A fire burned between a set of three ramshackle old buildings deep among the gum trees. Barely more than lean-tos, the buildings were made from salvaged bits of corrugated iron and mismatched planks of dried-out wood. They looked to be held together by prayers. The fire was sitting under a tripod, a pot hanging between its legs. Someone had used too green a branch to get it going, and that's what had caused the smoke to flare up. It was burning cleaner now, but it was too late.

The Australian Native Police had arrived.

The six of them stayed low, using a small gully as a natural defilade so they could scope the place out before going in. Terrence found himself wishing he had a monocular to get a better view on things: his eyes weren't what they once had been.

"It's not them," said John before too long. "I count eight."

Terrence had suspected: their prey had been too careful to then simply set up camp somewhere, and as soon as he'd seen buildings the reveal felt inevitable.

"Looks like them to me," said Jocko from one side.

Terrence hoped the others would ignore the man. The more he spoke, the more likely Jocko would transition from being dead weight to simply being dead. Nobody bit, and they all looked to Terrence to know what to do next. "If they're not our quarry, then we move on. No point exposing ourselves to unnecessary risk."

John and David nodded in agreement. Jimmy didn't react at all. Frederick was still staring at the encampment, no doubt weighing up how great that risk might be.

"I said it looks like it is them," Jocko said from one side, raising his voice to be heard.

The group whirled on him, but it was Frederick who spoke. "John is right, it's not them. Those are Abos, not Kanakas," he said, his voice hushed, his tone imploring Jocko to do the same. "Do you need to be told everything twice?"

Jocko bristled at the rebuke. "Well…" he started, struggling to work out what to say next. He adjusted his volume to something more appropriate. "What I meant was, it doesn't matter if it is them or not. They're squatting on my land. I say we clear them out."

Now Terrence felt a flash of anger at the man."We're not-"

"Might be the Mary Mob," Jimmy said quietly, interrupting Terrence before he could tell Jocko they weren't his hired guns. "Might be worth a packet."

The Mary Mob were a collection of Aboriginal bushrangers led by the two Summer sisters, one named Mary, the other Anna. They were infamous for their brutality. They left no witnesses, and were only a known element thanks to the hardiness of a governess they'd robbed, shot and left to die. They'd been pressed north out of The Settlement on the Clarence and they might have made up this way. Terrence and his men had, after all.

The bounty on just one member of the Mary Mob would set them clear for a long time, but the bounty on the sisters was clearly—regrettably—marked 'alive'. There was spectacle to be had in hanging a female bushranger. "And if it isn't?" Terrence asked back.

Jimmy stared at him, his nostrils flaring slowly, his eyes hollow, as if there was no person behind them at all. "Then we get to kill some coons," is all he said after a time.

Terrence could find no counter. He looked at Frederick, who nodded in agreement. The other native boys were on board as well.

Sometimes the bush was cacophonous, a torrent of noise from birds, bugs and whatever lurked out in it. The wind could drag its way through the trees in a deafening roar so that a company band might not even be heard. Other times it was dead quiet, like the ocean asleep, silent for miles, while the bush underneath snapped and cracked like cannon fire with every step a person took, no matter how careful.

Today it was the latter, and Terrence loathed it. The closer they got to the camp, the more it seemed like the next footfall would be the one that alerted the people within of the ANP's presence. His team moved carefully, but Jocko didn't seem to understand stealth at all. He was barely hunched, walking with his double-barreled shotgun low at his hip, his head pushed forward just a little.

They'd made it close enough now that Terrence could make out the finer details of the camp. There were eight of them, all Aborigines. He couldn't make out if any of them were women, but he trusted that the other fellows knew well enough to leave one of the girls alive.

Frederick could see that Jocko was going to give up their ambush, but he was too far away from the man to do anything about it. He trained his rifle over the man, but even if he reloaded quickly, it would be a waste of the surprise to shoot anyone but one of the rangers first. They weren't armed, but they did have weapons strewn about their camp. It would be ideal if they were dead before they got to them.

Jocko looked around at the camp and he could barely see the others now. They'd all spread out to cover the camp in a semicircle, leaving him where he was. They were basically crawling on the ground, like grubs. He didn't need to do anything like that. None of the blacks Jocko could see were armed, so what were the rest of them afraid of?

He was about 50 yards out now: well and truly close enough to get a clean shot. Jocko wasn't sure what was loaded in his shotgun, but he was pretty sure it wasn't birdshot. I’ll find out soon, he supposed. He raised his gun and trained it on one of the squatters, setting his feet hard on the ground to brace for the pending recoil.

A branch cracked underfoot and in a heartbeat Jocko was on the ground, his gun gone from his hand, something clamped across his mouth, muffling an involuntary yelp.

"Blak cunts shoot just as good as white cunts," said a voice, one of the trackers. Jocko's eyes lifted and they found the scary one, staring directly at him. "But if you give up our position you won't have to find out."

The gleam of a long, broad knife flashed across Jocko's face as Jimmy brandished it. Jocko's eyes found the knife and they widened, his heart racing in panic. It was all he could do to nod his understanding. Jimmy placed Jocko on the ground silently, and he lay there for a time, trying to regain his composure.

Frederick nodded to Jimmy when he saw the tracker back on his feet, a silent 'good job'. It was important to reward correct behaviours in them, else punishments become less effective.

Frederick had gone to great lengths to teach his unit how to move properly through the scrub. How to surround a location and inundate it with fire from all directions without causing any crossfire mishaps. They could be taught, he'd found, it was just difficult. There must be a genetic component to riflery, an aptitude that never came to this country as the weapons hadn't made it past spears, he thought. But Frederick'd taught them well, and he didn't need that overblown farmer fucking things up on him. He'd seen the glint of Jimmy's blade in the scrub. If "Jocko" was dead, it wasn't ideal but they could deal with it. They'd put him in one of the huts and say he was bled on entry to it, and they'd let the ants and flies hide the lie of it.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Now with Jocko out of the way, they could get to business. Frederick couched his rifle in the crook of his shoulder and lined up one of the blacks wandering around the camp. The squatter was no more than 30 yards out and oblivious of what was to come.

Frederick splayed the fingers on his left hand across the grip of his rifle, and then found Jimmy's eyeline over the top of the man's own gun. The square-jawed killer nodded up, to indicate that Jimmy'd fire on five. They kept the symbols simple. He found the kid and—after two beats—nodded down. David would fire on three. Frederick trusted that the old man would have found the other black on his own, and he mentally finished his count.

Terrence saw Frederick's hand splayed beneath his rifle marking a five count, and he quickly made eye contact with John, nodding upwards. John returned the nod, and Terrence found a target down the end of his rifle. A thought flitted into his mind briefly, and before it could escape he caught it and examined it. These people are about to die, and their only crime is maybe being bushrangers. He dismissed the moralistic idea that this somehow meant they didn't deserve to die—he refused to lie to himself—and settled on his own truth.

If they didn't want to die, they shouldn't have allowed themselves to.

Terrence squeezed the trigger on his rifle as the five count ran out, and his target fell to the ground like a sack of lemons, unceremonious, undignified. Few people die in a dignified manner he thought. A cacophony of sound accompanied his fire, an orchestra of explosions as the other rifles went off around him. Terrence calmly lowered the extended lever at the bottom of his weapon and loaded a new round into the breech at the back.

As Terrence lifted the gun again, he heard three other shots ring out, the volume of them cutting past the ringing in his ear to let him know he'd reloaded a hair slow. The old man scanned, but could see no movement in the camp. Off to his right, Jocko was—sadly—back on his feet and charging into the camp, his shotgun swinging wildly from side-to-side as the man lifted his knees high to cover the scrub.

Terrence looked to the rest of his team and saw all four of them with their rifles trained on Jocko, no doubt all loaded and contemplating dropping him. It would make things easier on them. A bullet in the back and a few well-placed fires could sell the idea that Jocko had been a casualty before an out-of-control bushfire. The gums would carry the flame without question, but the riskiest thing would be not getting caught in the blaze themselves.

A bushranger popped out of one of the huts, naked but for a low slung hip rig, revolver already drawn and bearing down on Jocko. Terrence reflexively snapped his rifle across to the man and fired. The fellow was spinning to take aim at Jocko, and the bullet carried the naked man around into a tight pirouette as he fell.

Jocko heard the boom and flinched, his head snapping reflexively to look to the direction of the sound. As his gaze went over, he saw the naked Abo, arm outstretched, twirling towards the ground. Jocko wrenched the shotgun across his body and fired, not even taking the time to brace, holding the kick of the gun down with his forearm alone. The shot peppered the man in a tight pattern and he spun to the ground, dead.

There were bodies everywhere in the camp, nine of them, one a woman. She was lying near the fire, some sort of blower in her hand, arm limp on the ground. She was still alive, struggling to breathe around the blood pooling in her mouth and lungs, her energy split between not drowning and lifting the gun to shoot the man who'd just walked into the camp. She accomplished neither.

Over near the farthest hut, one of the bushrangers was still trying to drag himself towards the pile of guns stacked against the wall, but each new effort carried him a shorter and shorter distance. The rest of the men were dead the moment the bullets had hit them.

Jocko's kill certainly was. He could see inside the Abo, where his shot had punched twoscore little holes in a mess of meat and blood. Jocko smiled to himself. His kill was the only one with any merit. The rest of these coons died not knowing what was coming for them, but the filth I dropped had been drawing down on me. Spinning to shoot him dead, and Jocko had fired first. He looked at the gun in the hand of the corpse. A rusted old muzzleloader: a piece of shit gun. When he retold the story, he'd make it one of those revolvers.

Jocko walked back to the hut the animal who'd tried to kill him had sprung out of, and he wrenched open the door. It sank off its top hinge as he did, and Jocko leapt back to dodge the rusted corrugated iron as it fell. A kaboom echoed out through the camp once more: this time the sound came from inside the hut. Smoke poured out of the open doorway, and Jocko quickly checked himself. He hadn't been hit. He thrust his shotgun through the doorway and fired blindly into the hut.

That's two real kills, he thought to himself as he stepped into the space, but the smoke cleared and revealed the truth. Sitting in a corner of the room, cramming a shell into the breech of her shotgun, was a small half-caste Aborigine woman. Inches above her head sat a hole the size of a grapefruit where Jocko's shot had punched through.

Jocko’s weapon was empty, and she'd definitely reload before he could—she was nearly finished, in fact—so he threw his shotgun at her head and leapt at her. The two of them struggled, but she never really stood a chance. Jocko simply used his weight and might to overpower her, pinning her to the dirt floor, straddling her torso as he held her down on the ground, one hand around her throat.

"You're on my land, bitch," he said as she flailed at him from below. Jocko’s eyes poured over her hungrily. "I can do whatever I want out here. And you tried to shoot me."

Jocko drew his knife from its sheath, and grinned as he watched her eyes widen, as he felt her pulse quicken. He really could do whatever he wanted. But what do I want? he thought. Jocko licked his lips as he looked her over again. In Sydney they had fine establishments with real women. Up here, they had knock shacks with feral game. This one would have fit in there well enough, he figured.

His thoughts were interrupted by a proper English accent. "Oh, we caught one alive," said Terrence from the doorway of the hut. "Put the knife away Jocko, if she's alive, she can stay that way."

Jocko looked at Terrence, and then back at the girl. He leant in close. "I'll fuck every one of your holes before we turn you in," he whispered to her in a low growl. "And then I'll make some new holes, and I'll fuck them, too."

She snapped her head up and bit at his face, catching a chunk of Jocko’s cheek between her teeth. Jocko yelped and reeled backwards from her, clutching the wound. She spat at him, the chunk of flesh hitting him in the face. "At least I'll feel the knife, you fuckin' baby-dick son of a bitch," she replied, her hands lashing out to grab at Jocko's crotch. His pants were pulled taut by his position on top of her, but she still managed to grab a fraction of his cock between her thumb and fingers, and she squeezed tight.

Jocko yelped again and leapt to his feet, breaking her hold. He gripped his knife tight, but before he could do anything he felt a hand on his wrist. Terrence had Jocko, his grasp strong: stronger than his wiry frame implied. The ANP leader held a handkerchief in his other hand, offered up to Jocko. "Why don't you go clean that up, and I'll make sure she can't hurt any of us," said the old man.

As he exited, Jocko’s eyes dared any of the others to give him any shit, but the most he got was a commiseratory nod from Frederick. The trackers sifted through the pockets of the corpses like the scavengers they were. It was a few minutes before Terrence stepped out of the hut with the girl in thick iron cuffs.

Terrence cleared his throat, and all heads in the camp turned to see him. "Making her debut before us this evening," he said with forced pomposity, "Anna Summers. Of the Mary Mob."

Frederick clapped, playing along, and the trackers all simply nodded and got back to what they were doing: piling the corpses of the other bushrangers together in the middle of the camp clearing. Anna sobbed loudly when she saw the pile.

"So you've got your bounty then," Jocko said loudly, his cheek stinging as he spoke. "Let's go get my fucking Kanakas."