Flight of the Eagle (58 page)

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Michael exploded. ‘Where in hell did you get your ideas on the innocence of women? Eton, with all the other young men whose tiny minds are filled with romantic ideas straight out of books. And for that matter, Catherine was no little girl. Oh, she might have been young enough to be my daughter, as you have yet to express, but she was all woman when it came to satisfying her own needs. Believe me, son.’

‘You bastard!’ Patrick hissed as he rose from the ground and Michael swung on him defensively.

‘Thought you might find a name for me sooner or later, other than father,’ he said with a cold smile on his face. Patrick stood face to face with him as the two men eyed each other tensely like a pair of fighting dogs. ‘You could try to hit me, ‘Michael said calmly. ‘But I promise you I will hit you right back.’ Patrick suddenly realised that his fists were clenched and ready to be raised. ‘I hear you are pretty good in the ring. Old Max taught you well,’ Michael added. ‘But you have to remember, he also taught me.’

Patrick relaxed and turned away to resume his seat on the ground with his back to the wagon wheel. ‘I didn't think it would be like this,’ he said sadly. ‘You and I almost coming to blows.’ He gave a short and bitter laugh then continued, ‘Here we are. We finally meet and I was terrified of what I should say to you. But right now, we are up to our necks in trouble, and all I am worried about is whether you were Miss Fitzgerald's lover. I suppose it has something to do with pride.’

‘There is nothing wrong in that, son,’ Michael said gently. ‘I did not know about you and her until we got to Greece.’

Patrick glanced up at his father. ‘Is that why you parted company, because of me?’ But the answer was an enigmatic smile from his father.

‘Possibly,’ he said.

In that simple answer and smile, Patrick saw his father in a new light. Maybe he was not the cad that he had first thought him to be. ‘Anyway …’

Michael's sentence was cut short as wood splintered in his face from the side of the wagon. He flung himself on the ground and at the same time snatched his rifle from against the side of the wheel. A hollow, rolling noise of a shot followed.

Patrick scrabbled to a position under the protection of the wagon. The shock of the sniper's round caused his heart to pound in his chest. ‘Where did it come from?’ he hissed across the space between himself and his father.

‘The rise,’ Michael answered as he lifted his head to scan the skyline. A faint puff of smoke lingered to mark the sniper's position. ‘’Bout five hundred yards out. Bloody good shot considering,’ he added with a note of admiration for his unseen adversary.

‘Think they will try and snipe us out?’ Patrick asked.

‘No. The range is too extreme. They will pot away at us until the sun goes down. Just keep us pinned here.’

‘What do you think we should do then?’

‘Wait until dark,’ Michael replied as he rolled on his back to locate the cigar he had dropped. ‘Then one of us will get out while the other keeps up a pretence that we are both still here. A trick I believe your Uncle Tom used to keep the traps occupied some years ago in Queensland. They had him and his blackfella mate Wallarie trapped in some hills in the Gulf Country. Worked for Tom. At least until they shot him.’

‘I can remain,’ Patrick volunteered. ‘You have a better idea of this country than I.’

‘Yeah. But I think you haven't finished your search yet,’ his father replied gently. ‘Better you get out of here while I hold them off. It's not the first time I've been in this kind of situation. You could say I've had a lot more experience than you.’

‘If you mean my search to find Catherine,’ Patrick said, ‘then you are wrong. I've found all I need to know.’

Michael puffed on the stub of his cigar. ‘No, I mean the search for yourself. That will take you a lifetime. Believe me, I know.’

Patrick felt a strange warmth in his father's words. How could this man know such deep, troubling thoughts that no-one else was privy to? ‘Father?’ Michael ceased puffing on the cigar. ‘Tell me about my mother. Do you think she gave me up like Lady Enid said she did?’

The big one-eyed Irishman felt a strange peace settle over him. ‘When we both get out of here I will tell you that your mother loves you with her whole body and soul. Always remember that, son.’ And he turned away so that his son could not see the tears that welled in his remaining good eye.

Beyond the crest of the grassy rise the Boer commando prepared for the night. No matter how deadly the Irishman proved with his strange rifle the night would blind him. Lucas Bronkhorst had lost one of his men and that left a debt to be claimed in blood.

The firing from the rise continued throughout the late afternoon and the bullets claimed the lives of Patrick's two horses. Only Michael's two bullocks remained grazing on the lush grasses of the veldt.

Great, billowing clouds tumbled over the horizon. A storm was coming to the African veldt.

SIXTY-ONE

E
xhuming a corpse is an unpleasant business. The square of canvas Sergeant Johnson had thrown between two trees for shade trapped the sickly, putrid stench of decomposition, making it even more difficult to bear.

Joe Heslop's body had been taken from his grave at Barcaldine's tiny cemetery and Sergeant Johnson attended as an independent witness to the autopsy carried out quickly and expertly by the former British army surgeon major, Doctor Harry Blayney.

Gordon and two Aboriginal troopers from his escorting party stood watching the grisly scene from a short distance away. The corpse lay on its back at the edge of the re-opened grave. The curious gravedigger stood to one side, watching the doctor perform the autopsy.

With a handkerchief soaked in cheap perfume wrapped around his face, the doctor probed the cadaver with forceps until he located the bullet. He dropped the lead projectile with the gore still attached into an empty tobacco tin. Then he handed the tin to Sergeant Johnson who duly recorded the fact that he had received from the doctor the bullet from the corpse of Joe Heslop. It was a recognisable .577 calibre round but Doctor Blayney continued to make a thorough search of the internal organs of the corpse to eliminate any other observable causes of death.

The lead projectile was worth more than a nugget of gold to the young inspector. The findings by Doctor Blayney had corroborated Gordon's version of the bushranger's death.

Satisfied that there could have been no other cause of death, the doctor rose from his knees and gave his permission for the body to be reburied. With little ceremony the gravedigger used his shovel to push the remains back into the ground. He would sell the cheap wood coffin to the mates of a stockman who had suicided after a massive drinking binge in town. After all, it had only had one previous owner.

The doctor, Gordon James and Sergeant Johnson retired to a hotel to celebrate the finding of the crucial evidence. Sergeant Johnson would ride to Rockhampton with the tobacco tin containing the bullet and thus be able to vouch for the unbroken line of evidence from body to the coroner's court.

The next day Gordon rode out of the town with the doctor and an escort of two police troopers. Two days later, when they were close to Balaclava Station, he left the doctor and his troopers at a camp they set up for the night. Gordon had to heal the pain in his spirit with the forgiveness and acceptance from the woman he loved above all others.

Although the tracks leading out from Rockhampton to the central west of Queensland were more clearly defined since the days when pioneers opened up the land to grazing, the going was no less arduous. Many times the city-born Granville White had regretted his desire to confront the place of his nightmares. Many times on the two-week journey to Glen View with the cheerful stock and station agent as his companion, Granville had been tempted to call off the trip.

But the agent kept telling him, in the indomitable way of the country-born man, that they were almost there and, finally, he was right.

A day after arriving at Glen View Granville stood in the front yard of the homestead. ‘I feel you should postpone your trip to the hills, Mister White,’ the manager said. ‘Looks like quite a storm brewing on the plains this afternoon and I don't like the look of it. Not the time of the year for storms.’

But Granville had not come all this way to put off the last leg of his journey. ‘I have to set out for Rockhampton no later than tomorrow, Mister Cameron,’ he replied from the seat of the buggy. Beside him sat the Aboriginal stockman Cameron had assigned to guide Granville to the sacred hills of the Nerambura. ‘Besides, you said it is less than a couple of hours from here.’

Cameron shrugged. It was not his place to tell the owner of the property where or where not he could go.

Mary Cameron watched her husband conversing with Granville White, aware that Matilda was also watching as she stood shyly in the doorway holding her daughter in her arms. When Mary turned she was sure the young woman was scowling. ‘What's wrong with you, girl?’ she snapped irritably.

Matilda glanced up at her and mumbled, ‘Nothing, Missus.’

Mary regretted snapping at Matilda but she was upset that the arrival of Granville White heralded her husband's demise as manager of the property. The city man had informed her husband that with the imminent sale of the property he should seek employment elsewhere as the new owners had their own man to manage the place. She brushed past the girl, scowling at their less than welcome guest. ‘Man baal, I know, Matilda.’

‘Mister White, he baal all right,’ Matilda replied as she followed Mary to a bedroom where her own infant son lay in his crib. ‘He make Mister Cameron and you go from Glen View.’

‘I'm afraid so, Matilda,’ Mary confided. ‘Probably within the month.’

She lifted her baby son from the crib and placed him in Matilda's arms to be wet nursed as Matilda undid the buttons on her cotton dress and placed the hungry baby on a fat nipple.

Mary sat down wearily in a chair while the girl nursed her child and reflected on the exotically pretty young woman who had briefly been the lover of Peter Duffy before he was killed. Matilda had proved everything that Inspector James said she would be. She was highly intelligent and keen to please and with the birth of their babies the girl was also a compatible wet nurse for her. The two women had grown close in their time together – the mutual bond of women who had participated in delivering each other's babies.

‘Why Mister White want to go long the hills, Missus?’ Matilda asked. ‘Place baal.’

‘I don't exactly know why,’ Mary replied with a sigh. The weather was so close that sweat streamed down her body under her heavy clothes and she envied Matilda for just the clean cotton dress she wore. But an Aboriginal girl was allowed such immodesty, as long as it concealed her female charms sufficiently from the menfolk who worked on the station. ‘I suspect he has a need to see the place personally,’ Mary replied after some thought. ‘It has links with his wife's family.’

‘Only bad spirits out there,’ Matilda grunted as the baby bit down with toothless gums. ‘Baal Nerambura spirits belong sacred hills.’

‘Your son is part Nerambura,’ Mary reminded her wet nurse. ‘How can you say that?’

‘Baal spirits, Missus,’ Matilda stubbornly reiterated. ‘Mister White, he make the spirits of the hill angry if he goes there. Make storm spirit angry.’

‘No, Matilda, just a storm, nothing more,’ she said with a weak smile of exhaustion. The weather was oppressive and sapped her strength. ‘And when my son gets older, do not dare frighten him with your stories about evil spirits,’ she chided gently.

‘Not stories,’ Matilda answered stubbornly. ‘All true.’

Over the dry brigalow scrub plains the thunder-heads billowed into massive castles in the blue sky. In the brigalow scrub the creatures of the bush fell into a frightened hush as they gazed at the horizon with wide eyes. This storm had in its heart a destructiveness not seen for a long time on the plains.

The Aboriginal stockman had not wanted the task of taking Mister White to see the hills. Like all the employees of Glen View, European or Aboriginal, he avoided the small range of ancient volcanic rocks. It was well accepted that the area was haunted and bad luck befell those foolish enough to challenge the spirits of the hills that lived in the rocks, trees and waterholes of the region. Cattle that strayed into the area were often found dead from no apparent cause. It was a place to shun – at all times, by all men.

But he obeyed his boss's order to take the owner to the place that was
baal
. Within a couple of hours they arrived at the base of the hills and the stockman lurked by the buggy while Granville White stood a distance away, gazing up at the summit of the tallest crest in the range. ‘Is the cave up there?’ he called to the stockman.

‘Yes, boss.’

‘And where did the dispersal take place of the blackfellas who used to live here?’ he asked as he walked back to the buggy.

‘Don't know, boss,’ the stockman lied, afraid the white man might ask him to take him to the killing grounds. As it was he had ensured they arrived on the opposite side of the hill to that of the spirit-haunted waterholes.

Granville flashed a broad smile of triumph which the Aboriginal did not understand. He had faced the source of his nightmares and had only found a jumble of ragged, scrub covered rocks. He had finally exorcised the ghosts of his past. ‘We can go back to the house now,’ he said to the stockman who leapt into the driver's seat with a grunt of relief. He was more than happy to put the place behind them. Besides, the storm rumbling over the plains had an eerie feel which made the stockman's skin prickle.

The trip back to Glen View homestead was much faster than the trip out and Granville had cause on more than one occasion to rebuke the man for the reckless manner in which he urged the harnessed horse through the bushy scrub.

Wallarie did not know exactly where he was but he knew that if he kept heading in the direction of the setting sun he would eventually reach the mission station. There he would be safe; he could trust the white man and his missus whose lives he had saved years earlier.