‘Caleb Hunt, this is Lil White,’ Penrose said.
‘It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, ma’am.’ Caleb bowed.
The woman surveyed him with perceptive but faded blue eyes. ‘You’re the American everyone’s been talking about. ’ad enough of lemonade and the good widow’s company, ’ave you?’ Before Caleb could answer she said, ‘What’s your pleasure?’
‘Do you have American whiskey?’
She smiled. ‘I’ve a fine American bourbon, if that’s your taste, Mr ’Unt.’
‘A young lady by the name of Nell suggested my first drink in this fine establishment was at her pleasure,’ Caleb said.
‘Nell did, did she? I ’eard ’ow you stood up for my girls so, yes, ’Unt, this first drink’s on the ’ouse.’
‘You are a lady,’ Caleb said.
The woman laughed. Her giant bosom, barely constrained by her corsetry, wobbled with her mirth. ‘A lady, is it? Been a long time since anyone called me that. Now where’s that bourbon?’ Lil bent to rummage through the bottles under the counter.
‘Will!’
A young woman with curling chestnut hair falling around her face and a loose gown covering her corsetry, leaned against a door jamb. Behind her was a flight of stairs, no doubt leading to the girls’ rooms, where they ‘danced’. Her provocative pose garnered the attention of several of the bar’s patrons but she ignored the whistles and catcalls. She had eyes only for Will Penrose. This must be the Sissy who was pining for Penrose.
Penrose whipped his hat off. One look at the younger man and Caleb knew where Will Penrose’s heart lay and why he was a regular at Lil’s Place.
He nudged his friend in the ribs. ‘Go.’
Caleb stood and leaned on the bar, watching as Penrose pushed through the crowd. Sissy held out her hand to him and the door shut behind them.
‘Your friend is quite a favourite of our Sissy,’ Lil said, pouring Caleb half a tumbler of Evan Williams Kentucky Bourbon. She pushed it across to him.
Caleb picked up the glass and stared into its golden depths. ‘I think I’m going to like you, Miss Lil,’ he said.
‘I’ll put it by for you.’ She leaned her plump elbows on the counter. ‘What brings you to Maiden’s Creek?’
‘I’ve a mining claim up at Pretty Sally,’ he said.
She regarded him for a long moment. ‘I’ve seen ’em come full of hope, but one winter up in these ’ills and they ’ead ’ome like whipped dogs. If you’re the canny sort, there’s more money to be made off the miners than the mines.’
Caleb looked around the crowded room. ‘You may be right, Lil.’
‘Besides, you don’t strike me as the sort given to ’ard work, ‘Unt.’
‘Really?’
Lil picked up his left hand. ‘You ’ave the ’ands of a gentleman.’ She turned it over and traced the lines on his palm. ‘You ’ave violence and tragedy in your past.’
Caleb snatched his hand back with a derisive snort. ‘And you’re an old charlatan,’ he said. ‘There’d be few Americans of my age and background who weren’t touched by the war.’
Lil shrugged and tilted her head as she considered him. ‘But you’re a bit different, ’Unt. Something about you doesn’t ring true.’
Caleb took a swig of the whiskey, holding the soft, smoky liquid in his mouth for a moment before swallowing it. There had never been hard liquor in his childhood home; whiskey and the devil went hand in hand, according to his father. He’d been right. Whiskey had become a taste acquired to ease the reality of war.
‘Another?’ Lil asked as he set the empty glass down.
Caleb shook his head. Another would lead to another and then another … and the night would end in a miasma of grief, regret and self-pity … and singing. He knew that route too well.
‘North or south?’ Lil asked.
‘South.’
Lil straightened. ‘You wouldn’t think to see me now, but back in my day, I danced in Savannah and Charleston.’ She smiled. ‘I was the toast of the town.’
Caleb studied the round, puffy face and tried, and failed, to imagine the girl who had been the toast of Savannah. ‘Pour me a beer, Lil, and we’ll drink to memories.’
Penrose reappeared half an hour later, smiling, his hair dishevelled. He ordered a beer, which Lil set down in front of him with a thump that slopped half the contents on to the table.
‘I’m ’oping you’ve settled your score with Sissy,’ she said. ‘She’s a working girl and don’t ’ave time for freeloaders.’
‘That is between Sissy and I,’ Penrose said.
Lil poked him in the chest. ‘No, it’s not. Sissy works for me. If you want to make an ’onest woman of ’er then stop wasting ’er time.’
They took their drinks across to Penrose’s table.
‘So, what’s between you and the lovely Miss Sissy?’ Caleb enquired.
Penrose stared into his glass. ‘I want to marry her.’
‘And what’s stopping you? Is it the fact she’s a dancing girl?’
Penrose sighed. ‘Yes … No … It’s my uncle,’ he said. ‘You haven’t met him yet. He owns me, body and soul.’
‘How?’
‘I come from a long line of tin miners in Cornwall. My father made a couple of unwise speculations and about five years ago we lost everything, and I mean everything. The bastard took the easy way out and shot himself, leaving my mother, my sister and I with little more than what we stood up in. Uncle Charles stepped in and settled my father’s debts on the condition I came and worked for him.’
‘Does he pay you?’
‘An allowance. He’s holding my father’s debts against the real value of my wages.’ He took a long draught of his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I probably made that sound worse than it is. He gives me free board and lodging, but I am conscious of the debt I can probably never repay in full.’
‘And your sister?’
‘Eliza is eking out her life as a teacher in a school for young ladies back in England. She hates it, but I have promised her that, when my lot has improved, I’ll bring her out here—and I will. There are opportunities here we’d never have in England. So you can see why I can’t make an honest woman out of Sissy.’ He toyed with the now empty glass. ‘Enough of my problems. Do you think you could sit a horse?’
Caleb rubbed his leg, which ached from the exertion of walking from one end of town to the other. ‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘Then let’s go and find this mine tomorrow,’ Penrose said. ‘I’ll hire a couple of nags from the livery stable. Pretty Sally’s about an hour’s ride north of here.’
‘What about your uncle?’
Penrose shrugged. ‘God knows he owes me a few hours off. But he’s in Melbourne. The old hypocrite is probably bedded down in a whorehouse in Little Lon. Are you up for it?
‘Yes,’ Caleb said. He drained the last of his beer. Time to see what the fall of those pennies back in Williamstown really meant.
Eleven
Pretty Sally
30 December 1871
Caleb dismounted from the hired horse with a grunt, stretching his damaged leg. The muscles screamed in protest. Even without the injury, it had been months since he had ridden a horse. But for all the discomfort, he had enjoyed the ride. Penrose had acted as a tour guide, knowing that this was Caleb’s first excursion into the Australian bush. At their approach, bright-coloured parrots rose, screeching, and a wallaby bounded across the track, pausing momentarily to inspect the men, its eyes bright with curiosity and its soft ears flicking. Caleb had seen drawings of these animals but his delight in seeing the little animal was quelled when Penrose told him that wallabies and kangaroos were the best eating to be found when supplies ran low.
The raw settlement of Pretty Sally consisted of a motley collection of bark huts and tents that clung precariously to a narrow stretch of flat ground on a high ridge. One shanty proclaimed itself to be the General Store with a handpainted sign t
hat hung crookedly above the door.
‘Why is it called Pretty Sally?’ Caleb asked as they rode through the town.
Unlike the tall mountain gums and the rich tree ferns of the green gullies, up here the trees were sparse and the undergrowth dried out by the hot summer. Pretty Sally had little to commend it except scrub and rocks.
‘I think the name is ironic,’ Penrose said.
He would never have found Hannigan’s claim without Penrose, who had in his possession a recent survey map. With little more than the description on the claim documents and the map, they passed through the settlement and continued along the ridge, turning off along a faint but discernible track, which ended in a small clearing. Caleb secured his horse’s reins to a fallen tree, allowing the beast enough room to graze the scraggly grass. While Penrose, head down, scoured the edges of the clearing, Caleb slapped ineffectually at the flies that buzzed around his head and clung to his shirt.
‘What are you looking for?’ he asked.
‘Claim markers,’ Penrose replied. ‘Ah, there it is. See that peg?’
Caleb limped over to the wooden peg that had been hammered into the ground. A piece of tin had been affixed to it, on which ‘Hannigan 19/10/71’ was written in a rough hand in black paint.
‘He would have put pegs in the four corners of the claim,’ Penrose said.
He let Penrose pace out the distance, scrabbling over the steep sides of the gully, his feet slipping on loose rocks.
Breathless and sweating, Penrose confirmed he had found the second peg. He waved a hand down the slope. ‘Looks like it goes in this direction. There’s a path here,’ he said. ‘You go first.’
Caleb was concentrating on making his way down the meandering path to the creek without placing too much pressure on his injured leg, so he didn’t hear Penrose’s warning shout until too late. Only instinct made him jump back at the very moment a long, dark snake rose up from the path and lunged at him. Something hit his boot.
Penrose rushed forward brandishing a large stick. The snake decided discretion was the better part of valour and slithered off the path, disappearing into the bracken with a flick of its tail.
His heart hammering, Caleb swallowed and forced himself to look at his boot. Mercifully, the animal had struck hard leather, leaving a dribble of milky substance on the brown surface, but it could so easily have been his hand or his exposed forearm.
‘What was that?’ He found his voice at last.
‘A tiger snake, I think. It must have been sunning itself on the path.’
‘Dangerous?’
‘Very. If it had got your leg, you would be dead. They are a devil in the mine workings—they get behind wood stacks or stone piles. There are some nasty spiders too. One of the men up at the Maiden’s Creek Mine got bitten by a red-back spider and was dead by the end of the week.’
Caleb whistled. ‘I thought bears and wolves were a problem.’
‘They probably are, but at least you can see them coming. These beasts can be anywhere. You have to watch where you walk in the bush.’
Caleb looked in the direction the reptile had taken. Now his fright had dissipated, curiosity set in. ‘What do you do if you’re bitten?’
Penrose shrugged. ‘Bowen would tell you the only treatment is the cut-and-suck method.’
Caleb frowned. ‘Wouldn’t you risk swallowing the venom?’
‘I’m an engineer, not a bloody doctor. Get a move on. We haven’t got all day.’
The creek, marked on the map but not named, ran through an unspoiled gully of tree ferns, bracken and tall mountain ash. After the blighted slopes around Maiden’s Creek, Pretty Sally seemed a lovely, peaceful place.
But not without evidence of habitation. There was the beginning of an adit—a horizontal passage cut into rock to access a mine—in the side of the hill. Below it, on the creek bank, they found a well-used campfire and the detritus of human occupation.
Penrose stooped and held a hand over the coals. His eyes widened. ‘Still warm,’ he said.
‘If it’s that bloody Hannigan—’ Caleb began.
Penrose looked around. ‘No sign of anyone.’ He climbed up to the adit and peered inside. ‘They haven’t got far but I don’t think they’re digging in the right place.’ He scrambled further up the slope and, using the geologist’s hammer he carried in his belt, he cleared some of the ground cover. He ran his hand over the rock, then knocked off a few samples and slid down to where Caleb sat on a stump beside the campfire, nursing his aching leg.
Penrose crouched beside him and hammered the rocks into smaller pieces, inpecting each one. He rose to his feet and flung them into the bush. ‘Nothing.’
‘Did you really expect to find gold just like that?’ Caleb asked.
Penrose shrugged and waved a hand at a pale line of quartz breaking through the slopes, beside which the adit had been cut. ‘I’d stake my reputation that’s the Pretty Sally reef, although technically it’s called a dyke. My betting is that it runs in an incline down the valley. There’s been talk about it for a few years now. But just because it’s quartz doesn’t mean its gold bearing. I hate to say it, Hunt, but this doesn’t look promising.’
Caleb glanced at the creek, which had a good flow despite it being the height of summer. ‘But if they found alluvial gold here, there must be something—’
A crack shattered the air between them, sending a crowd of parrots screaming into the air. Instinctively Caleb hit the ground, dragging Penrose with him. Another shot rang out, hitting the tree next to them, showering them with shards of bark. Caleb fumbled for the Colt. He cocked it with the expertise born of warfare and, with his left hand on Penrose’s shoulders and a whispered warning for the engineer to stay still, he waited.
Fortunately, they had fallen in a slight dip behind a pile of rocks from the workings, which made it difficult for the shooter to get a clear shot of them.
‘Show yourself,’ Caleb demanded.
There was a rustle of undergrowth and three men emerged into the clearing, one holding a rifle to his shoulder.
‘Drop your weapon,’ Caleb said.
His request was met with a caustic laugh and another bullet, which hit the tree above their heads, causing a branch to break off. Caleb responded in kind, aiming for a point just above the head of the man carrying the rifle. The shot took off his hat. The man jumped back and swore volubly, lowering the muzzle of his rifle.
‘Stay down,’ Caleb ordered Penrose, and rose slowly to his feet, the Colt in his right hand. ‘I’m going to ask you once again to kindly put down your weapon. I have five remaining shots. You have none.’
The man glanced at his companions and his mouth twisted in a snarl. ‘Yer on our claim,’ he said without moving.
‘You are mistaken, sir. This is my claim.’
‘Yer not Hannigan,’ one of the other men said.
‘So, you are acquainted with Mr Hannigan?’
‘We’re his partners. He went into Melbourne to see to registering the claim.’
Caleb’s hand tightened on the butt of his pistol. ‘Is that so? I’m sorry to disappoint you, gentlemen, but Mr Hannigan has signed over the claim to me.’
The three men looked at each other. ‘What d’ya mean?’ the man with the rifle said.
Caleb held out the claim form that now clearly showed his name.
The third man spat on the ground. ‘That could say anything.’
‘They can’t read,’ Penrose pointed out in a low voice.
‘Gentlemen, it seems we are at an impasse.’ Caleb raised his Colt. ‘Put down your weapon and let’s talk.’
The man with the rifle jerked the muzzle upward, in the direction of the horses Caleb and Penrose had left tethered on the ridge. ‘Nothing to talk about. We’ll just wait for Hannigan and you can ride back to town and cool yer heels.’
In another place and another time, Caleb could have taken out the man with the rifle without a second thought but he no longer lived in that world. He
re, in this outpost of the British Empire, the law would probably take a poor view of such an action. A tactical withdrawal was called for.
He held up his hands. ‘Very well, gentlemen. Let my friend and myself depart in peace and we will see what needs to be done to rectify this misunderstanding.’
‘There’s no misunderstanding.’ The leader’s beard jutted as he waved his weapon in Caleb’s direction.
‘May I know your name?’ Caleb asked.
‘O’Riley, and these are my brothers.’
‘I think, Mr O’Riley, you have been cheated by your friend Hannigan. Before our paths crossed, he registered the claim in his name alone. Last I heard he had taken off for the western goldfields.’
‘Watcha mean?’ The eldest O’Riley frowned. ‘We gave him all our savings to register the mine and buy some decent equipment.’
Caleb was tempted to laugh but it didn’t look like any of the O’Riley brothers had a sense of humour.
‘I think that Mr Hannigan has sold you out and pocketed your money.’
‘The bastard!’ The least hairy of the O’Riley brothers followed his outburst with a steady stream of tobacco, spitting it into the embers of the fire.
‘My thoughts exactly because, if my friend here is right—’ Caleb gestured to the still prone Penrose, ‘there’s no gold to be found where you’re digging.’
‘Hannigan said it was a sure thing,’ O’Riley senior insisted. ‘Said this was the Pretty Sally reef.’
‘Have you found any gold in the quartz you’ve dug out?’ Penrose ventured.
‘No, but—’
‘It’s up to you,’ Caleb said. ‘Mr Penrose and I will depart this place, but we will be back with Sergeant Maidment, who, I hear, takes a dim view of claim jumpers.’
‘Get off this land,’ O’Riley snarled.
Caleb pulled Penrose to his feet. ‘Come, Penrose. Time for us to return to town.’
O’Riley followed them up the path and saw them off with a shot above their heads that spooked Penrose’s bay mare. He brought the animal back under control with an effort.
When they were well clear of the O’Riley brothers, they stopped to draw breath.
The Postmistress Page 9