One

by Patrick Holland

‘You liar.’

  ‘You can’t be fuckin reasoned with.’

  Jim took another drink of whisky and looked across the plain at the distant storm. A gust of cool wind came across the country and hit him flush in the face. He closed his eyes. He sighed. He opened his eyes and stared at his brother and at Tom Lawton dusting his hat.

  ‘There’s a block of country,’ said Tom. ‘An old uncle of mine’s selected down south in the snow. Wants me to head down and work it with him. I reckon when we’ve done all our business and collected our debts, I’ll do so. I’m done with poaching grass for horses and campin out in the cold like a nomad.’

  Jim nodded.

  ‘Forgive me, Tom. Ride on. I’ll be with you shortly.’

  Tom Lawton mounted his horse. Jim stayed standing under the tree with his whisky flask, watching the storm that was near gone now.

  ‘See that you are, Jim. Then we can talk about pullin more unmarked horses outta the hills. Unmarked, mind. Forget anymore talk of raids and night drives. The hills begin to have police in them again.

  ‘No man alive can catch me unless I want them to. Ride on, Tom.’

  ‘What will I tell the others?’

  Jim Kenniff spat. His young brother stared at him keenly.

  ‘I’ve got horses in a hidden camp at Elim. Tell the boys I’ll met them at the hideout then we ride to there. We take those to Jericho, to McCulloch Then we collect our last pay. And you tell anyone who’ll hear it that I will burn the houses of any who stand in my way. That I will wreak a terrible vengeance on anyone who says my name to a policeman.’

  Tom shook his head and looked up at the sky.

  ‘Alright, then.’

  He nodded at Jack.

  ‘Come on, lad.’

  He rode back into town. At nightfall he came to the house of the Chinaman. She was there waiting for him. He took a pipe. She produced two books from under the Chinaman’s counter. A tattered paperback copy of The Escapades and Capture of Ben Hall and The Book of Common Prayer.

  ‘I have only these and one other.’

  ‘Not the first one.’

  She put it away and opened the second. She taught him to sound the letters.

  ‘See the O,’ she said. ‘You’ll remember that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it looks like your mouth when you say it.’

  He smiled. She put the book in his hands, and her hands behind his. She read and he repeated after her.

  ‘“O God the Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth, have mercy upon us.’”

  ‘“O God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy upon us.’”

  ‘“Remember not, Lord Christ, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers; neither take thou vengeance on our sins” … Jim?’

  But there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘Forgive me. You read so well. That’s all.’

  ‘We can read the other book. I got it from an old Greek. It’s Greek prayers, but in English.’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘You’re not interested in prayers.’

  ‘I’d like to hear you read them. I’m tired. You read now and I’ll listen.’

  He signalled to the Chinaman to have another pipe brought to him. He lay down and lit it and breathed the smoke.

  The girl read.

  ‘“Why these bitter words of the dying, o bre– … brethren”. That means brother.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘“… which they utter as they go hence? I am parted from my brethren. All my friends do I abandon and go hence. But whither I go, that understand I not, neither what shall become of me yonder. Only God who hath summoned me knoweth. But make commemoration of me with the song. Alleluia!”’

  She looked up from the book and saw the tears in his eyes had fallen. The wolf of the hills crying himself to sleep. She read on. He slept.

  In his dream it was dusk. Firelight was on the horizon. And the police were coming for him …

  He had just cleared the fence on that first horse he took by matchlight. He stole a Colt .44 and a Winchester rifle along with the animal. And he rode bare-chested and bareback looking at the fire in the distance with the rifle across his shoulders, knowing somehow that when he got as far as that inscrutable light he was safe. And then he could outrun anyone …

  That first time he was arrested and tried, the public defender had taken pity on him. He said,

  ‘Hunger makes a man do many things a satisfied man cannot understand.’

  But he had no intention of selling that horse when he took it.

  As a boy, belly full of his mother’s possum and onion stew, his father asleep in a chair, he was playing in the timber far from the house. There was a horse and rider silhouetted against the sky at the top of a ridge, a carbine slung across his back. He stood his horse there like a sentry against a belt of chaos that burned black across the plain. He turned his horse away into the teeth of a bitter cold wind – the boy had made nothing of the rider’s face. Then horse and rider disappeared down a bridle path. Jim never knew another thing about that rider, but that shape against the dusk stayed with him. And he would make his life fit that shape …

  He opened his eyes briefly and looked across the red-lit room full of shadows. The girl was asleep on his shoulder. A Chinaman sat smiling and eyeing him at the next table. He thought of that first horse he’d been dreaming of. The Arab. Then it was just one horse. But later it was dozens …

  Why would they send the entire army for one fucking man? For it seemed to him that all the troops and militias of the state were assembled on the ridge above the house. They had already taken his father. Lashed rawhide around the old man’s hands and feet and dragged him along the ground by a rope. When they heard of it, he and Paddy came out of hiding and went back to the house to check that their cousin was not molested too. Paddy gave himself up. But Jim would not. And now he and his cousin were trapped there with the troops gathering above him like the host of that thing he had always been riding against …

  He thought, No horror is great enough for them. And on this night of all nights, for the girl was sick unto death. God, how I hate them. He whispered. ‘I’ll visit this hell on you all before the end.’

  They were burning a cordon. A few were mounted up on the bluff behind the fires. Soon the whole rim of the horizon was on fire and it seemed Hell itself was perched and ready to ride down into the valley. She saw Jim staring out the window. She went to sit up, but he put his hand on her forehead and it was much too easy to push her body down onto the bed.

  ‘Lie down, my one true love.’

  ‘The light?’

  ‘The sun is setting. Close your eyes.’

  But she could not be deceived.

  ‘Run, brother. Run through the night and you’ll be safe at dawn. And I will be safe.’

  ‘Quiet.’

  ‘God calls me, brother.’

  ‘To where?’

  ‘Only He knows.’

  Tears ran down his cheeks and onto her bed.

  ‘I can’t live if you are gone.’

  ‘You have no say in it.’

  He whimpered. She took his hand.

  ‘I know what’s out the window. You have to run.’

  ‘I won’t leave you.’

  ‘Let me go, brother.’

  ‘Go to where?’

  She smiled and a tear described her cheek.

  She said,

  ‘You will find me.’

  He looked up at the burning hill. Then back to her. He closed his eyes and whispered.

  ‘I need to know you’re safe.’ He shook his head. ‘I would ride the marches of hell forever if it meant you find your home in the light.’

  ‘Surely you will find your home.’

  He opened his eyes in the opium den. The grinning Chinaman was gone now. He looked around the room and was happy there were men smoking still.

  Surely I will not, he thought. I will never sit at table nor lie in a bed that is mine again.
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br />   The proprietor was at the door, selling a can of ash to a black man. Jim was happy it was not dawn. The drug was still with him. He watched the dragons carved into the tables chase each other down the legs, onto the floor and up the walls.

  The girl slept on his lap now. He closed his eyes.

  He woke and the room was cold. Sleeping she looked more a child than her nineteen years allowed. He was five years older yet he always felt like her junior, that she was something much greater than him, and it shocked him to see the bones in her chest like those of a small bird, clearly visible now that breath did not come easy.

  He put his head beside hers on the bed. He ran his hand over her belly and held back tears. There was nothing he could do. And when he opened his eyes the stars were paling in the east and the life went out of her body.

  He looked up at the bluff. The police did not know how many men were down at the house and that was all that held them. They did not know there was only one.

  He pulled his braces over his shoulders and holstered his pistol.

  He wanted to ride out against them. But she had told him to run.

  He rode into the ranges. He was captured three days later. On his release he went back into the ranges and stayed there for months, living by means no man knew.

  He woke with a start and looked at the girl in his arms. For a moment, the softness in her brow, the way her lip curled at the corner of her mouth … Maybe it was the smoke.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered in her ear. He wondered if she heard.

  She stirred a little and nuzzled into him. He looked down at the part in her hair. He felt her breasts against his skin through the calico dress. Her warm breath on his face. His belt and coat and guns were slung over a chair. Somewhere a clock was ticking but the ticking seemed not to mark any time and he did not mind it. Outside the door men were laughing and women giggling. It was a glorious winter night. And he could hear her heart beating against his chest, and he could not tell whether it was her heart or his. He thought, You may never lie with a woman again. Her eyes opened. He smiled.

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘There is a man who owes me money. A horse trader northwest of here. He says he’ll take the horses I’ve got left, then pay for both. I’ll be back in three weeks. I will take that money and you and me will run.’

  Nixon had ridden aimlessly for a week. He wired Upper Warrego from Toko. Then he rode two nights and two days on the western plains to pick up his pay cheque at the post office in Augathella. The clerk was reading the paper. He stared at Nixon’s face, at the name on the envelope that contained the cheque.

  ‘You the Sergeant Nixon who’s chasing the Kenniff gang?’

  ‘I used to be.’

  Nixon held up the envelope.

  ‘My last pay.’

  ‘I’m sorry for you.’

  ‘Don’t be. I failed in my duty.’

  The clerk laughed and smoothed his moustaches.

  ‘You never failed me, Sergeant. I couldn’t give a rat’s arse who the police are chasin in the wilderness and whether or not they get em.’

  The man held up a newspaper.

  ‘Anyway, this here says they’ve already taken ship to San Francisco.’ He smiled. ‘But the paper two weeks ago said they’d sailed from Sydney, going to break horses for the military in Africa.’

  ‘None of it’s true.’

  ‘I gathered that. But you know it is funny meetin you here today like this.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cause I reckon I saw Jim Kenniff a couple of weeks ago. Here in town. Cashin a cheque.

  ‘Who was the cheque made to?’

  ‘Cash. But I reckon it was him – goin on what people tell me about his looks.’

  ‘And his picture in the papers?’

  ‘I never seen his picture in any paper. Cept for cartoon drawins.’

  It was true, the police had not released Jim’s picture to the press. Not in this state. And not in any state for eighteen months. Paddy’s was on the public record, but not Jim’s. And the wanted posters drawn up in Upper Warrego were still waiting on approval for release. No one in this country who had not met the man could know what Jim Kenniff looked like.

  ‘But he looked like death warmed up,’ said the clerk. ‘All gaunt. Ragged beard. Wild eyes. I just gave him his money and didn’t argue. I asked him how he’d been. He said he’d been drinkin in Longreach. He asked me what month it was. Not the time. Not the day.’ The clerk laughed. ‘What month!’

  ‘I was near Longreach two weeks ago.’

  ‘Well strike me. You two might’ve crossed paths. If it was him. He just had this way about him, like he was intelligent. We get a lot of swaggies and hobos,’ the man nodded at the street out the open front door, ‘as you see. But this man’s cover looked rougher than his mind, if you get me. I hardly know how to say it. But could’ve been anyone, I spose.’

  ‘Yes.’

  But Nixon hurried outside and mounted his horse and turned it to the northwest.

  He rode into Jericho six days later at mid-morning. He went to the hotel, then the shack on the outskirts where he had spent the night beside her, but she was gone. The window was dark. A red lantern fixed to a nail above the empty sill was swinging in the wind.

  He searched the tumbledowns for the old black woman who had brought her a basin of water. He searched the camp of Aborigines. But the woman was gone and the girl was gone and there was no word. He had sent her on to Longreach to the hospice. But surely she would be back now? Surely she was alright? He thought of the head wound. It was not so bad. Surely it was not so bad. But he was not a physician. He thought, What bloody good am I? And he thought that even if it wasn’t the wound, there were a thousand other ways the girl might be in trouble. Maybe bandits had held up the coach she rode to the hospice.

  He would wait one more night in the town. Then he would ride on to the hospice.

  He asked around and found the rum shanty where she worked. He rode between the rum shanty and her shack. At last he sat at the rum shanty, drinking from his whisky flask, having the old German who ran the place fill it, and getting drunker and drunker and watching the door.

  He slept alone in a sour bedsit at the back of the shanty. He woke early with a headache.

  He rode to Longreach but he could not find her there. He rode back. He had been away from her for weeks, and those weeks were passed easy, thinking she was safe, so that he barely thought of her at all, and he could have spent a year on the plains imagining he could ride to her door at any hour of the night and she be there waiting, but now that he could not find her he felt every minute she was far from him and he wished he had taken her to the hospice himself instead of chasing Jim Kenniff.

  The townsfolk thought he was mad, standing his horse outside a tumbledown in a black camp on the edge of town, watching for they knew not what.

  He stood his horse under a gaslight watching the road and drinking whisky. The gaslight went out. The night grew cold. He huddled into his coat. Pulled up his collar and pulled his hat hard over his eyes and sat shivering watching the dark.

  He had ridden for the hundredth time from shanty to hotel and back again and there was lantern light in the window of the shack.

  From afar he saw her in the doorway. Her eyes opened wide when she heard someone at the door, but at the sight of him she looked away. The light of the lantern barely touched her. A red shawl was wrapped around her shoulders. Her skin glowed in the shallow light. Her eyes were in shadow.

  He sighed. The sight of her gave him such physical relief. He had not breathed for days until now.

  ‘You beautiful girl,’ he whispered. ‘How long I’ve been among criminals and hardness.’

  He took off his hat. He hung his guns on a hook behind the door. He went to her and put his hand on her cheek.

  She grabbed his hand.

  ‘If you’ve come for a girl, I can find you one.’

  ‘Why would you sa
y that to me? I’ve waited days to see you.’

  She turned away to the lantern.

  ‘Don’t pretend to love me, sir.’

  ‘Why would I pretend?’

  ‘Men like you don’t love girls like me. I was a fool to have believed any promise a man makes, and twice a fool to believe him because the government has sewn a badge on his sleeve. Why are you here?’

  ‘I had a reason. But now I see you I’ve forgot what it was.’

  ‘So lie with me.’

  ‘I …’ He furrowed his brow. ‘I don’t want that tonight.’

  She nodded and pulled her one moth-eaten blanket a little higher up on her bed.

  ‘What was the other reason?’

  ‘I know now that my reason was to see you.’

  ‘And the other reason?’

  He sighed. He shook his head. Sat down on the end of her bed.

  ‘You remember I said I was hunting an outlaw?’

  She nodded and looked away out the window.

  ‘I knew it.’

  ‘I think you know the man I’m looking for.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You may have seen him come through here a week or two ago. His name – like I told you – is Jim Kenniff. He is tall. Handsome. But maybe rough-looking now. He’s been riding out in the weather a long while. And likely he’s been drunk as long as that. And guilty. And he’s known to like …’

  ‘Whores?’

  ‘I would have said pretty women.’

  ‘You don’t have to say anything. I know what I am. But I don’t know Jim Kenniff. And I would know if I saw him.’

  ‘Yes. Because he is handsome. And you saw his face in the newspapers.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But there are no newspapers with his picture. At least not this side of the border.’

  She stared blankly at him.

  ‘Perhaps I saw one from the south. A newspaper, I mean. Perhaps some traveller showed me. A bounty hunter. A policeman. How would I know? I don’t remember.’

  ‘Yes. It could have happened that way. But did it?’

  She said nothing. He sighed.

  ‘I saved your life, girl! Why won’t you talk to me?’

  ‘Why did you leave me alone?’