The Burning Land

by John Fletcher

  Matthew spurred his horse frantically along the riverbed. Scattered across a couple of miles of country the rest of the team was looking for strays but Matthew was searching for something a lot more important than a few cows. Aggie was still missing and although reason told him she could not be far away his mind would not relinquish images of her choking and helpless, buried beneath a shroud of sand. A knock on the head, that was all it would take. Enough to stun her. The sand, seeping into her mouth and nose, into her lungs while she lay helpless, would quickly do the rest.

  He came to the top of a dune and reined in, staring about him. No sound. No movement. Somewhere behind him he could hear the bellowing of cattle, the yip and yell of the boys as they rounded them up, but for the moment he was not interested in that. He stared down the flank of the dune, up the further slope, but nothing stirred. In every direction the sand stretched away, silent and inviolate. She could be anywhere. All he could do was carry on searching.

  He rode on, more slowly now as he realised the impossibility of the task. If she were buried there would be no way of finding her before …

  He would not permit himself to think about befores and afters.

  Please let nothing have happened to her, he pleaded silently. Please, please …

  A corner of his mind acknowledged his astonishment at his own depth of feeling. He had wanted her to come, of course he had, he felt good knowing she was with them, but to feel like this. It was something new and entirely unexpected. Perhaps not entirely new. He had known such feelings once before, at Mount Alexander when the miner had come and told him something had happened back at the tent. He had spurred his horse then, too, knowing with a sick certainty that something terrible and irrevocable had happened. But that was different, he told himself. That was Janice. I loved Janice. He had told himself he hadn’t but that had been a lie. He had loved her enough to make sure he never fell so heavily for anyone again. So why was he feeling like this? He refused to think any more about it. What he felt did not matter. What mattered was finding Aggie alive and unharmed. Heart pounding sickeningly, he rode on down the face of the dune.

  In every other respect things had been less serious than he had first feared. Some cattle would be dead, certainly, but most of the herd had found shelter in the creek bed. The horses, too, seemed to have survived unscathed. The humans had fared worst. Several of the boys had been thrown when the storm overwhelmed them. Git had a broken ankle and Charlie Owen a couple of cracked ribs. The waggon had survived because Nance had managed to unharness the horses; if they had bolted it would almost certainly have been smashed to pieces. It had been a foolhardy thing for her to do and he would thank her for it later.

  But where was Aggie?

  She was tough, self-reliant. She had come through a dozen experiences far worse than a sand storm.

  Please, please …

  He rode the mare up a fresh sandbank, the sand hissing like snakes as he breasted the slope. A dun-coloured tide extended as far as he could see: banks, dunes, plains of sand beneath a sky of pitiless blue. The tints of red and ochre had disappeared. The harsh and spiny vegetation was swallowed up. The sand dominated all.

  Aggie came over the top of a dune fifty yards away. She was driving two beasts ahead of her, prodding them with a long stick she had picked up somewhere.

  Matthew looked at her. Just that, and the world was right again. He blinked, swallowed.

  Thank God.

  ‘You like to muster on foot?’ he asked as she came up. He knew he was grinning like a fool, didn’t care.

  ‘Better than sitting and doing nothing,’ she said. She was flushed with heat and exertion. She pushed a strand of hair off her face. He thought he had never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

  ‘How bad is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Bad enough.’

  ‘Lost much stock?’

  ‘Some. But the water’s more important.’ All the mundane talk, his heart singing. He gestured at the dunes spreading away into the distance. ‘The sand’s swallowed up a lot of it.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  He squinted at the sun which by now had had almost reached the western horizon. ‘Tonight we’ll camp by the big waterhole. Tomorrow I’ll ride on and see how things are doing further north. The Barwon’s a hundred miles away and the cattle will need water to cover a stretch as long as that. So will we.’

  ‘Let me come with you,’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll take Charlton. He’s the expert on this part of the world.’

  ‘Why do you need an expert? Sand’s sand. You’re planning to ride north for a space and then come back, ain’t you? You reckon you’ll get lost without Charlton along to hold your hand?’

  He smiled. ‘I wouldn’t say so.’

  ‘I can tell the difference between sand and water and I ain’t no expert.’ She glared as Matthew’s smile widened at her vehemence. ‘Did I say something funny?’

  He shook his head, still smiling. ‘It won’t be a pleasure trip.’

  ‘That depends what we make of it,’ she said. ‘I came to see some of this country. Let’s go and see it.’ The cattle were straying; she yelled at them. ‘If I don’t get these fools back with the rest of them I’ll have wasted my efforts,’ she said. ‘No point in that.’

  Water and grazing were the worry, now that the greatest worry of all had been resolved. The smaller pools had been swallowed up; even the large waterhole that Matthew and Charlton had discovered had been reduced to less than half its original size. As for grazing, there was none.

  Charlton came trotting up. Behind him Brett Noonan and Joe Ogle had rounded up a dozen strays and were herding them towards the main herd by the diminished waterhole.

  ‘What’s it look like?’ Matthew asked him.

  Charlton tilted his hat to the back of his head and scratched his brick-red forehead. ‘There was a bunch upriver smothered by the sand. Another lot bogged by that small waterhole we passed a while back. Could have lost fifty head, easy, in those two places alone.’

  ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘Tom’s bringing in some strays. Git and Charlie are over by the waggon. Git’s mad as a cut snake. It’s a clean fracture, thank God, but he won’t be riding for a while.’ Charlton grinned. ‘We had to cut his boot off, which made him madder than ever. Charlie should be all right in a day or so.’

  ‘I’ll go over later and see how they are.’

  It was more urgent to get the mob together again. Injuries could wait.

  He rode on, heart light, body light.

  Matthew and Aggie set out at first light, taking with them a couple of spare horses and enough water and food to last them two days.

  ‘We should be back well before then,’ Matthew said, ‘but it doesn’t hurt to have extra.’

  Charlton had given him a quizzical look when Matthew had told him he would be taking Aggie with him. ‘Don’t get lost,’ he said.

  It had been bitterly cold overnight but the sun soon warmed things up. They rode north under a cloudless sky. There was no wind.

  ‘Thank God,’ Matthew said. ‘With all this sand we might have had to go through it all over again if the wind got up.’

  They rode all morning without coming out of the sand-blasted country. It grew hot. The reflection of the sun off the sand pained their eyes. At last there was a change. Tufts of mulga began to appear through the sand. Little by little the dunes sank.

  Aggie said, ‘It’s like watching the tide go out.’

  ‘What do you know about the tide?’ Matthew asked.

  ‘We lived by the sea until I was twelve.’

  ‘I know nothing about you,’ Matthew said, ‘yet I feel I’ve known you all my life.’

  ‘Not much to know,’ she told him.

  That night they camped by a small waterhole in the riverbed. The effects of the sand storm had finally receded and they were surrounded once again by the familiar scrub, the clearly defined riverbanks with gu
m trees, standing guard over occasional green-surfaced pools. After the sand-covered landscape they had left behind them the sparse vegetation seemed almost lush.

  ‘About twelve miles,’ Matthew said as they sat beside the campfire. ‘The mob can manage that all right.’

  Firelight played on their faces. Beyond, the land waited. Despite his worries about the herd Matthew felt good. He smiled at Aggie. ‘Tell me about this business of knowing the tides.’

  She watched the flames, face ruddy, hair gleaming in the light. ‘My brother and I grew up on the coast south of Sydney. My dad was a fisherman. He drowned when I was twelve and my mother took us to stay with her sister in the city. I hated it. All those buildings and grey streets … It seemed so cramped after the sea. I couldn’t wait to get away. As soon as I was old enough I did.’

  Matthew smiled at her. ‘Do you always get your own way?’

  ‘Usually.’

  ‘Lucky,’ Matthew said.

  Her hand flicked her hair off her face. ‘It’s not that I try to boss people about. I just seem to want things more than most.’

  ‘And your brother?’

  ‘He didn’t care one way or the other but I needed a man along with me.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I suppose I elected him for the job. If I hadn’t he would probably still be alive.’

  ‘What are you going to do now you’re here?’

  She lifted a shoulder, eyes fixed on the flames, said nothing.

  Matthew watched her. The fire drew moving shadows across her face but could not hide her beauty: the good bone structure beneath the smooth skin, the brown hair that now as always had escaped from its binding to lie in tendrils about her face.

  It was pleasant to watch her across the fire, hair as self-willed as its owner, brown eyes bright with reflected flame, long legs encased in men’s breeches. He had never seen her in anything but what she was wearing now, the trousers and boots, the working shirt buttoned high over her breasts. He studied her deliberately, seeking the shape of the body beneath the clothes, feeling a rising heat that had nothing to do with the fire.

  ‘When we reach Fort Bourke,’ he began and stopped, voice thick.

  She looked up at him. ‘Yes?’

  ‘What will you do?’

  Her eyes remained on his. He heard the rustle as a piece of wood collapsed in the flames.

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  She did not answer him. He reached out and took her hand in his. Her fingers curled to interlock with his own. They remained unmoving for a minute, then he tightened his grip and drew her towards him. Her mouth opened under his. The flames crackled. Shadows shifted across the ground. Beyond the fire’s circle the spirits of the empty land, silent and eternal, watched.

  Head pillowed on Matthew’s shoulder, Aggie’s eyes watched the dying flames. ‘I wondered if I’d misunderstood …’

  She felt him shift. ‘Misunderstood what?’

  ‘Why you wanted me to come.’

  ‘It was your idea.’

  ‘It was my idea to come out here now, not to join the drive. I told you I wasn’t coming.’

  ‘Why did you change your mind?’

  Aggie smiled at the red coals. ‘I told you. I wanted to see the country.’

  ‘I hope you haven’t been disappointed.’

  ‘I like what I’ve seen tonight.’

  His hand moved, caressing her. ‘Only what you’ve seen?’

  Her breathing changed. ‘And … felt.’

  The hand moved again. Heat reawoke, focusing, building. She closed her eyes, yielding to sensation.

  ‘And now?’ the voice whispered.

  Sensation flared. She sighed, limbs spreading.

  ‘Oh. Oh. Oh yes.’

  In the morning they returned to the drive. They spoke little. To an observer nothing would seem to have changed yet everything had.

  So that is what it’s like, Aggie thought. She carried pictures within her. Of Matthew, his skin so smooth in contrast with the crispness of the hair on his chest and belly; his fingers stroking, seeking, kindling fire; his smell of male, of dust and clean sweat; the roughness of his beard on her breast; the texture of his voice; the sensation of him filling her; his body hard and ribbed with muscle. Of herself; the tips of her breasts so sensitive against her clothes; her body moist; her being suffused with a sense of fulfilment. For the first time she could remember she was in tune with her life and where it was taking her. Casually she wondered how things would work out between Matthew and herself when they were back with the herd but did not worry about it. It was a new experience for her to rely on a man but now she did so. Matthew would work things out.

  THIRTY-ONE

  The sand storm had unsettled everybody. No one could work in the bush without experiencing storms and all the hands had been through them before, but this had been the worst any of them had known. They were lucky no one had died and everybody knew it.

  ‘Imagine what it’d be like,’ Brett said as he scraped his plate.

  Charlie Owen’s sore ribs made him irritable. ‘Imagine what what would be like?’

  ‘Choking to death on sand,’ Brett continued, imagination running riot. ‘Trying to breathe and all that happens you get sand in your throat instead of air.’

  ‘No point thinking stuff like that,’ Charlie told him. ‘Didn’ happen, did it?’

  ‘Sand in your eyes, too,’ Brett said, ‘I can just feel it.’

  ‘If my ribs weren’t so crook you’d be feelin’ my fist in your eye, never mind sand.’

  The whole team was edgy by the time they reached the waterhole where Matthew and Aggie had spent the night. The cattle, placid before the storm, were as bad-tempered as everyone else. More enterprising members of the herd strayed constantly and the work involved in bringing them back was an added frustration.

  ‘Lost their faith in us, that’s what it is,’ Tom Naismith said. ‘They’ve decided we don’ know what we’re doin’.’

  ‘They ain’t wrong.’ Charlie was still sour. ‘We got a thousand miles to go and we’re into sand dunes already.’

  ‘That’s what we get two pound a week for,’ Tom pointed out.

  ‘Two pound a week ain’t no good if you don’ live to collect it,’ Charlie said, mindful of what Charlton had said back at Jerry’s Plains.

  Git’s injury made Nance realise how much she had enjoyed the time she’d had to herself. A cattle drive was not a place to be if you valued your privacy but on the whole she’d managed pretty well. With Git favouring night duty, she had been able to go back to the waggon once supper was over and know that until midnight she had the rest of the evening to herself. She had been able to do whatever she liked: mend clothes, remember the past, make plans for the future. She could lie there and talk out loud to herself, if she felt like it. It was good, having space.

  Now, with Git’s accident, the space was gone. He was a bad patient. A man who had put up with exasperations that would have driven Nance mad now had no patience at all, either with himself, his situation or with her.

  ‘You could take a hand of cards with me,’ he said one night after they had pulled into their evening camp, ‘if you cared about the way I feel.’

  ‘I got a meal to prepare,’ she told him. ‘I ain’t got time for no cards.’

  Git swilled grog. ‘It wouldn’t hurt them none to wait.’

  ‘I ain’t paid to let ’em wait,’ Nance said. She moved the bottle out of his reach. ‘That’s another thing. I don’t appreciate you getting drunk so much. Just because you brought a couple of bottles along, don’t mean you got to drink ’em straight off.’

  ‘If you’re too busy to take a hand of cards I reckon you’re too busy to care what I drink.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I do care. I’ll bet it don’t do your ankle no good, either.’

  ‘Don’ see how it can hurt my ankle,’ Git said sulkily. ‘The darn thing’s busted. Bit of booze don’t matter.’

  Nance took no n
otice but went out to her cooking fire. By the time she came back with a plate of food for Git he was past eating: he had crawled over to where she had put the half-full bottle and drunk the lot.

  ‘Drunken pig,’ she said, and ate his food as well as her own.

  Git snored.

  She stared at him, unshaven, mouth open, strapped ankle dangling from the edge of the bunk. He stank, and not only of booze. She thought he hadn’t washed since the accident.

  ‘Have to sort you out,’ she said aloud. ‘Get you back on a horse as soon as your ankle will stand it. I ain’t putting up with this.’

  Most evenings after supper Tom Naismith rode off a little way into the country. The plain was so flat you’d think you could ride to the horizon before you lost sight of the camp but there were always folds in the ground where a man could look around him and see nothing. He liked that. It felt good to be alone for a while, to be away from the company of other men.

  He rode over a low crest of ground and reined in sharply. A hundred yards away, partially shielded by bushes and not much higher, was a small hut.

  ‘Ain’t much bigger’n a box,’ he muttered.

  He looked around cautiously. Out here it must be a native place, he thought, yet it did not look like the kind of dwelling a native would have.

  He circled it cautiously, watching for any movement, but there was none. He rode a little closer.

  The hut had been built from odds and ends of cut wood although where the wood could have come from, out here where there were no trees, Tom could not imagine. It even had a door of sorts, something that no native humpy ever had. He reined in again. If there was anyone inside the hut, it wouldn’t do to get too close.

  ‘Anyone there?’ He shouted so softly he could hardly hear himself. He tried again, a little louder. ‘Anyone there?’ Still nothing. His call had probably not been loud enough to be heard by anyone inside the hut. He took a deep breath, feeling his heart thud in his chest. ‘ANYONE THERE?’