The Golden Soak (21 page)

He shook me awake shortly after three, the billy boiling and the stars still bright, and half an hour later we were on the road again. Dawn was breaking and Mt Whaleback a solid hump against the paling sky as I took the cut-off by the old airfield where I had waited for Janet to pick me up. Kennie stirred and stretched his legs. ‘How much further?'

‘About sixty miles – two hours if we don't break a spring in the gullies.'

‘Christ! It's back of beyond.' His voice was sleepy. ‘What's this girl like – tough?'

‘She rides a camel when they're mustering.'

‘Sounds like dampers for breakfast and I could do with a good big steak.'

He went to sleep again and I drove all the rest of the way to Jarra Jarra. It was just after eight when we crossed the cattle grid into the paddock. We topped the rise and there was the homestead just as I had seen it that first time, like a deserted settlement in the blazing sun with the galahs a flock of grey shot through with pink, bursting out of the trees at the rattle of our approach.

We stopped in the shade, the homestead silent, no dog barking, no camel crouched there by the further bole, only the galahs wheeling. ‘Reck'n they start at first light.' Kennie pushed open the door and got stiffly out. ‘Most of these outback stations start early this time of the year.' He was thinking only of the breakfast he had been hoping for. He followed me between the outbuildings, across the patio and into the dim cool of the wire-netted room. It was empty, the house silent. I called Janet's name, but there was no answer, the stillness heavy with the heat.

‘There must be somebody around.' I went through into the passageway, to the door of Ed Garrety's den. I thought perhaps he might be listening to the radio. I couldn't remember when the morning sked was. But the door was locked, no answer to my call. I tried the kitchen then. A pot of tea and cups on the scrubbed wood table, the paraffin stove cold and nothing on it but a kettle, the water in it lukewarm. A current of hot air behind me and I turned to glimpse dark eyes watching out of a black face. The eyes were huge. ‘Sarah?' A flash of teeth, a nervous giggle and the face of the black servant girl was gone. ‘Sarah!' But by the time I reached the door she was running across an open compound towards some huts, running like a startled deer.

There was nothing for it but to cook our own breakfast, and when we had finished it, we sat dozing in the cane chairs in the cool house. We were both of us very tired and I was dead asleep when the sound of a vehicle woke me. I expected it to be Ed Garrety. Instead, it was Westrop who came in through the beaded flyscreen from the patio. He stopped at the sight of me. I had got to my feet and for a moment we stood there facing each other, both of us too surprised to say anything.

‘What do you want?' I asked him.

‘Garrety. Where is he – still down the mine?'

‘I've no idea. We've only just arrived.'

‘And the girl?' He moved towards the passage.

‘There's nobody here,' I said.

He paused then, looking at me doubtfully. ‘Yuh sure?' And when I didn't say anything, he turned and went outside, and I heard him talking to somebody. He was back almost immediately, coming in with that odd swaggering gait, and suddenly I knew what he reminded me of – the digger of Australian legend, the battle-scarred veteran of the wars they had fought across the world. It wasn't only that he had a wide-brimmed hat on his head and his khaki longs tucked into high boots, it was the long hard face, the steady eyes creased by the sun. His appearance, his whole bearing reminded me of Anzac Day and those pictures of floods of khaki wading ashore at Suvla Bay from old coal-burning troopships. ‘Yuh could help me,' he said, standing hesitant. ‘No hard feelings, eh?' He smiled, the dour look gone and a flash of warmth.

‘No, of course not.'

He nodded. ‘Sit down then. I'd like to talk to yuh.' He dropped into a chair, running his hand over the stubble of his pointed chin and staring at me as I resumed my seat. ‘You're probably the only man, apart from Garrety, who's been down Golden Soak in years. Did you get into all the levels?'

‘Who told you I'd been down there?'

‘Prophecy. Yuh didn't expect her to keep it to herself, did yuh? Yuh were down there getting ore samples the night we dumped yuh on the Highway.' That flicker of a smile again. ‘Something I didn't expect. But you've been down there, that's the point.' He leaned forward, his elbows on the cane arms of his chair. ‘Did yuh see anything that struck yuh as unusual, anything odd?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Hell!' he said. ‘Yuh must have seen something. Yuh were pretty shaken, Prophecy said – and yuh didn't seem to want to talk about it.'

‘You'd be shaken if you'd been down there,' I told him. ‘I was on my own and another cave-in could occur at any time.' But I think he knew it wasn't that, for he was staring at me very intently, waiting, and I was remembering the footprints, the strange atmosphere in that third level. ‘What are you getting at?' I asked, suddenly certain he knew something I didn't.

‘Garrety,' he said. ‘I want to know what he's up to down there.'

‘Didn't Prophecy tell you?'

‘Oh, sure. He's found the reef. There were a couple of prospectors and some truckers in the night Prophecy passed your quartz samples round the bar. By now just about everybody in WA must know he's found the reef again. So what's the point of him going on working down there on his own?'

‘You'd better ask him.'

‘I'm asking yuh. The samples yuh took came from a side gallery, Prophecy said. Beyond a rock fall, that right?'

I nodded, wondering what he was getting at, seeing the white of the quartz again, remembering the feeling of near-panic that had come over me.

‘What caused the fall?' And when I told him the rock was badly faulted, the fall almost certainly the site of the 1939 cave-in, he said, ‘Look. We were down there last night and his Land-Rover was parked up the gully. When we reached the mine entrance we were faced with that Alsatian of his, barking its head off. Then he came out, all covered in dust and looking like a bloody Cyclops with his miner's lamp blazing in the darkness. I didn't see the gun at first, but I know the sound of a bolt slamming a round into the breech, too right I do. What's he so scared about?'

‘Prospectors – people like you.' But he shook his head and I sat there staring at him, a ghastly thought in my mind, for there was a curious tension in him, an undercurrent of excitement. ‘He owns the mine, so you can't claim.' Silence and the thought growing in my mind. ‘You're McIlroy's nephew, aren't you?' He was suddenly very still, his mouth clamped shut. ‘And you're from Sydney.'

‘Wot if I am?' The crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened, his voice hard and flat.

‘You must be all of forty and you've never been in the Pilbara in your life before, never shown the slightest interest in your uncle's death. Why now?'

‘That's my business.'

‘And you came here from Darwin, straight out of hospital. So it's something you learned in hospital – either there or in Vietnam.' I was guessing and the expression in his eyes told me I was right. ‘What is it? What was it made you come down here and get a job as near to Jarra Jarra as you could?'

He got up then, coming towards me, and now the tension showed in his eyes. I didn't move and he stood there, staring down at me. ‘S'pose McIlroy never went into the Gibson?' He leaned down, his face close to mine. ‘S'pose he died right here?'

It was out now, the thought in my mind put into words, and Westrop staring at me, trembling slightly like a hound on the scent. ‘No,' I said firmly. ‘You know where his truck was found. He died somewhere to the east of Lake Disappointment.'

He nodded. ‘That's the story.'

‘You don't believe it.'

‘No.' He was still standing over me, but more relaxed as he said slowly, ‘Yuh see, when he left Nullagine, he didn't go into the Gibson. He came here.'

‘How do you know?'

He hesitated. ‘Okay, I'll tell yuh. It was a man called Gray. Tommy Gray. He was in the hospital bed next to mine and all one night he was rambling on about his childhood here. His father was the doctor in this shire, so what he said was dinkum, and one of the things he was on about was Pat McIlroy's death.'

‘And McIlroy came here?'

‘That's what Tommy said.'

‘Why?'

‘I don't know why. He just did, that's all.'

‘Gray's dead, is he?'

‘Yes. Died the following night, a Cong knife wound in the guts that had turned septic.'

‘In other words he was delirious.'

‘Of course he was delirious. Otherwise, he'd never have talked the way he did. Oh to hell with it!' he added angrily. ‘Yuh wouldn't understand. We didn't have any of yuh Pommies in that war. Yuh don't know what it was like, and if I told yuh he was screaming like an injured rabbit part of the time …' He took a step towards me, leaning his face close again and gripping my arm. ‘Wot's Garrety doing down that mine? Now come on, be fair. Either he's mad, like his father, or he's trying to cover something up. They never found McIlroy's body, did they?'

‘You don't really care what happened to him.' I said it harshly. It was the Monster, of course. It was McIlroy's Monster that had brought him here, the will o' the wisp lure of a mountain of copper. It had to be. And Westrop looking at me with a little smile and saying, ‘No, I guess you're right. I don't give a damn. But that doesn't mean …' He was interrupted by the rattle of the beaded flyscreen and he turned, his body blocking my view. ‘Did yuh find him?' he asked. And another voice answered, ‘Sure I did. But getting it out of him wasn't so easy. Like Wolli said, he's a bit gone in the head.'

Westrop moved then and I saw it was Lenny, the wrinkled mummified face cracking in a grin as he looked across at me. ‘So you're back eh? I told Phil you would be.'

Beyond the beaded curtain I could see Wolli hovering, a black shadow in the sun. ‘What's this all about?' I asked, getting to my feet.

Kennie had moved in closer, the two of us facing them. Westrop hesitated. And Lenny said, ‘It was Wolli put us on to him. An old black, bin living here ever since he got his skull cracked in that cave-in. They call him Half-Bake. Wollie thought there was another way into the mine.' He looked at Westrop and nodded. ‘He was right, too.'

He wouldn't say where the entrance was, but he admitted it hadn't been used for maybe forty years. ‘You must be mad,' I told him. ‘That mine's a death trap. And to go into it by a disused entrance …'

‘No business of yours,' Westrop said, and I saw his mind was made up and nothing I could do would dissuade him. And then, as he was following Lenny out to the patio, he turned. ‘If we don't meet up with Garrety down the mine, tell him I'll be back. And I'll know the truth by then. Yuh tell him that. And don't try to follow us, see.' He nodded and ducked out through the flyscreen, leaving us standing there.

Shortly afterwards we heard the sound of their truck driving off. It was only then I started for the Land-Rover. But when we reached it the back tyres were almost flat, the air still hissing out. ‘Nice friends you have.' Kennie's voice shook as he bent to examine the knife slits plainly visible.

There was no other vehicle available, the ute not there and the aged Land-Rover in the workshop by the petrol pump with the battery flat and the fuel line broken. We started out to search the rest of the buildings for the old miner, but we didn't find him. We found where he had been, in a half-derelict hut on the far side of the compound across which the aborigine girl had run so swiftly. The hut was surrounded by the debris of human life, plastic bottles and rusting cans with the flies swarming; inside it was a slum with nobody there. We searched all the buildings, but there wasn't an aborigine on the place, and though we called his name, and that of the girl, there was no answer, the whole settlement utterly deserted.

We went to work on the Land-Rover then, cursing the flies as we sweated at tyre levers hot as branding irons. We were in the process of getting the covers back on when Janet's voice brought me round in my heels. She was shouting at me, her face white with tiredness, her eyes blazing. She seemed to be accusing me of something, but in the exhaustion of working in the heat after a sleepless night my mind was slow to grasp what it was about. I just sat back on my heels and let her tongue lash over me, until at last it dawned on me that the old abo must have gone running to her and she thought we were responsible for scaring him out of what wits he had.

When I told her it was two miners from Nullagine, she didn't argue. She didn't apologize either. She just seemed to accept it, and though she calmed down, she was still breathing heavily as though she had run a marathon in the heat, her nostrils quivering and the skin below the eyes and around the mouth very white. I got to my feet then. I thought she was going to pass out. She put her hand up to her forehead, wiped ineffectually at the caked dust, and then abruptly sat down on the ground. ‘I was on Cleo,' she murmured. ‘All the way to the mine. Then back. And Sarah met me.'

The old man was the girl's uncle. I hadn't realized that. ‘She said two white men, and when I saw you here …' She closed her eyes. ‘Why? What were they after?'

‘Another way into the mine.' Her eyes were fixed on me, very large, as I explained how they had tried to get into Golden Soak the previous night.

She nodded wearily. ‘I knew something had happened. I went to bed about eleven and he still hadn't come back. He's been down there every day since you left. And this morning, the house silent and his room empty, the bed not slept in.' She leaned her head in her hands. ‘What is it?' It was a question aimed at herself more than me. ‘It's not money. He's never given a damn about money. I've had to look after that. What is it?' She was staring up at me again, her lips trembling. ‘He's been so strange.' And then she said, ‘I was out all day yesterday with the boys – another bunch they'd found, up by the Deadman Hill. I was beat.' She leaned forward. ‘Miners, you said – what do they want?' And then suddenly urgent – ‘Were they the ones who were here before?'