The Gold Seekers (50 page)

She cut him short. “Ah, now, ‘tis not your money I’m wanting, and don’t I know what it’s like not to have even a farthing to be made!” Her voice had an Irish lilt, musical and beguiling, and as if by instinct sizing him up, she swiftly drew the shawl closer about her, hiding the charms she had— seemingly inadvertently—exposed. “But you could do me the greatest service any man ever did, should you have a mind to, and that’s God’s truth, so it is.” She held out her hand. “I’m Patsy O’Dowd—Mrs. O’Dowd, wife to Seamus Michael O’Dowd. May I—” She gestured to the empty chair facing Luke. “May I join you, mister?”

It would have been churlish to refuse. Luke accepted the proffered hand and, forcing a smile, introduced himself and pulled out the chair for her. “What of your meal, Mrs. O’Dowd? You’re not finished eating—”

“Ah, ‘twas just tea and a mess of potato stew,” Patsy O’Dowd assured him indifferently. “I’ve no appetite. A body can’t eat when she’s sick to the heart with worry, can she, now?” She seated herself, her big, tear-filled dark eyes meeting Luke’s gaze confidingly. “You’ve the look of a good, kindly young fellow, so you have, Mr. Murphy. I was after noticing that when I seen you come in, and I made up me mind then and there. ‘Ask that young fellow to help,’ I says to meself. ‘He’ll not refuse when he hears the terrible trouble I’m in.’ And seeing you have the one thing I’m in desperate need of, Mr. Murphy—why, the Lord and His Blessed Mother surely sent you here this night!”

Luke stared back at her uncomprehendingly, all his chivalrous instincts aroused by her evident distress. She was sobbing now, mopping vainly at her eyes as the tears fell unchecked.

“Please,” he besought her, “don’t upset yourself. How can I help? I’ve nothing, like I told you, ma’am, I—”

“You’ve a ticket on the coach to Ballarat,” Patsy O’Dowd reminded him, “and I’ve not the money to buy one. ‘Tis a

matter of life and death, Mr. Murphy. I must get there.” Before Luke could protest that for him, too, getting to Ballarat was of primary importance, she had launched into her tale … and a moving one it was, described in graphic detail in her lilting Irish voice.

Her husband, it seemed, had met mysterious injury in a fall into one of the deep mine shafts in the Eureka lode at Ballarat. His leg was broken, they had told her, and maybe his spine as well. His need of her to nurse him back to health was dire and urgent. But—the tears came again, threatening to overwhelm her—short of selling her body, she had no means of making the journey to his side.

“I’m a good woman and a faithful wife, Mr. Murphy,” she added pathetically. “But sure, if the price for your coach ticket is that I betray me marriage vows, ‘tis not too high a price to pay, I swear it! Just so I can get to poor Seamus, there’s nothing I’d not do, so help me God!”

His conscience pricking him, Luke gave her his precious ticket, assuring her hastily that he would set no price on it. Patsy O’Dowd called the blessing of the Holy Mother of God and all the saints on his head and bent to plant a moistly grateful kiss on his cheek. Then she left him, a whiff of a cheap perfume in his nostrils and the first, unhappy dawning of doubt in his mind.

The doubt was turned into certainty when he went to settle his check for the meal.

“Up to her old tricks, Patsy was,” the old proprietor said gruffly. “Took you for your coach ticket, did she? Pah, should’ve warned you—but truth to tell, I figured you had more sense. She’s been wanting to get to the goldfields for quite a while, has Patsy. Well, now she’s got her wish. Leastways she’ll not trouble me no more, so that’s an ill wind! You could report her to the police, if you’ve a mind to, but she’ll be well on her way before they can lay hands on her.”

Luke took this advice, and a not very sympathetic police sergeant confirmed that he had been duped.

“We can’t pick her up just on your say-so. She’ll be on the coach with a valid ticket—no reason to pull her in for that. But if you’re so anxious to get to Ballarat, lad, there’s one way that won’t cost you a penny. You could sign on as a police trooper. There’s trouble brewing there.” The sergeant eyed Luke’s tanned face and now well-muscled body with a speculative smile, taking in his worn clothing and the stained moleskin trousers. “Been at the diggings before, ain’t you?”

“Yes,” Luke confirmed. “In California and in New South Wales, Sergeant.”

“Then you’ll know the way things are. An unruly lot, the diggers, bent on making trouble for the government. Some say they’re revolutionaries, tryin’ to set up a bloody republic here. Are you one o’ that kind, lad?” The question was grave.

“No,” Luke assured him. “I’m not. But I want to go to Ballarat. There’s a man there I have to find. He … that is, I was in partnership with him in California. He calls himself —well, his name is Humphrey, Captain Humphrey.”

“Humphrey?” The sergeant’s eyes narrowed. “Ah, now there’s talk about a Captain Humphrey—they call him Jonathan Humphrey. Seems they’ve formed what they’re pleased to call a Ballarat Reform League, and he’s in it up to his neck. Come here a few weeks back, with a bloody deputation, to try and persuade His Excellency the Governor to release three o’ their men sentenced for leadin’ a riot.” He went into brief details, still watching Luke’s face, as if uncertain whether or not to trust him. “They went to Toorak House, His Excellency’s official residence, making all kinds o’ demands, they were. I know, I was on duty there, as it happens, and I seen an’ heard ‘em. This Humphrey, now, the one you’re lookin’ to find—is he a gentlemanly kind o’ cuss, Welshman by his accent, with a dark mustache?” Luke was conscious of a surge of excitement. “Yes, sir, that’s him. You say you saw him when he called on the Governor?”

“Large as life, lad. Him and a big, surly Scotchman name o’ Kennedy and a decent enough feller they called Black. Old Quarterdeck—” The sergeant stopped himself, swearing beneath his breath. “That is, His Excellency, he gave ‘em short shrift, an’ quite right, too, in my humble opinion. So they went off back to Ballarat and started to stir up trouble.” He hesitated, again searching Luke’s face. “Why do you

want to find Captain Humphrey, lad? You said you was his partner in California. Does that mean he’s a friend o’ yours?”

Luke hesitated in his turn, wondering whether to reveal the truth. He decided on the half-truth he had fallen back on before. “No, Sergeant, he’s no friend of mine. He robbed me of my strike in California.”

“Ah, then, that figures, don’t it?” The sergeant frowned. “We’re looking for recruits for the police—they’re sendin’ for reinforcements for Ballarat, and there’s not that many decent lads as are willin’ to volunteer. Plenty o’ bad types, ex-convicts like, there always is. Can you ride a horse, boy?”

“Yes,” Luke assured him. His excitement increased. It would be one way of getting to Ballarat, he told himself, and … for God’s sake, a pleasant change from dishwashing.

“Got any references, have you? Character references, 1 mean?”

“I …” Luke considered the question. “I suppose Mr. Moss of the Criterion would give me a character, Sergeant. I’ve been working for him. Or there’s Captain Claus Van Buren. He’s known me longer—I came out from San Francisco in his clipper schooner, the Dolphin. And he married my—that is, he married my sister two months ago, in Sydney.”

The sergeant’s expression relaxed. He said, beaming, “Ah, now you’re talkin’, lad! If you’re related to Captain Van Buren, no need to question you further. Very well respected is Captain Van Buren.” He snuffled among the papers on his desk and found a form, which he pushed across for Luke to read. “Terms o’ enlistment as a trooper in the mounted police—read it through. If you want to volunteer, I can attest you right here an’ now.”

Luke glanced at the form without taking it in. “Could I be sure of being posted to Ballarat, sir?”

“Aye, pretty sure, if you make out all right in the trainin’.” The sergeant searched for quill and ink, eyeing Luke with kindly, approving eyes now. “I can put it on your papers that you’re volunteerin’ for Ballarat, and it’s for Ballarat we need the men at the present time. You’ll get there, lad—I can almost guarantee it.” He added with wry mockery, “And I reckon you’ve learned a lesson, ain’t you? You won’t be fallin’ for no more soft-spoken young women with hard-luck stories, will you?”

“No, sir,” Luke assured him, reddening. “I won’t.” He signed the enlistment forms, and the old sergeant swore him in.

Next day he reported to the mounted police depot, was given a cursory medical examination, issued with a smart blue uniform, a saber, a carbine, and a horse, and, following a fortnight of training, found himself on the way to Ballarat with some thirty others, as reinforcements for the goldfield police, under the command of Senior Inspector Brownlow.

His comrades, Luke quickly discovered, were anything but the “decent lads” the sergeant had considered desirable. There was a hard core of older men who had served time in the notorious prisons of Van Diemen’s Land—now officially called Tasmania, they told him, and spit as they did so. These men were tough, hard-bitten individuals who had taken part in battles with the diggers in other goldfields and had little sympathy for them.

“A bunch of bloody malcontents and revolutionaries,” a balding, heavily bearded trooper asserted. “And the damned Yankees are to blame for much of it. Came out here to spread their republican ideas, as well as make their sodding fortunes. And the Scotchmen are nearly as bad—Chartists, they call themselves, stupid puritanical bastards, every last one of ‘em. But the Irish are the worst o’ the lot— treachery’s in their blood, and because they’re priest-ridden Roman Catholics, they go along with the Italians and the French. They even had their revolutionary flag flying in Bendigo when we went in to sort them out—the diggers’ banner, they called it. And it was red, with a crossed pick and shovel, a miner’s cradle, and a kangaroo.” He laughed unpleasantly. “We burned it for ‘em, and they caved in, once we’d arrested the ringleaders. It’ll be the same in Ballarat, you’ll see, once they cotton on to the fact that we mean business!”

Listening to him as they trotted slowly along the dusty, rutted road, Luke wondered how Jasper Morgan had come to involve himself in the diggers’ cause. It was out of character; Morgan cared little for anyone but himself—although,

perhaps, they had appealed to his vanity when they had elected him to their reform committee. He had been excessively vain about his gold medal, purportedly awarded to him by the Queen of Spain… .

Luke learned that two or three of the new recruits had, like himself, been in the goldfields, though they were careful not to dwell on their past activities; others were newly arrived immigrants from England, whose funds, like his own, had run out; and there were four so-called officer cadets, of good family, who kept to themselves and offered no reason for their presence in the police ranks. But when any of the four deigned to talk to the troopers, it was to boast callously of being determined to teach the damned diggers a lesson.

“They should be hanged if they take up arms,” the elder of the four opined. “Hanged as traitors—they deserve nothing else. Let’s hope the Governor doesn’t weaken when the swine are put on trial, or the next thing that will happen is that they’ll march on Melbourne under their infernal red flag!” He added, clearly shocked, “I heard that at one of the camps they hoisted the American flag above the Union Jack. If that’s not treason, I don’t know what is!”

Only the sub-inspector in command of the reinforcement squadron appeared to Luke to have an unprejudiced view of the situation they were about to face. A thin gray-haired officer named Martin, he had joined the police ten years before, having served as a sergeant in one of Sydney’s garrison regiments, including a year’s duty on Norfolk Island, of which he adamantly refused to speak. But he expressed his opinion of the conflict with the diggers plainly enough, one evening when they bivouacked on the roadside and Luke found him by himself, moodily drinking tea.

“Mine’s not a popular view, lad,” he confessed. “Not with this lot, anyway, so I don’t air it all that often. But you’ve been a digger, so you’ll maybe understand. First off, I don’t reckon they’re aiming to start a revolution. They say they want justice, an end to the license charges—which are too high for those that never strike pay dirt—and no more police license hunts. I think truly that’s all most of them do want. The police raids are calculated to stir up resentment—I’ve seen that for myself—and too many of the officers abuse their power, while at the same time some of them are corrupt and they take bribes. I won’t name names, but I know some whose moral standards don’t bear investigation.”

Martin sighed and set down his pannikin.

“Gold has brought prosperity to this state, real prosperity that will last, even after all the gold has been dug up. It’s given the country a healthy influx of immigrants, many of whom will stay and develop the outback and clear the bush to grow crops and raise livestock. That’s to the ultimate good, isn’t it? And the diggers work hard for their gold— backbreaking work, in shocking conditions very often—you know that better than I do, Murphy. All right, so too many of them cheat and avoid paying for their licenses, but I sweat it’s because they don’t have the means to pay. A fairer system would be to put a tax on the gold, so that the ones who strike it rich pay for the privilege, while the others go or searching without charge. But …” The sub-inspector rose heavily to his feet. “The authorities don’t ask my opinion, so I just do what I’m ordered to and keep my mouth shut. But 1 can tell you, lad, I’m not looking forward to what’s ahead of us at Ballarat. Men will be killed and wounded, and the poor devils of diggers haven’t a chance in hell against the force we can send against them.” He eyed Luke thoughtfully. “Sergeant Fairfax mentioned you were looking for one of the reform league committee. Friend of yours, is he?”

“No,” Luke denied. He hesitated, uncertain whether or not he dare divulge the real reason for his search.

Martin said gruffly, “I told you, lad, I know how to keep my mouth shut. Don’t tell me if you’d rather not, but it’s possible I could help.”

“He’s going by the name of Captain Humphrey,” Luke said. “But his real name is Jasper Morgan. Back in California, where we were partners, he robbed my brother and me of every ounce of gold we’d worked for, and … well, it cost my brother his life.”