East of Outback (6 page)

“If tha’s a person, I eat my hat!” Dizzy poured on more speed.

They ran past the yellow bushes, past the wallaby innards strewn about in the hot red dirt. Dizzy got a shot off at the dog just as it ducked behind a tree.

“Who’d think a dog be ‘way out here! Took my breakfast, too!” Dizzy swung a fist at the air and gave up the chase. Wearily, he turned back toward camp.

Colin fell in beside him. “Hey!” He gasped and broke into a run. In the distance by their fire, a boy had grabbed half the roasting carcass and was running away.

Huffing and puffing, Dizzy ran as far as the fire and stopped. “I’ll guard what’s left,” he panted.

Bonzer. Just bonzer. Colin would never catch up to that fleet-footed lad. Besides, half a wallaby would serve two. Why did he bother? Because it made him mad.

The thief slowed down, stumbling. He glanced over his shoulder, dropped the side of meat and lurched back into a faltering run. Colin ignored the meat and kept going. A few hundred yards further, when he’d about caught up, the thief could manage no more than a rapid, shuffling walk.

Suddenly the thief stopped and wheeled, brandishing a small pocket knife; its blade no more than three inches long. He was left-handed. “Stay back,” he wheezed.

“No worries, mate. I’ll just stand here ‘til you drop over. Who do you think you are, to come sneaking into camp and steal our food? You only needed to ask, you know. Instead you send in the dog to decoy us away, eh?”

The thief stood wavering, as if confused by the impasse. A head shorter than Colin, he was probably five-one or five-two, just a frail lad. He looked young and tender and very vulnerable despite his tanned skin, weathered by the sun. His cheeks glowed scarlet from the exertion of his escape. His skin color told Colin some dark ancestor lurked in his background, and a raven-black wisp of hair had slipped from under his hat, pasting to his sweaty forehead.

“I don’t—” The hand that held the little pocket knife drooped. “Let me go, please? Won’t bother you no more. Just let me go.”

Colin stepped back and raised his hands. “All right. I’ll let you go. You can turn and run away to nowhere, or you can follow me into camp and have dinner with us. There’s enough for all of us; even your dog—that is, if Diz isn’t too ropeable about his breakfast. Anyway, you’re invited. It’s your choice.” He turned slowly and started back.

Twenty feet separated them, when Colin noticed from the corner of his eye the thiefs shadow begin to move. With tortured, shuffling steps the boy followed. He was obviously worn out, or dried out, or both. Why would he wear that ragged tan jacket on a warm summer evening? Colin wondered.

Colin picked up the half-roasted wallaby side on the way in. They really would be eating by moonlight at this rate.

Dizzy stared at the thief. He bolted to his feet and pulled his battered old hat off his head. “Desiderio Romales,
a sus ordenes
. Col, you Invite her to dinner, eh? Tha’s good.”

“Her?!” Colin wheeled to stare. A look of pure panic flashed across the thiefs face. Those bright black eyes darted from man to man.

Dizzy stuffed his hat back on and sat down by the fire. “We don’ touch you,
Señorita
, we promise. You safe here. Come, eat. You can go, stay, what you want. ‘Cept that dog of yours. I beat the tar outta that dog, I catch him. He took my breakfast.”

What was happening inside that little head? Colin tried to read her face and could not; perhaps she herself didn’t know. And how did Dizzy know it was a she? She wore a man’s shirt miles too big for her. Her mens’ trousers hung so loose and baggy the cuffs were rolled tight, and the rope that served as a belt pinched the waistband into wads of overlap. That hat, every bit as tattered as Dizzy’s, sat down around her ears.

Her knees buckled, and she suddenly flopped to the ground, still a rod away from the fire. She stared vacantly at the sizzling slab of wallaby.

Colin turned the meat and shoved another turnip among the stones, this one closer to the fire. His duties as cook temporarily abated, he could sit and stare back at her. He could even take a nap, but he didn’t quite trust her enough for that yet. Maybe Dizzy was wrong—this could be just a boy with a feminine face. Whatever; whether he or she, the kid was obviously very hungry.

Normally, Dizzy zipped from place to place, from moment to moment, with an endless energy. Not now. Slowly, casually, he stood up. He sauntered to the tree where his waterbag hung. He poured a cup of water and ambled over to the thief.

He handed her the cup. “Sip it, eh? You look pretty dry.”

She downed it in three swallows.

Col? How ’bout you fill it up again, eh?” He handed Colin the cup and sat down in the grass beside her, facing her. He pressed both hands on her face and she made only a token effort to duck away. He pulled her hat off. A long coil of black hair dropped down her back. It looked a little like Hannah’s hair, but Hannah’s was not nearly so dark.

“You don’ get all that fever being sick, eh? What happen to you?”

She sat silent, staring at the fire.

“I watch you flash that knife at Col. Cacky-handed. Maybe you flash your knife at somebody else, they cut you, eh? Lemme see your other arm, please.”

“Let me alone, please? Don’t bother with me.“Hey”

Dizzy’s excruciating English purred gently. “Hey, we don’ hurt you more. You need some help, we here. Ain’ no bother. What else we do ‘til the meat’s done, eh? Lemme look.
Por favor?
”

She looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time. “Filipino.”

“Tha’s what they keep telling me.” Without asking, he laid a hand on her arm just above her elbow; she caught her breath. Diz’s voice purred on. “Col, in my near saddlebag, a bottle I was saving for a special time. This time as special as any, eh?”

Colin handed him the cup and hunkered down beside Dizzy’s saddle to rifle through his left saddlebag. Here it was, a small, flat bottle of amber whiskey. Strange; neither in Broome nor aboard Captain Foulard’s boat had Colin ever seen Dizzy drink whiskey.

Dizzy had peeled the jacket off her right arm and was rolling a blood-stained shirtsleeve high. She had wrapped a grimy handkerchief around what had to be the world’s most painful gash. It seeped yellow pus. It burned an ugly red. With the sleeve up, it smelled like a dead rat.

“You don’ look out, you gonna end up with blood poison or gangrene,” Dizzy muttered, then raised his voice, “Col, get the waterbag, too, and my other shirt.”

She shook her head. “Don’t use your water up on this.”

“Got lotsa water. No worries.”

She frowned. “Where?”

He nodded toward the low hills to the east. “You don’ know that? I thought maybe you hang around here because of the water.”

“I didn’t know. No.” She sighed. “Just traveling, like you, I guess. Did I miss Broome? Did I go too far?”

“Naw, you going fine. Wha’s in Broome? Family?”

“Nothing. Just a place.”

“Is a place, all right.”

Colin was not a medical man. But Dizzy appeared to be, at least in practical matters such as this. The erstwhile thief settled to an air of acceptance, perhaps even complacency. She made no comment or protest as the near-doctor and his reluctant assistant spent half an hour cleaning the horrid wound.

Dizzy used his whiskey not to drink, but as an antiseptic, literally pouring it in. He discoursed in fractured English on the existence of germs, and how he’d learned from experience that sauerkraut juice, obnoxious though it may be, will not kill them.

Colin tried to reconcile what he saw but could not. The girl was perhaps fifteen, sixteen at most. Mary Aileen’s age. A little darker than Hannah’s coloring. Like his sisters, she was totally female and should have been subject to weeping. And yet, despite the searing pain Dizzy caused her, gentle as he tried to be, her cheeks remained dry. Her eyes glistened a few times, but that was all.

Dizzy sat back and washed his hands with the last of the water from the bag. “I go fill this up again ‘fore we eat, eh? Dinner ‘bout ready, cook?”

“Oughta be.”

“Hey.” Dizzy dipped his head toward the thief. “Sorry I take a shot at your dog, eh? I was angry.”

“You keep saying my dog. Isn’t that
your
dog?”

Colin scowled. “Why you think it’s our dog?”

“He stays near that bay mare. I saw him last night, following behind you. He stopped when you stopped here, and he’s been here all day today.”

Colin and Dizzy stared at each other.

“Naw. Couldn’ be.” Dizzy wagged his head.

“You said he didn’t belong to the owner. Maybe he chums with one of the horses we bought?” Colin hopped to his feet and went looking. The wallaby head and hide were missing now. The entrails had been scattered further. Colin walked out to the horses and stood around awhile watching, examining all the bushes about, looking hard at the pink earth and the gentle green.

There. A hundred feet away. Watching suspiciously with steely eyes, so still it appeared as nothing more than a blue-gray mass in the shade of a shrub, lay Max.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

B
LUE
M
OUNTAINS
W
ONGA

A three-foot length of wool yarn thrown into the air and let fall as it may would lie no more serpentine than this mountain road. Mary Aileen did not have so much a tendency to motion sickness as did Mum; still, the twisty track upset her stomach. Edan sat beside her in the rumble seat, wrapped in his own unfathomable cloak of thoughts. The rough track didn’t seem to bother him, but with Edan you never knew.

Hannah, in the front seat between Papa and Mum, squirmed for the thousandth time. Her dark head bobbed. Could Hannah never sit still?

Papa shifted into first gear and urged their touring car up the final steep grade. Drab dust rolled out behind them. “At last!” Mum heaved an audible sigh. They topped the rise and rolled the remaining quarter of a mile to their traditional family camping ground.

Mary Aileen was born to camp out. She loved this secluded site, though not the ride to it. She loved simply to sit and absorb the silent strength of these mountains. She enjoyed the picnicking and the tenting. The night sounds fascinated her.

Papa unloaded the heavy canvas tent as Edan and Mary Aileen measured out its space and drove stakes. In the past, Colin had driven the stakes. He enjoyed camping almost as much as she. Where was he now? Her heart ached. Hannah began complaining right on schedule as she wandered about the campsite doing the odd jobs requested of her. By now she was always either tired or hungry or bored or all three.

Within the hour Mum had dug out her little kitchen and was heating a casserole of ham and beans over an open fire. Edan and Papa went off to set up the latrine. Hannah curled up in the dust beside Mum to watch the flames play. Mary Aileen carried bedding into the tent and rolled it out. She heard Papa speaking sharply to Edan somewhere beyond the trees.

As her own blanket roll fell open, her sketch pad and pencils dropped out. She sat a few minutes, pretending she was thinking when, in fact, she wasn’t at all. Then she scooped up her sketching materials and walked out into the waning sun of autumn.

Some of the cliffs and canyons in these Blue Mountains dropped precipitously even as others flowed away in gentle undulations. Their campsite nestled on the crest of one of the long rolling hills. Mary Aileen walked the hundred yards to her favorite perch, an outcrop hanging on the brink of forever. She crawled out onto the smooth hard stone and sat down.

Behind her, overhanging gum trees shielded her from the sky. Beyond her the vault arched blue and endless over the gaping canyon. Why did the sky here seem far deeper and bigger than the sky over Sydney? Near the horizon it melted into a gentle gray to match the autumn haze. Sometimes it was difficult to see where sky ended and land began. Tonight the rolling gray-purple mountains drew distinct lines against infinity.

Mary Aileen sketched outlines she had sketched many times before—the rounded hills to the east, the ragged ridge across the canyon from her perch here, the weird knob out on the west end of the ridge. Should she sketch the knob this time, or should she not? At least several hundred feet high, it was a protrusion of wrinkled and gnarled granite, like an ugly wart on an otherwise graceful landscape. When she drew it exactly the way it looked, her picture appeared amateurish, unnatural. If she left it out, her sketch looked more refined, but inaccurate.

Aha! She had a sudden idea she’d never had before. She drew a tree where the knob ought to be. Mother Nature would surely plant a tree to hide that knob sooner or later. Mary Aileen would make it sooner. She sketched the tree after the form of the trees beside her.

On the crest of the mountain here, the trees spaced themselves at orderly intervals, making them easy to sketch individually. Below, in the wet gorge, they crowded each other, forming a dense green mat seemingly to protect the canyon from prying eyes. Living things were hidden in that canyon, wonderful things—lyrebirds and bowerbirds, orioles and pardalotes, platypuses and snakes. She wished she could walk among them unfeared!

Wee-ooo
. A bowerbird called in the forest below her. Silence. Something on the forest floor must have startled a flock of king parrots; with their noisy
chack, chack!
, red birds and green spurted up from the hillside opposite. Kookaburras laughed a hearty
g’day
to the waning sun. Beside Mary Aileen’s front-row seat, a restless little rock warbler rattled the dry leaves. Wagging its tail side to side, it hopped and skittered about.

The dinner bell clanged, muffled by the trees behind her. Mary Aileen scrambled reluctantly, to her feet, turned her back on her marvelous view of nature, and walked down to camp.

Papa bowed his head for the blessing as soon as Mary Aileen entered the circle. He thanked God for the food, and for the opportunity they had to retreat like this for a few days of rest and renewal. He acknowledged God’s hand in everything, and as soon as he said “Amen,” Hannah dived for the food.