Bella's Run (10 page)

‘No way, sunshine. You didn’t
clean
the guest quarters.’

‘I did so. I helped you clean up the grog. Doesn’t that count?’

‘No.’

Patty looked momentarily disappointed.

‘Heads for the holiday.’ Bella wanted a decision.

Patty spun the coin in the air and slammed it down on the back of her fist.

They both held their breath as Patty lifted her hand.

‘Heads,’ she said, a grin lighting up her face. ‘Who needs to be responsible?’

‘Yee ha!’ yelled Bella. ‘Watch out, coast, here we come.’

Chapter 9

It was five weeks later, on a sunny Friday afternoon. They’d just left Tamworth, having decided no trip for two country girls was complete without a visit to the Australian capital of country music. They’d swung in from the coast on their way home.

It was Bella’s turn to drive, and she was struck by the sight of hundreds of umbrella-like grass seed heads rolling across the ground, piling up against fence posts, chasing each other over the paddocks and along the roadsides, looking for all the world like tumbleweed.

Sara Storer’s tumbleweed.

‘Tumbleweeds!’ she yelled.

Slouched in the passenger seat, hat pulled over her eyes, Patty roused from a doze.

‘Look at them go,’ said Bella. She jabbed at the ute’s accelerator in an attempt to outrun one that was rolling in the grassy long paddock beside her.

‘That’s flaming windmill grass, you dill, not tumbleweed, and it’s got a tailwind, so unless you want a speeding ticket I suggest you give up the chase now.’

‘It looks close enough to tumbleweed to me. Where’s that CD?’

‘What CD?’

‘Sara Storer.
Silver Skies
. With the tumbleweed song she played in Gundolin. Where did we put it? . . . Oh here it is.’ Bella found the CD right where it should be, in the CD holder. One-handed, she shook it free from its cover, then went to jam it into the CD player.

‘Hang on a minute.’ Patty stopped Bella from killing the radio. Jacking up the volume, the Americanised country twang of the radio announcer filled the cabin of the ute.

‘For anyone interested in crossing the border, the Nunkeri Muster will now be held this weekend. Usually held in February or March, the organisers have moved the event forward because of concerns about bushfires later on in summer due to the drought.

‘But regardless of the time of year, they’ve got the Stockmen’s Challenge, a demanding and hotly contested horse race, which will test out the best horsemen in the land. There’s some hay-stacking, round-bale-rolling, whip-cracking and bush poetry. On Friday night a country-music DJ will hit the stage. He’ll be followed by a cover band on Saturday night . . .’

Bella looked at Patty.

Patty looked at Bella.

No-one knew they were on their way home. They’d decided the news they’d been sacked was better told to their parents in person. And they’d wanted to surprise Will and Macca. All phone calls home had been brief, text messages vague. What better way to end a year of fun and freedom than with the Nunkeri Muster?

And Will and Macca were sure to be there.

‘You in?’ said Patty, looking across the ute at her best mate. ‘Boy, oh boy, I’m in!’ yelled Bella, dropping the CD and shoving her left hand in the air.

‘Let’s do it then!’ cried Patty, slamming a high five.

‘You realise we won’t get there tonight,’ said Bella, a little while later.

Patty grunted, again nestled under her hat against the seat-rest.

‘If we start out early in the morning, we’ll get there in plenty of time for tomorrow night, though.’

Another grunt from the passenger seat.

That was enough encouragement for Bella. She notched up her speed and firmly pointed the ute’s bonnet south while the radio announcer voiced the local rural news. With nothing to do but drive, Bella snagged her Sara Storer CD from the floor where it had fallen, shoved it into the player and cranked up the volume.

She felt the music transport her to another time, another place.

She was in Gundolin.

Back with Will.

Dancing with Will.

Man, she’d missed him. Never before had she been so struck on a bloke. Will had somehow broken through the rules she and Patty had lived by: all fun; no pain or gain, especially when it came to men.

At unexpected moments over the last couple of weeks when she was riding the motorbike, or just mowing the lawn, she’d found herself yearning to see him, to hear his deep voice and laughter, to smell and feel his warmth.

The few mobile phone calls and text messages they’d shared had only accentuated the hundreds of miles of distance between them and made her yearn for him all the more.

She wanted to taste him. Make love to him.

Six weeks was up.

She’d won the bet. All wagers were now off. The booty was hers; Patty owed her a slab of rum and fifty bucks.

Her eyes slid across the ute to Will’s sister. Bella had been worried about Patty too, since the boys left. Patty had been quiet – almost reflective – and that wasn’t like her at all. Strangest of all was that Patty hadn’t been forthcoming with information after the night in Gundolin. When Bella asked how things had gone, Patty just smiled. With dreamy eyes she’d responded, ‘Good,
really good
.’

That was it. Not a skerrick more.

Although, Bella hadn’t exactly bared her soul to Patty about Will either, other than to complain about a certain bet.

More roaming windmill grass caught Bella’s eye in the paddock out to the right, tumbling wildly like her thoughts and her unexpected feelings for Will. Her whole body suddenly seemed as light as air at the thought of what was waiting in those mountains. Bella pulled the ute to a halt by the side of the three-chain wide road. Unsnapped her seatbelt.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Patty, the sudden stop making her pull the hat from over her eyes. ‘Where are you going?’ she said again, jolting upright.

Bella jumped from the driver’s seat, grabbed her hat and slammed the door.

Through the open window she called, ‘Out to dance through tumbleweeds!’

‘They’re not tumbleweeds, they’re just bloody grass heads! You’re an idiot.’

‘So are you. Come
on
!’ Twirling, Bella threw her hat into the air. ‘We’ve lived one of our dreams, Patty. Our outback road trip is done. Now we’re free and ready for our next adventure. I love my life!’

And she ran.

‘I can’t fucking believe I’m doing this,’ said Patty as she unsnapped her belt and got out of the ute.

‘Come on, grumble-guts. Have you ever seen anything like it?’ called Bella as she threw her hands in the direction of the hundreds of tumbling weeds scooting down the road. ‘They look so wild. So free. Just like us.’

‘If you say so, girl,’ said Patty, parking her bum on the bonnet. ‘So free in fact, in the US, North Dakota I think, they considered erecting a fence all the way around the
whole state
to stop the tumbleweed taking over. See, I’m not just a dumb-arse nurse.’

‘I never said you were.’

‘No, but you’ve thought it plenty of times.’ Patty lifted herself off the ute and slung an arm around her friend. ‘I agree. We’re as free-spirited as tumbleweed – but we’re not half as prickly!’

‘Speak for yourself.’

Patty went for a full arm-lock around Bella’s neck. Bella jammed a pair of hands into Patty’s sensitive ribs and tickled for all she was worth.

Patty roared and let her go, laughing.

Gasping for breath, Patty took a few moments to compose herself. ‘We need a photo. So we have proof for our grandkids that we actually did this.’

‘Grandkids? Whoa back. I can’t even contemplate the idea of kids.’

‘Okay. How about so we’ve got proof we’re legends in our own lunchboxes?’

Bella raised an eyebrow, then grinned and nodded.‘You’re just so full of yourself.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Yep.’

Patty looked contemplative. ‘You’re probably right.’

Then she ducked into the ute to grab her camera, and set the self-timer.

‘So are you coming?’ asked Bella.

‘Where to?’

‘To dance, my friend . . . To dance with Sara. Let’s pretend all this blow-away grass is tumbleweed and dance like lunatics. We’ve got the Nunkeri Muster and two boys waiting in those mountains of ours on the other side of the border. What’s not to be happy about?’

The driver in the four-wheel drive coming in the opposite direction was mystified. Two young girls – one a long-ringleted blonde, the other a shorter, claret auburn – looked like they were dancing by the side of the road on a Friday afternoon. From the camera perched precariously atop a felt Akubra hat on the roof of the ute, they also appeared to be trying to pose for a photo.

Figuring they were half-cut from an early finish shearing a mob or maybe they were starting early for a B&S weekend, he kept them in his rear-vision mirror long after he’d passed by. They were easy on the eye, that was for sure. And at his age the talent had all but dried up. Maybe he should have offered to take the photo for them.

A bit late now. They were on the move again, twirling, laughing. They reminded him of the yearlings he had at home, playful young horses full of the thrill of life. Arms swinging, heads bopping, elastic-sided boots flying through the air, their features slowly became blurred until they were just a pair of shadows dancing in the breeze.

Chapter 10

Will O’Hara shouldn’t have been at the Stockmen’s Muster on the Nunkeri Plains. He should have stayed at home, baling his paddock of lucerne before the cool change hit. Downing a gulp of rum-and-coke, he slumped his shoulders forward over the can in his hand and tried not to think about the green crop languishing in neat rows on his river flats, waiting to be baled into squares.

His thoughts shifted to his broken-down ute, sitting in the workshop back home on Tindarra Station. He’d inherited the ute along with the hundreds of acres which made up the station from his late Uncle Bill. He could have had the new water pump fitted to the old girl by now and she would’ve been running real sweet. He needed her going so he could start repairing the boundary fence between his place and his father Rory’s property next door.

He let out an audible sigh that floated into the night air above his tousled russet hair, heard by no-one who really counted. He
had
to get the place through this drought. So far he was doing okay; he’d de-stocked as much as he could afford to and was now only running a few steers he’d picked up cheaply. He had his new cropping regime sorted, and Bill had been able to see the first crop of lucerne cut before he died a couple of years ago. A stab to his guts reminded him how much he missed the old man. No, he shouldn’t be sitting in front of a huge bonfire on this grassy plain in the middle of nowhere drinking rum.