Page 10 of Stockman's Sandstorm

‘Coffee, Charlie?’ Cap asked.

‘As much as I’d like to, the caffeine makes my ticker race too much.’ Charlie patted over his heart. ‘Well, Ash, you ready to go?’

‘Go where?’ Ash slurped on his coffee. It was thick and creamy, coating his tongue as the perfect kickstart to the day. Slipping on his boots, he vaguely remembered he had to go shopping. ‘The shops don’t open for hours.’

‘The troughs, lad.’

‘Huh?’ Ash’s eyebrows rose over his cup. ‘But—’ He pointed at the toddler, having a fat time with some blocks.

‘The kid can come too. I used to give my beautiful Bea a break and take my baby girl out with me whenever I was boundary ridin’. The rock in the saddle, or vehicle, puts them to sleep every time. Bree said the baby seat will fit the Razorback, no problems.’ Charlie’s boots, with their thick Cuban heels, clomped up the porch steps. He squatted before the small boy inside the playpen. ‘Well, look at you. You’re a Riggs all right. Got that same nose and eyes, he has … You know what you have here, lads?’ Charlie tossed his thumb at the boy. ‘You’ve got your first cowboy at the station.’

‘He’s not a cowboy,’ Ash muttered.

Charlie grinned, adjusting his big hat. ‘Traditionally, Northern Territory cowboys were what we called young boys who’d start learning the trade as junior station hands. Then they’d graduate to stockmen. Jackeroos were usually sons of cattle station owners. Boys sick of their dads telling them what to do back home, so they’d get sent to work somewhere else for a bit.’

‘So, that’d make Mason a junior jackeroo, cause I’m a station owner?’ It was better than calling the kid a cowboy, which was an insult to a stockman.

‘Whatever you call him, he’s your legacy, and he needs a hillbilly hood.’

‘A what?’

‘Charlie means a hat,’ said Cap.

‘As an old-timer, I’m not gonna tell you what to wear on your noggin, that’s a personal thing, for sure. But back in the day, you could tell where someone came from just by the way they bashed their hat, like you mob do.’ Charlie pointed at the brothers. ‘There’s a Territory style to you, Ash. Same with Dex, but with a touch of Queenslander. Cap, you did time in WA and a lot of sheep in South Australia, I reckon. And Ryder, you were in the military.’

‘You can tell all that by a man’s hat?’ Ash adjusted his own well-bashed hat that he’d picked up in Katherine years ago.

‘If you’ve been in the game long enough, like I have, sure. Where did the little fella come from?’ Charlie narrowed his eyes at the boy holding up one of his blocks.

‘South.’

‘Yeah, Bree said he’s got that southerner’s skin. Guess that’s why she gave me her special brand of sunscreen to put on the kid.’ He tapped his work shirt pocket. ‘But you get this billy lid a hat, slop on the sunscreen, and his skin will toughen up in no time. Well, enough chinwaggin’, where’s this baby seat at? Stop looking, I found it.’ Charlie pulled the child’s booster seat from the pile of baby junk. ‘Back in the day, if they didn’t sit still, we’d strap them to the seat with rope. So, someone must be making money outta these fandangle contraptions.’

‘Before you go, Charlie …’ Ryder cleared his throat. ‘Bree told us about the threats to try and force you to sell this station.’

Charlie paused on the front porch steps, his hand gripping the baby seat, as he scowled at the dirt. ‘I told her not to say anything. It stopped once you lot bought the place.’

Ryder’s chair scraped across the floorboards as he approached the old caretaker. ‘Did they wreck the dam?’

‘Can’t prove nothing.’ Charlie squinted at the small, swirling willy-willy of dust dancing over the dry paddock. ‘All I know was that it was working fine one day, then the next its sides were torn down, along with our fences, with a stack of tyre tracks coming from the eastern firebreak. Bree and I were busy busting our butts fighting this bushfire. It started on the same day, over on the other side of the property.’

‘Sounds like they’d done that as a diversion,’ said Ryder, as Dex’s scowl deepened.

‘It was.’ Charlie slowly shook his head, staring at his boots as he spoke. ‘We had to do a back-burn to stop it from taking off, which meant sacrificing the crops we were getting ready to harvest. That boss of theirs was clever.’

‘How?’ Cap asked.

‘Coz in one day, they’d left us with no food or water for the cattle to get us through the Dry.’

‘What did you do?’ asked the animal-saving Cap.

‘Bree sat in the saddle for months, playing drover with that herd down the long paddock until the rains came, then she brought ‘em home.’ Charlie nodded to the open country towards the rising sun. ‘It’s that same mob of scrubbers you lot put in that paddock you finished re-fencing. You’ll find more scattered along the plains, where they’ve got plenty of scrub feed to keep ‘em happy. The rest, well …’

‘How many cattle did this station run?’ Ryder asked.

‘In her prime, Elsie Creek Station could hold fifty thousand head. When I became head stockman we kept it to twenty-five to thirty thousand head to not overrun the place, right up until Darcie left us.’

‘Where did they all go?’

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