When Colts Ran by Roger McDonald Page B

kept riding slack in the saddle and looking elsewhere, as if Randolph hadn’t spoken.
    After a while Colts said defiantly, ‘If Buckler comes crawling back I’ll tell him where to shove it.’
    â€˜Good on you, sport. Sounds like a fine idea.’
    They rode along until Colts leaned across, making a sign of entwined fingers.
    â€˜Buckler and Hammond Pringle’s old man, Birdy Pringle, who’s white as you and me, were like that in the first war. They made a vow to look after each other’s orphans if any came up. Each reckoned he was king pin and had the right. On the way back from France on the troopship they had an argument on principle. Birdy says he’s killed, he can’t get over it. Buckler says it’s kill or be killed on the frontline, not murder as Birdy sweated it. They were demobbed and Birdy shouldered a swag in Port Adelaide and headed north on foot, he must have come through here, kicking Eureka stones, aiming for the Top End and a cattle run. When people asked what he’d done in the war he said nothin’. They gave him the white feather. You’re like that.’
    â€˜Like what?’
    â€˜You give nothin’ away.’
    â€˜I don’t think so.’
    â€˜Why did he do it?’ Colts spat a fly.
    â€˜Was he ashamed?’ Randolph said.
    â€˜He was covered in medals. It didn’t matter how many lives he’d saved, how many Turks and Fritzes he’d popped – he was beaten up. Then he married a gin, mission wedding and all. Buckler was not impressed.’
    â€˜Along came Hammond,’ said Randolph.
    â€˜And Dorothy. They send us Box Brownie snaps at Christmas and cards rough-cut and glued with flour paste. Birdy sends a ten-quid note for the school year; he’ll save his hard-earned money now. It might have been me and Faye living up there with them – halfies and creamies and full-blood boogies – under a bark roof with four poles, except for the penny Buckler tossed when our father died, to see which one would get us. Birdy never knew it was a double-header.’
    â€˜What about your mother?’
    â€˜Veronica?’
    â€˜No, your real mother.’
    â€˜I never had one.’
    â€˜That’s a first.’ Randolph let it go.
    Each night they showered under the tank stand in sulphurous bore water, put on clean shirts, knotted neckties and buttoned their tweed jackets, no matter how high the thermometer climbed. Being trained for self-reliance they did their own sewing and mending, laundering their stiff moleskin trousers free of crushed dags and weight of dust in an outdoor copper cemented like a tomb. Woe betide the jackaroo who arrived late at the Oakeshotts’ table with or without excuses. They were permitted to remove their jackets only after Mrs Oakeshott invited them. Following the meal they sat round the short-wave set while Oakeshott expressed tactical opinions. Sometimes London and Berlin were clearer than Radio Australia. At the distant end of the dial they heard Tokyo Rose broadcasting from Japan. Colts talked of enlisting as soon as he could, went around firing at shadows with an imaginary Tommy gun and mowing down Nips in the saltbush till Randolph told him to knock it off.
    One Sunday Randolph and Colts spent the whole day searching for a sharpening stone Colts had dropped along the single-wire telephone line leading out to the boundary riders’ huts. Oakeshott was a bastard, they agreed, for insisting on every meaningless tool being accounted for. But when Randolph said he still respected Oakeshott, Colts said he did too. If Randolph said he’d like to rocket to the moon and run sheep there, Colts would say, wouldn’t that be something .
    Everything hung on Colts as the keeper of Randolph’s toothy smile.

SIX
    FOUR MONTHS AFTER COLTS BEGAN at Eureka he flashed Randolph a letter. ‘It’s from my sister, Faye. There’s been a ruckus. You won’t believe