Night Ride into Danger

by Jackie French

  ‘Paw! I . . . I was afraid . . .’ that you might die, he thought. He looked at Juanita. ‘Your . . . sister . . .’ he couldn’t quite manage ‘mother’ ‘. . . she said Paw wasn’t to sit up!’

  ‘How was I supposed to stop him?’ asked Juanita reasonably. ‘Stand on him? He’s not sitting, anyhow. He’s lying down, but he can drink this way and not choke. Do you want a cup of tea too?’

  ‘Yes, please. Where did it come from?’

  ‘India,’ said Juanita.

  Paw winked, his lips twitching in a smile. Despite his obvious pain he almost seemed to be enjoying himself.

  ‘How did the tea get into the pannikin?’ Jem asked patiently.

  ‘From the billy.’

  Juanita grinned at him. ‘Usually people swear at me after two questions. You’re pretty patient. You drive a coach well too.’

  Jem shook his head. ‘It’s an easy bit of road and the team’s worked part of it for a year, at least, and with each other too. Mr Smith could probably have done it, but I didn’t want to tell him that.’

  ‘Do not tell him that,’ said Paw. ‘There’s a lot we need to know about that man.’

  And a lot I can’t tell you till his ship sails, thought Jem. Instead he asked, ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Like someone’s set fire to my leg and the blacksmith is shoeing a horse in my head. I’m sorry, Jem. I should have seen that bit of ice back there. My mind was on other things . . .’

  ‘Like my sister, I suppose,’ said Juanita scornfully. ‘Men are always wanting to marry my sister.’

  Jem waited for Paw to protest. But he just sipped his tea thoughtfully.

  ‘Why isn’t your sister married if so many men have asked her?’ demanded Jem.

  ‘Me,’ said Juanita simply. ‘How can Sis marry a man who thinks she’s twenty-two, when she’s got a daughter twelve years old?’

  ‘There’s also the matter of not being Spanish,’ said Paw quietly. He winced as if the speech hurt his head. Outside Mrs Pickle groaned again, but quietly. Jem could hear the mutter of voices, Lee Chou and Señorita Rodriques. Or whatever her name really was . . .

  ‘Why do you pretend to be Spanish?’ Jem asked.

  ‘Who’d you rather go and see, a genuine Spanish dancer or someone who just dances Spanish?’

  ‘I think it might be more than that,’ said Paw softly from the floor. ‘Wallawaani, Juanita.’

  Juanita stared at Paw with what might be terror. ‘What does that mean?’ she asked, trembling.

  ‘I think you know what wallawaani means,’ said Paw, even more quietly. ‘I used to be on the Moruya–Araluen run, when Jem’s maw was still alive. I learned a few words there.’

  ‘What kinds of words?’ asked Jem, puzzled.

  ‘Native words,’ said Paw.

  Juanita gazed at Paw. ‘Please . . . please don’t say any more,’ she pleaded, glancing at Jem.

  ‘I won’t. But I wish you would. I understand, you see. That’s why Jem’s maw and I came from America.’ Paw gave a smile of love and memory, a smile Jem hadn’t seen for years. ‘Jem’s grandma was a native.’

  CHAPTER 9

  PAW’S SECRET

  ‘You mean Maw was a native? Maw can’t have been a native,’ said Jem, stunned. ‘She was American.’

  ‘America has its own natives,’ said Paw softly.

  ‘But that would make me a . . . a Red Indian. I don’t have red skin. Maw didn’t either!’

  ‘Red Indians aren’t red,’ said Paw wearily. ‘The name comes from the bounty the American government paid for the scalps of dead Indians — their skin and hair cut off. The American natives just have skin a bit darker than mine.’

  ‘But I’m just brown from the sun!’

  ‘That’s what people think here, ’cause they don’t know the look of American natives. But back home too many people would know you were Hidatsa. That’s the name of your gran’s people. When I married your maw my family disowned me. So we came here to start afresh. But she died,’ said Paw, his voice drifting like the moonlight. ‘Died before I could give her a proper home, and a farm and the horses we both loved. But she had you.’

  ‘We . . . we were h-happy,’ stammered Jem.

  ‘We were happy. That’s what mattered,’ said Paw. ‘It was worth it. Even those months of her dying were worth it. I’d give my whole life for those years with her, and now to have you, too.’

  Paw lowered the empty pannikin and shut his eyes. ‘Was going to tell you soon. Just couldn’t find the words for it . . .’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘Paw!’ said Jem softly, taking Paw’s limp hand in his.

  ‘He’s just asleep,’ said Juanita quietly. ‘Best thing for him, Sis says. She put something in his tea to help the pain that will mean he sleeps more, too.’

  Juanita offered Jem the tin again. ‘Have a gingernut. I’ve got pasties, too.’ She rummaged in her carpetbag then held out an oiled cloth.

  Jem unwrapped it and stared at the pasties inside it: bulging half-circles that smelled better than anything he’d eaten for years. ‘How’d you get these?’

  ‘Well, there’s this fairy who lives under the coach seat. She asked me if we’d like some supper . . .’ Juanita stopped at the look on Jem’s face. ‘Sis and I made them at our last lodging house. We’ve been travelling long enough to make sure we have more than bread and chops to eat.’

  Jem bit into a pasty. There was beef, and carrots and turnip and gravy: it was the best thing he’d eaten for years. ‘It’s good.’

  ‘Everything Sis cooks is good. I’m a good cook too,’ she added. ‘But Sis enjoys it. I don’t.’ She gave him a sharp glance. ‘Don’t expect me to call her anything other than Sis. If I did that once I might do it another time.’

  ‘I didn’t know pasties and gingernuts were Spanish,’ said Jem slowly, thinking of Paw’s words. ‘I thought Spanish people ate rice called paella and hams and fried fish. That’s what my encyclopaedia says.’

  ‘I thought you had only got up to G?’

  ‘I look ahead sometimes.’

  ‘Well, Spanish people eat pasties too. And gingernuts,’ said Juanita dismissively.

  Jem took another bite and glanced at her. She obviously wasn’t about to admit anything to him. He settled for, ‘How did you learn how to climb out of a coach window?’

  Juanita’s face relaxed. ‘That was from the Flying Alberto Family. They do an act with ropes and the trapeze. Mrs Alberto taught me to climb real well. She said I might even be good enough to do it on stage one day, or in a circus. But I want our farm.’

  ‘I was scared you were going to fall,’ Jem admitted.

  ‘So was I.’ Juanita took a pasty herself, and began to chew.

  Jem waited till she’d eaten half of it. ‘What was that word Paw said that made you so scared?’

  Juanita glared at him over her pasty. ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘You do.’

  Juanita said nothing for a while. ‘Your dad just told you that you’re part red Indian,’ she said at last, ‘but you don’t seem upset.’

  Jem considered. ‘I can’t really think about it now. Too much has happened tonight. Too much still has to happen. Besides, Red Indians are . . . interesting. Paw and Maw told me stories.’ Jem swallowed another bite of pasty. ‘I suppose that’s why they told me all the stories. All about canoes and how to make a bow and arrows and stories of brave warriors and how there’s a dog that can make a whole people vanish. The only reason I’d mind is other people minding.’

  ‘And other people don’t know. Not in Australia.’

  ‘Except you.’ Jem shook his head. ‘Why did Paw tell you our secret when he hid it even from me all these years?’

  ‘He likes Sis,’ evaded Juanita. ‘And he’s all shook up, too.’

  ‘But he told you, not your . . . your sister! What’s Maw being a native got to do with you? And, anyway, Paw hasn’t said boo to a woman since Maw died.’

  ‘He hasn’t met one like Sis,’ said Juan
ita.

  Jem considered, munching his pasty. Juanita was right. Señorita Rodriques wasn’t like any woman he’d met either, and not just because she was beautiful. She seemed like she could do anything. And she was kind and made the best pasties in the world.

  ‘Like I said, men always fall in love with Sis. But this time I think she likes your dad, too.’

  Jem finished the pasty, then wiped his fingers on his trousers. Maw’s novels had people falling in love at first sight. He supposed it could happen after a coach rolling over, being held at gunpoint by a bushranger, nursing an unconscious man and a baby insisting on being born, too.

  ‘So what was that word Paw said to you?’ he persisted.

  Juanita gazed at him. ‘Can I trust you?’

  ‘If I say “yes” you won’t know if I’m lying or not,’ Jem pointed out.

  Juanita sighed. ‘I shouldn’t have asked. Of course I can trust you. You convinced that man not to leave us behind. You do what you say you’re going to do.’

  ‘And if you tell me a secret I won’t tell anyone. Even Paw.’

  ‘You can tell your dad. Wallawaani — it’s native for something like hello, where Sis and I come from. Sort of welcome, too.’

  ‘Then Paw meant that you’re a native!’ Jem stared at her. Ma Grimsby had told him how the natives down the coast were cannibals. Her brother-in-law’s sister’s husband’s best friend had told him how a man he knew had seen the very place on the Ulladulla heads where a ship had gone aground. Everyone had come ashore safely but the natives had a giant feast and ate every single one of them.

  Ma Grimsby said the natives hunted the cedar cutters down on the south coast. She said the natives killed their babies . . .

  Jem blinked. But if natives killed their babies there wouldn’t be any more natives. And if every single survivor had been eaten, how did anyone know the story? Señorita Rodriques — or whatever her name was — made gingernut biscuits and mutton pasties. He couldn’t imagine her having a cannibal feast. And he liked her — and Juanita — a lot more than he liked Ma Grimsby, who made her mutton stews on Saturdays and just added more potato and water to them for the rest of the week . . .

  ‘I’m a quarter native,’ said Juanita quietly. ‘Just like Sis, because Sis says my dad was quarter native too. I asked her what the other bits of me were, but she said that for most people only the native bits count.’

  ‘You come from Moruya?’

  ‘Sis wouldn’t say. She won’t tell me hardly anything! Just that we come from south of Braidwood. Except I’ve never even been to Braidwood before this week, or not that I can remember. Sis said even going to Braidwood was a risk, but it’s been twelve years since anyone there might have seen her and everyone knows Señorita Rodriques now. No one would recognise her.’

  Except maybe Ma Grimsby, thought Jem. Ma Grimsby who said there was a mystery about one of the passengers.

  But there was a mystery about every one of the passengers. Even Mr and Mrs Pickle had kept Mrs Pickle’s pregnancy a secret, in case the driver didn’t want to risk delaying the mail run for a baby about to be born. But if Ma Grimsby had recognised Señorita Rodriques as . . .

  ‘What’s your real name then?’ asked Jem.

  ‘Janet Jones. I like Juanita better though. Sis is Carmel Jones.’

  ‘And your dad?’

  Juanita looked out the window. ‘His name was Harry Jones. He used to guide timber cutters up into the mountains to show them where the big cedar trees are. That’s all I know about him. The timber cutters get a lot of money for the timber from cedar trees. But one day he took two men out, and they quarrelled and one killed the other, then said my father did it. So they hanged my dad,’ said Juanita simply. ‘No one would believe a native man.’

  Jem stared. ‘I . . . I’m sorry.’

  ‘I wasn’t born till two months after he died. Sis couldn’t get a job with a baby in her arms. She left me with an auntie — but Sis says she wasn’t really my auntie, just called auntie. Sis worked cleaning a theatre. That’s how she picked up the singing and dancing, watching the rehearsals as she cleaned. And then one day the real Señorita Rodriques danced at the theatre, and a rich man fell in love with her, just like they do with Sis. But this rich man owned a ship, and he and Señorita Rodriques sailed away on it, just like that, leaving all her costumes behind, and even some of her old clothes.’

  Juanita smiled. ‘The next theatre that had booked Señorita Rodriques was down in Melbourne. They’d never met the real one. Sis spent all her savings on the coach fare down there. She put on a Spanish shawl and a Spanish accent and no one ever questioned her. She said she was terrified at first. But a cleaner only gets twopence a day, and a Señorita Rodriques can make twenty pounds a week, or even more, depending on how long it takes to get from theatre to theatre and how many shows she gives.’

  ‘When did you start travelling with her?’ asked Jem, fascinated.

  ‘I can’t remember. I must have been tiny, because if I’d turned up not speaking any Spanish people might have guessed. As soon as Sis had enough money she hired a nanny to look after me when she was performing. She told everyone that her poor parents had died and her baby sister was coming to live with her.’

  ‘But what if she meets someone who’s really Spanish?’

  Juanita laughed. ‘We’ve met lots of them! But Sis just taps them on the arm with her fan and says, “We must learn to speak ze English, no?” But the only people we spend a lot of time with are theatre people, or on journeys like this,’ Juanita added. ‘We mostly take the night coaches or night trains, because that way Sis can fit in more performances, so if there’s someone who asks too many questions we pretend to be asleep.’ Juanita smiled at him, slightly shyly. ‘I’ve never talked to anyone my age as long as I’ve talked with you. Even with Mrs Alberto I mostly just talked about ropes and climbing.’

  ‘I’ve never had a friend either,’ Jem admitted. ‘Not since I started travelling with Paw. I just know coaches and posting houses and lodgings. I suppose you just know theatres and lodgings?’

  ‘Pretty much. But once a year we have a holiday at some farm — one where no one is Spanish and they let us use their kitchen too. Those times are wonderful,’ said Juanita simply. ‘Sis and I go walking all day — we wear bonnets and long sleeves because we can’t risk getting tanned — but at night we can sit on the verandah and look at the stars. They’re the only times Sis tells me things, like wallawaani and other words, or about plants and . . . and important things to know.’

  ‘But not where you come from?’

  Juanita shook her head. ‘Sis only told me she was my ma when I turned ten, because I kept asking questions about who our parents were, and where they’d lived. But she won’t tell me any more than that. I just don’t know!’

  ‘I could hazard a guess.’

  Jem started. He hadn’t realised Paw had woken up, much less was listening. Even now he kept his eyes shut. ‘There are lots of native languages in Australia, just like in the United States. If you know the word wallawaani, you come from south coast country, or down Araluen way. I reckon your land’s been taken by squatters and selectors. Only way the natives can stay on their own land is by working for them, being a servant, working for your keep, no wages. A Spanish dancer can earn enough to have a farm of her own.’

  Paw opened his eyes. ‘But no more talk from either of you about men falling in love with Señorita Rodriques,’ he ordered. ‘Show some respect for your elders.’

  Suddenly Mrs Pickle shrieked so loudly just outside the coach that Jem almost slipped off the seat.

  ‘Off with both of you,’ said Paw, shutting his eyes again. ‘Go and check the horses. Jem, a word with you in private, first.’

  Juanita picked up her carpetbag. ‘I think you want us away because Mrs Pickle’s baby is about to be born.’

  ‘I think Mrs Pickle deserves a bit of privacy. If I had two legs that worked I’d join you.’

  Paw waited till Juanita
had grabbed the carpetbag and left then reached up for Jem’s hand. ‘I’m sorry about telling you about your maw like that. There just never seemed the right moment to tell you, then I go blurting it out at the worst of times. Pain and that potion got me saying things I should have kept to myself, maybe.’

  ‘I want to know,’ said Jem.

  ‘And as soon as can be, I’ll tell you. Jem, do you think you can drive the coach from here to Goulburn?’

  ‘Do you think I can?’ asked Jem quietly.

  ‘I think you’ve got the skill, but it’s going to be hard. It’s a good road, and mostly a straight and wide one, and you’re not likely to meet any other traffic till the morning. You know the team, and they know you. Yes, I think you can do it. Just take it slow, and don’t let Mr Smith push you. But he’s seen what happens if a coach gets out of control. Now skedaddle.’ Paw closed his eyes.

  Jem hesitated. ‘Paw . . . do you like Señorita Rodriques?’

  The blue eyes opened again. ‘Would you mind if I did?’

  Jem considered. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Paw nodded, then winced at the movement. ‘She’s a woman in a million, just like your maw. But I’m no more use to a woman like her than a three-legged cat in a dairy full of mice. She and Juanita deserve a man who can give them a good home. I saw your maw wait night after night for me. I won’t ask a woman to do that again.’

  Another shriek came from outside, and a small flood of words in what Jem thought must be Chinese, but that sounded reassuring.

  Paw gave a brief smile. ‘Sounds like someone is preparing to enter the world. Now off with you. And quick.’

  CHAPTER 10

  TALKING TO JUANITA

  The darkness thickened away from the coach’s torches, but the moonlight was bright enough to cast shadows and silver the gum leaves above them. Jem found Juanita patting one of the horses as it bent to chew a frost-brown tussock. Cobb & Co horses didn’t get a chance to graze during their journeys. On other runs, some hardly spent any time in the paddock at all, but were given hay and oats and water in the stable block, then sent out again as soon as they had rested. Horses treated like that hardly lasted a year, Paw said. Jem was glad the horses on this run were better cared for, well bred and perfectly trained and so too valuable for any careless groom to mistreat.