The Roving Party Read Free Page A

their chattering teeth.
    A people who havent the smallest inclination towards layin down for us.
    From a pocket of his coat Batman produced a quart flask of Indian rum that ran thickly up the glass then resettled. He pulledthe stopper as he repeated, Not the smallest, and threw back a swallow. The Governor is payin us to instil a lesson in the obtuse skulls of these dark skins. But I tell you this right now. It may be the blacks what do the instilling. It may be them affixing our bodies to the trees as you would the common criminal of old. I will offer no indemnity against that outcome. None whatsoever.
    Shoals of cloud glowed blood red on the horizon and the sun cast Batman tall and intense. The wind crashed in the blue gums along the hills and squalled down the valley. But the four men by the dray studied the ground in silence. From another pocket Batman produced a cake of negro head. He approached the assigned men and placed it in the palm of a fellow who grinned through his black beard and fixed Batman with his one good eye.
    You are a top sort, you are, he said to Batman. Look here, lads, we have some chew for ourselfs. He divided the cake four even ways. They rubbed loose the fibres and dipped a wad into the folds of their cheeks.
    As they chewed Batman spoke. There is among them a chief. A warrior. Some say witch. He is called Manalargena. If we dont kill this man we all need a floggin, I tell you. Mark him by his beard which he keeps dressed with ruddle. You must bring him down before all others.
    The men spat strings of juice on the ground, nodded their heads and mopped their chins, their eyes always upon Batman.

    Sergeant Bickle pointed at a line on the printed warrant. Make your mark here if you would, he said. It was a crumpled certificate he’d pulled from inside his coat and flattened out upon the bench of the horsecart. Batman read the thing over with narrowed eyes then carried the paper inside his house to sign his name to it. In that time Bickle put the new men to unloading from the dray sacks marked flour, tea, sugar and tobacco. In the low sun their shadows grew long and spidered, a procession of fairytale horrors shifting over the turf and all the while he goaded them with threats of a skinning at the end of his whip.
    Look here, Black Bill said to Batman as he returned with the warrant. They dont have shoes.
    Batman studied the bare feet slopping through the mud as they worked to unload. He raised his hat, smoothed back his hair and then resettled the hat neatly on his crown. He looked around at the overseer.
    Sergeant Bickle, where are their shoes?
    Dont recall I saw no shoes on the requisition.
    You what?
    I dont recall I—
    What use are the bastards without shoes?
    I done what I was ordered. Address your request to the Police Magistrate and he’ll dispatch em.
    Batman shook his head. That no-account wants a ball sendin through his bloody brains.
    Seems your crows dont need shoes. Bickle raised his gunat the Parramatta blacks and clicked his tongue. They glared at the soldier where he stood mocking them, their hands tight around the uprights and their jaws firmly set. A month ago the Dharug men had been walking the browned grasslands of New South Wales, but now their feet sank inch deep in the miserable damp of Van Diemen’s Land. They’d trod the August snow slurries and the mud and river marshes and felt the thorns of the pines through their soles and they would not be shod by anyone.
    Christ look at the boots on that bastard, said Bickle as he lowered his firearm. Black Bill had on a pair of boots cut in the fashion of a horseman and shined up fresh. The stitching was waxed and white against the boots and the leather had been polished with a lump of glass, much in the manner of saddle skirting, to give it a high gloss.
    He’s stolen them from somebody, said Bickle.
    John Batman looked him straight in the face. I tell you what. You get them off his feet and you can keep em.
    The overseer worked