“Wait …” Samantha frowned. “He called himself McGonigan’s partner. He’s old, but nae near old enough, for yer father’s surely of another generation.”
“Let’s see if I can keep the dates straight. They met in 1850 and went over to California together. America. Gold rush there. Earned barely enough to get a boat home again. Minute they got back they went to Ballarat, where the gold boom was just getting started. Win married but spent more time chasing gold than staying home. Abner was born a couple years later. His father died when he was just a toddler.”
“Winston, ye mean.”
He nodded. “Cave-in. Foully assisted, some say. McGonigan sort of took over responsibility for the mother and child—sent money, dropped by now and then. When Abner was twelve, McGonigan took him in as a full partner—over my father’s objections.”
“Surely he couldn’t be harboring hatred for that.”
Mr. Sloan shrugged. “You spend all those years scratching around in the bush, your mind does funny things. McGonigan died soon after, which took care of the partnership. My father brought his body out, but the boy disappeared. Not too long ago I heard someone mention the name, and I recognized it. So I knew he was alive, and apparently around Cairns. Then you ran into him.”
Samantha wagged her head. “So many who sought gold found death instead. Here. America. That affair in Ballarat. All over. In a way, Erin’s blessed that she has nae precious minerals.”
“Oh, Papa found his gold, all right. How do you think he financed Sugarlea? Built the plantation?”
Samantha laughed suddenly. “I cannae imagine that! In Erin the farms and the hamlets and cities have always been. Ireland be almost like God—nae beginning and nae end. I cannae conceive of starting a farm from naething; change a boundary, mayhap, or a dry stone fence, but nae a whole farm.”
“Cairns was built as a staging area for the gold boom inland—in sixty-seven, I think. Brand new town and looking down at the heels already.”
Samantha counted. “Thirty-eight years old. A whole city only ten years older’n meself! Ye have a history, Mr. Sloan, but ’tis such a short one. Me own native city? Why, Cork was old when the Vikings rowed ashore, and that was a thousand years ago. More.”
He poured himself a refill. “Cairns and Cork. Whether their history is marked in hours or millennia makes no difference. They’re both here now, and that’s all that matters. It’s the now I’m concerned with. History doesn’t affect me, and I’m not the least bit interested in it.”
“Eh, nae, sir. We be carried along on our history—’tis a part of us—we be enslaved to it and never once do we realize what it does to us, nor ever suspect we’re making more of it as we go along. Me brother Edan died months ago because Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth and James the First planted Protestants on the auld sod three centuries ago. Englishmen who never did belong there. And now Arthur Griffith and his Sinn Fein are making more history. And more trouble.”
“You see?” Mr. Sloan put down a sandwich to spread his hands wide. “You have Vikings and Henry the Eighth on your neck. I don’t. A couple of black savages chasing cassowaries and spearing fish, until my father’s generation arrived; that’s all.”
She drained her cup and stood up. “Aye. But ye’ve that, all right—yer father’s generation to contend with. ’Tis history, all the same, be it short or long. Me very point first made.”
His face washed dark like a tropical storm. What had she said? She no doubt would have found out, but Meg rapped earnestly at the door.
She burst in. “Mr. Butts here, sir.”
John Butts barged in right behind her. The storm in his face made Mr. Sloan’s scowl look like a picnic in the park.
Meg disappeared instantly.
“You foreclosed! You took my whole plantation! I trusted you, Sloan.”
“No need to stop doing that. Let me show you something.” Mr. Sloan nodded toward Samantha. “Another cup for Mr. Butts.”
Samantha darted to the kitchen at a dead run, snatched up the first cup that matched its saucer, and raced back. Mr. Butts had never frightened her before. He did now. He was normally such a mealy man, uncertain of himself it seemed. Today he boiled and roared like a runaway train.
She plunged into the office and set the cup hastily before him. He didn’t even see her.
Mr. Sloan thrust a paper in his hand. “That tea the typhoon rained on—I have it sold, John. It’s not a total loss. But I couldn’t have done it until it was mine, and I didn’t have time to work through you with all the releases and signatures and all that mess.” He smiled winningly. “You’re right I undercut you. But it was to our mutual financial advantage. An opportunity with a close deadline.”
Mr. Butts studied the paper, perplexed. “Durban. Wiggins told me he couldn’t find a market.”
“I put him onto some connections—friends of friends of my father’s. People my father knew back in his gold-digging days.”
So you’re not influenced by history. Samantha caught her master’s eye, but she couldn’t tell if he understood her thought.
Did Mr. Butts sink into the wingback chair because he was feeling less tense or because his knees collapsed? He wagged his head. “I—I guess I didn’t realize when I signed that …” He shuddered. “It’s so hard seeing my land—my property—in someone else’s name. Under their control. Your control, that is. Harder than I thought. I admit you have a head for business. And heaven knows I don’t seem to. Still …” His voice trailed away.
“I can imagine how hard it would be for me, were it Sugarlea,” cooed Mr. Sloan.
“I built the place, Cole, from nothing. Less than nothing. The century was in double-aughts when I started, and I thought surely within five years … Well, it’s five years, and … and …” He looked near breaking down. “I almost think I’d rather have the place back and keep making mistakes, or whatever I was doing, than to see it … understand, not that I don’t think you, uh … you know …” He licked his lips.
Samantha’s heart wrenched. The man, so ominously wild moments before, seemed more like a disappointed child. Disappointment? Wrong word. Consternation was closer, a child denied the one single thing in the world precious to him. She proceeded to do the only thing she could do—she went back to the kitchen for more tea.
———
Here came the brash young preacher whom the spirits mocked. Burriwi smiled to himself and watched the man come riding into the settlement on Wiggins’ roan. The boy was ignorant about relationships and how to greet friends, relatives and strangers, but he did ride well. Burriwi must remember the preacher was from a wholly different world, and be tolerant of his lack of culture and politeness.
Women, children—Luke greeted them all by name, those names he knew, and dismounted by Burriwi. With a grin and a handshake he hunkered down beside him.
“My nephew said you came by.”
“Dibbie all caught up on the cassowary people?”
“Caught up. Learn about. Yeah. Now he knows the stories about his people in the time gone.”
“The Dreamtime, you call it, I believe.”
“Eh, that, too. But he has to know lots of other stories, too—lots of times—since the Dreamtime. His fathers dead and all the others.”
Luke smiled. “Oral history. I understand that people without a written history can literally recite their oral history word on word for days at a time. The historian, so to speak, tells it to the next-generation historian, and that person has it memorized.” Luke snapped his fingers. “But once they learn to read and write, they lose the ability to memorize large quantities of information exactly.”
Burriwi shrugged, grinning. “Now Dibbie knows his fathers.”
Luke studied him a long moment. “You don’t happen to know how many teeth you have, do you?”
The laughter exploded out of Burriwi. It was not the least bit polite to laugh so at what was clearly a sincere question, but its absurdity delighted him. Besides, this young man didn�
�t know politeness from a coral cod, and he didn’t seem bothered by Burriwi’s infraction in the least. “Sometime we count ’em mebbe.”
“I’d love to.”
Burriwi wagged his head. Hopeless. He sobered. “If Dibbie learns to read and forgets his fathers, don’ you go teaching him to read, eh? Fathers more important’n reading. Oh, and I found out about your Jesus yesterday. Not in your book. My book.”
Luke’s ears didn’t snap erect literally, but he perked up like a dog who first notices a chunk of fresh meat. “Tell me!”
“I asked a whitefeller you don’ know, he says about Jesus same as you. Now I know it’s not just you and your book.”
“And what have you decided?”
“Eh, what you said. That Jesus is real, and He’s stronger ’n the spirits I know. He’s the best way. We talk a long time.”
“Burriwi, that’s wonderful. Who is this man?”
“Here. Why not you come along? Bet we can find him, talk to him more, mebbe, eh? Name’s Abner Gardell. Wise man; wise about the forest.”
Luke bounced to his feet with the kind of grin Dibbie saved for acknowledging special treats.
“Besides,” Burriwi smiled with all his uncounted teeth, “he keeps good eye on Sugarlea. Watch out for your lady friend.”
Luke’s face hardened. “He works for Sloan?”
“Ask him.” Burriwi was not about to get all mixed up in the various machinations of these outlanders. But then, Luke claimed to be very close to this Jesus fellow (in His present spirit form, apparently), and Abner Gardell admitted losing contact with Him. Burriwi would simply put the two men together and sit back to listen. The encounter ought be informative—at the very least, entertaining.
It was logical that the spirit world should extend far beyond the realities within blackfeller ken, just as did the physical world. This might provide Burriwi insight into the spirit world of the whitefellers, if indeed there was any, and he could pass what he learned on to the others. It might even help explain the whitefellers’ strange, inhuman drives and hungers.
Luke Vinson had the same effect on the forest that a sugar tram has on a quiet conversation. It took Burriwi most of the day to locate Abner Gardell, despite the fact that the fossicker was not at all trying to hide. Burriwi finally left Luke sitting—the man got tired easier than Dibbie did—located Gardell, and brought him to the preacher with as few words of explanation as possible.
Burriwi knew that whitefellers, having no custom for finding out how to greet one another, tended to be guarded and formal at first. But he certainly didn’t expect the feeling of just plain hostility that bristled between these men who purported to know Jesus. Nor did their talk go the way he had thought it would.
“I understand you work for Sloan.” Luke studied Gardell warily.
“No. Never met him. Seen you around his place now and then, though.”
“We’re not friends. I’ve formed a friendship with one of the young women in his employ.”
“Yeah? From the looks of your face there, I’d say you were out kissing a reef.”
Silence. Glaring silence.
Burriwi broke it. “Abner, friend, how do you smell me like that?”
The man burst out laughing. “Burriwi, I was leading you on. Since I realized Abos were keeping an eye on me, I’ve just been shouting that at the forest now and then. Couple times a day. If the boys are following me, they step right out and walk with me; I feel better keeping an eye on them. Didn’t think it worked on you, though.”
Burriwi snorted. Embarrassing, but the hostile spirit evaporated. He settled against a pandanus trunk and waited.
Either Luke didn’t catch on or he was good at hiding it. “Burriwi says you keep an eye on Sugarlea. May I ask why?”
Gardell snapped his head around to Burriwi. “You said he was a man I’d be interested to talk to. About Sloan?”
“‘Bout Jesus. He big-notes Jesus and you don’ talk to Him no more.” Burriwi shrugged and grinned. “So whata you say?”
“Ah!” Luke recovered his boyish grin and the feeling of hostility fled. He settled down cross-legged on the ground and explained to Gardell what he had told Burriwi. Then he recited what Burriwi said and what he understood Gardell to have said…. And in all this Burriwi plucked the men’s words from the air and shook them through the sifting-basket of his own thoughts.
He perceived how barren and colorless is the spirit world of whitefellers. Only four entities need be considered seriously. And yet, those entities were each so powerful, they performed by themselves all the blessings and curses that in the world of the blackfellers’ spirits were assigned to a host of specializing entities.
Amazing, too, was the black and white nature of their spirits—wholly evil or wholly good. Gardell seemed particularly concerned with the effects the evil one had upon him. He spoke of an unforgiveness, a smoldering hatred. Both men agreed this came from the evil spirit, a single entity called by either of two names. They agreed that this unforgiveness erected a barrier to intimacy with Jesus.
These two men, diverse in many ways, agreed completely on the powerful influence of their few spirits. Burriwi dismissed any doubts about the reality of Jesus, God the father, His Holy Spirit and Satan, whom they referred to as the devil now and then. And yet, if the three good spirits were so powerful, why did they exert so little influence on whitefellers, on Gardell especially? In a contest of three against one, how could Satan prevail? He must be powerful indeed.
Perhaps the raw strength of the evil spirit explained the whitefellers’ common traits of insane greed and callousness. Perhaps Burriwi felt this malign spirit directly when he felt Sloan’s spirit. But Luke’s book said man himself bears an evil nature. Burriwi thought about the petty jealousies and power plays within his own clan, much less these men. Luke’s book was probably right on that point. So then, how does one discern between the evil spirit’s malign work and the evil within the man himself? That was not coming out in this discussion at all.
Good thing he was listening with one ear, at least; Luke addressed him directly. “Burriwi, I’m glad you brought me. After conversing here with Abner, I realize I have to re-examine my own motives for confronting Sloan. Am I truly interested in the higher morality of freedom and human dignity, or am I exercising vindictiveness toward a man with whom I disagree, who doesn’t approach life as I do because he doesn’t have the light of God to go by?”
He had just used five words not in Burriwi’s vocabulary. Since the little speech didn’t add anything to the questions in Burriwi’s mind, he let it go by. “Glad you’re glad, Friend.”
Gardell chewed pensively on his lower lip. “What you’re saying, Vinson, at the core of it, is that if I want to get back together with God, I’m going to have to forgive and forget.”
“In essence, yes, if you want wholeness with Him.”
“I can’t.”
Out of curiosity, Burriwi asked, “Who is strongest, really? The good spirits or the evil spirit?”
Luke glanced at Gardell. “Strength for strength, God, of course. But God does not impose His power on us. He doesn’t make us obey Him. We have to want to, to do it voluntarily.” He translated his own long word. “On our own.”
“Sometimes we can’t.” Gardell scowled, somber.
Luke nodded. “It may seem so. Satan knows how to use the wrongdoing and evil within ourselves to add to his own strength. He’s able frequently to get the upper hand that way. Abner here has that very war going on within him—Satan using Abner’s own nature to keep him away from God.”
That answered the question exactly, and the way Luke sometimes talked a long trail to reach a short destination, Burriwi was mildly surprised. Gardell might have problems, but the matter was clear in Burriwi’s mind.
He would transfer his trust from the many spirits of sea and forest to the great God who was more powerful than all of them. That meant, he knew, that he must also believe about Jesus. No problems. And that surely me
ant, too, that the evil spirit would try to separate him from God, as it was doing to Gardell. He saw that he must guard against that.
Gardell was wagging his shaggy head sadly. “The past, Vinson. The past. It makes slaves of us all.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Disaster and Tragedy
Brilliant late-morning sun set the rippled sea to glowing, bluer than blue. Dazzling sand and bright water made Samantha’s eyes hurt as she walked the narrow strand below the house. She sat for a few moments beneath a small, gnarled tree. She had to tuck in and hunch over to fit beneath its low, spreading branches.
Out over the water a large white sea-eagle came soaring. Its gray-tipped wings dipped and spread; it looked more like a monstrously huge butterfly than a bird of prey. It coasted low to the light-dapples, its long white legs hanging down, then dropped suddenly. When it rose with mighty wingbeats, a silver fish flapped in its talons.
From above the trees here on shore—from out of nowhere—a dark wedge-tailed eagle zoomed by. It made a menacing pass at the sea-eagle. The second threat worked; the white eagle dropped its fish and angled away from the danger on its huge spreading wings. The dark eagle had the fish in its own claws before the trophy could touch water.
Why did this primitive act of avian piracy enrage Samantha so? It probably happened frequently; indeed, it had occurred quickly, as if rehearsed. And it was certainly none of her affair. Nature has its own rules for heroes and villains.
She’d best get back and commence luncheon preparations. That is one sorry thing about being a cook, she thought wearily. Your creations disappear three times daily—or oftener—and must be constantly recreated. She squirmed out from under her shady retreat and started home.
She was within a few rods of the house when hoofbeats came clattering from up ahead. Here came Mr. Sloan on Gypsy, wearing a city suit. She stepped out of the way.
He pulled up beside her. “I won’t be back for lunch. Have a supper waiting late.”
“Ye look upset, sir. Meg? Something meself can help with?”
Code of Honor (Australian Destiny Book #1) Page 20