Do You Dare? The Last Horse Race

by James Moloney

  ‘He’s grown two inches, at least,’ said Robert.

  They didn’t hug, like girls might have done, and they didn’t shake hands like men. As soon as Sprout jumped across the mud they were on the move and talking about a hundred things at once. Toby led the way up the sloping track and into the main street. There, he stopped for a moment and said, ‘We’re a gang again!’ The others nodded, knowing what he meant – two people didn’t seem enough for a gang, but three . . .

  ‘There are more houses being built, I see,’ Sprout noted. ‘Some things don’t change, though.’ Two men were fighting outside Bow’s Hotel, or they would have been if either had been sober enough to land a punch.

  ‘They’ll be friends again by nightfall,’ said Toby.

  They watched the brawl until a constable broke up the fun.

  ‘My family has an account at the general store, now. They might have toffee,’ said Sprout.

  He led the way across the street, but at the door of the store, Robert held back. ‘I saw my mother inside. If she sees me with you, Toby . . .’ He slipped out to wait in the street.

  Toby and Sprout took their place at the counter while the storekeeper served Mrs Poole. When the woman turned to glance at them, Toby realised it wasn’t Robert’s mother after all.

  ‘I’ll get him from outside,’ he said, but when he emerged into the street, he quickly forgot about toffee and the excitement of Sprout’s return.

  Robert stood with his back pressed against the wall of the old convict barracks. Five feet in front of him, a dog eyeballed him with menace.

  ‘Help me, Toby.’

  The dog was grey with flecks of black, and strong in the shoulders – not a big animal but big enough. Its lips were drawn back, revealing savage teeth, while a low growl rumbled in its throat.

  ‘Stare at its eyes, Bob. Don’t look away for a moment. Just back slowly towards me.’

  ‘I can’t, Toby. My feet won’t move,’ Robert whimpered.

  Toby sensed Sprout at his shoulder.

  ‘Whose dog is it?’ Sprout whispered.

  ‘Never seen it before,’ Toby replied.

  But someone had, it seemed, because a figure disappeared into Bow’s Hotel and shortly after, a man swaggered into the street, heading towards them in no particular hurry. Something about that swagger seemed familiar to Toby, but for now he had other things on his mind.

  ‘Who’s upset my dog, then?’ the man called, although the half-smile on his face showed he knew exactly what was going on.

  ‘Call him off,’ said Sprout.

  ‘Come behind, you mongrel,’ the man called in a growl of his own and immediately the animal backed away. When the dog came to him, the stranger kicked at it half-heartedly and ordered it across the street.

  ‘What did you do to him?’ the man said curtly to Robert.

  Poor Robert spluttered, barely able to form the words. ‘N-Nothing . . . I just . . . the dog came at me.’

  But the dog’s owner didn’t care. He sniffed in contempt and turned to head back to the hotel. He’d taken two steps when he swivelled on his heels and stared back at Toby. Seconds passed, as though his memories needed time. At last, he asked, ‘Where’s your mother, boy?’

  Just as the man spoke, Toby remembered him. He had been an assigned convict on another farm near Parramatta. What was his name? Even without a name, Toby remembered enough to wince. Whenever the man had visited their farm on business for his boss, he’d looked at Toby’s mother the way a snake looks at a mouse.

  When Toby didn’t reply, the sneer returned to the man’s face. ‘Pretending you don’t know me, is that it? That’s the sensible thing, considering. But I remember your face, even if you’re older now. Let me see . . . must be three years ago.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve lived here all my life.’

  At this, the mean-spirited visitor laughed out loud. ‘Have it your way, then, but give my regards to your pretty mother.’

  Then he walked back towards the hotel, leaving the boys in a silent half-circle.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Robert.

  ‘I haven’t got a clue.’

  ‘But he’s seen you before. He knows your mother is pretty.’

  ‘That’s just a saying,’ snapped Toby. He was waiting for Robert to mention the lie he’d told. He hadn’t lived in Moreton Bay all his life, but if his friend had noticed, he didn’t mention it.

  This was why he had watched for new arrivals at Queen’s Wharf all those times. Toby ransacked his memory for the man’s name but nothing came to him.

  Then, from the most unexpected source, he heard it.

  ‘Beckman,’ said Sprout. ‘His name is Reg Beckman. He turned up on the Downs last year, droving a mob of sheep from down south for one of our neighbours. He works as a shepherd now for whoever will pay him. He’s got a good horse.’

  ‘Is he a convict?’ Robert asked.

  ‘He was,’ said Sprout. ‘He’s a Ticket of Leave man now. He showed the paper to my father when he came looking for work.’

  A Ticket of Leave, thought Toby. The lucky devil. That precious piece of paper was something his mother didn’t have and if the police found out, she would go back to prison. Toby’s life would change, too, and he would lose the two friends standing right there in front of him.

  ‘I bought the toffee,’ said Sprout, when Reg Beckman had disappeared inside Bow’s Hotel.

  He held out a paper bag and invited each of the boys to fish about inside with his hand. Toby’s came out holding a glassy brown lump that glistened in the sunlight.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Robert, who didn’t waste any time licking at his own piece of toffee.

  On any other day, Toby would have made even louder noises. Sweet things were a treat he rarely got to enjoy. But today, even though he could taste the sweetness on his tongue, he couldn’t enjoy it – not while Beckman watched him from the hotel’s window across the street. A mongrel, just like his dog, he was waiting to follow Toby and find out where they lived.

  ‘You’re not saying much, Toby,’ said Sprout. ‘I thought you’d be asking for a ride on Lottie by now.’

  ‘Oh . . . er . . . yes. I do want to ride her again,’ Toby said lamely. His lack of enthusiasm made Sprout stare at him in disappointment.

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Toby had been waiting for Sprout to return. There was so much to tell him – how confident he was getting and his first try at a jump and the fall and getting back on because Stan made him do it. He’d been so eager to show Sprout what he could do and now that fun had been stolen from him.

  ‘Look, there’s your mum, Toby,’ said Robert between noisy slurps at the toffee.

  ‘Oh no!’ Toby quickly dumped his toffee into Sprout’s hands and took off down the street. His mother was heading for the general store with a basket in her hand. Beckman would see her for sure.

  Only moments after Toby reached his mother, he heard a voice from behind him. ‘Well, well. The people you meet on the edge of nowhere.’

  His mother couldn’t keep the shock from her face. When Toby turned he found Beckman smirking at the fear his sudden appearance had caused.

  ‘No one here knows you’re an absconder, do they? I can tell by the look on your pretty face.’

  ‘Yes, all right, no one knows our secret. But Toby and I are happy here, Reg. Dr Ballow will gladly vouch for my good name. There’s no call for you to turn me in.’

  Beckman sniffed as he’d done when Robert tried to explain how the dog had bailed him up. ‘I earned my Ticket of Leave. You should have done the same instead of running off.’

  ‘Tell him about your boss,’ Toby urged his mother. ‘He was cruel to you. He was going to send me away.’

  Mrs Thompson turned to him, her face drawn with sadness. ‘It would make no difference, Toby. This man is cut from the same cloth as my old boss.’ She switched her gaze to Beckman and said in a voice that dripped with disgust, ‘What do you want from me, Reg
?’

  He seemed stung by her change of tone, as though he was offended that she wouldn’t play the game in the way he enjoyed. Beckman wanted her to go on begging for sympathy, but now her voice had become hard, showing that she was a match for him, and he didn’t like that.

  He stayed quiet for five long, torturous seconds while Toby watched the menace building in his eyes. When Beckman’s face slowly widened into a smile, Toby stiffened. Whatever he was about to say would be terrible.

  ‘You know, I could do with a wife to cook and clean for me up there on the Downs.’

  Beckman’s words hung in the air like a putrid stench. But it was what he didn’t say that turned Toby’s stomach – he could force Toby’s mum to marry him as the price for keeping her secret.

  ‘No,’ said Toby, even though he didn’t intend to make any sound at all. The word just flowed out of him as a low sigh of despair.

  Rather than prompt more begging from Mrs Thompson, though, Beckman’s taunting words stirred the anger of a lioness.

  ‘I already have a suitor, Reg. He’s a better man than you by a hundred miles and he’s not an ex-lag, either.’

  Beckman replied with a fury of his own, ‘You’re still a lag too, remember. Will your beau want to marry you when he knows what you really are?’

  Toby saw the new danger. Beckman didn’t have to go to the police to hurt them, he need only tell Harry Kelso. He looked towards his mother and saw she had realised the same thing.

  How would Harry take the news? He was a good man and he hadn’t been bothered by the truth about Toby’s birth. But he was respectable, too, and no man wanted a wife who might bring him shame. Who would want to be pointed out in the street as the fool who married a runaway convict? And Beckman would spread the news. They could count on that.

  ‘You’re a heartless man, Reg Beckman,’ Mrs Thompson shouted in his face. Heads turned their way to find the angry voice, so in a lower tone she delivered her damning answer, ‘I’d rather go back to prison than spend a day as your wife.’

  ‘You’ll do as I say or you’ll live your life in misery, and your boy, too – believe me, he won’t be spared. I’ll claim him as mine, and who can say otherwise, except you. No one will hear you shout the truth from a prison cell, will they? Should work out well for me, really. I could do with an extra hand watching the sheep.’

  Beckman had managed to control his voice, but to anyone who’d turned to watch, the pair were in the middle of an angry argument. From among the onlookers, a constable appeared. He was coming their way. He wasn’t the only one; behind him Sprout and Robert had crept close enough to hear.

  The constable looked Beckman up and down. ‘Is everything all right, Mrs Thompson?’

  ‘Is that your name? I was sure I remembered a different one,’ said Beckman, with a laugh.

  Toby felt a knot tighten in his stomach.

  The constable’s eyebrows shot upwards but he didn’t ask Beckman what he meant. He was waiting for Toby’s mother to answer the question.

  There was nothing she could do. Beckman hadn’t attacked them. Everything he’d said was veiled in hints and hidden behind the smirk on his face. And if she complained, Beckman need only tell the constable that he’d come across an escaped convict and then Toby’s mother would have to explain herself. Toby could hardly breathe. How could his mother’s fate lie in the hands of a man as vicious as his dog?

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about here, Constable,’ said Beckman in a voice suddenly calm and reasonable. ‘I knew this lady years ago and simply wished to speak with her. She has misunderstood my intentions. Isn’t that right, Mrs . . . What are you calling yourself these days?’

  ‘My name is Thompson and you have no business suggesting it is anything else,’ she said defiantly. ‘Isn’t that right, Toby?’ she added, drawing him in close.

  Beckman couldn’t resist the double game he was playing. ‘If you insist,’ he said mildly, then winked at the constable, who couldn’t keep the suspicion from his face. All the same, he sided with Toby’s mother because he didn’t know Beckman from the devil himself.

  ‘Perhaps you’d return to the hotel and let Mrs Thompson go on her way,’ said the constable. ‘And keep an eye on that dog of yours. He’s been causing trouble, I hear.’

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ said Beckman, making an insincere bow as he backed off. His last glance before turning away went to Toby’s mother. In that brief look, Toby saw the smirk of a bully who knows he has the upper hand. You haven’t seen the last of me, it said. Beckman would take his time getting what he wanted and he’d enjoy their slow agony as he did.

  Toby’s mother set off, back the way she’d come. Already she was crying. Toby wanted to comfort her, but before he joined her, he saw his two friends waiting expectantly.

  ‘So he does know you. And your mother, too,’ said Robert.

  ‘Yes. From years ago. Please, Bob, don’t ask me any more.’

  ‘Beckman is trouble, though, isn’t he? Can we help, Toby?’ Sprout added gently.

  Toby couldn’t think of a single way they could, but he felt relieved that Sprout had asked. He and his mother weren’t entirely alone and somehow that put the faintest spring in his step as he hurried to his mother’s side.

  Toby stayed with his mother through the rest of that day and for half of the next, expecting Beckman, who only had to ask at the hotel to find out where they lived.

  ‘Where is he?’ Toby growled through gritted teeth when the man hadn’t appeared by noon on the second day.

  ‘Don’t be in such a hurry to wish him upon us, Toby,’ his mother warned.

  ‘Yes, but taking his time like this is an extra torture, don’t you think?’

  ‘I think he’ll come spitting his poison when it suits him,’ was all she’d say.

  Toby paced back and forth between the rows of beans behind the kitchen for another half hour and then jumped the fence. He was heading for the main street, for Bow’s Hotel in particular. When he poked his head through the door as he had done many times, there was no sign of Beckman.

  He went in search of Sprout and Robert to help him look, but they proved just as elusive. He finally found them both on the south side of the river. He found Beckman, there, too.

  ‘He’s been sleeping it off in his tent since they dragged him home this morning,’ said Sprout. ‘He’ll be like that until tomorrow, most likely. Come and have a ride.’

  Toby stood weighing up what he should do. He had to keep an eye on Beckman to protect his mother. Yet the man was dead drunk. He could afford an hour or so, surely. He followed Sprout towards the paddock where Robert had built up enough confidence to walk Lottie on his own.

  ‘Did I tell you I’ve ridden lots of horses since I saw you last?’ said Toby.

  ‘Show us what you can do then.’

  Lottie was the first horse he had ever ridden, so it was no surprise he felt at home straight away. Even so, Toby took his time. If he showed off too eagerly he might come a cropper and he wanted to impress Sprout, not make him hoot with laughter.

  He patted Lottie on the neck and spoke to her, and was delighted when she recognised him with a sway of her head and a playful swish of her tail. Let her know who is in charge, Sprout had instructed on that first fabulous day last year, and Toby used the reins, the stirrups and his knees to do just that.

  ‘All right, Lottie, time to do more than just stroll about like a tortoise.’ He urged her out of a walk, then from a trot into a canter and finally an all-out gallop. He hadn’t been able to ride at this speed very often. Only Stan would let him give Trojan free rein, and even then only for short stretches. It was a thrill to feel a powerful beast beneath him and to see the ground streaking by at such a giddy pace. But best of all was hearing the claps and cheers of his mates.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Sprout when he trotted closer to enjoy their praise.

  It was time to show them even more and Toby had just the trick. He guided Lottie towards the edges of the open pad
dock and carefully examined the bleached trunk of the fallen gum tree he’d spotted. Good – he couldn’t see branches or ant hills or wombat holes. After another circuit of the paddock, he diverted Lottie towards the log and balanced himself perfectly as the horse glided over.

  Sprout didn’t hold back this time. ‘Damn good! Where did you learn to jump?’

  After Toby had dismounted to give Robert another turn, he told Sprout about Stan. ‘He’s the best horseman in the district. I want to be as good as him one day, maybe even get a chance in a race around town.’

  ‘A race!’

  In all the things they had done and talked about, Toby had barely mentioned the races. He told Sprout now.

  ‘Sounds dangerous,’ his friend said.

  ‘If you fall off, maybe,’ Toby admitted.

  ‘No, I mean for the people walking about.’

  Toby shrugged and told him how Old Ted had got in the way one time. ‘But there’s nothing like a horse at full gallop.’

  ‘You said there are fences to jump too?’ said Sprout.

  ‘Yeah, this high,’ and Toby flattened his hand in front of his face to show Sprout the height of the top rails.

  ‘That takes practice. I’ve never tried anything so big.’

  While Robert bounced about on Lottie’s back, laughing to himself now that riding had turned from fear to fun, Sprout and Toby discussed jumping. A wooden box lay abandoned in one corner of the paddock.

  ‘This is about as high as I’ve ever jumped,’ said Sprout.

  Together they dragged it into the open paddock. Toby measured the box against his legs and found it rose above his knees.

  ‘I’ll give it a try.’

  ‘You’re sure? It’s twice as high as that tree trunk,’ said Sprout, looking uneasy.

  ‘Are you worried I’ll go and break my neck?’ Toby asked.

  ‘No, I’m worried Lottie will break her leg. Then Father will break my neck!’

  He helped Toby back into the saddle all the same and told him what do. ‘The higher the jump, the heavier you feel on the horse’s back, especially if you’re not balanced on your legs when she makes the leap.’