Bony gazed at the three weathered faces of these scoundrels. He glanced at the opposite mountain wall, and knew he was no longer a stranger in this land of precipitous slopes and gushing streams, to men who had the courage to defy a bureaucratic State.
Chapter Sixteen
Red Kelly Entertains
THE HOUSE had stood for a hundred and eleven years. Seen from Bony’s potato field it was magnificent; viewed at close quarters it revealed all the years it had stared out over Cork Valley. Unhandsome, cold, vain and aloof, it seemed to enshrine the bitterness of an ancient race without a trace of that people’s laughter to give it colour and warmth.
The great open porch-like entrance probably once had the protection of iron-studded doors, but now the flagged floor bore evidence of being used by poultry and hounds, and the hooks imbedded in the massive stone walls were probably used to tether horses while the master and his hunting guests ate lunch. A door opened inward from the rear wall of the lobby, and this late afternoon Red Kelly led a party of nine men into the great medieval hall of his house.
“Hey, there, Mary,” he shouted, and his voice appeared to float away and hide behind the hanging tapestries, under the great armchairs, beneath the vast central table, large enough to dine a king and his entourage. He was wearing a suit of brown corduroy, and to Bony he fitted wonderfully into this huge background which made Lilliputians of ordinary men. Here, even Brian Kelly was dwarfed.
A woman appeared, large and stout, wearing a white apron over a black dress. She brought a tray loaded with decanters and glasses, and she set her cargo of cut glass on the table. Her expression was wooden, and softened only once when she looked at Brian Kelly. Red’s guests were bidden to be seated.
Other than Bony and Brian, Jack and Steve, there were Mike Conway and Joe, again wearing his voluminous gamekeeper’s coat, and three men, strangers to Bony. The guests were told to serve themselves, and Bony found himself sipping first-class whisky. Habit was strong, and he proceeded to roll his unique cigarettes and make a little pile of them before lighting the first one.
“There was trouble,” stated Red Kelly.
“We took all the ordinary precautions,” stated Brian, and his father said, glaring at his son:
“Quiet, me bhoy. Jack, you tell of it.”
In his imperturbable manner, the rotund man related the incidents of the trip, keeping everything in correct time sequence. He told how Bony had frustrated the bushwalkers; Bony had seen them late the next day at about the same place; the decision to bring back fodder to deliver to Moran, a farmer on the outskirts of Markham, instead of bringing sugar for Cork Valley. On the return, nothing had been seen of the bushwalkers and the decision to take fodder to Moran had been the cause of the delay in reaching Cork Valley again.
When he had finished no one spoke for a full minute, all apparently waiting for Red Kelly to make the next observation. He said:
“Bit o’ bad luck.”
No one offered comment on that. Mike looked across the table at Bony. His expression was vacant, but his dark eyes invited Bony to speak. Bony did.
“That’s what Ned Kelly said before they hanged him.”
Red Kelly’s small blue eyes blazed with anger. His great hands bunched into rock-like fists, and his body crouched as though to spring over the table. He shouted:
“Ned said no such thing.”
“If he didn’t, he must have thought it,” Bony said with unaffected calm. “The mistake Ned Kelly made at Glenrowan was the mistake you made by sending us on the track you did. Ned Kelly’s mistake was to take the police too cheaply. That was your mistake. I don’t understand why the police didn’t catch up with you years ago.”
“There are reasons,” roared Red, standing the better to bring his fists down on the table which met the impact like a slab of granite. “You’re a stranger here. You’re a new chum. You know nothing. You’re nothing but …”
“Break it up, Red,” Conway said when the huge man stopped for breath. “There’s no damage done, and we can learn I hope, to profit by mistakes.”
“We can an’ all,” agreed Red at the top of his voice. “But it’s me as tells you we made no mistake by taking that road. It lies with young Brian. He should have know’d the train was being followed.”
“I did know, and when I did, I sent word to Jack and the others. So what are you yelping about?”
“And now ’tis me own flesh and blood that’s cheeking me. By the living——”
Red pushed back his chair to topple with a crash on the tiled floor. Brian stood and backed away from the table, and there they glared like a couple of dogs who had been in many a fight with neither gaining the upper hand. Jack and Steve continued stoically to smoke and lower the tide-in-glass. Mike Conway regarded his hands lying idly on the table, and Bony stubbed out a cigarette and lit another. No one spoke until the Kellys sat down.
“Now perhaps Mister Nat Bonnay, ye’ll be kind enough to oblige with your quare views,” sneered Red.
“Someone told me that this Cork Valley back-door trading has been going on for a hundred years,” began Bony, and was stopped by Red who wanted to know who told that lie. Softly and distinctly, Bony said: “Shut up! How the devil do I know who told me? Think I’m a tape recorder? A hundred years ago, fifty years ago, even ten years ago, there weren’t the people in Australia there are today.
“We found trout in one of the streams, and where there’s fish in these mountains, there could be anglers to catch them. Years pass. Times change. If those bushwalkers hadn’t got on to our tracks this trip, then other people might do so on the next trip or the one after. So, from now on we’ll have to have a scout behind us as well as ahead.”
“That’s not tellin’ us anything,” shouted Red.
“True,” agreed Bony. “There’s something else I won’t be telling you, and that is when a pack train leaves a trail deep enough for a blind man to follow with the point of his stick, it’s just childish. Now pipe down. You can roar and yell in a minute. If there is no way over the mountains without leaving horse tracks on soft ground, then something should be done with the horses’ hooves, for no one can give them wings.
“If you have to take a string of horses across soft country; if you have to make the trip before the winter weather is well set in, when it’s cold and bleak and wet enough to keep strangers at their television sets at home; if you have to go on thinking there can’t be strangers in the mountains because there were no strangers a hundred years ago, then you’ll have to ask Nat Bonnay how to carry on back-door trading without getting yourselves jugged. That is telling you something, Red.”
The big Irishman’s red hair seemed to stand up from his head, and his beard to stand out from his face. Splashing whisky into a glass he drank it like water to wash down a pill. His breathing rasped through his nostrils as he fought hard to maintain a degree of control which for him was an achievement.
“Tell us something,” quietly invited Mike Conway, stressing the pronoun.
“I once worked camels on stony country,” Bony said. “As you know, they have rubbery soles which are tough enough on sandy ground but may be cut and split on sharp stones. For those camels, we made leather boots. They saved the camels’ feet, and they wore well. A feller got the idea of robbing a small-town store. He made leather boots for his horse, and to the soles he tacked ordinary iron horseshoes back to front. The horse couldn’t gallop in the shoes, but that didn’t much matter as the robber had plenty of time. Anyway, when the policeman, and the locals with him, found themselves astray, the feller was well home with mum and the kids. Just an example of what can be done.”
“Ned Kelly invented that idea back in year one,” argued Red Kelly.
“Lot to it,” said Steve, and Jack nodded sagely. “Soft leather shoes, made on the floppy side, would stop anyone knowing if we was going or coming. The tops could be laced above the hocks, and put on or taken off in a jiffy.”
“Wouldn’t b
luff anyone,” grumbled Red.
“Bluff most people anyway for an hour or two to give us time to get away,” Jack, said, and Brian nodded agreement, perhaps merely to disagree with his father. “We could go the whole hog and make leather shoes with the horseshoes back to front, like that store robber. Good for you, Nat. Any more bright ideas?”
“Yes, but I’ll keep ’em in the box till wanted. Mightn’t need the shoes. There must be ways of going through the mountains without leaving tracks. Let me prospect, and I’ll find ways.” Bony gambled. “I’ll bet anyone and all of you that I could take the horses to O’Grady and bring back the sugar, all on my ownsome. And start tonight.”
“Be damned if I don’t think you could,” shouted Red. “I’m alterin’ me opinions of you, Nat, me bhoy. ’Tis an idea I’ve had for some toime, about leather shoes for the horses, but I clane forgot about it till you mentioned it just now. An’ you’ll be going for the sugar tonight.”
“Not tonight.”
The clear and soft voice directed all eyes to Mike Conway, abashed Red Kelly into astonishment, caused Joe to look up from studying his fingers. The words were barely important. It was the underlying strength of will revealed by the tones as well as the enunciation.
“You fellows were right not to bring back sugar. We aren’t that short of it. There was a risk, and we don’t operate with a risk. As for taking that particular track to O’Grady’s place, there was nothing wrong with that decision. How those fellows sneaked in behind the train, we don’t know. It could have been accidental, not intentional. We aren’t sure who they are. Nat will not take on the trip to bring back sugar, just to prove he can do it without being questioned. We shall not make further trips until we can be sure, or as sure as possible, there are no risks.”
“But. … But …” exploded Red, and Mike cut him off.
“We are not completely dependent on our back-door trade,” Conway continued, as though addressing a theological class. “Prosperity or starvation isn’t determined by it, as once it was. As Nat pointed out, times have changed. However, we haven’t changed. We are still agin the gov’ment, and to be agin the gov’ment is a good thing, keeping alive in us the spirit of independence and the will never to be subservient to political or bureaucratic pressures. Therefore, we carry on our backdoor trading by taking every precaution to avoid blaming disaster on bad luck.”
One of the strangers nodded his head like a mechanical toy. He drank and his deep upper lip lifted in disdain. Jack nodded with swifter approval of what Mike had said and Brian appeared to be waiting for something expected. Red Kelly emitted a sound akin to a board being wrenched from the floor and tossed whisky down his throat as if to smother another imaginary pill. With vast contempt, he shouted:
“Scotch! Bliddy muck! The Scotchmen never made dinkum whisky after the English conquered ’em.” He rolled away to a wall, lifted a corner of the tapestry, kicked a stone at the base of the wall, when a section swung outward to reveal an enormous cupboard. From the cupboard he snatched a two-gallon demijohn, slammed the stone door shut, and returned to the table. “Let’s have a man’s snort. Pour that canine’s water on the floor, Joe.” He flicked the demijohn to a shoulder with one hand, drew the cork with the other and filled several glasses with the pristine Mountain Dew. Conway, evincing disapproval, said:
“You were closest to those bushwalkers, Nat. D’you think they are the same pair who came down into the valley that day?”
“I wasn’t close enough to be sure, Mike. They were the same build. Give me a week, and I’ll prove it one way or the other.”
“How?” barked Red.
“Tracking them down.”
“You do think a lot of yourself,” sneered Kelly.
“I try to offer helpful suggestions,” Bony again needled. “I don’t run my head against a rock to tell how soft the rock is. I go tracking those strangers, and I run the risk of being recognised by them, and have the police after me. Not much of a risk, but I would take it rather than let a couple of wandering spies stop me in a bit of trading under the lap. This experience we had might make you all polish your brains. If you had had a taste of gaol like me, they’d be polished right now. Like to know what’s wrong with you?”
Red flexed his mighty arms. His beard stood out and his eyes became pinheads of blue. He could have been comical were it not for the menace oozing from him.
“Quiet, Nat,” said Mike. But Bony kept testing the Ned Kelly angle.
“You’ve been living too close. You’ve lost touch with the outside world. You think the police are like those that Ned Kelly made dance all those years ago. I’ve read about Ned. He did have brains, and he kept ’em polished until he lost out at Glenrowan. By that time he was too confident in himself and too contemptuous of the dopes in uniform who were chasing him. And so he took unnecessary risks, had a gay time with the people at the hotel, and was cornered.”
“I’ll have nothing agin Ned Kelly,” roared Red. “I’ll …”
“Ned Kelly had it in him to conquer Australia,” continued Bony. “He could have been King of Australia, but the crown was too heavy for him to lift off the ground. He shouldn’t have got himself muddled with booze. He should have kept his brain clear to keep on thinking with. Like you, Red. Just like you. Only you never had a brain to think with. So shut up and sit down.”
Red swept back his chair. He waved his arms. He expanded his chest, and made the same mistake he had made at the granite wall. He rushed Bony. He was lifted to the ceiling, appeared to twist there, and crashed on his back. Bony sensed the others were standing behind him, and he whirled to meet the attack. Finding them still passive, he waited again for Red, and Red staggered to his feet, pressed both hands to the back of his head and shouted a torrent of threats.
“I’ll mangle you, ye black bastid. I’ll beat you to a pulp like they done Kelso. By the living. …” The others were now shouting to stop him. Conway stood on the table, a glass in one hand, a full decanter of whisky in the other. Red swayed and went on and on, much of it making no sense. He began to circle Bony, as though they were two gladiators. His back was eventually turned to Conway, and Mike stepped down from the table to a chair, from the chair to the floor, and applied the decanter to Red’s head at the place where the floor had hit it.
Slowly Red Kelly turned about. With dimming eyes he saw Mike with the decanter. His shouting stopped, and he laughed. His knees sagged and he slumped into his son’s arms. Mike said, calmly:
“No time for fighting. Let’s have a drink.”
Brian laid his father out, stood up, grinned and said:
“Nice work.”
Bony shook his head as though he had been stunned with the decanter, shrugged despairingly at his failure to understand these Irishmen, and poured a half tot for himself.
Chapter Seventeen
An Important Affair
GRANDMA CONWAY gazed into the heart of the fire. Her dark eyes were introspective, and the expression on her face was saint-like. Only her hands, white and fragile, indicated her thoughts when the fingers of one caressed the fingers of the other. She was oblivious of Mate Conway working over her stove, and of Rosalie who was setting the table, for she was seeing pictures of the great room in Red Kelly’s mansion.
She had been married in that room nearly seventy years ago. She had been there at a dozen wakes. She knew the history of every tapestry, every painting of the Kellys’, the hearth where the end of a tree trunk burnt, the trunk that someone would now and then ‘nudge’ in from outside the house with a crowbar. That room, that great house, was the pride of all the Kellys, and all the Conways, and all the latecomers who had married into the two families. Abruptly the house, the room, the familiar things attached to the years of her life were banished by a voice saying with execrable imitation of the Irish brogue:
“I’ve been after thinkin’ of ye these last two days, Grandma. An’ I’m hoping now all is well with ye.”
Her dark eyes stared
into the bright blue eyes, to examine the newly-shaved face and the sleek black hair brushed straight off the broad forehead.
“ ’Tis a pity you don’t think more about me, Nat, and then ye wouldn’t be fightin’ Red Kelly over there in his own house.”
“There was no fight, Grandma. Besides, Red likes fighting, and a guest owes it to his host to oblige him in every way. Do you remember the time you saw him rise up in the air above the wall?”
“I do, indeed.”
“Well, this afternoon it was the ceiling that stopped him.” The straight line of her mouth melted into a curve at each end. “Just a little trick, you know. Feller gains speed with his legs, lifting himself along. He steps into another feller’s cupped hands, and the hands are raised, and up he goes like the cow that flew over the moon. That’s not fightin’, is it now?”
“I’ve been told all about it, Nat,” Grandma said, trying really hard to straighten the line of her mouth. “What made it bad was that you damaged his ceiling.”
“Oh, now, now! I didn’t touch his ceiling. When Red got up there he put his boot through it. I wasn’t anywhere near him.”
“Quite right. About ten feet under him,” supported Mike. “Besides, Grandma, Nat promised to go over some time and help Red to plaster up the hole.”
The old lady’s eyes flashed. She said:
“I didn’t know about that. You never told me.”
“Then I must have forgotten in the excitement of telling you about the fight. When Red came out of retirement, Nat was sitting on his heels beside him. First thing Red saw was a glass of whisky. Then he saw Nat, and began to get angry again. Nat said: ‘Have a snort. Stop you being giddy.’ Red said he wasn’t giddy. He took the glass and emptied it. He smashed it on the floor, and held it by the bottom to use the splintered part to go for Nat. Then what!”
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