mile downstream the river narrowed. Tracks marked where riders had crossed from the other side; two men only. Hamish hoped it was McKenzie and Jasperson. He’d seen his old friend Boxer go down during the fracas so the number made sense. ‘Boxer dead.’ He rolled the words around on his tongue, tasting its sourness. ‘Dead because of a bloody-minded Englishman.’ He spat in the dirt, swatting at the flies massing about his bloody wound. He thought of his old friend, envisioned his night black face. Boxer had been with Hamish from the very beginning. Together they’d travelled the breadth of the country they both loved. Boxer advised Hamish when the rains would come, taught him to study the directions the birds flew at sunset if he needed water, showed him where the best waterholes were. More importantly he was a guardian of the old ways, of the customs of his people. His was a great loss.
‘The rainbow serpent came from the mother earth,’ Hamish said clearly, ‘and caused the waterways to form in his wake. Where he rested he made a billabong.’ A wind lifted the branches about him. ‘I hope you’re in that place where the water is still and shady, my old friend.’ To Hamish, Boxer was the last of his kind: a full-blood Aborigine with a bond of love for this land that would remain unbroken, even in death.
Hamish directed his horse down the sandy bank. The horse stepped gingerly off the edge and, with his hind legs partially bent, half-slid down the embankment. Hamish held himself steady, leant back in the saddle and relaxed his body so that he matched the horse’s gait. In the centre of the river, rivulets of water ran across a sandy bar. These were the type of odds he could work with, he decided. Hamish tied a rope from his waist to his saddle and urged his horse into the water. ‘Come on then, lad,’ he coaxed, rubbing his neck.
The bottom deepened quickly, the water reached his thighs and then they were climbing up onto the sandy bank. The horse whinnied softly and snorted. They were stranded on an island. Realising that he had little choice but to go onwards, the horse plunged into the water at Hamish’s urging. This part of the river was much deeper and the horse struck out to swim to the bank. The current caught at them and once again Hamish felt the push of water, felt the horse being propelled sideways. They were carried one hundred feet downstream into the path of a fallen tree, which stopped their progress with a jolt. Hamish grimaced as his good leg was buffeted, the horse thrashing against the timber. Finally the animal gained his footing and, finding traction on the river floor, scrambled out of the water.
Regardless of his exhaustion and the pain of his useless leg, Hamish gave a grim smile. If Crawford could prove the events that unfolded last night, he could destroy everything. Nonetheless there were two things he had in his favour. One was the involvement of the renegade blacks, especially the fur-coated warrior of last night whom Hamish assumed was the marauding Aborigine Wetherly spoke of, and secondly, Crawford would not be expecting Hamish Gordon to pay him a visit.
It was midafternoon. Through the tree canopy edging Oscar Crawford’s homestead, the sun was a blinding orb. Luke hid quietly behind a stand of belah saplings and squinted across the short distance between the line of trees and the paling fence surrounding the homestead. The open space provided little cover. If he was going to make a run for it he had to be prepared. He pulled his carbine closer, running his hand protectively across the metal barrel. Overhead, crows called out soullessly. A black sulky remained parked at the front of the house, and he counted three, perhaps four horses. He ducked back under cover, his rifle grasped to his chest.
A number of hours spent searching the riverbank had yielded no clues as to his father’s whereabouts. There were the obvious tracks of where men and cattle crossed the river, but apart from a quantity of manure and trampled undergrowth, there was no sign of any men. A severed rope tied to a tree and two dead beasts, already torn apart by wild pigs, marked what must have been a frenzied crossing. It was only on Willy’s insistence that they’d travelled further downstream. Here along the edge of the river they’d found hoof