The Girl From Eureka
Page 16
‘It must have happened after we left,’ Will said.
‘You mean after you took a rock to the noggin’,’ Indy said. ‘And I dragged your sorry arse back here.’
He rubbed at his ‘noggin’ again where the rock had rendered him unconscious. She’d obviously remembered she was angry with him and spoke as though she wished she’d hit him in the head herself. He struggled to think back. ‘They were protesting the death of that Scobie fellow. They accuse Bentley and his friends of his murder.’
‘That was the rumour, now believed to be fact,’ Jack said, shovelling yet another ginger biscuit into his already full mouth.
‘Rumour or truth, you don’t burn a man’s house, his livelihood,’ Mary argued. ‘Mob mentality.’
‘Yes, madam,’ Will agreed. ‘It’s how I got this lovely mark on my head and came to be in your care. I thank you for that care, but now I must be getting back to the government camp, find out what’s going on.’
‘Are you well enough?’ Mary asked, pouring tea for them all.
‘I have not had a dizzy spell in days. I should have returned to camp yesterday.’
Indy nodded curtly. ‘I’m heading back to town too.’
‘No, it may not be safe.’
‘You have no say in it, Lieutenant,’ Indy shot back, blue eyes blazing.
Frustrated, but knowing better than to argue, Will turned and headed into the bedroom to collect the last of his meagre belongings.
‘It’s not safe for you here, lads,’ he heard Mary warn Jack and Bobby. ‘There is much unrest in the goldfields.’
‘Ma’s right,’ Indy tossed in. ‘They’re cracking down on highway thieves too. More soldiers escort the gold and even some of the passenger coaches carry guns.’
‘And since when have I ever walked away from a good fight?’ Jack said with a confident laugh.
Will returned to the living room. ‘Mrs Wallace,’ he said, taking her hand in his. ‘I cannot thank you enough for your help and hospitality. I have to get back to my regiment. They’ll surely think I’ve deserted by now.’
Indy just stood in the corner and scowled.
He kissed Mary’s hand and headed for the door.
‘Help him with the horse, Indy,’ Mary told her.
‘I’m fine, madam,’ Will declined, noting Indy’s sulky disposition. It wouldn’t be a day ending in y if Indy weren’t irritated with him about something, but he thought a little distance between them was warranted just now. ‘I can manage alone. I do not wish to break up your tea party.’
‘Nice to meet you, Will,’ Jack said, and stood to shake the hand Will offered.
Will gave Indy one last look and walked out of the house.
***
Indy stood in the kitchen for all of about thirty seconds before she lost the battle with herself.
‘I’ll be right back,’ she murmured and rushed out the door to the stables.
Will was saddling his horse as she entered the small open-sided shed and he turned at her arrival.
‘So you’re leaving just like that?’ Her disappointment lent a bitterness to her voice she wished she’d been able to hide. She hated sounding so desperate, but she couldn’t help it. Despite their argument the night before, not knowing when she would see him again was the worst kind of torment.
‘I had to go back eventually, Indy,’ he told her. ‘What would you have me do? Stay here and play house for the rest of my days? I have a job to do.’
‘Yes, harassing miners.’
He gave her an exasperated look, but didn’t take the bait, as he secured his horse’s bridle. ‘I’m thinking of your reputation, Indy, your safety. I am a soldier, the enemy in the eyes of over a thousand miners. They would be incensed to find out you’re cohort with a soldier. They can’t do much to me, but they will take it out on you. Can you trust this bushranger fellow and his friend not to spread gossip that I was here? That you aided me?’
‘Yes, I can trust Jack. And you and I are not cohorts,’ Indy argued, but she knew he was right. If the diggers knew she was even friends with a soldier, they would be furious.
‘Will you be alright here with those two gentlemen?’
‘Safer than I was having you here.’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Jack is a friend. He would never hurt us.’
‘Is he your lover?’
Indy blinked, so taken aback by his question that she found herself speechless for once.
Will shook his head, ‘Forgive me. That was out of line. Forgive me.’
He turned and mounted his horse in one quick movement.
Wanting the connection one last time, her hand touched his boot in the stirrup. ‘He is not my lover.’
He reached down to run a hand lightly across her cheek. The look in his eye as his hand caressed her skin gave her hope. Sitting upright again, he clicked to his horse to move off.
‘Will!’ she called after him. He twisted in the saddle to look back at her.
‘You can fight it all you like, but I know you want me as I want you.’ She saw his jaw tighten but he said nothing.
‘One day,’ she called. ‘You will kiss me one day! You can’t be a gentleman forever!’
And with that she watched him kick his horse into a trot and disappear into the stringybark forest.
Chapter 14
‘Well, look who it is.’
Striding quickly across the government compound, Will looked up to see George shading his eyes from the harsh sun.
‘I’d given you up for dead,’ George continued as the two friends clasped hands in greeting. ‘I couldn’t find you after the fire at the hotel. The place was bedlam.’
‘So it’s true then? About the fire at the Eureka Hotel?’
‘It is,’ George confirmed. ‘Once it was ignited the hot winds fanned it into a firestorm. We could see it from here. The police arrested several men for starting the fire.’
‘Is that what those men are doing in the jail corral?’ Will queried, looking across to where the crudely constructed prison held three men.
‘Yes. Although how they determined who actually started the blaze in that riot, I will never know.’
‘I don’t think they care,’ Will mumbled. ‘As long as someone is seen to be held accountable.’
He could see Commissioner Rede and Police Inspector Evans in the doorway of the Commissioner’s Office, arguing as usual. Playing a blame game of their own, no doubt. Rede would be accusing Evans of not doing enough to ensure his men protected the hotel from the raiding miners, and Evans would be condemning Rede for not having read the riot act. The two men could rarely see eye to eye on the running of things in Ballarat.
‘I didn’t know about the fire at the Eureka Hotel until today,’ he said. ‘The last I saw of it, the crowd were throwing eggs and then rocks at the windows. And then at us.’
He turned back to face George, lifting the hair from his forehead to show the small scar and bruise where the rock had hit him.
‘You were struck?’ George moved in for a better look. ‘Have you been unconscious all this time? You should see the doctor.’
‘No, I …’ Will stopped. He wondered how much he should tell his friend about Indy and her mother. ‘I had help from some local folk out in the bush.’
‘Local folk?’ George questioned.
Will could feel his face reddening as George stared at him. But then George smiled.
‘Oh,’ he stretched out the word. ‘A local lady perhaps?’
‘Two actually,’ Will said before he could stop himself.
George’s thick eyebrows shot up into his even thicker hair. ‘You’ve been holding out on me, old friend.’
‘No, I have not. I’ve met the girl before—on numerous occasions as it happens—as have you.’
George looked perplexed. ‘I’ve met her?’
Will saw the moment realisation dawned on his friend.
‘The digger girl? The girl you thought a child?’
George took a seat across from him, his face a picture of surprised amusement. ‘You saw her bathing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bathing in the river?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bathing naked in the river?’ George repeated.
‘Yes! Good God man, did I stutter?’ Will asked, irritated at his friend’s rapid-fire questioning. ‘I caught her bathing naked in the river.’
It was suddenly stifling inside the tent and Will stood and walked out again. But George followed hotly on his heels.
‘What manner of girl is this?’
‘I wish I knew,’ Will admitted. And it disturbed him no end. ‘I can’t sort her out. Like I said, I’d thought her a child.’
‘And now?’
Will thought back over the last few days he had spent with Indy: her obvious flirtations and her very un-childlike sensuality. Not to mention the image of her beautiful body glistening wet and naked in the river that played before his eyes repeatedly.
‘She is most definitely not a child,’ Will said, pinching the bridge of his nose as a headache began to set in. ‘She is a woman. A very attractive, very alluring, very … infuriating and confounding woman.’
‘Show me a woman who is not infuriating and confounding,’ George said with a snort before he grinned.
Will stared about the compound. The number of soldiers seemed to have doubled again since his little sojourn into the country.
‘So what happened?’
Will gave George a bewildered look. ‘What happened when?’
‘Did you bed her?’
‘What? No!’ Will denied vehemently, catching up with the conversation again.
‘You’re losing your touch, Will Marsh,’ George teased. ‘Three days with a beautiful woman who likes to bathe naked in rivers and you weren’t able to get her on her back.’
‘We were at her mother’s house.’
‘Oh,’ George said screwing up his nose. ‘Well. That is a setback.’
‘No,’ Will said, shaking his head to clear his erratic thoughts. ‘The girl, Indy, she is a willing party, believe me. It was I who stepped away.’
George just stared at Will, his brow furrowed. ‘I really think you should see the doctor. I believe that knock on the head may have dislodged something.’
Will couldn’t argue. He hardly recognised himself since he’d met Indy. She knew how to mess with his head, and his body. The girl was trouble. Ask anyone in Ballarat and they could tell you a story to prove it. He just didn’t know whether he wanted her to be his trouble or not. He’d rejected her advances, and it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time. So why did he feel as though he was the one who’d been rejected? His thoughts were jumbled when it came to her, and he didn’t like that one bit. And all he really knew was that, dammit, he missed her already.
***
Over the next few days Will stayed close to the compound. As another unit of the Twelfth regiment had arrived from Melbourne, the police were kicked out of their tents and relegated to the horses’ stables in favour of the soldiers, the horses having been moved out to hitching posts and fences. The police were not happy about the slight and fights broke out regularly between soldiers and the traps.
Since the attack on the Eureka Hotel, all government camp residents had been warned not to travel into town alone. The entire compound was unsettled by the fearmongering that miners would try to liberate the three men arrested for the Eureka Hotel fire. The women in the government camp were sent away to Melbourne or Geelong to wait out the trouble with family or friends. Police were being harassed in the streets and soldiers spat on. More meetings were being held on Bakery Hill and attended by thousands of miners. Democracy they called it. But more often than not the meetings ended up with the miners drinking to excess and becoming belligerent and violent. Regardless, when Will spotted one of the latest notices posted on boards about town, requesting the government camp sort out its own issues before Ballarat and the goldfields could be expected to do the same, he had to admit they had a point. It wasn’t an accusation without cause.
In the dark of night, Will lay in the tent he shared with both George and Timmons. He stared out the jagged tear in the canvas that framed perfectly the bright five-star formation in the night sky. A deckhand had pointed it out to him on his voyage to Australia from Calcutta. It was a constellation seen most prominently in the southern hemisphere, hence the name, the Southern Cross. He’d marvelled at the Aurora Borealis in the north of Scotland and had been amazed by the assorted exotic animals during his time in India. The elephants in particular had captured his imagination. But there was something about this small grouping of stars, in this distant country, that had him looking wistfully to the heavens when the night was clear. On nights like these, he would happily sleep out of doors, the only canvas above his head dark blue and bespeckled with diamonds. He was surprised to find he was coming to love this new colony.
A snore from Timmons—at least he hoped it was a snore—cut into his peaceful thoughts. It was close quarters, for certain, but he had most definitely lived in worse hovels than this. Compared with the other soldiers though, they were the lucky ones. There were only three in their tent where many had four or five men sleeping in any formation possible. Top and tailing with another man was not his idea of romance.
Romance.
He thought of Indy and his eyes cast up to the navy sky again. Was she back in the Eureka camp? Looking up at the Southern Cross just as he was? Or was she still at her mother’s? Sleeping in her bed. The bed he had slept in for the few days he was there. Was that beautiful body lying naked now against sheets he’d been naked in?
Becoming aroused at his wayward thoughts, he quickly turned his concentration back to Timmons’s bodily noises. Sleeping in close quarters with men was no time to be dreaming of the supple breasts and silky skin of a certain feisty, smart-mouthed, sexually alluring woman. He was no teenaged boy with raging hormones that he couldn’t control. He was an adult. A soldier. Able to quash his basic desires and deport himself like the disciplined military man that he was. He’d proved as much in his decision to push her away. What good could come of starting a courtship? She’d been furious with him for denying her, and yet, as he’d left her at the house, she’d tossed out a challenge.
‘You will kiss me one day,’ she’d called after him.
The grin split his face before he could stop it. What a terror she was. What a wholly uncouth, unladylike, brat. Absolutely not the type of woman he had imagined himself being drawn to. But oh, how she appealed to him, unlike any other woman of his acquaintance in his life. Her physical attractions were obvious to any man with a pulse, but he found he also enjoyed her company and her conversation. With her sharp intellect and biting verbal jousting, she was fun to be around and a match to any man’s wit. She had strength and integrity in spades, and he couldn’t help but admire her even as she drove him crazy. He would miss their debates should he be required to stay away from her. Perhaps they could just be friends.
It had been less than two days since he’d seen her.
Two days.
And he was in agony.
He rolled over in his cot and begged for sleep to release him from his torment.
***
Indy had returned from her mother’s house the same afternoon that Will had left the cottage. She’d had to see for herself the devastation of the fire at the Eureka Hotel. For a good twenty minutes she’d stood in front of it, astounded that something so grand had been reduced to blackened ruins so quickly, and without remorse.
‘Was a windstorm came through. She went up like a barrel of gunpowder,’ old Alistair McTavish told her as she’d stood there staring. ‘’Twas nothing could be done.’
‘Was anyone injured?’ she asked, think
ing of Will.
‘A few miners were burned as they tried to loot from the Bentleys’,’ he said, puffing out smoke from his pipe. ‘Drunken fools were lucky they came out alive.’
Back in her campsite with Sean and Annie, she listened to Sean tell the whole story again and he filled in some of the gaps left by Jack’s rather stilted version. She in turn told them the story of Will’s injuries and his stay at the cottage. Of course, she didn’t tell them everything about his stay at the cottage.
‘And he’s back at camp now, is he?’ Annie asked, handing Indy a bowl of rice she’d cooked to go with the vegetables Indy had carried back from her mother’s garden.
‘I believe so,’ Indy said, sulking a little. She was still annoyed with him. He had tried to make her believe he was indifferent, but she knew when a man wanted her.
She slept fitfully that first night. The sounds of camp were loud but her thoughts were louder. He was but a few miles up the road at the government camp, but felt a world away. She finally fell asleep, engineering ways of accidentally bumping into him.
Chapter 15
The blasted cradle was jammed again. Indy knelt beside it and did her best to shunt the caked on mud from the cleats. With so much clay wedged between the gaps nothing could be washed through.
She used an old boot brush to dislodge the hardened debris while Sean stood by popping lollies into his mouth one by one.
‘Want to give me a hand?’ she snapped at him.
‘You said you had it sorted,’ Sean argued through a mouthful of sweets. ‘Independence is a double-edged sword, missy.’
She squinted up at his tall frame where he blocked the afternoon sun. ‘Lord, don’t you sound like your mother.’
‘Do not,’ he said offended.
‘Do too.’
‘Do not.’
Indy chuckled and got back to work. She picked up the bucket of water and ran it across the apron of the cradle to clean it.
‘Right,’ she said standing up again and stretching her back. ‘That should do it.’
‘Well looky, looky here,’ Sean said, as she tested the rocking of the cradle. ‘The man’s got giant potatoes for balls, I’ll give him that.’