Coming Rain (22 page)

The old man turned and looked at his goats. ‘Stay there Eunice,' he said.

Lew looked at him.

‘My head nanny, lead goat I always called her Eunice.'

It seemed like a lifetime ago, joking with Painter about this old man dancing with
a goat called Eunice, and less funny now.
He wanted to ask why the man would call
every goat Eunice, and knew he never would.

Abraham had walked off about ten feet. He knelt. ‘Look at these boy. Those dogs been
all over here.' He reached out and touched a line of dingo tracks. ‘They got four
toes and the back pad like a big dog. See the claw marks?' He mused for a while reading
the sign. ‘There,' he said, ‘you see where she heavier on the rear pads, leaning
back a little as she run? Carrying her weight over her hips, a sure sign.' He pointed
a few feet in front. ‘And further on when she lie down, her tits starting to hang.
In pup. See where she make water? If you get it fresh you can smell it. That male
dog he stronger but an in-pup bitch she strong too. The shape they make when they
piss is different. The bitch is oval when they squat. The male they piss in a line,
against things if they can and it drips back. Different pattern.'

He pointed to another set of tracks, smaller and rounded. ‘They the feral cats,'
Abraham looked up and away into the middle distance. ‘Gone wild from the people used
to live here. Lot of cats round here. Not too many birds.'

Lew knelt next to the old man. He smelled him. Wood smoke and rank fat, an unwashed
smell. He reached out and gently touched the tracks as Abraham was doing.

‘You don't see the claws with the cat,' Abraham said. ‘Retractable see, the cats'.
Dingo, like a dog.'

Abraham bent and brushed his hand over a bare piece of earth. He used his finger
and the knuckles of his hand to mark out a paw print. Thumbnail marking the edges.
‘Fox, same to the dingo except they neater and smaller. Not so heavy. Don't see the
fox much when the dingo about. They kill them too. Same as
any wild cat they come
across.'

The old man pointed back to the original dingo track. ‘You can see how long since
they been here by which side of the track has had the wind over it. East wind comes
in at the daybreak. West at sunset. They been here at least a night ago I would guess.
That young red dog has been carrying his back leg where I shot him. See that?'

Lew looked at the line of tracks and saw how the spoor on the left, the near side
of the bitch's tracks, had only three heavy and one lighter imprint.

‘He is healing though,' Abraham said. ‘That bitch must've mothered him up good. I
never seen a smarter female all the time I been trackin' them.' Abraham raised up
and pointed to another shape about six feet away. Detritus from a ruined building
was scattered about, broken timbers, pipes and old solid bricks. ‘And there,' he
said, ‘that'll be their dinner last night.'

Lew looked at the wide recurring S shape with sand pushed up on the lower sides of
its travel. Two or three sheets of corrugated iron on the ground.

‘Python I would say,' Abraham said. ‘Maybe a children's and she been hunting him.
That snake be in her belly now I would wager. If I was a betting man.'

CHAPTER 56

She stopped, one paw raised in mid-stride as a python came out beneath a sheet of
corrugated iron for an early night hunt. The snake had not seen her and came big-eyed
and dappled wet, beautiful into the night. Sweet food white-bellied slithering along
towards her. Flickering tongue tasting the air upwind. The ecstasy of snake's muscled
coat. Gunya.

It was an easy kill. She took it behind the head. Its body coiling and uncoiling
as she crunched it dead. The python hanging from her mouth, she ran to the shelter
of a collapsed veranda and shared the hunt with the red dog.

When they had eaten, the bitch took them back to within sight of the old man's house,
downwind. They lay hidden in the thin covering of scrub and watched and listened.
The smell of the goats and the man came in the air to them, almost something to drink.
She heard metal moving in the wind. The bleating of goats in the last of the daylight;
how they moved and she watched the kids. The head female had a bell around her neck
and as she walked the bell clanked. The dingo saw she had a full udder and that there
would be newborn close.

Occasionally the old man would come outside to collect wood. Once he sat and milked
one of the goats. She watched him as he moved about. He was a careful man and would
stand still and cock his head to one side, listen and wait, studying the land around
his house, his eyes going over each detail. Occasionally the young dog would glance
at her, lay his chin back down on his paws. He had at last been taught what it was
to wait.

The sun was overhead when the wind swung around and their scent carried to the herd.
The belled nanny became uneasy and watched where the dog smell was. Her two kids
ran and knelt, pushing her back legs apart as they suckled. She stepped over them,
the metal bell clanked and she began to walk. Paced the perimeter of the enclosure.
Her neck craning, eyes searching the outlying country, the brush and scattered debris
of the old town. All the time, the clanking of the metal bell around her neck, keeping
time to her pacing.

The dingo, staying on her belly, crawled backwards and rose to a half crouch, swung
around to lope away and cross over the leap of the direction of the wind. She knew
she could not be seen from behind the old brick walls and the twisted waves of burnt
and buckled corrugated iron. It was simply their smell which gave them away, and
of course the damned dog crows that continued to plague them.

They trotted back towards the town. Passed across a tennis court and ran into the
fallen burnt timbers and iron of a collapsed stand. Ran along the shadowed side of
the main street. She sniffed the tyre tracks and footprints. Loose dust blew through
the streets, wrapping around poles and the broken facades of the buildings.

She jumped sideways, taking fright at a sudden crash of something falling. Ran in
a leap to a side alley. Studied the man's footprints in the sand, the goats' spoor,
their pellets, the line of wheel marks. She bent and sniffed at them. They had been
here before her and not that long before. She squatted and pissed on their footprints.
Looked back at the red dog that had almost begun to put weight on his shot leg.

She lifted her head as she heard, from a long way off, the approach of a vehicle.
Yipped at the red dog to listen and they trotted out the side streets of the town
into open country. She quickly decided to circle back to the goat yards. Once again,
this time upwind, and see if there was a possibility.

They waited in the karrik bush and watched.

CHAPTER 57

Abraham's house was built with the rocks he had gathered. He had cemented them using
a burnt lime mix. It was roofed with tiles and had been added to what looked like
an old shopfront. He had also built a series of staggered rock walls against the
prevailing easterly winds.

Lew watched as the old man removed the harness from the goats and allowed them into
a fenced enclosure. He took the piles of sandalwood from the small trap and stacked
them on sheets of corrugated iron. Lew lent him a hand and Abraham seemed to appreciate
it. When they had stacked the last of the sandalwood, Abraham roofed it with another
two sheets of corrugated iron and weighed them down with four bricks. Lew remembered
the piles of wood he and Painter had stored away for the next charcoal burn.

‘Thank you young fella,' Abraham said. ‘Lew McCleod is it?'

‘It is.'

‘Good good. Come in.'

Lew followed Abraham into his house.

‘Your father, they call him Mac? Mac McCleod? A shearer too?'

‘Never knew him Mr Smith.'

The old man studied him. ‘Abe. You can call me Abe. Sit down, I'll make us some tea.'

Lew sat at a long table topped with thick wooden planks.

Abraham bent to push some sticks into an outdoor oven. It had a square corrugated-iron
chimney, a parallel flue used for smoking meat. A back leg, flank and shoulder of
a young goat cured dark brown was hanging there behind wire mesh and hessian. When
the sticks in the oven caught he added some larger blocks of wood and soon he had
a kettle boiling.

‘So you going to catch up with those dogs and take the pups?' Abraham sat and poured
tea into two tin cups. Added a touch of yellow milk to his cup and spooned in sugar.

Lew lifted the cup to his mouth and blew on the tea. ‘I plan to.' Abraham made a
noise of appreciation as he sipped his tea, stirred it and tapped the spoon against
the edge of the cup. ‘I been hunting dingos for thirty years more or less. Fossicking
for gold and picking up sandalwood except when the horrors come. I can't do a damn
thing when that's on me, no I cannot.'

Lew held his hands on each side of the cup, watched the steam as it rose.

Abraham looked at him. ‘You shear with Painter Hayes?'

‘I did.'

‘You the young fella he took a shine to. I heard about you. Good shearer they say.
Two fifty a day and clean, day in day out. You and old man Painter always running
together. Now you by yourself here?'

‘I am.'

Abraham frowned, tapped the table. Touched two fingers to his cheekbone. ‘He do that
to you?'

‘No,' Lew said. ‘I fell off a horse.'

Abraham looked down at his cup, nodded. ‘How many times you fall off that horse boy?
Three, four times? Same horse?'

‘More like five or six times. Same horse.'

Abraham laughed. ‘You all right boy. By God that Painter can fight like a thrashing
machine can't he? Never known him to be beaten and when he on the drink, Jesus look
out take cover. I saw him once in Derby fightin' the publican and two coppers. Mad
drunk he was.'

Abraham stopped laughing and looked at the table, tapped his fingers on the wood.
‘Five or six times,' he said and nodded. Repeated to himself in approval of something
he did not understand.

Lew cleared his throat. ‘Where do you think she has gone to?'

‘The dingo bitch?' Abraham looked up. ‘Well I believe, like I showed you, she circled
back here. Those tracks from last night tell the story.'

Lew nodded as the old man continued to speak.

‘I would say she and that young dog have run east into the Sandy. But,' he paused
and sipped his tea, ‘she will loop twice north and then southwest and come back to
her ground. Where she knows best. I believe she will whelp at Winjilla. Her kind
been doin' it for a thousand years. Along those lines anyway. Good water, plenty
of game and dry rock caves there. The run into the big Sandy is a ruse to fool any
following, me that is.
I don't know if she even knows how good she is; by God she
is clever. But those pups is close. That Winjilla. Known as Daybreak Springs now.'

‘Daybreak Springs?' Lew wanted to laugh.

‘Yep, you know it?'

Lew stood up. ‘I know it,' he said. ‘But it is fenced off.'

‘It is fenced off, about two miles of it anyway but she will soon go around it or
dig under the wire. Or get the youngster to. You going to shoot them?'

Lew nodded.

‘What you got?'

‘A shotgun. Twelve gauge. Remington side-by-side.'

Abraham nodded. ‘Do the job if you get close enough.'

He stood up and walked inside the house. After a few minutes he returned with a rifle.
He laid it on the table. The bolt was open. Placed a spare magazine and a brown box
of shells next to the rifle. ‘This,' he said, ‘is the old fully wooded Lee Enfield
.303 Mark Three. It is reliable and accurate. The barrel is stabilised hot and cold
by the wood, see. Take it.'

‘I have the shotgun,' Lew said.

Abraham touched the stock of the rifle with a finger. ‘The shotgun is all right if
you are close. This,' he tapped the stock, ‘will do the job at two, three hundred
yards. Aim at the biggest part of the animal behind the front shoulder. Takes out
the heart and lungs, see. Dead before they hit the ground.' He mused for a moment.
‘Don't aim at the head.'

Lew picked up the Lee Enfield. He pressed the magazine release, closed and opened
the bolt.

‘You used one before by the look,' Abraham said.

Lew nodded. ‘Was shown.'

‘Well, you take it, I have another. That used to belong to old man Drysdale anyway.
Get it back to me when you can.'

Lew reached out and shook his hand. ‘Thank you,' he said. ‘I appreciate this.'

Abraham waited. He looked at Lew and Lew saw a tightening of his mouth. Something
uncertain pass across his face. ‘Would you do something for me?'

‘I will if I can.'

‘I have left set traps around Daybreak. And some poison baits. When the horrors came
I didn't get back to them. Especially the traps. Would you check them for me please?'

Lew nodded.

He saw Abraham's eyes become frightened as he rubbed a hand across his face. ‘I cannot
abide,' he said and his voice shook. ‘I cannot abide the thought.'

CHAPTER 58

Clara sat on her bed and stared at the door. Was there a stranger behind it? Had
someone come to stand between her and the world? Was her mother waiting for her on
the other side? Her dogs? She felt cold and when she touched her face with her stiff
fingertips it was numb. Her cycle was due and had not come and she did not know why
except perhaps that it was all that blood, the dogs and the filly whose name was
to be Rain because she had never known the rain except that once, the night before
her father came. How could he and why won't it come?