‘Some of the steam was still leaking from the pipes when they went over to drag their mates away but I’d say they’re only superficial burns,’ the foreman explained.
They were superficial burns, soon treated and dressed.
‘Leave the dressings in place until Monday then come into town and we’ll check the wounds and dress them again if necessary,’ Mak told the three men.
They all agreed and thanked him, while Neena smiled to herself. In this case, Mak was the person with the most experience, but as far as these rough outback labourers were concerned, it was as natural to them as breathing to consider the male of the species as the main authority—the chief!
‘Best if you’re a boy,’ she muttered, patting the bump as she made her way back to her vehicle. ‘Life’s a lot easier for men.’
CHAPTER TWO
BEST if you’re a boy?
The phrase he’d heard Neena mutter hung in Mak’s head as they drove away from the exploration site, but the weariness of the long drive out to Wymaralong was claiming him and he couldn’t think clearly about the implication of the words.
‘Do you not know the sex of your baby? I thought with regular scans most people found out quite early.’
Neena didn’t take her eyes off the road, simply shaking her head by way of reply.
‘I didn’t want to know,’ she said, and before she could explain the vehicle struck something and jolted to a stop, slewed across the road, airbags inflating so the world turned white.
‘What the—!’
The muttered oath told him his companion was conscious and as he fought his way out of the airbag he heard her door open.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Can you move your legs and arms? Coming on to dawn, I don’t drive fast because I’m always wary of ‘roos. I don’t think we hit whatever it is hard enough for major injury but your side took the impact and the front wing is crumpled. Are your feet free?’
Mak wiggled his feet and moved his limbs. There was less foot room than there’d been earlier, but his feet weren’t trapped.
‘I’m conscious and feeling no pain so I assume I’m okay and, yes, my feet are free. What did we hit? I didn’t see anything ahead of us and there certainly wasn’t anything on the road as we came out.’
‘It’s a camel, I just looked. I’d heard there was a mob of them out here, but hadn’t believed it. They’re usually further west, around Alice and over in the Western Australia deserts. By the look of things it was already dead—maybe the ambulance hit it a glancing blow on its way back to town. The damage is on your side so I doubt your door will open. Here’s a knife, can you cut your way free of the airbag? I’ll phone a tow truck.’
He felt the knife press into his palm then heard her move away, speaking quietly, no doubt phoning for help, but when he made his way out of the vehicle she wasn’t on the phone. The headlights, still working on the driver’s side, illuminated a macabre scene, the slight woman kneeling by the big animal, talking not to it but to a young calf that stood making bleating noises at its mother, no doubt waiting for her to get up.
‘She had this calf—the poor wee thing. See the cord—it’s not very old.’
The pain in the woman’s voice pierced Mak’s heart and he heard his own voice saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll look after it.’
We?
He was here for a month and what did he know about raising camels? Raising anything? Okay, so he’d thought he’d be a father—once upon a time—and he’d liked the idea, but his marital experience still rankled. It wasn’t something he was likely to repeat.
‘I’d like to get a rope around his neck,’ Neena said.
Mak smiled to himself, feeling the words were a great segue to his thoughts, then he realised she was trying to hold the struggling baby camel.
Struggling baby camel? The animal was kicking its ridiculously long legs and the woman holding it was pregnant.
‘Let go,’ Mak ordered. Guessing she was about to argue, he added, ‘If it kicks the baby, you’ll be sorry.’ He lifted it out of the way, standing up with it and wondering what to do next.
He supposed it was fate that the tow truck should arrive at that moment so he was illuminated by its headlights, standing in the middle of the road, a baby camel in his arms.
‘You guys been having fun?’ The tow-truck driver got out of his cab and surveyed the scene. ‘Not your baby, is it, Neena?’
‘It is now,’ Neena told him, standing up and moving across to where the driver was examining the calf. ‘We’d better put him in the back of my vehicle and get him out when we get to town. Can you drag the mother’s body off the road a bit before you hitch up to my car, Nick? Oh, sorry, Nick, this is Mak—Mak, Nick.’
‘New doctor in town, I heard,’ Nick said as he offered his hand to Mak.
‘Word gets around,’ Mak said, shaking hands with the man, although it did puzzle him just how this had happened in the early hours of a Saturday morning, especially as the town had been deserted when he’d arrived.
He didn’t puzzle over it long, putting the calf into the back of the vehicle then helping Nick wrap a chain around the dead camel and walking in front of the tow truck as it pulled the animal off the road and into bushes well off the track. Next, Neena’s vehicle, with its badly damaged bull bar and left wheel arch, was attached for towing, and Neena, who had settled the calf in the back of her big four-wheel-drive, talking to it all the time, was persuaded to leave it for the drive back to town.
‘Birds like ducks and geese attach themselves to humans if they don’t have a mother—do you think camels might do the same?’ she asked as she climbed into the tow vehicle, moving across the bench seat to make room for Mak in there as well.
‘Patterning, don’t they call it?’ Nick said, and Mak’s world became a dream again. Crammed into the cab of a tow truck as a brilliant dawn coloured the eastern sky, the smell of diesel fuel filling the air, and a slim, pregnant, beautiful woman squashed beside him, chatting on about the patterning habits of birds, stirring heat in his body again…
He’d put it down to tiredness and ignore it, that’s what he’d do, but, exhausted as he was, the night was not over. As Nick pulled up outside the big old house and Mak wearily alighted, his hostess was already making plans.
‘My office is the first room on the left, the computer’s on the desk,’ she said to Mak. ‘Could you hop on the internet and see what you can find out about camel milk? The little one will need a drink. And Nick, if you wouldn’t mind carrying it out to the stables. A rubber glove, that would do for a teat do you think, until I can get something sent out?’
‘It’s no use arguing,’ Nick said to Mak, as Neena made her way to the back of her vehicle to release the calf. ‘Once she’s got a bee in her bonnet about something, there’s no stopping her. I’d better catch up or she’ll lift the damn thing out herself.’
Nick hurried after her while Mak wearily climbed the front steps. They felt as high as Everest, but as tiredness cramped his legs he had to wonder just how tired a pregnant woman must be feeling. Not that he intended using her office for the internet search on camel milk.
Was he really about to do that?
Yes, he was, but he’d use his laptop—that’s if wireless worked out here. One day in four, she’d said—was that when it did work or it didn’t?
He sighed, too tired and confused to think about such irrelevancies. Though wasn’t the constitution of camel milk an irrelevance?
Not