HARRY TREMAYNE settled into his place on Bowgada station as a keystone settles into a well-built arch.
His first impressions of Brett Filson remained unchanged; liking and admiration for the man intermingling. Badly wounded in the war and still suffering the effects of the wound, Filson was quietly triumphant over disabilities which in a lesser man would have produced a human wreck.
The few hands he had met were all up to Tremayne’s standards of direct simplicity, generosity and bonhomie. Perhaps Soddy Jackson, who expressed political views strangely out of line with his behaviour, was an extraordinary character in a land of characters, but Old Humpy and Charlie English with his wife, Millie, and Alf Dodder were normal lovable bush people.
To them it quickly became apparent that Tremayne was woefully ignorant of sheep management, although an expert hand with cattle and horses. The new overseer made no bones about his lack of sheep knowledge, frankly admitting that his experience had been won on cattle stations where sheep were as rare as women. But as for bushcraft, there was nothing they could teach him.
The day he met Frances Tonger was overcast and cold. From the southern end of the breakaways blew a soft yet penetrating wind. He was riding southward along the Bowgada-Breakaway House boundary fence when he noticed in the distance a horseman riding towards him on the other side of the fence.
Here, in the middle of this north-south valley, the eastern breakaway, six miles away, resembled a rugged coast of headlands and bays, almost within stone-throw; whilst that to the west, at the foot of which nestled the buildings comprising the homestead of Breakaway House, and but four miles distant, had alongside it a chain of mounds which looked precisely like a chain of islands.
The brown filly he rode was vicious, a would-be man-killer. Unlike an honest, spirited horse who determinedly bucks right at the start of a day’s work, this horse behaved well – until she thought that her rider’s attention was momentarily relaxed. She seized her first opportunity after she and Tremayne had been out an hour, when, with astonishing quickness, she entered into a series of bucks. This failing to dislodge her rider, she determinedly tried to crush his offside leg against a solitary cork tree.
Naturally Tremayne’s temper became ruffled and he administered a sound thrashing which only served to make the horse angry as well as vicious. He vowed that never again would he ride this horse when working, for a horse that bucks after an hour’s good behaviour is a dishonest horse, a useless horse to any stockman, and one giving financial loss to its owner who employs men to ride out to examine sheep and their tracks and watering places, not merely to ride a horse.
Engaged in administering this chastisement, Tremayne failed to see the girl who cantered towards him and only when she spoke did he realise that the rider he had observed far along the fence was a woman.
In clear ringing tones she cried: “You beast! How dare you beat a horse like that?”
Astonished by this feminine voice, Tremayne ceased his belabouring and fell to staring at as pretty a face as he had seen for a very long time. Her presence so unsettled him that he forgot the filly; and the horse, knowing it, reared on her hind legs, pawed the air with her forefeet, sat down and rolled backwards like a playful pup. Within the cloud of grey dust which the filly stirred up, the girl saw Tremayne standing beside the undignified animal, and then, as the brute began to scramble to its feet, watched him leap back into the saddle. The Breakaway House girl saved the horse a thrashing commensurate with its vicious behaviour.
Tremayne dismounted. With the reins looped through his crooked arm, he led the horse close to the fence, where he leaned casually against a post and proceeded to roll a cigarette. “Good day-ee, miss,” he said in a drawling voice, his eyes twinkling, yet his mouth compressed into a rule-straight line.
“You beast!” reiterated the girl.
“Dear, dear! I seem to be engaged in general warfare with the female sex this morning,” he said lightly, looking up from his task to regard with unfeigned admiration the flushed face and supple figure of this young woman sitting on her motionless horse. Doubtless it was the effect of too much cigarette smoking which caused his heart to beat erratically, but that could not have accounted for the sudden trembling of his fingers. She was like one of those squatters’ women of the old days, coldly surveying a ticket-of-leaver who had neither legal nor moral right to breathe the same air as she did.
Slowly his gaze moved downward, to note the open-necked dark blue poplin blouse, the well-tailored white cord breeches, and the polished, military-style, high-topped laced riding boots. On them his eyes lingered critically before beginning the slow upward movement, finally to rest again on her face.
“How’s Perth?” he inquired irrelevantly, or what to a duller intellect would have sounded irrelevant.
She was mentally keen enough to know that his question contained a sneer at her city riding togs.
He realised that with satisfaction, as he watched her breast rise and fall and her lips part in anger. He calmly lit his cigarette.
“I would like you to know that I’m Miss Tonger,” she said icily. “I shall ask my uncle, Mr Morris Tonger, to report your disgraceful treatment of that poor horse to Mr Filson. Why, you are a low cad! Indeed, you are!”
“I’m all that, and more,” he agreed gravely. “I become, when the chance offers, terribly drunk and I smoke four ounces of tobacco every week. Sorry I can’t offer you a tailor-made cigarette. My name’s Tremayne – Harry Tremayne. Better mention it in the report. There’s half-a-dozen fellows working for Brett Filson, you know.”
Now furiously angry with this man who cared nothing for haughty eyes and icy tones, Frances Tonger determined to end this chance encounter. She jabbed her spurred heels into her horse’s flanks, cut it smartly with her light switch, and the next instant she was sitting on a saltbush and her horse was galloping for home.
“What did you go and do that for?” Tremayne inquired mildly. “Your horse wasn’t doing anything.”
Seeing that the girl was unhurt when she sprang to her feet to stare after the fleeing horse, Tremayne strapped the fence wires together, persuaded his horse to step over them, and then, unstrapping the wires, approached her rigid back. With very genuine concern, he asked: “Not in pain, I hope?”
Mortified to the verge of tears, she refused to face him. Her voice trembled when she spoke after a silence, which eloquently proclaimed her fight to regain self-control. “Your melodramatic sarcasm certainly has not affected me, if that is what you mean.”
“Good! You sound all right, anyway,” he told her, suddenly chuckling, which angered her still further. Now in the saddle, he kneed his mount round her slim figure, so coming to look down into her face. “Just you stay right there,” he advised cheerfully. “I’ll bring Dobbin back quicker than he departed. By the way, what’s the difference between melodrama and just plain drama? It’s a question which has often puzzled me.”
“Oh! You are insufferable!” she cried, her small hands clenched.
“That’s what my bank manager told me last month when I asked him for the loan of ten bob. Well, as they say: ‘I’ll be seeing you.’”
Watching him depart in a cloud of dust, Frances Tonger fervently prayed that his horse would throw him and break his neck. Of all the uncouth louts, this man was the worst. Never had she been dealt with in such a fashion by a man; certainly not by those belonging to the circle of youths with whom she was friendly in Perth; gentlemen whose hair was always well oiled, whose hands were always lily white, and whose high collars were invariably speckless to match their speckless sports cars.
Having tidied her short chestnut-coloured hair, dusted her shining military officer’s boots and hand-brushed her white cord breeches, she rearranged the set of her blouse and fell to watching the horseman streaking across the plain in pursuit of the runaway. It was then that she saw a second horseman converging on the runaway from the north-west, and presently she witnessed all three horses hunched together, and then the two horsemen came riding towards her with her horse between them.
Thus it was that Harry Tremayne met Frances Tonger and her uncle in the same morning.
Tonger was a larger man than he. His colouring was dark, and the weather had darkened his face, whilst too much drink had blotched it. The dark eyes were slightly protruding, and the lids above them seldom winked. He was dressed in a similar fashion to the younger man. “What happened to my niece?” he demanded in the manner of one accustomed to total obedience.
“She was thrown,” Tremayne replied lightly. “Horse not used to spurs.”
“She was thrown!” Tonger echoed. “Why, that horse couldn’t throw a bag of vegetables.” His black eyes examined the policeman with insolent minuteness. “Who are you?” he asked sharply.
“I’m a person of no social importance whatsoever,” Tremayne replied, inwardly rattled by the other’s tone. His voice became suggestive of the barking of a dog. “Who the hell are you?”
Tonger’s eyes opened wider and blazed with sudden temper. A dull flush mounted into his mottled face, and he gazed at the younger man as though judging his ability to resist violence.
Tremayne rode on, leading the girl’s docile horse and expecting at any moment his own mount to start another tantrum at the first unguarded moment. He gave Tonger another knock before he could recover from the first. “Well, who the hell are you?” he insisted.
Now Tonger’s eyelids drooped, but his expression did not adequately hide the anger within him. Still, more civilly he replied: “I’m Tonger. I own Breakaway House station. You’re on it now.”
“Oh! Well if I trod on your feet you must blame your tone. I’m a stranger on the Murchison. My name is Tremayne, Harry Tremayne, and I’m working for Brett Filson.”
“That so? Being a stranger to the Murchison, where have you come from?”
“From the Kimberleys. Been up there for years. I’m not going to tell you why I came out of the Kimberleys, or how much money I’ve got, because I don’t see that it’s any damn business of yours.”
For a while they rode in silence, Tremayne watching his horse’s ears, and beyond them the figure of Frances Tonger near the boundary fence.
Tonger, covertly glancing at Tremayne, noted the set of him, and his easy, assured seat. It was not lost on him that this young man’s slow action concealed tiger-like agility, and that behind the soft drawl was knife-edged mental quickness. Yet the smart remained, stoking the fires of temper which flared up when they reached the waiting girl. His ensuing exhibition of uncontrolled anger astonished Tremayne.
The large flabby face became crimson and the big body trembled. “What are you doing out here in those togs?” shouted Tonger, leaning forward over his horse’s neck. “Didn’t I tell you I’d have no do-dahs on my place? I won’t have you dressed in that Pommy togging. A habit was good enough for your mother, was good enough for your aunt, and is good enough for all the Tonger women. Breeches, even top-boots if you must be flash, but you won’t wear high heels to ’em and spurs to mark my horses. You with heels…”
“Cut it out, Tonger,” Tremayne said quietly.
Frances Tonger faced her uncle with scarlet cheeks, her eyes expressing hurt amazement. Tears began to slide down her cheeks.
“You keep out of this, you,” Tonger snarled at Tremayne.
“Your horse, Miss Tonger,” Tremayne said politely, holding her horse in position for her to mount. To relieve the tension, he went on: “Mr Tonger is right, you know. High heels on any kind of boots are dangerous. You see, a high heel might fasten you in a stirrup-iron trap.”
With a little rush she was beside the horse and in a second she was in the saddle. For just one instant her tear-blinded eyes met his, and he saw in them her thanks for his courtesy. Then, in defiance of her relative, she dug her spurred heels into the animal’s flanks and with one mighty plunge the horse was off to the homestead, the girl crouched along its neck.
“Say, you want to be a bit diplomatic with young women,” Tremayne drawled coolly, which halted Tonger in his intent to race after his niece.
“I’m not taking advice from you on how to treat women,” Tonger roared, viciously reining back his mount which was eager to follow the other.
“Perhaps my advice is worthless. To tell the truth, I haven’t had much experience with women.”
“Well, I have,” snapped Tonger. “And any man with sense treats women like he treats horses. Good day to you.”
“Hi! Wait a second. Miss Tonger left her switch.”
Tremayne, picking up the elegant riding switch, proffered it to Tonger, and Tonger, snatching it from him, wheeled his horse away towards the homestead and the girl now far in the distance.
“So long!” Tremayne called out, casually rolling a cigarette as he watched Tonger lash his horse into a gallop and ride away directly westward, not straight to Breakaway House.
Having lit his cigarette, he spoke to the filly: “That’s the kind of master you need, you hussy. One who treats horses like he treats women. One of the understanding sort is Mr Morris Tonger. And the thrashing you’re going to get if you play the fool any more today will make you think that Mr Morris Tonger is on your back.”