Zoe's Muster by Barbara Hannay

Author:Barbara Hannay [Hannay, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742536255
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 2012-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

13

On the surface, the stock camp was back to normal next morning. At breakfast, Luke still looked a bit strained, but he shared a joke with Jacko and a laugh with Julia and carried on more or less as usual. He avoided Zoe, of course, and she had the feeling that everyone was aware of a problem and was, consequently, walking on eggshells.

Once breakfast was over, however, her next priority was to get rid of Archie. The ringers wouldn’t be back till lunchtime, so she headed off, taking the spider jar still covered by a tea towel.

She hiked a good kilometre away to a distant rocky ridge, and from its summit she discovered a picturesque view of a bend in the river. There was even a quaint old hut on the riverbank, the eye-catching sort of tumbledown shell that a photographer would love to capture.

The hut had a precarious, sideways lean, as if it had been rudely shoved by floodwaters during a big wet season. For Zoe there was something else about it too, an air of history that made her stop and stare and wonder who had lived there, so far away from the homestead. Had her mum seen it when she was here? What stories could its splintery, timbered walls whisper?

She was so caught up in fantasies about the hut that she almost forgot her worries with Luke until she came back to the present with a start, and remembered she was still nursing a hideous spider.

‘Okay, Archie, freedom calls.’

She was filled with trepidation as she set the jar down, turned it on its side, and carefully, holding her breath, began to unscrew the lid. If the spider so much as looked at her, she would freak, but fortunately it just hunkered down, not moving. So she kept unscrewing the lid, then with her heart practically jumping out of her mouth, she tipped the jar.

The spider slid down the glass wall, but Zoe had to shake the jar to get it out over the lip and onto the dirt. As it hit the ground, it reared up menacingly, brandishing its front legs.

Zoe screamed and scrambled backwards. ‘Okay. Okay, you win. You can keep my storage jar.’

She turned and ran.

Back at the camp, she had time for a shower before starting on lunch, and she nursed a vain hope that cleansing her body might also, miraculously, wash away her heavy sense of guilt about Luke.

Hanging her towel over a tree branch, she stepped inside the makeshift canvas cubicle, reached up to turn on the shower nozzle. The sun had warmed the water to a perfect temperature, which was lovely, although she couldn’t waste the water in the outback. She turned the nozzle off as soon as her skin was wet, and lathered up.

Once again, she looked to the cloudless blue ceiling of sky and the drooping gum tree branch, minus the kookaburra today. It was exhilarating to bathe out in the open, and she thought how happy she might have been if she’d simply come out here to work, honestly, without any ulterior motives.

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