The Gallant (53 page)

Did he, Johnny wondered, did he want her as his wife, knowing that his love for her was not reciprocated? He drew in his breath sharply, knowing suddenly and with certainty that he wanted Kitty on any terms. Love could well come with marriage, with the intimacy of married life. He would overcome her defenses, win her love by the intensity of his own.

Unless there was someone else …

He asked the question, dreading her answer, and then saw her shake her head.

“Not Dominic Hayes?” he persisted.

Kitty’s headshake was even more emphatic.

“Oh, good heavens no! There was never anything between Dominic and me, except for his horses. I loved riding them, Johnny. I-was She was

smiling, her eyes bright, lit by some memory he did not share. Her smile faded, and she added gravely, “There was … someone at home, in Kilclare. But it was just a boy-and-girl attachment-it would not have lasted. He could not bear comparison with Pat or Michael, you see.”

“No one can bear that comparison, I suppose,”

Johnny suggested, his earlier affronted stiffness returning. To his surprise, Kitty put out both hands to him, her small, strong fingers closing tightly about his.

“You, nearest of all, Johnny,” she told him quietly.

“Then marry me, Kit,” he urged, the heady prospect of making her his wife overcoming the last vestige of his doubts.

“Even though you know that I’m not in love with you?”

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“Even then,” Johnny promised recklessly.

“If you are my wife, I’ll take you to the goldfields. I’ll take you anywhere, my love, and I won’t give up the hunt until we have found Michael. You have my word on it.”

Kitty’s head drooped. Avoiding his

gaze, she said, her voice oddly expressionless, “Very well, Johnny, I will marry you whenever it can be arranged. Here in Melbourne, or even in-what is the place called? Urquhart Falls.

And I’ll try to make you happy, even if I-that is, even if, for me, it has to be a …

marriage of convenience.”

In his delight, Johnny would have taken her in his arms, but, as she had so often in the past, Kitty managed to elude him. He bore each of her hands in turn to his lips, and then she broke away, to beg him, in a brisk, businesslike tone, to lose no more time in securing their passage to the Victoria mainland.

He obeyed her and was able to arrange both their passage and their marriage, thanks to what seemed to him an unexpected stroke of luck. The mail steam packet

Gloria

was due to sail for Port Phillip the following morning, and among her passengers, Johnny learned, was Father Tobias O’Flynn, a Roman Catholic priest, who was leaving his curacy in Launceston on appointment to a Christian Brothers’ school in Melbourne.

Elated by this discovery, Johnny made a call at the presbytery as soon as he had attended to the passage reservations and the young father enthusiastically agreed to perform the marriage ceremony on board the mail steamer.

“This is most romantic-a wedding on the high seas!

And to a compatriot of mine, indeed. I shall be delighted to oblige you, Mr. Broome.

Delighted and privileged.”

Kitty’s agreement was, to Johnny’s chagrin, less enthusiastic than Father O’Flynn’s had been, but she gave it without demur, stipulating only that the ceremony be delayed until the ship was in sight of their destination.

“Understand, Johnny, I beg you-ours cannot be a full and … proper marriage. Not yet-not until we’ve found my brother Michael. I must give everything to the search, without distraction. Bear with me, please.”

He could bide his time, Johnny told himself, concealing his disappointment. He could wait to claim his bride; and a bride

like Kitty Cadogan was infinitely worth waiting for. She would be his wife, in the eyes of the world, when they stepped ashore together in the Victoria capital, and no one-not even her brothers-could come between them.

Their wedding ceremony, performed in the Gloria’s

cramped and smoke-filled cuddy, in the presence of strangers, was a long way from what he would have desired. Kitty, in her traveling dress, her bonnet held in place by a trailing scarf, did not look bridal; and throughout the service-curtailed because he was not a Catholic-she seemed impatient and distracted, almost as if she wished it over, so that she might give her attention to more important matters.

She made her responses in a low, barely audible voice, and her small hand, when he held it in order to place his ring on her finger, felt cold to his touch. Nonetheless, she looked so beautiful and so desirable that Johnny’s heart beat faster when Father O’Flynn pronounced them man and wife and Kitty lifted her face for his formal kiss.

The strangers, including the master, drank their health, the men wringing Johnny’s hand, their congratulations envious of his good fortune in winning so beautiful a bride. The few women on board, wives of working men, took in Kitty’s elegant velvet, fur-trimmed gown and bobbed

curtsies to her, addressing her politely as “ma’am.”

But then it was over; the

Gloria,

assisted by a steam tug, nosed her way into the jetty, tied up, and prepared to receive the gangways by means of which her passengers would disembark. There were porters on the dockside, hackney carriages and a horse-drawn bus plying for hire, and a short distance away a notice proclaimed that the Melbourne and Hobson’s Bay Railway

Company ran a regular steam train service to Flinders Street.

Kitty, looking about her with bright-eyed interest, clapped her hands excitedly when she caught sight of this notice.

“Oh, Johnny,” she begged him, “let us go by the steam train! The

Herald

office is in Flinders Street, isn’t it?”

The short journey was swiftly and comfortably accomplished, the passengers seated in well-equipped, imported carriages painted in the company’s colorful livery and pulled by a 362

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magnificent locomotive, which rattled over the rails at a speed, a knowledgeable passenger assured them, well in excess of fifteen miles an hour.

Kitty took an almost childish interest in everything she saw, but when they left the train at the Flinders Street terminus, she became once again impatient and distracted, paying little heed to Johnny’s attempts to draw her attention to the fine new buildings and the well-ordered, lamplit streets, with their profusion of shops, restaurants, and hostelries. Having visited the town during the early days of the gold rush, he was impressed by the transition from what had been virtually a hodgepodge of weatherboard buildings, acres of tents, and streets that, all too often after rain, had been ankle-or even knee-deep in glutinous mud.

Kitty, however, was ill disposed to linger; she took his arm, urging him to inquire of a passerby as to the location of the

Herald

office. They found it without difficulty, and Kitty’s smile returned when the

expected letter from Patrick was taken from the rack and given to her. She ripped it open and read it quickly, then handed it to Johnny.

Dated almost three weeks earlier, it was brief and concerned only with Patrick’s movements.

I am leaving Melbourne tomorrow morning, having decided to take the Cobb and Co. coach to Bendigo. I have been told there is an excellent livery stable there, from which horses and various types of traps and buggies can be hired.

From Bendigo, I propose to make my way to Bundilly to talk to Mr. William

Broome-is he, do you know, any relation to Red and Johnny?

These Cobb coaches carry the mail and run through the night, with frequent stops at changing stations for fresh horses, and they are said to average a speed of ten miles an hour. They are American-built Concord coaches, designed for the comfort of passengers, and I would strongly advise you, Kit, to follow my example and travel by this means. But do not travel alone-take Johnny with you.

If I am able to obtain reliable information as to Michael’s whereabouts-from Mr. Broome or Martha Higgins in

Ur

quhart Falls-I shall endeavor to find him. I will leave word for you with Mr. Broome, but I think it unwise, if the trail should lead to the new gold diggings, for you to venture there, Kit. Stay at Bundilly or Urquhart Falls and leave it to Johnny to catch up with me.

In a postscript, Patrick had given the address of the coach booking office as “23 Bourke Street East-the Telegraph Stage Office.”

“Let’s go and book seats on the coach,”

Kitty said, when Johnny finished reading the letter.

She did not wait for his assent but was out on the street, obtaining directions to Bourke Street, by the time Johnny rejoined her.

There was a coach leaving that night, and at a cost of eight pounds each they were issued the last two inside tickets.

“It’s one hundred an’ twelve miles from here to Bendigo,” the booking clerk told them, as he scribbled their names on his list. “The coach carries thirty-two passengers, inside an’ out, it’s drawn by six horses, and the journey time is twelve an’ an “arf hours.” He grinned at them proudly. “Ain’t nobody goin”

to beat that for a long while, not even if they build a railroad. The new plank road through the Black Forest “as made all the difference-that used to turn into a swamp after ‘eavy rain, see?”

He added the gratuitous advice that Johnny would be wise to take his lady for dinner at the Criterion Hotel before departure.

“We leave from outside the ‘otel, sir, punctual, an” you’ll get a good meal there. On the way there ain’t more’n two changin’ stops where you can count on time to eat, an’ the Buckeye Hotel’s the best-that’s the last stop afore Bendigo. An’ you can leave your baggage with me, sir-I’ll see as it’s loaded on the coach.”

Kitty relaxed at last, to Johnny’s relief. In their now-frequent journeyings, she had learned to travel light, for one of her sex, to eat when it was convenient, and often to go without sleep. But the strain was beginning to tell, and he found himself wishing that, for her sake, this journey might be the last.

Surely her brother Michael could not elude them forever.

More than a little to his surprise, Kitty acceded to his suggestion that he take a room for her in the hotel, to enable her to

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rest for the few hours that remained before the departure of the coach. Johnny left her in a clean and comfortable room and, having time on his hands, returned to the Herald

office to make a search of the paper’s most recent files. He found a fuller report of the robbery of the gold shipment at Snake Gully than the one Dominic had sent them, plus a more recent article, culled from the Urquhart Falls Weekly Advertiser,

detailing Trooper Smith’s claim that he had identified one of the robbers as “the absconder known as Michael Wexford”:

I would know him anywhere. Big Michael, we used to call him at Norfolk Island, because he was a real big man, standing six foot five or six in his bare feet. And he defied the commandant’s authority all the time he was there. I don’t think I knew a convict who took more lashings than that man did, all of them for breaches of discipline and insolence.

It was Big Michael I saw in the taproom of The Travellers’ Rest-I would be willing to swear to it in a court of law.

The

Herald

had added a graphic description of the escape from the Port Arthur Penitentiary, during which a prison officer and a soldier of the military guard had been murdered and the government steamer

Hastings

seized “in an act of piracy”:

For this crime and the murder, subsequently, of the master of the

Hastings,

Wexford’s three companions in crime have been tried and hanged in Hobart, following their recapture there. But Wexford has, to date, evaded capture, and it seems more than likely that Trooper Smith did see him, with members of the gang of bushrangers who perpetrated the daring robbery of the gold shipment from River Fork.

A substantial reward has been offered for Wexford’s apprehension, and Commissioner Brackenbury is continuing the search for the gang, which local people are now calling the Lawless Gang.

Johnny sighed deeply as he replaced the report in its file. Michael, he thought grimly-his wife’s beloved brother-could not continue to evade capture for much longer. And the royal pardon, on which Kitty set so much store, would be revoked if he were brought to trial-it would hold no water, if Michael should be found guilty of

murder and bushranging and God knew what else.

Even if Oscar Meldrum’s sworn affidavit cleared him of complicity in the killings on board the Hastings,

he could scarcely plead innocence of the gold shipment robbery and the wounding of the two troopers-Trooper Smith’s evidence would certainly preclude that.

And the death sentence was mandatory for robbery under arms.

Johnny was about to return the file to the clerk who had produced it for him when another report caught his eye.

It was headed “The Lawless Gang,” and his heart sank as he read it.

A gang of bushrangers, believed to be the one known as the Lawless Gang, which perpetrated the gold shipment holdup at Snake Gully, raided the Bank of Victoria branch at the township of Snowdon six days ago. They stole some l700 in cash, and gold from the bank vault of as yet unknown value, but in attempting to make their escape following the robbery, one member of the gang was shot and is thought to be seriously injured.

Hero of the occasion was the manager of the bank, Mr.

George Lucas, who opened fire on the raiders from the premises opposite-a barber’s shop-where he had gone during his lunch hour for a haircut. In the commotion, however, the robbers succeeded in getting away, taking their wounded accomplice with them.

Mr. Lucas explained that although he does not normally carry a weapon when on duty at the bank, he had engaged to take part in a kangaroo hunt later in the day and had his sporting rifle with him in the barber’s shop.

Mr. Edward Jenkins, chief cashier at the bank, described one of the raiders as being “exceptionally tall and powerfully built, with the speech and manner of a gentleman.” This would seem to bear out earlier claims that he is Michael Wexford, who escaped from the Port Arthur Penitentiary with three others-since recaptured and executed-earlier William Stuart Long