It was always easy to pick a hobby farmer’s property, Hamish thought with a shake of his head. They bought into the area without investing in equipment and with no idea how to maintain their property—or the endless expense and effort they’d signed up for. He’d ask Matt who had purchased this acreage; they only had to ask for a hand and the locals would help out, either with labour or at least by lending the correct tools.
His eyes narrowed as a sheep lumbered across the road a hundred metres ahead. It was unusual to see one alone; they tended to travel like lemmings, all following the leader in single file, or at least milling around in a relatively tight group. Because of that, it was actually harder to catch a lone animal than to round up a mob.
He slowed the ute, glancing in the rear-view mirror to see whether Deefer had also registered the potential job. Yep. The dog strained forward, nose into the wind as he eyeballed the sheep. Refocusing on the road, Hamish realised there was someone walking up the centre of the track behind the sheep. A grin spread across his face: even at a distance, he’d recognise those jogging pants anywhere.
He let the ute roll to a standstill on the side of the road, then propped his elbow on the window ledge as he watched.
Intent on the lone sheep, Jemma didn’t seem to notice the vehicle. She moved stealthily, trying to creep up behind the juvenile, which had stopped to snatch a mouthful of roadside browse. Hamish grinned. Stalking a sheep never worked, they seemed to have a sixth sense that warned them of predators.
Sure enough, the sheep kept eating until Jemma was only a couple of metres away, then it leapt forward, making directly for the tumbled fence.
‘No!’ Jemma yelped as the animal blundered into the loose wires and crashed to the ground. It quickly righted itself, just as Jemma seemed to recognise her lost opportunity and rushed forward. She lunged for the animal but bit the dust, not even managing to grab a handful of fleece as the lamb charged along the fence line, bleating piteously.
Hamish snorted in surprise as Jemma righted herself, then stood in a half crouch, evidently working out her next attack. This time she went in hard, racing toward the sheep. For a moment, Hamish thought she’d got it worked out, but at the last second, she veered wide, as though she was hoping to scare the sheep in the right direction, rather than seize the animal.
The plan would have had a chance if the sheep was with the flock, but a single animal was too flighty, too unpredictable to herd. The sheep took off, racing up the middle of the road, with Jemma chasing it. The animal must have sensed it was getting too far from its home paddock, because it slammed on the brakes, then doubled back. It ran toward Jemma, dodging her at the last second and crossing the road to run along Peppertree Crossing’s tight boundary. If Jemma could catch up to the sheep, the decent fence would offer a better chance of corralling it. But the tangle of mallee stumps, tumbleweed and boxthorn bushes tripped and slowed her, and the spooked animal jinked and turned, leaping over invisible hurdles and putting on erratic bursts of speed. Eventually, it blundered through the undergrowth, back in Hamish’s direction.
Jemma scowled his way, but he was fairly certain she couldn’t make him out through the filthy windscreen.
‘You got a sheep dog on there?’ she yelled imperiously. ‘You might want to send it over this way.’
‘No need,’ he called back as he cracked the door and clambered out.
The fists Jemma thrust onto her hips and the squared-off stance said it all: she recognised him now.
‘Hamish. Any possible chance you could help a little? This is probably your damn sheep anyway, isn’t it?’
‘Not by a couple of properties,’ he said, coming to lean against the bonnet with his ankles crossed. Although he zipped his plaid jacket, Jemma looked hot and dishevelled, her fancy pants coated in dust and her hair a wild tangle. She directed a ferocious glower at him. ‘So you’re just going to leave the animal here? It’ll get hit by a car or something. And I’m positive you’ll bear some legal liability.’ She said the last bit like a threat, as though determined she’d find a loophole and happily be the one to follow through on the prosecution.
‘We’ll put it back in,’ he said, making no move to do so.
‘In there?’ She pointed to the wrecked fence.
‘Reckon so.’
‘Won’t it just come straight back out?’
‘Not once it sights the rest of the flock.’ He lifted his chin to the horizon, best part of a kilometre away. Silhouetted against the crisp spring sky, a mob of sheep moved slowly along the ridge top.
‘Well, there’s no gate, and it doesn’t want to go over or through that fence, even though it’s absolute shit and no doubt illegal not to have stock properly fenced. So how do you plan to round it up without your dog? In case you missed it, I’ve just spent fifteen minutes trying to catch the bloody thing.’
‘Didn’t miss it. Though it was more like ten minutes,’ he said, enjoying her annoyance. For years he’d been flattered by girls who shaped themselves into what they thought he wanted. And they’d succeeded well enough. But the lack of challenge had grown boring. Through no fault of their own, so had the girls. There was no thrill of the chase when there was no chase. Uninterested and unattainable—nowthatwas electrifying.
‘Yeah, well, let’s watch you put in ten minutes without the help of your dog, then,’ Jemma responded, crossing her arms and standing fair centre of the road.
He pushed away from the car and strolled toward the sheep.
‘You’ll never get close enough that way,’ Jemma yelled. ‘It’s a lot bloody harder than it looks.’
‘Nah, you’ve just got to show her who’s boss.’
‘Or you could just bludgeon it over the head with your club,’ she returned.
That one took him a moment, but then he grinned and clicked his tongue. ‘You really are city, aren’t you? This one’s a woolly sheep, not a woolly mammoth.’
‘Hilarious,’ she said, but she lowered her voice as he drew nearer to the teenage lamb. ‘Looks more like a pair of nice knee-high Ugg boots to me.’
‘Can turn her into that, if that’s what you want.’ He ended the sentence with a grunt as he took three huge strides forward and sank his hand deep into the fleece. With his left knee, he pinned the sheep to the remains of a concrete fence post. ‘Want to pat your boots?’
