Outlast the Night (5 page)

“And has it?” Jeremy asked curiously.

Harris slanted his eyes in Simms’s direction. “You could say that. Caine offered to keep me on year-round.”

Jeremy nodded. “Lang Downs has always been a place people stayed.” The same had never been true of Taylor Peak, much to Jeremy’s father’s and Devlin’s dismay, but that only made the current situation even stranger.

They reached the mob then, and Jeremy didn’t have time to ponder the situation anymore. He was too busy calling orders to Arrow and trying to stay out of the way of the others. Harris had a good command of the situation, but some of the men were better at following orders than others.

Between him, Arrow, and Jeremy himself, they got the mob moving back toward the valley. If Jeremy had to send Arrow after more strays than usual, he kept his comments to himself. Harris voiced them for him, and he was the one in charge of the drive, so better for it to come from him.

They got the sheep into the valley and delivered to the breeding pens. Macklin had that down to a science, a kid Jeremy didn’t know separating the sheep out one by one and directing them according to Macklin’s nods. “Who’s that with the boss?” Jeremy asked.

“Jason Thompson. His dad is the head mechanic. He’s lived here since he was two. He’s got a way with the animals. I thought Seth was supposed to be helping today too. I hope he hasn’t skivved off somewhere.”

“Seth?”

“Chris’s kid brother. Usually you can’t keep him and Jason apart unless Seth’s working with Patrick, Jason’s dad, but Patrick took the weekly run to town for supplies this morning.”

“Maybe Macklin sent him to do something else?” Jeremy didn’t claim to understand the tone of Harris’s voice, but he figured the kid deserved a chance to defend himself before he got reamed for shirking his duties.

“Maybe. He’s gotten better, but he played some pranks when he first got here, mostly on his brother, but I won’t let him jeopardize Chris’s place on the station. We’ve worked too hard for that.”

Before Jeremy could decide how to reply to that, another teenager, a little older than Jason, came running back toward the pens. “Seth will be out in a few minutes, Macklin. He said to tell you he’s almost done in the office.”

“There, see? A perfectly reasonable explanation.”

“Good thing too. Let’s get the horses turned out and see what else the boss needs us to do.”

Behind them, one of the jackaroos muttered something under his breath. Harris spun on his heel. “You got a problem with working a full day for your pay, Jenkins?”

The man flushed but didn’t say anything.

“What’s the deal?” Jeremy asked after the man had slunk away. “It’s been a while since I’ve been here, and I never worked here, but I don’t remember this kind of attitude.”

“It’s not all of them,” Harris said, “and Jenkins is the worst, by far, but I think the rumors hurt the station when it came to some of their seasonal men. They had to hire people they wouldn’t have looked twice at in the past. Some of them, a lot of them, really, have stepped up to do their jobs, but a few of them haven’t even tried to learn what they were supposed to do.”

“I didn’t realize it had gotten that bad,” Jeremy said with a shake of his head. “Did they lose any year-rounders?”

“I don’t think so,” Harris said, “but this was my first season, so I don’t know who was here before. The only empty house when I came seemed to be the foreman’s house, though, and Neil and Molly have moved into that now. Macklin offered Neil’s old house to Chris and Seth, well, and me, I guess, by extension.”

That explained the looks he’d seen pass between the two men off and on all day as well as Harris’s attitude toward the younger Simms brother. “Hopefully next year will be better,” Jeremy said.

“Yeah, and if it’s not, at least we’ll be expecting it and can plan to deal with it better.”

Chapter 4

J
EREMY
had just sat down at one of the empty tables in the canteen when Harris walked up and plonked his plate down across from him. “You sitting over here by yourself for a reason?”

Jeremy shrugged. “Emery’s pretty much poisoned the year-rounders against me, and the seasonal jackaroos all know each other already. Didn’t seem like there was anywhere else to sit.”

“Neil’s really not that bad once you get to know him,” Harris said. “I’ve heard stories of what he was like when he first found out about Caine, but he’s come around. He’s never given Chris and me a moment’s grief, and he shuts down anyone who tries to say anything about Caine and Macklin before they can say more than the second word.”

“That isn’t why he hates me,” Jeremy said. “My brother owns Taylor Peak—you knew that, right?” Harris nodded. “My father and Old Man Lang were good neighbors. Not good friends, probably, but good neighbors, but then my dad died and Devlin took over. Lang offered his condolences, his help, anything Devlin needed, out of respect for my father and their long-standing acquaintance, but Devlin refused. He said Lang was soft, that he was old-fashioned, and that he was irresponsible on top of that since he’d never married. What would happen to the land when he died?”

“Caine,” Harris said with a chuckle.

“Yes, but we didn’t know about him at the time. We were neighbors, but we didn’t know a lot about his family, nothing about a niece in the US, much less a great-nephew. Anyway, after a while, that irresponsible bit changed. Devlin decided he’d buy the property. He made an offer and Lang rejected him. That might have been the end of it, except Devlin couldn’t leave well enough alone. To hear him tell it, Lang insulted him, said he’d burn the place to the ground before he’d sell to Devlin. I find that hard to believe. Mr. Lang was a lot of things, including a hard enough man to carve this place out of nothing, but he wasn’t cruel. Not that I’ve ever seen or heard.”

“That’s certainly not the impression I got of him from the people here who knew him,” Harris agreed. “He’s somewhere between a saint and a minor deity to the men who worked with him.”

“I’d guess the reality is somewhere in between,” Jeremy said. “It usually is when you’ve got that kind of difference of opinion, but it doesn’t matter what Lang actually said to Devlin. Devlin was even more determined to buy Lang Downs. And then Caine came. Devlin approached Macklin when we first heard the station had passed to a relative in the US. He thought he could convince Macklin to use his position as foreman to influence the relative’s decisions. I have a suspicion Macklin did just that, only to convince Caine not to sell to Devlin instead of the other way around. That was already bad enough. Then word got around that Caine was gay, and he got intolerable. He called Caine every name you could imagine and set about spreading as many rumors as he could. When he found out about Macklin as well… well, you can imagine the explosion that caused.”

Harris shook his head. “Don’t think I want to.”

“I won’t say all the problems you’ve had this year are Devlin’s fault. Someone said enough that Devlin heard about it in the first place, but I know he hasn’t made it easier either,” Jeremy said, “and the year-rounders have to know that even if it’s more guess than fact. I knew I’d have an uphill battle if I came here, but I came anyway because it’s still better than anywhere else I might go.”

“It is that,” Harris replied. “This is the ninth station I’ve worked on. None of the others have come even close to the sense of belonging here. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, with all the bad blood between the stations, but unless there’s something you haven’t told me, you weren’t directly involved. And if that’s the case, you can carve a place for yourself here just like Chris and I have done.”

Jeremy pondered that for a moment. He’d accepted that he’d burned his bridges with Devlin when he left the way he did. Devlin would probably take him back if he toed the line and got married, but Jeremy didn’t intend to do that, certainly not unless gay marriage was legalized at some point, and that wouldn’t help his cause with Devlin anyway. He’d come to Lang Downs because he’d known Macklin would take him in for a few days without question. He’d hoped more might come of it, but it had seemed a slim hope at best, and the near fight with Emery hadn’t helped change that opinion. Today had been different, though. Today he’d felt like part of the crew, like he actually had something to contribute to the station. Lang Downs might or might not need an extra hand over the winter, but they certainly needed the help now—help Jeremy was well qualified to give.

“Maybe I will,” he said with a smile.

“Finish your supper,” Harris ordered. “Patrick should be back with the supplies, and that means Chris and I have beer again. You should come have one with us.”

“Are you sure?” Jeremy asked. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t mean it,” Harris—Jeremy supposed he ought to start thinking of the man as Jesse if he was going to drink his beer—replied, standing up. “It’s the house closest to the bunkhouse. We’ll be up for a couple of hours if you change your mind.”

“Nothing to change,” Jeremy said quickly. “I’d love to have a beer with you.”

“H
OW
did it go?” Neil asked, sitting down next to Sam at the table.

Sam grinned. “I got the job.”

“I knew you would,” Neil said with an answering smile. He sobered for a moment. “Is it what you want?”

“Maybe not forever,” Sam replied honestly. “It’s not something I ever thought about, you know? I never considered moving out of the city. This is nearly as foreign to me as moving to the States would be. That said, I really enjoyed working with Caine today, and it’s not like I have a lot of other offers. At least this way I can get my feet back under me. If I look for another job in six months or a year, I’ll be doing it with a fresh job on my resume, not with more than a year of unemployment as the top entry.”

“Yeah, always a good thing.”

“Are you going to be okay with me staying with you?” Sam asked. “I didn’t know it would turn into a long-term thing when I asked if I could come.”

“There aren’t a lot of other options,” Neil said. “The foreman’s house was only empty because Macklin moved into the big house. Otherwise you’d be crammed into one of the bachelor houses with Molly and me both. I mean, I guess you could move into the bunkhouse when the seasonal jackaroos leave in a couple of weeks, but that’s hardly comfortable for more than a season.”

“Maybe not, but in a season, maybe other options will open up,” Sam said. “You and Molly deserve your privacy, not to mention you might need that guest room for a nursery one of these days.”

“Eventually, maybe,” Neil said, “but we aren’t planning on starting a family right away. We want some time to be together just as a couple first.”

“Speaking of which, how are the plans coming?’ Sam asked.

“Molly wants to go to Yass in a couple of weeks, after the breeding’s done, to look at places for the reception,” Neil said. “Once we do that, we can start making other plans. I don’t know why we don’t just have it here on the station. Caine would let us use the canteen. And there will be plenty of space in the bunkhouse in the middle of winter if people want to come and stay overnight after the ceremony. You should have seen the Christmas party we had. Caine’s mother even talked Macklin into dancing.”

“With her or with Caine?” Sam asked.

“Both,” Neil said. “I couldn’t believe it, but everyone clapped and cheered.”

“You couldn’t believe they danced or that everyone clapped?”

“Mostly that they danced,” Neil said. “They keep their affection for each other pretty tightly under wraps when the rest of the men are around, even the year-rounders whose loyalty isn’t in question.”

“Why?” Sam asked. “I mean, I can understand why they might not want to be obvious in town, but here on the station? It’s not like it’s a secret.”

“You’d have to ask them,” Neil said, “but I think some of it is professionalism, some of it is Macklin being an incredibly private person, and some of it is not wanting to make other people uncomfortable in what is their home for the summer.”

“I get the professionalism and the being private, but what about them being comfortable in their home?”

“Like I said, that would be a question for them,” Neil said, “but Molly and I aren’t terribly demonstrative during the day either. I mean, I don’t go around kissing her in the canteen or out by the sheds. It’s just not the right place for it.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

“But the Christmas party was just that,” Neil said. “A party. The expectations were different. It was the first time since Caine’s arrival that had happened.”

“Has it happened since then?”

“Maybe Seth’s birthday party,” Neil replied after a moment. “It wasn’t exactly the same. Nobody was dancing, but it was a party and the atmosphere was much lighter than a typical dinner. Come to think of it, I did see Macklin standing with his arm around Caine. Is there a reason this is so important to you?”

“Trying to figure out how to fit in,” Sam said with a shrug. “I don’t know how long I’ll be here, but who knows? Maybe I’ll meet someone someday and want to bring him back here with me. Maybe I’ll even meet someone here, not necessarily this winter, but next season maybe there will be someone for me, like you met Molly.”