Our Sunshine: Popular Penguins (10 page)

‘You’re not taking Princess Beatrice!’ This is her husband’s favourite hunter, a lovely grey mare named after Queen Victoria’s youngest, only a six-year-old and with her best hunting years still ahead of her. Mrs C speeds after me into her stall, swings the feed bucket against my shin, then tries to snatch my Colt. Luckily the Princess has learned manners from an early age, is trained not to kick out at hounds; she doesn’t lift a gracious hoof for the fifteen or twenty minutes we roll underneath her in the straw.

‘This is where you belong,’ says Mrs C.

‘In you?’

‘In the dung and muck.’

My shaved, pale head certainly makes me look like something wormy from under a stone. With all my burns and grazes smarting, I’m moving sluggish like one too.

‘I thought you’d moved up in the world to murderer,’ she says, ‘but you’re still a shitty horse thief.’

‘I’ll probably get the mare back to you,’ I say. ‘Though it won’t do your husband any harm at all to lose it to me.’

As we argue under her we slowly start to rub and rustle in the straw. The lines around her eyes and mouth, her frowning years, smooth out. Although awake I dream I’m describing perfect circles. A kick, a braining death, don’t bother me. Finally my blistered fingers tip the pulse. Concentrate all my scabby flesh on this last humming gentleness. As it happens, even birdcalls between her legs don’t worry serene Princess Beatrice.

So I ride the Princess away into the smell of charred trees, through the forest of smoking splinters. She’s already the colour of fine ash. Branches of black banksia nuts like cremated monkeys droop over us. Even the thinnest mosses and palest lichens haven’t escaped the fire. Every wisp and bud and sound of life is scorched and crisped away. The whole land looks like toasted death, the very End.

In a silent line the four of us ride back into our territory. At least now the smoke has died away the visibility is good. After a bushfire you can see and hear a police patrol ten miles away unless they’re blacktrackers. At sunset we camp on a high elephant-shaped rock still warm from the fire and the sun. The missing evening bird choir, the void of the crickets, the total blackness, suddenly begin to weigh on us. We lie spread-eagled on the rock. Everyone is more or less normal again, but we can’t raise the spirit to speak or eat. The bushfire-sun sets gauzy red, the moon rises yellow as a guinea, the Southern Cross sparks down. The sky is the only light and movement and form of conversation.

The sky wakes us at sunrise and we eat some supplies from Mrs C’s. Our food crumbs make ants appear instantly from nowhere. And as we gaze dully at the blackness the faintest tips of colour catch the corners of our eyes – exciting, sappy shoots are sprouting from burnt tree trunks; shiny maroon, green and purple leaves are bursting out. At the edge of our hearing a magpie, or its echo, calls. The pink flush in the sky rims the eastern cloudbanks and then flares gold. The overhead sky swings from sulky grey to blue like it was never otherwise.

I GET a contact to leave one hundred guineas from the Euroa haul in Mrs C’s name at the front desk of the Commercial Hotel and I keep Princess Beatrice for myself.

What’s a little guilt compared to a good horse? She’s the best I ever stole – and she’s got two hundred and eighty-three to beat. Certainly the best I ever paid for, and even worth the money. Sweet, randy memories every time I ride her. Anyway, she deserves a more exciting life than carrying a rich farmer’s arse after the mangy offspring of English foxes.

And I think Mrs C could have minded more. That day in the stable my knee hit on something hard. A little Allen & Thurber .32 revolver hidden in the folds of her dress.

‘Are you going to shoot me with that pepperpot?’ I say.

And she says, ‘Now I know I easily could have, that’s enough.’

Jerilderie is the mare’s and my next adventure together. The mood we’re in there decides what I call her.
Mirth
.

A
fter Euroa there was pressure on Standish to put a new man after us. He chose Superintendent Francis Augustus Hare, his assistant commissioner, a South African and, like himself, a ‘man of fashion’ and member of the Melbourne Club. Then he told Hare to sign up this charming young informer who’d made himself known to him.

We’d been wondering about Aaron for a while. We all wanted to know for sure. Joe wanted to give him a second chance because he’d just got married. So Joe and Dan rode up to Aaron’s new selection opposite the Sugarloaf for a matey chat. Joe squatted on the ground for a heart-to-heart, sucked a piece of grass, drew a map in the dirt with a stick. (Aaron’s new wife was too young and green to invite them inside, or even offer a cup of tea. Dan stayed on his horse. He didn’t trust Aaron even then.) Joe told Aaron, well, we’re going here, and then here, to Goulburn in New South Wales to rob a bank and we want you to act as scout. Aaron excused himself, just being married and so forth. Winked at his old friend. Joe said never mind and he and Dan rode off.

Waited a few days. (Joe had given nothing away, since we actually intended heading towards the Riverina.) When Hare tightened security and poured men into the northeast we knew Aaron was seriously on the job.

R
unning from Victoria, Dan Morgan reached the Murray along the Warby Ranges, outwitting the police for the last time before they took his head on tour. Splitting into pairs two hours apart, we follow Morgan’s route twelve years later and come down onto the blood-red claybank downstream of Yarrawonga on a dry and humming February afternoon. The river trickles as slow as rust. In the heat we swim the horses across to the New South Wales side and climb up on the scrub plain without sighting anything human.

Jerilderie has five pubs, one for every fifty people. First and last in the main street is the Woolpack Inn, a bloodhouse where Mary Jordan runs the bar and keeps track of local police movements, the whereabouts of Sergeant Devine and his constable, Richards. Joe sweet-talks her while we drink and eat, still in pairs and incognito, Joe and Dan together, Steve and me, pretending not to know each other. Until we join up outside just before midnight.

A hammering on his door. Wake up, Devine, wake up. There’s been a murder at the Woolpack!

Devine weaves onto the verandah, blinking awake, Richards hurrying to join him, grumbling and buckling on their belts. Some bastard on a grey horse doing the yelling. Jesus, come quick!

Christ, not the Woolpack again, Devine says.

Then three men suddenly behind him, pointing guns. The horseman wheeling his mare and coming at them fast, levelling a Colt. Kelly! Devine says. Correct, sergeant. The Gang handcuffs them, pushes them into their own cells with the Saturday night drunks.

Steve, still hungry of course, orders Mrs Devine to cook us a meal. Then I take first watch while the others sleep. In the night a tired voice from the cells: Thanks for rooting my career.

S
UNDAY IN
Jerilderie. Ninety in the dusty shade, the hot air suspending specks of harvest chaff. All blinds drawn in the sergeant’s residence to discourage heat and visitors. In the darkened sitting room the chairs and sofa wear stiff covers; no one ever sits here. In a corner a big glass case of brightly-coloured stuffed birds of the region. Sergeant Devine’s hobby is trapping them with nets and birdlime. Another is collecting pistols, some of them with funny enough calibres and barrels to hang on the wall: muzzleloaders, a twelve-shot .38, a Winburn single-shot .65 percussion pistol, a Tranter six-shot .45 with octagonal barrel, a .41 revolver like Ben Hall’s. The way she twitches and wrings her hands, she wants us out of there. I say I’m just checking none of these trinkets is loaded. Just stay out of the sitting room and I’ll cooperate, she says. No, don’t open that. Don’t let that hot wind in on the parrots!

Something else is bothering her. She always prepares the Courthouse for Mass – no Catholic church here – so Dan lends a hand, carries the flowers across the street for her. Poppies, carnations, bunches of maidenhair and stag ferns. Helps arrange them, comes back looking soulful with a carnation in his lapel.

Steve, meanwhile, has the oven stoked, the leg of lamb coated with lard, salted and peppered and sitting in the baking dish. He’s peeled and sliced the potatoes, pumpkin, carrots and parsnips and shelled the peas. By now he’s sweating, dripping on the table, leaving a trail across the floor and food, and chopping mint leaves for a sauce. Where’ve you been? he says –
chip chop
– I’ve been working my fingers to the bone.

Joe and I can’t stop laughing, almost splitting our uniforms. (Devine and Richards are built narrower than us.) We’re dressed up as police, having given Richards an empty revolver and gone on his peacekeeping rounds with him (especially noting arrangements at the Bank of New South Wales), telling everyone we’re special reinforcements sent to guard Jerilderie against the Kellys. We’ve visited the blacksmith and had our horses re-shod, charged it to the police account and shouted Rea, the blacksmith, a drink at the Royal Mail Hotel. An important drink. The Royal Mail abuts the bank.

M
ONDAY
. A
T
noon Jerilderie’s a street of slow-moving shapes. Horses, carts and occasional verticals crossing obliquely from shade to shade. Still in uniform but this time with revolvers unholstered, we return to the Royal Mail, round up the manager, staff and customers, herd them into the bar-parlour and leave Steve guarding them while Dan watches the pub’s street entrance. He gives any thirsty customer a sharp count of three to jump the counter and join the prisoners.

Then Sergeant Byrne and Constable Kelly stroll next door into the bank and hold it up. No trouble from the astonished accountant, name of Living, or young Mackie, the clerk. The manager, Tarleton, is missing. Living says he’s upstairs changing after a dusty business journey.

Well, Tarleton’s soaking in his bath and shocked and shy to see us. When we come through the door – Joe and me with guns and the two bank johnnies, all crowding in the bathroom – he sits up in a flurry, eyes wide and white, grabs a flannel to cover his bobbing whatsis, then looks around for weapons and brandishes an uncertain loofah.

Hope that sponge isn’t loaded, Joe says, heh heh.

It takes a pair of trousers, a dressing gown and smoking cap to make Tarleton managerial. Downstairs in the bank he insists there’s only six or seven hundred pounds in the safe. He’s only underestimated by five thousand. While he’s dickering, the local schoolteacher, Elliott, comes into the bank and when he’s recovered I get him to hold open a sugarbag while I throw in all the sovereigns and sterling and all the other gold and silver coins. Then get him to write out a notice giving the children a holiday in honour of my visit.

The bloody bank’s as busy as Flinders Street Station. Next the town’s leading citizen, J.D. Rankin, comes in with Samuel Gill, the newspaper proprietor, and a storekeeper named Harkin, and raps on the counter for service. From Tarleton’s office I call out, I’ll be right with you. Then I jump out, banging my revolver butts down with a clatter. Don’t move! I catch Rankin and Harkin, but Gill jumps over Rankin and runs away. Take the others to the Royal Mail with the other prisoners. I need a drink, need to tie up loose ends.

By now we don’t need to point guns at people. In the bar I clap a revolver on the counter, swearing if anyone tries to shoot us or send a telegraph, Jerilderie will swim in its own blood. Then I call the barmaid for drinks all round. My shout, Lovely. Just take it out of these new sovereigns here.

Leave my gun sitting there on the bar. People leave it be. It’s as if it were a person, sitting there with its own air space around it. Wouldn’t be surprised to see someone buy it a drink.

T
YING UP
loose ends takes time. Joe’s sticking up Jefferson the postmaster, checking all the telegrams sent this morning, cutting the wires on the switchboard. I leave the pub to chop down two telegraph poles, am looking sideways at a third when a local man named Charlie Naw volunteers to chop it for me, and goes on to chop another six. Wires springing and tangling everywhere in the street. Buy willing Charlie a drink while I’m waiting for Joe. One thing’s still bothering me: the newspaperman, Gill.

I’m told he lives across from his printery, so I front up to his doorstep. His wife denies he’s there, says he’s probably lying somewhere, dropped dead with fright. Can’t see anything ever frightening her, or interesting her either. Looks just to the side of me, not straight on, as if I was a scurvy sore, perhaps, a bad case of cowpox. I say there’s something I want to give him. Joe and I have been working on it for three months. I hand her this bag of papers I’ve been carting around ever since. Will you pass it on? It’s important to me. Not possible, she says. I thought it might be interesting, I say. It’s begging to be printed. Afraid not, she says, looking somewhere over my shoulder as if at approaching inclement weather.

So we leave. Take our new treasure, mount up and ride out of town in four directions to confuse them.

What I wanted to give her news-hound husband was this story of my life.

H
e must stay awake, keep moving about, listen for the train. With all the planning, killing Aaron, the long ride here, the taking of prisoners, the entertainment, the waiting, none of them has slept or even lain down with his boots off for three nights. Dropping off for only a moment on the verandah step just now, he instantly dreamed he was lounging with friends on a fine, clipped lawn.

Around them, strolling strangers chatted and took the air. He found himself beginning to dig tunnels in the neat lawn and undermining it. All these mild people strolling past fell into the holes, which filled quickly with water. But he and his friends ran for the high ground, a grassy hill topped by a timber, bark-roofed hut, and were safe and snug there. They felt lucky and gifted, especially as all the people in the holes quickly drowned.

But then there was a knock on the door. With some apprehension he opened it and there was his father as a young man, tall, red-headed and green-eyed, and all lit up by a crown of bright white light. ‘I have to talk to you and Dan,’ he said, and they sat quiet and obedient while he spoke.