Dash and Dingo

by Catt Ford

  “Come ahead. I found a campsite,” Hank announced when he returned. “We might as well make use of it.”

  Henry sat down heavily when Jarrah lowered him to the ground. His leg was throbbing and yet numb to the point where he could no longer support his own weight. He watched dully as Hank built a fire using wood that had been left behind. Jarrah disappeared and returned quickly with water. Henry felt he was nothing short of useless, a tenderfoot who even at his best was of little use in the forest compared to the quick ease of the two men.

  With a concerned glance, Jarrah set a pot of water to heat by the fire and came to Henry. “A watched pot never boils, Dash. Look away so I can have hot water to bathe your wound.”

  “My leg itches,” Henry roused himself enough to say.

  “Where?”

  Henry pointed vaguely to the back of his calf.

  Jarrah bent to look and made a displeased sound. “Land leech.” He went to the fire and brought back a burning stick, holding it close enough that Henry could feel the heat, and smell the singeing of his leg hair. He watched Jarrah apathetically, too exhausted to even move his leg away from the red-hot stick.

  Jarrah gave a satisfied nod. “That took care of it. My apologies, my friend. The leeches sense our body heat. With your trouser leg cut off….” He shrugged fatalistically.

  Henry couldn’t help at all. He simply sat lethargically, allowing Jarrah to unwind the soiled bandage, bathe his wound, apply the poultice, and bandage him again. He stared at the amount of blood Jarrah wiped from the back of his leg.

  “The leech injects a poison that keeps the blood flowing,” Jarrah explained. “It’s not dangerous. It will stop soon.”

  Henry looked up to see Dingo watching, frustration on his face as Jarrah helped Henry out of his clothing. He mustered the energy to smile reassuringly at Dingo, relieved when the other man’s expression lightened. Jarrah ripped his ruined trousers into rags, using them to rinse the dried sweat from Henry’s body. He helped Henry into the torn trousers he’d rescued from their camp and replaced his socks and boots.

  “I’ll rinse the shirt.” Jarrah rose gracefully and vanished with it, going to the source of water he’d located, Henry surmised.

  He crossed his arms across his chest, made more self-conscious by the fact that Hank never lifted his head from his task of preparing food. Dingo gave him a sly wink, and Henry found himself smiling feebly.

  The shirt was cold and damp when Jarrah helped him put it on, but the lower altitude was steamy with humidity, so it was a relief to Henry. A mug of warm broth was put into his hand, and he drank it without question, surprised at how filling it was.

  He didn’t remember falling asleep.

  It was dark when he awoke, except for the dying embers of the fire. He could dimly see Dingo’s sleeping face across the clearing, where he was lying near his father. A sudden yearning to feel Dingo’s arms around him hit Henry so hard he gasped for breath. The ten feet that parted them could have been ten miles; with Hank and Jarrah there, the casual touches, the kisses, the nights spent curled together were now a thing of the past.

  Suddenly Henry knew what Dingo had meant when he’d asked if it were better to know. Now Henry did know what it could feel like to be the forbidden lover of another man; once they were no longer alone, they were more alone than ever, confined to secret glances. Even though Dingo claimed that his parents accepted his homosexuality, Henry could sense Hank’s discomfort with obvious demonstrations of affection, so gratitude and mere politeness dictated that they refrain.

  While he pondered, Dingo’s eyes opened, and he gave Henry a look of such longing, he knew he wasn’t alone.

  Henry whispered the lyrics of the song, their song, not knowing whether Dingo could hear him or make out the words from the movement of his lips, but it made him feel better.

  No one else must know

  The yearning we’re concealing

  The feelings we can’t show

  Staying hidden in plain sight

  Burning eyes can’t help revealing

  That we are tigers—

  His throat tightened at the last words, and he swallowed hard, unable to continue.

  Dingo nodded at him and closed his eyes.

  Henry stared into the embers for a long time before he fell asleep again.

  Dingo was lying next to him when he opened his eyes. Jarrah and Hank were also asleep on the other side of the fire.

  “Haroo, Dash,” Dingo said, his voice little more than a croak.

  “Haroo, Dingo,” Henry replied, his own voice also strained.

  “Dash, I’m so sorry,” Dingo said, reaching across and entwining his fingers with Henry’s. “I promised you adventure, but all I got you were lies and danger.”

  “I got more than that,” Henry whispered. “I got you. And I got to see the tigers. That’s worth everything.”

  “But you thought you were coming to start your career.”

  “I still could. I have the pictures.”

  “You can’t use them, Dash. It would go against everything we’ve tried to set up here.”

  “What have you tried to set up?”

  “There are plans in place. Gordon’s been working them out for some time now. That’s why the thylacines have been tracked. But for it to work, the tigers have to stay where they belong. Not in zoos. Especially not in London, where it’s rainy and cold and they’d pine away longing for the Tassie wilderness. It may not be the answer you hoped it would be, but it’s the best one.”

  “Maybe you’re right, but it does no good for me and the people I have to answer to.”

  Dingo shook his head. “Always so self-deprecating, Dash. Why shouldn’t it? You’re backed by the college, and you have a reputation in certain circles, or didn’t you know that?”

  “What circles?” Henry cried out, exasperated.

  “People who want to make sure the tiger lives free and in secrecy.” Dingo laughed. “You thought you found Gordon Austin, but he was looking for someone like you. It was part of the plan, to find a man of good reputation, bring him here and prove that the tiger was extinct. That way the world would stay out of Tassie and give the thylacine a chance to live in peace.”

  “And that’s all you wanted from me?” Henry asked coldly.

  “Until I clapped my eyes on you. Dash, you have to know how I feel about you by now,” Dingo said beseechingly. “If I didn’t believe in your integrity and honor, I could have led you a merry dance in the forest, and you’d never have set eyes on the tiger. But once I met you and fell in love with you, I wanted to share this with you. There might never be another opportunity for you to see them. And I know you can keep a secret; you have it now, the sight of an animal so miraculous—what is it?”

  “You love me?” Henry was smiling.

  “Hadn’t I mentioned that before?” Dingo started reddening, but he met Henry’s gaze faithfully.

  “Not really.”

  “You know, it’s customary when one receives a declaration of love to, ahem, reciprocate in some way.”

  Henry took Dingo’s face between his hands and stared into his eyes. “I love you, Dingo Chambers.”

  “And I love you both,” came the voice of Jarrah through the flames. “But you both need to stop gabbing and let a man sleep.”

  Both Henry and Dingo laughed softly, and soon all three of them were asleep again.

  Henry clamped his jaws in misery. The only good thing was that his leg no longer itched from the leech, but he was tired, filthy, and there seemed no end to the forest. If Jarrah hadn’t been helping him, Henry might have been tempted to simply lie down and become a meal for whatever wanted to eat him. He couldn’t see that they were making any progress at all.

  The other thing that kept him going was Dingo. If Dingo could keep moving, so could he.

  He heard and smelled the river before he saw it. And if he wasn’t imagining it, Jarrah got them moving a little faster, now that their goal was within reach. />
  “The River Styx,” Henry murmured. It felt like a victory, to be alive, to pass to the other side of the river again.

  Jarrah smiled at his words. “The boundary between Earth and the underworld.”

  Not surprised to hear a classical allusion from Jarrah’s lips, Henry managed to grin back. “But which is which?”

  “As long as the tigers stay on the other side, they may yet have a chance,” Jarrah told him gently.

  From there, it wasn’t that far to Jarrah’s truck, and soon enough they were leaving the natural world and all its wonders behind them.

  Chapter 28

  If Henry hadn’t been so unutterably exhausted, he might have felt embarrassed to be shown into the best hotel in Hobart in his battered state. His trousers were tattered and filthy, while his shirt was stained with sweat and torn by the branches of the jungle that now seemed loath to let him go.

  If not for Jarrah’s support, Henry wasn’t sure he could have made it up the steps alone. Despite his weariness, he roused himself to mumble, “Jarrah, I can make it from here. Don’t want you to….” His voice trailed off as his brain failed to come up with words to express the rudeness of the reality that a man native to this land, who had risked his life to help him, would not be permitted to pass through the front door of the hotel.

  In a subservient voice completely at odds with his true character, Jarrah murmured soothingly, “Don’t worry, sir. I’ll have you to the doctor in no time.”

  Henry nodded wearily, understanding the cryptic message that Jarrah would be able to pass unmolested if seen to be in service to a white man.

  The doctor talked to him all the while that he cleaned and dressed the wound, and Henry nodded blankly at intervals. He was aware of Hank and Jarrah answering questions and asking some of their own, but Dingo was uncharacteristically silent, sitting in a chair and holding his injured wrist.

  When the doctor finished bandaging his leg and had said cheerily, “I think you’ll do, Mr. Percival-Smythe. Next patient,” Henry looked longingly at the chair that Dingo vacated to get onto the doctor’s table, but Jarrah guided him from the room.

  Henry didn’t want to leave Dingo, but he was in no shape to protest, dreading the stairs. He was grateful to find that even in Hobart there was a lift in the hotel, which Jarrah put him into, helping him to lean against the wall before he stepped out.

  Henry was wondering exactly what he was supposed to do when he arrived at the second floor, but Jarrah was there when the doors slid open. Apparently the hotel’s beneficence only extended so far; once Henry had been patched up, it was decided that Jarrah could perfectly well use the back stairs.

  The lift operator gave Henry a supporting hand so that he could totter toward Jarrah. The strong hand gripping his arm was a relief, especially as he had no idea where he was going.

  “What room?” he managed.

  “I’ve got the key, sir, don’t you worry about anything,” Jarrah said, steering him down the hall to a room at the end.

  When the door was unlocked and closed behind them, Henry muttered, “Sorry, Jarrah.”

  “No worries.”

  Jarrah took Henry’s rucksack and propped it against the wall on the far side of a dresser, where it could not be seen from the door. Then he started to undress Henry.

  Henry murmured incoherently and tried to brush Jarrah’s hands away from his shirt.

  “Don’t you want to be clean?” Jarrah asked, pausing in his ministrations.

  Clean.

  It felt ages since he’d been clean. Eyeing the pristine white sheets, Henry nodded. He wanted nothing more than to be clean and to fall asleep on a soft bed with crisp, freshly laundered sheets. Actually, there was one thing more that he wanted, but Dingo was still with the doctor, they were back in what passed for civilization, and who knew when Henry would feel Dingo’s body against his again?

  Too weary with pain to care if Jarrah didn’t, Henry allowed the man to strip him and lead him into the bathroom. He submitted to the sponge bath, feeling nothing more than gentle care, watching dully as Jarrah’s dark hands passed over his own fairer skin. It was just so nice to be clean again. Jarrah even rubbed a damp washcloth over his hair. Henry felt dimly that the hotel would still have cause to mourn their sheets after he slept on them, but at least it wasn’t as bad as it might have been, had Jarrah not been there.

  He startled when Jarrah helped him to his feet. Despite the clean bandage, his leg burned and throbbed, and Henry felt as if he couldn’t take another step without falling to the floor and crying. But Jarrah managed it so that soon he was lying against the sheets he’d craved. Jarrah pulled the covers up and tucked him in as if he was a little boy, before stroking his hair. Henry never heard the door shut behind him.

  Henry awoke to find the room dark. It felt unfamiliar all at once to be inside a building after so many nights in the jungle. He missed the noises of the birds and animals that had become a familiar background to his conversations with Dingo.

  He thought it had been some sound that had awakened him and listened intently. The soft sound of a latch being clicked carefully made him stiffen in bed, prepared for Hodges or another of his government cohorts to be invading his room, perhaps to search it. His first thought was for the camera, lodged in his rucksack.

  Then he felt the mattress dip and the warmth of another body against his. Dingo’s scent filled his nose, and he sighed with contentment.

  He turned into Dingo’s warmth slowly, cautious of his leg and the other man’s arm.

  Without words, their lips met in the darkness with unerring certainty. The light brush of Dingo’s mouth against his made him start to get hard, and Henry chuckled to find he wasn’t too tired for that. Then he sighed.

  “What?”

  It was a mere whisper of sound, as if Dingo thought that they might be overheard.

  “I can’t help but think I’ve failed.”

  “You haven’t, Dash. Not in any way.”

  “I didn’t do what I set out to; secure a mating pair and transport them back to London,” Henry said miserably.

  “That’s not how I saw our goal,” Dingo said. “We set out to save the tiger, right?”

  “Right, and I haven’t done a thing—”

  “If we report that we saw no sign of the tiger, that we believe it’s extinct, then people will stop coming after them.”

  “It goes against everything I’ve ever believed in the name of science,” Henry said. “A cover up, a conspiracy.”

  “If it keeps Tassie safe, what does it matter?” Dingo cocked his head to one side. “You don’t think my dad is really afraid of boats and the crossing, do you? It’s well known how he feels about the tiger, and if he kept coming over here, a lot of people would assume he was coming to look after Tassie. He stays away to keep them safe. That’s why I can only come over every so often, and why Jarrah stays here.”

  Henry opened his mouth several times and shut it without speaking. If that were so, he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard of such an enormous act of self-sacrifice before. The look on Hank’s face when he’d seen that striped coat flashing through the bushes on their way back as if the tiger had let itself be seen to say goodbye to them— “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Face it, Dash, I’ve been right about everything every step of the way,” Dingo said smugly. “Besides, how did you ever think you were going to load two crates onto a boat labelled ‘thylacinus cynocephalus’ and our government were just going to let you waltz on board and sail off into the sunset? They have their own interests at heart as well.”

  “The King—”

  “Oh yeah, mention the King’s name, and all Aussies bow down and kiss the ground immediately.” Dingo gave a guffaw that reminded Henry that he was in a very foreign land.

  “Maybe you have a point,” he conceded.

  “I do.”

  “Your father really is afraid of boats, you know.” Henry couldn’t resist taking a little wind out of Dingo’s sai
ls.

  “He is not!” Dingo protested.

  Henry grinned at him; he seemed so like a ten-year-old boy protesting that his father was too the strongest, bravest man in the world. “Right, that’s why he closes his eyes when he gets near the dock.”

  “Stop talking about my father,” Dingo murmured. “Especially when I’m doing this.”

  Henry closed his eyes as Dingo took him in hand. He immediately hardened, and Dingo stroked him gently. Henry reached down between them to provide the same pleasure to his lover, and they moved in concert, their kisses deepening into breath-stealing intensity.

  Henry was mindful that they had to keep their voices down, unlike in the jungle, where their cries had melded with the freely expressed opinions of the animals along their journey.

  A gasp and the bite of Dingo’s fingers into his flesh heralded the other man’s climax. Henry slid in the hot fluid spilled between them, finding his own orgasm a moment later, suppressing a groan of satisfaction and relief.

  He could feel Dingo’s chest heaving against his as his breathing calmed, and their essence begin to cool against their skin, but he didn’t want to have to move. Finally it became uncomfortably sticky, and Henry started to roll away.

  “I’ll go,” Dingo whispered.

  Henry waited, hearing the sound of water running and then stopping. Dingo was merely a black shape in a dark room when he stood by the bed, gently wiping Henry’s stomach with a washcloth.

  He must have dozed off, because he started again when he felt Dingo’s hand slide over his shoulder and down his arm. Slowly, creakily, the two men found a position tangled together that suited both their injuries and nestled under the blankets.

  Henry heard the first drops against the glass. It was nice to be safely inside with Dingo pressed up against him while the rain fell outside. Henry smiled sardonically, knowing how ephemeral the feeling of safety truly was. Despite Hodges’s death, or perhaps because of it, they would soon be the focus of interest to government officials. Even now they might be camped outside his door, only waiting for first light to break in.