A Far Country

by John Fletcher

  ‘Leave them!’

  Jason stood rigid, hearing the scratch of breath over the back-drawn lips. He thought, he may shoot us anyway.

  The yellow-haired man must have thought so, too. His huge hand seized the muzzle of the rifle, forced it upwards.

  ‘I told you, no.’

  For a moment the young man struggled, then surrendered. He glared furiously at them, eyes hot. ‘We should get rid of ’em,’ he said to the yellow-haired man. ‘They’ll be nuthin but trouble, else.’

  ‘I said leave them.’ To Jason he said, ‘You get back in the hut until I decide what to do with you.’

  They were led back to the hut. Once again they were locked in.

  Jason remembered the cage at the edge of the cliff. He thought, all I ever do in this country is try to break out of gaol.

  Once again he sat down, back resting against the wall’s rough slabs. Breaking out would come later. Now there was nothing to do but wait.

  Asta sat in the house, hands clasped in front of her, ears hearing yet not hearing the words that Gavin directed in a furious monotone at her bowed back.

  ‘Why do you want them? Tell me that, at least.’

  ‘Not them. You can do what you like with the black one.’

  ‘Blake would have shot them both if I’d let him. You saying you wouldn’t have cared if it had been just the black one?’

  Asta hunched her head into her shoulders, not deigning to acknowledge such a question.

  ‘What will you do with him if I agree to keep him?’

  ‘Raise him as my own.’

  ‘To take Edward’s place.’ He had told himself not to say it but felt better with the words out in the open.

  ‘No-one will take Edward’s place,’ she said. It was true, yet Edward was dead, after all.

  ‘Then I don’t understand you.’

  She did not care whether he understood or not. What mattered was that she should no longer be alone in this arid land.

  ‘They may not want to stay‚’ Gavin said.

  ‘I will speak to him.’ I shall make him stay, she thought. How, she did not know.

  ‘They’re a pair of savages. Give them half a chance and they’ll cut your throat.’

  ‘They will not hurt me.’

  She believed it absolutely without knowing why.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he offered.

  Asta shook her head. ‘He will not speak if you are there.’

  It was strange how certain of the boy she was, knowing nothing of him. But I do know him, she thought. I have always known him.

  Asta went back to the hut, its secured door concealing who knew what future. She lifted the bar and went inside. The two youths crouched with their backs against the far wall. Light gleamed in their eyes as they watched her from the shadows.

  She said, ‘Perhaps you should start by telling me your names.’

  The faces as unmoving as the wall behind them.

  ‘Very well,’ she agreed pragmatically, ‘names later. Tell me, please,’ she said to the white boy, ‘how you came to be with the native people.’

  He ignored the question. He said, ‘We want to go back.’

  ‘You think they would have you back? After what happened?’

  ‘That had nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But you are white.’

  He glared his defiance. ‘They are my people.’

  She shook her head. ‘If you go back they will kill you.’

  Hatred spilled. ‘As you killed them, you mean?’

  ‘I do not deny it,’ she said. ‘As we killed them.’

  The eyes of the black youth moved between them as he tried to guess what they were saying.

  ‘Here you will be with your own kind, at least,’ Asta said.

  ‘My own kind?’ he repeated contemptuously. ‘That bloke with the gun was going to kill us.’

  ‘I shall deal with Blake,’ she promised.

  He watched her, his face hard, a hint of contempt on his lips. ‘Maybe I should kill him first,’ he said.

  ‘I wish no killing here,’ she said.

  ‘You going to keep us locked up?’

  ‘Your friend may go if he wishes.’

  The white face turned to the black, they spoke softly together.

  ‘If I stay he’ll stay,’ he said.

  ‘And do you wish to stay?’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘What is your name?’

  A pause. At length: ‘Jason.’

  ‘Jason …’ She tested it on her tongue. ‘And your friend?’

  He shook his head. ‘They don’t like people knowing their names.’

  ‘I must call him something.’

  Jason thought about it. ‘Call him Michael.’

  She went to the door, turned to look back at them. ‘If I leave the door open, will you run away again?’

  ‘One way to find out,’ Jason said, not in the business of making promises.

  ‘Very well.’

  She went out. Once again she left the door open. She walked across to the house without looking back.

  It was not much but it was, perhaps, a start.

  Alone on a hillock overlooking the sea, Nantariltarra wrestled with the spirits. He sat for the whole of one day and night and far into the next day, mind blank, eyes closed and unseeing. He had thought to summon visions that would tell him what he must do but had seen nothing. We are nothing, he thought, we know nothing.

  More and more he was convinced that the nunga were no more than the dust. For centuries they had lain undisturbed but now a wind had arisen that would blow them all away. A white wind, he thought. A deadly wind.

  Deadly it certainly was. There were eight dead out of a clan that numbered less than one hundred. He had known each of them; all the clan had known them. Five men, two women, one child, all henceforth nameless in accordance with custom. Their spirits accused not only the white men who had killed them but himself and the rest of the clan for having failed to prevent it.

  Eight dead. Plus the white boy upon whom he had pinned so many hopes. He too was gone, as dead as the rest. His name, too, could not be spoken.

  If we attack the kuinyo they will kill us, he thought, but what of it? By their raid on the camp they have already begun to kill us. If we are to die, whatever we do at least let us fight. It was easily said but in his heart he was afraid of the white man’s power. What did the spirits want?

  He waited, eyes closed. Silence, darkness encircled him.

  Wait, he instructed himself. Listen. Guidance will come.

  Through the silence came a cry, faint and shrill.

  He focused, senses drinking the sound.

  It came again.

  Nantariltarra opened his eyes.

  A blaze of light flooded him. After so long in darkness his eyes should have been dazzled but were not. Clearly, calmly, they surveyed the sky over the sea. A tiny hatchwork of cloud against the blue. Against the cloud …

  A far dot, circling.

  Doubt trembled, wounding his certainty. Karrkawara, the storm hawk, was the totem of the Warree clan who lived on the far side of the peninsula, facing the setting sun. Why should it appear to a man of the Winderah?

  The circling dot swooped, a sudden lunge across the wind. It swung above him as he sat, legs folded beneath him, facing the wrinkled sea. He heard the rush of air in its wings. Its reed-thin cry filled his head.

  Sharp wings swept back, fierce eyes watching the ground, the hawk swung across the fish-scale glitter of the sea. A silent shape hurtled up to meet it. From a crevice in the cliff face, Winda the owl rose to challenge the hawk that had invaded its space.

  Long ago Winda was formed like a man. He lived in a cave overlooking the beach. One day when he was hunting he found the children of Tuketja, the curlew, who in those days was also shaped like a man. Being hungry he ate them. When Tuketja returned and saw what had happened he was angry. He laid his complaint before Nantha, the red kang
aroo who was the totem of the Winderah people. Nantha pitied Tuketja and laid a curse upon Winda so that henceforth he would be able to leave his cave only at night. Men are frightened of the night and the quinkan who hunt at night, so Winda turned himself into a bird, the owl, that also hunts only at night.

  Now here Winda was, hunting in broad daylight.

  Winda the bird of Narungga tradition.

  Karrkawara the storm hawk from the west, the direction from which the white youth had said his people came.

  Winda challenged Karrkawara and chased him away.

  Slowly Nantariltarra uncoiled his legs and stood. He had been sitting for a very long time yet stood without touching the ground with any part of himself but his feet. Nantha, Winda, Karrkawara, his dreaming filled him.

  The sign he had sought had been given him. They would watch the kuinyo, learn the pattern of their movements. When they were ready they would find Mura and bring him back. They would kill the white youth without name. They would kill the pindranki—the white women—and the men who guarded the sheep. Finally, they would kill the yellow-haired men who led the white clan. The wisdom of the dead kuinyo would enter them. They would learn everything there was to know about them, their ways and dreaming.

  They would drive them away, as Winda had driven away Karrkawara. The death of the kuinyo would restore life and hope to the clan.

  THIRTEEN

  Shearing time.

  At Whitby Downs, named by Gavin after his Yorkshire birthplace, a group of riders and dogs was driving a mob of sheep across the plain towards the shearing sheds constructed from the bent branches of felled trees. The midday sun lay like a brand upon the grass, the cluster of buildings, the slowly moving flocks. Everywhere was noise: sheep bleating, dogs yapping, stock whips cracking, men yelling. The air was filled with dust from a thousand hooves rising in a golden haze into a sky bleached white by heat.

  Ian Matlock had ridden over to help. When the shearing was finished at Whitby Downs the team would move south to Bungaree.

  ‘Bungaree?’ Gavin had been amazed that Ian had chosen an aboriginal name. ‘How come you picked a name like that?’

  ‘Sinbad told me it means “him my country”,’ Ian said. ‘I liked that. Him my country now and the sooner the blacks accept it the better for all of us.’

  Although by the way they had been behaving—constant pin-prick raids, sheep speared, an unsuccessful attack on one of the shepherds—it seemed unlikely that would be soon.

  Ian turned in his saddle to look at his cousin. ‘Those two you picked up on the raid. I reckon you’re crazy to keep them.’

  Gavin would not admit it was Asta’s idea: no woman told him what to do, at least not officially. He said, ‘Got them digging a well. They’ve been no trouble.’

  ‘Nor will they be till the day they cut your throat. Then it’ll be too late.’ Ian brushed flies from his face. ‘They won’t trust us either, after what happened. In my book that makes them dangerous.’

  They rode for a while in silence, watching the ambling flocks, the darting, pink-tongued dogs, the boiling clouds of dust.

  ‘Do they ride?’ Ian asked.

  ‘Had a job getting either of them into the saddle,’ Gavin confessed. ‘Jason—the white one—kept falling off to start with but he’s getting the hang of it now. The blackfeller looks like he’s a natural.’

  Ian grunted sceptically. ‘Make sure they don’t steal the horses, that’s my advice to you.’

  Ian was right; Jason trusted none of them, least of all Blake Gallagher. His hackles rose each time he saw the cocky strut, the glowering face, the ever-present gun.

  I’ll deal with that bastard one of these days, he promised himself.

  As for the woman …

  Jason did not know what to make of her. She was friendly but made him uneasy, too willing to invade his space. He could not see why she should be so interested in him. What was he to her?

  Uneasy or not, he had given up the idea of running away. As the woman had said, he had nowhere to run. To the men here, Mura was black before he was a person. The clan would think of Jason in the same way.

  If he went back to them now, after what had happened during the raid, they might decide to kill him because he was white.

  Blake and his father stood over the box press, loading fleeces into bags for shipment to Adelaide.

  It was hard work and sweat streamed off them. Blake secured the mouth of the bag with twine. Together they lifted it out of the press and carried it to join the growing stack inside the shed.

  ‘Should fetch a right fair price in Adelaide,’ Hector said.

  Blake grunted. ‘If it ever gets there.’

  They walked back to the press.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Jason and the blackfeller … Gavin should have let me get rid of the pair of ’em when we shot up the rest.’ Blake stretched the new bag within the press. ‘We’ll ’ave to do it sometime.’

  Hector rammed a folded fleece into the bag. ‘Maybe, maybe not.’

  ‘If it had been them as raided us, you reckon we’d just accept it?’

  ‘We ain’t black.’

  ‘Neither’s that Jason.’ A second fleece joined the first. ‘We could lose the whole clip.’

  ‘They’d never do it,’ Hector said.

  ‘You’d better be right, Da.’

  Hector thought about it. Blake might be right, at that. He said, ‘I bin wonderin’ why they was still ‘angin’ around …’

  Blake straightened. ‘Now you know.’

  ‘It makes no sense,’ Gavin said but was troubled, Hector saw.

  ‘We killed their mates, didn’t we?’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Get rid of ’em while we got the chance, that’s what I’m sayin’.’

  Gavin turned away, exasperated by the situation. Get rid of them, indeed …

  Whatever that was supposed to mean.

  Asta’s fingertip touched the line of scars on Jason’s chest.

  ‘Tell me about these.’

  Embarrassed, Jason drew back from her touch.

  ‘It’s the way they do things.’

  ‘Why?’

  He did not know how to explain the acceptance of pain, the test of courage. He said nothing.

  ‘Do you know why you were brought here?’

  How he resented the way she tried to strip him with her never-ending questions.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because I wanted it.’ She laughed. ‘Although that is not the real reason. You were shipwrecked, I think?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Always, when I was a child in Europe, I was taught that the sea repays its debts.’

  He stared at her, no idea what she was talking about.

  ‘I had a son, you see. He was drowned. It was the greatest pain I have known.’ She smiled at him brilliantly, stretched out her hand to touch his. ‘That is the reason you are here. To do the things he would have done, had he lived.’

  Her words alarmed him, seeming to lay claim to him. ‘I don’t want to do anything. The men brought me here, that’s all.’

  He saw she was not listening. Maybe he would have to run away, after all. Anything, rather than this.

  Two weeks of driving rain brought a break in the shearing when it was only half-finished. Ground that had been as hard as granite turned to liquid. Work was impossible.

  ‘What a country …’

  Gavin stared fuming at the lashing downpour.

  ‘It will be the death of us, I dare say,’ Asta agreed. Yet privately she did not believe it. The death of others, perhaps, but herself … It would take more than this land to kill her. She stood at her husband’s side and stared out through the open doorway, seeing the sheen of standing water reflecting clouds that sagged grey bellies almost to the ground, the landscape half-drowned in mist.

  You hate me, she told it. But I shall beat you. Never doubt that.

  If needs be she would fight
it, as with new-found determination she knew she would fight the circumstances of her life, and she would win.

  The men sat around grousing, watching the rain. Devil’s weather, Asta thought. Everyone idle and out of temper, everyone with plenty of time to dream up trouble. She watched Blake in particular but nothing happened and eventually the rain stopped. The sun came out. She might have been imagining things but knew she was not. Trouble, now or later; she could smell it.

  The wet land steamed, new grass shone like emerald fire. Ian Matlock, who had gone home when it started to rain, returned, Mary and Alison with him.

  He clumped into the house, careless of the rich mud clinging to his boots.

  ‘There’s water in all the gullies and the tanks are full,’ he said. ‘Pity it didn’t wait until we finished shearing, though.’

  ‘At least the fleeces will be clean,’ Gavin pointed out. ‘Just like at home.’

  In north Yorkshire they had washed the fleeces on the sheep’s backs, standing with them in the ice-cold streams of the northern moors. For this year at least they would be able to do the same here.

  ‘Doesn’t mean we should stop drilling wells, though,’ Ian said. He sipped the glass of spirits that Gavin had put into his hand. ‘How are those two boys coming on?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Under supervision?’

  Gavin shook his head. ‘They’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘More’s the pity.’ Ian up-ended his glass.

  ‘Two pairs of hands,’ Gavin pointed out. ‘Not costing me a penny, either.’

  ‘You’ll live to regret it.’

  ‘We can’t turn our back on the white lad,’ Gavin protested. ‘He’s one of us, after all.’

  ‘You’re wrong. Have you seen the scars he’s got?’

  ‘The scars don’t signify—’