This journey to Port Southern for stores meant that Mary would have to
remain alone in the hills until her husband returned. The cow and calf
had to be fed and looked after. They were valuable possessions, and
could not be left for fear they might wander away from the clearing and
get lost in the scrub. Besides, there were the fowls to feed, and the
crop to guard from the shy, bright-eyed, wild creatures, that already,
lopping out of the forest at dawn, had nibbled it down in places.
Cameron's eyes lingered on his wife as he answered her question. She
stood bareheaded before him, the afternoon sunlight outlining her figure
and setting threads of gold in her hair. The coming of the child had
made her vaguely dearer to him. This journey had not been mentioned
between them since Davey's birth. He had tried to put off making it,
ekeing out their dwindling supply of corned meat by shooting the brown
wallabys which came out of the trees on the edge of the clearing,
surprised at the sight of strange, two-legged and four-legged creatures.
They, and the little grey furry animals that scurried high on the
branches of the trees on moonlight nights, made very good food. Donald
Cameron had been told that no man need starve in the hills while he had
a gun, and there were 'possums in the trees. But neither he nor Mary
liked the strong flavour of 'possum flesh, tasting as it did, of the
pungent eucalyptus buds and leaves the little creatures lived on. He
shot the 'possums for the sake of their skins though, spread and tacked
the grey pelts against the wall of the house, and when the sun had dried
them, Mary stitched them into a rug. She had lined Davey's cradle with
them, too.
Donald made ready for his journey next day. During the morning he took
his gun down from the shelf above the door, cleaned it, and called his
wife out of doors. He showed her how to use it and made her take aim at
a tall tree at the end of the clearing.
"You must have no fires or light in the place after sundown," he said,
"and let the grub fires in the stumps die out. Bar the doors at night.
And if blacks, or a white man sets foot in the hut y've the gun. And
must use it! Don't hesitate. It's the law in this country--self-defence.
Every man for himself and a woman is doubly justified. You understand."
"Yes, of course," she answered.
"And I'll leave you the dog," he went on. "He's a good watch and'll give
warning if there's any danger about."
"Yes," she said.
When the morning came she went to the track in the wagon with him,
carrying Davey. She got down when they reached the track; he kissed her
and the child, and turned his back on them silently.
She stood watching the wagon go along the path they had come by from the
Port, until its roof dipped out of sight over the crest of the hill;
then she went slowly back along the threadlike path among the trees.
A white-winged bird flapped across her path; already fear of the
stillness was upon her. When she reached the break in the trees and the
clearing was visible, the hut on the brow of the hill had an alien
aspect. The air was empty without the sound of Donald's axe clanging in
the distance, or of his voice calling Lassie.
She was glad when Davey began to cry fretfully. But she could not sing
to him. She tried, and her voice wavered and broke. Every other murmur
in the stillness was subdued to listen to it.
The day seemed endless. At last night came. She closed and barred the
door of the hut at sunset, glancing towards the shelf where Donald had
put his gun. The firelight flickered and gleamed on its polished barrel.
Kneeling by the hearth she tried to pray. But her thoughts were flying
in an incoherent flight like scattered birds. Davey slept peacefully on
the bed among the grey 'possum furs she had wrapped round him. She
watched him sleeping for awhile, and then undressing noiselessly, lay
down beside him.
She did not sleep, but lay listening to every sound. The creak of the
wood of the house, the panting of the wind about it, far-away sounds
among the trees, the shrill cry of a night creature, every stir and
rustle, until the pale light of early dawn crept under the door, and she
knew that it was day again.
While she was busy in the morning she was unconscious of the world about
her, or the flight of the day, but when her work was done and she stood
in the doorway at noon, the silence struck her again.
All the long day there was a faint busy hum of insects in the air. It
came from the grass, from the trees--the long tasselled branches of
downy honey-sweet, white blossoms that hung from them. Yet this
ceaseless chirring of insects, the leafy murmuring of the trees,
twittering of birds in the brushwood, the murmuring of the wind in
distant valleys, the intermittent crooning and drone of the creek--all
the faint, sweet, earth voices dropped into the great quiet that brooded
over the place as they might have into a mysterious ocean that absorbed
and obliterated all sounds. The bright hours were rent by the momentary
screeching and chatter of parroquets, as they flew, spreading the red,
green and yellow of their breasts against the blue sky. At sunset and
dawn there were merry melodious flutings, long, sweet, mating-calls,
carollings and bursts of husky, gnomish laughter. Yet the silence
remained, hovering and swallowing insatiably every sound.
She gazed at the wilderness of the trees about her. From the hill on
which the cow paddock was she could see only the clearing and
trees--trees standing in a green and undulating sea in every direction,
clothing the hills so that they seemed no more than a dark moss clinging
close to their sides. In the distance they took on all the misty shades
of grey and blue, or stood purple, steeped in shadows, under a rain
cloud. She remembered how she had wondered what their mystery contained
for her when she had first seen them on the edge of the plains, and she
and Donald had set their faces towards them.
She looked down on the child in her arms, and realised that they had
brought him to her; from him, her eyes went to the brown roof of the hut
with its back to the hillside, a thread of smoke curling from its brown
and grey chimney, and to the stretches of dark, upturned earth before
it. They had brought her this too, all the dear homeness of it, and a
sense of peace and consolation filled her heart.
To throw off the spell of the silence she decided that she must work
again. But what to do? Donald had said no fires were to be lit in the
stumps because the smoke might attract wayfarers on the road, or
wandering natives to the clearing. She sang to the child, fitfully,
softly. Then, remembering the spinning wheel which stood in its muffling
cloths against the wall in the hut, she brought it into the sunshine and
laid Davey down on a shawl at her feet.
When she had a slender thread of yarn going and the spinning wheel began
its familiar, communicative little click-clatter, her mind was set to
old themes. She forgot place and time as her fingers pursued their
familiar track. A gay little air went fluttering moth-wise over her lips
to the accompaniment of the wheel, and the little tap tapping of its
treadles. She glanced at the child every now and then, laughing and
telling him that his mother had found the wherewithal to keep her busy
and gay, as a bonny baby's mother ought to be, and that the song she was
singing was a song that the women sang over their spinning wheels in the
dear country that she had come from, far across the sea.
But the shadows fell quickly. The birds were calling, long and
warningly, when she carried the wheel indoors, and busied herself for
the evening milking.
Wherever she went the dog that had come from the Port with them,
followed. He trailed in her footsteps when she went to the creek for
water, or to the cow paddock. He lay with watchful eyes on the edge of
the clearing, when she sat at her spinning in the afternoon, or walked
backwards and forwards crooning Davey to sleep.
At about noon on the fourth day while she was making porridge for her
midday meal, the dog started to his feet and barked furiously. He had
been lying stretched on the mat in the doorway. For a moment her heart
stood still. Then she went to the door.
"What is it, Jo?" she asked.
The dog's eyes were fixed on the trees and scrubby undergrowth to the
left of the hut. Every short hair on his lean body bristled. He growled
sullenly. Later in the afternoon, when she sat in the clearing spinning
and singing with Davey on his shawl beside her, he started to his feet
suddenly and snarled fiercely.
Mary looked at him again questioningly and her eyes flew to the edge of
the trees in the direction he pointed. No quivering leaf nor threatening
sound stirred the quiet. He subsided at her feet after a moment, but his
ears, kept pricked, twitched uneasily; his eyes never left the edge of
the trees. Once they twisted up to her and she read in them the clear
expression of a pitiful uneasiness, the assurance of deathless fidelity,
a prayer almost to go into the house.
She picked up the child and walked towards the hut. The dog followed,
glancing uneasily towards the edge of the clearing. She shut the door on
that side of the hut and went to the back door.
"Jo! Jo!" she called long and clearly.
He flew round to her.
Though her limbs trembled, Mary went up to the paddock and brought the
cow down to the shed. She milked, with Davey on her knees and the dog
crouched beside her; then, with the child on one arm and the milk pail
on the other, she went towards the house again.
She did not go down to the creek for water as she usually did.
"It's not because I'm afraid, Davey," she murmured, "but Jo would not
have barked like that for nothing. It was a warning, and it would not be
nice of us to take no notice of him at all."
As she left the shed the dog darted savagely away. She did not notice
that he was no longer at her heels until she had re-entered the hut. As
she was going to call him, the words died on her lips. Two gaunt and
ragged men stood in the doorway!