To Chase the Storm: The Frontier Series 4

by Peter Watt

  When the dawn came colonial officers at the outpost watched helplessly with field glasses as the Boer scouts returning along the road from Zeerust marked the road with ranges for enemy marksmen. All the indicators confirmed Private Rosenblum’s worst fears. There was nothing the defenders trapped at the outpost could do to warn Carrington’s relief force.

  That day they watched the scouts from Carrington’s force driven back a mere two miles from the outpost by the well-placed Boer marksmen. They huddled in the trenches as the enemy artillery poured shells into their six acres of the stony mound. In a sad twist of fortune the British General Baden Powell set out to reinforce Carrington’s column, but as he approached the Elands River outpost the sound of fading gunfire brought him to the conclusion that the Australian and Rhodesian colonials defending the stockpile of supplies were fighting a lost battle.

  He turned back in the belief that no British unit could possibly withstand the Boer artillery and superior numbers of enemy soldiers besieging the outpost. His decision left the defenders on their own, with no hope of assistance.

  The Elands River commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hore, was faced with two options: to fight to the last man and die; or surrender to General De la Rey. Five days later the erroneous news was cabled to the world that the defenders of the besieged outpost had surrendered.

  As Fenella Macintosh read the news in the Sydney Morning Herald, she paled and her hands shook. Matthew’s last letter had stated that he had been sent to guard the crossings at some place called Elands River.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  From Kate Tracy’s verandah, the young woman watched the sun set over the bush west of Townsville. Her long dark hair coiled into a pile on her head under a fashionable straw hat, Sarah James displayed an exotic new beauty in an ancient land. In her early thirties, part Irish and part Darambal, her marriage to the former officer of the Queensland Native Mounted Police had produced five equally beautiful children. Gordon James now worked as one of Kate Tracy’s depot managers in Rockhampton and the lifelong love Sarah and Gordon had for each other had transcended even the awesome power of the avenging spirits of the Nerambura ancients.

  Although baptised a Catholic, Sarah had always been haunted by a spirituality much older than Christianity. Her inexplicably deeper feelings for the world around her could not be explained by her knowledge of the catechism, drummed into her by the good nuns when she was at school. A dream was never just a dream. It was an echo of her Darambal blood. And it was a dream that had brought her north on a coastal steamer from her husband and children in Rockhampton to meet with her Aunt Kate.

  Sarah gazed across the bush at the sinking sun and felt its warm spirit give her temporary solace. Her fixed attention on the horizon, which glowed from end to end with its orange and mauve mantle, was distracted by the clatter of a horse-drawn gig along the track that led up to the sprawling timber house. Kate’s return from her office in town would not this time bring the joyous reunion that normally marked their meetings. The deeply troubled expression on Sarah’s face, and the haunted look behind her dark eyes, gave words to her uncharacteristic silence.

  ‘You have seen him,’ Kate said as she embraced the niece who was more like a daughter to her. ‘He has come to you.’

  Sarah did not need to question her aunt; she too had the ability to see into that world beyond the understanding of men.

  ‘The old Nerambura man of the cave,’ Kate continued. ‘The same old man who came to me so many years ago with feathers and paint daubed to his body to tell me things I still do not understand.’

  Sarah held her aunt. ‘His name is Kondola,’ she whispered. ‘And he came to me six nights ago. First as an eagle, then he turned into a man. I knew then that I must come to you because only you would understand.’

  ‘It is death,’ Kate said with a sobbing sigh. ‘He has come to tell us that it is not all over. That the spirits of your mother’s people are not at peace even after forty years. I know, because he has also come to me.’

  ‘But he will not say who is to die, Aunt Kate. Or even why.’

  Kate drew away from Sarah and slumped onto the cane chair where she had so often sat in the evenings, enjoying the cool peace that the setting of the sun brought to the tropics. Kate instinctively glanced at the chair where Matthew had so often sat in her company on those happy occasions. She could not bring herself to even consider that the curse had fallen on her only child. Child? He was thousands of miles away fighting in a war. Her nephew’s letter had arrived a fortnight earlier, and since then she had cabled frantic telegrams to Victoria Barracks in Sydney to ascertain her son’s situation. The return telegrams had assured her that they would look into his enlistment and take steps to have him returned to Australia.

  And then she had received a letter from Matthew. He had written begging her forgiveness for any pain that he may have caused her by running away to join up. But he had also clearly expressed his burning desire to see action at any cost. As if to reassure his mother, he wrote sorrowfully of his being sent to some supply depot at an outpost on the Elands River. He had hoped for detachment to one of the fighting columns pursuing the Boer commandos on the veldt but had been posted to a location well behind the front lines. But the letter had arrived two days after the newspapers heralded the news of the terrible battle and subsequent annihilation of the surrendering colonial defenders at the Elands River outpost. Kate had prayed that her son might have been taken a prisoner rather than killed or wounded in the fighting. But the old warrior Kondola had come to her the same night that she had read her son’s letter and told her that a death was close. And now her niece stood on the verandah grim faced, confirming that which she would not admit to even herself.

  Despite what had been reported in the press, the Australians and Rhodesians defending the isolated outpost at Elands River had not surrendered. The besieging Boers had been reinforced and their numbers now swelled to around three thousand experienced fighters under the command of the brilliant guerilla commander, De la Rey.

  On the second day of the siege, the Boers had moved their artillery guns to within two thousand yards of the fortified mound but the deadly accuracy of the defenders’ rifle fire had driven them back.

  Lieutenant Annat, a Queenslander, had led a patrol of twenty-five men against one of the Boer pompom gun emplacements. They had crawled through the long grass to within two hundred yards of the gun and its crew and opened up with rifle fire. The Boer crew were forced back and only kept their gun when a Boer fighter crawled forward to attach a rope so it could be retrieved.

  Later in the siege, the brave lieutenant was killed when an incoming, twelve-pounder artillery shell exploded at his feet. Draped with a Union Jack, his men carried his shattered body to a burial site just outside the defences and buried him at midnight.

  After long, exasperating days attempting to crush the Australian and Rhodesian defence, the gallant Boer general sent one of his officers under a flag of truce to offer the stubborn defenders generous terms of surrender. But the British commander of the colonials declined, stating that his men would cut his throat if he accepted. As hopeless as the situation appeared, the defenders had chosen certain death to a man rather than give up the tiny hill. No relief was in sight and the world had accepted that no force, outnumbered and outgunned as Colonel Hore’s colonial force was, could withstand the superiority of the battle-experienced Boer commandos.

  Under cover of night, Trooper Matthew Duffy was sent with a reinforcement party of New South Welshmen to a small kopje south of the main defence. The outpost was commanded by Captain Butters, a Rhodesian veteran of the Matabele Wars, and there Matthew sheltered in a trench. When the sun rose, Matthew experienced a day of screaming and whistling Boer artillery shells pounding the small kopje as the Boer general turned his attention to neutralising the outpost which guarded the water supply for the defenders.

  Matthew had aged. The shine of his youthful eyes was gone and they were now dull and haunted. It
was only a matter of time before one of the exploding shells claimed his body and smashed his flesh into a pulp of bloody meat, or a sniper’s bullet shattered his head and forever put out the faint light that remained behind the haunted eyes. He had lived with an unrelenting fear of death for over a week: the petrifying distinctive whistling of the incoming shells followed by the concussive blast of the explosions renting the earth around him seemed to tear through his body to his soul. The constant sound of the giant doors to hell slamming caused him to huddle in the earth at the bottom of his trench shivering uncontrollably. He did not have the option to say he had enough.

  Matthew was trapped in hell and it was only a matter of time before the devil came for him. He was only fifteen but felt as if he had lived for fifty years.

  Just on dusk, when the bombardment lifted, the Boers came in waves against the southern outpost. Matthew felt a strange relief to see his enemy coming forward. Now he had a chance to hit back. He leant against the packed low wall alongside eighty other colonials with their rifles tucked into their shoulders, and calmly adjusted his rifle sights to fifty yards as Captain Butters’ cool orders passed down the line. And at fifty yards Matthew could hear the Boer commanders bellowing orders to their men as they struggled on. Matthew selected a target: a burgher who, Matthew noticed, was barefooted and wearing little more than rags. Matthew wondered whether, if the Boer killed him, he would take his boots. But he figured they would be too small for the Dutchman.

  ‘Fire!’

  The order was given and Matthew squeezed the trigger. The Dutchman pitched forward and the single Maxim of the defenders opened up to rake the advancing lines. The well-aimed volleys tore holes in the ranks of the advancing enemy, adding to the carnage on the slope.

  Matthew fired rapidly, working the bolt on his rifle without conscious thought. He paused only to reload the empty magazine as he crouched below the wall, before resuming his position at the breastworks to pour fire into the rapidly thinning ranks of the attacking Boers. He was hardly aware that the enemy was retreating down the hill when the order came to cease fire. He slumped to the bottom of the trench with his back against the wall and placed his rifle between his knees. The barrel was too hot to touch and Matthew’s ears rang painfully. He felt his body trembling and his hands shook so badly that he doubted he could reload his magazine.

  The next day the Boers came again.

  But this time they used the old Matabele ruse of driving sheep and goats before them in an attempt to fool the defenders. It did not work. Captain Butters knew the trick and once again Matthew worked the bolt of his rifle as he poured rounds into both the flock of animals and the ranks of enemy. And, once again, the defenders of Captain Butters’ tiny knoll held out against overwhelming odds.

  The siege of Elands River was entering its second week but all that meant for young Matthew was that he was still alive to kill more Dutchmen. He had changed in ways that would never allow him to go back to his youth. Nor would he ever again be completely at ease with those who had not known the savage fury of battle. In the few moments of snatched sleep between guard duty and standing to at the breastworks, fevered and fitful dreams echoed with screams. Sometimes the screams woke him and a hand on his shoulder – and a gentle, gruff word – told him that the screams were his. At those times he would shake off the trembling and try to think about a beauty that lay beyond the shattered land around him. He would withdraw into a place where he was once again sitting on the verandah at his mother’s Townsville house enjoying a sunset. Or he would remember the gentle touch of the beautiful Fenella Macintosh, the feeling of her hand in his as they walked side by side up the flower-strewn path from the harbour’s edge to her home. If he tried hard enough, Matthew could smell her sweet perfume amongst the acrid stench of cordite and lyddite.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Swinging himself into the saddle, Nerambura Duffy waved back to the wagon. Karl and Helen returned the gesture while young Alexander, holding one hand over his eyes against the glare of the rising sun over the red plains also waved.

  Nerambura had informed Michael and the others over the campfire the previous evening that he would bypass Cloncurry to ride north into the Godkin Range. Michael had not questioned why he had made his decision to ride on in search of Wallarie; he had long accepted that the young man might have a good idea where he might find the wily old warrior.

  When Nerambura was a shimmering silhouette on the horizon of the termite nest plain, Michael gazed west. The strange, rugged outcrops of ancient rocks jutted into the azure sky. ‘The ’curry’s just west of here,’ he said. ‘According to my reckoning, we should reach it in a few hours.’ He folded a map and placed it inside his shirt.

  Just after noon they reached the tiny township that lay amongst the stony outcrops. As unimpressive as it was, the town of timber and corrugated iron was a vital oasis on the vast expanse of brigalow plains. It provided the services that made life bearable for parched and weary travellers on the frontier.

  The first service that the Irishman sought was a hotel to provide Helen and her husband with the more refined pleasures of civilisation: a hot bath, clean sheets on a soft bed, and a meal not cooked in the ashes of a campfire. Michael had been prepared to press on but he had sensed that a night in town would be a blessing for the von Fellmanns. They were not bush people, although they were trying hard to be so.

  The wagon stopped in front of a low-set building with a wide verandah at the front. A motley crew of bearded stockmen and scrawny dogs sprawled, eyeing the newcomers, especially Helen, with some interest. The pastor helped Helen down from the wagon and Michael hitched his horse to a rail in front of a hotel.

  ‘Wait here,’ Michael said. ‘I’ll go and see if they have any rooms for us.’

  Michael was able to secure a room for von Fellmann and his wife and a couple of beds on the verandah at the rear of the hotel for himself and young Alex. But when he returned to inform his small party of his success he walked into trouble. A young, partially inebriated stockman was facing down the pastor in the dusty street. Helen and Alex stood ashen faced, watching the confrontation unfold.

  ‘A bloody sausage eater!’ the tough-looking stockman spat as the pastor attempted to step back, hands raised to ward off the belligerent man.

  ‘What’s the trouble here?’ Michael asked mildly with a faint smile on his face, stepping between the two unequally matched men.

  The stockman turned on Michael. ‘You’re the fella who rode in with these German bastards,’ he snarled as he sized up Michael. ‘You on the side of these bastards giving aid to the bloody Dutchmen over in South Africa against our mates?’

  ‘On the first count, you are right,’ Michael said calmly. ‘I rode in with the pastor and his wife. But on the second, I think we need clarification, boyo.’

  ‘What’s this clarification yer talkin’ about?’ the stockman asked suspiciously as he glanced at his mates on the verandah who were watching with some amusement.

  ‘What I mean by clarification is this,’ Michael replied as he swung a left hook into the young stockman’s stomach. The stockman gasped and fell to his knees with his eyes bulging. He gripped his stomach, desperately seeking air. The blow that had connected was harder than that from any horse that had ever kicked him. A low gasp of surprise rose from those who watched. ‘That’s what clarification means.’

  ‘Get up and give ’im a thrashin’, Jacko,’ a voice called angrily from the verandah. ‘Don’t let the old bastard do yer. It was a lucky punch.’

  The young stockman’s face was a mask of rage as he caught his breath and glowered up at the man standing over him with a faint smile on his face. Taking a breath, the stockman lurched to his feet and with a roar swung at Michael who easily parried the wildly thrown punch, stepping inside to deliver a barrage of well-aimed punches to the man’s face and midriff. Michael was once again the champion bare knuckle fighter of Redfern’s backstreets. His skills had been used many times in his violent life.
Although the younger man stood as tall as Michael, and was as broad in the shoulders, he was no match for years of accumulated experience.

  The smile was gone from Michael’s face now as he waded into the stockman who reeled under the systematically delivered blows. The spectators watched with breathless awe as Michael turned the face of the district’s champion brawler into a bloody mess. With a broken nose and swollen eyes, all the stockman could do was retreat. He desperately attempted to block the punches that came with blurring speed. Finally, he crashed on the verandah at the feet of his mates, who stepped back to avoid spilling their beers.

  Michael paused with his fists half raised to see if the young stockman was foolish enough to attempt to rise. He did not, but lay on the verandah, doubled up in his pain.

  ‘Anyone else here need clarification?’ Michael asked, glaring around at the faces of the bearded spectators. ‘Anyone here think I was just lucky?’

  ‘Not us, mate,’ one of the men mumbled, still awed by the stranger’s skill with his fists. ‘Haven’t seen anything like that around here for a long time.’ Michael smiled and unexpectedly held out his hand to the young man on the verandah. ‘You okay, young fella?’ he inquired gently.

  The young man spat a glob of blood from where one of his few remaining teeth had been, and tried to smile. ‘Bloody tooth was giving me trouble anyway,’ he said as he accepted the hand of friendship. ‘For an old man you hit like a bloody kicking horse. Maybe even harder.’