They had found little water, and even that had been salty. When they had climbed a steep rise in the terrain, from the summit they had seen a phenomenon that Edward Eyre had named Lake Torrens. But it only seemed to be water, as it was really a dry and glazed bed of where water had once lodged. To the north-east of Lake Torrens barren ranges continued tier after tier of rocky crags as far as the eye could reach.
It was a silent group that made slow progress northward, men trudging alongside the wagons or riding horseback, their clothes ragged and dusty, muskets slung on their backs. They had entered unknown territory where no white man had set foot, and it made Hannah remember something Captain Llewellyn had said on the Caprica, about a theory that God had created a second Garden of Eden somewhere in the world and that it might lie in the mysterious heart of Australia.
But this group was not searching for Eden or rumored lost cities or fabled inland seas. They were going in search of opal, Hannah had finally learned, and they were following Jamie because he had promised them riches. Not that he had anything certain to go by other than a very dubious a map and his own adventurous spirit. One of the men, Stinky Sam, had told Hannah that when Jamie was playing a game of cards that lasted three days, on a station west of Sydney, the final pot had contained shillings, pound notes, a man's gold ring, a lady's pearl necklace, the deed to a cattle run and a map to an opal field.
Jamie had lost the game but had purchased the map from the winner, who doubted its authenticity anyway ("How can a place be mapped when it's a place no man has ever gone into and come out alive?"), but Jamie had been taken with the yellowed parchment and inked lines and X's marked here and there. He had told his mates the Aboriginal story of the Rainbow Serpent, how its body sparkled with flames of color and glittered like gemstones, and that it had laid beautiful eggs of a translucent stone that shot back rainbows of color. The mythical eggs, it was said, could be found in the continent's interior, somewhere north of Adelaide. Jamie had put two and two together and decided to launch a hunting party.
"The opals lay on the ground," Stinky Sam had told Hannah one evening over a dinner of potatoes, damper and roasted emu bagged by Bluey Brown and his musket. "Beautiful chunks of frozen fire as big as your fist. Just there for the picking. We're all going to be rich."
Hannah had never seen an opal, although she had heard of them, the ones that came from Mexico and Europe. And as it was a rich, rare stone, she knew what drove these ragged men to follow Jamie O'Brien in blind faith—a group of mates drifting from one hope to another, picking up jobs here and there, drovers one season, shearers another, moving on when the mutual restlessness came over them, always believing Jamie that the end of the road lay just ahead.
They went by the nicknames Australians were so fond of: Blackie White; Abe Brown (called Bluey for no known reason); Charlie Olde called Chilly because his initials spelled C Olde; Banger, who loved sausages; Tabby, who liked to take cat naps; and Ralph Gilchrist whom they called Church because of the last syllable of his surname. There were also Roddy, Cyrus and Elmo, three brothers who looked so much alike Hannah could not tell them apart.
They were men Jamie O'Brien had met over a pint and a game of two-up, in places with names like Geelong, Coonardoo and Streaky Bay. And when O'Brien had his treasure map and his plan to hunt for opals, he had gone around to Geelong, Coonardoo and Streaky Bay to gather up his band of adventurers, like Jesus calling his disciples, Hannah thought, each contributing what money he could for wagons, horses and supplies, on the promise that when the treasure was found, it would be divided equally. Brothers Roddy, Cyrus and Elmo were young bricklayers looking for excitement; Blackie White was a toothless blacksmith in his fifties; Banger had been a cook on a sheep station; Stinky Sam and Charlie Olde were stockmen on a cattle station where Jamie had worked one winter as a rouse about; Ralph Gilchrist was a bullocky who had spent the better part of his life driving the great ox-drawn drays about the bush, taking supplies to farflung sheep stations and carting back mountains of wool. Bluey Brown and Tabby were axemen whose motto was "If it grows, cut it down," and they figured that, between them, they'd cleared a million acres of timber in their lives.
The only one not with them on this silent afternoon as the sun was turning to red-gold was Stinky Sam, who had gone off in search of opal, armed with a pick axe, a lantern and a canteen filled with whiskey. Stinky Sam got his nickname from working in a slaughterhouse outside of Hobart Town, where he had served time for pickpocketing back in Dublin.
Hannah looked out at the bleak landscape and thought: the earth has gone flat, as it was in the days before Columbus. The horizon was impossibly far away, and the sky so vast that Hannah felt as if she were back on the Caprica. It was late May—winter was coming, but the days were warm so that Hannah could only imagine the furnace this desert must be in the summer. At night, however, the temperature plunged, making everyone shiver and keep close to the fire. But they had brought tents and Hannah had one entirely to herself so that she had privacy.
As they made slow, steady progress each day, the men spread out in search of firewood and opals. It made Hannah think of Neal, and she wondered if this wilderness was similar to the land he was exploring
As the wagon creaked along, Jamie said, "Did I ever tell you, Miss Conroy, about this bloke I once knew, name of Fry? I was up Gundagai way one summer and I happened upon old Sammy Fry strolling through the town, looking for all the world like a down and out beggar—no socks, his pants held up with rope, a hole in his hat. 'See here, Mr. Fry,' I say. 'Everyone knows you've struck it rich with sheep. You own your own station now, yet you still go about looking like a shearer. Why don't you dress like the successful man you are?' And old Fry replies, 'Why should I? Everyone hereabouts knows who I am.'
"Well, wouldn't you know it, just a year later, I'm walking down one of the busiest streets in Sydney, and who should I run into but old Sammy Fry, dressed just as ragged as ever, but just as rich I had heard. 'See here, Mr. Fry,' I say again, 'you're in the big city now, you ought to dress better.' And old Sammy says, 'Why should I? Nobody hereabouts knows who I am.'"
Hannah smiled. She had discovered that Jamie O'Brien had a gift for storytelling and was a font of anecdotes, tales, myths, stories, fables. The narratives rolled glibly off his tongue, and they were always entertaining.
"Ever hear of a bloke named Queenie MacPhail, Miss Conroy?"
"I don't believe I have, Mr. O'Brien."
He grinned and said, "Would you like to hear how Queenie got his name? I was droving up along the Murrumbidgee River, far from where most folks live, and met a farmer named MacPhail, and his religious wife. They invited me in for a bite to eat and told me their complaint. There weren't many churches in that area and MacPhail's wife was beginning to worry about their son, who was nine years old and had yet to be baptized. Of course, that meant he also hadn't yet got a name, so they called him Boy. Mrs. MacPhail confessed to me that she was worried her boy might die and St. Peter wouldn't know who he was and wouldn't let him into Heaven. So I offered to ride about and fetch back a traveling preacher who could do the christening.
"We didn't know it, but the boy was listening at the keyhole as the MacPhails and I made arrangements with the preacher, and the boy got it into his head that christening must be like branding, because the preacher was talking of adding him to a flock. So the lad ran off, determined never to suffer a christening. We all ran after him, MacPhail, his wife, the preacher and me, and the boy led us a merry chase, all over the farm and right back to the house where he dodged in and out of rooms like a Tasmanian devil. By the time his father collared him and Mrs. MacPhail screamed 'Give my boy a name!' the preacher was so rattled he dropped his baptism water.
"'Quick, woman!" shouted MacPhail, 'another bottle,' as he was about to lose hold of his son. She slapped the bottle into the preacher's hand and as the reverend splashed the liquid on young MacPhail's head, saying, 'I christen thee—' he saw the label on the bottle and shouted, 'Good Lo
rd, it's Queen of the Highlands!' And to this day, Miss Conroy, old Queenie MacPhail boasts that he's the most baptized man on God's earth because it was done with good Scotch whiskey."
Hannah smiled and leaned forward to shift the flour sack at Jamie's back, as he was looking uncomfortable.
When Hannah had asked Jamie why he was going in search of opal, he had said, "I've never done it before. Life is short, Hannah. A man should taste everything he can." When she had asked, "What if you strike it rich? What will you do then?" He had quipped, "I never think that far ahead." In this way she had gotten to know more about the man in her care: Jamie O'Brien the carefree drifter who sometimes worked at honest labor, sometimes stole and cheated and lied, depending on his mood or the weather or the time of day. A man with a restless spirit and energy that couldn't be contained. Hannah had also discovered that Mr. O'Brien was a man used to ladies succumbing to his wit and his roguish charm.
What Hannah did not know was how Mr. O'Brien had come to be like this. She had yet to hear about his background, or what it was that had put him on the path of a lifetime of adventure outside the law.
Finally, up ahead, Maxberry raised his hand and the straggling party came to a weary halt. It was time to stop for the night and make camp.
And remove Jamie's bandage.
As usual, four men came to the back of the wagon to help O'Brien down for the night, his splinted leg making it impossible for him to walk even with a crutch. Hannah climbed down first, bringing her blue carpetbag with her. Her heart rose to her throat. She was dreading what was to happen next.
As Jamie hooked his arms around two sets of sturdy shoulders, he watched how dainty and ladylike Hannah went in search of some privacy, as if she were perusing flowers in a garden. His men went to great pains to see that she had all the privacy she needed. His men had also started combing their hair and watching their speech, and they made sure they didn't spit tobacco juice near her.
As the men unhitched the wagons and unsaddled the horses, letting them loose to graze on saltbush, Tabby got started on a fire while others gathered fuel and pitched tents, and Nan went off with her digging stick to hunt for goannas and geckos, Hannah made sure Jamie was comfortably situated with his back to a boulder, a bottle of water in his hands.
Then she retreated to the canvas tent that had been erected for her, and she sat cross-legged to stretch her aching back. She hurt all over. She was tired and hungry. More than anything, she craved a bath, but water was precious in this arid expanse and must be reserved for cooking and drinking. Jamie's men were foregoing baths and letting their beards grow. Even O'Brien himself, normally clean shaven, was sprouting a stubble-covered jaw.
The sun slipped behind the horizon and the tent grew dark. Hannah lit her lantern and, as she did every night, brought out Neal's photograph. Smiling at the handsome face, she said, "I wonder if you have made any fabulous discoveries yet, if you have named mountains and rivers after yourself, if already your photographic plates carry fantastic sights never before seen by human eyes."
She fell silent, recalling their last day together, on the road to Kapunda, when they had kissed with such passion, and she had felt Neal's ardor to be as sharp as her own. Her desire for him had not diminished, she loved him as deeply as ever, and yet. . .
She lifted her eyes to the canvas wall and thought of the man who sat on the other side, a few yards away. Jamie O'Brien. What was it about him that seemed to have cast a spell on her? From that first night in Lulu Forchette's moonlit garden, Hannah had felt strangely enchanted by O'Brien. Every time she thought about him, and when she had encountered him again as the newsagent's kiosk, Hannah had felt an indescribable draw to him. She was attracted to him, and the attraction was growing. How was that possible? She was in love with Neal. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.
But she could not shake Jamie O'Brien's eyes from her thoughts, his rakish smile and slightly crooked nose, the way he scoffed at his injury and told humorous tales of drovers and shearers, or of the clever ways he relieved unwitting Poms of their shillings.
She returned to Neal's photograph. "I am afraid," she said softly to him while outside, men's shouts and laughter rose to the darkening sky, "that if Mr. O'Brien has gangrene, I blame myself. I think now that I acted too hastily in applying the iodine preparation. I had a suspicion that, if the iodine can kill microbiotes, it can also kill living flesh. Perhaps I should not have used it for I fear now that while I might have succeeded in killing harmful microbiotes, I also killed the vessels and nerves that feed the tissues of Mr. O'Brien's wound. Dead flesh becomes gangrene, and I caused it."
"Hoy in there!" barked Michael Maxberry outside the tent. "Food's ready!"
Nan had speared some lizards, and Bluey Brown had managed to kill a lone wallaby with his trusty musket, so they had fresh meat for supper. But it was not a joyous meal. Whereas previous nights had been noisy eating affairs, filled with talk of what they were going to do with all the wealth they were going to find out here, tonight's supper was a quiet one as each man focused on the contents of his tin plate, shoulders hunched in the firelight, as if to deny the existence of the stars above, the vast desert around them, and the death of Jamie O'Brien's right leg.
Church asked about Stinky Sam, wondering out loud where "the old bugger" had gone off to, suddenly turning red and muttering an apology to Hannah.
"He's gotten lost," Maxberry said as he gave the fire a poke, sending sparks up to the stars.
Hannah wasn't hungry and so she left the circle to check on her patient.
Jamie was sitting with legs stretched out, his back against one of the few boulders in the vicinity. Hannah sat next to him on the gritty ground, gathering her skirts under herself and drawing her shawl tightly about her shoulders. A hundred feet away, eleven men and one Aboriginal woman sat huddled around a fire. The horses were tethered to the wagons where Maxberry and Church had strung a rope of pans and cutlery to sound an alarm in case dingoes came sniffing about, although it had been days since they had seen anything but the occasional kangaroo or wallaby.
"Mr. O'Brien, would you mind if we waited for morning to remove the bandage? I would prefer to inspect the wound in the sunlight."
"It's as good a time as any," he said with a smile.
"Are you worried?"
"About the gangrene?" He shook his head. "If I die tomorrow, I've had a good life. And if St. Peter doesn't let me through the pearly gates, then I'll just go round and slip through a hole in the fence." He absently rubbed the scars on his left wrist. "Won't be the first time I've stuck it to the authorities."
"Mr. Maxberry told me that you and he met on a road gang."
Jamie laughed softly. "I was out along the Snowy River when I met up with a bloke looking to buy kangaroo skins. I told him I had two hundred of them, fine red ones, ears and tails and all. I gave him a price, he agreed to it. I took the buyer's money, told him where to find the skins and I rode off. The troopers caught up with me four days later. The magistrate accused me of malicious intent to defraud the other man. I defended myself by pointing out that the two hundred skins were where I said they would be. 'You failed to mention,' the magistrate said, 'that they were still on the kangaroos!'"
Jamie laughed again, and Hannah smiled.
"Unfortunately, he didn't have a sense of humor, not like when I was caught the year before, selling a horse. The buyer listened to my sales pitch, gave me fifty quid for the horse, and when he saw that it was a clothes-horse I'd sold him, he had me hauled before the magistrate who had a good sense of humor—and a bit of gin in him I would wager—as he cautioned the buyer to be more careful in the future. I was let go that time. But the kangaroos, they landed me in a chain gang where Mike and I worked awhile before making a good escape in the middle of the night."
"So you admit you're a swindler."
"Only when I can't find dishonest work," he said with a wink, and Hannah wondered how a man was about to lose his leg, possibly his
life, could carry on a flirtation.
"Aren't you worried about your victims?"
"Most of them ask for it. You see that horse, the chestnut mare?" Jamie pointed into the darkness, and Hannah looked back to where the horses were tethered. "It was a race at Chester Downs. I'd won a few quid that day and would have gone home except I saw this fat braggart name of Barlow boasting about his champion race horse. I looked the animal over and said I'd like to buy her. We haggled all afternoon and agreed to a swap of land for the horse. I gave Barlow a government deed to a hundred thousand acres up Kapunda way, and he gave me the mare. That was last week. I reckon by now he's tried to claim his land and has discovered the deed is a forgery."
"And it doesn't bother you?"
Jamie searched Hannah's face for signs of judgment and disapproval, but found none. "The man's greed is what got him into trouble. Barlow knew that the land was worth much more than his horse. He thought he was swindling me. Hannah, I make offers that are too good to be true. An honest man would turn them down."
"Aren't you afraid Mr. Barlow will have you arrested?"
"He won't report me to the coppers. His kind don't like to look stupid. He'll cover the loss and keep his pride."
"You said he asked for it. What does that mean?"
"I choose my targets carefully, Hannah. Besides, Barlow reminded me of my father."
Jamie lifted his face and looked long and deep at the black sky. Then he brought his head down and, removing his hat, set it on the sand. Hannah saw how the night breeze played with his dark blond hair, growing long now about his neck. "My parents were among the first free settlers in New South Wales, grabbing up land and riding to success on the sheep's back, as the saying goes. I was the only one born in Australia. My parents came out with children, and then two were born ahead of me but they didn't thrive. I was the last, with my mother dying the following spring of a badly weakened constitution. It could have been a nice life, I suppose, but sudden wealth changed my father. He had worked another man's sheep farm back in Suffolk, so when he got his fifty-thousand acres, he gave our station the grand sounding name of The Grange and got rich running thousands of sheep on it, sturdy heavy-fleeced merinos. Long ago, he'd been a generous man, but money made him greedy, always wanting more, buying neighboring land from folk who couldn't meet their mortgages. My father covered his humble past by filling the house with expensive furniture, rugs from Turkey, even suits of armor imported from London. He put on the airs of a gentleman and demanded the same of his sons. My brothers complied, going to posh boarding schools, joining clubs in Sydney, wearing top hats and acting like proper English gentleman. But I was different. I was born here. I drew my first breath in the Australian air, and that set me apart from my family. Try though he did, my father couldn't turn me into one of them. I was wild. I couldn't stay put at a desk and a chalk slate. A succession of tutors came and went from The Grange, and my father took a rod to my backside more times than I care to count. When I turned fourteen, he decided to send me back to England, to go to school there and learn to be a gentleman. So I ran away. I packed a swag and hit the track and I've been on the move ever since."
This Golden Land Page 26