Fear Is the Rider (7 page)

‘Okay, mate,' said the Aborigine, and waited.

Shaw dredged his wallet out of his hip pocket. He knew he had nothing like two hundred and fifty dollars in it, but he had a book of fifty-dollar traveller's cheques totalling four hundred and fifty dollars. He quickly counted his cash. Eighty-five dollars.

‘Fifty dollars in cash and two hundred in traveller's cheques,' he said. ‘All right?'

The Aborigine replied with the automatic hostility of the ignorant, ‘No cheques, mate. Cash.'

‘These are traveller's cheques,' said Shaw, waving the book of cheques in the man's face. ‘Traveller's cheques. They're the same as cash once I sign them.'

‘No cheques, mate,' said the Aborigine obstinately. ‘I don't know you. Maybe the cheques are no good.'

‘But these are
traveller's
cheques,' said Shaw desperately, knowing that if the Aborigine were unfamiliar with traveller's cheques he had no real hope of explaining. ‘They're put out by the bank. They're the same as money. Anyone will take them.'

‘I won't,' said the Aborigine. ‘You want the gun, you pay cash.'

‘But I've only got eighty-five dollars in cash,' said Shaw.

The Aborigine shrugged.

Shaw turned to Katie. ‘Have you any money?'

She shook her head. ‘It's all in the truck.'

‘Oh, Christ.' Shaw turned again to the Aborigine. As patiently and as calmly as he could he said, ‘Look, these are traveller's cheques. They're put out by the bank so that they can be cashed anywhere in the world. Anybody, any pub or bank or shop or business, will take them. Can't you understand?'

‘You got no cash, mate?'

‘Only the eighty-five dollars.'

The Aborigine started kicking at the starter again. ‘Sorry, mate.'

‘Wait,' said Shaw. ‘Listen. I'll give you the eighty-five dollars and traveller's cheques for another two hundred. That's two hundred and eighty-five for the bloody gun.'

The Aborigine just shook his head, and kicked at the starter. The motor started.

‘Wait!' shouted Shaw. ‘I'll give you another hundred dollars. Eighty-five dollars in cash and three hundred in traveller's cheques.' He realised the more he offered the more he devalued his offer in the eyes of the Aborigine, but he couldn't help it.

The Aborigine shook his head.

‘Then for Christ's sake wait with us.' Shaw waved toward the Land Cruiser, now clearly visible over the plain, only minutes away. ‘Wait and see what's happening. Please help us.'

The Aborigine eyed the frantic young man and the silent drawn-faced girl, then glanced towards the oncoming Land Cruiser.

‘No, mate. Don't want no trouble. You come on up to the house.' He let in the clutch of the motorcycle and took off, slowly heading east towards Obiri.

Katie and Shaw stared desperately after him for a moment.

‘Come on,' said Katie. ‘We've got time to change the tyre before he gets here.'

Shaw looked towards the Land Cruiser, still some kilometres away but bearing down fast. For the first time since he had left the car he was aware of the heat. They were in the dappled shade of a tree but it made little difference. They both felt as though they were wrapped in hot, drying blankets.

‘Yes,' said Shaw, abstractedly. The jack and the handle were on the floor on the passenger side of the Honda. He took them out, and, remembering to put a flat stone under the base of the jack, began to turn the handle. He could hear the engine of the Land Cruiser now and knew he had no hope of changing the wheel before it caught up with him.

‘We're not going to make this,' he said. ‘We're going to have to fight him.' He stood up, leaving the car partly resting on the jack. In the glove box he had a heavy clasp knife. He found it, opened it and handed it to Katie.

‘You use this,' he said. ‘I'll keep the jack handle.'

She took the knife. It had a shaped wooden handle and a heavy blade about twelve centimetres long. She wondered whether she could thrust it into human flesh; then knew with sudden certainty that she could.

‘He'll probably ram the car, but he won't get us in the truck if we get behind a tree,' said Shaw, as they stood watching the Land Cruiser.

‘He has the axe,' said Katie, strangely calm.

‘There's two of us,' he said. He glanced to the west. The thin spiral of dust from the Aborigine's motorcycle was only a kilometre or so away.

‘That bastard,' said Shaw bitterly.

The Land Cruiser, looking paradoxically harmless and domestic, any country vehicle coming busily down a lonely track, didn't pause as it reached the turnoff to the soak. It went rolling past, bouncing slightly on the stones at eighty-odd kilometres an hour. The driver didn't even turn his head as he drove past. In a moment the Land Cruiser disappeared in front of its own cloud. They stood motionless, gazing after it.

‘He's after the black,' said Shaw at last. ‘That's it. He knows we've broken down and he's gone after the black.'

‘But why?' said Katie. ‘Why the black?'

‘Because he doesn't want any witnesses,' said Shaw. ‘He thinks the black is going to get help or something. Who gives a damn? Let's change that wheel and get the hell out of here. We can get back to Yogabilla.'

He knelt, inserted the handle in the jack and began turning.

It took the Aborigine some time to realise the driver of the Land Cruiser was going to kill him.

When he first saw the vehicle roll past the turnoff to the soak he thought it was just another traveller coming through and that the story the young whites had told him had been nonsense. He was a little puzzled because they had seemed genuinely terrified, but he didn't care much because he didn't see what it had to do with him.

The motorcycle rode easily down a single wheel rut between the stones. The Aborigine stayed at around thirty because he knew that a patch of soft dust could turn his front wheel and bring the machine down.

He began to feel uneasy when he realised how fast the Land Cruiser was travelling. Even a four-wheel-drive vehicle rarely tried to take the track at much over sixty kilometres an hour except in some grave emergency.

He speeded up a little and began to seek some break in the line of stones so that he could pull to the side of the track. The motorcycle couldn't cross the high loose ridges of stones that ran in unbroken lines on either side of the wheel rut he was driving in. He could have stopped and pushed the machine across but he wasn't really alarmed yet. The normal custom of the bush traveller would have been for the four-wheel-drive to pull out into the desert and go round him if the driver wanted to pass. The Aborigine's natural obstinacy disinclined him to make it easy for anybody to pass him. He didn't want to breathe the other's man's dust for the next half-hour.

But when the Land Cruiser was within fifty metres, fear touched the Aborigine and he began to speed up. The Land Cruiser kept coming. The Aborigine realised that he had to get off the track or run the motorcycle flat out. He couldn't get off the track. The line of gibbers held him trapped as long as he was moving at any speed at all. He turned the accelerator handle to its full range and the powerful machine surged forward, quickly reaching eighty, ninety, pulling clear just as the Land Cruiser came up to it. For a moment the bull bars of the Land Cruiser were within centimetres of the rear wheel of the motorcycle. The motorcycle pulled ahead, but riding a motorcycle at ninety on that surface was lethal and the Aborigine knew it. At any moment he had to hit a drift of stones, or soft sand, and there were soaks ahead.

He knew he'd kill himself if he kept that speed, and he knew he'd kill himself if he tried to turn off the track—and he knew the Land Cruiser would kill him if he slowed down. The birds at his waist revolved with wings flapping in macabre imitation of flight.

The shotgun slipped down his arm and began banging against his leg. He tried to shrug it back to his shoulder but he couldn't hold the throbbing handlebars and work the gun. Both barrels were loaded and pointing at his body. He took his right hand off the handlebar for a moment and let the gun fall free. It dropped on to the gibbers and slid across off the track without exploding.

A few moments later he ran into the soak. He knew it was there because he had driven through it a hundred times before, a patch of mud twenty metres wide kept half fluid by the seeping artesian waters. At five kilometres an hour it was just a nuisance, at ninety it was deadly.

The Aborigine had a chance. If he could hold the machine steady it could clear the mud, but if the front wheel deviated a fraction to either side, the machine would go into a wide uncontrollable skid. The Land Cruiser was barely thirty metres behind him.

He went hard into the soak, accelerating desperately, trying to fling the machine over the narrow strip of mud. The front wheel turned almost as soon as it hit the mud. The machine went over on its side and in a great burst of muddy spray, machine and man slewed across the soak.

The motor was still running when the machine stopped sliding. The Aborigine wasn't even badly hurt, just trapped by one leg under the motorcycle.

The Land Cruiser hit him in the next second.

The Aborigine saw nothing except a wall of grey mud, jagged at the top, as the Land Cruiser raced through the soak. The bull bar behind the mud caught him on the forehead and the Land Cruiser rolled over him, driving him and his motorcycle and the ducks at his belt deep into the mud.

The Land Cruiser stopped just the other side of the soak, its windscreen wipers working at the film of mud on the windscreen, turned around, then came back through the soak slowly running the two offside wheels over the mess of machine, man and blood in the grey mud.

Then it began moving fast back along the track to Yogabilla.

The dust of the Land Cruiser had hidden all this from Katie and Shaw as they worked on the wheel. They only knew the Land Cruiser was coming back when they heard its motor.

‘Get the spare out of the back,' Shaw said when the Land Cruiser went off after the Aborigine, ‘and the wheel brace.'

Katie dropped the clasp knife and opened the hatch door of the Honda and rummaged among the clothing and books that littered the rear section. The spare tyre was under a rubber mat, bolted to the chassis. She found the wheel brace, loosened the bolt and hauled the spare wheel out.

Shaw had the tyreless wheel off the ground. The rims were badly buckled. He grabbed the wheel brace from Katie and began to loosen the wheel nuts. The wheel turned under the pressure and he cursed himself for not loosening the nuts before he jacked up the car.

‘Hold the wheel,' he said. Katie knelt beside him and held the wheel firm. He loosened the four nuts and he and Katie spun them off the bolts by hand.

Shaw rolled the spare wheel into place, but the car was not high enough and it wouldn't fit. Shaw swore again and rapidly turned the jack handle. The car rose another few centimetres into the air. Now they could hear the engine of the Land Cruiser.

‘He's coming back!' said Katie.

Shaw shoved the spare wheel into place and Katie spun the nuts finger-tight. Swiftly Shaw shoved the wheel brace over the nuts and wrenched hard.

The Land Cruiser was half a kilometre away, visible now through the settling dust.

‘In, quick!' shouted Shaw. They abandoned the damaged wheel but Shaw grabbed the jack and the handle, more as a weapon now. He took the driver's seat and started the motor. The Land Cruiser was almost at the first turning from the track to the soak.

‘Go! Go!' screamed Katie.

Shaw paused, hoping to lure the driver of the Land Cruiser into taking the first turning off the track towards the soak. That would have enabled them to go out the other way and turn to Yogabilla.

But the Land Cruiser didn't pause; it came on down the track to the second turnoff.

‘For God's sake go!' shouted Katie. ‘What are you waiting for?'