Blood in the Dust Read online

Paddy gave a sharp nod.

  ‘Let’s go and tell Childers.’

  A few more scones were gone from the plate and several crumbs had reappeared on the aide’s tunic. He looked up expectantly as the trio approached.

  ‘You have yourself a deal, Mr Childers,’ Toby announced. ‘I do, however, have a few minor stipulations.’

  ‘I see.’ Childers’s look of elation changed to one of suspicion. ‘What are these stipulations?’

  ‘Firstly,’ Toby held up his right index finger, ‘my brother will come with me. He’s a skilled bushman like myself. You will, in effect, be getting two for the price of one.’

  ‘Of course,’ Childers said, clapping his hands. ‘You can take whomever you like with you. What else?’

  Toby raised another digit.

  ‘Since neither of us will be here to work, I feel we should each draw a wage of four shillings a day, with a period of five weeks paid in advance to my wife.’ He looked over at Paddy and received a nod. ‘Both lots to be paid to my wife before we depart,’ Toby confirmed.

  Childers face carried a look of astonishment. ‘So, in effect, two for the price of three. I can make no guarantees, Mr O’Rourke. The governor is allowing me a little leeway on this venture. I am sure something can be arranged, though. What else?’ Childers eyed the two raised digits on Toby’s hand suspiciously.

  ‘Angus McTavish, the mounted police sergeant is to accompany us, along with the native tracker Barraworn. Some extra constables might also be needed if things come down to a fight.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Childers announced. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Provisions and extra mounts for the expedition are to be provided from government stores.’ Toby had been about to hold up another finger, but decided it was unnecessary. He lowered his hand to his side.

  ‘One other thing,’ Toby added, and Childers frowned. Toby ignored the look and went on. ‘There’s a cove being held in the Melbourne Gaol. A cattle duffer called Scotchy.’

  ‘What about him?’ Childers’s look changed to one of puzzlement.

  ‘He robbed me and my brother of some cattle two years ago. We planned to sell those cattle to pay off a debt against our land. When we couldn’t pay, the man we owed the money to took our farm.’

  ‘I don’t see what this has to do with the task at hand, Mr O’Rourke.’

  Toby sat opposite Childers so that their eyes were on the same level. ‘Scotchy said the man we owed money to, Henry Pelham, hired him to steal our cattle so that he could take our land.’

  ‘What would you like me to do, Mr O’Rourke?’

  ‘I couldn’t get him to admit it to anyone that mattered, and I couldn’t get anyone to listen without proof.’

  ‘The burden of proof is an onerous one, sir, but cornerstone to our rights as British subjects.’

  Toby felt his anger flare and fought to suppress it. He had heard enough of ‘burden of proof’ and ‘direct evidence’.

  ‘I just want someone to listen to me, sir. I want someone to look into the matter and not shrug it off as the rantings of some boy.’

  Childers looked into his eyes. He must have come to some decision, for he stood and said, ‘I’ll see what I can do about having the matter looked into. Is there anything else, sir?’

  Toby shook his head.

  ‘I’ll have the Gold Commissioner here in Ballarat prepare everything you need for the expedition,’ Childers said. ‘Anything and anyone at his disposal will be made available to you. When can you leave?’

  ‘As soon as everyone is ready,’ Toby said. ‘Tomorrow if it all happens quickly enough.’

  ‘I shall see to it myself, Mr O’Rourke.’

  Anderson never once gave up the lead rope of the packhorse, even though it made for difficult riding through the bush and up along the spur to the escarpment. He could have tied the rope to his saddle, but couldn’t bring himself to give up that contact with the gold in the packsaddles. The best he could do was change hands every so often to rest the strain on his arm.

  His mount was content to follow along behind the horses of the two Jannjirra and he let it have its head as he thought about what lay ahead of him. They hadn’t left a single member of the escort party alive, but he supposed their bodies had been discovered soon after daybreak when they failed to break camp. The killings alone would bring many soldiers and mounted police to the area. Every traveller on the colony’s roads would be under heavy scrutiny, especially one travelling in company with natives. He glanced back at the packhorse and the bulging packsaddles and knew he couldn’t risk trying to move through the settled areas, even in the bush and along back trails, not for a while.

  Tilting his head back, he looked up at the heights of the escarpment, now looming over them. He would rest up in the tribal lands of the Jannjirra. As far as he knew, he was the only white man who had ever been up there. No one else had discovered the narrow defile that enabled the final climb past the cliffs and onto the heights. It had been nearly eight years since he had made his way up this very spur, cold, wet and on the point of starvation, wondering if the soldiers were still chasing him or had given up weeks ago and left the bush to deal with him.

  He lowered his eyes to the backs of Chilbi and Yawong. Soon, he would have them dismount and move back along their spoor, erasing all trace of its existence. After that, their usefulness was done. They would not let him ride off alone with the gold and he couldn’t allow himself to be seen with them once he returned to the settled areas. That would raise too much suspicion. It would be best if they remained in their tribal lands. His hand drifted to the grip of his revolver.

  Days later, as the sun hung low in the west, the trio made camp among a scree of boulders, a circular enclosure only accessible through a cleft between two gigantic stones. The gang had used this place a few times before. It was sacred ground to the two Jannjirra, and many of the sheltered areas were covered in rock paintings of scenes from their mythology.

  ‘Brush all traces of dirt from your feet,’ Chilbi warned at the entrance. ‘Carry no dirt into this place. The ground beyond must remain pure.’

  He and Yawong carefully scrubbed at the soles of their feet. Anderson, the only one wearing boots, stamped his feet a couple of times and made a cursory examination. ‘Clean as a whistle,’ he said.

  Chilbi gestured at the weapons. ‘These are touched by evil. Our ancestors will be angry for bringing them into a sacred place.’ He and Yawong gathered the firearms, spears and war clubs and stacked them to one side of the entrance. He pointed at the revolver in Anderson’s belt. ‘Your Djarriba weapon. Put it with the others.’

  ‘No,’ Anderson said, gripping the revolver. ‘I think I’ll keep this with me.’

  ‘You have no respect for the evil in your weapon.’

  ‘Oh, I have plenty of respect for the evil in this weapon,’ Anderson said, grinning.

  ‘The Djarriba gold,’ Chilbi pointed at the packsaddles. ‘Men have died for it. It is tainted with bad magic. We should leave it outside.’

  ‘More men will die if it is touched.’ The grin slid from Anderson’s face. He stooped into the low entrance, dragging the packsaddles behind him.

  Beyond the boulders a cliff rose towards the sky, and a deep overhang sheltered an ancient campsite, the roof blackened by generations of fires. On the far wall someone long ago had painted a likeness of the Rainbow Serpent, the creator of all life, its long coils winding about hand stencils and stick figures.

  ‘How long will we stay here, Warrigal?’ Yawong asked.

  ‘I know you want to be on the tribal grounds of your ancestors. You can stay here forever.’

  ‘Will we not return to the lands of the Djarriba? Will we not continue to take our revenge for the sickness?’

  Anderson smiled and patted the packsaddles. ‘The war is over, my friend. We have hurt the Djarriba deeply for sending the sickness to us.’

  Chilbi shrugged and turned away. Anderson watched him go, his mind deep in thought. He flicked his ga
ze to the packsaddles and back to the two Aborigines, his hand still on the revolver.

  Chilbi’s father walked out of the mists of his sleeping mind and paused at the limit of his vision. The elder was dressed in a kangaroo-skin cloak, his face painted in the ceremonial markings of the Jannjirra. He carried no weapons, for this was a sacred place and not to be tainted with evil or the instruments of death.

  ‘Greetings, my son.’ Barramat held up his hand.

  ‘Greetings, Father.’

  Chilbi felt a deep yearning in his soul – a regret for things that were lost and would never be again. His father looked fit and strong, every bit the warrior and elder of the tribe that Chilbi remembered, not the coughing form covered in pustules in the last days of his father’s life when the Djarriba sickness came for him.

  ‘I miss you, Chilbi.’

  ‘I miss you too, Father. One day we will be together in the spirit world.’

  ‘That time is far away. You have a duty to perform before you join your ancestors. You will be the guardian of all that is sacred. The ceremonies that appease the spirits of our people will be yours alone to complete.’

  ‘These things I will do, Father.’

  Barramat turned towards something beyond the ether, a look of fear distorting his features. ‘You must prepare yourself, my son. The evil is coming.’

  ‘What do you ask of me, Father?’

  The figure of his father retreated beyond the firelight, beyond the vision of Chilbi’s mind.

  ‘Please, Father. Don’t leave me.’ But only Barramat’s booming voice came out of the shadowed distance of the dream.

  ‘Wake up, Chilbi,’ the voice said. ‘You are the last of the Jannjirra people. Wake up and run!’

  Chilbi sat up, his eyes wide open and pulse racing. Someone stood above him and he drew a breath of superstitious fear.

  Yawong leaned over him, a silhouette against the stars, his head turned to face another figure that approached out of the darkness.

  Warrigal stepped carefully towards them and pulled the revolver from his belt.

  Chilbi rolled to his feet, eyes on the pistol swinging towards him.

  Warrigal paused and braced for the shot.

  ‘Run, Chilbi, run,’ Yawong screamed and lunged through the air. He pushed Chilbi aside as the revolver fired. The muzzle flash lit the darkness. Yawong took the ball in the chest and fell.

  Chilbi ran. He angled towards the rocks as he heard the revolver cock for a second shot, and threw himself headlong onto the ground as Warrigal fired. Something hot and hard tore across his thigh. He felt the skin open as the ball ripped across muscle. Using his momentum, he tucked himself into a ball and rolled to his feet. The pain in his leg was excruciating as he limped hard and fast for the entrance.

  Somewhere behind him he heard Yawong cry out, then the sound of another gunshot.

  He emerged from the boulders and paused beside the pile of weapons. His spear lay where he had left it and he hefted it in his right hand. Twenty paces away the horses stood tethered to a line and Chilbi sneered at the animals that were so precious to Warrigal. With a grunt of exertion and anger he let the spear fly. It whispered through the air and hit the packhorse behind the shoulder. The fire-hardened point pierced the animal’s ribs and cut deep. The horse let out a terrified scream of surprise and collapsed on its side.

  The other horses panicked at the dying bellows of their comrade. They kicked and whinnied as they fought to break away. Chilbi pulled the spear from the dying horse and turned to the animal beside it. This time he found the animal’s heart. The horse fell to the ground, kicked twice and lay still. He retrieved the spear and moved towards the last two animals. When all the horses were dead, he pulled his spear free and limped into the night.

  Anderson reloaded the revolver and stooped to the entrance. He couldn’t see more than a few paces, but a pale patch of darkness showed where the passage opened to the outside. He could hear the horses screaming and thrashing about. The Jannjirra had left their weapons on the outside and he knew Chilbi would be armed, if not with a musket then with a spear, a more frightening proposition. If the young Aborigine came for him, it would be fast, silent and fatal.

  He kept his back to the rock as he approached the starlight. In the gloom he could see that all the horses were on the ground. One animal still kicked feebly, but the screaming had died away.

  Chilbi had worked fast.

  There was no sign of the Aborigine, but that did not mean Chilbi wasn’t out there in the darkness, waiting with the spear. He cursed softly under his breath and retreated into the campsite. With Chilbi still alive, he would need to leave. If he remained here, he was as good as dead. The young warrior would take revenge for the killing of his brother. Anderson’s only hope lay in getting away. The Aborigine had been hit in the leg, of that he was sure. By dawn the wound would be hurting, the limb stiffening. He could only hope the warrior was wounded badly enough to prevent him from giving chase.

  He returned to the packsaddles and cursed as he looked down at them. A fortune in gold lay at his feet and he had no horse to carry it out of the mountains. At the campfire he found a pair of saddlebags among the equipment and spent the next few minutes loading pouches of gold dust into them. When he was finished, he stood and hefted the saddlebags onto his shoulder to test the weight. Not too light that he was wasting valuable space; not too heavy that he would never make it out of the mountains on foot. He had shoved forty pouches into the saddlebags, twenty in each. There was no room for more.

  With the saddlebags loaded, Anderson gathered rocks from within the arena and packed them over the gold and valuables he couldn’t take with him. The chance of anyone wandering into the camp before he was able to return with a horse was pretty remote, but he felt better for having hidden the gold. By the time he was finished, the eastern sky had begun to tinge with the promise of daybreak.

  Chilbi stood on the ridge above the camp, his back to a large gum tree to break his silhouette against the skyline. He watched Anderson walk into the bush with a pair of saddlebags draped over his shoulder and a flour bag in his hand. The Djarriba headed into the north. This direction surprised him. He had expected the bushranger to make his way south, towards the settlements of his own kind.

  His father’s words still haunted him. He could hear the whisper echoing in his mind, as if the elder had planted the words deep into his soul so that he would never forget them.

  ‘You are the last of the Jannjirra people. Run!’

  The loneliness welled up and rushed to engulf him. From this height he could see into the camp. Yawong’s body lay where he had fallen. He truly was the last of his people, and his blood ran cold with the thought of it.

  Warrigal reached the edge of the bush and stopped to survey the hills, his free hand wandering to the revolver tucked in his belt.

  He knows I’m out here, Chilbi thought. He knows I will come for him.

  He waited until Warrigal was gone from sight then climbed down from the ridge. The wound in his leg oozed watery blood, the muscle aching. He knew he shouldn’t waste time. He needed to catch up with Warrigal while he still had the strength, but a sense of longing drove him towards the camp.

  As he crouched into the narrow passage, he shivered. Normally Chilbi marvelled at the paintings lining the narrow passageway, but today they held no wonder for him. The people who had painted them were no more.

  He dragged Yawong’s body under an overhang of the inner wall and gathered up small boulders and stones, piling them so the bush creatures couldn’t get at the remains of his brother.

  The campfire still smouldered and in its ashes he found the charred remains of every musket, spear and club. Everything had been burned, including the food bags. He found the pile of stones where Warrigal had buried the gold, but would not allow himself to be tainted with its bad magic by touching it.

  Going back through the entrance, he stood for a moment over Warrigal’s tracks. Then, without looking back,
he shouldered his spear and followed the spoor into the trees.

  Cells stretched into the distance, each with a heavy door and peephole built at eye height so the gaolers could inspect the inmates. The roof was supported by iron beams, which were in turn supported by an intricate pattern of braces and crosspieces. Despite the gaol being at maximum capacity, Childers could hear his own footsteps echoing back to him through an eerie quiet.

  ‘The prisoners aren’t allowed to speak, sir,’ the warder said, guessing Childers’s thoughts. The man’s voice was barely above a whisper, but it carried clearly and would have been audible to someone standing on the opposite gantry. ‘In fact, they aren’t even allowed to see each other. We put hoods on their heads when they’re moved about. Keeps ’em docile like, sir.’

  Childers inclined his head to show he had heard the man’s words. He had no desire for conversation. In fact, he had no desire to be in this depressing building at all. It was only his sense of duty and a promise he had made to a fresh-faced young man on the Ballarat diggings that gave him reason to be here at all. He would look into young O’Rourke’s allegations. He felt he owed the fellow that much. Then he would leave and hurry to where the air was pure and fresh and smelled of gum leaves.

  The warder stopped outside a cell near the end of the wing. Here, the gantry expanded into a wide landing with a trapdoor built into the middle. A hangman’s noose hung from a beam above the trapdoor, perfectly still in the unmoving air, the rope sprouting coarse fibres along its length like the bristles on a dog’s back.

  ‘Here we are, sir,’ the warder said. He looked through the peephole. ‘Prisoner, step to the rear of the cell and face the wall,’ he growled through the grate. The warder waited, eyes pressed to the opening. Childers heard soft noises of movement from within the cell, then the warder stepped back and unlocked the door.

  The cell was about eight feet deep and five wide. A narrow sleeping mat occupied half the floor area. A bucket sat just inside the door, giving off a foul odour. Childers used his foot to push the bucket out through the doorway and onto the gantry, conscious of the look he received from the warder. He ignored the gaoler and turned his attention to the tall figure in prison clothing facing the wall at the rear of the cell.