The Goldminer's Sister

by Alison Stuart

  He sought another gap in the shutters and squinted. Now he could see Jennings watching the curtain, his big hand wrapped around a tankard, and behind him the child hunched beside the fire.

  Alec crouched and considered his options. He had to draw Jennings out of the house, or he risked the man using the women and the child as hostages but he had no weapon. One unarmed man against an experienced criminal with a rifle. The odds were not good.

  He returned to Tehan’s horse to see if the man carried anything useful. He found a length of rope and a small axe. Neither of these objects surprised him; trees blew down across the tracks on a regular basis and they would be useful in clearing the track. He cast around in the bush and found a solid branch. Neither an axe nor a branch was much use against a rifle but Alec had the element of surprise and he intended to use it.

  He tucked the axe into his belt, walked down to the creek and collected a handful of pebbles. With his heart in his mouth, he came within a couple of yards of the hut and threw the pebbles at the door before making a bolt for the side of the house.

  He heard Jennings bellow and the front door crashed open. Alec strained his ears, waiting to see which way the man would go and thanked the gods that his first instinct was to turn right, in Alec’s direction. As Jennings rounded the corner, Alec brought the heavy branch crashing down. He aimed for the man’s head but at the last second, Jennings twisted away and the branch caught his shoulder. It was enough force for the rifle to drop to the ground and Alec kicked it away as Jennings roared, coming for him with all the fury of a man who would stab a dog to death.

  Alec had the advantage of height but Jennings had brute strength. The force of the onslaught sent Alec crashing back against the house and onto the ground. The man’s fingers locked on his throat, his face a snarling, rabid mask. Alec pushed back, keeping the man at arm’s length while trying to break the grip on his throat.

  The world began to blur and he felt himself losing strength. Shadows danced into his peripheral vision.

  ‘You bastard!’ a woman screamed and something large and heavy swung down on the back of Jennings’s head.

  The bearded man went limp, collapsing on to Alec in a sweating, stinking heap.

  Alec caught his breath and looked up to see Eliza standing over the miner, a shotgun in her hand and her eyes blazing. Hell hath no fury …

  Eliza waited, letting Alec McLeod extract himself from beneath the unconscious man. He rested on his hands and knees, catching his breath, but Eliza’s eyes were only for Jennings. The man was down and as far as she cared, he could stay down forever. He had raped Annie, he had threatened to rape her—he had probably killed Will.

  She raised the shotgun, pointing the barrel at Jennings. If it had been loaded, she would have fired, but Alec found his feet and caught her arm.

  He shook his head. ‘Enough, Eliza.’

  She let him take the shotgun from her. Alec had a rope and, putting one knee on Jennings’s back, he bound the man’s hands tightly and dragged him over to the nearest tree where he wound the last of the rope around Jennings’s chest. Eliza watched him, her hands balling at her sides as she tried to still the red beast that still roared inside her.

  Her fear and hatred of the bearded man had awakened something that frightened her. She had wanted to kill Jennings, wanted to beat him until he was a pulp, fire both barrels of the shotgun.

  Alec returned and picked up Jennings’s rifle, cracking it open. Satisfied that it contained a charge he closed it again and cocked it, taking aim at the burly miner who groaned and looked up at Alec with unfocussed eyes.

  ‘Does your head hurt?’ Alec asked.

  For an answer Jennings spat in his direction.

  ‘Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you here and now,’ Alec said, bringing the rifle up to his shoulder.

  ‘Because you ain’t the sort,’ Jennings said. ‘Bloody man of honour, you.’

  Alec took a deep breath and lowered the weapon. He looked up at the sky. ‘I think it’s going to rain,’ he said. ‘Let that cool your temper, Jennings.’

  A cry of distress from Charlie made Eliza turn. The child knelt by the body of her beloved dog, cradling its head in her lap.

  ‘I wish you’d killed him,’ the child sobbed.

  Eliza laid a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. ‘That would be wrong,’ she said. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Bernie.’

  Alec squatted beside the child and stroked the dog’s head. ‘We’ll give Bernie a proper funeral,’ he said. ‘He died trying to protect you and your mother and we owe him that.’

  Gulping back sobs, Charlie allowed Eliza to raise her to her feet and lead her back into the hut.

  Annie propped herself up on her elbows, her fevered gaze going from Eliza to Charlie. ‘What happened? Did I hear McLeod?’

  ‘It’s all right, Annie, Alec McLeod managed to overcome Jennings,’ Eliza said.

  ‘Did he kill the bastard?”

  ‘No, but he’s not going anywhere. You’re safe, Annie.’

  Annie let her head fall back on the pillow, tears streaming from her eyes. ‘I can pick ’em, Miss Penrose. I can really pick ’em. Thought Jennings was properly sweet on me, until he …’ Her words were lost in another contraction.

  ‘Charlie, stay with your mother. I’m going to talk to McLeod,’ Eliza said.

  She found Alec leaning against a post in the shelter of the verandah, the rifle crooked in his arm and his gaze firmly on Jennings.

  ‘How’s Annie?’

  Eliza shook her head. ‘It’s not going well. She’s losing strength.’

  Alec propped the rifle against the post and came to her, wrapping his arms around her. She curled into him with a sigh.

  ‘I wanted to kill him,’ she said and, her voice muffled by his coat, she told him how Jennings had raped Annie. ‘And you know that given the chance he would have done the same to me.’

  Alec said nothing but held her closer, kissing her hair. Beneath his shirt, the muscles in his shoulder tightened and his breathing quickened.

  He pulled away from her and, holding her at arm’s length, he said, ‘As soon as Tehan gets here I’ll go for Maidment. I’ll see Jennings hang for what he’s done.’

  She let out a long breath and nodded.

  Inside the hut, Annie screamed.

  Charlie came running out. She tugged at Eliza’s sleeve. ‘Ma needs you.’

  Alec released her. ‘I’ll be here,’ he said, taking a seat on one of the benches outside the door, Jennings’s rifle across his lap.

  The afternoon wore on and despite Eliza’s chivvying, Annie hardly had the strength left to ride the contractions. The dark closed in and Eliza set Charlie to light the lanterns and stoke the fire. None of them had eaten all day and Eliza left the bed and stood looking at the contents of Annie’s food safe, easing the cramp in her back. Some dry bread and salted meat seemed to be the only edible items.

  Alec opened the door. ‘Tehan’s back and he’s got the midwife with him.’

  Relief flooded Eliza and she leaned on the table, conscious of her own hunger and exhaustion as Ellen Bushby entered, shaking off a bedraggled cloak. Tehan followed her, taking the cloak and hanging it from a peg by the door where it dripped water onto the earthen floor. The town’s midwife wasted no time in niceties. Her eyes were only for Annie and she went straight to the patient, pulling the curtain behind her.

  Tehan jerked his head at the door. ‘What have you done to Jennings?’

  Alec gave him a brief account and Tehan ran a hand over his eyes.

  ‘I knew I should have damn well locked him up before I left the mine, but I couldn’t find him. What are we going to do with him?’

  Alec glanced at the curtain. ‘Now you’re here, I’ll take Jennings in to the police.’

  Ellen Bushby came out from behind the curtain, her brow furrowed. ‘The baby’s breech. We need the doctor and we need him soon.’

  Tehan frowned. ‘What does that mean?�
��

  ‘Baby’s in the wrong position—feet first. He’s well and truly stuck.’ She paused. ‘I’ll do what I can but she needs a doctor, and even then …’

  Alec sucked in his breath, his hand going to the table as if he needed to steady himself. Eliza looked into his pale, drawn face and remembered his wife and child had died in similar circumstances. It must all be coming back. She took his hand.

  ‘If you’re going back to town, go for the doctor.’

  ‘The doctor, yes …’ He nodded. ‘Give me a hand with Jennings, Tehan.’

  Ellen turned to Eliza. ‘Make yourself useful, Miss Penrose. Tea, please.’

  Eliza set the kettle to boil and watched from the shelter of the verandah as a sodden Jennings was thrown onto the saddle of his horse. The man seemed surprisingly cooperative but he had spent several hours exposed to the elements and the thought of a nice warm gaol cell must have seemed a good alternative.

  With Jennings secured by his hands and feet, Alec turned to Eliza. She raised her hand but he left Tehan holding the horses and ran to her, folding her in his arms. He kissed her gently before reluctantly releasing her and swinging himself into the saddle of the freshest horse. He laid the rifle across the bow of the saddle and Tehan handed him the reins of the horse carrying Jennings. Alec jerked the reins and both horses moved forward. As he rode away, he twisted in the saddle and raised his hand. Eliza’s heart jolted. Whatever the next days held, she and Alec would face them together and to hell with what the town thought.

  Twenty-Nine

  Alec made good time into town and found Constable Prewitt behind the desk at the police station. He saw Jennings incarcerated in irons in one of the cells and went in search of Dr Sims.

  Mustering every shred of courage, Alec turned the horse up the track to the mine where the doctor’s housekeeper advised he would be found. An ominous silence hung over the mine site and the crowd at the gate parted to let him through without a word. In the yard, filthy, exhausted miners gathered in silent knots, watching Alec’s progress. He found the absolute silence worse than the earlier abuse and his instincts prickled. Something had changed in the hours he had been away.

  Osborne Russell appeared at the door to the administration building. ‘We’ve been looking for you,’ he said.

  ‘I’m only here to fetch the doctor. Annie O’Reilly’s in trouble and he’s needed.’

  Russell held up a hand. ‘Step inside for a moment.’

  ‘I don’t have a moment and there is nothing I have to say to Cowper that won’t wait.’

  ‘Please.’

  A man came forward to hold Alec’s horse and Russell ordered the nearest boy to find the doctor.

  A hundred questions boiled over in Alec’s chest as Russell stood aside to admit Alec to the manager’s office. ‘What’s happened? Have they found—are they …?’

  Angus Mackie sat at the table and beside him was Edward Gutteridge, the mine inspector for the Maiden’s Creek goldfields. Sergeant Maidment stood beside the fireplace, poking the fire in the grate with the toe of his boot. Cowper was conspicuous in his absence.

  ‘Where’s Cowper?’ Alec shook his head. ‘A woman is dying, I don’t have time—’

  Russell cleared his throat and said, with a sweeping glance that took in everyone in the room, ‘You are owed an apology, McLeod.’

  ‘Cowper’s gone,’ Mackie said. ‘And certain knowledge has been brought to us that clears your name.’

  Maidment turned around. ‘Eva Trevalyn came to me this morning with notes she had been keeping of conversations with her husband. They corroborated your story. I went up to the house to confront Cowper but I found he had packed his bag and told his housekeeper he was headed for an urgent meeting in Melbourne. He took off on one of Sones’s horses. We’ve alerted the police posts at Buneep, Port Albert and Sale, but no one’s seen him since this morning.’

  Russell straightened. ‘Interestingly Mary Harris had her own story to tell. It would appear she had certain expectations of her relationship with Cowper that have not been realised so she was happy to tell us everything she knew about the theft of the gold from the Shenandoah Mine. Gutteridge here has confirmed the figures for the two mines and it would seem you were right, there has been a systematic theft of gold from Shenandoah.’

  Maidment left his rearrangement of the fire and stepped forward. ‘We are now most concerned with the disappearance of Miss Penrose,’ Maidment said. ‘Mary Harris had no information beyond the suspicion that some sort of struggle took place in her kitchen last night. She found broken crockery.’

  So Mary Harris had been lying.

  ‘Miss Penrose is safe. She was abducted on Cowper’s orders by his man Jennings, who is now, I am relieved to say, in the custody of your constable. She was—’ he couldn’t believe he was saying this, ‘—rescued by Jack Tehan and she’s with Annie O’Reilly. While I would like to talk more, I must get the doctor to Annie.’

  Dr Sims appeared at the door. ‘What’s this about Annie O’Reilly?’

  ‘Ellen Bushby’s with her. She’s been in labour for nearly thirty-six hours and Mrs Bushby tells me the baby is breech. Doctor—’

  Sims nodded. ‘My horse is outside. I’ll go now.’

  Alec moved toward the door, but Russell laid a hand on his sleeve. ‘We need you here, McLeod. There’s been another fall. All the rescuers managed to get out of the way, but the water level is rising and we’re running out of time.’

  Alec ran his hand through his hair as his mind surged with the possibilities. Rising water, lack of oxygen, further falls. Even if Ian and the others had survived the first fall, they may already be too late. Without another word, he turned and ran from the building.

  As he passed the crib room, a woman in the doorway shouted, ‘Get them out, McLeod. You’re their last chance.’

  He turned to acknowledge Eva Trevalyn. She had been joined by three other wives: Ada Morgan, Jenny Tregloan and Janet Marsh. They stood by the door, their arms around each other, and an unfamiliar prickling started in the back of his throat. Everything Eva Trevalyn had done for him would be worth nothing if he could not get to the trapped men. These women would lose their husbands and their children, their fathers. He couldn’t fail them.

  Ducking his head, he entered the main tunnel of the mine. In the brightly lit cavern, groups of rescuers worked in silence.

  At the head of the shaft, the assistant foreman, Williams, confirmed the second collapse and the threat of rising water.

  Alec glanced at the two boilers in the cavern. ‘Stoke up the new boiler,’ he ordered, ‘and open up the steam valves on the engine all the way. We have to get the pumps to maximum.’ He straightened, narrowly avoiding hitting his head. ‘I want as much shoring brought in from wherever you can get it. I’m going below.’

  Below ground the situation was as bad as he had feared: the men were sloshing around in calf-deep water and the second fall of rock had undone whatever they had managed to achieve. The men had been trapped for four days; if they were still alive it would be a miracle.

  ‘We need to keep moving the material from the top part of the fall,’ Alec said to Williams. ‘God willing, there is enough of a void left by the fall to allow someone to get through to the other side.’

  Williams nodded. ‘We were doing well until the second fall.’ He paused, his eyes weary in the mask of dust and dirt. ‘Glad to have you back, Mr McLeod.’

  Ellen Bushby stood and sighed. Her eyes caught Eliza’s and she gave a slight shake of her head. ‘She’s not much strength left,’ she whispered. ‘We can’t wait for the doctor. This baby’s got to come out or they’ll both—’

  She didn’t say the word but it hung between them. Eliza had lost a childhood friend to childbirth, and she had been in the hands of the best doctor and midwife her husband’s money could buy. All Annie had was a midwife, a useless woman and a child.

  Ellen turned back to Annie. ‘Next contraction and I want you to really push,’ she said
. ‘Can you do that for me?’

  Annie nodded and moaned as the contraction came. Later, Eliza had trouble recalling the exact sequence of events that followed. Annie’s screams and Ellen’s shouted orders became a blur. First the legs, then the body and finally with a twist and a final push, a baby … a baby that hung limp and blue in Ellen’s arms.

  Annie struggled to prop herself up on her elbows. ‘Let me see,’ she begged.

  ‘It’s a girl, Annie,’ Ellen said, ‘but she’s not breathing.’

  Annie gave a ragged cry and fell back on the bed. From the other side of the curtain, Charlie began to sob.

  Ellen cut the cord, wrapped the child in a cloth and handed the limp bundle to Eliza. ‘See if you can get some life into the child while I see to Annie.’

  Eliza looked down at the perfect little face of the child who might never be and thought about a wax doll she had owned as a child. ‘What do I do?’

  ‘Try rubbing her,’ Ellen said.

  Eliza laid the baby on the end of the bed and, using the cloth, chafed the tiny body, willing life to return. But the child remained unresponsive.

  ‘Let me.’ Charlie pushed in front of her. She picked the baby up and held her close to her own little body, crooning to her and rocking her.

  ‘Charlie …’ Eliza said, holding out her arms.

  ‘She’s not dead,’ Charlie replied, holding on fiercely. ‘She’s not dead.’ She bent her head to kiss the fragile little face. There was a moment of absolute silence, then came a small sneeze followed by a cough and a high, indignant, fretful wail.

  ‘I told you she wasn’t dead,’ Charlie said.

  Ellen took the baby from the child and unwrapped her, checking fingers and toes while the new baby mewled her protests.

  She laid the child in Annie’s arms. Tears rolled silently down the woman’s cheeks and Eliza marvelled that a woman who had just endured the most horrific labour could look so content, so happy.