The Party Line by Sue Orr

really sorry for your dad …’
    ‘Nickie, shut up and listen. With all those broken fences, Gilbert’s cows are all over the place, right? Escaping here, there and everywhere.’
    ‘Yep. He’s famous for it.’
    ‘So would it be right to say that no one is ever really sure how many cows Jack Gilbert has? And how many calves?’
    ‘Probably. Except Jack’s so stingy, he probably does know.’
    ‘So. We get the other calves out of the pen in the middle of the night. We walk them up the road … and we put them in Jack Gilbert’s paddocks. Our paddocks.’
    ‘You mean with Jack Gilbert’s calves? He’ll notice straight away,four extra calves at feeding time. Your dad will notice for sure.’
    Gabrielle whispered the next words.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘We put them in with the milking herd. The cows that have just had their babies. I’ve looked at the fences where the herd is, and there’re still some broken-down parts. Don’t you get it?’
    Nickie shook her head.
    ‘It will look like some of the cows had twins, or even triplets, and some of the new calves wandered off. Dad or Gilbert will find the hole in the fence and think these new calves have found their way back to their mothers. They’re little and scrawny, so they look like they’re just born. And the cows will have milk so the calves will get a drink.’
    ‘And then what? They go on the bobby calf truck at your place?’
    ‘We’ll work that bit out later. Though I do already have a good idea.’
    Too many thoughts raced around Nickie’s brain. There had to be one really good reason why this couldn’t work. Nickie just had to think of it.
    ‘I’ve thought about it really hard,’ Gabrielle said. ‘I’ve tried to see how we’d get caught. The only big risk is someone seeing us doing it.’
    ‘What about when the Janssens see the empty pen, when they come to milk?’
    ‘They’ll just think the truck did come early. Like your father said.’
    ‘And what about Jack Gilbert, when he starts getting extra calves?’
    ‘It’s Dad’s job to look after the Gilberts’ stock. Every day he says he finds animals he didn’t know about. He’s always going on about how he can’t keep track of them, thanks to the holes in the fences. And you know what, Nickie?’
    They both waved out to Mrs Janssen. They were close to her now. They had to be really careful.
    ‘Going on what Dad says, if Jack Gilbert finds extra calves on his land, he won’t be going looking for their owners. He’d say they were his. Jack Gilbert would say he was right there when those calves were born.’
    The calves were at the gate, ramming at it with their heads, waiting to be let in the feeding pen. Larry wasn’t at the front of the stampede.He wasn’t in the middle either. He was right at the back. He looked about the same as he did yesterday. Wobbly, lacking in motivation and determination, Mr Burgess would say. Vincent didn’t look much better.
    ‘Do it,’ Gabrielle whispered. ‘Give her the message from your dad.’
     
    There’d been no rain for about two weeks. Nickie had listened to her mum and dad talking about the weather, saying it was a relief that the mud was finally drying out. Next thing, though, they’d started worrying about what would happen if no rain came, and there was a drought, and Jesus Christ did they not deserve one summer without dry conditions and losing sleep over peat fires and running out of feed? Nickie had the impression that the weather problems were the government’s fault. Eugene said things like Carter better be keeping an eye on this. Carter being the Minister of Agriculture.
    The night of the rescue, Nickie lay in bed with her curtain open just enough to see the sky. She’d gone to bed at the usual time of nine. There was a full moon. It couldn’t have been a worse night for stealing calves.
    She pushed her window open. Trucks hummed miles away on the highway. She wondered whether some of them might already be full of little