Night Ride into Danger

by Jackie French

  Mr Pickle gathered up his carpetbag and hurried off towards the sulky.

  Jem stepped tiredly to the coach and peered in.

  ‘Paw?’ he said.

  But Paw had gone.

  CHAPTER 14

  RETURN TO COBB & CO

  Jem turned to find Juanita grinning at him. ‘Don’t worry about your dad. Sis hailed a couple of carters to help her. They had a load of hay, and they got your dad snug on the top quick as winking, with Sis sitting next to him, and them talking nineteen to the dozen.’

  Paw, talking nineteen to the dozen? ‘Where has she taken him? The hospital?’

  ‘Not that filthy place. Sis says you go in with a sore finger and come out dead of a dozen diseases. She’s taken him back to your lodgings and then the carters are going to fetch a doctor to check his leg is set properly. Sis says me and her are going to stay at your lodgings too, till he’s right again.’

  ‘But you were going to Sydney!’

  Juanita nodded. ‘I’m to send a telegram to the theatre saying that we couldn’t catch the train because we had an accident on the way to Goulburn, which is true.’

  ‘You might have caught the train if you ran.’

  ‘Not without our luggage though. Our trunk was left on the road too, remember? A dancer has to have her costumes. You can’t just buy a Spanish dancing dress like you’d buy a barrel or a pickaxe.’

  But it wouldn’t take a dressmaker long to sew a costume, and if Cobb & Co sent a message on tonight’s coach then maybe the missing trunks could get to Goulburn in time for the train the day after tomorrow.

  ‘Do you need to buy a ticket for tomorrow’s train?’ asked Jem carefully. ‘Or one later in the week, maybe?’

  ‘I’ll need to ask Sis that, but I don’t think we will.’ Juanita met his gaze. ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘No. I’m glad.’ He didn’t have the words to say how glad he was.

  Juanita’s face relaxed. ‘We can stop at the Telegraph Office after you’ve delivered the coach. I’ve never sent a telegram before! Do you think they’ll let us watch them tap out the Morse code?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jem’s mind was on what was to come. It was going to be hard explaining what had happened at the depot, the lurching, trapped coach and Paw’s injury, the loss of Lady Anne, the missing trunks and . . .

  . . . and nothing else. Cobb & Co had no need to know about pistols and bushrangers, or secrets revealed, or even the private joy of a baby born by the side of a bush track.

  ‘I’ll tell them it wasn’t your dad’s fault,’ said Juanita firmly. ‘How your dad is a great driver and —’

  ‘They already know that,’ said Jem, suddenly deeply happy he would not be alone as he drove the coach on its final stretch of this journey.

  Maybe he and Paw would never be alone again.

  But they were kind to him at the depot.

  ‘What a journey, eh? And you brought the passengers back safely, and got the mail to the train on time, too.’ Mr Nutbolt looked up from inspecting the horses’ legs. ‘You’re your father’s son, and no mistake. Don’t know any other boy who could have brought that off.’

  ‘No one,’ said Juanita firmly, saying a final farewell to King Rex with another gingernut.

  ‘Quite right, young lady. It was an astounding feat, young Jem. Well done indeed!’ said Mr Reevesby, the deputy manager.

  ‘But we lost Lady Anne, sir.’

  Mr Nutbolt nodded sympathetically. ‘Pity about Lady Anne, boy. She was a grand stepper, and as good-natured as they come. But these things happen — though they don’t tend to happen with your pa. This is the first accident your pa has had in thirteen years. Remember that time the Shoalhaven was flooded and your pa swam the horses across one by one? No, that would have been before your time. No one else could have got the mail through that day.’

  ‘I saw him split the team once to go around a goat in the road who wouldn’t move,’ said Mr Reevesby. ‘You say he’s going to be all right?’

  Jem glanced at Juanita for reassurance. She nodded at him, patting King Rex’s nose. ‘I think so, sir,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid it will be a while before his leg mends well enough to drive the coach again.’

  Mr Nutbolt, traced a few faint scratches in the paintwork on the side of the coach. ‘Nothing a lick of paint won’t fix.’ He moved closer to Jem and added quietly, ‘You got enough of the readies to see you right till he’s on his feet again?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Well, we’ll head over to the office and get his wages for this week. A full week, too.’

  Mr Nutbolt ruffled Jem’s hair. Jem put up with it. ‘Maybe we need to pay you a wage too, young man. A boy like you driving four-in-hand through the night almost all the way from the Halfway House! That’ll be a story as good as any about your dad.’

  Jem didn’t look at Juanita. Of course they thought the accident must have happened after the Halfway House. Luckily there was no telegraph there to notify Goulburn that the night mail hadn’t stopped last night, but soon someone would realise that this was the team from Sherwin Flats.

  By then it wouldn’t matter, Jem realised. If anyone asked questions tomorrow or the next day he could tell them the truth, because Mr Smith — he could think of him by no other name — would be safe on board the ship. Nor would he have a chest of ‘books’ if the police escorted him to the docks.

  ‘Jem was a hero,’ said Juanita quietly. Jem glanced at her. To his surprise she looked as though she meant it.

  ‘So were you,’ he said softly. Mr Reevesby and Mr Nutbolt looked puzzled, as if they couldn’t see how a girl could have helped on the journey.

  Jem could not explain. But he had never been alone. He’d had Juanita and Señorita Rodriques supporting him, and Mr Smith to hold the reins so he could flex his hands and roll his aching shoulders. But he couldn’t risk any questions about Mr Smith yet.

  It had been Mr Smith who’d gotten on that train, and Mr Smith’s trunk that had been left behind, with no reason to ever connect it to Frank Gardiner.

  The trunk headed for their lodgings must always simply be a trunkful of books, its contents carefully hidden before Mr Pickle mentioned to his new workmates tomorrow that he’d ridden in a coach with a bushranger. He grinned. Maybe he and Juanita should go and buy some books later today, to fill it up, just in case anyone came looking.

  Jem looked around the depot: the coaches waiting to go out, a stable lad sweeping droppings from the courtyard and a swarm of sparrows hunting for oats among the mess, the long line of horses standing patiently as they were brushed down, or fed and watered, or simply rested between journeys.

  He had always loved the depot. But his true home the last five years had been sitting up with Paw as he handled the reins, tasting the gum trees in the wind, the scent of smoke and pigs as they passed a farm house, the tiny lights in the distance that would become the lanterns of a staging post as they grew closer, knowing that in every house or inn they passed someone would say, ‘There goes the coach of Cobb & Co.’

  Weary travellers would see its lights approaching and know the coach would carry them home — or on to another adventure.

  He had loved it all. But his world had changed last night and he had changed too.

  Juanita tugged his hand. ‘Come on. I have to send that telegram. And I bet Sis wants us to buy all sorts of things for your dad.’

  And I have a trunk full of books to hide, thought Jem, and a new life to build as well.

  EPILOGUE

  OCTOBER 1876

  Cherry blossom drifted like snow from the orchard as Jem sat on Friendly Fred’s vast back. The big horse plodded down the track to the mailbox at Cabbage Tree Farm’s front gate, keeping an eye out for any succulent clumps of grass, because Fred would never move too fast to take a mouthful or two. The air smelled of honey, with a faint scent of fermented turnips from Fred. Fred loved turnips, and when a horse was as gigantic as Friendly Fred, a heap of turnips going i
n one end of him made a good strong stink when it came out the other.

  But as Paw had said last month when he’d discovered a dead rat in the water barrel, life wouldn’t be fun if it was perfect.

  The cherry trees had been one of the reasons Paw and Aunt Carmel had chosen Cabbage Tree Farm. The previous owner had made his pile in the gold rush, and built a house and dairy and planted an orchard — everything a wife might long for. Then when he’d finally found a wife she wanted a house in Sydney, not one perched halfway up a mountain where the nearest neighbour was a twenty-minute walk away.

  But Cabbage Tree Farm was perfect for other reasons, too: a school only a short ride away for Jem and Juanita, with a teacher who’d even been to university; a stream which didn’t dry up even in the worst of droughts; and enough fenced paddocks so they didn’t need to hire farmhands to stop the stock from straying.

  The Donovan family had made friends here. They also liked their privacy. Cabbage Tree Farm was only a day’s cart ride to the community where Juanita and Aunt Carmel had been born, close enough for a visit if the family left at four am, then at the end of the day let Fred find his own way back along the road while they slept in the cart, waking at midnight when he gave a whinny to say they were back and it was time for a rub down and his oats. They didn’t want their new neighbours knowing where they had gone, not yet. In years to come it needn’t be a secret, because by then their neighbours would know them so well they’d just be ‘Carmel and Juanita’ and not ‘those natives’.

  There was also the secret of the ‘books’ hidden in the cellar walls, and Maw’s parentage, too. But like Paw said, half the families in Australia had skeletons in their cupboards — convict ancestors or people running from the law back in Europe. Most people were pretty careful about opening any door where a skeleton might pop out, in case anyone discovered their own.

  And a hidden wall of ‘books’ was a pretty fine skeleton to have.

  Jem slid off Fred’s back and hung his canvas bag over the gatepost to wait for the post cart. Fred was so placid you could shelter under him if it rained or for shade on a hot day, and he would just stand there with what Jem was sure was a horse grin. But today was spring and almost perfect, so Jem leaned on the gatepost and chewed a grass stalk till Mabel plodded round the bend, pulling Mr Moggle’s weekly mail cart.

  There wouldn’t be any letters, of course. Who’d write to them? But there might be some of Aunt Carmel’s catalogues and The Goulburn Post and The Braidwood Dispatch, as well as other goods Mr Moggle delivered.

  It was a rare Tuesday when his cart didn’t stop with a box of tea or packet of books. Juanita was as hungry for books as a cow in a cabbage patch. She and Jem had finished the encyclopaedia together, all the way to Zvon, a Russian musical instrument with its bells played by pulling ropes attached to clappers.

  After dinner now they took it in turns reading aloud the dime novels Paw had sent out from America, especially the ones about intrepid private detectives who always found the villain. Juanita agreed it might be fun to be private detectives, though not as good as being horse breeders.

  ‘Morning, Jem!’ Mr Moggle reached back into the cart as Mabel stopped with the practice of a horse who had stopped at this mailbox for years. Fred gave her a welcoming whinny.

  ‘Morning, Mr Moggle.’

  ‘Got two parcels for you.’ Mr Moggle gave the fattest one a squeeze. ‘Reckon one of them must be dress material. Your step-ma making new sheets or dresses?’

  ‘New shirts for me,’ said Jem. He’d grown five inches in the past year. Juanita was getting new trousers too, now she’d taken to wearing them in the paddocks, but sure as eggs Jem wasn’t going to let Mr Moggle tell the whole district that the newcomers’ girl was a regular tomboy.

  ‘There’s a chest of what looks like salt, as well, and your pa’s newspapers and two letters.’

  Jem put the parcels in the canvas bag then looked curiously at the letters. Who could be writing to them? Paw hadn’t even bothered to tell his family he’d remarried, much less given them his address. Neither his Cobb & Co mates nor Aunt Carmel’s friends were the letter-writing kind, and ‘Señorita Rodriques’ had vanished when she’d become Mrs Donovan.

  Jem inspected the letters more carefully. One was postmarked Goulburn, and addressed to Mr Donovan, Esquire, c/o Cobb & Co. The second had an American stamp. The writing on the front said To Jem Donovan, the boy from Cobb & Co, c/o Goulburn. Please forward.

  ‘Is that one from your pa’s relatives in America?’ asked Mr Moggle.

  ‘Just from an old friend, I think,’ said Jem, his heart beating fast. Two days after their coach ride Jem had read in The Sydney Morning Herald that the notorious bushranger, Frank Gardiner, had sailed to Hong Kong from Sydney. But there had been no news of him since.

  Mr Moggle waited in case there was more information to be had, then proceeded to other important matters. ‘How much rain you get Sunday night?’

  ‘Twenty-eight points.’

  ‘Ha! Harrison’s got thirty-two. How are the tomatoes ripening?’

  ‘Haven’t got the first one yet.’ There was, they’d been told, an unofficial local competition to see who had the first ripe tomato every summer. Actually Jem suspected Cabbage Tree Farm would celebrate their first year in the district by winning this competition — Aunt Carmel had selected a spot too high for frost and the surrounding rocks seemed to drink in the sun and give back the warmth during the night to the ripening fruit. But Paw said it might cause ill-feeling if the newcomers won, so they weren’t planning on letting on.

  ‘Don’t be conspicuous,’ Mr Smith had said. Don’t look like you’ve got money, either. Which was why every month they gave Mr Moggle a dozen boxes of Aunt Carmel’s cordials to take up to Chun Fat’s General Stores to sell, and why they’d sold so many foals last year, even ones they could have kept for breeding or to train up to sell to Cobb & Co. Cabbage Tree Farm looked like it made money, even if secretly its owners didn’t need it.

  There had been a great many books in that chest. Even half of them were enough to see the little family comfortable for the rest of their lives.

  At last Mr Moggle decided he’d got all the farm’s gossip. He flicked the reins as Jem clambered up onto Fred again from the gatepost, the letters now in the bag, and nudged the horse with his heels to go faster.

  Fred obligingly set off at his top speed, which was about twice as fast as a snail approaching a lettuce, his vast hooves clopping on the ground, pausing now and then for a mouthful. But at last they reached the house.

  It was a good house, built of stone with four bedrooms and a dining room, a drawing room with a piano where Mrs Sheldon the schoolmaster’s wife gave Aunt Carmel lessons, a closed stove in the kitchen and a hand pump in the scullery from the well in the courtyard, though the horses were watered from Stony Creek, which spilled down the mountain into a deep rock pool just right for swimming, as long as no black snakes decided to cool down in it first.

  The speckled hens clucked as Jem slipped off Fred in the house paddock. He ran into the scullery, took off his boots and pulled the parcels out of the canvas bag, then hurried into the kitchen. Aunt Carmel leaned on the bench by the window, a pan of cornbread steaming next to her as she gazed out at the valley. The kitchen smelled of roasting chicken with lemon and onion stuffing, and the warm scent of scones and cornbread.

  Aunt Carmel turned and smiled at him. ‘Home country,’ she said simply. ‘I’ll never get tired of watching it. It’s like the air can reach my toes again. Even the rocks look just like rocks should. What have you got there?’

  Jem grinned. ‘A package of material, salt, newspapers and two letters.’

  ‘Letters? Who’d be writing to us?’

  ‘One’s to Paw, from Goulburn. The other is for me. From America.’

  ‘Ah.’ Aunt Carmel carefully didn’t look at the trapdoor to the cellar.

  Paw had explained to the Mint in Sydney how miners sometimes paid a Cobb & Co Whip t
he five shillings to ride beside him on the box in gold, not coin, and that he’d been saving that gold for thirteen years. He had also carefully let Mr Moggle believe that he and the family did a little gold panning in Stony Creek, too. That would explain how every few years they might take more gold up to Sydney to be turned into sovereigns, though they would never be able to take such a large amount again.

  Nor would there be a need to. Paw’s and Aunt Carmel’s savings still hadn’t been touched, and some of Mr Smith’s books had been sovereigns that could be spent without being changed into coins — or sent to ‘Mr Smith’ when he had need of them. Some had been sent — with no return address — to ‘Mr Smith’s sisters’, too.

  ‘Ring the dinner bell,’ said Aunt Carmel, as calmly as when she’d got the possum out of the chimney or removed the giant spiders from the lamps, where they liked to eat insects that had collected there the evening before.

  Paw arrived first, smelling of fresh sawdust — he’d been cutting the posts for a new paddock down past the creek. But Juanita . . .

  ‘Put those trousers straight in the laundry tub,’ ordered Aunt Carmel briefly, wrinkling her nose. ‘And then put on a dress.’

  ‘Aw, Sis, I’ve been mucking out the stables . . .’

  ‘You’ll wear a dress for afternoon tea,’ said Aunt Carmel firmly. ‘There are two letters.’

  ‘Letters! For us?’

  ‘I’ll see you in the drawing room,’ said Aunt Carmel. But Juanita was already galloping up the stairs to her bedroom.

  The drawing room had a polished redgum floor and deep blue Chinese carpets. It looked out over the valley. Every time Jem saw it he thought how much Maw would have loved a drawing room like it, and how happy she would be that her son and husband had one now.

  Aunt Carmel brought in the tea things on a tray: jam tarts and fresh buttered scones and the teapot for her and Paw, with lemon barley water for Jem and Juanita, who appeared in a dress that she had clearly thrown on and her hair still unbrushed. But at least she’d removed her boots.