Absolution Creek (10 page)

Five minutes later a dazed Jarrod snatched at the offered towel Cora held. His right arm hung limply by his side. ‘What’s the matter with you two?’ Jarrod complained. ‘Jeez.’

‘You’ve been in an accident, Jarrod,’ Harold explained patiently. ‘Your ute and the float are pretty busted up, which means the police will need to be called in.’ He took a step closer to the boy. ‘Don’t think you want to be explaining yourself smelling like a brewery, do you?’

‘No harm in a few drinks.’ Jarrod dried his face, wincing at the sight of his blood. ‘Is it bad?’

‘No it’s not.’ Cora pointed at his arm. ‘What about your arm?’

‘No thanks to you, it’s busted. You reefed it over your shoulder.’

‘Selective memory, eh, Jarrod?’ Harold undid a few of Jarrod’s shirt buttons. The boy’s collarbone was near poking through his skin. He glanced at Cora. ‘Reckon I’ll take him straight to the hospital. It’s a bit much for our doctoring skills.’

‘Fair enough.’ Cora could set straight arm and leg breaks, but anything else was beyond her. ‘I’ll call and tell them you’re coming.’

Once Jarrod was settled in the front of the utility with blankets and pillows, Harold turned his key in the ignition. ‘You’ll have to look after the horse.’

‘Don’t you touch my horse!’ Jarrod slumped back in the bench seat.

‘You better go.’ Cora waved them off, side-stepping the dogs. In the kitchen she made the necessary calls to the police and hospital, the party-line telephone system ensuring the majority of the district would know of the accident within the hour. It only took one interested matron to pick up the telephone and listen in when the manual exchange was rung for the news to travel like the proverbial. Once the authorities were informed Cora holstered her revolver, slipped into her work coat and set her wide-brimmed hat firmly on her head. The business of putting an injured horse down lay ahead, a hateful task.

Chapter 6

T
he final rise was a beauty. The high spot gave Scrubber a grand view of the countryside. Spread out like a fancy banquet, squares of jade, brown, gold and murky green were intersected by lines of trees, roads and homesteads. The view folded over slopes until haze met the foothills to disappear into a land not visited by Scrubber for nigh on thirty years. He couldn’t smell it yet – the tang of dry dirt and real acreage, of sheep in their thousands, of a land that tempted like a bag of candy. He could remember it, though; could see his arrival at the Purcells’ property. Twenty-two years of age, swag at his feet, white gold dangling before his eyes. His missus once said he should have stayed in the flat country. Maybe he should have. He never could forget the scent of lanoline; of a fleece thrown six foot in the air, sunlight catching the burry edges of it before it landed on the wool table to be skirted and inverted into a lump of snowy whiteness. His boots tapped Veronica’s flanks as they plodded up the road. The old girl had a tendency to doze off when he tarried. Come to think of it, so did he.

Behind them, cars were starting to protest. Were he a betting man, Scrubber reckoned the young fella behind would overtake, regardless of road rules. They were travelling downhill, the bitumen hard on the three horses’ hoofs, the road twisting like a desert sidewinder. It was his right to travel the highway like any other person, even if there were now eight cars caught behind him desperately wishing for a slow lane. He patted Veronica on the rump, glanced at Dog padding rhythmically alongside him, and adjusted the scarf about his neck. The car was low and slate-grey; the kind of vehicle that would be invisible in bull dust and eventually get run over by a road train. The double white lines stretched ahead around the next blind corner.

His mount kept her head down and stayed centred on the road. If he’d been a believing man Scrubber almost considered it possible that his Veronica, the woman variety, had come back as the nag he now rode. He clicked his tongue and the mare dropped her head a touch lower. Yep, he mumbled, just like his V. She’d always been stubborn, like the time the doctor warned about dia
beat
es. No one was gonna
beat
her, V bit back. Of course the illness eventually got her a good five years ago at about the same time his own body began to fail him, which was why he was finally heading west to see Cora. With no one left to care for and his own illness worsening, he had no excuses left. Besides which, he had his conscience to clear.

The mare brightened and lifted her head as if attuned to his thoughts. Samsara and Petal weren’t so obliging: they pulled on their lead ropes and kicked out at the pushy prestige car behind them. Eventually Scrubber got bored with the noise of it all and gave an off-hand wave to his stalker, narrowing his eyes against flying grit as the car sped past.

At the end of the first week it was a relief to reach the start of the stock route. The horses knew instinctively when the real part of the journey began. They snuffled at the winter-whipped grass and whinnied when the bitumen grew invisible.

Scrubber stopped early that day. The warm sun was unseasonal and a camp spot hung enticingly in his mind like a good slug of rum. Once his girls were unpacked, their saddles resting at the foot of a gum tree, Scrubber stripped off, sitting the leather pouch on his folded oilskin jacket near a fast-flowing creek. Running into the water he splashed and yelped with delight. This, he decided, was living.

He could have sat by the water for hours, but with his stomach cantankerous he set about getting a feed. A lump of old mutton tied to a bit of string enticed two snappy craybobs to dinner. Scrubber grabbed at their thick slimy bodies, apologising for their unfortunate demise so late in the season. By the time he’d fished, fired up, and roughed together a bit of water and flour, the sun’s rays were streaming fitfully through the trees.

Scrubber boiled water in a faithful camp oven and plonked the fractious old man craybobs into the bubbling pot. They cooked in minutes and he tore off their pincers, gnawing at the white fluffy innards with teeth past chewing. Dog, not one for fish, ate damper from a tin plate and drank his share of hot billy tea, belching in contentment as he lay down near the fire.

‘Good, eh?’ In the past Scrubber had struggled with dinner conversation. Dog turned on his side and rubbed his head in the grass.

The camp fire struggled throughout the night. The wood, leached by numerous floodings, alternated between outpourings of smoke and rare flashes of unenthusiastic flame. When the timber did burn it turned to ash quickly. Scrubber watched the dismal offering with amusement, a piece of grass clamped between dry lips. He’d grasped long ago that some form of genetic flaw had pursued him out of the birth canal and into life, rendering him incapable of following a straight track. Knowing that – accepting that some things from the past were beyond his control – well, it made certain incidents easier to live with. Scrubber glanced at the pouch. He itched for conversation, however the stars were a little too close for comfort, a little too interested in what he planned to say.

Chapter 7

T
he sight of the twisted float didn’t endear Jarrod to Cora. The boy’s utility was buckled head on against one side of the stock grid. The float had jack-knifed, rolled over and come free of the rear of the utility. Cora walked the couple of hundred yards through ankle-high grass to where the float lay on its side. The steel of the horse trailer was ripped jaggedly at the front, and she could hear from within the horse’s laboured breathing and the float wall being kicked intermittently.

She scrambled up onto the side of the float. Inside, the chestnut mare glared back at her with wide, frightened eyes. There was a deep gash along her rump and another on her chest where she had hit the front of the trailer on impact. These wounds probably would have healed nicely under the care of the local vet were it not for the extent of the mare’s leg injuries. Both front legs were broken, and a hoof partially torn away. A crow flew overhead and gave a single vulturous cry. Slipping a bullet into the chamber of the revolver, Cora took aim and fired. The animal stilled.

In the silence that followed, Cora examined the scene. The mare was still saddled and, judging by the extent of the caked dust and sweat along her girth and legs, hadn’t even warranted a rub down at the end of yesterday’s draft. Aware that young men were inclined to be foolish and that the float was insured, Cora might well have only reprimanded Jarrod and deducted his wages for being thoughtless; what Cora couldn’t abide, however, was injury to animals.

‘You could have called me.’

James Campbell walked towards her, vet bag in his hand. ‘I didn’t hear you.’ Cora clambered down from the float. ‘Who called you?’

‘No one. I was on my way to check on some calving heifers next door. The pistol shot was the giveaway. I’d recognise it anywhere. How’s the kid? I assume it was Jarrod?’

Cora nodded. ‘Drunk as, with a busted collarbone and more attitude than a cut snake. Harold’s taken him to the hospital.’

‘Looks like he was lucky.’ James peered into the float. ‘Well, it was a nice clean shot, Cora, not that I would have expected anything else.’ He looked at the wreckage. ‘All this will have to stay as is until the police arrive.’