The Roving Party Page 6

  Soon one person and another and another emerged from the bush. Ominous figures, rifles borne in their arms. They did not cooee but came cautiously into the clearing through the smoke billows. The dog packs parted and closed behind them. Some growled but this the men disregarded and kept on towards the few scattered temma where Black Bill was crouched observing their progress. He rose from his position and walked the length of the camp to meet them.

  In his hands Batman held a length of rope and at the end of it was a young girl. The rope was tied around her neck and she did not resist but followed where he hauled her. The child she carried in her arms was equally meek and she clutched it to her chest as she stumbled along behind Batman. They were three where eight had gone. Batman and Jimmy Gumm and the boy. All moving at pace and glancing frequently to the rear, they approached the fires, dropped their knapsacks and knelt to repack the barrels of their weapons.

  Some bastard’s followin, said Batman. Watch them trees there.

  The two assignees glanced around at the scrub and at Bill where he stood armed and damaged and they drew their weapons tightly to their shoulders.

  What’s happened to you then? said Gumm as he studied the Vandemonian.

  But Bill only spat blood on the ashes.

  Hold her, said Batman.

  He passed over the lead rope and took hold of the girl as if she were a cull ewe. He forced her head to the ground and Bill looped a hitch around her feet so that she was barely given slack to breathe. Her dark eyes widened as the rope drew taut. Batman made to pry the child from her arms but the girl held on with a fierceness that had the child near to ripping apart and he wailed all the more loudly for it. The awful sound had Batman soon relenting and the child was left howling and holding his mother. Batman reached for his fowling piece, eased his knee from the girl’s back.

  Dont know no modesty does she, said the boy. He gazed at the half apples of her breasts.

  Are you hearin me? Watch them trees.

  I’m doin that.

  The Plindermairhemener girl was tall and thin and her child was much of a kind with her. Her patterned scars were dabbed over with ochre and she was otherwise painted up for a ceremony she would never undergo. Her scalp was freshly shaved and bloody scabs showed where the scallop shell had dug too deep. Bill crouched beside her and put out his hand to the crying child. The girl called out.

  What’s she sayin? said Gumm.

  Bill looked up at him. Help me.

  Christ, he said, you’d swear she was bein skinned. He rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. Then he brought his gun up. I seen somefink, he said.

  He pointed to the smoke drift and the ghostly line of swamp gums behind it. John Batman scanned those trees and he also perhaps saw some form of what Gumm had seen because he signalled to take cover behind a fallen tree, a massive thing of two hundred feet or more. The men found cover behind its mossy bulk and propped their pieces upon it, watching the trees around the clearing. On the open ground the girl lay struggling at her bindings. She raised her voice once more in a plaintive cry to her clansfolk.

  Take care and dont shoot Pigeon or Crook neither, said Batman.

  Bill cupped his shattered fingers as he watched the treeline.

  I’ve no ball left, he said to Batman.

  Just keep yer head down then.

  I see one.

  Where?

  Over there, said Bill. You see it?

  I dont see nothin.

  There.

  Batman narrowed his eyes. By that rock you mean?

  Aye, that’s it.

  Bugger me, you’ve the eyes of a needlemaker.

  Batman pressed his cheek to the small of the stock, took sight of the underscrub and released the cock. The thunderclap caused the girl to cease her mournful calling and there came from the bush opposite the sounds of men.

  Dont shoot you bastards, we’re white.

  They lowered their weapons as the remnants of the roving party appeared in the campsite. They stumbled past the bald, rounded temma and vaulted the fallen tree to join the company men in the cover it afforded. John Batman offered a flask of water and the newcomers drank and wiped their whiskers backhanded. Pigeon and Crook were the last into camp, the last into cover. They refused the water flask and remained standing and watchful where the others seemed content to rest. John Batman put questions to his servant Gould as the assignees checked the wrappings on their feet.

  See any?

  A good few.

  Put them down, did you?

  I shot up near on a pound of powder. I saw a deal of blood. More than that I cant say.

  Howell Baxter shook the mud from his bindings and rewrapped his feet. When he spoke his fathomless voice was full of the same weary ache they all felt. But that mongrel Horsehead, he said. He’s gone and disa-bloody-peared somewheres.

  It was the Vandemonian who finally went to see about the girl and her child. He poured a measure of water down her throat and wrapped the child in a possum skin. She had no broil left and sipped the water he offered. Her damp eyes closed. Black Bill corked the canteen, stood and returned to the company. The Dharugs were sharing a pipe and they offered the stem to Black Bill. The smoke rose and filtered through the feathered fronds of the wattles parasoled above them. Bill pulled a turn on the pipe before Pigeon slipped the pipe back into his own mouth, clattering it along his teeth to and fro.

  I dont see no dead ones nowheres, said the boy. He was looking across the barren campfield. Where you spose they went?

  We didnt kill none, said Jimmy Gumm.

  But I saw em fall.

  Gumm held up a pouch of shot. This weight wouldnt knock the grin off a halfwit. Wastin our powder, we are.

  That weight’ll do what we need, said Batman, and he tipped back his hat and stared.

  If you need them blacks mighty startled it will. If you need em killed use decent ball I say.

  Batman raised his doublebarrel gun and the wide-bored holes were two sightless eyes which he brought to bear on Gumm. Well hows abouts you stand up and tell me how startled you get, he said.

  Jimmy Gumm ground his jaw, his loose eye gazing offwards. I was just sharin me opinion.

  An opinion worth less than the spit you made it with. Now I’ll shoot every last black hide on this mountain and be glad for it but if you want yer ticket you’ll take in some live head with me. Batman lowered his weapon.

  They had a meagre breakfast squatting there at the fires, gathered where the sun had chased away the shadows and the frost. William Gould passed around a damper nub which they broke into and shared. Every man of that company watched the scrub flanks and the stands of man ferns for the clansfolk that they supposed at any moment would fall upon them, yabbering in tongues and waving their spears, but no such events occurred. Instead, the sky held firmly blue and the sun beamed warm on them as they slurped their tea. The girl was roped up spitting distance from the fire where they were cooking, her animal skins askance and her chest revealed. Thomas carried a pannikin of sugared tea to her and held it to her mouth as he had observed Bill doing previously, waiting while she sucked it back.

  You ought to cover yourself up, missus, he said.

  He gave her a share of his damper and he dipped some into the tea to soften for the child to eat. With his shirt sleeve he cleaned her face of dirt and ochre and she sat timidly while he did so, her child perched in her lap like some bald and doleful cat.

  But the light showed them also the extent of the blood across that clearing; it was everywhere in a pattern that spoke of the chaos they’d wrought. As they ate, Batman and Black Bill studied the spatterings, each at times gesturing at places that the other had not seen. When they called Crook over to make sense of the trails, he offered his thoughts in his own tongue. He waved towards his legs, at the sky, at the bush. He laughed. He tugged at the fuzz on his chin.

  Some dead he reckons, Pigeon said.

  Crook nodded and gnawed on his damper.

  What do you re
ckon? said Bill.

  I reckon same.

  Batman looked around at the blood trails. I want any dead found. I want em tallied. We’ll see what we have bagged us.

  The camp was sited in a clearing fired and shaped out of the rainforest over generations. It was tended land and the hand of the Plindermairhemener showed everywhere in its construction: in the narrows they’d shaped for coralling the kangaroo herds, in the island thickets that would hide their spearsmen, in the handholds hacked into the trees for possum hunting. Their blood lay upon the tended land now and the Vandemonian walked around those marks with his good boots crunching over the gum leaves, his eyes downcast.

  It was in seeing his own boot prints run before him that he found reason to pause and look more closely. He knelt down. The earth was soft and his tread bold and well formed. He had crossed this way the night before and passed a man riddled with shot and holding his wounds. As he scanned the ground he saw where the blood crossed his prints and ran further off into the forest. Bill followed across the clearing and into the underscrub of wattle and fern. At the treeline he stopped and looked back at Batman and the Dharugs who were cocking their heads in study, but they did not see Bill enter the bush with his knife drawn.

  He tracked through a shallow wooded gully at a trot and every few yards he saw a stain or the scuffed earth of a heel print. Soon he snaked over a mossy scree that turned under his boots and the light was dim and misty. The clansfolk had split the crowns of every man fern in that glade for the edible shoot inside and the cut fronds hung like eyelids, brushing against his hat as he moved beneath. He stopped to look around, listening to the morning birds calling, turning his head to peer into the shadows. Nothing. He moved on.

  Before long he arrived at a stone outcrop rising from the floor of the rainforest in great broken knuckles and he saw the marks in the mildew on those stones and knew he was close. A gully fell away below the outcrop and Bill stood atop those stones gazing down the embankment. Halfway down lay the clansman on his side where he had tumbled to a stop. The stones underneath were stained with his gore. Bill removed his hat and stood considering the descent.

  Now the clansman turned his head to stare. Shot had flayed the skin from the forepart of his ribs and exposed the muscle and the pearly bone in parts. Above the wound he was ornamented in several places with scarring. Most of them were in the shape of halfmoons but along his shoulders he was scarred in neat rows and it was these scars that spoke of his clansmanship. Bill read those scars and saw that face and he understood: here was Taralta the lawman. The Vandemonian descended into that gully through the rank damp and he crouched beside Taralta. Even now mosquitoes covered the bare parts of him. Bill brushed them off but Taralta had spent all night exposed and the flesh where they had fed was swollen and his thigh was embedded with scattershot and bruised in every shade of midnight. Such was his pain Taralta seemed barely to comprehend where he was. Bill raised him off the rocks.

  They made a slow pace towards the campsite. The lawman was holding his wounds and leaning into Bill, smearing blood on Bill’s shirt as they hobbled along. A short way off a tigerwolf raised its head to observe them, its dog’s eyes unblinking. Taralta looked at the creature but then turned away quickly as if he was ashamed to be seen in such a state.

  Say now. What have you there? said Batman as they emerged into daylight.

  Bill dropped the lawman where he fell. Lost in his pain, Taralta moaned and gritted his teeth. They poured water over his wounds which set him twitching and hollering. From a short distance away the girl called to him, clutching her child. Taralta took some ragged breaths and the girl in her bindings tried to edge near him but she was hauled off by Black Bill and dumped beside a bark hut.

  They stood over Taralta in thought.

  Wont see morning, said John Batman.

  Gould was beside him. Well we have us one, he said. What of the others?

  That there is a very fine question, said Batman.

  All about that campsite roamed a plague of dogs like nothing they had ever put eyes on. Black Bill sucked on a gum leaf and studied the dusty swarm wheeling around, their diamond eyes coruscating in the firelight; each the same sort of wormridden thing built of bone, skin and bile. Some were engaged in licking blood off the bracken or the dirt and some nosed through the temma in the manner of pigs in a wallow, turning out the skins and the feather bundles lining the huts. The stink of them and their faeces was something utterly unholy. Bill removed the leaf from his bottom lip and turned to Batman.

  Forty-eight, he said. Thirty of which is bitches.

  Batman looked at him. A regular little herd, aint it.

  Bill watched him.

  They’ll make havoc with me sheep.

  No more needed to be said on the matter. Black Bill collected his weapon and he looped the strap across his shoulder and proceeded to wade out among the dogs. Glancing around at each other the assigned men watched him go, but they did not seem to understand his purpose so they leaned back against the blue gums and closed their eyes for some sleep. The dogs stood off from Bill and watched him as he drew alongside them. Making as if he held food he called a few to him and let them sniff his empty palm. Then he raised the fowling piece to his hip and fired into the head of an earthcoloured bitch.

  A tremendous clap went up and the assigned men jumped at the sound. The dog spun a wild circle and folded upon itself. It lay in a welter of blood, its head mostly removed. The pack had sprung off and now waited uneasily at a distance. As Bill repacked the barrel the little native child began to bawl.

  The dogs dropped their ears. He approached close to a tall lean whippet and levelled the barrel near its neck. The fowler thundered and the dog burst in a bloody mess of fur and flesh as if detonated from the inside. The report cannoned along the mountainside away and away. Bill calmly repacked. The boy retrieved his weapon and came to lend his aid and they coralled more dogs into a confine between the temma where the animals huddled in fear. They both fired into that gathering and one fell plainly dead and another dragged itself through the dirt whining until it was brained with a stock.

  The tang of sulfur and burnt hair hung upon the campsite. Batman looked at Baxter and at Gumm where they sat watching the grim spectacle with the ease of gents.

  Well? said Batman.

  Well what?

  Get to it.

  Baxter buttoned up his meagre coat and reached for his piece. This is niggers’ work, he said under his breath.

  Make sure you do the bitches especially, said Batman. He stood looking down at Jimmy Gumm but Gumm did not move. He was feeling the contusions on his head where the boy had taken to him.

  You hopin to get yerself shot? said Batman.

  Gumm lifted his eyes. No sir.

  Batman drew his belt pistol and thumbed back the hammer. Take heed, he said.

  Gumm scrambled to his feet.

  By now a good few carcasses lay about on the dirt, and blood and bits of bone and innards covered the ground. The dying raised their heads out of that grime and cried and Pigeon walked among them brandishing a discarded waddy, bringing the club down across their snouts with such force that blood sprayed and rained down, staining his hat and shirt. They hauled the carcasses two at a time to the bonfires; their internals stringing out and steaming in the cold, gathering the leaf litter. Their hamcoloured tongues lolling from their mouths. Once alight the revolting smoke set the assignees gagging but they piled dogs up until the flames licked the boughs of the trees arching above. The washing of fire exposed jawbones and knuckled teeth and ribcages. The boy slapped his sticky hands against his trousers.

  Black Bill looked him over. It’s done.

  The boy nodded. His shadow flickered in torn flaps of firelight. What do you think that means? he said.

  He indicated the place where John Batman and Pigeon and Crook were gathered in discussion. Crook was gesturing down the mountainside at the primeval forest mantling the valley. On the ground beside him lay a fresh
ly rolled firestick and Batman spat into his hands, rubbing them over before he picked it up. He blew into the embers and a little flame took hold which he pinched out to make a smoulder. He seemed to be preparing himself for another push into the backblocks.

  Means more walking, said Bill.

  I reckoned as much. The boy unbound his feet, shook the mud off the rags and set to retying them.

  Bill walked over to join Batman and the Dharugs.

  Down valley there you find some buggers, said Pigeon.

  They’ll be like fleas in bloody dog’s fur down there, said Batman.

  Bill surveyed the phantasmal hills beyond. We have the girl.

  One young gin and one old storyteller dont justify what the Governor has outlaid on this. He wont pay us.

  We need us some of the menfolk then, said Bill. Big ones.

  The stouter the better. Meanlookin bastards.

  Then it is settled.

  Batman gazed at the forested slopes and replaced his hat. She’s settled all right, he said. He lifted his firestick and signalled for Bill to follow.

  The assigned men were standing before the blaze, pressing their sleeves to their faces as the acrid smoke of dog blew past. Great brumes of it like thunderheads brought to earth. Batman looked at them, man after man, and spoke.

  Keep that there fire burning for a mark. Elsewise you’ll be lost out here. Nothin but crows fer company. And be sure that gin can still walk when I get back.

  The assigned men and the manservant William Gould shuffled about anxiously but voiced no objections to the plan as it was proposed. They scratched their groins and watched Batman resettle the doublebarrel gun on his back and move off.

  He walked a few paces down the hill before something prompted him to stop and look around. You want a written tender? he said. On yer feet.