As the sulky moves along at its steady, slow pace, Jessica tries to think about the mob of horsemen that she’s sure will be out after them.
She reckons that it’ll take at least four or five hours to get a mob of men together from the various homesteads and stations around, then they’ll proceed to Riverview to inspect the three dead women. If they decide to tell the two Thomas men of the tragedy, locating the run where they’re working might take another hour at least and the return to Riverview the same. Getting to Joe’s place will add yet more time, which means they wouldn’t arrive there till late in the afternoon.
After that, drunk or sober, there’ll be some good bushmen among them and they’re not men to be easily fooled. They’ll see the dead dogs, the milk pail and billy abandoned together with the broken shotgun. Then they’ll come up to the house and see Billy’s discarded clothes floating in the tub beside the windlass, and her own stuffed into a bucket in her bedroom. There’ll be blood on everything, evidence of violence everywhere. It wouldn’t be too hard to make a decision as to what’s happened. Jessica runs the most logical sequence through her mind, trying to think as the men might do. They’ll conclude that there’s been a struggle of some sort at the pepper tree and that Billy has slaughtered the dogs. Then, when they go up to the homestead and find Billy’s torn rags and her own blood-stained clothes, the most likely conclusion they’ll reach will be that he’s murdered Jessica as well. But when they can’t find her body, they’ll change their minds and decide Billy’s taken her hostage and that her life is in danger.
The missing sulky will confirm this. After that it won’t take them too long to discover the sulky’s tracks running along the river front and they’ll be on their way in hot pursuit.
Jessica does have one thing in her favour, if it’s all going as she expects. If the men get to Joe’s in the afternoon, and then spend an hour looking around before they set off for the punt, they won’t get to it till sundown, the time when the snakes come out to dance. She knows a good horseman won’t take the risk of a snakebite to his mount, so with any luck the mob will agree that they can’t track Billy in the dark and that setting out in the morning is much the better plan of action. The country on the far side of the river and stretching all the way to the Lachlan is lightly wooded at best and most of it is flat as a pancake, black soil and scrub country where it isn’t difficult to track a man down once you’re onto him. They’ll probably have a black tracker along with them, too.
Jessica reckons they’ll assume that Billy is in charge and she, if still alive, is his hostage. Billy, they’ll think, has long since lost the skills of the bush and will have trouble finding water or earning his tucker off the land. There is simply no hiding for long in this type of country and once they’ve picked up his tracks they’ll reckon they have a better than even chance of tracking down their quarry before sundown tomorrow.
Most of the men will have come out without rations, eager for the chase and with half a skinful of Sunday grog to cloud their judgement. Some, with the drink already leached out of them in the day’s riding, will now want to go home and pick up enough rations for a couple of days. Unless Jack Thomas or his old man has thought to issue rations to the horsemen before they’d set out from Riverview. But it’s better not to think that way, Jessica decides.
Jessica thinks she’s left the homestead around nine o’clock in the morning, which, after they’ve negotiated the punt, should put them across the river a little before noon. On. the other side of the river they’ll take the road to Narrandera and from there, if the track isn’t too rutted, they should make pretty good time.
She reckons the journey to Narrandera will take her and Billy around twelve hours in the sulky, allowing for stops every three hours to give the pony the spells he will need. If nothing goes wrong, they could make it to Narrandera just before midnight, although Jessica isn’t fool enough not to know that something almost always goes wrong and that no journey in the bush is ever completed according to plan.
The drought has left very little grass about and their wheel tracks in the black soil won’t be hard to follow. The mob’ll soon enough know that she and Billy have headed for the punt. If they’ve reached Joe Bergman’s place earlier than she’s supposed and make it across the river before sundown, then they’ll have plenty of time to catch her. No matter what Jessica does, the sulky can’t outrun a mob of men on horseback. So she prays silently that she’s calculated correctly.
For the first few miles Billy sits nervously in the sulky, watching Napoleon’s rump, but after an hour or so he settles down and even seems to have forgotten about the danger they face. Jessica sees no reason to alert him — she realises that, like a small child, he has put his trust in her and is now enjoying their ride. It is as if they’re on a day’s outing or on their way to a picnic on the river bank. Might as well let the poor bugger have his freedom while he can, she thinks.
Billy loves the birds. The sulky frequently comes across a flock of galahs feeding in the dust, though on God knows what — there must be grass seed waiting for the rain. Billy’s eyes grow bright as they approach the feeding birds and he chortles with delight when the rose-breasted galahs rise at the last possible moment in front of the sulky. He claps his hands, pleased as punch when they schwark their indignation at being disturbed. Then he does an imitation of their cries, laughing and puffing out his chest, feeling very pleased with himself. Jessica reckons he can do a better than fair imitation of almost every bird call they hear.
‘Jessie, Jessie, look,’ Billy frequently shouts and then he might point to a sulphur-crested cockatoo sitting high up in a river gum. He’ll imitate the raucous sound of the big white bird, and often, to his immense delight, elicit a reply.
He does the same when they see a kookaburra or any of the parrots and rosellas they encounter on the way and he claps and chortles all the while, happy as can be, a small boy with a voice box of tricks showing off in front of her. She is grateful that it’s a game he seems never to tire of playing, leaving her to her own dark thoughts. Again she thinks miserably how kind it would be just to kill Billy out here, while he’s still happy and free, before anyone gets to him.
The sun is almost directly overhead when they arrive at the punt. Jessica can hardly believe her luck — it is moored on their side of the river. She sees the winch on a small platform built into its side, with the wind-in rope strung back to the far shore and the take-up neatly wound on its drum close to where she stands. Bringing the punt across the river is a tiring task, usually managed by two strong men. She hopes that Billy, with what help she can add, has the strength to wind them over to the other side of the river.
Jessica drives the sulky onto the punt and signals for Billy to climb down. ‘Billy, you’ll have to wind us over now,’ she says, taking him by the hand and standing him in front of the winch barrel with its large wheel. ‘You’re a strong lad, Billy, will you show Jessie how you can turn the wheel?’
Billy is delighted at the compliment. ‘Billy strong boy, Jessie!’ He smiles, rubbing his hands together and then spitting onto each palm.
Jessica releases the drum brake and adds her strength to the wheel as Billy starts to wind the rope in on one barrel while paying it out on the other, grunting as he pulls the punt slowly across the river. It is hard work, and the river, even though turgid and its current slow, catches the side of the punt, pushing it downstream so that Billy and Jessica must fight to keep both the ropes taut to prevent it from slipping sideways. Billy is soon drenched in sweat and near exhausted by his efforts and Jessica thinks her arms must surely fall off. Nearly half an hour passes before they reach the far shore of the Murrumbidgee.
Jessica leads the pony and sulky off the punt and up the embankment and gives Napoleon his nosebag of oats. Then she takes the hand axe, cuts a stout pole from a river gum and returns to the water’s edge to jam it into the rope drum so that it cannot release if an attemp
t is made to pull the punt back to the other side of the river. It isn’t much of a delaying tactic, as all it will require is for a man to swim across and unlock it again, but if as she’s hoping their pursuers arrive at sundown they may just decide to leave off until the morning, afraid of the snakes. Even if some of the men have packed rations, they may decide to stay the night and camp some distance away from the river bank to cross at first light, by which time she hopes to have reached Narrandera or to be no more than two or three hours away.
Billy is knackered and sits on the punt. Jessica calls for him to follow her and he climbs slowly to his feet and tries to walk, but the torn muscle in his leg has stiffened and he seems unable to move.
‘Come on, Billy, you must try,’ Jessica urges him. He tries to hobble and then hops on one foot towards her. It is at once obvious that he cannot manage the steep incline up the river bank. Jessica returns with the pony and sulky and, after much effort, manages to get Billy up into the seat and now tries to lead the pony up the embankment. But the horse is harnessed for flat country and wears no breastplate, and it cannot pull Billy’s added weight up the slope, making but a foot each time and then sliding the full distance back again.
Jessica takes everything she can from the sulky in order to lighten it — the tucker basket, axe, water bag, blankets, billy, skillet, tin plates and mugs, the bag of oats she’s brought for the pony and finally the Winchester. She tries again, but no luck. Finally she chops down a cypress pine and lops the branches along the trunk some three or four inches from where they abut so that each short spike will dig into the river bank and act as resistance when the sulky wheels run backwards against the spiked log.
The cypress trunk is heavy and she is already exhausted, but with each small gain up the embankment Jessica somehow manages to keep sliding it under the sulky wheels. In this manner, almost inch by inch, they make it to the top. It is an hour before they’ve conquered the slope and the pony is almost spent and will need another spell before they can move on. Jessica is anxious and impatient, but knows they have no choice while Billy, seated in the sulky, is soon enough asleep.
It’s well after two in the afternoon when she has reloaded the sulky and they finally get away again. What Jessica had hoped would take them no more than three hours including the river crossing has taken them two hours more. They have at least another ten hours to go before they reach Narrandera and Jessica now knows they won’t make it in one haul.
She decides they’ll go as far as they can before stopping for the night. When the sun sets there’ll be enough moonlight to guide them along the rutted road. But the pony, even with frequent spells, has no more than six hours left in him and will be unable to work any longer without a good night’s rest. At the latest, by nine o’clock they’ll have to stop and camp for the night.
If the men on horseback get across the river by sundown, they’ll catch them anyway and Billy won’t see another dawn. But if they do stay the night on the far shore and cross at daylight, then, with a fair amount of luck, she and Billy should be no more than four hours away from Narrandera and the mob won’t catch her. It’s a lot to ask of Napoleon, but he’s a stock pony in his prime, bred tough, and unless he goes lame she knows he’ll give her all he’s got.
By sundown they are twenty miles from the river crossing and Jessica knows the next two hours will tell if their pursuers have managed to cross the river. Going any further, she tells herself, isn’t going to make any difference. She decides to take a spell and boil the billy.
Billy is in a lot of pain as she helps him down from the sulky and allows him to use her shoulder to steady himself as he hops on one leg off the track. She helps him lower himself to the ground with his back resting against the trunk of a boree tree. Jessica makes a fire of dry scrub and boils the billy. Making two strong mugs of sweet black tea, she hands one to him. She adds more twigs and a few dry branches from the boree and allows them to burn down, then puts the skillet on the hot ashes and cooks a thick slice of bacon, which she cuts into tiny squares so Billy can swallow them easily. She hollows out the centre of half a loaf and packs in the bacon pieces and then replaces the bread. It’s the only way she can think to prepare a quick meal for this poor creature who has no teeth.
Jessica tries to sound cheerful as she hands the bread and bacon to him. ‘There you go, Billy, eat it all up now. I doubt there’ll be much more coming your way till mornin’, mate. When we make camp tonight, I won’t have the strength to cook and you’ll have to settle for dry rations, a bit o’ bread maybe, eh?’
Billy snatches at the bread and bacon, grunting as he tears at it with his fingers, cramming pieces into his mouth as fast as he can manage, softening the bread with gulps of tea. Then Jessica sits on her haunches and eats a little of the bread and drinks her tea and wonders if this is the last supper for poor Billy Simple.
She is dog-tired and the thought that the mob may have made it across the river makes her want to cry. She tells herself that Billy is her charge and she must deliver him to the police magistrate. She cannot bear the thought of failing, of seeing him gunned down short.
Joe wouldn’t say anything and he’d be happy she was alive, but she knows that deep down he would think she’d failed, that she didn’t correctly calculate the risks. ‘Girlie, they killed him, didn’t they? And he could’ve killed ya, eh, eh? A waste o’ time and effort and now them what did the killing’ll think things about you and him. Bad things.’ Jessica can hear him clear as a bell, even though she reckons he’d never say such a thing to her face.
She thinks about Jack. What will he say about all this? Earlier she felt he would agree she’d done right taking Billy to the police magistrate at Narrandera. But now she’s not so sure. If he’s among the men when they come, will he be the one to pull the trigger? The mob would expect it. Will Jack put Billy up against a tree and blast what few brains he has left out of his ugly head? Jack’s own self-respect may demand that Billy die by his hand.
But how would Jessica react then? Would she try to defend Billy Simple against the mob, against Jack? If she did, she knows it’d be taken real bad by all who heard of it, not just the drunken mob on horseback, but by folk everywhere. Jessica can hear the gossip in her head:
‘A woman who defends a murderer must have a reason, don’t ya reckon? She’s ugly and can’t get a man what’s normal. Hey, wait a minute, maybe them two . .. ? What’s he say all the time about what Jesus give him? Maybe she’s been helping herself on the side? Joe’s youngest, she ain’t like her older sister. Never did like her much. A proper tomboy, and ya can’t trust a woman what dresses like a man, can ya? Dirty little bugger!’
Jessica can see their looks, hear the sniggers from the women at St Stephen’s or at the agricultural show. Hester and Meg could never again hold their heads up in polite society.
Again she thinks about killing Billy. She could claim he tried to rape her when she was asleep. She could say she was trying to bring him to justice and also to save him from what the men would do to him — that was true enough. Then he’d attacked her, a madman coming at her in the night.
Jessica isn’t even too sure what rape is, or how it is done. It is a word she’d first read in the newspapers when she was ten and. when she’d asked Hester her mother had said it wasn’t something a little girl should know about. When she’d persisted Hester sighed and replied that rape was when a man made a baby with a woman he didn’t know from Adam.
The young Jessica simply couldn’t imagine why a man would want to do that. Almost all the people she knew had too many children as it was. It was hard enough trying to feed the brats they had with their own wives, let alone the kids of someone they didn’t know. But when she’d asked Hester why a man would do that, Hester had gotten real cranky and said that all Jessica needed to know about men was not to let one touch her until she was married and never to talk to a foreigner in a railway station.
As Je
ssica had never been in a railway station and couldn’t remember if she’d ever met a foreigner she’d felt pretty safe from this particular version of rape. When she told Joe what Hester had said and asked him was it true, he’d grunted, plainly embarrassed, then, after a while he’d cleared his throat and replied, ‘Yer mother’s right, girlie, most men are animals, not just foreigners.’ She supposed Joe had to say that because he’d once been a foreigner himself.
Now, at the age of eighteen, Jessica hasn’t acquired a lot more knowledge about rape. If men are animals, like Joe says, then they must do it like animals. This thought has preoccupied her greatly. She wonders how a man could rape her if she refuses to go down on all fours in front of him? He’d have to threaten to kill her and she’d have to do it to save her own life. That’s what she’ll say Billy did, threatened to kill her. He’d be dead and with him being mad and a murderer, there’d be nobody wouldn’t take her word for it.
Still and all, she’s read about a woman in Sydney who’d been surprised in her bed by a man who’d come through her window one night. She’d kept a knife under her pillow and she’d stabbed him to death in the act of raping her. Jessica has often puzzled about how the woman could stab him with her being on all fours with him behind her and her with her back to him and her hands and knees planted on the mattress. She’s concluded that the woman must have done it afterwards. The paper didn’t say, just said she’d stabbed him with a kitchen knife.
Jessica now realises that she can’t say Billy threatened to rape her. Because it will mean Billy has made her go down on all fours and done it to her before she killed him, like the woman in Sydney must have done. Otherwise how can she prove he tried to rape her?
The judge let the woman in Sydney off, but the newspaper didn’t say if she’d had the dead man’s baby. Jessica doesn’t want people thinking she is going to have Billy Simple’s baby. That Billy actually did it to her. It would shame Joe something terrible and Hester and Meg could never live such a thing down. Even when she doesn’t have the child because nothing happened, people will always say that she could have, that he’d done it to her rape or not. They’ll point to her and whisper to each other that she’d been raped by a madman and they’ll giggle and repeat the thing Billy always said about his gift from Jesus. They’ll think, she’s had his big thing inside of her. The shame of it might even prevent Meg marrying Jack Thomas, which will cause Hester to banish Jessica to purgatory for a lifetime or even longer. Jessica decides then and there that she definitely can’t make rape her reason for killing Billy.
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