Code of Honor (Australian Destiny Book #1) (15 page)

The hoofbeats began again, moving away. She pushed off and with great difficulty got rolling again. The road was very steep here, and up is not the best direction to take with a bicycle (another advantage of horses!). Shortly she got off the machine and walked rapidly, pushing her bicycle and keeping an eye on the fresh tracks cut in the mud.

She was tired, oh so tired. Mr. Sloan had provided her with a tiny garret room to herself and she had slept the clock around. But twelve hours’ rest does not make up for a preceding night spent in a saddle. She was hungry, too, although she doubted Bob would be particularly enthusiastic now at the notion of buying her lunch.

The forest seemed lighter up ahead. The hoofbeats either stopped again or were muffled somehow. She left the bicycle in a clump of ferns and moved forward carefully. The rain was penetrating to the forest floor now. It came not in the usual filter of little raindrops but in the huge clunky blobs that collected on myriad waxy leaves.

Vickers had ridden out into a grassy sort of clearing. At the far side of the glade, tucked against the rain forest wall, stood a shanty of unpainted boards. Its shake roof was green and hairy with moss, its stovepipe rusty red. Mr. Vickers swung down, tied his horse to a bush and entered the lopsided front door.

Samantha looked and listened for any sign of a dog. It seemed safe; she stepped cautiously into the clearing and paused. The horse raised its head slightly to watch her from the back of its eye, but it made no noise. She hurried along the edge of the clearing to the shack’s windowless wall and pressed in close.

“ … Listened a couple times,” Vickers’ voice was saying, “but I didn’t hear no horse. Nobody followed me.”

“I was so frightened for ye.” Amena O’Casey! “Perhaps Luke was wrong. Perhaps I best go back and finish out at Sugarlea. If Mr. Sloan can get ye thrown in the dungeon for no reason, there’s nae seeing the end of what he can do.”

“They couldn’t keep me.”

“Three days they kept ye. Three days without ye. Ah, Byron, ye cannae imagine what ye mean to me! Me whole life long have I yearned for the man who’d be mine. A strong man and noble, and a gentle lover. Ye be it all and more. Byron, I love ye so.”

Vickers mumbled something reciprocal and appreciative, but it was Amena’s words that tore at Samantha’s heart. For over a decade she herself had been seeking that very thing, without finding a man who so much as approached those ideals.
Nae even a close call,
as Grandmum said.

Amena had found her man. Samantha could tell by the warmth in her voice. What was pure joy, Byron Vickers had found his woman; you could hear it in every word. Now here was Samantha ready to rush back to Mr. Sloan, tattling, wreaking further havoc with their lives! Amena was breaking a vow made Mr. Sloan. But Mr. Sloan had broken Amena’s man, damaging his good name. When did all this horrid breakage end? When did the books close, the sides declare even-steven, the slates sponge clean?

Amena was giggling. “Byron! None of that now. Should we not be on our way south, making our escape? Byron—”

“We will, we will. Later. After bride and groom business be taken care of. Three days without ye’s a lifetime, Amena.”

The past spoke to Samantha. Edan:
Ye care naething for freedom, do ye
.

Yea, Edan, I do care for freedom
. So far as Samantha was concerned, the books closed now. She stepped back and turned away. She would return to the bicycle, roll down the hill back to Cairns and report … report what?

The horse stirred and nickered as she moved within its view. Rain whispered all around her.

“Halt!” Vickers’ voice sent her straight up a foot. She wheeled.

The dark bear stood shirtless in the doorway, a rifle or shotgun of some sort leveled on Samantha. He took a step forward, out into the drizzling rain. “I shook Sloan, but I wasn’t expecting you. Ye’re good, Miss Connolly, to follow me clear out here without me knowing.”

Why didn’t that great black gun muzzle gaping at her heart frighten her? Why wasn’t she hysterical? “’Tis appropriate to congratulate the bridegroom, I believe. Me congratulations.”

He dipped his shaggy head. “Luke Vinson married us ’fore we left Mossman.”

“I wish yerself and yer bride a happy life together.”

“Yer boss cocky’s made that bloody difficult for us, but we’ll try.” He took another two steps forward. “I’ve dealt with the blackest of the blackguards in my day; there’s none tougher than them that cuts cane. But ye’re a brazen one. No fear atall, not even in yer eyes. Not like any woman I ever knew.”

“I wondered about that meself, but I know why now. Ye be nae bushranger. Ye’re an honest and decent fellow, or ye’d not feel so outraged when yer name was impugned. I’ve naething to fear from a good man in the throes of true love.”

The great bear laughed and tipped his gun muzzle skyward. “A good man in the throes of true love. Aye and again aye. And with the best woman in the world, I trow. Get yerself down the hill, Samantha Connolly, and tell yer boss where to find me if ye’ve the mind to.”

“I don’t have the mind to, but I do owe him me loyalty. Sure and by the time he brings others, ye two will be long gone.”

“Aye, long gone. We’ve nothing left here; Sloan saw to that with his accusations. But we’ll make a go of it elsewhere. And ye tell yer slave master that one day Byron Vickers’ll return. And on that day, Cole Sloan’ll be paid back full and running over for the misery he’s caused us.”

“Misery? Were it not for him, Amena would still be in Ireland. And many Irish girls never find a good man. They die spinsters. He owes ye, I warrant, but Amena and yerself owe him, as well. All the blessings of the saints fall upon ye, Byron Vickers, and on your bride. G’day.” She turned her back to him and walked through the wet and rustling grass to the track, to the darkness among the trees.

She dared glance over her shoulder only as she was digging her bicycle out of that clump of ferns. He had gone back inside, he and his gun. She perched on the narrow seat and pushed off. Oh, she was sore!

What did that Bob fellow say about brakes? Nothing, as Samantha could recall. There were no hills this steep in Cairns. She tried to slow herself by pedalling backward but of course that wouldn’t work. Her speed picked up.

The track ahead moved; some sort of brown snake was slowly uncoiling itself, stretching forward to cross the road. With a yelp Samantha lifted her feet high. The snake, lightning fast, jerked itself back into a tight pile as she bucketed past it.

Now she couldn’t get her feet back where they belonged. The pedals revolved with a mind of their own and slapped her feet and ankles as she tried to regain them. The track curved left; she’d never negotiate a turn like that—not at this speed. With awesome dread she aimed the bicycle at a vine-covered bush on the far side of the curve. At the last possible moment she let go and covered her face with her arms.

The bicycle stopped with a loud, rustling
SKISH
. Its handlebars hooked her legs and kept her from flying. She slammed forward and down into a million jabbing, scratching branches. Some loud-mouthed bird sounded the alarm high in the trees, and other voices picked it up.

She lay there she knew not how long, too spent, too tired and hurting, too frustrated to move.
Silly goose, Samantha. You have to right yourself eventually
. Her legs and skirt were tangled in the branches two feet higher than her head. She maneuvered, trying to extricate herself without getting dumped harder on her ear. Her bottom half dropped level with her top half and she could at last stand up.

She ended up crawling out from under the tangle of vines and branches. She yanked the bicycle free. Several of the wire spokes in its front wheel were broken, a few more bent. Did it still work properly? She wasn’t about to find out. She would walk, at least until she hit level land. She gripped the errant vehicle by its handlebars and started down the road.

At least she couldn’t get lost, even though she didn’t really remember this particular curve. One road, thus one way. A quarter mile of walking downhill and she noticed there were no horse tracks in the mud. No bicycle tracks, either. That was logical. This rain would obliterate marks. Yes, but all of them? And yet, how could she miss the way when there was only one?

She stopped cold. Before her was a narrow, pinched
Y
in the road. Another track, just as muddy and obscure, was joining this one. She left the bicycle at the junction and walked a few yards down one leg of the
Y
. She turned and looked toward the bicycle. There was no way you could see the other track. Coming up the hill she could have passed a dozen
Y
’s in the path without ever seeing a one.

This was not the trail she had come uphill on. She must backtrack herself, discover her error and find the right way. She would follow the bicycle marks. She dragged the bicycle around and shoved it doggedly ahead of her, up the steep and winding lane.

Rain fell in earnest now. It traced little brown rivulets down the ruts in the trail. It turned the mud to slime. It pasted the loose strands of Samantha’s hair down across her eyes and cheeks. And by the time she reached that infamous braking bush, it had washed away the faint marks from the bicycle tires.

She stopped and simply stood there, spent. Dense and alien greenery pressed in on her. These ragged hills were not Dagda’s palaces that she loved so well. Unspoken fears, of everything from brown snakes to unknown horrors, crowded together, voiceless, in her breast.

Her sweet and gentle yesterdays back on the Auld Sod were driven from memory by the harsh and bitter today. She was alone. She was lost. And she was too, too tired to cry.

Chapter Twelve

Fossicker

It was a lovely butterfly, vivid in the gloom. Its upper wings were a smoky gray; the back wings, red along the bottom, sported diagonal bands so white they nearly glowed. Samantha hoped it would alight, but it flittered up and around and away. She sat on a soggy, spongy log and stared at nothing.

It would be dark in perhaps three hours—maybe four. She might be twenty minutes distant from Cairns or perhaps eight hours away. The closest she could pinpoint her location was “Australia.” She could be reasonably certain she had not left what was essentially an island continent. She sighed. So this was what all that blank white space in her atlas back home looked like.

The dripping forest hugged close around her. Whispering rain urged “press on.”

She stood up and picked up that infernal bicycle. How could things get so mucked up? A few hours ago she had worried what Mr. Sloan would say. Now she didn’t care a fig what Mr. Sloan said. She wanted only to reach human habitation.

Cairns lay at the bottom of the hills, flush against the sea. She could not go wrong, surely, by keeping to a downhill track. Two wrongs don’t make a right, they say. She had gone wrong once, but perhaps if she took a second wrong, her trail would turn out right. When her track dwindled to less than a footpath, she tried to walk directly through the forest downhill. Even without a bicycle she couldn’t do it. Dense, tangled growth clogged her every step, blocked her every move. She must stay to the trails.

She was stumbling now. The rain had ceased but the forest continued to drip. She was dripping, too, awash in perspiration. She still was not accustomed to the unrelenting heat of this country. She wished she could be certain she was working her way east, but the leaden sky gave her no hint where the muted sun might be. She could not even tell if the sun were close to the horizon yet.

She stopped. Something in the distant bush sounded just like a train whistle. The birds in this exotic land never ceased to amaze her. Again—low and mournful—

It
was
a train whistle! She was certain. But from where? The dense foliage sifted sounds so thoroughly there was no guessing the direction of that wonderful song of civilization. She walked faster, dragging the bicycle along. If the train whistled, it must have been nearing some sort of crossing or track junction. Trains do not whistle at random in the bush.

Also, trains follow rail lines and the lines do not merrily climb up and down hills as do roads and trails. Surely if she continued downhill along this trail, sooner or later it would cross the railroad grade. And once on the railroad grade she would enjoy a relatively straight, level walk to civilization and safety. Nor are railroad grades at all steep. Perhaps along the grade she could ride this bicycle without fear of it running away with her. Her spirits rose for the first time since she left that shabby little hut in the glade.

An hour later she was still walking along this endless track. She seemed no nearer anything. She had walked up and down hills and apparently over a saddle, though she couldn’t see far enough in this thickness to know for certain. Things from time to time had rustled in the forest to the right or left, never close enough to see. And what about the dangers she could not see—brown snakes in the chocolate-colored mud of the trail, and poisonous plants known to aboriginals but not to her?

The forest seemed more open here, not quite a clearing, but almost. She let the bicycle fall over and set herself down on a soft, moss-upholstered something, whether rock or stump she could not say. Dusk. This was definitely dusk. She was bound to spend the night in this terrifying unknown.

All her life she had been praying to God on demand. When in church you recite this prayer, then that one. When pursuing private devotionals in school, you count off prayers by counting off beads. During your early childhood, you kneel at your bedside and rattle off the prayers expected of you, as Mum sits close and monitors for quality and quantity.

She should pray now. The phrase “A very present help in time of trouble” came to mind—or was that the exact phrasing? She could not pray. She was not in church or school now, the nearest bedside was distressingly far away, and Mum sat in her parlor in Ireland on the other side of the world.