I took a moment to figure out where I was and who the body snuggled up against me belonged to. The air was damp, rich with the smell of rotting wood and winter fungi. My breath came out in icy clouds. A blue-black ant struggled through the mud before my eyes, dragging a lump of something many times its own size. You couldn’t help but admire its persistence.
I needed to move, to feel the blood circulating through my body, but I was reluctant to expose myself to what looked like a freezing morning. I gave it a few minutes then crept out of the swag and into my pants and boots.
Nash was still breathing heavily, snatching at air in sharp, shallow gasps. I let him rest. He looked like he needed it.
What had he said last night? The hide was further along this track. I followed it for maybe a hundred metres, Flinders tagging along beside me. He obviously knew the way. There were spider webs across the track, dew drops and morning light glimmering on their quadrilaterals. The country had been burned by a bushfire in recent years. The tree trunks were scorched and some of the ground was still coated with a layer of ash. There were even traces of vitreous material, where the sand had been blasted into glass. But new green shoots were surging out of the ashes and hunting for light. Fire was clearly an essential element in the natural cycle up here.
I came across a tiny wooden structure – an overgrown cubbyhouse, really – in a tree overlooking a gully. I climbed up into it. There was a sleeping bag in one corner and a food stash – a packet of Vita Brits and a tin of peaches – in another. There was a set of climbing equipment hanging off a peg on the wall. I examined the gear with interest. It was designed for ascending trees: there were ropes and spurs, a harness and a throw line. I was familiar with most of it. I’d done a high-angle rescue course in the Territory, even assisted with the odd real-life emergency.
I crawled to the front of the structure and looked out through an opening there. Fifty metres away, across the creek, was the improvised wood and wire shelter I’d seen in the photo. Beyond that was a magnificent mountain ash, maybe sixty metres in height, with a scattering of acacias around its base.
Halfway up the ash was a huge nest, a couple of metres wide, bristling with sticks. No sign of its occupant, but somehow that made the eagle’s presence more powerful. You could feel it. The nest held a commanding view, both of the valley below, with its mazy mists and waterways, and of the streaky winter blue above.
Some words came to mind. ‘That stormy white but seems a concentration of the sky . . .’ Dad had muttered the line once as we watched a flock of swans lift off from a waterhole in the outback. He said it was from a poem by the Irish poet, Yeats, describing a flock of swans rising from a lake in Galway.
This was a different bird on another continent, but the meaning and significance were the same. Nash’s eagle was a concentration of this place, the focus of its buffeting winds and thermals, the centre point of its angles of attack, its lines of sight. It was the kind of totem a desperate man would cling to. A desperate, decent man; he hadn’t turned to drink, or drugs or violence to cope with his troubles, as so many had before him. He’d turned to the natural world. That was what had drawn Nash to the Wiregrass Valley, to that lofty creature: he’d seen them as a symbol of the tranquillity he was searching for.
But how fragile was his paradise? How long would he last up here? He wasn’t looking good. He was shivering and limping, short of breath, feverish. I thought about the police parties I suspected were combing the hills and valley. Wallace wasn’t stupid. If I could find Nash, so could he. There were already choppers on the prowl. How long till they brought in the dogs or drones? How long would Nash be able to evade them? If his pursuers did apprehend him, his flight would go against him, maybe lengthen his sentence or prejudice a jury.
‘Morning Jess.’
I looked down. It was Nash. He’d abandoned the tarp and wrapped himself in one of the blankets from my swag, but he still looked like he’d been through the wringer.
I swung down and gave him as warm a hug as I could muster. I felt him tremble against my shoulder, then he turned his gaze to the valley before us.
‘Any sign of Pauli?’ His voice had gone raspy overnight. He was definitely coming down with something.
‘Nope.’
‘He’ll be out there somewhere,’ he assured me.
An unseen helicopter churned through the clouds to the south-east. I caught Nash’s eye, struck by the flicker of anxiety as he glanced up in the direction of the sound.
I stepped towards him and touched his brow.
‘You’re feverish,’ I said.
‘It’s nothing. Been coming on for a couple of days. Picked up a cold when I was out working in the storm.’
I looked him in the eye.
‘Nash, are you sure you’ve thought this through? It’s only been a couple of days, and you’re already looking wrecked. You need help. A doctor, maybe a spell in hospital. And then there’s Neville Wallace,’ I added. ‘He’s got his flaws, but when he gets his teeth into something, he doesn’t let go. He’ll track you down: choppers, dogs, drones, whatever it takes.’
He stepped back and emitted a sigh.
‘Maybe it would be best,’ I continued, ‘if you came down to Windmark with me now? I’ll do what I can to help: get a lawyer, speak up for you. And I’ll try to find out who set you up.’
He turned away, folded his arms and contemplated the trees before us. Not the mountain ash, I realised. He was looking at a smaller wattle alongside it.
‘Last night,’ he said, ‘I may have sounded a little bitter about my childhood. But it wasn’t all bad. Near the front gate of the property was a beautiful golden wattle. When things got rough, Shiloh and I . . .’
‘Shiloh?’
‘My big sister. We’d climb into the upper branches and sit there for hours. We even made a little tree house of sorts, if you can call a few planks hammered together a house. The magpies would perch and sing around us and we’d join in with them. The choughs would cluster and rustle in the upper branches at night. Sometimes the eagles would soar overhead. That was where I found this eagle feather.’ He touched his hat. ‘It was our solace, that tree, those birds. Even today, as an adult, when things are going bad, I can still find it, buried in my memory.’
He coughed heavily, then raised himself up. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll go down to Windmark, hand myself in to Vince Tehlich. He’s always been decent.’
He took my hand and kissed it.
‘I couldn’t have done this before I met you, Jesse. It’s a relief, knowing there’s someone on my side. That hasn’t happened much in my life.’
He turned and hobbled towards the camp.
I felt the resolve hardening in my heart. There was no way I could let him rot in gaol. And the only way to prevent that was to find out what really happened, both at Wycliff Rise and, years earlier, at Horse Thief Creek.