Cry of the Curlew: The Frontier Series 1 Read Online Free Page A

cooking fire and a gunyah, toppled by the impact of horse and rider, had collapsed into a nearby fire where it burned with a sweet and pungent scent from the oils in the timber framework. Henry had long steeled himself against such sights . . . they were the way of the frontier. Despite this, he knew that the day would leave a heavy debt on his soul.
    He stepped over the dead Aboriginal and advanced cautiously towards the muddy creek. When he was near, he heard a sound he prayed would not be what he knew it was. The moaning was long and pitiful.
    He scanned the creek and saw a young woman sitting in the shallow water in a tangle of her own entrails, which trailed away like pale blue sausages. In her agony, she was barely aware of the white man approaching her and it was only in the last second of her life that she looked up with pain-filled eyes into the face of her executioner.
    The recoil of the blast from the revolver caused the gun to buck in the sergeant’s hand and the conical bullet tore through the girl’s forehead. It was not the first time that he had used the gun to end the lives of the critically wounded. Nor would it be the last.
    The girl seemed to shrink as the bullet exploded in her brain and she slumped sideways turning the water crimson around her head. Her blood swirled away on the gentle eddy of the slow-moving creek and carried his words written in red to eventually stain the earth when the water was gone.
    ‘Poor, bloody myall,’ Henry choked as he turned and walked away from her. ‘Just a fucking girl!’
    Wallarie trembled uncontrollably as the sergeant moved away from the dead girl. The line of troopers had passed by him and had not seen the young Aboriginal warrior crouching terrified in the scrub where he had watched with helpless horror the slaughter of his people. Why had he not used his spears in an attempt to stop the killing? His haunted question begged an answer and the answer came to him in cold and practical terms. How could he be expected to face such an irresistible onslaught of men and beasts?
    The young warrior tried to control his fear as he crouched and tugged frantically at his beard. He fought his terror with the courage of a man who had lived through the shock of a lightning strike from the bowels of a raging storm. But soon the uncontrollable trembling of the frightened man became the tremor of an enraged warrior who knew that he would exact a toll on the killers of his people. He would use every skill he had – as warrior and hunter – to revenge his clan.
    He watched warily the big white man limping among the bodies of his people: rolling each one over with his boot with the pistol pointed as he did so. Wallarie gripped his spears with a calm certainty, but the white man appeared alert and dangerous as he moved from one body to the next.
    Although he was within range of the spear, there was thick bush between them that could easily deflect the weapon in flight and Wallarie knew that his option of closing with the white man across open ground was not a good one. The killers of his people carried a weapon that had the ability to kill with the sound of thunder. No, instead he would stalk the black crows who would not expect an attack from behind, as they would be too preoccupied in chasing his people who were fleeing for the comparative safety of the nearby hills.
    He slipped deep into the bush away from the ground that he knew he would never visit again. It had become a place of spirits where only the dead should roam. A place where the dead could hear the whispers of the ancient warriors reaching to them from their graves on the sacred hill.
    The young warrior did not know that he too was hearing the voices of the long-dead Darambal warriors calling to him down the corridors of time. But their words would come to him only when he had despaired of surviving the day.
    Henry, unaware that he had been under observation from the warrior, continued with his grisly task of