Dust of the Land

by J. H. Fletcher

  She told herself he would be back when he came, but it was no use. She poured herself a drink but didn’t touch it; she would wait until Garth was home again.

  She looked at her watch. An hour and a half now.

  Her nerves twitched. Should she go and look for him? She remembered Colin riding off in a rage and Garth saying there was no point searching for him in the dark, yet she could not sit here indefinitely and do nothing.

  ‘Another fifteen minutes,’ she said to the empty room. ‘Then I’ll look for him, dark or not.’

  The fifteen minutes passed. She could bear it no longer. She had just called Maisie to look after Peace when she heard a whicker and the soft thud of hooves.

  Thank God!

  Until she went out to greet him and realised the stallion had come back without its rider. No doubt about it now; Garth was missing.

  It took her five minutes to saddle up and whistle for Garth’s dog. She thrust the shirt that Garth had been wearing earlier under Blue’s nose.

  ‘Find the boss,’ she said. ‘Find him.’

  She rode out, Blue questing ahead. It was impossible to ride fast; in the shadows the darkness was absolute and where the moonlight shone through the leaves the jumbled pattern of black and white confused rather than guided. Soon they were climbing. This was the way Garth usually came, to the bluff with its views to the distant hills. He had told her he had come here for days at a time after his first wife died. He had come after Colin’s death, too.

  As she climbed, the trees fell back. The ridge was a blaze of silver light. The Aborigines disliked coming out at night for fear of Bima, the spirit woman whose infidelity had brought death to the world. That was why Bella had not asked them to join her; she was confident Blue would find him, if he was there to be found. Anxiety gnawed, just the same, as they climbed. What would she do if…

  ‘No,’ she told the darkness, swallowing her fear. ‘We shall have no ifs here.’

  They were halfway up the ridge when Blue, circling on either side of the almost-invisible track, began to bark. Bella was out of the saddle in a wink and running to where the dog was baying on the edge of a patch of shadow. They had found Garth. He was conscious but unable to move.

  ‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’ve busted my bloody leg,’ he said.

  ‘Let me see.’

  She felt with both hands. The thigh bone felt all right but when she explored below the knee…

  ‘Bloody hell, woman!’ Garth said, panting. ‘You trying to kill me, or what?’

  This was the second time she had crouched beside a man who had come off a horse.

  ‘It’s broken all right,’ she said. ‘I could feel the bone.’

  ‘Now she tells me. What kept you so long, anyway?’

  Garth was weak and in obvious pain, yet still managed a grin. Old not-to-be-beaten Garth. Bella was caught halfway between laughter and tears.

  ‘Had to pretty myself up first,’ she said. ‘Have to look good for my old man.’

  Such nonsense things to be saying to an injured man on a bare mountain. Such important things.

  She had remembered to bring a flask of brandy with her. ‘Have some of this.’

  He swigged a healthy mouthful.

  ‘Leave some for me,’ Bella said.

  ‘You’re not the wounded hero,’ Garth said.

  And gulped another mouthful before she could snatch the flask back.

  ‘Hero? Is that what you are?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘A real hero would have crawled back. Saved me the trouble of coming out in the dark.’

  ‘I’m not that heroic,’ Garth said.

  Although he did a pretty good job – not even a squeak as she levered him up. His arm draped around her shoulders, with Blue dancing anxiously about, she led him hopping up the slope to the horse waiting on the track.

  How she got him into the saddle Bella never knew but somehow she did, then took the bridle and led horse and rider back down the hill. When they got to the homestead she told him she was driving him to the hospital in Wyndham.

  ‘What’s wrong with the Flying Doctor?’

  ‘In the middle of the night? In any case,’ she told him, ‘they’re only interested in serious cases.’

  Garth was indignant. ‘If your leg felt like mine you’d think it was serious enough.’

  ‘Ah, but it doesn’t, you see. I don’t fall off my horse.’

  She still didn’t know how it had happened nor did she care. Her heart was dancing because she had found him and he was safe: that was what mattered. Or would be safe, once she got him to hospital.

  She eased him into the ute.

  ‘You stay there,’ she told him. ‘I’ll check on Peace, but she should be right until morning. Then I’ll be with you.’

  ‘Waste of petrol,’ Garth said. ‘I’ll be coming home again directly.’

  The hospital had news for him. They kept him in a month, because the leg was slow to heal. They said Garth was the worst patient they’d ever had. Given a choice they’d have chucked him out weeks before, but until the leg came right he was going nowhere.

  ‘You’ll have to do the first muster of the Dry without me,’ he said. ‘Reckon you can manage?’

  Some questions did not deserve an answer. Two weeks later she was back.

  ‘How did it go?’ Garth asked.

  Like a dream would have been the truth but Bella was too wise to say that. ‘It would have been much better with you.’

  ‘No trouble from O’Malley?’

  ‘He was keeping his eye out for us, especially along the Archer Ridge. He had his boys everywhere.’

  ‘He say anything?’

  ‘“I’m keeping my eye on you, Mrs Tucker…”’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I fluttered my eyelashes at him. “I’m honoured,” I told him.’

  Garth was delighted. ‘You never!’

  ‘He was so horrified he rode off and left us to it. That wasn’t the end of it, either. There were a hundred cleanskins in a draw. Could have been ours, or his. No way to know. So I waited until he was gone and then…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We drove them down the hill into Miranda Downs.’

  Garth said later it was that news, more than anything else, that put him on his feet again.

  As the time drew near for the birth of her second child, Bella made her plans. Unmoved by Garth’s protests, this one really would be born at home, with old Maisie doing the necessary.

  ‘I am fit. I am strong. What could possibly go wrong?’

  Nothing did. Whether having it at home made any difference was unlikely, but on the fourteenth of August 1946, two days after Bella’s own birthday, the baby was born at Miranda Downs without incident and with little of the pain she had experienced before.

  Bella would have liked to call him Garth-Charles: Garth for his father, Charles for her lost love, but she knew Garth would never permit his son to have a poncey, double-barrelled name. She compromised by calling him neither Garth nor Charles, but Richard. Garth didn’t care; he was a boy and thriving; that was what mattered.

  Even the breastfeeding seemed easier, this time round.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Below the house a small stream zigzagged between a complication of tiny hillocks, marsh and dense bush until it reached Saurian Creek. The creek had been named by Garth’s father for the crocodiles that had inhabited it when he had first arrived at the newly acquired Miranda Downs, back in the 1880s. The crocs were mostly gone now, although one occasionally ventured up from the Carlisle during the Wet, and that was enough for Bella to warn Peace not to play in the creek during the rainy months.

  To five-year-old Peace, prohibition was another word for challenge, and challenges were not to be denied.

  One day she sneaked out when no one was looking and wandered down to one of the little streams that flowed into the creek. She was not heavily into re
ading yet but liked looking at the illustrations in books, particularly children’s How to Do It books which were just coming back on to the market after the war, and had come across one showing how to construct your own mud dam.

  It wasn’t much of a stream, not more than two feet wide, but it was gently flowing, with muddy banks and a sandy bed. It might have been designed for the purpose. Peace, crouching amid reeds and in no time up to her ears in mud, set to work. She used a flat stone to excavate a diversion, watching with fascination as the water wormed its way with increasing confidence along its new channel, creating tiny earth islands that were quickly inundated by the rising flood. She piled mud in a wall across the stream’s main bed, blocked off the diversion and sat observing as the water returned to its proper course. She patched the odd leak that appeared in the mud wall. The level of the stream rose while Peace stared, enchanted by what she had achieved. The wall did not last long; the water pressure grew too great and within minutes it had been breached. Soon the whole structure had vanished but in Peace’s mind it remained as an enduring source of wonder, because for those few minutes she had changed the face of the land.

  It created in her a sense of purpose that, allied to her successful defiance of Mother’s authority, brought an awareness of her own power that would remain with her always.

  A year later, two weeks after her sixth birthday, Peace started at the school in Wyndham that had been set up to cater for the needs of the Outback kids. They stayed at various boarding houses around the town during the week, parents dropping them off first thing Monday and collecting them Friday afternoon. It was the first time most of the new pupils had been away from home and some were tearful and homesick but Peace had as much brass as a band and took it all in her stride.

  Just as well, because from the first she fell foul of her teacher. Mrs Barker was well intentioned but had her ways, one of which was to assume that none of the new children could read or write. With many of the kids this was correct, but Peace could do both, an inconvenience that Mrs Barker seemed to think came close to insubordination. Certainly she had no intention of allowing Peace’s unexpected literacy to change her routine, so for the first week, until Bella collected her on the Friday afternoon, Peace sat while Mrs Barker explained in excruciating detail the intricacies of a children’s basic reader, page one of which contained in block capitals the words PAT SAT IN A PIT, with a coloured drawing showing a child, presumably Pat, and the sandpit in which he was sitting. Peace did not try to hide her boredom, an attitude that had her standing in the corner two days into her first week.

  ‘It’s stupid,’ she told Bella when she picked her up on the Friday afternoon. ‘I’m not going back.’

  ‘Yes you are,’ Bella told her.

  It was an argument that Peace had no hope of winning but something happened in the second week that gave her hope that things might not be too bad after all. She made a friend.

  Charlene Ludwig was as tough as teak, a year older than Peace. She had been brought up hard, and it showed. From her Peace learnt a number of useful tricks: how to steal, although never from her mates; how to lie without the lie showing in her face; how to eat her fear so that no one knew how scared she was.

  ‘They must never see you’re afraid,’ Charlene counselled her.

  One day they were confronted by Willy Brown and his mates, and Peace observed Charlene put her advice into practice. Willy was eight and big for his age, with bright red hair, a pale skin blotched with freckles and red-rimmed, piggy eyes. He was a bully, and had two followers very like him. They had a cocky way of strutting about, their scowls terrorising children smaller or weaker than themselves, and they thought they owned the world.

  They watched as Peace and Charlene approached.

  Both girls were carrying the little cases that were the standard issue at school. Peace was no softie but she was a realist; there were three boys, all older and stronger than they were, and it was hard to see how two girls could hope to get the better of them, but Charlene marched on without a pause. Willy stood waiting but Charlene did not hesitate. She walked right up to him as though he were not there at all. At the last moment Willy stepped in front of her, forcing her to stop. Peace, walking just behind her friend, saw that Willy was a good head taller than she was.

  ‘Where you think you’re goin’?’ Willy said.

  Charlene looked up at him. ‘Wha’?’

  ‘You stupid or somen?’ Willy leant down and yelled, right into Charlene’s face. ‘I said where you think you’re goin’?’

  Exactly what Charlene had been waiting for. She did not speak but leant back on her heels, swung her hard case horizontally and caught Willy a tremendous clout above his eye.

  Willy staggered back, hands to his face, blood welling between his fingers. Peace thought Charlene would take off but she did not. She stood her ground, the case swinging easily from her hand, and it was Willy who backed away: one step, a second, then turning and running. The mates ran with him. When they were at a safe distance they turned.

  ‘I’ll getcher fer that,’ Willy yelled. ‘See if I don’t.’

  Charlene knew better. ‘Not him,’ she said contemptuously. ‘He’s yellow. We’ll have no more trouble from him.’

  She was right. From that day on, Willy Brown kept out of their way. Charlene was a good teacher in other ways, too. She taught Peace not only how to look after herself but what was valuable in life and what was not. You stood by your mates, no matter what, and you never told the authorities anything.

  Peace always reckoned she learnt more from Charlene Ludwig than she ever did from Mrs Barker.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  It was a brilliant June day, just after Peace’s seventh birthday, the last day of the school holidays, and Bella had been expecting Garth and Peace since mid-afternoon.

  Tomorrow Bella would be dropping her off at the start of the new term and today, as a farewell treat, she had finally yielded to her daughter’s pleading to go with the father she worshipped to collect cattle from a fenced stock camp five miles up the Tait River valley.

  A mob of cleanskins had been brought in a week earlier for branding and tagging before being loaded for delivery to the meatworks. Some of the young bulls in particular would be as wild as tigers, as liable to charge as run the other way; getting them into the trucks might be a tricky business but Peace had been on at her for months and Garth had promised to keep an eye on her.

  ‘She’s only seven,’ Bella said.

  ‘If she’s going to be a cowgirl,’ Garth said, ‘she has to start learning some time.’

  Bella wasn’t sure she wanted Peace to be a cowgirl, although she seemed a more likely candidate for life on the land than Richard, who showed signs of being studious by nature. But cattle and dust lay at the root of their life in the Pilbara and the child couldn’t be protected from them forever.

  Garth had recently picked up a high-axle jeep fitted with a bull bar in front of the radiator, so provided Peace stayed in the vehicle she should be safe enough.

  ‘Just don’t let her ride on the bar, okay?’

  The hands balanced on the bar and jumped off when they needed to throw an animal for branding. It was a trick Peace would want to copy, but what was jake for a seasoned man was not for a seven-year-old.

  ‘Stop fretting, Duchess.’ Garth was fifty-two but still strong, and his blue eyes laughed at her. ‘I’ll look after her, no worries. We’ll be home before you know it.’

  With tea nearly ready, she left it to Mary to finish off and strolled up the track to meet the boys on their return. She enjoyed the walk. Her days were so full of things that had to be done that she barely had time to notice their passing. It was good to have time to breathe for a change, to think where she was in her life and what the future might hold for them all.

  She loved her life on Miranda Downs: she had a good husband, two wonderful children and few financial worries. There were days when her heart swelled with gratitude at the blessings l
ife had brought her. She still found herself missing Charles Hardy and knew she always would, but the intensity of her feelings was less than it had been once. There were times when she wondered what her life would have been like had things worked out differently but there were also weeks on end when she did not think of Charles at all.

  There were other days, though, when restless Bella found herself needing more than she had. What that might be she had no idea, but knew only that she was thirty-three, there was a challenging world out there, and time was passing her by.

  She had turned the renamed Tucker Meatworks into a highly profitable venture, but that was no more than an appetiser. It was not the end but the beginning: of what she was not sure.

  She was a mile from the house when she saw the jeep. It was coming fast, bucking and lurching, and Bella knew the driver must have his foot flat on the accelerator. Something had to be wrong. Her breath froze in her chest.

  The jeep skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust. Garth’s haggard face stared out at her.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Peace has had a fall. I’m going to radio the Flying Doctor.’

  ‘What sort of fall?’

  ‘Not good.’

  Fear was one thing; having it confirmed was infinitely worse. Not Peace! It could not be!

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘On the back seat.’

  So she was. Bella flung herself into the vehicle.

  ‘Get on with it, then!’

  Garth slammed it into gear and roared away as Bella turned to look at her child. Peace was unconscious, her forehead a mass of blood. Crippled by fear, Bella turned to glare at Garth.

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘She fell, hit her head.’

  The jeep was bucking as it screamed down the track. Garth would have them over if he wasn’t careful, but Bella didn’t care about that. The only thing that mattered was her child.

  ‘Fell?’ Bella had to yell to be heard above the engine’s roar. ‘How could she fall out of the jeep?’

  ‘She wasn’t in the jeep. She was on the bar.’

  She had known it. Peace had been hurt, perhaps killed, by someone’s stupidity. Her mind threw up every barrier against it, but it was no use. Terror remained, despite her efforts, and, with terror… Rage, black and overwhelming.