The Ranger in the Hills: A Heartwarming Australian Outback Romance Read online

  ‘Don’t be for ever on guard. They mean well,’ her father used to say. ‘It’s because you look young, but you’re wise in years, Katie. They know it when they come here to see for themselves.’

  Then he would smile sadly and add: ‘It’s the pride in you, girlie. It was a gift from your mother, but it has its drawbacks. You are just like her, if you only knew. Staunch.’ His voice would fade away in a lost way as if he had gone back in time and was thinking of her mother.

  Katie, while these people here at Ryde’s Place talked about her as if in her absence, was aware of her chin-up and straight back. She had to fight that touch of red in her hair. She had always to be on guard …

  She turned to Tom and smiled with an effort. It was to hide the fact the bright blue eyes would like to shed a few tears, just for a change from always being on top of things. Suddenly she was more lonely in this room full of people than she had been at the forsaken bus-stop at Malley’s Find.

  ‘Let me pour you out another cup of tea, Tom?’ she asked quickly.

  ‘I’d like it very much, Katie,’ he grinned at her amiably. ‘Pour one for Bern too. Anything to take them off the subject of children. I wouldn’t stand for that, you know. Not after you’ve come all this way by yourself ‒ that is, not counting Andrew. Seems like that boy can’t be counted on at all. Anyone know where he is now?’

  ‘Yes,’ Stella said. ‘He’s out on the gravel square drawing on the ground with sticks for the benefit of Taciturn and Secretary.’

  ‘Secretary?’ Katie asked, taking Tom’s tea to him first. ‘I’m longing to meet Secretary. Everyone keeps mentioning his name.’

  ‘He’s Bern’s secretary,’ Stella laughed. ‘At least that’s what everyone calls him. Only someone like Bern would have the nerve to have a secretary out in this country.’

  ‘Nonsense, Stella!’ her mother said, reprovingly. ‘Jill, dear, get some more hot water, please. And Katie, don’t take too much notice of Stella’s teasing, will you? Bern doesn’t. He knows her so well.’

  ‘I’ll get the hot water,’ Katie said quickly. ‘You pour Bern’s tea, Jill. I won’t be a minute …’

  She had picked up the hot-water jug before Jill could reach the tea-table and gone quickly towards the kitchen. It was almost a flight but not so much from pouring Bern Malin’s tea as to spare Stella the annoyance of seeing her do it. Besides, she wanted to know exactly what Andrew was doing ‒ drawing with sticks on the ground! She hadn’t seen him in two hours.

  Katie poured the hot water into the jug quickly, then went to the kitchen window. The scene out there on the shadeless gravel square was a strange one.

  Andrew, Taciturn and an aborigine, all dressed alike in their brown drill clothes, were squatting on their heels in a silent circle. Andrew was drawing on the ground. The aborigine was nodding his head in approval. Taciturn was smoking a self-rolled cigarette nearly as long as a cigar and was watching with quiet intent. They were more like three men in solemn conclave ‒ deaf and dumb ‒ because whatever communication was going on between them was through the medium of whatever it was Andrew was drawing on the ground.

  The hot-water jug was heating up Katie’s hands so she went hastily back into the living-room with it.

  ‘Please, Mrs. Ryde,’ she said as she put the jug carefully on the tray. ‘Will you excuse me? I want to see what it is that Andrew is doing.’

  ‘Of course, dear.’

  ‘Must you know what Andrew is doing?’ Bern asked quietly.

  Katie closed her eyes, forgetting Mrs. Ryde was watching her.

  ‘Not really,’ Katie said, as she half turned away. ‘I’m curious, not watchful.’

  When she had gone from the room Mrs. Ryde took Bern to task.

  ‘I really don’t think you should take Katie away, Bern. I have a feeling‒’

  ‘That we won’t agree? We will, ultimately. I will see to it, I assure you, Mrs. Ryde.’

  Out on the gravel square Katie joined the trio squatting in the circle. They did not look up, or even seem to notice her arrival.

  Whatever Andrew had drawn earlier had been erased with the flat of his hand. On a clean dusty square he was now drawing a figure. It had thin spindly legs and large drooping hands. The hair about its head was blowing loosely in a windswept way. The figure was walking down a curve of track. As Katie watched, Andrew put in a tree ‒ it too was bent and twisted, nearly leafless, but the effect of motion was of endless wind blowing through the skeleton tree as it blew endlessly through the figure’s hair.

  Andrew drew very well, Katie knew that, but she wondered at the engrossed attention given him by the two men. The aborigine was, of course, Secretary.

  Andrew made little eyebrow-shaped marks above the tree. These were birds flying with the wind.

  ‘That’s him. That’s him, all right,’ the aborigine said.

  ‘That black feller’s very good all right. That sou’-east wind too. That’s him altogether.’

  Andrew went on drawing. Taciturn looked up.

  ‘He’s pretty good, this chap Andrew,’ Taciturn said to Katie. ‘Secretary says he’s very good.’

  Katie wondered exactly how Secretary would know. The drawing was a grouping of strokes; no more. It was as sparse as the land around beyond the soak, the wandoo grove and Mount You-self. This picture was of arid plain, empty except for the stroke figure of someone walking along a track past an old wind-bent gum tree, with birds flying in the wind.

  Andrew erased the drawing again and Secretary took the stick from him. He drew something now. It was incomprehensible to Katie.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked Taciturn.

  ‘Secretary showing the young feller how you track iguana.’

  Andrew took the stick and added more and even stranger signs.

  ‘That’s him,’ Secretary said with glee. He looked up at the girl standing beside them and grinned. His white teeth were a flash of light in his dark face. His eyes were shining liquid brown.

  ‘He knows plenty, this chap,’ he said. ‘He’d make pretty good black feller out in the bush. Some day I take him and show him Calajira. Mr. Malin bought Calajira some colours in a box from Pandanning. Now all people come to Calajira to buy his pictures. Big people from cities. They pay a lot of money.’

  ‘I’m sure you can teach Andrew a lot about the bush, and about tracking,’ Katie said gratefully.

  Taciturn grinned but Secretary became serious.

  ‘He know plenty,’ he said. ‘One day I take him to Calajira.’

  ‘Where is Calajira?’

  ‘Way out in the bush. You go up north two hundred miles. He lives at a place called Wulla Rock.’

  Kate had a sudden stirring of anxiety. Secretary wouldn’t mean to ‒ but Andrew was a wanderer and the aborigine was giving him ideas. If she let Bern Malin take Andrew without her, he could conceivably trust Secretary with the boy ‒ to be taken away perhaps through the wild bush to the desert-lands.

  Nothing, not Stella, Mrs. Ryde or Jill or Tom would shake her now from going with Bern Malin wherever he took Andrew.

  Katie left the bush artists to their drawings and went back to the homestead.

  Bern Malin had come out on to the back veranda with Tom. The two men stood side by side watching the girl approach. Katie saw them. How alike they both were, and yet how different. They were tall, lean and brown. Men of the outback. Bern’s hat was down on his brow so that he looked out from under the brim. His grey eyes were slitted a little as if he was seeing through and beyond Katie into too bright a sun; his mouth was not exactly in that straight line but it wasn’t smiling either.

  ‘Been having a corroboree, Katie?’ Tom asked with a grin. ‘Young Andrew seems to have roped and haltered Secretary all right.’

  ‘Taciturn too,’ Katie said with a touch of pride. She wanted them to know Andrew could make friends. He wasn’t a solitary.

  ‘Andrew and I are ready to come with you,’ she said to Bern, watching his face and not minding that he pro
bably would read determination in hers.

  His smile had a touch of irony in it as he brought his eyes back from outer space to the slim figure of Katie standing there looking up at him.

  ‘You had intended that all along, hadn’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I think I had.’

  That piece of honesty would jolt him surely!

  Bern Malin, looking at her steadily, did not alter his expression by so much as a flicker. He was as moveless as a wandoo tree at noon.

  Katie felt exasperated. Would nothing surprise this man?

  Chapter Eight

  The parting from the Rydes next morning had a mixture of gaiety and regret in it. Everyone was being nice to Katie, except Stella. Stella stayed by the veranda post, leaning against it casually yet in a way that was enticing in its carelessness. She watched a flock of black cockatoos flying far overhead, giving their lost fraternal cries as they wheeled and chevroned against a sky that was now pale with heat.

  ‘Rain coming,’ was all she said. ‘You can always tell when the cockatoos fly overhead.’

  ‘Rain?’ Tom said laconically, tilting his head back and watching the birds. ‘Rain somewhere, Stella, but not here. Maybe where they came from. Could be a hundred or so miles away.’

  ‘Tears on the hot earth,’ Mrs. Ryde said almost wistfully. ‘If there was only more crying up there where there aren’t any clouds’

  ‘Oh, Mother!’ Jill sounded exasperated. ‘It drenches if and when it does come. Mud up to the fetlock, and nowhere to get away from one another.’

  ‘You can always come over to Malin’s Outpost, Jill,’ Bern said with the kind of brotherly affection Katie had already detected between the two.

  The jeep was loaded up, for Bern was taking a quantity of stores brought in by the transport trucks from Pandanning some weeks ago. There were several of Katie’s warm brown loaves of bread in the packs too. They had been a great success ‒ for which she had given a sigh of relief. An unknown stove might have given disastrous results.

  Andrew was invited to climb up in the seat and Tom gave Katie a hand up beside Andrew. Tom was a little old-world in a way; but it touched Katie. She felt she had a need of kindness of a special personal sort. Tom gave it to her.

  Secretary and Taciturn came up on horseback. The former was riding Bern’s horse home and Taciturn was bringing along a new mount Bern had bought from the Rydes.

  Stella looked at them lazily from the veranda.

  ‘Secretary no doubt was born on a horse,’ she said lazily. ‘As for Taciturn, he’s turned into a commuter.’ She raised her voice a little so she could be heard by the two horsemen. The voice lost something of its sweeter tone when she did this. ‘Who do you really belong to, Tass? Rydes or Malins? You seem to live most of your time on the track.’

  ‘More power to the track, Miss Stella,’ the rock man said. ‘Can’t say there’s not more peace there. Kind of quiet after the chitter-chatter round about here …’

  ‘He has no respect,’ Stella said without concern.

  ‘I should think very little,’ Mrs. Ryde agreed. ‘He’s known you since you were born, so there’s nothing Tass doesn’t know about you, inside or out, Stella.’

  ‘I’ve tanned the out, more’n once,’ Taciturn said bluntly. ‘No nonsense from you now, Miss Stella, or you won’t have any trip to Pandanning. Can’t see Tom, or Mr. Ryde, giving up time to take you. I’m the only one that’s goin’ thataway in three months, I can tell you. So far as I know.’

  ‘There’s Bern …’ Stella raised her voice again ‒ to be heard clearly. She lifted her head as she did. Her beautiful figure tautened. Her throat was nearly as lovely as her eyes. ‘You’ll take me to Pandanning, won’t you, Bern? You said you were going soon. Just me and you and the bush for two hundred and seventeen miles‒’

  She was smiling at the promise of some treat Bern would not deny her. The thought of it had livened her. She stood straight and slim where before she had leaned. She looked across the space to the jeep where Bern was clipping down the canvas cover. ‘When you’ve sent Katie off to her cousin, of course,’ Stella added pointedly.

  ‘And that brat Andrew too,’ Jill put in.

  Bern did not answer. It seemed that he had not heard. The cockatoos were wheeling again and flew over from whence they had come, their terrible lonely cry suddenly assaulting the silence of the whole world of Ryde’s Place, where it fenced and paddocked itself against the bluff of the hills beyond the wandoo trees. Perhaps he had not heard! Katie was sure he would have answered Stella otherwise.

  It was to Stella he had given all his attention last night. Mr. Ryde was late in and Katie, Jill, Tom and Mrs. Ryde had made up a game of bridge.

  Katie did not mind that Jill had spoken of Andrew as ‘that brat’. She knew by this time that it was Jill’s way and was not meant to be unkind.

  Andrew, in the jeep, sat crouched against his sister, not because he sought protection but because it was necessary to leave plenty of room for Bern in the drive-seat. Bern was all man, and the seat of the jeep was four feet four and bit inches; Andrew’s eyes told him the width of the seat. He knew he was right. He could measure distance like that ‒ from tree to tree and across the track; the leap of a kangaroo and the pace of an emu. He didn’t mention this to anyone though he thought he might one day tell Secretary. Secretary would understand. One day the aborigine would take him to Calajira.

  At the last minute Stella had come down from her post on the veranda to join the group saying good-bye by the jeep.

  As Mrs. Ryde, Jill and Tom turned away, Stella, both hands in her pockets, rocked gently backwards and forwards from heels to toes.

  Bern started up the engine. At that moment Stella was on the forward lean.

  ‘Don’t jump my claims, Katie, will you?’ she said with an innocent, yet only half-friendly smile. She made it sound like an insincere joke as between sisters. ‘I’m sure to know if you do.’ She really laughed now ‒ showing her beautiful pearly teeth. ‘I have my scouts ‒ you may be surprised. We all do ‒ round about here.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Katie promised, joining in the joke ‒ if it was a joke.

  The last hand-wave given, the jeep was on its way.

  ‘Thirty miles an hour,’ Andrew said, as if he was thinking aloud.

  Bern Malin looked down at him, a very small boy indeed.

  ‘So you know about jeeps do you?’ he asked.

  ‘I read about it somewhere. They’re slower but much more certain. They go anywhere because they’ve a four-wheel drive.’

  ‘The sooner you learn about the insides of them, young man, the wiser you’ll be. You’ll know why they go slower and better. The engine is important too.’

  Katie said nothing. She was troubled that Stella might, under that joking manner, fear Katie as some kind of rival.

  Not for Bern Malin’s affections, that was for sure, she thought with a touch of rue.

  She only had to remember those beautiful hazel eyes to know that no one could compete with Stella.

  Meantime Taciturn and Secretary had galloped off down a horse pad that would take them the shorter way to Malin’s Outpost.

  They drove most of the fifteen miles in silence. At first it worried Katie but she could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t sound forced conversation. She wondered how much Bern minded having to reorganise his homestead. There was the bringing of Mrs. Potts, for instance. Then there was the scarcely-wanted Katie herself. It meant he had to set up quite a ménage.

  The more she thought of it the more she really understood what her coming had done to him. If he liked and preserved the bachelor quietude of his homestead ‒ how very much more he would hate this intrusion!

  In that small house, two women and a small boy, together with Bern and Mrs. Potts’s husband, would make quite a crowd.

  How could she expect him to accept this new responsibility with pleasure? She began to feel a creeping admiration for him that he had shown, after all, so very l
ittle of his feelings. It was really very good of him to give them a home. She would try and make up to him his loss by some good housekeeping; good cooking too.

  ‘What are those big dumps everywhere through the bush?’ she asked tentatively to break the silence. ‘They look like giant-sized anthills.’

  ‘They’re mullock heaps.’ Bern kept his eyes on the track. ‘They’re what we call the “diggings”; places where prospectors have dug down and sunk shafts to find the quartz vein along the fault-line of the rock. They were abandoned long ago.’

  He glanced down at Andrew again.

  ‘Don’t go exploring them, young man. Some of the shafts are straight down for a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet. No one would hear you call for help from there.’

  ‘Oh, I wish you hadn’t said that!’ Katie cried impetuously, clenching one small hand in her lap. ‘You’ve no idea what a wanderer he is. The temptation would be too great now that you’ve put the idea in his head.’

  The grey eyes met the blue over the head of the small boy.

  ‘Told him what, Katie?’

  ‘The very thought of shafts where men once dug and explored into the earth! It would be beyond Andrew to resist investigating ‒’

  She broke off. She had meant to start a conversation that was casual, even friendly. She had wanted to make amends. Now here was that old tension again. He would give Andrew orders and Katie, wringing invisible hands, knew that it was beyond Andrew to remember the orders, let alone obey them.

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ she pleaded, over Andrew’s head. ‘He’s not the same as other children. He can’t help following wherever his interest and attention lead him. He just can’t help it.’

  ‘Rot!’

  Katie felt as if he had hit her.

  Bern’s eyes were on the track again.

  ‘Andrew! Did you hear what I said about going near the diggings?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then what did I say?’

  ‘I’m not to explore them. The shafts are deep and dangerous.’

  Andrew was staring straight ahead through the windscreen as if not terribly interested in the conversation. Katie was sure it wasn’t even penetrating his head.