4

Outside the night was frigid, arid air cold as a tomb. I pulled my great coat closer, scarf tighter, as I walked across to the stockmen’s quarters to find the Inveraray overseer, Jock McIntosh, hardworking mainstay of this property. He and a couple of other men were quietly drinking in their mess. Normally alcohol wouldn’t have been tolerated on the property, but nobody cared at this point. Grog was all we had. A small fire burnt in the hearth, giving comfort if not heat. I sensed there’d been little conversation.

‘Can you tell me what happened, what you saw?’ I asked, after I’d closed the door.

‘They’d only been back from Cobar a half-hour,’ McIntosh said. ‘The Reverend was with Mr and Mrs Kirkbride, and Miss Kirkbride must have slipped away when no one was looking.’

‘Who saw her in the river?’

McIntosh looked over at a stockman I’d seen around the place, a quiet, lanky fellow who was smoking like his life depended on it. ‘Walsh?’

Walsh looked up with a start. ‘Yeah, I was by the river, saw her float past, thought it was a cow at first. Couldn’t believe it because there’s no cows round here. Then I saw it was a girl. I shouted, thought she was dead, then Mac came over and we waded in and pulled her out. She was coughing and carrying on but just like in a daze.’

I scribbled this all down, got the names of the men who helped, the time and Flora’s state.

‘She gunna be all right?’

‘The doctor is with her now.’

‘She’d cut her hair off,’ McIntosh said. ‘Hacked at it with shears.’

I looked up at him. McIntosh was a cool-headed Scot, but his voice broke as he spoke.

Another fellow murmured, ‘It’s like they’ve been cursed.’

‘Shut your yap,’ McIntosh snarled.

He could shut them up, but it was what everyone was saying. The Kirkbrides are cursed, being punished. But if Kirkbride was being punished, I knew it would be by another human. God didn’t go around punishing people or helping them. His indifference was supreme, like a neglectful parent. He was off at the front bar, drinking Himself senseless to blot out the folly of what He’d made, a squalling, destructive infant He could not raise to adulthood.

~

Joe joined me and we rode home, starlight illuminating the road, the howling call of wild dogs away in the darkness, the barked response from station dogs. The side of my face that had connected with Tom’s fist throbbed like a beating heart.

‘Will Flora be all right?’

‘She’ll have to be monitored for pneumonia after nearly drowning.’

‘But her mind?’

‘I’m not one of those doctors. I sedated her so she can get some sleep.’

‘Pouring that opium muck down her throat will make it worse.’

‘I’m her doctor and I have administered laudanum.’

I knew better than to argue with Joe on this. He wielded his stethoscope like a truncheon, always having the last word. We continued in silence. I’d spent a lot of time in a military convalescent home in Cape Town, recovering from my injuries, swilling morphine as if the hospital bought it in bulk and needed to get rid of it. It numbed the pain but didn’t do anything for my mind, and it took a dogged perseverance to get free of its clutches.

The doctors in Cape Town told me I had neurasthenia and should pull myself together and be a man. Same thing my father said to me. He spent his life holding himself upright in the face of endless deaths and he expected his son to do the same.

But to my way of thinking, there was endurance and stoicism, and then there was something else. The mind was cleaved, leaving one division to its own terrible devices, even if the rest of the company was marching in formation.

~

As we neared town, I saw a group of men outside the police station. Joe kept going, I dismounted and the men looked at me expectantly. Senior men from the district, owners of the big outfits, their managers and overseers, holding lanterns, low voices, long shadows on the muddy road.

Doug Forsythe, owner of Tindaree Station, stepped forward. ‘Gus, I know you’re busy, but we need some answers.’

As if I had answers. Over Forsythe’s shoulder and through the police station window I saw Lonergan at the counter, staring uselessly back at me.

‘Bob Kirkbride said James was taking his sisters to the ball in Cobar,’ Forsythe said. ‘How the hell did they end up on the Larne to Calpa road, then?’

The men looked to me.

‘We don’t know at this stage,’ I said.

‘It can’t be right,’ he replied. ‘Jimmy wouldn’t go to a workers’ dance, much less take his sisters to one. Mrs Kirkbride wouldn’t have it. Because this is the sort of thing that happens.’

‘The detectives from Sydney, they’ll go through all of this.’

Forsythe gave me a sceptical look. All of them did. Capable and well-respected wool men, they’d cleared and improved a wasteland, grown wool on it that contributed to nearly fifty per cent of the national clip, fought off drought and pestilence, and no shiny-arsed detective was going to come out here and sort out local matters, murder included.

‘We have to do it their way, Mr Forsythe. And it’s not going to be quick, or pleasant.’

‘We should go after them now,’ Jim Crowther, the Tindaree overseer, said. ‘We have enough men.’

‘Sorry, instructions are to wait.’

‘Ah, that’s wrong,’ cried Henry Peyton, the overseer from Gowrie Station. ‘They’ll be on their way to Queensland, and if we go tonight we might overtake them.’

‘Go where? Up the east bank or the west? Over to the Paroo? Maybe they shot off to White Cliffs or down to Wilcannia? We can’t go chasing hunches.’

‘Surely Bob Kirkbride wants them caught as quickly as possible?’

The trouble was, I agreed. We needed to put pressure on the killers and quickly, let them feel the fiery breath of vengeance coming at them, hooves pounding, steel flashing. Then they’d panic, make the wrong call and we’d pounce, get their necks between our teeth and shake the bastards until their teeth rattled.

‘If Sydney thought a manhunt now was the right way, they’d have ordered it. But they haven’t, so we wait and go by the book, gentlemen. No vigilantism will be tolerated. Anyway, it’s crutching time – which one of you can spare a dozen men for a manhunt?’

That silenced them.

‘Check all your staff,’ I added. ‘Warn them everyone will be questioned and not to jack up about it. Word has gone up and down the river and there will be reinforcements. Everyone has to pull together, keep their wits about them and stay calm.’

~

I barged into the front office to check on Lonergan. ‘Wilson turn up?’

‘Nope.’

I snatched a completed form from the top of the wrong tray and slammed it in the right tray. ‘This is a fucking firearms licence application, not a liquor licensing application.’

I straightened the blotter, checked under the counter to make sure Lonergan hadn’t mucked the rest of the forms around, opened the incident ledger and ran my eye down the night’s events. I picked up the firearm licence application again and read it this time.

‘Thompson wants a pistol. Did he say why?’

‘Ah, no? Was I supposed to ask?’

‘What is it you do in Bourke again?’ I slammed it down again. ‘And get that tea mug out of here.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Lonergan said, blinking rapidly, holding a telegram envelope out to me. ‘An order came in. I left it for you. Sir.’

‘Here,’ I said, shoving it back at him. ‘Stick it in the right tray this time.’ Then I stalked out and put myself to bed.

~

I woke with a shout, drenched in sweat, heart frantic. I scrabbled for a match on the nightstand, dropping them in the choking darkness, finally striking lucky and with a shaking hand holding the flame to the candle, still panting from terror. A soft, golden light bathed the room, throwing shadows on the wall. I propped myself up with a couple of pillows and lay there, taking deep breaths and hoping Lonergan hadn’t woken.

My nights were often punctuated with such events. The extensive scarring on my chest and under my arm puckered and pinched, waking me to the illusion that the bayonet was slicing my flesh again. Laudanum brought on sedation, but nothing stopped the dreams, so I left it alone.

If I was alone, I could manage. With another man in the next room, I just didn’t know.