This Golden Land (45 page)

     Hannah joined the group at the campfire, trying to think of how to break the latest news to him.

     "You think that's funny, miss," one of the three carrot-topped brothers said with a mouth full of food, "you shoulda been with us the day Jamie here was approached by a toffee-nosed Pom fresh off the boat. The bloke said he'd heard about a curious animal we have here, a kind of bear that lives in trees. So Jamie tells the Pom it's called a Drop Bear. They are called that, says Jamie, because they drop out of gum trees and suck the eyeballs out of anyone walking underneath. The Pom said he really wanted to see one, so Jamie tells him he can protect himself by rubbing dog urine on his head before he goes out walking."

     "You know, Miss Conroy," Blackie White said, as if competing for her attention, "after I first met Jamie up Brisbane way, I took him home and my mother said he hadn't the manners of a pig. But I stuck up for him and said he did."

     "Hey Jamie," Tabby the axeman said, "did ya tell Miss Conroy about the time you boxed a kangaroo?"

     Jamie grinned and said to Hannah, "Yeah, I did box a kangaroo, but I let her win. She had a joey in her pouch."

     As the others laughed, Hannah quietly said, "Mr. O'Brien, may I have a word with you, please?"

     They went to the opal shed—four wagon axles supporting a twig and brush roof—where a makeshift table had been constructed of planks and barrels, upon which were spread the finds from all the shafts: chunks of sandstone embedded with luscious opal of all the colors of the rainbow. A king's ransom.

     When Jamie was sure they were out of the hearing of the others, he turned to Hannah and said, "So how's Church is doing?"

     "His injuries are minor."

     "Thank God. When I saw all that blood, it had me worried."

     Jamie wore no hat so that his hair, the color of antique gold, Hannah
thought, was stirred by the evening wind. But there was enough light from a flickering lantern to make his eyes shine blue like the opals on the table. Without other people around them, with just the silence of the night and the stars above, Hannah felt suddenly nervous. He stood very close to her. He smiled, crinkling the corners of his eyes.

     "Mr. O'Brien, we have a serious situation on our hands. The very thing that I feared has happened. Ralph Gilchrist has scurvy."

     When he didn't react, she added, "You would know it as the Barcoo rot."

     His eyes widened. "Are you sure?"

     "He has bleeding gums. It is the first sign. His condition will get worse."

     "How did he get it?"

     "Scurvy is caused by a diet deficiency. Months of eating nothing but meat and biscuits."

     He rubbed his jaw. "Then how come the rest of us don't have it?"

     "We all will eventually, it is only a matter of time. Before Mr. Maxberry fetched me from the Australia Hotel, I was eating fruit and vegetables. My body most likely still has a store of the necessary acidic juice that prevents scurvy. I am guessing that in the months before you and your men departed Adelaide, you all ate properly. Mr. Gilchrist clearly did not. His diet was already deficient, so he is the first to show the symptoms. But I assure you, Mr. O'Brien, if we do not head back for Adelaide at once, we shall all come down with it."

     "How serious is this scurvy?"

     "It is fatal in every case."

     Jamie frowned. "Don't you have any medicine for it?"

     "Scurvy isn't like illnesses that are accompanied by fever. It is a disease of nutritional lack. Unless he gets proper food—fruit and vegetables—he will die. As will we all, Mr. O'Brien, if we stay out here much longer. If you don't want to go to Adelaide, then at least get your men to the head of Spencer Gulf, where there is fresh water and vegetation."

     The wind picked up, rustling the brush over their heads and making the support poles sway and creak. A few strands of Hannah's hair had come loose from the chignon, to whip across her cheek. Jamie resisted the impulse to reach up and sweep it back.

     "It's not that simple, Hannah." He ran his fingers through his thick hair. "They gave up their jobs, they pulled up stakes, they left wives and sweethearts behind. And they promised them they'd come home rich."

     "We have opals," she said, gesturing to the generous spread on the table.

     "Not enough, not split twelve ways.

     "They can have my share."

     "And they can have mine, too, but it's still not enough. They put their life savings into buying the wagons and horses and all the supplies and tools.

     They'll want their money back and more. You've seen how these men work, how driven they are. With each little bit of opal they find, they are that much more obsessed with finding more."

     When she started to protest, Jamie said, "Hannah, these men are more than casual mates. When Mike and I escaped from the road gang and the police launched a manhunt for us, I went straight to these blokes for help. They gave us a hiding place and food and steered the police in the wrong direction. I owe these men my life, so when I came into the treasure map and knew I was onto something good, I wanted to share it with men who had saved my life."

     The wind gusted, and Hannah had to hold her skirts down. "If it is about repaying a debt, Mr. O'Brien, you can repay them now by saving
their
lives."

     "But it's like this, yes Ralph's come down with the scurvy, but there's no sign of it in the rest of us. They won't leave while they're still feeling healthy, and I'm not sure I want to make them. Look at young Charlie there," Jamie said, pointing to the youngest in the group at the campfire. "I met him up Murrumburrah way ten years ago. This was long before I was put to work on a chain gang. I was free in those days, and on the road looking for shearing work when I found this boy in a field digging a hole. He was crying because he was burying his brother. So I set my swag down and finished digging the grave and then covered up his brother. Charlie told me he was all alone in the world. He was fifteen, I was twenty-three, so I invited him to join me and we ended up at Bunyip cattle station where he got a job as a stockman working under Stinky Sam, whom I'd already made friends with the year before. Six years later, those two hid Mike and me and gave us food and lied to the police who came looking for us. That was at great risk to themselves,
because harboring us would get them prison for sure. I've promised to make them rich men and I can't go back on my promise."

     Jamie fell silent and studied his calloused hands, while the wind gusted around him and Hannah, and the men at the campfire jumped out of the way of flying sparks. "Ralph Gilchrist," he said softly, "was being waylaid by bushrangers when I met him on the road. I joined the fray and together we sent them running. But for me, Church would have died or been left crippled, so he gave me a summer's work and a good life droving bullocks. I've a special friendship with each of those men, Hannah, and I won't let them down."

     She thought about this and something occurred to her. Ever since he told her that he had run away from home, Hannah had thought of him as a man without a family. And yet it was not so. Jamie O'Brien had a very close-knit family. She had never thought that family could be more than flesh and blood. But she thought now of her own close friendships with Alice and Liza Guinness, and she realized that she regarded them as family. It startled her. The night her father died, Hannah had seen herself as being alone in the world. But, like with Jamie, it was not so.

     Before she could try another attempt at persuasion, a sudden bright light illuminated the sky, followed by a deafening crack.

     "What—" Jamie snapped around in the direction of the flash just as a second bright light burst against the dark night. He and Hannah stared in shock at the streaks of blinding white appearing suddenly and branching from the sky to the ground.

     "Hoy! A storm is coming!" shouted Blackie White as the men jumped up from the campfire. "And it's coming
fast!"

     As they now saw monstrous black clouds materializing out of the night, billowing toward them, the men dropped their plates and frantically ran around to all the empty barrels in the camp, up-ending them to catch rain water.

     Another blinding flash as more lightning forked down, striking the opal shed and setting it on fire. Great forks of white light streaked down from the black sky, filling the air with a burning smell. Hannah's skin tingled. She felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. The bolts came quickly now, racing
along the flat plain toward the vulnerable camp, hot-white branches striking the ground five, ten, fifteen times at once. It was as if the whole desert had suddenly been electrified. The thunder was deafening.

     "We have to get into the mines!" Jamie shouted. "We're not safe out here! Somebody get Church!"

     Roddy and his two brothers ran into Ralph Gilchrist's tent and came out with him by arms and legs.

     The wind was furious now, the lightning on the leading edge of a gust front where the new storm was forming. Rain was a miracle and a blessing on this parched land, but the swords of fire that split the sky and sparked the earth were terrifying in their brilliance and intensity, the thunder cracking so loud that it seemed the sky was splitting open.

     Jamie O'Brien took Hannah by the wrist and ran with her. "Down here!" he shouted as, all around, the rest of the men headed for the mine shafts.

     "Hurry, Hannah! I'm right behind you!"

     "What about the horses?"

     "There's nothing we can do for them. Hurry!"

     She descended, groping for the handholds gouged into the stone wall, getting her feet caught in her petticoats. She saw Mike Maxberry send Nan down a nearby shaft, their silhouettes eerie against a sudden fork of lighting. Hannah thought they had been struck, but then she saw Mike climb over the rim shaft after Nan.

     When Hannah was halfway down, she looked up but Jamie wasn't descending. "Mr. O'Brien!" she called. "
Jamie!"

     He appeared briefly. "I have to help the others." And then he was gone.

     When Hannah reached the bottom, she turned her face upward, to watch anxiously for Jamie. Lightning forked and struck the ground, illuminating the night with a brilliance brighter than day. In between lightning bursts, the mine shaft was plunged into the deepest blackness Hannah had ever known. She heard men shouting. She smelled smoke and sulphur.

     And then there he was, lowering himself into the crater. She watched Jamie clamber down, while above, white light flashed in the night and thunder cracked and roared.

     "Everybody's down the shafts," he said breathlessly as he neared her.

     Thunder rumbled and the ground shook. Hannah thought of Ralph Gilchrist's cave-in.

     "We'll be all right down here," Jamie said when he reached the bottom. By the light of a lightning flash, he found a wall torch, which all the mines were equipped with and, striking a match, lit the tarred tip. The flame cast light on a narrow tunnel with rough stone walls. Hannah saw chisels and small pickaxes on the floor. When she saw the blanket, she realized they had chosen Tabby's mine, where he liked to take cat naps.

     The tunnel was narrow, with the ceiling just inches above their heads, and it didn't stretch far underground, about twelve feet Hannah reckoned. It might have felt like a grave, but cool air wafted down the shaft, the torch flame flickered, and Hannah could hear the storm above.

     "Might as well make ourselves comfortable," Jamie said as he took Hannah's hand and helped her down to the floor littered with sandstone chips.

     "What if rain comes down the shaft?" Hannah asked, as he sat next to her, their backs to the wall.

     "I'll keep an eye out. For now it's the lightning we have to worry about."

     Hannah watched shadows dance on the wall opposite. She was able to stretch her legs before her, but there was little room beyond that. Jamie's nearness made her heart race.

     She needed to talk. "Mr. O'Brien, when I came out of Church's tent, you made Tabby apologize to me for something he said about a dog that sat on a tucker box?"

     Jamie laughed softly while, above them, lightning streaked down from the sky and burned the desert floor with a fiery fork. He looked at Hannah, sitting so close to him her arm was pressed against his. This close, and in the glow of the torch on the wall, he saw the fine details of her face, the arched brows, the thick lashes framing irises the color of doves. Her complexion had warmed in the past months. Hannah Conroy was no longer pale but glowed with a healthy Outback tan. He shuddered with desire. "Do you know the story?"

     She shook her head. His nearness made it suddenly impossible to breathe. Hannah struggled with her feelings, fought down the rising desire in her body, the ache that was both familiar and new.

     "It's an old story," he said. Jamie sat with his knees bent, his wrists casually propped on them, a relaxed posture that hid the inner turmoil of his emotions. "It goes back to the early days of exploration in New South Wales. They were hard and hazardous times with supplies and stores having to be transported along makeshift tracks over rough terrain by bullock teams. Sometimes the wagons would get bogged down and the bullocky would have to go in search of help. The story is about the bullocky's dog guarding its master's tuckerbox—where the drover's food is stored—while he was away seeking help.

     Jamie turned to Hannah, his eyes meeting hers. "It was a summer of droving and my team got bogged down nine miles south of Gundagai. After trials and troubles, when I got back, old Prince was still there, guarding my tucker box. But he'd starved to death doing it, because he wouldn't roam from the treasure he was meant to guard. Starved to death guarding a box of food. I buried old Prince in that tucker box he'd sat on for so long."

     "It's a sad story," Hannah said.

     "That's why Tabby had to make a joke. Men don't like to cry in front of their mates, so they say the word wasn't
sat
on the tucker box."