One

  ONE

  This book is a work of the imagination based on real events.

  PATRICK HOLLAND

  ONE

  MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

  www.transitlounge.com.au

  First Published 2016

  Transit Lounge Publishing

  Copyright © 2016 Patrick Holland

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study,

  research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be

  reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to

  the publisher.

  Cover image: Sidney Nolan Bushranger head with read and yellow mask 1947

  charcoal, enamel on wove paper, sheet 31.4 × 25.2cm sight 31.8 × 25.4cm

  National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Purchased 1978

  Reproduced with the permission of the Sidney Nolan Trust/Bridgeman Art Library

  Cover and book design: Peter Lo

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  This project has been assisted by the Australian government through the Australia

  Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

  A cataloguing-in-publication entry is available from the

  National Library of Australia: http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

  ISBN: 978-0-9943958-7-0 (e-book)

  The wind drove an anvil of black cloud south over the ranges. This was such a wind as turns over trains. A horse came out of the storm and walked to the edge of the station.

  Constable Doyle looked out the window and saw the horse standing cold and shivering. He took a bridle from a nail on the wall. He walked to three feet away from the horse and threw the bridle and the horse shied – stood with its ears pinned back against its head, eyeing the man and ready to bolt. Doyle saw a hide brand half cut out, and a cross-brand over the wound. Enough of the old brand remained. Enough to read it. He looked up into the hills.

  ‘You couldn’t swear to it in a courtroom,’ said Doyle to Sergeant Nixon that night over whisky. ‘But you can trace MS4 in the hair.’

  ‘Carnarvon’s brand.’

  ‘Aye. A fortnight after our new friend Dahlke claims he saw Jim Kenniff night-riding his boundary.’

  ‘Do you think it’s them?’

  ‘Like a dropped cup in a house that’s meant to be haunted – everything gets blamed on the phantoms. I know those ringers up there. The horses they claim are missing are likely as not joined with some wild stallion in the hills. And being too lazy to go up and pull them out, they want the government to recompense them.’

  Nixon nodded.

  ‘And yet, here – perhaps – is a horse with the brand of the man who says he has lost horses, cross-branded with the brand of outlaws.’

  Doyle nodded and lit a cigarette. He uncapped a bottle.

  ‘They don’t believe they’re outlaws. That block Dahlke says he saw them on was theirs once.’

  Nixon nodded.

  ‘I know how that one goes. But leases run out and get re-sold every day. Most men are content with the way that goes.’

  Doyle smiled.

  ‘British conspiracy against the Irish.’ He drank. ‘So they say.’

  ‘You half-believe it, don’t you? But then, you’re half Irish.’

  ‘Aye.’ The constable reached across the table for the bottle. ‘And I get more Irish the more I drink. But every squatter and scalper on a starvation block up there reckons the Kenniffs have a hideout on their country. It’s a point of pride.’

  Nixon nodded.

  ‘And frightens contending thieves.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘But I know Dahlke. He is a serious man.’

  Doyle smiled.

  ‘Aye, very serious. D’you mark the garb he got up in to come to the station the other day?’

  Nixon smiled and cleaned two glasses with a rag and poured three fingers of whisky in each.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With a glass-headed pin and a little white flower in his breast pocket. To see us!’

  ‘Those are his town clothes.’

  Doyle laughed.

  ‘Poor bastard. Still, there was nothing silly about the horse that was under him.’

  ‘Carnarvon has good horses. That’s the issue.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And not long back he reckoned some boys came to the homestead at night, threatening his ringers. Though you couldn’t get any of them to admit it.’

  ‘Aye, maybe there’s something in it.’

  ‘Let me ride out and do a little scoutin in the hills.’

  Doyle brought the bottle towards himself and poured three fingers more.

  ‘So you can go and look in on that little woman you’ve got up there?’

  Nixon stared down at his glass.

  ‘I don’t have any woman up there.’

  ‘Ada something. Thoroughgood? Thoroughbred?’

  Nixon stared down at his glass and smiled.

  ‘Ada Thurlow. I’ve looked in on her now and then – when her husband gets bad with drink. That’s all.’

  ‘Fuck me, man. You’ve been around long enough to know not to get mixed up in that kind of affair.’

  ‘I know. I’m not mixed up. Not really.’

  Nixon liked being teased about Ada Thurlow. He took up his glass. Looked at the whisky in the amber light of the carbide lamp.

  ‘Funny how drink takes some men.’ He brought the whisky to his lips. Savoured the sweet burn, and at once the world’s barbs did not feel so sharp. ‘It’s about the only time I feel peaceful.’

  Doyle poured him another.

  ‘Pretty little thing, I hear. Mrs Thurlow.’

  Nixon looked up at him.

  ‘I spose so.’

  ‘Mary Boyce mentioned her to me. You know Mary?’

  ‘Only by name.’

  ‘Told me she was a nice young thing,’ Doyle smiled, ‘but a little frail, and that as a married woman she ought to tie or braid her hair rather than let it hang on her shoulders like a maiden.’

  Nixon laughed.

  ‘They’re strange old ducks out here.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Doyle. ‘They keep the manners of England, like no one in England would anymore. But I’ll take a small patrol out. The day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Dahlke will ride with you. He’s keen as hell.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll wear a flower for me?’

  Nixon smiled.

  ‘He might. But get Sam to track.’

  ‘Aye. We’ll go back along the way that horse came. See where it leads.’

  The patrol – Doyle, Dahlke and the black tracker Sam Johnson – was gone three days. Word came to the station that Charlie Tom had shown them shod tracks crossing his country, and that the patrol was camped on the Marlong Plain, intending to ascend the range. Another three days passed without word. That was no great concern. But then a week, and then a fortnight. And still nothing.

  Through the days Nixon tailed out troop horses on the green pick on the road. Through the nights he sat by the window with the carbide lamp and a bottle, watching the dark.

  The sub-inspector came to the station. He put a bottle of whisky beside two empty ones on the table. Another storm was riding the horizon. The men watched dry lightning flashing out the storm window.

  ‘Do you think they’ve found them?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe they’re trailing them.’

  ‘If they are trailing them, they’ve gone a hell of a long way.’

  Nixon wiped two glasses with a rag and poured the whisky.

  ‘The Kenniffs cover country a thousand miles in every direction.’

  ‘I just wish Doyle would send a wire. Is it like him?’

  ‘Yes. He
rarely wires. Sometimes he sends a pony from a station. But not always. If he’s engaged he might not. And after a time of riding west there’s no one to send.’

  Another week passed without a word.

  ‘Go look for him, Sergeant. I’ll wait here. Send word to me as soon as you sight them.’

  Nixon rode into a clearing where two horses had been shot. The brands cut out. ‘Blacks?’ said the boy Nixon had taken from Merivale Station. The boy’s name was Skillington.

  Nixon said nothing. He tied his horse to a tree and slid down the bank on his heels. The Skillington boy came behind him. The man squatted beside a fallen black mare. The horse was many days’ dead. He pulled the head over and inspected the rifle wound. There were no other marks. Then he opened the mouth.

  ‘Fucking blacks!’ said the boy. He squinted up at the high rocks.

  Nixon ran his hand over the black stubble on his chin and looked up and down the dry bed for tracks. He stood and faced the wind that brought a storm fast over the Consuelo tableland.

  They rode back down onto the flats and the storm came onto them.

  Nixon posted the Skillington boy on the road and told him to wait, in case the first patrol came back that way. He rode a day and a night alone in the direction of the patrol. He rode a faint track through giant mahogany and cypress pine and came into view of high scarps in the north.

  He came into an amphitheatre, rock walls on every side. In the middle of it stood a shivering horse without a saddlecloth but with packs on either flank. He drew his Colt and put his thumb on the hammer. He got low and moved up on the horse that recognised him. The horse was Doyle’s. Buckled to the strap that held the packs was a holster and Doyle’s Webley revolver. There was blood on the stock. Nixon tried to lift one of the packs and could not. He unbuckled it. On sight of the contents he backed away. His eyes darted about the rimrock. He reached behind him for the reins of his own horse.

  The Skillington boy sat up from a cook fire at Nixon’s approach.

  ‘You see anything, Sarge?’

  ‘We have to ride back.’

  He left the boy to stable the horses. The sub-inspector had been sleeping at the desk. He woke at the sound of spurs chinging on the floorboards.

  ‘I need money, guns and fresh horses,’ said Nixon. ‘But more than that I need time. I may be gone for weeks.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘A feeling.’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Nixon. The government won’t put any more money into chasing rumours of that gang through the mountains to no avail. And how I am I supposed to replace you?’

  ‘The commissioner wants them caught.’

  ‘The commissioner wants a promotion into government. You were here last spring. He had a thousand men looking for them.’

  ‘I was one of them.’

  ‘Then you’ll know that with a thousand officers on special duties in the southwest, desperadoes run riot in every other corner of the state. The commissioner was near sacked over it. Now he only wants them caught if we happen to fall over them. A thousand men couldn’t find them last spring. How will you fare better?’

  ‘A thousand men are as visible as a belt of fire from a mountain cave. But one man, that’s different. Me and the boy who’s been riding with me. And a tracker.’

  ‘There are no trackers. All are assigned. It’d be weeks before we could get one. And who is this boy?’

  ‘Nephew of Bob Skillington at Merivale. His uncle says he’s a dreamer. Reads too many adventures. Also he’s not good with cattle. But he knows the range country. And he wants to be a lawman.’

  ‘Hell. When you fail at everything else …’

  ‘Isn’t that your story? It’s mine.’

  The sub-inspector smiled.

  ‘He should keep at farming. Live to be an old man.’

  ‘I told him that. But he’s keen.’

  The sub-inspector shook his head and bit the tip off a cigar and lit it.

  ‘Anyway, I heard Jim Kenniff isn’t even in the country. That he’s in South Africa. Or California.’

  ‘I say he’s here.’

  ‘Are there signs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  Nixon checked himself.

  ‘Two dead horses in a clearing.’

  ‘Dead horses? Why?’

  ‘Because they thought someone was following them, and that whoever he was was close. And the horses were tired and slowing them down. That is the kind of men they are.’

  The sub-inspector tapped his cigar into a whisky glass and nodded.

  ‘You can set wanted posters,’ said Nixon. ‘But don’t release them. Not while I’m alive. Only afterwards.’

  ‘Alright then.’ The sub-inspector waved his cigar in the air. ‘You go. I’ll sit it out for you in this shitbox and wait.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Thank me by coming back. I don’t want to wait here one day longer than I have to. If you find them, arrest or kill them. If you find Doyle and Sam, you three ride back here as quick as you can and we’ll all get transfers to somewhere civilised.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But you’re not leaving before the grand fucking goat’s dinner at Mount Moffat.’

  ‘The commissioner’s coming?’

  ‘He sent a despatch rider to Mitchell the other day. He’s just come back from holiday down south.’

  ‘He’ll likely be coming to shut us down. I should be gone.’

  ‘You want a warrant. And he’s sillier than the magistrates I’ll have to apply to otherwise.’

  Commissioner Parry-Oakden stood on the veranda at Mount Moffat Station in white trousers, a regatta shirt and a white coat. The owners of the station were in England and had never visited. The commissioner was received with as much courtesy as the managers of the station could muster, though these, Sargood and his wife, were local-born people, and unaccustomed to finery.

  The commissioner took a biting port on the veranda then summoned the station hands and black servants to hear him read the service for evensong from the Book of Common Prayer before dinner. At last he commended his hosts and Sub-inspector Douglass and Sergeant Nixon and vaunted that the rule of law as kept out in these districts was the vanguard of the moral progress and happiness of mankind.

  ‘For if you can keep law here, it means, sirs, that you can keep it anywhere.’

  Nixon looked at the comissioner’s soft hands and flushed cheeks.

  The ringers and black male servants were led out to eat in their quarters. The female servants prepared the meal for the guests.

  They were served a pork roast with potatoes, pumpkin and green beans with a red-wine gravy. Rice pudding with cinnamon and vanilla came for afters.

  The men withdrew to the smoking room.

  A black girl brought the commissioner a cigar. He clipped and lit it.

  ‘The working classes in this country, they come from convicts, and they are inoculated with the virus of destruction. The scandal sheets feed it.’ He made a sweep with the hand that held the cigar. ‘There is a latent barbarism in this country. I’m sure you’ve felt it. And there is lately a seething irruption of that barbarity.’

  Douglass winked at Nixon.

  ‘Aye.’

  The commissioner went on.

  ‘I blame the selection acts. They’ve turned out a wave of crime against property and person, stirred up vagabonds and bandits. All over the west an air of terror prevails. Robberies. Policeman shot at. Even shot dead. It’s an unholy war, and what should honest men do all the while? I hear some of the farmers are putting together their own militias.’

  He eyed Nixon and suddenly the man realised he was expected to answer.

  ‘Not here.’

  The commissioner nodded and turned to the black girl who had remained beside him.

  ‘Fix your bonnet, child.’

  She did.

  ‘And be away with you.’

  She hurried out of the ro
om.

  ‘A good girl that,’ said Sargood. ‘A good worker.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the sub-inspector. ‘Had her look after my lad the other week when I was at Rewan. The little bastard takes to her like a mother. Specially now we’ve stopped her usin that awful grease they rub into their skin.’

  The commissioner nodded and sighed.

  ‘And yet, as a sow to its wallowing in the mire, or a drunkard to his nip, you may reclaim them for a time, but back they go.’

  ‘All roads lead to Rome,’ said Nixon.

  ‘How’s that?’

  Douglass shook his head. But Nixon was committed.

  ‘I only mean that if the Law is put by God in every man’s heart, then each and every man can be civilised.’

  The commissioner smiled and drew on his cigar.

  ‘If all roads lead to Rome, Sergeant Nixon, then all lead back out again to the wilderness.’

  ‘Touché,’ said Nixon. He stared out the window where the black girl was emptying a pot onto the grass. He had no special belief in God. He wanted only to check the pale and bloated man before him.

  The commissioner raised his cigar in the air.

  ‘Then there’s the trouble in Africa. Our best men fighting for the cause of civilisation against the heathen savage. I saw a picture, just the other day, of a general killed in Transvaal, clubbed to death, his body dragged through the streets and strung up with half-naked savages chanting blood curdling music beneath it.’

  Nixon thought,

  How did you hear it looking at a photograph?

  ‘But even that country,’ said the commissioner, ‘may not be as savage as here. The wolves are always want to enter the Eternal City. And I recognise this whole squatting frontier is a line of perpetual conflict. So we will keep this operation going for the time being. But I warn you both, there are no men. No reserves. Those that aren’t re-assigned within the force are signing on to fight the Boers.’

  ‘That suits me well,’ said Nixon. ‘But if there are no trackers, and I could have one man, then O’Brien up at Arcturus. He can track. I can ride with him.’

  ‘You haven’t heard? He should have been married. After a certain age, living in the wilderness is not good for a man.’