Casey glanced over at her youngest daughter. I wish your father could see you now, all grown up, she thought. She turned to her future son-in-law.
“So, where will you settle?” she asked, dreading the answer. “Will you stay in Australia after the honeymoon?”
David put his arm on the back of Dianna’s chair. “We haven’t really decided,” he said in his ‘down-under’ accent. “We’ll just wait and see how things work out.”
Casey covered her concern by reaching for a roll and the butter. Young love, she thought. They don’t worry about a roof over their heads or a bed to sleep in. She stifled an urge to give advice. Oh well. It’s their life.
The roar of a sea-plane engine caught their attention as it taxied across the water for take-off. The converted net-loft restaurant afforded them a birds-eye view of the harbour and the islands beyond. Seagulls wheeled in the wind as the plane banked to the left and climbed into the sky.
“What are you thinking about, Mom?’ Dianna asked. “You look so far away.”
“I was thinking about your Uncle Duffy,” Casey said. “You wouldn’t remember him—you were just a baby when he dropped in that one time. He had a sea-plane much like that one.”
“He was a bush pilot or something, wasn’t he?” Dianna said. “I’d heard a few family stories; just bits and pieces, mostly.”
“Back in the day, there was lots of room for entrepreneurs,” Casey said. “Up north was where the action was, and a person could make their own opportunities, which suited old Duffy. He had the heart of an adventurer.” She put down her coffee cup and gazed out the window, remembering her older brother. “He was a very interesting man. He might have been very successful, had it not been for what happened one summer…”
* * *
Dufford Mills stood in the hangar, wiping grease from his hands. Through sheer determination, skill and a lot of luck, he and his Cessna 180 had survived the harsh, limitless northern landscape. His was the joy and freedom of the skies as an unfettered and omnipresent observer of the world below. One man and one machine against all nature. How he had been talked into a partnership with anyone, let alone a man who didn’t even know how to fly, he had no idea.
Verbal Parsons had challenged him to a game of pool one night at the beer parlour in the old hotel. Verbal seemed to know a lot about business and the more the beer flowed, the more a mutual enterprise felt like the logical thing to do. Duffy had never partnered with anyone but had pushed his uneasy feelings aside.
With an impatient gesture, he threw the greasy rag into the refuse box. Don’t be an ass, he chided himself. This isn’t the first time you’ve gambled—maybe this time it’ll pay off. He’d already had a few runs ferrying crew and equipment into logging camps and running supplies to a survey crew.
