by Karen Wood
‘Let’s go back to the lake, ring Dad and see what he wants to do,’ said Mike.
Zoe called the dogs back. ‘Hope this property isn’t too big. We’ll have to find them again.’
‘They won’t go far,’ said Mike.
The cold air hissed at Zoe’s skin as she and Tahnee raced back to the lake – where they found Mike and Josh desperately hunting around for their clothes.
‘They’re gone!’ said Josh.
‘That’s really weird,’ said Zoe. She looked across the lake to where more kids swam, but they were hundred of metres away. ‘No one would have purposely taken our stuff!’
Josh cursed. ‘I’m frozen.’
‘At least you have jeans on.’ She stood there in her swimsuit. Her skin prickled with goosebumps.
‘My favourite high heels,’ moaned Tahnee.
‘My wallet,’ said Mike. ‘And the carkeys.’
‘Let’s go over and ask those people if they saw anything,’ said Zoe.
They picked their way around the edge of the water to where at least a dozen teenagers shouted and splashed loudly. They had tyre tubes and several boys fought playfully, shoving each other off and up-ending the rings. A cluster of girls sat watching in the nearby grass.
‘Hey, you guys didn’t see anyone take our clothes, did you?’ said Zoe. ‘Our wallets and keys and stuff were with them.’
There was a strange silence and Zoe sharpened her focus. ‘Caitlin?’
17
She would recognise her anywhere, even in this dim light. The way she sat, with her hands around her knees; the shape of her chin and the angle of her nose, peering out from under a soft pink Stetson hat.
‘Nice hat,’ said Zoe stiffly.
‘Thanks,’ said Caity, without offering an explanation.
‘Where’d you get it?’
Caitlin shrugged. ‘Scott gave it to me, why?’
Damn. Scotty had found it. He would know she had been to the property. Damn, damn, damn. He would warn his father. She needed a phone.
‘So, no idea who took our clothes?’ she said, knowing what a waste of breath it was.
Caity smiled casually. ‘No idea. Where’d you leave them?’
Evil shrew. She had them.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Mike from behind her. ‘I have a spare key hidden in the car. Come on, Zoe.’
He turned and marched away. Zoe followed, with Josh and Tahnee pacing behind.
‘Do you really have a spare key to the car?’
‘No,’ said Mike miserably.
‘Then what are we going to do? It’s about ten kilometres back to the showgrounds,’ she groaned.
‘I reckon we should muster those Angus into the yards,’ said Josh. ‘See if we can fire up that old truck that’s hidden there. If the brands match yours we should load them up and take them away. At least Scotty’s dad can’t hide them then.’
‘What if they’re not ours?’ said Mike.
‘Let’s get them in a yard and find out,’ said Josh. ‘There are some portable ones in a paddock corner.’
They set out on foot, across the hillside and Zoe looked back at Caitlin. She and her little cluster of girlfriends were gone.
‘She’s gone to tell Scotty,’ said Zoe.
‘Then we’d better hurry up,’ said Josh, breaking into a run.
The dogs took no time to get around the black cattle, forming a tight cordon around them until they filed into the yards. Mike closed the gate behind them.
‘I’m going to break into that old truck,’ said Josh. He had stopped shivering and his jeans seemed to have dried out somewhat, but Zoe trembled and her teeth chattered loudly. ‘There might be a torch or an old blanket or something in there to keep you warm.’ He stooped to pick up a piece of old fencing wire and made his way through the scattered trees.
He found a doorhandle and yanked on it and then slipped the wire through a tiny gap at the base of the window, pushing it down into the door cavity. With a pull and a click, the door unlocked.
He crawled in and flicked the interior light switch, then unlocked the other door. Zoe trotted around to climb in the other side. Again, she felt the most bizarre sense of familiarity. She knew this truck. ‘There’s a torch down the side of the driver’s seat,’ she said.
Josh reached down and found it. ‘How did you know that?’
She looked at him wide-eyed. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said slowly. ‘Um, there is also a road map up here.’ She pulled down the sun visor, and a folded map slipped out. Not that they needed it. But it was creepy that she knew it was there. ‘I know this truck,’ she said in a haunted voice that didn’t seem to belong to her.
‘You do,’ agreed Josh. ‘How?’
‘I don’t know.’ She turned around, and pulled a woollen blanket out from behind her seat.
As she settled it around her shoulders, she felt a sickening warmth crawl up her arms. Her heart began tumbling around in her chest. ‘I feel really sick,’ she whispered.
‘Are you okay?’ Josh jumped out his side and ran around to her.
‘What’s happening?’ Tahnee’s voice came around from the side of the truck. ‘Hey, that’s Caitlin Bowers’ truck.’
Something suddenly flared up painfully inside Zoe’s head; it whooshed liked kero chucked on a fire. Her chest heaved and she fought for breath.
‘Should we get her to a doctor or something?’ asked Josh.
‘How?’ said Tahnee. ‘We don’t have carkeys, or a phone.’
‘It might be an anxiety attack,’ said Mike. ‘She has them sometimes.’
Zoe felt his hand on her hair as she fought to breathe. Their voices tuned in and out as if someone was playing with the volume button.
I’m walking. Everything is hurting but I have to get back to the yards. I have to find help.
She let herself go limp in Josh’s arms and he curled them around her. She swallowed hard and opened her eyes. Before her was the cabin of the truck. Why did that distress her so much? What was her body trying to tell her mind? What was she supposed to remember?
The truck’s brakes lock and scream. Tyres slide over gravel. Cattle bellow in the back.
Everything is spinning. At the centre of the vortex is Mr Bowers, staring at me through the window of a truck.
Zoe stared at the windscreen of the Bowers’ truck. ‘He nearly ran over me,’ she whispered.
‘Who?’ asked Josh.
‘Mr Bowers; he was stealing our cattle. I saw him,’ she said. ‘And he saw me.’
Zoe put a hand against the side of the truck and closed her eyes while she tried to piece together the jigsaw that was her mind. In what order did everything happen? It was becoming clearer now. The pieces were beginning to slot together neatly.
Josh set her down against the raspy trunk of a yellow box tree. ‘Stay here while I go and get help.’
‘No!’ Zoe felt suddenly panicky. She couldn’t see straight. It was scary. ‘I don’t want to be alone.’ She clung tighter to his neck.
‘Shhh, it’s okay.’ He ran his hand over the back of her head. ‘You’ll be fine.’
‘I’m scared.’
She heard him laugh softly. ‘Scared of what?’
‘I can’t see. I’m scared I’ll die.’
‘You’re not going to die, Zoe. You’ll be fine.’
Still she clung to his neck. The thought of being alone like this was terrifying.
‘Just . . .’ He peeled her arms from around his neck and tried to set her down. ‘Let go, you’re strangling me.’
Zoe started to cry shamelessly. ‘It really hurts.’
He sat next to her and held her again. ‘Shhh, it’s okay.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘You’ll be fine, Zoe.’ He lifted a hand and gently touched the side of her face. ‘Your face is a mess.’
She lifted her chin, pressed her lips to his and kissed him.
At first he flinched in surprise, but then he kissed her back, slowly, cautiously. She could taste t
he salt of her own tears on his lips. ‘You need help,’ he whispered into her kiss.
‘I need you,’ she whispered back, clinging to him.
He kissed her again.
Everywhere hurt. Her hip, her ribs, her wrist throbbed as it rested on his shoulder. Pain pulsed rhythmically through her head, but his kiss took all of it away. His hand slid through her hair and for a moment nothing else existed. She lived only inside his kiss.
He broke gently away. ‘I should go and get the ute.’
She licked her lips. ‘Thirsty.’
‘There’s water in the ute. Just stay here, try to stay awake.’
He whistled sharply and then she heard him run across the paddock.
She didn’t know how long she sat there for, while the trees whispered all around her. The clouds swirled too fast in the sky. Life seemed to stop and start in erratic bursts of clarity and foggy patches of eerie nothingness. She frowned, confused. Who was that guy? What was she doing here? Where was Scotty?
She looked down at her riding boots. The cattle. What happened?
Blackjack?
She could see the blurred silhouette of him across the paddock with his reins dangling, head low, hopping on three legs. She stood and tried to focus. ‘Jacky.’ She walked to him, every step sending pain through her head.
Blackjack hobbled towards the yard with slow steps. The cattle were bellowing loudly, too loudly. Something was wrong. Zoe staggered after him, through the narrow stands of yellow box trees, in and out of the shadows and stepped onto the old dirt track.
A truck revved nearby. She looked up in alarm . . .
18
Josh adjusted the blanket around Zoe’s shoulders and held her tightly in his arms. The nausea subsided and she pressed her forehead into his cold, bare chest.
‘What can you remember?’ he asked.
‘After you went to get the ute, I went to find Blackjack and he was driving that truck with Dad’s cattle on the back. He must have thought we’d all gone home after the muster.’
‘Are you sure it was him?’ asked Mike.
Zoe nodded. ‘He looked straight at me.’
‘All he had to do was ring Caitlin,’ said Mike, ‘to see if you’d finished the muster yet. What a lowlife. Using his own kid to rustle cattle.’
‘What are we going to do?’ asked Tahnee.
‘Pass me that torch,’ said Mike. ‘I want to have a look at the brands.’
Mike shone the torchlight over the cattle. The brands on their hindquarters were large and messy, as if they had been changed, but it was impossible to see the lazy H and R of the Hillanaroo brand. ‘That could easily be our brand underneath,’ he said. ‘But there’s no real way to tell. He’s put another brand on top to hide it.’
‘We should tell the cops,’ said Josh.
‘I don’t want to leave the cattle,’ said Mike. ‘Caitlin has probably gone straight to her dad to tell him. He might come and hide them again.’
‘Let’s get this old beast going.’ Josh slapped his hand on the door of the truck. ‘We’ll load the cattle on and take them straight to the cops.’
Mike nodded.
‘You’d better hurry,’ said Tahnee, looking out onto the road. ‘There are cars coming.’
In the distance little white lights glided along in the blackness. Everyone jumped into action.
Mike sprang into the driver’s seat and fumbled under the steering wheel. The truck whimpered to life, then stalled again. He cursed.
‘Hold it, Mike, let’s get Zoe in,’ said Josh, helping Zoe into the cabin. Then he turned his attention to the truck. ‘Move over and let the expert have a go!’ It took only moments for Josh to get the truck roaring with life. He smiled graciously at Mike. ‘Am I a genius or what?’
‘It’s your electro-magnetism, Josh. I feel it whenever I’m around you.’
Both Zoe and Tahnee rolled their eyes.
‘Let’s get the cattle on,’ said Josh.
Mike backed the truck expertly to the loading ramp, and called out the window, ‘Don’t load those Herefords, they’re not ours.’
‘You don’t even know if the black ones are yours,’ said Josh.
‘Oh, they’re ours all right,’ said Mike. He leapt out, leaving the engine running.
It seemed to take forever for the black cattle to stomp clumsily into the crate and for Josh and Tahnee to slam the roller door closed behind them. Tahnee dived in beside Zoe and the truck lurched away from the yards. ‘Where’s Josh?’ asked Zoe.
‘Clinging on the sides,’ said Tahnee.
‘Where’s Frankie?’ she asked.
‘Where’s Frankie?’ Tahnee yelled.
Mike slowed and Tahnee opened the door wide so Frankie could leap in. He smelled horrendous, but Zoe hugged him, mud and all. He was shaggy and warm.
‘Phworr,’ muttered Tahnee. ‘You and your dog are as bad as each other. Whoa, hang on!’
Spiderman climbed in too and then Toby followed.
‘Bert and Race are in the crate,’ said Mike, pushing the truck up a gear.
Up ahead, two cars stopped at the wire gate.
‘They’re not going to let us through,’ said Mike.
Josh’s head appeared in the window. ‘Just push your way through,’ he said. ‘This thing’s got a wicked bullbar.’
Mike shrugged. ‘I’ll give it a go.’
Josh started hauling himself in the window. He squirmed and argued with the dogs until they were on the floor and he lay in Zoe’s lap, staring up at her. His feet hung out the window.
The high beam of the truck shone straight into the ute waiting at the gate, and Zoe saw a face she knew stare up at them wide-eyed. Mr Bowers. Mike inched the truck forward until the bullbar connected with the ute and began slowly pushing it back while Mr Bowers thumped his fist on the steering wheel.
Once through the gate Mike reversed far enough to clear the front end of the truck and swung it onto the road, narrowly missing a second car. Dad’s station wagon also sat on the edge of the road, empty and locked up. The truck lurched forward again and they chugged slowly up the road with the two cars following behind.
‘They can’t catch us now,’ Mike grinned, looking into the side mirrors of the truck. He put an arm out the window and held a finger up to them.
Josh laughed. Zoe looked down at him. He was still half-covered in black mud. ‘You stink.’
‘So do you.’
Mike looked across them both to Tahnee. ‘I told you.’
Tahnee hung her head out the window. ‘Just get to the showgrounds before I puke.’
Behind them, the cars wove from side to side trying to get past, but Mike kept the truck in the middle of the road so they couldn’t. When they got to the show-grounds, he pulled in and the two cars sailed on ahead.
On the other side of the grounds, inside the marquee, a country band was in full swing. The smell of hot, greasy food overpowered even the smell of the dogs and Zoe became instantly hungry again.
‘What do we do now?’ said Zoe as Mike pulled on the handbrake.
‘Have a long hot shower,’ said Tahnee, opening the door and falling out. Three dogs spilled out after her.
‘I’m going to get Dad,’ said Mike. He ran off towards the bar.
Josh helped Zoe out of the truck. ‘You okay?’
She nodded. ‘Just feel really betrayed, that’s all.’
He gave her a hug, wrapping his long arms around her blanketed shoulders and pulling her into his bare torso. ‘You need new friends, matey.’
‘I sure do,’ she said sadly. ‘How could I be such a bad judge of character?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, you got some of us right.’ He gave her a squeeze.
She squeezed him back.
‘They’ll get theirs,’ he said quietly.
19
Dad came marching through the crowds of people with Fred and Pete running behind him. Mike gave a jumbled explanation as he strode quickly to keep up.
�
��Where’d you get the truck?’ asked Dad, when he reached a trembling Zoe. ‘Where is my car?’ He ran his eyes over a shirtless Josh, who still had his arms wrapped around her. ‘And why are you all half naked?’
‘We were swimming. Our clothes were stolen.’ Zoe’s teeth chattered as she rushed to explain. ‘But look, Dad, we found your cattle.’
Dad frowned and swung onto the side of the truck. Mike took the torch from the cabin and joined him. For a fleeting moment, Zoe had the terrible thought that they could have got this wrong. They might not be Dad’s cattle at all. She stood shivering, watching Mike and Dad wave torch beams over the bustling, bawling heifers in the back of the truck. After much murmuring, Dad jumped off the crate. He pulled a phone from his pocket and walked away as he punched in a number and put it to his ear.
‘Are they ours?’ asked Zoe, trotting after him.
He stopped, took the phone from his ear and took a deep breath. He gave her an appreciative smile. ‘I’m pretty sure they are, yes. Well done, you.’ The look on his face was one of pure relief. ‘Go and get showered and changed before you get hypothermia while I ring the stock squad.’
She grinned and he held out his free arm for a hug. ‘You done good, Shorty.’ Then he gave her a gentle push and grimaced. ‘But geez, you need a shower.’
‘I can’t believe that harpy stole my shoes,’ said Tahnee, from over the shower wall.
‘And my phone,’ said Zoe. ‘Hope she takes a good look through and finds all those two-faced messages from Scotty.’ She turned the water on and adjusted the heat.
Huge clouds of steam billowed into the crisp cold air and water hissed out of the shower nozzle. It was hot, deliciously hot, and Zoe let it rush over her face and steal her breath away. She let the water cleanse her tears and her nausea, wash the hurt and soothe the anxious undercurrents of her heart.
When she was warmed through and rebuilt from the inside out, she stepped out of the cubicle to get her fresh clothes that hung on the hooks outside. ‘Caitlin?’
Caitlin stood in front of Zoe with red-raw eyes. In her arms was a bundle of clothes. ‘These are yours,’ she said, without looking her in the eye. ‘I’m sorry.’
