A Far Country

by John Fletcher

  ‘Wrong way,’ he gasped. ‘We’re getting further away from the house.’

  Alison kept going. ‘We can’t go the other way. They’ll cut us off if we try it.’

  It was true: but this way there was no shelter either, no place to hide. Jason risked a backwards glance. They had gained on their pursuers. The men were now at least fifty yards behind them but loping easily along and showing no signs of giving up. Already he could hear the sound of Alison’s breathing. Neither of them was any match for their pursuers. They had to find a place to hide. If they didn’t the men would soon run them down.

  They ran on. A minute later he stumbled over a chunk of stone lying hidden in the grass at the cliff edge. He staggered and almost fell before recovering. He increased his speed at once but had lost a few precious seconds. Worse, he had twisted his knee. Pain sliced like a knife blade into the joint as he ran.

  A track slanted off down the cliff. Without thought they followed it. It angled sharply down and around a rocky overhang and at once they were out of sight of the cliff edge above them.

  ‘Quick!’

  The path forked, one branch descending precipitously towards the sea, the other disappearing into a gully past an area of lichen-yellow rock. The seawards path was very steep and obviously led nowhere. They ignored it and ran on. Jason was hobbling now, his breath coming in painful gusts.

  They found a cave: a black crevice like a knife wound in the rock. Jason hesitated. Ahead of them the path snaked upwards towards the rim of the cliff. No cover, no hope of evading their pursuers. On the other hand the cave might be a dead end. He remembered climbing down the mine shaft at Kapunda. Would Alison be able to find her way in the dark? Would he?

  It was a risk they would have to take.

  ‘In here! Quick as you can!’

  He led the way into the fissure, Alison not hesitating but coming in right behind him.

  Darkness pressed upon them.

  *

  Mura had known from the first whom they were pursuing.

  The rule was rock-hard. A black man had died; a white must die in retribution. As soon as he had heard what had happened he had gone back into the bush, knowing that by doing so he was almost certainly shutting behind him the door to any hope of a life with the whites.

  More and more he had come to doubt whether there was any real hope of such a life, whatever he did. He knew so little, would not have minded if their attitude had been based on his own ignorance; ignorance could always be overcome. Ignorance had nothing to do with how they treated him.

  Mulatji, the man whom the whites called Sinbad, had said it. ‘They will never treat you as a man.’

  Apart from Jason, they never had. He knew that men like Blake Gallagher and his father never would. Mura had hoped the raid would flush Blake out. He would have got a lot of pleasure from killing Blake. But Jason and Alison …?

  He knew where the two fugitives were going. How could he not? He had lived in this area all his life. There would be time enough to decide what must be done when he came up with them: not that there was much choice. The rule was rock-hard. He ran on, unhurried in the sunlight.

  Hand groping before his face, Jason inched himself through the darkness of the cave. Rocks bruised his shins; the air smelt stale and dirty as though the cave were home to a multitude of bats. Jason went on inch by inch, yard by yard, his foot searching the ground ahead of him. He was afraid of holes that for all he knew might open up in the rocky floor in front of them. It was utterly dark. The cave must have changed direction as it burrowed deeper into the cliff; looking over his shoulder he could now see no sign of the entrance behind him.

  ‘Can you see anything?’

  Alison’s voice hissed in the darkness.

  ‘No.’

  At least if they could see nothing the blacks would be unable to see them, either.

  ‘I’d like to get a bit further yet.’

  Stumbling, groping, almost as frightened of what lay ahead as what lay behind, they went on.

  The cave opened up. The rock had pressed upon them; now it withdrew. Arms outstretched, they could feel nothing. Space surrounded them. A step. Another step.

  If we lose our direction here we’ll never find our way out.

  The empty darkness surrounded them like a scream.

  Jason stumbled over something on the cave floor. He cursed, heart pounding. He crouched, exploring with cautious hands. A pile of stone. He felt further. Not stone. Bones.

  ‘God!’

  ‘What is it?’ Fright in her voice.

  ‘I’m not sure. I think, somebody’s skeleton.’

  ‘Someone who got lost in here in the past?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  His hands explored further. A roundness, a dryness. A skull. It felt old beyond imagining.

  ‘How do we get out of here?’

  A good question; he had no idea of the answer.

  He listened. Silence. No; something less than silence. Somewhere in the blackness, something was tapping.

  ‘This way …’

  Alison’s hand in his, he groped his way through the darkness towards the sound.

  Water, dropping from a great height.

  He craned his neck, staring up into …

  Nothing.

  There was a real danger of getting lost in the vastness of the cave.

  ‘We should stay here.’

  The whisper kindled an echo like a murmur of distant thunder.

  ‘For how long?’ Her voice was sharp with the beginnings of panic.

  His shrug went unseen in the darkness.

  The water pattered down a yard or two ahead of them yet he felt no spray. He paused as a sudden thought occurred to him, explored the ground ahead of him with a cautious foot.

  A foot away it ended. Beyond it … Space.

  A shudder quaked through his body.

  ‘Don’t move!’

  ‘What is it?’ The panic manifest, now.

  ‘I’m not sure …’

  Cautiously he knelt, his hand moving ahead of him across dust … rock … empty air. The water pattered into the void: no splashes, no rocky base to create splashes. Emptiness.

  ‘There is a hole right in front of us.’

  ‘I’m going back.’

  ‘You’re staying right where you are. We get separated here we’ll never find each other again.’

  He drew her unresisting towards him; she came into his arms. He felt her trembling warmth, heard the infinitesimal chattering of her teeth.

  ‘Be quiet,’ he instructed her, ‘if you don’t want them to hear us.’

  Time passed. Jason counted slowly. One and two and three. Five thousand, six thousand, seven. When he reached ten thousand without sound or movement he said, ‘I don’t think they’re here.’

  ‘How do we find our way out?’

  The same question. The same answer: he had no idea.

  He had no idea in which direction the entrance lay, no idea at all. The only focal point in the whole cave system was the fall splattering in front of them. The entrance tunnel might be anywhere.

  He took a deep breath. At all costs he must avoid panic.

  ‘There’s got to be an end to the cave,’ he said. ‘It can’t go on forever.’

  His idea was that they could feel their way around the wall of the cave until they reached the outlet: but what if there was more than one tunnel? Pick the wrong one and they might go deeper and deeper into the cave system until they were irretrievably lost. Without light, without any idea where they were, their bones would in all probability be doomed to join those they had happened upon earlier.

  There seemed no alternative.

  The first thing was to get away from the chasm. Probably the hole had been opened up over the centuries by the falling water; the fact that it was there at all, however, had destroyed his confidence in the security of the cave floor. The only way to go was to crawl, exploring the ground in front of them as they did so.

 
He explained to Alison what he wanted her to do; on hands and knees they crawled back until, quite gently, he butted his head into the encircling wall of the cave.

  Now to find the outlet.

  *

  They had to be inside, Mura knew. If they had carried on along the path he would have seen them. Very well. He told his companions to go ahead while he waited here, listening to the silence of the cave within the cleft, the faint and repetitive susurration of the sea at the foot of the cliff.

  He had never been inside the cave and almost certainly never would. It was a site that had been used long ago to bury the medicine men, those who had been the guardians of the spirits. The cave was taboo and no member of the clan had entered it for a very long time.

  He waited, spears clutched in his hand, white paint reflecting the sunlight.

  It took a long time but eventually Jason found an aperture, six feet or so wide, leading off the main chamber.

  ‘Are you sure it’s the right way?’ Alison’s voice was spiky with incipient terror.

  ‘I think it probably is.’

  Even so, he hesitated before committing himself to it. Probably would hardly be enough, if it came to it.

  He felt something and paused, eyes closed, concentrating …

  Felt it again.

  He spat in his hand, smeared the spittle, held the palm up. The lightest of breezes blew cool upon his skin.

  He said excitedly, ‘I can feel air moving …’

  Inch by inch they made their way down the stone corridor towards the as-yet invisible light.

  *

  The sun had gone round to the west. Mura now stood in shadow. Once he had heard the distant rattle of gunfire. His two colleagues had not returned but he was unworried. What had happened to them was not his immediate concern. Jason was in the cave, he was sure of it. That was what mattered.

  He waited until he heard the faintest of sounds from inside the cleft. He glanced along the path in both directions, saw no-one. He settled more closely into the shelter of the rocks. The grip on his spears tightened.

  They saw the reflection of the light before the light itself: a puddle of greyness upon the walls and floor of the stone passage. To begin with it was so faint as to be barely visible. Cautiously they drew nearer. The light was still faint, yet bright enough after the cave’s darkness to make them squint. They reached a corner. The corridor twisted, twisted again. Light grew stronger, flooded in.

  Jason paused, watching the entrance. They had escaped from the cave but he had not forgotten why they had taken refuge there in the first place. Foot by foot, he stole closer. Beyond the opening the sky was a peerless blue. He could hear the rumble of the sea, smell the grass and hot sand of the cliffs. Life beckoned him.

  He could see no sign of anyone waiting. The blacks must have given up and gone away. He walked out into the sunlight. A figure, dark skin daubed with paint, emerged from the rocks at his side.

  *

  It had been a half-hearted raid at best. A few shots, a scatter of spears, and it was all over. No injuries on either side. All the same, Ian was uneasy; if he had not arrived at the house in the nick of time Mary would have been there by herself. She had a gun; she ought to be capable of looking after herself but he knew, no-one better, how she hated this frontier living. He had wondered more than once whether it would not be kinder to send her back to the city but saw no reason why he should deprive himself of the physical comforts of his wife. Of course, now that Asta was a widow … It was true she disliked him but that, he thought, could be changed. His mind roamed over possibilities, then he put them to one side. For the moment Alison was of far greater concern.

  When he had got back to Bungaree there had been no sign of her and he had no idea where she was. Now the attack was over he knew he must go out and look for her.

  ‘Will you be all right by yourself?’

  ‘Of course,’ Mary said. Her expression gave lie to her words but they both knew there was no choice.

  A clatter of hooves. Ian ran to the door. Blake and Sinbad reined in their horses before the house.

  ‘Alison’s missing. You seen any sign of her?’

  They had not.

  Blake said, ‘I said when that Michael went, it was time we sorted these blacks out once and for all. I’ve said it all along.’

  ‘Let’s not waste time talking about it,’ Ian said impatiently. ‘Let’s get out there and look for her.’

  Rifles in hand, pistols thrust into their belts and a great and rising anger in their hearts, the men rode out. Sinbad scouted ahead of them and within yards had picked up a trail that appeared to head down to the cliffs.

  ‘What the hell’s she up to?’ Ian demanded of the trees. Which did not answer.

  They rode furiously, reined in at the head of the track that snaked down the face of the rock towards the sea. They looked around them but could see nothing.

  ‘Down there?’ Blake suggested.

  Who knew? There was certainly no sign of her anywhere else. They left the horses. Guns in hand, they began to scramble down the cliff.

  ‘You get out of here, quick as you can.’

  It was Mura; the instinctive shock that had drawn Jason’s knife into his hand now ebbed. He shoved the blade back into the sheath. Gradually his breath stabilised.

  ‘Where are your mates?’

  ‘They’ve gone on ahead. I saw it was you so I waited to warn you.’

  Jason’s hand was on Mura’s arm. He squeezed it briefly. ‘Thanks, eh.’

  From the top of the cliff came the sound of a misplaced stone skipping free over the broken ground.

  ‘You go,’ Mura said urgently. ‘They are coming back.’

  A figure appeared at the top of the cliff followed by another one. White, not black.

  ‘That’s Blake,’ Alison said, ‘and my father’s with him.’

  Jason turned swiftly to his friend. ‘It’s you they’ll be after when they see you. You’d best get out of here.’

  An expression of resignation crossed Mura’s face. ‘They have guns. You tell me how I get away from a man with a gun.’

  In a fever of impatience Jason pushed him into the cave opening. ‘Get in there.’

  Horror. ‘I cannot—’

  ‘It’s either that or be killed.’

  It was useless. Terror transcended mere physical danger. Trying to shove Mura out of sight was like trying to shift a stake set in the ground: the more Jason tried, the more he resisted.

  ‘Then run!’

  But both knew to do that would be to invite a bullet or several. Then it was too late.

  ‘Look at this.’ The rifle muzzle came up, was thrust into Mura’s neck. ‘Paint and spears … Planning on attacking someone, were we?’

  The hammer of the gun clicked back. The muzzle carved a circle of flesh beneath Mura’s chin. Blake’s forefinger whitened on the trigger.

  ‘No!’

  Alison’s protest was as faint as a bird cry in the sea-washed air.

  Blake’s eyes moved but the gun did not. ‘This bloke was goin’ to kill you!’

  ‘He saved us,’ Jason said.

  ‘Lookin’ like that?’ Blake’s grin tightened the muscles in his cheeks. ‘You been mates a long time, Jason lad. You wasn’t thinkin’ of covering for him, by any chance?’

  Jason stared; so much for friendship.

  Impatiently Ian said, ‘Let’s get back to the run. I’ll decide what to do about him later.’

  ‘What’s the point of taking him back?’ Blake demanded. ‘Why don’t I shoot him and be done with it?’

  ‘I told you no!’

  Ian’s dilemma was simple: his instinct, also, was to shoot the prisoner and be rid of him, but Michael was under Asta Matlock’s protection and he did not want to endanger their relations further.

  ‘We’ll take him back.’

  They climbed back up the path. At the top the horses were as they had left them. Alison and Jason had been through so much. Now it
was hard to believe that anything had happened. The nightmare of the pursuit and the cave had become unreal, something that existed only in their imaginations. The terror had gone. What remained—the rolling landscape, the puffball clouds in the blue sky, the sounds of wind and sea—was the only reality.

  Ian said, ‘We’ll lock him up in the barn. Then I’ll decide what to do with him.’

  Alison said, ‘I’d better move before my father realises I’m here.’

  The straw in the stable sighed as, restlessly, Jason turned. Beyond the plank partition one of the horses whickered and blew softly. The warm smell of horseflesh was all around them.

  ‘I’m afraid they’re planning to kill him,’ he said.

  ‘They would never dare.’ Eyes round in her sunburnt face.

  ‘Blake would. I must get Mura away before it’s too late.’

  What about us? If you take Mura and run away? She wanted to say it but did not. Instead she asked, ‘How are you going to do that? Blake’s sitting on guard outside the shed door at this minute.’

  ‘I’ve got no choice,’ he said. ‘Surely you can see that?’

  She did see it. Love, she thought. It means sacrifice, then. ‘I’ll get him away. Be ready to get Michael out as soon as Blake moves.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Alison smiled, put her hand on his arm. ‘Trust me.’

  They looked gravely at each other. Today had seen a change in their relationship. It was what was meant by growing up. Now truly they had escaped from the after-mists of childhood. For practical purposes Jason had been an adult all his life but for Alison, with her more sheltered background, it was a new world. From now on she would have to find her way through it unaided.

  She shivered, said, ‘I don’t want to go.’

  Meaning, when I leave I shall be putting all this behind me.

  Meaning, when I go through that door into the darkness, I shall be turning my back on everything that has happened in my life until now.

  Meaning, I do not know when I shall see you again or that, when I do, I shall see you as I see you now.

  Meaning, You are my love.