East of Outback (14 page)

For an hour they threaded from tunnel to tunnel, from level to level, sometimes up, usually down. Where were they, and how deep in the earth? Cold fear gripped Colin’s heart and seemed to squeeze life from him. He could never find his way back. His last day on earth might well end hundreds of feet beneath it.

Twice they hit deadends and had to backtrack to some other option. Sometimes Colin led, sometimes the dog. Colin was sure now that Max was just as lost as he was. If only they could have followed the dog through that narrow side drift, maybe that would have been the way out—or would it?

He jerked to a halt so suddenly the mare bumped into him. A chasm yawned, wall to wall, right in front of him. Two planks stretched across it, a terrifying makeshift bridge. Colin flashed his headlamp down; nothing. He looked up. Nothing. Here was an abandoned vertical shaft from some prior mining venture, penetrating to infinity in both directions—and nothing to cross it but two thin boards.

Max trotted briskly across. The planks rattled. He reached ground on the other side, watching, waiting. He seemed to sense the dilemma.

The planks would hold Colin if he didn’t lose his nerve or his balance. But could they hold a thousand-pound horse? Even if they could, she’d never cross them. The tunnel was too low for her to jump the hole, too narrow to turn her around. Colin felt the sobbing well up within him again, contrary to his best intentions—tears of frustration and fear.

What choice was there? His mare would die a slow death by starvation, if left to herself, or plunge to an instant death in the gorge below. Back her up? She didn’t back well under the best of circumstances. What if she wedged sideways? He’d faced that before.

Then Colin remembered the words of old Captain Foulard:
I feel risky today. Too much happen to that pearl. Charmed, that pearl. I’ll win
.

The lusty Kanaka did not shy away from risking everything he had, not just in the matter of the pearl, but daily, on the unpredictable sea. Colin led the mare to the very edge and crossed on the boards, his eyes set firmly upon Max. The planks strained and creaked with his weight.

Colin reveled but a moment in the solid footing of the far side. “Come, girl.” He tugged gently at the leadline. “Come on. You’re charmed, lass. Come!”

For minutes the mare repeatedly moved forward, hesitated, stopped, shifted her weight back. She took a step onto the planks, stepped back. Colin murmured encouragement, keeping his headlamp shining, on the boards.

Suddenly she bolted forward, wide-eyed, clattering, lunging. Her shoulder hit Colin and squashed him against the wall. The glory of that blow struck him:
The mare’s shoulder had hit him; she was over here!
The planks clunked and clattered to oblivion down the hole. There was no turning back now; the chasm blocked their return.

Suddenly Colin’s spirits soared, without a solid reason in the world to feel exuberant. He urged the horse forward down the tight and narrow drift, Max following at a steady lope.

Beyond a curve up ahead shone a glimmer of pallid light. Light? But wait; it couldn’t be the sunlight—not in these depths. Had they somehow doubled back to the Southern Star?

A cheerful voice boomed in the distance, “Why, here’s Bluey, mates! Alio, Blue, old boy!”

Colin rounded the shallow curve and came up flush against a gate of dry, dusty timbers. And beyond the gate was the light! Naked, white light bulbs hung from the ceiling of a great, broad tunnel! Max had slipped easily under the gate boards, and bellied out ten feet from the miners, begging for tidbits.

Half a dozen men sat beneath the nearest light bulb, resting at their morning tea. One of them pointed at Colin, “Mmph, thbmmph.” Dry crumbs spattered from his mouth.

No longer lost! Safe at last from Uncle Liam’s rage! The relief welled up in Colin like a pot boiling over. His eyes and his nose were suddenly wet and the shame nearly blinded him. Here he stood in front of these strangers, strong miners all, blubbering like an infant.

“Saw you in the Exchange Saturday night, lad. Your mate’s cooking our lunch. Here to see him, are you?”

It was the Perseverance!

A miner with more presence of mind than the rest finally leaped to his feet. “Don’t know how you got here, lad, but you sure must have a tale to tell. Help me here, Smitty, with these timbers; let the lad through. Starve the bardies, he’s got a horse with him!”

The succeeding events would become a jumble in Colin’s memory. The men tore down the rickety barrier with their bare hands and brought him into the welcome light, wagging their heads over the open wounds and scrapes on Max’s Lady. Now that Colin could see them in decent light, his heart wrenched anew to think he was responsible for this!

Then he relayed the whole incredible story, including Dizzy’s dream of owning a claim, the reason he’d searched for his money in the first place. The miners marveled over the details of his underground journey from the Star—a horse across the chasm on two narrow planks of wood? Incredible.

“You’ve the bill of sale for this horse, lad?”

“Here somewhere, I think.” Colin dug the worn, folded paper out of his wallet.

The miner studied it and nodded. “Good-o. At least your uncles can’t claim ownership of your horse. Now here’s what you do, lad. We’ll send your horse to the surface up our number two shaft; she should fit. We’ll drape her in hessian, to keep from bunging her up worse’n she is. Then you ride straight to the constable’s. Show him this bill of sale to confirm the horse is yours. Next, ask him to go with you to your uncles’ place. Clean your stuff out of there with the constable at your side for protection. You’re not safe there alone. He’ll be the witness that you took nothing that wasn’t your own. Then you leave the Star behind—for good.”

Colin nodded, too tired to disagree. He still felt choked up, and tears still stained his cheeks; but no one chided or teased. Their tolerance surprised and comforted him.

He decided to follow their advice to the letter, and even made some decisions of his own. Saying a brief goodbye to Dizzy on the way out, he promised to send what money he could spare.

Soul-weary and virtually penniless, Colin put Kalgoorlie behind him. By noon he was ten miles east of town, following not a proper track but rather the railway, with Max plodding along fifty feet to the rear.

______

“When shall we reach Kalgoorlie, please?” Hannah asked the conductor almost in spite of herself, for she’d asked the same question not an hour ago.

He smiled. “Another hour, miss.”

“Thank you.” Her stomach gurgled. How embarrassing!

She sat staring out the window at the flatness, wishing she had something, anything, to eat.

A horseman rode by in the distance, headed east.

Hannah stared. She shrieked. She leaped from her seat and ran to the front of the car. “Let me off! Let me off! My brother’s out there!”

“I’m sorry, miss. Next stop’s Kalgoorlie. No doubt you are mistaken and your brother’s waiting for you at the depot.”

She shoved past the startled man and grabbed the great iron handle on the door. The fellow cried out, yelled at her not to touch it. She wrenched the bar and let go as the door whooshed open.

Rough, dry bushes whipped by the opening, and the endless ochre dirt trundled beneath in a blur. The train was moving so fast! If she paused to think she would lose everything. Frantically she shut her eyes and took the leap.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

S
LEEPERS

Mary Aileen picked at the food on her plate, but she certainly didn’t feel like eating. She glanced over at Edan. He was putting his potatoes and lamb away stoically, quietly, the way he did everything else. Two chairs empty at the table tonight—she secretly rejoiced that Mum successfully resisted Papa when he decreed that the chairs be removed. Colin and Hannah were part of this family. Mary Aileen had a tremendous fear that they would be dismissed and forgotten. Could Papa do such a thing? She wasn’t really sure. He was so incredibly hurt and angry.

Edan excused himself and left the table. Mary Aileen thought about an American nursery rhyme she’d read in a schoolbook, “Ten Little Indians.” One by one misfortune befell them “until there were none.” She might be glad the chairs remained, but she could not bear to look at them.

Mum finished her meal and laid her silverware methodically across the plate. “Have you heard yet from the constable in Kalgoorlie, Cole?”

“His wire arrived this afternoon. He says Colin left town and no one resembling Hannah detrained. He’s investigating, though.”

“She’d be there by now if that’s where she were bound. Cole, where else would she go?”

“I wired Chris in Adelaide. She hasn’t shown up on their doorstep. That leaves Meg and Luke in Queensland.”

Sam stared at the centerpiece on the table. “Unless—Cole, you’ve never wanted to talk to the children about our past. Could she have gone on a pilgrimage to Sugarlea, to seek it?”

He frowned and shook his head. “Kids don’t care about past history—I can’t imagine it.”

“Yes, we do.” Mary Aileen laid a fork across her plate even though she hadn’t finished her supper. She couldn’t eat. “We’re afraid, Papa. Afraid you did something terrible and don’t want anyone to know. We don’t even know where you were born. It’s not just your history, you know. It’s ours, too.”

Those wonderful rich, dark eyes studied her. What a handsome man, her father!

“What are you hiding, Papa?”

His mouth tightened. “When I committed myself to Jesus Christ nineteen years ago, I was not a worthy man. That was the old Cole Sloan, a different person. Not trustworthy. Not the man who fathered you. I spent several years making restitution for the past, as best I could. And with God’s help, I’ve followed a new way of life. God forgave the old Cole Sloan. I’ve put him away. I don’t want him resurrected.”

There were still questions to ask, and the right way to ask them, and Mary Aileen did not know how. Suddenly she envied Hannah, especially Hannah’s ability to read her father and draw the desired response from him. She looked at Mum.

Mum glanced briefly at Papa. “Your father asked for my hand on two occasions. On the first, I felt that because of his devious ways I could never trust him. But as he says, he changed. When he asked again I accepted. But I had to learn to trust him; I knew perhaps a bit too much of his past.” She raised her voice, and sounded confident, “I’ve never been disappointed, Mary Aileen. Never in our marriage has he betrayed my trust. This is the man you should know and emulate, not the man he was before.”

“But still I want to know—we all want to know.”

“Perhaps someday, when you’re old enough to understand.”

“Colin is old enough to understand. He’s old enough for lots of things—things you didn’t seem to want him to do.” Mary Aileen scrambled ahead with the questions that so long crouched in the back of her mind. “Papa, are you afraid Colin might turn out like the old Cole Sloan? Is that why you constantly told him he was doing everything wrong? Were you trying to make him an exact copy of the new Cole Sloan? He’s not you at all, Papa. He’s Colin.”

“I think that will be quite enough, Mary Aileen.” Cole’s eyes were dark, full of pain and obvious distress.

“Papa, he’s not like you now, but he’s not like you say you used to be either. He’s not devious, and he’s certainly not a bad person.”

“That’s enough!” Papa’s voice bellowed.

Mum’s voice was hard as flint, “You may be excused, even though you’ve not finished.”

Mary Aileen looked from face to face. The conversation had ended. “Thank you,” she mumbled, carrying her plate to the kitchen.

The doorbell rang as she was headed for the stairs, so she answered it.

A telegraph messenger stood in the night rain. “Cole Sloan, please?”

“Come in.” She led him to the dining room. “Papa, a telegram for you.” Papa signed it without saying a word, and Mary Aileen saw the lad back to the door.

She peered into the dining room and stopped cold at the door. Mum’s head was hung down and Papa’s face and neck were turning red.

He stood up so abruptly his chair slammed backwards. “Not a bad person, she says!” He stormed out of the room.

Mum melted forward, her elbows on the table, and buried her face in her hands, sobbing.

Mary Aileen’s heart froze in her breast.
Whatever
. . .? She crossed silently to the table and read the telegram.

YOUR SON STOLE OUR BAY MARE STOP SEND ONE HUNDRED POUNDS TO COVER LOSS STOP AIDAN SLOAN

______

If this is the winter sun, what a frying pan the summer sun must be!
Colin tugged his hat forward and closed his eyes. Max’s Lady slogged along at a constant pace, her ears flopping with each stride. She was probably walking in her sleep; Colin was pretty much riding in his.

He glanced back. Staring straight ahead, old Max came along at a numb, ground-eating dog-trot, his tongue dangling out the side of his mouth. Colin guessed it was high time he stop again to rest the animals. Max’s weeks of ease in Kalgoorlie had softened the old bitzer. Plenty of trees lined the railway here, but their gangling crowns and thin leaves offered scant protection. The only really good shade moved along the ground under the belly of his mare.

Max broke stride and turned suddenly, poised to see what came behind. Was it Uncle Aidan or Uncle Liam? A thump of fear hit Colin in the breast.

In the far distance a lone walker came this way. What would a traveler be doing on foot along the railway right-of-way? Colin couldn’t remember a hiker behind him earlier, but then, he hadn’t really looked back since he’d left Kalgoorlie. It looked as if the walker would soon catch up. A man on foot, faster than a man on horseback? That wasn’t hard when the horse was Max’s Lady. Colin could walk faster than this old plug. On the track she’d always trailed twenty paces behind Dizzy’s dun.

Dizzy, old pal. How is the love-struck little cook doing?
Colin wondered. He descended his mount and let the lead go slack. Max slumped to the ground in grateful resignation, and Max’s Lady dropped her nose until her sleepy head touched the ground.