Hills End by Ivan Southall Read Free Book Online Page A

outside temperature already in the nineties!
    And there was another thing. If the diesel really was out of fuel, there’d be a job to do, and what a beastly job! The pipe lines all full of air, sludge from the empty tank sucked into the cylinders of the engine. It’d take hours to get the brute started again. Only one thing to do. Get number two engine turning over and roll up his sleeves and strip down number one. Glory, old Ben would skin him alive!
    He hurried from the office, across the heat of the sizzling yard, that yard that was inches deep in wood shavings, towards the engine house. What a place it would be on a day like this—galvanized iron walls, galvanized iron roof—a man would cook in his own juice!
    He stopped then, suddenly disturbed. It was the feel of the yard, the feel of the heat, the stillness, the deathly calm, the suffocating atmosphere. He’d never felt anything quite like it. Sweat began pouring from him. Perhaps it was more than sleep that had made him squeamish.
    Instinctively he looked up to the sky. Unclouded, but not clear. Great Scott! In the north-east it looked ghastly, glazed over with a bronze sheen.
    He stared at it, couldn’t understand it, had never seen anything like it; but he knew it was wrong.
    He felt helpless, alone, isolated.
    A man was equal to things made by men, but Nature was different. There were times when Nature could be tamed, but there were times when Nature couldn’t be stopped.
    He realized he was listening again, and the stillness that he had taken to be total silence was neither stillness nor silence. He could hear dogs crying and the River Magnus rumbling, and he could see a cat across the yard in the hot shade, standing erect, bristling. A flight of ducks winged across the valley at an hour that was unusual for them, heading south. He could hear the lowing of cattle—the bull and the five cows and the calves at Rickard’s place. The milking of the cows for the coming evening was his responsibility. He could feel and hear and sense many things and all became one emotion—alarm.
    It demanded a conscious effort to continue to the engine house. No matter what was heralded by the state of the sky, one engine or the other had to be started immediately before all the perishable food in the township was ruined. He was right about the fuel. Number one was sucked dry. Frank Tobias was disgusted with himself, because when he felt the engine he knew it had been idle for an hour at least. The exhaust pipe was comparatively cool. He started the emergency unit and got back into the yard.
    He was restless and wondered how far the picnic convoy had gone. Probably most of the way. By now they’d be no more than thirty minutes’ journey from Stanley, all going well, with no punctures or breakdowns.
    He wondered about Miss Godwin and the children. They certainly would have reached their destination. Provided there had been no loitering they could have walked to the bluff in a little over two hours. There’d be no loitering with Miss Godwin. She bustled everywhere she went, as though her next hour were her last.
    He mopped his brow and wondered about himself. He was a strong man and a good man, but even the strong and the good might feel uneasy at being alone, as he was now, in an empty township, with a mighty barrier of mountains standing between him and the next man. The women and the kids didn’t count. If anything went wrong they’d be dependent on him. They’d be looking to him for help. He couldn’t turn to them.
    And something was wrong. He knew that more certainly than he had ever known anything. If he had been trapped at the rim of an erupting volcano he couldn’t have been more alarmed. The feel of the sky, the feel of the heat, the feel of the air, were downright evil.
    He stirred himself and paced down to the river. Old man Magnus was the weather prophet. Old man Magnus was the crystal ball that told the