by Paul Howarth
Still they persisted. What choice but to go on? Limping over the sandhills like the explorers of long ago, those men for whom these places were now named—Sturt, Burke, Strzelecki—and the many others who had died along the way. They came across reminders occasionally, harbingers of what was to come. A boot, a satchel, a rusted canteen; once, a shallow grave marked with a little cairn of stones. By a dried-up waterhole from which they wrung moisture out of mud, Tommy found a set of initials carved into a fallen tree—APC—and the simplicity of that message, of someone recording that they were here, moved Tommy to take out his knife and do the same. TGM, he wrote, Arthur looking on.
They’d been nine days in that desolate nothingness when they felt the earth tremble beneath them and heard the unmistakable rumble of cattle on the move. They reined up and sat listening. Tommy lowered the kerchief covering his mouth. Both of them were like sandmen: gaunt, sunburned, squinting; a film of red dust like a second skin. Their lips were cracked, their cheeks hollow, it was painful just to breathe. Still, they knew the sound of a mob rushing. They’d been listening for that noise their whole lives.
“There,” Tommy said, pointing to a thin dust cloud rising above the wavelike dunes. He jabbed his heels into Beau’s wizened flank and despite his own condition the horse took off like he’d sensed it too. Arthur cursed and followed, Tommy by now up and over the first sand dune, no view yet but he was close. He urged Beau down the bank and up the next two dunes and when he crested the second pulled the horse up hard. There in the gully below him raged a thick flood of cattle a good few hundred strong, charging between the dunes in a great roiling cloud of red dust. At their flank a lone drover was trying desperately to keep up, snapping his stock whip again and again. Nothing was working. The drover struggled to keep his mount. Where the gully narrowed, his horse was buffeted by the mob, almost crushed against the dune. The cattle had their blood up. He’d never hold them on his own.
Arthur was still clearing the sandbank when Tommy disappeared down the other side. Traversing the slope at a gallop, spilling slides of red soil in his wake, he raced to get ahead of the mob from on high, to cut it off at the pass. If they made it out of the gully it would be hopeless; the mob would scatter and be gone. The drover hadn’t seen him yet, but Tommy could hear his shouting and whipcracks over the frothing surge of the mob. The smell of them, the noise—he knew this all too well. Every year since he’d been able to ride he’d pushed his father to take him mustering, and even when he hadn’t Tommy had watched with his brother as the men brought the cattle in. Down he came now, out of the sunshine, sweeping past the stampede, standing high in the saddle, his head down, his backside raised, his face lit up with joy, screaming his parched throat raw.
Now the drover noticed him. His whip fell limp in his hand.
“We’ll turn them!” Tommy shouted, making a circling motion in the air. “Wait till we’re out!” The drover nodded and fell away, taking a position at the mob’s rear flank. By now Tommy was level with the lead bullock, its red eye glaring, spittle foaming in the corners of its mouth. He looked back for Arthur, but Arthur wasn’t there: coming down the distant sandbank at a stroll. They cleared the gully and came into the open plains and Tommy began moving in, yelling at the cattle, forcing them to turn. Which they did, wheeling away to the right, the drover at their other flank, making sure they kept in line. Slowing down finally. The madness fading at last. Tommy brought the head of the column to the tail and he and the drover kept them turning like a mill wheel.
“I thought I’d bloody dreamed you,” the drover panted, pulling up at Tommy’s side. “Glad I didn’t, anyhow. I was in the shit back there.”
He was a man of around thirty, with skin tanned so dark he was barely still white, a three-month beard and blue eyes cracked like leather left too long in the sun. He wore moleskins and a filthy shirt, had two gun belts around his waist and a dark red kerchief at his throat. He took off his hat and ran a hand through light brown hair that he’d allowed to grow down to his neck. He said his name was Jack Kerrigan. “Got any water?” Tommy rasped.
Kerrigan pulled a flask from his saddlebag and Tommy drank until he coughed. Arthur joined them cautiously. Tommy motioned with the flask and Kerrigan nodded. “Don’t be shy now. I got plenty back there on the mules.”
Arthur drank his fill and returned it. Kerrigan stoppered the flask, saying, “So, do I dare ask what you fellas are doing out here?”
“Looking for the Cooper Creek,” Tommy replied.
“The Cooper? Shit-in-hell, you’re about two hundred miles too far south. What you heading out that way for?”
Tommy glowered at Arthur, said, “He thought we could pick up the Birdsville Track, get ourselves into SA.”
“Some tracker you’ve got there, mate—you’re already in South Australia, probably been here about a week. You don’t need the bloody Cooper . . . where’s all your stuff at anyway? How are you boys still alive?”
“The other horse went lame a while back. Had to lose most of our things.”
“Well, shit.” Another stroke of his hair and he settled his hat back on his head. “I’ve seen some sorry bastards in my time but few worse than the pair of you. I thought I was lucky to have found you—I reckon it might just be the other way around.”
“Where are you going?” Tommy asked.
“Marree, eventually. Or I was, until these buggers spooked. Probably a snake what did it. Took off like they’d been bloody shot.”
“How far is Marree?”
“Maybe another month, give or take, depends how quick they travel, and how the track holds up. That’s the Strzelecki I’m talking about, mind you. Not your Birdsville bloody Track. Shit, you boys really don’t have a clue.” He started chuckling then said, “Anyway, you fellas got names?”
Tommy had been waiting for this since they’d crossed those cattle stations a while back; the risk of boundary riders, of being caught. “Robert Thompson,” he told him, the name off the headstone in St. George. “Or Bobby, if you like.”
Kerrigan shook his hand. “Good to meet you, Bobby. What about your boy?”
After a pause Arthur said, “Arthur.” They didn’t shake hands, and Tommy didn’t correct the reference to boy.
“All right. So listen, how about we work out some terms?”
“For what?”
“Well, you two are about as lost as a snowflake in spring, but you know how to handle cattle, and I could use the help. My men all quit a while back, bunch of workshy bastards that they are, got spooked by the Strez like some do. So how about you work your passage and I’ll see you to Marree, or any of the stations along the way. Tucker included. Provided we can find them two mules.”
Tommy glanced at Arthur. A tiny shake of his head. Tommy said, “What’s to stop us just following you anyway?”
“Nothing, I suppose. Except that if you try to rob me I’ll shoot you, no worries about that.” He patted one of the revolvers on his gun belt. “So unless you’re planning on eating rocks and dirt out there you might as well get yourselves fed. Plus I’ll pay you into the bargain. Twenty-five shillings a week, same as them other cunts, and I won’t ask any questions about what you’re really doing out here—that sound fair?”
“Fifty,” Tommy said. “Fifty a week.”
“State you’re in and you’re bartering.” Kerrigan chuckled. “You’ve got some nerve. All right, how about I throw in a penny a head for every one of these buggers we get loaded on the train. That’s between you, mind. You can split it however you like. Or I’ll point you in the direction of the Cooper and wave you both goodbye.”
Tommy leaned and shook on it, Arthur watching impassively as he did. “Good,” Kerrigan said as they parted. “Well, we’d best get straight to it, else we’ll be hunting down them mules in the dark.”
He moved his horse away, ready to begin cutting the cattle out of their wheel. “I don’t like this,” Arthur said.
“He’s saving our lives here. Plus we’r
e getting paid.”
“We don’t know nothing about this bloke.”
“Neither does he. Wouldn’t anyway—what did you give your real name for?”
Arthur sniffed and spat and turned his horse around. “Mate, nobody gives a shit what the blackfella’s called.” And he took up a position beside the mob.
Chapter 10
Billy McBride
Sunshine blanketed the homestead. A neat slab hut with well-kept storage barns and white sheets gleaming on the wash line. A barefoot woman shooed chooks while pegging out her husband’s damp shirts; blond-haired children played chase through the yard. At one of the outbuildings a man was working, replacing a section of weathered boards, a delay between each hammer swing and its sound reaching the crest of the hill on which the line of five riders stood.
Billy lowered the brass telescope, handed it back to Noone.
“You will guard the family,” Noone told him. “Restrain them, if you must. The rest of you to that big barn on the right there. That’s where our boy will be.”
Hannah Bennett was first to notice them. She dropped her peg bag and called to her husband but was muffled by his hammering and the squeals of their girls. The children halted immediately. The panic in their mother’s voice. She told them to get inside the house, shouted again, and only now did Drew Bennett turn: he saw his family fleeing, saw the horses descending the hillside. He locked eyes with Hannah, a long and fearful stare. She hurried after the children. Briefly, Drew’s head hung. He tossed the hammer and went into the shed and emerged with a shotgun broken over his arm. He slid in the shells as he walked to the middle of the yard, stationed himself between the riders and the house. Faces in the windows, watching him. Hannah in the crack of the door.
Drew snapped the breech face closed, set his feet apart, shouldered the shotgun, and took aim. Down the barrel he sighted them: two blacks, three whites, one tall in the saddle, his longcoat flared like wings. Drew hesitated. The shotgun sagged in his hands. One of the white men began waving madly, yelling for Drew to lower the gun, and with a jolt he noticed that the blacks were in uniform, and realized who the tall man was.
Drew glanced at his family and laid the shotgun on the ground.
Three horses swept by him, made directly for the main barn; the tall man followed them at a walk, his head twisting, watching Drew Bennett as he passed.
“Drew! Don’t! Easy now—don’t touch that gun!”
Drew scowled at the man shouting, dismounting his horse at a run. The face was familiar, the voice, but he couldn’t quite place him here, at his property, with these men. Panting, he stopped just a few yards away, his face flushed, his hand outstretched.
“Just . . . kick the shotty over, eh?”
Drew’s face unclouded. “You bring this mob to my house, Billy McBride?”
“They’re only here for the boy, nothing else.”
“I asked you a fucking question.”
“They were coming anyway. It was them that brung me.”
Drew’s face twisted. “What for?”
“Drew, mate—the shotty.”
He looked at the shotgun at his feet, as if wondering how it had got there. The others had dismounted and were watching from the barn.
“You know who they are?” Billy said. “Who he is? What he’ll do?”
“I’ve an idea, aye.”
“Then don’t be stupid about it. Christ, it’s only a black.”
Drew dragged his hand over his face. He kicked the shotgun to Billy; Billy opened it and tipped out the shells. At the barn Noone gave an instruction and Percy approached the door with his pistol drawn. He tugged on the handle but it was locked. All heads turned.
Drew’s voice was barely a whisper: “Lock’s on the inside.”
“No key,” Billy yelled.
Noone dispatched Jarrah to the toolshed, and as he passed he didn’t give Drew Bennett so much as a glance. Everyone waited. A hot wind whipped through the yard. The white bedsheets billowed. The house door creaked.
“I’ve my whole bloody family back there,” Drew said.
“Which is why you have to let them do their business then leave. They only want their trooper. That’s all this is about.”
“I never knew he was Native Police.”
“I know that, mate. I know.”
Drew glared at him a long time. “I’m not your mate, you fucking dog. Your old man would be turning in his grave if he saw what you’ve become.”
Jarrah returned with a long-handled shovel swinging nonchalantly at his side. He carried it to the barn and wedged the blade in the lock jamb and after a nod from Noone prized the doors. The wood cracked and splintered. Drew Bennett flinched at the sound. Percy and Pope had their pistols ready as Jarrah nudged the barn door open with the shovel end. Stiffly, it swung on its hinge. Noone glanced at Drew Bennett, jutted his chin, ordered Percy and the troopers inside.
“You have to stop them, Billy.”
“They wouldn’t listen even if I tried.”
Drew had paled. He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
And for a long time there was nothing. Total silence in the yard, in the barn, all eyes trained on the open door, until suddenly the silence was broken by a scream from within: a woman’s scream, rent with fear.
“Who is that? Who’s in there?” Billy snapped, but Drew only stared at the barn. Brief sounds of a scuffle, shouting, another scream, then the troopers emerged dragging the missing trooper Rabbit and a native woman through the door. They marched them to Noone and held them there, cowering from the sudden brightness, and from the inspector peering down.
“They’re fucking animals,” Drew Bennett said.
The troopers let go of their arms. The captives stood trembling in their borrowed clothes: Drew’s shirt drowning Rabbit, an old dress that Hannah had loaned. Rabbit began blubbering. Hands together in prayer. He was young, perhaps Billy’s age, and in that shirt looked younger still. He chopped his hands back and forth beseechingly, begging, “Marmy, please Marmy, sorry Marmy, please.” Noone smiled at him, sighed; his great chest heaved. He reached out a hand and very carefully placed it on Rabbit’s head, cradling his skull, and at the touch Rabbit dissolved into sobbing and a dark stain spread down the front of his leg.
“He pissed hisself!” Percy shrieked, laughing. “He pissed hisself—look here!”
Pope already had the neck cuffs. Wailing, Rabbit was put into irons. They took hold of the woman and did likewise, and it was only as she turned, as her dress tightened when her arms were pinned, that Billy realized what Drew had been talking about: a bulge in her belly; she was carrying a child.
“Oh, shit. Oh, no.”
“Yeah. And you’ll just stand here and watch.”
The captives were chained to the back of Jarrah’s horse and led to the edge of the yard. Noone and Percy remained by the barn. From the pocket of his longcoat Noone produced the silver flask they had been drinking from last night, unscrewed the lid, and saluted Drew Bennett in a toast. He took a sip and passed the flask to Percy, who laughed and skipped along the front of the barn, dousing the wooden walls in rum. Drew lunged away from Billy. Billy was too slow to react. From the house Hannah shouted after her husband and Noone’s head turned. He reached inside his longcoat. Two revolvers were reverse-holstered on his belt: he had one drawn and raised just as Billy managed to catch up with Drew and slam into him from behind.
Down the pair tumbled. Rolling through the dust. Noone slid the revolver back into his belt and fished out his matchbox instead. Drew dragged himself to his knees, Billy standing over him, arms spread, like shepherding a wantaway calf, while Hannah edged from the house into the yard. Noone struck the match and tossed it. A curtain of blue flame ripped up the barn wall and spread over the sun-parched building like a plague. Black smoke billowed. It pumped through the door and windows and up through the roof and whispered through the gaps in the walls. A hellish noise building. A roar of destruction, of death. Within
a few minutes the fire had consumed the barn entirely, its redness reflected in Drew Bennett’s damp eyes.
The family would watch it later. After Billy had recovered his horse and joined the others and the five of them had led their captives back over the grassy hillside, one by one they would slip timidly from the house, and would hold each other or stand alone, watching their futures burn. Their entire food store was in there. Their cattle feed and equipment, everything. They would never fully recover. When news of the fire got out, put down to a dropped branding iron, the church and their neighbors would rally round to see them through the coming months. But charity could not sustain them. Couldn’t give back what they had lost. Yes, they still had their cattle, and they could rebuild, but for the rest of his life Drew Bennett would measure himself against the man he had been prior to that day and always seemed to come up short. The children became sickly. Hannah blamed the smoke. For weeks it hung over them, long after the barn had folded boxlike and collapsed into a pile of smoldering timber whose flames refused to fully die out. The fire haunted them after sunset, glowing through the windows; they saw it even when they closed their eyes. And that smell, that godawful burning, on their clothes, in their nostrils, their hair. Hannah felt terrible for having taken in the runaways—she hadn’t known the boy was Native Police. Had she foreseen what would happen, that they’d be the ones punished, the night terrors and day terrors the children would endure, she would not for one second have hesitated in turning the pair away. She should have suspected. They were so frightened and helpless, they must have been on the run. But the woman was expecting, and even Drew agreed—they had done the right thing by them, it all felt so unfair. In her weaker moments she would blame her husband, though she knew it wasn’t his fault. But all she saw as she’d watched from the house was him lay down his shotgun and stand there while those men torched their barn. Yes, she had called out to stop him, she admitted as much, she was worried he would get himself shot. But Drew had always been the type who would protect them, one way or another, or so Hannah had assumed. And he hadn’t. Hadn’t even tried. Didn’t say so much as a word. He had knelt on the ground and watched their livelihoods burn, and that was how she remembered him, from that day till their last: on his knees, in the yard, helpless. No matter how much she wished otherwise, she never looked at her husband the same way again.