The river is Down (15 page)

The rock formation was clear now, more menacing in its stark red-blackness against the backdrop of yellow spinifex plain. The smoke, as the fire spread, billowed in cumulous clouds over a wide area.

Was this where Swell lived? Were the children here? If not

Dear heaven! Her breath, as she ran, came hard and hurt her chest.

A minute later she saw two small shadows dodging in and out of the smoke. They were beating at the ground with sticks.

Myrtle and Jinx! Thank God! The children were all right.

Now Cindie was forced to stop to catch her breath. The perspiration poured from her. The temperature was way more than a hundred.

How did one put out a spinifex fire without shovels, hoses and tree branches with which to beat? Those miserable sticks—and the fire was creeping, creeping! What could have caused it?

The cigarettes!

Cindie started to run again, out of desperation now. Instinctively she picked up an old tree branch, fallen in a

time long past from some wattle long dead. She dragged it with her as she ran.

Minutes later she came to the licking fire that was stealing through the brittle, dried-out spinifex. No roaring blaze here. Just a curving inroad of low orange flames spreading, spreading.

The children were all right. They were beating savagely at the edges of the fire farther round. Cindie started on her side, working her way as she beat, sometimes treading out hot embers with her shoes, breathing deeply, trying to recover her breath.

When she was near enough she called.

`Did you start the fire, Jinx? Oh, never mind what started it! Jinx? How does a spinifex fire stop? Shouldn't we try to get help?' She stood now heaving for deep intakes of air before she could go on.

Jinx, like Myrtle, puffing and banging and thrashing the ground, was too busy to answer Cindie except to call back:

`Keep on the east side, Cindie. That's where it's going. You stop it there. Myrtle and I'll stamp the burnt grass on the far side—'

`Swell has disappeared, Cindie. He'll run in front of the fire. Don't put your foot on him ' Myrtle cried.

Dear heaven! Cindie thought, energy renewed, and furiously beating her stick down on creeping flame. Is a spinifex fire dangerous, or is it just one of those things? If there's no wind perhaps it will die of its own accord in the night.

She turned away from the smoke to wipe her eyes. The heat had brought tears to them. Then as she lifted her face from her sleeve she saw something. A Land-Rover, followed by a second one, was hurtling over the plain from her left.

Her relief was almost an anticlimax of deflation.

Others had seen the fire-smoke and were coming to the rescue! The troubles weren't hers any more.

If it was those cigarettes! Cindie thought furiously. I'll tell Flan he can't have my car again, ever. And—well—

She nearly promised herself she would slap Jinx and Myrtle. She didn't believe in slapping, specially other people's children.

Cindie's ancient tree stem broke one second before the first Land-Rover came to a dusty halt. Even as the vehicle came to a standstill the door flew open and the driver, a little monkey man, ran round the south side of the fire towards the children. It was Flan. From the other side, his unidentified passenger spilled out at similar speed and attacked a red rivulet of flame with his boots.

Cindie's own fighting weapon useless, herself breathless and exhausted, she stood still. Her smoke-grimed face meant nothing to her, neither did the streams of perspiration running down her temples and the sides of her cheeks.

Here were men. They would know how to put out a spinifex fire in a treeless plain!

They would even know, she thought wearily, if it matters that several acres of this beastly stuff is burned, anyhow! There's millions more acres of it to spare.

The second Land-Rover seemed to have come from a slightly different direction from the first. Its tyres now skidded to a stop in their own cloud of red dust, and the drive door swung open. A man, tall, lean and in a blazing hurry, ran through the haze, boots crashing through grass and black cinders towards Cindie.

She stood quite still, suddenly feeling desolate.

He came through the pall of smoke. Nick!

There was incredulity in his face as he stared at her.

Bedraggled, smoke-powdered, exhausted and all, Cindie thought, seeing herself through his eyes. Oh, well. Does it matter?

`What in the name of fortune are you and those children doing out here?' he demanded. Did you have the bright idea of a picnic out by the rocks? A campfire and all?'

His voice, she decided, was full of sound and fury.

`No one in their right senses,' he went on, 'would light a fire on a day with these temperatures. Don't you know the very air is combustible on the plain when it's over a hundred degrees?'

Cindie stood quite still, looking at him, and saying nothing. She couldn't tell tales on the children, of course. But something like anger was creeping over her, as word by word he went about questioning.

So that is what he thinks of me? Not just a waif out of the

river, but a stupid little fool who lights fires in the spinifex? The sheer injustice of Nick's wrath kept her silent.

She did not answer him.

The man who had come with Flan, having trodden out his own yard or two of flame, moved towards them through the veil of smoke.

Cindie forgot Nick. She blinked her eyes.

Was she having hallucinations? Could it be-?

`Jim!' Her voice had a fog of smoke and fine cinder in it. `Jim Vernon!'

The heat and cinders smarting in her eyes filled them with

moisture. Or could they be real tears? She wiped them away with the sleeve of her blouse, streaking her face more than ever with fire grime.

Jim saw the silent figure of a young girl taking a cracking lecture from the boss—right on the chin. Those violet eyes, he guessed, were also taking a beating from the fire debris.

`Why—Cindie girl!' he said gently, as he came up. 'Cindie Smoke-all-over this time, eh?'

He was bigger than she remembered. Handsomer. He held out his arms.

Without a thought, she went straight into them and buried her grimy forehead against his shoulder.

`Jim! Oh, Jim!'

She closed her eyes.

He had come! Oh, the relief of it! It wasn't only the fire—she would have to explain some other time. It was Bindaroo—and this injustice from Nick—

She would never explain to Nick. Never.

I wish he'd go away and get lost, she thought of Nick, burying her face farther in Jim's shoulder and allowing herself the luxury of one spurt of real firebrand anger at the boss's expense.

Jim was here, so Nick and his anger didn't have to matter—well, not for now, anyway!

Cindie had been unaware of a third passenger in Flan's car. This newcomer was now quietly dislodging herself from the passenger seat. This done, she crossed the intervening space to Nick's car. It was Erica Alexander.

Cindie had been mistaken in her guess when, earlier in the afternoon, she had seen Nick driving away from the camp with someone seated beside him. That someone had obviously been left elsewhere, for Nick had driven up alone. Erica had come with Jim in Flan's Rover.

Cindie, a little embarrassed, lifted her head from Jim's shoulder.

`I'm terribly sorry,' she apologised to him. `How silly can I be?' She was conscious of a very smutty face, and cinder-tears still on her lashes. Jim's eyes were clearer and brighter than she had pictured in her memory.

`Don't be sorry, Blue Eyes,' Jim smiled down at her, turn-

ing her heart a little by the kindness in his tone. 'I can't imagine a nicer welcome for me. The best ever.'

Nick moved away deliberately. He began checking on the burnt-out edges of the grass. Cindie was relieved at that. She had Jim to herself. His eyes smiled into hers, giving her reassurance. For the moment she didn't care about anything else in the world.

`Fighting a fire, even a low spinifex one, is no joke for a girl fresh out of a city, Cindie,' Jim went on in his slow-speaking way. 'You did darn well even to try. Most newcomers in these parts would have shot through fast.'

`Jim . . . it's funny, but we've only known one another a short time. I hope you didn't mind my running to you like that. It was, sort-of, seeing an old friend.' She had nearly said dear friend, but saved herself in time.

`Who else but, Cindie Smoke-all-over?' He looked down at her, his brows raised.

`You are very kind, Jim. I managed to get myself all kinds of problems after I left Baanya. I have to explain something important to you

`Not now, lass. Time enough later, when we're by ourselves. Too many people around now. Right?'

She nodded. 'I will see you later?'

`Of course!' His eyebrows really went up this time. 'What do you think I came over for? "There's one girl in a pack of woe over there at the construction camp," I told myself. "I must navigate that river and straighten things out for her." '

Cindie smiled. The rainbow had come through the near-tears.

`Thank you, Jim.' She was contrite because she had caused him concern.

`Not to worry about anything now I'm here,' he consoled. `Problems happen to all of us—even chaps six feet tall, like me and Nick—and a few more like us.'

He slipped one arm along her shoulders as they turned towards the others.

Erica was standing not very far away, leaning in her effortless model-pose against Nick's Land-Rover. Her expression said she thought Cindie had been making an abject fool of herself with Jim Vernon.

Somebody ought to tell her he plays that role to every female east of the meridian, she reflected without kindness. Though, of course, this girl is young enough to be fooled.

She took a cigarette from the packet in her pocket and put

it in her mouth. Nick, coming towards her at this moment, lit it for her.

`You've been out excursioning too?' he asked mildly. His earlier anger about the fire was either masked, or had burnt itself out.

'I went over to the river with Flan to pick up Jim Vernon,' Erica said lightly, then nodded her head in the direction of Cindie and Jim.

'Seems that neither floodwater nor fire will separate that pair of lovers.' She raised her voice a little as she took the cigarette from her mouth. 'First the river, and now the blaze: Cindie is a person who puts herself in the way of being rescued, it seems.' She laughed, careless of the fact that her words carried across the short distance.

Nick flicked out the match, dropped it to the ground, then put the heel of his desert-boot on it.

'Probably a moment of crisis!' he said without emotion. He then turned quickly to another nearby patch of burnt grass. There were still smouldering embers amongst it.

Jim Vernon winked at Cindie. His arm along her shoulders gave her a friendly squeeze.

'Miss "E" is plain jealous,' he said in a low voice. 'She's used to being the only notability on the feminine side round these parts. Come on, lass, we'll face up to the boss and that young lady as if we're old, old friends entitled to do. a little bear-hugging in public. Anyhow, it was nice, wasn't it?'

Cindie laughed. 'Thank you for the saving grace of that remark,' she said happily.

Jinx and Myrtle, entirely unperturbed by all the fuss, had been searching the area for Swell.

'Come on chickens!' Flan called to them. 'Fire's out now, and if you're after that raking lizard you won't catch up with him before dark. That's advice from one who's dealt with frilled lizards since long before you were born. When the rocks cool down he'll be back to his own house, in top gear. Give him twenty-four hours, then come out and see if I'm not right.'

'I guess Flan knows,' Jinx said dolefully.

'I guess so, too,' Myrtle agreed. Then, since there was a promise of another near visit to their pet, and since the day's adventure seemed over, the little girl cheered up. Their friend Flan was here and might bring them out to the rocks tomorrow. Besides, there was a brand-new visitor from over the river to be investigated.

`You're Jim Vernon, aren't you?' she inquired, looking up into the overseer's engaging face. 'We've heard your voice on the air lots of times when you're calling other stations; and the outpost. We know about you and Cindie too. You sent a message to the construction camp that she was coming. You ought to have seen Nick's face! I guess he was pretty wild about it being a girl, only he didn't say so.'

Cindie had to make believe she didn't hear this. She wiped grime from her face as if preoccupied.

'How did you come across the river, Jim?' Jinx asked. 'Did you build a flying-fox?'

'No, young 'un. I swam.'

'In all that mud?' Jinx was incredulous. 'How'd you get through it?'

'It's not all mud yet, young fellow. There's plenty of fast-flowing water on top: teeming with fish too—all coming down from their mud-holes out east. I found me a log.'