LITMIR.BIZ

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“But the door’s locked,” I said. “Piggy always locks the door, you know he does.” Marty shushed me, took me by the arm and we tiptoed towards the door of the hut, carrying our boots.

      Only one of the others stirred as we passed, he just sat up,and looked blankly at us. “You woke me,” he moaned. Then he lay down, and went straight back to sleep again.

      Marty turned the handle, and miraculously the door opened. Marty took great care as he shut it behind us. We crept out on to the verandah, sat on the top step and put our boots on. He answered my question before I could ask it. “Ida did it,” he whispered. “I told her we were going to make a break for it tonight, but we needed the door unlocked. I thought she’d do it, but I wasn’t sure. But she did, didn’t she? Come on.”

      We ran then, but not out into the bush as I’d thought we would. Instead, Marty was leading me in the direction of the farmhouse. I was wondering what he was up to, where he was going, when I realised we weren’t heading for the farmhouse at all, but rather for the stables. Big Black Jack jumped a bit in his skin when he first saw us. But he seemed happy enough when Marty put his halter on him and led him out. Ida’s dog barked then from the farmhouse, which sent shivers up the back of my neck. “Shut up, dog,” Marty hissed, and shut up he did, just like that. I knew then that Ida had done that for us too.

      We climbed up on to the back of one of the farm carts and mounted Jack from there – he was a big horse, it was the only way up for us. Marty rode in front, me behind, hanging on. Then we just walked him away into the night. We didn’t go up the farm track, because we knew that way must lead to a settlement or a town of some kind, and we wanted to keep well clear of people. If anyone saw us, they’d be bound to take us back. So we deliberately went the other way, down a gully and out into the bush. We didn’t look back. I didn’t ever want to set eyes on that place ever again. But I did say a silent goodbye to those we were leaving behind in the dormitory, and to Ida who had risked so much to give us our freedom.

      Neither Marty nor I spoke, not for a long time, not until we’d put at least half an hour between ourselves and Piggy Bacon. By then we were trotting, and we couldn’t talk because we were laughing so much. We had done it; we had escaped! And Big Black Jack was huffing and puffing underneath us, laughing along with us, I thought, revelling in his new-found freedom every bit as much as we were. But after a while I got to thinking about all the others we’d left behind at Cooper’s Station, that maybe we should have taken them all with us. (All these years later I still feel bad about that. Why is it you never forget what you feel bad about?)

      Marty started singing London Bridge is Falling Down then, softly at first, then I joined in, and soon we were bellowing it out over the bush.

      I kept asking Marty questions, the most important first. “Where are we going? Which direction?”

      “Away,” he said. “Anywhere just so long as it’s away.”

      “You been planning this? You never said anything.”

      “That’s because I didn’t think of it until punishment parade yesterday evening,” he said. “It was while he was hitting me. I knew I’d be next, that he’d go after me just like he did with Wes. If I’d stayed he’d have killed me. Sooner or later, he’d have killed me. I know he would. Then I just got lucky. I saw Ida by the stables just before lock-up, told her what I needed. She didn’t even have to think about it. She did say one thing though: I had to remind you about your lucky key, to be sure you took it with you. Hope you have, because I’m not going back, not for all the tea in China.”

      My heart was in my mouth. I hadn’t given it a second thought. But I felt in my pocket, and there it still was. “Got it,” I told him.

      “That’s good,” Marty said, “because we’re going to need it. We’re going to need all the luck we can get.”

      It was fear of getting caught, and sheer exhilaration that we were free, that kept us going that night. We knew that we mustn’t stop, not for a moment, or even slow down, because Piggy would be sure to be coming after us just as soon as he discovered we were missing, and that would be at roll call at dawn. We had until then to get as far away as possible. Big Black Jack didn’t want to trot for long, but he plodded on steadily, never tiring, and we sat up there the two of us, rocking our way towards the grey light of dawn. We were just so happy to be out of Cooper’s Station. We talked a lot as we rode, and we laughed, laughed as hard as we could. I remember I felt cocooned by the night, swallowed up in its immensity, protected. At one point we saw some lights on the horizon. It looked like a settlement of some kind, so we kept our distance. We sang to the stars, all the millions of them up there. We sang For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow till we were hoarse with it. They seemed so close those stars, close enough to hear us.

      It was cold, very cold that night. We had no water. We had no food. But none of that worried us. Not yet. We were too happy to be worried. Not even the cry of the dingoes bothered us. Only when the sun came up, and the bush came alive all about us, only then did we begin to feel alone in this wild and unfamiliar place with nothing but scrub and trees for miles around in every direction. We’d been following a dried-up creek for a while when I felt the first heat of the sun. That was when I first thought I wanted to drink. We had stopped talking to one another now. There was no more laughter. I was beginning to realise just how vast this place was and just how lost we were. I didn’t like to say it though. Big Black Jack was walking on, purposeful and surefooted as ever. He seemed to know where he was going, and that made me feel better.

      When finally Marty did say something though, it just confirmed my own worst fears. “I don’t like this,” he said. “We’ve been here before, when it was darker. We were coming the other way then. And I keep thinking something else too, something Wes told me once, and Wes knew all about horses. He said that a horse will never get itself lost. It’ll always know the way home. I think maybe Big Black Jack is taking us back, back to Cooper’s Station.”

       Wide as the Ocean

      How easily we fell into despair, the two of us. As we left the shade of the gum trees how quickly the heat of the sun sapped our strength, and our spirits too. The desire for water was fast becoming a craving. The need to find it became obsessive. Within just a few hours all we could talk about, however hard we tried not to, was water. I didn’t care any longer if Big Black Jack was walking straight back to Cooper’s Station, right up to the farmhouse, nor if Piggy Bacon might be tracking us down and coming after us. Every shimmering watery horizon we saw raised our hopes, but we soon found we could not trust even the evidence of our eyes. Mirages mocked us time and again. We tried our best to ignore them. But a mirage is only a mirage once you’ve discovered it’s a mirage. Until then it’s a pool of cold clear water just waiting for you, a pool of hope. More than once this cruel hoax set Marty and me arguing with one another. But in the end we didn’t even have the energy for that.

      The deep gully we were following was sandy, but up on the banks there were patches of brambles and scrub, and here and there clusters of stringy bark gum trees. Where there were trees, we thought there must be water. Little did we know. So we rode down the dried up gully, hoping all the while to discover a hidden pool in the shadows, but everywhere we found nothing but earth turned to dust. There wasn’t a sign of moisture. And all through this futile search the sun rose ever higher, blazed hotter.

      Gathering enough thoughts to decide anything was so difficult. But we did manage to concentrate enough to make one decision between us. We invested in it all our last hopes. We could see the ground ahead of us on one side of the gully rising steeply into a granite cliff. From the top of this cliff we thought we must be able to see for miles around, that from up there we’d be bound to spot a river perhaps or a pool. But Big Black Jack refused to be diverted from the gully, and we knew already he was far too strong to argue with. He went where he wanted to go and that was all there was to it. So in the end we had to get off

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