Crystal Skies by Suzanne Cass

Author:Suzanne Cass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Suzanne Cass

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

AARON TOOK A seat next to Julie around the campfire, and asked himself for the umpteenth time today, why he’d thought bringing her out on muster might be easier. He rolled his shoulders gingerly, feeling the ache deep in his bones. Aaron liked to think he kept himself super fit and healthy, with three to four gym visits a week, and regular, ten-kilometer runs whenever he had a spare hour. Today had been spent carting boxes of equipment as they unloaded the vehicles, erecting numerous tents and awnings, banging steel pegs into the ground to hold up the tents, helping Dale to get the bore pumping water to fill the tank for showers—which ended up with him covered in grease and dust—carting feed for the stock horses gathered in the makeshift yards, and running back and forth between the caravan and mess tent with endless food collection errands for Julie.

But even when the ringers arrived back at camp, they weren’t close to being finished. The first job once the cattle were in the yards was to draft out the weaners, calves, and dry cows. Some cattle would be sent for processing to the meat works, and they were kept in the large pens ready for the trundling trucks to come and collect them in a few days. The micky bulls—male calves—would be castrated, de-horned, ear clipped, branded and vaccinated before being let loose again. And the female calves given much the same treatment, so they could be released to fatten up and get ready for breeding next year. Aaron had watched the ringers doing this dusty, arduous job and suddenly didn’t envy them quite so much.

He was more physically fatigued than he’d been in a long time. The most frustrating and surprising part of it all was that Julie kept up with him—perhaps had done even more than he had. He’d forgotten how strong country women were, how hard they worked. It was a good lesson in humility.

He’d done it all while keeping a close eye on Julie, of course. He never let her out of his sight, and if anyone approached her, he would hover like an overprotective father. Even though he was now pretty sure Julie was safe. Grudgingly, he admitted that it’d take a hell of a lot of skill and pre-planning for the stalker to be one of these ringers sitting around the campfire. You couldn’t just pretend at this job. You were either a ringer, or you weren’t, there was no in-between, as he was beginning to discover the hard way. Because he wasn’t one, and knew they only accepted him because of Julie, and because the boss said they had to.

Even so, he wasn’t going to let his guard down. Just because he was pretty sure no one at this camp was the stalker, didn’t mean the offender couldn’t still infiltrate somehow. It’d be almost impossible for someone to find her out here, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to just swoop in and abduct her, because where would they take her? It was the middle of nowhere.

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