Dash and Dingo (43 page)

“Get the fuck out of here,” Henry snarled.

Dingo glanced at him in surprise before turning back to the two men.

“What are you doing?”

“Where’s Hodges?”

The goon advanced on Dingo threateningly, but Dingo stood his

ground.

Before he even knew he was doing it, Henry stepped between them. He took a deep breath. “He wasn’t one of our party.”

“So you weren’t traveling with him. We knew
that.”
The man seemed at a loss of what to ask next, especially confronted with two men who showed no signs of backing down.

Henry wasn’t in the mood to help him; he just stood there and waited.

Dingo stepped up next to him and glared at the two men.

“We want to know where Hodges is.”

“Have you ever thought maybe he’s double-crossed you?” Dingo

smirked at them. “Maybe he changed his mind about the tiger.”

“As long as he was always on the opposite side of you, his interests and ours were one and the same,” the goon growled.

“Well, we haven’t seen him. Now beat it!” Dingo jerked a thumb at the door.

“We’re keeping our eye on you, Chambers.”

“That won’t help you find him. I don’t have him and I don’t want him.”

“He’s missing.”

Dingo smirked. “So go look for him.”

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The two men shuffled their feet uncertainly, not wanting to admit defeat. At last they circled around Henry and Dingo, leaving the room without closing the door.

“More government men?”

Dingo peered into the hallway and closed the door. “They work for the same group that hired Hodges.”

“What kind of crooks—”

Dingo held up a finger to his lips and said quietly. “That’s the shame of it. It’s not a group of criminals or even the people who supply specimens to zoos. Just farmers and ranchers who want to protect their property.”

Henry shook his head in disbelief, even though he had seen enough to realize it was probably true. “And where will they go now?”

“They’ll probably go and search for him, but Jarrah will have covered his, and our, tracks completely.”

“And where is Jarrah? And your father?”

Dingo shrugged. “Maybe it’s better that we don’t know. They’ll be back.”

They slept better that night, despite the run-in with the goons. But when Henry awoke in the morning, the space next to him in the bed was cold, long vacated. He gave himself a quick wash at the basin and made his way downstairs. Tony was behind the bar, and he jerked his head toward the back.

Henry nodded and found Dingo sitting in the beer garden, a cup of cold coffee sitting before him.

“Morning,” he murmured, sitting across from him.

Dingo looked at him, and then he glanced at his coffee cup and grimaced at the contents. “Morning. Shall I get you a coffee? I think I could use another.”

“Sure,” Henry said uncomfortably.

Fortunately, Tony had already beaten them to the punch and brought out a fresh pot just as Dingo was standing up. Alone again, they silently poured their cups, and Henry wondered how to breach the alien quiet that had started between them.

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It was Dingo who spoke first. “I have to go back to Melbourne.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I’ll have to report back to… the interested parties. And let
them
know about Hodges and what happened to the cub.”

“How will they take it?”

Dingo twirled his cup on the saucer. “Not well. But at least we managed to save the parents and two of the cubs. Although their rationale would probably be if we hadn’t gone there in the first place, Hodges wouldn’t have followed us.”

“It’s my fault,” Henry said bitterly.

“No, Dash, it’s not.”

“It is! This only happened because I dredged it all up, from following it back home.
I
made people look and keep me informed. That’s how Gordon found me.”

“Hodges already knew we were looking, because of what we were

doing here anyway. He knew we kept making tracking parties into the forest, trying to observe the numbers of the tigers. It would have happened with or without your involvement.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Dash—”

Henry stared down at the table.

“Dash, look at me.”

Henry looked up and met his gaze.

“Jarrah said you were meant to see the tiger. You were
meant to
.

Sometimes things are set in motion, and we don’t know why. Maybe you were meant to come here, for your own reasons, but you were to come away with something else entirely.”

“Like what?”

“Maybe you were meant to become their protector. Like us.”

“How much protecting can I do from England?” Henry asked.

“You have your own report to hand in,” Dingo said. “It depends what you put in it.”

“You mean lie,” Henry pointed out.

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“Or protect.”

“And after that?”

The moment had come. The one Henry had been dreading. Farewells and cheerios, promises to meet again that would never be fulfilled. The last goodbye. “When I woke up this morning, and you were gone, I thought—”

“I don’t want to leave you, Dash. Don’t you know that?”

Henry felt his blood warm, although logic prevailed. “I don’t want to leave either.”

“Maybe,” Dingo said carefully, “just maybe, you don’t have to stay in England.”

Henry felt the prickles of sweat develop against his hairline. “But my whole life is back home.”

“And it sounds as if you weren’t that happy there.”

Henry didn’t answer; he couldn’t.

Dingo continued prodding him. “You could start over again here.”

“It would mean giving up everything.”

This time it was Dingo who remained silent.

“Sometimes…” Henry said hesitantly, “it’s better to stick with what you know.” He wasn’t sure if he could fully articulate just what he meant. He had a job, a flat, a potential career back in England. If he were to give all that up, what guarantee would he have about a life in Australia? What kind of life could he have with Dingo?

Dingo downed the rest of his coffee. “I guess that’s that, then.”

Before he could stand and leave, there was the sound of footsteps behind them. Hank and Jarrah entered the beer garden; Hank looked tired, but Jarrah looked just as usual, with a placid good humor that spoke of a man satisfied with his work.

“Hey, old man. Haroo, Jarrah,” Dingo said.

“Boys.” Hank nodded, and they took a seat.

“What have you all been up to?” Dingo asked.

Jarrah bent to extract his pack from under the table. Carefully he pulled an object wrapped in cloth patterned with a striped pattern. Henry’s palm began to tingle.

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“You came a long way to go home empty-handed,” Jarrah said. “A gift for one who loves the tiger as we do.”

Henry took the object in both hands, surprised at its weight. He hesitated.

“Go ahead, open it,” Jarrah said.

Henry unwrapped the cloth, stroking the soft cotton striped with caramel, orange and brown. He uncovered a piece of sandstone. It was tan and mostly smooth with a few sparkly bits of gunmetal grey, like some sort of ore.

He looked up at Jarrah questioningly, even as the feeling in his palm intensified.

“Look at it closely.”

Henry picked it up and tilted it. Excitement began to build as he caught the faint lines on the surface. He recognized the line of the spine, leading to the stiff tail, the wide-spread jaw, the stripes drawn over the haunches.

“Tassie,” he whispered joyfully.

“A rock painting,” Dingo said in a reverent tone. “Does Mary—”

“She wants Dash to have it,” Jarrah assured him. “This is very old. The ancestors painted it.” He licked his thumb and swiped it over the surface of the rock.

Henry gasped and jerked, as if to pull it away, but for some reason, he let Jarrah do as he wished. If he had some good reason for destroying this one as he’d done with the first—

“It’s over one thousand years old. Silica has leached out of the rock and covered the painting. It cannot be washed away, no matter how many tears are shed over the tiger,” Jarrah said. “Take that with you, Dash, to remember that you saw the tiger alive and free.”

“I’ll never forget it,” Henry said.

“I know.” Jarrah stood up and held out his hand to Henry. “Good journey, my brother. And Mary said to tell you she will kick your arse if you don’t come to see her again. For some strange reason, she took quite a liking to you.”

Henry put his precious rock down carefully on the cloth wrapper and stood up, putting his arms around Jarrah and hugging him tight. “Thank you, Jarrah. You are a true brother.” And it was true, for he felt more of a bond with this man than he ever had with James.

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Jarrah’s arms were around him, and he heard him whisper something but the words weren’t in English. Then Jarrah released him and turned to Dingo.

The two men hugged and thumped each other’s backs. “Toorroo,”

Jarrah said.

“Toorroo, Jarrah.”

Henry sat down, watching as Jarrah slipped out of the back gate of the Beer Garden. He ran his fingers over the rock, unable to believe that Jarrah could bring himself to part with such a treasure.

Dingo cleared his throat and sat down, scraping the wooden chair over the uneven pavement. Ferociously, he turned on his father. “All right, old man, talk!”

To his surprise, Hank didn’t reprove Dingo. Instead he nodded, looking uneasily from one of them to the other. “I owe both of you an apology.”

“That’s for damn sure. What drove Hodges mad like that? Did you know he was that close to the edge when you sent us out there?” Dingo demanded.

“I rather think that I’m to blame,” Hank said with a sigh. “I don’t know if you remember how Clarence always used to be hanging about when you were a lad—”

“Vaguely. I do remember he was older than me and I wanted to punch his snout in.”

Henry laughed. He could easily imagine after his success with Johnno that Dingo would have wanted to test his prowess on all the older boys around.

Hank sighed again. “He seemed genuinely interested in the thylacine.

And in those days, the government wasn’t quite so gung-ho about decimating their numbers. I used to give lectures to some of the boys who were interested in the native animals of Australia and Tasmania, take them on hikes to show them how they lived. Clarence came to me, and he seemed quite a polite boy.

Timid, almost. Had no father, only his mother.”

With a flash of insight, Henry said, “You became a father figure to him.”

“Got it in one, Dash. Wish that I’d seen it back then, but no, I was too obtuse to pick that up,” Hank said regretfully. “Baz and Johnno never liked him. I thought it was jealousy, and it was, but not on their parts. He was a

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right little varmint when my back was turned, but Baz and Johnno were capable of looking after themselves.”

“And Dingo?” Henry asked.

Dingo looked a bit embarrassed.

Hank laughed. “Dingo was never a retiring sort. He had no trouble handling Clarence. Until—”

“Until?” Dingo leaned forward, and Henry realized that Dingo was just as curious as he.

“Do you remember when you first saw Tassie on that trip we took when you were ten?” Hank asked.

Henry and Dingo exchanged a glance.

“Of course.”

“Clarence had wanted to come along on that trip. I told him family only.” Hank shook his head. “I didn’t handle it well. I could tell he was upset.

But after you saw the tiger, I
saw
the fire in you. I knew you were the one.

The one of my boys who was going to carry on with my work….”

“And Clarence felt slighted,” Henry said.

“Exactly.”

“And
that’s
why he’s been on my arse for years?” Dingo asked. “What was his game? Did he think if he arranged for me not to come back, he could move in and take my place?”

“I don’t know. And whatever pathetic fancy he conjured, I didn’t realize he’d become so unbalanced as to come to the point of actually being willing to
kill
for it.” Hank rubbed his hands over his face. “I suspect he didn’t plan on either you or he coming back from this trip. Or Dash.”

Dingo looked rather shocked, and Henry felt pretty much the same.

After a moment, Dingo asked, “What makes you say that?”

“He killed his guide. And from what you’ve said—” Hank shook his head. “He didn’t tell his cronies at the department of animal protection where he was going. He no longer cared about the fate of the tiger. It was you or him, in his eyes.”

“He must have been mad!” Dingo exclaimed.

“Or sick,” Henry said. He, at least, had a bit of understanding for the man. This was one thing Dingo might never understand, having always had

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the love of both his parents. He almost felt sorry for Clarence Hodges. He rubbed his leg absently, stroking over the wound.

“Poor Clarence,” Hank said.

Henry reached for his painting, wrapping it carefully in the cloth, his palm throbbing. “Will those goons be back to try and steal this?”

Dingo gave a short bark of laughter, recalling the yip of the thylacine.

“They’re not interested in beauty. I think your rock is safe.”

Glad that things seemed a little bit better between them, Henry leaned in closer to Dingo. “There’s one last thing I want to do before I leave Hobart,”

he told him. “Will you come with me?”

Dingo didn’t even ask what it was he wanted to do and nodded. Henry could tell he had already guessed.