She remembered sitting with Tommy immediately after, right there on the front steps, talking things over, Tommy nursing hisbandaged hand. “Do you know what went on out there?” he had asked her, and Katherine thought she already did. Clearly there’d been fighting, given the injuries they’d sustained, and since there’d not been any arrests she’d assumed at least some Kurrong must have been killed. The rest were driven into the center, or so she’d been told. The men had come home happy, anyway. John, Noone, Raymond Locke. There’d been drinks in the drawing room and a feast of a meal, though when she’d asked about the details, about what they’d done, Noone had raised his finger and silenced her like a precocious little girl.
“But . . . there must be something in it, or why have a hearing at all?”
“It’s nothing. A formality. I just told you.”
“You also said you’re more worried about it than your own son.”
He saw off the whiskey and winced, sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Yeah, well, he’s a lost cause, that one. Anyway,look at me—happy as a pig in shit.”
He flashed a forced grin and walked past her, along the verandah and inside. Katherine stepped up to the railing. Miles ofsloping pasture before her, a tranche of ragged scrubland, the low outline of the ranges barely visible beyond. The sun hadfallen below the horizon, the sky a sloughy mix of purple and gray. All was darkness out there. She had never been that farinto the center, could hardly imagine it; in truth she didn’t dare. A shiver passed through her and she held herself, theskin on her arms pimpling though it was anything but cold, then, still clutching herself tightly, she turned and followedher husband back into the house, for where else did she have to go?
Chapter 20
Tommy McBride
Tommy threw down his cards, collected his winnings, announced he was in need of a piss. The men gave him grief for quitting.He laughed and told them to go to hell. Weaving among the tables, a little unsteady on his feet, through the back door andacross the dark yard to the outhouse, a simple shed divided into two narrow stalls. One of the doors was missing. Tommy usedthe other side. Humming while he did his business, closing his nose against the stench, a fly-filled fog of human waste. Hebuckled himself and came out gasping, only to find Jack Kerrigan and another man—some bearded old coot—waiting in the yard.He was about to warn them off the outhouse, tell them they were better pissing outside, when he noticed the revolver danglingin Jack’s right hand.
“What’s this? There a problem?”
“You’re fucked, mate,” the old fella said, smirking. “And we’re about to make ourselves bloody rich.”
Tommy looked at Jack, who nodded toward the stranger. “Bloke here reckons he knows you from out east, Bobby. Says you killedthe overseer on some sheep station near St. George.”
“I told ye, they call him Tommy: Tommy bloody McBride.”
“That true?” Jack asked. “That your real name?”
Tommy’s gaze slid to the ground.
“And what about this overseer?”
“I pushed him. It was an accident. He’d have shot me otherwise.”
Jack looked up at the heavens and let out a deep sigh, then raised his revolver sideways to the old man’s temple. He flinchedand cowered away, flashing panicked glances at Jack. “Hey now, take it easy, didn’t I tell you it was him?”
“You know this snake from back then, Bobby?”
In the gloom of the yard Tommy peered at him, thinking back through all those years. Barren Downs was mostly a blur to him,cut through with memories so vivid and stark they still stung. Cal Burns giving him a kicking, the faces gathered round . . .and among them this man now in front of him, beardless back then maybe, or less unkempt at least, his toothless mouth gaping,that same half-cooked look in his eyes. He’d been at the breakfast table the morning Cal Burns was killed. Alan Ames was hisname.
“Yeah, I know him,” Tommy said.
“See! I told ye! Wait—are yous two some kind of mates?”
“Well, shit,” Jack said wearily. “I never thought it would end like this.”
“End what? How d’you mean?” Tommy asked, panic rising, though surely he already knew. Unlikely as it seemed he’d been madeby this man: after all this time, out here in the middle of nowhere, in front of the dunny for Christ’s sake, his past hadfinally caught him up. He’d been a fool to assume it wouldn’t, lulled into a life that couldn’t last. Of all the ways it couldhave happened: Alan fucking Ames.
Jack said, “You’re gonna have to run, mate.”
“Hold up now. You ain’t cutting me out of that reward money, you bastard. A deal’s a fucking deal!”
“You shut your mouth before I put a hole in you. Bobby, listen—you have to leave. We don’t know who else this bastard’s talkedto, or what he might do next.”
“I ain’t told no one, you’re the first—”
Jack jabbed the revolver hard against Ames’s skull. He yelped and stood rigid. Jack said, “Take a couple of horses and whateversupplies you need and get out of here tonight. Head west, Bobby. Stick to the trails you know best.”
Tommy gawped dumbly. He didn’t know any trails out west, and was this really how the two of them were going to part? A flash of hatred surged through him for this fucker, Alan Ames, who had enjoyed his every humiliation back then, and no doubt joined the posse looking to lynch him after he’d fled St. George. Now here he was, years later, trying to do it all again. Well, Tommy wouldn’t let him. He’d rather take the bastard into the scrubs, shoot him and put him in the ground—nobody would find him, nobody would know. It shocked him how easily he thought it. But then, was it really so hard? He had
