Outback Born by K'Anne Meinel

Author:K'Anne Meinel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: series, Romance
Publisher: Shadoe Publishing, LLC
Published: 2019-08-28T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Alinta watched as Mel took her horses to a man working with the white man’s stone, iron they called it. It still bothered her to watch, and she unconsciously rubbed her neck in remembrance of the collar she had once worn. The big, beefy man was putting metal on the bottoms of the horse’s feet. It smelled terrible as the white man’s stone caused a burning smell to rise from them. Alinta didn’t understand when Mel called them shoes because she had also called those leather things she wanted Alinta to wear by the same word, but Alinta nodded and tried to sound the word.

Next, Alinta watched as Mel packed and repacked the supplies she had kept so neatly for her. She worried that she had done something wrong, but Mel didn’t say anything to her. Mel seemed restless as she waited, and Alinta wondered why they were waiting here in this house. The dogs under the house were restless too. When Carmen and Fabiola returned, she saw that Mel was relieved. As they ate dinner together, she once again tried to use the fork the way Mel had shown her. She preferred her fingers but saw that was frowned upon, so she would try for Mel’s sake. She wanted the woman to be proud of her. She was eager to please Mel in return for rescuing her from Bradley. At dinner they discussed things that Alinta did not understand about where she would be going. She had no concept of words like ‘south’ or ‘north’ and only caught a couple words she understood. She understood the word Cobdogla but only because she recognized their attempts to say an Aborigine word.

The next day, Mel spent a lot of time with the other men and the dogs. They were doing something with the sheep. Some went in one pen, others into another pen. Alinta didn’t understand it, but it was fascinating to watch the commotion. The sheep stirred up a lot of dust, and she tried to stay upwind of it, so it wasn’t blowing in her face as she watched them work and tried to understand what they were doing.

The following day, she was surprised when Mel hoisted her onto one of the horses and handed her the lead ropes to the other horses that were loaded with the many packs Mel had sorted. She was proud that Mel trusted her with this important task. Alinta had no idea that her horse was following Mel’s because it chose to and not because of anything she did to control it. Mel, her dingo-like dogs, Carmen, Fabiola, and several of the men Alinta had heard were called vaqueros helped push the sheep along. It looked like a lot, but not nearly as many had come along the track from so far away. At least half were headed north, although Alinta didn’t grasp the concept of this direction. She only knew that her horse followed Mel, and she kept going when the large woman veered off to check the flock for strays when a dog didn’t do it for her.

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