Escape to Koolonga

by Amanda Doyle

  There was no going back! The memory of Sharon’s mocking eyes, of Mark’s predictable ‘I told you so,’ were enough to send her scurrying for some matches.

  She found them, a whole carton of them, upon one of the dusty shelves. Her fingers fumbled as she lit a small lamp, turned up the wick, and carried it back to the kitchen.

  There was a large black range against the outer wall, but no wood with which to set it going. On the table she espied a single-ringed kerosene cooker. It would do to make a cup of tea, at any rate.

  It had a fat belly which gurgled appreciatively as she poured into it some fuel which she had found beneath the sink.

  Emmie returned the can to its place, and toyed tentatively with the pressure-pump on the cooker’s bulging side. In the absence of instructions, she gave it several half-hearted plunges until she felt some slight resistance building up inside, and then gingerly relinquished the lever.

  It was with some trepidation that she struck a match, turned the knob to its ‘on’ position, and cupped her hand over the sputtering wax taper as she guided it towards the small, hissing circular ring at the top. The next second there was a blinding flash, a single spurt of blue flame which licked the side of her cupped left palm before it died away to nothing, leaving Emmie clutching her stinging hand between her knees as she gritted her teeth against that instant, searing pain. It was so briefly agonising that it took a certain measure of will-power to let go her tight grasp of one hand upon the other, and turn off the knob again, but she had the presence of mind to do it. She was just congratulating herself upon the fact, when heavy steps sounded through the front room, followed by a muffled curse as their owner came in contact with what must probably have been a piece of furniture. The contact was sufficiently forceful to send whatever it had been flying to the floor with a resounding crash.

  There was a renewed curse, then the doorway was blocked by a man’s large frame, and an irate voice barked out of the dimness:

  ‘What in blazes do you think you’re doing, might I ask?’ CHAPTER TWO

  Emmie put her injured hand behind her back, and stared.

  ‘I might ask you the same thing,’ she retorted with dignity, masking her fright with a certain coldness, ‘since this happens to be my shop.’

  ‘You----? Did you say your shop?’

  The man lifted the lantern and played it over her face carefully and deliberately.

  He was a tall man, as tall as Mark, and as powerfully built. He had a leanness, though, a sort of agile, whippy strength, that neither of her brothers possessed. It was an almost animal quality, with its own distinct physical impact. Careless, yet graceful, in the way in which a panther is graceful. In the pool of light his build was impressive, almost menacing, and not for the first time in her life, Emmie found herself longing for the advantage that some extra inches might have given her. It was humiliating to find one’s heart pounding with alarm in this suffocating way, just because one had been unexpectedly confronted by a long, lean, broad shouldered, sun-browned stranger with an angular, square-jawed face that was of a colour akin to the shell of a walnut. At this moment, cragging brows were drawing together over the levellest grey eyes that Emmie had ever seen in her life. Beneath the eyes was an imperious nose, a somewhat unremitting mouth. She couldn’t see his hair, because it was concealed beneath a slanting, broad-brimmed hat which he hadn’t bothered to remove. The hat was a rather battered khaki felt affair, and she supposed the hair which it hid would be black and abundant, to match those sun-streaked, dark brows.

  The man raised the lantern further aloft, and in the shifting beam the action caused a ripple of sinew and muscle in the arm which was revealed beneath the carelessly rolled sleeve of a soiled bush-shirt.

  It was obvious that here was a man in the peak of condition, compared with say Mark, or Robert, both of whose sedentary occupations meant that their most onerous physical exertion was likely to be no more than a snatched game of golf at the week-end, or a sail around Middle Harbour.

  The stranger before her was a manual worker of some sort, judging by the tautness of those hardened muscles, and the supple stance of his shabbily clothed form. His narrow moleskin trousers were faded and worn; his elastic-sided boots were caked with dust.

  She raised her eyes to find that his own were scanning her face curiously. They were half-closed, speculative grey slits in his tanned, weathered face, and there were deeper lines grooving out from their corners. Lines, too, running from the slightly aquiline nose to the corners of that disapproving mouth.

  Emmie looked away.

  ‘Did you say—your shop?’ he prompted again, and Emmie lifted her eyes from those dusty boots with their defined, stockman’s heel, and brought them back to the weathered face where the intent, waiting eyes were demanding an answer.

  ‘My shop,’ she repeated firmly, drawing herself up to her full height, which was still miserably insignificant. The action did little more than bring her nose level with the middle button of the man’s double-pocketed khaki shirt.

  ‘How come?’

  He appeared unimpressed.

  Well! What a creature! Admittedly, she was an unremarkable figure herself, wasn’t she, and it wasn’t much of a shop, was it, but you’d think he’d have had the grace to appear just a little more interested—apologetic, even, since he had marched in through her own front door and frightened the life out of her!

  He didn’t, though. His features remained unrevealing as he put the lamp down on the table beside the cooker, groped in his pocket for tobacco and papers, leaned back against the sink, and began to roll himself a cigarette.

  His fingers went about their ritual with a dexterity which somehow fascinated Emmie. She withdrew her gaze again with difficulty.

  ‘It’s mine because Millie—Miss J. Millicent—left it to me,’ she announced, irritated at that off-hand manner, his seemingly complete indifference.

  ‘I inherited it,’ she insisted, more forcibly.

  ‘The devil you did!’ The man’s square-tipped fingers paused in the very act of bringing the newly fashioned cigarette to his lips. He became suddenly very attentive indeed! ‘What is your name, please?’

  ‘Emmie—I mean, Emily Montfort,’ she added in a defensive mumble, wondering why on earth she should suddenly find her own words lacking in conviction. Why, goodness, it almost sounded as if she were the apologetic one!

  ‘Are you sure you are telling the truth—about that inheritance?’ The grey eyes raked her in a puzzled, and puzzling, way. ‘You’re just a child----’

  ‘Hardly. Her mouth quivered at that. With amusement at his remark. With helplessness, frustration, bewilderment, too.

  In a way he was right about that. She felt as uncertain as a four-year-old, and she was too light-headed with weariness and that smarting pain in her hand to contradict the man’s statement with any real authority. ‘Look, would you p-please go?’

  Emmie saw his rugged features tighten visibly.

  ‘I’m not leaving you here like this. You’ll have to come with me.’

  ‘I’m staying here,’ she said flatly, without defiance. ‘If you knew what I’ve gone through to get here, you wouldn’t even suggest a thing like that!’

  ‘I’m not suggesting,’ the man corrected her with a certain level emphasis. ‘It’s an order.’

  An order! Just who did he think he was, this dusty-booted, teak-brown stranger with the proud bearing that even a liberal coating of dust and grime could not conceal? Who was he, to think he had the authority to order her out of her very own store, ramshackle though it might be. Emmie had a sudden weak desire to giggle. She wanted to laugh at her own tenacity in clinging to the wish to remain here, when only minutes earlier she’d have given anything to see another human being, not to mention being offered an alternative to this lonely, desolate accommodation for the night. That, minutes ago, would have seemed little short of a welcome miracle! And now here she was, turning down the positive offer of that very thing. It must
be the man—something about him—that caused this sudden contrariness in Emmie, this uncharacteristic compulsion to assert her independence.

  ‘One doesn’t just go off into the night with any odd man who might happen along,’ she rebuked him primly.

  ‘Not any man. Fenton’s the name. Riddley Fenton. So now that we know each other’—his mouth lifted sarcastically, ‘get your things together like a good girl, and we’ll be going.’

  ‘I’ve no intention of going, thank you.’ Emmie’s voice cooled. ‘So far as I’m concerned, you are any man, just like I said. The name Fenton means absolutely nothing to me.’

  ‘No?’ One mobile brow lifted in seeming amusement at that. ‘Well, if it doesn’t now, it will shortly. That is, if you are in fact who you claim to be?’

  ‘Look here, are you suggesting----’

  ‘I’m suggesting nothing.’ He sounded weary, suddenly near the end of his patience. ‘I don’t make suggestions at this hour of the night—not after a heavy day’s scrub-cutting and a long drive on top of it. I save my breath for necessities, and if I have to, I give orders. What’s more, I expect them to be carried out—promptly!’ he added tersely, and then, his expression sharpening, ‘What have you done to that hand?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that. Let me see.’

  The man placed the remaining inch or so of cigarette between his lips for safe keeping, stepped forward, and grasped her arm. Then he moved the lamp nearer and turned her palm upwards, squinting at it through a wreath of smoke.

  ‘You burnt it?’ Riddley Fenton reached beyond her to the sink, stubbed out his glowing butt with careful precision, and returned his eyes to her hand. ‘When?’

  ‘Just now. I was trying to light that little stove. I don’t know much about them, so I suppose I did the wrong thing. I was just going to try again when—when you came in.’

  He ignored the censure which was all too evidently linked with his intrusion, gave a non-committal grunt through closed lips, and continued to inspect the injury.

  Her hand lay upturned in his. It looked small and pale against his own tough, brown palm. Small and pale and— vulnerable. Emmie made to withdraw, and his grasp tightened. The pressure made her wince, even though he had not meant to hurt her.

  ‘Hold still.’ He frowned. ‘It’s quite extensive, and I’m afraid it’s going to blister. Is it very sore?’

  ‘Not very. I hardly feel it.’

  The man’s lips twisted as he released her hand at last.

  ‘The martyred type, as well as stubborn,’ he remarked nastily, retrieving his hat, which he had thrown carelessly on to the kitchen dresser, and turning her way once more. ‘I’ll dress it for you when we get home, and that will ease it a bit. And’— the grey eyes glinted dangerously—‘if you’re thinking of arguing, don’t.’

  There was something in the way he said that last bit which, together with the glint, told Emmie that, whatever she felt, it might in the end be wiser to obey. To tell the truth, anyway, she was too terrified of that little kerosene cooker to try it again just now, and wherever he was taking her, she might at least get that longed-for cup of tea! Her mouth felt dry, her throat parched. If she got a cup of tea out of the excursion, the hand could take its own chance!

  ‘I’ll get your gear. Go out and wait in the jeep.’

  ‘You mean ---- ’

  ‘I mean just exactly what I say.’

  ‘But aren’t I coming back tonight?’

  ‘Most certainly not. Now, just obey for once, will you, Miss Montfort? It would make a pleasant change.’

  Emmie bit her lip, but refrained from replying. She was too exhausted to think of anything particularly clever, and he was proving to be quite a formidable intruder, as it turned out. One would need to be in tip-top form to hold one’s own, and at the moment she was far from that.

  She had just scrambled into the jeep when the sight of Riddley Fenton hauling her luggage outside and pulling the front door shut behind him sent her flying forth again.

  ‘Oh, please be careful of that! That one there!’ She rescued the large bag which he had been on the very point of tucking under his arm along with one of the cases. ‘They— they’re my hats, you see.’

  She opened the bag to show him.

  He peered obediently inside in the semi-dark, but ‘Good God!’ was all he said. However, he left the bag to her own ministrations after that, slung her cases one by one into the back of the vehicle and held open the passenger door, after which he got in at his own side and drove away without speaking again.

  He seemed to be lost in thought. By the dim light of the dash she could see his profile, swarthy, absorbed, his eyes unreadable hollows above the faintly aquiline nose, the level mouth just now pursed consideringly, as if he had a problem. He drove fast, the yellow beams of the jeep’s headlights searching out the road ahead with unerring skill, avoiding ruts and bumps as they came into view, swinging in and out of belts of timber and stands of lower scrub.

  ‘Wh-where are we going?’ Emmie hesitated to disturb his reverie, but she had to know, didn’t she?

  He glanced her way, then back to the road again.

  ‘To Koolonga.’

  ‘I thought we were at Koolonga. Back there. Is this the town we’re going to?’ She didn’t mean to sound hopeful, but she was!

  ‘There’s no town at Koolonga. It’s just a siding. Presumably, as you got off there, you must have known that already. Or didn’t you bother with the customary preliminaries and take the precaution of finding out where you were coming to before you left your own neck of the woods—wherever that was?’ His eyes rested lingeringly upon the hat-bag which she was preserving carefully upon her lap.

  ‘Sydney,’ she informed him abruptly, hating the silken thread of sarcasm that was woven into his words. ‘And yes, of courseI did. I—I was just—er—curious, that’s all,’ she added lamely.

  She was at enough of a disadvantage already without admitting her folly openly. She could just imagine how his lip would curl, how heartily he’d laugh at her, if he could only guess how built-up she’d been this morning, and how deflated she felt right now!

  ‘We are going to Koolonga Station,’ he informed her, with a sort of exaggerated patience, as if as aware of her ignorance as she was herself. ‘That’s where I live. We’re nearly at the homestead now.’ Another sidelong glance. ‘Is that hand still giving you gyp?’

  ‘It’s not bad. Tell me----- ’ She changed the subject a little

  tremulously, because her hand was extraordinarily painful, as it happened. ‘Tell me, what is scrub-cutting? Wasn’t that what you said you’d been doing?’

  ‘That’s right. And it’s just exactly what it says. Scrub-cutting. The cutting of scrub to feed hungry stock. Just like the poet said, although it’s far from poetic work, believe me— “All day we had driven the starving sheep, to the scrub where the axes

  ply.” ’

  He quoted the line wryly, but with a singular lack of amusement all the same.

  ‘You mean—you cut the—the trees?’

  He nodded.

  ‘They’ll eat anything we can give them in the way of non-poisonous greenery when they’re starving, Miss Montfort. So would you, if you’d had as little to pick up as they have this past six months,’ he replied somewhat grimly. ‘It’s bad when it gets down to this. The cattle are off, and half my sheep stock are agisting on a couple of my other places. The rest are still taking their chance here as yet. I’m gambling on some rain before too long.’ The broad shoulders shrugged philosophically. ‘I’m luckier than some, in having properties in better areas to send them to. It’s hell to be overstocked in a season like this one. It can break a man if he’s caught with no alternatives. Some poor devils are forced to sell out for whatever they can get, and that can include their breeding

  stock, their flock ewes. For others ------ ’ Again the shrug.

  ‘Well, the stock routes are jammed with travelli
ng mobs just now. You probably saw some from the train, if you were looking out. Back the other side, east of Berroola, the route runs parallel for a couple of miles. The long road.’

  He had spoken those last words to himself, wearily, almost as if he had forgotten, temporarily, that he had a passenger at all. The lines at the sides of his mouth seemed momentarily more deeply grooved in the pallid glow that came from the instrument panel. He looked remote, forbidding.

  ‘I think I did see one of the mobs you spoke of,’ Emmie told him timidly, because it was obvious that the topic was somehow not a very pleasant one. ‘I saw a big, dusty lot of sheep, and a horse-drawn cart, and some men on horses, too. They were going very slowly, just sort of browsing along.’ ‘They’d have been pushing them, all the same. They’ve got to achieve a certain mileage each day—a stage—but if the stock are in poor condition it can be quite a job moving them along.’

  ‘Why bother to, then? Why not just let them stay where it’s greenest, where they like?’

  ‘No, Miss Montfort, I’m afraid that wouldn’t work out. As in almost every sphere of life, you’d get certain elements showing up. Greed, in this case. There’d always be some clever cove hogging the best patches for longer than he should. It’s a public way, a stock route, and in fairness to all, they’ve got to manage it properly. Keep stock moving, notify adjoining proprietors, make room for the next chap.’

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean.’ There was a small silence, and then she plucked up courage to observe cautiously, ‘Surely there’s quite a lot of grass there, though, at the sides of this very track we’re on right now. So why do you have to cut tr— er—scrub—for your animals, anyway?’