Flight of the Eagle (38 page)

‘Probably because they were so efficiently dispersed as a clan in my father's day,’ Gordon sighed, ‘that they have virtually ceased to exist. Except for Wallarie, who is the last full-blood, there are only Tom Duffy's kids, as far as I know, who have any Nerambura blood in them. I would say that, from the direction they have taken, Wallarie intends to take Peter Duffy back to the traditional grounds, for something like an initiation ceremony.’

‘Could be,’ Gales mused as he stared at the map behind him. ‘Blackfellas are a bit funny about things like that. Appears your Trooper Duffy was more blackfella than white from what I hear about him.’

‘Appears so,’ Gordon answered in a flat voice. He momentarily reflected on Sarah. She also had the last remnants of Nerambura blood and any children they might have would carry on a bloodline his father had assisted in attempting to wipe out. It was an eerie thought – and one with an uncomfortable echo.

‘ …
organise a patrol to ride south to Glen View
…’

‘Sorry, sir,’ Gordon replied. ‘I missed what you said.’

‘You recovered from that bang on the head?’ Gales asked in a concerned voice when he noticed the pale, sweating face of his inspector. ‘You look like you have some sort of fever.’

‘I'm all right, sir.’

‘Good! Because I want you to immediately organise a patrol to ride south and see if those two are at Glen View like you think they might be.’

‘Yes, sir, will do so immediately.’

Gordon justified his decision to himself on the grounds that it was better that he should find Peter and Wallarie rather than strangers who could easily shoot first. That afternoon he visited his mother before returning to the barracks to ride out with a seven-man patrol.

Emma James listened to her son explaining his mission. It was only when he was gone that she sat and thought about the ironic turn of events; just as his father had hunted Tom Duffy, now Gordon hunted the son of Tom Duffy. A sad wheel turning in their lives and always coming back to the place where it had all started. All the threads had come together for a future tragedy: a Native Mounted Police patrol would once again ride armed into the lands of the Nerambura clan of the Darambal people.

The resignation letter remained in Gordon's hand. He would tender it as soon as he had found Peter and ensured that his best friend was safe. Surely Sarah would understand the importance of what he was doing?

Gordon did not ride over to see Sarah before leaving with his patrol. He sensed that in fact she would not understand why he would volunteer to hunt down her brother. How could he explain to her that it was more than his duty to find Peter and reconcile his differences with him before he could begin a life with her? To find Peter before he could get into any more trouble was paramount. He and Sarah would then be able to be free of the curse that seemed to dog their lives.

THIRTY-SEVEN

S
outh-west of Townsville, and four days ahead of the police patrol, Peter Duffy and Wallarie camped in the thick tangle of dry scrub beside a waterhole. There was a third member in their company: a part-Chinese part-Aboriginal girl who had chosen to join them when they had bailed up a drunken shanty keeper.

Her name was Matilda and she had lived with her mother until she had died. Matilda had then remained with her stepfather until he sold her to the travelling shanty keeper who had purchased her from a prospector a week earlier for a considerable supply of good liquor. She was not of his blood and the old prospector had little room for sentimentality in his tough life roaming the isolated regions of the colony.

Matilda's mother and father, a Chinese shepherd, had lived together in a bark hut on a squatter's property. Matilda's mother had returned one day to the shack to find him murdered for the little gold he had kept from his meagre findings on the property west of Townsville. She had fled with her baby daughter and was found by the prospector who took her in as cook and someone to warm his bedroll at nights.

Matilda had grown up in the company of the white miner and her mother until she was fifteen when her mother had died after a bashing from the cranky old man. He had turned to Matilda to take her mother's place but the young girl had threatened to kill him if he tried to touch her. He was, afraid of the young woman but knew her exotic beauty – her slanted eyes and high-cheeked features – would help him fetch a high price with the right person. He was, after all, selling her into a decent employment – or so he convinced himself – at the sight of a crate of top shelf gin bottles offered for her ‘indenture’ into the grog shanty business.

The shanty owner had all intentions of offering her employment in his business – not behind the counter but in a cot in the back of his shop. She would fetch a good deal of money on her back, he had calculated, as he sized up the slim figure and firm young breasts and buttocks of the girl, as she leant over to serve her stepfather and the shanty owner a meal of curried beef and rice. The deal was struck between the grogger and prospector but on the track to his lonely grog shop Matilda had resisted his drunken approaches and he had beaten her.

It had been her cries of pain that had attracted Peter's attention as he and Wallarie rode up to witness the shanty owner straddling the young woman with his pants down around his ankles. Peter and Wallarie's presence had cowed the would-be rapist and robbing the ranting man had not even required the threat of a gun.

Wallarie and Peter helped themselves to flour, tea and sugar as the grateful girl adjusted the cotton dress she wore, and helped them load the supplies into their saddlebags. Peter had reached down and with a powerful sweep of his arm lifted her onto the back of his mount and she rode with her arms around the young man.

Peter by now only wore the trousers and boots of the Mounted Police and a bandolier of ammunition, slung across his shoulder and broad chest. Wallarie by comparison wore an old shirt and trousers, but no boots, when he rode the horse he had stolen from the Cloncurry Mounted Police barracks. Peter had been stunned by his audacity when he had walked into the town dressed in the clothes of Aboriginal stockmen. He had arrived brazenly at the police barracks and asked to speak with the trooper who had returned with the re-supply party.

‘How did you know I was here?’ Peter had asked.

Wallarie had chuckled. ‘Maybe I followed you on the wings of the eagle after the big fight out in the hills.’

Peter frowned at the old warrior's explanation but knew asking further questions would only elicit a nonsensical answer. ‘You know the whitefellas will hang you if they catch you in town?’ he cautioned.

Wallarie waved away the young man's concern. ‘No whitefella smart enough to catch me,’ he answered with a tone of contempt. ‘Time you left the whitefellas' town and came with me to the Dreaming place to become a man of the Nerambura people.’

Peter reflected on the offer. He had been denied his rightful place in the European world. Had he not proved his ability at the European school? And why was it that Gordon should be an officer when he was not as smart? The answers were all too simple. To the whitefellas he would always be just another blackfella.

‘We will need rifles and horses,’ Peter said, with an unwavering stare into the smoky eyes of the mighty Darambal warrior.

‘Just like the old days when I rode with your father,’ he smiled. ‘We will show the whitefellas we aren't beaten yet.’

And that was how it happened.

It all seemed so simple but in due time the grog shop owner had lodged his complaint with the police headquarters in Townsville. Embellished by his fury, the man added attempted murder and robbery whilst under arms to his story.

No-one questioned the word of a white man under the circumstances and, unfortunately for Wallarie, the shanty owner remembered his name being used by Peter. He also remembered the legend of the Aboriginal bushranger who once rode with the Irishman, Tom Duffy.

From the first night of their meeting Matilda and Peter had shared a bedroll. Before long she had fallen pregnant. For two weeks Matilda rode with Wallarie and Peter and for two weeks she had ridden with a life growing in her. Now she also carried the remnants of Nerambura blood with hers, a fact that did not go unnoticed by the old Nerambura warrior.

Not that she appeared different. But even so, Wallarie knew she had a spirit in her. He did not confide to Peter his knowledge. He would learn soon enough! When Matilda herself realised that she carried a spirit.

As Wallarie sat chuckling by the campfire, luxuriating in the beauty of the night sky and drinking cups of sweet black tea, he poked at the fire. A dingo howled in the distance and the old warrior suddenly lifted his bearded face to stare north. It was on the wind and in the mournful howl. Gordon James was riding south to find them and time was short. The old prophecy was soon to come true. Either Peter or Gordon was destined to die at their next meeting.

Wallarie stared morosely at the young couple curled together a short distance away under Peter's blanket, blissfully unaware of his dreadful premonition. Would all he had attempted to teach Peter prepare him for the meeting? Or would the son of Gordon James prevail? Only the ancestor spirits knew the answer. It was told by them long ago in the stories of his people's Dreaming.

Instinctively he glanced across the brigalow scrub towards the craggy hill silhouetted by the night sky. Once again they were in the traditional lands of the Nerambura clan and the sacred hill beckoned to him with its ancient power. In the morning Peter must leave Matilda and go with him to the cave to be initiated as a Nerambura man. Only then could he face Gordon James.

THIRTY-EIGHT

L
ieutenant Alexander Sutherland scanned the flat – plain of broken rock and arid sands. In the distance beyond the shimmering plain he could see an endless sea of sand and broken rock. Behind him rose the craggy mimosa covered coastal hills and the busy military port of Suakin. Onwards was hell itself. Only a return to Suakin from the long and dangerous patrol would give a chance to return to heaven. To bath once again in cooling waters, he thought wistfully, and loll around the bazaars of the white stone city. A chance to buy exotic gifts for his family back home in Colchester.

The young officer scratched at his grimy face and dry skin peeled away under his dirty fingernails. His sunburn had long disappeared and under the peeling dry skin his once-peach complexion was tanned a nuggetty brown. Constant exposure to the fierce African sun had left him a mottled colour. As a former officer, in command of a troop of Her Majesty's horse cavalry, the transfer to the Guards' Camel Regiment had come as somewhat of a blow. The glamorous image of the dashing cavalryman was long lost to working with the huge ungainly looking animals. But time – and the remarkable endurance of the huge and often quarrelsome beasts – had converted him to the merits of the creature. They were unsurpassed on the long-range reconnaissance patrols into the burning, broken lands of the Dervish.

The lieutenant scanned the wasteland of rock and sparsely scattered scrub with his binoculars but there was nothing of worth to note. No camps of bedouins or concentrations of Dervish warriors. No tracks or trails left by the enemy roaming the land on the same mission as himself: to reconnoitre for their respective armies and collect information to be converted into intelligence. Behind him, two escorting troopers sat on their camels scratching at the tiny insects that itched their sweating bodies. They had removed their goggles, issued to keep sand out, and rubbed at their sore eyes with the backs of grimy hands.

‘Blimey, Harry’ one of the men grumbled to his companion. ‘Mister Sutherland looks like 'e might want to go further south.’

Harry stared across at the young officer who had advanced fifty paces in front of them to a tiny rise in the sand.

‘Gor blimey! You could be right,’ his companion answered. But he noticed that something had gained the attention of their patrol leader.

Lieutenant Alexander Sutherland leant forward and fiddled with the focus on his binoculars. They brought into sharper outline the blurred image of a solitary man who plodded towards the patrol. Although the man was at least a quarter of a mile away, Sutherland could see that he was big, with broad shoulders and he appeared to be wearing what looked like the tattered uniform of the British army. ‘Trooper Krimble, Haley. Up here,’ he called back softly and the two cavalrymen urged their camels onto their feet. ‘Out there, to my front, ‘bout four hundred and fifty yards, there is what appears to be a man wearing what looks like a British uniform,’ Sutherland said. He pointed with his binoculars across the sand at the shimmering figure which twisted and turned in the heat haze. ‘At least what is left of one of our uniforms. Do you see the man?’

Trooper Harry Krimble squinted, his hand held to shade his eyes. He could just see the outline of a man. He brought his camel down into a kneeling position, dismounted and slipped his Henry carbine from across his shoulders, laying the barrel across the saddle. It was loaded and he slid the rear sight back for a long shot so he could drop the fuzzy wuzzy while he was well out, just in case he had any mates with him. Harry raised the rifle to his shoulder and used the saddle of his camel as a prop to steady his aim.

‘Don't shoot him just yet,’ Sutherland cautioned. ‘Wait until he is at least a hundred yards from us before you fire, Trooper Krimble. It looks as if he has seen us, and the chap does not appear afraid to take us on.’

‘Sure you want the crazy bugger that close, sir?’ Krimble questioned from behind his rifle, as he kept the blade of the fore sight on the target which was steadily drawing closer. ‘’E might ′ave some of ′is fuzzy wuzzy mates with ′im out there.’

‘No, I doubt that,’ Sutherland answered. ‘I have a good view of the terrain to our front and he is well and truly alone. Possibly got separated from one of his Dervish patrols and has decided to get to his Moslem heaven by attacking us. Only right we grant him his wish for salvation.’