Miles Off Course (26 page)

S
impson acted quickly. He brought Rowland back to the fire and sat him down.

“Do you know which one it was?” he asked.

“You mean to say there’s more than one?”

“Eichorn pays the Cassidys to collect snakes for his show… there’s at least half a dozen in there.”

“Well how the hell am I supposed to know which one bit me?”

“Give me your tie,
gagamin
.”

Rowland removed his tie and handed it over without question.

Simpson ripped the sleeve from Rowland’s left arm. The puncture marks were clearly visible on the bicep. Securing a large knot in the tie, he wrapped it around above the puncture wound,
and reefed it tight. Then he slipped a thick twig under the tie and twisted it even tighter. Rowland winced, but didn’t protest. He knew what snakebites meant.

Edna, having righted herself, knelt before him watching Simpson anxiously. Her eyes were large, distinctly panicked.

“I need something sharp,” Simpson said, casting his eyes around the cave.

“They took my pocketknife,” Rowland muttered.

“What about a pen? Or reading glasses?”

Edna reached into her pocket and removed a small Bakelite compact. Flipping it open, she slid out the mirror and handed it to Harry Simpson.

He nodded approvingly, and pressed it firmly against one of the fireside stones until it snapped into two jagged pieces. “Righto, Rowly, this might hurt.”

“Might?”

“Just try not to move.” Simpson clamped one of his large hands just above Rowland’s elbow to hold the arm still and tried to incise the wound as quickly as he could. The
fragment of mirror was not the ideal instrument for the purpose and the cuts were neither as clean nor as quick as they might have been. He had to try several times to ensure he had sliced deep
enough.

“Bloody hell!” Rowland gasped.

“Sorry, Rowly.” Simpson put down the mirror. “I’m afraid it’s not over yet, mate. I’ve got to suck out the poison.”

“You can’t,” Rowland said through gritted teeth.

“Got to be done, mate… I’ll try to…”

“No, Harry. You can’t suck out poison with a split lip.” Rowland pulled his arm away. “You might as well stick your head into that jolly basket.”

Simpson realised he was right. “Can you reach it yourself?”

“No, it’s too far round.” Rowland looked at Edna. Already he was having trouble focusing, but she seemed very pale. Her teeth were chattering. Whether or not it was from the
cold was hard to tell. “Ed…?”

She nodded uncertainly. “I don’t know how to…”

Simpson patted her shoulder. “Just place your mouth over the wound and suck out as much blood as you can—try not to swallow any.”

Edna shivered, feeling nauseous after having watched Simpson incise the bite. But she didn’t waste any time. She put her mouth over the wound and tried to draw the blood.

Rowland recoiled sharply and struggled to pull his arm away. He contained a profanity and groaned.

Edna shrunk back, her lips and chin dripping with his blood.

“Come on Rowly, give her a chance.”

“She bit me!” he managed to get out.

“Oh God, Rowly, I’m so sorry.” The sculptress was close to tears.

Simpson examined Rowland’s arm. It was bleeding profusely. In her panic the sculptress had indeed bitten him… rather hard by the looks of it. Her teeth had cut deeper than Simpson
had been able to with the mirror.

“Unconventional,” he said, smiling kindly at the distraught Edna, “but I think it might have helped.”

“Helped?” Rowland choked, as blood ran freely from the wound and down his arm.

“The blood will take the poison with it,” Simpson said firmly.

Edna wiped the back of her hand across her tears, smearing blood over her face in the process. “I’m sorry, Rowly, I didn’t…”

Rowland took her hand, regretting now that he hadn’t been more stoic when she’d bitten him. His head throbbed.

Simpson stood, moving carefully so the chain didn’t snag again. He took a bottle from a crate against the wall and pulled the cork out with his teeth.

“Believe it or not, I know people who swear by this,” he said, returning to Rowland with the bottle of Eichorn’s Snakebite and Blood Poisoning Cure.

Rowland sniffed the open bottle. It smelled of whisky, capsicum and eucalyptus.

“I’m tempted to let you take a swig of this first,” Simpson murmured.

Rowland looked at the bottle dubiously. “Smells like something I’d clean my brushes with.”

“Ready?” Simpson asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Guess not. If you’re going to hold onto her hand,” he warned, nodding at Edna, “be careful not to break it.”

“You’re hilarious.” But Rowland released the sculptress’ hand, just in case. She moved closer and wrapped her arms around him instead.

Simpson gripped Rowland’s arm at the elbow again and gradually emptied the bottle over the wound.

To Rowland, Simpson could well have been pouring sulphuric acid. He was aware of nothing but the searing pain, the faint smell of Edna’s rose perfume and the way she trembled as she held
him.

When the bottle was empty, Simpson tried to stem the blood, using the shirtsleeve he’d removed earlier and a strip which he tore from a blanket.

Edna pressed a canteen of water to Rowland’s lips while Simpson rolled out a swag.

“I’d put you closer to the fire, Rowly,” Simpson said apologetically, “but I’m afraid you’ll go up.”

Rowland nodded, remembering vaguely the part Eichorn’s snakebite cure had played in the incineration of Rope’s End. His headache was getting worse and the fire seemed very bright. He
fell back onto the swag and closed his eyes for a moment. Edna’s hand pushed the hair back from his forehead. Her voice sounded far away.

“Good Lord, he’s burning up.”

Simpson’s voice was calm. “We only need to worry if it was
warralang
… the brown snake.”

“And if it was?”

Simpson hesitated and then answered honestly. “If it was, then his odds are still even.”

“Even?” Edna choked. “You mean he could die?”

“Browns are nasty, but Rowly’s a grown man.” Simpson soaked another piece of blanket with water from the canteen. He handed the compress to Edna. “I’ve known men to
survive… a couple of dogs too.”

“Oh God.” Edna’s eyes welled and she looked away as she tried to control her tears.

“Hey,” Simpson said gently. “It may not have been the brown. The others will make him sick for a while but…”

Edna wiped Rowland’s brow with the wet cloth. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Rowland seemed to be deteriorating so quickly. “So what do we do?” she asked finally.

“We’ll just try to keep him comfortable—I’m afraid there’s not much else we can do.”

Rowland opened his eyes. “I can hear you, you know,” he said weakly. “I’m not dying—Harry’s overreacting.”

“This might teach you to stop poking around where I’ve told you not to,” Simpson said, moving to check the tourniquet. “I suppose some things never
change…”

Rowland winced as the tie was adjusted. “You’ll remove that before my arm drops off, won’t you?”

“Stop complaining, you’ve got two.”

Edna wiped the perspiration from his forehead once again. “You should try to sleep, Rowly.”

Rowland looked up at the sculptress, the perfect contours of her face streaked with blood and tears. He reached up and wiped some of the drying red from her chin. “You’re going to
give me nightmares.”

Simpson laughed. He handed another wet cloth to Edna. “Here, use this. There’s the stream but none of us will be able to get out of this cave until Rowly can walk.” He glanced
at the leg irons.

Edna cleaned her face, while Simpson hung a billy over the fire. Her compact now gone, she had no idea if she’d successfully removed the gore.

Simpson grinned. “If you don’t mind me saying, Miss Higgins, you’re a very pretty girl without all the blood.”

Edna smiled, stroking Rowland’s hair absently. “Thank you, I don’t usually wear red.”

Simpson chuckled, handing her a tin cup of black tea. “Don’t you worry too much, Miss Higgins,” he said. “Rowly’ll get through this…” He glanced at
Rowland who seemed to have fallen asleep. “He was a tough little kid… didn’t say much, but game for anything.”

Edna looked up. Rowland rarely spoke about his childhood.

“Were you born on
Oaklea
, Mr. Simpson?”

He shook his head. “Not quite. My mother went away with the women when her time came but she brought me back to
Oaklea
pretty much straightaway. I grew up there. It’s always
been my home.”

“You called Rowly
gaga
…
gagamin
.”

Simpson didn’t look up. “It’s Wiradjurie. My mother was a Wiradjuri woman. She couldn’t give me much, but she did give me language.”

“What does it mean?”

Simpson giggled. A rich child-like chortle. It was both startling and endearing. “You know, Rowly used to think I was swearing at him.” He shook his head still laughing. “I
didn’t realise till his pony threw him and he called it a useless bloody
gagamin
.”

Edna couldn’t help but smile at the obvious warmth of the memory. “You weren’t swearing at him, then?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

Edna stopped pressing him. Clearly Simpson did not want to tell her what the word meant. She sensed that it represented something important and personal to both men. Rowland would tell her if
she asked him, but she wouldn’t ask him. She didn’t need to.

“Did you and Rowly play together as children?” she said instead.

Simpson was plainly happy with the change of subject. “Afraid not. I’m a good ten years older than Rowly. I knocked about with Wil and Aubrey some. Rowly was just a bit of a kid,
always wanting to tag along. We spent most of our time trying to get rid of him. That was all before the war, of course.”

“Yes, the war.” Edna stared into the fire. “I guess that changed everything… even for the Sinclairs.”

Simpson nodded. “Especially for the Sinclairs.”

“What was Aubrey Sinclair like, Mr. Simpson?”

Simpson smiled faintly. “He looked exactly like Rowly… like him in other ways too.” He scratched his beard, and gazed at Rowland sadly for a while. “Aubrey was more
noticeable, didn’t play his cards as close.”

“You miss him?” Edna said softly.

Simpson was unperturbed by her directness. “Yes, he was the kind of bloke that’s missed.”

“He was a writer,” Edna said, picturing the young man who’d been lost to the world with his talents still secret.

Simpson looked surprised.

“You didn’t know?”

“No, I just didn’t know Rowly did. He’s never mentioned it before.”

“He only just found out.” Edna put down the wet cloth with which she had been cooling Rowland’s face and neck, and wrapped her arms about her knees. “It must have been
awful for them when the telegram came.” She remembered how the sight of the boy on his bicycle had become an object of terror in those years. Edna had known the boy who delivered the
telegrams in her street; he had drunk himself to death in the twenties.

“I don’t know, really. We were all serving. Rowly was the only one still around… poor kid. Mrs. Sinclair took it hard.”

Edna nodded. She had met Rowland’s mother and witnessed her inability to acknowledge her youngest son’s existence. “My poor Rowly.” Her voice was almost a whisper.
“How horrible for him.
Oaklea
must have been such a desperately lonely house for a little boy on his own.”

Simpson shrugged. “I’ve never been in the big house… but I don’t s’pose it was a good place back then.”

“Well, at least Rowly had his father,” Edna said without conviction. Henry Sinclair had died before she had ever met Rowland, and she knew him only through the severe portrait which
glowered sternly from the wall at
Woodlands.

“Don’t think the Boss took it much better than Rowly’s mother,” Simpson said, almost to himself, as he leaned back against a swag. “He was a hard man anyways. I
reckon Rowly fought his own kind of war back here.”

Edna put her hand on Rowland’s, overcome by an impulse to protect him. But of course the war was a long time ago—Rowland was a man now. He mumbled restlessly in fevered sleep. She
wiped his face with the cloth again. She had never thought Rowland secretive, but she realised there were many things he didn’t talk about.

Simpson studied her. “If you don’t mind me asking, Miss Higgins, are you the young lady who shot Rowly?”

“Yes.” Edna frowned. “I didn’t mean to,” she added.

Simpson’s eyes twinkled. “I figured that. Wil mentioned Rowly was keeping some interesting company.”

Edna sighed. “Mr. Sinclair doesn’t like us, I think.”

Simpson’s dark brow rose. “He doesn’t approve of you… that’s an entirely different thing.”

Edna liked Harry Simpson very much. His relationship with the Sinclair brothers, though unusual, was unforced and natural, as was their loyalty to each other. The stockman had a certain
unflappable peacefulness about his manner that was reassuring under the circumstances. As the hours passed and Rowland became more fevered, she needed that.

Edna stirred. The fire had burned down a little but it still cast a warm inconstant light on the cave walls. A deep, rhythmic rumble told her that Simpson too had dropped off.
She was aware that the ground was hard but she was not particularly uncomfortable. Quietly, she brought herself to her knees, looking first to Rowland.