Flight of the Eagle (18 page)

When Michael bid his farewell later in the evening to go to the ship that would sail for the south, Kate could hear the curlews calling to each other in mournful waning cries and she shuddered with superstitious dread. Were not they the spirits of the dead roaming the night? Had this not been a day of ill omens?

The hammering on the Cohens' door woke all in the house. Solomon rolled on his side and groaned. Who could be calling at this unearthly hour in the morning, he thought as he groggily forced himself into a sitting position in the bed beside his wife.

‘Judith!’ Distress was evident in the sound of the woman's voice from the verandah.

‘Kate, is that you?’ Judith answered as she pulled a shawl around her shoulders. She was out of bed before her husband and almost fully awake with the awareness that something must be terribly wrong for Kate to disturb them at such an early hour. ‘Is something the matter?’ she called as she fumbled for a kerosene lamp and lit the wick. The pale light flickered into a steady, anaemic glow and Judith could hear the confused mumbled voices of the boys as they came awake in the sleep-out. She made her way to the front door to see Kate pale and trembling with a fear Judith had not seen in her friend's face for many years.

‘Oh, Judith, something terrible has happened to Luke.’ The words tumbled from Kate's lips before Judith could utter any words of her own and impulsively she placed her arm around Kate's shoulder to usher her inside to the dining room. Willie stood behind Solomon and the two men stared through bleary eyes at Kate who had apparently come straight from her bed as she still wore her nightdress.

‘A terrible dream came to me tonight,’ Kate whispered hoarsely as she stared vacantly at the yellow flame of the lamp. ‘I feel that my darling Luke is dying in some terrible and lonely place.’

Judith did not attempt to dissuade her friend with reassuring words. Kate had always had the unsettling gift to know such things. Instead she held Kate to her as if the gesture might take some of the pain from her friend onto herself. ‘The muddy water. I saw the muddy water and that crow again. I …’ Kate paused and struggled to describe the chilling dream in words. How did you find words to describe feelings that were physical and yet not real? ‘I heard Luke call me from a long way away. He said that he loved me, even beyond the death he was facing. I …’ Then she ceased speaking and began to sob.

The two men stood awkwardly on the edge of the room, helpless in the face of the unknown and unacceptable. Only Judith seemed to understand Kate's strange insights. Solomon's eyes met his wife's with a questioning look. She motioned with her eyes for the men to leave them alone.

Willie followed Solomon to the kitchen where he lit the wick of a lantern. Neither man said a word as Solomon slumped into a chair. From the dining room they could hear the murmur of the two women's voices and sobbing. So much pain and suffering in the world, Solomon pondered. It was just a matter of waiting for Judith to tell him what he should do to help when she was ready.

A tall grandfather clock chimed four times. Three-quarters of an hour before it could boom five times they heard the scrape of chairs and the front door close. Judith came to the kitchen. The two men both looked to her expectantly.

‘Kate has gone home to try and rest for a while,’ she said simply in a tired voice. ‘Willie. You will go to Kate's house at dawn and help her prepare for a journey to Burketown.’

‘To Burketown!’ Solomon exploded. ‘But she is almost at her time of confinement.’

‘I know,’ Judith replied holding up her hand to quell any further protest from her husband. ‘I have tried to talk her out of going but she insists she cannot leave Luke out there. It is something she must do.’

‘Well, she can't go alone,’ Solomon growled. ‘That would be foolish in her state.’

‘She won't be going alone,’ Willie said quietly from the end of the table. ‘I will go with Kate and look after her.’

Judith cast an appreciative glance at the young man. ‘I know she will be safe with you, William,’ she said softly. ‘God will protect both of you.’

Solomon stared at his wife with an expression of wonder and disbelief. Wonder for her acceptance of Kate's lunatic decision and disbelief that God alone would protect a very pregnant woman on the long and perilous track west to the Gulf. Then he glanced at Willie and saw the fire of the fanatic. Oi but God had some strange people working for Him!

FIFTEEN

S
oon the sun would rise across the silent, scrub covered plains. A good time to die, Luke Tracy mused as he gazed east. Propped with his back against a tree he finished the last entry in the leatherbound journal Kate had given him. The gift was an attempt to encourage him to record the many things he knew of the Australian bush – and his colourful life as a prospector who had sought gold on two continents as well as his adventures when he fought the British at the Eureka Stockade alongside Kate's father. But the journal had remained empty, except for what he had written as the closing chapter of his life.

The words he now wrote were simple and full of love. No regrets but one: that he would never hold their child in his arms or again roam the bush of his adopted country and teach him or her its ways. But a man paralysed in the legs was of no use to a woman as active and passionate as Kate, Luke thought, with a deep and despairing sadness.

His horse lay dead only yards from where he had dragged himself to the shade of the tree the day before. Startled by a wallaby bursting from almost under its hooves the big thoroughbred had panicked and reared. Horse and rider had crashed heavily to the ground.

The horse had thrashed its legs and whinnied pitifully. As Luke had recovered his senses he realised in horror that the fall had broken his back. He was able to use his arms, but from the waist down there was no feeling.

He had been able to drag himself across to his horse and use his big Colt pistol. The shot was clean and the horse died a quick death. With great difficulty Luke released the saddlebags by cutting loose the straps before dragging them to a bumbil tree where he propped himself to wait.

It was only a matter of how death would come to him. It had been almost twelve hours since the horse had thrown him and he knew that the chances of somebody finding him were as remote as the area he had deviated into. He'd decided to follow a likely trace of gold. Old habits died hard, he snorted in frustrated anger as he knew his search had taken him well off the track to Burketown.

But even if he was found by some traveller or prospecting party he knew it would only be his corpse they would come across. For Luke Tracy had already decided that he would take his own life. He would rather die than live out his life as half a man! He would not burden the woman he loved more than his own life. Better he be found dead than have to look into Kate's pitying eyes.

When would he pull the trigger of the revolver that lay near to his hand? On the next sunset? Or when the dark came to visit as a friend, covering a man's eyes from the harsh beauty of the limitless horizons of the ancient continent? No, he did not want the darkness to be the last thing that he saw. He wanted to take with him the splendid vision of a flaming orange sunrise.

Tears flowed as he thought about Kate and the child she carried within her body. God gave and God took away, he thought. Kate's religion forbade the taking of one's own life. The mortal sin of despair, she had once told him. But Luke's was the spirituality of the dark peoples who had roamed these ancient lands. Maybe in the next life he would be a spirit of this country, a spirit of the rocks that held the yellow metal which had ruled his life.

He closed the journal in his lap and carefully wrapped it in a spare shirt Kate had insisted he take with him on the trip. He slipped the package inside a saddlebag and secured the straps. He did not want scavenging animals to disturb the last words to his wife. One day someone was bound to find his bones and the bags hopefully still intact and Kate would know how much he loved her from these simple scribbled words.

The sun was little more than a glowing rim through a gap in the sparse trees of the plain when Luke Tracy lifted the revolver.

‘Goodbye, my darling Kate. I will love you even in the next world,’ he whispered softly.

The booming echo of the gun rolled across the plains.

SIXTEEN

T
wo weeks out of Townsville and the birthing pains came to Kate. Willie heard her cry of distress as he rode ahead of the dray and turned to see her bent over on the seat, gripping her swollen stomach with both hands. With the reins trailing free the dray horse plodded forward, raising tiny puffs of dust on the dry, almost treeless plain. ‘Jesus,’ he swore savagely as he tugged down on the reins of his mount to wheel his horse back to the dray. She was obviously having the child, he thought in a panic. Out here, of all bloody places! Miles from the next settlement.

‘Help me down, Willie,’ Kate gasped and gave a grunt of pain as another contraction racked her body. Her waters had broken and she knew her time had come.

Willie flung himself from his horse to reach up and assist. When he had helped her down she propped herself against the only place that offered shade – against the wheel of the dray – and continued to pant as the waves of pain rolled over her. ‘What'll I do, Missus Tracy?’ Willie asked in a despairing voice as he squatted on his haunches in front of her. ‘I only ever delivered cows before.’

She gave him a weak smile of gratitude for his offer and she saw the expression of absolute fear in his face. ‘Just let nature take its course. Set up a camp for us. That's what you can do.’

‘Right,’ he mumbled and scanned the plains seeking the trees that might mark a creek line or waterhole. But there were no trees growing distinctively together, only the occasional stunted one struggling for life in a sea of desiccated grass on the distant horizon. They were deep in the same country that the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition had traversed almost a quarter of a century earlier, eventually claiming the explorers' lives.

Kate brought her knees up and reached under her long dress to drag down the cotton bloomers she wore. It weren't right that a man be present at such times, Willie thought self-consciously. Maybe better that he at least ride on to Julia Creek settlement to see if a midwife was there.

‘Get me the water from the dray,’ Kate gasped weakly. ‘I have a terrible thirst.’

Willie scrabbled amongst the supplies and found a large bottle of water. He handed it to her and Kate swigged in great gulps. The heat and exertions of her labour had left her parched with thirst.

‘Might be better I ride to Julia Creek and find a doctor or midwife, Missus Tracy,’ Willie said when she handed the bottle back to him. ‘Not much I can do here, ′cept set up camp and make you comfortable.’

‘How far is Julia Creek?’ she asked.

Willie scratched his head as he gazed westward. ‘Maybe only a few hours' hard ridin',’ he answered, his knowledge of the track coming from the trip he'd made with Ben's children along the same route weeks earlier.

Kate could see that his suggestion was really a plea. He would not desert her but his feeling of helplessness in the face of her labour left him with only one real alternative. She thought about his offer and decided that he was right. He might just fetch back a midwife or doctor in time for the birth. ‘Maybe you could give it a try,’ she replied and saw the expression of relief flood his face. ‘But first just get me a few things from the dray before you leave.’

He collected the items Kate asked for and spread them where they were close to her reach: a clean man's shirt she had brought for Luke for when she found him, a small phial of laudanum for her pain and the water bottles. He also placed a sharp knife and reel of twine beside her, only realising their significance once he had done so. She was preparing to deliver the baby herself.

Kate watched Willie ride away at a gallop until he became a shimmering image that twisted and melted in the mirage-like haze. It would be dark in a few hours and she prayed that the baby would come while she had light to see what she was doing. The contractions eased momentarily allowing her to relax and calmly assess the situation. She knew she must keep her baby clean when he came. He! Why was it that she thought of her baby as a son when she could not possibly know? Was it that God was merciful in his own way, granting her a male life for the one she knew He had taken from her?

The flies came to pester her with their tormenting feet tickling her face and their droning buzz in her ears. Theirs was the only noise in the otherwise eerie silence of the plains – and virtually the only movement.

Ah, but there was one other with her! She gazed up to the azure, cloudless sky to see a giant eagle drifting on the thermals. A majestic wedge-tailed eagle soared in search of carrion or prey and kept her company in her lonely world.

But the soaring eagle was not the only company she had. Kate did not see the dark figures of the tribesmen approaching from across the plains as a clan of nomadic Aboriginals followed the flight of the eagle to the dray.