LINGER AND DIE
by Neil Brooka
Part eight (chapters fifteen and sixteen) of my steemit weekly(ish) serial
And for those who came in late, click here and check my blog to start from the start.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN – DEAD SHOT
In the end it was decided that they should stick around for at least another day should they cross paths with whomever had been pursuing them. Hopefully one of the Campaspe tribes would get the blame for killing the tracker. Mary hoped the same fate would be assumed of themselves. So they gave themselves one more day for the coast to clear and for their concerns to subside, but all of them knew that the storm was far from over.
During that day of waiting, Johnny had retrieved a hoe and, with the help of Nigger, had set about going over any areas they might have missed. Much to his guilt, Caesar had insisted on lending a hand to pan out the resulting pile of earth to do his share under obligation of the contract Johnny knew to be broken.
"We can't tear up the whole countryside can we?" Caesar finally said when they were almost through with the job.
"If we don't someone else will." Some part of Johnny thought that if he scraped together enough nuggets today he might give them to Caesar – maybe as a gift on their parting to ease his conscience.
"If we don't someone else will?" echoed Caesar. “I heard that excuse from a confidence man I was bunked with in Van Diemen's Land.”
Johnny immediately changed his mind toward his intended generosity.
"I think we've turned Johnny into a right little businessman," said Mary, who was sitting upon a tree root, cleaning the grime that had built up under her nails. “Thought of investing your shares in this great new nation?” she teased – half hoping to inflame Johnny's ideals again.
"Australia? A nation?" scoffed the convict. “Australia is a slut for exploiting and it's too late to change her now. You need culture to be a proper nation. You need thousands of years of history and stories and language and blood. If ever she had it, I doubt it will be any she can remember afterthis fever,” he held up a small nugget, “takes hold.”
Nigger trotted up to sniff at the metallic chunk her master seemed so interested in and turned about in disgust when no discernible scent could be detected.
"You can have her," Johnny continued. “I'm sure one day her people will be reaping the rewards of the riches in her belly, but today that person is me, and I for one will not be wasting it on her immoral British economy.”
Failing to bite at Johnny's Irish nationalism, Caesar instead turned to gaze at the ever gathering clouds upon the horizon. "Been awful quiet these last few hours," he observed, dusting off his hands for the final time.
"We're too far from the drovers tracks," said Mary, “to have heard any more commotion from whomever that tracker was with.”
"I don't know. There's something about this place that seems like it deserted with his death." Caesar didn't notice Johnny and Mary's glances to one another. “Even the birds have become solemn and sparse.”
"I think we've had our fill," said Mary kicking the dregs at the bottom of the kitty tin. “There's only so much of this stuff we can carry. Heavier than lead, and if one of the nags kark it we'll really be up the creek.”
Johnny took a stone as an anvil (for theirs had already been sunk), and began beating and folding together a rough ingot from the scraps they had collected that day.
"This wind is blowing strange. The quicker we get a move on the better," said Mary. “And that's another thing I've been thinking about – what I suggested about us finding places upon a ship. It's a longer route, but I'm thinking we loop up and around to the north-west then come down through Geelong and make our way to Williamstown. We can find a ship there. Have to bribe to be smuggled out.”
"So you intend to double-cross Morgan?" said Caesar.
Mary said nothing.
"I was thinking," said Johnny. “I don't think we should all just roll into town together. It might be safer if we split up ... head different routes. There's certainly enough horses for us all to split.
"Good thinking," said Mary. “And might I suggest that Johnny take care of our arrangements on arrival? A woman on her own and a nigger cowboy are hardly the most inconspicuous pair to be sorting out particulars – at least until we can figure out exactly what is known of our affairs in the first place. Stories have a way of getting garbled and rumours have a way of pandering more to obfuscation than to exposition.”
Johnny steepled his fingers and looked to Caesar.
"I can take a horse on my own," said Caesar.
"Then I'll go with Mary on the dray," said Johnny. “I'm not leaving her to deal with the world on her own with all her fortunes – but I more than understand if you'd prefer to make your own way.”
Mary's jaw rippled. Johnny had said it in such a way as to imply it had been Caesar's idea to go on his own, and although it suited her plans just the same, his wording still irked her.
"Suit yourself," said Caesar, “but don't come begging to me when you're robbed, or banged up again.”
"You owe me nothing, but I think you'd owe a little to Mary."
Caesar looked back, puzzled yet vaguely amused at Johnny's blatant twisting of the situation – to paint him as the bad guy. Love really could turn men into clowns. In Johnny's case there wasn’t much that needed changing. "And what if you two and that conspicuous mutt are intercepted?" he said.
"She'll be my charge." Johnny pompously raised his head.
Mary – visibly bristling with indignant affect – somehow managed to hold her tongue. It had been her meaning all along that she should be rid of Caesar's negro looks while keeping Johnny as a patsy, but Johnny's execution had been so crude that she couldn’t help betray at least some of her true feelings.
"I'm sure your protection will be much appreciated," laughed Caesar.
All that afternoon there was neither a peep from the birds, nor a sighting of wildlife. Maybe it was the impending storm, or the subtle smell of death seeping up from the earth, but come sunset, all three of the company – Nigger included – were itching to be rid of the place.
So it came as no surprise to Caesar that Johnny and Mary decided to leave early that night, under the cover of darkness. It was agreed that Caesar should stay behind for at least two more days to allow for enough distance between them, and it was fair to say that he was not looking forward to this prospect in the least. During their journey Mary would dress herself as a young man and Johnny as an older man. As they readied their dray Caesar stood back to admire the disguises in the dying light of day.
For possibly the final time they waved goodbye to Caesar's melting silhouette behind them as they followed the old tributary riverbed back to the road. If they travelled constantly for the next forty-eight hours they might make it through The Black Forest with enough light to spare them the spook of its thick scrub. By the time they hit the road Johnny was praying to god that they would survive the long journey without any robberies, or recognition encountered.
"Beyond The Black Forest," said Mary, “there's a westerly-turning road that would take us directly to Geelong. If news of our notoriety has spread, it's there that we're likely to encounter it first.”
Johnny looked at the patchy sky, struggling to locate the southern cross between the ever growing drifts of black cloud.
"I hope this weather holds out," he said while Nigger stirred in his arms to lick his chin from below. “Not sure about this road in the wet.”
All through the night and the grey next day they carried on, and still the rain held off. That night they chanced a fire while they still could – to cook up some damper and to get a good warm six hours sleep. While Mary slept easily, Johnny stayed awake for many hours, his mind playing over the escalating risks in their plan. Primarily it was the gold that worried him – the fact that they had it carried in the same cart, all together, without redundancy. Mary had had the clever idea of keeping some of the genuine lead shot on the dray itself while their more valuable shot was stowed in the footlocker beneath their feet. It still made Johnny nervous.
The next day they finally reached The Black Forest road just as the sun had hit its peak in the sky. As if nature had been holding back as much as she could, the clouds finally broke with a few ominous splatters. Johnny felt the first drops tap against his skull before a peel of thunder rang out through the air. Nigger whined and tensed into a terrified shiver as the heavy frequencies rocked against her sensitive hearing.
"I say we get through as quickly as possible," said Johnny. “This track could be mush come tomorrow. The iron gangs have the road in better condition further south.”
Mary agreed.
Five hours later and the road was quickly disintegrating beneath their wheels. They had not come close to the spot where the road would improve, and in parts it seemed miraculous that they had passed through at all. The longer they travelled, the heavier it rained and the more the thing felt like a gamble.
"Should've held your tongue from your optimism," called out Mary through the deluge. The cart was well and truly stuck now, and the horses refused to go on. There was nothing they could do. “You've cursed us.”
"Morgan give you block, and tackle?" shouted Johnny through another violent slap of rain. “Looks like we might need to winch our way out and find shelter.” Mary did indeed have some pulleys and rope, so Johnny leapt from the drenched cart and secured it to the nearest tree that might pry them to freedom. Nigger did not follow. Instead she remained in the cart, her claws scuttling this way and that in a frenzied panic under the wrath of the sky gods.
"I'll get the horses ready," yelled Mary.
Somewhere up ahead, veiled within a curtain of downpour, a sleek black horse's hoof sank into the mud.
"In a bit of trouble are yehs?" said a shark of a man, water dripping from the brim of his wide hat. Two more men flanked him, both as skinny as whippets, both aged with the wisdom of violence.
"We'll be all right – just sit it out it looks like," said Johnny, struggling to hook the tow rope to the cart. “Let'em rip, Billy,” he called to Mary, who kept low beneath her cabbage-tree hat – the chief article of her disguise.
"Dead Shot – like the name," said the fore of the three. “There's a thick copse over yonder ... be a good place to rest up I reckon.”
Mary urged the horses forward and the dray came clean through the mud onto surer ground. When they had secured the horses again, Johnny followed the directions the rider had indicated. Soon they came to rest in the lee of a cluster of tall manna gums bolstered by some smaller scrubby bushes between.
"Lucky to get out of the hailstorm – would have shot your caravan to shit. No pun intended." The rider swept his leg over his horse and landed upon the soft earth.
His two friends, too, jumped from their horses and tied them up to skulk by some large boulders as they filled their pipes.
"What'cha doing all the way up in this neck of the woods then?" said the man who had spoken to them earlier, tipping back his hat so that a miniature waterfall cascaded down his riding coat. He looked to be much younger than the two older men, who could have been in their late fifties.
"Hawking shot is all," said Johnny. “They seem to go through it quickly 'round here.”
"You can say that again," said the man. “Matter a fact we might be wanting some for ourselves. Lots of bad characters out here – lots of shooting to be done.” He rubbed his chin and turned to his elders who were presently sharing a match to light their pipes between them. “Yeah – but we've no money to pay you with, have we?”
"Go on Jack, don't be shy," one of the cruel-faced old men barked.
"It's his first time see?" said the other sucking his wad red beneath the shadow of his brim.
The young shark named Jack pulled his own pistols now – one from each hip – and carefully aimed one at Johnny, and one at 'Billy'.
"Just ... You know? Give us what you've got."
Johnny said nothing, but a sharp yap from Nigger who was now wrapped between his legs, served its purpose in betraying her master's feelings.
"You know?"
"Yeah," said Johnny suddenly feeling a shot of adrenalin and an impotent, protective desperation for Mary, “we've got some ... Got some dregs.”
"Dregs? What you talking bout? We want shots – now."
Mary took a step toward the man, and Johnny nearly had a heart attack.
"Keep moving and I'll twitch," wavered the shark, holding his now Mary-facing pistol at the downwards sloping brim of her hat.
As if in a trance, Mary reached out a hand. The two skinny, pepper-faced ringleaders, or whatever they were, reached for their own weapons. Mary's finger was pointing dead at the trigger.
"Stop it ... Stop it ..." repeated the young shark in a strange automata voice.
Johnny's eyes said the same. What the hell was she playing at?
Mary's finger pushed the trigger in a deft jab. The hammer struck. Nothing happened.
"Dead pan. Look," laughed Johnny, suddenly seeing what Mary had been up to. Then he remembered the other two men had guns and shut his trap.
"Wha?" stammered the rookie ranger, examining his pistol.
"Not the best time for a stickup is it?" said Mary in what she considered to be a manly voice, holding her hands in mock surrender to the whippy men who were both looking instead to their protégée with amused disgust. A dead pan. The gunpowder in the young shark's rain-soaked pistol had become about as useful as poppy seeds in cannon charge.
"Now if you'll just be reasonable and pah – patient," stammered Johnny, “I'll sort you out some lead, but we've no shot.” He took a deep breath. “We have scrap though, and you're welcome to that. If you want you can take a couple of casting scissors too, but I can't do much in this rain can I?”
"Hah! Go on then you cheeky fucker," said one of the older men, glancing toward Mary.
"Fuck, Tommy. What ever happened to manners? Sorry ma'am," the other said with a tone of drama. He took a step toward Mary and placed his barrel against her hat – and pushed it off so that her long black hair fell about her shoulders. “Now let me see what else you've got in there.” He motioned toward the dray.
The young shark, Jack, jumped into action. "What you got a coffin for?" he said, peering into the back of the cart as he slapped the useless pistol upon his thigh.
"That's Mr Beasly. We're undertaking them down south as a favour," said Mary plainly. They had used all but one of the coffins for firewood; this one remaining box contained a few carbines and the only genuine lead shot Mary had left. She supposed that if the men were verging on discovering the gold she would open up the coffin, but for now they could have the scrap.
"Money. You've got to have some coin?" snapped back Jack.
Johnny's eyes bugged this way and that.
Mary stepped forward as the rookie ranger struggled with the bag of scrap lead, and held up one of the last gold sovereigns she still had hidden in her dress.
"Any more?" snapped the whippet man, snatching the gold sovereign from Mary before the young shark could take it. “Search'em.”
"It's all I have," said Mary calmly.
"Please," said Johnny. “That money is all we have in the world.”
"Might take the dog too –" the whippet man called Tom poked his barrel at Nigger's nose.
"How are we to get home without means of buying provisions now?" pleaded Johnny.
"Nah, be too much to feed –" said the whippet man to Nigger.
"Please," said Mary, vainly attempting to muster sobriety with her tone, “we've barely got enough to see us to our destination.”
"If your man can't provide for you that's your problem," snapped Jack as he twisted one of their last sacks of flour over his back.
Johnny thought he might be sick. There was a good chance the ranger had taken the sack with the nugget in it.
"Might keep the snakes away –" came Tommy, still eyeballing the little bitch as he sucked at his pipe.
"It wasn't wise interfering with my associate's pistol like that," barked the other, older man, from where he rested against his rock. “How'd you like me to interfere with yours?”
"But he might put up a ruckus – barking and what-not," said Tommy, and now he rolled back his head and closed his eyes: “Blessed heavenly father give me guidance as to what is to be done with these simple folk.” Beneath his half-closed lids the whites of his eyes could be seen.
Johnny and Nigger shrank back in unison.
"Hey Jack, what'cha think dog tastes like?" called the seated elder from his rock, while Tommy leaned further back as if asking for guidance from some voice of insanity.
"Shit, mate. Tastes like shit."
"Dog shit?"
"He says – he says. He gives you his mercy. Mercy." Tommy's head came down and his eyes became lucid. “Thank you brother for you kind donation.” His eyes drifted back down to Nigger.
"Leave the dog, Tommy," said the seated elder. “Jacks says they taste like shit.”
Tommy already had Nigger by the scruff of the neck, turning her this way and that as he listened to his voices.
"Like shit," said the whippet man.
"Nah," said Tommy, placing Nigger back down to cower in an s-shaped worshipful bow. “Come on boys.”
The three men climbed back upon their horses and disappeared into the rain as if they'd never existed in the first place.
"What do you make of that?" said Mary with adrenaline-rattled relief.
Johnny snapped from his petrified pose and rounded on Mary, remembering her move with Jack's pistol and the way Tommy had taken over the show:
"I make of it that I'm thankful you allowed him to save face through his madness," he said breathlessly. “You might be a little more careful in the future you know. You're a woman – but I'm the one who'll have to cop the wages of your brazen-fool actions. ” Johnny rummaged through the remaining flour stores, miraculously finding their giant gold nugget still at home beneath the caked powder.
"May as well camp here," said Mary, trying to ignore Johnny's cowardly wrath.
"Did you hear me? You're not invincible." In two strides Johnny had her in his arms. Mary struggled as he forced his lips upon hers, ignoring her stiff reaction to his embrace. As Johnny forced the kiss he imagined he was somehow recharging his manliness that had been so brutishly depleted from the scene with the rangers.
That night, as Mary readied the camp, a kind of obscene servility descended upon her mood. It had been induced by the dissonance in her having to stoke the embers of Johnny's complicity with her own servility of sex alike. The effect of this was a mixture of exhaustion and resignation – of which Johnny took full advantage. When Mary finally retired that night he followed her like a bad smell, slipping beside her over the cold, hard, timber surface of the dray. Mary closed her eyes and tried to forget his presence, but his pale hands were already twisting their poison ivy grip about her.
They awoke the next morning to a loud rapport of musket fire somewhere in the direction of The Black Forest. Little Nigger had already been out and about, surveying the edges of camp when the low pops thudded through the air. As if burned by some unseen branding iron she scuttled back to the dray, tail between her legs, quivering from the chill of terror.
"What d'you think we move along?" said Johnny as he pulled up his trousers.
Mary, tight lipped, made the dray cart ready for the road to come.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN – THE FIRST THIRD
Beneath the Campaspe's silent waters the golden perch angled itself up towards a broken quicksilver sky. Caesar, too, looked up at his own smothered ceiling. He could smell the rain and feel the electricity building in the turbulent air around him. A curl of white light crashed about the horizon. It only took a few seconds for the shockwave to hit.
"Another day," he said out-loud. All day he had been drowning in dread as the thunder approached and the wind grew colder. With each fresh gust that feeling sank deeper still, drawing his body into the ground he suspected would soon be nothing but mud, water and cold. That night he had only managed to halfway sleep through the blustery atmosphere.
Maybe it was the restless shadows cast, or the distant echoes of spooked birds that caused the terrible nightmare. It was of a dark wave falling over him, smothering and breaking upon his body with the weight of a land-slide. On catching the moonlight glint upon its raging white-waters he would wake up soaked in his own cold sweat. Twice he'd had the dream – twice peeling off his shirt for the wind and flames to dry a condensed film of terror from his skin. After coming to, with a final start, he decided to sleep upon the bank to escape the bad omens in that dried-out river bed. Upon the bank's lip he found a little more comfort. The campfire air drifted up the slope to warm his front while a cool wind rolled against his back from the other side, but still he could not sleep.
"Hello?" he gasped, shooting bolt upright. Something had been knocking ... but of course ... he was outside in the dark and had been awake the whole time. Only ... there it was again;thuck, thuck thuck. Lightening flashed and the image of trees violently dancing in the air, burst upon his retinas. That knocking ... it had been their branches bashing up against one another in the wind. “Hell,” he said, picking himself from the ground to stretch. He immediately felt better.
Caesar's wide hat refused to stay on his head so he let it flap in the wind while the chin strap worked its way into his neck. The horse was spooked just the same. Still a day to wait? Curse it. He was out of breath kicking dirt on the flames before the embers finally gave in and smothered.
The saddle weighed a ton. He had jammed as many of the golden shots as he could manage between its leather folds, while the rest went into the three flour sacks. His horse was a little too lean for his liking and he wondered if it would carry his weight along with the gold. He picked up the tracker's carbine. With a final look around he climbed upon the horse and kicked his heels. The weighted beast moved back up the old tributary. He hoped he would be able to find the track in the dark.
For some reason Caesar found something unnerving about riding up that old riverbed. Presently he directed the horse to its banks, but the further he went, the thicker the trees and the steeper the bank became. Eventually he had no choice but to return to the latent tributary, bracing himself for the flash flood he had dreamt up that very night.
"Hell ... Jesus ... God help me," and other things he cursed, but none of his words could diffuse the horrible feeling he had of being penned in by this death trap. He urged his horse on.How long, oh god, he mouthed, and god answered. The first spats of rain hit his jacket. In desperation he attempted to engage the tracker's horse in conversation. “Come on, girl, we're leaving this golden cesspit for good.”
The rain grew heavier.
"Let's see if we can make this scheme work out for us, what you think?" he said. “When we get out of here – back to civilization – the first thing I'll buy is some nice oat meal for you to get your nose into – molasses oats and all the apples you could want. Come on.”
And now the rain fell in earnest. As the deluge hit him, something in Caesar's dread made itself known. He was in God's hands now. Already a silver streak had appeared down the centre spine of the riverbed as the morning light struggled through the thick waves of cloud.the track, churned and foamed a great eddy of white, crackling water. As he sat mesmerised atop his horse on the track, he thanked the lord. I He could see it running faster with each second upon the glistening sandy soil. He knew it would not be long until he met the wall of water from his dreams.
Was that what he could hear now? A steady low thunder? Branches and bows snapped and groaned against one another in the distance. He kicked his heels, rounded the bend and saw the spray and foam and rode. And there it was. The natural hump in the river – the shallow spot the drovers track had crossed. He rode the horse up its bank and turned on the track and what he saw had his heart in his mouth.
There, on the other side of the crossing, churned and foamed a great eddy of white, crackling water. As he sat mesmerised atop his horse, he thanked the lord. It seemed that as the water had built against the opposite bank of the track, an eddy had been gouged into the earth to make a swirling dam. All the logs and debris, too, had built up to create a structure a beaver might be proud of. Upon his horse, Caesar felt the vibrations as boughs and branches broke. In horror he looked down to see jagged cracks heaving a cleft through the track where his horse stood.
Caesar urged the nag further back to higher ground, first with a trot, then with a surge as the water crept toward him. The horse needed no extra encouragement. Soon the water would be lapping at its flanks. He closed his eyes and felt the horse's movement slow against the water and waited for the cold to pour into his boots. The horse slowed. Caesar's body moved back in the saddle.
The inertia of a hill was all it was. Just a hill that had slowed the horse and they were safe. He tuned in the saddle to see the seething intersection collapse under an explosion of mud. The wave thundered down to wipe away their camp, their tracks, and the ghost of his own body that lay sleeping in some alternate, dreamless world.
"This rain will be our salvation, girl," he bellowed, slapping the sodden flank of the horse. “You'd have to be crazy to want to ride these roads in this muck.”
And so it came to pass. Neither coming, nor going, did he encounter another soul as he rode toward The Black Forest. Even the rain decided to stop after a half day's ride and soon the earth grew dusty and his spirits lifted while the sun warmed his back and his horse. Just north, a fresh storm had broken. Caesar tested the wind and thanked the heavens for the merciful wind that was keeping it at bay. So he pushed further on, only stopping by a creek to water his horse and to stretch the feeling back into his legs. The memory of the flood was still with him so he daren't stop for too long. When the skies broke again there'd be no telling what trouble the terrain might drop him in.
All through the night he rode, just as May and Johnny must have done before him. He had already resolved to give any approaching riders a wide berth. The plan was, he'd ride deep enough into the bush to let them pass without detection before moving back. He couldn't ride through the bush alongside the road – it was a sure way to lose himself forever in its folds, but at night even the operation of backtracking might prove his end, so he prayed once more for a clear passage.
There was something quite fresh and free about riding in the dark, but it was only after the sun arose to beat its warmth upon his face that he decided taking a nap might be in order. He would rest up to let Johnny and Mary regain their lead.
"Let's see if there's any news, girl," he murmured as he approached the unmistakeable scrub of The Black Forest road. “Hope we'll not be intruding.” Somewhere in the back of his mind he was having romantic notions of food and rest in some soft-floored hut. Caesar knew this was all a fantasy, but none the less, he turned at the spot where Binjie had led them to the camp and urged his horse into the scrub. Something about surviving the flash-flood had given him a heavy dose of adventurous courage. Maybe they'd have some of that white lightning left.
"Coo-EEE," he called when he guessed he was close enough to camp. “God almighty, girl, your diet must be wrecked to let off that rich vapour.” He covered his face with his arm and circled the horse around to see if the poor old thing had an upset stomach. The horse had had nothing to eat but grass since his masters death. Maybe she was not used to it.
"What has happened here?" said Caesar. “Smells like Lynch's shack.” Slowly now, his horse moved over the crackling forest floor, its own nose flaring and tossing as the smell grew worse.
Caesar's mind struggled to comprehend the vaguely human shapes strewn about the ground. He turned back and tied his horse to a tree before daring to look again.
"Shot and butchered," he heard himself say.
The stomach of the body was swollen with gasses and the legs and arms were all at strange angles. It was also missing a head. At first Caesar assumed it must have been bent back out of sight, but when he saw the truth – those hunched shoulders around a terrible bloody mess – something changed in his perception. It was as if he was looking at the scene from a distance, and the corners of his vision had become all blurred and warped.
"It's a puzzle," he murmured. “A puzzle. It's a puzzle.” More bodies further on. Some with shot wounds; most with horrible cutlass slashes. But all without their heads. Where were all their heads? Caesar's throat began to twitch.
"You ... I know you," came a pinched, dry voice.
Caesar turned and the world lagged and there was Binjie covered in blood, a great dull club in his hands. Johnny's gift of a carbine was still strapped to his back.
"Not me," Caesar said, but his voice seemed to have distanced itself from the horror.
Binjie dropped the club, and removed the carbine.
"Not me."
Binjie raised the gun with fire in his eyes.
"No."
A shot rang out in the blood-humid clearing and Binjie fell.
"Now ... is that the last of them I wonder?" said the trooper, an entranced eye upon Caesar's smoking carbine as he picked his way over the bloody ground. He had a crusty gash down his right cheek. It looked as if someone had meant to cut him in two, but had been shallow in their aim. Still in a pale trance, the crusty-faced trooper slid the gun from Binjie's corpse.
Caesar's mind spun back to the time of The Bush Inn when they'd left that wretched barn in a cloud of bulldust and strife. This had been the half-drunk lad they'd met on their run to Lynch's shack – who had sparked the stampede with his weapon.
"Lanky monkey figured out how to use it," said the trooper, examining his weapon. His eyes moved to Caesar. As if explaining the meaning of the scene the trooper motioned with his arm further back into the bush: “Couldn't answer my questions, see?”
Stretching back from the trooper, Caesar saw more bodies, one after the other. Some of them were white.
"Thought the monkey’s and gorilla’s would have banded together." The trooper was staring at Caesar, head thrust back into his neck. “No good to me on your own, mate. WHERE - ARE - THE - OTHERS?”
Caesar gawked at the stupid voice coming from the trooper's mouth.
"Where dem uder bruda?" the trooper said. “Gemmen and lady?”
Caesar said nothing.
"You sabby?" the trooper drew his cutlass, its blade dark with blood.
"Th – They're up ahead," said Caesar without thinking.
"What?"
"They went up ahead."
"You're a sullen one." The trooper leapt forward and the cutlass swung back ... “Made you flinch,” he squawked.
"Wait –" barked Caesar. Raising his arms to the hungry blade. But the trooper's attention had been caught by something gruesome upon the ground. Caesar took his chance to run.
Like a Shepherd after a bolting ewe – with a gleeful grin for a fresh chase – the trooper sprang to his feet. His two strong spring-steel legs kicked from the earth with ease and Caesar's attempt was over before it had even committed upon a particular destination.
"Come on mate. Have I fired my weapon off?" laughed the trooper at Caesar's fallen form.
Caesar was wrong. The boy had not been in shock at all. If anything his nerves seemed fuelled upon a thunderstorm of great exhilaration.
"Come on, don't be a sulky one." The trooper hooked the carbine under his arm and ducked to catch Caesar's frozen gaze. “Don't be a sook.”
Caesar looked at the grinning brute.
"Sookie, sook," the trooper clucked like a chicken, “sook, SOOKIE! Sook, sook, sook, sook, SOOKIE!”
Caesar's fists closed, his veins pulsed and the last thing he remembered was a sharp bump to the jaw and the troopers red, grinning face.
A great pressure was forcing apart his head. His own voice, as a groan, came out in puffs. It felt as if an elephant was jumping on his chest. When he opened his eyes the ground was heaving back and forth with his movements. Slung upon the rump of a horse, Caesar emptied his guts down its flank for a second time.
"That's right, you dirty little shit. If you empty your guts down the side of my horse I shall have to whip you."
"Where – you – taking?"
"Well it won't be a constable's office, that's for sure. Not much use as they'll take you without so much as a kiss. Nope, you're worthless to me on your own, which is why I'm gonna put you in storage."
Caesar's stomach spasmed against the horses rump, but there was nothing more to heave.
"Think of it as an investment. I'll put your good self to work ... Work you over and extrude some facts from your black hide and then – if all goes well – those facts shall lead me on to your partners in crime, and I shall have my twenty gallons worth."
The heat on his back was already starting to burn despite the overcast day.
"What kind of a gang are you to be already broken up? Hurt their feelings did ya? Rip'em off?"
"Told you ..." Caesar grunted.
"They'd better not be in the bottom of a hole somewhere."
Caesar's mind snapped into place. The gold.
"My – hor – se?"
"Yourhorse?"
"My-my – things?"
"My things now. Not that you had much. All shot – ill-matched for a carbine. Gave one of your guns to the Abbos, didn't you. Didn't steal it from you, did he?"
Caesar struggled to understand as the searing pain dug its claws deep into his back.
"Don't suppose you'd tell me if he had ... Might have killed your two friends ... did he? But we'll find out in good time."
Caesar wondered how long he'd last like this.
"Twenty gallons. You don't know what a difference that would make.
A sound escaped Caesar's mouth of its own accord.
"Pity about all that lead you had. Might have made a bit from that, but I guess I'm too much of a good samaritan for my own good."
"What – you – mean?"
"Did I say you could talk?"
Given it away?
"Need a break anyway ... teach you a lesson while I'm at it."
Caesar felt himself dragged from the horse. His arms, which he could no longer feel, were tied uselessly behind his back. He fell.
When he came to, the trooper was sitting atop his chest, smoking a pipe and playing idly with a pair of shears.
"Got yourself a wife, mate?" said the trooper.
He snipped the shears gleefully at Caesar's face, but a thought came over his countenance and he spun around.
"What about the toes? Eany, meany, miney, moe ..."
Caesar heard two horses gallop past and a volley of cruel laughter.
"Too much attention from onlookers." The trooper leapt up, leaving Caesar breathless, and returned with something in his hands. “Nearly home now. Can't draw too much attention to my prize. Someone might get jealous ... and I want no more of your squealing.”
Caesar's world went black.
"You get the bag."
The trooper lived by the sea in a small country town. Going by the sounds and the smells, this was all Caesar could rightly deduce. He had struggled the whole way to maintain his consciousness and a will to live, but for some reason the idea of the loss of his fortune seemed to have numbed him. His mind could think of nothing but escape. The gold could wait.
A rough hand grasped the top of his bag and yanked it off – along with a good portion of Caesar's hair.
"Cuppa?"
Caesar tried to open his eyes. Lamp light on a white wall came to him as a deep orange blur. He was sat in a chair, arms bound behind his back, and a figure was standing before him.
The trooper pressed the scalding tin mug into Caesar's lips and the burning tea tore into his bloody mouth. The trooper finished by emptying the rest, all at once, down his prisoner's bare chest.
"Whoopsy daisy," he sang.
Caesar grunted involuntarily from the pain while his head snaked about of its own accord, as if attempting to escape its own body.
"Awe ... look at that. Say ... I never thought you could see a burn on a nigger, but you kind of can. Fascinating. Pink under there like the rest of us."
The trooper's face came near enough to feel breath.
"Now listen ... I'm all for emancipation, but while you're in my house my rules apply." The trooper leant further in, placing his ear to Caesar's gag like a doctor listening for congestion. “I feel an indignant wind coming from that wide nose of yours. Your essential bearing is going to need a little working on.”
"What you doing in there, Ned?" came a motherly squawk from somewhere on the other side of a door.
"Just having a friend over, mum," bellowed Ned.
"Why yeh back so early?" she clucked. “Why's this door locked. Yer not drinking again?”
"For fucks ... Keep your voice down," Ned whispered, half to himself, half to his mother. He cleared his throat and shouted: “I'm not fuck'en drinking.”
Somewhere a door shuddered.
"That's one more for the piggy bank!" she screeched. “I'm no going till yi've put a penny in.”
Ned fished around in his pocket, extracted a penny and slid it under the door.
"Yeh'd better not be abusing yer'sel in there boy!"
"Working."
After a volley of muttering and clip-clopping clogs she made herself scarce.
"She thinks I'm still on the even with the law," he whispered though a grin to Caesar's ear. Ned thrust his fists into his pockets, breathed out a sigh of open relief and began pacing around Caesar's chair. “A great ruckus you caused with that gun you gave to the Abbo. Well? Did you give it to him, or did he take it?”
Caesar said something muffled by the mess of raggs stuffed in his mouth.
"That gift was used to murder Messrs Plimpton and Carver. What do you think of that?"
Caesar said nothing.
"Good fellahs they were – and with my own gun."
Caesar felt some of his teeth come loose in his mouth, but he was already in so much pain it only seemed like a casual punctuation mark.
"When we rode down upon The Black Forest quamby we didn't take prisoners. An ugly job it was too."
The blurry figure paced before him.
"A horrible job, but it had to be done. For their own mercy, it had to be done. The pathetic skinny serfs can barely survive on their own as it is, so naturally the promise and temptation of the luxuries of the white man are more than they can stand. It's pathetic really. And Gipps – poor old, good old well intentioned governor Gipps – with his grand Christian ideas. You know I was originally stationed to protect them? The blacks? And I tried, I really did. Taught them the lord's prayer. Taught them the name of the king and his various anthems and they all just treated it as a joke. It was the manipulative behaviour I've come to expect from them. At the end of the day all they wanted was my flour and my mill and to laugh and mock at me while they planned to take it all. Very nearly lost my life out there last night. It was my idea to stay back at the site of the cull and to wait for their gun toting leader to return to discover the wages of his sin."
Ned ran a fingernail down Caesar's chest.
"Animals make their paths and stay with them. Any tracker knows that. Tulip thought it was a waste of time. Frankly I don't think he had the stomach for the whole affair – but he'd be happy to take my earnings if it worked of course. What gave him the idea you'd gone that way god knows. I'd given up waiting by the time we retaliated for that blackskin's attack on the squatters." Ned scratched his stubble. “You are supposed to be in Melbourne now with Tulip, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you the bad news. Until I find your friends and I have have my reward, you're not going anywhere.”