Brent Towns

 The Lotus and The Dragon

by

Brent Towns

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Chapter One

Pilliga Scrub, 1875

From the west came the ominous, low rumble of thunder making its continuous trek across the leaden sky, headed for the eastern horizon. The big bay horse beneath me tossed its head in protest, skittish at the ongoing noise, picking its way slowly through the thick wattle scrub.

Close behind my horse’s tail came Billy and George, a pair of Aboriginal trackers, their skin the colour of ebony, the white of their teeth a stark contrast when they cracked a smile. The duo rode along in silence, neither man saying much unless spoken to or when they had something necessary to say.

Jack Crowe is the name my parents gave me twenty-five years ago. I guess you might say that I’m a hunter of sorts. Where most hunters track animals, my quarry is man. 

“Hey, boss. Up there.”

I turned my thickset frame in the saddle to see Billy. The tracker was pointing his long, brown hand at something ahead and to our right. 

Easing my horse to a stop, I turned to face forward, looking in the direction that Billy was indicating, and saw a thin wisp of smoke rising above the eucalypts near a wall of ochre sandstone. 

With a nod of my head, I said, “I see it.”

“They think they’re safe,” George said.

“Yeah.”

“That Monte Burns always was careless,” Billy observed.

Monte Burns was a bushranger and scoundrel. Running with him were two others: Hollister and Grey. Though not quite as bad as Burns, by all reports, they were still wanted, dead or alive.

The trio had robbed a Cobb & Co. coach just south of Narrabri. The lousy mongrels had killed the driver and gotten away with almost five hundred pounds from the strongbox. Well, that action was enough for the New South Wales Government to put a high price on their heads, calling for the services of a professional manhunter. That’s where yours truly comes in—Jack Crowe at your service.

Thunder cracked loudly overhead, and this time all three horses shifted nervously. I said, “Billy, go have a look.”

The tracker climbed from his horse, handing the reins to George, and quickly disappeared into the scrub. This wasn’t the first time the three of us had worked together. But it would be the last. I had decided that four years of hunting men for the police was enough. It was high time to settle down before I got too old, or worse, killed.

When I was twenty-one, I’d been travelling on a stage that had been held up in northern Victoria, just south of Albury, by a wanted felon named Flash Bob Roberts. The bushranger had fleeced me of my valuables, down to the last shilling I had in my pockets. That incident was a turning point in my life. From that day on, I’d become a hunter of men.

If the pilferer had known then that I’d prove so problematic to him, tracking him to the ends of his days just to get my money back, he may just have left me be. But he didn’t, and it wasn’t long before I’d caught up with him in the Warby Ranges. 

The citizens of Wangaratta stopped and stared at the gruesome sight I presented when I rode along their streets, trailing a horse with an already putrifying, fly-ridden corpse tied over its back.

The senior constable on duty at the time had questioned me thoroughly and then organised payment of a two-hundred-pound reward—which was the paper the dead Roberts had on his head. Once done, the policeman asked whether I was interested in another job. When he told me that all I had to do was ride over to Greta to pick up a young man named Edward Kelly and return him to Wangaratta, it sounded pretty straightforward to me. He was only wanted for common assault.

I hesitated for a moment before answering, but then the senior constable, a man named O’Hanlon, a short middle-aged Irishman, told me there was twenty quid in it. Gee, I didn’t want to seem too keen, but I was out that door pretty quick smart.

I saddled up my horse, grabbed a bite to eat, then headed over to Greta after that rapscallion. Honestly, the hard part wasn’t finding him—he was at a dance. When I entered the hall and announced that I was there for young Kelly, most everyone laughed at me.

When Kelly stepped forward, I found that the young man was rather big for his age. Huge, in fact. When asked to come along quietly, the bloke gave me a choice—fight or leave.

Well, after having been laughed at already, I wasn’t about to turn tail and leave, so we fought.

Many years later, even after Ned had been hanged for his crimes, it was still talked about—the knockdown drag-out fight that saw Ned Kelly bested for the first and only time at fisticuffs, by a man called Crowe.

When I showed up later in Wangaratta, battered and bruised, definitely a little worse for wear with Kelly in tow, the jaw on O’Hanlon dropped. On the safe delivery of the young man to the cells, the senior constable paid me and then offered to shout me a beer at the pub. 

I accepted readily, and the two of us talked for quite a while about different things. Then, O’Hanlon happened to mention a newspaper he’d once read, and how in America, they had men who hunted down the lawless for the money on their heads. 

The thought interested me, as I wasn’t really doing much else, and not long after, I began bringing in felons from Victoria and New South Wales. For the last year or so, authorities sought me out for the work I performed. They began referring to me as The Hunter.

The majority don’t condone what I do, in fact, many think it’s abhorrent, but mostly I offer a service that many can’t do without.

Now, with my dark hair tucked under a brand new leather hat, I was on my last manhunt. I had decided that once we took Burns and his bunch, I was done. The toll the job was taking wasn’t just a physical one, but a mental one.

Once it was all over, I intended to head west to the Darling River country and start a freight business. With so many properties along the river region and scattered throughout the nearby areas, there was bound to be plenty of work which would set me up to grow the business real good.

But before I get ahead of myself, first, we had to bring Burns in.

***

Large raindrops started to fall when Billy came back. Both George and me were seated on a couple of basalt rocks as we waited for his return.

“What did you find?” I asked, standing up as a kookaburra protested another deep rumble.

“They are there, boss,” Billy said. “I saw them with my eyes. They have no idea we are here.”

Nodding, I said, “We’ll go in on foot. Use the storm for cover.”

“This is the last time, yes?” George commented.

“Yes. The last time.”

I walked over to my horse and took a Martini-Henry rifle from the saddle. I checked its loads as well as those of the revolver I had tucked into my belt. Billy and George took their own rifles and followed me into the scrub. 

The heavy shower of rain continued, with large drops whacking onto our hats and long coats. The red soil was soon sticky and mushy and began building up on the soles of our boots. We came to a dry creek bed, which we crossed quickly. If the rain continued to fall like this, the narrow waterway would soon roil with runoff.

Before the rain, I’d noticed a pair of black cockatoos, their wing feathers glossy in flight. And once the rain stopped, a chorus of frogs would come out and sing their melodic tunes around the scattered waterholes. But right now, all the wildlife was taking shelter for the duration of the storm.

We continued to walk, none too stealthily, toward where the bushrangers were camped. Billy had said they were set up on a small billabong with plenty of fresh water. The rain would do their fire no favours, and without proper shelter, life for the small group would probably be quite miserable.

As we crept closer, the sight of them confirmed my suspicions about how the rain was making them feel. They were huddled morosely around their already extinguished campfire, their long coats over their heads in a pitiful attempt to keep some of the rain off.

I swapped the Martini-Henry over to my left hand and used my right to draw the revolver from my belt. Then I proceeded forward. 

The waterhole was on our left, its once glassy surface now dancing wildly as though under attack from the torrent of water coming at it from the grey clouds above. The sound it was making provided cover for our squelching approach. 

About fifty yards from where the bushrangers were crouched, we separated, our method slow and deliberate. I eased back the hammer on my revolver.

One of the bushrangers moved, repositioning himself awkwardly under his inadequate cover, and all three of us stopped dead. My eyes narrowed. The right corner of my thin mouth twitched, and I set my square jaw firm as I readied myself to shoot should the need arise.

But then the bushranger settled again, and we moved on.

We managed to get within thirty feet of them before the group became alerted to our presence. It was one of the horses that sounded the alarm. A sharp, shrill whicker that brought the men rushing to their feet, grappling with firearms. 

Pistols came up hastily and pointed at targets. The three bushrangers cursed out loud, more at themselves for their complacency rather than at my trackers and me.

Burns had his gun pointed straight at me, and in return, I had my own revolver sighted at the killer’s forehead.

Water poured from the brim of the bushranger’s hat, and his unshaven face below it was grimy. He glared at me and snarled, “Who the hell are you?”

“Crowe.”

Burns glanced at the two trackers. “You that Crowe? The one who works with the darkies to track men like us?”

“What do you think?”

The bushranger spat in the mud at his feet. “Shit.”

“Are you going to come quietly?”

“What? So they can hang me? Fuck off.”

A drawn-out silence ensued, and all that could be heard was the incessant rain striking any number of surfaces: water, ground, leaves, clothing, hats. 

“What do you propose we do, then?” I asked.

“I don’t give two dingos’ dicks what you do, but I’m leaving. One way or the other. Whether you’re alive to see it or not, is up to you.”

“You seem to think you have the upper hand.”

“I think that maybe I have, cobber.”

A crash of thunder sounded overhead. 

“Billy!” I snapped.

Two rifle shots rang out across the bush, and the pair of bushrangers with Burns dropped into the mud where they’d been standing. Turning his head to look at both crumpled bodies, his face an incredulous mask, Burns realised what had happened, and I stepped briskly inside the revolver before he could fire it, driving the butt of my own gun into his face.

The bushranger dropped at my feet, blood pouring from his shattered nose to mix with water and mud that was pooling beneath his head.

I looked at Billy and George. “Get the horses.”