Luke smiled to himself. Rain didn’t reach the ground beneath these trees either, but not because of the foliage. He glanced to the north and east. There was haze there, and mares’ tails. Possibly this horrific drought would break. The rain certainly wasn’t holding back for want of prayer.
Off to the west—what was that? Half a dozen riders had spread themselves wide across the land as if they were seeking something. Luke felt the strongest urge to avoid them. Silly. They didn’t look particularly dangerous, but in an inexplicable way, they did. Luke had been a very practical person in his youth, and his major training had been in the sciences, physics especially. It had taken him a long, long time to learn to shed the scientific explanation for everything and listen to his inner voice. But he had learned. He listened now, and quietly drew his horse aside and away through the trees.
He continued south, the sun at his back. He knew Aramac was behind him somewhere and that Barcaldine, or perhaps Ilfracombe, lay somewhere ahead. Other than that, he was lost. Continuing south, he would bump into the Central Line sooner or later, and then he wouldn’t be lost anymore. He would simply follow the railway west and end up in Barcaldine. Or Ilfracombe. Or Longreach. Or perhaps Alpha, depending on how lost he was now.
That body of men had safely passed. Luke tried again. “Indirri! I need you!” He had called at intervals throughout this last day and a half. No response. He tried once more, just to be certain.
Was that a human voice he had heard? Or an eagle-hawk crying? He urged his weary horse forward a quarter mile and called again. The answer came again, to his right. He found him! At last he had found Indirri. Now they could all breathe easier!
His own breath caught in his throat. That wasn’t Indirri. It looked a lot like Marty, the hat especially. He whipped his startled horse into a run.
The moment he saw that he was seen, Marty sat down in the dirt and simply waited. With his left hand he clutched his right arm rigidly at his side. Luke bolted off his horse before it had stopped and dropped down beside this bedraggled tenant of the Crown.
He took one breath and literally fell back. “How you stink! What is that?”
“Long story. Sure glad you showed up.” Marty struggled to his feet, but he couldn’t get there without a hand. “Let’s ride double-dink; I’ll tell you about it on the way.”
Luke made a face, but gave Marty a boost into the saddle and swung up behind. “This is a sacrifice for friendship I wouldn’t make for just anybody. What is that smell? It’s familiar.”
“I was coming up on Sheldon’s government house when six riders fell on me, shot at me, and chased me. The roan was too tired to keep the pace. He went down and I landed on my shoulder. Popped it out. That’s happened before.”
“It doesn’t look disjointed now.”
“I think it popped back in when I squirmed under the cow, but it hurts too much to move it. I crawled three feet and dug into loose dirt under a sun-dried cow carcass that had fallen by the track.” He shuddered. “Luke, you’d never guess how many thousands of bugs live under a dead cow. Not just flies and maggots. Big beetles with scratchy feet.”
“Indeed. Six apiece, in fact.” Luke listened a moment to the labored breathing. He must get this man some help quickly.
“They were right there on top of me, not a yard distant—the men, I mean. I expected them to find me any minute. Longest hour I ever waited in my life. I knew if they found me they’d kill me. And those bugs…”
“Why kill you? That’s rather drastic—not to mention illegal.”
“I knew it, that’s all. When I was certain they’d moved on, I came out and started walking north behind them. I figured so long as I stayed behind them, I’d be all right. They wouldn’t be expecting me back there—they’d already checked the basin pretty thoroughly.”
“I saw them. They would have killed you, all right—put me off—and I was a mile away.” Luke had better make some plans here. “Where to? Aramac?”
“No. Sheldon’s people will get there before we do. They’ll post at least one of their own in town to watch for me. We gotta get home.”
“That’s a long way off, even if you know where you’re going, which I don’t. And you can’t ride that far in the shape you’re in. Besides, I doubt my horse would make it with two.”
“Cy Bickett keeps a dozen horses at a camp near a little seep to the northeast. It’s out of our way, but not too far. If any of his stockmen are there, we can recruit them—at least tell them about the possible war.”
“Not the best of plans, particularly if you decide to pass out on me. You alone know our way around this wasteland. A seep, huh? Suppose there’s enough water in it to wash some of that smell off you?”
****
Meg tried curling up on her other side. That didn’t work either. She sat up on the floor and tried to see something. Anything. This was the darkest night she’d been in for ages. Marty’s mum and Pearl were asleep on top of Marty’s bed. That narrow pallet couldn’t be much more comfortable than the floor here. Meg got up and stretched. Oh, she was stiff. She was fully dressed—they all were (battle-ready, Marty’s Uncle Edward called it)—so she groped her way down the hall to the front door.
Edward’s voice barked a very military “Who goes?”
“Meg Con—Vinson. It’s me.”
“Not you. Them.”
“Halloo!” A familiar and most welcome voice called from the distance of the east paddock.
“Luke!” Meg’s prayers were answered, her day complete, and it wasn’t near sunup yet.
“Are you certain?” Edward sounded suspicious.
“I’m certain.” She hurried out into the dooryard.
A horse without saddle or bridle came clattering into the yard and right past them toward the barn. A minute behind it came two more horses. Luke slid off a bareback horse Meg didn’t remember seeing before. With a happy grin, he wrapped both arms around her and kissed her soundly.
He turned to the other rider. “Your turn. Go find Pearl.”
“Break it down, mate.” Marty! His right arm was bound firmly to his body with a sling and swathe. He carefully disengaged himself from his saddle and slipped to the ground. He was controlling his horse with a length of rope over its nose.
“What happened to ye? And why the…and why are ye two together?” Meg looked from face to face. “And what in heaven’s name is that smell?”
Marty grimaced. “Gully Joe’s clothes and a bath and I still smell like that cow. Gunner stink for a month. Meg, how about rousting out Rosella for at least ten pounds of breakfast? We’re starved.”
“I’ll tell her.” Edward disappeared in the dense gloom.
A lamp filled a window with an orange glow as Luke pulled the bridle off his horse and whacked it lightly across the rump. It trotted off into the blackness toward the barn. Marty took the rope off his horse and let it follow the other.
There was light in the kitchen now as they went inside.
We could be sitting out in the pleasant dining room at a lovely oak dining set, Meg idly observed; yet everyone seems to prefer crowding into the kitchen with its roughhewn slab table and stools. Luke did bring an oak chair from the dining room so that Marty could sit and lean back.
Rosella had already lit the little coal oil cookstove. She started a big pot of porridge. “Steak and eggs coming up. We wouldn’t have the eggs except for your mum’s chooks, Marty. They’re good layers and yours went on strike.”
“Thanks, Mum.” Marty waved to his mother as she entered the kitchen.
She looked at him in shocked consternation, studied the sling a moment and sighed. “Silly goose, I am. I thought after we raised you and kicked you out on your own, we’d be done with worrying and fretting about you. Doesn’t work that way, I guess.”
Meg would have started coffee, but Rosella was already throwing grounds into a pot. At that moment Pearl entered the kitchen. Meg watched her face with some amusement; here was a woman who loved, though she
was not necessarily “in love” in the romantic sense. Pearl crossed to Marty, leaned against the wall beside his chair and put a hand on his good shoulder.
Here, too, was a man who loved. He let his head rest against her and idly laid his left hand on hers. He looked drawn and intensely weary.
Luke hovered over the coffeepot in eager anticipation, a mug in his hand. “I found him down below Aramac yesterday afternoon. If you think he smells bad now, you should have smelt him then. We rode up to a Galilee Spring where we borrowed two fresh horses and a change of clothes and tidied him up a bit. Rode all night to get here.”
“Cy’s horses, eh? They don’t know their way here. How did you manage?” Marty’s mum flopped wearily onto a stool. “It’s blacker than the inside of a cow out there.”
“Please, Mum, don’t mention insides of cows.” Marty glanced at Luke. “Rode by starlight until the overcast blotted them out. By then we were close enough that Luke’s horse had his ears up. So we turned him loose and followed him in.”
The porridge was starting to bubble. Meg set out flatware and dishes and listened to the talk. Marty described his hairsbreadth escape and Luke described finding him. Both men fit comfortably in a wide open land that intimidated Meg. She was used to the close dampness of her native Erin, or even the encompassing gloom of the rain forest behind Mossman. Marty’s mum was just like them. She understood instinctively not just the lads but their horses as well, and what the land itself permitted and forbade and…and, well, all of it.
Luke got his coffee at last and sat down. He looked not much less weary than Marty. Meg settled herself near him and he wrapped his long arm around her shoulders. Would Meg ever develop the easygoing oneness with this vast brown wilderness that her Luke and the others enjoyed? For that matter, did she want to? Wanting to didn’t matter; she’d better. Outside the window behind her the sky was getting light at last. The terrors of the night slipped away. What terrors would the day bring?
****
Harry Bagley chewed nervously on the bumper of an unlighted cigar and watched out the window. Here he came at last, riding up the dusty little street of Aramac. Sheldon wasn’t nearly as imposing when he was dressed normally, without one of his awful brocade vests. He looked less set apart, more like one of the boys. The early morning light didn’t have anything to bounce off of. He tied his horse out front of the cafe and came striding in.
Before Sheldon entered, the room held only Harry and three of the lads; but when he came in, his presence filled the room. He nodded toward the little Chinese lady in the kitchen door and plopped into a chair beside Harry. “Get it done?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not? I told you I can’t wait any longer! I accomplished quite a lot at the meeting last night, but there’s another scheduled for the first of the week. If the Frobels show up at that one, I could still lose.”
“I thought that redistricting scheme was home on the pig’s back.”
“I thought so, too, but some of them balked. If they get Frobel on their side, it’s dead. And I told you already, we’ve got to redistrict if I’m going to get enough political pull to get what we need. And the bore on the east side dried up completely two days ago. Until I can drill deeper, I got nothing. I need Pinjarra’s south paddocks now.”
“The Frobel kid showed up. Right outta nowhere. We chased him but we lost him. He’s got one fast horse, y’know. I figured we better wait for you. There has to be some reason he’d come down right to your door.”
“From the south or the north?”
“North.”
“And you couldn’t outrun him?” The door squealed open. Whatever Mr. Sheldon would have said next had to wait. He twisted to see who was coming in.
Constable Edding’s scrawny assistant, Walker Hayes, slunk through the door; he seemed somehow swallowed up by the room. Edding’s shortcomings—both as a man and as a constable—were reflected on an even grander scale in his assistant. Hayes’ tunic, cut small to begin with, hung out over his shoulders and bagged at the sides. He pulled his cap off thinning mouse-brown hair and grimaced a greeting smile to Sheldon.
“Ah. They said you’d be here. I’ve important business with you, sir. Two matters, in fact.”
“Sit down.”
Hayes dragged a chair from another table and perched on the edge of it, facing Sheldon. “About the redistricting meeting you attended last night: first let me compliment your forceful and splendid presentation.”
“Thank you. What about it?”
“You left immediately thereafter, on other business, I presume. At that time there was some question as to why the Frobels were not present, since they so utterly oppose your redistricting scheme. There is rumor of funny business on your part. It’s a fence you would do well to mend in the near future.”
“And the other business?”
“Fifteen years ago. An incident in which a man named Hosteen was speared.”
“Attacked by savages. It’s a painful episode I’d rather forget.”
“Some say not. They’ve opened an investigation of it. There’s a possibility you may be held culpable. Eyewitnesses—surviving abos.”
“The abos filed a complaint fifteen years after the fact? Turn it up, Hayes.”
“Not the abos. Whites representing them. The abos are out on Pinjarra.”
“How many?”
“Two, I think. Their names were recorded, but I don’t remember them.”
“What’s Edding doing about it?”
“I don’t know. He’s out of town.”
“Right when I need him he goes on holiday, the drongo.” He stared at Hayes a moment. “Wait outside.”
Like a well-trained house pet, Hayes got up and left.
Harry spat out a stray shred of tobacco. “I coulda swore on a stack of Bibles there weren’t any eyewitnesses.”
“Maybe there aren’t. You heard him—these so-called witnesses are on Pinjarra. Maybe it’s just some lark that Frobel’s dreamed up to put me off.”
Harry leaned forward. “I for one ain’t about to take that chance. If they can really put the finger on you, then it’s on me, too. I was the one killed that gin. We all had a hand in it, which means we’d all swing together.”
“Not for a couple wild abos. You’re dropping your bundle, Harry. Relax. Get yourself together.”
“Wild abos, maybe not—maybe just a prison sentence. But station blacks? That speak English?” Harry sat back. “This day and age, that’s murder. You gotta get rid of them.”
“No, Harry. You.”
Harry studied his boss. Until now, Sheldon’s orders, while not exactly legitimate, were easy to carry out. Fun, even. Had Harry put the Frobel kid away, no one would be the wiser; it was done in a corner, and scant chance he’d ever be prosecuted. But now, Sheldon wasn’t just talking about firing a barn or scaring a few station hands. He was telling Harry to stick his neck out like a turtle on the run. Harry stood a good chance of losing on this one, while Sheldon’s neck was still tucked safely in his shell.
“No.” Harry felt a strange mix of dread and exhilaration as he stood up to his boss for the first time ever. “No, Mr. Sheldon, you wear a beard, too, on this one.”
Sheldon glanced around the room as Harry prayed to heaven the lads would back him on this. It was their necks, too. Sheldon pressed his lips down to a tight white line. “All right. All of us. Best plan is to surprise them. Hit fast and hard, torch the barn and house, kill every black on the place. All of ’em, understand? Big ones, little ones. That means we hang around long enough to make sure none go running out of the burning buildings and get away.”
“You’re asking a lot. Bonus in this?”
“If it goes right.”
“It’ll go right.” Harry would do most anything on bonus, as would the other lads. If nothing else could be said for the man, Mr. S. was generous with bonuses. And now, Harry had a vested interest in this raid. If there really were abo witnesses to that thing so long ago,
Harry’s very life depended on this raid. “It’ll go too right, Mr. Sheldon.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Into the Middle of It
Meg was impressed with how seriously Marty’s Uncle Edward was taking his role as protector. He sat up on the flat top of the barn’s gambrel roof—his crow’s nest, he called it. From there, he could see in all directions. Into the haylift she hooked the basket holding the quart pot full of stew and the pot of freshly steeped tea.
She hauled away. “All’s quiet, aye?” she asked, despite the creak of the pulley.
“So far. So far. Thank you, Mrs. Vinson.”
He eased down and leaned over the side to retrieve his basket of dinner. He clambered back up to his perch. Meg noted that this crow’s nest was aptly named, for it came replete with the birds. Several were alighting at the far end of the barn. They were settling unusually early this evening. But then, the Frobels and their guests were eating an early dinner also.
Rosella was serving in the dining room when Meg came back into the house. She took her place by Luke and he asked a blessing. Strangely, the conversation was much lighter and happier with Edward on the barn roof.
Meg found herself staring at Marty and quickly averted her eyes. He was painstakingly picking through his dish, his fork in his clumsy left hand, eating the potatoes first.
Marty’s mum smiled at her as she cut up little Bohra’s meat. “He’s always done that. The correct order is potatoes, turnips, carrots, beans, peas, onions, meat. I put barley in the stew once just to see what he’d do. He stared at it the longest time. Then he took an hour and a half to eat dinner, picking out all those little grains. Incidentally, barley ranks between potatoes and turnips.”
“You’re poking borak at me.” Marty gaped at her, then said, “No…you’re not making fun of me; you’re serious, aren’t you!”
Power of Pinjarra Page 25