Shepherd

by Catherine Jinks

  Wait. Of course.

  ‘It was a signal.’ Damn, damn, damn, he’s warning Cockeye. ‘He can see us.’

  ‘How—’

  ‘He’s got a glass.’ God knows how he came by it. I grab Rowdy and pull him into a patch of heavy shade. When I start to yank at his shirt, he slaps at my hands.

  ‘What d’ye think you’re—?’

  ‘Come bye,’ I tell Gyp. She dashes off to fetch Queenie. Then I look Rowdy square in the eye and say, ‘This shirt is going to kill us. If you keep it, I’ll leave you.’

  ‘All right, calm down. No need to bounce me—’

  ‘Give it here.’

  As Rowdy peels off his shirt, Gyp pushes Queenie in my direction, flanking from side to side. Poor Queenie doesn’t jib at this outrun. She’s in distress, and happy to see a familiar face. Even Gyp doesn’t fret her. She trots up to me like a pony, her heavy f leece bouncing. And she doesn’t f linch when I drape the red shirt across her back, or when I tie the sleeves beneath her belly.

  Good girl. That’s a good girl.

  I’d lend Rowdy my jacket, but it wouldn’t fit him. He’s too wide across the shoulders. And scarred, too, I see; a dozen lashes, by the look of it.

  ‘’Twas on board the Hive.’ He catches my sidelong glance. ‘I spoke out o’ turn.’

  And still he won’t shut up.

  ‘Here.’ I shrug off my sheepskin cloak and pass it over. ‘Put that on.’

  ‘Ah, no.’ He lifts his hand gracefully. ‘I’ll bide well enough till we reach the farm—’

  ‘Put it on.’ I’m not asking. ‘We’re safer as sheep.’

  ‘Ah.’ He nods then and does as he’s bid. I struggle to fit Gyp’s sheepskin across my own back, fumbling with the tarred knots while she watches intently. At last, with a word and a wave, I tell her to drive Queenie westward along the river-bed.

  She’s quick to respond.

  ‘Well, now,’ says Rowdy, gazing after the retreating ewe. ‘That’s clever.’

  It is. If Carver’s watching the red shirt, he’ll think we’re heading downstream. Perhaps.

  ‘Come on.’ I start moving in the opposite direction. A whistle brings Gyp back to me, though first she nips at Queenie’s heels, to make sure that the ewe picks up her pace.

  Poor Queenie. Poor girl; the blacks will eat her, I’m sure of it.

  ‘So we’re taking the road, then?’ asks Rowdy—just as another shot rings out above us.

  Rowdy flinches. I pause. Why only one shot?

  Unless two means west and one means—

  There it goes: the second shot. Two quick shots must mean ‘they’re heading west’. One shot, a break, then another tells Cockeye we’ve turned around.

  Except we haven’t. Queenie’s the one who’s trotting downstream.

  I just hope she keeps going.

  7

  I’M WORRIED about the sheep. Queenie, Moll, Skip, Dancer…they’re all out there, unprotected. They weren’t made for this country. The wild dogs will hunt ’em. The blacks will eat ’em. They’ll fall down holes and trap themselves in thickets.

  They’ll need me and I won’t be there.

  As a shepherd, it seems, I make a good poacher.

  ‘Was that a signal?’ Rowdy wants to know. He’s stumbling after me, hugging the tree line along the south side of the river. ‘Are they watching Queenie now?’

  I hope so, or we’re dead. Gyp is padding along at my side, swift and silent. She knows better than to blab.

  ‘Is there no one on the road, now?’ Rowdy continues quietly. ‘Is it safe for us?’

  I wish he’d shut up. The river’s gurgle masks the noise of our passage but he still shouldn’t be talking.

  ‘Would ye answer a question if yer dog asked it, I wonder?’ Before I can do more than snort, Rowdy adds, ‘Mebbe I should ask her. Gyp—can ye tell me where we might be goin’?’

  Gyp doesn’t reply so Rowdy speaks for her. ‘Woof. Woof-woof-woof,’ he says, then remarks in his own voice, ‘Ah, well, now that’s interestin’. And would you describe that as a tactical manoeuvre?’

  God help us.

  ‘Woof, woof. Woof-woof-woof.’ He must think he’s funny. ‘I see,’ he says. ‘Thanks, Gyp, you’ve dainty manners. Not like some folk I could name—’

  ‘Will you shut your mouth?’ I round on him, furious. Doesn’t he know what he’s risking?

  ‘Don’t blame me if yer dog wants a chat,’ he counters, as if he’s chaffing in a public bar.

  ‘Are you scared? Is that why you can’t stop?’ I see his mouth twitch and know I’m right. ‘I’ll leave you here if you don’t hold your tongue,’ I whisper. Then I turn my back on him and forge ahead, wishing that he was Pedlar, who had sharp teeth and no fear and never spoke out of turn. I’d have been safer with Pedlar, gun or no gun.

  My poor boy. My brave dog.

  Suddenly, to the nor’east, there’s a faint cry followed by a sharp crack.

  That’s not a musket. That’s a pistol.

  Gyp’s head jerks up.

  ‘Christ!’ Rowdy cringes. ‘He’s seen us!’

  I shake my head. Whoever fired that gun, he’s well out of range. Perhaps a snake frightened him.

  I was right about the signals, though; that last one sent him downstream. Now we just have to reach the road before he turns back.

  The question is: should we stay by the river? It winds about like a snake’s trail and that’s good, because nobody a quarter-mile downstream can look back along the riverbed and see us. But it will make our journey longer—and we don’t have much time. What if someone catches up with Queenie? What if she loses the red shirt?

  I think we should cut through the bush here.

  ‘This way,’ I tell Rowdy, and plunge into a thicket.

  I’d be more anxious doing this if Carver had a poacher’s eye. Not that we’re leaving footprints, in our sheepskin boot-soles, but on a stony riverbank there are no branches to break or thorns to snatch at stray hairs. You don’t have to worry about tell-tale threads getting caught on twigs. You don’t have to trample the undergrowth.

  Those are the signs I always look for when I’m stalking: threads, hairs, crushed moss, broken bushes. But Carver isn’t trained to hunt like me. He was born in Portsmouth, with his eyes turned to the sea, and was lagged for robbing a coach. So Carver looks for a different set of signs: weakness, wealth, seclusion. I’m hoping Cockeye’s the same. I’m hoping they won’t know a fresh scuff-mark when they see one.

  Besides, the important thing here isn’t stealth. The important thing is speed.

  Suddenly the air fills with parrots, flushed from a covert. They shoot up like fireworks, screeching and flapping and making Gyp bark. She can’t help it; she’s been taken by surprise.

  This is bad.

  Two shots ring out.

  ‘Christ!’ Rowdy hisses from behind me. ‘Did Carver see that?’

  Of course he saw it—and heard it, too. That’s why he’s signalled to Cockeye. We might as well have lit a bonfire.

  ‘Run!’ I crash forward. Gyp takes the hint, racing along ahead of me, quicker now that she’s free of her sheepskin. She vanishes into the thick growth up ahead.

  Rowdy yelps in pain as if he’s stubbed his toe.

  And here’s the river again, winding back across our path. Gyp’s already on the opposite bank, waiting for me. The ground’s uneven, all rocks and puddles, and it slows me down. Rowdy trips and drops his carbine.

  God help us. ‘If you can’t look after that, give it to me,’ I tell him, though I don’t really want the gun. Not now. Carver’s first target will be the man with the gun.

  ‘I’ll mind it better, I swear,’ Rowdy says, scooping it up.

  Gyp joins me as I plunge back into the bush, which isn’t so dense on this side of the river. I’ve a map in my head and if I’m reading the sun like a seaman, the ford is in front of us, to our right. The hill, of course, is on our left. And the road stretches between ’em, with Carver’s h
orse on it somewhere.

  Pray God we find that horse.

  Gyp yaps ahead of me. I can’t even see her; there’s a tea-tree blocking my view. But when I burst through to the other side, I find myself in a clearing with a small knot of sheep. They’re huddled together, bleating: Floss, Birdie, Echo and Sage.

  Sage doesn’t look well. The wool on her back is singed.

  ‘We should hide,’ Rowdy gasps, stumbling out of the bush to my rear. ‘Is there somewhere we can hide and wait for Barrett’s men to come?’

  Hide and eat what? Shoot a sheep and Carver will find us. Light a fire and Carver will find us. He won’t leave this place—not until we’re dead.

  No witnesses.

  Gyp seems keen to gather the sheep, but comes to heel when I click my tongue. Together we cross the clearing, which must have been made by the death of a great tree—we have to scramble over the rotten remains of the trunk before we reach cover on the other side. There’s brush here, too, though not as much of it. And that, if I’m not mistook, is a cross-cut stump.

  We must be close to the road.

  ‘Look!’ says Rowdy, pointing at the stump.

  Yes, I saw it.

  We pass another stump—and another. The trees are thinning out. Beyond them I can make out a clear patch, like a garden glimpsed through a picket fence.

  Motioning to Rowdy for silence, I hunker down and start to crawl. Gyp slips along beside me, brushing my arm with her tail. At last we reach the road, which is pinched between swathes of forest that seem intent on swallowing it up. A pair of narrow wheel-tracks are separated by a ribbon of uncut grass. To my right, in the distance, a stone-lined dip marks the position of the ford where the road crosses the river. There’s nothing else to see on that stretch: no Carver, no Cockeye, no horses. No men from Mr Barrett, either, but I wasn’t expecting any.

  When I turn my head there’s movement to the south, across the road. Three horses stand in the shade with their reins draped over a stump, flicking their tails to keep the flies off.

  Beside them, in silhouette, a figure sits with his back against a tree, his chin on his chest, his cabbage-tree hat pulled down low over his eyes.

  That looks like the man I shot at.

  My brother was six years older than me. There was a sister between us, but she died young. My mother never delivered her fourth child. She perished with the babe. After that, there was no one left to stand between me and my brother Jack.

  He had a hard streak and called me a runt. While I was still poaching pheasant’s eggs, he was already coursing hares. When I was given my first dog, he was given his first gun. As the elder son, he had his pick of the bedding, the bread and the puppies, and took it as his due. But he also bore the brunt of my father’s temper.

  Though we were both of us beaten, I never had my nose broke or one of my teeth knocked out as my brother did. He was toughened by my father’s anger: tempered, as wood can be hardened by fire. When we fought he always won. He used me to flush partridges sometimes, and would fire so close that splinters grazed my skin. Once he and his two friends—Fleming the butcher’s son and a farmhand called Turnip—threw me into a bull’s pen to see how fast I could run. Once my brother tried to set his dog on me, but the beast was my friend and did no more than half-heartedly worry my ankle.

  Later, in the coverts, we were all three of us hunting deer—my father, my brother and I. I had a gun by then: an old blunderbuss with a loose stock and no great range. It was good only at close quarters, but that suited me, for I was lighter than I am now, and quiet as a fox. I could creep up on anything, furred or feathered. I could even creep up on trout.

  That evening, I crept up on my brother. I could have shot him where he stood. I had the muzzle aimed at the back of his neck, but I didn’t fire. I couldn’t. For one thing, he was my brother. Though much of the time I loathed him, there was a blood connection so deep that when I learned he’d been shot in the head by Colonel Newton’s gamekeeper, I was seized by a splitting headache that lasted for three days. I remember how badly it throbbed while I was creeping about the Elveden estate at night, springing traps, unstopping earths and doing everything I could to ruin the management of the colonel’s game. Perhaps it was guilt I felt, more than grief, but whatever it was, it couldn’t have been fiercer. Though I often hated Jack, I couldn’t have killed him, any more than I could have killed Obadiah Johnson, or Dan Carver, or the magistrate who sentenced me. The fact is, I don’t have the stomach for slaughter.

  I’ve never killed anyone. Not even the man I shot at.

  ‘Jaysus!’ Rowdy hisses into my ear. ‘That’s never Nobby?’

  Nobby. I’d forgotten his name.

  ‘He was shot!’ Rowdy continues. ‘I saw it! He can’t be alive!’

  ‘Is that Raisin?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That looks like Raisin.’ I’d know her anywhere: the bay mare with the chipped ear. Beside her, Bolivar is the blue roan gelding with black points. The third horse is Woodbine, a sorrel mare with a white snip on her muzzle.

  ‘What are ye talkin’ about?’ Rowdy whispers.

  I have to turn my head to study his face, which is crumpled into a frown. Surely he must recognise at least one of ’em?

  ‘Don’t you know them horses?’ I ask him quietly.

  They’re Mr Barrett’s.

  He opens his mouth, but before he can speak there’s a rustle in the bushes to our left. We both duck, flattening ourselves against the forest floor—and watch as a sheep spills out onto the road, halfway between us and the horses.

  Birdie must have followed us.

  ‘Baa-aa,’ she says.

  Suddenly Echo appears behind her, bleating. And there’s Floss and poor Sage.

  Rowdy elbows me in the ribs. He’s trying to tell me something: that Nobby hasn’t moved, perhaps?

  The sheep are all making a bee-line for the horses, whose ears twitch in response. But Nobby remains motionless.

  ‘Is that cove asleep?’ Rowdy asks under his breath. ‘Or does he want us to think he is?’

  I don’t know. The horses shift nervously. Woodbine snorts. Raisin tosses her head.

  ‘Might be an ambush,’ Rowdy points out. ‘He might have a gun.’

  I don’t see how. Last time I counted, Carver had three guns: a duelling pistol and two muskets. We took his carbine.

  ‘Is he trying to lure us in?’ Rowdy continues, because every thought that enters his head seems to leave it instantly through his mouth. But he’s right. This could be a trap.

  The sheep wander towards Nobby, veering away only when Bolivar stamps his hoof. Still Nobby doesn’t look up. He doesn’t even twitch.

  I can’t see him well enough.

  ‘We need to get closer,’ I tell Rowdy.

  He nods. ‘Send Gyp.’

  Send Gyp? Over my dead body. Rowdy starts to gabble when I glare. ‘That dog’s a smaller target!’ he hisses. ‘If she’s quick, she’ll reach him long before he can fire, and will keep him busy while we’re closin’ in—’

  I cut him off by crawling away. We’re not using Gyp as a shield, thank you very much. Toss her in front of a pistol ball just to save our own skins? I think not.

  She follows me through the scrub as I inch my way towards Nobby, her head and haunches well down. I’m making too much noise with all my crackling and rustling, but Nobby doesn’t react. Raisin does—her head swings in my direction. She scans the leafy screen in front of me.

  Nobby stays as still as a steeple.

  I can hear Rowdy bringing up the rear. He’s even noisier than I am. But the sheep are bleating, and that helps. So does the cackle of a laughing jackass. When I reach the grove of saplings opposite Nobby, I’ve already made up my mind. I don’t need to see the drag-marks in the dirt near him, or the cloud of flies buzzing around his hat.

  Nobby’s no threat to us.

  ‘He’s dead,’ I tell Rowdy, who’s settling into the scrub at my side.

  For once he’s spe
echless. All he does is blink.

  ‘Steady,’ I murmur to Gyp, as I grope for a rock. She pricks up her ears. To Rowdy I say, very softly, ‘Is that gun primed?’

  He nods.

  ‘Shoot him if he moves,’ I add, straightening. Beside me, the muzzle of the carbine swings up. There are sheep between me and Nobby, so they’ll give me some cover.

  I signal to Gyp with a closed fist.

  ‘Away!’ I tell her—and together we burst out onto the road.

  She reaches Nobby just ahead of my rock, which lands between his outstretched legs. Still he doesn’t move. Gyp confronts him with a growl, all bared teeth and raised hackles, but he doesn’t lift his head.

  Keeping low, I push through the knot of sheep and slowly circle the tree that’s propping him up until I’m right behind him. Raisin whinnies. Flies drone. There’s no weapon here; Nobby’s hands lie empty, their fingers curled.

  Reaching around the tree trunk, I flip off his hat.

  Ugh.

  ‘Holy Mary mother o’ God,’ says Rowdy, as he steps out of the scrub.

  Nobby’s got no face—just shattered teeth, bone chips and dried blood under a gleaming blanket of flies. Carver’s left a dead man to guard his horses.

  ‘Will ye not put his hat back on?’ Rowdy begs, turning away with a grimace. I don’t blame him. I don’t want to look at this, either. I replace the hat.

  No wonder the animals are skittish.

  ‘Come on.’ We need to go. While Rowdy cautiously advances, glancing up and down the road, I unhitch Raisin and lay a soothing hand on her muzzle. Then I flick the reins over her ears.

  She’s saddled and sweaty, like the other horses. Stirrups dangle. Saddlebags are well-stuffed. I’d check inside ’em if I had time to unbuckle the straps, but I don’t.

  I’m adjusting the stirrups when a shot splits the air.

  Dust spurts up at Rowdy’s feet. He’s unhitching Woodbine, and causes her to jib when he flinches. Swinging myself into Raisin’s saddle, I spot Cockeye. He staggers out of the bush across the road, salting his priming pan.

  ‘Go! Go!’ Rowdy yells at me. Gyp is snarling and ready to pounce—but I can’t let her do it because who knows where Carver might be? I whistle her away, tugging Raisin’s head around.