‘No. No one is taking me out. But Jeremy—’
‘Just a quiet night somewhere. By the river? Jeez, Alice, what’s the big deal?’ Jeremy looked at her imploringly.
She looked down at her muddy boots.
‘Don’t you trust me? I know I’m not Mr Perfect, but I’m not gonna force myself on you.’
Alice looked back up at him. ‘I do appreciate you asking me, Jeremy. But I know that neither of us would enjoy it. And of course I trust you! I spend half my life alone with you.’
Jeremy felt hot indignation flare inside him. Why had he given her the opportunity to humiliate him again? This Valentine’s Day refusal was becoming a ritual. He wasn’t going to beg this time, at least. ‘Righto then. Have a nice night. All alone. Hey, Ali, you should think about joining a convent. You’d make a great nun. Your skin would stay nice and pale under an old habit.’
‘Thank you.’ She was infuriatingly cheerful. ‘Some of the most amazing people who have ever lived were nuns. Ever heard of Mother Teresa? Saint Mary MacKillop?’
‘Reckon they still wanted someone to love ’em, but. Bet they were lonely in bed at night. Withered up. Craving love.’ Jeremy looked at Alice, whose features were unreadable. How could she be so cold?
She turned and started to walk away, but he caught her hand.
‘Please, Ali?’ Yep, now he was begging. What in hell was he thinking?
‘I’m sorry, Jeremy.’
Her expression was gentle. But now Jeremy was fuming. He dropped her hand. ‘I reckon you got tickets on yourself, Alice. You’re just a bloody snob. I dunno why I waste my time with you.’
Last year he’d made no impact. This time he could see he’d upset her, hopefully as much as she’d upset him. She was looking up at him, large dark eyes full of bewildered hurt.
‘I never asked for your attention, Jeremy. Do you think I don’t know that getting me to go out with you is just some sort of challenge for you?’ Alice spun around and walked away, but not before Jeremy had seen tears spring up in her eyes. Before he could prevent it, he experienced a sharp stab of regret over his cruel words. He tried not to wish them unsaid: she’d deserved it, he told himself. Was Alice anything more than just a challenge to him?
He stormed over to his cottage to change, and resolved to head off now before his anger could cool. All the way to town in his ute, Jeremy filled his mind with noisy thoughts and blasted his eardrums with AC/DC. He wouldn’t think about Alice. Impossible Alice.
That night he had a blast. He did everything that usually spelled a good time. And as always, he was the life of the party. But while his body drank and laughed, his mind drifted back to stately old Redstone and Alice. He found himself remembering her accusation and wondered if it was true. Jeremy didn’t leave the pub with any of the girls that asked him to. Instead he drove home alone in the early hours of the morning.
Just after dawn, he came and found Alice at the yards where she was working with Benji’s colt. He climbed through the rails and stood diffidently in front of her. She looked up at him, seeming surprised to see him up and about so early. As soon as he was sure he had her full attention, he started to speak.
‘Ali, I wanted to say I’m real sorry for upsetting you yesterday. And mostly for those crook things I said.’
Alice examined him with her most probing gaze. Then her expression softened and her eyes spoke compassion. Jeremy felt like a naughty child. In his hung-over state it was maddening.
‘Forget it, Jeremy. I wasn’t upset for long.’ Alice smiled encouragingly.
Jeremy looked at her serene countenance and saw that what she said was true. ‘Why not?’ All his guilt had evaporated and he spoke testily. ‘Why didn’t I upset ya? Am I so unimportant? Like some sort of annoying little kid? I s’pose you couldn’t care less what I think.’
‘That’s not it at all! I just knew you didn’t mean those things you said about me. I know why you said them. I knew that I hadn’t done anything wrong, so why be upset? I think a whole lot of you.’
He’d been expecting some kind of sulky, begrudging acceptance of his apology and had been prepared for a few weeks of making amends for the terrible offence he’d caused her. And here she was, feeling sorry for him. Worst of all, he’d needlessly caned himself with guilt for the last twelve hours. Even the rum had failed to anaesthetise the rotten feeling.
Alice reached out and touched his arm. He looked down into her earnest face and reconsidered what she’d just said. She thought ‘a whole lot of him’.
‘I hate arguing with you, Jeremy. Let’s be friends again now that Valentine’s Day is over for another year.’
‘Righto then, Miss Wilson.’ He gave her a quick, hard hug and she sighed in his arms, obviously relieved. He vowed to himself that he would never speak to her rudely like that again.
Chapter 31
The grass had shot away and Redstone was looking a picture. Good feed was now abundant and there was water trickling in all the gullies. The cows were shiny and healthy, their episode of starvation already forgotten.
In March, the Redstone weaners were taken off their mothers despite Sam’s insistence that they were too small. But Alice was adamant.
‘It’s the breeders we need to think about now, Pa. If we don’t get those weaners off, those cows will be too slow to recover from the dry, they won’t cycle, and our calf numbers will be down again next year.’
The weaning went very smoothly. Alice’s dogs were working so effectively that they almost compensated for the lack of manpower. Each afternoon, once her grandfather had disappeared inside to doze in his chair, Alice would saddle Rose and work the weaners. She was pleased to see that Rose was coming along in leaps and bounds.
Then, in April, it was time for the late bullock muster. Sam was strongly opposed to Alice’s intention to ride Rose. This was a rogue generation of bullocks: they hadn’t been worked as weaners, as Alice had been away at ag college. Sam warned her that there was no place for a green horse on this muster.
However, fate was in Alice’s favour. The day before the bullock muster they discovered that Bingley was lame. Then Dan arrived with Mushgang for the four-day muster without his horse, having had to put the gelding down with a broken leg a few weeks before. Suitable horses were thin on the ground so Alice had her wish.
The first paddock they mustered was Pandemonium. When the riders entered at the eastern gate the main mob of bullocks was gathered at the trough. The nervous beasts got wind of the riders when they were still a distance away, and thundered off into the brigalow suckers.
‘Cunning old coots,’ Sam muttered. ‘We’ll let them run till they hit the back fence, then work them back around the long way.’
He sent Jeremy on Carmen to trot in one direction around the fence, and Dan in the other. The remaining three split up to canvass the brigalow suckers en route to the back fence, where they hoped the main mob would have pulled up.
Jeremy and Ace arrived on the scene first; at the sight of them, the bullocks began to shift uneasily in preparation for flight. Luckily, Alice arrived shortly afterwards, bringing with her several head that her dogs had flushed out of the suckers. She, Jeremy and the dogs positioned themselves at strategic points around the mob, at a respectful distance, in order to hold the bullocks where they were. When the three older men arrived, the cattle began to mill around suspiciously, looking for a weak point in the blockade. But the riders and dogs stayed in position for more than fifteen minutes, until the bullocks had settled down.
The task now was to move the mob along the fence, exerting just the right amount of pressure to keep them moving without startling them. Sam and Dan went in the lead, Alice, Jeremy and the dogs took the wing, and Mushgang stayed on the tail. They began to push the mob, and at first the large beasts travelled in an orderly fashion.
Then Ace disgraced himself when a hare bounded across his path too tantalisingly close for him to resist. He was off after it like a shot, baying like a hunting hound.
Several touchy bullocks rushed forward in surprise, which made some others bust out sideways. Instead of going out wide the too-keen Lydia made an aggressive beeline for them, and the added pressure only hurried them on their way out into the paddock. Kitty and Lizzy went out wide to block them, but, overcome by the size of the galloping bullocks, the two little bitches backed down at the last minute. Next Darcy closed in on the cattle from the side; targeting the ringleader, he leapt at the monster’s face and hung for a moment from its nose. The bullock spun around, disturbing the flight of his followers just enough to allow the other dogs to close in again.
By now Alice and Jeremy had arrived and between them they were able to turn the bullocks back towards the fence. But the whole mob began to rush. Sam and Dan were overtaken and in no time the bullocks were in full flight. They were moving fast, but in the right direction along the fence, so the riders’ only option was to keep up and try to steer them into the fenced laneway leading to the bullock yards.
Jeremy managed to get close to the lead, and at this point Carmen truly came into her own, roughly shouldering several straying bullocks back into the mob. At Alice’s command, Rose stretched out in full gallop, working her way to the front of the mob to help Jeremy direct them into the wing at the beginning of the laneway. Alice hadn’t even paused to consider the effect of the unruly chase on her high-strung mount, and it was only once she’d slowed down and reached the safety of the laneway that it occurred to her how responsive and willing Rose had remained amid the confusion.
Once inside the fence, there was nowhere for the uncooperative beasts to go but along the laneway and into the yards. The bullocks slowed to a bellowing trot and the riders were able to drop back to the tail and relax. Once the solid double gates had been shut, they left the bullocks to mill around in the cooler. To give the stirred-up cattle a chance to cool their brains, the four men and Alice took a break for smoko.
Mushgang chewed slowly on a piece of Olive’s date slice and looked sideways at Alice as though seeing her for the first time. ‘I take my hat off to you, Alice. I thought I was pretty damn good with horses until today.’ He shook his head. ‘I had that filly well and truly written off. You’ve proved me wrong. Wait till I tell old Stretch.’
‘I’m not as convinced as you, Mush,’ said Sam disapprovingly. ‘I wouldn’t trust that mare as far as I could throw her. Flighty bloody thing that she is.’
‘Well, Troy’ll think I’m talking rot when I tell him. I reckon he’ll be showing up here to see for himself.’ Mushgang laughed quietly to himself.
At once Jeremy was on full alert. ‘Troy Boy’ll jump at the chance to come and see Alice,’ he said tauntingly, poking her in the ribs with his finger. She pushed his hand away.
‘You’re not wrong there,’ said Mushgang, chuckling. ‘Been stuck on Ali here since he was nine.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mushgang,’ said Alice crossly. ‘Troy would be horrified if he could hear you.’
‘That’s true too,’ Mushgang agreed, still grinning.
‘Poor fella. Better brace himself for some cruel knockbacks.’ Jeremy shook his head sympathetically. ‘Unless he has a secret weapon of some kind that I don’t know about. He’ll need some kind of magic to melt the Ice Queen.’ He leaned forward and smiled provokingly into Alice’s set face. ‘Same as what he uses on those hot young fillies, maybe.’
Alice shoved Jeremy’s shoulder hard before standing up to put her cup away in the esky. ‘Must be time to draft,’ she announced decisively.
‘Aw, just when things were getting interesting,’ complained Dan.
‘Alice, you go on ahead with Jeremy and get started,’ said Sam. ‘Your eye for fats is every bit as good as mine these days.’
‘And a fair bit better too,’ added old Dan. They all laughed.
‘But use my horse, please, Ali,’ called Sam as they started to walk away. ‘It’ll be too much pressure for your green filly.’
‘Pa, just let me start on Rose and see how I go,’ said Alice. ‘I’ve done a fair bit of yard work with her on the weaners. Please don’t worry.’
Sam shook his head in concern.
‘This I have to see.’ Mushgang stood up and stretched. ‘I’ll help too.’
They drafted all the ‘finished’ bullocks out of the herd into a side yard. Darcy and the Bennet sisters were lined up along the fence, eyes riveted on Alice. She and the filly weaved quietly between the hefty beasts until she spotted a fine full-framed animal with well-covered loins. Rose seemed to sense immediately when Alice had chosen her beast: the agile little horse locked on to it and began a subtle, unrelenting pursuit. With quick, understated movements she started to block, advance, veer and retreat at the precise moment required to separate the bullock from the mob almost before it had registered what was afoot. She then became more assertive and entirely focused on the chosen animal as she directed it authoritatively towards the gate.
This pattern was repeated with each new beast. Rose rarely rushed at a bullock, but nor did she allow it time to stop and think. The sensitive filly seemed to be able to gauge the particular flight zone of each animal and to stroke its perimeter in order to achieve sufficient propulsion without panicking the beast. Most of the troublesome bullocks found that, once separated from their gang of brawny cronies by this small, dark, determined duo, it was simply easier to comply.
Alice was glowing with triumph when they finally finished. She’d discovered the filly’s aptitude for this kind of close work when working on the weaners, but she’d been uncertain about how this would translate to the pressure of the bullock yard, with such large animals and other horses, men and dogs present. Rose had come through this test with flying colours.
They had a late lunch before returning the remaining bullocks to the paddock, and Sam hugged Alice with relieved admiration. ‘You’re a Wilson alright,’ he said proudly.
‘You taught her all she knows, eh?’ Dan grinned.
‘Wish I could make that claim,’ Sam answered him seriously. He added quietly, ‘What Ali’s got can’t be taught.’
Chapter 32
Alice’s favourite month had come around again. April meant the bush run and her birthday; this year she’d be turning twenty. A few days before they planned to leave, she ran in the pack ponies from Brigalow, the Arab colt along with them. She noticed with concern that one of the hairy little workhorses had lost a great deal of condition, and on closer inspection, discovered an enormous abscess inside his mouth. She lanced it and gave him a penicillin needle, but the pony was in poor shape.
The result of this was that Alice was able to bring along her solid chestnut Bingley in his place. Even though he’d never carried a packsaddle, he was such a compliant animal that she had no doubt he’d rise to the occasion. She was pleased with this development, as with all the work she’d been putting into Desert Rose she’d been conscious of neglecting her faithful old gelding. It would have felt like adding insult to injury had she excluded him from the bush run as well.
At the close of the bush run the previous year, her grandfather had announced that his aged bay Snoopy wouldn’t be coming on the expedition again; the rugged terrain of the national park was beginning to prove too difficult for the old trooper. Now that Jeremy had Carmen, Alice assumed that her grandfather would be riding Rita. However, the day that they began the shoeing, the old man asked her to shoe up old Snoopy.
In answer to her look of surprise, he said, ‘Yes, I know. Old Snoop was meant to be out to pasture before now. But somehow I’d feel like a right hypocrite if I left him behind. I’m a bloody sight more broken down than he is. We’ll battle along together.’
Once most of the preparations had been made, Alice sewed a long calico case for a thin rectangular piece of soft foam. This she inserted into her grandfather’s swag without his knowledge. She also packed some hot-water bottles. So far it had been an unusually cold April and the nights had been chilly: she knew that her grandfather’s stiff old body would prot
est against long days in the saddle and nights of sleeping on the ground. As she made these preparations, Alice’s usual joyful anticipation of the trip was disturbed by an uncomfortable inkling that this bush run would be her grandfather’s last.
As they set out, Jeremy was almost as excited as the other two. He told himself that the thrill of the hunt was the main attraction for him. To some extent this was true: the daily stalking of shy mobs of young cattle hidden in hollows and up gullies was constantly stimulating. But without admitting it to anyone, Jeremy was also anticipating spending time in the wilderness with the two people he’d come to care about more than almost anyone else in the world.
This year, as a mark of respect to them, he joined in wholeheartedly with their traditional evening pursuits. He was a lively participant in cards and quietly tolerated the bush poetry. When they got yarning, he added to Sam’s stories with wildly exaggerated tales of his own.
As it turned out, they were lucky with the weather. They had a week of mild, balmy autumn days and nights. The bush was a picture, abundant with new life after the summer rain. The gums, bauhinias, wilgas and yellow jack trees were dense with bright new leaves and tipped with warm colour. Little bubbling springs seemed to have been born in all the gullies, and crystal water was welling up from what appeared to be solid red rock. The animals and birds all seemed to be in a hurry, flirting, talkative and busy as they made the most of the last warm weather.
The quietest of last year’s weaners had been selected for the national park; they had made good use of the abundance of soft grasses and were shiny, well covered, and large for their age. All Alice’s work with them the previous year was clearly paying off. Upon discovery, they were mostly compliant and happy to join with the main mob. They respected the dogs, and some of them even appeared out of the bush of their own accord, joining the mass of slow-moving bodies. Several larger animals that had been missed on previous years had joined the mobs of quiet youngsters and allowed themselves to be collected at last. This was an unexpected bonus and Sam was pleased.
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