Chapter 9
Tommy McBride
For weeks they slogged west blindly. No river to guide them, no trail, no road; their only destination the horizon, whosefeatures never changed. They didn’t seem to have been followed. Empty country behind as well as out in front, at most a distantroo or dingo loping through the scrub, the bones of fallen creatures bleached bright white by the sun. Slow going out here.The horses struggling in the heat, water painfully scarce. They only had their canteens to store it in, having fled Cunnamullawithout buying bladder bags, and were reliant on the dirty creeks and brackish pools they came across entirely by luck. Thestallion fared the worst of them. Unused to hardship, and the hardscrabble terrain. He wouldn’t wear the pack saddle and hatedArthur in the mount, meaning Tommy had to ride him and Beau carried their cargo, or what little of it remained. They’d gonethrough half their provisions already, and there was nothing out here to hunt.
Finally the scenery began changing: the soil becoming lighter, trees dotted here and there. In the distance they saw signs of a river, a steady thread of greenery weaving through the scrub, and whooping and cheering kicked the horses to a canter and raced to the nearest bank. They threw themselves in without undressing. Came up gasping and laughing like kids. They thought they’d found the Cooper Creek, no way of knowing this was the Bulloo River, hundreds of miles too far south. Drying on the bank in the sunshine, watching the horses drink, they babbled excitedly about having made it, and how they’d always known they would. Arthur did some fishing. Cooked them wrapped in river clay in the coals. It was the best damn meal they’d ever eaten: greedily they flaked the white meat off the bones, every last morsel, sucking their fingers clean, Tommy reminiscing about the first time he’d ever gone fishing, he couldn’t have been much older than six. Father had taken him and Billy out to a spot called Hollow Creek, where they’d camped just the three of them, and caught more than they could eat. He’d felt like a man that day. Like he’d been given just a glimpse. Easy to forget these happy memories—there were more if he forced himself, pushed through the veil their deaths had drawn. Mother, for no good reason, throwing an off egg at Father’s head; her squeals as he chased her round the yard. That time Billy got his foot stuck in a bucket and Tommy had laughed till he cried. His earliest memory might have been the day Mary was born; he was three. Billy had been told to take the two of them off somewhere but when they’d heard Mother screaming had snuck behind the house instead. Tommy wouldn’t keep quiet. Billy hushed him so loud Father heard. He broke off his pacing up and down the verandah, came round back and found them crouched beneath the sill. He’d scooped them up like they weighed nothing, carried them over to the stables, sat them on his knee. He was so strong in those days. Arms like cows’ legs. He’d held them tight and promised them everything would be fine, and it was for a while, Tommy admitted—it might not have always seemed it, but their lives had been just fine.
After two days following the river they realized it couldn’t be the Cooper. Its course was south-flowing, there were mountains in the west; they’d simply not ridden far enough. They crossed at a shallow point onto what looked like station land. Sheep and cattle everywhere, post-and-paling fences stretching across the fields. Meaning somewhere out here was a homestead, with a kitchen, a store, maybe a map that would show them where the hell they were. But such comforts also meant people, and they couldn’t risk being recognized. They were murderers, and word would almost certainly have spread. Station gossip, a telegraph line. They could give false names but it hardly mattered: they couldn’t change their faces, their disfigurements, the colors of their skin.
They headed toward the hills, the first true undulation in the landscape they’d seen in all this time. The earth here softer,and golden, the grass more plentiful and green. And there was water, the vast plains riddled with veiny streams and waterwaysthat from above resembled spreading fingers of mold. This was the fringe of the Channel Country, which Arthur said was a goodsign, unaware that the Channel Country covered a hundred thousand square miles. At least they didn’t go hungry. Sheep, calves—ameal was never far away. Arthur butchered and cooked them and they left the carcasses for the birds and dingos, whose killsalready littered the plains.
Still no sign of the Cooper.
“We’ll find it,” Arthur said.
The ranges were a line of jagged peaks and outcrops, studded with mulga and saltbush, steep downslopes strewn with bouldersand buttressed by great tablet-shaped slabs, the footing sheer in places, in others riddled with scree. They climbed in aslow tacking motion, long sweeps from side to side, Tommy guiding the stallion carefully; like he’d never left the prairiethe way he minced up that hill. They found a pass and followed a cutout through the ridge, walls of rock either side of them,the dull clip of hoof on stone, until the summit opened onto a wide gray plateau of almost-touching
