Trevor Shearston is the author of several books, including Something in the Blood, Sticks That Kill, and White Lies.

Game

By Trevor Shearston

Allen & Unwin

Copyright © 2013 Trevor Shearston
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74331-521-7
CHAPTER 1

The light was grey and they were riding down through thick scrub with shed bark slippery under the horses’ hooves and loose stone beneath. Jack was being their eyes, but both the younger men knew the country south of Marengo better than Ben did. He was content to ride tail with the pack mare.

Jack had overnighted once at the place with a mob when still a stockman, had even then, he claimed, noted its perfection to a bent purpose. By his account, a mile from Jugiong the Yass road climbed to a saddle cupping a shallow valley part-cleared as a layby, there being a spring. The entrance was blind, through boulders. The coach horses and those of the escort would be badly blown after the climb. The men too would have nothing on their minds but a drink of cold water. He had anticipated Ben’s rejoinder. ‘None of it any damn use, I know, if the bastards get wind of us–they’ll double the bloody escort. So we make ourselves scarce.’

The three had disappeared for two days into the hayloft on the Murrumburrah farm of Jack’s maternal uncle. The man didn’t want them there but took a wad of quids for gin and bread and a mutton stew. He asked where they were headed next and Jack told him back up to Fogg’s to fence a few bits of stuff. When they left he watched them out of sight. On Jack’s instruction they rode north for an hour, then east and by dusk were on the Galong following the stream south. Ben said nothing, the man was Jack’s affair. They were seated at a low fire eating warmed sardines from the tins when Jack said out of a brooding silence, ‘He’d shop me except he’s too worried I’d get away.’

John turned to Ben and waited. When he offered no comment John looked to Jack. ‘What — his own kin?’

‘He’d have sold the wife if he run out of Old Tom.’

The youngster strained forward into the firelight. ‘And you haven’t shot the mongrel?’

‘That what you’d do, John?’

Ben heard the dangerous edge. He caught Jack’s eye. The return glance said keep your hair on.

‘My oath! Any dog back home that turned got a bullet!’

Jack grinned without showing any teeth. ‘That so. Well that wouldn’t look too good on his stone. Shot for turnin, RIP.’

John erupted into a guffaw, then his face froze, until Ben chuckled and Jack himself began to laugh. Jack stopped first. He waited for John to see he’d quit.

‘I reckon we’ll make that our last word on him but, eh.’

They’d slept till the moon rose, then ridden to Jugiong, skirting the sleeping village and climbing the ridge that would bring them down onto the saddle and the road. Knowing Jack’s weakness for putting gain above risk, Ben wanted a look at the place before they began stopping travellers. It was possible too that a mob was being overnighted.

The scrub between the ash and stringybarks thinned and past the two in front of him Ben caught glimpses of a bowl of native millet with silver-grey ringbarks standing and the road a grey stripe that would be white dust later. He caught movement, looked again and was sure, and was about to call to Jack in the lead, but Jack had already seen and was pulling his mare. They sat their mounts in the shadow of the trees and watched the four figures trudging clumped together along the road. The light was still too thick to be able to make them out other than the fuzzy red of a shirt, the dull glint of a pan, but the long handles of the shovels strapped across their backs identified them. Diggers. Going north to Lambing Flat. In the still air the clanking that tolled each step sounded as close as the breath of the horses.

‘Buggers are on the move early,’ Jack muttered. ‘We want em?’

‘They’re goin in the wrong direction. Anyway, too bloody early to start standin guard, I want some breakfast.’

They watched till the four climbed to the rim, sank into the road. In those ten minutes the valley grew into being, dark blurs becoming shrubs, pale humps boulders, the line of the stream from the spring a green scribble through tussocks. Ben gave the diggers a further minute, then dropped the pack mare’s reins and rode from the trees and halted his mare and studied the nest of boulders from which the coach would emerge. The driver would be looking ahead to where placed stones made a roadside trough. A fallen ringbark up the slope to the right was the spot to hold the captures, behind his line of sight. From the log she was a straight run, no boulders, down to the road. They’d be halfway to the coach before the traps had the carbines out of the scabbards. He swivelled in the saddle and nodded.

* * *

By mid-morning of an already hot November day, thirty-four people sat in discrete groupings about the fallen tree. In deference to the presence of a woman all the men, including the three, had retained their coats. She was the wife of a surveyor. She sat on a horse rug beneath a white parasol, he on the step of their buggy, both angry and neither looking at the other. Two drays piled high with wool bales resembled the walls of a ruin, the resigned teamsters sitting straight-legged in its shade, backs against the wheels. A clerk sat alone at one end of the log holding the reins of a nag the three had not given a second glance. At the customary distance from the Europeans, but close enough to include in the same monitoring sweep, a party of Chinese coming from the diggings squatted on their haunches, faces hidden beneath conical hats, each man’s belongings in a tied mat in front of him. A retied mat. Like all there they’d been ordered to empty their pockets and open their loads. Only the purse of the surveyor’s wife remained inviolate.

Ben was alone with the captures. Firearms had been demanded at gunpoint and the caps and bullets removed and dropped in a sack. The lifeless weapons lay where tossed on a filthy tarpaulin from one of the drays. Even so his gaze swept the downcast faces constantly as he stood talking to a squatter named Hayes. The two knew one another slightly. When still a cocky with a wife and son Ben had driven a herd of store beef to Lambing Flat and been levied five pounds by Hayes on behalf of the committee towards building new saleyards. The five pounds had, half an hour earlier, gone into the take bag along with seventeen in interest and a fine gold watch. The squatter had responded tersely to Ben’s attempt now to converse. But curiosity about a man he’d read much of, but didn’t till today realise he’d already met, had got the better of him. Ben asked whether the new yards had in fact been built. Hayes assured him that they had. Then, knowing it was without doubt the only chance he’d ever get, the squatter asked whether Ben had been, as the newspapers asserted, one of the two men never identified by the informer, Charters, in the gang under Gardiner at Eugowra Rocks. Mr Gilbert’s presence was known, certainly, Hayes added quickly, he having been named at both trials. But because they were working together now did not of course mean, he granted, that their association went all the way back to the day of the famed robbery. Ben ignored the flattery and stared into the squatter’s eyes, trying to read there his motive in asking. It was no secret in the company he kept, but why should this man know and be able to swear on oath if it came to it.

‘How does it concern you, Mr Hayes?’

‘In no way directly, Mr Hall, I admit. I’m simply moved to enquire. As a reader of the newspapers.’

‘And that, you’d have me to believe, grants licence to ask anything.’

‘Not at all. My apology.’

Ben shifted his gaze to one of the Chinese, who had stood and was touching his crotch to signal that he needed to piss. Ben nodded and pointed to a tussock, there, no further. He watched the man shuffle away in his slippers and squat as they did to relieve themselves. His mind, though, was still debating whether to answer. How much did it matter? If ever he was taken the traps would charge him with being there and set about trying to prove it.

‘Yeah. I was there. I shot above the nags though, not into the coach.’

He didn’t know why he’d added that. It was true but the man didn’t need to be told. It sounded as if he was begging off.

‘It was a savage sentence Gardiner got.’

‘More savage than Manns, you reckon.’

Ben was watching the Chinese return to his companions but his eyes grazed the squatter’s face. Hayes’s cheeks had flamed.

‘Ah, quite, yes. I’d forgot.’

‘So’s Harry. Everythin.’ He flicked his hand to dismiss apology before it could be spoken. Jack was escorting a second, smaller, party of Chinese up the slope. ‘Beg pardon.’ Ben turned from the squatter and strode down to meet them. Two in front were wearing striped miner’s shirts and corduroys, the rest were in the uniform of black cotton pyjamas and woven hats. Jack carried across his thighs a double shotgun with tooled barrels and walnut stock.

‘Whose is that beauty?’

‘Jesus you’re a hungry bastard.’

‘It ain’t for me.’

Jack pointed with his chin. ‘In the red shirt.’ He lobbed the gun to Ben, who broke and closed it, then led an imaginary bird. The owner of the gun watched like a hawk. He wore a gold ring in his right ear and had his hair pulled tightly over his skull and tied, rather than plaited into the pigtail his brethren wore. Ben lowered the gun and read the maker’s mark. ‘Tower, eh? No trash for you. Get him where, John?’

‘Not John — Lee. I buy him Bathurst. Twenty quid.’

‘I give you ten.’

The man shook his head. ‘Not sell him.’ His companion tugged on his sleeve, the man jerked his arm free.

‘Then I bloody take it.’

He spun on his heel. The man looked in disbelief at Jack, then touched himself on the chest and pointed after Ben. Jack nodded. The man broke into a half-run.

‘Orright, ten quid.’

Ben spoke over his shoulder. ‘Too late, John, I give you the chance.’

The man stopped and turned his distressed face back on Jack. A two-fingered whistle spun all faces towards the nest of boulders. The youngster was out from their cover. He raised and whipped his arm, then kicked the stallion into a canter.

Ben stooped and lay the gun across a tussock, ran to the mare and vaulted into the saddle. The teamsters had stood and others too were climbing to their feet in expectation. Ben drew a Navy and rode in among them.

‘Sit down! All of yous! There’s your job, Hayes, keep em sittin!’

The squatter began flapping his arms like a bantam her wings and calling ‘sit, please’. Ben touched the mare with his knees and she picked her way intelligently through the panic. She was beginning to trust him. She hadn’t yet, though, had a revolver go off in her ear. He turned her towards the Chinese climbing the slope and raised the Navy. At the click of the hammer each man broke into a run.

John had slowed the stallion to a trot to come the last twenty yards. Jack called to him, ‘They comin behind or in front?’

‘Behind, it looks, I just seen the coach.’

‘There one on the box?’ Ben said.

‘No uniform but I’d say so — he’s got a carbine.’

The youngster didn’t like the police carbines, the roar of them and the size of the slug they threw.

‘We’re down there quick bloody carbines don’t matter.’

When the coach emerged from the boulders it was barely moving, the spokes visible. All on the hillside could hear the blowing of the horses and the driver telling them they were a grand pair of boys and she was only a mile now to the inn and oats and the most of it downhill. On the box beside him was a trooper in plainclothes with a carbine across his lap as John had said. He was looking down into his hand as if at his watch. Neither man had seen the crowd on the hillside. The driver gave the horses’ flanks a light flick of the reins, then took all four straps in his left hand and gripped the brake lever with his right as the coach started downhill. Two troopers rode from the boulders into the pillow of white dust in the coach’s wake. The bearded one saw them immediately, spoke to the other and pointed. Ben waited for the man then to swivel in the saddle and signal but he remained facing the hillside. Jack had been watching for the same give.

‘Just the two of the bastards.’

The troopers kicked their mounts forward and yelled to the driver, who threw a wild look up the hillside and began heaving with both hands on the reins. A man’s face, mouth open, appeared in the coach window and quickly withdrew. The trooper on the box had unbuttoned his coat to get at his Navys and was checking the priming of the carbine. The two on horseback swerved off the road and started up the hillside. Jack let out a yip and heeled his mare hard in her ribs. Ben and John took up the yipping. Revolvers in both hands, the three launched into a charge downhill, working the mounts with their knees. The troopers wheeled and separated. The bearded man unslung his carbine, the other chose the lesser range but six shots of a revolver. Ben yelled, ‘John — with me!’ and rode at the bearded man.

He was no raw recruit. He ignored their opening shots, levelled the carbine and calmly chose Ben. Finding himself staring into the barrel’s eye, Ben jinked the mare and in the same instant heard the whine of the heavy slug pass his right ear. He fired both revolvers into the bloom of smoke and followed. The man was waiting. He speared the now-useless carbine and, not waiting to watch, reefed hard on the reins, needing to draw a revolver. The stock struck Ben full in the chest. He felt himself toppling and lunged for the mare’s mane, fingers in a tangle of horsehair and trigger guard. John reined in beside him.

‘Jesus, Ben! You hurt?’

‘No, bloody get after him!’

John heeled the stallion hard in the ribs. Unused to such treatment, the horse half-squatted, then sprang off his haunches. Ben found the left stirrup. When he looked round the bearded trooper had turned his horse and was coming again at him and John, firing left and right. Ben saw a puff of wool as a bullet from John clipped the shoulderpad of the man’s coat. The two passed like jousters and then he was on Ben, the snatched shots of both going wide, but giving Ben his first decent look at him as they passed three yards from one another. He was in his forties, ginger beard and red hair, fierce blue eyes with sweat in the sockets, sun-cracked lips flecked with spit. John came hot on the man’s tail. Ben pulled hard on the left rein and the mare responded. She wasn’t worried by the guns, far from, she had her blood up. A touch and she broke into a full gallop. The man glanced over his shoulder and saw how close he was being pursued and fired a shot blind from below his left armpit, the first sign of panic he’d given. Ben fired and saw the left flap of the man’s coat belly like a sail. John had the nose of the stallion nearly up the arse of the trooper’s mount. He leaned and spoke in the animal’s ear and in three strides the stallion took him abreast of the other horse. The youngster twisted in the saddle and presented the barrels of both revolvers at the man’s head. He wasn’t asking him to bail, his snarl said he was going to pull the triggers. The man heaved on the reins and stood in the stirrups and his blown mount staggered sideways and collided with a ringbark. The man bellowed in pain, dropping reins and revolver and clutching his thigh in both hands. The horse walked to a halt, lifted her tail and shat.

Ben and John rode each side of the animal into the rich smell rising around her and levelled revolvers at the man’s face. All were breathing too hard to speak. The man’s teeth were bared and he was closing and opening his eyes and hissing as he pressed thumbs hard into his thigh. John jumped down to retrieve the dropped weapon. Ben pointed a barrel at the man’s second Navy. The man opened the flap of the case one-handed and offered the revolver by the butt and gripped his thigh again. Ben pushed the weapon into his belt. The roar in his ears was lessening and through it he heard a shout, ‘You’re licked, mate, give it up!’ Jack and his man were still at it. He’d forgotten them.

(Continues…)Excerpted from Game by Trevor Shearston. Copyright © 2013 Trevor Shearston. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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