Hearts of Gold

by Janet Woods

  Table of Contents

  Recent Titles by Janet Woods from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Recent Titles by Janet Woods from Severn House

  AMARANTH MOON

  BROKEN JOURNEY

  CINNAMON SKY

  THE COAL GATHERER

  EDGE OF REGRET

  HEARTS OF GOLD

  MORE THAN A PROMISE

  THE STONECUTTER’S DAUGHTER

  WITHOUT REPROACH

  HEARTS OF GOLD

  Janet Woods

  Welcome to the world

  Emelia Thomas

  18th April 2008

  Love you lots

  The author invites comment from readers

  via her website:

  http://members.iinet.net.au/~woods

  or by post:

  PO Box 2099

  Kardinya 6163

  Western Australia

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2009 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9-15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2009 by Janet Woods.

  The right of Janet Woods to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Woods, Janet, 1939-

  Hearts of gold

  1. Guardian and ward - Fiction 2. Love stories

  I. Title

  823.9'14[F]

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-376-1 (epub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6761-2 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-135-5 (trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  One

  Coolgardie

  Western Australia 1894

  Jack Maitland lay on a stretcher under the shade of the eucalyptus trees. The death adder’s venom had done its work efficiently. He’d been dying for three hours now. It had started with a headache then progressed to sickness that had drained his body of moisture. Pallor had crept under his tan, turning it a sickly yellow. His lips were blue and his body rigid, except for an occasional jerk. He no longer seemed to know Sarette, and would not sip the precious liquid from the water bag his daughter held to his mouth.

  Tears trickled from her eyes as she gently waved a mulga branch over her father’s body to prevent the bush flies from settling in the corners of his eyes and mouth. Damn the snake! Sarette thought. Startled by her father’s foot on its skinny lure of a tail the reptile had barely scraped its fangs against his skin in defence of itself before it had slithered off in fright.

  ‘It will take more than that little scratch to kill me,’ her father had said, giving his great booming laugh as he’d spit on his kerchief and rubbed it over the wound. But she’d seen the fear in his eyes as the venom had begun to take effect.

  It was a hot afternoon. Above them, the canopy of a tree swayed in the breeze, and the sun dappled the ground with moving patches of light and shadow. A pair of rose-breasted cockatoos began to squabble above them. Didn’t they know that her father was dying?

  ‘Shut up!’ she yelled at them, but they began to screech louder, until she threw a stone up at them. They flew to a neighbouring tree.

  Was her father still breathing? She couldn’t tell. Sarette leaned forward to place a hand against his heart and her ear against his mouth. There was still a faint breath.

  His eyes opened. Usually they were a clear green like her own. Now they were dark with blood, as though he was bleeding inside. His voice was barely discernible. ‘Why is it dark?’

  Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘It’s not dark. Papa, please don’t leave me,’ she begged.

  ‘I love you, Sarry girl, I’ll never leave you,’ he whispered, then the slow, erratic heartbeat against her palm stopped so abruptly that she found herself unprepared for it.

  She sat back on her heels. There was a strong sense of release in her, that her father was no longer suffering. There was also a yawning sense of bewilderment. He’d been a big man; how could something as small as a snake take his life away? It had happened too quickly, before she was prepared. He looked different without his life, smaller and vulnerable, and even though she knew that nothing could harm him now, she wanted to protect him. A sorrow so deep hit her that she didn’t quite know how to handle it. He was dead! Dead! Never again would he tell her that he loved her.

  Throwing herself to the ground she beat her fists against the earth, the violent act sending up orange puffs of dust. And she shouted out her grief in her fury. ‘Isn’t it enough that you took my mother? Did you have to take my father too, and before his dreams were even realized?’

  When her rage was spent Sarette became aware that the world would go on without her father, and so must she. Her mouth tasted of dust. It was everywhere, in the air that she breathed and in her hair, turning the dark length of it a dull copper and gritting against her scalp.

  ‘It’s Godforsaken country that doesn’t give anything back easily,’ her father had said of the place. ‘We’ll give it six months.’ That six months had become three years.

  Rising, she brushed the dirt from her skirt. It was one that had belonged to her mother, though it didn’t fit her yet and she tied it around her waist with a rope. There was another gown. Dark blue with lace on the bodice. Sarette was small for fourteen, she knew. She was saving the dress for when she was bigger and needed something special to wear. All the same, she was strong, and could dry blow the dirt for several hours before she became tired, dropping panfuls to the earth. While the dust drifted away on the incessant wind, any heavier flecks of gold in it were left behind to be carefully collected.

  The flies had begun to cluster. Shoeing them away she gently closed her father’s eyes, covered him with a ragged sheet and waited for Flynn to come back with the horse and cart, for she’d sent word to him.

  The Irishman didn’t have much to say for himself, as usual, but began removing her father’s clothing.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘If I bury Jack in his clothes somebody will dig him up for them. Besides, I could do with his boots and his clothes mesself. We’ll tie him in that auld sheet. Turn your back, now, girl. A neked man is
not a sight for an innocent girl to look upon. We’ll bury him with your mother, God rest her poor innocent soul, and we’ll say a prayer over him to speed him on his way.’

  She didn’t want to part with him. ‘Can’t we bury him tomorrow?’

  ‘No lass. It’s too hot for a body to be left unburied.’

  Before too long her father was tied up like a long, dirty-grey parcel. She helped Flynn lift him on to the cart, holding his legs so they didn’t flop around. The horse plodded off towards the cemetery with Flynn at the reins. Sarette sat next to him.

  ‘Men took their hats off and held them against their chests as the cart passed, calling out, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Jack Maitland . . . snake got him.’

  ‘Poor sod!’

  And more piously. ‘May God gather Maitland’s soul into his keeping.’

  Without being asked one or two men picked up their shovels and began to follow the cart, the others went back to work, their muscles bulging and their skin shiny with dust-streaked sweat.

  When they got to the site the men began to dig. Eventually the one in the hole with the bandanna over the bottom half of his face gave a nod to the others and they hauled him out.

  An odd smell hung about him that attracted the flies.

  Sarette knew he’d dug down to where her mother rested, and she leaned forward and tried to look down into the grave. She caught a glimpse of a dirty piece of rag and a bone, before Flynn pulled her back. ‘No, girl. It’s not a sight you should be looking at, now. Remember her as she was.’

  Her father was lowered into the grave with her mother. The dirt was thrown back into the hole and heaped over the top, a prayer said.

  There was a flat piece of oddly shaped stone, with her mother’s name on it. Died from typhoid. Sara Jane Maitland August 1892 and her unborn infant.

  ‘Do you know the date of your papa’s birth, Sarry?’

  When she shook her head, Flynn took a small pick from the back of his trousers and scratched in her father’s name, with the date underneath, and the word that from now on would make her blood run cold. Snakebite.

  They stood and looked at it in awkward silence for a while, Sarette thinking that, even though she wore her mother’s clothing she couldn’t really remember the woman who’d given birth to her all that well. Her presence had faded, and Sarette had long stopped crying over her. So the memory of her father would fade too in time, and become easier.

  ‘What will you do, now?’ Flynn said, breaking in on her thoughts.

  Sarette gazed at him, not quite understanding what he meant. Everything had happened so quickly that she hadn’t had time to think of her future. She didn’t like Flynn Collins much but she had nobody else. ‘I’ll look after things and help dig for gold, like I always do.’

  Flynn avoided her eyes. ‘I’ll take you back to the tent, then I’m going off to the grog tent to have a drink with the boys. A bit of a wake for your father.’

  Sarette ate some of the stew she’d made. The small kangaroo her father had shot was tasty, and she’d thrown a handful of barley in to thicken the gravy. As the sun went down the air cooled, and the campfires began to twinkle amongst the trees. After relieving herself, she crawled into her swag, curled up and cried herself to sleep. She felt lonely without her father for company. She slept soundly, her brain ignoring the rustles and snaps in the bush, the sounds of snickering horses and the wind soughing in the canopy above her.

  When she woke things felt different. Flynn hadn’t come back, and they’d been robbed. Pots, pans and shovels were missing. During the night someone had cut a hole in the tent, had scooped a hole in the earth and removed the tin containing her father’s small stash of gold. When the tin was full they’d been going to leave this place and buy themselves a house in the city. It was a woeful amount that had been stolen, nothing like the large strike at Fly Flat that had brought Sarette’s family here to seek their own fortune.

  The thief had also taken the water bag with the last of the water, and the pot with the remains of the stew, which had been hanging over the campfire. They were careful with water here in the dry landscape of the Coolgardie gold diggings, for it rained only rarely. The water was collected from a well at the base of a granite rock and was carried some thirty-five miles overland every day in a tank on top of a wagon. It cost at least a shilling for the gallon, and often more, so they had to eke the liquid out as long as possible, and make sure there was enough left over at the end of the day for the horse to have a drink. Her father’s partner reckoned that the water carrier collected more gold for his labour than the miners dug out of the ground.

  Sarette had never felt so alone in her life, or so scared. She had nothing of value, and would have to beg for water unless she could earn some money to buy it with.

  It was cool under the trees, but by the time she reached the more sparsely vegetated area the sun was beginning to bite into her back. She slowed down, then flicked a dry tongue over her lips and trudged on. The scrubby sand was alive with lizards that had come out to soak up the sun. A spider loped off with a fast, ungainly gait, heading for the safety of a hole thatched by a patch of spinifex grass. A hawk floated in a circle overhead.

  As she walked towards the town others were heading out. Some were new, people lured by the thought of riches, as her parents had been. They didn’t know how hard life in the goldfields was yet. Those who did were going in the opposite direction. She felt like keeping on going herself, but a few hours on the open road without water and she’d be dead. And if she happened to reach the city, what then? She must find Flynn.

  The town consisted of a straggle of shacks amongst the trees, the grog tent and some other buildings, though the land was still being cleared. She walked the length of the street then walked back again. There was a group of men sitting in the shade of a tree. She approached them. ‘Have you seen Flynn Collins anywhere?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘Sarette Maitland. He was my father’s partner.’

  ‘You’re Jack’s girl? I’m sorry to hear about your pa. He was a decent man.’

  She nodded. ‘Somebody stole our things from the camp, including my pa’s gold. We’ve got no water and I can’t see the horse and cart anywhere.’

  The men exchanged looks, then one mumbled, ‘Flynn headed out.’

  ‘Headed out where? He can’t take the horse and cart. It belonged to my pa. Do you know where’s he gone?’

  The man shrugged. ‘He didn’t say, luv.’ Fishing around in his pocket he came out with a shilling. ‘Here, this will buy you some water.’

  ‘He’s taken the bottle.’

  The man looked at his two companions. ‘Come on, you two. Last night you were giving her pa a send off. Spare a shilling or two for the kid.’

  One of the men spit into the dust. ‘I haven’t got enough money for mesself, let alone any to spare.’

  ‘Nor me. Perhaps Bessie will give her a job.’

  ‘She’s just a kid.’

  ‘Sarette put her hands on her hips. I’m fourteen, and I can work as hard as any man. Where does this Bessie live?’

  He jerked a thumb towards the bush. ‘Over yonder. Some men like them innocent. I reckon she’ll get a nice price for you. They’ll be queuing all the way to Southern Cross.’

  When Sarette realized what he was talking about, she blushed and didn’t know where to look.

  The first man rose to his feet. ‘Nay, lass. Take no notice of him. You come with me and I’ll see if Benstead will let you help him in the store. At least you’ll get fed.’

  But Mr Benstead didn’t have any paid work for her. ‘Her father owed us money for provisions when he died. She can work off what he owes.’

  ‘As long as you feed her.’

  ‘I didn’t say I’d feed her. She’s not my problem.’

  Mrs Benstead came through from the back room, where she’d been listening to the conversation. ‘It’s our problem if the debt’s not paid. It’s only right that sh
e should work it off. And I reckon I can manage to feed her for a week while you takes the wagon in to stock up on goods. She’s only a skinny little thing so won’t eat much, not like that bloody dog you brought home last month.’

  ‘He’s a good watchdog, and earns his keep.’

  And so the deal was struck. It wasn’t much, a chunk of bread and some corn beef and dried apple, which she kept for breakfast. Sometimes there was tinned soup. Sarette found that if she swallowed the dried apple then drank some warm water, the apple would swell in her stomach and make her feel full. Grateful for the food, she worked hard to pay off her father’s debt. She swept the sand away from the store, weighed dry goods, kept the shelves filled and the place as dust-free as possible.

  She didn’t go back to her camp at night, it was too far. Instead, she cuddled up to the dog under the flap of the tent. He seemed glad of her company.

  Mrs Benstead wasn’t as severe as she looked, and when Sarette’s debt was paid she handed her a sack containing some provisions. ‘The flour’s got a few weevils, but I reckon you’re not too fussy and can cope with that.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Benstead.’

  ‘You’re a good girl, Sarry. You’ve worked hard and have nice manners. Your dad would have been proud of you. He was a decent man, right enough, not like some of the miners around here. They’d steal your eyes from your sockets before you had time to blink.’

  The woman cleared her throat, which made Sarette think she had more to say.

  ‘I can’t afford to keep you on here, since we can barely make ends meet. But I’ll be the first to say you’re a willing worker. I’ve put a couple of shillings in the bag so you’ve got some water to take home with you. But only because you’ve earned it. Don’t think I’m a soft touch.’

  ‘Oh, no . . . I wouldn’t want you to think that I’d think that about you, Mrs Benstead.’

  The woman’s eyes narrowed a little, then her mouth twisted into a reluctant smile. ‘You’re not as daft as you look, are you? You can take the old water bag that’s hanging on the back veranda. I’ve put the word round that you’re looking for a position, and if anyone needs a reference they’re to come to me for a recommendation.’