Drew’s voice was barely a whisper: “Lock’s on the inside.”
“No key,” Billy yelled.
Noone dispatched Jarrah to the toolshed, and as he passed he didn’t give Drew Bennett so much as a glance. Everyone waited.A hot wind whipped through the yard. The white bedsheets billowed. The house door creaked.
“I’ve my whole bloody family back there,” Drew said.
“Which is why you have to let them do their business then leave. They only want their trooper. That’s all this is about.”
“I never knew he was Native Police.”
“I know that, mate. I know.”
Drew glared at him a long time. “I’m not your mate, you fucking dog. Your old man would be turning in his grave if he sawwhat you’ve become.”
Jarrah returned with a long-handled shovel swinging nonchalantly at his side. He carried it to the barn and wedged the bladein the lock jamb and after a nod from Noone prized the doors. The wood cracked and splintered. Drew Bennett flinched at thesound. Percy and Pope had their pistols ready as Jarrah nudged the barn door open with the shovel end. Stiffly, it swung onits hinge. Noone glanced at Drew Bennett, jutted his chin, ordered Percy and the troopers inside.
“You have to stop them, Billy.”
“They wouldn’t listen even if I tried.”
Drew had paled. He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
And for a long time there was nothing. Total silence in the yard, in the barn, all eyes trained on the open door, until suddenlythe silence was broken by a scream from within: a woman’s scream, rent with fear.
“Who is that? Who’s in there?” Billy snapped, but Drew only stared at the barn. Brief sounds of a scuffle, shouting, anotherscream, then the troopers emerged dragging the missing trooper Rabbit and a native woman through the door. They marched themto Noone and held them there, cowering from the sudden brightness, and from the inspector peering down.
“They’re fucking animals,” Drew Bennett said.
The troopers let go of their arms. The captives stood trembling in their borrowed clothes: Drew’s shirt drowning Rabbit, an old dress that Hannah had loaned. Rabbit began blubbering. Hands together in prayer. He was young, perhaps Billy’s age, and in that shirt looked younger still. He chopped his hands back and forth beseechingly, begging, “Marmy, please Marmy, sorry Marmy, please.” Noone smiled at him, sighed; his great chest heaved. He reached out a hand and very carefully placed it on Rabbit’s head, cradling his skull, and at the touch Rabbit dissolved into sobbing and a dark stain spread down the front of his leg.
“He pissed hisself!” Percy shrieked, laughing. “He pissed hisself—look here!”
Pope already had the neck cuffs. Wailing, Rabbit was put into irons. They took hold of the woman and did likewise, and itwas only as she turned, as her dress tightened when her arms were pinned, that Billy realized what Drew had been talking about:a bulge in her belly; she was carrying a child.
“Oh, shit. Oh, no.”
“Yeah. And you’ll just stand here and watch.”
The captives were chained to the back of Jarrah’s horse and led to the edge of the yard. Noone and Percy remained by the barn.From the pocket of his longcoat Noone produced the silver flask they had been drinking from last night, unscrewed the lid,and saluted Drew Bennett in a toast. He took a sip and passed the flask to Percy, who laughed and skipped along the frontof the barn, dousing the wooden walls in rum. Drew lunged away from Billy. Billy was too slow to react. From the house Hannahshouted after her husband and Noone’s head turned. He reached inside his longcoat. Two revolvers were reverse-holstered onhis belt: he had one drawn and raised just as Billy managed to catch up with Drew and slam into him from behind.
Down the pair tumbled. Rolling through the dust. Noone slid the revolver back into his belt and fished out his matchbox instead. Drew dragged himself to his knees, Billy standing over him, arms spread, like shepherding a wantaway calf, while Hannah edged from the house into the yard. Noone struck the match and tossed it. A curtain of blue flame ripped up the barn wall and spread over the sun-parched building like a plague. Black smoke billowed. It pumped through the door and windows and up through the roof and whispered through the gaps in the walls. A hellish noise building. A roar of destruction, of death. Within a few minutes the fire had consumed the barn entirely, its redness reflected in Drew Bennett’s damp eyes.
The family would watch it later. After Billy had recovered his horse and joined the others and the five of them had led their captives back over the grassy hillside, one by one they would slip timidly from the house, and would hold each other or stand alone, watching their futures burn. Their entire food store was in there. Their cattle feed and equipment, everything. They would never fully recover. When news of the fire got out, put down to a dropped branding iron, the church and their neighbors would rally round to see them through the coming months. But charity could not sustain them. Couldn’t give back what they had lost. Yes, they still had their cattle, and they could rebuild, but for the rest of his life Drew Bennett would measure himself against the man he had been prior to that day and always seemed to come up short. The children became sickly. Hannah blamed the smoke. For weeks it hung over them, long after the barn had folded boxlike and collapsed into a pile of smoldering timber whose flames refused to fully die out. The fire haunted them after sunset, glowing through the windows; they saw it even when they closed their eyes. And that smell, that godawful burning, on their clothes, in their nostrils, their hair. Hannah felt terrible for having taken in
