Bella's Run (12 page)

Francine and Helen had looked at each other in horror and fled the pavilion in search of the two wild cats, who were finally found brushing down their horses ready for the early-evening novelty events.

‘But, Mum,’ said Bella, ‘she pushed Patty’s head into a bucket of poop.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Bella,’ reprimanded an exasperated Francine. ‘You can’t go cutting up people’s faces with your stockwhip, for heaven’s sake. I’m confiscating it for a month.’

‘But it’s all I had in my hand at the time . . . and she deserved it.’

‘Not another word, young lady, not another word.’

Meanwhile, Helen O’Hara had been picking pieces of horse shit out of her daughter’s matted hair.

‘That little bitch,’ Helen said to Francine later, out of hearing of the two girls. ‘She should know better than to bully other kids. She’s a couple of years older too!’

‘Like mother, like daughter,’ said a grim Francine. ‘Prudence probably deserved the beating she got, but I can’t condone Bella using that damned stockwhip to cut people up.’

‘No, I suppose not,’ Helen had agreed. ‘But I have to say I like her style. And my daughter
stinks
.’

‘Yes, well . . . have you ever known our girls to go down without a fight? You tussle with one, you tussle with two. God help Prudence, is what I say.’

Some things never changed. Here they were again, Bella and Patty, tussling with Prudence – alongside a truckload of other girls.

Bella’s vision was blurring at the edges; the air around her head spinning like crystallised sugar in a fairy-floss machine. She couldn’t see Patty anymore or any of the other competitors in the Cock-Sucking Cowboy Shot-Shooting Competition.

She could, however, hear the packed crowd in the large green canvas tent whistling and cheering and stomping their feet, chanting, ‘Skol! Skol! Skol!’ Fifteen young women were lined up on their knees as if in homage to the liquor set out on the makeshift bar, a battered wooden tabletop sitting unevenly on two A-frame trestles; young women whose drunkenness could be ascertained by the ratio of empty to full glasses.

‘Skol! Skol! Skol!’

The roars got louder.

Bella knew she was slowing down. She lunged for another shot – and missed, hands flailing in empty air rather than landing on glass. She had another go.

Got it. Lifting her hand to shoot the shot, she gasped as dizziness suddenly kicked in. Stopping mid-toss, she waited until her head stopped whirling like flotsam adrift in wild seas.

Images of Will flirted with her mind – dizzying reality duelled with the arousingly erotic. Her awareness took flight to another realm, far beyond its usual self. Unbidden, her tongue lapped, savouring the taste of the drink in her hand. It tasted
so
good. With growing abandon she lapped again, her mind flickering through images as vivid as the sun on a burning hot day.

A naked torso with tanned skin moulded over muscle patterned with russet down, snaking below a belly button into illicit depths.

She had to have it.

Tight bum cheeks wrapped in denim, a tattered brown leather belt tail hanging unrestrained, drawing attention to the nicely rounded bulge snuggling into the front zip.

Bella slid her tongue around inside her soft cheeks, touching the searing heat of the decadent liqueur. It was all too much. She couldn’t stop.

Brown eyes dripping like molasses – syrupy and sweet. Dimples that dived into cheeks of wickedness . . . and then there was the wink.

Succumbing, she swallowed.

Oh. My. God. It was good.

The smooth slide down her throat . . . velvet softness, the smoothness of cream, a slow burn and throb.

The taste of the lover yet to be hers.

Throwing all caution aside, Bella grabbed the next shot and then another, her desire to win driving her on.

Maybe tonight?

She sucked and gulped, again and again, until the very last drop of creamy liqueur was gone. The roar from the crowd ramped up an octave.

Bella smiled like a sated she-devil.

Tonight – if he was here.

The PA system crackled and gave a long squeal. Jeers erupted from the crowd, directed at the man holding the microphone standing atop a chair near the makeshift bar.

‘Sorry about that, folks.’ He cleared his throat.

‘Just get on with it, Jonesy,’ a voice yelled from the crowd.

Jonesy hitched up his strides, sniffed back hard.

‘Um, well . . . Here in front of you tonight is the Sheilas Only
Cock-Sucking Cowboy Shot-Shooting Competition.’ Jonesy paused for a swig on his beer. ‘What a mouthful!’ He snivelled back hard again and shifted his weight so his hips pointed out towards the crowd.

‘And my, oh my, folks, wouldn’t we boys just love to experience the endurance of these cock-sucking sheilas tonight.’ Jonesy thrust his hips backwards and forwards to yells of approval and laughter.

‘Oh yes, siree, it’s quite a sight, ladies and gentlemen. If you’re not taking in the show, then wiggle those Wrangler butts up here and take a gander, before the cocks . . . or should I say shots, run out.’

The crowd roared. ‘Skol! Skol! Skol!’

For Bella, Jonesy’s voice and the crowd’s roar were just a loud buzz in an otherwise insular world. The erotic images of Will had long since departed. The only shot glasses left were the ones empty of temptation, held in her hands.

The butterscotch schnapps kicked in; the Irish cream remained a memory.

Her knees started to go.

Eyes closed, she began to sway.

She was going down.

Bella slid sideways, taking little time to hit the ground. The shot glasses – those tiny, incongruous shells of glass responsible for her current state – followed, sliding from the clutch of her slack hands to the dirt, smashing together with a tinkle. Oblivious to the uproar around her, Bella lay in a drunken stupor, a tumble of limbs resting on mother earth.

‘Jeez, Hells Bells, don’t pass out on me now!’

Patty had flung herself sideways, trying to halt her mate’s slide into oblivion. Missing her only by inches, Patty cursed as Bella hit the dirt. Bella’s breasts started to slide from their position perched inside her scarlet push-up bra, her Wrangler singlet doing nothing to help contain the boobs so intent on escape. Patty gave her best mate a shove with the heel of her hand.

No movement.

Not even a flicker.

She softly kicked Bella’s boots. Bella stirred in response.

Patty nudged again. Bella grunted.

A cursing Patty shoved and kicked together.

Bella moved to a half-sit. Realising she was semi-naked, she frantically helped Patty, who was trying to stuff her boobs back inside the gravity-defying bra.

‘Bloody hell. Why’d you have to be so well stacked?’ Patty frowned as her hands warred with Bella’s.

Laughter and cries of disappointment reigned equal among the watching crowd.

‘Let her go, Patty, you spoilsport!’

‘Let ’em rip, Vermaelon!’ mingled with roars of encouragement directed at the remaining drinkers still downing their shot glasses of cowboys.

‘Skol! Skol! Skol!’

Bella sat upright, startling Patty into letting her go.

Flinging her hands into the air, she screamed at the top of her voice, ‘I won! I bloody well DID IT!’

She turned and started pummelling Patty. ‘You owe me, sunshine. It was double or nothing. I
won
.’

‘You bloody well didn’t, you bag. I did.’ Patty launched herself at Bella, punching and roaring back. ‘You passed out. I didn’t. That means I won.’

Baring her teeth, Bella pushed Patty down on her arse. Throwing out an arm, Patty hooked Bella around the knees. The two girls tumbled together, wrestling their way across the ground, rolling through spilt rum and beer, cigarette butts and cow shit.

Some of the crowd moved with them, eager to see more female flesh. The rest stayed behind, eyes trained on the other contestants.

Gaining the advantage, Bella perched on Patty’s belly, hovering just above her friend’s prized crystal-encrusted belt buckle, the buckle awarded to Patricia Maree O’Hara as winner of the Nunkeri Muster Ladies Whip-Cracking Championship last year.

‘Give way, O’Hara!’ She started to move her hips backwards and forwards, riding Patty like a cowboy on a bucking rodeo bull. Hips thrusting, one hand in the air to keep her balance, Bella whooped with joy. ‘I won the bet.
Yee ha!
’

Patty gasped and spluttered.

‘Give her over to me, Bella; I’ll do a better job than that.’

The voice sounded familiar. Bella looked for the owner.

It was Macca, the man who no doubt had his heart set on getting Patty into his swag later that night. ‘It’s great to see you here, Hells Bells, but you ain’t got the right equipment, girlie!’ Wearing a belt buckle with bullock horns on a bright silver disk, Macca rocked his hips.

Bella laughed and punched the air with her fist. ‘I won! Say it!’

Patty reached out and grabbed Bella’s legs. ‘Stop! I think I’m going to puke.’

Bella wasn’t listening. If Macca was here, Will probably was too. And s
he
didn’t need some silly drinking competition to get him in the sack for the night. But two slabs of rum-and-coke plus a hundred bucks? That was a different story. She wasn’t giving way until Patty conceded defeat.

‘I won! Say it, girl!’ Bella yelled again, throwing a hand into the air.

So Patty did the only thing she could do: she stuck up her palm for Bella to slam a high five. ‘Okay. You won.’

‘YES!’

‘Now . . . get the fuck
off me
!’

Chapter 12

Will stretched his long legs out towards the flames, more as a reflex than to gain warmth from the bonfire in front of him. With temperatures reaching the thirties during the day, the fire wasn’t really needed, but it was as much a part of the Muster as the Stockmen’s Challenge.

A massive construction, with whole trees placed side by side and then on top, the bonfire took all night and half the next day to burn itself down. A CFA truck stood on standby, although Nunkeri had had more rain this season than Tindarra and there was at least a tinge of green left up on this plain. Even so, the tanker was good insurance in case a spark got away. With his butt planted on an old gnarled gum tree log set a strategic distance from the leaping flames, Will tuned into the poem being recited by an elderly man on the other side of the fire.

It wasn’t hard to see that Wesley Ogilvie – cattleman, bush poet, legendary stockwhip-maker and Will’s neighbour at Tindarra – adored every minute of his annual Nunkeri Muster performances. For as long as Will could remember, Wes had regaled them with poems, bringing to life Banjo Paterson’s ballads and adding a few of his own. Every tale he told was played out on the grazing properties in the high country mountain ranges and valleys of Tindarra, Burrindal and Ben Bullen. Probably to some townies it smacked of a long-winded whine session but, unfortunately, Will knew otherwise. The droughts, fires and floods Wes wove into ballads – they’d had them all in the space of a few years, here in the towering blue mountains of the Great Dividing Range.

‘He loves it, doesn’t he?’ a soft, cultured voice came from the darkness behind Will.

He swung around. Dressed in a faded pink-and-black chequered woollen bushman’s shirt, under which there appeared to be at least two more layers, a small rotund figure stood watching old Wes.

‘Aunty Maggie! Aren’t you hot in that get-up? I didn’t think you were coming until the morning.’

‘Neither did I.’ Disgust was evident in Maggie O’Hara’s voice. ‘And no, I’m not hot. It’s colder when you’re older, sober and away from the fire.’

‘What changed your plans? It must have been good to get you swagging it. You haven’t been too keen on the idea since Uncle Hughie died.’

‘Yes, well I’m
not
happy. I love my own bed these days. Getting old and set in my ways. But the woman we’ve brought in to judge the bush poetry competition tomorrow decided she wanted to try “this camping-out business” as she called it. She’s from Melbourne. As I organised the competition, I felt obligated to keep an eye out for her.’