Australian Heist

JAMES PHELPS

On the front cover an old woman in a cap pointed her finger at a girl wearing her hair in a bun while a gentleman in a suit looked on. ‘What’s your future like, Frank?’ McGuire asked. ‘You going to live long and be happy? Is it going to be suits and sheilas, or just hags pointing fingers?’ Gardiner looked up from the book and raised his eyebrows, the one on the left parted by a lumpy red scar. ‘I’m going to be rich,’ he said. ‘And I’ll run off with the girl of my dreams. A girl called Kitty.’ The two men sitting at the kitchen table with McGuire laughed knowingly. Johnny Gilbert had been the first to arrive, at about seven that evening. Gilbert was a famed horse thief, born in Canada before moving to Australia to be raised by conmen. McGuire knew Gilbert and had been told by his brother-in-law, Ben Hall, to let him and a few other boys in for a meeting, just a chat and a drink. Worth your while, he’d said. McGuire loved Hall. Everyone did. And he would do anything for the man who had married his sister and become co-owner of Sandy Creek Cattle Station with him. But Ben was breaking bad. He had just spent five weeks in gaol after being accused by police inspector Sir Frederick Pottinger of assisting Gilbert and Gardiner in the robbery of one William Bacon, but had been acquitted. During that time, though, Sandy Creek had gone to ruin. McGuire couldn’t tend the cattle on his own, and he couldn’t pay for the feed. Half of his cows were now dead.

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