The Silent Frontier Read Free Page A

them Lieutenant Lightfoot sat astride his fine mountsurveying the burning tents of the stockade and the grief-stricken women moving amongst the soldiers and wounded miners now being taken prisoner.
    ‘Well, laddie,’ Duncan said when Paddy was out of sight. ‘You look as if you could do with a tot of water.’
    Realising how thirsty he was, Lachlan gratefully accepted the canteen passed to him from the side of the wagon.
    ‘I have to go back to John and my sister,’ he said when he had taken a long draught. ‘They will be worried about me and Tom will be angry if I don’t get back now.’
    ‘I can take you to your brothers and sister,’ Duncan said. ‘Where are they?’
    ‘In the hills hiding,’ Lachlan replied. ‘I know where.’
    Duncan frowned. Already, the soldiers and police were spreading out to track down any wounded rebels who had fled into the thick bush on the hills behind the stockade. It was going to be a long day.
    Some time after the soldier and officer were gone, Tom regained consciousness. He glanced over to where his father lay and knew immediately that he was dead. Then Tom felt for the money belt under his shirt; it was still intact. For some unknown reason they had not searched his body, leaving him for dead. All around him Tom could hear the sounds of the massacre and smell the pungent aroma of burning canvas. He lay for a moment in the dust and felt the terrible pain bite at his shoulder. When he tried to move his left arm he screamed in pain; the sabre had inflicted a deep and deadly wound. The fighting shifted away, leaving him alone in its wake.
    With great effort, Tom forced himself to his feet, trying not to cry out. Stumbling like a drunken man, he weaved his waythrough the stockade, which was filled with galloping, mounted police and the red-coated infantry who seemed to ignore him as they sought out those who were still able to resist.
    Eventually he reached the foothills where he had sent his brothers and sister. Then the pain became too much and Tom sank to the earth with a loud groan. He knelt on the road, forcing himself to remain conscious.
    ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ a voice said, as if from afar, and Tom felt an arm under his good shoulder, hoisting him to his feet.
    ‘It don’t pay to be caught here with your wound,’ the voice said and Tom vaguely recognised the accent of a young American miner around his own age, with whom he and his father had been friends.
    ‘Luke Tracy, leave me,’ Tom said. ‘Get away while you can.’
    The young American ignored Tom’s plea. When Tom was able to focus on his helper’s face through the haze of his own pain, he could see that Luke had sustained a terrible wound. The side of his face had been slashed from his jaw to his ear. Blood streamed down the clean-shaven, handsome face. ‘I will get you into the bush and try to hide you,’ Luke said. ‘Then I will go.’
    ‘You get chopped with a sword?’ Tom asked as the American helped him to his feet.
    ‘God-damned Limey red-coat stuck me with a bayonet,’ Luke replied with a wince. ‘Got a feeling that I am not going to look too pretty if I ever get to dodge a hangman’s rope. The British aren’t going to look kindly on anyone who belonged to the California Colt Revolver Brigade after this.’
    ‘We weren’t even party to the rebellion,’ Tom said as they struggled across the road into the bushland at the base of the hills. ‘And the British murdered my da and tried to kill me. They slew him for nothing.’
    ‘Not nothing,’ the American rebel said. ‘We stood for our God-given rights – as it says in our American constitution – where all men are equal and deserve a voice in how things are run.’
    ‘That was a bit overlooked in Her Majesty’s colony of Victoria,’ Tom said, as Luke helped him into the cover of the dry bush and its trees. ‘Hotham doesn’t understand that we never wanted to rebel – just air a grievance.’
    When they were deep in the bush,