The Ranger in the Hills: A Heartwarming Australian Outback Romance by Lucy Walker

Author:Lucy Walker [Walker, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: australian author, small town and rural, outback romance, australian rural novels, australian romance, clean romance, clean and wholesome, autstralian rural romance
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Small Town & Rural Romance)
Published: 2020-01-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Katie’s only dilemma had been whether to take Andrew with her, or leave him. She worried about this quite a lot while she packed the saddle bags and made sure she had a torch, billy, water-bags and matches. She had come to trust Secretary beyond question; she was certain of Mr. and Mrs. Potts too. She could leave Andrew in their care. It was the first time in her life she had made such a decision. She felt she had crossed her own Rubicon when she made it.

Bang goes the first apron string, she thought.

She left a note for Mrs. Potts and a separate one for Andrew telling them what she had done and begging them not to follow her.

I know the track and the map by heart, she had written. If I can’t find him, or get into difficulties, I will come back at once. I won’t leave the track so will be perfectly safe.

Secretary could follow her if he wanted, she knew. She also knew he would not leave Malin’s Outpost, or Andrew, without Bern Malin’s orders. Bern had gone away and said he would not be back for some time. So she was safe, even from the vigilant Secretary.

She took Brown Fall, generally called Brownie, because it was the horse she knew best. This was the horse Taciturn had brought over from Ryde’s Place the day they had all come to Malin’s Outpost together. She had been riding Brownie when Secretary had taken them for rides.

The aborigine was safely out of the way. At night time he went to his own little house at the end of the near paddock. From the stables Katie could see the last coals glowing in his fire.

It was a long, lonely, eerie ride through that straggling bush and sand-plain. Sometimes the track seemed to lose itself where the undergrowth opened out into large sandy patches. Katie soon learned that the track, though winding around outcrops of rock or occasional heavy undergrowth, was nevertheless keeping in the one direction. Looking back at the Southern Cross from time to time she knew she was travelling due north.

When she came to the place where the clay-pan began she kept on northwards, riding straight across it, and sure enough there, leading into the bush, she found again the track just as it was on the map.

She was not afraid of the bush at night. There were no animals to harm one ‒ the bush creatures took fright and ran away ‒ nor were there wild people to haunt it.

She rode on through the moon shadows and tree shadows and occasional noiseless fluff of the night birds. These sounds came from mopokes she supposed. Yet she wasn’t certain.

Sometimes the track was clear and she was able to canter. Sometimes it was shadowed by the clumps of salmon gums that grew freely hereabouts on the far side of the sand-plain and clay-pan. She was forced to rein-in Brownie to a walk in these areas.

About a quarter

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