East of Outback (27 page)

“Yes’m. That’s very good. Uh, Mum will be pleased.” A
personal friend and Savior? A living person?
Here was a woman not in the least like James Otis, who made exactly the same claims, but in a different way. A rush of conflicting thoughts muddled Colin’s poor, tired brain.

She turned again to the basin. “Hannah says your parents are godly people. Christians. Wouldn’t it be tragic if you refused God, not because you thought it was the right choice for you, but because it was the opposite of your parents choice? I’m sure you’d not be so foolish. God must be accepted or rejected on His own merits, not because someone else accepts or rejects Him. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes’m.” Colin’s ears burned. Nay, more than his ears burned, his very heart burned. He dried the last of the flatware and emptied the dishwater out by the garden. As quickly as possible, he excused himself from the summer kitchen and took refuge in his poisoned apples.

______

It took Colin and Hannah four days to work the last paddock, laying the bait trail, re-feeding it, gathering the rabbit carcasses. Without Max the work took much longer. Colin would never have dreamed he could feel so sad over such a surly, ugly, old dog. They gathered in the last of the bait, the yarn, and the harvest late on a Monday afternoon.

Tuesday they completed skinning. They loaded the skins and the barrels of carcasses onto Mr. Slotemaker’s borrowed truck. Hannah showed Colin how to work the gears and drive as they drove their last load out to the railway station in Deniliquin. Thursday afternoon they returned to the Slotemakers’ with their cash in hand, thanks to the wonder of modern telegraphy.

Colin paid for the use of the truck and accepted Mr. Slotemaker’s check in payment for services. He felt quite professional and businesslike.

“Where are you headed now?” Mrs. Slotemaker asked.

Hannah looked at Colin. “We’ve talked about Gundagai. We have some shearer friends who should be there by now.”

“It’ll bring us closer to Sydney. We can pick up the railway there, and take Hannah home.” Now that it appeared within reach, Colin had trouble believing it.

Mr. Slotemaker nodded knowingly. “Got a letter from a friend north of Wagga near Junee. Jim Barnes. Just a small cocky with a few hundred thousand acres. He mentioned a serious rabbit problem, so I wrote him back about you. Might find work if you head up that way.”

“Oceans of opportunity there,” Mrs. Slotemaker added. “Rabbits everywhere and not enough men available to handle the problem.”

“Thanks for the tip!” Colin said, genuinely grateful. They all sat about on the veranda for another hour in casual conversation. Colin secretly hoped Hannah and Mrs. Slotemaker wouldn’t get off onto the subject of God again.

By dawn Hannah and Colin were headed northeast, on their way to Junee.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-O
NE

O
CEANS OF
R
ABBITS

“Know what I’m going to buy with our next check, Colin?” Hannah braced her perch on the top rail of the stakeside. She was getting pretty good at riding in the backs of stock trucks. Newly shorn sheep crowded at her feet, packed so closely none could move or lie down. The truck hit a dip in a dry creek. She clung to the corner post.

“A railway ticket to Sydney.”

“Trousers. I’m tired of having my legs and knees constantly scuffed. Heavy drill pants like yours, or dungarees.”

“Not a bit ladylike.”

“Neither is trying to stay modest on the horse, or when we’re bouncing along in the back of a truck like this. Trousers are
more
modest for the things we’re doing.”

“Still, it’s not proper.”

Proper! Easy for Colin to say. He doesn’t have to remember to keep his knees together. Look at him with one leg hooked over the rail, all neatly braced, hanging on with one hand. Men! They just don’t understand. Hannah watched the dry countryside. An hour ago they had wound through low hills and gentle rises, much more interesting than the flats they traversed now
.

“I wish Joe and the others had made it to Gundagai,” she sighed.

“Good thing they didn’t. What a mess that flood left! They’ll be forever digging the place out. At least only the river drainage flooded when the dam broke. There’ll be shearing on the flatland above the flood.”

Hannah counted her forty-second rabbit on this leg of the trip. She and Colin would be sorely needed at the Colfax station, just as they had been at Slotemakers’ and Barnes’. She pondered deep thoughts about death and killing. There were the rabbits, of course, but people were saying several men had died in the Murrumbidgee flood.

She didn’t have any answers. Either she didn’t know enough about the subject or she didn’t know enough about life. These farmers’ lives and livelihoods depended upon keeping the rabbits at bay. She and Colin were performing a valuable service. The revulsion she originally felt about killing the soft bunnies abated considerably as she beheld the hideous suffering and destruction they caused.

The truck slowed, crossed a creekbed and rumbled up the far bank. “Colin, if you had lots of money, what would you buy?”

“Our own stakeside. Or at least one of those little half-ton trucks—something to drive from place to place and haul Max’s Lady in.”

“If it weren’t for the horse, we could have accepted a ride in at least a couple of different vehicles. We could have been sitting inside, on real seats.”

“We need the horse, Hannah.”

“I know.” She thought about how they’d sometimes needed Max, too. He had been so good at seeking out rabbits, which in their final moments had hidden in the bush. They needed Max to catch rats, were they to take up that particular line of work again. She missed dear, nasty old Max terribly.

The truck lumbered into a wide, bleak yard of beaten earth. Ramshackle sheds with stretched canvas roofs huddled precariously at the far end, laced together by bonds of rail fence. A smokehouse, a meat safe, and an outhouse—all the accouterments of country living—stood about in attendance to a most dismal-looking government house. It was built like a small box, with a couple of lean-to’s attached to one end. A loose stone chimney indicated the kitchen. Its walls were vertical slabs of timber with the bark still intact. Weathered canvas formed the roof. Scattered about was a lot of just plain trash—bits and pieces of boxes and things. The crude, primitive nature of the buildings aside, this station lacked the crisp cleanliness of the Slotemaker place, the casual friendliness that had greeted them at the Barneses’. There was a feeling of desperation here, though Hannah had not yet seen a human face.

“It’s Uncle Edgar!” a soprano voice called out. Three ragamuffin children came tumbling out of the government house, followed by a fourth about Edan’s age, though he was scrawnier than Edan and much tanner from the sun.

Edgar Colfax drove the truck into a small paddock by the main barn. He walked toward the house, closing the gate behind him. As children lined the top rail watching, Colin dropped the tailgate and ran the ramp down. Max’s Lady, literally up to her belly in sheep, wheeled and bolted down the ramp unbidden. She had endured the whole trip with sheep jammed under her and pressed against her legs. It had obviously affected her disposition. She stood off to a corner now, glistening with sweat and wild-eyed.

Hannah called and waved her arms, trying to herd the sheep into some semblance of order. The shorn animals milled about, bumping into each other as they poured down off the truck. They shifted aimlessly about the paddock in a tight bunch.
Sheep are so stupid
, Hannah thought.

The oldest boy jumped down into the paddock and crawled up onto the driver’s seat. The children opened the gate, and he drove the truck out into the wide dooryard. A lad Edan’s age, driving the big stakeside—and Hannah had felt so proud of herself for having driven in the jarrah forest! She walked over to the gate, slipped through behind Colin, and followed him toward the house.

“You hired a couple of kids?” A tenor voice, thin and reedy, stormed from inside the house. “If I wanted kids doing the work, I’d send my own out.” Hannah paused outside the rickety fly-screen door, uncertain if she should enter.

“They’re experienced rabbiters. Did a good job down south around Deniliquin and Wagga Wagga.” Uncle Edgar was speaking.

“Don’t be crazy, Duncan. I don’t want our kids fooling around with strychnine,” came a weary woman’s voice.

The four children captured Hannah’s full attention outside, asking who she and Colin were and where they came from, and why she wasn’t married. She was trying to explain that just-turned-thirteen is really too young to marry when a voice bellowed from the house and Colin tapped her arm. She followed him inside.

The children trailed behind. A tired-looking, skinny woman with dark circles under her eyes snapped, “You kids run outside. Go!” The children reluctantly turned and left.

The woman’s dark, stringy, shoulder-length hair could use a washing. Actually, Hannah thought, a cut and a style would help too. On her hip she carried a baby of perhaps nine or ten months.

Duncan must be her husband, the man of the house. He didn’t have the same tired look as his wife. He certainly had none of the open joviality that made Mr. Slotemaker so delightful.

He frowned suspiciously at Colin and Hannah as Uncle Edgar introduced them. “Got a thousand pounds of soft apples waiting for you in the wheat shed,” he announced. “You two think you can handle the job?”

“Yes, sir.” Colin sounded mature and confident. Hannah felt very proud of him. “We used sixteen hundred pounds at Slotemakers’ and two tons at the Barnes station. We saw a lot of rabbits as we were coming in here. We can start with a thousand pounds, but we’ll likely need more.”

“That’s all there is and all there’s going to be. You’d best be sparing of them.”

“Yes, sir.” Colin dipped his head. “No better investment you can make on the land than rabbit control, sir. Saves the browse and grass, particularly in dry weather.”

“Investment means money, and that we don’t have. Do your best with what’s here.”

“Yes’r.” Colin started for the door, and Hannah silently followed; there would be no friendly chitchat with the Colfaxes.

Colin pulled his swag out from the passenger side of the truck and handed Hannah her traveling bag. He addressed the oldest Colfax child, Gerald. “When we were hired, your uncle said we could have the use of a horse cart. Where might that be?”

“I’ll show you.” Gerald led off across the wide yard. “You gunner hire us to help you?”

“No. I happen to know your mum doesn’t want you messing around the poison we use. She’d be angry if you did.”

“I’m ten now. I can handle it.”

“The answer’s still no.”

“That cart there.” Gerald pointed. He didn’t seem the least upset that no job loomed in the offing after all. “Needs grease, but it’ll do. You gunner put that bay mare to it?”

“Yair.” Colin gripped the shafts and pulled. The cart creaked pitifully. “Gunner have to pull both wheels and grease the bearings to get this doover in shape again.”

“I’ll show you where the grease is if you’ll let us help you.”

Colin stopped and studied him. “How much?”

The boy shrugged. “Bob a day.”

“Hafta think about that.” Colin busied himself with the cart wheels.

Hannah was already off in search of it. Where would they keep axle grease? Main barn, most likely. There was the little girl who called herself Mitzy, hanging up diapers. “Mitzy, how old are you?” Hannah picked up a wad of wet diapers and started pinning them to the line.

“Eight. I’ll be nine after Christmas.”

“A birthday right near Christmas? Do you win or lose?”

“Lose, mostly. Bryan usually gets a birthday present. His is in July.”

Hannah hung up two more. “I’m supposed to find some axle grease. Do you know where it is?”

“Sure.” Mitzy trotted off.

Hannah hurried behind her. Two minutes later she triumphantly carried the grease pot to the carriage shed.

Early next morning, rather than mix up strychnine where the children might get into it, Hannah and Colin carted apples, poison and all out to the paddocks where they’d be working. Hannah found cutting up apples to be a mindless, not unpleasant task. They cut the apples into particularly small slices to make them go further; that took longer than usual.

“Colin? Are we really going home after this?”

“Think of all the school you’re missing.”

“Do you know what I’d be doing this very minute? Sewing, by hand. With Miss Broaditch scowling at us.”

“So instead you’re cutting up apples by hand with a total stranger—Mr. Colfax—scowling at you. I don’t see any big improvement there.”

“I don’t get paid to sew by hand.”

“You’re not learning anything, either.”

“I’ve learned ever so much!” Hannah protested. “Things I never dreamed of. And think of all the places I’ve been that I’d never seen before.”

‘You’re still going back.”

She threw an apple at him and continued slicing bait. It bounced off his shoulder and rolled aside. She didn’t want to go home. And yet a small voice deep inside kept whispering, faintly, Oh,
yes you do!

She stopped suddenly. “Colin, look. Beyond you. That rabbit is just sitting there staring at us. You don’t suppose it knows, do you?”

Colin turned to watch the creature as it paused less than fifteen feet from him.

The living rabbit looked much larger than the stiff corpses they collected. It perched, loosely hunched, on its big, broad feet, and twitched its nose. Except when a fly lighted on its eye and it blinked, it made no other move.

“Go!” Colin waved his arm.

The rabbit sat quietly, flaccid in the warmth of the afternoon.

Colin threw an apple half at it. The piece struck its flank. With long, flowing hops it moved forward three feet and stopped again. It made no attempt to investigate the apple, and paid no attention to Colin or Hannah. A few minutes later it casually hopped away to the east.

Hannah and Colin looked at each other, shrugging. They resumed their work without comment.