Stone Country

by Nicole Alexander

  ‘No. Adelaide. Even if it ends today at your bidding, I’ll have done what I set out to do. Find you and tell what’s left of your family that you’re still alive.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ replied Ross.

  Connor retrieved pipe and tobacco from his pocket. His sun-riddled hand stuffed the bowl with dark shreds.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a smoke.’ Ross could feel his tongue itching for the taste of something pungent and strong. It had been too long since his last drink in the cave. The bottle was all that remained from when he and Hart had stopped the north–south train, claiming they’d been robbed, and managed to elicit enough compassion for rum and tobacco.

  Connor tossed some tobacco and a pipe to him. Ross didn’t say anything, simply concentrated on packing the wooden pipe, willing his fingers to stop shaking. Finally, he drew back a lungful of smoke, closing his eyes to savour the pleasure. It was going too far to be asking Connor for a nip of rum as well, although he knew Joe always ran with a couple of crates for emergencies. Dead man’s last rites, Joe called the stash. Alcohol for medicinal purposes.

  Instead, Ross delved into his shirt where Mrs Dyer’s squashed johnnycakes were lodged next to his skin, half-expecting a hint of something womanly to waft up from the wrappings. The paper rustled under his uncontrollable trembling and it was only when Ross became aware of Connor examining him that he sat the parcel on the ground and pushed the round bits of damper across with a boot. The Scotsman took one and ate it. An offering of sorts, given and received.

  ‘I haven’t forgiven you,’ Ross told him.

  ‘I know,’ replied Connor.

  Chapter 48

  With horse spittle speckling his face, Ross lurched forward, calves gripping hot flesh, his backside barely in the saddle, beard and hair flying. A resounding noise obliterated everything. It came from the pounding of the horse tilted at full gallop beneath him, the buffalo that was hurtling across the plains that he pursued, and his own breath, quick and gasping.

  Holding the sawn-off rifle in one hand like a pistol, Ross readied for the bloody strike, closing the gap until the thudding of the fleeing buffalo’s inner workings matched the rapid beats within his own chest. Ross aimed. A single shot escaped from the gun, striking down into the buffalo’s loin alongside its spine. In an instant, Nugget was swerving away light and fast across flattened grass from the toppling beast and the sweep of its horns. The buffalo dropped as if struck by lightning, paralysed but still alive, awaiting the knives of those that followed.

  Twenty-three for the day. Seventeen shot by him, six by Joe. It was a good tally and as much as he and the skinners could handle. Ross drew up on the edge of the swamp. Oozing, churned-up mud showed the trail taken by the remaining herd across to the safety of the palms, which stood thicket-close and impenetrable a mile away. He laid a hand briefly on the gelding’s neck, offering encouragement for a good day’s work, and nudged the horse away from the swamp. In the distance the other stockmen killed the wounded beast with a final shot before setting down to the business of skinning it warm, so that rigor mortis didn’t make the paring of skin from meat impossible.

  Ross didn’t enjoy thinking about the animal’s last moments. The buffalo lying in wait, frightened of the unknown, unable to move, forced to endure the final insult of hopelessness. Still, the skinners were a good team. In twenty minutes the hide would be off and loaded onto a packhorse ready for the trip back to camp.

  He rode over to meet Joe and Connor, and Joe gave a pleased nod. They both knew that, if not for Ross, Joe’s takings wouldn’t be anywhere near as profitable. He had easily shot at least eight buffalo a day since they began almost three weeks ago, which made today’s takings particularly impressive.

  ‘You might want to change horses tomorrow, Ross. Give that nag of yours a rest. He mightn’t last the distance with you riding him so hard,’ suggested Joe.

  Ross shook his head. ‘Nugget’s a stayer.’

  ‘He always was a sorry-looking excuse for an animal but Mick would be pleased to know how good the trade turned out.’ Connor explained to Joe: ‘The head stockman on Waybell traded tobacco in exchange for the gelding.’

  Ross tugged at the reins, riding clear of the men. Nearly every day the Scotsman dredged up the past. Connor flushed memories out of him like the men drove the buffalo clear of the brush.

  ‘Didnae manage to kill yourself today, then?’ asked Connor, giving him a wry smile.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Ross. He had a pact with Joe. If he killed at least seven head every day for a week, Joe would give him a bottle of rum. They laughed about it as being a bonus of sorts. Reward for effort. It would be funny, Ross agreed, if he weren’t so desperate. It had been five days since the last swig of blessed cane-sugar, a span of hours that led to sleepless nights and a desperation for the speed of a horse and the chance of death to forget the pitiful needs of his body. There’d been moments when he’d been close to stealing Joe’s supplies. It wasn’t pride that stopped him, but respect for his friend. Joe had never once asked him to explain his past and he’d given Ross a blunt apology for Connor’s continued presence.

  The day they rode out from under the shadow of Dyer’s hill Joe admitted that if he’d known who Ross really was three years ago, he would have asked him to become a full partner in the buffalo-skinning business, to help with the costs. But as Ross’s value lay in his abilities and Joe’s one good eye was showing strain, he was content having him as part of the team. Joe’s description of their professional relationship reminded Ross of how he’d valued Sowden’s men. Capital and labour tied together, as if Ross were a principled man of America’s Deep South. And now here he was, riding for another man’s benefit, all for the promise of a bit of grog.

  At the camp Ross handed Nugget over to one of the men and collapsed near a fire, drinking the black tea a woman poured for him. Then she resumed cutting up hunks of buffalo meat. The amount of food at the camp overwhelmed Ross. A meal a day was as much as he could stomach and even then he felt as if he was one of the old ewes on Gleneagle blocked up by a gutful of indigestible grass. A bit of kangaroo or fish would have been enough. A side of roots. Anything other than lumps of bloody meat.

  Around him, women had spread the buffalo skins on the ground and were salting them. There were four women to each stinking skin, talking and laughing as they rubbed coarse salt into the hides. The coats had been washed in the waterhole, and the fat and remaining meat cleaned away. Under the cover of a lean-to, hides were turned and restacked, drying out in the air. Another pile was being reordered so that the top hides now sat at the bottom. Ross stared at the stacks. In time, some of the skins would become leather belts driving steam engines, running even in death.

  One of the younger women in the camp sauntered past the fire. The older woman preparing the meat shooed her away but not before she’d smiled. He didn’t mind the look of her, and she appeared interested in him. He’d never slept with a black woman. Ross liked to believe it was out of respect but, deep down, he knew that taking one of their women could cause trouble, and that’s what had stopped him previously.

  The last of the packhorses arrived with the fresh hides. Joe was at the lean-to where the skins were stored, speaking to a Chinese worker named Manny, whose job was to ensure that the hides were sufficiently dried and cured properly for transportation to London. On days when the kill exceeded the sunlit hours the camp worked through the cold night, cleaning and rubbing, using salt harvested by the Greeks at Ludmilla Creek near Darwin. It would be no different this evening. Ross knew he would lie shivering in his swag as others prepared what he had brought them.

  Ross swirled the tea with a dirty finger, his free hand feeling the solid form of the novel tucked within his shirt next to his skin. The book was all that remained of his brother’s stories, a sorry collection of stuck pages and missing sentences that no longer formed a reliable storyline. But it didn’t matter, as he hadn’t been able to read the book properly for months. Now h
e only stroked the pages like a blind man reading braille, for he could no longer see the written word close up. It was as if his eyes had been blunted by wind and rain and fibrous light, and with the deterioration it seemed that a part of the civilised, educated world he’d been born into was now lost to him. He was grateful that other, everyday objects remained clear and that the disability was yet to affect anything other than his capacity to read.

  ‘Good day, verily good day, Mr Ross,’ called Manny. He did a little dance around the creamy-yellow piles of buffalo horns that were kept near the lean-to of hides.

  Ross studied the pyramid of bone. Having been told by Joe that the calcified material would eventually be ground into a powder for the Chinese to use as an elixir, somehow, he knew that those horns would be the closest he ever got to the exotic. He imagined Alastair curled between the front paws of the Sphinx or walking in the footsteps of Kubla Khan while he collected medicine for an ancient culture on the other side of the world.

  ‘You verily good, Mr Ross, verily good.’

  This was industry. The Top End kind. Where horses could get filleted by horns and men could be impaled through dumb luck. Chance exchanged for horns and hides. Hunters and the hunted. He only had to kill and stay alive. Ross hated it and loved it.

  ‘Dinnae think I don’t know what Davies is up to.’

  Of course Connor had taken the space beside him when they were surrounded by a mile of vacant bush. Ross hunched over the chipped mug. He longed for Hart and the boy’s quiet ways. The amenable conversation.

  ‘He urges you on to keep the kill high with promises of grog, waiting until those delirium tremens of yours are too bad to aim straight before giving you a bottle. Some friend,’ said Connor.

  ‘And you’d know about that.’ Ross twisted the cup back and forth deeper into the soil. ‘Being a friend.’

  ‘You’re a damn alcoholic. You’d drag yourself through the dirt for a drink. I dinnae know why I bothered looking for you,’ Connor snarled.

  ‘Why did you then? If I’d wanted finding,’ Ross said quietly, ‘I wouldn’t have tried so damn hard to disappear.’

  Connor’s shoulders slackened. ‘There’s many a reason but I’ll start with the worst.’

  Ross stopped fidgeting. He’d known that this was coming. How Connor managed to keep counsel for so long undoubtedly amazed them both.

  ‘Herself is dead. Your grandmother. Remember her? Died in her bed. And your father. Heart attack. Died within two years of each other. Your father first and then Herself. Two boys missing. Both gone walkabout. What did you expect?’

  Ross thought of his grandmother, loving, crafty and hard. Bound to protect the family name, no matter the cost. She’d blackmailed him with his inheritance to ensure that he’d marry Darcey, but he’d never blamed her, not really. She’d been mother and father to him. He would always love her.

  ‘Did you hear me, Ross?’

  As for his father, Ross never really knew him or had understood him and he certainly wouldn’t miss Morgan Grant.

  ‘Dinnae you have anything to say? They’re your blood kin, Ross.’

  The gap was so large between this day and his departure from Adelaide. So filled with the clutter of action and inaction that where there might have been at the very least the sense of an ending there was now only dullness.

  ‘You saw your life as a war from the very beginning, Ross. But it’s them that lost.’ Connor stood, his chest heaving as if he had run a mile. ‘You were the one they pitted themselves against, trying to make you understand. But they may have well been tossing pebbles against a rock wall for all you cared.’

  ‘G’day,’ interrupted Joe. ‘Thought we’d celebrate as it’s nearly the end of the week.’ He held a bottle ready to pour a nip for each man.

  Ross wanted to toss the remaining tea over his shoulder and shove the rim of the pannikin under the flagon’s neck but Connor watched, eyes needle-sharp. Ross hated him, hated that he actually cared what Connor thought of him.

  ‘None for me. Give it to Ross,’ said Connor. ‘He’s having his own private wake. For himself.’

  ‘You all right?’ asked Joe when Connor left.

  Ross took the rum, drank it down and held the cup out again.

  ‘Let’s save it for the morning. Steady your nerves for the shoot, eh?’ said Joe. ‘You know, I never got on with my father, either.’

  Ross moved away from Joe and wandered through the camp. They’d been talking about him, no doubt discussing the reasons behind his desertion, trying to find purpose in the choices he’d made. The idea of being judged by these two men made Ross prickle with anger. Connor’s presence had ruined the season and damaged the bond he’d once shared with Joe.

  A half-mile away at the river, women were digging up mussels that had grown fat deep in the soil. Ross moved aimlessly, the taste of rum still strong in his mouth. At a tree hollow a fly emerged. Ross stuck his hand inside to plunder the native honey, scooping the dark substance into his mouth. He licked his fingers. Wild honey. The Greek asphodel of the dead. Said to grow in the Elysian Fields. He laughed at this useless knowledge.

  Somehow, the young woman from the campfire had known to follow him, and she met him where pandanus palms edged towards thickening bush. He waited, concealed by a tree’s shaggy grass skirt of leaves, stepping out from the cover of the plants to grab the girl as she passed. She made a startled noise but didn’t try to leave, and allowed him to lift the material of her dress. He nodded encouragingly. Leaves rustled. It didn’t take long for the business to reach a satisfying conclusion and he rested against her, feeling suddenly remorseful for his treatment of her, even though she’d been willing. He found himself thinking of Sowden. How the manager once stated that one day a person might be grateful for a little black velvet. Sowden, the man he’d scorned.

  He let go of the young woman and stepped away.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  He told her to leave and she ran off. He sank to the base of the palm tree, his hands cradling his face. It had meant so much to him. To have been loved by Maria.

  Chapter 49

  Ross guided Nugget along a track that led to several rubbing trees, where tufts of buffalo hair were caught on bark and freshly twisted saplings showed a well-defined trail. He ran a callused palm over the rough surface and looked at the hoof-broken ground that would lead to a watering point and a wallow. It had been five days since the last big hunt. Eight since the last drink.

  Ross counted the buffalo signs with grim determination. This herd had been hard to find. The dry season was at its peak and the buffalo had taken to camping in the timbered country on the edge of the plain. But their preference for a home range was their undoing. The land dried up a little more each day and ten miles away over one hundred buffalo lay rotting in the earth that bogged them. Ross wanted to tell the brainless beasts that familiarity and security could bring a slow death but his job was to slaughter.

  Waiting for the first kill always unsettled him. He distracted himself by thinking of the girl, and the brief couplings that had occurred when the sun dropped low and fast. The camp was too occupied with the task of living to notice the absence of the outfit’s crack shot and the young woman he’d taken up with. Ross wanted the girl to go with him when the hunt finished, except now he agonised over the rightness of the plan. If Hart had been there, the boy would have spoken plainly and told Ross to do what was best. Best for Ross and for the girl. Ross saw benefit in their shared company but he couldn’t be certain of the girl’s safety. He’d just as likely go on a bender and leave her behind, or worse.

  Aboriginal men and women walked through the long grass, beating lengths of timber, tin plates and cups. Anything capable of making a noise. The clamour stirred the buffalo and they moved from the timber, gradually being shepherded towards the edge of the plain. Ross waited for the mass of dark bodies to edge out a little further from the wedge of trees, his mount lifting each leg from the ground like a runner wa
rming up. The herd stopped and sniffed the air. Far to the right sat Joe and Connor like stockmen on a wing of cattle, readying to drive the herd across the plains.

  Connor’s shooting had been fair to poor. It wasn’t that he was incapable, he simply lacked courage. Ross knew this by the way he hung back, giving chase but never quite committing to the final strike of spur to hair. Doggedly tailing a man, that Connor could do. But ride and shoot because he must, for a feed at the end of the day, to feel the suck of speed and the mind-altering swoop of the pursuit, that was something Connor couldn’t do. Or maybe didn’t care to.

  They’d talked little since their argument a month ago, and Ross sensed that Connor had given up on him. He expected that the Scotsman would see out the season and then depart in the company of hides and bones on a lugger from Dyer’s river landing. Ross would be relieved when he left. Connor looked at him sideways now, as if he couldn’t quite face the person Ross had become. That, at least, Ross understood. He had seen his reflection in Joe’s shaving mirror and had to step away before he set the razor blade to his skin and the de-bearding revealed more than Ross wanted to know.

  Finding themselves in open country, the buffalo began to run out across the flats. Ross eased Nugget into a trot. The ground was like cement made rough by twelve-inch-wide hoof impressions that formed in rain-soaked country and dried during the waterless months. The horse extended to a canter. Ross felt the draw of the kill as a wide-horned cow took the lead. He bided his time, knowing distance and speed would eventually wear her down. Hoping the rush of the chase would still his shaking hand.

  At full gallop Ross was close enough to see the bristles on the beast’s hide. He lifted the sawn-off rifle and fired. Simultaneously, Nugget stumbled on the rough terrain. Ross was pitched into the air and the wounded cow, briefly grounded, impaled the foundering gelding through the belly and then tossed the horse skywards. The sun was briefly obliterated. Ross heard a whoosh of air and whinnying and then the horse hit the earth. A rip of pain jolted through him. A cracking of fibre, tendon and bone. The gelding had landed on his outstretched legs. He struggled into a sitting position. Now he was like the beasts that he had slain. Paralysed but still aware.