Mystic Mountains

encouragement.
    What Tiger thought of this state of affairs she had no idea. But she knew Dougal 's resentment had festered until he'd become a man filled with hate.

 
     
     
    Chapter Twenty Six
    S eptember 1823
     
    So much had happened in this house, good and bad. Isabella felt a melancholy tug deep inside as she gave it one long last look. She had to think of the future now. Nothing was ever gained by looking back. Lord, she had plenty of regrets, but what was the point in dwelling on them.
    She' d gained her ticket of leave. It was safely packed in her trunk. Dougal had a small grant of land alongside Tiger's over near Bathurst, so once over the other side they could set out on their own at last. The prospect brought no excitement along with it. Strangely, her ticket, which she'd earned before her sentence had run its full course, brought little cause for celebration either. After all, she'd hardly lived the life of a convict.
    Thelma coughed, a ragged sound that seemed to tear at her throat. Isabella glanced over at her dear friend. If not for her she would probably have argued for Dougal to take land down Emu Plains or somewhere nearer the town, anywhere he could run a few sheep and cattle and they could plant some crops, make a future for the boys and to hell with Tiger Carstairs.
    That man rode up on Satan. "All set?" he asked, tipping his wide brimmed hat over his forehead.
    Isabella nodded without meeting his glowing eyes. His excitement was enough to encompass everybody. She could almost reach out and touch it.
    "Move along then, Johnny," he called, wheeling his horse to signal to the man sitting alongside Isabella. 
    Johnny was one of the four convicts among the eight men going with them as well as Dougal and Gillie. He was a bit slow with his thoughts, but strong and reliable. A Dorset-bred man of about fifty, he'd been transported for poaching.
    "Hold tight, Missus." He gave Isabella an amiable smile as he slapped the reins to coax the lead horse along.
    The party consisted of the wagon, pulled by the gelding that had taken Isabella and Dougal home for the first time, two drays each pulled by five bullocks, and two covered wagons each with four horses in harness. Isabella rode up front on one of these covered wagons, and Thelma was on the other. Tiger now owned seventeen horses in all. Dougal, Gillie and three of the men rode saddle horses while the spare two were hitched behind drays.
    The two men in charge of the bullocks were distinctly different from the other men, treating their oxen with more gentleness than the humans. Thelma and Isabella exchanged a grimace when they heard their language. It would have no place i n polite society. But Tiger insisted they were masters at handling the bullocks, a necessity where they were heading.
    "The oxen are preferred to horses over long trails," Tiger had told them. "They pull a dray steadily, rather than jerk it as the horses tend to do."
    Thelma waved from her seat and Isabella waved back. "Sit still, Tim," she commanded. He was bouncing on the bench seat in his excitement. "Hold him tight, Agnes, I don't want him falling off before we get out of the gate."
    "He 's all right, Missus," Agnes reassured her. Isabella wasn't so confident and had second thoughts about letting him ride with the girl. Agnes was fourteen. She'd been in the colony ten years. Her mother died on the ship over and Agnes had spent most of her life in the orphanage Elizabeth Paterson and Anna King started in 1800. Isabella dreaded to think what would have happened to the girl if these two wonderful women hadn't seen a need to create the institution for the wretched, abandoned and neglected orphans of the colony, of which there were many.
    Agnes was gentle and so thrilled to be going on the journey west with them she could be forgiven for being forgetful at times. Isabella wasn't as pleased with the other female they'd been assigned. Lily was twenty but looked and acted much older than her years. Buxom was the only description for her. Seated beside Thelma she was already openly flirting with the driver. Isabella had no illusions about Lily; she would lie with any man who so much as winked at her. The man she craved, Tiger, ignored her blatant efforts to entice him. This fact annoyed and dismayed her. It was obvious that usually few men turned away her free favors.
    Isabella wished devoutly they could have got a woman with more sense and less conceit. But they needed another woman 's