The Gallant (52 page)

Johnny spread out the two closely written sheets on the table in front of him. Patrick’s letter began with inquiries as to his sister’s health and well-being and then continued

I am deeply sorry fee leare that your search and John’s has led you to so many dead ends, but the advertisement Dominic published in his newspaper and which he caused to be copied in the Melbourne and Geelong papers has at last borne fruit.

There was a reply from a woman signing herself Martha Higgins, from the township of Urquhart Falls on the Goulburn River.

It was badly spelt and, alas, not as informative as I would have wished, Kit, but I believe that the woman’s claim to have seen Michael is true.

She described him accurately and stated that he had told her that his real name was Michael Cadogan and that he had escaped from the Port Arthur Penitentiary.

It seems he told her that he had passed a night with a station owner named William Broome-a relative, perhaps, of Johnny’s-whose place is situated forty miles distant, near the mouth of the Campaspe River, and is called Bundilly.

If this Mrs. Higgins is to be believed, Michael stayed there on his way to Urquhart Falls and worked on her smallholding outside the township for about a week. He saw the advertisement in a Melbourne newspaper and gave her permission to reply to it, telling her to claim the reward.

But, she said in her letter, the next day he packed up and left, telling her that he intended to go to the new gold diggings, which I understand are at either River Fork or Cutler’s Ford, in the Ovens area-a considerable distance to the east of Urquhart Falls, I am finding out all I can about these fields and how best to get to them, and I have written a cautious note of inquiry to Mr. Broome of Bundilly.

What worries me most is the inevitable delay between the arrival of Mrs. Higgins’s letter at the office of the Melbourne

Herald

comto which it was addressed-and the time when you will receive mine.

As I am not sure whether you are still in Hobart, I am sending this in care of Dominic Hayes and hope he will know an address to which he can forward it. I did receive the last letter you wrote from Sydney, saying that you had drawn blank there and were going back to Tasmania, but I have heard nothing since.

I promised I would wait for you and Johnny to join forces with me, but clearly, if I do, there will be still more delay and the scent will be cold. Also I am told that this is the worst possible time of year in the northern goldfields, with heavy snowfalls in the mountains.

I propose therefore to leave Melbourne within the next few days and visit the

Bundilly station and Urquhart Falls and then go on to the fields. Cobb and Co. run regular coaches to the fields, from Melbourne and Geelong, and I am making inquiries concerning their schedules, although I think it likely that I shall hire some form of horse transport, so as to be independent. I will leave word for you at the

Herald

office in Melbourne.

Johnny folded the letter and returned it to Kitty, puzzled by the tense, unhappy expression on her lovely face.

“What is worrying you, Kitty?” he asked her gently. “Surely this is good news? William Broome

is

my uncle, and surely he can tell us something about your brother. At least we know where Michael was staying until a few weeks ago-we know he’s alive and still free. And, my dearest, Pat is setting off after him. He may even have caught up with him by now!”

“Yes, Johnny, I know, and it is good news,” Kitty admitted. “But you haven’t read the cutting from the newspaper.”

Johnny picked it up, frowning. It hurt him deeply to see Kitty worried and unhappy, and he wished, not for the first time, that she would confide in him and allow him to help and comfort her. He was, he recognized ruefully, more passionately in love with her than ever-hopelessly, helplessly under the spell of her beauty and charm-yet despite their close association, she still continued to hold him at arm’s length, keeping her own counsel, instead of permitting him to share her anxieties and shoulder the full responsibility for their long search. On their return to Hobart, two weeks ago, she had seemed more at ease with Dominic Hayes than with himself. Certainly she had talked more freely to Dominic, and he, taking advantage of this, had teased and made her laugh over some reference to a horse named Snowgoose and the Master’s Cup.

Johnny smothered a frustrated sigh and started to read the newspaper cutting. There was a note from Dominic attached to it.

This report, published in the Goulburn Valley

Gazette and Advertiser,

was sent to me by a colleague in Melbourne, and it filled me with alarm. I do not know if Pat will have seen it, but I felt it a matter of urgency that you should.

Johnny’s frown deepened as he studied the report, conscious, as he read it, of being filled with alarm, as Dominic had been.

“Daring Robbery at Snake Gully,” the headline proclaimed. “Two Troopers Wounded.”

A gang of eight or ten bushrangers, armed with rifles and pistols, held up the gold shipments from the new field at River Fork, on the afternoon of August 10th.

The ambush was well planned, the robbers firing from concealment in the narrow gully just before dusk.

Troopers Hardy and Lomax were wounded, the former severely, although he is reported to be recovering.

The miscreants next turned their fire on the horse team, bringing the two leaders down and causing the wagon to overturn. The driver, Amos Flood, who escaped serious injury, was held at gunpoint whilst the gold from the heavy boxes was unloaded into sacks. The amount is believed to have exceeded 2,000 ounces.

The robbers then made off with their spoils into the bush.

Later the following evening, two troopers, William Smith and Thomas Mullan, making a search in the vicinity, came upon a party they suspected of being members of the gang in a tavern called The Travellers’ Rest, kept by David McMunn. Trooper Smith, who had previously served as an overseer of convicts on Norfolk Island, believed that he recognized a convict known as Big Michael Wexford-transferred to the Port Arthur Penitentiary, from where he recently absconded-but, on challenging him, the gang set upon him and his companion, and all made their escape, in a heavy snowstorm, taking the troopers’

horses with them.

Mr. Commissioner Brackenbury, with a large posse of troopers and volunteers from the mining community, is conducting the search for the bushrangers, and we understand that a reward of l150 has been posted for Michael Wexford’s capture.

“Do you wonder,” Kitty challenged miserably, when Johnny finished reading the newspaper clipping, “oh, Johnny, do you wonder that I’m sick with anxiety?”

William Stuart Long

“No, dearest girl, I don’t.” Johnny rose and went to kneel beside her chair, putting his arms about her waist. Kitty let her head drop onto his shoulder, and he heard her muffled sobs as he held her to him, his lips caressing her bent head. She did not pull away from him, as she so often did, and after a while she whispered wretchedly, “He doesn’t know-Michael doesn’t know about the pardon.”

“No, alas, he does not,” Johnny agreed.

“The wording of that advertisement was at fault, Johnny. Dominic should have stated that a pardon had been granted, instead of saying that Michael would learn something “to his advantage” if he applied to the

Chronicle

office. If I’d known he intended to publish it, I’d have insisted on his announcing that Michael had been pardoned … then he might have contacted the Chronicle,

instead of-was

She broke off, unwilling even to suggest that her much-loved elder brother could have engaged in the robbery of a gold shipment. But, Johnny thought, she was fully justified in blaming Dominic Hayes for the wording of his advertisement. Devil take him, Dominic should have known better. Or perhaps he did-perhaps the fact that Kitty’s abortive search had brought her back to Tasmania had had some bearing on Dominic’s cautious choice of words.

“We

must

find him, Johnny,” Kitty said. She raised her beautiful, tear-wet face to his, and Johnny was hard put to it not to crush her to him, raining kisses on her parted lips. But he controlled the impulse, reaching into his coat pocket for a handkerchief with which to dry her tears, reluctant to do or say anything that might reerect the barrier she was wont to set between them if he attempted to go too far.

“Patrick will find him,” he offered, thinking to console her. “He knows where to look, at least, and we-was

“We must go to Melbourne. We just join him as soon as we possibly can,” Kitty exclaimed vehemently. “It should be easy enough to find a vessel-any vessel at all, Johnny. I

don’t mind how primitive it is, so long as it will give us passage. Can you make inquiries?”

“Certainly,” Johnny promised. “But-was Kitty cut him short. “Then please, don’t delay.”

Johnny rose, his reluctance unconcealed.

“Very well, Kit. But, my dearest, it will not be safe for you to venture into the gold diggings as matters stand. The diggers are rough men. Women-respectable women-have no place amongst them. You read the report. Robbery is rife, and bushrangers haunt the neighborhood of the diggings. I could not guarantee your safety, unless-was

Again she cut him short, her tone angry and scornful. “I’m not concerned with

my

safety-it’s Michael’s safety that concerns me, don’t you understand? Pat and I came here to find him and we

must,

before it’s too late. A reward has been offered for his … his apprehension, and I can only suppose that means dead or alive, doesn’t it?”

If Michael had been one of the gang responsible for the robbery of the gold shipment and the wounding of two police troopers, then it seemed highly likely, Johnny thought grimly, but he tried to prevaricate, only to have his arguments brushed contemptuously aside.

“I’ll try to arrange for our passage to Geelong or Port Phillip,” he said stiffly. “It will probably have to be on board a sealer or a fishing vessel.”,

“I’ve said I don’t mind, Johnny-just so long as you can find a vessel that will sail right away.

You have your commission to find Michael and write his story, don’t you? And I can pay my own, so …

oh, please, let’s not stay here arguing! We’ve wasted enough time, been led astray too often by false information. We-was Kitty hesitated, sensing Johnny’s lack of response.

“Johnny, you

are

coming with me-you are going to take me to Urquhart Falls and the new gold diggings, aren’t you?”

Her voice was suddenly pleading, her brief anger fading, and aware that whatever Kitty Cadogan might demand of him, he could not bring himself to refuse, Johnny reddened.

“I accepted a commission from Mr. Hayes to go in search of your brother, Kitty-you do not have to remind me of that obligation. There’s no question but that I shall honor it. And I will escort you to Melbourne, to Bundilly to visit my uncle, if you wish, and to Urquhart Falls, to question this Martha Higgins. But I will only take you with me to the diggings on one William Stuart Long

condition, let that be clearly understood, my dear.

If you won’t accept it, I’ll go alone.”

He had, Johnny realized suddenly, adopted a stronger tone than he had ever previously dared to use with Kitty, and for a moment he regretted having done so, fearing her reaction and knowing, all too well by this time, her spirit and her swiftly roused temper. But, to his heartfelt relief, he saw that-far from resenting his high-handedness-she was smiling at him.

“And what condition do you wish to impose on me, John Broome?” she asked him sweetly. “I will agree to almost anything. I-oh, for pity’s sake, I

need

you! I cannot go alone. I’m fully aware of the limitations imposed on what you call respectable women in this country. I know that very few of the diggers take their wives with them to the fields, and that those who do go are women of easy virtue-they call them “cats,” I believe. Well, I have no wish to be mistaken for any sort of feline.” Kitty managed an odd little laugh, reddening in her turn.

“So what do you wish me to do? What condition have you in mind? Shall I adopt a male disguise? Pretend that I’m Pat?”

The die was cast, Johnny told himself-he must risk losing her, if he were ever to win her for his own.

Heaven knew he had been on the point of proposing to her more than a score of times in the past; but always Kitty had contrived to evade him, to brush aside the preliminary words leading up to an offer of marriage, as if their implication had escaped her. And he had allowed his hurt feelings to keep him silent. Even now she was seeking lighthearted excuses to avoid his proposal, for what else could her question concerning a male disguise possibly imply? No man with red blood in his veins would mistake Lady Kitty Cadogan for her brother Patrick, despite the fact that they were twins and bore a strong resemblance to each other.

That slim, graceful, utterly feminine body in breeches or a pair of digger’s moleskins and a cabbage plant hat would deceive no one who was not blind!

Johnny drew himself up to his full,

impressive height and answered, with all the dignified firmness he could muster, “You could marry me, Kit. As your husband, I should have the right to protect you, and I-oh, my beautiful darling, I’m madly in love with you! From the moment when I first set eyes on you,

there’s been no other woman in my heart or my life. Only you comalw and only you! You must know how I feel about you, Kit.”

“Yes, I know,” Kitty conceded. Her gaze was on his face, the wide, intelligent eyes submitting him to a searching scrutiny, which took him momentarily aback. “Johnny, I have

to be honest with you. I … I respect you too much to lie or pretend to you. And I’m deeply grateful to you for all you’ve done to help in the search for Michael. I owe you a debt which daily becomes greater and which I know I shall never be able to repay. But I-I’m not in love with you. I’ll marry you if that is what you truly want, but

do

you want a wife who cannot give you the love you deserve?”