The Gold Seekers (30 page)

He broke off, and Dora, watching him, saw the glint of tears in his dark eyes.

“Who did he murder, Luke?” Rob Yates asked, breaking the silence. “Your brother Dan?”

“Dan, yes, and our partners, Tom and Frankie Gardener. I went to see Tom’s widow when I came ashore in Sydney Town—his widow and their little kids. It was awful, and it just about broke my heart, having to break it to her that Tom wouldn’t be coming back. I didn’t tell her what really happened, though—I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. I just said our mine caved in and buried the three of them alive, and I gave her a bag of dust. I didn’t have anything else to give her, you see.” Again Luke broke off, his face working.

“Did your mine cave in, Luke?” Francis asked him quietly.

“It caved in because Morgan blew it up, Mr. De Lancey,” Luke told him bleakly. “But he shot all three of them first, and then he took the gold and made off with it to ‘Frisco. But maybe I’d best tell you how it happened from the beginning.”

He told them, in a flat, controlled voice that carried complete conviction, and Dora listened with growing horror as the ghastly tale unfolded. Francis, sensing her distress, reached for her hand and held it.

He said emphatically, “Go after him, Luke. Go after the foul murdering swine wherever he runs to! I don’t know what help I can give you, because—well, my sweet lass and I have some troubles of our own, and there are reasons why we had to leave Sydney Town and come up here with the gold seekers.” Dora felt his fingers tighten about hers. “You’ll need money to pay your passage to Port Phillip, if Morgan has gone there. I haven’t much, but you can take what I have.”

Luke shook his head. “No, Mr. De Lancey, I’ll not take your money. It’s good of you, but—”

“I’m in your debt,” Francis argued.

“No, I—we’ve done nothing that merits reward, sir.” Luke smiled and got to his feet. “I’ll earn what I need, or work my passage, if I find that the bird has flown. But—” He turned to his youthful companions, his smile warm and affectionate as he looked from Rob to Simon. “These two are good, trustworthy lads. Join forces with them, Mr. De Lancey, and stake your claim here with them. The rush will catch up with you if you do make a strike, but you’re here first, and the four of you could look out for each other. What do you say?”

Francis looked in mute question to Dora. She inclined her head without hesitation. It was, she thought gratefully, a wonderful notion and one likely to benefit them all, provided that she could play her part. Gold-seeking was—as Simon Yates had said—a harsh way of life for a woman. But she had chosen it; she had rejected the chance to return to Sydney and the hateful old man she had married.

“I’ll be more than willing, Luke,” she said with conscious gravity, “if Rob and Simon are … and if they’ll consent to teach me some of their cooking skills.”

The two boys laughed aloud. “I wish our mama could hear you saying that!” Rob exclaimed. “She always reckoned we were useless layabouts in the kitchen, didn’t she, Si? But we’ll teach you what we can and gladly. It’ll be great to have a worn—that is, begging your pardon, Mrs. De Lancey, a lady’s company. It’s been a long time since we even set eyes on a female.”

“Then let us shake hands on it,” Francis suggested. There was admiration in his eyes, Dora saw, as he helped her to rise, as well as the adoration she was accustomed to read there.

The handshakes were exchanged, and Luke said with relief, “Then I’ll be on my way in the morning. I … there’s just one question I want to ask, Mr. De Lancey, and maybe you can answer it. Jasper Morgan bought a brig, the Banshee, in ‘Frisco. A small vessel of about a hundred and ninety tons burden. She wasn’t anywhere in Port Jackson when we reached there, to the best of my knowledge, and a wharf laborer told me she’d been impounded by the customs and then sold. He wasn’t sure of the buyer’s name, but he thought it was Lewis or Levis—some name like that. You wouldn’t have heard anything about the sale or about the buyer, would you, sir?”

“No, Luke, I’m sorry.” Francis shook his head regretfully. “Not a word.”

“It was just a thought,” Luke conceded. “We passed an outward-bound brig near the Heads, when we entered Port Jackson, which might have been Morgan’s, but she was too far away for me to read her name.” He shrugged. “I expect it was coincidence, or maybe I imagined the resemblance. There are scores of small brigs in the harbor.”

He bent, from force of habit, to scoop up a handful of earth with which to douse the fire. Dora moved swiftly to intercept him.

“Luke,” she said, with a vehemence that surprised even herself, “is that not the cook’s job? Please let me do it.”

Luke stood aside, smiling, and Dora dropped to her knees beside the pile of glowing embers. Her small white hands were coated with dust and her fingernails blackened, but the fire was extinguished when Francis again helped her to her feet.

The cattle—about two hundred of them, as nearly as Luke could judge—appeared suddenly through the evening gloom and came charging toward him, an unruly mob with their great horned heads down, bellowing and raising a thick cloud of dust above and behind them.

He reined in, looking about him for a way to escape from their onrush. They were heading for the river, he realized. The Macquarie, a streak of silvery water, lay half a mile or so to his rear, reduced to half its normal breadth and volume by the recent lack of rain. Either the herd had been spooked, or thirst had driven the milling animals to sudden frenzy, and he would, he knew, be wise to remove himself from their path with what speed his tired horse could muster.

He dug in his heels, but his mount responded sluggishly, not yet conscious of danger. Then a warning shout alerted him, bringing his head around, and he glimpsed a rider on a piebald horse, waving at him frantically. There was a slight depression in the ground, he saw, in the direction in which the rider was gesturing, and he made for it thankfully, reaching it just as the herd thundered past. The leader, a huge brown bull with a moon-white face, clearly knew the ground better than he did, Luke thought, for it jinked right, and the rest followed, a single straggler—a half-grown heifer—the only one to contest possession of his refuge. It scrambled out, leaving him unscathed, and tore on after the rest.

His father’s farm in California had never boasted a herd of beef cattle; the grazing had been too poor to sustain more than the three or four milch cows needed for their own use. For all that, instinct told him that this herd was heading for trouble, if not for disaster, if it were to hurl itself at its present wild speed down the river’s steep and rocky bank.

Where there had been several feet of water there were now boulders, laid bare by the drought. He had observed them, Luke recalled, when he had forded the river lower down and, indeed, had been tempted to stop, in the hope that the receding water might have left exposed a few nuggets, which previously had lain hidden in its bed.

But he had resisted the temptation and gone on, aiming to reach Bathurst before dark. There was no chance of that now, he told himself, so that he could do a lot worse than follow his instinct and try to turn the stampeding cattle or, failing that, slow them down.

Using voice and heels, he urged his horse after them, taking the shortest route through a belt of trees that they had circled, and finally came abreast of them, his horse, excited by the chase, finding its second wind and breaking into a gallop, which enabled him to keep pace with the bellowing mob. But he could not turn them. Yell and beat his saddle flap as he would, the big bull kept on going, refusing to deviate from its chosen path and seemingly deaf to his puny efforts to make himself heard.

A shot rang out, a voice shouted something he could not hear, and glancing over his shoulder, Luke saw to his relief that two other riders had caught up with him. One was the man on the piebald horse who had waved at him, the other a black-bearded giant, with a cabbage-plant hat crammed onto his head, riding a big chestnut. The bearded giant had a rifle to his shoulder, and after jerking his horse to a standstill, he took aim at the bull that was leading the stampede and, to Luke’s amazement, brought the animal down with a single shot.

The rush was partially stemmed; more shots, fired into the air from handguns, turned most of the mob and slowed them down, but something like a score of the maddened cattle seemed disposed to continue their dash for the river. He was the nearest to them, Luke realized, and without conscious thought he galloped on, in an attempt to head them off. He had all but succeeded in getting ahead of them when his horse began to flag and, the next instant, stumbled badly and fell to its knees, sending him hurtling over its head. He landed awkwardly and hard on the sun-baked

ground, and a black mist closed over him, blotting out sight and sound.

He came to—he had no idea how much later—gasping for breath and with his body racked with pain, to find the piebald horse standing nearby, its rider bending over him.

“I think he’s only winded, Dickon,” the man called out. “But we’d better see there are no bones broken before we move him.” Almost his own words, Luke thought dazedly, when, less than a week ago, he had bent in similar fashion over the injured Francis De Lancey. He attempted weakly to sit up, but the stranger shook his head. “Bide still, lad, till I’ve had a look at you.”

His hands were skilled and gentle as they moved about Luke’s body, but even so, when they touched his left shoulder, a cry of pain was wrung from him.

“Dislocated, I fancy. Off your horse, Dickon, and lend me a hand to put the joint back in. Don’t worry about the mob; they’ll not go far now, and Billy Joe can hold them till we get through here.” The stranger’s voice was educated and authoritative; he was young—only a few years older than himself, Luke judged—and of fine physique. Even so, he was dwarfed by the black-bearded fellow in the cabbage-plant hat, who, when he slid from his saddle, towered over them both. He grunted something unintelligible and then, giving Luke a smile of singular warmth, grasped his injured shoulder with one huge hand, placed the other in the small of his back, and, with a deft movement that for an instant caused exquisite agony, restored the dislocated joint to its socket. He sat back on his heels, beaming, and the younger man gestured to him and stated pleasantly, “My cousin, Dickon O’Shea, who has the misfortune to be deaf and dumb. He can read lips, though, so don’t hesitate to talk to him. And I’m Edmund Tempest, most gratefully yours for your timely intervention. We could have lost half our beef herd if you had not come to our aid. May I know to whom we are grateful?”

Luke managed to sit up, the now-starlit sky whirling in crazy circles above his head. But it steadied, and he said, “My name’s Luke Murphy, Mr. Tempest. From Sacramento, California.”

“Ah, a gold digger?”

It was easier to agree than to explain, and Luke cautiously inclined his throbbing head.

“You’ve come from the diggings on the Turon, I imagine?” Tempest suggested. “Or farther afield, perhaps?”

“A mite farther, sir,” Luke agreed. “I’m on my way to Bathurst.”

“With your fortune made, I trust.” Tempest did not wait for his reply but rose briskly to his feet. “We’ll have to get the herd rounded up and down to the river, but that shouldn’t take us very long. Unfortunately we’ve lost all our white shepherds and cattlemen to the gold rush, Mr. Murphy —that’s why the beef cattle ran amuck. They broke down two fences before we knew what they were up to, you see.” He sighed. “The rain came too early this year, and the drought’s hit us badly. Still, perhaps it will break before we Jose too many.”

He reached for his piebald’s rein and, one foot in the stirrup, added courteously, “Bide here for a little while, will you, and then permit us to take you to the homestead. My father will wish to thank you, and the very least we can do is offer you a meal and a bed for a night or two, until you are fully recovered.”

Luke, impatient to be on his way, wanted to refuse, but his head was throbbing unmercifully now, and he doubted his ability to stand up, still less to ride a horse. He muttered his acquiescence, conscious that his voice sounded odd, even to his own ears, and when the giant Dickon divested himself of his jacket and placed it, rolled up, beneath his head, he lay back and let himself relax. Minutes later he drifted into an exhausted sleep, and did not stir until Edmund Tempest’s deep, pleasant voice once more aroused him.

They rode together through the moonlit darkness, Dickon walking behind his horse, to which was roped the carcass of the bull he had been compelled to shoot.

“At least we’ll eat well for a while,” Tempest dryly observed. “But my father won’t be pleased—he paid a mint of money for that infernal animal. It was bred by the Lees—a red shorthorn-Hereford cross. Luckily we have some of his progeny coming on.” He pointed to where, ahead of them,

lights flickered from behind a screen of trees, and stifled a weary yawn. “There’s the homestead—not much farther now, Mr. Murphy.”

Luke scarcely heard him. Wave after wave of nausea swept over him, and the throbbing in his head became well-nigh unendurable. He tried to speak, to explain his predicament, but no words would come, and to his dismay he felt himself slipping from his saddle. Dickon’s big hand came out to grasp him as he fell, and he slithered to the ground, once more struggling to draw breath into his lungs and failing to do so. The mists closed in; he could neither see nor move, and Edmund Tempest’s voice, harsh with concern, faded into silence as Luke’s senses left him.

When he wakened, he was in a big four-poster bed, with sweetly smelling linen sheets covering him and the softest of pillows beneath his head. A woman’s voice, with a faintly familiar accent, reached him, seeming to come from a very long way away.

“I believe he’s coming round,” it said. “Look, his eyes are open. Bring me the bowl of water, Elizabeth dear. I’ll put a fresh compress on his poor head.”

A younger-sounding, softly musical voice answered the first. “Here it is, Mama. I’ll raise his head a little, shall I?” Luke heard the splash of water and felt gentle hands moving about his face and head. He glimpsed a face, its skin like pink and white porcelain, and two deep blue eyes, gazing into his with anxiety mirrored in their dark-lashed depths, and then the bright daylight, coming from somewhere close at hand, caused him such sharp pain that he was forced to turn his head away. His eyelids fell of their own volition, and the vision he had seen abruptly faded.