The river is Down (14 page)

at three o'clock when he asked if he could borrow my car.'

`Not to worry!' Jinx advised, gazing lovingly into his tins to see all was well with his insects and tiny reptiles. 'Flan washed your car afterwards. It looks as good as ever. He took us out to see if we could find Swell, my frilled lizard, because he had a whole lot of tadpoles for him. Flan brought the taddies in from the test hole east of the road. That hole is full of water, even though rain hasn't come down here at all. Not one drop—'

'Flan says the water comes up out of the ground from seepage back in the ranges,' Myrtle volunteered, putting birdseed in the tins hooked to the side of the finches' cage.

The children's manner was too innocent for Cindie, specially as Jinx had a square-shaped packet in his shirt pocket over which he hastily stuffed a handkerchief when he noticed Cindie looking at him closely.

There was something more afoot than visiting a lizard in the spinifex, she thought.

'So you went for a drive with Flan? Out to feed Swell?' 'Well . . . yes. Well . . . actually yes.' The boy was very busy putting the lids back on his tins.

'Jinx,' Cindie said firmly, 'what have you in your pocket? You're not concealing another live sand-snake in it?'

'It's some ' The boy hesitated.

'Some what, Jinx?' Cindie persisted quietly.

The boy pulled out the handkerchief, then the packet.

'Not snakes. It's cigarettes, of course,' he said scornfully. He handed the packet to Cindie so she could see for herself. She opened it and, true enough, it was full of cigarettes.

'But Jinx! You don't smoke: I hope.'

The children burst out laughing at her dismay.

'They're not for us,' Myrtle scoffed. 'They're for Swell.' 'The lizard?' Cindie asked mystified. 'Do frilled lizards smoke?'

The children thought this uproarious.

'No,' Jinx explained. 'Sometimes Swell won't come out from his rocks. That's generally because he's fat and overfed. So we smoke him out by puffing cigarettes. We've done it before—' He broke off and suddenly looked guilty. 'Well, I guess that's a kind of smoking cigarettes, but it's only to get Swell out. It's three miles out there, and I have to draw him for my nature-study lesson—so I have to be sure he comes out so I can sketch him "live".'

'I see.' Cindie was thoughtful. 'All the same, even smoking cigarettes for that reason is not very good for a small boy

and a small girl. You'd better find some other way of stirring Swell. Can't you use a stick and poke him out?'

`That might hurt him,' Myrtle said indignantly.

`Yes, I suppose it would.' Cindie was contrite. The children's wild-life hobby was a little beyond her. 'Well, you'll have to think of something different. Didn't Flan feed him tadpoles to-day? Wasn't that enough?'

'He wouldn't come out. So you see that's why Flan said he'd give us some cigarettes. Then tomorrow

'Well, not the cigarettes tomorrow, anyway. You'll have to think of something else.' Cindie put the packet behind the clock on the mantel-shelf. 'I might be cross with Flan myself when I next see him. I'm sure your mother doesn't know about it.'

The children sighed as they looked at one another. Then shrugged.

`I'll be pretty mad,' Jinx remarked ominously as he carried his precious tins to the door, 'mad as hops in fact, if we walk three miles out in the spinifex tomorrow, and three miles back—and I don't get a drawing of Swell.'

Cindie had no answer to that. She debated as she began to grill the chops as to whether she would tell Mary of the children's methods or not. A little reluctantly she decided against. It would look too much like telling tales, and she wanted Jinx and Myrtle to trust her as she trusted them.

Perhaps they would tell Mary themselves.

The next day, Thursday, would be half-day for Cindie as well as the children.

On Saturdays and Sundays, when the camp was full for the week-end, the personal demands for help or advice would be multiplied by at least a hundred. The men would all be in camp at once. Mary had said she would like Cindie's help on the week-end days.

'I don't know what I did before you came.' She seemed surprised herself at this mystery. 'I'm flat-out now, yet you, Cindie, seem to have work to do to keep you busy all day too. Nick thought this would be a part-time job for you. Seems more like full-time with two capital letters.'

'I'm only too glad,' Cindie said readily. 'I like the men. I like helping them. And they seem so grateful—'

The next day Cindie finished her work at midday. Mary carried on. She explained to Cindie that like the professional men on the job, as different from the skilled men and workers,

Tr

she herself was on a salary. Like the boss, and several others, the geologist, for instance, there were no set times for salaried people. They were paid so much per month—regardless.

`All hours of the night you'll see Nick at his drawing-boards, if you happen up that way,' Mary remarked. 'Saturday and Sunday he's back up the road, checking and seeing things for himself, when the men are out of the way and the dust-cloud has settled. He does his thinking up there too. It's why he likes to be alone. He's responsible for all the thinking on the job.'

Cindie wondered if Nick would go up the road alone this week-end. Or would he take Erica too? Well, of course he would!

Meanwhile, to-day was her half-day.

Except for the whirr in the engine block behind the canteen there was a midday silence all round the camp. Specially so in Mary's house. There was no sign of the children, though there was evidence of a hurried lunch. The washing up had been forgotten.

Cindie cut herself a sandwich from the new-made bread and a slice of cold meat. She made the tea, then sat down to rest a few minutes and to let the tea draw.

Where, she wondered, are Jinx and Myrtle? A sudden thought assailed her. She jumped up and went outside to an enormous packing crate which was the children's shed for storing their play things and treasures gathered from the outback. The tins of insects and sand-snakes were gone.

Cindie walked back to the house slowly. It didn't matter, of course, that Jinx and Myrtle had gone off to keep tryst with their beloved frilled lizard, but it mattered that they had said nothing about it. Mary had warned Cindie that if she wanted to spend her half-day having a sleep-off she might find the children too noisy.

So Mary had expected the children to be around!

Cindie's steps were even slower as she moved across the room to the mantelpiece. She hated looking behind the clock because she hated the idea of distrusting the children. She would apologise to all the gods in heaven if she found that packet of cigarettes safely there. But look she must. She slid her hand edgeways down the space between the clock and the wall. The cigarettes were gone.

Well, she told herself, determined to be sensible about this, a good long walk would do her good anyway! Besides, she hadn't seen a frilled lizard. They were big creatures, she knew. They puffed themselves up when they were angry,

or disturbed, and their neck frill, inches wide, stood out like the first Queen Elizabeth's collar. Hence Jinx's name for his pet. Swell.

Cindie gave herself all the reasons she could think of for going out in search of the children. Alt but the true one. If Jinx and Myrtle were puffing cigarette smoke into the lizard's rockery then Mary would have to be told. It would become Mary's responsibility as to whether the children learned smoking habits by accident, or not. Mary could deal with Flan, and his irresponsible gifts.

Cindie knew the direction the children generally took when they went out. They had told her it was due west towards the sunset sky. Jinx had shown her how he could find due north on his big 'railway' watch; from that reckoning, due any-other-direction was easy.

Cindie put her sun-hat on, then walked around behind the two rows of caravan houses on the west side of the camp. Within a few minutes she found where the tyre tracks of her own car led out to the west. This was the way Flan had driven the children out with the tadpole harvest for Swell's dinner yesterday. Cindie's car-tracks were the easiest picked up in and around the camp because all the company vehicles had huge thick double-service tyres with deep square-cut grooves against skidding. Her car alone had come north with standard tyres meant for sealed roads. There was a slight veer in the alignment of the front wheels and this had led to extra wear marks on the outside rim of her right-hand front tyre. Cindie recognised these marks too.

A child could pick up the tracks and follow them over that red sandy waste which was all but overgrown with the round hump-shaped spinifex bushes.

Cindie had barely set out along this track, still hidden from Nick's office by the angle of the second row of caravans, when she heard a Land-Rover starting up from the camp. She stopped and looked out from under the brim of her hat to see where the Land-Rover was going, and if Nick was driving it. Everyone had this casual curiosity for something moving in or out of the stillness of the camp under the blistering sun.

It was Nick.

He was driving off in a southerly direction, the way he had brought her, Cindie, from the river. She thought there might be someone sitting in the front seat with him, but he drove so fast, and the dust-cloud behind him rose so smotheringly quick, Cindie could not be sure of that.

If anybody, it could be Erica. Was he taking her to see the geologist's latest test holes? Or maybe to the river? Cindie remembered how nice and green and cool that bank

of river gums had been. Here around the camp-site, there was endless nothingness.
Forever
and ever, it seemed. There was nothing except the clump of white gums at the back of Mary's house, and an odd bush or two of wattle breaking the flatness of the plain.

She felt a touch of envy because Erica would now be seeing the lovely river gums. Erica would be not so very far away from the crossing, then the road back to Baanyaand Jim Vernon! Funny how just being that much nearer a person: or in a place with which that person was associated, could make one feel as if one were somehow sharing his actual company!

The silly ticking heart that was in Cindie was very unpredictable, she told herself. She was actually jealous of Erica.

Oh, surely not! Erica had Nick, and would never think

of Jim Vernon—matrimonial-wise.

Perhaps they had taken a Thermos. And would have tea!

Funny, how it made her kind of sad. Yet she was glad she was not just a visitor to be shown the sights as a social gimmick. She was glad she was being useful: and gladder still she was earning some money.

One thing for sure, her Holden car would need a set of new tyres after this trip. Someone had mentioned that the

!track to the upper tableland, where Bindaroo stood, was rougher than any to the river or the coast. It was covered with iron flint stone. Yes, she needed every penny of the money she could earn.

As these thoughts flitted through her head, Cindie had

I been walking on, her eyes dropping to the ground every so often to be sure she followed the tracks.

Now and again she looked up towards the west to see if she might be nearing her destination. Sometime soon, she thought, the flat plain must change its character, if only a little. Swell, the frilled lizard, lived in amongst rocks. There had to be something other than red earth and spinifex.

Once she saw a williwilli of dust start up from nothing to become a tall spiral moving across the spinifex like a spectre out of space. Then subtly this changed to a fizz, dwindling into a dust-ball hanging low over the grass. Finally there was nothing but a faint red haze to show where this beautiful whirling dancing sprite had come to a last nothingness.

Then she saw dark broken lines in the near distance. This must be a shallow piece of breakaway country. Here would be the rocks. Here, with luck, she would find the children.

As Cindie approached these dark rocky outlines she thought she saw, for a moment, a very strange kind of williwilli. It was smoky-white—not brown or red—and though it spiralled up high into the colourless sky, there seemed to be a loose cloud-like formation spreading at its base.

The oddest thing about this particular was that

it did not move. It didn't whizz or dance away. It stayed still. And the cloud around its base was growing bigger in area. The whisper of spiral had altered shape to become pillow clouds.

Cindie stood still and stared at it.

It was smoke!

Could the children be giving themselves a picnic? A black-coated billy standing between two rocks over a small campfire? But it was too big!

Suddenly she knew panic!

This was a fire. A real spreading fire: not one made to boil a billy. If a wind rose .. .

Cindie started to run.