The Roving Party Page 8

  The lawman crabbed away over the dirt, still with his arms upraised, and Bill followed him and kicked him in the bandaged ribs and kicked at his arms.

  menenger, Bill said, menenger.

  The lawman curled up more tightly. Bill brought the heel of his boot to bear on the wounded man but he kicked in vain while Taralta folded his arms ever tighter around his head.

  Black Bill lowered the gun. Wattlebirds made their yac-a-yac coughs in the bush behind and he gazed at the blue hills to the south and the snow clouds forming above them. When Bill looked again at the lawman he was watching through his hands, dirt and ash stuck in the cords of his ochred hair. Bill brought the gun up, balanced it across his arm again and tucked the butt into his shoulder. Then he fired into the lawman’s head.

  The almighty concussion rattled the wind in his chest and the gun bucked from his grip and fell. He turned away, holding his shoulder. Blood had spattered his face, his arms, the front of his shirt. For a time he would not look at the body of the lawman where it lay near the fire. He rubbed at the bruising on his shoulder; watched storms amass around the southern peaks. After a while he turned to survey the slaughter he had wrought.

  One of the lawman’s arms was gone at the elbow and the teeth seated in the jawbone could be seen through the cheek. There was flesh blown every place. He picked up the Manton gun. The locks were soiled and he fingered out the grime, and then with the corner of his coat cleaned the pan and blew into the latchworks. He brought the weapon up to eye level and peered along its sights for barrel warps or any misalignment then, content, slung the leather on his shoulder. Without a rearward glance he stalked off, his hat replaced, his boots slipping in the blood. Smoke from the fire blew around him in a snarl raised on the wind and dispersed again on the same.

  Black Bill made haste after the roving party. He pushed onwards through clumps of tree ferns and followed the track taken by the company down the mountainside. They were no more than ten minutes ahead but he had neither sight nor sound of them. He paused to study the scuffings of bandaged feet and the direction they told before moving on.

  He was picking a careful path down an embankment strewn with debris when he heard it. He stopped and looked back at the mountain rising behind him and the silver snow it wore crownlike. The bush of black wattle and blossoming gum was broken only by the path he was scouting. He brought Batman’s gun around. Off in the forest the crashing of some nameless thing sounded, at first indistinct but ever less so. It may have been wallaby or emu but as he listened, as he made that din for what it was, he was gripped in a moment of panic.

  He bolted down the slope, finding a position in the undergrowth where he might hide, and he tugged the branches around himself and cast up the debris of the forest floor across his legs to obscure his clothing. In that blind he allowed himself only the smallest gap to see up the hillside as he settled the gun under his chin and concealed it too with leaves. He slowed his breathing, stilling every movement of his limbs. By the time he was embedded, the dark shapes of spearsmen were beginning to show among the yellow gums that stood mute and immovable as the men streamed around them. They dipped behind a fallen tree and vaulted its trunk and their great spears rose tall overhead. Black Bill had them along his barrel as his heart beat a lively rhythm against the earth but he held off taking his shot. They were driving before them a familiar figure, a baldheaded fellow crazed with horror, glancing behind and clawing his way through the underscrub. The warriors made war cries and hammered their waddies against the trees, setting the branches a-shudder and sending their spears sibilating between the gums. Bill watched one haft arc and bury in the earth beside Horsehead, who went down on one knee but rose and fought onwards towards the spot where Bill was concealed. Among the war party was Manalargena. He waved his blackwood waddy above his head and the clay caking in his beard shook as he hurtled through the forest. He was painted up for war in grey ash and red ochre. Behind him the terrible tribe howled in one voice as they followed their quarry.

  In those few seconds Black Bill considered letting the clansmen simply pass by. He was well hidden. No good would come of helping Horsehead. But the old crook was nearly spent and he loped along with the gait of a river troll, his wispy hair awry above his haggard face, his clothes torn and grime on his skin. As Bill watched, a ten-foot spear buried half its length into a tree fern just shy of Horsehead and he cried out to God for help. Instead the task fell upon Bill. He cursed himself for a fool. Then he rose out of the brush bearing the gun on his hip and fired into the war party. Immediately they dropped and one screamed out in pain and they scrambled a retreat up the hillside, keeping low behind the gums and leaving the distressed fellow where he lay. Only Manalargena remained standing and he did not turn or hide but rather he stared across that separation of forest at the Vandemonian. He raised aloft his waddy and called out, nina krakapaka laykara.

  The Vandemonian might have fired the second barrel but he would have left himself exposed without a charge. The headman hooted and wailed.

  Shoot the bastards. Horsehead was crouched behind a broken stump. Shoot shoot shoot, he said.

  But Black Bill had gone running into the scrub hunched over and Horsehead now bolted after him, stumbled and righted himself, and they put in some yards before the Plindermairhemener lobbed their waddies end over end through the trees. Those cudgels whoomping in slow rotations battered the gums overhead and gouged out huge wounds in the hardwood. There was more cover down the slope, thickets of heath, of flowering musk, and as they struck out towards it the headman’s cries drowned in the clamour of wind.

  They fought them running down the face of the mountain all that long day. They found cover behind crowds of ferns and mossy rocks while Bill repacked and fired at the noiseless black shapes flitting between various concealments. Noon saw them stop at a water trickle and they took turns lapping at the stones as the other kept watch. Bill refilled his canteen. Then they moved on once more but that small halt gave the clansmen back some ground and they quickly drew within range of a good throw. A spear curved over Bill’s hat and fell without a sound in front of him, the haft quivering in the earth. He frowned and broke the thing over his knee but more followed the first and soon the trees were full of their clatter. He picked up his pace and Horsehead stayed with him. The Plindermairhemener retrieved their spears as they ran and threw them again and they neither spoke nor cried out but maintained the silence of hunters.

  In the afternoon the two marked men crouched amid the ruins of a dried river bed and studied the clansmen where they held positions up the slope in the dogwood. Black Bill opened the neck of his shot bag and felt at the contents. Perhaps ball enough for one barrel. He retied the string and stuffed the sack inside his drum then looked around at Horsehead.

  You hear that? he said.

  The old cur nodded. I hear it. He jibbered the same stuff at me all night.

  Manalargena was calling to Bill across the distance between the parties. He called him plague dog and speculated on the nature of the white sickness Bill had so plainly contracted. He insisted that Bill would be killed as mercifully as any diseased animal if he came forth in surrender and would not suffer the punitive rituals of spearing or wounding reserved for transgressors of the law. Bill listened and waited and when the headman had finished his oratory he stood from the cover and fired. The men dropped away before the spout of flame. All except the headman. Bill stood with the gun against his shoulder assessing the position he held and then he went low and fast through the brush and Horsehead went after him. They ran for where the black wattle grew broad and would shelter them from sight as the clansmen renewed their cries of war.

  THE ROVING PARTY HAD SETTLED ON a piece of rocky mountainside cut across by southerlies as cold as glass, and lit only by the halfmoon affixed above the hills silhouetted in the west. They sat in that subterranean darkness, wrapped in their blankets, with their pieces in hand as they chewed on raw mutton strips. Gunfire had sounded all day along t
he mountain’s flanks and from fear of an ambush they had made no fire as the night drew down. Pigeon would not take his ease and he strode the edge of the rocks in silent observation, awaiting some sign of the Plindermairhemener. They had fashioned a rope collar for the girl and tied her hands at her back that she might be more easily led and she lay in her skins staring from her one unswollen eye at the Dharug man as he moved back and forth. Her child sat near her, shapeless in the dark but for his white eyes.

  No feature could be told out of that shrouded forest save what shadows were thrown up by the moon and John Batman tossed a small stone at Pigeon and motioned for him to quit. He looked at Batman, drew his blanket around his shoulders and moved off again at his scouting. And despite the savage cold most of them found sleep in whatever positions they held, beside and leaned against one another, and still Pigeon walked the boundary. He had slept not a shade the previous night and would not this night. It was near midnight when a call of cooee cut the silence. Pigeon nudged his countryman Crook and bade him to rise. Batman had chucked off his covers, finding his weapon even before the call had died on the air. The scrub beneath their outlook was a formless black and silver gradient along the mountain’s flanks, and they studied that sweep of country for what little they could make of it. Again came the call and the men in one motion aimed their weapons at the quarter from which it had emanated. John Batman was wary of this ploy and he would not return the cooee as was customary along the frontier. He walked out a short way and stood listening above the insect din. When the call sounded a third time it was followed by some words he could not make out. He turned to Pigeon.

  What do you spose that was?

  Pigeon grinned. Said he found some old cretin.

  Who said?

  Our Billy Black.

  Batman kicked at the ground. Did he? Well call him in then.

  Through his hands Pigeon bellowed out his own cooee and it was returned a moment later. The men stood down, eased back the hammers of their pieces, and before too long the stragglers approached the campsite and wordlessly sat themselves down among the others. Horsehead had fared poorly and was shivering and bleeding. He set his grubby feet upon the stones, and by the moon’s light plucked thorns and tended the various gashes in his soles.

  We believed you lost, said Jimmy Gumm.

  I was, said Horsehead. Now I’m found.

  He worked with great tenderness upon a two-inch score in his foot, probing it for remnants of splinter. I had a time of it with the crows, but.

  Where’s yer piece? said Batman.

  Out bush somewheres.

  Christ almighty.

  Horsehead sipped a mouthful of water and spat into the gash. The pain had him wincing. You see em too, Bill?

  I did. They were tracking Mr. Clarke here.

  And near had me too, by God.

  They mean to raise Cain I reckon, said Batman. We’d do well to watch our backs.

  I saw that chief atheirs, said Horsehead.

  Ugly heathen wretch, aint he? said Batman.

  I had no weapon or I would’ve bagged him meself. Bill there, he shot up a pound-weight of ball and I seen him drop one at least. But not that chief. No. He has some cunning in him, he does.

  We havent the wherewithal to take him. He is beyond us.

  They all looked around at Bill. He said nothing more but merely pushed back the brim of his hat and brought his features into the moonlight and they watched him proceed to pick at the dry scabby cakes of blood spattered up his arms, the blood of dogs, of clansmen, and some of his own.

  AT NOON THE FOLLOWING DAY THE bush first thinned over a few yards then evaporated entirely as the party approached the open grounds of Kingston. A change of temper washed over them and talk rounded to rewards and their spending, rum and its swilling, women and their laying. They retraced the curve of the field long ago burned from the forest by the Plindermairhemener. They passed the sheep bones and skerricks of yellowed wool that littered the ground, evidence of the slaughter committed upon Batman’s flocks some years back by those same folk. They led the native girl along and her dull eyes saw but did not see. Her feet kicked over the bones that rattled like ruined pottery.

  As they neared the farmhouse Batman’s three girls came bolting over the paddocks and topping fences to embrace their father. The eldest stood back when she caught smell of his clothes but the little ones seemed untroubled and latched on around his legs.

  Is she sick, Father? said the eldest. She was pointing at the black girl who’d dropped to her knees.

  She aint no concern ayours. He hauled the girls off his legs and steered them towards their sister. For a moment the three girls lingered, their dresses catching on the breeze. Then the youngest spotted the child Jimmy Gumm had on his hip.

  A baby. He has a baby, she said.

  Get inside. Get! Batman yelled and the girls took off.

  On Batman’s word, Gould led the native girl to the outbuildings. The key groaned in the padlock as Gould cranked it around and the chains fell free from the looped handles of the store shed. He freed the crossbrace and yanked on the door and its toe scarred the earth as it moved. The faded afternoon sun issued through the separations in the woodwork and caught in the cobwebs. That was all the light the girl would have. Gould pushed her into the stink of wool and sheep shit, and shouldered the door shut. Not a sound did she utter.

  When Eliza Batman appeared on the verandah she had in her hands a pisspot turned from wattle wood that contained their night’s purgations and her girls were leading her along by the skirts, pointing at the party men as they neared the farmhouse—the boy in his clothes stiffened with dog’s blood and the smiling black men and among them Jimmy Gumm holding the hand of a native child. Batman kept his distance until she’d slung the contents of the pisspot on the grass. She was a slight Irish woman, pockmarked but handsome still, and she met those men with a glare which made plain her displeasure.

  And what by Jaysus is this?

  A boy, mam.

  She swung about on John Batman. A boy. So where’s his mother?

  Locked up.

  Dont let’s be lyin to each other, Johnny.

  I aint lyin. She’s locked there in that store shed.

  In there?

  That’s what I said, woman.

  She cut through those squalid bushmen with her three girls behind her and banged on the door of the store shed. She called out but there was no sound from inside. Open it, she said.

  William Gould produced a ring of iron keys and from that selected one, shaking it free of the rest. He tugged the heavy door open in fits and starts. Eliza bent her head inside.

  Fearsome little colleen that, said Gumm, but he was met by the stone cold eyes of John Batman and the grin he wore vanished. The native girl stumbled drunkenly into the noon glare. Immediately the child by Gumm’s side began to keen for its mother.

  Take care, said Gould. She has a set of claws on her.

  But Eliza showed no caution as she stood taking summary of the girl from head to toe. The remnants of her ritual painting remained on her yet and the smeared ochre and white clay told of her providence among the people of the hills. The animal pelt she wore across one shoulder was crawling with fleas and stank of the smoke and grease of bushlife. She swayed under the baffling sun and covered her eyes with her roped hands.

  Eliza looked around at the men. She’s nothin but a child.

  Batman grimaced. I dont care what she is.

  Aye, she said. God’s mill may grind slowly, John, but it grinds finely. You wont be forgot when he tallies what’s owin.

  Carrying the bucket between them Batman’s girls ferried water from the creek and tempered it with boiled water from the kitchen, singing a hymn as they toiled. A small tin bath was borne from the house and stood on the verandah and the girl and her child were hitched to an upright beside it.

  Dont be frettin now, missus, said Eliza.

  Eliza hiked up her sleeves and leaned in to unfasten the
knot around the native girl’s neck. The coarse hemp had chewed at her skin and the girl flinched but did not resist. John Batman was backed against a fencepost, watching the spectacle from a gentlemanly remove with his gun held in the crook of his arm. Eliza steered the girl by the elbow towards the bathtub. Steam rose off the iron face of the water and the native girl hesitated at the edge.

  Look, it wont hurt yer none. See? Eliza splashed water onto her dark skin. The girl put one foot into the water as Eliza tugged on her elbow, and then a tentative second. There she waited with her bound hands at her chest.

  She wouldnt never have seen hot water before, said Batman.

  Course she has. They love a mug of tea.

  Dont bathe in it but, do they?

  Go on with yer now. Barely sixteen she is. This aint no business ayours.

  It’ll be my business if she bites yer ear off, wont it?

  Go on!

  Batman crossed his weapon behind his neck and walked off.

  Eliza lifted the child also into the water and he thrust out his squat legs and churned up the surface. Using a cook-pot she ladled water over the girl’s shoulders. It ran and beaded over the grease on her skin. So she took a block of soap and raised a lather over the whole of her back and thighs and arms and all the while the girl stood meekly and fixed her eyes downwards.

  Here, Maria. You do it. Eliza gave the pot to her eldest and the girl rolled up the sleeves of her pinny and knelt beside the bath.

  Look here at these scars on her.

  Dont be touchin them now.

  What’s her name?

  Goodness only knows.

  I should like to call her Ellen. Could I call her Ellen, Ma?

  Eliza straightened up, her backbones cracking. Katherine, she said. Come up here, would you?

  Bill’s woman was belting wet clothes against a stone and upon hearing her name she lifted her head. Her long hair was tied back like a white woman’s and her head came up slowly as if that coil was a great weight to bear. Eliza waved her nearer and she came, wiping her hands on the tattered men’s shirt she wore loosely over her belly.