The Roving Party (8 page)

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 freshly 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.

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.

T
HEY 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.