An hour after leaving the hotel, the forest abruptly ended at a gate, beyond which was grassland divided by the track which merged with the dwellings of a distant farm homestead. As though halted by an ambush, when the truck stopped outside the main house it was immediately surrounded by shouting children of all ages, an enormous woman and a tall, crippled man adding their welcome to the din.
Mrs Lake took charge of Bony, who noted two rangy youths lifting hauling gear and tackle to the truck, before being metaphorically carried into the large kitchen-living-room. The others trooped in soon afterwards, and all were regaled with “tough” cups of tea and huge mounds of buttered scones and buttery cakes, the butter being white and obviously home-made.
“Fred’s about three hours ahead of you,” roared Mr Lake, as one long accustomed to roaring to make himself understood. The commotion was terrific. A lanky youth leaned against the wall. A small tot clawed at Bony’s trouser leg and screamed to be taken up. A lath of a girl regarded him solemnly, and her mother’s vast front shook as she tried to edge in an opinion or two. Outside, calves bellowed and dogs barked and the chooks crowed to vie with the shrieking of a caged cockatoo.
The rattle and creak of the truck was hospital-quiet by comparison.
Two of the youths now stood on the truck maintaining hold by gripping the rear edge of the cabin. With them were numerous dogs which never ceased to yap excitedly, and though they had brought pandemonium with them, Moss and Dick shouted with unnecessary vigour. About nothing. They were as two small boys taking a train ride to the zoo.
Like a sardine in the middle of the tin, Bony managed to roll a cigarette before they passed through the farther boundary gate. He was thoroughly enjoying himself, and not far removed from the exuberant mood of his companions. The farm left behind, the forest closed upon them, and the track no longer so clearly defined as heretofore. Previously it had attempted a grade, had found an easy way among the hills: now it seemed to have taken leave of its senses and lost all caution.
Moss Way concentrated on his driving, and Dick Lake did remarkable feats with the wisp of cigarette which dangled from between his lips. The truck lurched and the engine roared and whined, and the back wheels bumped and sometimes felt as though springing off the ground. They were mounting a slope, following a trail left by Ayling’s car.
They topped a ridge, but the trees were so massed that nothing could be seen of a vista, and then they were rolling down a deceptive slope, the truck in low gear to assist the brakes. Across a gully, splashing through water, and on and upwards for hours, or so it seemed, and every yard the world limited by the forest of trees which blotted out compass points and often held the sun at bay.
“Old bitch’s boilin’,” remarked Dick.
“Yair. Not as good as she was,” observed Moss. “Reckon she’ll go to the top without seizing up?”
“Oughter.”
The dogs were now quiet. The engine went through its repertoire, and constantly the driver shifted gears with lightning rapidity. Bony gripped the seat edge to keep his body down and his head from crashing against the roof, for the farther they proceeded the rougher the track.
Presently the trees thinned, became smaller. The sky with its sun began to take charge of the world, and swiftly dominated it. Then the trees gave out altogether and they were crawling just below a red-rock ridge, here like tessellated castles, there like a city of church spires. The trees became an arboreal floor, crumpled like a carpet after a party and littered with outcrops much like discarded orange peel. Only the crudest work had been done to make the trail sufficiently level to prevent a vehicle from toppling over, and how these men expected to bring back and down a load of ten tons was beyond Bony. It was hair-raising enough to be going up in the empty truck.
Eventually it seemed that the very sky itself stopped further progress, and they arrived at a little plateau where the truck stopped, the engine collapsed, and silence was a blow.
“There she is,” Dick Lake said, opening his door and getting out. The dogs were already to ground to welcome him. The youths joined them, and Bony got down to stretch his arms and legs.
“Is this Sweet Fairy Ann?” he asked.
“Yair. Beaut, isn’t she?” replied one of Dick’s brothers. “Comin’ up t’other side’s worse, though.”
“See a long way,” said Moss, dragging a tin of water from the truck and proceeding to fill the radiator. “Not a drunk’s track, this one.”
“Why I said to bring no beer,” supplemented Dick. “Even Fred wouldn’t tackle this track with a drink in him, and if he tried to, my old man’d stop him.”
“Where did the bullock wagon go down?” asked Bony, and was told it was farther on.
“We leavin’ the tackle here?” inquired a youth.
“No, better take it down below the Slide.”
Even the engine sounded refreshed by the rest, and again all aboard the truck rolled across the plateau and gave Bony a shock. From the edge there was no track bar the corrugated rock as steep as a house roof for a hundred feet or more to a ledge which curved from sight. The vehicle crept down the roof to the ledge, and then hugged the rising wall of rock upon one side and shrank from the gulf on the other. Bony looked down. There was no bottom to the gulf save a faint white mist.
He wanted to get out and walk, but the wall prevented one door from being opened and there was nothing but space beyond the bottom of the other.
“Great view, ain’t she?” obtruded Moss’s voice. “That mountain over there we call Lightning Bill ’cos every thunderstorm coming across belts hell out of it. Wouldn’t live there for all the tea in China. Hate lightning. Never could stand for it.”
“Me, too,” supplemented Dick. “Them jungle storms put the wind up me.”
The ledge slanted and curved about overhanging shoulders reminding Bony of that miniature ledge leading down to the boys’ pirate cave. He kept his gaze upon distant peaks, and the soles of his feet unpleasantly tingled. Lightning he thought preferable to heights, and to come out this way for ten tons of firewood appeared ridiculously uneconomical. He said, cheerfully:
“I wonder if Mr Penwarden has knocked up the coffins we ordered.”
Moss laughed and Dick spat outside and chuckled. They were quite happy, and this made Bony inclined to annoyance. The ledge angled sharply, and he was positively sure that at the angle it was not wide enough to take the truck wheels.
Beyond the angle the gulf ended at a rock wall joining this with another mountain. Bony was greatly relieved until he saw that the wall was, indeed, just a wall and that beyond it the ledge went on to cross a precipitous slope of loose shingle.
“This is where the bullock wagon and all went down,” remarked Dick. “Old Eli Wessex tells of it. He knew the driver and his offsider. They never found ’em ... or bullocks ... or the wagon. Got buried under the mullock what follered ’em down to the river.”
“An’ diddled old Penwarden outer his price for coffins,” added Moss. “Looks like Fred’s done a bit of patching up here and there.”
The cut across the slope bore evidence of someone’s labour with a shovel, and without hesitation the driver permitted the truck to negotiate the cut. Bony expected the entire slope to give way, and again he wondered at the stupidity of coming over this mountain for a mere ten tons of firewood, which could so easily have been secured on the track back from Lake’s farm, when he thought he had the answer. Fred Ayling lived in this vast wilderness, quite without reason save the one of living adventurously, and these friends of his were making the trip because it was hazardous and because it was beyond the mundane orbit of their lives.
Thinking thus, Bony felt relief when the truck crossed the slope and the ledge became a trail following an easier grade again to enter the forest. Half an hour, perhaps, and abruptly they came to a hut built of logs, with a bark roof, and a smaller shed roof over an open fireplace. The fire was blazing, and billies hung from a cross pole. Fred Ayling stood by the fire, and be
hind him pranced a pert Australian terrier.
“Good day, blokes!” he shouted.
“Good day-ee, Fred!” came the chorus, as the truck disgorged its human freight. “How’s things?”
“Okey doke.” Fred tossed fistfuls of tea into boiling water. “Better have it right now. Gonna rain soon and hard, and the Slide won’t take too much weight.” Grey eyes gleamed when they encountered Bony. “Day, Mr Rawlings!”
Chapter Sixteen
Reactions
ONE OF THE boys brought a tucker box, and another carried Bony’s lunch basket, and everyone was invited into Fred Ayling’s house. The house contained but one room floored with rubble from termite nests. The furniture was scant and fashioned with adze and axe but so well built that Ed Penwarden would have been slow to condemn. For seats there were packing cases. Wall shelves bore the marks of the adze. They were laden with books, a camera, a microscope. Axes, protected by leather sheaths, and two rifles were suspended above the fireplace, and several framed photographs hung upon the walls. In addition to a fixed bunk there was a camp stretcher, the latter being in use.
Ayling brought in a large billy of tea and slammed it on the table to hurry the leaves to settle. Dick grinned with joy and his brother evinced great respect for their host. The small terrier defied the visiting dogs and kept them outside.
“How d’you know it’s going to rain?” Bony asked. “Not a cloud in the sky.”
“Don’t matter,” replied Fred, filling tin pannikins. “Help yourselves to milk and sugar, gents. It’s going to rain, and how! The spiders are flying.”
“Grow’d wings, did they?” questioned Moss Way.
“Yair, this morning before I got home. Musta hatched yesterday, or the day before. Never seen ’em do that in winter. You blokes’d better load up quick and do a get, or you might be here for a fortnight or a month. Even the ants aren’t liking it”
“What are they doin’? Carryin’ their eggs around?” asked Dick.
“No, shiftin’ the cows.”
One of the boys laughed, respectfully, and Ayling explained.
“You see, when the spiders hatch, the first thing they do is look for something to eat. As there are thousands of ’em in a sort of flock, a lot of ’em get eaten. The rest climb to a height, such as a dead tree, and they wait for a wind to come. You know, a soft wind that you can hardly feel. When the wind comes, they let out a yard or two of gauzy silk which the wind carries upwards with the baby hangin’ to the end of it. The wind might take ’em for only a few yards, and it might carry ’em for miles. Where they come down is where they stop and grow up and mate and have a few million young ’uns of their own.”
They stood eating and drinking the hot tea.
“That right that the females always eat their men?” inquired Moss.
“They will if they get the chance, but sometimes they don’t get it. Sometimes the old man’s a bit cunnin’. I seen one old feller catch a fly, wrap him up nice and comfortable with web and give that to the female to take the edge off her hunger. It’s hunger what makes the female so fatal. I never seen it done, but in a book I’ve got the naturalist tells how the buck spider will rope his female’s front legs so that after the mating she won’t be able to catch him.”
“Good idea. No woman’s gonna catch me,” vowed Dick.
“Don’t like spiders,” said Moss, and was supported by one of the lads.
“What’s wrong with ’em?” questioned Ayling. “Spiders are man’s greatest friend. If it wasn’t for the spiders, man would never have survived the insects.”
“Don’t like ’em, anyhow,” persisted Moss. “The bigger they are the less I like ’em. And them cows being shifted by the ants? Didn’t know you had any cows.”
Ayling laughed, and the others joined in.
“Go on,” urged Moss “I’ll be the mug.”
“Well, the ants keep aphis like we keep cows, and for the same reason. They look after ’em, and they milk ’em. They pasture ’em, and see to it that the weather don’t catch ’em bending. I could show you if I had the time. But I haven’t, and you’re loadin’ up and gettin’ away snappy. Haven’t got the tucker to feed all you coves for a month.”
While this conversation had been proceeding, Bony was noting the more intimate details of Fred Ayling’s abode, primarily to assess the man’s character. The books on the crowded shelves were all protected with brown paper covers with no writing on the spines to indicate their subjects. There was an enlarged picture of an elderly couple, and in the man there was distinct likeness to Fred. There was another photographic enlargement of three young men in uniform ... one a sailor and two soldiers.
“That’s us,” announced Dick Lake, observing Bony’s interest “Me and Fred and Eldred Wessex.”
“Better get going instead of yapping,” interrupted Ayling.
Bony stepped closer to the picture of three happy-go-lucky men so new to uniform they were still self-conscious of it. The second soldier said to be Eldred Wessex resembled in no degree either his father or his mother. The chin was weak, and the high forehead was too narrow. He had his sister’s nose, and the intensity of his sister’s dark eyes, but nothing of the sweetness of her mouth and the firmness of her chin.
The others were leaving the cabin, and Bony went out after them. Moss Way tended the engine of the truck. The boys removed the ropes and tackle, and Dick Lake with Fred Ayling sauntered away among the trees. The sunlight was charged with gold and was warm ... too warm and too golden. The birds were happy, or sounded so until one paused to listen intently for the subtle note of nervousness.
Bony went with those on the truck.
All about the camp were stacks of logs, each eight feet long and not less than fifteen inches through, each barked and without a particle of rot. Some had been split from logs of much greater girth, and here and there stood the stumps of trees having a circumference of many feet. An inescapable item of the scene was that nowhere had Fred Ayling’s work resulted in devastation.
The men proceeded to load the truck, and Bony studied the manipulation of ropes and counterweights enabling Ayling to use a cross-cut saw, and at another place he found a small contrivance by which Ayling was able to haul his logs together into a stack.
A strange man to live here alone in the forest, to fall the giants by his own efforts and to deal with them by his ingenuity ... and take time to study the insects and the birds. Happy to be a king without courtiers rather than a slave in the economic machine.
They loaded the logs and roped and twitched the load. They climbed into the cabin and atop the load and drove away along the trail, the engine pulling in second gear, slow and steady. Arrived at the cut across the loose side of the mountain, the truck was stopped and all got to ground, save Dick and Ayling.
“Better walk,” Moss told Bony.
Dick Lake proceeded to take the truck across the Slide. The others halted. Moss said:
“No reason for all of us to go down ... if she gives.”
“You mean that it’s possible that track may give way?” asked Bony.
“Could do. Not likely, though, as Fred’s had a good look at it,” came the cheerful answer.
They watched the loaded truck crawling across the Slide ... all for a load of wood ... all for a social visit to a pal. It was preposterous, and Bony was aghast, for he was sure those about him were not braggarts. They began the crossing when the truck had reached the far side, and Bony glanced upward to appreciate the smooth slope and downwards to see the same smooth slope of gravel extending to the edge of a tree belt hiding the river. How far down ... it appeared to be a mile or more.
Beyond the Slide, Fred Ayling left the truck and turned back after cheery goodbyes and a cool nod to Bony. The truck went on along the safer ledge and as Bony, with the others, followed on foot, he wondered if imagination gave the impression that Fred Ayling today was a trifle less friendly. It appeared possible that he was displeased with Dick Lake for talking about the pi
cture of the sailor and two soldiers.
The truck stopped, and when the walkers reached it, the driver pointed to the western sky where the knife-edge of a vast blue-black cloud mass was midway from southern horizon to zenith.
“Gonna come all right,” Dick said. “Must get past the old man’s place ’fore she does.”
They were halted at the foot of the roof-like slab of rock atop Sweet Fairy Ann, and the boys tossed down the rope and tackle. The tackle was fixed to the front of the truck and to a rocky projection, and Bony was offered a place with the team on the free end of the rope. The engine was revved, and in bottom gear proceeded to force the truck up the incline ... the crew on the rope running back, taking up the slack and giving just that added assistance to bring the vehicle to the summit.
Thereafter, Bony rode in the cabin with Moss Way and Dick, who man-handled the steering wheel, and when they entered the forest again the sunshine seemed to turn green ... until quite abruptly it vanished altogether.
The vehicle lurched and swayed, but the bumps and jars were absent. They managed to cross a wet patch by a fraction of effort from the driving wheels, and once were bogged and had again to employ the rope and tackle to get free. Dick answered Bony shortly. Moss said nothing, obviously anxious about the weather. The gaiety had left them, and Bony sought for a reasonable cause and failed to nail it.
Again they were welcomed by the Lakes and their numerous family. The dogs yelped and the calves bellowed and the children screamed. The Lakes were loath to let them go, and when they did there remained but little of the clear sky and that a brilliant sea-green.
“Looks like Fred’s spiders knew something,” Moss said.
“Hope the rain keeps off till we pass the Wessex place. Didn’t bring no chains, did we?”
“No,” replied Dick.
Further silence, which Bony broke.
“What made Fred Ayling take to the bush like that?”
“Just his way of it, I suppose,” answered Moss. “Was in love with Mary Wessex, wasn’t he, Dick?”
The New Shoe Page 12