That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott Read Free Book Online

plucked at their hair and clothing. Tree roots tripped them.
    They climbed trees to get a vantage point, but they bent under their weight, or were too short, or had branches far up the trunk and out of reach. They had no clear sight of anything but the scrub which trapped them until, as daylight was fading, they stepped into open space. There in the foreground was the smaller mountain range and, further beyond and visible to the right, an apparently still larger range. The latter remained blue with distance, but across a small, grassy plain scattered with a few clumps of trees, the earth rose rocky and gnarled, a heavy mass against the sky. An eagle circled.
    They had hardly wandered off course at all!
    After a day struggling with scrub the party was relieved to have space about them, a place to camp and their goal in sight. They stretched out on sandy, level ground, and their gaze moved from the dying sun and burning sky to the disappearing mountain range, and finally into the heart of their campfire. Banksia cones, they agreed, burn like the coal of home and hold their shape, even as ash. Skelly reached out with his boot and touched one. It collapsed into the ashy bed.
    Rain and a powerful wind woke them deep in the night. They tossed and turned in their bedding as their canvas slapped and snapped restlessly until finally, convulsing like a terrified thing, it tore itself from the ground and flapped away on panicking, pale wings. Soon, each man lay in a pool of water. Oh they tried to jolly themselves through, joking of the convenience of bath and bed being one and the same, and resting on elbows and knees with their backs to the sky, but still their skin wrinkled and thinned where bone touched the earth, the rain drummed on skull and shoulders, and their dripping noses only added to the puddle within which they lay. Voices drowned by the sound of rain, of trees creaking, of the roaring wind itself, they crawled to a single tree and huddled in their dripping wet bedclothes. Toward dawn the wind dropped and, shivering, they tried to relight their fire.
    They were still trying as day came cold, with a grey and washed-out light. Drops of water fell in clusters from the straggly trees and prickly shrubs with a sound like tiny footsteps rushing and dancing all around them. The low cloud and misty rain thinned, intermittently showing the waiting mountain range.
    A high-pitched barking pricked their attention. Bloody Menak’s dog, said Killam, and they watched it scamper back to a group of figures who had apparently coalesced from the clouds, who wore anklets of water drops as they stepped across the plain until they stood in a rough circle around the three shivering men, their sodden bedding and smoking pile of twigs. Dark figures in short cloaks of animal skin moved closer to the three men and Wooral’s hand emerged from beneath his cloak holding a warm and glowing banksia cone. The circle of men brought out similar burning cones from beneath their cloaks, and Chaine and Killam and Skelly felt the warmth enclose them.
    Proper fire not far, said Bobby.
    The warmth, perhaps even the company, revived Geordie Chaine. They waded through a number of small creeks until eventually the men, as damp as if they were themselves made of clouds and rain, were led to a shelter among towering granite rocks. Their boots crunched dry, coarse sand and a couple of fires warmed a natural enclosure of overhanging walls of stone.
    You eat beetle, Wooral told Geordie Chaine, smiling. Now bardi , unna? He held out curls of seared meat on a sheet of paperbark.
    With a nod from Wooral, Soldier Killam replaced his wet shirt and jacket with the shirt he’d earlier given his guide. Dry and warm, it was scented with the fire’s sweet smoke.
    Killam and Skelly slept. But Geordie Chaine circled the rocks of the shelter. Bobby followed the sound of his crunching boots. See, he said, pointing at an old cowpat which, having dried, had now almost disappeared