Page 29 of Stockman's Showdown

Ryder wanted to go with her. ‘Dex, keep an eye on her.’

‘You don’t need to ask. I was going to anyway. My condolences, Charlie.’ Dex shook the old man’s hand, slid on his hat, and followed Bree into the sunshine.

‘Ready to go, Charlie?’ The sooner Ryder called the police the sooner they could get some answers.

Charlie paused to look back at the skeletons frozen in their embrace. ‘Harry didn’t deserve this.’

‘No one does.’

By the time they left the cave, the first cracks of the stockwhips echoed through the air. It was Bree, with Dex on the other side of the large herd of cattle that stirred the moving dust cloud away from Cattleman’s Keep. A place that finally had revealed its secrets.

Climbing back onto his horse, Ryder scoured the area to work out the best way to bring their vehicles in. That’s when he noticed the channel in the back, like an old forgotten track hidden by the small hill. ‘Charlie, how far away was it where youfound Harry’s car in the Stoneys?’ The old Holden Bree called Pandora.

Charlie paused, high on the saddle to narrow his grey eyes back at the Stoneys that stood like stone soldiers on the outer edge of the valley. ‘It’s just on the other side of that gap. I didn’t think to look this side. We were working inland.’

‘You wouldn’t have found this cave, not before the landslide.’ A cave cleverly hidden behind the small hill Bree had used to make her stand against the stampeding herd. The silly woman! Damn, it was hard to get angry with Bree when he had to admire her grit at the same time. ‘What was your brother’s job on the station?’

‘Boundary rider.’

‘So he had a horse?’

Charlie nodded from the saddle of his stockhorse, Slim, which was steadily picking its way through the rubble and onto the grassy plains. He craned around in his seat, his grey eyes shadowed by the brim of his stockman’s hat. ‘Do you reckon Harry drove out here with Penelope to stash their gear in this cave, hid his car in the Stoneys to avoid attracting attention, and then pack or something?’

Ryder followed on his own horse, which he had yet to name. ‘That would’ve taken some planning—leaving the car in the Stoneys.’ Which was miles away. Yet from his preliminary search with Dex, it looked like the couple had been preparing for their escape for a while considering they had suitcases, a handwritten letter, and a box of gold.

‘But does that make my brother and Penelope murderers for killing Penelope’s husband?’

Ryder shrugged. ‘I’m not familiar with the case.’ It was a sixty-year cold case, after all.

‘Well, I know the murder involves weapons, and Bree told me you’re good with guns. I saw what you did with her shotgun—you understand them in a way most people don’t. And you’ve got Dex there,’ he said, nodding toward Dex, who was mustering the herd. ‘That boy’s good with numbers. Look, I know you and Dex are clever lads. D’ya reckon you could take a gander at that murder file for me?’

‘Haven’t you read it?’

‘Policeman Porter won’t let me. I know the lad means well and all, but aren’t you good mates with his boss, Sarge?’

‘Marcus, yeah.’ Ryder had helped Marcus a few times since coming to Elsie Creek, they became friends who shared a liking for top-shelf bourbons.

‘Do you think you could ask him?’

‘I won’t promise anything, Charlie, but I’ll try.’

‘Thanks. That’s all a fella can ask.’ Charlie nodded, digging his heels into his grey horse’s flanks and they began the trek across the plains.

As the massive herd shifted like a sea of white coats, their horses galloped across the open range, eating up the grassy plains beneath their beating hooves. They wove their way through the large thicket of paperbark trees that was part of the dried-out swamp, where rich terracotta soils contrasted against the pale trunks of the peeling paperbarks that stood beneath a pale blue sky.

The track wove across the plains until it approached a wall of trees. The red rock escarpment towered over them on the right, as the track dipped steeply to meet the creek. The temperature dropped, and the sky was hidden above a blanket of trees.

‘We need to walk through here for a bit.’ From his horse, Charlie led the way down to the small creek. ‘You can only get through here in the dry. In the wet season it’s all under water, making it prime croc country.’

Didn’t that make Ryder peer keenly from his saddle, scanning the rocky creek beds for any telltale drag marks and other signs of the man-eating predators.

‘Have you been through the Scary Forest yet?’

‘No.’ Ryder removed his sunglasses to crane his neck at the monsoon forest’s thick clusters of trees with their interlocking branches, tangled with vines, as swooping groups of colourful parrots screeched like an in-house alarm system.

With the jungle hemming in from all sides, it triggered a memory of slapping at mosquitoes with a team of men wearing camo gear. He did not want to remember. He did not want his mind to start playing tricks on him as he peered into the shadows of a thick monsoon forest. ‘Why the name Scary Forest?’

‘Bree’s mother named it Scary Forest when she was four. Beatrice was so small then, she’d sit on the front of my saddle with me, and we’d go check on our cherabin pots, or go to the waterhole to do some fishing, and check on the cattle.’ Charlie’s soulful sigh had his shoulders folding over to slouch heavily in the saddle.

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