The Ranger in the Hills: A Heartwarming Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  Katie bit back her indignation at this piece of sarcasm.

  ‘Where is he wandering now, please? Somewhere near enough for Andrew and me to reach him ‒ soon?’

  Bern Malin leaned forward and butted out his cigarette.

  ‘It’s not simple to answer that,’ he said evenly. ‘He came back from sinking oil-wells in Persia and the Sahara to look over his father’s old claims here in the sand-plain fringe of the outback. The face of industry has changed in twenty years. Manganese, ilmenite, rutile, tin, lead, zinc and copper are the great commodities of to-day. They are all here, many of them have been waiting geological ages for man to exploit them.’ He paused. ‘Gideon Dent came back because he knew his father had found these things long ago ‒ in addition to his meagre gold reef. They were unwanted in those days.’

  ‘You mean he came back here?’ Katie demanded. ‘Gideon Dent’s son?’

  ‘Here, to the old home.’

  ‘Please, Bern. Do hurry up and tell me. Where is he, and why doesn’t he come?’

  She could have cried. This was like waiting for golden news on a telegraph form that would not come because the telegraph boy was gossiping at the corner far down the street. She felt like a girl on the veranda waiting for a lover who was not yet in sight.

  ‘Please, Bern ‒’ she begged.

  ‘He can’t come just now, Katie,’ Bern said flatly. ‘He wasn’t the only person in the world who knew of old Gideon’s Track; nor that the old man had found these things; had, in fact, often talked about them in bush towns. Gideon Dent came back here to follow his father’s tracks, but so did others. They came, and they come. The outsiders are searching blindly. Old Gideon’s son has knowledge. These scouts from big mining companies; these itinerant prospectors for finance houses, would give much to know and follow Gideon Dent the Younger’s tracks. They could lead to the old man’s Finds. Now do you see why I had to get you away from Malley’s Find as quickly as possible? And without explanations. The day you sent a letter to Gideon Dent, care of the store there, you told the world that Gideon Dent’s son was back. Do you understand what that meant?’

  Katie was silent. Her eyes were fixed on Bern Malin’s face.

  ‘The east wind rising across the desert at night makes itself felt, in the long run, over a quarter million square miles in this part of the State,’ Bern said. ‘So does rumour! In this case in the form of a letter which happened to be a plain statement of fact. How do you think I knew that letter was waiting at Malley’s Find for Gideon Dent? The bush grapevine ‒ the whisper of news as one mining scout after another came pressing up through the Gap.’

  His face wasn’t friendly any more. He was waiting for her to understand the full implications of his words.

  So, in all innocence she had harmed Gideon Dent!

  ‘He couldn’t come to meet us, of course, because then they would have known for certain?’ she asked soberly.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Through the window she saw the brilliant yellow and green plumage of parrots flying past. Inside the office nothing moved, not even Bern Malin’s hands on the table.

  ‘I see,’ she said at length. ‘So for my sins I must stay quietly here and Gideon must stay cached away somewhere in the bush till the scouts get tired of looking for him?’

  ‘He won’t exactly be cached away, I can assure you of that. He’ll be hard at work. He always is. He just hopes that no one will catch up with him till he’s re-pegged his father’s old claims and lodged them once again with the Mines Department. After that the whole world can come.’

  ‘Including Katie James and her brother Andrew?’

  ‘Including Katie and her brother.’

  A lot had been answered, including the question nagging at the back of her mind as to why the writing in that return letter to her, telling her briefly to send Andrew, had been different from the one on the survey map. One had been written by the father, the other by the son.

  But what was Bern Malin to Gideon Dent? A sort of factor? An agent?

  Looking at his stern implacable face across the table Katie did not feel like asking that question just now. She would reserve it for a later day.

  One thing troubled her as she sat, quite still, staring now at the near edge of the table, only partly aware that he had sat down. He had lifted a pencil and was drawing lines on a piece of paper, almost as if filling in time against the moment when she would get up and leave.

  Tucked away here at Malin’s Outpost she and Andrew were safe from interfering with Gideon Dent’s work but they were not safe from dislocating Bern Malin’s life. Mr. and Mrs. Potts had had to be brought in from a diggers’ camp to look after them. Secretary had to give up his work to keep track of Andrew. Bern Malin had to give up time to keeping an eye on the Outpost now. He had responsibilities to Gideon there.

  Worse, infinitely worse, her very presence here could make an enemy of Stella Ryde. Certainly distress the kindly hospitable Ryde family. And, as Mr. Potts had said, give rise to talk.

  Katie allowed herself one tiny quirk of humour.

  If Bern Malin came riding back to the Outpost too often ‒ to make sure his visitors had not accidentally burnt the place down, or fallen into disused shafts ‒ Tom Ryde would come riding over with a gun. As a brother he was mindful of his sister’s honour. What a gale of rumour and fact that would be for a quarter of a million miles!

  How was she to tell Tom Ryde he need not worry? Tell him the truth ‒ that Bern Malin thought she was an irresponsible child, and didn’t seem to like her very much. This was on account of her having sent a letter which told the world that Gideon Dent’s son was back.

  Stella, and her love, were very very safe.

  There had been a silence in the room for a long time.

  ‘Well, Katie?’ Bern asked.

  He was looking at her again, wondering what was going on inside that small brown head of hers. First her face had been serious, then some imp had momentarily changed the expression. Now it was downcast, as a young girl’s face should never be.

  ‘I want to tell you something,’ she said very seriously, her eyes looking straight into his, unflinching.

  ‘I would not do anything to harm Gideon Dent, or let anyone know where he is. But ‒’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘If too much time passes by, and people get tired of us here, if the Rydes think it is unnecessary for Andrew and me to be here too long in your house, then I will go and find Gideon Dent myself. Of course ‒’

  ‘Of course, you would know how?’ His eyebrows were raised, his smile sardonic.

  ‘Yes, I would know how.’ Katie thought of the survey map which she still had in her possession.

  ‘You need not be anxious,’ she said confidently. ‘I would not let anyone follow me, or betray Gideon Dent ‒’

  ‘You would not; because you are not going.’

  He was not taking her seriously, which made Katie mad. He took what she had said as the simple boast of a very simple child.

  ‘I thought I ought to warn you, that’s all,’ she said with great dignity.

  He didn’t even try to hide his smile now. Katie read this as straight scepticism.

  She did not have so many inches as he had, but she understood the bush. Anyone who had lived in that sand-dune country on the edge of the Dust Bowl thought of the bush as a friend; something safe, grey-green instead of red and brown, sometimes colourless sand.

  ‘I think I will go and find Andrew now,’ she said rising, her head high.

  Bern looked at her levelly.

  ‘Last time I glanced through that window Andrew was heading for the diggings,’ he said quietly.

  Katie was across the room to the door in a flash; her hand was on the door knob.

  Bern Malin pushed back his chair and was across the room before she could open it. He swung her round so she stood, her shoulders against the door, his hands pinning her there.

  Her blue eyes stormed at him.

  ‘Let me g
o at once. It was you who told him ‒ coming here from Ryde’s Place ‒ about those diggings! You put the idea in his head.’

  She was almost frantic.

  Bern dropped his hands from her shoulders.

  ‘If he goes as far as the diggings,’ he said slowly and with a certain controlled anger in his voice, ‘he will be punished as I promised. Meantime it’s not necessary to run after him to save him from a hundred-foot drop down a shaft. Secretary is following. Where Andrew goes Secretary will not be far behind. At any time. He has my orders.’

  Katie stared up at him.

  ‘You said that about his going to the diggings to frighten me!’ she said at length. ‘You said that to punish me for something you think I’ve done wrong about training Andrew! You want to go on punishing me ‒ for that letter; for coming ‒ for everything.’

  Her voice choked with indignation; and the injustice of it.

  She stood, her back to the door, small and terribly indignant.

  ‘I’m sorry. I did not expect you to take it quite that way. I thought you understood that I now would be responsible for Andrew. I have to put him to the test to find out just what manner of boy he is, and just how far he will go outside rules before ‒’

  ‘You have to test him?’ said Katie incredulously. ‘You have to test him. What do you know, Bern Malin, about looking after a little boy ‒ three years old, four years old, five years ‒ as time goes by, in sand-dune country? Do you even know about sand-dune country? When the winds came the dunes are here to-day, and to-morrow have moved five hundred yards away. The track is here in the morning and gone at night. There is a new mile of sand-dune, and different track. Or no track at all ‒ A child so easily lost ‒’

  Her voice broke. Then she tilted up her head again; her eyes bright with a sudden vindication of all she had tried to do for this young and irresponsible brother, no matter if, or when, or how, she might have failed.

  She was not afraid to meet this man’s eyes; nor to defy him.

  ‘You think it is strange, that instinctively I want to run out of this room and along that track after Andrew?’ she asked bitterly. ‘How would you make a choice if you had an old man, your father, with a sudden heart attack in one room and a small child running out to the sand-dunes after a week of sandstorm, in the other direction? And every track wiped out by the wind? Which would you run to, if you had the choice, Bern? The man fallen from his chair, perhaps dying? Or the tiny child running out into a wilderness of sand-dune and dust where he would leave no track? What would you have done if the choice had been yours?’

  His eyes never left her face. His voice was quiet.

  ‘What did you do? What was your choice?’

  She closed her eyes.

  ‘The child.’ For a moment she was exhausted by anger. She looked up at him again, her eyes resigned. ‘Was there any choice? An old man whose days were numbered? Or a child with his whole life in front of him?’

  ‘No. I don’t think there was. That is when your father died?’

  ‘No,’ she said suddenly weary. ‘He survived it to die another night, some years afterwards.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  ‘It happened a lot of times,’ she said, the sad-bitterness replacing defiant anger. ‘That sort of thing, though not always quite the same. Life was all dilemmas. Every day. What would you do on a night when the dunes were shifting again and you were alone with that boy and your own father ‒ when your father had the kind of heart attack that you knew meant the end? Would you run out the five miles to the nearest neighbour for help? And leave the boy ‒ ten years old now ‒ to keep watch by a dying man, knowing that when you did get back the man would have died? His own father ‒ alone in that house with no one but a little boy? Or would you have sent the child out into the shifting dunes to try and find a way to bring help? To become lost ‒ perhaps never to be found? Do you know that children have been lost in that country often? It’s a natural daily hazard. No one lets their children wander there.’ She paused, then added, hardly above a whisper: ‘And I had, for a brother, a born wanderer. Don’t you suppose I had to watch him, and guard him?’

  She lifted up her head slowly. The light shafting in through the office window touched the lights in her hair. They shone like the red tips in the gum leaves at sundown.

  ‘Do you suppose I liked binding Andrew to me ‒ daily, hourly?’

  ‘What did you do on that night, Katie?’ Bern asked quietly.

  ‘I stayed and Andrew slept, and my father died. There was no one to go for help, or bring help.’ Her eyes were angry again. ‘Did I do right? There was no one in the world to tell me.’ She paused, then added: ‘Only my conscience.’

  He was looking at her steadily.

  ‘What did your conscience tell you?’

  ‘That no one could save my father. I had to shield Andrew.’

  Her eyes caught Bern’s and together, the grey and the blue held.

  ‘He was such a young boy ‒ only a child,’ she said sadly.

  ‘I’m proud of you, Katie,’ Bern said unexpectedly.

  Her eyes widened. The sadness and bitterness were almost gone.

  ‘You are proud of me? I don’t even belong to you. I don’t belong to anyone …’ Her chin was up and she was all pride again.

  ‘Not even to Gideon Dent?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Gideon Dent is my cousin,’ she said. ‘But he happens to be the man who is away ‒ -just now.’

  Bern Malin turned towards his desk again. His back was to Katie.

  ‘I know him well. No man knows him better. I can vouch for him, Katie. He knows that you belong to him. He will take care of you both.’

  Katie opened the door. She had no answer to give to that cold statement.

  ‘I am going now,’ she said. ‘I want ‒’

  ‘To find Andrew? You have a right, of course. You will find Secretary is with him by this time,’ Bern said gravely.

  Katie felt as if all spirit had gone out of her. She was exhausted, but she walked out into the sun ‒ knowing that he might be watching her from the window. She kept her back straight.

  She walked slowly because she believed Bern when he said that wherever Andrew had gone, Secretary was not far behind. Andrew was safe. It was she herself who had to escape. She had to go somewhere, a long long way there and back to be alone, to digest what Bern had told her about Gideon Dent. She didn’t know yet whether to be sad or glad because it was Gideon Dent, the Younger, and not his father to whom she had written in her need about Andrew’s future. She was glad Gideon Dent was not an elderly man but sad that the first one, her father’s cousin, was dead.

  The only real comfort she had was the knowledge that he was somewhere near ‒ not very far away at all.

  Chapter Ten

  The next day Bern Malin had gone.

  ‘To the diggings,’ Mrs. Potts said sagely, over the washing-up with which Katie was helping her. ‘You can’t keep his kind away from the diggings. Not with all this boom in minerals and base metals going on. And strangers coming poking and prying too! If he rests, they won’t. That’s for sure. Anyhow, that’s his job.’

  ‘What exactly is he looking for now that the gold seams have petered out?’ Katie asked, putting the dish she had wiped into the cupboard. ‘He did mention a whole list of minerals but I’m afraid they didn’t mean much to me. It’s something I never learned.’

  ‘Well, there’s copper. That’s one thing. That’s out at the Number Five where me and Mr. Potts were with four diggers. Doing nicely too, but you never can tell till they’ve got a whole lot out; and it’s been sent in to be tested. No, it’s not copper ‒ this time. Ilmenite. That’s it.’

  ‘What is ilmenite?’

  ‘Beach sands. Now wouldn’t you think beach sands would be near the sea? Well, it will surprise you to know that once, millions of years ago, this slice of the land through the Gap ‒ the one you came through from Malley’s Find ‒ was the huge bay of th
at sea. That line of hills there on either side of the Gap was the seashore.’

  Mrs. Potts, scouring a frying-pan, nodded her head vigorously.

  ‘Bern Malin did tell me something about it,’ Katie said.

  ‘You learn all about it when you work out here, I can tell you,’ Mrs. Potts went on. ‘Under all that sandstone and round the iron-stone outcrops there’s beach sands. Loaded with ilmenite, and all the things in it, like zircons. Very valuable, they say, and ever so beautiful. Better than diamonds, I think.’

  Mrs. Potts ceased her labours and looked at Katie pensively.

  ‘You’d wonder what me and Mr. Potts were doing working for wages when there was all that wealth lying around, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Why do you?’ Katie asked, laughing.

  ‘That’s had you, that one,’ Mrs. Potts went on, pleased with herself at catching Katie at what she called ‘walking on one leg’. ‘Because they haven’t found much of it yet. They just know it’s here somewhere. So there’s no money in it yet for them. Though there might be a lot one day. For me and Mr. Potts, now, and the men at the diggings there’s wages ‒ money all the time. That’s something, now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Security against hazards,’ Katie said, agreeing with her. She was putting the last of the china away now.

  ‘Those are big words but I know what they mean,’ Mrs. Potts turned round and addressed Katie’s back where the girl reached up to the top shelf to put away a serving-dish. ‘Security is like Tom Ryde over there at Ryde’s Place. He and his father’s got a nice farm between them and plenty of money coming in next to every season. There’s a nice young man for you, Miss Katie. That’s security. And not another girl in a hundred miles to take his attention. I guess he’d be a long-shot better choice for a young girl like you than any ‒’ She hesitated.

  ‘Than any ‒?’ Katie prompted quietly, turning round.

  Mrs. Potts addressed her attentions to the sink again.

  ‘Well say ‒ like anyone else tracking up and down the back country looking for this and looking for that. Bern Malin ‒ well, you’re not considering him, of course. He belongs to Stella Ryde, by all accounts. Leastways they talk like that up at the diggings. Peculiar how much talk goes on at diggings. Nothing else to do with the time, I guess. But that Gideon Dent now! Like chasing a shadow it is, trying to chase him.’