One

by Patrick Holland

  ‘That I can’t … I can’t lea–’

  But he pulled his horse around before the woman could finish speaking.

  The woman and children watched the men ride off with their husband and father on a child’s white pony, both the pony and the Babbiloora horse lashed in caravan to the Skillington boy’s mare at the surcingles with driving reins. Ada Thurlow hurried the children inside. The smaller girl huddled close to her mother’s skirts. The boy stood at the window crying, but the older girl’s fear was gone now and she stared after the vanishing patrol with hatred burning in her eyes. She said,

  ‘He was our friend, mother. Wasn’t he our friend?’

  She was ashamed of the fear she had shown and she cried to her mother.

  ‘I’ll be enemy to every bloody policeman that exists for all the rest of my life.’

  ‘Hush, girl.’

  Just then Mrs Boyce came up the stairs and heard the crying.

  ‘What in the name of the Lord’s afoot here, Ada?’

  ‘Oh, it’s just–’

  ‘The police took our father,’ said the eldest girl. ‘And the new horse.’

  Mrs Boyce saw the hatred in the girl’s eyes.

  ‘Can I borrow your daughter for the night, Ada? Only, with Frank gone, and on a night like this, I need a little wood chopped, and I’m not up to it meself.’

  Ada Thurlow kissed her daughter and nodded.

  Mrs Boyce told the girl to put one of a basket of already split logs on the fire. Then she took a pen and paper and wrote. She folded the letter and called her niece.

  ‘Child?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The men who were here last night with the horses.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can you follow them east out of the range? Maybe as far as the pass?’

  ‘I can ride these hills as good as any man.’

  ‘Give this to the one called James.’

  The girl smiled. Mrs Boyce secured the note in her pocket.

  ‘I’ll pack you bread and water. Go saddle your pony!’

  The patrol camped at a waterhole. The sun was already gone by the time they left Thurlow’s.

  ‘We spell here tonight.’

  The Skillington boy’s eyes darted about the rocks.

  ‘I don’t like this camp, Sarge. I say we ride through the night.’

  ‘What’s got you nervous?’

  ‘Just that this is proper Kenniff country. That’s all.’

  Nixon smiled. He shaped a cigarette.

  ‘Does it look like the scenes in the stories?’

  Thurlow too looked up into the high rocks as if for the movement of an enemy.

  ‘The boy’s right, Nixon.’

  Nixon put down the last of a ring of stones and looked at him.

  ‘But the Kenniffs are in the east. Have been for months. Isn’t that what you said, Tom?’

  Thurlow eyed him.

  ‘There are wild blacks up here, too. Take these damn cuffs off me so I’ve at least got a fighting chance.’

  King Edward brought kindling and Nixon lit it.

  ‘No, Tom.’ He nodded at a cypress pine and the cold camp he’d had King Edward clear twenty yards from their fire. At the cold camp the Babbiloora horse was tied to a low bough. ‘You and that horse have to remain with me. That’s why I’ve got my tracker here to stay up through the night.’

  ‘He doesn’t sleep?’

  ‘Not like you and me.’

  ‘How is that?’

  ‘His nights are full of devils. They keep him up.’

  Thurlow was silent for a time, watching the fire. Then he spoke.

  ‘Those horses they’re driving are wild horses.’

  Nixon lit his cigarette in the fire and nodded. Then he pointed the lit end at the thoroughbred stallion.

  ‘Not all of them.’

  ‘What the hell does it matter, a stray horse here and there? If a man can’t keep his boundary fences intact then he deserves to lose a horse or two.’

  Nixon laughed.

  ‘Perhaps, but I’ve ridden over plenty of cut wire to get to here.’

  Nixon stood and took a bottle of Irish whisky from his saddlebag. He came back to the fire and took a swig and offered the bottle to Thurlow.

  ‘How’m I gonna hold it?’

  ‘Give him a drink, boy.’

  The Skillington boy took the bottle and raised it to Thurlow’s lips. Nixon took back the bottle and drank. Then he gave it to the boy. The Skillington boy raised it to his mouth.

  ‘Not you,’ said Nixon. ‘Him.’

  They drank this way until the bottle was empty. Then Nixon watched Thurlow looking about the bush.

  ‘Why aren’t you sleeping, Tom?’

  ‘My wrists hurt.’

  Neither man said a word more, but after an hour Nixon went to the Skillington boy and woke him.

  ‘Yes, Sarge?’

  ‘That man’s more wary than he should be. There are hobbles in one of my saddlebags. Put them on that horse. You sleep in your saddle next to the animal.’ He turned to the black boy. ‘Edward!’

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘You sit up with this man here. Don’t sleep.’

  King Edward nodded.

  But Nixon woke in the night, dry-mouthed, from nightmares he could not recall. Only the sinking feeling they gave him.

  King Edward eyed him.

  He had told the story of the Breelong blacks those nights before to get a rise out of the Skillington boy. Still, he wondered what passed through Edward’s mind. Could you ever know? It was like trying to figure out what a stone intended. Perhaps an Aborigine was a thing that just was. And was moved by the same forces that moved the earth and the weather.

  ‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘You really don’t sleep, do you, Ed? Pass me that flask. In the tie-bag.’

  King Edward took the flask and gave it. Nixon took a swig.

  ‘You drink liquor?’

  ‘No, boss.’

  Nixon nodded. He looked about the dark beyond the belt of firelight and sighed. He looked up and checked the lie of the stars.

  ‘We’re past the middle of the night. I give the order to sleep. Anything that was coming for us would’ve come by now.’ He smiled and looked over at the Skillington boy struggling against sleep on his horse. ‘I give the order.’ He turned to King Edward. ‘Here. Take a drink. With a drink in your belly you’ll feel less like cutting my throat while I sleep. Or more, I spose. You can never tell with your lot.’

  Edward took the bottle to his mouth and winced only a little at the liquid that had not been barrelled long enough and burnt.

  ‘But that’s not the first time you’ve tasted whisky?’

  Edward shook his head and gave back the flask.

  ‘Where are you parents, lad? Mother and father?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Savage or no, a mother loves a boy and the boy his mother. Truly, lad, I wish it was not so. I lost mine, too. I was younger than you are now. You know,’ he sighed, ‘my grandmother starved. Do you believe that? I’m hardly able to myself. Died of malnutrition in England. You know England? But my mother was killed by a … Anyway, she was killed.’

  King Edward stared back at him. Nixon wondered if he understood any of what he said. He passed the bottle.

  ‘Here, drink with me, lad.’

  King Edward took the flask. Nixon went on.

  ‘And my father, he died of syphilis. My brother and me were sent into this state to live with an uncle. A turnkey at a lockup hospital for sick prostitutes. Is that ironic? Do you know irony?’ He whispered, ‘Never mind.’ He rolled and lit a cigarette. ‘We were very nearly sent to live with an aunt in San Francisco, but she married a man with children of his own and didn’t want us. I think on how different my life might have been had we gone out there. America. Perhaps I’d be a gentlemen by now, hey? With a proper education. And you?’ Nixon took back the flask. ‘Well, you’d be much the same either way. But even if I was born wi
ld as a dingo pup I’d rather have a mother than not. I’m sorry for you, boy. Was it a white man who killed her?’

  King Edward nodded. Nixon did not know whether in affirmation or simply because at that moment he had stopped talking.

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘It’s near daybreak. You sleep.’

  Alex Stapleton squatted in the brush spinning the cylinder of his revolver. He whispered to Elden Calhoun who was peering above cover.

  ‘They asleep?’

  ‘Even the coon beside Thurlow.’

  ‘Watch him. They sleep light. Is Thurlow asleep?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Alex laughed.

  ‘Useless bastard. The boy on the horse?’

  ‘I reckon he’ll only wake up if he falls off. The horse is asleep too.’

  ‘The policeman?’

  ‘Asleep by the fire next to Thurlow and the coon. Can’t you hear the bastard snoring?’

  Elden squinted at the dying coals of the fire.

  ‘He’s got a bottle beside him. He looks drunk.’

  ‘Aye.’

  Alex snapped the cylinder shut and smiled.

  ‘We go.’ Elden locked the bolt of his shotgun.

  They crouched and made their way to the edge of the cold camp where the horse was.

  Alex stood and put his revolver in his belt. He untied the Babbiloora horse while Elden stood cover with his shotgun pointed at the Skillington boy.

  His horse stirred and the boy woke. Eyes opened wide.

  Elden put his finger to his lips. He aimed the shotgun at the boy’s face.

  Alex nodded at the camp where the men were asleep and whispered.

  ‘You can keep our friend. We only want the horse.’

  The Skillington boy made to speak and Elden locked the bolt on the shotgun.

  ‘We only want the horse,’ Alex whispered. ‘That’s not worth dying over. Your boss is drunk. You stay right there quiet as a mouse and he’ll never know the difference. When we’re gone, you give us an hour. If we hear you after us, we’ll set an ambush and you’ll die then too.’

  ‘We’ll shoot all these,’ said Elden. ‘But we’ll wire you to a tree and burn you.’

  Alex whispered to Elden.

  ‘What’s the black boy doing?’

  Elden looked across the ashes of the fire at King Edward who stared at him unflinching. He kept his gun trained on the Skillington boy and his eyes on the black boy and spoke to Alex.

  ‘I don’t know. Just hurry up.’

  The Skillington boy watched Elden Calhoun back the horse out of the camp. In a while he heard the dull thud of hobbles getting cut with bolt cutters. He closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep again but the dawn was paling the horizon.

  Nixon woke and saw the horse gone and the look of apology on the Skillington boy’s face.

  ‘I would’ve woke you. But they had guns on me. They would’ve opened fire on us all.’

  ‘You useless bastard! Which way’d they go?’

  The boy pointed west.

  ‘And you!’

  King Edward sat by the fire, half sleeping now as he hadn’t all night. He did not look up.

  Nixon kicked the dirt beside the boy’s pants.

  ‘What bloody good are you? Were you scared? Would you’ve let them put a bullet in my head while I slept, you fucking savage?’

  Nixon saddled his horse.

  ‘Edward!’

  ‘Boss.’

  ‘You ride with me.’

  He turned to the Skillington boy.

  ‘And you, you milk-blooded bastard, you ride Thurlow into Injune town. Try not to lose the horse that’s under you along the way.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that, Sarge.’

  ‘Just get on your horse.’

  ‘I’m as brave as any man here.’

  Nixon laughed.

  ‘That’s the way a coward talks.’

  The Skillington boy spoke under his breath.

  ‘Hard to measure the bravery of a man drunk and asleep.’

  Nixon heard.

  ‘Because you don’t know who you’re talkin to, I’ll forgive you. Now get on that fucking horse and ride.’

  Nixon and King Edward tracked the horse and riders a hundred miles along the range. Two days on they found good tracks and then a fire with live coals.

  That night they slept within a few miles of the outlaws’ camp. Nixon could see fire in a cave. At dusk the day after, he caught sight of a rider on a roan horse moving slowly along the banks of a dry creek bed. Nixon drew his revolver, called to halt, and the rider fled into the timber. Nixon and King Edward gave chase.

  They caught up with Elden Calhoun on nightfall, their horses exhausted such that they could not have gone a mile further into the hills without water and rest. But Elden was alone.

  ‘Where are the others?’

  He smiled.

  ‘What others?’

  ‘The Kenniff gang. The men you ride with.’

  ‘Drunk in a public bar, most likely.’

  ‘And the horse?’

  Elden grinned.

  ‘What horse, officer?’

  Nixon laughed at himself.

  The horse could be anywhere. Back with the Kenniffs. Sold. Put in with a mob of brumbies. Shot and burnt …

  ‘Fuck me!’

  Nixon shook his head. The Kenniffs would be long gone out of the hills by now, gone onto the flat southwestern plains devoid of witnesses and police. And somewhere on those plains they would sell the horses under a false name and then vanish from the world.

  ‘By the way,’ said Elden. ‘Ada Thurlow’s put it about that her husband’s been kidnapped by a rogue militia man. I say militia man, as a policeman’d have to have a charge to hold a man. Ada’s the cousin of one of my associates, see, and I know he’d be grateful to anyone who could return her husband to her.’

  The Kenniff gang rode the horses into yards on the border north of North Star where horses belonging to no one were sold to men without names and moved on in the night. They sold two lots this way, for as much as could be got for horses without papers. They sold one more lot to a horse trader from north of Jericho whom they had dealt with before but who could not pay that night. He agreed to a dozen horses of the best horses at double the rate of the others – he had a buyer lined at Tenterfield, a wealthy squatter – and he told the boys to pick up the money in the northwest in late spring, and to bring all the horses they had left and he would buy those too.

  Paddy bought two black serge suits at the drapery in Goondiwindi that endorsed the cheque and now they had cash. They rode the midday train to Toowoomba and drank at the hotel.

  Alex Stapleton went back to the hills to wait for his cut of the sale of thirty-six stolen and wild horses. Elden stayed in the house of a scalper for a week. When he was sure he was not followed he rode to meet the others.

  Jim, Paddy, Tom, Michael and Elden crossed to Henderson’s boarding house for the night. Jim could not sleep. He went about the town for a walk at eleven. He passed the railway station and saw a light burning in a window. In the light he saw the woman gatekeeper. Their eyes met and he felt strange about the way she regarded him. He ran into the dark and told the others they had to leave. Lie low in the west for a time.

  They rode to Roma. They would ride different trains from there. Tom Lawton and Michael Carmichael rode out first. Elden would go next. Paddy would get off the train in Jackson where Tom would be waiting for him.

  They could go with Tom to his aunt’s house at Nunga for Christmas. Jim said he would ride to Surat. Then back to Augathella and home.

  ‘You should come with us,’ said Paddy. ‘Nelly cooks well. She’s a decent woman. It would do you good to be around decent people.’

  Jim nodded and looked away to the horizon and Paddy saw he had no intention of going to the house of Tom Lawton’s decent aunt for Christmas.

  ‘You go on without me, brother.’

  ‘I want you to come with me.’
>
  ‘We’ll be together tonight.’

  They posted Elden on a hill looking down over Roma’s gaslights. He scratched a camp in the scrub and was to keep watch and ride into town if he saw a patrol on the road.

  On the stairs of the Royal Hotel a young constable saw the revolver at Jim’s hip and the rifles strapped across both men’s backs and he stopped them.

  He pointed to the revolver.

  ‘You can’t have it loaded in town.’

  Jim emptied the cylinder into the young man’s hand.

  ‘And the rifles. I have to check the breech.’

  The brothers unslung them and Jim threw them at the policeman making him drop the bullets.

  Jim pointed through the hotel doors.

  ‘Bring them to us in there when you’re done.’

  ‘I can’t, sir. I must take them to the office.’

  ‘So be it. Anyway, constable, you might be able to help me. Is there a rum shanty or ale house in this town with a card game?’

  Paddy swore under his breath. He turned away to the street.

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said the constable. ‘And if I did, as a policeman, I wouldn’t be advertising it.’

  Jim shrugged.

  ‘My experience of that varies.’

  ‘You won’t get into the station tonight.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Whose name should I tag the rifles with?’

  In times past Jim would have given their names. After a night drive the name of an outlaw was something he had earned and – once the horses were sold – it could not hurt him.

  ‘Jim North. And this is my brother, Mick.’

  Paddy was unmoved. He kept staring down the street.

  The constable looked at him and wondered if he was keeping his face from view.

  They came into the saloon and ordered two glasses of whisky. Paddy eyed his brother.

  ‘Why do you have to do that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Put on such a damn show about the guns and the gambling? Then use your own first name and say we’re brothers?’

  ‘We look like brothers. And how many fucking men called Jim do you reckon there are in this country? Anyway, you’ve made use of our reputation. Remember that night back in Augathella? After we sold those Dysart horses? You danced with the senior constable’s wife.’