Wings Above the Diamantina. Arthur W. Upfield
Читать онлайн книгу.
on his knees beside his daughter, the station manager used the tip of a little finger to raise the girl’s left eyelid. He uttered an exclamation and raised the other. The girl was now staring at him with sinister fixity, her eyelids remaining in the position to which he had raised them. They were large and blue, dark-blue, and in them was the unmistakable expression of wild entreaty. Involuntarily, he said:
“It is all right! Really, it is. We are going to be your friends.”
“What! Is she awake?” Elizabeth demanded sharply. Quickly she lifted the girl’s head and then, finding the angle difficult, she squirmed her body round so that she, too, was able to look into the blue eyes. “Why, she is conscious!”
For a moment they regarded the staring eyes, in their hearts both horror and a great pity. Not once did the eyelids blink. The helpless girl uttered no sound, made no smallest movement save very slightly to move her eyes. Except for the poignant expression in them, her face might have been cast in plaster of Paris.
“Can’t you speak?” said Elizabeth, barely above a whisper.
Obtaining no response, she took up the cup of water and again pressed its edge against the immobile lips. There was no movement, no effort made to drink.
“Oh! You poor thing! Whatever is the matter?”
“Part her lips and see if she will drink when you drop the water into her mouth,” Nettlefold suggested.
Elizabeth accepted the suggestion, and they presently saw that the helpless girl swallowed. Her eyes were now misty, and from them welled great tears which Elizabeth sponged away with the handkerchief.
“Won’t you try to talk?” she pleaded softly. “Can’t you talk? Can you close your eyelids? Try—just try to do that. No?” To her father, she said: “I can’t understand it. She seems perfectly conscious, and yet she is so helpless that she cannot even raise or lower her eyelids. I am positive that she can hear us and understand us.”
“Yes, I think so, too,” he agreed instantly. “Well, the only thing to do is to get her home as quickly as possible, Then we must call Dr Knowles. He should know what is the matter with her. We’ll be moving. We can do nothing here.”
“All right. You take her. I’ll get into the back seat of the car, and you can hand her in to me,” Elizabeth directed. To the girl, she said: “I am going to close your eyes because of the sunlight. Have no fear—Dad and I will look after you and find your friends. And Dr Knowles is really clever.”
Throughout the entire homeward journey, Elizabeth supported the helpless girl against her body, exhibiting stoical endurance. She took the shocks that her careful father was unable to avoid.
Ted Smart and his men, with the cattle, had disappeared from the grey plain, and for mile after mile the car hummed eastward to one of the most extraordinary rivers in Australia. At this time no water was running down the Diamantina’s multitudinous channels. Here the river had no main channel to distinguish it from the veritable maze of streams which intertwine between the countless banks. Westward from the Coolibah homestead, the channels which form the river are fifteen miles across, and when the great floods come sliding down from the far northern hills only the tops of the coolibah trees are left visible.
When crossing the river the track was a seemingly endless switchback, and here the greatest trial was put upon Elizabeth coming after the long journey from Emu Lake. Narrow channels and wide channels; narrow banks and wide banks: the car was constantly being forced up and down like a ship passing over sea waves. Long before they arrived there could be seen the large white-painted homestead, men’s quarters and outhouses, all with red roofs gleaming beneath the sun. The conglomeration of buildings appeared and disappeared endlessly until at last the travellers reached the easternmost flat to speed smoothly for half a mile before reaching the horse-paddock gate. From the gate it was a quick run up a stiff gradient to the house which, with the many other buildings, was built on comparatively high land. Before the car stopped outside the gate of the garden fronting the south veranda, a woman came running to meet them.
She was tall and angular, strong and exceedingly plain. She was dressed in stiff white linen, reminding one of a hospital nurse. Mrs Hetty Brown, the deserted wife of a stockman, was the Coolibah housekeeper.
“Oh, Mr Nettlefold! Miss Elizabeth! Whatever do you think?” she cried. Her light-grey eyes were slightly protuberant, and now they were wide open with excitement. “Just after you left this morning Sergeant Cox rang up to say that last night someone stole an aeroplane at Golden Dawn. He said he would have rung through before but there was something the matter with the line. He wanted to know if we had seen or heard the aeroplane. It belongs to. … Why, Miss Elizabeth, who is that?”
“It is a young lady whom we found in peculiar circumstances, Hetty, and we have to get her to bed,” the manager informed her. “Where will you have her, Elizabeth?”
“In my bed for the present—Hetty, come round to the other side and assist Mr Nettlefold. My arms are useless with cramp.”
“Dear me! Whatever has happened to her?” Hetty cried.
“We don’t know yet. There now. Hold her while I move aside. Take her weight. Gently, now! Got her, Dad?”
“Yes, I have her.”
Despite his growing years, John Nettlefold was still a powerful man. He lifted the helpless girl and bore her along the garden path, up the several veranda steps and through the open house door as a lesser man might carry a child. At Elizabeth’s command, Hetty assisted her from the car, and then was ordered to run on and prepare her bed for the stranger. Grimacing with agony, Elizabeth followed slowly, moving her limbs to hasten returning circulation, and was just in time to meet her father coming from her room.
“I’ll get in touch with Knowles and Cox right away,” he said. “How’s the cramp?”
“It’s going,” she stated calmly. “It was stupid of us not to have thought of looking in the plane for her belongings.”
“Yes, we should have done that,” he hastened to agree. “Anyway, either Cox or I will have to got out to it to-morrow, so our omission is unimportant.”
She smiled at him, then smiled at something which flashed into her mind.
“Do you know,” she said, “I think I am at last going to justify my life here at Coolibah.”
“What do you mean?”
“Some day I will tell you,” she replied swiftly, and was gone.
Chapter Three
A Flying Doctor
When going “inside,” people at Coolibah followed the track winding away to the north-east from the homestead. Having travelled that track for twenty-four miles, they arrived at the Golden Dawn-St Alban track. Here there was a roughly made sign-post pointing south-west to Coolibah, north-west to Tintanoo Station and St Albans, east to Golden Dawn. About noon every Wednesday, the Golden Dawn-St Albans mail coach reached the road junction, and the mailman alighted to place the Coolibah mail in the letter-box fashioned from a petrol case and nailed securely to a tree. At noon the following day, on his return journey to Golden Dawn, he collected the Coolibah outward mail from the same box.
In addition to the twenty-four miles from the homestead to the track junction, the person desiring to go “inside” had to travel eighty miles to Golden Dawn, and a farther hundred and ten miles to the railhead at Yaraka. And from there the long rail journey to Brisbane began. It is not precisely a journey which can be undertaken from a country town to the city on a Bank holiday, and consequently people in the far west of Queensland do not often visit Brisbane.
Beside the track to Coolibah ran the telephone line which at the road junction was transferred to the poles carrying the Tintanoo and St Albans lines. When John Nettlefold rang Golden Dawn he was answered by the girl in the small exchange situated within the post office building. She connected him with the police-station. It was exactly six o’clock, and