Master of Ransome: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  Once across the creek the cattle pad was so wide it now allowed for them to ride side by side, and Greg reined back his horse.

  He pointed with his whip to the country ahead of them.

  ‘It is eerie in this grey early morning light,’ he said. ‘It’s not hard to believe in bunyips and ghingis living in those ant-hills.’

  The sun was not yet up. The plain stretched away from the timbered country in a forlorn grey light. The sparse, thin reed-like trees and the great mountains of ant-hills made one think they were not on the earth but perhaps on the surface of the moon or some other remote planet.

  ‘It’s very old, this country,’ Sara said quietly.

  ‘Old?’ said Greg. ‘It began in what the Aboriginal people call the dream-time.’ He turned his face to Sara and she saw there was something thoughtful and even tender in his face. ‘One wonders what the dream-time was like? And was it a better world?’

  They had ridden a few yards off the pad and Greg pulled up his horse beside an anthill that was as high as his mount. He threw his reins over the pummel, swung his leg over the saddle and slid off his horse.

  He held up his hand to Sara.

  ‘Come and look at this,’ he said.

  Sara got off her horse and joined him on the ground.

  They stooped before the ant-hill, looking into a great burnt cavern in its side.

  ‘An oven,’ Greg said. ‘Somebody cooked their damper and possibly a kangaroo here.’ He pointed into the burnt-out interior of the ant-hill.

  ‘The rottings from the termites at the base make a wonderful tinder,’ he said. ‘And then the whole glows and heats like coals. The perfect oven.’

  Stooping there beside Greg, Sara felt a soothing peace stealing over her. Now there were no conflicts between them. Greg, his mind and perhaps his heart, were thinking only of the strange ways of nature and of man and he was imparting that knowledge to Sara. It drew them together. The things of the heart hurt but the things of the earth brought only wonder.

  Sara straightened herself and looked around.

  ‘It would be frightening to be lost here, Greg,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said soberly. ‘More so, I think, than in the Red Ranges farther south. Though once I was lost there.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you lost,’ said Sara.

  ‘Yes. We came down in a plane. In the early days. They’re magnetic ironstone, those ranges, and though we tried to land short of them we came down on a plateau dead in the middle. They found us and got us out, but it was eerie.’

  He said no more.

  She wondered if she was as much a stranger to Greg as he was to her.

  Perhaps early morning rides, when they were alone together in the vast spirit-dreaming country, might dispel some of that strangeness and bring them closer.

  Somehow Sara respected Greg for the hint of deep feeling that he had shown when he had spoken of the oldness of the country and of the fear of the Red Ranges.

  He held her stirrup for her while she mounted.

  Once again she found herself looking down at his face the same way she had done the day they had crossed the creek on the way home from the cattle camp. The day Greg had proposed his strange bargain to Sara.

  Once again she read that something in Greg’s face she had read then but not fully understood.

  It was a face no longer withdrawn and preoccupied. His eyes were no longer hard or thoughtful. They were eyes that looked at her now as if recognising her and speaking to her. His face was gentle. And there was something else in it. What was it? Could it be a hint of sadness?

  Greg put her reins in her hand. Then he looked up and smiled right into her eyes.

  ‘The sun is coming up over your right shoulder,’ he said. ‘Good morning, Sara!’

  Sara turned round to see a patch of startling, shimmering gold on the eastern horizons. The trees and ant-hills stood black against it.

  Movement farther round behind her caught her eyes. Two horses were coming up the slope from the creek. They carried Julia and Marion.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The members of the house-party had nearly all dispersed. Stockmen had ridden out as they had ridden in, unannounced, to disappear from whence they came into the vast anonymity of the continent.

  The crocodile hunt came and went, with two crocodiles bagged and both of them to Clifford Camden. The station races came and went. Sara’s dangling ear-rings came and she had worn them with her pearl grey shimmering gown that was smooth and long and very svelte.

  Except for a few strays down at the quarters and one or two swagmen in the bush there was only the family left in the homestead.

  It now appeared that the Hunt family and the Sam Camdens were bent on visiting the sheep run down on the Ashburton River. At the present moment in time the big money was coming in to Ransome from the wool clip and the family was bent on seeing it for themselves.

  ‘To see if there aren’t more sheep on the run than Greg says there are,’ Marion said cryptically after Julia had thrown herself into this notion and insisted it was folly on the part of the shareholders to say all was well with Ransome when they had no knowledge of what went on in the place where the big money was really in grazing.

  When the plans had been finally and neatly concluded Mrs. Camden and Marion announced they were not going but instead intended paying a three-day visit to Turra station. A three-day visit meant a plane. Why couldn’t the station Anson take them?

  This was the sort of thing that exasperated Greg but of his exasperation he gave no sign.

  ‘The Anson could take you up and leave you there,’ he said. ‘It could fly back and pick you up later. Nobody ever stays on Turra for less than a week.’

  ‘It would be highly indelicate,’ Mrs. Camden said haughtily. ‘We have been invited by the two boys. To stay long would look bad. After all, Marion is not as “eager” as all that.’

  Sara had got the impression that it was Mrs. Camden more than Marion who had been ‘eager’ about the MacKensie boys all along. But then one never could tell with Marion. She never spoke of herself or of her interests.

  However, if there was something ‘in the air’ then Sara agreed with Mrs. Camden that a short visit was the diplomatic thing to do at this stage.

  ‘Well, if the Anson won’t take us,’ Mrs. Camden said crossly, ‘then I’ll send a message to Jack Brownrigg. If he’s a few days to spare he won’t mind bringing his own Dove plane and helping us out.’

  This was another embarrassing suggestion because the plane Greg had already chartered had not been one of Brownrigg’s Northern Airways planes but one of a West Australia company. Greg believed that as they were going to fly over West Australian territory they should use those particular services that had pioneered that state.

  ‘Very well, Mother,’ he said at length. ‘If Jack’s free and can lend us the Dove to make up our party I’ll send the Anson to Turra with you and Marion. We’d better make it an official charter. I’m not going to use Jack without his being reimbursed for it.’

  The consequent parties were arranged. Sara was delighted to hear that Jack Brownrigg was coming. She had not quite made up her mind about going to Ashburton with the family as she dreaded air travel, but Jack and his own Dove gave her greater confidence. She told Greg she would come but instead of travelling in the big plane she preferred to travel with Jack. Sara was ashamed of her cowardice and so she was evasive when she told Greg she would like to go in the Dove. He looked at her troubled face. Sara thought that he guessed her nervousness.

  ‘I … I like Jack,’ she faltered. She could not bring herself to say, ‘I won’t be so frightened with him because he knows I’m nervous and he’s so chivalrous, he’ll be careful.’

  She told Sam Benson, however.

  ‘Go with Jack if it makes you happier, Sara,’ he said. ‘But if you’re going to live in the north you’d better get used to plane travelling. Otherwise you’ll be cut off. And you can’t always have Jack at your
beck and call.’

  ‘Actually, Sam, it was Mrs. Camden’s beck and call. The Dove happens to be going to the Ashburton so I’m just happening along with it.’

  ‘Listen, young ’un,’ Sam said. ‘Every pilot takes care. You know what? The best pilot is the chap who thinks of himself and takes care of himself. So long as he’s looking after his own neck the passengers don’t matter. See what I mean?’

  Sara laughed.

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘If nothing happens to the pilot then nothing happens to the passengers.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  But she gained the impression that Sam wasn’t pleased with her. She’d have to grow a lot tougher yet to match up with the careless courage of people who lived in the outback. She sighed. Maybe, one day, she would.

  In due course Mrs. Camden and Marion took off in the Anson for Turra station and the big plane arrived with its front seats removed to carry a big load of freight into Ransome and an equally big one from the cattle station down to the sheep run.

  Greg, two of the stockmen and a jackaroo who were changing over with men from the sheep run, and Sara took off in the Dove with Jack Brownrigg. The Hunts, the Sam Camdens, Clifford and Julia took off with the freight in the Airways plane.

  Sara was thrilled with the sheep run. The homestead was old, having been built fifty years before by the former owners. It was of timber and galvanised iron and consisted of four living-rooms surrounded by a veranda, which itself was enclosed by net screening against flies, the curse of the sheep country, and mosquitoes.

  The formality of the life up at Ransome was gone. Here things were more at the picnic level. The food was brought up from the kitchen, an iron hut twenty-five yards away from the house, and they ate in the biggest of the living-rooms. One of the other rooms was the habitat of the overseer and the other two rooms were given up as dressing-rooms.

  For the rest they sat and talked and discussed business affairs on the veranda. In fact it was what Jack called a ‘veranda life’.

  The cooked food was poor because the station cook had been used only to catering for the men on the place, but the Ransome party had brought with them all their own requirements in fruits, salads, biscuits and cakes.

  As the station was run, as far as possible, by jeep, motor-cycle, tractor and truck, there were few good riding horses. These perforce were left to the men who spent a great deal of time going out to the flocks.

  It was Jack Brownrigg, who had taken his plane off for an outing the foregoing afternoon, who suggested a picnic farther up-country. He had spotted a claypan for good landing and within short distance of trees and water-holes.

  ‘When I’m on the ground,’ he said, ‘I’ll be able to see if I can taxi to the north end of the claypan. If so, I’ll be within three-quarters of a mile of the gorges. If the waterhole doesn’t offer enough to entertain us we might summon up the energy to walk to the gorges.’

  The idea was received with delight. The company had already been so much together at Ransome they had ceased to be charmed with the novelty of what each other had to say of his or her affairs. They all wanted to be doing something.

  Only Greg was doubtful.

  ‘Picnicking by the plane might sound all right,’ he said. ‘There’s always a hazard by air, though … and picnicking … well, maybe we could arrange a day to send out a fleet of trucks and take you up-river.’

  Julia, sitting relaxed in her chair, her very fine legs showing themselves to advantage as she crossed them negligently, replied by pointing round the room and counting.

  ‘Four to one, Greg. I’m sorry. You’ve only one vote when it comes to saying how much money we, as a family, will spend on an outing.’

  Greg lit a cigarette slowly. The others had chimed in to support Julia’s point of view, but both Julia and Greg remained silent. They were like two protagonists between whom some telepathic contest was being enacted but of which nothing was said in words and which didn’t really relate to the picnic. Of the others only Sara had nothing to say. She was watching Greg and Julia as one would watch a play on a stage. What would be the end of this duel that Sara had been conscious of since the very first day she landed on Ransome?

  It had been there all along. Today it had come out in the open.

  ‘It is Jack’s plane,’ Greg said at length, slowly. ‘If he chooses to use it as transport for you all, then I won’t make any difficulties. Sara and I will remain on the station.’

  He got up quietly and walked to the veranda door and looked out over the brown grassy downs. He turned.

  ‘I’m going down to the shearing sheds,’ he said. ‘Anyone coming?’

  There was silence. Then Sara stood up and brushed her skirt. She tried to be as easy and non-committal in her manner as Greg now was.

  ‘I’ll come, Greg,’ she said. ‘Will you wait till I get my hat.’

  ‘Bring a shady one,’ he said. ‘The sun has got the wrath of God in it.’

  Sara went into the dressing-rooms and reached for her straw hat from a peg driven into the wooden wall.

  What did it all mean? She was certain there had been a battle of wills between Julia and Greg and that it was an important one to both of them. It had mattered to her, Sara, too. It had mattered that Julia should not destroy Greg’s authority. It had mattered for Ransome’s sake. His authority as manager was a tenuous thing based on personality and confidence. As Julia had, not so delicately, pointed out, he did not have a controlling vote on the destinies of the Camdens.

  But he had over Sara. Unless she were like Julia and defied it too. Had Greg’s flat statement, ‘Sara and I will remain’, been his challenge to her? If she had defied it, what then? His authority would be broken altogether. Why had he that faith that she would not defy his authority? Her acceptance of it meant that the victory had not been entirely Julia’s. If Greg was going to keep one in the shadow of his wing, then it was going to be Sara and not Julia.

  Greg had gone to the edge of the small enclosure round the homestead by the time Sara joined him.

  Sara felt once again that tearing of herself in two. Her duty to Ransome, her bargain, kept her faithful to Greg’s commands. But once again it put her in the role of the subservient and not the wilful and decorative.

  She expected Greg to say something now to thank her for backing him up but in this she was disappointed.

  Because he said nothing at all to her as she joined him she began to feel angry and just a little miserable.

  ‘Why are you going to the shearing sheds?’ she asked to break the silence.

  ‘I want to look over those wool presses. The overseer thinks we should employ an extra man for maintenance. The quick changes of temperature rust up the springs.’ He paused moodily, then continued: ‘If wool prices hold, and that’s guesswork, we’ll have to extend the sheds. We could employ two carpenters there in the off season.’

  ‘Your guess would at least be an informed guess,’ said Sara.

  ‘True,’ said Greg. And they continued on in silence.

  Sara’s spirits sank lower still. How could he walk thus beside her and be no more conscious of her than he would be if it was one of the stockmen? Where were his thoughts really? Were they with the shearing sheds or were they with that current of electrified air that had flowed between himself and Julia on the veranda?

  They had reached the shearing sheds and Sara broke the silence again.

  ‘I think I’ll wait here in the shade. I’d probably be an encumbrance while you’re looking over the presses.’

  ‘If you prefer, Sara,’ he said. ‘I won’t be long,’ and he strode on to the first big wool-polished floor.

  Sara sat down on a box in the shade on the east side of the shed.

  So! He had left her flat. She herself had mentioned the word ‘encumbrance’ but Greg had not denied it.

  Well, it was her own fault, she thought. She could hear Greg’s footsteps inside and her heart longed for him. Yet she knew that if he had come, and if he had
held out his arms to her, she would have turned away.

  If there is any future for us, she thought bitterly, it can never begin to be realised with Julia present. She defies me too. She defies me to capture Greg from her. And I don’t know how to fight.

  She would not admit to herself that the pearl-grey satin dress and the dangling earrings had been like putting on an armour to do battle. She was too angry with the thing in Greg’s character that made him differentiate between Julia’s type and her own and Mrs. Whittle’s type to want consciously to do battle to win him.

  Greg was a long time, but Sara did not move. She sat and thought long enough to feel she had reached rock bottom of depression, and then, as always happens when one reaches rock bottom, she began to fight back.

  She had a right to Ransome because she had a duty to it. One day Julia would go too far. Then for Ransome’s sake …

  Greg, who had gone out of the building into another farther on, now came around the corner.

  ‘I suppose all this means another argument,’ he said. ‘But we’ll have to extend that far shed. I’ve been thinking about it for days.’

  ‘The plane picnic is not so important to you then. You are thinking more about improvements on the place than the fact that the others will probably go off to enjoy themselves?’

  Greg looked at Sara for the first time since they had left the homestead.

  ‘Why not?’ he said curiously. ‘I always think of the place first. I thought you knew that, Sara.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘I think I did know that. It’s myself who gets side-tracked by thinking of people as well as places.’

  Greg was still looking at her curiously.

  ‘I think of some people,’ he said in some surprise. ‘I didn’t want you, for instance, to go off on that plane ride.’

  Sara’s heart leapt unexpectedly.

  ‘I know you don’t like plane travel. And you get just a little air-sick, though you don’t admit it. But if you really want to go, Sara …’