The river is Down by Lucy Walker Page B

another person's will over her own. If so—and she must think this out—it was something urgently to be resisted.
    `Yes,' she said doubtfully. `I shouldn't be late for that
    `It's early. Look at the clock.'
    Cindie glanced at the dashboard. 'Not yet noon?' she exclaimed astonished. 'But the men back there were having their lunch. Everything is so timeless one doesn't notice Time.'
    'Or dates. You're north of Twenty-Six now, Cindie. Working hours, on site, begin at seven in the morning. On this particular day the men put the clock on half an hour, before breakfast anyway, and cut their tea-break. To-day they'll have finished a day's work by three. An hour to get back to camp and shower-up, and the rest of the time's their own. Those who are lucky in the draw will take the utilities, and will make
    the river before sundown. They'll fish, eat what they catch by the bank, and go without canteen dinner—'
    `And you don't mind?'
    `So long as they do their regulation eight hours on site—occasionally nine with one of the hours overtime pay—I have to be satisfied. It's still a free country up here, and this site is not a concentration camp. It's a construction camp. A boss who tries to make the men invariably eat in the canteen at six is a fool.' He paused. Then added slowly—`Take a man's freedom from him and you take his immortal soul.'
    Cindie was silent.
    What he had said was so true. It was the kind of truth one knew in one's innermost being, without ever having it taught or explained.
    Minute by minute her feelings for Nick Brent were indeed undergoing a subtle change; and it worried her.
    She remembered again, with a stab of unhappiness, the possible connection between Nick and Bindaroo. It had to be wrong, of course. As far as doubtful dealing with the Stevenses, anyway. Yet how subtly he had manipulated her departure with him from the site! Her mood, too! Or had he?
    Nick drove Cindie back to the camp after a quick run to the upland. From there the road had been one long streak, slashing the landscape from horizon to horizon. It had no beginning and no end. It touched one horizon and went on and on, in a straight line, to the other. The wonder of it had left Cindie without words. Nick in his own silence did not seem to have noticed this.
    Back at the camp, Mary Deacon greeted Cindie with some surprise.
    `Oh, so you're back?' Her eyebrows were raised. 'You're a right one, you are! Off with one man and back with another. Not to mention talking over the air with a third. How many men in your life when you're not up in the north, Cindie Brown?'
    `There aren't any secrets up here, that's for sure,' Cindie replied with a laugh. They were in the living-room of Mary's house and Mary had just finished dressing and making up her face. Going to the tea-party too!
    `Well . . .' Mary looked at Cindie with pretended severity. `This place is so quiet in the day-time, when the men are out on the site, you can't help hear when a motor car goes by.
    '
    Yours first, dust-cloud and all— Next a Land-Rover goes, and then comes back much later with the visiting celebrity on board. As for the third man? Well, there's always the air
    'Don't tell me you were listening in when I called Baanya, Mary? I thought the care-all was too busy—'
    `How right you are. But if I don't have those two children doing their school work up there where I can keep an eye on them, they just don't work at all. They happen to have a radio for the School of the Air. They take care to turn it on early.'
    'Oh!' said Cindie philosophically. `So, while waiting for the school session, they, and everyone in the canteen, including their mother, heard a private conversation?'
    'You take your clothes off and get yourself a shower before you make any more rash or ignorant statements, Cindie. There's nothing private on the air in this place. You might as well live cheek by jowl with your neighbours in a suburb.'
    Cindie was pulling her blouse over her head in haste. 'Am I