Only Killers and Thieves(4)

“And second, that you tell your father what happened here today, understand?”

“Yessir,” Billy said. “Yessir, we will.”

“And you?”

Billy elbowed Tommy in his side. He nodded.

“He don’t speak for himself? To my thinking a deal should be agreed out loud.”

“Say it,” Billy hissed.

“Yessir.”

“Good,” Sullivan said, taking up his reins. “Then on your way.”

The boys backtracked hesitantly, as one by one the group turned their horses and rode toward the trooper holding the two chained men. Only Noone remained. Still smoking his pipe, watching the boys like he hadn’t noticed the others leave. His gaze was steady and firm and his eyes were very white. Tommy felt that gaze run through him. It tiptoed down his spine. Billy tugged on his arm, pulled him away, and they set off scrambling for the distant trees.

The first time Tommy looked behind him, Noone was still there, watching. The second time he looked, he was gone.





2



When they rode into the yard Mother was on the verandah, sweeping, fighting her perpetual war against dust. A thin woman with a thin broom, pale in the shade of the porch, beating the wooden deck. Every day she swept, often many times, driving the dirt from inside their slab-walled house and around the small verandah, then expelling it down the steps. She swept, she cooked; privately, she prayed. She carried eggs from the fowl house in the folds of her apron; she taught all of her children to read. She had a hankering for the city. For city values, at least. She was a country girl now but not by birth—somehow she’d drifted out here. First to Roma, then Bewley, then this parcel of frontier land she’d wistfully named Glendale. Other than the dead center, there was nowhere farther to drift.

As the two boys dismounted, she finished her round of sweeping, then stood on the front steps with the broom in her hands and watched them walk their horses past the house, toward the stables, across the yard. Tommy felt his throat tighten. Still an urge to run to her, to confess, to allow himself to be held, but Billy had made it clear they weren’t to talk. Said Sullivan only wanted Father knowing because of the trouble it would cause. Mother smiled at them as they crossed in front of the house and Billy said it again: “Not a word, Tommy,” but quietly, through lips pulled tight in a smile of his own.

“Well?” she called. “What have you brought me?”

“Scrubs are empty,” Billy replied. “There ain’t nothing left.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I’m sure Arthur would have managed fine.”

“So send him out next time.”

“Tommy—what’s your excuse?”

“Sorry, Ma.”

She flapped a hand dismissively. “Ah, away with you. Useless boys. Me and Mary would fare better. Or maybe you just prefer my potato stew?”

“Best this side of Bewley!” Billy shouted. Mother laughed and shook her head and went back up the steps and inside.

They walked on. Past the long bunkhouse that had once held a dozen men and was now home to only two: Arthur plus the new boy, Joseph, Father’s native stockmen. The double doors were open but there was no one inside, and when they got to the stables the other stalls were empty, meaning the men were still out working, seeing to the mob. There wasn’t long before the saleyards: their year, their futures, tallied and sold.

In silence they unsaddled the horses, brushed them, fed them, tipped water on their backs, hung the damp blankets on the outside rail to dry. They walked down through the yard together, toward the well and the rusted windmill squeaking with each turn. Tommy fell back to let Billy have the first wash; he hauled up the bucket, watching Tommy as he pulled.

“There ain’t no sense worrying about it. They never meant us any harm.”

“You were scared the same as me.”

“Only because of them natives. Bloody hell, Tommy—black police!”

Billy laughed nervously as he said it, dragging the bucket over the rim of the well and sloshing water onto the ground. He knelt and began drinking, washing himself down; Tommy stole fitful glances across the empty yard. Just the mention of them made him nervous, blurred memories of rifle muzzles and cartridge belts and the uniforms they wore. He hadn’t looked at their faces, hadn’t dared. Tommy knew nothing about the Native Police—Father didn’t like talking about trouble with the blacks. Over the years he’d heard stories about fighting in the district—the whole colony, in fact—from stockmen and drovers and the odd traveler passing through. But Father wouldn’t discuss it. Not their business, he said. They had plenty of their own problems without getting involved in someone else’s war.

Billy finished washing and stood. Tommy came to take his turn. He tipped out the bucket and threw it into the well, heard it clattering against the walls, then splash into the water far below. He waited while it filled.

“They probably deserved it,” Billy said. “Might have done anything.”

“Trespassing, Sullivan reckoned.”

“All I’m saying is there ain’t no sense worrying about what we don’t know.”

Tommy didn’t answer. He held Billy’s stare. Billy shook his head and walked around the front of the verandah, toward the steps, and Tommy began pulling on the rope. He paused to listen to his brother’s boots on the verandah boards, the door slapping closed in the frame, then lifted the bucket clear of the well. He knelt on the ground and drank, the water dusty but cool, set about washing his face and neck, and at one point sank in his whole head. He stayed under as long as he was able, eyes closed, listening to the tick of the wood and the beating of his own heart, a strange kind of peace in the confines of the pail, muffling the outside world. But then came a crack of gunfire and he saw the body twitch, the trooper standing over it, performing his little bow, and in the silence of the water he heard the horses advancing upon them, the rumble of their hooves in the ground.