Flight of the Eagle (5 page)

When Ben heard the distant drumming of a horse at full gallop he checked the swing of the heavy hammer he was using to nail the railing of the stockyards. He cursed at the stress his adopted son Willie was putting his horse through and decided that he would have a few words with him.

‘Ben!’ Willie's call had a note of alarm not usual in the young man. At sixteen Willie had seen many terrible things in his life and as such it took a lot to cause him to lose his composure.

Ben straightened his aching back and watched Willie rein his mount across to the newly constructed stockyards still fresh with the sap of the trees oozing from cracks. The young man slid expertly from his horse to confront the tall, bearded man. ‘Big war party of darkies camped out on the western boundary’ he panted as if he had run the four miles from the western boundary marked by the dry watercourse of Ben's property. ‘Fifty, maybe a hundred,’ he gulped with a mixture of excitement and fear.

‘Any gins and piccaninnies with them?’ Ben asked quietly. His casually asked question had a calming effect on the young man who felt a little ashamed of his boyish excitement in the face of adult calmness.

‘Yeah, they got women and kids with ′em.’

‘Then I don't think they're going to be an immediate threat to us,’ Ben concluded. ‘But we will take no chances.’

Willie nodded his agreement. He had absolute faith in the decisions of the man who he had slowly come to view almost as his own father. Willie still did not know who his real father was as his mother had refused to tell him – or Ben.

‘′Bout time we had a cuppa,’ Ben said as he hefted the hammer over his shoulder and turned to walk towards the little bark hut that was their home. Willie followed and hitched his horse to a rail outside the hut.

Inside the hut Jenny kneaded flour into a bread loaf. Sweat ran down her face in tiny rivulets and the bun she had secured to her head was falling apart. Time – and the rigours of the frontier life – had brought flecks of grey to her crowning glory of golden tresses. She no longer attempted to conceal a large strawberry birthmark on her face as she had long forgotten it existed.

Ben constantly told her that she was the most beautiful woman on earth even though she was sometimes self-consciously aware that her once slim waist had thickened since they had courted.

Rebecca, their youngest child, sat at the roughly hewn slab table kneading a small loaf in imitation of her mother. Although she was only four years old she could already cook. She glanced up at the two men blocking the light from the doorway, then returned to her task of getting the dough ready for baking.

‘Where's Saul and Jonathan?’ Ben asked trying to sound calm.

Jenny paused in her task and brushed aside the trickles of hair from her face – which left a dab of flour on her nose – and stared at her husband with a glimmer of concern clouding her eyes. ‘Why? What's wrong?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. I was just wondering where the boys might be.’

‘They took the dogs and went out in the bush to see if they could find some native honey.’

‘I saw a bunch of darkies up on the dry creek. Did they go in that direction?’ Willie asked.

Jenny's mouth gaped. ‘I don't know. They just took off and said they would be back by dark.’

‘They will be all right,’ Willie said to soothe his mother's natural fears. ‘Nothing will happen to ′em.’

Ben was also worried but he had faith in his two sons' alertness. They had been born in the bush and, although Jonathan and Saul were nine and ten respectively, they were independent in the ways of survival. Already they worked as men on the property and Ben respected them for their adult-like toughness. They could handle the cattle and were both crack shots with the heavy Snider rifle. Very rarely did they return to the hut without a kangaroo which would be shared with the five station dogs.

Rebecca felt the tension in the small hut and watched with wide eyes as the adults conversed. Willie could see her fear. He loved the little girl – almost as much as his mother – and placed his hand on her head to pat her fine locks of gold. She was very much like his mother in appearance and manners whereas his two half-brothers were much like their father. She glanced up at Willie with questioning eyes and was answered with a reassuring smile.

‘I will ride out and find the boys,’ Ben said in a manner that did not evoke any sense of panic. ‘Willie, you can stay here and finish the yards while I'm gone.’

Jenny nodded. There had been a time many years earlier when he had said similar words and gone unarmed to warn the big Eurasian John Wong of the Aboriginal warriors' ambush on the track to the Palmer.

‘Ben?’ she said quietly, and with just the faintest trace of fear in her voice.

‘I know,’ he replied with a sad smile and the pair exchanged loving glances which cut short any need for words.

Ben took a rifle from a long wooden case beside their bed and slipped a box of cartridges into his pocket. He also strapped on the big Colt revolver Kate had presented him with on his first trek west with one of her wagons. Jenny retrieved the lead shot and powder flask from a sideboard. She loved the sideboard for its delicate woodwork carvings of flowers and leaves along its edges. It was one of the rare items in the hut that was actually shop bought although Ben had promised that one day she would have the best furniture in the colony.

Not that she cared for worldly goods as much as she cared for the tall, gentle man who was her husband. She had followed him across the frontier when he had walked beside the huge creaking wagons pulled by the stolid oxen and she had given birth to her sons in the shade of the wagons when her time came. Only Rebecca had been born in what was now their home on the property.

When Ben had completed his preparations for the search he turned to hug his daughter with a crushing expression of love and gently reached out to touch his wife's cheek. She responded by pressing her face into the broad, work-hardened hand. There were no tears in the parting, as tears might be an admission that she was worried for her husband and sons, but she closed her eyes briefly to draw in the scent of newly hewn timber and tobacco that lingered in the pores of his flesh.

Ben swung himself into the saddle and urged his mount forward with a gentle kick. As he rode past the stockyards and into the shimmering heat of the dry silent scrub he had a fleeting thought. It was as if the scrub were attempting to reclaim the hut for itself.

When he was gone from their sight Jenny took her daughter's hand and led her inside the hut. There it was acceptable for her daughter to see her tears. To be able to cry was the domain of women. Men bore their pain in silence.

The laughter of the women and children turned to cries of terror as they fled from the dry creek bed for the cover of the scrub.

Terituba scooped a spear from the cluster at his feet and faced the tall, bearded white man who had suddenly walked upon them. How could a white man take them so easily? He cursed as he prepared to fling the barbed weapon at the man walking fearlessly towards him along the creek bed. But the Kalkadoon warrior hesitated. If the white devil had penetrated the camping ground of his clan, then he could have as easily fired on them with the white man's terrible weapons that left bloody holes in their victims.

Terituba was not alone. Both young and old warriors bristled a wall of spears uncertainly at the approaching white man carrying a bag in either hand. On the white man's hip was the gun that could be fired many times without a pause to reload like the long guns. But it was not in his hand.

‘Let us kill him now!’ a young warrior cried nervously to Terituba. ‘Before he can kill us.’

‘No,’ Terituba yelled to his warriors. ‘Not unless I say’ The warriors reluctantly obeyed. It would be so easy to shower the solitary man with spears that were waiting to taste blood.

Ben felt every nerve in his body tingle with the expectation of the bite of a barbed spear. He was gambling for more than his own life – he was gambling for the life of his two boys. He knew from their tracks that they would probably come home via the creek and stumble on the heavily armed party of Kalkadoon. So he was striking first, but with a gesture of friendship and not violence.

He continued to walk directly towards the tallest of the naked warriors who, he guessed correctly, had considerable influence amongst his people now gathered along the dry creek. He was a formidable figure of a man whose broad shoulders and barrel chest rippled with hard muscle.

Ben could see that the warrior fixed him with dark, unfathomable eyes as he approached. When he was about ten paces away Ben halted and placed the two bags at the warrior's feet. He stepped back and gestured with a friendly smile to the flour and sugar and waited with the cold fear of tension that turned his stomach into a mass of wriggling worms.

The dark eyes coolly appraised him for signs of fear – or madness. But neither seemed apparent and Terituba surmised the gesture was one of goodwill.

‘Do not harm this white man. He means us no harm,’ he called in a loud voice to his people. And Ben could sense the change in the atmosphere that seconds before had been loaded with deadly threat.

Women, children and old men drifted cautiously back from the surrounding scrub where they had fled. Terituba lowered his spear and strode towards Ben to examine the two bags at his feet. He knew flour and sugar as they had taken the delicious foods from a teamster's wagon after they had ambushed him a week earlier south of their present campsite.

Terituba prodded the sacks with the point of his spear and grinned at the white man. It was a signal all was well and the children were the boldest of the clan to approach. They reached out and touched the creature they had been taught to fear and who now smiled at them. In turn he was rewarded with shy smiles.

The women fell on the sacks and tore at the bags with the sharp points of digging sticks, squabbling with each over who should get the gift. Striking out with his nulla, Terituba waded amongst the women to bring order to the chaos. They fell back with screeches of protest but waited sullenly until he indicated who should be first to take a share. The men meanwhile stood back, trailing their spears and staring suspiciously at the white man. It was only the temporary benevolence of Terituba that kept him alive.

‘Ben,’ the Jewish cattleman said, pointing at himself. ‘Me Ben.’

‘Miben,’ Terituba repeated and Ben smiled at his interpretation of his name.

‘Terituba,’ the warrior said, understanding that the white man had given his totem.

‘
What meat is that?’
he asked.

But neither man understood each other's language and an awkward silence fell between them.

‘Me lukim piccaninny belong me,’ Ben finally said to break the silence. Terituba understood
piccaninny.
It was a word he had picked up along the trading routes between the widely scattered tribes of Queensland. A word the white men had brought with them and which had been adopted by the tribesmen.

Ben repeated the question, his hand shading his eyes as if searching for something. He pointed at himself. Terituba understood from the pantomime that the man was looking for his children and felt a natural sympathy for him.

‘I have not seen your piccaninny,’
he replied in the Kalkadoon language and, although Ben did not understand the answer, he noticed a sympathetic note in the man's voice. He nodded as if he understood and thrust out his hand to the Kalkadoon warrior chief who eyed the gesture curiously.

Terituba imitated the movement and Ben took his hand and pumped it twice as he thanked the big Kalkadoon. Terituba could only surmise the gesture was a greeting between men of equal stature. It was a strange feeling to be holding the hand of a white man who had not come to kill him.

Then the white man whose strange totem was Miben dropped his hand and turned away. The warriors raised their spears and rattled them threateningly at the back of the man walking from them. But Terituba called to his men to let the white man go unharmed and curiously watched as the man strode along the dry creek bed and the women went back to squabbling over the precious supply of sweet sugar and flour.

Would they meet again, Terituba thought idly as Ben disappeared into the shimmering heat.

When Ben reached his horse which he'd left tethered to a tree he suddenly began trembling with the effects of delayed fear. He leant against the rough bark of a yarran tree from which came the hard timber the Kalkadoon used to fashion spears and boomerangs. For Ben it was a source of fence posts and firewood.

He had gambled with his life and won on the premise that a warrior culture would respect courage and goodwill and knew now that he could go in search of his two young boys without fear of ambush.

By sunset Ben had relocated the tracks of his two sons who had fortunately taken a route bypassing the creek bed and the Kalkadoon camped there. The tracks led back to the hut so Ben wheeled his mount and headed for home.

As he approached the hut just on sundown the barking of the dogs was a welcome sound. The exuberant noise meant that the boys were home.

But his joy turned to a cold fear when he saw Willie stumbling towards him like a drunken shearer at the end of a seasonal pay cheque binge. Tears streamed down the young man's face which was contorted with an inconsolable grief.

With a sharp kick Ben spurred his horse into a gallop towards the young man and Willie screamed his name with the sound of despair that only death could bring.

FOUR

T
he following morning Patrick woke to a beautiful summer's day.

The clouds had gone from the Irish sky and when he gazed blearily out of the tiny window to his room he saw the true colours of Ireland; a sea of green stretching across heather-like scrub and larch trees standing tall in neatly ordered copses.

In the distance beyond a sparkling blue lake he saw the most prominent feature of the fields: a tree-covered hill rising as a small but distinctive dome.

The tap at his door brought him out of his rapt gaze and before he could answer the door creaked open. A rosy cheeked young woman entered, carefully carrying a wide enamel bowl of hot water. She was about sixteen and the twinkle in her eyes bespoke the amusement she felt at finding the handsome young man in his long Johns as he stood by the window. Patrick's twinge of embarrassment only seemed to amuse the young girl further.