The Other Girl

Lucy Walker – The Other Girl (1963) Allison and Leura were two girls working their way around the vast Australian outback. They didn't mind which way they went, so long as they found jobs as they went along. They had saved up and bought a car, and then set out on their SeeAustralia venture. When the car broke down, out in the middle of nowhere, they were overtaken by a shearing team heading for their next station. The shearers had a problem—they had no cook; and when Allison and Leura heard about the big money that a shearers' cook earned . . . But only one cook was needed, and there were two of them ; and up to now, where one of them went, the other went also. Still, the shearers just had to have a cook; Union rules said : no cook—no shearing. They'd work something out. Or rather, Buck Ashe, the shearers' boss— he'd work something out. And when Allison and Leura looked at Buck Ashe . . . Chapter 1 The girls sat on the side of the track, periodically fanning themselves with a twig of mulga to keep the bush insects from stinging their faces. It was hot. Very hot. All around them, the red land—dotted here and there with the grey hummocks of spinifex and rare clumps of mulga—sang, hazed and dazzled as far as they could see. " Your turn to get the water-bag," Leura said. " Thought we weren't to drink too much in case nothing ever passed us." " We've been here two hours now. Night must fall some time, and then we can drink the dew on the spinifex. If any." Conversation was reduced to a minimum, for the sloth of the land was on them and even to move the lips was an effort. Allison, the English girl, stood up slowly, crossed the gravel track to where the car stood sizzling in the blazing midday heat. She unhooked the waterbag from the front bumper of the car, took two aluminium mugs from the back seat, and came back to her companion. " A full mug each, this time, yes ? We haven't tapped the other bag at all. Something is bound to pass us— some day." Leura, the Australian girl, nodded. " When we really run out we can always dig," she said. " I remember reading somewhere that if you dig down to the mulga roots you'll find moisture of some kind." The girls spoke this way from boredom, not because they were really afraid nothing would pass them. They weren't on the main road—the " bitumen "—

but they weren't on a station track either. This road had been leading somewhere. They had followed the map but had made a guess that this track was the turn-off they were supposed to take to get to the one-pub, one-horse town of Noya. They had intended to rest up for the night at that pub and go on in the morning. They were heading for the far north and were well and truly in the outback now. They had been that way for several weeks. They were two girls working their way around Australia. They didn't mind which way they went as long as they found jobs as they went along. They had saved up and bought the car, a second-hand Holden, and then set out on their See-Australia venture. Now the hose-pipe from the radiator had burst, and the car was technically and temporarily broken down. The garage had left out one item on their order list of spare parts. A radiator hose. They had everything else from a fan belt to a jack, but no hose. And it had to be the radiator hose that broke down. With magnificent restraint, neither girl blamed the other for not having checked the order. They had set out from Perth three months ago, travelling north, with only three rules for one another. The word " sorry " was forbidden. The phrase " Why didn't you ? " was out of court. They stayed together whatever happened. If one went back the other went too. After that they did what they pleased. If one wanted to sleep and the other didn't, the other let the first one sleep and minded her own business in some other way. " Live and Let Live " was the motto painted across the back of the car, and the two girls, both aged twenty-one, one English and one Australian, meant this as a motto for themselves. It had worked out wonderfully. They had gone as far as Geraldton on their first stint, and both found jobs at once. They had parked the car in a caravan block and taken up residence with their jobs. Leura Barton found herself in a hostel cooking for the cray-fishing men netand pot-making because it was out of season for the fishing. Allison Upton, who had once, in far-off England, been a nursing aide, was taken on at a boarding school where the matron was temporarily away through illness. When the matron returned the girls had already seen all they wanted to see of Geraldton, had loaded up the Holden once again and headed north. Four hundred miles farther on, one helped pack bananas for a month while the other served across the counter of a tea-shop in a small port town. This time they lowered hack the front seats of the Holden and slept there. They couldn't afford the hotel so early in their travels. They had headed back through Northampton, then eastwards into the sheepstation country. For three weeks they had a wonderful job on one station,

looking after the station-owner's children while he and his wife went south for I holiday. Now they were heading on, on, on. " Into the Blue North," Leura had said, chewing a piece of wattle bark. " Why blue ? " Allison asked. " Wait till you see the colour of Roebuck Bay. There isn't any other blue in the world like it, so I can't describe it. You'll have to wait." " How far to Roebuck Bay ? " " About a thousand miles the zigzag way we have to go now. Once we hit the bitumen we'll be right. Easy going then." The bitumen was elusive because they were travelling across country by side roads and station tracks from the station job they had just finished. The map wasn't as wonderful as all that either—once you'd left the main mad. Then the radiator hose burst. Just one of those things! The girls agreed about this until they discovered they had no spare part. After that they refrained from saying anything on account of the rules of the game. No " sorry " allowed. No " Why didn't you ? " allowed. " I guess we sit and wait," Leura said. " Perhaps we had better put up the canvas now," Allison said thoughtfully. " It's too hot." Leura crossed the track and sat down under a miserable bush that had no name because it wasn't worthy of one. "And an awful waste of effort if something does come along. We'd have to take it down again. Let's wait till nightfall." Allison sat down beside her and thought about this. It had been then she decided to get the water-bag again. Leura watched her cross the road. Allison, daffodil-fair, was slim and trim in her dusty cotton trews and dusty white shirt, but Leura didn't think about that. What staggered her was how an English girl, with absolutely no experience of the Australian outback, could take the whole thing so well. Leura had expected the fierce sun to burn that fair English skin to a frazzle. It very nearly had, in the last few weeks, but Allison had not complained. At night she had put layers of cream on her face, neck and arms, but said no word of the pain she must have been suffering. She's as game as Ned Kelly, Leura thought, but as this was an expression Allison was not likely to understand, she did not utter her thoughts aloud. Ned Kelly had been a highwayman and Allison might not have liked the comparison. To dark-haired, grey-eyed Leura, the Australian, it merely meant having courage—and you could forget all the rest of it. Allison for her part, bringing the water-bag across the track, wondered at the

casual way Leura took their mishap. She might be doing no more than wait an extra ten minutes for a bus, Allison thought . . . with a sense of admiration as well as wonder. They drank their mugs of water and this time it was Leura who took the water-bag back to the car and hooked it on to the bumper again. As she straightened up she looked across the endless stretch of spinifex. She lifted her hand to shade her eyes as she stood staring to the west. "A dust cloud! No, three dust clouds bowling along a mile or two across there," she said casually. Allison sat upright. " Coming this way ? " "Who knows? There might be another track over there. They're running parallel with us. Doesn't look so good." Allison stood up and looked to the west too. The first dust cloud seemed to turn at right angles and now was coming towards them, slightly to the south of where they stood. The other two clouds followed a mile or two behind. The girls looked at one another. "Good job we didn't bother with the canvas," Leura said. " Someone comes." "Looks like three ones," said Allison happily. "Three cars anyway." "Here's to hoping," said Leura. " Number One has turned at a twenty-five degree angle now and is coming this way for sure. You never can be certain on those rambling tracks." “They're all in one party because Two and Three are turning north-west now." Leura suddenly wrinkled up her nose and laughed. Allison had been dead serious when she said that. "What are you laughing at ? " Allison asked, slightly hipped. "How quickly you've learned to talk in directions. Wait till you get home to dear old Blighty and say—' I'm merely going south-west to Kensington.' " "There isn't any sun, most of the time, to tell the direction in England. like here."

Not

" Too much here," said Leura. They were tired of standing upright in the heat. Allison opened the driver's seat of the Holden and sat down on the floor, her feet stretched out in their dusty trews on to the red track. Leura propped herself against the hood of the car with her left elbow. "If they knew what was good for them, they'd hurry," she said, meaning the balls of bowling dust that meant vehicles were approaching. Allison, surprised, turned and looked up at Leura. "What on earth do you mean by that?"

"We'll have to buy or borrow a radiator spare," Leura said. "The rule of the road is that for the courtesy—never mind any exchange of hard cash—we give them some service too. If we were men we'd doubtless pump up their sagging rear tyres. As we're female we'll boil a billy and give them tea." "There are more unwritten rules in this country than printed ones in the book," Allison said. " Does everyone keep them? " "Everyone." A hundred yards behind their own stricken car the track curved sharply. The first ball of dust looked as if it was bowling across the spinifex. "Don't let's guess who and what," Allison said. "You're always right, and I never know." The car, a great fawn-coloured overlander thickly red with the desert dust, thundered round the curve, raced alongside, then pulled up with a passionate protest from brakes and tyres. Four men's faces stared out from under dusty nor'-wester ten-bale hats. The two men seated on the far side of the car had as if by reflex action swung open their doors, levered their bodies out, and were standing on the floor of the car, peering over the hood. "For crying out loud! " one of them said. The other three stared as the driver backed the car to the spot where the Holden stood. Allison still sat in the open door, her legs stretched out before her, her blue eyes wide, curious and honest under her cotton hat. Leura had not moved. She rested her body, elbow-wise, against the car and returned look for look as the newcomer car disgorged its human burden and four men in drill shirts and trousers, dust griming their faces, stood in the road and stared at the girls. Then, for Allison, began the most curious scene. Not a word was spoken by anyone. With strange, loose, easy cat-walks three of the men went right round the Holden, looking it over. One kicked the tyres one after the other and nodded his head with satisfaction. Tyres were all right. One, having circumnavigated the car and the two girls, slid down on his back and eased himself under the Holden, where he lay flat, examining the sump box, axle and transmission. One lifted the bonnet of the car and looked in at the engine. The fourth . . . the nicest . . . the boss, stood and watched. None of them even looked at the girls. The boss watched his men. The man with his head under the bonnet emerged from behind his screen. "Water hose," he said. " Wouldn't it! " The emphasis on the "wouldn't" startled Leura. For the first time she came out of her pose against the Holden. "Don't tell me," she pleaded. "You haven't a spare?" The discoverer looked at his boss and they both shook their heads with a kind

of dead-pan sadness. Then they turned to the girls and shook their heads again. The other two men abandoned their activities and came and stood in a group with their friends. They all shook their heads. "No radiator hose," the boss said with a kind of mock sorrow. Allison from her seat in the Holden's door wondered why she knew he was the boss. Something about the way he stood ; and his clothes were better, though not freer of dust. There was a slightly arrogant tilt to his broadbrimmed outback hat. Besides, he was the only one who hadn't done anything about investigating the Holden. He was the one who gave orders, she decided. The others were the ones who did things. Leura, being Australian, didn't think about any of these things. She just knew. She looked directly at him now, her grey eyes not quite believing and just a little angry. "Do you mean to say you came outback without a spare?" she said. Perhaps they had one but weren't going to part with it. But this was incredible. It had never, in one hundred and thirty-three years of habitation in this State, been known, to leave a traveller stranded. It was not going to happen now. Besides, outback men did not travel without spares. Not in this waterless waste of a land that would hold the whole of Europe in it. (Once-and-a-bit, if you filled in the gaps made by Italy and Spain and Scandinavia jutting out into sundry seas.) "Did you come outback without a spare, lady?" It was the first time the boss had spoken, and he had a wonderful voice. It was soft as a velvet glove round a steel hand. Also he drawled, something that delighted Allison and even charmed Leura, though she would have died rather than admit it just at this moment in time. "That's different," said Leura. "This is our first experience outback and everyone has to learn by their mistakes, and their omissions. You're outback men. You know better." All four men were standing, their feet slightly apart, their slim leathery bodies nicely balanced between two poles of legs. They were rolling cigarettes slowly, rhythmically and with great artistry. Leura could have thrown a dust-lump at them. Or a piece of anthill. That was harder and would have hurt more. She was sure they were teasing. They had to be teasing. The second dust ball was roaring along the track on the other side of the spinifex. The boss looked up under his brim and nodded to one of the men. "Better see Jake and Ted," he said. " Stop 'em up the track a bit. We don't want their dust as well as our own." He smiled at the two girls. It was almost a winsome smile except that Leura knew instantly it was full of guile and cunning—in a most attractive way.

The man walked on up the track towards the bend around which the other two cars would come. "I don't mind dust," Leura said, tilting up her head so that her chin thrust up in an unexpected pixie-ish way that made her very attractive, in spite of her own dusty face. Allison from her lowly seat said nothing at all, because, though she was sure Leura and the men were playing a game of words she didn't quite understand, she wanted to learn. Above everything else she wanted to learn about these range, slow-speaking, seemingly simple, easy-going people who had behind their innocent simpleton masks the stripes of tigers. Allison had been one year in Western Australia and had discovered that already. No one was as unaffected and easy as he seemed. Underneath he was sometimes whiplash, sometimes rock-like. "It's why they always win the Davis Cup," someone had told her. "You just don't think they've got what it takes. Then all of a sudden you collect a whirlwind and you don't know where it came from or who fired it off. Don't under-estimate them, Allison." Allison didn't. She wanted to understand them, because she was already in love with them. All of them. All who lived in that Arizona-Texas State on the west coast of Australia, anyway. The boss lit his cigarette, blew smoke, then casually looked around at the track and spinifex plain. "Not much shade," he said. "Guess we can get a billy boiling and drink in the sun. Nothing unusual about that." Leura had folded her arms across her chest and stood with her own feet slightly apart, her chin out, her grey eyes crackling ice. "You've sent that man back to tell the others to say they haven't a spare hose," she said. "Why?" He looked astounded. Yet his eyes, sea-blue and sardonic, were not innocent. "If they've got one I'm sure they'll lend it to you ladies. Even fix it on for you. How's that? Meantime what about tea?" Leura was dogged. "You want me to make tea for you? And I'm not even sure I'm going to get a spare for my car?” "Plain facts of the matter are—none of us has a Holden. Mine's a De Soto. Ted Haynes has a Zephyr Ford and Jake Taylor has a Falcon." "The Falcon radiator hose will fit," Leura said. She didn't know, she only hoped. Anyhow there was a way of making these things fit temporarily. She knew how herself. The second car screeched to a brake stop just round the curve and the man who had kicked the Holden's tyres earlier leaned in the window and talked to

the occupants. Allison thought she had never seen a car so covered with dust. It was much, much worse than their Holden or the De Soto. She knew why. Days back, Leura had explained you always had to get in front of any other car travelling or you collected their dust. Dust raised in the spinifex country didn't subside for hours. Even when you left several miles' distance between cars, the ones behind always got the dust. That would be another reason why that man standing there, so attractive in his angled hat, with his quiet engaging smile, his bland lying eyes, must be the boss. The boss would hardly take anyone else's dust if he was travelling in a fleet of cars. Allison Upton, late of England, knew a lot about outback ways already. Leura had glanced round and seen what was going on by the car way down the track by the curve. She was at this man's mercy, she knew. What was his price for that hose, she wondered. Not money anyway. Well, she could only wait and see. One thing: she wasn't scared. A glance at Allison had told her Allison wasn't scared either. She was quietly waiting on events. Mad dogs and Englishwomen! Thank God Leura had one of each kind for companionship: all rolled together in Allison. They had stumbled on one another quite by accident. They had been living in a hostel in Perth and going to work in the same insurance company. Allison had wanted to see the outback and Leura knew a fair bit about it. So they lived up, bought the Holden, and here they were. Allison had never said why she had come to Australia from England and Leura had never said why she had come up from a farming town in the forest country of the south-west to live in a hostel in the city. Neither asked and one day they would each probably tell. When they were good and ready. There were deep reticences in each; neither asked friendship from the other, yet each gave it in a strange, satisfying, surface way. Both wanted the same thing; so they suited one another. That was all there was to it. Right at this minute they wanted a spare part. Badly. Leura would have to play the men's game and wait and see. Meanwhile they might as well have a billy of tea. The man hadn't answered her remark about the Falcon hose fitting. Instead he nodded to one of the other men and this man walked into the scrub at the side of the track and begun to scrape together some dried leaves and sticks. By the time the third car had arrived at the curve and the conclave up there had grown to the number of eight, the fire was burning. A billy had been brought from the boot of the Holden and water emptied into it—from the

water-bag on the De Soto. The boss had smiled when he had seen Leura take his water-bag and not her own, but he hadn't stopped her. Instead he walked round her car and tested both water-bags by prodding them with the toe of his boot. "Enough there to last you two days. Three if you're careful," he said. Leura gave him a withering look. Allison carried the mugs to the side of the fire and the tin of biscuits from the Holden. She leaned down and whispered when her head was near enough to Leura's. "They won't leave us here for two or three days, will they?" she asked. She was surprised, not scared. Leura shook her head. She glanced up under the brim of her hat at the boss. He was walking quietly up the track to meet the oncoming posse of men from the two cars farther back. "No," Leura said. "He's up to something. We'll have to wait and see." "What do you suppose they are?" Allison asked. "They haven't said so—but it's a shearing team," Leura said. "They're probably just finished shearing a station farther down the stock route and are heading for another farther north. That chap would be the manager of the team . . . probably the woolclasser too. The rest are shearers. They'll do whatever he tells them." Allison straightened up and looked at the men curiously, half expecting to see wool sprouting out of their pockets and from under their hats. "How do you know that's what they are" she asked. "Because it's the shearing season and that's how shearers travel. Nothing but the biggest and best cars. And always in a team. They stick together. Look at the hands on that chap over there. He'd be the presser. . . ." "What's the presser?" Leura pushed the burning leaves together under the billy. "I'll explain later. Let's not talk now. Let's wait and see what they're up to." Allison nodded. The boss and the team had met in the middle of the track now. They had a two-minute conference then came on down, off the track into the scrub towards the girls. They were all grinning cheerfully. Some of them even removed their wide dusty hats. In case this looked too gentlemanly they wiped their foreheads with their elbows and put their hats back. Allison thought they were the most gorgeous hats in the world. They were sun-faded and dust-beaten ; broad-brimmed and sitting at rakish angles. They were characters in themselves. Never mind the thin, leathery, brown-dyed faces under them. The men's hands might have appalled Allison if she hadn't had a

touch of the artist in her. As it was, they fascinated her with the character that was in them. These were hands that worked near the earth and worked hard. They were paradoxical, for they were both brutal and tender. The men squatted down on their heels and the hands went forward to pick up the mugs of tea tentatively as if afraid of being clumsy, anxious to do justice and be kind to a mug that held tea. At the same time they were hands that could have bent drain-pipes. The boss sat down on his heels too. Someone handed him a mug of tea. "Where are you two girls heading?" he asked. "To Noya," Leura said with careful good manners. His eyebrows lifted and his eyes looked sceptical. "What's at Noya?" he asked. "It's only a stopping place on the stock route to Meekatharra. Nobody lives at Noya—bar the publican who is also the storekeeper." "To stay overnight," Leura explained. "Then we're going on north." She stopped, tilted that chin of hers, and looked at the boss out of clear eyes. "We're two girls working our way round Australia," she said levelly. "It's been done before. And by girls—so please don't look surprised." In fact the boss had not looked surprised. He remained dead-pan. "So I've heard," he said. "What was your last job?" "What was your last shed?" Leura countered. She had already told Allison that in shearer's parlance a "shed" meant a job of doing the shearing on a station. Allison did not look surprised at Leura's question. She too thought it was time they, the girls, took a stand and asked some questions too. The man smiled. "So you know the plant?" he said. "Nobody ever mistakes a shearer for a stockman or vice versa. You know the outback, young lady?" "A little," Leura said. "I have relatives living at Port Hedland." "And that's where you're heading now?" "Yes. From job to job—if we get them. There are two of us, you know." The man nodded his head thoughtfully. Allison had not taken her eyes from his face, and now in a sleepy kind of a way he seemed to indicate he knew this. He half slitted his eyes as if looking up to the westering sun but really he looked at Allison. She was as pretty a girl as he'd ever seen, in spite of the fact the sunburn hadn't really settled evenly over that pale, flawless skin. In another place or time he might have told her she had eyes like cornflowers. Remind me, he told himself, I'll tell her some day. "That's the problem," he said aloud, drawling. "There's always a job for one

girl. But two—that's different." "There's always been a job each before," Leura said. "There'll be more." She looked up quickly, suspiciously. "Why is it a problem to you? Your only problem is to lend or sell us a spare for the Holden." He shook his head. "No spare to lend or sell." All the men shook their heads, sadly. Leura knew they were, one and all, lying in their hearts. "Look," she said. "Let's face it. What goes on?" "We could tow your Holden a certain distance, but that would hold us up. We're due at Palari Downs some time to-night—another two hundred miles. We start shearing at sun-up to-morrow. That is if . . ." He stopped and all the men nodded their hatted heads. It was as if they echoed the word "if." "Thirty-five thousand sheep. And three to four weeks to do 'em in', one of the other men said slowly. He shook his head sorrowfully. "What's sad or bad about that?" Leura asked. "Next month we're due at Yandathurra Station, north of Palari. Twenty-five thousand sheep there," the man said. "We can't waste time. Not even a day at Palari. You do see that, don't you, lady?" "Thirty-five thousand sheep." Allison was awe-struck. "It must be a big station." A million acres!” the man said.

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"The bare million." Another man sounded as if he were correcting the other for a regrettable inaccuracy. "So what's all this got to do with us?" asked Leura. "You tell them, Ted," the boss said. "You're the Union man in this plant." Ted looked sad, bad and cunning, all in one face. "Union rules say we got to have a cook an' we haven't one. No cook—no shearing. Like no proper quarters, electric light and all—no shearing. No proper specified store amenities, etc.—no shearing. Union rules, and we just can't break 'em. Not allowed to—eh, Boss?" The boss nodded. "Correct." "But you aren't a shearer," Leura said to the boss. "Why don't you do the cooking?" Six of the men grinned and five of them laughed outright. "That's one for you, Buck," one man said. "Never thought of that. Woolclasser turned shearer's cook. Well, why not ? 'Smore money in it." Leura cocked her head. "What do you mean—'more money in it'?"

The bait was out and taken. Allison saw that at once. She hoped Leura would say yes. Allison liked these men but mostly she liked the boss. The one the man had called Buck. She knew he wanted to look at her. He did so in a strange communicating way even when he was really looking at the horizon, narrowing under the westering sun. She knew he knew she knew, too. It was funny . . . like seeing someone you knew very well across a room. You didn't have to say anything. You both understood. Allison guessed that Leura now knew why there was no spare part for their Holden. They were to be held to ransom, to come and do the cooking—the price of it would be one radiator hose and whatever that "more money in it" meant. The girls did have to have money. They were on a tightened-belt budget anyway. Besides, they'd have fun. Allison knew it in her bones. So did Leura, but she would play cunning too. She was not going to be held cheaply to ransom. Not Leura Barton, and not to a shearing team. "What are the quarters like at this Palari Station?" she asked judicially. "Are they derelict barns, or comfortable?" "Comfortable," Buck said easily. "You heard the men. No amenities, no shearing." "And no cook, no shearing," Leura finished for him. "What you really mean is —you're offering us a job as shearers' cooks. If we say no you'll let us sit on this road till someone else comes along who does carry spare parts. If we say yes-" "Just a minute, lady. Not so fast," Buck said slowly. "I didn't say 'cooks.' The word is singular." Leura laughed. "You mean one comes, and one sits by the side of the road in the middle of a spinifex plain and waits till Sir Galahad happens by?" "That's what we've got to figure out," said Buck complacently. "Which of you was the cook back there in Geraldton. And one of you cooked at Danyan Station while the Guthries went south." Leura drew in her breath. "So you knew who we were," she said. followed us."

"You

"You didn't arrange for our radiator hose to blow, by any chance?" Allison asked mildly. Buck wished she would say that again. Say anything again. She had a lovely voice. An English girl. He had thought so. "No," Buck said slowly. "We were using up the juice in a big way hoping to overtake you before you got to Noya. They told us back at Danyan there were two girls on the track ahead who might take on a job. One of 'em, that is."

"Where one goes the other goes." Leura said flatly. "And we can both cook. What's the problem about that?" "Hard cash," Buck said casually. "Union rules again. Thirty-five pounds a week for shearers' cook at Palari shed. It's got to be paid whether we like it or not." "Thirty-five pounds a week!" Leura's eyes popped and Allison's mouth opened. "For one” said Buck firmly. "You can't expect anyone to pay out seventy pounds a week just because there are two of you?" Leura and Allison stared at one another. This was untold wealth. "Let's halve it," said Allison brightly. "We can do alternate meals, or something." The men shook their heads gloomily. "Not allowed. Union rules," they said. "One cook, one pay." They all fell silent, and thought. One of the men had the presence of mind to kick together the coals of the fire. He went to the Holden and took the girls' water-bag and refilled the billy. He threw the empty bag on the ground. "You won't be using that any more," he said. "Not this side of Palari, anyway." That was a good sign. Nobody was to be left behind. Leura had a new thought. "In any event," she said firmly, "one of us can't take on the job without the other. One girl amongst twelve men! It's unthinkable. What do other cooks do, or are the cooks generally men too?" "Usually it's one of the shearers' wives... or someone from the nearest town who wants to earn some quick money. The one we were to pick up let us down. She went off with another team instead." Allison was frowning in thought and Buck wanted to tell her not to crease that pretty forehead. He didn't look at her. He wanted the girls to come because he wanted this one—the English girl—but he had to let the men find a solution. If he found it for them it was bound to be a solution contravening their blasted Union rules. If the men contravened it—that was another thing. If they didn't have a cook, not a sheep would be shorn to-morrow—or for days after: till they did get a cook, for that matter. The Union forbade it. "You know what, Buck," one man said. "There ain't no blasted union rule says one girl can't stay and just have a holiday—down at the quarters." "No, but the station-owners say it. No girls down at the shearers' quarters. You know it." "Nice rules," Leura said caustically. "Once one's a cook, one is no longer a girl."

"That's about it," the man said gloomily. They all thought again. There must be some solution, Leura thought. Thirty-five pounds a week! That would be seventeen pounds ten a week each! Wonderful, beautiful money! She glanced up at Buck. He was looking down, poking a stick in the fire. Under the brim of his hat, because his head was downbent, she could only see his mouth and the firm line of his jaw. Something in her heart ticked extra hard. Her eyes slid down his shoulder and long arm to his dark brown ironhard hand. His hands were not as tough and rough as the shearer's hands. They were good hands that worked. Leura wanted to say "yes," not because of the thirty-five pounds a week, whoever got it, but because of Buck, but she did not say this even to herself. She didn't know it herself. She only knew she wanted the job. She frowned. A way had to be found. Like Buck, it occurred to her that the men would have to find the way. Only the men could rationalise their own Union rules. She looked up and flashed a smile around the group. "You know, I had to cook a whole side of lamb at that crayfishing joint in Geraldton," she said. "It's easy once you know how. And I stuffed it. Have you ever had stuffed side of lamb? You need lots of brown gravy, of course. And you pour half a bottle of beer over it in the oven. . . ." Eleven pairs of eyes were on her. Buck's eyes were watching the coal at the tip of the stick he held in the fire quicken, live and die and live again. Allison said nothing. She sat one inch nearer Buck and she knew that even though he watched the coal he could see the slim pointed toe of her leather shoe and the small bones of her ankle. She felt very happy. This was one of those moments in life, she thought. It would go, and time would pass . . . other things would happen to her. Maybe she would go back to England and marry Ion . . . because her uncle wanted it so badly. But she would remember a hand holding a stick to a fire that made a fairyland of coals in an area about six inches by six. She knew it, and it was for no reason in the world. It was just one of those things. Funny. You could see a man, and never see him again. But you remembered him. Leura, on the other side of the fire, shut her eyes. If only the men would hurry up and find a solution. Surely stuffed side of lamb with a rich brown gravy meant something to them? It did. Eyes met eyes and all stomachs thought of stuffed lamb. Not that they were allowed lamb on the stations—just mutton, and sometimes, if the killer was quick, hoggett. But one could still stuff a sheep or hoggett—if one could stuff a lamb!

Shearers liked their food and they liked it good. A half-bottle of beer was always a half-bottle of beer whether it ran over the lamb, hoggett or mutton. They might have been heart-to-heart, they were so much in agreement on this subject. "Tell you what, Buck," the man called Jake said. He had driven in the third car. "If we take 'em both along we can put one of 'em on the books, eh ? That right? The other can stick around and if she gives a hand some time then that's not our business and we can always not be looking. Whether they split up the dough or not ain't our business—so long as they don't do it under our noses. 'Sfar as Palari Station is concerned we got one shearers' cook with us— and that's all. Grayson, the grazier, don't never come down to the quarters much, and from way up at the homestead one girl looks the same as another in the distance." Leura frowned. Grayson was the name of the owner of Palari Station, was it ? She had known a girl at school who had that name, and her father had been a grazier. Leura wondered if it was the same girl. She was about to say something, but Buck spoke first. He too was frowning, and he suddenly looked cold and aloof. There was the width of a whole glacier between himself and the man who had just spoken. "If you chaps are thinking of secreting a girl down there in the quarters, I won't be responsible," he said. "Grayson 'ud be down like the wrath of God." The shearers were not intimidated. They were grinning. "Sack us all and leave thirty-five thousand sheep unshorn? Not very likely, Buck ! All Grayson wants is his sheep shorn and for us to keep any dames out of sight so he don't know about it. That's all he'll ask. He just don't want to know about it." A small furrow settled between Allison's brows. Leura looked a little unhappy. "It doesn't sound very nice, does it?" she said, looking up at Buck. "Dames kept out of sight! Is this a cooking job, or is it what?" "Strictly a cooking job," Buck said, meeting her eyes. "Don't worry. This team's the best in the North and they're only trying to find a way to get a cook. They don't want to stop work till we get one any more than I do. It's just Union rules." He smiled, easily and this time frankly. It gave his brown, weathertouched face a kind of softness. It was like seeing a strong man being suddenly gentle with a child. Leura's heart ticked painfully again. "We'll come," she said, then glanced at Allison. Allison was daydreaming into a sky that paled before the onset of a blood-red sunset. She wasn't quite with us for the moment, Leura thought, and took her consent for granted.

Chapter 2 Buck stood up, suddenly galvanised into action. "Ted. Fix that raking Holden and get Shawn or Dobbs to drive it after us." He looked at the group of men still squatting on their heels by the dying fire. "Stamp that thing out, one of you. And two of you get in the Holden. I'll take the girls along with me. What's more, I'm going first. I'm not taking anyone's dust. . . ." He grinned. "Not with the shearers' cook on board," he added. Leura, her mind on other things—chiefly that that order to bring the Holden meant they did have a spare hose— eased into the driver's seat beside Buck. "Room for Allison in front too?" she asked. Buck looked down at her. "So that's her name, is it?" he asked. "What's yours?" "Leura Barton. Allison has an Upton after hers. What's your name—other than Buck?" He let go the hand-brake and moved the gear into first. The car slid forward. Allison had climbed into the back seat and said she liked it this way. She wanted to think. It had nothing to do with cooking, only to do with a wonderful sky, the dying heat of the day, and a long, lonely, lovely track before them. She wanted to dream but she hadn't the faintest idea what about. "Buckaan," he said. " Spelt with two a's. It's native for 'running river.' The rest is Ashe, meaning nothing in particular." "Buckaan Ashe," said Leura quietly to herself. It sounded good. In the back seat Allison leaned her head back on the head-rest and thought. A small smile settled round her mouth, turning it into the kindness of a peony. Buck had moved the rear-vision mirror and saw it. When she opened her eyes she saw his eyes in the mirror. They both smiled. Leura looked at Buck's hands on the steering-wheel. She thought she would make a good shearer's cook. A very, very good one. She meant to be. It had nothing to do with the thirty-five pounds a week, either. It had a lot to do with Buck Ashe's hands on a steering-wheel. Just what kind of a man was he, she wondered. Well, if she was shearers' cook she would soon know. He was the boss. Two hundred miles along the stock route then across station tracks was a long way for the girls to go that day. Both Leura and Allison had thought they were bush-hardened by this time. They could take anything, they had thought. However, they'd never before been driven overland for long distances by a shearing team. The pace was a good seventy miles an hour, and until the sun went down against its incredible crimson backdrop the heat in the car was stifling. Buck Ashe didn't carry a fan in his De Soto. That, an outback man thought, was a softy thing to do. But then he'd been used to the heat all his life. When the sun went down, darkness came on in a few minutes. With the

darkness Buck put on the spotlights on either side of the car. Then was unfolded a wonderful world. They had run into the higher scrub of the pindan and the powerful white lights lit up the trees, the bauhinia, and the ghost gums with their gleaming white trunks, for twenty yards on either side of the track. The car, huge and heavy, floated on the suspension springs when they hit a creek bed or a pothole. It had the feeling of a rubber mattress floating over a wave. "It's a wonderful car," Allison said dreamily from the back seat. we went over a bump then."

"I suppose

"A bump?" Buck said with irony. "We went down, through and over a threefoot culvert made by a dried-out creek bed." He looked in the rear-vision mirror to where the faint ceiling light of the car made the pretty English girl's face gleam in a pale, mystic way. "You fellers in England don't make cars this way. That's why we make the Holden ourselves and buy De Soto, Buick or Chrysler for a change." It was Leura who was up in arms on behalf of the English ear. "One of the crayfishermen in Geraldton had an Austin," she said. "It was the best engine ever, he said. And went over the creek beds too. He'd never had anything go wrong with it." "It hits the creek beds with a bang," Buck said. He was leasing, watching Allison's face every few minutes. He wanted the fair girl in the back seat to speak again. She had a lovely voice. Allison was thinking of other things—namely a not-so-distant paradise where for two or three whole weeks she would see Buck's broad-brimmed hat moving about amongst the shearers . . . hear the horses galloping down the tracks from the station homestead as the stockmen went out to muster up the sheep for the shearing. Would it be a station with cattle on it too, she wondered. Allison dreamed of rounds-up and rodeos down by the cattle camps; of men singing to the cattle under the stars. All the men had a vague and misty resemblance to Buck Ashe; but she didn't quite realise this. She wasn't interested in cars—English, American or Australian—except to feel she was very comfortable in this one. Something streaked out of the bush, straight at the track and the car. Buck swerved, but the something hit the rear mudguard with an awful thump. "What was that?" Leura asked. "A kangaroo," Buck said. "I'm afraid he collected. Don't look back. He'll be dead." Allison in the back seat sat up straight. "Oh please," she begged. "It may be only wounded. Please go back." shook his head.

Buck

"Can't afford the time," he said, then added, "Kangaroos are a menace to sheep country. If we don't kill them with cars the professional kangarooshooters get them."

Allison could have wrung her hands. "But it could have had a joey in its pouch." "They're plain stupid things," Buck said. "They see the lights of a car coming and they go straight for it. On a trip down and up we hit as many as half a dozen." "Please!" Allison implored. Buck was still driving at seventy miles an hour. There were taller trees and less scrub on either side of the track now. They were out of the pindan and into the tree-land again. The spotlights lit up their way, and it was like going through a cathedral of trees. Allison beat her fist on the back of the driver's seat. "Please," she insisted. Leura sat huddled down and said nothing. Like Allison she wanted to know the 'roo was out of pain, but she also knew the outback men were hard men. She didn't think Buck would turn back. She was mistaken. He slammed on the brakes and the car screamed to a halt. Buck turned round and leaned his arm across the back of the seat. "Look, lady . . ." he began, drawling. But Allison's face in the pale light of the sedan was hazy white and her blue eyes were dark pools and her mouth was sweet and pretty but sad and determined. "Okay! I suppose so." Buck started up the car and turned it round. "That's what comes of being slipped up by the raking shearers' cook," he finished. They were half-way back to the kangaroo when the second car, being driven by the man called Ted, passed them. There was a shout as they went past and after that Buck had to slow down because, in spite of the spotlights, they now drove in the haze of Ted's dust. Buck looked down at Leura. "See what I mean?" he said. "Now we drive a hundred miles in somebody else's raking dust." "Why did you do it?" Leura asked, peering up at him. The dust was in the car too. "You don't look like the kind of man who gets twisted round a woman's little finger." "The condition of the 'roo doesn't worry you?" he asked. "It does, but I wouldn't have asked you to turn back. That's not because I wouldn't have wanted it. I just wouldn't have expected you to do anything but laugh at the idea." "It goes to show, doesn't it?" Buck whistled faintly between his teeth. The men would rubbish him for this little jaunt. Ah well! He'd done some strange things in his life in the north-west but he'd

never gone back on his track for a dead kangaroo. He looked in the mirror at Allison's face and something in him softened. "Blasted dust!" he said. "We'll be lucky if we see the damn thing." The kangaroo was a dark object at the side of the road. Buck slowed down and turned round to a stop in the middle of the track. He got out and swivelled one of the spotlights round so it shone back along the route. "That's so Jake 'ull see me. He'll be doing seventy, rising eighty, by this time." He said this between his teeth to Leura, who was getting out of the car, partly to stretch her legs, partly to look at the kangaroo herself. "And," Buck went on in a flat, toneless, angry way, "the cur's in the middle of the track so he can't pass, and so I don't have to collect his dust too." Allison was out of the back seat by this time but she was unperturbed by Buck's annoyance. They crossed the road to the dark hump of the kangaroo. It lay quite still. Buck turned it over but it did not move. He bent down and felt it. Then he straightened up. "It's quite dead," he said. "Hit the car head-on and died instantly. They always do." He looked down at Allison. "You can't hit an object at that pace and have it live. They're always dead." "I'm so sorry," Allison said sadly. She looked down at the dead animal. She was surprised that kangaroos were so big. Racing along in the bush in the distance they only looked half the size. "No joey?" she asked. "It's a male." "Thank you for coming," Allison said quietly. She turned round and went back towards the car. "You knew for an absolute certainty it would be dead," Leura said. She looked up at him in the pale, filtering light from the car. "Yet you came back?" "I didn't run into the kangaroo, you know," Buck said quietly. "It ran into me. Quite a different thing. You'd better tell your young friend that, will you?" Leura knew what he meant. He wasn't a wanton killer of animals. Allison was leaning against the car, waiting for them. "Thank you . . ." she said again, a little foolishly. "Don't mention it." Buck was smiling in a sardonic, wry way. "You'll get your share of dust on the way home now. We've a hundred miles to go before whichever one of you is going to be cook has to set to and prepare a cracking big meal for twelve hungry men. They happen to be heavy eaters. And time passes on-" "Oh no!" Leura said. "We don't have to cook a dinner to-night!" "That is what the thirty-five pounds a week is for," Buck said sardonically.

"Big meals at odd hours and seven days a week." He held the door of the back seat open. "Are you going to get in, Allison?" he asked. The way he said her name sounded like music to Allison. Leura heard the note in his voice too. She looked at Allison's face as the other girl looked up at Buck. "You ride in front with Buck, Allison," Leura said. "I want to sleep if I'm going to cook. Up there in front I'm doing half the driving with my nervous system. My brakes are hurting my feet. Your turn to take a racketing." She crawled into the back seat and leaning back in a corner put her feet up. Buck swivelled the spotlight back to its former position and Allison walked round the car and climbed into the front seat. He eased his long body in beside her and revved up the engine. He did not look at the girl beside him, nor she at him. Leura closed her eyes. She didn't care at what pace they went now. Funny, but she had never before met a man who had had an instantaneous effect on her like that. She hadn't believed in attraction at first sight. But there it had been. And he had looked at Allison instead. Allison had looked back, and she, Leura, would do the cooking! Fate, Leura thought, leaning back with tired, closed eyes but still feeling the stinging of fine red dust creeping past her eyelashes under her eyelids, as the car gathered speed and raced on through the night. Fate always played a mean trick at least twice in life before it was tired of its victim. Last time— down there in her home town in the forest country—it had been a redhead, and that time the redhead had done it on purpose. Allison never did anything on purpose. Not even fall in love herself. She was probably thinking of dead kangaroos and not of Buck Ashe at all. Nice to be Allison. Leura, angry at her own thoughts, opened her eyes. She was looking straight into the rear-vision mirror and could see Buck's dark shadowed face. He turned that mirror so he could look at Allison all the time, she thought. At that moment Buck looked up and this time into Leura's eyes. He smiled. For the life of her, Leura could not help smiling back. He's very nice, she thought. She was ashamed of being jealous of Allison. But that was the way of it. She couldn't afford to let it spoil their working trip. Three weeks cooking on Palari, then they'd move on. She would have to bear with it. Leura felt the slowing down of the car. She sat up and peered out between the two shoulders in front. Down the track a beam of light from the headlights of a car shone straight across the road. The car was stationary, waiting for them.

Buck pulled up. From the other car a man emerged, hauling a swag-bag after him. Leura, in the diffused mixed lights of the two cars, could see he was tall, lean, rhythmical in his movements like all of them. An outback man. Like all of them he wore that wide, dusty, broad-brimmed hat at a careless angle. He slammed the door of the other car and his voice came crackling out over the still night air. "She's jake, Steve! Be seeing you." The other car revved its engine. Buck sat at the wheel of the De Soto, saying and doing nothing. The man came across the road, threw his swag on to the hood and took a minute or two to tie it down to the luggage rack. Then he came round the car in a leisurely way, opened the rear door and climbed in beside Leura. "You got company, Buck?" he said. "Two nymphs. How come?" His voice was firm, strong. It drawled a little but not as much as Buck's. "Been waiting long, Dan?" Buck asked. "You guessed we'd be going through about now?" "Darn-all hoped so, anyhow," the stranger answered. "Who went on in front? Could see his dust but must have missed him by five minutes." The De Soto was revved up and going. "Ted. He shot through while I went back to look for a dead kangaroo." "You what ? " The stranger was leaning forward, his arms on the back seat, talking across Buck's shoulder. "The nymphs," Buck explained laconically. "By the way, one of these ladies is the team's cook. The other is having a lift through." "I'm the cook," said Leura. "My name is Leura Barton." "Leura?" The man leaned back in the corner of the seat and looked at her. He raised his hat, which was always a silly gesture, Leura thought, when sitting inside a car, and at night-time. Outback men were never without their hats. Mustering or camping out, they slept with them on their faces. A hatless man in this heat was a dead man. Leura knew all about it from the two visits she had paid, years ago now, to her relative in Port Hedland. "Yes, Leura" she said a little primly. She was off men just at the moment. One down there in the forest country had wrecked her happiness and made a fool of her into the bargain. On account of that redhead. This one sitting in front, driving the car, had given her a catch in the heart in the first half-hour of knowing him but he liked the other girl best.

They just weren't worth it, Leura thought, meaning men. They were a pain in the heart, or a pain in the neck, or something. She'd rather get on without them. The stranger was rolling himself a cigarette. "Leura . . ." he repeated gently. "That means 'lava.' Must have come from a volcano some time?" "Maybe I am a volcano," Leura said a little tartly. "All cooks are supposed to have bad tempers, you know." "The lady passenger on my left," said Buck, interrupting them, "is Allison. Don't know the rest of it. Somebody did tell me, but I've forgotten." "Upton," Leura added. "Miss Upton." It was time, she thought, she would teach this Buck some manners. He didn't have to be outback-easy all the time. And why, for crying out loud, did Allison have to be elevated to the status of "passenger": a lady getting a lift through? All the other men in the team knew there were two girls going to shake-down in the quarters. Why not this one? Allison turned her head and smiled. "How-do-you-do?" she said. "I'm glad to meet you, Allison. My name's Grayson." Grayson! Leura thought uneasily. Of course. He was the station-owner's son. A homestead man and someone who mustn't know there was an extra girl down in the shearers' quarters. "He's Grayson of Palari," Buck said calmly. "They're his thirty-five thousand sheep we're about to shear." Allison turned round again, her blue eyes wide open with awe. "You mean your sheep? All those sheep are yours? Not your father's, or a company's sheep?" The newcomer lit his cigarette. In the flare of the match Leura could see he was good-looking in a rugged, weather-browned way. He had a square forehead, a strong nose and good chin. She couldn't see the colour of his eyes because the ceiling light was not good enough. But they wrinkled at the corners as he smiled. "All mine," he said calmly, without emphasis. "How ever do you count them ? " asked Allison. Leura closed her eyes. There were times when she wished Allison wasn't quite so naive. Then she was sorry for that thought. Allison was a nice girl and they got on famously together. Grayson of Palari had not answered Allison's question. Instead, in a steady

voice, quietly implacable, he said to Buck across the back of the seat: "Miss Barton is a stand-in to keep the shearing going, I suppose, Buck? I hope you have a usual shearers' cook lined up for as soon as possible. A married woman, or preferably a man ? " Buck, his rear-vision mirror still wrongly angled, looked at Leura in the back seat. His eyes were faintly amused, slightly wicked, but to Leura as attractive as ever. "You bet. One of the shearers' wives—name of McCoy. She'll be up in a couple of days. You don't want the shearers standing around doing nothing while the sheep stand around looking as silly as sheep for want of a cook, Dan? You know the Union rules. That kind of waste time takes money." "That's okay with me, Buck," Dan Grayson said quietly. "I'll look forward to seeing Mrs. McCoy." He was quite firm about this. Leura had no shadow of doubt about that. He was young-old like Buck Ashe. Probably anything from twenty-eight to thirty. But he was the station-owner and he wouldn't have girls cached away down in the shearers' quarters. Not done. Not on Palari Station anyway. Chapter 3 Leura thought she would never forget that day and night as long as she lived. Enough had happened in that twenty-four hours to fill a month. It was nearly midnight when they reached Palari boundary, and bang on midnight when they dropped Dan Grayson, the station-owner, at the homestead. The shearers' quarters were two miles down the station track towards a dried out creek-bed. Several vehicles, dust-covered overlanders, were parked at crazy angles to one another under some trees at the side of the long timber iron-roofed building. There were lights showing from every window, and the girls could see there was a long lean-to veranda running the full width of the building. On to this veranda there opened half a dozen doors. Allison had fallen asleep in the front seat and only the stop at the homestead had wakened her. She was still a little dazed as Buck opened the door for her and she climbed out of the car. "Last room at the end of the veranda is cook's room," Buck said kindly. "You'll have to share, I'm afraid. Everyone shares." "You too?" asked Allison, looking up at his tall figure through bleary eyes. He stood silhouetted against the lights of the quarters and suddenly seemed taller than she remembered. "Me?" he said. "I'm privileged. I sleep up at the overseer's house."

"Oh. The upper classes?" "No. Without me the men can do as they please. With me—they can't. It's as simple as that. The boss and the woolclasser get out from under their feet when off the job. They like it that way." Allison smiled. "Then you won't be there to see whether I help Leura with the cooking or not?" He grinned down at her. The headlights of the car shone through her hair, turning it to spun gold. She'd lost her hat somewhere on the floor of the car ninety-odd miles back along the track. "I wouldn't look, even if I were there," he said. "Well, not while you're cooking anyway." Allison thought he was a sweetie, and the look in her blue eyes said so, but her back was to the car lights and he could not see that particular expression. Leura, with the help of one of the shed-hands who had come out of the quarters, was dragging their swags from the boot of the car. "Where now?" she asked, coming up to Allison and Buck. They had looked rather striking standing there, she had thought. The slim, fair-haired English girl and the tall, spare Australian—the one looking up and the other down. How crazy could people be? They'd only met a few hours ago! Life was like that, wasn't it? What about herself? She couldn't very well talk! Buck turned from Allison. "Last room. Mike 'ull take your gear in for you." He shook his head slightly and looked actually sorry for Leura for half a minute. "Sorry," he said. "But I guess they've got the fire going—and it will be chops and eggs for about fourteen. Can do?" "For thirty-five pounds a week? Yes." "The kitchen and diner is the first room in the row. The rest of 'em, bar your own at the end, are shearers' rooms. Shower and wash-house in the lean-to at the back. Want me to go in and show you where to find everything ? " Leura shook her head vigorously. She didn't want to see Buck any more at all. Her lack of success with Buck reminded her too sorely of that other dreadful, painful experience of losing her fiance to a redhead. "If I can find everything, and make do, in a fishermen's hostel, I can in the north-west too." He liked her courage, for she was staggeringly tired. If she would have let him he would have said so. Even in the reflected light from the windows across the veranda he could see the set of her mouth, the grey eyes darkened by a grim, if exhausted, kind of determination.

"Well, go to it, girls," he said. "It's all yours. Dinner for fourteen, and the hour is thirty-five minutes after midnight. By the way—breakfast is at five-thirty AM Right? " "Right! " said Leura, as if this was a gag and she could have thrust it down his throat. As he walked away into the shadows she said to Allison: "He's really a sadist. He likes rubbing it in." "I don't think so," said Allison cheerfully. "I think you don't understand him. You've got a big job in front of you, so he sort-of underlined it to let you know he knew. And understood." They went up the three wooden steps on to the creaking, ill-fitting floorboards of the veranda. "Oh, and you do understand him, I suppose?" asked Leura. "Well, people are people," Allison said placatingly. "Whatever country they come from. There are nice ones and nasty. And ones like Buck. I like him. I'd even like him if he were in England, Scotland or Wales." "And in particular as he is in Australia—right where you are this minute?" Leura could have bitten out her tongue. She shut her eyes. Don't let me take it out on Allison because a blasted redhead walked into Joe's arms in my place. "I'm screaming tired," she said aloud. "Sorry in advance for anything I'm likely to say until I've had at least five hours' sleep." "'Sorry' is a word not allowed," Allison said quickly. "Remember? Rule number one. We take it for granted all along the line." She threw her swag on the left-hand bed because she had learned long since, without Leura ever having said so, that Leura liked the right-hand bed. "When the sun's over my right shoulder I know God's looking after his chillun," Leura had once said half-jokingly, half-seriously. She had all sorts of funny little beliefs like that. She had said redheads brought bad luck so she didn't like seeing them in the street. She had said she didn't like seeing rings on people's fingers. It was bad for the circulation. Allison had asked her what she would do when she became engaged, and married. "Wear ear-rings instead," Leura had replied. "They have gipsy's luck." Sometimes Allison thought Leura was joking, but sometimes she thought not. Anyhow, without comment she herself always bagged the left-hand bed as if that was what she wanted—so that Leura could have the right-hand one without asking. "You find the shower-house and clean-up while I find the kitchen and the gear," Leura said. "I'll shower later." "Can't we both-"

Leura looked at Allison steadily. “You're not the cook," she said. "You don't have to do anything but go to bed. To-morrow perhaps . . ." It was Allison's turn to stand with her feet slightly apart as if taking a firm hold on the ground. Her small rounded jaw jutted a little. "If you think I'm going to bed while you work..." she said almost belligerently, "well, you can take the sack as from now, and I'll be shearers' cook." Leura suddenly relaxed. "You're a good scout, Allison. I'm just a sore head." "Two sore heads, if you want to know. Well, let's go and get sore at the chops and eggs. It will work it out of our systems." The next two hours might have been hell if it hadn't been for the fact the girls received from somewhere a second wind. "You can always do it if you have to," Leura commented later to Allison. "So I've noticed," the other replied. One of the shed-hands had the fire roaring ready, and another had pulled out the cutlery and plates from the wooden cupboard against the kitchen wall. A mountain of chops stood in a large dish and several dozen eggs in an equally large bowl. "Four eggs apiece?" Leura asked, looking at the men already sitting about the long wooden table at the end of the room. Bottles of beer, glasses and cigarettes took up most of the table-top. The men had come a long way and were tired, thirsty, and waiting on the cook. "Add two more and you've guessed right," Ted, the car-driver, said. "Heavens!" said Allison under her breath. The shearers by common consent had agreed not to notice Allison's presence. She wasn't allowed to work for nothing. Union rules. So she had to be somewhere else. Not there. So they didn't see her. Anyhow, they wanted dinner, and quick. One girl sliced, peeled and cut potato chips at lightning speed while the other spread the top of the wood stove with fat, then chops. A huge pan of fat was already at the side, hot to a blue fume, waiting for the chips. It was the fastest meal Leura ever cooked, and to her great relief, in spite of its quantities it was a success. Every man had three chops, a pile of chips and two eggs. Then the other four eggs per man went on being cooked and came forward, with fried bread, as a second helping. Thirty tins of fruit were opened and emptied round the waiting dessert plates. After that four loaves of bread and butter were eaten. Then the men went bed-wise and Leura and Allison were faced with a mountain of plates and a dozen pylons of cups. "Nice to be a man," Allison said under her breath to Leura.

"Union rules don't allow for chivalry," Leura replied tersely. "In fact they put a penalty on chivalry. The men aren't allowed to work at anything but shearing." They put hot water in the sink and scraped bones from plates. There was a creak on the outside veranda boards and a dark tousle-headed figure appeared in the doorway. It was one of the shearers. "Ssh!" he said, holding up a warning hand. "Just come in to give you a hand. Don't let the other fellers know." The veranda floorboards creaked again and another man appeared in the doorway. Ten minutes later the whole lot were in the kitchen, all coming one at a time, barefooted. That washing-up was done in record time. Everything was put away spotless and in perfect order and most of it in silence. "Got to keep quiet about this," one fellow had said in a lugubrious whisper. "The Union might hear about it." They had all nodded their heads solemnly, and if silence can be witty, a witty silence ensued. "Whatever else might be dead—like that poor kangaroo," Allison said as the two girls climbed into their bunks later, "chivalry is still alive." "It always is, in the outback." Leura could hardly get the words out, she was so tired. "But they'd never, never let you know." " It's a men's world out here, but-" Leura was asleep. She didn't ever remember at what moment her head had touched the pillow. She had already passed into a dreamless world. There was no trouble about getting out of bed next morning. An enormous alarm clock had been put in the cook's room and it resounded like Big Ben and the crack of doom all in one. The shower was cold, for the heat of the day had not yet touched the land. At least it was private. The men were only just beginning to stir. In the shared rooms along the veranda, beds creaked; someone had his radio on; someone told him to shut the darn thing up. But so far no one was queueing up for the shower-room. The girls washed themselves in haste, but in peace. In the cook-house a rouseabout had the fire crackling and one small kettle near the boil. "You gotta get your cuppa-tea first," he cautioned Leura. "Else you don't get none at all till they've finished brekker. Since they eat a lot, it takes a long time." "What do you mean by 'a lot'? More chops and eggs?" "That's it, lady. Chops an' eggs. Chops an' eggs. Course if we've got a decent

cook—a real cook, I mean— then we get something different." "Oh," said Leura, putting out the cups and saucers. "Like what, for instance?" "Like cakes for the morning-tea break. An' mutton pie, an' good old roast dinner some nights Some nights the boys knock over a bush turkey. Then, by gum, we hev poultry ... if you know what I mean." "I think I do," said Leura. "The men have sent you in to lay the foundations of a good menu by dropping hints before breakfast." "Dunno what you mean." "You don't know what I think, either," said Leura. " Otherwise you would be an unhappy young man." Allison was putting out knives, plates, spoons and forks on the long table ready for breakfast. She was in a clean cotton pullover and dark cotton trews. Except for her golden halo of hair she looked as slim as a young boy. The rouseabout looked at her and shook his head. "Good job she's not the cook," he said. "Couldn't lift a side of mutton. Now could she? Couldn't fit it in the oven, I mean." Leura put her head on the side and regarded the rouse-about with disdain. "You're telling me... that when I cook a roast dinner... it has to be a whole side of mutton?" The rouseabout beamed. "You got it first go, lady. That comes of having brains. Now if all cooks had brains..." "You're pretty smart yourself, so as a just reward you can make the tea. I'm going to count chops." Breakfast was over and that mountain of dishes about to be faced again, when Buck Ashe came into the cook-house. He smiled at both girls, but Leura noticed he looked at Allison. She herself was up to her elbows in dough and didn't expect she looked her earlymorning best. One short lock of hair had fallen across her forehead and was bothering her, but if she brushed it aside she would have flour on her face as well as her hair. So she looked at Buck, a trifle balefully, through that lock, she barely said "Good morning" in return to his salutation. He wasn't looking at her anyway, she thought. So it didn't matter. Allison did the smiling for them both. She had a lovely, shining, earlymorning face, and it did anyone good to look at her. Buck was indestructibly handsome standing just inside the wire door of the cook-house. He carried an extra hat in his hand. One of the broad-brimmed stetson type that the men wore, only this one looked clean. Almost new, in fact. He cartwheeled it through the air to Allison and said, "Tuck your hair up

under that. From the distance, you could pass for a stripling rouseabout. We don't want the boss seeing girls instead of one cook round and about while the shearing goes on." He was smiling as he said it, and Allison thought he was joking. "I'd rather look like myself," she said. Buck was quite serious now. "But you can't," he said. "You're signed on as a rouseabout and that's what you have to look like. Believe me, if Dan Grayson sees a blossom of golden hair sprouting out of the rouseabout's head it's a one-hour-to-get-off-the-property order." "Who's to help Leura cook if I'm to be the rouseabout?" "Nobody but Leura. That's what she gets thirty-five pounds a week for. As a matter of fact, since we've signed on an extra hand—you, the junior rouseabout—she gets an extra two pounds ten. That makes thirty-seven pounds ten a week. With me thrown in for tea-breaks it makes it thirty-nine. What do you expect her to do for that? Play?" Allison's mouth fell open. "And what do I get for being a rouseabout?" "You wouldn't be two gold-diggers by any chance ? " Buck walked over to the stove, picked up the enamel teapot that stood hot on the side of the stove, and poured himself a mug of tea. He turned and looked over the mug at the two girls. Allison, her hands full of spoons and forks, leaned against the kitchen table. "Please Buck, what do I get?" she persisted. "Twenty pounds a week—if you've turned twenty-one." His mouth was full of the scones Leura had made while the shearers had been finishing their breakfast. She hadn't been able to bear that empty hot oven. Something just had to go into it. So Buck, uninvited, had hot scones with his tea. Allison frowned as she thought. Once again Buck, looking at her, wanted her to wipe away that tiny double line between her brows. Her forehead was such a beautiful, smooth and fair one. She was like an English flower in a desert, and something about her pleased him greatly. He had tallied up his team and decided he could do with one more hand. Neither of the girls could be shedhand, presser or shearer, that was clear. So it had to be rouseabout —the hand with the broom; the picker-up, the one at everyone's beck and call. The runner of messages. Leura, the dark-haired one with the obstinate look in her eye, had said she would be the cook. So the rouseabout had to be Allison—the flower in the field. "One gets twenty pounds and one gets thirty-nine pounds," Allison said thoughtfully. She looked across the tub of dough to where Leura went on kneading. The lock of her dark hair was clouding Leura's eyes, her bottom lip was caught in her teeth—something she always did when she was

concentrating. She looked up and met Allison's innocent blue eyes. "I'll swop you jobs, Leura. I always wanted to be the cook anyway." "Nothing doing," said Leura. "I bagged it first. And I know how. You don't...." Buck put his empty mug down on the side of the stove. "Like I said. A couple of gold-diggers." He walked across the kitchen to the wire door and held it open. "Put your hat on, bury that hair, Goldilocks, and come," he said. "Don't keep the boss waiting, or you're for it." Allison put down the knives and forks and picked up the hat from where she had put it on the table when Buck threw it to her. "I thought you said Dan Grayson was the boss," she said as she put the hat on and pushed her hair up under it. Leura's heart misgave her. Suddenly Allison looked like a child. A boy child. Buck Ashe might be an outback man, but he was a man of the world too. What might he do to the heart of a child like Allison? How much experience did Allison have of the world? She had crossed it—that was true. And lived alone in that hostel in a strange city. She had seemed none the worse for it when Leura had first met her. But one never knew about other people. People were like icebergs, in that only one-third was on top for the world to see. The other two-thirds were deep in the dark, secret ocean of themselves. Like Joe had been. Nobody would ever have guessed he would be capable of falling for a redhead when he loved—or thought he loved—another girl. Leura glowered at Buck Ashe. She wanted him to go away and not come back into her kitchen; not take Allison away into the possible danger of that man's world—the shearing-shed. Yet underneath she wanted to be nice to him—to seem as pretty to him as Allison did. She wanted him to stay. Not go. How funny would Buck Ashe think that—if he could look under the ocean level and see the rest of her iceberg. "Dan Grayson owns the station," Buck was saying to Allison as they went through the door. "I'm the shearing contractor. My team belongs to me and I bring it on to his station to do his shearing. Comprenez? My men do as I say— but Dan Grayson owns the station. He has rules too. So I abide by them." Their voices tailed away down the track to the shearing-shed—an enormous iron baronial-hall of a place that was wreathed in a haze of dust because of the sheep penned in their hundreds beside it. They had not remembered to say good-bye to Leura. They had simply gone. Leura shook and scraped the dough from her hands, went to the sink and washed them. Then when she had dried them on a bleached hessian towel she went to the door and looked out. Beyond the shearing-shed the stockmen were mustering a river of sheep along the track towards the sheds. In the middle distance Allison was walking

along beside the tall figure of Buck Ashe. He looked taller, she looked smaller, because of that difference in height. It was true she did look like a boy: a youth. She was slim-hipped in those cotton trews, and her wide-brimmed hat almost dwarfed her shoulders. Allison was a long way from her home and her native country, and Leura's heart misgave her. Then Leura looked at Buck's back, the rakish tilt of his hat. Instinctively and with great certitude she knew that Allison and all the Allisons in the world were safe with Buck. "Half her luck," said Leura as she turned back to the dough-tub, the washingup, the mid-morning tea-basket and thoughts of the mountains of food necessary for the slaking of the hunger and thirst of the Buck Ashe shearing team. An hour later she was talking to herself when Dan Grayson, the stationowner, walked in. He came through the wire door, just as Buck had done. No knock. No excuse me. He did take off his hat where Buck had merely raised his and clapped it back on his head. "Good morning," Dan Grayson said. He propped himself against the kitchen table and looked at the shearers' cook. "Were you saying something when I came in?" He looked at Leura quizzically. "I was saying thirty-nine over and over and over to myself," Leura said. She went on packing mugs and the new-made cakes into the tea-basket. This basket, she had decided, was big enough to carry twin babies. She glanced up and met Dan Grayson's eyes. They were grey, like her own, only flecked with blue. Now it was daylight, she could see what he really looked like. Strong. Everything about him was strong, and there could be a touch of arrogance too. Well, who wouldn't be arrogant if they owned a million acres and thirty-five thousand sheep! That didn't count the sheep that weren't being shorn either. Leura tried to think what that girl Grayson at school had looked like; but memory failed her. Tall, with dark hair, was the nearest she could get to remembering. Well, this man was tall and had dark hair too. And was very strong. He could be quite ruthless, also, Leura thought. Right now he was smiling. Trying to keep in with the cook. To keep his shearers they had to have a cook. The cook had to be beguiled into staying. So the station-owner was nice to her. That is—until the real McCoy came. A Missus, or a Mister. Anything in preference to a Miss. Dan Grayson's eyebrows twitched. "Thirty-nine?" he asked. "What has that to do with the tea-break basket? I presume that is what you are packing?" "Once when I went to a doctor I had to say ninety-nine, several times," said

Leura. "Ever since I've been in this boiling hot cook-house and thought of steam baths and pneumonia and tuberculosis, I've thought how much better thirty-nine sounded than ninety-nine. More mellifluous, if you know what I mean. More attractive." "Attractive ? " "About as attractive as pound notes." Leura put her head on the side and looked at the station-owner. She smiled, breaking up the shadow of her face so that the daylight shone in it, and she was suddenly not a shearers' cook, but a very attractive girl. Dan Grayson nodded his head. He had received the message. Life in the kitchen was tough but she'd be getting roughly thirty-nine pounds a week for it. She had to make a music of the money because the temperature made a hell of the cook-house. He levered himself up from the table and walked round the square timberwalled room. He looked up at the iron roof, at the flue behind the stove, at the one window which even under the pressure of his strong hand would not open fully. He opened the wire door, stood outside looking in and measured the width and height of the door with his eye. He came back and looked at the window thoughtfully. "I'll get this place fixed up for you," he said suddenly. "It's a furnace in itself." Leura beamed. "Thank you so very much. Mrs. McCoy, when she comes, will really appreciate that." Dan Grayson was back at the door. "I'll fix it before she comes." "Thank you again." Dan walked across the veranda and Leura almost ran to the door. "Mr. Grayson! You weren't thinking of going to the shearing-sheds, were you?" He turned. His hat was back on his head and his grey eyes appraised her. "I was. I always have tea with Buck's shearing team on the first morning. Other mornings if I have time, and am about." Leura was at a loss. How was she to get warning to Buck to tell them to keep Allison out of the way? The ogre was en route and the rouseabout would be caught. Without her hat, Allison would be metaphorically unfrocked. "Well ... I thought..." she stammered, trying to think what to say. Over Dan's shoulder, way down at the sheds, she saw the presser rolling out a bale of wool. The presser stood and looked up towards the quarters then went quickly back into the shed. Leura sighed with relief. Warning would be given.

"You wanted help with that basket ? " Dan Grayson asked. Leura flushed. "Oh no. That's my job," she said. "Besides, I understand one of the shed-hands was to come up. . . ." Dan came back the few steps to the veranda. He smiled, rather attractively this time. "Then I'll turn shed-hand for the day," he said. He stood high up near the roof of the small lean-to veranda and looked down at Leura. "Tell me," he said. "What do you suppose a shed-hand gets in Buck's team? I might put in a claim." "Yes. You do that. It might supplement the income from those thirty-five thousand sheep," Leura said gravely. "Only you would have to take into account the fact it will raise your income tax." Suddenly he was really smiling. Then Leura smiled too. "Where's that basket?" he said. "We'll put it to the test." Chapter 4 Down at the shearing-sheds Allison was nowhere in sight. Leura worried as to whether Allison would get a cup of tea, until she saw the woolclasser disappear behind a bale of wool with a large mug and a saucer with two cakes on it. Two minutes later he came back and picked up another mug for himself. So that's where she is, Leura thought, and marvelled at the deadpan nonchalance of every member of the team, including Buck. She wondered how mad Dan Grayson would be—if he knew. But then he hadn't even asked where the "passenger" was, or whether she had had a lift farther on . . . and to where. Perhaps he had so many people passing through, they were the same thing as sheep to him. Only they didn't pay dividends and there was no income tax. Leura sat on an upturned box and drank her mug of tea along with the men. Dan Grayson had gone outside with the presser and was looking at the bales of wool ready to be loaded. Out of her near-cynical daydream Leura came to to realise Buck was standing over her. She hated him for being so handsome. Handsome to her, anyway. She was mad with herself. How could she get this way in twenty-four hours? Less time than that, really. When did she first see him? About an hour after midday, yesterday. But he had seen Allison first, and gone on seeing her first, ever since. "The men like your cooking, Leura," Buck said. "I thought I'd tell you. Makes a difference if you know you're appreciated, doesn't it?" It was kind of him. Yet Leura wished he wasn't kind. She didn't want to like

him. She actually blushed. Buck saw the colour mount her throat and her cheeks. He turned away so as not to embarrass her. "Have you seen a shearing-shed before?" he asked. "If not, this is it." "Only once, and it was a small four-man stand down in the south. Nothing like this." "Come and I'll show you." There was no saying "No" to Buck, because he was moving forward already, expecting Leura to follow. She stood up and smoothed the apron which hung rather paradoxically over her slacks. She was half woman half boy herself in that rig-out, but she never thought of it that way. "There are the stands for the men," he said, pointing round the shed. "Those are the fleeces on the tables waiting to be classed. And the bins at the side. The shed-hand takes them down to the presses at the bottom of the shed. Mind the floor, Leura, you can slip on it easily." "It's the grease from the wool, I suppose," said Leura. Buck smiled. "That's why a woolshed makes a first-class dance floor. We're shearing this shed in two lots with a gap of four days between. That's so the homestead people can have their annual dance on the floor while it's good and slippery." He looked down at Leura. "Ever been to a woolshed dance? A station party?" Leura shook her head. "I have an uncle in Port Hedland, but he's a civil servant in the town. Nothing to do with stations." "Then you'll come to this one. You'll like it." "But what about Mrs. McCoy ? What if she turns up?" "Oh. You mean the real McCoy?" Buck laughed, his handsome brown face creasing up so that his eyes almost disappeared, his white teeth shone and the muscles in his throat relaxed. Whatever it was that Leura had said, he thought it was very funny. His laugh died and he looked a little whimsically at Leura. "The real McCoy," he said, "is always the real person... who never comes. The cook that wasn't. Sometimes, alas, the shearer that isn't. This time we've a full team of shearers and one extra rouseabout—as you know. But there never was any cook. We just couldn't raise one." Leura looked at him gravely. "Excuse me putting it bluntly—and in proper outback fashion—but what a pack of liars you all turn out to be." Buck pulled one ear. His smile was sardonic now. "We couldn't run the north-west any other way," he said. "It's not lying. It's a language of its own. Everybody understands it."

"And Mr. Grayson? The station-owner? Does he understand it? In the car last night he said that Mrs. McCoy—or a Mister... whichever it was—had to come. What did he mean by that if he knows that McCoy is the Missus or Mister who never is?" "The same as I meant. They have to exist in theory." "But not in practice? Does he know that Allison is somewhere hiding behind wool bales, all dressed up in a man's hat and looking like a tight-rope walker of a boy? Getting a rouseabout's pay?" Buck went on pulling his ear. "He wouldn't be half the man I think he is—if he didn't know," Buck said. Leura nearly stamped her foot. "I think you're all crazy. None of you knowing what your left hand is doing and all the time you're looking at it." "You have it all wrong, dear lady. We looked at it. We know what it's doing because we tell it what do do. Only we call it the right hand when it's really the left." "You're trying to make a fool of me," Leura said gravely. Buck was serious once again. "No I'm not, Leura. It's all in the game of running a station as far as Dan is concerned. And getting a shed shorn on time as far as I am concerned. Union rules on the one hand and homestead folk on the other just complicate the picture." "I know about the Union but what's wrong with the homestead folk?" "Mrs. Grayson, and Miss Eve Grayson—up there at the homestead—would heartily approve of the real McCoys. But what do you suppose they'd say to a couple of young fillies down in the shearers' quarters ? Yet we have to have them, don't we ? It's a matter of life and death to get that mob shorn before the rains come with the early cyclones. So any subterfuge to get a cook will do: even kidnapping a couple of stranded girls on a dirt track a hundred miles out on a spinifex plain." He was smiling again, but Leura refused to let it do anything to her heart. She had to regard him as a lost cause. He was probably nobody's man: not even Allison's, once they had moved on to their next shed where there probably was a real McCoy. "And Dan Grayson knows all about it. How cunning can you all be?" she said, sadly. "Just cunning enough to get a shed shorn and let two girls go happily off with a pocket full of pound notes." Leura softened. "When you put it that way, I suppose it does make sense... except to Mrs. Grayson." "Her opinion might count with Dan, but not with the shearers. They're my men, and I'm their boss. Now come on down amongst the wool bales and

hunt for Allison. Three bets to one she's prostrate." Allison was. She was half leaning, half lying, back against a sack of woolends, her face wreathed in pain. She opened her eyes and gazed reproachfully at a healthy cook. "Swop you jobs, but you can keep your pay," she said. "I'll cook for the rouseabout's packet." Leura bent over the other girl, her face concerned. "Allison," she said, "what is the matter?" "My back, my back! My fortune to swop backs and swop jobs!" Leura turned quickly to Buck, but the boss had only a sardonic smile to offer the invalid. "She'll be all right in a couple of days," he said. "It always gets them this way in their first shed. It's stooping to pick up the fleeces that does it." "I am dying," Allison said pathetically. "Then get up and die on your feet," Buck said firmly. "Tea-break's over and it's time you started earning that twenty pounds a week." "You are a brute” Leura said blankly. "Et tu" said Buck. "You brought her here. You are showing her the great outback: working your way around Australia. Well, here you both are. And like I said—get to it!" A smile puckered the corners of his mouth but he turned and walked away down the shearing-shed, where the cutters were already beginning to hum and the dust and wool-ends to fly. "He means it," Leura said in desperation, watching him go. "I know," Allison groaned. "He's a brute and I hate him. Help me up, Leura. I'm not going to let those beastly shearers see me lying down to it." Leura gave Allison both her hands and pulled her up on to her feet. "Up the rebels!" said Allison. "You must have a touch of the Irish in you to say that." "I haven't, but I always liked them. In spite of my mother's advice. Well, come on. Like you said—mad dogs and Englishwomen. Let's get to these ghastly fleeces." "And me to that furnace of a kitchen, and that side of mutton," said Leura. They walked together into the heart of the shed. "Leura, are you sorry we came?" "No. I keep saying 'thirty-nine' to myself. It helps." "Twenty doesn't sound so rhythmical." "We'll pool it and halve it. Two into fifty-nine doesn't sound so bad."

"Not by halves it doesn't." The girls looked at one another and smiled. A little crookedly, but they were smiles. The real McCoy. Everyone went to bed at half past eight. One or two of the shearers had their radios on until about nine o'clock, but for most of them the only sound was deep breathing. To-night Leura thought she was too tired to sleep. For half an hour she had massaged Allison's back then put belladonna plasters on the worst places. Buck had come down with the plasters after dinner. He kept them in stock because this back trouble always happened with new hands. The young trainee woolclasser on the table had never worked in a shed before. All his classing had been done in a technical school and on the wool floor of the brokers, so his back was in the same plight as Allison's. Buck had belladonna plasters for him too. "Remember you owe me for those," he said as he handed the packet of plasters to Allison. "They're out of Grayson's stock and I'm no good at keeping accounts." Allison and Leura had already discovered that practically anything could come out of Palari Station store, but everything had to be paid for by Buck because it was his team. There was a sort of honour code of paying Buck back. There were no special privileges for girls. They were "hands" be they male or female and had to abide by the rules. The girls were lying in their respective beds, and every time Allison thought about turning over she had to have second thoughts. It hurt too much. Leura lay with her hands under her head and looked up at the rafters that held the iron roof together. "The only time I ever went to bed at half past eight was when I was at school," she said. "I feel as if it is still afternoon." "There's nothing else to do, is there?" said Allison. "Besides, we have to get up at five in the morning. I wonder if they go to bed as early as this up at the homestead." "Let's walk up there one night," Leura suggested. "I would like to see what the homestead really looks like. It seemed so big . . . and there was a garden . . . that night we dropped Mr. Grayson." Allison was scornful. "That night! That was last night!" Leura groaned. "Good heavens. I thought it was a year ago. It must have been the side of mutton. Did you ever see men eat so much meat? It's incredible." "A sheep a day. They wouldn't believe me if I told them at home. I wonder what they eat up at the home stead?" "The homestead has a fascination for you," said Leura. "If it's moonlight tomorrow night we'll walk up."

"A two-mile walk there and a two-mile walk back? I'll have to feel a lot more enthusiastic than I do now." There was a long silence, and not even Allison groaned. Leura's eyelids began to droop over her eyes. I'll go to sleep in spite of myself, after all, she was thinking. "Leura..." Allison whispered. "Are you awake?" " Yes... just." "I wonder what they're like up there in the homestead. Mrs. Grayson... and Miss Grayson. They must be awfully rich. Imagining owning thirty-five thousand sheep...." “Come a moonlight night we'll go and see. I guess Mrs. Grayson darns Dan's socks and Eve is tall and dark . . . like him . . . and probably plays the piano or goes to bed at half past eight, like we do." "Mrs. Grayson is grey-haired. One of the shearers told me. mother, not his wife."

She's Dan's

Leura turned on her side and propped herself on one elbow. "Isn't Dan married?" she asked, surprised. "No. The men say he won't marry ever. He's a dyed-in-the-wool bachelor though all the station-owners around who've got daughters have tried to get him in." "Down there in that shed you hear all the interesting things," Leura said. "I have to work all by myself in the cook-house." "You had Dan Grayson call on you this morning. He carried the tea basket down for you. You ought to have heard the men on that one. They say Dan Grayson never did that for anybody in his life. They think you've really got something, Leura—they said so." "Allison," Leura said severely, "that shearing-shed is nothing but a hotbed of gossip. Goon. Tell me some more." "They really do, you know. The men, I mean. They think something of you. They think you've got what they call 'class.' And they like the cooking. You really went up to the top of their best-seller list when Dan Grayson carried that basket down. Those men don't miss a thing, Leura. If a kangaroo hops or an emu runs twelve miles down the track . . . they know." Leura rolled back on her pillow. "Oh, but such juicy gossip!" Allison said. "Would you like me to tell you some more? They say Buck Ashe has the best shearing team in the north. Of course they would say that—since they're the shearers . . . but they like him. They say he's 'dinkum '—whatever that means." "It means pretty good," Leura said sleepily. "You want to go to sleep, don't you?" "Mn . . . mn . . ."

"Then go," said Allison crossly. "Me? I'm for a night of racking pain. And nobody cares." "I do . . . sometimes . . ." said Leura, but the last word was lost in a yawn and five minutes later the girls were sound asleep. The next day passed the same as the first and both girls could soon see that a shearing-shed ran to clockwork and nothing was different from one day to another but the menu. Leura had to work hard at that. It wasn't easy to think up many variations on the theme of mutton. It was actually a week before Allison's back had returned to normal and she could bend or stretch with ease. Leura saw very little of Buck, for each day he went down to the shearing-shed from his own quarters, by-passing the cook-house. It was Allison who reported all that was said and done by the various personalities at the shed. "You've never seen anything like the way they work," she told Leura. "The perspiration pours from them . . . and except for tea-break they never stop. Each man has to shear a minimum of sheep a day and the one who does most gets most pay. One man can do two hundred sheep. Imagine it, Leura. ..." "How many does Buck shear?" "Don't be silly. He's not a shearer. He's the boss and he classes the wool. How much money the station-owner gets depends on the classing of the wool. That's why Dan Grayson comes down to see Buck so often. He wants to know how it's going—and it all depends on Buck." It was Saturday and nobody had worked in the sheds. Leura alone worked— in the cook-house. Union rules again. Shearers weren't allowed to work on Saturdays and Sundays, so they did their washing and hung it out along the wires round the quarters; mended their socks and sat yarning on the veranda steps. When the evening meal was over and all was washed up, the bread rising in the big bowls under cloths by the dying fire, Leura and Allison decided to take their walk up to the homestead. "Take a torch and don't get lost," the men warned them. "There are more station tracks than goannas on this place, and there's only one leads back to the quarters." "Where do the others go?" Allison asked. "Anywhere from the Indian Ocean to Sydney." There was a shout of laughter at this, but Leura understood what they meant. A station track could run for fifty miles before it came to its ordained destination—a water-bore, an out-camp, or the main stock route leading to a town perhaps three hundred miles away. "We have to watch for landmarks, and remember them," Leura said to Allison. "You take special note of any trees and I'll watch for stumps or creek

beds. . . ." "That won't tax my brain," Allison replied. "There's hardly a tree to the halfmile as far as the eye can see in the day-time—let alone what one can see by moonlight." They walked slowly, for this was a pleasure trip, not a journey. They talked a lot about the odd ways some of the men had and how different they were each from the other and how different they were as a type from anyone else they had ever met. At last, as if each had been drifting towards but trying to avoid the one person most in their minds, Leura mentioned Buck. "It must be quite an art handling all those men," Leura said. "They're so wilful . . . and stubborn. They're so powerful and strong and don't like taking orders." "No. But they take them from Buck. He has a way with him. He doesn't raise his voice. He's mild. He's sort of deadly mild, if you know what I mean. When he's quietest he has a look in his eye. Oh Leura ... I think he's an awfully clever person." "I'm glad you like him, because I think he likes you." Allison hesitated. "Do you really think so ? I'd love him to like me. I want to pass muster. All the time I think the men are waiting for me to crumble up and be no more than a useless girl. If Buck . . ." "Stop worrying about Buck. If he didn't like you he wouldn't have signed you on as rouseabout." "And book-keeper too," Allison added with a note of triumph. "I didn't tell you about it before because I thought you might want me to help you in the cook-house on Saturdays. But Buck hates keeping a tally of what the men get from the store. So I said I would. Do you mind?" "Of course not. Actually you're the ideal person, because the men won't growl about listing all their items to a girl. They would to a man. I can see that already. Are you to have a set time?" "Yes. On Saturdays after lunch. I'm to go up to the overseer's quarters. There's an office there and Buck and I'll go through the accounts. . . ." The "Buck and I" wounded Leura unexpectedly. She didn't know why that phrase hurt her. It was like a sudden knife thrust in an unexpected, an unprotected place. She had stopped thinking about Buck except to notice him go down past the cook-house to the shed each morning and back again each night. "There are only two more Saturdays," she said, more to console herself than warn Allison. "Five more," said Allison. "The next station we do is really this one too. It's the other half-million acres on the other side of the line on the map. They call it by a different name, and brand the fleeces differently, but it's still run by Dan

Grayson. We shear over in another shed by the northern boundary." The gossip that went on in the shearers' shed and which was missed by Leura, alone in her furnace kingdom of the cook-house, was something Allison heard, and often forgot that Leura did not. This was news indeed ! "I thought our jobs only lasted three weeks," Leura said quietly. "Three weeks on this station, but we have to finish the other one next door— which is really the same. Don't you see, Leura?" "Yes, I see. But Buck took us on for three weeks. He said so." Allison laughed softly. "He doesn't say so now," she said. "He likes us, Leura. And the men like us. So we'll stay on, I'm sure." She was suddenly aware of Leura's silence as they flickered the torchlight on the dark places in the track and walked on slowly in the cool of the evening. "You do want to stay on, Leura?"Allison asked anxiously. "Of course," Leura said quietly. "Think of all those extra thirty-niners." "For an awful moment I thought perhaps you didn't like being here." "I do. Of course I do. . . . Oh, look! There are the homestead lights. Don't forget to mark where this track comes out, Allison. We might take the wrong one back." "I'll recognise those three old trees there: and there's the corner of the garden fence!" "Right. Don't let's forget. It's the track leading away from the fence corner." There were lights on in the front of the homestead but all else was in darkness. The windmill tanks stood high and still like steel monsters in the moonlight. The shrubbery round the garden was sweet-smelling now the heat of the day was gone. "You'd think the dogs would bark, wouldn't you?" said Allison. "If they're there they probably recognise us," Leura replied. "Don't forget they help muster those sheep up to the shed every day." The girls came to the small wicket gate and leaned over it. A narrow path led through shrubs up to a round plate of a lawn then to the veranda steps. There was not a soul in sight and only silence resounded, like the music of the stars. Full of a something that could not be heard. "I'd love to go into the garden and look," Allison whispered. Leura said nothing. "Once I went to stay with an aunt of mine in London," Allison said. "On Christmas afternoon we went for a walk in Kensington and we could look in the lighted windows at all the Christmas trees: and the people in party caps. It was like being at a party ourselves. The people didn't mind. It's part of

Christmas." "Well, this isn't Christmas, but let's go and look," said Leura. "We needn't go right up to the house." The gate opened noiselessly and the two girls walked up the path, then stepped on to the lawn. "Look . . ." Allison whispered. "Roses. Imagine it— in the middle of the desert. It's like an oasis, isn't it?" The windows of the living-room were wide open. They were enormous windows, taking up almost half the wall frontage. A middle-aged lady sat at a small table, writing. Probably letters. She was well-dressed but severe looking. Not at all like Dan, Leura thought, and was surprised at the faintly tender feeling she had, at the thought. She was glad Dan wasn't as severe-looking as his mother. There was something of the patrician about him, but a certain studied kindliness about him too. "What a gorgeous room," Allison said in an undertone. "Look at that quaint furniture . . . and all the pot-plants everywhere. It's like an indoor garden. And so big. . . ." A young woman came in through a door as if coming down a passage. She was tall and dark-haired and wore an attractive floral cotton dress. Her hair was brushed back and high, and done like a crown on her head. She looked quite distinguished, though not exactly beautiful. She stood by the table, talking to Mrs. Grayson, then turned and went out again. The middle-aged lady went back to her writing. Eve Grayson, Leura thought to herself. Yes, I remember her now. Nobody knew her very well at school. She was always aloof... as if she didn't want to make friends. . . . I seem to remember. . . . She decided not to tell Allison she had been at school with Eve Grayson. It might make things awkward. After all, they were two girls working their way round Australia and at the moment were shed-hands in a shearing-shed and no more. It was better to keep those distances. No, she would say nothing to Allison. Besides, Leura couldn't remember that she liked Eve Grayson very much at school. Perhaps it was all of those million acres that made Eve aloof. Not to mention the other half-million that went under a different name because nobody, not even the Graysons, was allowed to own more than a million acres. Funny to be so near people who were kings of whole countries of land, as these station-owners were, and not feel anything very much. Dan Grayson now. He seemed something more than other men. A little more authority: the power to say he would fix up the cook-house and not worry about the accounts. He had the power to walk down to his shearing-shed and

say—"Missus or Mister McCoy but not two girls in the shearers' quarters": yet not the power to say who should work at what job in that shearing team. Only Buck had that power. It was the way things worked. Checks and balances, Leura thought. It's the way the country runs. "Let's go," she said. "It's getting late and I still have to get early breakfast. Besides, I'd hate to be caught." When the two girls turned round there was the figure of a man leaning against the wicket gate. He had his arms folded, as if he had all the time in the world. He was silhouetted against the pale moonlit sky and that same moonlight shone full on the girls now, telling him exactly who and what. Beside him, motionless, were two dogs. "Of course!" Leura said in an undertone. "The dogs had to hear us. They just don't bark. On a place like this they tell their master." It was Dan Grayson. Chapter 5 "I feel an awful goat," Allison whispered. "what shall we say?" "The truth, I suppose. We were having a look. He can throw us out of the homestead garden but he can't put us out of the shearing team. Cheer up. Only Buck can do that." They stepped off the lawn on to the path and tried to walk in a nonchalant way towards the wicket gate with the man and the dogs keeping guard over it. The moonlight and the starlight were so bright it might have been day. "Good evening," Leura said. "We were looking at your garden." "You must come and see it in the daylight." Dan Grayson did not move. "You would see more," he added. Leura strained her ears to catch a note of sarcasm, or even one of irony. But there was none. He had spoken quietly, as if he meant it. Suddenly he straightened up, turned and unlatched the gate, then stood to the side. Clearly ushering the girls through. Allison had taken Dan Grayson's words as meant. "It would have to be on a Saturday or a Sunday. Every other day we work from sun-up to sundown." "We work?" he asked gravely. Allison put the back of her hand to her mouth. Leura could hear her muffled "Oh!" of distress. She had let the cat out of the bag. She was supposed to be somewhere else. The passenger who had passed through. "Well, travelling's working, you know . . ." Allison said. "All those miles in all that heat! You'd be surprised, Mr. Grayson, how arduous it is to be moving about in the north-west." They were through the gate. The girls started to walk along the road towards

the station square and the corner of the garden fence. " Well—I have travelled—more or less," Dan Grayson drawled. "Here and there in the outback." He was walking with them and somehow had managed to be walking between them. They went on doggedly. And he went with them. Leura was furious for she felt he was playing some kind of a game with them. Why didn't he question them for trespassing, and be done with it? If he was trying to make them feel foolish he was succeeding, for that was exactly how they both did feel. He turned his head towards Leura. The moonlight accented the tall, lithe grace of the way he walked, like an animal that was full of strength, yet light as the brolgas that danced on the plains. She was strangely aware of that patrician quality in him that she had sensed before. It was an aloofness that was not stiff. In fact it was friendly, yet still remote. "I understand the shearers are taking next week-end off," he said quietly. "Your cook-house will be renovated and ventilated while they're away." "I didn't know____" "No? Buck likes keeping things to himself. Maybe he thinks that if the shearers knew we were happy to see them go for a day or two they'd stay out of contrariness." Both girls laughed. "That's just what they would do," Allison said. "Specially as you are having a party. A homestead party." "Will you be passing through about that time, Miss Allison?" He had forgotten her surname. "Most people passing through come to a homestead party." There was a minute's silence following this remark. Both girls were cogitating as to whether it was an invitation or not. And if it was an invitation for Allison was it one for the shearers' cook too ? And did he still believe she was only a passenger on her way? . . . "I can arrange to be nearby," Allison said as if she was playing a game. In a minute they could all burst out laughing and forget about it. If that was what he meant to happen. "I will be having a friend of mine with me—about then. May two passers-through come to a homestead party?" "Everyone comes," Dan said. "The nearest town is one hundred and three miles away. But everyone comes. Everyone." "Then thank you. We'll come," Allison said. It was much too dangerous pointedly to put the case of the shearers' cook to him. Perhaps he didn't want the case put. Perhaps he just wanted two girls to come to a party. Allison was having magnificent ideas, as the moon shining through the white trunks of the ghost gums had effect on her. She and Leura could pack up the Holden and go to the town for the week-end if the shearers would be away.

From the town they wouldn't be anything more than visitors. Now would they? If only she could breathe her ideas across Dan Grayson's broad back and inject Leura with the essence of this plot; then Leura wouldn't spoil it by saying something contrariwise now. Allison did not have to worry. Leura was silent. The lovely moonlit track, the silvered plain of dying grass, and mile upon mile of everlastings scenting the air in their last days until next spring, were all having a profound effect on her. All this world was lovely at night-time, Leura thought. It was no longer the red eerie north, but beautiful where the starlight softened it. She liked this man Dan Grayson walking beside her but felt as most people from the south do feel of the great landowners—he was someone outside her range of social life. They seemed to be invested in their remote, though human, loftiness with the untouchable-ness of their own vast acres. Allison, more naive, more natural, seemed to be able to come closer to him. In spite of so many people around her, and of the full physical efforts of her job, Leura felt in a void. Like some silly bouncing ball, her heart had bounded in Buck's direction. If he had had his hands out waiting he could have caught it. But he had been looking at Allison. Leura was so deep in her thoughts she did not notice that Dan Grayson did not keep to the track leading back to the shearers' quarters. Somewhere along the line a turn-off had veered to the north and Dan had quietly veered the girls northwards too. Suddenly there was a group of cottages standing on a rise above a small lake. They could see it all clearly in the bright-as-day moonlight. Allison stopped and Leura, shaking the cobwebs of her thoughts away, stopped too. "Where on earth are we?" Allison asked. Leura blinked. She hadn't known there was a lake anywhere near the shearing yards. Let alone a small village of houses, all standing on short stilts, their lean-to veranda roofs catching the light and reflecting back a silver glow. "That is the overseer's cottage," Dan Grayson said quietly. Yet there was a touch of amusement in his voice. "The one by the left is the accommodation for the shearing manager and the junior woolclasser. The latter, by the way, inhabits a room called 'the bridal suite.' Always reserved for the trainee woolclasser. On the other side is the head stockman's house. One or two of the oldest station hands live in the others." "They have a lovely view over the lake," Allison said. Dan Grayson turned to Leura.

"You have been very quiet. Are you surprised too?" " Yes. I didn't realise we were not on the track to the woolshed." "It's very easy to be lost on a sheep station." "I don't think we are lost," Leura said quietly. "I think we were brought. You are going to ask Buck for an explanation as to why members of his team are wandering uninvited near the homestead square. Isn't that it?" "Well, that's an idea," Dan said gravely. "Shall we knock him up and ask for tea? I see he still has his light on. By the way, only one member of his team is involved, I think. The other young lady is merely passing through. Yes?" Leura was growing tired of this silly game of words but she dared not say so. After all, they did want to keep this job. The pay was wonderful and would keep them in funds, and the Holden full of petrol and oil, for weeks. She had to pretend to agree with him. "Allison is a friend of mine," she said. " Some of the shearers' wives come up to stay with them for a few days. Buck wouldn't mind Allison." "I'm sure he wouldn't," Dan said gravely. "As a matter of fact I don't mind myself. I rather like it. Shall we go in and knock up Buck?" He didn't wait for an answer but strode on ahead, up the two wooden planks that served for steps on to the veranda of the cottage, and called: "You there, Buck? I've a couple of visitors for you. Are you respectable?" In the yellow rectangle of light Buck's tall figure appeared, his head nearly touching the top of the door-frame. "That you, Dan?" Buck peered round Dan Grayson's broad shoulders to where the girls stood. "Do you think we're for it?" Allison whispered. "What sort of silly stories do we tell this time?" "None," Leura said. “They won't want explanations themselves. I think Dan Grayson wants to make us feel foolish by way of punishment. And dangling us like a couple of caught pigeons in front of Buck will make Buck feel his responsibility. That's the way they do things." "Cads!" said Allison vehemently. Leura laughed. "The word they use in this country begins with an ' f.'" The girls ended that night's adventures by being driven back to the shearers' quarters by Buck. They had been called into the cottage living-room and given coffee and tinned biscuits. Buck and Dan Grayson had talked sheep, wool prices and how the shearing was going. They had been so pleasantly polite to the girls, this was a punishment in itself.

Allison had not been at all worried about her plight from the moment she had come into the somewhat untidy room and seen Buck's table littered with papers, his ashtray full of cigarette butts, and a pile of account books standing awry on a chair by the table. No wonder he hated doing the books. The small frown between her fair brows said this for her. Such lack of organisation! Such a proper mess of papers! Just wait till she got to them on her hours off from the woolshed ! Buck caught her looking at the disarray and grinned. "Not to worry," he said. "I'm getting me a bookkeeper this time next week. A pretty good one too." Leura detected the faint underlining of the word "pretty." Yes, Allison was pretty, even more so under this poor flickering electric light which came from a not-so-very-strong generator out in the engine house. Her skin seemed pale and her eyes a bright sparkling blue. Her fair hair stood around her head in a glorious halo. If I were a man I'd fall in love with Allison too, Leura thought. As for Dan Grayson, Leura hardly looked at him. He was too far removed in the scale of worldly possessions for her. She knew she liked him, in a wary kind of way, but it was like being in the company of princes. To be sitting there drinking coffee with him was unreal. When Buck went outside to pull the car round and drive the girls back to the quarters, Dan Grayson said: "I'll walk back to the homestead, Buck. I prefer it." It was Leura's turn to whisper to Allison. "He's giving Buck a chance to whip the hides off us for going up to the homestead uninvited." The girls stood out on the track waiting for Buck to turn the car, and watched Dan Grayson's tall figure merging with the shadows as he walked away. "You know," Allison said thoughtfully, "in their own peculiar way they're ruthless, aren't they? I mean people like Dan Grayson. He's left us wondering and worrying all the time we were in the cottage, and walked away as if absolutely nothing had happened. I suppose there is punishment in mere waiting." "Yes. And he knows it," Leura said. "I suppose it's better than shouting at a person, or using sarcasm. I don't think I'll go to his beastly homestead party, not even masquerading as a visitor staying in the town." "Oh, please!" Allison pleaded. "Don't pull out of that, Leura. I might never get the chance of seeing inside a station homestead again. Besides, if Buck is going I want to go."

"You could go with Buck." "I didn't think of that. If he asks me... of course. But I wouldn't want to go without you." "Let's wait and see. We'll spend the week-end in the town. That's for sure. It'll be a break and I'm pretty sure Dan Grayson wants to clear the whole shearing team out so they can get the woolshed ready for the dance in peace." The car rolled up beside them and Leura gave Allison the kind of gentle push that sent Allison into the front seat while she herself took the back seat again. "Room for three in front," Buck said. "I'll ride in the back," said Leura. "That way I'll get only the backwash of your crossness. Are you mad with us for walking up to the homestead?" Buck rolled the car forward and moved the gear into second. "About as mad as a man can be with two girls—any time of the year." "You kidnapped us. Now you're stuck with us." Allison's shoulder moved a shade closer to Buck's shoulder. "You're not really that cross, are you? After all, Dan Grayson wants an efficient shearing team too." Buck glanced down at Allison's upturned face. "Don't try any feminine charms with me right now," he said tersely. "They won't work with Mrs. Grayson, or Miss Grayson: so it's no good practising them on me. Leura ! Are you awake?" "Yes, Buck." "Then keep away from that damn homestead. One hint up there that there are two girls down at the shearing quarters and the whole team will go up in smoke. What's more, I could lose the Palari shearing contract. It's worth thousands of pounds to me. Now have you got that in your head?" "Yes. Right in." "Then see if you can get it into Allison's head. This isn't a game. It's big business. Dan Grayson doesn't care a fig who or what is down at the shearingshed as long as the job gets done inside the contract time; and done efficiently. But those two women up at the homestead—that's a different matter altogether." "Everything's registered, Buck," Leura said from the back seat. "I apologise. It won't happen again." "Me too," said Allison meekly. Buck's voice softened. "You're forgiven." Leura in the back seat closed her eyes. If only it hadn't been Buck. The junior woolclasser, now. He was a nice-looking young fellow and came from a very good family. His own people were station people. If only he had taken a shine to Allison. And Allison to him.

When they left the car at the quarters Leura slipped out first. "Good night, Buck. Thank you for not being too mad at us." She walked up on to the veranda and towards their room at the end, leaving Allison standing at the foot of the steps with Buck. "I think Leura really is sorry," Allison said. "She seems so quiet since we came here. I sometimes worry about her a little. Do you think it's the heat in that cookhouse ? " "Dan Grayson seems to think so. He's having it fixed up. He's really not such an ogre. He wants you to come to that homestead party. They're always short of girls, so all girls are asked. But not to come as shed-hands on Palari." "Does he have to knuckle down to those two women up there always?" Allison asked. "He doesn't knuckle down to anyone on earth. He merely plays for peace. He's a shrewd man. He doesn't put trouble in his way." "You like him, don't you?" "I have enormous respect for him. But he ought to get himself a wife. She'd deal with Missus and Miss up there at the homestead." "Why doesn't he get a wife? He's awfully good-looking. And must be awfully rich." "That's probably why. He'd rather someone liked him for himself than for his raking acres. It would be hard for him to find out, wouldn't it?" Allison leaned against the hood of the car and thought. "I suppose you're right," she said. "A man like that would never know. Would he? I mean—he'd be such a good proposition. ..." "You're not thinking of gold-digging yourself?" Buck asked quietly. Allison knew he didn't mean it. "Heavens no! I'd be frightened of a million acres. I'd rather rove round. And travel, and see things. I don't want to stay put..." Buck was silent a minute. Then he opened the car door. "You'd better go and get some sleep," he said. "I need an hour or two of it myself." He slid in behind the wheel. "Thanks, Buck, for not being too angry," Allison said gently. "That's okay. Don't do it again. See you in the morning." He revved up the car and a minute or two later had cut a semicircle in the track and was racing back, up the rise towards the lake and the overseer's cottage. Allison stood in the moonlight and looked after him. She was puzzled. He had seemed as if he had been about to say something,

then had slid into the car, revved up, and gone. She shrugged her shoulders. "I don't understand them at all," she thought to herself. Then she looked across at the sheds, the sheep-yards, and beyond to the spinifex plain all bathed in moonlight, standing still and silent. "But I love the place. I hope I don't get too fond. . . ." She hadn't been quite telling the truth to Buck about that roving around. Travel first—yes. Then to stay put, and secure. Funny, but one wanted so much—so very much out of life. Everything. At the end of the week the shearers were paid off. This was the way they liked it. After a time they had a craving for the town. Some even made the big stretch down to Perth. On Tuesday morning they would be back again and the team would sign up. Buck would draw up a new contract with Dan Grayson to complete the shearing on Palari. It was quite a scene that Friday afternoon in the shearing-sheds. Everyone knew what he was going to do. They shore like madmen, some even doubling their total, to clear the yards of the sheep mustered in. The star shearer, Ron Ryan, a huge, burly ox of a man with a fearful temper —but with shears that nicked like vicious ice through the fleeces when he wanted it that way—broke his own record. Two hundred sheep in six and a half hours. He stood all day bent over one sheep after another as a shed-hand pulled the sheep to him, reared them back against his thigh, then went for the next. Not once did he seem to straighten all day, and the sweat poured from him in rivers. It was competitive and every man, even lesser shearers, battling to pile up their tallies, watched out of the corners of their eyes to see that Ron was served. As rouseabout Allison had to take her stint of running to Ron with the water-bag and holding it to his mouth every half-hour so that he drank as he shore. Buck came down on to the table to clear the "backs" to assist the table man. An S.O.S by telephone the night before had brought two extra men out from the town to help the presser. The whole scene was—in Allison's words—"boiling with excitement." "You would think there was a king's ransom at stake," she said. "There is. An early start for a week-end to the city lights." "Buck said there's a lot of personal prestige in it too. Who can shear in shortest time. . . ." The hard day was over for the men, and the girls were washing up. Instead of lunch-break the men had lined up their cars ready with their gear

packed. In the afternoon the game had been really on. First finished was first away and didn't have to drive in someone else's dust. Last driving away drove in a veritable dust-storm raised by those preceding him. Leura had made sandwiches instead of a hot lunch and taken them down to the shearing-shed. She was disappointed later when she found that less than half had been eaten. "They were too busy shearing," Buck explained. "Trouble spent on them is trouble wasted when they want to get away." When the last man pulled out, the shed was spotless, and not a sheep left in the yard. The wool was pressed, baled and out on the runway, waiting for the wool trucks. The bins were scoured and stacked back beside the presses. Their next use would be to hold branches of gum leaves by way of decoration for the party. There was no one for the dinner Leura had cooked and she didn't know whether to be glad or sorry. There was still washing up of a kind to do: the cooking utensils mostly. Buck had come up from his last all-seeing look at the woolshed. He came into the cook-house and slumped down at the end of the long dining-table. What could be seen of him under the coat of dust and fine wool combings looked tired. "A cup of tea, Buck?" Leura asked. She wished her maternal instinct—or whatever it was—didn't go into operation at the sight of him and want to start cooking dinner all over again. This time for him. "Yes, please. That's what I've come for." Allison looked done-in too and Leura made her sit down at the table with Buck. Buck and Allison sat, their elbows implanted on the top of the table, their dusty faces resting in their cupped hands. They sat in an identical way and it occurred to Leura, bringing the teapot to the table, that subconsciously Allison had already learned to imitate the men in some of their attitudes, even in their modes of speech. She drawled a little, and spoke through half-closed lips. Her dusty hat sat on the back of her head the way theirs did. She had been too weary to take it off, even while she had been helping Leura wipe up. Leura set out the cups and saucers in the tired silence of Buck's watchful eyes. When she had poured the tea she passed Allison her cup first. "The next job we take will be at a finishing-school," she said. "You'll need a curry-combing before you go back to England, Allison." Allison dropped her hands and reached for the cup of tea. "Who said I'm going back to England? and ever." Buck looked up.

I'm staying in the outback for ever

"You're a game one, Allison," he said. "A fortnight ago I would have bet a

hundred to one you wouldn't have stuck out a day like to-day." "It all goes to show you are not very good at reading character," Allison said lightly. "Where the heart rules, the hands will work." She laughed, pleased with herself at that smart retort. Her eyes lit up. "A fortnight ago I'd never heard of a shearing-shed. You never know what's round the corner, do you?" Buck stirred his tea. "It was round a corner I picked up a couple of girls in the spinifex." He lifted his cup of tea and this time he looked at Leura over the top of it. He made a small gesture as if drinking a toast. "Here's to Leura, the eternal woman who waits on man. What would we do without the shearers' cook?" "You wouldn't shear," Allison said flatly. "You said so yourself." Leura didn't hear what Allison was saying. Buck's words, and gesture, were like drops of cool water in a desert of dust. There was sudden moisture in her eyes. Buck saw it but gave no sign. Instead he held her eyes with his for a few minutes, then took his cigarettes from the pocket of his work-shirt and slid them across the table to Allison. "One each apiece all round," he said. "We deserve them. matches, Allison?"

Have you any

"No, but I'll get them." Allison pushed back her chair and crossed the room to the shelf over the stove. "One more ministering woman," she muttered, half in earnest, half in fun. "Thank you for those few kind words," Leura said to Buck, trying to make light of them. "Don't thank me, Leura. They came easily. I'm pretty fond of you, you know." Leura stiffened. As she had leaned forward to take a cigarette herself she noticed the outline of a box of matches against the cotton of Buck's pocket. He had deliberately sent Allison across the room . . . away from the table for a minute. He was looking at her, Leura; expecting her to say—do something. What? There was the sound of a truck roaring at top speed down the track from the homestead and it pulled up with skidding tyres. The moment was gone. Leura straightened up. "What's that?" she asked. "The truck bringing the station-hands down. They've been sent down to get the woolshed ready for the party." "Already?" asked Allison, coming back to the table and giving Buck the box of matches. He took it and struck a match, lighting all three cigarettes, his own last.

"That's bad luck," said Allison anxiously. "Not for me. I'm not in the firing line." Buck laughed. "What firing line?" "Dan Grayson's. The woolshed is spotless. He'll have no complaints to make about that." He finished his tea at a gulp and pushed back his chair. "You two girls pack up and get out of here before all the men are down," he said. "The least seen, the less comment." He was at the door as he spoke and pushed open the screen. "Okay you chaps, I'll be with you in a minute," he called, then turned back to them. " Leave the cups and scram. I'll pick you up behind the quarters in fifteen minutes. . . . And keep out of sight if possible. You'll be in bed in the pub to-night by eleven o'clock, if we can make speed." "Come on, Leura," Allison said. "I have to get out of here, if you don't. Before the boss of Palari gets down here, anyway, and finds I'm an official rouseabout on the payroll." Buck was holding the screen door, waiting. He judged the moment when the men from the truck had gone into the woolshed. "Now!" he said to Allison. "Duck for it. Get your party dress, a decent pair of shoes, and your toothbrush. Never mind the rest. Hop in my car behind the quarters and lie low." Allison disappeared like a wraith in a mist. The fact the mist was the dust that had not yet settled from the shearers' exodus, let alone the arrival of the station truck, was neither here nor there. It was a cover, and Allison escaped. Leura was able to depart in less of a scramble. After all, the station hands did know the shearers had a cook. Or didn't they know she was female and not by the name of McCoy? "Take your time, Leura," Buck said kindly as she passed him in the doorway. "They're inside now. With luck we'll get away before the rest of them come down. This crowd is just a foraging party." He smiled at her. It was an encouraging sort of smile, Leura thought. The shining one he probably still reserved for Allison. She hoped so, because now she was certain Allison was half-way in love with Buck. It had to be Allison he liked best now. Chapter 6 flea-bite to the distances men like Buck could travel. He took the girls in, in record time, and they were both sure he went back to Palari at similar speed. A

HUNDRED

MILES

TO

THE

TOWNSHIP

WAS

A

MERE

One of the shearers had taken the girls' Holden into the town to be serviced. They were to pick it up the next day and drive themselves to the homestead party.

"Isn't it wonderful to have a bath instead of a shower?" said Allison. "I could soak and soak for weeks. . . ." "Keep it down to hours," begged Leura. "I want a bath too." "I brought soap but forgot cold cream," wailed Allison. "I've cold cream but no tissues or flannel," said Leura. "Blow, bother, drat!" "Have you any curlers?" "Yes, but no bobby-pins." "Why, oh why, did we have to leave in such a hurry? Anyone would think we were criminals on the run." "So we are," said Leura. "By Mrs. Grayson's standards anyway." "I'm dying to see that pair of women at the homestead," Allison said through a coat of Leura's cold cream. "What fun to arrive like a couple of ladies en route for higher places. Do you think we could pretend we're something frightfully important from the city?" "Actually we're much more important to Palari than high-society ladies," said Leura, lifting her head, lathered in Allison's soap, from the wash-bowl in the corner of their shared bedroom. "If the sheep weren't shorn they'd lose thirty-five thousand pounds. It's merino wool and grade Triple A. That's the best." Allison stopped her toilet to gasp. "All that?" she said. "What on earth do they do with all that money? They couldn't spend it?" "Hold some of it against bad seasons. Once they had a drought here for five years. The sheep all died, or had to be shot to put them out of their misery." "How awful." Allison was suddenly cast down at the thought of that horror. Then she perked up again. "I refuse to think of anything but parties for the next twenty-four hours. After that, let's be sad for Dan Grayson." She mused a moment, adding more cream to her face as she looked in the mirror. "Even in the middle of a drought no one could say poor Dan Grayson, could they? I mean he's not that sort. He'd always be top dog, wouldn't he?" "I haven't thought about him enough to know." "Haven't you ever thought about a man, Leura? Seriously, I mean?" "Oh yes, I have. Too seriously. One day I'll tell you about it . . . but not now. Allison, if you don't hop in that bathroom quick sharp I'm going in first. And I promise you I won't be out for hours." The two girls slept in late the next morning. It had been heavenly not to get up to the usual banging of the tin plate just before daybreak: Heaven not to dodge the shearers into the shower-house. The hotel housekeeper, knowing the late hour the girls had been driven in by Buck Ashe, sent them up breakfast shortly after nine. It was a bare ramshackle

hotel, built of timber frame and galvanised iron, yet was richer in friendliness and kindness than more exalted places. The back-yard of the hotel was a sight to be seen. There must have been a hundred cars and utilities, of every size and vintage. All had come far, or so it seemed by their thick coatings of red dust. Mrs. Salter, the housekeeper, told the girls that people were coming from hundreds of miles for the Palari homestead party. "It's an annual event," she said. "Most of the men camp somewhere inside the station boundary but the ladies like a bath and a real dress-up before they go. This hotel is practically turned into an extension of Palari when this happens." "Do you find it a nuisance?" Allison asked. Some rooms had had to have extra beds put in them to provide sleeping accommodation for all. "Certainly not," Mrs. Salter beetled. "It's trade. If the station-owners and the through-travellers didn't call in there wouldn't be any hotel. We don't have any daily regulars, you know." No wonder Palari was popular with the publican and everything was done that could be done, in this lonely township in the middle of the spinifex, for the visitors. "If there's a hotel, a store and a garage it's always called a town," Mrs. Salter remarked. "But that's all there is to it." "Nobody lives here," Allison said, incredulous. "There's not a house." "It's a stopping point. That's all." "And a refuge for Dan Grayson's lady guests," Allison laughed. At first the girls felt a little out of things. All the women in the hotel knew one another. They called one another by Christian names and they talked in loud voices across the lounge about all sorts of north-west matters as ordinary suburban people talk about the weather or the garden. Two rather attractive girls, in their late teens, sat down at the round lunch table with Leura and Allison. The small dining-room was packed to the last seat. They smiled in a friendly enough way. "You passing through?" one asked. Allison glanced at Leura, which was the signal for Leura to act as spokeswoman. "Yes. But I understand there's a dance at Palari. Buck Ashe suggested we go and Mrs. Salter tells us that everyone goes—known or unknown." "Oh heavens, yes. The whole district wraps up for a week-end when a big station entertains. And Buck will look after you. . . ." "You know Buck Ashe?" Allison asked politely. Both girls looked at one another, then laughed.

"Everyone knows Buck Ashe for thousands of square miles," the freckledfaced one said. "He shears all the sheep. Quite an institution is Buck. And of course all the girls are mad about him." "I thought there weren't many girls in the north-west," Leura said quickly. "I mean, there are more men than girls, aren't there? Two to one, I'm told." "Sure. But it still makes Buck Ashe an interesting person to those of us left." Leura thought she had better veer the conversation in other directions before Allison mentioned Dan Grayson. After all, they were supposed to be strangers, passing through. It wouldn't do to know all the Palari men too well. "There seem to be plenty of our sex here," Leura said. "Pooh! Twenty or thirty. There'll be more than a hundred and thirty men out at Palari. You'll have quite a time, I can tell you. The only trouble is that a hundred and twenty-eight of them will be married or uninteresting. The highsociety kind of station-owners' daughters will make a kangaroo hop for Dan Grayson, of course. They don't seem to learn. He's impregnable. He has too big an opinion of himself, if you ask me. He's probably waiting for a member of the Royal Family to come along." "You sound as if you don't like him," Leura laughed. "And you sound as if you are not station-owners' daughters yourselves." The freckled-faced girl smiled. "No. We're copper-mining, farther north. We've come down for the party. Dad and our two brothers have driven over to Palari. They'll camp down with the stockmen... if there's sleeping-bag room." The other girl had a sudden bright idea. "Our two brothers would like to meet two girls. They've no one to dance with...." "And half a hundred other brothers too," the other broke in. "Give them a chance, Robin. They've the pick of the entire manpower of the north-west. Don't restrict them to a couple of sandgropers." Allison wrinkled her nose. "Sandgropers?" "People who dig in the sand. That's us. Copper-miners." They all laughed at this frankness. "We can give you a lift out to Palari to-night," Leura offered. "That is, if you haven't other transport." "We'd love it," both girls said simultaneously. The hotel brooded in a hot hush all that afternoon. Everyone, including the publican and the housekeeper, was going to the Palari party. Everyone had a sleep, or in the case of Allison and Leura, who had slept in late that morning, hid themselves in the privacy of their rooms under the spell of hair rolled up in curlers. The girls had so long looked to one another like a couple of shed-hands that later they were almost unrecognisable, when bathed and beautifully dressed in cool light dresses, their heads of hair, the one so fair and the other so dark,

shining and curled. Face-packs made from oatmeal porridge borrowed from the housekeeper had done something fresh for their skins. It had taken the burn out of Allison's tan, and the freckles from Leura's nose. They made up with as much care as actresses, and when all was ready stood and confronted one another. "Dan Grayson won't recognise us, that's for sure," Allison said with a laugh. "And Buck will have to take three looks." "I don't recognise you myself," said Leura. "I guess I'm having the same effect on you?" "I suppose you looked like that once—before we came north." Allison put her head on one side and surveyed Leura. She had forgotten Leura was a pretty girl and that her dark hair was naturally curly with a blue shine to it that had been her own envy. Funny how the fair always wanted to be dark, and the dark always wanted to be fair. Like tall and short girls. They always wanted to be like the other one. They looked charming as they went through the lounge to the Holden, which Leura had already brought round to the front door earlier in the afternoon. The housekeeper for a moment looked puzzled. Then she raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth. Her expression seemed to sav: "These can't be the two dusty tired striplings in trews and shirts that came in last night with Buck Ashe!" They were like two girls from the city. Lovely, fresh, and beautifully though simply dressed. Their pretty gondola-shaped shoes, with brass buckles, would be the envy of the entire feminine contingent of the northwest. Female-wise, that was exactly what Allison and Leura hoped. The shoes had only just come into the shops the week they left Perth for the north-west. It had been a last temptation before they left for the outback. "Don't suppose we'll ever wear them," Leura had said. "But it's nice to have them to look at," Allison had replied blithely. They were lovely shoes. And lo! They were wearing them to Palari woolshed dance. The two strangers from the lunch table were waiting for them and within a few minutes all the girls were packed into the Holden. Leura drove and they were soon speeding on their way. The copper-mining girls were good fun and long before they arrived at Palari homestead Leura and Allison knew they were about to enjoy themselves. The homestead garden was a fairyland of lights. Far down the track the woolshed glittered like a land-lost sputnik. The four girls crowded up the steps on to the veranda together. Dan Grayson was standing, his mother on his left and his sister on the other side of his mother, to receive the guests.

Leura blinked. He looked different too. Gone were the tight-fitting drill pants, the open-necked work-shirt, the wide-brimmed stetson hat. Here stood a man of the world. He was tall, almost elegant, in his white sharkskin dinner-jacket with the dark braid-striped trousers. He wore the latest narrow black tie and his hair, flat and shining, suddenly seemed as black as his tie and shoes. He looked what he was—the prince of many acres and the ruler over the lives of all who lived on Palari. His manner was frank and easy, unassuming, yet carried authority. He did nothing to Leura's heart—not one pulse beat too many—but she admired him tremendously. In fact she was admiring him to the extent of forgetting to greet Mrs. Grayson and Dan's sister. Nobody's names were asked and there was no announcement as people arrived. Everybody came . . . and names didn't matter. Dan said "How-doyou-do?" to Leura, Allison and the two copper-mining girls all in one glance and breath. It wasn't till they were past that it occurred to both that Dan had not recognised them. "What yoicks!" Allison whispered to Leura. "What fun we can have to-night with no one seeing the Cinderellas under our fancy plumage." "Not recognising the shed-hands, that's certain," said Leura happily. It was her turn to shake hands with Mrs. Grayson and for the first time she was able to look straight into the face of that lady of formidable reputation. Mrs. Grayson was being the perfect hostess. Her manner was calm and gracious and there was no sign of the rigid attitudes that ordained—no girls down at the shearers' quarters. "How-do-you-do? I'm so glad you came and I hope you all enjoy yourselves." She took all four girls in with one glance, then turned to others who were arriving. Leura and Allison only had time to observe she was a tall, greyhaired woman, well-groomed and perfectly dressed in blue-grey chiffon. Her manner was correct, but not easy. Eve Grayson did not shake hands. She merely bowed and smiled. To Leura's surprise Eve recognised her. "It is—it is, isn't it?" Eve asked, puzzled. "Leura Barton," Leura admitted. "We were at school together." "Of course. You were awfully good at tennis and swimming, weren't you? How on earth did you come to be up this way? The last I heard of you was from a newspaper announcement of your engagement. You did become engaged, didn't you? It was to one of the Pagets in the south-west, I remember. . . ." The two copper-mining girls had passed on out of earshot, but Allison Upton stood and listened to this conversation in amazement. Eve Grayson's voice was a little lofty, as if she spoke only to the hierarchy. It all conveyed to Allison the impression that Leura had not only been—or was —engaged; it must have been to one of the squattocracy, too. Miss Eve

Grayson, tall, dark, good-looking, but proud, didn't seem to be the type of person to mention "one of the Pagets in the south-west" unless these same Pagets were landed hierarchy. How Leura had been holding out on Allison! And what, for heaven's sake, would Miss Eve Grayson say if she knew this same "engaged-to-one-of-thePagets" person was now shearers' cook on Palari Station? Allison was burbling inside herself like a glass of lemonade. What yoicks indeed! The strangest things did happen round corners in the north-west of this vast country. But wait till she had Leura on her own— round some other and preferably very dark corner! Eve Grayson's eyes drifted to Allison. Anyone known to someone known to the Pagets was obviously worthy of a special greeting. "How-do-you-do?" Eve said to Allison, all over again. "You have come with Leura? Were we at school together too?" "This is my friend Allison Upton," Leura said quietly. "Allison is from England." "Oh splendid. You are doing a tour of the north-west, I suppose?" "Yes. A very extensive one," Allison said. "I hope to see everything." Her face was poker-stiff and it was Leura's turn to laugh. Not at Eve but at Allison. Half of her thought she and Allison were really having fun, but the other half was a little ashamed at how easy it was to deceive. "You must come and stay with us on your way back," Eve said courteously. "We can't leave you to the hotels. They're such barns. And visitors from England are always welcome. Unfortunately it's shearing-time just now and Dan has his hands full. But on your way back . . ." She turned to Leura. "You are going north?" "Oh yes. By stages. Port Hedland is our immediate destination." "Then drop me a card when you about-turn. You simply must stay on Palari." She smiled with a special charm at Allison. "We like our English visitors to see how we run stations. You will come, won't you?" Even Allison had the grace to blush at an invitation which, in spite of the aloof manner of Eve Grayson, was quite sincere. "I'd love to . . ." she said awkwardly. "To be quite frank . . ." She had been about to put things in their proper context by saying they were "working their way" round Australia, but other guests were arriving and were waiting to be greeted by their hosts. Allison and Leura had to move on. "I didn't feel quite so good about that . . ." Allison muttered in an undertone to Leura as they walked along the wide veranda, in amongst a horde of people, to long trestle tables that were set out with drinks and canapes. "It takes thinking about," Leura replied. "But after all they do have to have

their sheep shorn and we have to help do it. They wouldn't hold it against us, working. Merely against Buck for using females as stop-gaps." "So our silence is to protect Buck?" "Half and half. We do want that big pay-packet, too. Don't we?" At the far end of the trestle table Buck Ashe and the young woolclasser—very handsome in their tropical dinner suits—were standing in a group of men laughing and talking about some joke one of them had told. As the two girls moved through the people to the table the men all looked up. Then looked at one another. "Bags the fair one." "I'll have the dark," another said. "Who's doing the introducing?" a third asked. Buck had taken a sip of his drink, put his glass down on the table, then jerked his head up suddenly. For a minute he had not recognised them. He had never seen Leura and Allison in dresses at all, much less attractive dance dresses. He had never seen them in shoes other than flatties and he had never seen them with hair shampooed, curled and dressed in a semi-bouffant way. Suddenly, more because of their lovely shining heads of hair, they had come into a woman's world of their own. They were very attractive, each in a different way, and so feminine, so desirable, Buck shook his head to make sure he wasn't dreaming. The young woolclasser dug him in the ribs with his elbow. "Do you see what I see?" he muttered. Buck stubbed out his cigarette and gave the other men in the group a cold stare. "Hands off my guests," he said. "I'll say who dances with the fair and who with the dark." He edged his way past his friends round the table and began to thread his way towards Leura and Allison. "Where did Buck come by two fillies like that?" one of the men asked with a touch of wonder. "In the spinifex," the woolclasser said, and nobody noticed that, youthful though he was, he knew how to hold his tongue in his cheek and not let anyone know. " Excuse me, fellers. Anyone Buck knows, I know. Right of being team-mates and all that. . . ." He too edged his way round the table and towards the girls. They were too late. The girls from the copper-mines had produced their brothers and already Allison and Leura were in a swirl of young people, all laughing and talking. They had glasses pressed into their hands and Christian names were being exchanged.

Over her shoulder Leura saw Buck stop, hemmed in by a press of people, scowl, then turn and walk away, back along the veranda to where Dan Grayson was lighting a cigarette for his sister in a lull between the arrival of visitors. "Oh, Buck!" It was Mrs. Grayson's compelling voice. He stopped. "Why, yes, Mrs. Grayson?" "I wanted to talk to you about something. First of all— how is the shearing going?" "Eighteen thousand done. Bang on the contract time, Mrs. Grayson," Buck said cheerfully. "We start on the second half on Tuesday." "I understand you have a female cook down there. One of the shearers' wives, I suppose?" Mrs. Grayson looked and sounded as if she lived a world apart from what really went on on a station. Not like the station woman farther up the track, Buck thought for the hundredth time in ten years. She was an isolate. He pulled his ear with one hand while he reached to the nearby table for a glass of lime-juice and soda which he knew was Mrs. Grayson's drink. It was standing waiting for her. He proffered her the glass with a smile. "Thank you, Buck. Yes, I think I will have a drink now. Most of the people seem to have come. Now what were we up to ? Oh yes. The cook down at the quarters. She is one of the shearers' wives, I presume ? " "Well… not exactly...." Mrs. Grayson's face closed up into haughty narrow lines. "You know my rules. I simply will not have women ..." "That's the problem, Mrs. Grayson. I couldn't raise a shearers' cook for a thousand miles, so I brought my girl along with me to lend a hand till one turns up. She's all right. I'll take care of her." For the fraction of a second Mrs. Grayson did not know what to say. Her expression said this was highly improper too, but then Buck Ashe was a man of very good reputation and ran the best shearing team in the north. Buck watched Mrs. Grayson's uneasy yet fleeting expressions. There was a touch of irony in his smile as he capitalised on her indecision and said: "Eighteen thousand sheep shorn, Mrs. Grayson. The men happy and well-fed. That's what you want, isn't it? And I keep an eye on everyone down at the quarters. One man out of line and he goes. You know that. . . ." Mrs. Grayson thought about this. She sipped her lime-juice and soda. "Upon my word," she said coldly. "The things we put up with when we hand our station over to a shearing team!" "Dan could always shear his own sheep. But then he, and his men, would have to join the Union. . . ." Mrs. Grayson had had enough of this from Buck Ashe. She knew he was the

best team man in the north. She knew Dan liked him. What was difficult and worse, Eve liked him. The only redeeming feature about this wretched conversation was the intelligence that Buck Ashe had a girl. That piece of news ought to bring Eve to her senses. Now perhaps Eve would have the wit to be more friendly with some of the other station-owners in the north. Frigid with annoyance, Mrs. Grayson sipped her drink again, then began to thaw. She was actually relieved to hear Buck Ashe had a girl. As a matter of fact this was a very useful thing to know. If the girl was here to-night— and Buck would have been bound to bring her—then Mrs. Grayson would see to it that Eve met her. Not as shearers' cook either. But as Buck Ashe's fiancee. Suddenly Mrs. Grayson found the whole topic of conversation gratifying. She now beamed on Buck. "Well ... of course. It is necessary to leave your team arrangements to you. And I must say you have managed very well in the past. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must have a word with Dan. It's time most of our guests began to move down to the woolshed. After all, they have come to dance." Buck had been placating Mrs. Grayson. In his work there were always people to be placated. Managing a team was managing people. Mrs. Grayson was one of the people, though she would have been outraged if she had guessed that that was how Buck Ashe regarded her. A few minutes later, when Dan came across the veranda, Buck greeted him with a wry grin. If Mrs. Grayson had told her son Buck's latest story, then Buck expected Dan to understand and accept apologies as said. He expected Dan to know that this was how you managed people when, if you told the absolute facts as they were, there would be no sheep shorn before the rains. He was very surprised when Dan did not understand. "Mother seems pleased you've got the shearing going all right, Buck," Dan said. Then he looked past Buck out on to the lighted square where people—all sorts of people, strangers, stockmen, gentlemen from the city—were standing round the barbecues or beginning to wander off towards a vast assortment of vehicles to catch a ride down to the woolshed. Buck noticed that Dan's eyes had the shaded, narrowed expression he wore when he was most thoughtful. "I didn't realise that girl—down in the cook-house—was so close a friend, Buck," he said. "I know she was at Guthrie's station, with the English girl, a few weeks back, but I had a feeling you had trailed them up the stock route because you were short of a shearers' cook. It was all pre-arranged, was it?" "Now look, Dan-" Buck began. Then he stopped short. There was an unwritten law that you did not explain in words the plots and deals you arranged when you had to by-pass a few regulations to get a contract done. As between men there was a gentleman's agreement that silence on these subjects was not only safe, it was required. The job had to be done. Period.

Dan was expected to know and understand; and keep quiet himself. For once Buck was a little grim. "Let's put it this way. I trailed the girls up the route and took them on. If you don't know the English girl is my number two rouseabout then stay ignorant, Dan. It's more healthy. As for the cook-" "I apologise for asking, Buck," Dan said suddenly. "I had a reason for being taken aback, but we can leave that till another day." Suddenly he grinned at his old friend. " When the shearing's done," he finished. "And a load of explanations that'll be," said Buck. "Let's get a drink, Dan. Then I'm heading for the woolshed." He suddenly decided to play along with the story that Leura was his "girlfriend." Just for the heck of it. "Did you see those tow-headed copper-miners taking my girls down the track to the dance? I did. You'll see the point when I say briefly—I'm going after them." "Girls? Not both of them?" Dan said sardonically as he handed Buck a glass frothing with beer from the barrel. "Well, one of them. Let's quit talking about them, Dan. I'm likely to forget they're girls and set 'em to baking bread or cleaning up the combings along the floor from the table to the bins, instead of dancing. Are you coming down?" "You go ahead, Buck. I'll be down presently when I'm sure Eve is ready. It's her night too, remember." "I haven't forgotten. The moment she puts her head in the woolshed, I have the first dance. Right ? Get the promise from her on the way down, there's a good scout." Buck had emptied his glass at a gulp, put it down on the veranda railing, and with a friendly lift of his hand was heading across the station square towards a station-wagon now filling up for the run down to the woolshed. Dan Grayson watched him go, then turned thoughtfully towards the main door of the homestead. Inside the large living-room a number of the elderly guests were sitting at small tables. Some were playing bridge, others merely talking to one another, watching the various people pass to and fro on the veranda or through the living-room from the inner rooms. It was a great game conjecturing who was who and where who came from to such a party. Dan reflected it would be interesting to know just what these quiet watchful shrewd bystanders were thinking, let alone saying to one another. An elderly woman beckoned to Dan and he went across to her, bending his head politely as he greeted her. "Are you enjoying yourself, Mrs. Wilton? May I get you something? A drink? Some coffee?"

"Not just now, Dan. You're a dear man to bother with an old fogy like me. There's that nice McCarthy girl from Lindarra Station over there. Now do tell me, Dan. Why don't you get married, especially with a nice girl like Mary McCarthy only a few hundred miles away?" She tapped him with a fan—for it was a very hot night and all the older ladies were fanning themselves. "It's not fair keeping the whole north on tiptoe so long. Tell an old friend! Why don't you get married?" It was a timeless question. Dan grew tired of it. "I guess I'm too busy, and I'd make a poor husband," was his standard reply. "I'm always out on the run and that wouldn't please the best of wives, now would it? Mrs. Wilton, I've been wanting to ask you a question for quite a long time. What was the price old Fred paid for that ram from Paget's stud?" "There you are," said Mrs. Wilton in exasperation. "Talking about sheep instead of girls. I shan't tell you, to punish you. But it was over four thousand pounds." Dan whistled. " 'Scuse me. I'll go and see Fred about that...." Yes, like Buck Ashe he had to make his small plays to avoid the truth, and to avoid bad manners in hurting old people. Why didn't he marry? Half the north had its eyes on Palari's million acres, not to mention the other half-million acres across the line on the map. As he went in search of his sister he said quietly but with some vehemence: "Damn the gossiping north. I shan't look there for whoever it is I'm looking for." Eve was coming out of her room, where she had gone to powder her nose. She looked white. So Mrs. Grayson had told Eve the news about Buck Ashe and the girl-friend! Dan hoped, for the sake of peace all round, it had not been mentioned that the girl-friend was the shearers' cook. "If you come out of the side door I'll take you down to the woolshed in my car," he said. "I think we've done justice to our guests up here." "Dan!" Eve stood quite still in the passage. "Did mother tell you about Buck Ashe? He's engaged, or something." Her mouth had a circle of white around the lips. She found it hard to speak. She was breathing quickly. "I didn't know it was as final as that." "Well, it is. And she is shearers' cook in his team. Dan, just wouldn't you think Buck would have chosen someone from the north? He's had the whole of it in his pocket for years. Not to mention..." She faltered. Dan knew what Eve meant.

Not to mention herself. She was part-owner of an enormous sheep station. She was good-looking, well educated, and had been kind to Buck. Yet he had chosen a nobody who could cook. Dan took his sister's arm. "Come along, old girl, and get in the car. We can talk there." Dan had parked his car under a grove of trees behind the tankstand at the rear of the homestead. He helped Eve in, folded her dress back so that it would not catch in the closing door, then went round to the driver's seat. When he was in he did not start up the engine at once. "There is something you and I have to face, Eve," he said. "Sooner than later. Palari is a stumbling-block to marriage as far as we are concerned. To some— it's what they want to marry. To others, like Buck, it's what they won't marry." "What has Palari to do with it?" Eve asked bitterly. "You know the familiar saying in the outback. The cheapest way to buy a station is to marry the squatter's daughter. Buck Ashe would know that saying as every overseer, head stockman and team manager would know it. For that reason he's the kind of man who would look at every other girl in the country before he would look at the squatter's daughter." "Sister, in this case." "Yes. Sister in this case." They were silent for a few moments. "I suppose you feel the same," Eve said at length. "I don't think about marriage," Dan said bluntly. "I think about Palari." Then he added even more bluntly, knowing that by wounding he could be the kindest, "Buck's not worth a kettle of fish where you're concerned. He's an itinerant shearing manager. That's the way he'll be happy all his life. One station after another—right through the north. Then four months of winter fishing down at Mandurah. That's the kind of man he is and he would change for no one." "The right girl could make him change," Eve said. "You're wrong. The right girl has to be the same kind of person as himself. Probably Leura . . ." He stopped. He could have chewed off that name in annoyance. It wasn't his policy to let his mother and sister know he knew the shearing team at the Christian-name level. Eve stiffened. "Did you say Leura? You mean Leura Barton? She's here tonight, and came with an English girl." Dan sighed. "That's who I mean," he said. "You might as well know. She's the shearers' cook." "It's impossible. She's one of the Bartons from Manning-anna; down in the karri forest. I went to school with her." It was Dan's turn to be silent. He took out a cigarette, offered one to his sister,

then lit both of them. "Go on," he said quietly. "Tell me more." Eve laughed. "I'm afraid she's taking dear old Buck for a cry. She happens to be engaged to Joe Paget. The stud-farm Pagets. Old Fred Wilton bought the prize ram, Allawora, from them at the Royal Show in October." Dan drew on his cigarette, then he leaned forward and stubbed it out less than half finished. He started up the car and turned on the headlights. "Let's go down to the woolshed," he said. "It should be quite an interesting evening." So Buck was in love with a girl who was engaged to someone else? Or had Buck been spinning another of his yarns ? CHAPTER 7 Allison, and Leura was dancing with one of the two owners of the copper-mine. It took Dan several minutes to recognise the two girls, or to recollect he had seen them arrive. It had been quite a job in good manners not to notice too obviously that here were two very attractive strangers to the north! DOWN

IN

THE

WOOLSHED

BUCK

WAS

DANCING

WITH

There had been something familiar about them but he had deliberately shaken hands and passed them on to his mother, then turned to the Everslee family which was just arriving. He smiled to himself now as he watched first one, then the other. How well they had taken him in! And how attractive they both were! Eve had been immediately led into the dance by one of their station friends and Dan stood and watched the crowd. He took a glass from someone who handed it to him, and lit a cigarette. There were people all around him, yet each would have said Dan Grayson had his "dust coat" mood on him right then. He was an easy man to talk to: but an easy man to leave alone at certain times. He had his moments of great friendliness, but also his moments of silence when he could be with a crowd, and not of it. So for a moment he stood alone and watched the dancers. What was there about Leura that she could play the double part, he wondered. That is if his mother and Eve had the story right. Buck Ashe regarded her as his girl. Dan looked at Leura's left hand where it lay on the shoulder of her partner. There was no ring. Perhaps she was merely having a "good time" in the north, a thousand miles from home. Some girls were like that. They put their commitments into a top drawer when they left home for a working holiday. Buck, Dan thought, a trifle sardonically, could take care of himself.

That was clearly what he was doing right now. The pretty blonde from over the sea was looking up into his face, laughing. And Buck, his dark brown face slashed with his cheerful smile, was talking down to her. Leura was smiling too. Her partner was obviously stumbling over himself, and possibly Leura's feet, to impress her. She was more serious than the English girl, Dan thought, but had a face full of character, softened by kindness at the moment as she strove to put the young mine-owner at his ease. One was like an open book, Dan thought, glancing at Allison. The other was like something half-opened—not a book: nor yet a flower. He found it hard to define Leura's expression. Perhaps it was a book that had been opened, then half-closed. She was on guard. That was it. Not against the good-natured young fellow trampling her now, but against a world. Or was it against herself? The dance came to an end and the couples stood on the floor and clapped. Buck had caught sight of Dan and Eve when they came in and he now steered Allison towards Dan. Eve and her partner were drifting there too, as they talked. Leura's partner clapped with determination and the orchestra—a pianist, piano-accordion and a guitar—started up again. Leura was once again in the arms of her partner and buried in the crowd of dancers. Buck, his grin a trifle sheepish, had his hand under Allison's elbow as he brought her towards Dan. "Allison," he said with the measured attitude of a general marshalling his wits as well as his subalterns, "have you met Dan Grayson, our host?" Allison took her cue. She was not a rouseabout in the shearing-shed. She was a visitor. She beamed on Dan. "We met when Leura and I first arrived," she said. " It's wonderful of you, Mr. Grayson, to give this dance to everybody—even strangers." Eve was beside her brother now and Dan turned to her. "Have you met Allison, Eve?" he said. "I'm afraid that is the only name I have to hand." He smiled as if this was a wry but commonplace joke. After all, the place was always full of strangers when they had a woolshed dance. "Yes. When you first came in," Eve said, looking at the other girl's pretty, fair face. Allison's smile was happy. Like that, she had the face of an angel, Buck thought, and from the expression in Dan Grayson's eyes Buck thought Dan felt that way too. "You were kind enough to ask me to stay with you on my return trip," Allison said. "I thought it was wonderful of you." "I meant it," Eve said. "We are used to travellers, and like having them."

Buck's left eyebrow was twitching and after a quick glance his eyes avoided Dan's eyes. "Eve, will you dance with me?" he asked. This time the expression in his eyes was no longer amused and a truant to fact but was both kind and serious. It was an expression that angered Eve yet brought down her defences. She had meant to decline to dance with Buck to teach him a lesson about his conduct, but of that she was now incapable. "Thank you," she said. He walked round Allison, who was still smiling guilelessly at Dan, and took Eve's arm. A minute later they were in amongst the dancers. "May I have the pleasure of a dance, Miss Allison?" Dan asked. Allison put her hand on his arm. "I'd love to dance," she said. There was the tiniest accent on the word "love" and she meant it. Leura, locked in the kindly embrace of her gallant knight, had seen the little scene in the corner of the woolshed. At that moment it had seemed to her as if all the aristocracy of the world had been gathered there, beside the branches of tubbed mulga tree and the cluster of coloured lights hidden in the foliage. Never had a place been so transformed as the woolshed. Walking into it, nearly an hour ago now, it had been like walking into a fairyland. And the floor was superb. Her partner had explained to her that it was the woolshed floor. The grease from the fleeces during the shearing time accounted for its wonderful polished surface. He also told her that, with a bit of wangling, he could probably show her round a woolshed if she came farther north, round about his family's copper-mine. "Actually we're mining bang on one of the stations," he said. "I'm pretty good cobbers with the station manager. I can see the woolshed any time." Leura thanked him gravely. "I have seen a woolshed," she said. "Quite a lot of one. But I would like to see the one on your station too." "Not my station," he replied ruefully. "Just my mine on someone else's station." It was then she had seen the aristocracy arrive. Dan and Eve Grayson. A little later, after the encore, she had seen Buck and Allison join them. For a few minutes they had stood there, a little world of their own, at the end of the longest, most highly polished dance floor Leura had ever seen. Allison had been in a seventh heaven all evening, and looked it. Now she stood, isolated by her fairness and her glow of charm, against a background of two men, both of whom Leura recognised were the patricians amongst her own countrymen. She saw Buck's hand under Allison's elbow; then later Buck's arm round Eve Grayson's waist. She felt doomed to be outside the charmed circle, destined to dance for ever with strangers in a strange crowd. Imprisoned by kind people,

tethered by good intentions. She wanted to be happy. It was a lovely night. Outside, the stars shone, and inside, the lights glowed behind barriers of green leaves. She had to be happy. Perhaps never again might life hold for her the enchantment of a woolshed dance. There were so many men that when the music stopped all you could see of any girl was the colour and shape of her dance shoes through a forest of trousered legs that were standing around her, their owners all trying to claim the next dance, or the next. She had to be happy. She would be happy. She smiled at the earnest copper-miner; and when as the bars of music slowed to a close he said, "I'm booking you for the next dance too, but let's come outside and throw a chop in the barbecue. Right?" Leura nodded. He latched her hand under his arm in a manner that told the world she was temporarily and inextricably his, and led her outside where the barbecues were flaming up here and there in a semi-circle on the other side of the track. Not without a pang of parting from the woolshed and those in it, Leura looked out on the night-world of Palari Station. Here there was the great, vast, eerie silence of the north and the incredible universal distances of its skies. It was peaceful, and like balm, healing. Buck did not come near Leura all night, though on more than one occasion later, he lifted his hand in a half-wave as he caught sight of her in the press of dancers. Only once again did Leura see him dancing with Allison, and twice dancing with Eve Grayson. Eve was really a very attractive person—if she hadn't been so aloof, so very much Dan Grayson's sister. Dan did not dance very much. Most of the time he was not on the dance floor at all. He was outside talking to his friends and pastoralist neighbours. Leura's troubles were chiefly associated with longing to dance with Buck on the one hand, but knowing if she did she would be, in some obscure way, betraying Allison. It was in the small hours of the morning, towards the end of the dance, that Leura danced with Dan Grayson. It was quite accidental. She had gone to the barbecue, now no more than a nest of dying coals, with her latest partner. They had been holding long forks over the fire, making toast, laughing and talking as they endeavoured not to turn the edges of their bread rolls into black coals. Leura's partner had dropped his roll from the fork, dug his fingers in the coals to retrieve it, and burned his fingers. It was not a bad burn, but he said: "Excuse me and I'll go plaster some butter on—just in case. Better to be sure than sorry."

He had gone to the barbecue table before Leura could answer. It was then Dan Grayson touched her shoulder. "He won't be able to put buttered hands on your dress for the rest of the night, that's certain. May I have the pleasure of this dance?" "I'd love it," Leura said politely. "But wouldn't it be mean to run off . . ." "All's fair at a woolshed dance, I can assure you," Dan said gravely. "He'll be a very surprised man when he comes back if he finds you still here." He smiled at her. Leura smiled back. "As a matter of fact he's coming now," Dan said. "Shall we go before we buy into an argument?" He had his hand in a firm way on her arm and quite literally began to walk her towards the woolshed door. Leura looked back over her shoulder, a little ashamed at deserting her wounded friend, but he put her at ease with a wave of his hand that signalled—"Trust it to be the boss. It was bound to be someone." Leura smiled and as they walked on to the dance floor Dan caught the expression. "Something is amusing you?" he asked. He danced beautifully and for a moment Leura could only think of that instead of answering him. At close quarters he was very handsome in a quiet undefined way. There was just something about him—tall, browned, and kind, yet whole realms away from her. "I was thinking of the expression on my last partner's face. I don't even know his name. It's fun, isn't it— dancing with so many people, perhaps never meeting them again?" "That was John Anderson, from Demarra Station. And what was the expression on his face?" "Hard to explain. Half-amused, I suppose. It was a look that said—'Just my luck!' I do feel mean, you know. He had burned his hand." "Not very badly, I can assure you. I saw him drop the roll. He shouldn't have gone for the butter." "What would you have done?" Dan Grayson raised one eyebrow, then laughed. "That's another matter. What's good for the stirrup is not necessarily right for the reins." It was Leura's turn to laugh. The expression in Dan's eyes quickened a little. Her face lit up when she laughed. Like this, her pretty, dark hair smelling faintly and provocatively of some frail perfume, she did not seem to be the kind of girl who could deceive. Nor even the kind who could cook those gargantuan meals the shearers demanded.

She was capable, as well as attractive. Probably Buck thought likewise, though, Dan had noticed Buck had not been anywhere near his "girl-friend" all night. Had they had a lovers' tiff? Eve could be behind that, Dan thought uneasily. Eve would hate this girl if Buck loved her. Damn Buck, he said under his breath. Strangely enough, the thing that interested him most about Leura was that she was only half-interested in himself. She treated him as one more partner. Nothing more. She couldn't care less that he was the station-owner. She was more preoccupied with John Anderson's burned hand. Dan had a half-unkind impulse to probe her where she might be sensitive—or guilty. "Eve told me your family lives in Manning-anna. Do you by any chance know the Pagets? They have a stud-farm thereabouts. Fred Wilton recently bought their prize ram . . ." He felt Leura stiffen in his arms. Then she looked away evasively. For the third time that evening Buck Ashe was dancing a short distance away. He saw Leura and smiled. Once again he lifted one hand in a half-gesture that was a greeting. Dan, looking over Leura's head, saw it. That lifted hand could mean anything, he thought. Paget had been the emotive word as far as Leura was concerned. He had registered something when he had asked her and she had looked round to find Buck. A port in a storm? Or an unconscious way of looking at the other love when reminded of the first? Dan was a shrewd man, and he was near the heart of the matter. "Yes, I know the Pagets quite well," Leura said. "Their farm is not far away from us." "I think there's a son learning the business management of the stud," Dan persisted. "I don't remember his name. . . ." Leura lifted her head and looked directly into Dan's eyes. Her face was stiff, but for him did not lose any of its attractive character quality. At that moment a sort of cold pride added something to her, yet cut him off. It put up a barrier. "William John," she said. "Called 'Joe' by his family, and friends." Leura knew what Dan was doing. When she and Allison had first arrived Eve had mentioned Leura's engagement to Joe Paget and Leura had not explained the engagement was broken. Eve had told her brother. Funny. For days she hadn't even thought of Joe Paget. She didn't care any

more. She was glad someone else had seen to it she did not marry Joe. The angels must have been watching over her and sent that redhead. They had meant to save her—if not without wounds. Give Leura the stars and the night outside. And forget about men. Love was a painful thing. The man holding her in his arms and dancing faultlessly while he tried to pillory her could go his way too—and take his sword-pointed questions with him. Leura's lips were so stiff she couldn't smile, not even politely, as she dropped her arms. "I am tired now," she said. "I don't think I'll dance any more. Will you excuse me, please?" She turned away and threaded a path for herself between the dancers and did not turn her head to see if Dan Grayson followed her. Had she done so she would have seen nothing but polite good manners on Dan Grayson's face: but that every other head in that woolshed turned. A girl had walked out on Dan Grayson. The four girls went back to the hotel, driven in the Holden by Leura, in the not-so-small hours of the morning. When the dancing was over the party was over for them, though not for many others who had stirred up the barbecues and begun feasting anew. The two copper-mining girls curled up in the back seat and went to sleep on that hundred-mile drive. There was no point in everyone staying awake, they said. At the fifty-mile peg one of them would take over the driving. Did that suit Leura? It did, except she was afraid of being hit by a stray kangaroo or emu. She didn't fear an accident, but she hated to kill wantonly. Yet these creatures of the bush had no logic about running into car lights. They always ran, at terrific speed, the way they were already headed when they took fright. "Drive slowly so we have time to stop if we see one," Allison said from the seat beside her. They had only gone twenty miles and had already seen two kangaroos and an emu cross the road in fright. "It will be all hours before we get in," Leura said. "What's the odds? We can sleep in all day to-morrow." They could indeed do that. There was no hotel staff to get breakfast. Everyone had gone to Palari for the party and not even the yardman had come home by eight in the morning. Other guests in the hotel knew what to do. They went to the kitchen and made tea and toast. The feast last night had been enough of solid food for the next twenty-four hours. Allison had gone down to the kitchen and made the tea for Leura.

"No jolly fear," she said when she saw Leura reaching for her cotton brunch coat on the pretext that somewhere in the nether regions a kettle might be boiling. "You cook all day—and half some nights too—out on the job. You're not going to cook on our week-end break." Leura let her go. There was logic in what Allison said, but apart from that she knew Allison wanted it this way. When they had finished their scanty but sufficient breakfast, and put their cups, saucers and plates on the floor under their beds, they each lay back, hands under heads, and looked at the stark white utilitarian ceiling. "Now let's have it," said Allison. "Tell. I'm boiling with curiosity." "About what?" "Eve Grayson saying you were engaged to someone she knew. You know— when we arrived on the doorstep. She knew you, and all about you." Allison turned, partly hoisted herself up, and leaned on her elbow. "You must have recognised her when we went up to the homestead that night," she went on. "The night when Dan Grayson caught us. And by the way, isn't Dan Grayson a heavenly sweetie? But more about him anon. Tell me first about Eve—what Eve said—and why you didn't tell me before." Leura remained looking at the ceiling, but she put out a blind hand, felt for the cigarettes and matches on the table and helped herself. She did not often smoke, but now was the kind of occasion when she wanted a cigarette. Allison from her bed across a narrow four-foot space watched Leura. She wondered if she was seeing someone new: someone different. Or was it that when you knew things about someone—unsuspected things—then suddenly you saw them differently ? Now she could see that Leura's face was serious at times, where before she had merely thought Leura subject to "quietness." She was a girl with a past. It was sad but most intriguing. As Leura drew in the smoke from her cigarette, Allison softened. "Don't tell me if you don't want," she said gently. "After all, I haven't told all about me, have I? I mean—we really were sort of strangers who happened to get on together. So if you'd rather not . . ." Leura's eyes watched the smoke filter up to the uninspiring ceiling. "We were strangers. Perhaps that's why we didn't talk about ourselves," she said. "Sometimes one just doesn't want to talk to anybody. It's like dragging embarrassment out, when one runs away from it oneself..." Allison had stopped looking at Leura. She reached across the space where stood the small common table and helped herself to one of Leura's cigarettes. "All serene!" she said. "Let's draw a veil, and leave it at that." "I'd just as soon tell you," Leura said. "It doesn't seem to matter so much now

that one has grown a kind of armour. It's like growing an extra skin. Some things can still hurt but it doesn't matter as much—if you know what I mean." Allison rolled over on her side and pulled out her empty cup and saucer from under the bed. "Don't look," she said. "I'm about to indulge in that filthy habit the shed-hands have. I'm using my saucer for an ashtray." "You clean it and wash it afterwards," Leura commanded, without moving her head. "I've had all the cigarette butts and matches I ever want to see in my washing-up water." "Guides' honour." Allison rolled back on to her pillow. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you I knew Eve Grayson . . ." Leura began slowly. "I'm not sure why I didn't tell you—except that I wasn't absolutely certain that Eve —the girl I knew at school—was one of the Palari Graysons. Also, when one goes to work on a station as a shed-hand—be it cook or rouseabout—one doesn't care very much for claiming acquaintance with the station-owner's family. I'm in a different world now and I want to stay there—in it. The world of the woolshed. On the big stations the two worlds don't mix, except if you happen to have a human kind of station-owner and a team boss like Buck." It was Leura's turn to roll on her side and prop herself on her elbow. "It's a queer world, the shed-hand world. Nobody quite knows who anyone else is, and few ever tell. Some of the shearers don't use their right names. They've probably escaped from something—a nagging wife, or a patronising family. One of the shed-hands is an English public-school man." "I know. I recognised his accent; then I looked in the fly-leaf of a book he left out under the trees last Sunday. It had an Eton bookplate in it." "There you are. You didn't tell." "No. It was his business. But he's on the level, Leura. I think he's travelling Australia the hard way, the same as we are. Awful if we find ourselves the subject of an article in the Sunday Press. Or worse, in a book." "We probably will never know. But that's how it is. You don't ask who people really are. And you don't tell." "I know," Allison said soberly. " You didn't tell about your past: and I didn't ask. Also vice versa." "True Australians." "I take that as a compliment. I don't mind telling you now, but I've had some awful bouts of homesickness. I didn't want to seem complaining." "One's own country is always the best country," Leura commented. "How evasive we are," said Allison scornfully. "We're both dying to get our history and our troubles—the same thing, by the way—off our chests ; and neither likes to begin."

"I will," said Leura. "Briefly, I was engaged to a man just a little older than myself, down in my own country district. Both families had helped engineer the engagement, of course. I can see that now. I was half-aware what my mother was up to but I suppose I wanted it to be that way. Deep down I was glad of her connivance. . . ." “What an awful word." "Some people call it being socially helpful to their daughters. Others call it plain match-making. Our two farms adjoin and I have no brothers. So I suppose it would have been a good thing all round." "Did you love him?" "Yes, I thought so. I never looked at anyone else, ever. The engagement made a terrific to-do in the district. It was in the papers and so were our photographs and the whole histories of the two farms." Leura stubbed out her cigarette and leaned back on the pillow, her two hands under her head, and stared once again at the ceiling. "What happened?" "A girl with red hair—the most beautiful red hair you ever saw—came into the district. It wouldn't have mattered if I could merely have faded out. It didn't happen that way. Every time Joe went into the town he saw her. Then they met—regularly. Everyone saw them because everyone knew Joe, and nobody could miss that hair. You could see it houses away." "So everyone knew, and you didn't? No one liked to tell you—then you discovered for yourself?" "Yes." "A stinking way to find out." "Yes. I lost Joe and thought the townspeople were laughing at me. They weren't, of course. I realise that now, but when you're in that state you think anything. I left home. Found a job in that insurance company in the Terrace in Perth and found myself at the next table to you—a girl living in the same hostel. The story in a nutshell." "And you never thought of meeting up with Eve Grayson?" "I never thought of Eve Grayson again after I left school. I liked sport; she loathed it. I was good at maths and science; she was on the literary side. That's all there is to it. I didn't tell you I knew her because, like your Eton shed-hand, I'd left that world and was in another. I wanted it to stay that way." "Except for going to woolshed dances ? " Leura had the grace to laugh. "No one is strong-minded enough to miss something like that. Now you tell." "In about ten sentences. My uncle manages a small engineering firm and his

youngest engineer was a junior partner. My uncle brought me up because my parents are explorers. Round and about the Amazon most of the time. My uncle wanted to marry me off to his junior partner, and I resisted. Don't ask me why, Leura. He's an awfully nice person really. It was just I didn't like feeling bartered. That's what it comes to in the end, when it's partners in a firm. 'My niece for your co-operation; and we consolidate the company.' I said I wanted to see the world before I settled down. Uncle said, 'Don't darken my doors again, ungrateful wretch,'—or words to that effect. So I went up to Australia House, enrolled as an emigrant to Australia. Paid my ten pounds, and here I am." "Are you sorry ? " "No. I love Perth and I'm crazy about Australia. But, as I said, I get occasional bouts of homesickness. After all, England is quite a place, you know. Specially in the spring." Suddenly there was a catch in Allison's voice, and she fell silent. Both girls were silent for a while. Then Leura said softly: "Buck likes you, Allison. I don't know how much, but if it's serious it might mean your staying in the outback for ever. Buck would never change." "I know," Allison said quietly. Leura longed to say—Don't hurt Buck, but she knew she had a vested interest in Buck not being hurt by Allison. She couldn't protect him, or Allison for that matter. She also had a feeling that Buck was basically hard. He would stand a broken heart or two. But Allison ? Not easy to be torn between one's country and the man of one's heart. But Ruth—back there in the Bible—had the same problem on her plate and she knew what to do. "Love's a hell of a thing," said Leura suddenly, savagely, as she threw off the covering sheet, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and added, "Let's have a shower, get dressed, and do the town." Allison threw back her head and laughed. "One pub, one store, one garage. Let's really do it." Chapter 8 SHEARING BEGAN AGAIN ON TUESDAY. THE WEEK-END

break had been a real one. Three days. From Monday afternoon, far into the night, the shed-hands and shearers were coming back. They had had their week-end down in the big smoke, had seen their families, spent too much money and were all for another few quiet weeks in the bush where they had nothing to do but shear sheep, pass fleeces and press wool—at terrific speed under iron roofs and in great heat. They still said, "There's nothing like the nor'-west. Don't ever want to see the city

again." "Till next time," Buck commented sardonically. Allison and Leura had seen nothing of Buck until they reported back for work late on Monday night. There, there was a true sight to delight them. They didn't share a room at the end of the quarters any more. They had been moved to the staff house, two hundred yards away on the track to the homestead. One of the stockmen's wives had come down to the house to look after the girls in their off hours. "Earning myself some holiday money," she confided to Allison and Leura as she showed them their rooms—one each, this time. There were fresh muslin curtains on the windows and the inside of this house had been plaster-lined and painted. It was like a small heaven. "What goes on?" Leura asked, bewildered. "Have we had our pay raised too— just so we can afford our new status?" Mrs. Riddle shook her head. "Mrs. Grayson nearly had a fit when she found out you girls were here working. And down at the quarters. My, you ought to have heard the dingdong that went on up at the homestead. Dan Grayson took off to the outcamp across the boundary line to escape it. But Eve didn't hear the end of it for the whole of Sunday. Buck Ashe was sent for and he collected, too." She smiled cheerfully at the girls. "If this year's wool-clip hadn't been well shorn, and worth a fortune, I think Buck's team would have been sent packing." Then she really laughed. "In the long run it's money that talks, isn't it? Eighteen thousand more sheep to be shorn this side of the boundary and every other shearing team in the North booked up for months! After an hour or two Mrs. Grayson saw the point, calmed down, and had you two shifted up here." They were sitting round the table in the small living-room, drinking tea. "What a pity we didn't let her know before!" Allison was looking at the muslin curtains, the linoleum on the floor, and the painted-plastered walls. "In fact we should have sent a notice as to our presence the night we arrived." Leura shook her head. "Eighteen thousand sheep hadn't been shorn then—as a sort of gesture of worth-whileness." "You sure would have been sent packing," Mrs. Riddle said. "Shearing might have been delayed, held up a few days or even a week, but Buck would have found a cook somewhere. He always does in the end." "But he would have been paying the shearers and losing money meanwhile," Leura said. "I don't suppose it would have cost the Graysons anything to make Buck wait." "That's it." Mrs. Riddle nodded her head. "That's why Dan didn't interfere.

Buck Ashe is his friend and he didn't want to see him lose money." Allison put her head on the side and gazed at the curtains musingly. "He's nice, isn't he? Dan Grayson. He does nice things—like save his friend money and..." "And have us stewing in unlined timber rooms and a cook-house like a Turkish bath." Leura was not to be convinced of any particular kindness in Dan. "The cook-house is not like that now," said Mrs. Riddle. "Wait till you see it. Dan had twelve men on it all day yesterday and to-day." "Twelve?" "That's the way he does things. He puts a whole team on a job and gets it over and done with at once. No dallying with Dan. And did those men work!" Allison's eyes opened wide. "All for you, Leura? You must have something in particular!" Her eyebrows arched over her forehead. Leura didn't want to be pleased about anything Dan Grayson did. He had been kind to her—his way—while he danced ; sticking pins in the places where she was most sore. She didn't understand Dan Grayson. She didn't want to be pleased with his type of kindness. "I thought he took flight to the out-camp," she said scornfully. "He can direct all heaven and earth from there, when he wants to," Mrs. Riddle insisted. "He comes in when a job is finished. And let there be one thing undone——! He can be tough, can Dan!" "I don't believe it," said Allison, biting the sultanas one by one from Mrs. Riddle's small tea-cakes. "I only saw him smiling. Leura, don't you think it funny that we've got a cook here for us while we go and cook down at the quarters for someone else ? " "We?" Leura's eyebrows were raised. "I thought you were the rouseabout. Do you want to change jobs this session?" Allison shook her fair head. "No. I've fallen in love with the young woolclasser. I like passing the wool to the bins for him. Nothing would part me from the woolshed." Leura blinked. "All of them! Do you fall in love with everyone, Allison? Or is it that everyone falls in love with you?" "A bit of both," Allison said cockily. Then she burst out laughing at the expression on Mrs. Riddle's face and the look of wonder in Leura's eyes. "It's only that I'm different," she explained. "I'm fair and I'm English and my voice is different. So I have fun. You do see it, don't you, Leura?"

"I see that you are good fun, Allison. And you're game. That's what the men like. They know the outback is tough. They've lived all their lives in it and there are occasions when they feel it tough themselves. So when someone comes from a softer climate, like you and that shed-hand from Eton, and enjoy making a go of it, they really think an awful lot of you." "Throw in the fact she's very pretty," Mrs. Riddle said judicially to Leura. Allison, having finished her supper, put both hands on the table and pushed back her chair. "I have an awful feeling you're both being charitable to a stranger. Let's stop talking about me and go to bed. I'm screaming tired. The wild life in that onepub, one-store town has worn me out." Leura could not go to bed. No chance of sleeping as peacefully as Allison! While the other girl had had her shower and climbed into bed Leura had helped Mrs. Riddle wash up the cups and saucers and then offered to walk a little way up the track with her. Mrs. Riddle lived with her husband in one of the isolated cottages near at hand. "This was built here in the early days," she explained to Leura, "when this old creek bed was the boundary of Palari. It was an out-camp, I think." "You don't feel isolated from the other stockmen's wives?" Leura asked. "No, I like it. There's more privacy, and there's very few weeks go by that someone doesn't use the staff house. Wool-buyers, machinery men, salesmen. You've no idea what comes this way nearly every week in the year. Then in the shearing season we're almost crowded. That's what the spinifex, the mulga and I think." The cottage was set two hundred yards back from the main track, on a small rise in a nest of metal-hard mulga trees. In the moonlight it looked very pretty, if a little lonely. Leura decided that Mrs. Riddle probably liked the extra job of being cook or caretaker for whoever was inhabiting the staff house. It was probably true she liked the privacy, and the extra pin-money she was able to earn. When they had said good night Leura walked slowly back to the main track, then along the wide sweep of moonlit plain towards the quarters. Voices had died down there. Now only one light shone. Tired after their long overland drive—more than five hundred miles from the city—those shearers who had already come back had turned in for sleep. Leura surmised the lone light belonged to the latest of the arrivals. A wonderful silence seemed to hang over the whole world. It was a whole endless, timeless world of silence. It stretched across a continent: two thousand miles of it. Leura, like Allison, was tired, yet she did not want to go to bed. She wanted to touch and feel and live with the night-time world of the outback—when

everyone else was asleep and no one, nothing, could break that crystal silence. She walked on slowly towards the quarters. It was a long shambling building —now an ink-black structure—not unlovely in the moonlight. The one light remained: a single eye. Some shearer reading? Or gone to sleep, forgetting to put out the light ? As she came nearer she realised the light was at the end of the building. In the cook-house. Leura's interest quickened. Now she could see just what Dan Grayson had had done to the cook-house. He had promised to make it better ventilated, easier to work in. She remembered an all-important thing. No dough had been made for the bread. Without bread it meant extra-early rising to make scones. She felt a relief that she remembered the bread in time. Her week-end off had made her well and truly scatterbrained, she decided. She could almost hear the sarcasm in Buck's voice. "Taken to homestead society for good and all, Miss Barton? Forgot you're no more than a shearers' cook, and think you ought to wear a party dress every night in the week?" Leura wished she didn't think in this bitter-sweet way of Buck. Of anybody in all the world. Take Allison now. Allison enjoyed everything, and everyone. Leura opened the screen door and looked in. Her heart stood still, then galloped forward. She very nearly let her mouth drop open. In the cook-house there was a big window where there had been only a small one before. The wall at the back of the room must have been pushed back, somehow, for the stove was no longer where it used to be. It was let in to an alcove so that it was no longer dominating the room. There was a ventilator in the roof with an electric fan—whirring. The timber had been painted and it looked marvellous, smelled fresh, and was good. All this Leura took in at a glance but it was not this that made her stop short in the doorway. The long dining-table was at the end of the room, near the door where she was standing. At the table, sitting opposite one another, their legs sprawling before them, their elbows resting on the table top and a large teapot and cups and saucers signposts between them, sat Buck Ashe and Dan Grayson. The ashtray was piled with cigarette butts which looked as if the men had been there quite a while. In the stove, at the end of the room, fire-coals glowed. For a moment there was a silent tableau as the two men looked up at Leura, and she looked at them. Then suddenly they came to life.

Buck and Dan drew in their feet, noisily because they wore heavy boots as if they too had turned stockmen and been riding. They pushed back their chairs and climbed slowly to their feet. "Come in, Leura," Buck said. "Taking a look at your new domain?" Buck was the boss—not Dan—while shearing was on. Dan merely owned the place. Buck ruled the shearers' quarters till the last sheep was shorn and the last shed-hand gone. It had to be Buck, not Dan, who invited her in. Leura had last seen him at the dance two nights ago, yet she felt as if it was a month away. She was unprepared for this sudden wave of feeling and incapable of mastering the blush that suffused her face, climbing up from her throat framed in the low-cut sundress she wore. It coloured her cheeks, then her forehead, till it even tingled her scalp. That Buck's appearance, because it was unexpected, should have such an effect on her, shocked her. Even frightened her. She closed her eyes a minute. I don't want to fall in love with him. Please, God, don't let me. Just let me have the sky and the stars. He likes Allison best. She opened her eyes and it was Dan Grayson who was looking at her. Buck had picked up the teapot and walked with it away to the stove. Clearly he was about to add hot water to it, and offer her tea. It wrung Leura's heart to see him turn so nonchalantly away as he walked to the stove. Dan Grayson watched her face with interest. Most people, when the stationowner was around, looked at him, whether they wanted to or not. They couldn't help it. The well-being of all their lives was in his hands and they knew it. He was king of his acres, and they knew that too—even if a small portion of his kingdom was leased off to the shearing contractor for the duration of his stay. Yet, for the moment, to this girl, he did not even exist. Dan Grayson found the situation interesting. He also was impressed that his friend Buck Ashe could have such an effect on anybody. "Come and sit down, Leura," Dan Grayson said, breaking the spell and at the same time drawing out a chair for her. Leura gathered her wits. She forgot she disliked him, or that she thought anything about him at all. She smiled a little self-consciously—on account of that blush for Buck. "I'm afraid I had a shock," she said. "I didn't expect to find anyone in the cookhouse."

"Even though we had the light on?" Leura sat down and smiled at Dan again. This time it was a kind of "thankyou" for his holding a chair for her. "There's often a light on in the quarters. The shearers fall asleep over their books or old newspapers. They're very tired when they come in from the shed. . . ." "And more so when they've come five hundred miles or so from a blow-up in the city?" "I suppose so," Leura said. Although she looked at Dan out of her very nice truthful grey eyes, and smiled at him, he was perfectly well aware that he might as well not be there. An interesting situation for Dan Grayson, he told himself. He was amused. At the same time he admired Leura for the quick way she pulled herself together and her quick reversal to type. She was being unconsciously the well-brought-up daughter of a well-to-do farmer, with a touch of the aristocrat in her herself—a million light years away from an itinerant outback team. "In the morning," Dan Grayson thought, "she'll remember this little scene and whip the cat—if there is one up there at the staff house." "I expect they all had fun in their own way," Leura was saying of the shearers. "We'll hear about it to-morrow." Buck arrived at the table, balancing a cup and saucer in one hand and the giant-sized teapot in the other. "That's the breakfast teapot, Buck," Leura said. "How much tea did you put in it?" "Enough for the whole team," Buck said ruefully. "Must have been thinking of the light in your eyes, Leura. It made me forget the cost on the budget of tea at midnight." Don't play with me, Leura's heart said, but her eyes did not waver and her smile did not falter. "Will anything dreadful happen if I merely heat it up again in the morning?" "Sudden death," said Dan. "If I know how shearers like their tea." "I agree," said Buck. "You can't manage this teapot, Leura. I'll pour." "Thank you. It's the second cup I've had to-night but I'll enjoy it. Mrs. Fiddle gave us tea and scones when we came in." Buck looked up over the teapot. "You and Allison?" he asked, almost too quickly. "Yes. Me and Allison," Leura said quietly. She took the cup and saucer from Buck and turned to Dan Grayson again. He would have given half his flock of sheep, he told himself, amused, to see her

sitting in Buckingham Palace, looking, holding herself, and talking this way. "It's a beautiful night—outside," she said. "Quite out of this world." "Probably is," said Buck, sitting down. "Night is up there in space with Gagarin and company. Have you noticed what Palari's squatter has done for your cook-house, Leura?" He was quite severe now. This was ingratitude, his manner said, not to notice the raking thing had been torn apart and put together again, fit for a French chef. Leura relaxed. "It's wonderful. As a matter of fact it took my breath away when I came in. Then I saw you both sitting here. I didn't know which I should talk about first. I mean . . ." She was confused. "Go on," Dan Grayson said. "Untangle yourself, Leura. You came in, saw a new cook-house and two strangers at your breakfast table and you didn't know who or which to blush for first-" He could have bitten his tongue. Damn. The girl had blushed when she came in that door! Leura turned her grey eyes and looked at him steadily. Her eyes concentrated on him alone and said simply, clearly: I think I hate you. It was as plainly stated as that. Dan smiled. Two could play at that game of a facade of manners. His smile was as attractive and as guileless as it ever was when he kept what he thought to himself. "We had quite a team on it," he said. He pointed to the end of the kitchen. "The men whipped out that wall in four hours. Moved back the stove in half an hour and replanked and caulked the timbers for the wall in another two. Six of them on the painting took another hour, and three of them on the ventilator took half an hour." He paused, lit a cigarette, and turned to Buck. "You know, Buck," he said, "I learned that in the navy. They used to put sixteen men in a lifeboat and they'd have it painted, lockers, inside-out and all, in half an hour. That's the way to get a job done." "When I was in the army we went without paint," Buck said. "When were either of you in the navy, or army?" Leura asked politely. don't remember the war much."

"I

"We're talking about the cold war," Buck said. "In short—National Service." Dan blew cigarette smoke ceilingwards and squinted at it from half-closed eyes. Leura wrinkled her brow. "Is the cold war, and National Service, one and the same thing?" she asked. "The Korean war was," said Buck. "We were both in that. Quite a war too.

Jungle for me, and freezing waters on the wrong side of the deck for Dan." "We'll tell you about it another night." Dan smiled easily. cigarette, Leura?"

"Will you have a

She shook her head. Cigarette smoke in her throat was definitely beyond her at this moment. She needed all her wits about her not to make another fool of herself—not to look at Buck, and not to be off-guard again, for an instant, in front of this beast, Dan Grayson. Right now she was sorry the frozen waters off Korea hadn't swallowed him altogether. "I don't often smoke. And if you don't mind I'll get on with mixing the dough." Now she was able to look at Buck naturally. "Thank you for the tea, and very much thank you for the fire. I would have had to light it to make the bread rise before morning." She pushed back her chair and both the men stood up. "Shall we help you?" Buck asked, smiling down at her, liking her, being sorry that she had to begin work while the rest of the team slept. Don't look at me like that, Leura thought. "I can manage," she said aloud. "As a matter of fact I like being messy by myself. That way I can work the dough better." "You certain?" "Yes, thank you, Buck. Leave the cups and saucers. After all, I am the cook, and a small wash-up like that is nothing. Besides, I want to feel I've earned my pay packet." "Okay," said Buck. "I guess I know how you feel. I can't stand someone else breathing down my neck when I'm classing wool. I like to make my own judgments. Coming, Dan?" "In a few minutes, Buck. I want to check the electric wiring on the roof. I'm not sure the men ran it through conduit. I don't remember telling them. The way it was before we pulled the place about was a positive deathtrap." They both went to the door. "Good night, Leura," Buck said. "Good night, Buck." "Don't make tea for any of the late-coming shearers," he warned. "There's still two cars missing from outside so I guess that's two more loads to pull in." "I wouldn't dream of it," said Leura. "I'm making bread for them. enough for one night."

That's

The two men went through the screen door, letting it close quietly behind them. Leura could hear their heavy boots being quiet as they went across the veranda and down on to the red earth below the step.

She turned and gathered together the three cups and saucers, the ashtray full of butts. She couldn't bear to think about that dreadful blush. She had to put it from her because she could not face what the blush had revealed to herself about herself. And Dan Grayson had noticed. I hate that man, she said, and took the tea things to the sink. Hate is getting to be a pretty much over-used word in my vocabulary. First it was the redhead, then Joe—now Dan Grayson. As she put the flour in the tub and uncorked the yeast bottle, she fell to wondering why she would refer, in herself, to Peony Johnson as the redhead. Well, who wouldn't, she asked herself. It's such beautiful red hair. Allison's hair is so beautifully golden.

Like

First Joe, now Buck. Did she always have to be the other girl? Suddenly she felt tears smarting in her eyes and raised the back of one floury hand to wipe them away. As she did so she heard the heavy boots on the veranda again and the screen door open. She didn't care which of them it was. She wished them both in Korea. It was Dan Grayson. "Mind if I go up the manhole into the ceiling?" he said. "By the way—did you notice you had a ceiling ? Wild luxury for a cook-house. . . ." Leura, her back to him, her hands and forearms deep in the dough tub, nodded her head. Dan Grayson stopped in his progress, carrying a ladder, to the far side of the room. He propped the thing against the wall and came towards Leura. Something about her troubled him. There was no mistaking the way she held her head. No girl looking at anything, least of all dough in a tub, held her head down like that without a good reason. Could it be because Buck had gone off so abruptly? She was supposed to be Buck's girl-friend. Dan put out his hand and took her chin firmly and turned her face towards him. Her eyes were full of tears and one lonely tear drop hung on her cheek. Flour smudged the other cheek where she had wiped its mate away. Her hands were thick with clinging dough and she tried to free them. Dan took out his handkerchief and flicked the tear away. He stood thus, holding her chin with one hand and his handkerchief in the other, and looked at her swimming eyes. Strangely, the sight touched him. Wet eyes made wet lashes and they were very long and dark lashes. The flush was on her cheeks again and her mouth was a warm red—not from lipstick. The stiff-backed fire had gone out of her and suddenly she was feminine and

very sad. She could not trust her voice, and the dough would not release her hands. She was his prisoner. Buck, Dan felt, needed a kick in the pants. He very nearly bent his head and kissed her. Then he wondered if he had gone mad. "Excuse me while I wipe your eyes," he said quietly. "Bread-making is not a time to cry, you know." He was gentle as he held her chin and even more gentle as he touched her eyes. Then, to jerk Leura out of her tears into a smile, he did something unexpected and funny. He held his handkerchief pinched over her nose and said, "Blow!" Leura did blow, and he wiped her nose too. "That's about as familiar with one another as a man and a woman can get without being married," he said. "I was four when someone last blew my nose for me." Leura was smiling, though her eyes were still a little wet. She didn't hate him any more. "Just—just let me get my hands out of this dough," she begged. "You get rid of that dough while I go up the manhole," Dan said. come down we'll brew more tea." "Not three times in one night!"

"When I

"Six times if necessary," said Dan. " Besides, you're the one who has had three lots. I've only had two. I've been known to make tea six times between dusk and dawn. When there's a drought on—and we're waiting for rain." "My goodness! You were late in last night," Allison complained in the morning as one showered and the other cleaned her teeth. Only a thin partition was between them. "What on earth were you doing?" "How did you know? You were sound asleep when I went up the track with Mrs. Riddle. You didn't even cream your face or comb your hair." "When you dived into bed I thought you'd take the wall with you. That would have wakened a wintering snake—python-sized. What were you doing? Running a rule over the station reputations with Mrs. Riddle?" "I was making bread in the cook-house. You forget. We're back on the job." "My hat! I had forgotten!" Leura couldn't bring herself to tell Allison just how she had passed that last hour before she went to bed. Another time—perhaps—when they had lots of time and not a mere five minutes to get down to the quarters. What a strange hour it had been. Leura had rid herself of the dough by putting it in the bread-tins, lining them

up on the open oven shelf, and covering them with a towel. Then she had gone to the sink and washed her hands and by that time Dan Grayson had come down from the roof. He came across the room, smiling, easy, sure of himself. It was the way he always was, and as if nothing like a weeping cook had come his way. "Do you want five minutes to powder your nose?" he asked. "But I like it better this way. It shines nicely. Not too much." "I'm sorry I made a fool of myself," Leura said. She liked him now. He had been rather sweet. "Sit down over there at the table," he said. "Buck made the last cup of tea. I'll make this." He watched for the rising flush at the mention of Buck's name, but it did not come. Leura was in full control of herself now. Anyhow, it had been Peony Johnson's beautiful red hair that had made her cry, and Allison's golden locks —not Buck's cup of tea. Leura sat down at the table and Dan made the tea. He let it draw, then poured it out as if it was a rite. "Cigarette this time?" he asked. "Or do we find biscuits?" "Cigarette, please. I only eat three times a day. Trouble with the figure otherwise." Dan glanced at her slim svelte body, and smiled. "I'd hate to see you when you really dieted." They sat and drank their tea and smoked their cigarettes together, and Dan told her how these frame and iron-roofed buildings could so easily be altered. "Not like brick, or stone," he said. "You saw through a slab of wall and push it back. Simple as that when it's not lined." He told her about the Korean war, to which he had gone when he was eighteen; about the years when he had played interstate cricket; about building a new homestead when his father died; and why Palari had to have a million acres to carry thirty-five thousand sheep. "All spinifex and sand, except when the rains come," he said. "Ask Allison about England. There the sheep lie down at ten o'clock in the morning, they're so full. Here they have to walk twelve hours to find enough to eat. If it weren't for the artesian wells underneath, and the bores, we wouldn't be able to carry anything but sand snakes. Not even the kangaroos and emus would come this way." He told her the horses that the stockmen used were all sixteen-handers because they were the station blood-stock originally bred by his grandfather. "We're very much known, on Palari, for our broncos," he said with a smile. "They take handling but they've wonderful stamina in this spinifex-and-sand country."

He asked her could she ride, and when she said yes, she had her own horse at home, he said he would take her out to Rocky Gully—one day. He was charming, kind, and full of good conversation. Except for the riding he asked her no questions and did not expect her to join in or tell him anything. He merely talked her out of her mood of sadness. Leura wondered why he did it. She knew he must think of her as a person lacking in openness and frankness. She had come on his property in disguise, as it were. She had told no one, not even her travelling friend Allison, she had known Eve Grayson at school; nor that she had been engaged to be married. Dan Grayson would probably think she was still engaged. He did not give her the opportunity to tell him anything of her own life—or to tell him anything at all, even if she had wished to do so. He did the talking and she did the listening. When they had finished their tea and another cigarette they washed up and he walked up the track with her to the staff house. As they did so the last of the shearers came home, in two cars, one following the other, the second car sending its headlights through the dust of the first like a fairy dazzle through a pink diamond mist. The spotlights on the cars lit up the plain, then the track, then the receding backs of Leura and Dan Grayson as they walked together through the belt of spindly mulga till they were lost round the turn of the track. When they reached the staff house, he said: "I'll say good night now. I'll be down at the woolshed some time during the week, and if I see you you might let me know how the ventilator goes in the cook-house. I'd like to know if it is a success." Leura could see his smile cut his face with a flash of white teeth in the moonlight. "Good night, Leura," he added. "Sleep well. You'll have roughly five hours of sleep. That's all." "Good night, and thank you very much," Leura said. It was commonplace and without overtones. He wasn't a bad sort of person, Leura thought. King of a lonely sheep station. He hadn't wanted to know why she cried. She was grateful for that too. And she didn't hate him any more. Chapter 9 no one had time for personal problems. Once again the incentive was there for the men to increase their totals. This time it was not because they wanted to get away early for a weekend break. The radio at the homestead informed the station world there was a SHEARING WENT ON IN EARNEST ALL THAT WEEK AND

cyclone hovering off the northwest coast in the Indian Ocean. When a cyclone hovered, Buck told Allison and Leura as they sat on the step of their new home after dinner at the end of a long day, nobody knew where it would go next. "Always south," Buck said. "Problem is—which way south. Straight down seaward of the coast, bringing rain only to the fringe? Or will it cut a halfcircle landwards, bringing the rain inland? Till the darn thing starts moving no one knows who'll get the rain. If anyone." Buck was sombre and thoughtful to-night. He had a lot of guessing to do, he told the girls. He had to guess where the cyclone was going and he had to guess how long before it started moving. "If it comes inland it means wet wool and we can't shear." Already the girls had heard the gossip of the woolshed and knew some of the hazards of intermittent rain. The shearers would rather keep on shearing a shed till it was finished. They liked their legal week-end breaks, but they hated being hung up idle while wool on the sheep dried. So did Buck. It cost him a lot of money. "What does Dan Grayson think?" Allison asked. "He knows everything. He ought to know that." "Dan doesn't lose money if the shearers are held up. I do," said Buck crustily. Both girls laughed. They'd heard this one so often. "That's how we came to be kidnapped. Anyone will do for a cook as long as the shearers eat something. Then they shear," said Allison. "I like that," Leura protested. "If by 'anything' you mean me—they've a jolly good cook." "Guess I'll go down to the quarters and have a talk with some of the shedhands," said Buck. "They're about as weather-wise as I am, and eight heads on that subject are better than one." He stood up. "I'm sorry I'm not good company to-night." "You've a lot to think about," Leura said. "Your turn to wash up, Allison." "Stack them up and I'll do them to-morrow," Buck promised. walking down the track with me."

"Allison's

Allison was standing beside him, slim and taut in her clean trews and shirt. He ran his hand through her hair, ruffling it. "Coming, mate?" he asked. Leura watched them go down the track. The blood-bath that was sunset was out of the sky and the world was darkling, grey and bush-smelling. Very still. Every now and again Allison gave a little skip as she walked. This was

because Buck took long strides. He was wrapped up in his worries about the weather and forgot Allison's small step. Walking with that occasional lighthearted skip, she looked so young, to Leura. And happy too. Allison had collected some sand in her shoes. She held Buck's arm with one hand while she balanced on one foot, took off her shoe and emptied it with the other hand. Leura couldn't help but laugh. There was something so matter-of-fact about it... so companionable and, by its very frankness, so intimate. Buck hadn't even taken his hands out of his pockets. He merely stood still, a tower of strength upon which Allison leaned while she emptied her shoes one after the other. Leura picked herself up. Mrs. Riddle had not come down to-night, because there had been some kind of a ding-dong up at the homestead and she had gone up there to help. A group of Government officials and their wives had arrived. The woolshed grape-vine had given this out. The party was on a look-see of the outback and only stayed at the very best of station homesteads. Palari was one of the best. Mrs. Grayson saw to that. This was the woolshed opinion. Mrs. Grayson felt rather grand about entertaining Government people, specially their wives. The men were Dan's kettle of fish. So Mrs. Riddle had gone up to the homestead and would probably stay there for several days. Leura rinsed the after-dinner coffee cups and tried not to think of Buck standing there, farther down the track, looking down at Allison's fair bent head. In the heat and work and rush of the days she had stopped thinking of him as someone who could have made the outer surfaces of her skin tingle if he had but looked her way. Her feelings for Buck remained, but they had dimmed—even dulled to a kind of regret, an un-bitter envy of Allison. So little was there of unkind jealousy in her feelings towards her fair-headed friend she would even have openly admitted this wry regret. How lucky can you be! she might have said. When Allison came back an hour later she told Leura that the conclave of weather experts down at the quarters had decided the cyclone would stand still for several days. "Till the end of next week, maybe," she said. "Buck says we're going to shear like mad and get this shed finished ahead of time. Then we can go over the boundary to the other half of Dan Grayson's station which is no longer Palari but Yindathurra. Imagine it, Leura! You have to call half your station by another name and use a different brand for your wool all because you're supposed—on paper—to own no more than a million acres. Sounds fantastic, doesn't it ? " "So long as you don't remember that most of the million acres is spinifex, barely subsistence land: nearly desert. Who wants a desert, anyway?"

"Mr. Dan Grayson. Else why should he own it?" "He owns the station, not the land," explained Leura. " He leases the land." Allison yawned. "Too involved for me," she said. "I'm about to have a shower and go to bed. I have dreams to dream, and they mustn't be neglected in favour of spinifex." Dreams of Buck, Leura supposed. She remembered when she and Joe had become engaged. What a long time ago that was ! And how could she ever have felt like that? But she had—no denying it. What a sad thing was love, after all. So ephemeral. Better to do without it. The shearers shore like mad to increase their tallies. Buck and the young woolclasser stood over the table as the fleeces were thrown to them. Allison, now expert as a runner, carried the fleeces to the bins. The presser pressed and the bales rolled out of the huge shed to the trucks waiting outside. Meanwhile, Leura, in her much improved kitchen, cooked huge meals and made extra baskets of tea and buns and scones and took them down to the woolshed to help the men keep up their strength. Leura, being an Australian, had seen men work in her own particular part of the outback, down in the forest country; but never had she dreamed men could work as they worked here on Palari. The wrath of God was in the heat, but that didn't stay them. Anything to get the shed finished while the sheep were mustered and the wool was dry! When the week-end came, Buck had to leave the team for the first time since they'd come up the stock-route to Palari. He had to go down to Perth to recruit more shearers for the Yindathurra shed and their next shed up the line, over the twenty-sixth parallel. He went alone because he needed car-room for the men he hoped to bring back with him. On Saturday, after the usual washing and hanging out of clothes, most of the shearers and shed-hands decided they would drive the hundred miles into the town, looking for entertainment. Only the young woolclasser and two of the men were left behind in the quarters. "I'll settle for a washing day," Leura said. "Me too," said Allison. "Clothes first, then us next, including our heads of hair." "We might do something about our hands," Leura suggested. "I wish I had asked Buck to bring back some lemons. Nothing but lemon will take those vegetable stains from my fingers."

Both girls held out their hands and looked at them. They were so bad they were funny. "My mother used to say, 'Never be ashamed of hands that look as if they've worked,'" Leura said. "Then your mother has no cause for shame in her daughter," Allison replied bluntly. "As for my uncle—he would say 'Ha! Two years' hard labour! Thought that's what you'd come to, my girl—going off like that! Globetrotting? Indeed!'" "And his junior partner? The boy you wouldn't be bartered for?" Leura asked mildly. "What would he say?" Allison pulled her hands back from outer space and looked at them wistfully. "I wonder," she said. Leura glanced up in surprise. "You sounded as if you cared.'” "I think I do." "But what about Buck?" "Oh, I care for him too. And Billy Rafferty, our very very junior woolclasser. He's taking me for a drive this afternoon." "Nice to be you," said Leura. "You have a heart big enough to hold a whole shearing team." "Just about. By the way, do you mind if we take the Holden? Billy hasn't a vehicle. He came with one of the shearers." "It's half yours. Don't forget to check the water, oil and tyres. And carry your water-bag." "Yes, Leura. Yes, oh yes! I know my catechism and my Bible. Hat, water, oil, petrol, spare parts, wheel jack and, like the King of Siam, etcetera, etcetera." "Well, mind you do." Leura had not seen Dan Grayson all the week, and after Allison had driven off, and she herself sat on the shady side of her lean-to veranda, she wondered if he was likely to come down to see if the newly renovated cookhouse measured up to his expectations. He had said he would come some time during the week—but then he'd had that influx of visitors. He might even bring the visitors down to see the woolshed. Most stationowners gloried in the woolsheds. It was more important to them than the homestead, often looked bigger and better, and certainly cost as much. Leura had a happy afternoon. She liked the peace and quiet and the knowledge that she didn't have to cook a big dinner. She had the chance to fix up the bits and pieces about her clothes that had gone wrong in the last three weeks. There were two pairs of trews she hadn't been able to wear because the zips weren't functioning properly and she hadn't had time to adjust them. There were buttons off blouses, a tear in one shirt, and one or two minor repairs to her undies. She was even glad Allison had gone off. This way she could make her own

mess, scattering her sewing about the sitting-room table and the veranda steps. Time enough to tidy it up when she heard the Holden coming up the track. The sun was a flaming banner across the western sky, throwing up the stark black trunks of the scattered trees like silhouettes, at the sundown hour when she began to wonder when Allison would be back. She was sitting on the veranda steps and she put down her sewing to look at the fantastic sunset. Custom did not weary her of wondering about it. Every night she looked for it—and marvelled. It's time I heard the Holden coming up the track, she thought. From then on, she began to worry. Allison had said nothing about staying out after dark. Besides, they hadn't taken any food with them. Leura knew that. She had walked over to the Holden when Billy Rafferty had driven it up. They had their water-bags and all the usual paraphernalia for travelling on outback roads —a plastic petrol container, oil. The tools were all in the boot of the car. But no food. Night fell and Leura made herself some tea and prepared cold meat and salads for the two remaining men in the quarters. At length she told them about her worry. "Don't worry, miss," one of them said. "They might have decided to go to town. That's a hundred miles away, but lots of fellers think nothing of that for an afternoon drive. Even if they've had a bit of a puncture or a hold-up somewhere round the station tracks, no harm can come to 'em. They've got water an' tools." "If they don't come home in the next hour or two do you think we should go and look for them?" "Not on your life. They wouldn't thank us even if we knew where they'd gone or what track they'd taken. A million acres is a lot of country, and when it's criss-crossed with a hundred tracks it would be like looking for someone in a maze." There was truth in that. But Leura worried. The evening meal was over and the hours crawled by. At midnight she could bear the worry no longer. She went down to the quarters to rouse the two men again, only to find one of their vehicles, the utility, was gone. And the men gone with it. They, too, had decided that a hundred miles to the township wasn't too far for an evening's outing. Like the rest of the shearers they wouldn't come back till late the next afternoon. The only vehicles were a huge wool truck and a Falcon sedan belonging to one of the men who had gone in the other man's utility. Leura sat on the step of the quarters and alternately thought and worried. What did she do now ?

Go up to the homestead for help ? She dreaded that. It would be doubly embarrassing to go with a complaint that two of the shearing team were missing on the one hand: and on the other hand to present herself to a homestead full of visitors, and place the Graysons in the difficult position of introducing her as Leura Barton, a friend of the family, or alternatively keep her standing on the back veranda like the hired hand she really was. To go up to the homestead, she felt, was a last resort. She wasn't sure of the way to the overseer's house nor the lake or the creek bed where the majority of the stockmen had their cottages, but she would have to find her way there somehow if Allison didn't come back soon. For the first time Leura realised how maddening could be the tangle of station tracks if one didn't know them. They ought to have a road map, she told herself. She also decided that this tangle of tracks was the cause of the Holden's late homecoming. They're lost, of course. As I would be. This started a new dilemma. Was it right and proper to leave them lost all night without doing something to help them? Something. But what? She waited an hour after midnight, then decided she had to do something. She would take the Falcon from outside the quarters, and drive it across one or two of the most obvious tracks. The station stretched away like a vast plain, and wherever Allison and Billy Rafferty were they would see the Falcon's headlights. Leura walked down to the quarters, examined the Falcon to see that it had petrol and oil and was in running order, that it had a water-bag hanging on the bumper and that she herself had a hat on her head. It was past the middle of the night, but one still took a hat. It was what Allison laughingly had called "The First Commandment in Australia's Book of Common Usage." Thinking of that remark of Allison's suddenly brought a dry feeling to Leura's throat. What if they were more than lost? What if there'd been an accident? Suddenly Allison, with her light-hearted conquering of a world, both the male and the real, hard, hot, spinifex world of the outback, was very dear to Leura. She thought of Allison as she had so often felt about her in silence—a girl full of charm and a kind of feminine gallantry; lots of courage, and as kindhearted as they came. All England was suddenly very dear to Leura. All on account of Allison. She slid into the car behind the steering-wheel and started it up. She would

not wait another minute. She would go find Allison, and to heck with anyone who thought she was playing caretaker. Buck would have gone—in a rage probably, but he would have gone. The first thing to do was follow the Holden tyre-marks. That was easy enough for an hour, because the Holden didn't have the same wheel-span as the station cars. Leura was grateful for the Falcon-owner having put a spotlight above the bonnet grille: it lit the road and all the world on either side in a glare like sunlight. The Holden track on the right-hand side was three inches inside the usual tracks. For half an hour Leura followed it, also trying to remember landmarks against her own return. Then suddenly the way became stony instead of red earth. There had been no turn-off, so Leura felt safe to continue. This was a track often used, that was clear. It must lead somewhere. The only discomfiting thing was that she saw neither sight nor sound of the homestead, the stockmen's cottages, or the lake. Allison and Billy Rafferty must have driven away from the station centre. If only they had maps, or better, signposts! Leura stopped the engine, eased herself out of the car, and tried to find the Holden tyre-marks on the road. They must have come this way. There was no turn-off. She got back into the car and sat and waited. The spotlight and headlights were full on. If the lost ones were anywhere within miles they would see the lights. There were no trees. Leura in the Falcon was out on the open plain. Then she sounded the horn and listened for an answer. There was only that utter silence. A whole world of silence, and no light except what came from her own car, and the stars and half-moon now westering as time crept on. Presently she had to turn out the lights. She dared not waste the battery. She sat quite a while in the unlighted car, watching, listening. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing but herself in the whole world: so it seemed. She started up again and drove on for another half-hour. She could only guess her direction from the position of the half-moon, because the track wound its way about like an inert snake. Direction didn't help, she knew, because she didn't know where Allison and Billy Rafferty were, and what was more she didn't know whether the homestead and shearers' quarters were north, east, south or west of where she was herself. It was four o'clock by the dashboard and the fuel register showed the tank half-empty, when she decided to turn about and go back. Leura never did know how she came to be lost herself. She followed the track back along the way she had come. It was true she had a long stretch of several miles over stony ground that did not show her own tyre marks.

Then she came to a fork in the track. She had seen no lead-in road on her way out. Once again she pulled up, got out, and this time searched for her own tracks as well as those of the Holden. There were none. She had to try and think which way lay the homestead. Most of the time she had seen the moon through her windscreen. The only thing she could now do was drive with the moon, paling down the sky to the west, behind her. She slid back into the car and drove on. The fuel register showed less and less petrol. "One more mile and I'll have to stop until daylight. Then I might see something." She couldn't afford to run bang out of fuel. All this while since she had lost her way she might—for all she knew—have been driving away from the homestead. This was the way, she supposed, that Allison and Billy Rafferty had become lost. How mad everyone on the station would be with all three of them! She couldn't believe that on her way out she had passed a lead-off track without noticing it. But this she must have done, because she certainly came to a fork on her way back. She was not frightened, only exasperated. If she had any fears at all it was for Allison. They might have had an accident. She herself was lost, and sooner or later someone would find her: in a rage, without a doubt. She drove on for twenty minutes of that half-hour she had promised herself, and there the track led dead-end into a wire fence. It ended there. Period. It was like the road through the woods that was lost. The track that led nowhere and for no reason. Leura stopped the car and sat leaning on the steering-wheel, wondering. This was a boundary fence. The boundary of Palari ? She knew that now she would have to wait till morning. She looked in the Falcon's glove-box and found a whole carton of cigarettes and a bottle of Irish whiskey. For once she was inclined to be glad about the shearers' ideas of "stocking up." One or two cigarettes would do, not a whole carton; but the bottle of whiskey meant she had an alternative drink if her water-bag didn't hold out until she was found. She had even heard of a car being driven on whiskey when the petrol had given out. She thought she wouldn't risk that. In the boot at the back of the car she found a small carton of tinned fruits. But no tin-opener. What was the good of a tin if you couldn't open it, she wondered. Then she remembered the old dodge of hiding your extra car key—in case you were locked out as could happen with the Holden—by tying it under the front fender of the car. That was what she and Allison did with their spare

key: perhaps Falcon drivers did the same. And shearers always carried a bottle-opener—generally with a hooked handle—on their key rings. Leura searched under the front fender and found the prize. Thanks be to shearers for their thirsty habits, she said, as she lovingly examined the spare key ring, which also carried that classic of a bottle-opener, the one that had the hooked handle that could open tins. I won't starve and I won't die of thirst—possibly of inebriation, but not ordinary thirst, anyway! She still wasn't frightened. Dan Grayson, who could set twelve men to fix the cook-house in one day, could set twelve men to scour the station tracks, even if some of them were eighty miles long. Someone would find her. Buck would sack her, if the Workers' Union let him. But she wouldn't die. Leura, alone there in somebody else's car, as the sky paled to the false dawn, thought reminiscently of her Workers' Union ticket. Her father would have had a fit if he had known about such a thing, but truth to tell she was proud of it. The Governor's Aide, a Guards officer, had joined a whaler before the mast to go down to the Antarctic in his vacation and had joined the Australian Workers' Union to do so. If the Governor's Aide could carry that little bit of paper, so could Leura Barton. Allison had said she would frame hers. Then Leura thought of Allison again and did feel fear. If only she knew they were lost—comfortably lost like herself—instead of upside-down and dead under a wrecked car. What with the cigarettes and the bottle of whiskey, she herself would die inebriated—but happy. She lit a cigarette from the automatic lighter on the dashboard and smoked it while she waited for the dawn. Presently she stubbed it out, leaned back and closed her eyes. She supposed she was very tired. It was daylight when she woke up. Even before she opened her eyes she knew there was something wrong with the world. She sat up and looked through the windscreen. She could just see the wire fence through a haze of dust and she could hear the whipping of sand on the bodywork of the car. A hundred yards beyond the wire fence the seen world ended. It was dark brown with a myriad moving objects. Then like an air-wave these objects hit the car. Grasshoppers. Millions and millions of them. They drove forward in cloud upon cloud, smattering the bonnet of the car, and the windscreen, with their bodies. It was half an hour before the grasshopper cloud had passed and she dared to get out of the car and wipe the bruised and broken insects from the windscreen.

The wind had died down, and with it the dust. On the far side of the fence were sand-dunes where last night, by the moonlight, there had been none. She had slept through a dust-storm and an insect plague. Leura gave herself a drink of water from the bag and then put it in the car for safety's sake. Other plagues might be at hand. She thought she would turn the car about and go back along the track, for a few miles anyway. She turned the car side-on to the fence, then the engine petered out. She tried again. The engine phutted up, then died. Once again she slid out and went round to the front to lift the bonnet. She knew quite a lot about motor mechanics. Both she and Allison had gone to the trouble to learn before they set out on their working tour. She didn't have to lift the bonnet to know the trouble. The radiator grille was solid with grasshopper bodies. No air could get through to the engine and the car had an automatic way of shutting off the engine when the cooling system broke down. Leura was still working at clearing the grille when suddenly life came to join her on that lonely empty plain. First, away to the right, some willy-willies came dancing and whirling: thin spirals of dust moving in slim columns across the plain. They were pretty, almost human, but Leura had an unhappy feeling they presaged another dust-storm. Then on the far side of the wire fence came the kangaroos. Two of them. Big euros, and they came up to the fence, then stopped, clearly not in the mood to break through, as well they might have done. Leura knew quite a lot of bush lore and she wondered why the 'roos stopped at the fence, and stayed stopped. They sat upright, their heads turned, looking back, as if waiting for something. A four-foot iguana ran up the straining post of the fence and stayed there. That meant something, Leura was sure. But she had no idea what. The most important thing was that neither the kangaroos nor the iguana were afraid of her... or of the steel monster of a car. They simply stayed immobile and waited, fifty yards away. Leura, hot and tired from her cleaning work, got back into the car and opened herself a tin of fruit. She hoped the euros and the iguana would not go away. They were company. In a minute when she had had her breakfast she would complete the car-turn and drive off. In the meantime she looked at the animals and the iguana with love. They were the only living things in all the world, as far as she could see. Even as she ate the tinned fruit, the western sky palled up in a brown blanket. The dust was on her again. Within seconds the world was almost browned out and Leura was afraid the dust and sand might even cover the car. One thing to die of inebriation—another thing to be smothered. Then she saw why the 'roos and the iguana were waiting. The fence was

support and they had their backs to the west. They had their backs to the sandstorm. That was their way of living through it. The dust and sand would pass round them, leaving the vacuum in front of them so they might breathe. They, the creatures of the outback, knew what to do. Leura started up the car and completed the turn so the car also had its back to the sandstorm. Me and the animals, she said, trying to be gallant about it. We understand each other. We're in this together. The engine petered out again, which meant that all her cleaning did not get rid of the dead grasshoppers wedged on the inside of the radiator grille. In front of her, the track by which she had come was lost: buried in red sand and curtained by red dust. It occurred to Leura that in these circumstances she just might not be found. There wasn't a track any more. Feet of red sand covered it. The way home was indeed lost! The car was facing around now, so she looked through the rear window, to the distant shadows of the kangaroos and the iguana, through the dust veil. "Don't go away, darlings," she said. "This time I really need you. There's nothing else that will tell me what to do. Besides—I like company." Half an hour later the dust-storm had passed over. There were sand-dunes, waves upon waves of sand everywhere. The kangaroos casually leaped away and the iguana came down from his post. Then came the wild bush turkeys. Hundreds and hundreds of them running through the low stubble of the plain: a river of them scrambling over the halfburied wire fence in pursuit of the grasshoppers and breakfast. I live and learn, Leura thought. She wiped the windscreen inside and out and looked for any sign of the track. There was none—and worse, the car, with its blocked radiator, would not go through the sand. She slid back in the car again and longed for the kangaroos to come back for company, or even to have the iguana slither up on the seat beside her. Chapter 10 AN HOUR LATER DAN GRAYSON CAME, RIDING UP ON one of the sixteen-hand broncos. It was clear, even to Leura, why the bloodstock on Palari was the bronco type. Only mountains of horse-flesh could pound its way through that sand. Dust-storms weren't such rare things to Palari, that was for sure. He came right up to the car, now sunk eighteen inches in sand, and swung off the horse. Leura remained sitting, watching him. There was nothing she could say. Absolutely nothing.

Had she been afraid ? She didn't know. She had been cracking funnies to herself about the wild turkeys, the kangaroos and the iguana for an hour. Perhaps it was because she was afraid but had been afraid to face it. Dan let the rein of his horse dangle to the ground and, stooping a little, opened the car door. Leura simply looked at him. She still had nothing to say. There weren't any words any more. His eyes slid over her quickly, then he smiled . . . that easy, unconcerned smile that meant it was a pleasant way to look at people but meant absolutely nothing else. It hid what he thought. “Move over," he said. "I'm coming in. That is, if you could stand a little more dust." He was dusty enough, that was true. His face was a red-brown mask, but then Leura knew her own was that way too, and she didn't care any more. She eased across into the passenger seat as Dan slid in behind the wheel. "Is Allison all right?" she asked. He looked at Leura, surprised. "Why not? Why are you concerned about Allison?" "I came out to look for her. She didn't come home. I thought she was lost— perhaps had had an accident. . . ." Dan's hands were on the steering-wheel and he grasped it, almost as if he would shake it loose. "For crying out loud!" he said. "Allison and young Rafferty spent the night at the homestead. Eve ran into them on the lake track and invited them up. Someone was supposed to ring through to you." Leura closed her eyes and slid down a little in her seat. After a minute's silence she opened them. "I'm glad of that," she said quietly. Dan took his hat off and turning flung it on the back seat; then he sat, his arm along the back of Leura's seat, and stared at her. "So you're glad of that, are you?" he said. "Do you have any feelings inside that body of yours, Miss Barton, or do you merely go on a wild goose chase following someone who is not even lost, cause an entire station and shearingshed to stop work and comb a million acres in a sandstorm for you, and then have no comment to make except that? Would you like me to pass the icecream, or something?" "Tea or coffee would do," Leura said, without looking at him. She had been almost happy with the kangaroos, the iguana and several thousand bush turkeys. Now she had to have no feelings in order to ignore unkind Fate for

being unkinder Fate in sending Dan Grayson to find her. Why couldn't it have been anyone else ? She looked up at him with expressionless eyes. "How do we get out of here, do you suppose?" she asked. Dan slid out of the car and slammed the door behind him. He went over to his horse, unstrapped a saddle-bag and brought it to the car. He opened the door, passed her the saddle-bag and then eased himself in again. "There's a Thermos of tea in that. We alternately walk and ride—that's how we get out of here. I hope you're insured, for I have a feeling this Falcon will be written off as a total loss. Nothing short of a helicopter with a crane will ever lift it out. There's a sea of sand for fifteen miles." Leura unstrapped the saddle-bag and pulled out the Thermos. "Thank you for the tea," she said. "How did you find your way here?" Dan had his arm along the back of the seat again and he stared at Leura's profile. Her lids drooped over her eyes because she was looking down at her hands as she unscrewed the lid of the Thermos, then the inner cup, and came finally to the cork. Her face was a sensitive one, mobile when distressed as she had been that night in the cook-house when he had found her crying into the dough. He couldn't believe she was as tough as all this; so innocent of her predicament that she could pass it off with an offhand kind of indifference. She had thought she was going to Allison's rescue. Well, she had feelings of a sort for someone. She had limited feelings for Buck Ashe or that Paget fellow she was engaged to, perhaps. They had to be limited, because she could hardly have a full-blooded love for one while she was still tied to the other. But she had cared about her friend—the English girl. He would give her a few marks for that. For some reason or other, the girl intrigued him. She was an enigma: and all she wanted to know was how he himself got here. She hadn't even been relieved, let alone glad, to see him. "I could follow the Falcon tracks as far as ten miles back," he said. "They were on this fence road. You had to be on this track somewhere." "Could you find your way in the sand, after it had covered the track?" Leura poured tea first into one lid cup then into the other. "I know every inch of Palari," Dan said quietly, still watching her expressionless profile. "I could follow the track if it was sunk under the Indian Ocean." Leura handed him the cup of tea and put the Thermos, with the cork replaced, on the floor of the car. She took one sip of her tea then put the cup

quickly in the open glove-box. "Excuse me..." she said, fumbling for the door lock. "I think I... might... might... be going to be sick____" The car door was open and she stumbled out, and sat on the step, leaning forward, her head in her hands. In a flash Dan was out of the other door and round the car. He squatted down on his heels—stockman fashion— beside her. "Keep your head well down, Leura," he said quietly. "You'll feel better in a minute." She felt very sick and as if she was receding away from reality . . . away into a limitless world, not defined as the world of stars or the world of sandplain and spinifex. Only a mist-world of nowhere. They stayed like that, both of them in silence, for quite five minutes. Then Leura lifted her head and straightened her back slowly. "I feel better," she said weakly. She didn't care a fig about Dan Grayson, but she was terribly thankful she hadn't been actually physically sick. How ghastly that would have been, she thought. In a sad kind of way she felt her humiliation would have been complete. That awful flush in the woolshed, that night; getting lost on a fool's errand while all the time Allison was a guest in the homestead; creating havoc amongst the manpower on the station! Then being sick. Just plain childishly, female-wise sick. This time she didn't hate Dan Grayson. She hated herself. "Do you think you can stand up?" Dan said. He raised himself to his full six feet and took her hand. "Give it a burl!" he said. Leura opened her eyes and looked up at him. His eyes had that cheerful innocent smile in them again, and he was challenging her. Give it a burl, he had said, as if he was talking to his kid brother, encouraging him. Making a man of him. Leura's grasp tightened in his hand and she stood up. The world went round behind her closed eyes and she wavered, a bamboo in the wind, but Dan Grayson held her steady, his hands pinioning both her arms at her sides. When she was steady, under her own control, as it were, he let her body come those few inches towards him and lean against him. He put his arms round her and held it. It was all quite impersonal. She was just a fellow creature needing some kind of nervous nurture, and he gave it to her.

She let her head lean against Dan's shoulder, and closed her eyes. In a minute . . . she thought. She felt like a tired child who wanted a small rest on the way up a mountain. She was as dusty as he was, but her body was soft and very feminine there under the belt of his arm. He let one hand run down, cupping her elbow, then to her hand. Her skin was soft—soft to his touch, as a woman's skin ought to be. Dan stiffened, and Leura straightened up. "I'm sorry," she said. She couldn't bring herself to say any more. There wasn't anything to say. He had to think what he would. She stood quite steady and he dropped his hands. "Sit on the car step," he said curtly. "I'll get some more tea." "Thank you. I think I'd like some tea now." They were distant and a little formal with one another as they went through the tea rites again. Leura behaved towards him as if he was a well met stranger and Dan responded with the same kind of treatment he would have given one of his stockmen found short of wind after being thrown from a horse. Leura drank her tea slowly. As she lifted the mug to drain the last drop she saw the two kangaroos come along the other side of the wire fence. Suddenly she smiled. "There they are," she said eagerly. She looked at Dan, her immediate troubles forgotten, her unease with him forgotten. She smiled, lighting up her whole face. "The two 'roos!" she said. "They kept me company. Without them and the iguana I would have been scared to death...." The kangaroos were a hundred yards away and they stood absolutely still, balancing on their enormous tails, dangling their small delicate forepaws in front of them, looking at the assembly of enemy foreigners on the other side of the fence. The car, the man, the girl, the horse . . . they seemed to be thinking. What were they doing there ? Dan put his tea mug on the ground, stood up quietly and almost stealthily went over to the horse. He eased his rifle from the saddle-strap that held it and still with the same cat-like stealth came round the horse. He was raising his rifle to his shoulder before Leura realised what he was about to do. Kangaroos in sheep country were a menace and a pest— she knew. But not these two. She jumped up and actually stood in front of Dan's gun. "No," she said. "You can shoot me first...."

Dan lowered the gun and looked at her over the slanting barrel. "That was a very dangerous thing to do, Leura," he said, his eyes grey instead of blue: ice-cold. The 'roos, startled by Leura's sudden movement, were away in great bounds. In a minute they were out of gunshot. "If you must shoot kangaroos don't ever do it while I'm around," she said. "I don't own sheep country. They don't do me any harm." Dan took in a deep breath, then turned on his heel and put the rifle back in its strap on his saddle. "Time we started for home," he said. "Do you think you can make it?" Leura was still looking at him with that challenge in her eyes, wanting him, for some inexplicable reason, to quarrel with her about the kangaroos. Something told her that nothing would make Dan Grayson argue—nothing on earth. To try would be like putting one's shoulder under a mountain. But she didn't want to give in. She wanted to defend the kangaroos with words: and Dan to refute her case. She wanted him to say they were pests, and she wanted to answer by saying they were life. You've got to be alone on a sandplain in a sandstorm, she wanted to tell him, to understand what it means to have other life with you. She stood, her feet slightly apart, her head lowered, her eyes challenging him. Dan walked to the car, reached in the back seat for the Falcon's water-bottle, then back to tie it to the saddle beside his own. He went back to the car, repacked his saddle-bag and then hung that on his horse. He locked all the doors of the Falcon, looked it over for the last time, then took his horse's bridle. "Coming?" he said. "You can ride the first ten miles and I'll ride the last five." She was defeated. Dan was not arguing. Anyhow, she told herself as he gave her a leg up into the saddle, I don't really care what he thinks. Why should I worry whether he understands what it is like to be kept company by two kangaroos and an iguana in a sandstorm or not. He doesn't mean anything to me. Then she apologised to herself. Except he did come and find me, she thought, a little ashamed. In some places the track back to the station area was not so deeply covered by sand, and they could travel more quickly. After a mile or two Leura wanted Dan to change places with her but he took no notice of her. "I've walked through sand before," he said. "And I'm properly geared. You are not."

When he had first come to her rescue Leura had noticed his khaki trousers were bound tightly by jute thongs all the way down his legs and over the tops of his riding boots. The cuffs were finished by leather straps that passed under the instep of his boots. Sandstorms were not such rare occurrences to Dan Grayson, Leura realised. Those tight-fitting clothes with their leather seaming must be used specially for them. The dust had died down now and all was crystal clear. The sun rode high in a pale hot sky; here and there the sparse clumps of trees stood like sentinels above the plain and its undulating waves of red sand. After an hour they came to a small claypan. It had been sheltered from the wind of sand by a rocky lip on the western side. The sand had piled high on the lip. The floor of the claypan was hard and levelled and there was shade under the lip. Dan helped Leura dismount. The bronco was such a huge one that he had actually to lift her down. For a moment she was once again in his arms, and it embarrassed her. She felt there was some kind of estrangement between them. It was an intangible thing but it made her wish not to have undue attention from him. She wished it had been anyone else on earth but Dan Grayson. As if it possibly matters . . . she kept saying to herself as this thought would continually cross her mind as they had plodded on through the sand. It's just that we don't like each other very much. If he'd only say what he thought. If he'd only upbraid me. . . . Buck would have gone off in a towering rage and Leura would have understood it, forgiven it, and known that in ten minutes he would have forgotten all about. It was something Allison liked so much in Buck. They sat down on the floor of the claypan, under the shade of the lip, to have some lunch. Dan had retrieved two of the tins of fruit from the Falcon, and the carton of cigarettes. He made a small fire of dried bark from the dead leaves that stood above the claypan and boiled some water in the billycan. He threw a handful of tea leaves into the boiling billy and let it stew there a while. Leura sat, her feet drawn up and her arms wrapped round her knees, and watched him. Her hat was pulled down on her forehead so that her face was shadowed. Dan did not once look at her while these performances went on, and neither of them spoke. The bronco, tethered in the shade, was given his own bag of water and a nosebag of hay hung round his neck. He was huge and happy, Leura thought. Yet it had been only Dan's iron steady hand on his cheek-strap that had kept him riding gently.

Leura had seen the stockmen rearing about on those horses. She had been brought up on a farm and ridden all her life but hadn't envied anyone on Palari on top of one of these kingly beasts. They had wills of their own. Up on this one she had had a slight feeling of kinship with the astronauts. "It is your turn to ride—when we have had lunch," she said to Dan as he sat down beside her and levered the hot billycan towards himself with a short branch passed through the handle. He used a piece of saddle-cloth to hold the billy while he tipped it to fill the mugs with black tea. Dan smiled. "Do you think you could manage Clout from the ground?" he said. "Or will you merely trail along in the dust?" "I can't ride all day and let you walk all day," Leura said. "It makes me feel worse." "Worse about what?" They were both holding their mugs of tea and when she looked at him she did not try to avoid the faintly satirical gleam in his eyes. "When I get back to the quarters I'll write it all down," she said. "Or better still —paint a picture on the wall." She stopped, then added quickly, "I'm sorry. That was rude of me and you don't deserve it. It's that I feel so beastly." "For going out in the middle of the night, over a maze of station tracks, to find your friend? I don't think you need feel beastly. Personally I think it took devotion. Or courage. Perhaps something of both." Leura blinked. She swallowed a mouthful of hot tea. It was very hot so she spluttered. It saved her saying anything to that remark, anyway. That, oddly, embarrassed her even more than sliding down off Clout's back into his arms. She tried to make light of it. "Do you suppose Buck will give me a medal?—or the sack?" Dan leaned back on one elbow. When one relaxed, one relaxed, his sprawling attitude seemed to say. There was all the time in the world, here in the nevernever of the sand-plain. Certainly no clocks. "He will hardly give you the sack," he said, drawling. "Apart from having to feed the shearers he has a special affinity for you—yes?" He looked at Leura through half-closed eyes, his lids drooping as if to guard his eyes against the light. "I understand you are technically what is called —his girl-friend." Leura registered delayed shock at that remark. For a moment she was quite calm. "Who said so?" she asked steadily. "Buck himself. He gave it out officially up in the region of my mother's parlour on the night of the woolshed dance." The shock made itself felt now, and its effect was to render Leura silent from sheer lack of comprehension.

After a minute she said: "Buck gave it out?" "Yes. You seem to think there was something wrong about that. Was it meant to be kept quiet ? If so, I apologise-" Laura wasn't listening. Over and over in her head she was repeating: Buck gave it out. Buck said I was his girlfriend. But he likes Allison. And Allison likes him. It can't be. There is something wrong. . . . Under the tan of her skin she was a little pale and Dan had a sudden stab of compunction. She was a girl caught between two loves. Young Paget, and now Buck Ashe. It wasn't a very comfortable state of mind, he supposed. He thought more of her because of that loss of colour, the faint frown between her brows and the look of bleak pain in her eyes. He sat upright, pulled out his cigarettes and offered her one. "Or would you have a home-made one?" he asked kindly. nicer."

"They're much

Laura temporarily felt like a patient being nursed along by the doctor. "Thank you," she said. "I think I would." She watched his fingers rolling the cigarettes dexterously, his dark head bent as he made them. The kinder undertones in his voice had reached out and been heard by something inside her, and touched her. The war between them was temporarily over. He was being kind, and at the moment she needed kindness. She was grateful. Yet... in her head a wounded cry was calling out: "Buck said so—in the vicinity of Mrs. Grayson's parlour." Dan's words. It meant Buck had told Mrs. Grayson that. Why? Then Leura understood. Mrs. Grayson had found out about the girls down at the shearers' quarters and Buck had said that to mollify her. Perfidious Buck. Allison, of course, had been passed off as a visitor and was now a guest in the homestead. Better than dead under an overturned car somewhere on Palari's million acres! Out here on the sandplain Leura was smoking home-made cigarettes with Dan Grayson the station-owner. It was really quite funny. Leura started to laugh, though it was the kind of laugh that brought the shine of tears to her eyes. When she went back to Perth she would see a real doctor and get some tranquillisers, or something. Anything to ride out this bleak period in her life. After all, it wasn't Buck's fault. It had all begun with a red-headed girl called Peony Johnson; and Buck had merely been on the target end of a rebounding heart.

Leura, in her wisdom, saw the truth of it all but she hoped Buck Ashe would keep out of her way for the rest of the job on Palari Station. She lay back in the shade of the overhanging lip, one arm under her head, and looked out on the claypan. It was then the brolgas came to dance. Real brolgas this time—not willywillies that were slim columns of sand advancing in the wake of a storm. The lovely graceful birds alighted and did their pretty pernickety steps. Then they took off, a soft grey moving cloud in the air. The bush turkeys came back —having had their feed of grasshoppers—and were short-cutting across the claypan on their bush-way home. There would be no emus or kangaroos here, Leura knew. They would all be safely outside Palari's boundary. Thank goodness. In the soporific heat of midday, Leura's eyelids closed over her eyes. Dan had leaned back long since, his hat characteristically over his face. Small things slid in and out under the fallen bark, and a dead gumnut fell. The heat-haze dazzled into a mirage on the claypan, and where there had been only a whitish floor tinged with red from the dust there was a beautiful lake with pelicans, water-fowl, duck and black swans. On the dead tree above the lip was a snow-covering of daffodil-crested cockatoos. Hundreds of them. The wind was dead and the sandstorm had gone for good. The claypan had borrowed its picture, a mirage, from the lake twenty miles away below the overseer's cottage and the cockatoos had come home to their usual roost for their afternoon siesta. In the shade below, Leura's eyes closed, she turned her head and it rested against Dan Grayson's shoulder. She sighed deeply, and, strangely, it was a sigh of contentment. Dan, still awake under the concealing shelter of his stockman's hat, heard it. Carefully he moved his arm so Leura could be more comfortable. His hand rested lightly on her shoulder. Then he too, like Leura and the cockatoos, gave himself up to the afternoon's sleep. Chapter 11 UP AT THE HOMESTEAD OF PALARI STATION, EVE GRAYSON

mother's expression.

was in a state of mind. Her

Mrs. Grayson was a cold person by nature. Eve, far more vulnerable than her mother, had grown up with a similar manner, partly from unconscious imitation, partly because she found it a defensive mechanism in handling the many different types of persons who came Palari's way. All the world seemed, some time or other, to pass along the station's tracks. Wool-buyers, machinery experts, shearing teams, came by right. Then there

were the hundred-and-one visitors, invited or otherwise: the lost people on the trackless plains in motor cars or utilities needing repair or servicing; the prospectors asking for permission to prospect for gold, copper, manganese or any of the other thousand-and-one minerals with which the north-west was littered. All took a toll of Eve's time and patience. Last year there had been the threat of an oil-rig, and a host of geologists from three different countries had had to be entertained. A week ago there had been their own woolshed dance, with the station littered with out-campers: some of whom had not yet gone home. This week was the Government party. Now the shearers' cook from down at the quarters had strayed away in a sandstorm ! Temporarily Eve lost sight of the fact the shearers' cook was Leura Barton, a girl she had known at school. Leura was no longer a school friend. She was one of those nuisance-people who think they are adventurous because they go working their way round the world like swagmen, and had come as one more shadow between Eve and Buck Ashe. Eve could have been cruel enough to hope that Leura would stay strayed. There was a minor kind of chaos down in the shearers' quarters on Monday morning. There was no cook for breakfast, for one thing, but happily Mrs. Riddle came to Buck's rescue in that respect. "I'll cook till Leura, or some other cook, is found," she said. Then added firmly, "Not one minute longer. I hate mutton and I hate cooking it. What's more, I never can gauge the quantities of food for a shearing team this size. How that girl has managed, I just don't know!" Leura out of the way, and a cook provided, Mrs. Grayson now felt she could do something about the English girl, Allison Upton, who had spent the night in the homestead at Eve's invitation, and was now simply not to be permitted to live down there with a bunch of men as if she were no more than a rouseabout. Mrs. Grayson declared she owed it to Allison's parents to look after her. Poor child! She was so far from home! "But I like it," Allison had protested. "It's fun. Besides, I'm earning money. I must earn money, you know, Mrs. Grayson." Mrs. Grayson didn't see that anyone needed to earn money on a station like Palari. It had everything, including fresh vegetables by air-freight once a week. It was useless for Allison to explain that she wasn't likely to live on Palari for ever and when she moved on she had to have the wherewithal with which to go. Neither did she want to tell Mrs. Grayson her parents were in Brazil and her uncle had all but shown her the door. All because she wouldn't be bartered for the junior partner—on principle. Buck, who only wanted the sheep shorn inside the contract time, gave up

arguing with the overseer, Randal Richards, who had come down to the woolshed to deliver Mrs. Grayson's ultimatum about Allison Upton. Allison was an extra rouseabout and Buck had put her on the payroll and used her as an added anchor to keep a cook on the place till the Palari shed was finished. He actually could manage without her. He knew this but he didn't want to part with her. Allison had been very useful and he was more than a little in love with her. But shearing sheep came first. It had to come first. Then he thought of Allison's fair hair and lovely smiling face and he said something under his breath that even the overseer didn't attempt to translate. "I'll finish this damn' shed," Buck said. "Then I'll come up for Allison. They're members of my team—that pair. If ever Leura's found." He looked the overseer in the eye with a belligerent spark of fire in his own. "You tell Mrs. Grayson from me that in the whole of my contracting career no station-owner has ever interfered with my team before. I could sool the Union on to her." "Quite, but you won't, Buck," the overseer said. "You mightn't get Palari's contract next year." Buck hooted with scorn. "They'd come across Australia to get my team," he said. "They can't better my men. Four of them hold State records and one is an all-Australia champion. You don't get shearers as good as that in every team. And you tell Mrs. Grayson that come the day the last sheep is shorn I want my rouseabout back." "Any messages for Dan if we get a flash from him? He has his walkie-talkie in his saddle-bag." "Yes. Tell him I want my cook back too. Mrs. Riddle will do pro tern, but the men are used to Leura's cooking. They want her. Dan had better hurry up and find her." "Dan, and the whole of the stockman outfit!" the overseer said caustically. "You're so attached to your staff, Buck, you should chain 'em up." "That's an idea, too . . ." said Buck, turning away. He had wool to class and shearers to keep the electric shears humming in the shed. At the door he softened and turned round. " Let me know when they find her," he said. "Okay. And I'll give all your messages to Mrs. Grayson." "You be sure to do that," said Buck, knowing full well the overseer would be sure to do no such thing. He himself had been blowing off steam, he knew. All the same, the girls did all right with his team. He liked having them with him. He had intended to sign them on for the next shed when he'd finished Yindathurra. He had a nasty feeling Mrs. Grayson might throw a spanner in that. Send word up the line about girls in the shearers' quarters! It wouldn't sound so good. It never did. All the men in the shed missed Allison's smiling face as she nipped speedily

here and there, lifting fleeces that fell to the ground; passing the classed fleeces to the bins; running for the water-bags when the men were working against time and getting dry. There seemed a shadow cast over the woolshed this morning and work didn't go so well. The men didn't like the idea of going up to the cook-house at lunch-time and not seeing Leura there, an apron hanging like a lap-rag over her flour-streaked trews. Buck had a feeling he would have to do something to ease the tension or they might all down shears and march on the homestead and have a Can't-ban-thegirls sit-down on the doorstep. "Don't worry, fellers!" he said cheerfully. "The girls will be back on the job tomorrow. I've seen to that." They believed him, but Buck had to begin thinking hard as to how he was to manage to keep his word. Leura wouldn't be a problem, if she was safe and sound. He'd never known Dan not to find anyone lost on Palari, so he wasn't worrying too much. Leura, as shearers' cook, couldn't by Union rules be sacked or be beguiled away from the shed till the shed was finished. Allison was different. The rouseabout was on a week-to-week basis. He had to think of a way of wrenching Allison from the Grayson clutches. Eve, Buck thought at length, I'll get Eve on-side. That'll do the trick. At the midday lunch-break Buck went to the telephone behind the woolshed and rang the homestead. It was Eve who answered. "Any news of Leura?" Buck asked. Eve could detect the anxiety in Buck's voice. "I'm afraid not, Buck. Dan hasn't come through on the walkie-talkie, since he took the boundary road. That was about ten-thirty. It's covered with sand, he said. He was outward bound then." Eve could hear Buck's groan on the other end of the line. "I can't do without her," he said. "Dan's got to find her." Eve's voice was faint. "If you feel so strongly about Leura, Buck, why don't you go and look for her yourself?" "Leura is Dan's prerogative," Buck said sarcastically. "A mere me doesn't jump Dan's claims. Not in the open, anyway." "Oh!" Eve's voice was fainter still. "Eve! Are you there?" "Yes." "Then please do something for me. Ask me up to dinner to-night. I want to talk to you. Be a sport?" "You want to talk to me about Leura Barton? Perhaps I could tell you something about Leura you don't already know. Her people have the farm

next to the Pagets—you know, the man Fred Wilton bought his ram from. . . ." "Eve, darling, I'm crazy about the Pagets and about Fred's ram but right now I only want Leura. Please help me. Am I invited up for dinner to-night?" Eve felt as if something strangled in her throat. She had to swallow and remember she had to appear as if she had pride—Grayson pride—even if she didn't have any of any brand at all. "Yes, Buck. We'll be glad to see you. About seven. If Leura comes in the meantime, I'll ring you." She was as cold and aloof as a squatter's sister ought to be. "Eve, you're a darling." He hung up, and Eve, up at the homestead, put the receiver back on her phone. I'm a darling, she said, then added bitterly, I'm also the other girl. . . . She drew herself up as she had so often seen her mother do yet had never really been conscious of doing herself. She went back to the veranda, where Allison sat stretched out on a cane chair, contemplating Palari's acres through the creeper screen of the Graysons' homestead. Life was luxurious, comfortable and glamorous, up here at the homestead, Allison was thinking. But she would still rather be down at the shearers' quarters with Leura. If only she knew that Leura was safe! Eve picked up her cup of coffee and refilled it at the small cane table and glanced at the back of Allison's hair. "That was Buck Ashe," she said, trying to keep her voice steady at the mention of Buck's name. "He's worrying about Leura." "Aren't we all? Why are you so sure nothing serious could have happened to her?" "Strangers are often lost on Palari. Or any other big station for that matter. Except out at Rocky Gully the landscape is all the same. It's hard to pick landmarks. But they are always found." “I can't understand why she should take that shearer's car and go anywhere at all. It just doesn't make sense. Leura is not like that. She doesn't do odd things. Me, now—well, I'm a bit more up in the air than Leura." Eve sat down and stirred her coffee thoughtfully. "Buck had gone to Perth so she couldn't possibly have thought of going to meet him. She wouldn't know the way out of the station." "She wouldn't know her way anywhere, any more than I do," Allison said. She was near tears, but had to conceal the fact. All these people here took being lost so much for granted. It didn't mean anything to them. And Leura being lost had spoilt her own lovely night staying in the homestead. It had been terrific fun, and quite an experience. Dan Grayson was the perfect host

and really quite a sweetie. It wouldn't be hard for any girl to lose her heart to Dan Grayson, Allison had thought. She had stopped thinking about Dan, or anyone else, in the morning when she had discovered Leura had taken a car and was gone. She had wilted like a flower under Mrs. Grayson's scathing condemnation of a young girl being a shearers' rouseabout. Allison was twenty-one but hardly looked eighteen. Mrs. Grayson regarded her, and treated her, as a mere child. "You shall stay here in the homestead until the team has finished shearing Palari," Mrs. Grayson had said. "Then your friend Leura can be released from her contract as cook and perhaps you will be able to continue your tour." "I think you are being a bit hard, Mother," Eve had said. "After all, lots of girls do it nowadays-" "Not on our station," Mrs. Grayson said in a brittle tone. "I owe it to Allison's parents to see that she is safe and properly cared for in a strange country." Allison said nothing. It would have been shocking manners to tell the true facts about her own parents' interest in her. Mrs. Grayson would have been so deflated. Allison couldn't bring herself to do it. The morning had passed with Mrs. Riddle bringing up a change of clothes for Allison and then retiring to take over Leura's job. Billy Rafferty had gone back to the quarters before breakfast, driving himself down in the girls' Holden. "Even if Dan hasn't found her, I wonder why he doesn't tell us on the walkietalkie thing," Allison said at length. She sat upright and picked up her coffee cup which she had forgetfully put on the floor as she was accustomed to do down at the quarters. As she picked it up she remembered Leura saying jokingly that they would have to take their next job at a finishing-school. "I'm sorry I put my cup there," she said, glancing quickly at Eve. "Your mother is right—in a way. One does get into bad habits down at the woolshed. Life suddenly becomes uncluttered with things you do or don't do. You sort of do as you please." Eve had put her own cup and saucer on the small table and risen to her feet. "Would you like some more coffee?" she asked pleasantly. She had taken quite a liking to this fair-haired girl from over the sea. There was something very natural about her. Eve had no idea that it was to Allison that Buck Ashe looked like presenting his affections. "Please let me pour it," Allison insisted. "I feel so useless while other people on the station are all out looking for Leura." "Buck Ashe is coming up for dinner to-night," Eve said. "He hopes we've found Leura by then. He's missing his cook." She felt driven to talking about Buck and Leura.

Allison's face lit up, but as she had her back to Eve, Eve did not see it. "I'm so glad," Allison said. "Buck's always good fun. He's a wonderful boss." "So Leura evidently thinks," Eve remarked dryly. "She has set her cap at him." Allison turned round and stared at Eve in astonishment. "Leura and Buck?" "Yes. Didn't you know?" Allison sat down in her chair with a jerk and spilled some of the coffee into the saucer. She poured it back into the cup slowly, thoughtfully. "I didn't know," she said quietly. "Leura is a dark horse, isn't she?" "Dark-haired people are always that," Eve said coldly. Her own hair was a dark brown but she never considered that being truly dark. She called herself a brownette. "And blondes?" Allison asked. "I wonder what blondes truly are?" "Open and frank." Eve was firm about this. "People with blue eyes, especially light blue eyes, can always have their thoughts read." "It's nice of you to say that. I had never thought of colour that way." Allison bet a Cadillac to a Mini-Minor that Eve hadn't the faintest idea what she, Allison, was thinking right now. Best not. Least said, least hurt. So Leura had taken a shine to Buck . . . irrespective of that broken heart left lying around somewhere in the south-west! Irrespective of the fact that she herself . . . People were funny. You never really knew, now did you? Her own heart felt heavy, but she put it down to the fact that Leura was still lost. Allison thought she didn't mind any more if she stayed up at the homestead instead of going back to be rouseabout in the woolshed. It was hot and greasy and awfully woolly down there, anyway. Besides, Leura was in love with Buck. Twenty-odd miles away, out there on the claypan, it was Dan Grayson who woke first from the afternoon siesta. A lifetime of habit told him when the lunch-hour was truly up. He woke instantly, as he always did when out on the run. Always the men had their doze after lunch—propped against trees or under the scanty shade of a wait-a-bit bush. Gently he released Leura's head from his shoulder and his own arm from around her, then pushed back his hat so that it was no longer on his face but in its proper place on his head. He stood up, walked away a few paces and stamped his feet to ease the

circulation. He had to swing his right arm to do this too. For half an hour it had been holding Leura. Then he went to his horse and removed the fodder bag from its drooping head. Clout had had his midday nap too. Dan put back the saddlecloth and saddle and strapped the girths. When Clout was ready he turned to Leura. Except that her cheek was now resting on the red earth instead of his shoulder, she was as he had left her. Sound asleep. He stood looking down at her for a few minutes. Then he glanced away across the claypan to where the heat haze still maintained a vestige of mirage. A muscle worked at the side of his jaw and he felt angry. For the moment he couldn't exactly say why. A day was wasted, hunting for a girl lost on Palari's tracks. He supposed it was that. His mother was right. Buck Ashe had no business to bring women in his contracting team. They always meant trouble. "Leura!" His voice was a command. She opened her eyes and lifted her head. She fought for a few minutes to remember where she was, then sat up quickly. "Heavens! I must have gone to sleep." He smiled grimly. "You did. But then so did Clout and I. It's the noon heat. In Spain it's quite the done thing." Leura scrambled to her feet and brushed down her clothes. Her hat, which had come awry while she slept, fell off and she stooped down and picked it up. "No use to worry what I look like," she said ruefully. She was still heavyheaded from that sleep. She badly wanted a shower and a good rub-down. "Your horse is waiting for you, madam," Dan said, making a gesture towards Clout. Leura shook her head vigorously. "It's your turn. Yes, I know it's hard to let a woman walk while you ride, but we're the ones who insist on emancipation... and equal rights... and all that. So we have to take equal responsibilities and share and share alike..." She broke off. Dan was looking at her strangely, as if she was a child talking and he had out of elderly patience to let her finish. "Now, if you're ready, I'll lift you up," he said. He ignored as worthless her earlier remarks. Being lifted on to a horse would ordinarily have been a shameful thing to Leura. She had never even mounted from a box or a stone, like some people she knew. On to this magnificent specimen she had no hope of mounting without Dan's help. She put her hand on the pommel and one foot in Dan's hand. Then she

turned and looked at him. "There's room for both of us on this horse," she said. "You sit in the saddle and I'll ride behind." It was sense. Dan had thought of it before: long back on the first half-mile of that sand walk. But riding on the back was uncomfortable. If they reversed the positions and Leura rode in the saddle he doubted if he could manage Clout with his arms around Leura. Clout was a strong horse and had a mouth of iron. It took a hand of iron to manage him any time, without the imprudence of visiting on him a second body. Dan looked at Leura out of those easy smiling eyes that never really portrayed what he meant. "All right," he said, unexpectedly. He had the reins in his hand and he leapt up into the saddle. Clout reared and Leura had to stand back until Dan had quieted him. "Right," Dan said. "Now. Brace your right foot on my instep, but as you come up swing round to come on-horse backwards. Got it?" Leura thought, then nodded. "Come up, turning my back?" "Just do as I say. You'll land here safely. I'll see to that." He certainly seemed to be a long way up there. Leura supposed—hoped—he had some way of swinging her round so that she could bestride the horse behind him. Maybe she had to climb over Dan. It was too silly . . . but she could never have mounted Clout without a lift-up. "Shouldn't I have gone up first?" she asked, peering up to him. Dan, way up above her, smiled. "Do as I say and you'll arrive," he said. Leura drew in her breath. She hadn't any alternative. She had to do as she was told. He leaned down and took one hand and she put her foot on his instep where he stretched his leg forward in the long stirrup. "Now!" She swung up, turning as he had said, and unexpectedly she was sitting across the saddle, Dan's right arm round her holding her. She looked into his face, not six inches away from her, bewildered and very surprised. He smiled. "Better riding, this way," he said. "Well . . . yes____" "Put your head back on my shoulder and forget the reinsman. We'll get home quicker this way." He nipped the rein and Clout reared, then plunged forward. Dan tightened and Clout came to order. Five minutes later they were out of the claypan and on to the sand-covered track again.

When they had gone some miles the sand waves under them seemed to be thinning out. Even Leura could feel that Clout's hooves were touching firmer ground. Dan pulled up under a tree. "I'll have to put you down for a minute," he said. "I have things to do." He held her while she slid to the ground. Then swinging his leg over Clout's back he came down himself. Leura stamped her feet and walked a bit to free herself from stiffness. Dan undid a box-like contraption he had strapped across the back of the saddle, knelt down on one knee by the side of the track and opened it. He took out something that looked like a large-sized transistor radio. He pressed a button in its side and a steel rod shot forward like a single antenna. "What is it?" Leura asked, bending over the box, watching what Dan did. "A portable two-way radio," he said. "A transceiver-set in miniature. Commonly called a walkie-talkie." He went on fiddling with knobs, then sound came through. First static, then a click. Dan began to speak into the small window in the centre of the set. "Come in, Palari. Come in, Palari. Dan Grayson here. Over." He waited a minute then a voice came through as clearly as if it had been from someone the other side of Clout. "Richards, overseer, here, Dan. Where are you and have you found the girl? Over." "Yes. I'm by Four-Tree Hill and the girl is with me. All well. The sand-wind is subsiding and you might get the breakdown jeep out to the end of the boundary track. The Falcon is stranded there. Can try your luck. Meanwhile one of the boys had better come out to meet us with the other jeep. It'll take the track up to about here. We'll come to meet it. Over." "All well here, Dan. In the name of heaven why didn't you let us know before? You must have come eight miles through the sand. Over." Yes, why didn't he? Leura thought. "Plenty of storm farther back," Dan said complacently. "The radio wouldn't have worked and I wasn't going to have the case clogged with dust. No electricity in the air now and I should say the storm's cleared for good. Flatpan here but back by the fence there'd be three feet of sand. Tell the boys to watch the breakdown jeep and if they can't bring the Falcon in, then too bad. But give it a burl. We'll take it easy from here on and watch out for the rescue jeep. Closing now." He clicked off the set, pushed back the antenna into the base and replaced the radio in its box. Leura had straightened herself and was watching him with fascination.

Why had Dan told that "cracker" about there being too much storm to use the radio? Anyhow—why hadn't he used it? When he had strapped down the set into the box he looked up at Leura standing above him, and grinned. He knew what she was thinking—or rather, wondering. "Why didn't you use that thing before?" she asked accusingly. "If you knew my overseer, Richards, you'd know the answer to that." "I don't know the answer. Please tell me." "When someone is lost on Palari he deploys his troops like a general before battle. His office becomes campaign headquarters. Palari terrain is mapped to the last detail on a board the size of a dining-table and..." Dan really smiled now. " Richards organises the search down to the finest minutiae. One man to each track, creek, gully and sheep-pad." Dan shook his head. "You can't get lost on Palari, Leura. Not with Richards at headquarters." "But the others would have been worrying." "Not they. They all know Richards, and that Campaign Headquarters. Like me, they wouldn't cut his moment of chieftainship short. He deserves his little bit of fun." Leura puckered her brow and thought. "It sounds as if you are all not very kind...." Dan was still sitting back on his heels beside the box on the ground. He pushed back his hat and looked at Leura, his eyebrows raised. "Not very kind?" he said. "Richards has had his best day since the last person was lost on Palari . . . someone wanted by the police about six months ago and trying to do a run-through to Alice Springs via the sub-desert country. The only disappointment to Richards about to-day's little party will be the fact that you aren't wanted by the police too. You're only half-important, Leura. But that campaign-plotting at Headquarters would have been just as perfect... please don't be disappointed... as if you had been half a dozen people on the run." Leura stood, her own hat pushed to the back of her head, the red dust streaking her face. Her feet were slightly apart in a stance that amused the half-admiring Dan; her arms were loosely folded in front of her as if, for the moment, she didn't know what else to do with them. Or maybe, that way, they gave her some aggressive confidence. Apparently she thought she needed it in sitting in judgment on Dan's capacity for innocent lying. "You know," she said thoughtfully, "I don't believe anybody in the north-west. Nobody really tells the truth. Not Buck, not you. Do any of your men?" Dan lifted his box and rose to his feet. "Put it this way," he said, looking straight at her. "We're a few people in a lot of country. If we run up against one another, or frustrate one another, we

can't go off to the club or the cinema to chew on it. Nor can we run to the races or a polo match to get over it. We don't have cinema, opera, or open-air boxing up here as a way of escape from one another. So we do what's right and keep our own council. Got it, Leura? One sometimes may avoid the truth if it hurts or disappoints as it would have done to-day. Or one may remain silent when the truth would be revealing as in the case of certain two young ladies down at the shearers' quarters." "It's logical," Leura said. "But there's a fallacy somewhere. It's convenient but not necessarily right." Dan strapped his box back of the saddle. "Human nature's not right, Leura, that's why," Dan said. "The thing to do is deal the cards straight and play the game straight. That way you survive in this country. A man's honour is his bond, and to hell with what he does with words or silences." Leura found it all very illuminating as far as Dan Grayson's character was concerned. After she had thought about it for a long time she might come to believe him. Just now she wasn't certain. He put his foot in the stirrup and swung himself into the saddle again. He pushed his leg forward and held out his hand. "Coming up?" he said. "Or don't you ride with strangers to the truth?" His mouth was straight but Leura knew he was laughing at her. As she put her hand in his, strangely, she warmed towards him. He was very human after all. Certainly kind to General Richards across there in the overseer's office, and doubly kind to both himself and Buck when he let Buck get on with shearing the sheep inside the contract time—and kept silence about the girls. Well, yes . . . she thought as he swung her up and she leaned back against him. All things balance, he is right. And kind. Really kind. . . . Her softer thoughts must have softened the contours of her body, because without thought of anything except a strangely happy sense of security she relaxed into his arm and against his shoulder. His arm tightened round her. Leura knew he did this because he had to hold Clout firmly by the rein; but she liked it. Unexpectedly, like the opening of a new chapter in a book, she liked Dan Grayson too. Very much. She didn't mind if they rode on like this for quite a while. Chapter 12 IT WAS FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON WHEN THE RESCUE

party found Dan and Leura. The

going had been slow for the jeep. Though most of the track from the homestead area was clear, there were places where the wind had whipped a funnel of sand through gaps in the undulating country and piled up small barriers astride the road. The jeep had to go round these sand barriers and in several cases the men found groups of sheep trapped in the low wind gullies, unable to get to the nearest bore for water. The driver and his mate had to pile out of the jeep, reach for the shovels in the back and dig getaways for the sheep. When eventually they saw Dan and Leura ambling along on Clout's back, looking just too comfortable for words, they wondered if they mightn't well have spent more time looking for more sheep penned in by loose sand-dunes. Returning to the station was also a slow business. Clout had to be hitched to the back of the vehicle. "Sheep in the gully, Boss . . . over t'left," was the only comment made by one of the men on the journey homeward. Dan knew what he meant. He pulled up; the three men piled out and took shovels from the back of the car. "We'll be back in a minute, Leura," Dan said. "Have to let these sheep out." He spoke tightly, as the men spoke. When he was with the men he was one of them. Well, that was the way of it at home too, Leura thought. She was glad Dan was like that. She sat in the front passenger seat and watched the men go down a small rise from the track. About two hundred yards away the wind had hollowed out a drain in the side of the low hill and then built up a fence of sand, banked up against a log across its mouth. Dan and the men set to with their shovels and red sand flew about them like a cloud. In fact after a few minutes Leura couldn't see them for the dust. After about twenty minutes they came through the pall, three dark figures emerging as if through the mists of time. They were so red Leura could have laughed, only she didn't dare. Dan and his men were very serious. It was part of the day's work. They threw their shovels in the back of the jeep and climbed in after them. Dan eased himself behind the steering-wheel. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting," was all he said. "That raking dust-storm cut a swathe right across Palari and that is probably all we'll get of the cyclone. We'll be days hunting pockets of sheep out of those hideaways." "I don't suppose they were really hiding-" "That's why sheep are so darn stupid. Bullocks or horses would break out if they wanted water and knew where it was. Not the sheep. They'd hide there till doomsday, if we let 'em." Leura glanced at Dan sideways. His face might have had a bag of red flour

thrown at it. His hands on the steering-wheel were covered with dust. His clothes and the brim of his hat carried layers of it. She wondered what she looked like herself. Funny, but while the men were away she hadn't thought to look in the rear-vision mirror. It just goes to show, was the only comment she could make about herself. It's easier to stay dirty when you can't do anything about it, and everyone is the same. Now if all the world gave up cosmetics, what fortunes we'd save. She found herself in this happy reflective mood because happy was just what she felt. It was as if a dark load had been lifted from her for the first time in months. She felt comfortable with herself, and comforted. There was a world other than that of the country of the heart. There was the outside world with its red sand and the animals which had told her what to do. There was the sweetness and fun of sleeping in the noonday heat under the shade of the cliff-lip on a claypan. And of course riding home, double-dinkie on a bronco, was part of it too. It was past sundown when they drove into the enormous galvanised iron edifice that housed the machinery and motor vehicles of the station. It was quite a place, Leura noticed. There were two big trucks, some utilities, several more jeeps, and then the sedan cars. There were four of these last. There were mobile water-tanks standing at the ready in case of a grass fire, and half a dozen small things like motor-bicycles and a trolley. On the way up to the homestead gate they passed the store, the smithy, the windmill shop, the forge, and a small sawmill housed under an open shed. "Quite a town," she said. "Quite a station," Dan said without emphasis. They had reached the turn into the station square when they saw Buck's car sweep up the track from the woolshed to the homestead gate. He slid out, slamming the door behind him, flicked up the catch on the gate and went through as if in a great hurry. He was dressed in his fawn-coloured tropical suit, white shirt and black tie. Dressed for dinner, obviously. His hair was plastered down and he was so clean he must just have come from a turkish bath. Also, he looked very handsome. He was so unmistakably Buck at his very best that Leura's heart—which she thought had decided to die down and be still for at least the next ten years—gave a lurch. He did not notice Leura and Dan coming, through the half-light, from the garage track. Dan glanced sideways and caught the bleak look in Leura's eyes. He looked back at Buck's receding figure as the latter went up the steps and into the

homestead. "Looks as if they're having another party," Leura said lightly. "I wonder if there's someone can take me where I belong—down amongst the shearers." "You can't do that," Dan said. "Allison is staying up at the homestead. My mother's orders, I'm afraid. She'll want to see you. I'm sure Eve will find something for you—or send down to the staff house for a change of clothes." They had reached the corner of the homestead garden where the woolshed track emerged from the darkling shadows of the plain. Leura stopped. She hadn't asked if Allison was still at the homestead, but Buck's haste and his immaculate appearance spoke for themselves. "Don't persuade me, please Dan," Leura said. "I would hate to go in like this." She hesitated. She would be honest with him. "Any woman would hate it— you know that, Dan." He pushed his hat on the back of his head and said, "You can go in the back way." Leura stiffened. His suggestion reminded her of the ambivalent position she was in while on Palari. She was a shearers' cook. One step up from a shedhand. There were certain social distances on a station and Leura would not breach them. Anyhow she liked it the way it was. "Look, Dan," she said, smiling. "When I'm in a shearing team—unless I graduate to woolclasser's status, of course—the woolshed is where I'll stay. You'd do the same, wouldn't you?" It was almost dark now, and looking down at her he could see the shine of her eyes. Her face was almost as dusty as his and it was a good camouflage for expressions. "Okay, Leura," he said. "I see your point. Will you wait here while I bring up one of the cars-" At that moment a utility swung round the square and Leura recognised its driver. It was the mechanic who looked after the machinery in the woolshed. He had probably been up to the workshop alongside the smithy. "That's Sykes," she said. "I'll go back with him." She ran across the distance, holding her hat in one hand and waving the other. Sykes stopped. Leura turned round to wave to Dan. Dan could see the silhouette of her figure against the utility's headlights and her waving hand. He lifted his hat and waved back, but Leura had already turned and was getting into the car beside the driver. It amused Dan that she had not even waited to see if he waved back. As he turned into the homestead gate he reflected that Buck dressed up like that

must really have something where the girls were concerned. Leura would rather go hungry and bedless than be seen looking like the desert nomad she had been all day and face Buck's searchlight eyes taking his pick round the living-room of the homestead. Dan rubbed his ear as he went round the veranda to enter the homestead the back way himself. He had half the red earth of the north on him, and his mother would have raised heaven if he had gone into her living-room like that. He'd have a shower, shave and change himself, and see if he could trump Buck's queen with his own ace round that drinks table inside. Time someone showed Buck who owned Palari Station. Dan, stripping off his clothes, had a mental picture of Leura's slim, trouserclad figure disappearing into a miasma of dust and distance. Which is quite absurd, he told himself. She went off in a utility. Perhaps Mrs. Wilton was right. It was time he found himself a wife. He'd better start ringing up the McCarthy girls in the morning. When he had reached the age when his bushman's hands remembered the soft feel of a girl's arm under them it was time he married himself off. Crazy subject to be thinking about, he thought. I'll wrench Buck away from Eve and Co. to-night and get him into the office with a bottle of whisky and a pack of cards. Time I took some of my own money back from that shyster. In the morning there was once again trouble in the woolshed. Or rather, outside it. Buck, striding down from his quarters, was met by two circles of men squatting in the dirt of the track outside the shed. They were in conclave. There was nothing about the shearing game that Buck didn't know. Men in a circle, off the job, meant one thing and one thing only. They were having a "sit-down." The threat of a strike. He stood over one group, his feet apart, his hands dug in his belt. "Okay, Ryan," he said. "What goes on?" Ryan lifted his head, eyes and face expressionless. "We're the shearers in this group, Boss. We're sitting in sympathy. It's the Workers' Union over there, thumbing over their rules. Better ask Joe Purdom." Buck walked to the other circle and stood over it. "You the spokesman, Joe?" "Yep. That's me, Boss." "What goes on?" Joe Purdom was the oldest of the shed-hands and he now drew, with slow deliberate movements, a piece of paper from his pocket. With the same slow deliberate movements he stood up, and cleared his throat. He kept his eyes on

his piece of paper and delivered himself of a dead-pan ballpoint-written oration. "'A. Upton, shed-hand, employed by Buckaan Ashe for the duration of shearing Palari sheep station's wool-clip has, in breach of contract, been stood down, and employment discontinued with no legal evidence that said shedhand A. Upton has (a) neglected duties as laid down by said contractor Buckaan Ashe, or (b) failed to present him or herself for duty; except when being restrained by unknown personages but with the knowledge and consent of said contractor Buckaan Ashe.'" He finished, folded his piece of paper slowly, and carefully replaced it in his pocket. Then he looked at Buck. Buck's thumbs were dug in his belt and his face was also expressionless. None of the men in either circle moved. "Members of the Workers' Union, here placed," Joe intoned slowly, "hereby give notice that we sit-down preliminary to striking until adequate reason and explanation be given as to why A. Upton, shed-hand, has had employment discontinued." Over in the other circle the man called Ryan intoned his piece. "Members of the Shearers' Union, here placed, sit-down in sympathy with members of the Workers' Union in the matter of the business aforementioned by Joe Purdom. Namely discontinuance of A. Upton as shed-hand, duties rouseabout—before Palari's shed is cut out." Over on the steps of the cook-house veranda Leura was sitting, chin cupped in hands, listening fascinated. She was also fascinated by the figure Buck cut standing there, his hat on the back of his head, his feet apart and his thumbs dug in his belt. It was only because the men were squatting down, she realised, that Buck looked a Colossus. The muscles of his face barely moved; so he spoke through half-closed lips, the way the men had spoken. As Dan had spoken when he was with his men. "Nice work, fellers," Buck said. "I take it one of you will agree to be intermediary in this matter?" "That's me," said Joe Purdom. Without moving, Buck seemed to spring to life. "Then take any raking car, truck, utility or kid's pram you can find and scram up to the homestead and tell Dan Grayson: No A. Upton, no wool shorn. Union decision. He'll get the message and you won't have to write it on a piece of paper and put it in your pocket." Joe Purdom began to make off in the direction of the parked vehicle. "And say, Joe," Buck called after him. "Collar Dan on his own away from the female section of the homestead. What's more important, bring A. Upton back with you. The shears are rusting for want of usage."

The men in the circles roared with laughter. They stood up and began to scatter in the direction of the woolshed door. "Once again, thanks, fellers," Buck said. He walked over to the cook-house steps and sat down by Leura. He pulled tobacco and papers from his pocket and began to roll a cigarette. "What would I do without the Unions?" he said. "Did you put them up to it, Buck?" "Certainly not. They thought it all out themselves." He licked the paper down and glanced sideways at Leura, his eyes smiling wickedly. "I had a kind of feeling that's how they'd think." He lit the cigarette, screwed up his eyes and looked out across the spinifex. "A. Upton," he said musingly. "Nice name for a pretty girl with fair hair. Just a few letters on a Union ticket." "I suppose you have me registered as L. Barton?" "Sure," said Buck. He looked at Leura and grinned. "That's your name, isn't it?" "Sure," said Leura. "I don't suppose you cared to mention the sex, or religion for that matter?" "This isn't a raking hospital," Buck said, aghast. "It's a shearing team." Leura laughed. "I often wonder what Allison's parents, or her uncle, would think if they could see her now." "What do you suppose they'd think of me?" Buck asked musingly. Leura sat quite still for a few minutes, then she said quietly: "They'd think you were okay. They'd have to think that, wouldn't they?" Buck was thoughtful for a moment, then he stood up, hitched up his pants and tightened his belt by one hole. "If ever I give them the chance," he said sardonically, and walked away towards the woolshed. It was an hour before Allison came down to the quarters, once again dressed in her working clothes, her hat perched on the back of her curls, her face urchin-like with triumph. Joe Purdom had brought her down in the borrowed utility and dropped her off outside the cook-house. Allison ran up the steps, across the narrow veranda, through the screen door and into the kitchen. "I'm here!" she said triumphantly. "Leura, oh, Leura, you ought to have seen the fireworks up at the homestead. And guess who came down on my side?" "Dan. He'd only care about having his wool shorn."

"Wrong again. Eve." Leura had been making currant cakes for the men's morning-tea basket and she drew the shelf from the oven, loaded with them, and put it on the end of the table. "You do surprise me. I would have thought Eve and her mother thought as alike as two peas in a pod." "Wrong again. Eve only looks as if she thinks like her mother. Underneath she's quite a softie. She said something about human rights and the Atlantic Charter, but Mrs. Grayson had never heard of that. Neither had I . . . but I understood it to mean something about the freedom of the individual. It was Dan who decided I was an individual and let me go. Joe Purdom said 'Phooey to it all! It's Union rules.' Aren't they all mad, Leura, in the most heavenly way?" Leura looked up over her tray of golden cakes and smiled with a touch of mischief. "You didn't, of course, mention a pay-packet, without which we could not continue our tour?" "I happened to mention it to Eve last night. She understood perfectly." "I haven't asked you yet how you did come to stay the night in the homestead." Allison sat down at the end of the table and reached for one of the cakes. It was hot and burned her fingers. She dropped it, said "Ow!" then licked the injured fingers. "And I haven't asked you how you managed out there in the sandstorm yesterday. Was it fun?" Leura looked at Allison about as balefully as one girl can look at another. "Terrific. I played with two kangaroos and an iguana while I waited for Dan to come for me." Allison's eyebrows shot up. "Truly? How lucky can you be!" "Very lucky. I'll tell you about it after dinner to-night. Meanwhile, are you going down to the shed now? If so, you can take one of the tea-baskets." "I'm going now. I have work to do. As Joe Purdom would say . . . Union rules. I'll take the tea basket and after dinner to-night I'll tell you about foam rubber mattresses on the homestead beds, morning tea in bed, and chilled grapefruit with breakfast." "Yes, you do that," said Leura even more balefully. "Cinderella would love to hear about what went on in the Palace." Allison laughed, and jumping up went to the wall cupboard and began to collect the plates and mugs, and put them in the big wicker tea-basket. "Not so much of a Cinderella for long—with a Prince Charming like Buck

around. He left the homestead early last night to make sure you were all right," Allison said, her back to Leura. The hands of both girls were stilled over their work for a moment. It was as if the hands were listening for a reply —a reaction—to that joke of Allison's. It was a joke so lightly yet so meaningly underlined. There was a few minutes' silence and Leura said: "I'll put the cakes in the second basket. You can carry both, and I'll take the two billies. They have sugar down there at the shed." That night, sitting on the steps after dinner, the girls recounted to one another their adventures of the last twenty-four hours. "Billy and I were coming back along one of the tracks when Eve overtook us in that little car of hers. She invited us up. Then Mrs. Grayson started asking me questions and I wasn't very good at providing the right answers. I mean the kind of answers that explained why I was in trews and shirt on Palari at that hour—unless I worked there. Anyhow I'm not very good at lying all the time, Leura. After that I was virtually a prisoner; and so was Billy. He was on a sort of please explain mat. Dan wasn't there to save us. Mrs. Grayson said she would send a message down to you." "I was bored, borrowed a car, went for a drive and was lost," Leura said laconically. "That's all there is to it, except I met the kangaroos, the iguana and the sandstorm. Later some brolgas danced and hundreds of bush turkeys went after a grasshopper feed. Then Dan Grayson came with one of those broncos and brought me home." "Was it fun?" "While it lasted." "What did Buck say when he came back from the homestead last night ? Was he upset?" "He wasn't in the least upset as far as I know—I didn't see him. What did he say up at the homestead?" "He plied Eve with coffee and meringues and begged for us back." Allison stopped and thought for a minute. "You know," she said, her head a little on one side, "I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't Buck's particular way of pleading that brought Eve down on my side this morning. Do you think it possible, Leura?" "Depends how much Eve thinks of Buck, I should say," Leura said judicially. "Yes. It rather sets one to wondering," Allison said thoughtfully. "Seems as if there are an awful lot of people would do anything for Buck Ashe. He always seems to be in love with the other girl. Have you noticed?" Leura had seen the expression in Buck's eyes when he looked in Allison's direction and she guessed that as far as Allison was concerned she would never be the "other girl." Buck thought she was the nicest thing that had ever

dropped off a British liner in an Australian port. This reflection didn't stop Leura from being curious about Allison's feelings on the subject of Buck. "Would you mind very much," she asked, "if Buck did protect himself that way—by always appearing to be looking at the other girl?" "I didn't say he always looked at the other girl. I said that to each girl she appears, to herself, to be the other one. Comprenez?" "You didn't answer my question. Would you mind?" It was Allison's turn to be thoughtful. "Supposing I haven't any answer," she said at length. "Except this—I love Australia, but I love England too. Do you know of any way a girl can live in both countries?" "Yes, easy. Lots do it. They marry someone boiling over with money and spend six months in one country and six months in the other. That way they don't have any winter. You could marry Dan Grayson, for instance." Allison ignored the last remark. "I like the winter," she said flatly. "I mean in England. I like the snow and even when there isn't any snow I like the theatres and operas and things. Mostly I like Christmas. Even thinking of Christmas makes me homesick. Trees with parcels on them and lots of coloured lights . . . and turkey and plum-pudding . . . and the London streets all decorated. Leura, what sort of a Christmas do you suppose we'll have here in the outback?" Leura gave up trying to pin Allison to questions the other girl wasn't going to answer anyway. "If we're still on the road, Christmas will be a swim in a billabong somewhere . . . letters from home . . . and a long sleep under the shade of a gum-tree far down on a stock route. . . ." "Letters from home! " Allison said, jumping up. "That reminds me, Buck came back from Perth and what has he done with the mail?" "There are only newspapers for us, I'm afraid," Leura said. Allison. . . ."

"I'm sorry,

Nothing had been said about letters from home, but Leura had noticed that at every town on their route Allison had gone into the post office and asked if there was anything for her poste restante. There never was, and Allison always pretended she wasn't disappointed. She always said the same thing: "I've been expecting a dentist's bill ever since I left home. It would be just like uncle to send mine on. He would be that kind of a horror." Leura thought he was a horror anyway. He was unbending and unforgiving, for Leura knew that several times in the months she had known Allison, Allison had written letters to him.

"Ah well," said Allison. "Newspapers are better than nothing. I wonder if there are any English ones. Where are they? On the dining-table in the cookhouse?" "Yes, if the men haven't got at them first. Bring one back for me, will you?" Leura stayed on the step, watching the moon rise over the spinifex. Way up the track in the homestead direction she could see the headlights of a car. "One comes," she said to herself. "What goes on now?" It was Dan Grayson and he had Buck with him. They stopped at the staff house and got out of the car. They walked over to the step where Leura still sat, not wanting to look too much like a reception committee. "My mother would like to see you up at the homestead, Leura," Dan said quietly. "Will you come? I'll take you up and promise not to keep you too late." Leura rose to her feet. It was darkling all around, and hard to read any expression in either of the men's faces. She wondered what it was all about, but was reluctant to ask. "I'd like to come," she said at length. "I'll get Allison —she's in the cook-house looking at the newspapers." "I'll go see Allison," Buck said, moving away. She watched his back and did not realise how wistful was the expression in her face. Dan Grayson was good at reading faces in the light from a rising moon. He'd been doing it all his life. "I'll drive you up," he said. "Actually, I don't think Allison is coming this time. My mother wanted to see you on a private matter. Shall we go now?" Chapter 13 TOOK LEURA A FEW MINUTES TO SLIP INTO HER bedroom and make sure she looked tidy enough for a visit to the homestead. She put on fresh lipstick, quickly feathered a pencil over her eyebrows and added the merest dab of powder to her nose. IT

The homestead was really the Royal Palace of this domain, and she felt it was a courtesy to her hostess to appear reasonably groomed. She even admitted it might be a change for Dan Grayson to see her in a dress and without a layer of Palari's red dust powdered over her. He had looked so very nice and fresh and handsome, standing there in the moonlight at the foot of the steps. She wondered why one of these north-west girls hadn't nailed Dan Grayson to the matrimonial mast. Had they not tried hard enough, or was Dan really unapproachable? She gurgled a little to herself as she thought of her suggestion to Allison that

if she, Allison, married someone like Dan Grayson—loaded with money—she could get the best of both worlds: the one on the top side of the equator and the other down under too. The things we girls talk about! Dan leaned against the veranda post and smoked a cigarette while he waited for Leura. "I hope I wasn't long," she said as she came out of the house door and closed the screen behind her. "Time doesn't matter very much outback." He held the car door open for her. "There's always something to look at." Leura slipped into the seat and waited till Dan came round the other side, took the driver's seat and started up the engine. It was a very big car— protected across the front by kangaroo bars and a fine mesh netting to prevent the radiator being clogged with flying insects. "Is this a social visit, Dan?" she asked. "Or a business one?" "Something of both. My mother is concerned about Allison; and Eve would like to see you. She feels remiss that she hasn't entertained an old school friend." "But she did entertain us," Leura put in hastily. "The woolshed dance! It was wonderful." "She entertained the whole world at that. Not you. There is a difference." Leura didn't know quite what to reply to that. The car lights were picking up the silhouettes of the scattered trees, and they vied with the moon to throw shining paths across the shadowy spinifex. "It's a strange thing that there is always something to look at," Leura said. "There is such a sameness about the landscape, isn't there? Yet when you look, even at night time, there are subtle differences. Little things. Shadows under a bush and the way the moon catches the edges of leaves. In the day-time the shimmer and the haze make things look different within a matter of minutes." "You've noticed that? You like the north as much as you like the forest country in the south?" he asked curiously. "Yes. One is lovely—that's the south. The north is challenging." Dan did not reply to that. He was silent for quite some minutes. without preliminaries he said,

Then

"We may be having a visit from one of your neighbours from your home country. Fred Wilton bought a ram from the Pagets. We're interested in the Pagets' stud stock ourselves. One of the members of the family will be coming up to advise on our own bloodstock." Leura felt frozen to her seat. She had felt glad to see Dan, and to be riding with him in his car. Her earlier feelings of antagonism had died away after the day they had spent together

escaping from the aftermath of the sandstorm. He hadn't seemed so distant, and beyond her as a person. He had been companionable and she had liked riding down the track with him on Clout. It had brought her an undefined kind of comfort. Now he had launched another missile at her. He knew very well the part the Pagets had played in her life. Eve had told him, of course. He knew this news would hurt. Why did he have to tell her? She was only the shearers' cook and needn't be anywhere near the homestead when a Paget came up to Palari. Next week the team would be across his internal boundary to Yindathurra anyway. They'd nearly finished shearing Palari's shed. She felt cold; and said nothing. Dan glanced down at her. "I thought I'd tell you," he said quietly. "It's something of a warning, I suppose." "Thank you," Leura said stiffly. "My mother knows of your connection with Joe Paget," Dan went on carefully. "She may think it right and proper to give you an opportunity to meet. It would be the obvious thing to do. I assume the Pagets know you are here on Palari?" "Nobody knows I'm here on Palari," Leura said quietly. "I'm on a working holiday with Allison and neither of us wanted to be known by anybody. That way we can be independent." She stopped, then went on bitterly, "Don't you know what it is to want to be independent, Dan?" They were nearing the homestead and Dan slowed down. Obviously this conversation had to be done with before they pulled up at the homestead gate. "Yes," he said briefly. "The world has changed since my mother was a young girl." He paused, then went on, "Living outback all her life cuts her off from those changes, and not only does she not understand them, she would find it difficult, almost impossible, to accept them. That is why she is concerned about Allison Upton being in the shearing-shed. That is why, if, when Paget comes and you are still on Grayson property--" "You don't have to say any more, Dan," Leura interrupted him. "I understand now. You are trying to be kind; and to warn me. I promise not to offend your mother's standards, if I can help it. Perhaps Allison and I should sign off at the end of this shed. And not go on with Buck to Yindathurra." "It might be wiser," Dan said quietly. "I am thinking of you and Allison when I say that. You are entitled to your freedom and your way of working for your holiday. I know, as you know, and as basically my mother knows, you couldn't be in a safer place in the world than in Buck Ashe's team. But she is still worried by the look of the thing. And nothing will alter her. She belongs to another generation."

"What you really mean," said Leura, trying desperately to be fair, and feeling that it was right to speak truthfully, if a little bluntly, "What you really mean is that... if one of the Pagets, either Mr. Paget or Joe, comes here, I am putting your mother in an impossible situation?" "I am not sure," Dan said, "that you are not putting yourself in an impossible situation. You are attached to Buck, I know." Leura took it that he meant by this the ordinary natural loyalties of a teammember. She did not know that Dan had other ideas. She was silent for quite a while and Dan drove the car up to the homestead gate, braked to a stop, then dimmed the lights. "It seems strange," Leura said sadly, "that a Paget should come at this time. Surely the long arm of coincidence?" "Eve arranged it. The double arm of coincidence, I think. Fred Wilton's ram and your presence simply gave birth to ideas." They were still sitting in the darkened car and Dan turned to her. His arm was along the seat and he let his hand rest on Leura's shoulder. That hand was conveying to her some kind of sympathy, she knew. She tried to reach back in her mind to what it was Allison had said about Buck... and Eve. Something about being the "other girl." Who was the other girl? Eve? Why would Eve bring a Paget to Palari to get rid of, or embarrass, Leura? Surely it had been Allison who was the "other girl" to Eve? Leura couldn't believe that Eve had so intricate a mind that she could think in two removes, not one. If Leura had to go because of the impossible social situation, then Allison would have to go too. Leura couldn't bring herself to believe that anyone could be so mean as to make two girls leave their jobs and their big pay-packets because Allison was sweet and fair and pretty and Eve was afraid Buck would lose his heart to her. Yet maybe Eve was right, and Buck would lose his heart. Perhaps he had, in fact, already done so. The price of that was the departure of the shearers' cook —and the rouseabout. "I hope Buck is able to get some more staff," she said quietly. "Buck can do that if he really wants to... and has time. He's going back to Perth next week-end to pick up the shed-hands he contracted last week-end. He'll make sure he gets one with a wife who'll cook—if he has to do it." Leura could barely see Dan in the darkened car, only the outline of his head and the pale disc of his face. "You really want us to go, don't you?" she said. He was quite silent a minute, then he said, "No, Leura. I don't."

She sat another minute in a puzzled silence. He didn't want her to go, yet he was making her go. He had to choose between his own womenfolk and two girls working down at the shearing-shed. And his choice was with his mother and Eve. She felt sick with disappointment. It had been such fun on Palari. Once again she hated Dan Grayson. He was using the power of pressure on her. Moral blackmail. That's what it was! What if she defied him? Defied all of them? Somehow, feeling as sick as she did at the moment, she knew she would not have the courage to do this, and go through with it. Dan opened the car door, eased himself out and came round to hold the door for Leura. She gathered herself together, suddenly hardened and stone-cold with hurt pride, and stepped out of the car. She walked up the garden path with him and on to the veranda. The homestead was lit up and the indoor plants made it look like a lovely cool greenhouse. All the shutters were up and every room was open to the world. In the living-room Mrs. Grayson was sitting in an easy-chair, sewing. She looked well-dressed and well-groomed in her beautifully-cut silk dress. Eve was at a small writing-table against the far wall; and she too looked polished and carefully dressed. Leura had felt pleased with herself with her fresh dash of lipstick and her soft cotton dress, but now she realised that Mrs. Grayson and Eve were really arrayed in battle regalia. The one way for women to defeat a woman was to be better dressed. They were. Dan opened the screen door and ushered Leura in. Mrs. Grayson put down her book, looked up, then rose graciously to her feet and came forward to greet the visitor. She held out her hand as if they weren't on a lonely station a hundred miles from the nearest one-pub, one-store town, but were in the very arena of society down in the city. "How-do-you-do?" she said. "I am so glad you were able to come up. We've been looking forward to having you at the homestead—by yourself." She smiled in a forced, patterned way." The annual woolshed dance is always pandemonium. Impossible to find one's friends." Leura took the proffered hand and said "How-do-you-do?" in return. Eve had stopped writing and now came across the floor. Leura was conscious that Eve looked at her closely, almost as if she were searching for something new or different in a face she thought she already knew. "Oh, there you are, Leura," she said. "I've been wanting you to come up for days." Then she laughed, uneasily. "I should have said nights, of course. You

work in the days, don't you?" "Don't we all?" said Leura as pleasantly as she could. "You must find lots to do in the homestead, Eve. I know that at home I never stopped working." "Dan," Mrs. Grayson said, "do bring some drinks will you, like a dear. And Eve... some coffee please. It's heating in the percolator in the pantry." She turned again to Leura. "Come and sit over here. I'm longing to hear all about your family. And the Pagets. Do tell me about the Pagets, my dear. We're expecting one or other of them here shortly. They have a wonderful stud, I understand." Getting through the next half-hour was a strangling business for Leura. She had to keep a straight back and a stiff upper lip. Dan had warned her what was coming and she had to pretend not to know, and not to mind—too much. Eve poured the coffee from a lovely old silver coffee pot and Dan poured liqueurs and brought them to the small table at Mrs. Grayson's side. They talked pleasantries for a few minutes, then Richards, Dan's overseer, came to the door and asked Dan if he could see him in the office. Dan excused himself and went out with Richards. Leura, over her coffee cup, watched him go. The perfect escape, she thought. She wondered if he had planned it. Her feelings were so ambivalent towards him that she did not know how she would think about him in the future. That wretched future that was a noman's-land: out of Buck's team! It was a sort of love-hate situation that the psychologists talked about. One minute bitterly she never wished to see him again, the next she was grateful to him that he had "warned" her and given her a chance to meet whatever had to be met with dignity. He had given her the time to see she must go, and the opportunity to do it her way. So disappointed was she about not going on to Yindathurra she wished he would go out of that door and never come back again. Dan had no sooner gone than Mrs. Grayson brought up the subject of Allison. "I do know, my dear Leura," she said, "that young girls of good education are given to travelling and taking jobs as they go. One reads about it all the time. But I feel quite sure Allison's people couldn't possibly know she is working under such rough conditions: and it is rough in a woolshed. So many men. . . ." "Not as many men as in the insurance office in Perth, Mrs. Grayson. The only difference is the way they dress," Leura said quietly. "And Buck Ashe is very strict about the proprieties. He takes good care of us." Once again Leura noticed that Eve looked at her quickly, and there was a sudden tight, tired line round Eve's mouth. "Where does Allison live in England?" Mrs. Grayson asked.

"In London. Her uncle is a director of an engineering firm and I think he has a London office in the City." "Would his name be Upton too?" "Yes. I think he is her father's brother. She lives with him." Mrs. Grayson and Eve exchanged a glance, but for the moment Leura did not think about it. She thought they were genuinely interested in Allison. From then on, the conversation was a quick remove to what were the two girls likely to do next. "You finish Palari shed this week-end, don't you?" Mrs. Grayson said. "You'll be off on your travels again, I expect. Still on your way to Port Hedland? Eve tells me you have a relative there." "Yes. He's a civil servant. He's in charge of a Government office in connection with the airport." It was all so simply, smoothly and suggestively done. The shed is worked out this week-end! On your way, Leura and Allison! The three women sat politely talking to one another for quite an hour. In that time Mrs. Grayson twice managed to get in the fact that Allison was much too nice a girl to be "roughing it" around Australia. Why not save up and take a nice boat trip up the coast? Now that was a splendid way for girls to travel. So comfortable, and they really saw everything that way. Well, not stations, that was true. But what was there to see on a station but miles and miles of red earth and spinifex? Farther north there was the pindan, of course. But that wasn't much more interesting than spinifex, surely. At the end of the hour Dan came back. He apologised for being absent as he looked at Leura. There was something unexpected about the expression in his eyes. He was being kind, but there was something else. A question? Almost a challenge, and his eyebrows, if not his eyes, asked questions. How did you stand up to it? Did you win? Oh dear, Leura thought wearily. I don't like these people any more. I think I want to go away anyway. I don't understand them. Not even Dan. In the cook-house, at the dining-table end of the room, Buck and Allison bickered amicably over the papers. Buck had poked the coals in the stove together and seen that the kettle was standing at the side. Always, at this hour of night, if any of the team used the cook-house as a meeting place, he called it the "drawing-room." "More comfortable than up at the homestead," he said, as he sat down on the other side of the table and reached for the paper Allison had already drawn in front of her. She was sitting, her elbows on the table, reading the headlines.

"You can put your feet up on the chairs here," Buck finished. "You can," Allison said. "I prefer the floor for mine. They fit better that way." She looked at Buck, pretending to be sulky because he had taken her paper. "Why couldn't you have one of the other papers?" she demanded. "I wanted to see what you were reading. By the expression on your face it was most absorbing." "It was. Quite." Allison leaned across the table and put her finger on one of the lesser headings at the bottom of the page: British Engineering Firm Takes Part-Interest in Australian Project "Nothing new about that," Buck said shortly. He wanted to talk to Allison, not have her read papers. " There are lots of engineering firms in this country backed or partnered by their counterparts in the U.K." "You've only read the headline. Read the next paragraph," said Allison with a note of triumph in her voice. Buck read on. He read it twice before he realised the meaning behind the statement. The English firm taking this interest in a project was called "Upton & Blackett." "Upton!" Buck looked up with interest. "Any relation of yours?" "My uncle," said Allison cheerfully. "None other." She tossed her head in a way that was something of a mannerism but which Buck found very beguiling. "He often takes an interest in firms in other countries. He has a man in the Argentine, and one in Canada." "You are beetling with pride," Buck said caustically. "I don't believe you dislike the old boy after all." "I don't dislike him. I'm rather fond of him." "Then why the runaway act?" "I didn't run away from him. Besides, he knows where I went and how. I often write to him and tell him. He doesn't answer because he thinks I'm learning a severe lesson and it will be good for me." "And who's the Blackett part of the firm? The junior partner?" Buck hit nearer the truth than he dreamed with his chance remark. He was busy re-reading the paragraph for the third time and did not see the quick flush in Allison's face. "You didn't run away from him, by any chance?" Buck asked, only half his mind on the question and still without any intent to hurt, or even to probe. He was merely making conversation, and this happened to be the topic. "Well ... if you like a person you don't run away from him, do you? Or do you?" "I wouldn't know what a woman would do in that case," said Buck, whose

interest had now passed to the next column. "Being a woman, a woman would obviously do the opposite thing to what made sense." Allison chewed thoughtfully on the bottom of her lip, then decided not to pursue the subject. Men always thought that way about women, anyhow. "May I have my paper back?" she asked. "You can have any one of at least four others, and I had that one first____" Buck folded the paper and put it beside the others. "Let's talk instead," he said, smiling at her across the table. "It's much more friendly." "For instance? About what?" "You and me. Can you think of anything more interesting?" "No. You start. When were you born, and what are the names of your parents, their parents, and the parents of their parents?" Buck laughed. "To hell with parents," he said. "I'm only interested in us. Listen, Allison—or for the purposes of this meeting I'd better call you A. Upton, shed-hand. Listen, A. Upton. Do you want to come on to Yindathurra with the team?" "I certainly do. This is the best way I ever knew of saving money. At the end of a shed there's a nice fat pay-packet and not a bean spent." "I'm afraid there is a plot up at the homestead spiking any ambitions to getrich-quick over a shearing-table. They think you should be curry-combed, scented, be-curled and be-dressed and on the sun-deck of a liner as a way of travelling from place to place. Not dusting it up with a shearing team." "What rot!" said Allison amiably. "I agree." "We don't take any notice of them, Buck, do we? You and I know better?" "You and I certainly know better, A. Upton. We can't stage another sit-down strike, because everyone is officially paid off at the end of a shed. But we'll do something. You and I, that is. We'll leave Leura out of this. Leura is strictly honourable and should be left to the fateful machinations of Chance. My version of Chance, of course." "I don't know what you are up to, Buck. It will be strictly dishonourable I know; but it will get us to Yindathurra I'm sure. Promise?" He leaned across the table and flicked the tip of her nose with his finger. "I wouldn't part with you for a thousand bales of Triple A merino wool, fair one," he said. "Leave all to me. And not a word to Leura." "Guide's honour," she said. "Not a word to Leura. Please excuse my asking, but don't you love Leura just a little? Why mustn't she know?" Buck was quite serious for a moment. "Because I love her a little," he said. "I don't want her involved in my strictly

dishonourable activities." "Do you love her as much as you love me?" Buck grinned. "That would be telling! You make the tea and I'll bang the gong in case any of the men want tea too." Allison pushed back her chair and stood up. She looked at Buck's smiling face and very wicked eyes. She shook her head sadly. "I'd hate to think what you would do to us if you had three women on your plate, instead of two," she said. "That would about cover the whole social scene as far as Palari is concerned, wouldn't it?" "It would," Buck replied, dead-pan. "Please don't be prophetic; it doesn't suit you." He did not bat an eyelid, but pushed back his chair and reached for the tin plate that sufficed as gong round the shearers' quarters. The sound of the iron soup spoon banging against it drowned anything further Allison might have to say on the subject. She was sure, however, that he winked at her. She went to the stove smiling and happy. She really did love Buck. He was quite a one, she thought. The threat of rain coming as a result of a cyclone off the north-west coast had geared the shearing team to completing the score at Palari some days earlier than programmed. In the end, all Palari had received from the cyclone was not the blessing of rain, but the stifling of the sandstorm. The shed finishing earlier, the team could take its time to move by devious station tracks to Yindathurra. Buck was going south to the city to pick up his extra shed-hands; the shearers and shed-hands were packing up, joyful at another week-end break in the town before starting at Yindathurra on the following Tuesday. Allison and Leura, because their contract on Palari was completed, were paid off. No one could protest. They had been employed for Palari shed and Palari shed was finished. Buck, who never talked to anyone, not even himself, about what he was thinking, doing, or about to do, had nothing to say to anyone about the imminent departure of the two girls. "They have their pay-cheques, fellers," was all he said as he shrugged his shoulders. Those who had worked for Buck for many seasons knew that when he was most innocent, he might be most dangerous, or cunning, or kind... they never really knew which. No one worried about the girls-just yet. They'd wait and see. Leura and Allison were delighted with their huge pay-cheques. Working with a shearing team certainly paid well. Nothing had been spent from day to day except the week-end at the hotel on the occasion of the woolshed dance. They had all of a month's money intact. "Rich as Croesus!" Allison said joyfully, kissing her cheque.

Leura's cheque was nearly double that of the rouseabout but she insisted that they pooled and divided. It had been their bargain when they bought the Holden and set out together. "I'll cook at the next shed and you can rouseabout," Allison promised. "The next shed?" wailed Leura. "No one will ever take on two girls again. Only Buck was mad enough to do it and that was because he was desperate for a cook." She had told Allison of the Graysons' ultimatum the day after the event. The girls agreed they were sad because they were leaving the shearing game. They had loved every minute of it. The prospects of serving behind counters or sitting behind typewriters after the rough, hot, hard-working freedom of station life appalled them. Never again, they agreed, would they be so happy. Leura realised with a start that "happy" was a strange word for her to be using. She hadn't been happy when she had first been picked up in the spinifex by the masterly Buck. She had been struggling not to wallow in an old sorrow. Then she had fallen into a kind-of-loving of Buck. What had happened that, on looking back over her shoulder, she could say and believe she had been happy? As for Allison! Well, Allison was just as happy as ever. Leura knew the answer to that. Allison loves everyone and everyone loves Allison. And Buck loves her in particular. Who wouldn't under such circumstances be happy, even if they weren't going off to cook and/or rouseabout on Yindathurra? Chapter 14 followed after a lapse of time by two carloads of the shearers who were going south to the city for the long week-end. The interval of time was to allow for some settling of Buck's dust. BY FRIDAY NIGHT BUCK HAD GONE IN A CLOUD OF DUST

The old race to be finished shearing had gone on, on this day, as on that last occasion when there had been a long week-end break. Time could be taken over the clearing up because several of the shed-hands had volunteered to stay on over to Monday to do that. Leura and Allison agreed to stay till then to cook for them. It was a quiet week-end. Silence reigned over the woolshed. "It's like going back to school in holiday time," Leura said to Allison as on the Saturday afternoon they washed their clothes, their heads of hair, and finally cleaned and polished all their shoes. "It suddenly seems so empty it's like the end of the world. School is a horrible place except when it's full of people." "Agreed," said Allison. "What shall we do to pass time to-morrow? Go and say our farewells to the homestead people?"

"No jolly fear!" Leura replied tartly. "It's their fault we're not going to Yindathurra. I'd scarcely be able to be polite if they came down to say goodbye to us. That's a state of affairs that is hardly likely, considering there has been no sign of Dan this last two days. You'd have thought he'd have been interested enough to see the last of the wool-clip being trucked away, wouldn't you?" "He's scared of two tiger-women waiting to get their claws into him because they'd been paid off." Allison slapped extra blacking on her shoes and rubbed with a will. "Nothing," said Leura furiously, "scares Dan. He's plain not interested. The homestead is suffering from one-upmanship. They've rid themselves of the girls from the shearers' shed! They're probably giving themselves a dinnerparty to celebrate." "What do you suppose they'll eat?" "I've food to cook here for those three shed-hands, if and when they oblige by coming back from kangaroo-shooting. I don't want to think of food up at the homestead too." To their surprise it was Eve who came down from the homestead to ask when the girls were pulling out. She had timed her arrival for about an hour after dinner. She found the girls in the cook-house, sitting alone amidst a pile of dishes and an oven-full of roast dinner because the shed-hands had not yet come back to eat. Leura and Allison were sitting on either side of the dining-table, smoking a cigarette and telling one another their life-histories over again. After the long silence during which neither had told the other anything at all, they now could not stop. It was their favourite way of passing time. Eve had driven herself down in her small car, and she came straight to the cook-house because it was the only place showing a light. When she came in both Leura and Allison were so surprised they couldn't speak. Eve was not quite the distant cold person she had seemed to be before. After two minutes of astonishment the girls realised that she was nervous. "Oh!" Eve said, as if she was surprised to find Leura and Allison sitting here. "I'm so sorry to intrude. Though... well... I really did come down to say goodbye." She collected herself and nearly came back to being that envied person—the squatter's sister. "May I sit down? You look so comfortable." "Yes, please do. . . ." Allison and Leura both jumped up and all but knocked over the chair at the end of the table in their combined anxiety to draw it out for the visitor. "Nice of you to come down, Eve," Leura said. "Have a cigarette?" Allison said, pushing the packet in Eve's direction. Not

that she could remember seeing Eve doing anything quite so out of character as smoke a cigarette! But it was something to do and say. "Have some coffee?" Allison went on. "Leura, we haven't had any coffee yet. We must have forgotten." "Your turn to get it," said Leura cheerfully. "My turn to wash-up." Eve gazed round the cook-house, at the dishes the girls had used and the other dishes waiting for the shed-hands at the side of the stove. The oven lid was open and the roast leg of mutton, with the vegetables around it, sat on the gleaming shelf obviously waiting for someone either to eat it or put it away. "Rather a big wash-up," she said. Leura could hardly believe her ears and eyes. Eve was actually nervous. They weren't nervous. Eve was. How strange! Leura glanced round the cook-house too. "Not so big," she said. "Generally we have sixteen. This wash-up will be for five only—if those three shed-hands ever come in." "Which of them is still here? Has Buck...?" "Buck's gone to Perth for more staff. Didn't you know?" asked Allison from the stove where she was pouring boiling water on to instant coffee in an enamel jug. "I thought the homestead knew everything Buck did. I mean, Buck's kind of up there a lot, isn't he?" "He probably told Dan," Eve said. "And Dan forgot to mention it. What sort of staff does Buck want?" "An extra rouseabout and a cook, that's for certain," Leura said dryly. "You may have heard that the current rouseabout and cook have been paid off." Eve looked down at her hands thoughtfully. Leura was immediately sorry she had said that. It was petty. On the other hand Eve and her mother had been responsible for their dismissal. People who had wealth and security didn't know what it was to lose two girls their jobs for them. They could always get another job somewhere else, one more suitable. That would be their way of thinking. Well, so they could, but it wouldn't ever again be the same thing as working in a shearing team. Buck's team. Allison brought the coffee to the table in the enamel jug and then put cups and saucers out. Suddenly she looked at Eve's face. She smiled, and pushed the coffee pot in Eve's direction. "You be hostess and pour," she said. "After all, it's your station, and your cook-house." Eve took the coffee pot. As she poured, she said a remarkable thing. "I wish they weren't mine. I wish it was all Dan's."

Allison was not to be disconcerted by this remark. "Then give it all away," she said cheerfully. "Better still, sell it. Money's awfully nice when you're working your way round the world." "I didn't know you were working your way round the world, Allison," Leura said. " I thought it was round Australia." "What's wrong with the world?" Allison demanded. "Apart from the possibilities of bombs and missiles I think it's a pretty good place. I'd like to see the lot." "You want everything. 'A rolling stone gathers no moss." Allison drew her coffee towards her, nibbled on a cheese biscuit, then said thoughtfully, "I've always wondered what that 'moss' was in that cliche. My uncle hurled it—the cliche, not the moss— around quite a bit when I decided to run out on Upton and Blackett." "It means money, and/or prospective husbands," Eve said unexpectedly. "If a girl doesn't stay long enough in one place she won't know anyone long enough to marry him. And of course moving always costs her money." Both girls stared at her in surprise. Eve certainly stayed long enough in one place and nothing seemed to have happened to her on the matrimonial market. "You could be right," Allison said thoughtfully. She chewed some more on her biscuit and sipped her coffee. "You could be right." As she repeated herself she shook her head sadly. Leura, removing her interest in Eve to her ever-recurring interest in Allison, thought she never would quite understand what Allison was thinking, or likely to say. At that moment there was the sound of the three shed-hands coming home late for their dinner. Eve Grayson watched Leura and Allison with interest. The two girls sprang to their feet, whizzed the coffee pot and cups and saucers out of sight in the direction of the sink. Leura began madly to test the heat of the food in the open oven and Allison began rapidly to reset the table. Silence reigned between them. Leura shut the oven door and stirred the coals in the fire. Allison took a broom and swept the floor to make it clean and tidy. The kettle was refilled and put on the boil, powdered milk mixed into water was set in a saucepan and Leura began rapidly to make a white sauce. As she went about this, Allison put her materials away for her when used. Eve Grayson removed herself from the table and took up a chair in the far corner. Allison rushed to the table and put all the chairs straight, including the one just vacated by Eve. Outside the racket of men braking a car, slamming doors and thundering in

heavy boots into the shower-room at the back of the sleeping-quarters gradually subsided. Leura looked up at the clock. "I'll give them ten minutes," she said, "then begin to carve. Allison, put the plates in the oven while I warm the bread rolls." "Warm the bread rolls?" said Eve from her corner chair. "Do you always go to so much trouble for their dinner? And why all the hurry ? And so much fuss?" "They each put in two pounds ten a week for the cooking," Leura said over her shoulder. "For that they have to be treated like kings." "It's fair enough," added Allison. "They pay enough and we certainly get enough." "But I thought you were the rouseabout?" Eve stared at Allison. "Right now I'm Leura's rouseabout," Allison said happily. I'm the shearers' rouseabout."

"In the day-time

There was a long silence as the two girls bustled round the cookhouse, and at length Eve said, "You seem to be enjoying it." "It's fun, if you make it that way," Leura said. "Why don't you try it, Eve? There's an apron hanging up behind the door—there's plenty to do." Now that she herself was paid-off she could forget Eve was the squatter's sister and could talk to her as an old school acquaintance. Any question of being "sacked" was over. In effect, they were sacked. Allison, rinsing cooking utensils in the sink, ahead of the main wash-up, turned and looked through a fallen lock of her golden hair at Eve. Just how would Miss Eve Grayson of Palari Station take that? There wasn't any Miss Eve Grayson of Palari any more. Only a slightly deflated young woman trying to reorientate her way of thinking—struggling between a lifetime of station-owning pride and the wish to have the kind of good time these two girls were having. "I'll help," she said quietly, not quite gracious but not ungracious either. "It is too late at night for you to have to work like that. The shed-hands should be home in time for their meals—or go without." The shed-hands came thumping in. They were in high spirits. They had shot two kangaroos, two emus and a bush turkey. Mostly they had been having a good time rollicking in their old jalopy over Palari's acres. At first Leura and Allison expected them to be taken aback at the sight of Miss Eve Grayson in the cook-house with an apron on. When they said "Gud-day!" cheerfully, reached for their chairs and said, "What goes on for dinner, Leura?" both girls realised they simply didn't recognise the third girl in the kitchen. They had never before seen the squatter's sister.

"Shearer's wife?" one shed-hand asked, cheerfully pointing the back of his fork at Eve. Leura thought Allison would explode, and Allison thought Leura would faint. "Just another rouseabout," Eve replied quietly. "Temporary, of course." "You on the payroll?" another hand asked, incredulous. "The shed's paid off. Except for us and the two girls." "I'm on the station payroll," Eve said, carrying an enormous plate of roast mutton and vegetables and placing it in front of the speaker. "You didn't mind Mrs. Riddle when she worked in the cook-house, did you? She's a station man's wife." The shed-hand scratched his ear. "Guess the station's Dan Grayson's, an' the shed's his too—now Buck's pulled out. Guess he can do what he pleases." He grinned up at Eve. "All the same, welcome in. Makes six of us for rummy after dinner." When the evening was over and Eve returned to the homestead in her small car and Allison and Leura to the staff house to bed, the two girls talked it over. "What do you suppose came over Eve Grayson?" Allison asked curiously as she brushed her hair in Leura's doorway. "I imagine that she came down to say good-bye with something of a guilty conscience because we'd been paid off. She stayed out of boredom with her own life up there and because she saw there was life in the cook-house and only a dead way of putting in the evening up there in her own home." "But Dan wouldn't be dead to eat dinner with," Allison insisted. "Even if he was a brother. He's gorgeous. I could sit on the other side of the table with him for keeps...." "One of the shed-hands said this morning that Dan had gone over to the Yindathurra woolshed and quarters to make sure they were ready for the team." "Guess it would be a bit boring up there, in that case," said Allison. She finished brushing her hair, put the front pieces into rollers and announced she was going to bed. "Honest to goodness," she said. "I don't know which of them to dream about. Dan or Buck. They've really got something, haven't they? In their different ways, of course." She squinted at herself in the mirror in Leura's room to make sure she had her curlers rightly placed. "Don't squint," Leura cautioned. "You'll end up by having to wear glasses." "I'll have to wear them to bed," Allison said, yawning. "To make sure I can

recognise the right man when I have my dreams." "Would you recognise him? Is there a right man, Allison?" Unexpectedly, Allison's face was serious. "Yes," she said. "There is. There has been for quite a while." She smiled as unexpectedly as she had looked serious. "I'll tell you about it another night. Me for the pillow now. I'm tired." There were occasions when Allison pulled down blinds, and this was one of those occasions. Leura recognised she had reticences of her own too. In spite of all their swapping of life-histories lately, there had been something neither told. It was the way of things—of most people, too, Leura thought. "Sweet dreams anyway," she said as Allison went through the door on her way to her own bed. "They'll be that, all right," replied Allison cheerfully. "I make a practice of it." On the Monday the woolshed and sleeping-quarters were left scrupulously clean by the shed-hands. Leura and Allison made sure that no newcomer to the cook-house would ever be able to fault the way they left it. They scrubbed, cleaned, polished and put away. As they went through the screen door for the last time they looked back. "It was fun, wasn't it?" said Leura. "Lots of it," said Allison. "Well, let's pack up the Holden and go. No use hankering after Yindathurra's cook-house." There had been no word from Buck. No sight or sound of any message nor any visit from Dan Grayson, the owner. Allison had begun to wonder if after all Buck hadn't been able to manage to do something about keeping the girls with the team. She was glad she hadn't told Leura that Buck had still been scheming. This way Leura wouldn't be disappointed. For herself, she could have cried, except now she wanted to reach a coastal town, if only for a few days. If only there was mail from home! She was yearning to know what that newspaper statement about Upton & Blackett taking up an interest in Australia meant. Though she hadn't said much at the time to Buck, the news had thrilled her. If, and when, she went back to England there would always remain a lead-out to Australia again. Allison knew in her heart she had fallen in love with this great red eerie empty friendly land and would never say good-bye to it for keeps. She would come back. It was part of her already. The Holden was duly packed, the staff-house was inspected for the last time, and Mrs. Riddle came down to have a last cup of tea with the two girls before they left. All around the woolshed area was an air of forsakenness. It, and the quarters, would sit there alone, unvisited, without friends, for another year. Then into this silence would come again the mechanics to set up the shearing stands; the

electrician from the homestead to see the shears were in working order . . . and into it and the quarters once again would come all the paraphernalia of high-powered important activity. Finally the team would come and the woolshed would be alive, the heart of the station, noisy with people and full of fun for the next shearers' cook and general rouseabout. This time they would wear trousers by right and not by a twirk of female fashion. Perhaps never again would there be girls down there in the shearers' quarters. The woolshed blinked its sightless glass eyes at the girls as they swung the Holden round in a circle and made off in their own cloud of dust down Palari's out-track, exit-bound. Perhaps the woolshed minded their passing-out parade too. They hoped so. Both girls turned and waved it a last farewell. "It'll blister in the summer heat, and sag in the floods if they have a heavy Wet," Leura said. "But I guess it will be waiting for Buck this time next year." "But not us," said Allison lugubriously. "Let's get off the subject," said Leura. "A hundred miles to that one-pub, onestore town. Let's have lunch in state. Besides, we can always cash our cheques at the hotel. Buck's cheques are taken anywhere in the State." "Who told you that ? " asked Allison. "It's the way of it. A man's bond is his honour in the north. No one ever borrows without paying back and no one ever passes a dud cheque in the north—whatever they do in the city. They could never cross the sandplain again if they did. It's a sort of code of honour that even thieves obey." "It's a wonderful place," said Allison. "If I don't look out I shan't want to go home to England." "Do you still want—very much?" "Um. Sometimes. As I said, I get homesick. Now don't quote that awful line again, Leura, about Breathes there a man with soul so dead etcetera, etcetera. It's true. And you'd feel the same in Europe. Let's talk about kangaroos instead. I've seen five. Please, please Leura, don't run into one and kill it." "It's more likely to kill us," said Leura, changing her hold on the steeringwheel. "Did you see Sykes's car when he came back from the town that night a week ago? The front was bashed in where a big red hit him. It's a wonder the car still ran." "If we can afford it we'll get kangaroo-bars for the car," Allison said philosophically. "That way maybe both we and the 'roo will stay alive." "You're sentimental. Like foxes, 'roos are a menace." "I like foxes," persisted Allison. "So please don't hit a 'roo." "I won't. But I can't guarantee one won't hit me." "Time to talk about something else again," said Allison. "Let's not talk at all."

"Yes. That's a good idea. Let's try that for fifty miles. Can do?" "Shall try." The girls looked at one another and smiled. They had overcome the heartache of leaving Palari and nearly overcome the double heartache of not going on to Yindathurra. Very nearly nearly, anyway. They had driven that fifty miles in that friendly silence when the steeringwheel began to pull in Leura's hands. She remembered, far back on the track, she had changed her hold several times, as if her left hand was a little tired of the pull. Why my left hand she suddenly thought. Then she had another, worse, thought. The car pulling over like that could mean a slow puncture. Please not, she wished. I hate changing wheels in the middle of the morning. It's too hot. She eased the car over to the side of the track and braked. Allison came out of her daydream. "Tea-break?" she asked. "Might as well," said Leura. "But I want to have a look at my tyres." "Not out of air?" "I sincerely hope not." Leura slipped out from the driver's seat and walked round the car looking at the tyres while Allison lifted the Thermos basket from the back seat. She stared at the left rear wheel and moaned. "Not a puncture?" wailed Allison, twisting round to look through the window. "That, or a loose valve. We've been slowly losing air for miles. We're down on the rim. The inner tube will be damaged." "Can't we have tea before we change the wheel?' begged Allison. "I couldn't work that jack without inner fortification." "We might as well," agreed Leura. "This is where it would be nice to meet a man, wouldn't it? One of the chivalrous kind who didn't mind changing car wheels for females and who didn't make a point of the principle that if girls will travel they must carry a jack for themselves." They sat in the open doors, on either side of the car, drank their Thermos tea and bewailed the fact it was just their luck to have to change a wheel before they reached the town. When tea was finished, Leura went to the boot for the spare wheel. She raised the shutter, then stood and stared. "No!" Allison heard the note of incredulity and despair in that one word. "What goes on?" She came round the car to stand beside Leura and stare into the empty boot. "Stolen, pinched, taken!" she said. "I thought you remarked there weren't any thieves in the north? Or not thieves while they are in the north."

"But nobody would do a thing like that," Leura wailed. "It's unthinkable. It could cost us our lives if we were off used tracks and ran out of water and food. It's just not done..." "Don't keep repeating yourself, Leura. It is done. In short, someone has stolen the spare wheel." Leura stared at Allison in a dazed kind of way. "We didn't take it out ourselves, did we? No. Of course not. Why would we have taken it out ? It was there when we put air in all the tyres on Friday. You know . . . when everyone was tuning up. . . ." "It was there then," Allison said thoughtfully. "Which of all those men could have done such a thing? There wasn't one of them we didn't trust. Was there?" Allison was still staring at the empty boot thoughtfully. Who indeed ? Of all the men in the shearing team on Palari, who was the one who had said he would . . . Leura, in her dismay, had turned and looked back over her shoulder. Far off, across the spinifex, where the track wound away into a heat-hazed distance, came a ball of red dust, bowling towards them. "Someone is coming," she said. The two girls looked at one another. "We were the last to leave. No one was to come after us along this track." "All the same, someone does come after us," Allison said peaceably. "I wonder what it will be this time. A rescue, or another kidnap?" Chapter 15 BUCK ANOTHER FIVE MINUTES TO CATCH UP with the stranded Holden. Once again the girls had taken up their positions as weeks ago they had waited for a fleet of overlanding cars to rescue them from the spinifex. Then, it had been a broken radiator hose. This time someone had taken their spare wheel—probably loosened the valve so they would have a slow deflation of air from the left rear tyre on the car. They had been stranded fifty miles from Palari homestead by contrived machinations of Fate: now appearing in the form of Buck Ashe. IT TOOK

Allison sat on the floor in the open door, her slim legs in their check trews stretched out before her. Leura leaned against the bonnet of the car, her linen hat pulled well down on her brow. Her expression said: If this is Buck, and he has done what I think he has done-watch out, Mr. Ashe! Right deep down inside her there was a warm hope but she dared not admit its existence. Buck had taken liberties with their car. He had been making fools of them. She would not let him off easily.

Allison's expression was too guileless to be true, but fortunately for her, Leura did not see it. Buck braked his car twenty yards behind the Holden, slid out of the seat and slammed the door shut behind him. His hat was at an angle, one which Allison called rakish and which Leura—keeping check on her wrath—called infernal. He strode through the dust to the Holden. None of the three said a word. He looked in the empty boot of the car, walked around the vehicle, looking at the tyres, and finally came to the left rear wheel. He had had to go round Leura to do this. He dug his thumbs in his belt and scowled. Then he looked up. "Do you mean to tell me you came without a spare wheel?" he demanded. "Came from where, without a spare wheel?" Leura asked sweetly. Buck shrugged. "The city... Geraldton... the Guthries? How am I to know where you leave your spare parts lying around. Last time you didn't have a water hose. Haven't you had a puncture since you left town? How lucky can you be!" He pushed his hat to a more dazzling angle, and this time folded his arms too, imitating Leura. "Do you always wait about to be appropriately rescued by Bush Galahads?" he demanded. "The last I heard of this particular Bush Galahad he was in Perth, Buck," Leura said with dangerous mildness. "So, of course, you could not have removed our spare wheel. I've no doubt it was one of your hired henchmen, a shedhand, who did it for you—before we left Palari, not the city." The belligerence disappeared from Buck's face and was replaced by one of outraged innocence. "For what would I be taking a Holden spare?" he demanded. "There is not a Holden in my fleet to Yindathurra. It wouldn't fit." "So you wouldn't be likely to have a spare wheel on your car that would fit a Holden?" Allison asked from her lowly seat in the car door. Buck pretended this was the first time he had noticed Allison's presence. He smiled benignly. "Are you there, Goldilocks?" he asked. "Certainly. Leura and I always travel together. Didn't you know?" "Not in sandstorms, that's for sure," Buck said in an aside to the spinifex plain. Leura made a mental note that she must remember that remark later and try to think out what he meant. There wasn't time now. At the moment she had to deal with whatever it was Buck was up to. Suddenly she recognised, for what it was worth, the kind-of-loving she had had for him all along. It was not the call of man for woman in the mating season. It was love of a charming wild unpredictable scamp who, while remaining the soul of honour, did the most

dishonourable things. He was a character; that was what Buck was. Paradoxical, and anyone would love him, and never forget him. Leura in particular. That's as far as it went, and no more. Already, recognising these things, her whipped-up anger was subsiding. It was quite hard to keep up the face of it meantime. She changed her position from leaning against the bonnet and stood up straight. Over Buck's shoulder she could see he had a shadowy passenger behind the windscreen of his car. The sun-visor across the car hood cast a shadow and the passenger was anonymous. Buck was addressing Allison, scowling into her bright blue eyes as she looked up at him, the very epitome of innocence. "Two nitwits travelling together," he said caustically, "Well, I'm telling you this. I'm not going fifty miles out of my way to take you to town. You can pile into the back of my car there and darn-all put in the night at Yindathurra. Rough and ready quarters you'll get there too. I've already got a rouseabout on board who has first claim on the bridal suite." "Rouseabouts don't get the bridal suite," Leura said. "The junior woolclasser does." "Not necessarily, if the rouseabout happens to be female." Leura straightened her back with a jerk. Allison jumped up, and peered over Buck's shoulder. "Female?" they cried jointly. "The Graysons said no women in the quarters at Yindathurra," Leura cried accusingly. "We were paid off because we were female," Allison remarked. Buck shrugged. "As far as the Graysons are concerned I'm no more than a mere shearing contractor," he said. "I do as I'm told. Ask Eve." "Ask Eve?" Buck spread both his hands in a gesture of surrender to higher authority. "She's the rouseabout..." "Eve!" Leura and Allison began to walk, tiptoe, back the twenty yards towards Buck's car where his own dust-cloud was only now beginning to settle. Eve, in a khaki work-shirt—one of her brother's shirts, probably—was sitting in the front passenger seat of Buck's car. Her expression was a curious mixture of disdain and defensiveness. The twin expressions clamoured for ascendancy as she looked at the two girls and as they peered, astonished, into the car. "She has trews on," Allison said to Leura. "And desert boots," Leura added. "She's dressed as if she's thinking of working in the shearing-shed." At this Leura shook her head sadly. "Taking the bread out of the mouths of the unemployed," she grumbled. "She's rich. She doesn't have to work," Allison went on, puzzled.

"She's the squatter's sister," Leura remarked bitterly. Eve straightened her back and reached for her regal airs. "I cannot help being the squatter's sister, and I am not rich. My father left me an infinitesimal share in Palari and I've lived on my brother's bounty ever since my father died. If you two girls will excuse me for indulging my proper rights of freedom—I shall, in future, work for my living." "In a shearing-shed?" Allison asked, incredulous. "What you can do, I can do," Eve said, still very haughty. "You haven't an option on efficiency, have you? And I happen to know sheep. I've lived with them all my life____" Her stiff back eased to a curve, the disdain went out of her voice and suddenly she was awkwardly shamefaced. "I've even been a bit of a sheep myself," she admitted. Allison nodded her head sagaciously. "Granted. But what do Leura and I do for a crust of bread and a cup of water?" "Exercise your freedom of choice too," Eve said, looking at them out of the corners of her eyes to see how they would take what was coming. "My infinitesimal portion of Palari keeps the balance between what my brother and my mother own. I can vote either way, any time there is a difference of opinion." "A difference of opinion?" asked Leura. "Do you mean that one of them, either Mrs. Grayson or Dan, does not mind if we work in Yindathurra's shed?" "Dan will come down on the side of Buck because Dan wants his sheep shorn. Buck explicitly put in his Yindathurra contract absolute freedom of choice for his team.” Leura and Allison stared at one another, unravelling this as if it was next week's conundrum. Each hoped her own answer was right; and each had the same answer. "You mean Buck will take us on?" they both demanded at once. "But why take our spare wheel?" Leura asked. "Buck could hardly take you on before he reached Yindathurra. He probably made sure you didn't go too far before . . ." Eve stopped, then added simply: "Buck hasn't taken anyone on yet. He signs the team up when he gets to Yindathurra. Apart from the principle of first come first served, I don't think he has enough men coming up from Perth anyway. That's how I came to get a job." Buck had been rounding the Holden car as if it was a mob of sheep that would not move. He examined it on top, inside and underneath, ending up with a reappraisal of the flattened rear tyre. Now he was hot from the sun, sooty-eyed with the dust, and tired of his exclusion from the conclave by his own vehicle.

He came striding up the twenty yards with an air of purpose. "For heaven's sake get in the car and stop talking, you women," he said. He wrenched open the rear door as Leura and Allison slid into the back seat. "Billy Rafferty's bowling up from behind now. He can pick up your luggage. It's the least he can do, since his is the only car a Holden wheel will fit. He has to be the culprit." "You said there wasn't a car it would fit...." Leura began. "... going to Yindathurra" Buck finished for her. " Strictly the truth. Billy's on his way to town to pick up the stores. That's roughly ninety miles from Yindathurra." Allison and Leura leaned back and gave deep sighs of satisfaction. Buck let go the brake and went into first gear. "Buck," Allison said in a voice that suggested a kitten who had tasted cream for the first time, "I love you." Leura glanced sideways at her team mate. It was a good job that Allison loved him, she thought, for now she knew she didn't love him that way herself. She could have kissed the back of his dust-stained neck all the same. She had her job back, and the big pay-packet; and best and most wonderful of all, was free from the bonds of love—of any kind at all. Just to even things up all round she said: "Eve, I love you." Eve, preoccupied with driving Buck's car from the passenger's seat, did not answer. Besides, at the moment, she had dust in her eyes. Yindathurra quarters were as Buck had said—rough and ready. To the girls, who had nearly been out of a job, they were heaven. To some of the shearers and shed-hands who knew they were being signed on, there was some cause for grumbling after the semi-luxury of Palari. These grumbles they gave voice to when Eve Grayson was around. Eve gave no sign she heard them because she was determined not to be the squatter's sister, even as a mouthpiece for Buck Ashe's team. "Buck can fight his own battles," she told Leura and Allison as the three girls made up their shakedowns in the end room of the quarters. "Bags the packing-case for my clothes," Allison said. "I shall keep mine on the one shelf," announced Leura. "That just about leaves the tea-chest for me," protested Eve. "You joined the team last," Leura explained. "You have no privileges." "You're lucky we tolerate you in the room at all," Allison added. "I don't know what the Workers' Union says about three in a room... and by the way, you have to take out your ticket before we start, you know... but the Shearers'

Union says two, and two only, in a room." "We could put the tea-chest on top of the packing-case and make a sort of partition," Eve suggested meekly. "That way it's the same thing as two rooms..." "With two in one room and one in the other? Unfair!" "We could put you outside altogether, so mind your manners," Leura said sternly. "Getting back to first principles," Allison interrupted, "since when have you decided Buck can fight his own battles, Eve? I thought you had a claim on fighting them for him. He's your pet whim, isn't he?" Allison was hanging clothes on a nail in the upper timber and had her back to the others; a spare nail held between her teeth made her voice muffled and uneven. Oh no! Leura thought. Not Eve and Allison both in love with Buck. She was so emancipated from love of Buck herself she actually forgot, for the moment, that three weeks ago this had been the situation between herself and Allison. Of course. That is why Eve came. No, that's not fair. I think Eve really wanted to throw off the shackles of being Dan's sister. Eve, head and shoulders in the disused tea-chest, either did not hear Allison's question, or did not want to answer it. Leura asked one for herself: "Why did you come, really, Eve? Did you want to run away from home, or something? Like Allison and me ? Or did you want to find out how the other end of the station worked?" Eve had emerged from the chest. She stood, her hair falling across her eyes, and looked levelly at Leura. "I thought you two were having fun—that night in the cook-house. It was Sunday, after the shed-hands came in from shooting. I thought I'd never really had fun like that—rushing madly round a cook-house so efficiently and playing six-handed rummy with the men over the table afterwards. I thought I'd sort of missed out on things, living up there in the homestead, always in a dress, always Mother's good girl..." She stopped abruptly, as if ashamed of this last remark and would like to take it back. Then she tossed her head in sudden defence of her independence. "I thought what you two could do, I could do. Everyone respected you for it, even Dan. I thought—that's the modern way of living. Mother's out of date—" "Even Dan?" There was a wistful note in Allison's voice. "He didn't come and say good-bye to us." "He will. I mean, he'll come and say hallo to you. He always goes to the woolshed on the first day of shearing. He did at Palari and he will here."

Leura took Allison's spare nail and drove it into the four-by-two crosspiece with the heel of her shoe. She hung her plastic-covered coat-hanger, holding her clean shirts, on this. "Does Dan know we've joined Buck's team?" she asked. She remembered Dan forewarning her that she and Allison were to be dropped from the team. What did he really think and want, she wondered. She decided anybody's guess was as good as hers, and she didn't care what Dan thought. Well, not very much, anyway. Not enough to lose any sleep over it. "I wouldn't know," Eve said after one more dive into the tea-chest to press another layer of underclothes into its nether regions. "I don't suppose he'll even say what he thinks when he sees you. He's a one for keeping his thoughts to himself, is Dan." Allison had finished depositing her clothes and making up her bed. She now sat on this last, kicking off her shoes as she did so, and tucking up her feet under her. "Tell us about Dan, Eve," Allison said. "Personally I think he's a sweetie—and awfully handsome, in an outback kind of a way. Of course, you've probably only got a sister-angle on him." "Yes and no to that last," Eve said, sitting on her own bed. "I can see what the girls round the north see in him. Coming from a sister, it's something special when I say he's really something of a sweetie myself. He's wrapped up in Palari and he can't stand the marriage-mongering that goes on round the north. My guess is, he'll stay a bachelor. He's never looked at any girl I know of, twice. But then-" Eve took a packet of cigarettes from her shirt pocket and passed it round. Leura too had perched herself on the side of her bed, her feet stretched out before her, her face uninterested in this conversation—in a stubborn kind of way. Allison looked up from lighting her cigarette as if Eve had cast out a line with her last two words, and the line carried a tantalising bait. "But then—what?" "I sometimes think he would like to marry. To provide Palari with an heir, I suppose." "What a stinker of a reason for getting married," Allison said flatly. "Hasn't he ever heard of love?" "Heard of it, but not practised it," said Eve. " He's not interested." Allison glanced at Leura through the smoke haze. "I think we ought to educate him. Draw lots, Leura, to see who tries first?" The smoke caught in Leura's throat, and she coughed. "He's all yours, Allison," she said at length. "I'm not in the market. I'm out of love myself." At any rate, she thought, Allison's little game would free Eve for Buck's

exclusive attention. It would mean there would be no apparent rivalry for the great Ashe's affections. Leura laughed ruefully to herself at the recollection that so recently she herself would have been moved to heaven by an extra glance from Buck. It was rebound, she said to herself, looking that love in the eye with honest truth. Then she fell to wondering if Joe or Mr. Paget were indeed likely to come to Palari as thought possible by Dan. Dan was something of a sweetie, after all—if only she could really understand him. Anyhow it wasn't worth thinking about. He was way up there amongst the gods of station-owners, whereas she was a lowly shearers' cook. What were her father's ten thousand acres to Palari's million and Yindathurra's halfmillion ? "I have a headache," she said flatly, interrupting Allison in the middle of a sentence. "Let's go and make some tea. Who knows where the aspirin was packed?" Work on Yindathurra began at a spinning pace and the three girls, like the men, hardly stopped to draw breath. Allison was the cook this time and Eve played rouseabout to her. Leura went into the shed as runner, promising to change over with Eve as soon as the latter had become back-easy. "How's it going?" Allison asked at nightfall when Leura, showered up for dinner, went into the cook-house. "Not so bad. I'll loosen up in a day or two." The day had to come when Dan Grayson came across from Palari to Yindathurra. Nobody knew why he did not keep to his usual practice of visiting the woolshed on its first working day. Even Eve did not try guessing. "What's the odds?" Buck said, when asked. "Who wants Dan, anyway?" A shadow was thrown across the open mouth of the woolshed at that moment, and Dan Grayson came in. "At least I know who doesn't want him," Dan said, with a half-smile. Leura had not seen the shadow of his arrival and it was only his voice that came through to her, penetrating a thin wall of fatigue and backache. She did not even turn her head or look up. She thought about the voice instead. Dan Grayson was there. Funny, but she would have known his voice anywhere. It had a timbre—like someone plucking a note on a harp that was deep and soft—and lingered. It was a nice voice. It drawled. With her head drooping down as befitted a weary rouseabout resting, Leura's ears listened for it again, but she did not look up or speak.

"Well, now you know," Buck said easily. "How about a cup of tea, Dan?" "That's what I've come for. Who's the cook? Leura?" Leura sat as she was and did not look up. The others answered for her. "Allison is the cook," Eve said from the wool-bale. "And I'm the rouseabout." Dan didn't even look surprised to see his sister sitting there. Buck watched the other man through suddenly narrowed eyes. Dan hadn't flinched a muscle when he had walked in and seen Leura and Allison there. Nothing happened now he recognised his sister up there on the bale, a rouseabout to all appearances. Maybe an explosion will come later, Buck thought. I'll hand it to Dan for being able to take something between the eyes without a flinch. Then Buck laughed to himself. He'd seen Dan stand quietly up to a thousand astonishing situations and show nothing but that easy-going smile, a pleasant friendliness in his eyes. When he was good and ready and wanted to lash out, that's just what Dan did. Well, the lash-out wasn't for yet, Buck thought. "Wake up, Goldilocks," he said aloud to Allison. "Fetch the boss a cup of tea. What are you being paid for?" Allison, sitting perched on the wool-bale, had, for half a moment, forgotten her paid duties. She was thinking Dan had made quite an entrance and she was watching him with fascination. How'd he go at home, she was wondering pleasurably and giving herself a happy daydream of suddenly producing Dan Grayson in her uncle's office— not to mention the office of Ion Blackett—just to see their reactions. "What? Me?" she said, waking up from her dream of her uncle's office. Funny, she'd had another spasm of homesickness. It was gone now. She slid off the bale, and hitched her trews into a safer position inside the snake-belt. One of the men had made it for her. "I'm ever so sorry, Dan. I forgot you drank tea." "Hot, black and strong," he said quietly. "And I don't take sugar." Allison crossed the floor to the billycan. "Guess Leura knows better about those details than I do," Allison said, as she lifted the billy and began to pour black tea into a pint cup. "She knows everybody's degree of blackness. Some take it black enough to hold up a gumtree. Some take it amber . . . like Sheba's necklace." Dan was standing looking at Leura. She had not moved. It was her tea-break and if she didn't make the most of it her back wouldn't stand up till the lunch-break. She didn't want to look at Dan but she liked listening to his voice. She had a warm pleasant feeling because he was there in the woolshed. That was because he ought to be there,

of course. He was the station-owner. That meant he was everybody's fatherfigure in a way— though he probably wasn't more than thirty, if as much. But she was still going to have her tea-break her way. It was her Union right. She had a ticket. The shearers and the shed-hands went on drinking their tea and biting into their scones, but they watched and took notice of Dan Grayson as if he was a being from another planet, and one of infinite interest. Only Leura, apparently, was not interested. Dan found this intriguing. Without expecting it he had always accepted the awareness of his presence wherever he was on his station. Here was a girl who couldn't care less. Dan found it revolutionary and almost pleasant. The girl's indifference was innocent of offence, too. "Buck," he said, when he had drained most of his tea, "can you spare half an hour? I'd like to go through the clip prospects with you." Buck heaved himself up from the floor. "When you like, Dan," he said. "Shall we go up to the office?" "Can't imagine a better place," Dan said, with a grin. The "office" was the store-room, full of cartons, packing-cases and shearers' gear, but it sufficed. Dan put down his empty cup. "Let's go," he said. He looked round the men seated on the floor, their backs to the wall, to Allison and Eve up on the woolbale, and lastly at Leura. He lifted his hand in a sort of leave-taking gesture. "See you all later," he said cheerfully. Still Leura did not look up. Next time I get her alone, Dan said to himself, I'll take a strap to her, and wake her up. " 'Bye, Dan!" Allison called to his back, sorry to see him go and not minding that she showed it. Dan turned and waved his hand. "That one was for me!" Allison said cockily. She let her lids half-droop over her eyes and looked lazily round the shearers. "The rest of you can forget it. 'S mine." "You can have it," one of the men said, getting up on to his feet and putting his mug down on a box. " Any time Dan Grayson waves to me I'll give it right back where it belongs. In his pocket." "You're jealous," said Allison. "Come on down off that bale, Eve. You've work to do. Collect all those cups while I pick up the billies and likewise another mess." Leura exercised control to get up without a groan, but she did this happily. It had been a nice tea-break—Dan coming like that. She wondered if he would ever take her for that ride he had promised long

ago. No. It was only a week or two ago. Heavens, she felt as if she had spent half a lifetime in a woolshed! Chapter l6 that had kept Dan Grayson from making his regular first-day visit to the woolshed. It had been a series of telegrams, radio calls and general inquiries from a person calling himself Ion Blackett, address Upton & Blackett, London, now in Darwin, passing into Australia by air, and on business. IT HAD NOT BEEN VISITORS IN THE PALARI HOMESTEAD

There had been one radio call from another quarter—-the south-west. This had stated shortly that the Pagets, father and son, would not be free to come to Palari for several weeks. About this Dan was pleased, and meanwhile had to get on with the business of unravelling the mysteries of the person called Blackett now in Darwin. The first radio call had come over the Flying Doctor Service from Port Hedland and Dan happened to be in his office at the time, going through the accounts with his book-keeper. "Message for Dan Grayson of Palari. Blackett of Upton and Blackett making enquiries about means of making his way to Palari from Darwin. Would appreciate reply from Grayson." Dan came back on the transceiver to the headquarters. Bluntly he said : "Listen, Andy. Who the hell is Blackett of Upton and Blackett? Never heard of him and why does he want to come to Palari? Over." The reply was thoughtful and studied. "You must have heard of him, Dan. A message went through four days ago to the Upton part of Upton and Blackett in London, informing him—the Upton part— his niece was on Palari and was in difficulties. Don't swear, Dan, the whole of the north is probably listening in. Over." "Somebody's niece in difficulties!" The listening north could hear the strain of control in Dan's voice. He did not swear. "I haven't any nieces of anybody on the raking station. Tell him to catch a jet out of Darwin and fly off. Close now. Over." He switched off and swung round in his chair to catch his book-keeper's sleepy eyes looking at him more sleepily than usual. "What do you suppose that was all about?" Dan asked. "Some nut wanting to hitch-hike a thousand miles across station tracks and stock routes to mend screen doors up at the homestead? And I'm to tell him how?" The book-keeper shook his head. He was a man always short of words, so he used them sparingly.

"The girl with the fair hair—down at the woolshed. Name of Upton," he said. Dan looked surprised. "Upton? Good heavens. I always called her Allison. What's she got to do with it?" "Same name as Upton and Blackett—the fellow who called. Could be the same person. The one in difficulties." "Don't be a raking fool," Dan said bluntly. "That girl's having the time of her life. Never saw anyone healthier or more fit." "All the same—someone sent a message. Andy said so." Dan thought for two minutes. Then he swung his chair round and reached for the dials on the transceiver. The pharmacist on the Flying Doctor Service was listing medicines to be kept in station first-aid cupboards and was asking stations to check. It was forbidden to interrupt such a session, and Dan Grayson was disinclined to do so in any event. He wanted time to think. He was certain sure he didn't want the whole of the north to hear of any girl—Blackett, Upton or Allison— in difficulties on his property. "She couldn't have sent that radio," he said flatly. "She was about twenty-four hours in the homestead and didn't come near this office. She wouldn't know how to send a message over the transceiver." "Mrs. Grayson could have sent it." The book-keeper put too much innocence into that remark not to rouse Dan's suspicions. "So that's it, is it?" He pulled in his feet and stood up. "Excuse me, Bart, while I go and see what goes on, and why." It took Dan ten minutes to hear from his mother again, at length, that if Allison Upton's people knew she had to live under such rough conditions they would not allow it. Mrs. Grayson, for her part, was not going to allow it either. Allison had mentioned the address of her uncle and she, Mrs. Grayson, had simply done her duty to the girl—and her relatives—by letting them know, the quickest possible way, of the circumstances in which the girl was on Palari. Then it was their responsibility. Had she delayed, anything might have happened. Anything. Dan was coldly angry. "What do you mean by anything, Mother?" he asked. "Buck Ashe is looking after that girl and nothing has ever happened that could be rated as anything —in that tone of voice—in Buck Ashe's team." "Snake-bite, for instance," Mrs. Grayson said blandly. "That girl wouldn't know what to do about a snake-bite if she had one." "Do you suppose that message reaching England would sound like something as harmless as a snake-bite?" "I've known people die of snake-bite," Mrs. Grayson said loftily. "I would hardly call it harmless."

"I would hardly call that message harmless either. Whoever received it the other end didn't think it harmless either. He must have caught the first jet out of England. He's in Darwin now." Mrs. Grayson smiled happily. "Quite right too," she said. "All I hope is, he doesn't take us to task when he sees the conditions under which that girl is living, and working." "It doesn't occur to you, Mother, that that girl is happy. She likes it. What's more, she's safer in that woolshed than if she was in Fremantle Gaol." "Never mind about that now, dear. That man, whoever he is, will come and see for himself. Then it will be his responsibility. By the way, where are the girls ? They left Palari on Monday. They must be on the track for Port Hedland. Probably on the bitumen by now." "You don't seem to have had very much concern for the other girl. Leura Barton. Why leave her out from your life-saving messages?" "Leura Barton is engaged to Joe Paget. I arranged for one or other of the Pagets to come and see us about that ram. Whoever comes could take her home, if she is still in the north. Dan, I know Buck Ashe is absolutely trustworthy but I will not have girls in the shearers' quarters." "Well, they're in the shearers' quarters right now. Over at Yindathurra. When your pals Upton, Blackett and Paget arrive, you can send them right across to Yindathurra and they can effect their own rescues. Meanwhile, I've work to do." Dan was so angry that for the moment he had forgotten that the Pagets were not coming just yet. He was thinking only of some scion of an engineering firm waiting in Darwin to be shown the way to Palari. Well, the scion could find out for himself. Dan was not having a bar of anyone north or south of the equator saying any girl was in difficulties on his property. The sayer could come, and then chew his own words. It has been Mrs. Grayson who had explained that Allison's people—Upton & Blackett—were an engineering firm. To Dan they were a firm, not people, and he couldn't worry less. Back in his office, the book-keeper reminded Dan that this was the firm that had lately taken up an interest in Australia. It had been in a recent paper and the book-keeper found-the copy from the pile on the floor in the corner. Dan calmed down. "I guess this fellow's come out on business anyway," he said. "He'd know the sort of girl she is, and is probably no more than looking her up. He thinks getting from Darwin to Palari is the same as getting to Edinburgh from London." "Back in the old country that's quite a journey," the book-keeper said reminiscently. "Least, that's how people look at it."

"Then he's in for some education once he leaves Darwin," said Dan. " Let's get on with these books. I've work to do out on the run some time. And I have to get over to Yindathurra. They're starting shearing." The next message to Dan threw another spanner in his day's work. A radio message came through from a member of the Government. Would Mr. Grayson meet Mr. Blackett of Upton & Blackett and act as host ? The Government member concluded Mr. Blackett must be a friend of Grayson. Information was to the effect that Mr. Blackett was bound for Palari Station. Dan said dryly, "He almost sounds important." The next call, later in the afternoon, came from Darwin again, so—in view of the Government request—Dan told Mr. Blackett to catch a cross-country plane to Port Hedland and he would have Mr. Blackett motored to Palari. Did 'Mr. Blackett understand that this would take two days— apart from the plane journey?' After that, Dan had to contact the plane service to check which day the plane came through and then send the mighty Richards, overseer, overlanding to pick up the strange guest. After that, Dan gave thinking about the matter a rest. One thing he knew for certain. When he went across to Yindathurra himself, he wasn't going to tell Allison what was afoot. He wasn't going to spoil her enjoyment of the job, and the life, by one day. She might as well stay with the shearing team till the last minute and get what she could out of it. The Blackett person sounded like some middle-aged, pious uncle, by the wording of his messages. There had been no direct conversation. "God help that nice little fair-haired girl when she falls into Nuncle's clutches," he said to the book-keeper. "Fun will be over for good and all. Personally, I'd opt for Fremantle Gaol." The third day after Dan's visit to Yindathurra, Ion Blackett arrived on Palari. Since he was a man of interest to the Government, Dan did him the honour of being showered and dressed in a fresh set of fawn-coloured drill clothes and with his stock-boots polished, double shine. Richards had come through on the transceiver to say what hour they were leaving Port Hedland and Dan, from long experience, knew the exact hour Richards would arrive with his guest. The General who planned rescue operations on Palari never had anything go wrong with his car or his plans, and he travelled by speedometer reckoning. Two hundred miles to the Black Stump turn-off. One-forty-fiveand-a-half miles to Emu Gap . . . and so on, and so forth. Richards, true to form, bowled up to the homestead within fifteen minutes of Dan's reckoning. A young man, tall and extremely good-looking as well as being extremely well-tailored, let himself out of Richard's car and came up the path to meet

Dan. He held out his hand and said, in the most pleasant voice : "A thousand apologies, Grayson. I had no idea getting to Palari would put you to so much trouble." "No trouble at all," said Dan. "I'm glad to see you. Come in and meet my mother. Tea will be ready in a few minutes." Leura and Allison, had they heard this welcome of Dan's and his calm statement that it was " no trouble at all," would have cooed with delight. They had long ago started a little black notebook with the lies that Buck and Dan told—in order to run a station smoothly—listed. Two strictly honest, dishonourable men, they labelled them. Dan actually, though surprised, was reassured by the appearance of Ion Blackett. He thought him a very presentable man, and when they fell to talking as they waited for the appearance of Mrs. Grayson and the tea, he thought him also quite likeable. Ion Blackett had put his hat on the veranda table and taken a cane chair. Dan was as astonished by his guest's hat as his guest was amazed at Dan's hat. Both were too polite to mention the subject. "Is Allison here?" Ion Blackett asked immediately. He was as eager as he was anxious, Dan thought. "No. She's out at a woolshed of mine on another property. We can bring her across to-morrow if necessary." Dan offered cigarettes, then added, drawling: "She happens to be on contract with a shearing team and is not at liberty to leave her work without the permission of the shearing contractor." Dan lit their cigarettes, then said through the last flame of the match before he blew it out: "I should have added—if Buck Ashe is agreeable, we will bring her across tomorrow. Buck Ashe is only agreeable when it suits him." Dan was impressed by the fact that Ion Blackett showed no signs of consternation or discouragement. "She is all right ? I mean—well?" "Never seen anyone fitter in my life. Or happier." It was then that Mrs. Grayson advanced on to the veranda from the livingroom door, holding out her hand in the manner of a station matriarch, looking and being her most charming best. Tea and explanations followed. Dan gazed amiably out over vistas of spinifex into a sky of colourless glass while his mother was forthright about her opinions of young girls travelling round the world by themselves. Without once looking in Ion Blackett's direction Dan knew that Blackett was punctuating Mrs. Grayson's remarks with quick glances at himself. Dan knew the young man was drawing his own conclusions and was not likely to lose a night's sleep over Allison's safety.

Ion Blackett thanked Mrs. Grayson for her thoughtfulness, then changed the subject to that of the engineering project in which Upton & Blackett were interested. "We were lucky to win an Australian Government contract," he said, "in the face of fairly steep competition from the Continent, and America too. As junior partner of the firm, I'm to make the initial contacts with the Australian end." "How splendid," Mrs. Grayson said—awed by anyone who won a Government contract. "I have to spend at least a week or fourteen days in Perth," Ion Blackett went on. "Then back to London, of course. I may have the good fortune to make regular visits to Australia over the years if all goes well with the scheme." "How wonderful!" Mrs. Grayson exclaimed. "You'll love the north-west of Australia. It's a wonderful life we have here." Both Dan and Ion Blackett wore expressionless faces now. Neither commented on the fact that formerly Mrs. Grayson had not thought it a fit place for Allison. But then Allison was a girl. In Mrs. Grayson's day, men, but not girls, were permitted to enjoy the north-west of Australia. Women may only grace a station veranda at tea-time, or the dinner-table at party-time. The girls who worked the copper mine up the country with their brothers and father were people beyond the horizons of Mrs. Grayson's visible world. She didn't know of such things as girls mining. She might have thought it worse than working in a woolshed. So no one enlightened her. Dan had further talks with Ion Blackett in his office that night, and finally it was agreed that Dan should take his guest over to Yindathurra in the morning himself. "I don't think you'll soften up Buck Ashe," he warned. "He's tough when it comes to the members of his team; and he happens to like Allison. He won't let her go inside her contract time." He privately wondered if Buck would want to let her go at all—if Allison wanted to stay. Only the morning would show. Ion Blackett made no comment. First he had to see Allison. If she was well, and wanted to stay out her contract, then he would go down to Perth on his business. He could then pick Allison up at Port Hedland on his way back to Darwin. If Allison wanted to come! That was the problem. And only Ion Blackett knew how sore that problem was. He said nothing of this to Dan. He admired the patrician quality of this tall, lean outback man who gave away little of himself but who nevertheless was easily approachable. Dan was the kind of man he trusted implicitly on sight. Ion Blackett knew nothing of

the girls' little black notebook, of course. They left Palari homestead just after daybreak the next morning in Dan's overlander. The sunrise flashed crimson colour over the grey face of the spinifex and the sky changed from grey to amethyst then rosy red. Within a few minutes it turned blue, then was colourless. The vast land of Palari Station stretched away to all horizons and Ion Blackett was silenced by its size, its emptiness except for the sheep here and there, and the red tracks winding in a desultory way in all directions. They arrived at Yindathurra shortly after the morning tea-break, and the team was back at work. Dan drove the car straight up to the quarters, by-passing the woolshed, and stopped outside the cook-house door. He led Ion Blackett up the wooden steps on to the lean-to veranda and opened the screen door. Dan was realist enough, and ruthless enough, to let the two meet unprepared. The man had come from England and butted in on the girl's affairs. Well, here were the affairs. Ion Blackett stood in the doorway, with Dan holding the screen door behind him. The light was so bright in the outside world that for a moment the Englishman stood blinking, either not believing, or not quite seeing, what his eyes struggled to tell him was there. Eve was outside getting the side of mutton from the open-air meat-safe. Over Blackett's shoulder Dan saw Allison, an apron tied neatly round her waist. She was at the stove at the end of the room, and at the sound of someone coming in, she turned round. Her face when she saw who was standing there was like a film story girl registering incredulity, joy, then a naive kind of anger. "Where on earth did you come from?" "Allison..." "Why did you come? How dare you come?" "Why did you run away?" Ion Blackett placed the incredible Mayfair hat on the shearers' dining-table and went towards the girl. Suddenly tears were streaming down her face. In another minute Ion Blackett would have his arms around that distraught girl but Dan decided this was no place for him. He let the screen door bang shut, thundered in his double-shine stockboots across the narrow veranda and took one leap to dismiss the three wooden steps to the ground. Eve, also apron over trews, burdened with her side of mutton, came round the corner of the building. She stared at Dan with sisterly annoyance. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

Dan looked as if he had just been through a course of shock therapy. "There's a man from England here," he said shortly. "He's in there making love to Allison." This had an unexpected effect on Eve. "What would you know about that?" she asked caustically. "You don't even know what making love is, Dan. You wouldn't know how. You're about as isolated as a cliff on a breakaway the other side of beyond—as far as love is concerned." She lowered the mutton to the corner of the veranda and wiped her hands on her apron. Dan had never seen his sister with smuts and dust on her face before, much less in trews and desert boots looking like a tigress about to spring. Mention of someone making love to someone had suddenly unlatched a flood-gate in Eve and she had things to say to her brother she had long kept pent up. "You think those girls—Mary and Julie McCarthy and Jill Penton and Sally Anderson—are all in love with Palari and not you, don't you? Well, you're right. When you're around, Dan, people—girls—only love acres. You don't know anything about making love. You don't know anything about telling a girl she has a nice hat, or what colour her eyes are—or if she's wearing a pretty dress or not. . . ." Eve was suddenly aware that at the moment she wore neither a nice hat nor a pretty dress, and as far as Dan's deaf ears were concerned she was talking rubbish. She brushed one lock of dark hair from her eyes and picked up her side of mutton again. Then the news that Dan had conveyed really romped home. "What did you say about a man from England—and Allison?" "Leave it ten minutes, then go and see for yourself," Dan said. "Give me that mutton and I'll put it back in the meat-house. You won't need it for another hour." He took the load from his sister and walked away. Eve turned round and stared at Dan's back. What had made her talk like that to Dan? Love was a sore subject in Eve's Palari, Dan knew. Buck Ashe had been his friend for twenty years. Dan liked him better than any other man he knew, but right now he would like to take Buck by the neck, and the seat of his pants, and throw him in the creek. Dan shut the meat-safe door and walked away to the yards where the sheep waiting to be shorn were mustered. A dust cloud hung over everything like a pall and in the distance he could hear the stockmen's cries as they rounded another river of sheep towards the paddock. Dan leaned on the rails and stared at his fleecy property.

What on earth had Eve said about the colour of a girl's eyes ? He tried to remember the colour of Mary McCarthy's eyes. Or Julie's or Sally Anderson's for that matter. He couldn't be sure about them but he thought they might be blue. He was certain he would remember if a girl had brown eyes. Brown eyes were so rare in the north-west; the men regarded them as jewels. The men always talked about a brown-eyed girl when they saw one. Grey eyes. He had only seen one pair of grey eyes as far as he could remember and they were Leura's. Creek-crystal clear grey eyes that were very honest, sometimes a little sad and sometimes full of a fun-making kind of derision. He wondered why on earth he should remember Leura's eyes when he remembered none of the others. Dan removed his boot from the stock-rail and his arms from the top rail and turning round went thoughtfully towards the woolshed. Inside the men worked with bent backs at their stands and the shears buzzed and clicked in a rhythm that made the pace of work. At the table Buck sorted for Billy Rafferty, who classed the backs and passed to Leura. Leura threw to the bins and when a fleece dropped stooped and picked it up. She looked slender, almost frail, in those trews. She had a linen hat pulled down over her hair and it dropped a little at the brim, casting a shadow over her face. Dan regretted this because he wanted to look at her eyes. He wanted to be certain they were just as he had been thinking of them five minutes ago. No one stopped because the station-owner stood there, though probably everyone in the woolshed knew the boss was watching. Speed was the essence of the contract when sheep were being shorn by the thousand. A shearer made his money by his tally and every day was a competition of man against man. Woe betide the shed-hand who served one shearer better or faster than another. Dan knew the rules. So he stood in silence, and watched. Presently he eased over to the table and watched the fleeces. At the end of the shed the presses clanged as the bales were put together, but still no one looked up to see what the squatter was doing. It was his shed, and he could come; but he had to keep quiet about it. The men knew the rules of the game too. Dan watched Billy Rafferty handling the backs and waited for a fleece to fall. When that happened Leura might look up when she lifted it. Then he would see her eyes. The shadow was on Leura's face from the brim of her soiled linen hat and she did not once glance in Dan's direction. He looked at his watch. He would have to wait an hour and a quarter to the lunch-break. Well, he

wasn't going to do that for any woman. Now, or ever. He turned on his heel, eased himself between the table and one of the waiting bins and walked out of the woolshed into the dusty sunshine and heat of day. Farther down at the stockyards he found one of the stockmen's rouseabouts. "Johnson," he said, " you can drive a car?" "I can that, Boss. Any make you like." "I'll take the pick-up back to Palari. There's a station visitor up at the quarters talking to one of the girls. He's an Englishman. You'll know him by his hat. Bring him up to the homestead in my car when he's good and ready to come. Might be sundown." "Okay, Boss." Dan turned away, then turned back. "Use your tact. Don't hurry him." The man, Red-Indian-faced from the dust, grinned. "Okay, Boss!" he said a second time. That night there was consternation in the girls' room, after Ion Blackett had left to be driven back to Palari. He would have stayed the night in the quarters if Buck Ashe had let him. On that score Buck Ashe was adamant. Nothing was going to interfere with his team while it was on contract, he said. Mr. Blackett could come back at the week-end if he wanted to see his girlfriend. Love was out of class while the shearing was on, Buck pointed out. He didn't allow it in, on, or around the quarters till the contract was up. He trusted Mr. Blackett saw his point. What was more, Buck was blunt about any prospect of any member of his team dropping out. "I drop no one out, once they're on for a shed," he said. "And no one drops me. You understand? Quite apart from legal contracts . . . there's a thing I learnt at school. They might learn it in your country. Noblesse oblige." Actually Ion Blackett was delighted with Buck. He thought he was a character, but quite apart from that, he knew instantly that Mrs. Grayson's concern for Allison, though perhaps kindly meant, had been quite unnecessary. When Dan Grayson's car, driven by Johnson and carrying Ion Blackett, had disappeared up the track in its own dust cloud, Buck climbed down from his high horse. He had a grieved expression on his face as he looked at Allison. "So you'll be leaving us, Goldilocks? Well, I didn't expect a good thing to last for ever." He flipped the tip of her nose with his finger. "He's quite a nice bloke . . . when he doesn't wear that hat," he said. "I guess you've made a good choice." "What you think of Ion's hat is absolutely nothing to what he thinks of your hat," Allison said loftily. " Only he's too polite to say so." "He will. Once you're married. You wait and see. Every man's the same once

he sits down to over-done steak after the honeymoon—no matter what he wears." It was almost dark, for the sun had gone down ten minutes before, but Buck still wore his hat. He took it off now and looked affectionately at its four-inchwide brim, shabby and layered with dust. "Now that's a hat for you," he said, holding it out for inspection. Then he glanced sideways at Allison. "You wouldn't believe it, but I set it at you... for quite a while. Till I sensed your heart was somewhere else anyway." "How did you guess, Buck?" "Those bouts of homesickness. That leary look in your eye when the moon came up. It had nothing to do with a shearing team, or the north-west for that matter." "I'm crazy about the north-west, and when we're married I'm going to come backwards and forwards with Ion. Buck, don't you think I'm the luckiest person ever? I have two countries, and I can live in both. Six months here and six months there." "Better choose summer both sides of the equator," Buck advised. In their room, as the girls undressed for the night, there was a see-saw between high spirits and low spirits. Leura and Eve had had the surprise of their lives. They said Allison was a "dark horse" but they were thrilled with delight at her happiness. "Why didn't you ever tell about him?" Leura asked. "I did about Joe Paget." "But you and Joe Paget had been engaged and broken off. It was all over. I didn't know about Ion. I thought Uncle was trying to dragoon him into marrying me, and me into marrying him. I couldn't bear it. I thought I'd die rather than have Ion marry me because it was good for the firm. I hated him for it—yet I was really madly in love with him. So I ran away." "And all the time he didn't want you for that price either?" said Leura. "He wanted you to love him, too, not the firm." "Why don't people ever tell what they really think and want?" Eve said furiously. "Because they're always afraid the other one doesn't want," Leura said. "No one can bear to make a fool of himself—or herself. It all goes too deep. . . ." Eve was first in bed and she threw the packet of cigarettes across to Leura. "You sound as if you know," she said. "Is it true you've broken off with Joe Paget?" "Let's be honest." Leura took a cigarette and threw the packet to Allison. "In effect Joe broke off with me. There was a redhead intervening. I just said the words to make it easy." "And don't you care?"

"Not any more." "Funny," Eve said, lighting her cigarette and throwing the matches to Leura. "I thought you were still engaged to him, and wondered what you were up to. You don't mind my saying that, Leura? It's best to be honest, isn't it?" "I was up to the same as Allison," Leura said. "Just running away from something that was humiliating. I'm awfully glad I did. I've had a wonderful time with the shearing team." There was a silence as the three girls puffed thoughtfully at their cigarettes. Then Eve said, carefully, thoughtfully, "I thought perhaps you rather liked Buck, Leura. . . ." "I did. In a way. Who wouldn't? Allison did too, didn't you, Allison? But it wasn't in the love-and-stay-married-ever-after-way. It's that he's such a marvellous person." "Agreed," said Allison. "I adore him, but I wouldn't want to marry him. Besides, I never stopped being in love with Ion." Allison stared at the raftered ceiling through the cigarette smoke. "Leura, will you hate me for breaking up our partnership before we meant? You will have the Holden, won't you ? " "I'd hate you if you stuck with me when Ion's come all this way to get you. Besides . . . Eve will stick around, won't you, Eve? I'd like the Holden. I can pay you your half out of my pay-packet—plus some savings I left in the bank against emergency." "I'll buy the other half of the Holden," Eve said quickly. "I'll need it too if Leura and I stick together. My little car won't carry us fast enough over the rough tracks comfortably." "I want to give it to you-" "Rot!" Eve and Leura said in unison. There had been no question of Allison leaving the team until the shed was worked out. She knew the contract but in any event she was half heart-broken at leaving at all. Only sheer happiness in her engagement to Ion softened the blow. Meantime the two weeks of further work in the shed gave Ion Blackett the time and opportunity to go to Perth on the business affairs of Upton & Blackett. It almost seemed too good to be true that Allison could always have one foot in each of her two beloved countries. Ion was certain that once the firm was established he would have to come to Australia at least once a year, and then probably for a four to six months' stay. Keeping strictly to Buck's rule he did not come over to Yindathurra shed until the week-end, and Dan had kindly lent him one of the station cars. Dan himself had driven over at a later hour in another car. He wasn't sure what was the attraction over at the boundary woolshed. Suddenly the homestead seemed empty. The living-room and veranda was full of vast

unpopulated spaces, and rang only with the sound of ghost feet. Dan was surprised that Eve's absence from the homestead should make such a difference. Mrs. Grayson had noticed it but was busy arranging a long visit to a neighbouring station for the picnic-races season. That and her visitor had stopped her from worrying about the sudden madness of Eve, who, Mrs. Grayson now discovered, had taken herself off to join the girls—down in the shearers' quarters—at Yindathurra. Ion Blackett had been the one who revolutionised Mrs. Grayson's attitudes in this respect. He told her of the changed modern world in Europe and advised her to do what his own parents had done—accept it. "Once you've trained your children how to act and think, the ball's in their court," he said. "It's up to them." Strangely, Mrs. Grayson listened to Ion Blackett. She made no comment but she seemed to be half-way to believing him. Dan listened to these conversations, made no comment, but wondered why the dickens the homestead seemed so empty—even with a visitor sitting in Eve's place. On Saturday morning he took a car and followed Ion's dust to Yindathurra. He wanted to look at the stock horses, anyway. Some of the men were a bit careless about taking change horses. He wanted to check. He saw Ion's car outside the cook-house, and one or two of the shearers hitting golf balls round the adjacent paddock. Others were hanging out their washing and some were dozing over books in the shade of a clump of trees. Dan went over to the stockyard and began to go over the horses and their gear. A little later Leura came down to him with a billy of tea. "I saw you arrive," she said. "You didn't come up to the cook-house for tea so I thought I'd bring some down to you." Dan watched her as he thanked her. Yes, her eyes were clear. He was glad he'd cleared up that little point. He suddenly remembered that message about the Pagets not coming to Palari for a week or two. "Joe Paget and his father are coming to Palari," he said. " But I'm afraid not for a week or two. Buck's team might have moved on, and you with it." He saw a shadow pass over her face but she smiled up at him quite simply. "If Buck signs Eve and me on, we'll go with him," she said. hoping. He never tells, does he?"

"We're still

"No. He runs his own business his own way but mostly he sticks to his team, and they stick to him." They both had one foot on the lower rail of the stockyard and their arms resting on the top one. Dan had lifted the billy and drained the tea. He shook out the tea leaves and stood the billy upside down on an upright. "The next shed will be over two hundred miles away," Leura said.

"We'd better go for that horse-ride now, in that case," Dan said. "I think I did promise. . . ." "Yes, please," said Leura. "I'd love to. I don't have to get anything. My trews will protect my ankles." "Sure?" "Certain sure. This is how I rode at home." Dan brought the two horses, quickly saddled, to the trees at the side of the stockyard. "I have to give you a leg up," he said. "You do," Leura laughed. "Last time I had to be swung up. Remember?" "I do," Dan said seriously. "Very well." He bent and cradled his hands to take Leura's foot. She made a faulty try, for the horse was almost seventeen hands, and she came back to earth again, both feet on the ground. "I'll lift you," he said. He put his hands round her waist. Suddenly she was very near him. His hands almost met round her slim waist and he could feel her breath on his brown dusty neck. His hands held her prisoner. For a startled minute she thought he was about to kiss her. He lifted his head quickly, looked over her head at the distant skies, then looked back into her eyes. The ease that had been between them was gone. Something was crying inside Leura. Now Dan Grayson! I can't ever face falling in love again. I can't go through with it. The hope—and the pain. He lifted her up on to the horse. As she picked up the reins, and he walked over to his own mount, she looked at his tall khaki-clad figure. He had nearly kissed her. Why? Dan pulled his horse round to come up beside her. As he did so he glanced at her face. It was set—cold and as distant as a mask. He touched his heel to the horse. "Let's go," he said. They rode far out over the spinifex and back again, each deliberately making an effort to ease the unwanted tension between them. When they came back Dan helped Leura dismount. He was careful to hold her distantly and not look at anything but her feet to see that she landed safely. "Thank you. That was lovely, Dan," Leura said conventionally. "What fabulous horses they are! Bigger than anything I've ever seen." They talked about the horses and their bloodstock as they unsaddled and then Dan walked up to the quarters with Leura. At the foot of the steps he touched his hat politely. "We must ride again, some time," he said. "Yes, I'd love that." Leura tried desperately to sound natural but ended up

nervously, jokingly, "You'll have to come two hundred miles for a ride—if Buck takes me on." She was saying it for the sake of saying something... the last awkwardness of good-bye. "Two hundred miles is not as far as Ion Blackett came, for Allison," Dan said. Then he looked at Leura quite seriously. "I just might ride that two hundred miles." Leura laughed. "Quite a journey that would be—on horseback. Goodbye, Dan, and once again—thank you." She went along the veranda to the girls' room and did not look back once. He watched her go, then walked away to his car. He moved in behind the wheel and shut the door quietly. Then he drove back to Palari. It was on the last day of the shed, two weeks later, that Dan came to Yindathurra again. Leura avoided him, keeping as much of the woolshed and as many of the men as possible between herself and Dan. Ion Blackett, his business talks in Perth finished, had come too, and was taking Allison back to Palari homestead for the night. The next day everyone was driving to the hotel in the town to see them off on their first stage back to England. Ion had bought a car while in the city and it was being freighted by truck as far as Noya. He and Allison were to pick it up there, overland to Darwin, and the car would be left there for the firm's use when the first of the group arrived from England to begin work on the engineering job. Leura's distance was so contrived it was obvious to Dan. No girl kept a distance like that, except she meant it. In an odd kind of way it amused him. He came to the door of the girls' room to take Allison's last case to the car, and Eve brought it out for him. "What goes on with Leura?" Eve asked. "She's been as silent as a sick sphinx ever since you took her for that ride. That bronco didn't throw her, did it?" "No. Perhaps seeing Allison go off with Ion; and maybe she is disappointed the Pagets didn't come to Palari. They won't be here for weeks." "She wouldn't care a fig," Eve said shortly. "That old engagement was broken ages ago. Before she came up north. She doesn't even mind any more." Dan watched his sister's bent head as she put the case down on the veranda floor. "Does she care for Buck, perhaps?" he asked. "She'd better not," said Eve, straightening up. "Buck is mine, Dan. I don't intend to run away from him the way those two girls ran away. I'm going to stick around and if Buck doesn't like me one day, he won't get a chance to like anyone else. I won't let him." Dan laughed. "Good for you, Eve," he said. "You're the only one who'll ever be right for Buck. You understand him. Put a leg-rope and halter on him for

me. But mind you hitch him to Palari's woolshed. I don't want any other team round here." Eve kissed her brother's cheek. "Sorry I was such a stinker the other day," she said. "Saying those rude things about love to you. I guess the subject's on my mind, and what's more I think you do know something about it. It's just a case of the right person." "How right you are," said Dan, and he picked up Allison's case. "See you later, old girl." "Not so much of the 'old girl' thank you. You're eight years up on me." Dan gave a wave of his hand and carried Allison's case to the waiting car. Leura was nowhere to be seen as they moved off. She and Allison had had their second-last, almost tearful farewells. "I'll see you in Noya to-morrow," Leura had said. "Till then . . ." "Till then . . ." Allison blinked the tears back too. She wasn't going to howl like a schoolgirl just because she was saying good-bye to someone who had been no more than the girl at the next typewriter three months ago. But what a girl! The next day the entire shearing team, now on the move to the next shed two hundred miles up the track, went to Noya to "whack it up" and send the young couple off with a zing. Dan Grayson had notified Mrs. Salter at the hotel from Palari and a mighty spread was set out in the dining-room— to be eaten buffet, on and off all day. Mrs. Grayson had driven as far as the Windie-up turn-off with Dan, Allison and Ion and was then on her way to the picnic-races and a week's stay at that station. They had a wonderfully happy and hilarious three hours at Noya. Allison declared that her wedding, no matter how much fun it might be, couldn't possibly be as wonderful as this. One of the shearers produced his classical guitar and all the old bush ballads were sung. A shed-hand recited "The Sick Stock-rider" and half a dozen others declaimed lengthy excerpts from Banjo Paterson. "Waltzing Matilda" was sung till they never wanted to hear it again. Meantime Mrs. Salter kept the food moving and the kegs of beer and gingerbeer flowing. It was Dan Grayson's party and Mrs. Salter knew just how much of everything Dan had to have provided when he wanted a good party. This was a very good party. The best Mrs. Salter could remember in years. Passers-by, pulling in at the hotel for a refresher and a break from the long thousand-mile drive, joined the party and soon there were almost as many strangers as there were Graysons and the Buck Ashe shearing team. "This looks as if it's going to be an all-day stayer," Ion Blackett said in an aside to Dan.

"It certainly will be that. If you want to hit the bitumen, Ion, you'd better go now. Otherwise it will be to-morrow morning." Ion rescued Allison; their bags were transferred from Dan's car to the new car which had been untrucked the day before at the garage, and once again farewells were said. "It seems like the end of something—seeing Allison go," Eve said to Leura as they stood on the side of the road while Ion Blackett warmed up the engine of the new car. "I don't suppose we'll see anyone like her again." "Allison had something special," Leura said quietly. Like Allison, she wasn't going to shed tears, but it was hard keeping her eyes dry. "There's only one like her in a lifetime." Buck had crossed over from the car and came and stood between the two girls. "Cheer up," he said. " She's coming back. It's not a wake, you know." "If you'll excuse me for five minutes, Buck," Leura said, "I'll go and feel like a wake in privacy—in the hotel. I can't bear to see that car taking off down the road." Leura slipped back into the hotel, which was now empty. Everyone, including Mrs. Salter and the staff, had gone out on to the road to see Allison drive away with the man she loved. The runaway was going home, leaving a little bit of herself behind in the Australian bush. The lounge was bare and the dining-room, still heavy with half-eaten food, was desolate. Laura walked into the living-room and sat down in a chair. Eve's not bright, or amusing, like Allison, she thought. But I'll make do. I'll have to make do. She had avoided Dan all day and somehow knew that he knew it. She could do nothing about that. It was just one of those things. Out in the road a cheer went up, and Leura knew they were off. Eve took Buck's arm and somehow his hand went up and her hand slid down, and they were holding hands. Buck lifted their clasped hands and looked at them with furrowed brows. "I never thought I'd descend to this with a rouseabout," he said, with a grin. "Nor to the squatter's sister?" asked Eve, looking into his eyes, telling nothing, asking nothing very much. Buck smiled at her cheerfully, but he was quite serious when he said: "We've been together a long time, you and I, Eve. Ever since you were a kid and I first came classing as a beginner with Old Man Browning's team. Remember? Browning's dead and the team's mine now, but you and I still seem to be around." "Yes. That's right, Buck." He dropped her hand and slid his arm along her shoulder.

"We understand one another," he said. A light of confidence made Eve's eyes bright and pretty. "We do—and no one else does." "I guess we'll keep it that way." For ever? Buck hadn't said it, but Eve knew he would. One day. She wasn't going to run away, that was for sure. The party went happily, crazily on, even though the guests of honour had gone. Still Leura avoided Dan and she began to be confident that she would succeed in doing this right to the end. Then it was on to the next shed, and good-bye to Palari for ever. It was the best way not to be in love with a man, after all. Keep moving. Run away from it. This course had been successful before and would be successful again. It was Allison's going, of course, that made her want to cry. She must go and do something about her face. Then she could perhaps go and sit in the Holden. She couldn't bear the party, or the hotel any more. She wanted to go away, and be by herself. She could have a sleep in the Holden. She's done that before too. Leura threaded her way through the people and the tables in the dining-room and went along the passage to one of the guest-rooms Mrs. Salter had made available. She washed her face and hands and put on some fresh make-up— very little, because it was too hot for foundations or thick lipstick. Just a brush of fine powder over her skin and the tiniest touch of colour on her mouth. She did her hair, then washed and dried her hands again. She felt better. Now for the side-door, and the Holden parked outside the garage on the other side of the street! As she crossed the road the noise of the party in the hotel behind her seemed to drop away like the stale end of a no-longer-glad story. She didn't want to sit in the Holden—or even go to sleep in it. She wanted to go away—miles and miles away. From habit she checked that the garage man had greased her car, changed the oil and filled the petrol tank. Buck's car, sharing the shade of the pepper tree, was parked alongside. She made sure her spare wheel and all her tools were in the boot this time. Without telling herself what she was about to do she knew she was going to get in the Holden and drive on. She knew where to camp for the night. Buck had told the team before they set out from Yindathurra to come into town. At the Gan Gan turn-off. She had it marked on her map. When she was sure that everything was in order she sat on the street seat under the pepper tree and wrote a note for Buck on a leaf torn from her diary. She tucked the note in the steering-wheel of his car. It was brief and said no

more than that she would drive on to the turn-off and would Buck please bring Eve. When she had done this she went into the empty garage, wrote out a cheque for the car costs and left it under the paperweight on the bench. She felt as if she was doing things in a dream, but even in that dream had time to wonder again at the honesty of the outback. All she had to do was write a cheque and leave it anywhere she liked. It would come home like a pigeon to its own roost. Funny—but wonderful. As she had gone into the garage, Dan had crossed the road to Buck's car. He leaned in the window and picked up Leura's note. He read the short message and then added one of his own. Tell one of the men to drive my car back to Palari. See you later. D. As Leura came out of the garage and opened the door of the Holden, Dan came up behind her. "Get in and move over to the passenger seat," he said quietly. "I'm driving." Leura stood quite still in the dying heat of the late afternoon. The shadows were lying across the road, and she was tired. She closed her eyes, then without a word did as Dan had told her. He eased his long legs under the shaft of the steering-wheel and slammed the car door shut. He turned the key in the lock and the engine sprang into life but he did not move the gear. Instead he waited for Leura to turn her head and look at him. His will was too strong for her will and after a minute she lifted her eyes. She didn't know what she felt. She thought she said prayers to some outside force to rescue her—or have mercy on her—but when Dan's eyes held her eyes she stopped thinking or praying or doing anything. "The Gan Gan turn-off?" he asked quietly. Her voice would hardly come through. "Yes." He shifted the gear and let go the hand-brake, the car moved forward and a moment later was travelling at high speed down the main street out on to the bitumen, then it veered off on to a gravel track. Leura stole a glance at Dan's face. "What are you thinking?" he asked. "I am wondering what you are doing. And why." Her voice still had that faint uneven echo to each word. She wanted to clear her throat but would rather have died than do so. He did not answer. He simply drove on. The alternate shadows and colour of sundown came to her rescue and eased the tension. Ah well! It wasn't the first time she had been kidnapped in the outback. That other time was in the spinifex—this time on a wide road in a country town. She was tired. Very tired.

She slid down a little in her seat and let her head lean back against the backrest, and closed her eyes. "Don't do that," Dan said. She didn't open her eyes. "Why not?" "It makes me want to kiss you." Then her voice—over which she had absolutely no control whatever—said, quite clearly, "Why don't you kiss me, Dan?" Her eyes flew open. Had she said that? Dan braked the car to a standstill and slid one arm along the back of the seat. The knuckles of his other hand, where it rested on the steering-wheel, were white. He bent his head and kissed her. Then both arms were around her and he kissed her again. When he lifted his head their eyes met and held. Suddenly Dan smiled. It was like the sun breaking over some nameless dark river in her heart, turning it into a golden waterfall. All the wonder of the world was shining in that smile. "Oh, Dan-" "Will you mind being the squatter's wife, Leura?" She wanted to say—I love you, Dan—but couldn't wring the words from her lips. They seemed words that were, in her experience, a lie; yet in her heart she knew that —this time—they were true. She closed her eyes. "If you do that again we'll never reach the turn-off," Dan said. Something gentle touched her eyelids then her mouth. "Does it matter very much?" she asked. "Buck will think so. You ought to know Buck's ideas of propriety in a shearers' camp." Suddenly sheer joy raced through Leura's veins. She laughed. How he would rave and rant!

Dear Buck!

But it didn't matter any more. Nothing mattered in all the world except that Dan kissed her again: hurting her, yet loving her. She knew it in the power of his arms. Yes, she would be the squatter's wife and when she could draw a breath she would tell him so. For the rest of the drive to the Gan Gan turn-off Dan drove with one hand, and not even a kangaroo hopped across the track to break the silver dream in which Leura sat—her hand in Dan's hand. She would have to tell him—one day—about Joe Paget and the redhead. And he would have to tell her why he had nearly kissed her—then been sorry for it —that day he took her for a ride. But not now. Nothing for now but Dan's hand holding hers, healing by its kindness and strength that old traumatic scar of a lost love: illuminating for what it had been, the iridescent bubble of affection for Buck Ashe. The moon was an orange ball climbing the eastern sky when Dan drove the car into the camp at the turn-off.

"We've a two-hour start on Buck and Co.," he said. "Are you tired, Leura?" "Very." "Then put your head on my shoulder and go to sleep." It was night. Dan's shoulder was to Leura the homestead at the end of the track, and peace. She closed her eyes. Dan watched her face. This was the girl, quiet with an inner strength of her own, who would come to him for what he himself was and not for Palari's acres. He leaned his head on her head and closed his eyes. The moon climbing high above the straggling trees lit their faces—and the plain—with a gentle light. Somewhere, somehow along the dusty track across the outback they had found each other. All had come out well, in the end, for Leura—a girl once lost in the spinifex. The End