Guardian Nurse (12 page)

Burn on Bruce was now on the edge of the small bunch of bullocks, and was carefully, inch by inch, easing out a picked animal. It was wonderful to watch the tableau, for tableau it seemed at this stage, it was all, apart from the selected animal, so unmoving.

‘On a big station there’d be a corral waiting,’ said Bert Patterson, ‘but on this place of Burn’s I just tether the beasts in a makeshift enclosure until he gets them trucked.’

The cutting-out went on for an hour, Bert Patterson, as each selected beast was secured, coming back to talk to the rail perchers.

‘Why has
Burn
got ladies’ shoes on?’ Jason asked. ‘Cattle shoes. Burn doesn’t really need them today for cutting out, but if you throw
a
bullock you want heels as a brake.’

‘Throw a bullock?’ Jason’s eyes were saucers.

At last the selected ones were wired in,
Burn
came back on Bruce, had
a
few words with Bert, then, squinting up at the sun, reckoned they had time for a cuppa before they pushed off home again.

‘The flask is empty,’ Frances reminded him, ‘and boiling a billy takes a while.’

‘Not if you do it the right way. However, I’m not
showing you that today. The Primus can work instead.’ He went into the gunyah, tinkered and pumped, and
presently
they heard the hiss of the little stove as it heated the water.

‘There’s no milk,’ Frances reminded him.

‘There’s tea and sugar here, and if you’ve never enjoyed a cup bush-style, it’s time you began.’

‘Jason, too?’ doubted Frances, not too keen on a black brew for a small boy.

‘You try to stop him!’ grinned Burn, nodding to Jason who already had found a cup and was eagerly waiting.

Whether Jason really enjoyed the strong dark potion Frances could not have said, but she rather believed he liked the man-feel of drinking it beside two cattlemen. She enjoyed it herself, though. It had been dusty and drying sitting on the rail.

They pushed off as soon as they had finished,
Burn
passing Bruce back to Bert as he told the cattleman what transport arrangements he had made. They reversed the way they had come, not so golden now as the sun was reaching the west, a few violet shadows creeping in here and there. It was almost dark when they reached the home run, and
Burn
put his foot down on the accelerator so as to get to West of the River by the time of lights-on.

But he didn’t make it for all his speed. He braked abruptly at Uplands, opened the jeep door and let out a yell.

‘Trev, you old traitor
!’

‘Burn, you old——
!’

‘Lady present,’ prevented Burn in time. ‘Also—
Jason.’

‘The sonno,’ said the man he had called, and he came across. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this.’

In
a
daze Frances heard
herself being introduced.
She heard
Burn
and Trevor Trent
talking together ...
making arrangements
to
meet for more
talking ...
Trev telling Frances she must get
Burn
to
bring her
into Wagga Wagga
.
.. telling Jason..
.

She was still in a daze
when at
last Burn
pushed on
again. He had to prompt her to get out and
open the
gate. ‘Because
,’
he said, ‘I’m
too tuckered
out to
do it
today. That last occasion
was
only
a treat,
don’t
think
you get handed one twice.’

She said ‘Yes’ dully, and performed
the
duty.
When
she came back after closing the
gate
again
she
wondered what her treat would be if she told
Burn
she
had met his friend before.

Only he
had not
been
this
man,
so he could not have been
Trent.

Who had he been, then? Why had
he come? Why
hadn’t she reported the meeting
to Burn as she had
intended to?

Why .
.
. because nervously she knew that
she
wouldn’t
.
.. wasn’t she preparing
to tell
him now?

CHAPTER EIGHT

Frances
prattled brightly with Jason as she bathed him that night ... over-brightly, as that bright young button soon informed her.

‘You’re talking and talking, France.’ A long disconcerting look at her. ‘Why?’

‘I suppose because it’s been such a lovely day. It was a lovely day, wasn’t it, Jason? You enjoyed it, didn’t you?’

‘All except that part where
Burn
went over the fence on Bruce. I didn’t want the horse to get hurt.’

‘And Burn?’

‘
Burn
wouldn’t get hurt
,’
dismissed Jason confidently. He looked at her shrewdly. ‘Is that why you’re talking and talking, France, because you were thinking Burn might fall down?’

She looked back at him, almost wishing she could confide in him about Trev Trent. He was such a wise small boy, it seemed almost incredible that one so young could comprehend that sometimes a deep worry is hidden in light talk. But she couldn’t speak of it, of course. She remembered how Jason had disliked that man right from the start. If only she had taken notice of the child, of a child’s intuition, not scolded him. That set her wondering rather disturbingly if Jason’s tale of waking up that day in the hammock to see the fellow watching from the hill
could
have been true after all. But, she thought soberly, there must be no questioning the boy again. Fortunately Jason seemed to have forgotten the affair, so she would, too. She would put her guilt over her own part in the episode in not reporting it to
Burn
right out of her mind. As she towelled Jason briskly she planned their lessons tomorrow, for the department’s next bundle had not yet arrived, and the morning class would depend on her.

Right from the beginning of the tuition she had found she enjoyed the process just as much as Jason. After all, teaching had been her first choice, nursing more a convenience ... even though later she had come to love it, too. The years away from teaching instead of dulling had whetted her appetite for it. Especially with a pupil like Jason West.

She declined an invitation from the boys and went to her room very early, taking out the teaching manuals long put away but brought out again when she had been assigned West of the River. She pored over them. She was absorbed in a chapter on learning to relate information to behaviour when there was a tap on the door. A second and third tap did not reach her ... nor did the quietly opened door, then the man’s steps to her side.

But this ‘France’ did penetrate. She gave a little start and looked up from the printed page.

‘It must be very intriguing,’
Burn
West said. Without being asked he drew up a chair to the desk and sat down as well.

‘I’m sorry,’ Frances offered, ‘I didn’t hear you.’

‘I shouldn’t have come in like this, I suppose, but the dead silence had to be investigated.’ He smiled slightly. ‘I expect that sounds like more cloak and dagger stuff.’

She smiled back at him, but it was a distinct effort. Instinctively at his words her mind had run back to that man who was
not
Trevor Trent.

‘Are you annoyed at my barging in, France?’ Burn was saying with concern, a little disconcerted, if
Burn
West could be disconcerted, because of her silence.

‘Of course not.’ She tried to put something into the denial. ‘I’m sorry I gave you that impression.’

‘You didn’t, really, I was actually self-absorbed. It’s something I’ve been thinking over for some time. France, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve been
overdoing my doubts, subtleties
—
’

She inserted, ‘Innuendoes.’

He said almost delightedly ... delighted? Burn West? ... ‘You listen to me
!’

She did not reply.

‘I’ve come to the conclusion,’ he repeated, ‘that I can relax here at West of the River. Especially with you. I’m referring, of course, to the child. I hereby cancel that previous injunction that you never go out unattended with the young fellow.’

Suddenly, almost burningly, where she had resented the injunction, now she desired it. It was ridiculous, she thought. There had only been that instance of a man who had not been the person he said he was. Said ... or had she believed he had said it? Had she jumped to that conclusion herself? Just now she found she could not clearly remember; all she knew was that she had tagged him Trev Trent, but he wasn’t, he was someone else.

‘Well, France?’ she heard the man beside her asking. ‘Thank you. Yes, of course,’ she said almost mechanically.

‘Take him where you please, when you please. I know he’s in safe hands.’

His eyes glowed down on her, and for a heady moment she warmed herself in the glow.
Burn trusted her.
She would never have credited that this man’s approval could mean so much. Then she was losing her pleasure and becoming apprehensive again. Now was her time to say: ‘Thank you, but there’s something you should know and I should have told you before. While you were away..

She did not tell. She found that warm glow too hard to relinquish. What’s wrong with me, she tried to ask herself, why am I like this with this man, this—married man?

‘You know by now,’ Burn West was saying in a low voice, ‘why I’ve guarded Jason.’

‘No, not at all.’ She added just as quietly, ‘I haven’t probed.’

He
w
as looking steadily at her. ‘I believe that. You would be that sort of girl. Do you want me to tell you now?’

‘No.’

‘And I don’t want to say it.’ She saw his whitened knucklebones and knew that he was thinking of something and not liking his thoughts. With a quick gesture she picked up the book she was studying and drew his attention to the chapter she had reached on ‘trying’.

‘Always encourage a child to try, make him feel that failure is not a crime,’ she read at random.

Fortunately he was diverted. ‘One thing,’ he said proudly, ‘the sonno was ready to try the back of a horse, wasn’t he?’

‘But isn’t that in the blood?’ She could not resist that as she remembered Burn West’s former acclamation.

‘Not all the time.’ He grinned an acknowledgment of her quick back thrust, and she felt a little ashamed of her repartee.

‘You see there was a small boy once,’ he related, then
gla
n
ced at her for permission to go on.

She nodded.

‘A roan tossed him, with the result that the rider was three months in a body cast, but more important still, scared to death.’

‘No wonder,’ Frances put in.

‘And that’s exactly what my mother said, but not my father. He had this aboriginal expert working for him, there’s no horseman like the first Australian, and he asked old Collie to choose another mount for the boy. The grey that Collie indicated sent my mother into hysterics, he was a wild thing, but my father believed in old Collie.’

‘And the grey turned out good?’

‘Not so quick a happy ending as that.’ The man asked Frances’ permission, then began his whisper of tobacco and paper.

‘The pony wouldn’t let anyone near him, even halter breaking was out, and when he got caught after a fright in fencing wire he was much worse. Then’ ...
Burn
West lit up ... ‘it all began. Two getting better together, the sliced-up, bleeding grey and the body-cast boy. It took a lot of time, but it came out all right.’ He exhaled. ‘That story is just to soft-pedal the West saga you must feel you’re hearing too loud and too often. The Wests were no gods.’ A sudden shadow at his own words made
Burn
’s face much too dark and much too angry for the simple story of a boy who had allowed himself to scare, Frances puzzled.

She broke in quickly with, ‘I can see now why you understand what Jason is going through with his cast.’

‘Oh no, France’ ... the voice was grim ... ‘I can never understand that.’

Not knowing how to reply, Frances looked down on the reference book again. They talked of mental stimulus, the encouragement of
creativity,
pressures to ‘conform’ that
curb
instead of inspire.
Suddenly
Frances was remembering
her lectures again,
enjoying the quick exchange of views with
someone who felt as
she did towards a child.
—
His child.