They Found a Cave (10 page)

‘Tas will think we don't trust him. You get some more logs and stir up the fire instead,' he commanded.

In the few minutes left to them a wonderful tidying went on, bags were thrown over the mess by the wall, the stone table was set for a meal, and a lighted candle placed in the middle. As the fire blazed up, the cave looked warm and inviting.

A strange voice could be heard admiring the goats in the outer cave, but Nigel would not allow anyone to go even as far as this to satisfy an urgent curiosity. They stood, awkwardly waiting, like nervous hosts before a party, Cherry trying to comb her hair with her fingers, and Brick to replace a broken piece of string which had once held his shirt together.

‘Here we are,' Tas called cheerily, as he led the way in.

He was followed by a bent old man, with a gentle face framed in straggling white hair—hair that grew down his cheeks and ended in a wisp of beard. Nippy gave one look at him and gulped, biting his thumb to prevent an explosion of mirth.

Even Cherry had difficulty in keeping her face straight, for this face was just the face of a goat; a kind, thoughtful leader of the herd, complete to the last wisp of white hair under his chin. Then she met his twinkling blue eyes for a second and no longer wished to laugh. She understood why Nigel came forward so politely to offer a log for a chair, and called him ‘sir'.

‘“Sir”?—“Sir”?' The stranger chuckled before Tas could speak, ‘He mustn't call old Mad Dad “sir” must he, Tas? No! Not in our democratic country.'

‘Dunno,' grinned Tas, glancing at him shrewdly as he helped him off with his pack. ‘Reckon a good few called you “sir” once, didn't they, if you give us the dinkum oil?'

‘Ah, well—maybe, maybe—some boys perhaps, if you insist upon the truth. But that's my little secret—eh?—just as your domestic arrangements up here'—he glanced with approval round the firelit cave—‘are your own. Be sure I shall betray them to no one, my friends.' His keen eyes darted round the circle and it seemed to Cherry he was really saying, ‘Please trust me. I respect a secret because I have one myself.'

Nigel nodded slowly, still watching him. ‘That's all right. Tas says you're his friend. He's often told us about you.'

‘Has he? Then at least you knew old Mad Dad Williams by name—as I know you! Over there, wondering if I am a spy in disguise, stands the Black-Haired Chief with the Singing Voice—Nigel or “Old Nig”. Am I right? Next to him is a Brick that is never dropped; and beyond, somebody called Nippy, given to decorating the cave walls with pictures of wild beasts, just as his far-off ancestors were wont to do with theirs…yes, yes!' His eyes blinked at the far wall, and an old hand, trembling slightly, picked up a twist of bark and with it stirred the fire to a fresh spurt of light, so that Nippy's charcoal drawings, made with a burnt stick, showed up bravely.

‘Is that a mastodon I see, or a dinosaur? Those tusks, now—or is it a trunk?'

‘Those aren't tusks
or
trunks—those are whiskers,' protested Nippy indignantly. ‘Can't you see those are drawings of my cat, Fluffles?'

They felt more at ease after laughing at Nippy and his Art, and then Tas turned the tables on his friend by asking why he hadn't included Cherry in his inventory.

‘Ah, a girl,' twinkled the old man, ‘but I hardly recognized her; I know so little about the species. Ask me instead the habits of the platypus, iguana, or echidna and I'll discuss them with you all night; but a girl—no!' And then he smiled at her and added, ‘Of course I knew why the cave was so bright and homelike, though.'

In a very short time they felt they knew him well, though he certainly disliked being questioned about himself. For instance, there was the fireplace. It seemed to interest him very much, especially the way Tas had rebuilt the chimney to allow smoke to escape more quickly through to the outside. Tas glanced up sharply as Mad Dad stood examining it and said, ‘So you knew it wasn't like this when we came, eh Dad? Reckon you've been inside this cave before, haven't you?'

The old man's only reply was to talk hard to Brick about firewood, and whether she-oak or wattle gave out the greatest heat. For a time he ignored Tas altogether.

As the days passed they found him mysterious in other ways. He accepted gladly their warm invitation to stay and rest, before pushing on across the ranges to his own lonely hut, and he was most friendly and helpful. He improved the table and added to its length, made rough benches of saplings for either side, brought rabbits for the stew pot, and taught them many bush ways. He also shared with them a special kind of rather bitter chocolate in a blue wrapper, which he said he lived on.

Yet one evening, when they had all looked forward to sitting round the fire roasting some ‘pinched' potatoes and listening to his yarns, he failed them.

Cherry blamed Brick, though she admitted to herself she had noticed how restless Mad Dad had been all through the evening meal. He had eaten bread and goats' milk cheese away from the fine new table, standing at the mouth of the cave watching for the moon to rise. Still, Brick should not have asked him—despite a scowl from Tas—why he wandered about as he did all over the bush. ‘Are you looking for something?' asked Brick—a question which had nearly bubbled out before.

‘Eh?…I go wherever the anaspides—the mountain shrimps—are to be found. Didn't Tas tell you?' He stirred his tea and carried it to the new wall as he spoke. ‘Think—just think of it! Picture, children, all the learned men poking about with fossils—see them? Peering through glasses in all the museums to classify the fossil print of one tiny creature supposedly extinct many thousand years ago; yes, dead and done for twenty thousand or so years before our time; and all of them wrong! Quite wrong, for here he's been quietly swimming all this time—suddenly discovered in our own wonderful little Island, very much alive and kicking in the high pools and mountain creeks.'

‘Not up here—not in our own tarn?'

‘Yes, lots of 'em. Haven't you noticed? I'll show you in the morning.'

‘Couldn't we see tonight?' demanded Nippy, prepared to dash out then and there. ‘The moon is full, and look!—it's coming up behind the trees across the valley now.'

‘So it is. Yes, it's a full moon tonight, as you say,' replied the old man absently, and would answer no more questions. He seemed absorbed in the rising of the moon.

Cherry thought of her morning washings with a sense of guilt. Had she actually made those frightfully rare creatures drink soapy water for their breakfast each day? She turned to ask Mad Dad if soap would injure anaspides, but he was not there. Nor did he return after they had cleared away the meal, and pulled up log seats round a fine blazing fire.

‘Why doesn't he come back and yarn with us?' they demanded of Tas, who only shrugged. ‘We want to hear more of his tales of the old Blackfellows and their ways.'

‘Search me!' Tas grunted. ‘He's a queer bloke, like I told you. That's why he's called mad, see? Don't go asking him a lot of questions, neither. He didn't like Brick asking him what his job was; I could see that.'

‘Oh, yes he did. He told us at once about those prawn things, didn't he?' protested Brick.

‘I say,' Nigel asked lightly, but with an uneasy glance round, ‘I suppose our friend hasn't gone off to see the Pinners by any chance?'

‘Gosh, no!' Tas laughed. ‘That's real funny. If you knew how he hates my Ma! Can't stand the sight of her. I know that for a fact.' And he added quietly, ‘He liked my Dad, you see; they were cobbers, reel cobbers in the old days. He's all right—don't worry about old Mad Dad, see?'

They didn't see very far, though they nodded wisely. Tas spoke very seldom of his father, and they knew this was because he thought of him so much.

Still Mad Dad did not return. When the last baked ashy potato had been eaten, and the moon was high and small as a shilling, Cherry got up yawning, and went to bed. She lay watching the fire for some time while the others talked, and whenever she caught the name ‘Mad Dad' it gave her a hurt, raw sort of feeling.

She almost wondered if she had slept at all, for the fire was still burning cheerfully when she awoke. Though dawn coloured the sky, it was cold and grey where the firelight did not lick the cave. Someone was standing by her bed, and as she rolled over she found Mad Dad proffering a mug of hot tea and smiling down at her.

‘What!' she gasped. ‘Morning tea in bed in a
cave
?'

‘I made a billy-full when I came in,' he explained. ‘If you don't scorn it?'

‘Try
me
!' shouted Brick, whose turn it had been to get up first and light the fire. ‘Just try
me
!'

Old Mad Dad trotted to and fro passing mugs of hot drink, and made them laugh again with his tales. They all sat up in the creaking beds to enjoy the luxury in slow sips. He did not say why he had only returned with the dawn; nor did anyone dare to ask him.

Some weeks later Cherry made by chance a curious discovery. There had been no special event since Mad Dad went his way over the mountains; nothing more than another night raid on the Homestead for supplies. Nor had the Pinners so far done more than shout abuse at Brick one day, when they had observed him streaking past Hollow Tree in broad daylight, carrying a sack of spring onions, peas, and carrots on his shoulder. These vegetables he had bravely collected while they were having dinner, but Pa's dog had given tongue.

Mad Dad, after staying with them a few days, had left as abruptly as he came. While the moon remained full he had again gone off without explanation, and handed hot tea round when he returned with the dawn. Then, with the waning moon, came a wet night with flurries of rain, and a sky quite overcast. He stayed that night with them in the cave ‘skiting', as Tas called it, about the wild things of the bush, and the wild men who used to hunt them not so very long ago.

‘If they were all round these parts,' said Nigel, ‘it's funny you never find any relics except the stones they chipped.'

‘Remember they were the most primitive of any men left in the world. They may have sheltered in these very caves, but they left no carvings, did they? The Australian abo's drew on the cave walls with coloured chalks, but not our Blacks. And since they burned the bodies of their dead, and built no homes, what relics could there be? Men of science would give a lot for even the skull of one now, but we let them die out and now it's too late to learn all we want to know. Hope the same doesn't happen with the rare animals. The Tasmanian tiger's nearly gone you know.'

The talk flickered like the fire, sometimes smouldering low, and sometimes flaring up with an argument. It was late when they went to bed and full morning when they awoke.

They found Mad Dad already up and about, fastening up his swag. ‘Well—thanks, all of you. I'm pushing along now,' he stated briefly. But they begged to be allowed to come with him part of the way, and see some of the back country they had never yet explored. He seemed quite pleased, removed his pack, and made breakfast for them while Cherry milked and they hastily got ready.

Cherry drove the goats with them up the slope when they started out, leaving them to graze in a gully when they reached the Cock's Spur. This was an odd-shaped knob at which they often stared, and though they had named it none of them had ever been there before. Beyond the Spur there was a big drop into unknown land.

The old man in front, bent like a question mark beneath his load, moved without hesitation over boulders and across fallen tree-trunks as though following a made road.

‘What about a spell?' Tas called at last, stopping him before the main descent. They sat on the sun-warmed rocks and gazed at the view spread vastly below. The morning air smelled delicious, with a breath every now and then of a late wattle in flower. The great valley beneath them was ribbed with a darker green wherever a gully ran in from the hills. Mad Dad tried to show them the one he would be following when he left them. He called it the Big Fern Gully and said it was his special landmark, but only Tas could pick it out. To Cherry the whole valley looked one undulating sea of foliage, with streaks of scrub here and there, leading up to the grand scenery of the mountain range beyond.

‘Down there'—Mad Dad pointed with the stem of his pipe—‘down in there is quite a big creek. No, you can't see it. It runs under a load of man ferns and sassafras, buried so deep you never hear it running.' He described for them walking down there where the sun never reached and the only light came greenly through the fern fronds overhead; how it felt to be treading a prehistoric forest older, probably, than the hills. No footfall could disturb its peace, for there was nothing there not spongy with age or decay, and the mosses into which a boot sank deep.

They longed to reach this place, only Tas having ever seen ferns which grew like trees, with fronds on top like a palm-tree and longer than a man; yet they were compelled to turn back long before they got there. Nippy was clearly both tired and cross, and though no one would have admitted it the return climb was quite far enough, especially with an empty feeling where dinner should have been.

Mad Dad opened his pack and shared generous slabs of chocolate round before he left them. As they sat eating it and resting, a six-foot black snake slipped round a rock into the scrub.

‘Kill it!' yelled Tas, grabbing up a stick.

‘Why?' asked Mad Dad, gently taking the stick from him.

‘Gosh! Don't you always kill a snake when you can?' Tas looked so utterly astonished that the others had to laugh.

‘I? No,
I
don't. Why should I? I have never yet met a snake that wasn't in a hurry to get away from
me
—have you?'