Free Flight of the Eagle by Peter Watt Page B

the colony and although she could afford a lavish lifestyle she lived modestly with her prospector husband Luke Tracy in their rambling house in Townsville. The frontier and its people had ownership of her soul and the desire to return to Sydney was long gone.
    ‘Just about ready to go,’ she heard her husband's gentle American twang. ‘Figure I should be into the hills before sunset,’ he added.
    Kate unconsciously reached out to touch the old scar on his face that marked the point of an English soldier's bayonet – a scar that reminded all of his stand with the American miners at the Eureka Stockade over thirty years earlier. She had since married the man who had continued to love her through the lonely years of his life prospecting at the edges and beyond of the Queensland frontier. The tall, taciturn Luke Tracy had always carried his love for Kate as he struggled through the tropical rainforests of North Queensland, trekking the wide arid plains of scrub tree in the west and into the ancient dry hills of central Queensland. He was a scarred veteran of the Stockade of fifty-four when he stood and fought as a young man with the California Independent Ranger Brigade against the redcoats on the goldfields.
    ‘I know,’ she replied, hoping she would not cry at his departure west on his journey to the little frontier town named in honour of the ill-fated explorer Burke. ‘Have you spare ammunition?’ she asked.
    The tall man standing over her smiled reassuringly as he stroked her face with a callused hand. ‘You needn't worry ‘bout the Kalkadoon,’ he said. ‘I'll be riding well north of their territory.’ He ran his hand down to her swollen belly. ‘I'd be more worried about you, Kate,’ he added. ‘This time you've got to look after yourself – not go worrying about the business. Let the people you employ look after things.’
    Kate nodded and forced back the tears. It was the pregnancy, she told herself, that had made her so emotional lately. The terrible spectre of two babies lost still haunted her. The first lost had been a son who had died hours after he was born and was buried at Rockhampton. She had been seventeen at that time and the father of her child had been Kevin O'Keefe, her first and worthless husband, who had deserted her on the eve of their son's premature birth.
    But Luke had been there to provide a strong shoulder to lean on in the weeks and months following. It was then that she knew she loved him but dared not expose herself to the pain of admitting her love was for a man who saw only lonely places where gold might be. The American prospector had seemed to be one of those men fated to ride out and die in one of those forsaken parts of the frontier. She wanted the man who would share her life to be with her – not always riding out of her life.
    Ten years past she had finally admitted to herself that she would rather risk losing him than not having him in her life at all. And that was when she also proposed marriage to him in a miner's tent outside the goldfield's port of Cooktown.
    A child was born eight months after they had been formally married but the baby girl died from a fever six months later. Her grave was one of many at Cooktown where Kevin O'Keefe, Kate's first husband, also lay buried. But his death was the inevitable outcome of living a life steeped in crime.
    The death of their daughter had caused Kate to retreat grief stricken from the world. But Luke had been with her and his quiet strength had nursed her through the self-recriminations. What had she done to cause the baby's death, she had asked herself. Could she have done something to prevent it?
    Luke had reassured her that death on the frontier was not always explainable – nor should one blame oneself. His pragmatic advice came from personal experience as he had many years earlier lost a wife and child to fever. At that time he had ridden the Queensland frontier alone with his grief and often similarly questioned