Under the Flame Tree

by Karen Wood

  ‘Where’s the key to the tack box?’ he asked.

  Kirra didn’t answer.

  She felt him take her arm. He spun her around and then let go.

  She glared up at him. ‘It is not okay to grab me like that!’ she said. Then she saw the saddle he held on his hip. ‘That’s the boss’s saddle. He’ll have a fit if he sees you with that!’

  ‘He won’t mind,’ said Daniel.

  ‘He will,’ said Kirra. ‘And I’ll be in as much trouble as you. Put it back.’

  Daniel held out his hand. ‘Key.’

  ‘No.’ She tried to push past him, but he blocked the narrow entrance to the ramp.

  ‘Give me the key.’

  ‘Give me that saddle.’

  He stared at her for a while without speaking. Suddenly he looked amused. ‘Give me the keys and you can have the saddle.’

  Kirra looked up at him. He was being conciliatory. She should have agreed. But for some reason she kept arguing. ‘You won’t need them if you put that saddle back.’

  He took a deep, settling breath. Then he looked at his watch. He did that a lot.

  She pushed past him, made her way to the cabin of the truck and let herself in. She heard the whirr of the winch as it began raising the ramp. Then she watched Daniel’s head bob along the front of the windscreen. He yanked open the driver’s side door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Driving. That’s if you ever give me the keys.’

  Kirra turned and stared at him. ‘Where’s Jack?’

  ‘Gone ahead with the cattle.’

  ‘Have you got a licence to drive this thing?’

  He rolled his eyes.

  ‘Fine.’ She ripped the keys from her pocket and passed them to him.

  He drove without speaking for an hour, while Kirra quietly seethed. Daniel rested an elbow out the window and watched the scenery roll by as he drove. His hand rested casually on the wheel, giving no clue as to what he was thinking. When they came to a T-intersection, he finally spoke.

  ‘Which way do we go?’

  Kirra tightened her mouth and refused to answer. There was a tense silence for a moment.

  Daniel spoke first. ‘Are you sulking?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘You’re sulking because I got the keys.’

  ‘I don’t care about the stupid keys.’

  He laughed. ‘Yeah, you do.’

  She shrugged, but still refused to answer.

  ‘We can sit here all day but the horses will be getting a bit hot in the back.’ Behind them another truck honked loudly.

  Daniel pulled a phone from his pocket. He tapped on it and held it to his ear. ‘Left or right at the intersection?’ he asked when someone picked up on the other end. Kirra prayed it wasn’t her dad.

  ‘Yeah, she’s here . . . ummm, she won’t answer me . . . Yep . . . Thanks.’ He flipped it shut, tossed it on the dashboard and turned left.

  ‘How did I end up getting stuck with you?’ mumbled Kirra. It was out of her mouth before she could stop it.

  Daniel hit the brakes so hard she felt the horses all stumble in the back. He steered the truck off to the side of the road and parked it under a row of gum trees. Then he turned to her. ‘How did I get stuck working with you?’ he retorted. ‘You’ve been on my case since I got here.’

  ‘I have not,’ she said, incensed. Was he serious?

  ‘You have the biggest chip on your shoulder about being a girl,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you just get over it?’

  ‘Why don’t you just get over going to juvy?’ Kirra snapped back as she yanked at the doorhandle and shoved the door open with her shoulder. She heard Daniel groan as she jumped out.

  She began marching along the deserted road. She heard the truck rumble alongside her and slow. ‘We are going to be so late,’ he yelled out the window.

  She held up her middle finger and kept walking. Behind her she heard him curse.

  ‘Kirra, stop!’ His voice had an edge of contrition. ‘Get back in the truck.’

  ‘Only if you give me the keys,’ she said, stopping in the middle of the road and staring him down.

  ‘You don’t have a licence.’

  She kept her hand out stretched. ‘Keys.’

  ‘Do you even know how to drive this thing?’

  She gave him a look. The Hino was a puny class C truck, hardly a semitrailer. She had been able to drive it since she could reach the pedals.

  ‘What if the cops pull you over?’

  ‘So that’s what you’re worried about?’

  ‘We don’t have time for this, Kirra.’

  ‘Give me the keys and I’ll show you a short cut to the yards.’ She hadn’t told him that they had been following Scrubby Creek’s boundary fence for the last ten minutes.

  Daniel’s jaw was set hard.

  ‘Just trust me,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t trust anyone,’ he said.

  Kirra inwardly groaned. ‘There’s an old gate up ahead. It leads to an old track to the yards, takes about half an hour off the trip. It doesn’t get used in the wet, but it should be fine now. If you let me drive, I’ll show you where it is.’

  Daniel’s eyes flickered ahead.

  Kirra started walking again.

  ‘Okay! Okay!’ he yelled after her. She heard the truck door open and then he was beside her, holding out the keys.

  She took them. ‘It’s just here,’ she said, walking to the fenceline and pointing to the wire gate held closed with a loop and a locking chain.

  Kirra fumbled with the keys. One of them would open the lock, but she wasn’t sure which one. She tried a couple, jiggling them about. ‘Get some WD40 out of the glove box,’ she ordered Daniel.

  He went back to the Hino, returned with a small blue can and reached over her shoulders for the lock. ‘Here, out of the way.’

  She snatched the can from his hand. ‘I can do it.’

  Daniel looked at his watch again. ‘We’re going to be so late.’

  ’Whose fault is that?’ she grumbled as she gave the lock a quick squirt and tried another key.

  ‘Yours,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Nothing to do with you sidelining three horses before we got started this morning.’

  He ignored her comment. ‘Want some help?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This is going to take all day.’

  ‘Why don’t you shut up, then?’ she said calmly.

  ‘Why don’t you give . . . me . . . the keys?’

  Argh, he never gave up! She was about to throw them at him when the lock clicked open. ‘There!’ She marched back to the truck, started the engine and revved it at him, making it clear he had better hurry up and open the gate.

  She drove through and as she waited for him to close it, she leaned over and locked the passenger-side door. When his face appeared at the window, she began rolling across the paddock.

  ‘Hey!’ he yelled, banging on the window.

  She grinned as she kept driving. No way was she letting him in the cabin. He could ride on the running boards. She leaned over and turned the radio up.

  ‘You have got to be kidding,’ he yelled through the tiny opening at the top of the window.

  Kirra kept driving. He was right. They were going to be so late.

  5

  A vast maze of steel yards ran along the top of the creek bank. The entire crew were waiting for them, unable to let the cattle out without the horses to muster them to their new paddocks.

  ‘She got us lost,’ Daniel said, jerking his thumb at her as he jumped from the truck.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ smirked Pete. The two properties were virtually on the same road. He and Paul grinned stupidly and Kirra could have slapped them both.

  Daniel moved to the side of the truck and began lowering the ramp. Steve and his sidekicks gave each other knowing looks.

  ‘What?’ she demanded. Surely they didn’t think . . . that she and Daniel . . .
ugh!

  They shrugged and walked away. She noticed Daniel sniggering as he walked to the side of the truck and began lowering the ramp. He scrambled up into the back and she marched up after him. ‘You’ve got tickets on yourself,’ she said.

  ‘Look out,’ he said, as he unpinned the divider and led the first gelding out. The horse nearly bowled her over as it tried to turn around inside the truck. She glared after him.

  Outside, her dad’s mood wasn’t much better. ‘About time you got here. We were about to send out a search party.’ He climbed up the truck ramp and began helping to unload the horses.

  Kirra immediately began untying the next filly. ‘One of the animals travelled badly,’ she said as she passed the rope to her dad. And it wasn’t one of the horses.

  ‘I want you and Daniel to check the water points,’ said Jim. ‘Ride one, lead one. Swap halfway. Show him the entire property – the gates, bores, troughs, holding yards, everything. We’ll use the other horses in the pens.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Kirra got the horses saddled, handed two over to the stockmen and then went to get Iceman. She found him in one of the outer yards with several other horses.

  He still looked as rough as ever, jet-black, with his mane half scratched out from itch and a dunny brush for a tail, but he was well put together, with powerful shoulders, big hindquarters and a plain but handsome head.

  He was the wreckage left behind from the last horse-breaker the boss had employed. When the man couldn’t sit him, he had hobbled Iceman’s two front feet together and stretched his hind leg out backwards and tied it to a tree. He’d got on and off and on and off and every time Iceman bucked he pulled himself over. Still the man got on and off and still Iceman bucked, until he fought so hard he nearly ripped his back leg off.

  The boss sacked that breaker. He was going to shoot the horse, but Kirra and her mum stitched his leg up, nursed him back and Kirra set about retraining him. She loved his guts. And in quiet moments Iceman would put his head in her arms and close his eyes. She was quite sure he loved her guts too. But he would always buck, it was just in him.

  As she girthed him tight, she noticed his back hump and his tail clamp down tight between his back legs. She grinned. She would soon show that sissy Daniel what a girl could do.

  ‘Get on him in the yard,’ said her dad, leading a filly past. He knew what the black horse was capable of. And she was glad that he also knew what she was capable of. He never treated her like a girl. ‘Better put a helmet on,’ he added.

  She took one from the dog boxes under the truck and jammed it on her head. By the time she got to the yard, most of the ringers were resting a foot on the rail, waiting. Iceman was always a crowd-puller. She noticed Daniel glance over his shoulder.

  One of the men closed the gate after her. She threw the reins over Iceman’s neck and brought his nose to his ribs. Without hesitating, she stuck her boot in the stirrup and swung her leg over. Iceman stood like a statue while she found her other stirrup. His back, as tight as a drum, arced up under her. He felt like a bomb that was about to detonate. She took a deep breath and prepared to release his head. As soon as she did, it would be on.

  She kept his head pulled around to one side and made him walk in tiny circles. She heard her dad’s voice on the sidelines. ‘Keep his feet moving, Kirra.’

  Iceman took short, tense steps. She let him onto a wider circle and then straightened his head. Iceman snatched the reins, stuck his head between his knees and honked like a donkey. He exploded off the ground in a series of furious bucks, landing on his fronts and then switching to his hinds before lurching into the air and kicking out somewhere behind her head. Kirra kept hold of his head and kicked him forward.

  ‘Stick him, Kirra,’ old Jack called out. She heard the smile in his voice.

  She rode buck after buck while her workmates hollered and whistled, until the big horse smoothed out and cantered around the ring with only the occasional skip of his hind legs.

  Too quickly the show was over, but she knew it was moments like this that earned her that respect with the men. This was why the boss had given her a job. Not because she was the foreman’s daughter. The sooner her co-worker realised that, the better.

  She rode the puffing gelding out of the yard. Pete held the gate open for her and she found Daniel waiting with her second horse. For once he looked gobsmacked. She took the bay’s reins from his hands and rode off, leading it alongside Iceman.

  Daniel mounted and followed, leading his second horse behind. He stayed quiet until they got a distance from the yards. ‘Should sell that horse to a rodeo string,’ he said as he rode up beside her. ‘He’d be the feature horse.’

  Kirra detected an edge of awe in his voice. ‘He’s too good for that,’ she said. Iceman’s athletic prowess was impressive. But he’d had enough traumas in his life already. No way would she let anyone put a flank strap on him.

  The black gelding danced beneath Kirra and she ignored it, knowing he would soon tire and get bored. Once his wrinkles were ironed out, Iceman was a lovely ride with smooth paces and fantastic stamina. By the time they left the home paddocks and got to the legume pastures, he had settled and the bay she led plodded through the rows of saddle-high saplings, his hooves occasionally clacking on upturned rocks.

  Daniel rode in silence. She noticed a shift in his whole attitude – whether it was new respect for her or the open country making him more relaxed, she didn’t know, but she welcomed it. He rode ahead and opened gates and waited patiently when the bay horse baulked at the concrete crossing at one of the creeks. She let him feel the smooth hard surface beneath his hooves one tentative step at a time, and then spent a moment leading him back over it a few times to build his confidence.

  Daniel watched without complaint. ‘Nice work,’ he said, when the horse walked confidently over the surface without hesitating. ‘Ever thought of a career with horses?’

  It was her turn to roll her eyes. Was that his smartalec way of apologising? She rode away and was glad when he followed without arguing or talking. She loved the serene openness of this country, the carolling birds and raucous cicadas. The music of it was too beautiful to be spoiled by words.

  As they reached the top of a hill and stared out over the endless basalt downs of Scrubby Creek, Daniel pulled his horse up and she saw the air billow from his lungs in a heavy sigh. He turned to her and gave her a brief half smile that reached his eyes. She knew that sigh. She did the same every time she came home from boarding school. It was sheer relief, the feeling of home, the freedom of the open space and the singing of the land to her soul. She couldn’t help a half smile back.

  Daniel lifted his reins and walked his horse on again, and she followed. They rode to every gate, crisscrossing paddocks and checking on cattle as they went. They dodged an angry Micky bull in some of the scrubbier country and stopped to fix a broken ball-cock on one of the troughs. Then they got into sparser country, with the grass clumps fewer and further apart. They rode on as the sun beat down hotter and hotter, casting a shimmer across the land. Kirra rolled down her sleeves and lifted her collar around the back of her neck to keep the burning sun off her skin.

  Towards noon, the horses began to lag. Kirra searched for the next bore, so they could stop and water them. She saw the windmill in the distance. ‘Time for a break,’ she said, pointing to the horizon. Daniel nodded and pushed his tired horse on.

  The trough was made from concrete, set in the lower half of an old corrugated water tank. It had an unidentifiable dead animal in it and the ball-cock was bent up at a useless angle. There was another more functional trough a few hundred metres away.

  Kirra stared at the circular pool of murky water. ‘I’m going to clean it out,’ she said. ‘Can you ride over and check that one?’ She pointed to a lone tree in the distance.

  Daniel gave her a salute and rode away and Kirra opened the pump box to get a bucket and a scrubbing brush. She scooped out the unfortunate furry lump and wa
lked a good distance away before flinging it under a bush. She drained out the water, took the brush and scrubbed the trough until it was immaculate. She replaced the bung and turned on the tap to let it fill. By the time the water level flowed over the side, it was looking so inviting that she dunked her head in and blew bubbles out of her nose, shaking her head and revelling in the cool, crystal-clear water.

  Kirra flung back her wet hair and gasped as the water ran down her spine. At the other trough, she saw Daniel dismount and adjust the water inlet. She kicked off her boots and pulled off her socks. Then she backed up to the old trough and let herself collapse into the water, its silky coolness rushing into her clothes and soaking her skin. She inhaled, closed her eyes and put her head back against the side.

  Nothing could dampen her mood – she loved it out here, where the country sang to her. Her frustrations with Daniel dissolved into the cool, clear water and the crystalline sky above. The incessant vibrations of her boarding school finally stilled inside her. She wallowed, enjoying the peaceful sounds of the bush, until she heard a horse’s feet approach and halt nearby. A pair of boots hit the ground and then there was silence.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he finally asked.

  She rolled her head to one side and half opened her eyes. ‘Taking advantage of the company swimming pool.’

  Daniel stood with both arms resting over the horse’s shoulders. Its saddle had been taken off and its back was slick with sweat. His eyes rested on her and she noticed all traces of meanness were gone. ‘You’re not like other girls.’

  She wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult.

  He kicked off his boots suddenly and stripped off his shirt. ‘Move over.’

  What? He was getting in with her?

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said, alarmed.

  Daniel shrugged. ‘You said it was a company pool.’

  That didn’t mean she wanted to share it with him! ‘Get your own water trough,’ she said shifting across and holding her arms out wide to block him.

  ‘I like this one.’ He began climbing in opposite her and Kirra had no choice but to make room for him. But he didn’t fit in so neatly. His arms hung ridiculously over the sides and his legs, somehow, became tangled with hers.