They Found a Cave Read Free

towards the heights above, where the tranquil afternoon showed up the high summit with splits and clefts in the rock making dark hollows.
    â€˜Why up there? Isn’t this far enough to have to climb on a hot day?’ the others demanded.
    â€˜Yeah, but there’s caves up there. Masses and masses of ’em—make the finest “kanga” homes you ever saw.’
    â€˜Listen, Tas!’ Cherry interrupted. ‘It is you Ma wants.’
    Tas peeped down, frowning. His mother was shouting for him in no uncertain voice. He spat deliberately, turned away and finished what he was saying. ‘Yeah. Caves up there—lots of them in the sandstone. All sorts and sizes, but a real bushranger lived in one, long time ago. No, Nippy, you can’t see it proper from here, but I swear I’ll take you up there one day…’
    He broke off again as another summons rang round the hills, then muttered angrily, ‘Oh, well… best go down, I suppose.’
    â€˜Why must you,’ Nigel asked bluntly, ‘since Jandie gave you the time off? I just wouldn’t hear her.’
    â€˜What would be the good of that with Ma? You don’t know ’er like I do…never hear the end of it…Must be near tea-time, too.’ He scowled as he got up, and kicked a loose rock fiercely over the edge.
    â€˜Will you put the sign out if we have to come, too? We’ll watch for it.’
    In sympathetic silence they saw him go down, taking his lanky frame like a shadow through the trees.
    â€˜Isn’t it queer,’ Cherry said at last, ‘isn’t it impossible that Old Awful is his mother? It doesn’t seem right, somehow.’
    â€˜He can’t stand her any more than we can.’ Brick rubbed his tuft of straight hair, which would never lie flat, thoughtfully. ‘I expect he’s an adopted, or a changeling, or a something, don’t you, Nig?’
    â€˜I don’t know. Pa Pinner’s bad enough, but he’s only a stepfather. Tas doesn’t pretend to like him, but he’s not dead scared of him like he is of his mother—have you noticed?’
    â€˜Well, no wonder! She’s such a beast to him. Fancy a mother… ’ Brick’s voice trailed indignantly away, and they fell silent again for a moment, thinking of another mother and father, twelve thousand miles away—they were so different…
    The afternoon was still. Sunlight shimmered lazily along the downward-pointing gum leaves and wrung a spicy scent from the curls of bark on the ground. A curious lizard flicked his tail, posing as a miniature dragon until Nippy poked at him with a stick and made him scuttle.
    â€˜When did you first begin to like him?’ enquired Cherry, still puzzling over the problem of their friend Tasman. ‘Was it when you found how awful they were to him? That’s when I did. I couldn’t understand him when we first came here—the way he talked, the things he said or anything. He didn’t like us much either, did he?’
    â€˜Gosh, no!’ Brick answered, laughing freely. ‘Why, remember the fights almost every day when he called us “Pommies”—and all that? And when he laughed at the way we did things, and at all the things we didn’t know—like when we were afraid all the time of meeting snakes, even in winter?’
    â€˜Yes, and he still thinks we’re rather mad, you know,’ said Nigel, his eye on two figures down in the yard, one so fat and the other lean as a fence dropper. ‘He told me he’d never heard such queer names as we had, especially “Nigel”. When I told him “Brick” was really short for Brickenden, and ‘‘Nippy” for Anthony, I thought he’d be sick on the spot.’
    â€˜But doesn’t he think “Tasman” is a funny name?’
    â€˜No, he doesn’t; I asked him. He thinks it’s all right because he lives in