Albert of Adelaide

by Howard Anderson

  “You, too, TJ.”

  The young dingo found a place among his kind and became one with the shadows of the grove.

  “Sorry we couldn’t get to you sooner. The dingoes didn’t spot your tracks until a few hours ago. It’s been kind of busy around here.”

  Albert sat down on the log next to TJ.

  “That possum may be crazy, but he’s not stupid, and that’s for sure.” TJ tipped his hat back and wiped his forehead with the back of his paw. “They’ve been bombarding a camp about a quarter mile from here. I think most of the dingoes got out before it started, but I’m not sure.”

  Albert took the canteen off his shoulder and offered it to TJ. “How are you doing?” he asked.

  TJ shrugged and took the canteen. “I’m a little peaked yet. My lodge brothers over there had to half carry me out here.” TJ gestured to the dingoes with the canteen. “I needed to know what we were up against, and I don’t speak dingo real well.” He took a drink from the canteen. “They keep those toy soldiers of theirs in groups and cover them with the cannon. Dingoes wouldn’t have a chance going up against anything like that… It could be worse, I guess.”

  “What do you mean?” Albert asked as TJ handed back his canteen.

  “They move real slow and have to set up the gun each time they come to a camp. The dingoes travel light and can keep away from them. I figure after a while they’ll run out of food or get tired of chasing dingoes around Hell and head back to where they came from.”

  Albert shook his head. “It will be too late by then.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re poisoning the water.”

  TJ didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally, he pulled his hat down. “Well, that puts the icing on the cake, doesn’t it.” He stood up. “Come on, boys, it’s time to head back.”

  The dingoes moved out of the shadows, and one of them came over and stood next to TJ.

  Albert jumped off the log. “TJ, we can’t let them kill the springs.”

  TJ put his arm over the dingo’s shoulder and leaned on him for support. “And we’re not going to. It will be a cold day in hell before a damned possum and a one-eared rabbit outsmart Terrance James Walcott, and you can bet real money on it.”

  28

  An Illusion of the Present

  Jack had been exhausted when they reached Muldoon’s camp. They had come a long way that day, and even with a guide it had been a hard trip. The young dingo, like most of his kind, wasn’t used to dealing with cripples and didn’t have much patience with Jack. Bad leg or not, he had to keep up.

  Albert had carried Jack’s pack for most of the day, but Jack was still a long way back when he walked into the center of the camp. TJ and a number of dingoes had already arrived, and there was a lot of activity going on around the water hole. Albert quickly took the packs he was carrying over to the edge of the water hole where he had slept before. He was heading back to collect Jack when Muldoon walked out of his tent.

  At that moment, Jack stumbled out of the bush at the edge of the water hole, dragging his left foot and doing his best to keep upright. He and Muldoon saw each other at about the same time. After a moment’s hesitation, Jack squared his shoulders and walked toward Muldoon, trying to disguise his limp.

  Muldoon ducked back into his tent and came out with a canteen and two stools. He put the stools down by the tent entrance and waited for Jack with the canteen in his good paw. Muldoon made no move to help Jack, but let him make his way to the tent as best he could.

  Jack reached the stools and sat down heavily. He looked up at Muldoon. “It’s been awhile.”

  Muldoon gave the canteen to Jack. The cork was still in the canteen, and Jack and Muldoon had only two good paws between them. Jack held the canteen as Muldoon pulled out the cork with his good paw.

  Jack took a drink. “Did I miss anything?”

  Muldoon shook his head.

  “That’s good to know,” Jack said as he gave the canteen back.

  Albert walked away from Muldoon’s tent and set up a place for him and Jack to sleep. He never again went near enough to hear what Muldoon and Jack said, but he watched them from time to time as he moved through the camp.

  Jack’s guilt had always been of his own making. If Muldoon had been hurt, he could blame only himself and the past events in his life that had driven him into the ring in Winslow. Albert was pretty sure they both understood this, but he couldn’t be certain.

  When Jack came back to Albert’s camp later, he was too tired to say very much. Before he went to sleep, he told Albert that he was glad he’d come and that it had been important to both him and Muldoon.

  Jack had been right when he said the Muldoon he knew had died in the hotel, but what he didn’t say was that the Jack from those days was just as dead. The Jack that saved Albert was not the same creature who had limped into Muldoon’s camp, and he would be a slightly different creature when he limped out.

  Albert was beginning to believe that he might have died in the desert near the railroad, and that TJ might have died on the gangplank in San Francisco, and all they had before them was a chance to die another time in a different place. The coming morning might be the time, and the clearing he was sitting in could very well be the place.

  The only lights in the desert that night came from Muldoon’s camp and the fires of the militia on the rise a half mile away. Two days after Albert and Jack arrived at Muldoon’s camp, TJ had sent word across the flats that no fires were to be lit in the dingo encampments beyond the water hole, and since that time there had been no other fires lit in Hell.

  TJ had suspected it was the firelight that had drawn the militia, and he had been proven correct. The fires that had been left burning every night around Muldoon’s tent had brought the militia to the water hole and, if the patterns of the past repeated themselves, the bombardment would begin just before dawn.

  The glow of the fires and the light reflecting from the water, from the tent, and from the ragged canopy of the gum trees created a sense of theater in the camp that foreshadowed what was to come in the morning.

  In a few hours, the dingoes were to let the fires die, and everyone in the camp except Albert would slip back into the bush beyond the range of the gun. TJ had said that if he had any choice he would have picked someone with longer legs, but Albert was the only chance they had.

  In the last two attacks, after the initial bombardment, the militia had left the trenches they had dug and had gone into the deserted camps to poison the water and take trophies from the dead. There was no reason to believe they wouldn’t do the same in the morning.

  The militia needed to be given a reason to go far enough beyond their camp that the shells of the cannon couldn’t protect them. TJ hoped that a short-legged platypus worth twenty pounds sterling dead or alive would be reason enough.

  If he survived the bombardment, Albert was to wait in the camp until the militia spotted him, then run into the bush, making sure that Bertram’s troops gave chase. The farther they chased him, the better. The militia had met no opposition so far, and they had likely become convinced of their invincibility.

  TJ had originally considered using a few dingoes as bait—they were brave enough to do the job, and they could run a lot faster than Albert. But they looked pretty tough, and TJ was afraid the militia might have second thoughts about chasing them into the bush. He would hold them in reserve in case Albert was killed at the water hole.

  Albert had dug a shallow burrow at the water’s edge to use during the bombardment. He had taken the reward posters he had been saving and placed them on stunted trees between the water hole and the militia camp, just to make sure the coming marsupials knew that chasing a platypus could be a worthwhile endeavor. Albert had done all he could, and if it wasn’t enough, he’d worry about it in another life.

  He sat by himself in the middle of the camp. He would send his pack out with TJ and the dingoes when they left, keeping only his canteen. TJ wanted nothing left in
the camp that the militia could use. He had asked Muldoon if he wanted to strike his tent and move it beyond the water hole and out of range of the cannon, but Muldoon just shook his head, and TJ let the matter rest.

  TJ and some of the older dingoes were now gathered at one edge of the camp conversing in signs and monosyllables. Every so often young dingoes would come in from the darkness bringing information, then be sent back out again with a response from TJ or one of the elders.

  Jack and Muldoon waited for word to leave the camp sitting under the canopy of Muldoon’s tent. When they spoke, they spoke in low voices and Albert couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  He knew that eight years had passed since they had seen each other, and that those years had been hard on both of them. He thought there would be an awkwardness between them born of the pain they both carried from Winslow, but time had erased none of the familiarity they had shared so long ago. Albert watched as one or the other would cock his head or use a paw for emphasis, casting moving shadows on the wall of the tent.

  The dingoes stopped feeding the fires, and one by one the lights around the water hole went out for the last time. Jack put on his pack and Muldoon came out of his tent wearing his peacoat. He had made a bundle of his wrestling tights and was holding them under his good arm.

  All that needed to be said had been said that afternoon, and with a brief wave Jack and Muldoon walked away. Two dingoes, one carrying Albert’s pack and the other carrying TJ’s carbine, helped TJ into the night. Albert was now alone in the deserted camp.

  29

  The Winners

  The first shell sent up a geyser of water in the middle of the water hole, and the second hit Muldoon’s tent. After that, Albert stopped paying attention. The morning air was dead still, and smoke from the explosions hung low on the ground. It wasn’t long before Albert couldn’t see more than a few feet from the edge of his burrow.

  The shots came at measured intervals, and Albert had enough time between each explosion to consider his mortality. He began to wish that the intervals were shorter and gave him less time to think. All he could do was lie in the burrow, covered in pieces of yellow-and-red canvas, listening to each shell whistle as it dropped into the camp and hoping his luck would hold one more time.

  As the morning passed, he became used to the noise of the cannon in the distance, the whistle and the detonation of the shells. Once or twice dirt had been thrown on him by shells that exploded close to his burrow, but he hadn’t been hurt. Fatalism replaced fear as Albert realized it would take a direct hit to kill him.

  He became more concerned with what was going to happen when the bombardment ended. The wind hadn’t come up and the smoke had gotten thicker. If not for the water hole at his back, Albert would have no idea which way he was facing and where he expected the militia to enter the camp. Between explosions he tried to listen for movement, but all he could hear was the ringing in his ears.

  It was quiet for a long time before Albert realized that the cannon fire had stopped. He stuck his head over the edge of his burrow and looked out into a gray haze. He could hear the faint sound of music in the distance beyond the smoke.

  He crawled out of the hole he had dug and stood up. The music wasn’t very good—it was just drums and bugles, one ragged, the other off-key, but it gave him some sense of the direction of oncoming militia. It wasn’t long before he began to hear voices mixed with the beat of the drums.

  He was going to have to start running pretty soon, but the militia would have to be able to see him first. The smoke wasn’t something he or TJ had considered; it made everything more difficult and had lessened his chances of survival considerably.

  Albert could smell the water behind him, and the instinct of untold generations of his kind told him that he would be safe there. He had learned the hard way that nothing was ever safe in Old Australia, but the urge to dive into the water hole was becoming stronger and stronger. Rather than risk a victory of instinct, Albert threw himself into the smoke and began running in the direction of the music.

  He was only about ten yards from his burrow when he ran bill-first into a large kangaroo carrying a musket. They both jumped back in surprise.

  “Platypus!” the kangaroo screamed.

  Albert turned and was two steps back into the smoke when the kangaroo fired his musket. The shot missed, but it started a chain reaction. Guns began going off all around him. The air was full of the sounds of shots, screams of pain, and then more shots.

  Albert had gone only a few more yards when he ran into a wallaby, armed to the teeth with rifle, pistol, and sword. The encounter scared the wallaby enough that he didn’t have time to swing his sword before Albert disappeared again. He heard the wallaby yell, “There’s another one over here!”

  There were more shots, more yelling. Albert kept bouncing off marsupials as he ran through the smoke. He tried to keep running in a straight line, but each collision shifted his direction and produced more high-pitched yells of warning.

  Gunfire rattled through the smoke and bullets were flying everywhere. Every so often, Albert would see a dim muzzle flash through the thick smoke and shift his direction to avoid the shooter.

  Screams of “Platypus!” were coming from directions he’d never been, and with each scream, shooting throughout the camp intensified.

  The cannon had started firing again, and Albert could hear the shells whistle overhead and explode somewhere beyond the camp. The sound of the gun gave Albert a vague sense of its location and he started running away from the noise.

  He tripped over a dead bandicoot with a spear in it, and he lay in the dirt next to the body for a few moments. He could hear the yips of dingoes in the smoke around him and the thud of clubs mixed with pistol and rifle shots. The air was clearer close to the ground and Albert could see feet running past him, dingo feet and marsupial feet mixed together. Occasionally a body would drop out of the smoke near him to lie on the dirt whimpering or choking.

  It was obvious that TJ’s plan had unraveled and the fight was not happening beyond the range of the cannon. Albert’s day as decoy was going badly, and he had no idea what he should do next. As he lay there, hoping for inspiration, the instinct that he had suppressed all morning began to reassert itself. The smell of water was very faint and was mixed with the stench of blood and black powder that surrounded him, but it was enough.

  If he closed his eyes, Albert could sense where the water was. He began crawling forward. He opened his eyes every so often to make sure he wasn’t crawling into someone being killed. If the way ahead of him was clear, he would close his eyes again and let his sense of smell guide him. The noise of the guns and the screams of the dying faded into idyllic scenes of the river of his childhood, and Albert began to crawl faster.

  He could see his mother on the far bank, and he knew if he could reach her everything would be all right and he would be safe forever. He jumped up and started running. As he reached the bank of the river, he tripped over something and fell headfirst into the water.

  Albert opened his eyes and found himself in the water hole with his hat floating next to him. A cannon shell exploded over his head and blew shrapnel across the water in front of him. Albert grabbed his hat, shoved it in his vest, and dived under the surface.

  He swam across the water hole, hugging the bottom the entire way. He surfaced on the far side and looked back toward Muldoon’s camp. Except for a few patches of gray that floated above the water hole, the smoke stopped at the water’s edge. He could see the body of the dingo that he had tripped over lying on the beach.

  Fighting was still going on in the camp. He could hear shots and see muzzle flashes, but the shots were becoming less frequent. A slight breeze had come up and was starting to thin the smoke. Albert could see figures moving on the far side of the water hole and thought it prudent to move out of rifle-shot range before they could see him.

  He climbed up on the bank and started jogging through the gum trees and into the hil
ls on the far side of the water hole. Another cannon shell burst ahead of him and he could see smoke from the explosion. If he had any friends left, they probably had been the target, and he headed in that direction.

  A hundred yards from the trees, he started coming across dead dingoes. They had been caught in the open, running toward the relative safety of the smoke-filled camp. They had been killed before they could strike a blow and, in dingo tradition, would remain unhonored where they lay. In time, the desert would reclaim the bodies.

  Another shell flew overhead, and Albert saw where it landed. The shell hit in front of a large boulder, part of a rocky outcropping that had created another small hill on the desert floor. The minute the dirt from the explosion settled, TJ climbed onto the boulder and started waving his hat. The movement drew another shell, and TJ just managed to get off the boulder before it hit one of the other rocks. Stone fragments ricocheted off the face of the boulder. TJ climbed back up and started waving his hat again.

  Albert heard the cannon go off, but there was no whistling and no shell fell. A minute later the cannon fired one more time and then there was silence.

  TJ hesitated and then stopped waving his hat. He kept looking in the direction of the militia trenches. Finally, he sat down on the boulder and put his hat back on. Jack limped out from behind the rock where TJ was sitting. He had Muldoon’s peacoat thrown over his shoulder and was carrying TJ’s Enfield in his good paw. He leaned the rifle against the rock, sat down, and put Muldoon’s jacket across his lap.

  Albert worked his way through the bush to the rocks as quickly as he could. He stopped next to Jack, who looked up at him and gave him a sad smile but said nothing.

  TJ was still breathing hard from climbing up and down the boulder. He looked down at Albert. “I wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”

  Albert looked around. “Where’s Muldoon?”

  TJ waved a paw toward the militia trenches. “He’s up there somewhere.”