The Wild One

by Janet Gover

  Carrie stood her ground. There was a gate between them. He couldn’t reach her. And she was no longer afraid. The stallion slid to a stop and twisted his head, ears flattened and eyes rolling.

  ‘I’m not scared of you,’ she said in a soft voice.

  The stallion squealed.

  ‘I’m really not,’ Carrie said again. ‘So you stop all that palaver.’

  The stallion’s ears flicked forwards as he listened to her voice.

  ‘You’ve been out there in the wilds for far too long. You’re not really a brumby. You’re not wild at all. You’re a thoroughbred and it’s time you started acting like one.’

  The horse took a tentative half step forward.

  ‘That’s what we are looking for,’ Carrie crooned gently. ‘That’s what we expect from a Fraser horse.’

  The stallion took another step. He stretched out his neck, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed hesitantly at Carrie’s hand on the rail between them.

  The whiskers on his muzzle tickled the soft skin of her wrist.

  ‘I know what it’s like to be lost,’ Carrie told him softly as he looked at her with big liquid brown eyes. ‘I was lost too. But I’m finding my way back. You could too. It’s time you came home. There’s a place for you with Justin. That’s where you belong.’

  ‘There’s a place for you too, if you want it.’

  Carrie hadn’t heard him approach.

  ‘I mean it, Carrie.’

  As Justin moved to stand beside her, the stallion’s nerve broke. Flattening his ears again, he made a threatening lunge at the two humans, then turned away to resume his ceaseless pacing along the far rails of the yard.

  Once Carrie might have run away too. But not anymore. She turned to face Justin, tilting her head by way of asking a question.

  ‘I’m serious. We make such a good team,’ Justin said. ‘What do you think about maybe making it a bit more permanent?’

  Carrie’s heart gave a little flutter. ‘What do you mean, more permanent?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, after we get them home, these horses are going to need a lot of work. I’m going to want to get the youngsters trained and ready to sell. I’ll never get stud book registration for them, but they should make good saleable work horses once they are broken in. We could work on that together.’

  Carrie frowned. Was he talking about her working for him?

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to finish what we started here?’

  Yes she would – but she didn’t think she and Justin were on the same wavelength. He was thinking about the horses. She wasn’t. Maybe she needed to turn his thoughts in the right direction.

  ‘I was thinking …’ she said slowly, watching for his reaction. ‘I could start racing again. It wouldn’t take me long to get race fit. I could go back to being a jockey.’

  ‘If that’s what you want, then that is what you should do. Just let me be there with you.’ He almost whispered the words in her ear.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t just want someone to work for you – for free?’ Carrie grinned cheekily up at him, and was rewarded by an answering smile that lit his whole face.

  ‘Well, yes. That too. Just think of the extra money people will pay for horses that I’ve bred and you’ve trained.’ He ducked as Carrie playfully punched his arm. ‘But this was more what I had in mind.’

  He pulled her close and kissed her. It was a strong, passionate kiss. A kiss filled with longing and wonder and excitement. Carrie was swept up in a moment, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and standing on her toes to get even closer to him. How she loved the feel of his strong but gentle hands on her body. He tasted ever so slightly of the beer he had drunk. But more than that, he tasted and smelled and felt like the other half of her soul.

  A bloodcurdling scream ripped through the air close by. They fell apart and spun to see the stallion just a short distance away, rearing on his hind legs, as if he was challenging them. His screams set the sleeping horses scrambling to their feet or racing to the far corner of the yard.

  ‘I think maybe he’s jealous,’ Justin said.

  ‘Oh, hush you,’ Carrie told the horse. ‘Your life is about to get a whole lot better – so stop fighting it.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  If only he could hold back the day and tell the sun not to rise. For the first time in a very long time, the darkness held no fear for Dan. Once more his sleep had been dreamless. The little girl with the huge dark eyes had not haunted him. For two nights now she had left him to sleep in peace. Dan lay by the dying embers of the campfire, staring at the orange glow … waiting. Waiting for the ghosts to come. But they didn’t.

  He knew the reason. He moved his head ever so carefully and brushed his lips across the top of Quinn’s head.

  He wasn’t quite sure how this amazing woman had come into his life. But he was so grateful that she had. Last night, this world famous photographer, the woman who could have been a supermodel had she chosen, had happily cooked damper on a campfire. The four of them had eaten a meal of stew sent from the Coorah Creek pub and warm damper. No restaurant meal had ever tasted so good. They’d washed the food down with a can each of warm beer. Not exactly a Château Laffite which, he had read somewhere, was the world’s most expensive wine. But warm beer would be more than he would ever want, as long as he had Rachel Quinn sitting beside him while he drank it.

  Carrie and Justin had left after the meal, heading back to Justin’s stud, brimming over with plans for the future. They hadn’t stopped talking about how they would train the brumbies and sell them on. How the stallion would become a part of the Fraser Stud and how they would launch him upon an unsuspecting world. They talked a lot about horses, but it was easy to see those plans were also about the two of them. Dan and Quinn had said very little about the future. But Carrie and Justin had been so caught up in their own dreams, they hadn’t noticed.

  Only Dan was awake. Quinn lay with her head on his shoulder, her long slow breathing telling him that she was fast asleep. If he could hold one moment of his life forever untouched by time, it would be this one. Lying beneath the dawn sky, the gentle sounds of the bush around him. Quinn asleep beside him, her warm body curled against his, her hand lying on his chest. For the first time in so very long Dan was at peace with the world, and with himself.

  That day in Fallujah Dan had lost everything he believed in. He had lost faith in humanity. In the triumph of right over wrong. In himself. These past few days had given much of that back to him. Dan was a realist. He didn’t believe in miracle cures. But he knew his life had turned around and there was a future for him now.

  Quinn started to wake. She murmured something softly. He thought he caught the sound of a name. Kim. Dan brushed the hair back from her face, and gently kissed her. She smiled, and then her eyes flashed open. For a few seconds he saw something there he hadn’t seen before. Something wild. Like an animal caught in the headlights. Her breath caught in her throat for a moment. Then she caught herself, she smiled and kissed him back.

  Dan kissed her, wanting to lose himself in the taste and smell of her. He kissed her hard, with every bit of the yearning he felt for her. He kissed her to make her forget whatever it was he had just seen in her eyes. He pulled her closer and rolled his body over hers. He could feel her move beneath him and he wanted to pull the clothes from her body right there and make her his. To love her so hard and so much that she would forget everything else.

  To love her so much she would stay with him.

  ‘Well, good morning.’ The voice from the other side of the campfire caught him by surprise. Justin and Carrie were back. Feeling both embarrassed and disappointed, he pulled himself together and sat up. Quinn took a moment longer before she too faced their friends.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s room service bringing coffee?’ she asked Dan.

  ‘I guess not. I can boil a billy if that helps,’ Dan said, shaking the last vestiges of sleep from his head and getting to his feet.

&nb
sp; Quinn vanished to do whatever it was women did in the mornings when they were camping and didn’t have a bathroom to spend hours in. Justin and Carrie were checking on the horses. Dan set about making coffee and warming some of last night’s left over damper.

  ‘I knew I recognised a couple of the brands on those escaped mares,’ Justin said as he returned.

  ‘I guess that means you’ll have to give them back to their owners.’

  ‘True,’ Justin agreed. ‘But from our point of view, those mares will be easier to handle than true brumbies. They’ll settle quickly. And if they settle it will help the stallion settle. Getting them on a truck to get them home might not prove so difficult.’

  Dan handed him an enamel mug full of steaming coffee. ‘That’s good news,’ he said, but he didn’t mean it. Getting the horses safely back to Justin’s place was the end of their mission. There would be no reason for Quinn to stay after that.

  Dan saw the light that shone from Justin’s face as he looked at Carrie. It was reflected in hers. He was happy for them. Particularly for Carrie. He’d recognised the fear in her that first night they met. PTSD was not just for war victims. He knew the dark place she’d been lost in, because he’d been there too. Justin had lighted her way out, just as Quinn had done for him.

  But Quinn didn’t live in Coorah Creek. Quinn lived in the back of her Humvee. And that Humvee could take her anywhere. It could take her away from him. He didn’t know if he would be able to stop it.

  ‘We’ve got a busy day ahead of us,’ Quinn said as she re-joined them and dropped to a crouch to place a frying pan on the fire. ‘I need a decent breakfast. Any other takers?’

  She received a chorus of affirmative replies.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ Dan asked as he sipped his coffee.

  ‘There are too many horses to fit in a single journey,’ Justin said. ‘And some of them are truly wild. They will have to be forced onto a truck. For that, we need to build a proper race and loading ramp.’

  ‘That sounds like a lot of heavy lifting,’ Dan said. ‘More than we can do in a day. And we only have two.’

  ‘I know.’ Justin grinned. ‘So I did the only thing that you can do when faced with an impossible task.’ He paused for effect. ‘I called Trish Warren.’

  ‘Trish?’ Quinn’s voice rose a couple of notes. ‘How is Trish going to help transport a wild horse herd?’

  Justin grinned. ‘Wait and see. We’ll know in an hour or so. In the meantime, Carrie and I are going to take the stock horses home. That will be one job done.’

  ‘If we’ve got a bit of time, and nothing constructive to do, I probably should go somewhere where I have phone signal and Internet,’ Quinn said. ‘My agent will think I have dropped off the face of the planet. And if I don’t e-mail my mother soon she’ll probably report me missing to the police.’

  ‘We could go back to the ranger station,’ Dan suggested. ‘I should check in too. I’ve still got a job and a park to look after.’

  ‘Will the horses be all right here alone?’ Quinn asked.

  ‘I don’t see why not. They have food and water – and it’s not as if anyone is likely to disturb them’

  When they got back to the ranger station, Dan walked over to his office, while Quinn went to the house and set up her computer and camera on the kitchen table. She plugged everything in to start re-charging, and began downloading the photos onto her laptop. As soon as she could she started flicking through the images.

  ‘Yes!’

  The exclamation was repeated several times as she perused her work. There were some excellent shots that really captured the story of what they were doing. Quinn paused at a wonderful shot of the stallion, looking wild and untamed. That was a cover shot if ever she saw one. The shot of the brumbies running down the gully, Carrie and Justin on horseback behind them looked like a scene from a wild west movie. Quinn was soon thinking about how she would crop the images, maybe tweak the lighting just so. She was beginning to decide how many images to send to her agent and in what order they should be presented. It was his job to sell the photo essay to a magazine. Perhaps Australian Geographic or Outback magazine if National Geographic weren’t interested. Her agent had also been talking about selling her photos for an outback scenes calendar. There were definitely a couple of suitable shots of the brumbies.

  Quinn flicked through to the next image and stopped.

  Dan’s face filled the screen. It was the shot she had taken very early on in their adventure, as they set up their campsite. Dan’s face was in part profile. The clean strong lines clearly lit by the angle of the sun. It showed what a handsome man he was … and more than that. Every line of his face showed his character – the strength, his struggle against the horror of war. It was the face of a troubled man.

  It was a wonderful portrait – but it was not a shot that Quinn would send anywhere. This image was for her alone. When she was gone.

  That sobering thought stilled her fingers. The time was nearly upon her when she would have to leave. Of course, she could stay for a while. Spend some time alone with Dan in this beautiful park. It was tempting. She had no other assignment booked – at least none that she knew about. Quinn reached for her phone before she could find an excuse not to.

  ‘Quinn,’ her agent said as soon as he answered the phone. ‘So good to hear from you. How did it go?’

  ‘Really great,’ she said. ‘I’m just reviewing the images now. They should be easy to sell. The big colour glossies should love them.’

  ‘Excellent. Can you send me a couple so I can have a look?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll e-mail something shortly.’

  ‘Great. Are you done?’

  ‘Almost. I need one more shot to finish the story. That should happen in the next day or two.’

  ‘Great. When are you coming back east? I guess you’ll want a few days off.’

  ‘Have you got anything booked for me?’ Quinn avoided the question.

  ‘There’s nothing here that is really worth hurrying back for,’ he said. ‘So if you want to take some time, go right ahead.’

  It was not the answer she’d been hoping for. A big job waiting for her would make it so much easier to leave. She knew that the longer she stayed, the harder it would be to drive down that dusty track and away from this beautiful wild landscape. Away from Dan. But she couldn’t stay forever. She wasn’t the woman to stay in one place. She didn’t need – or want – a home or a family.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Have you got anything that starts next week? Or the week after that?’

  ‘There are a couple of things. I’ll e-mail you some details. Well, get some shots to me today and let’s see where all this goes. Let me know when you’re on the way back. Talk soon.’

  As she ended the call and dropped the phone back on the table Quinn looked up to see Dan standing in the doorway. She wondered how much of the conversation he had heard. Judging from the look on his face, he’d heard enough.

  ‘So, you’ll be leaving soon,’ he said slowly.

  ‘I guess so,’ she replied. After all, leaving was what she did.

  Chapter Thirty

  Justin dimly heard the sound of a vehicle arriving, but it wasn’t enough to take his concentration off Carrie and the stallion. She was mesmerising. His head didn’t believe what his eyes were seeing, but his heart did. He stood rock still a few meters from the stockyard. He was barely daring to breathe in case he interrupted the magic – there was no other word for it – that was occurring.

  Carrie was inside the yard with the brumbies. Carrie, who just a few days ago was too afraid to even get close to one of his stock horses, was standing face to face with the wild stallion. She wasn’t being foolish. She was close to the gate, ready to slip through to safety if needed. But Justin didn’t think she would. Obviously some sort of connection had been formed when the stallion touched her hand last night. The first human touch the horse had ever felt. Now something was happening that he had
heard about, but never seen in all his years working with horses.

  Justin heard Dan and Quinn approaching. He twisted his body and waved urgently at them to silence them. They understood the message and slipped slowly and silently to his side.

  Inside the yard the stallion took a hesitant step forward. He was listening to Carrie talking, his ears flicking back and forward. He pawed the ground with one front leg, clods of earth flying away with the force of each stroke. His head was never still, tossing and twisting as if he wanted to break away – but couldn’t. Carrie didn’t move. Justin clenched his hands as the horse took another hesitant half step towards Carrie. The stallion was close enough that a simple lunge would take him to her. If he chose to strike out with those front hooves … Or slash with his strong white teeth … Justin knew very well the threat posed by a vicious horse. A part of him wanted to call her back to safety. The stallion might have been born a blue blood, but he was still a wild thing. He was dangerous. The thought of Carrie being hurt again was almost too much to stand.

  He bit his lip to force himself to remain still.

  Beside him, Quinn ever so slowly and carefully raised her camera.

  In the stockyard Carrie waited.

  For once the wind stilled and a strange silence settled over the gorge.

  The stallion tossed his head, and took another step forward. He reached out his long elegant head, nostrils flaring as he breathed in Carrie’s scent.

  Justin tried not to think about the danger in a horse’s bite … a bite that could break skin and crush bone. The animal towered over Carrie. She looked so small and so utterly vulnerable as she stood rock still while the stallion touched her face gently with his nose.

  He barely heard the soft whir of Quinn’s camera as the stallion snorted, the force of his breath raising Carrie’s brown hair. Still Carrie remained motionless. The horse shuffled just a fraction nearer, so he could run his muzzle over her face.