Starbuck, doubly startled, jinked forward in her traces and jerked the trap. Quartz Hogg sat down sharply. Comity slid off her horse and started to run the furlong to the buggy. She could not breathe: a roaring noise was emptying her lungs of air. As she ran, she stopped and picked up stones and began to throw them. She threw them with all her might, over and over again, rearming herself as she ran on. The stones began to hit the wheels, the tailgate, the upholstery. Smith, who had turned to watch Fred die, gave a startled grunt as a stone hit him in the neck. Another hit Starbuck, who towed the trap off the summit of the rise, and again the men lost their balance. Comity went on running, went on pelting them with stones. One caught Smith on the ear, one hit Hogg on the back of the head. What she would have done when she reached the trap, even she did not know. But chortling amusement gave way to curses, and having achieved his objective, Quartz Hogg recovered control of the cart and turned in a wide circle to head for home. He drove at Hart’s horse to frighten it away: the long walk home would teach the girl a lesson.
It was the longest distance she had ever run, or so it felt. Past the dead kangaroo, past the termite mound, past the belt that had finally slipped from Fred’s wrists; past the blood spatter… Her skirts hampered her, her boots weighed like lead, her hair got in front of her eyes and stopped her seeing.
“Fred?”
He was lying on his side in the dust, one arm flung up over his head, his legs bent as if he was still running, a pool of blood beneath him. But he lay so still that the flies were drinking sweat from his armpit undisturbed. His xylophone ribcage was perfectly silent and still. A few termites still clung to the hairs of his skin. She brushed them off – and felt the muscles flinch.
“They are gone,” she said. “You can come out now,” – just as if he was under the verandah and she up top reading too scary a book.
The ribcage did swell then. The fingers did flex, but Fred did not sit up. Comity lay down so as to see under his arm, and his eyes were open, as if he was listening, ear-to-the-ground, deducing clever things about the coming and going of hoofs. “Fred?”
His eyes moved to focus, but drifted apart again into a blank stare. A tear crawled down the side of his nose. Fred was not feigning deadness; he was dying.
“We should go to your gunyah,” she said.
His eyebrows signalled his dismay, his desire to be spared the effort. But Comity insisted. They could not go home, or Hogg would finish what he had started, and kill Fred for sure – Comity too, maybe, because she had seen him shoot down a child. And at least Fred’s gunyah was close by. Besides, without a plan, she would have simply to sit back on her heels and howl like a dingo, and what good would that do? No one would come.
The mare came. Hogg’s attempts to scare her away had turned the obstinate, idle nag into a nervy foal in need of comfort. She walked up behind Comity, reins dangling down from her mouth to trip her up, and swung her big head against Comity’s back. Do something. Do something, the horse seemed to say.