‘You follow us to the mission, eh?’ said a younger man.
He’d not expected to feel relief at passing the boy into someone else’s care. The welcome suggested they’d known of Ross’s coming, courtesy of the smouldering fires that stoked the sky. Ross tapped Hart on the shoulder but the only response was laboured breathing. The men gave the sagging boy a cursory glance and then waved eastwards and began to walk.
‘Young fella crook?’ asked one of them.
‘Snake bite,’ Ross told him.
‘Looks pretty buggered.’
Ross tugged on the lead and Hart’s mare drew level with Nugget. The cave had been a far better resting place. They shouldn’t have left it. When confronting mortality, a person didn’t need movement. A man required peace to ready himself.
Eight miles of rough ground later they reached the mission. It consisted of a collection of neat stringybark buildings, hemmed in by water, hills and plains. Mobs of pelicans were paddling about on a lagoon while, to the north and south, rocky ranges spread angular and sharp against the sky. A slight man of fair complexion emerged from a small house and introduced himself as the missionary, Mr Dyer. He listened intently to Ross’s explanation as he cut the rope that tethered Hart to the horse.
‘Bring the boy,’ the man directed.
Ross followed Mr Dyer to the broad veranda at the rear of the house, and placed Hart in one of the hammocks. The boy was listless. A thin arm fell to the floor, fingers brushing the timber boards. Ross placed it carefully back by the boy’s side and then removed his own hat, toying with the brim. Mr Dyer touched Hart’s brow then lifted the trouser leg to inspect the wound. A thin red line spread up the boy’s leg from the fast-growing abscess.
‘He’s too far gone,’ said Mr Dyer apologetically. ‘I’ll leave you to say your goodbyes.’
Ross looked at the departing missionary to Hart and dragged a stool to the boy’s side. There were no words he could think of that seemed right or proper, so he simply sat and waited for the young face to turn away from life. Small foamy bubbles gathered at the corners of Hart’s mouth. Ross swished at the flies. The boy stared out at the neat garden, which stretched to the lagoon. Ross searched for a story to share, a few words that might ease Hart’s journey but instead he felt his own lips tremble and berated his uselessness. He took the boy’s hand.
It took some time for Hart to die but when his last breath was finally taken, Ross closed the boy’s eyes and thought about what it had meant to him to have a friend.
‘Thank you,’ he said quietly to Hart’s still form.
In the afternoon Mr Dyer returned and read from a Bible. When he’d completed the passage he patted Ross’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. Was the boy family?’
‘No. I met him at a mine and we sort of stuck.’
‘Hard life. Hard death,’ pronounced Mr Dyer. ‘You never said what your name was?’
‘RG.’ He lifted Hart in his arms for the final time. ‘Where do you do your burying?’
‘This way.’
Later, Ross sat on the stool near the empty hammock, his thumb rubbing the worn cover of Alastair’s book. The missionary’s wife was busy in the schoolhouse and Ross was yet to meet her, having respectfully specified that only he and Mr Dyer were needed at Hart’s graveside.
Mr Dyer stayed close, returning to the veranda frequently as if he eventually expected Ross to need him. Ross suspected the missionary saw him clearly: an anonymous drifter stripped bare of excess fat, the colour of burnt beef, a shady man of indeterminate beliefs who may well have gone to war for the scars he carried.
‘I best be going.’ Ross knew Joe Davies was waiting, camped somewhere along the river.
‘Geese, ducks, ibis and crane.’ The missionary handed Ross a pannikin of tea, noticing the tremors in his hands. ‘Beautiful, aren’t they? I could sit here all day watching them out there. Are you a bird lover, RG?’
‘More a bird eater,’ he responded, gulping the liquid.
‘Well, we all see beauty in different things for different reasons.’
‘I was to meet Joe Davies,’ explained Ross.
‘I figured as much. Joe said you were coming.’ Mr Dyer took a sip of tea. ‘He’s camped about five miles away. Why don’t you wash up? I can find you a clean shirt from among our stores.’
Ross scratched at his beard, which stretched down to his chest. ‘I’m not a taker for your ministrations, Mr Dyer. It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. I’ve just been out in the scrub for too long.’
‘You’re a reader?’ asked the missionary.
Ross held up the book. A portion of the title was missing. ‘It’s done some travelling. Like me, I guess.’
‘And is it really as hard as the Greek myths would have us believe? All those labours?’
Ross squinted at the volume, wondering what the man was getting at. ‘It’s just a book.’ He placed the tome on his swag and waited for the man to finish staring at him.
‘There was an Aboriginal reserve here before the Church took it over,’ said the missionary. ‘Many of the children here are of mixed blood and we expect the numbers to only increase. I suppose I’m telling you this because family comes in all forms. Young Hart was family to you.’
‘I barely knew him.’
‘Out here it’s not unusual for men to ride miles to save a sick friend. There’s few of us about and we’re scattered by distance, which means that the word “reliance” takes on powerful significance. It’s knowing why we go out of our way to help someone who’s important.’ The missionary stomped on the boards, frightening away a foot-long lizard ambling along the veranda. ‘We’ll do up a headstone for young Hart. Is there anything that you’d like for an epitaph?’
Ross wondered at the point of a few words scratched on a piece of wood that would be worn blank by weather and eventually rot. But had he sunk so deep that even a remembrance to the dead meant nothing anymore? Across from him the missionary waited.
‘He was a good boy,’ said Ross, wondering at the moisture in his eyes. All he knew was that he wanted Hart back by his side.
‘How about “saved by a friend”?’
‘But I didn’t save him,’ argued Ross. ‘It would have been better if I’d stayed put and let him die in peace.’
‘And how do you know that he didn’t?’ Mr Dyer asked him.
‘I have to go. I’m obliged to you,’ said Ross, finishing the tea.
The missionary walked with him to where Nugget waited in the shade. ‘My wife wanted you to have this.’
The package contained a half-dozen johnnycakes still warm from the fire. Ross didn’t know what to say. It had been many years since anyone cooked for him, let alone a woman. He pocketed the food. Out to the west he’d once stolen a leg of meat from a drover’s fire when the man would have undoubtedly been happy to share a meal and a yarn.
‘We came across from the Roper River Mission,’ Mr Dyer said as Ross tightened the girth-strap. ‘You hear many a strange thing in these outlying places. Stories that are fabricated in the scrub, worn smooth around the campfire. There’s one about a man who left his family, wandered into the bush and disappeared. Many think he’s dead and he may have been forgotten, except that he always did the right thing by the local people, giving out tobacco and sharing food.’
‘Maybe he was being smart,’ said Ross.
‘Perhaps, or he could be more human than some of us and not realise it.’
‘Don’t know him.’ Ross placed his boot in a broken stirrup and swung up into the saddle.
The missionary held tight to the horse’s reins. ‘He carries a book with him. A story of Greek heroes. Some say he goes by the name of “RG” and I suspect that stood for his real name, Ross Grant.’
‘I think you’ve got me confused with someone else, Mr Dyer.’ Ross looked about the mission, with its cleared land and sundry outbuildings. It was a neat enough holding, carved as it was out of the guts of the Territory. Children of mixed degree
s of colour played chase in the dirt. Ross jerked on the reins, freeing the leather from the man’s grip. ‘I appreciate what you did for Hart.’
The missionary gave a flat smile. ‘See that hill? It’s about a half-mile away. If you climb to the top, you’ll get your bearings.’
‘I’ll do that.’
The mound was easy to climb. Ross guessed it to be about six-hundred feet high with a fine view of the surrounding plains, the mission with its lagoon, and Joe’s camp, which lay four miles further on. A scatter of horses and tents. There was a wooden cross at the top of the mound and Ross imagined the missionary praying for guidance, caught midway between the vastness of the universe and the responsibility that lay on the ground. Solitude and perspective. Maybe he and Dyer were not so different.
He kicked Nugget’s flanks and they cantered off.
Chapter 46
At the edge of the camp, three Aboriginal men were methodically going through a string of thirty packhorses, checking and paring down the shoeless hooves, which grew quickly in the soft country and regularly split. Ross led the two horses towards them – Hart’s was now a handy spare. From their furtive glances, he could see the men were suspicious at his arrival. A lanky individual ran a hand along fetlocks and hindquarters, sneaking closer to the other two, who were stern-eyed. A file tapped the palm of a hand. The curl of a whip readied for action. Accounting for the odds, Ross immediately sought an advantage. He could slash a couple with his knife but if it came to it he’d have to fight or shoot, or both.
‘Who are you?’ one of them called.
‘I’m looking for Joe Davies.’ Ross’s gaze skimmed over the group to the clutch of wurlies where women and children were gathered, and then to the tents a few hundred yards away, where a man was shaving, a piece of mirror tacked to a tree. ‘I’m RG, he’s expecting me.’
The men looked doubtful. ‘You’re RG?’ the lanky one asked. Then he turned towards the tents. ‘Hey, Joe!’
The man abandoned his shaving and wandered over, patting at his chin with a rag.
‘Who are you?’ He came close enough for Ross to recognise the fine scar above Joe’s cloudy eye. ‘RG? What the devil happened? I didn’t recognise you.’ They shook hands. ‘You look crook and –’
‘You’re unchanged,’ interrupted Ross.
‘Except for a few more aches,’ answered Joe. ‘I wondered if you’d come.’
‘Within ten days of the end of May, beginning of June. That’s what we agreed,’ said Ross.
‘It was a while ago.’ Joe studied him thoughtfully. ‘Over three years. Either one of us could have changed our minds. Taken on something else. Still, you’re here now.’
‘Your team aren’t very welcoming,’ commented Ross.
‘You look like a tramp, mate, that’s why.’ Joe turned to the horsemen. ‘Best shot at the gallop you’ll ever see. You can still shoot?’
‘Better than you,’ answered Ross.
He noticed a man weaving towards them through stacks of supplies – tea, sugar and Worcestershire sauce for the humans, salt and arsenic for the hides and enough cartridges to start another war. A string of fish hung limply from the man’s hand.
Joe squinted a whitish eye. ‘You’re not looking your finest, mate. You sure you’re up to this?’
‘Do you want me or not?’ countered Ross.
‘Better have a wash, eh?’ said Joe, although he sounded unconvinced about Ross’s capabilities. ‘You smell like you could have something living in that chin growth of yours.’
Ross grabbed a rusty saw, the teeth cracked and stained like those of an old man. Propping his rifle on one knee, he grasped the barrel as he cut through the stock, sawing it clean off. He lifted the weapon, checking it for balance.
‘This is all I need.’ Ross stroked the attachment where a sword bayonet had once been fixed.
‘I would have thought the missionary would have gotten you bathed and churched at first sight. You did see Dyer?’ asked Joe.
‘Yes, I saw him.’
‘Maybe he needs something, or someone, to get cleaned up for,’ said the fisherman, with a hiss of air through two mismatched gold teeth. His Scottish accent was painfully familiar.
Ross waited a moment for his mind to settle as the catch was deposited in a bucket. The fishtails stuck out the top, all crescent-shaped scales and grey-silver tones. The bearded man who’d been carrying them was now standing next to Joe. Ross found himself remembering the hours they’d spent together cutting pine for the Waybell homestead, the air in the grove tangy and almost too full of oxygen for his lungs. The splinters of memory washed through him like light through fog.
The fisherman held out his hand. ‘It’s been a while, Ross,’ said Connor, his voice was cautious but also tinged with emotion.
Both of their grips were strong and tight. ‘Yes. It certainly has,’ replied Ross.
Chapter 47
The cooking fish was spitting and hissing on the skillet. Ross wanted to know how Connor had managed to track him down but he worried that by asking the question a cavern would open beneath his feet and he would fall straight back into a place long left behind. The Scotsman served up the fish, slapping the meat onto an enamel plate, and pointing to a selection of cutlery. Ross studied a fork with its neat, shiny prongs, his fingers shaking, before reverting to what he was used to. He stripped the fish quickly with teeth and hands, demolishing it in an instant, and belched loudly.
Connor looked from Ross’s plate to his own. He’d taken only one mouthful so far. ‘I’ve been chasing you for a while. Thought I’d caught up with you at the Marriots’ place on the Barkly but you’d gone by the time I got there.’ He pricked the fish with the fork, a line of puncture marks running the length of the catch. ‘I even paid a black tracker but when you went northwest he refused to go further. Reckoned you knew the country better than him. Either that, or it was sheer luck if you survived.’ The sentence ended with the hint of a question. ‘People said you weren’t worth finding. Others said that you were a ghost, or maybe I was chasing the wrong man. There’s a lot of lost souls wandering around out here.’
‘Are you one of them?’ Ross asked. ‘I figure you must be, to come after me.’
‘So what does that make you?’ Connor replied.
He was as feisty as always and not short of a comment. Grey hairs and latticed skin may have altered the man’s appearance but his cockiness was undiminished. Ross skimmed the dinner plate with his tongue, thinking of Hart alone in a box, untroubled.
‘I met Joe Davies in the pub in Darwin a few years ago,’ Connor continued. ‘We got talking about rough riders and stockmen and he told me a yarn about this bloke who stuck a horse like nobody’s business. Won the maiden at Katherine on a niggly gelding a few years back and then picked a fight with anyone interested. Betting on himself. Davies ended up spending a season with him around Wild Man River. Nearly died from a snake bite. Well, you know the rest.’ Connor chewed on his catch. ‘I never cottoned on to the RG name. It seemed too obvious, and there was a drover by the name of Reg Garnet who covered a fair bit of the Territory down south. He used the same initials, so it never struck me that it was you until Davies mentioned the book that RG always carried. That gave you away. Alastair’s childhood obsession.’ Connor stabbed at the fish and took another mouthful. ‘I never would have figured you to turn out like this. Look at you. Your hair’s past your shoulders. Your clothes are barely holding together. How old are you? A few years off forty? You look closer to sixty.’
Ross had no idea how to respond to this question. He was unused to the restrictive ideas of time and place, of pinpointing someone by the years they’d been alive as if it were the only way that a man could be defined. He’d come to know life as a daily path where age meant nothing other than the ability to witness another sunrise.
‘Why are you here?’ he asked finally.
‘A lot’s happened since you left.’ Connor was chewing so vigorously on the fish that slivers drif
ted to his lips. He sucked them back into his mouth. ‘Haven’t you given any thought at all to what took place after you cleared out? Like what happened to Darcey? Your family? Or who’s running Waybell? It’s been years.’
Ross stretched out his legs, wondering at the options left. Joining Joe’s outfit was something he’d planned on and worked towards. Having it ruined by an outsider never came to him as a possibility. ‘If you open your mouth again, Connor, it will be a sorry ending.’
‘So you really dinnae care at all? About any of it?’
‘I left for my own reasons and they haven’t changed,’ said Ross flatly.
Connor ran a finger around the plate and sucked the juices off it. It itched at Ross, the fact the Scotsman had chased him. Trailing him like a villain through desert and scrub with the same unforgiving stars shining down on both of them.
‘You’re heading out with Davies, I hear,’ said Connor. ‘Mind if I come along?’
‘Why?’ asked Ross.
‘Because short of staying at the mission and waiting for the next supply-lugger to take me back to Darwin, I haven’t got many options. Besides, I haven’t been buffalo hunting before.’
Ross considered what it would mean to have Connor by his side again. He couldn’t tell if it was the risk of gladness or the sureness of heartache that made him so undecided. The latter he’d grown accustomed to, while happiness he didn’t know anymore except in terms of space and shifting light. It wasn’t much, this life he’d chosen, but it proved useful when it came to erasing the past.
They were both older now, different on the outside and in. Like a pair of birds stuffed and mounted on opposite walls. Glassy-eyed and glaring at each other. ‘And then what?’
‘Then I’ll go home,’ the Scotsman promised.
‘To Waybell?’ The word lodged in Ross’s throat.
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