Only Killers and Thieves(2)



“You know what’s over there?”

“Course I do,” Tommy said. Broken Ridge cattle station accounted for almost the entire district: excepting their own selection, and one or two others like it, there was not much this side of Bewley that wasn’t the squatter John Sullivan’s land.

“Want to take a look?”

“What for?”

“You ain’t curious?”

“We should be getting back.”

But Billy was already moving, weaving through the trees. Tommy let him go. He cleared his nose, took another drink from the flask. Billy called for him to come. He was standing at the tree line, waving like he’d discovered virgin land. Tommy sighed, trudged after him, then stood with his brother looking out over the fringe of a landholding a hundred times the size of their own. Broken Ridge was no selection: Sullivan’s grandfather had been the first white man to settle this part of the frontier, had taken all he could defend, no purchase, no lease, and the next two generations had pushed the boundaries farther still. Now John Sullivan owned the entire district—and everyone in it, Father claimed—without so much as a shilling having ever been paid.

The immediate terrain was familiar: bare ochre earth scattered with boulders and scree, termite mounds as tall as a man. But where the land opened out and sloped into the valley, Tommy could see a distant meadow, with what looked to be Mitchell grass growing improbably lush and green, the dark shapes of livestock dotted throughout. Beyond the meadow and the tree-lined patchwork of surrounding paddocks and fields, the jagged red ridge for which the station was named sawed against the sky, the foothills part-shadowed as if wildfire-scorched.

“One man,” Billy said quietly. “One man owns all of that. And here’s Daddy barely making it still. All these years, and we ain’t worth the dags on Sullivan’s arse.”

Tommy looked at him sideways. “You might not be.”

“I mean it. When I get my own run . . .”

Billy drifted into silence, the dream of it, his long-held plans.

Tommy said, “We should go.”

“We ain’t doing no harm.”

“You know what Daddy would say. Anyhow, it’s a long ride home.”

Billy smirked at him, then stepped deliberately from the tree line, spread his arms, and turned around. “See? What did you reckon, the ground would give out?”

He shouldered his rifle on the strap and swaggered away. Tommy cursed, ran after him, and together they wandered cautiously between rock mounds ringed by snake tracks, more clumps of spinifex, occasional mulga trees and Moses bushes, and the flat-leaf tendrils of prickly pear. The valley opening before them, the pastures running on and on . . . it seemed incredible to Tommy that Sullivan’s land could be fed by the same creek that flowed barely shin-high on their own. Unless it wasn’t—there might have been another river that Tommy didn’t know. It was possible. Broken Ridge was big enough that there could easily have been two.

They’d been walking less than a mile when Tommy saw the first horse coming over the rise. He threw out a hand and grabbed Billy by the shirt and pulled them both down to their knees, his eyes on the horse all the while. It was heading east to west, only five hundred yards away, and was ridden by a very tall man, sitting fully erect in the saddle, wearing a slouch hat and longcoat flapping open at the sides. After him came another rider, this one small and hatless, then a further five horses, seven in all, trotting in a single-file column. Trailing behind them were three native men chained together at the necks, running in the dust thrown up by the hooves and struggling to keep their feet. Whenever one fell the others did too, causing the convoy to halt and the rear-most rider to shout and curse and yank on the chain, hauling them upright in a clumsy jerking dance, whereupon the convoy would move forward until the next man fell, and the dance started over again.

All this the brothers watched wide-eyed, neither of them speaking, barely breathing so it seemed, until finally Billy took Tommy’s arm and dragged him in a crouch to a pair of Moses bushes growing side by side. They sprawled on their bellies and crawled underneath, thorns snagging their shirt backs and scraping their skin, wriggling far enough through to see the convoy again. Once more it had stalled. Another of the men had gone down. The rider yelled and pulled the chain, but this time there was no response. The group watched and waited. The rider got down from his horse. He was wearing a kind of police uniform, as were three of the others: white trousers, blue tunic, peaked hat. He walked over to the fallen native and kicked him. The native shifted in the dirt. The trooper slapped the other two about their heads, then kicked the man again. When still he didn’t rise, the trooper returned to his horse, pulled a rifle from his pack, and looked toward the front of the line. The tall man nodded. The trooper stood over the native, aimed, and fired.

Tommy saw the body flinch before the sound of the shot came tumbling over the plains. A noise escaped him. A soft and high-pitched breath. He could feel his heart hammering against the ground as the fading rifle report was followed by a muted cheer. The other riders were clapping. The trooper gave a little bow. He bent and uncuffed the body from the neck chain then bullied the remaining men into line. They rose, cowering behind their hands. The trooper shook out the chain and remounted his horse, but the party didn’t move on. The front two men were talking. The tall man extended an arm and pointed to where Tommy and Billy hid. Other heads turned their way. Then all but the last horse broke into a gallop and fanned wide across the plain, and Tommy gave out a moan like a just-kicked dog.

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