Red Queen by Honey Brown Page A

father. He was a pretty good sort from the photos I’ve seen.’
    ‘Dad? You’ve got to be joking. He was a Neanderthal.’
    ‘I think under the bikie beard was a very handsome man.’
    I snorted.
    ‘How’s your shoulder?’ she asked.
    ‘Not too bad, really.’
    ‘You’re just trying to weasel out of my back rub.’
    The mention of my shoulder had me prodding at the muscles. It gave me the excuse to turn my face away.
    When I looked back to her, she was peering up at the top of the bluff.
    ‘So what does Rohan do up there, in the bush?’ she asked. ‘I’d like to know what the hell he does all day, while we work.’
    ‘Well you know, you followed him.’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘Well you did, didn’t you?’
    She wrinkled her nose. ‘Yeah.’
    ‘So you fair dinkum tracked him through the bush?’
    ‘I didn’t track him. I’m hardly an outback expert. I saw bones along the riverbed. They looked pretty recent and I waited in the scrub for someone to come. I guessed they were bits of carcasses used for bait. I didn’t imagine that sort of wilderness was stock country, and figured someone was bringing them in. It’s pretty rough through that whole range, really dense undergrowth.’
    ‘I know. Dad took me shooting up there a couple of times.’
    ‘So I sat and waited. Nearly died when Rohan came through the bush; he was so close. He uses different approaches, I worked out later. He’s very careful. I was up this rocky bank, squatting in amongst the ferns, with the binoculars on the river, and suddenly he’s right on top of me. I couldn’t believe I was alone in the wilderness, dirty, hungry, starving , watching this rough-neck bloke with a gun on his back dropping a severed sheep head in the water …’
    She eyed me knowingly. ‘You can imagine; Rohan is fairly daunting out there, not exactly neighbourly. Seeing him, I knew I couldn’t approach. I figured I should just stand up and let this guy shoot me, put me out of my misery. It doesn’t take long to realise death by starvation is the worst barrel to be looking down. Then while I’m watching he pulls the sheep head back out, and there’s three crays on it, three . It’s like a revelation to me: so easy if you know how. He threw one cray back and I almost screamed with the waste of it. If he’d thrown it at me I would have eaten it raw.’
    ‘And you followed him back here?’ I said.
    ‘Not at first. I went back to the farmhouse. But then I worried I’d never see him again. I realised I’d have to follow him. And the next day I was more used to him. The grizzly look had softened to half-tame brown bear. And then I saw this place … and smelt it.’
    ‘Bit of a misconception, though? Here.’
    ‘Oh no. I’ve got no complaints. I was in a pretty bad place.’
    ‘So what does he do up there? What did you see him do?’
    ‘Oh …’ she shrugged. ‘He laid baits for crays and fished with line. He checked the rabbit traps and I suppose he hunts with the rifle.’
    ‘And he kicks back in the sun and has a rest.’
    ‘There’s not a lot of sun. You have to move to stay warm. I hate it up there. He loves it. You can tell.’
    I looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You know … you just see it in him.’
    ‘See what?’
    ‘The way he moves, his connection with it all. He belongs.’
    My voice grew hard. ‘So what made you think it would be okay to trust him? To risk your life and come down into the cabin?’
    ‘You’ve got to understand, I was desperate. I might have walked into a concentration camp if it meant a bowl of food. And like I said, your late-night playing helped.’
    ‘But still – Rohan; you must have worked out he wasn’t interested in visitors.’
    ‘Have you ever watched someone when they thought they were alone?’
    ‘No … not really. Not for any length of time.’
    ‘Well you can tell things; what they do, their respect for things around them.’
    ‘Tell what? That he’d let you stay?’
    ‘No. But