The Call of the High Country

by Tony Parsons

  ‘Well, you are mine, David MacLeod,’ Catriona replied, ‘and you might never win that trial. There are scores of top dogs at Canberra.’

  ‘Oh, I will win it, and when I do, then I’ll come back here and see which way the wind blows.’

  ‘If you want me, really want me, I will wait for you, David,’ Catriona said, her eyes aglow with delight.

  ‘If you insist on sticking it out for me, you’ll cut yourself off from a lot of your friends. I’ll never have the sort of money they have.’

  ‘My God, I had no idea that sort of thing was holding you back. Look, money isn’t a problem. Stuart and I get a share from Inverlochy and Daddy has other investments in our names. I could put my money into a trust for our future.’

  ‘Inverlochy is a fine property and I wouldn’t want to contribute to it being cut up. That wouldn’t be doing the right thing by Stuart. I’m not that sort of person. The land means a lot to me. Nobody likes to see acreage taken from them.’

  ‘But don’t you want me?’ Catriona asked him honestly.

  ‘Wanting and having are two very different things,’ he said. ‘Cat, I wouldn’t want to be the cause of your unhappiness or to know that you got less than you could have. You could have anyone, Cat, anyone at all. You sure could do a lot better than me. Right now you might think I’m what you want, but will you feel that way in a few years’ time? Wouldn’t you be jealous if Susan married a rich guy who could give her everything?’

  ‘David, I can’t believe you would even ask that of me. You are the only man who could give me everything I want. I have even told Daddy as much.’

  ‘You did? And what did he do?’

  ‘He sent me overseas,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘Okay, so your father knows. That doesn’t mean he approves, or ever will.’

  ‘David, do you love me?’ Catriona asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m very fond of you, I really am. I just don’t think this is a good idea. You could never convince your people to accept me, and I wouldn’t want you to have to try.’

  ‘Yes, I could. If it’s my parents that are holding you back, we can settle the matter right here. You can make love to me here and now and if I get pregnant, they will have to agree to you marrying me.’

  ‘What a damned stupid suggestion, Cat. You must be off your head,’ David said vehemently. ‘You just said you thought you knew me. Hell, Cat, you don’t know me at all if you think I would put you in that position. You go off and do your uni course. I need more time. See how you feel in a year’s time.’

  ‘David, I love you. You just think about that. The day you feel the same way and tell me that you do, we will become engaged. I don’t care if it causes mayhem at Inverlochy. It’s my life and I’m going to live the rest of it my way. I know you want it, too. I can see right through you.’

  ‘Don’t be so bossy, Cat. It doesn’t suit you. Let’s get going. Who knows what my folks will be thinking?’

  ‘The mind boggles,’ Catriona said, and laughed with real joy for the first time in years. She leant her head against David’s shoulder and he responded by putting an arm around her waist. She sighed and closed her eyes. ‘If you only knew how much I have wanted you to do that,’ she said. ‘You must believe me when I tell you that I’m sincere about waiting for you.’

  ‘I’d like to think you are,’ he said.

  ‘I think you really do love me, David. What do I have to do to convince you that I’m serious about you?’

  ‘You could learn to milk a cow,’ he said.

  ‘Milk a cow! Why would I need to milk a cow?’ she asked.

  ‘How else do we feed the pups?’ David laughed.

  Catriona made a face. ‘David MacLeod, you’ll be the death of me,’ she said.

  Catriona rode back to Inverlochy to have a shower and get changed before driving back up for dinner. Anne was waiting for David as he came up the steps from seeing her off.

  ‘Have you and Catriona finally decided to get together?’ she asked with ill-concealed impatience.

  ‘Mum, can’t a bloke get a bit of privacy around here? If you must know, Catriona told me that she loved me and I told her I liked her a lot but that I have some things to do before I settle down.’

  ‘God help me. You put her off?’ Anne gasped.

  ‘Yes and no. I suggested she sees how she feels in a year or so.’

  ‘You seem to be treating this as a big joke. I thought you must have told her something wonderful. She certainly had a glow on.’

  ‘I told her I was fond of her. That was about halfway to what she wanted to hear. If Catriona is a really special girl, she’ll wait for me. Otherwise, I’m better off without her. It’s as simple as that. If I have to go up against her parents, I want to know she’s behind me all the way.’

  ‘Nothing is as simple as that,’ Anne said.

  ‘I’m not going to worry too much for the time being about what Catriona does. She’s going off to do her course, and who knows what will happen down there? Catriona is a lovely girl and I’m just a hill country stockman.’

  ‘You are an old hardhead for a boy of eighteen,’ Anne said.

  ‘You’ve also told me a million times that I am very practical. Aren’t I being practical now?’

  To that question, Anne could not find an answer.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Catriona looked stunning when she arrived that evening for dinner in a plum-coloured dress which enhanced her lovely figure. She had changed her hairstyle so that it was coiled up. She came bearing two bottles of white wine, which she knew both Kate and Jean enjoyed with their evening meal. Andy and David drank the occasional beer.

  The first course of the meal was spinach in a pastry so light it almost melted in the mouth, and Catriona said she had tasted nothing nicer on her overseas trip. The main course was a piece of prime beef that had been sewn into a roll and then filled with herb and onion stuffing. And for dessert they had apple pie and cream.

  ‘Wow,’ David said as he finished off a big slice of the pie. ‘That was some dinner. Cat, you should come more often.’

  ‘I am sure she would if you asked her,’ Anne got in quickly.

  After they had cleared away the dishes and drunk some coffee, Anne took out her papers and put them on the table in front of her.

  ‘The details I have here came principally from Andy and his mother,’ she began. ‘But I also wrote away and obtained some additional information on the MacLeod family. I intend to put this material into book form before I am too much older. Your family has their history properly recorded, Catriona. It traces back a very long way.

  ‘There was, of course, a big difference between the Campbells and the MacLeods back in Scotland. The Campbells were Lowlanders while the MacLeods were Highlanders. Most of the Highland clans were enemies of the Campbells, who in turn considered the Highland clans to be mere cattle thieves.

  ‘Andy’s blood traces back to the MacLeods of Harris, Skye and Glenelg from the Western Isles of Scotland. Like many other Scots, the MacLeods were subject to eviction and were forced to leave their native country and make new lives in the United States, Canada and Australia, where their descendants can still be found to this day. Perhaps as many as thirty-five thousand people were evicted in all. The torment began after the Jacobite rebellion in 1745 to 1746 and continued for over one hundred years. Tenants were evicted to make way for sheep, and, after sporadic resistance, the western Highlanders were involved in what came to be known as the Crofters’ War. This caused the British Parliament to despatch a committee of enquiry into the whole awful business. Some Scots returned home but most did not, because although conditions were hard in the colonies, they were not as hard as back on the hills of their native land.

  ‘William MacLeod was one of these refugees. Along with his wife and small son he was destined for Canada but, because of his knowledge of cattle, he was offered a position on a developing cattle ranch in the United States.

  ‘William was
an excellent cattleman and much sought after for his knowledge of cattle husbandry. He took up land for a ranch of his own and, as fate would have it, he prospered. A descendant still owns this ranch today. One of William’s grandsons, Angus MacLeod, migrated to Australia after the gold strikes of the 1850s, eventually struck it lucky and purchased land along the Lachlan River. Periodic floods drove him off this land and on to the New England district between Glen Innes and Armidale. There were many Scots in this region and, while the country was hard in winter, if you owned enough of it, you could make a fair living. Labour was cheap and there was a rising demand for wool.

  ‘Angus MacLeod fathered six sons and three daughters. One son, Tormid, went as an officer to the Boer War. On his arrival back in Australia he became a landowner and politician through the acquisition of a large property near Scone in the Hunter district of New South Wales. Tormid married an actress of some repute and their only son, James, was Andy’s father. James grew up to be very good-looking and women were attracted to him like bees to honey. He had a certain degree of irresponsibility, which set him apart from the previous males of the MacLeod lineage. But there was no doubt he was a courageous man, which he proved in the Second World War, coming out of the AIF with a chest full of medals – and a propensity for whisky.

  ‘Now we come close to home,’ Anne continued. ‘Some years earlier, when the few large original properties in the Merriwa, Willow Tree and Quirindi districts were cut up for closer settlement, Tormid MacLeod purchased a hill property fairly cheaply. He had installed James on this property in 1939, but James didn’t stay there long. When he joined the AIF he left his wife and young son on the property with only one old stockman to keep an eye on things. While James was overseas, the property went downhill as rabbits bred in thousands. Tormid died in 1945 and James came back from the war to find that he had inherited a run-down property and that he had to find a lot of money to pay the onerous death duties. The sale of the hill property, which is where we find ourselves sitting tonight, would not have realised enough money to pay those duties, so the property at Scone had to be sacrificed. There was still not enough money left over from the sale of that to clear the debt on High Peaks, and there was hardly a living in the place the way it was, especially for a person with James MacLeod’s flamboyant tastes.

  ‘Fortunately, Andy’s mother, Alice, was made of good material, and she needed to be because High Peaks was not a place for the faint-hearted. The property was situated at the very end of the road and topped by high peaks. When the wind blew, the she-oaks along the creek would sigh all through the night. Going to town was a real adventure, as petrol was rationed and Alice and young Andrew sometimes had to come in by horse and buggy. For all that, Andrew had a very happy childhood and he was lucky to have a neighbour in that old Paddy Covers, who was a top bushman and stockman. He taught young Andrew all that he knows today. Thankfully, Andrew somehow reclaimed the industrious character of the earlier-generation MacLeods rather than that of his father.

  ‘By the time Andrew’s father came back from the war, Andy was in his early teens. He could do almost anything in the way of bush and stock work and had a real flair for handling sheepdogs and horses. There were several outstanding dog and horse men in the area, and Paddy himself was good with both. Paddy had acquired some very good kelpies and with these dogs he could do any kind of stock work. Andrew took an immediate liking to the kelpie, and Paddy let him have a pair for his own use.

  ‘Andrew and his mother were very close but there was antipathy between Andy and his father. The property had a big mortgage on it and simply did not run to the extravagances his father was fond of. While Andy was tramping the hills ringing green timber and shooting foxes to earn pocket money, his father was away at social functions all around the country, wasting money that should have been going into the property. Moreover, he drank far too much. It was his father’s drinking that set Andy against alcohol, which is why you rarely see him drinking to this day.

  ‘The real crisis in Andy’s life came when his father, returning to High Peaks late one night after a party, crashed his car into the creek below the bridge and killed Alice. Her death caused a big change in Andy. He became a silent, withdrawn teenager who would hardly speak to his father from morning to night. He looked after himself, took himself to school, washed his own clothes and prepared his own meals. Every spare moment was spent up in the hills.

  ‘Unfortunately, Alice did not live to see the wool boom, which began in 1950 at the time of the Korean War. This brought in more money than the MacLeods had ever handled on the property, but the extra money was put into buying an expensive car, racehorses and more high living. James MacLeod did not concern himself with reducing the debt that still plagued the running of the property.

  ‘Andrew grew into a large, powerful man, and when he left school at the age of fifteen, he began shearing and crutching at the local sheds. He was able to bank his money in a small account his mother had started for him. After two seasons of shearing, Andy was putting out a lot of sheep and ringing sheds. He bought himself a Chevrolet utility and began going to sheepdog trials. He won most of them and established the reputation his dogs have today.

  ‘But Andrew continued to consider that his father was very weak, despite all the medals he had received. He believed that plenty of other men had been to the war, had seen as much or more than his father had, had suffered more, yet hadn’t become booze artists. But the booze was only part of it. The way his father wasted money was an even bigger problem. However, the fact remained that James was his father and Andrew couldn’t disregard him completely.

  ‘Towards the end of his life, James made a couple of half-hearted attempts to effect a reconciliation with Andy. It was as if he could see that Andy was everything he was not. James told Andrew that he was really proud of him, that he’d done a hell of a job on High Peaks, and that he appreciated Andy saving his money to help out with the debt on the place. He then went on to confess that his heart was not the best: he’d had some bad pains and had been to see the doctor. He knew his time was coming to an end and wanted Andy to know how he really felt about him. He told Andrew that the property had been willed to him, and he asked Andrew to make a strange promise; a promise that if he ever needed advice he was to go and see Angus Campbell. Angus had been made an executor, who would keep an eye on things until Andrew was old enough to take over. This was Old Angus Campbell he was referring to.

  ‘It was also during this rare conversation that James asked Andrew how he was off for money. A bolt of dread ran through Andy as he hoped his father wasn’t about to ask him for a loan. Thankfully he wasn’t, but he did confess that he had discussed their financial woes with Old Angus.

  ‘Andrew was appalled. It was bad enough to waste money as his father had done, but to have taken their problems to a neighbour was extremely embarrassing, especially knowing that old Campbell would never waste a penny of his money. It was at that moment that Andy swore to himself he would clear the debt on High Peaks, even if it killed him, and he would never run to a neighbour with details of his affairs.

  ‘James MacLeod lived on for another seven months. Andy was shearing at a local shed and coming home every evening.

  ‘One night Andy came home to find no sign of his father, and the house in complete darkness. He grabbed for a torch as quickly as he could and set about on a desperate search. In the stables he noticed his father’s favourite horse, Rajah, was missing.

  ‘He returned to the house in a real quandary. There was nothing he or anybody else could do that night. The hill country, especially the slopes of Yellow Rock and Jimmy’s Mountain, was simply too dangerous to ride over at night. And on this particular night there was not even a moon to light his way.

  ‘The next morning, the first thing Andy saw out of his window was his father’s horse standing patiently at the gate beyond the dog yards and kennels. Its reins were trailing and one was broken short. He caught the horse and brought it back to the
stables, where he went over it for injuries. There was none that he could see. He was reluctant to involve Angus Campbell at this stage, but he had a feeling the matter was serious and felt that he didn’t have any choice. Old Angus said that he would come himself with Young Angus and their overseer, Buck Covers, a son of Andy’s old mentor, Paddy. The three men and a horse for each arrived within the hour. Equipped with ropes, a blanket and a water bottle, the four men set off into the mountains.

  ‘It was Andy who first saw the body in the gully to their left up on Yellow Rock. Below the track, the side of the cliff plunged away down a steep slope that was bisected by deeply cut gullys and ravines, and it was there, at the pit of one of those ravines, that James MacLeod’s body was sprawled.

  ‘Andy tied a rope to a rough-barked kurrajong, and without another word he dropped over the ledge. Hand over hand with his boots scuffing loose rocks and shale, he lowered himself down to his father’s body. In Andy’s mind he had not set himself a remarkable task: he was young, very strong and confident of his own ability. Of course if the rope had broken, that might have been the end of him then and there, but Andy never used faulty gear.

  ‘Andy at last eased himself off the rope and saw the others, two rope lengths above him, peering anxiously down. He lifted his hand to signify that he was in good shape and then dropped to his knees to examine his father.

  ‘When he turned him over he was momentarily shaken by the sight of the ruined face. He felt for signs of life. The body was cold and stiff. His father was dead.

  ‘During the traumatic years following his father’s death, Andy grew to depend on Old Angus. He had been there when Andrew found James’s body, he had helped out with the police enquiries, and he had always been on hand to give Andy advice or help him out with special deals with stock and station agents. Andy returned his help by handling the Inverlochy horses and by shearing. The two men had a lot of respect for each other, despite their social differences. Old Angus gave off an outwardly cold impression to outsiders, but he was an eminently fair man. He was a hard taskmaster, but he acknowledged talent and excellence whether it was displayed by a horseman, a shearer or a stud breeder. There was no second-best for Old Angus, and Young Angus – your father, Catriona – followed closely in his father’s footsteps. Old Angus was the first outsider to recognise Andy’s talent and his capacity to work hard to make something of himself. Perhaps their common Scottish ancestry meant something to Old Angus.