“… while we get the rest of the gear together,” Callan said.
By the time they were ready to leave, the temperature had begun to climb, in tandem with the sun’s climb through that heavenly, soaring sky. It would probably hit eighty or even ninety degrees by midafternoon, Jacinda knew. Everyone had swim gear under their clothes, and water bottles and towels in their saddlebags, as well as their share of picnic supplies. On a pair of medium-size, sturdy horses whose breed Jac didn’t know, the boys also had yabby nets, bits of string and lumps of meat for bait.
Kerry was staying home, and Carly was riding right in front of Callan on his big chestnut mare, Moss, her little pink backpack pressing against his stomach. She looked quite comfortable and happy up there. Her mommy was a little nervous about it, but Josh’s old riding helmet and Callan’s relaxed attitude helped a lot.
It was a wonderful ride. The dogs were wildly jealous, but Kerry wanted them at home with her for company. Their barks chased after the four horses and five humans for several minutes until the trail that followed the fence line cut down toward the dry creek bed and the hill between creek and homestead cut off the sound, at which point, “They can bark all they want but we don’t have to hear,” Callan said.
He let the boys lead the way and brought up the rear himself, with Jacinda in the middle. It felt good to know that he was behind her, that he would see right away if something went wrong and he’d know what to do about it.
Not that you could imagine anything going wrong on a day like today. A breeze tempered the sun’s heat, and the stately river gums spread lacy patterns of shade over the rapidly warming earth. They startled a mob of red-coated kangaroos who’d been sleeping in some dry vegetation and the ’roos bounded away, over the smooth-worn rocks and deep sand of the creek bed. On the far side of the creek, there were cattle grazing on coarse yellow grass. Some of them looked up at the sound of the horses, but soon returned to browsing the ground.
“When does the creek actually flow?” Jacinda asked, craning around to Callan in her saddle. It was a different style from the ones on Kurt’s ranch, not so high in front. “In winter?”
“Only when we’ve just had rain,” Callan answered. He nudged Moss forward to close the distance between them a little. Carly sat there, so high. Her little body rocked with the motion of the horse’s gait like she was born to it, and her helmet looked like a dusty white mushroom on top of her head. “It doesn’t stay running for long. A couple of days. Enough to top up the water holes. Fortunately we have a string of good deep spring-fed ones in the gorge, and a couple more downstream.”
“Does the creek water ever get to the sea?”
“Nope. It drains into Lake Frome, east of here.”
“Which is dry, too, most of the time, right? A salt pan?” She’d been looking at a map and some books with Carly while the boys did schoolwork during the week.
“That’s right. Salt and clay. Flat, as far as the eye can see. I like these mountains better.”
“Well, yeah, because you own these mountains.”
She couldn’t keep the satisfaction out of her voice, and he picked up on it. “You really like that, don’t you?”
Yes.
A lot.
The safety of it.
The strength.
“Almost as much as you do, Callan Woods.”
He didn’t answer, just did that lazy, open grin of his, which she could barely see beneath his brimmed stockman’s hat. Correction—she could see the mouth, but not the eyes. Didn’t matter. She already knew what the eyes looked like. Kept seeing them in her mind when she twisted back the right way in her saddle, bluer than this sky, brighter than sun on water.
It was midmorning when they reached the deep water hole lodged in the mouth of the red rock gorge. Callan and the boys led the horses down to drink, then tethered them in the shade on the creek bank, where they found tufts of coarse grass to chew on.
“Swim first?” he said.
“Is it really safe?”
“If you’re sensible.”
“So you mean it’s not safe?” She imagined crocodiles.
“It’s deep in parts, and it’s cold.”
“But no crocodiles?”
He laughed. “Not a one. But it’s colder than you would think, especially once you go a few feet below the surface. Keep Carly in the shallows. See, it’s like a beach. The sand’s coarser than beach sand but it shelves down nice and easy.”
“Mmm, okay.” She could see for herself the way the water darkened from pale iced tea to syrupy cola. “Why is it that color?” she asked.
“It gets stained from the eucalyptus leaves. In some lights, it looks greener. The boys and I like to jump and dive in a couple of spots off the ledge on the far side, there, but we always check the places out first. I’ve been swimming in this water hole my whole life, but you can get tree branches wedged in the rocks that you can’t see from the surface, and you don’t want to get caught or hit your head.”
“I’ll stick with Carly in the shallows.”
He was right. It was cold. Enough to make her gasp when she stepped into it from the warm sand. And it had a fresh, peaty kind of smell that she liked. Carly splashed and ducked and laughed, while Jac watched the boys and their dad swimming across an expanse of water that looked black from this angle, toward the rock ledge. They trod water back and forth, scoping out the depths for hidden dangers, then having determined that it was safe, no hidden snags, they hauled themselves out onto the rock, climbed to the high point, gave themselves a good long run-up and started to jump.
After fifteen minutes, Carly’s teeth began to chatter. She lay on a towel in the sun for a short while, but soon warmed up again, put a T-shirt over her semidry swimsuit and was ready to make canal systems and miniature gardens in the sand. Lockie had had enough of the water, also. He swam back to the beach to get his towel, but Callan and Josh were still jumping and whooping, their voices echoing off the rock walls of the gorge behind them, the only human sound for miles around.
“Swim over and give it a go,” Callan called out to Jacinda. He stood at the edge of the highest part of the ledge, a good twelve feet above the waterline.
Not in a million years, Jac thought.
“I’m watching Carly,” she called back.
“Lockie’s with her now. She’s dressed. She’ll be fine.”
“No, really …”
“I’m going back to the sand, Dad,” Josh said. He and Callan did one last whooping jump from the ledge together, with legs kicking wildly in the air and arms turning like windmills, then they swam toward the stretch of beach.
“She’ll be fine with the boys,” Callan repeated when he approached Jacinda, as if there’d been no break to the conversation. “She’d have to go in pretty far to get out of her depth here.”
He touched bottom and stood waist-deep, then began to stride toward the beach, the water streaming from his body as he got closer and shallower. He reached Jacinda, his skin glistening and his dark, baggy swim shorts hanging low on his hips. He wasn’t self-conscious about his body, just took it for granted.
Jac didn’t. She saw hard bands and blocks of muscle, a shading from tan to pale halfway down his upper arm, a neat pattern of hair across his chest, and the way the cold and wet made every inch of his skin taut.
Standing