by Tanya Moir
The Kid and Cooper reined in and the horses skittered below them and tossed their heads and the Kid and Cooper sat the horses and looked at the mule and the horses looked at it too. The mule looked back. Its brown muzzle moved as if it was chewing over something though what digestible matter it could have scratched from the road was hard to comprehend.
Cooper’s hand went to the butt of the rifle that hung beside his leg.
Watch your back, he said.
But even as they spun the horses a voice spoke and it came from the road behind them.
Buenas dias muchachos, it said.
The Kid turned the palomino again but in front of the mule stood more men with guns in their hands and bandoliers on their chests and even if he and Cooper had thought of outrunning the bullets behind they could not go that way.
The grey squatted and dug in his toes at the bristle of guns cutting off their retreat and Cooper spoke first to the horse and quieted him before he addressed the men strung across the road.
Buenas dias, he said.
There were more than twenty weapons pointed at them and pointing the weapons were all manner of men and some wore sombreros and some wore American hats and some aimed from the shoulder and others the hip but each man had the Kid and Cooper clear to rights and his finger on the trigger. In their midst stood one whose guns were still in his belt and silver tooling shone on the grips of his guns and on his lapels and the brim of his sombrero. He smiled at Cooper and the Kid and his shoulders were loose and his hands were in his pockets.
I am Ramon, he said and his voice was the voice they had heard before. And you are?
Passin through, Cooper said. We don’t aim to trouble no one.
You will not, said Ramon. But why such a hurry? Stay a while. We insist.
The Kid heard a stone slide in the rocks to his left and he turned his head and looked up into the twin barrels of a shotgun.
You’re takin us prisoner, Cooper said.
Prisoners, Ramon said. No my friends. You are our guests.
Ramon took his hands from his pockets and raised them and clicked his fingers twice and the Kid saw a flash of gold rings. Two men moved forward.
Of course, Ramon said, in these parts it is customary for guests to hand over their guns to their host. A small courtesy for the safety of all.
The Kid looked at Cooper. The armaments surrounding them clicked. Slowly Cooper drew his rifle from its scabbard. For a second he weighted it there in his hand and the grey pricked his ears and stepped in expectation. Then Coop let the weapon down real easy into the arms of Ramon’s man who stood waiting to receive it. Cooper laid his gun belt over the top and Ramon’s man nodded and stepped away and Ramon smiled and in the silence all barrels turned to the Kid.
The Kid’s hand was inches above the grip of his gun and his fingers curved to its shape but instead they moved to his buckle. He unslung his gun belt and handed it down and all the while he was watching Ramon and Ramon met the Kid’s gaze and continued to smile and when the Kid was done and the guns were brought back Ramon patted his vest pocket and brought out a match and struck it on his silver lapel and lit a cheroot and exhaled.
Do you smoke?
The Kid and Cooper were silent.
Well then, Ramon said. There is no need to delay.
Two more of his men came forward. They were carrying rope and sacks and the last thing the Kid saw before they covered his head was an upside-down slice of the road ahead where a barefoot boy in a soiled and ragged shirt stood hugging the mule.
Winstone opened his eyes. Something was disturbing the sheep and he sat up to see what it was but as far as he could see the only thing chasing them was the wind. He shifted his arse which was going to sleep on the rock and scratched the back of his head where the lichen was making it itch and then he examined the scurf his fingernails had collected.
The rabbit was still there below the rocks and the hawks were still in the sky. Still nothing moved on the road and it came to him that being a bandit king could require a lot of patience. Like the spider whose front legs he could see in the crevice beside his toe and it came to Winstone too that he was sick of waiting. But maybe it was easier to wait for the things you didn’t want to come than the things you did want because each empty day was a good day you’d had and not a waste and a disappointment. Maybe after a lot of those days you’d just take whatever skinny thing happened to come along and wrap it up tight and forget you’d once hoped for a blowfly.
He poked a stuck lake fly out of the web. It left a few legs behind but the spider didn’t come and get them.
Winstone watched the road some more. He watched the road and he turned a fresh page in his brain and he drew a line down its centre. On the left he tried to put the things he wished would come up the road and on the right the things he hoped would not but they refused to divide. So he crossed out Alicia in a blue dress on a pony and he crossed out Debbie and Tara and Lorne Greene and John Wayne and a pizza delivery van and pretty soon all he had left was A HORSE and he crossed that out too because someone would come looking for a lost horse. A WILD HORSE. But Winstone knew there was no point hoping for that because all the horses there were in the real world below had already been allocated.
Something moved. Not on the road but in the grass below the rocks and he watched the kitten creep through the tussock blades like syrup running from a spoon. He waited for the rabbit to run but the rabbit did not. It had its head down eating the grass and it didn’t look up as the kitten gathered itself and shifted and twitched and froze and thought and twitched again and Winstone looked down on them both from his tor and the hawk shadows slid. It was time to pick a side.
The kitten was hungry and it wanted the rabbit so bad it couldn’t hold the wanting inside. The kitten wanted the rabbit like it was a free mega-bucket of KFC just sitting there on the counter and the bucket was bigger than the kitten was and maybe it was more than a kitten could even eat but it wanted to try.
The rabbit wanted to itch its ear and clean its paws and eat the grass and maybe that didn’t amount to a lot but it was all the rabbit had.
Hey rabbit, he said. Watch out.
At the sound of his voice the rabbit vanished so fast he could barely tell which way it had gone and the kitten sat up and bashed its stripy tail side to side and looked at him with its narrow yellow eyes and Winstone had no doubt that if the kitten knew how it would have bashed him too. Then it turned its back on him and slunk off into the grass and he thought he might not see it again and he felt bad for a while but then he remembered it was a pretty sorry excuse for a cat and what it had done for him anyway?
He went back to watching the road. Above it a hawk braked and teetered to hold its spot but what it had seen down there in the dust was impossible to say.
BUZZARDS SOARED above the lair of the Bandit King and their wing feathers spread across the sun and their shadows raked the rocks and the brown grass country below but the Kid and Cooper could not see them. They rode the narrow path blind and reinless with their wrists secured to their saddlehorns and only the draught of the wings above and the long and echoing fall of stones dislodged by the horses’ hooves to hint at the height to which they had climbed.
Ramon’s men led them on. The way was wide enough for a horse and no more and an inch from the palomino’s hooves the rotten rock sheered away and fell a hundred feet to the gully below where a jackrabbit startled at the trickle of schist running down and stared up wide-eyed at their passing. Above the path was a short steep slope of shale clumped over with thorn and sage and from the shale rose the standing rocks that buttressed the bandit citadel and hid El Rabbitoh from all but the buzzards’ eyes.
From within those rocks the path was a ribbon twisting in the sun and the horsemen wound up it softened by dust and behind them the range ran bright and wide to the earth’s blue ends where cloud shadows stained the snow. Rock shaded the face of the Bandit King as he looked down from the highest sentry post and his eyes fierce
and dark as buzzard wings swept over the path and the riders on it. Behind him the sentry waited and El Rabbitoh turned from the window and nodded to him and then the Bandit King left the rocks. Outside in the sunlight he paused and looked up at the birds in the sky and the darkness remained beneath his eyes and they were the eyes of a man for whom sleep and trust were hard to come by. Wings passed over El Rabbitoh and his face was a wall of stone.
Ramon spoke a word and what had seemed a boulder blocking the path was revealed as a gate and the gate slid away as four of El Rabbitoh’s men turned the giant wheel that worked it. Ramon touched his heels to the black flanks of his horse and the horse’s dark feet stepping high led the way through the gate and behind the hooves of the last bandit horse the gate rolled back into place and the gatemen braked the wheel.
The hood was snatched from the Kid’s head and a buzzard screamed out of the blinding sun and the Kid squinted and blinked and still tied to his saddle he sat and looked upon the home of the Bandit King. Within the circle of rock was another of mud and stone and from the roof of that circle rope ladders led to sentry posts in the rocks and above the rocks the Kid could see only buzzards and sky and by the sun alone could he make any guess at the direction he had come from. They had halted in an empty dust space at the centre of the fortress. The space was bordered by a wide portico and men rose from the portico cradling their guns and from that shade looked out at the Kid and Cooper hatless and bound underneath the noonday sun. No one spoke.
Near the gate was a pump and a boy took the handle of the pump in both hands and worked it with all his weight and the pump began to bray hee-haw and the horses blew and stretched their necks towards the scent of the coming water.
Welcome, Ramon said. Friends. Let us show you to your quarters.
A studded door swung in on darkness and thudded there. The Kid and Cooper followed it in with two Winchesters behind them. The gun barrels withdrew and the door slammed shut and they heard the ram of a bolt and the turn of a lock and then there was silence.
The room they were in was cool and dim. There were sacks of fodder on its stone floor and a smoke of feed dust hung and turned in the latticed light beneath the grille in the mudbrick wall. In one corner were two clay jars half the height of a man and Cooper lifted the lid of the first jar and raised the dipper inside and sniffed.
Molasses, he said.
The Kid crossed to the grille in the wall and pulled himself up by its iron bars and looked out as best he could at the yard outside but beyond the underside of the portico’s slate was nothing but a mess of white light to pain his eyes.
What do you figure they want with us? the Kid said.
This one’s water, Cooper said and he lifted the dipper and drank. You want some? It’s good.
The Kid let go of the bars and dropped back to the ground and he turned and propped his back and one boot on the wall and he looked at Cooper.
They’ll tell us what they want soon enough, Cooper said.
Meanin we might be sorry to know.
Meanin I’m goin to enjoy me this here cool drink of water, Cooper said. Meanin you could do worse than do the same.
I caint enjoy nothin, the Kid said, not knowin what them bandits intend.
Well now Kid that’s a shame, Cooper said.
He hung the dipper back in the water jar and replaced the lid and then without further word Cooper settled himself on the sacks and took the hat from his back and shook it off and lay down under its brim and in such manner awaited the pleasure of the Bandit King.
The Kid kicked his boot heel against the mud wall. He pushed off it and circled the room and returned to the grille and pulled himself up and looked out into the glare and dropped back and circled again and looked at Coop who did not appear to have stirred and he looked down and picked a piece of chaff from his sleeve and then he sighed and sank to his haunches.
I know one thing, Cooper said.
What’s that? said the Kid.
Coop thumbed back his hat with one hand and lifted the other hand and considered what it contained.
We aint their first guests, he said.
Between his fingers Cooper turned a little pink glass button.
There was rose in the sky, a blush of it, not angry but like a petal. The day was slowing down and soon it would reel off over the hills and there would be only a glow of it left behind still and thick as the glass behind Marlene in the Clintoch church. The hawks had gone wherever hawks went and replacing them a line of geese beat across the dusk baying loud and sad as lonesome dogs in case anyone should miss their slow flight and no shot rang out from the valley below and the sheep filed back across the glazing sky with their number complete and all in all it had been a good day for the hunted.
Nothing had moved on the road and nothing would now with the night advancing out of the east and faster than it used to. Maybe that meant whatever was coming for him was one day closer and maybe it didn’t and maybe every day that ended like this wrapped up in cellophane skies was a gift and a horse you shouldn’t look in the mouth and it had carried him one day further away from Glentrool, and maybe when enough had gone by and enough world had turned what he’d done would slip over the shoulders of the earth and out of sight and he could go on just him against the sky without a thing behind him.
Winstone climbed down from the rocks and walked back to the cave. He thought about going on just him and he wondered where he’d go to.
Inside the cave the kitten was waiting for him. It flattened its ears and hissed when he tried to touch it. To make up for the rabbit Winstone dangled a bit of dried speargrass over the kitten’s head and the kitten grabbed it and turned upside down and kicked up at the stem with both back paws. Then the kitten made a grab for his hand and Winstone gave it the stem and after a lot of thought he chose a can of spaghetti with cheese and lit the gas burner to heat it up because it was cold in the cave even though the wind wasn’t blowing. He sat on his sleeping bag and watched the gas flame and listened to the flame hiss and he thought about moving on and staying put and he thought that maybe this was the right place to be and the problem was there was only so far west you could go before you ended up back where you started.
EAST TO WEST
It was the PigROOT not ROUTE that first brought Winstone west, a funny name for a road and Grunt and Bic would have had a thing or two to say about it if they’d been along for the ride. They weren’t. They were falling further and further behind one marker post at a time, one broken white line disappearing not into nothing but a bitumen haze where their edges shed and he didn’t have to look at the shapes of them any more.
Instead, Winstone coloured horses. Cremello buckskin chestnut roan. Horses in blue covers and green covers and close by the fence a posse of naked muddy rough-headed bays with a feral look about the eyes. A paint, which was what Great Horses of the American West said was the name for a patchy horse. Apache horse. And Comanche and Cherokee and Sioux the Red Indian rode not just with his whole body but every fibre of his soul and they’d come swooping down these hills the brown grass country flying like the empty lonesome wind.
Todd Jackson pulled his visor down. They were driving into the sun.
In a dry tufted paddock a pair of brown giants, shaggy white bucket feet and bright white arching noses.
Clydesdales, Todd said. Draught horses.
He hadn’t spoken for a while.
Winstone turned his head to look at them some more. The diesel engine clattered as the road climbed and outside the wind pushed and sucked and the chip-seal rumbled like the receding eastern sea and from somewhere inside the Pajero’s dusty dash came a constant plastic rattle.
In the back his bag slid and shifted among Todd’s gear. Todd drove a lot slower than Bic or Grunt or even Ros-your-social-worker did, but still the wagon bumped and lurched and wallowed its way like a half-poisoned possum around the bends and as the brown country narrowed and closed them in Winstone kept a watch on the gullies and bluffs and dry c
reekbeds, the rising earth so thin you could see its bones. It was good country for an ambush. For outlaws and rustlers and Bandit Kings. A bad land for the law.
If Zane was going to break him out this would be the place to do it. The cops weren’t watching Winstone any more. They’d finished with him, and whatever it was Zane was wanted for – unpaid taxes or speeding fines or shoplifting puddings and DVDs or assault of some shithead Year Nine who really deserved it – he could come out of hiding now. If Winstone were Zane or a Bandit King he’d have a hideout behind the tallest bluff. A secret fortress. He’d see everything for miles and when he saw the Pajero coming his men would push a big rock out into the road and Todd would have to stop and the Bandit King would gallop down on his big silver horse with its mane flying out and then he’d rear up and say hand over that boy. He belongs with me.
You couldn’t do that sort of thing at the emergency home. He’d known that, really, all along. With cops and lawyers and Ros in and out all the time and witnesses there around the clock a raid just hadn’t been realistic. Zane wasn’t going to blow a hole in the wall and yank him out to freedom. But Zane was going to come. Somehow somewhere he was making a plan. Winstone could feel it in the silence. One day he’d turn around and the stranger behind him on the bus in the street would be Zane in disguise and they wouldn’t say a word they’d just slip away the two of them alone and nobody would ever find them at Zane’s new house no neighbours no room-mates no locks no rules no dreams and when they got there Winstone could sleep.
The Maniototo, Todd said, and the plain opened up and the badlands were gone.
There were a lot of things to learn about Todd and one of them was that he liked to get in with the place names before the green signs but Winstone didn’t understand that yet and his head was suddenly full of stretched sky wider than the widest screen pulling the clouds apart and fraying them into the blue and the way Todd said Maniototo he misheard the name and thought of the Lone Ranger.