HOME ON THE RANGE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 62, Issue 87, 23 January 1942, Page 6

HOME ON THE RANGE

By BENTLEY RIDGE. (Copyright).

CHAPTER XVII. NIGHTMARE JOURNEY She steeled* herself to rush into the house to make certain the telephone was not working. It was quite dead. She found a pencil and paper in the mess on the floor near the writing desk, and darted out again. Being indoors made her skin crawl. She wrote: “Have gone over to see Mrs Henty. Maybe ill, please send help if not back soon. Taken Evelyn with me. M.D.” She pinned the paper on the door of Joe’s whare. Her mouth, her eyes, her fair full of dust, and her knee bruised from her fall in the passage, Myrle set off. It was a conscious effort to force herself to turn away from “Greystoke” and “Black Hill,” from the j’oad to help and human. companionship to turn towards greater loneliness, to the wild land shaken by sinister convulsions, full of unknown dangers. Taking Evelyn, too, Avas a further tax on her courage. But the chid could not be sent back to “Black Hill” alone; and she Avas tool terrified to stay at “PetersdoAvn.”

To Myrle’s relief she soon found that Evelyn began to forget her fears in a sense of adventure.

She skipped on the road, Avhich trembled ominously under their feet every feAV minutes; and when a more severe tremor made puffs of yellow rise from cliffs and cuttings all over the landscape she cried out ecstatically: “Oh’ look at the dust going up!”

Half a mile along the road they came to the place where it left the paddocks and descended to the river.

“Good heavens!’!* exclaimed Myrle, realising for the first time, the kind of task she had undertaken.

Below them for a distance of a hundred yards, the road had slipped away in a great landslide Avith the cliff. The Avooden bridge across the river, torn from the land, lay over on its side.

“The truck wouldn’t have been any use after all, would it??” said Evelyn. “I’m beginning to wonder what I should do with you, Evelyn,” said Myrle anxiously. “I’ll have to try to get across the river, somehow.” “Don’t leave, me!” said Evelyn, instantly terrified. ‘“Take me Avith you, I can swim—l Avon my fifty yards certificate at school!” It Avas not the river Avhich Avorried Myrle, so much, but that uneasy cliffside;. even as they stood the earth lurched under them and they saAV the surface of the landslide slipping; a great boulder Avent bounding aAvay into the river.

Frightened again, Evelyn began to cry. Myrle put her arms about her. “Don’t cry, Evelyn! We only have to stick it out. Some time this Avill be over; Ave shall be looking back on it, and it Avon’t seem to matter a bit.” She looked carefully, and noted Avhere the cliff was.less steep a feAV hundred yards back. The paddocks sloped down to it, and there were pine trees on the brink which probably served to hold it firm.

“We’ll go down there, Evelyn.” She took Evelyn’s hand and they ran back along the road, climbed the Avire and made their way down to tbe cliff edge. It Avas steeper than Myrle had thought.

She prayed that the earth might stand steady—just long enough for her to get Evelyn down! She went • first, choosing the safest route pointing out every foot and hand hold to Evelyn as they descended. At last, torn and breathless, they stood on the shingle at the river level.

They Avalked along the. river bed to the bridge, skirting the cliffs as widely as they could. At the bridge head the cliff dropped almost sheer into deep water* Making Evelyn stand Avell clear of the slide Avhich had carried away the road, Myrle climbed across the loAver heaps of rubble mingled Avith smashed telephone posts and tangled Avire, to see if it Avas possible- for them to get on to the bridge. The gulf betAveen the bridge and the land Avas too wide; the nearer part of it seemed to have had its piles wrenched out of the river bed; it had swung round into the stream and lay on its side apparently half afloat. The only thing to do Avas to swim either to the fallen bridge-, or to the other shore at a safer point. The, torn girders of the bridge seemed to offer a doubtful landing place; and Myrle Avalked back along the shingle Avith Evelyn, looking for a favourable crossing.

She laughed suddenly, in spite of the dryness of her lips, and the horror which seemed to hang with the still clouds over the. wrecked land.

“Why are you laughing?” asked Evelyn, wanly.

“I was just thinking of when I first arrived here with my father and mother. We got stuck in the car in that little creek five miles on the other side of ‘Greystoke’—ten inches of water, and it seemed like the end of the world.”

A hundred yards back, where the river forked into two branches, spreading wide and shallow with an island in the centre, they undressed hurriedly, they tied their clothes in a bundle, which Myrle strapped on the top of her head with Evelyn’s belt.

“Isn’t that how they do it in books?” said Myrle,' cheerfully. Evelyn, who was trying to cbnceal her dread, smiled manfully.

Myrle dragged a thick willow branch into the water with her: “Now, we’re going to swim with this branch in front of us, so that if the current gets too strong for us we can just hold on. What I want you to do is to keep quite calm, Evelyn, even if we get carried down the stream a little it doesn’t matter. Don’t get frightened if you begin to get tired, just say ‘l’m

tired,’ and we’ll hold on to the branch and drift.” They waded in. The first channel presented no difficulties; they landed, with Evelyn smiling and gratified that it had been so easy. (To be continued.)