Only Killers and Thieves(63)

Rabbit smiled at him conspiratorially, like this was some kind of ruse.

“I mean it. Can you tell her that? Please.”

As the trooper spoke, the girl stared blankly into the flames.

“Did she hear you? Did you say what I said?”

“Is different words. Not all blackfella talk same.”

“So she doesn’t understand you?”

Rabbit shrugged. They sat in silence again. Another lightning flash.

“They said you were from New South Wales?” Tommy asked.

Rabbit nodded, said a word Tommy didn’t catch. Sounded like a jury.

“What is that? A town?”

“Is people. Not much that mob left no more. Them all gone bung.”

Tommy looked down at his hands. He could hear raised voices and a distant slapping sound, no telling from which direction it came.

“They killed my family too. What happened to yours?”

“Was long time ago. Small Rabbit then.” His face was set, the expression severe, talking into the flames. “Plenty blackfella before Rabbit born, now is small mob blackfella, big mob whitefella. We is running, running, hiding, hiding. Then one whitefella come looking, says good job here Queensland, join up whitefella mob. Is better in big mob, I reckon. I says yes.”

“You . . . chose to be here? Why?”

“Here tucker, shillings, woman, grog. Learn whitefella ways. Show them other black buggers who boss here now.”

“By hunting your own people?”

Rabbit shrugged. “Them not own people. And is law, Marmy says.”

“Don’t you . . . I mean, don’t you want to go home?”

He said it sadly, quietly: “Is no more home.”

Tommy stared into the fire. He had assumed the troopers must have been press-ganged into service, not here of their own free will. If it could be called free will. Your family all dead and nowhere to turn, so you side with the enemy to get by. He could understand how that felt. Maybe not wholly, but he had an idea.

The girl had been watching them talk. Listening, it seemed. Tommy nodded at her. “What’s her name?” he asked Rabbit. Then to the girl: “What’s your name?”

She looked uncertainly at each of them. Tommy pointed to himself and gave his name, then to Rabbit and gave his, then extended his finger toward her.

“Kala,” she said in a low voice. She tapped her chest and repeated it: “Kala.”

“Kala,” Tommy echoed. “Are you thirsty? You want water?”

He mimicked drinking, the girl nodded. Tommy sprang to his feet and hunted out his flask. Not full or fresh still, but he gave her what he had. She sniffed the open neck, tested it, then gulped the contents down.

“There’s not much to eat, neither,” Tommy was saying, casting about the camp for food. He found only a piece of damper crust and a stale hunk of roo; the girl refused the roo but held the bread in her bound hands and nibbled at its end.

“I know—just a minute, wait here.”

He went to where his bedroll and saddlebag were piled against the canyon wall, and from the bag retrieved the packet of lemon sweets. There were roughly half a dozen left. He took out three, replaced the packet in the bag, then squatted between Rabbit and the girl—Kala, he reminded himself, Kala is her name.

“Here, take one. You suck them. They’re good.”

Rabbit snatched a lolly and tossed it into his mouth. His eyes flared and he grinned. Tommy waited with his hand outstretched. Kala reached out hesitantly and twisted one hand over the other, pivoting her wrists. She picked up the lolly and examined it, sniffed it, touched it with her tongue. Tommy nodded her on. She watched him very carefully, her eyes searching his, and when she slid the little lolly into her mouth and faintly smiled, the intimacy sent a tingle right through him. He crawled back to his place at the fireside and in the warmth and the silence the three of them sat together, contentedly sucking on their sweets, as the lightning crackled above them and the echoes of grunting and whip cracks came whispering through the ravine.

*

In the night he heard her crying. Kala. A soft and high-pitched whimpering beyond the coughs and snores. Tommy lifted his head and searched the shapes and shadows, the dark lumps of bodies curled on the bare ground. The fire was down. A deep charcoal glow but little light to see. He waited for his vision to come. Listening to Kala’s muffled sobs. He made out Billy and Sullivan, Locke and Rabbit, Jarrah, Mallee, and maybe Pope. And then there she was, lying near the wall, on her back with her bound hands covering her face and the longcoat spread open at her sides. Noone lay beside her. He was raised on his elbow, cradling his head in his hand. Talking to her. Whispering. A dreadful low hum. He lifted his eyes—chalk-white in the darkness—to look directly at Tommy but did not stop talking to the girl. There was movement. Noone’s other hand. It crawled pale and spiderlike over her skin. Tommy lowered himself back down. He rolled onto his side and closed his eyes. Noone hushed the girl but she would not stop crying.





22



The gunshot woke him into a mad scramble of men fighting off their bedrolls and lunging for their weapons, as the booming pistol report caromed around the chamber walls. Tommy went for his rifle but it wasn’t there. He hadn’t slept with it to hand. On his knees he crawled through a chaos of shouting to where it lay beneath his pack, and had only just reached the stock when he felt the tension in camp subside. He glanced over his shoulder and saw weapons slowly coming down.