by Peter Watt
He was about to pursue this line of questioning when the big German was called by one of the patrons to refill his glass, leaving Horace to sip his whisky and gaze around the interior of the bar. It was like most he had known in Sydney. The same strong smell of tobacco and stale beer, of ingrained vomit and unwashed working men’s bodies.
On the walls were a few sepia photos of wooden-faced bare knuckle fighters posing with patient stillness. One photo held pride of place above the bar. It was of a handsome and sturdily built young man posing in the classical style of the bare knuckle boxer: naked from the waist up and wearing the tight trousers and sash of the men who others envied for their brutal courage in the bloody contests where the last man standing was deemed the winner.
The English agent could not help but admire the handsome young man’s superb physique: broad shoulders, a muscled chest and arms that rippled with strength. The proud face was intelligent and strong. There was just the hint of a smile at the corners of the eyes despite the fact the subject had been forced to stand very still for the exposure. Horace almost choked on the whisky.
The face!
It was the face of Michael O’Flynn! Albeit with two good eyes and just a little younger!
‘You look as if you have seen a ghost, Herr Neumann,’ Max said when he returned to pick up his tumbler of whisky.
Horace quickly regained his composure. ‘Who is the young man in the daguerreotype above the bar Mister Braun?’
Max turned to gaze up at the photograph of his beloved Michael. ‘That is young Michael Duffy when I was teaching him to fight. He could have been the world champion if he had not been killed.’
‘Why did he go to New Zealand if he had such a splendid future as a fighter?’
‘He was falsely accused of a killing,’ Max scowled. ‘But he was innocent as everyone knew, except the police. He had no choice but to get out of New South Wales before he was arrested and hanged.’
‘Have you seen him recently?’ Horace ventured.
Max stared at the Englishman as if he was some kind of dummkopf. ‘How could I Herr Neumann? I have already told you, Michael Duffy is dead.’
Horace quickly finished his drink and thanked the big German barman. He left the Erin with his head swimming from a combination of good Irish whisky and the knowledge that he had stumbled onto by sheer coincidence. No wonder Michael O’Flynn had been so aloof on the Boston. Horace had assumed rightly that he was a man who harboured a secret he did not want exposed in New South Wales. He was a fugitive from the hangman!
Horace smiled to himself. Next time he played poker with Michael Duffy he held the winning hand.
Daniel Duffy, first cousin to the supposedly dead Irishman, lay against the pillows of the double bed admiring the long auburn tresses of his wife. As she sat at the edge of the bed carefully combing her hair with an inlaid mother-of-pearl brush, her hair shimmered with the fiery light of the lantern.
Daniel waited patiently until his wife had counted the obligatory one hundred strokes before she slipped between the cool sheets of the bed to join him. Their room had already lost some of the heat of the hot summer’s day and the sheets were refreshing to the touch. ‘What was the boys’ explanation for the American dollars?’ he asked, as she pulled the sheet up to cover her breasts.
‘They said that an American man with one eye gave the money to them at Fraser’s paddock this morning,’ she answered, snuggling into her husband. ‘It’s a strange story, but I think they are telling the truth.’
Colleen had been told of the money by her young daughter Charmaine who had been miffed that she did not have one of the pretty coins like her brothers. And with the subtlety of Ghengis Khan on a rampage across the Russian steppes Colleen had interrogated the boys until Martin broke, telling the story of their meeting with the American stranger. He had received a threatening glower from Patrick for his betrayal of their oath. But oaths had no validity under the persistence of a mother’s interrogation. At least they would be able to keep the dollars. Colleen did not have the heart to deprive the boys of their small fortune. They had piously promised to spend the money on the family the following Christmas.
‘The American told the boys not to tell anyone of the meeting,’ she explained. ‘Your mother was with me when Martin described the man to me . . .’ She paused if uncertain whether she should continue with what had eventuated. ‘The strangest thing happened . . . your mother almost fainted. She insisted that Martin repeat word for word everything the American had said to them.’ Colleen struggled with what she was about to say because none of it made any sense. ‘Your mother said it was Michael Duffy the boys had met. She said that Michael’s ghost had come back from far away where it had been lost and roaming.’
‘Ghosts don’t have American accents,’ Daniel said scoffing at this interpretation of the boys’ encounter with the stranger. ‘Or hand out silver dollars. He was in all probability a sailor who had once visited the Erin.’ But for the life of him Daniel could not think of any such meeting in the past.
‘Daniel?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think you should talk to your mother,’ Colleen said in a concerned voice. ‘And get this foolishness out of her mind. I don’t think it is good that she continues to believe the boys met the ghost of Patrick’s father.’
‘I will,’ he sighed. ‘First thing in the morning.’
That night Daniel’s sleep was troubled with dreams. When he awoke in the early hours of the morning the sheets were soaked with his sweat. That damned talk of ghosts! He sat in the dark room, attempting to erase the haunting memory of the dream. He would definitely have to convince his mother that the man was not Michael’s ghost or otherwise he would probably keep having the same damned dream.
But the trouble with the women in the Duffy family was that they had a primitive attitude to matters of the supernatural. His mother and Kate firmly believed in powers beyond those of the natural world. Daniel on the other hand was an educated man. He knew that the persistence of such beliefs was a legacy of the Celtic tradition they clung to, a means of interpreting what could not be immediately explained by science.
When he confronted his mother the following morning and tried to reason with her that the American was just a stranger who had befriended the boys and not Michael’s ghost, she merely smiled and patted her son condescendingly on the cheek. Daniel knew he was wasting his time trying to rationalise with her and shook his head in despair. Next it would be bloody leprechauns living in the back of the Erin!
He stomped away leaving his mother to believe Michael Duffy had come back from the grave. At least he had spoken to her as his wife had asked him to.
Bridget felt sorry for her son. It was sad that such an intelligent boy could not see that there were worlds other than those that existed on earth. But that he could only believe Michael had returned to them. His poor soul must be in torment, searching for those he had loved and left.
She made ready to attend church and bustle the boys out of bed. Young Martin was always eager to kneel and be absorbed by the Latin mysteries of the mass. However Patrick’s feeble attempts to feign illness went unheeded by a less than sympathetic Bridget. She scolded him for his lack of faith as he lay groaning in his bed. What would the good fathers think to know that one of their students was not prepared to drag himself from his bed to receive the Eucharist!
When all were assembled they were trundled off to the church where the pagan superstitions of Bridget’s Celtic past were reluctantly acknowledged as almost impossible to stamp out. A thousand years of staunchly imposed Catholic dogma had not killed off the Banshee. The Irish Angel of Death co-existed in the Irish psyche as surely as Saint Patrick had driven the serpents out of the Emerald Isle itself.
FIFTEEN
The Kate O’Keefe who sat in the tiny office of the Bank of New South Wales at Cooktown had little in common with the bullocky she had been weeks earlier. Prim and proper, she was dressed in an eggshell-blue coloured dr
ess that rustled when she moved. Her long dark hair was piled on her head in a manner that accentuated her slender neck. Only the golden tan of her face denoted a life beyond the constraints of the drawing room.
The man who sat behind his desk poring over the great ledgers of account with their neat copperplate columns of figures was the epitome of a bank manager. Dressed in a three-piece suit more ideal for cooler southern climes, he occasionally adjusted the spectacles at the tip of his nose and unconsciously pulled at his ear. Mister Dixon was barely in his forties, yet the great mutton chop whiskers down the side of his face had grey streaks, indicative of the responsibility he carried on his shoulders in Australia’s far northern frontier. Vast sums of gold accumulated in his safes and credits dominated his ledger entries.
Kate was as anxious as a schoolgirl awaiting her yearly conduct report as the manager continued to frown. Finally he looked up at her with what might be interpreted as a smile. ‘It’s good news, Missus O’Keefe,’ he said as he leaned back in his chair. ‘The gold has been converted and I have the pleasure to inform you the mortgage on Balaclava Station is almost acquitted.’ Kate sighed, the relief making her feel just a little light-headed. ‘But,’ he added ominously, ‘you are not, as they say, out of the woods yet. Some of your other investments have not fared well and you may be required to shift assets to cover them. That may yet mean selling Balaclava.’
Kate felt her euphoria turn to a sour pessimism. She had been warned by the Cohens that she was over-extending but she had played their fears off against her will to make money out of the gold diggers. She could never imagine ever selling Balaclava as it adjoined Glen View Station, which was still under the control of the Macintoshes. Kate had sworn an oath years earlier to one day own the land where her beloved father lay buried in an unmarked grave. ‘To put it bluntly Mister Dixon,’ she said, ‘what is my overall financial position?’
The bank manager broke into a beaming smile. ‘Extremely good Missus O’Keefe. So long as you do not have to call on a cash flow. You are currently in a position to absorb some losses from your other investments so long as you do not follow bad money with good. And be a little less generous with the charities you support up here.’
He hated adding the matter of the charities. Only he and Kate knew how the considerable cost of providing monies for the families of destitute miners strained her cash flow. Food and medicine cost dearly in the far north and so far she had paid without counting the pounds.
Like many others in the colony, Dixon had heard the stories of the young pregnant seventeen-year-old girl who had come north in ’63 to establish a pub. Instead, she had lost a baby, a husband and ended up working as a barmaid in a Rockhampton hotel for a couple of years until a windfall from an old bullocky had provided her with the capital to establish a financial empire in her own right. Most young ladies would have taken the rather large bequest and gone south to Sydney or Melbourne as the estate would have provided a moderately comfortable income. But not the legendary Kate O’Keefe. She had teamed up with the Jewish merchants, the Cohens, and with the sweat of her brow and against all odds forged an empire. A beautiful saint, she was also Queen of the North, he thought when he tried to label her. It was impossible not to admire such a woman.
‘Despite what you say Mister Dixon,’ Kate replied quietly, ‘the account for the miners’ families continues as normal.’
‘I expected you to say that Missus O’Keefe,’ he sighed. ‘In anticipation I have prepared papers for you to transfer a small amount of your cash to that account. I don’t think it will put any great strain on your finances at this stage.’
‘Good,’ Kate said. ‘And I want you to transfer an amount to an Ironstone Mountain account I wish to open.’
‘Ironstone Mountain?’ Dixon was puzzled. ‘I don’t think I have heard of Ironstone Mountain.’
‘It is an area discovered by the Archers of Rockhampton a while back at the headwaters of the Dee River. I heard about it when I was working in Rockhampton.’
‘What made you interested in such a place if I may inquire?’
‘It’s a mountain,’ Kate replied, ‘and I have a fascination for mountains, Mister Dixon. Somehow I feel that Ironstone Mountain is worth looking at in the future.’ She did not know exactly why she had singled out the hill situated a relatively short distance west of Rockhampton. Maybe Luke’s disease of seeking the metal he so highly prized had infected her, and that listening to him so often talk about potential gold ore areas, had rubbed off. Or was it that she had found a way to give him a gift as precious as the love she felt for him? ‘I have a man who has the experience to explore Ironstone,’ she added. ‘He might just find something of worth.’
Dixon raised his bushy eyebrows as a silent expression of disapproval. Kate noticed his gesture and felt just a little concern for her impulsive act. But she had made risky decisions in the past and this was just one more of them. ‘It will be done,’ Dixon grudgingly conceded. ‘I only hope that it does not put any greater strain on your cash flow.’
‘Thank you Mister Dixon,’ Kate said, as she rose with a rustle of skirts. ‘I know my money is in good hands with you.’ He smiled self-consciously at her compliment.
Kate left the office and walked to the busy street where Luke leaned against a verandah post with his arms crossed idly watching the townsfolk parading before him. One of his evil cheroots was stuck in the corner of his mouth. When he turned to see Kate walking towards him he flung the cigar into the dust of the street.
‘Is everything okay?’ he asked with a frown.
‘Everything is fine,’ she replied with a warm smile. ‘I am not destined for the poorhouse.’
‘Good.’
As they walked down Charlotte Street Kate agonised over whether to tell Luke what had transpired in the bank manager’s office. All was not well. Any call on her by a major creditor could cause her to lose Balaclava.
She glanced at Luke. Since they had arrived back in Cooktown he had not mentioned any plans to go down the track to the Palmer goldfields. Instead, he had worked at odd jobs around the town, and camped on the fringes with the transient miners of the small tent city. Her proposal as raised in the bank manager’s office to prospect Ironstone Mountain had a mercenary edge. But it was also rooted in deeper feelings for the man who was walking with her back to her depot.
She knew he would not see the proposal in direct terms as her gift to him. She fully knew that if he did, his fierce pride would be badly wounded by the gesture. When they were on the track to Cooktown he had talked about raising cattle suitable for the tropics. But he had also admitted that he had not been very good as a cowboy back in Montana. But, he’d added brightly, owning your own spread was a different matter. Kate had smiled at his optimism. He had some ambition after all.
But she had to be honest with herself. Men like Luke Tracy were born to see the far horizons, and to love them was to love their nomadic souls. And she was not sure if she was prepared to love him body and soul. To do so could bring the pain of loss back into her life. It seemed all she had allowed herself to love was constantly being taken from her.
‘I have a proposal for you,’ she finally said as they neared the depot. ‘I have spoken to Mister Dixon and asked him to allocate funds for you to go south and prospect Ironstone Mountain.’
Luke stopped in his tracks and turned to her. ‘I know the hill,’ he said in his surprise. ‘Just out of Rockhampton. I’ve been around it.’
‘But have you ever been on it?’ she asked.
He frowned and slowly his frown turned to a smile. ‘Can’t say that I have.’ He grasped Kate by the elbows. ‘You’d really grubstake a down-and-out prospector Kate?’
‘Why not,’ she replied with a broad smile. ‘After all, you only just missed out on claiming the Palmer.’
They commenced walking towards the depot and Kate could feel his excitement and felt a surge of happiness. Yes, she had done right by him.
‘You know,’ he sai
d, ‘I once thought about having a look at that old hill. Should have.’ He stopped and looked down into Kate’s eyes. ‘I have a good feeling about that hill Kate. Your investment will pay off.’ Then suddenly the excitement drained from him as he realised a reality. ‘But I would be away from you Kate. I don’t think I could do that ever again.’
She touched his face and fought back her tears. ‘Knowing you as I do I also know that you were born to search for what the earth hides from us. When we are separated, at night I will be able to look up at the stars and know we will be seeing the same heavens. I know that when you have found your El Dorado, you will finally be content.’
‘I know why you are doing this Kate,’ he said in awe, ‘and I don’t think I have loved you more.’
‘I’m doing this to make a profit,’ she sniffled with a laugh. ‘I just think I have employed the best goddamn prospector in the colonies to make that profit for the Eureka companies.’
‘You have,’ he replied, albeit less than modestly. ‘I won’t let you down Kate O’Keefe.’
She slipped her arm into his and together they walked in silence to the depot.
Jennifer was aware of Ben’s feelings for her. Since their arrival in Cooktown the young man had used every excuse to be around her and his presence made her uneasy. Not that she did not have strong feelings for him. She knew, that under other circumstances, she might have even called her feelings love. But love was something between a good woman and a good man and in the equation Ben was the good man, she the bad woman.
Her inexplicable coolness towards him after the emotionally charged moment when they had faced the warrior tribesmen on the Palmer track together persisted. It was as if nothing had happened between them. Although confused and hurt Ben refused to concede defeat. All he knew was that he loved Jennifer Harris more than he had loved any woman. Not that he had ever loved a woman before – at least not in the Biblical sense.