'She'll come out. Don't you worry.'
A smile scratched itself across the
man's unshaven face, a thin bitter smile that hung on the hate in his voice. He
stood in front of a stringy-bark, a gun in his right hand, his left rubbing
absent-mindedly at a deep scar on the side of his neck as he addressed a group
of about twenty other farmers. They listened and variously nodded. But the
tremble in the man's voice, the slight shake in his hand as it worried the scar,
and the strange stare in his eyes sent a shuffle of uneasiness through the
group. Some scribbled their boots in the dirt, some squatted to roll fags. A few
even moved away as though their physical act somehow distanced them morally from
the madman.
'I know that mongrel. She'll come
out for this.'
The smile tightened as the man
delved into a hessian bag and pulled out a tiny creature. The animal, a sandy-grey
pup only a few weeks old, screamed as the man dangled it by a hind leg before
the other men.
'Put the poor thing out of its
misery, Jim.' someone yelled.
'I will, mate.' the scratch
replied. 'When we've got her. Then I'll put both of them out of their misery ...
with this.'
The man called Jim brandished his
shotgun in the air and then stooped, pointing it into a narrow hole at the base
of the stringy.
'We're waiting, ya mongrel!' he
screamed and fired both barrels into the hole.
*
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