Bella's Run (14 page)

Bella saw flickers of fear in Eddie’s eyes.

‘Listen, you pimple-dick little tosser. Piss off to your big-city bars and clubs. Leave good country girls like me cousin and Patty here alone.’

‘Onya, Macca.’

‘Yeah, piss off!’ Voices from the crowd joined in.

With little steps, Eddie backed up. ‘Ah sorry, old fellow. I didn’t mean to upset anyone. Calm down a bit. I just thought . . .’ Eddie’s rush of words stopped abruptly as Macca raised a bushy eyebrow.

‘You thought what?’ Macca ground the words like a pestle.

Eddie rushed on, words spilling from his mouth like vomit. ‘Ah well . . . never mind. I’ll . . . um . . . go, shall I?’ He started to wiggle his way backwards through the throng of people now crowding around him. Strangers pressured him from all sides, pushing him, forcing his retreat, silently daring him to stay.

When he’d reversed himself clear of the main crowd, Eddie spun on his high heels and bolted for the tent doorway. Never being one for knowing when to keep his mouth shut, he turned for a last retort before he ran out of the tent to disappear into the night.

‘You’re all just a bunch of hick cowboys anyway!’

Everyone erupted into loud, raucous laughter.

‘Never a truer word spoken, hey fellas, and we’re bloody proud of it too!’ roared Macca.

The crowd moved back to the bar, where the rest of the girls were swaying on their knees in the shot-shooting competition. Ignoring the action still taking place, Macca spun to face an unkempt Bella and Patty. Both girls had plunked back down on the ground. ‘If you see or hear of that wanker again tonight, any time this weekend for that matter, you just find me or one of the boys here and we’ll deal with him. Right?’

Bella could see his gaze was filled with the ferocious protectiveness that came with love. The remaining few men who’d stayed at Macca’s side, blokes who’d known the girls and their families all their lives, added their voices to Macca’s.

‘Yeah!’

‘Hear, hear!’

‘Thanks, fellas.’ Bella could feel a blooming flush of heat on her face. The whole incident had sobered her as quickly as a dousing of ice-cold mountain water. She knew they’d almost caused a fight and she wasn’t proud of it. Visions of what they must have looked like rolling around, riding each other, flooded her mind and she shuddered as she thought about the trouble they might have caused. What would her parents say if they heard?

‘I just hope that toffy little shit gets in the fancy four-wheel drive he’s most likely driving and bales out of the valley pronto.’ Macca hunkered down beside the girls. Looking from one to the other and waving a warning finger in front of their noses he went on. ‘But I tell you what, you two. I don’t trust bastards like that one. No more flaunting yourselves, ya hear me?’

Bella heard him and bit back a retort. Beneath his usual easygoing personality, Macca had an autocratic attitude that could piss her right off.

But not this time.

She knew they deserved what he dished out. And she was glad he’d been there to protect them, even though it irked the crap out of her they’d needed him. Instead, she shut her mouth and looked at Patty to check what she thought. Seeing the glint in her friend’s eye and the pout on her lips, Bella could tell that Patty was thinking the same.

‘Girls?’ Macca laced his voice with warning.

As they reluctantly started to nod, Macca raised an eyebrow. Bella knew he’d guard them all night if they didn’t agree. Where was the fun in that? So she nodded energetically until it felt like her eyeballs were spinning.

‘What are you two doing here so soon anyway?’ Macca sat back on his haunches and settled in to roll a smoke. ‘I thought you were still up north enjoying station life for another month or so?’ He pulled out his baccy and paper from a top pocket. ‘Well, that’s what you said when we last saw you anyway.’

‘Well . . .’

‘Um . . .’

Both girls stopped and looked at each other.

‘I sense a story here,’ mumbled Macca, a tobacco paper on his lip, a plug of baccy now in his hand. ‘What did you do, the pair of you? Light a fire under a couple of ringers so they didn’t know which way was up? Flash a brown eye at the grader-driver while the boss was driving past?’

Conspicuous silence.

Eyes alight with laughter, Macca allowed the girls to guiltily squirm while he deftly rolled his smoke. Cupping his hands and leaning forward, he lit the rollie, then sat back on his heels. ‘Come on. Give it up. What’d you pair of minxes do?’ With his free hand he ruffled Patty’s hair then slid his fingers along her freckled nose to tap at its pert end.

Patty blushed. Watching closely, Bella was shocked to see that beyond the teasing humour in her larrikin cousin’s eyes there was possibly something else. And in return, Patty was staring up at Macca like he was God himself.

‘Now I don’t think I’ve ever seen
that
before.’ Macca was set to do what he did so well. Tease. ‘Pat Me Tuffet, blushing? That’s a new one on me.’

Patty reddened all the more.

Watching fascinated, Bella took pity on her best mate and rushed to Patty’s rescue. ‘Thought we’d drop into the Muster on our way back. Didn’t think we’d be home this early either, but, well . . . a few things happened . . . and, well . . . here we are.’

‘Huh?’ said Macca, eyes still on the red-haired girl by his side.

‘You wanted to know why we were here.’

Macca pulled his attention back to Bella. ‘Mmm, that definitely smells to me. You were enjoying yourselves
so
much; all those rodeos, race days and parties. What happened? Did that bitch, the station manager’s wife, finally find a reason to be rid of you?’

Patty looked at Bella; Bella looked back at Patty. Both girls laughed.

‘Mmm, well you could say that.’ Bella didn’t want to recount the drunken escapade that had led to their expulsion from Ainsley Station. Not after what had just happened. ‘Anyway, we thought we’d hoon down the east coast for a bit of a look-see. Heard about the Muster on the radio near Tamworth, so we decided to come straight here. A last piss-up before arriving home early to surprise everyone.’ She didn’t add that they’d been hoping the boys would be there.

Macca nodded, naïve to the female mind. ‘Must have been a bit of an eye-opener hitting the mountains after that flat, scrubby country up north.’

‘You can say that again.’ The first sight of the massive, blue-grey Great Dividing Range after a year away had been breathtaking. And their first glimpse of the final road to home, that ribbon of black tar that ran up, into and then through the mountains, had moved Bella to tears.

Patty finally found her voice. Touching Macca’s muscled arm to get his attention, she asked, ‘So, what have you been up to since I saw you last?’

Bella saw her cousin soften as he looked down into Patty’s dark eyes.

‘Macca?’ said Patty.

He sure was in trouble. Bella had never seen her cousin so lost for words. Macca stubbed out his cigarette butt and cleared his throat, then only managed a grunt before a commotion behind them saved him from answering.

It was Caroline Handley, an old school mate of Bella and Patty’s, and a contestant in the forgotten shot-shooting competition. Toppling from her spot at the makeshift bar, she’d accidentally shoved Prudence Vincent-Prowse as she went down, which started a domino effect along the line of still-kneeling drunken girls.

High-pitched squeals rang out.

Tinkling and chinking of smashing shot glasses followed.

The girls started to fall in a tumble of splayed limbs.

Forward momentum from the weight of all the lurching girls pushed against the A-frame trestle holding the tabletop in place.

The bar went down.

Dozens of discarded shot glasses still sitting on the bar started to freefall to the ground. Any contestants left kneeling and using the table as a prop finally toppled like a row of skittles one on top of the other, as the copious shots of Cock-Sucking Cowboys hit home.

The crowd went wild.

Chapter 14

Macca had wandered off in search of rum, so the girls crawled on hands and knees through the wreckage to an esky they’d hidden in the shadows of the tent walls. Grabbing a cruiser each, Bella slammed the esky lid shut, the effort causing her tummy to protest loudly to her brain.

‘Jeez, Irish cream and butterscotch schnapps is a lethal brew,’ she muttered as she tried mentally to force her insides to settle. She really wanted to spew.

‘Yeah, too right, totally lethal. Just like a real cowboy, a dick or a gun, hey – it’s much the same: one fatal shot and you’re out.’ Patty made the shape of a pregnant belly with weaving hands. This sent the pair into peals of hiccuping laughter. The seething crowd of drunks in the beer tent started drifting their way, ignoring the scrunching of glass underfoot. A hobnailed boot stomped down near Bella’s hand. ‘I reckon we should get out of here, Pat Me Tuffet, before we get trampled.’

‘Okay, but you’ll have to help me get up.’

‘What makes you think I’m in any better state than you?’

‘You owe me, girlfriend, big time. If I hadn’t stuffed those boobs of yours into that singlet, you could’ve had dirty male paws all over you by now.’

Bella shuddered. ‘Okay, so I owe you, but I’m going to grab my vest before we go. I always feel cold when I’ve had too much grog.’ Helping Patty to her feet, Bella grabbed an oilskin vest from beside the esky and started to make her way through the crowd towards the tent doorway. In the distance a band started strumming the first few bars of the classic ‘Khe Sanh’.

She loved that song.

Halfway to the exit Bella stopped and bent over. ‘Shit, I shouldn’t have stood up.’ A pinch to her butt cheek had her back upright. Turning her head all she could see was a big black hat and a very male Wrangler butt. ‘Whoa, mate. Don’t touch what you can’t afford.’

Patty grabbed hold of her hand and tried to tow her towards the doorway.

‘Jeez, I feel crook,’ said Bella. Burning bile was rising in her throat and her body started the pre-vomit sweats. ‘Let me outta here.’ Shaking away Patty’s hand, she took off in a shambling run, making it to the canvas tent opening in record time.

Eddie Murray was mightily uncomfortable. The tumbledown wattle-and-daub walls of the old hut where he was hiding were full of ants; inch-long, black, angry jumping jacks pissed off their hiding place had been usurped. Hidden from the beer tent’s view by crumbling clay, rotting wattle and a thicket of blackberries, Eddie lay face up on the hard, packed ground contemplating his options.

To stay or not to stay.

The most sensible idea would be to get the hell out of Dodge, or Nunkeri in this case, while he was still in one piece. Those blokes in there had looked very pissed off, and Eddie was happy with his face the way God had given it to him, although his height always caused a bit of concern.

He was damned sure that if he was spotted again the bushmen’s reception wouldn’t be so restrained. But Eddie had never been known for doing the sensible thing. That’s why he was so successful in high-powered finance. Living on the edge was what he did.

He slapped at an ant on his moleskin-clad haunch, once again marvelling that the little black buggers could bite through such thick material. He rolled onto his front and peered over the crumbling clay wall. Surely there had to be an easier way of getting a
Penthouse
romp with lusty, hay-covered sheilas.

A retching sound drew his attention back to the tent he’d recently exited. A girl staggered from the tent’s opening, her body listing from side to side. Peering hard through the blackberry bush and surrounding gloom, he couldn’t believe his luck. It was the blonde.

Under the floodlights he could see sweat glistening across the top of her heaving cleavage. A tumble of ringlets covered most of her face as she was obviously trying hard not to vomit. She halted in the reflected glow of the generator-driven lights and pushed the sun-bleached curls from her face with the back of her hand. Eddie caught the upward movement of those glorious breasts as they threatened to topple from their restricting cradle once again. He felt his dick harden in an instant and he knew he couldn’t and wouldn’t ‘get the hell out of Dodge’.