by Amanda Doyle
‘Carleen, wouldn't you go?’
‘You know the answer to that, so why ask?’
Lindsay pressed her lips together so that the wicked things she wanted to say just couldn’t get out to turn into actual words. Then she crossed her fingers, muttered a brief and silent prayer.
‘Hold her for me, won’t you, Carleen?’ she whispered fearfully. ‘Don’t let go too soon, like Rod did.’
Carleen gave her a searing look of scorn, but nevertheless she did hang on to the cheek-strap quite tightly until Lindsay was in the saddle, and waited until she saw the reins firmly in her grasp before letting go.
‘Keep looking in case Mannie comes to, and frets, won’t you, Carleen?’
‘Don’t saw her mouth like that, Lindsay—that’s why she’s tossing her head.’
‘Look after Mannie.’
‘I will—and good luck!’ There was a curious twist to Carleen’s mouth as she said that. Then she turned away towards the house, not even taking time to wave.
Perhaps that was as well, as it might have startled Chalita, who was behaving in a very fractious manner as it was!
Lindsay was secretly terrified. She had read somewhere that a horse has a built-in communications system that tells it when its rider is frightened, and she was doing her best to stifle her fear in case Chalita might discover it.
Several times during that lonely morning journey, Lindsay thought Chalita had found out. She had several isolated moments of sheer panic—once when the highly strung mare shied suddenly at a tiny snake that wriggled in the dust quite near her hoof, and once when for no apparent reason at all she reared up on her hind legs and snorted. Somehow, on both occasions, Lindsay managed to keep her seat, and to refrain from putting her arms around Chalita’s neck again. Instead, she reached frantically for the monkey-grip on the pommel and clung to both it and the reins with almost hysterical strength.
These experiences appeared to unsettle Chalita as much as they did her rider. There was a faint quivering right through her body, a pricking of her ears, that told Lindsay her own fright had been communicated. Her palms were sweaty with it, her forehead beaded with it, and her shirt, too, clung to her back with the very stickiness of pure, uncontrollable fear.
By noon she had reached the point in the dingo fence where she knew she must leave its guiding ribbon and break away to the west. Lindsay was loth to leave that comforting landmark behind. Ahead of her was more rugged country, with stunted scrub that sometimes screened her way. The rain had stopped, but the ground was treacherously soft in places, and the horse blew through her nostrils in terror as her hooves sank in the ridges of sand which must be traversed.
Lindsay’s mouth was parched. She would have liked to stop and have a drink from her water-bag, but Chalita seemed sensitive to even the slightest touch on her rump, and Lindsay was afraid that if she once got off she would never manage to mount again on her own. If she could only stay in the saddle, she must be getting near that camp, surely, judging by her watch and the position of the sun.
Now Chalita was pushing nervously through a belt of scrub. The sickly smell of gidyea was all about them, and in the distance was a disquieting and unidentifiable sound, a peculiar, sighing sort of sound that Lindsay found it impossible to place. Like grit rushing in the wind, if there had been a wind. The little mare did not seem too happy about that sound, either. Her fits of quivering started again, and she blew gently through dilated nostrils, rolled her eye, and walked sideways.
When they breasted the next ridge, Lindsay’s eyes rolled too. They almost rolled right out of her head, and she thought she might be going to cry. With frustration. With disappointment.
After all, it was a terrible anticlimax to have endured what she already had, to have managed to stay aboard Chalita through that long, hot, lonely morning, with the sun sucking back the moisture from the plain in a greedy steam, and her fear drying up her mouth, and not being able to get to that water-bag, and the gidyea exuding this nauseating smell, and her own perspiration running into her eyes, to find herself thwarted by a dried-up creek-bed that wasn’t dry any longer.
Lindsay eyed the widespread stream of muddy water with a sinking frustration. The trees that represented the edges of the creek-bed were a depressingly long way out into the stream, even though the water only lapped their trunks at the base. Bubbling eddies of froth moved lazily away into the main current from where the slow-moving stream was disturbed by those trees in its midst. She could only survey the flood that stretched in front of her with an indecision that she knew was cowardly, while the mare shook beneath her.
Away on the other side of the water, a bell sounded distantly. A bell? Yes, there it was again, the faintest tinkle. To Lindsay, the tinkle was like an angel sound from heaven, beckoning her to come. Surely a bell must mean a human habitation. The camp?
She leaned forward, shivering every bit as uncontrollably as Chalita, and together they went into the water, slipping and splashing towards the other side.
Lindsay was more than half-way across when the water first touched her sandshoes, causing her to hunch her knees into a sort of jockey position. By the time her rolled-up trouser cuffs were soaking, Chalita had started to swim.
Lindsay’s mouth went slack with horror when she realised what that rhythmic, floating sensation beneath her meant. She clung limpet-like to the saddle, but when the water broke over that, too, and eddied around her waist, she knew that she would have to swim as well. But how did you swim, in an outback, swollen, rushing creek, with all your clothes on and your hat with its bobbing-cork fly-veil sitting on your head?
The hat was tossed recklessly into the current, and Lindsay saw it bobbing away from her, corks and all. Her shirt, too? Oh, no! Not with all those men at the outcamp, away ahead where the bell had tinkled. Too late, now, anyway. Chalita’s gallant little head, thrusting forward, was all that remained above water.
Thoughts galloped through Lindsay’s brain at alarming speed. What did you do? What did you do?
Well, first of all you had to keep contact with your horse, hadn’t you? You got off carefully, and you kept hold of the saddle and you sort of swam along too. But did you get off on the upstream side or the downstream side? Upstream, you had the current to contend with, pushing you close against the horse, and that might not please Chalita. Downstream, you might be carried away altogether, to the Gulf of Carpentaria or Lake Eyre or wherever this particular creek was running to. Or you could get off backwards and hang on to the tail, couldn’t you? Lindsay was sure she had read that somewhere in a book once, in the library at school. The Indians did it, in South America.
At least that was a middle course—the tail.
You just kicked your feet out of the stirrups, like this. No, like this! Try again, Lindsay—perhaps the Indians didn’t use saddles. And then you worked your way backwards, slowly, because the current didn’t want you to do that, and tried to snatch you away. And then you slid down over the rump and grabbed your horse’s tail. Her tail? Her tail? Oh, there it was! Lindsay’s fingers entwined themselves in its coarse, comforting, floating strands and hung on grimly right near the tip.
The water took all force out of the horse’s flailing hind-feet, so that although they were quite near her they were powerless to harm. Discovering this, Lindsay’s confidence returned. She kept her head above the water quite easily as they passed the second line of trees, and Chalita began to flounder into quieter waters.
And then a voice yelled from the approaching bank.
Lindsay was so surprised to hear a voice—a human voice, at a time like this!—that she almost forgot to listen to what it was saying. Even when she concentrated, the words made little sense.
‘Leggo, missus! Leggo that tail, quickfella, missus, alla-same them hooves belonga Chalita proper killum you! Leggo quickfella, missus. They mebbe killum you finish!’
It was the way that raucous voice yelled finish that prompted Lindsay to let go. She was reluctant to part comp
any with Chalita—this creek had forged an extraordinary bond between them—but when the word ‘finish’ was yelled at you in that sort of voice, it had a horribly final sound.
Her fingers slackened and the tail floated away. She heard Chalita’s feet clattering through the shallows, but when her own feet sought for a hold, she banged her knee on a stone—floundered. Then the pull of the current was snatching her back, and her head went under.
Lindsay choked and struggled, with her mouth full of the swirling brown water. It sang in her ears, and twined itself around her limbs, so that her efforts became feeble and ineffectual. So feeble—just that singing in her head, blotting out thought.
When Tommo dragged her up the bank he flipped her over like a codfish, and pressed the water out of her lungs, and when she had recovered from her fit of coughing he turned her back the other way, helped her to a sitting position and grinned.
Lindsay didn’t grin back. She didn’t feel much like grinning.
‘You nearly drowned me,’ she accused him croakily.
‘O.K., missus. All good-oh now, eh?’
‘Not good-oh, Tommo,’ she whispered plaintively. ‘I’ve just been d-drowned.’
Tommo’s white teeth flashed in an ear-splitting smile.
‘You proper sillyfella missus, not get back alonga dat saddle quick. You wait till water bin shallow, dem cheeky-fella hoof they pokum you allasame they killum you, eh, missus? Maybe killum you finish! Kick you to glory!’ Lindsay stared silently into those laughing dark eyes.
‘You want Tommo take you alonga that camp, missus? Two, mebbee three mile? Eh?’
‘Yes, please, Tommo,’ she begged. ‘Take me to the camp.’ And then she fainted.
Lindsay was thankful afterwards that she hadn’t known much about that ride to the camp. When she came to her senses, it was to find herself slung ignominiously across Tommo’s saddle like an ailing sheep. Her head dangled and her legs dangled and her middle felt as though it was being sawn in two.
When Tommo clattered into the camp and unloaded her with a singular lack of ceremony into Rod’s arms she passed out again, but this time, when she regained consciousness, she was surprisingly still in them, but wrapped in a blanket, wet clothes and all.
Lindsay looked up into Rod’s anxious grey eyes and then she put her head against his shirt and cried. She couldn’t seem to stop crying, even though he was holding her so comfortingly and stroking the damp hair away from her eyes and saying over and over in a tender sort of voice, ‘Don’t cry, Lindsay, you’re all right now, darling, don’t cry, Lindsay,’ and she began to think that so much crying must have made her delirious.
It was only when he said more severely, ‘Why did you do it, Lindsay? Why have you come?’ that she remembered, with a sudden shock that effectively banished her hysteria, just why she had set out in the first place. Through chattering teeth she told him about Mannie, about the transceiver being broken accidentally.
All the time she was speaking, Rod listened attentively in silence, grave-faced, patient. Only when she mentioned the transceiver did he interrupt.
‘Couldn’t you have used the other set, Lindsay? The one at the store?’
She shook her head miserably, began to shake uncontrollably.
‘I c-couldn’t. I meant to order b-batteries. I was g-going to, but I h-hadn’t done it!’
‘I see.’
He put her down gently, flat on the ground, and went away, and when he came back again, it was with neat spirits in a tin pannikin.
‘Drink it, Lindsay.’ He raised her up in his arms again, held the mug against her lips. ‘Just drink it up. It won’t matter if it makes you sick. Maybe you’ve still got some of that river water inside you.’
He gave the ghost of a grin as he tilted the contents carefully down her throat. Then he laid her back, stood up, and said from that incredible height,
‘Now, don’t worry, Lindsay. I’m going to contact Dinewan on my transmitter. It hasn’t the range of the transceivers, you see, but the Lockwiths’ place isn’t far from here at all, and they can then contact Base for me.’
He went away again, and Lindsay closed her eyes, feeling the raw spirit coursing through her, bringing with it a warming glow. Her nausea was diminishing.
When he came back this time, Rod’s face held a puzzled expression. He put a blanket-roll he had brought underneath her head, and looked at her strangely. When he had sat down beside her, he said, almost carelessly,
‘Funny thing, that When Margie got through, they said they’d received the Gundooee call over the morning session, and that Mannie has been taken in. She’s safely at the hospital right now.’
Lindsay’s gaze was blank. Even Rod’s face swam a little out of focus.
‘But—received a call? They couldn’t have!’ she protested weakly. ‘The transceiver was broken, smashed. At least, Carleen said—’ Her voice died away as realisation dawned.
‘What did Carleen say?’
‘She said—she said—I thought—It doesn’t matter really.’
Lindsay was feeling sick again.
‘It matters to me.’ Rod spoke with quiet emphasis. He was silent for a moment ‘I’ll tell you what Carleen is saying now, and that may help you to remember.’
‘Saying now?’ she repeated, incredulous.
‘Well, a few minutes ago, to be exact. When Margie contacted the homestead on the set that was working.’ He paused, continued without expression. ‘Carleen says now that you got completely hysterical when Mannie collapsed, and went haring off on horseback before she could stop you. I must say’—he looked at her critically—‘you did seem extraordinarily overwrought.’
Rod’s face wavered again. It came and went in a kind of vacuum of weakness, a fantasy feeling that this couldn’t possibly be happening.
‘In fact, you’re still overwrought, I think, Lindsay.’
He gathered her shaking frame in his arms again, but this time Lindsay clawed at his hands, pushed him from her even though a spasm of that dreadful weakness assailed her.
‘Don’t touch me, not if you don’t believe. You—don’t believe me, d-do you? You don’t trust me, Rod.’
‘Hush, darling.’ He resisted her fumbling attempts to push him away, and held her firmly. ‘Of course I believe you!’ Suddenly she went limp in his arms. What was real, what was false, in this swaying, reeling world? It must be the aftermath, the shock. You couldn’t get almost drowned, and not suffer some sort of momentary ill effect.
‘Well, you shouldn’t,’ she mumbled wearily against him. ‘You shouldn’t trust me, do you hear me, Rod? I’ve deceived you s-since the very beginning.’
‘Shh! I know.’
‘You c-can’t know.’ She moved her wet head irritably, closed her eyes. ‘How can you know, when I’m only j-just telling you? I pretended.’
‘Yes, I know, pet, I know.’ His deep voice was humouring her, as if she were a petulant child. ‘You pretended to be a man, or rather, you omitted to state that you were a girl. A woman.’ His arms tightened about her. ‘I’ve known it all along.’
Lindsay’s eyes opened again.
‘How could you know?’
‘It’s what’s called passive deceit.’ He smiled faintly. ‘You didn’t even put Miss Lindsay Dutten on the stamped and self-addressed envelope which you enclosed for a reply. I checked with Mannie afterwards, and as I suspected, you’d just put L. H. Dutten—most unusual, that. Even people who accidentally leave it out before a signature almost always remember to put it on an envelope.’
She gazed at him incredulously. ‘You knew from the beginning?’
‘From the beginning,’ he agreed calmly.
‘Then why didn’t you send me away?’ she asked suspiciously.
Rod’s grey eyes twinkled with sudden amusement.
‘Because of Clancy,’ he replied with a solemnity that was belied by the laughter in his eyes.
‘Clancy?’
‘Yes, Clancy. Remember? Clancy of the Over
flow? I didn’t think he’d like it.’
‘Like what?’
‘I thought he’d be disappointed if, having come all that way, your bush friends didn’t greet you with those kindly voices, the way you expected them to. It would have been letting old Clancy down a bit, if I’d sent you away.’
‘Oh.’ Her eyes fell before his. ‘Your voice wasn’t very kind,’ she mumbled, gazing at his middle shirt button.
He grinned ‘No, it wasn’t, just at first, was it? I reckoned you were making plenty of bush friends for the time being, and hearing plenty of kindly voices without mine. Getting kisses, too.’
‘Oh, Rod! You mean Artie?’ She looked up again, dimpling. ‘Rod, that was only for a bet.’
‘Yes, I realised that—a good bit later.’ A pause. ‘Do you only give away kisses when a bet is involved?’ he asked in an odd sort of voice, bringing his head down very near to catch her reply.
Colour washed over Lindsay’s pale cheeks.
‘No—yes—I mean—of course not!’ she said weakly. His face was really terribly close, so close that it was difficult to think what she was saying. His grey eyes, smouldering darkly, were within inches of hers. And his mouth, that firmlipped mouth—so close—
‘Then we don’t have to bet on it, do we,’ he stated calmly, before he bent his head just that little bit more and covered her mouth with his.
Lindsay returned that kiss with a heady sensation of utter and unprecedented bliss. Half-way through she even managed to disentangle her damp arms from the blanket and put them around his neck, with the result that Rod seemed to go on kissing, only this time with a mounting passion that left her breathless.
Finally, he held her away from him and said indistinctly,
‘Dear heaven, Lindsay, how I’ve wanted to do that! When you’re my wife, I’ll kiss you just as often as I please,’ he told her with a return to his normal, masterful tone.
