Fear Is the Rider (6 page)

Before they'd gone fifty metres the rear wheels had sunk to the axles and the front wheels were spinning helplessly on the sand.

Shaw revved the motor furiously for a moment until he realised that all he was doing was digging the wheels deeper. He switched off the motor, threw open the door and stepped out of the car. He walked around it trying to ignore the literal weight of the sun on his head and arms. The front wheels, the driving wheels, had flung away the top surface of stones but seemed to be resting on a fairly hard patch of sand. They could still pull. The rear wheels had dropped into a soft patch.

Shaw became aware that Katie was beside him.

‘If we jack up the rear wheels it might pull out,' he said.

They both looked back at the sand ridge to the east. Somewhere behind that the Land Cruiser was rolling inexorably towards them. How far away was it: ten minutes, fifteen minutes?

Shaw took one moment to look around him. The sand ridge ran from north to south, from horizon to horizon. To the west the plain spread like a giant half-plate. The sky, white with heat, lay clamped over the earth like a vast lampshade, the light in its centre the impossibly brilliant, burning lethal sun.

Shaw took the key from the ignition and opened the rear hatch of the Honda. He'd only had the car six months and had never used the jack. He rummaged in the debris of travel in the carrying section behind the rear seat until he found it. It was a model he'd never seen before, two triangles around a spiral rod, but its function was obvious enough. It took him another minute to find the handle.

‘Get in the car and start the motor.' He said to Katie. ‘Turn the air-conditioning on.'

After only minutes in the sun Shaw could feel its rays penetrating his skull. He'd never worn a hat in his life and hadn't thought about buying one for the trip from Sydney to Adelaide.

He set the jack up under the rear bumper bar, inserted the handle and began to turn. The head rose up to meet the bumper bar and he felt the extra pressure. Katie had started the motor and the car was shaking gently. He kept turning the handle rapidly. The base of the jack sank steadily into the sand, but the car didn't budge.

‘Shit!'

Shaw wound the jack down until it was free of the bumper bar. He cast around the ground close by until he found a fairly large, flat gibber. He shoved it under the jack and began to wind furiously. In a few moments the car began to rise slowly, the rear wheels clearing the sand. Shaw scrabbled at the gibbers and piled them under the wheels. He raised the car about fifteen centimetres before he reached the limit of the jack. More gibbers under the wheels, shoving them in as tight as he could.

He looked over his shoulder. There was nothing on the sand ridge. How long did he have? Four minutes? Five? If he tried to take the car off now, the odds were, it would sink again. If he jacked it further, it would take more time. He made the decision even while he was thinking about the problem. Quickly winding the jack down until it cleared the bumper bar he let the rear wheels settle on the bed of stones he'd pushed under them. More flat gibbers, three in a pile under the centre of the bumper bar. Set the jack on them, start winding. The car rising slowly. Shove more gibbers under the wheels. The car was almost level.

Head down winding the jack, Shaw could feel faintness touching the edge of his brain. He stood up.

‘Put it in first gear and take off slowly,' he shouted to Katie. ‘I'll shove from the back.'

He heard the gears click into position and the rising beat of the motor.

‘Take it gently!' he shouted, and began shoving at the rear of the car, both hands against the burning metal, leaning forward and thrusting with all his strength, his feet slipping on the stones.

He sensed the Land Cruiser before he saw it. Then, straining to move the Honda, he turned and saw the brown vehicle stop on the sand ridge, pausing, hovering as the driver took in the scene below.

‘Take it away!' he screamed at Katie. The Honda began to roll forward as the front wheels bit. The rear wheels sent the pile of gibbers beneath them flying back on either side of Shaw. He stopped shoving, grabbed the jack and the handle and ran to the passenger side of the car. The door was open and he fell in.

‘Drive,' he shouted, ‘drive for the track!'

The Land Cruiser was racing down the slope of the sand ridge. The Honda's front wheels were biting on the surface and Katie put her foot down. It reached the track travelling at sixty kilometres an hour in first gear. The Land Cruiser was at the bottom of the sand ridge, on the track, bearing down on them seventy metres away. They could see it clearly for the dust-free moment before Katie swung on to the track. The driver was just a shape behind the stone-starred windscreen.

Katie heard Shaw shouting.

‘Faster, faster. For Christ's sake faster!' He switched off the air-conditioning.

Katie slammed the Honda straight into second gear without taking her foot off the accelerator and the little car leaped forward along the track. The Land Cruiser was almost on them: Shaw could see its shape through the dust barely a metre or two behind.

The Honda's speedometer rose over the eighty mark and the two vehicles raced down the track as though they were locked together. Even at that distance the dust must have hidden the Honda from the driver of the Land Cruiser, but he kept driving hard into the whirling obscurity. The only thing he could hit was the Honda.

Katie could feel the gibbers hitting the underside of the Honda with such force that it seemed they must come through the thin metal. Showers of stones were flying from the back wheels, chipping the duco off the Land Cruiser and pitting every inch of the windscreen.

The Honda went to a hundred in second gear and began to pull away from the Land Cruiser. Shaw, sitting twisted in his seat, still clutching the jack and the handle, could see nothing but dust behind. Katie went through to third gear. Suddenly there was a smoother patch of track and the speedometer quickly rose to a hundred and twenty. Katie went into top gear. They knew they were moving well ahead of the Land Cruiser but both had the overwhelming sense that it was there, just behind them, a hurtling weight of deadly metal poised to crush them the moment the Honda faltered in its flight.

They drove like that for half an hour without speaking.

‘What's that?' said Katie eventually.

Ahead was a wide, dark patch to the left of the track. It seemed to be almost on the horizon, a black mass in the shifting white and red blurred edge of the desert.

‘Scrub?' said Shaw.

‘It's trees,' said Katie. An apparently inexplicable patch of fairly tall trees stretching about a hundred metres from the track was growing in the desert, the only break in the desolate flatness stretching ahead and around them.

‘There's something moving there,' said Katie, as they bore down on the tress. An animal, perhaps, she thought, not daring to voice the hope she suddenly felt.

The track was growing worse; huge drifts of stones were catching the front wheels and forcing the car from side to side.

‘It's a man,' said Shaw suddenly.

It was. A man. Standing motionless now. Something long in his hands. There was no sign of a vehicle.

‘He's got a gun!' shouted Shaw excitedly. ‘A gun!'

Katie could see clearly now. It was a man about a hundred metres ahead, standing watching their approach, a gun in his hands pointing at the ground.

The rear offside tyre blew out.

The Honda hit a deep rut, bounced high in the air, and landed with the tyre against a large stone. Half the tyre disintegrated into fragments and the rest just fell off the wheel.

The car lurched wildly across the track while Katie fought the wheel, took her foot off the accelerator and let the car slow almost to a halt.

‘Keep going,' said Shaw.

‘But the wheel…'

‘Blast the wheel. Get to that man. He's got a gun, I tell you,
a gun
.'

Katie changed to first gear and, weaving erratically as the tyreless wheel pulled to the left, drove towards the man.

Shaw tried to look back, but there was too much dust.

‘He's got to be a long way behind us, a long way,' he said.

Katie said nothing. Her hands were white, clenched on the protesting steering wheel.

The man with the gun was an Aborigine, or part-Aborigine. He was dressed in khaki trousers and shirt and wore a wide-brimmed cowboy hat. The trees, sparser than they had seemed at a distance, were growing around a shallow looking patch of water. It was one of the artesian soaks which occur in the desert: water from the Great Dividing Range, seeping underground for thousands of years, finally emerging salty and hot to nourish tiny patches of sand.

A couple of waterbirds hanging from the Aborigine's belt explained the gun. A motorcycle was leaning against a nearby tree.

A long horseshoe-shaped side track ran off the main track to the waterhole, then back to the main track, farther west. Katie turned into the side track and drove the last twenty metres to the Aborigine.

He was standing in exactly the same position as he had been from the moment they saw him, apparently struck motionless with astonishment at the sight of the improbable little car limping towards him on three tyres.

When Shaw flung open the door and leaped from the car the Aborigine backed away a little. A short, wiry man, he seemed about thirty years old, but there was grey stubble on his chin.

Shaw walked towards him holding out his hands, palm upwards, in some sort of instinctive pleading gesture.

‘Listen'—he knew he was gabbling but he couldn't help it—‘listen. Please. There isn't much time. There's a maniac chasing us. I don't know why…don't ask me to explain…I need that gun. Will you help me…please?'

The Aborigine backed away, the birds at his belt swaying helplessly. He raised the gun—it was an old double-barrelled shotgun—a little, as though half considering using it to protect himself. His mouth under the wide, spreading nose hung slightly open. His eyes were staring.

Katie came out of the car and stood beside Shaw. She put her hand restrainingly on his arm.

‘Shh,' she said. Then gently to the Aborigine: ‘Look there—you see that dust?' She gestured behind her. Far away in the heat shimmer, the dust of a vehicle was spiralling into the sky. ‘There is a man in that truck who has been trying to kill us.' She swallowed and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself because she knew she had to persuade the Aborigine that she was sane. ‘He's been trying to run us down. That's a Land Cruiser and it would crush this car. We can't get past him and this car'—she gestured at the Honda—‘won't get through to Obiri. Look at the tyre. Please would you let us have your gun, or stay and help us?'

The Aborigine backed a little farther away and shook his head in bewilderment.

‘What do you mean,' he said, ‘trying to kill you?' He spoke in the nasal tones of any outback Australian.

‘He's mad,' said Shaw. ‘He attacked this…this lady, and I picked her up and he stole her car and he's trying to kill us. Please try to understand.' He moved a step forward. The Aborigine moved farther back, waving the gun vaguely.

‘I don't understand,' he said. ‘Why is this man trying to kill you?'

‘We don't know,' said Shaw. ‘He must be a lunatic. But he is, and now we're stranded with that tyre gone. He'll be here in a few minutes.'

The Aborigine looked blankly at Shaw, then at Katie. ‘Why don't you go on up to the house?' he said.

‘The house?' said Shaw.

‘Where I work. Where the Hawkins live. The hotel.'

‘Where is it?' said Katie.

‘Up the track. An hour, if you go fast.'

‘What's the track like?' asked Katie, her mind racing to calculate how long it would take to change the tyre.

‘Pretty bad,' said the Aborigine. ‘Hard to get there in that.' He gave a half grin at the Honda.

‘Well, what about it?' said Shaw. ‘Can we have the gun?'

The Aborigine sidled across to his motorcycle. ‘No, mate,' he said. ‘I need this gun.' The gun had a strap and the Aborigine looped it over his shoulder and mounted the motorcycle.

‘Please,' said Katie. ‘Just don't leave us here. Leave us the gun.'

The Aborigine shook his head, avoiding their eyes now.

‘I need it,' he said meaninglessly. ‘You go up to the house.' He began kicking at the starter of the motorcycle. The motor did not respond.

‘Listen,' said Shaw desperately, ‘I'll buy the gun from you. Will you sell it?'

The Aborigine stopped kicking at the starter and looked directly at Shaw, his expression at once doubtful and cunning.

‘How much?' he said.

Katie tried to speak but Shaw cut across her.

‘How much do you want—a hundred dollars, two hundred?' He knew even as he spoke that he was being absurd.

‘A hundred would be plenty,' said Katie quickly.

The Aborigine looked at them both and gave an unpleasant grin. He looked over their shoulder to the east. Both of them turned and followed his gaze. The dust cloud didn't seem to have moved much but it was obviously still coming towards them.

‘Your friend will be here soon,' said the Aborigine.

A surge of vicious hatred swelled from the pit of Shaw's stomach to his throat. He took a step forward, fists clenched, then stopped. The Aborigine slightly shifted the gun on his shoulder.

‘Will you sell me the gun?' said Shaw, his jaw jutting stiffly. ‘The gun and some cartridges. Will you sell?'

‘Sure,' said the Aborigine. ‘Two hundred and fifty dollars.'

Katie started to say something but again Shaw cut across her.

‘All right. All right,' he said. ‘Two hundred and fifty dollars.' He'd never fired a gun in his life but he knew that with a shotgun in his hands and the trees to shelter behind, he and Katie would be safe from both the man and the truck.