Moonstone Promise (8 page)

On the opposite bank, a man's voice came back. ‘Hey! Over 'ere.'

Bob kicked off his thongs and began rolling up his jeans. ‘Coming?' he said to Luke.

Luke didn't bother rolling his up. It was so hot he welcomed the idea of cold wet jeans. He followed Bob in and waded through the knee-deep water. It was cool and slow-moving. The concrete causeway was green with moss and slippery under his feet. ‘What river's this?'

‘The Rubicon, boy,' said Bob. ‘You're crossing the Rubicon.'

A man with wild, springy black hair and an untrimmed beard, wearing just an old pair of footy shorts, waded through the water. ‘The turtles are comin' down the river,' he called out, holding his hands out to the size of a football. ‘Saw two of 'em. Big fat ones.'

‘How big?' chuckled Bob.

‘They were
huge
, brother, big dinosaur ones. Tex saw 'em.' He called over his shoulder, ‘Didn't you, Tex?'

Luke heard a confused mumbling as someone came sloshing around the bend.

‘Them turtles, Tex,' the man reiterated. ‘Huge, weren't they?'

An older man with long skinny black legs and silvery hair waded towards them. In his hand, he clasped a small turtle by the neck. Its shell was barely larger than the man's fist. ‘Oh yeah, they were huge.' He held the turtle up and grinned. ‘This one's just a little baby one. Mum and Dad got away.'

‘You're not gonna eat that poor thing?' said Bob.

Tex looked at it and pursed his lips. ‘Bit scrawny, ay.' He flipped it back into the river.

‘You stop at the shop?' asked the wild-haired one.

‘Yeah,' drawled Bob. ‘Just got the usual roadside crap.'

Luke stepped out from behind Bob. ‘Oh yeah, and I brought a young fulla too. This is Luke.'

Luke felt two pairs of shrewd eyes run over him. The mood changed immediately.

The man with the springy hair stepped up onto the bank. He was big, with heavy features, but his movements were smooth and liquid, almost like a cat's.

‘Tyson,' he said, shaking Luke's hand, first in the way Luke was accustomed to and then urban-style, rotating his palm to take Luke's thumb in a fist-like hold. His grip was strong but cordial, and his skin felt smooth, almost papery.

‘Tyson,' Luke nodded.

The man called Tex was slower to come over. He held out a long, sinewy arm and offered a hand full of bumpy knuckles. ‘Tex,' he said, in a voice that went with his posture: easy, gentle and welcoming. He seemed senior to the other two men, and not just because of his age; he moved and spoke with authority. ‘How are ya, Luke?' he asked.

‘Yeah, good,' answered Luke. And he meant it. Something about the place was indescribably peaceful and he felt lucky to be standing there. He had no idea how long he was going to be around or what he would be doing with himself, but he didn't care. The place seemed special, ancient and untouched, as though a dinosaur could come clumping through the trees at any moment. If he had to be homeless, this was a heck of a nice place to do it.

The men began talking among themselves, with words and names that Luke didn't know. They spoke quickly, in voices too accented for him to understand. Luke stood there awkwardly, not sure what to do with himself. He picked up the word
yarramin
, which he knew meant ‘horse', and wondered if they were talking about him.

Tyson squatted next to the fire as he talked, feeding the small pile of coals. He waved a finger at the ground, indicating that Luke should sit down, and he did as was suggested. Bob plonked a bag of groceries on the ground and sat next to him. Luke turned to him. ‘What did you just say to them?'

‘What do you mean?' asked Bob.

‘Just then, you were talking about me. What did you say?'

‘I told them you were good with horses, wanted to come and see some wild brumbies.'

He had said more than that, Luke was sure, but he was okay with that as a general introduction.

Tyson pulled out a can of food from Bob's shopping bag. ‘Baked beans? What, am I a vegetarian now?'

‘For breakfast,' said Bob. ‘Thought you fullas were getting some wild meat. Didn't know all you could catch was a puny little turtle.'

Tyson ignored him and kept rummaging. ‘Hmm, yams.' He poked them into the coals with a stick. ‘So you're a bit of a fighter, ay, Luke?' he said.

Luke ran a thumb over his lip. ‘Guess I must be.'

‘And you're looking for brumbies, ay?'

‘I wouldn't mind gentling one,' said Luke. ‘A real one, out in the wild, not in a yard. I reckon taming a brumby would be really cool.'

‘You won't have any trouble finding them around here,' said Tyson.

‘Like horses, hey?' asked Tex, joining them.

‘Yeah,' said Luke. ‘Horses go way back in my family. I lost my first one, but my second family are riders too. My brother reckons the horses up here have got really hard feet. He's a farrier.'

Tyson began rummaging through the bag again. ‘No sauce?'

‘What, you think it's Christmas or something?' said Bob. ‘Anyway, that stuff's full of sugar.'

‘Last time
you
go to the shop,' Tyson grumbled back. He pulled a packet out of the bag. ‘Noodles,' he grunted with contempt. ‘Bring a can opener, or a
pot?
'

Bob groaned in annoyance.

Tyson stuffed everything back in the plastic bag. ‘I'm not eating any of that crap,' he grumbled. He folded his arms across his chest. ‘Gonna have to do some serious fishing.'

‘So you ride them horses too?' asked Tex from the other side of the fire.

‘Yep,' Luke answered. ‘I've been doing a few camp–drafts.'

The other men didn't pursue the conversation. They began talking quietly in their own language again. They seemed to be disagreeing about something. As Luke sat on the outer, the image of Lawson standing over him with blood on his lip came flashing into his memory, and it made him feel sick that he'd hit him.

‘Me and Lawson had a bit of a falling out,' he blurted for no particular reason. ‘I wish I could take him a brumby home. He'd love it.' He paused and then said quietly, ‘Make it up to him.'

The campsite was quiet for a while longer until Tyson spoke. ‘That's good thinking, Luke.'

Luke felt a surprising wave of relief at the approval in Tyson's voice.

Tex picked up a stick and began scraping at a mound of coals, revealing a lump wrapped in foil, sitting in a shallow hole. A waft of cooked meat hit Luke in the nose.

‘Is that kangaroo?' he asked.

Tyson and Bob both laughed.

‘I got us a big barra,' said Tyson. He turned to Bob. ‘You wanna teach this poor kid to fish while he's here, bro.'

The fish was like nothing Luke had ever tasted before; juicy white slabs of meat, infused with a smoky flavour from the coals and drizzled with bush limes that Tex had collected at a property on his way to the river. The yams were good too: fluffy and sweet on the inside, charcoal on the outside, which was okay if he dusted the gritty bits off.

As he talked to the men that night, Luke found out that Tex did the mail run every Saturday, out to all the stations in the lower Gulf. After his deliveries he often stayed to fish in the river. Tyson was some sort of advisor to the government, something to do with education, and that got him travelling around too. This wasn't their country. They were all from further down south, but the fishing was better up here.

Later, Tex and Tyson rolled out swags and fell asleep by the fire. Luke unrolled his blanket and threw it around his shoulders. As he watched the flames lap at a large chunk of log, he turned to Bob. ‘How come Tex was asking me about the horses like that?'

‘Ah yeah, that,' said Bob, seemingly mesmerised by the fire. ‘Tex is wary about people with horse dreaming.'

‘Horse dreaming?'

‘Yeah, you got big horse dream kicking around inside you, boy,' said Bob. ‘The way you walk with 'em like that
—
' He shook his head. ‘
—
it's not normal. Tex's worried about
purri purri –
black magic.'

‘
Purri purri?
I thought you fellas were good horsemen too. Harry reckoned Aboriginal stockmen were the best around,' said Luke. ‘Like you.'

‘Yeah, there are big traditions around Aboriginal stockmen, but also big fear of horses, mostly with the older fellas, a lot of lore about them carrying devils in their bellies, being sorcerers or demons, spirits in disguise. Old clever fellas run with 'em, do terrible things.'

Bob went quiet for a moment. His face, lit by the glow of the fire, was still. ‘It goes back to first contact, back to the massacres. The stories were told to keep the kids away from bad places.'

Luke stared into the fire. It made him feel uncomfortable, sitting there imagining what his ancestors might have done to Bob's.

‘My people have a lot of sad stories, Luke. Tex'll be all right once he works out you're not playing with magic.' Bob got up and stretched his legs.

Luke lay back with his blanket wrapped around his shoulders and gazed up at the stars. Locusts hovered in the light over the fire and he could hear cane toads crashing about in the shrubs and grasses around him. The trees were tall and scrawny without much cover.

He tried to close his eyes and sleep but his brain kept replaying the fight with Lawson, bringing a surge of shame each time, taking him back to a place that Harry had once pulled him out of.

After lying there for half an eternity, trying to deflect the sadness with thoughts of wild brumbies, he decided to get up and go for a wander. He walked out beyond the river into a paddock. The moon was rising, full and beautiful, turning the soft darkness of the land into tangles of black and silver. Although unsure of the ground beneath him, Luke set off at a slow jog, aiming for a small range of hills.

He ran down a little gully and over a stream. On the other side, the long grass swished as he brushed through it. He settled into a steady rhythm and as he began to pant he felt better, so he pushed it out a bit harder, blowing heavier and heavier with every mile he chewed up. It took longer than he expected to get to the line of hills. It seemed that the more he ran towards them, the further away they got, as though they were leading him on a chase. A fence loomed. He grabbed a post and vaulted over to the next paddock.

There, he saw silhouettes of horses, heads raised, ears alert, ready to flee. Luke slowed to a walk, then stopped and bent over with his hands on his knees, waiting for his breath to slow. A couple of mares ushered their foals away. The other horses resumed grazing.

Luke quietly approached what looked like an old quarter horse and ran his hand down its shoulder. He felt the broken pelt of a hot brand on its shoulder and wondered what sort of life the horse had had. Had it mustered cattle or been a campdrafting star? Been an old schoolmaster for the kids? He was a gentle old soul, this one. Luke ran his hands over the horse's neck, put his face against it, breathed in its scent, and felt the tension ease from his body.

The salty smell of horse sweat brought back images of home: of Legs and all the horses; Harry, limping down the stable aisle and sneaking a fag when he thought no one else was around; the warm sunny days spent training horses, sweeping out feedrooms and unloading trucks of lucerne. He remembered all the laughter and knocking about with Tom, hanging out at the mares' paddock with Jess, watching the foals play.

That life never belonged to me, anyway.

The old quarter horse put his head down to graze. Luke took a handful of mane and slipped up onto his back. It was broad and as comfy as a couch. He lay along it with his chest over the horse's wither, hung an arm either side of his shoulders and clasped his feet together over the rump. The old horse snorted softly and kept grazing. Luke closed his eyes and let his head empty completely, until only the in and out of his breath ran gently through his conscience, interspersed with the slow pull and munch of the horse grazing. The past and the future ceased to exist. He was in the here and now, filled with peace and comfort.