The Girl From Eureka

by Cheryl Adnams

  ‘It was a bloodbath,’ Will murmured.

  ‘They say the soldiers didn’t just shoot,’ Lenny spoke for the first time. ‘They chased down the wounded and bayoneted them until they were dead.’

  Will was sickened by what he saw. By what Lenny was telling him. Had he been there at the government camp, could he have stopped it before it began? Could he have done more? These were civilians. They weren’t soldiers. They were simple people looking for a better life and fighting for their rights in the world. They had built the barricade in defence, not offence. A wave of anger began to overtake his fear and weariness. At the edge of the ruins of the stockade, he spotted a group of three soldiers kicking over the bodies of fallen miners, ensuring they were dead. He saw their delight as they came across a wounded man and began to taunt him and poke him with the ends of their rifles and bayonets.

  ‘Stop that!’ Will yelled. Lenny helped him hobble as quickly as he could towards the men. They regarded him suspiciously, wary of the injured man in half an officer’s uniform.

  Finally seeing the ranking on the epaulets of Will’s red coat, the soldiers quickly stood to attention.

  ‘Lieutenant, sir,’ one of the men spoke.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘We were ordered to ensure the rebellion was dead, sir,’ the soldier responded a little wild-eyed.

  ‘Stop. I am ordering you to stop. Let the dead alone and let the wounded be returned to their loved ones. They’ll give you no trouble now. Fall back.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  None of the men looked overly happy about the order but with a salute they turned to head back out of the barricades.

  ‘Lenny, help me with this man.’ Will moved towards the wounded digger.

  But Lenny didn’t follow.

  ‘Lenny, please,’ he asked again. Looking up into the big man’s dark face he saw shock in the whites of Lenny’s widened eyes as he stared, frozen in place, past Will.

  Will turned to follow his stupefied gaze and his eyes fell on a mass of long blonde hair.

  She was face down in the dirt. Blood matted one side of her head, and on her back bloomed a dark wet stain.

  ‘No.’ Will’s voice came out in a hoarse whisper. ‘Indy!’ He willed her to move as he began to stagger towards her. ‘No! No!’ he was yelling now as he ran, forgetting his pain as he scrambled around the fallen bodies, the fallen barricades, to get to her. ‘No! Indy!’

  He fell to his knees beside the body. Lenny was there beside him in an instant.

  There was no question. She was dead.

  He let out one guttural, devastated moan and reaching forward, he moved her hair aside to see her pretty face. The face of the woman he loved and adored so much. His tears blurred his vision and the pain from his own injuries was flaring, making him dizzy again. Fighting the pain and nausea, he rolled her over onto her back. Yes, she was most definitely dead. The bullet wound to the side of her head would have killed her before the bayonet had been speared into her back.

  But he let out his breath on another cry. This time a cry of relief.

  ‘It’s not her,’ he said, wiping the tears from his filthy face. ‘It’s not Indy. Thank you, God.’

  He’d never felt such relief, but it was short-lived since he still didn’t know where Indy was.

  Ignoring his own pain, he carefully lifted the woman into his arms. She was so light, so small. On second glance, he realised she could be no older than sixteen. He felt ill. His own regiment had done this. This despicable act against humanity. And for what?

  He shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d come to learn that the wars he had fought in were never about the righteous saving of civilisations as his superiors in their rallying induction speeches had led him to believe. Wars were about money and about greed and about power.

  Lenny helped the other wounded man, carrying him out of the stockade. Just as they reached the Eureka camp they heard the yell.

  ‘Fire!’

  Will turned with the girl in his arms to see the soldiers he had just left setting fire to the tents and buildings inside the stockade. Will knew there were still wounded men, possibly women, inside the stockade. Only God could help them now.

  As he was about to turn away he saw, through the mist and smoke, a figure inside the stockade. Will watched the policeman release the ropes so that the blue flag with the white stars of the Southern Cross fluttered slowly to the ground. No man of uniform—police or soldier—worth his salt would let a standard hit the ground. But this flag was the symbol of rebellion, the very representation of all that the British Government wanted quashed. Independence and freedom. It put a lump in Will’s throat.

  Having obtained the flag, the policeman ran across the stockade out of the range of the now spreading fires. Cheers rang out from other policemen who saw the man dragging the flag along the ground. They jumped on it, tore at it, before handing it up to a policeman on a horse who held it aloft to the crazed cheers of the soldiers and police, united for the first time in their lunacy. The mounted policeman turned his horse in a circle and looking up from his cheering fans, stared directly at Will, a sort of maddened, victorious grin lit his face.

  Donnelly.

  Will’s heart stopped. He had to find Indy. If Donnelly found her first in this mess … He cleared it from his mind. Thinking that way would only make him crazy. He had to find her.

  Will moved back into camp where the unclaimed wounded were being gathered. A woman’s cry broke the sombre silence as she rushed towards him. A man followed closely behind.

  ‘It’s my Cora,’ the woman cried, inconsolably. ‘She only went in there to take food to the men in the stockade. She should never have been there.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Will said, knowing an apology from him would be hard taken.

  The father took his daughter from Will’s arms and, with a look of hatred unlike any Will had ever seen, he and his wife carried their dead child away.

  In his numbness, he didn’t even realise when Annie took his arm and led him to sit outside her tent. He felt the blessed warming from the campfire as she handed him a cup of billy tea and threw a blanket around his shoulders.

  ‘I can’t find her, Annie.’ He put the tea down and dropped his head into his hands, his blond hair falling across his face to hide the despair and hopelessness he felt.

  ‘Don’t you give up on her, boy,’ Annie demanded. ‘Our Indy? She’s resourceful. Got nine lives that girl. She’s a survivor. She probably got out of there and went to her mother’s.’

  He felt Annie’s soothing hand rubbing his back. She talked tough but he knew Annie was just as worried about Indy as he was.

  ‘She could have been arrested,’ Lenny threw in. He’d arrived back at the tent from handing the wounded man over to his mates. ‘I heard they’re arresting anyone involved in the rebellion and taking them up to the government camp.’

  He knew he should go back to the soldiers’ camp himself. Maybe he would find Indy there in the small jail with hundreds of other stockaders.

  Another hour passed and Will sat where he was, staring out at the miners as they collected their dead and brought them home. It was Sunday. There would be no church today for many of the faithful. Only funerals to prepare. Those who had no family to claim them were hastily being readied by soldiers for burial in mass graves.

  ‘Thirty,’ Will overheard Lenny say to Sean. ‘I heard them say thirty miners dead and only three soldiers.’

  ‘Who can be sure that’s even right?’ Sean asked. ‘It’s bad odds either way. Bastards didn’t give them a chance.’

  Will had seen some of the wounded. The count of the dead would rise in the coming days.

  Dawn finally broke over Mt Warrenheip and brought with it the scale of the devastation. The occasional gunshot could still be heard as soldiers and police chased down fugitives who had fled into the scrub to hide.

  Will looked up from the second cup of tea Annie had given him and stared into the
mist, dissipating now as the sun fought to burn through the haze. All around him people worked on the wounded, moving slowly, beaten, their spirits broken. He’d never heard the place so eerily quiet before.

  Shadows crossed through the fog, diggers and families made faceless by the backlight of the rising sun. Staring so hard into the swirling mist, shapes blurred and Will wondered if the pain was beginning to make him hallucinate as an apparition appeared in the distance. The silhouette of a body walking towards him with hair wild and untamed.

  ‘Indy,’ he whispered.

  Was he seeing a ghost?

  ‘Indy?’

  He’d been mistaken before. Perhaps his mind was playing tricks on him.

  ‘Oh! Sweet Mary and Joseph!’ Annie was suddenly beside him and Will looked up at her stunned expression. She stared, wide-eyed, into the mist as she crossed herself.

  ‘You see her too?’ he asked her.

  ‘As plain as I see you,’ Annie said, relief and happiness in every word.

  He stood on unsteady legs and staggered towards the apparition that apparently wasn’t an apparition. He could see by the smile on her lips that she had spotted him too, and she picked up her pace.

  ‘Indy,’ he said her name like a prayer, and a moment later she was in his arms. He gripped her to him tightly, never wanting to let her go.

  ‘Ouch. Will, you’re crushing me,’ she said, her voice muffled into his coat.

  ‘Sweet Indy,’ he said leaning back and taking her face in his hands. She was filthy. Her teeth and the whites of her eyes shone in the dawn light against the dirt and blood smeared across her face.

  Blood.

  ‘You’re injured?’ he asked, panic overtaking his relief. His hands fluttered over her face, down her body as he searched for bullet or bayonet wounds.

  ‘No,’ she said looking down at herself. ‘It’s not my blood. Some of the miners ran into the bush to get away from the soldiers, but with injuries they didn’t get very far. I helped those I could. Others weren’t so lucky. They’ll need proper burials later.’

  She looked him up and down for the first time and frowned. ‘But you are wounded.’

  ‘I’m fine now you’re here.’

  He simply leaned his forehead to hers and closed his eyes, saying another little prayer of thanks. He kissed her, not caring who saw. The soldier and the miner. An unacceptable coupling to most. But she was his miner. And she was alive. That was all he cared about.

  ‘Come, soldier boy. Let’s have a look at you.’

  With her arm around his waist and his over her shoulder, she moved him back towards Annie’s tent to sit him down.

  Annie took Indy in her arms and squeezed her tight. ‘Thank God, you’re alright.’

  ‘I’m fine, Annie.’ She knelt down in front of Will who sat again by the fire. ‘What happened to you? Were you at the stockade when it happened?’

  ‘No, I was still at the boarding house when the first attack was called. I came looking for you and was set upon by diggers. It was my own bloody fault. A red coat in the stockade is akin to a fox in the henhouse.’

  ‘You idiot,’ she reprimanded, but there was no heat in her scolding.

  ‘I had to find you,’ he said and taking her face in his hands once more, he leaned forward and kissed her lips. Kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her nose. ‘My beautiful, uncontrollable, indestructible, Indy. I thought you were dead. I should have known better.’

  ‘How badly damaged are you?’ Indy asked and looking him over she was suddenly incensed. ‘Who did this to you? Tell me who it was and I’ll kick their bloody arses.’

  Will could only smile and kiss her until he felt her tense body relax and her temper drain away. ‘Will you avenge me, my love?’

  She sighed. ‘No. I’m too tired for vengeance just now. I’ll go after them tomorrow.’

  ‘Is there a tomorrow?’

  His question hit home as they gazed wearily around the campsite.

  Her hand on his cheek forced him to meet her eyes again. ‘Just kiss me again and everything will be alright.’

  He did as she asked. Taking her lips in a crushing kiss as though it was the last time he would touch her.

  ‘Missed me did you?’ she teased, but he could see the affection in her eyes. The love.

  ‘There are things to discuss,’ he said shaking his head, shaking away the sleep and the fatigue that went bone deep.

  ‘You need to sleep first and heal a little,’ Indy said, examining his wounds beneath the bandages. ‘They opened up that thick head of yours again.’

  Obviously satisfied that Annie had already tended Will’s injuries, she stood. ‘Annie, help me get him inside.’

  The two women walked him carefully into the tent and lay him on the bed.

  ‘Sleep.’ Indy kissed his lips as Annie left them alone. ‘We’ll talk again when you’re awake.’

  ‘Indy,’ he murmured through exhaustion.

  ‘Will?’

  ‘Don’t go doing anything stupid.’

  She grinned and winked. ‘Me? When have I ever? Sleep now.’

  Chapter 28

  The sun was sitting high in the sky when Will managed to lift his aching body out of bed. Moving slowly and gingerly, he stepped out of the tent. It was late morning. He’d slept for hours. Annie sat by the fire with Walter O’Shanahan drinking tea and talking in hushed tones.

  Looking around for Indy, and not finding her, panic set in all over again.

  ‘Indy!’ he called.

  ‘Alright, alright, settle down.’ Annie stood from her seat at the fire, taking a cup of water from Walter and handing it to him.

  ‘Where is she?’ he asked shaking his head at the water.

  ‘Drink, lad,’ Walter instructed. ‘You must be parched.’

  ‘She’s out with Lenny,’ Annie said. ‘She’ll be safe with him.’

  ‘Not from a bullet she won’t,’ Will argued. He sipped the water and found he was dreadfully thirsty so drank the whole cup in one large gulp. Walter quickly poured him another.

  ‘All the soldiers and police have slunk back into their hole at the government camp,’ Annie told him. ‘And good riddance to them.’

  ‘Good riddance to who?’

  Will turned at the sound of her voice and relief filled him. Dropping the cup, he went to her, pulling her against him. He just had to touch her, to know she was safe.

  ‘What have you been doing?’ he asked, leaning back to look down into the sapphire of her eyes. The sparkle was gone. Replaced by weariness. The weariness of someone who had seen too much.

  He watched her glance around before she spoke, as though spies were everywhere.

  ‘Lenny and I collected dresses from the ladies in camp,’ she started, in a low voice. When Annie and Walter left their fire to render assistance to their neighbours, she sat Will down again and took a seat beside him. ‘We delivered the women’s clothing to miners hiding in the bush behind Black Hill. They—reluctantly I can tell you—surrendered their manliness and put on a dress in order to save their lives and escape to Geelong and Melbourne. I believe they are safely on their way.’

  ‘If soldiers catch you aiding fugitives you’ll be arrested or shot, Indy.’

  ‘I’ll not sit back and do nothing.’

  And there, in her eyes, was the fire he admired so much. It warmed him to see it again. ‘Of course you won’t,’ he said, dusting a curl from her forehead. ‘And that’s why I love you. Dressing as women. It’s a clever idea. How can I help?’

  ‘I think we’ve done all that we can,’ Indy said, gazing desolately around the campsite before turning back to him. ‘I heard you helped carry the wounded back to camp from the stockade. They’re calling you the Red Coat Miner.’

  Will shook his head sadly. ‘I only carried the dead.’

  Looking down at his red coat, he slowly removed it and tossed it over a log. He no longer felt pride in wearing it.

  ‘You were right,’ he said, taking her hand as they so
lemnly watched the wounded being patched up while the dead were shrouded and mourned.

  ‘It’s rare, but it happens,’ Indy said, with the faintest of laughs. ‘But what was I right about this time?’

  ‘We need to leave.’

  Her mouth fell open, before she snapped it shut. ‘You said you couldn’t leave the army.’

  ‘I know that’s what I said, but I can no longer be part of this life, this army,’ Will said, his eyes scanning the landscape of death before them. ‘You showed me it is better to be a good man than to be part of something so vile and wrong, blindly following orders simply because I have nothing else.’

  ‘You have me,’ Indy said, softly laying a hand on his injured face.

  ‘I know that now.’ He pulled her in for a strong kiss then just held her to him, relieved in the feeling of her heart beating against his. ‘I know that.’

  He leaned back and gazed down at her. ‘Come away with me, Indy.’

  ‘But my mother …’

  ‘She’ll come too,’ he added. ‘Of course she’ll come. I could never ask you to leave her behind. We’ll go north, follow the sun. I’ll build you and Mary a house.’

  They should have gone last night when she’d first suggested it, he thought, but hindsight was a wonderful thing. She didn’t have a price on her head as so many of the other miners did, but Will knew the police would come after her if they found out she was helping the fugitives escape.

  ‘We’ll build a house together,’ she told him and he grinned at her.

  ‘Stubborn to the end.’

  ‘Naturally,’ she said with a wink. ‘When shall we go?’

  ‘As soon as possible. We’ll go to your mother’s tonight, help her pack her belongings, and leave in the morning if we can.’

  ‘That soon? What about Annie and Sean? I can’t just up and leave without telling them what’s going on.’

  ‘I’m not sure it’s safe for us all to travel together,’ Will said with a troubled frown. ‘I’m deserting, Indy. We need to leave as lightly and as quickly as we can. I disobeyed orders again last night. Once things have settled down at the government camp they will reprimand me.’