The Stockmen

by Rachael Treasure

  Rosie frowned and looked at Julian. Then they both burst out laughing.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said fondly. ‘Sometimes I do miss the old bugger.’

  ‘After Christmas, let’s go down and see him then,’ Julian said.

  Rosie nodded.

  ‘Yeah. That’d be nice. Let’s.’

  ‘Well, see you tomorrow, sis.’

  Just before he shut the door, Julian pulled a letter from his back pocket and lobbed it onto her bed. ‘Forgot you had some mail.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Rosie, snatching up the envelope. Her heart leapt at the sight of the strange, spidery handwriting scrawled across it. Was it from Jim? Had he finally written? She could barely stop herself from ripping it open.

  ‘’Night then,’ she said to her brother.

  ‘’Night,’ and he closed the door. Rosie was tearing the envelope open when Julian ducked his head back round the door. ‘Is that smell you or the dog? It’s a shocker!’

  ‘Dog,’ said Rosie. ‘One thing Bones is not lazy about is farting.’

  ‘Foul,’ Julian said, wrinkling his nose before closing the door again.

  Rosie’s heart sank as she pulled out a letter which was folded around a pamphlet with a kelpie on the cover.

  The letter wasn’t from Jim at all, but came from a local homestyle historian – an ancient historian at that, judging from the shaky writing, thought Rosie. He was offering information for the kelpie articles. She felt a wave of disappointment sweep over her. Then her disappointment turned to sadness as she began to read the pamphlet and discovered the tragic conclusion to Jack Gleeson’s life.

  Chapter 34

  LAKE COWAL WEST, CIRCA 1880

  The doctor pulled down Jack’s lower eyelids and peered at the whites of his eyes. A yellow tinge had crept into their corners, making his normally brilliant blue eyes seem dull. The doctor stepped back from the bed, folded his arms across his belly and looked at Jack with a frown.

  ‘Nausea?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack.

  ‘Vomiting?’

  Jack nodded.

  ‘I see,’ said the doctor as he gathered up his things. ‘I recommend continued bed rest. There’s not a lot I can do at this point. It’s a matter of waiting to see how recovery goes.’

  He turned on his heel and pulled the curtain shut behind him, leaving Jack alone.

  A million questions flooded through Jack’s mind and fear gripped him. He thought of old Albert lying in his bed, dying, with his yellow old-man’s fingers curled up on the grimy sheets. Jack held up his hands and peered at his skin, which was also yellowing. The pain in his abdomen gripped him again and he shut his eyes against it and tried to think of something else.

  From behind the curtain he could hear the doctor and Mary talking in hushed tones and he strained to hear. He couldn’t make out any words. Anger simmered in him. What were they saying? Why weren’t they talking in front of him?

  In the kitchen, Mary’s face was pale and drawn as she listened to the doctor. Her hand instinctively came to rest on her unborn baby. She held back tears as the doctor’s whispering voice washed over her.

  ‘Hepatitis,’ he said. ‘That’s my diagnosis.’

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  ‘It’s an infectious disease of the liver … hence the yellowing of his skin and eyes.’

  ‘How did he come by it?’

  The doctor shrugged.

  ‘Any of a number of ways,’ he said. ‘The condition is spread through food and water. I’d say there may have been an outbreak here on the station … the children here may have had it, but the symptoms are usually mild in children. Their parents could have just thought they had a flu.’

  Mary thought back over the weeks. She tutored the Lake Cowal station children here in her kitchen. There was a time, about a month ago, when the numbers had dwindled to just two because the others were at home in the main house, sick with flu.

  ‘And our child? Will it harm the baby?’

  ‘No, Mary. It’s not likely.’

  She looked at the doctor’s earnest face, a face that reminded her of an owl. He blinked at her from behind his round spectacles.

  ‘And Jack? When will he be better?’

  The doctor fell silent and looked down at his shoes, as if the answer could be found somewhere at his feet.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t say. It’s … it’s a more serious condition for adults. He may not recover.’

  Mary’s hand flew up to her mouth and tears began to fall. Panic raged in her brain.

  ‘You mean he could die?’ she whispered.

  ‘Well … over time … perhaps … yes. I suggest you make provisions for you and your child. I’m sorry.’

  When Mary pulled back the curtain and came to sit by Jack’s bed, the expression on her face told Jack most of what he needed to know. She lay down next to him and stroked his strong, handsome face with her cool fingertips. She pushed back the strands of fair hair that now lay in damp slivers on his forehead. She kissed him with love on her lips. Jack moved his hand to her belly and let his hand rest on the place where his child slept within her womb.

  Jack was too ashamed of his illness to farewell his in-laws at Wallandool. Instead, he left Mary at her parents’ house and travelled on alone to the Cobb & Co coach change-over hotel in West Wyalong. Mary had wanted one afternoon to say goodbye to her mother and father before they headed south to Jack’s family at Koroit. But for Jack, goodbyes seemed senseless – especially goodbyes to Launcelot Ryan. Ryan’s bitter words at their last parting now cut even deeper into Jack’s heart, for he knew they were true. Mary would come back to this place to be with her family … and it would certainly be without him.

  Jack sat hunched on a bench outside the hotel in a patch of weak evening sunlight, waiting for Mary and the Cobb & Co coach to arrive. Some of the locals who passed him on the street were afraid to talk to him. This great strapping Irish lad, this legendary stockman, was a mere shadow of his former self. His skin was yellow, his face gaunt, the muscles of his arms were wasting away and his spine seemed to curve as though the gravity of earth was too much to bear. The strangest thing, though, was that there wasn’t a kelpie dog leaning by his leg, or sitting with its paws crossed by his boots. Jack Gleeson was horseless and dogless. A walking dead man.

  On a bleak morning in August 1880, cold winds sped over the paddocks at Crossley in southern Victoria. As if tormented by the wind screaming in the cottage roof, the baby woke and cried in his cane basket by the fire. Mary stooped to pick him up, a furrow in her brow. She held the warmth of the little boy to her breast and breathed in the sweet smell of his soft skin. She kissed him on the crown of his head.

  ‘Don’t worry, little man. Spring is on its way. It won’t be cold for long now. We’re through the worst of the winter. This wind and this winter is just Mother Nature having her say.’

  She bent to stoke the fire and then sat in the rocking chair. She clutched her baby and rocked back and forth, back and forth, as the wind threatened to lift the roof from the cottage.

  She was waiting for Jack’s Aunt Margaret and his cousins to arrive. She had sent word and they were surely making the four-mile trip from their home in Koroit to the cottage in Crossley now. She pressed her lips to her son’s head as she hummed. Tears spilled from her eyes and landed on the baby’s soft cheeks.

  ‘Oh dear God,’ she said, beginning to wail along with the wind.

  In the bedroom behind her lay the body of her husband of two short years. She had placed heavy pennies on his eyelids and washed him all over with warm soapy water. She had kissed him and whispered her love into his unhearing ears. She had picked up his hands and kissed each finger. She had seen those hands so often, pressing down gently on the soft skin of a working dog. Patting it with strength, command and love. She had felt that same power in Jack Gleeson’s touch. Now his hands were still and cold and curling. Mary held them to her cheeks but the magic of his touch was gone.


  The spirit of Jack had been blasted away by the cold Crossley wind. It was blowing north, blowing his soul back to the vast open country where all his dogs were. Back to where he belonged. His soul, embedded forever in the brown eyes of a thousand prick-eared dogs. Mary kissed her husband for the last time and waited for his family to collect his body.

  On that very same day in August, Charles King walked down to the kennels to let his dogs off for a run. While the other dogs danced in delight in the morning sunshine, he noticed Moss, on the end of his chain, lying on his side. The black dog was still. Charles crouched to place his hand on the old dog’s side. Moss was cold and stiff. And then Charles King knew. He knew his friend Jack had gone. He was suddenly crying. Unclipping the chain, he carried Moss over to a log and sat stroking him for a long time.

  As Charles King stared through tears at the red soil beneath his boots, he realised Moss had gone to find his master. He had joined Jack and Kelpie on a road that was not of this earth. They were all together, Jack, Kelpie, Bailey and Moss, riding high on a road that had neither past nor present, nor future. He gently laid the dead dog on the cold winter earth and turned away to search for a shovel.

  When Rosie woke it was morning and the anniversary of Sam’s death. She ran her hands over her wet cheeks with the sudden realisation that she had been crying in her sleep. She stretched her hands out of the covers and her fingertips came to rest on the pamphlet the historian had sent her. She looked again at the black and white photo of Jack Gleeson’s gravestone at Tower Hill cemetery. She couldn’t make out the inscription, but in type below the author of the book had written: ‘Erected by Mary in memory of her beloved husband John Denis Gleeson who departed this life 29th of August 1880 aged 38 years.’

  It sent a shiver through her. Jack had died so young. He was supposed to die a happy old man, with his children all around him. Training his dogs until he could no longer walk. He wasn’t supposed to die young, Rosie thought again. Poor Mary. To bury her young husband and to look ahead to a lifetime of raising her son without his father. Rosie felt the old panic rising within her as Jack Gleeson’s death stirred up emotions she’d tried so hard to control: her feelings over Sam’s death; Jim’s departure; her parents’ mess of a marriage. She couldn’t see a future for herself with anyone. What was the point? Tears began to well up in her eyes. Angrily, she swung her legs out of bed and accidentally stood on Bones’s tail.

  ‘Get out of the way!’ she said crossly. But he didn’t move. In the shaft of morning light she noticed his staring soulless eyes.

  ‘Oh God,’ Rosie said. ‘Lazy Bones?’

  She reached out to stroke his side. He was stiff beneath her touch. She wasn’t aware that she let out a strangled cry.

  ‘Oh no. Please, no!’ She knelt next to the old dog and said his name over and over. Then she began to fear the worst. She looked up at the pine-lined ceiling and closed her eyes.

  ‘Jim?’ she called out. ‘Jim?’

  But in her heart Rosie Jones knew Jim Mahony had left her world.

  Rosie stooped and rolled up the stiffening body of old Lazy Bones in the mat on which he had died. As she lifted him, fetid air escaped from his bowels. The familiar stench made her turn her head away.

  ‘That’d be right, Bones,’ she said. ‘Leave me with something special to remember you by!’

  She carried him to the wheelbarrow in the stables and laid him down inside it.

  ‘There you go, Lazy Bones – a perfect spot for you. You just lie there and I’ll push. No need for you to expend any more energy in life.’

  She swiped away tears as she laid a shovel next to him and began to wheel him through the side gate into the orchard.

  Beneath a lemon tree, Rosie began to dig. She felt the muscles in her arms flex and smelt the fecundity of the soil that squirmed with tiny living things. She winced as she sliced through the bodies of fat worms and they continued to wriggle, despite being severed in two. Here in the orchard, there was life all around – from the birds skittering noisily in the branches above her to the spider that was weaving her web on the back of a rich green leaf. Using her muscles to drive the shovel into the soil, feeling her breath quicken with effort, Rosie felt so young and alive. Yet lying there next to her was a stark reminder of death. Bones’s glassy eye stared up at the clouds that slid silently along in the blue sky above. His pink tongue was now pale and dry. His black lips looked plastic and his nose no longer shone with the moisture from his breath. She stroked his shaggy back before she lowered him into the grave on his mat. She began to shovel earth over his body and watched him slowly being covered by the dark soil. He would lie there like that for months in his death-sleep, slowly rotting away, though his body was still connected to life through the bellies of worms and tiny creatures that fed on him. Eventually, old Bones would become just that … bones.

  Rosie closed her eyes. She felt like she should say a prayer, but what good were prayers? She knelt down on the grass and patted the soil into an even hump. There beneath her was a grave. A grave that she now felt contained her past. She let out a breath and felt like she would cry … but no tears came. Her tears were now in the soil beneath her. She had just buried them along with Bones. She felt as if she was at last burying Sam and the memory of him. She was burying her hopes for a future with Jim. He was gone with his dogs. Along with Jim she was burying the tragedy of Jack Gleeson’s sad widow and his fatherless child. And, at long last, she was burying Rosemary Highgrove-Jones, and the past that had held her back for so long. Such a tiny grave, she thought, to fit so much.

  Rosie stood and began to stamp down the soil. It was as if she wanted the soil packed down so tightly, none of these things could ever come back into her life. She began to jump up and down, leaping high and then landing with a thump on the freshly turned soil. Stomping. Stamping. Burying the old. Trampling death. She gritted her teeth, laughing hysterically. What was the alternative to life? Rosie knew it was death. So there she was in the orchard, jumping up and down like a mad woman. She was living, leaping, breathing, all for now. For now, and for the precious life she had.

  Chapter 35

  Rosie pushed off from the rock and floated, trailing her fingertips through the water. She looked up at the blue summer sky and exhaled, letting the current slowly take her back downstream. She heard a splash. Then another. Rosie spun over to float on her stomach and see what had made the noise.

  On the river bank, Julian, wearing a Santa hat, and Evan, in reindeer antlers, skipped stones into the water. Around them danced the dogs, all eight of them: Dixie, Gibbo and Diesel, and the auction pups, Chester, Clyde, Coil and Sally. Duncan’s little terrier, Derek, was there too, looking offended at having to share his company with working dogs. A Jack Russell, thought Rosie, is a big dog trapped in a little dog’s body. She whistled and the ears of all the dogs pricked up.

  ‘Come, kelpies!’ she called. Some leapt into the water, others tiptoed over the stones and lowered themselves in gingerly. Soon they were all swimming around her, while Derek barked at them indignantly from the shore.

  ‘Lunch!’ called Margaret from her deckchair beneath a giant river red gum. Derek instantly fell silent and trotted over to beg beneath the table where the drinks and picnic hampers had been arranged.

  Rosie felt the warmth of the day wrap around her as she waded out of the river and hobbled over the hot river stones to her boots and sarong. The dogs splashed out behind her.

  ‘Go and sit down,’ she commanded, and the dogs ran up the river bank to lie under the shady trees.

  Evan and Julian, wet from the river, plonked down in the deckchairs and reached for their drinks.

  ‘Charge your glasses for a toast,’ commanded Duncan, the sweat on his brow shining.

  They all raised their glasses.

  ‘Merry Christmas!’ they chorused.

  In the silence while everyone sipped, Rosie realised she had never felt this happy.

  ‘This is great,’ Rosie said. ‘The
most relaxing Christmas ever!’

  ‘So you haven’t told her then?’ said Evan, glancing at Julian. Julian put his finger to his lips and frowned.

  ‘Told me what?’ Rosie sat forward.

  Julian sighed. ‘Nothing really. I’ll tell you later.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s just Evan spotted a fly-struck sheep on the way here.’

  ‘As my papa would say, Donworryaboudid,’ said Evan. ‘Eat now, slice off maggoty wool later.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Margaret. ‘Speaking of maggoty wool, my present for Rosie!’ She rummaged around in the back of the Pajero and pulled out a box, wrapped in Christmas paper.

  ‘For you,’ she said, handing it to Rosie.

  ‘Mum, I thought we agreed. It’s a no-present Christmas until we make a profit on the farm,’ Rosie cautioned.

  ‘I know,’ said Margaret. ‘But you won’t be cross with me once you open it.’

  Rosie tore at the paper.

  ‘Oh, wow!’ she said, genuinely ecstatic as she pulled out a pair of metal fly shears. ‘Brand new. And my very own. Thank you so much, Mum.’

  ‘Look, I even had them inscribed.’

  Rosie ran her finger over the lettering. Rosie Jones. She stood and gave her mother a damp, river-watery hug.

  ‘The man at the merchandise store said he’d show you how to sharpen them properly next time you’re in town,’ Margaret said, waving a fly from her face. ‘Thought I’d give them to you now so you can use them on that sheep on the way home.’

  Rosie set the shears down at her feet and sipped her drink. She looked at the dogs lying in the shade. Some were licking their wet coats, others dozing, or snapping at flies. She looked at Julian and Evan, who were munching on sandwiches, then Duncan and Margaret, who were feeding each other long skinny pretzels. She wished Gerald were here to see his family so happy. But then, if he hadn’t been brave enough to leave Highgrove in the first place, none of this would be happening.