Free The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson Page B

then, said Bill. Big ones.
    The stouter the better. Meanlookin bastards.
    Then it is settled.
    Batman gazed at the forested slopes and replaced his hat. She’s settled all right, he said. He lifted his firestick and signalled for Bill to follow.
    The assigned men were standing before the blaze, pressing their sleeves to their faces as the acrid smoke of dog blew past. Great brumes of it like thunderheads brought to earth. Batman looked at them, man after man, and spoke.
    Keep that there fire burning for a mark. Elsewise you’ll be lost out here. Nothin but crows fer company. And be sure that gin can still walk when I get back.
    The assigned men and the manservant William Gould shuffled about anxiously but voiced no objections to the plan as it was proposed. They scratched their groins and watched Batman resettle the doublebarrel gun on his back and move off.
    He walked a few paces down the hill before something prompted him to stop and look around. You want a written tender? he said. On yer feet.
    The Dharugs took up their effects and followed him.
    The blood of men, women, dogs intermixed in a muddy wallow where the vanguard of four walked; they slipped and staggered across that killing field towards the forested valley, Batman cursing, the Dharugs less perturbed. The boy jumped up, following the men down the slope.
    Hold on, he said, but the men continued and he hurried to catch them.
    Stay, boy, said Bill. This is not for you.
    No chance.
    It will be dangerous.
    I aint stupid like them back there. The blacks might come for their kin and then it will go to shite, wont it. Leave them to it I say.
    You are learning, boy.
    I am.

T HEY WALKED DOWN THROUGH A DRY creek bed lined with swamp gums grown so close together they appeared as one living whole. The men passed around these trees in single file, among sun shafts which pierced the canopy but threw no light upon their faces nor warmed their bones. In the gloom the air was thick with flies and the mushrooms grew like the sightless larvae of some queer and unnamed vermin. Before long they found themselves among a stand of trees which had been stripped of their bark for windbreaks. The naked trunks were carved over with bisected circles, detailings of the moon and sun, images of snakes and roo. The Parramatta men gazed at the finely wrought icons but John Batman found more to hold his attention. Pressed onto the flesh of the tree was a bloody handprint. Batman removed his hat and crouched to examine the ground and Black Bill joined him. One injured man had passed this way.
    They moved on. Somewhere south of Ben Lomond in a tomb of rainforest the trackers came to a stop before a vasteasement and stood staring up, their hands atop their heads. They picked over the mossy stone for any trace of the clan, crouched and fingered the cragged surface for tailings of dirt or crushed grass or any sign that might suggest a direction taken, but found nothing. John Batman leaned on his gun and looked over that sorry landscape. He pulled out his quart flask of rum and threw a gill down his throat. By the time he had replaced it within the folds of his coat he was set upon a return to his own Kingston and the warm pleasures of his wife. He signalled the Dharugs down and led his group back into the bush.
    That afternoon they retraced their track through the wilderness. Huge emergent gums broke the canopy and their uppermost foliage scraped the hulls of clouds dredging across the sky. But the sunless floor of that forest, kept shaded by acacia, sassafras and musk, was as wretched cold as the mountainside they had earlier quit. In time they left the trees and crossed a sequestered meadow where wallabies grazed. The animals watched the rovers advance before pounding away in unison, the sound like war drums beating inside the core of the earth. The men followed the slope of the mountain upwards and into the forest once more. Just beyond the fringe of trees the Vandemonian bent to one knee to study