The Horse Who Bit a Bushranger

by Jackie French

  ‘Go on then. Fire,’ said Billy. He raised his hands in the air. ‘I’ve got four guineas three shillings and a silver threepence down my boots. But you’ll have to shoot me to get them.’

  ‘I will and all!’ The bushranger’s hand tightened.

  There was a bang. Billy dropped to the ground. No, I thought, rearing in shock at the noise. Wait. Billy had dropped to the ground and then I’d heard the noise.

  Billy rolled over on the ground, toward me. He stood up and laughed. ‘I had teachers better than you. Master Higgins made us practise time and time again what to do if some cove pulled a pistol on us. You got one shot in that thing. Now you got to reload. We’ll be long gone by then.’

  The bushranger fumbled angrily at his pouch. ‘I can reload in the time it takes to sing a chorus of “Jack Doolan”. I’ll catch you—’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ said Billy confidently. ‘There ain’t no horse in this colony that can catch us. An’ if you have any sense you won’t try.’ He opened his coat. ‘See? Two pistols—and both are loaded. Now I know your voice, and I know your horse. You ride as far from here as you can make it. Otherwise it won’t be you finding me again. It’ll be me finding you. And this time, I’ll bring my friends.’

  The bushranger was still pulling stuff out of his pouch.

  Billy swung himself up on me and pressed me with his knees. I broke into a gallop through the trees, not following the road, though I knew where it was and I was sure that Billy did as well. On and on we raced, jumping over logs, Billy ducking under branches. There was no sound of anyone following us, but we kept up the pace anyway. We were young, and it was fun.

  We raced often after that—not against other horses: there was no other horse at the farm that could catch us. We raced the wind, leaving the dust and blown sticks behind us.

  We raced the moon, reaching the pools further down the creek before the moon’s reflection could appear in their darkness.

  Winter came. The swallows left. Summer came again. Season after season, me and Billy working together. I grew older, stronger. Billy grew stronger too. There were other men bigger than him, but not when he rode me. I was the King of the farm, King of the district, King of every horse we met.

  And then things changed.

  CHAPTER 22

  Billy, 1839

  The Reverend Hassall’s boots shone like a mirror. His horse stood obediently by the water trough as her master spoke.

  It was the first time Billy had ever seen the Reverend Hassall. He stood in front of his farm workers, awkward for someone whose job was preaching, then cleared his throat. ‘Ahem. I felt it only right that I should come and tell you this in person.’ His chin twitched. Billy had been listening to the accent, not the words, so he could try to copy it. He suddenly felt uneasy. Whatever was coming wouldn’t be good.

  ‘As you may know, in the last few months nearly every bank in the colony has crashed. There is no market for wool, none for sheep. I—’ He stopped, and began again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply. ‘This farm will have to be sold. I can pay each man up to the end of the month, no more.’ He shook his head. ‘Sometimes I wonder if the colony is doomed. A barren land where the rain won’t come, growing nothing the world wants to buy. I’m sorry,’ he said again. He turned, and began to speak to Roman John.

  Later, when the Reverend had ridden off—he would have to stay at a shanty overnight, but obviously didn’t want to sleep among the men he’d sacked—Billy approached the foreman.

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It means me and you and all the others with tickets of leave are out of a job. The men who haven’t got theirs yet will go back to government work. Working on the road teams probably. At least they’ll be fed.’

  Billy thought of the living skeletons working on the mountain road. Perhaps other government work gangs were better fed, and warmer. Somehow he doubted it. He felt a flood of relief his own ticket of leave had come through.

  ‘How can Reverend Hassall be broke? It don’t—doesn’t—cost him much to keep convicts working.’

  ‘I’m betting he borrowed to buy his farms, to buy the sheep. Now he can’t sell wool to England and so can’t repay his loans.’

  ‘What did he mean when he said the colony was doomed?’

  Roman John stooped to pick a grass stem. ‘We’re only here because England wanted this place as a gaol, and a fort to keep the French from getting the land. Now people in England and out here too are talking about no more convicts for New South Wales. Victoria doesn’t want more convicts either. Too many men and too few jobs. Point of fact,’ he added, ‘it’s been against the law for convicts to work for anyone but the government for over a year. But no one pays any attention. Government can’t feed them all.’

  ‘And now the farmers can’t afford to feed them either. Not with the drought.’ It had been six months since they’d had any decent rain. The corn crop had shrivelled, and the potato plants looked more like mushrooms that had somehow grown in dusty ground. They’d been feeding the animals hay for the past month, but that wouldn’t last forever.

  Roman John chewed his stem of grass. ‘That’s about the right of it.’

  I’d spend my last half-crown to make sure Conservative was fed, thought Billy. ‘What are you going to do?’

  Roman John shrugged. ‘Work my farm. It won’t bring in much money, not with no one buying wool, and what else has the colony to sell? Only whale oil…’ He gave an almost grin. ‘Precious few whales in the creeks round here. Won’t be any creeks, either, if it doesn’t rain soon. The wife sells eggs and butter in town once a month. That brings in a bit, and we’ve our own meat. She’s been lugging water to the potato patch and the pumpkins, so those’ll see us right. Enough for you too,’ he added. He met Billy’s eyes. ‘I’ve another idea in mind though. How much have you saved?’

  ‘Ten holey dollars, three shillings and tuppence.’

  Roman John stroked his grey moustache. Billy had never seen him trim it, but it always looked neat. ‘Not enough to buy a farm. But I reckon the Reverend would lease you this place, for ten pounds a year.’

  ‘Why should I bother? If he can’t make a go of it, I haven’t got a chance.’

  ‘You know what sheep were selling for, last market?’

  ‘Sixpence each,’ said Billy. ‘Which is why the Reverend’s broke.’

  ‘The Reverend farms like a gentleman. Breeds his sheep, sells the wool. If we buy sheep for sixpence and boil them down for tallow I reckon we could make six shillings a head. Tallow for candles and soap…there’s still a big market for that in England. Tallow travels as good as wool.’

  ‘And hides,’ said Billy slowly. ‘If we tan the hides we might make another shilling per beast.’

  ‘I couldn’t do tallow work by myself. Not at my age. It’s hard work. And mucky. We’d need more land than I have too. So, are you in with me?’

  ‘I’m in,’ said Billy.

  CHAPTER 23

  Billy, 1840

  It was miserable work. There were times, cutting the throat of some dumb animal who had done nothing but eat grass and let itself be shorn, when Billy knew he would dream forever of endless dead sheep, blank eyes gazing up at him, as he turned their bodies into tallow for England’s candles and soap.

  Every few weeks Roman John arrived with another mob, bought cheap at the sale of some poor farmer’s life. They were boiling up men’s dreams here, dreams like his, of owning a farm, dreams that vanished as the price of wool dropped to nothing, the colonies’ banks failed, and the drought brought dust and flies and a hard blue sky that seemed to ache for moisture.

  They’d pen the sheep together, trying not to hear the desperate baas, the animals terrified and often starving. Each dead sheep was hoisted up by a pulley hung from the highest clear branch nearby, and its front slit open so the guts rolled out. Then Billy would strip off the skin, chop up the beast with his axe, and throw it in the giant vats for boiling, while Roman John scouted for more
wood.

  Billy was twenty-three now, and strong. He could lift the smaller sheep on his own, and he barely remembered the starving, trembling boy he’d been on the deck of the convict ship, begging Roman John for a second chance.

  They boiled the sheep down on Billy’s place, in the old horse paddock, far enough from Roman John’s farm that the stink from the rotting guts didn’t carry on the wind. Once the meat cooled in the vats they scooped off the fat, boiled it again in fresh water to purify it, let it cool then stored it in big casks in the stone barracks where the convicts had once lived.

  Some of the cooked meat went to Mrs John’s hens. Billy liked Mrs John. She was older than her husband, with a thin body and large capable hands. She said little, but her plum duff was the best he had ever tasted. The hens thrived on the sheep scraps, growing fat and laying eggs even through the winter. The rest of the meat and bones were left out for the crows, and the goannas and the flies. The flies feasted, in such clouds that sometimes the air seemed shadowed over the piles of meat. The crows grew so fat they rarely flew, just sat and waited for their next meal, their vicious beaks shiny from their feasts. The goannas gorged all the summertime. When winter came they vanished—sleeping, Billy supposed—so the mountain of rotten meat grew.

  They tanned the hides over at Roman John’s, stripping bark from the wattles to boil for tannin, scraping the hides clean of fat and sinew, soaking them and stretching them time after time to keep them supple. Lambskins got a better price than sheepskin. The skins of the unborn lambs fetched the best price of all.

  The blood haunted Billy’s dreams. Hundreds of sheep, then thousands; the blood caked under his fingernails; the tannin stained his hands. When this is over, he thought, I will never kill another animal again. I’ll employ a stockman to do the dirty work. I want life, not death.

  It was Conservative who kept him sane. The big horse, waiting in the paddocks, restless with the smell of death, was as glad as Billy to gallop till the stench was far behind them, till the wind was sweet and clean. There was a pool where Billy could wash—a good long bathe if the day was hot, a quick soap and then a plunge in winter. Conservative would drink, and crop the grass, and Billy would look at him, this fine great horse—his horse—and know that despite the hard work, the blood, the stink, life could be good.

  And it would get better, too. Roman John was right. They were making more money each now than Roman John had ever got even as foreman at the farm. Three years of this, Billy reckoned—five at the most—and Roman John would have enough to live comfortably for the rest of his life, with a hired man to do the hard work of the farm.

  And Billy would have a farm. A stone house, a stable for Conservative to shelter when it was cold. A river of clear water, with ducks for Sunday dinner. No sheep, not even for the mutton. He’d breed horses. Paddocks of white horses, grand big animals like their sire…

  It was good to dream, lying there clean by the creek. He’d stay there till the moon rose, lighting their way home, so Conservative could pick the path out through the trees.

  CHAPTER 24

  Billy, 1841

  They went to Bathurst every month or so, Roman John driving the wagon with the casks of tallow, the piles of hides, Billy riding Conservative. Roman John did the bargaining with the stock agent, but by now everyone knew that John and Marks supplied the best quality tallow. No barrel of theirs had burnt bits floating in it to send the product rancid on the trip to England.

  There wasn’t much choice of places to stay in town. It was cheaper and better to camp out. There was a horse paddock too. It was safe to leave even a horse like Conservative there to let him rest after the ride, for the other stockmen kept an eye out for troublemakers. A horse thief was worse than sheep dung in the colony. Anyone who tried to steal a horse from the stockmen’s paddock would have to learn to ride without his fingers.

  There was a shanty down the road from the camp-ground where they served baked mutton and roast pumpkin and potatoes, welcome after the days of travelling and damper.

  There was singing in the evening too; songs from back in England or from Ireland, the clear pure voice sometimes of a Welshman, sent to the colonies for burning down an English landlord’s house. There were songs from New South Wales, as well—the old tunes, mostly, with new words: songs of shearing or pining for the sweethearts left far away. Sometimes an old man with a fiddle played the song Jem had sung, way back on the ship, of the bold bushranger who’d scorned to live in slavery, bound down with iron chains.

  It was dark when Billy left the shanty. Roman John had left after a single drink to wet the dust, but he’d stayed for the laughter and company. The moon was high, and lamplight glowed from the rear of the houses on one side as he trudged back down the lane to the camp-ground. Proper big houses they were in this part of town, with land that was planted with flowers and shrubs, as well as a few fruit trees and vegetables. The way to the stockyard ran along the backyards of one of the lovely avenues of houses.

  And then he saw her. Through a back window: the yellow lamplight, the big pan of water heating on the stove, the young woman sitting on the kitchen chair, her skirt up to her knees, her feet in another pan of water.

  He stopped, and stared over the garden into the window. The girl dipped a rag into the water and washed one bare foot, and then the other, then dried them on a towel. Then she unpinned her hair and let it fall.

  It looked like silk; it was the longest, blackest, straightest hair he’d ever seen. As he watched she dipped a brush into the hot water, then began to brush it through her hair, stroking it till it hung in wet tendrils round her face.

  He had never seen anything as beautiful in his entire life. Not even Conservative, he thought vaguely, is as lovely as this.

  He stood there in the road till he heard other men behind him, singing as they came back from the shanty. If they found him there staring, they’d look too. He couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else seeing what he had seen.

  He made himself walk on. Tomorrow, he thought, tomorrow I’ll call on her. Call on her properly, the way a man should do.

  I’d better ask Roman John, he thought, exactly how this courting ought to go.

  CHAPTER 25

  Conservative, 1841

  Something was happening. Something new.

  Billy washed himself all over in the horse trough in our paddock. (I didn’t mind the taste in the water too much.)

  He tied back his hair with a bit of leather. He rubbed his boots. He put on clothes I’d never seen before: a bright red shirt, a purple sash, and new trousers with no holes at the knee.

  I heard him calling in at half the tents at the camp-ground till he found what he wanted: a long sharp thing to scrape the whiskers from his face.

  He brushed me, over and over, and then plaited my mane, but I endured. He even washed the mud from my hoofs.

  By then I had realised what he was doing.

  He was making us look good. I knew it, and he knew it, as we stepped out through the camp and down the road. I was the finest horse in all the land, my head and tail held high, and he was the finest man.

  Clip clop we went down the road—not the road that led out of town, but another, with gardens that smelt interesting. I hoped we’d stop so I could have a taste and a better smell. And then we did.

  Billy slid off my back and looked around, then ducked under the wooden fence. He was back before I could even chew the grass I’d nosed out by the fence, a bunch of flowers in his hand.

  I reached out my neck to eat them. He held them away. ‘No, you don’t. Well, only one then.’ He handed me a flower. It was sweet, but prickly. I spat the prickles out. I didn’t mind now that he didn’t give me the other flowers.

  We cantered down the road some more. He pulled on my reins again.

  He tied me to a gate-post. It was a short tether, but I could reach my neck into the garden. The plants had prickles like the flower he’d given me. The grass at my feet was better.

 
; For a while Billy just stood there while I cropped the grass, the flowers in his hand. He seemed scared.

  I whinnied, and bumped him with my nose. If there was something to be frightened of then he should get on my back, and let me gallop far away, faster than any danger that might try to get us.

  He patted my neck soothingly. So it wasn’t dingo-type danger then, or something fierce.

  What was it?

  Billy spat on his hand and ran it across his hair, to make it tidy after the ride. Then he opened the gate and walked up the path around the house and out of sight.

  CHAPTER 26

  Billy, 1841

  The kitchen door was open, perhaps to let out the heat from the stove. Billy peered at the stove curiously as he knocked. It was the first stove he’d ever seen up close: a big metal box. A giant pot bubbled on top.

  ‘Tip the water in the barrel, there’s a love.’ Her voice came from what must have been the pantry. It was low and husky, and sounded posh, like the way he was trying to speak.

  ‘I’m not the water boy.’

  Her head poked round the larder door. Her hair was plaited this morning, and bound up on top of her head. It still looked beautiful. ‘What are you selling then?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She walked out into the kitchen, holding up her apron full of purple plums. She poured them into a bowl on the table, next to a row of empty jars, and looked at him. ‘I’m sorry, the master and mistress are away in Sydney. If you’d like to leave a message…’

  He was glad he looked—and sounded—like someone who might want to speak to the master, not the servant.

  ‘I came to speak to you,’ he said simply, and held out the bunch of flowers.

  To his surprise she didn’t seem to find that strange. Though why should she? Looking the way she did, with so few women in the colony, she must have had plenty of offers of marriage. He glanced down at her left hand. No wedding ring.