Cashin broke the little over-and-under gun as he walked, felt in his side pockets and found a.22 slug and a.410 shell, fed the mouths. He often had the chance to take a shot at a hare, looked through the V-sight at the beautiful dun creature, its electric ears. He didn’t even think of firing, he loved hares, their intelligence, their playfulness. At a running rabbit, he did take the odd shot. It was just a fairground exercise, a challenge. He always missed-his reaction too slow, the.410’s cone of shot not big enough, too soon dissolved and impotent.
Cashin walked with the little weapon broken over his arm, looking at the trees, dark inside, waiting for the dogs to reach them and send the birds up like tracer fire.
The dogs did a last bound and they were in the trees, triggering the bird-blast, black shrapnel screeching into the sky.
He walked over the hill and down the slope, the dogs ahead, dead black and light-absorbing, heads down, quick legs, coursing, disturbing the leaf mulch. On the levelling ground, on the fringe of the clearing, a hare took off. He watched the three cross the open space, black dogs and hare, the hare pacing itself perfectly, jinking when it felt the dogs near. It seemed to be pulling the dogs on a string. They vanished into the trees above the creek.
Cashin crossed the meadow. The ground was level to the eye but, tramping the long dry grass, you could feel underfoot the rise and fall, the broad furrows a plough had carved. The clearing had once been cultivated, but not in the memory of anyone living. He had no way of knowing whether his ancestor Tommy Cashin had planted a crop there.
It was a fight to get to the creek through the poplars and willows, thousands of suckers gone unchecked for at least thirty years. When he reached the watercourse, a trickle between pools, the dogs appeared, panting. They went straight in, found the deepest places, drank, walked around, drank, walked around, the water eddied weakly around their thin, strong legs, they bit it, raised pointed chins, beards draining water. Poodles liked puddles, didn’t like deep water, didn’t like the sea much. They were paddlers.
Across the creek, they began the sweep to the west, around the hill, on the gentle flank. In the dun grass, he saw the ears of two hares. He whistled up the dogs and pointed to the hares. They followed his arm, ran and put up the pair, which broke together and stayed together, running side by side for ten or fifteen metres, two dogs behind them, an orderly group of four. Then the left hare split, went downhill. His dog split with him. The other dog couldn’t bear it, broke stride, swerved left to join his friend in the pursuit. They vanished into the long grass.
After a while, they came back, pink of tongues visible from a long way, loped ahead again.
Walking, Cashin felt the eyes on him. The dogs running ahead would soon sense the man too, look around, turn left and make for him. He walked and then there were sharp and carrying barks.
The man was out of the trees, the dogs circling him, bouncing. Cashin was unconcerned. He saw the hands the man put out to them, they tried to mouth them, delighted to see their friend. He angled his path to meet Den Millane, nearing eighty but looking as he had at fifty. He would die with a dense head of hair the colour of a gun barrel.
They shook hands. If they didn’t meet for a little while, they shook hands.
‘Still no decent rain,’ said Cashin.
‘Fuckin unnatural,’ said Millane. ‘Startin to believe in this greenhouse shit.’ He rubbed a dog head with each hand. ‘Bugger me, never thought I could like a bloody poodle. Seen the women at the Corrigan house?’
‘No.’
They both had boundaries with the Corrigan property. Mrs Corrigan had gone to Queensland after her husband died. No one had lived in the small redbrick house since then. The weather stripped paint from the woodwork, dried out the window putty, panes fell out. The timber outbuildings listed, collapsed, and grass grew over the rotting pieces. He remembered coming for a weekend in summer in the early nineties, hot, he was still with Vickie then, a big piece of roof had gone, blown off. He asked Den Millane to contact Mrs Corrigan and the roof was fixed, in a fashion. Roofs decided whether empty houses would become ruins.
‘The Elders bloke brung em,’ said Den, not looking up. ‘He’s a fat cunt too. The one’s got short hair, bloke hair. Like blokes used to have. Then they come back yesterday, now it’s three girls, walkin around, they walk down the old fence. Fuckin lesbian colony on the move, mate.’
‘Spot lesbians? They have them in your day?’
Millane spat. ‘Still my bloody day, mate. Teachers in the main, your lessies. Used to send the clever girls out to buggery, nothin but dickheads there couldn’t read a comic book. Tell you what, I was a girl met those blokes, I’d go lessie. Anyway, point is, you ever looked at your title?’
Cashin shook his head.
‘Creek’s not the boundary’
‘No?’
‘Your line’s the other side, twenty, thirty yard over the creek.’ Millane passed a thumb knuckle across his lower lip. ‘Claim the fuckin creek or lose it, mate. Fence that loop or say goodbye.’
‘Well,’ Cashin said, ‘You’d be mad to buy the place. House needs work, ground’s all uphill.’
Millane shook his head. ‘Seen what they’re payin for dirt? Every second dickhead wants to live in the country, drive around in the four-wheel, fuckin up the roads, moanin about the cowshit and the ag chemicals.’
‘No time to read the real estate,’ Cashin said. ‘Too busy upholding the law. Still need someone to take the cows over to Coghlans?’
‘Yeah. Knee’s getttin worse.’
‘Got someone for you.’
‘There’s a bit of other work, say three days, that’s all up. No place to stay, though.’
‘I’ll bring him over.’
Den was watching the dogs investigating a blackberry patch. ‘So when you gonna leave the fancy dogs with me again?’
‘Didn’t like to ask,’ Cashin said. ‘Bit of a handful.’
‘I can manage the fuckin brutes. Bring em over. Lookin thin, give em a decent feed of bunny.’
They said goodbye. When Cashin was fifty metres away, Den shouted, ‘Ya keep what’s bloody yours. Hear me?’
THE CALL came at 8.10 am, relayed from Cromarty. Cashin was almost at the Port Monro intersection. As he drove along the coast highway, he saw the ambulance coming towards him. He slowed to let them reach the turn-off first, followed them up the hill, around the bends and through the gates of The Heights, parked on the forecourt.
A woman was standing on the gravel, well away from the big house, smoking a cigarette. She threw it away and led the paramedics up the stairs into the house. Cashin followed, across an entrance hall and into a big, high-ceilinged room. There was a faint sour smell in the air.
The old man was lying on his stomach before the massive fireplace, head on the stone hearth. He was wearing only pyjama pants, and his thin naked back was covered with dried blood through which could be seen dark horizontal lines. There was blood pooled on the stones and soaked into the carpet. It was black in the light from a high uncurtained window.
The two medics went to him, knelt. The woman put her gloved hands on his head, lifted it gently. ‘Significant open head injury, possible brain herniation,’ she said, talking to her companion and into a throat mike.
She checked the man’s breathing, an eye, held up his forearm. ‘Suspected herniation,’ she said. ‘Four normal saline, hyperventilate 100 per cent, intubation indicated, 100 mils Lidocaine.’
Her partner set up the oxygen. He got in the way and Cashin couldn’t see what was happening.