Home Before Sundown (12 page)

Four days?

Gabe had always thought it was five days, but Bella had insisted it was four.

Admittedly his memories of the time in Townsville when they'd abandoned their responsibilities and carried on like honeymooners were overshadowed by the horror of the way it had ended.

He and Bella had been so happy on that last day, happier than he'd ever imagined possible. They'd had an after-lunch swim in the motel pool, then they'd gone back to bed . . .

He'd been roused by the low buzz of his mobile phone vibrating against the fake timber surface of the bedside table.

He'd checked the number, surprised to see that it was Roy calling and he'd glanced at Bella, asleep, her tawny hair tumbled and messy from their swim and spread over the pillow. She'd pushed the sheet off and he could see the pink and white perfection of her neat, delectable breasts . . .

The gold chain that he'd given her the night before winked against her skin . . .

Not wanting to wake her, Gabe dragged on jeans and went outside to return the call. Even now, his stomach hollowed at the memory.

He could recall every detail of the still bright afternoon as he stepped outside in the hot sunlight, the hum of peak-hour traffic, the smell of coffee from a nearby café.

The phone conversation . . .

‘Roy, what can I do for you?'

‘Gabe, I don't know how to tell you this.'

‘Tell me what?'

‘It's your father.'

Pain scorched through Gabe like a rifle shot.

‘He went out with the post-hole digger,' Roy said.

‘On his own?'

‘Yeah.'

His father was supposed to wait till Gabe returned. They'd had the job earmarked.

‘There's been a terrible accident, Gabe. Looks like his shirt got caught and pulled him into the auger.'

No, please, no.
Sickening horror overwhelmed Gabe, suffocating him.

‘I was mending the stockyards near the homestead,' Roy said. ‘He didn't tell me he was going out. We didn't know . . . ' Roy's voice was breaking up, clogged with tears. ‘He didn't come back for lunch, you see, but we didn't think . . . By the time I went out and found him . . . he'd lost so much blood . . . '

Shaking with terror, Gabe sank back against the brick motel wall. ‘No,' he pleaded. ‘No way ––'

He couldn't bear this. He didn't want to hear.

‘I'm so sorry, Gabe.'

‘But the Flying Doctor . . . Dad will be okay?'

‘He's gone, Gabe.'

No.

God, no.

I should have been with him.

I thought he'd wait till I got back.

‘Gabe? Are you still there?'

He was numb with appalled grief.
I should have been there. It wouldn't have happened if I'd been there.

‘Gabe?'

Gabe let out a shuddering moan. ‘I'm here.'

But, God help him, he wished he wasn't. If he'd been home this would never have happened. ‘I – I'll come straight home.'

‘Yeah, mate. We need you. Your mum and the girls aren't too good.'

No, they'd be a mess.

Gabe wasn't sure how long he stood outside in a horrified, anguished daze. He didn't hear movements from inside the room, but then the door opened and Bella appeared wearing one of his T-shirts.

She grinned at him. ‘I wondered where you'd got to.'

His throat was too choked to speak. He held up a shaking hand, showing her the phone and he saw the change in her face as she realised that something terrible had happened.

He'd been in such a state as he'd grabbed his things and thrown them into his vehicle. He'd given her a hasty goodbye kiss, never knowing it would be the last time he'd kiss her on the lips. Already he'd begun pushing her away, as if he'd sensed that as soon as he arrived home he would have to deal with too many other things.

Guilt. Grief. His mother's pain and accusations.

If only you'd been here, Gabe, you might have saved him. How could you have been so selfish, staying away with that Fairburn girl?

Bella set off for the Piccadilly dam next morning. Gabe and Mac's talk of bogged cattle had reminded her that there was one distant dam she hadn't yet checked. To reach it, she needed to go to Mullinjim's farthest corner where there were no roads, so she decided to go on horseback, taking Striker, her father's favourite stockhorse.

She left early, but it was already hot as Striker cantered off across the sweeping grass plains, heading for the distant rocky red ridges. Bella had a water bottle and two apples in the saddlebag along with the sat phone, which she fervently hoped she wouldn't need.

It was fabulous to be on horseback again. The country felt different. Better, quieter, closer. So very familiar. She could smell the dust Striker's hooves stirred up and the sweet hay scent of the grass. The tangy sharpness of eucalyptus hung in the air.

This was her country. She loved the colours – the red soil, the champagne-pale grass and the soft blue-green leaves of the gumtrees. Loved the faded, cloudless sky, not the deep blue of winter, but the bleached summer version.

A small voice whispered that she belonged here in the bush. Her natural home was under wide North Queensland skies.

She wished she could silence the pesky little voice, stick her fingers in her ears. She'd made important choices when she left home. In France she'd been happy. With Anton she'd been especially happy, as she'd assured him last night in her passionate email, which might, she realised now, have been a shade over the top.

Oh, well, too late to get it back. And Anton was bound to love it.

At least her dad had sounded very upbeat in last night's phone call, assuring her that he was definitely on the mend. The doctors were much happier, apparently, and Bella had every faith that her father would bounce back soon, as good as new.

In the past he'd survived being thrown from a horse, singed in a fire and gored in the thigh by a bull. He'd made a brilliant recovery from his first heart attack. Her courageous dad always bounced back.

Thinking about her father now as she neared her destination, she remembered the times she'd come out here with him when she was a kid, and the way he'd cautioned her as they'd approached Piccadilly dam.

‘Let's walk the horses quietly from down wind,' he'd say. ‘You never know what you'll see around water in the dry season.'

Bella had been filled with excited expectation as they'd stalked quietly up the dam embankment to be rewarded by the sight of whistler ducks, pelicans and magpie geese all lined up like soldiers around the water's edge. There were kangaroos, too, staring at them, not quite believing their eyes. And then there'd been a sudden rush of wild pigs taking off, the big boars and sows quickly disappearing, followed by lines of little black piglets.

Today Bella noted crows in the treetops, squawking noisily and then silent, soaring kite hawks circling above them and she felt a stirring of alarm. A moment later she caught the stench of a dead beast.

As she edged Striker up and over the embankment she dreaded what she might find.

It was just as she feared – not a picturesque image of outback wildlife, but a grazier's nightmare – cattle bogged and at least one drowned.

A poor cow lay half-eaten at the water's edge, and a little further out there were two more beasts bogged with only their heads and broad backs protruding above the water. One was struggling weakly.

To Bella's horror, a ginger, mud-covered dingo emerged from the cow carcass, sniffed the air, saw the horse and rider, and loped away up the far dam wall.

Striker snorted and shook his head, clearly unsettled by the pungent smell of death.

Bella was almost gagging, too. She patted his neck. ‘It's okay, mate. I won't take you down there.'

Instead she looped the reins around a lone lancewood tree at the top of the dam wall and headed down on foot, working upwind from the dead cow.

The dam's muddy rim was littered with hundreds of imprints from wild pigs and dingoes. Bella shuddered. There'd been quite a feast and she prayed that it hadn't started before the poor beast had perished in the bog.

At least the other two animals – probably steers – were still alive and, as yet, unharmed. One seemed almost calm, breathing steadily with its huge, sad black eyes focused on her. The other continued to struggle weakly, giving a nervous bellow every so often, its eyes rolled back in terror.

Bella winced at their dilemma. It was beyond awful to see them suffering and frightened like this, but frustrating, too. Only a hundred metres away, on the other side of the fence, there was a perfectly good cattle trough drawing water safely away from the bog.

She shook her head at them. ‘We fence you off. We give you good water, but there's always one or two of you who think you know better.'

Grim-faced, she went back to the top of the dam, scanned the fence's perimeter and discovered the culprit. A fallen tree, an old, dead ironbark had flattened several metres of fence and opened the dam up to the more inquisitive members of the herd. Curiosity and the smell of water had killed the cow and two more could perish unless they were pulled out.

Bella knew she couldn't handle this alone.

Even with a strong horse she couldn't extract them, but she also couldn't leave the struggling animals to the pigs and dingoes. What she needed was a ute and a good long rope. And a gun. Shooting any of the herd was a sickening option, but the struggling steer looked beyond all hope.

The oppressive weight of responsibility settled like a physical pressure on Bella's shoulders. Her father's animals were in her care and she couldn't let them suffer unnecessarily. Time was running out for them.

She thought briefly of phoning Liz, then she imagined Liz trying to bush-bash in the ute and she just as quickly dismissed the idea. Her aunt had been away from this life for too long.

No, she would have to ask elsewhere and, after Gabe's little lecture yesterday about neighbours helping each other, she knew he was her best option.

Resolved, she went straight back to Striker, pulled the sat phone from the saddlebag and dialled, crossing her fingers that Gabe would answer.

‘Good morning. Redman Downs.'

Bella's stupid heart jumped at the sound of his voice, but today her cattle were her priority. She explained the situation quickly, was businesslike and to the point as she gave him her location and asked for his support with a four-wheel drive and a long, strong rope.

‘How bad are they, Bella?'

‘Do you still carry a rifle in the ute?'

There was a slight hesitation. ‘Yes.'

‘Good. I think we'll need it. One is on its last legs. Oh – and a chainsaw would be handy. There's a tree down on the dam fence.'

‘Okay. Got that.'

‘Thanks so much, Gabe.'

After she'd disconnected, there was nothing she could do but wait.

Striker seemed more settled and was standing patiently swatting flies with his tail. She walked him over to the cattle trough on the other side of the fence for a drink, checked that the flow was okay and then took a closer look at the fallen tree. A few minutes with a chainsaw would remove the timber and the wire could be restrung pretty quickly as well.

Her stomach fluttered nervously whenever she thought about Gabe on his way. A crazy reaction.

They had a messy, wet and muddy job ahead of them. It would be tricky to get a rope around the cows and in a position that wouldn't cause them more harm. It was a pity they'd bred horns out of most of the beef cattle or dehorned the rest when they were young. In the old days a loop or stout rope around horns had saved a lot of stock from bogs.

Hot minutes ticked by . . . Bella thought about eating one of her apples, but decided to leave them for Gabe, seeing he was going out of his way to help.

As she sat there in the scant shade she felt a strange sense that she was being watched.

From beneath the shady brim of her Akubra, she scanned the scrub line and then she saw them, about a hundred metres away – three dingoes, the ochre colour of the rocks behind them, stock-still with their ears pricked, staring at her, cautious but unafraid.

She wished she had a gun. The boys had always said dingoes could tell if you were carrying a gun. Even picking up a stick and shouldering it could send them scattering.

Bugger off, Yewengie . . .

Bella was pretty sure the dogs weren't a threat to her right now, but they would know that easy meals were waiting in the dam. She picked up a rock from the ground and hurled it, ineffectually, in their direction.

‘Bugger off, you mongrels. You'll probably end up with more of our bloody cattle anyway.'

It was inevitable. She would have to put at least one beast out of its misery, then she and Gabe would have to drag it and the rotting carcass some distance away to be recycled by nature. With the help of the dingoes, the pigs and the hawks, they would eventually return back to the earth.

Mulling over this, Bella couldn't help thinking how much her life had changed in a few short weeks. When she'd arrived at Mullinjim, she was still buzzing from her travels – the snows of the French Alps, the bars of Alpazur and Liz's comfortable urban lifestyle in London. But each day here, she'd felt Europe slipping away, like waking from a dream. And now, here she was cursing wild dogs in the wilderness, getting ready to shoot a dying bogged steer while she sweltered in the summer heat.

And yet she felt so at home  . . .

There was something about being way out here. Just herself and nature, and knowing that a difficult job lay ahead. It gave her an unexpected thrill, an inexplicable excitement. The challenges of life in the bush were huge at times, but the bush had a way of getting into your blood and, right now, her urge to face up to any challenge was instinctive.

Even if it meant working alongside Gabe, she thought with a grim smile as she heard the distant hum of a vehicle and saw red dust rising off to the east.

He'd wasted no time.

Bella opened the wire gate in the dam fence to let Gabe in and then followed as he drove up the earth wall to the narrow track around the top.

By the time she reached him he was already standing there, surveying the scene. A day's growth of stubble covered his jaw and he was ready for dirty work in his oldest, most weather-beaten black Akubra, a paint-stained khaki shirt and ripped jeans that had faded to milky blue.

Not fair. He shouldn't look so good in this gear.

‘Thanks for coming,' she said.

‘You were right to call me. They're well and truly bogged.' Gabe narrowed his eyes as he assessed the damage. ‘We should drag that rotten carcass away so it doesn't foul the water any more, but it can wait. Looks like it's already been here a while. The others are probably more recent arrivals.'

He sent her a quick smile. ‘Just as well you decided to check the dam this morning.'

‘I should have come out earlier. One of those bogged steers is really struggling. He looks like he's on his last gasp, poor thing. I think we'll have to put him down.'

Gabe frowned. ‘Maybe not. We managed to get all of ours out and these two are both still standing. At least they've got their snouts well above water. If he doesn't roll on us, he might be okay.'

Bella still wasn't sure.

‘Worth a try. There's plenty of rope.' Gabe shot her a bright warning glance. ‘But it's going to be wet and messy.'

She shrugged. ‘I'm up for it.' She wasn't looking forward to a close encounter with the squelchy mud and the brown soupy water, but she'd do anything to save Mullinjim cattle.

‘The best way,' Gabe went on, ‘is to get the rope around their forequarters and then under their front legs if we can manage it.'

It would mean going out into the chest-deep water where the bottom was obviously boggy as hell. ‘I don't suppose you brought wetsuits and face masks?' Bella joked.

Gabe smiled. ‘I've got something better. An old trick of Roy's. He ties one end of the rope on a long stick and pushes it under the beast, so you can loop it through on the other side. It works if the cattle are standing, with only their legs stuck.'

‘Okay. Let's give it a go.'

Gabe's grey eyes, taking in her neat gingham shirt and newish jeans, shimmered with a flash of amusement. ‘You sure you want to get dirty? Poor old Roy copped a gobful of muddy water.'

‘They're my stock, Gabe.'

‘I could have a go by myself. I wouldn't mind.'

‘And let me watch like a helpless female?' Bella rolled her eyes. ‘Don't even think about it.'

He chuckled and this time she fancied she saw a glint of respect. It was
almost
like the old days.

While Gabe tied the rope to the tow bar, Bella went in search of a suitable stick, but she'd only gone a few steps when she noticed a length of heavy gauge wire looped on an ancient, rotting fence post.

‘What about this?' She hurried down to the edge of the water. ‘Could we use this to get the rope under the steers? Bend a loop in one end, like the eye of a giant needle?'

‘Perfect!' Gabe was grinning ‘You should patent it.'

‘The Fairburn Bogged Beast Recovery Wand.'

‘Bubble-wrapped in plastic and available at a stock and station agent near you.'

‘Or at all good hardware stores.'

‘Only nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars.'

They grinned at each other. It really was like old times, having a joke together. Scarily, dangerously so.

‘Okay,' Gabe said, once more businesslike. ‘Let's tackle the worst steer first.'

Bella stepped forward, doggedly determined, and moments later, she was up to her chin in the disgustingly warm and smelly water, struggling to help Gabe get the rope under the beast while being careful to inflict minimal damage.

Even with her wire loop, it was difficult, messy work. Worse for the poor wild-eyed steer, but finally the rope was in place.