Hi everyone, well, I'm back(obviously)! My holiday was great, but I'm sorry I kept you waiting for so long. The following chapter didn't come out as easily as I thought it would, especially since I had it at over ten pages at first(I didn't want to keep you waiting for another chapter for the important resolution), before deciding to split it up into two chapters. So the good news is, the next one should follow in an hour or so because I'm nearly done! Enjoy!

Chapter Ten

„I'm ready" Nick confirmed. It was embarrassing enough how everyone had watched his attempts to mount the horse.

"Are you sure you want to ride?" Tess asked quietly, while Stevie was reminding the other two to take enough water. Nick had been on more than one cattle drive in Argentina, but not in the past couple of years, not since they had left the ranch after his promotion. Although he tried to conceal it, Tess knew that his leg had actually been getting worse with time.

"The more, the better. The motorcycle's broken; this is the only way to get around. I've done this before" he stated, and with that, the matter was settled for him.

Tess was about to suggest that he stayed and let Meg ride instead, but swallowed it down since she knew he would object. Besides, there were more important things to worry about now; they didn't have time for a discussion like that. Maybe she merely focused on details like this one because she didn't want to think about the dangers that might have befallen her niece. She couldn't bear to imagine that something might have happened to Charlotte; all that she wanted was to find her, bring her back, and find out what was going on.

Sheena was prancing impatiently. Tess had never ridden her before and the mare clearly sensed her anxiety. Oscar would have been better, she thought, but Stevie had talked her out of taking him for the search, since he was so old and got exhausted quickly. This horse was supposedly reliable and mild-tempered…unlike Mistral.

Tess pushed the thought aside and forced herself to listen to Meg. How could her mind have drifted off in a situation like this, even if it was just for a few seconds? She simply wanted to get started.

"…stay by the house, in case she returns, and look after Emily. I couldn't reach Alex, but Terry will be here, soon."

"Thank you" Tess replied. She could tell that Meg was just as concerned as her, and felt a surge of gratitude towards her friend, who managed to keep a level head during crises. "We'll split up into pairs of two-"

"I'll ride by myself" Stevie acknowledged quickly, anticipating the question, since there were five of them.

Tess nodded after a moment of hesitation. She didn't want Nick or Chloe to take off alone, and Stevie would probably be doing better by herself than with anyone else. "Jodi, Chloe- please search Jack's Folly, Skinny Jim's and the old barracks, including the shed on the heights, Stevie- Little Regret, the Northern pasture and the trail, Nick and I will take over the river, the wildlife corridor and the rest. You know that there's- it's possible that there's a boar around, so be careful. We'll meet here again at five."

Tess forced herself to smile down at her daughter reassuringly, who was looking at the adults wide-eyed, close to tears. "I'll be back soon, sweetheart, don't worry and be a good girl for Aunty Meg."

"You're gonna find Charlie, right?" she asked hopefully, with a pleading expression on her face.

Tess's heart sank at the question. "Of course we will. We'll find her." She immediately regretted the repetition, since there was something peculiar about any assertion one feels obliged to make twice.

The group split up, cantering into different directions. Meg looked after them, full of concern. She put her hands on Emily's shoulders from behind, squeezing them gently. "Let's go inside, I'll make us some tea."

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"Charlotte? Charlotte!"

"Charlotte!"

Tess sighed, no response once again. She eyed the grey sky suspiciously, which had darkened with clouds. They moved quickly; a warm breeze had emerged and the horses were starting to get restive. The weather could switch quickly out here. On the one hand, this was a pleasant change because the sun wasn't burning down anymore and a thunderstorm would maybe bring the overdue rain, on the other hand, the dry vegetation could easily inflame, the rain would make the ground slippery for the horses and the cracked earth would not be able to absorb all of the water, which could cause floods easily- and Charlotte was still out there. The last thing they needed now was a violent storm. For the first time in years, Tess hoped that it was a false alert, that the sky would not relieve itself onto the thirsting earth. Or if it could at least wait until they were all home safely…

"You think it's gonna rain?" she asked her husband.

Nick shrugged, throwing one more worried glance at the sky. "I'm not sure. At the moment, it looks like…I don't know. Everything's possible. We should hurry, though." He urged Gadabout forward with a little more force than necessary and looked around once more, searching every detail of the visible land for a sign of human life. "Charlotte!"

The horses found their way through the scrubland, across the rocky, uneven ground of the wildlife corridor. The bushes were getting thick in this area; it was harder to see through large groups of them.

"Charlotte!" Tess descended Sheena, tying her to a branch with a loose knot. "I'll check in there."

She pushed the hard twigs aside and tried to squeeze herself in between the first few bushes, noticing that some branches near the ground had been broken off. "Charlotte!"

Suddenly, she heard a cracking noise, coming from behind a small formation of rocks. Tess threw an alerted look back at her husband, who had already heard it, aiming the gun at a spot near her. He shook his head slightly, telling her not to check for the source of the sound.

Tess could feel her heart pounding strongly in her chest; it almost seemed as if any living being behind these rocks would hear it. Whoever, whatever this being was, she just wanted to know. The moments dragged, everything appeared as if in slow motion.

There was that cracking sound again. "Charlotte?" Her voice sounded shaky, reflecting her immanent fear. "If you're hiding somewhere, please come out. I won't be mad, I'm just worried."

The relieving answer didn't come. Instead, there was more quiet rustling, and Tess saw a small wombat running –or rather scuttling- away from the rocks. She let out the breath she had been holding and looked behind the formation: nothing else. "It was just a wombat."

At this realization, Tess felt weak and powerless. It occurred to her that Charlotte might have run away from Drover's Run, that she could be anywhere between Drover's and Gungellan, or worse, that she might have drowned in the river- they had only searched the bank so far. She noticed that she had clutched the rock, which had hurt her hand, leaving a small, bleeding scratch on her palm. She hardly felt it.

"Do you wanna move on?" Nick suggested behind her.

"Of course." She pulled herself together, turned around, untied the reins and mounted Sheena.

"You okay?"

"Sure." She was transfixed, focusing on what she needed to do to block out the feelings. "Charlotte!"

"It's not your fault, Tess."

"I'm responsible for her. I promised her father, and-" She broke off the sentence in the middle, looking around for any sign of a child.

"You couldn't have known what would happen; everything was fine this morning." Nick didn't know what exactly should have come after the "and", but he was able to guess that it had something to do with Claire's death. There had been insinuations before… However, he didn't understand how Tess could blame this on herself.

"Mistral's a young, nervous mare…she gets startled too quickly" she stated hoarsely. "Stevie thought some training would change that, but it didn't- she's no good for droving cattle."

"Charlotte's a pretty good rider."

Tess looked over at him, dumbfounded at this reply. "She's seven years old, Nick! I shouldn't have left the girls with Meg so often. I'm responsible for them, I should have been there."

"But that's just not possible on a sheep and cattle farm! And even if this was some other place…you can't always be there, always protect them from everything. And anyway, how do you know that this wouldn't have happened if you-"

"It wouldn't!" It was her first emotional reply.

"Look, I don't know exactly what Jodi said and in what context, but to me, it sounded like a bad coincidence. And Jodi's not what I would necessarily call 'considerate'…"

Tess shook her head. "It doesn't matter, I…I just want to find Charlotte. And somebody should call Peter. What am I going to tell him!"

"We'll deal with that if we haven't found her till five, which I'm sure we will have. Let's move further up North, the sky's getting darker."

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"Aunty Meg?" Emily asked quietly behind her.

She turned her head while heaving a heavy piece of corrugated metal. "Go back inside the house, honey. I need you to stay there for another moment while I put this stuff away."

"Is there gonna be a tormenta, with lightning and thunder and all?"

"A thunderstorm…I don't know…" she panted. "I'm just preparing…so we won't be surprised if there is one." She shoved the corrugated sheet into the shed and fastened the door, then turned to Emily, who hadn't strayed from her side.

The little girl looked back at her with frightened eyes. "But Mummy and Daddy aren't back yet!"

Meg crouched down in front of her, taking her hands. "Don't worry, they're fine. There are shelters in many places, so if the storm surprises them out there, they'll just wait in one of them until it's over and ride back to us afterwards." She feigned a calming certainty, hiding her own concern.

"Really?"

"Really." She smiled and got back up, looking around for something loose, which might do damage. "But I want you to wait inside, it's safer."

"No, I wanna stay with you!" She didn't move a centimetre, arms crossed defiantly.

"You can't, not now. Go inside, Emily, that's my last word!" The replacement part for the old tractor was still lying around, Meg noticed. She walked over there and picked it up.

The child's lips began quivering; tears sprang to her eyes. She ran after her babysitter. "Please, Aunty Meg…I don't wanna go back there by myself, it's scary!"

Meg sighed, she simply couldn't refuse a request from Emily when she was pleading like that. "Fine, but stay close and keep- oh my God…" She gasped when she saw an all too familiar chestnut galloping towards the homestead, bridle and stirrups flying loosely. "Stay where you are, Em!"

Meg ran across the yard, past the paddock and onto the meadow, but slowed down as the horse was approaching at a rapid speed. She stretched out her arms and tried to block its way, leaving room to sidestep in case it didn't work. If only the gate to the paddock were on her side… "Whoa, Mistral! Whoa…it's alright, everything's alright…whoa…"

It didn't work, the mare was too agitated and dashed past Meg. She let her run, hoping that she would return later, since there wasn't much else she could have done on foot. There were more important things to worry about right now than a runaway horse.

Meg returned to Emily, who looked crestfallen. "That means Charlie fell down, right?"

There was no way to express this mildly, and she wasn't going to lie. "Yes, it does."

Emily should have been disappointed, but instead, a hopeful glimmer showed up in her eyes. She pointed at something behind Meg's back. "Look, that's Uncle Alex's car!"

She was right, and from the speed of it, Meg was able to guess that Alex had received the message she had left on his mailbox. He stopped right in the middle of the yard and practically jumped out. "Have you found her yet!"

She hurried towards him. "No, the others are looking for her all over the place. Terry's searching outside of Drover's and asking people to keep an eye out for her. Where have you been?"

"Fisher" he answered curtly, not wasting any time on an explanation. "Did Nick take his motorcycle?"

"No, but it isn't working. Alex, I'm worried," she lowered her voice a little, considerate of Emily, "the horse she took- it came back, alone."

Meg saw a flicker of fear cross his face, yet only for a short moment. He would not talk, but act. "Can you spare a horse?"

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Alex looked around desperately, scrutinizing the bare countryside. Where was she? Where would he have gone, supposing he could have controlled it (which he doubted in Charlotte's case)? He tried to get it straight in his mind, but was unable to figure it out: Apparently, there had been some argument or something. And Charlotte had simply taken off –on a horse- without anyone stopping her…how was that possible?

Surely, Tess had warned her about the dangers of riding somewhere on her own. It didn't make sense to him that the kid would still do something like that, since she had seemed so eager to please before, like a guest. Sure, he had done that sort of thing in his youth, usually after fights with his father, but this looked more like the spontaneous reaction of an angry, hormone-driven teenager than that of a little child. And a damn dangerous one it was.

Something had to have happened, something big. Alex was worried, and he realized how meaningless everything else suddenly seemed- that he didn't get along with her, that she was mad at him. As long as she wasn't hurt, he thought, he'd gladly take the rest of it.

Yet it scared him that this had to happen right now…after his conversation with Peter, after things were finally starting to look better. For a moment, on his way back to the car in Fisher, he had seen a real chance at reconciliation, a chance at getting a look-in to make up for his mistake. But, of course, it had all vanished with the message on his mobile. The frightening part about this was, that this sort of thing always seemed to happen to him. Whenever things were starting to look up, a huge tragedy shattered the life he had built…

Alex shook off the thought. He should not, for one minute, have assumed the worst. Charlotte was probably fine, wandering around somewhere here, trying to find her way back to the house. He'd only have to find her, and if he did, she would hear just how stupid taking off on her own had been, no matter what she thought of him.

That was what he had to make himself believe, to keep going.