The summer of Davey's first year's work with his father was the driest
the early settlers had known in the South.
A breathless, insistent heat brooded over the hills, their narrow
valleys and the long, bare Wirree plains. The grass stood stiff and
straw-like by the roads and in the cleared paddocks, rustling when
anything moved in it. Hordes of straw-coloured grasshoppers lay in it,
whistling and whispering huskily, or rose with whirring wings when
anything disturbed them. The skies, faded to grey, gave no promise of
rain, and when the sun set it left a dull, angry flush--the colour of a
black snake's belly--behind the hills.
The lesser mountain streams dried up. The creek that ran through
Cameron's paddocks became a mere trickle. There was only one deep pool
left of it. In that only enough water remained to keep the household
going for a month, when Donald Cameron mustered, and he, Davey, and the
stockmen drove the cattle to the Clearwater River, ten miles away to the
south-west. It was still in good condition and Cameron held three
hundred acres of the river frontage there. He was better off than most
of the hill folk who, after driving their cattle a dozen miles or so for
water, had to pay high prices for paddocks to run them in.
Every man of Cameron's was away at the Clearwater, and Mrs. Cameron and
Jenny alone at the homestead, the afternoon that Deirdre came riding up
out of the misty depths of the trees.
For days a heavy, yellowish-grey haze had covered the hills. Mrs.
Cameron could not from her doorway see the slopes of the ranges behind
the house. The mist hung like a pall over the trees, seeming to stifle
the wild life of them. Not a twitter of birds was heard. Parroquets,
breaking the dun-coloured mist with the scarlet and blue and green of
their wings and breasts, dashed over the clearing, chattering hoarsely.
Now and then they rose from the orchard with shrill screams, as Jenny
drove them away from the few shrivelled plums left on the trees by
flapping a dish-cloth at them. The air was full of the smell of burning.
"The fires have been bad on the other side of the ranges," Deirdre told
Mrs. Cameron, as she came into the yard and slipped her bridle from
Socks' neck. "Father is taking our poddies and cows, and Steve's, to the
Clearwater."
"Yes," Mrs. Cameron said, "some men on the roads told us a few days ago
that we'd better get our beasts out of the back paddocks in case the
fires come this way."
Deirdre caught Socks by his forelock; but instead of turning him into
the paddock behind the stables as she ordinarily did, she led him into
one of the fern-spread, earthern-floored stalls and slammed the door on
him.
"A man at Steve's this morning said some of the people on the other side
've been burnt out," she said, "The fires swept over the bush as if it
were a grass paddock. Martin's, at Dale, is burnt down, and he said that
some of the children going home from the Dale school were burnt to
death."
Mrs. Cameron exclaimed distressfully.
"The fires came up so quickly they couldn't get home before them,"
Deirdre continued. "And when they turned to go back the flames were all
round. Father sent me up. Davey and Mr. Cameron being away, he thought
you mightn't know."
"If the fires are at Dale--"
There was a flicker of anxiety in Mrs. Cameron's eyes.
"They've travelled over forty miles already," Deirdre said. "And father
says if the wind changes we'll get them up here for sure. They may sweep
right on, as it is, and miss us. But he said it would be madness to try
to fight them--with only the three of us, and if they do come this way
to get down to the pool at once. He said he'd try to get here if the
wind changes."
Once or twice there had been scrub fires in the summer, and Mrs.
Cameron, with everybody else on the place, had helped to beat out the
quickly-running, forked flames which tried to make their way across the
paddocks of the clearing to the house and sheds. She had carried water
for the men beating, when there was water to spare, and they had dipped
their bags and branches of green gum leaves into the water and slashed
at the flames in the grass.
"There are beaters and bags by the barn," she said, "I cut the beaters
after Davey and his father had gone, thinking we might want them."
She meant to make a fight for her home if the fires came that way,
Deirdre realised.
The afternoon wore away slowly. Mrs. Cameron had few treasures; but she
made a bundle of them--a Bible, some of Davey's baby clothes, an
old-fashioned gold-rimmed brooch with a mosaic on black stone that
Donald Cameron had given her and desired her to wear with the black silk
dress he had insisted on her having and appearing in, occasionally, when
people began to call him the Laird of Ayrmuir. The dress was more an
object of veneration than anything else; but she wrapped it, and the
ribband and the piece of lace that she wore with it, into the bundle,
and put them, with her spinning wheel and a pair of blue vases that had
been her first parlour ornaments, on the back verandah where they would
be easy to get if the fires threatened the house.
Deirdre moved restlessly about out of doors, watching the haze on every
side of the clearing for any sign of a break in it.
"Are there any animals on the place, Mrs. Cameron?" she asked, late in
the afternoon.
"Only a couple of cows and Lass," Mrs. Cameron replied. "They're in the
top paddock."
"I'll run them down," Deirdre said.
Straddling Socks, and calling to the toothless old cattle dog who lay
dozing on his paws before the kitchen door, she went to the hill-top and
brought down the cows and Lass a few minutes later.
"Keep 'em there, Jock!" she said and left the old dog shepherding them
in the yard behind the barns.
While she was away, Mrs. Cameron and Jenny had bundled half a dozen hens
and a game rooster into a big wicker crate.
Just before sunset they went to the hill-top together, Mrs. Cameron and
Deirdre, and Jenny buzzing before them.
Not a puff of air stirred the tawny curtain that obscured the hills. At
a little distance the trees stood motionless. The light leaves of the
young gum saplings hung, down-pointed, with a stillness that had tragedy
in it. Faint and far away in the silence though was a rushing murmur.
The smell of burning that had been in the air for days came with a
harsher tang. Darkness was making way against the smoke-haze.
Neither Deirdre nor Mrs. Cameron spoke, staring into it.
A flock of parroquets flew out of the haze and scattered across the
clearing with shrill, startled screams. A little brown feathered bird
dropped into the grass. Deirdre picked it up.
"Its wings are singed," she said quickly, "and they're quite hot still!
It can't have flown far."
Tense and alert, she threw back her head. A puff of wind, feather light,
almost imperceptible, touched her face.
"It's coming from the west," she breathed.
"Will you take the animals to the pool, Deirdre," Mrs. Cameron said
sharply. "Jock'll keep them there. Jenny, you bring the beaters up here.
I'll stay and watch to see if the fire breaks. If the wind's from the
west, it'll strike us first here."