TJ closed his eyes. “Not much of a loss, if you ask me.”
Albert shifted position and his shadow moved on the far wall of the shelter. “Maybe not, but they were good to me once.”
TJ rolled onto his side. “I’m glad to see you, Albert.”
“You, too, TJ. I wasn’t sure you were alive.”
TJ smiled. “If I’m not dead, it wasn’t for a lack of trying to kill me.”
“What happened in Barton Springs?” Albert asked.
“Not much to talk about. I found the general store. It was dark by then, and I thought it was safe enough. I’d started for the back door when I heard Roger call out to me. Before I could get three more steps, someone behind me fired a shot. I didn’t even look back. I ran… I’ve run before, Albert, and I’m good at it.”
“It was Theodore. He was the one who shot you.” Albert took off his hat and shoved it into his jacket pocket.
TJ was quiet for a few moments. “I figured it might have been that damned possum when I saw him at the water hole. I’ll make sure of him the next time.” He reached out for the bowl of water and took a long drink. “Sorry I couldn’t get back to you. I didn’t realize how badly I was hit until I got to the edge of town.”
“Don’t worry, TJ. I got by.” Albert reached out and gently took the bowl out of TJ’s paw.
“It took me awhile, but I got back up to the water hole. I was going to wait for you in the valley, just like we said.” TJ was getting tired and the pauses were becoming longer. “Two days after I got there, company showed up… It was a hell of a fight, Albert. You should have seen it.”
Albert held out the water. TJ shook his head and continued.
“I shot the first dingo that came through the gap, and it delayed the rest of them until I could get up to that cave of yours in the cliff. After that it got real exciting.”
TJ stopped talking and rested for a few moments before he continued.
“Bertram never came within rifle shot or I would have tried for him. The possum would run in for a few shots and then run back out of range again. The dingoes were the ones that carried the fight. If I hadn’t started bleeding again and I’d had a little more ammunition, me and that snake would have held that cave until hell froze over.”
TJ closed his eyes again. “Funny thing about that snake. It crawled out from somewhere right after I got into the cave. It coiled up between me and the entrance and stayed there for the whole fight. I broke my wound open running up to the cave, and I had started losing a lot of blood. Late in the day I began blacking out. The last thing I remember was that snake striking at a dingo that was trying to get at me.”
Albert had been saddened by the death of the snake when he had found its body at the mouth of the cave. He was glad the snake had died bravely, but that didn’t make it any less dead. Albert would miss it.
“It was a good snake” was all he could think to say.
TJ opened his eyes briefly. “Would you do me a favor?”
“Of course I would.”
“Would you wash the blood out of my clothes?” TJ closed his eyes. “I can’t abide being dirty.” TJ took a deep breath and fell asleep.
Albert gathered up TJ’s pants and long red underwear and crawled out of the shelter with the clothes under one arm.
Muldoon was sitting by the fire outside the shelter. Albert’s pack was sitting next to him. The moon was full and low enough in the night sky to light up the whole plateau. The other fires in the encampment were beginning to burn out, the dingoes mere shadows that moved from time to time among the other shelters.
Muldoon looked over at Albert, the moonlight softening the scars on his face. “How is he?”
Albert walked over to his pack and opened it. “He’s sleeping.”
Albert took TJ’s coat out of his pack and put it with the rest of the bloody clothes he had taken from the shelter. TJ’s hat hadn’t suffered much, so Albert put it aside. As he started to close the pack, he remembered the sardines. He was going to have to talk to Muldoon about Jack sometime, and this might be as good a time as any.
Albert reached into the bottom of the pack and pulled out the tins of sardines. “I understand you like these.”
Muldoon looked at the sardines in Albert’s paw and then at his face. “Who told you that?”
“TJ, for one.” Albert extended the sardines to Muldoon.
The Tasmanian devil hesitated, reached out slowly and touched the tins for a brief moment, then withdrew his paw without taking the sardines. Muldoon looked back into the fire and said nothing.
Albert held the sardines for a moment more, then laid them down on the ground next to Muldoon. He picked up TJ’s clothes and walked to the stream coming down from the ridge. He followed the water past the pools to where it spilled over the sandstone escarpment and flowed into a grove of gum trees a hundred yards beyond the dingo camp. The dingoes got their water from the pools close to their shelters, and Albert didn’t want TJ’s blood mixing with their drinking water.
The moonlight was reflected by the water and the stones around him, and there was more than enough light for washing. Albert wet the clothes, gently rubbed them on the sandstone, then rinsed them in the stream. When he finished, he stretched the wet clothes flat on the stones to await the next day’s sun.
Albert sat at the edge of the plateau and looked over the treetops in the grove below him. The moon was beginning to move higher in the sky, and its light dimmed the stars around it.
For the first time since he had arrived in Old Australia, Albert felt at peace. There had been that brief two days between meeting Jack and the fire at Ponsby Station when no one was chasing him or creatures he knew weren’t being shot at or eaten.
TJ was alive. Jack was waiting for him at Ponsby Station. The zoo in Adelaide was now ancient history, and Hell was proving to be a pretty good place.
Albert decided to spend the night by the stream where he could see the trees. He was just getting up to retrieve his blanket when he saw Muldoon walking toward him across the sandstone.
“They’re afraid of you. Did you know that?”
“Who’s afraid of me?”
“The dingoes.”
Albert was always surprised by the idea that anyone could be afraid of him. It was true that the citizens of Barton Springs had kept their distance, but Albert had thought that was just the result of some bad press and hadn’t taken it personally. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does to them.” Muldoon sat down next to Albert, using his good paw to ease himself onto the sandstone. “Your footprints started it, and then there was that business with the snake.”
“My footprints?”
Muldoon shrugged. “How many other creatures run around out here with webbed feet? None, that’s how many. The dingoes don’t miss much. They’ve seen your tracks. They smell poison on you and they smelled poison on one of their dead. That cave where they got TJ had your footprints all over it, and when that snake killed another dingo, they began to put two and two together. Shooting one of them with gold dust just added to the legend. If I didn’t know better, I might be afraid of you myself.”
“I didn’t think Tasmanian devils could be afraid of anything,” Albert said after a moment of reflection.
Muldoon laughed. “Neither did I. Then I got famous and everything changed.”
“What changed?”
Muldoon stopped laughing. “I became afraid of not being famous.” He stood up slowly. “How’s Jack?”
Albert hesitated. “Getting old,” he finally said.
“I recognized his pistol when you fired that shot the other day.” Muldoon looked down at Albert. “Are you going to see him again?”
Albert nodded. “I promised to meet him at Ponsby Station.”
“Tell him I’ll save the sardines until he gets here.”
Muldoon made his way back toward the dingo camp, leaving Albert surrounded by moonlight and wet clothes.
25
/> A Platypus Unleashed
CALL TO ARMS!
VOLUNTEERS WANTED—NEW REGIMENT FORMING
All able-bodied marsupials wanted for punitive expedition
Remember Ponsby Station!
Remember Brave Captain O’Hanlin!
Remember Barton Springs!
Civilization in jeopardy!
Dingoes and Platypuses—crimes against nature!
Report to Gates of Hell on or before June 1st next
Many medals available
Signed: General Bertram, Commanding
Col. Theodore, in charge of ordnance
Albert tore the poster off the tree and put it in his pocket along with the reward posters he’d been saving. Every gum tree Albert had seen since he reached the hills near Ponsby Station had been plastered with handbills. Most were calls for volunteers; the rest were reward posters with his name on them. The price on his head was now up to twenty pounds. He was being blamed for killing O’Hanlin, burning down Barton Springs, and selling guns to non-marsupials. Albert wasn’t quite sure what a punitive expedition was, but whatever it was, it was being directed at him and the dingoes.
It had taken only two days to get to Ponsby Station from the dingo camp. Muldoon had told Albert that most of the trails that led into Hell went through the lava flow, but there were shortcuts through the hills if one knew where to look for them.
A young dingo had led Albert to the edge of Hell and no farther. It had been a strange trip. The dingo would walk or trot ahead of Albert but wouldn’t look at him. He would disappear at night only to reappear in the morning. When they reached the hills, the young dingo disappeared for the last time.
Albert was glad to be back on his own. His silent companion had made the trip across the flats much quicker, but it had also been a reminder of how deep the gulf was between the dingoes and himself.
Muldoon had told Albert that while TJ’s fight at the water hole had been good enough for his possible adoption, the major reason the dingoes took TJ away from Bertram and Theodore was because of Albert.
His looks and actions had become the subject of much conjecture around the campfires. TJ and Muldoon had pointed noses and pointed ears, and the dingoes could understand bravery in creatures that looked much like themselves.
In Albert’s case, it was unimportant to the dingoes whether he was brave or not. It was clear to them that there had to be some magic associated with him and the events that he played a part in. The dingoes had learned that trying to hurt a friend of Albert’s could get you bitten by a snake and that trying to hurt Albert personally could get you a faceful of gold dust.
Dingoes weren’t stupid. If they couldn’t find a stranger to fight with, they were more than willing to fight among themselves, but they weren’t suicidal. Albert was obviously too foreign or too dangerous to take lightly. Helping him or his friends was a cheap price to pay to stay on his good side. After reading the recruiting posters, Albert was afraid that the price might turn out to be more expensive than the dingoes had expected.
He reached the trail he had taken from Ponsby Station to the lava fields shortly before noon and turned south toward the settlement. The trail was familiar, and Albert was able to reach their old campsite by nightfall.
Albert made a cold camp that night, partially in memory of his and Jack’s flight from the wreckage of the mercantile, but mostly because he was a wanted animal in Old Australia. He wrapped himself in a blanket and lay back against his pack, glad to be alive.
He tried to remember what he had been like when he first came to Old Australia, but that had been some time ago and the animal that had arrived in that dust storm was long gone. He had been replaced by an animal that carried a pack, slept under blankets, and had an unflattering description of himself posted on every tree in the territory. He could remember all the things that happened to him and all the things that he had learned, but in living those events he had become what he was, and the animal he had once been was now a stranger. He fell asleep dreaming of dust storms and singing wombats.
Before the sun showed itself over the hills, Albert had already begun walking down the trail to Ponsby Station. The holes that lined the gully leading into town were quiet. No whistles came from the empty burrows, and the flowers in the coffee cans at the entrances had died from lack of water.
The silence of the morning was broken by drunken laughter drifting up the gully from the center of town. Albert hurried down the trail and onto the flat piece of ground next to the mine.
The rock foundations of the mercantile were still standing, but the building itself had been completely destroyed by the fire. Someone had cleared the site. Piles of burned timber, broken glass, and rusted tin had been shoveled to one side of the rock footings. A construction scaffold was still standing at one corner of the foundation, and a few uprights and wooden beams had been put into place. Work on the building had stopped long enough ago for the uprights to become covered with posters and broadsides.
Jack was standing on the foundation under one of the beams with a rope around his neck. The rope had been thrown over one of the beams and then secured to one leg of the scaffold. Jack was trying to keep his balance, but his crippled leg was on the verge of collapsing.
Two kangaroos and a large wallaby were standing in front of Jack, laughing and drinking from half-pint bottles. One of the kangaroos had on a bowler hat and was wearing checked pants. The other kangaroo and the wallaby were roughly dressed and carried rifles in their free paws. Two grubby adolescent bandicoots were sitting on the footings on the other side of the foundation. They wore overalls and had on tweed caps.
In between drinks, the kangaroo in the bowler would demand that Jack tell them where Albert was. When Jack wouldn’t answer, the kangaroo would slap him across the face and take another drink. With each slap, Jack would wobble on the footing and the noose on his neck would tighten. The noise from the blow would carry across what remained of O’Hanlin’s store, and the eyes of the young bandicoots would widen at the sound. The last rational thought Albert had before he went berserk was that the kangaroo in the checked pants looked familiar.
The rage didn’t spiral up from inside of him as it had done in the past. It was just there, and it was complete.
He felt his pack fall away and heard it hit the ground behind him. Ahead of him everything moved in slow motion. He could see the bandicoots point toward him and the kangaroos and the wallaby turn their heads. Albert looked down and saw small puffs of dust rise in the air with each footfall as he ran across the flat ground toward the mercantile. He looked up again and saw a cloud of smoke as the wallaby fired his rifle, and he heard the ball pass by his head.
Before another shot could be fired, Albert was in the air with his feet in front of him. He hit the kangaroo with the rifle and felt his spurs sink into its chest. As Albert fell backward, the other kangaroo struck him with a billy club.
The blow caught Albert on the shoulder, but he couldn’t feel it. He could hear the kangaroo that he had just poisoned start to scream. The uninjured kangaroo bent over to try to hit him again. He kicked up as high as he could, and his spurs caught his attacker in the throat. The kangaroo looked surprised and dropped the club he was holding. He slowly sat down in the dirt, and the bowler hat slipped from his head and rolled a few feet away.
Albert jumped to his feet and ran at the wallaby, who was trying to put another paper cartridge in his rifle. The wallaby turned to run, and Albert jumped on his back and spurred him in the flanks. The wallaby carried him for a few feet, then fell on his face. Albert jumped up again and spun around. He and Jack were the only creatures still standing.
The young bandicoots had taken cover behind the foundation and were peeking at Albert over the stone footings. The kangaroo he had hit in the chest was still screaming. The wallaby was moaning and twitching in the dirt. The kangaroo in the checked pants was bent over and making a gurgling noise. One of Albert’s spurs had caught him in the jugular, and blood wa
s pouring down his front and over his pants.
Albert stood there, shaking his head, and tried to make some sense of what had just happened. The screaming bothered him a little bit. He remembered that the dog on the banks of the Murray had screamed after he had spurred it, and he wondered abstractly how badly it must hurt to be poisoned by a platypus. He looked over at the bowler in the dirt and recognized it. The bleeding kangaroo had been the bouncer at O’Hanlin’s.
The screaming stopped, and the wallaby stopped twitching. The kangaroo in the checked pants finished bleeding to death, and everything came back into normal time. Albert’s shoulder began to hurt. He walked over to Jack, took the noose from around his neck, and helped him sit down on the foundation. Jack didn’t say anything but kept glancing at the bodies scattered around him.
The bandicoots made their way carefully around the foundation and stopped by the scaffolding. They stared at Albert for a moment and then whispered to each other. One of them reached up and tore down a reward poster from the upright on the corner. They looked at it and whispered some more. The one holding the poster started walking toward Albert but hesitated. His friend gave him a push.
The bandicoot came over and stood in front of Albert. He reached in the pocket of his overalls and took out a pencil stub. The bandicoot wiped his nose with his forearm and held the poster and the pencil up to Albert.
“My mate wants your autograph.”
26
Good Intentions
Jack had set up the tripod and billycan with the use of one arm, and he’d gotten upset when Albert tried to help him. It was obvious to both of them that Jack’s condition hadn’t improved since Barton Springs, and it wasn’t likely to in the future. Jack could still carry his pack and do the chores necessary to survive. But he was slow at it, and each time he struggled with something that had once been easy, he became irritated.
The cup was warm in Albert’s paws, and the smell of the tea helped mask the odor of death that he had carried with him from Ponsby Station. It had been two days since they had left that place, and he and Jack had encountered nothing but open desert during that time.
Albert of Adelaide Page 15