‘Hmmm.’
‘You should sleep.’
‘Alright. But, sir. Forgive me. Do you have any money? I will need a little before you go tonight. That man you shot owed me ten shillings. Like I say, you can lie with me. Or I can send for another girl.’
‘Lie down.’
He went to his wallet and took out a £1 note and put it under the rolled-up towel she used for a pillow.
He leant close to her. He put his hand on her forehead.
‘I don’t like that wound. Do you know anyone in Longreach? Anyone who can look in on you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anyone good?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tomorrow I will arrange for you to go to a hospice and a doctor I know there. I’ll give you money, but when you’re done being treated you’ll need help. Even if only to get back to here.’
‘Here isn’t my home.’
‘Where is?’
She shrugged and looked out the window.
He brushed her hair from her eyes, from where it matted in the blood that seeped from the bandage.
She said,
‘Will you come back and look in on me?’
‘If you like.’
‘When?’
‘A week or so. After you’re back from the hospice. They’ll take care of you there. Now sleep.’
He sat back down against the beam he had fallen asleep on. His back began to pain. He took his boots off and he lay down with half his body on the blanket and his head beside hers on the towel to raise his head a little.
In the night she put her hand on his chest. He woke and stared at her hand. He took her hand in both of his and in this way they slept.
In the quiet before dawn he got up and put on his boots. He looked at the girl’s table. She had a pen and a bound book of paper. A pen and book of all things. What a strange child. He wrote a note and folded it. He left his water pouch beside her. How sweet she looked asleep. But he did not like that wound. He folded another £1 note next to her hand and walked out the door. The old woman was baking bread in coals. He gave her money and the note and told her to help the girl to the mail coach when she woke. He mounted his horse. He had left the horse saddled all night. He stopped at the next town and had the horse stabled and he took a cheap room on the second floor of the hotel and slept.
The girl woke with the headache Nixon had warned her of. Blood had hardened to a crust on her bandage. Her hair was stiff. She sat up and drank a cup of water.
He was gone. Left her without a word. She stamped her foot.
‘He’s gone and hasn’t paid!’
Then she half remembered the man’s movements before she fell asleep last night. She spun round and looked beside her pillow and saw both £1 notes.
The old black woman heard her shuffling and came to the shack and said the girl must come with her according to the gentleman.
Jim Kenniff walked his horse into a wind that came across the plain from the west like a blast from a furnace. Then it was dusk. Then dark and the wind turned cold and the country was empty but for a few dim lights on the southern horizon. Those lights were miles away. The night was blue. Starry and cold. He pointed his horse at the lights. He had been riding on this cooling plain, through towns and bars in towns, riding towards a place he could not name; running from a thing that occasionally in his mind took the shape of a police patrol. And he would see men on horses on the plain that fit the dream – but they were scalpers or shepherds and they rode on and left him be. He rode through the night and rode into a town like all the others.
He rode in with two cleanskin horses he had won at cards. The horses were hitched to each other with a driving rein. He would put them with his horses that were loose up in the stony country at their hideout, then take them to sale in the spring. But first he would put them in a paddock at Elim with the other horses he had won and stolen on the road. He had gone through £1200 that month – in country where the average ringer was paid £1/10 a week. He bought new boots and clothes wherever he was and then left them in hotel rooms. He sat at blackjack tables with £100 stakes; he lost £300 in a night to a drunk surgeon in a poker game on a train; and he had spent more than half his money on drink and gambling. He had a cut above his left eye from a barroom brawl where a man had hit him with a whisky bottle. He lost count of the days he had been living in hotels and camping in the wilderness. He had picked up a telegram from an outpost post office and paid a girl on the street to read it. Tom Lawton wanted to meet him outside Ilfracombe, else Augathella if he had already ridden on.
He waited on the outskirts on a hill overlooking the gaslights. He came into town at dusk like a hunted animal, skirting the edges of the world of men. Never to be welcomed.
He followed a Chinese man with a bamboo pipe slung across his back. The man went to a slat-timber smoking den festooned with red Chinese lanterns.
He smoked a pipe and the dragons carved into the joists began to coil around each other and he smiled.
A girl came beside him.
He took a coin from his pocket and spun it on the table. The coin stopped spinning so this was not a dream.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘A woman brought me here to the hospice.’ She pulled her hair to the side to show the wound not yet healed above her right eye.
‘I’ll kill the bastard.’
‘That’s been done.’
Jim laughed.
‘So you didn’t lie to me that night about being protected.’
‘I did. I was lucky this time.’
Jim nodded.
‘Well, I spose you have many … suitors.’
The girl scowled.
‘I know who you are.’
‘Because I told you.’
‘But now I truly know.’
‘How?’
‘I read the papers this morning.’
‘How do you know how to read?’
‘Nuns taught me.’
‘What do the papers say?’
She stood up and went to the Chinese proprietor of the house. He retrieved the city newspaper from under his desk.
She went back to the table and put it down in front of him. He glanced at it.
‘It’s dark in here. You read it to me.’
‘It says, “Outlaws James and Patrick Kenniff and their gang of bandits out of the Carnarvon Ranges may be abroad in the west of the state. They are wanted in relation to the theft and sale of horses from Carnarvon and Babbiloora stations and other matters of interest to the police. It has been rumoured they may be seeking ship to South Africa or California. Any knowledge as to their whereabouts will be handsomely rewarded.”’
Jim lay down on his side and lit his bamboo pipe and drew.
‘If I wanted a ship, why would I be in the desert?’
The girl smiled.
‘You going to turn me in?’ said Jim.
‘No. But I’ve never heard such a public warning over stolen horses.’ She stared at him. ‘What have you done?’
He was silent. He dragged the paper towards him. There was a bad sketch of him. It was either him or Paddy – in flight on a horse. He stared at the words beside the picture. He leant close to the page. Turned it left then right. She saw.
‘You can’t read it, can you?’
He looked up at her.
‘No.’
Though they were poor his mother had had books. She had sung songs. His sisters took after her. Later, they would read to him the letters their mother sent from Brisbane and then Sydney. He remembered one where she extolled the beauties of the latter city’s cathedral bells tolling in a manner she called ‘plain hunting’, but Jim had no notion of what that might sound like. It made him think of shooting foxes on the grass flats, and that did not sound like much. The only bells he had ever heard were fixed to horses with a wont to stray.
‘I could teach you to read. I know where I can get books of stories. Not just newspapers. Stories that tell all manner of unb
elievable things. Back in Jericho I have two paper books. And the Bible. But I can get books here, too.’
He smiled.
‘Maybe tomorrow. But can you write as well as read?’
‘Yes.’
He took out a small yellowed sheet of paper and handed it to her.
‘The Chinaman will have a pen and ink.’
She went to the Chinaman’s desk and took them. She came back to the table.
‘Write, To Tom L. Meet at Tiger Scrub in seven days. If not there ride to Mexico.’
He asked her to repeat it. He put six shillings on the table on top of the paper.
‘Get the old man to take half the money and give the driver the other half and take it in secret with the next mail coach. And please get me some water.’
She gave the note and the money to the Chinaman. She took a glass and drew water from a barrel beside the back door. She came back and sat down and put the glass on the table.
‘I have one other paper that mentioned you. It called you and your brother the “wolves of the ranges”.’
He was silent. He looked down at his pipe. He took a drink of water. She looked at his tip-twisted moustache now growing into a wild beard. She stared at his green eyes. Pretty green eyes like her own. She did not know if they were wolf’s eyes.
‘You have sad eyes,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you have not done something awful. Perhaps something awful has happened to you.’ She watched him. ‘Why are you shaking?’
‘I need more smoke. Or a drink. That’s all.’
She looked at his fine coat. Oilskin with lapels.
‘Were you poor like me?’
‘Don’t the newspaper stories say?’
‘No.’
‘You ever seen those kids in the bush? Irish kids. Wearing a pinafore night and day because they have nothing else. Untaught in everything and left to themselves till the day they are useful for work. If a stranger comes to the house they hide in the bush like savages. And if their mother sees the stranger first, she gathers them into her skirts and shuts the door. Not for fear of the man, but because she knows her children aren’t fit to be seen. And you see your six-year old brother not able to say a word at night cause he’s exhausted from drivin horses all day cutting chaff. And you never ever sleep until dawn. Not even on your birthday. And twice a year troopers ride round, and you get hidden like I say, and your father hides, and your mother goes to a box and gives them what little you had for the winter for the glory of Crown and King.’
She nodded.
‘I’ve never had a birthday.’ She sighed. ‘Why don’t you and me get a place?’
‘Say again?’
‘We can go somewhere together.’
He stared at her.
‘Why me?’
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘I feel like we’re aligned.’
‘How aligned?’
She shrugged. She fell back in her chair. She touched the stitches on the wound on her forehead.
‘What would we do?’ Jim said.
‘You can change your name. Do horse work. I read you’re good at it. We can go somewhere far away from everywhere and you can break horses. We could go to the snow, where you mother’s people were from. Or further down south where it’s civilised and no one knows you. Or America if you have the money. The papers say you have the money.’
‘I’ve near blown it. Anyway, there are better men than me, girl. Station managers and such. Some lose their wives and are in want of another. You’re pretty enough. Ask one of them to take you with them.’
‘I did. Three weeks ago. He wouldn’t.’
‘What manner of man was he?’
‘A policeman.’
Jim nodded.
‘But was there never any other man?’
‘There was a British officer. He was from a good family. He put me with child.’
‘What happened?’
‘He ran off.’
‘The child?’
‘An old woman gave me burnt seeds and the child … went out of me.’
Jim closed his eyes and nodded. He was silent. The girl went on.
‘The woman sold me the seeds. But she said I was going to hell for it. I said she’d taken the money so she’d be going with me. She shouted at me from the Bible. I remember the verse she cursed me with. “Are you not children of transgression, the offspring of deceit, you who burn with lust among the oaks, under every green tree, who slaughter your children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks?”’
‘Bloody hell, girl. How would you remember that?’
‘How could I forget? I destroyed the image of God.’
He shook his head. She closed her eyes.
‘Am I going to hell?’
‘Why do you ask me? Because you think I’m near it?’
‘No. Only …’
‘Because I know about sin? All black women take scripture literally, girl. It’s not how it’s meant to be taken. You did no great wrong. I want another pipe.’
‘You’ve sold some horses. Risked your life to do it. For your father and brothers? But you drink and smoke your share in houses like this. Drink and gamble it away.’
‘Did you read all that?’
‘Yes. And I see it.’
‘So why take up with me now? What good am I?’
She moved to beside him. She put her head on his shoulder. Her hand on his thigh.
But he was no good for that now. The smoke had killed it. He fell asleep in the chair.
A storm skirted the northern horizon. Sheets of rain hung in the air then moved away to the south. Jim met Tom Lawton and Jack under a willow on the plain.
Tom got off his roan horse. He did not shake Jim’s hand.
‘When are you comin back, Jim?’
‘I’m headin that way now.’
‘Why’s it take every other bastard a week to get back and you more than a month?’
‘I got two horses slowin me down.’
Tom spat onto the iron-red dirt.
‘The dud cheques you’re passin round the country are gonna catch up with you eventually.’
Jim took the whisky flask from his coat and drank.
‘I don’t pay with dud cheques anymore, Tom.’
‘In which case you’re blowin your father’s money. Our money.’
‘My money. I took every risk. Including the risk of my life. Which risk stands. But I don’t want to fight with you, Tom. I want you and the boy to take these horses back to the range. Tell the old man and Paddy to muster everything within reach. I’m going to meet McCulloch early. Have him buy a hundred hores.’
‘You’re dreamin, Jim. There aren’t a dozen horses up there anymore. If we wanted more we’d have to steal em off flats in full view of bloke’s homesteads.’
‘Then that’s what we’ll do.’
Tom shook his head and looked away at horizon.
‘You reckoned we were done nightridin, Jim.’
Jack spoke.
‘And Mick’s in the lock up, brother.’
‘What for?’
‘Suspicion of horse theft,’ said Tom. ‘He’ll get off. He’s being held on remand. There’s no evidence. But the police, they’re trying to scare folk. Rid the country of your sympathisers.’
‘Our sympathisers.’
‘Aye. But Alex is gone too.’
‘Gone where?’
‘Scalpin. He’s found a woman. He can’t be runnin around the hills with loaded revolvers at his sides forever. None of us can.’
‘By which you mean you can’t. Is that what you mean, Tom? You gonna run off on me to the authorities? You want that reward the newspapers are talkin about. Is that it? Maybe you’re out here to take me in? He pulled his revolver and knocked Tom’s bowler hat to the ground with the barrel.
‘What fucking reward? Put that fuckin gun away, Jim, you crazy fuckin drunk. You called us out here. Remember?’
‘You called me first.’
Jim lowere
d his revolver. He took a drink of whisky. He looked away at the storm disappearing in the south.
Tom cursed.
‘You think they’d give me one fuckin shillin, even if I did turn you in? The drink’s killin your sense. I never even heard of any fuckin reward.’
Jim breathed hard of the cool air and looked at his young brother. The boy looked on Jim like a stranger. Like the character he read about in the week-old newspapers Mary Boyce passed on to the Kenniffs via her ringers. The ‘wolf of the ranges’.
‘What are you lookin at, boy?’
‘Brother,’ Jack said. ‘Take what’s left of your money home to Dad and take the horses. We need yards put up.’
Jim took another drink from his silver flask and put his revolver back in his hip holster.
Tom shook his head. He picked up his bowler hat.
‘Draw on me, will you? Your own fuckin cousin. The brother of the poor bitch you–’
But he did not finish that articulation before Jim Kenniff backhanded him.
Tom spat blood on the ground. Looked up at Jim.
‘You wanna know why Alex really left us, Jim? I’ll tell you why. Cause he was scared of you. Scared of the new direction of your disposition. We all are. Look at this fool boy here! Him and Elden think you’re some kind of great fucking rebel. But every day you’re out here living like you do you put their lives in danger. All of our lives. You ride with fighting guns visible at your fuckin hips. But for what cause, Jim? Have you thought of that?’
‘Always.’
‘For the poor Irish? Your family? I’ll tell you what cause. Yourself. For your own fuckin glory and nothing else. So we’re all of us scared. Scared of you on the drink. Scared of you out here alone. Scared of you caught by police. Scared of what you’ll do with a loaded rifle on your back when the wrong mood strikes you … Wake up, man! Bring your money and your horses home and we’ll be done with this life. For fuck’s sake, Jim, even Paddy’s afraid of you.’
Jim’s eyes stayed staring at the horizon.
‘He isn’t.’
Tom turned and picked up his hat from the dirt.
‘He told me himself.’
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