The Burning Land

by John Fletcher

  The door flew open with a suddenness that nearly made Tom fall out of his saddle with fright. He had a momentary glimpse of an apparition, partially covered in torn rags, face almost invisible beneath a tangle of hair, beard below its waist, before it took off across the plain, running flat out with head back and arms pumping, leaving on the air the thin rope of a long-drawn cry.

  Tom brought his horse under control and watched in astonishment the diminishing shape of the man fleeing like a deer over the open ground. He had burst so suddenly out of the darkness of the hut that Tom had barely had time to see him. He retained only an impression of a white man, how old he could not have said, barefoot and in rags, who must have been as wild as a kangaroo to run from him the way he had.

  He watched the distant figure until it was swallowed up by the purple shadows of the encroaching night. He felt no inclination to follow him but wondered in mute astonishment who he was and how he had come to be out here by himself. He thought to inspect the interior of the hut but something—nervousness, perhaps, or even a respect for the stranger’s privacy—held him back.

  For a couple of days he said nothing about the episode but eventually could keep it to himself no longer. He found Matthew and told him what had happened.

  ‘Must have been an old convict.’

  Tom frowned. Transportation had been abolished years before. ‘Maybe a loony,’ he suggested. ‘Come out here to go mining, maybe, and stayed on.’

  It was as likely an explanation as any.

  ‘Country as big as this has got to have its share of mysteries,’ Matthew said.

  The gnomelike old lady said, ‘There’s times when I wonder about the good Lord God.’

  Matthew stretched booted feet to the fire. ‘Why’s that?’

  She cackled. ‘I reckon he should at least have taken the trouble to let me organise my life properly without this constant upheaval.’

  The drive had reached the small farm during the afternoon and Matthew was now paying his normal courtesy call upon the owners, Maggie and Hud Orford. Through the cabin’s open doorway he could hear the sounds of the cattle as the boys settled them down for the night.

  ‘All my life it’s been the same,’ Maggie said. ‘No sooner are we settled somewhere comfortable than He sends the Spirit to drive me out again on to the highways and byways of this blessed land.’

  Matthew looked at her. Maggie and her husband Hud seemed as frail and dried up as bundles of leaves, too old to be living out here at all, never mind talking of moving on.

  ‘There’ve been times when I fought Him,’ Maggie said. ‘Tried telling myself it was my own restlessness that was causing it and nothing at all to do with the Lord’s work. Ah well,’ she said comfortably. ‘I knows better now.’

  ‘When we first got here this place was on the outer limits of civilisation.’ Hud, anxious to get his word in, spoke as though the farm were now in the middle of a big city. ‘Weren’t nuthin beyond us but wilderness and black-skin savages.’

  ‘They ever given you trouble?’ Matthew wondered.

  ‘Not so far. One or two of ’em wanders in from time to time. We gives ’em food. Make ’em work for it, mind, if you can call it work. They stay a while and then wander off again.’

  ‘You feel a call to preach, you could preach to them,’ Matthew said.

  Maggie shook her head. ‘We is all God’s creatures, black and white, but He gives different calls to different people. Me, He wants to minister to the settlers.’ She laughed again. ‘Makes Hud nervous when I talk like that. He’s gittin’ old,’ she confided, ‘gittin’ set in his ways. He’s fifty-nine, you know. Reckons we’re too old to be always movin’ on.’

  Hud clicked his teeth. ‘What I said was we’ve put three years into this farm and it’s just beginning to show results. Now she’s thinking of leaving and going on into the wilderness again. Don’t make no sense to me. I told God any number of times, He wants to do something for me, let Him take the itch out of Maggie’s feet.’

  ‘There’ve been three parties of settlers in six months,’ she said. ‘Who’s going to look after them? Young children and all? Who’s going to make sure they abide in the love and protection of the Lord?’

  ‘Do you have any children of your own?’ Matthew asked.

  ‘None, more’s the pity,’ Hud said. ‘Perhaps children would have made Maggie less inclined to tear off after every rag-tag, out-at-heels bunch of settlers that comes through. Wouldn’t be prepared to bet on it, mind. Once she fixes on something, the Lord Himself would have a job getting her to change her opinion.’

  ‘The Lord tells us to go, you’re saying you won’t?’ Maggie demanded.

  ‘There’s three years of our lives dug into this ground is what I’m saying.’

  ‘Three years of your life are more important to you than the word of God?’

  ‘Three years of your life too.’

  ‘We’re not talking about my three years. The Lord knows I’m willing to go if He calls me. What’s so special about your three years that you rate them higher than the Lord?’

  ‘We got this place of our own,’ Hud said. ‘At the time I remember you said that was the Lord’s will. And the time before that, outside Sydney. And all the times before that, as you will recall.’

  ‘And now if He wants us to move again, then move we will,’ Maggie said, very fierce.

  ‘If,’ Hud said.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I don’t think He’s the fool you sometimes make Him out to be. He sent us here to start a farm. Now you say He wants us to throw away all that work, move on again. Where’s the sense in that?’

  ‘It’s not for us to know or understand God’s will,’ she said.

  Hud made a helpless gesture, turned to Matthew. ‘I’d offer you a drink if I had any. Maggie broke my last bottle.’

  ‘Dern right I did. Just as I’ll break any more if you ever try bringing it home.’

  Hud licked his lips. ‘You don’t have any along with you?’ he wondered hopefully.

  Matthew was not getting into anything to do with booze. ‘I’m afraid not. We won’t be able to buy any up north so I thought we might as well be dry from the start.’

  ‘It’s not only booze you’ll be short of up there,’ Hud warned. ‘You’ve picked a bad season to head north. I hear conditions are worse than here and that’s saying something.’

  ‘It must rain sometime,’ Matthew said.

  ‘It’ll rain, all right. The question is when.’

  Back at the run the boys wanted to know what he’d found.

  ‘Nothing that’s going to interest you,’ Matthew told them. ‘No elegant young ladies, if that’s what you were hoping.’

  ‘I’d be more interested in inelegant young ladies,’ Charlie said.

  ‘No young ones of any kind,’ Matthew said. ‘The lady I saw might be old enough to be your grandmother, I’d say. Mind you, I didn’t see into every corner.’

  Brett grinned. ‘Maybe they keep ’em locked up,’ he suggested hopefully.

  ‘If they do,’ Matthew told him, ‘you can depend on it they won’t be letting them out until you lot are long gone.’

  ‘I didn’t think we’d find settlers as far out as this,’ Aggie said to Nance. ‘It must be a hard life.’

  ‘No harder than where we’re going.’

  Aggie had nothing to say to that. She wasn’t sure where she was going. The night she had spent with Matthew by the waterhole seemed to have changed nothing. Matthew spoke to her as much, and as little, as he had before they rode out together. There were times when she wondered whether she had imagined it, whether anything had happened between them at all. In some ways she was worse off than she had been before. At least then the rest of the crew had talked to her; now they treated her as though she were invisible. They were so careful around her that she could have screamed in frustration.

  Nance, thank God, was different. She could still talk to Nance.

  �
�They treat me like I’m glass,’ she said.

  ‘What do you expect?’ Nance asked her. ‘They think you belong to the boss.’

  ‘I belong to no one,’ Aggie said.

  ‘You went out there with him,’ Nance pointed out.

  ‘That don’t mean he owns me.’

  ‘Once we get north of Fort Bourke I reckon he’ll own the lot of us,’ Nance said. ‘Git says the land up there’s so empty we won’t have no choice but to go along with him.’

  ‘Maybe I won’t go no further than Fort Bourke,’ Aggie said firmly.

  Nance grinned. ‘And do what?’

  ‘Reckon I can do any job I turn my mind to,’ Aggie told her but knew there might not be any jobs. She had thought to start a store but somehow, without Caleb or perhaps because of her changed circumstances, she had lost her appetite for that.

  She looked at the buildings of the farm they had come to. The walls had been built of clay roofed with reeds. The unpainted walls were the same monotonous grey as the plain into which they blended. As far as she could see the ground was covered by a mangy pelt of silver-grey grass and spinifex scrub interspersed with patches of bare soil the colour of blood. A yellow line showed where the creek ran behind the house.

  Aggie went to find Matthew. ‘Why’d they make the buildings out of clay?’

  ‘No wood.’

  Aggie looked about her. Here and there individual gum trees hung their heads over the parched ground but for the most part the trees were dead, their trunks as naked as rock, their writhing branches questioning the sky. Nothing you could use to build a house.

  ‘What will it be like further north?’ she wondered.

  He smiled. ‘You’ll find out when you get there. If you get there.’

  ‘I’d say that was up to you, wouldn’t you?’

  He looked at her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Remember the waterhole?’

  ‘Of course I remember it.’

  ‘I would never know it, would I?’

  ‘If it was up to me I’d sleep with you every night,’ Matthew told her angrily.

  ‘You’re the boss,’ she retorted. ‘Who’s it up to if it ain’t you?’

  ‘It wouldn’t do,’ Matthew insisted. ‘The boys are all missing female company. It wouldn’t be right for me to have something they can’t have.’

  ‘I’m not offering to spread it around the whole bunch, if that’s what you’re saying,’ she told him. ‘How about Git? He’s got Nance and he ain’t the boss.’

  ‘It’s because he’s not the boss it’s all right.’

  Aggie shook her head. ‘What’s the point of being the boss if you can’t do what you want?’

  They walked back to the camp. It was getting dark and the light of the kitchen fire cast quivering bands of yellow and orange light against the canvas-covered side of the waggon, the moving figures of the men.

  On the edge of the firelight Aggie turned and looked up at Matthew. ‘Well?’ she challenged him. ‘What’s it to be?’

  Matthew was not about to be bullied. ‘I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Better make sure you do it before Fort Bourke,’ she told him, ‘otherwise you might find I’m not here to be told.’

  ‘I’ll tell you tonight,’ Matthew said.

  He walked away from her, wondering what he was letting himself in for. He had never known such an outspoken woman.

  The question was whether he wanted her for the long haul or not. I shall have to think about it, he told himself. I shall have to think hard.

  Matthew and Charlton called on Hud and Maggie Orford and Maggie told them her plan.

  Matthew stared. ‘But you’ve got the farm.’

  Maggie’s dark eyes shone with fervour. ‘The Lord don’t want us to settle here.’

  Matthew wasn’t sure what the Lord had to do with it but said nothing.

  ‘Are you mindful of the Lord’s will?’ Maggie asked him.

  ‘I’ve never thought about it one way or the other,’ he said.

  Maggie’s eyes moved to Charlton.

  ‘Me neither,’ he said hastily.

  Instead of the disapproval they had expected Maggie smiled at them. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Neither you nor any of the other benighted souls who are travelling into the interior. That’s why I must go.’

  ‘What about the farm?’ Matthew asked.

  ‘What I told her,’ Hud said. ‘Three years we put in here—’

  ‘If it’s the Lord’s will,’ Maggie interrupted, ‘who are we to say no to Him?’

  Matthew thought he should make it clear who was in charge around here. ‘You are asking for permission to join our cattle drive. Is that right?’

  Maggie’s eyes were bright in a face as wrinkled as a prune. ‘The Lord has told me to go forth and minister to the settlers and that’s what I intend to do. I would like to ride along with you, if you’re willing, because it’s more comfortable to travel in company and it’ll give me a chance to speak to you and your boys about the glory and lovin’ kindness of the Lord, but if you say you won’t have us along, I reckon we’ll go anyway. Ain’t nuthin you kin do to stop us from doing that.’

  Charlton began, ‘This is a cattle drive not a circus. We don’t have room for hangers-on—’

  Matthew interrupted him. ‘We got an Aggie already. Might as well have a Maggie too. Who knows? It might even do us some good.’

  ‘Amen,’ declared Maggie Orford triumphantly.

  ‘You’re barking mad,’ Charlton said as they returned to camp. ‘We bring along a loony like that to badger the boys, half of ’em’ll walk off the job.’

  ‘They won’t get paid if they do,’ Matthew said. ‘That’s one ferocious old hen. I wasn’t aiming to get in a fight with her. If she wants to leave that farm and ride off into the wilderness I would say neither you nor I are man enough to stop her.’

  ‘Travelling is one thing,’ Charlton insisted, ‘travelling with us is something else.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be easy with the thought that we’d refused them,’ Matthew said. ‘Once we cross the Darling we’ll be in country where there are few white people. None of us knows how the blacks will take it. I’d hate to have it on my conscience that we’d refused her and then something happened.’

  ‘Who’s she going to minister to?’ Charlton asked. ‘There ain’t nobody up there.’

  ‘You’d better hope there are,’ Matthew grinned, ‘or I can see her sharpening up her act on us.’

  By the time the two men got back, most of the boys were asleep.

  ‘I’ll take a look around,’ Matthew said as he did every night.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you think you’ll find,’ Charlton told him.

  ‘Neither do I,’ Matthew said, ‘but I sleep better for doing it.’

  Matthew huddled his head into his upturned collar as he strolled quietly around the camp and the sleeping herd. At first the extremes of temperature had seemed strange but he was used to them now. He found a flat-topped boulder and sat on it. All around him were the gentle sounds of the animals. A million stars flared in the velvet sky. He could have stayed in the south and mined gold. Made more money, maybe married a duke’s daughter, as Hamish had said. He regretted none of it. Too much money imprisoned you as surely as too little. Being out here, under this sky, facing the challenges of the unknown, was worth a dozen duke’s daughters.

  Something stirred behind him—a breath of air where there was no wind—and Matthew spun, broad-bladed knife leaping to his hand, nerves screeching. The blade shone in the starlight.

  It was Aggie. He lowered the knife, breathing deep. ‘Don’t creep up on me!’

  The speed of his reaction had startled her but she tried to hide it, as she always would. ‘You planning to kill me for it?’ she demanded, eyes on the knife.

  ‘Be thankful I didn’t.’ He pushed the knife back into its sheath.

  She stood beside him. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Li
stening.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘Hold your breath,’ he ordered.

  She did so. Side by side they watched the darkness, the indistinct blur of the scrub faintly silvered by the starshine.

  She whispered, ‘I can’t hear anything.’

  ‘That’s what we’re listening to,’ he told her. ‘The silence.’

  She shivered. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Matthew said.

  ‘I can’t go on like this,’ she said, ‘not knowing where I am. You want me around, you’re going to have to make some allowances for my feelings too.’

  ‘We could make love right now.’ Matthew told her, ‘but I’d still have to go back to running the drive tomorrow.’

  Aggie stared angrily at him. ‘Nobody’s trying to stop you running the drive. And tomorrow’s got nothing to do with it. If you wanted to do it you would.’ And started to turn away.

  ‘That’s not true.’ Matthew put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Don’t you understand why I can’t be seen to be living with you?’

  Aggie was close to tears. ‘What I understand is that you asked me to come on this damned drive. I understand you’ve been ignoring me ever since. I don’t understand why but I’m willing to make a guess.’

  ‘Make your guess,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t want to commit yourself. You fancy me but aren’t sure you want to be stuck with me forever.’ Aggie was furious now. ‘You hope I’ll make up your mind for you. If I leave at Fort Bourke, you don’t have a problem. If I stick around and things don’t work out you can tell yourself it was all my fault.’ She was standing so close to him he could see nothing but her eyes. ‘I’m right, ain’t I?’

  He was not going to be browbeaten by her. ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘Prove it,’ she said.

  He was angry now. ‘Serve you right if I did just that.’

  ‘Never mind the talk. Prove it.’

  She was the most outspoken and aggravating woman he had ever met. She infuriated him almost as much as she attracted him. Time spent with her could prove to be the most exasperating, most wonderful time he had ever known. He would be a fool to let such a woman slip through his fingers.