The Ranger in the Hills: A Heartwarming Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  ‘I suppose somebody had to explore ‒’

  ‘That’s it, miss. There’s always explorin’ types. Maybe old man Ryde knew Gideon Dent had come out this way. When he found this place he went back, got himself a lease, his wife and kids and a coupla dray-loads of seed and stores and clothes and come back with horses.’

  ‘Why horses? Why not trucks?’

  ‘Because he knew ‒ like you ought to know, young miss ‒ that there wouldn’t be any petrol bowsers or garages out here for trucks. Horses can make do on grass.’

  ‘But Bern Malin?’

  ‘He’s a different kettle of fish. He can be his own mechanic and he smartly taught Secretary. Besides which he had money ‒ must have ‒ because he brought everything including a truck-load of drums of petrol, oil and all that goes with it. He brings more down from Pandanning whenever he wants, or sends Secretary. All the difference ‒ having plenty of money.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Katie said soberly.

  ‘Not that the Rydes haven’t made it nicely since they been out here. They stick to grazing and leave the minerals and prospecting to others. More secure-like. They got cars now, of course.’

  The jeep braked to a dusty stop on the track below the veranda. At the top of the step was a nice-looking woman with brown hair coiled on top of her head. She was dressed in a clear-white cotton frock that made her look fresh and cool in the blaze of midday heat.

  She stood under the shade of the creepers ‒ a wild bush sarsaparilla ‒ that hung round the veranda eaves. She smiled as if she was pleased to have this twosome of strangers foist on her.

  ‘There you are,’ she said gaily. ‘I’ve been wondering all the morning if you’d get here by lunch. Are you dusty and tired?’

  Katie was down from the jeep first. She went up the three veranda steps to take Mrs. Ryde’s hand.

  ‘It’s awfully good of you to let us come,’ she began.

  ‘Nonsense. It’s heaven to have visitors in this lonely spot. You’re Katie, of course. Bern told me about you. And this is young Andrew?’

  Katie took a fleeting moment off to wonder how Bern Malin had told Mrs. Ryde anything. That two-way radio again? It had to be.

  Mrs. Ryde shook hands with the young boy too.

  ‘Come on in, both of you,’ she said. ‘I’ve a cold lunch set waiting for you. Tass, will you please unload the jeep? And Jifi ‒’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  ‘Did you leave Bern’s place neat and tidy? You know what an orderly person he is. I won’t have a Ryde leaving a mess over there.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know we’d been there, Mother,’ Jill said a little crossly. ‘Why do you have to fuss over Bern too? Anyone would think he’s the Archangel Gabriel ‒’

  ‘What nonsense, dear. I wanted to make sure.’

  ‘You don’t have to make sure. I always leave a place tidy.’

  ‘Another perfectionist,’ a girl said from the doorway.

  Katie looked at the new arrival with a sudden leaping interest.

  ‘I’m Stella Ryde. You’re Bern’s orphans, I suppose?’

  Katie didn’t answer because she couldn’t. She hadn’t rightly heard Stella anyway; she was staring into the loveliest pair of speckled hazel eyes she had ever seen. The rest of the face was beautiful, too, if you could drag your interest away from the eyes.

  What chance would anyone ever have against a girl like this? she thought idiotically.

  Though one part of her leapt in admiration for the girl in the doorway, the part that mattered most ‒ the heart ‒ dropped. She was furious with herself. Why should she think and feel like this?

  Stella Ryde was like her sister Jill. Her hair was straw-fair but it was softer, silkier; much better cared for. Her skin was softer and there was a bloom on it. This was amazing because anyone who lived out in the fringe lands of this hot climate invariably had a tanned, sometimes weather-marked complexion.

  How did Stella Ryde look soft to touch; and feminine and unweathered?

  ‘I’m Katherine James and this is my brother Andrew,’ Katie said.

  ‘Oh? Grown up, all of a sudden. The news we received was that it was plain Katie. We thought of you as another child ‒’

  ‘I guess I’m both,’ Katie said. ‘My name’s Katherine but I’m called Katie. I suppose Bern was not very explicit.’

  A child indeed!

  Mrs. Ryde had gone down the steps to bring one of the bags for Jill.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Stella?’ she said, realising her elder daughter had arrived on the scene. ‘Katie, what do you think of Stella? She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’

  ‘It’s only skin deep,’ Jill said in a noncommittal way as she too arrived on the veranda with the bundle of overnight laundry from Bern Malin’s place.

  ‘She has horrid thoughts most of the time, Katie, so don’t take too much notice of her.’

  ‘Now then, you two girls,’ Mrs. Ryde interrupted cheerfully, ‘stop bickering.’

  She had put the bag down and now took Katie’s arm.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of them. It’s the weather, and the loneliness, of course. They don’t mean it and it passes the time. Jill says it’s practice to sharpen her wit. Stella says it helps to cultivate a taste for satire. They’re really very fond of one another.’

  ‘My mother has a queer quirk,’ Stella said lazily as she followed them into the house. ‘She believes that sisters love one another as a matter of biological fact, whether they do or not. Her beliefs are not easily shattered without visitations from outer spirits.’

  ‘She reads too much,’ Jill said off-handedly, meaning Stella. ‘She and Andrew ought to get together. They’d form a mutual instruction team.’

  ‘What? That twopence-worth of manhood?’ Stella asked, looking with disdain at the young boy.

  Andrew did not hear her. He had gone automatically to the window, was already kneeling on a window-seat, arms propped on the sill, and was gazing out on the world of wandoos ‒ the trees that had no right to be there at all. He was wondering at the magic of their crossing the sand-plain and coming here where nothing about the climate except the water seeping up through the ground, and the isolated area of right soil, should have induced them within two hundred miles of the place.

  No barbs penetrated Andrew’s world of self-sufficiency, so Katie did not worry about him. The only thing that had stung her, in Stella’s welcome, was the definition ‒ ‘Bern’s orphans.’ Was that how Bern Malin had described them on that two-way?

  Funny, how it put her on her mettle. It did. She wasn’t the fighting-mad kind but she had a will of her own. Somewhere, somehow and someday soon, she and Andrew would not be pathetic orphans.

  She could not see a lighted way yet. This was why she had borrowed that map belonging to Gideon Dent, of course. It had been an instinct for escape and self-preservation that made her do it.

  ‘Stella and Jill have moved in with one another so we’ve a spare dressing-room for you, Katie,’ Mrs. Ryde was saying. ‘As you see, we are not a big bungalow. We all sleep out on the veranda, so that helps, doesn’t it? The rooms are just dressing-rooms, that’s all, and there’s lots more room in them without beds. It’s too hot in summer to sleep indoors anyway.’

  ‘It’s very good of you ‒’ Katie began.

  ‘Not a bit. If you knew how rabbity we get with one another seeing no one ‒ except for an occasional visit from Bern Malin and sometimes Secretary! We even welcome the prospectors that pass through. They always want something, of course ‒ run out of salt for instance. Isn’t it a strange thing how people going miles outback sometimes for months on end, forget to take enough salt? They have too much flour and tea and sugar and all the tinned stuff in the world yet they think a pound of salt will last them a season.’

  Katie laughed. Her face lit up and her mouth showed her beautifully even set of white teeth. It was the little things in life, like enough salt, that made the world a better place. Suddenly she knew she was going to lik
e it here. Her will to independence was almost an insult to the hospitality of someone like Mrs. Ryde.

  ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘Even where I come from. There are salt lakes for miles and miles but through-travellers come into town to buy a pound of salt. They’ve never taken enough and it doesn’t occur to them to go to the lakes.’

  ‘Jill, dear,’ Mrs. Ryde said, ‘take Andrew and show him where the bathroom is. Give him a clean towel, dear. Stella will look after Katie.’

  ‘Come on, prodigy,’ Jill said to the back of Andrew’s head. ‘Water is waiting.’

  Andrew had either heard nothing, or did not recognise himself with the new name.

  Jill tugged his hair from behind.

  ‘Boy,’ she said. ‘Wanted in the bathroom.’

  Andrew turned round. It took a second for him to bring his thoughts back from the wandoos.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘Where did you say?’

  Jill put her hands on her hips and rocked herself back on her heels. She looked from Andrew to Katie on the other side of the room.

  ‘Is he mad, or am I mad?’ she asked. ‘Doesn’t he click? Isn’t he with us?’

  ‘Not always,’ Katie said simply. ‘You see, he’s thinking. That’s why he is what you called him ‒ a prodigy.’

  ‘I was being sarcastic. That, I see, went over the James family’s head. Andrew! Left turn and quick march. Keep going till I tell you different.’

  Andrew looked in a puzzled way to Katie. She nodded. ‘Go on, dear. You’re only going to wash-up for lunch. Don’t keep Jill waiting.’

  The two left the room in the formation Jill had ordered.

  ‘Phew!’ said Stella from the depths of an arm-chair. She looked Katie up and down. ‘You’ve got a problem on your hands. Looking after that tortoise will keep your thoughts strictly in bounds, won’t it?’

  Katie sat down on the edge of the box seat.

  ‘I have thoughts too,’ she said quietly. ‘Have you ever tried to stop thinking, Stella? I don’t think it’s possible myself. So I understand Andrew.’

  ‘Defending him, heh? Or spoiling him.’

  Mrs. Ryde had been fussing round the table, set ready for lunch, in one corner of the room. It was a pretty, though not expensive room. The furniture stood on bare polished floors except for where a linoleum mat spread itself under the dining-table. The curtains were cretonne, old-fashioned but pretty, and the five small arm-chairs, worn but comfortable, had the same cretonne covers. The other furniture in the room was light and easily movable. It was a room for use, not for show. Lived in, comfortable, and spelling out ‘Home’ in four kind letters.

  ‘Now, Katie and Stella,’ Mrs. Ryde said. ‘You two stop sparring. You see how easy it is to get the habit, Katie? Stella will teach you in no time, if you listen to her. I strongly advise you to take no notice of my girls until you know them better. Underneath they have ‒’

  ‘Hearts of gold,’ Stella finished for her. ‘Mother, you will talk in cliches. Must you?’

  ‘It passes the time,’ Mrs. Ryde said cheerfully. ‘Now, Stella, please take Katie to the dressing-room ‒ and the bathroom; if Andrew has finished with it.’

  Well, what a household, Katie thought as she put a touch of lipstick on her mouth before the mirror in the dressing-room. Taciturn! That’s what he sounds, but isn’t. Perhaps Jill and Stella aren’t what they sound. I only hope Mrs. Ryde is. She’s so nice and I couldn’t bear to think that was a pose.

  She wondered what Mr. Ryde was like and how many other people formed the small community that bred horses on an oasis of watered plain in the middle of nowhere.

  Chapter Six

  When Mr. Ryde came in that night at sundown, there were two of him. That is to say, there was Mrs. Ryde’s husband and Mrs. Ryde’s son. Nobody had mentioned him and Katie wondered why. Perhaps they had just forgotten. Mr. Ryde was tall, heavily built, with the hazel eyes which he had bequeathed to Stella and which, even in the weatherbeaten face of a middle-aged man, were fine eyes. Tom Ryde was different from all of them.

  Katie guessed he was about twenty-five, perhaps, tall and slim and brown, but not weather-worn. Not yet, anyway. He hadn’t been as long exposed to the sun as his father.

  Tom had an engaging grin, Jill’s blue eyes, the same straw-coloured hair. Yet he was different. An individual. He was cheerful, glad to see Katie and Andrew, and did not spar with his sisters.

  ‘So here they are!’ he said with a grin as he shook hands with Katie. He looked at her with smiling interest. ‘My, my, and pretty, too! No wonder old Bern tucked you up and ran through with you. How come he let you loose over at Ryde’s Place? We might keep you.’

  Katie smiled back her pleasure in this nice bright young man.

  ‘I might stay too,’ she said, ‘if you give me such a welcome.’

  ‘Good for you. We’ll call it a plot and forget to include Bern in the deal.’

  ‘It would be a good idea, Tom,’ said Stella, who was again reclining in her favourite arm-chair, ‘if you forgot to start talking about Bern anyway. Anybody would think the Rydes, as a family, had a lien on him.’

  Tom had dropped Katie’s hand and walked over to the cabinet against the inside wall where he began to pour out drinks for everybody. ‘He’s got nobody else, sister. Not for a hundred miles ‒ except those diggers and Secretary. More likely he’s got a lien on us. Orange juice with a stick in it for you?’

  ‘I get tired of hearing his name,’ Stella said, examining her hands.

  ‘Methinks the lady protests too much,’ Tom whispered in an aside to Katie as he brought her a drink. ‘Don’t set your cap at Bern, will you? Her ladyship in the arm-chair might do you bodily harm.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Katie promised.

  ‘Wise you. Now, what does the young feller drink? Orange juice too? Out of a tin, I’m afraid, but cold, cold, cold! We do have a refrigerator, even if we are in the middle of a desert.’

  ‘With gas?’

  ‘No, an engine. You’ll hear it fut-futting in the middle of the night and think you’re in the middle of a city. We don’t turn it on till ten o’clock so as not to spoil the usual night sounds round about. Listen for them, Katie ‒ they’re worth it.’

  It was quite a crowded table for dinner. Mr. Ryde sat at the head and his wife at the side so she could best serve from the traymobile. Katie and Andrew sat together, with Tom and Stella sharing the end facing their father. Jill sat beside her mother and helped with the vegetables.

  Everyone had showered and changed but Stella outdid them all. She was really dressed up. Her hair was coiled beautifully on top of her head, her make-up was of starlet standard and her silk dress, though simple, was elegant and not inexpensive.

  ‘All for you,’ Jill said in a caustic aside to Katie. ‘She means to start a competition. Any good at matching it?’

  ‘No. My dresses are few and all off a peg but it might be fun to do something new with my hair to-morrow. Shall we all try?’

  Mrs. Ryde beamed on Katie.

  ‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘To-morrow shall be a special night. We’ll have a cold collation so that nobody has to be fussed up cooking and serving. We’ll all wear our best clothes.’ She looked down the table at her husband. ‘You’re in this too, Jack. Tropical suits for the men, and Tom can serve the drinks as if we’re at a cocktail party.’

  Katie listened to this with surprise ‒ and happy interest.

  Mr. Ryde was a quiet reserved man but he vouchsafed a smile at the visitor now.

  ‘We do it occasionally, partly to break the monotony and partly to keep ourselves in practice. You’ve no idea how outbackish we feel when we go to town, unless we’ve practised how to feel comfortable in town clothes.’

  It was a good idea, Katie thought, and with Stella setting standards it meant quite a lot of work and care to go into party preparations.

  Next morning everyone was up at daybreak. It was Jill’s weekly turn to get the early breakfast for the men. They
had already gone out when Katie emerged to join the breakfast table in the kitchen.

  ‘What are my chores?’ she asked quickly. ‘I can do practically everything. I have had to keep house for my father.’

  ‘Bread-making?’ Stella asked lazily as if expecting to catch Katie out on this one.

  ‘Yes, bread-making. It isn’t hard with a wood stove. I’d hate to try it with gas or electricity.’

  ‘Goody,’ said Stella, dipping her toast in her tea. Both her beautiful pink-tipped elbows were on the table. Nothing about her was hurried. Everything about her was relaxed. ‘You can start to-night. That lets me out.’

  ‘The pillowslips need mending,’ Mrs. Ryde said with a pleasant smile but a hint of determination in her manner. ‘You can be on the machine, Stella, while Jill and I are clearing away the dinner. There’s only an hour’s work in it.’

  ‘I thought we were dressing-up to-night?’ Stella still dipped toast in her tea and looked at nobody. ‘That’s a party, isn’t it?’

  ‘Dressing for dinner is not a party except on birthdays and Christmas and Easter,’ Jill said bluntly. ‘And well you know it, Stella. If you push the bread-making on Katie, then you have to take over the extra chore. Well you know that, too.’

  Katie looked in interest from one sister to the other, then back to Mrs. Ryde. She had never lived in a family. Andrew was too young, born too late in life to have been anything but a little child; her child, since her mother had died when Andrew was a toddler. Something about this give and take round the breakfast table enthralled her. She realised now the girls weren’t really quarrelling. They were pitting their wills against each other. Every now and again Mrs. Ryde intervened to arbitrate.

  Sometimes both girls joined forces and rounded on their mother. Sometimes Mrs. Ryde bracketed the girls together in her cautioning, or in giving her mild but firmly meant instructions for the running of the home.

  Andrew sat in silence, taking twice as long to eat each course as anyone else.