by Karen Wood
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘My dad’s cattle,’ she repeated. ‘The ones that keep going missing whenever you happen to be around.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yeah, right, just like you knew nothing about my horse.’
‘I never lied to you about him.’
‘You never told me about him either.’
‘Let me tell you now,’ said Josh.
‘All right.’ Zoe stood with her hands on her hips. ‘I’m all ears.’
‘My dad knows a guy called Pete, who works at the saleyards. He was talking about a nice horse that came through. He was lame but Pete thought he might come good. As soon as I saw him I recognised him.’ His voice softened. ‘Pete owns a pet-food company.’
Zoe snorted.
‘It’s on the bill of sale.’
‘But Dad would never let that happen!’
Wouldn’t he? Dad thought Jacky had bucked her off and kicked her in the head! He thought he was dangerous and lame! And the farm was going up for sale. She felt sick as she realised Josh was telling the truth. No wonder Dad had avoided answering her questions at the hospital . . .
‘What else do you know?’ she asked cautiously.
‘About what?’
‘My accident.’
‘I didn’t see how you fell off. I just found you, unconscious. I probably would have walked straight past if Wispy hadn’t found you first.’
Zoe ran her hands around Blackjack’s cheeks. Scotty, Caitlin, Queenie, they were all gone from her life. Well, no way was she going to lose him too. She scanned the place for a halter and saw several hanging on the gate. She took one and began buckling it around Jacky’s head.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m taking my horse back.’ She tied the rope around Jacky’s neck to make a set of reins. ‘He is mine. I don’t care how you got your hands on him. He’s mine.’
She took a step back and then vaulted onto him. She walked him to the gate and began unlatching it.
‘Hey, wait a minute,’ said Josh, striding towards her. ‘He’s my horse now.’
‘I’ll make sure you get your money back,’ she said, barging past him.
Zoe kicked Jacky on and turned him onto the road. There were fallen limbs everywhere along the edge, hidden beneath the overgrown grass. Blackjack negotiated his way through them slowly.
Within minutes, she heard a horse cantering along the gravel road behind her. Josh, coming after her. She steered Jacky onto the gravel where she could travel faster and kicked him into a gallop.
‘Holy —!’ Zoe pulled Jacky onto the side of the road to avoid colliding with a white station wagon. ‘Dad!’
She saw Mike in the passenger side, looking horrified before her father swerved to avoid her horse. He had seen her riding. With no helmet. This was not going to end well.
Zoe filled with panic. She kicked Jacky on and bolted for a secret track she knew. She had to get to it before her dad could turn the car around.
The track went down the side of the river that would take her up to the leasehold, bypassing Jen and Fred’s property. But she had to get to it and disappear before Josh and Dad caught up with her.
She pulled Jacky onto the grassy verge before a small bridge that crossed the river and ducked down beneath it. She hid under the concrete bridge, holding him steady, barely game to breathe. In moments, she heard her father’s car roar over the top of her.
When he was a good distance away, she turned up along the creek bed. The track began several metres away and took her up a steep climb through dense forest. Blackjack picked his way along the track, leaping onto rocks and choosing his own way confidently through the ruts and ridges.
She had no idea what she would do, but it would give her time to think; put all the pieces of this jigsaw together. If she went to Jen and Fred’s place, her dad would drag her straight back home.
She heard a horse clattering up the rocks behind her. She spun around.
‘I’m not giving him back,’ she said when Josh caught up, trying not to notice how the wind had torn half his shirt buttons open, leaving his chest exposed.
‘He was safe with me.’ Josh sounded frustrated and annoyed. ‘Now you’ve put him at risk again. Your dad saw him too.’
‘That’ll be my problem, not yours.’
‘Why are you always such an ice queen?’
‘What?’
‘Could you be any more frosty? I rescued your horse and you’re acting as if I stole it!’
‘You hid him from me,’ she steamed. ‘While I was unconscious in hospital, while my dad’s cattle mysteriously went missing for the third time this year, after you took advantage of me while my boyfriend was pashing my best friend. And to top it all off, my dog has just died. Excuse me if I’m a little bit confused and upset right now!
’She steered Blackjack around a large rock and let him scramble through a steeply cut channel.
Josh followed in silence while Zoe angrily wiped away her tears with her sleeve.
She kept Blackjack in the middle of the track, so he couldn’t ride alongside her. So he couldn’t see her blotchy, tear-stained cheeks and red eyes.
But as she rode on in silence, she hoped he would keep following. She didn’t know what the truth was, but she did know she was tired of being alone and unhappy. And the place she was going to, although beautiful, always made her feel a bit sad.
Near the top of the hill, the trees started to thin out and native grasses made a soft carpet dotted with grey boulders and starry everlasting daisies. Just being here changed her mood. She felt calmer, clearer in the head. Josh pushed his horse up next to her and they rode without talking for a while.
‘I haven’t been up here for ages,’ he eventually said.
‘Me either. I used to come up here a lot.’ They continued in silence a while longer. ‘This is where my grandmother died.’
Josh didn’t answer and she couldn’t bear to look at him. But she could see him out of the corner of her eye and hear the relaxed breath of his horse, snorting in and out.
‘Dad was on the front of the horse with her when it bolted. She got dragged but Dad broke free. He didn’t even get a bruise. But he’s never liked horses since then.’
Her heart sank as reality hit her. ‘You really did buy Blackjack from the kill pens, didn’t you?’ she asked Josh.
He nodded.
She rode over the bald knob of the mountain and when she reached a rock shelf, she slipped off her horse. She unbuckled her hobble belt and pulled it from the top of her jeans.
The belt had a brass ring a third of the way along. She bent under Jacky, looped it around one of his knees, ran the leather strap through the ring and then buckled it around the other knee. Then she slapped him on the rump and let him go graze.
Zoe walked over to the rock shelf. It looked out over a seemingly endless forest. Above the dark green canopy, two huge eagles circled gracefully in the thermals. She sat down, stretched her legs out in front of her and put her hands in her lap.
‘I can kind of understand why your dad doesn’t like you riding,’ said Josh, leaving his horse to graze next to Blackjack and joining her. ‘I’d take your horse off you too if you rode like that all the time.’ He sat behind her, stretched a leg either side of her and she froze when he wrapped his arms around her shoulders.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Testing the first law of thermodynamics.’
‘What?’
He laughed. ‘I’m trying to warm you up, Ice Queen.’
Zoe relaxed a little, and then smiled as a soft laugh left her nose. She let herself sink back into his chest and closed her eyes. ‘I’m not, you know.’
He let out a sigh. ‘Man, do I know.’
An odd quiet lingered between them. She leaned against his chest, registering the muscular strength of it and liking the way it fitted around her shoulders. Her legs crossed at the ankles, hands sat awkwardl
y on her lap. She looked down, to where both their legs stretched out over the rock, looked at his jeans and boots, next to hers. And when she dared look up he was smiling.
‘We have the same boots,’ he said.
‘Blundstone five-hundreds,’ she said and tapped the toe of hers against his.
The quietness stretched out between them and hung there for a while longer, until finally, Josh spoke again. ‘No one’s ever kissed me like that before.’
She looked at him sideways. ‘Me either,’ she confessed.
‘Reckon you’ll ever kiss me like that again?’
‘Probably not.’
Miss Antarctica, Ice Queen. Come on down!!!!
There was a pause and then she felt his hand pull the hair back away from her neck. ‘No chance at all?’ he whispered into her ear.
‘I reckon it’s your turn to kiss me,’ she whispered back. She turned to him.
Josh’s eyes darted around comically. ‘Reckon your gran’s watching?’
Zoe leapt up out of his arms. ‘No, but my dad is!’
Across the bald top of the mountain, her dad stood, hands on hips, with a ferocious look on his face.
‘I should have shot that bloody horse,’ he fumed. His face was red and his chest heaved with the effort of climbing the hill.
Zoe eyed the hobble straps around Blackjack’s knees and ran to him. Even if she let him loose up here on the leasehold it would be better than her dad getting hold of him.
‘You ride around like a lunatic. Are you trying to get yourself killed?’
Zoe fumbled at Jacky’s hobble buckle with trembling hands.
‘And you come here, of all places,’ he roared.
Jacky snorted at Dad, who was still charging towards him.
‘I should have just handed you over to your mother.’
She stood and placed herself in front of the horse. ‘Please don’t hurt him, Dad.’
‘And I should put a bullet in its head,’ bellowed her father, ‘so you can feel what it’s like to really lose something! To be fighting to hold onto something you love!’ He pushed her out of the way and grabbed at Blackjack’s halter.
Josh reached out to intercept him.
‘That’s my horse, Mr Brown,’ he said, as Jacky reared in fright, dodging both of them. ‘I own him. He’s mine.’
‘How the hell did you get hold of him?’ yelled Dad.
‘Bought him fair and square. From the sales. I got a receipt.’ Josh held both hands up in a gesture of peace.
Zoe decided to go on the offensive. ‘It’s no wonder you lost Mum,’ she said. ‘You’re a heartless bastard. If you’d held onto her a bit harder, she’d still be here helping you. She’d still be here for all of us.’
Whoa, where did that come from? Did she really just say that?
Her father’s face turned suddenly ashen. He walked to the rock ledge and for a moment, Zoe thought he was going to keep walking, straight off the edge. He squatted down and put his head in his hands.
Behind her, Josh hurriedly unbuckled the hobbles. Within seconds, he was on the red horse and had Blackjack leading along beside him.
‘I’m going to get him out of here,’ he said. ‘You okay up here with your dad? He won’t . . . hurt you or anything, will he?’
Zoe shook her head.
‘I’ll see you later, Mr Brown.’ Josh turned the horses and set off at a walk.
Zoe watched him lead Blackjack away. It seemed nothing was hers any more. She looked to where her father sat resting an elbow over one knee, then walked over and joined him on the rock ledge.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I don’t blame your mother for leaving.’
‘You’ve still got me, you know.’
He looked at her then. ‘Only just. Feels as though you’re slipping through my fingers most of the time. Just like everything else.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Dad looked away again. ‘I am too, Shorty. I know I’m never there for you in the way you want. I’m not good at all the woman stuff.’
He held an arm out to her and she shifted over and melted into his hug. His arms were like a bear’s, all hairy but strong and gentle. He wrapped both of them around her and dropped his face into the top of her head. ‘You’re so much like your mum,’ he mumbled, and then took her face in his hands. ‘Sometimes I feel the hurt when I look at you. I see what a fool I was to lose her.’
‘Mum was never cut out for this place,’ she said. ‘Making her live here would be like trying to make us live in the city.’
Her dad visibly shuddered, not just with the thought of it, she realised, but with the real probability. She shuddered too, as he let go of her face.
‘I’d really rather you didn’t lose me too.’
An uncomfortable look crossed his face and he spoke quietly. ‘Did Josh try to give you the horse back?’
‘No. He thinks I’m too reckless.’
‘Yeah, well, he’s right about that.’
Zoe winced, but didn’t answer back.
Her dad looked at her as if she was a fool. ‘After what he did to you?’
‘You hated him before the accident.’
A look of contempt came over her dad’s face. ‘I don’t trust him. His dad’s dodgy, but it was more that since you started seeing him . . .’ He broke off. ‘He just brings out the worst in you. You were a different person around him, always showing off and doing something stupid, and he encouraged it. I felt I barely knew you any more.’
‘And Josh? D’you think differently about him?’
Her dad shrugged. ‘His old man’s a diesel mechanic. Reliable.’
‘So that’s how you pick a good bloke?’
Her dad nodded. ‘Yeah, pretty much.’
‘Right,’ said Zoe.
‘Josh is a huge step up from Scotty.’
‘Who says he’s replacing Scotty?’
Her dad smiled.
‘You’ve been talking to Mike,’ she said accusingly.
‘Just be careful who you give your heart to, Shorty. Because once you give that part of yourself to someone you never get it back.’
‘Is that why you never met anyone else after Mum?’
He nodded and gave her a squeeze.
Zoe noted the warmth and the strength of his arm around her. ‘That just seems like a waste of nice hugs to me.’
‘This a private party?’ Mike stood behind both of them, his hands on his hips, bent slightly forward to catch his breath.
Zoe rocked her head back at him. ‘We’re doing girl talk.’
‘I’ll go, then,’ said Mike, turning on his heel.
‘But we’re finished now,’ she quickly assured him. ’It’s back to diesel engines.’
Mike visibly relaxed and let himself down onto the rock and they sat, in contemplative silence, in all their messed-upness, watching the sun sink into the baldy hills and cow paddocks that cradled her home at Hillanaroo; its chocolaty granite flats now all churned up with dozer tracks and broken trees, its currawongs that squawked noisily through the day and partied into the night. She looked at Mike and her father and thought of how easily they both just fitted into the place, so much so that she had a hard time imagining them anywhere else. It would be tragic if they had to move into town.
Maybe she should just go and live in the city with Mum and be done with it. Everything in her life seemed gone anyway, horse, dog, friend, boyfriend . . .
On either side of her, the men of Hillanaroo stared thoughtfully over the hills and she wondered what they were thinking.
‘Zoe.’ Dad spoke suddenly. ‘When you went back to get those three missing bullocks, were any of the other cattle yarded up?’
She sat there, trying to get her head straight. For her dad’s sake, she desperately wanted to remember.
‘I don’t know,’ she sighed.
‘Did you get back to the yards before you fell off?’ asked her dad.
‘No,’ said Zoe. ‘Scotty cracked his whip before I cou
ld get close enough.’
‘He chased you off, you mean?’ Dad clarified. ‘Before you could see what was going on in the yards?’
Surely not. Making out with her best friend was one thing, but that – what Dad was insinuating, that Scotty deliberately spooked her horse, that he yarded up the cattle and stole them . . .
‘I think he was . . .’ she paused, feeling humiliated, ‘more interested in Caitlin than the cattle.’
Mike gave a disgusted grunt.
Dad’s mouth went tight. Zoe saw his thoughts roll into balls in his head and continue to bounce around. After a while he shrugged and shook his head. ‘Maybe they got back into the lease. We’ll have to go back up there. Have another look.’
Zoe sat there, knowing for certain that the cattle could not have gone back. The gate had been closed. The fences were good. They’d had a drink.
Her heart sank as she thought about Josh again. He was the only other person there. That kiss – so out of the blue – was he the one trying to distract her? She exhaled heavily. But he was so nice. Everyone seemed to know and trust him. Everyone gave him access to their properties to go rabbit-hunting.
No. She agreed with Mike and Dad. He just wasn’t the type.
13
School next day was better, less confusing. Zoe managed to read a few chapters of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and found that Josh had put little blue sticky notes inside it with references to the class questions and wonky little smiley-face cartoons. They made her smile. Was he a total geek or just very sweet? But he wasn’t in any of her English classes, nor did she see him around the school.
Meanwhile, Scotty kept sending her text messages and if she hadn’t have been hoping that Josh would call she would have smashed her phone by Tuesday. She seethed every time she read one.
I still want to talk to you. We could meet somewhere private.
All these messages; while he still sat with Caitlin during lunch and jumped on the school bus with her every afternoon. She left them unanswered.
Meanwhile Caitlin pretended she didn’t exist. So did every other person that was remotely linked to her. Samantha and Tracey said polite hellos and departed as quickly as possible, which led Zoe to wonder what was being whispered about her. And Scotty didn’t want to hurt Caitlin’s feelings?