Code of Honor (Australian Destiny Book #1) (5 page)

Linnet almost left. But she paused in the doorway, turned and leaned against the jamb. “Why is it ye be constantly cross with me when ye never speak to anyone else in that tone of voice?”

“Because ye’re not pulling yer full weight. Ye lollygag too much. This isn’t some lark ye set out upon, sailing halfway round the world to have a bit of fun. ’Tis hard work with much expected of ye. At the tobacconist’s ye could slack off a bit. Not here.”

“Slack off? Hardly! Me days be filled up.”

“But not with anything productive. Ye could’ve stayed in Cork and done as much as ye’re doing now, and Mr. Sloan wouldn’t be out a boat passage.”

“Sure and yerself sailed around the world just so ye could work harder than ye might in Cork. Balderdash, Sam; ye’re here to find a man, same as Meg and I, for men be few and far between back home.”

“And how would ye be knowing that? Ye left home before ye even tried.”

A maddening half smile hardened Linnet’s soft round face. “Ah, now I see the light. ’Tis more’n all right for Sam to go traipsing across the face of the earth, even though her dear brother be not but weeks in his grave. All right for Meg, too, perhaps, with her Sean Morley dead as well. But not Linnet. Linnet ought t’ stay home and comfort the grieving parents so that Meg and Sam need not feel guilty about leaving.”

“Guilty! No. This may well be me last chance at a full life, and Papa and Mum agreed. But yerself had nothing much to gain by coming. Ye’re young yet. They begged ye stay.”

“So I can drift along ’til I be a spinster like yerself, or fresh out of prospects like Meg? If it’s so fine for yerself to begin a new life, why not for me as well? Why must I sit about waiting ’til I’m old and stodgy before I—”

The door slammed open. Mr. Sloan stood backlighted, his riding crop in hand. He scowled. “Has Kathleen returned yet?”

“Nae yet, sir.” Samantha straightened. How much had he heard, if anything?

“‘Scuse me, sir.” Linnet curtsied. “She purposed to take a little walk back the creek, is all. She’s sure to return in good time to prepare dinner.”

“How far back the creek?”

“Did nae say, sir. She fancies strolling in the forest, ’tis so unlike back home. Nae so far, I aver.”

“When did she leave?”

“Straightway she returned with the wagon, sir.” Linnet curtsied again and nibbled her lip.

The riding crop wagged at her. “Stay here. If she comes in, run to the stable and tell Fat Dog immediately. He’ll send runners to me. Also, I don’t ever want you near the estuary again, understand? That whole lowland is off limits. And clean yourself up. You’re a disgrace.” The crop pointed at Samantha. “You come with me.” Mr. Sloan turned away, then turned back again. “And the two of you do your arguing some other place on your own time. I won’t have nattering and squabbling in this house.” He marched out.

Samantha glared at Linnet but she didn’t have time to really skewer the wayward girl. She hiked her skirts and hurried out the door behind her master.

What was afoot? And why was Cole Sloan striding along in such a determined way? His long, strong legs swallowed distance yards at a gulp. Samantha fell into a jogging trot behind him, trying to keep up.

By the time they reached the stable the exertion had left her breathless. Samantha caught up to Mr. Sloan only when he stepped in under the makeshift thatched shelter-roof protecting the temporary horse stalls.

“Sir?” She dragged less air into her lungs than her body was asking for. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I hope.”

Fat Dog led Sheba out of her stall. The chunky mare was saddled, ready to go. She stood patiently, resigned, in quiet contrast to Gypsy’s prancing ways.

Mr. Sloan gathered up her reins, stuffed a foot in a stirrup and swung aboard. “Your nephews back yet?”

Fat Dog shook his head. “Still out there. Burriwi, he say it rains soon, better run fast, all the tracks gone rained away.”

“Do we have ’til dark?”

Fat Dog nodded. “But not ’til morning.”

Mr. Sloan wrenched the mare’s head around and dug his heels into her ribs. She lurched forward at a decidedly uncollected canter, around the end of the shelter and off up the forest trail to the west.

Samantha felt absolutely muddled. “If he’s in such a rush, why doesn’t he take Gypsy? She’s much livelier.”

“Gypsy’s tired; just been out. Sheba fresh. Besides, missy, Sheba’s better forest horse.”

“What is going on, pray tell? What’s happening?”

“Missy Cook Kathleen, she go walkabout in the wrong place.” Fat Dog waved an arm approximately westward. “Back valley there, pools of water, some sea, some other; bad place go to walk.”

“Why?”

“Crocodile.”

“But she’s only been gone an hour or two. What can happen in an hour? Surely Mr. Sloan is acting hastily.”

Fat Dog frowned. Apparently
hastily
was not in his vocabulary. “Maybe she comes home quick. So, I go tell Mr. Sloan run say it. But rain tonight, it …” He waved a dark hand, seeking to snatch the right word from the air. “Rain it beats away the track. My nephews, they go look, find her track, go to her quick before is rain.”

“Mr. Sloan is really worried something might have happened to her?”

“Wrong place she walks. She don’ know. Come too far away; she don’ know where danger be’s. Me, Fat Dog, I worry, too.”

Samantha’s heart thumped under her breastbone. From what little she knew of the aboriginal mind, worry was not a big part of their outlook on life. If Fat Dog was worried, the danger must be formidable.

Two young aboriginal men appeared instantly out of the forest gloom—invisible one moment and standing there the next. One of them leaned casually against a shelter pole and tucked up one leg as these people were fond to do. The other scooped up one of three canvas packs and started back the trail Mr. Sloan had taken.

Fat Dog handed Samantha a pack and shouldered the third himself. He took two steps, paused to adjust his load, and away he went. No word, no instruction. Apparently Samantha was to follow. Easier said than done. She struggled mightily with a bag of what must be lanterns; metal and glass clanked, and she could smell coal oil. No matter how she carried the pack, no matter how carefully she tried to move, angles and hard edges gouged at her, poked at her, rubbed on her.

Fat Dog was getting farther and farther away. Soon Samantha would be walking alone through this tangle, abandoned by those ahead, too far along to turn back. Linnet was young and sprightly; why didn’t she ever get these sorts of chores?

The faint trail followed the creek, more or less, and never seemed to climb up and out of the slurpy, swampy shore, nor did it bother to avoid all the low and reedy puddles. Samantha’s feet were soaked, and her black cotton skirt, like a wick, sucked fetid water up as high as her knees. Already she surely looked as muddy and forlorn as had Linnet just minutes ago. Silence closed in on the hot and heavy air. Where was everyone?

Wrenching fear forced Samantha’s legs to move faster than they wanted, forced her poor back to ignore the drubbing the pack was giving it. Sweat formed salty beads and rivulets on her face. It soaked her underarms. She thought of the delicious green that made this forest appear so pleasant when viewed from the open, from the beach. The dark green, no longer sun bright, closed in around her ears now and reached toward her on every side, even from below. The long cords and buttresses of strangler figs stretched from the top of the world to the earth like prison bars. Myriad leaves blotted out the soft blue sky of waning day.

Men’s voices ahead—how welcome they were! Or were they? She detected a frightening tone in them, a strange and ominous ring. The forest opened up ahead, and Samantha could see that Mr. Sloan was out of the saddle. He stood silent, grim, as Sheba shuffled nervously beside him—most unlike her. Fat Dog and the young man had abandoned their packs. The bags lay where they had been dropped in the mud beside a dark, quiet forest pool.

A charming pool it was, perhaps two acres in size. A vertical wall of jungle hemmed it close around, so that its flat surface could reflect only the fading light from directly overhead. Light green bushes hung out over the water here and there as if shoved beyond the shore by the crouching forest. Over on its far side, a jumble of logs and brush like jackstraws lay half in and half out of the water. Black flies buzzed all around its edge, and near Mr. Sloan a great cloud of them swarmed.

Samantha unceremoniously dropped her burden beside the other two packs. She looked from face to face and approached Mr. Sloan, for it was his tanned face she could read best. What she saw terrified her. He glowered at the pool surface, dark as a winter storm, while Sheba, normally so placid, fretted behind him.

She stepped in close to his elbow. “Sir?”

He gestured toward the ground with his quirt, flicked angrily at the buzzy swarm of flies. Roaring, the chaotic cloud lifted into the air. Beneath it the mudbank was slathered in a broad splash of bright cherry red. A yard farther, where the dank waters lapped at the greasy black mud, lay Kathleen Corcoran’s soiled, lace-trimmed cap.

Chapter Four

Victor

Gloom. Tight, nerve-jangling, on-edge gloom. Samantha stood numb and listless in the gray morning half-light, on the shore of that morbid dark pool. She watched the rain dash dimples across its face. Mr. Sloan thought the earthly remains of Kathleen Corcoran lay somewhere beneath these black waters. Samantha didn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to think that. Kathleen was next best to immortal. She herself said so. She had become lost in the mysterious thickness of this forest, that’s all. She’d find her way out any time now.

The rain had long since soaked Samantha to the skin. She was too distraught to care. Unlike chill Irish rain, this downpour was more like a warm bath. According to literary symbolism, rain cleanses. Rain pounded upon Samantha so earnestly she need never bathe again. Green symbolizes hope and the renewal of life. She was surrounded by green—bushes, trees, moss, the stinking slime along the shore all abuzz with flies. Life could not have been cut off so viciously, horribly, unfairly. Samantha had no desire to move or speak.

Speak she needn’t, but move she must. With the cook missing, cooking chores now fell to her. Back at the house she had prepared the household’s breakfast—no big thing, getting up long before dawn; she hadn’t slept a bit last night—and now she was the official camp cook here at poolside.

Mr. Sloan was riding Sheba the forest horse again today. What was a forest horse? Samantha felt too drained to care, let alone ask. The patient old mare came kaplopping up the muddy trail at her rocking-horse canter and drifted to a lackadaisical halt beside the rain fly. Mr. Sloan didn’t have to hurry dismounting and ducking in under the canvas. His ride out from the house had soaked him thoroughly. Samantha stepped in under the rain fly beside him and poured him a mug of tea unbidden.

He accepted it absently and stood at the very edge of the shelter, studying the little knots of aborigines standing here and there around the pool. “Anything happen this morning?”

“Nae, sir. That Wurra Somebody thinks one or two may lie among the reeds on the far side there, but he’s waiting for the beaters, he says. He apparently kept watch here all night.”

“Boats and beaters are on their way.” He sipped at his tea. The air was warm and muggy, as it always was here, and yet a curl of visible steam rose from the mug. The steam reminded Samantha of the hard-working dray horses back in Cork—how, on cool days, mist would rise from their sweaty backs. She almost expected such a gentle mist to rise from Mr. Sloan himself. His sopping wet shirt stuck to his skin so tightly she could feel his body warmth radiating.

“Uh, sir? How do ye, uh … If there be more than one, how do ye tell which crocodile, uh, performed the dastardly deed? I mean, sir, if indeed the deed’s been performed.”

“It has. Kill ’em all and slit bellies until we find trace of her.”

Samantha’s stomach rebelled for the hundredth time. He said it so nonchalantly. And yet he appeared obviously and visibly shaken. Angry. His face and hands, his carriage—all bespoke anger. Not sorrow, not fear, certainly not hope. Anger.

He stiffened as his head snapped around toward the trail. “What the bl—?”

From the dank darkness of the forest stepped, of all people, the Rev. Vinson. His blond hair looked darker in this rain, plastered to his head as it was. With a grim half smile he strode straight to the rain fly and ducked in under the shelter. He nodded to Samantha and extended his hand to Mr. Sloan.

Mr. Sloan declined. “Like a vulture, Vinson. You smell trouble and come soaring in from thirty miles away.”

The Reverend shrugged boyishly. “These are state lands back here. Anyone can wander about.”

“Rotten weather to be sightseeing, isn’t it?”

“Rotten weather, yes. Both sides of the mountains. We get all this rain, and on the far side of the hills the sheep and cattle are wasting in drought. I received a letter this last week from a pastoralist friend near Charter’s Towers. Martin Frobel. It’d better rain there soon, he says. His cattle can’t take much more. And his brother down by Longreach is even worse off.” He stuck his wet hand out into the rain, palm side up. “And we get all this.”

“Why are you here?”

“To help, if there’s something I can do. Also, I’m assuming Miss Corcoran was Roman Catholic. There’s no priest or other cleric in the area to perform extreme unction.”

Samantha found herself smiling in spite of her sorrow. “Why, Reverend, ’tis most gracious of ye.”

The man looked teen-aged when he smiled, albeit sadly. “I’m not an official cleric of that church, but apparently I’m better than nothing.” With a nod to Mr. Sloan he stepped out into the driving rain and wandered down to the shore.

“Extreme what?” Mr. Sloan frowned.

“Last rites for the dead or dying. One of the more important offices of the church. I’m ashamed to say I’d not thought of it ’til he brought it up. Me ties with the church be nae too strong; naething beyond duty, ye might say. I’ve nae idea what his own church thinks of it. ’Tis a blessed comfort, though, I tell ye, to know there’s someone about willing to do such a thing, whether ye belong in one church or another. Very thoughtful of the man.”