Fort Bourke was a disappointment: a scatter of slab buildings on either side of a churned street of black sand, three pubs and two stores, the Darling River flowing listlessly down the middle of a shrunken channel. Gum trees stood along its course, dry leaves rasping together in the constant wind.
They rested the cattle outside town while Matthew and Charlton rode their horses north to check on the water situation.
They rode for half a day before turning back. It was an arid and desolate place. A hot wind blew steadily from the north, bringing with it a gritty film of dust. The stark land stretched away on all sides, as empty as the sky. They found no water and back at Fort Bourke they had been told that the Warrego, somewhere over the horizon to the north, had ceased to flow.
They got back to town at sunset. In the western sky the sun floated like a huge pale balloon above an empty horizon.
‘The cattle will never last‚’ Matthew said. ‘I haven’t brought them all the way from Moriarty to have them die on me now.’
‘What do you plan to do?’ Charlton asked him. ‘Wait here until it rains?’
Matthew shook his head. ‘That could be months. What we’ll do is get the herd settled in while some of us push on up the Warrego and see what conditions are like further north. That way we’ll know where we’re headed at least.’
Charlton nodded. ‘In that case we might as well let the boys into town to enjoy themselves.’
‘Not all of them at once‚’ Matthew warned. ‘We still need someone to work the cattle and I suspect the ones that go won’t be up to anything after they get back.’
The boys drew lots and Joe Ogle and Brett Noonan went into town first.
‘Think I’ll go with them‚’ Hud Orford told Maggie.
She gave him a look.
‘They need an older man to keep them in line‚’ he said.
‘Did I say anything?’
‘You looked. I don’t see why. I ain’t had a drink in over a year.’
‘Because there weren’t no drinks to be had‚’ Maggie told him. ‘Well, go if you must. I just hope the others are sober enough to bring you back safely, that’s all.’
They were. They were all drunk but Hud was the worst of the lot.
‘Disgraceful‚’ Maggie said to him next morning.
One of Hud’s most infuriating characteristics was his ability to get stinking drunk without suffering from a hangover in the morning. It made Maggie wonder about divine justice. Now he grinned and said, ‘Dunno what you’re making such a fuss about. A few drinks, that’s all it was.’
‘A few‚’ she repeated scornfully. ‘Lucky them boys was there, that’s all I can say, or you’d never have found your way home.’
‘You talk no sense‚’ Hud told her. ‘I’d have ridden back good as gold. Even if I hadn’t Bessie would have seen me right.’
Maggie sniffed, hands busy preparing damper. ‘Enough to aggravate a saint,’ she said.
‘Why, Maggie,’ Hud said, ‘I thought you already was a saint.’
‘Closest thing to one you’ll ever see,’ she said complacently, believing every word. ‘That don’t mean I don’t get mortal sick of your shenanigans. I loves you with my whole heart, as well you know, but there are times I wonder about the good Lord’s sense, laying you on me along of everything else.’
And slap, slap, went her hands through the flour, terrifying it into submission as she did everything in life.
‘Love me with your whole heart?’ Hud said. ‘I thought it was only God you loved like that.’
‘That’s different.’
‘How?’
‘I loves you with my heart. I loves God with my spirit.’
‘Sure you don’t fancy Him a bit too? That old man with the white beard? Sure you don’ have no ideas about Him?’
‘Blaphesmy!’ Maggie was outraged.
‘Blaphesmy?’
‘Takin’ the name of the Lord your God in vain‚’ she told him in righteous fury. ‘You make sure ’E don’t strike you down.’
‘How’d He do that?’
‘With a pestilence. Or maybe a lightning bolt.’
Hud looked at the clear sky. ‘Don’ look like lightning to me.’
Maggie stamped out to give Aggie a hand with some baking. Hud hadn’t laughed; he hadn’t even smiled but behind his solemn eyes he was laughing, sure enough. The knowledge enraged her.
‘How is he this morning?’ Aggie asked.
‘The Lord has seen fit to give him to me‚’ Maggie said. ‘He sent that man to be a source of joy and tribulation to me. He has surely been that‚’ she added with satisfaction. ‘But the Lord wants me to make a thing of beauty out of the material He give me and a thing of beauty I will make.’ There was a flourish of trumpets in Maggie’s voice and she punished the damper with her knife. ‘My husband‚’ she said reminiscently, ‘is a very passionate man.’
Aggie thought how she had seen Hud last night, drunk as a galah and ready to fall down at any minute. ‘A thing of beauty?’ she repeated.
Matthew and Charlton left the rest of the party in Fort Bourke while they pushed ahead to scout for water. They were two days out when the rains hit them.
‘Just what we need.’ Matthew had to shout to make himself heard above the violence of the deluge.
Charlton looked at the sky, as black as night. ‘We might be in for a whole lot more than we need.’
Luckily they had brought a sturdy tent with them. They found a section of ground a foot or two higher than the surrounding plain and managed, with great difficulty, to pitch it so that its entrance faced away from the driving rain. They crawled in, laced the opening shut and lay down to wait the storm out.
‘It’s a harsh country,’ Matthew said, listening to the pelting rain.
‘A wonderful country‚’ Charlton corrected him, ‘but it don’t yield to fools.’
‘A man’s country‚’ Matthew said.
‘Ain’t nuthin wrong with that.’
‘Wonder how our bunch of cripples back at Fort Bourke will make out when we get where we’re going.’
‘They won’t stay‚’ Charlton said. ‘The boys are along for the drive. When it’s over they’ll head back.’
‘Maggie and Hud seem set on staying‚’ Matthew said.
Charlton chuckled. ‘Ain’t they a pair? I don’ reckon either of ’em knows what they want. Mind you, I wonder sometimes if that ain’t true of all of us.’
‘I know what I want.’
Charlton eyed Matthew shrewdly. ‘You want Aggie Burroughs.’
‘Aggie’s a great woman‚’ Matthew said. ‘She’s got more strength in her than most, I’d say, but I didn’t mean a woman.’ A trickle of rainwater had found its way through a seam in the canvas. Matthew wiped it away with a big finger. ‘As long as I can remember I wanted to come out here. When I was a kid there was a butterfly—’
‘Not too many butterflies in these parts‚’ Charlton said. He grinned. ‘Plenty of blowflies.’
‘It wasn’t the butterfly‚’ Matthew told him, ‘it was the idea of it. It burned me, all the time it burned me.’
‘Now you’ve seen it‚’ Charlton said, ‘what’s next? Move on again?’
Matthew shook his head. ‘I haven’t seen it yet. When I do maybe I’ll think it’s time to put down roots.’ He gave a comfortable laugh. ‘My foster father had a hundred thousand acres but they took most of it off him because he couldn’t stock it. Out here a man could have a million acres and no one to argue with him.’
‘Except maybe the blacks‚’ Charlton said.
‘There’s room for them, too. This land is big enough for all of us.’
‘Maybe the blacks won’t see it like that.’
‘Then they’ll have to learn. We’re here to stay and I want my piece of it.’
‘Whether they like it or not.’
‘Damn right‚’ Matthew agreed. ‘Whether they like it or not.’
The rain stopped at last, the sun came out to dry the land and as soon as they could move they returned to Fort Bourke.
‘No worries about water now‚’ Matthew said cheerfully.
Two weeks later they passed the spot where they had waited out the storm. Now the plain was covered in lush grazing, already a foot high in places. Amid the grass wildflowers lay like jewels.
‘It’s beautiful‚’ Aggie said.
‘Beautiful,’ Matthew agreed, ‘but never turn your back on it.’ They rode along beside the slowly moving herd. ‘Sometimes I think we’re no better than a bunch of fools. I don’t think one of us knows what we’re doing out in this country.’
‘You hired the boys to drive cattle,’ she said. ‘That’s why they’re here.’
‘I’ll grant you the boys‚’ Matthew conceded. ‘They’re here to do a job of work and draw their pay. But what about the rest of us? What about Charlton? What about myself?’ He paused. ‘What about you?’
‘If you don’t know why you’re here I can’t tell you‚’ she said. ‘A man drives a herd of cows a thousand miles I’d say he ought to know why.’
‘When we were stuck in that little tent I was saying to Charlton I could maybe take up a million acres, where we’re going.’
‘Do you want a million acres?’
They rode for a while in silence while Matthew thought about it.
‘Reckon I do‚’ he said eventually, ‘though Lord only knows why. I had over three hundred acres outside Sydney. Good land. Handy for the city if I felt like getting smartened up and going in for a steak and a beer with the governor. I don’t know what a million acres out here will give me that’s better than I had.’
‘They wouldn’t let you within a mile of the governor‚’ she told him. ‘You wouldn’t go even if they would. You want a million acres because of the way you are.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘You’re a big man. You need a big country to give you room to turn round in.’
‘A big country‚’ Matthew tasted the words. ‘That’s part of it, right enough.’
‘Only part? What’s the rest of it?’
The right words were hard to find. ‘You and me and Charlton, we’re not just trying to get to somewhere. We’re moving away from somewhere, too.’
She wrinkled her forehead. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I’d say the countryside down south is crowding up a little for my taste. When I was a kid we lived on a sheep run my parents opened up in the bush. We might have been the last people on earth. The only place around was Jim Jim and that wasn’t more than a dozen houses. By the time I left it was three times that size and I’ve no doubt it’s grown a lot more since. There’s river boats on the Murray, steam trains, last year I heard they’d even introduced an electric telegraph system. It’s getting like there’s no room for a man to breathe. There may not be much out here but at least there’s space.’ He grinned. ‘And what about you? Why are you here?’
Silence for a spell. ‘I’ve got my reasons,’ she said eventually, and with that he had to be satisfied.
Hud had thought to stay in Fort Bourke but Maggie wouldn’t hear of it.
‘We ain’t come out here to live in a town. We’re here to minister to the settlers.’
‘Where we’re going there won’t be no settlers to minister to,’ Hud objected. ‘Plenty of people here. Don’t they need the word of God?’
‘We stay here, I’ll be having to sober you up every day until our money runs out. Fort Bourke ain’t why we left the farm.’
Hud said nothing. When Maggie spoke in that tone of voice he knew better than to argue.
Please God, he thought, let her be satisfied next time. But had no great hope of it.
Nance had also thought of staying behind. She had had enough of the interminable journey. She wanted to stop, find somewhere to turn into the little cottage of her dreams. Fort Bourke was not what her imagination had depicted but she had no doubt it was a lot better than anywhere that lay ahead. From what she’d heard there was nothing ahead. A small farm that grew pumpkins and potatoes and beans on the outskirts of town seemed to Nance a very attractive prospect.
‘My bum’s that sore after sittin’ on that waggon these months,’ she said, trying to sound plaintive. ‘It’s time for a break.’
Git would not hear of it. ‘No one’s going to say I walked off the job before it was finished.’
‘How much further is he going?’
Git shrugged.
‘People in town say there ain’t nuthin north of here.’
‘Wouldn’t know about that.’
And didn’t care either, by the sound of him, Nance thought. She was displeased but could see there was no hope of moving him so for the moment said no more.
They were a week out of Fort Bourke when they first realised they had company. Charlton and Matthew were riding ahead of the herd when they came across hoof tracks that had come in from the west, then turned north to follow the left bank of the Warrego River.
Charlton reined in his grey and inspected them. ‘Three riders‚’ he said.
Three was a dangerous number. Numbers meant safety: there were usually more than three settlers in a party and they would always have at least one waggon with them, probably a few sheep or cattle, too.
‘Best keep our eyes skinned‚’ Matthew decided.
‘There’s too many of us for some sharp-shooter to take any chances‚’ Charlton said. ‘I wouldn’t expect no trouble.’
‘A rifle at a hundred paces is a great leveller,’ Matthew told him. ‘It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.’
Yet by evening they had seen nothing but the tracks running on ahead of them, the hoof prints cut cleanly into the damp earth.
That night Matthew decided to mount a guard over the camp. Like Charlton, Aggie thought he was making too much out of nothing.
‘I remember hearing of something like this‚’ he told her. ‘A family of settlers was stuck up and a woman stolen.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t remember where I heard it or anything about it but I don’t intend to let it happen to us.’
‘How far are we going?’ she asked him.
‘Until we get there.’
‘What’s wrong with the country around here?’
‘Too close to Fort Bourke. It won’t be too long before there’s river boats on the Darling. At least one’s been through Fort Bourke already. Next thing you know there’ll be a railway running right through here.’
Aggie shook her head. ‘Not for a long time yet. What’s there here to come for?’
‘Space.’ Matthew took a deep breath as though he could draw the wide emptiness into his lungs. ‘Freedom. There’s room here for the biggest sheep run on earth.’
Aggie despised such impractical notions. ‘Until it rained there was as much grass on these plains as you’d find in the middle of Sydney. Drought and heat‚’ she said, ‘that’s all you’ll get around here. I would have said it was pretty crook country for farming.’
For a while there was silence between them while Matthew watched the firelight shifting red and gold across her features, shining in her eyes as she stared into the flames.
‘What you going to do?’ he asked.
‘I’m here, ain’t I?’ she said. ‘I’d not have come past Fort Bourke if I’d been planning to turn around and go straight back again.’
‘Why?’ Matthew asked. ‘If you dislike this country so much?’
‘I never said I dislike it. But it’s a hard place. Anyone who settles out here has got to be hard, too, else they won’t survive. Ain’t no room for dreaming.’
They strolled away from the group of men clustered about the fire, past the waggon with the firelight glinting on the wheel spokes, until they came to the edge of the camp. They could hear behind them the faint murmur of voices, the barely audible crackle of flames, the sounds of the invisible herd. Ahead was silence. They stood side by side facing the wilderness.
‘I lived with sheep every day of my life until I was eighteen,’ Matthew said, ‘and I’ll tell you this. This country is too dry for cattle but it’ll be good for sheep.’
‘Why did you bring cattle then?’
‘Because everyone told me cattle did better out here. But they’re wrong. I can see a million sheep, spread out over a million acres of country. All of them carrying my brand.’ He laughed self-consciously. ‘Listen to me. We aren’t even there yet, wherever there is.’
‘I like listening to you,’ Aggie told him, ‘as long as what you’re saying makes sense. I ain’t much for dreams unless there’s something to back them up.’
‘I need something else,’ Matthew said. He had a problem getting his tongue around the words. ‘I wouldn’t want to do it alone.’
She laughed. ‘With a million sheep you would hardly be alone.’
He said, ‘I would want you to be there too.’
‘I’m here now, ain’t I?’
He shook his head in frustration. ‘That isn’t what I meant. I meant—’
Her hand on his arm cut off the words in his throat. ‘I know what you’re trying to say.’
‘Good,’ he said, relieved, and risked a glance at her.
She smiled. ‘But you ain’t said it yet.’
He stared out at the emptiness. As far as anyone knew there was not one human being living out there in all those millions of miles of space. Maybe a handful of settlers here and there who had pushed out ahead of proclamation to snatch their piece of territory, a few naked blacks wandering about, but that was all.
‘No one’s been out there,’ he said, wonderment in his voice, ‘never before in history. We shall be the first.’
‘I declare you’re enough to try my patience,’ Aggie said tartly. ‘You going to say something or not?’
Courage came to him, a breath of air out of the empty land. ‘I’m saying it in my own fashion,’ he told her. ‘That land out there has been burning me as long as I can remember. All these years I’ve been getting ready for this moment. I’m going out there to take hold of it. It won’t be easy. We’ll have to fight all the way. But I intend to live to see these plains covered in sheep with my brand on them.’ He took her hands in his. ‘I want you to be with me when I see it.’
‘I ain’t goin’ no place.’
‘I want you to marry me.’ He almost shouted the words.
‘It surely took you long enough to say it‚’ she told him.
He waited; she waited. Eventually he could wait no longer.
‘Well?’
Aggie smiled. ‘You think Maggie would conduct the service?’