“Fire!”
For the briefest of moments Arn Dawson’s eyes met hers. Then, wheeling round, he raced to his Land-Rover without another word.
Terese was only seconds behind him in the van.
CHAPTER TEN
There were no flames to be seen from the plateau track, but a charcoal-dark, red-streaked smudge was spreading ominously upward from the valley, rather like pictures Terese had seen of atomic explosions. Already the clear plateau air was taking on the blurred beginnings of a smoke pall, soon it could be perpetual twilight as it was in the lowest gorges. Terese’s hands tightened on the wheel. Down in those twilight parts, she thought, it must now be black night.
She turned off at the Pickpocket fork, but Arn went straight on. She jumped out of the van and ran to the house to find Joe hosing its walls and Ginny finishing a firebreak.
“Thank heaven you’ve come, you can take over,” greeted Ginny. “I’ll go down the valley.”
“Is it safe?”
“Quite safe. I got rid of all the dry brush and put wet sacking at all vulnerable points. Don’t worry, Terese, the plateau will escape.”
“I didn’t mean the plateau, I meant the valley. I meant will you be safe?”
"Of course. It might look bad”—Ginny glanced to the charcoal, red-streaked smudge—“but the New England isn’t bushfire country, it’s too lush, and it’s very unlikely the blaze will spread. On the other hand, if we’d been really prone, like 'most lumber districts, we might have been more prepared.”
Terese grieved over this as she took over from Ginny. She thought of the planting with its tender young growth, its upthrusting nurslings, not tough as yet like the older hard and soft woods, vulnerable, unable to withstand adverse elements, unable to resist fire. She thought of her tree—and scooped up and burned the final leaves, twigs and loose bark with renewed vigor, hosed again, then ran inside to tell Joe that since everything was safe here she would offer her help as well down the valley.
Joe was not there.
For a moment she stood frowning over the naughty old fellow, and then her face softened. It was too much to ask that he sit up here while his beloved Backdown burned. She could not blame him for slipping out. She had better fetch him back, though, Arn would expect her to do that.
She ran outside, carefully garaged the bookmobile, noting that Ginny had done the same with the jeep, then went to the stables to saddle Ringo.
The first box in the barn... Ringo and Sandy disliked each other and were not stabled together... was empty, so Ginny must have ridden, as Terese now intended to do.
But it was an intention she was not to carry out, for Ringo’s box was empty as well. For a moment Terese stood frowning. Had Ginny taken the precaution of moving the ponies? No, if she had done that she would have told her. Besides, there was nowhere safer than the plateau, Ginny had said that herself, which meant that as well as Sandy being ridden, so was Ringo.
“And,” Terese spoke it aloud, “by Joe.” Concerned though she was at his riding at his age and condition, she still had to smile at the vision of his hauling himself up, then prodding Ringo down the track.
A stubborn old man, too, because of him she would have to walk, though Terese made it a run, looking from side to side as she hurried along in case Joe, anticipating being seen and hauled back, was proceeding more secretly through the bush. At one spot she thought she saw hoofmarks leading inward, but she did not investigate. They probably were only old cropping tracks going nowhere at all except to a juicy square of sward.
It was a long run to Homeward Bound, but Terese saw no one at all on the way. She supposed that every available hand was down the valley with dripping sacking, brooms, rakes, anything they could handle to halt the fire, and that was where she wanted to be, too, not searching for Joe. She checked first with Miss Fox, who had been persuaded to remain until the children’s mother arrived.
“We can never be too careful,” Miss Fox was admonishing ... Miss Fox never missed an opportunity to advise or admonish ... “with fires. Now look at that blaze.” She clicked her tongue and Janet and Jalna clicked, too.
Terese looked with them, watched the flash of furious scarlet and gold leap into the air. Fortunately the flares seemed to be confined to one valley, and she could imagine the fighters down there striving to keep it that way.
“Matches,” continued Miss Fox, “will do that, yet you, Janet, were playing with them the other day.”
“But I didn’t light the fire,” defended Janet, “Gavin did.”
Gavin! Terese turned horrified eyes on the little girl, urgent questions on her lips. Not Gavin, she thought, never Gavin. “Janet—Jalna...” She began to interrogate, then she stopped. Wisely she remembered that the cause must wait till after the effect has been dealt with, and she asked instead about Joe.
“But he’s not here,” said Miss Fox. “Have you seen him, girls?”
“I know where Uncle Joe would be,” proffered Janet, “down to see his house.”
“But he’s not at Pickpocket, darling.”
“Not that house, his real house, he says, though it doesn’t look like a house to me, it’s just grass and big trees, and it’s where Granny and Gramp live, the Backdown ones, not the ones in Sydney.”
“Uncle Joe says he’ll live there, too,” proffered Jalna. “Under the red cedars.”
Terese knew it at once. Of course, she thought, that’s where the old man would go instinctively, to watch over the small acre where Susan and old Arn lay, where his generation lay and waited, where he would rest himself. One thing, thank heaven, he should be safe, for that furious scarlet and gold was not leaping in that direction.
“I think he’ll be burned up, though,” added Janet sadly, “because the little track he takes to his house goes right through where Gavin lit his fire.”
“A secret track,” added Jalna, who was fond of secrets as well as of gore, “he took us once, so we know. It starts up there"—she waved toward Pickpocket—“and it’s called a short cut. Did you know that a little track was a short cut, Tree?”
“Yes, darling, but never mind that now, just tell me where it is.”
“We shouldn’t tell if it’s secret,” frowned Jalna.
“Uncle Joe wouldn’t take us again,” refused Janet.
“I’ll take you myself. I’ll take you to Glen Ingle. Arrowdale. Wherever you like.”
Considering it was bribery, Miss Fox did not show disapproval. Instead, she said briskly, “Tell Miss Staples quickly.”
“It’s a little track and it goes into the trees, then over the mountain.”
“It’s secret,” said Jalna again.
Terese ran Janet to the front fence and pointed in the direction she had come, to the spot she had been inclined to investigate but had resisted. Now she regretted that.
“About there, Janet?”
“Yes. Shall I show you?”
“No,” ruled Miss Fox, joining them, “you’ll stop right here.” She held firmly to the little girls as Terese retraced her steps. To Terese’s dismay the track proved as secret as Jalna had gloated, and she had to repeat her run from the Pickpocket end before she recognized again the signs she had seen before, those hoofmarks she had thought would only lead to a square of juicy sward.
“Joe ... Joe!” She began calling now, willing the black smudge not to reach across until she found the old man.
“Joe!” she called again.
A reply came echoing from farther along the track, it hit each outcrop of rock and repeated its message three times.
“Here. Down here!”
It was a girl’s voice.
Terese fairly flew over the slippery pebbles, skidding several times but righting herself, and then, turning a bend, she found Joe and Ginny. They were both on the ground, and Joe was propped in Ginny’s arms.
“Is he... ” Terese had run to her side.
“I’m all right,” growled Joe irritably. “I just stopped for a spell, like anyone wo
uld, and Ginny here finds me and starts a panic.”
Behind him Ginny caught Terese’s glance and shook her head in the slightest of negatives. Her hand briefly flicked in the direction of her heart, then slid back.
A little silence fell between them, only broken occasionally by a distant explosion of burning leaves.
There was the sound of running feet coming from the lower end of the valley. In a few minutes four men and a boy came round the brush of trees. Terese recognized Gavin, three of the lumberjacks—and Arn.
She turned her glance away, but had the feeling that the gesture was unnecessary, that he had not looked at her.
“Well, old-timer, what happened?” Arn was squatted by Joe’s side.
“Damn track,” grumbled Joe, “it used to be much easier riding.” He gave a weak chuckle. “All right,” he conceded, “it’s me, not the track. I’m plain old.”
“Should fly you into Glen Ingle, you know.” Arn said it mildly. “Pete’s taken three loads already. Burns. Someone concussed by a fallen branch. Two sprained ankles.”
“Not for Joe,” Joe repeated.
“That’s all right.” Arn was looking still mildly—but levelly—into the old man’s eyes. “If you don’t want to go, as Ginny here never wants to go, then that’s all right.”
He stopped talking, but the level look still held Joe’s. Another sharp explosion of leaves, a crack of timber, then Joe said, “You know I reckon I’ll change my mind. Ginny can take me.”
Ginny’s glance flew upward to Arn. “No!” Her lips framed but did not sound it. “Oh, no!”
“Ginny?”
Ginny’s head was down. Still she did not answer.
“Ginny?” he repeated.
“All right,” she said.
The men made a rough but adequate stretcher of saplings, Joe protesting all the time that he could walk.
Slowly they all ascended to the plateau, and by the time they lowered the improvised stretcher Arn’s own Land-Rover was waiting to receive the man and the girl. At a nod from Arn one of the lumbermen climbed behind the wheel, the others lifted Joe in and stopped there to support him, Ginny silently climbed in after them, then Arn went over to Joe and looked steadily down.
Terese was standing near, and she felt her heart contract. She saw the two hands, the big firm one, the old frail one, meet in a long clasp, then Joe said, “B’seeing you, boy.”
“B’seeing you, Joe.”
The Land-Rover, with the men, with Joe and Ginny, slid off. For a long moment Arn Dawson stood watching it, though Terese had the feeling that, like herself, he saw little, that his eyes were blurred with tears.
“Arn...”
“I’m sorry, Miss Staples, a fire awaits me. That applies to you, too, Gavin.” For the first time Terese noticed that Gavin stood miserably by their side.
“But neither of you go getting the idea that your respective subjects have been dropped.” Suddenly businesslike, Arn snapped, “Collect all the sacking you can find and take it down to the fighters, Gavin. You go across to Homeward Bound, Miss Staples, and help Miss Fox with the tea service she has now begun.”
Gavin’s “Yes, Arn” and Terese’s “Yes, Mr. Dawson” were drowned in the roar of the Cessna taking off.
Ginny ... and Joe ... had gone.
Terese was glad to lose herself in the demanding work of feeding the fire-fighters, demanding because each man sent up for sustenance by Arn had been on the job since the first shrill of the alarm.
So was Arn when he came up at the first streaks of dawn the next day. Terese knew immediately that danger was over, otherwise Arn Dawson would not have left. She did not ask him, though, she left that to Miss Fox, and Arn answered Miss Fox, he never looked at Terese.
“Yes, it’s done and we’ve won. Any doubts we still might have will be settled in five minutes, I reckon, for it’s going to rain. Mind if I drink still unwashed?” He did not wait for a reply but drained his cup, and Miss Fox poured again.
“Damage?” she asked.
“Apart from that one valley, none at all. I could cry tears of blood at some of those grand warriors smouldering on the ground, though I admit it’s a sort of consolation that if they hadn’t gone that way, Flack would have butchered them his way.”
“Flack—then it was Flack’s valley.” Terese, in spite of herself, had come forward.
Arn Dawson’s cool reply sent her back again. “It was the valley,” he said flatly, “that Flack leases from me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Miss Staples...”
“Mr. Dawson?”
“There was something to discuss. Remember?”
“Yes. For me. For Gavin. Where—where is Gavin?”
“He’s around,” was the laconic reply. “I’ll deal with him next.”
“He said—he said he lit a fire.”
“He did. Then he put it out. He had the guilty feeling now that he started all this.” Arn shrugged to himself in his blackened state, then to the ruined valley beyond the window.
“He didn’t?” she echoed.
“No. The evidence of that is in a small ring of dead ashes situated in such a position that any sparks that could have flown would have gone in an entirely different direction. Oh, no, Gavin never started this.”
“Then...”
“Flack did it himself. Not deliberately, no man kills the goose with the golden eggs, and that was what that valley was to Flack, but through plain carelessness, inattention and neglect.” Arn looked directly at Terese. “Since you’ve stopped calling, the camp had resumed its old slack ways.”
She flushed, but made no comment.
“I—I’m glad for Gavin. Have you told him?”
“No.”
“But the boy was frantic...”
“And rightly so. In the Australian bush there is no greater sin than the one that Gavin has just perpetrated, and though he came to his senses and put the fire out I see no reason why his punishment should be cut short.”
Suddenly unable to stop herself, Terese cried, “And what of me? Am I to be punished, too? Am I to wait your convenience because it also will do me good?”
“You won’t have to wait long,” he promised, “only as long as a hot shower.” He put down the cup and strode away.
But Terese’s “punishment” lasted much longer. Before Arn could emerge, black no longer, they had received the news of Joe.
Two days later, Joe went to his “house”, as Janet and Jalna had called it, and after the little service in the valley of the tall trees where old Arn and Susan already rested, Terese, at a look from Ginny, crossed to the girl and together they walked up again to the plateau.
“Well, that’s that,” Ginny half smiled. “He won in the end, old Joe.”
“You mean Pickpocket?”
“Pickpocket? Why, no, I meant...” Ginny gave Terese a quick look. “Don’t you know?” she asked, and her cheeks were a soft pink.
Terese stared back at her, and suddenly, enlighteningly, she understood.
“Whither you go—” she breathed, and Ginny inclined her head. “With Peter. I’ve always loved him, but I was a stubborn brute, I wanted the love on my terms. I wanted Peter on the land beside me. That’s not the design of life, heaven knows how many times old Joe told me so, but I still believed I was special in what I wanted to do, something right out of the bag when it came to ability. Well”—a little laugh—“I found I was not.”
“And Peter?”
“Frankly, I wasn’t interested in his work, or I wouldn’t let myself be. But I learned a lot on that crossing the day of the fire, Terese. I saw how much more important Pete was than I could ever be. There was a man ... do you know Ramsay? ... he had severe burns, and if Peter hadn’t got him over when he did...
“Old Joe knew all this, bless him. Joe knew he would never see Backdown again, but he made that trip so he could make me see.”
“And you saw?”
“I saw. Look, Terese, Peter and I w
ere married yesterday.” Ginny held out her hand with the ring finger slenderly enclosed. “You’ll be having a new pilot for the Cessna. Pete is ambitious, he wants more than a milk run like this. He’ll get it, too.”
“And you, Ginny?”
Ginny smiled a little ruefully. “I’ll be a good air wife. I’ll stop in a handy flat and I’ll have a window-box, and when the land urge grips me I’ll either take in a Western or find a paddock somewhere and just look and dream. It won’t kill me. After all, I won’t be the first one whose ship has never set sail.”
She kissed Terese, and finished, “I love him, and I’m happy, isn’t that all that really counts?”
Terese was busy gathering her own things together when the telephone rang.
“Terese?”
“Yes.”
“Arn.” Not Dawson, she thought, not Miss Staples. “What are you doing?”
“I’m packing my things.”
“Good. I had no intention of letting you stay at Pickpocket.”
“I’m packing up to leave,” she said steadily.
“But not before we have that talk. Oh, no”—forestalling any protest—“you’ve got out of everything so far, you’re not getting out of that. I’ll see you down at the creek as soon as you can make it.”
“What about your office...” Terese began but the receiver at the other end was dead. Sighing a little, for she had hoped to catch Pete on his last crossing tonight, Terese dropped what she was doing and ran the van as far as she could to the valley where she, had found the rutilated quartz. Prompt though she was, Arn was there already.
“Packing, were you?” were his opening words.
“Yes.”
“The heck you were!”
“What do you mean by that?”
The Man From the Valley Page 13