Dust Off the Bones

by Paul Howarth

  “The other thing I wanted to know,” she interrupted, talking over him, “is how Billy McBride is faring on his old family run. Have you heard anything from him? Are matters concluded between us now?”

  “I gave him all he wanted, like you told me to.”

  “And? What else?”

  “How d’you mean, Mrs. Sullivan?”

  “Well, have you not seen or heard from him since?”

  “One of the blokes reckoned he was out at the Lawton saleyards a few weeks back, but that’s all I’ve heard.”

  A pause, then Katherine said, “Right, very good. Remember about Morris. And the upper paddocks. I’ll see you next week as planned.”

  She swiveled and marched out through the doorway, mounted up, and rode clear of the yards, whistles and catcalls as she did so; Morris finger-waved. Katherine ignored them, resisted the urge to give a finger gesture in return. She rode around the workers’ compound and onto the western track, unsure of the route exactly, it had been a few years. But when she saw the barren hillside sloping up to a blue gum wood, the termite mounds and thin horse trail beaten into the dusty ground, she left the paddocks and followed it and, once through the trees, emerged onto Billy’s land.

  It was a long ride to the homestead, over empty rubbled scrubland, miserable grazing country and not a cow in sight. There must have been fodder somewhere, perhaps closer to the creek, but not for the first time she wondered what it was with Billy, with most men: this stubborn battle to outdo their fathers, against all logic and good sense.

  Because it was such a sorry victory: the house crooked and crumbling, the inside covered in dust. There was a smashed mug on the verandah, finger marks on the table, and two of the chairs were pulled out, but otherwise no sign that Billy was living here at all. She knew the reason. The bloodstains were still visible on the floor. She crossed the yard to the bunkhouse and found a few items of his clothing scattered beside a stripped mattress—he’d left in a hurry, she realized. Gathered his blankets, packed his things. Meaning Noone had come calling like he’d threatened to, and Billy had rolled over again.

  He had arrived at the house yesterday, uninvited, unannounced; the first Katherine knew, he was standing in her drawing room, impossibly tall, talking with her father and Charles. She had not seen him in half a decade but it felt much less: the unnerving way he spoke to her, so courteous and polite; that hollow stare; the warmth of his hand when they shook. His very presence set the room akilter, as if she were suddenly drunk.

  “As pleasant as this is, gentlemen, I would be obliged if you would excuse us. Mrs. Sullivan and I have some urgent police business to discuss.”

  Amid scowls and second glances the others left the room and Katherine and Noone were alone. Katherine rang the bell and asked for tea and they sat waiting in the armchairs, facing each other, twenty feet apart. Still he felt too close. Like she couldn’t breathe. He smiled and those dead eyes traced her body head to foot. She smoothed down her skirts to the ankle, but they weren’t quite long enough.

  “So how are you, Mrs. Sullivan? Not short of suitors, I see?”

  “Very well, thank you.”

  “Is it official? Are you to be wed?”

  “Nothing is decided. How can I help, Mr. Noone?”

  The tea came and they fell silent while the housemaid poured, Katherine’s gaze flicking between the girl and Noone. She served them then hurried from the room, and Katherine found she had to grip her cup tight to the saucer to stop it rattling in her hands. Once, she had amused herself by teasing him, by speaking out of turn, but she hadn’t understood a thing. She’d been so naive in those days, about everything, not least this man.

  “I heard Billy McBride is working for you—is that true?”

  Perhaps she’d flinched at the mention of Billy’s name, some twitch that had given her away, or perhaps he’d heard the gossip from the men, but when she told him that Billy was back at Glendale, starting up on his own, Noone grimaced and inclined his head a little, said, “I’m very sorry to hear that. You must miss him, I am sure.”

  She hadn’t known how to answer him, took another sip of tea, smiling politely while Noone talked in general terms about the district, the colony, then asked quite sincerely if she’d had any trouble from the local blacks. “Good, good,” he said, nodding, when she answered she had not, like this was somehow news to him, an unexpected turn of events. She couldn’t read him at all, not like she could most men; there was always another meaning to everything he said. He had helped her once, after John died, going down to the compound to arrest Raymond Locke—did he assume she was now in his debt?

  The state they had found Locke in afterward . . . the things Noone had done . . .

  He drank his tea primly and told her about an expedition he was planning, for which apparently he needed Billy’s help. And hers: Might he trouble her for some rations, whatever she could spare? Again she rang the bell and asked for food parcels to be prepared, and didn’t think anything of it when Noone had said he needed five, despite there only being three men waiting when she later accompanied him outside.

  “Congratulations, incidentally,” Noone said as they parted, his eyes on her stomach, his tongue wetting his lips. “I wish you and the child the best of health.”

  Now she stood among Billy’s detritus in the bunkhouse and reflexively touched her bump. Barely anything, the smallest hint of a bulge, but the signs were undeniable, no matter how hard she’d tried. Even the dates aligned. Not the last time with Billy but the time before that. Two months, then, still so early—how had Noone noticed through her housedress; how could he possibly have known?

  She picked through the items on the bookcase. A deck of cards, a tobacco tin—what she knew of Billy she cared for very much but she didn’t truly know him at all. There were glimpses. His tenderness, his stubbornness, his temper, his refusal to know his place . . . but these traits were all part of the appeal. He’d grown up so fast—the suitors her father kept bringing her were boys compared to him. And now they were bound together, for better or worse, assuming the baby made it to term. She wouldn’t go to the doctor. Wouldn’t have anything done. If the child was God’s will they would just have to accept it and make the best of things. She stepped out into the yard, still holding her stomach. It was miraculous, really, the idea of a life growing inside. A blessing. Yes, they weren’t married yet, but that could be arranged, assuming Billy was willing to leave Glendale. She looked around witheringly. No child of hers would be growing up here. Suddenly she had a vision of their future together, clicking into place like lockpins: Charles Sinclair out of the picture, her father gone too, she and Billy married and living with the baby at Broken Ridge, all questions over her landholding resolved. Then just as quickly she was back in that yard, with all it still held for him, and she realized she couldn’t be certain what Billy would choose. For every time he had held her, kissed her, fucked her, here was the other side to him: living in a barn like a swagman, running with people like Noone.

  Chapter 9

  Tommy McBride

  For weeks they slogged west blindly. No river to guide them, no trail, no road; their only destination the horizon, whose features never changed. They didn’t seem to have been followed. Empty country behind as well as out in front, at most a distant roo or dingo loping through the scrub, the bones of fallen creatures bleached bright white by the sun. Slow going out here. The horses struggling in the heat, water painfully scarce. They only had their canteens to store it in, having fled Cunnamulla without buying bladder bags, and were reliant on the dirty creeks and brackish pools they came across entirely by luck. The stallion fared the worst of them. Unused to hardship, and the hardscrabble terrain. He wouldn’t wear the pack saddle and hated Arthur in the mount, meaning Tommy had to ride him and Beau carried their cargo, or what little of it remained. They’d gone through half their provisions already, and there was nothing out here to hunt.

  Finally the scenery began changing: the soil becomin
g lighter, trees dotted here and there. In the distance they saw signs of a river, a steady thread of greenery weaving through the scrub, and whooping and cheering kicked the horses to a canter and raced to the nearest bank. They threw themselves in without undressing. Came up gasping and laughing like kids. They thought they’d found the Cooper Creek, no way of knowing this was the Bulloo River, hundreds of miles too far south. Drying on the bank in the sunshine, watching the horses drink, they babbled excitedly about having made it, and how they’d always known they would. Arthur did some fishing. Cooked them wrapped in river clay in the coals. It was the best damn meal they’d ever eaten: greedily they flaked the white meat off the bones, every last morsel, sucking their fingers clean, Tommy reminiscing about the first time he’d ever gone fishing, he couldn’t have been much older than six. Father had taken him and Billy out to a spot called Hollow Creek, where they’d camped just the three of them, and caught more than they could eat. He’d felt like a man that day. Like he’d been given just a glimpse. Easy to forget these happy memories—there were more if he forced himself, pushed through the veil their deaths had drawn. Mother, for no good reason, throwing an off egg at Father’s head; her squeals as he chased her round the yard. That time Billy got his foot stuck in a bucket and Tommy had laughed till he cried. His earliest memory might have been the day Mary was born; he was three. Billy had been told to take the two of them off somewhere but when they’d heard Mother screaming had snuck behind the house instead. Tommy wouldn’t keep quiet. Billy hushed him so loud Father heard. He broke off his pacing up and down the verandah, came round back and found them crouched beneath the sill. He’d scooped them up like they weighed nothing, carried them over to the stables, sat them on his knee. He was so strong in those days. Arms like cows’ legs. He’d held them tight and promised them everything would be fine, and it was for a while, Tommy admitted—it might not have always seemed it, but their lives had been just fine.

  After two days following the river they realized it couldn’t be the Cooper. Its course was south-flowing, there were mountains in the west; they’d simply not ridden far enough. They crossed at a shallow point onto what looked like station land. Sheep and cattle everywhere, post-and-paling fences stretching across the fields. Meaning somewhere out here was a homestead, with a kitchen, a store, maybe a map that would show them where the hell they were. But such comforts also meant people, and they couldn’t risk being recognized. They were murderers, and word would almost certainly have spread. Station gossip, a telegraph line. They could give false names but it hardly mattered: they couldn’t change their faces, their disfigurements, the colors of their skin.

  They headed toward the hills, the first true undulation in the landscape they’d seen in all this time. The earth here softer, and golden, the grass more plentiful and green. And there was water, the vast plains riddled with veiny streams and waterways that from above resembled spreading fingers of mold. This was the fringe of the Channel Country, which Arthur said was a good sign, unaware that the Channel Country covered a hundred thousand square miles. At least they didn’t go hungry. Sheep, calves—a meal was never far away. Arthur butchered and cooked them and they left the carcasses for the birds and dingos, whose kills already littered the plains.

  Still no sign of the Cooper.

  “We’ll find it,” Arthur said.

  The ranges were a line of jagged peaks and outcrops, studded with mulga and saltbush, steep downslopes strewn with boulders and buttressed by great tablet-shaped slabs, the footing sheer in places, in others riddled with scree. They climbed in a slow tacking motion, long sweeps from side to side, Tommy guiding the stallion carefully; like he’d never left the prairie the way he minced up that hill. They found a pass and followed a cutout through the ridge, walls of rock either side of them, the dull clip of hoof on stone, until the summit opened onto a wide gray plateau of almost-touching slabs, and as they made their way across it Tommy felt the stallion lurch beneath him, heard a brutal snapping sound, then a scream from the horse and it tilted, and Tommy was thrown from the saddle as it fell.

  Arthur dismounted and came running. Tommy waved off his attempts to help, picking himself up gingerly, the stallion writhing beneath them, its leg in the crevice to the shin. The hoof had gone in, then the body had fallen, all the weight on that one bone. It was bent at a right angle. A thick white shard poked through the skin. Blood seeped from the wound and ran down the leg and gathered in a pool on the stone. Tommy crouched and put a hand on the horse’s neck, its pulse like a wind-up drummer toy. The stallion stopped thrashing. A sudden, deathly calm. Watching Tommy fearfully with wild, wide eyes.

  “Help me get his hoof out,” Tommy said, shuffling into position. Behind him Arthur didn’t move.

  “There ain’t nothing we can do, mate.”

  “Might be we can splint it.”

  “What would be the use?”

  Tommy glared up at Arthur, despite knowing he was right. An injured horse out here was worse than none at all. He tugged at the foreleg anyway, felt Arthur’s hand on his shoulder, shrugged it off.

  “Tommy . . .”

  “We can’t just leave him. We need that saddle for a start.”

  “Here, before the pain gets any worse.”

  Tommy turned. Arthur was offering Cal Burns’s revolver, flat in his open palm. He rose and stood looking at the gun.

  “Why is this on me?”

  “You were riding him. Hell, he’s more your horse than mine.”

  Tommy looked at the horse forlornly, and at the gun in Arthur’s hand. “No.”

  Arthur sighed. “Just . . . take a turn for once.”

  “What?”

  “Do something, Tommy. A fish needs catching, I catch it. We butcher a sheep, that’s me too. You act like it’s my fault we’re here.”

  Five years ago, in ranges just like these, Noone had offered Tommy a gun the same way, whispering about his father, his brother, persuading him to take a life. And he’d done it, he’d buckled, the first man he’d ever killed. He could still hear the gunshot echo through the canyon, could still smell the sulfur on his skin. Arthur had no idea what he was asking. “I ain’t doing it,” Tommy said.

  He walked away over the plateau until he reached the boulders on the far side of the rise, slipped between them out of view, and gazed at the land ahead, more of the same, the endless Channel Country, no sign of a river at all.

  The gunshot made him shudder. A violent, whole-body flinch. He closed his eyes and held himself and listened to the report receding over the plains. Bracing himself. Sucking each breath through his teeth. In his mind a carousel of every shooting, every death. He scrubbed his face and scolded himself—it was only a fucking horse.

  Arthur had the saddle swapped onto Beau by the time Tommy emerged from the rocks. The stallion lay dead on its side, its leg still caught in the crevice. There was a hole in its forehead. A clean shot between the ears. Arthur was crouched on the ground beside it, parceling out the remainder of their supplies—now they only had their saddlebags and what they could tie up behind. He glanced at Tommy then away again. “Here, give us a hand with these things.”

  “There’s no river out there.”

  “We’ll find it.”

  “You keep saying that, but when? Where is it? We’ve come far enough now anyway, why not just go south from here?”

  “We talked about this. They’ll be looking for us down there.”

  “You talked about it. You did. When do I get a say?”

  “Look, I know you’re upset about the horse but—”

  “I’m not upset about the bloody horse. Stop treating me like a boy.”

  “It’s you that does that, mate. Nothing to do with me.”

  Tommy stared at him, incredulous. “You really don’t have a fucking clue.”

  Arthur held the stare, then in silence packed up their things. They made their way out of the hills before sundown—Tommy refused to camp there, despite the natural shelter it gave. Th
ey barely spoke in the days following, so used to each other’s habits they could get by without hardly a word, such that when Tommy abruptly turned his horse to the south he did so without warning or explanation, riding off into the distance, not a backward glance. Arthur sat watching him. Weighing whether to let him go. Then he sighed and clicked his horse forward, followed on behind.

  They were three days riding toward the border before they came upon the dingo fence, an immense chain-link mesh strung between thick palings and as high as any wall. They came to a halt before it, stood their horses together, scanning the fence left and right. It seemed unending. Perfectly straight, to the horizon east and west. Tommy dismounted and approached the wire mesh with his hand extended, as if it might not be real. He laced his fingers through the link and gently rattled. Dust wafted through the gaps. He tested a post but it was solid, and they’d ditched the pick and most of the other fencing tools in the hills. All they had now was the shovel, and what use was that?

  For a day and a half they followed the fence line west and found not a gate or an opening; not even so much as a missing link. No choice but to abandon it, return north, heading for the Cooper and the central stock routes once again. No longer in the Channel Country. Might have been anywhere now. Desert terrain underfoot, a parched and rubbled ground, no cattle or sheep to butcher, no more little creeks and streams. They rationed their water sparingly. Made each damper loaf last two days. Sometimes they saw emu or rock wallaby or a pack of wild dogs, but the horses weren’t up to hunting and they weren’t yet desperate enough to eat a dog. They watched for signs of natives who might help them, but found none. Empty desert everywhere, arid gibber plains, corrugated as if a giant rib cage lay buried beneath the stony soil. No birds circling, no trees, no life at all. The wind blasting like a furnace. Dust choking their lungs, gritting their eyes, strafing their skin.