The Road to Winter (16 page)

‘They don't even know if she's real or not. I believe Finn, but Tusker and the others don't. They're not prepared to take the chance, even to get another girl and a baby.'

I can hear the anger in Stella's voice. ‘Well, I'm going to help her, Harry. I swear to God, I'm going to. I don't give a damn what the others think.'

‘They won't let you leave, Stell. They're watching us like hawks. They'd track you in no time and bring you back.'

‘And what about you, Harry?' she says, louder. ‘Are you going to lie down and let them trample all over us?'

‘You know it's not as easy as that. We've got Willow to consider. If I took off to look for the girl, you two wouldn't be safe. You know what Tusker's like.'

‘All right,' Stella says. She leaves a long silence than adds, ‘Help Finn and Kas, then. Help them escape.'

Harry is silent. Finally he says, ‘You know we'd lose them all. The three of them. They'd never come back to the valley.'

‘Four. There'd be four of them, God willing.'

I hear the lamp being blown out in the room and the house falls into darkness. I sit for a while, trying to understand everything I've heard. By the time I get to my feet my knees are cramping and I have to navigate carefully back to my room so I don't knock anything over.

I'm just about to close my door when Stella calls out.

‘Goodnight, Finn.'

The next afternoon, the decision is taken out of all our hands.

We've just finished lunch when we hear a gunshot. And—with my heart rising into my mouth—the low throttle of a trailbike. Harry reaches behind the dresser and pulls out a double-barrelled shotgun. He lays it on the kitchen table, along with a small bag.

‘Stell,' he says. ‘It's loaded and there are more cartridges in the bag.'

Seeing me standing in the doorway, he starts talking fast.

‘Finn, get Kas. Rachel's place is the one closest to the woolshed with the lemon tree in front. Get her out of here. Head
straight up the ridge, as high as you can. Keep climbing until you hit the old logging track. Turn right and eventually you'll get to Pinchgut Junction.'

He moves quickly toward the front door then but stops short of it.

‘Good luck, son,' he says.

Then he opens the door and steps outside.

The rumbling of the trailbike comes closer. I look out through a crack in the curtains and see a dozen Wilders standing in the yard. They're armed with an assortment of weapons, from chains to hoes and large knives.

I recognise Ramage immediately, straddling the trailbike, a rifle cradled in his arms. There is a bandage around his hand, and his face is bruised and swollen. There's bright tape around the fuel lines on the trailbike where I cut them. I curse myself for not having thought to slash the tyres too.

Ramage kills the motor and the whole valley is plunged into silence. The men of the community have gathered in front of the house, most of them unarmed.

Ramage grins. ‘Well, well, well,' he says. ‘Ain't you been the sly ones, tucked away in your little valley here? Selfish bastards keeping this to yourselves.'

He sniffs the wind and makes a show of looking around the buildings.

‘Who's in charge here?'

Tusker moves forwards, but Harry holds him by the arm and calls out, ‘I am.'

‘And who might you be?' Ramage sneers.

‘Name's Harry.'

‘Harry. You hear that boys? Harry's in charge here. Well, Harry, my name's Benny Ramage and I'm pretty much in charge in this part of the country.'

‘Not in this valley, you're not.' Harry's voice is defiant.

I hear movement behind me and I turn to see Stella sitting Willow on the table and picking up the shotgun. She puts her finger to her lips and softly clicks the breach into position. She signals for me to look after Willow, then she slips out the back door with the gun.

‘You've got fuck-all chance against us, Harry, and you know it,' Ramage continues. ‘You're not fighters, you're farmers. And Christ knows we need farmers, so we don't want to hurt you.'

Ramage lets the silence sit for a minute until he says, ‘We could leave you in peace here. But you've got something we want. A boy and a girl. She's a Siley and she belongs to me. We been trackin' them from the coast. The boy tried to kill me last week.'

Again, he leaves the words to hang in the air. I need Harry to stall him. I have to find Kas, but I've got Willow to look after now, too. She has walked across the room and is standing on her tiptoes to see out the window.

‘What's happening, Finn?' she whispers. ‘Why is Daddy talking to those men?'

‘We're all just playing a big game,' I say. ‘We're going to hide and the others will try to find us.'

‘Where's Mummy?'

‘Mummy's hiding,' I say, thinking as quick as I can, ‘and we have to sneak out the back as quiet as mice to find her.'

I take her by the hand and move towards the back door. There's a loaf of bread on the dresser that I break in half, shoving a piece into each pocket. It's cold outside. The house backs onto a small holding yard for cattle. It gives us some cover as we move past the side of the house and turn towards the first in the row of sheds. It's awkward running with Willow so I pick her up and piggyback her. She holds on tight around my neck.

When we reach the safety of the woolshed I look back to the men in front of the house. They're still talking.

I pick up movement off to their right. Stella is crouched behind the rusted wreck of a tractor. She has the stock of the shotgun resting against her shoulder and the barrel on the metal seat. She sees us and waves us to keep going.

I run along the back of the shed, but as I turn the corner a hand reaches out from one of the chutes and pulls me down. Willow gives out a little yelp as we stumble and fall sideways. I feel the full force of a body land on top of us and a hand clamps over my mouth.

‘It's me.'

‘Kas!'

‘What's going
on
over there?'

‘Ramage,' I say.

I barely get the words out when a blast from a shotgun echoes across the valley, so close I know it must be Stella. There's shouting, then and the sound of a fight, metal on metal, and
another blast from the shotgun.

‘Come on.' Kas says. ‘This is our chance.'

‘But he's got a trailbike.'

‘I've got something better than that,' she says.

She drags me up by the hand and I pull Willow along behind me. The sheep yards are like a maze. We dodge our way through them and out into the home paddock. Kas leads us along a fence to the back of another shed. She pulls a sheet of corrugated iron aside and squeezes through. I pass Willow in to her, then follow. There's a stall off to the side where a horse stands snorting steam in the cold air. He's jumpy with all the noise, but Kas soothes him. She slips a bridle on and passes the reins over his head.

‘Whoa there, Yogi,' she says.

She takes Willow by the hand and opens the stall, while I climb onto the bales and look outside. The fight is still raging in front of Harry's place. I can see a couple of bodies on the ground. There's no sign of Stella behind the tractor and Ramage's trailbike lies on its side in the mud. We've got no chance of getting out of the shed without being seen.

Kas has mounted the horse and has Willow in front of her. She's showing her how to grip the mane. I climb back down and swing my leg over to sit behind Kas.

‘Trust me, Finn,' she says. ‘Whatever I say, just do it.'

‘They'll see us! They have to.'

‘Which way do we go? What's the safest way?'

I remember Harry's advice.

‘We head up towards the ridge and climb as far as we can.
If we get to the tree line before Ramage, the trailbike won't be able to follow.'

Kas swings around, trying to understand what I'm saying. Then she leans forward and says, ‘You hear that, Yogi Bear. He says we gotta make it to the trees. Hold on tight, Willow.'

Then she turns to me. ‘Ready?'

Before I get the chance to answer, she digs her heels into Yogi's flanks. He skitters sideways then bursts out into the daylight.

The fight is going on about twenty metres away and everyone seems to stop when they see us. Harry is still standing, and so is Tusker. We're not quite at full gallop when we pass them.

Ramage is the first to react. He moves towards the trailbike. I hear the motor cough a couple of times before it takes. But the noise dies again and I see Harry dragging Ramage from the bike. Kas is leaning forwards, one arm around Willow and the other gripping the reins. We are at full gallop now and heading straight for a railing fence leading to the river paddock.

‘Move with me,' Kas yells. ‘And hang on!'

Yogi barely misses a step, launching us into the air. I lift off his back altogether but manage to hold onto Kas, who is leaning so far forward she must be squashing Willow. When we land I come down hard and I begin to slip off. Kas reaches around and drags me back into balance.

The paddock is rising steeply towards the trees and she urges Yogi on.

There's still no movement from the houses. I keep expecting to hear the roar of the trailbike. Yogi slows, feeling the incline
and the weight of our three bodies, but Kas digs her heels in again and we're in the trees.

The undergrowth is patchy, allowing us to move through at a good pace, but before long the mimosa and bracken fern thicken and we have to slow to a walk. Yogi suddenly seems big and cumbersome in the forest. His flanks are lathered in sweat.

Kas slides off his back and I follow. Willow still hasn't said anything, and I wonder if she saw Harry in the fight.

We try to get a view back to the houses, but since we're only fifty metres into the trees we'll have to keep moving. Above the sound of the wind in the canopy I hear the distinctive revving of the trailbike. Back down in the paddock I spot Ramage riding along the tree line. He revs the bike then veers downhill towards the farmhouses. Through the trees I can just make out a lone figure running up the hill towards us.

It's Stella.

She must have seen us riding off with Willow and has tried to follow. But Ramage has other ideas. He reaches her easily and circles her, his back wheel spitting up a cloud of dust and dirt. Stella keeps edging forwards, but Ramage is tightening the circle. He swoops in and tries to kick her, but Stella jumps out of the way.

While Kas and I have been watching the confrontation below, Willow has slid down off Yogi's back. She starts running in the direction of the paddock, calling to her mother.

I take off after her, but Kas yells, ‘Leave her! There's nothing we can do. We've got to take our chance now.'

I'm torn. With just the two of us on Yogi we could move
quickly, maybe make it to Pinchgut Junction before any of Ramage's men and be back in Angowrie by tomorrow. But then I think of Harry and Stella, and how they protected me. And Willow's just a kid caught up in shit she doesn't understand.

Kas leads Yogi further uphill. I can't move; my eyes are fixed on the paddock. Ramage lands a kick to Stella's back and she stumbles. She's quick to her feet, though, and presses on up the hill, forcing Ramage into a wider circle.

Willow has broken cover and is running down towards her mother.

‘Sorry,' I say. ‘I can't leave them to fight on their own.'

Kas looks at me, then back at the paddock. Without a word, she turns Yogi around and in one movement she's on his back.

‘Keep climbing,' she says to me, before digging her heels into Yogi, urging him down the slope.

Somehow she gets him to a canter, then a gallop, as she hugs his back and swings him left and right through the scrub, pulling the reins one way then the other, shifting her weight as Yogi responds to her.

In no time she's out of the trees and making straight for Stella, who has picked up Willow and is trying to protect her from Ramage. I'm not even sure if he sees Kas coming, there is so much dust in the air. Kas has Yogi at full stretch now and I worry she'll run right over the top of Stella and Willow.

But as she nears them, she slows Yogi, putting herself between Stella and Ramage, protecting them with the horse's bulk. Stella reacts fast, passing Willow up to Kas before climbing on herself.
I expect Kas to ride uphill towards me, but she circles back down towards Ramage, who has stopped and is straddling the trailbike with his feet on the ground. As they bear down on the bike, Yogi shies at the last second, almost dislodging Stella, but his flank hits Ramage and knocks him off the bike. Even from this distance I can hear Kas yelling at Ramage, who's lying on the ground, his arms protecting his head. Kas has Yogi skittering and pigrooting around him.

Finally she swings back uphill. When they reach the cover of the trees she slows and slides off to drag Yogi up by the reins. Back in the paddock, a couple of hundred metres from us, Ramage is on his feet again, leaning over and trying to right the trailbike.