by Lucy Walker
‘Never mind about me. I can ride a packhorse and make him go too. I’ll give you a demonstration in a minute.’
Cherry loosened her right foot from the stirrup. She would have liked to disdain Stephen’s waiting arms but she knew she couldn’t do that. She wanted to fall into them, never leave them, and certainly never mount another horse again as long as she lived.
She put her hands on Stephen’s shoulders, meaning to elevate herself lightly from the saddle and descend to the ground as easily as she had gone up into the saddle ‒ with his help.
Instead, as she leaned forward, she quite literally fell into his arms. He lifted her free of the saddle and the near stirrup iron and lowered her gently to the ground. He held her as he gave her feet time to find the ground and settle on them firmly.
Suddenly her eyes were full of tears because she could not help the fact that she had to lean against him. For a minute she was helpless and had no balance.
Stephen looked down at her.
She was still in his arms and she had to bend her head forward so the knuckles of her hand would wipe the tears from her eyes for her. That way he could see only the top of her head, thank goodness.
Nevertheless, when she shook her head as if to shake away cobwebs from her eyes and lifted it, trying for dignity and even a touch of hauteur, it was to find Stephen’s eyes kindly.
‘Some people have to learn the hard way, Cherry,’ he said gently.
He let her free herself from his arms.
‘I guess Tracy learned when she was a child,’ he added. ‘She had the advantage of you. Hence her docile willingness to go ahead in the truck.’
‘I suppose I asked for it,’ agreed Cherry, turning to see where Peter had got to. ‘But you might have told me. Oh, Stephen! Look!’
For a moment Cherry forgot the awful pain it had cost her to turn round. Her hand went out involuntarily to Stephen’s arm.
A dozen feet away Peter, up on his feet, was walking crazily but determinedly towards them. His tongue was between his teeth, his eyes were wide open with astonishment at his own cleverness.
‘One-two-three-four-five ‒’ Cherry was breathlessly counting.
On the eighth step Peter, satisfied with his day’s work, sank to the ground, gazed up at them, and beamed.
The cobwebs were back in Cherry’s eyes.
‘Oh, Peter!’ she cried.
She took two steps towards him and sank on the ground beside him. She picked up one of his hands. Then turned back helplessly to Stephen.
‘I don’t think I can get up again,’ she said.
Stephen was standing looking at the pair of them, the girl and the child, one kneeling and the other sitting on the ground. There was nothing all around them except a waste of treeless, grass-hummocked plain broken here and there by stony outcrops. Away to the north-east was the blue shadow of the edge of the jungle country.
Stephen came over to them and gave Cherry a hand to help her rise.
‘I’ve got a fine pair of you on my hands,’ he said. ‘One who won’t stop walking now he’s started and the other who can’t because she took to horseback. They’d better have some motor transport across there on that station.’
Cherry straightened herself slowly.
‘It would have been better to have brought Tracy, after all.’
‘I accept your apology in the same handsome spirit it is offered,’ Stephen said dryly. Then added more kindly, ‘My decisions are based on some knowledge of people’s capabilities, Cherry. But I didn’t underrate your care of Peter. Please don’t think that. With Tracy I would have looked after Peter’s welfare; she would have ridden the distance without undue trouble.’
But Tracy wasn’t willing, Cherry thought, though she could not say this.
‘Now you’ve got to do both ‒ look after me and Peter,’ Cherry said, aloud.
‘Exactly,’ said Stephen.
‘Tell me what to do and I’ll help myself.’
‘Good. We’ll get you up on the bay first. I’ll hand you Peter, then when I’m mounted I’ll come alongside and you can hand him to me. Right?’
‘Right,’ said Cherry. She was beginning to like this word ‘right’ of Stephen’s. It sort of turned doing things into a team effort.
Well, that’s what they were now. A team. She would have to carry her share. Nobody was any good in a team who had to be carried by others.
With much gritting of teeth, jutting of a bottom lip and grim determination Cherry walked across to the waiting horse without a grimace and as naturally as possible. Again Stephen held the stirrup for her and gave her a leg up. Again, with teeth gritted, Cherry sprang up into the air and into the saddle without flopping back into Stephen’s arms. Once there she sat up straight, the balls of her feet firmly pressed on to the stirrup irons.
‘I shall not so much as wince once again,’ she promised herself.
Stephen picked up Peter and handed him to her. Meantime he took the shoulder bag himself.
‘Never can tell how much the little tyke will wriggle,’ he said.
Oddly enough, even on the packhorse Stephen managed to look like a good horseman on a good mount. Cherry, surprised, noticed that he didn’t put his right foot in the stirrup. He left it lying across the pommel of the saddle in a ‘look easy’ fashion.
‘Don’t you ride with both feet?’ Cherry asked, curious, as he drew beside her and took Peter from her. He fitted Peter comfortably into his seat, pulled the child’s linen hat down on his forehead, then reached in his shirt pocket for the makings of cigarettes which the drover had left for him in the camp.
‘If you watch closely,’ said Stephen casually, ‘you will see that I bump less, can ride easily and at the same time carry a child and roll myself a cigarette … all at the same time, if I ride this way.’ Then he said by way of a joke to ease their relationship. ‘Besides, my right leg needs a rest. You go ahead. This time I’ll be the lubra.’
Startled, Cherry realised that that was just what she must have looked like to Stephen earlier. The man riding daringly ahead, the lubra following on the old nag, the baby in a sling. What a picture! Of course, it had a domestic tang to it, in aboriginal fashion, but all the same it was the picture of subservient woman.
She decided not to be offended because Stephen was now, decorously and with a smile of amusement on his face, doing exactly the same thing.
They rode several miles this way. As the pace was not much more than a walk with occasional bursts of trotting and even a canter or two Cherry was much more comfortable on the big stockhorse. True, the iron-framed saddle was hard, her back ached and other parts of her, notably her insteps where the stirrup iron cut into her, were sore but she had ceased to feel all her insides being rattled about like loose works in a juke-box.
Getting off later, and walking about, would be painful, she knew. But at least she would be whole and her body would be expected to be all in one piece. And she would keep a stiff upper lip. On that she was determined.
It was nearly midday by the position of the sun in the heavens when Stephen called a halt.
He came up beside Cherry and handed her Peter, slid off the packhorse and then took the child from her.
‘Don’t get off till I’ve put Peter some place safe from the horses’ feet,’ he warned.
Cherry had learned wisdom so she did not, this time, take the law into her own hands and demonstrate her independence by trying to dismount herself.
There was only one way and that was to be the least possible trouble.
She meekly sat on the horse until, Peter safely put down in the shade of some scrub, Stephen came towards her. Again he put up both arms to take her weight. Cherry, everything under control, unconscious of the determined line of her mouth and the sudden concentrated expression in her dark blue eyes, allowed her weight to come easily towards him. He lifted her to the ground as if she were weightless.
He held her steady for a few minutes. Had Cherry only known, her eyes had exactl
y the same expression as small Peter’s had had when he was essaying his first few walking steps. She was concentrating on that stiff upper lip so much that this time she failed to see the expression in Stephen’s own eyes.
He drew in the corners of his mouth and dropped his hands, as he saw that she stood steady, and turned away. He began to take their lunch ‒ damper and cold grilled steak ‒ from the saddle-bags. Peter’s inevitable tin of milk and the waterbag were taken from the hooks on the packhorse saddle.
‘We’ll sit in the shade over there,’ he indicated with his head. He had his back to Cherry as she walked stiffly but determinedly towards the scrub. He did not turn round until he knew she was safely sitting down beside the child.
Cherry did not acknowledge this gallantry aloud but in her heart she saluted him.
Oddly it made her a little sad. Half of her, the silly half, was beginning to fall for him all over again.
It was no good pretending that the Cherry who was an inexperienced ex-schoolgirl had not fallen for him when he was a lone mysterious figure sitting on that golden beach so many thousand miles away. That mad ‘crush’ had disappeared, she told herself, when he had come to the house, had inwardly laughed at her parents and her home, and anyhow had turned out to be a rich and unattainable station owner.
Then, of course, he had been difficult on and off ever since. She assured herself of this. In addition he was born and bred to the Tracys of this world, not to small-time governesses who turned out to be no more than nursemaids.
Alan Donnelly was different.
Cherry had a pang of remorse when she remembered Alan Donnelly. She felt as if she had suddenly been caught defecting from a point of honour. It was she and Alan who had been the good companions in all this strange time since the plane was wrecked. Alan had been thoughtful, kind, amused and amusing. He had hidden his troubles from the others. He had borne himself with dignity since he had not only been the pilot of the plane that had crashed but had also so immediately been superseded in authority by Stephen.
There is as much character in serving as directing, Cherry thought.
She would not let Stephen do this to her ‒ make her feel a sudden exulting pride in the fact her heart bowed a little to his occasional gallantries.
Stephen had everything. He didn’t have to have all the hearts too. Tracy’s heart was enough surely, since Tracy, in his eyes, had no faults.
As Stephen brought the waterbag and the saddle-bag to the shade in the scrub Cherry’s eyes wandered away to that north-eastern horizon where the blue shadow that must be the edge of the timbered country still lay, a smudge on the horizon. How happy they had been there!
How sad to think of that derelict camp lying alone in the clearing, waiting for four people and a child to come home. Four people and a child who would never come now. They were heading for a station, motor transport, and civilisation.
Cherry supposed that in her heart that camp in the clearing would now remain the Shangri-La of her dreaming ‒ a place where once nothing mattered and where there was no other world but huge trees, fallen logs, a wall of vine and four or five miles away a lily-strewn lake where birds came from hundreds of miles for their evening swim.
‘Why so quiet?’ Stephen asked, looking at Cherry closely. He was trying to gauge how badly knocked out she was by that ride. It was a ride that was nothing to him and with Tracy he could have made it in a quarter of the time but he nevertheless knew that any first ride is a trying experience for a novice and this one with those iron-backed saddles had been doubly hard on a girl.
Cherry had one hand on Peter and was unconsciously patting his arm. Peter, tired, had lain back on the ground, had put two fingers in his mouth, decided he had outgrown that piece of babyishness now he could walk, and was closing his eyes instead. If they didn’t hurry up and feed him, his expression said, he’d fall asleep instead of eating.
‘I was thinking of the jungle,’ Cherry said, her eyes a little dreamy, coming back to Stephen’s face as he bent over the saddle-bags. ‘It was rather nice there, wasn’t it? We did have fun ‒’
‘Very nice,’ said Stephen noncommittally. ‘Including the pythons.’
‘Oh, I’d forgotten the pythons. There’s always a catch even in the nicest things, isn’t there?’
Stephen had extracted the plastic mugs and was pouring water into one of them.
‘What was so nice about it?’
‘The company for one thing,’ said Cherry. ‘I wonder what Alan and Tracy are doing now?’
‘Not mixing dried milk for small boys, that’s for certain,’ said Stephen.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ exclaimed Cherry. ‘I’d even forgotten Peter. How dreadful ‒’
She reached forward and Stephen handed her the tin of milk with the cup of water.
‘The world generally seems to be well forgotten for love,’ Stephen said as he opened the second saddle-bag. ‘Is that why you fell in love with the jungle? That way you shut out other claims?’
‘What other claims?’ asked Cherry, stirring in the milk with a stick.
‘You have people, friends, commitments down south. Being shut away in a jungle shuts away the south, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Cherry contritely. ‘I suppose it does.’ In truth it wasn’t very kind of her to be thinking nostalgically of a camp in the jungle when her parents were still probably crazed with anxiety.
She bent over and roused Peter and drew him into her arms. She held the cup to his lips. As she did so she looked up.
‘Don’t let’s rest too long, Stephen. Somehow we’ve got to get to that Transceiver set as quickly as possible. I can’t bear to think of people worrying.’
‘How do you feel?’
‘It doesn’t matter how I feel,’ said Cherry doggedly. ‘We’ve got to get to that station. If you’ll hurry I’ll promise not to hold you up again. I’ll even ride that old packhorse ‒’
‘A reminder of your people down south has certainly had a salutary effect on your energy,’ Stephen said dryly. ‘A minute ago I thought you’d follow Peter’s example and go to sleep.’
‘I’ll sleep when I get through on that Transceiver set,’ said Cherry firmly.
‘To the man down south?’
‘To the man down south,’ said Cherry.
Peter finished his drink and was put back on the leafy ground to get on with his sleep. Stephen handed Cherry her share of damper and cold beef. They sat eating in silence.
Stephen half closed his eyes against the glare of the sun as he looked out across the plain.
It was hard on a girl, he supposed, when she found her heart divided between two men. Just how much had Alan Donnelly played the handsome gallant while he, Stephen, and Tracy had been away hunting those two days Alan and Cherry had been left alone at the camp?
And how much was she attached to this other man down south?
He turned his head a little and looked at Cherry where she had leaned her head back against the slim trunk of a scrub gum. Her eyes were closed.
He sat watching her for a minute, his face expressionless, then he turned back to look across the plain, a shadow in his eyes.
A ball of brown dust was bowling towards them from the south. It was coming along that cattle track.
It was not a willy-willy, because a willy-willy was spiral and it danced. This was a ball and it raced.
Stephen sat upright, his eyes slitted, the shadow gone. Presently he spoke softly between half-closed lips.
‘Cherry,’ he said. ‘Open your eyes. You’ll see God’s greatest creation coming towards you. A man in a motor car.’
Cherry opened her eyes and sat up. She stared unbelievingly at the big overlanding car that was materialising out of its enveloping cloak of dust.
Stephen had not moved. He sat, his knees drawn up and his elbows resting on them. He took out the tin of tobacco and papers the drover had given him and began slowly to roll a cigarette.
‘Now,’ he said, without raising hi
s eyes, ‘you will be able to get on to that boy friend of yours without delay. If my sight is right the sun is catching a certain gleaming object rearing itself up from the back fin of that car. It’s a radio rod.’
‘Boy friend?’ said Cherry dazedly. She blinked her eyes. ‘Boy friend?’ She looked down at the sleeping Peter. ‘That’s the only boy friend I’ve got. I wish he was truly mine.’
Stephen unlooped himself and stood up. He held out his hand to help her rise. Just as Cherry had forgotten she held Stephen’s arm when she watched Peter walk, now she forgot she held his hand, tightly, as they stood side by side and the great dust-covered overlander skidded to a surprised stop at the side of the track.
Chapter Fifteen
Everything that happened in the next twenty-four hours kaleidoscoped into a rush of events.
The owner of the overlander was one of the Kunder brothers from Kunder Station. He was a big, thickset man, roughly dressed but with a bush-whacker’s heart of gold.
‘Knock me down!’ he said. ‘That lost plane! An’ you’re all alive. Ringin’ bells! That darn radio has done nothin’ this last four days but yabber yabber about that plane.’
Time was urgent but not too urgent for a cup of tea. Alex Kunder might not have been able to read or write but there was nothing he didn’t know about motor mechanics, radio mechanics and carrying a travelling food box in the boot of his enormous car.
With great pride he demonstrated how he had built his car by picking up an old body here, an old engine there, engine parts from anyone who came through his station. And similarly with everything that went to make a two-way radio set for this monstrous, mechanical pride of his heart.
While Stephen raided the food box and Cherry, now adept, built a small camp-fire to boil the billy, Alex Kunder endeavoured to demonstrate how he had made everything himself and how he’d made everything work.
‘Good heavens!’ said Stephen, interrupting at one stage while he put fistfuls of beautiful tea-leaves into the billy, then strung a gum twig across the mouth of the billy to prevent the subsequent brew from tasting too smoky. ‘With twenty thousand head of cattle on that run, why don’t you buy yourself a car? Or half a dozen for that matter? Why make one?’
