‘Bloody claim jumpers,’ Penrose said with feeling.
‘I’m not sure that’s strictly true. It looks like Hannigan cheated them as he did me—took their money and registered the claim in his name alone. I wonder how he was planning to explain it to them when he got back?’
‘They can’t read, so they’d have no reason to disbelieve him,’ Penrose said. ‘That is, if he intended to come back. He’d got them digging in the wrong place to begin with.’
They rode on in silence.
As Maiden’s Creek came into view, Caleb turned to Penrose.
‘Do you think I’m as big a dupe as the O’Rileys?’
Penrose shrugged. ‘It’s going to take money and hard work for some time before you will know one way or another.’
‘I took a risk and sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn’t,’ Caleb said, adding, ‘I’m going to call it the Shenandoah. The Shenandoah Creek and the Shenandoah Mine.’
‘You can call it whatever you please,’ Penrose said. ‘It’s not going to mean gold will magically appear.’ He paused. ‘Shenandoah has a nice ring to it, though, and now you mention it, isn’t it a song too?’
‘I come from the Shenandoah Valley and it’s a river, quite a bit larger than the creek.’ Caleb smiled, remembering the broad expanse of the beautiful river. ‘But yes, it’s a song too.’
He serenaded Penrose as they turned their horses’ heads down the steep track into Maiden’s Creek.
They stopped at the police station, a solid building with cells built into the hillside behind it. Sergeant Maidment, a cadaverously thin man with bright, shrewd eyes met them at the main desk.
‘This mine of yours is more trouble than it’s worth,’ Maidment said. ‘I know the O’Riley brothers. I’ll go up and have a quiet word with them. Their bark is worse than their bite.’
Caleb and Penrose exchanged a quick glance. ‘Not the impression we got.’
‘They didn’t actually shoot you, did they?’
‘No, but—’
Maidment glanced at the Colt at Caleb’s waist. ‘I consider you may be more dangerous, Hunt. I don’t hold with carrying weapons in this town—people run the risk of getting hurt. I’d thank you to leave it behind in future.’
Caleb drew his jacket over the weapon. ‘Your warning is heeded, sergeant.’
‘On the subject of your friend, Hannigan …’ Maidment pulled a piece of paper from the pigeon holes behind the desk and studied it for a long moment. ‘He was involved in a brawl on the goldfields at Creswick. The constable up there saw him sobered up and sent him on his way. Last seen headed for the Ballarat fields.’
‘Where’s Creswick?’
Maidment crossed to a map of the Colony of Victoria hanging on the wall. He stabbed a finger at an area to the west of Melbourne. ‘If your boy’s out there, it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. If I was you, I’d forget him, Hunt.’
Outside the police station, Caleb cursed. ‘It irks me to let the bastard get away with it.’
‘Chances are he’s sold your equipment. Even if you find him, you’ll get no satisfaction,’ Penrose said.
‘You’re wrong. It would give me a great deal of satisfaction to find him. He wagered a mine claim with no gold and took advantage of my good nature. I don’t generally let that happen to me more than once.’
‘I don’t think I’d like to cross you,’ Penrose said. ‘Let’s go for a drink at Lil’s.’
Twelve
New Year’s Day, 1872
Obedient to the bidding of the Ladies’ Committee, Adelaide had spent the morning at the Mechanics’ Institute, hanging bunting and setting out the trestle tables for the picnic. The Mechanics’ Institute had only been open a year and still smelled of freshly sawn wood. It faced onto a wide crossroads, which today would be closed off for the picnic games. There was a small lending library in the front room and the main hall doubled as a church, an infant school, council chambers and general meeting room.
As she pulled her apron off, ready to return home, Mrs Russell and the ever-present Mrs Jervis, approached her.
‘Thank you for your help, Mrs Greaves. Tell me, will Mr Hunt be attending?’
‘Mr Hunt is a free agent. Whether he attends or not is up to him.’
‘For the sake of the young ladies of the town, I hope he is able to dance.’
‘I very much doubt it,’ Adelaide said. ‘His leg is still bothersome.’
Mrs Russell came closer and lowered her voice. ‘One hopes that he will soon be well enough to make his own way in the town. It does not do a woman of your standing any good to have a single man as a lodger.’
Adelaide bristled. ‘He was injured saving my son. I took him in as any good Christian would do.’
‘Would you have been quite so generous with your Christian hospitality if he had not been so comely?’ Mrs Jervis put in.
Adelaide looked from one to the other. ‘What would you have me do? Leave him in the less than tender care of Mrs Chauncey?’
The Chaunceys ran the Australis Hotel, a rundown establishment that attracted little regular patronage. Mrs Chauncey, who claimed to have been a nurse during the Crimean War, earned extra from boarders and for caring for the injured coming out of the mines. The survival rate of her patients was not high.
Adelaide fixed a smile to her face. ‘I shall be in attendance with my family and friends,’ she said. ‘The passing of last year must be marked.’
Mrs Russell raised her eyebrows. ‘Indeed? Is there some news to impart?’
‘No, but the turn of the year always presents us with a blank slate on which to write, does it not?’
‘It does indeed.’ As Adelaide turned to leave, she added, ‘I do hope Miss Redley will be bringing her cheese pastries.’
‘Of course. She was up at dawn. Good afternoon to you, ladies.’
The sound of the town’s brass band warming up drifted down the road as Adelaide stood on the verandah outside the post office, waiting for her household to make an appearance. She greeted other townspeople, all dressed in their party clothes and heading in the direction of the Mechanics’ Institute.
Caleb limped around the corner from the yard. He was immaculately dressed in one of his bright waistcoats, with a dark cloth tied around his neck. He looked her up and down and smiled. ‘Miss Adelaide, you look like you’re being led to your execution, not a picnic.’
Adelaide managed a smile. ‘I dislike social occasions. Too many people, too much noise.’
‘That’s true, but that’s the fun of it,’ Netty said, slamming the post office door behind herself and Danny. She glowed with excitement and had gone to a great deal of trouble with her appearance, her hair arranged in mouse brown ringlets around her face and tied up with the blue satin ribbons Caleb had given her. They perfectly matched the pretty blue floral dress that she had made with Adelaide’s help.
For the first time since she had adopted the persona of the widow Greaves, Adelaide felt dowdy and inappropriate in her black dress. Save for a few items from her previous life that probably didn’t fit her and were outmoded, everything in her wardrobe was black, not even the grey or lilac of half-mourning. Just unrelieved black.
As a sop to her own vanity, she had allowed Netty some licence with her hair and it had been dressed in curls to frame her face.
‘You look very nice, Mama,’ Danny said loyally.
Caleb offered his arm. ‘Mrs Greaves?’
She cast a glance at the other well-dressed townsfolk and shook her head. She had no wish to give the ladies any further fodder for their gossip. ‘I think not, Mr Hunt.’
Netty snorted. She thrust the basket of pastries she carried at Adelaide and caught Caleb’s arm with her hand. ‘I certainly have no objection to being seen on the arm of a handsome man. May give Amos cause for thought.’
Caleb laughed. ‘I have no desire to cross your beau, Miss Redley.’
Her friend’s words tore at Adelaide’s heart. Had she be
come an unnatural woman in the long years since Richard Barnwell had died? Did fear of gossip and innuendo colour every decision she made in life or was it just the guilt of knowing that she was not the virtuous widow she pretended to be?
The double doors of the Mechanics’ Institute had been flung open, revealing the long trestle tables, now laden with food. The brass band, drawn from miners and townspeople, that came together for such occasions had begun to play dance tunes from their shaded position on the verandah. A group of children were being organised into a three-legged race by one of the members of the Ladies’ Committee.
Will Penrose lounged against a verandah post talking to a pretty girl, not Sissy or any of the others from Lil’s Place, who would be busy on what was, for many, a public holiday. Out of deference to the occasion, even the stamper had been stilled.
‘Mr Hunt.’ Mrs Russell lunged at Caleb as soon as he entered the hall, grasping his hand firmly between both of hers. ‘So pleased you could join us.’ She turned, looking around the hall. ‘There are plenty of pretty girls who would love to make your acquaintance.’
Caleb freed his trapped hand. ‘I am right sorry I can’t oblige any of them with a dance today, Mrs Russell.’
The dame’s mouth creased in a moue of sympathy. ‘Your poor leg. Of course. But I do hope you will enjoy the company nonetheless.’
‘It all looks mighty fine,’ Caleb said. ‘You ladies have done a fine job.’
‘We had help, of course, from such as Mrs Greaves.’ Mrs Russell switched her gaze to Adelaide. ‘We have tried to persuade Mrs Greaves to join our little committee.’
‘I am pleased to help when I can but with my responsibilities at the post office, I simply don’t have time.’
‘You seem to have time to consort with the ladies of dubious virtue,’ the ever-present Mrs Jervis said.
Adelaide smiled sweetly and held up the basket of cheese pastries she carried. ‘I really must add these to the table.’
Adelaide found a space on a well-stocked table and set her basket down. Several children dressed in their Sunday best already hovered before the cornucopia, only to be shooed away by one of the Ladies’ Committee.
Caleb caught Adelaide’s arm. ‘Let me get you some refreshment.’
‘It’s only lemonade,’ Adelaide warned. No alcohol was permitted. The good ladies were also the leaders of the Temperance League.
She watched him wend his way through the crowd, then turned to Netty, who scanned the crowd with obvious anticipation.
‘There’s Amos,’ she said as the unmistakable figure of the coach driver entered the hall, his hat clutched in one hand. On seeing Netty, his face broke into a grin and he raked the fingers of his empty hand through his damp ginger curls. As he pushed through the crowd towards them he was waylaid by another woman. He cast a helpless glance at Netty as the woman persuaded him outside to join a lively polka.
‘Who is that?’ Adelaide asked her crestfallen friend.
‘Elsie Draper, from the bakery,’ Netty replied. ‘She’s had her eye on my Amos for months.’ She sniffed as the couple circled within arm’s length, Amos casting Netty a desperate glance.
‘Go,’ Adelaide snapped. ‘You don’t have to keep me company.’
She watched Netty push her way through the crowd to rescue her beau from the clutches of Elsie Draper. Adelaide’s stomach lurched as she recognised that her peevish demeanour came from nothing less than envy—envy that no man in this room looked at her the way Amos Burrell looked at Netty Redley.
Caleb appeared at Adelaide’s side with a glass of lemonade. He took a sip of the watery brew and pulled a face. ‘I would kill for a whiskey,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘Not with those two ladies in charge. You could do what some of the other men are doing.’ She indicated a small knot of miners covertly topping up their glasses from a hip flask.
Caleb downed his lemonade as they watched the dancing couples. ‘It’s been a long time since I took to the floor, Adelaide, and it’s disappointing that I can’t oblige you with a dance today.’
‘I don’t dance, Caleb.’
He glanced at her, one eyebrow raised in mock disbelief, and she felt a frisson of regret that every word she uttered must confirm this man’s opinion of her as a dried-up old maid.
‘Ah, Hunt. Hoped I would run into you.’
They turned at the sound of Sergeant Maidment’s voice. Out of his uniform he looked almost unrecognisable. He touched his fingers to the brim of his bowler hat. ‘Mrs Greaves.’
‘Sergeant. Do you have some news for me?’ Caleb asked.
‘I went up to Pretty Sally to have a word with the O’Rileys and they’ve gone. Packed up their camp and headed north to Aberfeldy three days ago.’
‘That’s good news. Thank you, Sergeant.’
Maidment shook his head. ‘They’ve probably gone looking for Hannigan. I don’t envy him if they find him.’
‘Hannigan seems better at making enemies than he does friends, Sergeant,’ Adelaide said.
‘Indeed. Don’t let me disturb your day.’ He ducked his head and strode off, his hands in his pockets and his eyes scanning the crowd. He reminded Adelaide of a bird of prey, watching and waiting.
‘I’m going to watch Danny in the egg and spoon race,’ she said.
The day was pleasantly warm without the searing heat that would have made outdoor activities unpleasant. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Amos and Netty had stopped dancing and were sitting together on a wooden log, too close for propriety, their heads bent together, talking.
Caleb followed her gaze. ‘How long have those two been keeping company?’
Adelaide sighed. ‘They’ve been stepping out together for years now. I have no doubt Amos will get around to asking for Netty’s hand sometime soon.’
He nodded. ‘You and Netty go back a way?’
Adelaide nodded. ‘Since I was a girl. Netty … Netty has been with me forever. She’s a friend. My only friend.’
Danny waved to his mother as Mrs Mackie, the organiser of the race, handed him the spoon and hard-boiled egg and ushered the children into a line.
‘On your marks, get set, GO!’ Mrs Mackie dropped her handkerchief and the children hurried forward, spoons held out in front of them.
‘Go, Danny!’ Caleb yelled as Danny passed them, almost in the lead, his brow furrowed in concentration. At the sound of his name, the boy’s mouth twitched into a smile and the egg on his spoon wobbled but didn’t fall. The distance between Danny and the boy leading the race closed and, just two yards from the finish line, the leader dropped his egg. Adelaide and Caleb cheered loudly as Danny crossed the line, egg still attached to the spoon.
Will Penrose joined them. ‘Enjoying our simple pleasures?’
‘It is a fine day for a picnic and felicitations of the New Year to you, Penrose,’ Caleb replied.
‘Was that young Daniel who took out the last race?’
‘It was indeed,’ Adelaide replied.
‘Mrs Greaves, how are you this fine day?’ Penrose had been joined by an older man, the mine manager, Charles Cowper.
‘Well, thank you, Mr Cowper,’ Adelaide responded and Penrose introduced his uncle to Caleb. The two men shook hands.
‘William tells me you have a gold claim up at Pretty Sally,’ Cowper said.
Adelaide did not miss the sharp glance Caleb shot Penrose. He turned to the mine manager with a dismissive shrug. ‘I won it in a two-up game,’ he said. ‘I doubt it’s up to much, but I thought I should come see it.’
Cowper stroked his moustache. ‘These enterprises need capital, Mr Hunt.’
‘So it seems,’ Caleb said. He nodded in the direction of the Maiden’s Creek Mine. ‘Quite an operation you have going up there.’
‘I am fortunate the investors are patient men. We’ve dug out enough to indicate that there is more to find and we are confident we will hit the main seam soon, aren’t we, William?’
‘It’s good of you to giv
e your men a day off,’ Adelaide said.
‘I have a team working in the mine, Mrs Greaves. Save for the Sabbath, there are no days off in this business.’ He raised his hat. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I—’
His gaze flew to the mine, where the frantic tolling of a bell cut across the noise of the jovial day. The last note of the tuba died away as the clanging continued. The crowd froze and every face turned to the mine, where a man could be seen running down the hill, hat in his hand.
As he reached the Mechanics’ Institute, the crowd parted, allowing him to reach Cowper.
‘What is it?’ Cowper’s lips had compressed into a thin line.
‘Accident. Geordie’s had his hand crushed.’ The words came out in a breathy rush as the panting man doubled over, his chest heaving.
Cowper looked around. ‘Where’s that bloody doctor? Has anyone seen Bowen today?’
‘I’ll fetch him,’ a man volunteered.
Cowper strode off in the direction of the mine. ‘Penrose!’ he yelled over his shoulder.
Penrose shot Caleb and Adelaide an apologetic glance and scampered after his uncle.
The crowd dissolved into knots of people talking together in hushed voices.
Fully ten minutes passed before the man who had gone for Bowen returned, hot and breathless. He slapped at his trousers with his hat as his colleagues gathered around him.
‘The old sod is two sheets to the wind,’ he said. ‘He’s no good for anything.’
The men looked up at the mine. One shook his head. ‘Geordie’s done for,’ he said in a sombre tone.
‘I …’ Caleb’s breathing grew ragged and uneven.
Adelaide glanced at him. All the colour had drained from his face. She gripped his arm. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m a doctor,’ he said so quietly even Adelaide struggled to hear him.
‘Caleb?’
‘I don’t have time to explain, Adelaide.’ He took the key from around his neck and handed it to her. ‘At the bottom of my chest is a wooden box—bring it to me at the mine. Amos,’ he addressed the coachman who had joined them, ‘Go up to Bowen’s and bring me his bag. Make sure it contains morphine and chloroform.’
The Postmistress Page 10
