One

by Patrick Holland

  They stayed in the saloon. Elden joined a poker game in a side room. Jim was gone an hour. When he came back his hands were shaking worse than before. He went to Paddy and said, ‘One more night.’ He ordered a hot rum and sat down again by the fire and rocked back and forth, glancing at the window.

  ‘Like a mother waiting for a lost child,’ said Joe.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘You think he’s watching for whatever’s coming for us?’

  ‘Wishing it on?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Tom Lawton shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The longer we sit here like this, out in the fuckin open like this, the more chance the police’ll catch up with us.’

  ‘I know it.’

  Joe Rhine shook his head. He whispered,

  ‘If I run, Tom. Will you come with me?’

  Tom looked up and stared in Joe Rhine’s eyes. He thought of his uncle lopping trees outside a cabin in the snow country down south. He sighed.

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Joe.’

  ‘Forget it. Forget I said it. I’m drunk. That’s all.’ He laughed. ‘But I can get drunker. Pass me that bottle.’

  ‘There’s a rum house we can go to here in town,’ said Tom. ‘With girls. If you miss your wife.’

  Joe put down his empty glass.

  ‘I miss her. And I’m not going to any fucking rum house instead of her.’

  ‘Aye. Forgive me.’

  ‘You go, if you like.’

  ‘No. Anyway, I should check with Paddy. But no. I don’t need to feel any worse than I am. If the girls there have any diseases, I mean.’

  ‘Especially not now we’d have to hold up a fucking hospital to get medicine.’

  They stayed in the saloon until after Jim went up for a bath. They watched Elden play poker from a distance. They stayed to watch to make sure he did not get in any trouble. Tom caught his eye through the doorway and pointed upstairs. Elden left the game and walked upstairs. Tom and Joe stayed till they were the last men at the bar and the barman called time and they paid their bill.

  Tom went to Jim’s room. He knocked but there was no answer. He turned the handle. The door was not locked. He pushed it open.

  ‘Jim.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jim was sitting up by the window, wrapped in a blanket. He was sitting by the window in a blanket and crying and watching the street.

  ‘Jim. Are you alright?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want me to get Paddy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Jim?’

  ‘Yes?’

  He held his breath.

  ‘Nothing. It can wait till morning.’

  Jim nodded.

  ‘Now you’ve seen me like this, you’ll betray me.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Jim.’

  ‘You will go to the police. Lighten your sentence. Like the poster said. Tell them where we hide. Where we keep horses. What I’ve done. I knew you would do this.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Jim. You’re drunk. You’re drunk and sick.’

  ‘Yes. I am drunk.’

  ‘Goodnight, Jim.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  They stayed in town through the next day. Paddy returned to the house north of town in search of the horse trader and his money. But he came back to the hotel in the afternoon empty-handed. He asked around the bar, but no one knew or was saying where McCulloch was.

  That night he and Jim ate beef hock and onion soup at a table by the fire and broke bread into the soup. They went upstairs to get clean.

  The men played cards and drank whisky and port till late.

  Late in the night Paddy went up to Jim’s room but Jim was gone.

  It was near midnight when he walked out onto the street. The gaslights were all out. A woman’s face pressed against the glass of a window and watched him. Then a boy in a sleeping gown.

  He walked back to the rum shanty. Then the shingle hut on the edge of town. He looked in her window. A man was with her. He opened the door and pulled him off her.

  The man pulled up his pants.

  ‘I’ll kill you, you bastard. I’ve paid good money –’

  But Jim Kenniff pressed his Colt to the man’s head. The man pulled up his braces and took his coat and hat and ran out onto the street. The girl slipped inside her cotton bag of a dress. She pulled a man’s black duffel coat around herself.

  ‘Who gave you that?’

  She slapped him across the face.

  ‘What right do you think you have? You bastard! To come in here after so long without word!’

  He grabbed her arm and she twisted out of his grip. He caught her other arm and flung her on the bed and pinned her wrists but she kicked him off her. She ran out the door. Through the window he saw her standing on the dirt road. He sat down on the bed with his head in his hands.

  She saw him through the window. Head down. Crying.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her through his tears.

  She put her arms around his neck.

  Rain came. The rain made a soft hissing whisper that was not there after you listened to it long enough. Out the window on the dirt road was a gaslight the lamplighter had forgotten to put out. Jim watched the rain fall through the light. She smoothed his hair.

  ‘Why did you come back?’

  ‘I want to protect you.’

  ‘How? From what?’

  He sighed.

  ‘I don’t know. And from everything.’

  She smiled at him, wiped his face where tears had tracked through dirt.

  ‘Can we leave together?’

  ‘No.’ He sighed and closed his eyes. ‘Not yet.’

  She brushed back his hair with her hand.

  ‘How did you come to this, brother?’

  ‘I stole a revolver and a rifle, and an Arab horse with a halter and matches. I stood the horse on a hill. The stars turned above me. There was rain in the mountains and the air was washed clean, and there was infinite plain before me and I was free.’

  She took a water jug and poured him a cup.

  He breathed hard of the cold air inside the shack. The rain put out the gaslight on the road. He watched the wick burning in the lamp on her table. He put his head in his hands.

  ‘I broke their faces. I crushed the image of God. And burnt it.’

  The girl held his hand. She put her head on his shoulder.

  ‘I have done the same.’

  He wiped his eyes.

  ‘I want to know they’re alright, wherever they are. Those men. And the families of those men. I know they will be hurt forever. But I want to know that they aren’t broken. I know I don’t deserve that peace.’

  She gripped his hand tighter. He shook his head.

  ‘But the police anticipate me. For the first time in my life I am not sure I can evade them.’

  He looked out the window at the dark that had been dark so long now he could see again and saw the wind moving detritus along the road.

  She wiped her eyes and looked in his and thought, He does not know.

  ‘And my men,’ he said. ‘They will desert and betray me. They all will. To the last one they will betray me. I have seen it in my dreams.’ He heard her sobbing and turned to face her. ‘Why are you crying?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s nothing, brother. Forgive me.’

  She smiled and kissed his forehead.

  ‘Read to me,’ he said. ‘Please read to me from the Bible.’

  She took a box from under her bed.

  He listened to her read verses whose meaning he half understood, names of places he would never see. The words spoke of a vast desert wilderness surrounding a small kingdom. He slept.

  He woke in the dark. He cried,

  ‘Where are you?’

  She came in from the next room. She put her hand on his forehead.

  ‘They’re coming,’ he whispered. ‘They are coming for me in the dark and they will kill me a
t dawn.’

  She kissed his forehead.

  ‘You are dreaming.’

  He grabbed her wrist.

  ‘I will never go in the door of my house again. I will never sleep in my bed.’

  She brushed his hair from his forehead.

  He sat up and looked around. Trying to remember where he was.

  She said, ‘If you tell a dream you extinguish it.’

  ‘I was in a desert. I woke in the night. Me and some men who were with me. I had told no man what God had put in my heart to do in the city. And I went out by night by the gate of the valley, and viewed the walls of the city that were broken down, and the gates were burnt by fire. I followed a stream to the gate of the valley and that way I returned. And the rulers of the city did not know what I did.’

  ‘That’s not a dream, brother. Do you not know where it comes from?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And the meaning?’

  ‘No. But that I am bound for hell.’

  ‘If you are, I will go with you. Sleep more, little boy. There is some time before dawn.’

  ‘Lie down beside me. Please lie down beside me.’

  She put her chin on his shoulder. Tucked her knees into her chest.

  She whispered,

  ‘Would you like me to be her? Say something she would say?’

  ‘No!’

  He put his arm around her and held her closer than any man or woman ever had.

  He thought of all the inexplicable things that make a man happy. A silent storm lighting a distant horizon. Wild horses running. The touch of a woman’s hand in the dark.

  ‘You are the only one.’

  He slept.

  She was boiling water for tea when a whore from the rum shanty came in with a poster.

  ‘I pulled it from a tree when no one was lookin.’

  The picture looked different. But it was him.

  ‘Have you ever seen a reward that big? And there were riders. A policeman and riders gathering around it.’

  The girl sighed.

  She went to the bed. She put her hand on his chest.

  ‘Wake up, brother. You must run.’

  They left their string of horses in the horse trader’s back block, hidden in heavy timber. They told his sister that they would be back in three days, and they wanted McCulloch to be here when they arrived. If he was not back then they would keep returning. The woman only scowled and stood on her veranda wrapped in hessian against the cold. She watched them ride away into the half-light of dusk like watching retreating enemies. She shouted at their backs.

  ‘There’s no money in the house! So don’t think of coming back at night to rob me.’

  They rode west into the desert into hiding – back to the camp they had scratched on the outskirts of town. They rode a course after water but the course was a blind draw.

  Joe Rhine turned his horse around and looked at the dry cold pale blue evening sky in the west and the promise of yet another night as a fugitive with no promise of any other kind the further they ran. He stood his horse and stared at Tom. Tom looked away. Joe sighed and spat.

  ‘I can’t do this anymore, Paddy. After tonight I’m done.’

  Elden Calhoun spat.

  ‘You just gonna turn around and go back? To what?’

  ‘To anything other than this.’

  ‘They’ll arrest you. They’ll shoot you.’

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way I don’t care.’

  Jim Kenniff drew the revolver from the inside of his coat. Joe Rhine stared at the gun and laughed.

  ‘You think that scares me, Jim? I swear to God, I can’t imagine what fear death could hold for a man who’s had a good enough dose of this life.’

  ‘I can’t let you go now.’

  ‘Why not? Because I’ll tell the police where you’re goin? Where our hideouts are? Everybody’ll be doin that back home soon.’ Joe looked at him and shook his head. ‘You poor bloody fool.’

  He turned his horse. The hammer of Jim’s revolver clicked behind him.

  ‘Turn around.’

  ‘No, Jim.’

  ‘Turn around and face me.’

  ‘No.’

  Joe walked his horse. Paddy and Elden and Tom looked now at the Colt in Jim’s hand that was shaking. Then the revolver fell to the ground.

  Elden drew his sawn-off Remington from his hip holster, but before he could level it Paddy kicked it out of his hands.

  ‘Let him run.’

  But that night at a low fire with their backs to the wind, Jim whispered to Paddy.

  ‘I tried to fire, brother. I tried to kill him. I could not.’

  Paddy nodded.

  Elden stood a way distant tying his horse. He overheard. He spoke.

  ‘We can’t let him go like that, boys.’

  Tom Lawton spat into the fire.

  ‘Shut up, Elden, you fuckin animal.’

  Once Jim might have said it did not matter that Joe had run, that no one would dare go to the police and anyway he could evade any patrol they sent after him. But he only sat silent and shivering before a fire that did not warm him.

  Elden stood up and went to where Paddy was arranging his tack. He spoke quietly.

  ‘Let me follow him, Paddy. Jim would order it if he was right in his mind.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about Joe. I’ve had it for weeks. You tell me you haven’t noticed? I think he’s gone proper scared. I think he’ll betray us.’

  ‘He won’t.’

  ‘And you know that? Would you swear to it?’

  Paddy breathed deep. He looked across the fire at his brother. Elden spoke.

  ‘They’re not gonna put us in the lockup this time, Paddy.’ He spat. ‘Let me make sure Joe Rhine isn’t talkin. That’s all.’

  Paddy sighed.

  ‘Then follow him. He’ll go to Tom Thurlow’s house. Thurlow’s woman is his cousin. Don’t get caught.’

  ‘No one’s lookin for me particularly. Not yet.’

  Paddy nodded.

  ‘When you’re done, set your horse loose in the bush and take the train to Roma then ride to Tiger Scrub. Get yourself a horse under the name Jack Loughnan. Take all the time in the world. We’ll swing wide and ride up through the valley. Take any other way in. I don’t want to see you again till we’re in the ranges.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Make sure he’s not talkin. That’s all. You understand? If he isn’t, then leave him alone. Then you ride to Tiger Scrub and wait. We’ll arrive there eventually.’

  ‘And if he is talkin?’

  ‘If you have to put the fear of God into him, then do so. Tell him Jim swears he will kill him next time.’

  ‘And if he has talked?’

  Paddy looked back over his shoulder at his brother huddled at the fire.

  ‘Then there’s nothing to be done. So leave him alone. But ride hard, boy, and get to where he’s goin before he does.’

  Elden saddled his horse and pulled his stovepipe hat tight onto his ears and rode out of camp.

  Tom Lawton watched him.

  ‘Where’s he goin, Paddy?’

  ‘To check on Joe. He’ll be back soon.’

  After six days’ ride Joe Rhine stood his horse on a wooded hill and looked down on the cattle track he had ridden that day and saw dust rising out of the trees. He thought, It is not Paddy or Jim as they would take note of that dust. He thought about sitting up here and levelling his rifle at whoever it was when they got a little higher and the scrub thinned. Then there would be a clean shot. But then he thought there might be more than one rider. And it might be a patrol. He got back on his horse and rode hard through the night.

  He arrived on dusk the next day. Horse and man exhausted. He took off the saddle and put the horse into the back timber.

  A man came out of the dark to meet him.

  ‘There’s someone following me,’ said Joe to Tom Thurlow. ‘They mean to kill me, I know it.’
/>
  Elden Calhoun rode to the gate of the homestead. He was early. He sat down at the gate at a sawn off stump, waiting for the sun to set. The stock of a carbine he had taken from a dead scalper along the way rested against his knee. He was holding his Remington, wiping it with a cloth. He set his shells on the stump then opened them and put beef tallow in the shells to hold the charge tight.

  He looked up at the dying winter light. Then at the house. Smoke came from the chimney.

  Tom Thurlow was inside and had seen Elden sitting out there. He stood at the window. His wife and children were behind him at the fire.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ he said to them. ‘Stay low and out of sight. And …’ – he had never believed in God – ‘and pray.’

  Now Tom saw the figure at his gate mount a horse and lift the gate bolt with his boot and ride through. Elden Calhoun stood his horse in the blue dusk in front of the house. He cried out,

  ‘Joe Rhine!’

  No answer.

  ‘Joe Rhine! I know you’re here, Joe. I have a message for you from Jim.’

  Ada Thurlow knelt by the window and held all three of her children tight into her chest. Tom Thurlow put a revolver in his belt at his back, out of view, and walked to the door. Before he opened it he turned to his wife.

  ‘You don’t go out there. No matter what he says. No matter what happens. You all stay here!’ He pointed to the gun rack. ‘The Winchester is loaded. If he kills me and comes in have it ready and shoot him at the door.’

  ‘Tom!’

  He put his fingers to his lips. He closed his eyes.

  Dear God, I’ve never much spoken to you before but help me now. Go with me now and don’t let him hurt them. Dear God, from here on in I’ll believe in you and be a better man to them all, but protect this house.

  He opened the door and stepped onto the veranda. Elden had the sawn-off Remington across his lap and was shouting at the walls for Joe Rhine. Now he stopped.

  ‘Hello, Tom.’

  ‘Joe Rhine isn’t here, Elden.’

  ‘He’s your sister’s cousin, isn’t he?’

  ‘You know he is. But he isn’t here. No one is. I’m alone.’

  Tom looked around and saw half his eldest daughter’s face in the window, lit by the light that came from the coals in the fireplace. He winced. He turned back to Elden Calhoun.