‘How do you know his name?’
Juanita gave him a look of scorn. ‘I asked him, of course.’
‘Does he speak English?’
‘I don’t know. I pointed to myself and said “Juanita”, and he said, “Lee Chun”.’
‘But that would make him Mr Chun,’ objected Jem.
‘Don’t you know anything? Chinese people put their family name first.’
‘I know lots,’ said Jem, stung. ‘Paw bought me a whole encyclopaedia. It’s at our room in Goulburn. I’m up to G for Grand Canyon now.’
‘What’s so grand about a canyon?’
‘The Grand Canyon. It’s in America, where Paw comes from.’
‘Why did he come here?’
Jem blinked. He’d never wondered why Paw and Maw had come to Australia. ‘To drive for Cobb & Co, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Mr Cobb who started the company is American and so are the men who own it now.’
‘Are you going to be a coach driver like your dad?’
‘No. Me and Paw are saving up for a farm. We’re going to breed horses. Are you going to be a dancer like your sister?’
Juanita gave a sudden grin. ‘Sis says I dance like a kangaroo on a hot dunny roof and I sing like a frog. No, we’re saving to get a farm too.’
Jem stared at her. ‘A woman and a girl can’t have a farm!’
‘Why not?’
‘You need a man to work it!’
‘Says who? What about all the women who kept the farms going when their men went to the gold rushes? Anyway, how can you and your dad run a farm yourselves? Who’ll do the cooking and darning and make your beds?’
‘I can make a bed,’ said Jem. ‘I can darn a sock, too, and sweep out a house. And it isn’t hard to put some meat on the fire and boil some cabbage and potatoes.’
‘If you want to live on soggy cabbage and potatoes,’ said Juanita scornfully.
‘Lots of men have farms without any women to help . . .’ began Jem, then saw Juanita was laughing at him. He gave a rueful grin. ‘All right. Maybe you and your sister could run a farm.’
‘Of course we could. Anyway, Sis and I just want a few acres, to grow cherry trees and pear trees and special plants. Sis knows how to make cordials with them.’
‘I like cherry cider,’ Jem offered.
Juanita shook her head. ‘Sis makes cordials for when you’re sick, or to stop you getting sick.’ Her grin came back again. ‘Though she can make cherry cider too. Hers is really good.’
‘Are they Spanish recipes?’
The grin faded. ‘I suppose so.’
The washtub was nearly at the shore now. Paw and Mr Smith dragged it up onto the sand and helped Señorita Rodriques out with her carpetbag, while Mr Lee clambered out awkwardly from the other side. He walked quickly up to the coach with his strange halting steps, then climbed into it, as if afraid Mrs Pickle might object to his presence as soon as she got to this side of the river, and insist they leave him there.
Paw and Mr Smith waded back into the icy water.
Jem glanced at the horizon again, just as the last small glowing slice of sun slipped below it. Dusk didn’t last long in midwinter. Even as he looked a wisp of white mist rose from the river and spread its threads into the growing darkness.
‘You must be frozen, Señor,’ said Señorita Rodriques in her lilting accent. She opened her carpetbag and pulled out a biscuit tin. ‘A gingernut,’ she offered Jem. ‘They are, how you say? Bueno. Most good.’
‘Thank you, Señorita,’ said Jem. He crunched it. ‘It’s delicious,’ he said around a mouthful of biscuit, though anything would have been delicious after Ma Grimsby’s stew.
‘Best gingernuts in the world,’ said Juanita, munching too.
Señorita Rodriques laughed. ‘The landlady let me use her kitchen this morning. It is, how you say, not good to travel with nothing to line your stomach.’ She offered Jem the tin again. ‘Take two.’ She hesitated, then approached the coach and offered the tin to Mr Lee. The small man blinked. He took a biscuit, tasted it, considered it, gave it a tiny nibble, then smiled his thanks with a bow.
Señorita Rodriques put the tin back in her carpetbag. Evidently, she wasn’t going to offer any biscuits to the Pickles. Paw, Mr Smith and Mr Pickle had nearly reached them now with the tub that held Mrs Pickle, bulky with shawls and petticoats as well as her bustle, grasping the tub’s edge and looking terrified.
‘You all right, lovie?’ asked Mr Pickle, as he helped her onto the river bank.
‘I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all,’ whimpered Mrs Pickle, her bustle quivering. ‘I wish we’d stayed in Braidwood, Horace.’
‘But it was you who insisted we go to Goulburn tonight, lovie. You said you had to get there!’
‘I don’t care! You should have stopped me! I want to go home!’
‘You can both wait here for the coach to Braidwood tomorrow if you don’t get a move on,’ said Paw. He and Mr Smith had already changed their wet underwear and put their other clothes back on. ‘I’m going to count to twenty. If you’re not both in that carriage I’ll leave without you.’
Mrs Pickle gave a startled cry and hurried up towards the coach, clutching her shawls around her. Juanita gave Jem a grin as she and Señorita Rodriques followed her.
‘You’ll feel better after a nice supper, lovie,’ Mr Pickle called to Mrs Pickle’s retreating back, quickly pulling dry underwear out of his wife’s carpetbag.
Paw and Mr Smith hauled the tub back to the coach then spread the hay on the floor again. Mr Pickle scrambled into the coach just as Paw fastened his lap belt, with Jem and Mr Smith beside him.
Paw cracked his whip above his head, flicking the reins. The horses responded at once, wheeling like one animal along the familiar track.
‘Ah, they know there’s a stable and oats waiting for them soon,’ said Mr Smith. ‘There’s supper at the Manar posting house for us too, isn’t there?’
Jem nodded. The gingernuts had reminded him how hungry he was.
‘You’re not driving this section, lad?’
‘Not with this mist rising.’ Jem decided not to mention that Paw only ever handed him the reins for the fairly straight and well-cleared stretch from Braidwood to the river, the bit that was always run in full daylight.
‘Fog soon,’ grunted Paw.
Mr Smith gazed at the sunset, a hint of yellow and pink, despite the rising mist. ‘That’s not going to delay us, is it?’
Paw gave him a look as if to say, of course it will.
‘Don’t worry,’ Jem reassured him. ‘Even if the fog slows us down Paw usually gets the coach into Goulburn at least an hour early. Never been late once. Even the time we broke a spoke we still got there with half an hour to spare.’
Mr Smith smiled. ‘Your paw is a wheelwright too then?’
‘When I have to be,’ muttered Paw.
‘Don’t stop at Six Mile Flats any more?’
‘Not since we’ve been on this run,’ said Jem, when it was obvious Paw wasn’t going to answer. ‘It’s Manar first, then Boro, Sherwin Flats, the Halfway House then Goulburn.’
‘Don’t suppose you know the story of Jackey-Jackey then? He operated around the Six Mile Flats area.’ Mr Smith settled back with the ease of a man who liked to tell a yarn.
Jem shook his head.
‘They called him the gentleman bushranger. Always wore a suit, took his hat off to the ladies. Back in 1840 it was, long before there was gold to steal, or Cobb & Co coaches to hold up.’
‘What was he after then?’ asked Jem.
‘Horses, tools, food, whatever valuables he thought those he robbed could spare — but never took a thing from a woman. No harm in him at all. Every time the traps caught him he’d escape. It was said no gaol could hold him, and I don’t suppose it could. Finally, they had to send him to Norfolk Island. Even Jackey-Jackey couldn’t swim from there.’
Jem shivered. ‘That was a bad place, wasn’t it?’
‘Not too bad when
Jackey-Jackey was first sent there. Maconochie, who was the superintendent back then, let the men have their own plots of ground to grow vegetables, let them cook their own food, have Sundays off and holidays for good behaviour. Not a bad life at all. But then Major Childs took over.’
Mr Smith shook his head. ‘He was a bad one. Made the men give up their gardens. Pure meanness, for the colony was short of food, and the men were growing enough to feed themselves. Gave them short rations — it’s said he sold most of ’em for his own profit. No more holidays to go fishing, longer work hours. And then came the final straw of all . . .’
‘What was that?’ demanded Jem, wide-eyed.
‘He took away their cooking pots. All the rations would be cooked together, just the stale stuff he hadn’t been able to sell to ships’ captains for their crew, rancid flour that was mostly weevils, salt pork so hard they couldn’t chew it, no more fresh food. Food to starve on, food to make you despair. July 1846 that was. Jackey-Jackey led the rebellion.’
‘Did they win?’ breathed Jem.
‘Not for long. Jackey-Jackey attacked several officers — and they hanged him for it. Only twenty-six he was. Never hurt anyone afore that, but the major drove him to it.’
‘Bushrangers don’t live long,’ muttered Paw.
Mr Smith shot him a look. ‘Some of ’em do, if they’ve the sense to stop being bushrangers and go straight. They’re the ones people don’t hear of. Is that the coaching station ahead?’
Jem nodded. He took the coach’s bugle and blew three long low notes, then two high shorter ones to let the grooms in the low sod building know they were coming. Every coach had its own call, and Paw had let Jem choose theirs.
The horses had slowed as they grew tired, but speeded up to a fast trot again now, their ribs heaving, their sides foam-flecked, knowing the end of their journey tonight was near.
The coach clattered into the yard. Immediately two grooms began to unhitch the team, while another two waited with the horses for the next stage of their journey. Paw jumped down and stretched, and Jem leaped after him. They had a long night of sitting ahead of them and this respite from the drive would be brief.
‘Dinner at last!’ Mrs Pickle descended from the coach and stared around. ‘Where is the dining room?’
‘You eat in the coach,’ said the groom, his hands busy with the harness.
‘But the . . . er . . . f-facilities?’ stammered Mrs Pickle.
The groom pointed to a dingy shed, away from the stables. Jem could smell it even up on the coach. ‘You’ve got two minutes, lady.’
Mrs Pickle gave a small moan. She staggered towards the shed, her bustle wagging behind her. The other passengers followed, except for Mr Smith. Jem suspected that like him and Paw he’d quietly used the river as his ‘facility’.
The passengers soon returned, accompanied by the stink of dunny. Mrs Pickle leaned on her husband’s arm. ‘I don’t feel well,’ she whispered, clutching her shawl. ‘All the swaying, Horace.’
‘I told you we should not come, dearest. Ah, supper,’ Mr Pickle added dubiously, as two men bearing hot shovels emerged into the courtyard, each shovel piled high with greasy chops. A woman in a grubby apron followed, with a tray of bread sliced into chunks.
Mr Pickle, Señorita Rodriques and Juanita each took a chop and chunk of bread. Mrs Pickle glanced at the dripping grease, turned pale, and shook her head. Mr Lee accepted only the bread. Mr Smith grinned. He tipped the woman ten shillings then grabbed a dozen chops, staunching their dripping with the largest hunk of bread, and piled more bread on top.
‘Good run today, Jem?’ asked one of the grooms. They all knew Jem.
Jem nodded. ‘Almost got stuck in the river. The rocks have shifted a bit in the ford.’
‘I’ll warn the coach from Goulburn. They’ll have more passengers to push though than you. Get yourself some chops while they’re still hot.’
Jem helped himself to three chops, with a hunk of bread to rest them on, and six chops for Paw, as the grooms lit the three giant lanterns, one on each side of the coach and the largest in the middle of the roof. The triangle of lanterns would light their way and warn any other travellers on the road that they were approaching.
The first team had already been led away to be rubbed down, fed and watered. The new team waited, their breath steaming.
‘All aboard!’ shouted Paw.
The coach thundered out into the shadows.
CHAPTER 4
DISASTER
Mr Smith’s false teeth were so shiny they gleamed in the lamplight as he tore at his chops. His eyes narrowed in pleasure as he munched, then threw the bones over the side. ‘How long to Sherwin Flats?’ He bit into his last chop. Jem had never seen anyone eat so fast. How did Mr Smith stay so thin?
The chops were juicy, but tough. Jem chewed before he answered. ‘Two hours, maybe three. We stop at Boro first.’
‘Ah yes, Boro,’ said Mr Smith, wiping his fingers on his handkerchief without expression.
Jem glanced at him, but Mr Smith just stared out at the small pools of light in the darkness around them.
The stages tonight were longer than most Cobb & Co routes, but the land from here on was fairly flat, and Paw’s night mail coach was usually lightly laden, unlike the day coach that dawdled so the men crowded on top at half-price wouldn’t fall off. Five good teams could handle the sixty-mile journey.
The fog swirled thick on the ground, stroking the wheels with cold damp fingers, but Paw knew every rut along this road. Above them the stars twinkled as if they’d been polished. Jem handed Paw another chop, its fat congealed now, and then a hunk of bread. He was feeling sleepy. He reached behind for their oil-cloth swag. ‘I usually have a nap,’ he apologised to Mr Smith.
‘A boy needs his sleep,’ agreed Paw. He smiled down at Jem. ‘He stays awake after we change teams at Sherwin Flats though, and sings to me to keep me awake. All the old songs, all the way to Goulburn.’
‘That’s the most I’ve heard you say since we set out,’ said Mr Smith.
Paw glanced at him. ‘Wish I could say the same for you, sir. Hush now, and let the boy sleep.’
‘Sleep sounds like a right good idea,’ agreed Mr Smith. He leaned back, and tilted his top hat over his face.
The passengers down behind them were silent now too. Even Mrs Pickle had stopped her soft moaning. Perhaps she was asleep too.
Jem let his eyes close. He was so used to the swaying and jolting now that it was like being rocked in a cradle. He could almost remember his cradle, and Maw singing to him. ‘Gentle Annie’, ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ and ‘Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair’ and, his favourite ‘The Captain and His Whiskers’ . . .
‘As they marched thro’ the town with their banners so gay,
I ran to the window to hear the band play;
I peeped thro’ the blinds very cautiously then,
Lest the neighbors should say I was looking at the men.’
Was that how Maw had met Paw? Neither had ever told him how they met. Had Paw been a soldier once . . .
Jem closed his eyes and slept.
*
The grind of wheels on gravel was a lullaby, and the steady beat of horses’ hooves. Jem opened his eyes briefly to blow the bugle to let the Boro grooms know they were arriving. He let himself doze again as the new team was harnessed, vaguely aware of lanterns and whinnying horses, the click of harnesses, Paw’s short words of greeting. Mr Smith seemed sound asleep, unmoving, his top hat still covering his face.
Then the stable lights were behind them, except for the small bright islands of the lanterns. He slept more deeply now, not even dreaming, till Paw nudged him. ‘Sherwin Flats coming up. Bugle, Jem.’
Jem lifted the bugle automatically and blew his five notes again, wakening properly to clamber over Mr Smith and jump down to stretch, before an aproned woman handed him a giant hot potato boiled in its jacket and a hunk of cheese. It was good cheese, home made. He ate it hungrily, holding th
e floury potato to warm his hands, then accepted another hunk of cheese as the woman handed it to him with a wink.
‘Mr Smith, do you want anything?’ he called. ‘They serve beer here too.’
‘Let me sleep, lad.’ Mr Smith didn’t even remove his hat. Jem clambered back over him, the potato still warm in his hands.
‘Are we there yet?’ That voice had to be Mrs Pickle.
‘No, lovie. Almost halfway, though.’
‘Only halfway!’
‘We could stay the rest of the night here, lovie. They say the inn has excellent beds.’
‘Not when we’re so near Goulburn! Horace, you have to make the coach stop rocking.’
‘I don’t think the driver can do that, lovie.’ Mr Pickle sounded worried.
As if a coach could run along a bush track without rocking! Paw and Cobb & Co’s special leather ‘springs’ gave passengers the least jolting ride of any in Australia, Jem reckoned, but even Paw couldn’t make a rough track smooth.
Down in the coach he could hear Juanita thank the innkeeper’s wife for the cheese and potato, then the soft melody of Señorita Rodriques’s accent. Mrs Pickle muttered to her husband, but too softly now for Jem to make out the words. There was no sound from Mr Lee.
Jem’s favourite team ran this next stretch. He loved all the horses, but these three leaders, Lady Anne, Lord Stripling and King Rex, were special: so willing they almost seemed to know what Paw wanted without even a touch on the reins. Lady Anne a regal chestnut, Lord Stripling shadow grey, and King Rex so white he almost glowed without the need of lamps. The final two, Dawn and Dusk, were matching night-black. Their coats gleamed in the lamplight, their muscles rippling.
‘Git up!’ called Paw, flicking his whip. Jem nibbled his potato as the horses broke into the fastest groundcovering trot of any team he’d known.
‘Like a song yet, Paw?’
Paw grinned at him. ‘I slept well enough today. Must have been to get out of eating Ma Grimsby’s stew at midday dinner. Reckon my stomach told me to keep sleeping. You have another nap, son.’
‘You sure, Paw?’
Paw nodded. ‘We’ve got two hours in hand. We’ll make Goulburn with time to spare. How about we have breakfast out this morning before we head over to our lodgings?’
Night Ride into Danger Page 3