Blood in the Dust Page 32

  Frank slumped against the side of the blacksmith shop and doubled over as he struggled for air. Paddy’s breath came hard, but he recovered quickly. All about him he could see more diggers running in from the rifle pits. One of the rifle brigade captains stood by the forge, directing men into new defensive positions.

  ‘Get that cart turned over. Close the gaps. We won’t have long.’ The captain’s face was the colour of beetroot. A musket ball had grazed his upper arm and blood soaked into the sleeve. The man seemed oblivious to his wound as he set the few defenders to work.

  Paddy went to a handcart, squatted on his haunches and took hold of the axle. With a grunt of effort, he straightened his legs and the cart toppled sideways. Two diggers helped him drag it against the wall of the blacksmith shop, then they closed the gap between the cart and forge with wooden crates. Beyond the forge more diggers used timber and stones, bags of horse feed – anything that might offer some protection against the soldiers.

  ‘Where’s Peter Lalor?’ Frank’s voice. He had recovered enough to help his comrades and dragged a supply box towards the new perimeter.

  ‘Hit in the arm,’ someone yelled. ‘The first bloody volley. He was being taken care of the last I saw.’

  The barricade was little more than a haphazard wall of wood and stone, boxes and bales of hay. ‘That’ll have to do,’ the captain yelled. ‘Everyone into position.’

  In his haste to help build the barricade, Paddy had forgotten to reload his musket. He looked about and found a pitchfork lying near the forge. It was better than nothing, so he picked it up and stood to the barricade.

  In the ruddy glow of dawn he could see across the dusty ground of the stockade to where the soldiers reassembled in preparation for the final assault. It only took moments for them to ready themselves, their front facing the blacksmith shop, a wall of crimson jackets and deadly steel. Then an order was shouted and the crimson wave surged forward, coming to engulf the last of the rebels.

  ‘Here they come!’ the captain shouted unnecessarily. ‘Fire!’

  A few muskets banged at the red wave roaring towards them, a pitiful popping noise that hardly drowned out the battle cries of the charging soldiers. Paddy saw one or two fall to the ground, but the others came on. He adjusted his grip on the pitchfork and waited for the wave to break over the top of them, his heart racing and blood singing in his ears.

  The soldiers reached the barricade and the diggers stood to meet them. Miners fought back with the tools of their trade, picks and shovels against the cold steel of the bayonet. Frank used the barrel of his empty shotgun to deflect a bayonet thrust and brought the butt around in the same motion, catching a young soldier under the jaw and sending him flying into the trooper beside him.

  Another soldier climbed the crude defences in front of Paddy, lowered his bayonet and prepared for the thrust. Paddy lunged forward as hard as he could and ran the pitchfork through the soldier’s shoulder. The trooper screamed and tried to fall back, but the pitchfork stuck in his flesh. The pair danced with each other at the ends of the six-foot pole, the soldier screaming in agony the whole time. Horrified, Paddy let go of the handle and the soldier backed away through his comrades, dragging the pitchfork with him. Then he was lost from sight as more soldiers closed in.

  Frantically, Paddy searched for another weapon – a pick, a spade, anything he could arm himself with – but there was nothing in reach. The redcoats crashed over the barricade and diggers screamed as the bayonets cut into them. Paddy and Frank were forced backwards under the onslaught, but they only managed a few paces before their backs came up against the wall of the blacksmith shop.

  Frank stood ten feet from Paddy. He had managed to get hold of a soldier’s carbine and was using the bayonet to keep three troopers at bay, beating them back with savage thrusts at their throats. The soldiers backed away and for a brief moment Paddy thought Frank had fought them off. Then he saw the real reason why the troopers were opening the ground between themselves and Frank.

  Mounted police had broken through the eastern side of the stockade and were using the momentum of their horses to break down any pockets of resistance. One of these horsemen saw Frank outside the blacksmith shop and charged towards him, sword held at the ready. Paddy watched the rider clear a pile of boxes in a graceful leap, but Frank failed to see this threat bearing down on him as he fought off the soldiers.

  The mounted officer passed Frank on the right, giving his sword arm a clear swing, the classic backhanded, downward slash of the cavalryman.

  Paddy tried to shout a warning. His breath rushed up his windpipe and his mouth worked to call Frank’s name. Instantly, the fire flared in his head. He tried to ignore it, to fight through it. It was Frank’s only hope. A guttural groan increased in volume to something that might be audible, even over the din of battle, but the pain in his head burst into flames of agony. His vision starred and Paddy almost passed out as the warning shout died in his throat.

  The mounted trooper brought his sword down and Paddy heard the blade hiss through the air. The speed of the swing blurred the motion into a bright arc of gleaming steel. The arc reached Frank’s left shoulder near his neck and continued down at an angle, severing muscle and artery as it went. For a moment the two were locked together, Frank and the policeman, joined by the blade, one end held firmly in a hand and the other embedded deep into vital organs. Then the policeman’s horse carried him onwards and he levered the hilt of the sword upwards in much the same way as a woodcutter releases his axe from a stubborn piece of red gum. It came away from Frank’s flesh with a sickening squelch.

  Frank kept his feet, a look of utter surprise on his face. He staggered a few steps as a bright fountain of blood jetted from the gaping wound and splashed into the dusty earth of the Eureka Stockade. Then he fell over backwards and hit the ground hard.

  Paddy ran to Frank’s side.

  A horrible gurgling noise came from the gaping wound. Paddy took Frank’s hand and squeezed it. His eyes opened and flicked towards him, glazed and unseeing at first, but brightening as he recognised the young man leaning over him. Paddy felt a return of the pressure through his fingers and Frank’s mouth opened to speak, but it was full of bright blood that dribbled down his face with each gurgling breath. Their eyes remained locked together and Paddy felt the pressure of Frank’s fingers increase, tightening painfully. Then the hand went limp.

  Paddy lifted Frank’s hand to his chest and held it tight. The tears came freely and silently, running down his face and falling onto the blood-soaked shirt of the man who had been a father to him for the past two years.

  His grieving was cut short as rough hands dragged him to his feet and clamped a set of darbies around his wrists.

  ‘You’re under arrest for high treason.’ The policeman pushed him towards a group of prisoners who were under guard by redcoats. Paddy went willingly, his grief for Frank having dissolved any fight left in him.

  In the light of the new day he could see soldiers and police scouring the tents and huts. He lifted his head to the flagpole where a trooper rapidly worked the halyard. The Southern Cross came down the pole and the trooper cut it free. He waved it high above his head as if it were the prize belt of a championship fight.

  The diggers were beaten.

  The stockade was crowded with soldiers and police, but they paid little attention to Toby as he rode up to the ruined fortifications. Many civilians were already at the scene.

  The bare flagpole pointed at a blue sky like a bony finger. Some wounded miners still lay within the breastwork and were being attended by a man Toby recognised as one of the diggings’ doctors. The hut which had stood near the flagpole was now a smouldering ruin and most of the tents inside the perimeter had been burned or slashed to ribbons. All this, Toby took in at a single glance. It was the group of wagons near the back of the stockade that drew his attention.

  The dead were lined up in a long row and lay shoulder to shoulder on bloodstained scraps of canvas
or calico scavenged from the remaining tents. Soldiers were loading the bodies, one by one, onto the wagons.

  Toby dismounted and walked to the line of bodies. The dead had their faces uncovered and the flies were already at work. A little terrier dog sat on one body, howling pitifully for its master. A soldier chased the dog off and his mates helped him lift the corpse into the wagon. As soon as their backs were turned the little dog leaped into the wagon and continued its howling lament.

  The soldiers ignored Toby as he approached the line of corpses that stretched along the hillside and past the remains of the blacksmith shop. He found Frank’s body near the far end. It was the patches on the elbows of the red chequered shirt that caught his eye. Maree had stitched those patches when Toby visited the camp one Sunday, her neat, tight cross-stitch as recognisable as if she had signed her name beside each repair. The massive wound in Frank’s shoulder still oozed blood that pooled in the dirt.

  ‘Oh God, no,’ Toby whispered. Flies crawled across Frank’s bloodstained face. He would have shooed them away, but there were more bodies in the line and he moved on, the dread of finding Paddy’s mutilated corpse building in his stomach. When he reached the last body he was shaking so much he had to will his legs to take each apprehensive step. There was no sign of Paddy among the dead lying on the ground and he went back to the wagon the soldiers were loading and climbed up on the spokes of the rear wheel to peer inside.

  Paddy wasn’t there.

  ‘Is this the first load of bodies?’ he asked the group of soldiers.

  One of the soldiers had a corpse by the ankles as his mate struggled with the wrists. They swung the body back and forth a couple of times to build momentum and let it sail into the air to land in the wagon with a thud. The soldier looked up at Toby as he dusted off his hands.

  ‘It’s the first one, all right. Looks as if we’ll be making a couple of trips.’

  Reassured, Toby jumped from the wagon and hurried to where the wounded were being treated. The diggers lay on the ground they had defended and waited for the doctor’s ministrations. Those that could sit up did so, but a contingent of soldiers and police stood close by. Wounded or not, they were prisoners of the Crown. A soldier moved to cut Toby off and usher him away, but a familiar voice rang out from among the group of policemen.

  ‘Toby? What the hell are you doing up here, laddie?’ McTavish strode towards him with his hand outstretched in greeting and the soldier, who had been about to send Toby away, shrugged his shoulders and returned to stand with his comrades.

  Toby let the sergeant take his hand and pump his arm up and down as if it were a piece of rope. ‘Hello, Angus,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for my brother. Have you seen him?’

  ‘He was here?’ McTavish asked, a look of incredulity on his face.

  ‘Frank, too,’ Toby admitted. ‘I tried to talk them out of it, but they wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘I’ve no’ seen either of ’em, laddie, and I was here from the start.’ He let go of Toby’s hand. ‘Lots of prisoners were taken to Government Camp. Maybe they’re among them.’

  ‘I know where Frank is,’ Toby said quietly.

  ‘Really, where—?’ McTavish stopped himself as Toby turned towards the line of bodies.

  They stood in silence for a moment and watched the soldiers load the dead. Two of them had another digger slung between them by the wrists and ankles and were making their way to the back of the wagon. The horses could smell blood and were restless. The wagon jostled backwards and forwards until another soldier went to the offside horse and tried to settle it.

  ‘Can I take him home, Angus? Can I take Frank home with me?’

  ‘All the bodies are to be taken to the Camp,’ McTavish said. ‘Commissioner’s orders.’ He turned to look at Toby. ‘As soon as his body can be released I’ll get word to you, laddie. And I’ll find out about your brother as well. I wouldn’t worry about him. He’s not with those poor men,’ he said, gesturing at the wagon, ‘and if he’s not with the wounded being treated here, then he was either taken prisoner or was one of the lucky ones who escaped. Either way, you can’t do much good here. Go home, Toby. You won’t be welcome up at the Camp. Go home. They will need you there.’

  Toby nodded and headed back to where he had tied Moonlight. As he walked, he heard the sergeant’s voice behind him, haranguing the soldiers loading the wagon.

  ‘Can ye no’ show a little respect for the dead, ye heavy-handed bastards. For Christ’s sake!’

  Toby made his way down to the creek and followed it upstream to the gully below the hut. People rushed towards the stockade now that word of the battle had filtered out. Several women tried to question him as he picked his way past, but he pretended not to hear them. Soldiers still skulked among the tents and some were herding little groups of prisoners in the direction of the Camp. Toby made no effort to avoid them. If they were to arrest him and cart him off to the lock-up he would look upon it as a blessing, for he had no stomach for the onerous task awaiting him at the hut.

  The women were all outside as he rode up the gully. They recognised him and rushed down the path, skirts held high, yelling questions as they ran.

  ‘We heard the shooting. Is Papa all right?’

  ‘Did you see them, Toby?’

  ‘Have you been to the stockade?’

  ‘Did you see Paddy and Frank?

  Toby swung out of the saddle and stood among them. His wife, mother and sister-in-law grabbed at his clothing and tugged at his sleeve as they implored him to answer their questions. He could hear Sean wailing in his crib.

  Since leaving the stockade Toby had searched his mind for the right words, but there were no words he could use that would lessen their pain. What were the right words to tell a woman that her husband would not be coming home ever again? How do you tell two daughters that their father is lying dead in the dust of the stockade? Toby was dumbstruck, but in the end his silence said it all for him.

  Maree stopped her questions and stepped back, a hand clutched to her mouth. Toby had been trying hard not to look at any of them, but his eyes found Maree’s across three feet of space and, in that single glance, she had her answer.

  He watched his mother-in-law fall to the ground, her skirts billowing out about her as she collapsed.

  ‘Not my Frankie!’ Maree beat at the ground with her fists. ‘Please, God! Not my Frankie!’

  Annie stooped to her mother and held her. Maree tried to fight her off, turning her fists against her daughter as Annie embraced her. Betty ran screaming towards the hut.

  ‘Toby?’

  Annie held a hand to him. He took her fingers into his palm. Her face was wet with tears and her hair had worked loose from its bun and hung in her eyes.

  ‘Paddy?’

  Even through her grief for her father, Annie was thinking of him. Frank had not been the only one at the stockade.

  ‘I don’t know. Under arrest, I think. McTavish is looking out for him. He wasn’t at the stockade when I got there.’

  ‘Did you—?’ Toby knew what she wanted to ask.

  ‘I saw him at the stockade, sweetheart. They’re taking his body to the Camp.’

  Annie nodded and untangled herself from her mother’s arms. She stood and inclined her head to where Maree sobbed uncontrollably.

  ‘We should take her inside.’

  Toby stooped and lifted Maree in his arms. As he carried her into the hut, he realised that everyone in this simple structure had become his sole responsibility. The magnitude of it pressed down on him as he remembered the promise he had made to Frank, and he hoped like hell he was man enough for the task.

  Childers hurried through the main hall of Government House towards the Lieutenant Governor’s private rooms. He carried a dispatch from the Gold Commissioner at the Warrogah diggings and, having read the message himself, decided the Governor would want to be apprised of it immediately, rather than wait for Monday.

  He knew the Governor and his wife were readying t
hemselves for church. The carriage stood waiting at the front of the house. Childers had informed the driver there was likely to be a delay. The Governor would want to deal with the problem the message conveyed before he left.

  He knocked at the heavy door closing off the Governor’s private rooms and waited. Footsteps approached the door from the other side and moments later it was opened by the Governor’s personal servant, an owl-faced man in his fifties who gave Childers a look that said: ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I need to speak to the Governor please, Pritchard.’ He had been about to add, ‘On a matter of some urgency,’ but the mere fact he was asking for the Governor on a Sunday morning should convey, even to Pritchard, the importance of his visit.

  Pritchard gave a slight nod and opened the door for Childers to enter. He stepped through the doorway and found himself in a sitting room. Several other doors led further into the house and Pritchard made for one of these. The military man in Childers would not allow him to be seated when his superior entered the room. He opted to stand by the high window, hands clasped firmly into the small of his back while he waited.

  ‘Ah, Childers.’ Hotham strode into the room. He wore a dress uniform and a frown on his face. ‘You have some news for me?’

  ‘Nothing from Ballarat, sir,’ Childers said. ‘I have not long ago received an urgent dispatch from Commissioner Blair up on the Warrogah diggings.’ He produced the message from behind his back and offered it to Hotham. ‘It is a rather disturbing report, sir.’

  ‘More disturbing than the miners banding together and starting a rebellion?’ Hotham raised an eyebrow as he took the message.

  Childers watched his superior’s expression as Hotham squinted down at Blair’s small, tight script. He saw the Governor’s eyes widen and knew he was reading the part where Blair reported the deaths of the entire gold escort party and the loss of the shipment. When the Governor’s expression changed to a scowl he knew he was reading where the local police had deduced that the perpetrator of this heinous crime was the bushranger known as Warrigal Anderson and his band of savages.