by Miller, Alex
She said quietly, ‘It looks different.’
‘They’re heading off,’ he said, pointing up as the pair of kites wheeled above their heads and dived away, gliding down over the maze of broken gullies that fell away at their backs. They sailed effortlessly across the shattered surface of their domain, back and forth they went, crossing and recrossing the ravines, getting smaller and smaller until at last they were lost in the distance.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘show me the way.’
‘We don’t have to.’ She looked at him.
He laughed, and they went together, towards Mt Mooloolong, across the easy sloping ground, hand in hand.
•
Ward sat against the front wheel of the jeep. He was watching the two distant figures as they slowly made their way down from the summit of the white pinnacle. The jeep was parked just over the crest of the wall of the earth tank, at the very end of the cleared fence line through the brigalow. The tank was full of water now from the storms and there was no sign of the dead pig. Beside Ward, lying on an old shirt, was the .303 rifle, which he had taken from the stockman’s quarters before leaving the station. Ward had been sitting here without moving, watching the climbers on the mountain, for more than two hours. He was waiting for the right moment. He was aware that it was nearly time.
Half a kilometre behind the station owner, back along the fence line, Alistair was struggling forward on foot. He had abandoned his exhausted pony some time ago. The boy was himself now close to exhaustion. He went forward in a shambling, interrupted jog through the low obstructing growth and dead sticks, talking to himself all the while and weaving from side to side in an erratic path.
Alistair had reached the base of the wall of the earth tank when the ripping explosion of the high-powered rifle shot pulled him up. He stood still listening, and into his mind there came a bright image of the stockman falling, his body turning over and over slowly through the air, falling down the vertical face of the forbidden mountain. He called and ran forward up the slope of the bank, shouting to his father and seeing the canvas top of the jeep coming into view. He reached the crest of the bank and looked down. Ward Rankin’s body lay awkwardly to one side of the front wheel, the rifle beside him.
Beyond him was the still water in the tank. Beyond that the grey forest of brigalow, out of which the oddly misplaced sandstone monolith of Ida’s mountain rose into the empty sky.
