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

  ‘That child would drive me round the bend,’ Stella said in an exasperated way. ‘Doesn’t he do anything quickly? Even normal speed would be quite a break for him, wouldn’t it?’

  Katie spoke to Andrew instead of answering Stella.

  ‘Hurry up, darling. Everyone else is finished and they want to wash up.’

  Andrew did not appear to have heard. He was thinking of something else as he slowly and painstakingly buttered toast.

  ‘You see what I mean?’ said Stella, levering herself up from her chair by putting both hands flat down on the table and straightening her arms. ‘I hope you make bread better,’ she said to Katie.

  ‘I hope you don’t take any notice of her,’ Jill put in. ‘Stella always speaks to people like that. Actually she likes Andrew or she wouldn’t talk about him at all.’

  ‘If you would go on clearing away the dishes, please, I’ll sit here and hurry him up,’ Katie begged.

  ‘Like they do with a baby in a high chair?’ Stella asked, lovely, lovely eyebrows arched.

  ‘Supposing you go outside and watch the men grooming the horses in the near-paddock,’ Mrs. Ryde said gently to Katie. ‘Leave Andrew to me. It’s many a long day since I had a little boy to care for and I just might win him round to eat a little faster.’

  ‘Didn’t Bern get behind him, and shift him?’ Stella persisted, looking down at Katie who was still sitting. ‘Or did you bedazzle him into believing Andrew is the prodigy Jill calls him? Do all budding geniuses have to take twice as long as everyone else to get through the ordinary course of a day?’

  This wasn’t sparring. There was a subtly different tone in Stella’s voice. This was being deliberately unkind. Katie felt it in her bones. The undercurrents of what Stella thought were deep, but not quite hidden.

  ‘I can’t imagine myself bedazzling anyone,’ Katie said. ‘Not with my coloured hair. I ought to have a temper; and no man can stand a shrew.’

  ‘Least of all Bern. I’ll tell you that for sure,’ Stella said. ‘He’s boss and when he speaks let no woman raise her voice.’

  ‘You ought to know, Stella,’ put in Jill from the sink. ‘He winds you round his little finger. Oh, how sweet and soft is your dove-like voice when he’s around!’

  ‘That will do now, girls,’ Mrs. Ryde said firmly. ‘We’re all getting too personal. What will Katie, and Andrew for that matter, think of us?’ She smiled at Katie warmly. ‘Go along now, dear, and watch the grooming. I’d love to have a little session with Andrew. Will you do that for me? I’ll find a chore for you when you come in later. And there’s the bread-making to-night. That will be yours for a promise!’

  Katie was loath to leave Andrew to Stella’s tender mercies. Even Jill, though not meaning it unkindly, said things in a way that Andrew could never hope to understand. No one had pushed him around in all his life, until Bern Malin had come along. Mrs. Ryde was different. She was kind.

  ‘I’ll disappear then,’ Katie said, standing up. ‘Please, Mrs. Ryde, you will be sure to give me my share of jobs besides the bread, won’t you? I couldn’t possibly count myself a visitor in the ordinary sense. I would be awfully unhappy if ‒’

  ‘Don’t worry, my dear, I shall. I’ll whittle a little of Jill’s work and a little of Stella’s. Then you’ll all be finished earlier and that will give you a free afternoon.’

  ‘Hurray!’ said Jill caustically, as if she didn’t believe it. Her hands were deep in the wash-up water.

  ‘Thank you very much.’ Katie was grateful. She would have died rather than be a dead-head on this busy family. How easy it had been for Bern Malin to push his burdens, if burdens she and Andrew were, on to other people!

  As she went out into the hot morning sun and looked around she thought again of Bern Malin, almost as if she expected to see him turn a corner by the stables, and be there. He was real to her, in that moment of thought, as if she could put out her hand and touch him. She could see his grey eyes, the strange gleam that came into them at times; the way he wore his hat; the long straight strong hands, brown with sun and weather, as they reached for the glove box: even the straight line that was his mouth.

  Why had he taken such a hold on her in so short a time?

  It was his personality, of course. It had something that stirred and commanded. People would look at him wherever he was, in the city or in the bush. She was sure of that. She was only one of many: or of all.

  Stella liked him: was perhaps in love with him.

  It would be all right if Bern Malin was in love with Stella too. Who knows how much a man might like a girl who was soft and fair, pretty, and with the most beautiful pair of hazel eyes?

  Men were men, Katie knew that. Most of them could not resist the feminine type, and that was just what Stella was ‒ whatever her nature underneath the veneer.

  Tom was grooming the last of the stable horses when Katie arrived.

  ‘What about the others in the paddock?’ she asked.

  ‘Their turn to-morrow. We do a dozen a day. In this climate you could never do the lot. There’s others out to grass; they’re way over behind the hill. Fifteen with foal too and the stallion’s in the wandoo paddock over there. Don’t go riding one of the mares through there unless we give you the okay, will you Katie?’

  ‘You’ll allow me to ride?’ Katie asked eagerly. ‘They’re not all stud stock then?’

  ‘None of it’s stud stock, alas, though they’ve got a good blood strain. No, we breed for the north-west stockmen’s market. They want a hard-living horse with a hard mouth and staying power. We ship a few to India too, when the market’s good up there.’

  Katie leaned her elbows on the cross-rail of the saddle yard.

  ‘This farm is like an oasis, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘How did you find it?’

  ‘We call it a grazing lease. My father discovered it. He followed Gideon Dent’s track, found the waterholes and the wandoos, and stayed. He was looking for land, not gold. He’s no prospector.’

  ‘Gold?’ said Katie. Her bright eyes looked up quickly. ‘Is that what Gideon Dent was looking for?’

  ‘God knows what he was looking for. Some men are born like Gideon Dent. They have to find something. They are eternal lookers. They press on and on, finding this or that, or never finding anything. He was like that. Gideon Dent was that kind of man.’

  ‘You say was ‒ as if he was dead?’ She hoped Tom didn’t notice the uneven note in her voice.

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Tom said. ‘He might as well be dead for all that anyone hears or sees of him. You ought to ask Bern Malin. He knows all about him; where he went, what he found ‒ if anything. I’ll tell you one thing, it won’t have been too much gold. Too many have followed the old Dent track through here looking for it, but it’s the wrong kind of country. There’s iron, they say, and manganese and God knows what, but who wants it? Millions of tons of it, they say, but no way of getting it out. You can’t take iron without railroads, and it’s five hundred miles of near desert to the coast from here.’

  ‘I see,’ said Katie. She rested her chin on the backs of her hands. ‘He was just a prospector, a sort of explorer?’

  ‘He pegged out claims all over the place. Somebody else can graze on those claims, as Bern Malin runs a few horses and a mob of cattle over there at Gideon’s place. But nobody can dig for anything under the surface. Nobody but Gideon Dent, unless he lets his claims run out. He could have done that, of course. If he has, he’s likely to have every sandgroper and gold digger in the place crawling over this bit of no-man’s-land. We hold the only substantial waterhole for grazing. There’s a bit of a one over where Bern Malin keeps his stuff …’

  Tom had stopped rubbing the horse down and looked to see why Katie was interested in all this.

  ‘Gideon Dent mean anything to you?’ he asked with a smile.

  Katie’s answer was unexpected to Tom, for the smile left his face and he frowned.

  ‘He’s my cousin. At least, he is my father’s cousi
n,’ she had said.

  ‘Speed the crows!’ Tom said. ‘Why didn’t someone brief me?’

  ‘Why should they?’ Katie asked, smiling. ‘Please don’t worry. I like to think my cousin was, or is, just a prospector; just a man who keeps on going and looking and perhaps one day finding. Maybe it’s no more than the rainbow at the end of the earth, but it’s a wonderful something to follow, isn’t it?’

  Tom was looking at her with interest. One hand was idly brushing the curry-comb delicately down the horse’s coat.

  ‘Besides …’ said Katie.

  ‘Besides what?’

  ‘It accounts for Andrew, doesn’t it? It’s in the blood. Andrew’s no more than a boy yet, but he’s always looking and noticing things around him; not people. He wanders off to investigate something that attracts him. Sometimes it’s no more than a goanna track or a kangaroo pad. But he notices and follows. Perhaps he is looking for something intangible. Perhaps he’s like Gideon.’

  ‘You worry about that kid brother of yours?’

  ‘Not really. He’s clever. But I don’t know how he will get on in life, being the way he is. Now you’ve told me about Gideon perhaps I’ll know what to do with Andrew.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, girl, don’t put those wanderlust ideas in Andrew’s head. Now or ever. A prospector’s life is okay for the odd bod, but it’s a terrible life. They get so they don’t like human beings; always have to be by themselves.’

  ‘Do you think that’s why Gideon Dent never comes home, now that there are human beings here amongst the wandoos? Only fifteen miles from his house? Do you think that’s why he never goes to Malley’s Find, but lets Bern Malin take his messages for him? Is it because he doesn’t like human beings?’

  Katie was still smiling at Tom, not at all unhappy that there were such strange bods in the world.

  Tom Ryde groaned.

  ‘I don’t know what I’ve been talking to you about,’ he said frankly. ‘Probably a lot of rubbish. I haven’t the faintest idea where Gideon Dent is, or why. I’ve never given him a thought except to be hearing the name now and again as if he’s some pan-happy prospector out there in the wild bush who magnetises a few other bods to go out there and follow him, and see what he’s up to. Mostly, if I’ve thought about him at all, I’ve thought he was no more’n a myth.’

  ‘Bern Malin’s not odd, and he’s out there,’ Katie said simply.

  Tom turned back to the horse and began curry-combing in earnest.

  ‘I’ve always had my own private ideas about what Bern Malin is up to.’

  ‘Oh!’ Katie said slowly, but as if she wasn’t really concerned. She mustn’t frighten Tom Ryde from talking now. ‘What is he up to?’

  It was almost too casually asked. Tom Ryde went on working as if cogitating whether he would answer that one or not. At last he turned round, threw the comb into a box nearby, and stooped to pick up a piece of sweat-rag. He began wiping his hands. He looked at the girl by the stockrail from under the brim of his very old hat.

  ‘As a feller, I rather like him,’ he said. ‘But he’s a bit of a problem. What I mean by that, Katie, is ‒ if he’s serious about Stella, then okay! If he’s not, I wish him half a desert away. Apart from all that, I’ve an idea he’s on to Gideon Dent’s claims, for what they’re worth. He probably has that myth cached up somewhere, while he, Bern Malin, takes a lien on those claims. That’s only guesswork, Katie, and I guess that way because I don’t like seeing Stella, and even Jill, falling for him. That’s brother-like, eh?’

  He stopped short. Katie had not flickered an eyelid and her smile was still there.

  ‘What a villain you make him out to be,’ she said. ‘It was awfully foolish of him to bring me and Andrew along, wasn’t it? We’re Gideon Dent’s second cousins and we’d have first claim on the claims, wouldn’t we? Not Bern Malin.’

  Tom pushed his hat back on his head.

  ‘Well, I never thought of that,’ he said. ‘Unless ‒’ He paused, then went on, ‘unless he’s had this Gideon Dent sign his claims away.’

  Katie laughed.

  ‘From what my father said, Gideon is much too earthly for that flight into stupidity. He’s younger than my father though I don’t know by how much. And Bern Malin will take us to him ‒ when he can find him. I’m sure of that.’

  ‘That was a promise, and you believed it?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know why. I just did. Something about Bern Malin told me to trust him. I did.’

  ‘Katie, Katie! You and Andrew are a pair.’

  ‘You don’t trust him?’

  Tom threw the sweat-rag into the box along with the curry-comb.

  ‘I think I do,’ he said honestly. ‘But business is business and there’s no sentiment in business. There’s a different brand of honesty in that world. If Gideon Dent owns no money or property ‒ only useless claims that have produced nothing marketable ‒ I don’t suppose there’s anything stupid about letting another man take over what he can no longer manage himself. That’s probably about how it is. I’d still wait and see.’ Tom grinned. ‘That’s the Ryde in me,’ he said. ‘My old man taught it to me. Wait and see is his creed. We never make a move without waiting first ‒’

  ‘Sounds sensible to me,’ said Katie.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know. Maybe if we hadn’t waited to see we might have moved on and found a bigger place. One nearer the coast where we don’t have to take half the flesh off the stock walking them across bush and claypans to get them to the railhead at Pandanning. I like being here so I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.’

  ‘It’s lovely here,’ said Katie, straightening up and turning round. ‘Look at those trees.’

  Tom pushed his hat back on his head.

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Look at those trees.’

  Not by word or gesture had Katie shown what Tom Ryde’s conversation meant to her. Her whole head was buzzing with the ideas he had innocently planted there.

  Tom, looking to the north-west, pulled his hat down on his forehead so he could figure out the meaning and purpose of a dust-cloud way over beyond the wandoo trees and round the hump of the low hill. He slitted his eyes against the glare of the sun and pondered.

  Katie did not notice his silence because she had warring thoughts of her own.

  ‘Thank you, Tom,’ she said and began walking slowly away in the direction of the trees. She did not notice Tom’s preoccupation because what was going on inside her head was a war of ideas.

  She was glad she knew now what kind of a man Gideon Dent was. He wasn’t a farmer as her father had thought, but a prospector. To Katie there was something brave and intrepid and enduring about people who went out into the wild country, in places where no other white man had ever been, to discover for themselves the nature of that land and the secrets it held.

  Prospectors, she knew, were a race apart. They never could stop pushing on and out until one day they leaned against a tree under the shade of the branches and gave up the daemon that had taken them through strange places and filled their lives with its own peculiar brand of wonder. Only when the heart stopped beating did the daemon leave them.

  Did it mean that Andrew too had this wandering, looking, finding streak in him? Did it matter? If so, what must she do about it?

  None of these thoughts were unhappy but underneath her own sense of wonder at the manner of man that Gideon Dent was ‒ or had been ‒ was a thought as painful and persistent and unendurable as a toothache.

  Had Bern Malin really followed Dent’s Track and taken over the claims? If so, was it an honourable thing to have done? Maybe he had bought them? If so, why had he withheld all knowledge of Gideon Dent’s whereabouts ‒ if he was alive ‒ from Katie and Andrew?

  Did he think they had come to assert some kind of nebulous claim of their own? Why was he keeping them apart from their cousin; apart even from knowledge of him? If he was alive. And who wrote that letter to her, telling her to send Andrew?
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  Meantime she and Andrew were the welcomed guests of the Rydes.

  The morning heat was mounting up from the land to meet the glare from the sun. The great trees stood in a wonderful etched stillness against the backdrop of hill and pale shimmering sky. Beyond them was a ball of brown dust, moving as if along a track.

  Katie’s life near the Dust Bowl had taught her what that was. Something or someone was moving out there. Possibly it was a small mob of the Rydes’ horses coming in to water. It could be Mr. Ryde coming back to the waterhole. She did not think very much about it because she was so concerned with her own thoughts. Yet, from habit she pulled her own hat closer down her forehead as Tom Ryde had done, the better to shut out the sunlight and protect her eyes by the shadow cast by the brim. Her eyes narrowed too because distance hurt them in the bright hot light. She did not think about it, or even wonder, yet from habit she watched the ball of dust, knowing that something was coming and soon that something would round the shoulder of the hill and come through the trees, probably making for the horse paddocks or the homestead.

  It was a horseman.

  Katie was not surprised, yet she knew it was not Mr. Ryde. Even through the fine veil of dust kicked up by the horse as he galloped she knew the figure was too tall, too slim for the thickset older man.

  A boundary rider? A stockman employed on Ryde’s Place?

  It didn’t matter very much, for her thoughts ‒ her awful doubts about Bern Malin and those claims ‒ were the only things that obsessed her.

  Then, slowly pulling herself out of her despondency, she noticed things around her. There was a track through the stately trees and the horseman was coming along that track. He rode a beautiful horse. It was black, high-handed and with a spirit of its own. Its legs were beautiful moving flashes of strength and speed. The horseman was tall ‒ very tall, and he rode the horse as if he was part of it, for ever flexed to its beautiful body.

  Then she knew. It was almost as if she had conjured up a genie by thinking of him. She had not rubbed a lamp or a ring, but the man riding through the trees towards her was Bern Malin.