One

by Patrick Holland

  They rode through the bleached bones of cattle and came into a ghost town on Lake Galilee. They sheltered from the heat in the post office. An inch of sand was on the floor, but this was a place not even dust could rest. The wind rose in the south and swept the floor clean.

  That night dew on the spinifex froze into needles of ice. They made a fire and slept in the open so as to better see anything that came at them in the night.

  But in the night Jim dreamt of those kites blown awry by the wind and he woke and went to his brother’s bedroll.

  ‘Paddy, leave me. You can still live.’

  ‘So can you, brother.’

  He shook his head and looked at the stars that seemed to reserve a little less brightness for him every day.

  ‘Brother –’

  ‘Sleep,’ said Paddy.

  The patrol rode north after the night of the battle on the rocks. On the road were the bodies of men. White and black men and one Arab and his camel. They took money from the dead men’s coats. King Edward took twelve pounds from the coat of a native policeman. ‘Same man as yesterday,’ King Edward said.

  ‘How the fuck can you tell?’ said the Skillington boy staring at the chest ripped apart, and the blood and bone-splinters in the face. A burning cariole tainted the clean air with smoke. An old black warrior was face down in dirt, flesh grown around a shackle on his left ankle like a ring-barked tree.

  A red dust storm came from the west and then there were no tracks of any kind.

  Now they rode long days and some nights along the blacksoil boundary that lay between civilisation and the desert.

  A day’s ride west from here and there were deep channels cut by floodwater. Those Nixon might ride into himself if pursued close, skirting hard and stony country till the high south fall, before cutting back east. You could reach Jericho unseen that way. But those shifting channels were not easy to find, and strike out into the desert with one degree of error and they could easy walk far enough from water that their own water would not get them back. They rode into Ilfracombe. Wind and heat tormented the houses, and emaciated animals walked the streets covered in a thin film of dust. A stage coach was stopped outside the hotel with an exasperated high-born and pregnant woman in suffocating skirts. But there was no sign of the Kenniffs in houses public or private. There were tracks leading away from the town, but too confused to follow, and after a time riding southwest even those were gone.

  ‘I say someone in that town must know somethin,’ said the Skillington boy.

  Nixon shook his head.

  ‘We ride on to Jericho.’

  They rode to the house of a trader in stolen horses north of Jericho. Nixon spoke to a man on the stairs of the house while King Edward and the Skillington boy scouted the place for horses from the range. But there were no horses.

  They camped down the road from the horse trader’s house for three days.

  ‘What are we waitin here for?’ said the Skillington boy.

  Nixon sighed.

  They came to a forking road. Nixon stood his horse and looked down the road towards the invisible town.

  The Skillington boy frowned.

  ‘What’s in Jericho, Sarge? Why are we hesitatin?’

  He sat up in the room he had taken at the hotel. It was near midnight and he still had not slept. He told himself he needed to walk. But he walked straight to her door. The lantern was out on the ledge. The wick burned down to nothing.

  He had to wait for her. He waited more than an hour.

  She came to the door hooded and with a red shawl across her shoulders.

  ‘How are you, sir?’

  ‘Don’t call me “sir”.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Terrible.’

  ‘Will you drink?’

  ‘Yes. Whisky. Or rum.’

  ‘And me? Do you want me?’

  ‘I will pay for your time. Twice what any other man will pay. Don’t go anywhere tonight.’

  After the whisky he went to sleep in the chair.

  He woke and she was still there. That she would go back to the rum shanty was an idea he should get used to. But he was happy she had not gone back.

  He stared into her eyes.

  She said,

  ‘You look good with your beard.’

  He ran his hand over it. Stared again into her eyes. Was the question pending? Surely it was. He thought he saw it.

  ‘Don’t you want to ask about him?’

  She turned away quickly to a basin.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jim Kenniff.’

  ‘You are here and alive. I assumed he was dead.’

  She glanced back at him, her breath tight in her chest.

  Nixon laughed. He lit a cigarette.

  ‘He evaded me.’

  She nodded and kept her eyes on the basin. He wondered if she tried hard not to look glad. But there was no smile and no change in her face.

  He spoke to her.

  ‘You said you were sixteen.’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘Keep yourself. And in a year I will come back. And if you still want it I will marry you.’

  ‘How will I keep myself?’

  He gave her a £50 note.

  The girl stared at the note as though it were a magical object come into this world from some other.

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘It’s all I have for now. You keep it.’

  She sighed. Shivered.

  ‘Do you want me to tell you about Jim Kenniff?’

  ‘No. I know you will lie.’

  She nodded and closed her eyes. Nixon took her hand.

  ‘But if he comes again …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You turn him away.’

  The gang rode into the channels, through a belt of acacias with a red mesa at their right. Riding this way they were always within a half-day’s ride to water in the east, yet they could move unseen. Their channel ran out into nothing and they were exposed. They rode onto plain where the wind began to furrow the sand and collect it into dunes. The nights were cold and at their right was Ilfracombe town and the temptation to ride in there; at their left the desert roared at them.

  Jim saw Paddy and the others looking in the direction of Ilfracombe in the green dusk as though that nothingdeserttown were paradise.

  ‘We can’t,’ Jim said. ‘It’s the first place a patrol will land.’

  ‘I’m not putting this horse one more inch to the west,’ said Tom Lawton. He looked at the sky. ‘Not in this weather.’

  ‘We keep on north,’ said Paddy. ‘And if we’re still thirsty we can go to the Thompson River braids. There’ll be lagoons there.’

  But in a day they came to the hut of a shepherd. They arrived at night. The shepherd had sunk a crude well and drew water. The shepherd did not speak more than a dozen words to any one of them.

  Elden laughed, watching the man wrapped in hessian against the desert cold, staring at his flock picking at the grass in the stones, watching the edges of the night for dingoes. The sheep had broken their yard, but they could not walk far enough from water to be lost.

  ‘Why doesn’t he talk?’

  ‘Any two men meet out here, and they know the other man wants water only. And that he does not want his motives questioned.’

  So Jim ordered his men to ask nothing of the shepherd.

  The next day tribesmen came across the sand to meet them. The faces of the men were painted white above thick beards, and their torsos were marked with lines of the white paint. They wore high and pointed grass headdresses and bones through their noses and bore bark targes on their arms. They slapped spears against the targes and shouted curses and so they saw the riders off.

  At dusk the sky that was white hot became deep blue and clouds of pearl floated above it and all the country was soft. There was the remnant of a fence. Rose light lit the men’s faces.

  ‘You will get your country, Paddy. So long as I’m alive.’

  ‘And I�
�ll make you stay on it too, brother. And straighten you out. And we’ll take wives and grow old smoking on our verandas.’

  ‘Aye.’

  But just then Paddy saw Jim’s body slanting left after the shoulder that was sprayed with shot, though they doused it with whisky and singed the grey-green edges of the wound every night with a fire-blackened knife.

  ‘You want whisky on that,’ said Joe Rhine, meaning they should turn east.

  ‘We’ll have it soon enough,’ said Paddy.

  They rode through spinifex and over the bleached bones of massacred Aborigines at Skull Hole and climbed a sandstone lookout over the blacksoil plains. On the leeside of the lookout were fallen horseyards and a hut. A man lay dead some weeks at the door. The last man here had lain wood and wire and tins over the body. Elden Calhoun kicked away the covering and sat on the man’s skeleton.

  ‘Get the fuck off him,’ said Paddy.

  Elden took the mummified hand and shook the arm.

  ‘He’s not complaining.’

  Paddy drew his revolver.

  ‘You’ll lie beside him if you don’t stand up, boy.’

  Elden stood up.

  The air cooled early and red dust sat shimmering on the horizon and a wall of red sand came from the west. They found an outcrop and got low and covered their faces with kerchiefs and their heads with their coats and took all the tack off their horses bar the bridles and reins that they wrapped around their wrists and held while the dust storm passed. They kept all horses but one.

  After twenty miles riding they breached the storm and they saw the tracks of the horse they had lost. They followed the horse to water.

  They rode to Jim’s hideout west of Elim and took his horses then drove them along the edge of the sand plains then cut back east.

  They came to George McCulloch’s house two miles north of Jericho. His sister, a dark-haired woman with sallow cheeks, came to the veranda. She said George was away on business. They said they would wait. She said she did not know when her brother would return. Maybe tonight. Maybe next week. They asked for iodine and bandages for Jim, and asked that the woman administer them. She did this without admitting a one of the men inside.

  Paddy sat with the men in the houseyard. After the bandaging Jim sat on the veranda watching. When no one came they went to watch on the road. But George McCulloch did not come. They left their string of horses in McCulloch’s yard. They rode back to their camp on the western outskirts of town.

  Tom leant on his saddle and looked down at the spare gaslights.

  ‘Should we ride in?’

  Paddy looked at Jim who shook his head. He did not want to ride back into that town unless he had their money.

  Paddy said,

  ‘It’s dangerous.’

  Tom looked behind him.

  ‘Jim? So we wait here in the wild for this bastard forever?’

  Jim closed his eyes and made no answer.

  ‘Untie your things,’ said Paddy. ‘We camp here.’

  They unsaddled the horses and tied them. A star shot across the sky.

  Joe Rhine looked up.

  ‘That has an evil meaning.’

  Jim was huddled into his oilskin coat, hunched over their fire. He looked up after the star, then down again at the fire that flared with fast-burning spinifex. But the only timber was green gidgee scrub and there was no heat in the fire when the spinifex flares died.

  ‘You alright, Jim?’

  He nodded.

  Elden Calhoun sat down at the fire and unfurled a newspaper he had stolen from the drum at the head of the road to McCulloch’s house.

  Jim eyed him.

  Paddy spoke.

  ‘If you’re gonna read a story about us or bounties or anything like that I’ll shoot you where you sit, Elden.’

  Elden slapped the paper on his knee.

  Jim shivered. He looked at Paddy.

  ‘Are you cold, Paddy?’

  ‘It’s cold tonight.’

  Jim nodded.

  Then the horizon was burning.

  ‘Some hatter burning rake,’ said Paddy. But he put his rifle on his knees.

  Paddy whispered to Tom to take the paper and read aside to him anything they needed to know.

  Tom took the paper.

  ‘Anything?’

  Tom shook his head.

  Paddy took the paper back to the fire to burn.

  Tom spoke.

  ‘But it says there they’ve got lights now in Brisbane city. Electric lights, I mean. Along the river and in the centre of town.’

  Paddy nodded.

  The fire on the horizon was dying.

  ‘You ever been to Brisbane, Paddy?’

  He put the paper in the fire.

  ‘That sposed to be funny?’

  ‘I meant into the town.’

  ‘I wasn’t permitted to do any sightseeing while I was there. What are you drivin at?’

  ‘Nothin. Only I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing those lights go on of an evening all at once. It said in there they go on all at once. And when they do everyone claps.’ He looked at Jim who was shivering. ‘Still. Look at these stars, eh? Like a damn divine river of light. What could be better than that?’

  Jim looked up. Once he had thought that. Now he saw a dark wilderness broken only by inscrutable fires. Like this cooling fire they lit on the plain. He shivered. Tonight he would trade all the stars in heaven for the electric lights in the city Tom read about. For the peace to sit under one and smoke a cigarette and just hear people talking and watch them walk along their way. He was sure he would sleep under such light in that world that would never have him back. Truly sleep. Without the worry he would wake with the muzzle of a gun in his face or a tomahawk at his throat. He had ridden so long at the dark horizon, and now he could never ride back.

  Paddy threw sticks on the fire.

  ‘Tom. You stay watch.’

  ‘Perhaps I should have a blanket.’

  The night was cold and growing colder.

  ‘Take my coat. More than that and you’ll only fall asleep. I’ll relieve you at the next watch. You know that town down there, don’t you?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Do you know where we can buy rounds?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  He went and sat beside his brother.

  ‘Jim.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tomorrow we’ll go into the town.’

  Jim looked at his brother and shivered and smiled.

  ‘Yes.’

  They scratched their beds in the dirt.

  The fire had gone with the wind to the north. At dawn after the fire a red reef of cloud sat across the sky. They rode into town and tied their horses behind the hotel.

  Jim sat shivering at the bar.

  The barman eyed him.

  Paddy put his coat around his brother, both to warm him and to hide the bullet-torn shoulder of his shirt.

  ‘He’s sick,’ Paddy said. ‘Been out in the cold. That’s all.’

  The barman nodded.

  ‘Rum. Two rums. With ginger ale if you have it. And lime.’

  ‘Aye.’

  The barman put a bottle of rum on the table along with the lime and a bottle of ginger ale. Paddy poured three fingers of the rum and two of ginger ale. He took a pocketknife from his belt and cut the lime into quarters and squeezed one into Jim’s glass and one into his own.

  To the barman,

  ‘Do you have any soup?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bread?’

  ‘Yes. And I have ham. And some tomatoes.’

  ‘Good. Bring slices of baked ham. Fry the tomatoes. And bring a pot of black tea.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The ham came steaming on a plate. The tomatoes beside.

  ‘Eat this, Jim. You’ll feel better.’

  Then the tea came and Jim finished his rum and poured a little of the tea in the glass.

  Paddy gave money to the barman.

>   ‘And this is for tomorrow. Get some pork or beef bones and onions and tell your cook to make a soup.’

  A man in a grey coat and with a three-day beard came to them from the other end of the bar. The man was drunk. Jim squinted up at him. The man smiled.

  ‘Are you–’

  Paddy put his right hand inside the breast of his coat.

  ‘You will be killed. Your house burned. Everything and everyone in it. If you say another word to me now or speak to anyone else tomorrow this will happen and nothing on earth will stop it.’

  The man spun on a coin and went to walk for the door. Paddy put his hand on his shoulder and whispered.

  ‘Don’t walk out. Go back to your table and drink as before. And don’t say one fucking word to your friends besides it wasn’t them.’

  Joe and Elden and Tom came down from getting clean. Paddy passed them on the stairs. Elden sat near Jim near the fire at the end of the bar but the two men did not speak. Tom and Joe took whisky and ate fried ham with bread at a table. They watched Jim shivering by the fire. Joe poured the whisky.

  ‘Look now.’

  ‘I see it.’

  ‘He’s crying. Is he crying?’

  Tom sighed.

  ‘I’ve never seen him like this.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Where are we going? Where can we go?’

  ‘Paddy says we wait for this bloke and his money.’

  ‘And even if he comes, where then? When our friends get sick of hidin us? Or realise we’re not as strong or young or fast anymore as the police?’

  ‘So what do you say we do?’

  Their glasses were empty. Joe poured again.

  ‘Why is this fuckin cheque so important all of a sudden?’

  Jim stood up from the fire. He huddled into his coat and walked outside.

  Tom and Joe stared at each other. They could not go after him or shout his name across the bar.