When Colts Ran Read Online Free PDF Page A

few lank peppercorn trees, drifting dust, iron roofs catching glare and corrugated water tanks waiting for rain.
    Talk was of bombs wrecking towns far to the north. Colts imagined Japs penetrating as far as these drought-stricken districts, peering into mirages, kicking at shadows under trees, attacking sheep.
    The motorbike continued on its wrenching way, Colts erect at the controls, observed by crows and circling kites.
    A dim, relieved shadow stole over the plains and stars pricked the sky. First night, they camped on a showground, second night on a claypan. Colts threw brush on a fire making a bright roar. He studied Buckler’s letters under the lamp of constellations, their position markers dangling. The cartoon drawings in the margins of the letters he’d always believed would make indicators of Buckler’s location, but the idea was hopeless. There was the fat cook, Abe, the skinny sergeant, Jack Slim, and stout Buckler himself under a big hat visible as a pair of boots and a pipestem.
    Veronica said they were simplistic scribbles worthy of one-track minds and carried on scooping a hip-hole for herself in the dirt, laying a canvas over blankets to protect them from dew. Buckler had lived that way for years, carving bush tracks with or without her, often without her, living half their married life away and coming back into towns that weren’t hers but, oh, he seemed to have made his own so cosily now.
    Sounds in the night made Colts sit up from his blankets.
    â€˜Whaassat?’
    Curlew, vixen, wild-pig-grunt, wandering cow, tawny frogmouth, earth-tremor, shooting star.
    â€˜It’s all right, Kings. Nothing to fear. No reason to be. Look at that sky!’
    Colts peered from his swag and saw her sitting in a light that seemed to shine from her like dew. Whatever he denied in himself spoke for him. She said, ‘You must go back, one day, and visit your mother’s grave,’ and his answer was, ‘No.’ Pushing himself back into sleep, he woke again, and there was Veronica still going on.
    â€˜A beautiful young woman, gay, free, social, full of life, never put-upon, always willing, humorous, naughty, a fountain of laughter. My darlingest friend.’
    The words laid onto him thickly. Her darlingest friend who’d introduced her to Buckler, and so on.
    The hour before dawn was enchanted. Insects clicked and there was a regretful thrill in the last of stars as the old world, the night world, holding such sway over everything, was beaten back to its lair and Colts’s eyelids drooped. He knew the day had truly begun when the first fly got in his ear and another one tickled his eyelashes.
    The fire crackled and Veronica appeared at Colts’s side with a mug of tea. When she brushed his tangled hair with her fingers he was too sleepy to knock her hand away. He fell asleep again. Or so he pretended.
    Buckler said in a camp, stay in your swag, someone will bring you tea, stay longer you’ll get the whole box and dice, the chops and eggs, fried damper. So it proved with Veronica.
    At last they reached the bank of the Darling River, a scene of desolation. Bleached bones were scattered under trees. Hide and hair scrawled in shifting dust along sagging wire fences. Kangaroos and sheep lay dead of thirst at parched turkey’s nest dams as windmills rustled and groaned. A plague had been through and the plague was a worse drought than the one they knew. Australia was a dry roasting bone of a country tossed away by time. At the corner of the triangular paddock where the roof of the old caravan was sighted, the carcases of Old George and Mrs Dinah were found, the two great horses stretched with dry hide where they had fallen into their last grins.
    â€˜It’s not them,’ said Colts, remembering love he had for named animals.
    â€˜Stop that always denying, Kings, it’s wearing thin.’
    He didn’t reply, and she was left once again with understanding of him