Copyright © Jane Smith
First published 2019
Copyright remains the property of the authors and apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.
All inquiries should be made to the publishers.
Big Sky Publishing Pty Ltd
PO Box 303, Newport, NSW 2106, Australia
Phone: 1300 364 611
Fax: (61 2) 9918 2396
Email:[email protected]
Web:www.bigskypublishing.com.au
Cover design and typesetting: Think Productions
Proudly printed and bound in China by Hang Tai Printing Company Limited
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Creator: Smith, Jane Margaret, author.
Title: The Masked Man / Jane Smith.
ISBN: 9781922265425 (paperback).
Series: Smith, Jane Margaret. Tommy Bell, bushranger boy ; bk 8.
Subjects: Bushrangers - Australian - juvenile fiction. Time travel - juvenile fiction. Adventure stories. Gardiner, Frank
BOOKS IN THE TOMMY BELL, BUSHRANGER BOY SERIES:
1. SHOOT-OUT AT THE ROCK
2. THE HORSE THIEF
3. THE GOLD ESCORT GANG
4. OUTBACK ADVENTURE
5. GANG OF THIEVES
6. MRS THUNDERBOLT
7. THE RUNAWAY
TO JAMES JAMESMORRISON MORRISONWEATHERBYGEORGE DUPREE
Contents
CHAPTER 1 Stranded
CHAPTER 2 The masked man
CHAPTER 3 The bank manager
CHAPTER 4 Arrested
CHAPTER 5 Noodles
CHAPTER 6 Back to the past
CHAPTER 7 Mr Sly
CHAPTER 8 The well
CHAPTER 9 The red neckerchief
Historical Note
Q & A with Captain Moonlite
About the Author
‘Looks like we’re not going to make it tonight, boys,’ said Tommy’s dad. He kicked the tyres and swore.
Tommy sighed. All day in the car, and then 15 minutes from their destination it just hiccups and dies. In the middle of nowhere.
‘Where are we, anyway?’ Tommy grumbled.
Martin fussed with the map. He had a smartphone, but he was the sort of kid who still used maps. Tommy didn’t have a phone; his parents weren’t rich like Martin’s.
‘We’re just outside of Mt Egerton,’ Martin said.
‘OK,’ said Tommy’s dad, pulling his phone out of his pocket. ‘Let’s get this heap of junk towed to a servo and we’ll get a bed here for the night.’
The boys scrambled out of the back seat to wait with Tommy’s dad. The sun was going down and it was late autumn; by the time the tow-truck arrived, Tommy’s fingers and toes were frozen. They checked into a motel: Tommy’s dad in one room and the two boys next door. It wasn’t what they had planned, but it was kind of exciting to be staying in a strange motel in the middle of nowhere.
Tommy’s dad was worried because he was stuck in a motel in Mt Egerton when he was supposed to be in Ballarat for business. He told the boys to walk down the road to buy takeaways for dinner while he stayed in to make some phone calls. Tommy and Martin glanced at each other with shining eyes. They were only too happy to explore the strange streets alone after dark! If Tommy’s mother was there, she would never have allowed it. But she was busy studying, so when Tommy’s dad had told her that he had to take a business trip to Ballarat during the school holidays, she had suggested that Tommy could go with him.
‘It’s an old goldmining town,’ she had told Tommy. ‘You’d be interested in that.’
It was true: Tommy had a great interest in the gold rush days. It had started when he’d found an old hat in a cave near his grandfather’s farm at Uralla. The hat was a battered old straw-like thing made from the leaves of the cabbage-tree palm; the type of hat that bushrangers used to wear. The hat seemed to have mysterious powers; whenever he put it on his head, it would send him back to the days when bushrangers roamed the countryside. He had had many strange and exciting adventures since he found it.
Tommy’s friend Martin was the only other human who knew about the hat. Tommy’s beloved best friend, Combo – who happened to be a horse – knew about it too, but he didn’t quite count as a human, although sometimes Tommy believed that Combo could think like one. Tommy wasn’t allowed to bring Combo on this trip to Victoria, so his mother had suggested that he take Martin for company instead. She liked Martin; he was a ‘good influence’, unlike Tommy’s other friend, Francis, who was always getting into trouble.
Tommy was pleased to have Martin along for the trip. Martin was kind and fun, even if he could sometimes be a bit of a worry-wart. Martin had once found a pair of old boots that had the same magical power as Tommy’s hat, but he didn’t like to use them. He’d only been back to the past a couple of times with Tommy; for some reason, the idea of coming face-to-face with a bushranger frightened him!
The boys left Tommy’s dad in his room and wandered down the road. It was dark and quiet and the street was empty. The moon hung low and bright in a black sky. Tommy shivered.
‘I’ve read about this place,’ Martin murmured.
‘Of course you have,’ said Tommy with a smile. Martin was a great reader.
‘It used to be a goldmining town,’ Martin went on. ‘There was a gold rush here in 1854. The town was probably bigger then than it is now. There was a mine, a bank, a post office, heaps of pubs …’
The boys squinted against the dark. Tommy’s cabbage-tree hat was in his hand; he fiddled restlessly with the black ribbon around its crown.
A chilly breeze stirring the trees was the only sign of movement in the street. Tommy tried to imagine the town as it had been during the gold rush: the dusty main street bustling with ladies in bonnets and big skirts; horses tethered to the posts of hotel verandahs; whiskered men with waistcoats and pocket-watches marching in and out of the bank. The urge to put the cabbage-tree hat on his head and slip back in time grew steadily stronger. The fear and excitement
