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My tutor, Ms Nicholson, seemed pleased with my response, and I hit mute and switched off the webcam, shovelled a huge bite of pasta into my mouth, and glanced at the Post-it.
Ride out at 7 a.m. got someone to go with [something illegible] was keen to—what was that word? Help? Held?And have funding for us.
Ryan had managed to find someone to pay us to take them on a muster? If the man could write a legible sentence, I might also be excited.
I glanced at the time: 8.07 p.m. Still an hour of this tutorial.
After a shower, and some packing for the muster, it was almost ten when I washed up my dinner bowl and went to find Ryan to decipher his awful script on the Post-it Note.
The house was still. The tin roof creaked as the night air cooled the structure. Floorboards groaned underfoot. Nothing creepy about it; it was as though the house was welcoming me, saying hello. If anything, the sounds were a comfort.
I found Ryan in the farm office, asleep in the office chair with Reggie asleep on his feet. He had a knee rug that had belonged to our grandmother half on his lap. I suspect Reggie pulled it down to have a warm bed on Ryan’s foot.
I left Ryan where he was—not because I am an arsehole. He just looked so peaceful with an almost smile on his lips; the perma-frown was gone, and he looked happy. Whatever he was dreaming about, I wasn’t going to take that away from him. I rarely saw him look like this.
He would wake up in the middle of the night and take himself to bed.
The next morning, I made breakfast in the homestead’s kitchen, with the topographical map spread out across the table and my notepad, making extra notes about the muster. Something was baking in the oven.
Reggie padded into the kitchen and gave me a wink. Ryan followed him with a jaw-cracking yawn and a stretch.
“Hey.” I raised a teacup. “Want one?”
Ryan nodded with a grunt.
“Wait, did you sleep in the office chair all night?”
Another nod.
There was enough in the pot for a cup for Ryan, and I put the kettle on for more. He took the tea from me and sipped, his eyelids fluttering in gratitude.
“S’kay,” he mumbled and sipped again with a groan.
“So, about your note. You found someone to go on muster with me?”
“Yeah, and we get paid for them coming along too.”
I groaned. “Did you accept some trainee or intern or something? I don’t want to train someone how to ride a stock horse who has never seen a sheep.”
Ryan drained his tea and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nah, not even close. It’s a sweet deal. We get some sort of stipend or something; dunno what it’s called. Amanda’s all over the financials. All I heard was we don’t pay for their labour. National Parks are giving landholders a payment so that their people can survey boundaries and wildlife numbers or something—”
“Wait, National Parks?” Horror flooded my body as I tensed up. “Who did you—”
Ryan shrugged. “Rosie, of course. With her wombat project.”
I gulped, turning away to make a second pot of tea as Mum, Amanda and Stacey entered the kitchen. Mum went to the oven and pulled out a tray of freshly baked jam drops.
“Speaking of, Amanda,” Ryan said as Amanda held out a cup. “What’s the deal with the funding Rosie has?”
“Ah. Rosie has government funding to place wildlife cameras on wombat burrows on private land. We’re effectively being paid to find sheep while we help her get the research surveillance equipment set up. I set up a spreadsheet last night to track her spending for the funding and I’ll take care of the invoice for us to be paid.”
Before I could protest, Mum jumped in. “Helping her place cameras on some burrows up near the shepherd’s hut was a fair trade for wrangling sheep.”
She held up a plate of hot biscuits and I took one. The woman knew my kryptonite.
“Rosie’s great at mustering,” Stacey added, grabbing three biscuits. “She always helped with our musters after Dad died.”
This was an emotional ambush by the Turner women.
