The Legend of Winstone Blackhat (15 page)

He went back to watching the road. Above it a hawk braked and teetered to hold its spot but what it had seen down there in the dust was impossible to say.

BUZZARDS SOARED
above the lair of the Bandit King and their wing feathers spread across the sun and their shadows raked the rocks and the brown grass country below but the Kid and Cooper could not see them. They rode the narrow path blind and reinless with their wrists secured to their saddlehorns and only the draught of the wings above and the long and echoing fall of stones dislodged by the horses’ hooves to hint at the height to which they had climbed.

Ramon’s men led them on. The way was wide enough for a horse and no more and an inch from the palomino’s hooves the rotten rock sheered away and fell a hundred feet to the gully below where a jackrabbit startled at the trickle of schist running down and stared up wide-eyed at their passing. Above the path
was a short steep slope of shale clumped over with thorn and sage and from the shale rose the standing rocks that buttressed the bandit citadel and hid El Rabbitoh from all but the buzzards’ eyes.

From within those rocks the path was a ribbon twisting in the sun and the horsemen wound up it softened by dust and behind them the range ran bright and wide to the earth’s blue ends where cloud shadows stained the snow. Rock shaded the face of the Bandit King as he looked down from the highest sentry post and his eyes fierce and dark as buzzard wings swept over the path and the riders on it. Behind him the sentry waited and El Rabbitoh turned from the window and nodded to him and then the Bandit King left the rocks. Outside in the sunlight he paused and looked up at the birds in the sky and the darkness remained beneath his eyes and they were the eyes of a man for whom sleep and trust were hard to come by. Wings passed over El Rabbitoh and his face was a wall of stone.

Ramon spoke a word and what had seemed a boulder blocking the path was revealed as a gate and the gate slid away as four of El Rabbitoh’s men turned the giant wheel that worked it. Ramon touched his heels to the black flanks of his horse and the horse’s dark feet stepping high led the way through the gate and behind the hooves of the last bandit horse the gate rolled back into place and the gatemen braked the wheel.

The hood was snatched from the Kid’s head and a buzzard screamed out of the blinding sun and the Kid squinted and blinked and still tied to his saddle he sat and looked upon the home of the Bandit King. Within the circle of rock was another of mud and stone and from the roof of that circle rope ladders led to sentry posts in the rocks and above the rocks the Kid could see only buzzards and sky and by the sun alone could he make any guess at the direction he had come from. They had halted in an empty dust space at the centre of the fortress. The
space was bordered by a wide portico and men rose from the portico cradling their guns and from that shade looked out at the Kid and Cooper hatless and bound underneath the noonday sun. No one spoke.

Near the gate was a pump and a boy took the handle of the pump in both hands and worked it with all his weight and the pump began to bray hee-haw and the horses blew and stretched their necks towards the scent of the coming water.

Welcome, Ramon said. Friends. Let us show you to your quarters.

A studded door swung in on darkness and thudded there. The Kid and Cooper followed it in with two Winchesters behind them. The gun barrels withdrew and the door slammed shut and they heard the ram of a bolt and the turn of a lock and then there was silence.

The room they were in was cool and dim. There were sacks of fodder on its stone floor and a smoke of feed dust hung and turned in the latticed light beneath the grille in the mudbrick wall. In one corner were two clay jars half the height of a man and Cooper lifted the lid of the first jar and raised the dipper inside and sniffed.

Molasses, he said.

The Kid crossed to the grille in the wall and pulled himself up by its iron bars and looked out as best he could at the yard outside but beyond the underside of the portico’s slate was nothing but a mess of white light to pain his eyes.

What do you figure they want with us? the Kid said.

This one’s water, Cooper said and he lifted the dipper and drank. You want some? It’s good.

The Kid let go of the bars and dropped back to the ground and he turned and propped his back and one boot on the wall and he looked at Cooper.

They’ll tell us what they want soon enough, Cooper said.

Meanin we might be sorry to know.

Meanin I’m goin to enjoy me this here cool drink of water, Cooper said. Meanin you could do worse than do the same.

I caint enjoy nothin, the Kid said, not knowin what them bandits intend.

Well now Kid that’s a shame, Cooper said.

He hung the dipper back in the water jar and replaced the lid and then without further word Cooper settled himself on the sacks and took the hat from his back and shook it off and lay down under its brim and in such manner awaited the pleasure of the Bandit King.

The Kid kicked his boot heel against the mud wall. He pushed off it and circled the room and returned to the grille and pulled himself up and looked out into the glare and dropped back and circled again and looked at Coop who did not appear to have stirred and he looked down and picked a piece of chaff from his sleeve and then he sighed and sank to his haunches.

I know one thing, Cooper said.

What’s that? said the Kid.

Coop thumbed back his hat with one hand and lifted the other hand and considered what it contained.

We aint their first guests, he said.

Between his fingers Cooper turned a little pink glass button.

There was rose in the sky, a blush of it, not angry but like a petal. The day was slowing down and soon it would reel off over the hills and there would be only a glow of it left behind still and thick as the glass behind Marlene in the Clintoch church. The hawks had gone wherever hawks went and replacing them a line
of geese beat across the dusk baying loud and sad as lonesome dogs in case anyone should miss their slow flight and no shot rang out from the valley below and the sheep filed back across the glazing sky with their number complete and all in all it had been a good day for the hunted.

Nothing had moved on the road and nothing would now with the night advancing out of the east and faster than it used to. Maybe that meant whatever was coming for him was one day closer and maybe it didn’t and maybe every day that ended like this wrapped up in cellophane skies was a gift and a horse you shouldn’t look in the mouth and it had carried him one day further away from Glentrool, and maybe when enough had gone by and enough world had turned what he’d done would slip over the shoulders of the earth and out of sight and he could go on just him against the sky without a thing behind him.

Winstone climbed down from the rocks and walked back to the cave. He thought about going on just him and he wondered where he’d go to.

Inside the cave the kitten was waiting for him. It flattened its ears and hissed when he tried to touch it. To make up for the rabbit Winstone dangled a bit of dried speargrass over the kitten’s head and the kitten grabbed it and turned upside down and kicked up at the stem with both back paws. Then the kitten made a grab for his hand and Winstone gave it the stem and after a lot of thought he chose a can of spaghetti with cheese and lit the gas burner to heat it up because it was cold in the cave even though the wind wasn’t blowing. He sat on his sleeping bag and watched the gas flame and listened to the flame hiss and he thought about moving on and staying put and he thought that maybe this was the right place to be and the problem was there was only so far west you could go before you ended up back where you started.

It was the PigROOT not ROUTE that first brought Winstone west, a funny name for a road and Grunt and Bic would have had a thing or two to say about it if they’d been along for the ride. They weren’t. They were falling further and further behind one marker post at a time, one broken white line disappearing not into nothing but a bitumen haze where their edges shed and he didn’t have to look at the shapes of them any more.

Instead, Winstone coloured horses. Cremello buckskin chestnut roan. Horses in blue covers and green covers and close by the fence a posse of naked muddy rough-headed bays with a feral look about the eyes. A paint, which was what
Great Horses of the American West
said was the name for a patchy horse. Apache horse. And Comanche and Cherokee and Sioux
the Red Indian rode not just with his whole body but every fibre of his soul
and they’d come swooping down these hills the brown grass country flying like the empty lonesome wind.

Todd Jackson pulled his visor down. They were driving into the sun.

In a dry tufted paddock a pair of brown giants, shaggy white bucket feet and bright white arching noses.

Clydesdales, Todd said. Draught horses.

He hadn’t spoken for a while.

Winstone turned his head to look at them some more. The
diesel engine clattered as the road climbed and outside the wind pushed and sucked and the chip-seal rumbled like the receding eastern sea and from somewhere inside the Pajero’s dusty dash came a constant plastic rattle.

In the back his bag slid and shifted among Todd’s gear. Todd drove a lot slower than Bic or Grunt or even Ros-your-social-worker did, but still the wagon bumped and lurched and wallowed its way like a half-poisoned possum around the bends and as the brown country narrowed and closed them in Winstone kept a watch on the gullies and bluffs and dry creekbeds, the rising earth so thin you could see its bones. It was good country for an ambush. For outlaws and rustlers and Bandit Kings. A bad land for the law.

If Zane was going to break him out this would be the place to do it. The cops weren’t watching Winstone any more. They’d finished with him, and whatever it was Zane was wanted for – unpaid taxes or speeding fines or shoplifting puddings and DVDs or assault of some shithead Year Nine who really deserved it – he could come out of hiding now. If Winstone were Zane or a Bandit King he’d have a hideout behind the tallest bluff. A secret fortress. He’d see everything for miles and when he saw the Pajero coming his men would push a big rock out into the road and Todd would have to stop and the Bandit King would gallop down on his big silver horse with its mane flying out and then he’d rear up and say hand over that boy. He belongs with me.

You couldn’t do that sort of thing at the emergency home. He’d known that, really, all along. With cops and lawyers and Ros in and out all the time and witnesses there around the clock a raid just hadn’t been realistic. Zane wasn’t going to blow a hole in the wall and yank him out to freedom. But Zane was going to come. Somehow somewhere he was making a plan. Winstone
could feel it in the silence. One day he’d turn around and the stranger behind him on the bus in the street would be Zane in disguise and they wouldn’t say a word they’d just slip away the two of them alone and nobody would ever find them at Zane’s new house no neighbours no room-mates no locks no rules no dreams and when they got there Winstone could sleep.

The Maniototo, Todd said, and the plain opened up and the badlands were gone.

There were a lot of things to learn about Todd and one of them was that he liked to get in with the place names before the green signs but Winstone didn’t understand that yet and his head was suddenly full of stretched sky wider than the widest screen pulling the clouds apart and fraying them into the blue and the way Todd said
Maniototo
he misheard the name and thought of the Lone Ranger.

Kyeburn, Todd said later. Wedderburn. Idaburn.

Flames eating up a dry brown map and sure enough, before long, there they were pulling up on green grass and Todd turned his head from side to side surveying it or maybe just stretching his neck and then he looked straight at Winstone and smiled.

We’re home, Todd said.

In those days Winstone was very tired, so tired that things sometimes got mixed up, but he wasn’t too far gone to know that a few pine trees and grazing cattle and a polythene-lined irrigation pond didn’t make it The Ponderosa. Todd’s place was a white board house with a red tin roof and a lot of windows and pointy bits and an old macrocarpa hedge on three sides and beside the Pajero in the drive was a pink plastic tricycle with streamers on the handlebars and a crapped-out looking Nissan Sunny.

Come on. Todd grabbed Winstone’s big bag from the back and Winstone picked up his schoolbag and held it to his ribs
with both arms and came around the Pajero to stand beside Todd. Todd waved one hand at the house and Winstone followed it fast so the other hand didn’t find his shoulder. Todd wasn’t Lorne Greene. He was about Bic’s age probably. A fit guy. A big guy. If he looked like any of the Cartwright boys it was probably Hoss but time would tell if he was a Hoss on the inside too and until he knew for sure Winstone planned to keep his distance.

There was a cracked concrete path leading up to a red front door with green things growing in pots either side but they didn’t go that way. They walked to the back and up a couple of steps and through a sticking door to a closed-in porch that smelled of mud and old apples and half-dry gear and the bowl of cat food on top of the washing machine. Marlene’s pink gumboots were by the back door. They brought him up short.

Come on, Todd said. Inside.