Beautiful Lies (4 page)

Archer, who had never set much store in either, was certain Tom was wrong.

The tension between the drill sergeant and the private seemed to dissolve after the Rough Riders stepped off the transport ship at Daiquiri on Cuba's southern coast. At first it seemed as if Linc had a new focus for his rage, or even that the jungle heat and punishing afternoon rains had sapped his interest. During their first battle at Las Guasimas, Linc, Tom and Archer fought the hidden Spanish soldiers without incident, each surviving without a wound, although eight of their comrades were killed. But a week later, after a hellish advance to the outskirts of Santiago, everyone's temper was short, Linc's most of all.

On the night before the charge up San Juan Hill, Tom received a warning that Linc had not forgotten him. All day the men had marched in the worst of conditions over paths a foot deep in mud, slashing their way through jungle inhabited by tarantulas and giant-clawed land crabs. Some of them had succumbed to fever; others were beginning to suspect they had been infected, too. No time or opportunity presented itself for comforting army routine. They threw down their blanket rolls and collapsed to the ground. Talking and smoking were prohibited, and most of them simply closed their eyes and hoped for sleep.

Tom was sinking into oblivion when he heard Linc's whisper close to his ear. “You won't survive tomorrow, Robeson. I'm the one who'll see to it.” Tom opened his eyes and saw Linc's sneering face just inches from his, but in the next moment Linc dissolved into the darkness. In his exhaustion Tom wondered if Linc's words were only his own worst fears spoken out loud. He was already uncertain whether he would survive another day of this hell, much less another battle, and he fell asleep convinced he had dreamed the threat.

They were on the move again by four the next morning.
Tom and Archer marched together, and Tom told him about the dream. Archer suspected Linc's visit had been real. Even in the face of threat, Tom was altering facts to make them palatable. But Archer had his own safety to worry about. He could only warn Tom to avoid Linc.

The attack on Santiago was to be two-pronged, with the Rough Riders swinging west across San Juan Creek to the heavily defended San Juan Heights. San Juan Hill stood to the left and a smaller hill to the right. As they waited for orders, the Rough Riders crouched beside the riverbank or wriggled into position in the tall, waving grasses.

Archer and Tom settled themselves along the bank in a position where they were least vulnerable to the savage Spanish gunfire that was steadily picking off their confederates. Out of sight, the wounded moaned pathetically, and curses filled the air.

“I'm going to see if I can get a better look.” Archer took off for a pocket in the bank. He was tired of waiting for the charge and eager for action. He made the pocket without incident and squirmed into position so he was hidden from view. Then he looked back to see if he could spot Tom.

From his new vantage point Archer could see that Tom was exactly where he had left him, but that behind him, creeping stealthily forward from mound of dirt to rock outcropping, was Lincoln Webster. Archer didn't have time to think. He raised his rifle, and at the exact moment that Linc aimed his own rifle at Tom, Archer fired.

No one except a dismayed Tom should ever have known what happened. No one else would have suspected that Linc was not just another casualty of a Spanish Mauser, but as Archer lowered his gun, he caught and held the gaze of a reporter from a New York newspaper who had been hidden behind another outcropping on the riverbank. From the
man's horrified expression, it was clear he had witnessed the entire incident, minus the crucial detail of what Linc had been planning to do.

The man rose, his face draining of color, as if he was certain that Archer would not let him live to tell this tale. He scurried from behind the rock and dove for better cover. And as he did, a Spanish bullet knocked him to the ground.

The story would have ended there. Even Tom, with all his integrity, would not have sullied the outcome of the subsequent charge up Kettle and San Juan Hills by relating what had happened just before. Linc was dead; the reporter was dead, too. Both Archer and Tom had survived the charge. No good would come from reporting what had happened that morning at the riverbank.

But well after the bugles had announced Spanish defeat, and days after the bands had finished their victory marches, Archer discovered that the reporter had not died that morning after all. At the brink of death from a head wound complicated by malaria, the man had been taken by ship back to the United States. No one knew for sure what had happened to him after that.

Every day until the
Miami
carried the victorious Rough Riders north to Long Island, Archer expected to find himself bound and chained. And on the day in September when the First Volunteer Cavalry Regiment was disbanded, he realized that he couldn't stay in the United States any longer. That morning he discovered that the reporter was recovering slowly in a sanitarium in Albany. And someday the man might remember exactly what he had seen.

That night Archer told Tom he was leaving the country for good, but Tom protested. Tom was convinced that even if the truth was revealed, Archer would be exonerated. But Archer knew he was doomed if the military ever made an
inquiry. The reporter had a major newspaper standing behind him, a newspaper that thrived on sensation. And what was more sensational than one of the Rough Riders murdering another? Archer was nothing but a cowboy turned soldier. If he lied, no one would believe him. And if he told the truth, he would probably face a firing squad.

“Then I'm going with you,” Tom told him. “My family won't help us, but I have money saved. If we throw our lot together we'll be able to establish a life somewhere. And even if I don't stay, I can help you make a start.”

Archer, who knew that success in his new life depended heavily on cash, welcomed Tom to join him.

Now, as Tom flailed from side to side on his narrow bed in Broome's Roebuck Hotel, Archer listened to his mutterings. By saving Tom's life, Archer, who had never been anyone's hero, had become Tom's, a position that suited him, since it brought with it Tom's resources and loyalty.

But even after years of seeking their fortune together, Tom was still a mystery to him. Linc's senseless persecution hadn't taught Tom anything. He still believed that, deep inside, everyone was good. He excused the faults of those he encountered and looked for redeeming virtues in the unlikeliest places, but most of all, he loved Archer without reserve. Archer, who had not been loved since the early days of his childhood, found this the strangest mystery of all.

Archer was a daredevil who acted without thinking, and this was the real reason he had saved Tom's life. But even though murdering Linc had not been without personal consequence, he wasn't sorry he'd done it. Since fleeing the country, he had grown accustomed to, perhaps even dependent on, Tom's friendship.

As Archer stared at his friend, Tom sat up suddenly and
looked around, although his vision was still focused inward. Then, as if the dream had been shaken into a new chapter, he sighed, slid down against the rough cotton sheet and turned to his side. He was silent at last.

Archer stared at the ceiling, but sleep had fled. He no longer thought about the circumstances that had brought him here, but about the ones he found himself in now.

He savored adventure, but he was tired of knocking around the world, living by his wits and Tom's dwindling bank account. He had little to show for his life, and the lure of the unknown was quickly becoming a curse. Like his father, he wanted to build a dynasty. He wanted land and sons and a herd of cattle stretching farther than a man could see. Even if it had been safe to go home to Texas, his chance of obtaining enough good land to build an empire was slim.

Here in Australia there was land at the right price. Granted, some of it was bleak, barren land that could sustain few cattle, but there was also more of it. All he needed was a stake to buy or lease property. He could do the rest with sweat and savvy.

He needed a bride from a rich family; he needed a pearl to make a woman like Viola Somerset look at him.

Archer sat up and felt for his clothes. He dressed quickly and let himself out without waking Tom. The early morning air was heavy and still. The faintest light tantalized the horizon. Last night he had asked the publican where the town's wealthiest citizens lived, and the man had pointed toward a road leading away from the center of town.

Archer had been too busy trying to find work to pay much attention to the way Broome was laid out. Now, as he strolled along the pindan dirt road and slapped lazily at mosquitoes, he saw that there was more to this slice of fron
tier than Chinatown, the jetty where the luggers docked and the ramshackle foreshore camps.

Society was beginning to make inroads in Broome. There were a customs house, a police station and a jail. He passed bungalows surrounded by deep verandas, some of which were shuttered or screened for sleeping. As the road began to climb and the sun spread its golden glow, the houses grew larger and finer. Archer knew he had discovered the lair of the pearling masters.

Archer had spent enough time on ships to know that by nature he wasn't a sailor. But for a moment he could appreciate the quaint charm of this coastal town with its exotic profusion of bougainvillea and feathery poinciana trees, its skies filled with circling terns, noddies and gulls. Broome nestled between mangroves and mud flats and the red pindan sandhills, but the faintest scent of salt was always in the air.

He stopped and surveyed the landscape, wondering which distant house belonged to Sebastian Somerset. If Somerset was the most successful pearling master in Broome, than it stood to reason that his would be the finest residence. But nothing Archer had seen was worthy of a man with so much influence. He trudged farther up the road until just ahead of him he saw a dark-skinned youth dressed in neatly pressed Western clothes, obviously somebody's houseboy on his way to work. Broome was a town where even the poorest sea captain could afford a houseful of servants.

Archer easily caught up with the boy. “Hey, can you tell me which house belongs to Sebastian Somerset?”

The boy looked puzzled and turned up his hands, but he didn't move away.

Dozens of languages were spoken here, but the univer
sal one seemed to be an oddly adulterated English. Archer tried a version of it. “House belonga Mr. Somerset? Big pearling boss?”

The boy didn't move or speak.

Archer reached in his pocket for his smallest coin, but instead of giving it to the boy, he flipped it into the air and caught it, repeating this several times before he asked his question again in the same pidgin dialect.

The boy pointed down the road. “Three house. Bigfella fence.”

Archer considered pocketing the coin, but instead he grinned and let it drop into the dust. The boy scrambled for it as Archer continued up the road.

Had he just kept walking he would still have recognized the third house as Somerset's. Although it didn't begin to compare with the houses of rich men in Texas, in contrast with its neighbors, Somerset's home was a castle. The house was imposing, but it still fitted into the local landscape and architectural traditions. The verandas surrounding it were cavernous, trimmed lavishly with lacy gingerbread and trellises smothered with vines. The floor was raised off the ground on blocks, and the green metal roof was peaked, with a door facing the front and a narrow walkway leading off it. Archer imagined that the pearling master could catch sight of his luggers going off to sea from his private vantage point.

The grounds were lovely, with a variety of palm trees and young specimens of the other-worldly boab trees with their massive bulbous trunks. The trees and a collection of shrubs rose in landscaped clusters to soften the edifice. A golden shower tree drooped beside a sober iron fence that looked as if it might have been imported from across the seas. He stood sheltered by the tree's weeping branches and stared.

Archer wondered what life must be like for the daughter of this house. Had she lived here always, or had her father sent her away to become a proper lady? Did she love this town, with its pungent smells, exotic vistas, its barbaric population? Would she refuse to leave, no matter what the enticement?

As if he had conjured the image, a woman in a nightdress glided across a veranda on the western side of the house. Through the sheer gauze at the windows he could see her moving silently, gracefully, toward the veranda railing. She lifted the gauze-draped frame and stood looking out over the garden.

Archer held his breath, not certain if she could see him. For a moment he had been afraid that Sebastian Somerset's wife would be staring back at him, but this woman was young and slender, with a single braid of golden hair draped over one shoulder and the hint of a softly rounded figure under the fabric of her white gown and robe. He couldn't see her face clearly, but he saw enough to realize her features were pert and symmetrical. She leaned against a veranda pillar and folded her arms.

The sun rose higher, and the sky brightened with the passing moments. The birds, like everything else in the heathen town, were too brash for Archer's tastes. Now one landed in the tree above him, flashing the colors of the rainbow and chattering as if it expected him to answer.

At the noise the woman turned and saw more than the bird. She leaned forward, her hair spilling over the railing like Rapunzel enticing her lover. Archer stepped out from the shadow of the tree and held up a hand in greeting. She moved to the steps and stood just above them.

“Do I know you?”

She didn't speak loudly, but even though the distance between them was considerable, Archer heard her.

“Not yet.” He flashed his best devil-may-care grin.

“Really? And why would that change?”

“Because I'm the man you're going to marry.”