The Legend of Winstone Blackhat (17 page)

BANG BANG BANG
went the bandit guns and a pheasant fell from the morning sky and the echoes and feathers tumbled. The sky was clear and blue and the mountains were clear and bluer and between glinting rocks and purple-flowering sage the dust upon which the pheasant fell was creamy and thick as the palomino’s mane.

Bandit hooves bit the dust and whoops and hollers thickened the air and a lizard spun and ran for its life and as the hooves galloped by the tip of a shotgun lifted the dead bird from the dust and tossed it back into the air and the rider caught it in his gloved hand and held the bird high and reined in and the hollering redoubled. The bandit shoved the pheasant into a sack and as he did so another bird broke from the brush and the cry went up and shot from a dozen guns tore the morning air.

Far behind the furious flapping of wings the brown grass country ran still and wide and there a lone rider sat his horse and the sun was behind him and rider and horse were a blade of darkness slicing the sage and their shadow swam before them.

The Bandit King’s face was at ease as he watched his men. His hands lay crossed on his saddle horn and in the right was a big gold coin and as the Kid watched El Rabbitoh flipped the coin and watched it flash and laughed as he caught it.

You do not shoot, El Rabbitoh said to the Kid behind him.

I’m not much of a hand with a shotgun, the Kid said.

Far ahead of them one of El Rabbitoh’s men drew a pair of pistols from his belt and his horse reared under him as he emptied all twelve chambers into the air.

El Rabbitoh examined the coin in his hand. Do you not wish to win my prize? he said to the Kid.

I guess I’d prefer to save my shot for bigger game.

Ah, said the Bandit King. You only shoot men. Is that it?

I don’t much enjoy shooting what caint shoot back, the Kid said.

A man has to eat, El Rabbitoh said.

Yessir, said the Kid. I aint sayin I never shot at a bird. I’m just sayin I don’t much enjoy it.

Perhaps, El Rabbitoh said, you prefer to let your friend Mr Cooper do your killing for you.

The Kid looked up. Ahead in the distance he saw Cooper raise his shotgun.

Cooper brought the gun to his eye and his eye glinted blue and he smiled as he fired.

The sound of Cooper’s fire was indistinguishable from the other guns but the Kid saw another pheasant drop to the ground and was in no doubt whose shot had downed it. The hunt swept on and the Kid watched it go and he reckoned the widening distance. Around seventy yards Cooper reined in the grey and looked back and the Kid put him just within shotgun range.

The Kid looked at Cooper half-turned in the sage. Behind Cooper the bandits charged on in a fug of dust and their shouts and their fire split the sky. The Kid looked down at the borrowed shotgun he held in his hand and he looked at the weave of the cloth on El Rabbitoh’s back and if the Bandit King knew the direction of the Kid’s thoughts or his eyes he did nothing to betray it.

Cooper holstered his shotgun and touched his heels to the grey. The Kid watched him trot towards them. He looked once more at the Bandit King and then he looked over his shoulder at the range spreading wide and free and sentryless behind him.

Get down, yelled the Kid.

KerCHAW
the rifle bullet sang off the rocks in front of the Bandit King.

El Rabbitoh hit the ground.

The palomino squatted as the Kid wheeled him about and the Kid steadied his shotgun as best he could on the forearm of his rein hand and fired from the hip at the dark shape of the shooter calmly sitting his horse a hundred yards behind them. The man in black fired again and the Kid felt the wind of the bullet graze his cheek before
KerCHAW
it hit the rocks above his left shoulder. The Kid took aim and let off his second shot but the man in black remained on his horse and the Kid saw him lever another round.

The Kid looked for El Rabbitoh and the Bandit King was on his feet and under his horse and from that cover and leaving his hat in the dust he sprang behind the rocks and began to fire.

Kerchaw KerCHANG
the rifle fire rebounded around the Kid’s head but the Kid and his horse made the rocks and as in their safety the Kid began to reload he heard a revolver shot and in Cooper’s hand the revolver fired again and the smoke of its barrel rose on the blue sky and the bandit hunters wheeled from the chase and their hooves thundered through the sage.

Even with his superior range the man in black could not stand against so many. Quickly he turned his horse and at full gallop rode out the way he had come and he was a flying black shape beyond reach of the bandit guns. Above him the Kid heard a rifle crack and there on top of the rocks El Rabbitoh stood against the sky with a Winchester to his eye. Three hundred
yards ahead the man in black tumbled into the dust and lay there without moving and his horse ran on alone.

The Bandit King lowered his smoking gun and his eyes were cold as he chambered another round.

Bandit boots turned the dead man onto his back and his face was broken from the fall and his blood was clagged with dust. Ramon bent and opened the man’s black coat and drew a paper from the pocket and folded it out.

Bounty hunter, he said.

A bandit spat. The Bandit King said nothing.

That was one hell of a shot, Cooper said. One hell of a shot.

The Bandit King said nothing.

The bounty hunter’s rifle lay in the scrub and its metal gleamed in the sun and El Rabbitoh walked over to it where it lay and stood looking down at the silver chasing. Slowly he bent and picked up the weapon and checked its safety and its weight and its sights and then he rose and crossed the dust and stood in front of the Kid and held out the gun.

You are a man of your word, he said.

In the Scout Hut dunny Winstone sat with his back to the road looking out at the sun on the dam through the shotgun pellet holes in the tin of the walls and he felt the breeze blowing through and he pressed his fingers to the metal. It was lighter inside the dunny now and airier too and you could see if someone was coming up through the grass though not on the road behind you.

But the range and the road and the dam were clear. The utes and the four-wheel drives had gone and so had the geese, their big brown bodies humped onto the back of the utes and driven
away bump bump down the white dust road with their long necks slopping about and the wind bringing up their feathers. He wondered what the hunters would do with the geese and he thought of them going round and round all crispy and gold like the chickens behind the glass in Pak’n’Save only monster-sized and he wondered how long it would take to eat one.

He’d got quite a shock when the posse of utes had turned up and opened fire though not as much as the geese he reckoned. Before those big slow birds had time to think what the hell they were mostly dead and by the end of the second day the only signs they’d ever been at the dam were their big green turds and their feathers.

Some of the hunters had stayed overnight in the hunting club hut and Winstone had watched from the rocks behind the cattle fence as they shook out the beds and fired up the stove and the smoke wound up and the sun went down in a fug of hot ammo and bird blood.

When he’d heard the convoy come up the road just ahead of first light he’d thought of bugles against the dawn and the garrison running to open the gates and the cavalry driving the wagon train into the fort in the nick of time and he’d wondered what good things they’d unload. Biscuits and bacon and beans and barrels of corned beef hash and there’d be a party in the stockade because the settlers had been getting down to their last pot noodle.

But it turned out all they’d brought was noise and lead because the hunting club hut was the one hut on the dam that Winstone couldn’t break into. It had grilles on the windows and three locks on the door and no loose boards and no emergency key and its floor was solid chipboard.

Outside the hut he’d recognised Jacko’s ute and Jacko’s dumb dogs and he’d watched the dogs thrash about half-drowning
themselves as they tried to pull the monster geese out of the water. But Jacko had taken his ute and his dogs and gone home at the end of day one and he hadn’t stocked up the Green Camo Hut which was a great shame because Winstone happened to know it was running short of a lot of things including matches and beans.

He could maybe have unloaded the utes a bit himself while the hunters were busy blasting the geese but with so much shot flying round the dam he kept losing his nerve and he lost it so many times he was still sitting there in the rocks on the other side of the road wondering where it had gone when the hunters ran out of geese and came back and took their stuff inside.

Then all he could do was watch the hut windows light up and the smoke from the chimney rise and guess what had been in the chilly bins in the utes that probably hadn’t been locked and the watching hadn’t made him feel good but he’d done it anyway because until that morning he’d had nothing to watch and he might not again for a while. Every now and then the hut door had banged open into the night and someone had come out for a smoke or a piss or both and voices and light came with them and before the door shut again frying smells leaked out and Winstone tested them on his tongue. Meat. Burgers maybe. Sausages. Steaks for sure.

After a while the hut door had started to open more often and take longer to shut and a hunter tripped on the step and swore and the smell of beer spilled up in the dark and Winstone thought he saw something trot through the light and he was pretty sure what it was and he thought it was headed for trouble.

He’d felt tired then and he hadn’t wanted to watch the hut any more so he’d headed back to the cave and eaten a tin of cold beans and some time later the kitten came in and it flattened its ears and glared wide-eyed in the fuzzy beam of the
torch and if it had won or lost he couldn’t say.

He’d had more than half a plan to go through the hunter’s utes before they woke up to see if there was anything useful inside and he was hoping for batteries and a gas refill but he would have settled for gum or a lighter or mints or string and he ended up with none of those things because the hunters were up before him. It was too early to get up for no reason and he wondered what there was left to kill and if they meant to start on the rabbits.

Then a call went up from the shore of the lake, one last bugling bird alone, and the notes stood over the range and as they fell and died the call was answered from the sky. In they came, a tattered V beating out of the cloud, unkilled unwarned the survivors and the unwary, and the shotguns rose and the big bodies dropped from the sky.

A DOZEN PHEASANTS
turned above the fire in the comedor of the Bandit King and the carcasses of as many more already consumed lay among the dishes on the table. Crowding the length of the board were pitchers and platters and glasses and bowls and the stained elbows of bandits wiping up sauce from their plates and in the bowls were stewed meat and beans and on the platters tortillas and cheeses and grapes and the fruit of distant orchards. The blade of a hunting knife slid into a peach and bore it up off the plate and in the dimness behind it wine poured and splashed and the tip of another knife picked its owner’s teeth and up and down the long table the bandits laughed in the way men laugh when they have knives and the world is a peach for the taking.

A hand swept up a pitcher dripping red from its spout and the hand was the hand of the Bandit King and he held the
pitcher above the Kid’s glass but the Kid’s glass was full and so El Rabbitoh filled his own.

You do not drink, El Rabbitoh said. And you do not lie. Is there no end to your virtues?

The Kid put a hand to the tumbler in front of him and turned it and pushed it and drew it back. The light of the fire was in his eyes as they sought out Cooper half lost among shadows and bandits down the table.

To sobriety, said the Bandit King and he raised his glass and drank it down to the dregs and placed it back on the table.