Dash and Dingo (31 page)

“No, that’s Jarrah. I need a few more hints, but I’ll do my best.”

Following behind Dingo, Henry wondered at the obsession that drove them both. Part of him wanted nothing more than to drag Dingo back to their tent, tear his clothing off, and make love to him, but another part was desperate to
see
the tiger, not just enticing glimpses when the animal suddenly appeared as if on stage, only to disappear moments later, but to really
see
how they lived, what they ate, how the pair interacted with each other. There was so much that had to be learned!

Dingo was sleeping when Henry decided he wanted to take a walk and soak up the surroundings. So much of it had gone by in a blur when they were trekking that he felt like he hadn’t taken in any of it properly and was failing his job as an archivist.

He grabbed his journal, which he had neglected ever since arriving in Tasmania, and headed deeper into the woods. He knew not to stray too far, as he had no sense of direction or his surroundings, and being in a strange land with nothing familiar to landmark in his head to find his way back, he knew not to dice with getting lost and never being found again.

There was so much to take in. He collected various leaves and flowers, doing thorough sketches before laying them carefully between the thick pages so they would dry and survive the long trip back home. He would ask Dingo

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and Jarrah to help him identify them, just in case he could add anything else new or of value in his report to Lardarse.

Lardarse. His charcoal pencil scraped across the page as he smiled. He was really starting to think like Dingo, now. It wasn’t that bad, though, to have a view of the world like Dingo’s. He was a man who saw the wonder in everything but also had a healthy contempt for those who didn’t.

Henry knew he loved Dingo, more than he had ever loved anybody in the world. He had fallen fast, and that was what made the future seem so scary and impossible.

Looking down at the page, Henry realized that his mind had wandered, and instead of drawing the leaf resting upon the opposite page, he had drawn Dingo’s face in profile. It wasn’t the most faithful of renditions, as Henry’s talent ran more to still life than human subjects, but he had captured the smirk perfectly, the one that could infuriate him and excite him all at once. He imagined Dingo lying back in their tent, probably still naked beneath the blankets. He wanted to go back immediately and crawl back in with him, lying against his body in sleep. It was a beautiful thought.

But he had work to do. He turned the pages of his journal until he found a blank sheet and made another attempt at sketching the leaf in case it got damaged in transit. He was drawing the first fine line of the stem when, behind him and to the left, he heard a twig snap under a heavy foot.

Too heavy for an animal.

Henry turned slowly, hoping to make it look natural. He couldn’t see anyone approaching him. He didn’t know why he was suddenly so nervous; after all, it could be Dingo coming to find him.

“Dingo?” he called out softly.

There was no answer, no friendly “Haroo!” sung out.

Another sound of footfalls, this time, to his right.

Henry jumped up and stashed his journal into his pocket. “Who’s there?”

It was strange just how definitely he knew it was a
who
, not a
what
.

After all, it could have been some heavy animal he hadn’t seen yet. But the animals in this patch of forest were quiet now, in daylight, so it wasn’t another animal moving through. It was a predator.

“Show yourself!” he yelled, making sure his voice, at least, sounded sure of himself.

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Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw brush move. He felt a trickle of sweat run down his back. The brush was heavy, and he couldn’t see anything through it. But something—
someone—
was moving.

They kept well hidden, toying with him. Like a cat with a mouse.

He couldn’t help himself. Henry turned and ran.

He could hear footsteps following him, but when he looked back, he couldn’t see anybody. They were keeping under the cover of the brush.

Concentrating on what was happening behind him, he tripped on a tree root and went flying. His journal went skipping across the muddy ground. He leaped to his feet, grabbed the journal, and started running again.

Whoever was following him was getting closer. Henry just hoped he was running in the right direction back to camp. He thought a tree ahead looked slightly familiar; there was a knot in the trunk that he remembered looked like a doorknob.

As he circled it, he collided with Dingo. They both fell, sprawling together on the ground.

“Dash, what’s the hurry?” Dingo asked, winded and amused.

“Someone’s… out there….” Henry panted, holding his stomach where Dingo had got him with his elbow.

Dingo was up on his feet and running in the direction Henry had come from before he could even get another word out.

Henry managed to stand up, still catching his breath. “Dingo!”

There was no answer. The forest was silent again.

“Dingo!”

He began cautiously retracing his steps. There was no sign of Dingo up ahead, but the brush to his left started shaking. Henry looked around him, hoping for a fallen branch to use as some odd weapon, but he barely had time to even see if there were any when Dingo burst through, his arms scratched and bleeding.

“What happened?” Henry asked.

“Didn’t see anyone,” Dingo panted. “Those branches tore me up pretty good, though.”

“No one?”

“Not a soul.”

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“There was somebody there.”

Dingo nodded, but Henry thought he could detect a note of skepticism in his eyes.

“I’m not making it up!”

“I didn’t think you were,” Dingo assured him.

“Then stop looking at me like I’m some greenhorn who got spooked by a cat.”

Dingo smiled. “There are no cats out this far. Feral dogs, yeah.”

“It
wasn’t
a feral dog. A dog would have growled or attacked me. This was somebody wanting to scare me.”

“Well, they’re gone now,” Dingo said, trying to calm him.

“They’re still out there,” Henry argued. “Do you think it was Hodges?”

Dingo hesitated.

“Dingo—”

Dingo sighed. “Maybe. He’s most likely scoping us out. Wanting to put the wind up us. We can’t let him do that.”

Henry stared off into the distance, then nodded, and looked down at Dingo’s arms. “Let’s go back to camp. We need to get some of that tea-tree oil on you.”

“You’re going to look after me?” Dingo grinned.

Henry knew he was being humored, but he let Dingo take him by the arm, and they began walking back to camp.

Dingo graciously allowed him to daub his scratches with the oil but sat with his head cocked, as if listening for any suspicious sound. “Feel better now?” he asked, reaching for his shirt and pulling it on.

Henry smiled. “I’m supposed to ask you that.”

“Pack your things.” Dingo did the same, tossing the few items he had taken out into his bag.

Henry had barely crawled out from under the tent when Dingo yanked on the ties, collapsing the fabric. Until now, Henry had always helped him fold the canvas, but Dingo had it halved and quartered before Henry was on his feet. He rolled it up and used the ties to lash it to Henry’s pack.

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Dingo lifted the ferns behind their now barren camp and ducked under, holding them up until Henry had followed suit. With his eyes lit with excitement and his skin green from the light that reflected off the leaves, Dingo looked like some overgrown, gleeful forest sprite as he held a finger to his lips.

Henry rolled his eyes in annoyance. He felt like telling Dingo sarcastically that he had grasped that they were moving on, thank you very much, as soon as Dingo had ordered him to pack. He followed Dingo, trying to tread lightly, glancing back frequently to see whether he could spot anyone following them.

They were moving upward again, and Henry felt his breath come

shorter as the oxygen thinned. Suddenly Dingo stepped into the bed of a small creek. Henry sighed. It seemed they were always either too hot or too cold, too dry or too wet. Apparently today it was going to be wet. His boots filled instantly when he stepped into the stream, but he actually felt somewhat refreshed until the chilly water made his feet go numb.

Dingo led the way downstream about two hundred yards. Henry

wondered if they were going to be wading all the way down the mountain in this wet thoroughfare, but apparently Dingo had been looking for a specific spot to leave the stream. He stepped out onto a rock covered with a lush coat of moss. When Henry followed him, he felt the moss cushion compress beneath his feet, but when he looked back, it had sprung up again, leaving no sign of their passing.

“That should slow them down,” Dingo said with satisfaction.

“How did you know that was there?”

“I didn’t. But one can expect to find that sort of moss alongside streams at this altitude.” Dingo sounded smug and pleased with himself, which irritated Henry, but he had to respect his knowledge of the terrain.

“Then how do you know where we’re going?”

“There are signs. The stars at night—”

“When you can see them,” Henry grumbled.

“Moss really
does
grow on the north side of trees. And even in deep shade, you can still tell which direction the sun comes up.”

“I feel like when I was ten, walking through the maze at Blenheim and the hedge was over my head, and I thought I’d never find the way out,” Henry admitted ruefully.

“How did you get out?” Dingo demanded.

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Henry laughed. Trust Dingo to hare off after a side topic that interested him even while escaping unknown pursuers. He swung around quickly to check behind them, but nothing was moving. “My brother James memorized the key, and eventually he took pity on me and led me out.”

“That was nice of him.”

“It cost me two weeks’ pocket money,” Henry said.

“Nice. Baz and Johnno probably would have nicked a whole month of mine.”

For some reason, that made Henry feel better, as if it weren’t just him, but that all older brothers were cut from the same cloth. Although, it was difficult to believe that Dingo, who had belted Johnno on the nose at ten, would have stood still for that sort of extortion. “So what if there isn’t any moss and it’s raining?”

“There’s my compass.” Dingo hefted his pack and turned back to say,

“Look behind you.”

Henry whirled, suspecting that his erstwhile chaser had come up behind them.

“What do you see?”

“Nothing!” Henry was ashamed to hear the rising panic in his voice.

“Sure you do.” Dingo pointed. “See that tree, that one that has a hole about ten feet up?”

Henry nodded, starting to calm himself.

“There wasn’t a hole on the other side. You have to look back at things when you’re hiking. They appear different coming and going. A tree may look like nothing on one side, but on the opposite side there may be a spot where lightning struck and took off a branch. That makes it a landmark.”

Henry nodded again, seeing just what Dingo was saying. And what he was leaving unsaid: how to get out of the jungle if something happened to him. “I thought you were looking at me whenever you turned around.”

“You do tend to improve the landscape,” Dingo said with that smile that made flutters start up in Henry’s stomach, but then he was back to business.

“All water flows downhill, heading for the sea. If you follow it, you’ll come out
somewhere
and be able to find a town or village. Look here.”

Dingo picked up a stick and shoved the litter of dead leaves aside with his boot, starting to draw a crude map in the dirt. “That’s the River Styx—”

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“Where you fell in.”

“Jumped. We traveled northwest from Hobart to cross it.
That’s
Maydena, another town where there were stories of a tiger sighting. Where we hoped Hodges was going.” He drew another squiggly line that arced closer to the line representing the Styx. “This is the Tenna River. I suspect that Hodges and his guide may have come up that way.”

“And in the middle?” Henry pointed at the blank area between the two rivers.

“Nameless, unexplored country. No farms, no towns. Only forest and water and animals,” Dingo explained.

It made Henry feel a little thrill to know that he could climb a hill and know that no one else had ever walked there before—at least not a white man.

“But Jarrah knows this area.”

“Even Jarrah doesn’t usually come this far,” Dingo said. “Not that it matters. He’s at home in the forest like no other man I know.”

“Then—how did Hodges get this far? If his guides don’t know the area?”

Dingo shrugged and for the first time Henry sensed his uneasiness.

“Probably using a compass, like we are. Maybe he’s offered them a lot of money. Times are tough right now, not much work in Tasmania.”

“
We’re
not using the compass; you are.”

“I’ll show you how when we get there.”

“Where’s there?” Henry asked, feeling a bit of déjà vu.

“We’ll know when we get there,” Dingo said. Carefully he scraped over the map he had drawn in the earth with a leafy branch until it was gone. He scooped up a handful of loose loam from the base of a tree and let it sift between his fingers, and then he carefully arranged dead leaves to look as if nothing had been disturbed. He thrust the branch he’d used deep into the brambles and surveyed the scene before he turned to lead the way.

For the first time Henry felt Dingo did believe him about them being followed. He just wished it made him feel better than it did.

Henry settled in for the hike.

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It felt like hours, but it was actually only two when Dingo slipped behind a thorny bush, threading through a thick maze of brush and stood gazing around. “This is a good spot,” he announced.