East of Outback (37 page)

Spoiled brat, indeed
. And as the day wore on and the hills became ever more confusing, Hannah became ever more firmly convinced.

Colin was horribly, inextricably lost.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-NINE

FIRE

“The mare’s worn out. We’re going to have to rest awhile.” Colin was talking about the horse but he might as well be talking about himself. He dragged to a halt, totally, completely exhausted. He flopped onto his back. “You couldn’t move me with a bullock team.”

He wasn’t lying about the horse. She stopped dead in her tracks and dozed off in seconds, her nose drooping to the ground.

Hannah flopped onto the dirt beside her brother. “I guess when I went off adventuring, I thought of it as some sort of lark. Serious, of course—to find you and help if you were ill—but still an adventure. I never gave a thought to the enemy.”

“You mean Nels Brekke?”

Hannah shook her head. “No. The country. The land. Floods, dust storms—and distance, just being away from everyone and everything that’s familiar.” She looked straight into her brother’s eyes. “Colin, I’m sure we should go back the way we came. I think we missed the first rail line because it got covered over in the dust storm. In fact, I remember a picture I saw in a book once of a locomotive with a plow in front to clear drifting sand on the Trans. I think we walked right over the first tracks not long before we met Mr. Indjuwa.”

“Maybe. Remember how Mr. Indjuwa said we were headed right? No hint or reminder to take the
second
set of tracks we came across, and not the first.” He hated the thought of backtracking. Even more he hated admitting his sister might be right.

He changed the subject. “I never thought about the ‘enemy.’ Yair. Even Brekke had a little bit of conscience. And my uncles had their good points. But the land. It’s—” He searched out the word with difficulty. “Mindless. No sense of responsibility, no mercy, no thought of weary travelers. The Enemy. It’s what has threatened us most. It’s what we’ve really been fighting.”

A dazzling flock of rosellas shot by overhead, babbling. Rosellas are rarely calm little birds, but these seemed particularly agitated. A hawk lifted suddenly out of a gum snag nearly overhead. Colin had not seen it until it was in the air. With heavy wingstrokes it beat its way over the trees and disappeared beyond a ridge.

“Colin, I smell smoke.” Hannah wrinkled her red, peeling nose. “And crackling. Listen.”

“Can’t be. There’re no farms or stations in these hills.”

“Don’t you smell it?”

With a sigh Colin sat up. He inhaled deeply. She might be right. Another camel driver camping? A chimney? Impossible. He looked about for the telltale plume. What he saw was an ominous gray wall. Fear galvanized him and flung him to his feet. “Down the gorge there. Look!”

Bushfire!

Colin had never seen one before, but he knew what he was looking at.

So did Hannah. Her voice was a soft whimper, terror-struck. “Colin . . . ?”

“Which way is the wind moving?” Colin whirled around. In an unexpected flash he remembered Dizzy’s trick. He picked up a pinch of dust and lofted it. The powder drifted eastward. “The fire’s coming this way, with the wind. We have to get over the ridge, fast! At least find some bare ground.”

Either the mare had absorbed their fear or she, too, smelled smoke. She was awake now, her head high, her ears aloft. Colin pulled the swag off her and cast it aside. He swung up on her back and reached out to Hannah. Hannah grabbed his arm and leaped up. Even as she did so, the mare was plunging forward.

At the racecourse in Sydney so long ago, Colin used to exercise his father’s horses in the gray mist of dawn. Then, breezing them thrilled him, with their powerful bodies lunging beneath him, their manes stinging his face. This was different. He was riding for his life, and for Hannah’s. No thrill—just terror. Colin drew his knees up on the mare’s shoulders and buried his face in her mane. He felt Hannah clinging to him, pressing against him, keeping low.

The mare stumbled and clawed up the ridge slope. She staggered in a rocky spot and lurched. They topped out onto a broad tableland studded with short, squat trees.

Hannah twisted behind him. “It’s coming! I just saw an orange spot! Colin, are we going to make it?”

The mare’s strides lengthened out across the level ground. She extended her neck for serious flying. Hard beside them, a family mob of kangaroos came shooting out from among the trees. They ran abreast like fugitives, the horse and the bounding kangaroos.

Colin didn’t have to look behind. He could hear the crackle getting closer, but what was that roar? He glanced back. The fire had crowned out. It leaped now from treetop to treetop, racing across the tableland with—yes, the speed of a running horse. A tree exploded into flame beside them, spraying burning leaves and sparks. The mare veered away in terror. A little wallaby angled off in another direction, its back smoldering.

The tableland curved in a gentle downward slope. Suddenly it dropped away at an eroded gully, a cut at least six feet deep. Colin barely had time to yell “Hang on!” as the mare gathered her legs beneath her and flung herself across the yawning crack in the earth.

______

“Where’s Edan?” Sloan looked around impatiently. The boy was always wandering off somewhere.

“I don’t know.” Mary Aileen shrugged. She adjusted the little leather harness on Smoke. Here in the outback they kept the cat tethered, lest she become rapt stalking some small creature and lose her way in the unfamiliar wilderness. Two kittens tumbled over each other, a third snoozed, curled at its mum’s feet. The fourth crawled over its littermate seeking lunch. There was no way you could tether four kittens, even if you wanted to.

Sam looked up from her crocheting. “He went off toward the cave again a while ago, I believe.”

Disgruntled, Sloan headed up the trail. Here in this pristine wilderness he felt restless. He wanted to be near a phone. He wanted to be abreast of things with letters and telegrams. He had planted seeds of inquiry. Surely some would bear fruit. But he wouldn’t see the fruit up here, isolated as they were. Besides, it was uncommonly hot and dry for this time of year, not nearly so comfortable as their pleasantly situated home, its temperatures moderated by the nearby ocean.

Sam’s sister Linnet and her husband Chris would be back from Europe soon, if they had not returned already. Perhaps he could use his brother-in-law as a liaison in the south.

Edan came running up the path. “Papa! There’s a bushfire somewhere out beyond the knob. You can see the smoke. I’ll run tell Mum and ‘Leen. You can see it from down at the end of the bluff.”

The child sped away. What could Sloan do but go look at the smoke? He walked out to the trail’s end on the nethermost brow of their hill. There it was, a curtain of yellow-gray haze, very dense near the rounded hills which hid the fire, ethereal as it trickled away into the blue sky Not much wind, at least from this vantage point. Unless it crowned out, it would creep slowly until it burned itself out on the lip of some rain-washed gully.

Edan returned presently, huffing and puffing, sweating profusely. Sam came close behind him.

“Where’s Mary Aileen?” Cole asked.

“Fiddling with her cats.” Sam sighed in resignation. “She says she doesn’t want to go look at innocent animals burning up. She seems agitated—upset about it.”

What could he say? Under the best of circumstances Cole could scarcely guess the paths women’s minds followed. There was less chance he could actually understand them.

Edan watched the yellow curtain. “Papa? Are animals really burning up?”

“Some are, I suppose. Birds escape, of course, as do creatures fleet enough to outrun it. Anything living in a hole in the ground escapes.”

Sam pressed in close. Cole slipped an arm around her. She, too, was transfixed by the yellow wall. “I’ve not seen a bushfire before. Up close, I suspect they’re quite noisy and frightening.”

“I suspect.”

Edan squirmed in close to Cole’s other side. It was the lad’s first literal attempt to get literally close to his father. He reached out and pulled him in tight. “Papa? The birds escape. But the nests burn up, don’t they.”

“Sometimes the fire creeps along the ground and everything in the trees remains untouched. If the fire crowns-reaches the trees—the nests would burn up, yes. But then the birds return and build new ones.”

“I’ve read,” Sam ventured, “that as soon as it rains, the burnt area sprouts all manner of new growth—grass, flowers. I read, too, that some seeds lie in the ground for years and years awaiting a fire; they can’t sprout unless they’re burned. Mary Aileen is right. Fire is death. But fire also brings life. ‘Tis why our Lord uses fire to symbolize His Holy Spirit.”

Edan made no comment. He buried his head in Papa’s side, and watched.

______

For moments and moments the mare hung suspended in space. Colin clung to her, panic-stricken. She hit the far rim of the gully and scrambled with all four feet. Colin slipped; Hannah bounced behind him and nearly unhorsed him when her weight shifted. They recovered barely in time. The mare galloped on, out of control. Behind them the wall loomed high, blotting out the sun and most of the sky, plunging them into near-darkness.

Max’s Lady staggered suddenly and lurched onto her knees. Hannah shrieked. The mare fought her way up to all fours, stumbled a few yards, and collapsed. Colin fell forward over her neck. He scrambled to his feet.

Hannah struggled, her leg pinned beneath the lathered body. Colin grabbed her under the arms and pulled. She yelped, but she pulled free.

“Colin, what about the mare?”

“No time! C’mon!” He seized her wrist and started running. Where could they go on foot to outrace this hell? He’d heard somewhere that fire travels fastest uphill. He and Hannah had two hundred yards of downhill yet, through increasingly dense forest, before they had to worry about an uphill race. They slammed down the slope.

The smoke and the dense trees together reduced the light to near nighttime down in the forest. Colin stopped. “Listen!”

“Water! A waterfall or something—back that way!”

As one they bolted off in the direction of the welcome sound. They crashed noisily into a dark, pleasant bower. Deep green leaves, bushes, and gentle ferns wrapped protectively around them. An unassuming creek babbled at their feet. “Back there!” they cried in unison.

The creek came tumbling over ragged, fern-studded ledges in a ten-foot waterfall. It paused to fill a quiet pool before hastening on its way. Dragging Hannah along, Colin plunged into the water. They pressed as far back against the ledges as possible. The waterfall beat down, close to their heads. For a moment Colin heard only the crashing water. Then came the roar and crackle of burning forest, closer and closer.

______

Sloan stowed Sam’s larger kitchen box. Edan handed him the smaller one, and he slammed the trunk shut.

Sam placed her crocheting and the lunch basket in the front seat and walked around to the back. “I think we have it all. I gave it a second go-over.”

He nodded. “I feel rather guilty, cutting our holiday four days short.”

“Don’t. It’s hot and dusty, and I’ve so much in the way of Christmas preparations to make yet. The children don’t seem particularly disappointed.”

Cole watched Edan crawl into the back seat. “Take a last turn around with me, Sam.” He took her hand and they walked up to the far end of camp. “What’s going on with the kids if they aren’t disappointed we’re heading home so soon? They act like their last friend just died.”

“The bushfire unsettled them, I think.”

“It’s twenty miles away, at least.”

“I know. You and I can accept that sort of thing. They don’t understand yet about life and death.”

“Who does?” Cole looked into her eyes. Together they made a broad circuit around the camp, ostensibly making a last check for anything left behind.

In reality, Sloan hated having to return to the city, to share Sam again with the real world. He assisted her into the auto and closed her door. A strange feeling crept over him as he climbed behind the wheel. Guilty? It was more than that. A still, small voice kept nagging,
Don’t go home
.

Ridiculous!
He was hearing things. The pressure and grief of Hannah and Colin was affecting him. That was all. He started up the rumbling engine and kicked the touring car into gear. They were off, headed for home.

______

Colin curled up on his side, doubled up in another painful spate of coughing. Fine gray ash, smoke, the permeating stench, all had a terrible effect on his throat and lungs. The brook by his feet babbled along as if nothing untoward had happened in the last few short hours, but their pleasant bower lay in ruins, smoldering, scorched, and shriveled. The waterfall still fell beneath unbroken sunlight. Heat from the fire made the ground beneath Colin unnaturally hot. It seeped into him and made him sweat.

Down the creek a few yards, a gum tree leaned out across the water, the bank partially washed away from its roots. The tree grew horizontally from its base, then turned sharply upward toward the light. He remembered the jarrah tree a continent away that did the same thing. Apparently it was a common occurrence. Upslope a bit stood a similar gum tree, tall and straight, not the least bent.

Papa stands tall like that tree
, Colin thought. Though they got along poorly, Colin readily admitted that Papa stood straight and tall, spiritually as well as physically. A sudden whimsical thought startled him: what if Papa were not that straight tree, but the crooked one? Papa’s brothers never straightened up, and he came from the same roots. What caused him to turn upward?

His past maybe. Stubbornness.
Jesus!
Of course! Jesus was the only thing separating Papa from his brothers, when you got to the heart of it. Mum. James Otis.

Hannah. The Slotemakers. They all had this different quality you couldn’t quite put your finger on.

Dear Papa
.