Read Online The Coral Tree by Joyce Dingwell - Free Book Online Page B

Felix—she patted them as she passed. They were glossy and groomed, but that was only to be expected of old Matt. He loved horses.
    Molly and White Nose were in the wrong stables. She smiled as she put Molly in “Molly” and White Nose where a white-nosed pony obviously should be stalled.
    As she stood there looking at them there were steps behind her. She turned round to smile at old Matt.
    “O ’ Flynn told me you were here, Miss Cary, so I thought I ’ d ride over on Pat.” Matt pulled the horse forward and said proudly. “He was off color, so I had him home with me, but he ’ s better now. Look at that gloss.”
    “They all look good, Matt. You ’ ve done an excellent job. Do you know I never realized how much I had missed them—” Cary ran her fingers lovingly down Pat ’ s sensitive nose.
    “The cure for that ’ s a ride, Miss Cary. I ’ ve kept your saddle in good trim.”
    Everything was in good trim: the feed-bins, the grooming brushes, the clean-swept floor. Cary saw that even her old jodhpurs and tartan shirt had been neatly hung up.
    “All waiting for you,” nodded Matt enticingly. “I ’ ll saddle Toby.”
    “Do you think I ’ ll manage Toby? He was always more difficult than the others, and after this break—”
    “Have to manage him some time,” returned Matt laconically. She heard him go along to Toby ’ s stall, calling him in that curiously soft voice for a big, rough man.
    She s h ut the door and took down the jodhpurs, then climbed into them in the quick, expert way she had learned when time off from attending Mrs . Marlow had been very precious and of doubtful duration. One had never known when she would querulously demand an immediate return.
    She was ready when Matt came back with the pony. “Go steady with him, Miss Cary,” he advised. “No letting him on the wing today. Are you right? Then up.”
    Cary was tense at first, and Toby probably sensed it. He stepped out delicately, as usual his beautiful muscles giving him the sensation of speed because he had always been a smoothly co-ordinated horse.
    Confidence came back with every step, however, and by fifty yards Cary was moving at a trot and enjoying the run.
    She turned Toby and came back to Matt. He had mounted Pat and was preparing to go back to his farm.
    “Mind w h at I said about going steady,” he advised. “I ’ ll keep Pat a week longer. Good-bye, Miss Cary. You ’ ll be settling in soon?”
    She nodded and rode as far as the gate with him, then returned in a canter. In the sudden mood of ecstasy she had often known on horseback she veered past the house and along the northern paddock.
    It was a delirious sensation, especially after twelve months ’ exile. She flanked the bordering fence that separated Clairhill from Currabong and rode on for several miles.
    She was nearing the end of the property now. She knew it by the little gully creek. This was the junction of four stations—Clairhill, Currabong, Fortescue ’ s and Ten Mile. It was generally regarded as no man ’ s land.
    It was a pretty spot where tranquillity was the keynote, where there was no sound except the chirp of crickets, the occasional song of a bird, the lazy tinkle of the stream after a spell of rain. Cary knew it was favored for country picnics, though, of course, Mrs. Marlow had frowned on picnics, so it had only been on treasured rides like this that she had come to the creek.
    Perhaps in her eagerness to see it again now, she dug her feet into Toby ’ s flanks, perhaps she forgot the sloping ground and kept giving the pony too full a rein.
    Whatever it was, whose fault it was, Cary could not have told clearly. She only knew that suddenly a figure seemed to be underneath h e r and Toby, beside the figure a cropping horse, that in an instant Toby had reared and turned and was streaking, out of her control now, towards the bordering trees beyond the gully.
    She did not see the man roll out of the way of the approaching hooves, turn