Jessica (16 page)

Jessica reckons it'll take half a day to gather a mob of men to come looking for Billy, maybe even longer. She probably has four hours or a little more lead on them if she and Billy get going soon. If she stays here with Billy and if the mob arrives, probably drunk, they're just as likely to lynch Billy on the spot, string him from the windlass. She can't just sit here and wait for that to happen, and Jessica shudders at the thought of more death. No, she makes up her mind, she doesn't know what she's going to do with Billy, but she's got to get going in the next half-hour.

‘Billy, I'll have to go harness the sulky, will you come with me?' Billy nods and goes to stand up but she raises her hand. ‘No wait, I'll pack some food for the way first.' She finds a large basket and puts in two of the loaves, adds half a packet of tea and a small tin of sugar, then slices several thick wedges from the leg of bacon and wraps them in a cloth. Finally she makes a nest of straw and puts a dozen eggs carefully into the basket. The eggs remind Jessica that she hasn't fed the chickens or the pigs and she hastily makes a bucket of meal mash for the pigs and fills an old jam tin with cracked corn for the chooks. It's double rations for both so if she's away tomorrow, as she expects, they'll be hungry but they'll last until she returns. ‘Billy, will you go to the well and draw water for the chooks, and then go back and get another couple of buckets for the pigs.'

Billy rises from the stool and Jessica sees he is now limping very badly.

‘You orright, mate?' Jessica carries a bottle of kero for the hatcher lamp and, with the cracked corn in one hand and the bucket of mash in the other, she walks towards the door.

‘Leg hurts,' Billy groans, limping behind her. Well, that's one good thing, Jessica thinks, he won't be trying to escape by running for it.

When they return to the kitchen it's obvious to Jessica that Billy's leg is troubling him badly. He is sweating buckets and sits down as they come in. He grabs his leg in both hands, holding it behind the knee so his foot doesn't touch the floor.

‘Here, let's have another squiz at your leg,' she says.

‘Take off yer boot, mate.'

Billy is reluctant to reach down to his boot, not sure how to go about it without hurting himself more. ‘Wait on,' Jessica says and kneels down on the floor and gently works the broken boot off his foot. Then she pulls up the leg of Joe's moleskins again and sees that the blood has seeped through the bandage and some has run down over Billy's ankles. His heel is sticky with blood and the inside of his boot is full of it.

She cleans up his foot and the boot, then removes the blood-soaked bandage and examines the tear in his calf, which appears to have opened even further. ‘It needs to be stitched,' she says, more to herself than to Billy.

‘Billy, I'm gunna have to stitch it, or it'll bleed or worse, get infected and make you real crook.' Jessica knows that she's losing time now but she's got no alternative. She has to try to stem the blood by closing the wound. She makes a thick swab of rag and shows Billy how to hold it against his calf.

‘I'll be back soon, Billy, just going out the back to get the stuff I need to fix you.'

Billy nods and Jessica goes back to the sleep-out and Joe's medicine box. She opens one of the little drawers in it and takes out the gramophone needle box in which Joe keeps his suturing needles. Then she removes a packet of horsehair from the drawer next to it. She's stitched the dogs several times when they've been caught on a fence and many a calf, and once a bad cut to Joe's arm he got stringing barbed wire. She knows she's not too strong at suturing a wound, Joe's a lot better at it, but Billy's leg is not going to close without a dozen or more stitches.

Jessica finds a scrap of paper and a pencil stub on Joe's apple box and hurriedly writes him a note:

Dear Father,

Billy Simple's gone crazy and murdered Mrs Thomas and the girls. I've taken him to the magistrate at Narrandera, left Sunday morning.

Don't worry about me, I'll be all right.

Jessica.

P.S. I've taken the Winchester.

She places the note inside Joe's medicine box and returns to the kitchen, where she takes the kettle off the hob and sterilises the needle and then swabs the dog bite, wiping away all the blood and sulphur ointment and making sure to clean the wound deep into the muscle fibre. Billy grips both hands tightly above his knee, his eyes closed, tears running silently down his cheeks.

‘Sorry, mate, it's gunna get worse before I'm finished with you. You can yell out if you like, there's nobody here but us.' Jessica sutures the wound the way Joe's shown her. By now Billy's swallowing his bottom lip and Jessica, glancing up at him, thinks it's a damn good thing Billy hasn't got any teeth or he'd slice it right off. He's sweating heavily and still gripping his leg with both hands, but he doesn't once cry out.

Jessica knots and then cuts the end of the horsehair. Her work is by no means a thing of beauty and Joe would probably scold her for a messy job, but she figures it will probably hold unless Billy has to run for it. She swabs the stitched wound with iodine and wraps a bandage tightly about it, then sterilises the needle again and puts it back into the little gramophone needle box. Jessica leaves what remains of the horsehair and the little tin box on the kitchen table. She knows Joe will see the gear on his return and will take it to his medicine box. Joe has a tidy mind and has drilled her since she was a brat about putting things back where they've come from. Jessica knows he'll find her note.

‘There you go, put your boot back on, Billy. You'll have to stay here in the kitchen while I harness the sulky, no use opening that up again trying to walk down to the paddock.' Jessica is anxious now — time is running out.

Billy looks frightened. ‘D-d-d ... don't leave me, Jessie.'

‘I'm not going nowhere without ya, love.' Jessica smiles at him, then folds her arms in front of her and pretends to rest her forehead on them. ‘Good chance to get some shut-eye, what say, eh, Billy?' She points to the table.

Billy obediently folds his arms and places them on the table and rests his head between them, closing his eyes. ‘Good boy. Won't be long. You stay there and be good, Billy.'

On her way to the paddock Jessica passes the windlass and sees a crow pecking at Billy's bloody clothes, which are draped over the wall of the well. She shouts and the crow flies off in a clatter of urgent wings, cawing its protest. Bloody vermIn, doesn't take them long, Jessica thinks.

The water remains in the tub and Jessica can see what's left of the soap lying on the bottom. Pushing her shirt sleeve up well past her elbows, she reaches down into the scummy water for the soap and places it to dry on the wall of the well, then she retrieves the scrubbing brush floating on the surface and puts it beside the soap. Her arm's now covered in a film of pink scum and several of Red's hairs stick to her. She'll have to leave poor Red to the crows and the meat ants, she sighs. And tonight there'll be a fox or two to have a good feed off him and the other dogs. It'll be a couple of days before she can bury their bones and what bits of skin and fur remain.

Jessica fills up a bucket of water from the tank and, scooping her left hand into the bucket, she splashes her arm clean and unrolls and buttons her sleeve at the wrist again. She casts about for a stick. Finding a stout twig, she uses it to lift Billy's shirt, now almost dried and beginning to stiffen in the hot morning sun. She drops it gingerly into the tin tub where it floats on the surface of the water. Jessica pushes it down under the water, forcing the air pockets from it with the stick. Then in go Billy's torn moleskins. After this she departs to get the horse, a pony named Napoleon, who'll go all day at five miles an hour if you give him a bit of a spell every now and then and let him poke his nose into a bag of oats. Back in the kitchen she finds Billy Simple asleep, his head still cupped in his arms. She loads the basket into the back of the sulky and returns to fetch a couple of blankets, which she rolls and ties with a piece of twine.

It's not yet cold enough to damp down the heat of the day but in the early mornings there's just the beginning of a chill in the air. Finally she carries a billy and a canvas water bag she's filled out to the sulky and hangs both on a hook behind the front seat. It's time to go.

She shakes Billy awake. ‘Wake up, Billy, got to kick the dust, mate.'

Billy is drugged for want of sleep and he whimpers, protesting, ‘No, no, Billy sleep now!'

‘Billy, wake up! We've got to get moving, the mob coming after you will be here soon enough.'

Billy rises painfully to his feet. Jessica knows she's got no more than an outside chance of getting Billy all the way to Narrandera in the sulky, especially if the men are out after him now on their horses. As Joe would say, ‘Not a good risk, girlie, you're on a hiding to nothing, better give it a miss this time.'

But Jessica knows she can't do that, she's got to try to bring Billy to safety. Along with Jack Thomas, she's Billy's only friend. You don't let a mate down when the going gets rough, no matter what. Joe says it's a rule you can never break. She knows that to do what he's done, poor Billy Simple must have been provoked beyond any possible endurance — she knows he's suffered for so long now in that household. She is aware that he can't ever be forgiven and will die for his crime. Jessica knows this for sure, but she's not going to let a mob of drunken shearers and stockmen string him up, give him a dose of bush justice and have a real good time doing it, then boast to their grandsons one day how they did this noble deed. She feels certain Jack would do the same as her if he were standing in her boots right at this moment. This last thought gives Jessica some comfort. Jessica watches as Billy limps over to the sulky. He struggles to climb aboard, glancing anxiously at Napoleon. Poor bugger can't even run for it, she thinks. Then she remembers the Winchester in the wood box and races to the kitchen to retrieve it. She can hear Joe's voice chiding her for her carelessness, ‘You're getting too bloody cocky, girlie. Remember the poor bastard's mad as a meat axe — if he comes for yiz, shoot him dead!'

Billy sees the gun and pulls back in alarm. ‘It's for Joe Blakes, Billy. We may have to camp the night. Don't want you bitten by a mulga, now, do we?' Jessica wonders what else they'll find out there, apart from snakes. If a mob catches up with them, would she stand her ground, use the Winchester? Like standing up to George Thomas? She doesn't know, can't think about it now.

She climbs aboard and sits beside Billy, placing the gun at her feet and taking up the reins. ‘Ha, Napoleon!' She raps the reins across the pony's rump and he moves off, happy to be out and about.

Jessica knows she's got the next twelve hours to try to keep Billy Simple alive in the bush, away from a drunken, hostile mob out to get him. Joe wouldn't care for the odds on her succeeding, she thinks. Jessica knows she doesn't much care for them herself.

T
hey hug the river, keeping the sulky close to the trees. Jessica knows that anyone coming after them from the open ground will have difficulty picking them up against the darkness of the river gums. They're two hours away from the punt where she and Billy must cross the river if they are to make it to Narrandera.

As the sulky moves along at its steady, slow pace, Jessica tries to think about the mob of horsemen that she's sure will be out after them.

She reckons that it'll take at least four or five hours to get a mob of men together from the various homesteads and stations around, then they'll proceed to Riverview to inspect the three dead women. If they decide to tell the two Thomas men of the tragedy, locating the run where they're working might take another hour at least and the return to Riverview the same. Getting to Joe's place will add yet more time, which means they wouldn't arrive there till late in the afternoon.

After that, drunk or sober, there'll be some good bushmen among them and they're not men to be easily fooled. They'll see the dead dogs, the milk pail and billy abandoned together with the broken shotgun. Then they'll come up to the house and see Billy's discarded clothes floating in the tub beside the windlass, and her own stuffed into a bucket in her bedroom. There'll be blood on everything, evidence of violence everywhere. It wouldn't be too hard to make a decision as to what's happened. Jessica runs the most logical sequence through her mind, trying to think as the men might do. They'll conclude that there's been a struggle of some sort at the pepper tree and that Billy has slaughtered the dogs. Then, when they go up to the homestead and find Billy's torn rags and her own blood-stained clothes, the most likely conclusion they'll reach will be that he's murdered Jessica as well. But when they can't find her body, they'll change their minds and decide Billy's taken her hostage and that her life is in danger.

The missing sulky will confirm this. After that it won't take them too long to discover the sulky's tracks running along the river front and they'll be on their way in hot pursuit.

Jessica does have one thing in her favour, if it's all going as she expects. If the men get to Joe's in the afternoon, and then spend an hour looking around before they set off for the punt, they won't get to it till sundown, the time when the snakes come out to dance. She knows a good horseman won't take the risk of a snakebite to his mount, so with any luck the mob will agree that they can't track Billy in the dark and that setting out in the morning is much the better plan of action. The country on the far side of the river and stretching all the way to the Lachlan is lightly wooded at best and most of it is flat as a pancake, black soil and scrub country where it isn't difficult to track a man down once you're onto him. They'll probably have a black tracker along with them, too.

Jessica reckons they'll assume that Billy is in charge and she, if still alive, is his hostage. Billy, they'll think, has long since lost the skills of the bush and will have trouble finding water or earning his tucker off the land. There is simply no hiding for long in this type of country and once they've picked up his tracks they'll reckon they have a better than even chance of tracking down their quarry before sundown tomorrow.

Most of the men will have come out without rations, eager for the chase and with half a skinful of Sunday grog to cloud their judgement. Some, with the drink already leached out of them in the day's riding, will now want to go home and pick up enough rations for a couple of days. Unless Jack Thomas or his old man has thought to issue rations to the horsemen before they'd set out from Riverview. But it's better not to think that way, Jessica decides.

Jessica thinks she's left the homestead around nine o'clock in the morning, which, after they've negotiated the punt, should put them across the river a little before noon. On. the other side of the river they'll take the road to Narrandera and from there, if the track isn't too rutted, they should make pretty good time.

She reckons the journey to Narrandera will take her and Billy around twelve hours in the sulky, allowing for stops every three hours to give the pony the spells he will need. If nothing goes wrong, they could make it to Narrandera just before midnight, although Jessica isn't fool enough not to know that something almost always goes wrong and that no journey in the bush is ever completed according to plan.

The drought has left very little grass about and their wheel tracks in the black soil won't be hard to follow. The mob'll soon enough know that she and Billy have headed for the punt. If they've reached Joe Bergman's place earlier than she's supposed and make it across the river before sundown, then they'll have plenty of time to catch her. No matter what Jessica does, the sulky can't outrun a mob of men on horseback. So she prays silently that she's calculated correctly.

For the first few miles Billy sits nervously in the sulky, watching Napoleon's rump, but after an hour or so he settles down and even seems to have forgotten about the danger they face. Jessica sees no reason to alert him — she realises that, like a small child, he has put his trust in her and is now enjoying their ride. It is as if they're on a day's outing or on their way to a picnic on the river bank. Might as well let the poor bugger have his freedom while he can, she thinks.

Billy loves the birds. The sulky frequently comes across a flock of galahs feeding in the dust, though on God knows what — there must be grass seed waiting for the rain. Billy's eyes grow bright as they approach the feeding birds and he chortles with delight when the rose-breasted galahs rise at the last possible moment in front of the sulky. He claps his hands, pleased as punch when they
schwark
their indignation at being disturbed. Then he does an imitation of their cries, laughing and puffing out his chest, feeling very pleased with himself. Jessica reckons he can do a better than fair imitation of almost every bird call they hear.

‘Jessie, Jessie, look,' Billy frequently shouts and then he might point to a sulphur-crested cockatoo sitting high up in a river gum. He'll imitate the raucous sound of the big white bird, and often, to his immense delight, elicit a reply.

He does the same when they see a kookaburra or any of the parrots and rosellas they encounter on the way and he claps and chortles all the while, happy as can be, a small boy with a voice box of tricks showing off in front of her. She is grateful that it's a game he seems never to tire of playing, leaving her to her own dark thoughts. Again she thinks miserably how kind it would be just to kill Billy out here, while he's still happy and free, before anyone gets to him.

The sun is almost directly overhead when they arrive at the punt. Jessica can hardly believe her luck — it is moored on their side of the river. She sees the winch on a small platform built into its side, with the wind-in rope strung back to the far shore and the take-up neatly wound on its drum close to where she stands. Bringing the punt across the river is a tiring task, usually managed by two strong men. She hopes that Billy, with what help she can add, has the strength to wind them over to the other side of the river.

Jessica drives the sulky onto the punt and signals for Billy to climb down. ‘Billy, you'll have to wind us over now,' she says, taking him by the hand and standing him in front of the winch barrel with its large wheel. ‘You're a strong lad, Billy, will you show Jessie how you can turn the wheel?'

Billy is delighted at the compliment. ‘Billy strong boy, Jessie!' He smiles, rubbing his hands together and then spitting onto each palm.

Jessica releases the drum brake and adds her strength to the wheel as Billy starts to wind the rope in on one barrel while paying it out on the other, grunting as he pulls the punt slowly across the river. It is hard work, and the river, even though turgid and its current slow, catches the side of the punt, pushing it downstream so that Billy and Jessica must fight to keep both the ropes taut to prevent it from slipping sideways. Billy is soon drenched in sweat and near exhausted by his efforts and Jessica thinks her arms must surely fall off. Nearly half an hour passes before they reach the far shore of the Murrumbidgee.

Jessica leads the pony and sulky off the punt and up the embankment and gives Napoleon his nosebag of oats. Then she takes the hand axe, cuts a stout pole from a river gum and returns to the water's edge to jam it into the rope drum so that it cannot release if an attempt is made to pull the punt back to the other side of the river. It isn't much of a delaying tactic, as all it will require is for a man to swim across and unlock it again, but if as she's hoping their pursuers arrive at sundown they may just decide to leave off until the morning, afraid of the snakes. Even if some of the men have packed rations, they may decide to stay the night and camp some distance away from the river bank to cross at first light, by which time she hopes to have reached Narrandera or to be no more than two or three hours away.

Billy is knackered and sits on the punt. Jessica calls for him to follow her and he climbs slowly to his feet and tries to walk, but the torn muscle in his leg has stiffened and he seems unable to move.

‘Come on, Billy, you must try,' Jessica urges him. He tries to hobble and then hops on one foot towards her. It is at once obvious that he cannot manage the steep incline up the river bank. Jessica returns with the pony and sulky and, after much effort, manages to get Billy up into the seat and now tries to lead the pony up the embankment. But the horse is harnessed for flat country and wears no breastplate, and it cannot pull Billy's added weight up the slope, making but a foot each time and then sliding the full distance back again.

Jessica takes everything she can from the sulky in order to lighten it — the tucker basket, axe, water bag, blankets, billy, skillet, tin plates and mugs, the bag of oats she's brought for the pony and finally the Winchester. She tries again, but no luck. Finally she chops down a cypress pine and lops the branches along the trunk some three or four inches from where they abut so that each short spike will dig into the river bank and act as resistance when the sulky wheels run backwards against the spiked log.

The cypress trunk is heavy and she is already exhausted, but with each small gain up the embankment Jessica somehow manages to keep sliding it under the sulky wheels. In this manner, almost inch by inch, they make it to the top. It is an hour before they've conquered the slope and the pony is almost spent and will need another spell before they can move on. Jessica is anxious and impatient, but knows they have no choice while Billy, seated in the sulky, is soon enough asleep.

It's well after two in the afternoon when she has reloaded the sulky and they finally get away again. What Jessica had hoped would take them no more than three hours including the river crossing has taken them two hours more. They have at least another ten hours to go before they reach Narrandera and Jessica now knows they won't make it in one haul.

She decides they'll go as far as they can before stopping for the night. When the sun sets there'll be enough moonlight to guide them along the rutted road. But the pony, even with frequent spells, has no more than six hours left in him and will be unable to work any longer without a good night's rest. At the latest, by nine o'clock they'll have to stop and camp for the night.

If the men on horseback get across the river by sundown, they'll catch them anyway and Billy won't see another dawn. But if they do stay the night on the far shore and cross at daylight, then, with a fair amount of luck, she and Billy should be no more than four hours away from Narrandera and the mob won't catch her. It's a lot to ask of Napoleon, but he's a stock pony in his prime, bred tough, and unless he goes lame she knows he'll give her all he's got.

By sundown they are twenty miles from the river crossing and Jessica knows the next two hours will tell if their pursuers have managed to cross the river. Going any further, she tells herself, isn't going to make any difference. She decides to take a spell and boil the billy.

Billy is in a lot of pain as she helps him down from the sulky and allows him to use her shoulder to steady himself as he hops on one leg off the track. She helps him lower himself to the ground with his back resting against the trunk of a boree tree. Jessica makes a fire of dry scrub and boils the billy. Making two strong mugs of sweet black tea, she hands one to him. She adds more twigs and a few dry branches from the boree and allows them to burn down, then puts the skillet on the hot ashes and cooks a thick slice of bacon, which she cuts into tiny squares so Billy can swallow them easily. She hollows out the centre of half a loaf and packs in the bacon pieces and then replaces the bread. It's the only way she can think to prepare a quick meal for this poor creature who has no teeth.

Jessica tries to sound cheerful as she hands the bread and bacon to him. ‘There you go, Billy, eat it all up now. I doubt there'll be much more coming your way till mornin', mate. When we make camp tonight, I won't have the strength to cook and you'll have to settle for dry rations, a bit o' bread maybe, eh?'

Billy snatches at the bread and bacon, grunting as he tears at it with his fingers, cramming pieces into his mouth as fast as he can manage, softening the bread with gulps of tea. Then Jessica sits on her haunches and eats a little of the bread and drinks her tea and wonders if this is the last supper for poor Billy Simple.

She is dog-tired and the thought that the mob may have made it across the river makes her want to cry. She tells herself that Billy is her charge and she must deliver him to the police magistrate. She cannot bear the thought of failing, of seeing him gunned down short.