Brian Penton

by Inheritors (v1. 0) (lit)

  Budge caught the back of his shirt. “Don't do it, Larry. It's only yourself you'll injure. It's only more strife and hatred you'll create.”

  Larry turned quickly and hit him across the mouth, then dived into the viscous, greasy darkness of the shed. But alone under the echoing roof, with rats scampering about his feet and boards creaking at every movement, he hesitated with his back to the wall, convinced that he saw the huddle of his father's form behind the press. His legs edged him back to the door, but he turned before he reached it and with the same sense of joyous abandon he had felt that afternoon when riding at the muzzle of his father's revolver walked across to the press thinking that every step might be his last. There was no one behind the press, of course, only a heap of rotting skins.

  Ashamed of himself he went back to the locker quickly and set to bursting open the door. Muttering to himself, “I'll burn the bastard's shed for him,” he tore his nails on the staple as he wrenched at it with a vindictive pleasure even in his pain. But a clap of thunder, breaking directly overhead, made him spin on his heel, and several seconds passed before he realized that he was holding his revolver. Coyle's voice urgently whispering, “Larry! Larry!” and in the next flash of lightning a glimpse of his companions at the door, brought back his breath. “Get a move on,” Coyle said, “it's going to rain.”

  At the next attempt he broke the lock and in a few minutes was rolling the drums of tar out of the locker. Five minutes later they hustled each other through the door again. The flames climbed over the skins with a low zooming and reflected themselves on the grease-polished floor. Coyle stayed, leaning in at the door to see them lick the wall and catch the oozing stalagmites of tar. Bending low against the wind the five of them ran to the hut.

  They had brought neck-cloths to cover the lower part of their faces, and this done hastily, they crept to the door, Coyle first, then Larry, then Wagner, with revolvers ready, and at the rear Berry and Budge.

  The hut was in darkness. The sound of fifty weary men snoring, tossing, moaning in a heavy sleep told them they were not expected. They entered. Coyle pushed Larry against the window and Wagner towards the door, and himself groped across the table for the slush lamp. A bottle rolled and smashed on the form. Loud snoring in the bunk near the window ceased and blankets rustled. A flash of lightning, illuminating a thousand chinks in wall and roof, shone on startled eyes and a hand poising a piece of bright metal.

  “Drop it,” Coyle whispered.

  Before he finished, as the thunder fell, they heard, under its obliterating roll, the thin piping of a police whistle. Larry grabbed and caught a handful of hair, smothering a second blast. In the next flare of lightning he saw he had a man by the beard and when Coyle got the lamp alight they found that it was Custard. He jerked his beard from Larry's damp fingers and darted a hand towards the whistle which had fallen between them, but a jab from Larry's knee laid him groggily on the bunk and Coyle put the whistle in his pocket.

  Immediately the room was full of men, grouped around the table in a half-moon of surprised faces and pasty-white legs protruding from shirts.

  “Get back.” Coyle flourished his gun and they pushed away from the table.

  Wagner began to laugh and pointed to a pair of spindle shanks in the front row. The owner huddled up and pulled his shirt-tails down. “'Ere, what's the joke?”

  “Just thinking what'll you do holding one of Rusty's prize stud rams with them pair of loins. It'll run clear off with you.”

  “Come off it,” Coyle said. “We ain't here merrymaking, men, as you can guess. We're a deputation from the camp down there. We're sent to take you back with us. The hut's surrounded. If you come quiet nobody'll hurt you.”

  “Not in the least,” Budge put in. “We're all brothers, we must stand together.”

  “That's all right. If you don't come quiet you'll carry a mark to remember us affectionately by a long time.” He motioned to Larry. “Call the boys.”

  Larry leaned out the window and whistled and received a faint whistle in reply.

  “There. Are you coming—like loving brothers?” The handkerchief on his face moved and Larry knew that he was smiling.

  The men commenced to pull their trousers on and gather their swags together, looking at each other and helplessly at Custard, who stood with his back to the bunk rubbing his jaw. “Stay where th'art,” he growled. “They can't touch thee. It's nowt but a bluff.”

  To answer him the wind puffed in a haze of black smoke and the stench of burning tar. Between the almost constant thunder the low roar and crackle of the flames was becoming louder. He looked out and saw the shed on fire, stopped rubbing his jaw, and grinned maliciously at Coyle. “Tha'll get ten years for this. Just wait till boss and Johns see they flames.”

  Coyle weighed his revolver. “We're waiting.”

  “No, no,” Budge said, beating his hands together. “Hadn't we better go before worse befalls?”

  Coyle strolled over to the window. Tongues of flame, like tattered flags, fluttered from the cracks in the wall of the shed. Here and there across the paddock to leeward sparks were starting the tinder-dry grass. He felt Larry shivering beside him. “Buck up,” he said. “You don't want to have to try a third time, do you?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  An impatient whistle came from the dark windward side of the shed. They saw the dim shapes of men closing in. Coyle whistled back and returned to the table. “All right, men. It's time to go. Out the door and straight for the trees behind the shed and the one who tries any tricks gets a pill.” He pushed the nearest man towards the door and the others like sheep herded after.

  But Custard pushed Coyle aside and held up his hand. “Stand still,” he shouted. “It's a gammon. What's five to fifty? Let they carry thee aht.”

  “A gammon is it?” Coyle pushed his gun into Custard's ribs. “Does that feel like a gammon?”

  Budge pulled the revolver away. “Don't do it. It's not needed. They're going quietly. Aren't you, mates? Nobody will hurt you. We don't come with hatred. We go down on our knees. Come and fight with us for our common cause in the brotherhood of man.” In his excitement he let the neck-cloth slip from his face, uncovering the tattered beard and childish blue eyes. He looked so absurdly harmless now and his nervousness, exposed by his twitching lips and trembling hands, was so plain that the scabs began to think it might be a gammon after all. They drew back from the door and collected behind Custard.

  The man with the spindle shanks shook his fist. “'Ere, who're you callin' brother? We ain't your brothers. You better get out of 'ere afore we chucks you out.”

  “That's the ticket. Chuck 'em out.”

  Coyle turned his gun. “Through the door, you swabs.”

  No one moved.

  “They won't,” Custard said. “Tha'd best go thyself before boss wakes up.”

  “They won't, eh?”

  “Na.”

  “Right, you crawler,” Coyle said. “We'll learn you a lesson.” As he spoke he swung his boot hard into Custard's groin. The man doubled with a hoot of pain and Coyle struck him down unconscious with the butt of his gun.

  “Please,” Budge cried, addressing Coyle and the scabs by turn. “Please go quietly, brothers. Please, Coyle, don't. In the name of humanity. . .”

  Coyle had picked up the bottle which had fallen from the table. There was a jagged saw edge on it where the neck had broken off. “Watch. Watch closely, scabs, and see how you are branded for life,” and kneeling beside Custard he ripped the sharp edge of glass down Custard's back, tearing the shirt and four instantly red weals in the flesh, from the nape of his neck to his belt. “That's our gammon for you.” He flung the bottle under the table and stood up.

  “'Ere! 'Ere!” the man with the spindle shanks said disapprovingly, then his jaw dropped and his tongue hung out.

  Berry was the first to find his voice. “That's a dirty trick to put on us, you murdering rascal,” he roared. “D'you want to get us all hanged?” Coy
le pushed his hat on to the back of his head, and Berry saw his eyes with the mad will-o'-the-wisp light in them as Larry had seen them the night before. He turned to Budge and Wagner. “Come on. Let us get out before it's too late. It's not what we came for.”

  Only Larry seemed unmoved by what had happened. He was halfturned from them, listening. “Hist. I heard a whistle.”

  He heard it again, clearly, then a shot, then a man shouting, then the sound of many feet running. He looked out and saw the men who had surrounded the hut fleeing past the shed. When he glanced round again Berry and Budge and Wagner were gone too.

  He went through the window head first, but before he was around the shed, which sowed hot sparks upon his face as he ran, Coyle caught and held him. “Look.”

  Larry looked back and there was his father, running towards them in his night-shirt.

  Coyle's fingers closed on Larry's wrist. They were stone cold. “If you don't shoot now you might as well shoot me and yourself.”

  Larry tried to get free and they struggled. He battered Coyle's head and face with his free fist, but Coyle held him, watching over his shoulder till Cabell was hardly twenty feet away. “Now. Shoot him or he'll shoot you in the back,” and tried to spring from between them, but Larry caught him round the waist and lifted him from the ground and threw him straight at his father's feet. Cabell fell, and looking back as he ran Larry saw them wrestling.

  Chapter Seven: On the Run

  The men were crowded round the dead camp-fire when Larry came in.

  “Where's Coyle?” they demanded.

  “I don't know.”

  “Which way did he go?”

  “I don't know, I tell you.”

  “All right. Keep your shirt on. Only they've got Goggs.”

  They sent out a party to reconnoitre for Coyle along the fence but there was no sign of him. Coyle was gone too.

  Larry sneaked off and rolled himself in his blankets. For a long time he heard the men arguing whether they ought to go up and rescue Goggs and Coyle, but there was no one to lead them and anyway they'd had enough for one day. The burning shed, the fire in the grass, the noise of the men fighting it and of frightened animals, and the lurid glare of clouds and the window-panes of the homestead scared them for what they had done. “There'll be hell to pay for this,” said those who had not helped to spread the tar or light the blaze. At last the rain came, just as it seemed the fire must sweep through the dry valley and consume every stick and living thing. The storm lasted long enough to save all except a square mile of grass and the shed, which burned merrily to the stumps, then rumbled off to the south. The stars came out, and the shearers went miserably to bed on the wet ground and uneasy thoughts of the day to come.

  Larry's head ached and the whip-burn across his back was like a tight, hot wire cutting him in two. He was feverish. He hoped that Coyle was dead, but he would doze off and dream that Coyle came back and in front of everybody accused him. “This man was my mate and he did the dirty on me. . .” In the bushman's simple values the scab, the betrayer of mateship, was the only criminal. Scabs, and Chows, and kanakas, they were the same blood. He dozed again and dreamt that he had crept up to the homestead and rescued Coyle, awoke and lay thinking how it could be done, thinking of his father and the police. “Perhaps he's dead, anyway.”

  It was the black, chilly hour before dawn. Berry came and shook him. “You're wanted.”

  He had to repeat it several times before Larry understood.

  “Your mother. She's waiting on the road.”

  The air, still again, was heavy with the smell of burning. “I don't want to see her. Tell her to go away.”

  Berry would take no such message, and Larry had to go.

  She was waiting for him near the gate, very small and bowed in the tight wrapping of her shawl. As he came up she took the shawl from her face and in the starlight he saw the changed expression which Cabell had noticed, as though her face had been broken in pieces and put together with a different look.

  It was nearly four months since she had last spoken to him and all that had happened since was between them. Her hopes of seeing him a wealthy and respected man were ended now and with them everything she lived for. She could not be tender with him: he had sacrificed her to a cause for which she had, because of those hopes, no sympathy. Looking at him now, at his face, the real, surly, Surface face, she thought, for all its fine features—black and bad and obstinate—she almost hated him, as the embodiment of that black, bad, and obstinately spiteful spirit which in her father, her cousin, her brother, and herself had caused her unhappiness. And he almost hated her too, as she shook her head at him, for he knew what was in her mind. He hated her in self-defence against a feeling of remorse and because he hated himself and everybody else.

  “What d'you want?”

  “You've made a pretty mess of things,” she began.

  “Shut up. If you've come to rouse I'm going back.”

  She hissed a breath back through her lips. “Yes, go back to your trash. It's where you belong. And more fool me for ever thinking different.”

  “Aw, go to hell, will you?” He turned and fled.

  At the edge of the camp she caught up with him. “Wait. You can't stay here. I came to tell you that they caught Goggs and Coyle last night. Your MATES.”

  “Well?” he said anxiously.

  “What d'you suppose? Goggs split on you.”

  “I don't care.”

  “You don't care? Are you mad? Do you think it's nothing to go to jail for ten years.” She breathed resentfully. “Thank God I won't be here to see you when you come out.”

  “Who says I'll go in. Just let him try. . .” But the threats stuck in his throat. He was ashamed to make them.

  “Oh, don't deceive yourself. You've done enough to be sent up for twenty years, enough to be hanged in the old days. And you needn't build any fine hopes on his mercy. If he'd had a gun last night he'd've shot you.”

  “He didn't have no gun?”

  “No, lucky for you. Why, what's the matter?”

  “Nothing,” Larry said.

  Up at the homestead a rooster crowed. The horses in the horselines shook themselves. A wash of opal light was beginning to separate earth and sky in the east.

  “I'll have to go now,” Emma said. “Here, take this.” She put a small package in his hands. “There's fifty sovereigns. They'll help you on your way till you find work.”

  He would have been surprised to know that those sovereigns came from his father's pocket barely an hour ago. True, it was no act of kindness on Cabell's part. He was afraid of Emma. (“You let the police lay hands on Larry and I'll tell what became of M'Govern.”) But he was afraid of Larry too. He remembered the look on Larry's face as they were riding at each other the day before. Now he had destroyed four thousand pounds' worth of Cabell's property and mutilated Custard in a diabolical way. He had no doubt that Larry had done this, as some kind of a sign, a threat to himself. The devil was in the fellow and down there he had four hundred men behind him. What couldn't he do before the police had time to get reinforcements? The same thought worried Emma. If Larry killed his father how could she save him? Or Cabell might kill Larry in self-defence. So they agreed: she must get Larry out of the valley.

  Larry refused. He would not leave his mates. He pushed the money into her shawl.

  “You're daft. In the morning the police will come down and arrest you—and Berry and Budge and all the others. Don't fool yourself, they know everything.”

  “I won't go. I can't go.”

  Men had been hovering around them for some time. They came up. Berry and Budge were there. “Is something wrong?” Berry asked. “I heard you say my name. Nobody's gone and. . .”

  “Goggs split on you, and the police are coming at sun-up.”

  Berry glanced at the eastern sky. It had lifted itself from the ragged hills and the birds were waking. “It's what I more than half-expected from a bad night's work,” he said.
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  “No use talking pious now,” Emma said. “That won't serve in the dock. You'd better get on your way and take Larry with you.”

  “Much obliged to you, missus. Much obliged. If you'll wait till I roll my swag up, Larry. . .”

  “I'm not going.”

  “Not going?”

  Larry gestured angrily, but when he spoke it was in rather a forlorn voice, “Where would I go?”

  “You're still a young man,” Berry said. “If you're driven out of this you could make a place of your own. You can come to my place. There's room for a mate.”

  Larry almost groaned, looking at the eager, sympathetic faces of the men and wondering what they would say when they knew. They were all talking at once, trying to persuade Larry to clear out. “You've done enough for the cause, Larry.”

  “Aye, nobody done more.”

  “You'd best come to South America with me,” Budge said. “It's a losing fight here. Now I know that there's too much bitterness between men for Jerusalem ever to be built on this soil. The place began with cruelty and hatred and time has only increased it. Your father'd be a kinder man if he'd never had convicts to flog, and we'd never have done the devilish things we did last night if we hadn't had the fear and poison of the evil old days in our blood. Will you come?”

  “No.”

  They could see each other's faces clearly now. Emma saw that no words would move him. She drew the shawl over her head and turned impatiently away. But at the roadside she looked back and said, “Goodbye, Larry.”

  He watched her clump heavily over the bridge and up the slope in her outsized, ugly boots, and wished that he had answered her.

  When Berry and Budge and Wagner and most of the others who had taken part in the raid were gone, the spirit of the camp began to go to pieces. The strike was as good as over and all hopes of the great bushmen's revolution and the Utopia of underdogs which men had talked about since the First Fleet landed its cargo of unhappy outcasts at Botany Bay a hundred years before. The scabs and the quieter men drifted away from the camp, shearing began, the rains came, and only the little group of homeless bushmen remained to defy the police. Then the rains washed their camp away, more police and soldiers arrived, and they scattered over the country-side in bands, burning fences and gates and grass and beating up stray police and infantrymen and scabs.