Bushfire Rescue Page 3

  I headed for the trees. It wasn’t easy. I was wearing a boot on one foot and a sock with holes on the other. The truck was standing in the middle of the road with its motor idling gently and the driver’s door wide open. I was halfway past it when the little voice in my head stopped me in my tracks.

  Whoa boy! it said.

  I did an about-turn and dashed back to the front of the truck. Before I realised what I was doing, I swung up into the cab and slammed the door shut behind me.

  I had never driven a truck before, but my brother Nathan had taught me to drive his Land Cruiser on an abandoned mining lease back home in the Northern Territory. I didn’t think this would be much different. I pressed the clutch in and pulled the long gear-stick back into the ‘R’ position. Ahead of me, Einstein lumbered up from under the bridge. He was no longer wearing the baseball cap and his face was white as a sheet. He didn’t look very happy to see me in the truck.

  I wasn’t exactly delighted to see him, either. I put my foot on the accelerator and released the clutch. The engine stalled.

  You forgot the hand-brake, the little voice in my mind reminded me.

  I was getting seriously worried. Einstein came pounding towards me, his face turning from white to red. There was murder in his eyes. Pig-eyes was clambering up out of the creek bed behind him. Quickly I locked the driver’s door, found neutral, and turned the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled back into life just as Einstein reached the truck. He grabbed the door handle and yanked. It was locked. He began banging on the window instead.

  ‘Open up!’ he shouted. ‘Unlock the door!’

  Did he think I was an idiot?

  Pig-eyes came running up on the other side. I leaned across quickly and locked the passenger door, too.

  Now I had an angry rustler on each side of the truck, both banging on the glass and yelling blue murder. It was scary. If either of them got in, I would be in a lot of trouble. I was in a lot of trouble already. How was I ever going to get out of this? My hands were shaking so badly that I had difficulty releasing the handbrake. Then I clunked the gears into reverse, gave the motor plenty of herbs and released the clutch.

  The truck shot backwards with such force that Pig-eyes lost his grip and fell onto the road. I heard a rattle of hooves on the truck bed behind me and hoped Rex was okay. Pop’s pride and joy would have to take care of himself for the next few minutes.

  I was busy trying to keep us on the road. Nathan hadn’t taught me how to reverse. It was ten times harder than going forwards, especially in such a big vehicle and with the road twisting and turning behind me. The truck veered crazily left and right, with Einstein swinging from the side mirror like an overweight acrobat. His face was red as an overripe tomato. He was yelling at me to stop. Both of us knew I wasn’t going to do that. I floored the accelerator, and finally he lost his nerve and let go.

  Einstein hit the ground running. He kept running for about a dozen paces, then slowed down to a stop and stood watching me, hands on hips, chest heaving. Behind him, Pig-eyes was charging back towards the bridge, where he’d left his motorbike.

  I tried to concentrate on driving. I wished I was going forwards not backwards, but the road was too narrow to turn the truck around. To make matters worse, Einstein had bent the side mirror during his acrobat stunt, so I couldn’t see behind me. I was driving blind. The truck wove drunkenly from side to side, the engine roaring. I knew there was a bend coming up.

  Almost too late, I remembered the off-side mirror. When I looked across, I saw a wall of trees rushing towards me. I slammed on the brakes and spun the steering wheel at the same time. The truck slewed sickeningly sideways. There was another clatter of hooves in the back and a thump that rocked the whole truck. Sorry Rex!

  The truck stalled. For a moment all I could see was swirling dust. When it cleared, I saw in the off-side mirror a stretch of straight road behind me. More through good luck than good driving, I had got the truck around the corner.

  Einstein, Pig-eyes and the bridge were no longer in sight. I restarted the engine, slipped the gear-shift back into reverse and stepped on the accelerator.

  The next corner went the other way. It was a left-hand turn and I had no mirror on that side. I had to open my door and hang out over the road to see where I was going. I was halfway around, crawling along at about half a kilometre per hour, when Pig-eyes and Einstein came screaming up on the motorbike. Pig-eyes slid the machine to a dusty standstill. Einstein leapt off the back and rushed towards me. I just managed to close the door in time. The truck stalled. Einstein picked up a large rock from the side of the road and tried to smash my window. A web of spidery cracks spread across the glass.

  ‘Unlock the door,’ he shouted angrily.

  Terrified, unable to think straight, I turned the key and planted my foot. Einstein dropped his rock and jumped clear.

  Somehow, I reversed the truck around the blind corner. A short section of straight road appeared in the rear-view mirror. Sweat was dripping off me like rainwater. I wobbled the truck backwards along the narrow road. Driving in reverse is hard! And Rex wasn’t making things easy for me. He was crashing about in the back, clattering his hooves and thumping the sides so hard that the truck rocked to and fro like a ship. And Pop reckoned his precious Charolais bull was as gentle as a lamb. Yeah, right!

  The next corner was a right-hand turn (left, if you were reversing), and I got around it okay using the off-side mirror. I was wondering if it would be possible to drive all the way to Nan and Pop’s in reverse, when Pig-eyes and Einstein caught up with me again. Pig-eyes rode the yammering motorbike right up to the front of the truck. They were about one metre from the radiator grill, their heads poking above the truck’s long black bonnet. Pig-eyes had a lot of dust on his visor, but I could see Einstein’s face over his shoulder. If looks could kill, I would have been dead and buried at that moment.

  Then Pig-eyes slammed on the brakes. Why was he stopping? I looked in the mirror.

  Trees! My foot slammed down on the brake pedal. Too late.

  There was a tremendous jolt, followed by a loud crash, then a series of bangs and scrapes and teeth-rattling vibrations. Finally, the truck thumped to a standstill and a leafy branch fell across the windscreen. Everything went silent and still. Save for a low, angry ‘MOO’ in the compartment behind me.

  9

  MY PROBLEM NOW

  Sweating in the hot, stuffy cab, I listened to the two men talking.

  ‘That’s the end of that,’ Pig-eyes said. ‘We’ll never get it back on the road.’

  ‘What about the bull?’ asked Einstein’s deeper, slower voice.

  ‘What about the bull? We can’t very well dink him on the motorbike, can we?’

  ‘But the boss has been planning this one for months.’

  ‘Well, the boss stuffed up this time,’ Pig-eyes said angrily. ‘I told him we should have done this job at night. “No, no,” he says, “there’ll be nobody on the farm all day Tuesday. Corcoran and his missus go to bowls every Tuesday, regular as clockwork.” So what happens? We go on a Tuesday and run into a meddling kid on a horse!’

  Now I understood why Pig-eyes had been surprised when I’d told him Pop was up in the High Pasture. They’d thought Nan and Pop were at bowls. My grandparents hadn’t gone to bowls this week because I was staying with them. I had fouled up the rustlers’ plans.

  Einstein was thinking the same thing. ‘Just wait till I get my hands on the interfering little –’

  ‘Forget the kid,’ Pig-eyes interrupted. ‘Let’s get out of here while we still can. I don’t like the look of that smoke.’

  I couldn’t see any smoke from inside the truck. The leafy branch across the windscreen obstructed my view. But I knew Pig-eyes was talking about the mushroom cloud I’d seen earlier. There wasn’t any danger. If the cattle thieves had been up on Copperhead Spur, they would have seen that the fire was too far away to pose a threat. But I was happy to let them think otherwise. Anything to make th
em go away.

  There was a crunch of feet as the two men walked past the truck’s cabin. Einstein paused and turned. He thumped his big fist on the cracked glass of the side window.

  ‘I hope it’s a bushfire,’ Einstein said in a low, mean voice, ‘and I hope you fry!’

  Moments later, the motorbike howled into life and roared off into the distance.

  I waited for two or three minutes, until I was absolutely sure the rustlers were gone. Then I unlocked the door and tried to open it. It was jammed. I had to crawl across and try the other door. There was a denim jacket on the passenger seat. It probably belonged to Einstein. I left it lying on the dirty floor and climbed out.

  I was surrounded by trees. The truck had left the road and ploughed backwards twenty-five metres into the forest, knocking over several small trees in the process. A branch lay across the top of the cab. The rear wheels were sunk up to their axles in a boggy creek bed. No wonder Pig-eyes and Einstein had given up. It would take another truck, or a bulldozer, to get it out.

  Wondering how Kosciusko Rex had fared, I peered in between the thick wooden slats of the cattle-pen on the back of the truck. A big red-rimmed eye glared out at me. There was an angry snort and I got a face full of warm bull’s breath. Then the eye disappeared. Next moment – CRUNCH! – a massive horn punched clean through the wall of the truck, missing me by ten centimetres. Wood splinters sprayed everywhere. I got such a fright that I lurched backwards, lost my balance and landed flat on my backside on the leaf-strewn ground.

  Since when did Kosciusko Rex have horns? Pop’s big white Charolais was a poley. He was meant to be hornless. Were there two bulls in the truck? I crept round the other side and cautiously peeked through a gap low in the cattle-pen. There was only one bull inside, and it wasn’t Rex. It was a smaller, leaner animal. And it had a pair of heavy, flat-tipped horns as wide as the handlebars of a Harley Davidson. I would recognise those horns anywhere. So would hundreds of ex-rodeo riders all around the country. They belonged to Chainsaw, the meanest rodeo bull of all time. Now retired and living out the rest of his days in Nan and Pop’s high-country farm.

  The cattle rustlers had taken the wrong bull!

  Peering into the truck, I realised what had happened. Chainsaw’s hide was coated in dry white clay. He must have been rolling in boggy ground at the edge of the dam and changed from a black bull to a white bull. The rustlers had been ordered to steal a white bull and that’s what they’d found. Instead of a champion Charolais stud bull with a pedigree five kilometres long, the idiots had stolen a mongrel rodeo outlaw that was famous, not for his breeding, but for his legendary bad temper. I had done them a favour by taking Chainsaw off their hands.

  Now he was my problem.

  10

  RAINING FIRE

  It took me four or five minutes to limp back to the bridge in my boot and sock. Susie was grazing quietly in the fuzz of grass growing beneath the bracken along the creek. I was relieved to see her. I’d been worried that Pig-eyes and Einstein might have caught her and taken her with them. (Had they only known it, the palomino was worth more than the bull they’d just abandoned.) But the rustlers had only stopped long enough to replace one of the planks so that they could get the motorbike across the bridge. They had probably reached the Alpine Highway turn-off by now.

  Provided the fire hadn’t stopped them.

  I didn’t like the look of the smoke. Einstein’s parting words kept turning over in my mind. I hope it’s a bushfire and I hope you fry! A hot midday wind had sprung up, pushing the smoke directly overhead. It covered the sky. I knew the fire was several kilometres away. The wind made it look worse than it was. Einstein’s threat held no weight. I wasn’t in any danger.

  I took a long drink from the water bottle strapped to Susie’s saddle and then mounted her. The mare seemed skittish. She pressed back her ears and tossed her head, snorting. When I urged her up the first low rise beneath the electricity pylons, she shied sideways and tried to double back down to the road. I didn’t blame her. We had already crossed Copperhead Spur once that day and it hadn’t been easy. But I needed to get back to my grandparents’ farm as quickly as possible. Nan and Pop would be worried. And I wanted to tell them what had happened so that Pop could drive round in his own truck and fetch Chainsaw. It was turning into a stinking hot day and the cranky old bull didn’t have any water.

  ‘Sorry Suze,’ I said, pulling the nervous mare around and giving her a firm giddy-up squeeze with my legs. ‘Whether you like it or not, we’re going back over the spur.’

  Or so I thought. We only got halfway up. From there I had an unobstructed view over the ridge running parallel to Copperhead Spur. What I saw was frightening. The fire looked a lot closer than I had thought. The wall of smoke seemed to be rising out of the next valley, little more than half a kilometre away. That was impossible! An hour or so earlier, it had been three or four kilometres distant. A fire couldn’t move that fast.

  Then I noticed the wind. Earlier, the day had been hot and still. Now a gusting northerly blew in my face, bringing with it the acrid smell of burning eucalypts. Susie smelt it too. She stamped her hooves and nickered softly. I held her steady. Even though it was early afternoon, an eerie darkness had fallen over the mountains. The sun was a dim red disk, barely visible through the tide of thick smoke that swept across the sky.

  I watched a black ember float down on the wind towards us, trailing a thin ribbon of blue smoke. Soft as a feather, it landed on a dry frond of bracken not three metres from where I sat on Susie’s back. The frond smoked for a moment, then arched its back and blossomed into a flaming yellow flower. I slid down from the saddle and stamped the flame out with my boot. Before I could remount, another ember floated down fifteen metres away. I hurried over to stamp it out, too. When I turned around, I saw another. And another. All around, faster than I could get to them and stamp them out, glowing embers were falling from the sky in a silent red shower.

  It was raining fire.

  Then I saw something even more frightening. On the skyline several hundred metres above, a bright snake of flame slithered up the trunk of a gum tree. It coiled swiftly through the branches, then the whole treetop burst alight.

  A spot fire had started on Copperhead Spur!

  For several moments, I couldn’t move. I stood in the knee-high bracken, watching as my escape route was cut off by the new fire. A flock of black cockatoos swooped overhead, their raucous cries shaking me from my trance. I swung back into the saddle.

  ‘Let’s get out of here, Susie.’

  With a prod of my heels, I sent the little mare charging back down into the valley.

  11

  WILL-O’-THE-WISPS

  A mob of about thirty kangaroos came thumping along Corcoran Road as we reached it. Spooked by the smell of smoke, they hardly took any notice of us, whizzing past on both sides. They were so close that one actually brushed my right stirrup. A couple of the big bucks bounced nearly as high as me. Susie wanted to race them, but I held her back. The kangaroos went bounding into the distance. I wished them good luck. If anything could outrun a bushfire, I reckoned a kangaroo could.

  I wasn’t so sure about a bull, though. Leaving Susie on the road, I limped down to the truck and jumped the boggy creek bed. There was a big door on the back of the truck that swung down and acted as a ramp. It had landed on a clump of ferns, leaving a half-metre drop at the end. The ferns were like a springy mattress underneath it. When I tried pushing down on the ramp, it bounced right back up again. Chainsaw came clopping to the open doorway and gave me a mean glare. I backed away quickly.

  ‘Come on, big guy,’ I called to him, ready to run if I had to.

  Chainsaw put one large hoof on the half-lowered ramp, then paused when it wobbled. If he came one step further, his weight would push it all the way down. But the bull shook his massive head, as if to say, No way am I walking down there, and reversed back into the truck.

  The rustlers’ rope was still tied aro
und Chainsaw’s neck. It trailed between his front legs and disappeared back into the truck. Using a long stick, I managed to hook its end and pull it out. The rope was nice and long, about eight or nine metres. This suited me fine; I wanted as much distance as possible between him and me. But he wouldn’t cooperate. No matter how hard I pulled, Chainsaw wouldn’t leave the safety of the truck-bed. The bouncy ramp made him nervous.

  Time to put Plan Β into action. Recrossing the creek bed, I tried coaxing Chainsaw out beside the ramp rather than down it. From here, it was a small drop into the ferns. The ground was soft and he wouldn’t hurt himself.

  ‘C’mon, jump,’ I encouraged him, pulling hard on the rope. ‘I know you can do it. I’ve seen Pop’s videos.’

  In one of them, Chainsaw jumped so high that the unfortunate cowboy on his back nearly went into orbit. They carried the man away on a stretcher, which was what happened to a lot of the hopefuls that tried to ride Chainsaw. How times change. Now the grand old warrior of the rodeo circuit was nineteen years old. He had retired from the rodeo scene, and it looked as if he had retired from jumping as well.

  Maybe he needs someone on his back to get him moving, the little voice in my head suggested.

  That is so not going to happen! I told it.

  In Chainsaw’s long and illustrious career, no one had ever stayed on his back the full eight seconds to the bell. Four hundred and twelve men had tried, four hundred and twelve men had bitten the dust. No way in the world was I going to be number four hundred and thirteen.

  I dropped the rope and retrieved the stick. Walking around the side of the truck, I poked it in through one of the gaps and prodded Chainsaw in the rump. There was a thunderous clatter of hooves, then the stick jerked in my hand. I pulled it back out and discovered I was only holding half a stick. A long, flat-tipped horn waved menacingly through the gap.