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challenging her to lie to him, which she promptly did.
 Away. She dared not look at Alice or Connie though out of the
corner of her eye, she noticed Alice pull Rosie closer to her in case the
little girl said something she shouldn t.
 When he gets back, tell him to come to me at Blue Water Station.
Kitty snorted.  I do not think so.
The man sighed and fixed her with another direct gaze.  It is in your
own best interests.
 We want no business with you.
 Listen to me. Life out here is hard, and farming is unforgiving of
mistakes. I will give your husband a good price for this property. I
recommend you pay attention to what I have to offer.
His patronizing tone flared Kitty s anger.  Never!
He inclined his head and his narrowed gaze never wavered from hers.
 I am a patient man. One day you will come to me. With the slightest of
movements, he turned his horse and disappeared into the dense bush.
-109-
Anne Whitfield
Kitty heaved a shaky sigh.
They gathered their things quietly. Kitty was deeply troubled by the
encounter but said nothing to the others. Back at the hut, they felt safer,
and they shuddered to think what it would be like here without Jessup
and Holby to safeguard them from harm. It surprised the women how
quickly they had come to depend on the two men.
Alice quickly went about her tasks preparing the evening meal,
secure in doing mundane chores second nature to her. Connie attended
to the wet children, while Kitty fed the chickens some grain and collected
wood for the fire. They went about their work subdued and a little
nervous. The encounter with the horseman reaffirmed the isolation they
felt.
Kitty threw her armload of wood into a pile by the door. The imposing
stranger dominated her thoughts. Jessup said his name was Miles
Grayson and Blue Water was a rich and well-developed station.  Well, if
he thinks he can buy me out then he can think again.
Kitty s back ached. She stooped once more to pull another weed from
around the tiny vegetable seedlings. Sweat trickled inside her clothes and
dust coated her russet skirts. Throughout March, April and into May, no
rain descended from the azure sky to saturate the property s dry, crusty
earth. The parched, brown grass shriveled and gaping cracks appeared in
the ground.
With a lot of hard work, they had ploughed a plot twenty yards long
by ten yards wide at the side of the hut and enclosed it in wooden
paneling. Holby told her they would never have vegetables if a fence
wasn t built to stop the kangaroos, wallabies, wombats and the like from
eating the seedlings the minute they popped out of the ground.
-110-
Kitty McKenzie s Land
Watering the garden was a hated and exhausting chore to them all.
The house creek no longer flowed so they had to carry up buckets from
the larger of the two creeks. Kitty stayed on tenterhooks as she did this
job, expecting Grayson on his ebony horse to charge out of the bush and
declare the water his. No one had seen him or his men since his first
visit, but Jessup warned them that Grayson s men would be keeping an
eye on them. Kitty detested the very thought, but pushed it from her
mind.
The hot May sun shone down fiercely and she glared up at it.  Don t
you know it is now autumn here? she grumbled at the yellow-orange orb
sitting high in the clear blue sky.  Can you not be so harsh on us?
She paused to stare at her new home. Much had been achieved
despite a few setbacks.
The new room was completed; a bedroom for Connie, Kitty and the
children, while Alice still slept on the trundle bed in the main room. This
improvement to the hut made it safer for the children to move without
having so much clutter to trip them. Holby then built a small lean-to
onto the back of the hut for storage with a connecting door for direct
access. His next project was building a hut for himself and Jessup. He
was certain that when the rains came, they would continue a good while,
and he had no wish to spend the coming winter in the open. Besides,
they worked hard and Kitty wanted them to have somewhere more
private and comfortable than the ground to sleep on each night.
The hut was still primitive by anyone s standards and not very
relaxing. Kitty missed the niceties of the house in Forbes Street and she
missed those she left behind, especially Mary. Ingrid s last letter told
Kitty the gossip was Timothy and Mary lived at his Goulburn home, but
no one was sure. Nothing more on the subject was mentioned.
The sound of cattle bellowing made Kitty raise her head and stare in
that direction. The cattle Dan bought had appeared after twelve weeks of
overland trekking. The beasts arrived in poor condition with bones
-111-
Anne Whitfield
protruding beneath their slack hides. Many had sores, split feet and all
were underfed. Kitty was certain the drovers had not given them
adequate rest and feeding spells. The herd was three dozen beasts short
of its original total. Jessup muttered something about the drovers selling
some off to make extra money along the way, nearly causing a fight to
break out.
Kitty refused to pay the drovers their full wages and ended up having
to get her rifle to force them from the property when they became violent.
They scampered off into the bush and, despite her worrying they would
return later to raid the herd, nothing more was seen of them.
Jessup and Holby shot five distressed cows, releasing them from
their misery. The rifle s blasts killing the poor defenseless animals
angered and frustrated her. She wrote a long letter to Dan explaining
what happened to the cattle and the action she took.
The land possessed little grass after the drought of summer and
autumn and the two men moved the cattle daily from one spot to another
about the property. At the furthest parts, they took it in turns to watch
the cattle overnight, in case of attacks by dogs, natives or bushrangers.
Kitty put the plan to fatten the cattle for market and the breeding
program on hold until the rains came.
 Miss McKenzie?
Kitty, lost in her thoughts, jumped at the sound of Jessup s voice.
 Yes? She wiped the moisture from her brow.
 Two more of the cattle are dead. That makes it eight this week. We
have no need for any more salted beef so Holby is burying them. We still [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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