AllFreeNovel
Share Us
chapter 17
Ally
I didn’t make it two steps inside before Jono was grasping my arms and halting my progress, his body blocking the path past the table and up the stairs. “What did he do?” I shook my head, unable to answer him. “Did he hurt you?”
“Not the way you think. It’s screwed six ways from Sunday.”
“You let me know if you want me to give him a talking to, okay.” Scottie looked up to Jono like a father. I hadn’t ever really done that. Dad and I were closer. We kept in touch, unlike he and Scottie. Not that that’s what Dad wanted. He wanted to have a relationship with his son, but Scottie had cut him off completely, turning instead to Jono, who’d accepted the role wholeheartedly. I’d always adored Jono—in many ways I wished that he and Ma had gotten together years ago. They would have been a better match than Ma and Dad. I also understood why Scottie had done it. Jono was the kind of man who would have been a great father. His solid presence and reassurances had solved many a problem on the station. He was kind and caring and with his attention turned on me, I felt his unquestioning love for me as the daughter I knew he’d wanted.
“Could you check on them?” I asked. “To make sure they’re okay?”
“They?” He furrowed his brow in question.
“Craig’s back.” I looked to Scottie and Macca who were standing close, chatting to Nan and Ma. “He didn’t tell you?”
Scottie shrugged like it was no big deal. “We were getting to that. Got distracted.”
“Whatever,” I mumbled, uninterested in whatever excuse they had. Three days ago, life had been good. Then a fire roared through the station and my world had imploded. It’d ripped apart so much of what I’d held dear that I didn’t even know where to start trying to fit the pieces of the mangled wreck back together.
“I’ll check up on them, love.” He patted my shoulder awkwardly and stepped aside, letting me pass. I heard the back door close on my way to my bedroom where I curled up on the bed, my mind spinning in circles with everything that had happened in the last few days.
If it wasn’t bad enough, now that Craig was back, we’d had to break the news to him.
Blond lay dead before us. For all Waru’s efforts to free him, the bull had wandered straight into the path of the flames. It was a wide front and the wind had whipped it up, spot fires skipping ahead of the front, leapfrogging so it travelled faster and faster along the tinder dry ground. Even patches of dirt with no remnant vegetation—and there were lots that were simply bare—had been singed. The smoke lay thick, lingering in the air the day after the front had passed through. During the thick of it, Blond could easily have been disoriented, his brain starved of much-needed oxygen.
The loss of the big stud bull was a major blow to the station. The mob had increased production and the quality of calf had improved significantly since we’d brought him on. As sire to the majority of calves, Blond was essential. Thankfully, we were insured, so the financial loss wasn’t going to cripple us, but his death was another setback that we had to bounce back from. Emotionally, it was taking a lot higher toll than simply making a claim for reimbursement.
It was especially tough on Sam. He’d known how much Craig had loved the damn bull. The first rule of any livestock production was to never get emotionally tied to the cattle. But we’d all broken that rule when it came to Blond. Seeing him interact with Craig had given us all a soft spot for the big beast, and the double whammy of Blond’s loss and Craig leaving had hit Sam hard.
When we hadn’t been able to get a read on Blond’s tracker on the monitoring app, I’d forced myself to accept the worst. Before we’d even set out, I’d known. I’d steeled myself for the sight of him. But it didn’t help. It hadn’t taken much to find Blond. Waru’s directions were spot on. The bull had only moved a hundred metres or so away from the mended—now burned—fence.
The sight of his blackened hair and burned body lying motionless had shattered me. The wildlife had already started devouring him, a murder of crows feasting on his carcass. We hadn’t needed to get close to know he was gone. Even still, Sam had, sliding off Spook and trudging over, spine bent as if he was curling in on himself. He shooed away the crows and then ripped off his hat and threw it. As if finding Blond’s carcass had been the last straw for Sam, he’d run his hands through his hair, tugging on the ends. The pained roar that had escaped his parted lips had broken something in me. I’d resisted going to him, trying to respect his need for privacy, but I hadn’t ventured far away. I couldn’t. I’d never heard him so desolate, battling a loss so deep that he was breaking to pieces.
I didn’t know how long he’d stood there, breathing hard, anger radiating off him. But when he returned, he strode straight past me going to Spook when I’d reached for him. I stood there, waiting for him, waiting for a sign that he would turn to me rather than his horse. It was as if Spook could read him, dropping his head low so Sam could take the much-needed comfort he offered. But Spook didn’t stay still for long, nudging Sam away after a moment. I went to him then, running my hand down his back, but he’d stiffened at my touch, and I’d backed off.
*****
Craig’s face paled and he muttered a curse, his skin looking ashen in the light of dawn. “When? The fire?” His voice cracked with pain and even after a sleepless night when I learned just how deep the secrets between us went, and the hopelessness of our predicament had weighed heavily on me, my heart broke for him. The tears I hadn’t managed to keep at bay the night before threatened to fall again.
“Yeah, mate.” Sam squeezed Craig’s shoulder and cleared his throat while Craig had looked away. He sucked in a breath and pulled free, walking away from us. His boots crunched on the dirt and he kicked at a stray rock, sending it soaring in a high arc.
We could barely hear him when he spoke. “I want to see him.” It was a six-hour round trip on horseback, one that ’Tella and Spook had already done. Craig could do with the bonding time with Daisy again. She’d fretted so much the day that we’d taken the other horses out that Scottie ended up working with her just to keep her occupied. We saddled up and began the trek out to Blond’s grave.
Craig had a special bond with the bull. From the moment they’d seen one another, there was a spark. A tether that kept bringing them back to one another. Playing basketball with a bull may have seemed a little out there, but it was their thing. Even though it only happened a few times a year, after every muster Blond was rearing to go. He’d let himself be guided into the sorting yards and patiently wait there until the herd had been moved around. Then he’d scan the landscape non-stop until he spotted Craig. If he wasn’t there holding the basketball, Blond would snort and huff and bellow until he got his game on. Craig had never once missed it, and now I wasn’t sure what he’d do. Post-muster basketball games had become a kind of crazy tradition that’d developed at the station.
Now that Blond was gone, Craig needed time to say his goodbyes.
The red dirt was still freshly turned, the small mound that marked Blond’s grave already starting to settle. Craig moved stiffly, looking over his shoulder at us as he walked towards it, while Daisy waited patiently for him to water her. I was still angry with Craig. Betrayal sang through my veins, fresh from his departure and raw from his return. But as angry and upset as I was with him, I couldn’t let him do it alone. I dismounted ’Tella and went to stand beside him. I heard Sam do the same, while our horses joined Daisy under the only tree in the vicinity not touched by fire. It was an old eucalypt, tall with its branches splaying wide. We’d wanted to bury Blond under it, but its roots spread almost as broad as its canopy, and the last thing we needed was to topple the old tree. Instead, we buried Blond where he’d fallen, beside a smaller copse of trees scorched black with the inferno. The grass fire had run hot and fast, the strong winds having pushed the front along before it could lick through the trunks of the trees that followed the meandering of the dried riverbeds. This line of vegetation linked up with the ravine Macca had been in when the wind turned, changing the direction of the fire.
We stood together, Sam and me flanking Craig as he stared at the mound we’d packed down as hard as we could with the excavator. Shoulders hunched, he looked weary, like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. I reached out and linked my arm with his and Sam stepped closer too, not quite touching Craig, but letting him feel Sam’s solid presence. “It’s stupid for me to be cut, but I feel sad, you know?” He shook his head and continued, not waiting for an answer. “I can’t help but think about why he abandoned the other bulls and came so far away from them. He’s nowhere near water. What if he suffered?”
“Waru said he was calm.” Sam turned to him as he spoke, his gaze soft. “I like to think that Blond came out here to have some alone time. He always did want to do things on his own terms, even die.”
Craig shook his head, his voice wobbling as he spoke. “I should have been here instead of Waru. Scottie wanted him with Macca, but I should have insisted. Maybe I could have saved him.”
“You can’t beat yourself up, Craig.” I leaned into him, resting my head on his shoulder. “It’s just one of the shitty things that happens on a station sometimes. Blond was a good bull. He gave a lot of himself and helped get us through some tough breeding seasons. His legacy won’t be forgotten.”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat and nodded. “Yeah, he did.” Craig pulled away from me, squatting at the base of the grave. “See ya, old mate. Ask for deposable thumbs in the next life, yeah. We’ll tear up the court again one day.” He patted the red dirt a couple of times and returned to Sam and me.
