Read Online Moonlight Downs by Adrian Hyland - Free Book Online Page A

be that hard,’ yelled one of the drifters. ‘All ya gotta do is head for the hills and follow your nose.’
    This wasn’t the first time I’d heard the Moonlight incident discussed in the bar. One blackfeller’s killing another was nothing to get excited about, but the general consensus was that the killer beating up four of Bluebush’s finest and making an escape was the best thing that had happened round here since the mayor was caught in flagrante with Benny Birkham, the town’s one-man Mardi Gras. But I didn’t like the way this conversation was heading. Coming from these guys it sounded unclean.
    ‘All for a runaway coon,’ yelped the little Pom.
    ‘Shoulda just handed out more knives and let im finish the job,’ interjected a yellow-cap cowboy, his teeth just about falling out onto the table in his excitement. ‘Get rid of the lot of em.’
    ‘Wouldn’t that make Earl’s day?’ asked one of the bikies.
    I found the jug was overflowing in my hands. I put it on the bar, a red mist falling across my eyes, but I’d only taken a step in their direction when I felt a hand upon my shoulder.
    Stan. He was standing there looking at me, his eyebrows raised.
    ‘You reckon they’re worth the bother, Emily?’
    I glowered at him for a moment. The red mist lifted a little.
    I had to hand it to Stan. He was a little old guy with a stoop and a hump and a head that looked like it was being pulled towards his left shoulder by an invisible rubber band, but he knew how to run a pub. Tranquillity seemed to radiate out from him.
    ‘No,’ I sighed. ‘Don’t suppose they are.’
    ‘Why don’t you take a break? You been workin yer little arse off. I don’t want a compo claim for, what?—RSI of the pullin arm? Go and get a bit of fresh air. Kaz can keep this mob tanked up. Come back at dinner time.’
    Ten minutes later I was walking down Hawker’s Road when I spotted a dirty police Toyota pulling away from one of the Warlpuju houses. McGillivray was at the wheel, and I flagged him down.
    ‘Top of the afternoon to you, Tom. You do look like a bag of shit.’
    He was decked out in crud-encrusted overalls, a filthy cap and topsoil thicker than most of the surrounding desert could boast.
    His eyes narrowed. ‘You spend a week crawling in and out of snake holes and see what you look like.’
    ‘So,’ I said with an innocent smile, ‘did you get your man?’
    If his eyes had narrowed any further he would have ruptured his eyelids. Not that I could blame him for looking pissed off.
    ‘My man…’ Tom growled. ‘I’ll be amazed if we ever do get im, way Pepper an Archie are doin their job.’ He shook his head. ‘I been workin with those boys for twenty years. Best trackers this side of the Alice, an I never seen em so arse about. If I didn’t know better I’d say they were doing their best to avoid him.’ He glanced at the house and grunted. ‘Fuck it, I do know better and they were doing their best to avoid him.’
    ‘Not a sign, eh?’
    ‘Oh, we got signs. We got signs comin out our arse. Things disappearin from stations and mining camps, the odd butchered bullock, the odd rifle shot. Trouble is they’re always somewhere we aren’t. We know he’s out there, but Pepper an Arch don’t wanner come within a bull’s roar o’ the bastard.’
    ‘You blame em? Dangerous man, Blakie. Specially for them.’
    He started up the ute. ‘Anyway, if it’s all the same to you, Em—even if it isn’t—I’m outta here. There’s a hot bath round here somewhere with my name on it.’
    ‘What were you doing here anyway, Tom?’ I asked, pointing my chin at the house.
    ‘Just dropped Pepper an Archie off at the family seat.’
    A howling chorus erupted from behind the corrugated iron fence. Somebody was singing along with that blackfeller classic, the Warumpi Band’s ‘Fitzroy Crossing’. Somebody else was singing along with something else, or possibly it was the same song, sung in a different key with some of