A Changing Land (8 page)

‘How are you going, Ferret?'

The dog gave a whine. Bullet nudged her leg as she squatted beside him. The rain had eased and a cold southerly stung her eyes. Sarah snuggled up against Bullet. Despite the best of intentions, her thoughts turned from cattle ramps, trucks and Anthony to her mother.

‘Morning.' Jasperson dismounted stiffly from his horse before wrapping the reins around the hitching post that ran parallel to the verandah. By his side was the lad known as McKenzie. Hamish ignored Jasperson's newest recruit. Having plucked the boy from obscurity, the lad's length of tenure at Wangallon depended on his ability. Jasperson looked peaky. In hindsight, Hamish recalled, not much different to the day over fifty years ago when they had come upon him camped alone on the banks of the swollen Broken River. There had only been the three of them after Hamish's brother's death: Hamish, Lee and Dave. They had buried Charlie on the goldfields, headed north and found Jasperson. Jasperson, an uptight Englishman with a penchant for young boys, had given some cockeyed story about having lost everything and everyone. Yet Hamish saw in him the same attributes as Dave; they were men who could follow orders and keep their mouths shut and men like that were damn hard to find and replace. It was a pity Dave finally succumbed to his own mortality. Hamish had thought his willpower was stronger than that.

‘Well, what news?' Hamish swigged down his tea. If a month traversing Wangallon's western boundary had not caused the Englishman to hanker a little for conversation, nothing would. There were miles of fences to check, boundary riders to locate and rotate to other parts of the property and general observations on the state of the grazing country to be recorded and passed on. Hamish was usually on horseback by now, the rising sun in his eyes and an image of the country he'd acquired over many years beckoning like a pitcher of water. Instead it was nearing seven o'clock and his impatience was biting at his stomach.

Hamish tapped out his pipe. ‘Well?' A glance was exchanged between the pustule-faced boy and his overseer. Hamish knew that look. Their relationship had clearly been settled one night out on the western boundary. Money and terms had been exchanged and Hamish suspected McKenzie had dropped his trousers by a glowing campfire. It was not the first time such a favour had been extracted, nor would it be the last. Hamish narrowed his eyes. This Scottish boy with his flickering gaze and willingness to accommodate Jasperson was looking for advancement. No doubt he believed that the top of the great tree that was Wangallon was poorly stocked with fruit not yet grown or apples souring and ready to fall. Well this one would be at the receiving end of a ready lesson if he diverted from a path directed by Jasperson.

‘Luke's about a day's ride away,' Jasperson began. ‘The cook's already at the Wangallon Town Hotel. Reckon's the boy got speared a few months back.'

Hamish considered this snippet. ‘He's not maimed?'

Jasperson shook his head.

‘Good. Take yourself into town and report back to me when he arrives. Is his whore still there?'

‘The Grant girl? Yes.'

McKenzie's expression grew attentive. While the question was directed at Jasperson, Hamish sensed annoyance. The Scottish
boy was peeved. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers and scuffed at the dirt with the toe of his boot.

‘If she be your whore too lad, my advice would be to find another.' Hamish couldn't have his own son sharing a woman with the likes of this boy. ‘What else?' he demanded of Jasperson.

‘The big river dried up down near Crawford Corner a few weeks ago. The boundary rider moved the cattle south in an attempt to get them to the main drain but it was dry.'

‘What do you mean dry? It's a damn artesian bore. It can't simply have dried up?'

Jasperson scratched irritably at his crotch. ‘The cattle took off into Crawford's. There's water in that big hole on their side so that's where they headed.'

Hamish considered the relevant facts. He had no water. Crawford did. ‘And the drain?'

‘I reckon they blocked it off.'

Hamish looked at his overseer: Filthy trousers, dust-covered boots and a clean shirt; the man's one concession to a modicum of respectability. ‘You reckon?' he repeated. Such a word didn't exist in his vocabulary.

‘The boundary rider –'

Hamish took a sip of tea and uncrossed his legs as he lent sideways in his chair as if looking behind Jasperson. ‘I don't see the boundary rider. I didn't ask the boundary rider.'

McKenzie fiddled with his horse's reins. Jasperson spat a globule of something wet and chewy on the ground. ‘It's blocked. Crawford's dug a trench to divert our bore drain water into the waterhole on the river.'

Hamish's eyes narrowed. ‘And my stock?' he enquired slowly, his dirty fingernails drumming his thigh.

‘Fifty or so head are running on Crawford Corner.' Jasperson subtly directed any anger back towards the rightful owner.

Hamish slammed his fist into the palm of his hand. So this was
how it was going to be. But he had him this time. He had Oscar Crawford for no less than stock theft. ‘Get my horse, Jasperson.'

‘Boss?'

If they left now they could reach the river at noon and wait out the hottest part of the day. Hamish paced the length of the verandah. Oscar Crawford needed to be taught a measure of responsibility. The man had grown insufferable. He'd shown uncommon bad sense in refusing Hamish's over-generous offer to buy him out. His veins buzzed with anticipation.

‘Boss,' Jasperson scratched thinning hair at his temples, ‘the drain's been unblocked and the ditch filled in and hadn't we best wait till after Christmas?'

Hamish stopped walking. ‘Yes, all right,' he agreed dourly. He forced his legs to return to his chair. ‘Christmas.' He glared at the Scottish boy, who, in response, quickly remounted his horse. ‘Well, we have his highly coveted stud master.' Hamish's hands grasped the wicker armrests and the fine cane cracked beneath his grip. His lips curled. ‘Let Crawford have his Christmas. Let him stuff his English belly on Wangallon meat. Eventually,' he looked directly at Jasperson, ‘he will choke.'

The overseer gave a thin-lipped smile.

Lauren Grant lent further over the hessian bags of potato, flour and sugar in the small storeroom and steadied herself against the hard sacks. In between two of the stacked bags closest to the timber wall was a small gap where a brown mouse was sedately nibbling his way through one bag. The mouse tracked from one bag to another and Lauren imagined the little rodent tasting potato and then sugar in a delightful method of belly stuffing that would render him exhausted in the growing heat. Silently she concentrated on the mouse eating his fill as Mr Stevens proceeded to satisfy his own hunger. With her skirts thrown up about her waist, Lauren mentally began counting Mr Stevens's panting. He was not much on ceremony and could be relied upon to conclude his business with a modicum of fuss.

Mr Stevens, a rangy man with a deep-set brow and a bony, finicky wife who was no doubt the cause of the deeply entrenched furrow between his eyes, gave a series of loud, breathy gasps. Lauren counted and then smelled eight exhalations of onion and
the remnants of teeth-rotting food. Once he got to twelve she needed to brace herself against the wall, however today the hessian sacks were stacked in greater numbers and although she extended her arms, her fingers refused to touch the uneven timber wall before her. Instead Lauren found herself staring at the daylight seeping through the cracked timber and then, as her eyes gradually adjusted, into two pairs of eyes. The eyes giggled and kicked the outside wall before running away. ‘You scallywags,' she berated as she was pushed forward onto the sacks. Mr Stevens gave a long sigh and then farted.

God's holy trousers
, Lauren thought with disgust. If ever a man knew how to ruin a perfectly harmless transaction it was this man with his less than fine personage, only just adequate dick and a voice like a squeaky wagon wheel bumping over a dirt track.

‘Good. Good girl. Take what you need.'

A triangle of light entered and left the storeroom. Lauren heard footsteps travelling the length of the narrow store and then a soft flipping sound, which signified the open/closed for business sign being adjusted. Picking herself up from where she had been so roughly shoved, Lauren patted her skirts down and tidied the wisps of hair that were matted with her sweat and the onion breath of the shopkeeper. She wanted more than potatoes and bread today, if you please. She had a hankering for eggs and a length of calico for a new skirt. Lauren peered around the uneven timber slats of the door. Mr Stevens expected her to leave by the rear window. To actually hitch up her skirts like her tabby cat of a sister Susanna and crawl from his sight. Well not today. Today was the last of such escapades. Though she'd been quite good, for recently only the ugly Scottish boy, McKenzie, and Mr Stevens had been regular.

On her reckoning Luke Gordon could be due in Wangallon Town at any moment. Lauren wiped at the line of sweat on her brow. Despite the morning's undertakings she felt rather jaunty. The
months of waiting were now behind her and she expected better things for her life in the new year. ‘Best be starting now,' Lauren decided, firming her mouth and straightening her back. ‘Ouch.' She pressed at the muscle in the small of her back, pinched her cheeks, although she doubted she needed the colour, scooped up a handful of potatoes and walked from the storeroom, her head high.

Hilda Webb and her two daughters were arguing over their account at the long wooden counter, giving Lauren time enough to select a bolt of green material from the shelf. She snatched up a reel of cotton and a length of pink ribbon that she fancied and dropped them down the front of her loose fitting blouse, and then with a cursory glance at the rather cheap-looking shoes on display, she carried the material to the counter. Her presence immediately raised the ire of the women who were of the social conviction that one should not mix with the daughter of a washer woman.

‘Perhaps, Mr Stevens, you wish to serve this person. Then we can complete our business in private.' Mrs Webb held scented pomade to her nose.

Lauren dumped the potatoes on the counter and rested the material alongside. ‘This person has a name, Mrs Webb,' Lauren announced, summoning her best toff's voice that she decided was quite wasted in Wangallon Town, ‘which you know well enough seeing you can't keep staff for more than a few months due to your own ill-humour and it's me own mother who washes your dirty smalls.'

Mrs Webb opened her lips only to discover that embarrassment and anger rendered her silent. The older Miss Henrietta Webb took her mother's arm and, pulling her aside amid whispers and furtive glances, the two women busied themselves examining some handkerchiefs of very poor quality.

Lauren winked at Mr Stevens, whose permanent brow furrow had mysteriously smoothed with shock. ‘A length for a skirt, if you please, a dozen fresh eggs, a tin of condensed milk and I'll be having a couple of those,' Lauren pointed at the boiled lollies. The shopkeeper was staring at her as if she were some criminal straight off the boat from the mother country. ‘How is Mrs Stevens?' Lauren wet her forefinger, her saliva marking a line across the dusty counter. ‘You'll be needing a cleaner next, Mr Stevens. You ask Mrs Webb. People what are incapable of looking after themselves always need someone handy. Me, for example, I could give those pipes of yours,' she pointed at the wooden smoking pipes on the shelf behind him, then glanced at his crotch, ‘a real good blow out.' Lauren enjoyed herself by standing stock still as her material was cut and wrapped and her purchases bundled into a paper bag. ‘And I believe I would still have credit.' With her belongings pushed across the width of the counter, Lauren held out her palm. ‘I could check with Mrs Stevens?' Lauren snavelled up the coin thrown onto the counter.

Mr Stevens cleared his throat. ‘You don't have credit here no more, Miss.' He looked at her meaningfully.

Lauren tucked the bag under her arm and winked. ‘Neither do you, Mr Stevens.'

With her business completed, Lauren walked slowly past the three Webb women. The eldest girl, a peaky, skinnier version of her own cat's-bum-mouthed sister, considered herself above the inhabitants of Wangallon Town. ‘I'll give Mr Luke Gordon your best, Mr Stevens.'

Lauren didn't bother to look back, though she felt like one of those blue–green blowflies, sticky with interest. She needed to wash, eat and then position herself at the old box tree on the edge of town as if she were going for a walk. Of course it was possible that Luke wouldn't return on this very day, but last year he had. Four days before Christmas when the sky was near white with heat and dust and the birds stopped flying for fear of fainting and
a person lost their shadow, well, that was the hour Luke Gordon had walked his horses, pack horses and his blackfella mate into town. Lauren itched at the moisture gathering at her waistband and pushed a boiled sweet into her mouth.

For midmorning the main street was decidedly quiet. There were only three horses tethered to the hitching post outside the two-storey hotel and a black sulky. At the sight of the minister's sulky Lauren decided to take the longer route home by crossing the dusty street diagonally. This direction would take her through Mr Morelli's vegetable garden and past the Gee's chook house before sneaking through the backyards of three rather cantankerous women. Lauren was almost in too good a mood for a fight; however, if necessary she could shout just as loudly as the next old hag. Besides, she figured no good would come of crossing the path of a minister, what with her having committed one mortal sin already this fine day. She didn't think God would mind about the cotton and ribbon, after all it said nothing in the Bible about it being wrong for a woman to look her best. Lifting her skirts, Lauren kicked at a stone with her worn lace-up shoes and walked swiftly across the road. The air was already thickening with heat and swirls of dust spun up from the road like spinning tops.

Hoisting the paper bag beneath her arm, she was about to walk through the shabby remains of Mr Morelli's sun-withered garden when she heard her name called. She turned slowly, loath to be held up yet intrigued as to the voice that addressed her. Riding up the main street was one of the Wangallon men; the ugly Scottish lad, McKenzie. Lauren lifted her eyes heavenwards.
God's holy trousers
, she muttered. Why couldn't they space themselves out a bit instead of all fronting up like half-pint scallywags bobbing for apples. She waved briefly and then continued on. He was a good paying lad who treated her well enough, however business was over for the day and a girl couldn't go for bread and dripping when a joint of beef was soon to walk into town.