Page 79 of Stockman's Sandstorm

‘I gave her that when she caught me cheating at poker. I won’t play with her anymore because she knows all my tells.’ He chuckled, rubbing at the dirt on his ruddy cheeks. ‘But my hatband came to be because I got bit.’

‘Excuse me?’ She wasn’t sure if the old storyteller was telling another tall tale.

‘Back in the day, me and Darcie went hunting for buffalo. When Darcie spotted this ten-carton buff—’

‘A what?’

‘It’s how many cartons of meat you’d get once you take down that buffalo. It’s measurements, like it’s a two-can drive to town, six-can trek to my mate’s house.’

‘You measure the distance in beers?’

‘For sure, mate, it’s the Territory way.’ His cheeky wink made her smile. ‘Anyhoodle, there we were hunting after that buffalo, tracking it to where it had crossed this spring. Darcie reckoned the water was only knee-deep, and it’d be a good place to cross, he said. Little did we know that lying under that dirty water was a two-and-a-half-metre crocodile, just waiting.’

‘Oh, no!’

‘Well, Darcie got through fine, with me right behind him. But when I tried to climb outta that spring, it felt like a stick had jabbed me in the leg. It was only then I looked down and saw my leg was stuck inside this saltie’s mouth.’

Harper gasped, hand to her throat. Her horse must have noticed, lifting its head, she patted its milky mane, which calmed her down, too. ‘What did you do?’

‘I froze and called for Darcie. We couldn’t shoot it, coz if the croc moved it would’ve ripped my leg open. I was surprised it hadn’t. But sure as Monday follows Sunday, I jammed the butt of my gun right between its eyes. It must’ve stunned it enough to let go of my leg, so I could pull the trigger, with Darcie doing the same.’

‘What happened next?’

‘Well, after that, my leg spasmed up something fierce. We wrapped my leg in my shirt and I drove myself to town to see the doctor. Darcie dragged that crocodile carcass back home and gave me the leather as a get-well pressie and I used it to make boots, belt, and my hatband.’ He lifted the leg of his trousers and showed off the scar. ‘It was my prize for surviving.’

She gasped at the size of the jagged scar in his lower calf. ‘You’re lucky you did survive.’

‘Don’t I know it.’ He tapped the brim of his hat with a grin and a sparkle in his eyes.

They rode in silence for a while, concentrating on the slender, rocky path. The constant shift of hooves was like the beat of a thousand drums, blending with the low cattle murmurs.

The path widened, and they were back on the path she remembered. Hooves swapped the clash against rocks, for soft river sand and the slosh of water trickling down the middle of the Stoneys where they followed the water uphill, the direction for home.

‘Reckon you can take the left and play catcher on the wing?’

‘You should write a book interpreting your sayings, starting with catcher on the what?’ Were they going to start playing baseball?

‘It’s where you try to block off the mob from wandering down the side tracks.’

‘With what? A big baseball glove.’

‘This …’ He held out a rope, bound into a large coil like his stockwhip. ‘You just wave it at them. They’ve seen enough of the stockwhip to listen up. You’ve got this, missy.’

The rope was coarse in her hands, like the reins she’d been holding for hours. Now she understood why Bree wore gloves. ‘I’m getting riding gloves in the future.’

‘If you keep this up, I might have to teach you how to swing a decent stockwhip, for sure.’ Charlie nodded at her and rode to the front, the cattle following. ‘Now, you wait a beat in that gap so none of them think they can play hide and seek through the caves.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘They’re knackered now, so they’ll behave. Just make some noise and your horse will do the rest. It’s what they’re trained to do, and that stockhorse you’ve got is a good one, for sure.’

She wished she knew the horse’s name, as she was relying so heavily on it.

Bree and Charlie shared a close relationship with their stockhorses, compared with the horses the brothers swapped between them as they debated over fuel and vehicle cost comparisons and the benefits to riding horses. Cap was keen on keeping the horses based on the many pluses for the environment. But then the discussion shifted to horse feed and fixing the stables, in between all the other jobs they had. The to-do list for running a station seemed never-ending. No wonder the brothers were grappling with what was a priority when the list grew daily.

It reminded her of days in the office where they’d plan years in advance, down to monthly, weekly, and daily events, allowing for a change in priorities such as anti-terrorist training, or for political scandals where you dropped everything for damage control.

She was pretty sure horse riding and learning how to muster weren’t part of any conventional nanny’s job description. But she’d asked to try.

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