They moved on, Sam listing on his fingers how many animals he’d seen, soon needing Danny’s fingers as well.
‘You’ll be onto toes before long,’ Beth said to him, when Pat showed them the emerald-green eyes of a spider in his web.
‘This is so exciting,’ Sam whispered back. ‘Isn’t it, Danny?’
But Danny, Beth realised, was tiring quickly and, with a couple of children already in the hospital with some mystery illness, she decided she’d take him back to camp. Ally, too, had probably had enough.
‘What if you go into Pat’s cart and I take Ally and Danny back to camp?’ she suggested to Sam.
‘No, I’m Danny’s friend so I’ll stay with him.’
‘I’ll go with Pat,’ Ally said, surprising Beth, although she knew she shouldn’t be surprised by anything children did.
She shifted Ally into the bigger cart, found somewhere to turn her cart, then headed back, stopping when she heard any rustling in the bushes, letting Sam sit in the front so he could shine the torch around and spotlight the animal.
‘Over there! I can hear a noise over there. Shine the torch, Sam,’ Danny whispered, when they were close to the junction of the main track.
Beth eased her foot off the accelerator and Sam turned on the torch, finding not an animal or reptile but a human being.
A very tall human being.
A very familiar human being!
‘A-A-Angus?’
His name came out as a stuttered question, and she stared at where he’d been but the torchlight had gone. Sam had taken one look at the figure, given a loud scream, flung the torch down into the well of the cart and darted away, heading along the track as fast as his little legs would carry him.
Danny began to cry, Beth yelled at Sam to stop, to wait, but it was Angus who responded first, taking off after the startled child, calling to him that it was all right.
Beth took Danny on her knee, assuring him everything was okay, driving awkwardly with the child between her and the wheel, hoping Sam would stay on the path, not head into the bushes.
‘He got a fright,’ she said to Danny, ‘that’s all. We’ll find him soon.’
Fortunately, because Danny was becoming increasingly distressed, they did find him soon, sitting atop Angus’s shoulders, shining Angus’s torch.
‘He’s not a Yowie after all,’ Sam announced, as the little cart stopped in front of the pair. ‘I thought he was a Yowie for sure, didn’t you, Danny?’
Danny agreed that he, too, had thought Angus was the mythical Australian bush creature, although Beth was willing to bet this was the first time Danny had heard the word.
As far as Beth was concerned, she’d been more afraid Angus was a ghost—some figment of her imagination conjured up in the darkness of the rainforest.
Yowies, she was sure, were ugly creatures, not tall, strong and undeniably handsome…
A ghost for sure, except that ghosts didn’t chase and catch small boys.
Which reminded her…
‘You shouldn’t have run like that, Sam,’ she chided gently as Angus lifted the child from his shoulders and settled him in the cart where he snuggled up against Beth and Danny. ‘You could have been lost in the forest.’
‘Nuh-uh,’ Sam said, shaking his head vigorously. ‘I stayed on the path—I wasn’t going in the bushes. There are snakes in there.’
‘And Yowies,’ Danny offered, but he sounded so tired Beth knew she had to get him back to camp.
And she’d have to say something to Angus.
But what?
Not knowing—feeling jittery, her composure totally shaken—she let anger take control.
‘I’ve no idea what you were doing, looming up out of the bushes like that,’ she said crossly. ‘You scared us all half to death.’
‘Beth? Is that really you, Beth?’
He was bent over, peering past Sam towards her, and he sounded as flabbergasted as she felt.
‘Who is that man?’ Sam demanded, before she could assure Angus that it was her. ‘And what was he doing in the bushes?’
Exactly what I’d like to know myself, Beth thought, but her lips weren’t working too well, or she couldn’t get enough air through her larynx to speak, or something.
Fortunately Angus wasn’t having any problems forming his speech.
‘I’m Angus and I’m staying at the resort. Right now, I’m doing the same thing you’re doing, looking at the animals at night. That’s why I have my torch.’
He lifted it up, showing it again to Sam who took it and immediately turned it on and shone the light on Danny and Beth.
‘Turn it off,’ Beth said, finding her voice, mainly because the light had shown how pale Danny was. ‘We’ve got to get back to camp.’
She wasn’t sure who she’d said it to, the kids or Angus, but she knew she had to get away, not only because of her own fractured mental state but because Danny needed his bed.
She nodded at Angus—it seemed the least you could do with an ex-husband you found wandering in the rainforest at night—and put her foot on the accelerator.
They shot backwards along the track, Sam laughing uproariously, even Danny giggling.
‘Little devil,’ Beth muttered at Sam, turning the key he’d touched while they’d stopped to forward instead of reverse.
She accelerated again and this time moved decorously forward, passing Angus who was still standing by the track.
If the shock he was feeling was anything like the shock in her body, he might still be there in the morning.
Back at the camp, she left the two children with their carers, explained that Ally had stayed with the larger group, then made her way to the medical centre.
Was she going there to avoid thinking about Angus?
She tried to consider it rationally, wanting to answer her silent question honestly.
Decided, in the end, she honestly wasn’t. Little Robbie Henderson had been asleep when she’d come off duty and although Grace Blake was an excellent nurse and would page Beth if there was any change, she wanted to see for herself that he was resting peacefully.
And check on the other patients, of course.
And it would help her not think about Angus!
She parked the cart outside the medical centre, frowning at a dark shadow on the ground just off the edge of the parking area. A shearwater going into its burrow? She watched for a minute but the bird didn’t move.
Hadn’t Lily picked up a dead bird the other day?
And Ben, one of the rangers who was sick, had also been collecting dead birds.
‘I was just going to page you.’ Grace greeted Beth with this information as she walked into the hospital section of the medical centre. ‘He slept quite well for an hour, then woke up agitated. Actually, I’m not sure he’s even fully awake. Luke’s here, but he’s with Mr Woods, the man you admitted this afternoon with a suspect MI.’
Luke Bresciano was a doctor with the Crocodile Creek hospital and rescue service and, like all the Crocodile Creek staff, he did rostered duty at the medical centre. Officially he was the doctor on duty tonight,