Dolan of Sugar Hills (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

An hour went by. Forty miles went by. Forty miles of cane.

In that hour, during those miles, Sheila never spoke.

For the first ten minutes she had rebelled silently and desperately.
It isn
’
t true,
she had thought,
it can
’
t be true, it mustn
’
t be true, he
’
s making it all up.

But in her heart she knew this was no fabrication, it was fact. The island never had been father’s, so it never could be hers. She had spent all her money coming to something that she had no right to come to at all.

She was stranded ... just as he had said.

“Afternoon tea,” called the stewardess, “anyone for afternoon tea?”

“Would you care for—” began the man.

“No,” said Sheila hastily. She reddened and added, “Thank you very much.”

“That’s better,” he drawled sarcastically. “I’m glad at least you remembered that.”

She flushed a deeper pink again.

“Look here, Miss—Mrs.—I don’t know the name.”

“Guthrie.”

“Guthrie, don’t you think you’d better face facts?”

“If facing facts means listening while you tell me what a fool I’ve been, I’ve been told already,” she retorted. She added bitterly, “By you.”

“I’m presuming,” drawled Cane Dolan laconically, “that not only have you burned your boats behind you, but also haven’t sufficient wherewithal to return to the boats to refloat them.”

“If you mean go back to Miss Whittaker and ask her to reemploy me—no, I couldn’t raise the fare,” Sheila coldly agreed.

“In which case,” he said authoritatively, definitely, “after tea the pair of us will face facts. Come.” He rose.

She followed him helplessly to the diner ... accepted sandwiches, scones, cakes.

Then they came back to the lounge.

“How much money have you?” he began.

“I don’t see how it concerns you.”

“How much?”

She told him.

“Holy smoke!” he said a second time.

“I suppose now,” she observed resentfully, “we’ll have the ‘fool’ routine all over again.”

“I may be primitive, barbaric,” he replied acidly, “but I can see that will get us nowhere at all.”

“
Us,
Mr. Dolan?”

“Yes,” he said coolly,
“
us.
”

She looked at him questioningly, and he looked speculatively and lengthily back. His consideration was very measured, most thorough.

For all her delicate air, he was thinking, there was a certain suggestion of strength about her. It was there in the tone of her skin, fair yet glowing, in her violet eyes, dreamy yet lucid, her shining dark-brown cap of hair.

“I can use you,” he stated at length.

She stared at him saucer-eyed.

“Are ... are you waving a flag now?” she burst out impulsively at last.

He laughed at that. He laughed and laughed.

Presently he said, “If you’re asking me if I’m interested in you as a woman, the answer is no. I’m not interested in any woman. In this enlightened country of seven hundred thousand males to six hundred thousand females I don’t join in the woman rush.”

“Then—”

“I want you merely as a companion.”

“A companion to whom?”

“To—the ladies on Silverwake Island.” She noticed he hesitated briefly for the first time; for the first time he seemed a little less assured.

“If there are two of them, they shouldn’t need a companion,” she argued.

“Look here,” he said testily, “with what you have in your purse it would be wiser not to quarrel with your future bread and butter.”

“I haven’t accepted the job.”

“What will you do instead?”

“Some school—” she said uncertainly.

“You’re unqualified; you just told me.”

“A library—”

“Odd for a primitive country, but our barbaric librarians are qualified too.”

She flushed. “You never forget that, do you?”

“No,” he said, “I don’t.”

Desperately she suggested, “I could take care of children.”

“Whose children?”

The man was quite maddening. “The people’s children, of course,” she flung.

“Here,” he stated levelly, “the general rule is the small-farm system, in fact only a handful of the really big cane plantations remain.” He paused. “Sugar Hills is one.”

“That doesn’t affect my proposal,” she asserted.

“It certainly does. On small farms women do what they were intended to do, take care of their own.”

And mind their own business as well,
she thought bitterly,
that’s what he would like to say to me.

A flick of his charcoal-dark eyes told her he had read and agreed with her thoughts.

He did not say the words, however. All he said was: “As I see it there are only two things left for you—cleaning or pulling beer. The cleaning would dismay you. There’s nothing dirtier than a cane farm house after the burning off has been done.”

“Burning off?”

“To remove trash and leafage from the cane prior to harvesting. Also there are pests, beasties you’ve never encountered. Women up here grow up with them and take them in their stride. Besides the usual mice are sugar ‘roaches, a snake upon occasion, giant toads that reach a sitting height of six inches and which you don’t kill because they were introduced from Hawaii to eradicate the cane beetle, another lovable little fellow.” The man laughed.

“It appears, then,” Sheila said coldly, hatingly, “that I can only pull beer.”

“You’d last five minutes,” he grinned back. “We have deep, long, busy thirsts.”

Another mile ... more waving canes.

“I’m your last resort,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’ll pay you a decent salary ... enough, anyway, for you to put some aside for when the job’s over.”

She looked at him curiously, for a moment forgetting her own troubles. All at once she could sense a dedication in this man, but it was not a lofty dedication, rather was it a dedication of ... hate.

She shivered a little, knowing an odd fear of something she could not understand.

Presently he spoke again, and this time there were no undertones in his voice.

“You need have no apprehensions as to propriety,” he said crisply. “There will be female company at Sugar Hills as well as at Silverwake.”

“You mean if I accept this post I work in both places? The farm and the island?”

“Of course,” he replied irritably. “You don’t expect me to take you over to the island at once, do you? We’re right in the fir: swing of the cutting just now.”

“I could go myself,” she offered.

“It would be a long row,” he replied loftily, “for I don’t expect you can manage a power boat.”

“Aren’t there regular services?”

“There are no services. Not to Silverwake. The Roylen boats come in sometimes during their tourist cruises but there’s no set schedule, nothing binding as regards us. Yet you—” scornful eyes flicked at her “—would have come all the way up here and expected to put out a shilling or so and be taken across.”

“I thought,” she interrupted wearily, “you’d dropped the ‘fool’ routine.”

“Have you dropped your inane idea of standing unaided on you own two feet?” he returned. He looked at his watch. “Sugar Hill: in another half hour,” he warned.

“At what station do you alight?”

“Sugar Hills, of course.”

“But isn’t that the name of your plantation?”

“The plantation. And the station. And a very wide radius. We’re big. I told you that. Well, have you made up your mind?”

The stewardess was at the door of the lounge again.

“Bookings for first sitting for dinner tonight,” she invited.

Cane Dolan looked at the girl.

“Make up your mind,” he said impatiently. “Are you booking up for dinner on the train or are you getting off with me?”

“You’re ... you’re quite sure—” she stammered.

“Look,” he said harshly, “if you’re harping on that flag business again, you couldn’t mean less to me if you were a cane beetle.”

“Or a toad,” she suggested a little shakily, “reaching a sitting height of six inches and which must not be killed off.”

“Don’t be frightened,” he answered lightly. “When it comes to eradication I’m solely concerned with someone else.” Again the charcoal eyes darkened. For all his apparent banter Sheila once more definitely sensed that black dedication of hate.

Involuntarily she shivered, not knowing why, feeling that odd coldness one had laughingly dismissed as a child as “someone walking on my grave.”

But none of this affected her, she thought a little wearily. He had just said so, and unmistakably, if unflatteringly, obviously she did not affect him.

So it was that, five minutes out of Sugar Hills, when he asked her finally for her answer, Sheila whispered, “Yes...” Then remembered and added rather childishly, “Thank you very much.”

CHAPTER THREE

Cane Dolan climbed down first from the train, turned and held up his arms. Sheila hesitated a moment, saw there was nothing else to do if she was to alight, so jumped into the arms.

The bags were handed out. Everybody in the carriages peered through the scaled windows. When the door was closed and the train started to move again everyone waved.

“I’ve never discovered whether that’s out of Queensland friendliness or train boredom,” observed Cane Dolan, nodding back. He looked around and frowned irritably. “Where’s that blamed Jacky? I told him to meet me.”

At that moment Sheila heard something approaching along the narrow road. She could not see anything, for the track was winding and it was hedged both sides with tall cane. She remarked on the tallness and the man shrugged.

“It’s fourteen feet, but about four feet of that is ‘top.’ New Guinea grows the big grass, a height of twenty feet. We have the highest sugar content, though, of the world.”

The sound of the engine was louder now, and the next moment a Land Rover appeared around the nearest curve of cane. Sheila noted that the man who drove it was dark. She wondered if he had been cutting ... she had seen photographs of the cutters and knew that it was a “black” job ... but Cane Dolan drawled, “Jacky’s forebears were from the South Sea Islands, he’s Kanakan. The Kanakas were repatriated years ago, but Jacky’s people, and a few others, stopped on. I believe—” Cane took out his cigarettes “—several of the tourist islands now are employing the Kanaka girls along with grass skirts and floral leis and what-have-you’s to add a movie touch. That would have been another expense for your little venture, my child.”

“I’m not your child,” snapped Sheila, hating to be reminded of the island again.

“No,” he answered with a cool flick of his eyes, “my employee. By the way, what is your name?”

“Is that for your employment record?”

“No, for myself.”

“Then my name is Guthrie; I told you before.”

“You may be Guthrie in England, you may be in Sydney, even in Brisbane, but here, in latitude nineteen, we use first handles. In N.Q., which is Northern Queensland, no one is Mr. or Mrs. or Miss, they’re Bill, Mary, Mary-Lou. What are you? And are you Mrs. or Miss?”

“Miss, of course,” she answered sharply.

“You sound like one of my own breed, no lover of the opposite sex.” He regarded her quizzically. “The name,” he insisted masterfully again when she did not comment. “Not Guthrie, your first handle.”

“Sheila.”

“It won’t do.”

“What?” She stared at him indignantly.

“It just won’t do. In Australia sheilah is a name for a female.” She hesitated, “Dad called me Shell.”

“Shell.” He considered that, then nodded his head. “Shell it will be here, then, where the men are. It won’t matter elsewhere.” He considered her now. “You’re not unlike a shell, you know,” he proffered. “You’re small, neat, smooth, delicate, yet obviously robust for all your slight build.”

She flushed under his lazy scrutiny. “Thank you,” she said.

“I haven’t finished. You’re also—” he drawled it lazily “—probably like all females, quite brittle, all cover, no heart.”

“Did you require a heart?” she flashed.

“God forbid.” He gave her a maddening grin.

The Land Rover had drawn up. Jacky’s smile made a wide gash in his pleasant face.

Sheila climbed in beside the driver, Dolan stacked the bags, then got in too. It occurred to Sheila that he had not told her his “first handle.” She recalled how he had taunted on the train, “There is another name, but you wouldn’t be interested, not in anyone so crude.”

Jacky asked, “Straight home, boss?” and Dolan nodded.

As though he had read Sheila’s thoughts he tossed at her, “You can call me Cane—unless you’d sooner call me boss.”

Sheila did not respond.

They started off down the winding track, field after field of the rich, broad alluvial valley covered as far as one could see with tall sugar cane, green, damp, shining.

Occasionally there was a fallowing field, and then one could glimpse the thick jungle bush from which this plantation had been won, dense gray gums merging into a grayish distance that turned purple where the eye could see no more.

They climbed slightly and the scene was magnificent, patchworks of fields of cane in varying stages of growth, tramlines that were really narrow-gauge rail transports winding through the fields to form a colored mosaic. Farther out there was a glassy blue sea dotted near and far with innumerable little islands.

“The Barrier Reef is out there,” indicated Cane Dolan. “So is the Whit Sunday Passage.” He paused. “So is your coral isle,” he said.

“It’s not my coral isle,” she returned bitterly. “It’s yours.”

They descended again. As they traveled he told her briefly that cane grown from sets, or cuttings, was called plant cane and harvested at ground level, that the new crop that shot up from the stumps was called ratoon crop.

“Cane ratoons with every cutting, but with a lower sugar content each year. Ratoons save the expense of new plantings but give a lower yield per acre.

“Round the next bend you will see my house.”

Jacky took the bend, and there, set in the middle of terra-cotta red soil, was a homestead, on piles, as stood most of the

Queensland houses, surrounded with banana foliage, frangipani, bougainvillea, hibiscus in bloom.

“Sugar Hills,” Cane Dolan said.

It was big, sprawling, cheerful, casual; by colonial standards it was obviously old. It must have belonged to a few Dolans before this Dolan, Sheila decided. She murmured as much, then mused, “And now it’s yours. That is, of course, if you have no elder brother.”

He did not respond for quite a long time, and she glanced at him curiously. She saw to her surprise that his face now was extraordinarily set and grim. “I have no brother,” he said at last. “Sugar Hills is mine.” There was no exultation in his words, no pleasure. Sheila looked around her, puzzled. No pride, she thought, and yet this is a very beautiful place. She wondered how he could speak with dispassion like this.

A woman appeared on the wide veranda.

“You’re back, Cane,” she greeted.

“Put the Rover away, Jacky,” Dolan directed the Kanakan. “Hello there, Molly,” he called to the woman. “I’ve Shell Guthrie here. I’m taking her over to the island when the harvesting panic lessens. Meanwhile she’ll stay with us. Got a room?”

“You know there’s a dozen rooms,” laughed the woman, who was little less brown than the Kanakan, but it was the brown of sun-tan, not of race. She seemed as unsurprised as Jacky had been that Cane should return with a female. Perhaps Cane Dolan did this often, Sheila thought.

In that uncanny way he seemed to have of reading her thoughts the man drawled, “I don’t make a practice of fetching women back. I’m not, as stated before, a competitor in the woman-race. However, even if I did make it a habit it would still be accepted. Queensland is a free-and-easy land.”

He carried her bags up to a room that the housekeeper indicated. It was quite huge, uncarpeted for coolness, furniture kept to the minimum for the same reason.

“What’s Shell short for, dear?” chatted the woman when Cane had left, “and isn’t it pretty? Shelley, I expect. What’s your other name again? I’m Molly Ferris.”

“Guthrie,” said Sheila, and did not explain any further because Molly Ferris did not wait for an explanation.

“I’m glad to have one of my own around the house,” Molly confided cosily. “All I see are men, men, men. Of course some of the cutters bring their wives and families with them, but not many; most of the men are bachelors living in the barracks and cooking for themselves. And such cooking! These cane cutters believe in good food, believe me. Great steaks the size of a plate three times a day, and then of course there are the spaghettis and the raviolis the Italians go in for ... one-tenth of ail Queensland’s cane cutters are Italian ... and then there are the sprinklings of other nationalities, all with their country’s favorite dish as well. To go past the barracks at meal times is like going into a continental restaurant, I always say.

“Will you come now and have tea?”

Cane Dolan was there already, eating large scones piled high with a jam that Molly told Sheila was rosella.

“It’s a variety of rose hip,” said Cane, “not a parrot, so you needn’t let it put you off.”

The tea he drank would have shocked Miss Whittaker; it was black and Indian and sweetened with a large spoonful of crude sugar.

“There’s refined shop-white sugar if you must have it,” observed Dolan, “but I take this.”

“I’ll take it, too,” said Sheila, and did. She found something about it that she had never found in sugar before, that she liked very much.

He kept his eyes on her. “Settled in?”

“I’ve only been here a short while.”

“Well, you’d better settle in, as I can’t see us crossing to Silver for a few weeks yet.”

“Because of the pace of the cutting?”

“The cutting, the milling and possibly the weather.”

“The weather?” Sheila glanced to the window that framed a flawless blue sky.

Cane nodded. “It’s past cyclone time, at least officially past, but anything can happen at any time up here. I have a feeling it’s going to happen, and I’m usually right. If so, crossing the Whit Sunday will be right out, of course.”

Sheila thought of those little islands in the glassy waters. “That millpond?” she disbelieved.

“That ‘millpond’ is never taken lightly, my girl. It’s placid most times, occasionally pleasantly ruffled by the trades, but when something really blows those waters can pack a punch that can make the most seasoned mariner grab anxiously at the helm.

“I’m going down to the harvesting now. Care to come along?” He got up and started briskly off, apparently expecting Sheila to catch up, so she did.

They set off past colorful flower gardens filled with shrubs and variegated leaves that Sheila never had seen before.

They passed beneath banana, papaw and mango trees, and then all at once they were in the cane again, the reedy grasses with their feathery plumes making a little singing sound in the warm, soft breeze.

“Is this ready for cutting?” Sheila inquired of the nearest field.

“Not until we burn it off to remove trash and leafage. And,” Cane Dolan shrugged, “snakes. The harvest is June to December, which is our winter to early summer in case you don’t know. The peak time is October. I expect this batch—” he nodded to the cane “—will go then.”

When they arrived at the actual cutting Sheila expressed surprise that it was not more mechanized.

“Planting is mechanical, so is fertilizing and weed controlling, but when it comes to harvesting, machines can only operate on standing cane, and since we live in the shadow of Harriet

“Harriet?”

“This coast’s special cyclone,” explained the man, “and since Harriet tangles up the cane so diabolically it can only be tackled by hand. Most of us don’t go in for fancy machines.

“However, don’t think we’re backward. It’s been estimated that our cutters can cut and load cane at three times the rate of overseas plantations.” Cane Dolan sheltered a match and lit a cigarette.

The land of overstatement—and overstaters, Sheila thought.

She watched the cutters working several abreast... she saw the deep swathes they made to and fro across the field, leaving the cane lying crosswise to the direction of the cut. She saw it all topped with a cane knife while lying on the ground, and then loaded onto trucks.

“We both truck and rail,” said Cane Dolan, “only we call the railways tramlines. From there it goes to the mill and later to bulk loading.” He paused. “Any questions?” he asked.

“Yes. Were they cane knives the men had in boxes down in Brisbane when—” She stopped. She had been going to say “when you stepped in and said what you did, when you spoke about ‘waving a flag.’ “

She might just as well have said it. His charcoal-dark eyes told her so. They grinned at her, grinned quite devilishly.

“Yes, they were cane knives,” he said.

“And you mislaid yours,” she murmured, remembering the pungent advertisement that had inspired her to throw a paper down and deride this as a primitive land.

“No, it was not mislaid. The word, you should recall, was ‘stole.’ ” He stuck out an obstinate chin.

She looked at him, exasperated.

“But surely,” she pointed out, “it didn’t matter all that much. Enough for an advertisement, I mean. After all, you wouldn’t actually cut, would you, not if you’re the owner. You are the owner?”

“I am the owner, but still I cut. I cut and I get black cutting.” He said it deliberately, even with frank enjoyment. He waited and watched her. “Any objections?” he asked.

“Of course not. How could I have them, and what would it matter if I did?”

“Nothing,” he said promptly of the last.

The cutters had not looked up once during the conversation, they had kept up their dedication of rhythmical swathes.

“The quota is six tons a man,” said Cane Dolan. “But more can be cut; I myself can cut eleven.”

You could,
Sheila thought.

Aloud she murmured, “All this to sugar our tea.”

“Don’t be a fool.” Again he was taunting her with that. “There’s treacle, rum, power alcohol, industrial acids, vitamins and sulfa drugs there, and that’s only a start.

“All right. Seen enough for today? Tomorrow you can stroll down, and decide if you like me better a darker hue.” He grinned.

“Why should I?” she retorted.

“Why should you stroll down, or why should you like me any better?” he bantered. “Never mind, it’s not even skin deep.” Again he laughed and shrugged.

Sheila had the feeling that he was not referring to the dark color that tomorrow’s cutting would achieve him, but to the extent, present or future, of any association between them. Not even skin deep. Well, Mr. Dolan, that would suit her.