by Amanda Doyle
“What you’ve got to learn, Clancy—and fast—is to keep that pecker-nosed little sister of yours from poking around where she isn’t wanted. Riding round the way she does, never know where she’ll turn up next. It puts the men all wrong, and I’m sick and tired of her nosey ways. She doesn’t take much notice of me—not enough, anyway—so from now on you’re going to be the one to see she doesn’t go peeking and prying around too far from the homestead. If she does—well, something could easily happen to her. Common sense ought to tell you that, innocent an’ all as you are. It’d be a dreadful thing for something to happen to the little golden apple of Mr. Clever Seaforth’s eye, now, wouldn’t it? Just look out, that’s all, Clancy. Keep it to yourself, mind, but keep that kid in bounds in future, or there’ll be others sorrier than you, and I don’t mean me.”
It was fully five minutes after Johnny went silently out into the night again before Clancy could force her limbs into movement at all. The numbness of perplexity warred in her with an unaccustomed pricking of unease and alarm, not for herself, but for Tammy. She drew a shaking hand across her brow. Oh dear, how horribly complicated life had become! Not only did she feel directly responsible for Tamara, but there was also the positive realisation that upon her own behaviour rested the whole relationship between Jed Seaforth and Johnny Raustmann. It just wasn’t fair, at nineteen, to be so burdened, with no one to confide in. Perhaps she should have written openly to Aunt Elizabeth, but what was the use? Perhaps her imagination was running riot. Perhaps it was her acute physical dislike of Johnny that made her suspect, not only a streak of ruthlessness, but evil—yes, evil—about the man.
Dispiritedly, she turned out the kitchen light. If she looked as pale as she felt, she would be wiser not to subject herself to Jed Seaforth’s observant scrutiny just now. She called what she hoped sounded like a cheery goodnight as she passed the sitting-room door, and turned thankfully towards the sanctuary of her bedroom. Tammy didn’t stir as Clancy undressed swiftly, padded along in her mules to clean her teeth in the bathroom, then slipped into bed and drew up the sheet. It wasn’t until she had been lying there for quite some time, her mind churning over the problems that beset her, that Tamara’s bed creaked as she turned, leaned up on one elbow, and whispered, “Clan. Clancy, are you still awake?”
“Mm-m.”
“Clancy, are you listening?”
“Mm—what did you say, Tam?”
“Clancy, listen. I’ve got something to tell you. The queerest thing. Are you listening?” Tamara enquired doubtfully into the darkness.
“Yes, go on. I am.”
“Well, Clan, an awful funny thing happened to me today—out there at the Peacock. I went through the main gorge a little way, and I dropped down from a ledge to the creek at the bottom, just near where the flat rock is with the worms underneath. They’re really awfully long ones—the worms, I mean —but I don’t think the fish can like them as much as the grubs after all, Clan. They kept sort of breaking into pieces when I was putting them on the hook, and even then the fish didn’t take them. I didn’t catch a thing in the end, so it’s a good job I took that bit of cold roast and tomatoes, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is indeed. Is that all you wanted to tell me?” asked Clancy on a note of exasperation.
“Course not—I’m telling you, aren’t I, if you’ll just listen! Actually, Clan, now I come to think of it, maybe those worms are too like the colour of the water for the fish to see—sort of greeny-brown. Maybe they bite at the grubs because they’re white, and they look so inviting.”
Clancy shuddered. She knew it wasn’t only the fish that found the grubs inviting. The black children loved them, and she had a momentary, sickening vision of little Nellie’s and Sam’s hard white teeth and pink protruding tongues as they tipped back frizzy black heads to receive these squirmingly delicious morsels.
“Do go on, Tam,” she urged.
“Yes, well, like I was saying, I didn’t catch a single fish.” Tamara was not to be hurried on any account. “Then, after I’d had my lunch and trod out the fire, I reckoned there just might be some deeper pools farther into the gorge, so I stripped off some pieces of bark and got more grubs in my tin with the holes, and off I went. I wasn’t going to bother with those old worms again. That’s the very first time I haven’t caught even one fish.” Tammy broke off to sigh disgustedly before resuming her somewhat prolonged tale. “Anyway, when I’d gone along the creek-bed for about half a mile, I couldn’t see any likely looking pools, it was too rocky, so I decided just to lie down a while, and play kind of action-stories in my mind. It was as still as anything lying there, and I could really think most beautifully. It was too early for the birds flying back to water, and even the frogs were quiet ‘n everything. And that’s when I heard the sheep.”
“Sheep?” Clancy’s attention was arrested at last.
“Sh-h,” whispered Tamara, as if the very walls might hear. “Yes, sheep. It was only faint, but I knew it was sheep all right, and not just one sheep either. So I thought I’d investigate. The creek ran right under a fall of rock just there, so I was at a sort of dead end. I had to climb back on to a high ledge, and skirt around the hill quite a long way, before I found them. That’s how I was so late back. It took just ages, but I’m glad I did it, anyway, because—Clancy—” Tamara paused uncertainly—“Clancy—I think the sheep were ours.”
“Ours?” echoed Clancy rather stupidly.
“Yes, honest, Clan. They even had our brand on the rib, and there was a triangle out of the front of the near ear and everything and—and—well, they just looked like ours,” she concluded weakly.
“Couldn’t they have been the Thompsons’?” asked Clancy dubiously. It just didn’t make sense.
“Clancy, it’s only half-way through the Peacock, the place they’re in. The Thompsons’ is that far again out the other side. And they couldn’t come in the way I came. I could see they must have come in by the track round the base of the range. There’s quite a Sheep-pad worn through a narrow opening leading from the track, and the rocks rise so steeply all round that it looks like a natural pen in the middle of the outcrop. There’s even a bit of netting secured across the opening, so someone must have put them there, but they wouldn’t get out anyway, Clancy. There’s water there, and there’d have been a green pick along the creek’s edge under the saplings to entice them in. There were some bags of sheep nuts there and the remains on the ground, too, so someone must have been feeding them.”
Tamara’s voice tailed off anxiously. There was silence in the bedroom. Clancy couldn’t seem to bring her mind to bear on the possible significance of all Tamara had just said. It couldn’t be true, surely. There must be some mistake. However, and why ever, should Bunda Downs sheep be penned up in the middle of the Peacock Range, away at one end of the property, at the very time when Jed Seaforth was making a check muster of the stock on the place?
Jed? He couldn’t—? No, of course he couldn’t. The whole thing was just too crazy. Clancy’s mind was dizzy with fatigue as well as speculation.
“Oh, Tammy! Why do you always have to get into such scrapes?” she demanded, with what seemed to Tamara to be complete unreasonableness.
“Well, really, Clancy! If that doesn’t stone the crows!” was Tammy’s indignant rejoinder. “I wish I’d never told you, if that’s all the thanks I get.”
Clancy was contrite. Her irritability was suddenly vanquished, and intense drowsiness took over.
“Never mind, poppet,” she mumbled sleepily. “Sorry I snapped. Look, we really must go to sleep. Let’s think about it in the morning.”
CHAPTER 11
CLANCY pulled on an old pair of jodhpurs, crammed the tails of an ancient white shirt in beneath her slim waist, tied a cotton handkerchief loosely around her throat. That was an old trick, to keep her more comfortable when perspiration would begin to trickle in the noon-day heat. Instead of her linen hat, she reached for a battered pith topee that lay on top of the old-fashion
ed mahogany wardrobe.
It had a green mesh veil over it, with corks all round that bobbed at the least movement of her head when she put it on. Tamara always teased her about the ridiculous incongruity of her pink-cheeked oval face and silky fair curtain of hair beneath the top-heavy, chunky helmet. She said Clancy looked just like a slender daffodil with an ugly old earthenware basin sitting on top of it! Clancy didn’t care. She would rather look that way than have to bother all the time about the myriads of flies that would otherwise persist in crawling all over her face as she rode, as they always did over the sweaty flanks and withers of her horse. Sometimes, when your hands were otherwise occupied with reins and a stockwhip, or perhaps an ailing lamb slung across the pommel, they would climb up and down your face unheeding, even though you shook your head vigorously, and blew futilely at them with your bottom lip stuck out. Clancy preferred her bobbles and veil, but Tammy wore a wide-brimmed slouching felt, just like all the men did.
It was still dark. Clancy gave Tamara a shake, waited a moment to make certain it had woken her, picked up her hat, and made her way to the kitchen. She loved this hour before dawn—at first, the stillness of the great bush, then one by one the sounds of day—the first bird calling, the beat of wings overhead, the yap of a dog, the dink of the hobble-chains as the horses began to move about. The light was on in the book-keeper’s cottage, and down at the station-hands’ quarters too. Jed would be up, perhaps as aware of the delights of dawn as Clancy herself. Jed and Johnny Raustmann. Something suddenly clicked into place in Clancy’s brain. Just as she lifted the metal tray she had been setting the night before, it clicked. Again she felt that hypnotic presence behind her, the rough hand on her shoulder as she was turned round abruptly. Johnny Raustmann’s leering face so near her own, the ill-concealed anger in his voice as he issued his warning to her to keep Tamara near the homestead. Something would happen to her, he’d said, if she went poking around any more—and , he had meant it. Clancy’s legs began to wobble the teeniest bit. She put the tray down, and sank into a spindle-legged chair, rearranging her disordered thoughts. What exactly had happened last night? Think back now, she adjured herself.
First, Tammy had been late. She had come up the steps, and Clancy had ticked her off in front of Jed Seaforth and Johnny. And then Tammy had said— ‘ yes, she’d actually said it in front of both men—that she’d been into the Peacock gorges farther than she’d ever been before; far enough to make her very, very late coming home. Then, after dinner, Johnny Raustmann had come to threaten Clancy, to say that Tamara mustn’t be allowed to go so far away again, poking around.
Snakes alive! Why hadn’t she realised it before? Those sheep! Johnny Raustmann must know something about those sheep!
As the full impact of her deductions smote her, Clancy suddenly felt physically sick. Was Johnny Raustmann even now wondering how far Tammy had gone into the range yesterday? Could he possibly suspect that she had actually seen or heard those sheep? Oh, no, that was too horrible to think about! He mustn’t guess, for the sake of Tamara’s own safety, he just mustn’t!
Clancy went back, on wooden legs it seemed to her, to the bedroom she shared with Tamara. She didn’t feel like the same girl who had left it ten minutes before. She didn’t feel like anything or anyone. Some sort of sixth sense took over now, and guided her actions as she said to Tamara, “Poppet, remember what you told me last night? About the sheep?”
Tamara had her head on one side in front of the mirror, nimbly plaiting the last inches of her pigtail. All she said was “Mm,” because she had the elastic band which went on next, held between her lips, but her snub-nosed face had the perky curiosity of a sparrow as she looked in the glass at her sister’s reflected face. No doubt her news had created more of an impression this morning than it had last night, she saw with childish satisfaction.
Clancy took the band and slipped it on, then picked up the ribbons. “Darling, you haven’t told anyone else about the sheep, have you?” She was purposely casual.
“No, not yet, but I think Jed—”
“No, Tammy!” Clancy’s voice was sharp, unwontedly so. She had a horrid vision of Jed’s inanimate form lying beneath the windmill, of Jed’s lifeless body lying—where next? If Johnny had slipped up once, he wouldn’t the next time. There must be a lot at stake before he’d—She controlled her voice with an effort, but there was an urgency in it that made Tamara turn round and stare.
“Tammy, promise me you won’t say a word to anyone until I say you can? Not to Jed, or Johnny, or—or anyone. It’s terribly, terribly important, Tammy. I can’t explain why just yet, but let it be our secret for a few days, and promise not to breathe a , word. It—it just—mightn’t be safe. Please, Tammy,” , she pleaded.
“Well, O.K., Clan. If you say so,” Tamara agreed , reluctantly, “Only—”
“Poppet, if you do this, I promise—cross my heart, spit my death—that you can be the one to tell it when the time comes. After all, it was your find, wasn’t it?”
The little girl beamed her relief.
“All right, Clan. I promise—not a word till you say, and then I’ll tell,” she said importantly.
Clancy’s breath came out in a deep, relaxed sigh. “See you in the kitchen in five minutes. Bless you, Tam!”
She almost ran back, to finish cooking breakfast, and packing the lunches. The sound of footsteps came along the veranda. Jed’s. She’d know them anywhere.
She pushed a tendril of hair back from her brow, spread a liberal helping of cauliflower pickle over the sandwich halves laid with cold meat, and slapped the tops on in what she hoped was a businesslike fashion.
Jed watched, propped against the door-jamb. He was newly shaven—she knew that particular fragrance, had come, in these short weeks, to be acutely aware of its nearness. His hair was plastered down wetly, his shirt open to reveal his strong brown throat. He was immaculate as always. Even his boots, which would soon be caked with thick red dust, gleamed in the light from the single naked bulb which dangled above Clancy’s head. Beneath it, her own hair shone like living gold.
“Good morning, Clancy.”
“Good morning, Jed. Johnny not up yet? Good! I’ll have time to pack up these lunches before we start breakfast, instead of after.” Clancy was pleased with herself. Although she felt lightheaded with shock, her voice sounded surprisingly normal.
“Where’s Tamara? Awake?”
“Yes, just coming, She’ll bring our saddle-bags in. Here’s yours, Jed, and Johnny’s. I hope I gave you plenty yesterday?”
He grinned, his teeth flashing against the teak-brown of his skin. “If you want us to do any work afterwards, you’ll be a bit stingier in future. It was very nice, Clancy. My mother used to make those big yellow slabs of caraway-seed cake, and I hadn’t run across them since. It took me back a few years when I looked in my tucker-bag yesterday.”
Clancy raised her eyes and smiled her pleasure. Seeing Jed’s ‘stern features relaxed and boyish like this, her heart turned over with pain. It made him seem so young, narrowed the gap in their ages. It made all sorts of things seem possible, if only—if only he hadn’t a wonderful girl down there in Adelaide, that lucky girl who was going to have that unchanging, constant warming love of which he had spoken to Tamara.
The moment passed. Clancy had herself in hand again, and when Tamara came hurtling into the kitchen with a saddle-bag over each arm and a rather breathless apology for being so long, she was able to smile at her as well, and say reassuringly, “It’s all right, Tammy. Everything’s under way, and here’s Johnny coming. I’ll dish up the steak if you finish frying the eggs.”
During the busy day that followed, Clancy yet had time to think about things. In fact, she thought, and thought, and thought. The heat was oppressive, and in no time she was bathed in a cloying film of fine dust as she worked her solitary path behind the mob of sheep she was bringing in to the counting-race near the bore. Beyond running out occasionally to bring an errant wether to heel,
the two dogs padded thankfully along in the moving square of shade made by the horse’s body, tongues lolling, blinking in the stifling airlessness. Force of habit had taught them to seek what little shade was offering. Often one would see dogs running underneath the horse-drawn sulky in a passing drover’s outfit. It always amused Clancy, because she was sure it couldn’t be a degree cooler under a moving vehicle than in the open sun—but even a fraction of a degree counted in this weather, she conceded, and they probably reaped the benefit of the slight draught made by the revolving wheels.
Clancy’s thoughts kept bobbing in her brain just like the corks kept bobbing on the brim of her fly-veil as she rode slowly along. The idea that Johnny Raustmann could be up to something questionable filled her with extreme distaste. After all, even though she had come to loathe and fear him for his unwelcome personal attentions, he had stepped into the breach when her mother had needed someone so badly, and things had seemed to go smoothly under his management. Had they really, though? What was it Mr. Parsins, the lawyer, had said? Something about Bunda Downs being an “indifferently run property,” and hadn’t he implied that the new manager had been called in to run it “to the owner’s eventual advantage?”
Clancy had to admit, now she really thought about it, that a place the size of Bunda Downs should really be able to provide little Tammy with a proper education, even if the girls couldn’t have new dresses, or electric irons, and frills of that kind. Surely the wool-cheque from all these sheep should be substantial enough for them all to live in a slightly less frugal manner than that to which they had become accustomed?
Suddenly Clancy found herself wondering how this hadn’t dawned on her before. She recalled now, vividly, Jed Seaforth and Johnny Raustmann facing each other across the dining-table like two warring dogs stiffening for the battle. Jed had said something about checking the stock because he always did when called in to affairs of this kind, and Johnny had been really furious. She could see it now. It meant Jed had been suspicious of something. Maybe even the bank manager and the solicitors had been suspicious of something, and that’s how they had asked for Jed’s help. In fact, they had all been suspicious except Clancy. Here she was, the person who had been on the spot all the time, who should have seen how things were going. How could she have been so stupid as not to see? How could she have been so blind?