The Gold Seekers (29 page)

But Francis De Lancey—handsome, chivalrous Francis— had changed everything. He had restored her self-confidence, made her feel wanted and admired, desirable … a woman, not a child. She had not intended to fall in love with him—that had certainly not been part of her plan, for she had always been aware of how much she had to lose if she went too far. Yet, unable to help herself, she had fallen in love. The flirtation had become serious, the affair of greater importance than security or the social position she had once

wanted so badly.

“We cannot go back now, Francis,” she repeated. “7 cannot!”

Francis held her close, his lips on hers, his arms cradling her stiff and weary body. “I love you, Dora, my dearest girl,” he whispered. “I will love you till the day I die, I swear it by everything I hold sacred! We’ll go on—there must be somewhere for us in this vast wilderness.”

He turned the wagon, whipped the jaded horses into a shambling trot, and they descended the hill to follow a track around its foot. Two more large mining camps lay on their new route, but, when they both were despairing of ever finding it, they breasted a rock-strewn ridge and were suddenly looking down on a green expanse of flat, treeless plain devoid of human habitation, with a creek running through it about half a mile away.

“We’re here, my darling!” Francis exclaimed, his voice elated, waking Dora from a fitful sleep. She joined him on the front seat of the wagon, and he unfolded the rough sketch map he had made, based on information gleaned at their various stopping places. “I think that is a creek called Tambaroora, but I can’t be sure. But there are no tents that I can see and no—” He broke off, swearing under his breath. “Oh, the devil take it, we’re not the first! Look, there are horsemen down below! Three of them, with packhorses!” Dora followed the direction of his pointing finger and saw that he was right. There were three mounted men, each leading a packhorse, trotting slowly toward the head of the creek.

“Does it matter?” she asked, an edge of impatience to her voice. “There are only three riders, and it is a big creek. We cannot expect to be alone, Francis.”

“No,” he conceded. “That’s true, darling. We’ll go down after them.” He plied his whip, and the horses started down the slope, gathering speed as the weight of the wagon impelled them forward. Francis did not attempt to steady them, eager to reduce the distance between the trotting horsemen and themselves, and even as Dora cried out to him to have a care, disaster struck.

One of the horses stumbled, alarming its companion, which kicked over the traces, and then both animals took fright, tearing down the hillside and eluding all of Francis’s frantic efforts to control them. The wheels of the wagon on the off side struck a boulder, and the spokes shattered, causing the wagon to crash over onto its side. Dora managed to hold on to the back of the seat, but Francis was flung forward, to fall, with a sickening thud, several yards away. The wagon shaft broke, bringing down one of the horses, and the other, panic-stricken, struggled free and went galloping off toward the creek.

Badly shaken, Dora slithered down from her seat as the wagon discarded most of its load. Fear lent her strength, and, gathering up her skirts, she ran unsteadily to where Francis was lying. Sobbing his name, she fell to her knees beside him, shocked and horrified when he did not answer her desperate cries. He was unconscious, she realized, lying

limp and twisted on the swampy grass, one arm beneath him and his dark head lolling, as if …

“Oh, dear God,” she prayed aloud. “Dear kind God in heaven, let him be alive! Please, Heavenly Father, do not take him from me! Francis, Francis, my dearest love, speak to me, tell me you’re alive!”

Dora had managed to pillow his head on her lap when, heralded by the thud of hooves, the three horsemen they had seen earlier, approaching the creek, pulled up a few yards from her. The leading rider, a slim, deeply tanned young man in seaman’s duck trousers and a tattered shirt, jumped from his saddle and, letting his horse go, came to kneel at her side. Gently he lifted Francis’s limp, dark head from her knee and, murmuring reassuringly, subjected him to a swift examination.

“I reckon he’s only stunned, ma’am,” he told her. “But we’ll just make sure he’s not broken any bones. Rob—” He addressed one of his companions. “Help the young lady to her feet, will you? And then you and Simon right the wagon, so’s we can bring the two of them down to the creek.”

Dazedly, Dora accepted the helping hand the youth addressed as Rob held out to her, and she let him lead her to the shade of an overhanging rock. He left her there and went to aid in righting the wagon, only to call out, “There’s two wheels busted, Luke. We’ll not be able to get the wagon down the hill until we’ve mended them. And we’ll have to shoot the horse—both its forelegs are broken, poor brute.” Luke, continuing to give all his attention to the injured Francis, grunted an assent, and moments later Dora heard the sound of a shot. She shuddered, and the shorter of the two young men came to her, offering his arm.

“We’re going to set up camp by the creek, ma’am,” he told her sympathetically. “We’ll soon have a fire going and the billy on. I’ll take you down, shall I?” He saw her hesitation and flashed her a friendly smile. “Don’t you worry your head about your husband—Luke and my brother Rob will carry him if he can’t walk. But like Luke said, the chances are he’s only stunned and winded. He came out of your dray at a fair rate when the horses bolted, so it’s small wonder he’s out cold.”

On the way down to the creek, he volunteered the information that he and his brother Robert were from New Zealand’s North Island, the sons of the Church of England mission doctor at Rangihowa, Simon Yates.

“Luke Murphy’s an American, come here from the California goldfields. He was working his passage as a deckhand on the ship that brought us here, the Dolphin, and we chummed up on the way to Sydney.”

“And now you are prospecting together?” Dora suggested.

The boy nodded. “Rob and I are going to try our luck in the fields, yes, ma’am. We’ve taken out licenses. But Luke’s not looking for gold—he’s looking for a man who robbed him, back in California. A Captain Jasper Morgan, who served in Her Majesty’s Twenty-third Foot. We had word that he was in these parts, somewhere along the Turon River, but we’ve not seen hide nor hair of him here. Luke’s going to try Bathurst way, soon as he’s seen us settled on a claim. I suppose—” Simon Yates turned to look at her inquiringly. “You won’t have come across him, will you, ma’am? This Captain Morgan, I mean.”

“No,” Dora denied. “No, I haven’t. We—that is, my husband and I—” She caught her breath, hoping that he would not question her too closely, and then went on resolutely. “My husband and I have come from Sydney, Mr. Yates. We, too, intend to stake a claim up here, but … there are so many men searching for gold—thousands of them. We could not, I mean we did not want to join a big camp where there are only men. I … it would not be seemly since I am a—a lone female.”

“No, ma’am.” The mission doctor’s son seemed readily to accept her explanation. “Some of the diggers do bring their wives and families with them, but not many. It … it’s a harsh way of life for a woman. And for a lady born and bred—” He colored, evidently fearing that his words might be misunderstood and taken for criticism. “I admire your courage, ma’am, I truly do.”

They reached the creek, a shallow stretch of silvery water bordered by a thick belt of trees and heady with the scent of the mimosa growing on the opposite bank.

Simon Yates, displaying faultless courtesy, bowed Dora to a seat at the edge of the trees, divesting himself of his jacket and spreading it out for her to sit on. Then he excused himself in order to go in search of the packhorses.

“We just let them go, you see, ma’am, when we witnessed your accident, and it looks as if they’ve strayed. Still, I don’t suppose they’ve gone far. You stay right where you are and rest yourself … I’ll be back as soon as I’ve found our

horses.”

He was as good as his word, returning about a quarter of an hour later with the errant animals. Having secured them, he set about building a cooking fire with what was clearly the skill of long practice, and then, whistling cheerfully, took a smoke-blackened billycan from one of the pack saddles and headed down to the creek in long, loping strides to fetch

water.

Dora waited, recovering slowly from the shock of the accident and fighting against the nausea that threatened to overwhelm her. After a while, the sound of voices caused her to look up to see that, at long last, the young seaman named Luke and the older Yates boy were on their way down the steep hillside. Francis, she saw, to her heartfelt relief, was mounted on one of the horses—slumped in the saddle and with Luke leading his horse, but alive and conscious.

She got to her feet and went eagerly to meet them, biting back a cry of dismay when she noticed Francis’s right arm was suspended in a sling, fashioned from a belt and the tail of a shirt. He looked white and badly shaken, but was swift to reassure her when she reached his side.

“It’s all right, my love. I’m in one piece, thanks to the timely aid these good fellows have supplied. And I don’t think my arm’s broken—just bruised and a mite sore, that’s all. And the wagon can be repaired, they say.”

Luke assisted him to dismount. “We’ve brought your tent down with us, Mrs. De Lancey,” he said practically, gesturing to the canvas draped across the saddle of one of the lead horses. “It’ll take us only a few minutes to set it up and give you some privacy. And when that fire gets going, we’ll cook us something to eat.” He glanced about him with evident approval. “Seems a likely spot for game. I’ll take a musket and see what I can bag for the pot.”

Dusk was falling when, in response to Luke’s hail, they gathered around the fire, on which the skinned carcass of a young kangaroo was roasting on a wooden spit, the old black billycan boiling merrily on the embers of the fire. Dora realized suddenly that she was hungry; during their long journey through the mountains, she and Francis had tasted no fresh meat except in Sofala, where, for an exorbitant sum, they had purchased some beef that had soon become putrid. She had never acquired any skills in the kitchen; at home, prior to her marriage to Benjamin Lucas, her mother had attended to all the family’s needs, and since they had arrived in Sydney, there had been servants to wait on them, and a well-trained cook.

A trifle shamefacedly, she watched Rob Yates deftly making what he told her was damper, from a mixture of flour and water, cooked to appetizing perfection on an upturned spade, while his brother sliced up the kangaroo meat with equal skill and neatness, using a heavy clasp knife, which he took from his belt and sharpened on a stone. Both the meat and damper tasted delicious, and Dora ate well, her nausea gone.

Later, seated companionably around the fire as the darkness closed in, they talked, the Yates boys of New Zealand and their life there, Dora nostalgically of England, and Francis of his naval service, which, Dora was surprised to learn, had encompassed twelve of his twenty-two years and a war with the Chinese, in which he had been wounded.

Luke Murphy was oddly silent, listening with evident interest but contributing nothing to the discussion.

“Don’t you have anything to tell us?” Francis asked him, leaning back, his head pillowed on Dora’s lap and his pipe emitting a thin, fragrant cloud of blue smoke. “About California and the goldfields there?”

Luke’s expression hardened. “I’ve told Rob and Simon all that’s liable to help them find gold out here, Mr. De Lancey,” he defended. “And they can pass it on to you, if you wish. Because I’m moving on, you see, sir, just as soon

as I’ve seen them settled on a likely claim. Tomorrow, maybe, if this creek’s as promising as I think it is.”

“He is looking for a man who robbed him, Francis,” Dora put in, recalling what Simon Yates had told her earlier. “That is so, isn’t it, Luke? A man named Captain Morgan, who served in the British Army?”

Luke turned to her, his eyes suddenly bright. “Yes, that’s so. Ma’am, do you know him—do you know where he is?”

His face fell and he looked crestfallen when Dora shook her head. “No, Simon asked me that. I’ve never heard of him, I’m afraid, Luke. I’m sorry if I raised your hopes.”

“He was here—or someone fitting his exact description. He was working a claim on the Turon but has moved on. Toward Bathurst, one man told me, and he talked of going to Victoria because he had not done good here.” Luke leaned forward to poke the fire, the light from it revealing a grim tautness in his pleasant young face. “I have to go after him—to Victoria, if need be.”

Francis eyed him in some bewilderment. “But if he robbed you—in California, I take it—would you not be better off staying here? You say this creek is promising; you could make … what do they call it? A good strike, which would more than compensate you for whatever Morgan stole from you. If he’s a rogue, rogue enough to rob you, what chance will you have of forcing him to repay you? And if he’s an officer—that is …” He did not complete his sentence, but its implications were plain enough, and Luke reddened.

“Jasper Morgan did not only rob me, Mr. De Lancey,” he answered, his tone harsh. “My brother Dan and I were in partnership with him and two Australians, working a claim near the Feather River, and we struck it rich—real rich. More than twelve thousand American dollars the Mint in ‘Frisco paid out for the gold we found … the gold 7 found. Morgan claimed it; he took the money. He—” Frowning, Luke looked from one to the other of the faces grouped around the fire. He went on, addressing Rob and Simon Yates. “I never told you the whole story. I never told anyone on board the Dolphin, not even Captain Van Buren, because I figured it was my business. Mine and Mercy’s, because she was there too, in Windy Gully. But I guess I might as well tell you now, and you’ll understand why I have to go after Jasper Morgan, if it’s the last thing I ever do. He’s guilty of murder, you see, and the miners’ committee where it happened heard and— yes, saw the evidence with their own eyes, and they found him guilty and sentenced him to hang. I’ve come after him to bring him to justice.”