The Cattleman's Daughter Read online

  RACHAEL

  TREASURE

  The Cattleman’s

  Daughter

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  For my main men: my husband, John, my

  son, Charlie, my brother, Miles, and the two

  grandpas, Valentine and Douglas

  Author’s note

  I grew up using fire as a land management tool on our Tasmanian farm, and I experienced the 2003 and 2005 fires in the Dargo High Plains, so it’s no surprise that fire became a theme of my novel. I wrote this book before the devastating 2009 fires, but I hope it may offer hope or healing to those affected and create new thoughts on how we manage this landscape with balance and common sense.

  PART ONE

  One

  When Emily Flanaghan hit the tree and her heart slammed out of rhythm, she didn’t hear the rush of hooves as the other bush-race riders belted past her. Nor did she hear her silver-grey mare, Snowgum, roar in agony, screaming out a hideous guttural sound. As the mare’s hooves, like dark river-stones, flailed the air, Emily was lost to the smell of blood of both horse and human. Instead, she felt herself drifting up through the filter of gumleaves, her panic subsiding. She marvelled at the imperviousness of gum-tree trunks, how solid they were, in all their silvery beauty.

  Gone was the surge of fear she had felt when she and Snowgum had taken the full force of the big chestnut galloping beside them, hitting them broadside. Silver stirrup irons clanked, the horses grunted punch-drunk, and Snowgum was shunted off course. As the tree loomed directly in front of her, Emily had for an instant wished she’d never fought with bloody Clancy. She wished she’d never entered the race just to claim some ground back from him out of pride.

  Images of her two girls, Meg and Tilly, flashed in her mind. They had been down at the marquee with their mob of little friends, running amok. Both girls were lean country kids, with messy, sun-kissed ponytails and grubby faces, now waiting nervously to see their mum race her horse across the line.

  Her youngest, Meg, had clung to her whispering, ‘Mummy, don’t go in that horsey race. Please,’ her freckled nose scrunching up. She’d felt Meg’s tears on her neck, prompting the sting of her own.

  Then, in the seconds before she hit the tree, she thought of her dad, Rod, and the pain it would cause him to lose her at just twenty-six. She felt the weight of guilt in leaving him alone, now of all times, when a stroke of a pen in a faraway parliament could soon take their family mountain cattle runs away from him. Then she had a flash of her brother, Sam, on the other side of the world in a Nashville recording studio. Or, more likely, in a bar with a bourbon in his hand, wearing irresponsibility on his face along with his too-cute grin.

  Finally, she saw Clancy. In the last split-second of life as she had known it, Emily felt the horror of Clancy’s rage towards her. As she hit the tree, she felt an overwhelming sense of regret that she’d mucked up her life so badly. She had allowed herself to be stolen away – from herself, from her family and from her mountains.

  Then came the pain of impact. As Snowgum gave way beneath her, Emily heard the sound of running water, and wondered why that water was slowing to a trickle. She didn’t realise it was the sound of the blood in her veins moving slower and slower. She listened to an axe falling somewhere in the distance, quickly at first, then slowing to a few lazy haphazard strikes. She didn’t know it was her heart, beating slower. Then slower. Then almost still. Just one … lazy … hack … at … a … time.

  Emily’s body lay crumpled and still on a dry rocky creek bank while a frenzy erupted around her. Race officials in fluoro orange vests clambered over tussocks and scrambled through shallow rocky waters. One of them punched words into a two-way radio as he ran.

  ‘We got a rider down! We need an ambulance! It looks bad, real bad.’

  On the golden river flat, where the makeshift tent city of the mountain cattlemen’s get-together sprawled out for the two-day celebrations, people were still watching the race. The commentator, oblivious to the fall on the other side of the rise, continued to call the Mountain Cattlemen’s Cup as the field of horses half slid down the jagged slope towards the finishing straight.

  Horses were sheened with sweat, riders gripped tight with denim-clad thighs and, with gritted teeth, hissed their horses on. Adrenaline surged through the veins of horses and riders alike. The two leaders hugged the curve of the track tight. One rider’s boot struck the fluttering triangular blue-and-yellow flags strung between star-pickets as his horse was bunted and shunted home. They flew past in a blur, belting for the line. Only three people in the crowd were ignoring the neck-and-neck finish. Rod and his grandchildren, Meg and Tilly, searched desperately for Emily on her grey mare. As the rest of the field raced home with Emily nowhere in sight, Rod felt panic rising within him.

  ‘Where’s Mummy and Snowgum?’ Meg said, squinting up at her grandfather.

  Rod gripped both girls on their shoulders. ‘I’ll go find her. I promise. You stay here.’ He tried to sound confident as he saw Meg’s eyes fill with tears. A friend in the crowd stepped forward and guided Meg and Tilly away. Rod nodded his thanks to the woman and then he was gone, sprinting towards his ute.

  A pretty bush nurse was doing up the silver press-studs of her blue overalls in the back of the ambulance. She pulled her long, chestnut hair back into a ponytail and smoothed the rumpled sheets of the stretcher bed, her rosy lips still raw from his stubbly kiss. She could still taste the beer, cigarettes and dust on his lips. Penny felt dizzy and giggly all at once, recalling the full force of his lust. Their encounter had been fast and furious.

  She knew he had been watching her all day, like a predator stalking its prey. The very moment that Kev, her ambo crew partner, walked away to get a drink, Clancy had run to her, curved his arm around her waist and dragged her into the ambulance.

  He’d kissed her hard on the lips and reefed open the studs on her overalls to clutch at her breasts. Then he’d lifted her onto the stretcher bed as she swiped aside the drip stands and oxygen equipment. He had wrenched down her overalls, tugged at his own leather belt and unzipped his jeans, revealing hips as snake-thin as a bull rider. He’d set at her in a flat-out gallop, the rhythm of his thrusts rising in crescendo as the commentator called the mountain race outside the ambulance. As Penny thrust her hips against his, she threw her head back and gripped his perfect backside tight. She felt like a sweating, blowing horse, and he, her rider. The ambulance rocked and she wanted to scream, but she had pressed her hand over her mouth and bitten down hard into the flesh of her palm.

  When it was done, Clancy lay on her for a time, breathing heavily. Penny had shut her eyes and stroked his muscular shoulders, already beginning to long for the next encounter. They could only ever steal moments like that. She hoped no one had seen – he was not so subtle when he was drunk. But she’d smiled coyly as she smuggled him out from the ambulance and jammed his big black hat back on his head. Thankfully, everyone’s eyes had been on the race.

  In the lead-up to the Mountain Cattlemen’s Cup, Kev had been watching Penny in the side mirror flirt with that selfish bugger, who acted as if his wife and two kids didn’t exist. Disgusted, he’d turned the mirror away and eventually taken himself off to find a cuppa. He couldn’t bear to watch.

  Now, back in the cabin with his feet up on the dash, Kev was relieved to see the mongrel husband had gone. But suddenly the radio was alive with urgency and Kev knew immediately that it was a bad one.

  ‘Penny!’ he yelled. ‘Get your arse in the front!’

  In the creekbed, Rod knelt beside a course official, who had gingerly loosened Emily’s protective vest. Rod cried out in anguish when
he saw his daughter’s twisted broken body. The translucent white glow of her normally tanned skin, the blood trickling from the corner of her mouth and the deathly stillness of her limbs injected fear through him.

  The official bent over Emily’s face, listening desperately at her pale lips for breath. Next to them, others were hauling on Snowgum’s reins, pleading with the mare to stand so they could move her away from Emily’s body. Snowgum’s cries were so excruciating Rod wished the mare would just lie down and die. He couldn’t bear to see Snowgum’s white flanks coursing with blood and the way she twisted in pain. He heard someone scream out, ‘Does anyone have a gun?’ Rod’s world spun. This couldn’t really be happening. He looked at the lifeless body of his daughter, whispering, ‘Please, God, no.’

  She simply could not die. Not his Emily. Before Clancy had stolen her away, Emily had been the lifeblood of their family and of their whole mountain community. This beautiful girl somehow represented their future. For years Rod and his sister, Flo, had battled to keep the mountain cattleman traditions alive in the face of sustained attacks by politicians, bureaucrats and environmental idealists, mostly with the hope that Emily would one day come home to them. Each time Rod had trudged to another meeting to negotiate his grazing rights with the ever-changing guard of government men, he had held Emily there in his heart as a reason not to give up. Emily’s presence revived him and kept the weary older generation of cattlemen laughing and hoping. But then she had moved away with Clancy. Rod had watched, heartsick, mute, as Emily’s marriage ground down her soul and eroded her spirit. The bright flame of her youth began to dull.

  Now, here she was, all but extinguished, and Rod felt the sting of guilt. He’d been the one to encourage her to ride in the Cattlemen’s Cup. He had thought somehow it was the start of having her come home to him. He lay his hand on her cheek. Now here she was leaving him in the worst way imaginable.

  ‘We’re gunna have to start CPR,’ the official said, glancing fearfully at Rod. ‘She’s not breathing and I can’t get a pulse.’

  Rod squinted down the track, looking desperately for the ambulance. As the man gently eased Emily’s helmet off and bent forward to breathe life-giving oxygen into her mouth, Rod was shocked to see that her long, dark hair had been chopped off, the scissor hacks still angry and angular against the softness of her heart-shaped face.

  ‘Emily?’ he cried. ‘Emily, stay with us. Emily!’

  Two

  Somewhere through the haze, Garth Brooks was playing. Sam Flanaghan rolled over, dragging with him all the pain from last night’s Budweisers, downed after his gig. He’d been in honky-tonk heaven when he’d stood on the Nashville sidewalk and gazed up at the giant neon-red cowboy boot and flashing guitar of Robert’s Western World.

  As he strode into the bar carrying his guitar case he was immersed into a rowdy nocturnal den of burgers, boots and booze. He was heady from the crush of rhinestone cowgirls done up to the nines in tassels, tight jeans and lairy two-tone dress boots. The smell of deep-fried chicken mingled with the odour of spilled beer and the sickly sweet scent of the perfumed and peroxided women. Sam sucked in a breath. Right from the start, he had known he was going to get carried away.

  Now, in his newly rented bedsit, Sam’s gummy, long, dark eyelashes peeled themselves apart. The first thing he saw was his guitar case, open. Next to the Conargo Pub sticker that was faded to a mottled text, he saw a hot-pink bra hanging carelessly over the metal clip of the case. His eyes roamed further towards the bedside table, where the sound of ‘Friends in Low Places’ was coming from. There he saw a large black bra curled up beside his bed like a sleeping cat. Not one but two sorry-looking condoms lay on the floor like bedraggled windsocks. Eyes wide open now, and with a slow, wicked grin, Sam extracted his limbs from those of the two naked Texan girls sleeping on either side of him.

  One girl was dark and lean and lay on her back with her forearm rested over her brow, as if she were having a crisis. Her mouth was open and she was making gentle snoring sounds from the back of her throat, her breasts sagging a little too much either side of her sturdy ribcage.

  The other, a blonde, lay on her stomach with her knee turned out on the bed, her bent leg mimicking the position of her arm. She was dribbling slightly. The peaches-and-cream complexion that had caught Sam’s attention from the stage now looked dimpled and pasty. Ellen and …? He couldn’t recall. He did remember they were both soldiers. Home on leave from fighting their ‘war on terror’ and holidaying in Tennessee, sinking whisky as if there were no tomorrow. Brassy, boastful women in uniform, though clearly not in uniform now, he thought dizzily. Sam looked down now at the blonde’s breasts. He had so wanted them as a pillow last night, so far from home, but his cheek had met not the soft yield of flesh but stubborn plastic. Implants.

  Sam frowned. Garth was still playing. He remembered that it was his phone – a different country-legend ringtone for every day of the week, just to motivate him. To get him through the humiliation of suddenly being a nobody in Nashville. He’d come here because there were music legends in every recording studio who could be hired to play on new albums. If his Aussie hit song, ‘Jillaroo Junky’, about a bloke who couldn’t keep his hands off the rural chicks, was picked up, his dream of making it Keith Urban-big in the States could come true. But so far every single producer had drawled, ‘A Jilla-what?’ It seemed he’d jumped the gun – just like his manager said he would.

  ‘Sam Flanaghan,’ Ike had said, tapping Sam’s dinner-plate rodeo buckle before he’d flown out of Sydney. ‘You’re a cowboy from the bush – you’re just not ready for Nashville. You need some professionalism under your belt before you do this. It’d be best to grow up a bit, kiddo, before making a trip like this.’ Ike had knocked his knuckles on Sam’s head. ‘But there seems to be no one listening inside there.’

  And Ike Johnson had turned out to be right. Sam had been in Nashville doing the rounds for months now but no record company people had called. Only the dodgy rabble of mates he made in seedy bars ever phoned.

  He reached over the blonde, knocked a glass of water onto the grimy brown carpet, swore, then fumbled to find the silver form of his phone. He flipped it open.

  There was crackly static on the line.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Sam! Oh, thank God. Sam, there’s been an accident. It’s Emily.’

  Suddenly Sam’s world back home came hurtling towards him. Not Emily! The big sister he’d idolised all his life. He sat bolt upright, his mind firing.

  ‘What kind of accident? Is she going to be all right?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sam. I don’t know. It’s pretty bad. They’re going to chopper her out.’

  Sam heard the raw fear in his father’s voice, then the line went dead. When he tried to redial, it went straight to message bank.

  ‘Dad! Call me back when you’re in range!’ Sam threw down the mobile and sank his head in his hands just as the Texan girls began to groan their protests for waking them.

  Sam was transported back to Dargo Primary School with Emily by his side, her long, dark hair in lopsided pigtails. They sat at scratched wooden desks just as their father had before them. Sam and Emily adored their teacher, Mrs Dongeal, who had also been their father’s teacher.

  She may have had wattles like a bush turkey hanging from her neck and what looked like a single overripe watermelon for a bosom, but motherless Sam and Emily craved female attention, and Mrs Dongeal was all for giving it to them. She’d taught in the district for forty years, and sometimes Sam and Emily would fake a few tears just to be drawn into the soft pillow of her bosom, ignoring the prickle from the sharp hairs on her chin.

  No, it was inconceivable that Sam could lose Emily too. Everything revolved around Emily, like the sun. Sam didn’t know how he’d have survived the loneliness of his childhood in the rugged mountain country without her. Nor would he have found his heart-place in music.

  Emil
y and Sam were fifth-generation cattlemen, descended from a line of determined, hardworking, resourceful people. Sam had grown up on stories about their great-great grandparents, who had bush-bashed their way to the remotest part of the high country on horseback with the kids strapped into armchairs on either side of a packhorse. His great-great grandmother, Emily, who had barely ridden before that trip, carried Sam’s great-grandfather, then just a nine-month-old baby, on a hired horse.

  He had heard how his forebears had pit-sawn timber and carved out a living from the mountains using both brains and brawn. Tirelessly they built their dreams in the most rugged country in Victoria. In the early days, when the Flanaghans weren’t packing goods over the mountains with a team of work-fit bush horses, they were supplying miners with food and equipment from their hut on the King’s Spur, or droving mobs of cattle over the mountains in search of sweet summer grass. Even on rare days of rest, the Flanaghan boys were tearing off on adventures; searching for gold, digging mine shafts, climbing cliff faces, leaping horses over too-high logs.

  While stories abounded about Sam’s long-gone relatives, Sam just didn’t seem to ache for those kinds of adventures. With no mother to anchor him, Sam found himself wandering far from home, whichever way the wind blew.

  It had been the women in the family that kept the men in line. Family folklore told of old Emily always dishing up a meal or preparing a bed for anyone who needed hospitality in that wild, sometimes bitter place. It was Emily who encouraged her boys to dabble in poetry and write stories, painstakingly etching out their letters in the dull glow of a candle flame in a mountain hut, amidst snow storms. Emily who encouraged them to sound out a tune on a harmonica beside a summertime campfire, to take an interest in hymns and the word of God.

  The strong mountain women of the past were still present in his sister. Emily had a quiet strength that seemed somehow rooted in the mountain rock on which she stood. Sam knew he had missed out on the hard-work gene that Emily had so firmly ingrained in her. At least he had a good dose of the musical gene, but the mountains were no place for a dreamy, lazy boy, and every day of their lives Emily had covered for him in some way, and made him feel okay about himself.