Only Killers and Thieves(45)
He moved his horse forward. Billy flinched when he drew alongside.
“You seen that?” Tommy said, pointing. “That look like a floodplain to you?”
Billy followed his finger, eyes narrowed, straining to make it out.
“Might be. What of it?”
“It’s not hardly rained, Billy.”
He shrugged. “So maybe it’s a lake.”
“Exactly. And how’s he got a lake in the middle of a bloody drought?”
“You don’t get a lake. Either there is one or there’s not.”
“It should be all dried up, though. Must be full for us to see it from here.”
Billy looked at him irritably. Tommy went to argue again but there was a whistle from behind, two-toned, an up-and-down cooee. Both of them turned. Noone was now directly behind them, alongside the young trooper; he nodded toward the water, tutted, and shook his head. The boys jerked back around, and Noone went on whistling a jaunty little tune.
“Can’t you just leave it?” Billy whispered. “Quit your questions all the time?”
“You don’t think it’s off he’s got a lake?”
“No, I don’t. And neither should you. How many more warnings d’you need?”
Tommy eased back into line. He kept his head down. Noone was now humming and sometimes singing and his voice was deep and full. They rode on. A long sweep through dry bush until they reached a struggling creek, by the look of it the same creek that flowed south onto McBride land. The group watered here, let the horses drink, and Tommy found himself squatting at the waterside a little way along from the young trooper who had been following him all day.
Tommy tried to not look at him. Filled his flask, watched the water trickling by, dappled in shade. Billy was with Sullivan and the others at the top of the bank, acting like one of the men. Tommy could hear them talking: “Not until the ranges,” Noone said. Tommy raised his flask dripping from the creek, stoppered the neck, and caught a glimpse of the young trooper filling one of the bladder bags. It was made of stitched kangaroo hide and bulged with trapped air as the trooper forced it down. His waddy dangled at his side. His arms were long and thin. He had both sleeves rolled, and with each surge underwater it looked more and more like he was drowning something there. An animal, a small child—hadn’t Mrs. Sullivan told him they liked eating their young?
Tommy fumbled his water bottle and dropped it in the creek. He plunged down after it, paddling into the water on his hands and knees, just reaching the flask before it was lost. He backed out of the water. He’d soaked his trousers and shirtsleeves. As he rose he saw the trooper coming for him, his mad eyes bulging, the drowned hide dripping in one hand and the other outstretched.
Tommy lurched clear and scrambled up the bank to join the other whites, wet and panting and scared. They frowned at him. Looks of confusion, distaste. Then Sullivan said, “Poor lad looks like he’s pissed himself,” and all of them, including Billy, laughed. Tommy walked to where Beau waited in the shade of the trees, stowed his flask in the saddle pack. While he was fastening the buckle the trooper emerged from the creek bed. He saw Tommy staring, and waved.
*
At sundown they scattered their tracks and made camp in a clutch of weeping myall trees, the low branches giving shelter from the cold and shielding their fire from view. A small fire at first: the troopers built it up and stacked wood into a pile; they cleared the ground around it, saw to the horses, then retired to make their own camp outside the cover of the trees. They did not light a fire. Faint sounds of them moving out there, scrabbling around, whispering, and sometimes a burst of hushed laughter, the whites listening in silence as Sullivan parceled out dry stores in the makings of a meal. Sausage and biscuits. A quart of rum. Quietly they ate their food. Dusk drawing in around them, darkness coming quick, and as Tommy nibbled his biscuit he watched the others in the firelight. Billy alongside him, Sullivan, then Locke sitting cross-legged with a revolver in his lap, gnawing on the sausage like it was boned. On the far side of the fire, Noone sat alone, reclining against the trunk of the myall tree. He had his bowie knife out, picking at the sausage with the tip, dissecting it, piece by little piece. The gristle he would flick into the fire, and when he found a morsel that interested him, he would skewer it on the point of the knife tip and place it delicately between his teeth, before sucking it sharply into his mouth.
“They ever fucking shut up?” Locke grumbled, tearing off another bite.
Noone watched him through the flames. “They being?”
“Your niggers. Couldn’t you muzzle them or something, let us eat in peace?”
“Funny, I was just having that same thought about you.”
Locke spat into the fire. Tommy saw Sullivan smirk. Noone held Locke’s stare, then smiled and went back to his meal and there was silence between them again. Embers crackled in the darkness. A sweet smell of violet from the trees. The branches were draped like curtains around the little camp and the shadows of the men played upon the leaves.
“I knew a bloke once,” Sullivan said. He paused to take a swig of rum, then leaned and passed the bottle to Locke. “Heard about him anyway, this fella down near Bathurst, somewhere round there, kept his blackboys chained to a stake in the yard. Might have even muzzled them, I’m not sure, but the point is he wouldn’t leave them loose after dark. Didn’t trust ’em. Chained ’em to a fucking pole. Long chains, mind you, let ’em wander a bit. Fed ’em from a trough, gave ’em a bucket to shit in, they slept right there on the ground. Course, people didn’t like it, church and city types, but you wonder if he didn’t have the right idea.” He looked meaningfully at Tommy and Billy. “Fella works for you for years, next thing you know, he’s killed your whole family just about.”