Bushfire Rescue

by Justin D'Ath

  Coughing up grit, half blinded by dust, I dug myself out. A few metres away, almost directly above me, Susie was struggling to find traction on the near-vertical slope. Her hooves sank down to their fetlocks, but that didn’t stop her kicking. Every kick showered me with rocks and dirt and swirling dust. Rolling out of the way, I scrambled on all fours up the slope and grabbed her bridle.

  ‘Easy,’ I gasped. ‘Take it easy, Suze.’

  For a moment she quietened. Her eyes rolled back to look at me. I stroked her dirt- and sweat-streaked face. ‘Okay, we can get out if this if we stay calm,’ I said, talking to myself as much as to Susie.

  There was a rumbling sound. The ground trembled. I looked up and saw an extraordinary sight. Whole trees were moving! We had started a full-scale avalanche.

  A boulder went thumping past so close that I felt the rush of air. More huge rocks rolled towards us. Susie let out a high-pitched scream. She reared, lost her balance, tipped slowly over and landed on her back, four legs flailing in the air. The ground shifted beneath her. A section of the mountainside was slipping down into the valley, taking Susie with it. The little mare began moving away from me, sliding down the slope on her back. I stood transfixed, my mind working in slow motion.

  This is my fault, I realised. I had got her into this. If Susie died, the blame would rest squarely on my shoulders.

  I launched myself across the sliding ground and managed to grab her reins. A tumbling rock hit me on the hip. Ignoring the pain, I leaned back against Susie’s weight and dragged her around until gravity took hold and rolled her back onto her hooves. Nostrils flaring, eyes wide in fear, the terrified horse kicked and struggled to get a footing.

  ‘Steady, Suze,’ I cried, ducking out of the way of another tumbling boulder. I held her reins firmly. Even though I was quivering inside, I tried to make my voice calm. ‘Follow me.’

  I led Susie at right-angles across the rumbling, shifting slope. It was hard to stay upright. My feet slipped and skidded. I’d lost a boot when I fell off Susie and sharp stones bruised my foot through my sock. More boulders hurtled past. Tree stumps shook. Suddenly a miniature crevasse opened at our feet. We leapt across it. And not a moment too soon. Where the crevasse had been seconds earlier, now there was a river of rocks and scree and tumbling boulders as tonnes of unstoppable debris went crashing into the valley below.

  Susie needed no further encouragement. Side by side, the little palomino and I scrambled for our lives.

  5

  IN THE NICK OF TIME

  Somehow we made it to solid ground. The mountainside below had stopped moving. A pall of dust hung in the air. Susie was trembling. Dirt and dust clung to her damp coat. She was a brown horse now. I patted her sweaty mane and my hands turned brown too. She nickered softly and nuzzled my shoulder. It was a friendly gesture, but because of the steep gradient I nearly lost my balance.

  ‘Hey, take it easy,’ I said, laughing for no reason. I guess I was just thankful to be alive.

  I studied the skyline. The avalanche had carried us about fifty metres back down the slope. Now it was roughly two hundred metres to the top. It was a very steep climb. Could I manage it with one boot missing? I decided I could. By my reckoning, there were still eight or ten minutes left before the truck passed on the other side of the spur. It wasn’t nearly enough time, but maybe I could get close enough to read the truck’s rego number. It was our only hope of getting Kosciusko Rex back.

  I no longer thought of the twenty thousand dollar reward. It was Pop’s pedigree bull that mattered. Nan reckoned he was worth as much as a house!

  ‘Find your way home, Suze,’ I said, giving her a smack on the rump. It made me sad to watch her go down the side of Copperhead Spur towards the green strip of farmland far below, but the last section of the climb was too steep for a horse. I removed my helmet and hung it on a bush.

  I won’t be needing that any longer, I thought.

  How wrong I was.

  It took me three or four minutes to get to the top. It was a nearly vertical climb and I was minus one boot. By the time I got to the top, I was exhausted, dripping with sweat and dying of thirst. It wasn’t even midday, yet the temperature was soaring. It felt close to forty degrees. What a fool I’d been to leave the water bottle fastened to Susie’s saddle! Limping because of my bruised foot, I crossed the narrow rocky saddle and stopped in my tracks.

  Shishkebab! Looming over the mountains, three or four kilometres to my left, was an enormous column of smoke. It hung over the shimmering landscape like the mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion. Huge, motionless, menacing, it filled half the sky. I hadn’t seen it earlier because Copperhead Spur had shielded it from view. The absence of wind meant that the column rose straight up for several thousand metres, until a slight movement in the upper atmosphere sent a faint smoky haze in my direction. That explained the strange brown shadow that made the landscape dull and the eerie redness of the sun.

  It was a bushfire, a big one. Alone at the top of Copperhead Spur, I watched the smoke and my skin prickled. I knew there was no danger – it was too far away to pose a threat – but its sheer size was awesome. It would be pretty scary if it was closer – in the valley below, for instance. I wondered if there would be any way to escape it.

  Corcoran Road traced a pale wriggling path through the forest far below. There was no sign of the truck yet. It was probably five or six minutes away.

  One kilometre in five minutes, I thought, surveying the steep access trail that ran down this side of Copperhead Spur, too. It wasn’t impossible. Competitors at the Olympics could run a kilometre and a half in under four minutes. But I was no Olympian. And this was almost straight down. If I tried to run, there was a high possibility I would break my neck. Plus, I was wearing only one boot. I was never going to save Pop’s bull.

  ‘Sorry Rex,’ I said, and looked round for a shady spot to rest and cool down.

  I was about to make my way towards some snowgums when a flash of reflected sunlight caught my eye. Far to the right, the small rectangular shape of the black truck came inching around a bend. The motorbike was in front. It looked like a tiny speck. Moments later both vehicles disappeared into another fold in the thickly forested foothills.

  If only I could fly, I thought.

  Leaves rustled behind me. I spun around, expecting to see a kangaroo or a wallaby. Instead, Susie trotted out of the snowgums. She’d followed me!

  ‘Susie, you’re a legend,’ I gasped, surprised and pleased. ‘You got here in the nick of time.’

  6

  OFF THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

  The ride down the side of Copperhead Spur was mad! If I’d had time to think about it, I would have chickened out. But the sight of the truck, and then Susie’s unexpected arrival, somehow made me act without considering the risks.

  For the first fifty or sixty metres the drop was nearly vertical. It felt like we were jumping off the edge of the world. We went into free-fall. I lay back against Susie’s rump, gripping the saddle with my knees. My stomach was way up in my ribcage and my eyes were scrunched tightly closed. Down, down, down we plummeted.

  I felt a jarring thump. Then another. Then a succession of thumps and a clatter of sliding rocks and flying hooves. I opened my eyes. Susie was still on her feet. Even more amazing, I was still on her back. But only just. My backside was taking a beating. My feet spiralled in the stirrups. My body and arms flopped out of control. I concentrated solely on staying in the saddle. There was nothing else below me, as far as I could see. Above me was a perfect view of the wide smoky sky, interrupted every ten seconds when a towering electricity pylon flashed by.

  Somehow we made it. I don’t know how long it took to get from the top of Copperhead Spur to the road. Enough time for my whole life to flash before my eyes. Fourteen years crammed into one thousand metres of free-fall. I was dazed and giddy as I swung out of the saddle and planted my quaking feet on Corcoran Road.

  It felt so-o-o-o-o good to have solid g
round beneath me again.

  So-o-o-o-o good to be alive.

  Above us, a long curtain of drifting dust traced the path of our suicidal descent. I was shocked by the steepness. Did we really come down that? I patted Susie on her mud-and sweat-darkened shoulders. Both of us were trembling.

  I hadn’t forgotten our mission.

  ‘What are we going to do about the truck, Suze?’ I asked.

  Susie didn’t answer. All I could hear was her loudly blowing breath and the gurgle of a stream that flowed under a rickety wooden bridge ten metres away. The little mare was pulling in that direction. She wanted a drink.

  ‘Go on,’ I said, releasing the reins. ‘You’ve earned it.’

  There wasn’t time for me to get a drink. I made a decision. Taking the truck’s registration number wasn’t enough. I couldn’t simply hide in the forest and watch the cattle thieves drive by. Pop might never lay eyes on his prize bull again if the truck reached the highway. It was up to me to stop it.

  While Susie picked her way down through the rustling bracken to the stream, I limped onto the bridge. It was a primitive construction: two heavy wooden beams with a row of planks bolted crosswise on top of them. There were no side rails. I remembered crossing several of these bridges on the way to the farm from the airport. The planks had rattled noisily under the wheels of my grandparents’ four-wheel drive. Sure enough, towards the middle of the bridge, I found a plank that had worked loose from one of the rusty bolts. By lifting one end and swinging it back and forth, I managed to free the other end as well. I slid the heavy plank off the edge of the bridge and dropped it into the stream.

  Now there was a thirty-centimetre gap in the middle of the bridge. It wasn’t wide enough; the truck might still get across. I tried the planks on either side of the gap. One was loose, but no matter how hard I pulled, I couldn’t work it free of its bolts. Breathing heavily, I paused to wipe the sweat from my eyes.

  That was when I heard it. Faint with distance, hardly louder than the soft murmur of the stream, came the yammer of a two-stroke engine.

  There wasn’t much time. I made another attempt to rattle the loose plank from the bolts. No good. I couldn’t work it free.

  The sound of the motorbike was unmistakeable now. I glanced round. The gravel road curved away from me and disappeared behind a wall of towering gum trees about eighty metres from the bridge.

  Think, I urged myself. There’s got to be a way.

  Then it came to me. I needed something to prise the plank loose. I looked around for a lever. Anything would do. It just needed to be long and sturdy enough to give me a slight mechanical advantage. A fence post, I thought, trying to block out the hum of the motorbike, or a good thick branch.

  A plank!

  Seconds later, I was splashing like a madman through the stream. Susie raised her dripping muzzle from the water to watch me wade past in pursuit of the plank I’d tossed into the water. She was about five metres downstream from the bridge. The plank was caught in some mossy rocks. Hefting it onto my shoulder, I crashed through the bracken and onto the end of the bridge.

  The motorbike sounded very close. Behind its high-pitched buzz, came the low growl of the truck. They were just around the corner. I had ten seconds, maximum, before they swung into view and saw me.

  Staggering out onto the bridge, I plunged the end of the dripping plank into the gap and leaned down with my full weight on the other end. Success! The second plank popped off its bolts as if they were made of Playdough.

  The sound of engines filled my ears. I tossed the first plank back into the stream and grabbed the second one. Not daring to look over my shoulder, afraid of what I’d see if I did look, I rushed to the edge of the bridge. And jumped.

  7

  DANGEROUS MEN

  I missed the water. There hadn’t been time to look where I was jumping. Crunch! I landed across the plank and might have broken several ribs had it not been for the heavy thicket of bracken that softened my landing. It really hurt. With a groan, I let go of the plank, rolled under the bridge and lay still.

  The motorbike skidded to a stop on the bridge. It was about a metre away, right over my head. I saw the knobbly tyres through the slits between the planks, and the soles of Pig-eyes’ boots. The noisy two-stroke engine went silent. From the road came the squeal of brakes. The truck’s door creaked open.

  ‘What’s going on?’ a man’s voice asked.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Pig-eyes. He had climbed off the motorbike and was peering down through the gap in the bridge. Luckily, I was near the bank, where he couldn’t see me. ‘Someone’s had a go at the bridge – taken out a couple of boards.’

  A second shadow fell across the planks and the truck driver joined his mate at the hole. I could hear the engine idling gently in the background. ‘Vandals, d’you reckon?’ he said.

  ‘Nah, not out here,’ said Pig-eyes. ‘Reckon someone wanted to stop us.’

  ‘Why?’ asked the truck driver.

  ‘Why do you think, Einstein? That’s a pricey piece of livestock in the back of the truck.’

  ‘But … but …’ stammered Einstein. ‘But nobody knows we’ve got it.’

  ‘There was that kid back at the farm. Isn’t that his horse?’

  Uh oh. I silently parted the bracken. Susie was standing ten metres away, gazing in my direction.

  Don’t look at me! I wanted to shout at her. You’ll give the game away!

  Only this wasn’t a game. These were cattle thieves, criminals. Dangerous men. Already Pig-eyes had tried to hurt me by forcing Susie into the fence. I should never have tampered with the bridge. Who knew what he and Einstein would do if they caught me now.

  ‘It can’t be the same horse,’ Einstein was saying. ‘We must have driven fifty kilometres.’

  ‘Maybe the kid knows a short cut. He told me he was Corcoran’s grandson. He must know his way around.’

  ‘Wait till I get my hands on him,’ snarled Einstein.

  ‘Forget it,’ Pig-eyes said. ‘He’s probably hiding in the forest. We’ll never find him.’ He lowered his voice. ‘But without a horse, the smart-Alec will have a very long walk home.’

  I heard the clomp of boots. Then Pig-eyes vaulted down onto the creek bank and peered under the bridge. He was still wearing his crash-helmet, but the visor was flipped open. For a moment it seemed like he was looking straight at me. I froze. My heartbeat was belting out a furious drum solo in my ears that blocked out everything else. I was all set to leap up and run. But I was in the shadows, partially screened by bracken, and Pig-eyes didn’t see me. He walked off along the creek bank towards Susie.

  ‘Here horsy,’ he said softly, raising his hand as if holding a lump of sugar. ‘Come to daddy.’

  Susie had no intention of letting him get anywhere near her. She probably remembered their last meeting. Shaking her head as if to say, No way, José, the little mare wheeled around and cantered off down the stream, splashing water in high silvery fans behind her. Pig-eyes chased her for five or six paces, then gave up.

  ‘Forget the horse,’ Einstein called. ‘Let’s fix this bridge and get out of here. I can see where the kid dropped one of the planks.’

  Next moment, the big truck driver came crunching down through the bracken on the other side of the bridge. He picked up the plank lying right next to me and hoisted one end up onto the bridge. I held my breath. If he looked down, he would see me. But Einstein was concentrating on fitting the plank into the gap in the bridge. He was looking up, not down.

  I felt a sudden weight on my right hand, then a slow creeping movement. Lying flat on my belly in a bed of crushed bracken, my hand was only a few centimetres from my face. I swivelled my eyes down and nearly died of fright. I was eyeballing the biggest, ugliest, most horrendous-looking spider I had ever seen.

  Its brown, furry body was the size of a mouse. Each of its eight, pinkish-brown legs was as long – and nearly as thick – as my little finger and covered in tufts of red and grey hair. It wa
s almost as big as my hand. The worst part was its fangs. They were huge. Shiny black and viciously hooked, they looked like a pair of eagle’s claws. They were so close to my face that I could see dew-drops of clear liquid glistening on their needle-sharp tips.

  It was one of the bird-eating spiders that live in that region. Nobody knows how dangerous they are to humans, but they have been known to kill birds and animals as large as wallabies. The repulsive creature was sitting on my hand about ten centimetres from my nose. I tried not to focus on the venom-dripping fangs. Two rows of beady black eyes returned my gaze.

  I couldn’t move. If I did, Einstein would see me. But I must have made a noise – a gasp or a groan – and attracted his attention. Suddenly a large hand closed like a vice around my other arm.

  ‘Gotcha!’ said the big cattle rustler.

  8

  DRIVING BLIND

  There was only one thing to do. I flicked the hand with the spider on it upwards. Bullseye! The huge spider landed on Einstein’s baseball cap. It was clinging onto the peak, dangling its heavy, egg-shaped body and at least four fat, pin-wheeling legs right in front of Einstein’s eyes. A shrill wail escaped his lips. He released my arm and straightened up, waving his hands like someone shooing away flies. But the spider wasn’t going anywhere. Slowly, its weight pulled the cap forward and down on Einstein’s head. Still waving his hands in useless circles, the big rustler took two blind steps backwards, lost his balance and fell backside-first into the creek.

  I was out of there. Without a backward glance, I shot out on the other side of the bridge and scrambled up onto the road. Pig-eyes shouted something from further down the creek. I didn’t hear what he said. I wasn’t interested anyway. All I wanted to do was put as much distance as possible between myself and the two rustlers. My mind had closed down to everything else. Get to the trees! it was screaming. Get to the trees and hide!