The Complete Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

fetchedback plates of eggs, a great platter of sizzling rashers, bread, butter, scones. We were ravenous, all of us. But when we were seated even Jem Riley, who was a rough fellow, ate in a restrained, almost dainty way, swallowing quietly, blushing at every mouthful in an effort to keep up to the standard set by Henry Denkler and Wes McGowan, which was clearly what they thought was due to Miss Appin' “background.” As soon as he had gulped the last of his tea, Jem excused himself and bolted. He would drive their ute down to the store and fill the emergency cans.
    Glen, in a high state of amusement at Jem's confusion, got to his feet, thanked Miss Appin with an old-world formality that delighted his father and which the McGowan boys could turn on quite effortlessly when occasion demanded, and went after Jem to help.
    “So then, Millie,” Wes McGowan began, pushing back from the remains of his breakfast while Braden and I tucked into seconds, "what have you got to tell us about this
pig?”
    A SEVEN-MILE DRIVE south of Miss Appin's, the old Jeffries place where the boar had been sighted was no more now than an isolated chimney stack in a pile of rubble and a steel windmill whose spindly tower and blades could be seen in the long grass off the north–south highway.
    We drove in slowly—there was no longer a track—and parked in a clump of water gums. I was directed to take charge of the McGowan dogs, Jigger and Tilly, but also of Matt Riley's dog, Archer, an Irish setter as new to all this as I was and very nervous, though Jem assured me, as the dog rubbed against him and licked his hand, that he was sweet-natured enough if you handled him right. And it was true. When I leaned down and hugged him a little, he immediately shoved his nose into my groin. I settled in the shade of the water gums, but the three dogs, excited by the sense that something was about to begin, remained standing, heads raised, lean flanks trembling, pulling hard at the leash. It was just after ten. The sun was fierce, the long grass a wave of cicada-voices rising and skirling, then lapsing, then rising again.
    Matt, with Jem as usual at his side, went off to do some scouting and it was confirmed. There was a pig, a good-sized one.
    Wes McGowan, whose party this was, had ceded authority for themoment to the professional. He was seated now, sweating under his hat, in the shade of the Bedford, having a quiet smoke.
    Matt Riley, meanwhile, had taken Braden aside and was giving him instructions, pointing across the open grassland to where the boar was holed up and sleeping in the sun, somewhere between the windmill and the darker treeline that marked the course of a creek.
    The other old-timer of the party, Henry Denkler, had set up a folding stool, and with his hat drawn down and his .303 across his arm, was dozing, for all the world as if he was having a quiet snooze in his own backyard in town.
    The others, Glen, Stuart, Jem, were squatting on their heels in the shadows behind me. Not speaking. All their attention, like mine, was on the group Matt Riley and Braden made, Braden the taller by a head, which was all Matt-talk, low-voiced and slow, no more, as I strained my ears to catch it, than a few broken sibilants at moments when the cicadas cut out.
    Braden was nodding. Allowing himself to be sweet-talked into a kind of high-pitched ease. Yet another area in which Matt was a professional.
    I glanced back quickly at the others.
    They too had been gathered in. A moment ago, Glen and Stuart had been as tense almost as the dogs, out of concern perhaps for Braden— more family business. They were subdued now. Almost dreamy. As if Matt had worked his spell on them also, as he had done three or four years back, when they had been where Braden stood now.
    I too had a place made for me, but it was up to me what I made of it. I held fast to the dogs, watching their shoulders quiver in expectation. Something of their animal sense that we were set down now in