Code of Honor (Australian Destiny Book #1) (30 page)

It wasn’t easy for him, getting outside. Debris from the splintered wagon box blocked the doorway; he had to climb over and through the wreckage. The porch roof had collapsed, forcing him to creep beneath it.

The living horse struggled mightily beneath the dead one.

Mr. Frobel waved his gun at the mess. “Hated to shoot the horse, but the bloody galah was gonna fire the house. I stomped the torch out. No danger now.”

“He’s gone?”

“Saw a glimpse of him ducking into the forest off that way. Quick as a cat, that feller, for as old as he looks. Didn’t seem hurt. Or repentant.”

Luke stared off at the forest wall. He grimaced. “Let’s dig this horse out. Then … well, I don’t know what.”

Samantha clambered over and under splintered wreckage. With only half her attention, she performed her assigned task of sitting on the horse’s head while the two strong men cut its dead companion free and rolled it aside.

Somewhere in that deadly forest, two men stalked each other. She knew them both. No matter who won, she would mourn. She could not win. The woes plaguing her beloved Erin were not limited to the Emerald Isle. They were here with her, now.

There is no such thing as escape to peace. Perhaps, there is no such thing as peace.

Chapter Twenty-four

Fire and Fury

Burriwi particularly relished that breath of time between day and night that is neither, yet both. With clucks and murmurs the birds of day settled themselves, as with rustling and flitting the creatures of night began to stir. The air paused between its rhythms of sea breeze and land breeze. The forest for these few moments dimmed without turning black; it gave him the time needed to reattune his senses from day-brightness to night-darkness.

He dropped to a comfortable squat and leaned his back against a plum tree. With noisy flaps and flibbers, a fruit bat arrived overhead and commenced its breakfast. Burriwi thought of Luke Vinson’s first encounter with fruit bats and smiled to himself. Whitefellers have the strangest attitudes about bats. Luke spent half that night telling Burriwi about vampires, some doctor named Frank Stine who tried to be God…. Sometime Burriwi would have the opportunity to repeat Luke’s own stories to him, word for word. Luke and his books. Burriwi smiled again.

A soft patter of rain began as the day dribbled to an end. This night would soon be here; the rain would dull Burriwi’s ability to hear and the darkness was robbing him of vision. He must be especially careful.

Here came Luke up the path between the house and stable. Luke. Burriwi could feel him without following with his ears, though Luke made so much noise any child could tell you exactly where he was. The man with him, that Martin Frobel, made much less noise and bothered the spirits of the forest hardly at all. The man was a native of the wide open land out beyond Woop Woop; you could feel it in him, that different spirit all the outback natives, black or white, shared.

How strange, this. Burriwi could still discern the spirits, those of men and those not of men. But he no longer felt at one with them. Now that he had cast his lot with the great God of Luke’s book, and with that God’s Son, he was in some way separated from the old familiar realities beyond sight and sound. Whitefellers had erected a dog fence mostway across Australia, they said—to keep the dingoes out of the sheep. That’s how Burriwi felt, like the dingoes must feel; they could see the sheep but they couldn’t get to them. Was his own spirit somehow changed? He must discuss this new thing with Luke. Or perhaps with Abner Gardell. That man understood the bush.

Gardell versus Sloan. A difficult choice. Burriwi might well be called upon to declare his loyalty to one or the other. Sloan, while not generous, did provide tucker and sometimes turps. Sloan had given both his crocodiles to the clan when by rights he could have kept at least portions of each. But Gardell was much closer in spirit.

Luke and his Martin friend were far enough ahead. Burriwi picked up his spear and stood. Was the cook coming? No. She must be remaining at the house. She was a spirit at odds with the voices of the forest! She didn’t just chill the spirits; she antagonized them, and they her.

The rain came harder and louder now. Gunfire erupted up by the stables—a shotgun blast, a large-calibre pistol, another shotgun blast. The shotgun would be Sloan’s and it was spent now. He must have found Gardell.

Burriwi shinned up the poinciana tree just north of the stable area. From here he could see all the open lot, not to mention most of the forest wall around. This high up, he was relatively safe from wild shots.

Sloan, behind Sheba’s hardwood manger, tossed his shotgun aside and yanked a pistol from his belt at the small of his back. There was Gardell, behind the big pandanus near the tin water tank. Bent over double, Sloan scurried like a crab down the length of the stable, from manger to manger. He dived around the far end beyond Gypsy and fired wildly at the water tank, three or four fast shots. In gracefully curved streams, water spewed from the neat round holes in the tank.

Gardell stepped out just long enough to return a couple shots and ducked back to safety. “More than time for the piper to be paid, Sloan. Your daddy left you a fine legacy of debt. A life for a life. Too bad you can’t pay two lives, for that’s what’s owed. Maybe even three, if we count the Butts fellow. How does that go … ? McGonigan’s blood cries out to me from the ground.”

“You’re sick, Gardell. That generation’s dead and gone. I’m not my father’s keeper any more than I’m my brother’s.”

Luke’s voice cut in from twenty feet behind Gardell. “It’s God who said that, Abner, and you’re not God. He’s the only one can judge. Not you.”

Gardell cried out, “Leave us alone, Vinson!”

Simultaneously, Sloan shouted, “You interfere and I’ll be on your hammer just the same as his. You’ve done enough, Vinson.”

Undaunted in the least, Luke called, “‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ Abner. Let Him take care of it.”

“I’m doing God’s will. The sins of the fathers are visited on the children unto the fourth generation.”

Sloan popped out and fired twice, his pistol steadied in both hands. Was he shooting at Gardell or at the voice of the preacher in the forest? The gathering gloom of dusk dulled his vision; from his high angle, Burriwi couldn’t really tell.

Luke’s open-country companion swore and said something about being a fool. The forest rustled above the patter of the rain; its voices gasped.

And here stood Luke, like a shag on a rock, out in the clearing. He carried his book. No gun, no spear, not even a stone to throw. He stepped into the thirty-yard-long clearing between Sloan and the pandanus palm behind the water tank. His book! Even from the height of this tree, Burriwi could feel the hostility in the two white-feller adversaries. They were determined to kill and there stood Luke weaponless but for his book. The boy was a bit strange (why count teeth?), but Burriwi would not have guessed he was so utterly foolish and careless of life.

Luke’s voice rang clear on the still and ominous air. “That’s from Jeremiah, Abner. Know what else it says? ‘In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity; every man that eateth the sour grapes,
his
teeth shall be set on edge.’” Gardell was using the lull to better his own position beyond the water tank. So, Burriwi noted, was Sloan.

Luke turned his back on Sloan. “I spent a little time making certain of the text, Abner. Deuteronomy clinches it. ‘The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers; every man shall be put to death for his own sin.’ That’s God’s will, Abner, and you’re not in it.”

Burriwi could feel the tension from away up here. Sloan was bent over attending his pistol—reloading, no doubt.

Sloan exploded up and out of his hiding place. He fired at the pandanus and leaped the manger. He hunched down behind his big burly wagon horse now. The animal rolled its eyes and shifted back and forth nervously in its stall.

Luke wheeled to face him. “You, Sloan! I opposed you bef—”

Three steel chains stretched across the front of each stall to keep its horse inside. Burriwi himself had hooked and unhooked those chains many times when he helped Fat Dog with the horses. Sloan didn’t bother with them. He came diving forward; he sprawled on his belly under the chains and fired at Luke!

Burriwi could hear the slug hit. The preacher staggered backward—done in, or just ducking? Burriwi couldn’t tell from here. Almost instantly Luke’s friend Martin roared something and opened fire. Gardell screamed “No!” and blasted away. The clearing filled with drifting gunsmoke. That and the near darkness obscured Burriwi’s view. Curious how driving rain fails to wash away smoke.

Sloan was on his knees now. His gun clicked; it clicked again. The gunsmoke began leisurely to lift away and dissipate. Burriwi could smell it up here now.

Gardell, with a wicked grin, stepped boldly out and stood before the water tank, his gun on Sloan. “I still have a few shells left. One from my father, one from McGonigan, one from Butts.”

Burriwi expected fear on Sloan’s face; darkness and some smoke still obscured his vision, but all he could see was defiance. Defiance and hatred.

Movement in the haze—Luke regained his feet and planted himself squarely in front of Sloan, facing Gardell. “Here’s where you choose, Abner. Your own revenge, or God’s way. But they’re not the same thing. Tell me to move aside and I will. I won’t try to take your choice away from you. But you have to tell me to.”

For once, Sloan and Gardell agreed on something. As one they shouted at Luke, “This is none of your business, Vinson!”

Luke wheeled on Sloan and pointed his Bible at him. “You stay out of this, Sloan!”

The planter knelt there in the stall door, the chains pressing his back, and gaped. The hatred faded to utter surprise.

Luke turned his back on the man who had just tried to kill him and faced Gardell. “It
is
my business, Abner.” He wagged his Bible in Gardell’s face. “You’re doing what my Lord forbids and then trying to get Him to take the blame for it. It’s your vendetta, not God’s, and you’ll pay bitterly for the lie, I promise you. I’m trying to save you from that.”

“I waited for this too long, Luke. Set him up—sent him warnings so he could worry and fret, like my mum fretted all those years. His father destroyed both my fathers. Both.”

“And you think God’s going to let that sort of thing slip by Him? Crikey, Abner! You can trust Him better than that!”

“Don’t ask me not to. You got no right to ask me not.”

Luke’s voice rolled on. “God said in Ezekiel that the soul of the father and the soul of the son are His, and the soul that sins will die. Don’t you see? It’s not you against Sloan, two boys scrapping in a back alley, or I’d stand back and let you both have at. It’s God against Satan for control of
you
!”

Sloan broke his pistol open to reload. He glanced beyond the clearing to the pastoralist and at Martin’s large gun. He laid his empty pistol in the mud.

“Let God take care of Conal Sloan’s sin, Abner. Don’t bring sin upon yourself by killing a man for someone else’s crime.”

What was wrong with Luke’s book? Burriwi wagged his head. Bullet damage. It worked better than a hard kangaroo hide shield, for sure. Kangaroo hide doesn’t stop bullets at close range.

The haze of gunsmoke nearly cleared before anyone moved.

Gardell stared at Sloan as if Luke were not there. His arm relaxed until his gun pointed at the rain-beaten mud by his side. “If you’re destined to burn in hell, I leave it to God to strike the match.” Wearily he walked past Luke and Sloan, across the open stable yard, and disappeared into the darkness and tangle of the forest. The voices accepted him instantly and said nothing to betray his route or passing.

Luke’s book had won out over guns and hatred! Burriwi grinned. He’d chosen the right course, all right! An amazing and powerful thing, Luke’s book about his God. And an amazing and powerful God, to give such strength to the preacher man whom the forest spirits ridiculed.

Martin moved out into the open, his pistol in his hand. “Now what?”

Burriwi sniffed and sniffed again. It wasn’t the unique tang of gunsmoke. “Luke!” he called from his high roost. “Fire! Fire from the house!”

A splintering
crack
and the kitchen lit up orange. Samantha threw the tea billy, the last of her water, at the nearest flames. They sputtered and flared anew. She whipped the cloth off the table and beat at them wildly. That was an error; the cloth was soaked with coal oil no less than was the floor and wall. The glass from the kerosene jug Gardell had thrown crunched under her shoes.

The fire loved its tasty tidbit and ate instantly into the cloth. She threw it aside as flame rushed at her face. The kitchen was lost. She must retrench and fight it from the hall. If she could somehow cut it off at this end of the ell, the rest of the house would be safe. Even if it dropped brands on the roof, it could not spread—not with rain wetting down the tin.

Cole Sloan!
Oh, God, please don’t let Abner kill him!

Sloan, Gardell, Luke—the distant gunfire had ceased. What had happened? Were any left to return to help her? She mustn’t cower now. She backed into the black, smoke-filled hall and slammed the kitchen door, cutting off the horror in there. The wall beside her, the wall of Linnet’s room, radiated heat. She laid a hand on it; it was too hot to touch. She heard crackling overhead; the fire was moving through the rafters above the ceiling!

The eggshell of wall exploded in orange fury. The fire in Linnet’s room had broken out into the hallway. With a shriek Samantha turned and ran through the darkness. She must do something to save the house, but she was helpless now. The only available water, the slashing, stinging rain, was not enough to stem the blaze. She heard a tin sheet pop and clang on the roof.

The hallway was so filled with smoke now, even were it noon instead of dusk, Samantha could not see. The smoke burned her eyes; they closed and filled with tears. The smoke set fire to her lungs and choked her; she couldn’t breathe.