Those who had heard and witnessed were thoughtful as they rode on. It was easy in that landscape to encourage thoughts of death.
But the thick Judd, whose own soul had achieved fulfilment not by escaping from his body, but by returning to it, preferred to interpret the aboriginal illusion in terms of life. He who was wedded to earthly things would often invoke them as he rode along, and so, on the day they began to climb those quartz hills, he was thinking of his wife, who smelled of bread and soap, and who had the mole beside her nose, with the three little hairs sprouting from it. This he now saw with wonder, and much more from the years they had lived together, before he woke. Yet, he had got life in his sleep. His sons were evidence enough of that. Golden-skinned, they galloped the horses bareback down to water, and folded sheep at smoky dusk, and cut the lambs’ tails in season, with the blood spurting in little fountains into their laughing mouths. Suddenly his ribs were aching, and the welts of old punishment. The cat of love smote him in the hands of his great sons.
In his craving for earthly love, Judd struck the stirrup-iron of Harry Robarts rather roughly with his own, and bruised Harry’s knee with his, for they were riding side by side.
‘Move over, son,’ the man complained. ‘You are riding that close we will be joined for ever at the stirrup-irons.’
The boy lowered his eyes, and removed himself.
‘It was not a-purpose,’ he sulked.
‘Whichever way, it is not safe,’ said Judd.
He had developed an affection for the sawney boy. It was out of pity, so he explained it, and in camp would cut for him choicer bits of starved mutton, or dried beef, and put them on the lad’s plate, and go away. Formed by circumstances, their relationship remained upon the whole respectful, although the boy was inclined to accept it for want of a better, and the man, often impatient, was sometimes even contemptuous of his mate.
Now, as they rode together, it appeared that the boy was still thinking of the tree-platform recently discovered, and of the migration of aboriginal souls, for he murmured tentatively, dreamily:
‘Did you notice it go, Mr Judd, when Jackie opened his hands?’
‘Notice what?’ asked the man.
‘It was a white bird, like, very quick.’
‘Now, you have been seeing things,’ said the man.
The boy sniggered, and slapped at his horse’s withers with the bundle of reins.
‘Did you not see?’ he persisted.
‘Nao!’ said the man.
Then a steer stumbled, and fell, and they pushed and kicked it to its feet again. When it was walking, Judd resumed their conversation.
‘You had better tell Mr Voss of this here experience of yours, Harry, with birds. It would interest him.’
For, if wax has to be wax, then it is difficult to resist a squeeze, and Judd was only human.
‘Not Mr Voss,’ said Harry. ‘Not on your life.’
‘Mr Voss would understand such things,’ smiled Judd.
‘That is why I would not tell him.’
‘Or he would take it out on yer for ever.’
‘Yes,’ Harry replied.
It was obvious that all possibilities were contained for him in the single form of Voss.
Judd had become as silent as a piece of leather. He would have liked to give the boy a present, and remembered a magnifying-glass with ebony handle that he had kept for years, in a shammy leather bag, in a box.
They were riding and drowsing in perpetual dust, and stumbling on the rocky sides of the hills they were ascending, when Judd reached over and grabbed something from the trunk of a tree.
‘There you are, Harry,’ he said, and offered his closed, hairy hand. ‘There is a present for yer.’
In the absence of ebony he was forced to such measures.
‘What is it?’ asked the boy, advancing his own hand, but cautiously.
‘No,’ laughed Judd, blushing under dirt. ‘Open your mouth, shut your eyes.’
Then, when his suggestion had been followed, he popped a little lump of gum into the lad’s open mouth.
‘Aoh!’ cried Harry, wrinkling up.
‘No,’ insisted Judd. ‘Go on.’
He was putting into his own mouth a similar knot of gum, to demonstrate his faith in the token, or else they would both die of it.
So they rode, and sucked the gum, which was almost quite insipid in flavour, if slightly bitter. Yet, they were both to some extent soothed and united by its substance and their act, and were prodding the rumps of the broken cattle gently with their toes, as they rode back and forth in their oblique ascent of the glaring hill, until the boy glanced up, and there was Voss, looking not at him, but forward into the distance from a crag.
As the lad stared at his leader, the sun’s rays striking the surrounding rocks gave the impression that the German was at the point of splintering into light. There he sat, errant, immaculate, but ephemeral, if he had not been supernal.
‘We will never get that far,’ muttered the gloomy Harry Robarts.
‘He would not want you to,’ said Judd.
But the boy would have jumped from his horse, and torn his knees open on the rock. As it was, aware of some disloyalty to his leader, he spat out the remains of the bitter, and now offensive gum.
‘I will stick closer than anyone, in the end,’ said Harry. ‘I will sit under the platform. I will learn languages.’
‘That is mad talk,’ protested Judd.
Both were uneasy over what had been said, because either it could have been the truth, or only half of it, and which was worse it was difficult to tell.
‘Mad,’ repeated Judd, hitting his horse with the hard, dirty flat of his hand. ‘First birds, and now languages. What languages will you learn, Harry? German?’ He had to laugh.
‘It does not matter; German or any other. I will learn to speak what Mr Voss will understand, and tell what I have inside of me.’
‘What purpose will it serve?’ asked Judd, looking at the closed rock.
He had grown gloomy.
‘Some people can write it down,’ continued the boy. ‘But I cannot write no more than speak. Not like Mr Le Mesurier. He has written it. I seen the book.’
‘Oh?’ said Judd. ‘What has he written?’
‘How do I know?’ cried the exasperated Harry. ‘If I cannot read but big print.’
So that man and boy were plunging heavily on identical horses amongst the rocks.
‘He is keeping a journal,’ the man decided, finally. ‘Like Mr Voss.’
‘It is not that,’ said the boy. ‘He has a different look. I have watched him writing it.’
‘Then we will see, I expect, some day,’ sighed the man.
‘Not us,’ sneered the boy. ‘These here deserts will see it, the pages blowing about, till the sun has burnt ’em. We will not be here.’
‘I will not die. Though I may not know enough to read,’ said the man through his blunt teeth.
‘We will all die.’
‘You are mad, Harry!’ cried Judd.
‘I know as I am somewhat simple,’ confessed the boy, ‘and cannot put things good.’
He had even forgotten Voss, who, when he looked again, was gone over the other side, and in his place were the swords of the sun, slashing at the quartz, and with less spectacular effect at a long, soft cloud of celestial wool, such as the men would not have imagined after looking so long at the dirty stuff on their own sheeps’ wretched backs. However, the cloud itself grew dirtier with the afternoon, and was increasing, and changing uglily.
Towards evening, men, horses, mules, and cattle had crossed the ridge, and were gathered at a point where a gully, descending upon a plain, joined the dry bed of a river.
‘Sure enough it will rain,’ said the men, whose eyes were already shining with moisture, and lips filling, while horses whinnied painfully, and blunt noses of cattle were snuffing.