Shadow of the Osprey (12 page)

A
s he rode out of the rising sun, Kate paused to glance at the approaching horseman. All she could see however was a tall man framed by the fiery glow. The glare hurt her eyes so she returned to packing the cooking pots into a box under the wagon and dismissed the horseman as just another traveller heading for the Palmer River.

Ben, Jenny and Willie had gone down to the creek to fetch water for the trip while the Chinese under the command of John Wong were moving out onto the track and already heading south. The horseman would probably overtake them very soon, Kate thought idly.

The departing Chinese laughed and waved to Willie who watched them from the banks of the creek. He was disappointed that they were taking their precious supply of candied ginger with them and was tempted to run after them and ask for more of the sweet. But he sensed that he could not leave Ben alone with his mother. She had been acting very strangely since the previous evening.

‘Hello Kate. Don’t you own a dress?’

Startled, Kate swung around, dropping the pots on the ground. With the rising sun still at his back the horseman seemed to tower over her. She had not heard him approach and shaded her eyes to focus his face. For the first time in her life she saw the full extent of the scar that ran from the corner of his eye down his cheek.

‘Luke!’ she gasped. ‘You no longer have your beard!’

‘Yeah,’ the tall American replied, with a slow smile on what Kate thought was the most wonderful face of any man she had ever known outside the men of her family.

‘Beards aren’t all the fashion back home.’

She began to cry, although without knowing why. Nevertheless it felt so good to cry!

Luke flung himself from the saddle to go to her side but she waved him away angrily. ‘Why didn’t you write?’ she sobbed bitterly. ‘You just ride out of our lives. Six years and not a word. Why?’

Luke hung his head and stood self-consciously wringing the brim of the broad felt hat in his hands. He had not expected this reaction from the woman he had dreamed of seeing again for so long. He’d thought that maybe she might be mildly annoyed. But not tears and anger. ‘I didn’t think you cared,’ he mumbled. ‘I just didn’t seem to get around to writing, that’s all.’ Kate did not reply but turned to stoop and pick up the pots and pans. He bent to help her. ‘I’m truly sorry Kate,’ he said, placing his hand over hers.

Kate sniffed defiantly and used the long sleeve of her shirt to wipe away the tears. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, as she stood with a handful of pots. ‘It was just that the Cohens were concerned for you, more than anyone else.’ Luke placed his hat on his head and turned away lest she see the pain in his face. ‘Why did you come back?’ she asked, as he strode towards his horse.

He paused in his stride and turned to face her. ‘Heard about the Palmer while I was in the Montana territory,’ he replied bitterly, disguising his pain. ‘Realised some other bastard had discovered my river of gold. Had to come back to see if any was left. That’s the only goddamn reason I came back!’ He lied to protect himself. To have travelled so far only to have Kate reject his love was more than he could face.

‘I see,’ Kate whispered. ‘You are welcome to travel with us,’ she said in a louder voice. ‘That is, if you wish to return to Cooktown for any reason.’

‘I might,’ he growled. ‘As a matter of fact I do have some unfinished business back there. The Palmer can wait for a while.’

‘Then tether your horse to the wagon and walk with me,’ Kate said with less anger in her voice. ‘You can tell me where you have been for the last six years. And how you came to be on the track.’

Luke nodded and led his horse to the wagon. ‘Told you Kate. I was going to have a look at
my
river of gold, that’s all.’ He thought he could see a flicker of disappointment in her eyes at his answer. But it was not likely, he told himself. ‘You know, I almost got to the Palmer six, maybe seven years back,’ he said tethering his horse. ‘Just bad luck and a bad case of the fever drove me south. But I met a poor bastard who got there. Can’t remember his name. Buried him with a myall spear in his leg, out beyond the hills south of here,’ he said with a wave of his arm. ‘Things might have been different if I had pushed on,’ he added wistfully. ‘I might have got rich. But that’s all past.’ And you might have seen me as more than a down-and-out prospector, he reflected sadly to himself.

Goddamn you Luke Tracy, Kate thought angrily as she took in the outline of his face. Goddamn you for just coming and going in my life. It was all too confusing, her feelings an untidy mess which could only be sorted out when time allowed. For now she had the task of getting her two wagons back to Cooktown. People other than Luke required her attention for the moment. It was not the time or place for her to explore what she felt for the man she had always tried to deny she loved.

Although Luke walked with Kate beside the bullock wagon little was said. For Luke, talking was one of those things people did when they had nothing better to do with their lives. Besides, he had a personal score to settle with the man who had caused his flight to America. Before his departure from Cooktown, Luke had learned that a Rockhampton solicitor by the name of Hugh Darlington was scheduled to visit and consequently the American’s brooding thoughts did not make him very talkative. Especially since he was focused on the deadly confrontation he planned with the man he had since come to learn was once Kate’s lover.

That evening they camped by the track. Luke assisted Ben in unyoking the bullocks and hobbling them for the night while Kate and Jenny prepared the evening’s meal.

The awkward silence between Kate and Luke created a tension not lost on Ben. He had never known his boss to be so unsettled and aloof. He had heard from his aunt Judith how the American had been such an important part of the young Irishwoman’s life. His aunt had even ventured that Kate loved Luke Tracy. ‘But that she refuses to admit as much to herself,’ his aunt had sighed.

Ben had taken a liking to Luke. He had an easy way about him that inspired confidence and it was not hard to see why his uncle Solomon spoke so highly of the Yankee. A couple of years back his uncle had told him how Luke was forced to flee the country because of some kind of treachery by a Rockhampton solicitor. But he would not elaborate and the subject was forgotten. And Jenny had shyly told him of how she had first met the American prospector on a Brisbane River wharf six years earlier. His generosity to her and her father was something that had touched her. The fact that he had reappeared in her life again made her feel as if everything would turn out well for Willie and herself in the future. It was like an omen.

So if the American had been so important to Kate why was she now treating him as if he were a leper, Ben puzzled. He could only conclude – as had countless men past and present – that it was the mysterious and unfathomable nature of a woman to do so.

Kate patted the dough into a flat cake. As she prepared the damper bread to be placed in the hot ashes to bake, she found herself gazing at Luke going about the task of hobbling the bullocks. Tall and lean with a face that reminded her of a noble eagle, Luke’s dark blue eyes always seemed to be seeing things beyond the distant horizons. His face was tanned and his long hair, shot with grey streaks, hung down to his shoulders. It was not a handsome face but one that spoke of gentleness backed by a toughness of a man others respected for his physical courage. The long scar inflicted by an English soldier’s bayonet had faded considerably with time but was still a reminder to the world of his stand at Eureka twenty years earlier.

It was a face she had grown to love, Kate now grudgingly admitted to herself. Those same eyes that watched the distant horizons could suddenly brim with laughter, and his slow drawling voice filled her with a yearning to be held by him. Strong, gentle, funny, intelligent and caring, she thought, when she put words to what she loved about him.

But he was also impulsive, foolhardy and a born drifter. Dangerous and lonely enterprises guided him in his perpetual search for gold and he seemed to have little in the way of ambition to settle down. He was everything a woman should avoid.

As Luke strode towards her, his saddle over his shoulder and trailing his rifle, Kate looked away. She did not want him to see the love in her eyes.

‘Can I do something Kate?’ he asked gently as he settled his saddle and rifle beside the fire.

‘I have gone this long without a man’s help,’ she replied. Luke flinched. Without a word he picked up his rifle and saddle and walked away.

Kate bit her lip. She didn’t mean it that way! Why was it that she could not tell him of her love? The word ‘defence’ echoed as a bitter self-recrimination. She had a need to defend her feelings against the pain of him leaving her life – as others had – forever.

Kate’s wagons rumbled into Cooktown, the big wheels creaking and groaning along Charlotte Street. They passed the numerous bawdy houses and hotels that had sprung up on the banks of the Endeavour River to cater to the appetite and thirsts of those who had come in search of a dream. But despite the sordid reputation of the boom town, Kate felt that she had arrived home.

Dust rose in a permanent cloud, finely coating all who ventured onto the main street. A babble of accents merged into an excited din of sound; the guttural accents of the Nordic visitors mingled with the sing-song voices of the Asian miners, the brogue of Scots and the twang of Americans.

Ships of every nation were anchored in the river just off the main street, having disgorged their cargoes upon arrival in Australia’s far north. The ships were as crowded as the crush of humanity on the shore; coastal steamers, Chinese junks and small sailing ships competed for anchorage in the muddy brown waters that ran into the opal-like Coral Sea.

Luke, leading his horse, strode beside Kate down the busy street. Ben, Jennifer and young Willie followed, trudging beside the second of Kate’s wagons. Through this melting pot of humanity the big wagons rolled until they neared the depot where Kate handed over control of her wagon to Luke. She had led her little band of travellers to the depot that stored the precious goods of the frontier: shovels, picks, gold cradles, candles, tinned meat, nails, kerosene, cloth, canvas tents, medicines, tobacco, tea, coffee, rice, sugar and flour. ‘I have something to do before I arrive at my store,’ she said mysteriously.

‘Kate, there is something I should tell you,’ Luke said, with a stricken expression clearly stamped on his face. Kate returned his expression with one of puzzlement. She had never seen him express such pain before. He had always been a man who kept his feelings very much to himself. ‘I really came back because I wanted to see you again.’ She could see that he was groping for words and sensed in his simple statements a great depth of feeling. ‘I love you Kate. I always have. For what it’s worth.’

She gently touched his face with her fingers, and turned to walk away without a word. This was not the time to deal with their feelings for each other. Now she must go in search of a place she knew she must visit before she could find peace in her life.

Finding her husband’s final resting place had been difficult. There were so many freshly dug graves around Cooktown with little to mark who lay beneath the earthen mounds. But luck was on her side when she caught sight of a young woman placing a posy of wildflowers on one of the graves.

The young woman had a face aged by her profession and a pallid complexion indicating that she rarely saw the daylight hours. She was pretty, in a hard way, and Kate felt that the woman would have been attractive to a man like her husband. The young woman stared down at the unmarked grave. There were no tears, only an expression of regret when she glanced up at Kate.

‘I’m looking for the grave of someone I once knew,’ Kate said gently. ‘A man called Kevin O’Keefe.’

The woman glared. There was hostility and resentment in her darkly shadowed eyes. ‘You know him too?’ she sniffed angrily. ‘Not altogether surprised. The big bastard had an eye for pretty women.’ She glanced down at the grave and a tear splashed from her eye. ‘That’s him there,’ she said, indicating the grave at her feet. ‘Stupid bastard got himself killed.’ The woman choked and could not continue her grief-stricken tirade.

Kate guessed that she was the woman John Wong had said her husband had got himself killed over and felt an empathy for the woman who had made the fatal mistake of falling for Kevin O’Keefe’s charm just as she had all those years earlier. She felt no animosity towards her, only a deep sadness that Kevin’s life had come to nothing more than this unmarked grave on the Queensland frontier.

She walked away, leaving the young woman to grieve for the handsome and charming rogue, knowing she would never return to visit the site again. It belonged to the other woman who wept openly for him as she could not. It was time to go to the depot that was her home and be with the living.

The interior of the depot felt cool after the weeks toiling with the bullock teams. Kate sat on a bale of hay in her store reflecting on the visit to her husband’s grave. She found her thoughts drifting to Luke, the Cohens and the Jameses who had all become so much a part of her existence and wondered what she would do without them. The loss of any one of the people who had come to share her life since that fateful day she had stepped ashore at Rockhampton – eleven long years past – would have been a loss greater than that of the man she had married. Had time hardened her against her past? Or was it that she had nothing in common with the girl she had once been?

She gazed at Emma James who had greeted her with an outpouring of unabashed joy for her safe return. She felt a touch of envy for Emma’s wonderful life with Henry. They may have had little in the way of money but Emma had her husband’s gentle love.

When Henry was discharged on medical grounds from the Native Mounted Police, he and Emma had accepted an offer to work for Kate managing the Cooktown depot. The depot was used for the storage of goods to be hauled down to the Palmer River and out to the homesteads of the squatters, as well as to the little towns springing up in the hills and on the plains of North Queensland.