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Georgina sighed. ‘Bill, I’ve travelled the desert much more than you have. You’ve been stuck at your trading post.’

‘Emporium,’ corrected Bill proudly. ‘All right, young Georgina, good luck.’ He stood back as she righted her yellow helmet, then kicked the bike into life. ‘Should have been a boy,’ he grumbled.

‘But I am, I’m George.’

Fortunately the cycle drowned that, for Georgina had not intended to say it, it had just burst out. Of course she would never go through with such a harebrained idea. No, she would make for Westleigh tonight, three hundred and fifty kilometres north-west. She and her stepfather had stopped once at Westleigh when Georgina had taken the old man out after a particular rock, and the people at Westleigh had been very welcoming, and most insistent that they come again. Probably they would even find a job for her, superintending the children’s correspondence lessons, or doing letters for the station. Georgina avoided a large rut.

Soon the track became as straight as a gun barrel, and strange names began cropping up, names of towns though there were no towns, only a solitary windmill, sometimes not even that. Wombo, Pudda Pudda, Starshine, Smelly Swamp, Begin Again.

Apart from detours for salt pans, clay pans, sticky patches, gibber patches, it was an uneventful morning, but for Georgina a very wonderful one. Joanne might see all this as godforsaken, as the ends of the earth, but Georgina only saw the bare-boned beauty of it, beauty that made mere meadow prettiness fade in comparison.

She passed a few bigger concerns, clusters of chalets, a plastic-lined tank for swimming and a cookhouse wearing a ribbon of smoke. At one, she paused for lunch. These larger outfits comprised project-employed men who did not feel sufficiently personally or financially involved to suspect strangers, and here you were welcome to stop. This bunch told Georgina they were wolfram and mica men, but they were, they grinned, not averse to discovering nickel.

‘Or gold?’ Georgina grinned back.

During the afternoon she saw a spy plane, a big silver bird in the heraldic blue sky. It certainly would be a spy plane, she knew that from experience, and she stopped the motorcycle to watch the craft dart under a single white cloud. Not a very nice way to make your living, Georgina thought, checking up like that on what a camp was doing, and more important where it was doing it, then selling the information; but that was mining business these days.

She watched the plane return, circle, catch a ray of blazing sun and change into shining gold. The burnished bird against the Bible-blue sky almost hit at her. She stood there and watched and watched and watched ...

And the harm was done.

No harm, really, except for the fact that she was now much later than she had planned. Georgina checked her watch, checked her map, then realised she really would have to stick at it to make Westleigh by dusk.

At once, almost as though it knew her intention and decided to be spiteful, the track worsened considerably. It narrowed, it bent, it strayed and it rutted. Time after time Georgina had to get off the cycle to manoeuvre the machine over a bad patch. Twice she had to remove her bag, the typewriter and Bill’s tucker to make a lighter load ... what in heaven had Bill put in the tucker bag, it was as heavy as lead ... and that made, along with the reloading, for more delay.

When she looked at her watch again, she was shocked.

Well, there was nothing for it but to keep going, and at least the road was getting better again.

There were no prospectors now, she was too far out in the country, and that was why Georgina was rather surprised to see the car. Of course cars came, otherwise there would be no call for a road, but she had not expected one this late.

The car was just ahead of her. Ordinarily Georgina would have tooted, stopped and had a friendly word, but now she took the opportunity of a temporary widening of the sandy track to push past. Suddenly she was thinking of Bill’s: ‘Just watch your step, Georgina, the west isn’t what it used to be.’

Once in front of the car, she accelerated and gave the car her dust. She was sorry about that, it was disgusting driving in dust, but it was getting late, and if she was to reach Westleigh...

To her annoyance, though she kept up her speed, she couldn’t shake off the car. It must have been appalling steering into the cloud she had created, and, you would have thought the driver would have had more sense and slackened speed, but he still kept up.

Not only did he keep up, he accelerated and then hooted at her and the sound, punctuating the noise of their respective vehicles, alarmed Georgina. What in heaven, she thought, is he doing?

She could not see him clearly in the mirror, all she could see was dust and a vehicle with a figure in the middle of that dust. Perhaps he was harmless ... not perhaps, most certainly he was harmless. Perhaps all he wanted was to be in front, for after all no car driver wants to be beaten by a secondhand sidecar. In which case, decided Georgina, even though it would delay her further he could take the lead. She veered to one side, and after a few moments he passed.

She let him go well ahead and allowed the cloud of dust to disperse. She was impatient to be off, but it seemed a wiser move.

At last she got started again, only to round a stand of bluebush a moment after and see him within distance once more. What was wrong with him? Why was he positively dawdling ... no, actually stopping! ... like this?

For the first time Georgina knew a faint fear. Before she had been aware of danger yet had not really believed in it. It was sensible to take precautions, but one did not really believe anything could happen.

She sized up the situation quickly. The car had not left her any room to pass this time, meaning that she either had to catch up and then stop and confront him, or else turn back, something she could not possibly do at this time of the afternoon. Then—and a delighted giggle escaped her Georgina saw the second track. What luck! Of all the fortunate places for the fellow to wait this must be the most fortunate one—for her. For undoubtedly it was the only one in miles that offered an alternative route. Evidently the man had not noticed the junction, but Georgina did, and she prepared to veer off to the left. She knew these western tracks very well, how often one road could break up into four or five small roads, then they merged into the one road again. Thank you, mister, Georgina smiled, for stopping where you did and not looking round.

She pushed to the left, very rapidly, so rapidly she only heard him call to her very faintly, so faintly that she decided to consider it no call at all. That will teach him to play city tricks out west, she thought. She kept up her speed, for possibly the track was no short cut, and when the roads met up again she intended to be well ahead of the car, and keep ahead this time.

She kept bouncing along, looking back occasionally for a distant blur of dust, for it was quite likely he would follow her; if not for ulterior motives, then certainly in the belief that she knew a better way. His car, she recalled, was a fast modem one, so it should be appearing by this time. But perhaps he was forging ahead on the other road and would be waiting when the two tracks merged. For a few moments Georgina extended the motorcycle to its utmost. Or perhaps ... she frowned ... he had had no ulterior motive, no anything, and had simply stopped and called out because he had broken down.

Well, that was his bad luck. She tried to say it blithely but did not quite succeed. He could be a newchum out here and not well equipped. Serves him right and all that, but

But

‘Oh, damn!’ Georgina said, turned the cycle and went back.

'It was late afternoon now. In the way it did up here, night could surprise you at any minute. There were no preliminaries in these latitudes, night simply fell, then that was that.

Oh, where was that wretched man?

She was back at the junction now and there was no car. More fool her to have returned.

However, even if she had kept going she still would not have made Westleigh, she realised, and annoyed at her bad start on her very first day, Georgina decided to look around for a likely spot to spend the night. At least a cycle, even on® with a sidecar, could be put in a more concealed position—no, she wouldn’t say concealed, she would say sheltered than a car could; and Georgina chose a thicket of mulga and pushed the cycle into the middle of it.

She decided to eat while it was still light, so she took out the hamper and rugs while she could still see them, got into the sidecar and made herself snug. When night came it would be pitch dark for an hour and impossible to find anything. After that it would be dark blue and deep gold and very lovely ... if one had the nerve to watch it. She smiled.

But she watched safely now as she ate, watched a wedgetailed eagle rise high in a sky of fast-deepening bluebell, watched a spotted harrier looking down for his prey. What if he mistook her for a goody? No, he was pouncing on another poor victim. Georgina shut her eyes from the sight of it... and that started it, started a sleep that as far as she was concerned went on too long. She had not intended to sleep, she had intended to watch; but sleep she did, and the noise that awakened her was not the beat of the harrier’s wings, the struggle of the unhappy prey, it was a man’s footsteps.

There was a car there, too. The same car she had passed and given her dust, then afterwards allowed to pass her. Wherever he had been, she didn’t know, and evidently he did not know where she had been either, for he called out:

‘What are you playing at? Is it some kind of game?’

Then he came across.

‘Just watch your step, Georgina,’ Bill had said, and Georgina had agreed that things weren’t the same any more and resolved she would do just that.

But who wanted things the same with a man like this, a man smiling warmly at you, putting out his hand to you, a man with a flick of sunbleached hair, bright hazel eyes and a friendly smile?

Georgina smiled back and put her own hand out to his. ‘I’m sorry ’ she began.

‘No,
I
am. I can see it all very clearly now. You thought that I--'

‘Yes?’ Georgina asked.

‘That I might be a menace?'

‘Well, yes, I’m afraid I did,’ she admitted.

‘It wasn’t that at all.’

'I hope not.’

He grinned and said: 'I was simply trying to attract your attention not to take the turn-off. It comes to a dead end.’

‘But it didn’t,’ she protested.

‘Then you can’t have gone far enough to find out. Why did you come back?’

'I ... well, I got worried about you.’

‘
Touché:
He smiled again. ‘I did the same.’

Georgina met his smile with hers once more.

‘Seems we’ve been two idiots,’ the man said. ‘Where were you heading?’

‘Westleigh.’

‘You wouldn’t have made it, anyway. Not by dark.

‘No,’ Georgina agreed. She asked: ‘And you?’

He shrugged. ‘I do this trip fairly frequently and I couldn’t inflict myself on a station every time, so I’ve converted the car for sleeping. You’ll find it comfortable.’

‘Oh no, I won’t.’

He grinned all the way at that., but he didn’t argue. ‘Please yourself, then. How are you for rations?’

‘I’ve eaten.’

‘Wise girl, it’ll be dark in five minutes.’

And bright again in an hour,’ she pointed out.

‘Then you know the Inside?’

‘Yes.’

‘A pity you won’t accept some creature comfort,’ he shrugged, ‘we could swap stories. There’s nothing like Inside stories.’

‘I know,’ Georgina agreed a little wistfully, ‘but there’s also nothing like country convention.’ She said it very properly, even though a smile was not far away.

He saw the smile and played along. ‘So long as it’s just convention stopping you and not fear.’

‘It’s what I said,’ she assured with a quirk. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight,’ he saluted.

Georgina rearranged her cushions and rugs, and by that time it was dark. Instant Night, she and her stepfather had called it. She lay back and looked up.

The bush had never disturbed her. She was, she supposed, no child of Pan; it was the children of Pan who saw and heard and imagined things. The silence and emptiness of remote places had never brought that choking panic that it did to some people, to Pan’s people. I’m just a natural for the outback, Georgina congratulated herself, I’m khaki-coloured, ordinary and tough.

I’m George, in short ... or I would be if I could go through with it. But it’s too ridiculous, and I won’t.

She watched the darkness until at last the stars broke through, big blossoms of stars and a moon the size of a melon. Occasional movements of small animals, perhaps reptiles, did not disturb her. When a dingo howled a long way off, she chided: ‘Lie down, yellow dog! ’

She wondered idly and rather pleasantly about that nice man in the car. A writer looking for material? A pastoralist returning home? Obviously he wasn’t a stockman, nor a drover or horse-breaker, he didn’t wear the right clothes. He could be a geologist, she supposed. She wondered where he was going.

She started eliminating different places, and then, in spite of her previous sleep, she became drowsy doing it.

A small noise aroused her. It could have been a kangaroo, a yellow dog, and yet it seemed somehow a human noise, like footsteps. Feet made a different sound from paws or hooves.

There it went again, a stir. A slither. A step.

Then suddenly there was a scatter of something on the windscreen in front of her ... she did not know what it was, nor wait to find out, she simply leapt from the cycle outfit and fled to the car, calling as she went. Except that Georgina was shaking with fright and not focusing properly, she would have noticed that the man was already out of his car and waiting with the door open for her to get in.

But she didn’t notice.

She said breathlessly: 'I thought... I woke up ... there was this sound …'

He said soothingly: ‘Get in.'

Georgina did.

They talked for hours. He had much to tell her about the north-west, and that was what Georgina wanted. Tentatively during the conversation she brought in the Lucy River, Big Lucy, and his descriptions thrilled her. Yes, it was beautiful, he said, in the big river country. There was colour to spare, he related, flowers everywhere now, not coastal flowers but flowers without a name; flood flowers you could call them perhaps, scarlet, magenta, orange, gold, and always, of course, the Salvation Jane.