The Horse Who Bit a Bushranger (13 page)

Annie sat in the room she had shared with William for so long. Her vase of dried grasses still stood on the chest of drawers—well polished; she was glad the girls had seen to that. Even the dresses she had left still hung in the wardrobe.

The room stank of sweat and rum, despite the faint scents of beeswax polish and lavender-stored sheets. William’s smell, she supposed. He hadn’t smelt like that when she’d been with him.

He was gone.

She had been prepared for him to yell at her or forbid her the house. She had hoped his love would help him forgive her, to let her see her children one more time. And him.

She had loved him. Always loved him. But she had been wrong, all those years ago, to think that love and marriage were enough to make the white world forget she was a squaw. Who could understand how much just one word could hurt?

The room still had the essential William smell, she realised, not just the smell of sweat and rum. But he was gone…

She sat on the bed, staring down at the Persian mat they had bought in Sydney. She didn’t feel she had the right yet to sit in the drawing room or kitchen, as mistress of the house.

She’d had the words all ready to explain to him.

No family of any worth would marry a child of Markdale. Not when their mother was a squaw.

With her gone, people would forget. People in the colonies were good at forgetting. What family didn’t have a convict in their past, or a grandfather sent out here for stealing from the regimental mess funds? Once she was gone the strength and beauty of her children—and the Markdale wealth—would give them the position they deserved. She had wondered for years if she should leave.

And then Francis had come. A man with dark eyes, like hers. He might have had some Native American in him too, though he called himself a white man. But he came from her country. He knew the deerskin houses, the lines of fish drying in the sun. He’d even used words from the old language, her baby tongue, words she almost half remembered. He knew the word for mother.

It was a sign. Her people believed in signs. Somehow she remembered that. Francis had come now as a sign to say ‘Go. Let your children be free. Learn about yourself.’

It had seemed so easy, suddenly. Leave this place with its taunts of ‘native’, the routines of motherhood and marriage. Go south to the rag-tag goldfields in
Victoria, where no one expected their neighbours to be respectable. And if she was honest there was the excitement too—a new man, a new life, a new fortune to be won. It seemed as though she had been working for others all her life.

If she’d had more time to think she wouldn’t have left. She had that one night only before Billy returned.

She knew she’d done wrong by the end of the second day, waking up in a strange shanty with a man who was still almost a stranger. Francis was a good man in his way. But he wasn’t Billy. Suddenly she knew that, in her heart, she would always be Billy’s wife. And her children—how could she even have dreamt she could have lived away from them?

But it was too late, even then. What husband would take you back, once you had left?

She had thought they would all thrive without her. Servants could do the extra work. And William—there would be plenty of women happy to comfort a rich man.

She had even been prepared to find him married again, assuming she was dead. She’d read that there were new laws coming that would allow something called ‘divorce’—where when the man or woman had gone off with someone else the marriage could be ended, though it was easier by far in this land of massive distances just to say that they were dead.

And now he was. Dead. She shook her head. Not William. William had too much life to die…

She couldn’t live without him. That’s what she’d realised, months before. Couldn’t live without her children. She had to see them, even if just for a little time.

She hadn’t known what her future held when she’d ridden up tonight. She hadn’t planned to stay, not long, just long enough to talk to them, then leave again before the neighbours knew that she was here. Just to see her children once again, see her William, and then…

But he was gone.

What had she done to him, that he was dead? How had he died? How had Markdale become so shabby and so sad? Was it all because of her?

She’d asked her children to leave her alone. But now William Junior put his head around the door. Behind him was Mattie Jane.

‘Mama?’

Annie stood up, and reached out to them. William Junior stayed where he was, impassive. But Mattie Jane ran to her. Annie put her arms around her. The child was stick thin.

She held her out again to look at her. ‘Mattie…what’s wrong with you?’

‘She’s been ill.’ William Junior’s voice still held no expression. ‘She nearly died. But you weren’t here. Mother, where have you been?’

She sighed. ‘It’s a long story. Too long for tonight. How did your father die?’

William said nothing, as though it wasn’t her business now. It was Mattie Jane who answered. ‘He was with Richard. Richard said Papa fell from his horse and hit a tree. The police think…’ Her voice grew quieter. ‘The police think Richard killed him.’

Annie felt the cold seep up from her toes, and through her body. ‘Did he?’

‘Mother!’

She ignored William Junior. ‘Did he?’ she asked Mattie Jane again.

Mattie Jane shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘He says he and the other boys own the farm now. He said that father was drinking it all away.’

Annie’s strength gathered again. There was still something she could do for her children. Perhaps after all she could be their mother again.

‘Your brothers don’t own the farm. I will tell the magistrate to make it over to me.’

William Junior stared. ‘He won’t! Not to a woman! And you’ve been gone for years.’

‘Think about it.’ Her voice was dry. ‘I can’t have been involved in your father’s death. The police may decide you were all to blame.’

‘They won’t give control of a farm to a woman.’ William’s voice was uncertain now.

‘I’ll make them agree.’ She could charm them. She’d charmed men all her life. Even now, she knew she could bend a magistrate to her will. She rubbed her arms. They still felt cold. She wondered when she would feel warm again.

No time to worry about that now. No time to grieve. There was too much to be done.

She’d failed her children once. She wouldn’t fail them now.

‘We’ll make the place pay again.’ She’d seen the broken fences, the nearly empty paddocks. ‘Then we’ll divide it between you, sell part of it perhaps. Equal shares to you all…’

William Junior looked like someone had slapped him with a dead fish. ‘The girls as well?’

‘The girls as well.’ Annie paused. ‘But possibly…possibly not Richard.’ She clasped Mattie Jane to her, felt the frail child cough, saw her take out her handkerchief. Saw the blackness of dried blood.

She had never felt despair before. Grief, grief as a child; grief when she’d left; grief half an hour ago that felt like it would tear her mind apart but now…

Had the sickness that killed her people passed to her daughter in her blood?

Oh, William, she thought, and wished she could wail it aloud. Why did you have to choose me?

Mama took control of everything. For a little while it almost seemed she’d never left. But then Mattie Jane would see Papa’s place empty at the head of the table. Mama would let no one else sit there, not even William Junior.

Mama convinced the magistrate to put the land in her name, so she could provide for each of her children. Mama convinced the police there was no evidence against Richard too.

Land prices were high, with successful gold miners wanting farms, or veterans of the Crimean War coming to Australia with their pensions, wanting land and peace. But Mama decreed the land would not be sold, not the land Papa had loved so dearly.

The farm would be divided between the boys, with the largest bit for William Junior; all except for twenty acres and the house, which Mama would keep. For Mama had a plan to make money for her daughters.

Mama explained the plan as they all sat at the kitchen table—the big table she and Papa had bought in Maitland when they were first married—William Junior and his new wife Elizabeth, Elijah, Mattie Jane and Martha, Alfred and Richard too. Richard spoke little these days. Mattie Jane wondered if it was the memory of Papa’s death, or the burden of being suspected as his killer. Both were heavy burdens for a young man to bear.

Mama spoke frankly. Mattie Jane had never heard her sound like that before.

‘There’s no chance to keep the family’s good name now. Folks around here know what I am.’ She held up a hand to shush William when he tried to speak. ‘And now we are the family that might have killed their father. There will never be any way of getting away from that rumour.’

‘Unless we move.’ William Junior took Elizabeth’s hand under the table. ‘Mother—we want to go to Queensland. Martha and her Alexander too.’

Mama looked at them shrewdly. ‘You’ll need money for that—enough money so you can buy yourself a good position to begin with. Your sisters need money too. So I have a proposition.’

William looked wary. ‘What?’

‘We turn this house into an inn.’ She laughed at their expressions. ‘It has been almost that for the past twenty years, feeding and lodging any travellers who come this way. Now we make them pay for it. We’ll call it the Horse and Jockey. We’ll hold races—ten pounds to enter. Races for women too.’

‘Women don’t race!’ William’s mouth gaped like a fish.

‘I can ride as well as you,’ said Mattie Jane. But she crossed her fingers under the table, for she knew it was a lie. Once, maybe, it had been true. But she was too weak to control a big horse now.

‘People will pay money to see ladies riding,’ said Mama matter-of-factly. ‘And we’ll give balls the night before the races too—grand balls, with musicians down from Sydney, not like the rag-tag dances at the hotel. We’ll make people pay to enter, give them food like none of them have ever seen before. Clean out the drawing room; take down the walls to Papa’s study. We’ll have a ballroom, with polished floors, and all the gentry can dance the night away.

‘And the next morning—’ she smiled at Elijah, her quiet son, listening seriously but not saying a word—‘you and Elijah can sell them horses. Buy as many mares as we can afford, so we can sell them Conservative’s grandsons and -daughters—the best horses in New South Wales.’

‘No,’ said William, but his voice was uncertain.

‘Yes,’ said Elijah. It was the first word he’d said.

Martha nodded.

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ said Mattie Jane.

Horse races…balls…even if she was just to cook and serve the supper. New people to see, music and laughter.

‘New dresses. New curtains. New horses. We’ll do this properly,’ said Mama. She smiled. It was the first real smile she’d given since she’d come home. ‘We’ll all be richer than bushrangers in a few years. But,’ she added, ‘none of us will end up on the gallows.’ She stared at each of them down the table, her face impossible to read. ‘Not even Richard.’

He had gathered wood for his camp fire carefully—old dry stuff, dead branches pulled down from trees. A bushranger couldn’t risk wet wood that might make a smoky fire.

It took six strikes on his flint to get a spark to set the dry grass alight. Ben fanned the flames with his hat. No matter how dry the wood, a fire always sent up smoke at first. But if you fanned it enough the smoke vanished into the air before it rose above the trees.

Ten years ago he’d have built a giant blaze, dried himself properly after last night’s rain, and shot a roo without wondering if an informer might hear the shot, and send for the police to capture him.

There was a price of a thousand pounds on his head today. Most of the small farmers had been loyal before. They had no love for the police, and sympathy
for any man who made the joes look like fools. But a thousand pounds was enough to tempt any man.

Ten years ago…three years ago…he’d only feared his enemies. Now he feared his friends. How much friendship would a thousand pounds buy?

He cut the meat up roughly with his knife—possum, caught this afternoon, asleep in a tree hollow. His ma had taught him that, learnt it from one of the native women who’d worked as a maid a while. There was good eating on a possum…

He grinned at himself. Who was he joshing? Possum meat was tough and stank of gum leaves. Even a year ago he’d have bought a leg of mutton from some farmer, and a bag of flour, or bread made by the farmer’s wife. Farmers trusted him. He never robbed a poor man, and paid well for any help.

He’d never killed anyone, either. But two of his gang members had, even though he’d tried to stop them. When the police captured him he’d hang—if they didn’t shoot him first.

There were two ways a bushranger could end up—shot by the troopers, or on the gallows. Ben Hall hoped it would be the first.

No bushranger lived to tell his grandchildren his exploits. Black Caesar, Bold Jack Doolan. They’d even arrested Frank Gardiner, the King of the Road, in Queensland last year.

Ben added a few twigs to the fire. Soon as the law changed he could be shot on sight, without even a trial.

Funny; a year ago his anger would have been enough to keep him warm. Anger at the crooked policeman who’d locked him up, just so he could sweet-talk his wife away. Anger at the magistrate
who’d kept him in prison just on suspicion; fury at Police Inspector Sir Frederick Pottinger who’d had his cattle rounded up while he was in gaol and put into stockyards so they died of thirst.

That day they’d let him out of gaol he’d been able to smell the poor creatures as he rode up to his farm. He saw their eye-sockets in his nightmares, gazing up at the sky as though to beg for moisture; saw the dried skin of the bodies, the flesh sucked out by sun and maggots, still heard the flies that clustered about their corpses.

They’d burnt his house down too. He’d had to let the farm go just to pay his lawyer.

The police had taken everything: his wife and child, his animals, his farm. All he had left was anger.

That’s when he’d joined John Gilbert’s gang. If they wouldn’t let him make an honest living then he’d make the blighters pay—the police, the magistrates, the wealthy landowners.

It had been fun at first. No one hurt or killed—that’s what they’d sworn. They stole Inspector Pottinger’s horse when he tried to follow them, stripped the police constables naked and tied them to trees then gave them a lecture on how to treat folks right. One time in Canowindra they’d paid the whole town to party for three days. The hold-up at Binda had been a party too.

The best though was when he’d been at the races and Inspector Pottinger hadn’t even seen him. Pottinger had been recalled to Sydney in disgrace. ‘Even blind Freddy could see it,’ the newspapers said. Ben suspected that people would be saying ‘even blind Freddy could see it’ for a hundred years.

Then one day he woke up and found the fun had vanished; he realised there was no turning back. And all the time the hunt for them was getting bigger and more serious.

He and the others split up when the reward was announced. It was too dangerous sticking together. One man might just pass unnoticed. Three looked like a gang. They planned to meet again at Billabong Creek near Forbes, get their horses shod and then…

Who knew? Not he. He’d lost all heart for thieving. But what else was there for him now?

He looked at his horse. About done in, poor beast. A bushranger with one horse was a dead bushranger. A bushranger with no horse at all—or a lame one—was dead even quicker.

He’d made it a rule to have two horses at least: one to ride, and one to carry his swag, and in case the other one went lame. Three horses was better; four was best of all. But Firefly had gone lame, and Elderberry needed rest, and time to put on some fat again. He’d given the horses to a farmer who’d done him a favour. The only one left was Midnight, and he was about done in.

Now he needed another horse. A good one.

And he knew just where to get it.