True History of the Kelly Gang Read Online Free PDF

for there was not one window in them heavy walls. At 1st we would shout out to him but never got any answer and finally we all give up excepting Jem who run his hands along the frost cold walls patting the prison like a dog.
    I dreamed about my father every night he come to sit on the end of my bed and stare at me his puffy eyes silent his face lacerated by a thousand knife cuts.
    I were so v. guilty I could never of admitted that life without my father had become in many ways more pleasant. Only when his big old buck cat went missing did I frankly tell my ma I were pleased to see it gone.
    Do not misunderstand me our lives was far harder for his absence. The landlord provided no decent fences so the mother and her children was obliged to build a dogleg fence 2 mi. long to save our cows from impounding. In any case our stock would still escape the fines was 5/– for a cow 3/– for a pig. This we could ill afford. Our mother were expecting another baby she were always weary yet more tender than before. At night she would gather us about her and tell us stories and poems she never done that when my da were away shearing or contracting but now we discovered this treasure she had committed to her memory. She knew the stories of Conchobor and Dedriu and Mebd the tale of Cuchulainn I still see him stepping into his war chariot it bristles with points of iron and narrow blades with hooks and hard prongs and straps and loops and cords.
    The southerly wind blew right through the hut and it were so bitter it made your head ache though it aint the cold I remember but the light of the tallow candle it were golden on my mother’s cheeks it shone in her great dark eyes bright and fierce as a native cat to defend her fatherless brood. In the stories she told us of the old country there was many such women they was queens they was hot blooded not careful they would fight a fight and take a king into their marriage bed. They would have been called Irish rubbish in Avenel.
    Our mother grew bigger. We boys laboured beside her in the garden it were a good loam soil and we was set to improve it further. That 1st winter we had parsnips and potatoes only. We had to sell the wagon and 2 horses but kept our small herd of dairy cows. We produced 2 lb. of butter per day but rarely had anything except lard for our own bread. Jem and I tramped into town and back delivering the butter on foot walking right past our father’s lockup not calling out to him no more. Each day I waited for the night to fall who can imagine from where happiness will come?
    On the 5th of August 1865 I come home in the loud dripping dark. It had been raining already for a week the creek were a river roaring so I did not hear Mother’s cries until I were at the door. I picked up a shovel and inside I discovered her lying on the earthen floor. When she saw me she sat up and explained she was beginning to have her baby. The handy woman were already gone to Hobbs’ Creek for another birth so my mother had sent Maggie to borrow the Murrays’ horse and ride to fetch old Dr May. That were 2 hr. previous and now the pain was very bad and my mother feared Maggie had been thrown off the horse or drowned crossing the creek.
    Annie were the oldest but of a nervous disposition she had chosen this occasion to have the gastric fits. So while my mother laboured Annie vomited into a bowl beside her. I helped Mother onto her bed which were made from 2 thick saplings set into the wall and a piece of jute bag suspended between the shafts. Thinking her darling Maggie dead she cried continually. Jem were just 7 yr. and Dan were only 4 yr. they was both disturbed to see their mother in such distress.
    In the hours that followed she could find no comfort or relent finally directing me to place a quilt over the table which she climbed upon at the same time instructing us all to go back behind our curtains. Dan begun bawling in earnest the table were revealed to be too short and my mother could not