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

shooting the critically wounded Nerambura. He counted his blessings that, apart from the girl in the creek, he could only find three others alive.
    When he was satisfied that the only surviving creatures were the flies, he slumped with his back against a coolabah tree where he wiped tears from his eyes with the back of a gunpowder-stained hand. The powder stung but his tears felt good. Killing warriors was one thing . . . killing women and children another.
    The fires of burning gunyahs crackled and the smoke swirled on the early morning breeze to drift wraith-like in the azure sky. There would be times later in his life when the smell of burning eucalyptus would bring back the bitter memories of the dispersals. Eucalyptus was the scent that he had first associated with his new home, but now burning eucalyptus was the smell of death.
    A solitary crow cawed in the distance while Henry waited alone for the troopers to return. He cried softly for the dead girl in the creek and he cried for the loss of his soul. But no man would ever see him cry. Grief was a personal thing that he shared with the Nerambura dead who now surrounded him with their accusing silence.

THREE
    I n the predawn, Donald Macintosh and his party had silently saddled their horses, snatched a breakfast of cold damper washed down with water from their canteens, and to the fading cries of the curlews and the creaking of saddle leather, picked their way to the sacred hill of the Nerambura people.
    There they waited slouched in saddles, brushing away the swarms of flies that bothered man and beast as the sun rose in the clear skies.
    Donald’s thoughts were not on the ambush but on the long dry season that had stubbornly persisted. The destructive tornado-like swirls of dust on the plains were more and more frequent, and they came as choking masses of red dust twisting and spiralling into the cloudless skies, tearing the bark roofs from the outbuildings of the homestead. The summer rains had come and gone the previous year without delivering the promise of a good drenching for the parched plains, and the last remaining water was quickly disappearing from the water holes.
    For all his wealth and power, he had no control over nature. But he was able to console himself that he could do something about one problem affecting the future financial success of his property. He could drive off the Children of Ham who competed with his flocks for the precious last sources of water.
    He gazed down the line of horsemen to his son who had taken up a position at the far end. When their eyes met, Angus flashed him a smile and the young squatter felt a rush of admiration for his father who seemed so calm, as if he were waiting for the start of a grouse shoot and not the slaughter of the Aboriginals who lived on Glen View. He envied his father’s apparent calmness because he could not feel the same peace. Something, somewhere watched him. Something with no form but as real as the dust and heat of the ancient land. A sickening wave of nausea overwhelmed Angus and he swooned. Donald noticed his son slump in his saddle and could see that he was pale and distressed.
    ‘Are you feeling unwell, lad?’ he called down the line with paternal concern. Angus could hear his father’s voice call to him, as if he were speaking from a long way down a tunnel, and he recovered momentarily.
    ‘It’s nothing, I am well,’ he reassured him. ‘Just a touch of the sun.’ But he knew it was not the sun that had made him feel the dread whose form was as real as the nausea that had almost swept him from the saddle.
    The Cave . . . White warrior searching for his prey . . .
    The image shimmered in his fevered mind like the sun-parched plains at midday and he desperately attempted to shrug the disturbingly persistent idea from his thoughts. But the image persisted as a haze before his eyes.
    The white stick-like warrior stalking him with spear poised for the killing thrust . . .
    A week