Billy looks confused, then realises what she means and, still on his back, he fumbles desperately, clumsily buttoning himself up.
‘All done, Jessie,’ he now says.
Jessica looks down warily and, seeing he has successfully completed the task, says, ‘Good boy, Billy.’ She places the mug of tea down and puts one foot on either side of Billy’s hips. Then, gripping both hands about his wrist, she manages to pull him up into a sitting position. She brings the skillet over to him. ‘Eat your breakfast and don’t take all day!’ she scolds him, in an attempt to cover her embarrassment.
It’s almost sunrise before they finally get away and Jessica chides herself again for sleeping in. The men will have crossed the river at dawn, delayed no more than fifteen or twenty minutes by the log she’s jammed into the rope drum.
She’s still got enough time to get to Narrandera, but Jessica knows that if something goes wrong on the track the mob could still reach her in time to get hold of poor Billy.
Despite the birds calling at sunrise Billy has been strangely quiet and Jessica thinks he might be sulking because of her angry outburst. Billy can’t keep anything much in his mind for very long, though, and Jessica expects he’ll cheer up after a while. But when he remains silent she stops the sulky so she can take a good look at him. His face is flushed and covered in sweat and he’s trembling badly. She puts her hand on his forehead. He is burning up. Billy has a fever and Jessica doesn’t need to be told it is probably his leg. She gently pulls up his trouser leg and looks at his calf. Somehow, perhaps when he fell onto his back, he’s split the stitches in his leg and the wound is open and festering. The flesh around the stitches has turned shiny and inflamed with the infection that’s now spreading up past his knee. Jessica knows Billy is in serious trouble and she must get him to the cottage hospital in Narrandera as soon as possible.
Jessica starts off again, though she knows if the pony is to last the distance she can’t make him go too fast. She judges they’ve been going for nearly an hour and a half now, and as the sun climbs higher it grows unbearably hot. The black flies cluster around Billy’s wounds and seem to grow thicker all the time. Eventually Jessica stops and cuts two small branches from a bush for them to use as fly-swats. But they don’t help much, and the flies cluster on Napoleon’s rump, feeding on his sweat, until it’s hard to see the colour of his hide.
When they are two hours down the track, the left wheel, the one on Billy’s side of the sulky, begins to wobble. Jessica feels her heart sink, and she pulls up. In all the anxiety of yesterday’s events she’s entirely forgotten about the faulty axle. Joe had said it’d need to be re-heated ill the forge and straightened or it was likely to snap.
She climbs down and walks over to Billy’s side and inspects the wheel. The axle has bent alarmingly and she can see a fracture beginning in the metal near where it enters the hub. Jessica is no smithy but she knows at once that the sulky can’t make it much further along the road and that they’ll be stopped well short of their destination. It’s almost more than she can bear and she begins to weep softly, leaning against the side of the sulky. Nothing is going right; she’s at least ten miles from Narrandera, the mob’ll be no more than three hours away now, and while she may be able to walk it, Billy can’t move a yard. They’ve even left the scrub plains behind. It’s open country here, flat as a table, mostly desert without a tree or a blade of grass to be seen, only an occasional ball of tumbleweed breaking the remorseless flat land.
Out here there is nowhere she can hide Billy and go on foot for help. By the time she returned he’d be a bullet torn carcass left on the side of the road for carrion or brought into town slung across the back of a horse, like a slaughtered beast.
Joe once told her that after the bush ranger Dan Morgan killed six men the government brought in what was known as the Felon’s Apprehension Act, whereby anyone could shoot a known felon on sight and, furthermore, if you were found helping such a person to escape you were liable to receive a fifteen-year jail sentence.
Even though it was fifty years ago, Jessica reckons it could still apply to her helping Bill} Simple. Joe says they never change laws that are against the poor. Billy is now a known felon all right, having just murdered Ada Thomas and the two girls. You don’t get more known than that, do you? Jessica asks herself darkly. What’s more, if they come upon them on the track, she can’t prove she’s taking him to the police magistrate. It’s her word against theirs. They’re free to shoot Billy down on the spot and they’ll soon realise that she isn’t his hostage, that she’s obviously helping him, so they’ll arrest her as well. Fifteen years in the clink and no chance to prove she’s innocent.
Joe had gone on to tell her how after they’d shot Morgan they’d severed his head to be given to the scientists in Sydney, his beard was skinned like a po
ssum and tobacco pouches were made from the skin of his penis and scrotum. Even worse than that, afterwards they’d put his headless body on public display outside the town lock-up, where townsfolk queued to be photographed standing beside his decomposing corpse. Panicking now, and working herself into hysterics, Jessica sees all of this happening to poor Billy Simple, with his gift from Jesus being cut off and put on the train to Sydney addressed to the scientists with a note, ‘Biggest ever seen in the Riverina’.
‘Jessie?’ she hears Billy call fitfully from the sulky directly above her, ‘Whassa matter?’
‘Axle’s broke, Billy, we’re beat, mate,’ Jessica sobs and then grows suddenly furious and takes a kick at the wheel. ‘Bastard!’ she yells.
Billy is silent for a bit, then he speaks quietly, ‘Billy sick, Jessie, you shoot him now, eh?’ Jessica looks up to see Billy is still shaking and burning up with the fever. ‘We’re gunna get you to the doctor, Billy. Remember? We’re goin’ to the hospital in Narrandera where they fixed your head up good.’
‘But Billy no good no more, Jessie.’ He points to the Winchester, his voice pitiful. ‘Shoot me, Jessie.’
Jessica feels a slow anger growing inside her gut. The bastards are not going to get Billy Simple, she vows to herself. Not now, not ever, fuck ‘em!
‘It’ll be all right, Billy,’ she says, looking up at him.
‘We’re not beaten yet.’
The black flies hum around her head, the fierce sun beats down and Jessica climbs aboard again and sets off, determined to go as far as the cracked axle will take her. Almost a mile down the track the axle breaks, but by then she’s worked out a plan.
Jessica turns to Billy. ‘Billy, you’re gunna have to sit on the pony, and I’m gunna have to walk you in.’
Billy’s teeth are chattering and his shirt is drenched with sweat. ‘Horse hurt Billy,’ he says plaintively, ‘horse hurt Billy’s head.’
‘It’s our only chance, mate. I’m bloody not givin’ up now!’ Jessica moves to help Billy down from the sulky and he winces and draws away from her. ‘Damn you, Billy, help me!’ she shouts at him.
Whimpering, Billy tries to get down from the sulky but he loses his balance and falls against Jessica. They both tumble to the ground. Billy rolls away from her, moaning and crying out with the pain.
Jessica lies still — she feels as though she’s been run over by a team of horses. After a few moments she realises she hasn’t broken any bones. She rises slowly to her feet, too shocked to cry. Blood runs from her cheek and she sees she’s grazed her arm, but she doesn’t care. Now she has only one thought in her mind, to get Billy Simple into Narrandera. Beat those bastards heading down the track. Hobbling over to Billy, she manages to get him to sit up on the side of the sulky while she unharnesses Napoleon.
‘Billy, we’re going to take your splint off so you can sit on the pony, you understand?’
Billy makes no reply, his head hangs between his knees and he is sniffling. But he lets Jessica untie the splints and remove them. Jessica then takes her bowie knife and cuts the leg of Joe’s moleskins to the thigh so that Billy’s badly swollen leg is less restrained.
The infection has spread higher up his leg and Jessica knows that if she doesn’t get him into Narrandera on time he’ll die of blood poisoning. She’s seen it happen before, to a stockman who’d been gored by a beast and couldn’t be brought in from the run in time.