The Legend of Winstone Blackhat (12 page)

ABOVE THE CANYON
grey spread over the world and raised the sky and the wind cut it to a shine. Below was dusted with shadow and gritty with cold and there was no warmth in the palomino’s yellow flank and no warmth in the face of the Kid as he leaned there cinching up his saddle.

Take me with you, Mary Ellen said.

You don’t want to go where I’m goin.

Why not?

Aint nothin there but the end.

The end of what?

Most everthin I guess.

I got money, Mary Ellen said. And I can ride. I won’t slow you down. Next town we come to I’ll buy me a horse.

It aint that.

Then why?

You aint got no business comin with me, the Kid said. And I aint got no business lettin you come. It aint right.

Meanin I belong at home with my paw.

I don’t know about that, the Kid said. But you sure as hell don’t belong to me.

I could, Mary Ellen said, couldn’t I?

I got no right to take you.

I’m askin you to.

That’s because you don’t understand what it is you’re askin.

We could go some place else, she said. Another way, together.

You don’t understand.

Cooper told me you’re huntin someone.

The Kid said nothing.

What is it he did?

He took somethin, the Kid said. Somethin he didn’t have any right to.

And when you find him, she said. What do you aim to do then?

Well I guess I’m aimin to make things right.

You think you can do that.

My aim’s pretty good.

Don’t make me go back.

Mary Ellen, he said. I won’t make you go any place. But if you’re willin to ride behind me I’d be pleased to take you back as far as the Granville road.

And if I’m not?

Then I’ll be sorry.

I’m sorry already.

The Kid held his hand down to her. Will you ride with me a step?

She took his hand and he gave her his stirrup and she swung up and for a mile or two the Kid rode in Mary Ellen’s arms with the warmth of her against his back and her cheek resting on his shoulder.

It was starting to rain. From the rocks behind the cattle fence Winstone watched the Red Hut people pack up Alicia’s car and the clunk of the car doors as they opened and closed hung soft
in the rain and he thought about leaving and how it had felt and how it would feel and how it was feeling for Alicia.

Out west the sky was lit up and dappled grey and the rain gave shape to the wind and circled with it like flocks of birds raised out of the grass.

Alicia wasn’t watching the sky. She was already in the back seat of the car buckled in and hunched over something in her lap and Winstone bet it was
Angry Birds.
She hadn’t gone back to look for the kitten.

Ron who didn’t seem so much like Lorne Greene now that Winstone knew his name came out with another supermarket bag and rearranged the back of the Subaru a bit to find a place to put it. Alicia’s dad walked around and rearranged it some more and then he reached up and closed the hatch and the two men bowed their heads and stood there looking at it Alicia’s dad with one hand on the glass while the rain pocked the dust and the rocks began to darken.

Alicia’s mother hugged the old woman and got in the car and Alicia’s dad took Ron’s hand and they slapped each other’s shoulders. Everybody waved apart from Alicia. Then the Subaru bumped silently over the grass and for a while it was coming straight for the rocks but Winstone couldn’t see Alicia for the front seats and the Subaru turned onto the damped-down dust and he didn’t see her and never saw her again and he couldn’t tell if Alicia had looked back because of all the luggage.

The cattle grid rang and the Subaru eased over the rim of the range and was gone and the grey hung heavy and undisturbed and in front of the Red Hut the old woman and Ron stood in the rain.

When Winstone went back in the evening the old woman and Ron had gone too and the windows and door of the Red Hut were covered up with plywood. He couldn’t see Jacko’s
ute anywhere and there hadn’t been shots for a while. Winstone watched the huts until it seemed that anything going to move would have done so by then and the only takers were shadows and clouds and the sun running west and the water in the dam.

He came down from the rocks and climbed the fence and crossed the road and walked past the Red Hut and around its bay and up the slope to the tor where he’d spent the previous day and he saw a used cartridge shell on the ground and picked it up and put it in his pocket. The dead rabbit was nothing, not even bones. Not even a stain on the ground. Some white fluff caught in the tussock maybe. It could have been thistledown. Winstone threw the cartridge away.

Halfway up the tor he found a can of tuna. The can was open and tucked up about as high as a girl could reach and he thought about who else might have put it there and there was no one but Alicia. She’d gone back for the kitten after all.

Winstone squatted and looked at the can. Some flies had found it as well and they rose around Winstone’s ears and from the looks of things they’d been there all day and he was the first thing to disturb them. He left the can there in case the kitten wasn’t fussy although it had better be quick and he made a mental note to come back the following day and see how the maggots were doing.

When he got back to the cave the kitten was there. He found it asleep in a pile of his clothes just as it had been the previous night when he finally made it home. When it heard him the kitten opened its eyes and glared and drew back its lips but it was more of a yawn than a hiss and it didn’t go anywhere. Winstone looked at the kitten and wondered whether it had really been napping there for hours like it was trying to make out or if it was messing with him and had tailed him everywhere and just slipped in before him.

It wasn’t raining outside but it was cold and Winstone had had enough of the day so he got the gas burner out and made them chicken noodles. The kitten edged out of its nest and ate its share from the billy lid and Winstone watched the noodle ends hang from the kitten’s mouth and wondered how big the maggots had got and whether they’d taste much different.

He was glad Jacko’s dogs had finished all of the rabbit off even though it had meant he’d been stuck there waiting most of the day and he hadn’t liked the crunching.

Leaving Clintoch was easy. Bic loaded the Commodore and pulled out and drove up the road to Rahui Bridge and crossed it and it wasn’t much of a river or much of a bridge and not much change on the other side. The curtains in the new house were green. Winstone stuck the cowboy paper over the hole in the bedroom wall and so as not to rip the corners he put new tape over the top of the old and the flakes of paint that had come with it from Clintoch.

Zane said Rahui Bridge would be okay and in the beginning it was. It was at the far end of the same school bus run and after the Hasketts’ house the run turned in and cut a big loop around not very much before it came back out on the Clintoch road. The spot where it did was only a couple of k’s down from the house and it might have been quicker to walk but Winstone liked getting on first when the bus wasn’t steamed up with kids but empty and cold and clean and nobody was looking. He liked watching the other kids get on because they couldn’t look back. Those were the rules, they had to keep their eyes down. By the time the bus was on Boundary Road heading past the old house with the only sign of Hasketts the shape of the Commodore in the cut-back lawn it was full of kids looking but the bus didn’t stop any more and there was nothing to see and the driver kept his foot down.

Coming home if Winstone timed it right he could slide into his seat and get his head down and disappear and he didn’t have to stand up in front of anybody except a Year Three kid who was scared of Bodun and the Blake twins who couldn’t say anything because Bic was working for their old man so they weren’t allowed. But Winstone didn’t often get the bus home because most days after school he walked over to Zane’s and Bodun mostly got picked up by his mates so it was just Marlene going home on the bus and Winstone didn’t know how it was for her by herself but he figured it must be okay because she never asked where he was or said anything about it.

One day a dull black car followed Winstone up to the top of College Road and as he tried not to look at it the back window wound down and Bodun stuck his head out.

Where you going? Bodun said.

Nowhere.

Get in.

No.

I said get in.

Winstone had to run then. He cut the corner across the reserve and hid up in the dairy on the main road and pretended to look at the magazines but not the dirty ones and through the gaps in the posters on the dairy windows he could see Bodun waiting for him outside. Winstone looked back and the dairy owner was watching him and watching Bodun and the black car and he thought the dairy owner was going to call the cops but instead he took Winstone through the back and let him out the side door and Winstone never did find out what Bodun had wanted him for. Experiments, most likely.

Because of all that it was late when he got to Zane’s and Zane was on the internet but he got off right away when Winstone came in and made them toasties with spaghetti and cheese.

What do you want to do? Zane said, and Winstone wanted to watch
Django Unchained
and Zane said no because it was too violent. So they watched
A Fistful of Dollars
instead and Winstone hadn’t seen that one before and Zane explained how it was called a spaghetti western on account of it really being shot in Spain and not Mexico like it was pretending to be and then he drove Winstone home.

Rahui Bridge was a lot further to drive than Boundary Road but neither of them minded. They listened to Zane’s music all the way there and later that night when Zane picked Winstone up again from the clump of willows beside the bridge and they drove back they listened to it some more.

Zane didn’t want to see any more violent stuff so he put
Rawhide
on and they watched that big herd of skinny cattle stir up real American dust and it was hard to understand how Rowdy Yates could have turned into Clint Eastwood. Winstone looked at Rowdy laughing with all his mates and he wondered what he’d done to end up with nothing, not even a name, and not a single cowboy to ride beside him.

The next morning Winstone stood on the verge waiting for the school bus and Marlene stood beside him crusty with snot and Bodun stood off aways pretending not to be there with his hands down deep in his pockets. He seemed to have forgotten the day before and Winstone didn’t remind him.

It only took a few minutes to set the cat traps. The ute pulled up alongside the Red Hut on a day of metal skies blown through and brittle with wind. It was late for spending the day at the huts and early for spending the night and not a time when people came to the range and Winstone caught out in the open between the Green Camo Hut and the Sliding Door Hut got quite a surprise and for a moment or two he thought the ute had come for him. He was on his way to the dam for a crawly hunt because down in the gully they were getting harder to find and when he saw the ute crest the ridge he had no choice but to hit the tussock and hope that the driver had been too busy looking at the road to notice him and his bucket.

He could see through the grass and he watched the driver shove the door of the ute out against the wind and get out and swear and zip up his jacket and get back inside and the wind shoved the door to again and flattened its slam and when the man got out for the second time, bracing the door with his knee, he had a beanie pulled over his ears.

Winstone wondered why he didn’t just park up facing the other way but the man walked around the ute and in its shelter opened the canopy door and then Winstone saw the cages.

The trapper got three cages out and walked over and laid one cage close against the foundations of the Red Hut where
the rubbish tin used to go and another where the long brown grass turned short and green and goose shitty at the edge of the beach and a third at the base of Alicia’s rock tor. Winstone didn’t know who the trapper was but he was well informed. When the trapper was done he stood and looked around as if to fix the spot where he stood in his memory or maybe hoping the cats would come out and give themselves up and save him the trouble of returning. Then he got back in his ute and drove off leaving the range to the wind and the sky.

Winstone waited a while and then he picked up his bucket and walked over to the cage beside the rock tor and squatted on his heels in the grass and looked at the trap. There was a can of something oily and fishy in there and he poked at it with a speargrass stem but the can didn’t move and then he saw the wire. He stuck the speargrass stem through the mouth of the trap and nothing happened and he sat a while and looked at the trap some more.

There was a metal plate jutting out of the floor of the trap in front of the can and Winstone fed the speargrass stem between the mesh in the side of the trap and touched the plate and the door of the trap sprang shut but not that hard. He looked and looked and he could see nothing to snap a cat’s neck or its spine and it came to him that the trap was just a holding cell and not a place of execution. The killing would come later. He wondered how they’d do it. Bullet or bash. Lethal injection. Maybe drop the cage in the dam. There was a lot of choice when it came to killing a cat. Or maybe they’d get busy and forget about it and it’d just die bit by bit with its belly caving against its ribs waiting every day for them to come.

Winstone stood up and walked down the slope and sprang the other two traps and when he turned around the kitten had both paws through the side of the rock tor trap trying to get at
the can of food and he realised what he’d taught it.

Leave that, he said.

The kitten did not. Winstone stood and watched and as he watched the kitten circled the trap and tried the other side.

No, he said. Leave it.

But the kitten took no more notice of him than the wind and while it was busy trying to find a way into the trap he walked down to the dam and filled his bucket and carried it back up the slope and by that stage the kitten was on top of the trap fishing down for the food in the can. Winstone tipped a good dollop of cold dam water over the kitten’s back and it leapt and shivered and shook and looked at him with more hate in its eyes than you’d think could fit inside a kitten.

It’s for your own good, he said.

The kitten hissed at him and slunk off and Winstone followed it to the trap beside the Red Hut and they proceeded in that way for some time until the kitten’s fur was plastered to its pink hide and Winstone’s bucket was empty and they looked at each other and the kitten sat down and began to lick its fur.

Now don’t you go trying it, he said, when I’m not here, and then he had an idea and leaving the kitten washing itself he went back and reset all three traps and he took himself off out of sight and pretended to hunt for crawlies.

When he came back the kitten was caught in the rock tor trap and so busy scoffing cat food it hadn’t even noticed. It noticed Winstone and his bucket, though. As soon as the kitten saw him coming it spun and tried to shoot out of the cage and its ears went flat as it realised that it couldn’t. It knew it was in trouble then, you could tell, and it started to ricochet around the cage like a crazy thing but Winstone had no mercy. He let it have the whole bucket this time and it crouched there dripping and scowling at him and he made it wait a while. When he opened
the door the kitten shot out and disappeared in a wet kitten blur and he wondered if he’d see it again and he thought that he probably wouldn’t, leastways not if the kitten saw him first and he looked at the empty range and the empty traps and the empty bucket.

There wasn’t much light left in the day and the wind was falling away and just the odd gust of it blowing through hard on the kicked up heels of the sun. Winstone picked up his bucket and walked back to the Green Camo Hut and circled it and climbed under the dinghy and took the net and then he went down to the water and hunted crawlies for real this time and he caught a big old boy with pincers the size of his thumb and after he’d looked at the pincers for a while and tested them with a speargrass stem he tipped the old crawly back into the dam because it was too big to Zippo.

In the fireplace behind the Sliding Door Hut out of the remnants of wind he Zippoed the rest of the crawlies he’d caught and the sun falling through some unseen gap in the world shone up through the grass and feathered every stem. The kitten came stepping slow through the grass with the sun picking out its paws and its belly fur and the span of its whiskers like fishing line and Winstone watched the kitten stop short at the sight of the trap still set and waiting at the edge of the grass and raise a paw and change its course and it came on to him in a wide circle.

When the kitten reached him he had a cooked crawly ready for it and he held it out in his hand and the kitten took the crawly between its kitten teeth and crouched down with its paws tucked under neat and began to eat it. Winstone watched the kitten splinter the crawly head and lick out the brains and he wondered what other things he could teach the kitten to do. Sit lie down roll over play dead. The kitten finished the crawly and looked up at him narrow-eyed.

Freeze, he said.

The kitten didn’t move. Winstone gave it his crawly head and waited until the kitten was done. Then he pointed his fingers at it.

Bang, he said.

The kitten closed its eyes.

THE JAWS OF THE TRAP
glinted in the failing sun and the colours of weathered steel were in the banded sky above and in the shadowed face of the Kid as he sat on his heels looking down upon it. The mountain lion’s yellow eyes watched the Kid. Its mouth was open and he could hear its short breaths and see the curl of its tongue and the heave of its heart below its hide.

Watch yourself, Cooper said.

But the mountain lion was no more than a few months old and what fight had been in it was gone and it had no will to run or even hide. The Kid worked the spring of the trap with his gloved hand and released it and opened the trap and took out the cat’s paw and the mountain lion laid its yellow head down in the weeds and its eyes fell shut and its breath scraped over the rasp of its tongue and blew dry craters in the dust.

Gimme some water, the Kid said.

Water, Cooper said.

Yeah, said the Kid, and he held out his hand and caught the canteen as it flew from the spot in the sage aways off where Cooper stood holding the horses. The Kid pushed the stopper out with his thumb and tilted the canteen and ran a line of water over the mountain lion’s muzzle into the dust but the cat did not open its eyes or lift its head and it did not drink. The Kid laid his hand to the cat’s jaw and pulled up its lip and Cooper said, Goddammit Kid, and the Kid poured again into the animal’s
mouth and its tongue moved and sucked and its breath grew easy.

An just what are you plannin to do with it now? Cooper said.

Leave it be I guess.

Leave it be.

The leg aint broke, the Kid said.

You caint let a thing like that be, Cooper said. What about them ranchers back there? It aint safe.

The Kid looked at the mountain lion. How old you reckon it is? he said.

Old enough.

Maybe we take it off aways. Take it with us over the pass where there aint no more farms.

You fixin to start a circus, Kid?

You know I aint.

You caint tame a thing like that, Cooper said. An you caint trust it. It’s a killer is all.

It aint even grown, the Kid said. Maybe it won’t kill nothin.

It don’t know nothin but killin, Kid. It gotta kill or it dies.

Maybe it don’t.

Kid, you don’t kill it now quick and clean you’re just leavin it for somebody else to do slow and dirty.

I aint got no stomach for killin a thing that aint done nothin yet.

You aint got no stomach, Cooper repeated slow.

It aint hurt nothin or nobody.

You goin to wait till the hurtin is good and done, Cooper said. I guess then you goin to come ridin back and hunt it clear over the range till you shoot it down.

The Kid was still looking at the cat and still it had not opened its eyes and the Kid took off his hat and laid it across his bent knee and studied the stains upon it. Quick and clean, the Kid said, but he did not rise.

It’s goin to die anyway, Cooper said. You’re just makin it easy.

The Kid knocked the dust from his hat and stood and set the hat on his head and took a step back and felt for his pistol and stood looking down and the sun slipping over the lip of the range took with it what colour had remained in the day and the Kid stood and looked some more in the growing grey.

You want me to use the rifle, Cooper said.

The Kid nodded once.

You come on over here, Cooper said, and hold these horses.

The horses shifted their feet in the cold grey dust and the Kid held their reins in his clenched glove and there was metal in his eyes and in the sky behind him.

You aint got to worry about no mountain lion tonight, he said.

A single shot ripped the dusk and the Kid started and blinked as if feeling the rifle’s recoil against his shoulder.

Come on, Winstone said. He looked at the kitten asleep in the grass and up at the sky still lit by the vanished sun pale and brittle as a bird’s egg. He touched the kitten’s flank where the stripes turned to spots in the thick yellow fur and the kitten opened its eyes and its mouth and yawned.

Let’s get out of here, Winstone said.

The kitten got up and stretched and tagged after him up the slope and it stopped at a great distance and waited as Winstone sprang the trap at the edge of the grass and the trap beside the Red Hut and after they’d crossed the white dust road and the cattle fence it went off about its own business.