The river is Down (18 page)

As Jim moved across the canteen hall, Cindie watched Mary with a newly-awakened interest. Spry was hardly the word she herself would have used. Yet, now that she came to notice it, Mary did look nice this morning. Her hair was neatly swept back. She had on the nicest of her cotton frocks, one -with a soft collar round the neck. Her lipstick Wasn't smeared, either, as it so often was after she had put the end of that pencil in and out of her mouth, on and off, as she worked.

Cindie had forgotten, in the trouble course of her own thoughts, that visitors were so rare at the camp that the inmates were as interested in Jim as if he were an arrival from Mars. She remembered the side-looks and half-heard teasings she herself had received that first day.

Of course Mary would want to see the new arrival—and look her best for the occasion, too!

Cindie suspected Hazel, Evie and Betty up in D'D row would probably think the overseer from Baanya who had come across the river on a log was the Master-Martian. They'd probably give him a super afternoon tea-party.

'Golly, you do look nice, Cindie,' Jinx said, as the children, washed and spruced for dinner that night, came into the living-room.

`Do you think I'm over-dressed, Jinx?' she asked. 'Every girl wants to wear a pretty frock sometimes. Besides, I bought it from Coles—in case you think I'm showing off. Very light and cool: not expensive at all.'

`You don't have to explain to them, Cindie,' Mary said. 'It's a nice dress and you look nice. Thank goodness for

that. I like to see a young girl wear a pretty dress. If she doesn't do that when she's young, she won't have much chance later. Too much hard work to bother about dressing up when you've two children, a house, and two hundred and seventeen men to look after.'

There was a touch of heart-burning in those last words.

`You look very nice yourself,' Cindie said quickly, hiding a sudden compassion for Mary. 'Your hair is so dark and thick. That little white streak makes it very distinguished. And you've wonderful eyes—when you don't snap them. Jim said you were "spry". I think he admired you—'

Mary smiled more amiably. 'Thanks for that lot,' she replied. 'Next I'll be dressing ·up like Cleopatra. Couldn't be those three talkative wives up there giving us a jolt, could it, Cindie? Or maybe it's only the newcomer from Baanya.'

Cindie's blushing,' Myrtle said. 'I guess it's Jim Vernon. Are you wearing that dress anywhere special to-night?'

`Yes—actually 'Cindie was a little confused.

`Not to see Nick or Miss Erica, of course,' Jinx was supercilious about this. 'They're what Dicey George calls exclusive. I looked the word up in the dictionary. It means "shutting out" in one book; and "keeping to themselves" in another.'

`It must be Jim Vernon, then,' Myrtle insisted.

`That'll do, you two,' Mary commanded flatly. `Get on with your dinner now, and let Cindie and me have ours in peace.'

It was clear to Mary that Cindie and Jim Vernon had a date. `Those wives up in D'D?' she wondered. 'Let's hope they aren't out snooping around. Every man in the camp will think Cindie is an open-go for dating. Then we'll have Nick taking action and shunting out my help-all as soon as the river is down. Of course, he does have to be careful with so many men!'

Cindie was proving so very useful. Mary decidedly didn't want to go back to the rat-race of looking after the needs of a lot of helpless men at the pace she'd gone before Cindie came.

`Like living in a williwilli twenty-four hours a day,' she said, thinking aloud.

They all looked at her in surprise.

`What is like living in a williwilli?' Cindie asked.

'A construction camp. As I said before—two children, one house, two hundred and seventeen men: and now you having to account for the fact you're wearing a nice dress. Even if you did buy it in a chain store.'

The meal was early over, for the children were hungry and made quick work of their food.

'Off you go,' Mary said to Cindie, as she pushed back her own chair. Tor once Myrtle and Jinx can clear away and wash up. The sooner they learn the better. What's more, it'll teach them to mind their manners and not make personal remarks.'

Mary shook her head a little as she glanced again at Cindie's party dress. It was hard to own up, but she was just a little envious of that youth and what could' lie in front of Cindie if she had luck, as well as other gifts. She'd not had luck herself. Myrtle had been so young when her husband had been killed—falling from a rig over a hole being tested for water, when surveying had begun on the first stages of the road. That's why Nick had, against custom, given her, a woman, a job on the site. She supposed that too was luck in a way—come to think of it!

Cindie ran eagerly towards the canteen. Jim had said he would meet her by the steps, and she was already a few minutes late. Thank goodness Mary had decided the children were the washers-up for this last meal, else she would have felt guilty at leaving it.

It was a glorious night: so quiet that even if a kangaroo had hopped out there on the plain it would have sounded like timber falling, in the stillness. The blue-black sky was a distant bowl, inverted and star-ridden. The moon was an arc lifting slowly over the eastern rim of the world.

Best of all, Jim Vernon was waiting for her.

Cindie could see his dark figure leaning against the door, a cigarette glowing in his hand.

'Well . . . there you are!' he said in his soft drawly voice. 'Like a night bird coming through the shadows. My, Cindie, that's a pretty dress, now you're close up and I can really see you.'

'Thank you, Jim. It's nice of you to notice. I put it on because it's a special occasion. I mean, having a friend of my own to meet. The children thought it was something of a joke, my dressing up.'

'Well I don't. I like a girl to look like a girl. Those slacks, now. They're cute. But come nightfall—well, I like a girl to be a girl. Am I repeating myself?'

'You are, Jim,' Cindie laughed, taking his arm as he offered

it to her. 'But nice things are worth repeating, aren't they?' 'You've said it. Now where'll we go? Last time I visited

l

the construction camp it was two hundred miles farther north. The way they move these mobile towns about these days stretches the imagination a bit. That is, until you see it done. I haven't found all my bearings on this new site yet.'

`There's a pile of timber sleepers way over behind Nick's house. Let's go there. They make a seat just naturally.'

`Good for you. I'm glad you know your camp geography, Cindie. All I've discovered is the way to the canteen from my own digs; then to Nick's house, and the short track through the caravan rows to D'D '

Cindie dropped his arm. 'Oh, no, Jim! Not already?'

He laughed, picked up her hand again, and tucked it in his arm. 'My, you sound jealous. Aren't I allowed to take tea with three talkative ladies who, besides other virtues, know how to make a good cake?'

'Of course,' Cindie laughed regretting her dismay. 'It's just that I wanted you first. Yet I haven't any right, have I? I mean we're really only acquainted

'In the best possible way.' He dropped his voice to the sepulchral: joking now. 'We're the sharers of secrets.'

They wound their way between the row of caravans, past Nick's house, which was dark and silent.

Perhaps Nick was taking Erica for a moonlight walk. Cindie wondered why this last thought made her feel—well not exactly captious, because that was something alien to her nature—but nearly that.

They came to the neatly-tiered pile of timber sleepers, and Jim found a comfortable seat for Cindie where she could lean against the pile above. Then he sat down beside her.

`Well now, all joking apart—' his voice was still kind, but the teasing was gone—'what's been troubling you, Blue Eyes?'

'I suppose you can call me that easily, Jim, because you know that Cindie Brown is not my real name. You know what it is because of that cheque. It's Cynthia Davenport.'

'Okay. So what's in a name? You know the little bit about the rose that smells so sweet?' He took out his cigarettes and offered them to Cindie, but she shook her head. Her profile was pale in the light from the waxing moon. He still thought her the prettiest, if the most anxious, girl ever.

'I didn't want to deceive Nick, or anyone on the construction camp,' Cindie began slowly. 'But I knew they would call my rescue from the river over the air. Regulations, and all that. I didn't want the Stevens brothers at

Bindaroo to know I was coming. That's the only reason for the deception. They would have picked up any call.'

'I see. But they're relatives, aren't they? The Stevens brothers?' In the glow of the match Jim held to his cigarette, Cindie could see his face was suddenly thoughtful. The smile, and the whimsical kindliness, was gone. His expression was almost as dead-pan as Nick Brent's could be. Cindie knew already that this was a northwest character trait. They all do it, she thought.

'The Stevens brothers are more connections than relatives, I expect. I'll explain that in a minute, Jim. What I want to ask you is this—what is going on at Bindaroo? Living in the district, and knowing everything about every other station —as the people up here do—you must know something that could help me.'

`Well, maybe ' Jim was cautious now. 'What do you

mean by "connections"?'

'It's a long story, but I do trust y
ou, Jim. I don't know why, but I
do. Something about a woman's insight, I expect.'

'Like me knowing the right and the wrong of a horse by the sound of his hoof-beats, eh? And the rattle of an old Holden, too?'

Cindie saw he was smiling again. His teeth flashed white in the shadow of his face.

`Thank you for being so nice about it, Jim. I mean, about my name, and all that. . .

He took the hand lying beside him, and squeezed it gently. Cindie let her hand lie in his, because this way it was easier to go on with her story.

'My father's uncle lived in England. My parents and I came to Australia when I was a child. When my great-uncle died, he left quite a large sum of money to be divided equally between his nephew, who was my father, and his wife's nephews, who are Neil and Athol Stevens at Bindaroo.'

'That's "relations" near enough for me, Cindie. Go on.'

`The Stevens brothers were already here in Australia—as we were. They'd been working up in the north, and seemed to know it quite well. They had worked on sheep stations. They came to my father and suggested they all three put this legacy, in one lump sum, into buying Bindaroo.' She hesitated, but Jim's silence was a reassuring one.

'My father wasn't foolish. He did make inquiries, and he was told a sheep station was a good investment. Also that both the Stevens brothers had good reputations as hard workers. Besides

`Besides what, Cindie?'

`My father didn't want to dissipate the legacy by spending it. He thought we could carry on as we were, not well off, but not badly off either, and then we would reap the extra gains later on.'

`Sound enough. What happened next?'

`The Stevenses were able to buy Bindaroo, and it took the rest of the legacy to restock it and replace obsolete equipment—bores and windmills. That sort of thing. My father received interest on his money all along, because Neil and Athol Stevens were getting their living off the place and we weren't. Within five years it was expected a bigger income would come in from the wool clip. Then—'

`Then what?'

Cindie retrieved her hand from Jim. She was distressed now.

`My father died the year before last. That was the fourth year after he had invested in Bindaroo. Since his death, my mother hasn't even received the interest. Last year or this. She has to live on a pension. It's not very big: not adequate—'

'Didn't you make inquiries through a solicitor? Or even your bank?'

Cindie nodded. 'Of course. But Neil—he's the one who is technically the manager—always wrote about the drought, or the stock dying: the grass drying out. He seemed to be putting us off. Then the bank manager told my mother there was a rumour that someone—or some others—were likely to take the station over. He even thought this was a good thing. Because of the drought, I expect.'

There was a long silence in which Jim Vernon butted out his cigarette, putting his heel on the dead stub as Cindie had seen Nick do.

`My father was what was called the sleeping partner,' she added.

`That, Cindie Brown-all-over, was the trouble,' Jim Vernon said gently, letting her down kindly. He took her hand again and held it tight. What he had to say now might hurt, but it had to be said. This girl had come a long way to find out the truth; so the truth she would get.

`Had he been on the property he would have known what was going on. He'd have had his say.'

`I see.'

`You only see a little, my child. Neither you, nor those Stevens brothers, know enough about running a station.

The young men might be hard, honest workers. They might have been first-class stockmen, bore-sinkers, musterers, and fencers. They might have been the lot, and good at it. But they knew nothing about sheep-classing, or wool-classing for that matter. Worse, they knew nothing about over-stocking on eroded country. Those last three deficiencies were the main causes of their troubles. Then came the drought over land that had already been eaten out by over-stocking earlier. That, the drought, settled 'em. Do you understand all that?'