This Golden Land (38 page)

     She fell silent, recalling their last day together, on the road to Kapunda, when they had kissed with such passion, and she had felt Neal's ardor to be as sharp as her own. Her desire for him had not diminished, she loved him as deeply as ever, and yet. . .

     She lifted her eyes to the canvas wall and thought of the man who sat on the other side, a few yards away. Jamie O'Brien. What was it about him that seemed to have cast a spell on her? From that first night in Lulu Forchette's moonlit garden, Hannah had felt strangely enchanted by O'Brien. Every
time she thought about him, and when she had encountered him again as the newsagent's kiosk, Hannah had felt an indescribable draw to him. She was attracted to him, and the attraction was growing. How was that possible? She was in love with Neal. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.

     But she could not shake Jamie O'Brien's eyes from her thoughts, his rakish smile and slightly crooked nose, the way he scoffed at his injury and told humorous tales of drovers and shearers, or of the clever ways he relieved unwitting Poms of their shillings.

     She returned to Neal's photograph. "I am afraid," she said softly to him while outside, men's shouts and laughter rose to the darkening sky, "that if Mr. O'Brien has gangrene, I blame myself. I think now that I acted too hastily in applying the iodine preparation. I had a suspicion that, if the iodine can kill microbiotes, it can also kill living flesh. Perhaps I should not have used it for I fear now that while I might have succeeded in killing harmful microbiotes, I also killed the vessels and nerves that feed the tissues of Mr. O'Brien's wound. Dead flesh becomes gangrene, and I caused it."

     "Hoy in there!" barked Michael Maxberry outside the tent. "Food's ready!"

     Nan had speared some lizards, and Bluey Brown had managed to kill a lone wallaby with his trusty musket, so they had fresh meat for supper. But it was not a joyous meal. Whereas previous nights had been noisy eating affairs, filled with talk of what they were going to do with all the wealth they were going to find out here, tonight's supper was a quiet one as each man focused on the contents of his tin plate, shoulders hunched in the firelight, as if to deny the existence of the stars above, the vast desert around them, and the death of Jamie O'Brien's right leg.

     Church asked about Stinky Sam, wondering out loud where "the old bugger" had gone off to, suddenly turning red and muttering an apology to Hannah.

     "He's gotten lost," Maxberry said as he gave the fire a poke, sending sparks up to the stars.

     Hannah wasn't hungry and so she left the circle to check on her patient.

     Jamie was sitting with legs stretched out, his back against one of the
few boulders in the vicinity. Hannah sat next to him on the gritty ground, gathering her skirts under herself and drawing her shawl tightly about her shoulders. A hundred feet away, eleven men and one Aboriginal woman sat huddled around a fire. The horses were tethered to the wagons where Maxberry and Church had strung a rope of pans and cutlery to sound an alarm in case dingoes came sniffing about, although it had been days since they had seen anything but the occasional kangaroo or wallaby.

     "Mr. O'Brien, would you mind if we waited for morning to remove the bandage? I would prefer to inspect the wound in the sunlight."

     "It's as good a time as any," he said with a smile.

     "Are you worried?"

     "About the gangrene?" He shook his head. "If I die tomorrow, I've had a good life. And if St. Peter doesn't let me through the pearly gates, then I'll just go round and slip through a hole in the fence." He absently rubbed the scars on his left wrist. "Won't be the first time I've stuck it to the authorities."

     "Mr. Maxberry told me that you and he met on a road gang."

     Jamie laughed softly. "I was out along the Snowy River when I met up with a bloke looking to buy kangaroo skins. I told him I had two hundred of them, fine red ones, ears and tails and all. I gave him a price, he agreed to it. I took the buyer's money, told him where to find the skins and I rode off. The troopers caught up with me four days later. The magistrate accused me of malicious intent to defraud the other man. I defended myself by pointing out that the two hundred skins were where I said they would be. 'You failed to mention,' the magistrate said, 'that they were still on the kangaroos!'"

     Jamie laughed again, and Hannah smiled.

     "Unfortunately, he didn't have a sense of humor, not like when I was caught the year before, selling a horse. The buyer listened to my sales pitch, gave me fifty quid for the horse, and when he saw that it was a
clothes-horse
I'd sold him, he had me hauled before the magistrate who had a good sense of humor—and a bit of gin in him I would wager—as he cautioned the buyer to be more careful in the future. I was let go that time. But the kangaroos, they landed me in a chain gang where Mike and I worked awhile before making a good escape in the middle of the night."

     "So you admit you're a swindler."

     "Only when I can't find dishonest work," he said with a wink, and Hannah wondered how a man was about to lose his leg, possibly his life, could carry on a flirtation.

     "Aren't you worried about your victims?"

     "Most of them ask for it. You see that horse, the chestnut mare?" Jamie pointed into the darkness, and Hannah looked back to where the horses were tethered. "It was a race at Chester Downs. I'd won a few quid that day and would have gone home except I saw this fat braggart name of Barlow boasting about his champion race horse. I looked the animal over and said I'd like to buy her. We haggled all afternoon and agreed to a swap of land for the horse. I gave Barlow a government deed to a hundred thousand acres up Kapunda way, and he gave me the mare. That was last week. I reckon by now he's tried to claim his land and has discovered the deed is a forgery."

     "And it doesn't bother you?"

     Jamie searched Hannah's face for signs of judgment and disapproval, but found none. "The man's greed is what got him into trouble. Barlow knew that the land was worth much more than his horse. He thought
he
was swindling
me.
Hannah, I make offers that are too good to be true. An honest man would turn them down."

     "Aren't you afraid Mr. Barlow will have you arrested?"

     "He won't report me to the coppers. His kind don't like to look stupid. He'll cover the loss and keep his pride."

     "You said he asked for it. What does that mean?"

     "I choose my targets carefully, Hannah. Besides, Barlow reminded me of my father."

     Jamie lifted his face and looked long and deep at the black sky. Then he brought his head down and, removing his hat, set it on the sand. Hannah saw how the night breeze played with his dark blond hair, growing long now about his neck. "My parents were among the first free settlers in New South Wales, grabbing up land and riding to success on the sheep's back, as the saying goes. I was the only one born in Australia. My parents came out with children, and then two were born ahead of me but they didn't thrive. I was the last, with my mother dying the following spring of a badly weakened constitution. It could have been a nice life, I suppose, but sudden wealth
changed my father. He had worked another man's sheep farm back in Suffolk, so when he got his fifty-thousand acres, he gave our station the grand sounding name of The Grange and got rich running thousands of sheep on it, sturdy heavy-fleeced merinos. Long ago, he'd been a generous man, but money made him greedy, always wanting more, buying neighboring land from folk who couldn't meet their mortgages. My father covered his humble past by filling the house with expensive furniture, rugs from Turkey, even suits of armor imported from London. He put on the airs of a gentleman and demanded the same of his sons. My brothers complied, going to posh boarding schools, joining clubs in Sydney, wearing top hats and acting like proper English gentleman. But I was different. I was born here. I drew my first breath in the Australian air, and that set me apart from my family. Try though he did, my father couldn't turn me into one of them. I was wild. I couldn't stay put at a desk and a chalk slate. A succession of tutors came and went from The Grange, and my father took a rod to my backside more times than I care to count. When I turned fourteen, he decided to send me back to England, to go to school there and learn to be a gentleman. So I ran away. I packed a swag and hit the track and I've been on the move ever since."

     "Have you ever been back?"

     "Once, a few years ago. The old man had taken a new wife and sprouted a new crop of O'Briens. I went up the front steps but he wouldn't let me in the house. Said he had disowned me and I was never to come back. My bounty poster at the time didn't have as long a list on it as it does now, petty crimes really, but he threatened to send for the troopers. He wasn't a total bastard, though. He gave me an hour's head start."

     He looked at Hannah for a long moment, his eyes roving her face, taking in the dainty bonnet capping dark hair that was gathered in a knot at the nape of her neck. Out here in the rough and ready wilderness, he thought, and she still looks like a lady. "Let me give you a bit of Outback wisdom, Hannah."

     She had never given him permission to address her by her first name, nor had he ever asked. But she did not protest.

     "The trick in life, Hannah," he said, "is to cram everything into the moment. All your hours and days, all your pasts and futures. Compress then into
now
, and savor it like a rich man's feast."

     "And live outside the law?"

     He searched again for signs of judgment, but found none. She was curious about him, he knew, and she deserved an answer. "I don't live
outside
the law, Hannah. I live by my own law, pure and simple. No toffee-nosed Pom in a white powdered wig twelve thousand miles away is going to tell Jamie O'Brien of the lower Murrimbidgee how to live."

     He picked up the enamel cup that sat in the sand near his hat and, lifting it in a toast, took a sip. Hannah knew it was whiskey. O'Brien set the cup down and said with a sigh, "I feel sorry for the bloke who doesn't drink."

     "Why?"

     "Because when he wakes up in the morning, that's the best he's going to feel all day."

     Jamie shifted his weight and winced.

     "Pain?" Hannah asked in alarm, and hope.

     "There's that one tie that's still bothering me. If you could loosen it a bit?"

     Tension on the splint bindings had had to be adjusted over the days, first to accommodate swelling, and then to tightened the splints as the swelling had gone down. Hannah delicately picked at the knotted rag and when the two ends fell away, she stared in horror.

     In the light of the moon and the stars, Hannah saw a great black spot staining the bandage directly above the sutured wound. She closed her eyes. It
was
gangrene. The necrosis had seeped up through the bandage. There was no hope.

     "Everything okay?" Jamie asked.

     "I'm just re-tying it," she said, picking up the filthy ends of the rag with shaking hands and re-doing the knot, covering the horrific black spot.

     Jamie rubbed his stubbled jaw and said, "Would you do me a favor, Hannah? Will you remove your bonnet? Just for tonight?" He added with a grin: "Call it a dying man's wish."

     Hannah thought of the black spot on Jamie's bandage, thought about how everything was going to be different tomorrow, and so, reaching up, she removed the pins and then the bonnet, setting it aside on the sand.

     "That's much better," Jamie said, his gaze brashly roving the hair that
shone like jet in the moonlight. Then his eyes met hers and Hannah saw his pale blue irises reflect starlight and moonlight, and Hannah found herself thinking what an attractive man O'Brien was, and she realized she was falling under a strange spell. She rubbed her arms. Chill was seeping through the wool of her shawl, through the fabric of her dress, through her skin and flesh right into the marrow of her bones. She knew it had nothing to do with the cold night.

     "I want to share some magic with you," he said. Jamie reached into his pants pocket and brought something out. "You will need to remove your glove for this."

     Hannah did so, and was startled when Jamie placed something cool and smooth on her palm. "Feel that?" he said softly. "Like holding a cloud."

     The opal was the size and shape of a robin's egg, smooth and soft. She turned the pale blue stone this way and that, catching moonlight and shooting back colors, and it made her think of Jamie O'Brien's eyes.

     "Look into it, Hannah, move it about. Go into the heart of the stone and let the colors swirl around you, bring you in to where there is only peace and silence. Feel the colors embracing you. The stone is cool, the colors are bright. The Aborigines believe opals are healing stones. They're the eggs laid by the Rainbow Serpent and they possess tremendous power to heal and to soothe."

     Hannah was mesmerized by the stone, thinking it possessed the best characteristics of the most beautiful of gemstones: the fine sparkle of al-mandine, the shining purple of amethyst, the golden yellow of topaz, and the deep blue of sapphire. Now she understood Jamie's passion to find more.

     As she started to hand it back to him, he said, "Keep it. As payment for leaving your comfortable hotel and coming out here to help me. Besides, we'll be finding plenty more." Then, looking into her eyes, he said, "Stay with me tonight, Hannah."

     She went back to her tent to fetch two blankets, and settled next to Jamie, who made a place for her at his side with his arm outstretched so that it curled protectively around her shoulders when she leaned into him. Hannah spread the blankets over the two of them and, resting her head on his chest, lay for a long while listening to the steady beating of his heart.

     Hannah closed her eyes, spilling tears onto the dusty fabric of his shirt. As he started to tell her a humorous Outback tale about a race and an old drover's horse, Hannah listened to Jamie's voice deep within his chest, and the rhythm of a strong, brash heart. And she thought that, under other circumstances, in another time, she could fall in love with this man.