Only Killers and Thieves(10)

“Ah, don’t worry about it. Couple of dozen, that’s all.”

“Feels like more.”

“Is that right now?”

“There’s no grass. How long have they got?”

Father sighed and looked at the creek. “They’ve got long enough.”

Billy was lying on Tommy’s other side. He rose onto his elbow and called, “I’ll bet John Sullivan’s got plenty fodder. Grass to spare up there.”

“I’ll bet you’re probably right,” Father said.

“So why not ask if we can graze them? Only till the sales come round, and if he wants something for it we’ll pay him out of the take.”

Father snorted bitterly. “Like he doesn’t get enough.”

“Still, it’s better for us than if the whole mob starves.”

“The answer’s no, Billy.”

“Can’t hurt at least to ask him.”

“Yes it can. The answer’s no.”

Father rocked himself forward and groaned as he climbed to his feet. He nudged Arthur and Joseph awake with his boot cap, then went to where the horses were tied in the trees. The group rose wearily, gathered up their things, and followed. As they walked, Tommy leaned close to Billy and whispered, “How would you know about Sullivan’s paddocks if we never went past them blue gums?”

Billy shrugged. “I’ll say I was only guessing. You saw what he has, though. Imagine the take if we got them fattened up first.”

“He won’t ask him. You won’t change his mind.”

“I know. Man’s more stubborn than that bloody packhorse. My arse is on fire, Tommy. I’ll be lucky if I can sit down for a week!”

Tommy was still laughing as he walked Beau out of the trees. The group made its way upstream, northwest, into the far corner of the selection, the mob thinning out the farther north they rode, their painful moans of hunger replaced by the silence of the bush, only the whisper of the horses and dogs through the scrub and the rustle of leaves in the wind.

“Hey,” Tommy said to his brother. “Remember Wallabys?”

“Wallabys—too right.”

“Reckon we’ll ever get back there?”

“Not anytime soon.”

“Good, though.”

“Yeah,” Billy said, nodding. “Yeah, it was.”

They’d been riding two miles upstream when the dogs stopped gamboling and pointed themselves at the creek. Both let go a series of short warning barks, then fell silent as behind them the party bunched to a halt, warily studying the trees.

“What is it?” Tommy asked. “What they seen?”

“Quiet,” Father snapped.

Arthur leaned toward him in the saddle. “Probably just smelled another dead bugger. Might be one drowned in the creek.”

Tommy could smell nothing different. Heat, sweat, horse. He thought he could hear flies buzzing, but flies gathered everywhere out here. He glanced behind at the open grasslands and the scrub swaying gently in the breeze. His damp shirt rippled. He cleared his nose and spat. Father was hunched over in the saddle now, craning for a view through the trees. Very slowly he straightened. He reached out an arm, appealing for quiet, for calm, then his other hand went for his carbine: he shouldered the stock and took aim at the creek.

Tommy scrambled for his rifle. It was strapped across his back and he struggled to bring it round. Billy and Arthur trained their weapons blindly at the trees, while Joseph sat unarmed and motionless on his horse. Tommy got his rifle down and roved it along the tree line, his breathing quick and panicked, his eyes very wide, but there was nothing in the branches that he could see. Fragments of sunlight glinting on the water. The leaves fluttering in the breeze.

Father dismounted, his carbine raised. His boots hit the ground and he started walking. “Joseph, with me,” he said quietly. “You lot stay here.”

This time Joseph obeyed. He dismounted and Arthur handed him a pistol, an old open-frame, five-shot, percussion revolver that was missing half its grip. Joseph took it from him dumbly, held it flat in his palm. Father called from the trees and Joseph went after him, the revolver swinging in his hand. Together they ducked beneath the low branches and were gone, the dogs following them in, kicking through the deadfall and splashing through the creek.

“We should go with them,” Billy said. “We should go too.”

Arthur hushed him. They waited. Watching, listening, glimpsing their shadows rising up the far bank and passing into the clearing beyond, onto Sullivan’s land. Dead silence. Not a sound. Tommy was holding his breath, waiting for a gunshot, an ambush, some indication of what they’d found, and yet the noise that broke the silence was somehow even worse: Father’s voice, flat and wary, saying, “Boys, don’t come over here. Don’t come over, understand?”

Billy slid down from his horse. Tommy did the same. Arthur protested but he was also dismounting, following them into the trees. Rifles raised, they crossed the shallow creek, through columns of sunlight falling between the leaves. The dogs were on the far bank, waiting. They whimpered and sniffed the air. Tommy and Billy came up the slope and into the clearing, and Tommy caught a breath of the odor, rank and unwell. Father and Joseph were standing about twenty yards away, weapons lowered, arms limp at their sides. Neither was moving. They both had their heads bowed. Father looked up and saw his sons and his face sagged in sudden grief. They moved closer. Neither boy looking at him now. Their eyes were on the large red gum behind him, alone in the clearing, like a sentry in the scrub.