This Golden Land (33 page)

     He pushed on. His temples thrummed with pain. Even though it was May and winter was around the corner, the heat grew intense, baking down on him. He walked into the hot wind, and when the sun finally set, he welcomed it with relief. But his thirst was beyond anything he had ever known or imagined. And he was exhausted. He curled up against the slight rise of a sandy mound and, thinking of hungry dingoes and poisonous snakes, drifted off to sleep.

     Neal awoke twice, startled by unidentifiable sounds. He shivered. Temperatures that made the Outback a cauldron during the day dropped to near freezing at night. He lay on his side shaking, teeth chattering, his eyes peering into the darkness as he imagined a circle of wild dogs closing in, or black men with spears.

     When the sun came up, he welcomed it, and he trudged on. The pain in his head grew worse. He had stopped perspiring. His legs felt as if they were made of lead. Dehydration, he thought. Death by dehydration . . .

     In the late afternoon, with the coppery sun blazing in his face, as if daring the fragile human to survive yet another night, Neal suddenly heard a sound—a human sound. He stopped and listened, swaying unsteadily. He squinted through eyes so dry he could hardly blink. When he heard the sound again, he realized it was himself. He had been sobbing and didn't know it.

     Neal was covered with insect bites now, and scratches from tramping through dead brush. His tongue was swollen. He throat closed up. But he kept walking. Ahead lay Sir Reginald's expedition, he was sure of it, with barrels of cool water and ointment for his sores and a pillow for his head. And once he had recovered, he was turning right back around for Adelaide and Hannah.

     Neal passed the night in a sleep so deep that nothing woke him except,
at last, the piercing rays of another new hot sun. At noon he fell, and it was some minutes before he could get up. He pushed on, fell again, got up and pushed on again. He grew delirious and started to laugh. He thought of his friend back home, Ernie Shalvoy, who had opened a photography studio in one of Boston's better neighborhoods. Ernie was mixing iodine with ammonia, and when he added it to the silver nitrate bath, the explosion blew the large front windows of the studio clear across Canal Street. Neal couldn't stop laughing at the thought of it.

     Finally, with another coppery sun in his eyes, he slid to his knees and this time could not get up. His head was in so much pain that it felt as if it were going to explode like Ernie Shalvoy's studio. Neal toppled to the dirt and lay there, trying to think of a prayer. His pulse pounded so loudly in his ears that he did not hear whisperings nearby, and his eyes had been so nearly blinded by the sun that, just before he lost consciousness, he did not see the black shapes slowly gather around him, dark figures clutching spears, clubs, and boomerangs.

H
ANNAH AND HER TWO COMPANIONS HAD FINALLY TRAVELED
beyond the farthest point she had ever journeyed from the Australia Hotel. It was new country, and exciting.

     Before taking to the road, the trio had stopped at Gibney's Feed & Supplies, down the road from the Australia Hotel, and purchased flour, salt, dried strips of kangaroo meat, eggs, molasses and whiskey. Now it was late afternoon. Adelaide, its suburbs, and farm country had fallen far behind. Spencer Gulf lay to their left, wide and peaceful with ships under sail on their way up to the isolated pastoral lands where men were growing rich on sheep. To the right lay hills and thick woods, and sometimes flatland where a courageous pioneering farmer was coaxing wheat out of the soil, and vineyards were laid out in luscious green patterns. Hannah saw more wildlife now. Instead of the occasional emu, flocks sprinted across her path, heads and necks forward on their great gray bodies, and instead of a lone kangaroo among the sheep, whole families beyond count now leapt in red-orange mobs. Overhead, the blue autumn sky was dotted with white puff-clouds,
black cockatoos with brilliant pink or orange crests, wild ducks and flocks of geese, and, occasionally, a black swan with wings outspread.

     Hannah thought: Neal came through here on his way to the expedition's base camp. In a year from now, when he returned, perhaps he would show her a photograph of this very view of Spencer Gulf, and Hannah would say, "I saw it with my own eyes!"

     She and her traveling companions had exchanged not a single word since leaving Gibney's. Mr. Maxberry was a taciturn man who kept his eyes forward as they spurred their horses to a steady trot. Hannah wondered about the curious scar that bisected his face from forehead to chin. She was amazed he had survived the injury. Unfortunately, Mr. Maxberry could not hide his disfigurement with cosmetics and tiaras as Alice so successfully did.

     Evening was coming on, and Maxberry brought his fatigued horse to a halt to announce that they would make camp for the night. While he went to collect wood and got a fire going, and Nan went down to the water's edge, carrying a long sharp stick, Hannah massaged her sore muscles and got busy mixing flour with water to be baked in the hot coals for bush-bread called damper. She was worried about Jamie O'Brien. "Broken leg, and it hurts like the devil." Extreme pain meant a serious injury. She wondered if it might be beyond her skills.

     Nan came back to the camp, the hem of her wet skirt tucked into the waistband, her spear proudly bearing three large orange fish.

     "Roughy," Maxberry said, taking the fish and gutting them with his knife before throwing them into a frying pan he had untied from his saddle. "They feed at night. Makes 'em easy targets for the likes of Nan. I've never been able to do it, but Nan has the skills of her people."

     Hannah was curious about the Aboriginal woman, and would have liked to ask questions. But she felt that might be impolite in Nan's culture, so she looked up at the stars, still finding them exotic after all this time. They were not the constellations of home. Instead of spotting the familiar Big Dipper, she saw the Southern Cross, a heavenly reminder of how far she had traveled.

     Maxberry said nothing further as he cooked the orange roughy in the pan, his scarred face illuminated by the fire, while Nan tested the damper
baking in the coals. While she waited to eat, Hannah brought Neal's photograph from her bag and privately looked at it by the fire and silently said to him: We are both dining beneath the stars.

     They ate the fish plain, but to Hannah it was a banquet, she had been so hungry. To her surprise, however, no provision had been made for sleeping arrangements. She had to settle for curling up on the ground, bundling herself in her heavy cape. When Maxberry and Nan went to lie together on the other side of the fire, Hannah, who might have been shocked under different circumstances, thought: It's a different world.

     She fell asleep with Neal in her thoughts, and awoke the next morning stiff and sore. After a breakfast of damper, molasses and tea Hannah found a secluded spot in the shallows along the shore of Spencer Gulf where, lifting her skirts above the water, she bathed as best she could. And as she did, she saw majestic ships with billowing sails gliding along the wide, sparkling body of water.

     Another day of non-stop travel, keeping the horses going for as long as they would hold up, followed by another night of camping, and finally the next morning they came to a place where, to their right, a lush green mountain range began. "Named for Flinders," Maxberry said as he climbed down from his horse and inspected the ground. It was noon and Hannah was grateful for the respite. "They were supposed to be here!" Maxberry said in exasperation. "This is where I left them."

     Hannah saw on the grassy ground the blackened firepit and evidence that a camp had been there. "He didn't stay and wait for us," Maxberry said. "They're moving north. Slower than us, I'd reckon, so we'll catch up."

     Hannah wanted to ask why a man who was so seriously injured would dare to travel. What was so important up ahead that he had to keep moving despite a life-threatening wound? But she said nothing, knowing she would soon have her answers.

     The next day, thirty miles up, they found another abandoned camp, but of more recent habitation, so that Maxberry said, "Probably tomorrow, the day after, we'll catch up with them."

     It turned out to be the next day, when they reached the northernmost tip of Spence Gulf, and just a few miles beyond, in a region where no farms,
no sheep stations were to be found, that they finally met up with the others.

     The terrain had changed drastically. Here, Hannah realized, was the Outback. Farmland and rich pastures and verdant vineyards lay far behind as, before them, stretched the beginning of a scrubby desert, hilly in places, with clumps of gum trees here and there, and the occasional bushy mulga.

     As they approached the camp of a few men and wagons and tents among stringy-bark trees on the sandy bank of a trickling creek, Hannah rode straight to a wagon that had been situated in the shade, with a group of men gathered around it. Hannah paid no attention to them as she had only Mr. O'Brien in mind. She found him among sacks of flour and potatoes and propped up against a water barrel. Jamie O'Brien was grinning at her from beneath the wide brim of his bush hat.

     "Faith, I'm glad you came," he said. "I was afraid you wouldn't."

     Hannah dismounted and walked stiffly to the wagon, thinking she would never get used to riding a horse the way men did. The first thing she noticed was his color: O'Brien face reminded her of ashes. Hannah noticed also that he was sweating and that he not so much grinned as grimaced in pain. Jamie's right lower leg had been splinted between two crooked branches. And it was a bad job.

     Returning to her horse to fetch the blue carpetbag, Hannah came back to the wagon and said, "You should not have continued traveling, Mr. O'Brien. Nothing can be so important out here."

     When he said nothing, but tried to shift his weight, wincing, she said more gently, "Tell me what happened." She brought out her stethoscope and eyes widened among the onlookers—those who had never been to a doctor had no idea what they were looking at.

     "We were loading water barrels," Maxberry said. He stood opposite Hannah on the other side of the wagon. "One of them slipped and landed on his leg. We splinted it. But then he insisted on riding his horse and broke the leg again."

     "First of all," Hannah said, looking around at the bearded, dirty-faced men who seemed not to know what to do, "we need to remove this splint. It is useless." Whoever had done the job, had not immobilized the ankle and the knee, so that O'Brien could move his broken leg freely. "We will need
two straight planks. Take them from this wagon if you must. And would you please remove this splint?"

     Two men stepped up and untied the rags that bound the useless splints to Jamie's lower leg.

     "Remove his boot, please," Hannah said.

     Maxberry glowered at her. "What for?"

     "Just do it," Jamie said. He choked back the pain as Maxberry pulled the boot from his foot, and said in a tight voice, "Sorry for the socks."

     His men laughed half-heartedly and watched as the lady unflinchingly pulled the grimy sock from Jamie's foot and then did a very strange thing. She removed her gloves and placed her fingertips on the curving part of the foot, halfway between the toes and the ankle. After a moment, she nodded in satisfaction and said, "You have a pulse. That is a good sign." She knew that standard practice in leg fractures was to check for a pulse at the groin as well, to be certain circulation was unimpeded, but in this case it was out of the question.

     "I will manipulate the distal end and will need someone to hold his knee."

     Maxberry volunteered.

     "Please have the planks ready," she said to the other men, "and several rags for tying them in place." To Jamie she said, "Mr. O'Brien, I will be immobilizing your ankle and your knee with splints, which means you must keep your leg straight. Now, this might hurt a bit, but once the bone ends meet, the pain should subside."

     Hannah positioned herself at the foot of the wagon and as she pushed the pant leg up so that she could grasp the ankle, she was stunned to see thick bands of scar tissue encircling O'Brien's ankle. She realized they must have been caused by leg irons, and it was obvious his ankles had been rubbed raw many times, re-opening the wounds before they could completely heal.

     And then she noticed something more alarming, something on the pant leg, midway on the shin. A bright red spot the size of a shilling.

     Blood.

     "Wait a moment," she said as calmly as she could to Mr. Maxberry, who had climbed into the wagon and knelt beside Jamie, ready to assist with the bone-setting.

     Hannah opened her carpetbag and brought out sharp scissors with which she proceeded to cut the pant leg from the cuff to the knee.

     The air was still and silent as everyone watched. Flies buzzed about, but no breeze rustled the dry leaves of the stringy-bark trees.

     When the leg was exposed, Maxberry shouted, "Crikey!"