Arthur dismounted and came running. Tommy waved off his attempts to help, picking himself up gingerly, the stallion writhing beneath them, its leg in the crevice to the shin. The hoof had gone in, then the body had fallen, all the weight on that one bone. It was bent at a right angle. A thick white shard poked through the skin. Blood seeped from the wound and ran down the leg and gathered in a pool on the stone. Tommy crouched and put a hand on the horse’s neck, its pulse like a wind-up drummer toy. The stallion stopped thrashing. A sudden, deathly calm. Watching Tommy fearfully with wild, wide eyes.
“Help me get his hoof out,” Tommy said, shuffling into position. Behind him Arthur didn’t move.
“There ain’t nothing we can do, mate.”
“Might be we can splint it.”
“What would be the use?”
Tommy glared up at Arthur, despite knowing he was right. An injured horse out here was worse than none at all. He tugged atthe foreleg anyway, felt Arthur’s hand on his shoulder, shrugged it off.
“Tommy . . .”
“We can’t just leave him. We need that saddle for a start.”
“Here, before the pain gets any worse.”
Tommy turned. Arthur was offering Cal Burns’s revolver, flat in his open palm. He rose and stood looking at the gun.
“Why is this on me?”
“You were riding him. Hell, he’s more your horse than mine.”
Tommy looked at the horse forlornly, and at the gun in Arthur’s hand. “No.”
Arthur sighed. “Just . . . take a turn for once.”
“What?”
“Do something, Tommy. A fish needs catching, I catch it. We butcher a sheep, that’s me too. You act like it’s my fault we’rehere.”
Five years ago, in ranges just like these, Noone had offered Tommy a gun the same way, whispering about his father, his brother,persuading him to take a life. And he’d done it, he’d buckled, the first man he’d ever killed. He could still hear the gunshotecho through the canyon, could still smell the sulfur on his skin. Arthur had no idea what he was asking. “I ain’t doing it,”Tommy said.
He walked away over the plateau until he reached the boulders on the far side of the rise, slipped between them out of view,and gazed at the land ahead, more of the same, the endless Channel Country, no sign of a river at all.
The gunshot made him shudder. A violent, whole-body flinch. He closed his eyes and held himself and listened to the report receding over the plains. Bracing himself. Sucking each breath through his teeth. In his mind a carousel of every shooting, every death. He scrubbed his face and scolded himself—it was only a fucking horse.
Arthur had the saddle swapped onto Beau by the time Tommy emerged from the rocks. The stallion lay dead on its side, its legstill caught in the crevice. There was a hole in its forehead. A clean shot between the ears. Arthur was crouched on the groundbeside it, parceling out the remainder of their supplies—now they only had their saddlebags and what they could tie up behind.He glanced at Tommy then away again. “Here, give us a hand with these things.”
“There’s no river out there.”
“We’ll find it.”
“You keep saying that, but when? Where is it? We’ve come far enough now anyway, why not just go south from here?”
“We talked about this. They’ll be looking for us down there.”
“You talked about it. You did. When do I get a say?”
“Look, I know you’re upset about the horse but—”
“I’m not upset about the bloody horse. Stop treating me like a boy.”
“It’s you that does that, mate. Nothing to do with me.”
Tommy stared at him, incredulous. “You really don’t have a fucking clue.”
Arthur held the stare, then in silence packed up their things. They made their way out of the hills before sundown—Tommy refusedto camp there, despite the natural shelter it gave. They barely spoke in the days following, so used to each other’s habitsthey could get by without hardly a word, such that when Tommy abruptly turned his horse to the south he did so without warningor explanation, riding off into the distance, not a backward glance. Arthur sat watching him. Weighing whether to let himgo. Then he sighed and clicked his horse forward, followed on behind.
They were three days riding toward the border before they came upon the dingo fence, an immense chain-link mesh strung between thick palings and as high as any wall. They came to a halt before it, stood their horses together, scanning the fence left and right. It seemed unending. Perfectly straight, to the horizon east and west. Tommy dismounted and approached the wire mesh with his hand extended, as if it might not be real. He laced his fingers through the link and gently rattled. Dust wafted through the gaps. He tested a post but it was solid, and they’d ditched the pick and most of the other fencing tools in the hills. All they had now was the shovel, and what use was that?
For a day and a half they followed the fence line west and found not a gate or an opening; not even so much as a missing link.No choice but to abandon it, return north, heading for the Cooper and the central stock routes once again. No longer in theChannel Country. Might have been anywhere now. Desert terrain underfoot, a parched and rubbled ground, no cattle or sheepto butcher, no more little creeks and streams. They rationed their water sparingly. Made each damper loaf last two days. Sometimesthey saw emu or rock wallaby or a pack of wild dogs, but the horses weren’t up to hunting and they weren’t yet desperate enoughto eat a dog. They watched for signs of natives who might help them, but found none. Empty desert everywhere, arid gibberplains, corrugated as if a giant rib cage lay
