The Stockmen

by Rachael Treasure

  ‘The senile act started out as a bit of a lark … it certainly sucked in the likes of your mother. Then I just kept it up. I wouldn’t get my Meals on Wheels from ’em if I didn’t act up a bit. Plus the more of the “old fool” act I give them, the more I get to hear what they really think of me. Silly old chooks. They think I’m as deaf as a post and nutty as a Picnic Bar.’ He tapped at his head and gave a high-pitched, gleeful laugh. He strode over to the sideboard and pulled out a bottle of Tullamore Dew whisky.

  ‘Sit yourselves down and we’ll have a nip. But first I’ll clean out the blessed kitty litter, it’s giving me the shites. I was hoping one of the old chooks would be by to do it for me, but they’ve been thin on the ground this week,’ he said with a wink.

  Rosie sat on a sagging armchair and watched as Mr Seymour carried the kitty litter outside.

  ‘Wow!’ whispered Evan as he picked up a snow dome of Phar Lap and shook it. ‘This place is so retro! Some of this stuff would sell for a mint in Melbourne!’

  Mr Seymour returned and poured them all large glasses of whisky before settling back into his armchair. On the piano, the cat continued to crouch, watching them through narrowed eyes.

  Mr Seymour raised his glass. He looked directly at Rosie.

  ‘Jim tells me you’re digging up the ghosts of history … tracking down the past of “Kelpie Jack”.’

  Rosie wondered what else Jim had told him about her.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said politely. She looked around at the old photos and sketches of long-dead racehorses on the walls, and the stacks of yellowing newspapers on the floor. ‘Maybe I should ask if you have any books or clippings on him?’

  ‘Don’t get him started,’ Jim said.

  Rosie didn’t feel like talking about kelpies with Mr Seymour. She wanted to climb into bed with Jim and reassure him that she didn’t care what the rest of the town thought.

  ‘A bit of oral history would be good,’ Rosie said dreamily, casting Jim a flirty look, which he ignored.

  ‘Well,’ Mr Seymour said, ‘I can tell you all about the bloodlines, and which dogs were crossed with Jack’s Kelpie to start the breed off.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rosie, resigning herself, ‘that’s … great.’

  BANKS OF THE MURRUMBIDGEE RIVER, CIRCA I871

  Jack urged Bailey on to a trot when he heard the lowing of cattle ahead on the track. Since leaving Ballarook, he had spent the days drifting north on his way to Mary at Wallandool. But when he heard that Mark Tully was looking for him, Jack turned his horse to the east. He knew Tully was in charge of a mob of drought cows and was grazing them alongside the Murrumbidgee.

  Jack’s skin prickled with excitement when he saw through the trees the black gelding with the white snip on its nose, and the mottled red hides of the cattle.

  On the other side of the mob, Mark Tully was hitching rails up around the yards. He looked out from under his hat when his dogs barked in greeting and ran towards Jack.

  ‘They said at the hotel that you were about here with the herd,’ said Jack as he slid from the horse and shook Mark’s hand vigorously.

  ‘I’d heard word you’d left Ballarook too … chasing a lady, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Jack, kicking at the dust. ‘That’s yet to be seen.’

  Mark put a hand on his mate’s shoulder. ‘Come with me. I’ve got something that will take your mind off Miss Ryan.’ He walked with Jack over towards the camp site.

  There, tied to a tree, was a handsome black dog with a short, smooth coat. He had prick-ears and bright brown eyes and his tail beat up clouds of dust when the men walked towards him.

  ‘I’ve been holding on to him for weeks, trying to track you down. His name’s Moss. I thought a dog as classy as this would be perfect for Kelpie. He’s the same lines as my dogs. Rutherford-bred, from northern Scotland. When I saw him working, I knew his style would suit your Kelpie.’

  Jack stooped to pat the young dog’s shiny coat.

  ‘He’s a beauty.’

  ‘It’s time both of us put our skills to the test and went trialling. With dogs like these I reckon we’d be hard to beat.’

  ‘But how did you come to have him?’

  ‘Ah, Jack … let’s just say the odds were with me that day.’

  Jack unclipped Moss’s chain and he danced about Jack’s legs wagging his tail. Kelpie came to bounce in front of him as an invitation to play, her solid little forepaws thumping on the ground. Moss pulled back his ears in response and grinned as he leapt from side to side.

  ‘He’s a character,’ said Jack.

  ‘That he is. Like you said that first night we met again, on our way to Ballarook … this is the start of something bigger than just you and me and these few dogs. We’re going to make a difference, Jack. I just know it.’

  As the birds began to stir before dawn outside the window, Rosie woke up on Mr Seymour’s couch. In the chair across from Rosie, Mr Seymour sat with his mouth open, snoring.

  Jim, Julian and Evan had disappeared hours before to the musty-smelling spare rooms, while Mr Seymour droned on about dogs.

  ‘Velour bedspreads with tassels! We had these when we were little,’ was the last Rosie heard from Evan, before he and Julian both fell into a deep sleep.

  Feeling seedy from too much rum, Rosie tiptoed along the hall and peered into one of the bedrooms. There, in each other’s arms, lay Evan and Julian, sleeping peacefully. Rosie couldn’t help but smile. It was the happiest she’d ever seen her brother. She closed the door gently. In the next room, Jim slept on an old camp bed. Rosie crept in and sat on the edge of the bed. Jim stirred and opened his eyes to look at her.

  ‘I think we’ve had our first fight,’ she whispered. ‘But the best part is making up, you know.’ She pulled back the old quilt and snuggled in next to his warmth.

  ‘You’re not wrong. This making up feels very nice indeed.’

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Mmm?’ he said sleepily.

  ‘Do you really think I’m ashamed of being with you?’ Rosie asked, resting her chin on his chest and looking up at him. Jim shut his eyes again.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘If you hadn’t noticed, Jim, you’re in Australia now, not Great Britain. We’re a classless society down here.’

  ‘Oh, are you now? I don’t believe that for a second.’ Then he added more gently, ‘We’re from such different backgrounds, Rosie. Maybe it’s just not going to work?’

  ‘Don’t you dare say that!’ Rosie said. ‘Of course it can work!’ She snuggled back into his chest.

  Jim held her tight for a moment, then gently pushed her off him and sat up.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ve work to do today. I’m sober enough to drive now, so let’s get cracking.’

  ‘So have we stopped fighting?’ she asked.

  ‘All is forgiven,’ he said as he stooped to pull on his jeans.

  Chapter 28

  It was now late afternoon and the sleepless night at Mr Seymour’s was catching up with Rosie. She and Jim had spent the morning out at Cattleyard Swamp mustering up the cows and calves for marking the next morning. As they trailed the cattle, bringing them back to the homestead yards, Rosie squinted at Jim.

  ‘Are you sure we’re not still fighting?’

  ‘Of course we’re not,’ he said, reaching over to pull Oakwood’s rein so that the gelding came to stand next to his mare. Then he kissed her. ‘I’m just tired. That’s why I’m not chatty.’

  Back at the homestead, Rosie couldn’t wait to climb into bed with Jim. All they had to do now was feed the dogs, mix up the chaff for Sassy and Morrison, and prepare the vaccine, ear tags and knives for tomorrow’s work. Then eat and slip into bed. Her thoughts were interrupted when her mother rang the dinner gong.

  ‘Surprised she’s up for cooking,’ said Jim, looking up from his knife sharpening. Rosie smirked. According to Julian, Margaret had only arrived back at the homestead that morning, long a
fter Jim and Rosie had headed out to muster the cows and calves. Apparently she had alighted from Duncan’s sports car, kissed him fondly on the lips, and run inside giggling like a schoolgirl.

  When Rosie and Jim walked into the homestead they were met by the delicious aroma of Indian curries. They found Margaret, Julian and Evan sitting at the kitchen table, laughing and drinking beer. They greeted Rosie and Jim with cheers and raised stubbies.

  ‘That’d be right,’ said Rosie, her hands on her hips and a smile on her face. ‘Jim and I slave our guts out all day while the bloody squatters party on!’

  She accepted the bottle of beer that Julian was pressing into her hands and hungrily scoffed some naan bread.

  ‘Come on, everybody,’ said Margaret. ‘Dinner is served!’

  In the dark, wood-panelled dining room they passed delicious steaming dishes around the table, everyone talking at once. Jim held Rosie’s hand beneath the table. In the glow cast by the silver candelabra, Rosie sat back in her chair, watching her family. Her mother looked different. Younger, somehow. Her clothes didn’t look like they had been ironed on to her, for one thing. And her hair, normally lacquered into place with masses of hairspray, fell in soft, natural waves. She acted differently too. When had Margaret stopped hassling her about her appearance? Rosie wondered. She no longer complained about Rosie’s torn work shirts, threadbare jeans and long, untrimmed hair. Rosie couldn’t quite put her finger on it but her mother had changed … or at least, something had shifted within her. Rosie stifled a smirk. Something had definitely shifted within her last night, she thought wickedly. Something like Duncan Pellmet. Rosie spluttered and began to laugh.

  They all turned to look at her. Her hand covered her mouth and her eyes scrunched up as she shook with laughter.

  ‘What?’ they chorused. It made her laugh harder. Here she was, she thought, sitting at her great-great-grandfather’s dining table that had been imported from England. She was holding hands with the stockman and playing footsies with him under the table. What’s more, the stockman was sitting at the head of the table, where Highgrove-Jones men had sat for generations. Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, her gay brother was talking to his boyfriend. Then there was Mrs Highgrove-Jones, who had just spent the night with her new toy boy (given that Duncan must be a good seven years younger than Margaret). The Highgrove-Jones ancestor who had imported the table wouldn’t just be rolling in his grave. He’d be spinning like an Afro-American rapper. But then, Rosie realised, Mr long-dead Highgrove-Jones was no longer her great-great-grandfather anyway! Her real great-great-grandfather could’ve actually been some swagman who had once called in here to beg for food.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ asked Julian.

  She brushed tears of laughter away and struggled to speak.

  ‘This!’ she said, sweeping her hand around the room. ‘Us!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Margaret.

  ‘Well, there’s Julian … a horse’s hoof. No offence, Evan. And you, Mum … shagging the editor of The Chronicle, while your husband’s run off with your sister. It’s such a crack-up! And then there’s me … a bastard, so to speak. With a father so awful Mum can’t admit who he is. And now I’ve taken up with the workman.’ She held up Jim’s hand from under the table. ‘Can you imagine what Prudence Beaton would say? Or the Chillcott-Clarks?’

  The room fell silent as all eyes came to rest on her. The smile on Rosie’s face slid away as she looked around her. Jim stared at her poker-faced, her mother pursed her lips and Evan put his hand on Julian’s shoulder. Then, as if a switch was flicked on, Margaret, Evan and Julian began to splutter too and soon they were laughing loudly enough to rouse the ghosts of the servants in the attics. But even as her family laughed around her, Rosie felt uncertainty settle in the pit of her stomach. Jim had quietly slipped his hand out of hers.

  By the time Rosie made it out to the quarters after clearing up the kitchen, Jim was asleep. Instead of spooning against his warm body, Rosie lay with her back to him. What was upsetting him so much? And how could she sleep when she longed to find out who her true family was? Sighing, she reached out for the tattered Working Kelpie Council newsletter beside the bed and began to read.

  BOLERO STATION, NSW, CIRCA 1874

  A hot, windy day was coming to life beneath a sunrise splashed with colour. Jack looked up at the crazy clouds that hung over the red-soil plains of the Riverina. Bright pinks, blues and reds were streaked across the sky like the brushstrokes of a madman’s painting. Jack pulled his hat down low over his brow and made his way to the kennels. Kelpie wasn’t in her normal place waiting for him, ears pricked and tail flogging the ground. Instead she was inside the dark hole of her kennel. He stooped and looked inside.

  ‘Well, bless me!’ he said, grinning broadly. ‘You might have waited for me, girl! You weren’t due for another two days!’

  Kelpie was curled around a litter of fat, glossy pups, five in all. Jack scooped up each tiny pup in his hands, surprised at the range of colours Moss and Kelpie had thrown. One pup was jet black, one black and tan like Kelpie, two were of rusty red colour and yet another came with a slate-grey coat.

  He couldn’t wait to tell Mary that the pups had arrived safe and well. Normally he’d write to her. But he would be seeing her the next week, as he had time off from Bolero to journey to the Ryan’s local church for Easter Mass. It was there the Ryan family clustered in the front pews each Sunday after a dusty journey from their home on Wallandool. Launcelot Ryan would glare as Jack and Mary stole gleeful glances. Afterwards he would lurk near the couple like a shadow, making sure they exchanged only pleasantries, and nothing more. Jack shrugged away the thought of Mary’s father and the difficulties he created between them. He had five beautiful pups! He went to find his fellow workman, Tom Keogh, who would be excited to hear the pups had arrived. Jack had promised Tom a pup from Kelpie’s first litter.

  As the winter moved into spring on Bolero, the pups began to grow into classy types. Rain had failed to fall in the Mirool district, so Jack spent many of his days carting water to thirsty stock. Because of the dry he couldn’t have leave to visit Mary on Wallandool. Instead he wrote her stilted letters, always with the vision of her father breaking the wax seal and reading his private words. When he did have a day off from work, to forget Mary he absorbed himself in training the pups. Soon other workers and young graziers from neighbouring stations were drifting over to Bolero on Sundays. The men would share training methods with one another, standing about the yards with their dogs on the ends of long ropes like fallen kites. Some coaxed pups with pieces of dried kangaroo meat and others used kindly words and sounds.

  John Cox of Mangoplah station came by regularly to play at the dog trialling. He kept his smile hidden behind a long moustache and raised his voice to the heavens if the dogs took a wrong turn. When John Cox first saw Jack working a dog without cursing or raising his voice, his caterpillar-like eyebrows rose high on his forehead.

  ‘Your skills are too good for that of a mere overseer, Jack. If I could have you as my manager on Yalgogrin, I could tend to Mangoplah without a worry in the world. What do you say?’

  ‘It sounds tempting, John. But I haven’t long set my boots down here on Bolero. Give me a bit of time to think on it.’

  Jack loved it when graziers such as John Cox chose to spend their spare time working their dogs alongside station hands. In the yards, Jack thought, the dogs made all men equal. They gathered outside Jack’s tiny wattle-and-daub hut to talk dogs until sundown, admiring Jack’s pups as they ran about on the crackling dry house paddocks. The lightly timbered mountain of Yalgogrin rose up from the Riverina plains as if seeking out the sky. Jack’s hut nestled at the base of the mountain amidst a cluster of lazy-looking pepper trees and sturdy, upright kurrajongs. Galahs screeched in the drooping branches and danced in front of the hut. The men were gathered here in the shade beneath the split shingle roof on a particularly hot Sunday, waiting for the afternoon to cool befo
re riding home with their dogs. When the sun sank lower and the flies began to give up their chase, Jack’s boss, Mr Quinn, stood up.

  ‘S’pose we ought to bid you lads farewell and get on with our work. Jack here must muster that mountain, and I must ready myself for a journey home.’

  The men stood to leave, but Jack poured himself a cup of tea, took another hunk of damper and pulled up a chair on the verandah.

  ‘I think I’ll use this chair for the muster instead of me horse, if you don’t mind,’ he said.

  ‘Stop playing silly buggers with me,’ Mr Quinn said. He was already familiar with Jack’s humour and liked to play along with him. Jack had fitted in comfortably on Bolero.

  ‘Oh, I’m not being silly at all,’ Jack said with a glint in his eye. ‘Bets are on, gentlemen, that I can muster that there Yalgogrin Mount with this chair here … instead of my horse.’

  ‘Right then! You’re on!’ said Quinn, taking off his hat and throwing a coin into it. The other men tossed their own coins into Quinn’s hat.

  ‘Now, how do you propose to do it?’ asked Jack’s boss.

  Jack strode over to a flat clear area in front of the hut.

  ‘Just you watch.’

  Jack called Moss and Kelpie to him and told them to sit. With his back to the hill, Jack looked at both dogs. They quivered with anticipation, ears pricked, eyes locked on Jack, waiting for his word.

  ‘Moss, get away over,’ Jack said, inclining his head to the right, and Moss took off, casting out clockwise towards the mountain. Jack followed his command with a piercing whistle that seemed to propel the dog up the steep slope. At Jack’s feet, Kelpie whined softly with impatience, waiting her turn.

  ‘Kelpie, get away back,’ said Jack, inclining his head the other way. Like a rabbit on the run, she shot out in an anticlockwise direction towards the mountain. Then Jack strolled back to the hut and sat on the rickety old chair, resting his feet up on the verandah post and folding his hands across his flat belly. Both dogs ran further and further away. Soon they were just tiny black blobs darting between the trees on the crest of the mountain.