The Cattleman's Daughter Read online

  ‘But I thought you were against the cattlemen?’

  ‘I’m not against anything, my dear.’

  Evie stroked Emily’s head and the energy from her hand sent warmth flowing through Emily’s scalp and body.

  ‘I simply believe in balance. Now, you need to get on with your healing and then you can go on that ride in Melbourne. Your people need someone like you, to give them a new direction.’

  ‘What do you mean like me?’

  ‘You don’t see it, my dear, but you radiate light.’

  ‘Light?’

  ‘Yes. As does your youngest.’

  ‘Meg?’

  ‘Yes.’ Evie gently placed on Emily’s lap the old photo album that usually lived in the lounge room, with photos haphazardly added to it over the years, particularly on wild days when it was too rough to ride out on the plains. ‘Take a closer look. Children are purer. They haven’t had time to disbelieve.’

  Evie left Emily alone to flip through the album. With astonishment Emily began to see the way the camera picked up a shining white glow around Meg’s form. Either the crown of her head was lit as if by a halo, or the outline of her body shone with silver light. In some photos the light was subtle, in others it was clear and strong. One taken at the Mt Ewan spring captured Meg looking deep into the camera lens. She seemed one with the spring that gushed out of ancient rock to sustain the gentle fronds of deep green ferns. Meg crouched beside the silver bubbling water and beside her, caught in mid-flight, was a winged insect. Of course, Emily knew it was a dragonfly. But the way Meg’s eyes shone as the flying creature hovered near her made them seem somehow connected, like earth sprites or fairies.

  ‘No,’ Emily said, shaking her senses back in place.

  She snapped the book shut. Where was all this taking her? Before the accident, she’d been a simple mother of two children. Now, more and more, she was finding she didn’t know herself at all.

  Fifteen

  Luke wound the Datsun up to its full speed of ninety kilometres along the four-lane freeway. He was given angry toots and the bird by other frustrated drivers, which made him even more furious than he already was. The fights with Cassy were intensifying. Just as he had vowed to break up with her, she had gone and injured her foot. He felt bad about leaving her to hobble about the house fending for herself, so for the past few weeks he had stayed. But it had been an intense and fiery time of tears, tantrums and yelling matches. This latest fight had been over the cattlemen. Luke knew Cassy had deliberately picked it because he was packing to move to Dargo.

  He glanced into the rear-vision mirror, fleetingly meeting his own eyes. Luke knew he wasn’t a bad person, but this last fight with Cassy had revealed his uglier side. The more he fought with her, the less guilty he had to feel about leaving. He remembered how she had hobbled into the kitchen on crutches and slapped a newspaper onto the kitchen table.

  ‘It’s placard-painting time,’ she’d said.

  ‘Now?’ Luke had looked up from the stack of papers and books he was putting in a box. ‘Cass,’ he said wearily, ‘you know I’m leaving next week. I’ve got other stuff to do.’

  She ignored him, jabbing a finger at the newspaper. ‘Says here there’s a protest ride in the city next week. Thousands of those bloody redneck cattlemen, hundreds of ’em riding horses. Can you imagine the stress those animals will be under? Bastards!’

  She pointed at the small map in the paper.

  ‘They start at the MCG, then down Wellington Parade to Flinders Street Station, then up Swanston and onto Bourke Street to Parliament House.’

  ‘Really?’ Luke said. He wondered whether that pretty girl from the hospital would be there. ‘Sounds great. I’d love to go. I love horses.’

  ‘I’ve got to let Indigo and the guys at PETA know. We’ve got to move fast.’ Cassandra stopped suddenly and gave Luke a strange look. ‘What did you just say? You love horses? You never told me that. I thought you loved cars.’

  ‘What? I don’t even like cars.’

  ‘But you’re always tinkering with the bloody Datto.’

  ‘That’s because it’s always breaking down.’ He picked up one of the magazines he was packing and pushed it in front of her.

  ‘Horse Deals? You read Horse Deals! What for?’

  Luke shook his head, knowing that in the two intense years they’d been together, Cassy hadn’t taken a scrap of notice of what he liked and didn’t like. It was all about what she liked. Life in the city with Cassy was so in-your-face, with no stillness, he’d somehow been able to stop feeling altogether.

  As he looked at the cover of Horse Deals, the thought of sitting on a beautiful, perfectly educated stockhorse in the mountains gave Luke hope.

  ‘Have you ever had a working dog lean on your leg and look up at you?’

  ‘What?’ said Cassy.

  ‘Do you know what that feels like?’

  ‘A dog on your leg?’

  ‘No! Not a dog on your leg. That look a working dog gives you. The warmth and love in his eyes.’

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘Or the way a horse will bend his body round for you simply by touching him lightly on the flank.’

  ‘What?’

  Luke snatched the magazine back.

  ‘You’ll never understand. You’re too in your own head to even notice!’ Luke had raised his voice. He could feel himself shaking. It shocked him, just how much rumbled below the surface in him. A kind of fury, and a deep, deep sadness that he had lost any connection to the life he loved. No soil, save for the box of seeded parsley on the back windowsill. No animals, save for greasy-looking starlings and hungry little sparrows that flitted about the back step.

  ‘In my own head? I’m doing this for the good of the world. I’m going to that cattlemen’s rally for the sake of the environment. What are you going for? To look at horses! You’re going to be a park ranger up there in less than a fortnight and here you are backing them?’ Fury blazed in Cassy’s eyes. ‘I can’t believe your hypocrisy!’

  ‘Me, a hypocrite! You protest about everything outside of this place,’ Luke was shouting. ‘But what about making a difference here? What about a community garden? Or a backyard battery-hen rehab project? Or teaching city kids about food and the land and the cycles of life and death? Why don’t you do something good for a change, instead of crapping on other people? Actually produce something yourself.’

  ‘I can’t believe you. If you’ve got all the answers, Einstein, why haven’t you done anything like that? I’m the one doing the good. I’m the one making the difference. Lately, you just sit around, not talking. You don’t smile. You don’t even care!’

  ‘Because I’ve been dead, Cassy! Dead! For the past two years!’

  ‘What do you mean dead?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Luke said, nearing tears, running his hands through his dark curls. Emotion blurred his vision. He sat in stony silence, trying to make sense of the newspaper text in front of him. Anything to keep a lid on the emotions he now felt.

  Quotes flashed up at him from the page. They were the sentiments of rural people on their knees. ‘Enough’s enough’, one quote read. ‘Tired of being treated like second-class citizens’, said another. ‘The state government think rural people don’t count’; ‘A risk there will be no Australian farmers in the future’. The words began to swim on the page again. Luke had heard these sentiments all his life. It just depressed and confused him even more. Cassy, shocked to see him break down, placed a hand on his shoulder.

  Furious, Luke shook off her touch with a bear-like roar. He flung the box he was packing to the floor and stood so suddenly the chair fell backwards with a crash.

  From the hallway Karla called out, ‘Are you two having wild sex on the kitchen table again? Please move my assignment off the table if you are!’

  Luke grabbed his keys. He knew the way he felt wasn’t all Cassy’s fault. But he also knew he needed to get out of this crazy, faltering relationship.
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  ‘I’m going out.’

  ‘What do you mean out?’

  ‘Out out,’ Luke said, slamming the front door so hard the picture of Krishna came crashing down in the hallway.

  And that is how he’d come to be on the freeway in his little buzzing Datsun with nowhere to go. He wanted desperately to go back to the house where he was raised, where his mother had cooked the vegies she had so carefully grown, where he was free to go yabbying, chop down a sapling looking for bait, or simply wander in the culverts beside the empty roadside. All that space and stillness.

  But he knew he was remembering the place with the rosiness of distance and time. The reality of that life on the wheat farm was a different story. His father was worn down and crumpled by stress, his weathered face creased with lines. His mother, drab in her work clothes, with very little reason to smile. The day the footy coach came crying on the doorstep to tell them the team had folded. The way his mother had fought alongside the other people in the town to keep the hospital open. Then they had closed the school, and allowed city-folk to sink their money into managed investment schemes so farms were bought and ripped up for trees.

  They, thought Luke. Who where ‘they’? All these people driving past him in their comfy clean cars to their offices? He was about to become part of the massive ‘they’. He was about to join the big bureaucratic giant that managed the forests, the schools, the roads, the hospitals. He felt daunted and dwarfed. How could he fit in, with a man like Kelvin Grimsley as his boss? But at least he’d be living in the heart of the mountains. Maybe near that girl he’d met. She seemed the type who wasn’t sucked into all the city guff spewed forth each day from billboards, radio stations, newspapers, televisions, shop windows and the painted sides of buses. She seemed natural, like the land itself. Grounded.

  ‘Bugger this,’ he thought. He pulled over into a side lane and dialled the number of the woman he’d spoken to in VPP Human Resources. When he at last had her on the line, he asked if he could meet the outgoing Dargo ranger today, if not tomorrow.

  ‘I’m not sure we can accommodate your request at such short notice, Mr Bradshaw. It’s really not my department. Your orientation with the outgoing ranger is scheduled for next week.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ he said wearily. ‘I’ll just drive out there myself and take a look at the town.’

  Luke steered out into the traffic, his mouth set in a determined line.

  ‘Dargo or bust!’ he yelled, banging the steering wheel and suddenly feeling much, much better.

  Sixteen

  The main street of Dargo was wide and lined with large walnut trees that dappled shade across the road. Luke was instantly taken with the town. A blonde girl with a big bum walking along the roadside caught his eye. She was hard to miss in her hot-pink top and torn denim shorts, and was walking a Pomeranian with an arse that looked much like its head.

  Another woman, wearing a fluoro vest, was on a roadside slasher, cutting the long grass beneath the shady trees, while an elderly man sat in a verandah chair and waved lazily as Luke drove past.

  After that, the street lay empty. The houses dozed in the afternoon summer sun, protected by their leafy gardens and the tall trees that grew in the fertile river-flat soils.

  Luke caught glimpses of the bush-covered hills beyond the town, too many to count, wave after wave of steep pitched rises tapering upwards towards the mountains. He smiled, feeling hopeful that, soon, this place would be his home, and the people in it his friends. And he would come to know this country.

  Within moments he was in the heart of Dargo. One store and, opposite, one pub. He pulled up beside a phone booth and took in the sight of the humble township. The store had a grey corrugated-iron roof with the words ‘Dargo Store’ stencilled in large white lettering in the same font he used to stencil in black ink on his dad’s wool bales.

  The pub had a rusty red roof with ‘Dargo Hotel’ painted in the same glowing white text and the thick timber upright beams and slab-cut weatherboards spoke of bushmen and their skills. Luke looked again to the store.

  In the deep shade of the verandah, a bench seat hosted two elderly men, who were sitting, smoking, and not saying much of anything to each other. To the right of the store, a shadecloth was set up over a lawn with white plastic tables and chairs for the tourists and their need for cappuccinos and lattes.

  Luke felt like a coffee now, then berated himself for becoming such a city boy. He should be heading to the pub for a beer and parking the Datsun there. It would look small and wimpy next to the row of dusty four-wheel drives and utes, though. They had all manner of blokey items on their trays, including tatty-eared working dogs, fuel drums, welders and chainsaw boxes. Luke thought he’d head into the store first for something to eat, and to find out where the Parks station was.

  The old men on the bench nodded g’day and watched with mild curiosity as Luke passed. The screen door shut behind him, enclosing him in the cool, dark interior. The ceiling fans whopped overhead and as his eyes adjusted from the bright sunshine outside he saw the place was a hive of activity.

  A lean woman sorted letters behind a postal desk, while a young girl in a singlet top and shorts stacked vegetables from a box into tall glass-faced fridges. From a noisy kitchen another woman thumped the basket of the deep fryer and drained a batch of chips. As Luke stepped towards the counter a juvenile wombat trundled out and began to chew on his bootlaces.

  ‘Hello,’ Luke said, a smile on his face as he stooped to scratch behind the animal’s ears.

  The counter was crowded with stubby holders, postcards, lollies and community fundraiser chocolates, and the shelves were crammed with camping and fishing gear.

  ‘Are you right?’ asked the girl in the singlet, pushing her glasses back up her nose and tossing a cabbage up and down in her slender tanned hands.

  ‘Just looking for the moment, thanks,’ Luke said shyly.

  ‘Fine, take your time,’ she said, then stepped forward and berated the wombat, scooping it up. ‘Rack off, Sophie. You’re supposed to be in bed.’ She bundled it into a bag behind the counter. ‘Sorry ’bout that. She’s a real tart. She likes the boys.’

  The girl looked him up and down, then went back to her fridge-stocking. Luke felt the scrutiny from the locals, like he’d stumbled into a frontier town. He remembered what Kelvin Grimsley had said about the hostility here. He wondered if it might be better not to mention he was the new ranger.

  He was relieved to spot a bookstand featuring self-published titles on local history. Perfect, he thought. He could read up about the place before he started the job. He picked up a book with a black and white photo of an olden-day whiskered miner on it and flicked through it. One passage caught his eye and he began reading.

  ‘Time and time again, Emily shines out in the Flanaghan story as far more than just tough. A tireless worker, astute businesswoman, dedicated mother and steadfast no-nonsense friend.’ No-nonsense, Luke thought to himself. He liked the idea of that, and, so far, he really liked the look of Dargo too. There were no monster shopping malls with giant super stores, no dozen-bay carwashes, no vast entertainment complexes for children and no glossed-over reality.

  He shifted the weight of his feet and read on.

  ‘Early in 1878 Jeremiah Flanaghan borrowed some horses and took his wife, Emily, his children and all his worldly possessions into the mountains. Emily rode a saddle mare and carried her fourth child, a nine-month-old baby. Her husband fitted an armchair on each side of the second horse for the older children to ride in. Blankets, rugs and so on were stuffed in around the children and they were strapped to the chairs so they would not fall out.

  ‘The decision to pin all their hopes on this rather risky-sounding venture and shift the young family and all its possessions to a remote spur in the very heart of the snow country could not have been an easy one to make. But both Jeremiah and Emily were courageous and ambitious enough to give it a try, in the hope that it would somehow lead them into
opportunities later on, that other less adventurous types would miss out on.’

  Luke glanced up from the book. Adventure. That’s definitely what had been missing in his life. Perhaps here he would find his way.

  ‘Emily!’ came a voice from the doorway. ‘Emily!’

  Luke looked up to see a good-looking bloke calling back through the flydoor. He seemed kind of familiar, but Luke just couldn’t place him.

  ‘D’ya want a pie?’

  A voice from outside called, ‘Yeah! Thanks!’

  ‘Shut the bloody door, Flanno. You’re letting the flies in,’ said the girl in the singlet.

  ‘Sorry, Kate. Bossy bag.’

  ‘I’ll give you one in the bag,’ she said, setting aside her vegie-packing. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Just Dad’s fortnightly order on the tab,’ he said, handing over a list, ‘and two pies.’

  ‘Sauce?’

  ‘Yep. Thanks.’

  When the screen door opened again and a young woman walked in, Luke didn’t recognise her at first. She wore threadbare, faded green work trousers. They were several sizes too big, rolled up at the legs and hitched over her waist with some old braces. Under the braces she wore a blue-checked flannelette shirt, one sleeve ripped off at the shoulder, the other tattered. There was a rolled towel under one shoulder of the braces, obviously to stop it rubbing on an injury that was taped heavily. Her look was topped off with an old, oil-stained Caterpillar cap. She looked like a hillbilly, straight out of Deliverance country, but under the hat, he recognised the sweet face of the girl from the hospital. Luke stifled a smirk, barely believing his luck. Here she was! Right here!

  As she swiped the grubby cap from her head he was struck again by the prettiness of her face. Despite her clothing, she was stunning. From behind the shelves, he had time to study her better than sitting beside her at the hospital.