by Lucy Walker
Well, she told herself, determined to be sensible about this, a good long walk would do her good anyway! Besides, she hadn’t seen a frilled lizard. They were big creatures, she knew. They puffed themselves up when they were angry, or disturbed, and their neck frill, inches wide, stood out like the first Queen Elizabeth’s collar. Hence Jinx’s name for his pet. Swell.
Cindie gave herself all the reasons she could think of for going out in search of the children. All but the true one. If Jinx and Myrtle were puffing cigarette smoke into the lizard’s rockery then Mary would have to be told. It would become Mary’s responsibility as to whether the children learned smoking habits by accident, or not. Mary could deal with Flan, and his irresponsible gifts.
Cindie knew the direction the children generally took when they went out. They had told her it was due west towards the sunset sky. Jinx had shown her how he could find due north on his big ‘railway’ watch; from the reckoning, due any-other-direction was easy.
Cindie put her sun-hat on, then walked around behind the two rows of caravan houses on the west side of the camp. Within a few minutes she found where the tyre tracks of her own car led out to the west. This was the way Flan had driven the children out with the tadpole harvest for Swell’s dinner yesterday. Cindie’s car-tracks were the easiest picked up in and around the camp because all the company vehicles had huge thick double-service tyres with deep square-cut grooves against skidding. Her car alone had come north with standard tyres meant for sealed roads. There was a slight veer in the alignment of the front wheels and this had led to extra wear marks on the outside rim of her right-hand front tyre. Cindie recognised these marks too.
A child could pick up the tracks and follow them over that red sandy waste which was all but overgrown with the round hump-shaped spinifex bushes.
Cindie had barely set out along this track, still hidden from Nick’s office by the angle of the second row of caravans, when she heard a Land-Rover starting up from the camp. She stopped and looked out from under the brim of her hat to see where the Land-Rover was going, and if Nick was driving it. Everyone had this casual curiosity for something moving in or out of the stillness of the camp under the blistering sun.
It was Nick.
He was driving off in a southerly direction, the way he had brought her, Cindie, from the river. She thought there might be someone sitting in the front seat with him, but he drove so fast, and the dust-cloud behind him rose so smotheringly quick, Cindie could not be sure of that.
If anybody, it would be Erica. Was he taking her to see the geologist’s latest test holes? Or maybe to the river? Cindie remembered how nice and green and cool that bank of river gums had been. Here around the camp-site, there was endless nothingness. For ever and ever, it seemed. There was nothing except the clump of white gums at the back of Mary’s house, and an odd bush or two of wattle breaking the flatness of the plain.
She felt a touch of envy because Erica would now be seeing the lovely river gums. Erica would be not so very far away from the crossing, then the road back to Baanya ‒ and Jim Vernon! Funny how just being that much nearer a person: or in a place with which that person was associated, could make one feel as if one were somehow sharing his actual company!
The silly ticking heart that was in Cindie was very unpredictable, she told herself. She was actually jealous of Erica.
Oh, surely not! Erica had Nick, and would never think of Jim Vernon ‒ matrimonial-wise.
Perhaps they had taken a Thermos. And would have tea!
Funny, how it made her kind of sad. Yet she was glad she was not just a visitor to be shown the sights as a social gimmick. She was glad she was being useful: and gladder still she was earning some money.
One thing for sure, her Holden car would need a set of new tyres after this trip. Someone had mentioned that the track to the upper tableland, where Bindaroo stood, was rougher than any to the river or the coast. It was covered with iron flint stone.
Yes, she needed every penny of the money she could earn.
As these thoughts flitted through her head, Cindie had been walking on, her eyes dropping to the ground every now and again to be sure she followed the tracks.
The sun was hot in a white heat-dazzled sky, but she knew it would be cooler on the return journey. It would be later in the day and the temperature would have dropped. She would have her back to the sun instead of having it dazzle daisies in front of her eyes, as it was doing now.
She walked on and on, her thoughts engrossed by first one thing, then another. She had long since ceased to marvel at the spinifex with its sharp brittle spikes ready to stab her legs if she took a false step. Within a few minutes her flattie shoes were covered beyond recognition with the red dust from the redder earth.
Now and again she looked up towards the west to see if she might be nearing her destination. Some time soon, she thought, the flat plain must change its character, if only a little. Swell, the frilled lizard, lived in amongst rocks. There had to be something other than red earth and spinifex.
Once she saw a willi-willi of dust start up from nothing to become a tall spiral moving across the spinifex like a spectre out of space. Then subtly this changed to a fizz, dwindling into a dust-ball hanging low over the grass. Finally there was nothing but a faint red haze to show where this beautiful whirling dancing sprite had come to a last nothingness.
Then she saw dark broken lines in the near distance. This must be a shallow piece of breakaway country. Here would be the rocks. Here, with luck, she would find the children.
As Cindie approached these dark rocky outlines she thought she saw, for a moment, a very strange kind of willi-willi. It was a smoky-white ‒ not brown or red ‒ and though it spiralled up high into the colourless sky, there seemed to be a loose cloud-like formation spreading at its base.
The oddest thing about this particular willi-willi was that it did not move. It didn’t whizz or dance away. It stayed still. And the cloud around its base was growing bigger in area. The whisper of spiral had altered shape to become pillow clouds.
Cindie stood still and stared at it.
It was smoke!
Could the children be giving themselves a picnic? A black-coated billy standing between two rocks over a small camp-fire? But it was too big!
Suddenly she knew panic!
This was a fire. A real spreading fire: not one made to boil a billy. If a wind rose …
Cindie started to run.
The rock formation was clear now, more menacing in its stark red-blackness against the backdrop of yellow spinifex plain. The smoke, as the fire spread, billowed in cumulus clouds over a wide area.
Was this where Swell lived? Were the children here? If not ‒?
Dear heaven! Her breath, as she ran, came hard and hurt her chest.
A minute later she saw two small shadows dodging in and out of the smoke. They were beating at the ground with sticks.
Myrtle and Jinx! Thank God! The children were all right.
Now Cindie was forced to stop to catch her breath. The perspiration poured from her. The temperature was way more than a hundred.
How did one put out a spinifex fire without shovels, hoses and tree branches with which to beat? Those miserable sticks ‒ and the fire was creeping, creeping! What could have caused it?
The cigarettes!
Cindie started to run again, out of desperation now. Instinctively she picked up an old tree branch, fallen in a time long past from some wattle long dead. She dragged it with her as she ran.
Minutes later she came to the licking fire that was stealing through the brittle dried-out spinifex. No roaring blaze here. Just a curving inroad of low orange flames spreading, spreading.
The children were all right. They were beating savagely at the edges of the fire farther round. Cindie started on her side, working her way as she beat, sometimes treading out hot embers with her shoes, breathing deeply, trying to recover her breath.
When she was near enough she called.
Jinx, like Myrtle, puffing and banging and thrashing the ground, was too busy to answer Cindie except to call back:
‘Keep on the east side, Cindie. That’s where it’s going. You stop it there. Myrtle and I’ll stamp the burnt grass on the far side ‒’
‘Swell has disappeared, Cindie. He’ll run in front of the fire. Don’t put your foot on him ‒’ Myrtle cried.
Dear heaven! Cindie thought, energy renewed, and furiously beating her stick down on creeping flame. Is a spinifex fire dangerous, or is it just one of those things? If there’s no wind perhaps it will die of its own accord in the night.
She turned away from the smoke to wipe her eyes. The heat had brought tears to them. Then as she lifted her face from her sleeve she saw something. A Land-Rover, followed by a second one, was hurtling over the plain from her left.
Her relief was almost an anticlimax of deflation.
Others had seen the fire-smoke and were coming to the rescue! The troubles weren’t hers any more.
If it was those cigarettes! Cindie thought furiously. I’ll tell Flan he can’t have my car again, ever. And ‒ well ‒
She nearly promised herself she would slap Jinx and Myrtle. She didn’t believe in slapping, specially other people’s children.
Cindie’s ancient tree stem broke one second before the first Land-Rover came to a dusty halt. Even as the vehicle came to a standstill the door flew open and the driver, a little monkey man, ran round the south side of the fire towards the children. It was Flan. From the other side, his unidentified passenger spilled out at similar speed and attacked a red rivulet of flame with his boots.
Cindie’s own fighting weapon useless, herself breathless and exhausted, she stood still. Her smoke-grimed face meant nothing to her, neither did the streams of perspiration running down her temples and the sides of her cheeks.
Here were men. They would know how to put out a spinifex fire in a treeless plain!
They would even know, she thought wearily, if it matters that several acres of this beastly stuff is burned, anyhow! There’s millions more acres of it to spare.
The second Land-Rover seemed to have come from a slightly different direction from the first. Its tyres now skidded to a stop in their own cloud of red dust, and the drive door swung open. A man, tall, lean and in a blazing hurry, ran through the haze, boots, crashing through grass and black cinders towards Cindie.
She stood quite still, suddenly feeling desolate.
He came through the pall of smoke. Nick!
There was incredulity in his face as he stared at her.
Bedraggled, smoke-powdered, exhausted and all, Cindie thought, seeing herself through his eyes. Oh, well. Does it matter?
‘What in the name of fortune are you and those children doing out here?’ he demanded. ‘Did you have the bright idea of a picnic out by the rocks? A camp-fire and all?’
His voice, she decided, was full of sound and fury.
‘No one in their right senses,’ he went on, ‘would light a fire on a day with these temperatures. Don’t you know the very air is combustible on the plain when it’s over a hundred degrees?’
Cindie stood quite still, looking at him, and saying nothing. She couldn’t tell tales on the children, of course. But something like anger was creeping over her, as word by word he went about questioning.
So that is what he thinks of me? Not just a waif out of the river, but a stupid little fool who lights fires in the spinifex?
The sheer injustice of Nick’s wrath kept her silent.
She did not answer him.
The man who had come with Flan, having trodden out his own yard or two of flame, moved towards them through the veil of smoke.
Cindie forget Nick. She blinked her eyes.
Was she having hallucinations? Could it be ‒?
‘Jim!’ Her voice had a fog of smoke and fine cinder in it. ‘Jim Vernon!’
The heat and cinders smarting in her eyes filled them with moisture. Or could they be real tears? She wiped them away with the sleeve of her blouse, streaking her face more than ever with fire grime.
Jim saw the silent figure of a young girl taking a cracking lecture from the boss ‒ right on the chin. Those violet eyes, he guessed, were also taking a beating from the fire debris.
‘Why ‒ Cindie girl!’ he said gently, as he came up. ‘Cindie-smoke-all-over this time, eh?’
He was bigger than she remembered. Handsomer.
He held out his arms.
Without a thought, she went straight into them and buried her grimy forehead against his shoulder.
‘Jim! Oh, Jim!’
She closed her eyes.
He had come! Oh, the relief of it! It wasn’t only the fire ‒ she would have to explain some other time. It was Bindaroo ‒ and this injustice from Nick ‒
She would never explain to Nick. Never.
I wish he’d go away and get lost, she thought of Nick, burying her face farther in Jim’s shoulder and allowing herself the luxury of one spurt of real firebrand anger at the boss’s expense.
Jim was here, so Nick and his anger didn’t have to matter ‒ well, not for now, anyway!
Chapter Nine
Cindie had been unaware of a third passenger in Flan’s car. This newcomer was now quietly dislodging herself from the passenger seat. This done, she crossed the intervening space to Nick’s car. It was Erica Alexander.
Cindie had been mistaken in her guess when, earlier in the afternoon, she had seen Nick driving away from the camp with someone seated beside him. That someone had obviously been left elsewhere, for Nick had driven up alone. Erica had come with Jim in Flan’s Rover.
Cindie, a little embarrassed, lifted her head from Jim’s shoulder.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she apologised to him. ‘How silly can I be?’ She was conscious of a very smutty face, and cinder-tears still on her lashes. Jim’s eyes were clearer and brighter than she had pictured in her memory.
‘Don’t be sorry, Blue Eyes,’ Jim smiled down at her, turning her heart a little by the kindness in his tone. ‘I can’t imagine a nicer welcome for me. The best ever.’
Nick moved away deliberately. He began checking on the burnt-out edges of the grass. Cindie was relieved at that. She had Jim to herself. His eyes smiled into hers, giving her reassurance. For the moment she didn’t care about anything else in the world.
‘Fighting a fire, even a low spinifex one, is no joke for a girl fresh out of a city, Cindie,’ Jim went on in his slow-speaking way. ‘You did darn well even to try. Most newcomers in these parts would have shot through fast.’
‘Jim … it’s funny, but we’ve known one another a short time. I hope you didn’t mind my running to you like that. It was, sort-of, seeing an old friend.’ She had nearly said dear friend, but saved herself in time.
‘Who else but, Cindie-smoke-all-over?’ He looked down at her, his brows raised.
‘You are very kind, Jim. I managed to get myself all kinds of problems after I left Baanya. I have to explain something important to you ‒’
‘Not now, lass. Time enough later, when we’re by ourselves. Too many people around now. Right?’
She nodded. ‘I will see you later?’
‘Of course!’ His eyebrows really went up this time. ‘What do you think I came over for? ‘There’s one girl in a pack of woe over there at the construction camp,’ I told myself. ‘I must navigate that river and straighten things out for her.’
Cindie smiled. The rainbow had come through the near-tears.
‘Thank you, Jim.’ She was contrite because she had caused him concern.
‘Not to worry about anything now I’m here,’ he consoled. ‘Problems happen to all of us ‒ even chaps six feet tall, like me and Nick ‒ and a few more like us.’
; He slipped one arm along her shoulders as they turned towards the others.
Erica was standing not very far away, leaning in her effortless model-pose against Nick’s Land-Rover. Her expression said she thought Cindie had been making an abject fool of herself with Jim Vernon. Somebody ought to tell her he plays that role to every female east of the meridian, she reflected without kindness. Though, of course, this girl is young enough to be fooled.
She took a cigarette from the packet in her pocket and put it in her mouth. Nick, coming towards her at this moment, lit it for her.
‘You’ve been out excursioning too?’ he asked mildly. His earlier anger about the fire was either masked, or had burnt itself out.
‘I went over to the river with Flan to pick up Jim Vernon,’ Erica said lightly, then nodded her head in the direction of Cindie and Jim.
‘Seems that neither floodwater nor fire will separate that pair of lovers.’ She raised her voice a little as she took the cigarette from her mouth. ‘First the river, and now the blaze: Cindie is a person who puts herself in the way of being rescued, it seems.’ She laughed, careless of the fact that her words carried across the short distance.
Nick flicked out the match, dropped it to the ground, then put the heel of his desert-boot on it.
‘Probably a moment of crisis!’ he said without emotion. He then turned quickly to another nearby patch of burnt grass. There were still smouldering embers amongst it.
Jim Vernon winked at Cindie. His arm along her shoulders gave her a friendly squeeze.
‘Miss “E” is plain jealous,’ he said in a low voice. ‘She’s used to being the only notability on the feminine side round these parts. Come on, lass, we’ll face up to the boss and that young lady as if we’re old, old friends entitled to do a little bear-hugging in public. Anyhow, it was nice, wasn’t it?’
Cindie laughed. ‘Thank you for the saving grace of that remark,’ she said happily.
Jinx and Myrtle, entirely unperturbed by all the fuss, had been searching the area for Swell.