my legs into the saddle leather and his flexing ribs until he stepped into a trot. I sat gently back and propelled him into a lope. He was quick to turn, light on the bit. He moved between gaits with agility. I pulled him to a stop several yards from Wade and said quietly, “I’ll take this one.”
I waited until Wade had ridden and affirmed both of his choices and Dustin his, then haltered the regal brown horse who had caught my eye in the beginning. He kept one ear flicked toward me, his eyes like black lakes. He blew hard through his nostrils a few times while I saddled, but once I was up, he stepped out in a long stride and eased into the movements. He was the tallest of the horses, less sensitive to the bit and my leg, but he was young and eager. I now had a set of companions with whom to face the onslaught of the days ahead.
Wade, Dustin, and I rode the rest of the horses one by one. Some were young broncs barely broke, a few were feedlot horses who could turn quickly but tripped in the deep melon holes left from the wet season, and some were old station horses who conveyed with their eyes that nothing would surprise them or prove too demanding. Even in the dust of the yards, in the rough survey of horses, subtle tinges of chemical response caught in my chest and pricked at my skin. With some horses I felt fear flooding my body, with others a more confident familiarity; some were scared and had perhaps been handled roughly or mistreated; some were obstinate, heavy; others flared their eyes and reared to get away.
We shuffled through papers that had come with the horses, a few including a photo, name, age, markings, brands, and comments by ringers who had ridden them. I took the stack of yellowing pages after Wade and, by process of elimination and the tracing of markings, found my two horses. The first stock horse’s name was Crow. His papers said he was seven years old. The tall gelding was a five-year-old named Darcy. Wade gave me two more horses whom neither he nor Dustin wanted: a massive stocky bay and a little filly. We turned the horses into a larger pen to cool down and water, then walked together, the three of us, across the corrals toward the truck they had parked by the loading chute, leaving the dust cloud behind.
Angus later brought out an old Brekelmans saddle that he’d found in the tack shed for me to ride. The dark leather had seen many years of riding, but I found each piece well riveted and sewn. The saddle was small and light like most Australian saddles, with the low, rounded, single arch where the horn would be on an American saddle. The stirrup fenders—the leather holding the stirrup—were cut wide, like an American Western saddle, and swung easily. They were burned into a polish where the last rider’s knees had rubbed.
I wanted to know the horses intimately before the muster work began, and so I caught Darcy later to ride him again. I led him out of the corrals where the new station horses still milled and tied him to the fence near the shipping container. He snorted and raised his head high, his neck stiff. He was taller than any horse I had ever ridden before, his shoulder at the level of my eyes. With his narrow withers, the saddle fit him well. I adjusted the bridle carefully, so that the rings of the snaffle bit pulled a couple of wrinkles at the corner of his mouth. Then I walked him out past the paddock gate and into the open bunchgrass clearing, took a deep breath, and swung into the saddle.
He tensed immediately, and I let him step out in long strides to release his nervous energy, riding with my legs pressed in alternate rhythmic motion against his ribs to establish control, my hands exerting light but firm pressure on the reins. He was a thunderstorm ready to roll across dry grass. I let him break into a fast trot and we covered the ground across the clearing, then passed through forest and yet another clearing in moments. A horse prefers a rider with focus, feels more comfortable if he doesn’t have to make decisions other than where to place his hooves. I chose an invisible point in the distance, feigning confidence for the sake of the dark horse beneath me, and rode straight ahead, into the unknown landscape.
I kept riding and almost didn’t return. We broke our course forward only to dodge around deep melon holes and fallen trees. The country unfurled like bolts of linen, forest and clearing, without any distinguishing characteristics or landmarks. If it were Arizona, I would have ridden for hours, climbing ridges when I needed to reset the compass of my mind or remember elements of the terrain described to me at one point or another, the internal lay of the land, maps drawn from story and memory. Here I had no such assets, no history, no stories, no outback formation.
I reined Darcy in and we stood there, quietness filling in the space around us. I would go no farther. A light wind erased our tracks in white tendrils of dust and eucalyptus leaves. If I were to die, it would take them a while to find me. I felt an unsettling in the pit of my stomach, an intuitive warning that this was not my landscape, and I had little right to be here. I shifted in the saddle to ease my discomfort and saw only the same close screen of weepy eucalyptus trees. So easy to get lost out here. Darcy flicked his ears. He was standing still anyway, the tension released from his muscles and neck. I turned back in the direction we had come and, choosing my angle carefully, let Darcy pick up speed for the ride home. I would saddle Crow and venture out another day.
Stephen Craye
MIDMORNING A FEW DAYS LATER, a stocky gentleman I didn’t recognize approached me and offered a ride around the station in his pickup truck. He had short silver hair and a beard and wore a clean, pressed, button-down shirt, jeans, and dusty leather boots. He was not tall, but his shoulders were so broad he looked as if he could have wrestled an ox to the ground, and he stood, unconcerned, with a steady and ambivalent gaze. I said I would need to ask permission to abandon my chores, wondering silently what sort of danger he might present. He indicated then that he was the boss, and I could do as he said.
“You are the security man,” I said. He was supposed to have met me when I arrived.
“Yes.”
“Nice to meet you then.” I climbed up into his white Hilux.
Stephen nodded. Then, almost apologetically: “I get busy.”
He headed east, driving past the yards into the successive waves of forest and clearing. I stared out the open window, at times able to see for a ways. After a while I became intensely aware of the security man at the wheel, guiding this foray into some reach of the station.
I overcame my sense that small talk was not his forte, and asked, “What is it that you actually do?”
His face was impassive as he replied, “I protect the family’s interests.”
He sped down the straight dirt track. The landscape around us was, I presumed, the family’s property, or a piece of it anyway. Stephen had appeared at the station apparently without notice or being noticed.
“What does that mean, exactly?”
He waited before answering. “I am in charge of overseeing all their operations.”
He continued after a while in measured, unhurried sentences. He worked directly with the owner, Gene, and his children, driving or flying to all of the many stations the family owned across two states in Australia. I gathered that his work was to haunt the remote reaches of the properties and know what was going on at all times. He was ultimately responsible for directing the overhaul of Stilwater. He was the one who had placed new managers and a new head stockman on the property.
We encountered occasional swamps, lagoons with crocodiles, and stretches of coarse grass too thick to walk through and almost unpalatable to the stock. The types of plants changed dramatically over short distances, and yet the overall look was almost the same: white slender trunks and stretches of grass, in repeating patterns.
“Can you tell me more about the owners?”
“Gene and his family?”
“Yes.”
