The Untold (19 page)

T
he station owner of Phantom Ridge did not wait for Barlow, the big-city sergeant, to take any action at all. He had his men post Wanted signs of Jessie around the valley. They collected a wedding photo from the postmaster. There never looked a bride more unhappy. Her dark eyes were narrowed and her disheveled hair only partly hid the bruises taking shape on her forehead and cheek.

They nailed posters to trees, and others they strung to fences with wire. Even before the men rode away, the posters turned crisp with the unseasonable heat and seemed to fade before their eyes, but they did not fade so much that the reward was no longer visible. Anyone could make out that the capture of this woman with dark eyes and long dark hair was worth one thousand pounds to someone. There was no fine print regarding who had offered the reward or who would ever pay it, but many of those who saw it had a mind for pictures and numbers only. The money itself was enough to impress itself upon them, and in a day or two the news had spread to the single cabins, where all the men, who were otherwise tapping mugs on their tables or skinning some bony thing for their dinner, took the news as they would take a gold nugget between their teeth and they felt it like a tweaked nerve changing their fortunes forever.

In their minds there was no shadow of a doubt that Jessie was the thief and a murderer, too. Some of them knew Fitz firsthand to be a drunk and, worse, a boastful drunk, bragging about the ways he might kill her. But who were they to judge? If they held to an
eye for an eye as their order of justice, most of them would be blind anyway. The thought of weighing up a man's sins against the way he should die unnerved them and their sympathy swung to Fitz and was ignited more by the thought of him dying by the hand of a woman. And, further, they considered the size of Fitz and the force of him and what they knew of her and they concluded her powers must be unnatural. His house was burnt down and his body was not found and they preferred to think of witchcraft rather than the idea that there was some accomplice among them. Those who had a head for it deduced that Fitz's stockman Jack Brown and the rabble-rousers Fitz recruited job to job had been sent up north to deliver cattle, so that left only her and her carefully chosen moment.

There was talk that cattle were disappearing without a trace and the old man, too, gave fuel to the story. He reported that since Jessie had passed through his house in her escape to the mountains, the old woman, his wife, was no longer sane and had began muttering prayers when she thought that he could not hear her. She had never prayed aloud, not in all the years he had known her, only to herself. And so, in no time at all, the posters and the talk together inspired a terrible scourge and they believed that they were armed with enough reasons for capturing and killing my mother.

Most of them rode in packs, partly because they did not know the terrain of the mountains, but more out of superstition. Some of them had lived in the shadow of the mountains for more years than they had fingers, but still the mountains sat unnamed and until now the men had no reason to go near them. Only for the fact of the reward money did some ride entirely alone. But they were few, having no assurance that if they fell or lost their footing they would ever be found.

T
HE OLD WOMAN HEARD THEM
in the night, a cacophony of horses and men. Metal and leather slapping against horses' bellies, tins and pots and guns, men reckless and howling.

She rose from the bed she shared with the old man and took pains to be quiet, though now it seemed that nothing would wake him. She shuffled out, collecting her shawl and her boots, and moved into the dark to where his dog was tied to a tree. The dog's eyes glistened, moving like two flames in his head, and as she came up beside him she cooed so he would not bark but then he did. She used the words the old man used,
Shush, you mongrel bastard
, and then she muzzled the dog as she had seen the old man do, wrapping rope around his snout. The muzzling sent him bracing against the tree in a soundless fit, his eyes protruding for all he could not bark.

The old woman walked towards the fence until she could see the men riding in the distance. Some of them carried lanterns, and from afar and part illuminated they appeared wrongly composed, the neck of a horse joined with the face of a man, long arms holding lanterns. The old woman could not determine how many they numbered but from the racket she thought them to be a small army.

She stood deathly still in the paddock and watched them pass and as they moved it was like watching a creature hurrying in the night towards its kill. When she could no longer see them, she could hear them groaning and then the slowing of their horses when they reached the slope of the mountain.

She knew the price that was on Jessie's head and she knew that it made no difference to men like that if they killed her. There was life in Jessie. Even when my mother was on the cusp of death the
old woman had seen it in her. The old woman did not know what she would make of that life but she knew that it was worth more than the price they had put on my mother.

She opened the gate of the paddock that faced the mountains and returned to the dog, who was still fitting by the tree. She untied the rope at the tree and with a flick of her wrist unwound the muzzle. Unleashed, the dog sprinted out into the dark. The men had left their keen scent in the air and turned-up earth with the bolting of their horses. The old woman knew that the dog would track them and finally meet them farther up the mountains. She hoped that the yellow-eyed dog would be read as a terrifying omen and she prayed that there were at least some among them who would take heed of such a warning.

I
t was evening when the gang arrived back at the camp and the boy was waiting for them on the ridge. Above him it looked as though the clouds had captured the sun and everything was pink and luminous.

The gang was exhausted by the ride, Jessie included, and as soon as they had secured the wild horses in the holding yard and fed and watered their own, they flopped down by the fire the boy had started and gazed up at the sky. The clouds were moving fast and no cloud was still for long enough that any of them could make it out as any earthly or mythical creature.

Jessie rested her head against her arm and watched the boy preparing their meal by the fire. His beauty, the gang, the clouds, all of it seemed miraculous, all of it incomprehensible.

T
HE NEXT DAY
the rope they had carried back to the camp was strung up to a tree and a pulley; they attached a branch for a handle and a seat and a flying fox was made. The boy went first, launching himself from the ridge, and he flew from one side of the camp to the other. They spent the whole day running back and forth and none of them seemed to be tired from it or even tired from the day before. Jessie watched them from the shade and she loved the boy's expression most of all as he sailed through the air, his eyes as wide as his smile, growing less fearful with each ride.

J
ack Brown and Barlow set off at first light, the way any expedition should, their packs loaded with supplies, their hats on their heads, rifles slung across their backs. Jack Brown felt fit and ready for it, released from some great tension that had been holding him back from lighting out these last months and finding Jessie himself. Barlow seemed edgy in his saddle, but the day unfolded in silence and neither man knew what the other was thinking.

It wasn't until halfway into the day that Barlow said,
I need to eat
, and Jack Brown urged him to keep riding till they reached the river. Barlow didn't argue or say anything but fell in behind Jack Brown's horse and followed him closely, in what Jack Brown took to be a sulk.

If I have to stop suddenly your horse's nose will be up my arse.

Barlow slipped farther back for a while but then Jack Brown could feel him stepping up close again, and when he couldn't stand it any longer Jack Brown pulled his horse right up and Barlow had to swing his horse out, tearing at its neck suddenly and pulling it wide. Jack Brown rode on. Barlow tried to settle his horse and soon Jack Brown spotted a tree with enough shade for them both to sit down in with some distance from each other.

Riding towards it, Jack Brown could see a poster nailed to the trunk. He dismounted and tore the poster down.

Jessie
, he said, and the breath went out of him as his gut turned
over.
Fuck
, he said to himself, and then he yelled to Barlow,
They've put a fucking bounty on her head
.

Barlow rode up next to Jack Brown and Jack Brown handed him the poster.

It's not legal
, said Barlow.

It doesn't fucking matter. They've named the prize. It's like unleashing dogs on her.

Let's keep steady
, said Barlow.
We've got to eat, and the horses need to rest.
He dismounted.

This is fucked
, said Jack Brown
. They'll already be out for her. If I wasn't wiping your arse, I would have been out here much sooner.

Bullshit
, said Barlow, tightening the straps on his saddle
. There was nothing stopping you going after her from the day she disappeared.

Jack Brown unbuckled his saddlebag and slumped to the ground while his horse took to grazing around him. He unwrapped the loaf of bread he had bought from the cook at the Seven Sisters. It was as heavy as a brick. He tore off a hunk of it and pushed it into his mouth, which was wet with saliva not from hunger but from a sudden feeling of sickness.
He chewed with his mouth open and as he chewed he surveyed the field they had ridden across. The long grass was bleached white by the sun and it collapsed as the wind traveled over it and sprang back as the wind turned in front of them.

For the rest of the day Jack Brown set an urgent pace unless they were riding through thick forest. They did not see a living thing, aside from birds that swooped in and stripped the trees as they rode. Jack Brown felt them to be riding in the wake of a storm that had recently passed through and he shuddered to think of the groups of men taking to the mountain like hungry dogs and the murderous intent they carried inside them.

That night they slid off their horses and walked, chafed and bowlegged, to set up camp next to the river. Jack Brown limped to the water and dunked his head right in and saw there were bream, silver and fat and feeding at the edges. He fashioned a net by tying his shirt to a stick and caught two of them.

He threw the fish at Barlow.
Here. I'm not gonna be your hunter-gatherer and your cook, too.

He settled himself by the fire that Barlow had lit and watched as Barlow began to clean the fish. Silver scales sprayed up against his hands and stuck to the shirtsleeves that he hadn't bothered to roll up.

Been to see the Sisters lately?
said Barlow.

You just ate their bread.

Did you pay for it?

Actually, you did.

Did you stay?

What business is that of yours, Sergeant?

I just want to know if we should bill the Crown for your fuck.

What can I say, Sergeant? God save the King.

Did the King suck your cock?

Jack Brown lay down, the bridge of his back against the curve of his saddle. He tipped his hat low till he could see only the flickering light of the fire and Barlow's bare feet stepping around it. He could not ward off the feeling that he should have left sooner, and already he wanted to ditch his companion.

He was woken by Barlow kicking the sole of his boot and handing him a plate of fish and the remainder of the bread, which he had toasted in the fire. The fire was blazing and stacked up like a pyramid. It smoked thick and black and Jack Brown was about to tell
Barlow to kick it down and use fewer leaves, for the way it smoked and spat and surely signaled their coming. But then he thought better of it. It was better that he forewarn her, signal their slow ascent.

He believed they would not find her if she did not want to be found.

That night he dreamt of her stalking through the caves in the mountains above him—which part of the mountains he could not tell—and he looked for where the sun might be and for some signs, as if even in his dreams he knew to look. Then he saw what surrounded the caves—an impassable ravine filled with the crumpled bodies of horses and men. All of their legs snapped and pointing at angles, like broken trees littered on the ground.

T
HE GANGS OF MEN
crashed up the mountainside, splitting into groups of four and five, scything through the bush in different directions, paying no heed to existing tracks or openings but all seemingly possessed to forge a course of their own devising. The dog charged up the mountain after them, more nimble than a horse. When he finally caught up with one of the packs, he got under the feet of a horse, which bucked and threw its rider. The man tumbled screaming into a canyon and his screaming and the dog's barking caused other horses to buck until only one man of the party remained in the saddle. That man raised his gun to shoot the dog, which sent him running through the bush in pursuit of another party.