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Re: Pat Ritter. Books

Postby patritter » Tue Sep 19, 2017 10:53 pm

'The Drover' - Page 83:

Both men agreed and decided to return to camp and move it closer to their quarry the next day.

The sun was almost below the horizon when the men returned to camp. Liz had dinner waiting; the children had eaten, bathed in the nearby lagoon whilst Rose remained on her bed.
‘Thanks Liz, that is delicious. We at least know where they are. In the morning we’ll move camp to their water hole.’ Harry told Liz.
‘Do you think Rose will be up to it?’ Liz’s face frowned knowing her sister-in-law was behaving unusual. Although she’d never lost a child, particularly a boy, she didn’t know why Rose was acting this way.
‘I’ll have a word with her tonight and see if she can move on.’ Harry said.
Later that night before Harry retired to bed Rose was reading a Mills & Boon book by the dim light of a kerosene lamp.
‘Can you put the book down for a minute so I can tell you what we’re doing tomorrow?’ He asked Rose in a quiet and gentle voice.
She closed the book, ‘so what are we doing tomorrow, what’s so urgent?’ Rose said in a sarcastic voice.
‘We saw the mob today but it’s too far from here to ride, muster and yard them. I want to move camp closer to where they are.’ Harry explained.
‘I don’t care what you do Harry, move the camp, do what you want but leave me out of it. All I want is to be left alone to read my books.’
‘What about the children?’ He whispered.
‘What about them. Liz is there, she’s doing a fine job looking after them. I didn’t have to do anything today only read my book and sleep. She made sure they bathed, ate their dinner and put them to bed.’ Rose said with glee.
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Re: Pat Ritter. Books

Postby patritter » Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:11 pm

'The Drover' - Page 84:

‘When are you going to bathe?’ Harry asked sternly, emphasising the you.
‘I don’t know if I’ll ever wash again. I’m happy to sleep, read and relax. I want to go to sleep now – leave me alone.’ Rose blew the flame of the lamp out, turned over, and closed her eyes.
Harry went to the lagoon, bathed and returned to bed but decided to sleep in a swag underneath the truck to give Rose room and time to recover. How long would it take, he pondered.

Breaking daylight the next morning, work needed to be completed before the heat of the midday sun burned through.
After breakfast Harry loaded the horses and dogs onto his truck and waited for Mick and Liz to follow him to make a new camp.
‘We’ll head this way.’ He called out to Mick and waved him to follow. Harry manoeuvred his truck across gullies, around mulga bushes and onto gibber country. Gibber country is rocky and rough stones or rocks. It’s tough on animals also on machinery.
Heading toward the mountains he’d pointed out to Mick the previous day, he came upon an oasis in the desert. It was a great place to make camp. A huge ravine reached up to the top of a small mountain. At the base of the ravine was a large waterhole.
‘This is the place they’ve been watering Mick.’ He called out to his brother when he stopped the truck away from the ravine.
Amongst the trees, out of sight of the ravine, they made a camp combining both trucks covered with a huge green tarpaulin swung between them used to camouflage their camp from the brumby horses.
‘We couldn’t have got a better spot,’ Harry shared with his brother over the camp fire, ‘from the tracks at the waterhole there must be hundreds of them watering each day.’
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Re: Pat Ritter. Books

Postby patritter » Thu Sep 21, 2017 11:14 pm

'The Drover' - Page 85:

‘Yeah, it sure looks that way. What about around sunset we set up a position near the water hole upwind so they don’t smell us, and work out how to trap them.’ Mick asked his brother.
‘Great - it feels good to be trapping brumbies again. It takes me back to our childhood.’ Harry’s thoughts immediately returned to his youth when he and his brother Mick trapped brumbies to get a quid and now they were doing the same. They were only teenagers at the time and now each married with a family. Nothing much had changed between the two brothers. They always worked well together.
Near to sunset the two brothers placed themselves high above the ravine to get a bird’s eye view of the brumbies coming into water.
‘Have a look at the black stallion?’ Harry pointed and whispered to his brother.
‘He’s going to cause us trouble – you know. We might have to shoot him so we can keep the mob together.’ Mick whispered back to Harry.
‘We’ll see what happens before we shoot him – if he’s trouble, yes, but wait until we work out a plan before we do it.’ Harry replied in a quiet voice.
Both men returned to the camp and discussed how they were going to trap the brumbies.
‘If we build a set of yards and made a wing on each side we can trap a few at a time, quieten them to use as coaches for the rest.’ Harry explained.
‘How many do you think we’d want to trap first?’ Mick asked.
‘Probably about ten – if we trap the stallion in with the ten, then that’d be the trick. Where he goes the others follow.’ Both men agreed.
Early the following day they worked out how many posts and rails they’d need to cut from local timber to make a yard large and strong enough to hold ten horses especially the black stallion. With an axe each they selected sufficient posts after falling trees of a good size.
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Re: Pat Ritter. Books

Postby patritter » Fri Sep 22, 2017 10:56 pm

'The Drover' - Page 96:

Using strong rope they towed the posts to near the water hole and started digging post holes with a crowbar and shovel to form an enclosure to trap the horses. When they had sufficient posts in the ground it was time to cut rails and fasten them to the posts. Between each post were four rails, one on top and bottom and two in between. These were wired to each post using a cobb & co twitch to hold them in place. A slip rail was used as a gate to stop any trapped animal from escape.
The trap was set.
Near sunset Harry and Mick readied their horses waiting for the mob to come into the water. Harry’s eyes scanned the bush to see horses, lead by the black stallion, followed by other horses.
At one point the black stallion was about to enter the trap – stopped and raised his head as if to listen for anything unusual. The thirst was too much not to lure him to the waterhole. Others followed.
When most of the horses had their heads down drinking at the lagoon Harry quickly spurred his horse toward the opening in the yard. He needed to be quick because if the black stallion heard or seen him approach he would race out of the yard and they’d bid the mob goodbye.
Harry was quick because he knew his horse. Fast galloping from the bush behind which he was hiding, he spurred his horse toward the opening in the yard – he leaped from his horse, grab the slip rail and fasten it to the post to stop the mob.
Mick stayed back so if Harry failed to fasten the slip rail in time he would try and hold them from breaking away and force them back into the yard.
It was split second timing. Harry saw out of the corner of his eye, the black stallion stop drinking from the waterhole, he knew he had little time to complete his task. In an instance the black stallion turned toward Harry – stalled, wind blasting from the nostrils, lifted both front hooves and reared on his hind legs; whinnied to the others to alarm them of danger.
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Re: Pat Ritter. Books

Postby patritter » Sun Sep 24, 2017 11:02 pm

'The Drover' - Page 87:

Harry reached the slip rail in time, he grabbed the slip rail and quickly placed it across the barrier to stop the horses’ escape.
Mick rode up to Harry with a smile on his face, ‘good on ya mate – you did it, we’re got em.’
They trapped almost twenty including the black stallion.
Over the next couple of days each horse was handled and roped to quieten them enough to make them used to humans.
After quietening each mob they caught, eventually the entire mob was handled and calm enough to drive to Cunnamulla.
It took both men six weeks to trap 280 brumbies by using this method.
After handled and quietened the mob; they drove them to Cunnamulla where they received 10 quid a head.
Harry kept the black stallion. In the mob was a foal, black maned – tailed buckskin creamy. Claire wanted this colt as her own.
‘We’ll break him in Daddy – can I have him, he’s beautiful’, Claire pleaded with her father. She named the colt Dusty.
Chapter 11

Rose was pleased to be home in her cottage and once more living in town. Most of the day she lay on her bed and read Mills and Boon books, she didn’t want to do any housework or look after the children.
Harry continued droving and on one return trip home was surprised to discover Rose was expected another child.
‘This could be the best thing that could happen’, Harry told Rose in an excited voice.
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Re: Pat Ritter. Books

Postby patritter » Mon Sep 25, 2017 10:27 pm

'The Drover' - Page 88:

‘Not likely.’ She replied in a harsh voice. She didn’t want another child to take care of, she couldn’t look after the two she already had.
‘Perhaps it may be another boy and we could put behind us the death of little Harry.’ He continued. It was twelve months since they lost their son.
Rose gave birth to a girl, her name Annie. Unfortunately Annie was born with a disjointed hip. Her left hip socket torn away from her hip, it was a birth defect, which caused the hip to fracture from the socket.
‘What else could go wrong?’ Harry queried, ‘at least the child is alive.’ He whispered to Rose.
Annie became the centre of attention with Rose and Harry spending more time with her than their other two children. Many trips to hospital became Annie’s life with operations to mend the injury.
‘Annie will always walk with a limp.’ The doctor told Harry and Rose, ‘she should live a normal life.’
Claire and Louise felt they weren’t receiving the attention from their parents, particularly their father which hurt Claire’s feelings whenever she wanted to be alone with him. It didn’t matter to Louise because she was closer to her mother than she was her father.
Life continued with Harry still droving taking a mob of sheep to Bourke each month whilst Rose remained at home with her children mainly to take care of Annie. When Annie crawled, she dragged her injured leg behind her and always called out to be carried. After a number of operations the recovery period seemed it would never end.
Claire was now nine years old, Louise five years old and little Annie almost twelve months. Harry’s sister, Anna was in the hospital giving birth to her eleventh child which turned out to be twelve because she gave birth to twins.
After giving birth to the twins Anna fell into a coma. Although the twins were properly cared for at birth by hospital staff nothing could bring Anna from the coma. Ten days into the coma Anna’s life support was switched off. She died a dignified death with her husband Les by her bedside.
TO PURCHASE THIS BOOK CLICK HERE: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/95766
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Re: Pat Ritter. Books

Postby patritter » Tue Sep 26, 2017 11:00 pm

'The Drover' - Page 89:

Harry didn’t know what to do. Les, his brother-in-law grieved for his wife and his other children aged from only a fortnight old to nine stayed with Rose and their children.
‘How can I live without Anna?’ Les sobbed holding onto Harry’s shoulder.
‘It’ll be okay mate, I’ll make it right – don’t worry we’ll work it out.’ Harry consoled his brother-in-law.
After lying Anna to rest next to the grave of Harry’s son at Cunnamulla Cemetery the family returned to Harry and Rose’s home for the wake. Family and friends journeyed across the country to say farewell to their friend and relative.
Later that night after Harry and Rose retired to bed Harry said to his wife, ‘I want to take care of Anna’s children?’
‘How many do you want to look after?’ Rose inquired.
‘Nine including the twins; Rachael, Dorothy, Hector, and the others, it’s the least we can do for her. She looked after me since I left home and now it’s my time to help.’
‘What about Les, what’s he going to do?’ Rose asked.
She thought about Harry’s demand and knew it was the only solution. Les couldn’t raise these children, particularly the twins. What else could they do? Les lived a nomad lifestyle and he liked the taste of rum.
‘He’ll take the older boys to work with him. He couldn’t be expected to look after the twins; Anna would turn over in her grave to know I didn’t look after them.’
‘Yes, we have a responsibility. It’ll be tough but I agree Anna would have done the same for us in a similar situation.’
Rose at that moment forgot about her own self pity and made up her mind to take care of the children. It would make their family twelve children. The kids would need to get on with each other or else.
Rose put her arms around Harry’s neck and lightly kissed him on the lips, ‘you are a good man Harry Williams and that’s why I love you so much.’
TO PURCHASE THIS BOOK CLICK HERE: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/95766
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