Free Bella's Run by Margareta Osborn Page B

outback road trip is done. Now we’re free and ready for our next adventure. I love my life!’
    And she ran.
    ‘I can’t fucking believe I’m doing this,’ said Patty as she unsnapped her belt and got out of the ute.
    ‘Come on, grumble-guts. Have you ever seen anything like it?’ called Bella as she threw her hands in the direction of the hundreds of tumbling weeds scooting down the road. ‘They look so wild. So free. Just like us.’
    ‘If you say so, girl,’ said Patty, parking her bum on the bonnet. ‘So free in fact, in the US, North Dakota I think, they considered erecting a fence all the way around the whole state to stop the tumbleweed taking over. See, I’m not just a dumb-arse nurse.’
    ‘I never said you were.’
    ‘No, but you’ve thought it plenty of times.’ Patty lifted herself off the ute and slung an arm around her friend. ‘I agree. We’re as free-spirited as tumbleweed – but we’re not half as prickly!’
    ‘Speak for yourself.’
    Patty went for a full arm-lock around Bella’s neck. Bella jammed a pair of hands into Patty’s sensitive ribs and tickled for all she was worth.
    Patty roared and let her go, laughing.
    Gasping for breath, Patty took a few moments to compose herself. ‘We need a photo. So we have proof for our grandkids that we actually did this.’

    ‘Grandkids? Whoa back. I can’t even contemplate the idea of kids.’
    ‘Okay. How about so we’ve got proof we’re legends in our own lunchboxes?’
    Bella raised an eyebrow, then grinned and nodded.‘You’re just so full of yourself.’
    ‘You reckon?’
    ‘Yep.’
    Patty looked contemplative. ‘You’re probably right.’
    Then she ducked into the ute to grab her camera, and set the self-timer.
    ‘So are you coming?’ asked Bella.
    ‘Where to?’
    ‘To dance, my friend . . . To dance with Sara. Let’s pretend all this blow-away grass is tumbleweed and dance like lunatics. We’ve got the Nunkeri Muster and two boys waiting in those mountains of ours on the other side of the border. What’s not to be happy about?’

    The driver in the four-wheel drive coming in the opposite direction was mystified. Two young girls – one a long-ringleted blonde, the other a shorter, claret auburn – looked like they were dancing by the side of the road on a Friday afternoon. From the camera perched precariously atop a felt Akubra hat on the roof of the ute, they also appeared to be trying to pose for a photo.
    Figuring they were half-cut from an early finish shearing a mob or maybe they were starting early for a B&S weekend, he kept them in his rear-vision mirror long after he’d passed by. They were easy on the eye, that was for sure. And at his age the talent had all but dried up. Maybe he should have offered to take the photo for them.
    A bit late now. They were on the move again, twirling, laughing. They reminded him of the yearlings he had at home, playful young horses full of the thrill of life. Arms swinging, heads bopping, elastic-sided boots flying through the air, their features slowly became blurred until they were just a pair of shadows dancing in the breeze.

Chapter 10
    Will O’Hara shouldn’t have been at the Stockmen’s Muster on the Nunkeri Plains. He should have stayed at home, baling his paddock of lucerne before the cool change hit. Downing a gulp of rum-and-coke, he slumped his shoulders forward over the can in his hand and tried not to think about the green crop languishing in neat rows on his river flats, waiting to be baled into squares.
    His thoughts shifted to his broken-down ute, sitting in the workshop back home on Tindarra Station. He’d inherited the ute along with the hundreds of acres which made up the station from his late Uncle Bill. He could have had the new water pump fitted to the old girl by now and she would’ve been running real sweet. He needed her going so he could start repairing the boundary fence between his place and his father Rory’s property next door.
    He let