‘There was a windstorm. It happens at this time of year,’ said Maria.
‘How’s Connor?’ he asked through the rain. The house was some distance away, obscured by the bush.
‘Asleep.’
Ross’s hands were shaking uncontrollably. He wrapped them about his muddy body, noticing the rips to his shirt. He didn’t know how long Maria had been by his side. Or how he’d managed to get from the bed to out here in the middle of the night.
‘I couldn’t move you,’ she said. ‘I tried.’
‘You should go inside. You’re soaked.’
‘It’s only water.’ She tilted her head upwards, the rain running down her face and neck. ‘You must drink lots of it,’ she replied. ‘Even if you sick it up, drink as much as you can. Here.’
Maria ladled water from a bucket at her side and Ross loss count of how many times he drank from the dipper. When he was finally sick, it was brutal and violent, as if his very insides were being torn free. He stayed on all fours as he brought up Sowden’s vile concoction, pale slivers of his last meal massing on the ground to be washed away by the rain.
‘You’re not a drinker?’ she asked when he could finally bring up no more.
‘Whisky, occasionally.’ Ross clutched at his aching stomach as he collapsed back against the trunk of the uprooted tree. ‘Actually, I could count on both hands how many drinks I’ve had, and most of those have been this year.’
‘It won’t help, you know. The drink. It will only rob your chi, not help you to find it.’
Ross didn’t understand what she spoke of. As the rain eased to a gentle spray she placed a hand on his chest. The action was so unexpected that he flinched. Unperturbed, Maria spread her palm across his wet shirt. ‘Only a person who is lacking seeks release through drink. If not, why would you take such a vile thing?’
He looked at her hand on his chest and then into her eyes. He thought of the few girls he’d been attracted to in the past and the nerve it had taken to be the one who approached them. No woman had ever initiated contact or touched him the way Maria was. It unsettled him; the closeness of her, the words she used. As he wondered what he should do next, she drew away. The heat of her body dissipated, but he could still feel her.
Ross may have been thrust from Gleneagle, but it had been his choice to venture to Waybell Station. And now he was here he felt decidedly unbalanced. Nothing was as he imagined it would be. Everything was new and strange, from the dense heat to the thundering skies and the tangle of land that circled Sowden’s hut. It was as if all progress stopped here. The worst of it was the creeping acknowledgement of how little he knew about this place and the people inhabiting it. Even this previously restrained girl, who knew things he’d never heard before and acted unconventionally. There was a knot of tension between her eyes. She looked tired. Ross guessed that he was to blame for that.
‘Don’t look at me that way. You’re in a new place now. Remember when you saw me at the Tree of Knowledge outside the Terminus Hotel?’ She sat back on her feet. ‘The old Chinamen gather the youth there and teach them things. Well, they used to. Not so much anymore.’
‘And they taught you?’
Maria appeared amused. ‘No, but I listened.’
‘So you’re Chinese,’ said Ross.
‘I’m many things.’
‘Well, if you’re determined to sit out in the mud with me, you might as well tell me a little about yourself. Like why you chose to barely speak until we arrived here?’
Ross glimpsed again the shy creature of the past days. ‘What would I talk about? The trees and animals?’ she asked. ‘The rain or the sun? I didn’t know you. I waited.’
Ross drank more water. ‘Waited to see what?’ Maria spread the sodden material of her dress across a well-formed thigh.
‘What kind of man you are,’ she replied. ‘Now I know.’
For some reason Ross recalled his grandfather riding off on a bicycle, armed with a net, a killing jar and some pins. The more exotic butterflies he kept fluttering behind glass, inspecting them with a magnifying glass before growing weary of the show and depriving them of oxygen. Once dead he stabbed them with a single pin through the body.
‘Someone’s coming,’ said Maria. She got to her feet and ran off.
‘Ross, are you out here?’ Connor caught sight of Maria leaving. ‘You’re as white as a sheet.’
‘I’d be a lot worse if it wasn’t for Maria,’ Ross replied.
‘Aye, right.’ Connor looked in the direction the girl had gone, his expression thoughtful. ‘Wasn’t that a brew and a half? I thought I had a bad night until I saw the state of your swag. Do you know that you ripped the netting clean off and dragged it halfway across the flat? I reckon you must have crawled out here, by the look of things.’
‘I barely remember what happened. What about you?’ Ross got to his feet. The rain had stopped, and with the parting clouds the morning sky grew bright.
‘Me? Good as new, apart from a pounding headache.’
‘Sowden poisoned us,’ said Ross.
‘I’d say it was more an introduction to life up north. He drank the same as we did. This morning, Annie made some beef tea and then I got the grand tour from Mick. There’s a half-decent dray and a work shed. Well over one hundred horses. Most are hobbled and they roam about. The tack will keep us busy. Saddles, stirrups, bridles, halters, reins, bits, harnesses, martingales, everything has to be kept dry, the leather greased and checked for mould. But that’s not all of it, I was up early enough to see Mick carrying Sowden from his bed to a chair.’
Ross gave a hoarse laugh. ‘Good. I’m pleased he’s suffering as well.’
‘No,’ said Connor sternly. ‘You don’t understand. Bill Sowden can’t walk.’
Chapter 20
‘I didn’t want to cause a bother.’
Ross was fairly stunned. ‘It’s true then. You really can’t walk?’
They were seated around the table. The day shone through holes in the iron roof and walls, shafts of light spotlighting cracks, dirt and the mice running across the ground.
‘It’s only a trifling problem. Like I said, nothing worth bothering people about.’ Sowden poured black tea from a battered tin pot, his movements verging on refined compared to the previous night. ‘Sugar?’
Ross accepted the pannikin, adding a hefty dose of sugar, the sound of his spoon tinny in the room.
‘Some might think it’s a disability, but being paralysed in both legs –’
‘Some? This is a cattle station,’ replied Ross.
‘Dinnae you think you should tell us about your, um, little difficulty?’ asked Connor.
‘Right. Yes. I’ll not fancy it up for you. The gist of the story involves a poorly broken-in horse and a mad bull. We were up in the north when it happened. I came out of it the worst. Lay on the ground for a day, I did, before eventually being found.’
‘And you haven’t walked since?’ said Ross.
The manager slurped his tea.
‘When did this happen?’ Ross demanded.
Sowden looked blank, as if he couldn’t remember.
‘When did it happen?’ Ross enunciated each word slowly.
‘Oh, about …’ Sowden counted off time on his fingers. When he reached his second hand, Ross turned to Connor in disbelief.
‘About nine years,’ concluded Sowden.
Ross was stunned into silence by the manager’s extraordinary revelation. ‘Who’s been running the property?’ he finally asked.
The manager called for Annie and the woman appeared, padding across the dirt to her partner’s side. She poured more tea for everyone, her features arranged in an expression of compliance. Then she slipped from the room.
‘You haven’t answered my question.’ Ross tried to temper his anger. Sitting the pannikin down, he moved around the cramped space, past the newspaper pictures nailed to the wall, trying to comprehend the scale of the lie that had left his family property in the hands of the
Aboriginal workers. For that was who must be managing it. There was no one else.
‘The men have never done wrong by me,’ said Sowden, as if reading his mind.
‘How would you know?’ replied Ross, leaning over so that his face was inches from Sowden’s. ‘Really, how would you know?’
‘Because I damn well do!’ Sowden slammed his fist on the table.
‘Ross, steady.’ Connor was standing, as if ready to stop a fight. ‘Let’s sit and talk through this.’
Ross regarded the tin trunk under the desk. ‘Are the station papers in here?’
‘Yes,’ answered the manager, his voice straining with rage.
Ross carried it to the table, where he sorted through the contents. Once he had retrieved everything he needed, he dropped the trunk back to the ground.
‘The station books are all there. Everything’s up to date.’ Sowden slumped back in the chair as if exhausted.
Some of the ledgers were mouldy, with pages ruined by rodents and weather. But the manager’s hand was neat enough and the explanations regarding weather, pasture conditions and the general yearly movements across the property of men and stock were specific and descriptive.
Ross scowled. ‘This is far more detailed than the reports you send to my father.’
He left the two men for a few minutes while he fetched the paperwork carried from Adelaide. On return he began comparing the two sets of figures.
Sowden wasn’t expecting that. ‘What have you got there, then?’
Ross peered at him over the top of the papers. ‘The reports you’ve been sending my father.’
‘I couldn’t see the point of worrying him,’ the manager hedged.
The figures didn’t match. There had been a decrease in stock numbers in the first few years that Sowden was able-bodied, and although the losses fluctuated after that time, the final tally in the Waybell ledger showed a massive reduction in the cattle running on the property. Ross and Connor had been concerned by the figures in the Adelaide ledger, which had detailed several losses that ranged close to the two hundred mark, but that was nothing compared to this.
Ross pointed out the discrepancies to Connor and then directed his attention back to Sowden, who was beginning to resemble an animal in search of a hole to crawl into.
‘We’ve gone from over eight thousand head fifteen years ago to a little over fifty-five hundred today?’ Ross searched through the documents. ‘And here.’ He tapped the sheet of paper. ‘You told my father that the number of cattle on hand this year is seventy-eight hundred. Where is the rest of the herd? What happened to them?’ Ross slammed the ledger closed. It was little wonder that Sowden didn’t welcome their visit. ‘You’re fired,’ Ross told him bluntly.
Sowden’s drooping cheeks wobbled in anger. ‘You can’t fire me, boy. The men won’t work for you if that’s what you’re thinking. Not a young fella wet behind the years who’s been hiding out on a sheep farm at the back of Burra for most of his life. That’s why you came up here after all these years, wasn’t it? To kick me out and take over the place yourself. Well, you can forget about it. Mick won’t work for you, nor will any of the others without me, and you need them.’
‘Based on these figures, I don’t think Mick will be staying, either.’ Ross gathered the Adelaide correspondence, squaring the edges of the pages. ‘Particularly as I assume he’s the one who’s been giving you these numbers. Can he even count?’
Sowden gave a weak smile. ‘Do you think we’re a bunch of idiots?’
‘No, you’re certainly clever enough,’ countered Ross. He had expected Sowden to relent, to admit to the disaster he’d helped create. Instead, the manager struggled furiously to hoist himself further upright in his chair.
‘You have no idea what it’s like here,’ puffed Sowden. ‘If your father ever bothered to set foot in the place, I would have told him plain. Waybell is naturally watered. That’s what we depend on, year in, year out, on a big wet season that will fill everything up and give us hope. There’s been no money to develop water in the south of Waybell, where we need it most. Do you understand, boy? Half the place is dry, too dry for cattle, and the north is so waterlogged it’s not fit for running cattle. As for fences, well, you would have seen for yourself, there aren’t any. The cattle walk for miles. Some of them could be on the other side of the Daly River for all I know. If there’s cleanskins the neighbours nick them. What do you think you’d do if you came across an unmarked stray out here? Stand in the middle of nowhere and holler out what you’ve found and hope someone hears and comes a-running? Why, the first season I was on Waybell some wild blacks came across from the east. Those myalls ran off a few hundred head. So you tell me, how’s a man to manage a place like this when he’s told not to spend a brass razoo? When any money that’s made goes down south to swell the coffers of a speculator?’
‘Obviously we’ll have to wait out the wet season before you leave,’ said Ross. It was taking all of his willpower not to throttle the man.
Sowden thumped the table again. ‘You’re not listening. You’re damn well not listening to a word I’m saying. It’s not my fault. Where am I going to go? What am I going to do?’
‘Ross, I think we’d better discuss this,’ interrupted Connor.
For a moment Ross thought he’d misheard. However Connor was already at the door waiting for him. Ross followed him outside and across to the billabong. On its far side a fire threw a thin line of smoke into the air as children ran back and forth at the water’s edge. Ross turned to his friend. ‘Don’t ever talk to me that way in front of staff again.’
Connor jabbed his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘So why’d you bring me then? To be your lapdog, another Grant lackey?’
‘It’s you who’s been doffing your cap to my family these many years.’ Above them, the stony cliff shadowed them as the sun rose.
Drawing his hands free, Connor’s usually mobile face grew still with fury. ‘Dinnae talk to me like that.’
Ross hesitated. ‘Sowden’s got to go. The property is a mess. It’s clearly been mismanaged.’
Connor took his time in replying. ‘Aye, things aren’t right way up but your father’s not a stupid man, Ross. You know he’s here for one reason only – the land increasing in value. I dinnae disagree that Sowden’s done wrong, but your father can be pretty adamant. If the property has been managed badly then unfortunately he has to take his fair share of the blame. You cannae sit in your study thousands of miles away and expect everything to go perfectly.’
‘So you’re not as loyal in your allegiance to the Grants as everyone assumed,’ accused Ross.
‘I’m just saying how it is. You best decide, Ross, if I’m a friend or your employee because I cannae be both. Not out here.’
The question of Connor’s role wasn’t something Ross had ever considered, however employee and friend was exactly what was required of him. The Scot’s grounding was in devotion to duty and Ross couldn’t understand why that needed to change. ‘Sowden lied, Connor, and we’re not talking about some bad decisions being made. There’s theft involved.’
‘We have no proof of that,’ argued Connor. ‘And we’re unlikely to find any. So what are you going to do? Send him packing and then what? Hope the men will be happy to work for you? We’ve no idea what number might leave if you do fire Sowden. I’d hazard most of them,’ he thumbed at the camp by the billabong, ‘will be on his side. Clearly they’ve all been looking after him, otherwise Sowden couldn’t have survived out here for so long. Their loyalty will be with him, not us.’
Across the water the children squealed as one of them was pushed into the mud. A woman sitting in a group pounding stones called to them and the boys reluctantly stopped their play.
‘That camp depends on the station for meat, tea and sugar,’ said Ross. ‘They won’t all leave.’
‘Let’s wait things out,’ suggested Connor. ‘Tell Sowden he can stay. That will keep everyone happy. When we’re able, we’ll send word
to your father and he can advertise for another manager. Someone who knows this country and the people.’
Ross wasn’t prepared to be bossed about again but nor could he afford to have Connor offside. ‘I’ll think about it. In the meantime, Sowden can stew.’
‘If that’s what you think is best,’ said Connor, departing.
In the centre of the billabong a duck squawked and fluttered before disappearing under the water’s surface. Up popped a boy holding the flapping bird by the legs. He swam to the bank, casually wringing the duck’s neck as he walked to a cooking fire.
Ross decided to write to his father. He wouldn’t mention Sowden’s accident or the mismanagement. Highlighting the money that could be made from Waybell would ensure his father’s attention, and attention was what Ross needed if a request for a line of credit was to be granted.
At the side of the house, Maria was cutting tall grass with a scythe, her brown arms damp with perspiration. Ross took shade beneath the wired-in veranda and the girl glanced at him, the blade hovering aloft before she resumed the task. The curve of each stroke made a gentle swishing noise as the blade sliced through air and plant. He remembered what had passed between them earlier that day, the warmth of her hand on his chest. The unexpectedness of the thought was not lost on him. He’d done his best to avoid women since the giving of the white feather in Burra, not that he’d been very successful with the opposite sex before that time, and yet here he was, watching Maria and admiring what he saw.
Chapter 21
1920
January was behind them, lost in days of horizontal rain and heavy cloud-cast hours. Connor and Ross had celebrated the festive season quietly. Connor reflected on his first Christmas in many years spent away from the Grant family home, while Ross was pleased to finally be on the property, despite the tense circumstances. Two days after Ross’s arrival, Sowden and Annie moved out of the house to the camp on the edge of the billabong, and with their departure he rearranged the household to suit its remaining occupants. Connor slept in the storeroom, surrounded by the tin trunks that held their supplies. Ross gave Sowden’s space to Maria, which was only proper for a young woman, and he stayed in the sleep-out, grateful for the privacy but wary of the infinite area that stretched out beyond the chicken wire.
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