by Nevil Shute
She would have found it even pleasanter if the weather had been cooler, and she came to realise the value of Jane’s insistence that she should avoid the city at the height of the hot weather till she was acclimatised. It was an exceptionally hot January. Each day the sun rose in a cloudless sky at dawn and set in a cloudless evening sky at dusk; each night Angela and Jennifer lay with few coverings in the somewhat stuffy little bedroom of the homestead, unable to sleep till midnight for the heat. Each day thin wreaths of smoke behind the mountains told of forest fires in the high country to the south of them; each day Jack Dorman listened to the wireless weather forecasts, worried, for some news of rain.
“Don’t like the look of it at all,” he said more than once. “It’s a fair cow.”
He was too worried and preoccupied for Jennifer to bother him with questions, and Angela knew little about the station, and cared less. She asked Tim Archer to tell her what the trouble was, and he said that the boss was worried over the condition of the top paddock, bordering on the forest. The spring up there which usually ran all through the summer had dried up some weeks before and the paddock had got very dry; on account of lack of water they had moved the stock out. The paddock, in consequence, had been little grazed for some time and the grass was far too long for safety; if a fire should run through the forest to the Leonora boundary it would sweep across that paddock in a flash. The homestead would probably be safe enough, but fences would be destroyed; the dry wood of the posts would burn like tinder.
“The trouble is with these darn fires you don’t know where they’ll stop,” said Tim. “You can’t do much about it, either.”
It was on one of these cloudless days that Jane went into town with Angela in the Morris; to make a break for her Jennifer had volunteered to get the dinner so that Jane could dine at the hotel with Angela. She served the inevitable hot roast mutton with potatoes and vegetables competently, though she was dripping with sweat; Tim and Mario finished the meal, and helped her with the washing-up. Then they went out to their work, and Jack Dorman stood with her on the veranda looking at the wreaths of smoke rising almost straight up into the sky behind Buller.
He said anxiously, “I believe that’s nearer. Think I’ll run up the road a bit in the Ford, ’n see if I can find out where she’s burning. Like to come?”
She got into the car with him and they started up the road towards the mountain. They passed the Merrijig hotel and went on towards Lamirra and the timber camps. At Lamirra Jack Dorman stopped the car and went with Jennifer into the store, kept by an English couple who had recently come out from Portsmouth, but they knew little of the local conditions and were ignorant about the fires; they did not think that they were very near.
“Run up the road a bit to where they’re cutting,” Jack said when they got outside. “We’ll get a view over the ridge up there, and see for ourselves.”
They drove on up a broad, smooth, well-engineered road winding up the mountain-side; he told her that this was a timber road made for the passage of the timber lorries getting the wood out; it was designed eventually for use as a main highway. They went on winding up the hillside, and it was cool in the forest; the great trees met high over their heads and practically the whole road was in shade. From time to time they passed a trailer truck loaded with tree-trunks coming down, sighing with air brakes; from time to time they passed a track leading off into the forest on one side or the other, and saw groups of men handling the fallen timber, who paused in their work to stare curiously at the new utility.
They stopped to ask the ganger of a group of road-makers what the fire position was. He was reassuring; he said that it had not crossed the King River and he did not think it would; the forest fire patrol were there and they had cleared a fire break three miles long to save the forest timber. Jennifer sat in the car while the men gossiped, understanding only about half of what they said; the names of mountains, rivers, people, and official bodies meant nothing to her and she did not fully understand what it was all about.
It was lovely sitting there in the car. They were at an altitude of about four thousand feet and in the speckled shade of the forest; for the first time that day she was cool and dry from sweat. She stretched luxuriously in her clothes. It was quiet in the forest, or it would have been, but for the distant and rhythmic rumbling of a bulldozer at work.
She sat listening to the bulldozer as the men talked. The noises repeated in a regular cycle; a roaring acceleration of the motor followed by a few seconds of steady running, then a period of idling, and then a few seconds of light running as the thing reversed, another idling period, and the cycle began again. It varied very little; she sat listening to it dreamily, half asleep in the coolness of the forest.
The cycle was disturbed, and woke her from her doze. A rumbling of heavy timber broke in and the roaring of the engine mounted suddenly to a climax, and then stopped dead. There was a noise of tumbling machinery and a continued rumbling of rolling logs; a few men shouted in the distance, their voices puny and lost among the greater noises. Then everything was quiet again.
Then men broke off their discussion of the fire and looked in the direction of the row. “What’s going on down there?” asked Jack.
“Bulldozer at work, shifting logs,” the ganger said. “Sounds like he’s got into trouble. Those bloody things are always getting into trouble. We had one bogged up to the seat last winter; took a winch and a day’s work to pull him out.”
They went on with their talk; down in the forest everything was quiet. Presently the ganger went on and Jack Dorman let the clutch in and the car moved on up-hill. “Sounds a bit better,” he said to the girl beside him. “We’ll go up to the top of the road and have a look. He says we can see the fire from there.”
A quarter of a mile further on, a track led down the hill to the right. As they approached they saw a man running up this track towards the road, a man in lumber jacket and dirty canvas trousers, a rough man, running clumsily up-hill, half-foundered. He waved at the car when he saw it; they stopped and waited for him to come up to them.
“Aw look,” he panted. “Give us a run down the road to Lamirra. There’s been an accident in there, and two blokes got hurt bad. I got to telephone the doctor and the ambulance at Banbury, ’n find a bloke called Splinter.”
Six
JENNIFER opened the door of the utility and slid across the seat towards Jack Dorman; the man tumbled in beside her and slammed the door. He was panting and streaming sweat. Jack Dorman began to turn the car. “It’s a proper muck-up,” the man said urgently. “I got to get Splinter quick.”
The car swung round and headed down the road. “Where d’you want to go?”
“You know the office building, other side the bridge? They’ll telephone the ambulance from there. Maybe they’ll know where Splinter’s working.”
“Where it says the name of the company, on a big board?”
“That’s right. They’ll telephone from there, and then I’ll have to find Splinter.”
They did not speak again; Jack Dorman devoted his attention to the road as they went flying round the curves down into the valley. Once as they swung violently round a corner with a scream of tyres the man was flung heavily against Jennifer; he wrenched himself off her and said, “Sorry, lady.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “Who is this man you’ve got to find?”
“Who? Splinter? He’s the doctor here.”
Jack Dorman, eyes glued to the road, said, “Is that the chap that goes fishing at the week-ends?”
“That’s right,” the man said, “he’s just one of these D.P.s, working in the timber with the rest of us. He’s a doctor in his own country, like. He’s not allowed to be a doctor here.”
They came to the office building at the bottom of the stream, a small weatherboard shack of three rooms; the man flung himself from the car. “I’ll wait here a bit,” Jack Dorman called after him. “ ’Case you want to go back.”
They sat
in the car for a few minutes, waiting. “Where is the nearest proper doctor?” the girl asked.
“Banbury,” he said. “There’s a hospital there with an ambulance, and there’s a doctor—Dr. Jennings.”
“How far is that from here?”
“About seventeen miles.”
She was a little shocked; accustomed as she was to city life it was difficult to realise that there could be no doctor close at hand. “How long will it take him to get here?”
He hesitated. “That depends. If he’s in Banbury and he’s free, he might be out here in an hour. But I believe this is his Woods Point day.”
“What’s that?”
“He goes to Woods Point once a week,” he said. “They haven’t got a doctor there. I think this is the day he goes there—Tuesday. I’m pretty sure it is.”
“How far is that from Banbury?”
“About forty miles.”
She said, “You mean, it could be hours before he could get here?”
“Too right.”
“But what happens, in a case like this?”
“Just got to do the best you can,” he said. “Most doctoring for accidents is common sense.”
They sat together in the car, waiting. Then the man that they had brought down from the woods came to the door of the office with the manager, a man called Forrest. Jack Dorman knew him slightly as an acquaintance in various local bars.
“Eh Jim,” he said. “Got a bit of trouble.”
Jim Forrest glanced at him in recognition, and then at the new Custom utility. He crossed the road to Dorman. “Aw, look, Jack,” he said. “Are you busy?”
“Not particularly.”
“Joe here, he says there’s two men got hurt bad, up where you picked him up upon the road. They’ll have to be fetched down and taken into hospital, unless we can get the ambulance to come out for them. Could you stand by a few minutes while we get through to Banbury? If we’ve got to send them in, they’ll travel easier in this utility than in one of my trucks.”
“Do anything I can. I’ll run them into Banbury if you want it.”
“Thanks a lot. I’ve got the call in now. Say, while you’re waiting, could you run Joe up to Camp Four, fetch a man called Zlinter?”
“I know him. That’s the chap that fishes?”
“That’s right. He’s a D.P. doctor, been working here for quite a while. I got him on the telephone and he’s gone down to his camp by truck, pick up his stuff. I’d appreciate it if you’d slip down there ’n pick him up. Joe can show you. By the time you’ve got back here I’ll have spoken to Banbury.”
The utility went sliding off with Joe in it again; a mile down the road it turned into the camp and ran between the rows of hutments under the gum trees, and stopped outside the fourth on the right. Joe got out and called to a man at the door. “Hey!” he said, “Seen Splinter anywhere about?”
The man said, “He’s inside.”
Joe vanished into the hut and Jack Dorman got out of the utility with Jennifer; together they unfastened the black twill cover of the truck-like body. Joe came out carrying in his arms a very large first-aid box. “Put it in the back,” said Dorman.
A tall, dark man came to the door of the hut and glanced at the utility and then at Dorman; recognition came to him. “So,” he said, “we have already met, upon the Howqua. It is your car, this?”
“That’s right.”
Carl Zlinter paused in thought. “I have much to take,” he said. “It will be all right to drive this car into the woods, up to the accident?”
“I should think so. The ground’s pretty hard.”
“I will take everything, then, in the car.”
He went back into the hut, and reappeared with Joe, carrying five cartons roughly packed with packages of cotton-wool, dressings, splints, bandages, bottles of antiseptic; these with a worn leather case completed his equipment. It only took three or four minutes. “Now we are ready to go,” he said.
Joe got up into the back with the stores, and Zlinter got into the front of the utility with Jennifer and Dorman. “It is better to bring everything,” he said. “Much will be not needed, but for the one thing left behind—it is better to take everything.”
Dorman said, “Go back first to the office?”
“I think so. Perhaps the ambulance and doctor are already on the way. In any case, we must pass by that place.”
They slid off up the road again to the weatherboard office. The manager came out to meet them. “Can’t get through yet,” he said. “You go on up, and I’ll be along soon as the call comes through.”
Jack Dorman said, “The doctor’s day in Woods Point, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tuesday. I’ve an idea it is.”
Jim Forrest made a grimace. “It would be. Will you take Zlinter up there, Jack? I’ll be up there myself soon as this call comes through.” He turned to the Czech. “Do what you can, Carl, till the doctor gets here.”
“Okay, Mr. Forrest,” said Carl Zlinter. “I will do the best that I can.”
The utility moved off and up the hill. Carl Zlinter sat in silence, mentally conning over the stores that he had brought with him, the information of the accident that he had got from Joe. A man called Bertie Hanson with a crushed leg trapped beneath the upturned bulldozer; a man called Harry Peters, the bulldozer driver, unconscious with a head injury. He was not troubled by the injuries; his long experience in the medical service of the German Army had accustomed him to front-line casualties in Russia and in Normandy. It was the lack of stores that worried him most; there was no blood plasma and no equipment for transfusion, and no dressing station. Still, he had worked and saved men’s lives with less than he had now. What a clumsy fool that bulldozer driver must have been!
Jennifer sat silent between the men as the utility sped up the hill. She was somewhat at a loss; only half understanding what was going on. The tall, dark foreigner beside her had medical experience though he was not a doctor; apparently he was a lumberman, for he was dressed like one, yet in this emergency Joe, and even the manager, seemed to defer to him. She did not clearly understand what it was that had happened in the forest and nobody had enlightened her; indeed, perhaps Joe was the only one who really understood the accident, and he was inarticulate, unable to communicate exactly what he knew.
They passed the road gang and reached the track that led down off the road; Jack Dorman headed the Ford down this timber lane in low gear, and they went lurching and swaying down the hill between the trees. Directed by Joe they turned presently and traversed the hillside to the right and came out into a sloping open space, where all the timber had been felled. Down at the bottom of this sloping space, upon the edge of the unfelled forest, there was a bulldozer lying on its side and forepart, lying across a log about two feet in diameter. Two more tree-trunks lay above the bulldozer, one caught upon the spade, the other poised in the air above it, perilously, apparently about to fall. There were men with ropes working carefully around this game of spillikins, attempting to guy back the log poised in mid-air.
“My word,” Jack Dorman breathed. “You wouldn’t think a bulldozer could get like that….” The girl from London sat silent. These things which had happened in the forest were outside all her experience.
Dorman drove the Ford slowly forward till its way was barred by scrub and timber; then he stopped it, and the dark foreigner with them got out and made his way quickly to the accident. He was wearing soiled khaki drill trousers and a grey cotton shirt open at the neck; his arms were bare to the elbow and very tanned, yet he had unmistakably the air of a doctor. Dorman followed after him with Joe, and the girl came along behind them, uncertain what she was going to see.
She saw a man pinned beneath the bulldozer by one leg bent below the knee in an unnatural attitude; he lay upon the ground beneath the log that rested one end on the bulldozer spade, most insecurely. His face was badly lacerated on one side, and there was blood congealed upon the c
oat that had been thrust as a pillow beneath his head. He was conscious, and the eyes looked up with recognition at Carl Zlinter.
The lips moved. “Good old Splinter,” he muttered. “Better than any mucking doctor in the mucking State. Get me out of this.”
The dark man dropped down on his knees beside him. “Lie very quiet now,” he said. “I am giving an injection which will make you sleep. Lie very quiet now, and sleep.” He opened his case, fitted up the hypodermic with quick, accurate movements, sterilised it with alcohol, broke the neck of a capsule and filled it, and sterilised the forearm of the man upon the ground, all in about thirty seconds. He drove the needle in and pressed the plunger down. “Lie very quiet now, and go to sleep,” he said softly. “Everything now will be all right. When you wake up you will be in hospital, in bed.”
The man’s lips moved. “Mucking German bastard,” he said faintly. “Good old Splinter. Good old … mucking German bastard …”
Carl Zlinter got up from beside the man and crossed to the other casualty. Men parted as he came, and Jennifer saw lying on the ground the second man. He lay upon his face, or nearly so, apparently unconscious. He had been bleeding from the ears and the nose and the mouth; he lay still, breathing with a snoring sound, irregularly. Great gaping wounds were on his scalp, the fair hair matted with blood, with white bone splinters showing here and there. Jennifer bit her lip; she must not show fear or horror before these men.
“We didn’t like to move him till you came, Splinter,” said somebody. “The poor mugger’s got his skull all cracked. We reckoned it was best to leave him as he was.”
The dark man did not answer, but dropped down on his knees beside the casualty and began preparing his injection. Gently he bared an arm and sterilised it, and thrust the needle in it. He withdrew it and sat back on his heels, his fingers on the pulse, studying the patient. He did not touch the head at all.
