Band of Gold

by Deborah Challinor

  Gideon handed him a mug of coffee enhanced with a liberal splash of whiskey; he downed half in one go, and glanced up at the sun. It was around three, so he’d been underground for four hours. ‘When did the rain stop?’

  ‘About two hours ago,’ Gideon replied, peering down the shaft and waiting for Mick to appear.

  Rian nodded, and eased his aching back and shoulders. The heat certainly hadn’t abated, and the steam rising off the ground and the mullock heaps surrounding the neighbouring shafts gave the landscape a rather unearthly effect. As Mick’s dirty face appeared over the lip of the shaft, Gideon halted the horse on the whip, held it until Mick decanted himself, then detached the rope from its harness. The horse, having done the same thing thousands of times, turned itself around; Gideon reattached the rope, the horse plodded off along the worn path and the bucket descended, on its way back down to Ropata to be filled.

  A creaking of harnesses announced Daniel’s arrival with the cart, Haunui and Simon rattling around in the back. The splint had come off Daniel’s arm a week ago but it was still weak, so he’d been put in charge of driving the bullocks, a pair of docile, semi-somnolent beasts. Haunui and Simon jumped out, reached for their shovels, and began tossing arcs of washdirt into the cart. Rian watched for a few minutes, finished his coffee, then picked up his own shovel and set to. In twenty minutes the cart was full and they set off for the river, leaving Gideon behind to supervise Simon’s descent into the shaft. Hawk and Tahi were already at the Yarrowee’s edge working the long tom.

  Because of the rain the Malakoff Lead wasn’t as crowded as usual, but not everyone had been flooded out and the diggings were still reasonably busy. Rian nodded in response to hands raised in greeting, and wondered what Pierre was preparing for supper. He’d been bringing it out to the claim lately so they could keep working, and Kitty and Amber, and Leena and the children, often came with him to share the evening meal.

  Ahead he could hear the Yarrowee, in summer normally little more than a meandering stream, hissing and gurgling along, swollen and extended beyond its banks after the week’s downpour. The day before yesterday they’d had to move the long tom back from the river’s edge: instead of leaving the gold in the riffles, the current had simply swept it away, along with the washdirt.

  As they rounded a bend the river came into sight, a dirty brown snake of water bringing with it debris and foam from upstream. As usual its edges were lined with diggers bent over cradles and long toms, and the odd low flume temporarily abandoned over water that was for now far too deep and swift. Daniel brought the bullocks to an untidy halt, and everyone got off, boots sending up small dollops of mud.

  Rian plodded across to watch as Hawk shovelled washdirt into one end of the long tom and Tahi walked along its length, picking out any large pieces of gravel carried along by the water that might damage the sieve. What collected in the tray at the other end was clean gold.

  ‘Much in this lot?’

  Hawk grunted without looking up. He’d removed his shirt, and his skin was glistening with sweat. ‘No sign of bottoming out yet.’

  ‘Shall I take over?’

  Hawk glanced at the pile of washdirt at his feet still to go into the long tom. ‘After this.’

  Rian took off his hat and fanned his face. The leaden clouds beyond Black Hill had darkened even further and it was raining again to the north, the smell of it travelling on the warm wind.

  Soon, the cart was empty and Tahi and Daniel were ready to return to the shaft. Hawk sat on the riverbank to rest his aching back, Mick began the delicate job of removing the washed gold from the riffles in the collection tray, and Rian took a long draught of unpleasantly warm water from his bottle, then started on the heap of washdirt. The long tom was set parallel to the river’s edge, a foot or so into the water to catch the current, which meant he had to stand at the head of it with his boots submerged, but he didn’t mind because at least his feet were cool. He began to establish a rhythm, bending first to the left to scoop up a shovelful of washdirt, then swinging it to his right and dropping it neatly into the long tom, being careful not to overshoot the mark and tip any of the precious gold-bearing ore into the river. After a while he became aware of little more than the fluid movement of his muscles and his clothes sticking sweatily to his skin.

  Which is why he got such a shock when the ground suddenly began to vibrate beneath his boots and a rumbling noise seemed to rise straight out of the earth. Alarmed, he looked up to see Hawk and Mick staring at him. Earthquake?

  Then the rumbling grew to a roar, and a torrent of water, mud and small boulders burst around the narrow bend in the river, and swept away everything in its path.

  Hawk felt himself tumbling over and over, but still he held his breath, feeling the skin on his torso and arms rubbing raw as he scraped against rock and riverbed and branch, praying that he would find air before his lungs burst. Then his scalp felt afire and he was hauled upwards by his hair and out of the watery maelstrom. He reached out and grabbed at whatever had saved him.

  ‘Jaysus, mate,’ Mick gasped, as Hawk wrapped a muscular arm around his throat.

  Hawk let go and pulled himself further out of the torrent, draping himself over the overhanging bough to which Mick was clinging.

  ‘Where—’ Hawk exploded into a fit of coughing, then vomited up a ribbon of dirty water.

  ‘He should have been just behind us.’

  Hawk coughed again, and spat. The water level was beginning to subside now, and rapidly. A minute ago it had reached his armpits—now it was only waist-height. A flash flood.

  ‘He’ll have got out further downstream,’ Mick said, sounding more hopeful than confident, and cleared his nose into the water. ‘Be walking back by now.’ He glanced at Hawk’s shoulders. ‘You’ve a few good scrapes on your back, so you have.’

  Hawk wasn’t even aware of them. ‘Did you see him after we went into the water?’

  Mick shook his head. Despite his positive comments, his face was white with shock and dismay. He pushed his dripping hair back off his face. ‘Take a look?’

  Hawk slid off the bough and dangled his legs until his feet had safely touched solid ground. Mick followed and, without letting go of the branch, they made their way towards the bank until they were out of the pull of the current. As they stood and watched, the water level dropped another foot, leaving the ground strewn with branches, small rocks, plant matter, bits of broken cradle and diggers’ gear, and scummy foam. Around them diggers themselves were hauling themselves from the water, stunned at what had just occurred. Two bodies were visible, one face-down on the far bank, and one floating down the river towards them.

  Hawk estimated that he and Mick must have travelled with the wall of water at least 500 yards down the river, as they were now nowhere near where they had set up the long tom. With cold dread settling in his belly, Hawk raised a hand to his eyes and peered across at the body lying on the bank. It was hatless and shirtless, but from here he couldn’t tell anything more.

  A handful of bedraggled diggers stood gingerly in the shallows, apparently waiting for the body in the river to wash up. Hawk watched as Mick strode past them, up to his knees in water, then turned the body face-up. He signalled a negative to Hawk, then dragged it by one limp arm out of the river and onto the muddy bank.

  He shook his head as he approached Hawk, who pointed across the river at the other body.

  ‘Current safe in the middle yet, do you think?’ Mick asked.

  Hawk shrugged, and together they made their way carefully across, armpit-deep in water that was filled with mud and floating debris.

  The body was lying on its face but the head was turned to one side, and before they even got close Hawk and Mick saw that it wasn’t Rian. They both let out deep breaths of relief. This unfortunate digger had been bearded, although he possessed only part of his beard now, as his right lower jaw had been torn off. His eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the mud that had become his final resting pla
ce. Near his nose was embedded a small nugget of gold. Mick crouched, dug it out and slipped it into the man’s trouser pocket.

  They recrossed the river, and Hawk sent Mick running back to the claim to fetch the others while he began to walk back along the bank searching for Rian, but before Mick had gone far he met everyone else, piled into the cart, coming the other way.

  Daniel reined in the bullocks, and Simon called out, ‘Is it true, there’s been a flash flood?’

  ‘’Tis,’ Mick shouted, ‘and we can’t find Rian!’

  All around them streams of diggers were heading for the river, and several stopped to listen while Mick gave a very abbreviated version of what had happened, until Daniel told him to get in and finish telling them while he drove on.

  ‘He will just be further downstream,’ Gideon said. ‘You say there are men pulling themselves out of the water everywhere. He will just be walking back.’

  ‘He might not even have gone down as far as you and Hawk,’ Simon suggested. ‘He might even have only gone a few yards and then managed to get out.’

  ‘Ae, he might just be sitting there on the bank where the long tom was, wondering what is taking you so long,’ Ropata added.

  Mick looked at them, staring back with hopeful faces and trying to reassure themselves that nothing bad could have happened to Rian, and he couldn’t tell them. He couldn’t tell them how incredibly powerful the torrent of water had been, and he couldn’t tell them that it had carried within it rocks that could smash a man’s head open like a rotten pumpkin, and he couldn’t tell them how once it had dragged you under it was only luck that spat you out again.

  But he felt Haunui gazing directly at him, and saw that somehow Haunui knew, and he suddenly couldn’t meet the older man’s eye.

  Haunui turned to Simon and said quietly, ‘Go and let Kitty know what’s happened. Stay with her. Don’t let her come out here.’

  By the time they reached the river it seemed that every man on the Ballarat diggings had arrived. They couldn’t get near the water’s edge, and Hawk was nowhere to be seen. When they located him an hour later, two more bodies had been recovered from the river. Nobody had seen a man answering to Rian’s description, dead or alive.

  At five-thirty, Hawk said, ‘We need to tell Kitty.’

  She sat at the table at Lilac Cottage, a cold cup of tea in front of her, her back as rigid as though a rod of iron were lashed across her shoulders. Simon sat opposite, pushing around a slice of the spiced fruit billy bread that Maureen had brought across and which Kitty had refused to touch. Amber was huddled on the daybed cuddling Bodie, who for once was allowing herself to be excessively petted.

  Kitty had repeatedly made Simon tell her what he knew, but as it wasn’t much they’d been silent for some time, Kitty sitting whitefaced and tight-lipped. Initially, as predicted, she had wanted to go to the river and help with the search, but Simon had convinced her to stay by telling her that she needed to be at the cottage in case Rian staggered home under his own steam, exhausted and disoriented. He thought this highly unlikely, but it was preferable to the idea of her witnessing the extraction of Rian’s pale, lifeless body from beneath some overhanging bank miles downstream, or from several feet of stinking, sucking mud. But he wouldn’t be dead, of course. He could well be lying hurt somewhere, but he wouldn’t be dead.

  Amber leapt up and opened the door. ‘They’re here, Ma!’

  Kitty hurried to the door and moved Amber aside, then mutely stepped out of the way to let in Hawk, Daniel and Haunui. A quick study of their faces told her that the news wasn’t good, and her heart felt once again gripped in a fist of ice. For a short while, sitting at the table, she had managed to convince herself that everything that was happening was nothing more than an exceptionally unpleasant and unwelcome dream, that if she sat still enough and said nothing, it would eventually stop and she would wake up. And that had worked for a little while, but then Simon had started pushing around his piece of cake and the tines of the fork had made irritating, intrusive noises on the plate, and then she’d begun to think she could hear the bits of dried fruit in the cake squeaking and scraping over the porcelain, and by then the bubble she’d fashioned around herself had been punctured and little snippets of what he’d said had started creeping into her thoughts again. And now here were Hawk and Haunui and Daniel, and they’d never been able to hide anything from her when it came to Rian.

  They all looked exhausted. Hawk had someone else’s shirt on. It was too small for him, and he must have hurt himself because the back was stained with watery blood.

  He touched her shoulder. ‘Kitty, you should sit.’

  ‘No.’

  So Hawk sat instead. ‘We have searched thoroughly up and down the river bank for two miles from where we were working. There is no sign of him.’

  ‘So he must have been swept farther down than that,’ Kitty said simply.

  ‘Yes, he must. We will go back soon, and keep searching.’ Hawk blinked up at her, and Kitty could see how terribly tired he was. ‘But Kitty, we cannot search tonight. It is overcast and there will not be enough light.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she said, and even she heard the desperation in her voice. ‘I’ll take a lantern.’

  Haunui and Daniel exchanged an uneasy glance; she was not going to be rational and calm about this, but then none of them had expected her to be. They hardly felt rational and calm themselves, but searching in the dark would be unlikely to help find Rian. Next, she would get angry, as she often did when she was frightened or upset, and Kitty angry could be extremely daunting.

  ‘E hine,’ Haunui said gently, ‘there are new…puddles? What do they call them?’

  ‘Billabongs,’ Hawk said.

  ‘Ae, from the flood, and some of the shafts near the river have filled with water. It’s too dangerous in the dark. You can’t search tonight.’

  Kitty stared at him. Suddenly she blurted, ‘He’s not dead, you know. Just because you haven’t found him yet, don’t start thinking that.’

  Slowly, Amber uncurled herself from the daybed and stood, her hair an untidy halo and her arms loose at her sides. In a very quiet voice, she said, ‘No one said anything about Pa being dead.’

  ‘No, Amber, dear,’ Simon said hurriedly, ‘He’s not dead, we just haven’t been able to find him yet.’

  Amber’s gaze swept from Kitty to Simon, then back to her mother.

  ‘Ma?’

  ‘We will find him, love, I promise.’

  But Amber’s face crumpled. She marched up to Kitty and punched her arm. ‘You swore on Bodie, Ma. You said Pa would be fine!’ Her voice shot up an octave. ‘You swore on Bodie’s life!’

  And she hit Kitty again. And again, until Haunui stepped in and picked her up and carried her away.

  The following morning, they were all out at the river just after dawn. Pierre had propped a sign in the bakery window saying Closed Until Further Notice, even though he, Leena and Maureen were inside cooking furiously to feed the search party, which had grown as word had spread overnight about Rian’s disappearance.

  Flora would have to be consulted some time during the day, but he had arbitrarily decided to dedicate himself to supporting the search, rather than baking for their usual customers. Anyway, he was too distraught to piddle about making fancy little breads and confectioneries—now was the time to be throwing meats and spices into pots to create hearty Cajun dishes that would line the bellies of searchers and give them the energy to find his beloved Rian.

  The men from Patrick’s syndicate had taken the day off to help search, and so had about two dozen other diggers whom Rian had become acquainted with over the past months. Wong Fu, too, had arrived with a dozen men from the Chinese camp. And even the majority of diggers on the Malakoff Lead who couldn’t spare the time removed their hats in a show of support as the search team moved towards the river.

  They searched all day until sundown, wading along the river, which had returned to a level only a little hig
her than normal for that time of year, risking bites from eels and stings from catfish spines while feeling under banks, poking about in the debris that had piled up along the river’s edge, and wading through the billabongs and tiny, shrinking tributaries the flood had left behind. The only places they didn’t—couldn’t—check were the flooded shafts close to the river. The water in those would eventually drain, but, according to old hands, that could take more than a fortnight.

  The following day they searched again, and the day after that. The river gave up two more bodies, grotesquely bloated and nibbled by fish and eels, but neither was Rian. Funerals were held for the dead, the undertaker’s black and glass-panelled hearse busy for two days in a row, ferrying its increasingly stinking cargoes along the Main Road to the cemetery on Creswick Road.

  Haunui kept a very close eye on Kitty. He had half-expected her to begin to wilt with grief as it became more and more obvious that Rian might never be found, that he might have been swept away to some secret little place where Hine-Nui-Te-Po would hold him in her arms for ever. But she wasn’t wilting. Instead she was angry, and she seemed, to Haunui at least, to be using her anger to drive herself on. She wasn’t eating enough, she was refusing to rest—according to Amber she was barely sleeping at night—and her distress was certainly showing on her face, which was pallid and drawn, her eyes underlined by deep purple shadows. She was making herself sick, and for once he didn’t know what to do.

  On the fourth morning after the flood, the search team was noticeably smaller, as most of the diggers who had gathered to help had gone back to work. But the Katipo’s crew naturally all mustered, and Wong Fu and three or four of his people also stayed on.