Cherish the Land (14 page)

“And the ones who don’t have jobs usually are unemployed for a reason,” Walker agreed. “Does he have a house for me? What do I need to bring with me?”

“I don’t know. The funeral wasn’t the time to talk details,” Thorne said. “I’ll call Sam and give him your number. He was the office manager at Lang Downs before all of this. He’ll be on top of the details. And, Walker?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. You didn’t have to agree.”

“I can count on one hand the things you’ve asked me to do in more than twenty years that weren’t related to the job,” Walker said. “You saved my life. I think I got the better end of this bargain.”

“That’s not the way it works.”

“The hell it isn’t. I’ll call you when I get to Taylor Peak. You can come visit and we’ll scare the shit out of some know-it-all jackaroos. It’ll be just like the first day of basic training with all the rookies. Bring Ian with you. They’ll know you’re gay and have to shut their traps and deal with it because you’re too much of a scary bastard for them to say anything. It’ll be fun.”

Thorne laughed. He would bring Ian with him. It would be worth the constipated looks on the faces of the Taylor Peak jackaroos to watch Walker tear them a new one. “It’s a date.”

J
EREMY
PICKED
mechanically at his food. After the funeral ended and everyone left, it had been back to the usual business of running a station, except Jeremy still didn’t feel like he knew where to start. Sure, he knew the mechanics of all the tasks required to run a station. He could do the job of any man he employed, with the possible exception of fixing a broken engine. But he’d never been the one to keep track of all those tasks—who needed to do what and when and with whom and schedule rotations—and just thinking about it made his head hurt. He was a capable crew boss. He might even go so far as to say a bloody good crew boss. But he didn’t even know where to start when it came to being a grazier.

Thank God for Neil. He’d have gone under a dozen times already without his support.

The sound of someone clearing his throat drew his attention from his morose thoughts and neglected plate. One of his jackaroos—he didn’t know their names yet, although he needed to learn—stood in front of him, hat in hand. “Yes?”

“No disrespect, Taylor, but I signed on to work for Devlin Taylor, not his brother. And I sure as hell didn’t sign up to work on Lang Downs.” The glare he sent in Neil’s direction shocked Jeremy with its venom. He’d known Devlin hated the Lang Downs jackaroos, but he’d hoped it hadn’t carried over to the rest of the men on Taylor Peak. It appeared he’d hoped in vain. “I’ll pack my things and be off the property first thing in the morning.”

Jeremy nodded—because what else was he supposed to do?—and gestured toward Sam. “Leave an address with Sam for where you want your last paycheck to be sent. We’ll post it on Friday along with everyone else’s.”

“I don’t want your money,” the man said. “It’s as tainted as everything else you poofters touch.”

Neil was on his feet and in the man’s face before Jeremy could blink. “Be glad you already quit, mate.” The bite in his voice broke Jeremy out of his stupor. It wouldn’t help anything if a fight broke out. “Because that’s the kind of comment that’ll get a man fired. Forget about tomorrow. Pack your bag tonight. You have half an hour to get out before I throw you out.”

“You and what army, Emery?” the man spat back.

Jeremy rose from his seat and moved to separate them. Sam got there before he could. “I’d hate to have to dock your pay for damages,” he said coldly. “I suggest you take Neil’s advice.”

The jackaroo glared at all three of them and stormed out of the canteen.

“Anyone else feel that way?” Jeremy asked the men left in the canteen. “Because if you do, now’s the time to get out. No harm, no foul, no hard feelings. Your paycheck will be in the post on Friday. If you stay and I have to fire you because of your attitude, you won’t get even that much.”

Half a dozen more men stood and followed the other jackaroo out of the canteen.

“Good riddance to them,” Charlie White, a year-rounder Jeremy had known since he was a teenager, said after they’d left. “They were lazy sons of bitches anyway. You’re a Taylor, lad, and that’s all that matters to most of us.”

“Thanks, Charlie,” Jeremy said. He looked around the room, taking the time to meet the gaze of each man in the room. “Just so we’re clear here…. Yes, I’m gay. Yes, Sam is going to be here helping me run the station. No, I don’t expect you to like it, but I do expect you to respect it.” He waited for the murmurs to die down. No one else had walked out yet—a good sign. “Yes, Neil is the foreman on Lang Downs. He’s also my brother-in-law, which means he’s going to be around. Devlin had a bone to pick with Lang Downs, a lot of it because of me. I never wanted anything to happen to him, but he’s gone now and I’m running things. Unlike my brother, I don’t have a bone to pick with Lang Downs. If that’s going to be a problem, the door is right there.”

More grumbling, from different quarters, Jeremy noted. Interesting that the men who had issues with Lang Downs weren’t all the same as the ones who had issues with him being gay. Had he missed a reason for the tension between the stations? He’d have to ask Charlie about it later. “Chances are, Neil won’t be the only one either. The closest vet lives on Lang Downs. The best damn mechanic I’ve ever met lives there too. They’ve both offered their help in their areas or anywhere else I need it. I intend to take them up on it. And finally, I don’t have the same attitude toward how to run a station that Devlin did, which means there will be some changes. I’m willing to discuss them if people have questions or concerns, but I expect everyone to respect the final decisions I make. If that doesn’t work for you, now’s the time to leave.”

No one moved, although that could have been because no one wanted to do anything with him watching. He gave one last nod and grabbed his hat from next to his plate. He’d lost his appetite.

“Sam, Neil, let’s leave them to their dinner.”

Neil looked like he wanted to argue, but Sam herded him toward the door. As they walked toward Devlin’s house, Jeremy wondered how many men he’d have left come morning.

J
ASON
JUMPED
out of the ute as soon as he reached the big barn on Taylor Peak. His heart pounded as he grabbed his bag of supplies and hurried inside. Jeremy’s call had been terse, bordering on frantic. They needed a vet and they needed one now. Jason had torn out of Lang Downs as fast as he could safely drive. He hadn’t been back to Taylor Peak in the two weeks since Devlin’s funeral, and this was not how he’d wanted his first return visit to go.

“What happened?” he asked when he saw Jeremy.

“Who are you?” one of the jackaroos asked.

“Jason, thank you for getting here so quickly,” Jeremy said before Jason could answer.

“I’m the vet,” Jason told the jackaroo.

“You’re not Dr. Nelson.”

“No,” Jeremy agreed, “but he is a vet, and he was closer than having Dr. Nelson come out from Boorowa. Back here, Jason. We were moving the mob between paddocks and my horse got tangled up in barbed wire. We cut him loose as best we could and brought him back in, but he’s a mess. He’s… bloody hell, he was my horse before I came to Lang Downs, and he’s the horse Devlin used almost exclusively. I don’t want to lose him. He’s covered in blood.”

Jason’s gut clenched. Bad enough for his first emergency to be on Taylor Peak where he would have to deal with their distrust of everything related to Lang Downs. Having it be Jeremy’s one link to his brother only made it worse. If it had been a sheep, he could have assessed the situation and told them it would a better choice to butcher it than treat it. He couldn’t do that with this horse unless he had no other choice. It didn’t look that serious, but horses were fickle creatures. He’d seen vets do everything right and the horse just up and die on them anyway. And he’d seen others so badly hurt no one expected them to survive and they just had.

He approached the jittery horse carefully. The animal wasn’t fighting the crossties holding it in place, but Jason could see the way its muscles jumped in pain and protest. “Take a deep breath, Jeremy. Horses bleed. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Let me take a look at him before we panic. What’s his name?”

“Misfit,” Jeremy replied.

Bloody hell
, Jason thought. If that wasn’t a biting commentary on Jeremy’s life before coming to Lang Downs, Jason didn’t know what would be.

“Okay, Misfit,” he crooned to the horse, “let’s take a look at you. You did a number on yourself, didn’t you?”

He held his hand out so Misfit could sniff it. He hadn’t sterilized them yet because he wanted the horse to smell him, not antiseptic. The time for sterilization would come later. Misfit snuffled at his hand like he was looking for a treat.

“I don’t have anything for you just yet, mate, but let me take care of you and I’ll give you the apple I was going to eat for lunch,” Jason promised. He ran a soothing hand down Misfit’s neck as he stepped to the side away from Jeremy to assess the injuries. Someone had removed the barbed wire, but the damage the braided metal had left behind on the horse’s skin was obvious. Mostly around its back legs, fortunately, with no injuries he could see on Misfit’s chest or belly, but the chestnut coat would hide small amounts of blood. He’d look more closely as he worked, but Misfit was still standing, so he doubted anything critical had been torn open.
Suture him up, give him antibiotics, something for the pain.
He could handle this.

“Okay, I’m going to give him a sedative for the pain and to keep him calm while we treat him.” Jason rummaged in his bag for a syringe and filled it with the sedative. It would take a few minutes for it to work, but he could use that time to scrub up and find out what had happened. Misfit shivered all over when Jason injected the sedative, but he calmed to Jeremy’s touch.

“Is there a sink I can use to clean up before we start? I don’t want to make him worse because I have dirty hands.”

“Over here,” Jeremy said.

Jason scrubbed his hands and arms thoroughly. “Where’d the barbed wire come from?” he asked while he waited for the sedative to take effect.

“It was lying in the scrub,” Jeremy muttered. “The more I find out about the way Devlin ran things the past couple of years, the less I like. I’ve found more than one pile of scrap from fences just lying around in the paddocks. I’ve ordered it cleaned up, but I only have so many men and that isn’t our only chore.”

A jackaroo joined them as Jason was washing up.

“Who’s the kid?” he asked.

“Jason Thompson, from Lang Downs,” Jeremy replied. “He just finished vet school and came home to work. Jason, this is Tim Perkins, one of my crew bosses.”

Perkins made a noncommittal noise and went to stand by Misfit’s head, stroking his forelock soothingly.

When Misfit’s head began to drop and he started looking drowsy instead of frantic, Jason grabbed his clippers. “I’ll be as gentle as I can, but if he moves around, he runs the risk of getting hurt worse. Keep him as calm as you can. I’d rather not twitch him unless we have to.”

Jeremy joined the other man at Misfit’s head. Jason could feel them watching him. He did his best not to squirm under Perkins’s assessing gaze, but he could feel the weight of judgment from every jackaroo in the station in that look. Jason knew how gossip spread on a station. By now, all the hands not in the barn would have heard all about how the new vet—a kid—had come instead of the usual vet. And every one of them would judge him based on how well he treated Misfit.

He couldn’t focus on that. He had to pay attention to what he was doing or he could make matters worse, and that wouldn’t do anything to help his reputation.

He turned the clipper on and waited to see how Misfit would react to the noise. He twitched his ears a little but didn’t seem overly bothered. Jason set the base against Misfit’s shoulder so he could see that the vibration wouldn’t hurt him. When that got no more of a reaction than the noise had, Jason breathed a sigh of relief. He headed to Misfit’s back legs, where the wire had done the most damage, and started shaving around the injuries he found. Most of the marks were puncture wounds rather than lacerations. He clipped the hair back from them so he could clean them, but they would heal without any extra repair. The lacerations would require more work.

He finished the first leg without finding anything serious, but he didn’t hope for his luck to hold. When he moved to Misfit’s other hind leg, he grimaced. The barbed wire had cut deep, tearing the muscle and exposing the flexor tendon. If it was ruptured, he didn’t know if he’d be able to save the horse. “Bring me my bag?” Jason asked Jeremy.

Jeremy brought it to him and hissed when he saw the wound. “That looks bad.”

“Don’t panic yet,” Jason said, trying to keep himself from doing just that. “It’s exposed. That doesn’t mean it’s compromised.” He filled a new syringe with a local anesthetic and injected it in Misfit’s hindquarters, just above the injury. “I’m going to give that a moment to work so I can clip around it and clean it without him trying to kick the shit out of me, and then we’ll see if it’s as bad as it looks.”