by Peter Watt
TWENTY-SIX
The silence of the hot mid-afternoon was shattered by the bloodchilling war cry of the Kalkadoon. A whispering shower of spears sang their lethal song and the swish-swish of boomerangs whirred death in the air.
‘At them, lads!’ Gordon cried above the shots and shouts from his column of troopers who milled as the deadly wooden weapons fell amongst their ranks. But they rallied quickly under Gordon's calm leadership and spurred their horses forward at the fleeting shadows in the thick scrub of the narrow river valley.
Please God, Gordon prayed, that Sergeant Rossi and Commanche Jack would react to the situation as he had briefed them to.
The naked Kalkadoon warriors fled before the mounted charge as it crashed through the spindly scrub. But suddenly the fleeing warriors propped and turned to face the charge with fresh spears fitted to woomeras. A second shower of hardwood spears whistled through the mid-afternoon air and a trooper screamed as one of the deadly barbed spears found flesh. He toppled from his horse as he grappled vainly at the slender shaft protruding from his thigh.
If Sergeant Rossi and Commanche Jack were not in position they were all dead men, Gordon thought frantically as he twisted to fire his revolver at the dark figure that had suddenly appeared at his stirrup. The warrior fell back and his spear clattered to the ground.
On the left flank of Gordon's patrol the massed warriors appeared like weeds to surround the troopers who had ridden recklessly into their ambush. The air was full with spears and boomerangs flying from two directions as the warriors joined with the ambushers who had waited patiently for the troopers to pursue them.
It appeared to the Kalkadoon that the white man had learned nothing of their tactics. The patrol was hemmed in by the thick scrub and the Aboriginal giants were able to engage them in close quarter fighting. It would be rifle butt and pistol against wooden shield and nullah.
The trapped troopers sought desperately for escape but the fleeting shadows became a massed wave as they surged forward from the vulnerable left flank of Gordon's patrol. The Kalkadoon came at them from the front, leaving the trapped patrol of fifteen troopers pinned against the river on one side as the warriors encircled them with whoops and battle cries of imminent victory. To be unhorsed in the melee meant certain death and the trooper who had been speared in the thigh knelt on the ground firing, loading his carbine with a desperation born of this knowledge.
Dear God! Gordon prayed with dying hope for the plan he had so carefully planned. Save us! His revolver was empty and he lashed out at a warrior whose body was partially covered by his wooden shield. The man fell back and was saved by his shield which took the brunt of the pistol as Gordon swiped at him. He was grinning triumphantly and Gordon suddenly experienced the meaning of raw fear. He was seconds from being unhorsed by five other Kalkadoon who had joined the fight to finish him off. There was no retreat and the circle was closed on the troopers who fought their own battles for survival.
The grinning Kalkadoon warrior swung his stone axe in a low arcing movement and the sharp edge of the hand chiselled head caught Gordon a glancing blow in the calf of his leg. He hardly felt the pain; his thoughts were focused on a fighting retreat and he was no longer even aware of his carefully laid-out plan in his concentration to survive.
The rolling volley of shots came from behind him as Gordon frantically pulled down on the reins of his mount to drag her out of the semi-circle of Kalkadoon. They were attempting to close with him with shield, stone axes and lunging lances of wood as he became vaguely aware that the semi-circle had disintegrated. Above the increase in the blasts of carbines and pistols he could hear the roars and shouts of Commanche Jack's troop of horsemen as they descended on the flank where the tribesmen had waited in ambush. Above the din of gunshots, screaming men and cries of mortally wounded warriors he could hear the distinctive accent of the American urging his men on.
The skirmish had turned into a desperate battle of survival for the Kalkadoon who were now themselves caught between the troopers and the sudden appearance of the white bushmen riding down on them with guns blazing. With a desperate courage the tribesmen fell back, although they continued to fight in a disciplined manner.
Commanche Jack's pursuing horsemen hesitated in the face of the Kalkadoon's determined and orderly retreat. With adrenalin spent and reason returned, they broke off the engagement to fall back out of range of the deadly missiles that still filled the spaces between the trees.
Gordon's hand trembled so badly that it caused him to drop a couple of rounds of his pistol as he attempted to reload. It had been too bloody close, he thought as he used the ejection rod under the barrel of his Colt to eject the empty cartridges. He was vaguely aware that the warrior with the stone axe who had wounded him lay face down a few yards from where he sat astride his horse. Blood trickled from a gaping wound in the man's shoulder.
Gordon's horse snorted and shifted under him and suddenly the fallen warrior was on his feet. The wounded man was far from beaten and with a loud cry the Kalkadoon lunged at Gordon's horse, snatching at the trailing reins. The crack of the rifle coincided with the wounded man gasping with pain and toppling forward. The top of his head was blown away in the split second it took the heavy Enfield .577 bullet to strike him.
‘As tricky as Injuns,’ Commanche Jack said from the cover of the bush. Even as he rode towards Gordon he was reloading his rifle with a fresh round. ‘Good thing fer you, Inspector, I was ridin’ past.’
The tough American slid from his horse and pointed his rifle at the man lying face down in the red sand. ‘These darkies are as ornery as any Apache I ever had cause to meet,’ he said as he cautiously approached the corpse. But, from the state of the warrior's shattered head, it was obvious that he was dead. ‘Fight even when they should be dead. Now a man like that takes a lot o' beatin’.’
‘You took your time,’ Gordon snarled ungratefully. ‘They almost had us.’
The former frontiersman of the American West tipped his hat to the back of his head and stared up at the police officer glaring down at him. ‘We had a mite trouble with our hosses on the slopes getting to you. Lucky we even got to you when we did.’
Gordon had not anticipated this problem of the second column traversing the slopes of the hills on their left flank. He had predicted accurately that the Kalkadoon ambush party would hit them from the left when they went after the warriors whose task it was to lure them into the trap. And in accordance with his prediction he had briefed a column under the command of Commanche Jack to push their horses up the slope and then descend on the ambushers' rear.
But the relieving column's going had been hampered by loose rocks and small cliffs impeding their route. It had been fortunate for the relief column that the Kalkadoon had been preoccupied with annihilating the troopers of Gordon's patrol and thus had not noticed the slow advance of horsemen to their rear.
When Sergeant Rossi brought his patrol into the ambush site Gordon was stunned to see that many of the bushmen were nursing wounds. The little Italian's face reflected the shocked expression of one who was aware how close he had come to facing his Maker. Gordon had left his third column as a reserve force. It was only to engage the Kalkadoon on his orders and he had not been able to order the reserve force in! What had happened?
‘Theya cumma outta the bush,’ the sergeant said in a flat and weary voice. ‘Theya almost killa us. Alla roun’ us. This way, thata way …’ His voice trailed away and Gordon could see a thick smear of dark blood on the sergeant's hand when he gesticulated. Clearly the Kalkadoon had appeared suddenly in the midst of the reserve force of horsemen trailing Commanche Jack's forces.
‘Where did the main body of the myalls come from when they attacked you, Sergeant Rossi?’ Gordon asked, although he already had a good idea.
‘Behind us. Theya cumma behind us. Some attacka from the side.’
Gordon nodded knowingly. The Kalkadoon had not only laid an ambush on their advance but had been stalking th
em as well. It was a credit to the hunting skills of their enemy that they could have launched such a large scale attack on his expedition without disclosing any sign of their positions prior to the clash. But such an attack also signified to Gordon that he was very close to the main base of the warrior tribesmen.
Weeks of patrolling the hot and dusty red plains of the Cloncurry district in search of the elusive warriors were coming close to the time of a decisive confrontation. Always the Kalkadoon had been able to ride the patrols ragged as they dashed from one reported incident to another. It had seemed to Gordon a pattern had emerged of a well-coordinated series of strikes by the tribesmen intended to wear down his punitive expedition in frustrating, fruitless follow-up actions.
Gordon had finally realised the pattern used against him was intended to wear his men down. Instead of riding from one reported skirmish to another he had deployed his force into a sweeping screen of horsemen patrolling westward across the plains. They had zigzagged north and south so that the mounted and heavily armed force might be seen by the small raiding parties roaming the scrublands in search of unwary travellers and lightly defended homesteads.
Unwittingly the Kalkadoon had fallen for Gordon's tactic of herding them back to their defendable rocky fortresses in the Godkin Range to the west. Unwilling to be cut off by the roving patrols of troopers and bushmen from their women and children, the Kalkadoon had retreated slowly south.
Over the weeks Wallarie had listened to the reports filtering into the hills with the runners returning from the war parties. He had realised with growing concern that the Kalkadoon were being herded like stock. And, like stock, the Kalkadoon were being massed for slaughter.
He had put his views forward but was ignored by both the council of Elders and the Kalkadoon chief. Although the Darambal man was respected for his knowledge of the white man, the Kalkadoon felt that he over-estimated the ability of the troopers to effectively engage them on their own lands. Could it not be that the white men were being led with the same blind confidence that had brought about the massacre of Inspector Potter's patrol? Did they not outnumber the mounted force whose horses were useless on the steeper slopes of their fortress-like hill? And what enemy could come against the stockpile of weapons they had on the hill tops?
But now that the furious bursts of gunfire that had rolled as echoes in the hills had ceased, the warriors stumbled, wounded and bleeding, into their hill top camps. Women wailed and children cried for those who did not return. The Elders muttered amongst themselves. Had the Darambal man been right?
Terituba was one of the more fortunate survivors of the ambush that had gone terribly wrong for the Kalkadoon. Stricken by the loss of friends and relatives, he staggered from his desperate climb to the top of the hills and collapsed with exhaustion. A short distance away Wallarie sat cross-legged, by a fire, fashioning the barbs of his newly made spear. ‘The black crows tricked you,’ he said calmly to the young warrior panting for breath as he lay on his side in the crumbled rock of the hill top. ‘They scattered you with their horses and guns.’
Terituba raised himself into a sitting position. The wailing of the women was terrible in its intensity. He searched the weeping mass for his wife and two sons. He could not see them and remembered vaguely that she had gone with the women, early in the morning, to the river to search for food. His sons were too young to join the young men as they had not yet been initiated into the tribe. They had gone with the other boys in search of goannas and small wallabies with their spears and nullahs.
Terituba felt a dread for his family's safety, knowing that the white men and their black troopers were advancing as an unstoppable force along the river. What if they should fall on the women and children down in the valley? ‘It is not like before, Darambal man,’ Terituba finally answered, holding his bearded face in his hands. ‘They fought us from all sides. Their guns killed many of the fighting men.’
Wallarie continued to chisel with the sharp stone at the end of his spear. ‘Their leader is cunning, as I have warned you, Kalkadoon man,’ he said quietly, without looking at Terituba. ‘He will not stop until you are all dead. He is not like his father who I once knew. He is proud and wants to prove he is a man like his father. But he is not his father. He does not have the same spirit. His father learned not to be proud of killing my people. That was before his spirit left his body.’
The younger warrior listened to the words of the Darambal man and no longer sneered at his perceived timidity. For Terituba had a taste of what the Darambal man had warned and he did not like the bitterness of the blood in his mouth. ‘We will show the white man Gordon James that he cannot defeat us when he comes to our lands,’ he said fiercely, as conviction surged through him with the recovery of his physical strength. ‘We will do to him what we did to Inspector Potter.’
But even in his bravado the Kalkadoon man remembered the terrible power of the guns. Men were flung into the earth with gaping wounds and the horses were able to dance away from grasping hands endeavouring to unseat the riders. A worm began to eat away at his confidence to defeat the whites. But he would not let a Darambal man see his doubts and he would not betray the creeping fear he felt. The Kalkadoon were like the fish dammed in the traps they built in the rivers. No. A man must fight to protect the lands that he held sacred.
Terituba knew that his people were possibly facing the same fate as the Darambal man's people. To not resist the invaders surely meant loss of the traditional lands. To resist could mean the loss of a people. Either way, one without the other, was death to the spirit. They were left with only one alternative now that they had allowed themselves to be trapped. A final and decisive battle, the outcome of which would be critical to the very survival of the Kalkadoon.
The Kalkadoon warrior rose to his feet from the earth that was his by birthright. He stood unbeaten and uncowed to face the north from whence his enemy advanced.
TWENTY-SEVEN
‘Five troopers wounded. Two seriously with spear wounds. Seven of the accompanying party of bushmen wounded. One with a serious wound from a boomerang.’ Gordon James read off his list to the force of grim faced troopers and bushmen gathered around him, their rifles and carbines close at hand. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, glancing up from the notebook in his hand. ‘That is about the extent of our casualties at this moment. We have been fortunate not to have lost anyone so far. And today we inflicted a blow against the Queen's enemies. I suspect the Kalkadoon are licking their wounds right now. But I also suspect, despite the defeat they suffered here today, they are far from beaten.’
Men nodded agreement and muttered amongst themselves. They had a grudging respect for the warriors who demonstrated an intelligence in warfare normally reserved for European armies. One or two of the bushmen had served in Britain's colonial military expeditions against the tribes of Africa and gave unexpected compliments to the bravery of their present foe: here was a fighter who knew how to employ tactics and terrain to the advantage of himself. A foe who could stalk them with the stealth of long training and strike, then withdraw, with all the discipline of a British square withstanding the assault of a superior force.
‘What's yer plan, Inspector?’ Commanche Jack asked, chewing on his endless supply of tobacco and crouching on his haunches with his long-barrelled Enfield as a prop.
Gordon cleared the earth in front of him with his boot and, using a twig, drew a map in the red soil. It showed the river valley and hills to the south as he imagined they might be. He snatched up a handful of river stones from the sandy beach adjoining the nearby river and included them in his sketch. When he was finished the men at the briefing huddled closer. ‘We are here,’ he said poking at the sketch. ‘The stones represent the hills to our south.’ He turned and pointed at the fine of summits that ran north south and poked above the scrub trees.
‘According to my estimations the enemy will be holed up on one of those three largest hills you can see to your front,’ he said, and the men glanced
up at the hills. The afternoon sun blazed brightly off the rocks and men shaded their eyes with their hands as they surveyed the deceptively peaceful country for signs of Kalkadoon occupation. They saw none but they expected little else with the knowledge they had now painfully acquired of the Kalkadoons' ability to conceal themselves. ‘We will camp here for the night and at first light send out small patrols to ascertain which hill the main force of the Kalkadoon are occupying. When this has been achieved the patrols will return and we will assemble for an assault on them.’
‘You mean attack ′em?’ a bushman questioned, whistling through his teeth. ‘What if'n we can't get our horses up the hill? That would mean we'd have to go at ′em on foot. Don't like that idea one little bit, Inspector.’
‘We would have cover,’ Gordon reassured as he could see the idea did not appeal to many of the bushmen. ‘A spear will not go through rock.’
Horse, gun and rider were a unit that gave them the edge on the Kalkadoon. From a horse they could fire, retreat, reload and fire again. The horse gave them the capacity to stay out of range of the deadly wooden missiles but on foot retreat was severely limited.
‘What guarantee we would have cover?’ another bushman asked in a concerned voice. ‘Maybe the hills the Kalks are on are as bare as the hills we passed coming this way. Just a few trees and nothin’ much else.’
The gathered bushmen nodded more vigorously and the muttering became louder. They were all volunteers and could withdraw their services.
Gordon had the answer. ‘If we don't finish this now and retreat back to Cloncurry the myalls will think they have beaten us. If that happens, then the weeks we have been hunting them will be a waste of time and they will renew their attacks in the district. Their chief issued a challenge for us to dare and come after him. Well, here we are. We have no other choice than to finish this fight once and for all. If we don't, then you will not be able to sleep safely in your beds at night. Your women and children could be brained by a nullah. The Kalkadoon will keep on spearing your stock until you have nothing left to stay for.’