Brumby Plains (6 page)

Norrie glanced at Lazarus, and he said, ‘It's secret men's business. I only know that something really important got lost or stolen a long, long time ago. Without it the men can't have proper ceremony business. It makes them old people real sad.'

They all sat there not knowing what to say, until Darcy yelled out, ‘Hey, I've got a bite!' and jumped up from the bank to haul in his fishing line.

‘Keep the pressure on him, Darce! Don't let him spit the –!'

Lazarus's words were abruptly cut off by a huge silver explosion in the billabong. The limpid green water was churned into a froth by an enormous barramundi that leapt out of the pool twisting and arching in an effort to rid itself of the hook embedded in its mouth.

‘Wow, it's a beauty!' shouted Sam.

Darcy hauled back on the fish. It leapt and splashed mightily into the billabong several more times before it tired itself out and he was able to pull it in. Lazarus and George waded into the water to help drag the fish through the weeds, and then it was on the mud at their feet, a whole metre long, its shining silver scales tinged with green from the fresh water.

‘Wow, what a monster,' sighed Darcy.

‘That's the biggest fish I've ever seen! Wait till Dad sees this!' George was almost overcome with excitement.

Vincent and Jamerrie came up to them, their attention attracted by the shouting voices.

‘Hey, young fella! Some fisherman, this boy!' Vincent beamed at Darcy and bent to lift the fish up by its open mouth.

‘That's a good barra, my boy! Your dad gunna be real proud of you. We better get this one back home quick before he goes bad. You get your aunty to take a photo for you, eh? Come on now, we better clean this old fish …'

They brought a hessian sack down to the billabong and soaked it thoroughly before wrapping the fish in it after it was gutted. Evaporation would keep the fish cool until they got back to the homestead.

As they packed up the camp, Sam said to Vincent, ‘What did you see? Did you find the airstrip?'

‘Yeah, I found it. No one there now, just some track in the long grass, where somebody bin drive up and down so that plane could land. Dunno what they doing there, in the bush like that. Bit strange, eh?'

‘We better tell Dad. He'll know what to do.'

‘Yeah, ol' Mac will know. Well, come on, you mob! Let's get this fish of Darcy's home before the hawks find us!' And with that he shepherded them all into the back of the Toyota and they drove off.

 

Back at the homestead, the barramundi was duly exclaimed over and photographed, and half of it given to Vincent and his family to take home. After they had unpacked, they wandered down to the horse paddock to plan the next day's activities.

‘We're going back to the cave, aren't we?' asked George.

‘Yeah, but I don't think we should just yet. Dad'll think it's a bit strange if we keep going to the same place, don't you reckon?' Sam was feeling uneasy about going back to the cave after his conversation with Vincent the previous night, but he didn't think he could explain it to the others. ‘Why don't we take the horses out to the lake instead? We could go to the cave again in a few days, maybe.'

‘Cool!' Darcy was itching to show Sam just how good a rider he really was.

‘Let's do that!' Tess agreed.

George, who would have much preferred a drive in a car to a horse-ride any day, was outvoted and so resigned himself to tagging along with the others.

Sam went searching for his father, who had gone back inside the house, and found him in the office. Mac was staring out of the window, head in his hands, a stack of papers under his elbows.

‘You okay, Dad?' he asked hesitantly.

Mac started and stared at Sam. ‘Yeah, yeah, fine. Just thinking about this paperwork, that's all. So what's the story about the plane last night? You heard it too, Old Vincent said.'

‘Yeah, it was really weird. No lights or anything. I only heard it come in, but Vincent heard it go again. Must've been after I went back to sleep. What do you reckon it is?'

‘I don't know, but it can't be legal, that's for sure. I'll let the Coastwatch people know about it, but there's not much they can do, I'd reckon. Lots of planes sneak across the coast at night like that, and the patrols can't be everywhere at once. Could be drugs, illegal immigrants maybe.' Mac looked up a number in the directory and picked up the phone. Sam waited as his father spoke to someone in
Darwin, and then asked him another question when he put the phone down again.

‘Can we go riding tomorrow? Tess and Darcy really want to go out for a long ride, and if we go early while it's cool, we can stop in the middle of the day and come back in the late afternoon.'

‘Yeah, I don't see why not. Where do you want to go?'

‘Up to Goose Lake. We can take food and stuff in our backpacks, and there's still plenty of water in the lake for the horses.'

‘Okay. You organise it, but make sure the horses don't get knocked up. No galloping in this weather, just easy walking. And make sure the saddles come off when you stop at the lake.'

‘We will. Thanks, Dad!' Sam turned to race out the door, but paused and looked back at his father. ‘Dad? Is everything all right with the station? You and Mum seem really worried about the book work.'

Mac looked at him for a moment, and then said, ‘Well, I reckon you're old enough to understand what's happening, and you've got every right to know.' He paused and sighed heavily.
‘We borrowed a lot of money a few years ago, when it was easy to get. We had to build the yards, do a lot more fencing, buy the grader and so on. It's all part of the covenants of our lease. Last year the price of buffalo dropped, and then interest rates went really high. So while we're making less money, the bank wants even more money than before. Now we're having trouble meeting our interest payments. The bank's giving us a hard time about it at the moment.'

‘What will they do if we can't pay them?'

Mac looked tired suddenly. ‘Well, the worst they could do is force us to sell the station.'

‘We could lose the
station
?'

‘Not if I can help it. Don't you worry, they won't get Brumby Plains off us that easily.'

 

That night it rained heavily, and Sam lay in bed listening to the drumming on the roof and mulling over his conversation with his father. Despite Mac's assurances about not worrying, Sam couldn't help himself. He felt so powerless and helpless. There was so much he didn't understand about the world.
Everything seemed to be tricky or dangerous. What would happen to them if they had to leave Brumby Plains? How did adults ever know what was the right thing to do? Did you just suddenly become smart when you turned twenty-one, or did everyone else know something Sam didn't? Like with Vincent and the cave. The old man seemed to know that Sam and the others had been up there, but Sam couldn't be certain. He knew they probably shouldn't be going up there if Vincent was unhappy about it. But the lure of a cave, especially one that seemed so mysterious, with its paintings and its secret way in, was too hard to ignore.

Sam thought about the cave. The rain pelted the iron roof above him, and he wondered if it was also running down the roots of the banyan tree and dripping into the cave. The paintings on the wall puzzled him. They depicted some kind of disaster, surely, all those people lying on the ground. He shivered as he felt a breeze across his shoulders. The wind had picked up a notch or two, and it moaned like a lost soul. He looked out of the window but he couldn't see through it. There was a curtain of water cascading down from the roof and it flickered
and glimmered with an odd red light, which reflected back onto the sandstone walls around him, making the paintings appear to move and change …

He was in the cave. He could feel the grit of the earth floor beneath his bare feet, and the fine spray of moisture blowing into his face from the water cascading over the entrance was sharp and cold. His ears were filled with a terrible moaning sound as the wind howled past the opening. He turned around, noting that the red glow reflected by the curtain of water sealing him in was stronger toward the back of the cave. With a sense of foreboding he moved towards it. As he did so, the paintings on the walls seemed to shift and dance. They looked different, newer and fresher, brilliant blacks, vivid dark reds. The red colour glistened in the dim light, and he reached out a hand to touch a finger to the surface. It was wet. It was blood.

A sudden movement caught his eye. He turned his head to see a graceful black and white bird swoop through the curtain of water and soar around the cave, the flickering red glow turning its white head and breast to ruby. It was a banded fruit
dove. Before Sam could begin to wonder what it was doing in a cave, it swooped towards the back and disappeared into the shadows.

The moaning of the wind increased, only it wasn't the wind. A wailing, keening sound was coming from the back of the cave and dragged Sam unwillingly towards it. It seemed to be a long way in. The roof sloped down here, and Sam had to get on his hands and knees to crawl through. He emerged into a larger space and lay on his belly blinking in the firelight that danced and flickered before him.

A figure was hunched over a fire in the centre of the space, rocking slowly to and fro, and singing in a flat, reedy voice. The old Aboriginal man seemed not to notice Sam, and continued to chant in a monotone as Sam sat down on the other side of the fire and stared at him, his heart beating wildly. As the song came to an end, the old man raised his head. He lifted a gnarled claw of a hand and pointed to Sam, and then to the end of the cave Sam had come from. It seemed that the old man wanted him to leave, but as Sam rose to go, the old man stopped him and instead gave him a stone.

It was a piece of agate, waxy smooth, streaked with pink and black bands and an odd shaped white patch. The old man closed Sam's fingers around the stone, and held his hand in his own twisted, knotted ones for a moment. His eyes looked at Sam, yet his gaze was not focused, and Sam realised that he was blind. The stone felt strangely warm and wet in his hands, and he glanced down to see with horror that blood was dripping through his fingers. It soaked the legs of his jeans, and puddled around his bare feet, and ran in rivulets across the floor of the cave –

Sam sat up in bed with a start. The window was open and rain had soaked his sheets, wetting his feet and legs. He kicked off the wet bedding and closed the louvres, then hunted round for his torch. The generator was always turned off at night to conserve fuel, so there was no electricity, and he desperately needed some light. The dream had left him shaken and disoriented. He found the torch, and its bright yellow beam lit up the walls of his bedroom and the rain-soaked sheets. There was no blood, no stone, no old, blind Aboriginal man.

Sam lay back, his heart still pounding in his chest. The rain eased and the wind died down, and through the stillness that followed he heard the long moaning call of a curlew, and remembered Vincent telling him the birds were the spirits of dead people. The hair stood up on the back of his neck. He shivered, reached over and dragged a cover off the spare bed and curled up under it, feeling very sad.

Next morning, the rain was gone, the water soaked up by the thirsty ground, leaving little trace of the storm during the night.

‘Come on, Sam!' cried George, bursting into his room when it was still dark. ‘Let's get going – it'll be too hot to ride far soon!'

Sam had not slept at all well. The strangeness of his dream had kept him awake through the night. He rolled out of bed, got dressed, and
followed the sound of voices to the kitchen, where Tess and Darcy were already packing some lunch.

‘Hey, you're slow today. I thought you'd be out catching the horses by now,' said Darcy as he put apples and oranges into a backpack. ‘Are you going to ride Saxon?'

Sam shook cornflakes into a bowl and splashed some milk over them. He really didn't feel very hungry.

‘Yeah, I guess so. Mum hasn't ridden him for a while and he needs a good walk, she said. Who do you want to ride?'

Darcy shrugged. ‘Gidget's getting a bit small for me. I'd rather ride something with a bit more pace, like Saxon.'

Tess rolled her eyes at her brother.

‘Gee, Darce, you think you're such an ace rider. You know you couldn't ride Saxon in a fit! And Aunty Sarah'd never let you anyway.'

‘Shut up, Tess! I could so ride him if I had the chance. I'm as good a rider as Sam. I just don't get to do it as often. Anyway, I didn't mean I wanted to ride Saxon today. Sam's taking him. I could ride
Toby. Or Sabre.' Darcy looked at Sam, who frowned at his cereal bowl.

‘You could take Sabre. He's a bit harder to hold than Gidget, so you'll have to watch him. We're not going to be doing any racing though – it's too hot, and it'll knock the horses around. Dad said we can go so long as we rest up in the middle of the day, and take the saddles off them at the lake.'

George came back into the kitchen with Old Jock the Fencer, and grinned broadly at the others.

‘We caught all the horses already, so hurry up, you mob – the day's nearly over! Mum and Dad have already gone out checking the bores, and you're still mucking around here like a lot of old grannies.'

Jock poured himself a cup of tea, and sat next to Sam at the table.

‘Now you keep an eye on these young 'uns, Sam, me lad. Yer mum 'n dad won't be real pleased if you don't all come back in one piece. They said they'd be back by dark, so make sure yer home before 'em, or we'll all be in hot water.'

Jock helped with the saddling up, and they were gone before the sun had risen more than a finger width above the horizon. It was only about ten
kilometres out to the lake, an easy walk while it was still fairly cool. Sam led the way on Saxon, his mother's big brown stallion, stretching out an easy swinging pace that the other horses followed. Darcy was riding Sabre, but eyed Sam jealously, unable to keep from feeling bitter about everyone regarding him as a lesser rider than his cousin. Tess was beside Sam on Shona, a quiet chestnut mare with a white nose and a sweet nature, while George brought up the rear on Gidget, a step up for him from little fat Polly. George liked horses well enough, but he really thought that motor vehicles were the only way to travel. ‘At least with cars you've got proper brakes and steering,' he would argue. ‘The brakes and steering on a horse don't always work like they're supposed to.'

Sam was tired. He slumped a little in the saddle as he settled into the rhythm of the stallion's gait, and thought over the strange dream of the previous night. It must have been a combination of the stories Vincent had told them the other night, and not enough sleep, and a good deal of feeling guilty about the cave in the first place, he decided. They shouldn't have been up there, and they'd be in heaps
of trouble if anyone found out. But he had to go back to the cave; it was something he felt both compelled and afraid to do.

They walked along at a steady pace, chatting idly, enjoying the early morning coolness and the freshness of the air after the night's rain. Corellas and cockatoos screeched from the trees above them, interspersed with raucous kookaburras and softly cooing doves. Time was stretching out like a long rubber band. Sam felt as if he had been rolling along on his horse for centuries, as if he was walking back into history, and he wasn't surprised when the old black man stepped out from behind a tree as he rounded the next bend, holding out his hand with the coloured stone in it. As Sam leant over to take the stone from him, the old man grabbed his arm and jerked him hard –

‘Whoah, Sam! Are you okay? You looked like you were falling off!'

Tess's face swam into view as Sam blinked and shook his head. He was seated on Saxon still, Tess had hold of his arm, and the old man was nowhere to be seen. A black and white bird flew into the branches of a nearby tree.

‘Jeez, I must've dozed off. I'm pretty tired – didn't get a lot of sleep last night.'

Tess frowned at him and leaned towards him. ‘You're not getting sick, are you? You look a bit pale. Do you want to go home?'

‘No way! I'm fine. I just got a bit sleepy, that's all. Come on, let's go.'

He nudged Saxon into a walk again, and shook his head. Why did he keep dreaming about this old man and the stone? It was all really strange.

Tess looked at him doubtfully, but rode along beside him. George and Darcy had overtaken them and were a few hundred metres further ahead. They ambled along for another hour or so, then angled off the road onto a track that wound through bushes and trees until it abruptly crested a hill and the lake was below them, a slab of silver glass in a green frame. A gate barred their way.

‘Where's all the buffalo?' asked Darcy as George opened the gate to let them ride through. ‘Aren't they usually hanging around this lake?'

‘We fenced it off a couple of months ago. Dad said they were muddying it up too much, so now we pump the water into a trough outside the fence.
He said that way the wildlife and the birds can still get a drink.' George made a face. ‘Stinkin' Jerry next door said we were just wasting money, that the buffalo were more important than a bunch of wallabies and parrots. Reckons he could show us how to run a buffalo station properly. I'd like to show
him
something one day …' and he kicked the gatepost.

At the lake they unsaddled the sweating horses and let them drink, and then tethered them in the shade. George and Darcy lit a fire, and they boiled a billy to make some tea. They sat in the shade for a while, talking and eating and drinking tea from pannikins.

‘Let's walk around the lake,' said Tess. ‘I haven't been here for so long, I'd forgotten how pretty it is.' She stood up, picking up her hat, and Darcy and George joined her.

‘Come on, Sam!'

‘Nah, I'm going to have a sleep. I'm stuffed.'

And Sam pulled his hat over his face and lay back in the shade on the grass. The others wandered off, and Sam listened to their voices receding as he faded off to sleep.

 

‘Sam! Sam, wake up!'

Sam was jerked from a deep and dreamless sleep by Tess shaking him.

‘Where's Darcy?'

‘Darcy? He went off with you guys, didn't he?' Sam struggled to sit up, rubbing his face and blinking at her.

‘That was ages ago,' said George. ‘He didn't want to go all the way round the lake with us. Didn't he come back here?'

Sam got to his feet. ‘I've been asleep since you left.' He stared around at the bush, the lake, their backpacks on the ground, the horses in the shade of the trees …

‘Oh no …'

‘What? Can you see something?' Tess tried to see what he was looking at.

‘Saxon's missing too!' Sam was worried now. ‘Darcy must've taken him for a ride while I was asleep! Stupid idiot – he'll get himself killed!'

They saddled up the other horses while Sam scouted around and found a set of fresh hoof prints leading away from them. They followed a rough track through the trees, winding and
twisting for a couple of kilometres. It took them ages to follow the hoof prints, picking their way slowly and carefully, making sure they didn't miss anything.

‘Oh no!' said Sam, pulling his horse up and bending down to look at the ground. ‘He's not walking anymore. Saxon's started to gallop …'

At last they came upon Saxon standing quietly under a tree. Nearby, looking ashamed and defiant at the same time, was Darcy. He was huddled on the ground nursing his arm, and had a cut on his head which was bleeding profusely down the side of his face.

‘Darcy!' Tess jumped off her horse and hurried over to her brother. ‘Are you all right? How could you be so stupid! You could have been killed, you idiot! Let me look at your head.' She parted his hair and inspected the damage. ‘It's not a deep cut but it might need stitching. We'll have to get you home now.'

Sam and George helped him to his feet. ‘Ow!' cried Darcy. ‘My arm really hurts!'

‘Great! Broken arm as well. You're a star, Darce. We'll probably never be allowed out on our own
again after this. What happened?' Tess was really angry.

Darcy tried to look defiant, but his voice came out as a squeak. ‘Well, Sam wouldn't have let me ride Saxon if I'd asked him …'

‘I told you, he's really fussy about who gets on him.' Sam was inspecting Saxon, and satisfied himself that the stallion was unharmed. ‘It's not
me
who wouldn't let you ride him, it's Saxon.'

‘Come on, let's go home. We'll probably be grounded for a hundred years now,' predicted George gloomily. ‘Good on you, Darce.'

It seemed to take forever to walk back to the lake, pack up their things and make their way home. They walked the horses slowly so as not to jar Darcy's arm too much, stopping several times to give him a drink of water, and arrived home just after dark. Mac and Sarah were home already, so all hell, as they had expected, broke loose. Sarah drove Darcy into Darwin to the hospital straight away. Sam and Tess went with her, while George elected to stay at home with Mac.

They arrived in town late that night, and after getting Darcy's arm seen to at the hospital, they
stayed at the Munros' house in Fannie Bay. If the empty house and his broken arm made Darcy miss his parents, he was too ashamed of himself to mention it. The next morning was Saturday. Sarah had to take Darcy back to the hospital, so Sam and Tess decided to go to the markets. As they walked along the streets to the Parap village centre, Tess remembered something.

‘Hey – we found some funny stuff at the lake yesterday. I guess I forgot to tell you in all the rush. After Darcy left us, George and I kept walking and we came across this pile of dead birds.'

‘Dead birds? Why were they dead?'

‘We couldn't tell. It didn't look like they'd been shot or anything; there was no blood. Just these little bodies all heaped together near the lake. Still pretty fresh – I mean, nothing had been eating them yet, so they couldn't have been dead for too long.'

‘What kind of birds were they?'

‘A bit of everything, really – a few peaceful doves, some bronzewings, some finches, a couple of parrots. I think there were about fifteen or twenty altogether. There was one of those banded fruit doves, too.'

Sam looked at Tess. Something prickled at the
back of his mind. ‘That's funny … What would kill that many birds in one spot?'

‘That's not all we found,' Tess went on. ‘Further round the lake we saw all these tyre tracks, and a campsite, where someone had a fire. Some beer cans too. And we found a big sinker. George picked it up. He said you'd found one like it down at the Pocket a few weeks ago?'

‘Yeah, I did. Dad thought it was a fishing sinker, but he wasn't too worried about it. Hah – maybe some tourists were trying to catch a fish in the lake. Or it could have been those pig shooters that Old Vincent was talking about.'

‘I suppose so. Still, I wonder what could have killed those birds?'

They walked on in silence till they reached the markets. The humid air was heavy with spicy fragrances and the crowded stalls bright with colourful vegetables and fruits. Sam ordered stuffed chicken wings, and a steaming bowl of seafood laksa while Tess lined up for a vegetarian Laotian pancake. Balancing a tofu curry and a pawpaw salad as well, she joined Sam at a wooden table under a shady rain-tree.

‘I wonder where Charles is?' said Sam when they'd finished eating. ‘I can't see his plant stall around …'

Tess scanned the busy stalls and shook her head. ‘Let's ask the guy who was next to him the other week.'

They wandered over to where a man was chopping green coconuts with an extremely large machete.

‘The bonsai bloke? Ah, he's the mystery man,' laughed the coconut chopper. ‘Never know when he'll turn up next. Always out bush – don't know how he stays in business! Some people have it easy, not like the rest of us who have a job during the week as well. He could be here next Saturday, if you want to try then, but I can't promise you anything. Want to buy a coconut drink?'

They had a last look around the markets, bought a mango smoothie each and headed back to Tess's house.

‘That sleazy little bloke who knocked Aunty Sarah's crystal into the gutter isn't here either, so I suppose that's a plus,' noted Tess as they left.

On the way home they took a different route, and found themselves walking past Charles's house.

‘Why don't we go in and say hello?' suggested Tess. ‘Ask him why he's not at the markets.'

‘Maybe his van fell off another cliff,' muttered Sam.

Charles wasn't home. In fact the house looked completely deserted. But as they were leaving the verandah, Sam grabbed Tess's arm. ‘Look! There's some of those same sinkers we've found out at the station!'

On a table near the doorway, amongst some bonsais and earthenware pots, was a small wooden box containing about a dozen large steel shapes.