The Golden Soak (34 page)

‘And the copper deposit?' I asked.

‘A chance, that's all,' he said. ‘Like you drilling at Golden Soak. We're all of us gamblers, y'know.'

‘You're not certain then.'

‘About what?'

‘That it's here.'

‘How could I be?'

‘So McIlroy never saw it.'

He shook his head slowly. ‘All he ever had was the rough position given him by a black feller.' And when I asked him how an abo could possibly have known what copper looked like in the ground, he said the man had been employed at one of the mines near Nullagine. And he went on to repeat the story of how the aborigine had been walkabout in the Gibson and had come into the bank to trade the information for cash. And after that he closed right up on me, wouldn't say another word and went off to give Tom a hand.

That night we had bully beef and damper and thick sweet Indian tea. And afterwards the four of us sat for a while by the glowing ashes of the cook fire, Ed Garrety slumped in a camp chair and Kennie questioning Tom about the desert people and their spirits. But Tom was a Pukara. His parents had lived and died in the Turee Creek area halfway between Jarra Jarra and what is now the iron mining township of Tom Price. He had only met the desert people – the Ngatatjara he called them – when he had been walkabout, crossing the Gibson Desert to the Clutterbucks. He had done this twice as a young man, the second time to attend a corroboree at Ayers Rock. ‘Before me talk'im desert people. Forget'im plenty.' And his broad black face cracked in a grin that showed his broken front teeth. But he knew the names for the ghosts of their dead that haunt the desert at night. ‘Call'im
mamu
.' He cocked his head on one side, affecting to listen, hugging himself with laughter. ‘Plenty
mamu
, but keep'im far going, no trouble us.' And then he was telling a long story about a
mamu
that had taken the shape of a watersnake. It was I think a story from the Dreamtime of his own people, but it was complicated and I was too tired to follow his uncertain English. The last of the firelight flickered and died, my head nodding.

The back of our Land-Rover was fusty with the smell of sand and our own sweat. We slept in the open that night, a small breeze blowing hot from the north-west, no flies and the stars shedding a ghostly light on the desert around us. It was very quiet. I had a last cigarette, wondering what we'd find in the morning, and then I fell into a deep sleep. Something woke me shortly after two, but I was too tired to lift my head, glancing at the gold hunter tied to my handkerchief and falling asleep again in the same moment, vaguely conscious of a sound fading. And then the sunrise hit me, heat again and flies crawling on my face, seeking the moisture of eyes and nostrils.

I sat up, bleary-eyed, still half asleep, my limbs cramped by the hardness of the sand. A large centipede was feeling its way over my feet, a reptile slithering sluggishly to the shelter of a brittle bare bush. Nature called and I got up, walking a few yards before relieving myself. Kennie stirred as I came back, stretching himself. ‘Christ! It's hot.' He sat up then, his face burned red beneath the beard, his eyes looking wildly about him. ‘Where's that Rover gone?'

I thought he was still half asleep, the Land-Rover right in front of us, not a dozen yards away. But then he was on his feet, moving to get a clear view beyond it and suddenly I realized what he meant. There was just our own vehicle there, the other had gone. He pushed his hand up through his tousled hair. ‘When did he go? I didn't hear him.'

I stood there for a moment, too surprised to do anything but stare vacantly at the empty desert. ‘Something woke me. Just after two.'

‘You saw him go?'

‘Of course not. Something woke me, that's all. I was dead asleep again before I'd time to think about it.'

We walked to where his Land-Rover had been, the tracks of it clear in the sand heading east.

‘What do we do now?'

‘Follow him,' I said.

‘In this heat? You're joking.' He turned to me, his eyes still wild, his voice trembling. ‘Playing hide-and-seek in the desert like this. Are you mad?'

I turned then, a sudden premonition sending me stumbling back to our own Land-Rover. The bonnet catches were undone, a sheet of paper lying white below the steering wheel. I grabbed it.
Sorry, but I didn't ask for your company. You'll have to wait here. Back in two days
.

‘What is it? What's he say?'

I handed Kennie the pencilled scrawl and lifted the bonnet. The distributor head was off, trailing its four cables, and the rotor arm was gone.

We had no spare, of course, and I stood there helpless, wondering why the hell he had done it. To immobilize us, yes. But why was he so determined to be on his own?
We are all of us gamblers
. I remembered his voice, slow and tired, but if he found the Monster he must know he couldn't keep it to himself. A copper mine in the desert wasn't something like Golden Soak. To develop it would require big company finance. Kennie was swearing softly to himself. ‘Two days,' he muttered. ‘Two goddammed blistering days. And not a thing we can do about it.'

‘No.' We'd just have to stick it out.

‘And how do we know he'll be back?'

‘He could hardly leave us to fry here indefinitely.'

‘Oh, I don't doubt he intends to come back. But will he be able to find us again?'

‘He's got Tom with him. He should be able to backtrack along their own tyremarks.'

‘And suppose there's another sandstorm?'

The thought had occurred to me, but it wasn't one I wanted to dwell on. ‘We'll just have to keep our fingers crossed,' I said lamely.

‘Well, you keep yours crossed. I'm going to see if I can file a piece of metal down and rig a replacement for that rotor arm. And if I succeed, we're getting out. Okay?' And he went to the back of the Land-Rover and began rummaging among the bits and pieces of spares I had picked up in the workshop.

All that day, through the long fly-ridden heat, the rasp of his file sounded as he worked at a piece of brass clamped in a vice on the tailboard, while I lay and dozed in the back. I knew it was no good. Such a small, insignificant thing, but a rotor arm is a machine-made, precision job with the metal contact arm insulated in a barrel of oven-hardened bakelite. But at least it kept him occupied, his mind off the deadly danger of our situation, as the dust devils he called whirlies twisted and twirled in an endless sand dance and the dunes stood on their heads in blinding pools of throbbing heat.

Night came and he sat there, exhausted, the glow of his cigarette lighting his face. ‘It won't work. I can't get it accurate enough, and I've nothing to make the barrel outa.'

‘We'll just have to wait,' I said. A week I had told Janet. ‘If he doesn't come back tomorrow, then we've only two more days before they send out a search party.'

‘A fine job they'll have, searching for our tracks under a fresh layer of sand! But the plane may come back.'

‘Perhaps.'

Nothing to do but wait. I thought of the desert war, men frying in tanks, living like nomads and fighting in the heat. I had only just been born then, but Rosa's father had been with the Desert Rats. We had talked about it over the port the few times I had visited him. I had read about it, too. If they could stand it, then so could we. But it's different when you've no organization behind you, nothing to do but wait, and all the time that secret niggling fear that nobody will bother and you'll be left to die of thirst. I checked the water before I turned in, doing it surreptitiously. We had 20 gallons at least. And though it was tepid and tasted of metal, it was enough to see us through if Janet did what I had asked.

That night, as the sun set, the sandhills ceased their heat-throb dance and colour crept back into the landscape, the temperature dropping back towards the hundred and the atmosphere clearing, so that our world of blinding, desiccated emptiness had form again and beauty, a terrible lonely beauty, but still beauty, with its shades of red and gold and the translucent unbelievable green of the eastern sky. But for the heat and isolation, the extreme discomfort of our situation, I could have sat there everlastingly entranced, believing it to be the most breathtakingly beautiful sight I had ever seen. Instead, it was a sort of frozen hell, all that red and gold, and the sun a great disc blazing on the lip of the desert, sinking till its lower rim touched the horizon, melting along it like some great steel mould pouring molten metal. There was a movement away to the east, a drifting of strange shapes. Emus. There must have been a hundred in that flock, flowing northward like a dark tide merging with the lengthening shadows.

‘Must be water somewhere,' Kennie muttered.

Night fell and we watched the stars grow brighter, lying sprawled beside the glowing ashes of our fire, plagued by ants and too exhausted to sleep. And in the morning, nothing to do but wait, with the heat building and the sand moving with the midday wind, the dust devils swaying to their twisting sand dance, mirages turning the desert upside down. It was a long day that frayed our nerves. Too tired to talk, we just lay fending off the flies, hating ourselves and the desert, frustrated beyond endurance. And then, as colour flooded back into that deadly waste of petrified sandhills, sound invaded the desert silence. It was a long way away, but we both of us knew what it was, both of us starting to our feet, searching the sky to the west.

Nothing. Nothing but the blaze of the slanting sun – blinding. Kennie seized his shirt and started up the sandhill behind us. I followed him, the sound of the plane growing as I stumbled up the slope, needle-sharp spines of spinifex pricking my bare knees. I reached the top and there it was, to the north of us, a flash of sunlight on its fuselage and Kennie waving his shirt frantically. But it kept going, flying eastward at about 1,000 feet.

We watched it as it dwindled, the sound of it fading. ‘He never saw us.' Kennie's body seemed to sag, his arms limp and the shirt dangling. ‘Christ all bloody mighty! The bastard wasn't even looking.'

‘He was flying a course,' I said.

‘But he'll come back. He's got to come back. Quick! A bush signal.' He was suddenly galvanized into action, running down the slope, back to the Land-Rover.

I stayed there, watching. The sound of it died in the distance, but it was still visible, a speck and dropping to the horizon, and then it was gone. But only for a moment. I saw it again, much lower. It had banked, searching low down along the desert rim. I called to Kennie to take a bearing, but he couldn't see it from where he was. He had one of the jerricans out of the back of the Land-Rover, a rag in his hand. I yelled at him to bring me my compass, my eyes concentrated on the plane. ‘The compass,' I screamed at him.

The plane was still there, circling low down, when he thrust it into my hand. The bearing was 112° magnetic, the distance – what? Ten miles? Fifteen? It was difficult to tell. I slipped the compass into my pocket and stood waiting, the old gold hunter in my hand, holding it up so that I could see it and still keep my eyes on the plane. ‘Twin-engined, wasn't it?'

‘I think so,' he said.

The same plane then. ‘What's its speed?'

But he didn't know. ‘The small Cessnas do about 140, I reck'n.'

Say 160–180. It would be a question of counting the seconds. Out of the tail of my eye I saw him running back down the slope. He reached the jerrican, was soaking the rag in petrol. And then the speck was turning and heading back and my eyes were on my watch, counting aloud as it grew larger, the sound of it faintly audible again.

Fire blazed in a patch of spinifex, the crackle of flames momentarily distracting me. Thick oily smoke began to billow up. But slowly. Too slowly. And the plane a long way to the south of us, climbing steadily. The fire died and the smoke with it. Four minutes. Five. Six. And twenty-thirty-forty seconds. It was due south of us now, still climbing, the sunlight on its wings, but five miles away at least. Fire crackled again in the spinifex, the black smoke rising in a thick cloud. Six minutes forty-five seconds. Allowing for reduction of speed due to the angle of the climb, that made it just over a dozen miles to the point where it had been circling. Say five hours' walking. If Ed Garrety failed to return by nightfall.…

I was almost back at the Land-Rover then, suddenly conscious of Kennie yelling at me, blaming me for the fact that they hadn't seen us. ‘You and your damned compass. If you'd left me to get that fire going …'

‘We know where he is anyway,' I said.

‘And what good's that do? Look at it now!' The fire was racing through the whole area of spinifex, the resinous smoke rolling skyward, a thick black streamer. ‘They'd have seen us.' He was almost crying with exasperation.

‘They couldn't land,' I said wearily. That damned boy! Why couldn't he shut up? ‘Be practical.'

‘You be practical,' he shouted at me. ‘You think you're going to walk it?'

‘Maybe.'

‘You're crazy then. You'd never find him.'

‘Got any better ideas?'

‘If you'd left me to get that signal fired …'

‘Oh, shut up!' I was sick and tired of him. ‘You waste your energies fooling around with a bit of metal. Then you expect a plane to land in this stuff.' I could hear the high trembling in my voice, nerves screaming and the exhaustion of heat wearing my patience. ‘I'm sorry,' I said, forcing myself to speak slowly, rationally. ‘I'm tired, that's all. We're both of us tired.'

‘You can say that again.'

‘We'll have some food – a brew-up. We'll feel better then.'

‘Like hell! We've missed our chance, I tell you.' I could hear his voice cracking.

‘Pull yourself together.'

‘And what about you? Shut up, you tell me. Well, shut up yourself for Chrissakes. I didn't ask to come on this bloody trip.' And he added, his voice still strained to a high pitch, ‘I don't know who's crazier, you or that old man. I want to get out of here. That's all. Out of here, and alive, see.'