Behind Mt. Baldy (14 page)

Roger made his way to the place
where the men had vanished from sight. A faint footpad showed their route. This
led up onto the main timber track but here it was in more open scrub and was
overgrown with waist high grass.

The men had trampled a path which
was easy to follow. Ten metres further on it crested a low knoll. Roger walked
up to the rise, every nerve alert. Here another side road went off downhill on
the left. Trampled grass led in both directions. Roger paused, unsure which way
to go.

The screech of cockatoos told him.
He moved forward a few paces and could just see over the rise. He stopped and
crouched behind a bush.

The timber track went downhill
for about fifty paces then entered a large clearing at least a hundred metres long
by half as wide. Beyond this it tunnelled back into a forest of tall white gums
further along the ridge. The cockatoos were in the gum trees. The clearing had
been bulldozed as part of the timber hauling some years before and was now
either bare red clay or small bushes.

Near the closest edge three of
the men stood with their backs to Roger while the blond man paced deliberately
on a compass bearing. He was counting aloud and suddenly stopped and turned to
face the others. They at once began walking to join him.

Stephen had joined Roger by this.
“What are they doing?” he whispered.

“Counting
paces.
I told
you it was a treasure hunt. Look. Now they’ve got their metal detector to
work,” Roger replied.

They watched as the man with the
glasses quartered the ground systematically with the detector. He stopped from
time to time and Bruno dug but only threw aside several small rusty metal
objects. After circling up to ten metres from where the blond man stood the
operator stopped. He took off his earphones and shrugged.

There was some discussion. Then
the old man gave quick orders. Bruno set to work chopping at a bush. The man
with the glasses and the blond man both began walking back towards the boys.

“Here they come! Quick, into the trees,”
Roger hissed. He pushed at Stephen to move and keep down. His heart had leapt
into his mouth and the adrenalin pumped.

The boys moved on hands and knees
as fast as they dared. Roger paused to reach behind him to stand the tall grass
back up then followed Stephen. They just had time to push into the undergrowth
amongst the closest trees when they heard the men’s voices.

Roger gestured to lie down.
“This’ll do. Keep still!” he hissed. They lay flat, hearts thumping.

The men walked up over the rise
talking angrily. They looked neither left nor right and were clearly in a bad
mood. As they went past Roger shuddered with relief. From where he lay he got
glimpses of the men as they skirted the fallen log. To keep them in sight he
  moved
and raised his head. He could just see part of
the four wheel drive beyond the track junction.

The men went to the vehicles and
the boys lost sight of them but heard doors open and close and metallic noises.

Stephen tugged at Roger’s sleeve.
“Come on Roger. Let’s get out of here,” he whispered, pushing his glasses back
up his nose with one finger.

“Not yet. This is interesting.
Let’s just creep down through this thick patch to see if we can get a clear
view of that clearing.”

Stephen shook his head but
followed him as he began a careful crawl down around a thicket of spiky palms.
Suddenly he gripped Roger by the ankle.

Roger froze but no explanation
was necessary. The two men were returning from the vehicles. The boys were now
a good ten metres in from the old road and quite safe from observation. They
waited till they heard the men pass down into the clearing before continuing to
creep forward.

     “Ah!”
Roger breathed. He had found just the spot.
As the slope
dipped again yet another old snig track went off down to the right.
Here
there were thick bushes on the bank above it and a clear view out into the
clearing. The boys crouched behind them and peered through their leaves.

“Digging a hole,” Stephen
observed.

“Yes. They must have found it,”
Roger replied. Once again he was a-tingle with excitement. The men had brought
machetes and another shovel and mattock.  They began to clear the bushes
and then marked out an area indicated by the old man.

Bruno then began loosening the
hard, red clay with the mattock.

“He’s not enjoying that,” Roger
sniggered.

Stephen didn’t reply. After a
while Bruno stood aside and the other two shovelled the loosened soil away.
Roger glanced at his watch. It was ten to four!  Reluctantly he decided it
was time to go. But he did want to be there to see the treasure unearthed!

He was just about to tell Stephen
when Bruno handed the mattock to ‘Glasses’ and, on the instructions of the old
man, picked up his rifle and began walking back up the track.

For a horrible moment Roger
thought they must have been seen or heard but as he watched he decided that
Bruno had been sent on another errand. He waited till Bruno passed from view
then whispered to Stephen. “When he comes back we will get out of here.”

“About time too,” Stephen
replied.

They lay and watched the digging.
The old man just stood and looked on. The other two took turns. That it was
very hard digging was plain from the slow progress and the size of the clods
hacked loose. Both diggers discarded their shirts and sweated freely.

“Bruno’s taking a long time,”
Stephen muttered angrily.

“Yes he is,” Roger replied. He
looked at his watch again. Ten past four.  Twenty minutes. Where could the
man be? What could he be doing? A horrible suspicion formed in Roger’s mind
that Bruno might be stalking them. This caused such a flutter of panic that for
a minute or two he couldn’t think straight. He forced himself to calm down.
‘Stop it you coward!’ he told himself. ‘Be logical. If those men thought we
were here they would take much more direct action.’ He turned to Stephen.

“Let’s go. We will find out what
he’s doing.”

Roger again led the way. He
crawled back for twenty metres until positive they could not be seen from the
clearing. Then he slowly rose to his feet, his joints protesting and sore muscles
stiff. Then, careful step by careful step, he made his way around the side of
the hill to near the roots of the fallen tree.

What he saw at once relieved and
dismayed him. Bruno wasn’t stalking them. He was sitting on the bonnet of the
four wheel drive with his rifle cradled across his lap, looking back along the
track towards the main road.

Stephen crept up beside Roger.
“What can you see? What’s going on?” he whispered.

“Bruno. He’s sitting there on
sentry duty. At least he looks like he’s on guard.  Strewth, I hope Graham
and Peter don’t come looking for us,” Roger replied.

“Then we’ll have to go round
him,” Stephen replied. Roger nodded.

Stephen now took charge. He took
out his compass and set it for West. Then he began slowly making his way down
the steep slope in that direction.

It was difficult to move
silently. There were so many dead twigs in the leaf-mould and Bruno was only
fifty metres away. Step by step the two cadets edged downhill, gripping small
trees for support, avoiding vines and spiky bushes. They had to weave around
fallen logs and through a patch of wait-a-while.

Here Stephen got caught up. He
avoided the more obvious thicker tendrils but a thin one caught the back of his
shirt. He stopped almost at once but not before the bush had been pulled and
leaves set rustling. The two cadets froze.

Had Bruno heard them?

After a moment Stephen eased
backwards. Both knew what to do. Never pull at wait-a-while! The curved barbs
just dug in deeper and the vines are too strong for a human to break. You have
to take the tension off then roll gently away. Roger helped by gripping the
offending tendril in his fingers, ignoring the sharp pricking.

The slope got steeper as they
went down and the undergrowth became thicker with more and more wait-a-while.
Stephen stopped. “We are heading into some sort of a creek. Do you think we’ve
come down far enough?”

Roger looked back. He estimated
they were only about a hundred paces down the slope; perhaps fifty metres.

“No. Twice that distance at
least. Keep going,” he murmured.

They resumed their slow descent.

Further down Roger got snagged by
wait-a-while. The barbs hooked the sleeve of his shirt. He stopped and backed
up, then peeled the tendril off. It came clear of the cloth with a ripping
sound. Roger let go of the tendril but it swung from the palm frond overhead.
Instinctively Roger put his hand up to ward it off. At the same moment his
right foot slipped on the rotting vegetation underfoot.

“Ow! 
Bloody
thing!”
Roger cried softly.

He pulled away and stepped back -
into another hanging tendril.

“Hold on Roger. I’ll help. You’ve
cut your hand,” Stephen said.

Roger looked. Four holes in the
skin on the outside of his right palm suddenly had drops of blood appear. These
overflowed and a sticky red trickle ran down the fingers. Roger put his hand in
his mouth and sucked. The smell and taste of the blood made him nauseous.

“Not your day,”
Stephen
observed as he unhooked the tendril.

Roger mumbled some swear words
then followed Stephen on down the slope. They seemed to be well away from Bruno
by this, over a hundred metres but Roger insisted they go on down for another
hundred paces.

“Better to be sure than sorry,”
he grunted. He was irritated and physically uncomfortable. By now he felt
tired, sore and very thirsty and he was eaten up by curiosity about what the
men were digging for. The blood trickles on his hand dried up and he forgot
about them.

The compass bearing took them out
of the re-entrant and down the side of a steep spur-line. They crossed the
spine of this and halted for a moment to look. An overgrown snig track went on
down it. A trampled plant showed that the men had been down it.

“This will do. Let’s head north
to the main road,” Roger said.

Stephen pulled out his map and a
pencil and they made a guess where they were.

“About forty five degrees for
about three hundred metres, say five hundred paces, should do it,” Stephen
decided. He put the map away and set his compass.

They continued their detour, pushing
through a clump of huge, broad-leaved plants that were taller than them, then
past a tree with huge moss-covered buttress roots, then past another tree
caught in the parasitic embrace of a strangler-vine. The bearing led them
steeply downhill.

It became so steep they had to
use both hands to grip the smaller trees as they went down. Several large
clumps of wait-a-while caused detours of ten metres or so. Both boys were
sweating freely and became grimy around the hands and neck. A huge butterfly with
brilliant blue wings fluttered past.

The bottom of the slope was a
small creek bed. There was no running water, just damp leaves and moss covered
rocks. They were in the shadow of the next ridge by then and it was quite
gloomy. The far side of the small watercourse was so steep they had to look
around for a way to haul
themselves
up.

Stephen dragged himself up into a
thicket of small saplings with difficulty.  Roger went a few paces up the
creek bed towards an easier place.

“Aah!” he cried aloud.

Before he even looked he knew
what it was. Fierce waves of sharp pain lanced from his left-hand up his arm.

Stinging Tree! He swore, then
cried again and waved his left hand in the air. The blasted bush was obvious
when he looked for it. He had brushed one of the heart-shaped leaves with its
distinctive serrated edge. There were several stinging trees there he now saw.
The thousands of tiny white poison bristles were plain to see.

The pain was intense. Roger
gripped his wrist with his right hand while tears flowed down his cheeks. His
vision blurred and he hopped around. It took a real effort to stop crying out
again. Stephen stood further up the slope waiting. He looked sympathetic and
Roger knew there was nothing he could do to help. 

If circumstances had permitted
Roger would have tried to remove as many of the tiny white bristles as he
could. He could see them, like unshaven hairs, stuck in the palm of his left
hand. The outside of the little finger had collected the most.  Sticking plaster
gently eased on might have removed some when it was pulled off; or careful
plucking one by one with tweezers. But there wasn’t time (and his tweezers were
in his pack).

As the first waves of pain
subsided Roger wiped his eyes, swore again then gritted his teeth and reached
up to a tree to pull
himself
up the slope. That hurt
too as the bristles were driven in or broken off and he knew he would feel the
sting for months to come. ‘Every time I wet my hand or it gets cold the tiny
poison barbs will activate,’ he thought morosely.