Two days later Mac came into breakfast with news of a cyclone watch for the area, so any chance of an expedition away from the homestead was well and truly cancelled. Darcy took some small comfort from the fact that it wasn’t only his broken arm which had them all housebound.
‘Why don’t we see if we can get onto Norrie and Lazarus on the computer?’ he said when they’d all stopped moaning. ‘They’re on the internet too.’
They sent Norrie and Lazarus an email, inviting them to play a game over the net, and surfed around looking at websites while waiting for an answer.
Within a short time it came through: ‘Hi, just got your message. We can play for about an hour, then Uncle needs to use the phone. Where will we meet you?’
Sam sent back an email with a website address, and soon they were playing a kind of space age battleships game.
After only half an hour Mac appeared at the door. ‘Sorry, fellas – I need to use the office.’ The expression on his face didn’t allow for argument, so they headed out to the verandah.
They were kicking their heels on the verandah rails when a vehicle came into view.
‘Hey, isn’t that Charles’s van?’ said George.
‘What’s he doing here?’ Sam frowned.
Sarah came out onto the verandah at the sound of the approaching engine. ‘Oh! I forgot to tell you. Your friend Charles Rowntree phoned yesterday and asked if he could come out. He wants to look for some native tree seedlings.’
‘’Ullo, ’ullo, ’ullo!’ Charles Rowntree unfolded his lanky frame from the driver’s seat and ambled towards them with a wave and a half-bow. ‘A welcoming committee! I am indeed honoured. And this must be your mother – I do hope the bonsai is behaving itself? How do you do, Mrs McAllister, it’s a pleasure, a pleasure!’ And he shook Sarah’s hand vigorously, eyebrows darting around his forehead and his ponytail whipping from side to side.
Sarah seemed as if she was trying hard not to laugh, and took Charles inside to meet Mac.
Tess looked at Sam and shook her head. ‘I don’t know what you’re so suspicious about. Even your mum likes him!’
Sam said nothing and shrugged. He was convinced there was something not quite right about Charles Rowntree, no matter how much the others all fell for him.
They had a cup of tea while Mac gave Charles directions around the property to places he would be likely to find interesting specimens.
‘That should keep you busy enough for two days, I reckon. You can camp in the single men’s quarters, and eat here with us, if you like. And the kids can show you around. Might stop you getting lost.’
‘Oh no, no, no, thank you very much, but I don’t want to be any trouble. I’ll be perfectly happy camping on that delightful little creek I crossed on my way in here, if that’s all right with you? I have all my gear with me. And I’m sure these good people have much better things to do than follow me around!’ Charles grinned at the others, his eyebrows doing their ferret imitation again.
‘Suit yourself. You may get wet though – there’s a cyclone watch on. Anyway, usual station rules, leave all the gates as you find ’em, and don’t pat the buffalo!’
With that, Mac and Sarah disappeared into the office again.
‘So this is Brumby Plains!’ said Charles, beaming at the remaining four. ‘Very nice little spread you have, I must say. And what do you do with yourselves all day, so far from town? There can’t be too many vans to pull up cliffs in your spare time?’
Tess, George and Darcy giggled. Sam pretended to be interested in some ants trying to make off across the table with a few grains of sugar.
‘We ride our horses, and go exploring and stuff,’ said George.
‘Yeah,’ said Darcy enthusiastically. ‘There’s heaps to do out here!’
‘Really?’ Charles made a face that looked like he didn’t believe them. ‘It doesn’t get boring, all those buffalo, nothing but miles of grass and trees? I suppose there’s the wildlife, wallabies and all that. How about birds? Any birdwatchers amongst you lot?’ Charles’s eyebrows were hurtling around his forehead.
‘Dad knows all the birds on this place,’ boasted George. ‘He reckons we’ve got a treasure chest of birds here.’
‘A treasure chest of birds, is that so? Oh yes – you told me about the … ah, the … spotted pigeon, was it?’
‘No! Not a pigeon, a dove!’ laughed Tess and George. ‘It was a banded fruit dove!’
‘Of course, of course, how silly of me. And where do you find them?’
‘Right where you’re going!’ said Darcy. ‘We saw some last week, when we went up to look at –’ He was cut short by Tess elbowing him, unfortunately right on his broken arm, and he yelped in pain.
‘Oops, sorry, Darce,’ said Tess brightly. ‘Did you tell Charles how you got your broken arm?’
A short while later they stood on the verandah watching Charles’s white van disappear in a cloud of dust towards the Escarpment.
‘He’s such a funny bloke,’ laughed George, shaking his head. ‘I thought his eyebrows were going to fly off his face!’
Tess and Darcy agreed, but Sam was obstinate in his opinion of Charles. ‘Yeah, well, I still reckon he’s suss. How many people come out here and don’t want to be shown around? And anyone can see it might rain – why would he want to camp outside?’
‘He probably just likes being on his own. He’s a bit strange, that’s all,’ shrugged George, who appreciated anyone with a sense of humour.
They didn’t see Charles again after that. He had obviously camped on the creek and headed back to town the next day as he had planned. Things looked pretty dull and boring.
Then, the day after Charles had left, George catapulted into the dining room where Sam and Darcy were playing Monopoly, and yelled excitedly, ‘Dad said the cyclone watch is cancelled, and we can go out for a drive tomorrow if we want!’ He looked over his shoulder, and dropped his voice. ‘Let’s go back to the cave now. We won’t get another chance before it gets too wet out there.’
Tess was in the office chatting to Norrie over the internet when she heard George’s news. She asked Norrie and Lazarus to come with them to see the cave.
‘No way, Tess – old Granpa would know about it. We’d get into too much trouble. You mob be careful anyway. Tell us all about it when you get back.’ Norrie signed off at her end.
They started making plans at once. This time Sam was leaving nothing to chance, and scrounged a torch for each of them. They made lunches and packed up the Landcruiser that night, and next morning were off early with copious warnings from Sarah and Mac about being careful and watching out for Darcy’s arm.
Darcy had the good grace to look embarrassed.
The air was heavy and humid, and a heat haze shimmered over the bare scorched sandstone on top of the Arm. They sweated up the top of the ridge to where the banyan root dropped into the cave, and stood looking down at the hole, all breathing heavily, their T-shirts plastered to their backs.
‘We can’t go down there today, not with Darcy’s arm. I didn’t even think about that.’ Sam swore, and sat on the ground. George and Tess slumped beside him, and Darcy looked like he wanted to roll himself into a little ball and hide in a hollow log.
‘Well,’ said Tess after a moment, ‘let’s have a really good look up here instead. There might be a lot more interesting stuff.’
They shouldered their packs again and wandered up the eroded watercourse towards the other side of the ridge.
‘It’s a lot narrower here,’ said George, looking north and south along the top of the ridge. The Arm was about five hundred metres wide or more for most of its length, but seemed to pinch in at the point where they were standing on the eastern side. ‘Looks like all this rock fell away at some time.’
They stood staring down at the maze of tumbled sandstone boulders.
‘Man, that must have been a landslide and a half. I wonder what made it fall?’ said George.
‘Looks like it happened a long time ago, though. Let’s go down there,’ said Tess. ‘Darcy, you wait here while we have a quick squiz …’
Within a few minutes they were standing near the bottom of the rockfall, peering into a small dark opening that was almost hidden by bushes and clumps of grass.
‘This might be another cave!’ exclaimed George excitedly. ‘C’mon, let’s have a look inside!’
They found the torches in their backpacks and squeezed inside the narrow opening. It was musty and dry inside, and they could make out the shape of fallen rock and debris. It just looked like a space under a landslide, and none too safe either. It smelled old, and small creatures scurried away from the torchlight.
‘I don’t know about this place. It doesn’t look very stable, does it?’ whispered Sam. He jumped as something scuttled across his foot.
George shone his torch in a wide arc and stopped. ‘What’s that over there – on the wall?’
Sam and Tess squinted in the gloom.
‘It looks like some of those paintings we saw in the other cave,’ said Tess.
‘Wow, maybe they’re all over the ridge!’
A faint voice reached them from outside, and Sam straightened up. ‘I forgot about Darcy. C’mon, we better not leave him by himself up there for too long. We’ll come back here another time,’ he said reluctantly.
They scrambled back up the rockfall to where Darcy waited, looking irritated.
‘Where’d you guys get to?’ he complained. ‘It’s not fair being stuck here by myself!’
‘Yeah, well, whose fault is that?’ demanded George.
They set off along the ridge again, heading south, following the scoured-out watercourse. After a while they came upon a patch of greenery, overhung by trees and creepers. In the middle of a rocky kind of basin, they could see the remains of a pool which was now just a muddy puddle. Tracks and little paths showed it was visited by much of the local wildlife.
‘Hey, this must be a spring!’ said Tess.
‘No wonder there’s usually so many birds up here,’ said Sam. ‘It’s probably the only water for miles. I guess it gets them through the last of the dry season, before it rains.’ He looked around at the silent bush and wondered aloud, ‘It’s weird that there are no birds now, though. There should be.’
He and Tess were moving around the edge when George suddenly stopped dead and said, ‘What’s this stuff?’
He had walked right into what looked like a giant spider web, only it was a lot stronger. They gathered round it, not immediately understanding what they were looking at.
‘This is weird stuff,’ said Darcy, fingering the fine netting. ‘You can hardly see it until you’re up close. It’s not some kind of cast net, is it? You know, for catching small bait fish?’
‘Why would anyone bring a fishing net up here? There’s no fish in the pool,’ said Tess.
She moved along the length of the net and stopped. ‘Oh! There are some birds caught up in it …’
Four or five little finches dangled above their heads, their tiny bodies caught in the filaments. All of them were dead. A fluttering suddenly shook the netting, and they realised there was another bird trapped in it. It was a banded fruit dove, and its feet and one wing were tangled in the netting. It flapped as Sam approached it, but as he laid his hands on it to disentangle it from the net it became quiet and still. He gently pulled it free, and it lay against his chest for a moment or two, and then flew away in a sudden explosion of wings.
They watched as it disappeared into the trees, and then George said, ‘Look at this! Sam, aren’t these like the sinker you found at the Pocket?’
He picked up one end of the net. Spaced evenly along the bottom edge were several lead weights, smaller than the one Sam had found at the Pocket, but otherwise of the same design. Sam felt his stomach turn over, but he also felt a surge of anger.
‘This isn’t a fishing net – it’s for catching birds! Look! It’s set up in front of these trees, so that when the birds fly down to drink, they get caught in it.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Tess. ‘I read about that in the newspaper. The birds get caught in Australia, and then they’re smuggled overseas. People pay big money for wild birds.’
‘And lots of them die,’ she added, touching the little feathered bodies of the finches.
‘We better get Dad up here to see this. I bet that’s what Charles has been doing. He’s not looking for plants, he’s trapping birds! No wonder he didn’t want anyone to come with him!’
They hurried back along the ridge to the banyan tree and climbed back down the rocky slope to where they’d left the Landcruiser. Sam drove home as fast as he dared, only to find the place practically deserted. Old Jock met them on the verandah, his face a picture of shock and outrage.
‘Yer parents have gorn to town. The bank – the flamin’ bank has foreclosed on ’em! They’re gunna sell us up!’ He sat down heavily in a chair and shook his head.
‘A few hours ago that lawyer feller phoned, sayin’ that the bank had delivered a foreclosure notice to him, so Mac and Sarah had to rush straight in. They said they’ll ring you fellers later, so we’ll just sit tight till then, okay?’
Everyone was miserable. They were in the dining room, picking at a lunch no one felt like eating, when the phone rang. Mac explained to Sam what was happening, and said he and Sarah would be back in a day or so, as soon as they had sorted something out.
‘The rivers have come up since we came to town, too, so we’ll be stuck here for at least another day. Just ring us if there are any problems. Hopefully we can sort this out by then. And, Sam? Don’t worry, okay?’
Sam repeated his dad’s news to the others afterwards. ‘Dad said that we had to borrow a lot of money a couple of years ago, when we built the new yards and got the grader and stuff. We got behind in the repayments this year, but Mum and Dad talked to the bank and it seemed to be all right. But now the bank wants the loan paid back. It’s going to sell the station to get its money.’
‘They can’t do that, can they?’ asked Tess in disbelief.
‘That’s why Mum and Dad had to go in and see the lawyer, to try and stop them.’
They sat around the table in silence. Finally George broke it. ‘Did you tell Dad about the netting up on the ridge?’
‘No,’ replied Sam. ‘It was pouring in Darwin. I could barely hear him. Besides, he’s got more important things to worry about, I reckon.’ He was silent for a bit longer, then said, ‘There’s nothing we can do about the bank. But we’ll have to go back up to the ridge and take that net down, before it catches any more birds.’
They headed off straight away, leaving Jock a note on the table. The sky was overcast and rain was drifting across the flood plains in long dark streamers, but it still looked dry up towards the ridge. Sam parked the Landcruiser at the foot of the Arm and they set off up the rocky hill. It was much hotter than it had been that morning, but no one noticed it now. They reached the top, passed by the banyan, and headed south along the ridge top back to the pool.
Maybe it was because they were all so preoccupied with the awful news from town. They trudged along with their heads down, not concentrating, and that was why they almost blundered straight into the two men beside the spring. Sam, his ears still keen even when his mind was somewhere else, heard strange voices and stopped the others just in time. They dropped silently behind some bushes. They could hear two voices quite clearly now.
‘… there won’t be any more pick-ups by boat till next season. Said it’s too dangerous now, too many storms.’
‘So it’s a plane tonight?’
‘Yeah. Same place – at least we don’t have to clear the strip again. Bit risky, if y’ask me. Too many people could hear the plane, I reckon. Like them blackfellers next door, hear everythin’.’
Sam and Tess peered through the dry grass.
‘It’s that sleazy guy from the markets,’ Tess breathed, and Sam nodded.
‘And Stinkin’ Jerry’s son, Nigel,’ he whispered back.
‘What are they doing?’ George and Darcy lay on the ground behind Sam and couldn’t see.
‘Looks like they’re moving the net to a different spot. Shh!’
‘We’ll check this one just on dark, and then pack the birds in the tubes before we go to the airstrip. Plane comes in about ten o’clock so we gotta get the lights for the strip ready, and then that’s it,’ they heard Nigel say.
‘Won’t be too soon fer me. I’ve ’ad a gutful of the bush. I just wanna get me money, get back to town, and hit the pub.’ The sleazy guy slapped at a mosquito and swore. ‘They better send some decent carvin’s this time too. Them last ones were rubbish. Had a lotta trouble sellin’ ’em at the markets.’
‘Yeah, well, I reckon I’ll be glad to finish up. We’re losin’ too many birds now anyway, in this heat. B’sides, I reckon McAllister’s getting a bit suss. Me old man’s already covered up for us a coupl’a times, blamin’ ’em for droppin’ the fence and stuff. It’s gettin’ too risky, if y’ask me. Russell shoulda stopped at the last load.’
Darcy wasn’t usually afraid of spiders, but this one was crawling along his broken arm, and when he shook it off, he banged his arm into a rock and gave a yelp. Immediately the two men stiffened and looked up.
‘Oi! Look out!’ shouted Nigel.
Sam, Tess, George and Darcy jumped to their feet and ran. They ran as fast as they could, straight back down the ridge, dodging and weaving through the low scrub along the dried-up watercourse. They could hear the shouts as the men pursued them, and they ran even faster.
As they came near the narrow section of the ridge, Sam yelled, ‘Quick, over the side!’ and they plunged down the rockfall, sliding and tumbling, scrabbling furiously. They pressed into the opening they had been looking into that morning and stopped, chests heaving and eyes wide with shock. They stayed silent in the dark, not wanting to even think about what nasty creepy crawlies might be in the little cave. They could hear the men shouting to each other up above, casting back and forth trying to see where they had gone. Finally the voices receded, until all was silent for a while.
Sam shrugged off his pack and fished out his torch, and it was then they realised with horror that Darcy was not in the cave with them.
‘Oh my God!’ gasped Tess. ‘We left him behind! I thought he was right behind me. He mustn’t have been able to get down the rockfall with his broken arm.’ She sagged to the floor and put her head on her knees. ‘What are we going to do?’
Sam dropped to the floor beside her. What a mess! If only he hadn’t brought them up here this morning, they wouldn’t have returned and run into those men. If only they had stayed away from the cave like Vincent had warned him. He couldn’t imagine what was happening to Darcy.
‘We have to get back to the house and call the police. But we can’t climb up the rockfall, they’ll be looking for us,’ said George grimly.
Tess sniffed and said, ‘What do you think they’ll do to Darcy?’
‘It’s okay, Tess. We’ll think of something. C’mon, let’s have a look around here. Maybe there’s another way out,’ said Sam, sounding more hopeful than he felt.
He stood up and moved a little further inside the cave, shining his torch around. Past the fallen rock, it was quite large. All over the walls were paintings similar to those in the first cave. He was puzzled. He had never seen this cave in his life, but he had the strangest feeling he had been here before. There was something familiar about the shape of it …
Tess and George had their own torches out of their packs now, and lit up the interior of the cave more brightly.
‘Wow – look at these paintings. They’re like those other ones, only …’ Sam stopped and peered more closely at the wall. ‘What do you think that’s supposed to be?’
Tess and George stopped at Sam’s shoulder and stared.
‘Looks like men on horses. Must be white blokes, I guess … maybe it’s a picture of a muster?’ ventured George.
Tess shone her torch around the wall, lighting up a lot more paintings. ‘All those people falling down with their mouths open … and the people on horses are pointing sticks at them … hey, this is a picture of a war or something. Those white people are shooting the black ones!’ She stared at the wall and shook her head.
They were all quiet for a moment, contemplating the awful scenes before them.
‘I didn’t know anything like that happened around here,’ said Sam. ‘Maybe that’s why Old Vincent doesn’t talk about the old days?’
He moved away from the wall towards the centre of the cave to scan the rest of the area for a possible way out. His foot crunched on something and he shone the torch down. In the bright white beam, a human skull grinned up at him, and he gave an involuntary shriek and jumped backwards.
‘It – it’s a skeleton!’
Tess and George were pressed close beside him, and he slowly shone the torch back down again, his heart hammering inside his chest so loudly he was sure it could be heard up on the ridge. A skeleton lay on the floor of the cave. It looked like it had been there a very long time, centuries maybe. The bones were picked clean, but otherwise not disturbed. It lay beside the remains of a fire, it seemed, and there was a tattered old piece of cloth near it.
‘What’s that shiny thing, next to its arm?’ whispered George, who was holding on to Sam’s shirt tightly.
Sam shone his torch more directly at the object, and froze. His heart, which had started to slow again after the initial shock of finding the skeleton, now did a double backflip and almost stopped. Just past what must have been the finger bones of the skeleton lay the coloured stone which he had dreamt about. Suddenly he realised why the cave felt familiar. It was the cave in his dream, where the old man was sitting by the fire singing, and where he had given Sam that same stone.
He stooped down and gently picked it up. It felt like the right thing to do. ‘I know how to get out of here,’ he said.
Sam led them towards the back of the cave, climbed over a few boulders, and then disappeared. George and Tess heard a strange flapping noise that started off loud and close and gradually died away, and then Sam’s voice called to them. They stooped to see his torch beam shining from the other side of a narrow opening. They had to wriggle and slide their way through, and crawl on their hands and knees until the ceiling rose enough for them to stand. The air was warm and thick with the pungent odour of bats.
Sam moved slowly ahead of them, and for many minutes they gingerly stepped into the blackness with only their torches to split the dark. Gradually they could see some light, and as they moved towards it, they felt the air grow fresher as the light grew stronger. After a few minutes, they stopped in disbelief. They were in the cave below the banyan tree!
‘Sam, how –?’ Tess stared at him in amazement. Sam just shook his head. He wasn’t sure if anyone would believe him, about his dream and an old Aboriginal man – but the stone in his pocket was real.
‘What’s that?’ George was shining his torch onto something that lay against the cave wall.
‘Hey, I saw that the first time we were in here, just before you dropped the torch when the bats flew out. I wonder what it is?’ Sam squinted in the gloom and went to move towards the bulky shape.
‘No – not now – c’mon, we have to get help!’ Tess said anxiously, and moved over to the bottom of the banyan root.
They climbed up carefully. There was no sign of anyone else, and they could hear nothing, so they quietly picked their way down the ridge to where the Landcruiser was parked under a tree. Sam stripped off his backpack as they ran towards it, tossed it in the open tray and jumped into the cabin. He pushed in the clutch, gripped the steering wheel with one hand and reached for the key with the other. The key was gone.
‘Where’s the key? I left it right here! It –’
Suddenly the doors were flung open on both sides, and rough hands dragged the three of them from the vehicle.