A Far Country

by John Fletcher

  He thought, How can I please her if I don’t understand her?

  ‘They’re birds, ain’t they?’

  ‘Birds? Of course they are birds.’ Contempt edged her voice. ‘It isn’t likely they’d be sheep, is it?’

  He flushed. ‘Nobody’s talkin’ ’bout sheep! You wants to see ’em, they’re there, that’s all.’

  And stalked away.

  It was the best thing he could have done. Alison thought about it that day, and the next. He had considered her likes and dislikes enough to tell her about the eagles, to realise she might be interested.

  Her response had been to tell him that eagles weren’t sheep.

  She could have gone to look for them herself but would not do that. It would be the sort of victory she did not want him to have, the satisfaction of knowing that she was interested but lacked the courage or graciousness to permit him to show them to her. If now she allowed him to show her the birds it would also be a victory for him yet somehow that seemed less bad.

  Alison had done no hunting; lacked Blake’s instinct for stalking and capture. She went looking for him.

  ‘I am sorry.’

  He stared at her, his hard-eyed glare.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The eagles.’

  ‘Oh, them.’ He laughed dismissively and she thought she had lost her chance. Then he said, ‘They’re still there, I reckon.’

  He was right. They were there, free and beautiful in their freedom.

  Alison watched them, entranced, two large birds that had come to them from nowhere, their unconscious grace giving them control over the skies with effortless, barely perceptible movements of the great wings.

  Beautiful, indeed.

  ‘Thank you for showing them to me.’

  Blake seemed as uncomfortable with her gratitude as he had been affronted by her rejection.

  She felt the need to repay him by sharing something of her own with him but had nothing. The lack made her uncomfortable, too.

  ‘It was very kind of you,’ she said.

  He muttered something, at sea in this new environment, left her as soon as he could. He retained a lasting impression of a smile he had not seen before, a look in her face that told him he was on the right lines.

  Slowly, inch by inch, with the passing of the weeks, the months, he drew closer.

  She no longer thought of Blake as the bullying boy who had murdered the kitten. Now he was Blake, a man at one with his surroundings.

  Asta dominated what was about her, humans included, by effort of will rather than by natural instinct. What she could not dominate at once she fought into submission: humans, animals, the land. Only the sea did she not seek to control, although Alison wondered whether she would not have done that, too, had she been able.

  She also missed nothing of what went on around her.

  ‘You like Blake a little better than you did, I think?’

  ‘Perhaps a little,’ Alison admitted cautiously.

  ‘Blake is a very determined man.’

  Asta did not condemn him for it; in this environment determination was a quality necessary for survival.

  After a childhood with her father Alison knew all about determination. Blake shared with Ian Matlock one fundamental characteristic: if there was something you wanted in life you took it. It was an attitude Alison understood and respected. It occurred to her that she herself might be what Blake wanted but that was unimportant. She told herself she remained as committed to Jason as she had always been although she would have been more confident of it had she ever heard from him.

  There had been information of a sort. Walter Lang had written to say that Jason had been at Kapunda and had then travelled north to take a job at Burra Burra. After that: nothing. He could still be at Burra Burra. He could have travelled into the interior. He could have gone back to sea. He could be dead. There was no way of knowing. The vast land had swallowed him up.

  Her memories still warmed her, especially of that time that would be forever embedded in her consciousness, but for how long, she wondered, would she have to make do with memories?

  Half the problem was that there was no way she could communicate with him. The only way was to send a message with one of the drovers who passed increasingly regularly through the peninsula but this she dared not do, fearing her father. Why should it be necessary? she thought resentfully. Surely, if Jason wanted to contact her, he should be able to get a message to her?

  So she waited but no message ever came and gradually she began to doubt. Perhaps she had been a fool to let her feelings overwhelm her in the way they had. Had he really cared for her? Had she for him? Even her memory of his face began to blur. She had thought their act of love had been a declaration both to him and to herself of the depth and sincerity of her feelings. She had assumed it had meant the same to Jason but now was unsure. What if he had been interested only in the physical act and now had no further use for her?

  She did not want to believe it yet supposed it was possible. She knew nothing about men. In the meantime Blake was here, attentive, not at all as he had been, making no secret of his admiration for her. With the arrogance of youth she took his attentions for granted, found herself watching him in turn: the sun-bronzed arms, the strong shoulders, the way he walked like a king through their shared world.

  He was strong, and strength, like determination, was necessary. He would protect her, if it came to it, in the same way her father protected her. Blake, she told herself, had not run away.

  It was not something that needed an urgent decision; then, one day, it did.

  One of her mother’s horses, a young stallion with a hard mouth and vicious temper, had split its hind off-hoof. This was something her mother would normally have dealt with herself but a foaling mare took her attention. Her father agreed to deal with the stallion for her. Alison came out of the house and saw it happen.

  Blake and her father had the stallion tied by a head stall to the paddock railing. The afternoon sun varnished the little tableau: the animal, coat liquid chestnut with the light on it, tossing its head and bugling furiously against the restraint, Blake on the far side of the horse and partly concealed by its restlessly surging body, Ian gentling it, stooping to one side of the beast, reaching for the damaged hoof.

  Her father had never been as good with horses as her mother. He lacked the instinct or the patience but Alison saw that the stallion, half-wild though it was, was at least under reasonable control. What made her pause and watch the scene she never afterwards knew but she saw her father take the hoof, leaning his head towards it, the horse twist suddenly, screaming, and try to rear. Its lashing hoof was plucked straight from her father’s hands and sent with full force into his head. She heard the thud, like an axe in rotten wood, and was running, running, mouth wide, voice keening, a furious burst of energy even as her mind said too late, too late.

  Blake said, ‘Dunno what happened. One minute everything was under control, the next it was going mad. Damn near pulled my arms out of their sockets.’

  Mary said, ‘I blame myself. I should never have let him near an animal like that.’

  Asta said, ‘There is no point talking about blame. The man is dead. What we have to consider now is what is to be done.’

  Alison running, running, as she had run towards the scene of the accident, knowing that what had happened could not be undone yet hoping that somehow, if she ran far enough, fast enough, it might still be possible to turn time back to how it had been in the instant before …

  Running from the thought that the horse had been reasonably calm, that something had happened to turn it into a killer, that there had been blood on its flank as from a knife jab, that …

  Running.

  *

  ‘Your aunt’s right,’ Blake said. ‘I don’t like to talk about these things neither, not now, but they got to be discussed. Someone’s got to run Bungaree.’ A pause. ‘I got to think about me own future. I needs to know where I’m plac
ed.’

  ‘You aren’t thinking of leaving?’ Alison was shocked. ‘Not when we need you so much?’

  A smile: apologetic but with steel in it. ‘Depends how much you needs me, don’t it?’

  Alison’s eyes—she could not control them—strayed to the knife hanging in its sheath on Blake’s belt.

  ‘Sunburst had a gash on his shoulder,’ she said. ‘Any idea how that could have happened?’

  ‘Must have bin while he were jerking about,’ Blake said easily. ‘These things ’appen so fast.’

  Asta’s words: Blake is a very determined man.

  Asta raged, barely coherent. ‘How can you? How can you?’

  Jason will be back, she warned. All you have to do is wait.

  But Alison had long given up hope of any such thing.

  They were married by the Reverend Laubsch on the last day of June after a long and mostly incomprehensible sermon. The day was clear but cold. An icy wind scythed across the peninsula to set the women’s clothing fluttering and cause the men to clutch their unaccustomed tall hats. The happy couple stood outside the little hut that Mr Laubsch had persuaded Asta to set aside as a chapel, the bridegroom smiling, his bride demure beside him. Who could blame Blake for his smile, with such a beautiful and compliant bride?

  Stiff-faced, Asta had watched at snivelling Mary’s side throughout the drawn-out ceremony. She knew, they all knew, the story of Ian’s fatal accident, how Blake had been holding the stallion’s head at the time. She thought, I must make sure he never has anything to do with horses around me.

  She thought Alison was lunatic to throw herself away on a man like Blake Gallagher but after her initial outburst had made no attempt to influence Alison’s decision. The world was full of fools.

  TWENTY

  ‘The biggest bastards ever walked the earth.’

  Silas Tregloam swilled beer, banged his empty pot on the counter for a refill. Red nose, red eyes, but Silas knew his way around mining and Jason listened to him, as did the half-dozen others gathered in the Miners Arms. Outside a winter gale battered the walls of the building; somewhere a loose shutter slapped and crashed against the stonework.

  Silas swilled from his refilled pot, wiped a hand the size of a shovel across his mouth and returned to his perennial evening topic: the iniquities of the management of the Burra Burra mine.

  ‘That feller John Graham. They d’ say he take ten thousand a year out of the mine an’ ’e never even been yur! Never once set foot in the town! An’ see ’ow they was when they had that there labour trouble last year. Talked ’bout gettin’ in the militia to deal with poor miners what hadn’t hardly the price of a crust of bread to their names. I tell ee, brothers, them Frenchies had the right idea when they ’anged the bastards.’

  ‘They di’n hang no-one.’ Eli Pentewan knew Silas better than his own wife, saw a lot more of him, after all. He had been listening to him put the world to rights for twenty years: which didn’t stop him slipping his spoke in from time to time. ‘What I ’eard, they cut their ’eads off.’

  Robert Noakes, an older man with a reputation for being politically conservative, said, ‘Di’n do too well in that there latest effort, did they now? They Commune fellers didn’t get nowheres, from what I did ’ear.’

  ‘More the pity,’ Silas said. ‘I tell ee sumen, though. Commune or no Commune, there be trouble comin’ yur if the management don’ watch its step.’

  ‘Why?’ Jason asked.

  It had taken three months for Silas Tregloam and his cronies to accept him into their circle; another three before they had been willing to talk openly in front of him.

  Silas tapped his red nose. ‘I d’ smell it,’ he said with an expression of indescribable cunning. ‘Tes comin’, brother, aren’t no doubt ’bout that.’

  ‘Why?’ Jason asked again.

  Silas said ominously, ‘If they starts their tricks with the assayin’ over agen …’ Bloodshot eyes looked at Jason through the smoke-fumed air. ‘Tell me agen what ’e were sayin’ ’bout that.’

  ‘Only what I heard in the office. They’re going to use company surveyors in Adelaide to recheck the assays carried out here at the mine.’

  ‘So’s they can claim the copper content be lower ’n what tes and they can cut wages agen! Twill be like ‘forty-eight all over agen!’

  ‘You don’ know that,’ Robert protested. ‘Mebbe the company’s learned its lesson.’

  Silas laughed derisively. ‘Henry Ayers? When did ’e learn anything except how to turn a bigger profit for the shareholders?’

  ‘Tesn’ in their interests to cause another strike,’ Eli said. ‘There’ll be no profits at all, that road.’

  ‘No wages, neither.’ Once again Silas addressed his beer pot, wiped his moustache. ‘I tell ee, brothers, profits or no profits, a strike be what they’ll get if they start messin’ ‘bout with the assays!’

  ‘I’ve a notion they mean it,’ Jason told Mura.

  Jason had used his position to get Mura a job labouring above ground at the sorting tables. Accommodation had been a different matter. Jason had known Challoner would never have given permission for that. A black living in the company’s accommodation? He would have been more likely to approve a herd of pigs. In any case, Mura did not want to stay there. He preferred to camp out in the open with a handful of other aborigines who had also been drawn to the Burra Burra in hope of wages. It was primitive but Mura was used to that. There was liquor, which he was not used to at all but was seemingly beginning to like.

  Now they sat before the glowing coals of a small fire, coat collars pulled up, while the wind brought a splatter of cold rain about their ears. Mura clutched a tin pannikin of spirits that he replenished periodically from the bottle at his side.

  ‘You want to go easy with that stuff,’ Jason said.

  Mura ignored him. ‘If there’s a strike,’ he said, ‘what’ll it mean to us?’

  ‘Depends if we join them or not.’

  ‘Will we?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  He had thought about it, certainly. These days that was all he was good for, he thought, thinking about things. Always thought, never action. Quite different from how he’d been in the old days. Then he would have made up his mind, one way or the other, and done it. Now …

  He was adrift. Had been for months, since he got the news.

  Not a day he would forget. A day of bright sunshine, he remembered, after weeks of rain. A day of hope. For the first time in a long time he had allowed his thoughts to turn back to the run.

  He remembered the vast, grassy expanse of Whitby Downs, the waves pounding the base of the cliffs. He thought, without letting himself think too closely, of Alison, what had happened between them, his hopes for the future. He knew a lot about mining now, about the business of mining. He had a notion that this might be more important in the long run than knowledge of geology or metallurgy: the ability to turn what lay beneath the ground, copper or tin or lead, into gold. It was the secret of Henry Ayers’ success and Henry Ayers, avaricious and meticulous, was a man whom Jason both hated and admired. Hated for his penny-pinching ways, admired for the way he held every aspect of the Burra Burra operation in his hand. Given half a chance it was the way he would have been himself although Henry Ayers, unlike Jason, had no reputation as a fighting man.

  Another reason for remembering that day, special as it was in so many ways.

  ‘Fine strong lad like you,’ Silas had said. ‘Just the man we bin lookin’ for.’

  ‘There’s a thousand miners in town,’ Jason protested, ‘what’s special about me?’

  Jason had been involved in a punch-up with an obstreperous drunk a week earlier, had put him away in no time.

  Silas cackled. ‘Got the name fer un, see? Got the name.’

  One of the muleteers, one Silvio Fernandez from Valparaiso, had also been making a name for himself. Big rowelled spurs, ferocious moustache, he had been terrorising the local hotels and—far worse—drawing
the eyes of the few unattached local women. The time had come for him to be taught a lesson and Jason, it seemed, had been chosen for the task.

  ‘Championship of Burra Burra,’ Silas said, ‘think of the honour!’

  ‘A thousand Cornishmen and you’re leaving it to one Australian and a bloke from Chile to decide who’s champion? Where’s your pride?’

  Another cackle. ‘Don’ ee worry, my son. We’ll all be in your corner, never fear.’

  A fat lot of good that would do.

  It was a well-organised affair. There might be few prepared to climb into the ring themselves but no shortage of those willing to arrange for someone else to do so.

  Bunting was strung gaily in the Kooringa square. An area was roped off. The union flag was much in evidence. A milling crowd in holiday mood, excited voices, bright shirts, in one corner a silver band playing suitably martial airs. Everyone eager to see blood spilt as long as it wasn’t their own.

  No sign of the Chilean contingent.

  ‘Perhaps he won’t turn up,’ Jason said hopefully.

  ‘No chance of that,’ said Eli, self-appointed second. He massaged Jason’s shoulders, took a swig from a bottle taken from his jacket pocket. Jason reached for it, had his hand slapped away. ‘Later,’ Eli said, swigging again.

  By the time the Chilean arrived Jason’s second, plus half the crowd, were in a very cheerful mood. Jason was cold and scared but at least he was sober.

  He sat in one corner of the square, a coat around his shoulders, and waited.

  A murmur, swelling. A blast of unfamiliar sound. The trampling of horses’ hooves. He looked up, heart beating furiously. The Chilean party rode into the square. First came the outriders, sombrero hats in tune with their huge moustaches, silver harness shining in the sun. Then a dray decked with flowers containing half a dozen smiling women, all black hair, flashing eyes, scarlet shawls. Two buglers in a cart. Finally, in an open carriage drawn by four matched mules, Silvio Fernandez himself, standing upright and throwing kisses to the crowd.