The Roving Party (20 page)

They awoke with the birds and put forth in the dark before dawn. With them they carried neither flour nor mutton, flint nor tinder. Bill rolled a heap of embers in damp bark for a firestick and slung his fowling piece across his shoulder. He filled his powder flask, loaded his pockets with ball. That was all he needed. Katherine kitted herself up in his spare dungarees which she rolled at the ankle and hitched the waist with cord, and as she walked the hems scuffed along the ground.
The two of them made towards the dawn’s flameglow where it bloomed beyond the hills. As they moved into the forest a miserable rain began and where it fell the bark litter darkened and the pungency of wood rot grew; the rain accompanied them that long day as they walked the unburnt back country of the Plindermairhemener. In the afternoon they crossed pastures where saplings and wild grasses stood so profuse that the grazing wallabies were hid entirely and their small furred heads rose and fell above the level as the herds bounded away. Bill checked his trail and saw his woman coming some yards behind, the grim line of her jaw unchanged and her hair and clothes speckled with grass seed. He waited while she approached and together they pushed on.

The night sky cleared as they settled their first camp at the rim of one such pasture with the wild stars already above giving light. Bill shot a native hen which they plucked and roasted and ate in silence. When it was fully dark an emerald rippling unfurled across the sky like the underside of a wave breaking upon the bladed shore of stars. They watched the aurora for a long while but they knew not how to read it. The Vandemonian took up his dagger and sharpstone and Katherine heaped up the fire. She stretched out for sleep beneath her skins and Bill sat with his back to the blaze grinding his knife with the stone, watching the jade-coloured glare in the sky manifest along the mirrored span of steel.

They trekked days through the hills east of Ben Lomond without sight or sound of another soul. They ate possum taken from the gum trees or little lunna bunna the shape of kidney potatoes or fern roots which they dug up with a stick. They found bush cherries. Pigface. Mushrooms where it was damp. On the fifth day they happened upon a rivulet bedded with small pebbles that Bill fingered through for some quartz pieces with which to strike fire. At dusk they found high ground and watched the sun melt at the fringe of the world. They scanned the blue-grey landscape for pinpoints of fires, only lighting their own when Bill was satisfied there burned no other. Through those days they shared few words so it surprised Black Bill when one night Katherine looked him in the eye.

Her name Kittawa, she said.

Bill was picking over some possum bones and he set them aside. He picked his teeth. Who? he said.

Katherine clutched the skull bound at her throat. As if nothing further needed saying.

He shook his head.

She need name. I call her Kittawa. Now she rest.

It was a boy.

Eh?

You heard me.

Katherine’s mouth drew into a grim line. pudeyar, she said. lobudenday.

Woman, I tell you it was a boy. I got eyes in my head and I know what I saw.

She went quiet now. Her fingers felt around the cranial separations and the toothless jaws then she lowered her eyes. Bill laid the meat bones across his lap and continued picking flesh from the joints, the crevices.

With the morning’s first blue gradations Bill perched on the ridge to study the country below. A tableland patterned into clearings by curving tree formations, the meadows like missing puzzle pieces. Away on the far side of one field burned a fire and that smoke was the only sign of life he’d seen in a week. It was a mile or more distant but as thick and threatening as the fires lit by whole companies of men. He shook Katherine awake by her shoulder and they ate a breakfast of cold meat, sharing water from the canteen. A few embers remained among the hearthstones so he wrapped them inside bark and tied it with grass. As he was crouched there at the fire pit he looked at her face, drawn and dulled. Bill retrieved his fowling piece and he called for her to follow him down the slope.

They walked the verge of a grassed basin, keeping to the trees and looking over the sweeping depression to where the smoke
billowed. The hills had opened into flat country clumped with wattle and gum as hunting hides for the spearsmen but the hides had become overgrown through disuse as the spearsmen had been driven off. Later in the day they mounted a rise and Bill removed his hat and held it before the sun to shield his face as he studied the bivouac before them. Two white men wandered around the fire building it up. They had a captive bound and laid out in the grass. It seemed to be a naked black child. Bill replaced his hat and sat on the rocks and Katherine took seat alongside him and together they watched the goings-on. The men dragged the child around by the neck and dropped their pants and had turns with it. Bill looked away, then he looked back towards the men. He sat there awhile watching. A lone dog wandered near the fire. The child cried out.

It was enough. Bill picked up his gun and walked down the wooded hill. He meant to keep going, to make towards the coast where the Plindermairhemener were likely snugged up. He walked through the scrub and his ruined boots rang on the rocky ground. But Katherine did not follow. She remained staring out across the pasture. Bill waved to her but there was no response so he clambered back up to her lookout and stood beside her watching. She placed her hand inside his own and she pointed at the child. Pointed and squeezed his fingers. For a short time Bill stayed with her and clasped her calloused hand but then he rose and struck out for the camp.

They’d absconded from somewhere. That much was apparent from the broad arrows they still wore with their ankles and wrists exposed in those undersized government issues. One of them had a kangaroo skin cast about his shoulders like a cloak. His cohort carried a stout club. They waited by the fire as the Vandemonian crossed the field in full view. He cradled his piece in the bend of his arm and was some time reaching the place but he did not deviate nor did he move his eyes off the two men. As he neared, their dog started barking and its dorsal hair bristled.

She’s trained to eat blacks that one, said the fellow in the skin cloak.

Black Bill walked unconcerned past the dog then stopped and glanced around their camp. A wallaby lay half in its entrails. Their hands were bloody and one of them had a knife. They stared at him.

I would use the fire if I might, said Bill.

You what?

The fire.

It talks, by Christ.

A talkin ape, aint it.

They both studied the long gun in Bill’s arms.

I have a pipe. Some baccy. If you let me use your fire.

The one with the club leaned forward. What kinda darkie sports a gun like that? Eh?

Bill turned on his heel and began to walk back the way he had come but he hadn’t gone more than a few steps when they called to him, Oi! Bring yer good self back here. We dont mean no harm.

He looked around at them. The dog snarled but stood off. He moved towards the fire again and took up a place in the grass. They’d humped up some firewood nearby for the night and propped against the heap was the native girl, no more than ten and collared with a length of roo hide. Bill kept his gaze away from her as he produced his pipe from his jacket, stuffed it with weed and passed it to one of the runaways. The fellow lit it with a handful of burning grass.

Holdin any rum about you there, blackie?

Bill shook his head.

No, I didnt reckon you was.

Why would some pisspoor old blackfella be holdin rum? said the other.

I supposed I might ask at least.

Did you now.

Who knows what he has stashed?

You howling bloody simpleton.

Their hair was matted like flocks of wool, their chins grimy with unshorn beards. They stared and he stared back.

Lookin to trade that piece are ye? said the man in skins.

Bill laid the weapon by but within reach. It was loaded, cocked. No, I have need of her, he said.

Take that dog for it. And some shot.

I dont need dogs.

Every bastard needs dogs.

Not every.

The man in skins stood up and moved around to Bill and held the pipe out and Bill accepted it with a nod, placed the stem to his lips and sucked. Flame leapt from the bowl as he puffed. He pushed back his hat. I wouldnt have thought females too common hereabouts, said Bill.

The men looked at each other and at the girl. She belong to you or somefink, blackie?

No.

The pipe hissed.

Got any kids have you then? said the man in skins.

I have a son.

Your kind ought to be gelded. You illbred fuckers.

The white men stared at him waiting for any signs of anger. But Bill just passed the pipe on and the man in skins closed his hand around the bowl, a hand shy its first and second fingers. His woody stumps tottered against the bowl as he drew. He watched Bill and Bill never blinked.

Is somethin painin you, blackie? he said.

I dont reckon.

Where’d you come from then?

Come out of them hills away west there.

The hills.

Aye.

Crept up liken old tomcat, didnt you?

The man in the skin cloak tapped out the spent pipe onto his palm. Make it the dog and the girl then, he said. And leave us a bit of ball.

No.

That’s a fair offer.

No.

Out on the grass the emus raised their unclad heads, sounding their deep-throated drumming. The Vandemonian stood with his weapon, slung the strap over his shoulder and paused only a moment to stare at them, straightening his hat. He left for the hills and they watched him go. One of them called to him, You want yer pipe?

Bill never looked back. I’ll find it after, he said.

They watched his dark figure shrink into the distance. The fellow in skins laid the pipe on the ground near the huge fire and looked at it. Then he turned his eyes back across the field where the Vandemonian retreated.

What’s he mean, after? he said.

There was no moon at night so the scoundrels’ fire shone upon the darkened plain like a sun alight in the universal vacuum. There was an hour or two before dawn and the men
were curled in blankets soundly sleeping, the dog at their feet. By the fire the girl lay huddled, chewing at her bindings, working her wrists back and forth to loosen the cords and every so often she craned her head back to watch the slumbering men before she went again at the cords with her teeth. But the leathers in which she was cinched would not give and she could not advance her cause. Again she bent her head around to study the men where they slept, both with their mouths ajar and wheezing. When she turned back she saw something shifting beyond the light’s throw. It seemed at first a trick of the mind or some other phantasm until she saw the steel blade in his teeth which showed him as separate from the night itself. The naked Vandemonian crawled nearer and cut her tethers.