Taste of Victory

by Sandra Dengler

  Frobel sat down in the dirt, drew his knees up and draped his arms across them. The blood on his hands was beginning to dry. “I don’t play games, Sloan. When we talked in your office there, what I said was what I meant. And I’m not playing games now.”

  “Something like this doesn’t just happen. I was singled out. Chosen. Of all the people in this place, they picked Cole Sloan. Of all the people in this place to lend a hand, fate picks Martin Frobel. And here’s lovely Pearl, fetching the gendarmes as her husband fetches the luckless victim to an assigned place.”

  “You’re saying this was arranged?” Frobel rubbed his chin with the back of his wrist, the only clean part left. Those chocolate-brown eyes fixed upon Sloan’s steadily, without wavering.

  “That’s what I’m saying. There’s no sense to it otherwise. And no chance it would all happen by accident.”

  Pearl was livid; Sloan could read the tension in her face. Frobel seemed not the least put off.

  “Yes, I can see you’d think we set it up.” The chocolate eyes hardened. “Your horse punched a hole in the shrubbery big enough to let a lorry through. The drongo on the bay was coming at you to finish what he started, Sloan. The only thing that turned him around was a rider coming at him, and then I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t reconsider and try some more. You were in more trouble than you could handle.”

  “Manufactured trouble. Why, Frobel? Why try to make me feel some debt to you? Get a better deal on beef transport? Is this part of some even bigger setup, to get back at me? I see all kinds of possibilities. But I don’t see anything that came out of pure chance.”

  “We agree there. Not chance. Pearl and I belong to God, Sloan, in a way you can’t understand. Whatever those three were up to, it’s God’s providence that we happened to see them stalking you, and it’s His doing that we—both of us—could do something to help you.”

  “Don’t give me that—”

  “If you owe a debt, it’s to God, not us. And for the record, no. We didn’t set it up.” Frobel popped to his feet smoothly, powerfully. “I doubt those three are still here, but I’ll hang around outside until the constable gets back, just in case. Pearl, maybe you can go tell his lady what’s happening.”

  She nodded, glared at Sloan a moment, and left. If she were so angry with him, why was she off doing him a favor?

  Sloan ended up sending Hilary home in his carriage. The racetrack hired its own doctor and its own constable, both of whom poked and prodded and otherwise attended him. Still, until everything was done, Sloan didn’t climb into the hired cab until dark. He fell into bed the moment he arrived home. Hideous dreams marred his sleep that night, and in the morning he could not remember what they were.

  He ought to take the day off. He should just sit around licking his wounds. With great and admirable force of will—plus the necessity of hustling if he was going to earn a quid today—he walked over to his office early, before breakfast. The walk shook some of the pain and stiffness out of his beleaguered body, but only some of it.

  As he turned into Crown Street a fire engine passed, bound for the station. The men hanging on its rails looked grimy, weary-looking. Must have been a big one. What was this? A pumper and a hook-and-ladder stood parked by his door, their horses not yet hitched back up to them. Wet, flaccid hose lay all around the two-wheeled hose cart. Clumps and crowds of onlookers stood about. Sloan was beginning to despise onlookers.

  A drift of dark gray smoke still floated out from—from—from his first-floor window ten feet above the street!

  He approached a fireman in a spiked brass helmet. “I’m Cole Sloan. That’s my office!”

  “Come with me, Mr. Sloan.” The fellow led the way through the door. “We confined damage to the first floor up there. Watch walking on this ground floor, though. Water makes it treacherous.”

  The stench of burned wood hung even thicker than the smoke. Water stood on the ground floor an inch deep. It still cascaded down the stairs they climbed. Sloan’s boots were soaked through instantly.

  His office. Black. Charred. Reeking. Hot, dark, humid. Curls of smoke and steam filled the room in spite of the bellows device a fireman was using to blow the stuff out the window. Sloan would salvage nothing here. Not a single thing.

  “Mr. Sloan, do you smoke?”

  “No.”

  “Did a client or visitor smoke here yesterday?”

  “It was locked up yesterday. No one here.”

  “Your electrical system?”

  “A light in the ceiling. That’s all.”

  “I am required to determine a cause. No one here, you say. Can you offer any suggestion as to what caused it?”

  “I don’t know who, but I can tell you what. Arson.” He stared at the mess that had been his desk, his records, his life.

  He turned abruptly and headed back down the sooty, dripping stairs. He shoved past two firemen with a hose, out into the clarity of day.

  And he stopped cold. A familiar black face, very sad, approached him from the street side.

  Chester, aged Chester the groom, doffed his hat and stepped up to him. “Mistuh Sloan. Track constable, he told me where to find you. Mistuh Sloan, Boss’s Red Pepper horse: his leg was broke. We had to put him down. Boss ain’t got no horse no more.”

  Chapter Five

  Echuca Charlene

  November 3, 1906

  Dearest Mum and Papa,

  I am situated in the town of Echuca in the state of Victoria. I had planned to travel to Melbourne, but an interesting position came up here. I am the secretarial assistant to Reginald Otis, a missionary to area aborigines. He is building a facility somewhere to the east, as I, here in town, handle the correspondence, requisitions, and such that his project generates. The work is very challenging, as he is building in the state of New South Wales and must adhere both to their governmental rules and hoop-de-doo and to Victoria’s. What an inevitable mountain of paperwork is involved in an essentially profitless enterprise! Imagine what it would be like were he determined to make money!

  Linnet has enrolled part time as a music student at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. She says she is taking voice lessons from a brilliant tiger of a woman named Guli Hack, and is engaged in violin and piano lessons as well. She has also taken a position as maid to a professor. I’ll enclose her address and mine. She says she likes her professor’s family and enjoys her job, but she may quit as her work load is onerous. Her note to me sounded bright and happy.

  Before coming south, I visited awhile with Margaret up in central Queensland. I am pleased to report Meg appears to have married wisely. Her young man is quite attentive and utterly smitten with her. You would like him very much. He has a sly sense of humor much like Papa’s.

  At this moment (just past dawn) I am looking out my window at a medium-sized green and yellow parrot, quite wild, nipping berries off a bush. And in the chimney of a building across the way, a pair of kookaburras (no, I’m not making the name up) is nesting. A cockerel is not so noisy as are these big blue-gray birds. They call the sun up each morning and then complain about it all day.

  Much more than the north Queensland coast, this area reminds me of home. And yet there are differences, just discordant enough to make one feel “this is not quite right.” It is unsettling, and yet, very beautiful. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, given time.

  There are many more trees here than you know in Ireland, groves of short sparse ones scattered through an otherwise featureless landscape, and thicker forests of quite tall ones along the riverbank. The River Murray is apparently one of the continent’s largest, and yet I can almost peg a stone across it from shore to shore. Papa, you would love to watch the boats. Some are smaller than a dory and others respectable enough in size to haul cattle, lumber, and great bales of wool. There are side-wheelers and barges and little steam tugs. Apparently there used to be many more. Mr. Otis says the river trade is past its heyday. If so, it must have been great indeed.

  Lumbering
and wool trade are the chief industries here. And eating. Echuca boasts quite a number of restaurants, cafes and hotel dining rooms. There is the American, which used to cater to that particular foreign element (I hear they’re as raucous as the kookaburras), and several that court the trade of riverboat officers. My favorite is a little tea garden with outdoor seating under a bower. Very pleasant.

  Indeed, there is so much to this land that is pleasant. God bless you both.

  With warmest love,

  I am your dutiful daughter,

  Samantha

  Samantha glanced out the window as she addressed and sealed the envelope. A great white cockatoo with yellow feathers in its crest had joined the parrot. And a honeyeater of some sort scrambled about in the bush near the window. The honeyeater clattered and chattered obnoxiously. Did none of these birds sing sweetly? She wished she knew more about these striking birds.

  Samantha took up her hat and beaded reticule, locked her door behind her, and strolled out into the golden morning sun. No need for a shawl in this hot summer weather. Summer in November! Honestly! With ample time to take the long way to the office and still arrive early, she walked down Leslie Street and angled across to the river shore.

  Either Echuca was built on a rise or the Murray cut its bed very deep here, for the riverbanks fell away at least thirty feet in a stark, vertical cliff to meet the water below her. Samantha stood a few moments on the grassy lip of the cutbank and watched the brown satin water glide by. A large snow-white heron—or perhaps it was an egret—came flapping across the water and lit on its stilt legs on the cabin roof of a small paddle boat. Very peaceful, this, before the cranes and the steam engines began their day’s activities.

  She wandered out onto the great wharf. The Great Echuca Wharf, the Marvel of the Age, boasted the local Riverine Herald. Marvel? Well, yes, perhaps it was. For three quarters of a mile this engineering masterpiece in red gumwood linked the river below with the shore above. The upper level, along which Samantha now strolled, with its stores and sheds, stood flush with the street. Beneath the thick plank flooring, an elaborate grid work of wooden girders laced together in geometric cacophony, a tangled maze of beams and pillars filling the thirty vertical feet from esplanade to river.

  Whatever the engineering involved, the myriad beams did their duty. The wharf was not only sturdy enough to receive its tons and tons of wool and lumber, it also had to support the huge iron-and-wood cranes that laded the riverboats. Samantha would like somehow to obtain a picture of the wharf to send Papa. An excellent carpenter and joiner, he would enjoy nothing better than to admire the complex joinery of all these angled supports.

  “Young woman! Miss Connolly?” A rather rotund man with muttonchop whiskers draped upon a roly-poly face flagged Samantha from the doorway of the wharfmaster’s office. “You work for Reginald Otis?”

  “Aye. I do.” She crossed to him.

  “I’ve a message here from him, and a problem.” The man bowed and extended his hand. “Forgive me! We’ve not met, save through correspondence. My name is Alistair Drummond. How do you do?”

  Samantha accepted the hand and nodded. “How do ye do? A message from Mr. Otis?”

  “A letter arriving in last night’s post; I dropped by your office, but you’d left. Come in, please.”

  “I had a number of errands, so I closed the office early yesterday and killed all the birds with one stone. Sorry to miss ye.”

  “I’ve no idea what you’re going to do with this, but I’ve no resources.” Mr. Drummond led the way into his office.

  Samantha stepped in the door, from golden light to eternal gloom. If this were her office, she would first wash the grimy windows. Then she would haul the stacked files and papers out onto the wharf and let nothing back in the door unless it had a proper place to hide. What a jumbled, disorganized mess! But this was not her office, thank goodness, and she need not consider the days of tedious work that putting it in order would require. This was someone else’s woe.

  “Now, where is it…?” Mr. Drummond pawed and rummaged through the clutter on his desk. He had said it arrived just last night; apparently it was already lost in this mare’s nest.

  “Here it…no…ah!” With a little smile of triumph, all in excess of the situation, he waved it aloft. “Mr. Otis has informed me here that supplies he’s sent for will arrive by rail from Melbourne. And at the same time he’s bringing down a crew from his station.”

  “Supplies. Aye. The roofing tin, pump parts, the donkey engine, and ten iron bedsteads. Did he mention books? He’s expecting several crates of schoolbooks.”

  Mr. Drummond looked at her oddly. “You already know about that.”

  “Meself processed the order, sir. I didnae know, however, that he planned to come out so soon. The last he wrote, he’d be there for the summer.”

  “The crew’s the problem. They’re blacks, I assume. And, well, ah…You’re aware, I’m sure, that the Esplanade or the Bridge won’t take them. In fact, I don’t know of an accommodation in town that will. And where do you intend to put all those supplies when they arrive? Storing them on the premises here will cost a pretty penny.”

  “Arranging transportation out to the station should nae cause ye much of a problem. There be boats sitting about idle and to spare.”

  “Well, ah, Miss Connolly. You’re new in town and don’t understand. The river trade is seasonal. The water is down now. Most vessels, particularly the larger ones, tie up and wait for higher water, lest they run aground. There’s not a boat on the river just now that’s big enough to handle all this.”

  “Mmm.” Samantha studied the grimy floor boards. (She’d have the floor scrubbed, too. And whitewash the walls.) “When may I expect the shipment and Mr. Otis?”

  “I believe your freight shall arrive late this morning on the train. Your employer is coming by the river. He should be here by nightfall, if the Kyabram hasn’t encountered problems with shallows.”

  “Thank ye, Mr. Drummond. I’ll make arrangements today to take care of both. I was pleased to meet ye.” Samantha bobbed her head. Her terse nod was not at all a curtsy, but it seemed somehow ample for the occasion.

  “Miss Connolly!” he blurted. “I don’t think you realize, I can’t help you.”

  “I understand that, Mr. Drummond. Meself shall make arrangements for Mr. Otis’s crew and the supply shipment. Thank ye very much for informing me.” She smiled and left promptly. What a depressing place that was.

  No more time for admiring the scenery. She turned her back on the wharf and on the towering gum trees along the shore. By the time she reached her little office in Hare Street, a scant hour past dawn, the sun burned hot. Another scorcher today.

  She hung her hat on the clothes tree and sat down by the window at the little table she pretended was a desk. This office was half the size of Mr. Drummond’s, but it presented a neat, orderly appearance—relaxing. She much preferred this little hole in the wall to the most prestigious office. She leaned back in her chair, propped her elbows on its arms, and pondered the situation.

  She already knew why blacks were not welcomed in the hotels. They were black. They tore the place up. They didn’t know how to behave in civilization. They got drunk. Since Americans behaved similarly, they had a hotel all for themselves; obviously the key word was “black.” Where to house them?

  No large boats would be on the water now, he said. If the wharfmaster didn’t know, who did? And yet, Mr. Otis needed transport for his goods now, not some bright day in the future when the water level rose. And his books had not come yet.

  Somewhat ruefully, she imagined how much a devious and scheming nature would help out just now. She was far too straightforward to cajole people into serving her needs. And the thought of deviousness instantly brought Cole Sloan to mind. Where was he now? How was he doing? She found herself still daydreaming ten minutes later. Honestly! That part of her life was ended. Besides, his was a most scheming mind, albeit housed in a most attractiv
e body. Ah, but look at what Cole’s conniving had done for him! He had lost nearly everything. No, perhaps the straightforward approach was better.

  She wrote a rather hasty letter to the publisher in Melbourne concerning the delinquent books. Then she adjusted her hat on her head and strode forth to right all these irksome situations—straightforwardly.

  The abandoned store beside the customs house would be the most convenient place. She walked around the corner to the store and tried the doors. The front was locked but the back was open. She walked through, assaying the amount of dust and neglect, and unlatched the front door on her way out.

  She stopped by the Bridge Hotel. Mr. Otis’s mission, a most charitable and worthy effort, required bedding and mattresses. Might they have worn, used bedding they’d part with for a modest price? They did. She wrote a check and hired an idle lad with a fishing pole to haul her bedding down to the abandoned store.

  She retraced her steps to the wharf and trotted down the east stairs almost to river level. No matter how bright and hot the day, this world beneath the wharf remained ever damp and gloomy. Although she’d been down here before, still she found herself pausing, just to look. Massive gray beams wove themselves into a colossal cantilevered lacework three stories high, practically as far as the eye could see. The Riverine Herald was right.

  The dry pounded dirt under here was firm yet powdery. She was sorely tempted to tread this gray world barefoot someday just to feel the cool dust as it should be felt. Two small side-wheelers lay docked at this end. She made her way to the closest—a flat, squat, graying little craft named Echuca Charlene—and walked a rickety plank from dirt to deck.

  “G’day, mum. What can I do for you?” He came popping out of the nether regions of his deck cabin, his hands all black with engine grease. Were Samantha to meet this unkempt, dumpy little man with the shaggy beard in the streets of Cork, she would have turned and hastened the other way. But this man looked no more dangerous, and smelled no worse, than any other boat captain on the river. Appearances counted for very little in this roughhewn land. He grinned with approximately half the full complement of yellowed teeth.