A cheerless dusk. A coal-grey sky.
‘You look tired enough to fall over,’ said Cuff.
Mackie nodded.
40
Seamus Peachey had begged Griffin Pinney not to go. He’d begged him to wait, just for a day or two, when he’d be well enough to walk, to keep up, which he would, so he said.
Harp was sympathetic, for he was keen to get Peachey off his hands, but the game hunter would not entertain the proposition, he would not have an invalid on the trek, and they left Harp’s camp the same day, Pinney and Sparrow, and Bea Faa and the dogs, the young dog and the old dog.
The game hunter set a pace, Thyne Kunkle’s Swedish musket in hand. He pushed them hard, through swampy country draining to the Branch, until they met with the Branch above the tidal limit. They drank deep on hands and knees and with that they took to the river, sand and shallows, the cluttered banks, or game tracks higher up, whatever worked best. Griffin Pinney was in no mood to dawdle.
Sparrow had temporarily lost the power of speech. He thought Bea Faa a beauty, more beautiful than Biddie Happ. He tried not to look at her, for when he did it was hard to look away. Like a spell. She might be more beautiful, even, than Misty Knapp, the woman who first sparked his manhood, dancing the way she did, at The Dirty Sack on the river Irk, so long ago.
He wondered where she’d come from, this Bea Faa. Perhaps she was an Otahetian, though he’d never seen an Otahetian, not even a picture. He’d just heard the stories and he reckoned she was about as dusky as what he’d imagined, thinking about the Otahetian beauties, sporting their allurements, dancing and so on.
He felt awfully diminished in the presence of this tall girl. He, Marty Sparrow, expiree, failed farmer, sad sack, yellowy man with no panache.
When his tongue came back to him, he did try. He asked her questions but her answers were curt, just a yes or a no. Only when he asked her about the cut on her lip did she provide something more. ‘That happened when he raped me,’ she said.
Pinney took Sparrow by the arm. ‘Go on,’ he said to the girl and they watched as she walked ahead, keeping to the slim track. ‘You want some o’ that you can have some o’ that.’
‘You mean . . .?’
‘I mean, you stick with me we can share the quim.’
‘I don’t do that.’
‘Tell me then, what is Bet Pepper’s little venture if it ain’t the sociable sharing of the quim?’
‘That’s different, that’s um, contractual.’
Pinney stared at the ground about his boots, scratching at his forehead. ‘You disappoint me Marty,’ he said.
The game hunter foraged on the move and they watched him, Sparrow and Bea, and mimicked him when they could, uprooting the tubers he called bush parsnips, picking wild berries and edible greens. A feed, now and then, of the little mushrooms he called milk caps and the climber that he called snotty-drops, and they watched as he gobbled down the little snots, so-called. They did as he did, for they were hungry.
They passed through the ceremonial ground and further along they came upon the murdered blacks.
They did not tarry for long.
Bea stood off. Sparrow moved as close as he dared and looked up at the two men hung from the bough, the dogs sniffing at the feet. ‘You know them?’ he said.
‘I know they’re Branch,’ said Pinney.
‘We still got a compact?’
‘O’ course we got a compact! We are as much at variance with the military as they are; are we not?’
‘I suppose we are.’
‘Suppose! Suppose! You’re trouble Marty, you’re lukewarm, you’re tepid. Not like this girl. She got the grit you need, stuck a knife in me to prove it.’
The game hunter spread the tear in his britches and put the wound on display.
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Sparrow.
‘Well, now you do, so take it in. There’s no place for suppose out here.’
‘No, yes.’
‘One more thing. She puts a foot wrong, I’ll punish her like you ain’t never seen.’
‘I do hope you won’t do that.’
‘Depends on her. She’s a good girl she’ll be alright.’
They trekked for two days, their course bearing ever more northward, and they paused at a confluence, studying the scene ahead, a forest of she-oaks and the towering cliffs of the gorge beyond.
They walked on, sand and shallows for much of the afternoon, here and there weaving thickets on the banks, until the half-light of dusk settled into the gorge, a faint moon.
Beneath that moon a wild dog stepped from a fracture in the cliff wall. The dog surveyed the scene and then picked its way down the scarp to a thicket of water gums by the sand and there it stood, cloaked in the shadows.
Griffin Pinney put a hand on his old dog and the animal dropped down. Sparrow took hold of the pup, anxious to soothe the creature, keep him quiet and still. Sparrow was tired and footsore, and so was Bea. And they were hungry. They were keen for meat.
Pinney went down on one knee. He primed the Swedish musket. He checked the flint and the flint screw and he put the cock from half to full and raised the gun, settling the stock into his shoulder.
The wild dog stepped cautiously from the cover. The dog stood there, fear and thirst commingling, still as stone save for the slow, watchful turn of its head. Then it moved to the water and began to drink.
Pinney took aim and fired in one movement. The sound came back at them off the cliff walls as the ball took the dog in the shoulder and brought him down, but he was up again, frenzied, spinning about, snapping at the wound, squealing with pain. Then he made for the timber.
In that instant, the pup leapt forward, broke free and galloped across the sand, drawn on by the distressed wails of the prey. Into the shallows, long, swift strides, born to this, his rhythm untroubled neither by the run of the river or the bedrock as the wild dog scrambled up the wooded scarp.
Pinney was reloading as the pup took to the timber, bounding up the slope, snapping at the shot dog’s heels. The shot dog turned and stood its ground, teeth bared, the near foreleg soaked in blood, the pup inching forward, itching for engagement, when Pinney fired a second shot.
The wild dog plummeted onto a bed of scree among the water gums. It twitched and kicked and fell still.
‘This gun’s alright and that pup’s a natural,’ said Pinney. The observation made Sparrow uneasy. No one save Seamus Peachey had ever said a word good or bad about the pup.
‘I might have to have him. He’s a certifiable game dog, heart and snout.’
‘He is not for sale,’ said Sparrow.
‘Well, don’t get too attached.’
Pinney turned to Bea. ‘Put a fire.’ He threw her a piece of flint from his haversack and she caught it. ‘Lose that and you’ll be sorry.’ Then he snapped words at Sparrow. ‘Go get that meat.’
Sparrow found the wild dog among the water gums, dead as mutton. He took the carcass by the hindquarters, the head joggling in the shallows as he crossed the river, the pup cavorting in the wash, snapping at the dead meat and sniffing and licking at the bloodied fur.
Bea gathered old flood-wrack and tufts of dry grass from sheltered nooks in the stone. She lit the fire. She sat with Sparrow as the pup shook out the wet in its coat, pleased as punch.
‘He’ll chase a fat duck to hell and back that one,’ said Pinney.
Sparrow was pleased the pup had come good. He was a blue-blood game dog. He was swift and brave, plain to see. Now he stood foursquare, his flanks heaving, his eyes locked on the dead meat, his shaggy coat soaked and ridden with grit.
Pinney threw the carcass onto a hip-high block of tumbledown stone.
‘I’ll ready the dog,’ said Bea.
‘Why?’ said Pinney.
‘Because I can,’ she said.
The game hunter considered the offer. He put his axe and his knife on the stone beside the bloody carcass and stepped away with a bow and a flourish of his arm
across his middle, like a Dutchman on his way to church.
‘Keep your eyes on her,’ he said to Sparrow.
He walked downstream a short way and fumbled about and began to piss.
The girl watched. ‘If he covers me again I’ll slice his jugular,’ she said.
‘What with?’ said Sparrow, as Pinney returned.
She said nothing more. She severed the dead dog’s head with the axe and took off the lower legs above the knuckle bones, chopped off the tail and threw it to Pinney’s old dog. Then she took the knife and cut a line from the neck to the belly through to the bumhole. She took hold of the carcass at the scruff, fingertips in the raw stump. She waded into the watercourse and stood for a moment while the water washed round her ankles and cooled the itch in her scabby leech wounds.
She slid her hand into the cavity and closed her fist on the innards and dragged down to the dog’s rear and took all the gut away and dropped it into the flow and washed out the cavity. Then she washed her hands and came back to the block as the pup took to the water, snapping up the guts.
She peeled the hide off the neck and the forestumps and gripped the raw flesh in her hands while Sparrow jerked the hide off the ribbing and the rear end.
Downstream there were crows at the water’s edge and some tall wading bird in the shallows, picking at the innards on the flow. Dark settled into the gorge.
Pinney snatched up the axe and quartered the skinned dog with heavy blows, and they cooked portions on hardwood skewers fashioned from the branches of a turpentine tree. They turned the meat as required, the smell inciting their hunger.
Sparrow marvelled at the skewers for they did not burn through. ‘Hard as iron,’ said the game hunter.
They ate all they could, not another word, peeling the charred black flesh from the skewers and tipping it from one palm to the other and taking it on their tongues, sucking in the cold night air and flicking the grease off their fingers while the pup prowled for the dregs and Pinney’s old dog watched on, drowsy.
They slept that night on the sand beneath the arc of a shallow cave. Somewhere to the west a lightning storm cracked the sky, filling the gorge with flashes of blue-grey light and charging the ridges with a faint blue tracery, but not a sound to overlay the murmur of the flow.
That night Bea dreamt they were sleeping, much as they were. A dark figure came silently across the sand and stood in their midst and she feared for her life but she could not move and neither could she speak. She saw a bone-handled knife and she saw the dark figure drop to one knee beside Griffin Pinney. Her fear was gone, for it was Joe. Pinney opened his eyes. His lips mimed words but he gave out no sound, like a fish grounded, and Joe spoke to him. ‘You can’t talk Griffin, I just cut your throat,’ he said.
In the morning, a shadow crept over the river as dark clouds moved in from the west and banked like some grim fortress in the northern sky.
They made bush tea on the rekindled fire and they picked over the carcass one last time, and fed the leavings to the dogs.
Pinney led them upstream, the old dog labouring along at his master’s heel, the pup splashing through the shallows, lunging at shoals of tiny fish, tiddlers.
The girl watched the pup. ‘You cannot keep a cat from mousing.’
Sparrow was caught unready. He did not quite hear what she said for she had not hitherto spoken to him, save to answer his questions.
‘He’s a natural,’ she said.
‘I know, he’s special.’
Now the wind in the gorge was cold and seemed to whirl about them and they noted the surge in the river’s flow. They could hear the drum of the rain miles off when they felt the first light drops, heavier by the minute. High above they saw wood ducks in formation, like the head of an arrow. They noticed Pinney limping, his hand on the leg wound, his gait hurried as they turned onto a long straight reach, hardly a crook in the river’s line.
Pinney searched the timber and the ridges on either side of the gorge and saw no relief. He hurried forth, the old dog keeping up as best he could, the pup in his element.
The heavens opened and the rain harried into the gorge and before long the river swelled some more, the quickening flow thick with silts from the uplands. The levees were crumbling into the flow, slender saplings bowed down in the rain, the ridges mantled in the black of ages, like ruined battlements, silvered cascades pouring through fractures in the cliff wall.
At the far end of the reach the river took a sharp turn and they picked their way through a muddle of boulders to a sliver of sand high on the shoulder. They went higher still, through old flood-wrack and scrub, into the trees, and they perched there in the downpour like ticks on a mammoth, watching driftwood hurtle into stone, the torrent banking and churning, the white water crashing into the boulders and lashing the timber on the fringe, saplings coming away, the runnage downstream sucking them on, them and all things loosed by the force of the flow.
Pinney said something but his words were lost in the sound of the waters on the bend. He stood and turned and limped away and Bea and Sparrow followed, shivering, and the dogs with them and the old dog stumbled and Sparrow helped him up and pushed him on.
They followed Pinney onto the next reach. The track narrowed as they went higher. Higher still they spied a shelter beneath a prodigious overhang. They edged their way to the shelter and there Bea and Sparrow dropped down, soaked and shivering. The dogs shook themselves and set to and fro, sniffing out the scents in the grit, devouring whatever they could find, lime-white dung and shards of cooked bone.
Pinney stood beneath the cover of the overhang, watching the torrent below, the incessant boom percussing around the shelter as the waters banked and crashed on the turn.
The night came on with great swiftness, as if the light was sucked away on the flood waters.
The old dog came and stood beside Pinney. He tried to cough something up, but in that he failed. He walked slowly to the rear of the shelter where he dropped down and sunk deep into sleep.
41
It was dusk when they heard the two gunshots in quick succession, a musket, the sound confirming for Cuff and Mackie that Griffin Pinney’s party was not that far ahead.
They sought cover in a shelter high up, above the uppermost gatherings of old flood-wrack, nestled among coachwoods and turpentines and tangles of anchor vine.
Small birds fled from nests in the honeycombed stone. Mackie leant against the wall and slid to the ground. He checked his parts for ticks and leeches.
Cuff stood on the lip, staring into the gorge. ‘All we need’s a hubble-bubble and a songbird in a cage, this could be Babylon.’
Mackie was in no mood to be cheered. ‘I’d sell my soul for a tot of claret.’
‘It’s still yours to sell, that’s good news,’ said Cuff.
Cuff scanned the shelter and spied more than what he needed for a fire – a scattering of dead wood and leaves eddied into a heap so neat you’d swear they were sweepings, and little piles of lime-white dung, likewise useful. He set about making a fire upon a spread of antique coals as Mackie stretched out on the cave floor, his head propped on his haversack, his eyes closed, his breathing laboured.
‘I thought you’d struck a truce with those lungs.’
‘A truce of uncontracted length.’
‘Want some biscuit?’
‘No.’
Cuff sat close to the lip of the shelter. He ate some biscuit and contemplated making some bush tea but as Mackie was dozing he chose instead to sit quietly, watching the scene fade as night came on and then a lightning storm, bathing the ragged shelves and the fault lines on the far cliff wall in flashes of blue. When the cold began to bite he retreated to the fire, stoked it once again and made some tea. He could hear the river. In the firelight he could see the sweat on Mackie’s brow.
Several times in the night Mackie woke with a start, convulsing, sucking for air. His neck was spongy to the touch, the glands swollen, as were his legs below the knee. For s
ome hours the sweats came and went, swift visitations that left him soaked through.
In the predawn Cuff made some tea and rationed out a biscuit, one each.
Mackie got himself up. He shuffled to the lip of the cave and spat into the void and tried to cough up some more of the phlegm that rattled his every breath. He declared the very thought of solids made him ill, but he was desperately parched. He drank the tea, catching his breath between gulps, the warm mug romancing his fingers. He grimaced as he swallowed. His joints ached and there was hurt in his throat and he could hear the gurgle in his chest like bubbles up through water. He wished he had some claret, for claret alone seemed to calm his throat and placate his mood.
Cuff was pleased when Mackie dozed off. He dozed for much of the morning. Cuff dozed too and otherwise sat by the fire, sipping at lukewarm tea and pondering their predicament.
Rain set in, then heavy rain, sheeting into the gorge. Cold gusts swirled about the cave, stirring the firesmoke. The sound of the river drew Cuff to the edge of their shelter to view the spectacle below, the swollen river thrashing the banks.
He studied the river, and he studied the prone form of his companion; reckoned they would have to relent and head home. He did not want to abandon the chase for the gunshots to the west had been as sweet and clear as a message in a bottle. They knew they were making ground. Pinney could not move swiftly with a pair of novices in tow, and there was the Woody boy to consider as well. Cuff had a feeling in his gut the boy might be alive. He went back to the fire and squatted down. ‘That boy just might be alive,’ he said.
Mackie stirred. ‘I think not.’
‘Well, we can but hope.’
‘You live on hope you die fasting.’
‘And you’ll die fasting if you don’t eat my biscuits.’
Mackie coughed some more, propped on one elbow, bringing up what he could and spitting into his palm so he might inspect the red droplets from the depths of his lungs.
‘I’ve heard it’s called the sad passions, that clears me and puts you square in the frame,’ said Cuff.
The Making of Martin Sparrow Page 24
