“Hello, Billy,” Noone said. “Now isn’t this a pleasant surprise.”
Chapter 4
Tommy McBride
Arthur peeled the revolver from Burns’s loose grip, then rifled through his pockets and began stripping off his boots andclothes, panting, “Grab the horses, Tommy. And that black’un too.”
Tommy glanced at Burns’s black stallion. Beyond, the fleeing stablehand was now a speck across the fields. “I never meantto kill him.”
“He ain’t dead yet, but we still have to run. We’ve a couple hours’ start at most.”
“But . . .”
On his knees, Arthur spun. “But what? What? You want to hold his hand and wait till he comes round? Either way we’re fucked,mate, so get your head out your arse and help me here. Five bloody years I’ve been carrying you, dealing with all your horseshit;don’t you dare play possum now. Wake up, Tommy. Get that horse.”
As Arthur undressed him, Burns’s head flopped to one side and Tommy saw the crimson mess matted in his hair. He’d hit a rockpart-buried in the dirt, the only one out here, a million-to-one chance. All he’d done was push him. Nothing more than that.It didn’t matter. Death followed Tommy regardless. Shadowed him, night and day. As if years ago it had laid a hand on hisshoulder and had been stalking him ever since.
He drifted in the direction of the stallion, collected him, and led him to where the others were tied in the shade. Arthur ran over, carrying a loose bundle of clothing that he stuffed into the empty saddlebags; he was already wearing Burns’s boots. He fetched the long-handled shovel and a few other fencing tools and slid them under the stallion’s saddle straps, then mounted up and ordered Tommy to do the same. They rode out, over a couple of miles of open grassland until they reached the rutted gravel coach track that traced the course of the Balonne River to St. George, where, on the outskirts of the little settlement, they halted by a roadside cemetery and considered the distant outline of the river crossing on the far side of town.
“We’ll have to find another way across. We can’t risk going through there.”
Tommy wasn’t listening. Studying the nearby headstones, the names and dates and descriptions: beloved father, mother, daughter,son. He wasn’t any of those things, he realized. If it was him who’d died back there today, what would his inscription say?Murderer? Liar? Coward? Did he even warrant a proper grave?
One headstone near the fence read: robert thompson, he enjoyed a simple life, and that phrase tolled in Tommy like a bell. A simple life—it sounded wonderful. To live and work and die in peace, to beremembered, to be mourned.
They doubled back and crossed the river out of sight of the town, then struck west through open country before joining thetrack again. They could follow it all the way to a place called Innamincka, Arthur explained after an hour of silent riding,of thinking his plan through, a lonely trading outpost he’d heard of, weeks away, up on the Cooper Creek, provided the trackwent that far. Nobody would come looking for them out there. More likely assume they’d crossed the border into New South Wales.Then from Innamincka they could trace the Cooper until it met the Birdsville Track, that fabled central stock route runningnorth-south through the guts, now with wells and bores and camping grounds, apparently, serving the great rivers of cattlethat tumbled out of Queensland onto trains waiting to whisk them directly to the south coast ports.
“We’ll just follow the cattle. It’ll be like old times.”
Arthur smiled uneasily. He almost sounded convinced.
* * *
It would be four days’ hard riding before they reached the next main town, following the ribbon of the western coach trailthrough sun-drenched grassland, the sky deep blue above them, thin cloud scudding like surf. Fifteen-hour days in the saddle,or as much as the horses could take, resting through the heat of the daytime, riding dusk till dawn at night. They saw nobodyfollowing. No posse on their tail. Only the occasional silhouette of some weary traveler trudging eastward, or in a spew ofdust and gravel the mail coach rattling by.
They spoke very little in those early days, other than the basic business of keeping themselves alive. Arthur had Cal Burns’smoney clip, but there was nowhere to buy supplies, and out here both food and water were scarce. If they saw any form of settlement,the few lonely farms and hamlets dotted along the trail, they would creep from the shadows at nighttime and use whatever river,bore, or waterhole sustained the people living there, fill their flasks and water the horses, then slip away unseen.
On the second night they called time on their riding just before dawn, found a place to make camp, lit a fire. Warming themselvesin silence, when suddenly Arthur said, “Look, I just can’t let this lie.”
“Let what lie?”
“What happened back there, how you—”
“I already told you, I never meant to kill him. He had a gun to my head!”
“Ah, you don’t even know he’s dead, Tommy.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, that’s not what I’m saying: how you disappeared inside yourself, like you always do. Burns wasn’t going to shoot youand you know it. My bet, he reminded you of something that happened from before, and that’s what set you off.”
Tommy didn’t answer, buried his gaze in the flames.
“It’s been five years, Tommy. It’s time you moved on.”
“Moved on? Are you serious?”
“Yeah, well, you need to hear it. We had a good thing going there, best work in years. Now look at us. This is hardly the first time, neither.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Oh, you reckon? Listen, there’s plenty buggers out there had it just as rough as you and don’t carry it with them
