Sunset Ridge

by Nicole Alexander

  Wes took a sip of the water and offered more to Hocking. The suffering man choked and spluttered.

  ‘Mr Wade’s not coming but his son Tobias will eventually,’ said Wes.

  ‘And how do you know that?’ Hocking asked breathlessly.

  Wes screwed the lid on the canteen. ‘He and I used to ride together back in Oklahoma.’

  ‘So you think you’re his friend?’ The question lingered. ‘My father thought that. Aloysius Wade offered my father silver shares, and they sent him broke. He killed himself.’ Hocking coughed, his head drooped on his chest.

  For a moment Wes thought the man was really dead this time.

  ‘Over forty years of service with the high and mighty Wades and look what he got for his troubles.’ Hocking was barely audible.

  ‘What’s this then? An accountant’s revenge?’ Wes laughed but the man had passed out.

  Across the flat country came the familiar pounding of hoofs. Two Aboriginal stockmen and a scraggly white man eased their mounts into a walk. Wes noted the unease on the men’s faces. He’d arrived only months ago from America, and the Australians, regardless of whether they were black, white or brindle, were reluctant to talk to him. They were a suspicious lot, wary of strangers and no doubt expecting him to fail in his role as the new station manager. The only stockman with any noticeable confidence was the straggly bearded white who stared down at him from the saddle. Evan Crawley was leading hand on the property, what Australians called an overseer. The man knew livestock, had the ear of the men and so far had done everything he’d been told. This situation, however, would test him. Evan had been friends with Hocking.

  ‘Mr Kirkland.’ Evan gave a nod and dismounted. ‘You’ve been busy.’

  It was difficult to see the stockman’s eyes under the wide-brimmed hat he wore but his voice was steady, a reasonable sign that the man had the stomach for work such as this. ‘Evan. Nice of you to join me.’

  ‘I’m guessing you wanted some time for Mr Hocking to become acquainted with your management style otherwise you wouldn’t have sent us ten mile in the opposite direction.’

  ‘This is bad business,’ one of the Aboriginals commented.

  ‘Then pack your belongings and leave,’ Wes replied calmly.

  ‘Take off, Chalk,’ Evan told the elder of the two Aboriginals. ‘Take your boy and head back to the bunkhouse. We’ll be along soon.’

  The Aboriginals turned their horses and left.

  ‘Can they be trusted?’ Wes asked.

  ‘They’ll be right,’ Evan assured him. ‘They know what side their bread’s buttered on.’

  Wes put pressure on Hocking’s shoulder wound with his hand. The man awoke with a groan.

  ‘We usually get the coppers when stealing’s involved,’ Evan said sociably.

  ‘Well, I’ve ridden with the law and the best kind of justice is the quick kind.’ Wes took a rifle from his horse and, lifting it, fired into Hocking’s thigh. There was a splat of bullet and bone. Hocking screamed, Evan winced.

  ‘For the love of God, Evan, do something!’ Hocking pleaded, as blood seeped from his leg. ‘This isn’t the wild west. We’ve got laws in this country.’ Evan lit a pre-rolled cigarette and wedged the smoke between the dying man’s lips.

  ‘Australia isn’t my country.’ Wes cut the ropes binding Hocking with a pocket knife and coiled the two lengths up. ‘At least drag yourself away from those blasted meat-ants.’ He turned to Evan. ‘It seems Hocking had a difference of opinion with Mr Wade’s father, something about silver shares, which isn’t much of an excuse when it comes to stealing livestock and siphoning funds from the books. I never did like accountants.’

  Evan sniffed. ‘Don’t have much of a need for them myself.’

  They caught their horses and mounted up. Both men gave Hocking a fleeting glance before riding off, as the former station manager attempted to drag himself away from the ants.

  The two Aboriginals hid in the scrub until the white men disappeared across the plains, then they rode back to where Hocking lay, face down in the dirt. They picked him up and carried him deep into the trees, where they gave him water and a strip of salted mutton to chew.

  ‘You be right, Mr Hocking.’ Chalk, the older of the Aboriginals, cut away the bloodied shirt and prodded the wound. ‘Gone straight through, Mr Hocking.’ He left the maggots wriggling in the dead flesh surrounding the festering injury and pulled a mix of dried herbs from a leather pouch, then added water. As he mixed the concoction, his son Jim checked the bullet hole in Hocking’s thigh.

  ‘The bullet’s still in there.’

  ‘My leg’s broken,’ Hocking told the boy tersely. ‘Best shoot me and get it over with. I’ll not survive.’

  Chalk divided the poultice between both wounds and bound the injuries tightly with strips of Hocking’s shirt as the land grew dark. The man fell unconscious.

  ‘This is a bad business to be tangled in, Father.’

  Chalk gestured for his son to assist him and they lifted Hocking onto a horse. ‘Kirkland cannot take the law into his own hands.’ Once the unconscious man was tied securely to the saddle, they led the animal towards the river.

  ‘Are all Americans like Mr Kirkland?’

  Chalk glanced at the lifeless man slumped on the horse. ‘I’ve only known two. Hocking talked many times of America,’ he told his fourteen-year-old son as the branches overhead grew thick and daylight dwindled. ‘Hocking talked about the red peoples called Injuns, abducted relatives and black men kept as slaves. These Americans are no different to the white man here. Their greed makes them want to conquer all others, but most of all they want to conquer the land.’

  ‘Is that why they came here, Father?’

  Chalk sucked in the dry scent of the bush. ‘Not initially. Hocking said a woman was involved, but it’s not her we need to worry about, or Kirkland. I have waited for the All-father to show me what lies ahead. In my Dreamings I sense another all-powerful one and I worry for what may come across the great waters in the years ahead. You must remember our people, our teachings, Jim, and remain committed to our beliefs.’

  The trees grew wide and old. The thick girths of the ancient plants lined the steep bank of the waterway. The men navigated ancient roots eroded by bygone floods and finally, on the sandy banks of the river, they lay Hocking on the ground. It was dark and shadowy between the water and the trees. Overhead the night sky was bright with stars.

  ‘Will he live?’ Jim placed a rolled blanket under the man’s head.

  Chalk looked upwards at the Emu in the Sky. The great bird’s body lay across what the whites called the Milky Way, its head a dark smudge near the bottom of the Southern Cross, its murky body stretching across myriad stars. ‘Bring my medicine.’ Chalk selected some quartz crystals and shells from the saddle bag, and placed them in a line on the man’s chest. ‘I cannot judge whether he should or should not die. I only know that he was our friend.’ He mixed wild tobacco weed with ash from an acacia bush and placed the drug behind Hocking’s ears and on his bare chest.

  Jim looked on. ‘I don’t know this place, but it feels different.’ On the far bank a number of the trees showed scarring, the waterhole in the river was still and wide.

  ‘My father found me as a child in his dreams and sent me to his wife, but I came too early and was born here at this sacred site, where the rainbow serpent rises for a breath.’ Chalk removed his shirt and sat cross-legged next to Hocking. His lean chest showed three deep scars, thick black welts against blacker skin. ‘You will leave me, son. Return in five days and bring food.’

  ‘Evan will wonder where you are, Father.’

  ‘Tell him what we have done. Tell him that Hocking was his friend and ours and that we have done what he could not. Tell Evan I will return.’ He chewed on a wad of tobacco weed. ‘Go.’

  Chalk watched as his young son gathered the reins to their horses and began to ascend the riverbank. When the boy finally disappeared through the trees, he took a knif
e from his belt and cut a fourth, deep line in his chest.

  Through the pain the world grew still. Chalk focused on the great waters that bordered the land. On the land beyond the waters, and the people known as Wade. Then a shadow appeared and wings grew from the shadow. Overhead the Emu in the Sky stayed constant, but from afar another great bird called.

  Chapter 1

  Thirty-nine years earlier

  September, 1886 – Dallas, Texas

  Aloysius Wade looked down at the main street of Dallas from the second-storey window of Wade Newspapers. Timber shops and business houses lined the wide dirt road. Men on horseback fought for space with covered wagons, drays and sulkies as full-skirted women lifted their hems above rain puddles. At the far end of the street a wagon laden with buffalo bones was halted outside the hotel. The pieces of skeleton glinted in the late morning sun as a black child in cut-off pants and bare feet stood guard, perched on a wagon wheel.

  Dallas had once been the world centre for the trade of leather and buffalo hide but with the animal practically wiped out, the desperate were gathering the sun-whitened bones of the slaughtered beasts and selling them to fill the demand for fertiliser back east. Aloysius had briefly considered entering the market, but his head had been filled with images of bedraggled men, women and children scouring the carcass-strewn plains. Collecting the bones of the dead was not a legacy he fancied even if there was substantial coin to be made.

  He still couldn’t help but marvel at the growth the city had undergone over the past three decades. His father had first sent him and his older brother, Joseph, west to Dallas in 1857 with a view to making men out of them under the guise of expanding the family business. At that time Aloysius had held little hope of a successful venture. The brothers expected to be killed en route either by Indians, accident or some other wily character. As it was, one of their wagons was lost crossing the Red River.

  There had been less than six hundred inhabitants on arrival, which Joseph considered to be an impressive population considering a few years earlier a trading post had been the only feature. The streets were orientated to a bend in the Trinity River at the site of a limestone ledge, which was meant to be the head of navigation. In fact the river was unnavigable but it was the best crossing for miles and Aloysius and Joseph grew used to seeing the billowing clouds of dust that signified hundreds of head of cattle being driven along the Shawnee Trail. Dallas had grown on the back of farming and ranching, but it was only with the arrival of the railroads that the city had prospered.

  ‘Mr Wade, sir.’

  Aloysius greeted his assistant brusquely. Fifteen-year-old Hugh Hocking was the son of his closest friend, Clarence, who was also his accountant and advisor.

  Hugh placed the day’s mail on Aloysius’s desk. ‘My father called regarding the State Fair.’

  ‘And?’

  A single rifle shot echoed in the distance. Aloysius reached automatically for the colt holstered at his hip.

  Hugh flinched. ‘He’s on his way, sir.’

  Aloysius turned to resume his perusal of the street as Hugh exited the room. The heady days of shoot-outs in the main street were almost as rare as feathered frogs, but there were still scrapes between liberated slaves and whites. And there was invariably the odd drunken cowboy or old Indian who came into town to pick a fight. Only last week a black had been lynched on the outskirts of East Dallas for insulting a white woman. The Civil War had changed much and Aloysius knew many southerners wished Dallas had perhaps not been so prosperous at the end of the war compared to other southern cities, although the influx of blacks meant there was rarely a shortage of domestics or fieldworkers, even if they did have to be paid.

  The war. Aloysius couldn’t think or speak the phrase without remembering his older brother, Joseph. On impulse, he opened the top drawer of his desk and reached for the letter Gregory Harrison had written in 1863 from Fort Sumner. Gregory, an old friend from their Charlestown days, had been killed a few months later, shot through the heart by a Kiowa Brave. Aloysius re-read the letter, as he had every week for the past twenty-three years. It was the last time his niece’s name had been written in ink. Philomena was presumed dead.

  We are now facing renewed hostility from the Apache and assume from previous engagements that retribution will be fierce. On that front I was most sorry to hear of your grievous news. In answer to your investigations my advices suggest that it was indeed Geronimo or one of his band who captured your niece, Philomena. The girl’s abduction following the murder of her brother and father is now well-documented in these parts and, although missives have been sent in an effort to broker her return, there is no news.

  Aloysius had spent a lifetime revisiting the events that had led to his brother’s death. At the outbreak of war he’d argued with Joseph for the right to join the Confederate Army. Their father had forbidden them to both enlist in an effort to protect the family line. Joseph eventually grew tired of quarrelling with his younger brother and they agreed to toss a coin to see which of them would go to war. Joseph won.

  A sharp knock on the door broke Aloysius’s reflections and he replaced the letter in the drawer. Straight-backed, of medium height and brown hair, in middle age Clarence Hocking veered towards being overweight. In comparison, Aloysius in his forty-ninth year remained slim and fit. He rode to work every day and took a constitutional along the banks of the Trinity River after lunch when time permitted. After pleasantries were exchanged, Clarence came straight to the point and handed Aloysius a copy of the financials for Dallas’s inaugural State Fair. Due to open next month, Aloysius was part of the private corporation behind the venture. He and his partners were hoping for crowds that would edge the 100,000 mark, thereby ensuring a healthy profit. Aloysius checked the figures.

  ‘I have no doubt that we will exceed our projections, Aloysius,’ Clarence explained. ‘We certainly have the necessary transportation in place to bring the masses to our fair city.’

  ‘Yes, well we are all agreed on that. The railroad has made this town. Believe me, there was a time when I had my doubts as to my father’s sanity when he sent Joseph and I out here.’

  Clarence Hocking shuffled papers and slid another document across Aloysius’s desk. ‘And in all deference to your father, I too was a little perturbed when he asked me to join you.’

  ‘Well, it certainly worked out well, for both of us.’

  Hocking’s mouth twitched. It was the closest he ever came to a smile. Five years older than Aloysius, he’d been a widower on arrival, but he’d quickly remarried and fathered seven children, all of whom had survived and most of whom were law-abiding. The hopes of the family lay with Hugh, who’d shown himself to be intelligent and hardworking. Hocking pointed to the document sitting on the desk. ‘I have copies of the profit and loss statements for Wade Mercantile and Wade Grocers & Provisions. Did you want me to run through them?’

  ‘Are my sons making a profit?’ Aloysius enquired, checking the rows of figures.

  ‘Joe is overseeing the mercantile end of things very well but, of course, like most businesses everything is on credit. As long as the farmers are productive he’ll be paid in due course. And he seems to be managing the plantation well.’

  ‘The costs of shipping to the coast are too high,’ Aloysius commented. ‘If the cotton prices ever dropped significantly…’

  Hocking agreed. ‘Exactly, which is why Dallas must continue on its path to becoming a self-sustaining industrial city.’

  Aloysius had been one of the earlier owners to see the benefit of sharecropping following the changes wrought by the Civil War. Both free black farmers and landless white farmers worked on the Wade plantation in return for a share of the profits, and the arrangement was proving lucrative for the family, although many a time it would have been far simpler to revert to the old ways and simply flog the Negroes who got uppity. Diversification remained the signature reason for the Wade family’s success. It was Aloysius who convinced his father to extend the
ir interests beyond newspapers and into farming and retail a few years after their arrival at Dallas, while Joseph had travelled to New Mexico to investigate the tin and silver mines. Their early business ventures had also been significantly buoyed by two prudent marriages. ‘What about Edmund? Has my youngest lad reached the agreed sales figures?’

  Clarence gave a sigh that assumed a father’s disappointment. ‘Frankly the store should be doing a lot better. Settlers are passing through Dallas and heading north into Indian Territory in greater numbers every year. The trade for goods and provisions should be rising accordingly.’

  Aloysius selected some newspapers from a side table and spread them across the desk. ‘The Civil War and subsequent restructuring of the South continues to affect many.’ Aloysius pointed at the newspapers, the Cherokee Advocate, the Indian Journal, the Indian Citizen. ‘All of these tribal newspapers talk of the influx of white and black farmers into Indian Territory. The Indians are making a fortune leasing their lands or sharecropping them. Why, the Cherokee lease their six-million-acre Outlet to the Cherokee Strip Live Stock Association of Kansas for 100,000 dollars annually. We’re talking 300,000 head of cattle on Cherokee rangelands.’

  Clarence shook his head. ‘I’m not moving to Indian Territory, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’

  ‘I’m simply saying that there are many inflationary and deflationary pressures affecting people since the war. People are looking for a new start. Edmund should be taking advantage of the situation. You mark my words, the civilising of the West has just begun.’

  Clarence couldn’t fault his old friend’s argument. The massacre of buffalo by the military, who knew that the extinction of the animal might well result in the destruction of the Indians by depriving them of a significant part of their culture, had led to an increase in cattle. And while Clarence still owned a ranch, the days of open-land ranching with corrals and cowboys had swiftly changed with the arrival of barbed wire. Cropping farms were increasing and overseas capitalists were making substantial investments in the cattle industry.