Bony and the Kelly Gang. Arthur W. Upfield
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the adults seldom speaking and the children not at all. Everyone was overtly interested in the new man, and once it was apparent that old Mrs Conway was discussing him with her grandson.
In character with the shy, police-hunted, horse-stealing half-aborigine, Bony at last politely arranged his knife and fork on his empty platter, and sat back in his chair. He waited to be spoken to, and no one did. One by one other diners finished the course, and the girl on his left rose to gather the platters and carry them to the bench. The paintings caught his attention. The room, large though it was, was too small a setting for them. One was of a castle beneath the black draperies of lowering clouds, and was surely the home of the original Dracula. Another was a battle scene, and the third portrayed a man and a woman in the costume of a century long past. The man reminded Bony of the red giant called Red Kelly.
A large plate loaded with apricot pie was set before him, and he smiled his thanks at the girl who served him, his left-hand neighbour. She gave no answering smile, her expression being slightly bored, but after she had again occupied her chair and was eating, he found her looking at him when her face was tilted downward over her spoon and fork. He noted a sustained and furtive interest.
The final course was cheese, bread and butter, and the children were given glasses of water. Bony hoped for some tea or coffee, as without one or the other no Australian meal could be ably digested. When the children, whose ages ranged from ten to about fifteen, departed one after the other, he despaired.
The women rose, and left the room, leaving only the very old dame and the men. The men began to fill pipes or roll cigarettes, and when his pipe was working, the hairless one joined Bony and so banished his feeling of being in a desert. He said, easily:
“I did hear you could throw a boomerang. Never did I see it. Somewhere about there’s an old one as long as a cutlass. Would you throw it some time?”
“If it’s a large one, it would be for ceremonial use,” Bony explained. “Those made for throwing are much smaller.”
“There’s a book which says the aborigines throw them to knock birds down. Would that be the kind?”
The dark grey eyes were serious, but deep in them natural humour gleamed like sand grains seen through clear mountain water.
“If the birds are close enough,” agreed Bony. “Hit or miss, you know. Always chancy. Actually, the abos throw them for amusement.”
He was enlarging on the subject and the bald man was engrossed, when Mike Conway set before each two china cups, one containing black coffee and the other a whitish liquid which might have been kümmel. Baldhead watched Conway until he was again seated, and broke off in the middle of a question. When the old woman and the others lifted the cups of white liquid, he did likewise. So did Bony.
Mike Conway said: “The Kellys.”
The contents of the cups were tossed down throats and the cups of coffee taken up and sipped. Bony was running a little late. He lifted the right cup and tossed the contents down his throat. It must have splashed the sides for his head exploded and his breathing stopped. Fire streaked before his eyes, and water drowned the fire. Beyond his clouded vision he saw Grandma Conway shrieking with mirth. Fighting for air, he staggered to his feet, and someone banged him on the back with a sledge hammer. Baldhead was saying, soothingly:
“Should have warned you, Nat. You take it fast, or you take it extra slow. You never fumble it.”
Chapter Four
The Spud Digger
Inspector Bonaparte dug ‘spuds’ in the most beautiful valley in Australia.
Conway’s potato crop occupied the crown of a low plateau in the centre of what comprised about three thousand acres of cleared rich land, bordered by broken country massed with trees and surrounded by steep mountain slopes crowned with rock faces. From where he worked he could see the mark of the track slanting down the slopes from Conway’s brother’s house to cross the valley to the settlement. Behind the settlement, the fall of water dropped from ledge to ledge and was sometimes golden, sometimes blue, and sometimes amber, according to the angle of the sun. Early and late, it was polished pewter.
The big house stood on the far side of the valley and in the morning the slate roof gleamed beneath the sun and at evening the windows reflected the sunlight and could be counted. For Australia it was a mighty house, the transplantation of memory of one in the old country, and there lived Patrick (Red) Kelly, the descendent of the first Kelly who found Cork Valley and settled there.
In that year there had been no railways out from Sydney, and the track from Sydney to Melbourne Town was barely defined by the pioneers’ bullock drays. It was the hunting-ground of Starlight and bushrangers of his stamp.
Legend has it that the original Kellys had two children, a boy and a girl. The boy Sean eventually sought a wife, and one day rode up from the valley. A week later he rode into the valley with a woman behind him, whom he claimed, he had captured on the track to Melbourne, and had been married to her by a priest travelling with her party. The sister Nora came of age to seek a husband, and she copied her brother by riding forth from Cork Valley. On returning she was accompanied by two priests and a notorious gentleman of the road known as Black Daniel, with horse pistols stuck in his belt, a beard shaped like a spade, and the price of a hundred guineas on his head. The poor fellow thought he was tough. He must have been comatose from the eyebrows upward, because he thought he was bringing home Nora Kelly to do a trade with her father. How the priests came to be of the party isn’t on record. However, they were present when negotiations for ransom were opened with Nora’s father and brother.
It is said that Black Daniel had the drop on everyone, his mind occupied with gold, and forgetful of the demure female, victim of his avarice, who was standing with him, her eyes downcast and hands clasped in anxiety. Then something fell on him; one of Nora’s heavy boots, it is said; and on returning from unconsciousness he found himself being married to her by one priest, with the other holding him up on his feet. It was then learned that his name was Conway.
Shortly after the demise of the original Kelly, Sean Kelly and Black Daniel Conway feuded over the division of the land. They met early one morning, and when Sean fell mortally wounded he had strength enough to pull a trigger and drop Conway dead in his boots. Following the double funeral, the widows voted to continue the feud, but the wife of the original Kelly came up with his will under the terms of which she inherited all of Cork Valley. She succinctly remarked: “Peace or else.”
The aged widow must have been as remarkable a character as her husband. She sent out for a priest-lawyer, and one month after the double funeral, he arrived to say Mass, and afterwards conveyed the conditions of peace to the young widows. A wall was to be built across Cork Valley; one half would be bequeathed to Nora Conway, and the other to her sister-in-law. Young Mrs Kelly was to have that portion on which the great house stood, and Nora Conway was to build her home on the other portion.
The priest-lawyer, a truly saintly man named Cahill, supervised the erection of the stone wall, and saw to it that the legalities were duly executed. Old Mrs Conway now living in the modern settlement, was the granddaughter of Black Daniel Conway, the bushranger, and Nora Kelly who first bashed him and then married him while his knees sagged. Sections of the wall still stood, other sections littered the ground and were replaced with posts and rails. Bony sat with his back to it now and ate his lunch. The sun was warm. The air was crystal clear. The sweetness of this God’s garden was ever to remain in his memory.
It seemed that he was the only one who did any real work. Now at the end of the first week his back muscles had firmed and he was liking the labour of digging potatoes, and taking pleasure in counting the bags he filled. There were, of course, hundreds of cows to be milked. The Conways owned power-driven milking-sheds and a cream and cheese factory, electric power being brought in from outside.
Bony became one of the Conway family. He was given breakfast at seven, provided with a lunch bag and billy can for tea, and returned to his underground lodging in time for dinner at six. The soft-spoken Mike Conway treated him with consideration, and the bald-headed Joe Flanagan