To Chase the Storm: The Frontier Series 4 (29 page)

The siege of Elands River was entering its second week but all that meant for young Matthew was that he was still alive to kill more Dutchmen. He had changed in ways that would never allow him to go
back to his youth. Nor would he ever again be completely at ease with those who had not known the savage fury of battle. In the few moments of snatched sleep between guard duty and standing to at the breastworks, fevered and fitful dreams echoed with screams. Sometimes the screams woke him and a hand on his shoulder – and a gentle, gruff word – told him that the screams were his. At those times he would shake off the trembling and try to think about a beauty that lay beyond the shattered land around him. He would withdraw into a place where he was once again sitting on the verandah at his mother’s Townsville house enjoying a sunset. Or he would remember the gentle touch of the beautiful Fenella Macintosh, the feeling of her hand in his as they walked side by side up the flower-strewn path from the harbour’s edge to her home. If he tried hard enough, Matthew could smell her sweet perfume amongst the acrid stench of cordite and lyddite.

TWENTY-EIGHT

S
winging himself into the saddle, Nerambura Duffy waved back to the wagon. Karl and Helen returned the gesture while young Alexander, holding one hand over his eyes against the glare of the rising sun over the red plains also waved.

Nerambura had informed Michael and the others over the campfire the previous evening that he would bypass Cloncurry to ride north into the Godkin Range. Michael had not questioned why he had made his decision to ride on in search of Wallarie; he had long accepted that the young man might have a good idea where he might find the wily old warrior.

When Nerambura was a shimmering silhouette on the horizon of the termite nest plain, Michael gazed west. The strange, rugged outcrops of ancient rocks jutted into the azure sky. ‘The ’curry’s just west of here,’ he said. ‘According to my reckoning, we
should reach it in a few hours.’ He folded a map and placed it inside his shirt.

Just after noon they reached the tiny township that lay amongst the stony outcrops. As unimpressive as it was, the town of timber and corrugated iron was a vital oasis on the vast expanse of brigalow plains. It provided the services that made life bearable for parched and weary travellers on the frontier.

The first service that the Irishman sought was a hotel to provide Helen and her husband with the more refined pleasures of civilisation: a hot bath, clean sheets on a soft bed, and a meal not cooked in the ashes of a campfire. Michael had been prepared to press on but he had sensed that a night in town would be a blessing for the von Fellmanns. They were not bush people, although they were trying hard to be so.

The wagon stopped in front of a low-set building with a wide verandah at the front. A motley crew of bearded stockmen and scrawny dogs sprawled, eyeing the newcomers, especially Helen, with some interest. The pastor helped Helen down from the wagon and Michael hitched his horse to a rail in front of a hotel.

‘Wait here,’ Michael said. ‘I’ll go and see if they have any rooms for us.’

Michael was able to secure a room for von Fellmann and his wife and a couple of beds on the verandah at the rear of the hotel for himself and young Alex. But when he returned to inform his small party of his success he walked into trouble. A young, partially inebriated stockman was facing down
the pastor in the dusty street. Helen and Alex stood ashen faced, watching the confrontation unfold.

‘A bloody sausage eater!’ the tough-looking stockman spat as the pastor attempted to step back, hands raised to ward off the belligerent man.

‘What’s the trouble here?’ Michael asked mildly with a faint smile on his face, stepping between the two unequally matched men.

The stockman turned on Michael. ‘You’re the fella who rode in with these German bastards,’ he snarled as he sized up Michael. ‘You on the side of these bastards giving aid to the bloody Dutchmen over in South Africa against our mates?’

‘On the first count, you are right,’ Michael said calmly. ‘I rode in with the pastor and his wife. But on the second, I think we need clarification, boyo.’

‘What’s this clarification yer talkin’ about?’ the stockman asked suspiciously as he glanced at his mates on the verandah who were watching with some amusement.

‘What I mean by clarification is this,’ Michael replied as he swung a left hook into the young stockman’s stomach. The stockman gasped and fell to his knees with his eyes bulging. He gripped his stomach, desperately seeking air. The blow that had connected was harder than that from any horse that had ever kicked him. A low gasp of surprise rose from those who watched. ‘That’s what clarification means.’

‘Get up and give ’im a thrashin’, Jacko,’ a voice called angrily from the verandah. ‘Don’t let the old bastard do yer. It was a lucky punch.’

The young stockman’s face was a mask of rage as he caught his breath and glowered up at the man standing over him with a faint smile on his face. Taking a breath, the stockman lurched to his feet and with a roar swung at Michael who easily parried the wildly thrown punch, stepping inside to deliver a barrage of well-aimed punches to the man’s face and midriff. Michael was once again the champion bare knuckle fighter of Redfern’s backstreets. His skills had been used many times in his violent life. Although the younger man stood as tall as Michael, and was as broad in the shoulders, he was no match for years of accumulated experience.

The smile was gone from Michael’s face now as he waded into the stockman who reeled under the systematically delivered blows. The spectators watched with breathless awe as Michael turned the face of the district’s champion brawler into a bloody mess. With a broken nose and swollen eyes, all the stockman could do was retreat. He desperately attempted to block the punches that came with blurring speed. Finally, he crashed on the verandah at the feet of his mates, who stepped back to avoid spilling their beers.

Michael paused with his fists half raised to see if the young stockman was foolish enough to attempt to rise. He did not, but lay on the verandah, doubled up in his pain.

‘Anyone else here need clarification?’ Michael asked, glaring around at the faces of the bearded spectators. ‘Anyone here think I was just lucky?’

‘Not us, mate,’ one of the men mumbled, still
awed by the stranger’s skill with his fists. ‘Haven’t seen anything like that around here for a long time.’ Michael smiled and unexpectedly held out his hand to the young man on the verandah. ‘You okay, young fella?’ he inquired gently.

The young man spat a glob of blood from where one of his few remaining teeth had been, and tried to smile. ‘Bloody tooth was giving me trouble anyway,’ he said as he accepted the hand of friendship. ‘For an old man you hit like a bloody kicking horse. Maybe even harder.’

‘I’ll shout you and your mates to a round in the hotel and we will forget what happened here.’

The stockman frowned as he was helped to his feet and rubbed his jaw.

‘Yer a strange one, mate,’ he said. ‘But yer all right. I think I’ll buy you a beer. Yer the first bloke who ever put me down around here.’ The tension was gone and he slapped Michael on the back. ‘Me name’s Jacko, an’ these are me mates.’

Helen was still transfixed by the sudden unleashing of violence that had occurred. One second two men appeared to be intent on killing each other and the next they were the best of friends, slapping each other on the back. She shifted her gaze to Michael’s face, unmarked by the fight, and again thought her Aunt Penelope may have been right. Fighter, painter, poet – and lover. To date she had only seen a gentle, sensitive man old enough to be her father, but she remembered how he had in fact been her mother’s lover and was the father of her half-brother, Patrick Duffy. Now she found herself wondering at his skills
as a lover and felt guilt surge through her body. He was extremely dangerous to women, she reminded herself, despite his age. But he was also a man who had seen much violence in his life. Not all his scars, she suspected, were physical.

Michael turned from the verandah with a smile and, as if reading her thoughts, winked. ‘You will find a nice room waiting for you inside. And I wouldn’t mind if you looked after young Alex for me while I go and have a drink with the boys.’

Helen nodded, speechless.

The word quickly spread around the little frontier town of Jacko’s defeat at the fists of the one-eyed stranger. And the word spread to the publican’s wife, a pretty woman in her mid-forties with flaming red hair and milky pale skin. Between rounds in the busy afternoon swill of the hotel’s public bar, she was able to engage the stranger in light conversation. She could not help being entranced by his easygoing charm and slow smile. Here was a gentleman, rare in the rough back country of Queensland.

Michael was not slow to see the signs. The publican’s wife was more than just interested in him as another patron of the hotel. There was something in her eyes and the way her hand lingered on his when she served him a tot of rum. It was only a matter of waiting for the cloak of night to arrive to see if he would taste more than the alcohol the hotel had to offer.

While his wife took Alex for a walk to see the few shops in the town, Karl decided to remain in the tiny hotel room to make notes on his meeting with the
Aborigines he had encountered east of Cloncurry. Helen did not mind and Alex proved to be good company, although his recounting the way Mr O’Flynn had beaten the younger stockman did become repetitive.

‘He was so fast, Aunt Helen, and when he hit the other man . . . I wonder if Mr O’Flynn could teach me to fight like that?’

She smiled and tolerated his excited prattle. ‘Fighting is not good, Alexander,’ she replied gently. ‘It is not God’s way.’

‘Yes, but if Mr O’Flynn had not hit the other man then he would have hurt the pastor. And he might have hurt you and me.’

‘I’m sure your Uncle Karl would have talked the man out of hurting us. Your uncle is a very learned man of books and knows many things.’

‘But he does not know how to fight like Mr O’Flynn,’ the boy replied somewhat tactlessly as he walked beside his aunt along the dusty street. ‘Sometimes books are no good out here.’

Helen had to agree with the boy’s observations. This was a strange and hostile land where values were measured according to a tough, dogged spirit of survival – not the works of philosophers writing from the comfort of civilisation. As she walked she was hardly aware of the dusty streets and the frontier town’s shops. Her thoughts were in turmoil as she fought her rising feelings. Although she was desperately attempting to quash her desire for Michael, she could not help wondering what it would be like to just once in her life feel his body become part of hers.

When Helen and Alex finally returned to the hotel mid-afternoon, Michael Duffy was leading the bar in a round of Irish songs. Helen went to her room where she found her husband busy at his notes. She sat on the bed and watched him scribbling in his journal, feeling a desperate need for physical release. But she knew her pious husband was immune from such carnal cravings so she lay back on the bed and allowed him to continue with his work. She soon fell asleep, waking only when it was time to join him and the others for a meal in the hotel’s dining room.

TWENTY-NINE

M
ichael was not at dinner and nor was he still drinking in the public bar. Helen did not really know why she should be concerned except that she and Karl needed him to guide them into the Godkin Ranges north of Cloncurry the next day. She was annoyed that he should disappear for the evening. He would be of no use if he turned up drunk or hungover.

She had little appetite for the plate of badly cooked steak on the cracked china plate and complained peevishly to the young girl who served the meal. But, a growing boy with a big appetite, Alex did not mind the overcooked meat and mushy vegetables. The journey was turning his puppy fat into muscle and his fair skin was now tanned. He bore little resemblance to the pallid, timid boy who lived overlooking Sydney’s magnificent harbour.

Karl was preoccupied but still found the stifling heat had taken much of his appetite. He would have preferred a plate of venison accompanied by a goblet of crisp, chilled Rhine wine, but such luxuries were things of his father’s home in Prussia. The best he could get here was a dirty tumbler of lukewarm gin. He glanced up at his wife when she snapped at the waitress, a girl of barely fourteen wearing a grubby dress that looked as if it had not been changed in many dinner sittings. ‘Hush, my wife,’ he said gently in German. ‘The young lady is not the cook of this meal before us.’

The girl stood aside and curled her lip with contempt for the churlish foreigners.

‘Where is your cook?’ Helen asked angrily. ‘I would like to send this back to the kitchen.’

‘Dunno,’ the girl answered with a sneer. ‘Probably somewhere with that big Irishman, for all I know. Old Arthur’s doin’ the cookin.’

Helen stared at the girl in bewilderment. ‘With the cook!’

‘Yeah, probably. She’s ’ad her eye on him all arvo. Just hope Mr Crofton don’t find out or ’e will give her a real thrashin’. ’E’s the publican.’

‘But you know,’ Helen argued. ‘Why should the innkeeper not also know?’

The girl gave Helen a curious look.

‘’E an’ his missus don’ get on. Don’t think ’e cares so long as she keeps to ’erself what she does,’ the brazen waitress replied with an understanding far beyond her tender years.

Helen dropped her line of inquiry and pushed her plate aside.

The tinned peaches that followed the main course proved to be somewhat more appetising. Karl commented that they should stock up on tinned fruit from the local store before they set out on the next leg of their search but Helen paid him little heed. Her thoughts were focused on Michael’s betrayal. Betrayal of what? The question echoed in her mind as they left the dining room and headed for their beds, the drunken merriment of the raucous frontiersmen carrying with them to their stuffy room.