The next day, watching the men's actions, Alexandra became positive that she was right about why Hinton had kept the others away from her. With the attitude of one who has acted entirely within his rights, he remained stonily silent toward Crowley, waiting for the other man to speak first. When they stopped at a pond to water the horses, Crowley spoke to Hinton who gradually emerged from his silence.
Near sunset, they stopped for the night where the track crossed a creek. As they dismounted, Hinton told Alexandra to build a fire and cook, then seized her shoulder and pulled her close. "And if that fire smokes," he snarled, "I'll push your face into it."
Releasing her, he turned away and unsaddled his horse. Alexandra gathered twigs and sticks that had dried in the sunshine during the day. After building a hot, smokeless fire, she fried strips of salt pork and cooked peas and rice. She dished up the food, and when they had all eaten, she took the dishes to the creek to wash them. Hinton and Crowley sat beside the fire and talked, their dispute completely forgotten.
As she knelt beside the creek, stacking the dishes to carry them back to the fire, Alexandra heard a soft footstep behind her. Before she could turn, Snively had his arms around her and fondled her breasts as he tried to kiss her. She twisted away from him in revulsion. Neither of them spoke a word, wanting to keep Hinton from noticing their tussle and reacting in a rage which would be directed at both of them.
Snively darted a fearful glance toward Hinton, then looked back at Alexandra with an exultant, lustful grin as he moved away. Her hands shaking in anger and disgust, Alexandra took the dishes to the fire. Then grabbing her blanket, she lay down, listening to the conversation between Hinton and Crowley.
Hinton had previously mentioned that he was considering a scheme to get money, and he was telling Crowley the specifics of the plan. He intended to steal a flock of sheep and take it to the Hunter River, then sell the animals a few at a time to farmers and graziers in the area. Crowley was doubtful about the plan, pointing out a serious shortcoming.
''You always talk about the danger of being caught," Crowley said, "so we could never get away with it. Sheep can't be driven more than ten or fifteen miles a day, and soldiers would be after us within a day or two after we took the flock. They would catch up with us easily."
"Aye, that's the main obstacle that I saw," Hinton replied. "I looked at it from all sides, and I couldn't think of any way around it. But when I found that track that we've been traveling on since yesterday, I figured out a way that we could avoid that problem."
"What do you mean?"
"All of the sheep stations around Bathurst are close together, and we couldn't take a flock from any of them without drawing attention. But I've heard of a big sheep station in the outback that has flocks spread far and wide. This must be the track to that station, because we're already well beyond any of those around Bathurst. We could take a flock from it, and the others at the station probably wouldn't know for weeks or perhaps even months. By then, we could have the sheep sold."
"How far away is this station you're talking about?"
Hinton shrugged and shook his head. "All I know is that it's a long distance away. That's better, though, because the hue and cry for us here will die down while we're gone. And it'll be worth our while. Sheep will sell fast at two or three shillings each, so a thousand or more sheep will bring in enough money to last us for a long time."
His interest in the idea growing, Crowley became enthusiastic after Hinton mentioned the amount of money involved. The two men discussed the plan, as Alexandra listened in dismay.
She had thought that they would hide out for a time and then go to Hunter River where she might have a chance of escaping and reaching a village. Now they would be going into the distant wilderness of the outback, and she would remain the bushrangers' captive indefinitely.
Chapter Ten
During the following days, the uncomfortably cold night that Alexandra had spent on the wet ground became a fond memory. The farther west she and the bushrangers went on the track, the more torridly hot the weather became. Early summer was pleasant in Sydney, but here the sun glared down from a cloudless sky through the long, suffocating hours of each day.
Adding to her discomfort, her riding cape was in rags and her hat had been lost somewhere along the way. One night, she looked in the bags containing clothes that the bushrangers had stolen from the farms. She picked out a man's hat and coat to protect her from the sun, turning up the cuffs on the coat as she put it on. It was risky because of Hinton's unpredictable temper, but he said nothing when he saw her wearing the coat and hat.
He tied her hands and feet with increasing carelessness for several nights, then stopped altogether, and he showed no inclination to rape her again. It had become evident that his lust was aroused only by an urge to punish and dominate, and as long as she resisted defying him and did nothing to anger him, he ignored her.
At night, when Hinton talked with Crowley or had his attention on other things, Snively tried to catch her by herself to fondle her. She tried to avoid such situations, which would enrage Hinton if he saw them. The incidents were a reminder that her life would become unendurable when Hinton turned her over to the other men, because she would be repeatedly raped every night. At the mercy of Hinton's whim, she felt utterly helpless.
While cooking one night, she looked at a small knife among the utensils as a weapon rather than as an implement. There were pistols among the loot from the farms, but concealing one of them in her clothes would be impossible. The knife, however, was small enough for her to slide into the hem of her dress, where it would be completely hidden.
When she was certain that the men were paying no attention to her, Alexandra made an opening in the hem of her dress and slipped the knife into it. The next night and on following nights, she took it out and honed it on a stone until it was razor-sharp. While she had no idea of what she might do with it, she felt less helpless, the weight of the knife in her hem deeply comforting to her.
Along with the heat of the outback, it was plagued with flies. At ponds and streams, they were joined by clouds of mosquitoes. The men cursed and flailed their arms in vain, while Alexandra found that she could keep the insects away by carrying a leafy twig and fanning herself with it.
Despite the circumstances, Alexandra experienced moments when she enjoyed the journey. The outback was intimidating, a harsh land with perils on every side, but it had a rugged, compelling beauty. Venturing where so few had been appealed to her sense of novelty and adventure. Its enormous spaces staggered her imagination, and it was so entirely different from any place she had ever seen that she found it endlessly fascinating.
The bushrangers, however, had an intense aversion to it. The boundless reaches and isolation of the immense land were oppressive to the men, making them nervous and irritable. With a mixture of contempt and amusement, Alexandra watched them act like small children who whistled to bolster their courage while passing a cemetery. The men talked loudly among themselves during the day, and after sunset, they built a fire and sat near it to keep the vast, dark cavern of night in the outback at bay.
The men remained constantly fearful of being seen, and near the top of a hill one day, Hinton suddenly wheeled his horse around. "Get off the track!" he shouted to Snively and Crowley. "Move, you bloody fools! Get off the track and hide in the brush!"
Just before Hinton jerked the rope on her horse's bridle and turned it, Alexandra saw dust rising from the track on the other side of the hill. Then she concentrated on balancing herself on the saddle to keep from falling as her horse spun around with Hinton leading it off the track as he continued shouting at the men to hurry.
The horses cantered, plowing through the thick growth. Some fifty yards from the track, Hinton rode around a thick, tall clump of brush and stopped behind it. The other men, following closely with the pack horses, reined up.
"What's wrong, Hinton?" Crowley asked.
"Someone's coming down the track t
oward us," Hinton replied, then he turned to Alexandra. "If you make a sound, it'll be the last thing you ever do," he warned her grimly. "Do you understand?"
She nodded, watching the track through the screen of brush in front as she heard heavy wheels rumbling, and saw a thick cloud of dust. A moment later, seven huge drays drawn by oxen passed over the top of the hill where Hinton had turned off the track. They were loaded with large, canvas-covered bales of wool, and four armed riders led them.
"That wool is worth a fortune," Hinton commented sourly. "Why should some rich swine have all the gold it'll bring? That would be more than enough to last us for the rest of our lives."
"Well, we can't get that," Crowley replied, "but we can get some of his sheep that the wool came from. That'll satisfy me."
Hinton laughed sardonically, agreeing. When the drays disappeared around a curve, he turned his horse and rode back to the track. Alexandra's mount and the others followed. Then the horses settled back into the routine of traveling up the track at a fast walk.
Finally, they camped beside a pond. When she went for water, Alexandra took a wine bottle that was full of water as well as a bucket. The distance between sources of water becoming farther, she had concluded that the time might come when they would be unable to find water. She had mentioned it to Hinton, who had merely laughed sarcastically, and she had begun keeping the wine bottle full of fresh water.
At the pond, Alexandra emptied the water from the previous day out of the bottle and refilled it, then dipped up water into the bucket. Hiding the bottle under her coat, she returned it to where she kept it in a pack of foodstuffs. She then set about preparing the usual meal of salt pork, peas, rice, damper and tea which she knew the men wanted. But Alexandra knew that as a steady diet, the food would eventually cause scurvy. Among the foodstuffs was an earthenware pot of pickled cabbage which prevented the disease, but the men disliked its vinegar taste. The one time she had put it on their plates, Hinton had thrown it at her. More than willing to let them get scurvy, Alexandra filled their plates with what she had cooked, then added a helping of the pickled cabbage to her own plate.
After the meal, the bushrangers built a roaring fire as they always did, since the vast, surrounding darkness made them uncomfortable. Their conversation was the usual topic, their dislike for the outback. Crowley had suggested several times that they turn back, and he became more insistent about it as Hinton refused once again. Their exchanges verged on an argument, then they built up the fire once again before they unrolled their blankets beside it.
The following day, while they were riding up the track, Hinton shouted at Crowley and pointed to a kangaroo in the brush some two hundred feet away. "You see that kangaroo over there, Crowley?" he called. "See if you can hit it."
Crowley lifted his musket and fired at the animal. He missed, and the kangaroo bounded away. Hinton jeered as he cocked his musket and looked around. A few minutes later, he saw another kangaroo and fired at it. It tumbled over, thrashing on the ground in its death throes.
"That was closer than the one I shot at!" Crowley shouted angrily.
"No more than a few feet," Hinton replied, laughing and reloading his musket. "Let's see if you can do any better on the next one."
A short time later, they saw another kangaroo, and Crowley fired at it. The bullet wounded the animal, and the men howled with laughter as it bled heavily and struggled frantically to flee, falling down every few feet. Then, when Snively joined in, the bushrangers took turns shooting at the animals and wagering pence on being able to hit them.
Alexandra was revolted, knowing why Hinton had started the shooting. None of the men were intelligent, but Hinton was sly and had thought of a way to distract Crowley from the journey. But it was savagely brutal, at the expense of pain and death for unwary animals that had stopped to gaze curiously at the travelers.
However, it worked as a way of diverting Crowley's attention from the journey, and the wantonly cruel sport continued during the following days, filling the hours of traveling for the men. When sitting beside the fire at night, they argued over the settlement of the wagers they had made that day, and not over whether they should turn back toward Sydney.
Alexandra saw far more animals than the men who spotted only those that were in the open. But in addition to having discovered that she had more physical endurance than the men, she had long since found out that her eyesight and hearing were keener than theirs. However, they saw enough to leave a trail of dead and wounded animals behind.
While she was washing dishes at the edge of a billabong one night, Snively once again sneaked up on Alexandra. This time he managed to get within a few feet of her before she detected him, then he rushed her. As he threw his arms around her, squeezing her breasts and trying to kiss her, she knocked over the tin plates and pannikins in her furious effort to twist out of his grasp.
Hinton, hearing the clatter, stood up beside the fire. "What the bloody hell is going on over there?" he growled, peering toward the billabong. Seeing them in the moonlight, he charged away from the fire. "Snively, I warned you about that, you little swine!" he roared.
"She told me that I could!" Snively yelped, dodging to get away from Hinton. "She said that I could if I wanted to!"
"I don't give a bloody damn what she said!" Hinton bellowed, chasing him. "I'm the one who gives the orders here, not her!"
Catching the smaller man's sleeve, Hinton spun him around and hit him in the face. Blood burst from Snively's nose and mouth as he stumbled back and sprawled on the ground. Following him, Hinton kicked him again and again as he scrambled about frantically on the ground and tried to get away, his face covered with blood. Finally, after kicking Snively around to the other side of the fire, Hinton turned back.
"So you told him that he could, did you?" Hinton snarled, stamping toward Alexandra. "I warned you about causing trouble, you slut!"
Knowing that it would be useless to protest and contradict Snively, Alexandra steeled herself, trembling in fear. She ducked as Hinton's fist lashed out, but it still struck the side of her head hard enough to daze her. Catching her hair as she fell, Hinton dragged her to her blanket, then threw her down on it. He dropped on top of her, pushing up her clothes and unfastening his, and then pushed into her with a vicious thrust.
When Hinton fastened his pants and went back to the fire, Crowley's lust was aroused and they argued fiercely over her again. Numb with pain and her mind still reeling from the blow on her head, Alexandra lay, listening as they raged at each other, Crowley demanding to have her and Hinton refusing. The argument ended in hostile silence, and Alexandra pulled her blanket closer and waited for sleep as an escape from her misery.
The atmosphere of discord remained the next morning, and Snively's face was swollen. Later in the day, the hostility between Hinton and Crowley faded, and they shot at kangaroos again. Snively joined in later, the aftermath of the night before passing, and Alexandra earnestly hoped that he would leave her alone.
Two days later, a situation that she had foreseen occurred. Throughout the day, she and the bushrangers rode up the track without passing a billabong or a stream. Hinton cursed irately and increased the pace to a canter, but the track continued winding through the arid, sun-baked terrain without a sign of water.
When dusk gathered, the men's disquiet in the vast, isolated land came to the fore. They stopped, making a dry camp beside the track, and kindled their usual large, blazing fire. Alexandra asked Hinton if he and the others wanted cold rations, then had to jump back as he slapped at her viciously, cursing and snarling that they were too thirsty to eat.
As the men sat morosely beside the fire, Alexandra quietly took her water bottle out of the foodstuffs, along with cheese and ship biscuit. Intensely regretting that she was unable to give the horses at least a sip, she went to her blanket. After the bushrangers were asleep, she ate and drank, then fell asleep. The next morning, she concealed the bottle under her coat and returned it to its place in the bag
gage.
There was still no sign of water as the morning passed, the sun rising higher into the cloudless sky and the breathlessly still air becoming torridly hot. Instead of shooting at kangaroos, the men were glumly silent in their raging thirst. Alexandra's satisfaction over their suffering was offset by her pity for the horses with dried foam crusting on their lips as they plodded wearily along.
Early that afternoon, she saw bright green foliage through the shimmering heat waves. A short time later, the horses lifted their heads and flared their nostrils as they smelled the water, and they broke into a canter. The bushrangers exchanged perplexed comments and looked ahead, seeing nothing that was different. Finally, when they were near the billabong at the side of the track, Snively and then the other men saw it.
When they reached it, the men ran to the water and drank, but Alexandra restrained the horses from drinking too rapidly and foundering. The nine large animals were frantically thirsty, and she had to struggle with them. Gripping the reins and halter ropes, she dragged the horses back after they had gulped down a few mouthfuls. Then, their frenzy of thirst passing, she got them under control and made them drink slowly.
Alexandra drank when the horses finished, then she opened a bag of supplies to get out the cheese and ship biscuit. As they wolfed down the food, Hinton opened another pack that contained jugs of rum stolen from the farms. Selecting a jug that was less than half full, he emptied out the remainder of the rum on the ground.
Turning to Alexandra, he handed her the jug. ''Here, fill this and keep it full from the waterholes along the way," he ordered gruffly. "That's what you should have been doing all the while, you stupid cow."
Silently taking the jug, Alexandra carried it to the billabong. As she knelt at the edge of the water, the angle of the sun on its surface made it almost like a mirror. For the second time since the bushrangers had captured her, she was aware of her appearance.
Outback Station Page 18