One

by Patrick Holland

  ‘Aye.’ He nodded. Then he looked up at Nixon. He wept. ‘Aye, thank you, Sergeant.’

  ‘Go back and get some sleep, Tom.’

  Nixon watched the figure of a man come out of the rock wall. He pushed the bolt of his rifle. But when the figure stood in the shaft of moonlight that fell into the gorge he pulled the bolt back and stood.

  ‘Edward.’

  ‘I found a way.’

  ‘Can you tell it to me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ Nixon sighed. ‘Can we take horses up?’

  ‘For some way, maybe. Then you have to walk them. And they will not like it. Better I go up alone. But if I fail, you can come after me.’

  ‘I will go up with you.’

  ‘No. You stay here, boss.’

  ‘Alright.’ He lowered his voice so the officers and especially the Skillington boy could not hear and would not wake. ‘We’re running out of everything, Ed. Ammunition. Food. Sanity. Jim Kenniff sits there on the rimrock each night trying to scare us. But I think he does not feel strong, else he’d attack us full on. He’s waiting to get well, or waiting for men, or waiting for the fire in the north to die. But even so, so long as we trail him like this, he has the advantage. He attacks when he wants. Do you agree?’

  ‘Yes, boss. And that fire will only last another day. The wind pushes it north.’

  ‘So, will you do a thing for me? That no other man here can do? That will help get us all out of here safe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Nixon nodded.

  ‘Then there is one more thing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He took the boy by the shoulders.

  ‘Have you ever killed a man?’

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘Tell me the truth, boy. I only want the truth. Have you ever killed a man? Before you were at the mission. Think on what they put you there for.’

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘Tell me, Ed. No harm will come to you. Look in my eyes. You can trust me.’

  ‘Yes, boss. I have killed a man.’

  Nixon nodded and closed his eyes.

  ‘Now you’ll tell me about the way up you’ve found.’

  Nixon gathered the patrol. He told them Tom Lawton had tried to escape in the night, hence the cuffs.

  The Skillington boy nodded.

  ‘I knew it. I fucking knew it.’

  Nixon ignored him.

  ‘Ed has found a way up. He will take Tom up there, to show them our prisoner and tell them they are surrounded. He will ask them to surrender. And if they shoot, then Edward will shoot back. Then we will back him up.’

  Nixon tied Tom’s rein to King Edward’s saddle.

  ‘Keep your knife handy. Any trouble, you swing round and cut that.’

  Then he fitted a rifle scabbard onto the boy’s bare back and slid Holland’s Remington inside. He gave the boy the dead man’s bandolier.

  ‘Ed–’

  ‘After this, boss. I’m done. Don’t come for me anymore.’

  Nixon stood in silence, staring into King Edward’s tired and bloodshot eyes.

  ‘You do this, lad, for me, for the state and for king and country, and you’re free.’

  King Edward nodded.

  God, he thought, watching the boy ride away. For me and the King both? He laughed. You marvellous noble bastard.

  ‘Scanlan?’

  ‘Sergeant?’

  ‘Are you sure there’s no whisky left in that saddlebag over there?’

  ‘No. But there’s Holland’s flask.’

  ‘Get it for me, man. Good Christ, I need it.’

  King Edward reined the horses up a grade to the south that snaked back north. They rode over loose stones angling towards the dim outline of a sandstone draw that went up the ridge.

  After two hours following the ridge crown, they looked down. They were a mile ahead of the patrol. They followed the switchbacks until they were moving north up a way that narrowed, and the more it narrowed the more fidgety Tom Lawton got. He stared at the black boy in front of him who had his right hand on the butt of a Remington and his left on a knife in his belt while his horse walked unreined.

  ‘What’s your name, boy?’

  Kind Edward said nothing.

  ‘Your name? What you’re called?’

  ‘King Edward.’

  ‘I mean the name your mother gave you.’

  ‘I don’t know it.’

  ‘Then the name your mates called you … in the camp or whatever you were in.’

  ‘Mirrawong.’

  ‘Aye. Listen to me, Mirrawong. I’ve got bad misgivins about this mission. How about you?’

  The boy took the reins in his hands again.

  ‘You don’t say much, do you?’

  ‘Talkin makes me trouble.’

  ‘There you go!’ Tom Lawton forced a laugh. ‘Me too, lad.’

  They rode further along the narrowing way in silence.

  ‘Lad.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This bad feelin I’ve got’s gettin worse the more we go up this road. Listen to me. We could run out of here, boy. Or else … if you throw down your weapons. Jim Kenniff might just welcome me. And you along with me.’

  Silence.

  ‘After that we can ride back south. Do some horse or cattle work, rob a mail coach. Take up women and drink. I know whores in the towns’d lie with you.’

  Still the boy in front said nothing.

  ‘Alright then. If we must ride up this fuckin way, then you ride with your gun holstered. Your arms in the air … And see this!’ He bit it. ‘My undershirt. You rip it into a flag and we ride up waving it. Those police don’t know what they’re doing, they’ll be picked off one by one down there.’

  King Edward slowed his horse and let Tom ride alongside.

  ‘You watch up there the scarp,’ said King Edward.

  ‘They won’t be ridin there. That way’s plain to sight. They–’

  But when he looked around King Edward had the rifle levelled at him.

  ‘Aye,’ said Tom Lawton, and he smiled. ‘The heart, boy. Make sure it’s the heart.’

  King Edward fired.

  Tom sat dying on his horse and watching the sun. His face burnished by the golden light. He turned his head and saw shafts of light pierce the fringe of a storm cloud that was reaching across from the east – that would put out the fire in Consuelo. He smiled. Then he fell at the horse’s feet.

  King Edward carried Tom’s body to a dry stream and and took the man’s horse by the bridle and tied it to a tree.

  He walked his own horse up onto the plateau of the night before. He walked to where he had seen the water skin. He checked the ashes of the fire. He waited and looked west across the ridge and saw a thin cloud of dirt drift moving down the gorge. The cloud was a half-mile ahead of the place he stood. He tethered his horse where the Kenniffs’ horses had been and he walked.

  He turned round an elbow of stone and he saw Jim Kenniff, black kerchief across his face, wheeling his horse around to take in the gorge.

  King Edward knelt low to the ground. Jim Kenniff saw him. In that instant Jim threw his Winchester to his shoulder and fired and the bullet hit King Edward in the ribs and exited out his back.

  King Edward fell down behind a rock. He reloaded the Remington. Got on his knee and edged just far enough from behind the rock to sight Jim Kenniff who stood his horse in the open, watching for movement through the sight of his rifle.

  Blood ran from King Edward’s side. He thought he could spin on his knee and pull at least one shot off before Jim Kenniff could fire or reach cover. But if he broke from the rock now and missed, or even if he fired true, with that rifle trained on him and Jim Kenniff behind it, he would be dead.

  He peered around the rock. He threw the rifle out into the open.

  Jim dropped his own rifle to his lap.

  King Edward stood and stared at him. Jim Kenniff’s eyes were open wide, every muscle in his body at the ready, but he did not
raise his weapon.

  Now each man looked into the other’s eyes.

  Edward turned his back. No shot came. He walked to where his horse was tethered and mounted. No shot came. He turned around and looked at Jim Kenniff standing his horse on the ridge. Then he turned away.

  He rode to Tom Lawton’s body and took the dead man’s shirt and ripped it and bandaged his torso. Then he remounted the horse and rode south and at last the country flattened out. He wanted to eat something. He regretted not having the rifle with him. But it was better for a black man not to be carrying a rifle if he was without orders from police, and anyway he had his knife, and perhaps tomorrow he would hunt down a rabbit. He smiled at the dying sun and a cold south wind rose and the pain in his side left him, though the torn muscles were stiffening and he was feeling light-headed and he could not properly turn to look behind him.

  They had walked three miles hugging the rock face. Nixon heard the shot split the quiet of the gorge. He froze still and listened.

  Only the one, he thought. He sighed. Surely it’s the boy that fired it. But one shot could be bad, too.

  He was smoking in the shade when he heard the next shot and wondered what it meant. There were at least the two Kenniffs up there. Two Kenniffs and Tom. There should be three shots. Or one. But not two. And the third shot did not come.

  He shouted to the men.

  ‘Tonight we ride up the defile.’

  The Skillington boy rode up beside him.

  ‘The shots–’

  Nixon anticipated him.

  ‘It means they’re a distance apart. It’s the Kenniffs, signalling to each other. They might even be talking to someone further along, trying to get help.’

  The Skillington boy nodded.

  They rode on.

  They stopped at a deep pool.

  Then it was dark and King Edward had not returned.

  The Skillington boy sat next to Nixon, but Nixon did not want to talk.

  ‘Go help the others with the fire, boy.’

  ‘The shots we heard this afternoon. They weren’t the Kenniffs talking to each other at all.’

  Nixon sighed. The Skillington boy went on.

  ‘And still Edward isn’t back.’

  ‘He could be trailing one of them. You know what he’s like. He might not return. Hell, boy, I don’t want to talk about this.’

  The boy nodded and said nothing.

  ‘I’m trying to keep you alive,’ said Nixon. ‘To return you to your mother. Just as much as I’m tryin to catch these men.’

  The Skillington boy nodded.

  ‘What is it, boy?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘It’s just that after every man that we lose …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I feel like …’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘That none of us is getting home.’

  ‘We will.’

  ‘You don’t know them like I do, Sarge. Jim Kenniff. He’s not like other men. He’s hot as fire and patient as stone. He will not stop now. He will not rest and he will not sleep till he’s killed us all. I don’t know what god or devil protects men like him, but he’s protected. Why do you reckon every man, woman and child loves him, he and his men, no matter the havoc they wreak? Why? I don’t know. Do you? Why do they hate you?’

  ‘Us.’

  The Skillington boy nodded.

  ‘Listen, boy. You told me Jim Kenniff can shoot the eye out of a crow at night. You, or someone, told me that. Is it true?’

  ‘I spose it is.’

  ‘Then the target you presented that night when Holland got shot – you should be dead already. I say he was shooting to slow us down.’

  The Skillington boy tilted his head. Nixon went on.

  ‘I promise you, boy. As long as I am alive you’ll make it out of there.’

  Nixon woke in the dark and saw Sam Johnson out in the open studying the gorge walls with Constable Scanlan beside him. He walked towards them.

  ‘Get under cover, Sam.’

  ‘If the black boy doesn’t come back,’ said Tasker, ‘then we need a tracker.’

  Nixon shook his head.

  ‘Get that man under cover.’

  He went to the Skillington boy and held his arm to wake him. The boy sat up quickly.

  ‘I need you to do a job for me, lad. I think you are right about Edward not coming back. I would have given this job to him if he had. But over there with Scanlan is the one man in the country who can make a definite case against the men we’re hunting, and the thinner our ranks get, the narrower and more bereft of cover this gorge gets, the more he starts to look like a target.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘You have to ride escort to him. Ride him out of here and put him on a train to Brisbane. Take him to a telegraph office and Sam will talk to the sub-inspector. Then all will be arranged.

  The boy whispered.

  ‘Do you mean only me to take him, Sergeant?’

  Nixon nodded. The boy breathed deep.

  ‘But you saw how easy they crept up on me back in the desert. I’ve been thinking about it. Those boys of Jim Kenniff’s must’ve sat there watching us like jackals. For hours. They don’t need sleep. They can move without anyone seeing it. And we haven’t seen sign of them for a day and a night. They could be anywhere.’

  ‘It’s true I don’t know where they are. But they are somewhere, not everywhere, and if you move one way and me and these policemen another, then one party of us at least gets out.’

  The Skillington boy shook his head.

  ‘I’m not like you, Sergeant. I don’t have your nerve.’ He sighed and looked down at his boots. ‘I’m not gonna be a lawman. I’ve thought it through these last nights. I want a wife and a home. To sit by a hearth with stew and fresh bread, not lie on a desert floor looking at the stars and hoping and praying like hell that no man or savage or wild dog is at my throat after I close my eyes.’

  Nixon nodded.

  ‘Then do this last thing. You had to ride out of this country somehow, lad. Ride that man back to a train, follow the telegraph line, and you’re free to live out the rest of your days as you will.’

  ‘And if the Kenniffs are here now? Watching us? Listenin to us? Like you say, once they see Sam … And if they ambush us, what then?’

  Nixon laughed.

  ‘Then you’ll be dead and you won’t have to worry about anything at all.’

  The boy searched for a smile but could not find it. His mouth twitched. He squinted. ‘They have nothing to lose. You know as well as I do, Sarge – if they did kill Sam Johnson, and if I saw it – and they knew I saw them do it … You know …’

  ‘What are you asking, boy?’

  ‘If it gets bad, sir. If I see them go after Sam. Can I run?’

  Nixon wondered for just a moment what the boy meant by it ‘getting bad’. But the look in the boy’s eyes said it meant getting any sign at all of the Kenniffs.

  Nixon wondered what difference his word made when the boy had already decided the matter in his heart.

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘I know, sir. But should … can I?’

  ‘Defend Sam Johnson as best as your courage allows. I don’t expect you to die for him, or for me. Defend him to the limits of your strength … then you may abandon your post.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Nixon smiled. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  ‘Once you’re at Injune you’ll be safe enough. You won’t have to do anything more. I’ll get Sam to ask for more men to complete the cordon in the west, to make sure the Kenniffs can’t get out of here, no matter what happens to us. And I’ll have a patrol ride to where we came in, in case they’ve have been signalling for help up there and there’s men planning to ride in and storm us.’

  The Skillington boy shook his head and looked away. He looked at the empty sky.

  ‘They won’t storm you, Sarge.’ But he d
id not know. Tears came to his eyes. ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘We’ll make our way up the rocks the way King Edward found. We have to go at Jim now, or perhaps we’ll miss him for good.’

  ‘Forgive me, Sergeant.’

  ‘Don’t worry, boy. You ride back. We might take a drink some time. You’ll show me your new wife and tell me what work you’re doing or about the block of land you’re on and we’ll put away a bottle.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the boy, still looking away at the ridge to the south, determined not to let tears fall. ‘Yes. That would be good.’

  Sam and the Skillington boy had been gone three hours and Nixon had heard no disturbance.

  He led the patrol up the escarpment. They ran the horses till the horses could not hold the ground. Then they dismounted and walked them. Soon they went on their hands and knees with reins wrapped round their wrists and hands. They came to a stone plateau and there was no sign of the Kenniffs.

  They ran along the ridge where they could lose their footing and slide half a mile. They went this way till afternoon when a clean shelf came in sight two hundred yards away and Tasker saw Paddy Kenniff working his horse down the gorge.

  Tasker whispered hard at the others who squatted and looked in the direction of the shelf. Paddy turned and saw them.

  He ran. Tasker and Nixon charged onto the shelf. Nixon called out to halt and surrender. Paddy ignored the call and ran up a gully. Tasker fired and missed. He fired again and shot Paddy’s horse.

  Nixon called out,

  ‘Where’s Jim?’

  Every man scanned the surrounding rocks. They looked higher. Then Nixon saw him standing his horse between two pillars on an impossible ridge.

  He shouted at his men.

  ‘Get cover!’ But his words were silenced by the bullet singing over their heads.

  Nixon threw his rifle into his shoulder and fired. The bullet kicked up dirt where Jim Kenniff had been a split second before.

  The rounds of the police were snapping in the air at the vanished man.

  ‘He’s gone!’ Nixon called. ‘Save your bullets.’

  Jim heard the rifle reports behind him and the whine of bullets glancing off rock. His mare slipped. He tried to hold her in, but the horse was already side-slipping on the loose shale. He turned and ran her sliding across the loose rock, barely gripping it, then rode down onto a level of broken slabs. He heard another shot. He stood his horse and readied his rifle. But nothing came behind him. He ran the horse west. He kept looking over his shoulder. But no fire came. Sandstone became foothills. And from one of these he could see the fire in the north and the storm wind blowing a sheet of rain. Before him black ash fell like snow. And beyond that black line, through the storm, was the way into endless western plains, unhindered. He turned around and called his brother’s name blindly at the rock wall behind him.