The river is Down (27 page)

'Flan ' Cindie asked, turning round sharply. 'Could

Jim Vernon be at the construction camp?'

'Why not? There's a beaut flying-fox rigged up across that river. It'll last quite a time. The weather news says the river water's going down, anyway.'

'But why would he go back to the construction camp?' Flan shrugged.

'Please, Flan. You know something—'

'I don't know something. I just guess. Same as everyone else on that raking site guesses, or bets. And I'm not telling. Go and get that coffee, Cindie, like I said, and quit worrying about Jim Vernon. He knows his own business best.'

But he knows I'm not there: I'm here! Cindie thought, puzzled.

It was a waste of time, guessing. There were too many riddles in the air this morning. Flan was right. A good cup of coffee, with cream on the top. was the thing she needed most right now. She did believe in a little self-help—and determined uplift, too. It was this spirit that had made her come north in the first place. At home, all she and her mother had done was worry.

She would be cheerful for Flan's sake. She would, she

would!

Cindie did not go in to dinner that night. She did not want to see Erica, nor watch the two of them dining side by

side. She went to the one small café opposite the general store instead, and ate baked beans on toast. She bought a packet of biscuits so that she would have something to eat with her early-morning cup of tea. She'd be there first so as to avoid certain other people in the pyjama parade. She didn't intend to go to breakfast because she wasn't two-faced enough to greet Erica with a smile. Well, not if Erica was en route to Bindaroo—taking Nick with her.

She thought of Jim's optimistic message. He had sent that to cheer her up, of course. Perhaps, this time, he didn't really know what was going on.

Cindie's absence from breakfast was a gesture in vain, for Nick and Erica had taken off in that plane at midnight. With the speed of air travel, they would probably be at Marana, or Bindaroo—long before breakfast.

Flan told Cindie all about this later, as he packed her, together with the hamper made up for them by the hotel chef, into the Land-Rover.

The other secretaries had been green with envy when Cindie, meeting them in the hotel foyer earlier, told them she had a day off because her chief was away: and where she was going.

`I told you so,' Sylvia, the ever-smiling blonde, said. 'You have the King Chief of all. I heard him ordering a hamper at the desk after dinner last night. Only the best—he said. My, oh, my, Cindie! He must value your services some—'

`More likely that of his "chauffeur",' Cindie replied with a laugh. 'Flan is his right hand and so devoted it would take a knife-edged saw to sever them apart.'

`Somebody—absolutely dashing—must have achieved that feat to-day. She was in for dinner last night. And did the hotel staff look up! You were right, Cindie. She's quite a gal!'

Cindie thought about this as she went through the door to see if Flan was ready.

Yes—that was exactly what Erica would do. Everyone would look up, including the three secretaries. She had been afraid to go in to dinner because she had known, deep down inside her, that Erica would have had that effect on herself too. The honest part of herself would have had to give in to admiration.

Flan sat in the polished Land-Rover: everything about him polished too, except the old wide-brimmed dusty rouseabout's hat. That was his most loved possession, and he

disdained the cotton jungle hats Nick and the other men wore on the road-site.

`Come on, Cindie! Up, girl!' he called. 'We've quite a day in front of us. At least three gorges to visit.'

`We'll enjoy every minute of it, Flan,' Cindie promised as she levered herself into the passenger seat. It was quite a step up into the Land-Rover. She meant what she said. All else but the scenery would be forgotten. She might never come this way again.

Some shadow of events had cast itself before her, but she did not recognise it. She little dreamed how the day would end.

They drove out along the road leading to the west for more than thirty-odd miles, then turned into a gully where magnificent trees, with white papery bark, stood at a great height. It was so cool and beautiful in this tree-shaded gully that Cindie could hardly believe they were only a few miles from nothing but semi-desert plain.

`Cadjebuts,' Flan explained. 'They only grow in gullies near water.'

`I don't see any water.'

`Like most other places in this country, the water's always underground,' Flan grumbled. 'Wait till we get to the real gorges. You'll see water there all right. You'll never see the like of it elsewhere: always coloured because it catches the reflections of the walls above it. Have patience, Cindie.'

`I will,' she promised.

They drove out of the low gully on to a wide expanse of flat land. For a few minutes Cindie thought they were back on the original plain. In the near distance in front of them were the queer mesa-shaped mountains with their red blocks at the top, their sides striped with alternate barren rock and swathes of green spinifex grass.

`It's the strangest, weirdest country in the world,' she said.

'A thousand million years old, those rocks,' Flan said. `So the geologists say, anyway. They've got a fancy name for them—Pre-Cambrian. You know what that means?'

Cindie shook her head. 'Don't blind me with science, Flan. That happened to me once before. Never again! Let's just call them "rocks"!'

Flan pulled up to a sudden stop beside a small isolated

grove of white-trunked gums. As far as the eye could see,

the mullas coloured the ground like a frail mauve mist.

`But where are the gorges?' Cindie asked, puzzled.

`Hop out now,' Flan advised. 'Then walk round those

black-hearted gums. But mind your step. You'll see a crack in the ground. That's the first gorge. There are others

'A crack in the ground?' Flan had spoken of the gorges that way before, but she'd thought he was joking.

`What did I tell you?' he grinned.

From where Cindie stood, looking across a waste of dried-out grass, the crack looked like a mile-long snake winding over the land. Clumps of white-trunked gums grew in small groves here and there by its side. One or two of these trees had a broken branch which showed the black heart under the bark. Nothing was blacker than that heart, and nothing—not even snow—was whiter than the outside trunk.

Low bush and dry grass sprawled between the trees and the broken rock rubble right to the edge of the crack. Looking along the horizontal plane of the landscape, Cindie expected the gorge might be only a few yards wide.

Then she walked forward.

Less than three feet from the edge she stopped, and gasped. The great gash in the earth's surface was many hundreds of feet wide. Looking down it was almost impossible to see the bottom for the small stunted trees that sprouted out of the sides of the canyon, and the buttresses of denuded red, blue and green rock that formed the near wall. Down near the bottom, on the far side, were wreaths of thick, delicately green ferns. Climbing up the far sides were assortments of the strangest growths, growing out from the crevices. Here and there, even a tall tree had found a foothold and was reaching with its great green arms to a sky far, far above it.

But it was the cliff-face of the gorge that made Cindie hold her breath. Never had she seen such colours. Awe silenced her.

Sheer slabs of shining rock, wet from seepage from above, lined the gap. They were striped in flashing blue, jade-green, and here and there, a brilliant red. Sometimes the colours ran horizontally, nearly the length of the canyon. The whole was carved by cracks into vast rectangular, striated patterns.

The sound of water, wind-sheltered, touching gently against a gravel bottom somewhere down, down, down there in the gorge, was as eerie as faint bunyip music.

`See what I mean?' asked Flan, grinning with amusement at the picture of wonder in Cindie's face. 'How about going down?'

`Down there?' Cindie asked, puzzled. 'But how? It's almost perpendicular.'

`There's a path—if you know it. Quite a few people come here from time to time. Occasional travellers. Geologists and rock-hunters, mostly. Have you plenty of strength in your sinews to-day, Cindie?'

She nodded. 'Lots. I can go down where others have been.'

`Good girl, because this one's the toughest. I reckoned we'd do the hard one first. The others'll be easy. It's a case of character, tackling this feller. How are you for walking and climbing bare-footed?'

Excellent,' Cindie said, kicking off her flatties at once. 'I do all the gardening at home in bare feet. It's a way of life, isn't it?'

The things you young people do!' flan declared. Cindie laughed. She threw back her hair and looked towards the gorge with challenge in her eyes.

`My, you have a lovely face when you laugh like that, Cindie. How come it makes me think of sun shining through rain, or something?'

`Because sometimes I feel a bit rainy. I've had troubles. I'll tell you about them sometime. But darling Flan, right this minute, I'm happy. That's because you've brought me out to this gorgeous place. How Jinx and Myrtle would love it! I wish they were here!'

Not me. I'd have to chain 'em to a rock to make sure they stayed alive.'

They were standing side by side, near the opening to the path now.

`You go first, Flan,' Cindie suggested. 'You're the one who knows the way.'

`I do, too. Most of the path you can't see from one buttress to another. You'll see the bottom, with green water in it, when we get over a few of these top boulders. About half-way down there's generally a rope hanging about. That's for novices. Just follow me and keep your eyes skinned for where you put your feet.'

Cindie had never dreamed of anything like the descent into this heart of the gorge. Every now and again she paused to look around. The sight was beyond description. It was fairyland, no-man's-land, moon-land, and a child's haven of fantasy. The light and shade—the colours were unbelievable. Strangest of all were the trees that oddly sprouted out of rock clefts here and there. Occasionally a single one stood sentinel-high on a fallen mountain of rock—clinging with its roots to—what?

)

Below, she could now see the great pool of water lying still as a dead lake, reflecting the brilliant colours of the walls. It was guarded in secret silence by fallen rock, bright green ferns and the glistening sides of the gorge.

The path they were gradually descending ran diagonally across the cliff-face. Here and there it changed course a little to round some bluff or curve into some bay in the wall. There were some places that required long step-downs: others where they had to clamber over rocks.

'You all right, Cindie?' Flan asked, turning round and looking up at her from time to time. 'You want a hand, or can you manage this one? Sit on your backside and slide down it. Easier that way. Safer, too.'

'I'm doing fine,' Cindie declared happily. 'You keep your eyes in front, Flan. It might be you who needs a hand.'

It was only a joke, of course— a riposte to his challenge—but it was almost as if she had put the shadow of a dark wish on him.

They had reached the place where a rope dangled as hand-help over a bad spot. The rope was maintained there by officialdom in Mulga-Gorges. Flan made the gap, then Cindie, pulling on the rope, joined him.

'Curl your toes in, hereabouts, Cindie,' Flan advised. 'There's loose pebbles on this stretch. Balled-up toes act as a brake—' He slipped on those same pebbles as he spoke.

It was only a little slip, and nothing might have come of it, except Flan did the natural thing. He leaned with his back to the cliff wall and grasped a point of jutting rock to steady himself. Alas, the rock was loose in its bed, and came away in Flan's hand. Worse, it had supported a heavier boulder above it.

'Oh, Flan!' Cindie warned.

It was too late. The boulder crashed down, smashing on to Flan's foot, then it hurtled madly down into the gorge below. The noise, as it hit the bottom, sounded like the crack of doom.

Flan, spread-eagled safely enough for the moment, had a face sheet-white under his deep-burned skin: his foot had taken more than a hundred-pound crack on it.

Suddenly, by the roll of his head, Cindie knew he might faint any minute. That falling boulder must have pulped his foot.

'Flan . . . Flan . . . hold on! I'm coming!'

She could not make haste because of the narrowness of

the track—with its gorge on one side and the rock wall on the other.

She had to go slowly: edging towards him carefully. There the path was all pebbles and the incline was steep. A rock had to be rounded, and another climbed over.

'I'm coming, Flan!' Cindie went on saying, as she crept forward. She looked up once. He was leaning back, still spread-eagled to the wall, but his eyes were shut. His head was lolling just that frightening little bit. 'Hold on, Flan darling . . . hold on!'

As she neared him, inch by inch, she glanced at his foot. Once only was enough. Shoeless, as were her feet, it was a red, white and black mess. That was all.