DEAR ERIC,
I am sending this letter by two friends, one of whom will pass it to another who will post it in Kiama. I have waited so long for a letter from you that I wonder if Mate Conway stopped it at the Office here. I would have written to you had I your address, and you will remember how suddenly you left Cork Valley. It was only the other day that quite by chance I came across it in the book I lent you, and found your note in which you wrote those wonderful words. And there at the beginning was your address.
Dear Eric, do please write to me and say you meant those words. Please send your letter to Miss M. Mathews, Care of the Post Office, Bowral, and add ‘to be called for’. I am to go to Bowral in ten days to buy a few things for our Festival, and I will manage to go into the Post Office without being seen. You must know how difficult it is for me here.
When I found your message in the book and read that you adored me and would come back some day and claim me for your wife, I just cried with happiness. So do please, please, dear Eric, write to me at once so that I can get it at the Bowral Post Office.
Reluctantly Bony burnt the letter, and in the envelope enclosed a note for Superintendent Casement.
Chapter Fifteen
A Recruit for the Rebels
ON THE sun going down beyond the welter of ridges Bony left the tor, and all the way back to the great cave he made sure he hadn’t been tracked by Steve. Both Jack and Brian Kelly were there before him, and all were interested to have his report.
“As you said this morning,” Bony began, “from that tor the stream you walked in can be seen. I wished I had glasses. I saw two men walking up stream about four o’clock. I don’t think they were carrying packs. They halted at the junction of the two streams, and poked about there for twenty minutes. Then they walked down stream again. They’re probably camped some distance down stream.”
“Blast ’em!” snapped Jack, and Bony argued.
“Better behind us than ahead of us. The way ahead is clear, I take it.”
“Yes,” Brian replied for the fat man.
“Then why worry? There’s no one to interfere with delivery to Mister O’Grady. On the way back we’ll have those fellers ahead of us, and if we can’t pass them we’ll have to slip round them. No difficulty there.”
“No dice, Nat. We don’t go back this way,” declared Jack, and Steve agreed with him.
“Not with the back loading we’ll have,” interjected Brian.
“There’ll be no back loading either,” Jack asserted.
“What’s wrong with the back loading? Dynamite?”
“No, Nat. Only sugar,” replied Brian, and Steve, who was grilling steaks, quietly cut in with:
“We don’t take the back loading. Now, let’s eat and get on with the job in hand.”
Sugar! Sugar is used in the distillation of spirits, and because of the risk that Mike Conway might be stopped and his truck searched, sugar had to be smuggled in by the back way, to supplement the small surplus above ordinary community use. And so by the story about the two men camped on the stream, Bony had hindered the trade in Mountain Dew, and hoped to learn of another track over these mountains between Cork Valley and O’Grady.
“Mike tell you we were to meet O’Grady with his truck?”
“Yes, and that I am to get his receipt for the forward loading and give ours for the back loading,” replied Bony in answer to Jack’s question.
“Well, gettin’ chased by those two fellers makes us take on another plan. We don’t deliver to O’Grady’s truck, but to a barn he’s got at the back of his farm. The track’s clear, and I seen O’Grady today and arranged it. Takes more time, but that can’t be helped. Get that?”
“Of course.”
“At the place we’ll tell you about, we’ll bypass Brian and the dogs. He’ll stay there until we leave the barn, and then he’ll be ahead of us on the way back. How’s that?”
“Good as far as it goes,” replied Bony. “But when I’m on this job I’m having a scout behind me as well as in front.”
“Argue that out with Red, Nat.”
“No trouble, Jack,” Bony airily assured him. “Now about that sugar we take back.”
The little fat man laughed outright, saying to the others:
“Ain’t he a beaut? He should of been a pirate, eh? He’s born to it, ain’t he?” Then to Bony: “Nat, me bhoy, you does just what you’re told, and me and Steve is telling you. O’Grady will be tellin’ you, too. And he has the sugar. Don’t be worrying so. We’ll have some back loading. And with that, we go home by another track.”
“All right, but don’t say I was nervous about handling a few bags of sugar for the kids at the valley.”
That raised another chuckle from Jack, and Steve laughed in his dry manner.
It was dusk when they left the great cave, with Brian and the dogs again well in the lead. This evening the fog was absent, and all the slopes were lustrous green at the base and purple velvet at the summit. When night came the slopes were discernible only by their emptiness of star points.
A dog stopped them after something more than an hour, and Jack’s torch showed a green rag tied to its collar. As hitherto, when the rag was removed the dog at once loped away to follow Brian Kelly. Another hour followed and then they came out on to what was obviously a shelf overlooking the coast lowlands. Jack said this was where they would spell the horses for half an hour. He said, too, that the lights far away to the left were those of Kiama, and that the glow in the sky to the south marked Nowra, a moderate sized town.
“We’ll come back from O’Grady’s as far as this place,” he explained. “We’ll go direct inland, which is why Brian will wait here instead of going with us to the barn.”
They lapsed into silence, and when Bony was beginning to wonder when they would go on, as Jack’s half hour was nearing a full hour, he detected a faint sound and saw a shadowy figure just beyond the temporary camp. It was silhouetted by the glow of Nowra’s lights, and he knew it wasn’t Brian Kelly.
Silently he stood, and silently he advanced to the figure. It came on stealthily, failed to see him, and then was seized and held by an arm lock.
“Damn you, let me go!”
“Ah! So it’s a woman. Now who are you?” demanded Bony, and Jack chuckled and answered for her.
“She’s our Bessie O’Grady, Nat. Let her be.”
Bessie was almost as tall as Bony, and certainly capable. Releasing her he was only just in time to avoid a blow at his face and would not have escaped if Nowra’s kindly sky-glow hadn’t revealed her raised arm.
“Now now! No offence meant,” he chided. “No one told me you were expected. Now don’t be rough. I’m apologising.”
“Damn you, you nearly broke my arm,” the girl hissed, for it wasn’t the time or place to shout. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“He’s Nat Bonnay,” Jack again replied for Bony. “Cork Valley bloke. I told your dad about him when I was over.”
“Didn’t tell me about him. All right, you Nat Bonnay. I’ll let up this time, but don’t you ever grab me no more.”
“Not without invitation, Bessie,” Bony said.
“It’ll be a long time before you get that. Well, do we stay all night?”
The pack train moved off with Bony and the girl and Jack in the lead. They skirted a cliff and then descended by a gully to an invisible track which twisted and turned interminably. Wondering why the girl had met them at a spot far outside the boundary of her father’s farm, he probed.
“I’ve to take you in by a new track,” she told him. “Dad ain’t so good in the dark. His eyes are going on him. How old are you, Nat?”
“Old!” The question startled him. “Well, now, I could be thirty and I could be fifty. It depends.”
“Married?”
“My eyes see only Rosalie.”
“Oh!” Bessie said nothing more for five minutes. She gained Bony’s admiration for her sure-footedness and supreme confidence in the darkness.
“Might be hard to get, Nat.”
“Only teasing. I wouldn’t have a chance.”
“I’ll tell you my opinion when I see you in the light.”
First it was soft ground, then it was rock, and presently it became shingle indicating to Bony that they were following the dry bed of a stream. He asked:
“Are you married?”
“No. But I’m going to be.”
“Who’s the feller?” questioned Jack. “Can’t be me. Or is it?”
“What d’you think? I’ll tell you who, so you won’t have no disappointments. It’s Brian Kelly. He doesn’t know it yet, but he will in proper time. He thinks he’s catching up on Rosalie, but me and Rosalie are planning it different.”
“You’re great friends?” pressed Bony, still undecided what to do about the mission entrusted to him.
“Rosalie’s the only friend I’ve got, exceptin’ Dad. I’d do anything for Rosalie, anything. I’d kill that Brian Kelly, or anyone else who crossed her up. So you take care, Nat.”
They came to a gate, which Bessie opened and stayed to shut after the train. When it was apparent that Jack knew the track from here on and the girl must be walking with Steve, Bony put another question, this time to Jack.
“Plenty of fire, eh?”
“Plenty,” agreed Jack. “Wild like these mountains when it storms. Do anything a man can do, and sometimes more. Her mother got burnt in a forest fire, so she’s the boss, even over her old man, and he’s tough enough to fill his pipe with pine needles. If she does get Brian she’ll take the steam out of him. If you don’t believe it, say a word agin Rosalie.”
“I wouldn’t risk it,” Bony said. “That Bessie’s made of wire rope.”
A minute or so later, there grew against the stars the shape of a building unmarked by lights, and Jack proceeded direct to it and in through a wide and high doorway. After the entry of the last horse and the rearguard, heavy doors thudded shut.
A match scraped to flame and a pressure lamp plopped and burned to steady radiance revealing a man, tall and gaunt, with a thatch of iron grey hair and dark eyes in a rugged face. He held the lamp high to bring to reality the heated horses and their loads, Steve and Jack, and the girl Bessie. He said, with a slight brogue:
“No more troubles?”
“Nat, here, saw those men walking up and down Sandy Creek before sundown,” replied Jack. “Still lookin’. I told you how Nat bluffed ’em, Tim.”
“You did so,” O’Grady advanced to hold the lamp closer to Bony. “Glad to meet you, Nat. We like a man with a fast mind. Trust Mike Conway to choose well.”
“Yes, Dad, Mike didn’t choose too bad, did he?”
Beside the man’s face appeared the oval face of his daughter. Her large brown eyes balanced out the complexion ruined by sun and wind, and admitted to the balance, the mass of brown hair tied in a pony tail. Her eyes studied the new man, studied every feature of the brown face. She was wearing a short reefer coat, buttoned tightly, dungaree trousers and well worn, elastic sided boots.
“I’m glad I pass,” Bony said, smilingly, his gaze moving from her to O’Grady, and back again. “I apologise again for manhandling you.”
“Ah, how was that?” asked O’Grady.
Bessie told about her reception at the night camp on the ledge, and O’Grady laughed quietly, and repeated his preference for a man who can think quickly. Then he broke into swift action.
“All right, bhoys. Down below with the merchandise.”
He gave the lamp to Bessie and took a spade and cleared the floor covering of dry earth from a trap door, and Steve and Jack began unloading the packs. Bessie slipped down into the cellar and there lit another lamp, and when she came up and found Bony unslinging sack-protected liquor containers, she urged him to stop and sit with her on an empty case.
“They can manage,” she said. “Talk to me. I want to know about you.”
He related sketchily his assumed history, watching her verymuch-alive face and eyes alternatively with the men lowering the containers down the cellar steps to O’Grady. She wanted to know how he had bluffed the bushwalkers with boulders and then she asked about Rosalie, and that he was to tell Rosalie how much she was looking forward to seeing her at the festival. It was now that Bony made his decision.
“You told me you’d do anything for her. True?”
“Of course. Did she...”
“She wants you to do something for her now.” Two fingers touched his lips to warn her. “She has a boy friend in Sydney. She wants you to post a letter for her, secretly.”
Nodding assent, she, too, watched Steve and Jack at work, and the letter slipped swiftly into her pocket.
“That will be okay, Nat. Tell her so.” Her eyes were shining with excitement. “Did she say who he is? Is she happy, real and true?”
“No to your first question. I think yes to the second. How long is it since you saw her?”
“At Christmas it was. We were over there for Christmas night.” The brown eyes narrowed with introspection. “I think I can guess. I remember now Rosalie was a little bit different. Yes, I think I know who it could be. There was a man staying over at the Conways. I heard about him, but she didn’t say a word to me. They found him knocking bits off the rocks near their waterfall. He was a teacher or something.”
“Did you hear his name?”
“Yes. It was Hillier, Eric Hillier.” Bessie was smiling. “I wonder! Perhaps it was after he went away that Rosalie fell in love, and wasn’t sure enough to tell me at Christmas. If you get the chance, Nat, you tell her my guess. Say I guess before I see who the letter’s for.” The stowing of the containers being completed, O’Grady was ascending the steps, and Bessie laughed and exclaimed: “What a trick, Nat! Those men didn’t like those boulders falling on them, I bet.”
She chatted and teased as the horses were loaded with bags of cattle cake, and finally Bony produced his delivery note and had O’Grady sign the receipt. He said then he had to sign for the back loading, and insisted when O’Grady and Jack both said that was not now necessary.
“Well, that finishes it,” O’Grady announced. “You tell Mike and the others we’ll be over at the festival. Tell Mate Conway we’re looking forward to her pasties, and tell Red we hope he’s got a lot of that special dandelion wine left.”
“And tell Rosalie from me that I’m counting the days,” added Bessie.
The lamps were extinguished and the doors opened to permit the smugglers to leave in the dark. The girl accompanied them to the gate from where the return track was known to Jack. She squeezed Bony’s arm, and sent by Jack her ‘love’ to Brian Kelly, and as they departed Bony heard her closing the farm gate.
Right now Bony was pleased with himself. His ambushing sustained his vanity and fed a life-long spirit of rebellion against authority. He felt he was in the position of the trusted scientist being investigated by security. He felt like a spy being spied upon. It wasn’t so, of course, but this was how the presence of other investigators into matters on which he was assigned now affected him. No man likes his ability to be questioned, his reputation to be disputed; therefore those alleged bushwalkers, or others of the police or the Customs Department opposed to him, were rather more than competitors.
This had been the underlying motive for his action of ambushing, preserving his territory against intruding strangers. However, he had, by so doing, strengthened his position with the men of Cork Valley and further strengthened it by the assumed indignation of the carelessness of leaving horse tracks, and the temerity which dictated the back loading of cattle-feed instead of sugar for the distillation of Mountain Dew.
He had reported seeing those bushwalkers late the previous afternoon, when they were probably miles from the valley of shallow streams, intending to add to his fellows’ difficulties and gain not a little by surmounting them himself. All this contributed to the satisfaction he now felt. Having been assigned to investigate homicide, homicide would be entirely his concern, and s
muggling merely a step or two towards finding the murderer of Eric Torby.
It was perhaps the dark night, the rough going, the spice of adventure which controlled Bony this night. Had it been broad daylight, and his associates policemen, the reactions of Inspector Bonaparte might have been very different.
Anyway, he liked the men of Cork Valley. They were a kindly lot. Moreover, as himself, they were born natural rebels. An Australian Prime Minister once said: “You can do anything you like as long as its legal.” So you can raise your own salary and increase the perks, if you make it legal. Legality is King; Morality is like ‘Monopoly’, a game for a quiet evening.
Some time about midnight Brian Kelly and his dogs appeared to report all quiet ahead. They off-loaded and fed the horses, made a fire and camped until daylight, and when Bony awoke he found himself amid great boulders lying under the vast balcony of bulging rock at the foot of a mountain.
They were in a narrow gorge, and water music played to the new day. He took towel and soap to the racing stream, and was captivated by the beauty of the towering walls of grey and brown ‘bricks’ of which they were built. The air was crisp and distance was dwarfed, and on the narrow grass banks of the stream rabbits fed and two deer grazed. The deer fled when he approached, but the rabbits merely ambled a short distance away and regarded him with mild curiosity.
Jack was the next man to ease himself from his blankets. He proceeded to halter the horses and, with three on each side, led them from among the boulders to the stream where he found Bony madly splashing about and entirely naked.
“You gone wonky?” he asked with spurious nonchalance.
“Not yet, but I will if I can’t scoop out some fish for breakfast,” replied Bony. “Enough fish in this stream to feed Cork Valley. Stand back. Here’s some more. They’re half-pounders at least.”
“You keep going, Nat,” Jack encouraged him, and took the horses down stream. Brian appeared; when he saw two fish flapping on the grass, he ran up stream and flung off his clothes, then splashed and beat the water down towards Bony.
Bony and the Kelly Gang Page 11