The races eventually wore out as a subject for reminiscence and then there was only the long desert of weeks and months until Christmas. Oliver went out to the stock camp in the mid-year holidays to help with the mustering, but neither Jim nor Rosemary was allowed to accompany him. It was reasonable enough, Jim thought, that Rosemary couldn’t – after all, she was a girl, and just turned ten – but it should have been different for him.
He brooded on the injustice of it, then went to look for his uncle, finding him in the blacksmith’s shop collecting the gudgeon pins that Charlie Attwood had made for the gates in the new yards at Duck Hole.
‘Uncle Rob.’ Jim stood in the doorway, his back to the light, and glowered at Rob in his pressed khaki and polished boots. Even the belt about his trim middle shone, and the buttoned-down sleeves of his shirt might have come straight from the iron.
‘Well, what is it, Jim?’
‘I want to go out to the camp. Why shouldn’t I? If Oliver’s allowed I should be too. Dad always let me. He never said I couldn’t. There’s nothing to do here and I can ride just as good as Oliver.’
‘Just as well, you mean,’ Rob said. He frowned down at his nephew, trying for a conciliatory tone. ‘I’m afraid you’re still too young, Jim. It was different in your father’s camp – that was smaller and he was there too. I won’t be. And it’s not fair to the men to put the responsibility on them.’
Jim’s eyes flashed. ‘I can look out for myself.’
‘I’m sure you think so,’ Rob agreed politely. ‘But for all that, you’re not going. The men aren’t paid to chase after kids. Maybe next year when you’re older you could camp out with them for weekends.’
The very suggestion raised the boy’s hackles. ‘I won’t be here next year!’
‘Then the question won’t arise, will it?’ Rob said with maddening reasonableness.
Jim scowled, kicking at the dirt as he turned away. He had a good mind to clear out, just saddle up Jake and go. He fantasised about riding to Arcadia and living there with Nipper and his family until Sandy came home, but of course it wouldn’t do. His uncle would know where he’d gone and would waste no time dragging him back, and that brought him to the crux of the matter – Rob’s easy assumption that Jim would still be here this time next year. Of course he wouldn’t! When his father returned it would be to stay. They would return to Arcadia, which, according to Aunt Mary, had not been sold after all, stock up and start again. Once he got home to his own place, he would never come near Kharko again, and he would visit the blacks’ camp as often as he liked and never wear shoes.
Lost in his own thoughts, Jim suddenly became aware of Rob’s voice behind him. ‘What?’ he asked his uncle.
‘I said, you don’t have to spend all your time at the homestead. It’s not the stock camp, but you could come for a run out to the new yards with me if you like.’
‘I don’t want to.’ It gave him satisfaction to refuse the offer, but if he had expected his uncle to show disappointment he was wrong.
‘Suit yourself.’ Rob threw the pins into the back of the rover, dusted off his hands and nodded towards the flying figure coming through the garden gate. ‘Rosemary does.’
Jim wished his refusal unspoken then, but was too proud to say so. With his hands in his back pockets and a scowl on his face, he watched the column of dust chart the rover’s progress down the paddock. Even a girl’s company was better than nothing. Barney had taken rations out to the camp and would probably stay there; Dino had gone off to help pull the rods on a broken-down bore. That left the bookkeeper and old Charlie, neither of whom liked kids, and Pommy John. Sighing heavily, Jim wandered down to the kitchen, only to find Pommy napping in his ragged armchair with a month-old newspaper spread over his face. Everyone, it seemed, had something better to do than be with him.
He sat on the loading dock for a while, kicking his heels back against the supporting timbers. Then movement at the trough caught his attention – the horses had come in and suddenly he knew what he would do, where he would go. He wasn’t supposed to ride alone, but nobody would even notice he’d gone. His uncle wouldn’t return before dark, his aunt was busy, and he’d be back before she began to wonder where he was. He set out purposefully for the saddle shed where his bridle hung.
But his conscience was not altogether clear and he argued briefly with himself as he bridled Jake, who leaned stubbornly back on the reins and had to be coaxed into following him. He had often ridden alone at Arcadia. But only in the horse paddock, an internal voice reminded him. Well, this was still a paddock, wasn’t it? Bottom lip stuck out in indecision, he glanced at the angle of the sun – there was all afternoon to get there and back. His mind was made up.
He slapped the saddle into place, had a drink at the stable tap and was ready to go. He could get to Bell Creek, explore and be back well before his uncle got home. When he didn’t turn up for lunch Aunt Mary would think he was in the kitchen with Pommy, and Pommy, if he thought about it at all, would assume he was up at the house. Swinging into the saddle, Jim kicked Jake and cantered swiftly away, until the bulk of the stockyards hid him from sight. Then, reining his pony to a brisk walk, he turned him towards Bell Creek.
It was pleasant to be abroad alone, with the sun warm on his back and arms and only the regular tread of hooves for company. He wished Nipper was with him to see the little scurryings and sudden freezes of movement about him as he rode: the flick of a lizard’s tail, the stealthy rustle of insect life. Kitehawks hung as if from threads in the blue above him, and euros’ ears twitched as he passed. Jake snorted comfortably, reaching at the bit, while Jim daydreamed, imagining his father riding beside him, the creak and jingle of his saddle gear chiming with Jim’s own, and the whiff of his tobacco on the light breeze. That was something else he missed. Most of the men at Kharko smoked, but his uncle didn’t. He would have liked him better, Jim thought, if he did. At least he would smell right. He and Nipper had tried it once with flakes cut from a plug of nikky tobacco, but it made them so ill that Jim had never touched it again.
It was no distance to the overgrown track that led on to the mine. Jake turned automatically towards it but Jim kicked him on, then picked a switch to reinforce the message. Sandy had said he could have spurs when he was older. Perhaps he had already bought them at Mataranka, or some other town, and would send them in time for his birthday. Jim had hinted as much to Barney, and of course Rosemary had been there and blabbed it all around the kitchen and now everybody knew. Jim grimaced at the memory. Trust her! It wasn’t certain, and if she hadn’t said anything it wouldn’t matter. Perhaps he would write one more letter to his father, just to remind him.
He smacked the pony’s shoulder again with the switch. The range was suddenly closer. The sand had given way to pebbly ground that Jake’s hooves clattered over. Jim could smell the waxy, baked-stone scent of the range and hear the shrill of cicadas in the trees. He listened for the stone bells but they were silent. The air hung still and there was the buzz of flies.
At the creek, spindly gums shouldered each other for room amid a tangle of conkaberry bushes and black-stemmed beefwood suckers. Jake, pushing through it into the dimness beyond, snorted unhappily as his hooves slid on the water-smoothed rocks. He kept propping, ears like sticks, to stare bug-eyed into the shadows, until in the end it was quicker to walk. Jim swung down and hitched the reins.
‘You wait here,’ he said sternly. ‘And don’t rub that saddle neither.’
On the right bank of the gully was a sandstone ledge with a narrow euro pad winding down its centre. Jim scrambled along it, thinking there had to be soakage water somewhere. It was too rocky here, but perhaps further along he would come to sand. The trees squeezed tightly together, and when their foliage sighed in a little gust of wind his skin goose-pimpled with cold just as his ear caught the faintest echo of a bell. He stopped, head up, but the noise was not repeated. All he could hear was a tiny clicking sound, perhaps a borer in the tree beside him, and the far-off cawing of crows.
He needed the wind to blow. As it was, with the trees crowding his view, he might walk right past the bell holes without seeing them. Time fretted at him. In the gloom of the timber and high gully walls it was impossible to see the sun, but he seemed to have been hours in this shadowy world. He had been confident of his ability to find the holes but realised now that he could walk straight past them unless they were actually sounding. Perhaps that was what happened to the man who was said to have perished somewhere in here. He wished he hadn’t thought of that, but it was probably just a yarn anyway.
The pad still ran before his feet but the slope at his right had turned into a solid wall of rock, which just up ahead jutted out in an overhang that forced the trees aside. He looked up, following the line of their trunks, and that’s when he saw them – the shadows of blackfella hands on the ancient stone. They fanned ochre and white across the grainy rock, their spread fingers and partial prints as shocking as a shout in the silence.
The hair prickled on Jim’s neck and his mouth was suddenly dry. Oliver had been wrong about this place and the reason the blackfellas kept away. It was spirit ground, where nobody but the old men should be. He took a careful step backwards and then another. The trees that had been simply a nuisance seemed all at once menacing, and in the dim light the air pressed down on him like an accusation. He half expected to see the bodies of the men whose handprints they were, and when the euro that had sat unnoticed behind him suddenly moved he turned and bolted, crashing away down the path.
He broke panting into the thinner scrub where he’d left Jake, but the pony was gone. He couldn’t believe it: Jake was an old hand at getting his own way and had a habit of rubbing against whatever held him, but Jim had hooked the reins high, so to escape Jake must have snapped them. He swore. Jake would get home long before he could, and it only needed someone to spot the riderless horse and the roast would be ruined, as Pommy liked to say. His heart sank and he had a hollow feeling in his stomach. It was one thing to pretend that Sandy would have countenanced the expedition but he knew very well his uncle had forbidden it. He’d have to walk, and as quickly as he could.
He was hot, footsore and halfway home when a vehicle overtook him. He could have pulled his boots off and made better time had not six months of enforced footwear softened the soles of his feet to useless-ness. He plugged doggedly on, grateful for the cooling wind that fluttered his hat, but it also masked sound, causing him to leap like a startled deer when a horn blasted behind him. He spun about, heart thumping, and was relieved beyond words to see Barney behind the wheel.
‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ Barney jerked his head in disapproval, his eyes searching beyond Jim. ‘Get in. Where’s young Ro?’
Jim slid thankfully onto the seat and cleared his throat. ‘She’s with Uncle Rob,’ he said uncertainly. ‘They went out to the new yards. My mongrel horse cleared out on me, I woulda been home else. Cripes, I’ve been walking for hours.’
Barney’s eyes narrowed. ‘Riding by yourself?’
‘I only went to Bell Creek.’ Jim was aggrieved. ‘Crikey, Barney, what am I supposed to do with myself? I can’t make friends with the blackfellas, I can’t go out in the stock camp, I’ve gotta have a girl tagging along everywhere I ride. If he knew he wouldn’t even let us…’ He bit his betraying tongue.
‘Frig around at the old mine, y’mean?’
‘You know about that?’
‘Have to be blind not to.’
‘How come you didn’t say anything?’
‘Like you’re gunna take any notice,’ Barney snorted. ‘Besides, Oliver’s got his head screwed on. He’s dependable. The boss knows that too, so I reckon he lets you get away with it.’ He changed gear, saying bluntly, ‘You don’t give him much credit, do you?’
‘Who?’ But Jim knew who he meant and wriggled uncomfortably.
‘The boss. It’s not his fault that he ain’t your dad, you know. I’ve never heard you say a civil word to him yet. And the funny thing is, if you gave him half a chance you might even get to like him.’
‘Huh!’ Jim hunched his shoulders. ‘That’ll be the day. I suppose you’re gunna tell me you do? Like him, I mean.’
‘Matter of fact I do. You know, kid, I worked a horse like you once. He couldn’t learn nothing either. Silly bugger had to be taught the same thing over and over. I was still at it when the rest of his mates was finished and gone.’
Jim flushed angrily but bit his tongue. Then Barney slowed and pulled over. ‘There’s the pony now. Catch him and slip home. Think yourself lucky it was me found you and not Des, but if you ever pull a stunt like this again I’ll tell the boss meself.’
Back at the stables Jim unsaddled Jake and let him go. The sun was sitting on the shed roof, and half an hour later dust on the road heralded his uncle’s return. Rosemary was full of chatter, about the brumby foal she had seen and the emus on the fence line at the new yards.
‘So what did you do?’ she asked and Jim shrugged sullenly.
‘Nothing.’ But he’d been thinking. Barney’s words had dug into him like fishhooks. Did he really dislike his uncle so much for what he was, or for what he wasn’t? Barney had been right about other things – he had, Jim silently admitted, been right about today too. It had been stupid to ride out alone like that without leaving word. He could have slipped on the rocks and twisted his ankle, or broken it; he could have got lost. And in all fairness, how was his uncle to know about the freedom he’d had on Arcadia? He had never told him about life there. In fact, save for the common courtesies demanded by the meal table and living together, he had scarcely spoken to him at all. Perhaps, Jim thought, he might try to, if only to prove to himself that Barney was wrong.
Despite the letter of reminder, Jim’s birthday passed without word from his father. Aunt Mary baked him a cake with eleven candles that he blew out at a celebratory morning tea. There was a card from Leo Baker, a book about racehorses from Oliver, a yoyo from Rosemary, and a large parcel from his uncle and aunt that proved to be a handsome saddle pouch with buckles shaped like stirrup irons. Later in the day Pommy John gave him a pack of playing cards, and Barney a tobacco tin with a lid he had decorated by scraping off the paint and punching the shape of a horse’s head into it.
‘An old digger showed me how,’ he said. ‘He learned it in an Eyetie prison camp.’
‘Were you in the war, Barney?’ Jim squatted beside him, the rail at his back, and ran admiring fingers over the tin. The horse looked just like the Rook. ‘Dad was.’
‘Nah. I was only about fifteen when it finished. Heard from him, have you – your dad?’
‘No.’ Jim fiddled with the tin, not meeting his friend’s eye.
‘Well, I expect you will,’ Barney said cheerfully. ‘When I was up north the mail useta take its time. Supposed to be a weekly service but it never was.’ He rolled a smoke with quick, clever fingers, lit up and leaned back, his face lifted to the sun and smoke leaking out of his nostrils.
‘You know that day I went out to Bell Creek?’ Jim asked suddenly, drawing his feet up under him.
‘Yep.’ Barney squinted sideways. ‘See you been getting on better with the boss since about then.’
‘A bit. He’s not so bad, sometimes,’ Jim admitted. ‘Anyway, I’ve been wondering what you were doing out there that day. The camp wasn’t at Benny’s bore. And you said it might’ve been Des that came in, not you. How come?’
Barney grunted. ‘Mostly luck – for you, that is. Nah, we were mustering the Number Two country. We yarded early and were riding back to camp when Des sent that lazy bugger Jacko over to the dam to fetch in some fresh horses. The country’s flogged bare and we had ’em on the bit of feed in the dam enclosure. Well, Jacko was too tired to get off for the gate, so he tries to do it from the saddle. Hooks his boot under the head stick and it pops out of the loop and smacks the horse in the side of the face. It was that goose-rumped yellow-bay, kick the eye out of a needle, you know?’
‘Jelly,’ Jim nodded.
‘That’s her. She bucks into the gate, dumps Jacko and gets the wire round her hind leg. That brings her down, and when she falls she shifts the saddle. Next thing she’s up and bolting with the saddle under her guts.’ Barney shook his head, cigarette smoke curling past one ear. ‘Criminal is what it was. The rest of the day was lost getting her back. The saddle was wrecked of course, flaps gone, stirrups gone, tree busted. The mare’s leg was cut to the bone and when we finally run her down she was that stirred up I had to get a rope on her to catch her. See, accidents happen in this game and sometimes it ain’t nobody’s fault. But then you get some useless bugger like that Jacko… There just ain’t no safe shortcuts. Remember that, kid.
‘Anyway, we was short a saddle and out of meat, so Des stopped to kill and it was me that come home for the gear instead. And seeing we’d caught up with the mare more than halfway to Benny’s bore, I come that way thinking I might happen on a few of the lost bits. The bridle was gone too, and the saddle pouch.’
He flipped his cigarette butt into the dirt and stood up in one sudden movement. ‘Well, a breather ain’t a day off, so I better get back to it. Enjoy your birthday.’
‘Thanks. And for the tin.’ With a last admiring look, Jim stowed his present in his pocket.