Diamond Spirit (19 page)

‘Jessy! Wake up!’ Grace shook her violently. ‘Wake up, Jess! The horses are out!’

‘What?’ Jess rolled over, rubbing her eyes.

‘Katrina tied Chelpie to the fence near Muscles, and he went crazy. He smashed through his yard and tore through electric fences.’

‘He did what?’ Jess crawled out of her swag and squinted into the torch that Grace shone in her face.

‘And then Dodger and three of Lawson’s horses escaped onto the road! ’

‘Oh, my God! Which way did they go?’ asked Jess, scrambling to the door.

‘They went out the front gate. Dad and Harry have headed towards town and we have to go the other way to see if we can find them.’ Grace motioned to Jess with one arm. ‘Come on. Quick!’

‘Muscles is a stallion. He’ll attack Dodger,’ said Jess, wrapping her arms tightly around herself as she hurried through the freezing showgrounds. ‘He’ll hurt him.’

‘No, he won’t. He’s not aggressive,’ said Grace.

‘Lawson’s horses are all mares. Muscles will fight Dodger for them,’ said Jess. ‘He might get hit by a car . . . or get chased through a fence.’ The more she woke up, the more she started freaking. ‘We have to find them!’ She broke into a run. ‘Oh God, please don’t let Dodger get hurt!’

The girls dashed through the maze of horse trucks and floats. They could see where the horses had torn through the electric tapes, leaving a tangled white trail behind. At the front entrance, Jess panted, already out of breath. ‘Which way did they go?’

‘That way is into town, so we have to go this way,’ said Grace, taking off in the other direction. ‘This torch is dying.’

‘It doesn’t matter. The moon is so bright it makes no difference anyway.’ Jess ran alongside her. The road was coarse beneath her feet, and before long her socks had eroded away and were flapping around her ankles, leaving her feet rasping cruelly against the cold bitumen. She slowed to a hobble. ‘This is hopeless. We will never catch up with five horses.’

Then she heard them. ‘I can hear hooves on the road, listen! They’re up ahead! They sound as though they’re galloping.’

Then there came the most sickening sound. An air horn honked long and loud in the distance, accompanied by the screeching of brakes. ‘Oh
no
!’ Jess screamed and took off, leaving Grace behind her. Her feet stung with every step.

In front of them stretched miles of nothingness, with a corrugated dirt road through the middle of it. A road train rumbled in the distance, getting louder and louder until its lights rose up over a small rise in the land and came hurtling through the stillness of the outback towards her.

Jess dived into the grassy edges of the road as wheel after wheel thundered past. She counted four large bogies after the prime mover. Clouds of dust infused with cowdung billowed up behind it. She pulled her pyjama top over her mouth to filter the air, and closed her eyes tight. She couldn’t see a thing.

Then, as she groped around blindly in the long grass, she trod on some overgrown mutant bindii burr. As she tried to extract it from her frozen foot, she wondered where Grace was.

A vehicle rumbled along the dirt road in her direction. Its headlights shone weakly through the blur of dust, its engine slowed and a gruff voice said, ‘Get in, idiot!’

‘Lawson?’

‘Well, don’t just sit there. Do you want a ride or not?’

Grace shifted across the bench seat to let her in. ‘It’s okay, Jess, hop in,’ she said.

Luke stood on the back of the ute, holding onto the rollbar with one hand and working a large spotlight with the other. Lawson’s blue pup raced around his feet.

Jess scrambled into the cabin. Unable to find a spot for her feet among the tools and debris on the passenger side floor, she pulled her knees up and sat cross-legged with her feet under her bum. She shivered with cold.

‘I don’t know what you kids thought you were going to do when you found those horses.’ Lawson began a lecture. ‘You’re in the middle of the outback, with no shoes on, in the middle of the night! You’ve got no halters and one of those horses is a stallion with a mob of mares. Are you trying to get yourself killed?’

Pig.

Jess sat there in silence. The corrugations in the road made the ute pound like a jackhammer, and it felt as though her brain was being rattled out of her skull. Lawson sped furiously along the track while she held white-knuckled onto the dash, bracing herself against the potholes as the ute lurched and bumped and fishtailed madly. Eventually he slowed down and peered intently out the window, as Luke shone the spotlight back and forth across the empty plains.

Lawson pulled his head back in and spoke as he drove. ‘It wasn’t me, you know.’

‘What wasn’t?’ said Jess. Her hand flew against the side window for balance as they met a large pothole.

‘It wasn’t me who put that horse through the fence.’

‘Hey?’ She could hardly hear him above the chains and tools that rattled and clanked about. What was he talking about?

‘You owned that little coloured horse, didn’t you, the one that got stuck in the cattle grid?’

Jess’s hackles rose. ‘Diamond was an Appaloosa. What about her?’

‘That white horse has been stirring up my cattle for weeks. I keep finding it loose down on the river. I tried to tell you at the old man’s place that day, but you wouldn’t listen.’ He kept driving for a while. ‘I thought it was you and your mad mate. But then I started finding Snow-bloody-white down there.’

He fought the steering wheel through another pothole. ‘I’d be willing to bet that’s how your pony got out and into that cattle grid. That white thing’s the nastiest little horse I’ve ever handled. The other horses hate it. So do the cattle. Look at the trouble it’s caused tonight.’

Luke thumped on the back window of the cabin. ‘There they are!’ They saw several shadowy horses beside the road.

‘Oh,
great!
’ said Lawson, as he wrenched on the handbrake. In the headlights, Muscles grunted up and down on his best mare, Marnie. ‘Get off her, you mongrel!’ He got out, pulled a stockwhip from the back of the ute and cracked it at the stallion. The sound echoed into the distant hills.

Muscles leapt off, screaming defiance, and immediately began hunting Chelpie and the other two mares. Lawson continued to crack the whip at him and managed to get himself in between the stallion and the mares. Muscles pawed at the ground with one hoof and bared his teeth.

‘Luke, grab Marnie, quick,’ Lawson yelled. ‘Grace, you get Muscles. Hurry up!’

‘No
way
!’ said Grace, standing by the ute, terrified.

‘He’ll be right as soon as you get your hand on his halter, Gracie. Just grab him!’

‘He’ll savage me,’ pleaded Grace.

Muscles paced back and forth snorting and pawing at the ground as Lawson held him off with the whip, while Luke approached the mare and slipped a halter over her ears.

‘If you don’t grab him soon he’s going to savage
me
,’ he yelled at Grace, as Muscles rushed him with bared teeth. ‘Come on, he’s your horse.’

‘He’s not mine, he’s Dad’s,’ she argued. At that moment, Dodger came into view. Muscles reared into the air and screamed, warning the gelding to keep away.

‘
Dodger! Get out of there!’ yelled Jess.

‘For Pete’s sake, someone just get a rope and
grab
him
!’ Lawson yelled.

Jess grabbed a lead rope from the front of the ute and began to walk towards Muscles, who was transfixed on the three mares behind Lawson. She walked gingerly, trying to avoid the stones and burrs. ‘Easy, Muscles,’ she said.

The stallion turned and rushed at her with his ears back. Jess stopped immediately, ready to take flight if he got too close. She repeated the words, ‘Easy, Muscles. Come here, boy,’ and inched towards him, her hand trembling. She stayed focused on the ring at the bottom of his halter. The stallion let out a long, squealing whinny to the mares.

‘That’s it; good, Jess,’ said Lawson. ‘Just get that rope on him and he’ll settle right down . . . slowly . . .’

Jess crept closer, keeping her bare feet as far out of reach of the stallion’s steel-clad hooves as she could, and holding the rope out in front of her. Then she lurched forward and snapped the clip onto his halter. The moment it was attached, Lawson dropped his whip and ran to take the lead rope and pull the stallion into line. Jess stumbled backwards to get out of the way and fell over, finding another mutant burr with her hand.

‘Come on, you old rogue,’ said Lawson. ‘The game’s up.’ He gave a tug on the stallion’s halter. ‘By geez, Stan’s going to hear about this one.’ He led the stallion back to the ute, who pranced and squealed cheekily. Then he turned to Jess. ‘Well done, kid.’

Jess was unable to speak. Her hands were shaking.

‘Wow! You were amazing, Jess!’ called Grace, leading Dodger towards them. ‘Weren’t you scared?’

‘I was totally petrified!’ Jess tried not to burst into tears.

‘Just wait a minute, Grace,’ interrupted Lawson. ‘Let me tie this stallion to a tree before you bring that gelding over.’ He led Muscles to a scrawny mulga sapling and tied him securely.

‘Is he okay?’ asked Jess, hobbling towards Dodger. She threw her arms around his neck. She couldn’t bear it if anything had happened to him. Suddenly the draft didn’t matter; she just wanted Dodger to be okay.

‘He seems to be. I can’t really see. We need a torch,’ said Grace.

‘Bring him in front of the headlights,’ said Lawson.

Jess took the lead rope from Grace and brought Dodger in front of the lights. ‘I think he just has a few scratches.’ Then she picked up his hoof and groaned. Another big chunk had been torn off.

‘Give me a look,’ said Lawson, returning from tethering Muscles. He placed the hoof between his knees and examined it carefully under the headlights. ‘What a disaster,’ he said. He dropped the hoof to the ground. ‘So, how are we going to get all these horses back to the showgrounds?’

‘Well, is it fixable or not?’ asked Jess.

‘We can’t leave that stallion out here,’ he said, ignoring her. ‘That shrub’s not going to hold him for long.’ The topic of Dodger’s foot was clearly over. ‘Luke and Jess, you’ll have to stay here with the horses while Grace drives and I lead Muscles out of the window. We’ll come back with a truck. Will you be right for a short while?’

What, out here, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark?

‘We’ll be right,’ said Luke, leading Marnie over.

‘I’ll leave the blue dog here with you,’ said Lawson.

The blue puppy, you mean.

‘Okay, yeah, that’d be good,’ said Jess, trying to sound as confident as Luke.

‘Watch out for daisy burrs – they’ll put a big hole in your foot. I got a flat tyre on one of them once.’

‘Bit late, but thanks.’

‘Here, you’d better take a jacket, too,’ said Lawson, shaking his head. He pulled off his fleece-lined denim jacket and threw it at Jess. ‘Dunno what you thought you were gonna do out here half-dressed.’

Then he retrieved Muscles and jumped in the passenger side of the ute with the window open. ‘First gear all the way, Gracie.’ He stuck his head out the window. ‘And don’t let go of that mare, Luke. She cost more than my house.’

Grace started the engine and began bunnyhopping down the track with the stallion trotting obediently behind.

‘Watch out for the min min lights!’ Lawson sang out as they drove off. He chuckled just like his father.

‘The min min what?’

24

JESS WAS SERIOUSLY FREEZING.
Her teeth chattered, she couldn’t feel her feet and her nose burned. Dodger looked miserable too, standing stiffly in the cold night air. He groaned and let himself down onto his knees, and then dropped heavily onto his side with his legs folded beneath him and his nose resting on the ground.

‘It’s freezing out here,’ said Jess.

‘Sure is,’ said Luke. He paced around with his shoulders hunched, blowing into his hands to warm them. The mare walked after him.

Jess crouched down next to Dodger and stroked his neck. ‘You’re a naughty boy for running away, Dodgey.’ She rubbed between his ears. ‘I’m so glad you didn’t hurt yourself.’ His fur was deliciously warm under his thick forelock, so she moved closer, and since he didn’t seem to mind, crawled up in a ball under his neck with the pup on her lap.

She looked out across the pebbly downs of Longwood. Billions of stars blazed above, all the way to the horizon. The moon, big and bright and beautiful, cast shadows under the gidgea trees. Beyond them, Chelpie grazed alone, glowing white in the moonlight.

It had been her all along. She’d spooked the cattle, the cattle ran through the fences, then Rocko must have hunted Diamond into the grid.

‘That’s the whitest horse I’ve ever seen,’ said Luke suddenly, snapping her from her thoughts.

‘That’s because it’s
truly white
,’ said Jess in a bitter, mimicking voice. ‘Not just a
grey
that’s faded with
age
.’

Luke groaned. ‘She’s a pain in the arse, that Katrina, isn’t she?’

‘I reckon.’ Jess thought of Katrina and Tegan, sitting on their horses, acting all sorry about ‘What was its name again?’ down on the flats after Diamond had been destroyed. They’d even had the hide to sneer at Dodger.