The river is Down (19 page)

`But surely there were friends, or neighbours with experience, who could have advised them?' Cindie's voice was indignant. `Marana? They're next door.'

`Friends? I don't know, Cindie. They're a lone pair, those Stevenses. Some people become that way, up in this country. They live alone with the space and the silence and they become part of that too.' He paused. 'Isolates! It's their own choice.'

`You seem to know so much
about
them, Jim. Couldn't you have forced advice on them?' There was a cry-of-the
heart in this question.

`I know how you feel,' Jim replied gently. 'It might have been different if the Overtons and myself at Baanya had known the sleeping partner, your dad. Specially if I'd known there was a girl called Cindie Brown-all-over connected with Bindaroo. But you see, we didn't know any of those things. Besides ' Jim hesitated and fossicked in his pocket for his cigarettes again. Smoking seemed to be relieving some tension in him that had not been there before.

`Go on, Jim—please.'

`It's simple, Cindie. In this country you leave well alone till you're asked. They didn't ask.' He paused. 'In their enthusiasm the Stevens brothers over-stocked and the sheep ate the place out—like I said. Then the drought came. Then someone—well, there's always bound to be someone with an eye to the main chance—probably came in at the moment to take over. That someone, or those some people, held the whip hand from then on. Who knows? I don't, Cindie, because I abided by the custom of the ,land. I didn't ask.'

Cindie sat absolutely still. She could not bring herself to ask—The lady with the mania for sheep? The engineer wanting to buy into property cheaply? Erica and Nick? She simply could not bring herself to put the thought into words.

Jim did not utter them for her.

She thought he knew. He liked Nick Brent, as a man, whatever he thought of Erica. So he would be loyal.

-

'I see,' Cindie said, her voice a dying fall on the quiet air.

Jim lit his cigarette and smoked it thoughtfully. Cindie's hands, on either side of her now, were holding the plank of timber, pressing her nails hard into the wood till it hurt.

So there would be nothing for her mother, after all! Is that what this meant?

The pension was all right, but not enough for the sometime comforts Cindie's father had once given his wife.

Mrs. Davenport was in poor health. She had no courage without the husband who had once been such a good companion. She had never really got over his death.

`It's not good enough,' Cindie said aloud, rebelliously. 'I'm still going on to Bindaroo. That is, when I can cross the flooded country. I mean to do something. Anything!'

Jim sighed. 'Well, that's the spirit, anyway,' he said slowly. 'But promise me something, Cindie. Wait. Have patience. You will have to wait anyway, because you can't get out of this area except—' his voice suddenly took on a lighter tone—'except on an ant-eaten log with your best friend: meaning me, Jim Vernon. That way out, of course, would take you back to the coast road and Baanya. . . .' He paused for thought. 'But then again, if the land dries out quickly, there's always the road up north—'

Way up hundreds of miles at the beginning of the road? Past Mulga Gorges?' Cindie remembered Nick's half-promise he would take her up there sometime. He'd probably forgotten.

Jim nodded. 'But you'd need an aeroplane to get to Bindaroo from there. There's no track from Mulga Gorges to the upper tableland.'

Cindie wrinkled her brow and thought. 'Erica Alexander came across the claypan country from Marana in the east. If she could come in, why couldn't I go out?'

'Erica has the courage and the nerve of her kind, Cindie. You have to accept that. The Alexanders might be hard and unneighbourly, but as a clan they conquered this country before there was even a track from the coast. No one can ever put anything over an Alexander. Erica knows the way, and has the know-how for driving through that country, even when it's all but water-logged.'

'I have courage,' Cindie said stubbornly. Then added more moderately, 'Well . . . of a kind. . .

'Not the right kind for this job, Blue Eyes. Take Jim Vernon's word for it. Remember time was on Erica's side.

Three hours later, and even she couldn't have come across the neck between the claypans. Ask Nick

'I wouldn't ask Nick anything. I suppose that's why he thinks such a lot of her. As a person, I mean.'

`Could be other reasons too. He's a man, like any other man, and she's good on the eye. Don't forget that, Cindie. She has a mind too. That's something Nick always respects.'

He looked at the girl beside him, a silhouette against the pale starlit sky that now was reflecting splendour over the plain. The sickle of moon was a curved torch shedding moonbeams on her hair.

`Wait, Cindie.' he advised again quietly. 'The drought has broken. Who knows, but the Stevenses may salvage something out of Bindaroo. Remember evaluators, lawyers and Government leasing agents can't cross to those areas yet. Nothing can be done without those chaps. Time is on your side. Play for time. Promise me?'

Cindie thought about this, her head bent down and the moon playing fey with the shadows cast by her lashes on her cheek. The sight of her sitting thus pulled at the toughest fibres of Jim's heart.

`Whenever there is time, there is hope,' he added gently. `Will you trust me, Cindie? I may be able to do something. I can't figure out what, yet, but where there's a will, there's a track: even if the one to Bindaroo is under mire right now. I'll do something. That's a promise.'

Cindie's eyelashes flew up. She lifted her head.

'I never trusted anyone so much in my life,' she said sincerely. 'It's just something about you, Jim. Besides, you're the only person north of Twenty-Six who knows my real name, and you haven't given me away. You won't ask Nick for anything, will you?'

'He could be your best friend,' Jim suggested carefully. `Never.'

He seemed surprised.

`What makes you dislike him so, Cindie? I didn't think you had that kind of feeling in you. Not a girl with a straight back, dark hair and beautiful eyes—a girl with a face like a delicate flower when the stars are shining on it.'

`Jim dear, you are so nice to me. Why? Somehow it makes me feel guilty—that wrong name, and all that—'

`Maybe I'm just a little bit in love with someone who first came in a dusty rattler, brown-all-over, but now looks as if a mopoke brushed by her, dusting her cheeks with magic. Maybe it's because you're a stranger in this tough

country, and the iron-hearted overseer from Baanya suddenly feels he likes the role of crusader on a white horse.'

Cindie dropped her head on Jim's shoulder. If it hadn't been for her mother's plight, she knew she would give up the struggle right now. It was too easy to stay put; to do nothing but rest here, safely in the circle of Jim's arm.

She looked up again. The moonbeams were shooting sparks in his eyes now.

`What is it?' she asked. 'Why do you look at me like that?'

'It's the little dark curl that falls down on your right temple: a sort of beckoning finger. I'd like to drop just one kiss on it. Just one—for luck.'

Cindie's face creased in a happy smile.

'Please do, Jim. And when you've finished I'm going to drop one kiss on you. Right there

She put the tips of her fingers on his forehead.

'Then let's swap now, while no one's looking,' he said with a grin.

One minute later the grass a few yards away crackled as if someone or maybe two ones—walked across it.

Nick and Erica were moving quietly against the mantle of shadows into the silver light washing Nick's house.

They could have seen her pull Jim's head gently down so that her kiss, the brush of a butterfly, could touch his brow.

It doesn't matter anyway, she thought. I don't even like them very much as a pair. Not when I think of Bindaroo.

'A star dropped from heaven, right there,' Jim said, touching his forehead. 'Thank you, Cindie Brown. That's the nicest present a hardened bush-whacker ever had. I won't wash my head ever again. I might lose my lovely kiss.'

The next morning at breakfast time, Dicey George called at the house to tell Mary Deacon that Nick had finally given his permission for the canteen party the following Saturday night—a week away.

'The wives up in D'D had taken it for granted,' he added with a mischievous grin. 'Little do they know what could have happened! Nick might have decided there were other things more important to do.'

Cindie, coming into the room, wondered at the early visit.

'Top of the morning to you, Cindie!' Dicey's grin was

more wicked than ever. 'Could it have been you who was

keeping late hours last night? Seems like there were shadows flitting all over the campus round about moon-up.'

He was teasing, of course, so Cindie forgave him. Besides, his early-morning face was always cheerful.

`I did go for a walk—'

`Uh, huh! Hope it was good hunting. Seems like Nick and Erica were out listening to a moonlight sonata likewise—according to Hazel, Evie and Betty.'

`News so early in the morning?' Mary asked primly. `Do they get up to count the kangaroos going home after their gambol round the waterhole too? Or what?'

'Or what,' Dicey decided. 'Who's interested in kangaroos round here anyhow? They're two-a-penny from sundown to sun-up. Well, I must be off, or I'll have Nick hunting me. In a ruthless mood, is our boss this morning! The Spinifex Queen must have proffered the prickly cheek last night. Watch it, folks, in case the thunder strikes your way.'

`Be it on your own head, Dicey,' the care-all, full of cares of her own, said without sympathy.

'We'll have to put off any return tea-party for Hazel and Co. for a while,' Mary reminded Cindie that night. 'Dicey says all three are flat out, and the caravans are wonders to behold. The wives are shoulder-deep in several miles of paper. They've been cutting it into strips for streamers. It seems Betty is free with the paint-brush, too. She's doing murals on brown paper. Busy bees, aren't they? I wonder what Nick will think '

`There you go!' Cindie laughed. 'It's your turn to wonder about Nick's thinking. I'm the one who's expected to know his moods intuitively, yet here are you doing the guessing.'

'One thing I know about him right now,' Mary interrupted, 'is this. He's so taken up with Q. of the S. there won't be any house-inspection for quite a while. That doesn't mean we don't leave everything spick and tidy.' She hung out the tea-towels in so taut a line there wasn't a single wrinkle in them.

'Q. of the S.? Oh, you mean Queen of the Spinifex? Erica! How dull can I be?'

'A lot, and often,' Mary remarked frankly. 'You'd be surprised. There you are, in day hours, with your head down, at the canteen, working away like a whole hive of bees, yet you haven't once wondered what I think of your work.'

'Oh, yes, I have,' Cindie put in quickly as she dusted down

the table, chairs and wall shelves to make things easjer in the morning. There was nothing like an early get-away, as Mary often said. 'I didn't like to ask, that's all.'

`Well, I'll save you the trouble. I plain don't know how I managed before you came. I'm flat out, even with your assistance. Seems there are more men than ever in strife with their wives, sweethearts, the employment bureau or the tax department! Not to mention that outbreak of flu.'

She paused, satisfied with her towel-hanging, and looked at Cindie, who was now industriously polishing the wall-mirror.

`So ' Mary went on, 'if you want to know—I told

Nick about it this morning. He called me over to his office

for a talk. I gave him a few facts to chew on. I said I wanted

to keep you on permanently. So what do you say to that?'

Cindie stopped sweeping her cloth round the mirror. She stared at Mary's reflection in the polished glass.

`What did Nick say?' she asked slowly.

`He said he'd work out some figures and he'd see. Of course, he has to figure everything out, Cindie. I'd never really told him how many problems crop up. He has to make a profit on this road

`Oh, yes. Nick has to make his profit.' Cindie began rubbing the mirror again; hard. 'Profit means money to invest, doesn't it? That means more profit. Then when that profit's invested—more still! Of course station property is always the best investment, isn't it?'

`What bush-bat's got in your hair, Cindie?' Mary asked irritably. 'No profit, no road, and no road means no jobs. All works out, doesn't it, if you ever did algebra? X always has to equal Y in any business.'

`Yes, of course,' Cindie said quietly. 'I'm sorry. It was stupid of me to say that.' She had done all she could to the mirror, and, turning round, began to fold up her polishing-cloth.

It was. So back to the other question. 'If Nick figures out the right way, will you want to stay on permanently?'

Cindie's eyes met Mary's. 'Oh, yes,' she said, torn between eagerness and some doubt. 'I'd like to do that so very much. I
love it out here in the Never. I
love the life here in the camp. Also, I need a really good job. This one pays much more than any down in Perth.'