The river is Down Read Online Free Page B

luck, good or bad. She didn't yet know which.
    Of one thing she was certain. She wasn't welcome but he was not being so very unpleasant about it now. He was stuck with her, as he had said, so he probably was being philosophic too. A little late about it, but that was the way the cookie always crumbled, anyway. With those eyes, that quiet manner that was more silencing than revealing, he could have been crushing. She was, after all, the uninvited guest.
    Besides, she was unenlightening about who she was, or where she was going.
    Yes—she could see there was a case against her.
    To be a girl unidentified and lost, was unforgivable!
    They drove in silence a long way. Cindie thought it must be five miles at least before they spoke again. The Land-Rover seemed to ricochet from one spinifex bush to another, yet all the time the land remained fiat. It went on and on forever , now turning a wonderful rosella red because the sun was westering. The sky was layered with the thin streams of amethyst and purple sundown clouds. The light shining through them put a strange rose-coloured dew over the earth as far as the eye could see. Earlier it had been dusty and arid, now it was lovely.
    'Why is the ground in the north red?' Cindie asked, breaking the silence. 'It's all red; not just when the sun makes it shine as it does now.'
    'The iron in it,' Nick Brent replied. 'Oxidised iron.'
    `Blinding me with science!' She was not able to hide the little bitterness in this remark.
    He ignored it. 'You'll see the iron in the cuttings through the Mulga Gorges. Red-black as sun-up through a storm cloud,' he went on, as if he had not heard her, or recognised a hidden history provoking her words.
    Cindie eased. She liked the way he had said this last. He had a feeling for the land, then, barren and empty though it was. He wasn't all construction boss and unwilling rescuer of stranded females.
    Then he deflated this hopeful thought.
    It's no place for women,' he said with finality. It's a man's world.'
    That was exactly what David had said about the research laboratory. He couldn't stand women scientists. He thought their place was bed, kitchen and nursery. She hadn't been able to explain to David that modern girls had to go to work at something. Pocket money or a dress allowance weren't forthcoming in her fatherless home. Girls had to go out into the world to be something. David was not convinced. What did they need pocket money for, anyway, he had asked. Money was a man's responsibility.
    But he had wanted her when the laboratory hours were over. He had wanted her to be there, waiting, whether he came or not. That eternal empty waiting! Thus on and on for four years. Four years of her life waiting.
    So Cindie had jumped in her car and driven away. To here, into a seat beside this man who now, in his turn, said—It's a man's world!
    Did it always have to be a man's world? she wondered angrily. Even in the year ,, when it came?
    Someone had driven this way some time earlier because now they drove through a veil of dust for several miles. Cindie was glad of the veil. Not that Nick Brent was looking at her at all, but somehow she liked the privacy of having her anger hidden from his all-seeing eyes.
    A little later Nick stopped the Land-Rover, then unhooked the receiver of his two-way radio and flicked on a switch. Voices were talking in that light outback drawl. Cindie didn't listen to this talk at the moment, and neither apparently did Nick Brent. He watched his dashboard clock instead. Five minutes later he flicked another switch.
    `Coming in,' he said. 'Nick Brent, Northern Road Development Construction Camp, calling Marana and Baanya. Answer if you're getting me. Give and receive, both remaining open.'
    A voice came through at once. 'Alexander, Marana Station, here. Any word of that girl coming up on the south side of the river, Nick? We had a watch-it call from Jim Vernon at Baanya. I only collected it when I came in half an hour ago. My wife said