The Girl for Gillgong Read online

  They each got in on their respective sides. Kerry was careful to swing her legs over the case and avoid the rusty spring. There was a long, red scratch on her calf where it had caught her, and its smarting was a reminder to avoid a recurrence. Her nylons were a mess. Past repair.

  Bob’s eyes were on her once more.

  ‘A corker, ain’t it?’ he said appreciatively.

  ‘A—corker?’

  ‘Yeah—that hat,’ he explained awkwardly. ‘She’s beaut!’

  Beaut! Kerry blushed to the tips of her small, pretty ears. What a nice compliment, delivered with a self-conscious reluctance that made it quite the nicest thing that anyone had ever said to her.

  ‘Why, thank you, Bob! I—I may call you Bob?’

  ‘That’s me monicker!’ he grinned delightedly, and Kerry grinned back. She didn’t understand some of his indistinct, nasal phraseology, but she got the gist of its meaning. She knew that he meant they were to be friends. She would have a friend all the way to Brady’s Creek. She was feeling better—quite recovered, in fact—and she had found a friend. What more could anyone ask?

  Enthusiasm bubbled up inside her again, as the truck commenced its jolting course once more. The dust was nothing. The heat was nothing. The smarting scratch on her leg, the egg-sized lump on her brow were nothing, because the big, unfriendly, silent man at her side had turned out to be a friend after all, and quite a chatty one, into the bargain.

  Kerry’s spirits rose. The sky seemed blue and bright—she hardly noticed the glare. The clumpy vegetation appeared green and succulent—sparse and dull no longer. The plain stretched away, not endless any more, but with a vast, extensive beauty of its own, and the promise of a destination—Brady’s Creek.

  ‘What is Brady’s Creek?’ she asked, shy in her ignorance.

  ‘Brady’s Creek? That’s my place.’ Bob sounded proud.

  ‘A—village? A—house?’ hazarded Kerry.

  ‘Brady’s Creek’s an outstation,’ she was informed patiently. ‘One of Tad Brewster’s.’

  ‘Oh.’ Kerry’s brow cleared. ‘Tad Brewster’s? Then you must be near Gillgong?’

  ‘Brady’s Creek’s on Gillgong,’ Bob corrected her, ‘but it ain’t near the homestead. It’s an outstation, like I said.’

  ‘Oh, I see. ’ Kerry was anxious that he shouldn’t discover her ignorance, although she didn’t understand—not the least little bit. ‘And—er—what do you do at the outstation, Bob?’

  Bob took his hands off the wheel a moment, and spread his fingers expressively.

  ‘A bit of everything, Kerry, I reckon—the outstation’s a kind of a centre in its own right, see—for brandin’, musterin’, crutchin’. I check the bores fer Tad, too, an’ I ride the boundary up my end of the run, things like that. Get it?’

  ‘Yes, I get it,’ she replied untruthfully. It sounded very complicated. ‘It must be hard work, riding the boundary?’

  Bob laughed.

  ‘Not hard, Kerry, it’s just plain, dead borin’, but it’s gotter be done. It ain’t so bad these days, when we got more automation—machines ’n everything. This here old ute is what I often do me boundary-ridin’ in.’ He patted the steering wheel. ‘She’s quicker than a horse, I don’t have to hobble ’er when I make camp at night, an’ if she goes lame I got a heap of spare tyres in the back there, too.’

  ‘Oh.’ Kerry thought about that in silence for a moment, and then asked the question that was uppermost in her mind. ‘Wh-what’s Tad Brewster like, Bob? I suppose you know him quite well.’

  ‘Sure, Kerry, everyone knows Tad Brewster.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Tad’s a great cove,’ asserted Bob positively. ‘I wouldn’t want to work for a better bloke than Tad. Tad’s the best boss this side of the North Pole, yer could say, I reckon.’

  ‘That’s a big place.’ Kerry disputed this fervent exaggeration in a dubious voice. ‘That’s an awfully big place, Bob—the whole of this side of the North Pole.’

  ‘Well, Tad Brewster’s a big man,’ countered Bob reasonably. ‘He’s a big feller, Tad is, Kerry. Not just big-built, I mean—sure, he’s that, too; but Tad’s the biggest feller round these parts, if yer get me. Reckon ’e mightn’t talk much ’n all that, but when ’e does ’e’s generally got somethin’ to say that’s worth listenin’ to. Tad’s all right.’

  Kerry’s heart lifted. Tad Brewster was all right. And Gillgong would be all right, too. Everything was going to be all right, just as she had known it would be! Gillgong—Gillgong—Gillgong. The tyres swished their message each time they rotated on the dust-snake tracks, eating up the miles to Brady’s Creek on Gillgong Station.

  ‘How do I get to Gillgong? To the house, I mean?’ she asked Bob next.

  ‘To the homestead? Andy Matherson’s comin’ out for yer.’

  ‘Who is Andy Matherson?’

  ‘Snakes alive, Kerry! Don’t yer know nothin’? If you ain’t curiouser than a magpie, I’ll eat me blinkin’ hat!’ Bob looked at her in amused exasperation. ‘Andy’s the book-keeper at Gillgong, see. He’s Tad’s right-hand man, Andy is. An’ if yer want ter know how he’s comin’ for yer, Tad’ll likely send the plane, seein’ it’s quickest. I got a beaut little air-strip at Brady’s Creek, an allweather job. Mud nor nothink don’t bother the strip at Brady’s Creek when she rains. The planes fly in an’ land on it as easy as a beetle on a watermelon. It’s bonzer!’

  Kerry laughed. Her dust-smeared cheeks were flushed with excitement. It certainly sounded bonzer. Really bonzer! Not even the faint throbbing of her angry bruise, the weariness of her jolted limbs, or the creeping lassitude that can sometimes assail one after a bout of travel-sickness, could dampen her rising sense of pleasurable anticipation, now that she knew herself to be nearing journey’s end.

  Brady’s Creek, when it came, was an anticlimax.

  There was no creek to be seen, not a drop of that beautiful water that Kerry had been dreaming about all the way. All she could see was a weird shambles of corrugated iron sheets that made a hut-like dwelling, and an assortment of circular galvanized iron tanks, a windmill, and in the distance some wood-fenced yards and mustering pens. No creek of any sort. Just a rutted mud-bed sprinkled at the edges with lines of gumtrees of a variety that she had never seen before.

  ‘Where—er—where is the creek?’ She summoned the courage to ask Bob that, because her curiosity was once more getting the better of her.

  Bob jerked his head to the hard-baked channel of ruts.

  ‘That’s her there, Kerry, see.’ He pointed. ‘She’s dry just now, nothing left but a couple of soaks, so we’re on the bore, but when Brady’s Creek comes down—’ he whistled expressively—‘when she runs a banker, Kerry, she can spread out about two miles wide, and then some! She always runs out that way, east, and that’s the reason the yard an’ the air-strip’s on the other side. Get it?’

  She nodded. She was becoming accustomed to Bob now. A pity she was going to have to leave him just when she had got used to his queer way of talking.

  ‘I get it.’ She edged her way past the rusty spring, and slid stiffly out of the truck. Then she reached back in for her case, because Bob had apparently overlooked it. He was busy slinging an assortment of tins, bags and cartons out of the back into an untidy heap on the other side. Crash, crash, crash, went the creosoted planks, into another pile, after which he stood for a moment with his hat pushed back, considering before he reloaded certain items.

  ‘Gotter put them on Andy’s plane,’ he explained. ‘Tad ordered ’em, and Kell got ’em for ’im. Shouldn’t be long before Andy comes in now, Kerry.’ He narrowed his eyes against the lowering sun. ‘Reckon we better get on over. Better put yer port in again, eh?’ He took her suitcase and placed it in the back this time, and they clambered into the shabby cab once more.

  The air-strip, on the west side of the presently arid Brady’s Creek, was a slightly raised plateau, if such it could be termed. At any rate, it was a gentle, flat-topped el
evation in that vista of sun-brown plains country, which was even now beginning to acquire a lovely pink light—soft, like a marshmallow, thought Kerry—as the sun dropped low on the straight horizon.

  When the Gillgong plane flew in, it came drifting down, right out of the marshmallow haze of evening, and settled gracefully on the flat surface of the air-strip. Kerry caught her breath at the sight of that plane. If Kell’s had been a jaunty little moth-like machine, this one had all the streamlined grace of a grey sea-bird, coupled with the shimmering, swooping speed of a silver-gauze dragonfly. The man who emerged from the cockpit didn’t seem to suit that sophisticated plane at all, but then it wasn’t his plane, was it? It was Tad Brewster’s. Kerry’s nerves sent tingling little alarm-warnings right up her spine at that thought. She pushed them away firmly, and looked at the pilot again.

  He was a homely, ugly, middle-aged man, with bleached eyebrows and fading strawberry-sandy hair which crowned his freckled face in an untidy thatch. His smile would have been untidy, too, decided Kerry—untidy and probably rather endearing, that is, if he had smiled.

  He didn’t. He tried his best, it seemed to Kerry as she watched his reaction a little anxiously, but somehow the smile didn’t quite come off. He grasped her outstretched hand warmly enough, but his eyes slid away, found Bob Merrit’s, and Kerry was aware of odd, unspoken messages passing between the two men. She was beginning almost to expect this by now. It had happened each time she had got passed on, at each successive stage of her journey.

  Perhaps this was the normal way among bushwhackers when they greeted incomers, even ones they were expecting. Be that as it may, Kerry found it slightly discouraging. There was an equally discouraging little silence, too, as Andy Matherson’s intensely blue, astonished eyes were drawn back to the slight, blue-clad figure standing diffidently before him.

  Bob Merrit cleared his throat, turned aside, and spat. Then he turned back again, and said gruffly,

  ‘Kerry’s all right, Andy. Get it? I reckon she’s real true-blue, eh?’ That was nice of Bob! Kerry thanked him with her eyes, gratefully.

  Andy Matherson still appeared to be speechless.

  Bob tried again.

  ‘She’ll be O.K., Andy—honest she will. There’s more stuffin’ in ’er than what there looks. Yer can’t just dump ’er anyway, can yer, not after ’er trekkin across that ruddy plain in my old bone-shaker. Sick as a sparrer, she was, Andy, but she stuck it out like a good-un, fair dinkum she did! Yer can’t dump ’er now, can yer, Andy?’

  Bob’s voice slowed to a nasal pleading.

  Pleading? Surely not!

  But yes, he was pleading! Kerry smiled at him reassuringly. She felt like hugging him, sweaty shirt, stubble and all. Dear Bob. Nice Bob. He thought he had to plead her cause! He didn’t realize that she had actually been engaged, by Tad Brewster himself, to come out to Gillgong. He couldn’t know about the advertisement, and the interview with the wool firm man. He couldn’t have been told that they were wanting a girl for Gillgong, and that Tad Brewster himself had arranged for her to come. Yet she had thought he did know all those things! Perhaps it was the book-keeper who didn’t know, since Bob apparently felt the need to convince him.

  Kerry was aware that Andy Matherson was still studying her as though he was on the brink of some unpleasant decision. She was also conscious that perhaps she was not looking her best. Her stockings were laddered; the pretty blue cotton suit crumpled because she had had to squash herself over to one side in the truck all the time, to avoid her case and that horrid spring; her neat white shoes were coated in a matt film of brown dust, and possibly her face was, too. At least her honey-straw boater was intact, and hadn’t Bob told her it was beaut? Remembering that, Kerry’s morale took an upward swing again.

  She lifted her head proudly, with young and innocent dignity, and spoke with quiet authority to the sandy haired, indecisive man who had been sent to collect her.

  ‘Mr. Brewster is expecting me. Would you please take me on to Gillgong homestead just whenever you’re ready? I’m feeling rather tired after such a long journey, and I should naturally like to tidy up before I meet my employer. Shall we go now?’

  ‘Yes, all right, Miss—er—Kerry. We’ll go.’ Andy Matherson sounded somehow resigned.

  Kerry climbed into the beautiful silver-gauze plane eagerly, in spite of her weariness. Then she sat alone there while the two men loaded in the supplies that she and Bob had brought across that desolate plain.

  When the last pack had been stowed, Bob gave a thumbs-up sign to her through the little passenger window at her side, and Kerry did the same back to him. Just for an instant he displayed the yellow stumps of teeth again in an encouraging grin, and then he ambled away towards the old dusty truck.

  Kerry watched carefully, in case he turned round, but he didn’t, so she gave her attention to the inside of the plane’s cabin again. Kell’s had been comfortable, but this one was positively luxurious! She settled back, too tired to speak to the pilot whom Tad Brewster had sent to bring her, revelling in the comfort of well-sprung leather and padded arm-rest after the lumpy, sagging seat in Bob’s utility.

  Andy Matherson gave her one last, puzzled look from the cockpit before he turned for the take-off, and Kerry’s eyes, now smudged and hollow with fatigue, stared back innocently. She gave him a gay little smile to show that she was not frightened. After all, this wasn’t her first take-off. It was her second in a single day. She was a veteran flier! Tad Brewster’s book-keeper didn’t return the smile, but he turned back to the controls almost immediately, so perhaps he had been a little worried that she would be nervous, after all. Her smile had reassured him, as it was meant to do.

  Up in the air, the pink marshmallow sky was all about them. It bathed the distances in a rosy glow that took away the desolation. Or perhaps there was no desolation—not on Gillgong, which was a station although you didn’t say it; which had a homestead, not a house; and an outstation on a creek that wasn’t a creek; and a boss who was the best this side of the North Pole, kind and generous and big-hearted.

  Kerry peered downwards. They were flying fairly low, and from time to time she could see tiny dots of cattle strung out around the bores. She didn’t know, of course, that they actually were called bores, but she realized that there must be a reason for the animals to be herded together in those particular places, and she could see even from the plane, that there were lots of narrow, worn paths spidering out around the watering places. She would have liked to ask Andy Matherson about them, but he didn’t turn round—not once. She only saw the back of his neck, and the grey streaks in his sandy hair where it covered a thinning patch on the crown of his head.

  When he had brought the plane winging in to the Gillgong strip, throttled back, and finally taxied to a halt, he left the control-panel at the front and came to help her out.

  Kerry decided that that was a very kind thing to do. She really appreciated the almost paternal hand that kept at her elbow as she stumbled out. She now felt so worn, so lethargic, that it had been an effort to leave that nice, soft aeroplane seat.

  Outside the air was cooler because the sun had sunk so low that only the tip was showing. It looked like the top half of an orange floating on a sea of gilt and marshmallow-pink waves.

  Riding out of the gilt and marshmallow came a horseman.

  He came right past the hangar at the end of the airstrip, and on towards the plane. Kerry couldn’t see his face, because the gold and rose sunset was blazing at his back. She could only see that his shoulders were arrestingly broad, his back long, and curved to the saddle, his legs straight to the stirrups, and his hat—the wide-brimmed slouch felt that she had already seen several times today—pulled well down over his eyes. The horse was a powerful black with a curious white snip over one nostril, and it moved at a rapid, ambling gait beneath the man, whose body swayed gently in rhythm with its pace.

  Kerry didn’t know what instinct told her that the horseman must be Tad Brewster, unl
ess it was his awesome physique and the calibre of his thoroughbred mount. In its way, that plane, too, was as much of a thoroughbred as the horse, so it was reasonable to assume this man was the owner of them both. She felt a sudden, unaccountable flutter of nervousness that made her reach into her handbag and draw on her soiled white gloves. She tugged a lock of fair hair forward to hide her ugly bruise, and straightened the honey-straw boater anxiously as she stood there waiting for him to draw his horse to a halt and swing down from the saddle right next to her.

  The man was tall—very tall. He seemed to tower above her, blotting out the gilded sky. Kerry’s hand had been extended uncertainly, but still the man had not shaken it. Perhaps he wasn’t going to? Kerry looked up, and let her gloved hand drop to her side, because it was obvious now that it wasn’t going to be taken in a welcoming clasp after all.

  Tad Brewster had pushed his hat right to the back of his head, so that a white strip was visible near the hairline of his teak-brown face. His hands were on his hips, the rein looped through one arm, and the black horse snuffled softly at his shoulder. His eyes were narrowed so that Kerry couldn’t tell what colour they were, but she thought she had never seen such an unreadable, unapproachable, stern-featured face as the one that now bent down towards her.

  Andy Matherson had stopped offloading his cargo from the plane. He stood somewhere behind her, and the big, forbidding horseman stood in front of her. All three of them stood, enclosed in a ring of uneasy silence.

  Tad Brewster was the first to speak. He took his hands off his hips and resettled his hat at its former concealing angle, and said to Andy Matherson in a voice that had a depth of weariness and patience,

  ‘O.K., Andy. Where’s the mix-up?’

  The book-keeper cleared his throat.

  ‘No mix-up, Tad,’ he replied uncomfortably. ‘She was all there was to pick up, out there at Brady’s Creek.’ Kerry stood between them, blinking hollowly from one to the other.