He said out loud, ‘I will pray, Lord. I will pray for the Aboriginal people. I care for them. I do, Lord. There is nothing to forgive. I really haven’t done anything wrong, just . . . Well, it is difficult. You know. You’ve got to think of the long term. I care for them. I do.’
Tom Jeferies watched the small crowd disperse. Two men walked by and they called up to him. ‘Pray for the Sergeant and his men!’
Tom waved at them and made a sign of the cross.
Out of town, the tracker squatted next to the tracks he had found. One pair of prints indicated a slight person who moved lightly, a second pair was a stronger stride. Both prints were narrow; perhaps they could be young boys but more likely were women. He saw the marks on a tree where the wood had been torn and sugarbag pulled and he knew he had the right trail. He found a camp only half a day out and in the dust was a torn bark pouch with sixpence in it.
Perez questioned the tracker, nodding in courtesy before he began. ‘Mr Ferdinand, are there signs that one woman is captive, being dragged? I presume it is not possible to tell from the footprints whether the person is black or white?’
Ferdinand looked at the sun and thought about what his family was doing down south and whether the fish were running in schools in the shallows along the beach, and what kind of net he should be making.
‘The lady, sir, walking that direction—’ he pointed ‘—chasing a goanna animal lizard, now she coming back to the colour woman.’
On the third day of riding, Constable Linklater reached the ravine country with its serrated orange ridges and armies of spinifex spears. Here, men hunted wealth and played with survival, water was as elusive as gold. The track ran alongside Halls Creek, at this time of the year a mostly dry watercourse. In the evening he rode into the town, a collection of mud brick and slapped-up tin dwellings. The police station stood out, a solid sprawling whitewashed building. Constable O’Byrne sat in a central courtyard mending a bridle. He was a large man with a blustery face of big cheeks but his lips were a tight line and his eyes folded to slits against the weather and his work.
‘Lock-up’s full,’ were his first words as Linklater approached. ‘Black ’uns waiting to suck on government money.’
Linklater handed him Perez’s letter.
O’Byrne scowled. ‘I ain’t going nowhere until I get this here lot to Derby.’ He flicked his finger to the back of the police station.
Linklater didn’t want to look. ‘Anyone else around?’
‘Timmins is doin’ a round, be back in a day or two.’
‘Guess I’ll wait.’
‘Nurse said that baby there at Cicada was stillborn. Not much yer can do, she said.’
O’Byrne lifted up the bridle to examine his work. Linklater hesitated, wanting to ask O’Byrne for more detail. Instead, he walked away.
The town had a small hospital, nurses’ quarters, a post office and a hotel. There was no mining in the town anymore, just panhandling at the creek. Miners camped out, a day’s horse ride, at Ruby Creek or Mary River mines. They came back weary from the long hours of pulling buckets of dirt from the mineshafts and the strain of living in hope of stumbling over a nugget or spying a dull yellow vein they could claim.
Linklater camped near the creek bed. On the second evening he sat on the veranda of the hotel as the sun set and an army of stars marched out of the depths of the deepening sky. He watched four men walking up the road. They were filthy and thin. They passed him with expressionless faces as though he didn’t exist, or no-one existed, just the path they were travelling, which went straight to the bar. Linklater waited a few moments then followed them.
Inside, the darkness of every shadow was amplified by the low light of the swinging kerosene lamps and the air was thick with cigarette smoke and dirt. That evening, like most, no-one cared for anything other than throwing the rum down their throats.
‘Whose claim yer come to protect?’ The voice had a thick Russian accent.
‘I am looking for some fellas, strappers, from Cicada Springs.’
No-one replied but the place was suddenly quiet.
Linklater spread his arms along the bar. He smiled at the faces of the grime-covered men. ‘I heard there was a damn fine singer in one of the station hands who came here for a bit, sings an Irish song.’
‘Ever’one sings an Irish song here,’ someone grunted.
A big man wearing a shirt that stuck to his body like it was slowly becoming his skin let loose with a loud mournful ballad. Someone pulled the stool from under him and he fell with a thud onto his backside on the floor. He roared and the others laughed. Another handed him a mug of rum and there was no more singing. The conversation started again and the people of Halls Creek forgot the constable was there.
Linklater edged over to where the four men were sitting, scowling into their rum in the corner.
One tow-headed man stood up. He was a young man, blond if it weren’t for the dirt. ‘We ain’t done anything wrong.’
‘Nah, didn’t say you have. But there’s conjecture ’bout what happened out there. I’m lookin’ for advice.’
One of the others, his face ruddy in the lamplight, shook his head. ‘Place is evil—stay away. Big crow will come down and eat yer.’
Three of them laughed; their teeth were dirty and stained with tobacco. The fourth, the young one, sat down, silent.
Linklater felt sorry for them. ‘You fellas should get outta here.’
They turned away from him, except for the young one, whose eyes flitted across Linklater’s face and then back to the table to the mug of rum in front of him.
Linklater went outside and sat on a rock in a mound of rubble at the veranda’s edge. After half an hour or so the blond man came out. He took a step forwards and back again, looking down the road then back inside the bar. Linklater decided he wasn’t more than a kid. He upended a small barrel and put it next to him, out of the shadow of the hotel. ‘Have a seat.’
The kid sat and looked at the sky.
Linklater said, ‘Not finding much of the yeller stuff?’
‘Nah.’
Near the creek a lantern glimmered, the cicadas whirred and in the faraway hills a chain turned, clunking a bucket upwards in a shaft.
‘Would rather be back on the station.’
‘What’s stopping yer?’
‘Nothin’ right there anymore. Scary place. Snakes are waiting for yer. Birds are waiting fer yer. The whole place . . .’ He stood up. ‘Them crows they followed me here. I can’t get ’em away. Can’t get it out of my head. I can’t get outta here ’cos every time I try something goes wrong. An’ the priest, like, he came. I says to him I wanna tell you something, I wanna confess something. He says son, that’s why I am here, so you can clear your sins. I says my sin is that I saw something and I didn’t tell anyone. I tell him what I sees and he says God gives justice and God has given justice and that man has been given justice and it’s up to him in his death to face the Lord and justice. Like he knows more ’n’ me about what happened there. And I say I saw a man kill a man and no-one is telling. He says no, it was justice, that man there that you talk about, we know who he is, he has had justice from a Christian. I ask him, like, can a Christian act for God and he said sometimes that has to be.’ He stopped and scuffed the dirt with his boot.
‘What did you see?’
‘He was a good horseman, black or white or muddy, he was a fine horseman. The boss, y’know, he couldn’t even ride a horse, but he was a Christian. Is a Christian better ’n’ a man who knows how to ride a horse proper? He was real good with them cows. I watched ’im, y’know, and I knew what to do. He didn’t have—’ the man paused ‘—no airs.’
The four points of the Southern Cross were bright in front of them and the cascade of the Milky Way seemed to be pouring its stars to earth somewhere out there in the desert. The moon, almost full, was high in the sky. Linklater heard the howl of the dingoes. He wondered about that, the howl of the dingoes, and he didn’t l
ike it, right now.
‘What was his name?’
‘Jurulu. Them blackfellas called him skin name, like, Jawandi. He wasn’t from these parts but they took him, y’know; he had relations, right, ’cos of his skin. He told me it was the same ever’where, he had relations ’cos he knew his place, right. Ain’t that somethin’? You kinda got this pattern ’bout yer relations all over the earth, you might never have met ’em, hey, but they’re yer brothers and sisters, like.’
‘What happened?’
The young fella sat and rocked forwards on the barrel. He closed his eyes. ‘Boss William woke us at the horse yards ’n’ he says that that man Jurulu, he done wrong. We keep saying what wrong? Then Mr Lidscombe he say he raped a white woman. We didn’t know what woman, wouldna ever thought his wife, his wife with baby, y’know. Ever’one got real mad. We wanted to kill him then and there. And I guessed I’d seen him talk to Miss Emily, never seen any blackfella talk to a white woman. I never seen anything else but that morning I figured it was enough to prove that maybe he could do that bad. So they marched him up to the homestead. Boss William says he wants to chain him up till the police could come, but we are walkin’ and he is getting madder and madder, and he marches him over to this tree, right, one of them old trees, ’n’ he says hey fella your baby is there under the ground dead, dead like you will be. That’s when I kinda twigged and I was hurtin’. Then the head stockman—you know his name, he is a strong fella, John—has his rifle out and he walking towards Jawandi pointing the rifle and I am scared. I am thinking I gotta step in here, that John fella is outta line, then Boss William he grabs the rifle from John and first I am relieved ’cos I figure he gonna stop it all and chain this bloke up. Instead he aims and he shoots him.’
‘William Lidscombe shot Jurulu?’
‘Yeah, and ever’one laughed. They laughed. Trevor, his brother, he walks away. He coulda done something.’
Linklater was silent.
‘So then ever’thin’ goes wrong, nothing works, ever’one is cross, the missus she disappears and all the camp, all gone, then Trevor and John they chase the missus, and I figure I don’t figure it, I jes’ wanna get out of the place.’
The strapper stopped. They were quiet and after a while his breathing slowed as they looked at the stars.
‘Thank you for telling your story.’
The young bloke looked up at Linklater. ‘Was it right for me to tell yer? Was it right? Were Boss William wrong?’
‘You were right to tell me. Killin’ people is against the law till the truth is known.’
The young fella wiped his arm across his eyes. ‘Where you going?’
‘Cicada Springs, work things out. You get outta here, nothing but fool’s dust here.’
‘Yep.’ He stood up straight. ‘Boss William he is a strong man but he ain’t right here and these blackfellas they have magic to break yer if they really want. I reckon they breakin’ ’im bad.’
The hunting party trotted along the road leading to the coast.
The tracker and the local Aboriginal man travelled between the road and the river, weaving between the trees, their gaze on the ground, or sometimes on a lowly branch with a torn leaf, or a movement or sound of an animal. On the second day, Ferdinand, the tracker, had a message for Perez. ‘The two womans are following by three horses.’
Perez tried to make sense of it. So the white woman was alive but not tied. Why didn’t she make for a travellers’ camp? A threat can be as good as chains. Bayliss must be following, leading two horses, maybe for the women. Bayliss, of course, didn’t want to be associated with the Aboriginal woman. They must be heading to meet at some safe point, make out the Aboriginal woman was a servant and force Emily Lidscombe to pretend to be his consort or perhaps his sister and escape on a ship from Broome. Perez became so certain of this line of thought and preoccupied with making the details fit that he did not ask the tracker any additional questions.
Ferdinand found English difficult. He wanted the words to be perfect and he didn’t know how to say clearly that with the three horses were one muscular white man, an old man leaving signs of maban magic and a boy who kept throwing a short spear.
The following day under an early morning sky brushed with waves of feathered clouds, Ferdinand put his hand up to halt the party. He walked in increasing circles, his eyes on the ground and the leaves and twigs of bushes, but his thinking was of the sea, of spearing fish and cooking them on the shore.
‘The horses travel that way.’ He pointed south-west. ‘Womans walking that way.’ He pointed north-west.
Perez considered this. The parting of ways fitted in with the likely story; it was an age-old tactic. But where were the two parties going to meet? He considered how heartless Bayliss must be to force the women to walk.
‘We follow the women,’ said Perez.
They left the river and headed north-west. Perez feared the loss of the certain water supply that the river gave. He ordered one of the officers to stay close to the full-blood.
Initially the men made a good pace through the country. Ferdinand informed Perez that the displaced leaves and scuffed steps of bare and bush-sandaled feet were only two to three days old. Perez scanned the tracks and signs Ferdinand pointed to but he could not see anything in the jigsaw of loosened foliage and stones. He undid the top button of his coat to ease the heat a little and checked that the bristly fabric sat square on his shoulders and that the seams were straight and in line with the stripe of his trousers. He kept his back straight and insisted the officers did the same. He had no such traction with the blackfellas and it bothered him, the way they rode loose-stirruped and slouched.
The country was rough and when it came to the rises and bluffs of sandstone they had to wait, circling their horses or sitting under what shade they could find, until the tracker came back with information. Only the local Aboriginal really knew the area, what country they might be walking to and what might be influencing the women’s direction. The tracker would confer with him in broken kriol, the language of a few common words.
At the evening meal on the fifth day Perez took a wooden stool and joined the blackfellas who sat cross-legged in the dust. The Aboriginal men ate noisily, using their hands to ladle the stew from the plates into their mouths. Perez handed the tracker a fork. Ferdinand smiled and laid the fork carefully on the ground. Perez gazed into the fire and back to the faces of the men who seemed to be ignoring him, concentrating on their food. He couldn’t think what to say. He felt the skin of his forehead and temples tighten. He had never believed what others had said, that you had to sit with them.
Perez put his stool aside and sat in the dust. He waited for a moment when Ferdinand was not chewing, for a polite time to ask a question. ‘Children? You have children?’
Ferdinand nodded and continued eating.
‘And you, Ned?’
The full-blood did not respond.
The night was quiet, just the occasional spit of the coals. Ned ran his tongue across his plate and looked over to the big fire where the pot of stew sat.
Perez tried to brush the dust from his trousers but instead it settled into the cloth. He made a little harrumph sound in his throat and smiled at the men. ‘I want to say that I like you both.’
The full-blood put his plate on the ground. His forehead was heavy above his eyes, his lips protuberant and his nose large and flat. Ferdinand’s face, by comparison, was gentle with lighter skin, straight nose and eyes of a grey-green colour. Perez thought it would take one or two more generations for the blackness, the Aboriginal features, to be hidden, to be diluted sufficiently. He felt sick at the intermingling that would be required. There should be a better way.
‘Ned, do you know this woman we are hunting? This woman?’ Perez pointed into the darkness, the direction they were headed in. ‘We only know her name is something like Weary. She is from Cicada Springs near Halls Creek. Cicada Springs.’
Ned remained silent.
Perez
repeated himself, making the words slow and clear. He saw there was no sweat on the face of the Aboriginal man, just the dust, light on his skin in the firelight. Perez was close enough to look into his eyes, black and unyielding, flickering with the light of the fire. Perez saw the unevenness, the keloid of the scars on his chest where he had loosened his shirt, the cuts down his legs, the leanness and the lines of his muscles. He knew Ned could throw a spear and bring an animal down from a distance so great that most men would not be able to discern what type of animal it might be. Perez tried to stop the thought that he admired this man.
‘You know her?’
Ned did not reply or give any indication that he had heard.
Ferdinand stuck his plate in the sand and wiped it clean with a handful of coarse grains and a piece of grass. He lifted his chin towards Ned. ‘This man is Bunuba, the woman is Gidja.’
Ned waggled his fingers. The movement and the smile with it were almost imperceptible.
The tracker grinned and said, ‘Sometimes Bunuba and Gidja going to the same ceremony.’
‘Ceremony?’
‘Dancing. Ever’body dancing. Mans and womans.’
Perez frowned and was quiet for a little while looking at the red dirt on his boots. He pursed his lips hard then smiled and raised his head to look at the two men. ‘I like dancing too.’
‘Hey, hey.’ Ferdinand laughed and Ned nodded with a soft chuckle.
Perez beamed. ‘What is Gidja?’
‘That is colour woman’s people.’
‘Her tribe?’
Perez felt the skin on his face go cold and tight. They knew her tribe. What else did they know? Did they care she was a killer? He looked at the plates covered in sand close to Ned’s naked leathery black feet. Looked at his heavy brow and depthless eyes. He remembered the sentiment uttered by whimsical poets, sensible men even, that were was something of the savage in all men.
‘God help us,’ he muttered.
He looked to the other fire. The pale faces of the three policemen were turned towards him. He felt foolish. He stood and raised his voice, ‘That is clear then. Any allegiance with the person or those associated with her will be dealt with swiftly and harshly.’
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