‘Please, it’s Sarah,’ she said, accepting the paper. ‘What is it?’
‘A promissory note. You can stay here as long as it’s needed.’
She opened the letter and read it. ‘And what if that fellow turns up in the meantime?’
‘He’ll have to find somewhere else.’
‘Thank you. I’ll show it to Father later.’
Niall found himself searching her for any marks, bruising, though only her hands and face were exposed. There was nothing to see.
‘You might be back before you know it anyway,’ he said. ‘Who can tell?’
‘We’ll see.’
She began slowly walking away from the house with him following.
‘Those skulls on the fence,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember seeing them the first time I was here. I wonder …’
‘I couldn’t tell you anything about them,’ she said.
After an awkward pause where neither of them knew what to say, she asked, ‘What’s been happening with those sick men? Have they been moved yet?’
‘They have.’
She moved away from the verandah, her head down as if contemplating what was happening on their property.
‘That diggings. It’s an ordeal for a lot of people, isn’t it?’
‘For some. It hasn’t always been like this.’
They walked by the corner of the house and cast their eyes over what the settler Millicent had been able to carve from the bush. The act of wandering about, doing something, helped Niall relax and gave him something to talk about as opposed to wondering what he’d say next.
Whereas the house had been meticulously built, the outbuildings were cruder, perhaps made from materials the squatter had cut down and shaped himself or had others slap together for him. Only the fruit trees and English evergreens seemed comfortable in the cleared expanse around the house. It was a small defence against everything that grew and lurked beyond the crooked fence line.
‘It’s open here. A good spot,’ he said.
She threw him a glance as they walked. ‘Have you always been with the police, Sergeant?’
‘No, not always. I had a business once,’ he said. ‘And it’s Niall.’
A light smile flickered across her face. ‘What kind of business?’
He nodded at the bush beyond the property boundaries. ‘Cutting and selling timber.’
‘We had a small farm once,’ she said. ‘Further south. Just north of the ranges. Much tinier than our property here. It was too dry there though, too hard to make a living.’
They stopped by a coop where once hens must have been locked up at night.
‘No problem about it being dry here,’ he said wryly, watching her as she leant over trying to spy something, as if there might still be hens fossicking and fretting at the earth.
She smiled again.
There was a clay basin about twenty inches across dug into the ground for hens to drink from, and Niall tore away some weeds crawling into it.
They continued on until they reached the boundary of the cleared land. A wall of forest seemed impenetrable beyond. They stopped at the fence for a while, the line of clear sky to the west already edging closer.
‘Will you be able to tell me what’s happening at our farm?’ she asked.
He stared at the bush, amazed that anyone could subdue even a fraction of it.
‘I can do that. Would be happy to. I have to go out there today anyway,’ he said.
‘Will you be around the goldfield later on?’
‘For the time being.’
‘I mean, later today. This afternoon?’
He nodded.
‘Perhaps I could see you then, if you’re about. I’ll be at the stores to pick up some things. Perhaps you could tell me that everything is all right out on the farm.’
‘That’d be good.’
She relaxed and reached over to touch his arm. ‘It’s decided then. I’ll meet you this afternoon, say about three?’
‘All right. I’ll look out for you.’
‘You’d better go now.’
21
A welcome sun crept higher, warm enough to draw moisture from eucalypts reaching over the track. Rosellas swooped in front of Niall in blurs of royal reds, blues and greens. Perched among the very top limbs of an old dead tree, a squabble of sulphur-crested cockatoos protested his entry into the bush, flying off noisily to settle a short distance away, only to promptly repeat their performance as he rode closer again.
There was always something of interest in the forest even if there was also a vague feeling that he was somehow being watched. As he rode, Niall sometimes swung around to pierce a look into a thicket of bush or stare behind him, once waiting several long minutes to see if anyone was going to appear from a bend in the track.
Be careful now, his father had said that last time they were out poaching. And then when the gamekeeper appeared out of black night – it seemed to him now he must have been waiting for them – his father and brothers had taken to their heels, not one of them even turning to call him to hurry up or run back to help when they must’ve seen he’d been caught. It was his father’s fault he’d landed out here. But perhaps the magistrate had at least been right about one thing, something it had taken him a good long time to see. Out here he’d been given a second chance. And he almost laughed because he had one over his father. A convict sent to Australia, he was now a policeman. The old man could put that one in his pipe and smoke it.
He gave the horse a gentle dig in the ribs, sending it on its way again.
The sick had only been at Delaney’s farm a day, even less. But when he arrived near the farm he was taken aback by the presence of uniformed troopers he didn’t know. The first two stopped him, bailing him up when he was still a good hundred yards from the first fence. Beyond their shoulders and their horses he could see other men, again strangers, loitering closer to the dwellings.
‘Who are you blokes?’ Niall demanded.
‘We’re the commissioner’s special troops,’ the one who seemed to be in charge said. ‘I’m Constable Ramage.’
A gargantuan man, he came to Niall ahead of his fellows, raising a hand in the middle of the track.
‘And the other troopers? Who are they?’
‘It don’t matter to you who they are.’
Ramage’s hair was dark, long and unruly. There were fresh scratches on his face as though he’d just been dragged from a brawl. Two of the other troopers, whom Niall also didn’t know from Adam, came close by, making it clear no one was going to get past them if they didn’t want them to. They all looked to be spoiling for a scrap.
‘Special troops? Since when?’
‘Since yesterday. Any objections?’
The huge lead man was squeezed into a uniform way too small for him – they probably didn’t make them his size, Niall thought.
‘No. But if it’s all right with you fellows, I’m going to see how things are going with everyone over at the huts.’
‘And if it’s all right with you,’ Ramage replied with a sneer, ‘you ain’t.’
‘I’m a sergeant, you’re a constable.’
‘I ain’t wasting my breath on you.’
The trooper folded his arms across his barrel chest, pirate-fashion, and stared the sergeant down.
Niall held his gaze.
‘So the commissioner has you blokes looking after everything going on here?’
‘Here, and we’re helping with the circus on the diggings,’ Ramage answered, before realising that perhaps he’d volunteered too much information. His eyes hardened as his troopers moved closer to him, almost surrounding Niall’s horse. ‘You got one minute to leave.’
‘I’ll be talking with the commissioner,’ Niall said.
‘It don’t matter to me,’ Ramage answered. ‘Get lost.’
The troopers, all on foot, stood closer to Niall. His horse was edgy now, sensing something, fidgeting under its reins and sweating up.
‘Fa
ir enough,’ he said, wheeling his horse around so abruptly it forced two of the troopers to leap back in fright.
Before the troopers had time to even contemplate doing anything in response Niall was galloping away in the direction of the diggings.
So what were they up to here? Stanfield had said nothing to him about new troopers. It was reasonable he’d want no one wandering in or out of the property without good cause, but that shouldn’t have applied to him. Now there was another piece to the puzzle. This Ramage and the others would be at the circus tonight, but why and to do what? There were more than enough troopers on the diggings to take care of it.
As he let the horse fall back into a trot he was in two minds about what to do next.
After a few minutes’ riding he nudged his horse off the track and through low scrub, careful to keep his tracks to a minimum should anyone be following. And sure enough, after he was out of sight but still within earshot of the track, he heard horses jogging up from Delaney’s.
He stilled his horse and hoped it wouldn’t snuffle or move but it seemed to sense the danger and was every bit a statue. As the riding party moved along Niall caught flecks of red shirts and brown horseflesh through tangled scrub.
‘He’s a smart bastard,’ one of them was saying.
‘If he is he’ll stay on the diggings. We catch him out here again and no one’ll ever see him again.’
‘Ashes to ashes,’ a gruff voice laughed and the others joined in.
Three of them, Niall figured.
When he was certain the men had passed and weren’t heading back to Delaney’s he led his horse further into scrub until finding slightly higher ground where wild grass and spindly eucalypts grew. He tied the horse where it would be fine to be left for a while and slipped his rifle from the saddle ties. He’d never had to use it but he didn’t want to find himself without it if the time came. He marked a sapling so he knew where he’d have to turn back in for his horse later and began walking back up the track to the farm.
He kept alert for other travellers as he slowly made his way. Bracken was reclaiming the track in many places, though the traffic of the last few days had also taken some toll, with heavy carts and wagons furrowing ruts.
It was as though everything was rushing at him at once, he thought. It made some sense to have extra troopers helping out with the quarantine, but bringing them in for the circus was an altogether different matter when Row had his own men. From the little he knew of Row he didn’t seem the type who would want strangers interfering with his work. Meanwhile, Smales had dumped a fierce pile of belongings and equipment at the police huts, taking literally his instruction about gathering everything from Oriente’s. A sodden mess of wet canvas now sat dripping in a corner of a stores hut along with muddied clothes and blankets. It looked like they’d been dragged along behind whatever Smales had used to transport it all back to the huts, probably on purpose. There were also the two packing cases, each no more than a foot and a half square and shut tight.
He also pondered on what the irritable doctor had said about the water at Mosquito Creek being putrid. He’d have thought the floods would have washed away any rotten water harbouring sickness if that’s what the cause was, but in fact it could have forced diggers to look elsewhere away from their normal water supply, to one of the steadier billabongs or still creeks further away from the river. What many might once have been using as a dumping place for refuse, a toilet or a place dead dogs were kicked into, might now have become drinking water.
And it all took time to investigate.
He was getting closer to Delaney’s, slowing his pace and glancing about more cautiously till he decided to cut into bush and stay well out of sight over the last part of the journey.
He felt safe crossing through scrub. Snakes wouldn’t start moving till summer. Nor was he likely to be running into anyone else. There was fear of the countryside in people. They stayed huddled on the diggings or in camps nearby. Even on roads travellers pressed close together, trotting up quickly to join others if they thought there was even the slightest danger of being separated from their group. Bushrangers were partly the cause of it, despite being held mostly in check these days. But bolder, more organised bandits sometimes bailed up large groups of people on the main roads. He had heard of gangs patiently moving along their line of victims, systematically robbing them of everything valuable they owned with a polite, ‘Thank you, if you would care to hand over that gold watch in your pocket there’ or, ‘Most kind of you to part with that little nicety’.
Apart from them, however, there were also hatters who would shoot you as quick as look at you, and who you most definitely wouldn’t want to run into. But there was no chance of that out here, Niall thought. Other places yes, out here no.
It wasn’t just bushrangers causing the nervousness, or a fear of blacks coming to plunder and kill. It was mostly a dread of being caught in the bush alone, of night descending and a person being left defenceless, against what he didn’t even know. There was too much shadow in the bush at night, too much unseen rustling, moaning and calling, too much imagination and sleeplessness.
Picking his way through bush was slow but that was all right. When he glanced up sunlight streamed through the canopy. After all the bleak weather they’d had a day like this was almost a miracle.
And in his mind he kept turning back to Sarah and what that man was doing to the women. He wouldn’t mind giving Delaney a dose of his own medicine, let him see what might happen to people who thought they could take advantage of those weaker than themselves.
Every now and then he took his bearings, drawing on the map he had in his head. He had to listen, too, for any sound outside of the usual range. Standing stock-still he moved his head this way and that in different directions – west, north, east – trying to listen in to anything unusual.
Delaney’s was right where he expected it to be from this approach. Soon he could easily see the main hut and a trooper sitting at guard beside the front door. Delaney had done a good job, he thought again, clearing as much land as he had. Whatever else there wasn’t to like about him, his property put paid to the idea that all Irish were bone lazy.
Although it was hidden from his view, he knew he was about fifty yards wide of the track coming into the farm. Making sure there was always a good covering of foliage in front of him, he worked his way around the perimeter of the farm.
Presently he was able to get down on hands and knees and crawl his way forward to a rocky, granite outcrop, his rifle strapped across his back. From here he could see more clearly across to Delaney’s hut and outbuildings.
No one was likely to be on the lookout for him here but he wasn’t going to take any chances after what he’d already seen. Most of these remote places were like Macquarie Harbour: only one way in and one way out. Perhaps that was what Delaney saw in it; a geography that would work to his advantage this time.
Someone caught his eye then.
A trooper venturing from somewhere behind the main dwelling and one of the smaller sheds nearby, possibly the one Delaney kept his chickens in, was loping about with no real purpose. Smoke was rising from further behind the huts in the direction the man was heading.
Have to move, Niall thought, and he took a risk by raising himself and crossing into a lightly timbered fringe of bush.
By getting into a crouch he could manage a slow jog through the sparsest part of it, more slowly when he had to cut back to where cover was greater if he felt too exposed.
In no time he’d made forty, then sixty yards to the far west of the clearing.
From here he had a better view of the sheds closer to the main hut but not to where the smoke was coming from. He looked around him, back into the bush, and listened for voices, but there was nothing to hear, much less to see. The smoke was blowing higher now, rising plumes of dirty grey and sometimes black from behind the sheds. To get a clearer view he’d need to make a break across about thirty yards of open country into s
crub where he’d have a direct line of vision to the blaze.
Breathe in for a moment, he told himself. Catch your breath and stay calm.
He scanned the country left and right and it seemed clear. If whoever was attending the fire would stay there for a moment he was as safe as houses.
Holding his rifle firmly by his side, he ducked his head and ran, picking a spot to dive into. Before he knew it he was in cover again and hoped he hadn’t made too much noise doing it, his heart beating into his throat.
Recovering himself, he shifted on damp ground to peer through a break in foliage that was still hanging limp and wet. He heard a gust of laughter and then at least three different voices.
Wriggling to the reasonable cover afforded by the stout trunk of a eucalypt, he pressed his chin into earth and watched from under the low branch ahead of him.
There were three, four troopers. He could see them clearly enough, could see the look on their faces. At least one of them he’d met on the track earlier, the others he didn’t know. How many had Stanfield taken in?
He could feel damp seeping through the knees of his trousers, then at his thighs.
There was a fire, more smoke than flames, stoked with lengths of rotten timber. One of the troopers held a newspaper wide in two hands fanning smoke into his mates’ eyes and forcing them to dance around in escape. More laughter erupted as smoke chased the men whichever way they scampered.
With their larking about it was hard for him to see what was going on.
He glanced back across to the clearing and again to the main hut. There was nothing.
The smoky column of dense grey and black suddenly opened as if drawn back by ropes to reveal a white arm poking out from a pyre of logs, its hand clenching.
He saw then why they didn’t want anyone about. They were burning the dead.
The rest of the body became visible as several burning logs fell from the pyre, the corpse contorting itself as furious heat took hold. A leg raised itself to more laughter and horrified oaths, more again as the other arm cocked itself to make a point.
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