by Lucy Walker
At sundown the brilliantly coloured parrots disappeared into holes in the tree-trunks far in the bush; the tiny birds with the coloured bills went to their nests.
‘They’ll be back, round sunup to-morrow,’ Sam advised. ‘You keep your eyes skinned for when the galahs come, any time now. They’re like pink and grey bush flowers up there on top of the winch. Maybe, if you’re lucky the kangaroos’ll call in for their evening drink over at the soak. If it’s moonlight an’ they’re pleased with themselves they’ll gambol all hours round the bore ‒ like they were young goats, or something. Dozens of ’em; young and old.’
The galahs came just before dark.
There were hundreds of them too, turning the iron framework of the winch into a garland against the backdrop of bush. So pink and grey and soft they looked, crowding every resting-place they could find.
Katie did not see the kangaroos that first night. She was too busy with her thoughts to watch for moonlight. She had seen the animals often, after sundown, at Malin’s Outpost.
Why did Sam say ‒ Him, and Gideon Dent ‒ like that?
It had been like saying ‒ me, and my black eye too. And as meaningful.
Chapter Twelve
The next day and the next day passed in the same way as the first for Katie.
She waited patiently, beguiled by the birds, the haunting endlessness of the bush wherever she looked, meanwhile working round the fire and the cook-pot for the men. This last the men appreciated when it came to meal time.
The stores were limited in variety but Katie tried new combinations with old ingredients.
‘Somebody else’s cooking always tastes different,’ she explained when they asked her where the magic was.
On the evening of the third day Jack Bean told her Sam was going out bush to the Never to have a word with ‘a big-fella Boss, very important’.
Some message had come through to the men. Katie had no idea how it had come, but she knew something had happened. The atmosphere in the camp was different. After tea Sam went around the far side of the soak to clean himself. When he came back he had changed into clean brown drill clothes.
Katie said nothing, but watched. When Jack Bean told her Sam was going ‘out-bush’ to see someone in the Never she knew she was going too. She had already done one mad thing coming up the track this far. She might as well do two ‒ to make it all worth while.
If it had been Jack Bean she would never have followed the aborigine without his knowing. But a white man, even a bushman? That was different. She was sure as sure that Sam was going out to meet Gideon Dent as she was sure there were stars in the sky.
She had hear Sam mutter his name to Fred. She had heard Jack Bean say ‒ with a laugh, almost as if it was a joke ‒ ‘That feller Gideon not far away now. Him bin come walk thisaway.’ The men had laughed as if there was some joke in that.
‘I’ll go find Bern Malin and ask him a few questions,’ Sam had replied to Jack Bean for Katie’s benefit. But Katie had known he had only said that to put her off. She was puzzled and anxious but still determined. Sam was going out to see or meet Gideon Dent. She believed this because this was how she wanted it to be ‒ so very badly.
It wasn’t hard following Sam. The moonlight washed everything with a pale light. The spaces between the trees were clear as if a huge incandescent lamp was hung in heaven instead of earth’s dead satellite.
Sam walked along, between the trees, across the clay-pans, over rounded outcrops of some igneous kind of rock as if he couldn’t care less who or what, if anything, followed him. He wasn’t even in a hurry.
His feet trampled the dead sticks and dried leaves underfoot. Now and again he whistled; even stopped to break off some twig or branchlet to use as a switch as he went along.
There was nothing secret about the way Sam walked. He went along defiantly as if he never dreamed anyone would follow him. Whoever it was he was soon to meet, it was someone he knew.
After about two miles, as far as Katie could guess, the land began to slope upwards, then on the down-slope over the rise it changed its character altogether. This was breakaway country. From the hollow rose a line of boulders, rearing themselves up to make an escarpment.
‘The beach that was a million years ago,’ she thought. ‘The old cliff!’ This was what gave the mystery to this place. It was so old. So very old. It was beyond comprehension, really.
Sam’s boots scrambling among the rocks were suddenly silent. He had stopped, or perhaps slithered down some grassy pad into a cleft or gorge.
It was still bright white moonlight ‒ no trees here to hide canny places with their shadows of trunk and branch and leaf.
Katie went very quietly now. She didn’t want to be discovered before she had found whoever it was Sam had gone to meet.
If it wasn’t Gideon Dent ‒ well, too sad! She would confess her sins and walk back with Sam. She thought she knew a way now of winning the old prospector over from any annoyance he might feel. That cook-pot and camp oven!
The silence was so unqualified she sat down on a rock and waited. Sam was somewhere near. He would begin walking, or scrambling over rocks again. She would wait till her ears told her where next to turn.
Beside her was a sort of shale-like path up which she had been climbing in Sam’s wake. She hadn’t noticed it was a path before ‒ a natural one probably, but doubtless one that human beings traversed. Sam had been following a definite route all this time!
She was sitting, thinking, wondering, glad of the rest when she heard the sound of boots on the rocks again. This time it was someone coming down the mountainside. It was someone coming to meet Sam: who was expecting him.
Then came Sam’s voice from the cleft ‒ not twenty or thirty feet away from her, but beyond an outcrop of rock.
‘That you, Boss?’
He was answered by a quick word.
Katie felt as if she was frozen, not with cold but some strange immobility. She sat, her back very straight.
If that was Gideon Dent’s voice she had to hear it again. She wanted it to be his voice so badly. Hope, a sort of heaven, was so near ‒ perhaps.
Sam’s boots slithered up rocks and someone else’s boots came down rocks. They were talking together now ‒ their voices low but only because noise in a silent white-lit night was desecration at any time.
Katie stood up, a little stiffly. Now. Now she must do something. It wasn’t as easy as she had thought.
A black shadow fluffed past her, a blur against the blur of rock and boulder on the other side of the path.
‘Good God!’ the voice was quite distinct, not Sam’s voice, almost violent in its surprise; yet there was something else in it. Incredulity? Not, please God, exasperation.
It had to be Gideon. The black shadow that had passed her had been one of the aborigines. He had seen Katie sitting on the rock and had recognised her even in the dark.
She jumped from the ledge by the outcrop on to the path and scrambled up. She felt frantic now. He couldn’t go ‒ he mustn’t go. Why should he go? Why, why, why?
The rocks bit into her hands as she helped herself up the slide, grasping at anything that would help her. The pebbles made a slippery slide under her shoes.
She couldn’t go back to all that worry. What was it that was different in Andrew? Was he just like Gideon Dent the older ‒ some family trait coming out in a second stream of descendants? Whatever he was, what did she do with him? Where did she send him? How did she educate him?
She felt as if the sound of that voice was like throwing a life-line to her in the middle of a dangerous stream ‒ yet so that she could barely reach it. He couldn’t, couldn’t go without seeing her! It wasn’t possible ‒
Then round the corner of the outcrop ‒ he was suddenly there! Not going from her but coming to her.
He was only a shadow, tall, part of the night landscape ‒ and he wore a hat.
Katie wanted to laugh.
‘I’m going to have hysterics,’ sh
e thought. She could not see him because her eyes were filled with tears.
Then his arms were round her. One hand pressed and held her head against him. He would not let her lift it. For a moment she wanted only this ‒ her head against his breast.
The strength in his arms was the strength of a strong man. Gideon wasn’t a myth. He was real.
He did care for her. His arms held her that way.
Yet he did not speak.
‘I’m sorry I came. I had to come, Gideon. I couldn’t bear it any longer. Andrew needed you. Then I needed you. I had to come and find you. I couldn’t wait ‒’
Her voice begged a kind of tolerance from him. He knew surely she wouldn’t betray him to the mining scouts who were trying to find and follow him! He trusted her, didn’t he? Or didn’t he!
‘Listen, Katie ‒’ his voice was so low, as if he too feared scouts or being overhead. It was a husky whisper. Sam and the aborigine were somewhere near and this was none of their business. This was family: sadness and gladness all mixed up together. She had lost her father, and come a long long way ‒ to this moment.
He didn’t want even the lizards under the rocks to hear.
There had been wells of sorrow in her heart that she would share with no one ‒ except perhaps Gideon Dent.
He knew it. She could tell by the way his arms held her tightly; rocking her gently as if she was his child ‒ a beloved child.
She had found him.
‘Listen, Katie ‒’ he was saying, so low she scarcely heard him. ‘You must go back. I will come, I promise you. It is unsafe now! Dangerous for us all. My men too. They have so much to lose. These hills have people in them looking for Gideon Dent’s Track. A few days, a few weeks, is all we need. We have found the old survey pegs. It’s a race to town with the claims. Katie ‒ Katie girl, you will go back?’
She hardly heard the words though she understood the meaning. Everything in her was taking in the tenderness in that whispered pleading. Her whole body responded to the way he held her; the pressure of her cheek against his chest; something almost like passion in his hand cupping her head, holding it against him: not letting her look up.
She grew calm.
How wonderful yet how strange! She knew she could wait now; days or weeks. A wonderful confidence passed from him to her.
He cared about them ‒ herself and Andrew. That was what Bern Malin had said. Bern must have told him all about her. Bern must have been kind too. He could have said awful things about her being an uninvited nuisance, or something. He must have said good things.
Katie didn’t care whether this man had a scarred face, a blind eye or a hare-lip. It was too dark to see him anyway. The moon had gone behind the hill. He was hers and she belonged to him, and he cared.
‘Andrew ‒’ she began in a voice muffled against his breast.
‘Leave Andrew to Bern Malin. He will look after him.’
‘But they want to send him away: to a boarding school ‒’
His voice was softer, almost indistinguishable now. There was a laugh in it, though a wry one.
‘Trust Bern, Katie. He’s not as bad as you think. That idea is for the future only. Not now, or for quite a while. Promise me that you will trust him?’
The faint blur with the sound of a fluff was beside them suddenly, materialising out of the shadows like a wraith.
‘Listen, Boss.’ It was an aborigine speaking urgently. ‘Those fella up camp longa One Crow Bar bin come down otherside breakaway. Mightbe, they bin come this way cross Breakaway Hill. Maybe not. You betta double-up quick fella. They’m bin look plenty for old pegs alla-same long-time. They bin follow you six days now ‒ night time too, mebbe ‒’
‘Sam!’ The voice was a shade louder now. It had authority in it. His arms still held Katie a prisoner, blinded by the fabric of his shirt, and the muscle wall of his chest. She could have stayed here for ever. Perhaps he thought it better that she didn’t see him. She could not describe him then, or where she had seen him if prospectors came asking questions round Malin’s Outpost. They often went through Ryde’s Place. He didn’t want her to know him ‒ yet. She could understand it all.
She should have waited, as Bern had told her to do.
She was glad she hadn’t. She had had this one moment of relief, and of intense happiness. She would be patient now that she knew‒
The two men had been talking in muffled tones. She could neither hear distinctly, nor did she care. She wanted to stay here, shielded by his arms.
He loosened his hold on her.
‘Take her and get her back as fast as you can, Sam ‒’ She could distinguish that much. ‘Don’t make a racket till you get across Flat-Foot clay-pan. See that she doesn’t tell anyone ‒ anyone at all ‒ where she’s been to-night.’
‘You’d better go quick, Boss,’ the aborigine put in ‒ his voice was even softer than Gideon Dent’s voice. ‘They catch up with you-fella, this time, pretty quick soon.’
Katie was suddenly passed from one man to the other. It was Sam who held her now: both horny digger’s hands on her arms.
Gideon said something again, this time to her, but she did not catch it. Then he was gone, a black shadow merging with the rock shadows; a sound of boots on rocks, then silence.
‘Mind your feet, lady,’ Sam said quietly. ‘Betta watch it. The rocks aren’t too safe on this path. The raking moon’s gone out.’
Gideon had gone. Had he said good-bye? Or hadn’t he?
How mad she had been to come! Yet he wasn’t angry with her. He had held her ‒ as if he cared. Really cared. Had she dreamed it, or had it only been that he could not and would not let her know him? Until he had finished his work at any rate.
They were crossing the clay-pan before Sam spoke to her again.
‘Excuse me saying it, Katie James, but you did the darndest thing following me like that. My mother reckoned my father used to have a horse-whip ‒’
‘Yes, I know,’ Katie put in contritely. ‘You wish you had it now; and if you did you’d use it.’
‘I don’t say as I would, but I wouldn’t mind hearing about someone else likely to be a bit more gentle using it.’
‘I’m sorry, Sam.’
‘That’s all right. That’s good and fine, so long as you don’t ever tell nobody where you been to-night, or who you’ve seen. You any good at promising? I’m darned if I know if I’d believe you ‒ not after following me like that ‒’
‘You were pretty easy to follow, Sam. You weren’t very quiet.’
‘Didn’t have to be ‒ till I got to the breakaway. You’d need to be mighty canny to find that bit of a cleft where I had to meet the Boss. Except you were hard on my heels.’
‘Sam, is it so very important to travel at night, and play so much hide-and-seek? Could someone else really claim those finds? You do call them finds, don’t you?’
‘It’s the law. First pegging ’em has ’em. In the old days they used to start with a line-up ‒ twenty miles or more away from the first find. Then they shot off a gun and, by golly, did they rush! Men on bikes, on horses, in drays and carts. Men on foot. You know what, Katie James? That’s the law to-day too ‒ if someone hadn’t pegged and laid claims first.’
‘It seems so unreal.’
‘It’s not. You know what? The Government in this here State subsidises prospectors month in, month out, whether they find anything or not ‒ to keep on looking. They got to have a chance to peg and claim first too: the same as me and Fred and Bern Malin, and our syndicate: or anyone else. Fair go for all is the law. Leastways that’s what I know since old Gideon Dent’s days. How d’you think Malley fared with his find? Gold, that was. Talked too big, and others got there before he went to town and posted it. He died poor.’
‘Gideon Dent’s son? What about his claim? You seem to think only of your syndicate, Sam.’
‘Same thing. We’re all in it. Call it what you like. Gideon Dent Ltd., Bern calls it when he’s in a good mood. What’s “Lt
d.”, Katie James?’
‘Why don’t you ask Bern Malin, since you hang by his word so much?’
‘So would you, if you knew him well enough,’ Sam said bluntly. ‘If you want to know I have asked him but he gives up explaining. “It’s the law, Sam,” he says. “Just do as I tell you and you’ll keep out of gaol; and the poorhouse too for that matter”.’ Sam paused. ‘That kind of reminds ‒’
‘Yes?’
‘That promise. You giving it, an’ can you keep it, if you do?’
‘I give it, and I can keep it, Sam. That’s a promise. Am I forgiven for following you?’
‘Don’t ask me. You ask the other fellers in the syndicate.’
‘If I knew them all, I would.’
‘Well, it won’t be long now. I’m telling you that. Outback in the Never they just about got that old track pegged to the last chain. It’s too near the end of a long haul to run risks right now, Katie James.’
‘I suppose I’ll have to tell Bern Malin what I’ve done,’ Katie said reluctantly.
Sam laughed at that. He really laughed as if it was a good joke.
‘It’s not funny to me,’ Katie said crossly.
‘It’s funny to me because there isn’t anything going on round here from Malley’s Find to Pandanning, then out west to the Simpson Desert, that Bern Malin doesn’t know. You couldn’t keep anything from him, not if you tried.’
‘Secretary?’
‘Secretary, Jack Bean and Jack Bean’s three brothers. That was one of ’em back there in the breakaway to-night. Then there’s Bern himself ‒’
‘I don’t want to hear about him any more,’ Katie said a little stiffly. At the moment Bern Malin was not only a man to fear because of her misdemeanours, but he had competition in her heart. Gideon Dent.
As she thought about it, that same heart lifted.
He was not a myth. She knew him, had met him, and loved him ‒ all by the feel of his arms around her, the rub of his shirt against her cheek and the darkness of his shadow as he had loomed up out of the gorge emerging round those rocks through a cleft in the breakaway. Whatever he really looked like ‒ that was what she would remember about him most: and most preciously. His shadow ‒ with dark night behind him.