Someone rode to Dalesford to fetch the police. Pot’s parents, Billy and Mary, were informed, Mary shrieking with grief.
Annie organised hot soup for the girls and ordered them to huddle in front of the fire, wrapped in blankets. Charlotte and Nell were miserable, worried about Pot and frightened by their experience with the bushrangers.
The search party clattered out of the stable yard into the dark, heading back to where the hold-up had taken place.
Annie, Charlotte and Nell sat in the sitting room too nervous to eat or talk. Charlotte read aloud to take their minds away from the endless waiting. At last, Annie sent them both to bed.
Many hours later, Charlotte and Nell were woken by the sound of bits jingling and saddles creaking. They jumped out of bed, threw shawls over their nightgowns and hurried out to the sitting room, where Annie was still sitting up in her chair.
‘It sounds like they are back,’ agreed Annie.
A few minutes later, Will, Henry and Mr McLaughlin came into the house, looking exhausted. Mr McLaughlin shook his head despondently in answer to Annie’s questioning gaze.
‘No sign of them,’ Mr McLaughlin said. ‘We looked everywhere, but it was too dark to find any tracks. They could’ve been just under our noses. At last we decided to come home and sleep, so we can make an early start in the morning. Tomorrow we’ll take supplies, and Billy might be able to find their tracks.’
Annie stood up, tightening her shawl around her shoulders.
‘Sit down, my dears,’ urged Annie. ‘Charlotte and I will heat you some soup and bread for supper.’
The next morning, the search party set off before dawn, carrying saddlebags of food, blankets and supplies in case they needed to camp out. Charlotte had begged to be allowed to join the search party but had been refused and told to stay home where it was safer.
Charlotte and Nell occupied themselves by feeding the animals: the poultry, the newborn chicks, the lambs, wallabies and the pigs. They read their books and helped Mrs Gregory make marmalade in the kitchen.
The day dragged by slowly. Annie, Charlotte and Nell ate by themselves that evening and there was no sign of the men. Nor the next day or the next.
At the end of the third day, well after sunset, the men finally returned, their weary ponies stumbling, with their heads hung low. Charlotte and Nell rushed out to meet them, hope surging in their hearts.
‘No, we didn’t find Pot,’ admitted Mr McLaughlin. ‘Billy discovered their tracks and we followed them for fifty miles. They must’ve known we were following because they took to the river and we lost them.
‘We searched up and downstream but found nothing. At last the horses were tired and we were worried about everything at Rosedale, so we came home.’
Everyone looked worried and disappointed. The men set to work unsaddling the horses and giving them all a good feed. The horses rolled happily in the dust, pleased to be home once more.
Mrs Gregory set to work boiling water for hot baths and preparing a hot meal.
So life continued on much as normal, except everyone missed Pot’s cheerful face around the homestead. The police came and questioned the McLaughlins about the robbery, although they seemed more concerned about the loss of Annie’s jewels than the loss of Pot.
Two weeks later, at dusk, Charlotte was out picking thyme and marjoram in the garden, when she noticed a small dark figure stumbling up the track. She looked closely. The figure looked familiar.
‘Pot!’ shrieked Charlotte at the top of her lungs. ‘Pot’s back.’
Charlotte dropped her handful of herbs and raced down, over the fence and along the track towards Pot. Nell, Annie and Will followed behind, alerted by Charlotte’s shouts.
Soon Pot was surrounded by an anxious, happy, boisterous crowd of well-wishers welcoming him home and asking him dozens of questions.
‘Are you all right?’
‘How did you escape?’
‘Did the bushrangers let you go?’
‘Did you walk all the way home?’
‘How did you find your way back?’
Pot nodded, too tired to talk, but grinned his happy, familiar smile.
‘Leave the poor boy alone,’ insisted Annie. ‘He looks all done in. Come inside, Pot, and we will get you some food, then you can tell us all about it. Will, run and get your father. Charlotte, fetch Mary and Billy too.’
Everyone ran to do Annie’s bidding. Soon Pot was seated at the kitchen table, wrapped in a blanket with a big bowl of hot beef stew in front of him, which he stuffed in his mouth hungrily. An eager audience, including the McLaughlins, the Gregorys, Mary and Billy, Charlotte, Nell and Sophie, sat around the kitchen, waiting for him to finish and tell his tale.
At last, after his third serving of stew, Pot pushed away his bowl, which had been wiped clean with bread.
‘Do you feel up to telling us, Pot?’ asked Annie with concern. ‘Or would you rather wait until the morning?’
‘I feel much better now,’ admitted Pot. ‘Is there any pie, Mrs Gregory?’
Mrs Gregory obligingly cut him a huge wedge of apple pie and smothered it in golden cream. Pot wolfed that down, as though he hadn’t eaten for a week. At last he finished, with a huge sigh and a rubbing of his bulging stomach.
‘The bushrangers took me to their hiding place far to the south,’ Pot began. Everyone listened avidly.
‘We rode for three days, riding down rivers to hide our tracks. At last we stopped in a valley deep in the bush. The bushrangers untied me and ordered me to hobble and unsaddle the horses.
‘We climbed up a cliff to a big cave. There were sacks of food, cooking gear, beds and weapons stored there.
‘The captain made me collect wood, build fires, cook meals, wash up, cart water up the hill. They fed me nothing but scraps, and hit me if I was slow. At night I was tied up.’
Annie bristled as she heard about how Pot had been mistreated. She gently patted him on the arm.
‘Captain Lightning made sure they always watched me, with a pistol. A few days later, the captain and another bloke went to town for supplies. The others became lazy, drinking rum.
‘They sent me to get firewood, but didn’t come with me, just watching from the cave.
‘I got a big pile of firewood, collecting it till they were more interested in the rum than me. When it was getting dark, I slipped away.
‘I walked and ran all night. Once I heard the bushrangers coming after me and hid in a tree till they passed. It was dark and I had a good start, though they had horses.’
Charlotte’s heart pounded as she thought of Pot hiding in a tree with the bushrangers in pursuit.
‘When the sun rose I hid my tracks, then slept in a hollow log. I walked only at night, until I was far away.
‘The cockatoos showed me where to find water and I found grubs and bush fruit to eat. I didn’t waste time fishing or hunting, and I couldn’t light a fire in case they saw it.’
Mary and Billy nodded proudly, patting Pot on the back.
‘For the first four days it was hard, because I didn’t know the country or the way home, so I just kept heading north. Then suddenly I felt the spirits of my people. Then it was easy because the spirits guided me home. Seeing the lights of Rosedale homestead was the best sight I’ve seen in ages.’
Pot stopped talking and gave a great yawn.
‘Well done, Pot,’ cried Annie. ‘Welcome home. I think now you need a good night’s sleep.’
Mary and Billy ushered Pot away to their room, murmuring their goodnights. Pot received many pats on the back and hearty congratulations from the family on his way out.
‘Extraordinary,’ pronounced Mr McLaughlin. ‘That boy found his way home with no map or compass, no food or water and no boots. He must have walked more than a hundred miles. It is a miracle he found his way here.’
‘And he was half starved and beaten,’ added Annie. ‘Those bushrangers are villains.’
‘With Pot’s help, the police might hav
e a much better chance of tracking down those bushrangers,’ suggested Mr McLaughlin. ‘I wonder if Pot can find his way back to the cave as easily as he found his way home?’
A couple of days later, when Pot had rested, another party set off on horseback, made up of Pot, Billy, Mr McLaughlin, stockmen and police constables. They were gone for over a week, but eventually returned happy and triumphant.
They had taken the bushrangers by surprise in their lair. One was captured down by the creek; the others had surrendered after a lengthy gun battle, when they realised they were outnumbered and trapped.
The police had taken the bushrangers into custody and were sending them down to Easthaven to stand trial. The police felt sure the bushrangers would be hanged for their crimes.
Mr McLaughlin returned with Pot’s missing pony, the silver elf bolt and Annie’s jewellery.
‘Yes, but can you please get up now?’ Jess insisted. ‘Nonnie wants to do some cooking with us today. She wants us to pick oranges and lemons from the trees down in the courtyard, to make marmalade, and we are going to make scones.’
‘Okay. Okay. I’ll be right out.’
Sophie felt pleased. She loved cooking with Nonnie. They had the time to make things properly and cook them from scratch. Mum always seemed to be too busy these days, with Will and work, to cook anything except mince, mince and more mince.
Sophie and Jess went down into the garden of the apartment and picked four oranges and two lemons from the trees.
‘Wonderful, girls,’ said Nonnie with a smile, handing over a juicer. ‘Let’s start by juicing the lemons. Be careful to save all the seeds because we need them to make the pectin.’
Sophie and Jess squeezed the juice out of the halved lemons, setting aside the lemon seeds.
Nonnie carefully peeled the skins off the oranges with a sharp knife and scraped the white pith off the orange flesh. Jess chopped the oranges, while Sophie thinly sliced the peel. Nonnie showed Jess how to pop the lemon seeds, pith and chopped lemon peel into a clean stocking.
‘We cook the bag in with the fruit to make pectin, which makes the jelly set,’ Nonnie explained. ‘This is how my mother taught me to make marmalade, and her mother taught her before that.’
‘All the way back to Charlotte Mackenzie?’ asked Sophie quickly.
‘Probably,’ laughed Nonnie, scraping all the chopped orange fruit and sliced peel into a saucepan. ‘Now we add four cups of water and cook it all up with the bag of pith and seeds.’
The orange mixture simmered for fifty minutes. Nonnie, Sophie and Jess cleaned up the mess, then placed the clean jars in the oven to heat.
‘You girls add the sugar, while I stir.’
Four cups of sugar were added to the mix while it was brought to the boil.
‘We have to keep stirring or the sugar will burn,’ warned Nonnie, stirring vigorously. ‘Now let’s taste it. If it’s too sweet we add more lemon juice, if it’s too bitter, it needs more sugar.’
The girls tasted the warm mixture and decided it needed a touch more sugar. When Nonnie judged the mixture was ready, she turned off the heat and left it to cool down.
‘Now we test how our mixture is setting,’ explained Nonnie. She tipped a teaspoon of the hot fruit mixture onto a cold saucer and placed it in the fridge. A few moments later, she tested the fruit, which was now firm like a jelly.
‘Perfect,’ pronounced Nonnie. She scooped the seed-and-pith bag out of the mixture and squeezed it between two teaspoons to extract all of the pectin.
The warm marmalade was finally poured into hot sterilised jars and left to cool.
‘And there we have it – the finest Scotch marmalade, as made by the Mackenzie women for generations!’ announced Nonnie with pleasure.
‘It looks beautiful,’ agreed Sophie, feeling a sense of pride in the row of jars, glowing bright orange in the sunlight.
‘Can we have it on our toast tomorrow morning, Nonnie?’ asked Jessica.
‘Of course, and there should be plenty of jars left for you to take home to your mama,’ Nonnie assured her. ‘Now, do you have any cooking energy left for making scones, or should we go out?’
‘Scones. Scones,’ cried Jess enthusiastically.
‘Scones it is, then.’
In November, Mr McLaughlin invited Charlotte and Nell to come on their first cattle muster. The cattle were to be brought in from the scrub on the ridges and herded down to the stockyards.
‘Stay out of the way of the stock hands and be very careful,’ warned Mr McLaughlin. ‘The horns of those wild young bulls are deadly.’
‘It’s so much fun,’ cried Will. ‘Sometimes the bulls charge right at your horse, and you have to be mighty fast to get out of their way. They don’t like the sound of the stockwhip though, and that frightens them back into line.’
The next morning everyone woke before dawn. Charlotte and Nell dressed in their riding habits, boots, gloves and shady straw hats. Breakfast was eaten quickly and quietly, everyone too sleepy to chat. The horses were already in the yards, so were easily caught and saddled.
Nell and Charlotte saddled their ponies themselves, with a little help from Mr McLaughlin to tighten the girths. Then they rode off through the cool half-light before dawn. The big golden dogs, Nicky and Tiger, loped along beside the horses, watching for emus or kangaroos to chase.
Sophie flew behind the horses, excited to be part of the early-morning expedition. She saw Charlotte riding side-saddle on her black pony and felt an overwhelming desire to ride a horse too, instead of skimming above the ground.
Sophie hovered close, causing the horse to shy and cavort. Sophie took a deep breath and slid onto the horse’s back, behind Charlotte, holding on around her waist. Sophie rode astride, but she was weightless, so the horse cavorted once more then settled back into her usual stride, her ears flicking back and forward.
Charlotte settled the horse with a gentle stroke on her neck.
‘Whoa. Easy does it, girl. Are you shying at your own shadow?’
On their left, the eastern horizon glimmered with a pearlescent glow of pale pinks and violets, gradually washing the hills and valleys with a rosy stain. A flock of pink-and-grey galahs swooped through the sky, shrieking merrily.
‘Rosedale looks so beautiful in the dawn light,’ murmured Nell to Charlotte.
‘It always looks gorgeous on horseback,’ added Charlotte. ‘I think I am even getting used to the heat.’
The red sun was now over the horizon, filling the valley with light.
‘How about an early-morning gallop, girls?’ asked Mr McLaughlin.
‘Race you all to the creek,’ yelled Will.
The valley stretched out before them, flat and cleared. The horses sensed the coming gallop and pawed the ground, their ears flickering in anticipation.
‘Ready. Set. Go,’ bellowed Will, kicking his heels into his horse’s sides. The girls rode side-saddle so had to use a crop, as well as their left heel, to encourage their mounts to canter.
All the horses leapt forward, galloping across the valley. Charlotte’s heart sang, her hair whipping across her face and the skirts of her riding habit flapping. Sophie sat right behind her, holding Charlotte tightly around the waist. Sophie’s hair flew and her nightgown billowed in the breeze.
Both Charlotte and Sophie felt as one. It was one of the best feelings they could imagine, as if they were flying across the earth. A log appeared under Charlotte’s horse’s hooves and she flew over it, hardly changing her stride.
Everyone pulled up at the creek, elated by their ride.
‘I won,’ cried Will triumphantly.
‘That is because you started before anyone else,’ argued Charlotte, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘You cheated!’
‘I had to, to beat Blackie,’ Will admitted with a laugh. ‘She flies like the wind.’
‘It must be one of the best feelings in the world to gallop across an open valley,’ said Charlotte with a smile.
The riders rode on in companionable silence, until Henry spied a small herd of cattle drinking at the waterhole.
‘Now stay behind me, girls,’ warned Mr McLaughlin. ‘Henry and Will, you come in from the left, and Billy and Pot from the right.’
The cattle saw the men and horses and spooked, fleeing for the safety of the scrub. The men urged their horses into a canter to chase them and head them off, cracking their stockwhips as they rode. Tiger and Nicky jumped to work, racing after the cattle, barking loudly and nipping at their heels, harrying the cattle into a tight mob.
Charlotte and Nell cantered after, watching how the men, horses and dogs worked together to control the herd and move them where they wanted them to go. Sophie clung on tightly to Charlotte’s waist, wondering if it would hurt if she fell off.
‘Yah. Yah,’ shouted Charlotte, urging Blackie into a gallop as a young steer made a break from the herd.
She was the closest so gave chase, dodging and wheeling through the trees. In a few moments, Charlotte had neatly gained on the steer and cut him off, heading him back to the mob.
‘Well done, Charlotte,’ yelled Henry in approval. ‘That’s how it is done.’
Charlotte flushed with pleasure. When the mob of cattle was subdued, the riders dropped to a walk, moving the cattle quietly through the scrub.
Every now and then another small herd would be discovered and rounded up into the main herd with much cracking of whips, barking, shouting and kicking up of dust.
At one waterhole, they found a calf bogged to its belly in the soft mud around the edge, struggling weakly to escape. Its mother mooed helplessly on the creek bank, trotting back and forth in anxiety.
‘Down you go, lads,’ called Mr McLaughlin. ‘Bring those ropes, Henry.’
The ropes were carefully tied around the calf’s body, behind the front legs, then fastened to the pommel of Mr McLaughlin’s horse. Henry, Pot and Will jumped in the waterhole to push the struggling calf free, getting covered in slimy mud, while Billy hauled from the front.
The Locket of Dreams Page 20