Shepherd

by Catherine Jinks

  A sip of water should keep her quiet while I move her cage.

  ‘Here you are,’ I whisper, dipping a tea cup into the water bucket. The cup fits neatly through the bars and she falls upon it, cackling. I doubt Carver will hear her; I can barely hear Woodbine when she whinnies again.

  What else do I need? That chair is too low. That barrel is too heavy. The high stool should do it—but now the hen is fussing, so I lay her on her back and stroke her chest until she’s in a trance. She doesn’t even stir when I pick up her cage.

  Cage, stool, looking glass, gun…I take a deep breath and pray that Gyp is watching over me.

  Then I go out.

  The only cover between here and the stables is the cool-room. It stands in the beaten expanse of the farmyard like a spar on a beach. I crouch behind it and—Christ, the stench chokes me. It’s worse than the hold of the Lord Lyndoch. I can’t steady my breathing because I don’t want to breathe at all.

  Now, Tom. Now. Quick and quiet. Careful or you might drop something. Lady Jane clucks, but her voice is soft. It’s drowned out by Woodbine’s frantic whinny, which brings tears to my eyes. I blink them away, averting my gaze from Cockeye’s corpse lest the sight of it drains me of courage. Don’t look. Stay firm. Step over the blood and brains.

  Quietly I set the stool down, hard up against the stable door. Quietly I place the cage on top of it. Quietly I wedge the looking glass between the door and the bars of the cage, within easy reach of the hen.

  Then I dash towards the hayloft end of the building, rounding the corner just as Lady Jane starts to peck at the glass. Tap-tap-tap. She’s high enough to be a human hand.

  I cut poor Nugget down earlier, but the rope still hangs from the lift-beam, frayed a little at one end. When I jump to reach it, a sharp pain jabs at my bad knee. My elbow’s giving me trouble too as I pull myself up, hand over hand. Normally I’d be shimmying up this rope like a rat on rigging, but it’s harder than usual. The gun on my back is as heavy as a cask of wine. My left arm jibs at the weight. Even so, I have to keep going. Quickly.

  I’ll hear the stable door when it opens—those hinges are badly in need of oil, though they’ve been mute so far. Seems Carver hasn’t noticed the hen. Either that or he’s lying in wait.

  Finally: the lift-beam. My fingers clamp around the wood. I swing my legs up, plant my feet against the edge of the hayloft door and…here I am. Inside at last.

  Woodbine’s angry snort masks the thud of my landing. Though the hayloft is very dark, there’s light beyond the bales in front of me. I squeeze between them, crawling over a carpet of loose hay that muffles my advance, thank God.

  I’m flat on my belly when I reach the edge of the hayloft floor. The top of the ladder is just a few inches away. I can’t see anything down below—not even the source of the light—but I’d be a fool to lift my head just yet. I have to wait until I hear hinges creak.

  I hope I do hear them over the pounding of my heart.

  Woodbine is neighing. Rowdy is gasping. Tap-tap-tap goes Lady Jane.

  Suddenly there’s a crash and a yell and a deafening explosion as Carver fires. Lady Jane squawks and flutters.

  I rear up and take aim. Carver is by the stable door, which he’s just yanked open. The smoking pistol in his right hand is sagging towards the ground. The pistol in his left hand is pointing straight up at the hayloft but his gaze is on the hen flapping around in her broken cage, on the ground by the overturned stool.

  Rowdy’s the one who spots me first. His eyes widen. The hook in his shoulder is tied to the hook that used to support Mr Barrett’s bear trap. Because he’s double-ironed, Rowdy can’t raise his hands high enough to release himself. He’s propped against the wall not far from Woodbine’s blood-streaked haunches. His ashen face is shining with sweat or tears (or both). In his good hand he’s clutching a pitchfork.

  I think I know what Carver’s been doing. He’s been making Rowdy jab poor Woodbine in the hindquarters. That pitchfork’s so long, Rowdy can do it without getting kicked—though he still can’t reach Carver.

  I don’t know what prompts Carver to turn his head. Instinct? The movement of my gun barrel? A change in Rowdy’s breathing?

  He whips around and fires.

  I fire back as his ball whizzes past me.

  My father taught me to shoot. He had a double-barrelled fowling piece that he cherished with all his heart. Every night he would clean it with a flannel soaked in sheep’s-foot oil. He told me that cleaning a gun and keeping it dry would stop the barrel from bursting. He showed me how to aim slightly above and in front of a moving target; three inches for every thirty yards of distance, he would say. He made me place my left hand near the ramrod instead of the trigger-guard. He ordered me never to use the gun to beat a bush when I was flushing game. And he stressed the need for calm.

  ‘You must be as cool as a Quaker,’ he instructed. ‘Don’t jerk your head when you fire. Don’t close your eyes. Don’t pause in your forward movement. If a bird should rise and fly in your face, let it pass you. Then you should fire.’

  Though my father’s temper was on a hair trigger, he was as peaceful as a mill pond when he got behind the barrel of a gun. I’ve never seen a steadier hand. I once saw him take down a partridge at a hundred yards. For myself, I never equalled him. I never possessed his eye, nor his judgement.

  But I am quick. And when presented with a big target, stock still, at a distance of ten yards, my aim is good enough. That’s why I manage to hit Carver.

  A red bloom starts to spread across Carver’s thigh. He cries out. Even as he crumples, however, he unslings another musket, cocking it one-handed.

  I’m ducking when he fires; the shot sends wood-chips spraying down onto my head.

  Flat on the floor, I fumble for a new cartridge and tear off its tail. Powder in the pan. Powder in the barrel. Ball. Ramrod.

  ‘Tom!’ That’s Rowdy’s voice, thinner and hoarser than usual. ‘He’s gone!’

  Has he? Or has he got Rowdy at gunpoint?

  ‘Tom, hurry!’

  I’ve finished reloading. One, two…

  Three.

  When I bob up, I see no sign of Carver. The door stands ajar.

  ‘Tom,’ Rowdy quavers. ‘I’m sorry I lied to ye, but I had to get away from that bastard…’ Even now—shackled, pierced, tied to a hook—he can’t seem to stop talking. I slide down the ladder and rush to the door.

  ‘I didn’t know what he was plannin’ to do, I swear,’ Rowdy gabbles. ‘He talked about killin’ ye for what ye did to him, but I thought they were idle threats. I thought he was headin’ north, away from Barrett’s farm…’

  I slam the door shut. There’s a bar, so I use it. Carver can’t get back in now.

  ‘Our overseer was workin’ us to death or I wouldn’t have fallen in with that pair o’ damme-boys,’ Rowdy continues faintly. ‘Ye can’t choose yer company on a road gang. Cockeye got us out, and he wouldn’t leave without Nobby…’

  Quick. Scurrying over to the hook in the wall, I stretch up to flick the loop of rope off it, letting Rowdy slide to the floor with a groan. He drops the bloody pitchfork. His irons are fastened with wire instead of rivets, so I don’t even have to use a hammer to get ’em off. Carver left the pliers within easy reach.

  ‘We none of us had guns nor horses nor vittles when we first escaped.’ Rowdy’s still rambling on. ‘We stole from a few shepherds’ huts is all.’

  Untwisting the wire on the top-irons takes muscle, but somehow I manage it. The first cuff falls away and I move on to the second one, knowing Rowdy won’t have the strength to do it himself.

  ‘Then we found Carver crawlin’ around,’ he mumbles, ‘and he just—well, you’ve seen what he’s like. Told us what to do…wouldn’t take no for an answer…Nobby and Cockeye buckled quick enough but I didn’t want nothin’ to do with him…’

  I’m trying not to look at the hook in his shoulder. There’s about an inch of it sticking through his shirt.


  And that’s the second cuff. It hits the floor with a clang.

  ‘I just needed a bed and a bite to eat.’ He’s whimpering now. ‘I’d run away from Carver and I was desperate. He’d walked up to a logger and stuck a knife in his neck—’

  ‘You’d better take that out.’ I nod at his shoulder. ‘Somewhere away from the horse.’

  ‘Tom—’

  ‘D’you want me to do it?’

  He shakes his head, thank God, gasping at the pain it causes him. Then he drags himself across the floor as I slip into the stall next to Woodbine’s.

  Poor Woodbine. Half a dozen bloody nicks pepper her haunches—but they’re not deep. At least Rowdy made sure of that.

  When he shrieks, Woodbine tosses her head and I don’t blame her. I’m trying not to puke myself.

  All right, there’s a good girl. I stroke her nose and pat her neck, trying to calm her while Rowdy draws the hook out of his shoulder. I can’t help glancing up at the hayloft, though I’m not expecting Carver to appear there. How could he? I put a ball through his leg.

  ‘Done,’ Rowdy wheezes. He’s the colour of suet, wringing wet and limp with exhaustion, his eyes half-shut. His wound needs binding; the blood’s pouring out.

  I grab one of the horses’ towels, scurry over and drop to my knees beside him. ‘Are you fit to ride?’ I whisper, pressing the wad of linen to the hole in his shoulder.

  Rowdy looks at me, blank-faced. Then he nods.

  ‘He’ll be watching that door,’ I continue with a jerk of my head. ‘He knows the horse can’t climb, so he’ll be lying in wait just out there.’

  Through clenched teeth Rowdy hisses, ‘But you shot him!’

  ‘Grazed him.’

  ‘Sure, and he must have gone!’

  ‘No.’ I rip the sleeve off Rowdy’s shirt and use it to tie the towel around his wound. ‘As long as he’s alive, he’ll come for us. He’ll want us to pay for his suffering. Wild dogs get more dangerous when they’re hurt.’

  ‘Jaysus,’ Rowdy moans. His eyes are shut again. ‘What’ll we do? He took my pistol and cartridges—’

  ‘That’s why you need to ride.’ I have a plan. Not a great plan, but the only one I can think of. ‘If we tarry too long, he’ll set the stables on fire,’ I explain in a low voice. ‘But if we ride out now, together, he’ll be waiting for us. That’s why we need to distract him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll tell you.’ I take a deep breath, look him in the eye and say, very softly, ‘Can you deal with Woodbine on your own?’

  ‘On my…?’

  ‘We have to part.’ Before he can do more than stare at me, appalled, I put my mouth to his ear. ‘You’re not fit to fight, and you’re not armed for it,’ I breathe. ‘But if you can ride out at a gallop, I might hush that murdering cull yet.’

  12

  I REMEMBER the day Carver first told me he’d killed someone.

  It was early evening and I was sitting with Joe in the hut, waiting for my supper. We always took care not to eat before Carver joined us, and Carver hadn’t joined us.

  ‘Blacks,’ he announced, on finally entering. He had the musket with him because he never let anyone else touch it. Even when Joe was guarding the flock at night, Carver used to sleep with the gun in his bed.

  ‘Where?’ said Joe.

  ‘Down by the brook.’ Carver sat heavily on the sturdiest stool and grabbed the biggest joint of mutton. ‘Don’t fret—I scared ’em off.’

  No one asked how. Carver told us anyway.

  ‘I showed ’em this.’ He fumbled for the leather cord he wore around his neck. I’d never seen what was hanging on the end of it because it was always tucked into his shirt, and when he pulled the thing out, there in the hut, the light was so poor that at first I couldn’t make out what it was.

  ‘I showed ’em the gun—and this here—and told ’em not to come back,’ he added with a sly grin. His teeth were like the ribs of a wrecked ship in a grey mud-bank. He still had two eyes then, and they both gleamed as he dangled his pendant in front of my nose.

  I realised I was looking at an ear, shrunken, shrivelled and sun-scorched. He’d punched a hole in its lobe so that it hung upside down from his leather cord.

  ‘Dried like a raisin in the sun,’ he informed me with a touch of pride. He said he’d lopped it off one of the blacks killed on Mr Barrett’s first raid, then went on to reminisce about the screams of fleeing women and the excellent marksmanship of Mr Barrett, who had winged several ‘coal-black savages’ despite the darkness. The pile of corpses they’d left behind, Carver gloated, had been as high as a cow’s back. ‘A grouse hunt, that one,’ he told me. ‘You’d have been in your element, Tom Clay, a seasoned poacher like yerself.’

  My stomach heaved but I said nothing. I’d been in the hut for barely a week and I already knew I was living with a black-hearted villain.

  I understood that my days would be numbered if Carver had anything to do with it.

  Peering out of the hayloft, craning my neck like a goose, I can just see the front of the kitchen. There’s so much light pouring through its door that the back of Mr Barrett’s house is visible too. Carver isn’t, though. If he’s hiding in either building, he’s keeping well away from the windows.

  I don’t think he’s gone that far. If he is hiding, he’ll be using the cool-room, which is closer. I wish I had a better view of it from here.

  Slinging the carbine over my shoulder, I reach for the lift-beam and hoist myself up and lose my grip and…

  God!

  No; it’s all right. I didn’t fall. I lost my hold but the rope was there and I’m safe. I’m good.

  Take a deep breath, Tom. Don’t falter.

  Again I swing myself up—this time I get it right—and manage to squirm along the lift-beam until I reach the gable. Now I can see the cool-room.

  But no Carver.

  ‘Carver!’ Rowdy yells from beneath me. Muffled by the stable roof, his voice sounds hoarse and a little unsteady; he was so weak that I had to push him up into the saddle. Sitting there with the pitchfork in his right hand and the reins twisted around his left, he looked as if he was going to faint.

  But he’s found the strength to do his duty.

  ‘Ye might think you’ve nothing to lose, Dan Carver,’ he continues. ‘Ye might think, “I can’t hang more ’n once, so why not kill two more folk?” But ye should be frettin’ on yer immortal soul, my cully.’

  I’m hoping the sound of his voice masks the scrape of my feet as I claw my way up onto the stable roof. One side of the roof, fully exposed to the cool-room and kitchen, is bathed in a faint, golden glow from the kitchen door. But the other side is in shadow, so I heave myself up there, clinging to the roof-ridge with my fingertips.

  Rowdy’s still talking.

  ‘Now, I don’t know if you’re a religious man,’ he says to Carver, ‘but there’s not a soul on earth can be sure what awaits him when he dies. And what if killing us gets you twenty more years in purgatory? Assuming, o’ course, that you don’t go straight to hell…’

  My cheek is pressed f lat against the wooden shingles. Slowly, cautiously, I raise my head and peer over the roof-ridge.

  I spot Carver at once. His musket barrel is poking out from behind the cool-room. He’s readying himself.

  ‘What’ll ye lose by lettin’ us live?’ Rowdy demands, straining to keep some vigour in his speech. ‘By the time we get to town, you’ll be well away. And it’s us who’ll probably hang for this, not you. After all, who’s goin’ to listen to a couple o’ lags ridin’ their master’s horse?’

  I adjust my position and raise the carbine until its muzzle is trained on Carver’s gun. Then I reach into my pocket, pull out Mr Barrett’s pliers and let ’em slide down the front of the roof.

  Bump-bump-bump-CLANG.

  Carver thrusts his head out from behind the cool-room. He looks up and fires.

  I duck as the stable door crashes open.

  When I lift my
head again, I spy Rowdy: he’s swerved to the left and is riding towards the road. He kicks poor Woodbine into a gallop and she gamely hurls herself forward, though the holes in her rump must hurt like hell.

  Carver drops the musket and raises a pistol. In his quest for a clear shot, he’s stumbled out from his hiding place.

  Now. Now. I fire at him before he can fire at Rowdy.

  There’s a spray of dust. God dammit! My only chance and I missed!

  Carver jerks back behind the cool-room. He’s gone to ground and I’ll have to lure him out again. I duck back behind the roof-ridge to reload.

  One more shot. I’ve only one more shot.

  Carver fires his second musket: flash in the pan. He curses.

  The darkness has swallowed Rowdy, though I can still hear Woodbine’s fading hoof-beats. She’s escaped. She’s saved him.

  Now I have to save myself.

  Slowly, Tom; don’t drop anything. Powder in the pan. Powder in the muzzle.

  Before I can pull the trigger, Carver’s pistol-ball hits the roof and I shy from the impact. That’s three shots. One more and he’ll be stopping to load his weapons.

  ‘I ate a native bear once,’ he growls. Is he talking to me? Is he still by the cool-room? I can’t tell.

  Three pokes of the ramrod. Replace the ramrod. Half-cock the hammer. Now—where is he? I push the gun barrel cautiously back over the roof-ridge.

  Nothing.

  Inch by inch I raise my head…

  A shingle fractures nearby. Four shots—that’s it.

  In one easy movement I thrust myself up over the roof-ridge and aim my carbine. There he is, stumbling towards the hayloft end of the stables, dragging that left leg, which is wrapped in a torn and bloody strip of cloth. His gaze lifts. His hand rises. There’s a pistol in it—

  He fires wide as he limps along, and I duck back down. Curse it, he’s reloaded.

  ‘The bear was up a tree and I threw rocks at it until it fell.’ He’s moving towards the hayloft door. His voice tells me as much.

  I uncock the carbine, sling it over my shoulder and start sliding back the way I came. The roof ’s quite steep and, though I’m not exactly hanging by my fingertips, they’re doing a lot of the work.