Accepting the probability that he was customarily under Grandma Conway’s surveillance, Bony was careful not to betray any interest, and he continued his work as though engrossed by the urge to increase his daily tally of spuds.
There was another unusual intrusion into Cork Valley in the mid-afternoon. Old Mrs Conway began to signal. Bony straightened, casually looked about, and saw two men approaching from the west. They were less than a quarter-mile from the wall, and both bore the heavy loads of bush-walkers. Both wore the tough clothes and boots associated with these people who delight in tramping over mountainous country. And mounted on his grey mare, Red Kelly was riding furiously to cut them off.
Bony’s impulse was to snatch his coat and lunch bag from the wall and walk away from them; to keep his back to them, and prevent them from seeing his face and recognising his racial ancestry. This would be strictly in keeping with the character of a police-hunted ex-horse-thief, but when he estimated that Red Kelly would halt the bushwalkers before they came too close to be able to identify him, he bent lower over his work and watched the meeting with side-wise glances.
“And where d’you think ye be tramping to?” shouted Red Kelly before reining back his horse. “This is private land, and I’ll have you know it. I won’t be having you disturbing my stock. Where d’you think you’re going?”
Bony couldn’t catch the replies, and Red Kelly maintained his indignantly shouted protests, although having reached the trespassers, shouting was quite unnecessary.
“To the coast and Wollongong, eh! Well, this is no road to the coast and Wollongong. How did you get here? What’s that! Came down the cliffs with your ropes. More fools you. I’ve a good mind to have the law on you. We have been losing cattle and how are we to know you’re not spying out the land to steal more? I don’t want your names. I want you off my property. You come down to the house. There’s a truck leaving for town in half an hour. You can go on your way in that.”
The wind had fallen, but even had there been a strong gale Red Kelly’s voice would have reached Bony. The halted bushwalkers eased their loads, and began the divergent walk down the slope to the house, with Kelly riding behind them as though he were driving two prisoners back to the stockade. He ranted at them continuously until even his mighty voice no longer reached the amused potato digger.
Now what! Were those men sent by Superintendent Casement? Casement had said:
“There must be a plan whereby we can keep in touch. We don’t want to find you dead on a road and looking as though you’d been run down by a truck. You have consented to go down to Cork Valley, and we must take reasonable precautions for your safety. We’d better send a dairy inspector, or some such, about once a week, and you could make yourself seen by him. If he doesn’t see you...”
“It would ruin the set up,” Bony had argued. “Not only that. If the position is as you suspect, then the appearance of any stranger, in no matter what guise, would be definitely dangerous. Don’t be concerned about me. I’ll come up when I am ready, and I’ll be ready when I have finalised my assignment, or when I am convinced that Cork Valley isn’t where your rabbit burrow is. So, Super, no supervision, no interference.”
Casement had grumbled, had been unconvinced, had reluctantly agreed to make no move on being assured that when he, Bony, decided to leave Cork Valley nothing or no one would hinder him.
The odds were against the bushwalkers being Casement’s spies. They were within their rights to walk over the mountains, to scale cliffs with their ropes and risk their necks, to camp out in the lee of a rock or beside a stream. It was arguable that they had the right to cross private property and Red Kelly most certainly argued they had not, all the way down the slope to his house.
Later, dust rose from the lane and soon thereafter Bony watched the truck speeding up the track, to the top of the rim where was the white house and the boundary fence.
Working on, he planned his ‘front’ to the Conways in respect to the trespassers, and then he heard a sound which, when he concentrated, he thought must have been made by a blacksmith’s hammer clanging on an anvil adjacent to Red Kelly’s house. It could mean that the horses had been taken from the paddock to be reshod.
Unless there is work for them, horses are not shod.
The dust from the truck clung to the mountain slopes, and was more evidence that the erratic wind was dropping. Minutes after the vehicle had disappeared over the rim, three horsemen rode from the vicinity of Kelly’s house and proceeded in a westerly direction. Bony watched them cautiously. He was almost sure that one was Brian Kelly, and that another was Steve Conway, and that the animals they rode were not any of the seven strangers.
As the sun neared the high western horizon the truck returned and the wind died away to an early evening calm. Bony could now distinctly hear the clanging of the blacksmith’s hammer. At five o’clock the sun disappeared, and the blacksmith stopped working. A few minutes later the horses were returned to the paddock, the seven strangers and Red Kelly’s grey. At a quarter past five Bony parked his fork, donned his coat, collected his lunch bag and billy can and set off down the slope to the river and settlement. The three horsemen had not yet returned.
Immediately on meeting the Conways in their dining room, Bony asked sharply:
“Who were those two hoboes?”
Grandma Conway continued to gaze at the open fire, and Mike Conway replied:
“A couple of bushwalkers, so they said.”
“Oh! How d’you know? Did they prove themselves?”
“They said they were bushwalkers, Nat. They looked the kind. They carried the bushwalkers’ kit, including ropes to scale rocks. What’s riling you?”
“What’s riling me!” echoed Bony, voice raised. “Look! They were making for me, and I wasn’t wearing my hat. They could have seen me as not being a hundred per cent white. They would have done if Kelly hadn’t stopped them when he did. There’s no knowing that they didn’t farther back, with binoculars. Were they searched for binoculars? Were they carryin’ ’em in cases slung from their necks? Those sort generally do.”
“Pipe down, Nat,” urged Mike Conway. “Everything’s all right. They didn’t carry glasses, and Red Kelly thinks they weren’t close enough to you to register anything. If you are thinking they are police agents, forget it.”
“I’m not thinking that,” Bony said. “I am thinking those fellers could tell some of their pals about crossing the valley and being balled up by Red Kelly and seeing me working at the spuds, and that could get to the police.”
“Forget it.” The aura of strain which had met Bony on entering the room had faded, and he became confident that his tactics had succeeded in allaying suspicion that the bushwalkers were police agents checking on a police agent. He said:
“It’s too open up there digging spuds. I don’t like it.”
Grandma Conway spoke for the first time.
“Nat, me boy, don’t be worrying so. It turned out all right for you. Don’t be blamin’ of us, now. I saw those fellers, and I signalled with me glass long before you looked this way.”
Bony permitted himself to be mollified, and he turned a half-smile upon the old woman.
“I’m blaming myself really, Grandma,” he began and stopped. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs Conway. That was a slip of the tongue. I should have kept looking more often this way. I’ll remember to now, for sure.”
“You be wiser in future, Nat,” she said, and thoughtfully added: “And you can call me Grandma if you like. Everyone does who’s a Conway.”
Bony beamed. “Then I’ll be a-serenading of you, Grandma.”
The leaf was between his fingers. The leaf was against his lips, and the preparations for serving dinner were hushed. They heard nothing until Kathleen Mavourneen came across the world from Ireland to be with them, the effect to be credited to the instrument rather than the player.
Due to the insistence of every housewife that when dinner is cooked it must be served, the resulting sile
nce was broken by Mate Conway calling them to the table. Grandma Conway’s eyes were bright as she was wheeled from her place before the fire, and Mike was smiling as he rarely did.
Steve Conway appeared late that evening, apologising to Mate Conway, nodding to Grandma and her grandson, and then at Bony when seated, and in the usual manner the meal came to its conclusion. This evening, as he was about to leave, Mike called him to join him and his grandmother who was again seated before the fire. He was invited to sit between them, and the chore of washing utensils and clearing the table went on behind them.
“How do you like being here with us, Nat?” Conway asked.
“I’m finding it suits me,” answered Bony. “How do I fit?”
“Pretty good,” Conway said, staring at the flames. “How would you like to stay on, say for a year, even always?”
“It wouldn’t be hard, Mike. You’ve all been very decent to me. You mean stay on working for you?”
“Yes. You see, there’s not too many men working about the place. Valley’s always a little short of labour and that’s because we like to keep the place to the Conways and the Kellys. It has always belonged to us, and we don’t take to strangers.”
“But you took to me that day you gave me a lift,” queried Bony.
Mike Conway chuckled before saying:
“Explanation’s simple, Nat. I wanted my spuds lifted. You were in a spot of trouble and the Irish have a soft spot for the under dog. In that respect you and us Irish are on equal ground. That’s so, Grandma?”
“Yes, ’tis so,” agreed the ancient. “You’re welcome to stay on with us Conways as a Conway, Nat. You haven’t a home, have you?” Bony shook his head.
“You have a wife, though?”
“She cleared off with another man when I was in gaol.”
“So you said, Nat.”
“And there’s other work beside digging spuds all day,” Mike contributed. “Horses to ride and break in, if you want that kind of work for a change.”
Bony pretended to consider. He was actually feeling doubt about the part he was playing, as though it were an inner voice warning him that loyalty could become a mastering force and, although misplaced, bring himself at odds with the principles which had guided him hitherto. Then doubt was banished by the thought: ‘I am thinking as Nat Bonnay. I should be thinking as Inspector Bonaparte. I am Inspector Bonaparte; not Nat Bonnay the horse thief.’
He said: “I’d like to be a Conway.”
Chapter Ten
Surprises
THE FIRST of the winter fogs came two days after Bony joined the Conways. Early in the afternoon, the sun lost its power, and there appeared on the rim, eastward of the waterfall a frill, like wool. Midway down the slope a cloud formed hung suspended there while its feet came downward as though to seek a base. The mist along the rim came tumbling down in great masses to join the lower cloud, swelling it swiftly and increasing its descent until the settlement vanished and the floor of Cork Valley appeared to be drawn into its chill embrace. For a few moments the sun was blue when it, too, vanished.
Having no watch, Bony was unable to judge the time. He worked on until, assessing the hour by the number of bags filled with potatoes since the sun had disappeared, he decided to return to the settlement before darkness and the fog made the short journey hazardous even for so expert a bushman.
The fog was no hindrance. He negotiated the paddocks to the lane by following his own pad, and once there merely continued along the rough track beside the river. He was barely able to see the parallel fence beyond the stream. Eventually the low bridge fording the river came out of the fog and he was but three yards from it when he became aware of the figure beyond it.
As any aborigine would do, Bony instinctively halted and froze into a fire-blackened tree trunk. The person advanced, and then turned off the track and down to the stream. Then Bony could see it was a woman wearing a hooded raincoat. She aroused his intense interest when, without sitting, she removed her shoes and proceeded to cross the river, holding to the side plank of the bridge to gain support on the slippery boulders. At first he thought her mission was to find the screwdriver, but she left the stream and put on her shoes. She came up the short bank to the track, and abruptly stopped when she saw him. She was Rosalie Conway. She said:
“Oh! It’s you, Nat. You’re early.”
“Am I?”
“Whisper. Please. I thought I would meet you before you left the paddocks. I want to talk to you, Nat. Urgently.”
Her eyes and her voice betrayed anxiety, and yet he sought duplicity and found no sign of it.
“Have you come to meet me ... secretly?” Bony asked.
“Yes, yes. I want to ask you something, to get you to do something for me. But not just here. Someone could come along and find us.”
A test! A trap! What was this? The awareness of danger, so quickly born in all wild things, and the aboriginal race so closely allied to them, now swayed this man who was half kin with them. His eyes blazed into the girl’s dark eyes, flashed away to probe the surrounding fog for sign of an enemy. A full blood, he would have acted with resolution to maintain his assumed character; so much less than a full blood, the white man’s impetuosity and the white man’s reluctance to spurn the look of appeal in a pretty woman brought reason to clash with instinct, the gambler’s passion to tussle with primitive intuition. He said:
“Why did you wade across the river, and not come by the bridge?”
As though impatient of the carefully worded question, Rosalie did two things at the same moment. She clutched Bony by the arm to urge him back from the bridge, at the same time answering his question.
“Because the bridge is wired to ring the buzzer at the house.”
Decided now to give a little in return for that vital information, Bony suffered himself to be taken to the haven of a low bush from where he instantly saw that the track could be watched even in the fog. They sat, silently, while the girl regained her composure, and while he considered the implication of the wired bridge, and the probable answer as to why no one had surprised the people of Cork Valley. More a statement of fact than a query, he said:
“All the bridges are wired to give the alarm?”
“Yes.” The girl bit her under-lip vexatiously. “I could have done wrong telling you about the bridge. But...”
“But...” he prompted, sharply.
“I could be making a terrible mistake about you,” she said. “I’ve been watching you ever since you came. I’ve come to think you’re a kind man at heart, and that you might do something for me, something I can’t do for myself.”
“I’m a Conway. As long as it isn’t against the Conways.”
“No. No, it isn’t really.” She hesitated for so long he thought she was waiting for him to speak, and purposely refrained. “All I want you to do is to post a letter for me.”
“Why not post it yourself?”
“I can’t do that here. You see...”
“I’m afraid I don’t see. Why not be frank?”
“It’s to a friend of mine. I ... I don’t want Mate to see it.”
“How can I post it. Where?”
“You could give it to a girl who would post it in Kiama.”
She was gazing steadily into his masked eyes, vainly seeking assurance, and he was on the defensive, alert to detect the trap.
“The day is passing,” he reminded her. “It will be dark soon.”
“Yes. Yes, I know. All right, I’ll trust you, Nat. The letter is to a friend, and it’s quite harmless to anyone here. You will be going away with the pack-horses in the morning, and at the end of the journey you will be met by a man with a truck, and his daughter, Bessie. All I want you to do is to give the letter to her. It’s stamped and addressed. Bessie has been my friend always. She’s posted a letter before. But don’t let the others see you give the letter to her, will you? You mustn’t do that.”
“A love letter?” asked the romantic Bony.
“The man I shall meet with the truck. Who is he? Describe him.”
“His name’s O’Grady. He’s tall and thin. Bessie is tall, too. She has fair hair and brown eyes, and she’s one year younger than I am. Just give the letter to her without the others seeing...”
“Yes, you told me that. Where is the letter?”
Subjugating his interest in the journey with the horses to the immediate necessity of gaining further information concerning this ‘illicit’ posting, he said:
“I know your mother is the postmistress here, but you are old enough to write to whom you wish. Why should she not know about this?”
“Because ... Well...” Rosalie hesitated. “Well Mate Conway isn’t my mother. She’s an aunt. I’m a Ryan, not a Conway. And besides, they want me to marry someone of their choosing and I’ll not marry anyone I’m not in love with. You will do this for me, won’t you?”
He accepted the letter and placed it in an inner pocket, doubting the wisdom of undertaking the errand although now convinced there was no subterfuge behind it. He was conscious of the deepening dusk, of the urgency of returning to the settlement, and the further urgency of pressing for more information.
“Oh, Nat, thank you,” she said, enormous relief shining in her eyes. “Look, it’s getting dark. We must hurry.”
Together they walked to the bridge, which she said they would have to cross together, else the alarm would ring twice. She held his arm and told him to walk in step with her, and to place each foot on the same planks of the decking. On the far side, she said:
“Now they’ll know that you have crossed on your way from work. Let me go first. Dawdle a little. And thank you, Nat. I can’t say how grateful I am.”
The fog took Rosalie Ryan, and then Bony remembered he wanted to ask how she knew about the journey he was to take with horses. Horses! Were they the strange horses that had appeared in Kelly’s paddock, and had been shod, or re-shod in preparation for this journey? The bridges were wired to give notice of anyone crossing, of any car or truck! All bridges were wired to give the alarm, so the girl had said. Interesting—very much so. On crossing the bridge, the domestic indicator in the living-room would inform the Conways that he had crossed. The indicator had told them when the car had come down the mountain track, the car that had gone on towards the waterfall without lights that night. Oh, yes, very interesting to Inspector Bonaparte.
Bony and the Kelly Gang Page 7