When Colts Ran by Roger McDonald Page A

wasn’t. It was the same defiance in looks but not in feeling.
    â€˜He won’t say what he expects of you.’
    â€˜You feel it though,’ said Randolph.
    Colts faced the bouncers Randolph sent down. Struck on the arms, shoulders and head, he didn’t complain. Likewise, he was hard on Randolph and kept the balls coming until it was time to clean up for tea.
    Pre-dawn Colts was out catching the horses before Randolph was properly awake. If volunteers were called for chipping burrs in the holding paddocks, Colts went to it. If Randolph said he was off doing a job he found Colts willing to go one better; and he wasn’t bad either, helping dismantle a windmill with the station mechanic, putting the parts back together, never wasting an effort, pacing himself, only needing to be told a detail to remember. All he wanted was more practice at sheepwork, and he’d get that. When Oakeshott assigned them to separate work parties, Randolph connived to get them back together again. It never took long.
    After a while Randolph announced he’d extended his finishing date on Eureka another month, always worrying a bit that Colts needed extra shepherding before his farewell.
    They rode out early with their fresh horses kicking each other and swishing their tails getting rid of flies. Colts wore a leather sweatband around his wrist, tooled by Randolph in a pattern of lizards and bush mice.
    Randolph caught him turning at the sound of a motor at the rear of the sandhills by the salt lake, where the inwards track ran. At first he’d said the only thing keeping him at Eureka was that Buckler would be back. After a while he expressed his fury at being dumped. Randolph drew the story out. The only ones who cared had left him for the west and centre. His sister, Faye, was gone off as a missionary’s wife; Mrs Veronica Buckler was gone to make Buckler pay for his sins; Major Dunc Buckler was gone pushing along north to find the war that didn’t want him.
    Buckler was hypocritical as all shit built up, said Colts, when he learned about Buckler’s men and de Grey’s boys heading off from Eureka together – he’d blocked Colts from going with him but travelled with a boy his age and toting a rifle too, Hammond Pringle.
    Randolph knew enough to know that wasn’t quite how it was. Colts was the one who broke out, got himself expelled from school and set off travelling inland spurning counter opinion. Lucky for him Buckler evaporated with his half-arsed army. You made objections to make a place where you could go in this life. Randolph saw it might be to Colts’s surprise a place called Eureka.
    Colts circled out looking for sheep dispersed in fives and sixes over wastes of saltbush stretching to a horizon of white dust haze and immeasurable glare. The animals scattered around one side of a clump but failed to appear on the other. Their fleeces were the same colour as the soil, a mustard grey. Randolph waited like a magnet a few miles away until the mob was mustered towards him, and they set off walking them.
    â€˜Listen, you’re doing all right,’ said Randolph, with the mob bunched and moving, and they could yarn as they switched away flies. Maisie ran away out, low to the ground like a dusty moving comma, keeping the sheep all in order. Randolph carried a small black-and-tan kelpie on his lap because her feet were sensitive to the hot ground, but later coming up to the yards when it was cooler she would do the job while Maisie stood back and rested.
    â€˜Eureka wasn’t my idea – they duped me,’ said Colts.
    Randolph feared hearing him say it was a big mistake.
    â€˜It’s all right, though,’ Colts spoke into the angle of his chin and the shadow of his hat fell on his face.
    Randolph whistled a tuneless tune as they advanced another mile or so. Then Randolph said strangely, after complicated thought, ‘I’ll never forsake you, Kings.’
    Colts