“Not so very near. We hadn’t been worryin’ ourselves much about it. But it got hotter an’ hotter, an’ the smoke come down more an’ more, an’ Mick got thinkin’ about the wind changin’. If it did—well, did y’ ever see a fire travel in the ranges, miss?”
“No. I’ve only seen very small fires.”
“Please God you’ll never see a big one. In the ranges, with a wind behind it, it don’t travel—it races. Gets into the tree-tops, an’ jumps a mile at a time. There’s no fightin’ it—you can’t burn breaks in that big timber. Men might have a chance to save their lives, but never kids. That’s why Mick sent us off. But I wish’t I could ’ave stayed. Only for the kids I’d ’ave stayed, too, an’ let ’im talk. But kids are an awful big argument.”
She paused, trying vainly to look into the hills.
“Mind y’, we haven’t been fools. Mick an’ Bill know their way about. We’ve cut every stick as far as we could, all round the camp, an’ burnt off all the undergrowth: we been livin’ on a big patch of bare, burnt ground for weeks. It’s awful livin’, of course—I jus’ give up tryin’ to keep the kids or anything else clean, ’specially with the only water half a mile away, down a big hill. Took over twenty minutes to carry up a bucket, an’ half of it would be splashed away before I got up. You get mighty savin’ with water when you got to carry it like that!”
“I should think you did,” said Robin, under her breath. Bush girl as she liked to think herself, she realized that there were phases of life she did not comprehend. This little woman, with her quiet face and anxious eyes, was only one of many, struggling and suffering quietly in the lonely places. “How did you manage for stores, Mrs. Ryan?”
“Oh, not too bad. Mick or Bill took a day off every fortnight or three weeks, an’ brought things back from the township. I’ve got a camp-oven, so I can make bread all right. I ain’t been off the place meself for six months, ’cept for one day, an’ then it was on’y ’cause Baby was sick, an’ I had to take her to a chemist. That’s what gets y’ down, miss: when the kids gets sick, an’ y’ don’t know what it is. An’ of course they don’t get the right sort of food for kids. But they got to manage on it somehow.”
She gave a short laugh.
“I got a sister—works in a big shop in Melbourne. She come to see us once when she had her holidays, but it fair scared her. She come for a week, but she on’y stayed three days—my word, an’ I’d looked forward to havin’ her, too, an’ I’d got the camp like a new pin. Wasn’t Bill mad, havin’ to knock off work again to take her back! She said she didn’t know how I lived. Like animals, she said—never a soul to speak to, an’ no goin’ out to pictures or darnces or things. Well I reckon I know all about what it means not to have a woman to talk to now ’n’ then. But she can keep ’er pictures an’ darnces: I wouldn’t change my job for hers, bad ’n’ all as she thinks mine!” Her head went up with a queer little flash of pride. “Bill an’ me reckon we’re doin’ a job that counts!”
“I should think you are!” Robin said, slowly. “And you have your three splendid kiddies.”