Ally for Life: Kiwi Land Girls, #2 by Tania Roberts

Author:Tania Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Red Rose Publishing
Published: 2022-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

16

When they reached the horse paddock, Barnaby, Trigger and Misty were frolicking about like children playing a game of tag. They whinnied and snorted as they stomped their hooves and created mishmash trails of trampled snow.

“They’re having fun.” Alice watched her warm breath float away into the cool morning.

“The first snowfall is always fun.” Danny caught up to the rest of them. Walking with a wooden leg in snow was more difficult and left a distinctive trail. Footprint, square, footprint, square. “Wait until you’ve been out in it for days. It’s not fun when the cold has burrowed its way into your bones.”

The rubber of Alice’s gumboots already felt cold. She wondered whether rubber provided more insulation than wood. She’d never heard Danny complain. He just got on with life and didn’t speak of whatever had caused his disability. Sometimes his eyes had a faraway look as if he’d transported himself to another time, another place. Then after moments of stillness, his whole body would shake and he’d be back, attentive to whatever was happening.

Watching Danny was a reminder to Alice that you never knew what made other people who they were. That you couldn’t let whatever happened in your past colour your present, it did, but you didn’t have to give into it. She wouldn’t give in to hers. Alice was strong and she wouldn’t be a victim again. She was lucky, at least she still had both legs.

Her thoughts turned to Fergus. What made him a white feather, a conscientious objector? If he hadn’t got into the fight at the races, she would never have known. She’d like the opportunity to ask him, one day.

“Alice!” Fergus’s call pulled her out of her reverie. He was holding the gate open. “Are you coming?”

They caught the horses, saddled them up and headed out. Alice listened for the crunch of snow with every footfall, watched as the snowflakes splotched her raincoat and disappeared, and inhaled the purity of the air, filling her lungs with what felt like a new beginning.

The reins sat loosely in her gloved hand as she let Fergus and Barnaby lead the way and Misty follow at a safe pace. They passed the paddock where the crop had been sown. It was simply a square of white, framed by a fence whose bottom wire was peeking out from the snow. Alice hoped the crop would survive being encased in ice or all her ploughing efforts would be in vain.

Further out, the ewes sat in mobs, a united façade so that each had a side protected from the elements. Alice interpreted their bleating as a cry for food.

“Your hay is coming,” she called out.

Fergus chuckled. “Sheep don’t have the biggest of brains, Alice. I don’t think they speak English.”

“Baa. Baa. Baa.” Alice bought into Fergus’s teasing.

By the time they reached the back paddocks the wind had joined the fray and flurries of snow whipped in from the south. Alice’s raincoat protected her body but the gap between the hem of her coat and the rim of her gumboots was cold and wet.

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