Coming Rain (14 page)

She saw the bungurra as he saw her. The forked tongue flickered out at her and she
leapt and bit down on its fat banded tail. Lifted it in the air and tossed it just
as its sleek head came around to bite her. The sand goanna tried to flee into the
darkening scrub but she sprang on it again and grabbed it behind
its racehorse head.
Her fangs crunched the vertebrae and the bungurra's head flashed open-mouthed, side
to side. Its tail and body twisting in double-jointed reptilian fury. Twisting and
hissing at her even as it died.

She drank its oily blood. Her whole body arching and absorbed with what she was doing.
Tore the goanna's fat belly apart as it was dying. Swallowed the sweet stomach contents.
The gorgeous yellow fat slid down her throat.

The body of the twitching bungurra goanna lay near her. Her belly began heaving from
overeating and she retched but kept the food down. Her whelp roiled and she knew
that they had been in hiding, tucked and still as she fled the killer. Now they were
content.

Flies began. She took the lizard up into her mouth, its body hanging from her jaws,
turned and began to trot back to where she had left the young dog.

It was dark, the night, when she reached him, he had curled closer into himself,
changed his body shape. His nose to his tail. His breathing had slowed. This was
a good sign. She dropped the half-eaten goanna near his nose. Walked backwards and
lay down.

He woke and sniffed at the meat in the darkness.

She watched him as he began to lick at the hunt. Once she would have killed such
an adolescent from another clan. Now he was taking the oil seeping from the fat of
the bungurra. He rose on shaky legs and began to eat, gulping at the pale meat. He
vomited. Paused and ate again, like a pup with undigested meat regurgitated for him.
A mother's feed. She stretched and began to fall asleep. The first of the two moons
rose.

CHAPTER 33

Lew followed her out of the woolshed and stood on the landing.

She had reached the yards where Tom was haltered to a bottom rail next to a circular
cement water trough. A saddle blanket and saddle on the top rail beside him. The
bridle on a post.

‘Clara,' he said.

She ignored him and took the blanket and put it across Tom's back. Turned to the
saddle. One of the stirrup irons slipped and got caught as she lifted it. Lew was
standing in his moccasins. Heavy cotton trousers, bowyangs. His upper arms, white
in the sunlight as always, covered in cuts and scratches. He heard her curse as she
dragged the stirrup iron out of the fence and turn to him. Her arms full with the
heavy stock saddle.

‘Lewis,' she said eventually, looking at him with a raised chin. Tears in her eyes.

Her team of dogs had aligned themselves along the yards, seeking out any scraps of
shade. Lying down, heads up, panting
and blinking, watching her every movement. Every
gesture. All with open mouths, pink tongues dripping.

‘I wanted to thank you,' he said, ‘for all your help.'

She looked at him a moment longer, glanced at the dogs and stepped to put the saddle
across Tom's back. Stood on tiptoes to free the iron from the seat and the twist.
‘That's quite all right,' she said as she knelt under Tom's belly, her shoulder into
his side, and retrieved the girth strap. Retreated again to her boarding-school voice.
‘I enjoyed the change,' she said. ‘And you are leaving soon aren't you?'

‘I don't want to.'

‘No?' Clara stood and lifted the side flap of the saddle, found the buckles, aligned
and tightened the girth. Said stop it to Tom who had held his breath against the
tightening, waited for him to breathe out and pulled the girth strap tighter. ‘Unavoidable,'
she said. ‘Isn't it? Your leaving?'

‘You are very beautiful, Clara, I have not ever seen,' Lew placed both hands on his
head. ‘And I keep looking at you and you do too. At me. I know you do. I just want
to say this. Should I even say this?'

She shot him a hard look, turned away. Gave a tentative smile, her eyes becoming
big as she lifted the bridle off the post and stood in front of Tom, said Tom and
let the reins hang over her arm. Placed the headband across his forehead while bringing
the bit up and into his mouth. Insisted to him to take it. She reached up to ease
his ears and forelock through the headband and quickly buckled the chinstrap just
as he champed at the metal bit in his mouth.

‘I don't have to go,' he said.

She could not look at him. Her breathing had become shallow. Shook her head and after
a moment of thinking, spoke. ‘It's all right Lewis. It is. Thank you, that was a
lovely thing to say.'

Lew looked over at her dogs. ‘They can't take their eyes off you. Not for a second.
They are all in love with you.'

She seemed to jerk, involuntarily. As if he had said something that shocked her,
and she placed her hand over the eyes of her horse.

Tom began to swish his white tail at flies. Shook his head and blew air out through
his nose. The rattle of the bridle and bit.

She retrieved the reins and put them over the gelding's head, held them in the stiff
hair of his mane.

‘Come over to the house stables later,' she said. ‘I have a filly there I'm introducing
to the lead. A yearling and she is just something. Black, but she will dapple to
grey, same blood lines as Pearl and Tom.'

‘Where?'

‘At the dressage yards, near the house. I'll bring little Gwennie down for you to
see. I have made a carry bag for her to ride in, wait till you see her.'

‘Gwen?' Lew frowned, remembered. ‘The joey?' This feeling of wanting to laugh with
joy as he looked at her.

‘Yes, Lewis, little Gwen. You did give her to me, remember?' She glanced at the woolshed
door behind him. ‘Don't tell Dad or Mr Hayes though, will you?'

He nodded. ‘The stables? No, I won't.'

The team of dogs had stood as Clara moved. Their panting
and pausing as they watched
her. How they loved her. Waited on her, tails wagging. Whining for her to notice
them. Two or three of them sat, not taking their eyes off her for an instant. Not
an instant.

‘Down from the house. Try not to be seen.' She turned, held the pommel with both
hands, leapt and swung herself up and into the saddle. Her feet searching out the
stirrup irons. Tom lifted onto his back legs a few inches and she used the pressure
of her thighs to turn him as she took the reins between the ring and middle fingers.
Bent her chin forward to check the buttons of her shirt. Whispered darling to Tom.
And: walk back; behave yourself now.

She was, all the time, in motion, turning away. The unchained dogs up on their feet.
Standing proud and obedient for her. He heard her whistle; they barked, whined and
trotted out behind her, arranging themselves into the pack order of dominance.

King in front on her near side. Fleet on the off, narrow eyed, glancing across at
King to ensure he remained a little behind. A younger male ranged slightly ahead
and Swift rounded on him and tore at his face in a short savage attack. The running
order was restored and the dogs ran on, high wagging tails and open mouths behind
their mistress. Sky looked neither left nor right. Her belly was full of pups again.
Heads and tails, six maybe seven.

Clara raised a hand without looking back at him and kicked Tom into a slow canter.
Her straight back and hips moving already within the rhythm of the horse's gait.
Tom always ran more proudly when she was riding him. His white tail thrust out
straight
as a flag draped. Just fine and showing for all to see. I am alive and almost a stallion,
a gelding cut-proud. Look at me, look at my tail. This is who I was.

Behind them shorn sheep blared in the tally-out pens. He did not know he heard them
as he watched her. He could still see her arched back and the rolling movement of
her backside controlling the sweet canter. He asked Painter's Mr Jesus, the Man on
the hill, the moon, the entire universe and everything he ever believed in for her
to look back at him. Even the hope of rain and her dead mother to return. Just at
that moment.

Look back at me, Clara. I would die for you.

And she did, he saw her teeth, her lifted hand. Twisting in the saddle, she called
something back at him. Her flat hand now on the rump of the running horse.

‘I can, Lewis.'

He breathed out, wanted to kneel on the ground but instead smiled as big as he could
and waved at her. ‘Thank you,' he called. ‘Thank you, I would like that. I would.'

He turned to the woolshed and saw that Painter and John Drysdale had come out to
stand on the landing and were looking at him and then to where Clara was riding.

‘You right son?' Painter called to him.

Drysdale stared at him and the damaged red eye seemed to be glowing in the white
ointment of his face.

CHAPTER 34

The bungurra had brought strength to her legs and heart and lungs.

After an hour of lying near the pup, the bitch stood and trotted back the way they
had come. She was cautious, stopping every few hundred yards to listen. Cut back
across their tracks to be upwind of any followers. The helpless and staggered spoor
they had left was obvious; easy prey to any. She studied their tracks and sat. Waited
and began to tremble. Stood as the shooter seemed to call out to her…No, just the
wind. She turned suddenly to bite at something that wasn't there and began to settle
into the running: alongside old bitch dingos coming to the hunt, gone in the teeth
yet always obedient to the pack.

She was alone now.

Casting about for scent she became almost certain the shooter was not coming. It
was too easy. Now using the old looping pattern of travel, she traced their tracks
back almost to the dry creek bed where the old man had shot at them. Through the
bushes she could see the car, still stranded on the lip of the
creek. She raised
her nose, there was no sense of the man, he had gone. Listened intently. The car
seemed still and dust had settled on it. Oil and petrol fumes surrounding it. Something
was pulling her to go to it and examine it more closely but she resisted this. The
spirit of her mother seemed to whisper walk back. Come away child-pup from this thing.
Leave it.

She walked backwards silently and turned. Began to trot to where she had come from.
Night was falling and the western star come up. The moon's consort and suddenly a
shower of falling stars. The great cloudless sky turning flare white for a moment
and then back, almost black. Second moon rising.

She was running across the flat land in the moonlight. Her face, her open mouth was
as she was, unthinking. Of remembered wild dogs running free nearby, in the shadows.
The land moving beneath her. The ground came first. After that her feet and eyes
and mouth.

When she reached him, she saw the young red pup had scratched a hollow for himself
and lay, nose to tail. The bitch ran to him and sniffed. Circled and tested the perimeter
of where they were sleeping that night. She pissed and defecated and returned to
her markings to smell them as if to reassure herself of their presence and the boundary
of their being there.

It was high moon dark as she came back to the sleeping body of the adolescent. She
pawed the sand to create also a hollow. Again circled, sniffed and then lay down.
Her back to his back. She felt his warmth and the movement of his lungs as he breathed.
The sinewy strength of his dog youth came into her. The beating of his heart.

CHAPTER 35

The black filly was light on her feet. Her coat shining and it was obvious she had
the thoroughbred in her. Nervous and quick to move, eyes showing as big as you like,
she looked at you beneath a black forelock, pricked ears and already long mane. Thick
black tail held high and strong behind. One white foot.

Lew leaned on the wooden rail of the circular dressage yard and watched Clara as
she gently laid the rope over the filly's back. All the time she cooed to her, hushed
her and praised her. Sssh now the good baby girl, just a little bit yes you are,
I am not here to hurt you. We are going to be good friends you and I oh yes we are
ssssh now hush darling. I know I know, little bit. Come come to me to me. Look here
to me. Steady darling now.

Allowed the filly her natural curiosity. Tentative at first and quick to start, she
approached Clara, stretched out a long neck and smelled her. Began to trust. Clara
watched as the filly gently touched her chest with her nose, stepped closer and became
more
curious with the unfamiliar smell and rub. Her ears moving back and forth, she
began to nibble at the shirt pockets. Clara laughed and the filly quickly raised
her head. The rope fell away into the dirt as she threw off to her near side and
spun, turning her rump.

‘Would you kick me darlin'?'

The filly laid her ears back and cocked her near hip as if to kick.

‘Now now…Go on if you have to, just a little bit, go on.'

And she did, kicked out first with her near then off leg then hopped and kicked out
with both back legs.

‘Both barrels. A fighter,' Clara said. ‘All the better for it. You a killer horse?'
She whistled for a while and waited. Whistled again and watched as the young horse
seemed to think about the whistle. Her ears moving back and forth. ‘I don't think
so.'

Clara turned away from the yards to allow the filly time to settle. To show her as
a mother would that sometimes she should be ignored.

‘She loves you,' Lew said and smiled. ‘Just like your dogs, she cannot stop wondering
about you now.'

‘We will see,' Clara said.

The joey Gwen was in a sack around Pearl's neck. Holes had been cut to let her back
legs stick out. A straw hat on her head with more holes cut in it to allow for her
ears.