The Ultimate Choice

words as possible, and had the pleasure of seeing ten years lift from her grandfather's face.

His surprise and relief gradually settled into a righteous satisfaction. His eyes sparked with new life, his sunken cheeks puffed out, his jawline firmed, and his shoulders lifted. He was no longer the impressive figure of a man he had once been, he had grown thin and wiry with age, and was almost bald, but the old strength of character rose out of the lines in his face and Kelly silently rejoiced in his rejuvenation.

'At least he's seen one of his mistakes!' Michael O'Reilly declared with ringing satisfaction.

'He actually said he would hand the title deeds over?' Judge Moffat questioned sharply, wary of accepting what Kelly had told them at face value.

He was a big man in his late sixties, florid of face and with a distinguished thatch of snow-white hair. His light blue eyes narrowed in speculative thought at Kelly's insistence that Justin St John had given her his solemn assurance.

'Well, I'd have to mark that in his favour-if he carries through on it-but I wouldn't be counting your chickens before they hatch, Michael,' he advised her (grandfather heavily. 'Not after what I heard from Tom Kennedy down at the courthouse this afternoon. Justin St John is very slippery. In my experience, a man like that cannot be trusted.'

'What did Uncle Tom say?' Kelly asked, confident in her own mind that Justin St John would keep his word.

'It's about the sheep,' her grandfather answered with a disapproving frown. 'The most terrible thing, Kelly! He's selling us out. He's selling the country out. He's selling everybody out.'

'A traitor! We've got to find a way to stop him,' the judge rumbled. 'If we don't, we're all going to lose a lot of money. The Russians won't even want to look at my rams, let alone buy them. He's a traitor, all right. A traitor to everyone!'

'What's going on? What's he done?' Kelly demanded impatiently, finding the accusation distinctly unpalatable.

Judge Moffat huffed. 'You know the government will only allow five hundred rams to be exported overseas each year…'

'Yes, of course. It's an enormous concession. Our wool per sheep is almost double the world average. Why should we give that advantage away?'

'Exactly! I don't mind selling them good sheep as long as we keep the best for ourselves. But Justin St John has found a way around it! He's sold us out!' the judge almost thundered in his indignation.

'How?' Kelly asked in bewilderment.

'The Russians are going to get Octavian Augustus the Fourth,' her grandfather answered mournfully.

Shock bounced around Kelly's mind. She refused to believe it. No one could be that mad. But her grandfather and Judge Moffat believed it. She groped for words in Justin St John's defence. 'That's impossible! He can't do it! Octavian Augustus the Fourth is the greatest merino ram in the world. The government would step in. They won't allow it.'

'That's the iniquity of the thing!' the judge growled. 'He's keeping Octavian Augustus the Fourth. He's selling the semen for artificial insemination…'

'But that's illegal!' Kelly pounced, relieved that they had to be wrong about Justin St John. For some reason that she didn't stop to examine, she didn't want to believe he was bad any more. 'You can't export it. It's against the regulations!' she said triumphantly.

'That's where he's so clever,' her grandfather put in with grudging admiration. 'Everyone in Crooked Creek will wish they'd thought of it first. He's going to be hated for it.'

'For what?' Kelly almost screeched.

'He's impregnating five thousand ewes. When they conceive, the ewes carry the embryos out of the country and there goes the breeding strain from Octavian Augustus the Fourth. He's already had the Russian ambassador down…'

'Should be hung, drawn, and quartered!' the judge thundered, clearly of the opinion that the statute books should still allow that particular sentence to be handed down. He threw up his hands in despairing appeal. 'How am I going to sell my rams to them when they get that standard of breeding over there? At the very least, it will depress prices abysmally!'

'But can he do it, Grandpa?' Kelly asked, feeling very confused about the man.

'Nothing to stop him that I know of. Or the judge. Australia needs the Russians to develop their wool industry to defeat the threat of synthetic fibre. Henry Lloyd told me that himself. And then there's the humanitarian side. Russia is one of the coldest countries in the world. It needs better, heavier wool to keep its population warm. But Justin St John is sure going to clean up with this deal. He'll make so much money…'

'Disgusting! Absolutely disgusting!' the judge cried in heartfelt condemnation.

Kelly only just managed to stifle a smile. Justin St John was certainly a smart operator, and he might be revolutionising the industry, but he wasn't doing anything bad in selling the ewes to the Russians.

And it was now perfectly clear that the judge, who owned a daughter stud, fiercely resented the fact that he hadn't thought of the scheme first.

Naturally Grandpa sympathised with him. Justin St John had been the enemy up until tonight, and it would take a little while to readjust that thinking.

'Well, at least we're going to keep this place,' she said brightly, wanting to remind her grandfather that the shadow had lifted from their future.

'Don't believe anything until you have the title deeds in your hands,' the judge grumbled pessimistically.