The Post at Gundoee

by Amanda Doyle

  ‘My—your—? What did you say? Just then, Rod?’ She spoke rather feebly, because she was still recovering her breath.

  ‘You heard me, Lindsay, my own sweet darling. I’m warning you of my intention to marry you, that’s all.’ He smiled down at her, the passion still blazing in his eyes at war with the gruff matter-of-factness in his voice.

  ‘Oh, Rod!’ Lindsay breathed his name ecstatically, flung her arms around his neck again, half laughing, half crying, with a mixture of delight and sheer physical weakness.

  He kissed her gently, as if sensing that she was almost at the limit of her strength, and then he took her hands from behind his head.

  ‘I’m only telling you now,’ he told her with mischievous candour. ‘I can choose a better time and place for asking you, Lindsay. The men will be in soon, and your shirt’s still wet. You’ll have to get out of those clothes, and I’ll dry them by the fire here. I’ll give you this blanket to wrap around you till you get them back, and I’ll dry that blanket, too. Can you manage, do you think? Could a prospective husband help in any way?’

  Her cheeks were aflame.

  ‘I—I’ll manage, thank you,’ she said hastily.

  Rod chuckled softly.

  ‘Over by that tree, then.’ He helped her to her feet, handed her the second blanket. ‘Tonight we’ll light a second fire, a little bit away, so that the sound of the ringers changing places won’t disturb you. You’ll hear the ringer out there in the darkness singing his cattle to soothe them and stop any other night noises from alarming the mob.’ A smile crept into his voice. ‘I’ll make sure Artie’s not one of them tonight. His singing is of a rather unrestful quality, and his repertoire of songs is pretty border-line, too. You can have my saddle for a pillow, and you should sleep all right. Tomorrow we’ll ride back in together.’

  Lindsay paused on her somewhat wobbly course to the tree.

  ‘Goodness!’ she exclaimed. ‘I forgot all about Chalita! She ran off when I let go her tail. What shall I ride back on?’

  ‘You mean Dusty, of course,’ he said abruptly, striding after her and putting a hand on her forehead. ‘You aren’t still shocked, are you, Lindsay?’ he added, with a sudden return of anxiety.

  ‘Chalita,’ she repeated firmly. ‘Dusty wasn’t around, so I came on Chalita, but she ran away when I—when I was in the w-water.’

  The memory of that drowning sensation made her shiver.

  ‘I see. Well, she’ll come in during the night, probably,’ he told her evenly. ‘Don’t worry about it, Lindsay. She’ll hear the bells on the tailer’s horses—she knows the sound well. She’ll come sniffing around, and we’ll catch her.’

  Lindsay wriggled her way out of her wet clothes and came back wrapped in the second blanket, handed Rod her other things. She felt incredibly slack and weary, but wonderfully happy and content, too.

  Rod accepted the clothes. The firelight was at his back in the rapidly descending dusk, so that she couldn’t see his expression clearly, but when he spoke his voice was angry, heavy with control.

  ‘Yon couldn’t have caught Chalita, Lindsay, never in a million years. You couldn’t have saddled her either. And when I think of you riding her—’ He broke off, swallowed audibly. ‘Both Chalita and Dusty were in when I rode out here, Lindsay—not in the saddling yard itself, but in the horse paddock, close at hand,’ he informed her bleakly.

  Then he waited.

  It seemed to Lindsay, from the patient stance of those dusty, elastic-sided boots planted there in the dust, that Rod might be prepared to wait there for ever till he got a reply. There was a certain relentlessness about him that told her he was in one of his ‘I expect and intend to get an answer’ moods.

  She rubbed her hand over her brow, looked up at him with misty green eyes that were hollow pools in her white face.

  ‘Do we have to talk about it?’ she asked, pleading.

  ‘No, darling, we do not.’ He patted her shoulder with unexpected kindness. ‘We don’t need to talk about it for a long, long time—not until it’s just a memory. Just one little thing, though, Lindsay. Carleen knew about your own pretence from the beginning, didn’t she?’ His grey glance was probing.

  Lindsay nodded dumbly.

  ‘O.K.’ Surprisingly, Rod smiled. It was that slow, caressing smile that just curled the corners of his mouth. ‘I’ll talk to her when we get back. There’ll be absolutely no unpleasantness, but I don’t think you’ll see her much again. I’m sure she won’t want to stay, in fact, once she hears we’re getting married.’

  Lindsay smiled tremulously. She couldn’t voice her gratitude. Some day, she would tell Rod everything. Not just now, though. It didn’t matter right now.

  She went over and sat in her blanket beside the fire which Rod had got going for her, and watched the evening routine in the camp. When he came back with her dry clothes she put them on again, over by the same tree.

  The men straggled in, in twos and threes, turning their horses loose with bell and hobbles to pick up what they could, carrying their saddles back to put them where Rod directed, under the gums, and then making for their own swag and quart-pot to brew up that ever welcome mug of tea. Jimmy and Tommo came in then, leading three fresh horses which they tied up under a couple of near-by saplings before making their way to their own fire, laying down their battered felt hats beside their swags, and getting out their quart-pots like everyone else was doing.

  As they passed her, they gave Lindsay a puzzled glance, but showed their even white teeth in their customary friendly smiles,

  The other men, too, kept looking over at Lindsay. She could see their eyes darting her way under cover of their smoko operations, but if Rod was aware of those furtive, peeping looks or the bouts of whispering that accompanied them, he gave no sign. He was obviously content not to notice. He seemed to be waiting for something.

  When all the men had come into camp for the night, except for the horse-tailer out there with the cattle until the first ringer had had his meal and could take his place, and the steaks were beginning to sizzle and spit on the three different fires, Rod stepped into the clearing between the fires and called to Lindsay.

  ‘Come here for a moment, please, Lindsay,’ he said, with that old, familiar ring of authority. ‘I wish to say something.’ Lindsay stood up and obeyed, just like everyone always did when Rod used that stem, commanding tone. She walked out of her own warm firelit circle, and into the clearing. ‘Come here, Lindsay. Right here to me.’

  All eyes were watching. Curiously, the quart-pots and pannikins ceased their chinking, and even the steaks seemed to sizzle more quietly than before, as she and Rod stood there together in the little pool of silence.

  Then, with the eyes still gazing and the bush all about them, Rod took off his hat, tilted up her chin with steady fingers, and kissed her with a slow, deliberate tenderness, right on her lips. Then he put his hat under his arm, and turned to the firelight where Artie and Herb were kneeling on one knee over the steaks.

  ‘Now, Artie,’ he murmured deeply, ‘you go and collect on the knockout stakes, eh!’

  Rod took Lindsay’s hand and led her gently back to her own little fire away from the rest, and as their feet crunched softly over the fallen gumleaves, they heard Art’s voice, breathless with stupefaction—

  ‘Well! If that don’t beat all!’

  Lindsay gazed at Rod.

  ‘You knew?’ she said wonderingly.

  ‘I told you there’d be no point in you competing, didn’t I? You were home and dry already, you see.’

  ‘All along?’ she whispered incredulously.

  Just for one brief moment, Rod’s teeth glinted in the firelight.

  ‘It’s up to every man to know what goes on on his own station, Lindsay,’ he muttered huskily, before he gave her that second kiss.

 

 

  nk you for reading books on Archive.