Dream Time (historical): Book I (19 page)

Sin Tremayne lost the next day due to the amputation. Amaris handled the Tremayne wagon reins, while Sin rested fitfully. Elizabeth’s home concoction might not have made him sleep as promised but it did keep down his fever.

Celeste counted that a blessing. Sitting in the back of the wagon, she smoothed back his hair from his face as he dozed that next evening. “We’re both so lucky, Amaris. It could have been so much worse. I— I might have lost him.”

Amaris, standing outside the wagon, leaned against its drop-down door and peered through the dark at her friend. “Did it ever occur to you that you might have died in that accident?”

“Better me than Sin. He’s strong. He could go on without me. I wouldn’t want to live without him.”

Amaris couldn’t understand this sort of rationale. “Look, why don’t you get out and stretch your legs. Wash off the day’s dust. You’ll feel better.”

“I can’t leave—”

“Yes, you can leave Sin. I’ll spell you.”

Celeste paused, then said, “All right. But come get me if he—”

“I will, I will, I swear.” She had to smile. “Now go on.

After Celeste left, she climbed inside the wagon. The canvas top was folded back to catch the evening breeze, and by sitting just so she could watch the twinkle of the clear stars that made up the Southern Cross.

“We can’t see the crux in Ireland, you know.”

His voice startled her. She glanced over at him. In the darkness his blue eyes glowed as bright as the stars.

‘Then the Irish are missing something beautiful.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You currency people have never seen the true color of emerald.”

There was such longing in his voice that she overlooked his reference to her as a currency child, a first-generation Australian. “Tell me, Sin, will you ever go back to Ireland?”

He didn’t answer, and she wasn’t sure he had heard her. “No,” he said at last, “me life is here. For some reason, fate has brought me here to Australia. Somewhere out there in the Never-Never, I will find out why.”

She could have chided him about his Irish penchant for fatalism, but his philosophical mood intrigued her. “You don’t believe in mere coincidence?”

“No more than you do. Fate is taking you into the Never-Never, also.”

“No, not fate. I control my destiny. I make my choices.”

His eyes drilled into hers. “Wait and see, Amaris,” he said in a low voice that made her shiver. She wasn’t certain if her reaction was elicited by the prophecy of the voice or its deep mellifluous tone that stirred as yet unawakened longings.

Australia was a man’s land, rough and raw. This was land much older than Europe, worn down by time, passive and long-suffering, enduring the severest droughts, extreme heat, heaviest floods, and devastating
winds. Its vegetation bent, distorted, adapted—and survived.

Yet this was also Arcady: the land rich, the climate beneficent. Sheep and cattle thrived. Enterprise was open to all.

At least that was the image Amaris strived to keep before her. In the meanwhile, she made biscuits with weeviled flour, brewed post-and-rail tea in which ticks floated to the top, went weeks without a bath due to the scarcity of waterholes, and endured Francis’s increasing frustration with the disillusionment of his dream.

She guessed that he had expected, despite all warnings, the green, rolling meadows of his homeland. To his credit, he was stubborn, and she knew he would see this venture through to its realization.

No one complained if the wagon train crossed over another’s land, for no roads existed. Apart from small yards of rough timber close to huts, no sign was seen of settlement as they approached the fringe of that great tract of emptiness known as the Never-Never.

Eventually, the area of land grants was reached: a vast, grassy plain. Relief flooded Amaris. Her dreams had not been dashed. Each squatter selected the acreage that would make up his run and made a note of its natural boundaries, such as a creek or a hill, and cut notches in a line of trees or ran a single furrow with a plow to mark the edge.

By now, Amaris knew that rich, green grass country was synonymous with bad sheep country. The reason for this was stock disease. In high rainfall areas, standing water led to a high incidence of disease. The result was the wethers barely had enough time to fatten before they died of the disease.

She and Francis selected a run dotted in places with saltbush and blue bush and desiccated acacia trees. Another plus was the wide, shallow creek, trickling through a swath of the run. The creek was called Yagga Yagga, aborigine for Quiet Quiet. Which was what it was. Softly came an oboe
-like birdsong, infinitely lovely.

“A curlew,” Sin said.

Standing on the ridge beneath a silver ghost gum, she surveyed the green meadows where young kangaroos grazed and the timbered stretches beyond. The place had a spirit. At least, she thought so after chancing on aboriginal rock art one day when riding boundary. The area was a Dreaming Site, a place that still contained the power and energy of the Dream Time. It was mystical. It was hers. Pulykara would commend her for being a Dream Keeper.

Later, she and Francis lay side by side in their swags that first evening. A little apart, Molly slept soundly, tiredly. Amaris was too excited to sleep. “When we have time we can build a dam. Besides, Francis, this is the dry season. If we don’t build on that hillock, our house will be flooded when the rains come.”

Build they did, as did all the other squatters over the next several days—if what was little more than a roof on supports could be considered a house. All the squatters assisted-in erecting each house.

The first job was to cut split posts to make a rough pen for livestock. She and Francis had only the sheep and their two horses to pen.

The hut she and Francis shared was put together with sheets of bark stretched out and tied by strings of bullock hide to a framework composed of saplings, also bound with strings of hide. Not a nail was used in the entire building. Abutting that shed were a primitive kitchen and a nook that served as temporary sleeping quarters for Molly. Amaris foresaw more permanent cottages for all the workers she would one day employ.

Inside, bunks and a table were likewise constructed of sapling. Their fireplace was chinked together from stones gathered by the women.

Throughout the day, the men looked to Sin for advice. For a man who wasn’t one of the currency lads, he seemed to be respected for his knowledge. When noon brought a respite, the women were ready with fresh water and pot-roasted beef.

Amaris stood and watched the sweaty men eat their fill. A dread filled her. These people had been her daily companions through all sorts of hardships for six weeks. Once temporary homes were erected on each of the runs, she did not know when or how often she would see them. Tens of miles would separate nearest neighbors.

As though her thoughts had been voiced, Celeste came up behind her and whispered, “Weil miss seeing you as often as we used to.”

Amaris turned to her. “We?”

“Aye, Sin, too. You know how he feels about you.”

She floundered for words. “Well, I would say he doesn’t exactly approve of your associating with me.”

Amazement deepened the brown in Celeste’s eyes. “I don’t know whatever made you think that, because he says your strength is what will make Australia.”

Eyes narrowing suspiciously, she looked at the men, lounging in various positions beneath the bark shed, to find Sin’s sun-weathered face. Propped on one arm, he was sinking those white teeth into a hunk
of the stringy kangaroo meat while he listened to a point the major seemed to be making.

“What made Sin say that?” she asked. Had he been mocking her queasiness that day she had steadied his hand for amputation?

“Why, Sin has felt that way for as long as I can remember.”

Astonished, Amaris returned her gaze to Sin. Had she been wrong about him all this time?

§ CHAPTER FIFTEEN §

Noah couldn’t have witnessed this much rain, Amaris thought as she stood beneath the porch awning and surveyed the overflow of the creek’s turbulent water. It inched threateningly closer to their newly built home. The roof Sin and Francis had labored on the past four months was still unfinished. Rainwater dribbled into a bucket in the rooms upstairs. The house lacked many amenities of even the houses in the Rocks. A real criterion of destitution. Yet she had never lived in anything so nice or so large. The house had its own parlor, office, and four bedrooms, as well as a cottage for Molly.

How many sheep was she going to lose to the rains? Francis and Rogue could only work so many sheep. Both her husband and her dog were looking ragged those days. Nine months of isolation and deprivation in the outback was taking its toll. She, Francis, and even Molly, who did all the cooking and
cleaning while Amaris helped Francis work the sheep, suffered from fatigue, lack of sleep, and perhaps most of all a monotonous routine that was interrupted only occasionally by some holiday gathering.

With a sigh, she turned and went back inside.

She strode into the downstairs bedroom, where Francis slept. His hair was still damp, and mud glistened on his forearms. He was determined to make a working ranch out of their sheep station, Dream Time. Gently, she shook his shoulder. “I’m going to check on the sheep.” Rogue couldn’t gauge water rising.

Francis’s eyes opened. He tried to focus, gave up, and closed them again with a mumbled, “All right.”

Pity softened her gaze. Francis’s life had been one of lightheartedness and luxury. He had had no experience with hard labor. He blundered often in his decisions, but she could understand that because he didn’t know and love the land yet.

Nevertheless, he was determined to make the station a success, and for this she respected him. In truth, the station was gradually prospering. Six lambs had been added to the flock out of lambing season.

She swung away and took her rubber slicker from a peg along with her wide-brimmed bush hat, under which she tucked her braid. A wry smile tugged at the ends of her mouth when she recalled the adage that the brim of a station owner’s bush hat was in inverse proportion to the size of his station.

His
station? Descending the veranda’s wooden steps, she glanced down at her long legs, clothed in men’s riding trousers. She supposed that, wearing those and the bush hat, she did look like a man.

The wind had picked up. She tightened her hat’s drawstrings and braced herself against the wind’s brunt. Renegade stood placidly in the shed, tail-end to the wind. Wearily, she saddled the gelding, mounted, and set off in a direction that paralleled the creek.

Driving rain slashed at her face. Rain, wind, dust, the glaring sun—she had made them her companions. Them and a loneliness that Francis’s and Molly’s presence did not alleviate.

Suddenly a thought from out of nowhere leaped into her mind: On those occasions when Sin and Celeste rode over for a dinner party or when she and Francis went to Sin’s to celebrate a holiday, she wasn’t lonely. More specifically, the time flew during those few times she spent talking to Sin about sheep breeding or the price of wool in London or shipping charges.

She shook her head. No, it was only the subject, not Sin, that made the time pass so quickly, so pleasurably.

Dream Time was becoming her passion, her dream to replace the emptiness her writing and her charity work had not done. She would somehow make Dream Time Sheep Station an empire in Australia, though just how she didn’t know. Not when there was so much land, so little money, so few hands to do the work.

She rode on in the afternoon’s sullen half-light. The wind keened in her ears like one of Sin’s banshees. Some minutes passed before she realized that not only the wind was keening. She sat more alert in the saddle and strained to differentiate between the timbres.

Her ears detected a human quality!

Her hand dropped to the saddlebags to search for the reassuring bulge of her pistol.

It wasn’t there. Suddenly, all the horror stories she had ever heard about the savage aborigines of the outback and the even more ruthless bushrangers, those escaped convicts and robbers who terrorized the outback, shot through her mind.

Then a quality in the keening mitigated her panic. Instinct prompted her to turn her horse in the direction of the sound, which was coming from the creek. The ground grew more sodden. Renegade, picking his way down a muddy incline, avoided debris of bush and weeds left by the storm’s rising and receding waters.

The green line of trees below and the amplification of the rushing water indicated she was coming upon the creek. Little more than the tops of trees were visible above the cascading water. A bloated sheep bobbed past. One of hers?

The power of the raging creek was overwhelming. Just the thundering sound made her dizzy. She scanned the area, looking for the source of the strange wailing she had heard. Finding nothing, she was in the act of wheeling her horse around when her eye was caught by the flash of red among green.

She rode closer. Perched precariously on a swaying limb was a near-naked aborigine, wearing a red bandanna knotted around his neck, a leather breechcloth, and boots. The man was so small, she
at first mistook him for a child. Fright was etched in the whites of the wide eyes. The lips were taut with pain.

Then she saw why: A long gash laid open his leg to the bare bone, beginning just below his breechcloth all the way to his knobby knee. That explained the keening—he had sensed imminent death.

She called to him. He didn’t move. She rode closer—as close as safety would permit—and yelled again. Only his gaze shifted toward her. The rest of his dark body was like petrified wood, almost undetectable from the eucalyptus to which he clung.

She gauged the distance of safe ground that separated her from him. Not enough. She glanced at the swirling waters. A flirt with death should she try to reach the man.

She saw the fear color the man’s eyes a yellow glaze. He knew she knew that certain death awaited him. He nodded, he understood and was resigned. When one lived in the Never-Never, each day one awakened was one more day than had been expected.

Not wanting to witness the man’s death, she turned her horse around to trot up the rain-washed knoll. She got no farther than a couple of yards, then tugged so hard on her reins that Renegade reared on his back legs and neighed his displeasure.

Taking her rope from the saddle ring, she knotted it through the ring in the surcingle. Then she led old Renegade down the incline toward the tree where the aborigine was perched. Each step she carefully tested against mud slide.

When water swished over the toes of her boots, she stopped. The man in the tree stared at her uncomprehendingly.

She held up the looped rope.

A glimmer of hope brightened his eyes.

She twirled a loop of the rope and tossed it toward the man.

He had sat in one position for so long that his reaction time was slow, and he missed the rope by a hand’s length.

She hauled the rope in. Even in the lapse of those few seconds, the water seemed to have risen to her ankles. Or else she was standing on mushy earth that was sinking. She tried again and lost her footing. She splashed into the muddy water. It stole her hat, then swished into her mouth, opened in outrage.

Sputtering, she came quickly to her feet, grabbed at the floating rope, and calmed a now spooked Renegade. The whites of his eyes and his whinny proclaimed his nervousness. He was accustomed to a wagon—and to her. And more recently, the nuisance of sheep.

The horse tried to shy back, but even the distance of a handspan would be too far at that point for the rope to reach. Restraining the horse by its bit, she tossed the rope a third time.

This time the aborigine caught it. Did he speak English? “Tie it around your waist,” she called.

He stared at her blankly.

She went through the
imaginary motion of knotting her end of the rope around her own waist.

He nodded and awkwardly mimicked her action.

She could only hope he had tied it tightly enough.

When that was done, she yelled, "Now, climb down out of the tree.” Elaborately, she pantomimed her instructions. Despite the dire situation, she grinned at how absurd she must look.

She was absolutely startled when the man grinned back at her. Then she started laughing—and he started laughing. At that, she laughed harder, making silly wheezing sounds that made her laugh even more. The little man laughed so hard that tears glinted in his eyes like prisms of sunlight.

At last, both she and the aborigine stopped and stared across the expanse of white-capped water. He would have to avoid the wood and bush and other jetsam bobbing past. She would have to nudge her nervous old nag into a slow but steady ascent of the knoll.

With the pressure of her knees to clue him, Renegade performed admirably in hauling the man through the water. The current kept tugging at him, and he went under the water’s surface several times. She was afraid he would drown.

When finally he gained footing, staggered ashore, and collapsed half in, half out of the water, she halted Renegade and, dismounting, ran to the man.

He looked like a gnome, all shriveled, making it difficult to tell his age. He could have been fifteen or fifty. She guessed somewhere in between, maybe thirty. His long hair was a scruffy mop.

His eyes opened. Dark brown irises stared back at her. Then he grinned. She realized three of his front teeth were missing.

“Your leg.” She pointed. “We need to take care of it.” She knew she didn’t ever again want to take part in an amputation. “Let’s get you back to the house.”

That part was harder than rescuing him from an island tree. He was very reluctant to mount Renegade. When she finally persuaded him to do so, she found pushing the man into the saddle was like hefting deadweight.

Riding tandem with him, she turned Renegade back in the direction of the house. The man sitting in front of her, and no taller than Nan Livingston, stank something awful. She finally identified the smell as that of emu oil.

She tried not to look at the canyon of a gash running the length of his thigh. The rain started pouring down in wind-driven sheets. She didn’t know whether to feel grateful that the smell was obliterated or feel miserable in her soggy state.

Renegade’s steps picked up as he sensed the proximity of the stable. At last, the vague outlines of the house appeared. Supporting the man with his arm across her shoulder, she stumbled toward the shelter of the veranda. They got no farther than just inside the door and, panting, collapsed on the floor.

A bewildered Francis staggered through their bedroom door. Seeing her entangled with
the aborigine, her husband rushed toward them.

“No!” She held up a staying hand. “It’s not what you think.”

He stopped short and peered down at her. “What the devil . . .!”

“He’s been hurt, Francis.”

“We’ll be hurt if any of the squatters discover we’re harboring an aborigine savage. You know better than to do something like this.”

She ignored him. Getting to her feet again, she
slipped her arm underneath the aborigine’s and dragged him toward the spare bedroom. As yet, it had no bed, but she well remembered Pulykara’s preference for the floor.

A pallet compiled of old blankets was quickly made for the man. His eyes watched her as she moved around the room.

She left to prepare hot water for cleansing the gaping leg wound. Francis was pacing the floor. “I was going to check on the sheep in the back pasture, but I never got a chance,” she told him. “You’d better see what you can do.”

He glowered at her. “I don’t have to be told like a child.”

She was too tired to apologize. Wearily, she returned to the other bedroom and the wounded man. When she entered, his eyes brightened. The gash had been soaked in the dirty river water for so long that red streaks radiated upward from it. She felt the man’s forehead. It was feverish all right.

She finished cleansing the wound and wrapped it in clean cotton strips. “You need something in your stomach,” she told him and felt foolish since he probably didn’t speak English. He gazed at her uncomprehendingly, but that might be credited to his condition. God knew how long he might have been perched in that tree.

She prepared an herbal tea and a bowl of corn mush, but either he was so weak he couldn’t eat or he detested the white man’s food. With the advent of evening, darkness turned the room as dark as the Styx. By the light of her candle, the aborigine’s eyes appeared quite glazed, and he was making a low, raspy moaning sound.

Within the hour, she would need to decide whether to stitch the gash or take off the leg. Medication was nil in the outback. Should she chance only stitching
. . .

She was worried, too, about Francis. He should have been back by now. When the door opened, she spun around, arms outstretched in a relieved welcome—only to fling herself into Sin’s arms. He was as startled as she. In automatic response, he held her against him. Only a second, but an eternal second.