Blood in the Dust Read online

  ‘You may turn around,’ Childers said.

  The man turned and fixed him with a stare from a solitary blue eye. The other eye socket was covered with a patch. His face seemed rather sallow, probably as a result of being denied sunlight for some time, Childers thought. The eye swept over him, taking in the gold braid and air of officialdom in one casual sweep. Almost immediately the man’s face adopted a look of contempt.

  ‘My name is Childers. I am aide to the Governor. You are Jonathon Bowmore, I presume?’

  The prisoner gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  ‘For God’s sake, speak up, man. If I am to circumvent the hangman’s desire to stretch your neck, then we must speak with each other.’

  The eye blinked. ‘You’re here to help me?’

  ‘Maybe not directly,’ Childers admitted. ‘However, the matter we discuss may warrant a stay of execution while some formalities are sorted out. They could go on for years.’ Childers clasped his hands into the small of his back. ‘Now, am I addressing Jonathon Bowmore or not?’

  The prisoner nodded again, a definite movement of the head. ‘People call me Scotchy,’ he said.

  ‘I wish to discuss with you the matter of some cattle you stole during the summer of 1852.’

  Scotchy remained unmoving. Childers saw the eye study him again, roving up and down his uniform as he tried to fathom why the Governor was concerning himself with stolen cattle. ‘What about it?’ he finally responded.

  ‘You did not act on your own initiative, did you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Childers smiled. ‘What I mean, dear chap, is that you did not come up with the idea of stealing the cattle of your own volition. Someone put you up to it,’ he expanded, on seeing the puzzled look on the man’s face.

  ‘Is this really going to help me? With the hangman, I mean.’

  ‘My good fellow, if another investigation were to be opened it may prevent the hangman from getting at your neck for some considerable time.’

  Scotchy nodded. ‘Some toff come and asked us to steal some cattle from a couple of brats.’

  ‘Did he say why he wanted you to do this?’

  ‘He didn’t,’ Scotchy said, shaking his head. ‘But the lad who hired us for the droving job was screaming something about losing their land if they lost the cattle. If I’d known what the toff was goin’ to get out of it I would’ve held out for more than twenty pounds, believe me.’

  Childers nodded. ‘I see. I don’t suppose the gentleman who put you up to this task gave you his name?’

  ‘No names were needed so long as money changed hands. We didn’t give him ours and he didn’t give us his.’

  Childers didn’t need a name. It appeared young O’Rourke was telling the truth. This thief and his friend were paid to steal the cattle from him. The only person who stood to gain anything from the situation would have been the fellow the boys owed money to.

  ‘Thank you,’ Childers said. ‘You have been most helpful. He turned and stepped through the doorway. ‘Good day.’

  ‘What about helping me with the hangman,’ Scotchy yelled. He tried to follow Childers, but the warder blocked his path and used the tip of a baton to push Scotchy back through the doorway.

  ‘Oh, I’ll help you with the hangman,’ Childers called over his shoulder. ‘I’ll have him replace that rope. It looks terribly frayed. I’d hate it to snap and botch the job.’ He stepped out for the stairs to the ground floor. From behind him came the sound of the baton striking flesh.

  At Government House Childers found a clerk sitting at a desk in an outer office.

  ‘Do you have any idea where a place called Bunyong Creek is, Wilder?’

  ‘Bun-yong Creek?’ The clerk enunciated each syllable as he tapped the desk with a pen. ‘Never heard of it, sir.’

  Childers reached over and patted the man’s shoulder. ‘Be a good fellow and find out where it is for me. I have to speak to the Governor about a grave injustice.’ He stepped back and moved towards the door. ‘What sort of mood is he in?’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it a good one, sir,’ the clerk said. ‘It never is these days.’

  ‘This is where we lost the bastard after he shot your folks.’ McTavish gestured at the ground around them. ‘Other patrols since have tracked him to this area. Some have even gone higher.’ He lifted his face to the blue-tinged heights. ‘None have ever picked up his trail.’

  Toby studied the heights above them and scratched at the growth of beard on his face. The six-man party were eight days out of Ballarat and he hadn’t shaved since leaving the hut on the diggings the morning after Childers’s visit. The ridge appeared to be a natural ramp that climbed to the rim, but from where he sat his mount, he could see that the final climb would not be an easy one for horses. Tumbledown boulders littered the edge, looking for all the world like the battlements of an ancient castle.

  ‘It’s obvious they went up there,’ he said. ‘There must be some place where a horse can get through.’

  They spent the morning climbing the ridge and at midday reached a screen of rocks and boulders that appeared impassable. ‘Let’s dismount and scout around on foot,’ Toby suggested. ‘Anderson got horses up there somehow.’

  Leaving the horses tethered, they split into two groups, each setting off in a different direction to explore the barrier. Toby and Paddy, accompanied by a constable named Gatwick, went to the right, while McTavish, Barraworn and a second constable named Sloan headed to their left.

  For an hour or more they crossed rocky and steep ground, but the line of boulders appeared unbroken. Toby moved further downslope and tried to study the lay of the land with the eye of a horseman. The ground was open enough close to the rocks, maybe not for a mounted man, but certainly for a horse being led on foot.

  ‘I don’t see any way up there. Not from this place, anyway,’ Gatwick said, his moustache twitching as he spoke. The constable still wore his blue tunic and his face gleamed with perspiration.

  ‘And yet they got up there,’ Toby reminded him. ‘They wouldn’t climb the ridge to a dead end. There has to be a way.’

  They walked back up to the boulders and continued searching, exploring the spaces between the huge natural monoliths. Late in the afternoon, Toby was about to give up and suggest they head back to find the rest of the party when he heard Paddy clapping his hands for attention. He looked in the direction of the noise, but his brother was nowhere in sight.

  ‘Pad? Where are you? Have you found something?

  The clapping continued, more urgent than before. Toby and Gatwick moved along the wall of rock until they came to a large bush that had taken root in one of the fissures.

  ‘Paddy?’ He listened for the clapping. It seemed to come from behind the bush and Toby pushed it aside to find Paddy crouched in a narrow passage no more than four feet wide.

  ‘You think this is it, Pad?’ Toby asked sceptically. They had followed similar gaps in the boulders only to be confronted by a dead end.

  Paddy nodded and pointed at the ground. Toby followed the direction of his finger and saw the hoof print of a horse, perfectly formed in damp earth.

  ‘This has to be it,’ Toby said. ‘Well done, Pad. Let’s go and find McTavish and the others.’

  It took half a day to negotiate the narrow passage leading onto the escarpment. The footing was treacherous, and Toby had each rider dismount and lead his horse up the incline, one careful step at a time, their animals’ flanks barely squeezing through the press of rock. The two packhorses needed to be unloaded and led up the same way, the supplies divided up among the men and hauled to the top before being reloaded.

  The country beyond the escarpment was sparsely treed. Anderson’s natives had not used anti-tracking after clearing the passage and the spoor was plain to see. Toby was tempted to ride as fast as possible until McTavish reminded him they could now consider themselves in enemy territory and needed to be alert. Gatwick and Sloan each led a packhorse and McTavish moved th
em into the middle of the group. He gave Barraworn instructions to follow the spoor and Toby and Paddy followed behind the tracker.

  ‘If we are ambushed by Anderson or the natives, we should rally on the packhorses. Then we can decide the best action to take,’ McTavish advised. To Toby’s ear he didn’t sound too convincing.

  Each man ensured his gun was loaded, with a cap on the nipple. Gatwick and Sloan even went as far as carrying their carbines in one hand while they rode, but soon tired of this as they negotiated twists and turns. It wasn’t long before they followed the example of the others and left their weapons in the scabbards.

  At noon they reined in beside a cluster of rounded boulders and ate johnnycakes washed down with gulps of water from their canteens.

  ‘We need to find a creek and water the horses,’ Toby muttered to Barraworn. The tracker nodded and led the party along a twisting game path towards a distant rise. Twenty minutes later they found a narrow stream cascading down the hillside.

  ‘How the hell does he do it?’ Gatwick said as he filled his canteen while his horse drank thirstily.

  ‘He can smell it,’ Sloan explained.

  ‘Maybe his horse could smell it. He just loosed his rein and let the horse follow its nose to water.’

  ‘No,’ Sloan insisted, ‘I saw him flaring his nostrils. He could smell it himself all right.’

  While the horses drank their fill, Toby took Paddy and Barraworn to scout along the creek bank. If this stream was the only water for some miles, the natives who lived up on the plateau must use it as well, he reasoned. Carrying their muskets, they followed the little creek downstream, looking for any sign of human habitation. They walked in the water, for the scrub on either bank was too thick. Barraworn took the lead, his shaggy mane of black hair flicking from side to side as he searched. After ten minutes of sloshing along, the tracker stopped and squatted on his haunches.

  Toby moved up to Barraworn’s shoulder and squatted beside him. ‘What is it?’ he whispered.

  Barraworn pointed to a break in the scrub on the left bank. Here the ground had been packed flat and hard by the passage of many feet over the years. Only human feet could flatten the dirt in such a manner. Animals would have left the bank churned to mud.

  ‘This place here where lubras come down for water, boss.’

  ‘Let’s follow the path back into the bush,’ Toby said. ‘See where it leads.’

  Barraworn stood and moved cautiously onto the bank. On the far side of the clearing a track led away through shadowy scrub. He cocked his carbine and moved onto it, Toby and Paddy close behind.

  The track followed the bank of the creek. Every now and then an offshoot snuck away towards the sound of water hidden behind dense bush. These showed only the marks of wombats and marsupial rats. They stayed with the main path which eventually turned away from the creek towards a stand of tall gum trees. Barraworn paused and waited for Toby to come up beside him.

  ‘Old gunyahs, boss.’ Barraworn pointed into the trees with his chin.

  Toby could see nothing unusual beneath the trees. Barraworn must have sensed his puzzlement. The tracker pointed again with the barrel of his carbine.

  ‘One there, boss.’ The barrel stabbed towards a pile of fallen branches that looked as if a bonfire had been prepared some time ago and never lit. ‘Another there.’ Again, the carbine pointed at a similar pile of dead branches and sticks.

  Toby suddenly realised what he was looking at. The gunyahs had lost their leafy protection against the elements, leaving only a skeletal framework of sticks. As the realisation struck him, he could see more dilapidated structures scattered through the trees.

  He waved Barraworn forward and the trio moved out into the trees. This campsite had obviously been a favourite for the semi-nomadic Aborigines. Well-worn paths twisted through the trees in every direction, the earth packed hard and flat by the passage of many feet, so that, even now, Mother Nature had not completely reclaimed what had once been hers.

  Barraworn led them along a broad pathway to a space between the boles of two gum trees where he stooped and picked up a piece of charred wood.

  ‘Campfire, boss. Long time ago,’ he explained, unnecessarily. The blackened stick had a furry coating of moss on one side. Many small bones lay scattered on the ground. Toby recognised the femur of a wallaby and the skull of a possum discarded in the grass.

  ‘Let’s get back to the others,’ he said. ‘We’ll bring them here.’

  ‘You wanted to find an Aborigine camp, Angus,’ Toby said, pointing at the tumbledown structures when they returned. ‘Doesn’t look like it’s been used for a couple of years.’

  McTavish swung from his horse and strode between the old gunyahs. He stooped to look into one gloomy interior, then another. Finally, he turned back to Toby and the others.

  ‘This fellow Anderson escaped from a convict work party some years ago. He was chased as far as the escarpment before the soldiers gave up.’ He walked back to his horse and took the reins. ‘Every now and then a settler would report seeing a white man among a group of natives, but no one was sure. No one wanted to come up here and look for a convict bolter. This tribe remained out of contact for a long time. I suppose they looked after Anderson, fed him and so on. The poor buggers were unaware of the evil they were harbouring.’

  ‘But what happened to the Aborigines?’ Sloan asked.

  ‘I don’t know, laddie. They may have gone down to the settled areas, as a lot of tribes do. Maybe they went deeper into the bush. By all accounts this mob was a pretty reclusive lot. But I’ll bet a week’s pay these are the same Aborigines Anderson found.’

  Toby looked at Paddy and shifted the Lovell in his hands. He could sense Anderson’s malevolent presence, somewhere out there in the bush. He said, ‘We can camp here tonight. Tomorrow we’ll follow the tracks into the interior.’

  To continue north into high and wild country on foot would be suicide. Starvation and death awaited in that direction. He had deliberately travelled north to take him away from any pursuit that may have tracked him to the edge of the escarpment, but Anderson knew if he stood any chance of making it out of the mountains, he would now need to head west, to the fertile river valleys where settlers lived. If he could reach a settlement or road, he could steal a couple of horses and come back for the rest of the gold.

  The saddlebags were slung over his shoulder, and they thumped against his chest and back as he picked his way through the trees. The revolver was tucked into his belt and he carried a small calico bag containing spare powder and shot, a roll of banknotes and a few pounds of flour. It wasn’t much, he knew, but with a little luck he would soon be out of these cursed hills and able to spend a little of the money or gold dust on a meal at an inn or homestead – or use his gun to get what he wanted.

  Late that afternoon, he trudged up to the edge of the plateau and looked down into a broad river valley. Some twenty miles away, light reflected off water. There was a large river down there and, judging by the high country to the east, it must be flowing into the west, towards the settled areas. If he could reach it, he could follow it to civilisation. The country between the river and where he stood was covered with thick forest, and the valley wall dropped away steeply, plunging a half-mile or more to where the glittering water lay.

  Two days, maybe three and I’ll reach the river.

  He shifted the saddlebags onto his other shoulder and started forward.

  Barraworn paused beside a wall of boulders and eyed the markings on one of the great stones. All that morning he had led the party into the north, his keen eyes picking out small features which reassured him they were on the right track. Here and there he found the remains of campfires or trees which had been stripped of their bark to make the carrying bowls Aboriginal women use to collect food. He could see rocks that bore marks where tools and spears had been sharpened. To him the countryside had the same look an abandoned town or village might have to a white man, and the beginnings of super
stitious dread were creeping into his mind.

  ‘What is it, Barraworn?’ McTavish asked, as he reined in beside the tracker.

  Barraworn turned to the sergeant, his eyes wide with terror. ‘This place, bad yamma, boss.’ He cast his gaze over crude paintings of figures, the outlines of hands stencilled beneath the overhang of a huge boulder where they were protected from the weather. ‘This the place where spirits live.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Toby asked as he came up beside them.

  ‘He says there is bad magic in this place. Evil spirits live here,’ McTavish said. ‘The laddie’s scared to hell.’

  Toby studied the rock paintings and then looked into the terrified eyes of Barraworn. ‘All right, matey,’ he said. ‘You go and scout around to see if there are any recent tracks leading away from here. Don’t come too close if you don’t want to.’

  Relieved, Barraworn urged his mount away from the boulders. He gave them a wide berth as he circled around to cast for recent spoor.

  Toby swung from the saddle. He passed Moonlight’s reins to Sloan then pulled the Lovell from its scabbard. McTavish did the same and they moved cautiously along the natural wall of boulders. They had not gone far when the warbling call of a magpie caught Toby’s attention. He looked to where Barraworn sat his mount, fifty paces out into the bush. The tracker made the warbling call again and pointed back towards the boulders.

  Toby and McTavish moved along the base of the boulders until they were in line with the direction Barraworn had indicated. Four dead horses lay beside the rocks, all tied to a tether. The mountain dingos had been at work, the sides of the dead animals torn open.

  ‘What the hell do you suppose happened here, laddie?’ McTavish asked, his eyes sweeping the ridge above the boulders.