But before he turned away he couldn’t resist taking one last look through the binoculars. The fire seemed a little closer now, and the convoy of trucks and cars were like tiny dots against that great tidal wave of flame and smoke. He noted that the sky was darkening over the horizon even though the sun still beat down on him here at the top of the hill. Was there another storm brewing – or was it just clouds of smoke? Either way, he knew better than to hang around to find out.
He took a long, slow sweep of the paddocks that spread between the rocks of Morgan’s Reach and the fire. There were emus, kangaroos and wallabies racing across the valley floor, and those black pinnacles didn’t seem very far away when viewed through the powerful binoculars. He knew he wouldn’t reach home until long after dark – and that he would have to cycle like the wind to stay ahead of that billowing smoke.
Danny realised he was wasting time, and was about to head off when he caught a glimmer of something sparkling in the far distance. It winked from the shadows beneath a small stand of trees at the northern end of the valley, and he thought at first he must have imagined it. He was going to dismiss it, but curiosity made him focus the binoculars on the spot – and he saw it again.
He tried adjusting the binoculars, but whatever it was moving down there remained just too far away to be seen clearly. His pulse began to race as his imagination took hold and his thoughts ran helter-skelter. It definitely hadn’t been the spark of fire – but it could have been an old tin can, or a bit of glass catching the sun. That thought didn’t satisfy him, for cans and bits of glass didn’t move about, and whatever was glinting down there was winking back at him at regular intervals.
He could hardly breathe in his excitement as a possibility began to take shape. The shadows were dappled, and if someone was lying in them dressed in camouflage, then of course he couldn’t be seen clearly. But if it was the soldier, why hadn’t he smelled the smoke? Why wasn’t he hurrying away from that awful fire that seemed to be creeping closer by the minute? Surely he couldn’t be asleep.
Danny chewed his lip in an agony of indecision. Maybe he was injured and couldn’t run – maybe something terrible had happened to him and he was dead. And yet, Danny reasoned, if he was dead then what was moving down there, flashing that wink of light?
Danny rammed the binoculars back into the battered leather case, took a long drink of water and picked up his bike. He would go and find out for himself.