by Paul Howarth
They overtook the natives and corralled them by circling the horses head to tail. Three men, two women, one of them very young, cowering together in a melee of wild dogs. All of them were naked, the women holding each other tightly by the arms, as if preparing to dance, and the men crouching with their spears raised ready to throw. They turned as the horses turned, bare feet shuffling in the dirt, eyes flashing around the circle as it closed and closed and closed.
Tommy scanned the men’s faces: Joseph wasn’t there.
The corral stopped revolving and the posse faced them front on. Everything was still. The horses panted from the chase, frothing at their mouths, bodies heaving with each breath, and the riders panted also, recovering themselves, rifles lowered or propped in the crook of an arm. The natives moved only their heads, twitching man to man. Tommy felt their eyes pass over him, felt their terror just the same, and realized that to them he was no different from Noone or anyone. He had drawn his rifle obediently; now he let it hang.
Some of the dogs began growling and barking. Maybe ten dogs in all, mangy and piebald, ribs jutting beneath their scarred coats. Not full dingo, not full anything, just dogs. A brown-haired thing, its yellow teeth bared, snapped at the shins of Locke’s horse. The horse drew back, startled, nearly threw its mount. Locke righted him and leveled his carbine at the dog, then thought better of it and drew his sword instead. The blade was slightly curved and it glinted in the sun. Locke taunted the dog, waited for it to lunge again, and when it did so he leaned and ran the sword through its neck. A quick thrust, in and out: the dog keeled onto its side, bright blood spurting, and sniggering rippled briefly around the corral.
Locke examined his bloodstained blade, ceremoniously turning it this way and that, then he stared at the natives and settled on the nearest man. The man still had his spear raised. It was aimed directly at Locke. Locke pointed the bloodied sword at him and roared, held it until his breath gave, the only sound out there, echoing all around. His face turning red, his chest swollen, purple veins bulging on his skull. When finally the roar left him, he took a long breath, glanced at Sullivan beside him, and laughed.
The native threw his spear.
He launched it without warning, without back lift, the shaft quivering softly as it flew, followed by a hushed tearing sound as it pierced Locke’s skin. Barely a sound at all. Like a knife through an unripe pear. Locke reeled from the blow and for a second sat there looking at the spear. It was embedded in his shoulder, a few inches above his heart. He tried to cry out but hadn’t the breath; the cry gargled in his throat. He looked at the native. The man was crouched as if ready to run. Locke dropped his sword. It landed beside the dead dog. He reached for his carbine but struggled to free it from the strap. The spear wagged as he moved. He took hold of the shaft with both hands, as if to pull it out, then in one quick jolt he snapped it and seethed with pain. Spittle foamed between his teeth. His face was damp and pale. Only the surge of his breathing in the silence of the tight corral. The others watching on, their rifles aimed at the spear carriers, whose spears sagged slightly in their hands.
Locke unstrapped his carbine, wheeled it around, and took aim. His face and head glistened. Sweat streamed into his eyes. The carbine trembled in his hand and he tried to steady it with his left forearm but the arm wouldn’t fully raise.
“Well?” he shouted, wiping his brow with his sleeve. He stared at the native and the native returned the stare.
Noone rolled his eyes and nodded.
“Aye, get on with it,” Sullivan said.
Locke leveled the carbine again. The barrel wavered horribly. Still the man didn’t move. Facing his assassin down. Locke drew the air hard and fast through his nose, breath after surging breath, then suddenly the breathing stalled. His trigger finger clenched. An almighty noise spewed from the rifle’s maw and the recoil threw Locke’s arm high above his head. There was screaming. A flurry of canine howls. Locke straightened and peered at the native but the native crouched before him, unhurt. Another dog collapsed to the ground, half its side blown out.
“Christ in hell,” Sullivan said. “Can’t you just shoot the bloody thing?”
Locke cursed and tried to reload, fumbling a cartridge from his belt, pinning the carbine in his armpit and pawing at the chamber bolt. Blood seeped from his shoulder and spread on his shirt. His hands trembled. Grunting darkly as he worked. The woman began talking, high-pitched and desperate, pleading for mercy, maybe. She spoke to the troopers, the whites; all ignored her. Everyone waiting for Locke. But he fumbled the new cartridge and dropped it on the ground, and as he fished out another Sullivan groaned and lit a cigarette, and on the far side of the corral Noone swung over a leg and jumped down from his horse.
“Alright,” he said. “That’s enough from you.”
“I ain’t done with that bastard yet. Look what he did to my fucking arm.”
“It won’t kill you,” Noone said. He waded through the dogs, then stood towering over the natives, who gawped up at him in awe. He looked feral. His shirt was ragged and his hair was wild, his face dark with stubble and his empty eyes very wide. In his hand he carried an ornate silver revolver; it dangled casually at his side. He stood regarding the natives awhile. Two of the men still brandished their spears, the tips only yards from Noone’s face. Could have been through his skull before he’d even had time to blink, Tommy thought. Yet Noone stood there perfectly calm, a slight frown, as if reckoning something about the scene, while around him the others waited, Sullivan smoking his cigarette, Locke fiddling with the spear stub embedded in his shoulder. He glared at the man who’d thrown it.
“You’ll get yours,” he said.
Now Noone raised his left hand in greeting, fingers straight, palm flat. The natives watched the hand fearfully. The woman pulled the girl close. And she was a girl: while the woman was full in the hips, belly, and chest, the girl’s body was straight up and down, barely adolescent, little different than a boy.
“Please,” Noone said kindly, lowering his hand. “Drop the spears. Go on now. This isn’t a fight you are going to win.”
Their eyes wandered. To each other, the troopers, perhaps hoping they would translate but they did not. Noone waited. The young girl peeked out from the woman’s side and he smiled at her, the smile fading the longer the two men took to comply.
Noone tilted his head slightly, and in a low voice told them, “I won’t ask again. Drop the fucking spears.”
Neither man did so. Noone turned his eyes skyward and shook his head, let out a heavy breath. Then he raised his pistol and shot the nearest spear carrier square in his face.
The head burst in a spatter of tissue and bone, spraying Noone and the natives and some of the dogs. The body collapsed in stages—waist, knees, legs—then slumped awkwardly face-first on the ground. The spear seesawed before coming to rest in the dirt. The girl was screaming, a chaos of dogs leaped and howled, a cheer rippled through the group, and Sullivan shouted, “Now that’s how you bloody do it!” while Tommy leaned and retched at the side of his horse.
“Don’t,” Billy said. “Stop it. Sit up.”
Tommy felt hands on his shirt, Billy dragging him upright; he brushed him away and did it on his own, sat there coughing and gasping and finding nothing but irritation in his brother’s face, no upset, no concern. Tommy wiped his mouth and spat. Billy tapped his shoulder and gestured for him to watch.
Neither Noone nor the natives had moved. They stood dripping in the dead man’s gore. The girl cried into the woman’s side, the woman’s hand clamped over her mouth. All were trembling. The last remaining spear carrier placed his spear carefully on the ground and stepped back, and Noone nodded like a courtesy had been observed. He picked at his chest and shirtfront, flicking away deposits of bloodied flesh and bone.
“There there,” he said idly. “There there.”
When he’d finished his preening, Noone stepped over the body, parted the men, and stood before the woman and girl. Neither would lo
ok at him. Noone reached between them and tried peeling them apart, but they squealed like they’d been burned and only clung to each other all the more. Noone frowned, stuffed his revolver into his waistband, and held them each by the jaw, cheeks bunching, lips puckering; both had their eyes clamped shut, sobbing quietly as he turned their faces back and forth in the low sunlight.
“Look at me.”
They would not.
“Look at me.”
He let go of the girl, pulled his revolver again, and leveled it at one of the men. The muzzle butted against his temple: he flinched but otherwise didn’t move. Noone corkscrewed the barrel into the side of his head and the native grimaced and moaned. Now the women were looking. Watching Noone toy with their man.
“Thank you,” he said. He put away the revolver and took hold of the woman’s hand. She watched him raise it daintily above her head. Noone tried leading her but the girl had the other wrist and would not let go. Noone looked at her. The muscles on his jawline clenched. The older woman spoke and the girl hesitated, then released her wrist. Noone brought the woman out into the open and like some bloodied whoremaster began a ceremonial lap of the corral, to the grunts and calls and whistles of the watching men.
“She’ll do,” Sullivan mumbled, flicking away his cigarette. “Yep, she’ll do.”
Tommy tried not to watch. He turned away but saw Billy eyeing the woman up and down, and heard across the circle Jarrah and Mallee clapping and howling, telling the woman what they planned to do to her, what they planned for her to do.
“We don’t got time for all this,” Locke grumbled. He leaned in the saddle and with his rifle muzzle hooked his sword through its guard and lifted it from the ground. He sheathed it and poked idly at the spear. A fresh gout of blood bubbled from the wound. “I need this thing out my shoulder, get the hole properly packed.”
“You’d be at it worse than them if you’d not got yourself hurt,” Sullivan said.
“Good of you to bloody notice, I’m sure.”
“Ah, stop whining. You should have shot the bugger when you had the chance.”
“I ain’t done with that cunt yet.”
“So you keep saying,” Sullivan said, chuckling. “But you’ll have to find a way to reload your carbine first.”
Noone finished his presentation, released the woman back into the group, and steered the girl forward by the waist. He did not offer her to the other men. Instead he led her to his own horse, where he took a handkerchief from his pack and began dabbing at her tenderly, swabbing the mess away. The girl stood rigidly before him. Noone cleaned her cheeks, her neck, her chest, and her eyes never once left his face. While he worked, Noone called for Jarrah and Rabbit to see to the others: they dismounted and unraveled the neck chains, kicking aside the dogs. Rabbit brought the two men into line and Jarrah positioned the woman behind them, and like bewildered children they stood meekly as the chain was hung and the neck cuffs clamped shut. Jarrah groped the woman. Between her legs, her buttocks, her breasts. He grinned at her. She spat in his face. Jarrah slapped her and laughed and went back to his horse, and Tommy heard Sullivan mutter, “He can wait his fucking turn.”
Noone put the girl on his saddle, climbed up behind. He gave her his longcoat, draped it over her shoulders, she pulled the collar tight to her neck. Noone reached around for the reins, then left his hands there, clasped around her middle, the fingers of one hand splayed on the bare skin of her belly where the folds of the coat did not meet. He checked the group behind him and they rode on, making for the ranges again, each taking his place in line, Tommy behind his brother, same as it had always been. He could not see the captives without turning around and could not see the girl in front: he pinned his eyes on Billy’s back and tried to forget what had just occurred over the past quarter hour. He shook his head. Only a quarter hour they’d been waylaid. No longer than if they’d stopped to piss or fill their flasks. But now they rode to a percussion of neck chains and left a dead man in their wake, a pack of wild dogs picking at his body and the two of their own Locke had killed. A quarter hour, and all was changed.
21
In the last of the twilight they tied the horses in the trees and shambled with their packs up the rubbled hillside, dragging their captives high into the ranges and the smooth-walled canyon in which they made camp. A long and bell-shaped runnel hollowed out by the wind, broad in the belly and narrow at the neck, twisting like a wormhole through the rock. Dark in there too, little moonlight through the slim gap, only the fire to see by once they’d got one lit: the wood burned quick and hot and the curved walls cradled the warmth.
The group laid out their things. Bedrolls, weapons, packs, the whites taking up positions nearest the fire, the troopers staying close to the prisoners they held. They’d been separated: the women seated with their wrists bound on a ledge formed by the rock face; the men chained together on the other side of the canyon, back-to-back on the floor. Rabbit guarded the men; the others watched the woman and girl. Perched on their ledge, they sat with their heads down and their hands between their legs, the woman entirely naked still, the girl wearing Noone’s longcoat. All eyes on them. Sly and lustful stares. The occasional catcall. They didn’t ever respond. Leaning their shoulders and sometimes their heads together and closing their eyes as if asleep.
Supper was damper bread and the last of the roo meat—sweaty now, and tough, but it hadn’t yet turned—and afterward the group lazed about, smoking and taking their rest. Locke claimed a bottle of rum and wouldn’t give it up on any account, argued it helped soothe the pain of his wound. Pope was to see to it after supper: despite Locke’s protests, Noone had refused it done sooner. It could wait until they’d eaten, he said.
So Locke staggered around camp with the bottle in his hand, babbling like a barroom prophet and ignored by the rest of the group. He talked to the troopers, to the captives, to the moon and the stars in the sky. Like a fool ranting wildly in the streets. When he passed by the man who had stuck him, he sank down before him in a crouch. Peering into his face, but the man wouldn’t meet his eye. Locke took hold of his hair. It was short and knotted, and he gripped it like a fleece. He hoisted the man’s face level with his own, then let go of the hair and slid a finger up the man’s torso: crotch, belly, neck.
“I’m gonna gut you, nigger.”
“Leave him,” Noone warned, talking directly to the fire. “We’ve questions that need answering first.”
“So long as I get what’s owed after.”
“Being what exactly?”
“This darkie’s head on a stick.”
Noone turned his gaze on Tommy and Billy and regarded the brothers gravely. “I’d say these two boys have a better claim on him than you.”
Locke rose and lumbered to the fireside, stood over the gathered whites. “It wasn’t them two that did their lot. Fucker speared me, though.”
“And how are you so sure it wasn’t them?”
“Their two blackboys done it—ain’t that what you said?”
“What I was told,” Noone corrected. A lengthy silence hung. “Either way, they’re due a killing. Two of theirs for two of ours. You’ll remember that you were afforded the same courtesy, and with it you shot a dog.”
Locke stood there dumbly. He took a pull of rum. The liquid sloshed in the bottle and he gulped it down his throat, eyeing Tommy as he drank. Tommy looked away. Locke finished and wiped his mouth and shifted his weight from foot to foot, then he turned and moved on again. Reeling toward the troopers, calling, “Priest, I’m sick of waiting. Come and fix me fucking arm.”
“Think on it,” Noone told the boys softly. “Perhaps in the morning, if you’d prefer.”
Billy frowned like he was still catching up with what had been proposed.
“You mean for us to shoot them?” Tommy said.
“Yes.”
“Just like that? For no reason?”
“For every reason. The reason we are all here. Wait and hear their confession
, see if that won’t change your mind.”
At which Sullivan snorted in laughter like a joke had just been told.
Through the smoke and flames Tommy watched the two chained men. They didn’t look much like killers. Naked and filthy and bloodstained, caked in their own piss and mess, they looked miserable and hungry and scared. Their faces were gaunt, ribs visible under the skin. They were still only young, Tommy thought. Be lucky if they were out of their teens. Yes, one had put his spear into Locke, but in his position Tommy would probably have done the same. As would Billy, Sullivan, and no doubt Locke himself. As would any man.
There was a squeal, and Tommy turned. Locke had begun molesting the woman with his one good hand. She wriggled and squirmed on the ledge. Locke cooed at her and mimicked a mouth with his hand, like it was a puppet, a bird. In a childish high-pitched voice he made the creature talk, telling her where it would nibble next, then he plunged the hand downward, grabbing for her breasts, between her legs. The troopers scowled at his performance and spoke between themselves.
“Best control him, John,” Noone said. “The men are not amused.”
“They can please themselves. It ain’t none of their business what he does.”
“He’s insulting them. They covet her, consider her theirs.”
“Horseshit, theirs. They should learn their fucking place.”
“Well, I won’t discipline them. Not for him. The man’s a buffoon.”
“They’ve no bloody respect. You’re too soft on ’em, that’s what you are.”
“You haven’t the faintest idea what I am.”
Locke was now grabbing his crotch and humping his own hand. “Raymond,” Sullivan called. “Leave the gin alone.”
“Oh, but she’s a shy one. I’m only warming her up.”