Absolution Creek (30 page)

‘Reckon you had a good fall, kid.’ He picked at his teeth, examined a morsel of food retrieved from a rear molar, and popped it back in his mouth. ‘You’ve been asleep for a bit.’

Tinned foodstuffs and bags of flour, sugar and tea lined the far wall along with a handful of books. Squib made out the name Ivanhoe and Sir Walter Scott on one red cloth volume; it was one of her father’s favourites. In another corner were two tin chests. There was no window, just the bed and rough blankets, the table and chair and a rifle and saddle near the door. A candle crate held a quart pot and potatoes. A writhing Jesus was nailed to the split timber walls. Squib turned her nose up at this show of religion, wondering if the same bathing rules applied here. The dirt floor was patterned with boot marks, and there wasn’t a single sheepskin rug to make the place a bit homey; not even a length of material to mark the space between the bed and the table. A dark leatherbound book sat squarely on the edge of the table. Squib read the gold lettering on the spine and immediately thought of her stepmother, Abigail.
Holy Bible
.

‘Where’s my father?’ Squib pulled at her dress. The material felt stiff. ‘Where’s Jane and Beth and Ben and Abigail?’

Jack creased his forehead. ‘I don’t know. I found you by the creek when I went down to check my traps; figured you’d been washed up by the flood.’ He looked at her carefully. ‘There was no one else.’ He fell to eating the remains of the food, keeping his head low to the plate until the tin was clean. He licked the spoon a couple of times and then took up a wooden pipe.

A flicker of pictures ran through her head. ‘I fell off the dray. We were leaving the Purcells on account of –’ Squib stopped, wary of sharing the truth.

Jack halted in the stuffing of the wooden pipe. ‘On account of what?’

‘Nothing. You know the Purcells?’ she asked hopefully.

Jack shook his head. ‘They’re not from around here, that I know of. Which town are they close to?’

Squib shrugged. In all her time at Waverly Station she’d never been to town. The match flared against the tobacco as Jack drew on the wooden end. There was a billow of smoke and the pipe went out.

‘Where were you heading with your family?’ Jack lit another match and gave a series of puffs, which set him to coughing and spluttering. The tiny flecks of embers died again.

‘You don’t smoke much, do you?’

Jack concentrated on the pipe and gave a scowl Squib figured was just for show. The man’s eyes were soft and pale in wrinkle-free skin, although his face was very brown.

‘Anyway, Father said we had to cross the
crick
before the rains came.’

Jack re-lit his pipe and gave three strong puffs, his satisfaction at the glowing tobacco evident. ‘I reckon he missed his opportunity.’ He looked her up and down. ‘If you want to wash up there’s a barrel of water outside. Reckon you’ll have to stay with me for a while, though, until your leg mends a bit and Adams comes. He can take you back to Stringybark Point after he finishes up his mail run.’

‘Can we find my father?’

Jack looked out the door. ‘Best thing to do is get you back to town with Adams.’

‘Will he find my father?’

‘In town they can telegraph the right people about you being . . . lost.’ He pointed to a tin on the table. ‘You might want to put some salve on those grazes once you’ve had a wash.’ He glanced around the hut as if seeing their surrounds for the first time. ‘You be right here.’

Squib wasn’t sure if it was a question or a matter of fact, so she gave a brief nod.

‘I’ll be out all day.’ He waved his arm vaguely. ‘You might keep the fire going if you’ve a mind.’

After Jack left, Squib limped outside with the tin. Her injured eye still wouldn’t open fully, but she could make out that miles of flat country peppered with trees surrounded the hut. She drank thirstily from a barrel and then, filling a cast-iron bucket with the red-tinged water, stripped off to wash both her clothes and herself. Once clean she quickly re-dressed and applied the sticky salve from the tin to her grazed legs and arms. There wasn’t much to see at Jack’s hut. It sat within a ring of tall trees and scrub, as if a giant had dropped it into the clearing. The roof was bark with saplings rested crossways to hold it down, tied on with woven grass and twine. On the coolest side of the hut was a meat safe, empty. Three distinct tracks led out from the rough building. Squib limped about very slowly. The first track only went a short distance and finished at the base of a tall tree. There were piles of mounded dirt as if someone had been digging at its base and a bit of prodding with a stick soon led Squib to discover that this was where Jack did his morning business. The second track, the one Jack took that very morning, meandered across the grassy paddock forever, so she turned homeward. The third track wove eastwards through wavering grasses, eventually narrowing until it reached the creek.

Squib came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the swiftly flowing current. On the opposite side three kangaroos were nibbling grass. Disturbed, they raised their heads, pricking their ears at her intrusion. Sunlight streamed down through the gum and box trees framing the waterway as the kangaroos hopped to a grassy hollow. Squib glanced again at the hated water, wondering how many days her father was from finding her. It didn’t matter, Squib decided, she simply had to wait.

A partially skinned rabbit lay in the dirt. In the late afternoon light the carcass looked a blue-grey colour. It still had its head on and its eyes were glazed. Jack washed himself in the bucket, before wringing his shirt out and hanging it from a hook near the hut’s door. He returned to squat by the fire, building it up with branches before decapitating the rabbit and roughly cutting it up. He threw it in the pot on the fire.

Squib couldn’t help but stare at Jack’s bare body. Muscle rippled across his stomach as he moved and a thin line of hair disappeared into the top of his trousers. Reluctantly Squib drew her gaze back to the fire. ‘Where’s your family?’ she asked quietly. She’d slept the afternoon away, her injured leg spread out in the dirt like a wounded animal. ‘Are you lost too?’ She didn’t like that word. It reminded her of the yellow dog, of her own misadventure.

Jack looked at the contents of the pot and frowned. ‘What happened to the rest of it?’

‘I ate it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was hungry.’ She was still hungry.

‘What are you wanting a meal in the middle of the day for? And what am I supposed to use for beginnings for the stew?’

‘Everyone eats three times a day,’ Squib answered. ‘Anyway, all we need is dripping and flour.’

‘Well, there’s no dripping. So we’ll have to make do with a bit of water and salt.’

‘Cabbage?’

‘No. Does it look like I have a vegetable garden?’

‘Well, you’ve got flour so we can make damper. And I saw potatoes.’

Jack glared at her. ‘True enough. Guess I’ll go get some then.’ He walked to the hut, returning with the potatoes.

They sat in silence until the smell of cooking rabbit and dough filled the dry air. Jack dished up a plateful for each of them. The rabbit wasn’t so good this time. When they’d finished, he pulled a night log across the fire, sat the pot to one side and walked wordlessly to the hut. Squib limped slowly after him to sit on the narrow camp bed, watching as he lit the slush lamp and began reading a letter. Within seconds the hut was invaded by whirring insects. They came through the open door and the ill-fitting slats, biting and buzzing until Jack appeared to sit within a blur of cream-coloured wings. With a sigh he carefully folded the letter and placed it securely inside the book.

‘Is that from your family?’

‘They’ve been delayed.’ His voice was low. ‘Shouldn’t you go to bed?’

‘When does Adam come?’

‘Adams? A few days, a week, can’t always be sure.’

‘Why not?’

‘Cause I can’t.’

‘But why?’

‘Cause things don’t run like a clock out here, Squib. That can’t be your real name. What’s your surname?’

Squib lifted her splinted leg onto the bed. She figured she could tell him her name. He had been good to her. ‘Hamilton. Where’s your family?’

‘Coming.’

‘From where?’

‘You sure do ask some questions for a kid.’ Jack blew the lamp out and walked to the door of the hut. ‘Time for some shut-eye.’ He closed the rickety door behind him.

Squib peered through the slats at Jack’s silhouette as he stalked about the campfire in the gathering darkness. She wondered what he thought about, where his family was. He was a big man – bigger than her father – with a kindly face, except that Jack’s nose was a bit crooked and his teeth were slanty at the top, like someone had pushed them all to the left. Squib nosed closer to the timber walls, her face pressed hard against gappy boards. Her breath caught in her throat. The light fell softly to highlight his muscular shoulders and broad back. Jack Manning certainly wasn’t like her father or brother, or Scrubber for that matter.

At some time during the night Squib awoke with a start. A wind had blown up and it ruffled her hair through the gaps in the hut’s walls. The small space was criss-crossed with light from the moon, and through a gap in the bark roof a sprinkling of stars brightened the dark sky. Night was the time to stay awake, Squib decided, for everything bad that happened in her short life had occurred when darkness covered the earth. Her mother died during the night. They had left Waverly Station during the night. And the water came for her in the night. There was something else that had occurred, something so awful and sad it clutched at her chest like a hand twisting at her heart. And then she remembered. It was Jane. Jane had watched her fall.

Chapter 24

H
arold took one glance at Sam’s seat on the dappled mare as he tore past him, and knew he was looking at a rooky. Although in truth his yelps for help were also a bit of a giveaway. Oh, he’d put on a good show, there was no doubt about that. It was so good that Harold didn’t pay much attention to his skill level the first day. Sam had been late and so Harold had saddled the mare for him. He’d talked about a strained shoulder muscle and backache from the previous day’s work in the machinery shed, and sure enough he looked a bit stiff in the saddle. He followed rather than rode abreast and seemed a bit unsure. Preoccupied with scheming to ensure his nephew ended up with a paying job, Harold had ignored him. Who’d watch a learner when you could ride with a natural – and Kendal White was a born horseman. Where he got it from, with city slickers for parents and professionals for siblings, was anyone’s guess. The kid had a good seat, kept his heels in and the reins firm, and rode with the nonchalance of an old hand despite his intermittent stints in the saddle.

A week ago they’d mustered a 1500-acre paddock, moving a mob of wethers westward into country the boss had been fallowing for six months. With the flighty wethers taking off in every direction Harold hadn’t been able to keep much of an eye on Sam. Meg’s husband drifted in and out of the scrub, gathering a few head as he went and, whether through default or ability, was with them at the end. That was as much as Harold could expect of a city-born recruit in a big paddock. Today, however, they had mustered and yarded the rams in an old set of sheep yards over the creek. The area had been well rung in the early twenties and the lack of timber meant Harold was quick to notice Sam’s reluctance to be up front and centre; most of which stemmed from his inability to control his horse.