sir.”
We sat there, the three of us at a table with our cups of coffee and tea, waiting a good hour for the sky to brighten. They both seemed disinclined to learn any more than the few tattered pieces of information they had already received about me. I didn’t get more out of Angus, except that he had ordered a load of twelve horses from one of the Sutherland properties several hours to the south. The current station horses were either old, completely wild, or both.
They unloaded the new horses at the yards. A mismatched bunch if I ever saw one: a mass of manes and dust, tumbled and shaky and roughed up from jolting hours on the road. Some were monstrous animals, half draft horse, and others bony and small. All of them were stock-horse blood—thoroughbred, Arabian, and pony descendants of the earliest horses of Australia—made for distance, agility, harsh conditions, and cow work. I didn’t know whether to be enthusiastic or concerned. These were the horses that had fallen to the bottom of the barrel, scraped from other stations and trucked north to the farthest, newest Sutherland station, which had yet to gather credibility. But at the same time I didn’t feel quite so out of place as I swung the heavy pipe gates closed around the stirring, biting tangle of animals. After all, they would not have any more experience on the outfit than I did.
Angus introduced Wade Hamilton, the head stockman, who had arrived with the load of horses. Short, in his early thirties, with close-cropped dark hair and a coffee-brown stockman’s hat, he had a strong grip and a shadow of a grin. With him was Dustin, Wade’s young brother-in-law and my fellow station crew member. He was a kid, not yet eighteen, and he gave me a lop-sided smile as he stepped forward and said, “How ya goin’, mate?”
Angus indicated to Wade that he was passing off responsibility for me, and he climbed back into the ute—a utility vehicle with a cargo tray—and left us there at the corral without another word.
“Well mate,” Wade said, “let’s sort out these horses.”
He carried a saddle and saddle pad out from a shipping container serving as a tack storage that sat just beyond the pens. He swung the saddle to rest on the cross-rails of the rusty pipe fence and stepped inside the corral with a halter. Dustin and I followed into the smoke of agitated soil.
As the head stockman, Wade had first choice of the new mounts, and he didn’t waste time laying claim. He didn’t even turn to us, just quietly said, “I’ll take the white gelding and the tall bay.” We would each need a change of horses, two or three for the cow work that lay ahead.
Wade moved forward, and the horses pressed against the farther corner of the corral. “We’ll ride ’em and you can choose a couple for yourselves.”
We didn’t argue with his choices, the most handsome horses in the motley herd. I had silently chosen another two horses, but I’m unsure how they caught my eye. One was a tall dark horse, almost as regal as the bay, and the other a smaller black horse with a quiet eye. Maybe it was the same magnetism that draws people to recognize each other without having met before. I knew those were the horses I wanted to know, to approach quietly and lay a hand on the dark withers, to slip a lead rope around the neck, feel the nostrils quivering, and look into the liquid eye.
Wade stepped into the milling band and eased the white gelding apart, slipping the halter strap around his neck and leading him back to the fence to be saddled and bridled. Dustin and I opened the gate to let the others into the next corral, should the gelding get wild. Wade held the reins close to the horse’s neck as he swung into the saddle, ready for anything. The white horse arched his head and pranced the first few steps, but moved off into a fast high trot without revolt.
Wade had arrived at Stilwater a few months prior, bringing his wife, Cindy, and their two young children—Wyatt, who was five, and a newborn daughter, Lily. Wade had grown up on cattle properties in Central Queensland and spent his early life around horses and cows. He had also been a bull rider.
He’d met Cindy in the rodeo circuit—she was a professional barrel racer, and she kept her brumby-cross chestnut barrel horse close to the house to ride. Some days she took her horse and Lily out to the round yard, set her sleeping daughter in the pram, and galloped dusty circles around the innocent child. I’d heard stories of some mothers carrying their infants in slings while they mustered and hanging the babies in trees when they had to gallop off after an unruly cow. Cindy helped Claire with the cooking, pulled the sprinkler around the lawn, and started lessons with Wyatt via School of the Air, struggling like most mothers in the outback to haul her little son into the house and keep him there until he had finished his schoolwork.
Wade surveyed the horses in the pen, no doubt considering the mess he had been handed and the work that lay ahead. If he was equally uncertain about his new station crew member, he did not let on.
Dustin chose his favorites next, both younger, unsettled broncs who could give a wild ride. A rider is only as reliable as his horse, and good crew members ride good horses. I nodded.
Wade and I closed the gates behind Dustin and stood warily to the side while he saddled his first choice, the young horse’s white eye rim signaling a forthcoming explosion. Dustin had blond locks that fell from underneath his silverbelly stockman’s hat, covering his long eyelashes. He took his hat off and slicked his hair back with his hands, replaced the hat, and gathered up his reins.
Dustin swung quickly into the saddle and within two steps the horse hit the air in panic. Dustin rode him through several high jolts and came out astride, riding at an unsteady canter around the small corral.
Wade turned to me, coated in fine white dust. “Your turn, mate.”
To a rider, a horse is a second spirit, and riding is like becoming one being with two minds, two beating hearts, four legs, and two arms that must join into a seamless whole. The secret is to strive to become the horse while it yearns to become human; then the elusive ephemeral being comes into momentary existence. Imbalance between horse and rider, combined with movement, leather, and terrain, make it hard to follow a line forward. But with the right spirit, a good horse could mean I had a chance on this station.
I took a bridle and filtered into the herd, letting the horses slide past until I had the smaller, black, quiet-looking stock horse caught against the corner. He surrendered with a sideways look, a flick of the ear, and did not move as I approached, murmuring quietly, and looped the reins around his black neck and the bridle over his ears. He had a white blaze that flickered to a tip between his nostrils and he lowered his head, acquiescent. Leading him out of the herd, I nudged him to a trot in a small circle on a long rein before tying him to the fence. I carried over the pad and he waited while I swung on the saddle and eased the cinch tight.
I rubbed the roughened hair of his neck and then held a closer rein while I pressed at his muscles, slid a hand down his leg, and lifted a front hoof. Though he kept one ear pointed at me and his eye open, he didn’t flinch. I ran my hand over his withers, his straight back, his flanks. Wade had instructed us to check each horse for formation, hooves, teeth, lameness, and injuries. But, when they all turned up lame and knock-kneed, we didn’t have much choice in the matter. My two companions hadn’t seemed overly concerned about a thorough assessment anyway, not pausing for a second before they swung into the saddle.
I stepped in close to his shoulder, gathered the reins, and gripped, the fingers of one hand wound into the mane, the others on the smooth leather pommel. I placed a toe in the stirrup and swung my other foot off the ground. The first contact of seat to saddle leather, legs to ribs, fingers to leather reins, is all it takes to feel the exchange of electricity. Riding is not the domain of the mind, more an intuitive tactile engagement. The horse moved off in
