by Lucy Walker
The offsider hadn’t said a single word and Cherry, listening to all this with fascination, had not yet made up her mind whether the offsider was deaf, dumb or both. Possibly he didn’t have to make the effort since Stopper could think for them all.
‘Well, thet’s thet,’ said the drover, suddenly deciding there’d been enough conversation for the night.
Tracy was coiled up and probably asleep. Alan had been quietly smoking in silence, listening, like Cherry, while Stephen tried to negotiate with the drover for the loan of the truck if only for a few hours.
‘We’d jes’ better get a bit of shut-eye,’ the old man said, standing up. ‘I’ll git me back to me own hole in the ground.’
He looked at Stephen and then pushed his finger up under the battered old felt hat and scratched his forehead. He pointed with his thumb at Cherry.
‘How you figure yer sleepin’?’ he said. ‘If you ain’t married all round, I guess you all got to find some place to sleep elsewhere.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Stephen quietly. ‘Cherry will sleep with the child. I imagine Tracy is best left where she is. I think she’s asleep already. Alan and I’ll move over under the truck …’
‘Cherry! Well, blow me down!’ said the old man. ‘If that ain’t a pretty name. Reminds me of them little red things you git summertime in Adelaide. Mighty sweet they are.’ He bent and peered into Cherry’s face. ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘Yer mighty pretty too. Just cain’t figure out why you ain’t got married, and gotta carry roun’ someone else’s baby.’
Cherry, who had begun rather to fall in love with this quaint old drover, smiled up at him. The firelight caught the edges of her teeth and the moist stars in her eyes.
‘I haven’t tried hard enough,’ she said laughingly and meaning it as a joke. ‘Maybe I’ll catch someone someday. Then it will be my own baby I carry around.’
The drover pointed the stem of his pipe at Stephen.
‘Why don’t you marry him? If he’s one of them Denton brothers from Yulinga, like he says, he’s got plenty a’ dough. An’ he’s not so bad-looking either. Fine upstandin’ feller.’
He looked perplexed and a little injured when Cherry suddenly jumped up and said: ‘I ought to wake Peter and feed him now. Otherwise he’ll let us know all about it in the middle of the night.’
Stephen stood up slowly but with an air of intent.
‘I suppose you break camp and start moving before daylight?’
‘Me and Billy and the cattle’s moving when the first light comes in. Him …’ and he pointed at his silent offsider, ‘he cleans up the camp and takes the gear onta the next camp. Thet’s at Mulga’s End. You all kin go with him. Room in the back with the gear if you pushes it up. You’d better ask him let the girl and the baby ride up in front. When it comes to them newfangled things like trucks, he’s the boss.’
Cherry had picked up the tin of meat juice and left the fire circle. Peter’s nest in the bushes was not so distant she could not hear the quiet drawling voices of Stephen and the drover continuing discussing plans for the morrow. Alan roused himself from the fireside and came through the shadows towards Cherry.
‘Will you be all right for the night, Cherry?’ he asked in a quiet voice so as not to alarm Peter who was just waking out of his first sleep.
‘Yes, thank you,’ Cherry said, looking up and smiling.
They were beyond the firelight but an early moon was throwing a white light on to them as they stood near the shelter of the low scrub trees and blue grass bushes.
‘It’s too warm to worry about coverings,’ she added. ‘But if it gets chilly in the night I’ll move us both in by the fire.’ She laughed. ‘There are far too many of us to matter whether I’ve got that funny old drover on one side of me and that very silent offsider on the other.’
‘I’ll keep one eye open for you,’ promised Alan. ‘I think we’ll be all right. My guess is Stephen will keep guard anyway. I understand that awful gramophone has got to be put on again to keep the cattle amused. If the night gets too silent a sudden noise could stampede them.’
‘I’m too tired to mind,’ said Cherry.
‘Me too,’ said Alan. ‘Can I bind your ankle for you before we turn in?’
Cherry shook her head.
‘I think I did the best thing for it by walking with it free. It’s much better to-night.’
Alan hesitated, then said somewhat gruffly:
‘Well, good night, Cherry.’
‘Good night, Alan,’ she said, smiling at him again. He half turned but paused. Then he turned back again.
‘What do you suppose that old codger meant by trying to marry you and Stephen off? I took a dim view of that. Didn’t seem to notice I was in the offing.’
‘Well, you were round the other side of the campfire with Tracy and she was very much asleep against your shoulder. He’s so matrimonially minded I think he’s already fixed you and Tracy with a gold ring, with or without bell, book, and candle.’
‘To-morrow night,’ Alan said with conviction, ‘I’ll fix that camp-fire circle so I’m on the side where you are. And we’ll leave Tracy to Stephen.’
Cherry smiled.
‘Anyhow, it’s rather fun, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You know I’ve never been outback like this before. It makes me think of someone all the time.’
‘Someone? What someone?’ asked Alan, pretending to be alarmed.
Cherry’s tone changed subtly.
‘Someone who used to live up here, years ago. I often wonder if he did the kind of things I saw Hugh and Stephen Denton doing when I was on Yulinga. And the sort of things this old drover does now …’
‘Hmm,’ said Alan, folding his arms and looking glum. ‘These “somebodies” in your life. Remind me to investigate them one day, will you?’
‘I will,’ promised Cherry. ‘Now I’ll have to attend to Peter or he’ll stampede the cattle before the gramophone has a chance to lull them off with its own brand of din.’
‘Cheers,’ said Alan. ‘And once again, good night.’
‘Good night, Alan,’ Cherry said softly and turned away to where Peter was now sitting up, yawning widely and gazing round at his new home with some bewilderment.
Alan is a dear, Cherry thought as she knelt down to take Peter in her arms. It’s funny but in spite of his being an air-pilot and not a stockman I’ve got a kind of feeling he’s like my father must have been. That’s odd. I wonder why.
Then, thinking of this, her thoughts turned back again to the couple down there in the lower latitudes worrying about her whereabouts now.
‘Poor darlings,’ she thought. ‘When I’m through this I’ll go home to them. I promised Dad it would be in a year’s time. But somehow, after this, I know they’ll want me.’
She was sitting cross-legged on the ground with Peter in her arms by this time. She held the tin of warmed meat juice to his lips. Her eyes rested on the sheen the moonlight made of his soft downy head.
‘But how,’ she added, ‘will I ever bring myself to part with you?’
Peter obligingly swallowed a drop the wrong way and gave himself up to a spasm of coughing. This took Cherry’s mind off her divided loyalties long enough to stop worrying about to whom she would devote the rest of her life.
When later she crouched down in the long dried grass with Peter in her arms it was the old drover’s injunction to marry and have a child of her own that she thought of.
And the drover had selected Stephen as the prospective candidate.
Cherry thought of Stephen, sitting by the fire, a dark concentrated expression on his face as he tried to persuade the drover to lend them the truck. Suddenly it reminded her of Stephen sitting on the white beach at the foot of the Street of the Pines.
It seemed a long time since she had thought of him that way. The attractive mystery man on the sands had turned first into a taciturn pastoralist and then into the determined leader of their little plane-wrecked crew.
Finally, of co
urse, the drover would have him turn into Cherry’s husband.
Cherry, half asleep, gurgled at the thought of the annoyance Stephen must have felt.
She wondered why her own heart felt suddenly sad.
It must be Tracy, she supposed. And of course the knowledge that the Stephens of the world were not for her. She had a father and mother to whom she owed her first, perhaps her only loyalties.
She must stop thinking about prospective husbands, let alone giving her heart away to other people’s children.
Nevertheless she drew Peter closer.
An hour later Stephen, walking quietly around the camp to make sure all was well with his responsibilities, saw the moonlight shining on Cherry’s face where her chin rested on the little boy’s head. She lay, Peter in her arms, curved in a half moon amongst the small trees.
This time he was not amused at the quaint figure Cherry Landin cut.
Chapter Thirteen
The noise in and about the camp woke Cherry before dawn. The cattle from habit knew they should be on the move. There was a bellowing and stamping in the herd. Billy, the stockman, was galloping out, cracking a stockwhip to round up the mob, heading the leaders in the right direction. Now and again a dog gave a short sharp, bark.
The camp-fire was glowing with coals and by this light, helped a little by the false dawn, Stephen could be seen assisting the drover to break camp and saddle the horses.
Cherry, stiff from her sleep on an old rug lent by the drover, could see the men’s shadows as they worked with great strength and speed.
The man who was truck driver, offsider and cook, was grilling steak for breakfast.
Cherry got out Peter’s tin of dried milk and proceeded to make him a drink.
Alan was the only one who exchanged a word with Cherry as she came to the camp-fire.
‘’Morning,’ he said. ‘Sleep well? You don’t have to answer unless willing. ’Scuse me while I rescue that steak in the coals. As you see, I’m cook’s offsider this morning.’
Tracy was still rolled in a rug, apparently fast asleep though less than twenty-five yards from where the horses, stamping and rattling their bits, were being saddled at ferocious speed by Stephen and the drover.
‘Let Tracy cook and you help the men,’ Cherry suggested. She sensed that this was how Alan would rather have it.
‘Dear child, have you ever lifted one of those saddles? They’re made of wood and iron. I’m not joking. That’s what these outback fellers use. The old boy has got the strength of ten and by the look of it Stephen can give him another ten man-power.’
Cherry retrieved the tin of hot water and began to pour in and mix the milk powder.
‘It’s good of Stephen to help,’ she said.
‘He’s helping himself. He’s going to ride back to that station they were talking about last night. He didn’t let the old chap go to bed until he’d promised him the use of two horses, if he couldn’t have the truck.’
‘How far is it? Twelve miles, I think they said. What does he want two horses for?’
She felt a drop in her spirits at the prospect of losing Stephen from their party. She knew they were all safe at last but somehow five would now only be four and the Jack of Hearts would be missing.
Heavens! What made her think of that? Well, Stephen was rather a colourful figure. He was very nice when he wasn’t being superior and the arch-type of the great landowning class. Maybe she had always liked the Jack of Hearts when she had played rummy with Dad on winter evenings, because that was just what the Jack of Hearts was. Nice, but rich and unobtainable when you held in your hand five trumps of another suit.
Alan retrieved more grilled steak from the frame on the coals, put it on a tin plate and covered it with another plate.
‘It seems we eat as much steak for breakfast as most families would eat in a year,’ he said to Cherry. ‘That’s why the drover and his team are so tough. Steak only for diet. By the way, notice I put Peter’s meat tin under the grill to catch the beef drops.’
‘Yes, thank you very much. You are a darling, Alan, and I guess Peter will be grateful too.’
‘If he ever sees me again. Stephen’s taking him back with him to that station.’
Cherry nearly dropped the tin of milk.
‘Stephen and who else?’ she said.
‘Tracy, when she wakes up.’
Cherry poured the heated milk from the tin into a plastic cup and as she did so her hands trembled.
No, she said to herself. No, no, no!
The drover had said that station wasn’t fit for habitation. The owners were rough men and lived in a shanty. Even the native stockman wouldn’t sleep there. The drover had said that. It might be dirty. It might be ridden with … well, ridden with anything.
And Tracy looking after Peter!
‘Oh no, Mr. Stephen Denton. You’ve got another think coming if you think I’ll give up Peter to Tracy’s care. Why, his own parents hadn’t trusted him to Tracy. They had sent me, but me, to take him to Timor Bay to have his injections. And that was in a civilised plane to a civilised place. And what’s more Tracy was going too. But they didn’t leave Peter to Tracy. They gave him to me.’
She did not answer Alan and he watched her go out of the light of the fire into the shadows with Peter’s early morning drink. As dawn came stealing, a grey misty light over the plain and into the clump of trees in which the party was camped, he saw her sitting, her back slightly bent, with Peter in her arms, feeding him from the cup. Her face was turned to the child’s face.
‘That’s hurt her,’ he said to himself. ‘But I thought I’d break it to her first. She’d have found it too hard to take direct from Stephen. He doesn’t soften his blows.’
Tracy stirred, unrolled herself and sat up and stretched. Presently she came, still half asleep, towards the fire.
Alan gave her a few minutes and then broke to her the plans for the day.
‘Me ride on one of those rocking-horses saddles? I bet that’s what they use. And Peter too? Huh! Then Stephen can carry him.’
Cherry had come to the fire for Peter’s next course, and Alan handed her the tin of meat juice which he had already retrieved from the fire by means of a long fork and a piece of hide. She looked up as Tracy spoke, stood irresolute a minute as if she would say something, but then changed her mind. She went back to the child.
The offsider had finished his share of steak grilling and was now throwing all available utensils, the rugs and other camp gear in the back of his truck. Cherry, carrying Peter, crossed over to him.
Billy the black stockman had come in by this time for his breakfast; hunks of left-over beef were given to the dogs and Stephen and the drover now went to the camp to get their share of billy tea and steak.
It was nearly daylight and the plain stretched away to the north and west, an eerie sea of grey, lifeless grass. Beside them was the clump of trees and beyond that the low hills they had crossed yesterday.
Somewhere north-east of that was the jungle country they had left such a short time ago. Somehow, at this moment that camp in the jungle, silent and empty except for the plane wreckage and the gear they had left behind, seemed to Cherry like a lost heaven and a home to which there was no return.
Why hadn’t she known in those few days that there had been perfect happiness. Now, back on the fringe of the civilised world she was faced again with all the problems of those who have rights and those who have no rights.
There in the jungle camp her care of Peter had been a duty required of her. Here it was a privilege of which Stephen would now deprive her.
‘Please,’ she said to the truck driver, ‘when do you move out? Before the cattle or after?’
‘Before and after, missus. I takes the first load on to Mulga’s End, six miles on. Then I give the cattle a wide circle and comes back the southern end of ’em for the rest of the gear and for you fellers.’
‘Have you had your breakfast?’ Cherry asked with careful politeness.
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‘Yeah. I always feeds self first. Then I can go when I’m good an’ ready.’
‘Are you good and ready yet?’
‘For the first load? Jes’on. ’Nother five minutes.’
‘Do you mind if I sit up in the cab till you are ready, please?’
The truck driver shrugged.
‘You kin sit anyplace you like, lady. You can even come first trip with me if you likes. It’s not so bad at Mulga’s End. A good lake and a decent feed for the bullocks.’
‘I’d like to come,’ said Cherry. ‘But please don’t say anything to the others just now.’
The truck driver pushed his finger under his ancient felt hat and scratched his head.
‘I guess it’s all right, if you says so …’
‘They might all want to come first trip,’ said Cherry. ‘And you haven’t got room, have you?’
‘No darn’ fear I haven’t. You jes’ get up there in the cab an’ not a word to anyone.’
Cherry looked over her shoulder but no one at the camp was looking her way at the moment. She walked round the side of the truck, took Peter’s tin of milk and plastic cup from inside her blouse and put them on the cab seat, then hoisted herself up, still holding the boy.
As she sat there and waited she told herself she was mad. This way was no real escape. The truck only went six miles to Mulga’s End. But somehow doing it this way was better than arguing with Stephen. One thing she was certain, no one, no one, was going to take Peter from her except by brute force; and that would have to be exerted with considerable effort.
It was rough driving in that truck for there was no real track for wheels. They went over hummocks of grass, flat boulders of rock, deep indentations in the ground. The truck swayed from side to side and Peter, fresh from his long sleep in the open air, squealed with delight.
Cherry held him tightly.
What, she wondered, was the law of child custody?
Would the law regard her as the right custodian since Hugh Denton and his wife had given Peter to her? Mrs. Denton had put Peter in her arms at the homestead and Hugh Denton had handed him up to her in the plane. They had given their child into her care. But had they? Hadn’t they said Stephen was going to Timor Bay, and that Stephen needed her help?