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  And now Turk had gone and stolen a thousand cattle. Marty remembered one of the psalms his mum read out of the Bible—about God owning all the cattle on a thousand hills. What if Turk had gotten some of God’s cattle mixed in with Cy Bickett’s and Pop’s and the others’? If God were even an eighth as angry as these men…Would a man like Turk ever consider the wrath of God?

  The sun with all its vivid, intense heat beat upon Marty’s hat and shoulders. It burned his eyes and forced them almost shut. He had grown up in this. He should be used to the heat. That was another part of the weirdness; how heavily the sun and the shimmering open spaces were making his senses reel.

  Cy Bickett pulled his horse back from the line and jogged over to Marty. He slipped in beside Marty’s horse. “Yon Jason there’s too young, but you ain’t. Your father says you’re pretty good with a .22.”

  “Guess so, kinda.”

  Mr. Bickett pulled a long-barreled pistol out of his belt. “I don’t want you using this unless there’s no way not to. You don’t ever point it toward one of us, even for an instant. And you don’t ever leave it unloaded. It’s the unloaded guns that kill people. And you don’t for a second forget that there’s death in the other end of it.”

  Marty’s heart went thump. The cool, heavy, ungainly pistol was suddenly in his hand instead of Mr. Bickett’s. He stammered. “I don’t think, uh…Mr. Bickett, I mean I don’t really think I oughta—”

  “If Moran gets trapped like we plan, he’s gunner start looking for the weak link in the net; and that might be you boys. I want you to be able to protect yourself if you have to.”

  “What’s Pop…? I mean, doesn’t Pop think I oughta—”

  “Your papa agrees you’re close enough to man-sized. Oh, one other thing. Don’t go blowing the ears off your horse there.”

  “Ears. Right. Uh, wait; don’t you think I oughta—”

  He was gone. Mr. Bickett had ridden off to talk to someone else, leaving Marty to ponder the horrid gravity of growing up.

  Beside him, Jase murmured, “Whacko! Sure wish he’d do the same for me.”

  “Your horse’d never hear again.”

  They crossed the Barcoo an hour past lunch, and Marty thought of other rivers he’d heard of, rivers you need a boat to cross. The Murray was one such, and the Darling—rivers with water in them most of the time. At this particular “ford” the Barcoo consisted of soft sand half a mile wide. A thick green row of acacias lined its southeast bank. A quarter mile upstream, a wallow of caked clay marked, like a gravestone, the dead remains of a dried-up billabong.

  All of a sudden they were on him! Ahead lay a stretch of low, casual, rounded rises, not really undulant enough to be called hills. And from among them rose the dust of a thousand cattle. Turk was driving his stolen mob in the heat of day. Even Marty knew that if Turk was keeping his cattle on their feet and moving when they wanted to loaf, he must have caught wind of his pursuers.

  The line of irate stockmen spread thinner, grew ragged, as they spurred their horses forward…

  …and the chase was on!

  Stiffness and saddle sores faded to nothing. Marty’s gelding plunged forward, caught up like Marty in the heady thrill of this wild ride. The gelding’s strong, rhythmic strides jolted and faltered as they swooped up the first rise. He dodged boulders and jumped the craggy little outcrops as Marty mostly just stayed on top. When the horse’s big feet nearly tangled in a clump of grass, Marty was sure they’d both go crashing down, but he recovered his stride. Somewhere among the low trees to the right, Jase whooped like a jubilant banshee.

  Within minutes they were in a sea of cattle, a million cattle, and Marty remembered how many a thousand cows really is. The mob was rushing, breaking, scattering amid a dense and gritty pall of bulldust. Marty couldn’t see; he couldn’t breathe; he didn’t know where he was, let alone where anyone else might be. He could hear the gunshots, though. A dozen of them crackled and roared above the thunder. A voice cried, “Over that way!”

  Lovely! What way?

  The universe was full of bawling cows and horns and hooves and dust. The world churned along at the speed of Marty’s running horse. Straggly trees reached out and grabbed at him as he brushed past; a branch nearly pulled him off. His horse stumbled on the uneven ground. Where was Jase? Jase couldn’t ride as well as Marty, and Marty was having trouble enough. What if Jase…?

  He was over there, a bit ahead, a hazy gray phantasm looming above the maelstrom of horns and razorbacks. Marty jerked his gelding’s head aside and forced him off toward Jase. The most dangerous thing in the world is to lose your horse from under you in the rush of a panicked mob. He must stay close to Jase, just in case the boy fell. What could Marty do if the worst happened? Who knows? He knew only that he must not lose his cousin in this chaos.

  The rider ahead dropped from sight as big bay hindquarters came flying up through the dust and tumbled forward. Not only was Jase down, he might be crushed beneath his horse! Moments ago they had been in the thick of the mob; now they seemed to be more in the thin of it.

  Without really thinking, Marty jerked his horse to enough of a stop that he could jump off beside the fallen bay. Still without thinking, he pulled that clumsy pistol out of his belt. He would try to drop any cow bearing down on Jase; one or two carcasses piling up might be enough of a barrier to keep Jase from being trampled.

  He had slaughtered many a bullock—put the bullet just so in the curl of hair on the forehead. But those cattle had been standing docile in a feedlot. These were coming at him at that bounding, jerky cow canter. He tried to steady his shaking hands. How could he hit one little spot on—?

  “Noooo!” a man’s voice shrieked beside him, wailing to heaven itself.

  Marty wheeled as a wild-eyed cow thundered past. Through the choking, obscuring dust, he saw a blood-soaked shirt.

  Turk Moran! It wasn’t Jase at all! As his horse struggled upright and ran off, Turk pulled himself reeling to his knees. Screaming blasphemies, he twisted, swaying, to face Marty, and with him came the muzzle of a shotgun.

  In defense, without thinking, Marty swung the gun in his hands toward the drover he’d known for years.

  Never in his whole life to come would Marty ever be able to remember which of those two horrible roaring guns fired first.

  Chapter Two

  The White Knight of Barcaldine

  Pearl, at thirteen, was three years older than her sister Enid. She was bigger, wittier, prettier. Her dark blond hair curled and Enid’s brown mop didn’t. So why were people always passing Pearl by in order to make a fuss over Enid? There they were doing it again. Half a dozen church elders mobbed around Papa and Enid, and here stood Pearl alone on the church steps.

  “So, young lady, and what do you think of the events this morning? Glorious, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. Absolutely.” Glorious. Hmph. If you believed this hubbub, when Papa brought Pearl and Enid to church this morning they were all pagans. Your father and sister are brand-new Christians! Isn’t that wonderful? And what did that make Pearl and Mum—Hottentots? Ragged old Christians? Aborigines were pagans. So were the thousands upon thousands of Chinese who swarmed across the goldfields to the west. Pearl was a Christian, born to it, baptized, raised in the church. So were Papa and Enid and Mum. And now look at all this.

  Elder Babbitts’ crooked yellow teeth were smiling so Pearl smiled also. The elder’s smile disappeared, replaced by his usual stern now-this-is-serious stare. “Do you understand exactly what happened this morning, Paula?”

  “Pearl.” She corrected, then added a hasty, “By your leave, sir.”

  “Pearl, of course. Do you understand that by confessing their sins, and by openly committing their souls to Jesus Christ and acknowledging their faith in Him as their Savior, your father and sister have passed from death into life?”

  “Yes, sir.” Certainly she understood, from catechisms and Sunday school verses memorized years ago. You confess your sins every Sun
day; it’s written right into the service. Jesus is life, and Pearl was born into life, no less than Papa and Enid.

  “Now, dear Paula, have you made that same confession?” Elder Babbitts’ tone of voice assured her he was certain she was hell-bound.

  “Yes, sir.” She glanced around, desperate for a way out. She could see none.

  Undaunted by the positive reply, Elder Babbitts treated it like a negative and launched into a rehearsal of the morning’s sermon.

  “Pearl! Come!” Papa was calling her at long, long last. Relief flooded her and she excused herself from Elder Babbitts’ monologue and rushed down the steps. She latched onto Papa’s right arm, and Enid took his left and they headed home, walking the way they always did from church—arm in arm.

  Papa was a handsome man indeed, with his craggy face, sparkling blue eyes and wavy golden hair. Pearl took a great deal of pride in being his daughter, in walking beside him so elegantly. Elegantly. Yes, indeed, the Fowkeses were elegant. What a far cry from the past.

  Papa’s father and Mum’s too had both been deported convicts. Ah, the blood-curdling stories of deprivation and horror Grandpa Fowkes told, stories about the voyage in chains from England, stories of hardship as he served out his sentence in the world’s ultimate penal colony. He especially loved to describe the shame and prejudice free landholders were so quick to heap upon ex-convicts, denying them everything from a full political voice to the best of the farming land. And now here was Pearl Fowkes, his granddaughter, enjoying every advantage of modern civilization.

  Pearl dragged them to a halt before the window of a little millinery shop in Wharf Street. Papa tugged her into motion again and they angled up into St. Paul’s Terrace. Mum was dressed and waiting for them, as always, when they walked in the door. Mum worked hard six days a week and claimed the Sabbath as her personal day of rest. Pearl couldn’t wait until she had a full-time job so she could rest on Sunday also.

  Mum complained bitterly about the lack of domestic help and the high cost of a simple maid as she set out the Sunday dinner single-handedly. Papa and Enid glanced at each other now and then, smugly, as if their non-news were the greatest news in the world. The family sat down at the little mahogany dining table just as always, with Papa offering the blessing first, then the bowls of food passing around from left to right.

  After a few moments Papa cleared his throat. “Maisie,” he began, “this morning Enid and I made the most important decision that is possible to make. We confessed our faith and committed our lives to Jesus Christ.”

  Mum eyed him with the same and so…? look that Pearl felt. “I always rather thought you were religious enough already.”

  “In the past I was searching. Today I found.” Papa laid his fork down. “There is more news. The church is building a mission church—a branch, if you will—in Barcaldine. I shall accompany the minister as his assistant.”

  Mum dropped her fork and stared. “You’re leaving home? Leaving Brisbane?”

  “We all are. We’re moving to Barcaldine. Should be there soon after Christmas—by the end of summer perhaps, or February at the latest.”

  “But your job—you’re just beginning to make good money. And my job…It took me years to build up a very exclusive clientele. No. It’s nonsense. Rubbish. I won’t hear it!” She retrieved her fork and viciously attacked the roast lamb on her plate. “No.”

  Papa waited patiently until the silence was unbearable. “It is a call to service I will not ignore,” he continued. “The church will pay us a hundred pounds a year, and you can take up your laundry business there as you are doing here. The girls will be educated in the local church school. I understand there are several fine schools. As for Pearl, I am sure she will be able to find work as well; she’s old enough. She can help out.”

  Mum raised her fork in defiance. “I am exclusive laundress to the families of the lieutenant governor, the chief of police, the director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, to name a few. Do you realize what it took to establish myself thus? They enjoy position, Herbert, and they pay. In this Barky Dean—whatever you call it—who is going to pay what my services are worth? Who has position? No one, I guarantee you. Aborigines and a few smelly shepherds. Not a soul of consequence. You ask me to leave all this—for that. Bah!”

  “I’m not asking you, Maisie,” Papa said quietly. “I’m telling you.”

  Pearl’s heart sank heavily. When Papa assumed his low-pitched, this-is-the-way-it-is voice, there was no arguing. Pearl couldn’t imagine moving away from the city. She still vividly remembered leaving Parramatta, the small town of her birth, to live in Sydney, and how Sydney spoke to her instantly: “I am your home. I am in you.” Brisbane, while not so large or urbane as Sydney, was still a city of some substance, with darling shops and busy ways. And now they were on the move again.

  To nowhere. Pearl was bound to nowhere. The lamb turned dry in her mouth; the potatoes choked her. Nowhere! And all because Papa’s overdeveloped religious fervor was soaring to new heights—soaring out of control, obviously. But Mum would be the first to agree; Pearl could see it now in her mother’s stricken face, pale in contrast to her dark hair. Her plump face was so tightly drawn that it seemed to lose its plumpness instantly.

  The only person enthusiastic about the idea was Enid. But then, of course she would. Enid knew exactly how to play upon adults’ emotions, Papa’s especially, saying precisely the right thing at the right time in order to have her way and garner favorable attention. Bitter. Life was so bitter!

  Bitter? The journey to Barcaldine stretched the word to new horizons even before they left. Ever since they had moved here to Brisbane, Mum had spent every shilling she could touch to make their home truly elegant, the way her clientele’s homes looked—carpets, draperies, furnishings. Now she had to sell nearly everything—and at a loss, too, because times were hard and few people in these trying days could afford pretty things.

  But it wasn’t just the home and its furnishings. It obviously hurt Mum very much to leave the important Brisbane citizens she had served these years; you could tell it in her sad eyes and tearful evenings. Pearl, much like her mum, felt the loss too. She had to give up all her school friends, whom she would never see again. How sorrowful. True, most of them had been stuck-up snoots who treated her like a lesser person, but they were her friends and they were moneyed.

  Papa hinted that Pearl could take only one trunk. “Rubbish!” muttered her mum. But even two trunks and a band box would not hold all Pearl’s clothes and mementos. She had to leave behind some of her dearest possessions, including a bisque china doll that (she learned months later) fell into the hands of a very common and poor girl who lived down the street. It didn’t ease the pain in the least that Pearl hadn’t looked at that doll in years.

  Bitterest of all was the actual journey to nowhere. Papa and his family, Barcaldine’s new minister and his family and a half-caste helper named Toby were to travel as a company. Pearl didn’t much like the minister’s mousy little wife, their young children were annoyingly rambunctious, and she never knew what, if anything, to say to Toby. And that was what it was like all the way up the coast railway from Brisbane to Rockhampton.

  At Rockhampton the party unloaded all their belongings on the railway platform, and then reloaded onto another train. The trip was hardly half over and already Pearl was intensely weary of travel. After much hissing and tooting and ringing of bells, the train began to lurch forward, spraying soot on everyone as it rolled.

  As they moved slowly out of Rockhampton, Pearl noted the contrast to Sydney and Brisbane. Those were cities of commerce, with busy quays and many important bank and office buildings. Rockhampton, though, was a working city, a mining town, and it swarmed across its ragged hills like no city Pearl had ever known. Smokestacks from a dozen mills belched more black smoke than the train did. Even from inside her railway car, she could hear the noise and feel the thudding vibrations of a stamp mill by the tracks. What must it be like to live in this
noisy, dirty town? She caught sight of a mob of happy children, laughing and playing tag on a slag heap. They didn’t seem to mind the noise and dirt a bit. But then, children usually don’t.

  Beyond Rockhampton, Pearl somehow lost track of time. Not for the life of her could she recall the date exactly, nor could she remember how many days they had been in transit.

  But there was one thing she couldn’t forget—the stifling heat. Relentless summer sun made the rolling countryside glow and shimmer. Passengers opened their windows as wide as possible, with only a few stuck closed. Even so, the cars felt like ovens, heated not just from above but pouring in on all sides. Only when the train was ripping along at top speed (not all that frequently) did any kind of breeze stir inside.

  At a barren little stop called Anakie a woman came aboard with a small chest slung on a strap around her neck. She moved from car to car, opening the little drawers in the chest to show her wares—gemstones from the mines of Anakie. To hear her talk, Anakie was the gem capital of the world. Capital? All Pearl had seen there was a few shacks and tents.

  Indeed, all Pearl was seeing anywhere was shacks and tents and a few weather-beaten buildings with unpainted wooden sides and galvanized metal roofs. Her father wasn’t dragging her off to nowhere. They were way beyond nowhere.

  ****

  “Pearl, dear, wake up. We’re there. We have to get off the train now. Pearl?” Mum was shaking her shoulder, tapping her cheek.

  Groggy, Pearl lifted her head from Mum’s lap. Darkness. They would have to arrive in the middle of the night! She struggled to sit up. Enid was stretching, just as droopy-eyed. Pearl felt like something the cat had dragged in as she stumbled out onto Barcaldine’s rough-hewn railway platform. Papa arranged something with Toby and herded his family down into the street.

  “Keep up!” Papa kept saying, but keeping up was the last thing on Pearl’s mind. This was obviously the season referred to as “wet.” Dark, heavy mud clung so thick to the sides of her shoes that her feet got heavy. She tried to keep her skirts high and out of the glop. No such luck. She watched the ground, picking her way carefully, but she couldn’t avoid the constant puddles and mires. At least this town had some proper wooden buildings. It was still out beyond nowhere, though. Such a primitive, unappealing place! Whatever could Papa have been thinking of to consent to this?