One

by Patrick Holland

  ‘How about that!’ he said. The wind rose and he shrank into his duffel coat.

  ‘What?’ said Holland.

  ‘Those two crows. Neither says a word to the other.’

  ‘Sam’s worked for the police for a long time. And in my experience, you only have to ride twenty miles before they speak another language. Those two would be as likely to hit it off as you and a Frenchman.’

  ‘My grandmother’s French.’

  ‘Then you and a German. Cigarette?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I say he’ll run,’ said the Skillington boy.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That savage we’re using as a tracker. I’ve been with him weeks and he hasn’t said a civil word to me. You know why?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Because he hasn’t got a civil idea in his head. That’s why. What allegiance does he have to us?’

  Holland shrugged. The Skillington boy spat.

  ‘And Nixon’s given him a rifle to keep. Just look at him. How’d you like to have him ridin beyond you with a loaded gun?’

  Holland shrugged.

  ‘Poor bastard. The missions do alright by the women. But they leave the men helpless. I guarantee you I’ve ridden with worse men.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘Look at that cloud moving in. It’ll rain tonight.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  Nothing moved. No sound but water running in the rocks.

  There was a rifle report and a sound like a hard slap and the Skillington boy mounted before he was even conscious of Holland lying dead beside him. Another shot and the Skillington boy’s horse slipped and panicked for footing and fell on its side. He lay looking at Holland’s broken face close beside him leaking blood onto the rocks.

  The Skillington boy stood up. Stunned. As though this was all a thing he had dreamt and was dreaming again. He stared at Holland. He pictured himself in death, lying on the ground beside Holland. Surely it could not be so. His horse had bolted back down the creek away from the rifle fire. Nixon bellowed at the boy to run. But he was frozen and looking at the fallen Injune policeman and the blood leaking from the exit wound in his neck, feet in the gorge stream. Twitching.

  ‘But–’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do for him!’

  Still the boy stood.

  ‘The twitching is nerves,’ Nixon shouted.

  The boy only stared.

  Nixon had crawled to beside him.

  ‘He’s dead!’

  Then another shot came from the ridge and ricocheted down the walls and all the men ducked with their arms above their heads.

  ‘Now run!’

  And this time the boy followed around a bend into the dark defile where the Kenniffs had gone before them.

  There were two ways. Along the gorge to the west, to where they were shot at, else up the defile one horse at a time.

  Nixon studied the walls of the gorge and the possible trails around. A man could climb it maybe – if he had goat’s blood in him. But getting up there did not mean there was a way out onto the ridge – not one you could find easily, or lead all these men into, not if you didn’t know the country. And he did not want to lead them into a box. On the other hand, to go all the way back down through the rocks and find a trail that led around and brought them out at the right place could take weeks.

  So they sat at the mouth of the defile. Here at least was a stream, one that they could walk to, one man at a time under the cover of a rifleman at a boulder.

  ‘And here we block their escape to the east.’

  ‘They’d never come back this way,’ said Tom Lawton. ‘Maybe it’s time.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To go up after them.’

  The Skillington boy shook his head.

  ‘A day ago it was suicide! They could pick off an army man by man up there as long as they had water! Remember what you said?’

  ‘Aye, but I’m not sure they have water. And being shot at like that last night changes a man’s thinking.’ He took a bite of tobacco. ‘You bore up well though.’

  ‘Shut your fucking mouth, criminal.’

  Tom Lawton’s eyes fixed on the boy and narrowed.

  ‘Now there’s some bravery. Where was that last night when you had your horse saddled beside you on watch, makin sure we were good and visible from up top, so long as you had a getaway? That poor bastard who stood beside you is dead in the creek thanks to you.’

  ‘Shut your mouth.’

  Tom Lawton drew his revolver and pointed it at the sky. Tasker and Scanlan put their hands on their revolvers. The Skillington boy had his arm across his gut to reach the stock of his shotgun. But his arm was shaking. Nixon stood motionless and watching.

  Tom Lawton smiled.

  ‘You’d love to see me dead, wouldn’t you, boy? What’s stopping you? You know, don’t you, that if I even started to level this revolver at you every man here would put a bullet in me. But I still might get one shot off.’

  ‘Here,’ Nixon called. ‘The gun, Tom.’

  Tom Lawton smiled and took the revolver at the barrel and tossed it.

  ‘Take it, Sergeant.’

  Nixon caught the gun and put it in his belt.

  ‘You can keep your rifle.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Nixon turned to the men.

  ‘Before dawn we push on down the main gorge.’

  Nixon went into the ravine a little to wash his face in a pool and the Skillington boy came behind him.

  ‘What is it, boy?’

  ‘I don’t trust him, Sarge.’

  Nixon laughed.

  ‘Because he threatened to kill you?’

  ‘That’s funny?’

  ‘He wasn’t going to shoot.’

  ‘Maybe not. Because I think he’s got designs on gettin the lot of us killed. We follow his lead, and we keep gettin shot at.’

  ‘Like he said, lad. We can’t employ him to find them then accuse him when he does.’

  ‘He’s giving them signals.’

  ‘It’s in your head.’

  ‘They know he’s here. They know he could testify against them. And yet Holland’s dead in the creek and he lives.’

  ‘Quiet, boy.’

  The Skillington boy whispered.

  ‘You think they’d just let him ride away from them like he did?’

  ‘Maybe they didn’t have any say in it?’

  ‘You don’t know them like I do, Sarge. You didn’t grow up out here.’

  ‘Quiet, boy.’

  ‘Sarge, I–’

  ‘It’s in your head, boy. Go back to camp.’

  Nixon had drunk a quarter of the second of two bottles of whisky the Injune policemen brought with them. He poured a cup for Tom Lawton. Then he sat drinking with his back against the rock, now looking down into the gorge, now at the man across the dead fire oiling his revolver.

  Nixon thought, They see us too easily. But we’ve been exposed, of course they can fucking see us. But surely they know ways through this gorge, why do they sit shooting at us? The fire. You saw it and Tasker told you. And there’s the cordon in the northwest. Maybe they’ve seen it. But then he looked at Tom looking up at the invisible ridge, with his revolver in the moonlight. Was he checking it, or flicking his wrist to throw light off the metal?

  The morning was clear and cold. Tasker made a small and sheltered fire to boil water for tea. He boiled the water then stamped the fire out and lit two cigarettes in the coals. He passed one of the cigarettes to Nixon. He nodded towards the main gorge and the place where Constable Holland lay dead.

  ‘I want to give that lad lying out there a proper burial, Sergeant. He deserves it. His mother deserves it. We crawl along this gorge for a week, and the lizards and crows will have eaten him.’

  Nixon smoked. He stirred the coals of Tasker’s fire.

  Tasker shook his head.

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘I heard you. We’ll bury him in rocks.’

  Tasker
shook his head. Nixon stared at him.

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  Tasker pointed up the defile.

  ‘Your outlaw friend was right. We have to go after them.’

  Nixon looked up the rock into the narrowing walls and the dark.

  ‘We ride horses in there, up the way they went, and they’ll see or hear us from the ridge. Look how narrow that rock is. There’ll be no turning and running. No cover. They’ll pick us off like ducks in a gallery. I tell you, I’m not walking horses up there into caverns that they know and I don’t.’ He took a drink of water. ‘They have to come down somewhere. And when they do, we will not be at a disadvantage.’

  Tasker shook his head and drew on his smoke.

  ‘So we crawl along here getting shot at nightly, waiting till whatever’s keeping them is gone, that fire or whatever it is, then someone rides in here with a telegram saying that the Kenniffs have gone out the other side? And then we’re chasing them at months’ disadvantage across a desert. You don’t remember what happened last time?’

  ‘I’ve been reliving it these weeks gone. But what do you suggest?’

  Tasker threw his cigarette butt into the fire and brushed his moustache and looked up the defile. ‘Maybe we can’t all go up there. But one man can. Not the exact way the Kenniffs went, mind. But near it. And remain hidden. Look at those cracks in the wall! Some of those must link up, and climb! A man could go up there, find their camp, then cut their throats in the dark.’

  Nixon laughed.

  ‘Who could scale that fucking rock?’

  Tasker shaped a new cigarette and lit it and nodded.

  ‘The black boy could.’

  Nixon stared at King Edward.

  ‘He’s not cutting any man’s throat.’

  ‘If your boy can sneak through without being detected then he can lead us in. Perhaps not to their camp, but at least to a position from which we can get in rifle range without being at a disadvantage. Only thing is, would you trust him to do it? To not ride off into the fucking wilderness, or else betray us. What allegiance does he have to you?’

  ‘I know what he’ll do,’ said Nixon.

  ‘No one knows what an Aborigine’s gonna do until he’s done it. Not even him.’

  Nixon stared at King Edward. At the Skillington boy.

  Scanlan and Tasker crept out from behind their shelter. They took Holland by the feet and arms and set him inside a stone enclave and filled it with rocks. They tied two sticks into a cross and set that in the rocks.

  The patrol walked slow and hard against the north wall. And Nixon looked for a fissure in the rock – a place with footholds.

  A ribbon of stars came into the sky above them again. They built a fire. Nixon reckoned the Kenniff’s could hear as well as see them here, and the only danger in a fire was that it got so bright the men could not see out.

  He stirred the coals and took in the warmth and imagined this fire was the last fire on earth. He looked up at the ridge. The last fire on earth and the wolves at the door. He thought, What losses should we suffer to keep wolves from the hearth?

  He looked across the fire at Tom, watching the ridge with squinting eyes as ever.

  Nixon called King Edward to the fire. He indicated a fissure in the stone up ahead.

  ‘Tonight when everyone’s asleep and I’m on watch, you see if you can get a way up there.’

  ‘We’re not waitin?’

  Nixon nodded towards the Skillington boy oiling his rifle.

  ‘The men are restless, and that boy’s about to crack. I don’t know what his fear will do to him. We must take a risk.’

  Nixon came on watch. King Edward walked out of camp and he nodded to him without a word.

  Nixon had three fingers of whisky left in the bottom of Holland’s bottle. He drank it and then wished he hadn’t as more was wanted for the job and the drink only left him low. He tried to ward off sleep. He thought he saw one of the brothers riding the ridge in the dark. A rider silhouetted against the blue night sky. The rider came and vanished. Then came again. And Nixon thought, Why don’t you kill me Jim Kenniff? Then the rider was gone and did not return. But later he opened his eyes and did not know if the vision had been shadows or a dream.

  King Edward worked his way up the rock wall under moonlight. He climbed to a ledge and edged sideways along it. The ledge came onto an exposed shelf. Mist settled on the stone. Weathered pillars of rock stood at the entrance to a dry waterfall. In one pillar, in an eroded tunnel, was a burial cylinder. A dead black man with a brass-hilted sword beside him, his eyes closed with mud. King Edward scaled the rock and walked onto a hanging plateau, crouched low under full moonlight. In the north he saw the rim of fire that was moving away to the north. The plateau met a wall of rock. He climbed it and at the top he saw a water bag hanging in the branches of an ironbark. Then, a hundred yards from where he squatted, he saw a tethered horse. He turned around and scanned the dark for a break in the walls and saw a long white reflection in the east where the brush was not so thick. A sandstone track that a horse could walk.

  The Skillington boy came on watch but Nixon dismissed him.

  ‘I’m not sleepy,’ he lied. ‘You get some more rest.’

  ‘Where’s King Edward?’

  ‘I sent him after a rabbit.’

  Nixon was at watch at the fire with his rifle across his knees.

  Tom Lawton got out of his bedroll and went to the fire and lit a cigarette. Nixon regarded him.

  ‘Can’t sleep?’

  Tom nodded. He pointed with his thumb at where Sam Johnson lay sleeping.

  ‘I’m expendable now.’

  Nixon said nothing for a time. He looked at Sam. The black man had spent so long in the wilderness he now slept like a child, even on a rock with a few pine needles to soften it.

  ‘Every witness makes the case stronger.’

  Tom laughed.

  ‘I never meant to testify, Sergeant Nixon. You know the terms of my being here. You pursue those men until either we shoot them or they shoot us.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘And you’re a man of your word, aren’t you?’

  ‘You can still help us track them.’

  ‘I’ve told you everything I know in that regard. Now your black men are more use than me. You know it.’

  ‘What are you asking?’

  ‘Nothing. Just talking out loud.’

  Nixon laughed.

  ‘If you think I’m going to let you ride out of here without us,’ he raised his eyes, ‘so we end up with you sitting on that ridge above us as well …’

  ‘What d’you think Jim Kenniff would do to me if he saw me ridin alone?’

  ‘I don’t know. I reckon he’d be less angry than if he saw you ridin with us. And he’s got good eyes. And you’re here and alive. And that last time he got fucking close.’

  ‘That worries you, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘His eyes aren’t that good.’

  Tom drew on his cigarette and looked up. He saw Nixon look up after him. He laughed.

  ‘You think I’m waiting for something, don’t you?’

  Nixon said nothing.

  ‘You know what I’m waiting for, Sergeant Nixon? Death. I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired.’ He breathed smoke into the cold air and drew on his cigarette again. He looked up at the stars. Shook his head. ‘They say the earth’s a star, don’t they? That’s what they’re saying now?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘They do say it. Those stars we look up at are just fire and ash and ice. Still, they look beautiful when you’re far enough distant.’

  ‘What the hell are you driving at?’

  ‘Don’t you just wish in one of these skirmishes a bullet would find you, and you’d have the joy of that Holland boy, just looking up at the stars, leaking your blood into the ground, feeling it go out of you like feeling infection go out of a wound. And then �
�’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘No more trouble.’

  Both men sat silent and watching the fire. Tom spoke.

  ‘If we shoot that man. Jim Kenniff. Him or his brother. Then the whole country will hate me. People who don’t know either of those boys from a bar of soap will hate me for it. And I will have to change my name. Move myself and any girl who takes up with me somewhere way up north or way down south. Maybe even leave the country. Then, if you take them in alive, my life won’t be worth a fucking thing. And you police’ll be nowhere near me when some one of their riled-up kids comes after me with an axe in the night. Some kid who doesn’t know how we were in the beginning, me and Jim hunting foxes in the dawn, walking overnight onto English country that the English were too afraid to walk on and making fires and setting up a few hundred yards above and watching black warriors come to the fires with bone-tipped spears like something out of a dream. Or the way he would stand up to any man bigger than him, richer than him, more powerful than him, police and politicians and landed gentry and their sons. He’d stand toe to toe with the lot of those bastards and bring em down a peg and it made all us poor fuckin Irish and sons of criminals and scalpers feel taller. How proud I was when he started goin about with my sister. The rumours, all that’s said of him, they’re all true in their way. About him bein able to walk over sand and his tracks disappear behind him, how he can go invisible, how he can shoot the eye out of a high-flying crow. They lie in the detail, but they’re true because they tell you how it feels to ride beside him. How it felt when his mind and his soul were good, and we all of us knew what we were fighting against. We thought we were the heralds of a new age. Now I know we are the relics of one passed. And the copper who chains my wrists, or the kid who shoots me off my plough horse won’t know any of that. But if I get cut down out here, as your prisoner, well …’ He smiled wistfully. Then tears came to his eyes. ‘I still love him. I guess I wanted to say that to someone, before whatever happens out here is finished. Maybe I wanted to say it to you personally. And if I have to choose … when I have to choose … I will choose him.’

  Nixon went to his saddlebag.

  He returned with handcuffs. He locked the cuffs on Tom’s wrists and Tom smiled through his tears. He turned his wrist in the iron. Pulled at the chain.