Cry of the Curlew: The Frontier Series 1 (44 page)

‘What sort of man was Patrick’s father, Mister Duffy?’ Enid unexpectedly asked and Daniel could see that the woman was even now thinking of Patrick as her grandson.

‘Michael was a grand man,’ he replied proudly. ‘He was big, brave and strong and he had a gentle way about him. He dreamed of some day becoming a great artist and capturing the beauty he saw in this country. He wanted to show the world this country’s soul in his paintings and his son is growing like him in every way.’

‘He must have been an exceptional man,’ Enid sighed, ‘for my daughter to have loved him so very much.’ They parted, but not before she turned away briefly so he could not see the pain in her face. The tears would come later, when she was alone, for the terrible thing she had done to her daughter and to herself.

FORTY-ONE

H
ugh Darlington never tired of watching Kate dress herself.

She held no shame for her body and would wriggle into the tight corsets, exposing, for a short and erotic time, forbidden glimpses of milk-white flesh for his voyeuristic pleasure. As she wriggled into the uncomfortable and constraining corsets, she would often swear with unseemly and colourful words she had picked up from the bullockies in the bar and her use of profane language caused even the worldly-wise solicitor to wince.

Finally she buttoned her long dress and brushed it down before she sat on a chair to pull on the lace-up boots fashionable with the ladies in London and Rockhampton. Hugh lay against the brass bedhead and gazed admiringly at her.

‘I will see you tomorrow, Kate?’ he asked as thick smoke curled around his head from a cigar he puffed.

‘No,’ she replied as she gave an unladylike grunt and yanked at the laces. ‘I have to make sure my new wagon is ready to leave for Tambo, so I shall be too busy to see you. It’s Benjamin’s first time out. I have a present for him which I have to pick up from the
Lady Mary
’s captain at the wharf.’

‘I hope for your sake that one of those matters isn’t an appointment at the bank about purchasing Glen View, Kate,’ he said ominously and Kate froze in the act of tying the bootlace.

‘What do you mean by that, Hugh?’ she asked quietly.

‘Just that I hear things in my business, as you full well know,’ he replied. ‘And there is a rumour you are going to try to buy Glen View from Sir Donald Macintosh.’

‘Oh, he is a
sir
now,’ Kate said bitterly and turned to Hugh. ‘Although somehow that does not surprise me.’

Hugh took a long puff on his cigar and exhaled a stream of thick smoke before speaking. ‘You have enough opportunities in your present position to capitalise other properties, Kate. So, as someone who cares for you, and as your solicitor, I would advise against stirring up things best left alone. Sir Donald is a powerful and I, suspect, a dangerous man to cross. I know of your vendetta against the Macintosh family – as it seems does most of the colony – for the alleged things you think they are responsible for. But you haven’t any proof to be a one-woman nemesis. Although, it is rather apt that the word is derived from the Greek goddess of retribution,’ he said, pleased with himself for his recall of the Greek classics.

Kate stared at him with an icy expression akin to hostility. ‘Would you help me if I was trying to bring the man to justice?’ she asked and he looked startled at both her question and its tone.

‘It is not a question of helping you as much as a question of what is lawful,’ he reflected. ‘Of course I would help you if I thought you had solid grounds for your supposed suspicions. But you don’t, Kate.’

She turned away from the man who only minutes earlier had held her in his arms and sworn his love to her. This was a different man virtually telling her that she was some kind of stupid and foolish woman infatuated with a hopeless cause. Damn him! Damn all men, she thought savagely as she rose to leave.

She knew there were others who would die for her. Men like the quiet and capable Luke Tracy. She turned back to Hugh before she left the room, snapping angrily, ‘Never underestimate a woman, Mister Darlington. Especially a Duffy woman.’

His smile caught her unawares as he stretched lazily and shot at her, ‘I never underestimate you, Kate O’Keefe. What man in his right mind would?’

She could not help smiling as he had a way of switching tactics and defusing her anger with his considerable charm. There were times she knew she could hate him for his smug male attitudes. But he had that way of making her want him. Damn you, Mister Darlington, I should leave your house and never return! But she knew full well that she would come back as the handsome and charming solicitor’s magnetism was as strong as the candle’s flame was to the moth.

Standing beside the massive wagon and bullock team, Benjamin Rosenblum felt embarrassed by his Aunt Judith’s attention. She fussed over him as if she were his own mother. At fifteen years of age, Ben was a man. And men did not have women fussing over them like they were little boys.

The new wagon was loaded with the badly needed supplies for the trip west to the far-flung properties on the brigalow scrub plains beyond the Great Divide and the bullocks stood patiently waiting for the rifle-like crack of the whip over their heads.

Joe Hanrahan, the teamster Kate had employed to take the wagon west, had stopped at the appointed place at the edge of town to meet her for final instructions and the stopover gave the Cohens an opportunity to farewell young Ben.

‘Remember that we will always be thinking of you, Benjamin,’ Judith said as she stepped back from the tall and gangling youth. ‘And be always aware that you are a Rosenblum.’

Solomon stepped forward and gravely shook the young man’s hand. At least his Uncle Solomon treated him like a man! Little Deborah was solemn when she handed her cousin a handful of wildflowers she had picked for him. The straggly bouquet was partly crushed in her chubby little hands but the childish and innocent gesture touched the young man. He accepted her gift with appropriate dignified gratitude and Deborah broke into a beaming smile of happiness.

Finally Kate took her turn to farewell Ben. He blushed when his beautiful employer gave him a peck on the cheek and said, ‘I have a present for you, Benjamin.’ She thrust at him a finely polished wooden case with his name inscribed on a small brass plate affixed to the lid. He lifted the lid and gaped with stunned awe at the Colt revolver inside. It was the heavy navy model and came with powder flask, bullet mould, nipple key and a tin of percussion caps. Ben was lost for words as he stared at the magnanimous gift. All he could do was stammer, ‘I, I . . .’

‘It is the only insurance I can give you as an employee of the Eureka Company,’ Kate said quietly to the young man. ‘Joe will show you how to use it when you are on the track.’

Joe Hanrahan stood by Kate’s team of oxen waiting patiently and the stocky teamster nodded to the boy while he uncoiled the stockwhip he held in his big hand. He made ready to move the wagon, which was one of the new four-wheeled giants that had replaced the two-wheeled drays on the frontier. It had the capacity to haul larger loads, which meant the teamsters were making good money per hundredweight of goods.

He nodded respectfully to Kate and, with a bellowed roar and crack of the long whip above the bullocks’ backs, he set in motion the lumbering four-wheeled giant.

Ben tucked the case under his arm, gave a final wave, and followed in the wheel tracks of the creaking wagon.

Little Deborah clung to her mother’s skirts and watched with wide-eyed awe the impressive demonstration of power, and she waved to her cousin trudging away from her in the rising dust raised by the hooves of the oxen.

Kate sighed as she watched her wagon slowly lumber down the track heading west for the mountains. She felt a touch of envy for young Ben, as she wished it was she who was walking beside the big wagon instead of Ben. For some strange reason, she had a fleeting memory of Luke who had once ridden with her along the same track that her wagon now journeyed.

Benjamin Rosenblum had travelled north from Sydney and had left behind his mother, who was Judith’s sister, and his six sisters. On Judith’s suggestion, his mother had agreed for him to travel to Queensland to take up work with the Eureka Company as an apprentice. She had grown concerned with her son’s increasing connections with the sons of the always present underworld of hardened criminals who frequented the street corners of Woolloomooloo on the harbour front.

Ben was the eldest of her children and she had wanted to see him educated so that he could join the public service as a clerk for a secure lifelong job. But she also recognised the insidious reality of starvation for her family and the Cohens had offered to pay Ben’s fare to Queensland.

Ben had arrived reluctantly in Rockhampton as a surly and gawky boy, resenting his exile from Sydney’s bright lights and the flashy company of older youths involved in a life of petty crime that supported their hours of indolence. He’d commenced his apprenticeship with Kate O’Keefe, who needed a man to assist the taciturn and burly teamster Joe Hanrahan.

Like all boys his age from the sophisticated city, Ben was full of his own self-importance. But one night he came home severely bruised from a beating. He was a much chastened young man for his experience. Aunt Judith had shown no sympathy for her nephew and Ben had said nothing of the thrashing he had received from the teamster, whom he had pushed once too often with his advice and bad manners. Ben quickly learnt that not all the hard men lived on Sydney’s street corners, boasting of their often exaggerated physical prowess. Some men like Joe Hanrahan just used their fists and said nothing of it.

And so Ben adjusted quickly, and painfully, to life in the Queensland colony while his Aunt Judith forwarded most of his wages to Sydney to his mother with letters describing how well young Ben was doing in his ‘chosen’ trade.

Joe Hanrahan had grudgingly admitted that the lad was turning out well after his unfortunate ‘accident’ of falling off the back of a dray. For the taciturn teamster to admit that much of a young man was praise in its own right.

When the ponderous wagon had creaked and groaned out of sight, Solomon turned to Kate. ‘That was a fine thing, Kate,’ he said gratefully. ‘A fine gift for a man to have with him.’

Kate modestly dismissed the gratitude with a small wave of her hand. ‘He is a fine young man, Solomon,’ she said. ‘And I know he will make you proud.’

Solomon smiled at her statement, as she was only six years older than Benjamin and yet she was talking like a woman much older than her tender years.

‘Ben earned the gun,’ Kate continued as she strolled with the Cohens back to their buggy. ‘Joe told me he was an eager apprentice and has a good way about him when it comes to handling the beasts. He says Ben was born to be a bullocky.’

‘It is good that he has employment with us,’ Judith reflected. ‘His mother will be proud to hear the things you have said about her son.’

Now that Ben walked beside the big wagon as a man, Solomon said a short prayer that God would look after him and Joe on the arduous and perilous journey west.

Judith wondered how Kate would react when she arrived back at the store with them to find a beautiful and expensive gift waiting for her. But her thoughts were also glum, as she knew of her friend’s passionate affair with the handsome solicitor. Some things in life could not help bad timing. The gift waiting for her at the store was one such thing badly timed.

‘Hello, Kate. You are as beautiful as the day you first came north,’ Luke said with a broad smile on his bearded face as he stood in the paddock behind the Cohens’ store. ‘And this is Lady . . . She’s yours.’

Kate did not know how to react as Luke stood holding the bridle of a magnificent mare. Sixteen hands, Kate thought. And the blackest coat she had seen on any horse, broken only by a single white blaze on her forehead. And the big brown eyes were the most intelligent for a horse she had ever seen.

The sudden and unexpected appearance of the American after so many years stunned Kate. She felt giddy with shock but forced herself to maintain a calm demeanour as she stepped forward to stroke the big animal’s forehead.

‘I can’t accept such a beautiful horse, Luke,’ she choked. ‘She must have cost you a small fortune.’

Deborah danced around her mother with excited admiration for the most magnificent horse in the whole, wide world. ‘Aunt Katie, Aunt Katie, take me for a ride on horse?’ she squealed excitedly.

‘I can’t accept the horse,’ Kate said gently to the little girl. ‘She is far too beautiful and expensive for me to accept.’ Luke passed the bridle to Kate, who protested feebly, ‘I cannot take her.’

But her resolve crumbled when she felt the big finely chiselled nose of the mare nuzzle her. There were people who would literally kill to own such a fine horse, as Kate knew full well!

‘I think I might look a bit out of place riding her side-saddle,’ the American said with a grin, ‘as is proper for ladies with the position I heard lately that you have around town.’ Kate smiled as he had facetiously reminded her of a time when she defied custom by riding a horse as a man would. ‘And besides, she doesn’t like men very much. Lady has a habit of making men look foolish if they attempt to ride her.’