by Tanya Moir
The Bandit King’s face was at ease as he watched his men. His hands lay crossed on his saddle horn and in the right was a big gold coin and as the Kid watched El Rabbitoh flipped the coin and watched it flash and laughed as he caught it.
You do not shoot, El Rabbitoh said to the Kid behind him.
I’m not much of a hand with a shotgun, the Kid said.
Far ahead of them one of El Rabbitoh’s men drew a pair of pistols from his belt and his horse reared under him as he emptied all twelve chambers into the air.
El Rabbitoh examined the coin in his hand. Do you not wish to win my prize? he said to the Kid.
I guess I’d prefer to save my shot for bigger game.
Ah, said the Bandit King. You only shoot men. Is that it?
I don’t much enjoy shooting what caint shoot back, the Kid said.
A man has to eat, El Rabbitoh said.
Yessir, said the Kid. I aint sayin I never shot at a bird. I’m just sayin I don’t much enjoy it.
Perhaps, El Rabbitoh said, you prefer to let your friend Mr Cooper do your killing for you.
The Kid looked up. Ahead in the distance he saw Cooper raise his shotgun.
Cooper brought the gun to his eye and his eye glinted blue and he smiled as he fired.
The sound of Cooper’s fire was indistinguishable from the other guns but the Kid saw another pheasant drop to the ground and was in no doubt whose shot had downed it. The hunt swept on and the Kid watched it go and he reckoned the widening distance. Around seventy yards Cooper reined in the grey and looked back and the Kid put him just within shotgun range.
The Kid looked at Cooper half-turned in the sage. Behind Cooper the bandits charged on in a fug of dust and their shouts and their fire split the sky. The Kid looked down at the borrowed shotgun he held in his hand and he looked at the weave of the cloth on El Rabbitoh’s back and if the Bandit King knew the direction of the Kid’s thoughts or his eyes he did nothing to betray it.
Cooper holstered his shotgun and touched his heels to the grey. The Kid watched him trot towards them. He looked once more at the Bandit King and then he looked over his shoulder at the range spreading wide and free and sentryless behind him.
Get down, yelled the Kid.
KerCHAW the rifle bullet sang off the rocks in front of the Bandit King.
El Rabbitoh hit the ground.
The palomino squatted as the Kid wheeled him about and the Kid steadied his shotgun as best he could on the forearm of his rein hand and fired from the hip at the dark shape of the shooter calmly sitting his horse a hundred yards behind them. The man in black fired again and the Kid felt the wind of the bullet graze his cheek before KerCHAW it hit the rocks above his left shoulder. The Kid took aim and let off his second shot but the man in black remained on his horse and the Kid saw him lever another round.
The Kid looked for El Rabbitoh and the Bandit King was on his feet and under his horse and from that cover and leaving his hat in the dust he sprang behind the rocks and began to fire.
Kerchaw KerCHANG the rifle fire rebounded around the Kid’s head but the Kid and his horse made the rocks and as in their safety the Kid began to reload he heard a revolver shot and in Cooper’s hand the revolver fired again and the smoke of its barrel rose on the blue sky and the bandit hunters wheeled from the chase and their hooves thundered through the sage.
Even with his superior range the man in black could not stand against so many. Quickly he turned his horse and at full gallop rode out the way he had come and he was a flying black shape beyond reach of the bandit guns. Above him the Kid heard a rifle crack and there on top of the rocks El Rabbitoh stood against the sky with a Winchester to his eye. Three hundred yards ahead the man in black tumbled into the dust and lay there without moving and his horse ran on alone.
The Bandit King lowered his smoking gun and his eyes were cold as he chambered another round.
Bandit boots turned the dead man onto his back and his face was broken from the fall and his blood was clagged with dust. Ramon bent and opened the man’s black coat and drew a paper from the pocket and folded it out.
Bounty hunter, he said.
A bandit spat. The Bandit King said nothing.
That was one hell of a shot, Cooper said. One hell of a shot.
The Bandit King said nothing.
The bounty hunter’s rifle lay in the scrub and its metal gleamed in the sun and El Rabbitoh walked over to it where it lay and stood looking down at the silver chasing. Slowly he bent and picked up the weapon and checked its safety and its weight and its sights and then he rose and crossed the dust and stood in front of the Kid and held out the gun.
You are a man of your word, he said.
In the Scout Hut dunny Winstone sat with his back to the road looking out at the sun on the dam through the shotgun pellet holes in the tin of the walls and he felt the breeze blowing through and he pressed his fingers to the metal. It was lighter inside the dunny now and airier too and you could see if someone was coming up through the grass though not on the road behind you.
But the range and the road and the dam were clear. The utes and the four-wheel drives had gone and so had the geese, their big brown bodies humped onto the back of the utes and driven away bump bump down the white dust road with their long necks slopping about and the wind bringing up their feathers. He wondered what the hunters would do with the geese and he thought of them going round and round all crispy and gold like the chickens behind the glass in Pak’n’Save only monster-sized and he wondered how long it would take to eat one.
He’d got quite a shock when the posse of utes had turned up and opened fire though not as much as the geese he reckoned. Before those big slow birds had time to think what the hell they were mostly dead and by the end of the second day the only signs they’d ever been at the dam were their big green turds and their feathers.
Some of the hunters had stayed overnight in the hunting club hut and Winstone had watched from the rocks behind the cattle fence as they shook out the beds and fired up the stove and the smoke wound up and the sun went down in a fug of hot ammo and bird blood.
When he’d heard the convoy come up the road just ahead of first light he’d thought of bugles against the dawn and the garrison running to open the gates and the cavalry driving the wagon train into the fort in the nick of time and he’d wondered what good things they’d unload. Biscuits and bacon and beans and barrels of corned beef hash and there’d be a party in the stockade because the settlers had been getting down to their last pot noodle.
But it turned out all they’d brought was noise and lead because the hunting club hut was the one hut on the dam that Winstone couldn’t break into. It had grilles on the windows and three locks on the door and no loose boards and no emergency key and its floor was solid chipboard.
Outside the hut he’d recognised Jacko’s ute and Jacko’s dumb dogs and he’d watched the dogs thrash about half-drowning themselves as they tried to pull the monster geese out of the water. But Jacko had taken his ute and his dogs and gone home at the end of day one and he hadn’t stocked up the Green Camo Hut which was a great shame because Winstone happened to know it was running short of a lot of things including matches and beans.
He could maybe have unloaded the utes a bit himself while the hunters were busy blasting the geese but with so much shot flying round the dam he kept losing his nerve and he lost it so many times he was still sitting there in the rocks on the other side of the road wondering where it had gone when the hunters ran out of geese and came back and took their stuff inside.
Then all he could do was watch the hut windows light up and the smoke from the chimney rise and guess what had been in the chilly bins in the utes that probably hadn’t been locked and the watching hadn’t made him feel good but he’d done it anyway because until that morning he’d had nothing to watch and he might not again for a while. Every now and then the hut door had banged open into the night and someone had come out for a smoke or a piss or both and
voices and light came with them and before the door shut again frying smells leaked out and Winstone tested them on his tongue. Meat. Burgers maybe. Sausages. Steaks for sure.
After a while the hut door had started to open more often and take longer to shut and a hunter tripped on the step and swore and the smell of beer spilled up in the dark and Winstone thought he saw something trot through the light and he was pretty sure what it was and he thought it was headed for trouble.
He’d felt tired then and he hadn’t wanted to watch the hut any more so he’d headed back to the cave and eaten a tin of cold beans and some time later the kitten came in and it flattened its ears and glared wide-eyed in the fuzzy beam of the torch and if it had won or lost he couldn’t say.
He’d had more than half a plan to go through the hunter’s utes before they woke up to see if there was anything useful inside and he was hoping for batteries and a gas refill but he would have settled for gum or a lighter or mints or string and he ended up with none of those things because the hunters were up before him. It was too early to get up for no reason and he wondered what there was left to kill and if they meant to start on the rabbits.
Then a call went up from the shore of the lake, one last bugling bird alone, and the notes stood over the range and as they fell and died the call was answered from the sky. In they came, a tattered V beating out of the cloud, unkilled unwarned the survivors and the unwary, and the shotguns rose and the big bodies dropped from the sky.
A DOZEN PHEASANTS turned above the fire in the comedor of the Bandit King and the carcasses of as many more already consumed lay among the dishes on the table. Crowding the length of the board were pitchers and platters and glasses and bowls and the stained elbows of bandits wiping up sauce from their plates and in the bowls were stewed meat and beans and on the platters tortillas and cheeses and grapes and the fruit of distant orchards. The blade of a hunting knife slid into a peach and bore it up off the plate and in the dimness behind it wine poured and splashed and the tip of another knife picked its owner’s teeth and up and down the long table the bandits laughed in the way men laugh when they have knives and the world is a peach for the taking.
A hand swept up a pitcher dripping red from its spout and the hand was the hand of the Bandit King and he held the pitcher above the Kid’s glass but the Kid’s glass was full and so El Rabbitoh filled his own.
You do not drink, El Rabbitoh said. And you do not lie. Is there no end to your virtues?
The Kid put a hand to the tumbler in front of him and turned it and pushed it and drew it back. The light of the fire was in his eyes as they sought out Cooper half lost among shadows and bandits down the table.
To sobriety, said the Bandit King and he raised his glass and drank it down to the dregs and placed it back on the table.
Outside the shadows of servants criss-crossed the dust of the yard and in a circle of torchlight the bare feet of a child hurried to fire the lamps and a fat moth fluttered to the flame.
I’d say the day’s about done, said the Kid. Wouldn’t you?
But our fiesta is just beginning, El Rabbitoh said and he smiled. Are you so impatient to be gone? That is an ugly quality in a guest.
Nossir, the Kid said, I aint.
Then stay, El Rabbitoh said. Stay and join us. Ride with us and grow rich. Look around my friend – do we not have everything a man could want here?
The Kid looked around at the food on the table and the fire in the hearth and bandit fingers began to pluck a guitar and the Kid’s eyes fell upon the nape of the neck of a brown-haired girl as she leaned to pour the wine.
That’s mighty kind of you sir, he said to the Bandit King. But the thing is I got business.
Ah, said the Bandit King. The light of the candleflame flickered on his cheek as he watched the Kid and the Kid watched the girl and the girl as she straightened met the Kid’s eyes and she smiled before turning away and the Bandit King saw all.
Why did you do what you did today? he said to the Kid.
I gave you my word, the Kid said, I wouldn’t run.
You could have let that assassin shoot me, El Rabbitoh said. Why did you not?
It didn’t seem right, the Kid said. Ridin in an killin a man like that. Not even callin his name.
No, El Rabbitoh said, it does not seem right.
The Kid was silent.
Consider my offer, El Rabbitoh said. I am a generous man. Among my men there are many I love as brothers and none that I trust. But you. You would be as a son.
A son, the Kid said.
The son I would wish to have, the Bandit King said, if I were to choose my heir.
How do you know? the Kid said. About me.
I read men’s hearts, said the Bandit King. Call it a gift. What I see in most does not help me to sleep. But you are different.
I aint sure what you’re offerin me, the Kid said.
All you see, El Rabbitoh said.
The Kid looked down at his empty plate and with the tip of his knife he pushed at the heap of pheasant bones as if his fortune might be read there.
Do not speak now, El Rabbitoh said. The day is not over until the new dawn. I will give you your answer tomorrow. Then give me mine.
Winstone sat and felt the breeze off the dam on his face and looked out through the shredded tin at the empty shore. They’d had a caller. The hunters. They’d had a thing that made a sound like a goose. About halfway through the day he’d seen them blow it.
He got up and wiped his arse with the paper the hunters had left and he pushed open the pierced dunny door and walked down through the grass and the silence and thought that before you got excited about the cavalry it paid to recall which side you were on. On the beach he picked his way through the goose-shit and the cartridge shells and the down and he tucked a brown feather behind his ear.
Then he climbed the rocks behind the Red Hut and stood there under the purged blue sky and he thought about those big geese blowing their own last post and he looked down into the water.
THE DOORS OF the bandit hall stood open to the night and beyond them was music and laughter and the colours of fire and unnoticed by those within the Kid walked into the cold blue night and the sound of crickets. The yard was empty. There was yellow light below the line of the stable door and the Kid crossed the yard and opened the door and the horses shifted their feet and turned their ears and the palomino raised its nose from the hay.
The Kid walked down the line of stalls and the palomino whickered at his approach and the grey stuck out its head.
He aint here, the Kid said to the grey. I don’t know where he’s got to.
The Kid stopped at the door of the palomino’s stall and the horse nosed his arm and blew out its warm hay breath on his sleeve.
You like it here, the Kid told the horse. You like it bettern dodgin rattlesnakes all day and sleepin on the ground.
Oh he likes it fine, said a voice behind him.
The Kid turned around. From the stall across the aisle the mule looked back at him with one long ear pressed against its skull and the other standing upright. The mule backed away at his approach and the Kid looked over the loosebox door and sitting there cross-legged in the straw was the barefoot boy in the ragged shirt he’d seen two days before. The boy was mopping up table scraps from a tin plate on his lap and he looked up from the plate at the Kid and licked his fingers.
The Kid looked at the boy and he looked at the mule and the mule flattened both its ears and tested the back wall of the box with its hoof.
Anybody ever shoot at that thing?
Nobody yet, the boy said.
The Kid rested his elbows on top of the loosebox door and then he folded his arms and leaned upon them. What are you doin here kid?
The boy took the pheasant bone he was sucking on out of his mouth and shrugged. As you see, he said.
I meant how’d you come to be in this place?
The boy lifted his chin. El Rabbitoh brought me, he said.
Brought
you, the Kid said, from where?
From a place I had no wish to be.
You don’t have no kin?
The men here are my kin, said the boy. El Rabbitoh cares for me.
Is that so? said the Kid.
As you see, the boy said again.
An what is it you do around here, the Kid said, when you aint tending mules?
I do many things, the boy said. I am of great service.
I’m sure you are, the Kid said. Does the job pay well?
My reward is to come, the boy said and he picked up a pheasant wing from the plate and began to gnaw it.
The Kid watched the boy chew. I guess so, he said.
I know so, the boy said wiping his hand on his shirt. One day I will be a bandit prince.
Is that so? said the Kid.
It is so.
What makes you so sure?
It is not a matter for doubt, the boy said. El Rabbitoh has told me.
CENTRAL
The Jacksons had time fenced up like a grazing plan into neat parcels of hours each one exactly sized for its purpose. All that was necessary was to follow the arm of the day as it swung around and you’d be delivered back where you started from lacing up your shoes in the early morning grey one ear out for the bus hardly knowing how you got there.
Be at the mailbox by eight-ten. Feed the dogs at four. Help Debbie until teatime. The first week or so Winstone had to hold his breath as he cleaned the dog runs out but it wasn’t the dogs’ fault they’d been eating and sleeping in their own shit all their lives and didn’t know any better. After he got used to the smell he liked feeding the dogs and right from the start he liked helping Debbie.
He liked the way she sang along with the radio and talked to the cat and the sure way she had of picking things up and setting things down as if the world had an order and she knew what it was and she always had. To look at her full on was too much and as far as he could he avoided being caught in that way just as he tried to evade the beam of her full notice which turned on him burned him up with every bad and dirty thing he’d done in his crusty snot-picking miscreant life and where his hands had been that morning. But he liked Debbie being there. He liked her moving at the edge of his sight and the swing of her square-cut hair against her turned cheek and the sound of her voice behind him. He liked scrubbing vegetables elbow to elbow with her at the sink. He liked seeing her standing there at the bench when he looked up from the table and sometimes he wished he was Jemma and just as small and could go up behind Debbie and hug her leg and push his face into her thigh.
