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“I wasn’t taking her in there, only leaving her in some safe place near there, but why do you say now more than ever?”

“Because,” he said cryptically, “you’ll soon find out that they, so eventually you, just don’t.”

“I do believe I can read something in that,” Gemma retorted. “I believe you’ve had dealings with the Mannerings and they’ve put you in your place.”

“And what place is that?”

“Road boss, a ruthless, forthright, greedy, overbearing, presumptuous, spiteful thirty-six-wheeler, not all that far from a savage . . . Mr. Territorian, you’re hurting me! Let go my arm at once!”

“I’d like to break it,” he said, but he still released her. “No, I haven’t had dealings with the Mannerings ... well, not that kind, not the road kind. The Mannerings are not my customers. Bagsworth trucks for them.”

Although she would have liked to have learned
what
kind of dealings, Gemma brought the subject back to Harriet.

“What can I do with her tonight?” she appealed.

“Ask at the desk for a double bed.”

“Be serious!”

“If I were, you wouldn’t sit down for a week, not after the things you just said.”

Gemma looked indignantly at him.

“Why are you going on like this?” she demanded. “It’s I who’ve been imposed on, not you. You give
me the little girl, then von expect me to hand her over like—like an animal!”

The absurdity of her statement did not occur to Gemma until he reminded her: “Well, she is, you know.” He grinned, but Gemma found she could not smile back.

“You’re going to take her for veal,” she accused. “That’s what they do with young cattle, don’t they, make them vealers.”

“As a matter of fact my idea was to graze her for twelve months, then sell her for a yearling. Choice meat, yearling. You can name your own price. Of course if one takes a liking to a beast and keeps it five years . . . store cattle it’s called then ... there’s always the hamburger market. Now
you're
hurting me.” For Gemma had wound up the window to cut out his hateful voice and had not stopped at the big brown fingers fastened across the glass top. But she did stop winding at his protest, and putting his arm over he reversed the window down again.

“How can you feed Harriet?” he asked.

“Poddy-feed her.”

“Oh, so you know that?”

“Of course I know that.’

He paused a moment:

“You haven’t any ideas of rearing her for future milk, have you, for she’ll never be that kind of cow. I mean, she could feed a calf of her own some day, but there it would stop. This breed is not like a Jersey, it has small udders. Also” ... a small lopsided smile ... “you would need a bull.”

“As you asked me and as I told you,” she reminded thinly, “I do know the birds and the bees bit.”

“Rather awkward if you didn’t,” he nodded, “with a marriage coming up.”

“Look here, Mr. Territorian—”

“Just Territorian will do, or better still Tim. I’m Tim Torrance. Very few get called Mister up here.”

“I think,” resumed Gemma frozenly, “this conversation has gone far enough.”

“It hasn’t even started yet. You’re asking me what to do, how to go about it, then promptly not listening. Well, right now I’ll bed Harriet somewhere at the back, and you can walk up the front stairs like an elegant lady should.” He added: “An elegant Mannering.”

“That doesn’t solve things.”

“It will if you give me a moment. Go in and register, then meet me
_;
at dinner and we’ll thrash it all out. I’ve already booked in myself.”

“You
have booked in!”

He must have read her complete amazement, for he looked back at her and grinned.

“Takes your breath, doesn’t it? But see here, Future Mrs. Mannering, you are not now in Sydney, climbing the stairs of the Hilton or the Wentworth, you are in the dead centre, and here it doesn’t count whether you went to college or bush school, or whether you wear an imported Savile Row suit or local working clobber.”

“The same clobber,” said Gemma deliberately, eyeing his stains and grease and sweat, “as you wore since that bush school.”

“Not exactly. I had short pants then, but the sweatshirt could be the same.”

“Yes—unwashed.” She murmured it quietly, yet he still heard her.

But instead of tackling her, he merely grinned again. “You'll be surprised,” he said, “how I clean up. Now you go along and send down a porter for your bags and I'll put the baby to bed.” He opened the door and edged Gemma out, put her bags on the sidewalk, put his hand forward for the car keys, then started and drove the car to some back way she must have missed.

For a vexed moment Gemma just stood, then with a shrug she went up the hotel stairs.

“Name of Glasson,” she said at the desk. “I booked a room by mail.”

“Certainly, Miss Glasson. We’ve been expecting you. Mr. Torrance said you were on the way ”

“Mr. Torrance? He would be—”

“The Territorian, yes. Lionel, bring in the bags, then room seventeen for Miss Glasson.”

Before Gemma could ask any more questions, she was whisked away to a very tasteful and very abundant room.

It was a room even big enough, she thought, looking around, for a double occupancy, just as he, that savage who worked for Territorian, had suggested. A double bed, she had been told, for herself and Harriet.

What a man!

She began taking things out of her case.

It was heaven just to lie in the bath and soak. Evidently the manager understood the bone weariness of travelling in the centre, for the tub was king size and bath salts had been provided. Also the towels
were thick thirsty ones, and generous in number.

Gemma lay back and began to feel a little better.

She wondered idly how the savage would “clean up”, then decided unkindly to make a fool of him tonight and to wear simply everything for dinner. At the most, she thought, a man like that, a thirty-sixwheeler even though he was a road boss, could carry only another pair of pants and another shirt.

She got out of the bath at last and went through her dresses, all beautiful brand-new dresses as befitted a bride. She decided devilishly on a particularly lavish, long patio silk . . . that should floor him . . . and dressed leisurely and carefully. She was sorry she could not add her engagement ring, but Bruce had that. Bruce had said that most certainly his mother would want a formal engagement dinner, so he had taken it with him. “As I told you, Gemma, the Mannerings are sticklers,” Bruce had smiled. Gemma looked regretfully at her bare finger now, took a long, last, satisfied look at herself and decided that the tawny shades of the flowers in the silk did things to her slightly tawny blonde hair and matching eyes, then decided to go down.

When she reached the stairs and looked over the balustrade, she was a little bit piqued to see that
he
had not put in an appearance yet. She had rather fancied the turning of his head at her approach . . . stairs were so spectacular . . . then the crestfallen look at his own gear after hers. Now, she thought, impressed, if only he had presented the sartorial perfection of the man already standing there, standing in a semi-formal grey flannel, stark white shirt, tasteful striped tie, then it would be entirely different. But
that man knew what to wear, and undoubtedly was accustomed to wearing it. He also knew some impressive women. The girl he was with was really outstanding. She also, and Gemma noted it a little crossly, had let her head go, as Gemma had, in tonight’s dress. If anything, she outdid Gemma. However . . . a shrug . . . the pair had nothing to do, either of them, with her or the savage. At that moment the man turned, and Gemma flinched.

It
was
the Territorian.

That was Gemma’s first shock The second was that he
had
cleaned up well. He had cleaned up— quite remarkably.

All this she thought in a split minute. In the other part of the minute she actually was in the road boss's arms. Right in them. Enclosed in them.

“Darling,” he was saying very distinctly, “you’ve been hours, but it’s been worth every second.” He held her back from him and looked admiringly at her. Then very deliberately and very unmistakably and very intentionally, he kissed her.

“Dinner is waiting,” he said, and Gemma found herself being shepherded to the dining room, being ushered to a comer table for two, being plied with wine.

The same as when he had left her with the calf, she had something the matter with her throat and her voice wouldn’t work. But when it did return this time, she did not cry. She said :

“Are you quite mad?”

“The classic answer they tell me is Yes, mad for you, but that would be asking for it, wouldn't it, from the future wife of a Mannering.”

“She—that girl—will think—”

“Yes?”

“She’ll think that I’m your—your—”

“Mistress, fiancée or wife,” he nodded. “That was the purpose. Any of the three would do so long as she got the message that you belonged.”

“Belonged?” she echoed.

“To me. And don’t say I’m crazy any more. I know her sort.”

“What sort?”

“Bush Bettys doing the rounds and hoping for some mug.”

“Bush Bettys?” she queried.

“That’s my tag. Centre Claras, if you like, or Territory Tessies. Anyway, girls out for a nice return.”

“You mean
you?”

“Any mug. As I would be one if I fell.”

“But why would she be interested in you?”

“Am I that bad?”

“No, but—”

“I’m also not exactly penniless, and you may not have noticed the tourist boutique in the vestibule where we were standing, but there were some very valuable opals there.”

“You don’t mean—”

“I do mean. And why not? Am I that repulsive, then, even with money?”

“No,” she admitted, “and you have cleaned up well. But—”

“But?”

“Would a girl like that go for a man like you ? She was very elegant, very tasteful. Quite a beauty. Oh, I have no doubt you earn a good wage, I’ve often read how much, but wouldn’t an adventuress, as I think they call them, go for a—boss?”

“I am a boss.”

“I know, but I didn’t mean just a road boss.”

“Then I’ll go a little further I’m boss
of
the road bosses. Yes, that’s right.” She must be looking disbelieving, Gemma thought, and indeed, she did disbelieve. “The outfit belongs to me. I’m the Territorian himself.”

“You are?” she gasped.

“Yes.”

“Then why—”

“Why was I driving? I do that occasionally, I never let myself lose touch.”

“But would she know that?”

“Out here, everyone knows everything. You’ll soon find that out.”

“And you say that she would be aware that you are—”

“Tim Torrance of Territorian Transport. I say, that’s quite a tongue-twister, isn’t it? Yes, ma’am, she would know just that. And now if you don’t mind, Future Mrs. Mannering, I’d like to start my nosh.”

He did start, but for a while Gemma simply sat there.

“You are a savage, aren’t you?” she said at last.

“I use a knife and fork,” he returned. “But don’t be misled. If the meat’s tough, I’ll still take it to the mat and gnaw over it like Fido. Now start, please. I’m not going to embarrass you. I won’t take up any bones and I won’t spill the gravy.”

“You’re impossible!” she snapped.

“You,” he said, “are beautiful.”

She looked across at him, startled . . . and was startled at the look he gave back. It was a very, very long look.

At twenty-six, Gemma thought incredulously, you don’t get looked at like that.

She glanced away, and presently he started talking, and in relief at first, and then in very real interest, Gemma talked back.

“I used to overland the mobs,” the man said, “and it’s really the only way, but, the same as many things now, the family round the kitchen table of a night working under the big lamp, for instance, it’s not with us any more. Like going blackberrying, like—”

“Like going mushrooming,” came in Gemma.

“Like Sunday School anniversaries and singing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’,” he tacked on.

“Or ‘Bringing in the Sheaves’,” added Gemma. “Though,” she said a little shyly, “I think you still sing.” Gemma had been drinking the wine he had plied, but it was not just that making her suddenly able to. express herself. “I think you sang on those overland treks,” she told him.

“An overlander has to sing the cattle,” he reminded her.

“Sing the cattle?”

“Singing the cattle means soothing them to sleep.”

“But you have cattle on your trailers, too.”

“Packed so tightly,” he said sadly, “there wouldn’t be room for one note. However, those overlanding days are past.” •

“Did you go straight into road trains?” she asked him.

“Future Mrs. Mannering, road trains arc in the millionaire category. No, I did not. I toiled for years on trucks.” He grinned reminiscently.

“Were they that funny?” She had seen his remembering grin.

“They were always interesting I picked up a lone hiker one day because he carried a guitar and I rather fancied a song. But from nowhere it seems a whole group appeared, and I got all the music, full blast, that I wanted.”

“Tell me more," she invited.

“I’d like to
show
you more,” he said. “Ever slept in the cabin behind the steering wheel?”

“No.”

“It’s wonderful, Future Mrs. Mannering. There you are aloft in your safe eyrie, far up where no one can break the fortress, and if you look out at midnight you’ll see star shadows Ever seen star shadows?”

“No,” said Gemma again, thinking how wonderful it would be.

“Then we must show you some time.”

“Perhaps.” Gemma added a little hurriedly: “Tell me about now. About the thirty-six-wheelers.”

“I own twenty road trains,” he said quite casually, “more than that of trucks, plus a fleet of little beetles to run up and down The Bitumen and be general trouble-shooters for both.” He took a long slow drink. “I saw what was coining and got in quick.”