Dream Time (historical): Book I (18 page)

Quickly, it was over. Afterward, she lay beside him as he slept. She stared at the wagon bottom’s knotted pine boards and wondered at the mild distaste she felt for the intimacies of marriage with Francis.

She felt as if she had somehow given away something precious of herself but was at a loss to explain what.

§ CHAPTER FOURTEEN §

If Amaris thought her journey the day before had been dusty, she felt buried in dust today. On that second day, the Marlborough wagon was last in line—all because Francis had insisted on shaving at the creek that morning.

She slid a sideways glance at her husband. She supposed she should feel pride at his fastidiousness, when the rest of the men were looking unkempt in their dirty dungarees and matted, scraggly beards.

Even Sin, who wore no facial hair, sported a shadowed jaw this morning. Thinking about her run-in with him at dawn, she shuddered.

She had risen in the dark, when only two or three others were stirring in their bedrolls, quietly dressed, and walked down to the creek. Cool, fresh water had been the one vision in her mind, and she had not detected any movement in the brush until she was caught fast from behind and her mouth silenced by a hand.

She struggled, kicking at her captor’s shins and elbowing him in the ribs, but she was held fast. Her screams came out mere groans.

“Amaris!” Sin spit the name as if he had tasted something rotten.

In that lax moment, she sprang free of his grasp, but not far enough. Instantly, his hand latched onto her wrist. “Stop!”

The harshly whispered word had its effect. Like a snared rabbit, she went still.

He pointed just beyond her feet. Her gaze followed the direction of his finger. Tracks of bare feet cut the damp earth. “Aborigines,” he said in a hushed voice.

She stared at the prints, then looked up at him. “So?”

“You are accustomed only to Pulykara. The bush aborigine is something different.”

She resented his superior tone. He hadn’t grown up in Australia. He didn’t understand and love the land as she did. “How would you know?”

With that uncanny ability to read her mind, he said, “I may not have been born here, but ’tis many things I have seen that you can’t even begin to imagine.”

“Such as?” Why did she dally here with this man she didn’t even respect?

“A coal mine camp . . . the aborigines ran in packs of a hundred odd, so that their numbers compensated for their primitive weapons. They surrounded the huts. Then with blood-curdling yells and the growling of their kangaroo dogs, they clubbed some of the workers’ heads to jelly. Most of us were lucky enough to hide in the bush until they left—and then the overseers’ mastiffs caught up with us.”

She shrugged. “Savages, all of you.”

His hand tightened on her wrist. “A savage, Amaris? Aye, I suppose I have become one. And yourself?” He studied her in the gray light that preceded sunrise. “A scavenger, methinks. Aye, a savage and a scavenger. What a disgusting pair we are! Now, go on back to camp, while I track down these prints.”

She jerked her wrist from his grip. “I don’t know what Celeste sees in you.”

She could have sworn he smiled. “I don’t know what you see in Francis.”

“Francis? Francis is a gentleman, but then you wouldn’t understand the meaning of that term.”

“I can’t risk acting like a gentleman. Gentlemen don’t survive out here.”

A superior smile had tugged at her mouth. “Oh, I don’t know. Francis managed to provide fresh meat for our supper last night.”

The bridge of his nose had creased in a frown. “His hunting spree also managed to call down a pack of aborigines on us and endanger everyone in the wagon train.”

Frustrated, she had shouldered past him. Heading back to the wagons, she had run into Major Hannaby, who had looked as startled as she. Why hadn’t his ability as a leader been questioned? If the wagon train had to depend on an Irish ex-convict for information, then the pioneers were indeed in trouble.

She asked Francis, “Did Major Hannaby give you an idea of how long it would take to reach the Darling and Murray rivers?”

“Maybe six weeks—if we make it over
that
.”

She stared at what was causing his dour expression. The wagons and drays in front had already prepared
for the steep ascent of the passage through the Blue Mountains. Long chains were linked between a wagon, and pullies built into the rocks. Celeste and Sin’s wagon was even now being drawn up the almost sheer incline.

As Amaris watched, one chain popped loose. A tremendous whirring sound echoed between the foothills. The wagon began rolling back. She heard Celeste scream. At the same moment, Sin leaped from the wagon.

Bloody coward! Amaris’s mind cried out even as she jumped down from her wagon and sprinted up the hill toward the runaway wagon. What in God’s name did she think she could do? Another sixty seconds and the wagon would smash her flatter than a johnnycake, then smash itself and Celeste to oblivion on the rocks below.

All at once, Sin was flinging himself at the second pulley station. A grinding screech of the chains reverberated throughout the pass. The wagon, as if running up against a rock wall, stopped immediately, then jerked forward with the backlash of momentum before coming to a halt. Two wheels spun off in opposite directions. The wagon lurched drunkenly to one side.

Before Amaris could reach the wagon, Celeste jumped down and started running up the hill toward the second pulley station and Sin. He pushed himself off the pulley and straightened. At her shout, “Sin!” he turned toward her. Blood covered his arm and shirt. He took a step, staggered, and fainted.

Celeste pushed her way through the men who rushed to his side. “Oh, my God!”

Amaris, just behind her, saw the reason for her outcry. Sin’s left hand was mangled. Blood pumped furiously from finger joints that were nothing more than bare bone and shredded flesh. Amaris’s breath sucked in. Her stomach knotted.

“Move aside,” Major Hannaby said, crowding his bulk past the others. “I’ve dealt with things like this on the battlefield. Hands shattered by rifle fire.”

He stooped over the inert Irishman. The old man made noises that sounded to her like a bumblebee droning. He glanced up at the blanched faces above. “No doubt about it, gentlemen. At least two of the fingers will have to be amputated.”

“No!” Celeste cried.

Amaris put her arm around her friend’s waist. “Come away. Tis best to let them do what they can.”

“But he hasn’t come to yet! What’s wrong, Amaris?”

She tried to sound convincing and patted her friend’s shoulder because she didn’t know what else to do. “His body has simply received a shock to its system. He’ll come around soon.”

Four men shouldered the limp body and carried Sin away from the dusty, rutted path to a small, grassy clearing bounded by boulders. “Start a fire,” the major said as he began rolling up his shirt sleeves to reveal bony arms sprinkled with gray hair.

Amaris followed Celeste to the clearing, where she sat down beside her unconscious husband. Seeing Sin like that, his face in repose, Amaris thought he was not nearly as fierce.

Celeste stroked his dust-coated hair back from his face. “It will be all right, my Sin.” Tears rolled from her cheeks to clear paths through the dirt caked on his beard-stubbled face.

His eyes fluttered open. The pain must have struck immediately, because he winced, then groaned. At once, his eyes glazed over.

“Any water?” Amaris heard a man call out behind her. It was Jimmy Underwood. “We’ll need water.”

“Rum’ll do just fine,” Thomas Rugsby said. The Welshman’s baby face was starting to grow peachfuzz.

“The things we’ll need to watch for,” the major was saying as he knelt between her and Celeste, “are infection, shock, and hemorrhage.”

“Amaris,” Francis said, shouldering through the onlookers to her side. “Is Sin all right?”

The major looked up from the knife he was holding over the flame. “He will be if he survives the operation.” His expression was bleak.

“Give the Irishman a liberal dose of the stuff,” said a bean pole of a man called Sykes. He was an ex-convict who had worked as a stockman and now wanted his own run.

So many people were crowding around that Amaris found the lack of fresh air nauseating. Or maybe it was the spectators she found nauseating. They were treating this like it was a circus.

Francis surprised her by squatting beside her. In his hand he held a bottle of rum. “Here you go, friend,” he said, lifting Sin’s head to pour a stream between his slack lips. “A round of drinks on me.” Then Francis tilted the bottle to his own mouth, took a deep draught, and returned the bottle to Sin’s. The amber liquor spilled over the man’s lips and ran down his neck and under his sweat-stained collar.

“Let me through,” the major said. The knife he held rapidly parted the onlookers.

Amaris stared up at the red-hot blade.  A strangled, “No!” escaped Celeste’s pale lips. Her face was as white as the dust on Sin’s.

A chubby young squatter named Lemuel followed the major. Benny, a clubfooted man, carried a torch. Realizing the awful act that was about to come, Amaris swallow
ed hard. “Come with me, Celeste.”  Arm around her waist, she propelled Celeste away.  “Let the major take care of Sin.”

“Let me up,” Sin mumbled behind them.

Celeste pulled away from her. “No, Sin needs me.”

The major whispered, “Lemuel, strap a tourniquet on his arm. Mrs. Tremayne, talk to him, distract him.”

She knelt beside Sin and propped his head on her lap. “Darling, how are you feeling?”

His brow was sheened with sweat, and pain whitened his lips. “Like hell.”

He glanced down at his mangled hand, lying on his stomach. Blood gushed into a pool around the splayed fingers—or what was left of them. The ghastly sight made even Amaris want to wretch. The major bent over him, and he asked, “Me hand? It has to come off?”

“Only a couple of fingers. Nothing to fret about.”

“In that case, let’s have ourselves a party,” he rasped with a wry smile.

As deftly as a sailor, the cherubic Lemuel knotted a leather cord from a bedroll around Sin’s forearm, then, with a grunt of satisfaction, stood back to watch.

“Marlborough,” Sin said, his voice ragged with pain, “give me another couple draughts of that nectar.”

“Here, Francis,” Celeste interposed, “I’ll give my husband a drink.”

As if she were serving tea, she took the brown bottle and, supporting Sin’s head, daintily tilted the bottle to his dry lips. “There, my darling, you’ll feel better in no time.” With a tremulous smile, she returned the bottle to Francis, who made way for the major.

Sin swallowed, then said, “Get on with the party, Major.”

The old man glanced at Amaris, kneeling opposite him. She also had the misfortune to be closest to the major. “Push back his sleeve, Mrs. Marlborough, and hold his hand steady for me.”

Her heart missed a beat. She had thought one of the men, maybe Jimmy or Sykes, would assist the major. In front of her behind the line of kneeling men, Eileen Hannaby, Molly, and Elizabeth watched with worried faces.

Swallowing back her queasiness, she half tore, half pushed the frayed sleeve up Sin’s forearm as far as the tourniquet would allow. The muscles in the forearm stood out like pulley chains.

“Tremayne,” the old man said, “the last two fingers are coming off. You ready?”

Sin nodded.

Celeste cradled his head in her lap. She was smiling brilliantly at him. The tears in her eyes were hard diamonds. “Did I ever tell you what a handsome rake you are?”

Thinking Celeste had picked a poor moment to make a tasteless joke, Amaris rolled her eyes. Then, seeing her friend’s adoring expression, she realized Celeste really meant what she was saying.

Sin’s laugh was brittle. “The fairies have been whispering nonsense to you while you sleep, Celeste.”

At that instant, a harsh breath came from deep in his throat. His arm shook. His eyes closed. “God .
. . damn!"

A vibration traveled from his wrist into her fingers. Against her will, she glanced down. The major was sawing into the base of the shattered finger bones. He worked with concentrated intent.

The noonday sun seemed unmercifully hot. Boiling hot. She closed her eyes, and Sin said, “Don’t you dare go”—he winced at the renewed shaft of pain, then finished—“weak on me, Amaris!”

“Not Amaris,” Celeste defended, her voice a light humming in Amaris’s ears. “Amaris is the strongest of us all. Why, she nursed the convict women at the home through the cholera epidemic. Do you remember, Sin, when Amaris stood up to the port official because—”

Whatever it was Celeste was recalling, Amaris didn’t hear. There was a terribly loud droning in her ears now. She forced herself to think about the run she and Francis would be claiming. With luck, it would have a good flowing creek. Was Rogue staying with the sheep below?

“Take another drink,” the major was saying. “You’re going to need it, man.”

Francis bent near and passed the bottle to Celeste, who once again tipped it to her husband’s mouth. At that same moment, the major laid his knife onto the torch Benny held ready, until the blade glowed once more with a pulsating red.

Sin had no more swallowed than the major laid the knife over the two bloodied stubs. She heard a hiss, then smelled the stench of burning flesh. What
would have been a shriek issued from Sin in a muffled groan, and then he fainted again.