Shepherd

by Catherine Jinks

  I’m hoping I’ll go unregarded now. I’m hoping Dan Carver will be as oblivious to me as the eels and the trout and the pheasants were back in Suffolk.

  As a hunter, you have to be quieter than your prey.

  Dan Carver’s blood trail begins at the door of the cool-room. From there it runs past the kitchen, around the back of my old sleeping quarters and into the southern paddock.

  As soon as I hit the long grass, I get down and start to crawl in case Carver is hiding in the forest with his gun trained on me. Besides, keeping low makes it easier to track blood-spots on the ground or smears of blood on the grass. If Gyp were here, I wouldn’t have to be so canny. Without Gyp’s nose, I have to rely on my eyes and ears.

  I can’t rely on my nose, because I’m pinching it shut. Poor Buttercup has been lying in the paddock for at least two days now, and badly needs burying. She’s left her pats all over the place, too, and they don’t smell too sweet when your face is a foot off the ground.

  There are other leavings in the grass, as well. Kangaroo pellets. Bird droppings. Fresh dog turds. No doubt the wild dogs have been feeding on Buttercup and scouring the farm for loose chickens.

  I’m glad I shut the door to the cool-room.

  Here’s the edge of the paddock. The grass thins; the shade thickens; the tree trunks rear up from a bed of matted roots. The forest is so dense that there’s not much underbrush. I can read the blood trail on the dry earth as clear as ink-marks on paper: one spot, two spots, veering off to the east.

  Carver was dragging his leg as he walked. He paused here for a while and left a dense spatter of droplets before moving on. That’s the mark of a gun-butt in the soil, cut deep. He must have been leaning on his musket.

  He had to weave around this rock because he didn’t have the strength to step over it. He had to skirt this bush because he didn’t have the strength to push through it. This is where he fell and got up again. This is where he stopped to reload a gun. There’s black powder on the ground and a torn strip of paper.

  What a fool.

  The drops of blood are more widely spaced now; by this time his bleeding must have slowed. But it doesn’t matter. A big man like Carver, made clumsy by pain—I don’t need a blood trail to see where he went. He left a bloody hand-print on that tree trunk. And over there, in the distance, he left a loose thread on a thorny branch.

  When I reach the thread I can see it has blood on it. What now? He hit a dense thicket too wide to bypass, so he had to forge straight through. There are snapped twigs everywhere. Trampled leaves. Crushed branches. He’s cut a path for me, all the way to the other side.

  Above my head, a little thorn-beak cries out as I pass. I look up to see it flit from tree to tree, piping out its alarm.

  ‘Shh!’ I tell it, but there’s no calming one of those birds when you’re in its domain. All I can do is move on through the scrub, hoping Carver isn’t anywhere nearby.

  I have a strong feeling somebody is. Time and again, my skin prickles—but when I turn, there’s no one. It could be the forest. Or a ghost. Or…

  Pray God I’m not being stalked by a black.

  Suddenly there’s a break in the canopy. Mottled sunshine glints on a narrow, rocky riverbed lined with tumbled boulders. I cower behind a tree trunk and scan the open ground, my gun raised and half-cocked. Carver’s been here—there are signs—but he doesn’t seem to be here anymore. I certainly can’t see him.

  Cautiously I advance into the open, the muzzle of my carbine sweeping from left to right. The ground’s so uneven, I have to keep glancing down at my feet. My skin crawls. My guts churn. Again I sense I’m being watched. Could that be Carver? No. He’s like a wounded bull, not a hunting weasel. If he was close, I’d hear him. Or smell him. Or see fresh signs.

  The river’s barely running. Two rills in my path are narrow enough to step over. And between them, in the mud: Carver’s footprints. Plain as day.

  He’s tracked the mud across a bed of dry cobbles, up to the top of a large rock and down the other side. So has a wild dog—more recently than Carver. A wavering line in the mud tells me Carver was dragging a musket. He must have been using it as a walking stick. He kept leaning on it—here, and here, and again over here. When he reached the far bank he grabbed a branch to steady himself and broke it. There’s a hair caught in this bark where he rested his head.

  He was feeling so poorly he could hardly stand. Any minute now, I’m expecting to stumble on his lifeless body. Surely he couldn’t have walked much further?

  But he did. He kept going. He pissed on this tree; the smell is still sharp. Then he plunged into the bush, right here, snapping sticks and scattering petals. The trail swerves where he changed direction. Why did he do that? Why turn left?

  ‘What are you up to?’ I mutter.

  He’s helped me by moving onto soft ground. There are footprints ahead—and paw-prints as well. The stock of a musket scraped against stone, leaving a brown mark. Deep dents show him leaning heavily on the gun, again and again, as he stooped to pass beneath a half-fallen tree. I duck under the same tree and emerge into a small clearing with a jumble of boulders in the middle.

  Careful, Tom. Dropping behind a tea-tree, I squint at the rocky outcrop, which is pierced by a modest, low-set cave. Carver could be in there. Anything could. I’m seeing a trail, but I don’t quite—

  Yes I do. I understand now. Snapped branches: big, thick, leafy branches, taken from different sides of the same bush. Carver broke them off deliberately, then dragged ’em behind him towards the rocks, sweeping away his tracks as he went. But was he thinking about his tracks? Or did he want the branches for another reason?

  Bedding, perhaps? Did he sleep in that cave?

  Is he sleeping there still?

  Dry leaves have fallen across the scuff marks left by his branches; I count at least ten. And bird tracks, two sets of ’em. Those marks of his were made hours ago.

  Bent double, clutching my carbine, I begin to circle the clearing until I’m directly behind the cave. From here I’ll be able to climb onto the big slab of rock that forms its roof. Carver won’t see me if I approach him from the rear. But he might hear me if I’m not very, very careful.

  Quietly now. One step. Two steps. As soon as I reach the rock, it gets easier; all the leaves and sticks have tumbled off its sloping flank, which juts out of the dirt like the bow of a half-sunk ship. In my sheepskin soles I pad up and up, towards the far end of the rock. And when I reach the edge, I peer over it.

  The cave’s just beneath me. But is Carver inside?

  Another thorn-beak squeaks an alarm. God grant Carver doesn’t know that bird for a sentinel. Folk rarely do; they overlook bird calls. There can be grand battles and great love stories playing out overhead, and if you remark on it to someone like Joe, he’ll just stare at you, blank-faced.

  This bird doesn’t like me. I flick a small twig in its direction and it flutters away, startled. Then I turn my attention back to the cave, shifting my grip on the carbine as I crane my neck for a look at the dark hole where Carver may—or may not—be hiding.

  If he is in there, he’s not making a sound.

  Reaching for a pebble, I balance it carefully on the edge of the rock, place my foot next to it and aim my gun-muzzle straight down. If I kick the pebble, and it lands near the cave, Carver might come out to look. And if he does, I’ll have a good, clean—

  Christ!

  A peck on my scalp, a flurry of wings—the thorn-beak’s diving at me. I flap it away. Lose my balance. Tip over the edge.

  Fall.

  I land on the churned-up dirt at the mouth of the cave.

  I’d been a month on Mr Barrett’s farm when three troopers rode up to the front door. They were tracking a couple of bolters called Riley and Milgate. Though none of us had seen the missing pair, we were closely questioned by the troopers, who were condescending to Mr Barrett and very rough with his assigned men. They shouted, sneered and threatened to flog us if we didn’t te
ll ’em what we knew. It was plain they thought all lags were liars.

  They had a black with ’em called Sammy. He wore English clothes and had a good supply of chewing tobacco. The troopers were using him to track Riley and Milgate; he’d been on their trail for thirty miles. But when Mr Barrett asked if Sammy had tracked the runaways to his farm, the troopers wouldn’t answer. They rode off quickly, taking Sammy with ’em.

  ‘Came here to cadge a drink, I’ll wager, and ignored the black’s advice,’ Mr Barrett later remarked. He also observed that to mounted police, all convicts were in cahoots, secretly supplying aid to other lags who might have hooked it. ‘You’d have to be dead on the ground at their feet before they’d believe you hadn’t absconded,’ he said to George Trumble.

  I learned two things, that day. I learned that no English poacher could compete with the likes of Sammy when it came to long-distance tracking. Thirty miles over rough ground? I’d never heard of such a thing. A black tracker must have an eagle’s eye and a dog’s nose; I can’t account for it otherwise. I thought I knew Ixworth and its coverts as well as I knew my own hands, but the blacks must know this country the way God knows it. They must know every leaf and grain of soil.

  I also learned that, no matter what a convict’s situation might be, he’ll never persuade a trooper that he’s telling the truth. Once you’ve been shackled, you’re a lag for life, whether you were sentenced to seven years or thirty.

  That’s why I’m trying not to think on the future. What hope is there that Carver won’t take me down to hell with him? What hope is there that the troopers will believe a word I say? They’ll likely hang me for the slaughter.

  I’ll have a better chance out here, despite the blacks and the snakes and the strangeness of everything.

  For one split second, I stare at the cave in front of me. Then I roll away.

  That’s when I notice the footprints. They’re so faint I can see them only because my poor, battered nose is almost pressed against the ground.

  They’re leading out of the cave, not into it.

  I know that tread. I know that gait. Those are Carver’s tracks, though he wasn’t leaning on his gun when he made ’em. He left the cave some time this morning, heading north. Towards the road or the farm?

  If he was going back to the farm, he’d have made a sharp left turn and headed due west. It’s the road he wanted.

  A wise man would have dragged those leafy branches behind him to disguise his trail. But Carver must have left ’em where he slept—and now I can follow every step he took because the marks are quite fresh, with no leaves or paw-prints scattered over ’em and no drops of blood either. He wasn’t bleeding, though he was ill. Look at the way he staggered when the bush proved too dense. Look at the way he grabbed that overhead bough and broke it off. Did he use it to beat his way through the undergrowth? I think he did. There are white splinters on the ground.

  I’m keeping an eye on the sun as well as the trail. It seems to me Carver was executing a great half-circle, edging around the boundary of the farm as he made his way nor’west. This is where he stopped to spit. This is where his eye-patch caught on a twig and he lost it—or threw it away.

  Every few yards I pause to listen, but I can’t hear any snapping or rustling in the distance. If he’s ahead of me somewhere, there’s a good half-mile between us. Either that or he’s not moving.

  Careful now, Tom. What if he’s lying in wait? Or what if someone else is? I’m still sensing someone on my trail—someone small and dark and silent. I thought I glimpsed a shadow out of the corner of my eye.

  Unless I’m going mad?

  A laughing jackass overhead mocks my efforts. There’s cleared land through the trees ahead; that bright, distant sunshine could be the road. Have I reached it already?

  Yes, I have. I even recognise this stretch of it. To my left, as I peer around a tree trunk, is Mr Barrett’s house: a little grey box at the end of a pale, dusty drive. The house is so far away that I can’t even make out the shape of the windows, but I know Rowdy’s in there with nothing between him and Carver but a few animal traps and an unloaded pistol. God, God, God. What am I going to do? Where’s Carver?

  He’s not by the house. He’s not on the road. I study the sweep of the sandy cart track to my right as it disappears around a gentle curve. Surely he wouldn’t have gone that way? It heads north, back towards the shepherds’ hut.

  Could he have decided to go to town instead?

  Whatever he did, I won’t know until I’ve checked the road for tracks. But that’s going to leave me badly exposed. If he’s trying to flush me, I’m in trouble.

  Quick, then. Startle him. Burst out like a grouse.

  I jump onto the road. Scan the dirt. Spot a footprint—and another, pointing away from the farm.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I whisper.

  Why would he want to go north? He burned down the hut; there’d be no supplies left in it. Could he be hoping to find a sheep? Or did he hide something important back there?

  No. Of course.

  That stretch of road passes the meadow where Rowdy left Woodbine. He came back for me without the horse, so Carver must have known she was somewhere close by. Somewhere within easy reach of a wounded man. Somewhere with space enough for a large beast. But was it just Woodbine Carver wanted, or me as well?

  If he had any sense he’d have taken the horse and gone. I doubt he has, though. No witnesses. He’ll be watching Woodbine, waiting for me to come and fetch her.

  Better to stay off the road.

  That dirt track would be quieter than crashing through the forest, but Carver’s likely guarding the meadow’s entrance—in which case he’ll spot me if I don’t have cover. So I keep to the bush along the edge of the road, taking care where I put my feet, avoiding dry leaves and stems. Every once in a while I stop and close my eyes, listening hard. The first time I do this, I hear only the wind in the treetops. The second time, I hear a horse snorting.

  Woodbine. She must be close.

  Slowly I part the branches in front of me. Slowly I creep forward, duck under low boughs, step across fallen logs. Whenever I’m jabbed or scratched, I swallow my hiss of pain. Whenever my sleeve catches on a thorn, I stop. Ease back. Remove it with care.

  The blacks have been here recently. Someone’s been digging for roots. I sniff the air for smoke, but there’s nothing.

  At last I reach the edge of the meadow, which has been hacked out of thick forest by the side of the road. Where the trees used to be there is now only grass dotted with cross-cut stumps and a few frail saplings. Woodbine stands in the middle of this clearing, tied to one of the stumps. She’s grazing half-heartedly, flicking the flies away with her tail. Her right saddlebag isn’t bulging the way it used to. It looks as if someone has emptied it, leaving one of the straps unfastened.

  I sink to my haunches behind a tree and survey the open space, searching for Carver. He must be here. But the meadow is surrounded on three sides by a wall of dense brush. If he’s skulking behind it, he’s as invisible to me as I must be to him. Will I have to sit and wait until he coughs or sneezes? What if I cough before he does?

  I’m considering my options when a faint, nagging sound intrudes on my thoughts—the sound of a thorn-beak crying its alarm. I didn’t notice it at first: the bird isn’t anywhere near me. Its shrill piping is coming from across the meadow, way over there. And whatever’s troubling it isn’t moving.

  The call rings out again and again, but no other bird responds. No other bird flaps out of the tree-tops.

  I wonder if…?

  Let’s take a look.

  Once again I set off, circling the meadow from south to north. I keep well back in the trees so Carver won’t spy any leaves shaking or branches swaying. Every step is carefully measured, for all that I’m downwind of Carver. He won’t hear me unless I accidentally fire my gun.

  A crash, a thump, a flash of grey fur and a small kangaroo bounds off into the bush. I have to stop
for a moment and gulp down some air. My breathing is unsteady. My pulse is racing. I’m sweating like a pig.

  Keep at it, Tom. Not long now.

  That bird is still peeping. It’s so close, I decide to get down and stay down. At first I shuffle. Then I crawl. That’s why, after advancing about thirty yards, I spy the ants.

  They’re small black ants, hurrying along in single file—and each is carrying a tiny white bundle. A breadcrumb? A grain of sugar? There was sugar in Woodbine’s saddlebags. Carver must have taken it. He must have taken the bread, too.

  He can’t be far away.

  That thorn-beak is just overhead. I can hear it. I can smell sweat and black powder. The muffled rasp of laboured breathing is interrupted, now and again, by the sound of someone chewing with an open mouth.

  Inch by inch, I raise my head. Inch by inch, I turn it.

  And there he is. Dan Carver.

  Sitting with his back to me, gazing out over the meadow.

  15

  I WAS alone in the house when my brother came home for the last time.

  It was just after daybreak. My father was out in the coverts somewhere; he never told me where he went, any more than he would have told the dogs or the fire-irons. I was roused from my sleep by a knock at the front door, and opened it to find a small crowd in the street. The vicar was there, with the parish constable and Colonel Newton’s underkeeper.

  Jack was there too. He was laid out on an old door under a bloodstained blanket.

  ‘You must prepare yourself, Tom Clay,’ the vicar said.

  The next thing I remember we were all in the kitchen, with Jack lying on my father’s bed. The parish constable was explaining that Jack’s wounding had been an accident. (‘He was where he should not have been—in the line of fire.’) They’d shot Jack’s dog, Savage, after he attacked the colonel’s gamekeeper. This second blow, on top of the first, left me speechless. I stood in a corner and watched the local authorities commandeer our house.

  But then my father came home. His sack was empty, so he must have heard all the voices and dumped his catch outside. When he walked through the kitchen door, everyone else fell silent. He was the only armed man in the room.