Wimmera Gold

by Peter Corris

  'I don't understand,' Margaret said. 'Meals at the hotel, picnic races, trips to England.' It was she who should be having dreams of travel and escape, not dull old Henry, fattening fast on the squatter's diet of lamb chops and potatoes, more inclined these days to take the trap to town than to ride.

  Henry Fanshawe, still cherishing his secret, released his wife's pale, cold hand and drained his glass. 'Understand? There's nothing to understand, my dear. We have built this colony up from the most primitive of beginnings. The rewards are beginning to flow. I want us to enjoy those rewards.'

  'Us,' Margaret said.

  The soft, dreamy tone in which the word was uttered alarmed Fanshawe. He went back to his masculine, leather-covered seat and poured more wine automatically. He looked at his wife as she sat with unnatural stillness in the elaborately carved, high-backed chair with its buttoned, velvet upholstery. He recalled that it had been his birthday present to her several years before. What had he given her for her last birthday, or the one before that? He could not remember. Pushing his thoughts back in time brought him up against an alarming possibility. He tried to remember the last time he had raised Margaret's nightgown and lowered himself onto her. Some weeks back, surely. After Sir Adrian Pelham and his wife had visited and the two couples had played whist in this same parlour and he and Pelham, who was a good chap, had drunk a few glasses of brandy over their cigars. 'Margaret,' Fanshawe almost whispered. 'You're not with child again, are you?'

  Margaret Fanshawe was drifting in a sea of fantasy, far from Mount Perfect and the Grampian Ranges and the colony of Victoria. After only a few days her memories of Lincoln were fading quickly, scaling down to the smell of soap on his hair and skin, the twang in his drawling voice as he made ordinary words sound like snatches of song and strange words—pinto, Durango, El Paso, Sonora—sound like a lover's pledges. Her husband's anxious whisper broke her reverie. Was it possible that she would have something, someone, to remind her forever of what amounted to a few hours? She had used the douche, taken precautions, but such things were known to fail. She allowed herself to dream, but not so much as to lose touch with what she needed for survival. 'I don't know, Henry,' she said. 'Possibly. I'm sorry, dear. I'm very tired. I must go to bed. Could you sleep in the guest room and get Bridget to deal with the children in the morning? I feel I really must get some rest.'

  It was a very puzzled Henry Fanshawe who rode alone towards the northern boundary of Fanlock the next day. His wife had not appeared in the morning and the children were fractious and difficult. Samuel asked when 'Wess' was coming back and he had to get the boy to repeat the question several times before he could understand him.

  'He's not coming back and I'd take a stockwhip to him if he did.'

  Privately, William Fanshawe doubted that his slow-moving, stout father would be able to do much damage to Wes Lincoln with a stockwhip. 'Why, father?'

  Fanshawe was not used to being questioned directly on adult matters by his children. He shook his head and busied himself over his breakfast. The house seemed unnaturally quiet and when Elizabeth heard that her mother had been served breakfast on a tray she burst into tears. 'Mother is ill,' she sobbed. 'She's going to die like Mrs Prescott.'

  Fanshawe spoke to his daughter with unnecessary harshness. 'Nonsense! Mrs Prescott was sixty years old. Your mother is not going to die.'

  'Isn't mother old?'

  Fanshawe threw down his napkin and left the room. He had no understanding of the minds of children, and could not remember ever indulging in such foolish questions himself. He instructed the maid to attend to the children and hurried to the stables, arriving out of breath and agitated. He saddled a horse and heaved himself up. Never a keen or expert horseman, he had not ridden for some time and was alarmed to see how his gain in weight restricted his movements and made him feel less comfortable in the saddle. Today, however, he needed exertion, needed to ride over his land to see and feel the physical evidence of his success.

  Fanlock was a fine property, amply watered in good seasons by several creeks and, even when rain slackened, the major stream continued to flow. At considerable cost, Henry Fanshawe had built an extensive system of vast, fenced paddocks, serviceable lambing yards and solid pens to contain the sheep at shearing time. Some of his leasehold was unfenced, but he was rapidly getting the whole run under control, which meant cultivating an orchard, extending the vegetable garden and grooming a lawn and flower beds in which Margaret occasionally, but not lately, had taken an interest.

  He clattered away from the house on the slightly splay-footed dun gelding, regretting the choice of horse and conscious of where he was going although every cautious instinct in his cautious body told him to point the beast in another direction. The present was confused and troubling, but the future held untold promise. He headed for the lightly timbered country cut through by the shallow gully where he had buried the nugget. The future was a chancy and difficult proposition, like a hand of cards. In debt to his bank like all landowners, and still engaged in lengthy, complex, and increasingly expensive correspondence with his legal representative in Melbourne, Henry Fanshawe needed to see concrete evidence of that future—to touch it with his own hands while standing on his own land.

  It was not his first visit to the site. Two weeks back he had taken the risk of venturing to within a mile of the place in the trap, covering, with considerable difficulty, the rest of the distance on foot. The spot soothed him. After a gentle summer and good autumn rain the creek was running freely and the she-oaks and other trees along the bank cast a deep and satisfying shade. Now, as he approached the area, he noticed a couple of cattle grazing close to a dense patch of mulga. At the sound of his horse the beasts retreated into the scrub and Fanshawe cursed Lincoln again for deserting his post and leaving him with a mob of useless, half-wild cattle. He refused to let go of the feeling of well-being that was stealing over him. His domestic cares fell away as he climbed down from his horse, tied it to a sapling and walked along the bank of the creek.

  At a distance of fifty yards, nothing appeared to have changed since his previous visit. His hiding place was well above any waterline ever reached and well concealed by overhanging tussock grass and prickle bush. Fanshawe brushed away a few flies with his hat and scrambled down the bank, taking care not to dirty his velveteen riding trousers, to stand below the point where the key to his future lay concealed. He so expected to find the place undisturbed that at first he could not comprehend what he saw. The section of river bank had been torn away, excavated from the very spot on which he stood. Freshly dried earth lay in clods around a hole the size of a biscuit box.

  'No,' Fanshawe gasped. 'Please no.'

  He lunged forward, lost his footing and slipped down the bank so that one foot entered the water. He clawed his way back, scrabbling with one muddy boot, grasping at exposed tree roots, smearing his coat and trousers with yellow clay and dark dirt. He regained the flat place below the hole and thrust his hand inside. His fingers groped around, clutched and scratched, but the space was cool, dry and empty. Henry Fanshawe gripped a protruding rock to prevent himself from collapsing. Above and along the bank his horse whinnied. Fanshawe was close to tears but anger welled up inside him. The anger proved greater than his sense of loss and outrage. The horse whinnied again and a cow broke from the scrub to crop at the grass above him. Suddenly Fanshawe understood.

  He climbed to the top of the bank and waved the cow away with his hat. 'Goddamn you, Lincoln,' he said. 'I'll see you in irons for this if it's the last thing I do on earth.'

  3

  John 'Black' Perry sized up his man carefully. Big fellow, he thought, close to six feet and fifteen stone at least. Perry, standing six feet and one inch, weighed a mere twelve stone, but he was undaunted by his opponent's advantage in weight. Some of the poundage was in beer fat and the miner's muscles were bunched and lumpy, not the best construction for a man in the prize ring. Still, you had to be careful—a lucky punch causing a moment's dizzi
ness, and the miner might get him in a hold that could squeeze the eyes from his head. And one thing was for certain, men who worked underground like this Albie Watkins were tough and could absorb a tremendous amount of punishment.

  Perry sprang forward to land the first blow of the third round of the fight. It was a 'catch' fight, organised quickly for a small purse, only £10, with the winner to take all. The ground had been marked out and the stakes and ropes set up on a patch of grass some distance behind Wilding's Commercial Hotel.

  Perry had placed three side bets of £5 on himself at two to one. Poor odds but the best he could get. He landed with his left on the miner's nose and saw the blood leak out. Watkins' response was a savage swing which Perry ducked and went in under to hammer two hard right hand blows on the flesh-padded ribs. Watkins was slow to recover and Perry was able to dig a hard, winding left into his stomach. Watkins was beginning to breathe heavily. The first two rounds had taken ten and twelve minutes and had ended with Perry slipping to the ground after taking most of the sting out of two clumsy punches. Rounds ended with a man going down, and a skilful and experienced boxer like Perry knew how to contrive endings. The large crowd gathered around the roped square had hooted their disapproval and Perry confirmed a few impressions—colour consciousness was high, the betting was against him and finesse was wasted here. For him to achieve an undisputed win he would have to lay the miner senseless on his back.

  Watkins blundered forward without a defence and threw a clumsy roundhouse right. To Perry's surprise the miner managed to follow this embarrassing miss with a short clubbing left that struck his shoulder and half spun him around. The crowd roared. They think the darkie's finished, Perry thought, more chagrined than hurt. He let the miner come on, brimful of confidence at one well-timed punch. In the United States, England and other Australian colonies, Perry had fought men capable of landing hundreds of better punches in the course of a three-hour battle. The miner was panting hard and Perry concluded that his formidable local reputation had been gained in short, decisive fights. He slipped around the ring for a minute, tiring Watkins, whose feet were not nimble on the slick grass. The crowd pressed against the ropes, shouting.

  'Do 'im, Albie. Do the smart nigger!'

  'He's running. This ain't a footrace, nigger.'

  'Cross-buttock, Albie. Crack his black ribs for 'im.'

  Perry darted in to land a left-right combination on the infuriated miner's ear and mouth. They were feeling-out blows, designed to see if his opponent was weakening and becoming punch-shy. Watkins barely blinked and surged forward throwing punches at the air and spitting insults through swelling, pulped lips.

  'Stand and fight, you nigger coward. Scummy, fuckin' black bastard.'

  Perry ignored the words, feinted and struck, retreated, slipped sideways and left Watkins floundering against the ropes. The manoeuvres had placed him over in his own corner. His second, a man named Pratt who had only agreed to act for Perry on a promise, win or lose, of five shillings, fingered the sponge in his water bucket and wondered if he would ever get the slightest chance to throw it in the ring as a signal of surrender for the mulatto. Several roughs in the crowd had urged this course on him but Pratt, inherently cautious, had noticed that at least a couple of the spectators had bet on Perry. He rung out the sponge and dropped it back into the water. Perry had no trust in Pratt and took advantage of Watkins' discomfiture to shoot him a glance. No fear of being cheated from that quarter, he decided.

  The miner advanced with his big fists held high and cocked in the approved fashion. At least it had been the fashion in Bill Sparkes' time, the most noteworthy and admired colonial bare-knuckle man of an earlier day. Times had changed and Perry was an advocate of the crafty school of Sayers and Mace. It had worked to his advantage, other fighters and the Fancy imagining that every man of colour fought like old Tom Molyneux, all heart and bone and muscle with the mind left outside the ring. Perry judged that the spectators had had sport and blood enough. He met Watkins in the middle of the square to a shout of approval. For an instant the two men toed the line. Then Perry's right shot out like a piston. Watkins did not see the punch but felt it like a cave-in at the mine. He was struck on the point of the jaw and the reverberation travelled up into the bones of his skull, jarring his brain, cutting off the blood supply and dropping him like a bird shot on the wing.

  After making his appalling discovery, Henry Fanshawe had ridden into Wilding and drunk several glasses of brandy in the Commercial Hotel. There was an odd look in his eye and acquaintances, used to seeing a man who was the very epitome of sobriety and respectability, observed his dirty clothes and wild manner with alarm. They were curious but kept their distance as Fanshawe evidently preferred to take his drinks alone. Slightly befuddled, Fanshawe wandered the few streets of the town. Wilding was prospering on the basis of several good seasons for sheep farmers and the continual steady yield of the deep-shaft gold mines. In recent years a winery had been established by a German from South Australia and there were signs that the town could become the leading centre in the area that was becoming known as the Wimmera.

  Fanshawe crossed the street to avoid his solicitor's office. He had no wish to see the man whose services he had made so much use of lately. No need for him now, he thought, and no way to explain. Likewise the telegraph office was quickly passed. Nothing to say to the Melbourne lawyer, nothing to give to the rapacious politicians. Fanshawe was dimly aware that he had constructed much of his life around the gold nugget in the past weeks. It had directed and absorbed his energies and now he felt purposeless and adrift as if his existence had no meaning. His life was turning to dust—his wife was unfathomable, his children fractious and his finances uncertain. He had already outlaid considerable sums of money in legal expenses, land surveys and palm-greasings. All wasted. Bread cast upon waters which had dried up.

  As he walked he reflected that perhaps the worst aspect of his plight was the absolute impossibility of gaining any redress. He could scarcely go to the police sergeant and complain that a gold nugget he had found and hidden had been stolen by one of his employees who had gone he knew not where. The legality of his own actions was questionable but, more importantly, he would be a laughing stock. Fanshawe was a man aware of his own limitations and his solid achievements as a landholder were essential to his self-esteem. He feared ridicule more than drought or bushfires. The realisation of what he was doing came to him abruptly—wandering tipsy through Wilding in the late afternoon, possibly even muttering to himself. He had to get control. One more drink, he thought, then a brisk ride home to ponder a course of action.

  As he neared the Commercial, approaching it from behind, he noticed a small group of men walking along a track away from the hotel. He recognised Dr Humphrey Price, the town's only physician, and the idea occurred to him that he might confer with the doctor on Margaret's strange behaviour. Perhaps Price could recommend a tonic. He followed, too preoccupied with his problems to ask why a group of respectable-seeming men would be walking up a bush track behind a public house. Not being a member of the sporting fraternity, it took Fanshawe a few minutes to recognise what the crowd, gathered in a paddock behind a screen of trees, was about. A prize-fight, a diversion for roughs and idlers with money and no sense. A shout went up and, despite himself, Fanshawe became curious. He moved forward, having no compunction about shouldering aside his social inferiors to gain a sight of the ring.

  He saw a tall man, wearing only moleskin trousers and light plimsolls, his body the colour of teak, land a blow on the face of another whose white skin was streaked and blotched with blood. Fanshawe did not know either contestant but the white man's meaty shoulders, dungaree trousers and heavy boots stamped him as a miner.

  The dark man stalked his opponent. Suddenly, both men were immobile and then the white man was measuring his length on the ground. Fanshawe did not see the blow struck and thought the miner had slipped and fallen. Then he realised what had happened. He had never seen a human be
ing move so quickly with such devastating effect. He was aware of standing transfixed and then of his arm being taken in a friendly grip and being moved as the crowd dispersed.

  'Not your sort of thing, Henry, I shouldn't have thought. Damn fine mill though. I was too late to see much of it but I won a guinea or two.'

  Fanshawe looked at the doctor. 'Humphrey, good day to you. Yes, I just happened upon it by accident. I wanted to see you in point of fact, and saw you heading this way.'

  Price, a small, plump figure with a full beard and a soothing, casual voice that derived from his genteel English origins, smiled. 'Looking a trifle furtive, I fancy. Very much frowned upon by the constabulary, the noble and manly art, but capital sport. What did y' want to see me about?'

  Fanshawe had quite forgotten. Price detected brandy on Fanshawe's breath and noted the disarray of his clothing. In his time in the colonies, to which he had been more or less exiled to escape prosecution for gambling debts, he had seen many a squatter fall prey to the strain of husbanding vast acreages of uncertain country. Fanshawe, he would have thought, was an unlikely victim, but there was no telling. He lit a cigar as the two men walked back towards the hotel. Price had delivered the last two of Fanshawe's children and admired the conduct of the wife. A cut above the husband in spirit and intelligence, he had concluded, but such misalliances were not unusual in these outlandish places. Dr Price viewed Henry Fanshawe very much as the Wilding solicitor viewed him—as a valued client, well worth a soothing word and a social drink.

  'You say you won money on the darkie, Humphrey?'

  'Yes, indeed.'

  'Then you must know something about him.' Fanshawe could not get the quickness of the man's movements from his thoughts. He was reminded of something by that speed and sureness. 'What's his name?'

  'John Perry,' the doctor said. 'He arrived just a few days ago. Fellow's a sort of one-man circus. The other day it was riding tricks, then shooting. Milling's evidently another of his accomplishments. I shouldn't be at all surprised if he speaks Greek and Latin. Extraordinary chap. D'you fancy a drink, Henry?'