The Five Dollar Mail (Book 1: The Green & Book 2: Lynch's Boys)

25: Curiosities

Cover painting by Angela Taratuta. All graphics by yours truly.  Chapter art of  Hellbender is by Diego Candia.

Hellbender was not the sort of man one expected to see with a dusting cloth in his hand. So it was particularly startling, and more than a little amusing, to see him divested of his coat and hat and busily doing housework.

Surprised, Lily halted in the doorway of the unused room down the hall from her own, watching him. He wore suspenders over a plain striped work shirt and his light brown hair was in wild disarray. He hardly looked like the same man who'd literally thrown Mr. Galloway off the property hours earlier. In fact, at the moment, he looked more like a disheveled schoolmaster.

His trunk, which had apparently preceded him on an earlier stage and had been waiting for him in this vacant room, sat open in the middle of the floor. It had clearly seen better days. It was water stained, scorched in places, and had a tarnished brass nameplate on it that said "Jon Hungerf..." The half of the nameplate that would have held the "ord" was partially obscured by what looked suspiciously like a shotgun blast.

"Mr. Bender." Lily said from the doorway. "I brought you up some clean sheets for the bed."

He turned, saw her, and smiled broadly. "Ah. Much thanks, Miss." He strode over to take the offered linens. "I'm right chuffed that Lynch gave me a room up here, I wasn't expectin' that. More expected to end up in the bunkhouse, but I'm not going to complain."

Lily imagined Bender and Saint living in the one-room cabin the crew shared and didn't have a lot of trouble guessing why Lynch had decided the bunkhouse was crowded enough. Still, no reason not to give the man the spare room. It was small, and was currently not being used for anything but a guest room. Months of disuse, however, had rendered it dusty and stale, so a bit of freshening up was in order. "I can make up the bed for you, if you like," she said.

"Well, I'll warrant you'd do a better job of it than I would," he laughed. "Thank you, Miss. Let me get my clutter out of your way." He quickly collected up things he'd careless unpacked and tossed onto the bed. Books, medical supplies, an eyeglass case, bizarre carvings and weird lumps of what Lily supposed were rocks were scattered over the faded quilt. He grabbed a tin of liniment and deftly tossed it back into the trunk with a metallic thump. The rocks he gathered up and hastily deposited onto the mantle. "Sorry..." he apologized, embarrassed for the mess. "I needed something at the bottom. Tha's always the way of it, yeah?"

She smiled at him, charmed and baffled. He was just about as different from what he had initially seemed to be as a man could possibly get. "By the way, thank you for...coming to my rescue earlier."

He chuckled, pocketing the last few bits of debris and spreading his hands as if to present the cleared space for her inspection. "Came to that yob's rescue, more like. He'd have had either Jesse beat him till he quit moving or he would have done something really, really stupid. Stupider even than grabbing you, I mean."

She felt a twinge of residual fear, remembering how Galloway's hand had strayed to his pocket while her brother had staggered helplessly, temporarily blinded. "Well, he just about shot Jesse. He had a gun."

"Actually, love, he had two guns."

Lily's mouth dropped open as Bender turned and started stacking books on the mantle and using the larger rocks as bookends to hold them upright. Bender went on flippantly, his back to her. "He had another one in his trousers. I took that one off him, too. By then, I was fed up to the back teeth with him. I told him to nick off and stay nicked off. He comes back here, I can promise you he won't enjoy his visit."

Lily wanted to ask the stocktender a million questions. The man has got to be a walking storybook. Who is he? What on earth is he doing here? What did he do before he got this job? She pulled down the quilt and quickly folded it up, her brow furrowed with rapid-fire thoughts. She grabbed a clean sheet and snapped it out over the bed, watching the white fabric drift down over the mattress.

"Mr Bender...where are you from? I mean, if you don't mind my asking..."

He didn't turn around. He paused, his dusting cloth hovering motionless above the desktop before he let it drop again. He then turned to look at her. "I'm from South Australia, Miss."

She stopped and looked at him, wondering why he seemed to hesitate. "Why, that's far away, I reckon?" She pushed her glasses up on her nose. "That's...well...you know, I don't rightly know exactly where that is..."

"It's on the other side of the world, me love. I'm a long way from home." He have her a wistful smile and turned back to his work. "Came to this country some years back. Lived near the west coast for a while." He went back to his trunk and started rummaging around. "And so here I am."

"So here you are." she smiled back, a little awkwardly. Maybe Mr. Bender doesn't like talking about home. He looked a little...sad? Homesick? I shouldn't have asked. "I don't mean to pry, Sir..."

"Naw, love, I don't mind talkin' to you." He said amiably. "I'm glad for the conversation. And look, there ain't no Sir here. We got our hands bloody together right off, you and me did." He turned back around and gave her an earnest look. "You have no idea how relieved I was to have you there helping me with Peltier."

Lily felt her eyebrows shoot upwards. "Me?" She was stunned. She'd almost been afraid that he had thought that she had been in the way. "Why?"

"Because I didn't know but his life might have depended on us." He shrugged. "And I don't know everything."

Lily cocked her head. She'd never seen a man so confident as Mr. Bender, so she didn't understand what he was saying now. "But...you're a..."

"A farrier, Miss Lil. That's all."

She stopped, startled. He was right. She nodded slowly, then paused.

"Mr. Bender..." she said softly. "you know, if you hadn't been here I'm not sure I..."

"I didn't tell you to do anything you didn't already know to do." He cocked his head at her in mock sternness.

He was, of course, right again. Well. Ain't we a pair.

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