Big Sky Read online

  ‘That sounds right.’ Still, I did get a buzz when Aria returned from the occasional weekend back at her place with some exotic new treasure that her parents had picked up while they were away on business trips.

  ‘My turn,’ I said to Dan. ‘I’ll take a crack at Kubla Khan for the mob. You’d better get some sleep. Drafting starts tomorrow.’

  I could sense Dan’s crooked grin in the darkness. ‘Yes Boss.’

  I shook Aria awake at 2 am. ‘Your turn.’

  She groaned and buried her head beneath the swag.

  ‘Come on, Aria!’ I grabbed her by the shoulders, digging harder than necessary. I almost wished we were both guys – then Aria and I could have a punch up, get it out of our systems and be best mates by breakfast.

  ‘Okay,’ Aria grumbled. ‘Leave me alone. I’ll get up. I’ll get up!’

  I waited until she was fully dressed then crawled into my swag. I crashed before I shut my eyes.

  Something was wrong.

  I sat bolt upright. The mob bellowed and carried on. In the red glow of the dying fire, peaceful sleeping bodies surrounded me, including Aria’s!

  Bloody hell!

  I scrambled out of the swag and dashed over to aim a kick at Aria’s swag.

  Aria spluttered awake.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I hissed. ‘You’re meant to be on watch.’

  ‘I got too tired,’ Aria whined. ‘You know I’m not good at being woken up.’

  I couldn’t believe it.

  Dan and Franz also woke with the commotion.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Dan called.

  ‘Aria slept on her watch. The mob’s restless.’

  Dan slid from his swag. ‘I’ll come.’

  I stared at his golden chest, all muscle, picked out by the red embers as he threw on his shirt.

  We leaped on the night horses like old pros.

  The mob paced uneasily, lowing and calling out. I shone the torch into a couple of thousand jostling white bodies. Closer to the fence something growled and I swung the torch to reveal a scene of carnage. Three dogs were tearing the guts out of a calf. When the beam hit them they froze, then darted back beneath the fence.

  A sob caught in my throat. We’d butchered a killer only the week before, but this – seeing the calf’s white hide splayed open – made me feel sick. I was responsible for these beasts. They were fenced and vulnerable; it was my job to protect them.

  ‘You want me to shoot the dogs?’ Dan asked, coming up beside me.

  I heard the doubt in his voice. ‘No.’ It was touch and go, the mob were already unsettled, a gunshot could tip them over into a rush. A bust out now and the entire muster would be back to square one.

  ‘We’ll track them when there’s more light,’ Dan agreed. ‘You want to help me get the calf out?’ One day of belting sun and the carcass would become a stinking flyblown mess that would freak the cattle out. Together, we began the grisly work of dragging the calf away.

  TEN

  Aria cradled a cup of tea and was all cosied up to Jonathan by the time Dan and I returned, our arms sticky red with blood.

  I couldn’t meet her eyes. Two and a half years of day-in day-out friendship had been undone in two short weeks. At least she had the grace to look guilty. I didn’t say anything to her. There was no point – the blood staining our hands and forearms said it all.

  ‘I’m going down to the spring,’ I announced.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Aria said in a small voice.

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  I meant it. As Dan and I had looped the green-hide rope around the calf’s neck to drag it further into the scrub, something had died inside me. In a way it made Aria less irritating. I just didn’t care.

  ‘Are we going to start drafting today?’ Aria asked as I scrubbed down my arms with Gran’s no-nonsense carbolic soap.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Bet you can’t wait until it’s over and we can go back to the big house and get a decent slee . . .’ She trailed off.

  I didn’t reply, just kept scrubbing.

  ‘Look Skye, I’m sorry, okay. I’m really crap at waking in the middle of the night and the cows were cool and everything looked fine and I thought I’d just go back and have a tiny little lie down before I fell asleep on the horse.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said coldly.

  Aria put her hands on her hips. There were shadows under her eyes from the long days and late nights around the campfire. Her jeans were ripped and she smelled of horse and sweat like the rest of us.

  ‘Skye? I’m sorry. I know I stuffed up. People do.’ She muttered something else I didn’t quite catch.

  I nodded. There was no point in staying bitter. I didn’t care anymore. The drafting was the most important thing now. It required delicate choreography and I needed everyone on board.

  It was only as she went back to the camp that I realised Aria had muttered: ‘Except you.’

  Before the drafting started I wanted to find the dogs. It was an obsession. I asked Dan to stay with the horses and take charge of the camp.

  ‘Let me do it, Skye.’

  I shook my head. This was something I needed to do. My friendship with Aria seemed stone cold dead. But beneath that was fury. I wanted to take it out on something or someone. Best thing would be to find the dogs that killed our calf.

  ‘Let me come with you,’ Aria said.

  Aria would only be a hindrance, but it would keep her away from Dan.

  ‘Okay.’ I turned to the others. ‘Franz and Jonathan you check the fences. Dan will you show you what to do.’

  I grabbed a canteen and the rifle. ‘We have to go now before it gets too hot.’

  Aria didn’t delay with tooth-brushing and hair-brushing and picking over breakfast. Instead, she butted up behind me on Missy, as if trying to prove herself. I rode Blue Dreamer. I had ridden him yesterday as well, but I was going out into country I hadn’t fully covered before and I wanted my horse – the one I trusted above all others.

  I led Blue Dreamer to the section of fence where Dan and I had seen the dogs run off. Blue Dreamer picked up the scent immediately.

  ‘What is he? A sniffer horse or something?’ Aria asked, incredulous.

  ‘Blue Dreamer has many skills.’

  ‘Guess he’s got a big enough nose for it.’

  We laughed and something warmer returned to the cold silence between us.

  ‘Sorry about last night. I was an idiot.’

  ‘You’re forgiven,’ I said, and surprised myself by meaning it. ‘Let’s just let it go. It’s happened now. It’s over.’

  ‘Do you think I could have a go with the gun sometime?’ Aria asked.

  I smiled beneath the brim of my akubra. ‘Over my dead body.’

  We continued on for a couple of hours until we came smack up against a creek.

  Blue Dreamer snuffled around noisily. He’d lost the scent. I slid off and scouted around. I hadn’t been to this part of the creek before. Bell-like bubbling led me closer in. I parted a fringe of pandanus.

  ‘Oh, Aria – look!’

  Bundwarra stretched over thousands of hectares so it was impossible to know every nook and cranny of the country. We could comb over it and still miss a discovery – a cave full of pristine rock art, a waterfall, a gorge that had to be seen to be believed.

  We had stumbled into a perfect little glade. ‘Now this is magic!’Pandanus trees fringed the smoky blue waterhole, their leaves like shredded elephant’s ears. Lorikeets chattered and pecked at flowering paperbarks before taking fright at our approach. At the far end of the hole, water gushed into a narrow channel and spilled over the lip of a cliff. Sulfur wafted into my nostrils. I pulled off a boot and dipped my blistered foot into the water. Hot springs!

  ‘Come on!’ I yelled to Aria, forgetting the dingoes. ‘Last one in is a rotten egg!’ I stripped off my jeans and shirt and then pulled off my undies and bra too.

  ‘Woohoo!’ Leaping in, all the aches, the sadd
le-soreness unknotted. And the anger – that burning anger fizzed and melted away.

  Aria waited on the bank.

  ‘Come in, you idiot – it’s beautiful!’

  Aria bit her lip. ‘What about crocodiles?’

  ‘Nope. No salties here. Water’s the temp of a hot tub.

  Besides, there’s a waterfall. Crocs can’t climb cliffs.’

  Aria painstakingly pulled off her shirt and hung it over a branch.

  ‘Get a move on. We haven’t got forever. We’ll have to get back to the others before they wonder where we are.’

  Aria took a tentative step towards the waterhole. She was still wearing her knickers and bra. Size 8. B cup. Dior. I knew it because her mum bought bras for her from some flash place in Paris and I’d seen the labels. Aria’s walk-in wardrobe had so many designer labels she could have made them into a patchwork quilt – emperor-sized to match her bed. I was Size 14. D cup. Playtex. Heifer breasts or ‘Mudda udders’ as Damien put it before he got a slap in the mouth from Mum.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I assured her. ‘It’s only me and I’ve seen it all before.’ At school, neither of us hid anything. There was no point. Sharing a bedroom made it impossible not to eventually give up and let it all hang out. Bare bodies, snoring, honking farts and smelly feet . . .

  Aria peered into the bushes as if there might be a thousand pairs of eyes screened by leaves. But that’s what I loved so much about being at Bundwarra. It was vast. There was nobody to see, only a couple of unimpressed wallabies and the occasional goanna.

  Aria peeled off her knickers and unhooked her bra, then plunged in. She emerged, her dark hair sleek and glossy. ‘It’s beautiful!’

  I could have burst with pride. It was beautiful, better than any fancy pool at an exclusive resort. Skinny-dipping felt amazing too – soft and silky, free and natural.

  I ducked under and gazed at a fuzz of silvery blue riverbed. It was something I’d enjoyed since I’d first learned to swim – staying under for as long as I could and pretending I was a fish. I told myself that I didn’t need to breathe and somehow that let me stay under longer. It was like looking through an out-of-focus camera. Everything – algae, weeds and bubbles – became a mysterious, swaying symphony of underwater life.

  When I broke through the surface I turned to where Aria had been. The surface ran smooth in blank silvery sheets. I spun around, treading water. Aria had vanished. I watched the water, expecting her to burst through at any second. When she didn’t, my skin prickled.

  ‘Aria!’ I shouted. ‘Aria!’

  What if she’d gone under and got tangled in tree roots? What if I’d seriously miscalculated and there were crocodiles here? I scrambled out of the water to get a better angle from the bank. The water was maddeningly opaque. ‘Aria!’ I screamed.

  There was a rustle from the pandanus on the other side of the waterhole.

  Aria stepped out. ‘Got you!’ she crowed.

  ‘What the hell?’ I fumed. ‘I thought you’d drowned!’

  ‘Just mucking around. I wanted to see what you’d do if you couldn’t find me.’

  ‘Well now you know! But next time I won’t bother.’ What did she think she was up to? This wasn’t the time or place for some dumb primary school prank.

  A twig snapping in the bushes made me spin around.

  ‘Skye?’

  No way. It was Dan. I jumped back into the waterhole as he materialised from behind a screen of pandanus. Aria slipped in too, but took her time.

  ‘Were you spying on us?’ I demanded, dry-mouthed.

  Dan shook his head. ‘We were starting to worry. I followed your tracks.’ Although he kept his gaze averted, I wished my breasts weren’t bobbing to the surface like two big white jellyfish.

  ‘Is there any room for me?’

  ‘No,’ I said flatly. ‘Not while we’re in here. And you can turn around while we get dressed.’

  Dan obliged and Aria and I swam to the edge, clambered up over the rocks and fumbled to throw on our clothes.

  ‘We’ll see you back at camp,’ I said, my cheeks still burning.

  Dan nodded. I couldn’t help looking back once we were past the first layer of pandanus to glimpse his fine brown body, gleaming against the water, before he dived in – a perfect V-shaped back that tapered into a smooth, tight bum. I shook my head at myself. What a hypocrite.

  ELEVEN

  Drafting was the usual dusty chaos. I decided we could let a thousand through at a time. It took us less than an hour to yard half the mob up and canter them through the main gates into the big yard.

  Dan led the horses back into the holding paddock and we worked the mob on foot. I stood over at the entrance gate to draft, calling out which gate needed to be opened for each beast. Franz, Jonathan and Aria were stationed at the other gates, clinging to the bars as I quickly assessed each beast while Dan walked around the yards, keeping the mob moving through.

  Round they came, spilling out like breakfast cereal from a box.

  I let through three decent-sized cows. ‘Three dippos.’ I shouted. They went into the dipping pen to be spray-dipped for ticks and buffalo fly.

  ‘Two, meatworks!’ They were steers and mostly muscle, but big enough to get a decent price.

  Franz opened his gate and the steers cantered through.

  The next beast was a weaner and went into the pen for trucking to a far paddock, to separate it from its mother. For every weaner funnelled through, a cow gave furious, mournful bellows.

  ‘Calf!’

  Jonathan opened his gate.

  And so it went, I kept calling out though my throat was parched and my lips chafed.

  At one stage, a mickey burst through while calves jostled into the calf yard.

  ‘Block up!’ I shouted to Jonathan, who was busy hamming up an impression of a dopey cowboy chewing hayseed against the fence, much to Aria’s hilarity. He didn’t shut the gate in time and the mickey got through into the calf pen. We had to work quickly to get it out again without any calves spilling back through. Jonathan was more attentive after that.

  By the end of the afternoon we had sorted about half the mob. I poked at the grit on my teeth with my dry tongue. My eyes were stinging and my throat felt as if I’d just swallowed an echidna. All that shouting had made me hoarse, and I swear I’d inhaled a kilo of dust. Drafting wasn’t nearly as much fun as the muster, but the job I was looking least forward to was yet to come . . .

  I showed the others how to strop their knives on their boots, spitting on the leather and running the blade back and forth to sharpen it for the work ahead. Dan struck a fire in an old forty-four gallon drum and we heated the brand: it was in the shape of a B for Bundwarra. I unpacked the dehorners, that were like great big pruning saws, and the vaccines for jabbing the beasts.

  As the mob were pushed through into the next yard, we held them down in the crush, sawed off the horns of any cattle that hadn’t been done before and branded them high on the rump. Calves and mickeys got castrated – the crows swooping down to gobble up the delicacies we discarded. The rest Dan grilled up on a post-hole shovel blade propped over the fire drum. He passed one on a stick to Jonathan. ‘Want a bush oyster?’

  Dan popped one in his mouth and smacked his lips.

  Jonathan visibly paled under a coating of grime.

  I was jabbing a needle into a cow’s rump to vaccinate it.

  Dan caught my eye.

  I grinned. Aria might be off in her own world, and Jonathan clearly disliked taking orders from a girl, but I had an ally.

  We were five long days into the drafting with only a few hundred head left in the big yard to process the next day.

  Aria bounced around the campfire like she’d swallowed a bottle of red cordial. How did she do that? Guess she’d always been the night owl while I was the early bird.

  ‘Come on everyone, let’s play another game!’

  I groaned, but Jonathan’s cheering drowned it out. Aria seemed to be getting more an
d more hyper every night, wanting to sing and dance and tell ghost stories. She loved being the constant centre of attention.

  ‘What is the game?’ Elise asked.

  ‘Truth, dare or double dare!’ Aria announced, flicking a cloud of red dust from her gleaming black hair.

  No way. There was enough daring stuff to do out here during the day without having to do it at night as well. And as for truth . . . I glanced over at Dan, who sat meditatively cradling his cup of tea. Nope – I didn’t want to be made to tell the truth.

  ‘You playing, Skye?’ Aria asked with that uncanny timing of hers.

  I shook my head. ‘I want to get the rest of the mob sorted tomorrow. It’s going to be a big day. Think I’ll call an end to this one.’

  Aria pouted. ‘Don’t be a spoilsport. It’ll be fun and we need everyone to play. Otherwise it’s not fair.’

  ‘Maybe she thinks she’s too good for us,’ Jonathan said. His diamond earring glittered in the firelight. So pretentious. I wanted to punch him.

  ‘It sounds fun,’ Elise said turning her round blue eyes on me. ‘Play with us, Skye. It is good to relax before the sleeping.’ Elise had been a gem, turning out the best food she could from limited ingredients and being ever ready with hot sweet tea when we came in from the yards. ‘Okay then.’

  Aria clapped her hands. ‘Good. I’ll go first. Dan?’

  I sat up.

  ‘Truth, dare or double dare.’

  Dan scratched his head beneath the Stetson, as if contemplating. ‘I guess it’ll have to be truth.’

  Aria smiled wickedly, baring her straight white teeth, the best money could buy. ‘Okay then, how many girls have you slept with?’

  ‘Aria!’ I protested. ‘Dan you don’t have to answer that.’

  Dan counted on his fingers. As he counted on his right hand for what must have been the tenth time, I had to stop holding my breath. ‘I’d say about hundred or so.’

  Oh.

  He added, ‘If you count my sisters.’

  Aria’s eyes widened. ‘What?’

  Dan gave a slow grin. ‘Yep. Been camping with a hundred or so girls from my mob, slept just across from them in my swag.’