Bony and the Kelly Gang. Arthur W. Upfield
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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:
“Come here, young feller, and give an account of yourself.” A lace cap instead of a wig. A black dress instead of an ermined gown. But the same penetrating eyes of the judge, the same pseudo-placidity hiding the iron will to extract facts. Bony sensed the tense atmosphere. He felt rather than witnessed the others ranged beside and behind him. It was time for cunning, and for this he was not unprepared. “Well, go on, Nat. What happened?”
He could have earned millions of dollars on the films instead of his miserable salary as a homicide investigator. In the assumed character of the State-educated but not fully assimilated half-aborigine, he shuffled his feet, looked everywhere save into the expectant faces about him, and into those probing dark eyes. Then, as though forcing himself to speak, he said:
“How did you know about the Kellys? None of you was there.”
“I was there. Through my spyglass I was there,” sternly countered the old woman.
“Oh!” Again the nervous shuffling of feet. The faint hunching of the shoulders betrayed instinctive shrinking. “Well, it happened like this.” Now there was defiance in his voice. “I had to defend myself, see! A young chap who said he was Brian Kelly came along where I was working. He was pleasant enough. Said it looked like the potato crop was heavy, and all that. Then his father came galloping across the paddocks, and told him to get back to work. When he wouldn’t go, his father hit him with his riding crop. Hit him across the mouth and knocked the pipe out. So the young chap jumped off his horse and heaved his father off his, and they got stuck into it.”
“Yes, yes! I saw all that,” shrilled the now ecstatic old woman. “I could see their heads above the wall, and you standing on the wall and dancing with excitement. Then you jumped off the wall and joined in. I saw that, too.”
“Well, I thought they were just having a bit of a blue. Old Kelly fell down, and young Kelly stood on his chest with both feet and tried hard to pull the beard off him. Mr Kelly got rid of his son and they charged together and wrestled a bit, and Brian kneed his father, and then took up a rock and tried to brain him. Then they had another wrestle, and this time Mr Kelly got down hard to the job of strangling his son. I had to stop him with a drop kick.”
“I didn’t see that,” complained old Mrs Conway. “Go on.”
“Well, I thought that finished the blue,” continued Nat Bonnay. “It took some time for Brian to get over the strangling, and his old man to get over my drop kick. Mr Kelly stood up first, and Brian called me a black bastard, which I resent. Anyway, Mr Kelly came for me. He had five yards to travel, and he sort of got up speed. When he got to me he had one foot high in a try to kick me. I got both hands under his foot, and at the same time he began to straighten his leg and so sort of levered himself up on my hands.”
“Ha!” The ejaculation was whispered between the old woman’s parted lips. “I saw Red Kelly go up twice as high as the wall. I’ll swear to it, ’deed I will. And it was you that sent him, Nat?”
Nat Bonnay was now distinctly nervous. He looked up from the floor. He glanced into those burning dark eyes and hastily looked at Mike Conway standing beside him, and then at the flaming logs.
“Did you send Red Kelly up twice as high as the wall? That great red bull of an Irishman? Did you?” persisted Mrs Conway.
“Well, I had to do something to stop ’em,” replied Nat, now a clear whine in his voice. “Mr Kelly was strangling his son, all right. Brian’s face was purple and his tongue was poking out. I didn’t want any killing, and the police coming down here and dragging me into it. I got troubles enough. It’s all right for you squatters. You got the police on your side. You always have had ’em on your side.”
Nat paused for breath, and was conscious of the silence in the room. He went on, half fearful, half rebellious.
“There was Mr Kelly rushing me, and Brian was coming out of the fit and trying to join in. As I said, Mr Kelly stepped into my hands and sprang off them. I had to fix him because he was getting vicious, and so as he heaved up, I twisted my hands so he’d come down with his stomach landing fair and square on a handy half buried rock. It made him terrible sick, but I’m not pulling my forelock and sayin’ I’m sorry.”
In that large and homely room there was silence, prolonged, imprisoned. The grandfather clock for which Inspector Bonaparte would have paid five hundred pounds, had he had five hundred pounds, ticked its majestic tread through the Hall of Silence until insulted by an unleashed storm of laughter. Old Mrs Conway gasped and shrieked. She beat the arms of her chair with her fragile blue-veined hands. Mike Conway stooped and flailed his hands against his thighs. His wife clung helplessly to another woman as helpless as herself. Joe Flanagan rocked on his bandy legs to one of which clung a toddler undecided whether to be frightened or happy. Only the girl, Rosalie Conway was coldly disapproving. She stood stiffly, hands at her sides, her face solemn, her eyes closed.
Mike Conway managed to straighten himself and point at Nat, and yell:
“He just twisted his hands under Red’s foot so that he came down with his guts across a rock. Him ... our Nat ... who weighs eleven stone heaves high old Red and drops his seventeen stone square on a rock. Boy oh boy! If only I could have seen it.”
“I did, I tell you,” gasped the old woman. “I saw it all through me spyglass. I saw him going up and I watched him coming down. The dratted wall stopped me seeing him spread his stomach on the rock, though.” She broke into a gale of laughter, gurgled and gasped and shrieked, and managed to utter words making the sense of: “Made Red terrible sick! My! My! Stop me someone ... stop me.”
The alarmed women gathered about old Mrs Conway and the men were shushed. With difficulty they quieted the matriarch, and eventually dinner was placed on the table.
Nat Bonnay was promoted to a seat beside the old lady whose oaken heart was pacified by a nip of ‘wine’. Dinner proceeded with the usual decorum, which hinted of aristocratic ancestors back in Old Ireland. The incident of the gum-leaf playing which appeared to have cracked the social ice was now supported by the encounter with the Kellys which melted the ice entirely.
They baffled him, these Conways. Bony had met every kind of Irishman in the outback, men of every degree. Those Irishmen, however, he had known individually. He had seen them against a background of other nationalities. Now he was seeing a family, a clan, against its own background of an isolated valley, haunted by five or six past generations, and he wondered how much the people about this massive table were influenced by their isolation, and how much by their forbears who came from Ireland to fight and claw a foothold in this new, mysterious and hostile land.
He recalled his assignment to mind; to investigate the suspected murder of an excise officer.
Dinner ended and the women and children withdrew, save old Mrs Conway. Mike served the usual cup of liquor, and when they were smoking, he said to Nat:
“No doubt you’re thinkin’ we’re a funny crowd, Nat. We are. We keep to ourselves. All for one and one for all, as the saying goes. Pity you interfered between the Kellys. Mind you, I’d have given a fiver to have seen you in action, but if I had been there I would have joined them against you.”
“Damn it, Mike,” exploded Nat Bonnay. “I had to separate ’em, as I told you.”
“No, you didn’t have to, Nat. It was a family fight. It’ll work out peaceful in the end. We’ve had these brawls for years, a hundred and fifty years, from what we’ve been told. You just