He waited for Paddy. The night air cooled the burning plain. He stood on the hill with a stolen horse and his rifle across his shoulders, with all the plains before him as the stars came into the sky. But Paddy did not come.
He walked his horse down out of the stones. He waited by a cypress tree. Still Paddy did not come.
Then it is done, he thought. And he thought of that last rifle report that had sounded behind him when he came down the rock. ‘Then it is done,’ he cried. And he walked his horse through the falling ash and smoke onto the plain.
He rode into spits of icy rain through the cold country scarred by fire. He came to a hut. In the hut was a black woman wrapped in a dingo skin with two small and naked half-caste children. She had no food to give him, but gave him water from a pouch. He drank. The woman watched him with frightened eyes.
He slept on the dirt floor. He woke in the night and whispered aloud from his dream, ‘I would never ever have left you.’ And he did not know from what dream the words came.
The woman sat with one eye open. Half-sleeping against the wall with her arm around her children and a knife in her hand.
The next green evening he came upon an empty scalper’s hut. Goat skulls and carbine shells lay in rows on the floor.
He lay back against the wall. The Winchester lay across his lap. He had no fire. Dead stillness, then the occasional night sound. He might be the only man in the world. He thought that. He smiled. Then he cried.
The night was bright and clear. He rode down onto blowing grass. The wind came from the south and was cold. A train cut the dark on the eastern horizon. Stars bit the edge of the plain.
He unsheathed his knife and wiped the blade clean on his trousers. He looked at the reflection of his face in the blade in the shallow light. Jim Kenniff the outlaw. He laughed. And he thought of the touch of a woman’s hand.
He ground-tied his horse and lay down beside it and looked up at the silent roaring stars. Then he could see her standing in front of him. Watching him sleep. She was close enough to touch and further away than the stars.
‘I would never have left you.’
She was standing in front of him. The wind blew her dark hair across her face. The wind was biting cold now.
‘Why can’t I keep you?’
Now the wind brought sleet.
He was parted now from all his brothers. From his men. And from her.
And onward I go. But I go to God condemned. My eyes to the ground. How can a man live, when he has done so much wrong, caused so much pain? I would suffer anything to be with you now. With all of you. Anything.
He saw a horse and rider in the distance. He was not afraid. Then the rider was gone and he was alone again in the dark under cold roaring stars. Ahead of him was the long night. Curled in the dark, again, he lit no fire. What beauty is mine? What glory have I attained? What wealth? Now I am to be destroyed in flames. Alleluia!
Ice rain came. In rain like this you could get lost ten feet from your horse. But the girl was still there standing in the rain and now she was smiling. He smiled back.
‘Why were you fighting?’
‘I was at a variance.’
She knelt beside him. Though it was she who was leaving him.
‘God calls me, brother.’
‘To where?’
‘Only He knows.’
Tears ran down his cheeks.
‘Don’t leave me here alone.’
‘Follow me, Jim. I know the way home.’
He woke and pale light was on the horizon. He sat up. He turned around to face the high scarps in the northeast. I will burn the world.
He rode back to where he knew the patrol must pass. He climbed. The ice rain swept the stone and hit him sideways and flayed his skin. When the horse was blinded and could not ride into it he found a cave out of the rain and lit a fire.
He sat in the cave in the stones blackening the edge of his blade in the fire while the storm kept on outside. He looked out of the cave into the dark and watched the ice borne on the wind.
At dawn he rode after the smoke of a cook fire, then the suspicion of mens’ voices. He got close then skirted wide to come in under cover. He began threading his way through the rocks. The ridge flattened out. He ran the horse along the scarp. His rifles were across his back and the Colt at his hip at the ready.
He sighted the patrol. Nixon on foot at the lead and Tasker and Scanlan on horseback leading a pack animal. He pulled his revolver and readied his horse to charge down the scree into the ravine. But he took in a chest full of cold air and winced. For there was Paddy, in chains in tow behind the packhorse.
He closed his eyes and wept.
He took a rifle from his back. He put Paddy’s face in the sights. Then he looked up at the sky. The storm was overhead and there were no stars in the grey dawn twilight. He dropped the rifle to his lap and his chin fell on his chest.
He raised the rifle again. Levelled it at the man at the head of the patrol.
‘I could kill you all,’ he whispered. ‘I could kill you all and every one. I could burn the world till there was only ash.’ He looked again at Paddy. ‘Where will we run tomorrow, Brother?’
They were nearly out of the gorge. They walked a half-cut wild cattle track. They had lost the track for a time. But now a spitting hissing rain was washing it clean again.
Nixon watched the declining ridge.
Up on the rim was a rider. The horse snorting smoke, the man with a rifle in his hands and another across his back. Water sprayed off the top of the gorge.
Tasker and Scanlan looked up and saw Jim Kenniff and fell behind their horses.
Nixon pulled his rifle to his shoulder. He breathed deep. He pressed as hard as he could on the trigger without firing and thought, Fire, man. Fire now. But he looked up from the sight and shouted into the wind.
‘Come down, man!’
Coda
The girl went to the bar to top up his glass. He had stayed upstairs a week already. The one pouring the drink was a pretty redhead called Bella. A hard-faced peroxide blonde came to the bar, nodded at the man and gave Bella a knowing smile.
‘You’ve got yourself a regular?’
‘Hmmm.’
Bella poured whisky into the glass and recapped the bottle.
‘Funny old coot. He’s on some kind of government pension. You should hear the stories he tells.’
‘He’s not old.’
‘He seems old. Look at that crazy King Edward moustache!’
A motor car went by on the street. The girls stopped to look at it. Gentlemen in suits and ladies in fine dresses were getting off at the Paddington tram stop. A half-dozen soldiers got off with them and entered the bar.
The girls smiled at the soldiers making their way through the bar.
The redhead called Bella indicated the man at the table. She spoke to the peroxide blonde.
‘But if half of what he says is true …’
The other girl smiled.
‘It never is.’
‘I spose not. Shame. He says he was some kind of outlaw. Or maybe he was a catcher of outlaws. But look here. Don’t look. Subtly, Maggie. Look at his belt.’
‘A bullet belt?’
‘Yep. What do they call those? I can’t remember. But no bullets.’
‘I hope not,’ the blonde woman laughed.
The girl called Bella came to the table and set the whisky down in front of him. She sat down and let her knee touch his. She put her finger in his belt.
‘What’s it called?’
‘Bandolier.’
‘My friend wanted to know. Where’s the gun?’
‘In the room upstairs.’
She smiled.
He said, ‘You don’t believe me?’
‘If you say so.’
‘It’s the only belt I have. It’s silly, isn’t it?’
‘No. It’s romantic.’
He nodded at the uniformed soldiers two tables away.
‘Where
are they going?’
‘The barracks on Roma Street, I spose.’
‘I meant where are they sending them?’
‘I don’t know. Sudan? I heard Sudan. Or Namibia.’
‘What for?’
‘Do I look like a newspaper?’
‘Forgive me. Lately, I don’t keep up with things.’
‘I don’t know. To fight a herd of Boers.’
‘A horde.’
‘Well, smarty. If you know, why are you asking?’
‘Forgive me.’
‘No sooner we’re a country than we’re at war, hey? They’re even taking them out there.’
She pointed.
Out the window on the veranda were a pair of black trackers in the same uniform as the men in the bar. They were not allowed in the bar. They too were waiting for the tram to the barracks.
He drank the whisky.
‘Perhaps you should bring the bottle.’
She signalled for it.
‘You’ll kill yourself drinking like that.’
‘One of the better ways to go, surely.’
‘Not at the end.’
‘No.’
The girl was looking at the soldiers at their table now.
He looked at them too.
‘I was a soldier. Till very recently. A kind of a soldier.’
‘Yes. You were telling me. What kind?’
‘I worked for the government hunting men who terrorised the west.’
‘Aborigines?’
‘White men.’
He looked in the girl’s pitying eyes and thought, Soon, Sergeant Nixon, no one will believe you.’
‘What were you doing that for?’
‘Why does anyone do any work?’
‘Money?’
‘True. I was paid.’
She stared out the window, then looked back.
‘Speaking of which, you hear those outlaws are going on trial? Last of their kind we’ll ever see. That’s what the newspaper said. The ones arrested last year. Or the year before. And such crowds gathered round the courthouse each morning. The police had to clear the streets. What was their name again?’
‘The Kenniffs.’
‘That’s it. The whole city came out to see the last desperadoes.’
He had seen that headline in a newspaper too. ‘The Last Desperadoes’. Though he did not read the story. The men had been in custody for a year. Only now were they going to trial and exposed to the public again.
‘The worst outlaws in the history of the state,’ said the girl. ‘That’s what they’re saying. Even my old mum went to the court to see them. She said, “I’ve been forty-two years in Brisbane.” She said, “I wanna see them outlaws!”’ The girl laughed. ‘But they say he went quietly. The leader of em.’
‘Do they say that?’
‘Yes. His supporters turned on him for it.’
He nodded and stared at the glass that was empty again now.
She saw by the bottle that he had drunk the equivalent of three doubles now. And she could see the drink in his eyes. It was always at this point in the afternoon, he would drink so much and then he was barely there with her at all. She thought she should act. She put her hand on his knee.
He came out of his reverie. He held her hand.
‘Forgive me. I’m no good for that. I just wanted someone to talk with. I have money.’
She smiled.
‘As you wish.’
It had gone this way every night so far that he had stayed at the hotel. But it was important to get the terms of business straight before a man was too drunk, so he would remember them. Though she guessed this one would pay even if he did not remember the terms.
‘Why don’t you want to go to bed?’
He did not answer.
‘I know! You’re in love, aren’t you? You got a wife or a girl somewhere.’
He thought of a hut with a lamp in the window on a vast plain that was a world away. She was younger than these women in the bar, but as little of their time as he was.
He had ridden back to her after the capture of Paddy and Jim Kenniff. He had ridden back to her in the rain. He had a sick feeling in his heart that he could not account for, that he was sure the girl would cure. All the way back to that town he felt the terrible bittersweet sorrow that by now some other man had found her and taken her to his house as a wife and given her what he could not. She was lovely. Someone would see it surely. As he had. As Jim Kenniff had. And they would take her away from him. He put his heels into his horse’s ribs and breached the storm.
But when he arrived at the edge of the town she was gone. He found the old black woman who occasionally looked in on her. He asked her where the girl was and he listened to the story of how an English railway engineer had shot her in the stomach for having got herself with his child. He asked to see where she was buried but the old woman did not know. She said the government had taken her. The woman grabbed his arm.
‘Why didn’t you come back for her?’
He was shocked. He could not answer, only stare at the woman’s hand. He would never forget the tightness with which she gripped him. The sorrow and anger in her voice.
He remembered the girl’s soft dark skin. Her Oriental eyes. He could not believe the beauty of those eyes could ever be quenched. That face destroyed. Surely it was impossible. It was better, he thought now, that he had not seen her body. And all at once he was crying.
‘Forgive me,’ he said.
The girl at the table glanced at her wristwatch. When he started apologising for things she couldn’t see, then he was nearly gone. She might finish early this evening. With money enough to go to the picture theatre.
He poured his glass to half-full.
The state governor had sent him a letter. The letter congratulated him on ‘ridding the backward west of a band of degenerates in the name of God and Civilisation’. He heard that the governor and the commissioner had had cocktails in celebration at the governor’s bluestone mansion in the week after the capture. Now the commissioner was promoted to government.
But he was paid a £16 reward and offered a promotion that he did not accept. He had taken work at a drapery. Folding clothes.
He gave no evidence in person on that first day of the trial. Only a recorded statement. But he had gone to the court. Now he thought of them sitting there. Jim and Paddy. Eyeing him from the dock. They passed him on the way out. There was an accusation in Jim’s eyes that he could not answer.
He had seen an old bushman he thought he recognised outside the court that day. Perhaps a sympathiser. The old man cheered when the Kenniffs were driven from court to the watch house. Cheered and then wept and then disappeared into the crowd. At one time he thought he saw Alex Stapleton and Michael Carmichael in bowler hats with cravats around their necks, standing behind some boys who had come in from the near hills, who wore some version of a ten-gallon American hat that looked ridiculous, looking at Jim and Paddy Kenniff who had both been sentenced to death.
They were paraded in chains like captured animals.
He took a drink of whisky and spoke to the bemused girl.
‘I should have shot him. Shot them both.’
Since the day of the sentencing, when the crowds broke down the doors of the court, he had got drunk every day. Was drunk by two in the afternoon and stayed that way.
‘When I saw them in the stocks, I knew … I should have shot him or forgiven him. Out there in the wilds. Killed them with my own hand or let them run.’
Their father had sold up all their horses to buy lawyers. They had only nine horses left. He sold these along with Jim’s best horse to the Carmichael boys for £35 on condition of them being found and catchable. He rode the ranges looking for men who knew his boys and might testify to their character, but every man who had even ridden with the Kenniffs had fled into the wilderness. And the landed sympathisers denied ever knowing them.
The judge’s voice had trembled when delivering the sentence.
There was a priest sat beside the Kenniffs who shook his head and walked out of the court alone.
Nixon drained his glass and poured again. He stared out the window at the people going by. The women with the slim, neat-cut dresses that were the style now. Sometimes at a depth of night and drink he thought on Jim Kenniff so long he did not know which of them rode that ridge in the dark and which was down in the valley keeping another watch at the fire.
But now – at this very hour – Jim would hear a prison bell clanging to say that proceedings had commenced. A police chief and four khaki warders would be entering Paddy Kenniff’s cell. And a hangman in a black mask and a false beard and spectacles would be pinioning his arms to his sides with a leather strap – the hangman was required to sleep in the gaol two nights before the hanging to remove him from men, so he did not retain the sympathies and doubts of a man. And the government overseer would step forward. Soon Jim too would be in the gallows.
Nixon spoke to the man riding the scarps in the west with the dark behind him as though in prayer.
‘I’m sorry, Jim. God, I’m sorry.’
Jim turned his horse away into a bitter cold wind
She stared at him. Were those tears in his eyes? She was thinking there could not be long left in the man before the drink put him away for the night when a boy behind the bar turned on a wireless to listen to a news broadcast. The broadcast spoke about a new shipment of horses to Australian infantry in Sudan. The Light Horse were about to ride on Transvaal.
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