The Gallant (50 page)

“Of course I don’t mind,” Michael assured him.

“And there is another reason why I’d like to stay here,” Luke volunteered. “That poor little girl, Jane. No one talked to her all through supper, did you notice?”

“She is deaf and dumb, Luke.”

“Yes, I know. But she can lip-read-she followed everything that was said.” Luke’s brow furrowed. “I have a friend who’s deaf and dumb, Dickon O’Shea, and he’s one of the people I like best in the whole damned world.

We worked the sheep and cattle together at Pengallon. Often we were away, just the two of us, for days on end, and we got so we could understand each other perfectly. I thought-well, maybe I could help that little girl to communicate the way Dickon and I used to. Because she must be a mite lonely, just listening and never talking.” His expression relaxed.

“Dickon used to draw pictures, with charcoal, to illustrate what he wanted to say. I might be able to teach Jane to do the same.”

Another lame dog, Michael thought. Luke might be sending one on his way, but he had found another.

“You bide here, Luke,” he urged,

smiling. “I’ll go on in the morning, if the rain lets up.”

The rain had let up the next morning. Michael loaded the packhorse, and having thanked the Broomes for their hospitality, he was about to go on his way when Angus called out to him to wait. He came from the stockyard leading a country-bred bay, saddled and ready for use.

“Take him, Mr. Cadogan,” he invited.

“Dad says you’re to have him for as long as you want.

Go on,” he urged, thrusting the bay’s reins into Michael’s hand. “He’s getting a trifle too old for stock work, but he’ll carry you well enough. And riding’s better than walking, in this country.” He grinned, when Michael continued to hesitate. “If it bothers you, why, you can bring him back when you’ve made your strike! Good hunting!”

There was a bulging corn sack hung round the bay’s neck, and swinging himself into the saddle, Michael echoed the young man’s grin.

“Thanks,” he said simply. “I’ll pay you for him in gold-you see if I don’t.” He raised a hand in a farewell salute and, leading the packhorse, trotted off down the rutted road.

Michael did not hurry unduly. He slept in an old, deserted farmhouse the first night after leaving Bundilly, set up his tent ten miles from the township of Urquhart Falls on the second, and rode in on the morning of his third day on the road.

The little township was pleasantly situated against a background of rolling, tree-clad hills, with the river-swollen from the recent heavy rain-a stone’s throw from the point where the main street came abruptly to an end. The dwelling houses were mostly weatherboard, the shops and stores, with a single exception, constructed of the same material. The exception was a pretentious stone building, standing in the center of town and housing, besides a well-stocked emporium, a tavern and gaming rooms. This bore the name Brownlow carved across its front, and the same name appeared over a new, half-finished building, which proclaimed itself a bank, with a large, handwritten notice in the window announcing that it was open for business.

Horses, laden with packs like his own, were tied to hitching rails outside the tavern and several small eating houses, and most of the men visible in the street were, Michael saw, miners on

their way to the diggings. Recalling what William Broome’s sons had told him about Brownlow, he decided to give both tavern and emporium a wide berth, but with the appetizing smell of roasting meat assailing his nostrils, he yielded to temptation and dismounted outside a small, shingle-roofed eating house, which offered “Travellers’ fare at fair prices.”

Inside, the place was scrupulously clean.

Half a dozen well-scrubbed wooden tables, set with cutlery, invited customers, but only two of the tables were occupied, and when Michael entered, a buxom, gray-haired woman bustled up to greet him with a beaming smile and invited him to seat himself at a table by the window.

The meal was plain, but it was well cooked and more than ample. The pangs of hunger satisfied, Michael sat back, to enjoy

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the pot of strong black tea placed in front of him and idly watch the comings and goings in the street outside. The other customers had settled their dues and gone, and the buxom proprietress, seemingly with nothing to do that necessitated her immediate attention, drew up a chair opposite his and sought to engage Michael in conversation.

“You stayin’ here, mister, or just passin’ through?”

she inquired.

“Passing through,” Michael told her.

“On your way to the diggin’s? I see you got a packhorse out there at my rail.”

“Yes, I’m going to try my luck, ma’am.”

“At Cutler’s Ford or them new diggin’s at River Fork?”

Michael drained his mug, a trifle worried by the woman’s persistence. But probably she was only trying to be friendly, he told himself, and he answered her question with a shrug.

“I don’t know. I intended to look around before deciding. I expect I’ll follow the crowd.”

“They say River Fork’s promisin’, but of course they’re all headed there now. It’ll be cold, this time o’ year-the diggings are high up.” The woman studied him thoughtfully. “You’re new to it, ain’t you? Just come out here, have you?”

Best stick to his story, Michael thought; the Broomes had not doubted it, so this woman probably would not. But she was looking at his callused hands, as he poured himself a second cup of tea, and instead he said evasively, “I’m new to gold digging, but I’ve been out here a while.”

Her shrewd eyes were raised to his face again, and she said, with a quick change of tone, half pitying, half derisive, “I get it, mister-you come out at “er gracious Majesty’s expense! Well, good luck to yer, so did I. The name’s Martha Higgins. What’s yours?”

“Michael-was He could not give her his real name, he decided, and he could not use Wexford.

“Michael Mayo.”

Martha Higgins appeared satisfied; at all events, she did not pour scorn on his choice of a name, and once again her tone changed, becoming persuasive.

“You set on goin” to the diggin’s? With winter comin’ on, it ain’t the best time. An’ I could use a good man, Mr. Mayo. I

got a little spread, out of town a ways-a few sheep an’ some store cattle. It needs a man, an’ since my husband died, it’s not bin easy to work it an’ run this place as well. Labor ain’t easy to come by here, neither. What there is, Mr.

Brownlow grabs.”

“Mr. Brownlow? Doesn’t he own that new bank?” He knew the answer, of course, but Mrs. Higgins’s outburst took Michael by surprise.

“Not only the bank, mister! He owns just about everythin’ worth ownin’ in this town! He was made o’

money when he came here, an’ he’s bin co*’ it ever since. Used to be a p’lice officer, they say, down at Ballarat, an’ made it by bribery an’ corruption-that’s what the folk here reckon.

He got hisself shot at the Eureka

Stockade, and-why, talk o’ the devil! That’s him, walkin’ across to his bank, see?”

Martha Higgins broke off from her tirade to point to a stout, red-faced man in a black frock coat and stovepipe hat who was crossing from the opposite side of the street. He was too far away for Michael to see his features clearly, but his air of self-importance was evident, and so, too, was the fact that he walked with a pronounced limp-a legacy, no doubt, of the battle at the Eureka Stockade.

“You wouldn’t fancy workin’ for him, would you, Mr.

Mayo?” Mrs. Higgins suggested. “Not too many folk do-he’s a skinflint an’ a hard

man to please. But I ain’t hard to please. All I’d ask is a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, an’ your grub thrown in. What do you say?”

It was the second offer of employment he had received in twenty-four hours, Michael thought, with a certain wry amusement. But at least Martha Higgins’s offer had been made in the awareness that he-how had she put it?-had come out to Australia “at Her gracious Majesty’s expense,” and it had been coupled with the admission that she herself had come out the same way.

He smiled, liking the garrulous woman and appreciating her honest forthrightness.

“I hadn’t planned on staying, ma’am.”

“Give it some thought,” she urged. was “Cause there’s storms brewin”, an’ I wouldn’t fancy tryin’ to keep dry in a flimsy tent comn when it’s chuckin’ it down with hailstones as big as your William Stuart Long

fist. An’ likely it’ll be snowin’ at River Fork afore long, take my word for it.”

Michael hesitated, looking through the window once again to follow the limping figure of the onetime police officer as it reached the door of the bank and then disappeared inside. Must he always be on the run, he asked himself-was that all that freedom meant?

Freedom to hide from ex-police officers, to remain silent at dinner tables such as the Broomes’, and … yes, to fear to use his own name, lest it lead to recognition and arrest?

“Where is your farm, ma’am?” he asked cautiously. “You said it was out of town?”

Martha Higgins, sensing his indecision, reached across to grasp his hand. “Three miles out, mister, an’

set right back off the road the diggers take. It’s a tidy little place, with a good cabin on it-an’ you’d have it to yourself, “cept for my son Tommy. He’s sixteen an” he does what he can, which ain’t much-but he tries. I’m here all day; I just go out to sleep there, an’ I put in a day’s work with the sheep on a Sunday. Tell you what-was Her eyes were on his face, pleading with him. “Try it for a week-just one week. Clean the place up for me, get in wood for the fires, do the jobs that are cryin’

out to be done. If you don’t want to stay after a week, you can go, an’ no hard feelings. Eh-will you?”

Michael gave in, and she hugged him. They went out to her small farm then and there, and he found it precisely as she had described it, the lad Tommy a goodnatured youth, with the gangling gait and vacant smile of a mental defective. There was, as its owner had said, much to be done, and within a few minutes of his arrival Michael hobbled his horses, unpacked his mining gear, and went to work.

In a week, he had achieved a good deal, with Tommy his willing and happy assistant. They were hampered to a certain extent by the rain and hailstorms Martha had predicted, but even in the downpours there was work awaiting him in the cabin and sheep pens, and he tackled it with enthusiasm. True to her promise, on the seventh day Martha paid him his wage and offered to free him, but he grinned and shook his head.

“I’ll quit when the place is in proper order-and when the

sun comes out again. I cannot leave it like this, Martha.” He listed what still needed to be done, and the woman turned away, not wanting him to see that she was crying. But she was not the kind to weep for long.

Suddenly giggling, she started to hum a tune that Michael did not recognize until she put words to it.

“We’re factory girls, Refractory

girls, We’re frail girls, pale

girls

-

Keep nit and skip the bail girls!

“Ain’t you never heard that old bit o’ doggerel, Michael? Someone taught it to us on the convict ship comin’ out. I was only a kid, eleven years old, but I ain’t never forgotten it.” Martha raised her voice and sang lustily:

“We’re tried an’ true Old Bailey

girls, The strip an’ rob you gaily girls, The true blue gin an’ tatter girls

-

The assault an’ batter Parramatta Factory girls!

“We sang it to a hymn tune, which made it seem better somehow, an’ it used to make the overseers mad. Didn’t you ever hear it?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Michael answered.

“The only ditty we ever sang on Norfolk Island began “True patriots we, who left our country for our country’s good” … I don’t recall any more of it, but I fancy it must date from the early days.”

“You was on-Norfolk Island?” Martha exclaimed. “Oh, Gawd, you poor

devil! Didn’t they uster say that was punishment short o’ death?”

“Yes, that was what they called it,” Michael confirmed, and he could not prevent some of the remembered bitterness from sounding in his voice. “And that’s what it was, when John Price was commandant!”

They did not speak of the past again, but three days later Martha brought a copy of an old Melbourne newspaper with her, when she came from town. In silence she laid it down,

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opened, in front of Michael, on the table where he and Tommy were finishing their evening meal. There was an advertisement in the center of the opened page, and she pointed to it with a blunt forefinger.

“I reckon you’d better read this, Michael.”

Her voice was strained. “It’s more’n a week old. A customer brought the paper in, an’ I just happened to see it.”

Michael did as she had asked. The advertisement was headed, in heavy black print, Michael Wexford, and his heart sank as he read on: A reward of l150 is offered to anyone who can supply information as to the present whereabouts of the man known as Michael Wexford, lately a prisoner in the Port Arthur Penitentiary. This information should be lodged at the office of the Hobart Chronicle

or at this office. It should be made clear that if Michael Wexford himself makes contact with the Chronicle

in person or by letter, he will learn certain facts which will be to his advantage.

“That’s you, ain’t it, Michael?” Martha challenged. “You’re not called Mayo?”

Michael nodded. But what, he wondered in bewilderment, could the Hobart

Chronicle

tell him that would be to his advantage? And why post a reward?

“A hundred an’ fifty quid’s a lot o’

money,” Martha observed, tightlipped. “An’ this dratted newspaper finds its way here! This ain’t goin’ to be the only copy in Urquhart Falls.”

It would not be, of course… . Michael rose slowly to his feet, filled with a cold anger he found hard to hide. Martha was watching him, an odd expression on her lined face as she asked, “I s’pose you’ll be movin’ on?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I’ll have to, won’t I?”

“It’ll be safer,” she conceded. “But maybe you could-what does it say?-learn certain facts that’ll be to your advantage. A relative might’ve died an’ left you some money.”