Bushfire Rescue Read online

  I watched a black ember float down on the wind towards us, trailing a thin ribbon of smoke. Soft as a feather, it landed on a dry frond of bracken. The frond smoked for a moment, then arched back and blossomed into a flaming yellow flower. All around glowing embers were falling from the sky in a silent red shower.

  It was raining fire.

  Puffin Books

  Also by Justin D’Ath

  Extreme Adventures:

  (can be read in any order)

  Crocodile Attack

  Shark Bait

  Scorpion Sting

  Spider Bite

  Man Eater

  Killer Whale

  The Skyflower

  Infamous

  Astrid Spark, Fixologist

  Echidna Mania

  Koala Fever

  Why did the Chykkan cross the Galaxy?

  BUSHFIRE RESCUE

  JUSTIN D’ATH

  Puffin Books

  For Matisse

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Australia)

  250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada)

  90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto ON M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland

  25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd

  11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ)

  67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd

  24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2005

  Text copyright © Justin D’Ath 2005

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without Limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  ISBN: 978-1-74-228618-1

  puffin.com.au

  1

  RUNAWAY

  In the last ten or fifteen minutes something strange had happened. Everything had gone hazy. When I looked up through the gum trees, I couldn’t see a single cloud from one towering ridge-top to the other. The sun was halfway up the morning sky. Yet somehow the day didn’t seem as bright as it had when I’d set out from the homestead thirty minutes earlier. Weird.

  Susie, the horse I was riding, had begun acting strangely, too – snorting and tossing her head and prancing sideways along the steep, narrow cattle trail. It was hard to stay in the saddle. When I pulled on the reins to slow her, the little palomino took no notice. She knew I was only a novice rider and not in control.

  ‘Hey, cut it out!’ I cried, trying to sound confident.

  It worked. Susie stopped playing up and settled into her normal bumpy trot.

  I leaned forward to scratch her coarse white mane. ‘Good horse,’ I said, which showed how little I knew about horses. Then I glanced up at the sky again. A mistake. Because that was when Susie deliberately walked into an overhanging branch. I should have been expecting it. Nan Corcoran had warned me about the straw-coloured mare when I volunteered to take Pop’s lunch up to the High Pasture, where he was fixing fences.

  ‘Watch her, Sam,’ Nan had said, holding Susie steady while I swung wonkily up into the saddle. ‘She likes being ridden, but she’s full of tricks.’

  This trick backfired on Susie. Hardly thicker than my thumb, the branch she’d walked into wasn’t big enough to sweep me off her back. It bent harmlessly out of the way. But something was attached to the branch, and that wasn’t harmless.

  Wasps’ nest! warned a little voice in my head.

  Too late. The grey saucer-shaped nest slapped against my shoulder and a cloud of angry insects exploded into the air around me. I’m allergic to bees and wasps. One sting can put me in hospital. Three or four stings, my doctor says, and it would be all over, red rover. Luckily I was wearing riding-gloves and a long-sleeved shirt. The deadly swarm centred its attack on my hands and arms so I wasn’t stung. Susie wasn’t as lucky. At least two of the large yellow and black wasps attached themselves to her neck, their long stingers plunged savagely downwards, while a third flew into her left ear.

  All hell broke loose. Susie let out a loud whinny and leapt high into the air, tossing me out of the saddle. It took me by surprise; I was still fighting off the wasps; I had even let go of the reins. By some miracle I landed on Susie’s back again, only now I was flat on my stomach with my arms around her neck. The mare bucked a few more times, flinging me about like a rag doll, then she broke into a gallop.

  I had never ridden a galloping horse before. In my short career as a rider, I had only dared take Susie to a slow canter. Now she was going flat out. Trees shot past like matchsticks. It made me dizzy to look at them. ‘Try to match yourself to the horse’s rhythm,’ Nan had told me on the first day of my holiday. Good advice, I’m sure, but impossible when you’re lying prone along a horse’s back. Susie felt like a jackhammer underneath me, pummelling my chest and stomach. She had saved me from the wasps, but now she was out to kill me.

  ‘Whoa!’ I cried, or tried to. It came out sounding like: ‘Woh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!’

  Susie took no notice. If anything, she went faster. I held on grimly. Nothing was going to make me let go. It was life or death. Nan had loaned me one of her old riding helmets, but that wouldn’t help me if I hit the ground at this speed. A broken neck seemed the most likely outcome.

  Suddenly the trees were gone. We had left the forest. Susie was galloping across open grassland. I saw a fence reeling past to my right, a blur of posts and battens. Susie swerved through a gate. Some holding yards flashed by, then I saw a dusty black truck with a ramp leading up into the back. A man holding a rope stood next to the ramp. A second man sat on a motorbike ten or fifteen metres away. Between the two men stood a huge white bull. It had a rope tied around its neck. Kosciusko Rex! Susie had taken a wrong turn; she’d brought me down to the bull paddock.

  ‘He-e-e-e-e-l-l-p!’ I yelled as we shot past.

  It was too late. Already the men, the bull and the truck were behind us. It didn’t matter. Susie seemed to be slowing of her own accord. Since entering the paddock, her gait had changed from a gallop to a fast canter. I adjusted my grip around her neck and tried to work my body forward into the saddle. The reins flapped and danced in front of me. If I could grab hold of them, I might be able to ease the mare down to a walk.

  What was that noise? The drumming of Susie’s hooves drowned out most other sounds, but I could hear a high, wailing whine. It seemed to be growing louder. I glanced over my shoulder. The man on the motorbike was racing across the wide brown paddock behind us.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I yelled at him. ‘I’ve got it under control.’

  I was worried that his noisy machine would scare Susie just when she was beginning to calm down. But the motorbike rider couldn’t hear me. He kept coming. He was fifteen metres behi
nd me and catching up fast. I shook my head at him. I even risked letting go with one hand and waving him away. He didn’t take the hint. He drew right alongside. Just as I’d feared, Susie broke into a gallop. She began veering away from the yammering motorbike.

  ‘Get away! You’re scaring her!’ I yelled.

  The rider was wearing a helmet but I could see his small pink-rimmed eyes through the visor. They looked like the eyes of a pig.

  ‘Yaah! Yaah! Yaah!’ he shouted, forcing Susie into a sharp turn.

  What was he doing? Was he trying to kill us?

  WHAM!

  2

  THE JINDABYNE RUSTLERS

  Like me, Susie’s attention had been focused on the motorbike. She saw the fence at the last moment. It was too late to swerve and the fence was too high to jump. With a terrified whinny, the little mare planted all four hooves in the dusty pasture and slid straight into it. The wires absorbed the impact and Susie bounced back like a ball off a tennis net. But I kept going.

  I flew over the fence.

  I did a midair somersault.

  I landed – WHAM! – flat on my backpack.

  Flat on Pop’s lunch, I would find out later. Nan’s thick wholemeal sandwiches cushioned my fall and probably saved me from breaking my spine. But neither they nor the helmet stopped me from knocking myself nearly brainless.

  I lay still for a few moments, blinking at the sky. My head hurt. Spots danced before my eyes and I couldn’t see properly; the sun looked red. I moved my eyes painfully in their sockets and watched Susie scrambling to her feet on the other side of the fence. She didn’t seem hurt. I still didn’t fully understand what had happened.

  Then I heard the sound of a two-stroke engine. The man on the motorbike pulled up next to the fence and switched off the engine. He raised his visor and looked down at me through the sagging wires.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here, kid?’ he asked.

  ‘My horse got out of control,’ I gasped. I was winded and it was hard to talk. ‘Who are you? What are you doing with Pop’s bull?’

  ‘Never you mind,’ he snapped. He looked back across the paddock. ‘Was anyone with you?’

  I wondered why he seemed angry with me. ‘No. I was taking Pop’s lunch to him.’

  The man narrowed his piggy eyes at me. ‘Where’s your pop now?’

  ‘Up in the High Pasture,’ I said.

  He nodded and seemed to think for a moment. ‘Okay,’ he said finally, as if reaching a decision. ‘Stay right where you are, kid, and I’ll go get help.’

  He started the motorbike and rode slowly along the fence line in Susie’s direction. The little mare snorted and trotted out into the paddock, but the motorbike followed her.

  ‘Yaah! Yaah!’ cried Pig-eyes, herding her in the direction of the black truck.

  My heart thudded in alarm. Something weird was going on here. If he was going to get help, why was he taking Susie? And why couldn’t he help me? He hadn’t even asked if I was hurt. Grasping the fence, I dragged myself to my feet.

  ‘Hey!’ I called weakly. ‘Why are you taking my horse?’

  Pig-eyes didn’t slow down. I was still dazed, still winded, still badly shaken from my fall. My head throbbed. For more than a minute I simply stood there, supporting myself against the wobbly fence, watching helplessly as the motorcyclist herded Susie across the paddock. He chased her past the truck and out onto the road. Then he slapped her on the rump and watched her gallop away. The other man was closing the big doors at the rear of the truck when Pig-eyes rode back into the paddock. Kosciusko Rex was nowhere in sight.

  Who were these men? Why were they on Nan and Pop’s farm? What were they doing with Pop’s prize Charolais bull?

  Then it hit me. They were stealing him! They were the Jindabyne Rustlers!

  3

  COPPERHEAD SPUR

  Nan and Pop had told me about the notorious gang of thieves that had been stealing cattle from farms all over the state. Known as the Jindabyne Rustlers, they had got away with more than a million dollars worth of livestock in the past eighteen months. The police had no idea who they were. There was a twenty thousand dollars reward for anyone who could provide information that would lead to their capture.

  Twenty thousand dollars!

  Peeling off my gloves and backpack, I half climbed, half rolled across the fence and set off at a slow, limping run towards the truck two hundred metres away. I knew there was no way I could stop the rustlers on my own, but I could get the truck’s rego number. The rest would be up to the police.

  I was halfway across the paddock, too far away to read the rego plates, when Pig-eyes swung his motorbike in a wide semicircle and sped out onto the road. The truck followed.

  I stopped running when I reached the gate. I was out of breath and dripping with perspiration. A big chain and padlock lay coiled in the dust at my feet. The stainless steel hasp of the padlock had been cut cleanly in two. They were rustlers, all right.

  I closed the gate. Pop’s other bull, an old black rodeo bull called Chainsaw, was still in the paddock somewhere. Probably near the dam on the other side of the hill.

  My head was throbbing, thud, thud, thud. After a few moments, I realised the thudding wasn’t coming from inside my head.

  ‘Susie!’

  The little palomino came trotting back along the road. Pig-eyes had chased her away, but she’d come back for me. Forgetting my aches and bruises, I slipped through the gate and hobbled to meet her.

  ‘Easy, Suze,’ I said.

  Susie shook her head and snorted. The wasp sting in her ear was still troubling her. I stroked her flanks and continued talking softly. Then I put my left foot in the stirrup and cautiously swung up into the saddle. I had never done it on my own before. Susie stood there, as if I knew what I was doing. As if I was in control. I patted her neck.

  ‘Good girl, Suze,’ I said.

  I was faced with a dilemma. Which way should I go? Back to the farmhouse so that Nan could phone the police? Or up to the High Pasture, which was closer, to let Pop know what had happened? Pop would have his mobile phone with him, but the signal wasn’t always reliable in this remote corner of the mountains and he might not be able to get through to the police. He did have his four-wheel drive, however. We could go after the rustlers ourselves. But we might not be able to catch up to them. Pop wasn’t a very fast driver and the rustlers would have thirty minutes head start.

  There was a third possibility. I looked at the line of electricity pylons running up the side of Copperhead Spur. A rough path had been carved beneath them through the forest to give access to the tall metal pylons and keep the wires clear of trees. According to Pop, it was a short cut to the Alpine Highway.

  ‘If you’re prepared to do a bit of mountain-climbing,’ he’d joked a week earlier, as he and Nan drove me from the airport, ‘you could save yourself thirty-five kilometres by going over the spur instead of driving all the way around it.’

  I did a quick calculation. Nan and Pop’s farm is high up in the mountains. The only way to it is Corcoran Road. It’s an unsealed road that twists all the way to the outside world. There was no way known a cattle truck with a bull on board could do more than fifty kilometres per hour along it. That gave me roughly forty minutes to cross the spur and meet the cattle thieves on the other side. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if I caught up with them. Probably I would get the truck’s rego number – and the motorbike’s, if it had one. First there was the problem of crossing Copperhead Spur, the long, craggy escarpment that towered over the farm and blocked out three quarters of the western sky.

  ‘Susie,’ I said, ‘how good are you at climbing?’

  4

  AVALANCHE

  Susie was pretty good at climbing. She needed to be. The electricity access trail was rough going. It was overgrown and incredibly steep. A forty-metre-wide avenue slicing through the majestic old-growth forest, it went straight up the side of the spur.

  For the first five
or six hundred metres the going wasn’t too bad. We zigzagged slowly upwards. Susie picked her way carefully through the knee-high bracken, skirting boulders and stumps and the rotting hulks of fallen trees. By leaning forward and taking most of my weight in the stirrups, like Nan had taught me, I managed to stay more or less in control – if you didn’t count sliding off the back of the saddle a few times. Then we came to a rockslide.

  A ten-metre-wide ribbon of scree and rocks and loose dirt, it looked unstable and dangerous. There was no way around it. Susie paused and turned her head, as if asking, What now, boss?

  I didn’t feel like anybody’s boss. I glanced uncertainly upwards. We were only about a hundred and fifty metres from the skyline but the gradient was nearly vertical. So near and yet so far. I wondered briefly about the strange brownish cirrus clouds high overhead, then searched for another way up. The only alternative was to try the other side of the access trail. To get there we would have to skirt the nearest pylon, which meant going back the way we had come for at least sixty metres and losing precious altitude in the process. I looked at my watch. We had used up twenty minutes. There wasn’t time for any more pussyfooting around.

  ‘Giddy-up!’ I said, urging Susie forward.

  Things began to go wrong as soon as the little mare stepped onto the rockslide. A stone rolled beneath one of her hooves, dislodging a small river of loose dirt and gravel. Susie fell awkwardly onto her haunches. She tried to stand up and fell again. Her floundering hooves couldn’t get purchase in the rattling stream of gravel and stones and moving earth. She whinnied and began buckjumping desperately through the rockslide. It was too much for me; I couldn’t hold on. Before I knew what had happened, I found myself dangling upside down, with my right foot caught in the stirrup. For a few terrifying moments I was dragged along, my helmet scraping and bumping over the gravel. Susie’s sliding hooves came thumping down perilously close to my head. Then my foot popped out of the elastic-side boot I was wearing and I was free. I rolled about five metres and came to rest wedged against a tree stump. When I looked up, Susie was sliding down towards me, hindquarters first. She was going to crush me! At the last moment, she managed to dig in her hooves and halt her downward slide. A small avalanche of dirt and rocks continued on down and nearly buried me.