24

It was spring and the district rang with bleats as ewes and lambs called to each other. Entering a lambing paddock was bad form out here as it upset the ewes, but I had to speak with Jim Crowther, and I had to do it now.

The sun was coming up, that time of day when the noise level rises and the world takes on its colours for the day. At Tindaree I’d been told where Crowther was: he’d fetched up to the lambing an hour ago with some bad news. As I rode in closer, I saw dun-coloured mounds dotted about and heard the flies, loud and thick.

I rode over to a cluster of men, who barely registered my arrival. Dingos had been at work overnight and Crowther was dark, the men on watch almost in shock. Dead lambs were scattered about, throats torn out, gashes in their sides where the dingo had gone for their kidneys, leaving their guts strewn around in the dirt. The ewes were bunched up in a terrified mob. The smell of blood and death put me in mind of the murders.

Another horse and rider was coming and fast. Crowther looked up. The boss, on his way to see the damage.

‘Mr Crowther, a quick word?’

‘Can’t you see, man? Whatever it is it can wait.’

I glanced at the men whose job it was to check the ewes and lambs every few hours to make sure none of the birthing ewes were in trouble. Their faces had a green tinge to them. If a worker killed a sheep, broke a bone while shearing, smothered it or cut the jugular, they had to buy it and then it would go to the kitchens. There were a lot of dead lambs and ewes here, so these blokes were in strife, with a lot of mutton and lamb to be chewed through.

‘Hirst and Shawcross – where are they?’

‘Not doing their bloody job, that’s for sure,’ one man murmured.

True enough, but dingos were dingos, and cunning bastards at that.

Forsythe was getting closer, slowing his horse down to a trot while he looked around at the carnage. There were eagles and hawks circling already, ants marching in formation towards their targets. Doesn’t take long for one creature to profit from the death of another.

‘They’re up in the scrub to the north-east, where all these bastards live,’ Crowther said. ‘Should have cleared it long ago.’

‘Did you check their whereabouts on the Sunday after the dance?’

Crowther slowly raised his eyes to mine.

‘Right, I’ll leave you to it.’

Forsythe hailed me and I rode over. He looked devastated, as you would at the loss of hundreds of pounds’ worth of stock.

‘Look at this, Gus. What do I pay these worthless feckers for? To kill vermin and to protect the sheep.’

‘Dingos are a mighty foe.’

‘Shouldn’t be here. Blasted dingo fence, we put that in and still they get over it? Useless doggers.’

‘That’d be Hirst and Shawcross?’ I said.

He nodded, surveying the carnage. ‘I pay them to shoot the dogs, I feed them, I supply them with ammunition and they shoot the roos instead.’

‘I’m on my way to speak to them now. Want me to tell them to come in?’

‘What do you want with them?’

‘Police matter.’

‘Tell them to get down here, at once.’

~

It was a long ride to the scrub in the north-east of Tindaree but it had to be done. I knew the patch of scrub Crowther was referring to, quite a substantial piece of the original vegetation, kept because they hadn’t got around to clearing it yet. If it was harbouring vermin, then its days were numbered. I set off, hat pulled low, a Colt pistol on my hip and a bad case of indigestion from Mrs Schreiber’s blood sausage.

The land out here had been hammered by the hooves of millions of sheep over the decades and now the soil was tightly packed. Saw this everywhere in the district. Hard-packed soil that turned to mud in the rain, then dried as clay, then blew away in the strong winds. No grasses to anchor it anymore. Great gullies caused by this erosion were scattered around the land like cracks in an old man’s heel. Winter rains made it worse. No matter, they just drove the sheep further west.

I saw the low grey-green of the scrubland ahead of me lying beyond a creek which ran through steep cliffs of eroded red soil. A couple of redgums clung on, half their root mass hanging free, stripped of dirt. White cockatoos fluttered and fussed high in the branches. Just a matter of time before these mighty trees crashed down into the gully.

It was getting close to midday when I heard gunshot and set Felix towards it. Sounded regular, not the random gunshot of a roo shooter, more like shooting a corralled herd of goats or camel. Methodical. Beasts that couldn’t get away. I moved towards it, getting a fix on it every time a shot rang out. As we got closer, I took out my sidearm and fired into the air so they’d know there was someone else around and not shoot me. The shooting stopped.

We pushed through a stand of mulga and saltbush, the smell of fresh blood and shit and cordite reminding me of the Transvaal. My senses straining at full alert, pulse racing, scanning every shadow, every movement for a lurking Boer. Felix held his nerve, going forward willingly, trusting that I knew what I was doing. We rounded a curve in the creek bed and came across a couple of hobbled horses, scrawny beasts with sad eyes, a scattering of fodder on the ground beside a cart. There was a campfire nearby with a billy, a couple of bedrolls and what looked like a full whisky bottle.

The cart was neatly piled high with dead dogs, their scalps and tails removed. Another cart stood nearby, with a load of fencing wire and posts. Two men came out of the scrub, rifles pointing at me, then they lowered them when they saw me. The same two men as on the Jong land, Gog and Magog from the edge of the unknown.

‘Good morning.’ I dismounted, to their surprise. I’d holstered my pistol but was aware of its weight on my hip.

‘You looking for us?’

‘Nope, just heard the shots and thought I’d take a look,’ I said. ‘Is it just dogs you’re shooting?’

They looked at me, then walked away through the straggly scrub. I followed and found two massive mounds of dead kangaroos, the air thick with flies. In a fenced-in area lay the freshly bleeding corpses of a couple more dozen roos that’d been chased in there. Some of the dead animals had been skinned and then the skins pegged out to dry on the dirt. Both men were covered in stubble, with blood-smeared, sweat-stained shirts and weathered, bloodied faces.

There was a sudden movement in one of the piles of kangaroos. A joey emerged from its dead mother’s pouch. One of the men climbed the pile of carcasses, grabbed the joey by the tail and then climbed back down, boots crushing skulls and paws. He held the struggling joey on the ground and with his other hand smashed the butt of his rifle into its head a couple of times until it stopped moving. Then he flung it back onto the pile.

The blood in my veins ran cold. It was them who’d killed the Kirkbrides, I knew it. Probably paid to kill them, along with Beavins. And then they killed Beavins to stop him talking.

‘You was the trooper in Calpa,’ one of them said softly, looking at me.

‘I am the trooper from Calpa, currently suspended.’

‘Fucked up, did yer?’

A brace of kookaburras burst out laughing, their merriment dying away on a bleak note. I sensed these two knew I was looking for them. Perhaps one of the men on Tindaree told them I’d asked Jim Crowther a while back.

‘I’ll be getting on, then,’ I said, and walked back to my horse, expecting to get a bullet in the back at any moment. Felix and I got out of there as fast as we could. I was not going to tell them about the lamb and ewe killings, or that their employer wanted to see them, because I wanted them to stay put while I went for reinforcements. I had no handcuffs, no rope, no warrant and – without the element of surprise – no chance of subduing the pair of them.

Not much later, as I rode alongside the creek gully, I heard horses galloping. Turned in the saddle – Hirst and Shawcross riding at me. For a second I debated waiting to see what they wanted, but my body was telling me I already knew. I was out of uniform and an easy take. I spurred Felix on to a gallop. Heard a shotgun blast behind me. There was nothing and no one to come and help me.

We galloped for what seemed an eternity, the crack and thump of the odd bullet propelling me on. They were serious. Felix was grunting now, the effort causing him to foam up, but he’d do it, I knew he would, so I urged him on. Then a wallaby ran out on our left flank. Felix was up and I was down, falling, expecting to hit the soil of the veldt, waiting for the bayonet as I writhed breathless in the dust. They were closing in on me. My rifle was with my saddle and Felix was gone.

My only hope was to roll into the gully, let them get close and shoot them with my pistol. They’d seen where I came off and they’d see if I made a run for it. The gully was it. I rolled over the edge and fell further than I had estimated, landing badly on my thigh, which screamed in pain along with every other part of my body. I scrabbled to a crouch, heart pounding, hearing the rhythmic thud of horses getting closer and closer.

I saw a movement to my right, upstream. A naked man, old with a white beard. God come for me? Me in the future? What the hell? He gestured for me to join him. I scrambled, still crouching, towards him, keeping as low as I could, panting and on fire. He pointed to the bank. He’d lost his mind but I soon saw a dugout, a precarious cave hollowed out of the stony creek bed and redgum roots, and crawled in. A blanket, neatly folded, a billy, a few tins, a battered old Bible and a rifle. The God-bothering swaggie with one eye.

He took the rifle, put his finger to his lips and I heard him scrabble up the bank. The hooves got closer, until I heard panting horses, the jingle of bridles, the foul-mouthed bastards asking for me.

‘Satan is behind ye, boys,’ the old man said in a calm, cracked voice. ‘Best to ride on before he gets to thee, for down ye will go into the spitting sulphur lakes of hell.’

Hirst and Shawcross laughed, told him to get out of the way or they’d shoot him.

‘The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless,’ he pronounced. ‘Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?’

I had my revolver in both hands, squatting at the mouth of the dugout, eyes on the bank above me, ready to shoot if they so much as dangled a filthy boot over the side.

‘Why don’t ya put some clothes on, you stinking old maggot?’

‘Why don’t thee repent? Go in peace and take the Lord’s hand.’

They spoke in mumbles to one another, then one called out, ‘Just wanted a word with you, Trooper.’

I heard them cock their rifles.

The old hermit started singing, ‘O God, to whom revenge belongs, Thy vengeance now disclose.’ A hymn I remembered droning at school. Plenty of smiting and cutting down. Hirst and Shawcross could just shoot him for a bit of peace. I had no idea why they didn’t.

There was nothing more, the ever-present buzz of flies, then the sound of hooves moving away into the silence. The hermit slithered down the bank and joined me at the mouth to the dugout, waving the rifle. ‘No bullets in it, but they don’t know that.’

‘Thank you, sir, you are very brave.’

‘’Tis the Lord, standing with me,’ he said, shaking his old head. ‘They’ll come back. Satan likes to win. You get on through the scrub and follow the creek east down to the river. You’ll come out a couple of miles south of the Larne punt. No more’n a half a day’s journey.’

‘You should come with me – they could come back and kill you.’

He raised both his arms. ‘For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.’

‘Rightio … thanks again.’ I nodded and scrambled up the bank on the scrubby side, then looked back at the old man. He still had his arms raised.

I couldn’t afford half a day. But to arrest them I needed more than just a revolver and harsh words. More pressing was the need to get the hell away from them quickly. It wasn’t hot, but nor was it weather for walking over stony, hard ground with no compass and no water and no bloody horse.

~

I set off, keeping the gully to my left. The scrub tore at my clothes, my hands. The sun bored holes in my eyes and the grinding throb of a thousand insects drilled into my brain. The ground was littered with bleached bones and singed twigs, blackened leaves. A haze hung in the air, a smell of burning timber and something deeper, greasier, decaying.

Coming off Felix had dislodged something in my mind and I found myself looping around and around the memory of falling in South Africa, that long, slow instant between unseating and impact. The shock of the landing, air jolted from my lungs, the sudden fight to the death. I didn’t like going back to that moment and yet was dragged there by the scruff of my neck, day and night. Then a bullet hit a tree trunk right next to me with a sudden thwack.

I dropped to the ground. They hadn’t given up. Panicky, I checked my position. Back in the gulch was the only shelter. I slithered over, tearing my trousers and rolling over the edge, landing on my scarred shoulder, breathless at the pain, then I was up and crouching and running at the same time, tripping over bones and scree. Another bullet, the crack and whizz of it overhead. I heard their horses coming right at me.

I checked my revolver. Six shots. Maybe a hundred yards’ range, but if they got that close it would be because I was dead.

I kept running, trying to keep my head low. No sound from them, just my own harsh panting, and the crows bickering over my soon-to-be corpse. After a while I peered over the top of the gully. Just flat plain and a shimmer in the distance. I scrabbled up, scanned the bleak plain. Nothing happened. Kept walking.

~

Thirst was a problem. When you get thirsty you’re already drying up, and it took mental effort to keep from dwelling on it. I longed to lie down and soon just gave in to it, stretching out on the stony red soil with a grunt of relief.

At twenty I could shoulder my spear and shield and, like a hoplite running across the dark Homeric plain, go all day. At thirty-one, with the constant pain of injury sapping my stamina, plus years of drink under my belt, I was struggling. The shame of it. An officer drags his broken carcass forward into the enfilade, a joke on his lips, his last thoughts of his country as he lays himself on the altar.

I blocked the sun from my eyes with my arm. Any moment the call would come, ‘Stand to your horses.’ Except I didn’t have my horse. Sharp stones dug into my spine, flies clustered at my eyes, my nostrils. Ants appeared from all directions, small lizards twitched over the soil to see the spectacle. I sat up, swept them off me and noticed, lying nearby, a scattering of dead galahs, their vibrant pink breasts faded in death. So many it had to be a poisoning. The sky was bright and hard, no tears.

I got to my feet, wincing at the pain shooting down my side, squinting in the harsh light. A glass of beer, frothing at the rim, condensation on the glass. A waterbag of tepid tank water. I wouldn’t lie down again. Fall, maybe, but not lie down. I’d submit to the sword of an implacable, cold-eyed Trojan warrior, but not a couple of scum-crusted doggers from Bugger Me North.

~

Towards dusk I had to stop. My headache was so bad it felt like someone was firing a Maxim gun into my skull. I couldn’t see the creek gully in any direction and had no clue as to where I was. My watch was chained to a button on my tunic, which was hanging in the wardrobe at home, so I’d no hope of even the most rudimentary form of navigation. All I knew was west, and once the sun went I could go off course and end in a very tight spot. There was no shelter to be had and the air temperature was rapidly dropping. If the wind started up I’d be in for an unpleasant time.

In the dying light I saw, ahead of me, a half-stump of some dead tree. It was as welcome as a sturdy tent and I flopped down, leant against it, pulled my coat close and tried to doze. A smell of decay, greasy and foul, gusted past me now and then, noxious fumes of death almost making me gag. Got to my feet and looked around, and in the distance, on the starlit plain, I saw a haystack, a conical haystack like I’d once seen in a book of French paintings. Except the hay was black against the frosty, silver starlight.

I walked towards it, confused yet half-believing I had fallen into a painting. All around me lay blackened puddles and splatters on the pale, compacted clay. Paint splatters, surely. The painting book lay in my lap as I sat by the fire, and in the kitchen Mrs Baker was roasting lamb. The fireplace was smoking, clouds of grey smoke and singed hair and cooking meat.

The black hay took wing as I approached, sundering the smoke with harsh warning cries. The picture shifted to a pile of guts and skulls, bones, fur, intestines. In the grey flesh shredded by a thousand beaks I saw the lumpen bodies of wombats, of all things. Wallabies, paddymelons, emus, grey kangaroos, dingos, dogs, rictus mouths, open jaws, starlight glinting on teeth, empty eye sockets, viscera, tendons, all piled on a pyre of half-burnt mulga and belah. Wisps of smoke heavy with the stench of putrefaction floated around and rose above to the heavens, where God, accepting this sacrifice, would send back rain.

I turned and ran, slipping and slithering over the stones, an unnamed terror riding my shoulders, maddened by the smell of the grave, my throat and tongue coated with death, the grimacing creatures in pursuit. Stopping only when I felt the horror recede, I dropped down to the ground, exhausted. I must have fallen into a doze as the spectres of the dead danced in a starlit circle, Grace in the middle clapping her hands, the floppy white bow in her hair shining and bouncing to the rhythm, while the galahs, pink breasts modestly glowing, danced strip-the-willow with their partners, the bush ravens, those sober, solemn gentlemen of death.

~

I was woken by the usual dawn chorus, and a more reassuring sound I had yet to hear. My body ached, the scars cutting and scraping my flesh as if I were being skinned, my tongue and mouth dry and sandpapery. I got up and walked. Never saw the gully again but I kept walking away from the sun, because that way lay the Darling and I couldn’t miss it.

By midday I was stumbling again, but I kept the sun behind me and towards dusk I saw a hut in the distance and made straight for it. Rusty galvanised iron and bark slabs fixed to rickety, unfinished timber and a metal door. In the wind, the bark slabs on the roof lifted and settled, whistling in the cracks like a mouth organ with only two notes.

A couple of scrappy acacias nearby, bent in the wind, a rope slung between the house and a forked sapling stuck in the ground and anchored by more rope. An infant’s stained and yellow nappies flapped in the wind. Outside the shed, on a rough slab bench, stood a galvanised iron washtub with a wooden washboard sitting in the grey, greasy water. I wavered – drinkable? Washed nappies. No.

I called out, identifying myself. Never knew what mad bastard was in these huts. Had my hand on my sidearm. A thin child, possibly a boy, maybe around seven and wearing nothing but torn and filthy grey short pants and brandishing a sharpened stick, came to the doorway and told me to go away.

‘Your mother or father home?’

He nodded, his lips cracked, dry snot caked around his nostrils, nose burnt bright red along with his cheeks. From inside the hut came the sound of small children grizzling. The boy lowered his sharp stick and I peered in, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light. The air inside the shed was hot and fetid, sour milk, shit and dust.

A young woman sat at a rickety table, bodice open, nursing what looked like a skinned rabbit but was in fact a naked baby. No nappy, just its bony buttocks cradled in her hand. The mother’s clothes were stained with what could have been blood from her split lip. Her golden hair, matted and knotted, had been scraped back from her weathered face and tied into some sort of knot. She looked up without interest. Two more infants, filthy faces, wild, matted fair hair, and both wearing cut-down flour bags as smocks, looked up at me. One of the children was cross-eyed. Each of them had one of their mother’s knees and clung on for dear life.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you … I’m Constable Hawkins from Calpa.’

She nodded as she rocked back and forth. On the table stood an open tin of IXL blackberry jam, flies crawling around the jagged edge of the rim.

‘May I have a drink of water?’

‘Round the back.’ She looked past me and out the door to nowhere.

I stepped outside. Two little girls, around four or five, both wearing cut-off flour bags, came pelting around the side of the shed, laughing and panting. Stopped dead when they saw me. Eyes wide, sunburnt, flaky skin.

‘Don’t be frightened, I’m just after a drink. Can you show me? Is there a tank?’

The taller one sniffed and wiped her hand across her nose. The smaller one clutched her sister, half-hiding behind her.

‘Where’s your father?’

‘Pushin’ the cart.’

I followed them around the back to a water tank up on stumps. Turned on the tap. A thin trickle of brown water fell in the dust. The water smelled of death. Some animal dead in the tank. There had to be another source of water.

‘Is there a creek or something?’

The little girls stared at me. They looked like they had scurvy, not an uncommon disease out here. I dipped south and pulled out a sixpence and a few pennies and handed them to the eldest.

I left them and kept going in the direction they assured me the river lay in. Eventually I saw a human figure, a lone man in the distance where the scrub thinned out to paddocks, and made my way towards him. He was pushing a poison cart, a device that cut the ground into furrows and deposited poisoned grain into the soil. The rabbits would grub for the grain but the sheep wouldn’t. The Romans sowed the fields of the conquered with salt. We used poisoned grain.

He looked at me, took his hat off, wiped his bald head with a handkerchief and then replaced his hat.

‘G’day. I’m trying to get to Larne,’ I said. ‘Am I close?’

‘That way, mebbe an hour,’ he said, pointing east.

‘Spare a drink?’

He handed me a waterbag and I sniffed at it, then drank as deep as was polite and handed it back, thanked him.

‘You got a wife and six kids back that way?’

‘Yeah – what about them?’

‘I stopped there for a drink. Something in your tank.’

He sniffed, wiped his hand over his nose like his kid. All day pushing a poison cart for a hut, a pound of mutton and some cocky’s joy.

The water made a hell of a difference and I hurried away. I kept going until I could smell the mighty, muddy Darling, and never has a smell been so welcomed. The last few miles were full of thoughts of a beer, cold and bitter, lots of beer gulped down with scarcely a swallow.

I saw the tree line and made for the punt. There was no paddle-steamer around and I had to rouse the punt man, the delightful Chips Grogan, from his comfortable seat, where he sat, arms folded, scowling at the river.

‘Spose youse want to cross?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Don’t spose you ride a young chestnut?’ he said. ‘Came running about with no master yesterday.’

‘Yes, that’s my horse. Where is he?’

‘I took him across and give him to Trooper Parry. You’ll have to pay for his crossing. I don’t cross for nowt.’

‘You’ll have to send the account to the Bourke police.’

‘The hell I will. You pay for yourself and your horse or you can’t cross.’

‘Listen, you miserable, lying bastard, you know who I am,’ I said, taking a menacing step towards him. ‘You take me across and send to Bourke for the money or I will do you for hindering a mounted trooper in the course of his work. And I’ll take great pleasure in it.’

He glared at me, hesitated for a minute and then decided better of it. I got on the punt and he clambered into his boat and rowed across the river, towing the punt. Would have been less fuss to just take me in his little boat. But he was the punt man, and by crikey he’d pull his bloody punt across the Styx if he had to.

I hurried into town to the station, found the water tank out the back and filled my stomach fit to burst, then washed my face, splashing the water about, reluctant to leave the stream of clear bliss. I went inside and found Parry.

‘Couple of blokes shooting roos to the west, Jack Hirst and Toby Shawcross, doggers on Tindaree, they shot at me,’ I said. ‘We need to bring them in.’

‘Thought something had happened to you. Got your horse out the back, the chestnut.’

‘And you didn’t think to ride out and look for me?’

‘Yeah, I would have, but now you’ve turned up.’

‘Some old swaggie who lives in the creek bed stopped them with religion.’

‘Yeah, that’d be Digby Doolan. Naked? Yeah, that’s him. Uses the scriptures like a fucking mallet.’

‘I can’t order you, but I think apprehending these two is an urgent matter.’

‘I’d like to be of assistance, mate, but as you say, you’re suspended. And they done nothing wrong. Shooters shooting on the property they’re licensed to shoot on.’

‘They aren’t licensed to shoot me, for fuck’s sake.’

‘Yeah, but you don’t know for sure they were shooting at you, do yer.’

Parry was the perfect trooper for out here – not much between the goalposts and lazy to boot. I had no money for food or beer and the Larne publican didn’t do credit, no matter who you were. Nothing for it but the long ride back to Calpa.