by Carol Jones
Dry grass scratched his bare ankles and low hanging branches scraped his head as he skirted tree and boulder, breathing hard. He leaped over a fallen tree trunk, and scrambled down the grassy bank to recross the river, one li downstream from the place where he had confronted Little Cat. He had to reach camp and make his escape before he was caught. But that didn’t mean he must abandon his quest. He and the old man could trail the group from afar, tracking their passage through valleys and forests, across plains and over mountains all the way to the goldfields. Twelve bullocks and two hundred and sixty men did not travel unnoticed. And if he lost the trail, he could follow the signs carved into trees by his predecessors, other men from the Middle Kingdom who had left warnings of wicked landowners who would exploit them, or kind men who might help, who pointed their countrymen towards New Gold Mountain.
He knew where they were headed, a place known as Creswick Creek. The name of the diggings caught in his throat. Little Cat would not escape him a third time.
‘She didn’t escape. You let her go.’ The voice of his father’s po came to him in the whooping call of an owl. He felt its looming presence in the shadows that closed in around him.
‘The bullock driver interrupted me.’
‘She was all but dead and you let her live. What kind of son are you?’
He remembered the way Little Cat had thrashed in his grasp as he held her beneath the water, powerless to escape. If he had only kept her there a while longer, she would be dead now. Instead he had succumbed to temptation. He had needed to hear her voice one last time, even if her words were poisoned with hatred. He could not resist the sensation of her body pressed against his. From the moment he had seen her floating naked in the pool, her flesh luminous as a pearl in the moonlight, he had been transfixed by her vulnerability. A vulnerability he had never seen in her before. He had wanted to hold her. Cradle her. Protect her. Instead he had put cruel hands upon her and sought to take her life. If the bullock man hadn’t come he would have squeezed her throat until her body was nothing but an empty shell.
‘You could have finished her off even then.’ He heard his father’s words in the rustling of small creatures and the creak of ancient branches. ‘Death comes quickly.’
He almost defended his inaction; Little Cat’s words were lodged in his memory, but he could not bring himself to repeat her lie about his father. Big Wu could not have done what she said. His father was a righteous man, an honourable man, a man of yee.
‘I could. I will,’ he promised his father, the words emerging as a ragged gasp as he thrashed through the bush. What else did he have in his life other than his family and his clan?
Little Cat’s vulnerability was a lie too, as deceptive as his own pretence at bravery. She had taken a lump of stone and smashed his father’s head to splinters of bone. There was nothing vulnerable about her. Somehow he had been seduced by his friendship with her brother and the desires of his body. But he would not make that mistake again. He would not betray his ancestors or his loyalty to the clan a second time. He would prove his mettle to his father’s po, if it were the last thing he did on this earth.
*
The bullock man sat on a log a small distance from the glowing coals of the campfire. He had roused Big Nose from the tent after cajoling the Hartley woman to her bed beneath the bullock dray. Clearly she did not wish to go, but he had insisted that she needed her rest to be fresh for another day of travelling on the morrow. Now he watched Strong Arm’s face as he questioned her friend. There was no hint that he had betrayed her identity to Big Nose in his glance, merely concern. Perhaps she might yet keep part of her secret from her friend.
‘I want to know the whole story. Tell the boy he is to leave out nothing.’ His voice did not rise above a soft burr but she knew that he was determined to prise the truth from her.
Big Nose was rubbing his eyes, still half asleep. He looked from one to the other bemusedly. ‘What happened, Mr Thomas?’
‘Your friend here nearly got himself killed. I want to know by whom and why.’
Clearly whatever he was telling Big Nose was a shock, for his eyes widened and his mouth opened slightly. She supposed that learning your friend had been attacked and almost killed might be a shock if you were a man of peace like Big Nose.
‘Thomas says you are in grave danger. He asks who is responsible,’ he said.
She looked down at the ground, avoiding his eyes. ‘No speak,’ she whispered in the foreigners’ tongue. She did not want to lie to her friend, but her existence was already a lie, a lie she had no intention of admitting. She could only hope that Thomas would not expose her.
‘Tell the boy I will keep his secrets, but for the good of the camp I must know who attacked him and why. If this was the work of those bullies he fought earlier, I need to know so that I can put a stop to it.’
Big Nose relayed Thomas’s words. ‘If you have secrets, he will respect them. And so will I,’ he added, with a hurt expression, as if to ask why she hadn’t confided in him already. They were friends who had shared the perils of the road, their hopes and fears for the future. ‘If you are in danger, you need to say. You are not alone here.’
‘Crows everywhere are all black,’ she said, making light of the danger. She did not want to tell more lies, yet how could she confess to Big Nose that she had killed a man? He was a person of restraint. He wouldn’t understand, especially when she couldn’t tell him the whole truth without giving away her identity.
‘What did the boy say?’
‘He says there are bad people everywhere.’
‘Very enlightening. But I want to know about one particular bad person and we are going to sit here until I do.’ Thomas folded his arms across his chest and stretched his powerful legs towards the fire. It appeared he was not to be moved.
Big Nose held out a hand as if he might place it upon her shoulder, then thought better of it and let it drop to his side. ‘We all have secrets. We’ve all done things we regret. It’s hard for minnows, like us, to survive in this world, where the bigger fish would snatch us up in one gulp.’
But she refused to live her life as a minnow. That was what got her to this land in the first place. If she had remained a minnow, she wouldn’t be here. Big Wu would have swallowed her whole. And if not her, then he would have punished her family. He might haunt her dreams but she didn’t regret fighting back. And she couldn’t regret his death either. She could live with that ghost. The anger still raged inside when she thought about that day in Big Wu’s house, and she wanted to lash out at him all over again. The only thing she regretted was the trouble she had caused her family. Perhaps she had become one of the crows now, since death meant so little to her.
‘The man who attacked me seeks vengeance for his lineage,’ she muttered finally. Big Nose would understand that.
‘Why does he seek vengeance?’ Big Nose translated Thomas’s question after he had relayed her words.
Here was the truth of the matter then. If you put something into words, did that make it true? If you left it unsaid, did that make it false? Could she admit the truth even to herself? And why did Young Wu really seek vengeance? Because he wanted to kill her, or because others demanded her death? Truth wasn’t a simple matter.
‘He seeks vengeance because I killed his father, Wu, the headman of our village.’ The words were a whisper of truth.
Big Nose greeted her explanation with silence, as if he couldn’t quite accept what he was hearing, as if it did not sit with his understanding of reality. He fixed his gaze upon the coals, avoiding her eyes, the red glow turning his familiar craggy face into a thing of shadows. Perhaps he would never look at her in quite the same way again. This thought wrenched something in her heart. She had so few friends now, she couldn’t afford to lose him.
Thomas was glancing speculatively from one to the other of them. ‘What did the boy say?’ he asked, a wry twist to the side of his mouth.
Big Nose cleared his throat. ‘He says th
at he killed that man’s father.’
This was enough to unfold the bullock man’s arms and bring him to his feet. He stalked towards her, coming to a standstill so close that she caught the scent of his animals upon him. She shuffled back a step.
‘He must have had a reason. A boy doesn’t kill a grown man without good reason.’
‘Thomas asks the reason for this killing.’
‘That man’s father attacked me first. He was the headman of our village and the Wu clan elder. If I hadn’t fought back I would not be here now.’ Another partial truth. ‘But now this man and his clan hunt me.’
Big Nose nodded, apparently accepting her explanation, but he still did not look at her. He began a short conversation with Thomas, who searched her face as Big Nose spoke the name of Wu, as if he could read her mind. He knew part of her secret, so perhaps he could guess the rest. After all, he must know the ways of men.
‘He was tall, this man Wu, and will stand out from the others. We could search the camp for him but I suspect it would be futile. He’ll be long gone by now. Tomorrow morning I’ll ask your leader to make a headcount and then, at least, we’ll know what name he has been using, and if he travels alone. But Strong Arm…’
Her new name sounded strange in the foreigner’s tongue, as if he spoke of another person, not the girl Little Cat, or the boy Strong Arm, but someone altogether different. Someone she no longer knew.
‘… you must not leave camp alone again. I cannot risk it.’
*
He had expected to find the old man snoring in their tent but he was awake, squatting by the glowing coals of their campfire, repairing a tear in Young Wu’s other trousers. The blue fabric seemed even more coarse and colourless in the dim light, like a puddle of grey. Just like his life.
‘Come. We must leave.’
‘What has happened?’ The old man knew of his mission but did not breathe the word ‘kill’ aloud, for who knew what ears listened to their conversation in the midst of this camp of tightly packed tents?
‘Nothing. Nothing has happened. Something almost happened and that is why we must leave,’ he said, grimacing in disgust at his failure, ‘before leaving becomes impossible.’
Soft sounds of snoring emanated from beneath the canvas where their tent mates slept. Leaving might disturb them, but their gear was packed and ready. All they need do was shoulder their ta’am, take up their baskets and head off into the night.
The old man hazarded a glance at the surrounding camp. He appeared almost fond, as if it saddened him to leave. ‘I will fetch our baskets,’ he said, creaking to his feet. ‘There is always another opportunity, nephew. You will fulfil your vow.’
‘I do not need you to tell me this, Old Man.’
He knew it only too well.
36
From the homestead veranda, Violet looked out over the grass-covered slopes of gently rolling hills and shallow valley, to the blue shadow of the craggy Grampians beyond. Here and there clumps of eucalyptus trees provided shelter for livestock, and shade for the Celestials who were encamped by the creek. Mere weeks earlier, she would have considered the rustic bluestone dwelling primitive, with its galvanised iron roof and undressed timber posts. Yet this simple house was a luxury compared to sleeping on hard ground beneath a dray, lulled to sleep by the lowing of bullocks and the pungent scent of their dung.
After they had crossed the Glenelg River at Gray’s Crossing, their route to the goldfields had wound from one pastoral holding to another. Lewis avoided the towns and settlements – and therefore the police – where the Chinamen might be arrested for evading the poll tax if they were discovered. Naturally, some of the more venal pastoralists demanded payment for their silence. And with much of their workforce run off to the goldfields, the arrival of two hundred and sixty Celestials upon their doorstep was indeed a gift from heaven.
For Violet, the one blessing of an enforced stay upon this property was that the mistress had taken pity on the poor bedraggled governess who landed on her doorstep and lodged her in the homestead. Clearly, the gossip from South Australia was yet to reach the Glenelg shire or her welcome may not have been so warm. For a week, Violet had slept beneath cool white sheets and amused her hostess with tales of London society, while the Chinamen laboured to build a dam. With few tools, they dug enough clay earth to build an embankment across the creek. Their only payment was the pastoralist’s silence and a few old ewes, which they promptly plunged into scalding water, plucking the wool like feathers from a duck.
She should have been glad for the respite. She should have been grateful for the woman’s kind and cheerful company, especially after her previous humiliations. Yet she jumped at the scratch of a branch against the window. The hairs on her neck pricked at the sound of a man’s voice on the veranda. She waited. She watched. She listened. She pined.
It would not do.
For the first few days she told herself that Lewis did not venture to her door in the wee hours for fear of being caught by their hosts and ruining her reputation. But he took to avoiding her even during daylight hours, refusing their hosts’ invitation to luncheon at the homestead, pleading the need to keep an eye upon his charges. It did not escape her eyes that the girl, Strong Arm, was rarely from his side. While her countrymen laboured at digging and hauling earth, Lewis kept the girl close.
This afternoon Violet decided that the time had come to remedy the situation. From the homestead, she set off down the hill towards the creekside encampment, intending to remind him of her existence. She defied any man to ignore her when she stood before him in all her glory, as limited as that might be in this primitive land. She had arranged her hair into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, allowing a few tendrils to frame her heart-shaped face and draw attention to her cheekbones, yet nothing so elaborate that she might appear frivolous. Her sprigged muslin had tempted, but in the end she had donned a dull nankeen dress, with a calico apron borrowed from her hostess, and a smile as her only decoration. Against all inclination, she intended to look sturdy and capable – since that was what Lewis so clearly admired – no matter how greatly the costume offended her finer senses.
As she skipped over clumps of dry grass and scattered sheep droppings, the ocean of sheep parted before her. A single sheep veering from her path set the entire flock to stampeding, leaving in its wake a cloud of the nasty March flies she had learned to fear for their vicious bite. Something or other in this godforsaken land was always seeking to dine upon Violet’s tender flesh, whether it was flies or mosquitoes, ants or spiders, fishes or snakes. She had soon learned that anything with more than four legs, or fewer than two, was to be avoided at all costs.
She spotted Lewis from a distance, despite his blue flannel shirt, not unlike that of John Chinaman. However, his broader, taller figure singled him out, as did the way his brown moleskin trousers fitted his sturdy thighs. He was standing shoulder to shoulder with one of the Celestials as they leaned over some business they were about in the dray, the rear of which had been propped upon a log. He appeared to sense her presence, for he lifted his head like an animal sniffing the wind, and turned to gaze up at the slope where she walked. Her heart lifted a trifle and she raised a hand in greeting, hurrying towards him.
As she drew closer, Violet recognised his companion as Strong Arm, and that slight lift of the heart slumped. What in this world drew him to the girl? She had few charms that Violet could discern. Her breasts were no more than cherries. Her eyes were bright, and their leaf shape was not unattractive, but her face was browned from the sun and her head, shaved bare at the crown, was as handsome as a boiled egg. She was strong, it was true – and her athleticism would not be out of place in Sanger’s Circus – but she possessed few womanly charms. And it could not be denied that she hailed from the Middle Flowery Kingdom. Her appeal to a strapping, handsome man such as Lewis was a mystery. Violet comforted herself with the thought that perhaps he only looked to employ the girl as a shepherd on his pastoral lease
, since labour was in such short supply. For what man would choose a child like Strong Arm when he was offered a woman like Violet?
‘Halloo there, Lewis,’ she called as she glided between the drooping branches of she-oak, trying to ignore the cloud of midges that swarmed around the creek.
‘Good day, Miss Hartley,’ he said, striding towards her. A milder woman would have taken this distant courtesy as insult. To Violet it came as a challenge.
‘I’ve been missing our dinners of aged mutton and burnt damper.’
‘Ha! I wager there’ll be more before we reach our journey’s end. So don’t worry yourself.’
‘I feared you’d tired of my poor culinary efforts.’
‘Not at all. I thought you might enjoy a few comforts while you can.’ Despite whatever promises he had made himself, he cast a surreptitious glance at her figure that she did not fail to catch. ‘Unfortunately, the life of a bullocky isn’t suited to a lady.’
What was he telling her? That there was no room in his life for a woman?
‘Some ladies have no trouble with it,’ she said, with a pointed look at the girl who had clambered up onto the dray and was bending over something there. He followed her gaze with a frown.
‘Strong Arm tends a patient. One of the Chinamen is ill. Too ill to walk. He may not make it.’
Thus far they had lost five men upon their journey. Two had run off after the attack on Strong Arm at the Glenelg River, no doubt the perpetrator and a companion. Two had proved unequal to the long trek and fetched up at one of the pastoral leases to work as gardeners. And one unhappy fellow had strung a rope over a branch and hanged himself just outside Casterton. There had also been sickness and injury, but nothing life-threatening until now.
‘I can help.’ She wondered why he had not called upon her skills earlier. Why he kept her at such a distance.
Lewis pushed back his hat and rubbed at his forehead. Was she such a conundrum too?