BRANIGAN  by Filton Hebbard

                                    BRANIGAN

CHAPTER ONE.    This is how the first chapter begins:

       The pony stumbled, the girl was thrown, and about half an hour later the crack of a rifle shot resounded through the valley.

          It was a beautiful valley with soft, sweeping, undulating walls capped with dense trees on the upper reaches, and a long, winding trickle of a stream where it dipped to the bottom of the basin. In the hot, mid-morning sunshine the water of the stream scintillated as it fell from rocky outcrops on its journey to goodbye. Sheep grazed on the pastures, and in the distance, where the floor of the valley levelled as if a master pastrycook had rolled it ready for its topping, the long rows of grape vines could be seen: it was a quiet valley, sleeping.

          A stretcher was made from heavy canvas with two stout poles sewn into the outer sides, and six strong men carried the pony to the chosen place of burial. A grave was dug, and on the following day a small group watched as the body of the pony was lowered into the depths.

          'Be careful, Mr Morgan. You musn't hurt Tom Shore. I don't want no more pain for him.'  The young girl's face was drawn, dry-eyed, but red from earlier tears, and her tone strangely authoritative. She was twelve years of age, with flaxen hair and a straight nose in her heart-shaped face.

          The old, white-haired man paused to draw the back of a wrist across the perspiration on his forehead. He was the closest family friend, the one automatically chosen to be in charge. 'I don't think we can hurt him any more, Pila,' he answered softly.

          'Have you ever been dead, Mr Morgan?'

          The old man looked down, avoiding the girl's eyes. 'No, Pila, I haven't.'

          'Then you don't know whether it hurts or not when you're dead, do you, Mr Morgan?'

          'No, I don't. I'll be very careful with Tom Shore.'  He looked into the faces on the opposite side of the stretcher. 'You all heard that.'

          The grave had been dug large enough to take the poles of the stretcher, onto which ropes had since been tied. Gently, the men lowered the pony to the bottom.

          'There's two sheets in the cart with some hay,' the girl stated. 'Mum gave them to me.  You have to lay one sheet over Tom Shore to keep the dirt off him, and then the hay in case he gets hungry, and then the other sheet to keep the hay clean.'

          'Yes, Pila. Can we fill it then?'

          'Yes, Mr Morgan, but no rocks or anything like that. Not till you get to the top.'

          The grave was filled and carefully rounded. The heavy wooden cross was firmly set, and the girl stood alone. The adults had moved nearer to the homestead, standing together, looking back. The only woman amongst them spoke. She was in her mid-forties, pale of face and not of robust health, furrows across her cheeks. Pila's mother.

          'Some of you are new to the valley,' she stated quietly, 'and I want to thank you all for what you've done to help. You didn't know my husband Tom, did you?'

          'No, Mrs Shore,' somebody said. 'We've heard about him.' 

          'He was a good man, wasn't he, Dan?'

          Old white-haired Dan Morgan nodded. 'None better, Alice.'

          Mrs Shore looked around at the peaceful grandeur of the valley. 'It's hard to imagine how nature can change so drastically, so suddenly.'

          She looked at those who were new, the grape growers. 'Pila was born in one of the worst and longest droughts this valley has ever known. As a little child, she only knew it as a dry and barren place - which it was. But my husband knew it as it could be, like it is now. Every night before she went to bed Pila would sit before his chair in the living-room and he would tell her stories, about all sorts of things. he would tell about pirates and princes on beautiful white horses, and lovely gardens, and all those other children's delights. But the story that she liked the most, the one she kept asking for, was the story about a beautiful valley. "Our valley," he used to say. "It will come to us."'

          Mrs Shore paused and looked about. 'So different. So very different.'  Then she looked towards her daughter, standing at the graveside. 'Pila used to go to church in those days. She won't go now. She won't go inside, I mean. Most of you have seen her sitting underneath, I'm sure. You see, the padre used to give a sermon and it was like the story my husband used to tell Pila. It was a sermon about a beautiful valley with the things we see about us now. He used to ask us to pray to God for an end to the drought and the return to this lovely valley in which we live. But the drought continued for seven years before it broke, and one day - Pila was about six years old, I think - she asked her father when they would be going to this beautiful valley that both he and the padre often spoke about. Tom didn't think, I suppose, and he told her that this was the beautiful valley in his story, and one day it would come to her.'

          Mrs Shore sighed and shook her head almost in despair. 'Tom was a country man. He didn't explain things very well. He knew what to do on the property and he did it. He could never understand why Pila became hurt. She was old enough to know that the earth doesn't shift around. She accused him of lying to her about this beautiful valley, because she had only known it as harsh and dry. And she thought the padre had lied to everybody.

          'She wouldn't listen to any bedtime stories after that. It went on for about a year before the rains finally came, and it hurt Tom dreadfully. Pila was everything to him. She was our only child. I couldn't have any more children.' She touched her stomach. 'The trouble I've got now set in after that. But Tom was so sure that he could win Pila back when our mare had its foal. He planned to give it to her, to teach her how to ride it and care for it as her very own.'

          Mrs Shore took a handkerchief from her pocket and drew it across her eyes. 'Let's go up to the house for a cup of tea.' She turned. 'Pila got her pony. That one we've just buried. When  the rains came, they went on for days. You remember them, Dan. We thought they'd never stop. It was while it was raining that the mare had its foal. Tom heard the mare calling and he went out to help. It was night. I warned him to be careful. His heart used to give him a bit of trouble now and then, and the yards had gotten so slippery with the mud. We don't know what happened. We never saw him again and they never found his body.  That little stream down there had turned into a raging river. He must have slipped, and with those heavy clothes that men wear in the rain, he wouldn't have had much chance. We knew that he'd helped the mare have her foal because his lamp was in the stable. Maybe he left it there as comfort to the mare and was coming back to the house in the dark. Nobody knows. We thought we'd lost Pila, too. A search party found her three days later, sitting on the bank downstream, just staring at the water.'

          Mrs Shore moved towards the house and the men silently followed.

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