Only Killers and Thieves(69)

“You don’t think we should have done them?” Sullivan asked.

“It would have brought us no benefit if we had.”

“Shut the buggers up at least.”

“They won’t talk. I know a man when I see one and that was not a man.”

“You seen his face?” Locke said, laughing. “Looked like he’d shat himself!”

“How do you figure he gave up the Kurrong, though?” Sullivan asked, and Noone pointed to where the reverend had been standing with his horse, then trailed his finger toward the horizon in the west.

“He’d had contact with them only recently, perhaps as recently as yesterday. We follow these tracks, we’ll come up with them soon enough. The stupid bastard didn’t know what he was saying.” Noone grinned wickedly. “By God’s good grace we’ll be on them by nightfall.”





24



The tracks led clear as a bridleway through the dusty scrub, and they followed at a canter until the horses tired. The heat was searing, the air stifling and close, though at least now there was some cloud cover, the first clouds Tommy had seen since they left. Smell of lightning still, he thought. The charge of it, the spark. Might have struck the earth nearby. Or was the smell his own, maybe? A trace from the gunshot he had fired? He sniffed at his shirt, his fingertips, smelled sweat and wood smoke and something burning; he wiped his hands clean on his thighs. Did those new cartridge revolvers even leave a stain? Did a killing? Would he be smelling that gunshot for the rest of his days?

Kala sat quietly behind him. Bouncing lightly with each stride. With his head half-turned Tommy could glimpse her, and if he pretended to watch the ground he could see her feet. Sometimes she touched between his shoulder blades for balance, steadying herself with her still-bound hands, or even fell against him, her chest against his back, and he would brace himself in the saddle to support her flimsy weight, until she moved away again. He would have liked for her to stay there, to press herself into him, rest her head and sleep if she was tired. She never did. The briefest touch between them, and she was gone.

“I’m sorry about your . . . what was he anyway? Your brother? Friend?”

Of course she didn’t answer. Might not have understood, or even heard. Tommy spoke quietly so the others couldn’t listen, his voice vibrating inside him; he imagined she could feel it too.

“I didn’t even want to come out here. This was all Billy, Sullivan, Noone. They say we’re after Joseph, but I don’t see how he could have made it all this way on foot. Daddy wouldn’t lend him a horse. We found these two blacks—men—in this tree by our creek, and Joseph was Kurrong, same as you. He wanted to bring them back to your land, must have dragged them, I reckon, since he didn’t have nothing else.”

He felt her touch him. No more than a tap. He turned. Kala eyed him warily, leaning away with her head angled to the side. She signaled for water. Tommy went scrambling for his flask. He pulled out the stopper, gave it to her, watched her put the bottle to her lips and her long neck contract. He faced forward again. Listening to her drinking, a faint gasp after the final sip. She handed back the flask and their fingers lightly brushed, and Tommy made a point of taking a drink of his own, deliberately placing his lips where hers had just been.

On they rode. Nothing more from Kala and nothing more he could think to say, his thoughts instead spiraling back through the hours and replaying the dull thump of the round slamming into her kinsman’s chest, the way his body had twitched and then fallen still, the silence in camp, the smile on Noone’s face, the whispered truth he’d offered about who Father had really been.

Efficient, he had called him. Claimed they used to hunt blacks for pay.

Father hadn’t spoken much about his time at Broken Ridge. Hadn’t spoken much about anything, in truth. He was a man of silences and of secrets: if he had something to tell you he would say it, but idle gossip and chatter only got in the way of work. He worked, he ate, he slept: there had been no more to him as far as Tommy was concerned. The broodiness, the impatience, the outbursts of emotion when he’d embrace one of them so hard they couldn’t breathe . . . all these things he took at face value, hadn’t ever questioned what was happening underneath. The same could be said for Mother, Tommy supposed. He had not considered either of his parents people in their own right; or rather, he had not thought it possible there could be anything more to them than what he already knew.

Certainly Father didn’t like talking about the natives—said the violence against them was not his concern—but he wouldn’t let his white stockmen mistreat black workers in the same way Sullivan did. Tommy had never seen Father beat them or whip them or call them nigger or such things, and though Billy reckoned him soft, Tommy had always put it down to Arthur, a closeness between them going back years. But what if Noone was right? What if he was actually trying to atone for what he’d done at Broken Ridge? And, worse still, how would Tommy ever know?

He was remembering things now. Arguments Father had had with his men, warnings he’d given them. He had warned his family too, warned the children not to listen to the stories they might hear, about fighting and cruelty on both sides, blacks being shot, whites being speared. At one time hadn’t Father even allowed wild natives to cross over his land, to camp in his scrubs, and then . . . and then Sullivan had come down to the house one day and there’d been a big blowup, Sullivan telling Father to end it or he would, and Father trying to stand his ground but there’d seemed no ground on which he could stand. The men had all been watching, out in the yard, and when Sullivan was gone and Father had marched back into the house, Tommy had heard them mutter and scoff. He couldn’t have been much older than eight. He’d not connected it before now, but that was the night Father had burned the toy wooden horse Sullivan had given him years before.