They had an unbearably stuffy night in the breathless railway carriage; once Marcella went out on the platform and sat down for awhile listening to the echo-like barking of dingoes out on the ranges. In less than five minutes she was back again, her feet and hands prickling and sore with the bites of ants and sandflies. She was not at all sorry when dawn came at half-past three. She was disappointed in the creek; it had sounded luxuriously moist from the note of pride in the stationmaster's voice when he mentioned it. It turned out to be a suncracked water-course with a little muddy water lying in hollows, and one or two deeper holes from which the manganese miners got their water. She had been hoping for a swim: she had to be content with dipping a handkerchief in one of the hollows and wiping her face with it, since all the rest was needed for drinking.
"Next time yous come along we'll have had a drop o' rain, an' then you can drownd yourselfs if you want to," said the stationmaster.
They started out at four o'clock with the information that Gaynor's Station was a collection of weather-board huts, a homestead put together by five lads from England who were trying to make a fortune each. They had not yet made a living between them. Loose End was owned by an elderly squatter with many children. Five big gums, which could be seen for miles, stood sentinel over the homestead on a rising knoll of ground.
"But if yous ain't lucky, don't hit up Loose End. Old Twist has lots o' luck, but it's mostly bad luck. A kid every year, an' eether a bush fire or a flood or something to make up for it. His eldest is going on for ten, I think--an' how's he to pay for labour to clear his land?"
Neither of them knew, but they decided to make for Loose End and see what was going on under the five gums.
That day was the strangest experience to them both. Louis had tramped before in the cooler New Zealand summer; Marcella had walked miles on Lashnagar. But this walking through the dry, sun-scorched scrub, on which their feet slipped and slid was an experience quite unique. The heat rose from the ground to meet that blazing down from the sky of Prussian blue. At eight o'clock they were both tired, but Marcella, who plodded on, calm and unworried, was not nearly so tired as Louis who made himself hot and dissipated much energy in wondering when they would get there--wherever "there" might be. He had started the day whistling and gay; by ten o'clock he was in the depths of despair and took Marcella's attempts to chaff him as insults and injuries. As soon as they reached a patch of stunted bushes she decreed a halt and a rest. They filled the billy from their water-bottles and, making a fire with the scorched scrub, had it boiling in a few moments. Louis, though he was revived to interest by the pannikin of tea and a cigarette and biscuits, sank back into deep depression after a few minutes, saying that their coming into the Bush had been the act of lunatics, that they would die of starvation and thirst--until she made him take out his map and find out where they were.