The Horse Who Bit a Bushranger (15 page)

He bowed, a funny laughing bow, still holding her hand. She wished she wore gloves like Mama.

‘Your first dance?’ he asked softly.

She nodded.

‘You’re not afraid to dance with a bushranger?’

She put up her chin. ‘I’m not afraid of anything.’

He looked at her. Most grown-ups never really looked at girls, except to make sure their hair was tidy, or they weren’t eating with their elbows on the table. But Ben Hall looked at her as though he was trying to see just who she was. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Mattie Jane Marks.’

‘Marks? You live here?’

She nodded, trying to ignore the tickle in her throat.

He was laughing now, but not at her. ‘You’re your mother’s daughter, right enough. The courage of a lion, and big brown eyes as well. You’d make a good wife for a bushranger.’

‘I’m too young to get married.’

She felt the flush right up her neck as soon as she’d said it.

‘I think you might be right. But I’m a patient man, if I have to be. What do you say?’ He bent his head and whispered in her ear. ‘Do you think you’d marry me?’

Suddenly it seemed the most serious question she’d ever been asked. She hesitated before she answered. ‘Maybe.’

He looked quiet now, all the laughter and the flirting gone. ‘I’ve never had anyone say that to me before.’

‘What have they said?’

The smile didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Some screamed. Most said yes. They think being a bushranger is romantic.’

‘But it isn’t?’

He laughed again. ‘Come on. Let’s dance again. We can talk as we dance and no one can overhear us. Have you learnt that yet, Miss Marks? You can be in a room full of people and no one can hear you when you dance. But in the bush a single footfall can crackle the leaves, and tell the traps you’re there.’

‘Is that how it is as a bushranger? Being afraid of the police all the time?’

He twirled her round. When she had her breath back he said, ‘Sometimes. The police are mostly fools on broken nags.’ He shrugged. ‘For some men, bushranging is adventure. For others it’s a dream.’

‘But for you?’

He looked down into her face. ‘For me, it was anger. Revenge. Getting my own back on the police who ruined me. They killed my cattle, left them to die of thirst in the stockyards, so the crows could eat their eyes.’ His voice was hoarse with grief. ‘Revenge on the wife who left me. It was a policeman who took my wife. Took my baby son, my farm, my life.’

‘Why did she leave?’

‘I don’t know.’ She could hear the honesty in his voice. It was the first time, she thought, that a man had ever talked to her so openly. ‘Maybe she just liked him better. But I’d have let her go as long as I could see my son. They didn’t have to destroy everything else as well.’

She was going to cough if they kept dancing. She stopped near the open door, where a breath of fresh
air trickled into the heat of dancers and candles. ‘My mama left my papa. I don’t know why she left, why she came back. She won’t speak of it, or about Papa either.’

The bushranger glanced curiously at Mama, seated behind the piano, her fingers galloping with the polka. Mama wore her company smile. As Mattie watched she glanced over at her and the bushranger, considering. She nodded slightly, then went back to her playing.

‘Your mama is making sure I don’t lead you astray.’

‘Like she was led astray?’ Mattie flushed again. No one in the family had ever used those words about Mama. But they were true.

He touched her cheek, a light stroke with his finger. ‘Life is complicated.’

‘Even for a bushranger?’

‘Especially for a bushranger.’ He hesitated. ‘There are choices I made I can’t unmake. I’d go back to the past, if I could. I’d do it differently. But you never can do that.’

‘Mr Hall.’ Mattie met his eyes. His eyes said more than his words ever could. ‘If I marry someone I wouldn’t leave them. Not ever. Not for anything.’

‘You’re young. It’s easy to say when you’re young.’

‘I’m not young. Not young in my heart. I nearly died, Mr Hall. The sickness is still in my lungs. It will kill me one day. I saw my papa hurt so bad he wanted to die, and finally he did. I watched it all. I’ve learnt some things, maybe, that older girls will never learn at all. One of them is that I would never leave anyone I love, who loves me back. Never. Not ever.’

‘What if I ask you to marry me again then, in five years’ time? If I live so long?’

She couldn’t tell if he meant it. She thought, maybe he doesn’t know if he means it either.

‘Maybe I won’t be alive to ask, Mr Hall. But if I marry, it’ll be for true.’

‘For true, eh?’ He looked down at her. His eyes seemed to warm her all over again. He took her hand. ‘Let’s make a pact, Miss Mattie Jane. Let’s both refuse to die. And in five years’ time—or less maybe—I’ll ride up and ask you that question again.’

It was as though warmth spread from his fingers into hers. For the first time since she’d first been ill she could almost believe that she would live; would live to marry, to have children; live to be an old woman smiling at her great grandchildren crawling on the rug.

‘What will you say?’ he whispered.

She smiled. Suddenly it was as though the weight of her illness had fallen away. ‘You’ll have to wait till you ask me again, Mr Hall.’

‘You’re a grand girl, Miss Mattie Jane. A good girl.’ He lifted up her hand, and kissed it. ‘I’d better dance with someone else, or people will talk. It’s not good to be talked about—not if you might marry a bushranger.’

‘Dance with Sarah. Sarah’s my best friend.’

‘The other little girl?’

‘I’m not little!’

He looked at her seriously. ‘No. You’re small, but your heart is as big as a mountain, and your courage too. Come on, introduce me to your Sarah.’

She watched him dance. With Sarah, and then her again, and then with Sarah again too. And every fine lady in the room, she knew, envied them, dancing with a bushranger, his eyes as clear as the sky.

And one day he was going to come for her again. She knew it, deep inside her heart. They would both live, and be together.

There was music coming from the house, which wasn’t interesting, and strange horses in the other paddocks, which were.

Scents are strongest at night. I stood there, munching grass, drinking them all in: the bush rats after the corn crop, the old man possum in the storehouse roof, trying to work out how to get in to my apples, the other horses cropping the grass, or lifting their heads to smell me too.

I was used to horses coming and going these days. Suddenly a man walked across the courtyard. I kept on munching. People came and went these days, but they never came to me, except for my Mattie Jane.

But he didn’t head over to the paddock with the other horses. Instead he came straight to me. I lifted my head.

Had he brought me apples?

The man slipped under the fence rails. He carried a bridle in his hand. Suddenly I realised he was about to slip it over my head.

No one rode me without an apple!

I bit his hand before he got the bit fully in. I heard him swear. He stepped back, limping a bit, looking at his hand to see if I’d drawn blood.

‘Well.’ He peered at me in the moonlight. ‘It won’t be you I take. Pity. You’ve a grand look about you. I reckon you could outrace any police nag in the country.’

‘He could.’

Suddenly there was a shadow beside the fence.

‘I wondered where you’d gone,’ said Annie.

The mistress stood in the shadows by the paling fence. ‘Well, bushranger. You’ve decided you’d like more of our hospitality?’

He shrugged. ‘My other horse is lame. If you don’t have fresh horses you’re dead. And I’m not keen on dying.’

‘So you decided to help yourself to one of ours?’

He wasn’t smiling now. ‘Who’s to stop me?’

‘I am.’ She drew a pistol from behind her back. He reached for one of his, but stopped as she pointed hers at his head.

He glared at her. ‘You said no one was armed.’

She smiled. ‘I lied. I invited you to dance, Mr Hall. It’s a poor guest who robs his hostess.’

He gave a snort of disgust. ‘What would you know of it? You with your silk and jewels. Have you ever been hungry? Had your land stole, your wife, your child, your cattle?’ He reached toward his pistols again.

Annie held hers up to her eyes, ready to shoot. ‘Keep your hands where they are or you’ll be dead before you’ve got your pistols cocked. I can shoot a lemon off a tree at fifty paces, bushranger. You’d be surprised what I can do. You’d be surprised what I’ve lost too. Look at me. What do you see?’

The bushranger shrugged. ‘A lady. White hands that have never done a real day’s work. Silk skirts and jewels.’

She laughed.

The bushranger looked up. She pulled off her glove, then held out her hand to him. The other still held her pistol.

‘Look again.’

He took her hand. He looked at it. ‘It’s soft…’ he said.

She nodded. ‘It’s the butter. Make enough pastry, enough puddings, and your hands will be soft. But there are calluses too. I’ve sweated, and for more years than you, young man. Look at my hand again.’

He did, still not understanding.

‘It’s a brown hand, not a white one,’ she said gently. ‘You see the silk dress, you see the jewels. Which are glass, by the way. I sold the real ones. The brown of my hand isn’t from the sun, young man.’

He looked at her properly now. She pulled her fingers away and stroked me, just as I liked it, along my nose. I shuffled at her fingers. The jewels in her hair gleamed in the moonlight. Her pistols glistened too.

‘I have been hungry,’ she said softly. ‘More hungry than you can ever know, Mr White Man, like my belly was nibbled by mice. I have sat with the dead around
me. Not just my family but all my people, every one of them dead except for me. My lands gone to the white man, those I loved lost to their sickness. But then I was given a second chance. A missionary family took me in, and gave me a trade. And then a good man, a kind man, made me his wife.’

She lowered the pistol. ‘I won’t let a bushranger steal from my family. But I might give a horse to a man who wants a second chance.’

‘You mean…’

She patted me again. ‘They say this horse killed a man. My husband. No man will ride him now.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘I can’t sell a horse that might have killed my husband, even if I don’t believe that’s what happened.’

For a moment they stared at each other. ‘That horse bit me. You’re offering me a killer?’

‘He bit you because he didn’t get his apple. I’m offering you a second chance. A second chance for you and for Rebel Yell. Leave off bushranging, boy. You’ve got money, haven’t you? You’ve robbed rich men for long enough. I heard you once got five hundred pounds just for one ransom. You can’t have spent it all on drink and women.’

He hesitated. He nodded. ‘A bank account. But not in my name.’

‘Buy a ship’s passage in your false name. Grow a beard or a big moustache. Go to America. It’s where I came from,’ she added. ‘There’s no second chance for one with my colour skin there. But there may be for you. Rebel Yell’s a good horse. He’ll carry you well, while you arrange your money and grow your whiskers. When you’re about to sail send a message
to the Cow and Whistle. The landlord will make sure Rebel Yell gets safely back here.’

She held out her hand again. ‘Well?’

He made no move to take her hand. ‘What if I do?’ he asked at last. ‘What if I come back in five years, maybe, with a new name and big moustaches, and ask to marry your little daughter? Would you welcome me then?’

‘Mattie Jane will be dead in five years.’ Her voice was flat now, all emotion gone. ‘She has the coughing sickness that killed my family. She’ll not be here next Christmas. You made a dying girl happy, Ben Hall. You made my daughter queen of the ball. For the first time in years she’s dreaming of a future, not a headstone. That’s her horse you’re going to take—and she was the one who told me to let you take him. So yes, you’ll have a welcome here.’ She dug into her skirts.

It was an apple! I whickered happily. I’d known I could smell one somewhere.

She helped the bushranger saddle up the horse. She slipped into the kitchen, and brought him bread, and meat, and plum pudding wrapped in a cloth. She brought him a bag of apples too, to keep Rebel Yell happy till they got to Sydney.

For a moment—just a moment—she wished she were riding with him. A new life, not knowing your tomorrow. A life without everyone needing you, and asking what to do.

But only for a moment. She wouldn’t fail her children again.

He swung himself up onto Rebel Yell. The horse reared, then cantered in a circle. How long had it been since anyone had ridden him?

But the bushranger kept his seat. He didn’t yell, or try to use his whip. He simply waited till the big horse steadied, then patted his neck.

Annie nodded. This man knew horses. Knew women too. He was a charmer. That would all stand
him in good stead. She waited till he’d got his other horse on a lead rope, reached down into her pocket again, then held something out. ‘One more thing, Mr Hall. But you don’t have to take it.’

He stared down at the tiny oval painting on a piece of board. ‘It’s your daughter.’

‘My Mattie Jane. Her friend painted it—Sarah, who you danced with inside. It’s a good likeness. No, don’t worry. Sarah likes painting. I have others.’

‘I’d like it,’ he said quietly. ‘Whatever happens, I’ll keep it all my life, to remember this night.’

‘Good luck to you then, Mr Hall. Best go now, before any others come out and see which way you’ve headed. Ride carefully.’

‘I will.’

He lifted his hand to her. She blew him a kiss. It was wrong of her, but there was no one to see, just him, and the horses.

She watched as the bushranger rode off in the moonlight. Then she brushed the tears away, put on her smile and her gloves again, and walked back into the room of music and candlelight.