Henry Appleton Boy Hero and the Burgess Gang

ONE

DELIVERY BY STORM

An icy rain pummels the small cottage at the edge of a great forest. A dim lantern swings in the front window, and the hand painted ‘Bluebell Cottage’ sign is tossed this way and that as the wind strains to wrench it off its hooks.

Look well at the young man who stands at the front door, grasping its frame as he is buffeted by the mocking wind, and peers into the darkness of the New Zealand bush. He is barely 14, but his body is already forged and hardened by this harsh country which has a special disdain for those who venture across the oceans and dare to call this home.

Father! he cries into the storm.

Whoo whoo! replies a ghostly owl in the treetops.

Behind the house, in a patch of tilled land which is planted in various types of vegetable, is the young man’s mother, thin and muscular. She wears threadbare trousers borrowed from her husband’s wardrobe, rolled up and hitched with a piece of cord; and his shirt also, knotted at the waist. Her boots are a pair which no longer fit her son.

It is not far from midnight, and the moon’s light is mostly blanketed by dark cloud and rain, but this woman wields a spade with ferocious intensity. Only hours ago, a runner from the goldfields brought the news that her husband is dead, and in her grief and anger she attacks the dirt that represents her hope and her despair.

William, why? she sobs. In London no more than four years gone, Victoria Appleton was a gentlewoman who wore fine clothes and spent her days in the society of other educated women. Now her matted hair forms a veil over her fine features, and her hands are blistered and cracked from hard labour.

Why? Her warm tears mingle with the icy raindrops and her spade slices into the plants she has so carefully tended.

Hark now! Above the howl of the storm can be heard an eerie screech as if some miserable animal is in pain.

Father! At the front of the house Henry Appleton, for this is the young man’s name, calls out again.

The animal’s screech now reveals itself to be the creaking of wagon wheels.

The boy, already drenched, flings himself into the storm, slipping and sliding in the mud as he scrambles towards the trees.

The wagon appears in the mist before him as a spectre materialising from Hades. It is a narrow and battered wooden vehicle drawn by a miserable packhorse, and lined on each side are the hooded denizens of the underworld; or so they appear to be.

Hallo – Appletons! cries one. He pulls back his hood, regardless of the tiny daggers of rain which stab his bearded face. Appletons – ahoy! This man is Hans, and he is from Germany, but that is all his comrades know. Like the rest of them, he has left behind his old life to search for gold in this far-off land. Perhaps he is the youngest son of a wealthy land owner; perhaps he killed a rival in a fight and can never return. No-one knows, and no-one cares. Tonight the guardians of the wagon are simply united in their concern for a fellow gold digger and his widow and son.

The other men drop their hoods and flick the rain from their hair. These are young men from places far away, drawn to New Zealand’s goldfields by stories of adventure and great riches. They are by now more accustomed to death than they would wish to tell. They stand alert, as sentinels, having delivered their forlorn consignment.

The Appleton boy stops abruptly, confronted by the wagon’s sorry cargo. He knows that beneath the waterlogged oilskin, lashed down by rope bindings, is the body of his father William Appleton. He sees his father’s boots, heavy with mud, protruding from the cover.

William! The widow runs from the cottage. She flings her thin frame against the shape of her husband’s body, sobbing. Hans the bearded German wraps a powerful arm around her to support her and they drag the cart close to the cottage. He says nothing. There is nothing to say when a man hands a widow her dead husband.

Come inside, please, says the widow. She has already stopped crying, and she knows the men will be hungry after their long trek through the storm. There is a large pot of soup simmering for them. The men remove their sodden coats and boots and step into the cottage, grateful for its warmth.

While they spoon down the soup, and the widow fusses over them and thanks them for their troubles, the boy remains outside. He offers the cart horse a bucket of water, then stands silently next to his father’s shrouded body.

He is grieving, of course; the dead man is the only father Henry has ever known. But William Appleton was not Henry’s birth father, and although Henry had a happy life with William and Victoria Appleton in England, and although William was a good father and cared deeply for Henry, the boy longs to know his real father. Was he an adventurer? A writer? A lord, or a pauper?

Henry has always known that his real mother gave him up for adoption, and he accepts she must have had good cause. But he has that gnawing pain that every adopted child experiences, always wondering why.

These thoughts occupy Henry’s mind as he stands alongside the cart. The rain continues to pepper him with icy shots, but he pays no heed. He helps the men carry his father’s body into the cottage and lay it on the table. He helps them turn the cart around in the mud. And he watches as the men with the horse and cart are once more swallowed by the mist and rain.

TWO

HIS FIRST ADVENTURE

Now we turn back the pages of Henry’s life. For as they say, the nature of the man can be seen in the boy. I, Johnny Slick, having been afforded the privilege of spending time with Henry Appleton, can now recount some of his earlier adventures.

Travel with me, if you will, to March 9 th, 1862, a month shy of Henry’s 11th birthday, when we will witness an event which gives us an early signal of Henry Appleton’s heroic nature.

On this day, Henry accompanied his father to town while William Appleton visited the W. H. West Hair Dressing Saloon in Hardy Street, Nelson.

It was not a regular occurrence, because Mrs Appleton preferred that her husband stay at home and help dig the garden behind Bluebell Cottage, rather than go to what she described as a den of iniquity. But this day she resigned herself to spending the morning without her husband and son, and bid them farewell as they set off in the old cart which their elderly horse Solomon could barely pull.

William Appleton waved a cheery goodbye, and gave his son a friendly punch on the arm.

Just the two of us men, he said. Just the two of us.

Henry sat head high beside him, grinning, as they juddered down the rough track towards the town.

They did not talk. His father began to hum an old English tune Henry did not recognize, and there was a faraway look in his eyes. Henry was happy to think about nothing, but simply to gaze at the shimmering trees as they passed by.

As they entered the dark forest, William Appleton stopped humming.

Hard times, he muttered to himself. Hard times.

I know, said Henry in a small voice.

Henry knew his father would be thinking about his debts. They owed a lot of money to the bank, and sometimes they had nothing to eat but potatoes from their own garden.

Henry wished he could help. But he had no money, and no way to earn any money.

Then, as they came out of the forest into more open countryside, William Appleton awoke from his dream and turned to Henry.

Henry, son , he said. Take the reins.

He handed the worn leather straps to the boy, and for the next few minutes Henry sat proudly in charge, firmly guiding old Solomon along the uneven track.

When they arrived in town William took back the reins. Well done, Henry, he said. Well done. He hitched the wagon, and disappeared into the W. H. West Hair Dressing Saloon.

Henry peered through the window at the shelves stacked with toys and well-thumbed newspapers. Signs pointed to fireworks, gun powder and shot for firearms. There was a majestic iron barber’s chair with arm rests and a footrest so customers could stretch out.

A few years ago, Henry would have been taken inside to play with the toys, but he was too old for that now. He knew his father would be in there for a good two hours, chatting with friends and reading the papers, so he skipped across the muddy road and sat on the bench to watch the world go by.

Already his mind was active, as he began to draft another short story for his Wild West collection. Cowboys and Indians, gunfights, horses and cattle drives, heroes and villains…

His attention was drawn to a pair of strangers who rode up on horses which glistened with sweat. The men were clearly villains, Henry decided, and made a mental note of their features. The older man had a bushy beard and drooping hat which nearly concealed his face, but it was his eyes that marked the man. His left eye was a steely blue, but his right eye was dead and devoid of any hue.

Henry’s gaze turned to the younger man, whose only interesting feature was his neatly-trimmed pencil moustache. He looked back at the older man; Dead Eye Dick, Henry said under his breath. What a character for his next story! How could anyone with a dead eye like that be anything but a villain?

Henry’s attention to detail was an asset he was keen to develop, for the sake of his writing career. He made a point of examining the men’s dusty footwear – a buckle was missing from the older man’s right boot – and their trousers were grubby, their jackets crumpled. Dead Eye Dick wore