of the matching pitcher. The homemade boiled soap carried the tracing of fat almost too rancid for use, yet it scrubbed into an excuse for lather and he doused his face, arms and chest vigorously.
‘It’s Christmas tomorrow.’
He wanted to ask her what this statement was meant to mean to him; instead he did what came the most naturally – he ignored her.
‘You don’t talk much.’
What the fig was there to talk about, he wondered. When he had completed his brief ablutions he rolled a cigarette and lit it, throwing the matches in the general direction of the girl. With a slowness borne of repetition he took a long, relaxing drag and then coughed up a mess of yellow sputum. He swallowed the lumpy parcel. Through the window Luke glimpsed a bullock dray ambling down the dirt road. From the hallway he heard footsteps, groans, and a woman’s yelp. On his reckoning he’d been in Wangallon Town for near three days. It had to be three for he was feeling imprisoned this morning, like some brumby chased down and yarded after months of roaming free. He was also pretty positive that he’d seen Jasperson skulking about the place not two days ago. Trust his father to send the weasel out to check on him.
Luke listened absently to Lauren as she talked of the green tree in the church, of hymns she had heard sung last Christmas, of the joint of mutton she hoped to eat with her family on the morrow. He was looking forward to some decent food, to Lee’s ramblings and his young half-brother’s infectious enthusiasm. As for Christmas, well, it was a day like any other day; besides, other matters weighed on his mind. His fingers brushed the small tortoiseshell hair comb purchased in Sydney.
‘Tell the cook I’ve need of some breakfast.’ Luke jingled the coin in his pocket, settled another coin on the edge of the washstand. A thin curl of smoke angled from the corner of the girl’s mouth.
‘You don’t have to do that.’ She bit at her bottom lip, gave a teased-out smile.
Perhaps he’d paid her too much? Certainly it had been enough for a week’s service. Scooping up the coin he pocketed it before opening the door. He gestured with his arm for her to leave and then began gathering his belongings. Lifting his bedroll, he sat it on the lumpy mattress.
‘When will I see you?’ the girl asked. ‘I’ve been good to you, Luke Gordon,’ she argued, clutching her hands against her breast. ‘Haven’t I been good to you? And I waited and I lay with no other all these months you’ve been roaming the bush.’
Luke gathered her skirt and blouse and watched the girl dress. Patting her rounded behind, he gave her a gentle shove out the door. Strangely enough the lass looked as if she might cry.
‘Take me back to that station of yours.’
‘I promised you nothing.’ Luke shoved his hand in his pockets.
Lauren stood on the bare floorboards of the hallway, her cheeks flushed. She wiped at her nose. ‘I’m a respectable girl, I am.’ She straightened her neck and shoulders. ‘You were pleased to see me.’
Luke tried to shut the door, finding a foot and palm quickly wedged between him and silence.
‘I’m a polite and proper young lady. If my father hadn’t fallen prey to the demon drink I’d be strolling down the main street in a swish new skirt with a matching parasol if you please.’
Luke pushed at the door and with a final shove managed to close it in the girl’s face.
‘You’ll be back, Luke Gordon,’ she called from the hallway. ‘You’ll be back.’
Not two miles from Wangallon Homestead, Luke’s attention was drawn to the flicker of movement. He was on the final leg of his journey, having almost completed his progression through the winding track that led through the ridge. It was a route cut by his father forty odd years previously and it connected Wangallon Homestead with Wangallon Town, the settlement which had sprung to life in the early fifties. Now as he ducked to miss an overhanging branch, the stillness of the surrounding trees brought into relief the outline of two figures. They were on the very edge of the ridge where the pine trees thinned gradually before being dwarfed by an open plain of grassland.
Luke reined in his mare, and steadied the other two horses he led. He squinted against the glare made more ferocious by the recent shelter of the ridges’ thick