Only Killers and Thieves(56)

“He is,” Billy said quickly. “Has been since we left.”

Noone looked at him coldly. “Better afraid than a fool, Billy. At least your brother has some sense. Oh, don’t worry, I have the measure of you too. Had it the moment I saw you crawling out of that bush.”

Noone clapped his hands as he walked away, gathering the others around him. The troopers drifted in from where they’d been sitting, and Sullivan and Locke came close, Sullivan watching the brothers as they joined the back of the group, Tommy the last to arrive.

“Good news!” Noone announced. He was a head taller than all of them, even Locke, Jarrah, Mallee. “It seems that our native friends who dropped their little bag camped at this waterhole last night. They’ll be headed for the ranges, no doubt, but depending on the time of their leaving we might still catch them before sundown. They are on foot, women with them, won’t be in a rush. They don’t know we’re coming, so we have the added advantage of surprise.”

Locke rubbed his hands greedily. Nodding up and down.

“How many?” Sullivan asked.

“We think five. Three men, two gins, a small pack of dogs.”

“Always fucking dogs,” Locke said.

“The horses are well rested, so we ride hard until we lose the sun. And for God’s sake, don’t shoot them. These ones need questioning first. Don’t anyone fire without my say-so. John, Raymond—that includes the pair of you.”

“Aye, aye,” Sullivan said, and the group parted. They each went to their horses and began checking their weapons and tightening their straps. Tommy dropped the packet of lollies into his saddlebag, Billy spun the barrel of his revolver and snapped it into place, opened it up, snapped it again.

“About as useful as your pizzle, that thing,” Locke said, walking his horse by.

“I can shoot.”

Locke dropped his reins and came to stand between them, close to Tommy’s side. He peered down over his shoulder. “What about you? What you ever killed?”

Tommy kept his head lowered. Fiddling with his strap.

Billy said, “We’ve both shot plenty. Rabbit, possum, roo.”

“What about a nigger?”

“Not yet,” Billy said.

Locke smiled at that. A smile stained brown with chew. He cupped Tommy’s chin and turned him around, tilted back his head, his face in Tommy’s face, the foul tang of his breath, the rough grip of his fingers squeezing Tommy’s jaw.

“How come you never speak, boy? You missing a fucking tongue?”

Tommy’s teeth were clenched. “I don’t have nothing to say.”

Locke dug his finger into Tommy’s mouth. It wriggled thick and wormlike between his teeth and gum, prying the teeth apart. Tommy gagged. The finger tasted of shit. Same taste as the smell. Now Locke’s thumb was in there too, groping for Tommy’s tongue; he writhed and shook his head but Locke’s grip on his jaw was too strong. “Hey!” Billy was saying. “Let him go!” Locke pinched the tongue with his nails and the pain made Tommy’s eyes fill. He stopped fighting and let him have it. “There you go now,” Locke said, his eyebrows rising on the bald mound of his head as he pulled out the tongue. “There you go—ah, look at the size of it, no wonder you never speak. Smaller than a baby leech, that thing. Christ help you, boy. Your pizzle that small n’all?”

He brushed his hands and walked off laughing. Tommy retched and spat, and when he straightened Locke had picked up his reins, ready to lead his horse away.

“Keep the hammers down on them rifles, and that bloody revolver, else you’ll get yourselves all excited and fire off too soon. I don’t want one of you little cunts shooting me in the back.”

Don’t tempt me, Tommy thought, rinsing his mouth clean.





20



They led the horses around the waterhole and out through the last of the trees, then mounted up and rode west through the same terrain of stone-riddled soil, those uncanny rock mounds, a sparse smattering of bushes and scrub. Pope leading them, reading the trail, but even Tommy could make out the markings in the soil. Only faint, but there was no question: a series of human footprints, heel, arch, and toe; a scattering of paw tracks from the dogs. Tommy couldn’t look at them, kept his eyes on the back of Billy’s shirt. Someone had made those footprints. Someone with feet, legs, arms, heart. One looked as small as Mary’s, just about. He exhaled shakily. He hadn’t been expecting it, this sudden call to arms. And now there were footprints. These people they chased were real. Somehow being out here, surviving each day, had become an end in itself. Easy to forget it had only ever been the means.

Out of the trees meant out of the shade, into the blazing sun. It seared the ground before them and raised a haze upon the empty plains, no sign of the natives out there, they were beyond the horizon at least. In the distance the ranges loomed more clearly than Tommy had ever seen them, within reach by nightfall maybe. Not quite mountains, more substantial than hills, with rounded peaks and smooth hollows like something molded from a vast putty of dirty red clay. The base was fringed with trees and brush and the downslopes were scarred by a network of what looked to be canyons and caves. Plenty of places to hide in, plenty of routes to take. A slim hope sprang in him: if the natives reached the ranges, they might yet manage to escape.