Bony and the Kelly Gang

by Arthur W. Upfield

  At the entrance to the shed he stopped again, and now observed the headlights of a motor vehicle coming down the zigzagging track from the white house on the ridge. He could just hear the hum of its engine. There was another sound, a low whirring noise. It came from the house opposite. Against the pale sky where the light of the departed day still lingered, he witnessed the dwarfing of a television mast. The antenna was ultimately telescoped into the roof.

  Chapter Five

  Peace and War

  THE UNLIT lamp was on the table in his room. The trap was up and poised on a stick. The way of retreat was clear. Bony waited within the dark interior of the shed. Without effort his ear registered the noise of the oncoming car.

  He was convinced that the warning bell was associated with this visit, and also that the visit had been announced to the occupants of the opposite house who had immediately telescoped their television antenna. For the first time since coming to Cork Valley, the curtain was lifted a little on these Cork Valley people.

  “No one has ever gone in there and discovered anything of an illegal nature,” Superintendent Casement had said.

  Who had rung the warning bell, and from where had it been rung? Bony reflected on the journey he had made by truck from the white house on the ridge. He estimated the time taken from the white house to the settlement, minus the period spent on replacing the damaged tyre, and was convinced that unless the warning had been delayed at the white house, it hadn’t been given there.

  It was as well he was not outside the shed entrance, for the headlights suddenly illuminated the entire settlement, causing him to withdraw farther inside, and enabling him to see three men crossing the roadway diagonally to meet the oncoming vehicle. When it stopped outside the general store, they converged on the car, and Bony saw for a second the figures of Mike Conway and Joe Flanagan before the headlights were snapped off.

  There was no talk. The slamming of doors told him that the men had entered the car, and it passed the shed and went on down the roadway with its lights out. Bony waited to hear it stop at the cheese factory. But he heard it pass the factory and fell to pondering on its destination. Beyond the factory there were no houses, nothing but the large piggery. The car went on beyond the piggery.

  As immobile as the corner post of the shed, Bony listened to the sound of the car dwindling into the distance. He watched the mast rising from the opposite house against the starry sky. He watched another rising from a house farther along the row. Still without lights, the car pressed on in the same direction, moving slowly, but not stopping. It was obvious that the driver knew the way, every yard of it.

  The visitors were not police, and Bony wondered if Mike Conway was aware of their identity before their arrival. It was unlikely because the television masts had been lowered before their arrival, and raised again shortly after they had gone on, when it was known who they were.

  The now faint noise of the car abruptly ceased. In the silence he could hear music coming from a house, the gurgling of the small river beyond the settlement, and fancied he could detect among the night sounds that of the far away waterfall.

  How long he stood there resting his back against the corner post didn’t bother him until he heard the car returning. Its headlights were still not operating when it passed the shed and stopped outside the store. Again the doors were slammed, and then the track was brilliantly lit by the headlights, and within the side glow he counted the three men who had come from the neighbouring house, and the two from the Conway place. When the car drove off, he thought it time for discretion, and slipped down into his cellar where he lit the lamp and pretended to be interested in a paperback autobiography.

  He was left undisturbed and the following morning his day began as usual. The settlement was still in shadow. The first milking was almost done, the milked cows waiting in the yard at the rear of the shed and the last batch waiting in a side yard to take their places under the machines. Passing along the roadway he saw a woman shaking a mat outside her front door, two others gossiping and a gaffer pottering in a garden. The scene was normal. A beagle came and wagged his tail, and Bony paused to pat him.

  Dogs! He recalled that the previous night scene had been incomplete, for no dogs voiced hostility or welcome to the night visitors. How had they been controlled? Quite a mystery to think about while digging potatoes.

  There can be no two opinions about the Australian autumn, when the days are softly warm and the nights are cool and placid; the heat and the dust and hot winds of summer are irritants easily forgotten. This was another perfect autumn day in Cork Valley. At the end of the houses, Bony turned off the road and followed a path into low scrub, which soon gave place to open gums, and beyond them he entered a wide lane between wire fences. The path skirted the river, now merely a stream running over polished granite stones and washing against the larger boulders. Magpies warbled and one divebombed him and then gave it up. He crossed the river by a narrow bridge, where the path junctioned with a wider track on which were the marks of motor tyres and horses hooves.

  Half a mile on, he had to leave the track and follow another across the grass paddocks to reach his bagged potatoes and digging fork, and place his lunch bag and billy on a large stone fallen from the old dividing wall.

  The wall reminded him of a part of Victoria where the stones had been gathered and built to serve as fences. This one appeared to have neither beginning nor end. It came up over a rise to the north, passed him by and ended amid the trees marking the river to the south. Where he was working was its highest point. Here it had weathered best, being four feet high and four feet wide. The stones comprising it had obviously been gathered from the adjacent land, so that old Mrs Kelly had really achieved a dual purpose when she ordered its erection ... peace and improvement of the land.

  He, too, was now at the highest point of the valley floor. The track from the house on the ridge down to the settlement was like a crayon mark. The settlement shone like a white mausoleum on green velvet. The waterfall beyond was molten silver. Beyond the wall the great house occupied by the Kellys stared suspiciously with its many eyes at him.

  He could see the children running and playing in the only street of the settlement, on their way to the school building. Two men were working near the cream factory, and two others were driving the cows to pasture. Another was riding a horse in a distant paddock on the Kelly side of the wall. Crows cawed about the yard, which, by the skins drying on racks, must have been the slaughtering place, and a blue wren danced on top of one of his potato bags.

  It was a pastoral scene, to engage the enthusiasm of an artist. All about him vistas of peace and beauty. Children going to school; houses where people lived unaware of the joys of television ... by day. A liqueur at the end of dinner strong enough to choke any damned Englishman. Cars going about without headlights and engaged in mysterious business. This Cork Valley had slumbered for centuries, disturbed now and then by domestic arguments among the aborigines, had swooned beneath the summer sun, and was cosily wrapped about from the winter cold.

  Until the Kellys came. They stirred the stuffing out of it. They built the big house, built the wall and cleaned the land of stones. They said it was their land, and it was so. Had Sean Kelly ridden up that track gashing the slopes to find himself a wife? Had he ridden down that track with a wife on the saddle behind him? By which road had his sister Nora gone forth to seek a husband, to return with a man of derring-do, and two priests to make sure of subsequent respectability? Where, just where, had the husbands met with pistols blazing, and left their widows and children to carry on a tradition of violence until an old woman with a last will and testament cried: “Peace or else”? And the wall was built, and peace of a kind came to Cork Valley.

  That tough old woman had been born again in the strongwilled old woman even now pointing her telescope at the spud digger. She could pipe the eye on hearing ‘Danny Boy’ played on a gum leaf, but it was on record that she had used an axe handle for a purpos
e not intended, when she had laid out a stranger caught stealing her cattle.

  “Superficially they’re all quiet and peaceful,” Superintendent Casement had told Bony. “But, privately, I’m game to bet my rabbit burrow is down there.”

  A kookaburra came to rest on the bag next to the one where the blue wren had danced. Another came to perch on the edge of the wall. Silently Bony welcomed them, and hoped they would repeat their previous performances. He dug on and on, action methodical and now tireless, and with the appearance of the potatoes, there also appeared large and fat worms. The kookaburras chortled softly at each other, and then one after the other flew to land within a yard of his implement and gobble the worms. Finally they waited within inches of the fork for the worms to be uncovered.

  Bony talked to them. Their beady eyes divided attention between him and the earth, and when he paused both looked at him and waited as though plainly asking why the heck he had stopped digging. He was thus engaged when he heard the thudding hooves of an approaching horse. He straightened up when a cheerful voice called:

  “Day to you! How’s the crop?”

  “Good day,” responded Bony. The birds flew away, and he strolled to the wall where he had put his coat, and from a pocket produced tobacco and papers. The man on the horse was in his middle twenties, and there was no need to ask his name for he was of the same mould as the red giant who had rushed Bony into the shed. “Another great day, eh?”

  “Beaut! Are you the horse thief?”

  Inwardly Inspector Bonaparte flinched, but calmly he replied:

  “Well ... yes. Who are you?”

  “I’m a Kelly. My name’s Brian. What’s yours? I did hear but I’ve forgotten.”

  Bony who liked frankness in other people, began to like this Brian Kelly. The grey eyes were wide and candid. He had his father’s colouring and the promise of his father’s physical power in the wide shoulders and the powerful neck. The voice was pleasing. The somewhat weathered riding togs were less so.

  “The name is Nathaniel Bonnay. Nat for short. I met your father, I think, the day I arrived. You live in a nice place.”

  “Nice enough on fine days, Nat. Leaks a bit when it rains. Nothing wrong with the country though. Except for the fogs. Though I like the fogs, as a matter of fact. They prevent people spying on others, like Grandma Conway’s doing right now.”

  “She is, eh!”

  “Have a deck,” Brian Kelly waved a hand towards the settlement. “Parks herself at the eye-piece of a glass all day. Don’t miss much, the old witch.”

  Bony could see the sunlight glinting from behind a window adjacent to the general store.

  “I’ll be told tonight that I don’t work fast enough.”

  The younger man loaded a pipe, watching Bony at the same time with his small shrewd eyes. The wide mouth was generous, but the chin betrayed a quick temper. The flame-red hair needed cutting, and the cloth cap clamped down on it needed replacing. Bony knew that his mother had been dead several years. He knew, too, that Brian Kelly had, like the Conways in their turn, been educated at a Catholic college. That costs money and money was here in this valley. Yet Brian Kelly’s clothes were disgracefully worn, and could be his father’s castoffs.

  “Are you working for wages?”

  “Contract. Seven shillings a bag,” replied Bony.

  “Oh!” The pipe was lit, and Brian gazed pensively across the paddocks towards the settlement. “Where are they camping you?”

  “In the cellar under the shed.”

  “I’ve never been down there. Heard about it. Good hideaway, though. I understand they feed well. We eat like dogs.”

  “Mrs Conway is a wonderful cook,” Bony said. “Seems to have plenty of help, too.”

  “They’re civilised; we’re still savages.” He was sitting on the saddle sidewise, and the horse was placidly standing parallel with the wall. A faint smile touched his mouth.

  “Didn’t think there was anything in horses these days. Stealing them, I mean,” he prompted, and Bony laughed and explained that the horses which had been his downfall were prospective racing stock. Brian wanted to know the details. He wanted to know what the country was like round Tenterfield. He asked if there was much employment in the real outback, and was pressing his questions when his face fell into a dark frown.

  “The old man’s coming to argue,” he stated with conviction, adding with equal conviction. “I’m fed to the back teeth with the old man.”

  Red Kelly was coming on fast, mounted on a grey mare that was feeling his spurs and crop. He was wearing smart jodhpurs and a tweed jacket, and the breeze was parting his bushy red beard and overgrown red hair. He arrived at speed, cruelly sawing at the animal’s bit. Ignoring Bony nonchalantly leaning against the wall, he shouted with unnecessary violence at his son.

  “You get to hell out of here. Get on with your work. Go on, get away from here. I’ll not stand for you gossiping with every Tom, Dick and Harry, and horse-thieves and scum off the roads. Get going.”

  Young Kelly sat on his horse without moving. His face was white, and his eyes appeared to reflect the colour of his father’s beard. With shattering swiftness the elder man slashed his crop across his son’s face, whisking the pipe from his son’s mouth.

  “I’m the boss of Cork Valley,” he yelled. “I say go, you go. You been looking for a thrashing for a long time, my lad, a long, long time.”

  Brian Kelly partly fell, partly slipped from his horse. He made a crouching run to the grey. Red Kelly lifted his crop to strike again. He was seized by a foot and tossed off his horse.

  Chapter Six

  A Private Fight

  THE QUESTION in Bony’s mind was: ‘Is this a staged brawl for the purpose of involving me and resulting in a trip to hospital, like that policeman?’ Such violence between father and son could, however, be genuine, and in either case Bony was presented with a ring-side seat.

  Kelly gained his feet, blinked his small, turquoise eyes, and roared his fury. The protagonists were of the same height, but the older man had superior weight, and probably greater strength, despite his age. Bony settled down to enjoy a good match, as any man would do in a stadium. Yells, shouts, grunts and threats, combined with smacks like a storm-ripped sail, and welling gore, aroused in this man of two races instincts which he would normally be ashamed to reveal.

  Now he was standing on the wall and yelling encouragement. The evenness of the battlers, their ferocity, the blood smearing their faces and fists drove from Bony’s mind what he was and had achieved, and all his maternal ancestors crowded in to take possession.

  At one moment the son was standing on his father’s chest, and with both hands trying to tear the beard off him. At the next the son was staggering away and the father was on his feet. Then the father had his son in his arms and was straining to crack his ribs. Tearing himself from his father’s grip, Brian snatched up a seven-pound rock.

  The rock rose and the rock descended on Red Kelly’s head. Red Kelly rolled forward on his side, flung his arms about his son’s ankles and brought him down. For perhaps a halfminute they were like little playful bears and then the younger man was on his back and the older man’s huge hands were about his throat. A vast heaving struggle slowly subsided and there was the horrific flutter of life about to depart.

  Nat Bonnay proved to be the hangman’s nark. He jumped from the wall on to Red Kelly and dragged him back by the hair. As this was an unbelievable impertinence, Red Kelly heaved himself upward, threw Bony off his back and prepared to charge. But Bony was on his feet a fraction ahead of him, and the toe of Bony’s boot connected with Kelly’s chin grounding him like a plane without wings.

  As one Kelly struggled to regain air and the other strove to return from a far journey, Bony was jigging on his feet: a delighted David triumphant over two Goliaths. When Red Kelly opened his dazed blue-washed eyes, he encountered eyes of indigo blue, and Brian Kelly lurched to his feet, swayed dizzily, and yelled:

  “Wh
at are you doing, you black bastard? Keep out of this. It’s a private fight.”

  He rushed Bony, shorter than himself by six inches, and lighter by three to four stone. Bony wasn’t there, and before he could swing about, he was being ridden like Sinbad. Bony rode high, and he did things to Brian’s neck with steel-like fingers in the manner of his mother’s knowledgeable people. Searing pain shot into Brian’s brain, unendurable and unending pain. He heard as though beyond the sea of pain the hissed words:

  “I can send you mad, you young idiot. Pipe down.”

  Then he was free of the pain but not of the knifing memory of it. He realised he was kneeling and sobbing. He heard his father shouting that he would murder the black bastard. The shouts turned into screams of rage, and the screams terminated in an earth shaking thud.

  On Brian Kelly raising his head and looking about with one effective eye, he saw his father on hands and knees, the hands on one side of an earth-based boulder and the knees on the other, his shrinking stomach athwart the crown of rock. He began to crawl towards his sire, savage hate reborn, but when Red Kelly sprawled forward on his face and groaned, Brian crawled to his horse, clawed his way up and into the saddle, and rode dejectedly towards the big house.

  Ten minutes later, Red Kelly lurched to his feet, staggered to the grey mare, hauled himself into the saddle, and rode after his son. He seemed to have forgotten all about the spud digger.

  Working through the afternoon, Bony gave part of his attention to the scenery beyond the stone wall, accepting the probability that the Kellys might re-enter the arena accompanied by reinforcements. The blue wren, fed full on the insects uncovered by the digging fork prior to the battle, lazed on the filled bags of potatoes, and the kookaburras returned to levy their tax on the worms.

  On entering the Conways’ living-room for dinner, it was instantly apparent that the entire clan was waiting for him. The matriarch in her high back chair before the open hearth greeted him with: