Night Ride into Danger by Jackie French

Author:Jackie French
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

TALKING TO JUANITA

The darkness thickened away from the coach’s torches, but the moonlight was bright enough to cast shadows and silver the gum leaves above them. Jem found Juanita patting one of the horses as it bent to chew a frost-brown tussock. Cobb & Co horses didn’t get a chance to graze during their journeys. On other runs, some hardly spent any time in the paddock at all, but were given hay and oats and water in the stable block, then sent out again as soon as they had rested. Horses treated like that hardly lasted a year, Paw said. Jem was glad the horses on this run were better cared for, well bred and perfectly trained and so too valuable for any careless groom to mistreat.

‘Where’s Mr Smith?’ Jem asked.

‘Gone to get more water. He’s funny. He was just sitting out here looking up at the moon, and smiling.’

Jem wondered if Mr Smith had ever seen the moon in prison. ‘You’re not scared of him?’

Juanita considered. ‘No.’ She grinned at Jem. ‘Anyway, Sis put the pistol I took from him in our carpetbag. Only one of them’s loaded — the one I took. Mr Smith couldn’t have shot any of us with his empty pistol.’

Jem nodded. Mr Smith had shot Lady Anne, and he hadn’t seen him reload. Could he have reloaded the other pistol down at the stream? No. Mr Smith would need shot and wadding, a brush and powder flask — all in his carpetbag probably, and his carpetbag was still on the coach.

Jem blinked. That loaded pistol was in the bag Juanita carried now.

He regarded her cautiously. What if Ma Grimsby was right? What if natives did hold cannibal feasts? Except . . . except Amos Bighands was one of the grooms at Goulburn, and he was a native. Jem had known him for years. Cobb & Co employed lots of native grooms. Jem was sure they’d never eaten anyone . . .

He realised that Juanita was looking at him strangely, too.

‘Don’t Red Indians scalp people?’ she asked, a little too carelessly.

‘Paw said white people took scalps,’ said Jem. ‘Maybe it’s something everyone does in America.’

‘I heard that the Indians are cannibals,’ Juanita offered.

‘I don’t think they are,’ said Jem warily. ‘Maw told me stories about how warriors would hunt buffalo — they’re like giant bullocks. Maw said the herds of buffalo were so big you couldn’t see the horizon. I don’t think people who hunt buffalo would bother eating people. Maybe being a cannibal is one of those things you say about people you don’t like. Maybe . . . maybe there have never been any cannibals . . .’

‘Yes, there have,’ said Juanita firmly. ‘I read it in the newspaper. There were those convicts who escaped in Van Diemen’s Land and ate each other.’

‘But they were English. I’ve never heard anyone say English people are cannibals.’

‘What else did your mother say about Red Indians?’ asked Juanita, more thoughtfully now.

‘How when you were made a man you got to wear an eagle feather.

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