Jessie James: Lady Bushranger

By Raymond Boyd Dunn

You share the emotions of a teenager as she frees herself from her present life of drudgery, and becomes a bushranger, because she yearns for a new, adventurous lifestyle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raymond Boyd Dunn
• Release date: Oct 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311619426

Raymond Boyd Dunn

Raymond Boyd Dunn is a "born and bred" third generation Australian. After his retirement Raymond Boyd became a grey nomad, and, with his wife, spent some time touring this vast country of Australia. He was born in the small Burnett Valley town of Monto, Queensland, and for his entire life has answered to the name of 'Boyd'. Apart from his travels he has lived all of his life in Queensland, and after satisfying his thirst for seeing first hand this wonderful country we live in, settled on the Sunshine Coast to spend his remaining years in the sunshine near the beach.He commenced his working life as a Bank Officer and resigned after thirteen years to become self-employed. At various stages he has owned a Corner Store, a small Supermarket Chain, a Butchery, a Milk Run, a Printery and a Cattle and Grain Farm. He has been involved, in various capacities, in Cricket and Tennis Clubs; Jaycees, Lions and Rotary Clubs and Aero Clubs. He was a Cricketer, played tennis, tried to play golf, and was a keen long distance runner.Upon taking a well-earned retirement he wrote his unpublished autobiography, which was for distribution among his family of six children and numerous grand-children. A visit to Cooktown, where he learnt of the Palmer River Gold Rush, was the incentive to keep writing and produce his first novel 'Palmer Gold' He then settled down to write novels, producing two more books to complete a Trilogy...'An Australian Ranch' and "Carly and Sam...Will and Effie'. There followed numerous short stories, and other novels: 'Lord of the Manor in Australia', and 'The Vintage Years'. He continues to write whilst enjoying life in the sunshine on the beautiful Sunshine Coast in Queensland.

Book preview

Jessie James - Lady Bushranger

Deadlier than the Male

By Raymond Boyd Dunn

Copyright 2014 Raymond Dunn

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher.

Because this book is classified as Australiana genre, the author has checked all spelling with the Heinemann Australian Dictionary.

Smashwords Edition

Chapter 1

For as long as she could remember, Lizzie’s life had been one of prolonged drudgery. At the age of sixteen she was the eldest of the many Buchanan children.

Every two years, without fail, another sibling was added to the family; in a couple of cases there were twins, with the result that, at mealtimes, there were ten youngsters sitting around the long table in the kitchen of their five bedroom homestead. Originally the home was built with two bedrooms, and was completely surrounded by a wide veranda, but as the numbers increased, the father, Jed Buchanan, added another one, then another one, and, finally, a fifth. The veranda space was reduced accordingly.

Being the eldest, Lizzie, once she was old enough, bore the responsibility of aiding in the nurturing of each new baby, and the subsequent caring of the child as it grew older. Of the ten children, only the second-born, Jack, was a male, but he was physically frail, and was a disappointment to his father as he grew older and could not carry out the onerous tasks required on a dairy cattle property of the late 1870s.

The siblings were not illiterate as might be expected of country children of the late nineteenth century. The mother, Florence, was a well educated city girl who had been blinded by the attraction of a handsome country man: the owner, as she thought, of a large country property. When she discovered that the ‘large country property’ was a dairy farm twenty miles away from the nearest town, it was too late  she was pregnant with their first child, Lizzie.

However, Florence was a young woman with a forgiving nature, and one who was prepared to accept her lot and make the best of her circumstances. It did not lessen the love she had for her husband, and she settled down to be the wife of a hard-working, if somewhat temperamental, dairy farmer; to bear his children and to teach them the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic.

As the family grew, and Lizzie grew older, the eldest daughter became an invaluable help to her mother and father in all the tasks associated with the operation of a successful dairy and small crops farm. The cream was produced by a hand operated separator, and then made into cheese in the cool-room especially built for that purpose. The cheese would be taken in to town on their fortnightly visits. Now, at the age of sixteen, she was beginning to resent the burden of work she was expected to do. Her brother, Jack, added an extra load to her daily tasks, because she would cover for him by doing some of the things that he had great difficulty in performing. The next sister, twelve-year-old Marjorie, was beginning to take more responsibility in the day-to-day tasks of housework and the tutoring of the younger siblings, but this was counter-balanced by allowing Lizzie more time to work outside in the dairy, in the tiny cheese factory, or ploughing the ground for feed crops.

The outdoor work kept her in fine physical shape, and she had a figure to be proud of. Her face, however, was a disappointment to her. She had been told that she looked very much like her father, and this caused her to imagine that she looked more like a boy than a girl. The fact that she did look a lot like her brother did nothing to allay this way of thinking. She could not be described as pretty  handsome would be a more apt description of a face which was formed with a prominent nose, full lips and a wide mouth, and dark eyebrows above eyes as black as a raven’s wing. Her eyes were her best feature, because when she smiled she smiled with her eyes, and it transformed her whole face into what could then be described as beautiful. She kept her black, wavy hair shorter than that of most young women of the time.

For several years now, when her mother was pregnant, Lizzie accompanied her father on his fortnightly visits to town for picking up supplies and delivering cheese. This was really the only time when she came into contact with other young people who were not her siblings, and in the couple of hours it took him to conduct any business and return to the store to pick up his grocery order, there was not much time for her to fraternise with the locals.

The only young person she met, and spent more than a passing ‘pleased to meet you’, was the nineteen-year-old shop assistant, Harry Francis. When she had to go to town in her mother’s place, she would spend the previous two weeks stirred into a state of excitement looking forward to seeing him again. He had his job to attend to, and couldn’t spend much time talking to her, and she had to be satisfied with sitting on a stool and watching as he collated their order and attended to his other tasks. This she had been prepared to do ever since the first visit to town with her father. After six or eight months her mother would accompany Jed to town, and Lizzie was left behind to mind the baby. Then another eighteen months would pass before her mother was enduring her next pregnancy, and Lizzie could travel to town on a regular basis to visit Harry again.

Harry was not aware of Lizzie’s long-standing ‘crush’ on him, and looked upon her as just another young lady who was pleasant to talk to, even though it had to be while he was working. His boss allowed him a certain amount of leeway, because the Buchanan order was always a large and profitable one, and their cheeses were popular with his customers. Once she was gone, Harry dismissed her from his thoughts. He had a current girlfriend, the latest of many because he was regarded as a ‘lady’s man’  a ‘Casanova’; and his reputation around town caused many a mother to be concerned about her daughter’s welfare whilst in his company. Lizzie did not know this, and secretly looked upon him as her boyfriend.

For years now she had been having romantic dreams, both daydreams and those which prevailed during the hours of sleep. She was an ardent reader of the trashy, romantic, paperback novels which her parents brought back with them after their fortnightly visit to town. Through living on a farm she was well aware of how and why the family increased every two years, and had knowledge of how her own body functioned. Her main daydream centred on the young man, Harry, and she would imagine herself as the heroine of one of the stories she read, and Harry as the hero.

A passion, for which she had very few opportunities to indulge, was shooting. Her father owned a Winchester Carbine, one of the original models manufactured in 1866, which fired a .44 rim-fire cartridge. He was extremely proud of this possession, but pined for the time when he could afford to purchase the 1873 model. It was too much to hope for that he would one day have sufficient funds to buy the much cherished 1873 ‘One in One Thousand’ rifle.

When she was fourteen, Lizzie pestered her father until he took her shooting with him. In a magnanimous gesture, her father set up a cardboard target for her, and allowed her to fire off a full magazine varying the distance to the target after each shot. To his surprise, her grouping could be covered by the chipped enamel mug he carried with him. She proved to be a much more accurate shooter than he could ever hope to be. After that day he always took her shooting with him, but so he didn’t have to share his Winchester he bought her a single shot Remington. It didn’t bother her that it was a lesser firearm than the Winchester  the important thing being that it was accurate, and it was her very own!

………….

Chapter 2

Her mother was pregnant again, and Lizzie, once again, became her father’s offsider on his visit to town.

Jed sold all his popular cheeses to the storekeeper, Francis, who kept a record of both the money owed for the goods purchased by the farmer and the cost of the cheese. The cost of the cheese always exceeded the total for the grocery order. On this occasion, the storekeeper said to him,

Jed, the amount we owe you is beginning to get quite large. I think that after we tally up today’s transactions I should settle up with you.

That’s good-oh with me, Sam, said Jed. As soon as you have it tallied up, give it to Lizzie. He turned to his daughter, and continued: Take it down to the bank and deposit it for me, Lizzie. I’m likely to be late calling back. Can you do that?

Yes, Pa  what’s the name of the account?

Lizzie’s mother looked after the books of the farm, and Lizzie had no idea of her father’s banking