She walked across to him. ‘Let me help you …’
She hung the damp topcoat over the back of a chair. Jacket and waistcoat followed. Surreptitiously, Wilma tested the weight of the watch and chain. Heavy. Good.
She coaxed him. ‘Take off your shirt.’
‘You first.’
She kicked off her shoes and unpeeled her stockings, taking her time about it, not wanting him to see the knife strapped to her thigh.
‘Now you,’ she said, pretending to tease.
He took off his shirt. His white body drooped with fat. All to the good, she thought, so long as he didn’t drop dead on them.
‘Lie on the bed.’
A violent hammering on the door warned Wilma it was time to go into her act. She raised her hands to her mouth, miming terror. ‘Ohmygod …’
He jerked up, agitated, supporting himself on one flabby arm. ‘What is it?’
The door flew open before she had time to reply. Shanks Patchett stood in the doorway, on cue as always.
Wilma shrieked. ‘My husband!’
Gawd, she thought, it was like something out of the music hall.
‘What the devil do you think you’re doing with my wife?’ Patchett trumpeted.
Look at the round eyes, the open mouth. ‘Your wife?’
Her cue, once more. Bawling, hands to her eyes to hide the lack of tears. Tears? It was all she could do not to laugh.
‘I’ll kill you for this,’ Patchett bellowed.
‘My God, no!’ Skipping around the room, scrabbling for his coat. ‘Please … A misunderstanding. Perhaps we can come to some arrangement …’ He turned, pistol in his fist.
Now it was Patchett’s mouth that was hanging open; not that Wilma’s was much better.
Brown smiled at them, safe behind the muzzle of his gun. ‘Throw that knife over by the door. Easy, now …’
Patchett hesitated, then did as he was told.
‘The troopers will be interested in having a talk with you two,’ Brown said.
Wilma watched him. If Brown reported them they’d be in jail before they could turn round. She wasn’t having that, not if she could help it. Brown was watching Patchett. She whipped up her underskirt, grabbed the knife and stuck Brown in the arm before he could turn … Except that he turned anyway, moving faster than she had expected, and the knife, instead of skewering his upper arm, sank deep into his chest.
Wilma let go of the knife. Brown’s eyes, as wide now as his mouth, stared in utter astonishment, a tableau of terror and disbelief. The gun wavered and fell from his hand. He coughed. Blood ran in a slick stream from his mouth. He crashed full length to the floor.
That’ll teach you to mess with me, Wilma thought. She had often wondered what it would be like to kill a man. Now she knew; she felt absolutely calm. ‘Get the wrong side of me, Shanks, you see what happens.’
She started to go through Brown’s pockets.
‘What you doin’?’ Patchett was bleating like a sheep.
‘What’s it look like?’
Gold watch, gold watch chain, a fistful of sovereigns in his pocket. Better than she’d hoped. She yanked out the knife and wiped the blade on the dead man’s shirt.
‘We’ll have to leave town,’ Patchett gabbled, lips white.
‘Damn right,’ she agreed. The only question was where: Melbourne would be no good, nor any of the smaller towns. She grinned at him, thrusting the knife back into its sheath. ‘We’ll have to go north after all, won’t we? With your mate Stubbs.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
Dust.
White as powdered alum. Fine as smoke. It dissolved the blue of the sky to milk, the sun to a bronze ghost looming intermittently through billowing cloud. It coated eyes and throats. It turned familiar faces into masks. It plastered clothes, hands, fingernails, lips. It obliterated landscapes and soured tempers.
‘I never thought we’d see so much dust this early in the drive,’ Matthew said. ‘I expected these conditions up on the Namoi, perhaps, but we aren’t even to the Hawkesbury yet.’
Charlton nodded. ‘It’s a dry year, right enough.’
‘Dry? It keeps up like this we’ll be carrying half the countryside with us by the time we get there,’ Matthew said. ‘Whenever that’s likely to be.’
‘We’ve been covering four miles a day,’ Charlton said, ‘which is about right for the start of a drive. When they’ve settled down a bit we should double that. Means it should take us four to five months, which is about what I reckoned.’
They sat their horses on the summit of a low mound and watched as the figures of cattle, horses and men moved through the sparse gum scrub below them. Beyond the herd the waggon pitched and rolled as it threaded its way through the grey-green landscape.
The cattle had not yet settled down and every so often some tried to make a break for it, to be chased and harried by the stockhands until they gave up and turned back again. The air was noisy with the lowing of the mob, the yelling of the men, the repeated pistol-crack sound of the stockwhips.
‘The boys are enthusiastic enough anyway,’ Charlton said.
‘Just as well,’ Matthew said. ‘Time we get to the other end they’ll have covered enough miles to have gone there and back.’
‘The cattle will settle down soon enough,’ Charlton said. ‘It’s bad enough having to ride all the way there, never mind walk. If I was a cow I’d want to keep all my energy for what’s coming.’
‘Cows don’t know what’s coming,’ Matthew pointed out.
‘Who knows what they know?’ Charlton said. ‘Things I’ve seen, I think sometimes that cattle can smell drought.’
‘Drought,’ Matthew repeated, tasting the word on his tongue along with the dust. ‘I don’t reckon it’ll be that bad.’
‘Drought is always bad.’
‘Back in February that steamer got fifty miles beyond Fort Bourke. There must have been plenty of water in the river for it to manage that.’
‘That was the Barwon,’ Charlton said. ‘It’s the Warrego I’m worried about.’
The two men moved off side by side through the scrub.
‘If it’s that bad there doesn’t seem any point going there,’ Matthew said.
Charlton watched the vast expanse of the plain stretching away northward into the far distance where sand devils writhed under a sky white with heat. ‘I didn’t say it was bad,’ he said at length. ‘Can’t breathe in small places. I need to feel space around me.’
‘But there will be drought?’ Matthew persisted.
Charlton reined his horse. He tilted his hat to the back of his head and scratched his forehead, staring out across the featureless miles to the unbroken horizon.
‘Reckon there will,’ he said.
‘Worse than this?’ Looking at the chalk-dry landscape.
Charlton spat contemptuously. ‘This ain’t nothing.’
‘It’s pretty dry.’
‘Pretty dry and drought’s two different things,’ Charlton said. ‘See what I just done? Spitting like that? In drought country you don’ waste no moisture spitting. You hold it all in, long as you can.’
‘If you’re right we could be riding into a disaster,’ Matthew said.
‘Where we’re goin’, disasters are always possible.’
Again Matthew studied the dry landscape. ‘How do you know?’ he asked eventually. ‘About drought, I mean?’
‘Must be part cow myself,’ Charlton said. ‘Can smell it, I reckon. From two, three hundred miles away I can smell it.’ He grinned, seemingly unworried by his own dismal prognosis. ‘Interesting times ahead.’
He put spurs to his horse and cantered away.
They drove the mob through a succession of hot, dusty days. Slowly the ground rose until they were following a high ridge with views of the distant Blue Mountains away to the west. Six days after their departure, with the sun setting in a blaze of colour, they came down off the high ground to the banks of the Hawkesbury River.
The ri
ver was five hundred yards across at this point. On the far bank high sandstone bluffs crowned with trees rose vertically against the sky. As they watched, a vessel nosed out into the current from the northern shore and began its slow crossing of the dark water.
‘Wiseman’s Ferry,’ Charlton said.
‘Who’s Wiseman?’
‘He ain’t nobody. He’s dead. He opened the ferry about thirty years ago. It’s the only way across the river.’
Matthew eyed the distant bluffs. ‘There’s a way through there?’ he asked dubiously. ‘Looks like it could be rough going.’
‘It is,’ Charlton said with relish. ‘You could say the real drive starts here.’
They watched as the ferry completed the crossing and tied up to a wooden jetty. A handful of cattle and a dray came ashore.
‘Where do we overnight the cattle?’ Matthew asked.
‘There’s a stock reserve half a mile upriver,’ Charlton told him.
Matthew nodded. ‘I’ll let the ferry know we’re crossing in the morning while you get the boys moving the mob along the bank.’
Around the fire that night the boys talked about taking the mob across the river by ferry.
‘First time I heard about it I didn’t believe it,’ Brett Noonan said. He was the youngest hand, barely eighteen, and although he had ridden with other mobs this was his first time on the Hawkesbury. ‘Didn’t seem right, the idea of puttin’ a mob of cattle on a boat.’
‘They been doing it for years,’ Charlie Owen said. It was his third trip and he wasn’t about to let anyone forget it.
Brett looked indignant. ‘I know that.’ He leant forward, fingers curled around his mug of tea, eyes staring into the fiery interior of the flames. Somewhere beyond the circle of light a steer bawled mournfully in the darkness. ‘I just said the first time I heard about it—’
‘They put cattle on boats to England,’ Joe Ogle said helpfully. ‘All over the world, they send ’em.’
Brett began to wish he had never raised the subject. ‘All I said was, the first time I heard about it I thought it was strange, shipping cattle over a river by boat. That’s all.’
‘They been doin’ it for years,’ Charlie repeated.
Brett’s voice rose. ‘I know they bin doin’ it for years!’ He looked at Charlton, anxious to get away from the subject of the ferry. ‘What’s it like on the other side?’
‘Stack of mountains,’ Charlton told him. ‘A lot of timber, too.’
‘Cattle and timber don’t mix,’ Brett said dubiously.
Charlton puffed his pipe. ‘All the more reason to get through as quick as we can.’
‘It was pretty damn dry last time I went to Muswellbrook.’ Charlie laced fingers about a bent knee. ‘Went along Cockfighter Creek. Old man McAlpin came after us as we was going through. Said we was spread out all over his property.’
‘Bet you was, too,’ Joe Ogle said.
Charlie ignored this. ‘Cockfighter Creek …’ He smiled reminiscently, ‘I thought we was going to have to fight him, afore we got through.’
‘Which way did you go after Broke?’ Charlton asked.
‘Up to Singleton and then northwest to Muswellbrook.’
‘The grazing’s bad that route,’ Charlton told him. ‘You should have stuck to the Hunter and gone around through Jerry’s Plains.’
‘All I know is I was mighty glad when we got there,’ Charlie said.
Next day shortly before dawn, they broke camp.
A chill air breathed from the river and Matthew beat his hands together as he walked over to the small fire where Charlton was standing big among the smaller men, hands wrapped around his mug, breath steaming in the grey light.
‘Cook’s doin’ a good job,’ Charlton said, chewing.
Nance had put up some beef, damper and tea for them to line their bellies. Matthew was as pleased as the rest of them to find the food waiting but was not about to say so. ‘What I’m paying her for,’ he said, blowing on the tea. Steam rose with his breath into the air.
Charlton was wearing a heavy coat that hung almost to his ankles. He had an uncorked bottle in his hand. He offered it to Matthew. ‘Put a spike in your tea.’
Matthew took the bottle, poured a tot into his mug, sipped appreciatively and thrust food into his mouth. Overhead the sky turned from purple through gold to blue. Matthew swallowed, dashing crumbs from his lips. ‘Let’s get a move on.’
An hour later, the first rays of the sun gilding the treetops, they drove the first of the stock bawling and protesting down the ramp onto the ferry.
It took most of the day to get them across the river and Matthew was cursing with impatience long before the ferry made its last crossing. He watched as the boys sorted the mob into some kind of order. When they were ready he turned to Charlton at his side. ‘You were saying the drive starts here,’ Matthew said. ‘Let’s do it, then.’
Whips cracking and voices yelling, they drove the stock up the bank and set off northwards through the mountains.
Stubbs told himself he was a damn fool. Nobody in their right mind would have agreed to take a city slicker like Shanks Patchett into the wilderness, let alone his fancy whore, yet that was what he had done and now he was stuck with it.
Anyone as old and ugly as I am should have had more sense, he told himself although at thirty-five he wasn’t really that old.
Patchett had come to him in panic with some yarn about Wilma and a man who had met her in the way of business and died because of it. How Patchett was involved wasn’t clear but it seemed the troopers would like to talk to the pair of them, something that Patchett was keen to avoid.
Stubbs had nearly refused but Patchett had always known how to get around him. ‘We been mates,’ he said reproachfully. ‘You ain’t goin’ to dump us, are you?’
‘Us?’ Stubbs repeated. ‘Since when has Wilma Shaughnessy been a mate of mine?’ Although he had known her from time to time in her professional capacity.
‘Can’t leave her behind,’ Patchett said. ‘The troopers pick her up there’s no saying what she might tell ’em.’
Stubbs was doubtful: he didn’t see her as a country girl. ‘We don’t have room for passengers,’ he had told her. ‘What can you do that’s going to help us?’
‘You know what I do.’
‘I know what you do in town. That’s no use to us in the bush. The only men we’re likely to see will be black ones with a spear in both hands.’
Talk of spears did not seem to bother her. ‘I could cook.’
Stubbs was sceptical. ‘Ever done any?’
She tossed her flame-coloured head. ‘You callin’ me a liar?’
He ignored that. ‘Can you ride?’
At least she was safe there: she’d been brought up on a farm of sorts. ‘As well as you, I reckon.’
Stubbs pondered. It probably would be easier with two of them than by himself. Patchett might not be the ideal partner for this sort of venture but at least he knew him.
‘Any trouble, I’ll leave the pair of you behind,’ he had threatened.
‘There won’t be no trouble.’ Wilma knew Stubbs wouldn’t chuck her out in the middle of the desert. As for the cooking, she would get by. In her experience, most men weren’t what you’d call fancy feeders.
By the evening of the second day Patchett knew it had all been a horrible mistake. He would never have believed how agonising it was to ride a horse when you weren’t used to it. The end of the first day had been the worst. When they stopped he had been unable to lift his leg over the horse’s rear. He had been obliged to fall off sideways and it was a miracle that the startled beast hadn’t trampled him.
Stubbs had watched him with interest. ‘I asked Wilma if she could ride,’ he said. ‘I never thought to ask you.’
Patchett hated to be laughed at. ‘You knew damn well I’m no country boy,’ he said. ‘The town’s my place.’
‘Maybe you should have stayed there then.’
Patchett sat o
n the ground and sulked.
‘It’s too early to be sitting around,’ Stubbs told him. ‘There’s work to do.’
Patchett glared up at him suspiciously. ‘Like what?’
‘There’s a fire to light, horses to look after, water to be fetched.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘My share. Make sure you do yours.’
Stubbs had made him do it too. To relieve his feelings he complained until Stubbs threatened to gag him. As for sleeping on the bare ground … He thought he could have slept on a bed of vipers, he was so tired, but somehow he hadn’t been able to get the hang of it. The earth was like a rock and there was nowhere to fit his hips or arms. He felt all the worse for knowing that the others seemed to be having no trouble at all.
In the morning, eyes red, bones aching, he felt more exhausted than ever. He began to wonder if he would survive.
Stubbs obviously shared his doubts. ‘You want to change your mind, now’s your chance.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’m going on.’
He looked at Wilma but she stared him down contemptuously. ‘Don’ look at me,’ she told him.
His suspicions deepened. He had heard them talking in the night: probably about gold. Now they were trying to cut him out of his share. Well, he wasn’t the fool they took him for. ‘You don’ get rid of me as easy as that,’ he said.
‘Please yourself,’ Wilma said disagreeably.
She had always known that a whore’s life was unsatisfactory. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t fun and it offered no prospects. When the chance came she had been happy to get away from it. Life in the open had sounded great: all those hours in the fresh air, riding a horse instead of lying on her back on a dirty sheet, breathing the scents of the countryside rather than the boozy breath of some man … Now she wasn’t so sure. At least in Sydney she had seen plenty of action. Who cared if most of the men had been dirty, foul-mouthed, as rough as rats? It had made cheating them that much more fun. At least she had felt alive.
That Brown, she thought. If it hadn’t been for that son of a bitch I’d be there now, sitting in the corner of the bar, looking for trade.
The Burning Land Page 31
