without another word.
“Well mate,” Wade said, “let’s sort out these horses.”
He carried a saddle and saddle pad out from a shipping container serving as a tack storage that sat just beyond the pens. He swung the saddle to rest on the cross-rails of the rusty pipe fence and stepped inside the corral with a halter. Dustin and I followed into the smoke of agitated soil.
As the head stockman, Wade had first choice of the new mounts, and he didn’t waste time laying claim. He didn’t even turn to us, just quietly said, “I’ll take the white gelding and the tall bay.” We would each need a change of horses, two or three for the cow work that lay ahead.
Wade moved forward, and the horses pressed against the farther corner of the corral. “We’ll ride ’em and you can choose a couple for yourselves.”
We didn’t argue with his choices, the most handsome horses in the motley herd. I had silently chosen another two horses, but I’m unsure how they caught my eye. One was a tall dark horse, almost as regal as the bay, and the other a smaller black horse with a quiet eye. Maybe it was the same magnetism that draws people to recognize each other without having met before. I knew those were the horses I wanted to know, to approach quietly and lay a hand on the dark withers, to slip a lead rope around the neck, feel the nostrils quivering, and look into the liquid eye.
Wade stepped into the milling band and eased the white gelding apart, slipping the halter strap around his neck and leading him back to the fence to be saddled and bridled. Dustin and I opened the gate to let the others into the next corral, should the gelding get wild. Wade held the reins close to the horse’s neck as he swung into the saddle, ready for anything. The white horse arched his head and pranced the first few steps, but moved off into a fast high trot without revolt.
Wade had arrived at Stilwater a few months prior, bringing his wife, Cindy, and their two young children—Wyatt, who was five, and a newborn daughter, Lily. Wade had grown up on cattle properties in Central Queensland and spent his early life around horses and cows. He had also been a bull rider.
He’d met Cindy in the rodeo circuit—she was a professional barrel racer, and she kept her brumby-cross chestnut barrel horse close to the house to ride. Some days she took her horse and Lily out to the round yard, set her sleeping daughter in the pram, and galloped dusty circles around the innocent child. I’d heard stories of some mothers carrying their infants in slings while they mustered and hanging the babies in trees when they had to gallop off after an unruly cow. Cindy helped Claire with the cooking, pulled the sprinkler around the lawn, and started lessons with Wyatt via School of the Air, struggling like most mothers in the outback to haul her little son into the house and keep him there until he had finished his schoolwork.
Wade surveyed the horses in the pen, no doubt considering the mess he had been handed and the work that lay ahead. If he was equally uncertain about his new station crew member, he did not let on.
Dustin chose his favorites next, both younger, unsettled broncs who could give a wild ride. A rider is only as reliable as his horse, and good crew members ride good horses. I nodded.
Wade and I closed the gates behind Dustin and stood warily to the side while he saddled his first choice, the young horse’s white eye rim signaling a forthcoming explosion. Dustin had blond locks that fell from underneath his silverbelly stockman’s hat, covering his long eyelashes. He took his hat off and slicked his hair back with his hands, replaced the hat, and gathered up his reins.
Dustin swung quickly into the saddle and within two steps the horse hit the air in panic. Dustin rode him through several high jolts and came out astride, riding at an unsteady canter around the small corral.
Wade turned to me, coated in fine white dust. “Your turn, mate.”
To a rider, a horse is a second spirit, and riding is like becoming one being with two minds, two beating hearts, four legs, and two arms that must join into a seamless whole. The secret is to strive to become the horse while it yearns to become human; then the elusive ephemeral being comes into momentary existence. Imbalance between horse and rider, combined with movement, leather, and terrain, make it hard to follow a line forward. But with the right spirit, a good horse could mean I had a chance on this station.
I took a bridle and filtered into the herd, letting the horses slide past until I had the smaller, black, quiet-looking stock horse caught against the corner. He surrendered with a sideways look, a flick of the ear, and did not move as I approached, murmuring quietly, and looped the reins around his black neck and the bridle over his ears. He had a white blaze that flickered to a tip between his nostrils and he lowered his head, acquiescent. Leading him out of the herd, I nudged him to a trot in a small circle on a long rein before tying him to the fence. I carried over the pad and he waited while I swung on the saddle and eased the cinch tight.
I rubbed the roughened hair of his neck and then held a closer rein while I pressed at his muscles, slid a hand down his leg, and lifted a front hoof. Though he kept one ear pointed at me and his eye open, he didn’t flinch. I ran my hand over his withers, his straight back, his flanks. Wade had instructed us to check each horse for formation, hooves, teeth, lameness, and injuries. But, when they all turned up lame and knock-kneed, we didn’t have much choice in the matter. My two companions hadn’t seemed overly concerned about a thorough assessment anyway, not pausing for a second before they swung into the saddle.
I stepped in close to his shoulder, gathered the reins, and gripped, the fingers of one hand wound into the mane, the others on the smooth leather pommel. I placed a toe in the stirrup and swung my other foot off the ground. The first contact of seat to saddle leather, legs to ribs, fingers to leather reins, is all it takes to feel the exchange of electricity. Riding is not the domain of the mind, more an intuitive tactile engagement. The horse moved off in a walk without resistance. I took a few turns around the pen, then pressed my legs into the saddle leather and his flexing ribs until he stepped into a trot. I sat gently back and propelled him into a lope. He was quick to turn, light on the bit. He moved between gaits with agility. I pulled him to a stop several yards from Wade and said quietly, “I’ll take this one.”
I waited until Wade had ridden and affirmed both of his choices and Dustin his, then haltered the regal brown horse who had caught my eye in the beginning. He kept one ear flicked toward me, his eyes like black lakes. He blew hard through his nostrils a few times while I saddled, but once I was up, he stepped out in a long stride and eased into the movements. He was the tallest of the horses, less sensitive to the bit and my leg, but he was young and eager. I now had a set of companions with whom to face the onslaught of the days ahead.
Wade, Dustin, and I rode the rest of the horses one by one. Some were young broncs barely broke, a few were feedlot horses who could turn quickly but tripped in the deep melon holes left from the wet season, and some were old station horses who conveyed with their eyes that nothing would surprise them or prove too demanding. Even in the dust of the yards, in the rough survey of horses, subtle tinges of chemical response caught in my chest and pricked at my skin. With some horses I felt fear flooding my body, with others a more confident familiarity; some were scared and had perhaps been handled roughly or mistreated; some were obstinate, heavy; others flared their eyes and reared to get away.
We shuffled through papers that had come with the horses, a few including a photo, name, age, markings, brands, and comments by ringers who had ridden them. I took the stack of yellowing pages after Wade and, by process of elimination and the tracing of markings, found my two horses. The first stock horse’s name was Crow. His papers said he was seven years old. The tall gelding was a five-year-old named Darcy. Wade gave me two more horses whom neither he nor Dustin wanted: a massive stocky bay and a little filly. We turned the horses into a larger pen to cool down and water, then walked together, the three of us, across the corrals toward the truck they had parked by the loading chute, leaving the dust cloud behind.
Angus later brought out an old Brekelmans saddle that he’d found in the tack shed for me to ride. The dark leather had seen many years of riding, but I found each piece well riveted and sewn. The saddle was small and light like most Australian saddles, with the low, rounded, single arch where the horn would be on an American saddle. The