other two back to the boarding house. When I got to the
kitchen, the doctor was still tending to Catherine while Harriet
and Nellie hovered.
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Her injuries were purely superficial. There were a couple
of abrasions and a sprained wrist, probably from putting out
her arm to break her fall. The doctor bound the wrist and made
a wisecrack about not having to do the dishes for a while, then
he looked at me.
I had an ugly bruise on the ribs below my shoulder blade,
which wasn’t likely to be serious. The doctor probed with his
fingers. I winced.
“Lucky boy, you could have some fractures, but all in all,
nothing broken; you got off lightly.” He taped me up. I knew
what had caused it – as I lay on top of Catherine, a chunk of
wood had hit me, bounced off and crashed into the wall
behind. I was lucky – if it had been a piece of brick it would
have crippled me.
“No sleeping on your back, no horse riding, running, or
labouring of any kind for a week. Feel free to drink plenty of
alcohol for pain relief, especially at night.” With that, he
snapped his bag shut and made off without presenting a bill.
All the while I had no shirt on and Catherine was hovering.
In spite of myself, I kind of hoped she liked what she saw. By
now, the Colonel had returned from his errand to the telegraph
office and corralled us in the kitchen.
Anderson’s face was dark, his demeanour completely
changed. Half an hour ago he was congenial, entertaining, the
prince of graciousness and charm. Now he was an avenging
devil bent on retribution, and woe betide any who were the
object of his wrath.
“Those men you followed earlier – do you remember how
to find the house they went to?”
“Yes.”
“Then put your shirt back on. We’re going after them.”
“Right now?”
“Yes – right now!” He disappeared towards his room and
returned in the blink of an eye with a leather travelling case.
Putting it down, he opened the lid. It contained two 12 gauge,
lever action, Winchester shotguns and an assortment of large
calibre service revolvers; all packed in nice little pockets with
loops to strap them in. “Take your pick.”
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I swooped on one of the Winchesters and Floyd grabbed
the other. They were model 1893’s and the barrels had been cut
off flush with the ends of the magazine tubes. It was then that I
noticed the Colonel was wearing a gun belt containing two
double-action, multi-ejection revolvers mounted in the cross
draw position, the butts protruding from the front of his coat.
He threw me a bandolier of triple O buckshot cartridges
and bade me to wait by the front door, then turned his attention
on Potts and Floyd. All the while, Harriet and Catherine were
watching and their eyes were larger than saucers.
Catherine followed me to the front door, her expression
one of concern.
“Why are you here? Why do you have so many guns?” As
she spoke, I thumbed cartridges into the magazine of the
Winchester until it could hold no more. I paused.
“We are a special military taskforce whose job is to hunt
down the people who did that.” I pointed at the ghostly
remains of the railway station. “Odds are they are still here and
if they are, we will get them. They are not peasant Boer
farmers on the warpath. They are professional anarchists from
abroad and very dangerous people. They have already
committed one murder that we know about and we are the only
ones here who can stop them.”
She stared at me with a look that was even more
concerned. She stepped up and hugged me. I put my arms
around her and held her with the shotgun still in my left hand.
We could hear the others coming, so we let each other go.
“Don’t let them hurt you, Richard. I don’t want you to be
killed.” She stepped out of the doorway so the others could
pass. Bit late for that, I thought absently. My back was already
hurt and I hurried as much as mounting soreness would allow
to catch up with the others.
The section we sought was long and narrow, with barely a
yard or two of space on either side. The house was small – a
wood-framed cottage with vertical corrugated iron for
cladding. The back fence was low and we shuffled quietly
towards the house without disturbing the horses, noting that
they were saddled and ready to go. Converging on the back of
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the house, we split into two groups. Floyd and Potts crept
around each side to cover the front, while the Colonel and I
waited to give them time to set themselves up.
The back of the house was dark with the exception of a
room in the lean-to that was probably the kitchen. The curtains
of the only window were pulled across, while the moon lit up
the yard with a pale, ambient light, creating deep shadow
under the verandah that ran across the back. We stepped across
the verandah carefully so the boards wouldn’t squeak, and
slowly approached the back door which was mounted
centrally, taking up positions on either side. There was a
murmur of hushed voices coming from within.
The Colonel drew both revolvers from their holsters and
with the muzzles up, thumbed back the hammers.
“Open up! This is the law.” He gave the door a good kick
and sprang out of the way. The murmuring abruptly stopped
and was followed by a barrage of shots. Wood splinters blew
outwards from the tongue and groove that clad the door and
little shafts of light shone out of the holes. The lamp in the
kitchen went out. It was now deathly dark and silent within.
While straining to hear something I heard the sound of
window weights clang from around the side of the house. On
tiptoes I glided to the edge of the verandah, where I poked my
head out in time to see a shadowy figure drop from a window
and crouch defensively, staring my way. His arm came up and
pointed.
“Drop it, felon.” There was a shot, followed by a thunk as
the bullet hit the weatherboards a foot or two away.
I looked again, in time to see the felon sprinting towards
the front of the house, where a blow to the head from a gun
butt felled him. Floyd emerged from the shadow of the front
verandah, holding his shotgun on the prostrate form. Turning
back, I could see that the back door was now wide open; the
Colonel nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, a running figure
emerged from the other side of the house. He was carrying
something bulky and heading for the horses like the devil was
on his tail.
He was too short to be Potts or the Colonel, so I fired from
the hip. He dropped whatever it was he carried and vaulted
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onto a horse. In the time it took to lever another round and put
the butt on my shoulder, he was about to clear the back fence,
so I loosed off another qui
ck shot. He sailed over the fence and
disappeared into the gloom, folded low over the horse’s neck.
Potts then appeared trailing a handcuffed prisoner and
Floyd materialised like a ghost from out of the gloom.
“The other fellow is out cold. I cuffed ‘im to a verandah
post.”
Before I could say anything the Colonel reappeared,
framed by the still-open back door, one of his guns returned to
its holster.
“House clear,” he said and looked at Pott’s prisoner.
Even in the moonlight I could see he was the big boy that I
had seen at the crossroads. I walked to the middle of the yard
and bent over to examine the object that was left on the
ground. It was a burlap sack. I grabbed it and tried to lift it, but
my back hurt too much. I straightened up slowly.
“Colonel, come and take a look at this.”
Anderson strode over and picked it up. “Well, look at that,
this should be interesting.” He took the sack inside, lit the still-
warm lamp in the kitchen and deposited the sack on an
adjacent table. Inside the sack was a half emptied case of
dynamite sticks, at least fifty detonators in little packets and
about one hundred and fifty yards of fuse, all wound into neat
little coils. “Yep, we got the right house. Lucky you didn’t put
a bullet into that – it could’ve gone sky high and taken us with
it!”
We returned to the boarding house at 3am to find the front
door unlocked and the lamps in the hallway still going.
Catherine and Harriet appeared, clad in their dressing gowns
and looking hugely relieved to see us. We unloaded our
hardware and followed Harriet to the kitchen for a cup of tea
and a bite to eat.
The women looked tired, for after we had left they were
too anxious to sleep, so they all piled into Harriet’s bed to
comfort each other and await our return. Once the water boiled
we had tea and sandwiches while the Colonel recited events
for the benefit of the ladies, sticking to the broader details
while the rest of us ate.
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We roused the unconscious prisoner that Floyd had
manacled to a verandah post and after propping him against it,
we examined him by the light of the lantern. He was still
groggy and there was a sizable gash on his forehead above one
eye. The light was indifferent, so it was difficult to tell if his
eyes had dilated or not, which didn’t really matter. Until we
got him to the cells there was nothing we could do for him
anyway. Meanwhile, the local populace must have been roused
by all the gunshots, but wisely, were keeping their heads well
down in case the shooting started up again.
By this time the Chief Constable and a junior constable had
arrived in response to all the firing; both armed with revolvers
and wanting to know what was going on. They examined the
prisoners then we marched them to the police station, half
walking and dragging the injured man between Floyd and
another constable, who had also turned up belatedly. We put
the two men in the cells and presented the duty constable with
the sack and its vital evidence, after which we reconvened in
the front office. While a junior constable went to fetch a doctor
the Chief Constable took notes of our account of the capture of
the felons and the gunfight that resulted. He lived in the house
next door to the station and was awake at the time of the
disturbance, working on a report on the bombing. Now he’d
need to do a lot more writing before the report could be
finished.
Since there was nothing we could do before daylight
returned and we could examine the house of the bombers more
closely, we trudged back to the boarding house for some much-
needed sleep. By 4am we had all gone to bed, by which time
my back was killing me. Potts had given me a bottle of
whiskey, so I guzzled at least three or four large mouthfuls on
the spot and almost gagged, to the amusement of the others
and consternation of Catherine and Harriet. Then I slumped off
to my room.
I woke. Someone was tapping on my door. It was daylight
and my head throbbed. My throat felt drier than a yard of
Sahara sand.
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“Go away,” was amended to “who is it?” It was Catherine.
She was concerned. Was I all right? Well no, I wasn’t really
but I couldn’t tell her that.
I was lying face down, diagonally across the bed, my head
partly over the side. I had been woken constantly by aches
through the night and kept sipping the whisky, which had been
a godsend, for without it I wouldn’t have slept at all.
Unfortunately the downside was that now I had a hangover to
go with my sore back. I partly rolled over – carefully. The
blankets were a mess, so after struggling to sit up, I rearranged
my pillows and straightened the blankets to cover my legs and
underwear.
“Come in then.” The door slowly opened and in she came,
holding a small metal tray with a poached egg and awkwardly
favouring her bound wrist. She was still in her nightdress, the
vertical, lace-trimmed collar that covered her neck protruding
from the open top of her dressing gown.
Her hair had been meticulously brushed, the right side
pushed behind her ear. Even my bleary eyes could see how
cute she was. She walked over and put the tray next to me
before sitting down carefully on the end of the bed. She
grinned and lightly rubbed the bandaging around her wrist.
“You look awful.”
I limply smiled back. “Thanks. With friends like you I
won’t need detractors.” Her grin deepened. I picked up the tray
and positioned it across my knees.
“Wow, breakfast in bed. Do all the occupants get this?”
“No silly, only the helpless ones.”
“Damn. I thought it was because I was someone special.”
She laughed. “Oh, you are special all right, but not for the
reasons you think.”
I was back on the bench seat, which had been righted and
cleaned. It appeared to be none the worse for wear after its
ordeal, which was more than I could say for myself, but there
were of course, adequate compensations. Nellie had to be
prodded off to school, her eyes wide with indignation,
protesting that she wanted to stay right here with us. Catherine
then brought me a mug of freshly brewed coffee and as I
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sipped, I watched the workmen on the other side of the road
sweeping up debris and tossing bricks into a flatbed wagon. I
wriggled to get more comfortable and all was well with the
world again, or at least, it almost was.
Anderson, Potts and Floyd went back to the house of the
train wreckers and I tagged along, although I wasn’t much use.
I slumped on the back verandah while they tipped the house
upside down, but there was nothing of interest to find, not even
a sawn-off shotgun that could have killed Ferg. They talked to
the neighbours, hoping they would learn something to link
Shaun Blaine or Eric von Smidt to the men in jail, but all to no
avail. It was as if Smidt and Blaine didn’t exist; nowhere
around here, anyway. They went to the jail and interviewed the
two men but still didn’t learn anything, or the name of the
individual who’d got away.
The prisoners were tough nuts; men who were not
intimidated by Potts and with the exception that they had come
from Orange Free State they were not about to give up their
secrets, even though Potts would have tried his darndest to get
something out of them. They were grilled about the death of
Flighty Ferg and any part they may have contributed to it, but
they hunkered down, jaw muscles tightened, and wouldn’t
admit a thing. They thought that officially we had nothing on
them. They were prisoners of war until we could prove
something otherwise. The reality though, was that they were
spies and saboteurs, so it was unlikely there would be any
armistice for them. Consequently, an unsympathetic military
court would try them and there was every likelihood they
would be shot.
One of the horses left in their yard had a white spot on the
fetlock of the right, front leg, which matched the description of
the missing horse from Jamestown. It seemed we had found
Herrick’s stolen horse if nothing else. It also proved they had
been in Jamestown, but that was all it proved. Floyd had also
been looking at the hoof prints made by the horse that jumped
the fence and got away.
“Do y’ think you might have hit this fellow?”
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“Yes. It was dark and the range was stretched for a
shotgun, but I had a good line and he hunched forward after he
cleared the fence, so maybe I did.”
Floyd meanwhile had got down on his haunches. He
pointed to the marks in the dust.
“The horse he took has an odd-shaped shoe. See, it has a
flat bit here and an uneven radius. I could follow that hoof
print almost anywhere.” He looked at Potts and the Colonel.
“Would it be worth our while to go after him?”
“Hell yes,” blurted the Colonel. “He’s obviously heading
somewhere and that somewhere will certainly be of interest to
us. He could lead us to someone important; that would be a
whole lot more than just worth our while.”
That was it then. Potts volunteered to go with Floyd while
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