Lesbian Cowboys (17 page)

“Yes, ma'am. Just down the road from where I grew up,” Eileen said, stroking Luce's hair. “And after a ride, dinner—probably just a salad after that late lunch—and a shower, what I'll want to do is eat you until you say my name like you mean it. Really fucking loud.”

 

An hour before sunset on the prairie was a gorgeous time. It was a stage-set riot of sepia tints, blood reds, and flaming siennas and ochres contrasting with blue-purple shadows. Luce rode Eleanor Roosevelt, who uncharacteristically kept attempting to break into a gallop, while Eileen rode a gelding, seeming almost a part of her mount. Luce watched her closely and guessed that
she must be controlling the horse through pressure from her pelvis and calves, but it was undetectable; there wasn't much use of the reins. It was as though horse and woman had become a gestalt, transforming into a single woman-horse entity.

They rode a mile or two out from the house to an old buffalo wallow that was now a bentonite-sealed pond, shaded by a trio of young Fremont cottonwoods and circled by tracks of not just horses and cattle, but many deer and antelope.

They dismounted and sat, listening to frogs and crickets, and Luce told Eileen about Janice. The woman she had thought she loved,
did
love, but who would not accept love without submission. Without possession. Who was so damaged as to be incapable of believing that anyone cared about her separately from the wealth.

“And I had to learn the difference between generous and controlling,” Luce said. “I was ashamed that it took hard effort to pack my truck and just drive away. I still am.”

“What are you, twelve?” Eileen had taken a joint from her shirt pocket and lit it with a kitchen match ignited by a flick of her thumbnail. “Didn't you state your own terms? Define the borders?”

“Janice is hard to talk to, but she
knew
she was making me miserable. I cried all the time,” Luce said defensively. “And I never cry.” Bongo laid his head in her lap and looked concerned.

“So you took it and took it until one day you decided that you weren't gonna take it any more,” Eileen said, blowing an arrow of smoke and passing the joint.

Luce inhaled and held it for the beat of three. “Pretty much,” she said. “I've never been any good at confrontation.”

“Hey!” Eileen had poked her in the arm, hard.

“Hey what?” Eileen laughed and hit her harder.

“Why are you hitting me?” Luce asked, and stood up. Eileen
followed, took the joint, drew in a long drag, considered her, and slapped Luce's face with her left hand. Bongo was wide awake and concerned, but he too seemed confused about what he should do.

“Wrong response.” Another slap. Harder, enough to sting. Luce turned to walk away, but Eileen seized her by the shoulders and shook her. “C'mon, what should you say when someone hauls off and smacks you?”
Or stabs you?

“Stop hitting me,” Luce said after Eileen gave her another gentler slap and handed her back the joint.

“You win a prize,” Eileen whispered. She pulled Luce to her. The kiss moved from gentle to urgent, to an entwining of tongues and muffled moans. By the end they were back on the grass, Luce sprawled on top of Eileen.

“Good prize,” Luce said. “And I get it. Dumb Philosophy 101, but I get it. It may even make a little sense.”

 

The rising moon shone through the glass, casting a blue-green glow on the room and over the sleeping loft where the two naked women lay sweaty and entwined. Eileen had kept her word, and Luce had screamed her name so loudly that the pastured cattle had probably heard. Bongo certainly had, and barked to be let in the house. Eileen had teeth marks on her shoulder and scratches on her freckled back. Both of their faces were wet with one another's juices. They kissed, rested, arose, and showered together, and began again—with moderation to the previous desperate urgency.

Even by the inadequate light of the moon and two candles Luce could see that Eileen's scars now stood out as scarlet lines against her pale skin. Her own flesh was dark from the outdoors and sunbathing. Janice hated tan lines.
How could she love someone that shallow? Still love her?

“You are going to have to go back.” Eileen was the first to recover. “I know that. You have bits of her all through you.”

“I don't want to.”

“But you will.”

“Yes.”
But only because I met you and now I would be ashamed to admit lacking the courage to do it. Demand love on my terms.
Luce drew a finger down Eileen's arm, shoulder to fingertips.

“What happened to him?” Luce asked, staring up at the slanting ceiling. “You're here. You survived, so…”

“I took the knife away and I killed him. I'm not the tiniest bit sorry about it,” Eileen said. “I made the decision that I wanted to live.” Her voice was even and inflectionless; all of the warmth had gone out of it. After a while they slept.

 

“I wish I could stay here,” Luce said, swallowing a spoonful of buttered oatmeal. Through the windows she could see Eleanor Roosevelt in the crystalline early morning light, standing by the paddock fence, staring toward the house.

“I wish you could too,” Eileen said. “But I'm not your honey bun, sugar plum right now, though I kinda wish I was. However things work out I want you to come back. Bring her with you. Maybe I can help straighten her out.”

“I'll bring her—if things go that way,” Luce said. “But I think I'll have to be the one to do the straightening. Otherwise I might be back without her.”

“You'd be welcome,” Eileen said.

And the last kiss was the best yet.

 

As Eileen had told her, there wasn't any cell phone reception until she got within a couple of miles of Mazurton. There she pulled over to the side of the road and punched in the familiar
number. Janice answered and they talked. And cried. Afterward Luce carefully turned the truck and trailer around, and she and Bongo and Eleanor Roosevelt headed back north. Toward Wyoming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You shouldn't be here!”

She was beak-nosed and quivering, lean and tight-strung as fencing wire. Underneath her fleece beanie, her eyes were fierce.

“No?” Lou continued squatting at the small fire, enamel mug of coffee in her hand. “Who says?” By her side, Kelsey growled a stern warning.

The woman stalked a farther pace into the clearing amid the snowgums. “The National Park Service. The Mountain Cattlemen's Association. The Victorian State Government.”

“The government!” Lou hooted. “Don't see no stuffed politicians here.”

Swinging her small pack from her shoulders, the woman leveled a glare at Lou. “And I say it!”

Eyes crinkling in amusement, Lou took another draught of coffee. The liquid steamed in the crisp air. “Now I'm really
worried. You and whose army is going to move me on?”

“Listen,” the woman hissed. “You know bloody well this is the Alpine National Park. And cattle have been banned for the last two years. You must take your horse, put out your fire, and drive your herd out the way you came in.”

“Herd? You're too kind.” Lou glanced over to where Daisy and her calf grazed placidly. “And, I'll be another three days if I go out the way I came in. If I keep going, I'll be in Dargo tomorrow.”

“You're destroying the ecosystem. Their hooves cause erosion; they encourage imbalance with their selective eating. And they're banned! As they should be.” She jammed her hands on her hips and glared. The setting sun lit her curly hair to a golden corona, silhouetting her wiry figure, swathed in Gore-Tex and fleece.

Not pretty, thought Lou, idly, but interesting. But right now, a whinging greenie that was rattling her peace.

“You're disturbing my ecosystem,” she said pointedly. “I was quite happy, bothering no one, until you came along. Shouldn't you get back to your pretty marked path before dark? Wouldn't want you bushed on the high plains. Rescue attempts are a pain in the arse, not to mention a waste of public funds.”

“I left the trail because I saw your marks. Hoofprints and cattle tracks. And a dog. The last two of which are banned in—”

“National Parks. Yes, I know. I heard you the first time.” She unfurled, rising to her feet in one smooth movement. “I've had enough of you. I suggest you fuck off back to your renovated Victorian terrace in some poncey Melbourne suburb and renew your subscription to
G Magazine
. Then I suggest you meet your equally annoying friends—no doubt a bunch of overpaid lawyers and marketing gurus who bond over lattes and congratulate each other for being strong independent women—and
you can relate how I single-handedly destroyed the whole high plains ecosystem, before you write a letter to
The Age
about state-funded child care and the quality of organic custard apples in the Prahran Market, and forget about me. And believe me, it can't happen soon enough as far as I'm concerned.”

Lou turned her back and stalked over to where Ruby grazed placidly. Running her hand down the bay's shoulder, she took steady deep breaths. Her gaze passed over Ruby's neck and centered on the snowgums edging the clearing, their mottled bark and clean-edged limbs silver in the gloaming. She took a lungful of crisp mountain air and focused on the boulders and tufts of hummocky grass.

“Look, I'm sorry.”

Christ, that woman moved quieter than a tiger snake.

“I didn't mean to be so confrontational.”

“You've got ‘confrontational' down to an art form.” Lou stayed with her hands on her horse's neck, feeling the shift of muscle underneath the burgeoning winter coat.

“It's just that this area is different. Special. Australia's got so little snow country that it needs to be preserved.”

“Preserved. Pickled like an onion. Made into an exhibit to be admired. No.” Lou turned and faced the other woman. “That's where you're wrong. This is living, breathing landscape, not a museum piece. And that's where I come in. I'm not merely borrowing this land to walk upon it over Melbourne Cup weekend; I'm part of it, my history is here, in the high country. The mountain creeks run through my dreams. My horse's hooves tread the dirt, and yes, my cattle roam the high plains. Or they did, until your lot interfered.”

“Your family are mountain cattlemen?”

Lou nodded and her blunt fingernails dug deeper into Ruby's mane.

“We've held Cully's Run since 1860, when my great, great, great grandfather came over from Ireland and took over the run. He got a few cattle here and there—rustled some, if the tales are true—until he had a decent mob. And every spring, he'd drove them up Insolvency Spur, just him and his brother who was soft in the head, and their dogs. He lost a few over the side of the trail, and he lost his brother when the ground went from under his horse and he was thrown down a cliff. But he kept going, and he built his run up. My family still holds it.

“And until the stickybeaks got involved, we kept that life. At the start of summer, we drove our cattle up through Dargo to the high plains and let them roam, growing sleek and fat, and every autumn we'd muster them up, take them back down to lower pasture. And in the meantime, we'd check on them, mend fences, maintain the timber huts that the bushwalkers now use and the hoons burn down most summers. We'd mend tanks, dig culverts, fix washouts in the roads—the roads that now carry city people in their four-wheel drives up for a weekend of adventure. We know this land, better than you can ever imagine. Don't you try to tell me about this place. It's my land.”

The other woman was silent. In the half-light her thin face was thoughtful. “So why are you here now?”

“I can't give it up. The government has banned the cattlemen from the plains; so what! I'm not going to be ordered around by some drongo in a suit. So every spring and autumn, I drive a couple of cattle up the old pathways. I don't let them roam free; I just take them along the old tracks from Dargo up to the high plains and back again. We're not harming anyone, and you're not going to stop me. So, now that you've made your point and I've listened, I suggest you turn on your GPS unit and get your pretty butt back on the trail and down to your
camp. The light's going and I'd hate to have to call out Bush Search and Rescue.”

“I'm not camping. I've booked a room at the Dargo pub.”

“You're kidding, right? You'll never find your way in the dark. I suggest you git on down the track as far as you can and make camp before it's completely dark.”

“Didn't you listen? I said, I'm not camping. Look.” She rummaged through the small pack, bringing out muesli bars, fruit, bottles of water and energy drink, gloves, and an extra fleece. “No tent. No sleeping bag.”

“So what are you going to do? Dig out your satellite phone to call for rescue and dob me in at the same time?”

The other woman advanced. Close up, she was smaller, scrawny even. Her brown hair curled over her shoulders, contained by the fleece beanie. Her eyes were blue, and her skin had a weather-beaten look, prematurely aged by the harsh Aussie sun.

“Cattlemen's code.”

“What?”

“Don't you people have a code, whereby you help each other out? Not just cattlemen; no one leaves anyone else stuck in the bush. I'll stop here with you tonight. May I share your tent?”

“What tent? I don't see any tent, do you, Kelsey?” Lou addressed the dog. “Me and Kel here, we share my swag.” With a wave of her hand, she indicated the canvas sausage on the far side of the small fire. The self-contained bedroll was sturdy, with a waterproof cover and merely a hood to keep the rain off the occupant. While it was roomy for one, two would be more than cozy.