Behind Mt. Baldy (23 page)

“Good on you boys!” she called.

Stephen waved. The car drove on
out of sight, leaving Roger feeling slightly foolish. The boys marched on.

Soon Roger settled into the
rhythm of marching. As his muscles warmed up the soreness went away. Only the
chafing at hips and shoulders still intruded noticeably. After about twenty
minutes Roger heard Graham call out. He looked up. Bright sunlight showed a few
hundred paces ahead.

“That’s the last of rainforest,”
Peter said.

“Thank God. I’m sick of the
stuff,” Stephen said feelingly.

Roger was puffing too much to say
anything but could only agree. The damp from his perspiration had inflamed his
stinging tree bite and he couldn’t resist scratching at it.

They came out onto a bitumen road
with open pasture on the left and rainforest on the right. Roger’s spirits
lifted and he stared out over the rolling hills, his eyes almost aching with
relief at being able to focus at more than fifty paces.

After a few minutes they passed a
grassy car park. A family with a van were there.  A sign said:

                       
CATHEDRAL FIG

“Is that the Curtain Fig?” Peter
asked.

“No. Don’t think so. Wrong name,”
Graham replied.

“We’d better check. We’ll look
silly if we walk all the way to Yungaburra if the next clue is here,” Peter
cautioned.

“Good idea,” Roger said, coming
to a standstill.

“No Roger, you keep going. I’ll
go and check and catch you up,” Graham replied.

Roger groaned but began walking
again. Without Graham leading they slowed down to a nice steady plod. Roger
kept looking behind and saw Graham reappear in the distance and set off after
them.

A small tourist bus rattled past,
forcing them into the long grass beside the road. Graham gradually overhauled
them. He caught up as they came to a road junction and farm.

“Nothing there,” he reported.
“This is the farm we rang up at,” he added.

The friends stood in a perspiring
group while they discussed this. Peter pointed along the dirt road which led
off east across the open country.  “This is the road we came along on
Senior Ex last year,” he said.

Graham nodded. “We walked from
Gordonvale along the Mulgrave and then up Robsons Track. That was a great
exercise.” The three older boys then exchanged reminiscences about that
exercise, leaving Roger feeling quite left out. For once he was glad when they
started marching again.

The road curved around the farm
buildings and southwards away from the jungle. It went down to a small bridge
and then wound its way over open farmland.  It looked very pretty to
Roger.

Within ten minutes he had lost
interest in the scenery as he plodded up a kilometre long slope. Several times
cars rushed past, forcing them to step into the long grass. There seemed to be
no breeze and there was no shade. Roger began to wish they would pass through
some rainforest.

The road curved and dipped down a
long slope to a narrow bridge. Roger struggled to keep up. He wished Graham
would slow down but he didn’t dare suggest this. A glance at his watch showed
it was 1:30. They had been marching for nearly 50 minutes. ‘Perhaps Graham will
go by the book and give us the ten minutes in the hour to rest?’ he wondered
hopefully.

No such luck.
Up
another long hill.
Into the sunflowers to avoid a
shiny blue car driven at high speed by a young man with a black moustache.
‘Trying to impress his girlfriend!’
Roger thought
resentfully.
Another narrow bridge and a wait for another car
to rush across, also far too fast for safety.
Bloody tourists! Up a
slope through more open fields, some brown and poorly maintained, others green
and dotted with black and white dairy cows. Down to yet another narrow bridge.
Past a farm with magnificent flower gardens bordering the road.
Past a derelict barn on the right.

A swarm of tiny finches flashed
across the road at their approach. A car came from behind. Why do they all
drive so fast? Uphill past a row of pine trees which threw a little shade.
Another farm and dogs barking.
By this time Roger was just
marching mechanically. His legs and feet seemed numb and his hips and shoulders
just a general misery. Sweat poured out of him. He began to fall behind and had
to battle with himself not to call out asking for a rest.

The road just seemed to wind
uphill between walls of headhigh grass until it reached the crest of a long
ridge. Here it passed to the right of a low hill and out to the right there
were glimpses of half the Atherton Tablelands.

Suddenly they stopped. Roger came
to a standstill and blinked sweat from his eyes. Graham was dropping his pack!

“OK. Ten minutes. This is the
junction with the Gillies Highway,” Graham said.

Roger looked around. He was
astonished they - he - had walked so far. It was just on two O’clock.

“How far have we come?” he asked.

“A bit over seven Ks,” Graham
replied with a grin. “That’s good going for an hour and a half.”

Roger dropped his pack and
webbing and felt as though he would float away.  He flexed his arms and
rubbed his sore shoulders. A slight breeze sent a pleasant cooling sensation
down his sweat soaked back. He sat on his pack and had a long drink.

At that moment a car, a white
sedan, arrived at high speed from along the highway and pulled up with a
scatter of loose bitumen. Two men in it peered out, the closest one pointing to
the road sign with his left hand and waving a map in the driver’s face with his
right.

Roger looked up out of curiosity
and felt a thrill of fear run through him. Both men were dressed in black!

The pointing man suddenly saw the
cadets sitting beside the road. His face went hard and he clenched his teeth.
He turned to look at them. Then he and the driver exchanged words and bent to
the map. Roger couldn’t help staring. The nearest man was in his forties with
big shoulders, a large squarish head and a roll of fat on the back of his neck.

The car suddenly leapt into
motion and sped off down the Danbulla Road. Roger pulled out his notebook and
began to write.

“What you doing Roger?” Peter
asked.

“Writing down that car’s
make
and number.”

“Whatever for?”

“Didn’t you see? Those men were
both dressed in black.”

“Oh come off it Roger!” Graham
snorted. “You’ve got Iron Claws on the brain. Give it a rest. The cops have
arrested the murderers.”

To Roger’s surprise Stephen spoke
up. “I think Roger’s right. The Inspector did warn us about strangers, and he
did say the KSS used to be organized in groups of nine.”

Graham had no answer to this.
Instead he looked sulky, then took out his water bottle and had a drink. Then
he hoisted on his webbing. “Let’s keep moving before our muscles stiffen up,”
he said.

Roger just wanted to lie down but
he made the effort to stand up. “Ouch!
Too late.
I’m
stiff already,” he groaned. All his muscles seemed to be tense, like hard
rubber. With an effort that made him groan he swung on his webbing and pack.

Graham was already on the move.
He began striding down the right hand side of the two lane highway. At least it
was downhill for a half a kilometre but Roger could see the road went up over
another long, open hill. Once again it took a few minutes for the stiffness to
ease out of his aching muscles. By then they were at the bottom of the slope
and all their muscles had to painfully ‘change gears’ to begin the upward slog.

It wasn’t very pleasant. Cars and
trucks raced past at high speed, often too close for comfort. Some vehicles
tooted their horn and people in a few yelled derisory taunts and obscenities
which made Roger feel very self-conscious and embarrassed.

As they plodded up the slope the
four strung out until Roger was a good two hundred paces behind Graham but only
fifty behind Stephen. He kept grimly on, trying to think of something nice,
rather than of his chafing and sore knees.

What his mind kept returning to
were the events of the last two days. Try as he might, he could not shake the
horrifying visions of the sodden corpse, or of the men in black lurking in the
jungle.

The cadets reached the crest of
the ridge.
A secondary road lead
off on the right. The
highway curved left along the crest. Away down to the right sunlight glinted on
an arm of Lake Tinaroo. Beyond it was the dark jungle covered mass of Python
Ridge where they had spent the night. Beyond it was the mass of the Lamb Range
where he had endured his terrifying airship ride. He looked away. ‘I’ve had
enough of this place for a while,’ he thought. 

Instead he looked left to where,
twenty kilometres away, Mt Bartle-Frere, Queensland’s highest mountain, heaved
its jungle covered bulk above the rolling pastures to cover half the distant
horizon. That got his mind going back to the January a year and a half before
when he and the others had spent two weeks searching the jungle there for a
gold mine. That had culminated in them being rescued from the rain sodden
jungle by helicopter.

‘I must have rocks in the head to
keep coming on expeditions with this lot,’ he mused, remembering the fear he
had felt as the cyclone had lashed their jungle camp.

As they got closer to a belt of
trees ahead they developed into a wall of solid jungle. Roger pulled out his
map to confirm his memory. Yes. It was the patch of jungle around Lake Barrine.
The boys passed a farmhouse. A gravel road went off on the left. They passed
another farm house and then the jungle was right beside them on the left. Traffic
whizzed past. Roger felt he was in a sort of nightmare.

As they passed the turnoff to
Lake Barrine Graham stopped and waited for the others to catch up. “Anyone
want
to go to the shop?” he asked.

“Where?”
Peter asked.

“At the kiosk
down at the Lake.”

“Fair go!” Stephen replied.
“That’s a couple of hundred metres, and downhill all the way - which means
uphill coming back. It will add half a kilometre to the walk.”

Roger said nothing. He just stood
bent over to ease the weight of his pack, while trying to recover his breath.

“You go if you like,” Peter said.
“Leave your pack and I’ll wait here.”

“OK. Do you want anything? Steve?
Roger?” Graham asked as he dropped his pack.

“No thanks,” Stephen replied.
“I’ll keep walking. This is ridiculous. You keep talking about doing this hike
but you are forever stopping for every silly little reason.”

“It’s OK. I’ll catch up,” Graham
replied. “Anyway, it’s nearly time for another rest.”

“How far have we come from the
Danbulla turnoff?” Stephen asked.

“About four Ks,” Graham replied.
“Do you want anything?”

“Get me a softdrink,” Peter said.

“Roger?”

“Yes please,” Roger replied. He
was debating dropping his pack or sitting down but knew that was weakness. He
dug out some money and passed it to Graham. “I’ll just keep going.”

It took an effort to make that
first step but he pushed himself. Stephen started walking too, following a few
steps behind. Roger didn’t look back. He just put his head down and gripped his
pack straps with both hands to ease the weight.

The main road ran through jungle
with a mowed verge a few metres wide.  The traffic raced past. Roger found
it most unpleasant. As he plodded along he saw the back half of a large brown
snake slide into the weeds just ahead of him but he did not change his pace.
Some instinct told him it wasn’t going to attack and he was too tired to get
excited. He just warned Stephen. The snake slid along near them for half a
minute before vanishing into the weeds.

As the road curved slowly left
they came into an area of shade which went on for over a kilometre. Roger just
plodded on, feeling more like a zombie every minute. He was just coming to open
country again when Peter and Graham caught them up.

Graham called, “Pull up you two
and have a drink. It’s time for a break,” He was grinning and striding along as
though he didn’t have a care in the world. That nettled Roger and he shook his
head in annoyance. He looked at his watch; nearly twenty past three.

“How much further to go?” he
asked, taking the cold can of softdrink from Graham. He opened it and poured it
down his throat.
“Aaah!
That’s good!”

Graham consulted his map. “About
seven Ks I reckon.
Another hour and a half.”

‘Seven Ks,’ Roger thought. His
gloom must have showed on his face. 

Stephen clapped him on the
shoulder. “Cheer up Roger. We’ve walked about fourteen since lunchtime. You are
going well,” he said.

This unexpected statement made
Roger look at Stephen. He didn’t know what to say and wasn’t sure if Stephen
was giving him a compliment or teasing him. In reply he gave a weak smile and
nodded, then quaffed some more softdrink before holding the can out.