The patrol found tracks along a creek east of Consuelo. There were rocks pushed out of old sittings as if by a mob of horses driven in a line.
They rode onto Boyce’s station but no one was at the homestead. The homestead sat on the crest of a hill and Nixon wondered if the people had seen him coming and hid.
They rode next door to Tom Thurlow’s patch of country. Thurlow and a pair of his ringers said they might have seen someone driving horses as night fell but did not pay any mind to it.
‘To what?’ said Nixon. ‘Two dozen or more horses, half a mile off a good stock route with green pick, being moved across rocks in the dark?’
‘That’s right,’ said Tom Thurlow.
Nixon spat. He leant on the pommel of his saddle.
‘Here’s the thing. I doubt any legitimate drive would take such a route across these mountains.’
Thurlow shrugged
‘Nothin to do with me.’
‘But it is, Tom. Crime undermines every good thing in the world. Even things that criminals, let alone you, regard as good. There must be things in this world you love. Whose sanctity you would preserve from lawlessness.’
Tom Thurlow smiled.
‘Indeed there are, Sergeant, and if, as you say, there are outlaws abroad in the ranges, then let me return to the care of those things.’
‘The Kenniff boys,’ said Nixon to the man’s back. ‘That’s the gang you used to sell guns to, isn’t it, Tom? Before you married into this bit of country? This country that men like me keep watch over. Even though you’d betray us to the same outlaws that’d take every last head of stock out of your hills if one of them decided he had a grudge against you, and perhaps stop at taking your wife.’
Tom Thurlow spat.
‘I know the boys you’re talking about. Last I heard they’d gone east. Months ago.’
‘Was it them who drove the horses across the ridge two nights ago?’
‘I couldn’t make out the faces.’
‘You didn’t send a rider up to look?’
‘No. Why would I want that trouble?’
‘That’s curious.’ Nixon nodded at King Edward, stiff-spined and bareback on his horse. ‘Cause my tracker here has one set of fresh horse prints going up to the ridge and one coming back to the house. So if it wasn’t one of your men, it was one of theirs. Don’t you think that’s curious?’
‘I’ll check my stores.’
‘Perhaps one of your women met someone yesterday night.’
‘Are you brewin for a fight, Sergeant?’
‘No.’
‘But I couldn’t strike you, could I? That’s where your kind draw your bluster. A poor working bastard like me can’t touch you. Even when you slight me.’
‘Forgive me, Tom. That came out wrong. I only meant that the men we’re tracking will be riding a long way. They’ll need supplies every two or three days, and to spell their horses. You’re not missing any?’
‘You said there was only one set of tracks going back up the ridge.’
Nixon looked about the homestead and yards. To a stand of bull oaks.
‘There are a hundred ways out of here. I’m not going to spend a night looking at rocks to prove what I already know. I just wondered if you might tell us where they’re heading.’
Tom Thurlow nodded. He flicked the butt of his cigarette onto the dirt and put his heel on it.
‘You say you ride my boundaries.’ He nodded. Looked up to the ridge. ‘Let’s say I did know the men who were driving horses by here two nights ago. Where will you be when word gets out I told you about them, and one of their thugs or ring-ins comes here drunk with a stirrup iron threatenin to break open my head? Where will you be then, Sergeant? Getting a medal pinned on your coat in the city? Or in the town with a bottle of whisky and a whore? I know about you, too, Sergeant Nixon. I heard about your history, and I have sympathy for you. But from where I stand there are certain laws you – like all police – prefer keeping than others. And you cannot keep your vigil everywhere at all times. And when you are absent, then who defends my land and my women? I’ll tell you. I do. And that’s what I’m doing now. Goodnight, Sergeant.’ He eyed King Edward. ‘And take your savage well away from my homestead.’
The Skillington boy pointed at the houseyards. To a horse tethered there. Only the outline of the animal was visible now in the dusk.
‘That’s a fine looking horse, Tom.’
Thurlow looked quickly at his yards. He took his pouch and pinched tobacco.
‘Thank you.’
He kept walking towards the homestead. The boy called at his back,
‘Especially fine for a man who’s famous for having the hairiest inbred ponies on the range. That horse is seventeen hands high. And sore. I been watchin im.’
Thurlow stopped.
‘I wanted to join a decent horse with my mares for a change. I put a few pounds away for him in the summer. Any wrong in that?’
‘The Kenniffs are famous for liking good horses.’ The boy spoke now with an authority he borrowed from the man he rode with. ‘They like good horses so they stay faster than the police. I say that’s not your horse.’
‘I bought him off a friend.’
Nixon spoke.
‘Who’s your friend?’
Thurlow took smoke papers from his trouser pocket. Took one up with his tongue and rolled tobacco into it.
‘I’m tired of answerin your questions, Sergeant. I’m goin inside.’
‘If that horse had a Kenniff brand on its hide, or a tampered brand made to look like a Kenniff brand, what do you reckon that’d mean for your story?’
‘It doesn’t.’
‘And I say it does.’
‘Ride out of here, Sergeant. Why are you pesterin me? Last I heard, the Kenniffs were in the east. Pickin up their brother out of gaol.’
The boy turned to Nixon.
‘Should I check the brand, Sarge?’
Nixon nodded.
The Skillington boy rode to the yard. He got beside the horse, struck a match and called back.
‘It’s not Kenniff’s.’
Thurlow lit his cigarette.
‘Now get off my land.’
Nixon readied to apologise. He should not have put so much stock in the boy. But the boy called out again.
‘HB1 on the shoulder. 35 off the neck. The brand’s HB1.’
‘That’s a Babbiloora horse,’ said Nixon. ‘That horse is stolen.’
‘Everyone trades horses up here.’
‘And some men steal them. And others help them to steal them. Tell me the manager’s name. The man who sold you this horse.’
Tom Thurlow shook his head and laughed and spat.
Nixon got off his horse and took cuffs from his saddlebag.
Thurlow’s wife had been watching from one of the dark windows of the house. Now she came onto the veranda.
Nixon’s breath caught in his chest at the sight of her. He called to her.
‘Hello, Ada. I’m very sorry for this.’
‘What the hell is going on, Sergeant?’
‘Could you get one of your boys to find a quiet pony?’
‘Why?’
‘We need to take Tom into town.’
The woman gathered her skirts and came across the dust. She whispered fiercely at him.
‘He hasn’t done anything.’
There was venom in her eyes. Nixon locked the cuffs in front of her and in front of the children who had come out onto the veranda. A boy of fourteen, a girl of twelve and a much younger girl. The boy was skinny and scruffy and red-cheeked like his youngest sister. The eldest girl was just as beautiful as her siblings were plain, and was the mirror image of the mother at the same age. She stood in a white dress that an itinerant nun had given her, that might fit in two years’ time, with her blonde hair hanging long between her shoulder blades. She and the other children half hid behind a beam. The boy and little girl looked stunned. The eldest girl was crying. Nixon saw it.
‘I’m sorry, Ada. Tom’s not who we truly want, I dare say we won’t keep him long. But can you find me that pony? It will be much worse if we have to walk him.’
‘You can’t put him on that horse?’
She pointed to the Babbiloora horse.
‘It’s a stallion, and anyway it looks half-lame. I’d prefer a pony.’
‘You won’t get there tonight. Even with a horse.’
‘No.’
She called to her son to bring the pony.
‘And Ada?’
‘Yes?’
‘If you know anything that can help us … help your husband?’
She nodded.
‘Yes, yes. Alright.’
‘Forgive me, Ada.’
She whispered,
‘Do you mean to take some kind of revenge on me through him?’
‘No.’
‘You know …’
‘Know what?’
‘That I can’t … I can’t lea–’
But he pulled his horse around before the woman could finish speaking.
The woman and children watched the men ride off with their husband and father on a child’s white pony, both the pony and the Babbiloora horse lashed in caravan to the Skillington boy’s mare at the surcingles with driving reins. Ada Thurlow hurried the children inside. The smaller girl huddled close to her mother’s skirts. The boy stood at the window crying, but the older girl’s fear was gone now and she stared after the vanishing patrol with hatred burning in her eyes. She said,
‘He was our friend, mother. Wasn’t he our friend?’
She was ashamed of the fear she had shown and she cried to her mother.
‘I’ll be enemy to every bloody policeman that exists for all the rest of my life.’
‘Hush, girl.’
Just then Mrs Boyce came up the stairs and heard the crying.
‘What in the name of the Lord’s afoot here, Ada?’
‘Oh, it’s just–’
‘The police took our father,’ said the eldest girl. ‘And the new horse.’
Mrs Boyce saw the hatred in the girl’s eyes.
‘Can I borrow your daughter for the night, Ada? Only, with Frank gone, and on a night like this, I need a little wood chopped, and I’m not up to it meself.’
Ada Thurlow kissed her daughter and nodded.
Mrs Boyce told the girl to put one of a basket of already split logs on the fire. Then she took a pen and paper and wrote. She folded the letter and called her niece.
‘Child?’
‘Yes?’
‘The men who were here last night with the horses.’
‘Yes?’
‘Can you follow them east out of the range? Maybe as far as the pass?’
‘I can ride these hills as good as any man.’
‘Give this to the one called James.’
The girl smiled. Mrs Boyce secured the note in her pocket.
‘I’ll pack you bread and water. Go saddle your pony!’