Страница 53 из 55
I was about a hundred metres from the bushes when I heard two sounds at once; one that was welcome, one that was not. The welcome sound was the throbbing of the motorbikes. The unwelcome one was a shout from the bridge.
There are sounds the throat produces which may not be in English, but which have an unmistakable meaning. When I was little I’d had a dog called Rufus, who was a border-collie springer-spaniel cross. He was just a natural rabbiter, and I used to take him out most afternoons for the joy of seeing him at full stretch after a fleeing rabbit. Whenever he was in hot pursuit he uttered a peculiar high-pitched yelp, that he never used at any other time. It didn’t matter where I was or what I was doing, when I heard that sound I knew Rufus was chasing a rabbit.
The shout from the bridge, although not in my language, was unmistakable too. It was a shout of ‘Alarm! Come quickly!’ Although I had a hundred metres to go it suddenly looked forever. I felt that I would never reach my target, that I could never cover so much ground, that I could run for the rest of my life and not get to safety. That was a terrible moment, when I came very close to death. I entered a strange state when I felt as though I was now in the territory of death, even though no bullet had struck me. I don’t know if a bullet had even been fired. But if a bullet had struck me then I don’t think I would have felt it. Only living people can feel pain, and I was floating away from the world that living people inhabit.
Then Fi appeared and screamed, ‘Oh Ellie, please!’ She was standing in the bushes but she seemed right in front of me, and her face looked huge. It was the word ‘please’ that reached me I think: it made me feel that she needed me, that I was important to her. Our friendship, love, whatever you want to call it, reached across the bare ground and reeled me in. I became aware that there were bullets stinging through the air, that I was pounding hard across the ground, that I was gasping for breath and that my chest hurt, and then I was in the safety of the trees and stumbling towards the motorbikes, dropping the end of the rope for Fi to gather it. I would have liked to hug Fi, but I was rational enough to know that I was a petrol-soaked leper, and a hug from me would have been a death sentence for Fi.
I grabbed the furthest bike and kicked it off its stand, then swung it round to face Fi. As I did there was a whoosh, and a string of fire began to speed across the grass. Fi came ru
Chapter Twenty-two
When we met Homer and Lee, up in a gully behind the Fleets’ house, there was a babble of noise for about ten minutes, with everyone trying to talk at once. Relief, excitement, explanations, apologies.
‘Everybody shut up!’ Lee finally yelled, using Homer’s tactic, and in the sudden silence said, ‘There, that’s better. Now Fi, you go first.’ We told our stories, then the boys told theirs. Feeling safer on their side of the river, they had stayed to watch the explosion; the earthquake that we had only heard and felt.
‘Oh Ellie,’ Homer said, ‘it was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.’ I began to fear that we’d turned him into a pyromaniac too.
‘Yeah,’ said Lee. ‘It was a real blast.’
‘Tell us everything,’ I said. ‘Take your time. We’ve got all day.’ The morning had begun and we were breakfasting on cans from the Fleets’ pantry. I had baked beans and tuna. I was feeling pretty good; I’d had a predawn swim in the dam and was glad to have washed the last of the petrol from my skin. I was in the mood to be treated gently, and was looking forward to snuggling into Lee for most of the day. But in the meantime I was happy to lie back and close my eyes and hear a bedtime story.
‘Well,’ Homer said. ‘It went so well at first. We got to the stud with no hassles, although pushing those bikes for the last few k’s was hard work.’ Homer had done it twice; taking his bike to the hiding place, then going back for Lee’s. ‘As you know,’ he went on, ‘our plan was for me to do the mustering and get them out to the road nice and quietly. Then Lee was going to hide on the road and jump out at them with the flash, while I used the prod to stampede them.’
We’d only been able to find one prod and we’d ruled out the aerosol can as too dangerous, but we’d found a battery-operated flash attachment for a camera, and Homer was confident that the quick, blinding flashes of light would do the trick.
‘So there we were,’ Homer continued. ‘Nicely set up, just lying back in the paddock, watching the stars and dreaming of huge fresh T-bone steaks. We had a few chats to you, as you know, and we were happy to wait for a convoy to roll through. Then we hit our two big problems. One was that no convoy came. That wouldn’t have been so bad maybe, if we could at least have called you and told you we were going ahead anyway. Although there was still the big danger that we’d suddenly find a convoy up our backsides. But the other problem was that the bloody walkie-talkie packed it in. We couldn’t believe it. We tried everything – in the end Lee just about took it to bits – but it was as dead as the dinosaurs.
‘Well, we were pretty desperate. We knew you’d be sitting there, in a lot of danger, waiting for a signal that wasn’t going to come. We got close to panic at that point, I guess. We had two choices – to go ahead with the cattle and hope you’d be able to react in time, or to call it off. But we couldn’t call it off without telling you – that would have left you in an impossible situation. That was a weakness in our pla
‘So we only had one choice really. It was getting so late we couldn’t wait any longer for a convoy. Lee went out in the road to do his flashing, and I got the cattle moving.’
‘How?’ Fi asked.
‘Eh?’
‘How? How do you get a big mob of cattle to do what you want, in the middle of the night?’
I remembered she’d wanted an answer to this question before. She was serious about becoming a rural.
‘Well,’ said Homer, looking a bit silly. ‘You hiss.’
‘You what?’
‘You hiss. Old cattleman’s trick. Old Miss Bamford taught me. They don’t like hissing, so you walk around behind them making like a snake.’
I half expected to see Fi take out a notebook and earnestly write it down. Having given away one of his professional secrets, Homer went on.
‘Our big ambition was to hold them in the road until the sentries were at the right end of the bridge, but it was hopeless. The cattle were too restless and we were scared that a convoy or a patrol would turn up. So we got the prod and the flash and away we went.’
‘It was fun,’ Lee said reflectively. ‘Except for the first few seconds, when I thought they were going to charge me.’
‘But the guards were at the right end of the bridge,’ I said. ‘They were in the perfect spot.’
‘Were they? Well, that’s the best bit of luck we had in the whole business then. That was totally unpla