The Roving Party Read online

  The Dharugs took up their effects and followed him.

  The blood of men, women, dogs intermixed in a muddy wallow where the vanguard of four walked; they slipped and staggered across that killing field towards the forested valley, Batman cursing, the Dharugs less perturbed. The boy jumped up, following the men down the slope.

  Hold on, he said, but the men continued and he hurried to catch them.

  Stay, boy, said Bill. This is not for you.

  No chance.

  It will be dangerous.

  I aint stupid like them back there. The blacks might come for their kin and then it will go to shite, wont it. Leave them to it I say.

  You are learning, boy.

  I am.

  THEY WALKED DOWN THROUGH A DRY creek bed lined with swamp gums grown so close together they appeared as one living whole. The men passed around these trees in single file, among sun shafts which pierced the canopy but threw no light upon their faces nor warmed their bones. In the gloom the air was thick with flies and the mushrooms grew like the sightless larvae of some queer and unnamed vermin. Before long they found themselves among a stand of trees which had been stripped of their bark for windbreaks. The naked trunks were carved over with bisected circles, detailings of the moon and sun, images of snakes and roo. The Parramatta men gazed at the finely wrought icons but John Batman found more to hold his attention. Pressed onto the flesh of the tree was a bloody handprint. Batman removed his hat and crouched to examine the ground and Black Bill joined him. One injured man had passed this way.

  They moved on. Somewhere south of Ben Lomond in a tomb of rainforest the trackers came to a stop before a vast easement and stood staring up, their hands atop their heads. They picked over the mossy stone for any trace of the clan, crouched and fingered the cragged surface for tailings of dirt or crushed grass or any sign that might suggest a direction taken, but found nothing. John Batman leaned on his gun and looked over that sorry landscape. He pulled out his quart flask of rum and threw a gill down his throat. By the time he had replaced it within the folds of his coat he was set upon a return to his own Kingston and the warm pleasures of his wife. He signalled the Dharugs down and led his group back into the bush.

  That afternoon they retraced their track through the wilderness. Huge emergent gums broke the canopy and their uppermost foliage scraped the hulls of clouds dredging across the sky. But the sunless floor of that forest, kept shaded by acacia, sassafras and musk, was as wretched cold as the mountainside they had earlier quit. In time they left the trees and crossed a sequestered meadow where wallabies grazed. The animals watched the rovers advance before pounding away in unison, the sound like war drums beating inside the core of the earth. The men followed the slope of the mountain upwards and into the forest once more. Just beyond the fringe of trees the Vandemonian bent to one knee to study the ground.

  There is a depression here, he said. Bill used his finger to outline a mark in the undergrowth. The wounded took rest in this place, he said.

  Leaving the boy squatting in the bracken they circled around looking for a sign, fanning out to the points of the compass and scouring the groundcover. Bill soon found one trail of blood. He stepped with care through the little ferns where the red mottling glistened and he followed it to the base of a dead swamp gum, its trunk split apart. Balled up and wedged inside was a young warrior. Black Bill showed him the barrel. The warrior was stonyfaced and sweating. Each held the eyes of the other as Bill primed the cock of his gun.

  I have him, he called.

  They gathered at the hiding place.

  You have a knack for this you do, said Batman.

  The clansman had taken most of the scattershot in his thigh and some in the knee and when they tried to haul him upright he would not be moved but only called out in pain. He was written with scars, some the consequence of ritual, others of war, and there was a look of sombre contempt about his features as he clutched his shot knee and met their stares. Perhaps he saw some small victory in his resistance or sought to impede them anyhow. His leg bled sluggish and dark and he wiped his hands on the bracken.

  Batman lifted off his hat, smoothed back the black hair beneath and replaced it. He looked down at the clansman before glancing away. Then he dropped his firestick and unslung his doublebarrel gun.

  Yer ball, he said to Bill.

  The Vandemonian uncinched a pouch from his belt and passed it to Batman and Batman stood the stock on the ground and held the gun by the mouth. An iron tamping rod was hidden in a channel between the barrels and he slid it free and placed it in his teeth. The barrels were octagonal in shape and the folds in the steel showed along the twin lengths like the grain in polished wood, irregular and organic. Etched into the sideplates were detailings of an eight-point stag surrounded by rosebushes and a nameplate bearing the Manton mark. Batman dosed the mouths from a powder horn and fed in a handful of grapeshot from Bill’s pouch. He tamped that with the rod, then ripped off two little squares from a width of cotton kept for the purpose in his coat pocket and wadded them down behind the ball.

  Batman considered the silent man secreted there in the hollow and thumbed back the hammers. He put one foot either side of the clansman’s outstretched legs and showed him the long void of those bores, standing thus prepared through a few creakings of the trees. The warrior was wide-eyed, looking to Bill and to the Dharugs.

  The eruption raised the birds squealing from the branches. As the gunsmoke cleared the fellow slumped forward and spilled upon the soil a stream of arterial blood. The hollow behind was peppered with pieces of skull and other matter. John Batman snapped open the locks, cleaned out the pans with his cloth and mopped the blood off the barrels. He looked around at the rovers.

  The boy was openmouthed, pale, and he stared at the ruination laid out there at his feet and stepped back as the blood ran near his rags. The Dharugs had by now turned away and did not look back. They began retracing their track through the rainforest, picking among the fallen trunks. But Black Bill alone among that party met Batman’s eye. He resettled his fowling piece across his back and spat on the ferns, watching Batman. Batman pulled out his rum, popped loose the cork, and drank. He held out the vessel to Bill. The Vandemonian looked at him. Then he turned to follow the Parramatta men out among the lemon myrtles and antique pines.

  DARKNESS OVERTOOK THE COMPANY AS THEY emerged from the treeline onto a hunting grassland where a flock of cockatoos grazed like yard fowl. They gathered firewood and beneath a bare and tumorous blue gum made a camp, for there was no light to travel by. John Batman struck a fire from the firestick he carried and tended the flames. They roasted the strips of mutton they’d each carried and watched the stars uncloak. All knew a wretched night awaited when the dew stiffened into frost and the grassland began to white over. They had no billycan as it was with the other men, so they boiled water in their mugs and held the handles through their sleeves. John Batman chose a coal from the fire and lit his pipe. He blew smoke out his nostrils before handing it on to the boy, who took his turn and let the flavour fill his mouth. He blew through his nose as Batman had and gave the pipe to Black Bill.

  What do you spose happened to old Horsehead? said the boy.

  John Batman was sitting cross-legged like a Chinaman with his hat on one knee. He looked away upcountry. Not my concern no more.

  Will you track him?

  We’ll do better without his sorry bones about.

  The night was bitter and all save John Batman wore their blankets around their shoulders. Batman was close to the fire and feeding it wood. Pigeon had his own pipe burning and with each draw the coal glow lit him; he smiled at mention of Horsehead.

  Them Vandiemenland buggers cook him on fire and eat him I reckon. Eat him bones clean up.

  He laughed and so did Crook.

  They never eat men do they? asked the boy.

  Couldnt say, said Batman.

  What about them Parramattas?

  Couldnt say.

  Pige
on’s havin a lend, aint he?

  Batman stared at him. He slurped his tea. Couldnt say.

  The boy studied the Dharugs and his face darkened. He drew his legs up tight, out of their reach. No, it werent the blacks, he said. He’s just run off is all. He has designs on being a bushranger you know. A new Brady or some such.

  That horsefucker aint worth a hair on Brady’s arse, said Batman. He spat into the fire.

  I heard told you yourself lagged the outlaw, said the boy, up Launceston way.

  And that’s the truth of it.

  He must’ve bin a catch.

  He was that.

  Ow was it done?

  How was it done, Batman murmured to himself. He held back the story as if he was reluctant but it was more likely an artifice of the telling, a telling he had honed over the many years since. He stoked the little fire. You dont take a man like Brady. More probably he relents. So it was with me.

  Did you shoot him?

  We had after him and we took a brace of guns but we never shot the man. There was some sharpshooters present too, I tell you. Fellows who could shoot the pizzle off a rutting buck if they so chose it. Men who knew guns like you know your own fingers or damn near.

  The boy held his tin mug and the steam melted into the darkness around him. He watched Batman intently.

  They was every breed of men, said Batman, but they shared a common enough trait and that was a fondness for money. The bounty stood at a hundred guineas you see. A sum intended to turn Brady’s own gang upon him and set every man in the district at his heels. There’s a good measure of cunning in our old Governor, a good measure. He reckoned rightly that such a sum would stir the appetites of them what’d called Brady their man and stir them it did, lad. Now there was parties like the one I had formed tracking hither and thither after the man and his gang. He was doomed and every man alive knew it as a cold certainty that Brady would be hunted to a standstill, whereupon guns would be drawn and the death shot exchanged. What I intended was to be the man who fired it.

  The boy watched him. But you never did, he said.

  No I never. And more’s the pity for that man. It was a herd of cows give him away in the end. The great man what near raised the island into revolution. Aye. There was these cows come rumbling down a field close to our camp. I know cows, and cows wont do aught without incentive and I watched em run and figured upon their havin cause to do so. So I took up arms and left camp to have me a little look-see.

  You went alone?

  I did. Foolish as it might sound now, I held no fear of Brady. Some believed that he was better than the common thuggery. Somethin grander. Some believed he was Irish gentry cast out for his politics. They believed a good many things about him and none of them true. But when I at last laid my young eyes on the wretched sight Brady had become, I was confirmed in my opinion of him as a brave man but doomed. For never would you see a more pitiable creature than what he presented. I came upon him at some distance limping across a paddock with the aid of a crutch. There was no army and nothing of the rebellion about him. Just a single beggardly figure straggling over a landscape nearly Irish in its greenery.

  I almost broke off right there. Plenty of people since said I should have. John Wedge allowed that he was the nearest we’d ever have to a Red MacGregor and as such deserved his peace. But I couldnt come at that when I was younger. I supposed a man should suffer for his sins. Even a great man. There was also the matter of a hundred guineas weighing on me thinking. I am since changed in my opinions though. I followed him onwards and he staggered into a bit of bush and after a time I crossed the field in pursuit and it wasnt far till I caught him. Holed up snug under a bush he was. Muddier than a miner. I showed my gun and he raised his likewise.

  By now a deep cold had come down and the stars gleamed like minerals. Batman gazed up at the sky a moment to study those brilliant stones before he continued.

  I held my firearm and I looked him dead in the eye. We stood off a good minute. Then Brady asks me who the hell I was. And I says John Batman at your service. He is in pain somethin terrible. He asks if I’m a military man. I says to him, I’m not a soldier—now surrender for there is no chance for you.

  Batman swirled the dregs of tea then drained them on the grass and slipped the mug into his pocket. But I know this much. I ought to have shot the bastard. When he was dropped his neck held they say. He danced on the gibbet like he was back a-courting in County Kildare. There aint a man in history who deserves to die like that. I ought to have shot him and had done with it.

  The judges, the parsonry, the public servants, they never get their hands dirty with men’s blood and they are the worse for it. There is a sly cruelty to a fellow who sends others to their death while he himself has no knowledge of it. But I’d say one minute beside a dying man with all his flailing and begging would set their thinking to rights.

  The boy shivered inside his blanket. Brady had it coming, he said.

  Batman leaned in and the underside of his jaw was lit up ghoulishly by the fire. We all of us have it coming, lad.

  Bits of mutton in the flames smoked in a dark crescent. The boy watched him still. What about that witch? Does he?

  The witch, said Batman. He nodded slowly.

  Does he?

  I will tell you somethin about him. There isnt a particle of manhood about that savage. Not more than a speck. His weapons of choice are a treachery patiently nursed and some knowledge of hides and snugs. He deserves a dog’s death and by God he will get it.

  After the talking was done Black Bill rose, tea in hand, and melted into the night to relieve himself on the bushes. When he returned the men had lain down for sleep and Bill did likewise, but not before building the fire up against the weather. Only the boy remained awake. He watched Bill settle once more and drag his blanket around his shoulders. The flames twitched and danced between them.

  We aint runnin foul of the law ourselves are we? said the boy. I mean, Batman up and shot that black bugger.

  Black Bill tugged his hat down over his eyes. He eased back against the meat of the blue gum. You cant murder a black, he said, any more than you can murder a cat.

  The boy drew breath to speak but in the end had nothing more to say. The fire popped, the only sound to mar the limitless dark. He pressed two fingers against his cheek and brought them to his mouth and licked and remembered the taste of apples.

  THE SUN THREW A WEAK LIGHT around the mountain and John Batman walked the perimeter of their little camp looking upcountry for smoke from the signal fire. The frost rasped under his boots as he strode, leaving prints the colour of grass. The sharings of damper were miserly small and they ate quickly. They pissed on the fire and then Batman led them over the plain where feet both booted and bare grew numb as their progress was written upon the hoarfrost. They retraced their own run through the forest and up the slope where the going was steepest and all that morning the sun was merely a rumour in the sky. By afternoon it revolved around the mountainside and shone upon the backs of the company. At a stream they lay in the slick litter and drank and refilled their canteens and Pigeon indicated a gap in the canopy where smoke as thin as a feather floated against the blue day and marked the locality of the assigned men. They pressed on, taking a bearing through the brush that gave easier passage, and the miles ran by.

  Within a few hours they had found the camp. The assignees and Gould seated around the signal fire stood and brought their weapons up. They looked badly done with, dark under the eyes and unwashed. Jimmy Gumm had the native boy on his hip and he approached the group with the little boy clinging to his shirt and sucking his wet finger. Baxter and Gould looked upon John Batman with much the same satisfaction, as they’d supposed the company murdered and themselves lost on the mountain. They grinned and walked towards him. The child’s mother was roped beside the fire and Taralta lay nearby, his eyes closed, his breath shallow. They had wrapped his wounds and fed him although quite why they could not say.

 
; Some sort of sled’s what’s needed, said Gumm. To drag him on.

  Batman didn’t respond. Instead he walked away from the fire and waved at his men to follow him. They formed up in a rough curve, those bleakfaced men, and stood with their arms folded on their chests. Batman looked them each in the eye as if he was no part of that group but was indeed its opposition. His massive gun was longwise on his back, the leather strap and buckle on his chest in the manner of a military cross-belt, and he unslung that fearsome piece and held it out before him. The men waited in silence.

  Who will it be then?

  They glanced at one another.

  The child was wailing, a thin, carrying sound. John Batman held his weapon. They shifted under his burdensome gaze and scratched their balls until he raised his voice again.

  I aint doin it, he said.

  But no one stepped forward. They made a study of the ground and would not raise their eyes.

  And so it was that Black Bill grabbed the doublebarrel gun from Batman’s hand and he checked the priming and walked off towards the campfire. They watched him go and they one and all shook their heads. Batman called them onwards with a motion of the arm, so they hefted their hide knapsacks and affixed their weapons across their backs and then they followed him. Someone lifted the native girl to her feet and shoved her along and her child rode on Gumm’s broad and lashscarred shoulders. Soon they were gone altogether. Black Bill removed his hat. He worked back the heavy cocks of both barrels and they settled with a dull clunk. Taralta clutched at his swaddled chest and looked Bill in the eyes, as wordless as ground stone. Bill brought up the massive gun and steadied the barrels across his forearm as his broken fingers could not take the weight. The sight of those octagonal bores levelled on him caused the lawman to huddle down behind his hands and cry out, and Bill steadied the gun but there was no clear shot he might take. He waited.

  See now, he said. Move your hands.