Coming Rain by Stephen Daisley Read Free Book Online

been that morning and smelled where they had
urinated and then she squatted and also pissed over their markings. Her tail curved
as she checked the spoor of her leaving. Defecated and repeated the circling. Scratched
sand behind her to cover the dropping. The smell of the old man and young man were
different.
    The dingo studied the dead kangaroo and the surrounds for a while longer.
    Her eyes drooped and she licked at her shoulder, a healing wound the black dingo
had made with his slashing teeth as he mated with her. The black dog was strong,
crossed with one of the big run-off cattle-station dogs.
    They had become welded when he covered her and finished, knotted with his swollen
glands locked inside. She had yelped, turned and bitten at him, opening his ear.
His dominance reasserted itself and he stood snarling over her with strong, straight
legs. She obeyed with look-away eyes and became still for him as they waited. And
then he slipped out, and was gone. Head down running west and never looking back
at her. Ten minutes later her nose was following where his feet and saliva had touched
the rocks and sand. The rapture of what would become a pack, twelve or so dingos,
running in and beside her.
    She felt a twist of hunger for six and stood. Approached the yonga carcass from a
side angle, bent her head under where the tail had been taken and began tearing at
the flesh. Soon she had exposed the intestines. Swallowed a mouthful of gut fat.
The doe’s soft liver, pulpy in her mouth. The dingo bitch gulped the liver and choked.
Vomited up the black mess and began to eat it again.

CHAPTER 9
    It was mid-morning when they turned off the Great Eastern Highway, rattled across
the rails of a cattleguard and onto the red mile that led to Drysdale Downs homestead.
They passed a five-wire fence. Iron star pickets and two top barbed, wool stuck in
the barbs. The dried bodies of several wild dogs had been wired with ancient spines
and leg shapes outstretched on the fence. Paddocks of dried mitchell and failed flinders
grasses, yellow grass and smoke bush out to a series of hollows and rises away to
the horizon. Beyond there the wheat fields.
    Three pink and grey galahs flew off the fence at their approach.
    ‘Drysdale Downs,’ Lew said. His voice croaking from the dry silence. ‘How many they
got?’
    ‘Not as many as they used to,’ Painter said. ‘About twelve hundred I believe. Three
maybe four days for us.’ He coughed. ‘Used to run over ten thousand head but they
gone mostly to wheat now anyway. Should be the other way around. Dunno if they got
shed hands coming even, it’s all a bit of a doubt mate.’
    ‘No blackfellas you say?
None?’
    ‘Not now, not ever. I told you. They will never lay a foot here. None bloody left.’
    A Comet windmill in the near paddock. Tall and rusted tubes welded into a thin quadruped
structure with a working platform bolted below the circle of blades. Long curved
metal flukes. A bent pipe running from the top of the bore to the holding tank. Two
stone drinking troughs north south.
    ‘Something else I should tell you,’ Painter said. ‘Pull up here for a bit.’
    Lew stopped the truck at the side of the track. Stones crunched beneath the tyres.
He looked over at Painter.
    ‘The boss, John Drysdale, lost his wife a few years ago. Had their share of troubles
on the place, her was just the latest.’
    Lew with both wrists on the steering wheel, leaned forward, watching. ‘Lost?’
    ‘Cancer. Yep. Jack the dancer, y’know.’ Painter stared out the side window. ‘Took
it hard I heard. Like a dry stick in the wind these days.’
    ‘By himself now?’
    ‘No, a daughter, she was at boarding school in Perth. She come home I believe. Clara,
her name. Thought I would let you know to tread a little careful, y’know, ducks on
the pond. Less said the better.’
    Lew nodded. ‘I’ll keep it in mind.’ He eased the clutch pedal out.
    ‘Have you seen that?’ Painter nodded out the window as they