A Far Country

by John Fletcher

Asta had known for years that life was not intended to be easy. She had not wanted to leave Norway—surrounded by the sun-burned expanse of the peninsula, as different from her homeland as it was possible to be, she saw that clearly now—she had never wanted to come to Australia, she had not wanted to come to Whitby Downs. She had done all these things. She had had children and lost them, a husband and lost him, a foster son and lost him, too.

  She made her way around the run, attending mechanically to the things that had to be done. For days the shock of Jason’s going dragged like chains at her heels.

  All her plans. All her hopes.

  Gradually her will re-asserted itself. Two things remained: herself and the confidence she felt in herself and in Whitby Downs, the sheep run she and Gavin had carved out of the wilderness.

  Herself and the land.

  She would never permit herself to lose either of them, would never share them with another human, would guard them with her life.

  Ian went to see her again, trying to reason with her. He smiled into her eyes, tried to place his hands on her. She rejected him, not trying to hide her contempt. He stormed out of Whitby Downs and rode home, burning with frustration and anger.

  ‘There is nothing worse,’ he told the surrounding bush, ‘than trying to reason with a woman who won’t see sense.’

  It was difficult to see what he could do about it. He would have to be patient—something that always came hard in Ian’s life—but it was the only way. She’d run things pretty well up to now but one of these days she would be sure to trip over her own feet; then she might welcome his offer of help.

  He had been home less than an hour when Blake came riding furiously up to the house.

  Ian went out to meet him. ‘What’s up?’

  Blake did not dismount. ‘Fire is what’s up!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the north paddocks.’

  ‘Damnation!’

  It was the worst possible news. Ian ran for his own mount. A hot north wind had been blowing for several days. All the paddocks were tinder-dry. A fire up in the northern paddocks would threaten the whole run.

  He swung himself up into the saddle.

  ‘Who’s up there?’ he shouted.

  ‘Asta’s there with Cato Brown.’

  ‘How did she get there so fast?’

  ‘Said she smelt it.’

  They rode fast to the north. It wasn’t long before they could smell it themselves. It certainly wasn’t hard to spot. A dense black cloud of smoke came rolling towards them, heavy with the stench of burning, and as they grew nearer they could see the red of the fire reflecting off the underside of the cloud.

  With Cato helping, Asta was lighting a back burn down wind from the main blaze. She ran frantically along the line of fire, lighting fires and damping them down, expending energy like a lunatic. The others went running to join her.

  Her face was rosy with heat and exertion, her skin smudged with soot. ‘Spread out,’ she shouted above the roar of the fire. ‘If it gets past us we’re done for.’

  Even fighting a bush fire came down to routine: lighting the back burn, letting it spread far enough to prevent the main blaze from jumping the burnt ground, keeping it under control so that it could not itself run away and join the main blaze. It was hard, dangerous, frightening work and the wind did not help. Showers of sparks exploded skywards as a bush vomited flame, a gum tree that had been guarding a slope for a hundred or a thousand years burst into a tower of fire, the heat carried on the wind dried their skins until they, too, felt like exploding into flame.

  Through the roiling smoke the sun blinked and vanished, just one more ball of fire in a world encompassed by fire. Yellow flame, red flame, sparks, heat and black smoke: their only universe, like the first days of the world.

  They controlled the flames only to have them spring up again somewhere else, ran cursing to control the new blaze, the ashes so hot that their feet blistered inside their boots. Lashed by heat, the wind eddied, carrying sparks swarming across the cleared area, setting a hundred new fires blazing in the open ground beyond.

  Asta was everywhere, energy flowing from her in a seemingly endless tide. At one point, when the flames died momentarily, she stood with her boots touching a smouldering log, the remains of the grass spiralling smoke and fumes all about her, and screamed her defiance at the rampaging flames.

  ‘You shall not win!’

  She challenged the fire in English, in Norwegian, with her tongue, her mind, her heart.

  ‘You shall not destroy me!’

  Again she summoned the ancient gods to her aid. Odin and Thor fought on her side and slowly, inch by reluctant inch, the fire drew back, contained within the circle of cleared ground that she had built around it.

  Ian, Blake and the rest watched her, awed and overwhelmed by the intensity of her will that outshone the flames themselves.

  At last it was out but no-one would be able to leave it for hours yet, not daring to turn their backs in case the fire seized the opportunity to burst out again.

  They sat on the ground, the burnt earth all about them, the air acrid with fumes.

  Asta laughed. ‘Flame and heat everywhere,’ she said, ‘but we do not have any fire to make tea.’

  At that moment it was the most important thing she could think of.

  ‘You did well,’ she complimented the others. ‘Thank you for what you did.’

  They all knew they would not have overcome the fire without the inspiration that Asta herself had given them.

  ‘You are a real man,’ Asta told Blake. ‘You did the work of ten.’

  She neither liked nor trusted him nor ever would, perhaps, but respect was something else. Respect—for his strength, his will, his sheer basic ability—she was prepared to give him in full measure. No-one, man or woman, could hope to run Whitby Downs completely on their own. Ian was right in that, at least. Blake would never be Jason, of course, but Jason was gone. Provided Blake was willing to accept orders from a woman she thought he would do.

  Asta stood at the paddock rail, one hand on the neck of her favourite gelding, and watched as the distant rider drew slowly nearer. Both man and horse had their heads down as though weary to death or perhaps dispirited, but they came on anyway. There was something about the man that triggered a chord of recognition in her. She studied him thoughtfully as he came down the last slope and started up the hill towards the house.

  She had no reason to suppose the new arrival meant trouble. Nonetheless, she went indoors to fetch her rifle. This was frontier living. It did not pay to take too much for granted. She came back. The figure was much nearer now. He was no horseman, that was plain. He sat his mount like a sack of potatoes and, suddenly, she knew him.

  ‘Joshua Penrose from Kapunda. That’s who you are.’

  Penrose halted a dozen yards from her.

  ‘Mrs Matlock,’ he greeted her, raised hat, smiling eyes. ‘Good morning.’

  Asta held the gun, not pointing it, but making a statement with it all the same. It said, I am free. I may be a widow but I run my own life. Do not mess with me.

  Just in case he had any ideas.

  ‘Mr Penrose,’ she said. ‘This is a pleasant surprise. Perhaps you had better get off before you fall off.’

  ‘Ma’am, I shall be very pleased to do so,’ he said frankly.

  Did so with difficulty, nonetheless.

  ‘You have ridden a long way.’

  ‘And fear I may have wasted my journey. But had to speak to someone. We are partners, after all.’

  They went indoors. She went to pour them both a glass of cordial, paused with the neck of the bottle over his glass. ‘Unless you would sooner have whisky?’

  ‘I would indeed, ma’am, if it’s no trouble.’

  She fetched his drink.

  ‘Come, Mr Penrose,’ she said. ‘Sit down. Tell me why you are here.’

  He cleared his throat. ‘I’m in trouble, ma’am, that’s the size of it, but I’m
not sure there’s anything you or anyone else can do about it.’

  ‘Perhaps I should be the judge of that.’

  It took a long time to squeeze the story out of him but in the end she managed it.

  ‘There’s a hill north of Kapunda. Some of it came up for sale. The main line of the lode seemed to head that way, I decided to go to the auction and see what sort of price it fetched.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I suppose I got carried away. I bought two hundred acres.’

  ‘How much did you pay?’ Asta asked.

  Joshua’s voice was so low she thought she had misunderstood him. ‘How much?’

  ‘Sixty-five pounds an acre.’

  ‘So much!’

  ‘The worst thing is, the lode pinched out before it reached my land. It seems I am the proud owner of two hundred acres of prime grazing land.’

  ‘At sixty-five pounds an acre.’

  ‘As you say.’

  Thirteen thousand pounds.

  ‘It has created certain financial strains.’

  She could well imagine it.

  ‘But why are you here, Mr Penrose? I do not have surplus money to lend you.’

  Or to invest in failed mines.

  ‘I shall have to realise some investments to ease the financial pressures on me. Part of my interest in Neu Preussen will be among them.’

  ‘How much of your interest?’

  ‘I thought one third?’

  ‘At what price?’

  Penrose frowned at his empty glass, turning it in his hands. ‘Three thousand pounds?’

  ‘For one third of your interest. You are valuing it at nine thousand pounds, then, this one quarter interest.’

  ‘It is a fair price—’

  Gavin had bought his own quarter interest for five thousand pounds. Now Penrose was asking almost twice as much.

  ‘No,’ Asta said.

  Silence. Penrose looked at her, eyes unfriendly. ‘Naturally I expected to negotiate—’

  ‘No negotiations. No talk. What I am willing to do is buy out your whole interest in Neu Preussen for the price my husband paid for his own share.’

  ‘Five thousand pounds?’ Penrose puffed indignantly. ‘There has been a considerable amount of development since your husband bought into the mine. A very considerable amount. Forgive me, ma’am, but I fear that as a woman you may not understand the implications of such an investment—’

  ‘Take it or leave it.’

  A pause. Penrose took a deep breath. ‘You force me to leave it, ma’am.’

  Asta smiled at him. ‘Tell me, Mr Penrose, why have you come such a long way to see me?’

  ‘To offer you my shares—’

  ‘Which Mr Lang would no doubt have been pleased to take from you without need for such a journey. Did you ask him for three thousand pounds?’

  ‘No, ma’am, I did not. There are others who might be interested. Captain Bagot—’

  ‘But our agreement requires, does it not, that any shareholder wishing to sell must first offer his shares to his partners?’

  Impasse. They stared at each other.

  ‘I shall tell you what I think,’ Asta told him, ‘I think you are using me as a stalking horse. I do not think you will sell me your shares for any reasonable price I might be prepared to offer for them.’

  Penrose fumbled awkwardly with the brocaded collar of his shirt. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Two reasons, Mr Penrose. Because Mr Lang already owns fifty percent of the mine and you believe that he will always outbid me in order to obtain control. One share, Mr Penrose, that is all it takes. He might well be prepared to pay three thousand pounds for that share. I would, myself, if it gave me control, but it does not. All your shares will give me is fifty percent, equal with Lang. That I might be interested in. But not one share less. And not for nine thousand pounds.’

  Pause.

  ‘You mentioned two reasons, Mrs Matlock.’

  ‘The second reason is that I am a woman.’

  ‘Why should that matter to me?’

  ‘It is how gentlemen think.’

  ‘Then why should I have come all this way? If I was not prepared to sell to you because you are a woman?’

  ‘I did not say you would not be prepared to sell at any price. But at a reasonable price: I do not think so.’

  Penrose eyed her with growing respect.

  ‘You are a clever woman, Mrs Matlock.’

  ‘This is a man’s world, Mr Penrose. If a woman is not clever she gets nowhere.’

  Over supper that night he asked her about Jason.

  ‘Jason has gone, Mr Penrose. God willing, he will one day return. In the meantime, we go on living our lives.’

  They walked the run, she showed him the view from the cliffs; he probed, ever so delicately, into how she had learned to manage as a grazier in what she herself had described as a man’s world.

  Asta laughed. ‘I do what I suppose everybody does. I survive: or try to.’

  ‘I have to sell,’ Penrose told her frankly, ‘but would like to keep an interest. Would you not be prepared to take less than fifty percent, perhaps?’

  She liked him but this was business. She would not be swayed. ‘All or nothing, Mr Penrose.’

  ‘You are a hard woman,’ he complained.

  She took it as a compliment. Eventually, to her own surprise and perhaps to his, she bought his shares for six thousand pounds, to take account of the development that had taken place at the mine since Gavin had acquired his shares.

  ‘You drive a hard bargain, ma’am. I doubt Mr Matlock himself could have done better.’

  More than ever Asta needed an agent to look after her interests in Kapunda. She had thought to offer Penrose the job but did not. She needed someone able to stand up to Walter Lang, and Penrose, she saw, was not the man. Oh Jason, she grieved, why did you abandon me?

  Nevertheless she liked the Cornishman. He was not the man Gavin had been, would never dominate his personal landscape as her husband had, but there was comfort in that. She knew she could handle him, had done so over the question of his shares, yet he was not so weak that she despised him.

  Red face and lively eye, Joshua Penrose was as different from Gavin in body as he was in personality, yet there was a spark between them. She saw that he felt it, too. A sense of mutual awareness drew their eyes to each other.

  She hesitated, wondering whether to encourage that awareness or not. On balance, she thought, they would make a good pair, she with the advantage, to be sure, but that was necessary. Never again would she settle for being the chattel of a man.

  It had been so long since she had had a man. She had thought she would never have one again, accepting that Gavin’s death had closed that particular door forever. Now she was not so sure. She watched the powerful shoulders, the strong column of Joshua’s neck, and wanted him with an animal lust that startled her with its intensity.

  She waited for him to make the first move but he did not. She was sure he shared the same feelings. Perhaps she should take the initiative. Supposedly it was something that no woman did but it was a long time since she had allowed herself to be governed by such prejudices. Since Gavin’s death she had spent her life doing things that no woman did and, so far at least, the sky had not fallen.

  She thought she might take him to the grotto on the cliffs, see what might develop when they got there, yet at the last minute drew back. Penrose was paying only a brief visit to Whitby Downs. His base was Kapunda and she would spend little time in the mining town. Whatever her feelings, she was not interested in a fleeting relationship with Joshua or any man.

  The timing is wrong, she thought. I will wait.

  Then, after he had gone, riding northwards on the first leg of his long journey home, she missed him. Now that it was too late, she regretted having done nothing.

  By an effort of will she put regrets behind her. She would not allow herself to miss anyone, neither Penrose nor Jason. Her life was here, with demands of its own.
It permitted no room for weaknesses of any kind.

  Blake Gallagher was another for whom weakness had no place. Since his father had put the idea into his head, he had thought of little else but the land. To begin with he had doubted. It seemed impossible that anyone would be willing to hand over what was theirs to another person. Within the family, perhaps, although even that seemed barely possible, but to an absolute outsider … It was against every dictate of nature. If he had owned it he would have seen the land in ruins before he allowed one inch of it to fall into the hands of another person, would kill anyone who laid claim to what was his own.

  He thought, I am not even the overseer. I am the son of the overseer. Is it possible that …?

  It was possible. The love of the land, the determination to have and to hold: that he had. But was his will strong enough to do whatever had to be done to win it?

  His father evidently thought so. ‘You got to sweet-talk the girl, if that’s what it takes. Do what you got to do.’

  Blake walked the land, knelt upon it, allowed the soil to sift through his fingers. Desire ran through him, a lust more intense than he would ever feel for a woman. A woman you could possess, conquer, whereas the land … It could be his but only so long as he was worthy of it.

  Blake raised his face to the sky, clenched fists raised. A vow. This would all be his, for himself, his children, his children’s children. His by virtue of work, of opportunity, of lust of ownership. If he married Alison, if anything happened to Ian Matlock, this would be his.

  First, Alison.

  ‘Eagles,’ he said. ‘Down at the dam.’

  She stared at him as though she did not understand what he was saying.

  ‘I thought you might want to see them.’

  ‘Why?’

  Her immediate reaction: if she let him see she had any interest in the eagles he would shoot them. She had never forgotten the kittens.

  ‘Why should I want to see them?’

  ‘Because they’re free.’

  She had not known what she had expected him to say; not that, certainly. It made her doubly suspicious.

  ‘How do you know about eagles?’

  He knew nothing about them, had mentioned them only because he had thought she would be interested. Now he was at a loss how to answer her, his campaign running into snags almost before it had started.