The river is Down (6 page)

Only when she was certain that all was perfect, even to straightening the curtain over the one window in the living-room, did she venture through the doorway.

There, neatly stacked side by side under the lean-to shelter, were her two cases, her rolled sleeping-bag and picnic Esky, from the car.

Nice to think my car is safely back again, she thought. At least, I suppose it is. It was nowhere in sight.

Once she was outside in the brilliant hot sun she realised the silence was not so absolute after all. Somewhere over

in the square another engine, a quiet one, was thrumming consistently. She guessed it would be a power engine and generator supplying power and electricity.

Where did she go from now? And what do?

She had to rind the boss's office, if there was such a thing. Somewhere over there amongst those rows and rows of neat white mobile houses, Mary and her children must be. They couldn't just vanish into thin air.

Cindie walked across the wide stretch of red earth, patched here and there with tussock grass and spinifex, towards the near end of the canteen. At least the cook would not have gone to wherever it was the men went with their business of building a thousand miles of road. Where was the road, anyway? Not in sight!

She climbed the steps of the canteen and stood in the opening. The shutters were up all round, making this big place more like an open-air pavilion.

The two children, Myrtle and Jinx, sat side by side at a table on one side of the canteen. They were writing in exercise books. By them were two stacks of books. In front of them, on the table, stood a lovely gleaming radio set—now silent. They were obviously doing their lessons. Presently perhaps they would tune in to the School of the Air.

They sneaked tiny quick glances at Cindie, then ducked their heads down again, even more quickly.

Still shy? Cindie wondered. Then decided not to intrude on them yet. She might put them off her altogether.

Mary Deacon was sitting at a long table on the other side; one man was beside her, and two others were on chairs nearby as if waiting for her attention.

Only the men, all three quite young, really looked up. Mary was too busy with pen and paper and piles of forms. The men looked away quickly, shyly. Then back again with slow welcoming grins.

Cindie thought of the effect she had had on the children and wondered just what was the effect on these men. They wouldn't often see a young woman on the thousand-miler.

The man to whom Mary Deacon had been attending took a form from her, and as he came down the long floor of the canteen, Cindie could see he was now busy pinning a cheque to the form.

So this was one of those who had not known, before he came up north of Twenty-Six, what forms to bring; or how to fill them in if ,he did bring them.

Then she recognised the cheque book in the man's hand. She smiled. It was almost like seeing an old friend. That cheque book, pink and blue, was issued by the same bank as her own. She, and this man—strangers to this moment—were linked way back thousands of miles by one banking company.

Funny how companion-like it seemed!

She smiled almost too readily, then blushed and looked away quickly. He wouldn't understand what had brought that happy look of recognition to her face. Neither would the other two men waiting now for Mary Deacon to attend to their problems. They were all aware of her as she stood there by the opening, her face rosy with that blush. They were all staring at her; including Mary.

Cindie could have wrung her hands. She had seemed too friendly too soon in a camp inhabited by more than a hundred single men.

In a flash she understood, more than Mary's last words last night, why Nick Brent and Flan had not been so welcoming when they had picked her off the island between the billabong and the river.

She bit her lip. She began to walk down the length of the canteen; it seemed like the distance of a vast ballroom floor.

'I was only just ' She wanted to explain to Mary but

knew she couldn't in front of the remaining two men. Then came another annihilating thought.

That cheque book! The same as her own! She had paid for her petrol at Baanya Station with a cheque bearing the signature—Cynthia Davenport. Worse, the cheque forms were over-stamped with her printed name, and her account file number. Jim Vernon couldn't help but read her real name on that cheque.

She had let Nick Brent, and Flan and Mary think her name was Brown. Even if she explained now, she was untruthful as a person from the word go!

'I . . . I thought I would offer to help. . . .' She answered Mary's surprised and doubtfully appraising stare with an over-anxious expression. 'But first . . . that is . . . is there any way I could send a radio message? I mean, I know people talk over the air at certain scheduled times. Would I be allowed to do that?' She was too hurried. She was making Mary suspicious, perhaps.

`You'd better ask Nick Brent about that,' Mary said. 'He doesn't allow a free-for-all. There'd be chaos if he did;

and no work done back on the road. The men can take turns on the evening session, but only for urgent messages. They're allowed one personal call a week.'

She was staring at Cindie. Not quite so critically now, but curious.

`What's troubling you, Cindie? By the way, you chaps, this is Cindie Brown. The boss brought her in last night. Marooned by the river. Cindie, this ' She pointed with her pencil to a slim dark young man whose face was almost as kind as Jim Vernon's had been. 'This is Dicey George, who's the radio mechanic on the camp, and on the general ironmongery up on the road too. This other fellow can't speak English yet—he's Italian—but soon will. His name's Molani. So he says, but this employment contract shows three more syllables to it.'

The Italian smiled shyly but Dicey George grinned broadly.

`Don't take any notice of Mary being caustic,' he said. `Molani has more syllables to the end of his name all right, but no one can pronounce it thataway. Molani for short suits everyone.'

`Thanks for the explanation, Dicey,' Mary said with sarcasm. 'Now let's get on with what Cindie wants. You're the radio man. You give her the answer.'

Dicey grinned across the paper-littered table. 'How come you sometimes say the right thing, Mary? You must be slipping Taking Miss Cindie in hand is the very break I'm looking for. You shoot ahead and fix up friend Molani and I'll have the girl!' He stood up. 'Back soon,' he added as a final comment.

He winked at Cindie as he turned to her. She knew the wink was a friendly one, no more.

`Thank you,' she said. 'You mean you can help me get a message through?'

He looked at his wrist-watch. 'Ten minutes to go, and the air's open. You come along with me and I'll fix all—Nick being absent from camp—I hope.'

Dicey started to walk down the long floor with Cindie at his

side. He was young but very nice, she thought. She guessed

twenty-two. His brown cotton clothes, shirt and shorts,

were clean and pressed. His brown face and dark hair

looked scrubbed and polished. His appearance said he was more of a technical officer than the other two men, who probably dug at the earth with spade and shovel or from behind the wheel of a dust-blowing grader.

'If Nick comes back from the site—and he's due soon—we'll tell him this is exceptional circumstances,' Dicey said as they walked along. 'Afte
r all, someone has to be bother
ing somewhere what's happened to one lost girl. Yes?'

'It's Jim Vernon at Baanya,' Cindie said uneasily. 'You see, he's a friend of mine. He'll—'

'Let your people know?'

'Ye-es. He'll let them know.'

Someone, way back in her childhood, must have taught the lesson 'Tell one lie and you have to tell fifty to support it.' What sort of miserable mess was she getting herself in now?

One fib about her name to begin with—then complications! Changing one's identity wasn't all wombats and wallabies, after all.

All the same, she couldn't let those people up at Bindaroo Station know she was coming. This was for her mother's sake. She alone could find out what was going on there. Did the end justify the means? Had anyone ever settled that little moral issue?

'You're mighty quiet, Cindie,' Dicey George said as they crossed the red gravel square to another large mobile unit, bristling with antennae and wireless masts. 'You're not scared because you're caught up here on a construction site?'

'Oh, no!' She was almost too hasty with that reply.

'That's good.' He glanced at her quickly as he mounted the unit's steps then held open the -wire door for her to go through. 'Don't take too much notice of Mary. She has a blunt tongue, but a heart of gold. Don't know how we'd build the thousand-miler without her. There's several wives come down for a visit and, like you, are caught by the floods. They're in the caravans back in D'D row. You'd better mind them more than Mary. All they have to do is sit and talk all day.' He grinned at her-slyly. 'Some talk too! One hour in the camp and they know everyone's business, and everyone's past history. A whole gaggle of transceiver sets helps them.'

Cindie was genuinely surprised. 'There are other women stranded here now? I'm not the only one?'

'If no one's apprised you of the fact it's maybe because Someone, Nick Brent to boot, is waiting to see just how soon

you mix up with that gossip group. Or don't, as the case may be.'

`Thank you for telling me,' Cindie said. She looked at the radio panel above a bench at the far side of the unit. It made her think of -the operations room she'd seen at the space station at Carnarvon.

`All that gadgetry?' she queried, surprised.

`All of it. We don't just talk on area outposts from here. We give weather information down south, geological data to the experts across the continent. Fetch in Radio Australia for news round the world. We even print a broadsheet daily, two pages, so the chaps can read the news for themselves.'

Cindie was awed. `They get service, don't they? Iced drinks, and news of the world out in the middle of a desert!'

`Don't you let the old-time nor'-westers up hereabouts hear you call this part of the world a desert. It's plain home to them.' Dicey sat down in front of a panel, turned one switch, then tuned in with another. The relay from the Meekatharra Outpost was just closing down the telegram session.

`Sit down in this chair here, Cindie, next to me. The open session's coming on now. As soon as I raise Baanya I'll hand over the mike to you.'

Cindie sat down and watched Dicey's intent face as he operated the transceiver.

There was a buzzing, a clicking, then a voice.

`Marana Outcamp here,' a clear voice said. 'Good morning everybody.'

Cindie recognised this at once as belonging to someone called Erica who had spoken over the air to Nick yesterday. A haughty voice: very sure of itself. `Come in the construction camp if you're listening.'

Dicey put his hand over the mike and winked at Cindie. `We're not listening!' he said with a grin.

The inquiry came again but still Dicey said nothing. There was absolute silence in the unit for half a minute.

`She's off,' he said at length. `Now we'll try Baanya for ourselves. Too bad for poor Erica. No one wants to talk to her this morning.'

He eased the knob a little.

`Dicey George calling Baanya! Dicey George calling Baanya! Come in please.'

His hand over the mike, he leaned towards Cindie and whispered in her ear.

`You know the whole north—including Erica—is listening in? And she won't be pleased we didn't answer her call.'

[It was a warning. She smiled gratefully at him. At the same time she was desperately trying to think how she could

ask Jim Vernon, if he came on the air, the sixty-four-dollar question. Would he keep her secret? She was not Cynthia Davenport. She was Cindie Brown.

`Mrs. Overton, Baanya, here. You want the men for anything particular, Dicey? The overseer is the only one in the homestead. My husband has gone out with the stockmen. They're mustering round the river paddocks. You know the river's down, Dicey?'

'We know all right, Mrs. Overton. Nick and Flan saw it yesterday. Matter of fact, the overseer is the one we want. There's someone here wants to talk to Jim Vernon urgent-like.'

Dicey glanced sideways at Cindie. She gave him an imploring look, and shook her head.

`Don't tell her who ' she begged.

Dicey's eyebrows did a dance and his grin had an edge of knowingness in it.

`Personal? A surprise?'

She nodded.

The woman's voice came back.

`Jim's coming now, Dicey. How are things on the site? Pity you can't get any rain or river water up there. Erica, over at Marana Outcamp, said Bindaroo's had nineteen inches. Nick'll be pleased, anyway.'

Cindie's ears buzzed. Nick, Erica and Bindaroo all mentioned in one breath! Why should Nick, who was a road-construction engineer, be pleased about rain falling on Bindaroo?

`Maybe a few of us'll cut across the plain to the river and do some fishing in the week-end,' Dicey was saying into the mike cheerfully. 'It's up to Nick—and the lottery for the utilities, of course. There's never enough.'