Bella's Run (17 page)

A blackberry bramble slapped against her bare skin.

‘Youch.’ She grabbed at the spike-laden branch with its thorny barbs now stuck in her flesh. ‘Bloody blackberries.’

Her arm came free only to have the thorns snag her shoulder, drawing blood. She flung away the offending brambles.

Closing her eyes to protect them, she blindly moved past the remaining leafy canes, through the doorway to open ground, and into the waiting, sweaty arms of Eddie Murray.

‘Holy crap!’ Bella yelled as she slammed into a solid mass. Opening her eyes, she found herself staring at a perspiring, white forehead and the top of a balding male head. She tried to spring backwards but found herself held within an iron grasp, two hands clamped on her bum cheeks, squeezing with a grip that made her yell again.

‘Youch! What the—’

Mid-sentence, Bella’s reflexes kicked in and with them the basic human instinct – flight or fight.

Bella fought.

She struggled hard to move out of the lecherous arms.

Eddie grunted as elbows smashed into his chest, and he responded with a thrust of his hips pushing Bella away from him, bending her waist to an impossible angle. Bella felt a set of hips grind into the tops of her legs and a very male bulge try to mount her thigh, like a lusting dog on the make.

She lifted her leg to ram her knee into his groin but he was too quick, whipping his stocky leg around and through Bella’s feet, tripping her over and slamming her onto the ground.

‘Whoommff.’ Bella’s breath dived deep into her body. The pain of her back hitting the dirt drilled into her tail bone.

And then he was on top of her.

Fat and pudgy fingers mauled at her body, grasping at her waist buckle and pulling at the press-studs on her vest. Hot, fetid, sloppy lips mashed against her mouth, her cheeks, her neck, slobbering saliva.

The crack of the stockwhip rang through the night air.

Once.

Twice.

The man on top of Bella reared.

Once.

Twice.

Baying like a dingo, Eddie frantically rolled away from the biting sting that was crashing around his arse, leaving a stunned Bella alone on the ground. He could feel blood rising, steamy and hot as the cuts through his moleskins were laid bare to the night air. Only a flicker of his brain wondered at the origin of the welts. He’d felt them so often before in the bordellos of his city, an anonymous sweetener to his carnal entertainment, it just added to his sexual excitement, his lust-filled brain failing to register a warning bleep.

He scuttled to slam his body down on a stunned Bella, his throbbing dick now threatening to explode.

‘No you don’t, arsehole. Get the fuck OFF HER!’

The whip came down again.

Across his back. His shoulders.

A volley of cracks, unrelenting in their attack.

Eddie staggered up onto his feet and spun, lurching, confused, reaching out for his attacker.

He grabbed at the leather that was coiling like a snake out in front of him and succeeded in taking hold of the thong, reefing it from the hands of his assailant. Stepping away with his prize, he tripped over Bella’s now kicking legs and fell hard, losing hold on the whip. Bella flung herself sideways, snagging the handle with her outstretched hand and throwing it in the direction of her saviour. Eddie jumped to his feet, grabbing at space, just missing the flying whip by inches.

The shape in the darkness caught the whip and quickly moved it back and forth inscribing a figure of eight into the night air. To Eddie’s horror, there were two whips in motion.

With the pair of stockwhips clasped firmly in her hands, Patty deftly flipped into a Queensland Crossover and thrashed the bloke in front of her across his face, not caring if she blinded him.

In fact, she
wanted
to blind him, to flog him to within an inch of his hairy white butt, for what he had been trying to do to Bella.

‘Move, Bella, MOVE!’ Patty roared at her friend, not losing her beat as she pelted Eddie with her whips.

Bella rolled over and lurched to her knees. All she could see was Patty’s flying arms at one with her whips, pulling all the moves that had made her the Nunkeri Muster Ladies’ Whip-Cracking Champion for the last five years.

The wooden stock of the whip rose as one with Patty’s hand, the plaited thong flicking the Fall – a single strip of leather near the whip’s end – hard at the man in front of her. The cracker at the end wreaked its relentless damage on the soft facial features of Eddie Murray.

Eddie was screeching as he tried to grab at the woman causing him so much agony.

But she was unassailable.

A bevy of stockwhipping moves learned at her father’s knee and finetuned under the tutelage of a master in outback Queensland: a Sidney Flash followed by the Victorian Cutback. And then just as Eddie, in pain-driven terror, decided it was time to cut and run, Patty threw her red kangaroo whips into The Train.

A formidable movement of dual whips cracking out a sound like a train bearing down on an unending set of tracks. A movement that drove Eddie away from a swaying Bella and into the old hut’s remaining walled corner, in an effort to stay clear of the menacing leather.

Eddie was pinned down. His face and hands a bloodied mess, he cowered in the corner like a wounded dog.

Bella finally made it to Patty’s side, steering clear of the flashing leather, and wincing with pain as her bruised vertebrae shot into place down her racked spine.

‘Oh. My. God. He was trying to—’ Bella couldn’t finish the sentence, didn’t want to formulate the thought.

‘I know.’ Patty threw one of the whips to her friend, runner-up champion of the same stock-whipping challenge.

In perfect concerto the two girls finished the whipping display with an original and impressive Cattleman’s Crack, drawing the plaited thongs around over their heads and allowing the whips to fall with a dual crisp
thwack
at Eddie’s feet.

As one, they flicked both stockwhips to rest across their shoulders.

‘But he’s leaving now, aren’t you,
city slicker
!’ Patty ground the last two words out through clenched teeth.

Eddie Murray didn’t reply.

He couldn’t.

His bloodied mouth wouldn’t cooperate and he couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face. His eyes were swollen, blood-filled slits and his only thought was of escape – from these crazed mountain women, back to the city, where at least
his
kind of women knew their place.

Bella and Patty watched as he disappeared into the night, crashing through the blackberries like they weren’t even there.

‘I suppose we should’ve reported him.’ Patty said.

‘Nah, mate,’ mumbled Bella. ‘Don’t really want anyone knowing what just went on.’

‘But what if he tries it on someone else? What then?’

‘I don’t reckon we’ll see him again, Patty. Not after the hiding you just gave him. You were pretty impressive, you know.’

‘You didn’t do too bad yourself. Besides, he deserved every bit of it and more. Wish I could’ve got a go at his
bare
bum and then he’d have
really
known what pain was.’

‘You did good, Patty. Thanks.’ Bella shook her head. ‘Jeez, if you hadn’t come along just then, I’d have been in trouble. How’d you know I was here?’

‘I saw you when you were caught in the blackberries. I was just getting us another drink.’

‘Thank God you did.’ Bella’s voice trembled. With the adrenaline of the fight now seeping from her veins, she could feel the aftershocks of horror shuddering through her body. It had been close. Too close.

Violation and revulsion was all she could feel now. She found herself reliving the touch of those creepy, clammy sausage-like fingers pawing across her body.

‘It’s over now, mate, with no harm done, ay?’ Patty slung an arm over Bella’s shoulders and grasped her into a sideways hug. Bella ducked her head onto Patty’s shoulder, feeling the warmth of her friend’s body reach out to the coldness of her own.

‘Bella?’ Patty brought them both to a halt and spun her friend around to face her. ‘You’re okay, aren’t you, mate?’

‘Yeah, I suppose so. It’s just . . . I don’t know. He was so creepy, and I couldn’t protect myself.’ Refusing to look at Patty, she dug a booted toe into the ground, digging divots from the dirt.

‘Listen to me, girl.’ Patty forced Bella’s chin up and let her brown eyes bore into the opposite blue ones. ‘It’s finished, it’s over. He didn’t get you. We fought him off together. He couldn’t get his shiny white arse out of here quick enough. We
can
defend ourselves. It just takes a little country creativity, that’s all.’ Patty tried a smile. She leaned forward and grabbed hold of the stock of the whip resting across Bella’s shoulder.

‘For a runner-up, you didn’t do too bad a job yourself. I’d better watch myself in the championships this year.’

‘Yeah, right.’ The sarcasm was back in Bella’s voice. ‘Where’d you get the whips from anyway? I haven’t seen these two before. You been stashing some secret arsenal? Are you
that
worried I’ll whip your arse?’

‘For your information, old Wes Ogilvie made them for me, ready for tomorrow’s big competition. I went to grab us some more grog from the esky and ran into him on my way back. He’s pretty tanked and pissing poetry for conversation but he’d been looking for me to give me these.’ Patty proudly held up the whip. ‘Beautiful, aren’t they? Genuine Wesley Ogilvie 12 plait kangaroo hide whips. They cost me over five hundred bucks, but they’ll be worth it. I’m lining up for my sixth title, you know.’

Bella whistled. ‘Wes Ogilvie
made
you a pair of whips? Crikey, that’s impressive. I’ve got no flaming hope now. What is it with you and these old blokes? You just wind them round your little finger. I didn’t think he was making them anymore, not since Catherine got sick. Didn’t think he had the time, or maybe his heart wasn’t in it.’ Bella lifted the whip from her own shoulder, took in the skilful weaving of the rawhide and then reverently returned it to its proud new owner.

‘He’s got a grandson. A city slicker who’s helping him out a bit, he said, so old Wes’s making a few whips again.’

Bella shuddered. ‘Oh no, not another city boy.’

‘Nah, this one’s all right. Seems like a nice bloke. He’s a dentist or something toffy like that. I met him just before with Wes. Got a heck of a plum in his mouth but he turns out well in a pair of Wranglers.’ Patty waggled her eyebrows. ‘Come on, mate. Let’s put these whips with our esky and go find a party.’

Sometime later Patty disappeared again. Probably gone for a wee, thought Bella as she swigged on a bottle of water and idly listened to the new band on stage. Over the music she heard the distinctive, low-pitched rumble of the twin stacks mounted on her cousin’s ute. Bella honed in on the sound of the approaching vehicle. Her heart accelerated, pumping at double-pace. All senses went on high alert, nerve ends tingling in the deepest regions of her body.

She could sense it was him.

Hoped it was him.