Cleanskin Cowgirls

by Rachael Treasure

  ‘The truth?’ Elsie repeated, her face growing red.

  ‘Yes. The truth. Where you’ve run away from. Who I need to call. If I clear it with your parents, I have got a place for you. We’ve got a bit of a staff crisis happening on Goldsborough Downs. You can be taken on for a trial if you give me the honest truth.’

  ‘The truth,’ echoed Elsie again.

  The woman got up from her desk. ‘Wait here. I’m going out the back to get my bag. If you’re not prepared to be honest, the company will not hire you and when I come back, you’ll be gone. If you are in fact trustworthy, I’ll help you in any way I can.’

  Tara shrugged. She had no parents, and she knew a quick call to Barb Nicholson, whom the township and Constable Gilbert classed as her unofficial ‘custodian’, would support the idea, but she felt for Elsie, who had suddenly gone pale. They both knew talking the Joneses into this plan was going to be almost impossible.

  Twenty-two

  Elsie led the stockhorse out of the gooseneck trailer. The mare’s hide was smooth to touch and her coat was white and peppered with dark flecks. Her black mane was hogged short like an upright fire brush and a long thin forelock fell between two kind, wise old eyes. The wispy ends of her tail flicked to keep the flies away and swished against her angled smoky black hocks. The colouring on her legs reminded Elsie of a watercolour of a cloudy sky.

  ‘Wolfie will look after you,’ said Gordon Fairweather as he laid a steady hand on the horse’s rump. ‘She’s a veteran. We give her to all our newbies.’

  Gordon was leading a chunky chestnut from the trailer behind Elsie and heading towards the other horses they had just unloaded and hitched to a rail. The gelding clumped down the ramp on giant-disced hooves, his bottom lip drooping, his blaze like melted ice cream down his big slab-boned face, his ears flopping sideways. He was clearly from lines of station horses selected for good practical breeding where temperament and vitality, not looks, were key.

  ‘Elsie Jones, Elsie Jones, Elsie Jones,’ sang Gordon. ‘Sounds like a name for a girl who sings the twelve-bar blues. I seen you with the guitar. It’s compulsory round here for you to play us a tune after knock-off. My missus, Elaine, she loves to dance me around to a bit of music.’

  Elsie smiled, saying she’d be happy to.

  Gordon reached for the forelock of the chestnut and smoothed it down. ‘This big fella, Gazza, will do your mate.’ Gordon put the back of his boxy roughened hand up to the side of his mouth and rasped a whisper, leaning towards Elsie. ‘We put all the big girls on him. He’s strong. He can carry a load. All day and into the night.’

  Elsie glanced at the head stockman, a slight frown on her face.

  ‘I’m not meaning to be rude, Elsie,’ Gordon said in his roll-your-own smoky voice, ‘but it’s a sad fact that in the thirty years I’ve been working with the Newlands Pastoral Company, the kids comin’ here for trainin’ just keep gettin’ bigger ’n’ bigger from all that sugary shit and lolly-grog that’s dished out to ’em. It’s an epidemic from the city to the saltbush.’ He shook his head as he hitched the lead rope in a perfect tie-up knot on the rail. ‘They don’t know the first thing about feedin’ themselves proper, from a garden or nothin’. The world out there’s just gone plain wrong.’

  Elsie inclined her head, almost as if she was pleading with Gordon to go easy on Tara. ‘She’s lost five kilos already since . . . since . . . we began travelling up here.’

  ‘And she’ll lose a damn lot more with the work, and Mrs B’s good cookin’. They all do.’ Gordon chuckled.

  Elsie smiled. Despite his forthright comments, she could feel the compassion in the man.

  She looked out to the horizon, a broad sweep of sky and irrigated paddocks fringed by arid red dirt and tall sun-bleached grasses and low shrubs. It felt as if she was dreaming and not actually standing in the heart of a one-million-hectare property somewhere in the Northern Territory. Today her life looked so different, all thanks to Vera in Mt Isa. Vera and Elsie had teamed up together on speakerphone to talk to her mother, with Tara sworn to silence. Sarah Jones had hung on the other end of the line, her hands shaking with fury at her daughter and relief that she was safe — and heading for a ‘gap year’ on a well-run station, like many a grazier’s child before her. And to be honest, on the inside, Sarah was greatly relieved they would save the thirty thousand dollars her school fees would have cost. Kelvin was not sleeping at night for the state of the farm books; and his mayoral salary had only just been kept from Cuthbertson Rogerson in the election. Who knew what might happen next time?

  Elsie had said, ‘I’ll head back to school next year. I promise.’ As she said it, she knew that promise was already broken. She was free.

  Wolfie woke her up from her daydream, nudging her shoulder so Elsie had to balance herself out suddenly with a step.

  ‘Don’t let her do that,’ Gordon said. ‘Make her step out of your space. She can be a rude old girl when she first meets ya. She’s testing ya. She knew your mind had wandered.’

  Elsie twisted her lips tightly as she hitched the mare next to Gazza, self-conscious that her tie-up did not come easily, her brain addled with first-day nerves. Handling an NP Co station horse to go mustering nearly four thousand yearling Brahman heifers in the morning was a far cry from playing on little Jasper mobbing the sheep up when her parents weren’t about. She watched as Gordon went back into the trailer to get his bay gelding, Bear, from the shaded cavern of the truck. Flies massed onto the dung pile the horse left as he ambled out, craning his neck and ears forwards, clearly glad he was home under the big blue sky of the station and in yards that smelled of safety, not like the fear-soaked scent of the yards at the rodeo ground where they’d held the draft.

  ‘Just stick ’em here for a moment. I’ve gotta check their shoes before we let ’em go. I can see already Wolfie’s pulled a nail,’ Gordon said.

  Elsie nodded, not sure what to say. Conversation was not her strong point as it had never been encouraged at home. At Grassmore, the workmen never chatted the way Gordon did. The Grassmore men just saw her father coming, ducked their heads and got on with it. Gordon kept on about a campdraft the crew had just come back from. The crew Elsie was still yet to meet and she couldn’t wait.

  Around two am the girls had woken to the clump of boots on the ringers’ quarters verandah and the slamming of doors, the kick of the pump as the staff sought showers and a few hours’ sleep before work began again. Then at dawn Gordon had come knocking on Elsie and Tara’s door, asking for a hand to unload the horses he’d just driven in from the draft, travelling slower than the others with his precious load. Their day had begun before breakfast, but to Elsie now as she smoothed her hand over Wolfie, it felt as if her life had begun.

  ‘Tara oughta have mixed their feed by now,’ Gordon said. ‘Then it’s your turn for a feed. Mrs B will have a big breakfast cooked. She knows the crew are all knackered so she feeds ’em good.’ He glanced over to the large shed where they had earlier left Tara busy in an enclosed area of the skillion. The shed had all kinds of mixes for the working horses in it, along with licks and supplements for the cattle. For a moment she had stood in the shed door, the rattle of the tin reminding her of Zac and Amos and the shed back home. Even though it had only been ten days since that night, Culvert seemed a whole world away. Still, Elsie clung to the memory of those moments with Zac.

  ‘If we grab ’em some hay now,’ Gordon said, interrupting her thoughts, ‘they can camp in the yard cos we need ’em saddled before sun-up. It’s gonna be a big day.’

  ‘Not as big as what it’ll be for us,’ Elsie said.

  Gordon chuckled. He watched, impressed, as Elsie, unbidden, reached for the shovel that was clipped to the gooseneck and began scraping up horse dung and carting it to a nearby bottle tree.

  When she was done, she followed Gordon over to the hayshed, which was stacked almost to the rafters with big round hay bales. Gordon demonstrated how to start the tractor, to spear the spikes
through the giant bales and to lift the forks up. The tractor responded, jerking the roundie up and down. Then he was off on the machine, inclining his head towards a steel yard gate where a circular metal feeder was placed in the centre of the rocky yard. Elsie, on foot, read his meaning. She crossed over the red dirt and swung the gate. After the bale was tipped in the feeder, Gordon unclipped a leather pouch on his belt, tossed his pocketknife to Elsie, nodded at the bale and proceeded to drive the tractor back to the shed. As Elsie began to hack away the outer netting of the bale, freeing the rich-smelling hay within, Tara came over with a barrow filled with the buckets of mixed chaff.

  ‘All done,’ she said, looking pretty in her cowgirl hat. She began to tip the feed into bins surrounded by tyres, the warmth of the morning sun already heating them so they gave off a faint odour of petrochemicals. The horses whickered from the rail. Gordon was already back with them, chaps on and farrier kit spread on the ground, bent beneath the belly of Gazza as he tacked in another nail with a small silver-headed hammer.

  ‘He doesn’t muck about,’ Tara said, watching the way Gordon moved purposefully and with easy haste even after very little sleep and a night of truck driving. She was feeling the heat wrap around her, already causing her body to slump into lethargy.

  ‘I get the feeling it’s all systems go around here,’ Elsie said as they made their way over to him.

  He stood and stretched his back, then moved to pick up the hooves of the other station horses.

  ‘After brekky you’ll have a morning of induction with Gracie, our bean counter in the office. She’ll sort your work clobber out.’ He narrowed his eyes at Elsie’s bluey. ‘You’ll need a proper shirt, EJ. You’ll get burned to a crisp in that.’

  Tara gave Elsie a wry smile. EJ.

  ‘Yeah, EJ.’ She grinned.

  Elsie jammed her tongue under her bottom lip and pulled Tara a face. ”Tard,’ she muttered.

  ‘Lunch is at twelve-thirty, and hopefully your Boss Man Simmo, Michael Simpson, will be about and he can meet you. Then this arvo you’ll have safety training and protocol with Marcus Hinch, our company pilot and transport logistics guru. Y’know Hinchie who flew you in.’

  Tara and Elsie nodded, recalling their trip yesterday in a plane that seemed to come out of a Biggles book.

  ‘We just can’t kill it!’ Hinchie had yelled as he welcomed the girls aboard the Cessna that he told them had served the company for thirty years. Hinchie himself looked unkillable. He was a lean fit man who looked far too tall and broad in the shoulders with giant arms and hands to even fit behind the controls of the tiny plane. The single prop spun and sliced sunlight, and Elsie had felt a rush of excitement about where this adventure was headed. For even ballast Hinchie had sat Elsie in one seat with Marbles at her feet, her precious amp and guitar, and the treasured mop and bucket tucked behind her. Hinchie sat Tara opposite. Behind them were all manner of station stores. Marbles had been panting hot old-dog breath and Elsie drew him near to her as the plane taxied onto the runway for take-off.

  ‘We’ve got some rangeland scientists coming off the station today,’ Hinchie had yelled to them over his shoulder, ‘so you girls timed your run perfectly!’ He had strapped himself into his harness, reached for a Santa hat, dragged it onto his grey head along with his radio ear muffs, gave the girls the thumbs-up and off they had flown, towards an unknown red-dirt future at Goldsborough Downs as new employees for the Newlands Pastoral Company.

  Now here they were the very next day holding horses for Gordon, who was still talking, even with the shoeing nails sticking from his mouth.

  ‘Hinchie trains our rookies about how the stations operate and flies to each station on a regular run. But you’re under my wing for the most part. The crew call me Crack . . . cos I get ’em up at the crack of dawn and get ’em cracking. And also on account of my pants.’ He dropped the horse’s hoof, stood, spun about and showed the girls his trousers from the rear. ‘They drop a little on me as the day goes by.’ He went back to work.

  ‘Crack. OK. Sounds good,’ Elsie said.

  ‘My first round of advice for all newcomers to Goldsborough Downs is: There’s a reason you’ve got two eyes, two ears and only one mouth. Look and listen more than you talk. You’ll go a long way in life if you do.’

  Elsie was slightly stunned. When she had envisaged turning up to a cattle station to find work, she’d imagined rough cigarette-smoking men of few words, slumpy station quarters and poor pay. Instead she could already feel the care the Newlands Pastoral Company put into training their crews and the place itself. It was so neat and tidy, everything was in order here. She could barely believe Tara and she had stumbled on a first-time job such as this. Of course, she knew the Primrose Ladies’ College career adviser would be having a seizure by now. The women teachers at that school should know better what was ‘out there’ in rural industry for their country girls. For any girls who would never settle for uni and a ‘sensible’ job, this was where the career advisers should send them, Elsie thought.

  In the yards, she and Tara undid the horses’ rope halters. Once free, the animals dropped their heads to begin chewing. Even the NP Co horses were peaceful, Elsie observed.

  After hanging the halters in an ordered tack room, the girls fell in step with Gordon Fairweather across the ochre-dust station yard towards a clump of trees, beneath which was the mess room. As they entered a Colorbond fence gateway, the smell of bacon and eggs drew them along a concrete path dividing a buffel-grass lawn.

  Elsie wondered what Zac was doing right that minute. If he was thinking of her at all? The girls had sent postcards from each new town, and spoken to the twins twice, though the conversations were a bit awkward. They hadn’t had time to decide what their relationships really were, after all. They’d only seen each other once in the last four years! But there was something between them, even if it was only the old Poo Crew bond that they just couldn’t shake.

  The girls had rung the previous night from Mt Isa, but had only reached Gwinnie. As they had hung up the phone, both had felt a little deflated. Elsie resolved to write a letter to Zac and even a song, and send it to him that week.

  She walked into the mess room and there was the entire Goldsborough team, including the two bearded scientists finishing up their work on the station and flying out that afternoon with Hinchie. Moving about in the kitchen behind them was a jolly-looking cook and at the centre of the crowd at the table about a dozen people sat, amid them the most handsome young man Elsie had ever seen.

  On his lap sat two red cattle-dog pups and on either side a pretty girl. The young man was laughing loudly with the rest of the people, the crew clearly at the end of a very funny story. When he looked up with his crystal-blue eyes and past Tara to see her, he flicked a fringe of sandy hair from his eyes and smiled widely.

  Elsie glanced away shyly, but not before she had noticed his perfectly tanned skin and his sexy big silver belt buckle. An image of Zac flashed momentarily in her mind, of the sprinkle of acne. Then came an image of herself in the mirror with the giant mole on her face. The one that was no longer there.

  Elsie barely took in the other names of the people in the room as Gordon introduced them. All she could hear was: ‘This is Jake.’

  Twenty-three

  In the giant shed near the shit ponds Amos pulled his protective goggles over his eyes, dragged on some rubber gloves and began filling a beaker with brown sludge. ‘What are we? Three weeks on with this stuff?’ he asked deep in concentration as he jabbed a thermometer into the slurry and pulled a face from the stench. He wrinkled his nose and held the beaker at arm’s length. ‘Boy, this is really cooking with gas.’

  Zac looked at the dial on the vat and shook his head. ‘Too much gas if you ask me,’ he said, tapping the gauge. ‘I’m sure Dad got the calculation wrong.’ He turned back to the computer and entered some more numbers.

  ‘In another couple of months it’ll be sweet,’ Amos said. ‘Sweet like my Tara.’

/>   Zac hurled a rubber hose in his brother’s direction so it bounced off Amos’s back. He folded his arms across his Superman T-shirt. ‘She’s not yours. You can’t own a person.’

  ‘I’m going to marry her one day. I know it.’

  ‘Well, I guess that’s one way of kinda owning her. After all, marriage was set up by the church to control women and children as property.’ With teenage swagger he spun himself on the revolving stool and fired an imaginary pistol at his brother, blowing smoke from his fingers.

  ‘You’re right,’ Amos said. ‘It is kinda outdated. Well, if I’m not gonna marry her, I’m gonna . . .’ Amos searched for a word, ‘I’m gonna dedicate myself to her.’

  Zac pulled a doubtful face. ‘Dedicate? What the heck does that mean?’

  Amos shrugged. ‘Be committed to her for all of my life.’

  ‘Humans are not by nature monogamous,’ Zac said in his grown-up science-man voice. ‘Society brainwashes us into thinking we are meant to partner for life. Biologically we are driven to mate with several others —’

  ‘Biologically yes,’ Amos said, drawing up his safety goggles and turning to his brother, ‘but spiritually, most of us are all seeking the one. To make us feel whole. What if, just what if, the energetic of love for one person is enough to override the male biological function for his entire lifetime? It’s been done. Many men have done it. And the way I feel about Tara —’

  ‘The way you feel about Tara is in your underpants, caused by hormones,’ Zac scoffed. ‘The one? I mean really? Mum said no other person can make you feel whole. That’s up to you and your connection to universal intelligence.’

  Amos shook his head, frowning. ‘Don’t you feel the same about Elsie, especially how she looks now after her operation?’

  Amos saw a flicker of pain shadow Zac’s expression and his jaw flinch.

  ‘I liked her better before the operation,’ Zac said flatly. ‘Now she’s something her mother wanted.’