One

by Patrick Holland

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Elden. ‘Cause I followed a man’s tracks to here. One man on a horse. Coming from the west like me and riding like he was pursued.’

  ‘I don’t know who you followed.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘He isn’t here.’

  ‘Then where?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I can pass on a message if you want.’

  Elden leant on the pommel of his saddle and nodded. He looked over Tom’s shoulder.

  Tom prayed to God his daughter had gone from the window. He thought, God, don’t let him see in there.

  ‘Aye,’ said Elden. ‘A message. You see, there’s a bounty on our heads and–’

  ‘I didn’t know that. And I don’t care. I’ve always been a friend to you boys.’

  Elden stared at Tom and spoke on.

  ‘… and I wanted to impress upon Joe what a bad idea it would be if he were to tell anyone about our whereabouts and plans. See, he left in a hurry. Jim never really got the chance to explain these things to him.’

  There was a bang of something hitting wood inside.

  Elden raised his shotgun and pointed it at Thurlow’s head.

  ‘Alone, huh?’

  Tom Thurlow said nothing.

  Elden grinned.

  ‘You’ve got bloody big mice.’

  He let the double barrels rest on his left forearm. He shouted at the dark window.

  ‘Come out now or I shoot him!’

  There was a scuffling behind the door. Then muffled voices. Then quiet.

  Elden pulled back the Remington’s hammers. One then the other.

  ‘Come out now or I shoot him dead where he stands.’

  He stiffened his forearm. Put his eye in the sight.

  Then the door burst open and Tom Thurlow’s twelve-year old girl flew to her father’s waist and held it and fell onto her knees crying and screaming not to shoot.

  Elden lowered his gun.

  ‘Hello, girl.’

  She turned her face and opened her mouth. She wanted to tell the man on the horse to ride away, but no words came.

  ‘Stand up, girl.’

  She did not move. Could not move.

  ‘Stand her up, Tom.’

  Tom Thurlow picked his daughter up under her arms. She was limp. He whispered in her ear.

  ‘Don’t show him you’re scared. Be strong, little one.’

  Her legs stiffened and she stood and turned to Elden Calhoun.

  ‘I’m not scared a you, you hateful cunt!’

  Her father pulled her in to him and swore under his breath and thought,

  God no, child. Not so much as that.

  Elden sneered.

  ‘Well.’

  Tom mumbled a prayer.

  ‘Well,’ Elden said again. ‘Well fuck me!’

  He got off his horse. The girl’s eyes were closed again but she heard his spurs chinging in the dark as he walked towards them.

  Tom put his hand on his hip, in striking distance of the gun in his belt at his back, and thought, If I draw and I don’t hit him first … If he shoots me down, then they’re here alone with him – an animal fresh from the kill. His hand trembled.

  Another chinging footfall.

  ‘You hurt her and I’ll kill you, boy.’

  Elden stopped. He tilted his head and squinted into the dark at the girl.

  ‘Ten years old? Eleven? Answer me, child!’

  She looked up.

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Still. Not too big for me to throw you across my saddle. Have use of you on the ride home.’

  ‘You’ll have to shoot me if you think you’re gonna touch her.’

  Elden eased back the hammers and flipped his shotgun and caught the barrel.

  ‘If you think I’m not worthy of her, then perhaps I’ll just crack the little bitch’s head open with this. Now come here, girl. Come here or I’ll kill your dad in front of you.’

  Tom had her by the collar of her nightdress but she pulled away from him.

  She walked out to meet the man who threatened them. She stood in front of him with naked hatred in her eyes.

  He took her dress at the throat and ripped it down so she stood topless in front of him in drawers. She tried to cover her nakedness with her arms.

  ‘You are a pretty thing. Maybe I’ll throw you on my horse after all. Or maybe I’ll mount you right here where your father can see.’

  He picked the girl up.

  ‘Put her down.’

  Elden stared at Tom. Then back at the girl.

  ‘Put her down, you son of a fucking whore.’

  Elden saw Tom reach behind him for a gun and in that instant Elden dropped the girl and drew a pistol from his hip holster and shot the gun out of Tom Thurlow’s hand.

  Tom fell bleeding to his knees, his right wrist in his left hand. He stared in shock at the two and a half fingers on the dirt in front of him. He heard the chinging spurs.

  Tom looked up into eyes like stone.

  Elden squatted.

  ‘Where is he?’

  Tom was crying. Elden spat.

  ‘You tell me where he is or I mount your fucking girl and ride her into the dirt.’

  He could feel his wife at the window. She’ll miss, he thought. If she shoots and misses … God, please please please keep her hidden.

  ‘A slab hut,’ he whispered. ‘About a mile west of here on the creek.’

  Elden stood up and breathed the night air and looked at the stars and smiled. He mounted his horse and rode out the gate.

  Tom stood. He could not close his right hand. He went to where his daughter was collecting the ripped piece of her dress and trying to cover herself. He put her between his forearm and his rib cage and pulled her up to his shoulder. They walked back into the house. His wife was at the window on her knees, shaking, the Winchester fallen beside her. ‘I nearly shot him. But I wasn’t …’ she cried. ‘I wasn’t sure of my aim. I was worried I’d … God, I wanted to kill him.’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  But while she dressed her husband’s wounds she heard two gunshots and she stood up. Tom winced. He reached up and took her hand. ‘Maybe that was Joe’s gun. I didn’t know … I wasn’t … There’s nothing we can do.’

  She fell down in her chair.

  In the night they made a fire and put down a rolled-up blanket and camped away from it in the trees. But nothing came to the fire. Jim hardly spoke. Paddy watched him, now drinking whisky, now with his eyes half-closed against the fierce light that burnished the horizon. Staring across the border of this world into some other, as though he barely heard or saw anything that was before him.

  They rode back to McCulloch’s for the third time. Jim winced on sight of the woman alone on her veranda.

  He drew his Colt.

  ‘Where is he, woman?’

  ‘I don’t know. He never tells me. Why would he tell me? He keeps company like you men. Perhaps he’s dead.’

  Jim’s head fell.

  They rode back to Tom who was sitting on the plain chewing tobacco.

  ‘No money?’

  ‘No,’ said Paddy

  Tom shook his head.

  At dawn Paddy descried a solitary rider coming from the south. Paddy kept the rider in his rifle sight all the while he was in range. Till he could see the man’s face.

  Elden approached the camp and Paddy shouted across the plain.

  ‘What the fuck are you doin here?’

  ‘I got bored at Tiger Scrub.’

  ‘You fuckin idiot.’

  ‘I ran outta money.’

  ‘How do you know you weren’t followed?’

  ‘No one’s lookin for me particularly.’

  ‘How did it go with Joe?’

  ‘There was an altercation.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I decided Joe Rhine could not be trusted.’

  ‘So you killed him?’

  ‘I never seen him die. He may have.’

  Paddy
Kenniff backhanded Elden off his horse. Elden stood up grinning.

  ‘Well that’s fine thanks for keeping you cunts off the gallows. Fine fuckin thanks indeed!’

  He looked to Jim for sympathy.

  Jim only stared at him.

  Jim’s eyes closed then opened wide as though waking from out of a dream.

  Tom Lawton spat a stream of tobacco and shook his head and laughed without mirth. ‘How many friends we got back there now, Paddy? That’s why this cunt’s run back here. He’s scared someone at home’s gonna try and kill him.’

  Elden stared at him blankly.

  Tom went on,

  ‘That’s one hundred more miles of the fuckin hills we can never go into again. You think you kill one informant and you reduce the number by one? You increase it by ten, you fucking idiot. Fuck me!’ He looked at Jim. Then he wheeled his horse around and hit its flanks with his boot heels and swore now to himself. ‘Fuck me fucking roan.’

  Then he wheeled the horse back around and looked at Jim.

  ‘You know we can’t ride back now! Not with him.’

  Jim said nothing. He looked at Paddy. Paddy looked away at the horizon. Jim took his revolver from his hip holster. Elden had been brushing the dirt off his stovepipe hat and now put his right foot in the stirrup iron and saw Jim’s gun trained on his head. He grinned. He mounted his horse.

  ‘You think you’re invincible, Jim Kenniff?’

  Jim said nothing.

  ‘Say something, you fucking mute.’

  But Jim said nothing. Only held the revolver and stared at the man who threatened him with near-closed pale eyes. Elden shook his head.

  ‘We can all of us see how weak you’re getting, Jim. You can’t lead us anymore. You’ve lost your nerve. And Paddy’s never had it.’ He waited. ‘Say something, you fucking spook!’ Then he nodded. ‘Alright, then.’

  His right hand went quick to his saddle holster and he had the Remington across his body and levelled when Jim fired two bullets into his chest.

  Elden stayed on his horse. Still grinning. He turned and watched the sun dying on the horizon. All four men stood their horses. The three without mortal wounds watching Elden till he fell to the ground.

  They buried him in sand.

  Tom went to dig for water, Paddy took Jim aside.

  ‘We cannot wait longer, brother.’

  Jim said nothing, drew on his smoke, looked down towards Jericho, then up at the desert sky.

  ‘Every day we wait,’ said Paddy, ‘the authorities are gatherin forces against us. And if there’s something in Tom’s suspicion … Brother, we cannot wait.’

  Jim looked down at Jericho.

  ‘I would never have left you.’

  It was dusk and a wind that could cut a man in half rose in the south. The wind tore ash from Jim’s cigarette.

  ‘Jim, the police will shortly find us. They may be circling. But if we backtrack a way, send whoever’s followin us astray.’ He looked across the plain. ‘See those rocks? We can ride on the shale in there and no one will know.’

  Jim nodded.

  ‘Jim, we can come back for the horse money next season.’

  Jim nodded and turned to face Jericho and the freezing desert wind.

  ‘Aye, next season.’

  The last green glow of twilight drained out of the day. The stars rode the horizon. They mounted their horses and rode into the teeth of the wind.

  The patrol rode south along the edge of the desert. Through Isisford, Yaraka, Jundah, Stonehenge and Charleville … There were days they heard good rumours of night riders, and even of the Kenniffs themselves, coming into town for water and whisky. In Bethlehem there was an Arab camel train captain who described three men on horses who had asked for a whole skin of water and when he refused, saying that the town was only an hour away, they had taken the water at gunpoint.

  King Edward followed tracks west from there into the red sand channels, but at last those tracks went to nothing, blown away by the wind. They rode on in the hope the tracks would come again but the tracks did not come and they stood one night looking at the empty horizon, a band of silver where the stars bit the sand, and Nixon knew they must go east.

  They rode into grassland and spare timber. They had taken a wide southwesterern arc after Paddy’s direction, through Mexico, Caroline Crossing and Redford; and now they pointed their horses at Arcadia Valley where they reckoned their path would be obscured.

  At Pony Hills they learnt it was September, though the nights were still cold. Then a warm night came and a lightning storm came from the north. In the day they rode past a homestead where, through wide open doors, they saw women putting sheets over mirrors. The horses were sweating. They unsaddled the horses and tethered them to box trees and sat away from them in the middle of the plain. The storm broke. The rain drove sideways into their eyes and they pulled the hoods of their oilskin coats over their faces.

  The clouds broke and shafts of yellow light struck the grass.

  Jim saw a red daisy under a windthrown eucalypt. He got off his horse. He put his hands around the flower.

  They rode across open downs of scattered myall. The plain was broken by low ranges on the far western horizon and a mountain in the north. The sorghum had failed here and men were baling it for fodder. The riders pulled kerchiefs up over their faces. The sorghum balers stood staring at the riders come through the plough dust.

  A windstorm rose in the north. The wind came down out of the hills and tore ringbarked box trees out of the ground.

  The patrol rode the grass plains looking for some sign or word. They stopped in at a cotton farmer’s house. He gave them black tea and bread and butter.

  ‘My apologies, officer. There’s no more I can give you.’

  ‘This is good. Thank you.’

  ‘I had vegetables in the ground before the winter. But the wind and frost got to em. All you get here is drought and then flood and the plain is waterlogged. Then the winds come and throw the timber about so you can’t even run a plough over it without breaking the blades.’

  Nixon asked if riders had come this way.

  ‘Now and then.’

  ‘Perhaps going east. They would not have liked being seen.’

  The man thought. Scratched his head.

  ‘There were riders. Kerchiefs over their faces. But there were dust storms and I thought nothing of it.’

  They rode three days. They came into a wood of ash trees. Light poured through the corridors between the trees. At dawn the light sat still on the mist. In the late afternoon a flare lit a passage through ironbarks and they rode through it to a half-fallen fence.

  King Edward got down off his horse and picked a red flower. Dirt had been cleared around the flower by human hands.

  That night there was dry lightning in the northeast.

  Fire burned along a dry creek bed. It rolled in balls across the plain.

  They put their spurs into their horses’ ribs and outflanked the fire. Wind blew the fire away to the north. On the northern horizon that night they watched the fires fanned by the wind.

  In the morning there was no sun. Darkness spread across the plain from the north, turning day into night. No man of the patrol could see another at more than six yards.

  They rode into Eurombah. Cattle and sheep and wild horses had walked into the streets out of the fire. A pall of smoke drifted over the rooftops and ash blew over the streets. Then a cold wind rose in the south and blew the heat and dust away. The next town they came to was smouldering ruins.

  The night was still. Wild dogs walked the fringe of the darkness just beyond the firelight. Dingoes and half-bred wild dogs that howled and kept them awake.

  Dust and ash blew across the plain. The riders wore their kerchiefs across their faces, with narrow slits to see out of. Rain came at dusk and washed the air clean. The night was cold and they rode with chins pushed into the collars of their coats. The gaslights of a town rose on the eastern horizon.

 
; Tom Lawton shouted into the rain at Paddy.

  ‘We gonna stop and eat something?’

  But Paddy thought, this weather hides us.

  ‘We ride as long as the rain lasts.’

  So they rode into the stinging rain that cut sideways across the flat.

  They came onto hill country. They heard voices and rifle fire and reined their horses away from it to the west.

  In the dark they made their way haltingly, running where there was an open flat, brushing pines and ducking fast as black tree limbs came before their faces.

  Once more lights burned through the haze on the eastern horizon.

  ‘Let’s ride there,’ Tom shouted. ‘Get warm.’

  Paddy looked at Jim. Jim looked at the lights and was silent.

  Paddy turned to Tom.

  ‘I don’t know that place. We ride on.’

  A rider skirted the edge of the dark.

  Each man put his hand on the stock of his gun. Lightning flashed. The rider saw the gang standing in the rain, faces covered, with hands on stocks. There was a look of terror on the rider’s face as though he had seen demons ridden out of hell. The rider bolted, riding as flat on his horse as the saddle.

  They stood their horses in the half-shelter of a cypress pine. Tom was sick. He thought perhaps he had caught what Jim had. He was wet and sick and cold. He thought about the wanted posters they saw even at outposts now. The posters said, James and Patrick Kenniff and gang. They were not yet looking for him by name.

  A rush of cold air came across the plain and tore ash from the end of Tom’s cigarette. He thought of a girl he hadn’t seen for a year, past twenty-five years old now, who might be thinking of him by a warm hearthstone in Arcadia Valley tonight. Or else have forgotten him.

  He shouted.

  ‘Paddy! Jim! I’m leaving.’

  ‘To where?’

  ‘I don’t know. Home.’

  ‘We’re going home,’ said Paddy.

  ‘I mean I can’t ride with you anymore.’ He wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘I’m sorry, boys. I can’t.’

  ‘Just ride to the range with us,’ said Paddy.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You really need to ask me that?’

  ‘Why?’