Luke trailed Bear ever higher into the mountains. Lessons in bushcraft came flooding back, learned as a boy at Daniel’s side.
‘The earth is a manuscript rewritten each day,’ his teacher had told him. ‘As we go about our business, we leave a ripple that betrays our passing. Footprints are a part of this telltale ripple. Another is the warning cry of the currawong as we walk too close to his nest, the honeysuckle stem broken as we pass, the carelessly discarded core of our apple. Animals are no different. Tracking them is like reading. First we painstakingly learn the simplest letters. They join into words, combine into phrases and so we can read the book of the animal’s life.’
Daniel always impressed upon Luke the sacred responsibility this information bore with it. ‘Such skills unlock secrets. Treasure this knowledge and use it wisely. Disturbing wildlife can cause much harm, leading them to desert their young or abandon feeding grounds or flee into danger. Remember, you are a guest in their home – always show respect.’
Luke didn’t find it difficult to follow Bear’s frantic flight through the forest to freedom. Why he chose to follow the dog was not so clear, but it seemed as good a plan as any. His escape left him more conscious than ever of his own cowardice. He couldn’t avoid it. A voice screamed in his head to return before it was too late, though logic told him it was already too late – the die already cast. His penalty would be severe, whether he surrendered now or was taken against his will. Only this thought prevented him from returning to camp, from throwing himself at the superintendent’s mercy, from begging forgiveness and accepting whatever beating or punishment came his way.
It seemed to Luke that fear now entirely ruled him. How had he become so spineless? He thought back to his childhood in Hobart – so innocent and cocky then, full of brash charm, with an eye for the girls and never shy of a fight. His mother and sister, how they adored him, unable to refuse him anything once he trained his smiling brown eyes on them . . . Afternoons in his Uncle Hiram’s blacksmith shop.
‘He’ll get on, that lad, there’s no doubting it,’ his father would announce to nobody in particular as Luke brought down hammer on anvil to fashion a red-hot piece of steel into a horseshoe or engaged a customer with a winning grin. His uncle agreed. Everyone agreed. How wrong they’d been.
The toe ripped off his boot on some rough ground. He kicked at the rocks again and again until his toes bled, filled with contempt for himself. Yet part of him acknowledged that he had finally escaped. For years he’d planned and plotted and schemed and dreamed of this, and doing it nourished a kernel of pride.
Luke ripped a strip from his shirt, tied his boot together as best he could, and forged on. Following the dog gave him a purpose, pointless as that purpose was. Focusing on tracking also distracted him from the seriousness of his predicament. How grateful he was for the bushcraft Daniel had taught him. It could spell the difference between life and death in the days ahead.
Hour after hour, Luke climbed into the rugged uplands. Sometimes he glanced back, but saw no sign of pursuit. Open bush gave way to taller forests of eucalypt, southern myrtle and blackwood. Thick scrub and tangled logs slowed his progress, but also made it easier to track the big dog. His blundering through the undergrowth left an obvious trail.
At last Luke emerged from a timbered ridge onto an open button-grass plain, cradled between craggy cliffs. A shadow rippling along the ground made him look up. Overhead soared two dark shapes, gliding in lazy, dignified circles across the vivid expanse of blue. He watched the eagles enviously, so far removed from the wretchedness of his own earth-bound existence.
The emerald carpet of cushion plants provided a delightful contrast from the grey-green forest, and soft, spongy comfort for Luke’s aching feet. But now it proved much harder to follow Bear’s tracks.
Luke recalled his teacher’s words. ‘The clues to the next track are in the present one.’
Although always kind, Daniel was an exacting taskmaster. When Luke found it difficult to age a trail, his teacher had taken him into Coomalong’s garden and cleared a level patch of soil, removing twigs and pebbles and roughly smoothing it with the side of his hand. He used a stick to make five impressions in the soil, each roughly half an inch deep – a paw print.
‘Memorise this mark. Also the prevailing wind, time of day, position of the sun.’
Six hours later, before Luke normally went home for the day, his teacher again summoned him into the garden to examine the print. Although it didn’t look any different, Luke studied it carefully and wrote down the weather conditions.
Daniel gave him a satisfied smile. ‘I’ve asked your father if you may stay with us at Coomalong this week. Would you like that? Good.’
The housekeeper showed him inside to a guest bedroom. There he discovered his own little trunk, lovingly packed by his mother, sitting in the middle of a soft featherbed.
Luke spent the evening wolfing down tender corned beef and cabbage dumplings, followed by mounds of pudding and clotted cream. After dinner Daniel challenged him and Belle to poker, a game they all took seriously in spite of playing for peanuts. When his wife complained about the children staying up late at such a questionable game, Daniel said he was teaching the mathematics of chance. Eventually Mrs Campbell wrested them away for a supper of honey sandwiches and warm milk. Luke went to his room, tired but happy, and sank into his soft bed.
Just as he was drifting off to sleep, his teacher roused him. Mr Campbell was carrying a notebook and oil lamp. ‘Get dressed, my boy. Hurry up.’
Luke pulled on his trousers and jacket. In the excitement of being invited to stay, he’d forgotten to ask the reason for his visit. He was about to find out.
They trooped to the back garden. Light drizzle fell on the ground where the mock paw print lay. Daniel lowered the lamp so Luke could see. It looked a little different now: shallower, less distinct. He examined it for a while, making sketches, taking notes.
‘Good, good,’ said Daniel. ‘I’ll see you again at four o’clock this morning. You’ll repeat the process every six hours for the next week, observing how the track deteriorates with time. That is how you learn to age a trail.’
He’d certainly learned from one of the best.
Luke scouted ahead and picked up Bear’s tracks in a boggy patch beside a stream. He stopped to drink, cupping the clear, sweet water in his hands, gulping down long draughts.
Late afternoon melded into dusk. Shadows gathered, casting the jagged face of the range into stark relief. An icy wind chased after the departing sun, piercing Luke’s ragged clothes. He shivered with weariness and cold, and the bullet wound to his shoulder throbbed painfully. Still, he was loath to abandon Bear’s trail.
In the half-light he came to another creek. There, beneath a screen of pandanus leaves, he found a fern-frond bed trampled flat, still holding the impression of the sleeping dog. Luke curled up in the soft nest and slept.
Hours later the tigers discovered Luke as they stole, soft-footed, back to the safety of the mountains. The playful cubs, with full stomachs and egos boosted by their first hunt, almost pounced on him as he slumbered. Coorinna called them away just in time. Bear, following a few minutes behind, showed more caution, giving the sleeping man a wide berth.
In the morning, Luke faintly recalled three inquisitive, twitching noses on little whiskery faces, bright eyes reflecting the moonlight. He thought it a dream. As he tried to rouse himself, the full extent of his predicament hit him. The bone-numbing chill of the Tasmanian highland night had seeped into his body as he slept, fingers of frost stealing his strength, enticing him to lie still just a little longer.
He tried to move, but his arms and legs were stiff and unyielding. At first he was pleased his shoulder didn’t hurt, until he realised it was simply numb with cold. When circulation returned, it ached again with a vengeance. After several painful minutes of effort Luke coaxed his reluctant limbs to stretch. He clambered uncertainly to his feet, stumbled, and fell hard back to the ground, wondering where on earth his balance was. At last he managed to stand, hands still frozen, feet dead lumps of wood. Stamping toes and rubbing fingers, Luke lurched to the creek to drink. At first his hands didn’t register the bite of icy water in his cupped palms, but soon enough his extremities felt like they belonged to him again.
As morning sunshine filtered through the gum trees and the pastel sky promised a warm spring day, Luke forgot his misery. An unfamiliar realisation hit him. He was free. Free to freeze, perhaps. Free to starve. Free to succumb to loneliness and madness, but free nonetheless. And he knew that he would not trade the sweetness of this freedom for a lice-ridden bunk, a meagre meal and the doubtful comfort of his cutthroat companions back at the work camp. With no better plan, Luke kept on after Bear.
For some reason the dog had changed direction. One set of prints had become four or even five. In miry ground below the creek he found the tracks of another large dog and what looked like puppy pug-marks. If Luke read the trail correctly, Bear was following a wild pack, his own tracks always overlapping the others.
It was with a great deal of apprehension that Luke descended the mountain, aware that by doing so he headed back towards town. His nerves played tricks on him. Once he was so sure he could hear men crashing through the bush that he hid for an hour in a soggy, leech-infested depression behind a rock.
Eventually the forested slope opened onto a broad, grassy clearing. On its western edge was a ramshackle hut. Luke watched for a long time in the shelter of the trees, until curiosity overcame caution. He abandoned Bear’s trail and hurried to the hut.
Nobody had lived there for a long time. Grass grew high all around. Sheets of bark lined the crude split-log walls, and wire loops tied the frame together. The weight of native honeysuckle had pulled the door askew, and part of the roof was caved in. Luke didn’t mind. What a stroke of luck!
He pulled back the creeper and pushed through the rickety door. There was even a rough stone fireplace, mortared with crumbling clay. A rock lay at his feet. He picked it up and wedged it back into the tumble-down chimney. A smile spread over his face. He looked around. A crooked meat safe in one corner. Some dusty boards and a frayed hessian bag. In the bag he found a half-full gunpowder flask, two empty rum bottles and a rusty knife. In another corner lay a battered axe head, some wire, a broken broom and a cast-iron pot. Not much to most, but to Luke it felt like Christmas.
Dusting them off and trying to ignore his aching hunger, a million uses for each item sprang to mind. He forgot about Bear. He even forgot he was on the run. Luke swept the floor with the old broom. Tomorrow he’d cut a young tree to replace the split handle. He placed the boards on some stones along the wall to make a handy bench. He took the old pot and bottles down to a little creek that bubbled in a gully beside the hut. He washed them and filled them with water. On his way back he picked some early waratahs, his mother’s favourite flowers. He used a bottle as a vase and stood the scarlet blooms on a level stone above the fireplace. It felt like home already.
Next to eat. Fashioning a rough snare from wire, he went back to the creek, where rabbit droppings pointed to a fresh warren. He dug a shallow hole, buried the loop at the base of a springy sapling, fashioned two notched pegs, and hammered them in on either side. Bending the sapling to the ground, he fixed the wire snare to its free end, carefully slotting the slender trunk into the notched peg. A trip-stick, laid across the path and wedged into the notches, completed the trap. Any rabbit knocking the stick would be ensnared and flung into the air.
Luke returned to the hut and sat down to rest with his back against the wall. Fatigue and hunger were taking their toll. He glanced at the sun sailing high in the sky. Late afternoon at best, and rabbits wouldn’t come out until dusk. His empty stomach couldn’t wait that long. Time to go fishing.
He baited a bent wire hook with a wriggling worm, unravelled a thread from the hessian sack and tied the line to a stick. Down to the creek he went and promptly caught a plump, spotted trout. Luke stopped to collect bracken root and warrigal greens on the way back to the hut. Now for a fire. Gathering kindling, leaves and dry grass, he poured a tiny portion of gunpowder from the flask onto the rudimentary stone grate. Using the axe head as a flint stone, Luke struck it again and again against the fireplace. Before long sparks flew, igniting the tiny pile of powder with a bright flash. Smoke wafted, followed by flame.
Luke whooped with delight. Before long, a fire crackled happily in the dusty hearth. Stripped fern root went into the fire to roast. Fish and greens went into the cast-iron pot, balanced on two large rocks either side of the grate. His first meal as a free man. The succulent fish melted off the bone. It was the most delicious meal he’d ever tasted.
The chill of approaching night nipped the air. Luke gathered bracken and fern fronds, piling them high against the wall away from the gap in the roof. He tested his new bed. Comfortable as the feather mattress at Coomalong.
As twilight fell, Luke checked his trap. A rabbit dangled in the wire snare. This was too good to be true. Luke hurried to his new home to roast it on a stick. But with darkness came a growing sense of unease. Were they searching for him? Had a reward been posted for his capture? The lurking fear of discovery remained, yet nothing would make him abandon his refuge that night.
He finished the rabbit, washed his pot, refilled his bottle and snuggled down in his ferny bed. To distract himself from the nagging pain in his shoulder, Luke focused on the waratahs. Bold, fiery flowers – each scarlet torch a mass of individual blossoms. Daniel had told him that waratah was a native word for ‘beautiful’. Luke tried to remember the botanical name. That was it. Telopea from the Greek ‘telepos’, meaning ‘seen from afar’. He gazed at the fire. An echo of the waratah was there in the flames. Red fingers leapt and danced, offering up shapes of animals and trees. The image of a dog glowed brightly and died. Luke’s eyes grew heavy and he slept.
Hours later, the moon looked over the mountains to see the figure of a giant black dog standing like a statue in the clearing, staring at the hut. Raising his head, Bear sent a howl, long and mournful, into the empty expanse of sky. He took one last lingering look before melting into the shadows, leaving the moon to journey alone across the starry heavens.