Bony and the Kelly Gang. Arthur W. Upfield
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a job for you down in the valley,” he said. “We’re peaceful in these parts. You lift the spuds, and you live peaceful, and you’ll be looked after and paid good rates. As long as you don’t claim to come from Ulster you won’t have a war on your hands.”
A humorous quirk appeared at the corners of his mouth, and brought a smile to Bony’s eyes when the latter asked:
“Think I could claim to come from Northern Ireland?”
“Where could your father claim to come from?”
“I don’t know. My mother never told, that I recall.”
“Like that, eh!”
“Like that. Any harm in saying he might have come out from County Mayo?”
Both men chuckled, and the invalid said:
“Better stick to the truth, perhaps. All right, Nat. The job’s yours.”
Chapter Two
Snugly in Cork Valley
The track from the white house crossed level ground for five hundred yards, passed over a rough but well constructed wooden bridge spanning a gully, and proceeded down steep gradients skirting the inner slopes of the coastal mountains. Until the bridge was reached the traveller wouldn’t expect to be so rewarded by the colourful space which rested like a halo on Cork Valley.
The white house stood on the rim of a great amphitheatre. The floor was sea-green in the light of the westering sun, and pale blue where the shadows lay. Against the southern wall a brilliant silver streak marked the eternal fall of water, and near its base the tiny houses were white squares. To the right of the settlement, and separated from it by green paddocks, stood a mansion of many chimneys and windows which at this time of day were glaring searchlights, as though directed suspiciously at the descending truck.
The driver had to brake all the way, and keep the engine in low gear. The track was the original entrance to Cork Valley, its surface rough, yet maintained by expert draining, and at every inner bend of the mountain folds was another bushman-built bridge. It was obvious that no public money had ever been spent on the road or bridges.
Bony was aware from Superintendent Casement’s map that this was the front door to Cork Valley, as he was aware there were no known back or side entrances. So far the plan to introduce him as Nat Bonnay was proceeding smoothly, and the long-held suspicions of the people at Cork Valley were being confirmed. Having announced himself as a thief and a thief’s associate, he was still offered work and, presumably, protection from the police.
As Bonnay, he did not know the name of the truck driver, or the people at the house on the rim. He had not been informed, and in his assumed character he would be expected to ask, otherwise it would be presumed that he knew, and how could he explain knowing names when he ought not to know them. A small point, but one powerful enough to slay a ferret. Casually he said:
“Who am I working for?”
“The name’s Mike Conway. I’m the Cork Valley carrier and storekeeper. My wife is the post-mistress. All right with you?”
“What d’you mean: all right with me?” Bony retorted. “I got a right to know who I’m working for, haven’t I?”
“Yes, you have that,” admitted the driver. “Why the heat?”
“Blast it! You asked me if it’s all right with me to know. Why shouldn’t I know?”
“No answer, Nat, no answer,” came the quietly spoken words. “You go to a good school?”
“Why the hell not?” Bony almost snarled. “Think because my mother was an aborigine I’m a sort of wild animal? ’Course I went to school. I passed my Intermediate. Then what? Back to the land. Anyway, what d’you want me to do? Dig spuds or teach at school?”
“Pipe down, Nat, pipe down. I didn’t mean to rile you.” Bony continued to sit half turned to the driver. “Life is what you get out of it, not what it likes to give you, I’m going to pay you seven bob a bag to lift spuds, and the wife will charge you three pounds a week for board and keep. And when the crop’s lifted, there’s other work you can do if you care to stay on.”
“Expect I’ll be staying. The Valley looks good to me,” conceded Bony.
“Good on you. Winter can be cold, and there’s plenty of fogs, but the quarters are snug enough. And another thing, Nat, us Conways and the Kellys don’t stand for foreign interference. Get it?”
“Bit by bit, Mike. We’ll get along.”
“Sure we will. It’s a deal?”
“Well, I’m not walking back, and I’m liking that word ‘snug’.”
Fifteen minutes later and five hundred feet lower, the off-side front tyre blew out, and the driver had to proceed on a flat to the next inside bend and relax the vehicle against the bank. The new man evidently knew what to do; he disengaged the spare from its rack and had it ready for Conway before the wheel was jacked. The change occupied them twenty minutes. “You aren’t exactly useless,” commented the driver when they were moving again. “Two miles to go, and then a cup of tea.”
“That inner tube could be chewed to ribbons,” surmised Bony, thoughtfully adding the twenty minutes occupied by the change to the twenty odd minutes spent at the white house. Forty minutes might cause a bad hitch in a time-table.
“Could be so,” was the cheerful agreement. “Still it’ll come off the income tax.”
“The skin off my hands digging spuds won’t come off my tax,” complained Bony.
“Don’t worry, Nat. You’ll be paid in hard cash.”
The next bridge they came to crossed a gully which looked a mile deep. It was narrow and had no side walls or rails, and the man accustomed to the level square miles of the inland shrank back. Soon afterwards they arrived at the valley bed, and here the track was better as it wound over low bald hills on which cattle grazed in knee-high grass.
Cork Valley! There was not a valley like this in County Cork, Ireland. The man known to all his friends as Bony, and now in Cork Valley as Nat Bonnay, a horse thief and partaker of stolen fowls, was entranced by its beauty: the autumnal tints; the soft blues of the shadows and the jet black gaping jaws of the surrounding mountain slopes and cliffs. From a rise he saw the houses of Cork Valley, pure white against the green wall of trees divided by the living silver of a high waterfall.
They approached the settlement. Bony counted seven houses: three on one side and four on the other of a wide unmade street. Beyond the houses stood a large shed-like building he guessed to be a dairy and creamery, and as they drew near he noted people gathering in the short street, and Mike Conway exclaimed:
“What the hell’s up now!”
The first house on the left was combined with the general store, and just beyond the store was what might be a garage. At this building Conway stopped the truck, and it was instantly surrounded by half a dozen men who offered no sign either of welcome or hostility. A huge man, with flame-red hair, small, intensely blue eyes, and a full beard as thick and as red as his hair, jerked open the door of the truck.
“Come on, you,” he ordered, the need for haste plain in voice and eyes.
Bony lowered himself from the high cabin, dragging his old suitcase with him. He was seized by two men and urged, with no possibility of successful resistance, off the street and into the garage-like building. It contained farm equipment, and stacks of potatoes and pie melons. At the far end a grinning boy held up a trap door in the floor. The man with the great red beard said:
“Down quick, me lad. The police are right on your tail.”
Wooden steps descended to a cellar. A hurricane lamp burned on a small table. There was a bed bearing a small pile of folded blankets. He sat on the chair beside the table, and laughed silently as he rolled a cigarette.