Cry of the Curlew: The Frontier Series 1 (26 page)

With a shrug, he rose to his feet and brushed himself down. He was once again in control and an officer of Her Majesty’s Native Police. The sergeant had not wanted to kill him any more than he had wanted to die, although it did not sit well to test the patience of the big sergeant any further.

‘Well then, Sergeant,’ Mort said, casually regaining his composure, ‘I believe you have a report to submit on the matters concerning the death of Corporal Gideon. A report of how he tried to strangle me and I was forced to defend myself.’

Henry did not answer, but turned his back on his commanding officer. He was sickened by the pact he had made with him and he fully knew that they were both playing a game that neither could win. Better the murdering bastard was gone from the force than allow Mort to use his position to eventually out-manoeuvre him, he thought bitterly. He knew that it would only be a matter of time before Mort found a devious way to win in the end.

Henry made sure he was riding behind Mort as they made their way back to the barracks. Mort was true to his word and submitted his resignation to the sergeant for dispatch to Brisbane that night. Before the sun rose the next day, Mort was gone.

Four weeks later the young replacement officer sat at Mort’s old desk shuffling the reports before him. He made noises in his throat like that of an officious clerk.

Henry stood stiffly at attention. His leg ached and he silently cursed the pompous officer, who could plainly see that he was in some discomfort. Standing rigidly to attention before him, he waited as the officer stared at a vacant point beyond Henry to where Mort had always hung his sword on the wall.

‘Highly irregular, Sergeant James,’ the young officer finally said as he glanced up. ‘I find all these reports highly irregular. We have a police trooper dead and the man who killed him suddenly resigns. Mister Mort will have to attend an inquiry, you know.’

‘Yes sir,’ Henry replied formally. ‘I believe that is the procedure. But I don’t think we will be able to find Mister Mort, sir. From my inquiries, he has disappeared and no one seems to know where he is.’

‘Hmm . . . Well, I suppose we have his statement here about the incident with the trooper at that darkies’ camp,’ the officer mused as he shuffled the handwritten statement to the top of the files. ‘Under other circumstances, Mister Mort might have been commended for his work in attempting to bring to justice this man who was killing the darkie girls. But headquarters is not happy with his sudden desertion from his post and he would have to answer charges on the matter of not giving the regulation notice.’

‘Yes sir,’ Henry answered dutifully.

‘From what I have seen of your work, Sergeant, I must say I am not very impressed,’ the pompous young officer remonstrated, but Henry knew it was a lie. His work was of the highest standard. He had maintained the police barracks in good order and he felt his spirits slump as he guessed that the word was out to remove him from his post in Rockhampton. ‘I have been asked to recommend your future in the Native Police,’ the young officer continued and he was uncomfortable in what he had to do, as he personally could not find fault with the sergeant. Damned if he was going to recommend dismissal, no matter who this squatter was who wanted the sergeant out. ‘It will be my recommendation that you be transferred from here to a place decided by Brisbane.’

Transfer. It could have been worse, Henry thought, as he stared stonily at the wall behind the officer.

‘The transfer will be effective as soon as I get word back from headquarters as to your new posting. Do you have any questions, Sergeant?’

‘No, sir. No questions.’

‘Very good. I think you are capable of continuing with your duties until your replacement arrives. You can go, Sergeant,’ he said, dismissing him.

‘Sah!’ Henry saluted smartly, turned and was about to march out of the office when he heard the young officer call to him quietly.

‘I wouldn’t be packing my bags in a hurry if I were you. Reports tend to get lost and these matters blow over in time.’

Henry smiled. So there was some justice left in the world after all.

On the verandah Henry relaxed and gazed across the parade ground to the stables which the troopers were mucking out. The work came to a stop when they saw their respected sergeant. They all knew that the call to the office meant something important, as Sar’nt James had reported in his best uniform.

‘I’m not gone yet, you lazy and idle men,’ he bawled good-naturedly across the parade ground. ‘So get about your duties or I’ll put the cat across your backs.’

They hurried into their work with grins on their faces. Sar’nt Henry was tough . . . but fair.

With Mort gone, life was returning to normal around the barracks. Henry limped across the dusty parade ground. Why was it that he felt he had not seen the last of the murderous officer? The thought struck Henry as surely as one of the heavy lead balls of the police carbines. He slowed to stare back at the office where Mort had spent much of his day brooding and the answer came to the English sergeant. Because men like Mort were survivors, just as rats were when a ship was sinking. They just simply moved somewhere else and started all over again.

‘I should have killed him when I had the chance,’ he muttered softly to himself.

TWENTY-FOUR

T
he Aboriginal troopers, stripped to the waist and wearing loincloths as they cleaned their carbines under the cool shade of a big gum tree, paused to stare curiously at the tall man. Not many visitors made the trip to the barracks unless it was on official business.

The stranger rode with the easy style of a man who spent most of his life observing life from astride a horse. He stopped at the rifle-cleaning detail to ask them the whereabouts of Sergeant James and they pointed to a bark hut across the parade ground. He thanked them and reined his mount to the sergeant’s office, where he swung from the saddle with the ease of an experienced horseman. The troopers went back to pulling pieces of oily cloth through the barrels of their carbines. Whatever the stranger wanted was whitefella business and no concern of theirs.

Luke Tracy hitched his horse to a rail outside the bark hut and knocked on the door. A voice boomed to enter and Luke pushed open the door to step inside. He saw an impressive man, by his sheer size alone, wearing the blue uniform of the Native Mounted Police, sitting behind a desk spread with official papers and a map.

‘You Sergeant James?’ Luke asked as he removed his dusty hat and slapped it against his thigh. The big man behind the desk glanced up at him from the map.

‘I’m Sergeant James,’ he acknowledged, fixing his visitor with a modicum of interest in his American accent. ‘And I presume you’re a Yankee.’

Luke grinned. ‘Luke Tracy. Prospector out of California . . . and mostly out of luck.’

Henry warmed to the American’s easy manner. ‘What can I do for you, Mister Tracy?’ he asked, leaning forward. ‘Not many whitefellas come out this way . . . unless they need our help.’

‘That’s why I’m here, Sergeant. I heard you were on a dispersal around November last year on a run called Glen View,’ Luke said and noticed a cloud cross the police sergeant’s face. ‘I was hoping you might be able to give me some idea of where a couple of fellas are buried. Believe they were speared by the myalls. A teamster by the name of Patrick Duffy and his boy called Billy.’

‘If I may ask, Mister Tracy, why do you want to find them?’

Luke sensed more curiosity in the question than suspicion. ‘Pat Duffy was a friend of mine,’ he answered reasonably. ‘We were on the diggings at Ballarat back in ’54. I’m heading out west and I kind of hoped to drop by and pay my respects at Big Pat’s grave.’

Henry rose from behind his desk and limped to the only window in the office, where he stood with his hands behind his back to gaze in contemplative silence at the Aboriginal troopers cleaning their rifles on the far side of the parade ground. ‘If I knew where Mister Duffy was buried,’ he finally said, ‘I would tell you, Mister Tracy. But my former commander, Mister Mort, was the last man to see them alive . . . and he is no longer with the troop. He left a week ago . . . whereabouts unknown.’

‘You must have some idea where they are,’ Luke offered. ‘Someone would have buried them. One of them Glen View shepherds mebbe.’

‘I hope Mister Duffy got a Christian burial,’ Henry replied. ‘Under the circumstances.’

‘What do you mean by that, Sergeant?’

‘Nothing that is of your concern, Mister Tracy,’ Henry replied firmly but not with animosity. ‘Just that the previous commander didn’t handle the situation very well at the time.’

Luke was very perceptive when it came to dealing with men and the English sergeant’s manner was rather strange. He played a hunch.

‘I heard your boss killed one of the troopers a short time back. Apparently he was killing young gins . . . so I heard around the pubs.’

Henry’s expression clouded. ‘I can’t help you, Mister Tracy,’ he said abruptly as he resumed his seat behind the desk. ‘I don’t know where Mister Duffy is buried . . . or if he has been buried at all. So if that is all you want with me, I would suggest that our conversation is at an end.’

Luke sensed that he had touched a raw nerve and he realised he would get nowhere continuing with his questions.

He departed and returned to the Cohens’ store, where he told Kate what had transpired at the police barracks. She expressed her disappointment but she was not deterred, even though he pointed out the magnitude of the task ahead of them. Finding a grave, if one existed, in such a vast place as the brigalow plains of central Queensland . . . But Kate persisted stubbornly and he shook his head.

A day before Luke and Kate were to ride out of Rockhampton, they received an unexpected visitor.

A puzzled Solomon Cohen hurried to Kate, who was sorting supplies with Luke in a storage shed behind the store. The shed was little more than a corrugated iron roof supported by timber poles for storing baled hay. But it also doubled as a relatively comfortable accommodation for Luke while he was in Rockhampton.

‘Sergeant James from the Native Police wants to speak with you,’ Solomon said and Kate glanced up in surprise from wrapping a canvas sheet around blankets.

‘Tell him to come through,’ she said and instinctively brushed down her dress.

Henry stood in the shed curiously eyeing the supplies scattered around him: tinned meat, small sacks of flour, demijohns of lime juice, twists of tobacco, ammunition for the guns and packets of sugar and tea.

‘I heard you were heading out west, Missus O’Keefe,’ he said after he had introduced himself to her. ‘And I also learnt that your brother is Tom Duffy.’

She stared hard at him with the defiance her family had long displayed for representatives of the British legal system. ‘How did you learn that, Sergeant James?’ she replied coldly and a faint smile formed at the corners of Henry’s eyes.

‘I’m a policeman . . . and this is a small town,’ he answered. ‘Do you mind if I sit down, Missus O’Keefe? My leg gives me a bit of trouble.’ She gestured to a bale of hay and he sat down heavily. ‘Mister Tracy here rode out to ask me if I knew anything about where your father might be buried. I told him the truth when I said I did not know. But I have this,’ he said, passing Luke a piece of paper. ‘It’s a map I made, to the best of my memory, of the area around the site of the dispersal. You will see the best landmark is a range of hills there and a creek line. I think if you search in the area around the hills you might find something. As for getting out to Glen View itself, that I believe is in your hands, Mister Tracy.’

The American folded the paper and placed it in a battered chocolate tin that contained the smaller essential items for the trip: needles and cotton spools, a small phial of laudanum and a brass prismatic compass.

‘Thank you, Sergeant James,’ Kate said, softening her animosity toward the police sergeant. ‘But I cannot help wonder why you should assist us when I can only assume you have a duty to search for and arrest my brother.’

‘Your brother might not have obtained such notoriety had it not been for the actions of the former commander of the troop,’ Henry replied. ‘Something happened to your father that I will never be able to prove. Not that it matters now because Mort has disappeared and could be on his way out of the colony, even out of the country by now. Whatever happened the day of the dispersal at Glen View I think was murder. And I think that your brother was innocently caught up in the circumstances because of the actions of Mort that day.’

He turned to Luke. ‘As for Corporal Gideon being the murderer of those darkie girls, Mister Tracy, I can assure you he was an innocent man who also fell victim to Mort’s insanity. That is all I can say except that I hope you get to your brother before we do, Missus O’Keefe.’ He paused and Kate could see a subtle change in the man, not obvious to less perceptive people. ‘I mean that as a man . . . and not a policeman, Missus O’Keefe,’ he added softly and she was able to read in his eyes a gentleness that belied his gruff exterior. She could also see deeper to a terrible torment of the soul for the violence of his life and she suddenly felt a surge of pity for the man. ‘If you intend to journey to Glen View,’ he added, ‘I would advise that you stay out of Mister Macintosh’s way. It seems he has a great dislike for the Duffy name. Your brother is under suspicion for the killing of three Glen View shepherds and I doubt that he will welcome any relative of Tom Duffy on his property. I would fear for your lives if you did so.’

‘Thank you for the warning,’ Kate said. ‘I do not have any intentions of meeting Mister Macintosh if I can help it.’

Henry eased himself off the hay bale and brushed down his trousers. ‘I’m glad of that, Missus O’Keefe,’ he said. ‘You appear to be an honest young woman from all that I have heard about you. And I’m sorry for your recent loss. I don’t think I can give you any more assistance, so I will bid you both a good day.’

Luke extended his hand and Henry seemed surprised. ‘My thanks also, Sergeant James,’ he said. ‘Hope we meet again one day under better circumstances.’

Henry accepted the offered hand. ‘So do I, Mister Tracy,’ he said as he made his departure.

When he was gone, Kate sighed. ‘I think Sergeant James is a good man, haunted by his past.’ Luke did not understand. But then he did not have a woman’s intuition either.

The following day Luke and Kate set out from Rockhampton and in the two weeks they rode the track west, she constantly amazed the bushman with her extensive knowledge of the flora and fauna they encountered on the journey. She could identify many of the plants and animals by name as they traversed the range of low scrubby hills to the west of Rockhampton, and even when they rode into the seemingly never-ending sea of brigalow scrub.

As a young girl she had read as much as she could about the bush. The colourful and detailed letters her father had scribbled concerning his observations of the land on his long journeys across the vast and seemingly endless plains had provided her with much of her knowledge.

She was full of surprises from the very commencement of their trek. Luke had been stunned to see her wearing men’s clothing the morning they met to ride out of Rockhampton. But he was even more surprised to see her ride astride her mount as a man would. Riding side-saddle along the rough bush tracks was not practicable. It was spine-twisting and uncomfortable, she had explained to him, and he was forced to agree.

Luke taught her to ride and how to lead the packhorse and very soon he took it for granted that it was just as natural for a woman to ride like a man as it was for a woman to wear the practical clothes.

Kate adapted to life on the bush track as if she had been born to it, although at times the bush was like an ocean devoid of landmarks. Luke was a good teacher and patiently taught her how to live with nature and travel through the country of endless horizons. She soon gained her confidence as he pointed out how he followed the seemingly invisible route west along the lonely track.

Often at nights when they were camped, the American would gaze at her across the camp fire and ponder on how lucky a man would be to have such a woman for his wife. O’Keefe must have been raving mad to leave such a woman, he would muse to himself as he sipped at his coffee and watched her prepare for the next day.

He did not consider that the beautiful young woman saw him in any light other than as a good friend, a guide and protector on the trek west, and he would sigh and dismiss his feelings as nothing more than wishful thinking. He was careful to hide them from her, but the further west they rode the more he realised that he could never love any woman as much as Kate O’Keefe.

In the two weeks travelling west, they had encountered only the occasional shepherd riding or trudging back to Rockhampton. But near Glen View they encountered a solitary bullock dray returning to pick up supplies in Rockhampton.

The dray was stacked with bales of wool for its return journey, and the man who walked beside his team trailing a bullock whip was almost as wide as he was tall. He was accompanied by a tough little cattle dog which snapped and yapped at the legs of the big plodding bullocks.

They met the bullocky and his dog just on sunset and pitched their camp with the teamster, who introduced himself as Harry Hubner and was pleased to have them share his camp fire.

After the horses and bullocks had been hobbled for the night, the four sat around a camp fire sharing the evening meal. The fourth member to share the fire was the dog, which considered itself an equal to the humans. After all, did he not work as hard as his master? The dog took a liking to Kate and leaned against her, staring with adoring eyes at the human whose voice was as soft as her stroking pats were gentle.