by Lucy Walker
Stella insisted that Katie sit up in front next to Tom, the driver.
‘I’ll sit next, by the window,’ Jill said quickly, swinging herself up before Stella could complain. ‘That’s to keep you from sticking more pins in hated objects, sister. Let’s have some peace to-day. We want to enjoy ourselves.’
Stella shrugged, made a grimace at her sister, then advised Andrew to ‘move over pronto’ or she would sit on him.
‘As I have prickles for a hide,’ she told him, ‘you would mind that very very much.’
It amused her, even caused her some wonder, that Andrew showed no animus. On the contrary he seemed attracted to her as if she, like the snake, held for him some strange intrinsic interest that had nothing to do with her being a human being. Stella found herself to be an object for Andrew’s consideration.
‘I think he’s mad,’ she told Secretary frankly.
‘Not mad. Very clever, like that old feller Gideon Dent. Same sort of feller. That old one knew everything like this young feller now. I think that old feller Gideon Dent come back in this young feller’s skin.’
‘So be it!’ said Stella, yawning. ‘I couldn’t care less. What’s an old prospector, anyway. A landowner, now, has position. Prestige you could call it. That’s why I tell Bern he should stock up Malin’s Outpost and leave holes in the ground to nomads.’
‘You mean mine shafts?’ Andrew asked. Stella ignored him.
She reached for a cigarette in her trouser pocket, and lit it leisurely.
‘Where’s Bern gone, Secretary?’ she asked. She did not look at the aborigine, but waited for his answer.
‘Outback. You know, Miss Stella, Mr. Bern doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going. It’ll be out in the diggings somewhere ‒’
‘He tells you. You are his runner. You always know where he is.’
‘Not always, Miss Stella.’ Secretary’s brown eyes became full of a quiet wisdom tinctured with a little amusement. ‘Maybe, Miss Stella, Mr. Bern think someone might ask me. So he doesn’t tell me on purpose. You understand?’
Stella, puffing her cigarette, half-closed her eyes.
Yes, Bern could have thought just that way. Someone might ask so it was safest for Secretary not to know. The someone Bern meant would have been Katie, of course.
It pleased Stella to think Bern took precautions against Katie.
Not that she had anything against Katie. She was a nice girl. But no girl, like herself for instance, wants a nice girl like Katie living almost arm in arm with a man who ‒ well, who belonged elsewhere.
They had a happy day. Stella, though always the lazy and decorative one, had been good company after all. She had decided in her mind that Katie was the girl for Tom and Tom the man for Katie, so she spent the day seeing the two were placed together. In the jeep, at the picnic table ‒ a flat rock at the base of You-self ‒ walking up the hillside in search of Secretary’s soak; counting the variety of birds seen amongst the trees here but never on the flats below, Stella somehow manoeuvred that Katie and Tom were side by side. Jill saw what Stella was up to, and knew her motives, but she had no objection. Stella might as well try to work things to suit her ‒ and the Rydes in general, of course, Jill thought.
Some day soon, she herself would go to Pandanning and find that nice man who kept the accountant’s seat warm in the bank. He had taken her out several times when last she was in the big country centre. The worst of it was, she thought crossly, it was Stella’s turn to go to Pandanning next. And Stella was bent on going. New clothes, and a flutter here and there with one or two other eligible men in Pandanning, was Stella’s idea of a real holiday. Of course, she always meant to come home to Bern Malin when time was up. Jill understood Stella very well. She didn’t even disapprove of her ‘fluttering,’ so long as it was nowhere near the accountant in the bank on the corner.
It was Jill who now unwittingly decided when Katie would go in search of Gideon Dent.
Whenever Katie had studied that precious map at Malin’s Outpost, she felt she was seeking him then. It needed only prolonged uncertainty, or fear, to send her off in reality.
Jill lying sun-baking on the flat rock above the soak at the foot of You-self provided the spark.
‘How will you like going to boarding school, young feller?’ Jill asked Andrew as she lazily turned from one side to the other to spread the sun-tan evenly over her golden skin.
‘Boarding school? What’s that?’ Andrew asked, not very interested. He was resting on one elbow drawing lizard figures on the rock with a piece of clay from the edge of the soak.
Katie was stretched on her back, her hands under her head, her hat over her face.
Under the cover of that hat her eyes flew open when she heard Jill. She lay stiff and very still. Boarding school?
‘A place boys go to learn their ABC, and sleep the night too: every night,’ Jill explained. ‘Haven’t they told you about it yet?’
‘What boarding school?’ Andrew asked the question to be polite to Jill, who he thought, wanted to talk to someone.
‘There’s one in Pandanning, and several in Perth. Mother has been making inquiries about them for Bern. Heavens! Am I breaking the news?’
‘Pandanning’s about two hundred miles, isn’t it?’ Andrew asked. ‘The land is good loam up that way. There’s wheat farmers as well as sheep farmers. Secretary told me.’
‘I bet he didn’t tell you how to do algebra. That’s just what you’ll learn in boarding school.’
‘Who, me?’ said Andrew hazily. ‘Oh, I’m not going. I’m staying here.’
‘That’s what you think,’ said Stella putting in from where she sat several feet away, rubbing oil on her arms so that the sun didn’t tan too deeply. ‘You’ll do just what you’re told, young tiger. Probably for the first time in your life.’
Katie lay unmoving. Her eyes stared unseeingly at the lining of her hat.
Bern Malin and the Rydes in collusion to send Andrew away? Alone? Bern had said that Katie was a minor. She couldn’t be responsible for Andrew.
She knew it was the law that he was supposed to go to school. He was only excused if he was able to learn by correspondence classes or the School of the Air.
Here at Malin’s Outpost there was no way of contacting either.
Katie felt she couldn’t have heard aright. Yet she knew she had. Without consulting her, Bern had made arrangements with the Rydes to find out about a boarding school for Andrew!
Didn’t they know that you couldn’t put a young boy like that in total confinement without some softening up? Everyone knew that aborigines ‒ used only to freedom and the outback ‒ died when they were put in confinement. It could happen to Andrew. Even the doors at home, like here, were never shut, let alone latched or locked! Katie’s heart beat painfully as she lay there on the flat rock.
She turned over and rested her forehead on her arms.
It was this problem of Andrew’s education that had brought her across Australia to Gideon Dent.
If he was only here‒
As Stella began telling the indifferent Andrew of the delights and horrors of boarding school, Katie, lying with her head buried in her arms, tried to think of a way of making some contact with Gideon Dent at once. Something inside her was hardening.
However well-meaning they were ‒ the Rydes and Bern ‒ they had no business not to tell her what they were planning.
Before they did something disastrous like proving she was a minor‒ therefore incapable of providing for Andrew’s education ‒ she must do something herself. Suddenly, she knew now what that something was.
She must find Gideon Dent now. She had to find him. He would tell her what to do. She would take his advice, and his alone. Hadn’t her father told her that no one but Gideon Dent would have the right to care what became of them? He was a kinsman.
‘He won’t let you down, Katie girl,’ her father had said.
‘I wrote to him, years ago when your mother died. He said he’d lo
ok after Andrew ‒ if ever the time came ‒’
The picnic was finally packed up and the trip back to Malin’s Outpost made in the kind of silence that most times is comforting. It was the silence of physical tiredness; and of people at peace after a long and happy day.
Only Katie, her shoulder touching Tom’s comforting one in that jeep, was at war inside herself.
Don’t do something rash ‒ foolhardy. Something you’ll regret ‒ she told herself.
Andrew was more than her brother. He was her child, because she had brought him up so far.
You can’t keep him tied for ever to your apron strings, Katie ‒ the still small voice persisted. She couldn’t afford to listen to snippets of self-advice because she didn’t know at what age young boys should be sent out into the world to fend for themselves.
She had to find Gideon Dent! It was no use asking Bern Malin. He would be ruthless with Andrew as he had been ruthless with her ‒ leaving her out of any consultations about boarding school.
The Rydes had gone home at sundown, with Katie, Secretary, Andrew and Mrs. Potts waving from the slip-rail. The farewells had been noisy and gay; full of talk, sisterly sparring and kindly attentions from Tom. Yet afterwards, Katie could hardly remember any of it ‒ only the jeep disappearing into the blazing sunset as if it had gone outwards into a great fire.
Her thoughts had raced round and round, in and out, as she had gone through the motions of enjoying herself, being nice to everybody and to Tom Ryde especially, then seeing them off in good spirit. All the time there had been one real thought amongst a maze of little ones.
She would find Gideon Dent ‒ not to-morrow, or the next day or in a week’s time. To-night she would set out!
She knew the map. She had supplies left over from the picnic. Secretary would look after Andrew in her absence.
Once only did she let herself think about Bern Malin without anger. That was when she went into the office to find the saddle-bags after the Pottses had turned out their light and Andrew had gone to sleep in his bed on the veranda. They always retired at nine o’clock. Mr. and Mrs. Potts, like Andrew, were sunup, sundown people. That was their waking day.
Katie stood inside the doorway, when she had switched on the light, staring at the table behind which Bern Malin had stood when he had told her the first Gideon Dent was dead, but the second Gideon Dent did care for them.
She could see Bern leaning on that table, one hand palm down on its surface, the other stretching forward to butt out a cigarette. She could see him looking up at her, those fine grey eyes showing what could have been an odd compassion. She remembered now there had been a strange note in his voice when he had said of Gideon Dent ‒ I know him very well. I can vouch for him. He knows that you belong to him. He will take care of you both.
Why did the very echo of his voice shake her resolution? This she knew instantly was something she must fight against. She would falter: she would be no more than putty in his hands if she listened to a memory that made her, for one stupid weak moment, feel spineless.
It was to Andrew she owed her loyalty.
Chapter Eleven
Katie’s only dilemma had been whether to take Andrew with her, or leave him. She worried about this quite a lot while she packed the saddle bags and made sure she had a torch, billy, water-bags and matches. She had come to trust Secretary beyond question; she was certain of Mr. and Mrs. Potts too. She could leave Andrew in their care. It was the first time in her life she had made such a decision. She felt she had crossed her own Rubicon when she made it.
Bang goes the first apron string, she thought.
She left a note for Mrs. Potts and a separate one for Andrew telling them what she had done and begging them not to follow her.
I know the track and the map by heart, she had written. If I can’t find him, or get into difficulties, I will come back at once. I won’t leave the track so will be perfectly safe.
Secretary could follow her if he wanted, she knew. She also knew he would not leave Malin’s Outpost, or Andrew, without Bern Malin’s orders. Bern had gone away and said he would not be back for some time. So she was safe, even from the vigilant Secretary.
She took Brown Fall, generally called Brownie, because it was the horse she knew best. This was the horse Taciturn had brought over from Ryde’s Place the day they had all come to Malin’s Outpost together. She had been riding Brownie when Secretary had taken them for rides.
The aborigine was safely out of the way. At night time he went to his own little house at the end of the near paddock. From the stables Katie could see the last coals glowing in his fire.
It was a long, lonely, eerie ride through that straggling bush and sand-plain. Sometimes the track seemed to lose itself where the undergrowth opened out into large sandy patches. Katie soon learned that the track, though winding around outcrops of rock or occasional heavy undergrowth, was nevertheless keeping in the one direction. Looking back at the Southern Cross from time to time she knew she was travelling due north.
When she came to the place where the clay-pan began she kept on northwards, riding straight across it, and sure enough there, leading into the bush, she found again the track just as it was on the map.
She was not afraid of the bush at night. There were no animals to harm one ‒ the bush creatures took fright and ran away ‒ nor were there wild people to haunt it.
She rode on through the moon shadows and tree shadows and occasional noiseless fluff of the night birds. These sounds came from mopokes she supposed. Yet she wasn’t certain.
Sometimes the track was clear and she was able to canter. Sometimes it was shadowed by the clumps of salmon gums that grew freely hereabouts on the far side of the sand-plain and clay-pan. She was forced to rein-in Brownie to a walk in these areas.
About a quarter of an hour after she looked at her watch by torch-light and noticed the hands read after midnight, she saw the light of a camp fire through the trees. It was burning low as if to coals. She had been riding two and a half hours by this time.
Except that she was on horseback ‒ not so very comfortable because of Brownie’s feed bag and the rug roll, the saddle-bags and other care-taking paraphernalia ‒ she would have cheered.
The track had led somewhere. She was here at one of the diggings. This was only the first leg of her journey, but it was somewhere, some place: a stop-off.
She was tired. When she reined-in under the trees, she looked around. There were mullock heaps scattered through the bush, giant ant-hills made by man ants digging into the earth’s crust for its hidden treasure. The moonlight, shining down between trees, picked out the heaps.
Katie sat on the horse, and thought. Brownie stamped his foot once but she stilled him.
A black shadow, utterly silent, fluttered through the bush at the side of the track, perhaps thirty yards away.
It was too big for a mopoke, not noisy enough for a kangaroo. She wondered if emus were silent as they went through the bush. She thought probably not, but it didn’t matter. She was not afraid of the bush and its night creatures. She was afraid only that she would find Bern Malin at the camp, and he would turn her back. Or try to turn her back.
Dark though it was, and no one there to see it, Katie’s head went high on her slender neck and her chin tilted upwards ‒ a sign to the shadowy trees, the moonlit splotches of dark earth and the glinting mullock heaps that Katie had a will of her own.
Not Bern Malin, nor all the moveless silence of the bush would turn her back now. She had come to find Gideon Dent. If it was humanly possible, she would find him.
Reason told her that if Bern were at this place Secretary would have been to visit him. They would have known back at the homestead.
Gideon’s Track, on the map, went many more miles into the outback. Somewhere out there, Bern Malin had gone. This camp would be safe for her to visit.
Katie lifted Brownie’s reins. The horse smelt water and fire, and human kind which meant stabling of a sorts for h
im. He shook his head, clinking the bridle harness like bells, then stepped forward. He went warily, because like Katie he too did not know what to expect.
Katie leaned forward and patted his cheek to encourage him. The horse edged forward more briskly.
They had come to the edge of the clearing when Katie saw two figures standing on the near side of the camp fire. Their dark silhouettes against the light showed them both to be standing alike; their legs apart slightly as if balancing their bodies between them, their hands dug in their belts.
They had their hats on too.
Katie could have laughed. Even in the middle of the night they wore their hats. They were bushmen, all right: what was more they were waiting for her. They were looking straight at the place where she and Brownie were emerging from between the trees. They would have heard her coming. On a still night any sound in the bush could be heard. But why weren’t they asleep so that they couldn’t hear anything?
She pushed Brownie forward till she came up to the men. They did not move. Their faces were dark shadows under their hats and only their eyes shone. Katie reined-in. One man put up his hand and caught Brownie’s cheek-strap.
‘You come far?’ he asked laconically ‒ his voice slow and drawling; a bushman’s voice. It was expressionless, yet Katie knew this was deceptive. He was probably surprised the night rider was a woman ‒ if anything on earth would surprise him at all. It was a wonderful thing about the outback she remembered; women were always safe.
‘From Malin’s Outpost,’ Katie said. ‘Will you hold Brownie steady, please? I’m coming off.’
The second man had not moved.
Katie slid down and threw Brownie’s reins, over his head.
‘I was looking for someone,’ she explained. ‘I came by night because it is easier, not so hot ‒’
Not so truthful either, she thought sadly. But she was looking for someone and before she asked more she must know about Bern.
