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‘Who brought ya?’
‘I came on the train. Then the old man picked me up.’
All the men sat down at the fire where Jack boiled a thin stew. They took their knives to bread that broke like chips from a wooden board. They poured stew into metal cups and broke the bread into it.
Old Man Kenniff looked across the blackened, hungry faces of Jim’s men.
‘How’d you fare along the way?’
Jim shrugged. ‘Mostly we were aided. We ran into John Creevy and the Brassington boys. Creevy rode on ahead of us for the most suspect hundred miles. He’d ride back in the night and give us the all clear. On the return we were on our own.’
‘No trouble from police?’
‘No.’
Joe Rhine stared at him across the fire. Jim saw it.
‘What are you lookin at?’
Joe threw a stick into the flames.
‘Nothin.’
Paddy went to the cave store and came back out with a bottle of whisky. Jack watched him.
‘How was prison, brother?’
‘Wonderful. It gets better each time.’
Jack grinned up at his brothers.
‘Wipe that stupid grin off your face, lad. You think it’s a joke.’
‘You made it a joke, brother.’
Alex laughed and took Paddy’s whisky bottle and took a drink.
‘He’s been reading about us in the papers in Sydney. He reckons we’re heroes.’
Elden Calhoun grinned.
‘We made the papers in Sydney?’
Alex took paper and tobacco from his pouch and rolled a cigarette.
‘Paddy made the papers. You didn’t.’
Paddy took back the bottle and spat tobacco behind him. He looked at Jack who was looking at the fire and smiling. He motioned to his young brother with his thumb.
‘He thinks the outlaws always get outta gaol. That the troopers never hit a thing they aim at and that bandits never miss. That we end every day with bullets skippin into the dirt about our horses’ feet while we ride into the sunset unassailed unto whisky and women.’
Jack smiled.
‘That’s the truth, in’t it?’
‘Look around, boy! Where are the women?’
‘There’s whisky.’
He put his hand out for the bottle.
Paddy passed it.
‘Mother shoulda kept you in Sydney.’
‘She tried. I worked on a trawler for a while. But fishing didn’t take with me.’
‘Shame. You might have been some use as a fisherman. And now you’re just another useless mouth to feed while you pretend you’re livin in a Deadwood Dick.’
Alex sealed his cigarette with spittle and lit it.
‘And we already had Elden for that.’
Elden looked up from the fire.
‘Shut up, cousin.’
Jim turned to his father.
‘The country’s dry as a witch’s tit. For miles out of here.’
‘Aye,’ said the old man ladling stew. ‘Even the old families are leaving. He turned to Paddy. ‘That new manager down at Carnarvon, what’s his name? German bloke …’
‘Dahlke,’ said Jim. He looked up at Tom and Alex. They were staring into the fire.
‘Aye, that’s it. Dahlke.’ The old man laughed. ‘You tell em, Jim.’
But Jim was silent. The old man went on.
‘Few months ago, Paddy, when you were away, this Dahlke comes to the Ralph hut accusin Jim and Alex of drivin horses off Carnarvon and Babbiloora.’
Paddy spoke.
‘What finds its way that far into the scrub is any man’s. So it’s always been.’
Jim shook his head.
‘But more than half a those are our old horses. The ones at the gorge end of Carnarvon. Those were ours.’ He was staring into the fire. ‘We didn’t have fences to hold em.’
‘I know that well enough,’ said the old man.
Jim spat into the fire. Reached for the whisky.
‘Anyway, those horses are sold.’
He took a drink and looked about the dark scarps. He thought, And now we live on rocks. Rocks where you couldn’t keep a hundred goats let alone a hundred horses. He remembered taking them to Early Storms that first time, a dozen at a ride. Then watching them get thinner and nearer to dying each day, trying to pick feed out of crevices, some breaking their legs to get footholds that would let them chew on low-hanging branches.
‘And Carnarvon’s got grass just burnin in the sun. Nothin on it.’
When the brands were healed – brands they’d cut and remade with hot lime powder – the men had ridden the horses back onto feed at the high edge of Babbiloora. Tailing them out at night, rifles at the ready. It was that as much as the night-riding that made the trouble.
Old Man Kenniff nodded.
‘We’ve been paying men with dud cheques since you left, Paddy.’
‘But we’ve got money now,’ said Jim. He took a twist of tobacco from the wallet beside him and bit off an end. ‘And there’s one more lot of horses we can rightly claim. Horses we can catch and sell.’
Joe Rhine shook his head.
‘I thought we were done.’
Jim eyed Joe across the fire.
‘Near done.’ Then he looked up at the stars. ‘We have to keep going.’
Joe laughed without mirth.
‘Keep going towards what?’ He flicked his cigarette into the fire. ‘When we got the horses off Babbiloora and Carnarvon we were done, Jim. That’s what you said.’
‘We’re done when there are no more of our horses in this country. And there are horses still.’
Paddy drank and looked at the fire.
‘What are you thinkin, brother?’
‘That mob we passed ridin into here.’ He turned to the old man. ‘Down off Consuelo. Between Devil’s Post and the eastern scarps, high up Peawaddy and Meteor creeks. It was night when we passed, but there must be three dozen of em. Mostly cleanskins from what I could make out. Livin up there on crowsfoot stalks. They must be some of ours. Paddy?’
‘Aye. I spose so.’
‘And the foals of ours and wild horses. I guarantee you we find some U-lazyK-6 horses in em. They’ll be easy enough to coax out. And there aren’t even blacks up there on those creeks. We’ll pass quieter than ghosts.’
Paddy spoke.
‘The blacks aren’t up there because it’s an old burial ground. I rode into it the afternoon before I went away.’
‘We rode through two of em to get back here and didn’t get any trouble.’
Paddy tilted his head.
‘I’ve seen em get angry over lesser things. You never know how that’ll go.’
‘I know most of the chiefs and kings round here,’ said Jim. ‘Lately they’ve been comin to the old man for tobacco and whisky. They won’t trouble us.’ He spat tobacco into the fire. ‘We’ll take the horses and sell em at Roma, or further south if the feed on the road will hold up.’ His eyes went to the western ridge. A line darker than the sky. ‘We need a new yard.’
‘Aye,’ said Tom Lawton. ‘Those horses’ll be madder than goats.’
Jim smiled.
‘There’s not a horse in these ranges I can’t catch in the mornin and ride home at night.’
Paddy only stared into the fire and nodded. Jim saw it.
‘But you look troubled, brother?’
‘I’m tired, Jim. That’s all.’
‘Speak.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Say it.’
Paddy sighed. He looked at the fire. Then down at his boots.
‘All I want’s a stretch of country. Enough to run a few cattle. So I can break horses for the neighbours and run the cattle I own and that be it. I want a wife.’
‘How do you mean to get all that if not by taking it from them?’
‘There’s a bloke I met in gaol. A cousin a yours, Tom. Theophilus Foot. I’ve been meanin to tell you all.’
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�Aye,’ said Tom. ‘I remember him. Good old lad, too. Well I’ll be. Old God-Lover Foot, eh? Was he in for vagrancy?’
‘And drunk and disorderly. But he reckons he’s selected some scrub north of here, near Galilee. Reckons it’ll be alright once it’s pulled. I mentioned you, Jim. But all you boys could get in on it.’
‘Galilee!’ said Alex. ‘Fuck me, Paddy. That’s the desert.’
‘You can run cattle on it.’
‘Aye,’ said Tom. ‘But that’d be Theo. He worked up there once.’
Jim nodded. But it was as though he did not hear a word.
‘We have to keep ridin against them now.’
A station hand looked up from digging a post hole and saw horses and riders silhouetted against the dying winter light at the top of the range. Though he did not know for sure it was them, he went into one of the rum shanties on the Comet River that night and boasted he had seen the Kenniffs night-driving horses.
‘Where was that?’
The boy turned around. He saw the man who asked the question. A tall man with a stiff-brimmed hat that sat low and straight over his eyes, and a tawny tip-twisted moustache.
‘I reckon towards Rewan, sir.’
‘Nixon’s my name,’ said the man. ‘Bring your drink down here and we’ll talk.’
The patrol found tracks along a creek east of Consuelo. There were rocks pushed out of old sittings as if by a mob of horses driven in a line.
They rode onto Boyce’s station but no one was at the homestead. The homestead sat on the crest of a hill and Nixon wondered if the people had seen him coming and hid.
They rode next door to Tom Thurlow’s patch of country. Thurlow and a pair of his ringers said they might have seen someone driving horses as night fell but did not pay any mind to it.
‘To what?’ said Nixon. ‘Two dozen or more horses, half a mile off a good stock route with green pick, being moved across rocks in the dark?’
‘That’s right,’ said Tom Thurlow.
Nixon spat. He leant on the pommel of his saddle.
‘Here’s the thing. I doubt any legitimate drive would take such a route across these mountains.’
Thurlow shrugged
‘Nothin to do with me.’
‘But it is, Tom. Crime undermines every good thing in the world. Even things that criminals, let alone you, regard as good. There must be things in this world you love. Whose sanctity you would preserve from lawlessness.’
Tom Thurlow smiled.
‘Indeed there are, Sergeant, and if, as you say, there are outlaws abroad in the ranges, then let me return to the care of those things.’
‘The Kenniff boys,’ said Nixon to the man’s back. ‘That’s the gang you used to sell guns to, isn’t it, Tom? Before you married into this bit of country? This country that men like me keep watch over. Even though you’d betray us to the same outlaws that’d take every last head of stock out of your hills if one of them decided he had a grudge against you, and perhaps stop at taking your wife.’
Tom Thurlow spat.
‘I know the boys you’re talking about. Last I heard they’d gone east. Months ago.’
‘Was it them who drove the horses across the ridge two nights ago?’
‘I couldn’t make out the faces.’
‘You didn’t send a rider up to look?’
‘No. Why would I want that trouble?’
‘That’s curious.’ Nixon nodded at King Edward, stiff-spined and bareback on his horse. ‘Cause my tracker here has one set of fresh horse prints going up to the ridge and one coming back to the house. So if it wasn’t one of your men, it was one of theirs. Don’t you think that’s curious?’
‘I’ll check my stores.’
‘Perhaps one of your women met someone yesterday night.’
‘Are you brewin for a fight, Sergeant?’
‘No.’
‘But I couldn’t strike you, could I? That’s where your kind draw your bluster. A poor working bastard like me can’t touch you. Even when you slight me.’
‘Forgive me, Tom. That came out wrong. I only meant that the men we’re tracking will be riding a long way. They’ll need supplies every two or three days, and to spell their horses. You’re not missing any?’
‘You said there was only one set of tracks going back up the ridge.’
Nixon looked about the homestead and yards. To a stand of bull oaks.
‘There are a hundred ways out of here. I’m not going to spend a night looking at rocks to prove what I already know. I just wondered if you might tell us where they’re heading.’
Tom Thurlow nodded. He flicked the butt of his cigarette onto the dirt and put his heel on it.
‘You say you ride my boundaries.’ He nodded. Looked up to the ridge. ‘Let’s say I did know the men who were driving horses by here two nights ago. Where will you be when word gets out I told you about them, and one of their thugs or ring-ins comes here drunk with a stirrup iron threatenin to break open my head? Where will you be then, Sergeant? Getting a medal pinned on your coat in the city? Or in the town with a bottle of whisky and a whore? I know about you, too, Sergeant Nixon. I heard about your history, and I have sympathy for you. But from where I stand there are certain laws you – like all police – prefer keeping than others. And you cannot keep your vigil everywhere at all times. And when you are absent, then who defends my land and my women? I’ll tell you. I do. And that’s what I’m doing now. Goodnight, Sergeant.’ He eyed King Edward. ‘And take your savage well away from my homestead.’
The Skillington boy pointed at the houseyards. To a horse tethered there. Only the outline of the animal was visible now in the dusk.
‘That’s a fine looking horse, Tom.’
Thurlow looked quickly at his yards. He took his pouch and pinched tobacco.
‘Thank you.’
He kept walking towards the homestead. The boy called at his back,
‘Especially fine for a man who’s famous for having the hairiest inbred ponies on the range. That horse is seventeen hands high. And sore. I been watchin im.’
Thurlow stopped.
‘I wanted to join a decent horse with my mares for a change. I put a few pounds away for him in the summer. Any wrong in that?’
‘The Kenniffs are famous for liking good horses.’ The boy spoke now with an authority he borrowed from the man he rode with. ‘They like good horses so they stay faster than the police. I say that’s not your horse.’
‘I bought him off a friend.’
Nixon spoke.
‘Who’s your friend?’
Thurlow took smoke papers from his trouser pocket. Took one up with his tongue and rolled tobacco into it.
‘I’m tired of answerin your questions, Sergeant. I’m goin inside.’
‘If that horse had a Kenniff brand on its hide, or a tampered brand made to look like a Kenniff brand, what do you reckon that’d mean for your story?’
‘It doesn’t.’
‘And I say it does.’
‘Ride out of here, Sergeant. Why are you pesterin me? Last I heard, the Kenniffs were in the east. Pickin up their brother out of gaol.’
The boy turned to Nixon.
‘Should I check the brand, Sarge?’
Nixon nodded.
The Skillington boy rode to the yard. He got beside the horse, struck a match and called back.
‘It’s not Kenniff’s.’
Thurlow lit his cigarette.
‘Now get off my land.’
Nixon readied to apologise. He should not have put so much stock in the boy. But the boy called out again.
‘HB1 on the shoulder. 35 off the neck. The brand’s HB1.’
‘That’s a Babbiloora horse,’ said Nixon. ‘That horse is stolen.’
‘Everyone trades horses up here.’
‘And some men steal them. And others help them to steal them. Tell me the manager’s name. The man who sold you this horse.’
Tom Thurlow shook his head and laughed and spat.
Nixon got off his horse and took cuffs from his saddlebag.
Thurlow’s wife had been watching from one of the dark windows of the house. Now she came onto the veranda.
Nixon’s breath caught in his chest at the sight of her. He called to her.
‘Hello, Ada. I’m very sorry for this.’
‘What the hell is going on, Sergeant?’
‘Could you get one of your boys to find a quiet pony?’
‘Why?’
‘We need to take Tom into town.’
The woman gathered her skirts and came across the dust. She whispered fiercely at him.
‘He hasn’t done anything.’
There was venom in her eyes. Nixon locked the cuffs in front of her and in front of the children who had come out onto the veranda. A boy of fourteen, a girl of twelve and a much younger girl. The boy was skinny and scruffy and red-cheeked like his youngest sister. The eldest girl was just as beautiful as her siblings were plain, and was the mirror image of the mother at the same age. She stood in a white dress that an itinerant nun had given her, that might fit in two years’ time, with her blonde hair hanging long between her shoulder blades. She and the other children half hid behind a beam. The boy and little girl looked stunned. The eldest girl was crying. Nixon saw it.
‘I’m sorry, Ada. Tom’s not who we truly want, I dare say we won’t keep him long. But can you find me that pony? It will be much worse if we have to walk him.’
‘You can’t put him on that horse?’
She pointed to the Babbiloora horse.
‘It’s a stallion, and anyway it looks half-lame. I’d prefer a pony.’
‘You won’t get there tonight. Even with a horse.’
‘No.’
She called to her son to bring the pony.
‘And Ada?’
‘Yes?’
‘If you know anything that can help us … help your husband?’
She nodded.
‘Yes, yes. Alright.’
‘Forgive me, Ada.’
She whispered,
‘Do you mean to take some kind of revenge on me through him?’
‘No.’
‘You know …’
‘Know what?’