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

  He was summing her up as he glanced at her with those fine deep-set eyes of his, saying nothing but looking thoughtful, waiting for her reaction.

  ‘Andrew and I are going amongst strangers?’

  He laughed.

  ‘After so short an acquaintance I am not a stranger then?’

  ‘My cousin sent you. That makes it different.’

  He nodded his head towards the mountains which they were fast approaching.

  ‘The settlers are known to your cousin too. They will look after you.’

  There was a long silence. Bern Malin was frowning now.

  ‘Are you worried that we won’t fit in with these people?’ Katie asked.

  He looked surprised.

  ‘I was thinking of something else.’

  Katie was exasperated.

  ‘Of your very urgent work?’

  ‘Yes. As a matter of fact that is what I was thinking of.’

  Not of them; of his work! Katie wished her spirits didn’t so easily rise and fall. What had come over her? She had never been like this at home.

  They were so near the foothills now that Katie could mark the course of the creek that ran down the side of the centre mountain and cut the wedge in the spur on its southern flank. There was a fine line of timber climbing the mountainside ‒ fed and watered by that stream.

  Great slabs of dark iron-red rock lay flattened against the grey background of the scrub on the hills. Tors with creviced gullies towered above landslides of fallen boulder. Rich bands of brilliant green and blue stone slashed sashes across this bared cliff.

  The mountains had seemed so serene from the blue distance; so quiet in the afternoon sun. Now, with the cloud shadows lying across them, they looked ominous.

  Chapter Four

  They came at length to the foothill between King Mountain and You-self to the south of it.

  The car pulled up on the edge of the track where the creek splashed down its last wall-face to spread out into a damp swampy area thick with ferns; knee-deep with bracken.

  A man was sitting on a rock boulder waiting for them. A girl, perhaps Katie’s age, leaned against another boulder holding the reins of a horse while she waited.

  The man, fortyish, weather-worn and in dark dusty clothes, looked as if he had worked amongst rocks all his life. The rock was in him and the rock-dust was on him.

  The girl was pretty and slender in a light-coloured blouse tucked into a pair of slim-trim slacks. The trousers themselves were tucked into calf-high boots; the only things that looked dusty. Her straw-fair hair was striking under a white wide-brimmed cotton hat.

  Her figure was so slim that, to Katie, it was a dream. The girl did not stir from where she leaned against the boulder but watched from under the brim of her hat with a kind of patient interest. Her whole appearance and manner said they’d been waiting a long time, and why hadn’t Bern Malin and his carload of strange people hurried up.

  Nevertheless, and in spite of this lack-lustre reception, Katie’s heart bounced upwards when she saw the girl. Here was someone of her own sex and age. It seemed too good to be true ‒ yet frightening. Katie on that lonely cocky-acreage, scratching out a living with a scatter of fowls, a goat, two horses, a few sheep and an annual diminutive crop of oats and sub-clover, had never really known girls of her own age. The nearest she knew of had lived in a township twenty-five miles away. A small brother, a sick father, together with the horses, goat, sheep, fowls and oats, had seen to it that Katie only went to town once or twice a year.

  Bern Malin was out of the drive-seat, slamming the door behind him. The man on the rock rose to his feet slowly as if there was all the time in the world.

  ‘Well ‒ you went and come all right,’ he said in a slow drawl. ‘You got what you went for, Bern?’

  Bern nodded his head.

  ‘Two passengers,’ he said. ‘You and Jill picked up my message, I see.’

  ‘Yeah. That we did. Secretary brought it over from the camp. He took it on the two-way sometime after midday. Mrs. Ryde told Jill to come along with me case the young lady wanted ’tention, or maybe just company.’

  Bern Malin stopped in front of the man, his feet slightly apart, his hands tucked in his belt. He said nothing, but waited. Clearly this rock man was one of slow and thoughtful speech. He liked to punctuate his paragraphs with silences. Bern obviously knew this, and waited.

  After some thoughtful grass-chewing the man went on.

  ‘Likewise, in addition,’ he said in an even slower drawl, ‘Mrs. Ryde said for the young lady and the boy to come across to their place after they rested up a bit. She’ll put ’em up till such time as you come back, Bern.’

  Again there was that waiting silence.

  ‘Mrs. Ryde said for Jill to stay with ’em ‒ the two you’ve brought ‒ in your place till they’re good and ready to make the shift over to Ryde’s.’

  The story was finished. Bern knew it for he did not wait for any further remarks. He looked up across the intervening space at the girl with the horse.

  ‘Thanks a lot for coming, Jill,’ he said. His smile was the magnificent shining kind Katie had seen only once, back there a hundred years ago in Malley’s Find. Still seated in the car, she watched it with something of a pang.

  ‘I’d do anything for you, Bern,’ the girl said with a grin. ‘Just now, anyway. I might be in a different mood next week.’

  ‘So say you!’ He was still smiling. He half-turned to the car. ‘Well, here’s Katherine James. We call her Katie for short.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Me, you, Andrew and Taciturn here.’

  Katie opened the car door, slipped out and came round the bonnet to meet the other girl. Jill had not moved from the boulder.

  ‘How do?’ Jill said easily, taking in every inch of Katie’s somewhat creased dress, her brown hair with the red lights in it ‒ for her hat was somewhere on the floor of the car ‒ and the blue eyes, eager, yet anxious. She did not miss the chin that could tilt up readily and the lovely shaped brows, nor the mobile mouth that could smile and just as easily show distress. Right now it was nervous.

  ‘Yes … I’m Katie. It’s very good of you to come.’

  ‘Where’s your brother? I thought he was the important one. That is to say, it was for the brother Bern went to Malley’s Find …’

  ‘Patient in the back seat,’ Katie said simply. ‘He’s always like that I’m afraid. He waits to be told ‒ or asked ‒’

  ‘There’s not much size to you for this life out here,’ the rock man said slowly, looking Katie up and down, assessing her worth and her staying quality as if she was a heifer or a prize pony. ‘Can’t say I ever knew the little ones to give up too soon, all the same. You staying long, miss? My name’s Taciturn. Maybe Bern’s forgotten to mention it.’

  ‘I haven’t had time, Tass,’ Bern said. ‘Now with the permission of all around I’ll finish the introductions.’

  He had gone to the car and helped Andrew out. The boy had been dozing again. Bern stood behind him holding him steady with hands on his shoulders.

  ‘Katie, Jill Ryde is a neighbour, if you can call being fifteen miles away neighbourhood. Taciturn is her mother’s overseer. Jill, you’ve met Katie and now this is Andrew James ‒ when he is awake, and with us.’

  He glanced at Katie. He was waiting for her to tilt that chin because he had had a double meaning to that description of Andrew.

  Katie saw the trap and said nothing ‒ just in time.

  Without bending her head she looked down at her shoes. When she glanced up again it was in time to catch Jill winking at Bern Malin. This time Katie’s chin did go up.

  ‘Andrew,’ she said to her brother, ‘Mr. Malin has brought us so far. We’re going now with … with …’

  ‘Tass and Jill,’ the other girl said. ‘My name is Jill Ryde, Andrew.’

  She was nearly laughing. Katie wondered if it was at her, or at both of them. She supposed they did look odd. Dusty, tired, creased. T
hey had come more than two thousand miles in all ‒ the last five hundred of those miles through the empty bush with Bern Malin.

  Andrew was only half-awake and puzzled by the scene. He managed to say ‘How-do-you-do,’ very correctly.

  ‘As I like, generally speaking,’ Taciturn said in his slow way. ‘That is to say, if no one present minds.’

  ‘You should say “How-do-you-do” in reply, Tass,’ Jill said sharply. ‘Mind your manners.’

  ‘Don’t reckon I ever had any,’ Taciturn said, still unperturbed.

  Andrew could stand steady on his feet now. Bern Malin dropped his hands and turned away to take their belongings from the boot of the car.

  ‘There’s a case of fresh peaches here, Tass,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to leave them under the ledge and let Secretary come down with the mule to-morrow.’

  ‘Okay with me, Bern. Guess Jill here will have to put those bags of Master and Miss James on Nipper. Seems like, by the size of them, Nipper could take them. Can take most things ‒ generally speaking.’

  ‘I’ll take the stores along with me,’ Bern finished. ‘I’ll bring some of them back when I return.’

  Bern slammed boot and door shut, then turned to Katie. He held out his hand. She put her hand in his, remembering to hold it firmly as she did. Her father had always told her one could tell a person’s character by the handshake. She could feel now how strong and determined was Bern’s hand. He smiled a little in his eyes, and she knew he was noticing something about her own hand.

  ‘Good-bye, Katie,’ he said, still holding her hand. ‘It won’t be long before I see you again. I’m leaving you in good care.’

  ‘But, my cousin ‒’

  His face froze a fraction of a second, and he dropped her hand.

  ‘Your cousin will hear all about you,’ he said almost roughly. ‘I will tell him of your safe arrival and that you’re in the hands of the Rydes. He’ll be quite satisfied with that.’ He spoke to the others rapidly, before she could interrupt. ‘Get the bags up on Nipper, will you, Tass? And Jill, take your time up that cutting, won’t you? These two have been car-bound all day. Their legs won’t take kindly to a steep climb.’

  ‘All the time in the world, Bern,’ Jill said cheerfully. ‘We don’t have to get home till the Southern Cross is up anyway. Can’t find the way without those pointers.’

  ‘Good-bye, Andrew,’ Bern Malin said to the boy. ‘Speak up, sit up and stir up! You won’t forget, will you?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Andrew said politely, but not comprehending. His thoughts were on other things, notably the brilliant splash of colours in the western sky. The sun would go down soon in a beautiful but terrible glory. Andrew could have stood there for an hour to watch it. If he put his hands palm upwards, he thought he would feel the heat of a great furnace; except that he knew the western sky was too far away; a place that was never touched. The problem of a world that was round.

  Bern Malin opened the drive door once again and pushed his legs in under the steering wheel. He raised his hat; put it back on his head at an infinitesimal angle that made it look careful-careless again. Katie couldn’t help noticing it. It was like his signature tune and gave him an air of being just that much different from any other man she had ever seen.

  He started up the car and let go the brakes. Without turning his head again he lifted his hand in a final gesture and revved the car up into high speed. He took a sideway track round the base of the mountain ‒ and was gone. Only a dust pall hung like a fine brown drift on the buttress of the hill.

  Katie stood quite still and watched the dust thin out, dissolve and then be nothing.

  She felt quite dreadful: as if she was utterly alone in a world of endless plain, three mountains before her, and a blazing sundown sky that wounded the eyes.

  She was unconscious of anyone standing nearby.

  She was alone. He had brought her ‒ and Andrew ‒ out here into the no-man’s-land of the West Australian never-never, then gone away. Their brief encounter had left a wound, not pleasure or happiness. This last ‒ the sense of unhappiness ‒ she resented bitterly.

  It was Andrew who broke the odd silence.

  ‘I’d like a drink of water, Katie. I’m thirsty.’

  She was instantly back into reality. The call of the child was enough. Her other world had gone with Bern Malin round the mountain, out of sight.

  ‘Is the water in the creek all right to drink?’ she asked Jill quickly ‒ too urgently, as if Andrew’s need was the most important thing on earth.

  ‘As right as you’ll get anywhere in this place,’ Jill said, watching Katie’s face with curiosity. She added: ‘It didn’t take you long to fall for Bern, did it?’

  Katie was half-way to the creek, only a few yards away, before she registered what Jill Ryde had said. Her back stiffened.

  Had the girl meant that as a barb? Or was she joking?

  There was a painful silence in the sundown hour.

  ‘I’ve only known him twenty-four hours,’ Katie said lightly. ‘For all I know he might be married. It didn’t even occur to me to ask ‒’

  Taciturn cleared his throat.

  ‘He ain’t but that ain’t Miss Jill’s fault: or Miss Stella’s neither. Never knew such match-making as goes on with that pair, and all to no end.’ He was sorting and counting the cases and an assortment of stores set out on the ground from the car. ‘No girl’s likely to marry Bern Malin for the natural reason ‒ he ain’t the marrying sort. Like me, he’s a born bachelor. Now, are you going up that hill this side of tomorrow, Miss Jill? Or are you thinking of camping overnight down here?’

  Taciturn led Nipper up the steep rock path. Jill followed with Andrew, and Katie came last.

  Somewhere, out of sight, the sun had gone down, but the sky was still a radiant pink. The rocks and undergrowth, the bracken and slim drooping trees on either side of the creek were black since the light was no longer on them.

  Andrew climbed sturdily, wanting only to stop now and again to investigate the track of an animal or insect; an odd plant sprouting from under a rock by the path.

  Katie wondered how they would get on when night fell. Twilight couldn’t be expected to last more than twenty minutes, she knew.

  However, after no more than a hundred yards’ climb they turned a sharp corner round a crumble of large boulders and there the path flattened out to cross over the spur, leaving the tall mountainside on their left to its lonely silence.

  Here Taciturn and Jill paused for Katie and Andrew to catch up.

  ‘I thought we were going to climb the whole of that mountain,’ Katie said with a laugh. ‘I couldn’t see how ‒’

  ‘It gives to a path to the bottom from hereabouts,’ Taciturn said in his slow voice. The way he said each word, singing the diphthong, had a charm of its own. ‘Bit of a landslide caused by that there creek, I guess. You jes’ come up between the landslide and the side of the old King, Miss Katie. Now all we has to do is cross over the hump of this here spur and we’re right. Flat country t’other side ‒’

  ‘You all right, Andrew?’ Jill asked in a voice that had neither interest nor lack of interest in it. Jill was another one, Katie thought, who did not commit herself too early in an acquaintance.

  ‘Yes, I’m all right. Thank you very much,’ Andrew said politely. ‘I was wondering where all those rocks split off the mountain. Guess it was heat and cold that did it. My book said it can drop thirty degrees in temperature between midday and midnight in this part of Australia.’

  ‘Goodness, you’re a bookworm, are you?’ said Jill and looked with a speculative interest at the boy. ‘How old are you? You sound like a professor to me.’

  ‘Ten. Professor of what, Miss Ryde?’

  ‘Jill to you, little boy, and don’t you be too know-all round about me. I might show you something about this country you don’t already know. I’ve lived here.’

  Katie bit her lip and preferred to look at the sky turning now from pink to mauve. Ji
ll’s tone of voice had not exactly been unkind. It was true, what Bern Malin had said ‒ she could not go on protecting Andrew for ever, though she had wanted badly to put in a word in her young brother’s defence when Jill had spoken.

  Suddenly the other girl laughed.

  ‘Don’t look so determined to be polite, Katie,’ she said. ‘I suppose you think you have to be because Tass and I are in charge now. Well, you don’t have to be polite, and you don’t have to try. Me? I just speak my mind, specially to freaks like Andrew …’

  ‘Freak!’ Katie protested.

  ‘Any child of ten who’s read about this part of Australia is a freak. Nobody knows it except us. That is Rydes and Malins and the surveyors and prospectors out east. Gideon Dent’s the only person ever been this way except those of us here now.’

  ‘He wrote a diary. My father had it,’ Andrew said, as if the matter was not of much importance ‒ just something to be taken for granted.

  Jill had taken Nipper’s bridle from Taciturn while the rock man tightened the horse’s girths and tested the ropes tying on the pack-bags to the saddle.

  She looked round the horse’s nose to speculate on this impossible ten-year-old prodigy.

  ‘Oh, he did, did he? You mean Gideon Dent?’

  ‘Yes,’ Andrew went on mildly. ‘My father sent it back to him just before he died. My father died, I mean. I’d like to see it again.’

  ‘In which case you’ll be lucky,’ Jill said. ‘Nobody round here ever sees him. He’s a myth ‒ almost.’

  ‘We will,’ Katie put in quickly. ‘He’s our cousin. That is why we’ve come.’

  ‘Good luck to you,’ Jill said with a laugh. ‘Flesh and blood is closer than good neighbours, I suppose. He just might emerge for you … if legends come to life again.’

  Katie’s heart beat painfully. It must be the climb ‒ surely.

  Jill changed the tone of her voice.

  ‘I’m sorry if I sound snipperty,’ she said. ‘We get so tired of messages for Gideon Dent ‒ and inquiries for Gideon Dent ‒ from prospectors going through. To us he’s the man-that-never-was but as messages do come and go I suppose he must be somewhere out in the wilds. Anyhow Bern would never have brought you out here if he hadn’t been able to find him ‒ Bern knows everyone who’s ever been this way for two hundred miles around.’