East of Outback (16 page)

Mr. Brekke arrived after five that evening with the necessary parts and a repair truck from the yards. The driver started up a welding rig in the truck bed, and the crew pitched in to commence repairs.

Mr. Brekke beckoned to Hannah. “You. You jumped off the train, didn’t you?”

She nodded. Fear sparked in her big, dark eyes.

“The conductor reported it to the yardmaster, as he ought, and the yardmaster was of the opinion you were on your own. Then constable Bowden came looking for you. Next thing, they had search parties out all up and down the line. Still out there, some of them. They stopped by the settlement the night you detrained.”

She hung her head. “I’m sorry I caused so much fuss. I wasn’t thinking. I only wanted to reach my brother Colin.”

Colin sighed.
There goes our freedom
. “You knew who she was when you hired us, didn’t you?”

“Knew when I walked into the pub who you were.” He glared at Hannah. “Today I told the constable you’re safe and that you’d left town. Didn’t tell him you’re with us, o’ course. I couldn’t get your bag from him else he’d suspect. All he needs to know is that you’re not lost or hurt. If he found you here, I’d lose your brother, too, and it’s too short a crew to lose another man. You got any plans to jump overboard again?”

“Oh, no, sir! I promised I’d work for you, and I will. I’ll do my best for you, sir.” Her voice dropped to a shy mumble, “’Tis my very first job, sir, and I’m indebted to you for hiring me.”

Mr. Brekke glared at Colin. “What about you?”

“I, uh . . . I’m pleased you took care of it as you did, sir. Thank you.”

The huge man looked from face to face. The gruff countenance softened. “Good enough.” He walked away.

Colin gave Hannah plenty of help preparing supper for the hardy crew. After all, the cook at the Perseverance taught him everything he knew. He smiled again at the thought, and at his memories of the stalwart little Tejano.

It was nearly dark when they finished up. Colin had never considered how endless a task cooking could be—all the preparation work and constant clean up, and in the end nothing to show for it but a clean kitchen—only to repeat the process in a few hours.

The moon, entering its first quarter, was rising already, impatiently chasing the dying sun. Just to give her some exercise, Colin rode Max’s Lady out to Lake Lefroy, with Hannah darting about on foot—with him, yet not with him. The “lake” was a salt flat, totally dry, stretching and glistening as far as the eye could see. Australia was level; Lake Lefroy was a kitchen floor.

“Look here, Colin! Look what I’ve found!” Hannah stuck her head back into a tin shed. The sign over the door said BICYCLES FOR RENT.

She rolled one out. “It has the old-fashioned solid tires. Bet it’s still ridable. Come on, Colin! Choose one and ride with me!”

Colin dismounted and took a look inside. A score or more of abandoned bicycles leaned against each other in the musty shop. He chose one randomly and wheeled it out into the orange glow of sunset. He climbed aboard. Nothing gave way, so he pushed it forward with his feet on the ground. It creaked, then whispered in rhythm from a dozen rubbing joints. The sprocket turned, but not without protest. He shoved off and began pedaling. What glorious freedom!

Hannah, fifty feet ahead, had already bumped down the slope out onto the world’s greatest cycling arena-Lake Lefroy. Colin was sure all the bikes had tasted Lake Lefroy salt; the salt pan was probably the very reason the rental had existed. He had to pedal hard to catch up with Hannah.

The sun dropped away, leaving only the feeble moon to cast its light, but the salt flat was so brightly reflective, it was as if the moon were full. They rode in a wide loop for miles, it seemed, across a crystalline crust as smooth as linoleum.

Except for the crackling whisper of tires on salt, and the creaks attendant to bicycles so long ungreased, they rode in silence. Beside Colin, Hannah began to pedal faster. Faster. Faster. She flung her head back and closed her eyes, and the wind ran like fingers through her long hair.

An hour after they returned to the truck, the crew was on the track again. They rode all night trying to make up lost time, and the next day ate at a little pub called the Golden Dream in a tiny, nearly abandoned town.

Hannah chose not to eat. She took Colin’s last quid into a ramshackle hairdressing emporium, and emerged half an hour later, her dark hair shorn to a short bob. The child had become a woman.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

J
ARRAH

Slim as a telephone pole and taller than a Sydney office building, it stood with its feet firmly in the earth and its lacy head halfway to heaven, snubbing mortal men. Colin stood at its base gazing up openmouthed. Never had he seen a tree so absolutely awesome as this one. Cut it down? Unthinkable.

“Gunner study nature, or make a quid?” Mr. Brekke’s voice boomed out across the open woodland. He came striding over and paused beside Colin.

Colin shrugged and grinned. “Guess I can’t do both.”

Brekke tilted his head back. “Quite a sight, eh? Jarrah, this one is. Jarrah and karri—king karri—finest trees in the world, right here in Western Australia.”

“Back east it’s red gum they all crow about.”

“Crikey, lad, that’s just ‘cause they never saw these.” He waved an arm nearly as thick as the tree trunk. “Jack and Woppo over there—go help them cut up that stick. And stay away from Woppo. When he’s off his turps, he’s mean.”

“Yes, sir.” Colin shouldered his crosscut saw and set off beneath the mighty trees. Out on the ends of the eight-foot blade, the saw handles bounced gently up and down in rhythm with his strides. The undulating blade hummed a faint chant in his ear;
whonnnn, whonnnn, whonnnn
. Ferns and shrubs grabbed at his ankles now and then. The ground gooshed in places, soggy from the winter rains.

Like carefully placed chessmen, the tall, straight trees stood evenly spaced some yards apart, as if aligned in rows by the hand of man. Their loose, open crowns let through nearly all the sunlight. Colin remembered reading in a geography book about the rainforests of South America, and how the trees there screened out ninety-five percent of the light from the humid floor. He could not perceive a forest so dark and close.

Jack and Woppo were hacking away at a tree that must have been felled several years before. Why would someone cut down a tree and then leave it to rot? Colin laid his saw aside and took up Jack’s measuring stick. With it he marked off the length of a sleeper and set his saw on the mark. He drew it across.

The stakeside was chugging this way from somewhere; Colin could hear it behind him.

“Alo-o, Colin!” Hannah’s cheery soprano sang out above the thrum of the motor.

Colin wheeled. She waved from the driver’s side, a swift and hasty wave. Instantly her hand darted back to the wheel, and just in time. The truck lurched over a small, half-rotted fallen tree and rumbled on away through the greenwood.

Colin gaped. “She’s driving! And she’s alone!”

“Why not?” Jack gripped the nether end of Colin’s saw and drew it towards himself.

“She’s just a little girl!”

Jack stared at him a moment. “Look again, lad.”

Numbly Colin dragged back on the saw. It yanked away from him; he pulled it back. Forth and back, forth and back. Hannah was twelve. She wouldn’t be thirteen for another three months. Hannah, with a hair bob just like Mum’s and Mary Aileen’s. Hannah, driving that huge, ungalnly stakeside . . . traveling three thousand miles alone and penniless . . . and making it.

“Quit riding the saw, lad. Wake up!” Jack gave his end an extra tug. “I’ve had to work with that bugger Woppo all morning; I’m in no mood to offer charity.” Jack, snaggle-toothed and middle-aged, was an average rouseabout. He bent his back to any work placed in front of him, though never with much enthusiasm. He earned the sugar in his tea, and apparently that’s all that interested him. Had he never married? What sort of family had he come from? No one seemed to know much about him, and no one, as far as Colin knew, ever dared ask. It was just Jack—no last name ever given. He’d drifted about, working here and there as opportunity arose, like so many Australian men since the Great War.

Is this my destiny? Empty as Jack’s?
Colin wondered.
I am, after all, doing the same thing
. But was Jack’s life empty? He went where he wished and did as he pleased. He earned his way, contributing his share, turning the wheels of progress. No worries. No chains to tie him where he didn’t want to be.

No love, either.

“Git off the saw, Drongo!”

“Sorry.”

Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Colin couldn’t help wondering if anyone loved him. Hannah, obviously. But, Mum? She said she did, but then why did she consistently side with Papa? Did Papa love him anymore? Did he ever love him? Colin was not certain the man was capable of love. Duty, yes. Affection, yes, especially toward Mum. But clear, strong, undying love? For anyone?

Am I capable of that sort of undying love? Perhaps I’m too much my father’s son—unable to love completely. If that be so, a wandering life doesn’t fall so far off the mark
.

The saw rasped within a few inches of bottom. “Hold it,” said Jack, breaking Colin’s reverie. He hooked a peavey in the log and rolled it a quarter turn. They cut it through, measured off the next length, and began the interminable back and forth motion once again.

The truck horn tooted in the distance and the stake-side appeared again, staggering through the bush, threading among the trees.

“Time to eat!” Jack abandoned his end. Gratefully Colin walked away from his.

Hannah bounded down from the cab seat—quite a bound for such a small frame. She hopped back to the flatbed, full of eager enthusiasm, and gathered up three sack lunches. “This is the last stop, so I can join you.” She dipped herself a tin mug of water from a large pail on the flatbed and settled under a tree.

Colin sat down beside her, opened his sack and looked in. Two apples and a sandwich. “When do you think Mr. Brekke is gunner find out you can’t cook after all?” he teased.

Jack plopped down at Hannah’s other side. “Stay off her, Sloan. Mebbe she has some learning to do yet, but she ain’t no blacksmith.”

Hannah frowned. “What does that mean?”

“A blacksmith is a rotten cook.” Colin bit into his sandwich. Mutton. He was not overly fond of mutton. “When did you learn to drive a truck?”

“This morning. Mr. Brekke says that with me driving the truck, that leaves one more man free to cut wood. So he sent Les and Max’s Lady off across the creek where the truck can’t go. Some good sticks there, he says.”

“I can’t believe he’d trust you with the truck.”

“Well he did.
He
doesn’t think I’m a little girl.” She tossed her head and her freshly cropped hair floated out like a halo. “Soon as we’re back to work I drive about gathering spools. Mr. Brekke showed me how to tell the boggy places and stay away from them. He’s setting up the donkey engine and mill. Then Mr. Brekke will haul the sleepers to the railway. ‘Tis a long way. Colin, this is so glorious!”

“Yair. Glorious. ‘Til you take out the front end driving over logs.” He envied her enthusiasm. He enjoyed her ebullience. So why did a sense of danger and dread, of foreboding, hang over his head? What did he feel that he could not put his finger on?

Hannah popped the last of her sandwich into her mouth and bounced to her feet. “I’ll see you later.” Absolutely glowing, she scrambled up into the truck cab. The electric starter groaned a couple of times before the motor kicked in. No doubt Hannah believed herself to be an expert driver already. What would she do when she ended up in the driver’s seat of a vehicle she had to crank? The gears ground. Suddenly the old stakeside lunged forward. She needed practice with the clutch, too.

Jack watched the stakeside waddle out across the forest floor. “Quite a bobby-dazzler, the little lady. Them dark eyes—”

Colin wheeled toward him. “Don’t even think about her. She’s too young.”

Jack studied him with a steady eye. He smirked. “She’s safe from me, lad, but not because you’re protecting her. I can beat the tar outta you anytime I care to. It’s Brekke’s got his eye on her, and I know better’n to tangle with that hunk of a Norwegian. Fights like a threshing machine. Get to work now, Warb.” He sauntered off, looking not the least bit concerned.

Brekke!

Suddenly the amorphous mass of foreboding in Colin’s brain took on a hideous shape. Little Hannah had no idea whatever of the dangers lurking about, and Colin had seriously underestimated them. Brekke. And if not Brekke, Jack or someone else. Colin had to get Hannah out of here. He had to help her reach safety in Sydney under her father’s roof.

Under her father’s roof. Safety. A sudden remorse flooded him—or was it homesickness? He wanted to be under his father’s roof as well, even with all the friction and anger and irritation. He didn’t want to be stranded a continent away, cutting up trees, with his little sister in imminent danger. He wanted Mum’s good cooking and Edan’s quiet support and Mary Aileen’s constant, critical, watchdog eye. He wanted home.

The stakeside was back. Hannah pulled up alongside him. “Mr. Brekke says you’re to help Les load spools.”

Colin grabbed the door handle, wrenched it open and climbed inside. He flopped in the seat. “So what else does Mr. Brekke say to you?”

Hannah shoved the stick into first. They lurched violently into motion. “He says don’t run over any stumps. Colin, what’s a spool?”

“The sections of tree trunks that we sawed up. The sleeper-length pieces.”

“Oh, of course. All right.”

“Look at that. Another good stick just lying there abandoned. They wouldn’t dare waste this much wood in the eastern forests.”

“Mr. Brekke says we’ll cut up this downed timber first. He’s going to bring some men over from the logging camp tomorrow and have them fell us the rest of what we need.”

Mr.
Brekke. Brekke this. Brekke that
. Part of the fear in Colin’s heart was turning to anger.