Cry of the Curlew: The Frontier Series 1 (50 page)

‘No, Tom,’ Wallarie hissed back over the space between them. ‘They are your children and you must take them. I will stay for a while and fire at the black crows, because I am better than you at getting away on my own.’

He knew Wallarie was right and he reached out to pat his friend on the shoulder. Wallarie was naked and he was naturally camouflaged by the night. Tom’s European clothes made it harder for him to move unseen in the darkness.

‘I will go when I tell you I am ready,’ Tom whispered. There was no time to argue as both men had heard the sound of a small avalanche of rocks from only a few yards out, where one of the advancing troopers had carelessly dislodged them.

Tom crawled on his belly to his children and gave them short instructions on what to do. He scooped up his little daughter with one arm and held his rifle in the other hand. ‘Going now!’ he called softly to Wallarie in the Nerambura language. Immediately Wallarie used two of his pistols to blast away at the unseen troopers lower down on the rocky slope. When the guns were empty he rolled away from his position and fired his third pistol into the dark. The troopers instinctively kept their heads down as the bullets cracked and whined around the slope.

And it was while Wallarie was blasting away with the pistols that Tom made his break. The heavy rain may have provided concealment for the troopers, but it was a dual-edged weapon. The troopers did not know that the voice that chatted in a conversational tone on the hill was engaged in a monologue.

Wallarie kept up the one-sided conversation as he expertly reloaded his revolvers. He knew that while he held the summit, the troopers dared not expose themselves to his deadly, rapid fire. But he also knew the delaying tactic could not work forever. A bluff was a bluff in any man’s language.

FORTY-NINE

K
ate’s every instinct screamed. She was in dire peril for her life and lay in her bed praying that the silence of the crickets would end. She needed to once again hear their reassuring chirping in the night and know she was alone. She was not able to explain why the feeling of dread had come on her, except that something was not right. Had Luke taught her too well . . . to listen even when she was asleep?

There was an uncanny silence outside her house and she thought she had heard the dull thud of heavy footsteps on the wood plank verandah. Dear God, let it be her imagination, she prayed. As she pulled the sheet up to her chin, she remembered the little pepperbox pistol Judith had given her as a gift for her journey west with the American. Where did she leave it? Yes, in a drawer beside the bed.

Kate eased herself up and placed her feet gently on the floor. But the bedsprings squeaked with the loudness of a steam train braking to an emergency halt, and she gritted her teeth in a futile gesture to make the noise go away. Then she heard the distinctive and sinister sound of a rusty hinge as the front door to the house was slowly pushed open. Could it be Hugh come to surprise her with a visit? But her instincts echoed a hollow
no!

Very carefully she slid the drawer open in the small wooden bedside table and fumbled for the pistol. She was rewarded with the feel of its solid frame at her fingertips. She gripped the compact multi-barrelled pistol in her hand and placed the gun on the bed as she reached for a kerosene lantern and fumbled for a wax match from a tin. But the unlit match fell from her hand as the door to the bedroom crashed open and the dark room was filled with the odour of whisky and sweat.

Kate’s cry was stifled by the voice that snarled from the doorway.

‘Don’t scream, Missus O’Keefe.’

She flung herself on the mattress to crouch against the brass bedhead with her legs tucked under her long nightdress and she groped for the pistol jammed uncomfortably beneath her.

‘I’m not come here to hurt you,’ the voice said with a drunken slur. ‘Just to warn you that you will never get Glen View while I’m alive. Or even after I’m dead.’

Kate was acutely aware of who the unseen and threatening intruder was.

‘Mister Macintosh,’ she hissed through clenched teeth. She had recognised the Scottish squatter’s voice despite all the years that had passed since he had last confronted her on Glen View. Luke had protected her then. But Luke was not with her now. She realised with rising terror that she was alone facing the man whom she knew in her heart had been responsible for the murder of her father and the deaths of so many innocent men, women and children of the Darambal people.

‘Sir Donald to you, lassie,’ he growled. ‘Only my betters call me by my old title. And you aren’t one of them by any long shot.’

Kate could vaguely make out the squatter sliding down her wall to sit on the floor beside the bedroom door. She considered fleeing but cautiously decided that attempting to dodge past the burly man might put her in greater danger. Instead she fought to keep down her panic and play for time. She had another option, and that was to fight. Slowly Kate eased her hand down to the pistol under her hip.

‘What do you want here, Sir Donald?’ she asked and tried to sound calm, although her heart pounded uncontrollably like a hammer in her breast. ‘Why have you come to my house uninvited at this time of the night?’

The squatter snorted at her question.

‘I’ve just come to tell you that I’m on my way south for my younger son’s memorial service,’ he replied. ‘And that I know about your very foolish attempt to buy up my lease. Well, I’ve got news for you, lassie, and that is: it’s not going to happen, because I’ve just got a loan to refinance Glen View.’

‘Now that you have told me what you said you came to do, you can leave my house,’ Kate said in a firm and unwavering voice. She was answered by a menacing chuckle from the squatter sitting in the dark.

‘I’ll go when I’m ready,’ he said, ‘and not when you tell me. I want you to know some things about your family . . . and mine . . . Missus O’Keefe.’

‘What things, Sir Donald?’ she asked and heard him sigh heavily before he answered.

‘Things like the fact that there is a curse on us, Missus O’Keefe. On us. And you. Oh yes, a curse that has taken two of my sons and has taken your brother. Damned if I can think of his name.’

‘Michael,’ Kate whispered. And his name was picked up by the man who sat across the room from her.

‘Michael. Yes, Michael Duffy. It seems the bloody curse has taken my two sons, and if it all goes to course, then it will take one of your family next. Maybe your murdering bushranging brother. The Native Mounted Police will get him sooner or later.’

Kate flared and spat back angrily, ‘They will never catch Tom to hang him,’ she said. ‘He is a Duffy. He is like my father whom your English soldiers hunted in Ireland and tried to murder at the Eureka Stockade. He stayed alive, despite their best efforts.’

‘Until he came to Glen View,’ Donald cut across her savagely. ‘Where he was foolish enough to try to step between me and the murdering black bastard who killed my elder son. And he paid with his worthless life for doing so.’

Kate listened with cold hatred to the next best thing to a confession of guilt from the squatter and she wrapped her hand around the butt of the pepperbox pistol as her finger curled on the trigger. Fear and rage came together as a deadly combination.

‘You killed my father, you bastard!’ she hissed in the dark with a cold and calculating fury.

Donald laughed softly.

‘I never said that, lassie,’ he replied. ‘And I wouldn’t be putting it around that I did if I were you, either. We have laws about such things in the colonies. No, I can say with all honesty, I didn’t kill your father. Let us say that I agreed with what did happen to him in the end.’

Kate raised the pistol.

‘I am going to kill you, Sir Donald,’ she said calmly. ‘I have a pistol and it’s aimed at you.’

‘Then shoot, lassie,’ Donald said softly. ‘You could do no worse to me. It is possible that both you and I are the intended sacrifices to the myall curse because, if you kill me, you will also surely hang and dance with me in hell. Go ahead and shoot. Let me join my sons. Or are the Duffys only capable of bushwhacking their victims?’

He laughed and laughed until the laughter became almost a sobbing cry, while Kate fought to keep calm. She knew the squatter was taunting her. She would remain calm, because she wanted the man to suffer for a lot longer yet. Until she found a way of hurting him.

A dead man feels no more pain and she wanted him to be alive to feel the pain she would eventually bring him in a way that he would know had come from her. The death of his second son was
his
pain now. Even she could not make it worse and if she did kill him, she knew that would be an act of mercy. She suddenly felt a feeling akin to sympathy for the man whom she could sense was hurting as much as any human could. But regardless of her unspoken acknowledgement for his grief, she knew he was responsible for much suffering to her own family and for that he would eventually have to account.

As she pondered the strange situation being played out in her bedroom, she heard his boots scrape on the floor as he heaved himself to his feet and lurched out the door without further comment.

Kate remained huddled on the bed for some time after the squatter had left the house and she was vaguely aware that she was trembling. Whether it was through fear for the short but emotionally violent intrusion of the squatter, or the anger she felt at her own sympathy for the man’s grief, she was not sure. But she knew the man had said something that had always haunted her. Was there a curse on the two families? She found her thoughts drifting to her brother Tom, whom she had not seen since she was a little girl in Sydney, a time when Tom had stood beside her father and waved as he bade her farewell. Oh, how she had missed Tom. He had always been good to her. First she had lost Michael, and now Tom was a man hunted like some wild and savage animal in the colony’s wilderness.

She listened to the return of the reassuring crickets’ chirp in the quiet and solitary hours of the morning. A dog barked from somewhere in town and further in the distance she could hear the mournful cry of the curlews. A cold shiver went through her as they seemed to be calling to her . . . or someone in her family!

And she experienced another fear that she did not want to admit that had come from something Sir Donald had said in his drunken and rambling discourse. How did he know about her attempt to buy his lease?

FIFTY

A
s Tom picked his way down the other side of the hill, his thoughts were of Mondo. But he knew that he could not dwell on her death. To do so would distract him from his primary task of getting their three children to safety. Mondo would have wanted that. She had been born of a people whose dictates were practical and, in their often harsh world, the survival of the young mattered to the countless generations of women of the Nerambura people.

The distant carbine and revolver fire continued spasmodically from atop the hill as a seemingly harmless popping sound. Tom made his way with the children to a site at the base of the hills where weapons and food were cached for such an emergency. The horses that had been left hobbled and grazing on the plain might have attracted the attention of the troopers who could be lying in ambush waiting for him to make an attempt at riding out. He knew he would not be able to use them in his escape.

When he finally reached the bottom of the hill at the edge of the long grassed plain, everything went terribly wrong. First the rain ceased and then the clouds parted to allow the moon to shine through.

Tom was also acutely aware of the frightening silence that now came from the top of the craggy hill where Wallarie had been holding the troopers at bay. He knew that he could not have run out of ammunition as they had stocked a good supply of powder and ball.

The pale light from the half moon revealed a sea of dripping grass as high as a man, beyond which were the thinly scattered trees of the plain. Tom hefted Sarah off his shoulders and placed her gently down, and he gripped the Snider in both hands as he quickly surveyed the horizon to his front. At least to cross the moonlit plain would allow the tall grass to swallow them as surely as the sea rolls over a drowning man. But using the grass-covered plain would also make it easy to track him and the three children.

‘Stand in the Queen’s name!’

Tom froze. The bastards had ambushed him! The command came from his right and the voice was vaguely familiar. He could see that he was only twenty paces from the long grass and the concealment that beckoned to him. But the bloody moon had lit them up as surely as a lantern in a public bar.

‘Sergeant James! That you?’ Tom called into the night warily. He sensed that he was at the end of a rifle sight, as the voice had been very close. Twenty, maybe thirty yards, he guessed. He still held his rifle as he desperately sought about for cover. Peter clung to his belt and would not let go. Sarah now held Tim’s hand and was crying softly as she trembled with fear for the strange events of the night.

‘It’s me, Tom,’ Henry called back. ‘Throw down your gun. I’m not alone this time.’

Henry knew that if the moon went behind the clouds he would lose sight of the bushranger. And had it not been for the rain stopping and the moon suddenly appearing, Tom could easily have slipped past his flimsy cordon. The police sergeant knew that the bushranger was stalling for time, waiting for the moon to disappear, then he would try to make a dash to the taller grasses of the plains.

‘I have my kids with me, Sergeant James,’ Tom called. ‘Tell your troopers to be careful about where their trigger fingers are.’

Henry could see the big man silhouetted against the night sky, but he could not see the children. Then he saw the slight movement of Peter’s head next to Tom’s waist. He swore. He did not know Tom had kids. If things went bad, the children could be caught in a lethal crossfire.

‘How many?’ he called to Tom.

‘Three . . . two boys and a girl.’ The clouds were too far apart. The time was running out for him to make a break for the concealment of the long grass.

‘Then for the sake of your kids you had better throw down your gun, Tom,’ Henry pleaded. ‘I don’t want their blood on my hands. Nor do you.’

The Irish bushranger knew the police sergeant was right. To try to make a break meant that Henry and his troopers would be forced to shoot, and in the dark bullets did not discriminate between the innocent or the guilty. Although he was prepared to take the chance in making a dash for the long grass, it would mean putting his children’s lives at risk.

The moon was only seconds from a cloud which now drifted across the sky to swallow the half circle of light. The frogs croaked in a deafening cacophony of sound as he watched the two troopers rise out of the long grass with their carbines pointed at him. They were advancing on him, taking advantage of the last seconds of light. Although Tom knew there was a slim chance, young Peter still had hold of his belt. Little Sarah sobbed while Tim was silent. He was too frightened to make a sound.

Tom sighed. He might have a chance. But his kids were all that he had. The rifle dropped from his hands and he raised them above his head.

‘It’s done!’ he called to Henry, who rose from the grass with his rifle levelled.

The night exploded and a bullet took Tom in the back, flinging him forwards.

Henry looked up and could see the line of troopers on the hill with rifles raised to their shoulders. Smoke drifted like an evil mist around them as the echo of the volley of shots shattered the night. There had been a terrible mistake!

‘Christ, no!’ Henry screamed as he sprinted forward to drop on his knees beside the critically wounded bushranger. He ripped a scarf from around his own throat and tried desperately to stem the flow of blood, although he knew it was hopeless.

The three children stared wide-eyed at the big white man who cradled their father’s head.

‘You once said you knew Kate, Sergeant James,’ Tom said, clutching his chest, and Henry nodded. ‘I’m not going to see the sun rise . . . I know that. But I want you to promise me that you will get my kids to Kate, wherever she is,’ Tom said, fighting back the darkness that came on him in waves. There were things to be said before he died. Urgent things.

‘I can do that for you, Tom,’ Henry said gently. ‘Kate is living in Townsville and I promise you that I will get them to her. I owe you that much. What happened here tonight wasn’t personal.’

‘I know that, Sergeant James,’ the dying bushranger said with a pain-twisted grin. ‘Peter is my oldest,’ Tom continued. ‘That’s Tim over there holding onto Sarah’s hand,’ he said, turning his head. ‘They are a bit wild and Kate will have to be firm with ’em. Look at that! The bloody moon is finally gone and I’m lying here in the arms of some bloody trap. It’s not a decent thing, Sergeant James,’ he said with an attempt at a laugh, then began to choke on his own blood.

Henry knew Tom was almost gone when he had made his observation of the moon’s disappearance behind the clouds. The moon had not disappeared. The evening sky was clearing and the stars, washed clean, sparkled overhead. Tom stiffened and with a long sad sigh, he relaxed.

Henry rose slowly to his feet. ‘He’s dead,’ he said in a flat voice and the children stared wide-eyed at the police sergeant, although they did not understand what the white man had said.

Henry looked at the three children huddled and trembling together, and wished he knew what he should do next. But his troubled thoughts were distracted by the sound of the remaining troopers picking their way down the track from the hill with Lieutenant Uhr leading the way. When they reached him, they cast the children curious looks while the police lieutenant squatted on his haunches to examine the body of the dead man at Henry’s feet.

‘Tom Duffy, sir. These are his kids. He surrendered without a fight . . .’ Henry began angrily, but knew that in the circumstances, it was really no one’s fault. ‘Just one of those things.’

Lieutenant Uhr rubbed his face wearily. ‘Well,’ he said with a sigh, ‘at least we got one of them. The blackfella got away on us. Damned well slipped past us when we were right on him,’ he said. ‘I suppose we should be grateful we didn’t suffer any casualties.’ He stood and stared in the direction of the Duffy children. ‘We will have to take them back to Burketown and let the authorities figure out what they are going to do with them. We’ll camp on the hill and bury the gin in the morning. Duffy’s body goes back with us. You can organise the men to bed down for the night, as I doubt if we will find the blackfella now he is on his own. At least not for a while.’

‘Sir!’ Henry acknowledged. He would talk to Mister Uhr in the morning about the fate of the Duffy children. For now it was a matter of consolidating their position for the night. They were all weary and the tension of the events of the past hour had taken a toll on their spirits. Henry knew he would somehow get the children to Kate. What happened after that was up to her. But he also knew that she would not allow the sons and daughter of her brother to be cast aside. They were, after all, her kin.

The rain was gone and the clouds had drifted away. In the distance, the curlews called to the spirit of Tom Duffy. Wallarie also heard Cry of the curlews and knew his friend was dead. How? He could not tell. But he knew he would never see him again. Except in the world beyond the Dreaming.

The Aboriginal warrior cast away his rifle and revolver. They were things of the white man’s world and their possession would mark him to the white men who would always hunt him. Naked and without the guns, he was as much a part of the land as were his ancestors. Ancestors he would avenge, as the warrior of the cave had called to him for vengeance.

While he walked with the sounds of the bush and the light of the shimmering stars above, he knew it was time to return to the old ways. He gazed up at the heavens, seeking the spirits that would guide him on his journey. And when he found the spirits he sought, he commenced the long journey south to the traditional lands of the Darambal people.

As the last full-blooded Nerambura tribesman, he would sing the death chant for his white friend whose spirit he knew was now sleeping, one with that of the sacred hill.

Hugh Darlington shrank from her fury as Kate stood quivering in her rage in the doorway of his office.

‘You told him about the purchase,’ she said with a venom in her voice to match the fire in her grey eyes that were like flints throwing off sparks. ‘You told Sir Donald, even though you swore your love for me. Why? I cannot understand why you would do that.’ Her last statement trailed away as a plea, a desperate attempt to allow him to explain the impossible.

‘I cannot tell you my reasons, Kate,’ he replied in a choked voice as he sat behind his desk. For a second Kate felt almost a twinge of sympathy for him. He looked so pathetic as he sat slumped in his chair and he no longer appeared in her eyes as the strong and decisive man she had loved. He was like a snivelling, goddamned son of a bitch, Kate thought, and she wondered how the strong language of the American prospector had crept into her thoughts so easily. She shook her head, turned her back and slammed the door as she walked out of his life.

The only two men she had given herself to had betrayed her, she thought savagely. But she refused to allow her sense of loss to overwhelm her in maudlin sentimentality. And all the men who had truly loved her – her father, brothers and Luke Tracy – had been taken from her life in one way or another.

As Kate swept across the dusty street striding purposefully to her office, she held her head high and had a set expression of determination on her pretty face. A few bystanders stared curiously at the beautiful young woman who marched past them without acknowledging their greetings. Anger was an emotion easily felt and none dared ask the fiery Kate O’Keefe what was wrong. The expression on her face did not invite questions.

In her office, she leant on the closed door and burst into deep racking sobs.

Kate cried not for the betrayal of a worthless man who had used her for his own carnal needs, but for the men she knew she would never see again. The men who had truly loved her in their quiet and gentle ways.