The Shearing Gun Read Free Page A

and shearing had made me fit, if a little top-heavy. My arms and chest were broad and deeply muscled from the physical lifestyle I led, and my waist rather small. A lot of older guys who farm start to get a pudgy stomach once they begin to rely on the younger generation and machinery to do the hard stuff. I was only twenty-five and spent my days hunched over struggling sheep while I cut the wool from their backs. You can’t have a beer gut if you’re going to be doing that all day. Shearing sheds were usually damn hot too, so a singlet was my uniform. No farmer’s tan for me.
    I’ve been told before—by the lily-white gay lads I meet up with in the big smoke—that my body is droolworthy. But I can’t see it. I’m deeply tanned and will probably end up with skin cancer sometime in the future. My muscles are big—but not those pumped-up gym rocks I see the models in the queer magazines sporting. Nah, I’ve just got working-man muscles, about the same as every other guy in the district.
    My one vanity, though? No chest hair. There is plenty of the dark stuff under my arms and below my belt, but it hasn’t formed on my upper chest. It just grew that way. I’m kind of glad that I’m not a gorilla, like some. My features are nothing special—two eyes, two ears, a nose and mouth—so I do like it when I step into one of them gay nightclubs in the city with my top two buttons open on my one good shirt, and have them little boys all sigh.
    One lad at footy suggested that the reason I had no chest hair was because I was a girl and waxed my chest. My fist and a personal best of twenty goals that game told him different.
    With my shirt off, I watched Doc Elliot out of the corner of my eye for any reaction. In the last five days, I had convinced myself that I had been hallucinating when I saw him check me out on Sunday. So I watched him closely to see if I could see anything. Not that I really cared one way or the other. Not that I would do anything about it even if he was that-way inclined. “No fishing in my backyard” was the rule I went by.
    Doc Elliot seemed entirely professional. He kept his eyes and fingers on my shoulder, never once doing anything inappropriate.
    “The bone is still sound,” he pronounced. “So you need to watch it and come back to see me in three weeks—sooner if it starts hurting more than a dull throb, or if there’s a bone protruding.”
    He helped me back on with my wrinkled shirt but stepped away to allow me to do up the buttons myself. I didn’t bother with them and just strapped the sling around my arm again.
    “So is that it?” I asked, jumping down from the table.
    “Yes. Are you going to rest it?”
    “Prob’ly not,” I told him cheerfully.
    He sighed at me again, and his eyes flicked down at my open shirt. “Do you need help doing up the buttons, Hank?”
    “Nah,” I refused. “It gives ’em something to look at, right?”
    I meant it as a throwaway line, nothing serious, but Elliot’s eyes dropped to the inches of skin displayed by my open shirt, then, to my utter surprise, they went lower and checked out my flat stomach and belt buckle. And other parts.
    “Huh.” The single exclamation of astonishment fell from my mouth before I could check it. I was stunned that I was right about him. It wasn’t judgment at all—people in glass houses shouldn’t really be picking up any stones, let alone hurling them about. But the guy flushed red, took an extra step back, and lifted his hand as if to adjust his tie, but found he wasn’t wearing one. He cleared his throat and looked at his computer.
    He didn’t seem to know what to say, and I was danged if I knew either. So, I reached for the door handle. “See ya ’round, Doc.”
    I beat a hasty retreat and banged the door behind me as I fled.

Chapter 3

     
    I T WOULD be a blow to the guy’s ego if he realized that I completely forgot about the whole incident after that. As I said, “no fishing in my backyard,” so it