He dipped his shaggy head. “Luke Vinson married us ’fore we left Mossman.”
“I wish yerself and yer bride a happy life together.”
“Yer boss cocky’s made that bloody difficult for us, but we’ll try.” He took another two steps forward. “I’ve dealt with the blackest of the blackguards in my day; there’s none tougher than them that cuts cane. But ye’re a brazen one. No fear atall, not even in yer eyes. Not like any woman I ever knew.”
“I wondered about that meself, but I know why now. Ye be nae bushranger. Ye’re an honest and decent fellow, or ye’d not feel so outraged when yer name was impugned. I’ve naething to fear from a good man in the throes of true love.”
The great bear laughed and tipped his gun muzzle skyward. “A good man in the throes of true love. Aye and again aye. And with the best woman in the world, I trow. Get yerself down the hill, Samantha Connolly, and tell yer boss where to find me if ye’ve the mind to.”
“I don’t have the mind to, but I do owe him me loyalty. Sure and by the time he brings others, ye two will be long gone.”
“Aye, long gone. We’ve nothing left here; Sloan saw to that with his accusations. But we’ll make a go of it elsewhere. And ye tell yer slave master that one day Byron Vickers’ll return. And on that day, Cole Sloan’ll be paid back full and running over for the misery he’s caused us.”
“Misery? Were it not for him, Amena would still be in Ireland. And many Irish girls never find a good man. They die spinsters. He owes ye, I warrant, but Amena and yerself owe him, as well. All the blessings of the saints fall upon ye, Byron Vickers, and on your bride. G’day.” She turned her back to him and walked through the wet and rustling grass to the track, to the darkness among the trees.
She dared glance over her shoulder only as she was digging her bicycle out of that clump of ferns. He had gone back inside, he and his gun. She perched on the narrow seat and pushed off. Oh, she was sore!
What did that Bob fellow say about brakes? Nothing, as Samantha could recall. There were no hills this steep in Cairns. She tried to slow herself by pedalling backward but of course that wouldn’t work. Her speed picked up.
The track ahead moved; some sort of brown snake was slowly uncoiling itself, stretching forward to cross the road. With a yelp Samantha lifted her feet high. The snake, lightning fast, jerked itself back into a tight pile as she bucketed past it.
Now she couldn’t get her feet back where they belonged. The pedals revolved with a mind of their own and slapped her feet and ankles as she tried to regain them. The track curved left; she’d never negotiate a turn like that—not at this speed. With awesome dread she aimed the bicycle at a vine-covered bush on the far side of the curve. At the last possible moment she let go and covered her face with her arms.
The bicycle stopped with a loud, rustling SKISH. Its handlebars hooked her legs and kept her from flying. She slammed forward and down into a million jabbing, scratching branches. Some loud-mouthed bird sounded the alarm high in the trees, and other voices picked it up.
She lay there she knew not how long, too spent, too tired and hurting, too frustrated to move. Silly goose, Samantha. You have to right yourself eventually. Her legs and skirt were tangled in the branches two feet higher than her head. She maneuvered, trying to extricate herself without getting dumped harder on her ear. Her bottom half dropped level with her top half and she could at last stand up.
She ended up crawling out from under the tangle of vines and branches. She yanked the bicycle free. Several of the wire spokes in its front wheel were broken, a few more bent. Did it still work properly? She wasn’t about to find out. She would walk, at least until she hit level land. She gripped the errant vehicle by its handlebars and started down the road.
At least she couldn’t get lost, even though she didn’t really remember this particular curve. One road, thus one way. A quarter mile of walking downhill and she noticed there were no horse tracks in the mud. No bicycle tracks, either. That was logical. This rain would obliterate marks. Yes, but all of them? And yet, how could she miss the way when there was only one?
She stopped cold. Before her was a narrow, pinched Y in the road. Another track, just as muddy and obscure, was joining this one. She left the bicycle at the junction and walked a few yards down one leg of the Y. She turned and looked toward the bicycle. There was no way you could see the other track. Coming up the hill she could have passed a dozen Y’s in the path without ever seeing a one.
This was not the trail she had come uphill on. She must backtrack herself, discover her error and find the right way. She would follow the bicycle marks. She dragged the bicycle around and shoved it doggedly ahead of her, up the steep and winding lane.
Rain fell in earnest now. It traced little brown rivulets down the ruts in the trail. It turned the mud to slime. It pasted the loose strands of Samantha’s hair down across her eyes and cheeks. And by the time she reached that infamous braking bush, it had washed away the faint marks from the bicycle tires.
She stopped and simply stood there, spent. Dense and alien greenery pressed in on her. These ragged hills were not Dagda’s palaces that she loved so well. Unspoken fears, of everything from brown snakes to unknown horrors, crowded together, voiceless, in her breast.
Her sweet and gentle yesterdays back on the Auld Sod were driven from memory by the harsh and bitter today. She was alone. She was lost. And she was too, too tired to cry.
Chapter Twelve
Fossicker
It was a lovely butterfly, vivid in the gloom. Its upper wings were a smoky gray; the back wings, red along the bottom, sported diagonal bands so white they nearly glowed. Samantha hoped it would alight, but it flittered up and around and away. She sat on a soggy, spongy log and stared at nothing.
It would be dark in perhaps three hours—maybe four. She might be twenty minutes distant from Cairns or perhaps eight hours away. The closest she could pinpoint her location was “Australia.” She could be reasonably certain she had not left what was essentially an island continent. She sighed. So this was what all that blank white space in her atlas back home looked like.
The dripping forest hugged close around her. Whispering rain urged “press on.”
She stood up and picked up that infernal bicycle. How could things get so mucked up? A few hours ago she had worried what Mr. Sloan would say. Now she didn’t care a fig what Mr. Sloan said. She wanted only to reach human habitation.
Cairns lay at the bottom of the hills, flush against the sea. She could not go wrong, surely, by keeping to a downhill track. Two wrongs don’t make a right, they say. She had gone wrong once, but perhaps if she took a second wrong, her trail would turn out right. When her track dwindled to less than a footpath, she tried to walk directly through the forest downhill. Even without a bicycle she couldn’t do it. Dense, tangled growth clogged her every step, blocked her every move. She must stay to the trails.
She was stumbling now. The rain had ceased but the forest continued to drip. She was dripping, too, awash in perspiration. She still was not accustomed to the unrelenting heat of this country. She wished she could be certain she was working her way east, but the leaden sky gave her no hint where the muted sun might be. She could not even tell if the sun were close to the horizon yet.
She stopped. Something in the distant bush sounded just like a train whistle. The birds in this exotic land never ceased to amaze her. Again—low and mournful—
It was a train whistle! She was certain. But from where? The dense foliage sifted sounds so thoroughly there was no guessing the direction of that wonderful song of civilization. She walked faster, dragging the bicycle along. If the train whistled, it must have been nearing some sort of crossing or track junction. Trains do not whistle at random in the bush.
Also, trains follow rail lines and the lines do not merrily climb up and down hills as do roads and trails. Surely if she continued downhill along this trail, sooner or later it would cross the railroad grade. And once on the rail
road grade she would enjoy a relatively straight, level walk to civilization and safety. Nor are railroad grades at all steep. Perhaps along the grade she could ride this bicycle without fear of it running away with her. Her spirits rose for the first time since she left that shabby little hut in the glade.
An hour later she was still walking along this endless track. She seemed no nearer anything. She had walked up and down hills and apparently over a saddle, though she couldn’t see far enough in this thickness to know for certain. Things from time to time had rustled in the forest to the right or left, never close enough to see. And what about the dangers she could not see—brown snakes in the chocolate-colored mud of the trail, and poisonous plants known to aboriginals but not to her?
The forest seemed more open here, not quite a clearing, but almost. She let the bicycle fall over and set herself down on a soft, moss-upholstered something, whether rock or stump she could not say. Dusk. This was definitely dusk. She was bound to spend the night in this terrifying unknown.
All her life she had been praying to God on demand. When in church you recite this prayer, then that one. When pursuing private devotionals in school, you count off prayers by counting off beads. During your early childhood, you kneel at your bedside and rattle off the prayers expected of you, as Mum sits close and monitors for quality and quantity.
She should pray now. The phrase “A very present help in time of trouble” came to mind—or was that the exact phrasing? She could not pray. She was not in church or school now, the nearest bedside was distressingly far away, and Mum sat in her parlor in Ireland on the other side of the world.
Meg had told her once that the pastor Luke Vinson did not pray, either. That surprised the daylights out of Samantha until Meg went on to say, “But he talks to God frequently and intimately.” Ridiculous. The good pastor was surely pulling the wool over his own eyes if he thought that. He was flummoxing himself just as Samantha had talked herself into believing that a pillow really does alleviate the discomfort of riding. If God existed at all, He was up there and we were all down here—hardly good positioning for intimate conversation.
Perhaps God did exist. Perhaps He did extend himself to the aid of His followers who were good and therefore deserving of His attention. That certainly wasn’t Samantha. Everyone called her good. Even Byron Vickers today had used the word in reference to her. But she wasn’t.
If she were truly good she would not be lost in the middle of nowhere—a very dangerous nowhere—on the brink of a sleepless, uncomfortable night. She would have handled the Amena/Vickers thing differently and much better. She would take a strong, moral stand instead of meekly trotting along behind Mr. Sloan, whatever he did. She would not berate Linnet so constantly, or find fault with Meg. She would not so eagerly back Mr. Sloan up as he trampled on human dignity and just plain did wrong.
No. In no way did she merit God’s approval or deserve His help, if indeed He offered help. In fact, if deserts were at issue here, she probably deserved exactly what she was getting. And she was cast on her own resources, which were nil—no God, no leprechauns, no hill palaces, certainly no bright lights or merriment in this dark and dripping gloom.
Treetops rustled high above her. Large somethings were crawling clumsily about in the upper branches of the tall trees. They were grotesque creatures that changed form as they moved, bobbing, from limb to limb. But banshees were merely a figment of the fertile Irish national imagination—weren’t they?
Someone coughed in the forest beyond. Coughed?! Four feet high, a small blue head moved by dots and dashes through the undergrowth just ahead. It paused. It stepped out from between dark green bushes. It was a bird, rather like an ostrich. A tall helmet sort of plate perched on its naked head. Dark hairy feathers covered its blob of a body. And those stout feet—it stopped to stare at Samantha. With surprising grace and silence for such a bulky bird, it slipped back into the forest.
Cassowary. That’s what it was—a bird she herself had once cooked. Tough. Tasteless. But the bird dropped summarily outside her kitchen door had no head or legs. So that was what the whole creature looked like!
Something fell from above and plopped at her feet. It was a prune pit of some sort, the fruit meat all eaten off it. Those amorphous somethings away up there were eating fruit and throwing the pits at her!
She must go on; she couldn’t spend the night here. She snatched up the bicycle, that infernal bicycle, and started forward. Would she never find a railroad grade? She doubted now she had ever really heard such a thing as a train whistle.
On sudden impulse she called out. The somethings in the treetops shuffled and flittered like giant bats. She cried out again, as loudly as she could muster. A pause … again. How stupid! You’re taking leave of your senses, Sam lass. The first step on the short road to madness. Get hold of yourself! She shouted “ouch!” involuntarily when a pedal came winging around and slammed into her leg. Just as she thought her situation could get no worse, it was rapidly deteriorating.
The bicycle stopped so abruptly it pulled her off balance. Now what? It was getting too dark to see well. Her skirt hem was caught in the bicycle somehow. She let the machine down and groped in the gloom. The chain that linked pedal to back wheel—it had just eaten her skirt. She tugged. Nothing. The chain would not give, her skirt would not tear, the bicycle would not move.
She sat in the wet slop in dire need of a good cry, but she was simply too tired to muster tears. She should curl up right here and try to get some sleep. Wait until morning and better light, then try to make the bicycle chain disgorge her skirt hem. Soft rustling on the trail ahead changed her mind instantly.
What was it this time? Another impossible-looking bird? More yard-wide amorphous somethings? Some eerie aboriginal myth-monster that really existed after all and absolutely adored devouring innocent maidens?
She shouted, “Go away! Shoo! Scat!”
The forest dripped silence.
She pulled her knees up and crossed her arms upon them to provide a prop for her weary head. She thought of what Amena had found, and what Meg was apparently finding, and how she herself was so totally, abysmally alone.
The rain had ended long ago, and the leaves were about done shedding water, but Samantha was as soaking wet as ever—rain and sweat both. She’d mildew before she got out of this horrid wilderness. She tugged again at her skirt hem. Stuck. And night was here. In moments she would no longer be able to see her white blouse, let alone her black skirt.
Frustrated beyond words, she screamed the sort of tantrum-level shriek she had not indulged in since childhood. She pounded with both fists on the stupid bicycle and bent another spoke.
“Can’t be all that bad, surely.”
Samantha screamed again, but this one was fear.
The voice surely belonged to the dark form on the trail ahead. Matching sound to sight, Samantha guessed it to be an older white man, bearded, somewhat stocky and paunchy, wearing a broad-brimmed hat of some sort. He hadn’t bathed for a while.
The form stepped up closer. “Heard your cooee and thought I’d come see who it was.”
“Heard me coo—what?”
“Cooee. Shout. Call.”
“Aye. Of course. Be there perchance a railroad grade near?”
“Very near. You ’spect to call in a train maybe?”
“’Twas hoping to dispel some of the many frightening wild things about.” She glanced upward, half expecting the huge amorphous somethings to start throwing fruit pits again, but leaves and darkness painted the overhead a uniform black. She would refrain from mentioning that this strange man was one of the frightening wild things she worried about.
A sulphur match flared as the fellow lighted a candle. He knelt close and held the candle near her. His bushy moustache reminded her a bit of Papa, and some of her fear faded. How ridiculous! Fie, Sam! You cannot trust him. Can you not feel the menacing air about him, a strangeness?
“Never heard of such a thing. One of them bicyc
le doovers. Out here beyond Woop Woop.” The bushy head wagged. This man was just as hirsute as Byron Vickers, and yet he in no way gave her the impression of a bear. Perhaps it was the glistening gray in his sideburns and beard. “Stuck in it, eh?”
“Aye.” She scooted a bit to give him room.
He studied the chain and the cogged metal wheel, waving the candle slowly here and there. “Hold this here.” He thrust the candle into her hand.
She would have cautioned him that the bicycle was not hers and must not be further damaged, but it somehow didn’t seem to matter anymore.
He produced an absolutely giant knife with a blade the size of a butcher knife. He poked at the chain. “Closer with the light, eh?”
Obediently she twisted around to hold the candle low. It dripped wax on the cogged wheel. With the tip of his knife he popped some little thing. The chain fell apart and he lifted it away. She pulled her skirt hem free. At last. She climbed to her feet slowly, for she was very, very stiff.
He coiled the chain and stuffed it in a pocket. “Put it back on when you can see. Less you want to ride it some more.”
“Nae, I’ve ridden it quite enough for one day, thank ye.”
He retrieved his candle and blew it out. The dark seemed darker. He picked up the whole bicycle in one smooth handful and set it on its wheels. The man was amazingly strong for one so gray. “So you’re headed for the railroad. I’ll walk along with you awhile if you like. Had a partner once, out fossicking. Irishman, talked the same as yourself. Irish?”
“Aye, County Cork. Working for a plantation owner in Mossman.”
“Railroad’s not gonna take you to Mossman, missy.”
“‘Twill go to Cairns, will it not, or somewhere close?”
“That it will.” Despite the dark this fellow was able to walk comfortably along the muddy track. Ridiculously, the bicycle seemed to behave better for him. He gripped it in the middle of its handlebars and by sheer force of arm made it come along smartly. “Where in Mossman?”
Code of Honor (Australian Destiny Book #1) Page 12