The hut was cobwebbed and there were mouse droppings over the floor and dust over everything, but it was dry and well sealed, the wind only reaching in under the door as it gusted now and then, rattling the latch, or when it whinnied through the edges of the animal skin over the window. There was a small table, two chairs and a bench along the left-side wall, stacked timber boxes and a slatted bed frame in the corner (with a straw mattress of sewn hessian sacks) and an improvised shelf with wooden crates slotted in like drawers. Rusted nails in the exposed studwork, one or two with the withered twig remains of some plant, a thin chain on another, a small painting (blue water bay) hanging by the bed. Cutlery, a stack of tins with no labels, a hatchet, jug and bowl on a stand below a mirror the size of a postcard. Tait had noticed a few books on a shelf too, but hadn’t gone to look yet.

Joseph O’Farrell said, ‘Here we go,’ and held up a bottle of whisky.

‘Good work, brother.’

‘They say he’s German,’ Tait said.

‘Prussian,’ Wilson said.

‘Long way to come.’

‘True for everybody here, ain’t it?’

Joseph found cups and poured.

‘How’d you meet him?’ Tait asked.

‘Our old man used to send us up with supplies,’ Joseph said. ‘John let us stay the night sometimes, depending on the weather or how late we got in.’

‘What was he doing up here?’

Wilson smiled. ‘Hunting tigers.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Why not?’

Gabriel Tait looked into his cup. He didn’t believe it; but, then, he wasn’t sure what to believe about John Myer. He said, ‘So did he really crack a hundred? Or the one twenty-six, like they say?’

‘I reckon he got the century for sure,’ Joseph said. ‘At least.’

‘And then some,’ his brother said.

‘Yeah, you’re right.’

Tait said, ‘Do you know his age for a fact?’

‘Knew it with me own eyes,’ Wilson said. ‘Standing next to the man.’

‘That doesn’t tell me when he was born.’

‘Reckon he was though.’

Tait sipped his drink. ‘There’s a story then.’

‘Well,’ Wilson said and swept his arm around the hut, ‘it’s all here, matey. You only paid us to get you up.’

They sipped their whiskies.

‘He was married,’ Tait said. He’d found the names in a marriage register in the archives in Hobart.

‘Yeah?’ Wilson said. ‘Didn’t know. He might have been.’

‘John was a handsome chap,’ Joseph said. ‘That’s true.’

DARCEY’S LUCKY WEDDING RINGS

Every morning in Hobart, Gabriel Tait waited for the Chief Secretary’s Department to open its doors. Because he couldn’t sleep, he was always up early and nothing was open and hardly anybody was about.