The Winter Pony (26 page)

It was another miserable night. My blanket was sodden from melted snow and sweat, then froze as the sun carried his light far to the north. Patrick came along and tightened it, pulling the icy layers close against my ribs. He was trying his best to help, but he only made me colder.

Then the wind blew hard. It blew harder than ever before. The tents fluttered and banged, the dogs dug themselves deep, and the sledges disappeared under enormous moving drifts. A river of snow seemed to flow across the Barrier. It toppled the pony wall, and icy pellets rattled on our blankets. It nearly knocked me off my feet.

I couldn’t look into that wind. So much snow streamed across the Barrier that I could hardly see Nobby beside me. I shivered under my blanket.

But out of the whiteness came Mr. Oates. He was leaning forward, struggling for every step, and behind him came Birdie Bowers and Captain Scott. I saw Cherry, with his glass eyes already balls of snow, and Patrick and all the others. They looked like gray shadows as they set to work in the howl of wind, to rebuild the pony wall.

We marched in breaks between the blizzards. Captain Scott pushed us hard, trying to make his thirteen miles. With skis strapped to his feet, he moved up and down the line as we straggled south together.

On the outside he looked hard as rock—browned and toughened—by wind and sun and weather. But on the inside he was worn away, whittled down like the lonely cairns on the Barrier. He said no man deserved to find winter weather in the middle of summer.

It was as though the place had turned against him, that the mountains—like giants—were trying to blow him right back to the sea. Captain Scott had come with his motor sledges, with his ponies and dogs and men, all marching like an army to conquer the mountains. Maybe they didn’t want us on their backs. Maybe the Pole preferred not to be found.

I was no longer in the lead. Again we straggled along, with Bones and Snatcher and Snippets pushing past me. Often Nobby and Michael passed me too, and I was last of all, too far back to see anyone else. It was just me and Patrick plodding through the white mist.

THERE
were times when it was beautiful. Behind the clouds, the sun encircled himself with giant rings of different colors, like pale rainbows all around him. They shone through the clouds and onto the snow, and Patrick stopped me once to admire it. We might have been the only creatures in the whole world, with the whiteness all around us. “Now, isn’t that a splendid sight, James Pigg?” he asked. The light shimmered above us; it shimmered in front of us, great rings of gold and blue and yellow. Patrick petted my nose. “We might be looking at the eye of God,” he said.

And there were times when it was strange. Out in the snow on a windy day, a pony came from behind me. I was plowing through a hollow full of powdery snow, my shoulders aching from the harness. Patrick used my halter to hold
himself up as he waded and staggered along. In an hour we’d moved a hundred yards, and I was so tired that I could hardly keep awake. I knew I was right at the back of the line.

The pony came up through the blowing snow without a sound of breaths or hooves or harness. He just appeared beside me and glided past at a steady trot, not even denting the snow with his hooves. He had neither a handler nor a sledge, and moments later, he’d overtaken us and was disappearing into the blizzard. I called out with a shrill whinny that Patrick didn’t understand. “Easy, lad,” he said. “I know it’s hard.”

The pony kept moving, fading away. But he turned his head just enough, in the instant before he vanished, that I saw that he was Blucher.

Michael’s end came next. The small pony with the tiny hooves, the one who ate my fringes, had his nose bag on when Mr. Oates came to fetch him. His handler was Cherry, and I had never seen a man so sad as poor Cherry was just then. He asked Mr. Oates to wait until Michael had finished eating, and that didn’t take very long because there wasn’t a lot in our feed bags. He petted the little pony every minute. Then he took off the bag and scraped the inside of it for the last flakes that Michael couldn’t lick from the folds and the corners. He held them out on his palm, his hand bared to the cold. Then his glass eyes frosted over, and that made him seem like a spirit.

Michael went playfully. He was always happy with Mr. Oates, and he must have imagined that they were off on some
sort of game. He rolled in the snow, then sprang to his feet, then nickered with his teeth showing, as though the whole thing was a great joke.

I didn’t want to watch him being shot. I muzzled at my feed bag, wishing I didn’t have to hear the sounds. I was glad the little pony fell so softly into the snow.

And now there were five of us. We were twelve miles from the Gateway. One more day would get us there, and I didn’t know if I should be happy or afraid. Just then, all I felt was loneliness.

When the men were in their tents, and we were shuffling sleeplessly along the picket line, the clouds sailed away and I saw the Beardmore.

It was horrible but beautiful, a hundred miles of ice pouring down between the mountains, shattered by crevasses, jumbled with enormous blocks and ridges. I could see why no pony had ever climbed it. I didn’t believe it was possible. The Beardmore looked worse than the Barrier, and all uphill for a hundred miles. I hoped just then that Captain Scott wouldn’t even
ask
me to climb it.

The Gateway didn’t look so much like a gateway anymore. We were too close; there was no arch of clouds to close it in. The mountains at the sides seemed more like barriers than pillars. My mountains at home had been friendly and safe, but these seemed only cruel.

I felt scared. I felt cold and very alone. I wanted to huddle close to Snatcher or Snippets, but we were spread too far along the picket line. We could only look at one another, and the two of them stared at me with wide and wondering eyes. They looked fearful, trapped somehow on the huge Barrier.

I didn’t sleep. I watched for Patrick, staring at his tent for hour after hour.

Clouds moved in again, hiding the Beardmore. Snow began falling, very soft and silent, with huge flakes drifting down. Then the wind picked up again, and the snow became a stinging sleet.

I kept staring at the tent. I could feel half-melted snow slithering from my forelocks, dripping from my mane. I had to blink it away. Everything looked dim and watery.

When Patrick appeared, a blizzard was blowing again. The sides of his tent were booming in the wind, and the pony wall had tumbled.

It was a wretched, awful day. The snow was wet enough to soak through my blanket, until every inch of me was wet. Then the temperature fell, and all the water turned to ice. I shivered so hard that I thought my bones would shatter.

For four days, it was like that. Howling wind and sleet one moment, enormous flakes the next, tumbling through the air like a storm of butterflies.

Mr. Oates stayed with us. He fussed with our blankets and rubbed us down. Then he huddled by himself against the pony wall while the wind whipped over his head. The men kept saying that the temperature was well above zero, but I had never felt so cold.

On the third day, Blossom went by. I saw him only vaguely, through whirls of blowing snow. He walked as though there was no wind, his mane unruffled, his forelock hanging straight. Like Blucher, he stepped along on top of the snow, and he left no tracks on the powdery surface. I remembered him as sickly
and old, a staggering thing. But now he looked younger than I’d ever known him, strong and healthy.

He passed between the tent and the pony wall, very close to Mr. Oates and Snatcher. The man didn’t see him, but Snatcher did. He turned to look, snow tumbling from his hair as he raised his head. But already Blossom was gone, a faded ghost in the blizzard.

I hadn’t slept since the storm began. I was cold and tired. But I was sure that I saw Blossom, unburied from his grave.

An hour later, the wind began to ease. The snowfall stopped, the sky brightened, and the men crawled out from their tents.

They looked like foxes emerging in the spring, wary and worried. Their tents were drifted over so heavily that only the tips of the bamboo poles were poking from great mounds of white. They came out wet and miserable, from a warm dampness to a world of unbelievable snow.

The sledges were buried four feet deep. The dogs couldn’t be seen at all, though wisps of steam rose from the little holes where they’d dug themselves in.

The men brought shovels and picks. They dug out the tents; they dug out the sledges. Mr. Oates and Patrick gave us our nose bags, though there was so little food inside them that it was hardly worth the bother.

Patrick offered a biscuit. What an effort to lift my head enough to take it. Cold and wet and frozen, I felt more dead than alive.