This Golden Land (30 page)

     In her father's handwriting, dated April 1846, a recipe was written:

     
5 g iodine
     10 g potassium iodide
     mix with 40 ml water and 40 ml alcohol

     The final formula!

     Her father must have placed it in his medical bag when Luke Keen had come to fetch them to Falconbridge Manor. Later, when Hannah had sold the cottage and packed up her things, she had rolled her father's instruments in a towel and had not seen the slip of paper among them.

     "Pardon me, Mr. O'Brien, I must go. Thank you again for rescuing my bag."

     Touching his finger to the wide brim of his bush hat, Jamie flashed her a grin, winked, and said, "I hope to do you another service again some day."

     When she had walked away, Jamie went to the rear of the newsstand where his friend Michael Maxberry was smoking a cigarette and scanning a wall of news sheets.

     "I want to know where that lady lives," he said, pointing to Hannah as she was swallowed by the crowd. Remembering that he had seen her come out of the chemist shop across the way, and thinking she might be a regular customer there, he said, "Nip across to that chemist shop, tell them your wife is in need of a midwife, someone recommended Miss Conroy and you need to know where to find her."

     "But we're about to leave town," Maxberry protested. "Gotta be well away before sundown."

     "I want to know where she lives. I'll be paying her a visit when we come back rich men."

     That was just like Jamie, Maxberry thought as he struck off across the street. One of these days his weakness for chasing skirt was going to get him into serious trouble.

W
HAT THE DEVIL HAS GOTTEN INTO THOSE HORSES?"
S
IR
Reginald Oliphant barked.

     Neal looked up from his work. It was late afternoon and the horses had been allowed to roam loose outside the camp, to graze on the local pale green saltbush. After sunset, they would be rounded up, tethered and hobbled for the night. Neal noticed in the dying sunlight that the animals did seem jumpy.

     "They're skittish about something," said Andy Mason, one of the horse wranglers. He looked up at the blue, cloudless sky, then surveyed the distant horizon, which was growing dark in the east, golden-orange in the west. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary—and a man could see for
miles
in this flat land—he rose from his chair and sauntered over the sand to take a look.

     The expedition was camped 230 miles northwest of Adelaide, just beyond a Godforsaken spot Edward Eyre had named Iron Knob due to the substantial deposits of ironstone in the area—a dun-colored sandy wilderness dotted with scrub and the occasional stringy-bark tree, punctuated by
queer mountain formations streaked brown and tan. Neal had examined the soil and, using a magnet, had determined that there were most likely heavy ore deposits beneath the surface. He reported this to Sir Reginald, who made a note that this might be a good place to recommend for future mining operations.

     The members of the expedition sat in folding canvas chairs at tables that had been set with teapots, cups, and plates of sandwiches. Neat white tents, glowing in the declining sunshine, stood in a perfect circle around a roaring campfire over which a skinned kangaroo was being roasted. Within the tents were beds neatly made by trained attendants brought especially from England. Sir Reginald was known for exploring some of the world's most inhospitable regions but he believed in taking British civility with him wherever he went.

     As Neal watched the wrangler talk to the horses, calming them down, he wondered if he should bring his own three mares into the small roped-in compound they had erected for the animals. Turning his face to the west, he squinted over a landscape that was vast, barren and forbidding. Was it his imagination or had the temperature changed suddenly? And what was that muffled rumbling in the distance? A breeze had come up, causing the canvas walls of the tents to flap and make snapping sounds.

     "Did you know," the leather-skinned explorer said as he poured tea into his cup, "that
sahara
is the Arabic word for desert?" Sir Reginald was in his sixties with ruddy skin, white hair and a bristly white moustache. He wore crisp white clothes and a spotless white pith helmet, and he looked to Neal more like a man watching a croquet match on a grassy lawn than one about to explore a dangerous and unknown desert.

     "That would make it the Desert Desert then," Professor Williams, looking up from his journal, said.

     "Indeed!" Sir Reginald went on to regale his companions with stories of his exploits up the Nile and in East Africa, the fierce savages he had battled, harems he had visited in Cairo, and hookah dens offering hasheesh. "You know, Mr. Scott, I've been to America many times. I have a fascination for your Indians. Had the good fortune to sojourn for a while among the Seminoles of New York. Amazing people."

     Neal looked at him. "You mean the Seminoles of Florida, don't you?" "Right you are, Mr. Scott, my mistake. Big place, America."

     Neal returned to his work. He was examining rock samples he had collected, analyzing and cataloguing them, using a diamond to scratch each piece and then referring to a Mohs chart written in German as a guide to determine each sample's hardness: calcite—3; quartz - 7. He weighed them on scales, measured them with a ruler and calipers, and then, in a notebook, drew sketches of each specimen with descriptions underneath. Neal had not yet been given the opportunity to take photographs as Sir Reginald had kept the expedition moving. When the salty adventurer had been curt with the newspaper reporters who had followed them from Adelaide, Neal thought Sir Reginald seemed strangely determined to evade public attention. When Eyre's expedition set out eight years prior, a military band had played
God Save the Queen
and ladies with parasols had come to see them off. When Neal asked Sir Reginald about his curious desire for secrecy, Oliphant had quipped, "Publicity is vulgar."

     Neal wasn't along for the fame. Whatever lay ahead, in territory never before explored by white men, he was confident he would be able to analyze and catalogue everything he found, just as he was doing with the rocks. He had brought along the very best scientific equipment: the finest binoculars of German craftsmanship, a Swiss pocket watch, a mariner's compass
and
a sextant, a barometer and instruments to calculate wind speed for weather predictions. And the tools of geology: magnifying glasses, picks, chisels, hammers, brushes, whisk broom, calipers, scales, jeweler's loupe, field notebook, bottles of acid and water, sieves, trowels.

     Neal had also brought along a portable writing kit crafted from lightweight wood that opened out into a lap desk complete with inkwell, storage for paper and envelopes, and a small built-in clock in the latest modern design. He planned to chronicle every inch of the journey, every second of every day. It was going to be the most accurately recorded wilderness expedition man had ever launched.

     He thought of the expanse that lay before them, the Nullarbor Plain, which Eyre had described as "a hideous anomaly, a blot on the face of Nature, the sort of place one gets into in bad dreams." But Neal was looking
forward to uncovering its mysteries, and his companions seemed equally energized.

     Besides Sir Reginald and himself, and Fintan Rorke, Neal's young assistant, the party was comprised of a surveyor, a cartographer, a botanist, a zoologist, three professional hunters, two cooks and stores-keepers, a wheelwright, horse wranglers, a few able-bodied men to carry firearms and keep an eye out for hostile natives, the English valets whose job it was to serve meals, make the beds and carry out personal tasks for the men, and a military colonel whose purpose Neal surmised was to act as representative of the British Crown. There were no Frenchman, Germans or Italians in the group as Sir Reginald did not trust foreigners.

     Professor Williams, a gaunt man with an impressive gray beard splayed across his chest, was the zoologist. He had come to Australia to write a definitive text on the wildlife of the great southern continent, with chapters broken down into mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and insects. The last chapter was reserved for Aborigines, whom Williams hoped to observe in their natural habitats, recording their hunting and eating habits, mating rituals, rearing of the young, and defense of territories.

     Colonel Enfield, the military representative, was in his late thirties and had hair so light blond that it was almost white, as were his brows and lashes and moustache. With his pinkish skin, the officer looked almost albino, and Neal wondered how he was going to survive beneath the desert sun. Enfield also had a habit of blinking too much, which indicated his eyesight might not be good.

     Neal had not yet gotten a chance to get to know the others—John Allen, the tracker and scout; Andy Mason the horse wrangler; Billy Patton, the fat cook; and all the rest. And so because he was traveling with strangers, Neal had removed the emerald-glass tear catcher from its gold chain and replaced it on a sturdy leather thong so that he could wear it about his neck with the tiny bottle hidden beneath his shirt. It wasn't that he thought he was traveling with thieves, but the bottle and its gold looked a costly and tempting trinket, and he didn't want to wake up one morning to find it, and one of the other men, gone.

     Neal had one other treasured memento that he kept on his person as
well: Hannah's glove. Whenever he brought it out, to think of her, to keep their connection alive, it was as if he held Hannah's hand in his own.

     As the wind began to pick up, requiring paperweights for the maps that had been laid out on the tables, Neal looked over at his young assistant, who was sitting in the deepening shade of a tent, whittling a piece of wood. Neal thought of Fintan Rorke as a youth, and yet, at twenty-one, Fintan was only six years younger than him. It was the boyish looks, Neal thought, and his eager smile. When Neal had gone to a carpenter for special boxes to be made for his dangerous chemicals—transporting them over rugged terrain required extra strength and sturdiness—he had met a man with five apprentice sons, all competing to be a partner in their father's business. Fintan was in the middle, and when he heard Neal talk about the expedition, he had jumped in and asked if they could use an able carpenter along the trip. Neal had hired him, deciding that they could use someone handy at repairs, and Neal had liked the boy's initiative, speaking up instead of waiting to be asked. They had gotten along at once, as Fintan followed orders cheerily and seemed to possess the sort of sunny disposition that was going to be needed on the arduous trek.

     The wind gusted, making Neal's paper flutter and sending sand flying across the ground. He called out to Fintan to see that their wagon was secure and the crates properly tied down. Every time they set up camp, Fintan always made sure the photographic chemicals were not near any heat or flame. Everyone in the party had been warned about the volatility of Neal's supplies and they avoided going near his wagon.

     "Will do, Mr. Scott!" Fintan called back as he set aside the piece of wood he had been carving. "A waste of time," his father had always groused. "There's proper work to be done." Fintan was good at his carpentry craft, knew his way around saws and adzes and hammers. And he could do more than carve a bedpost, too. Fintan was good at fixing wagon wheels and axles, or cobbling together custom boxes and contraptions such as Mr. Scott the photographer needed. But that wasn't what Fintan wanted to do in life. He wanted to create
beauty
with wood and knife, because therein lay his God-given talent: the ability to take a homely little block of wood and make a rose of it, or a sleeping cat, or a butterfly.

     Not that young Fintan ever expected his talent to amount to much, not when a living was to be earned and who would buy wooden knick-knacks that only gathered dust anyway? So he saved his whittling for his leisure time, and at that didn't show off his work. These rugged men of the world would no doubt have something to say about a boy who carved flowers! He didn't mind. Fintan knew he was as manly as the rest of them, and just as fond of the ladies. It was just that . . . he couldn't name it, could only feel a sense that there was something more to the world than money, women and fame.

     John Allen, the tracker who had come from England years ago and knew South Australia like a native, rose from his chair and stretched his lanky frame. "Let me tell you, Professor," he said to Williams, who had just made a comment about Aborigines. "Three things you gotta watch out for in this country: snakes, dingoes, and Abos. There's poisonous snakes all over the place here, and while dingoes look like ordinary dogs, they're as vicious and cunning as any dangerous beast found in Africa. But the biggest threat is from the Abos. Don't let their sleepy looks fool you. They're sly and crafty and they hate us. You'll feel the spear in your back before you see who threw it."

     When Andy Mason, the red-haired horse wrangler, voiced the observation that this land belonged to the Aborigines before the white man came, Allen retorted, "They weren't doing anything with the land. Just walked all over it. Didn't plant anything. Didn't build anything. So why should they care if we took it? You don't see them turning down our tobacco and whiskey. They don't have any culture, no writing, no alphabet. Didn't even invent the bow and arrow! Abos got no morals. Old men marry little girls eight years old. Husbands give their wives to strangers. They don't believe in God, they worship rocks and trees, they go about naked, and they're cannibals to boot."