The Golden Soak (40 page)

‘You,' I said. I didn't want to face Janet, not yet – not until I'd got this claim pegged and had been into the Gibson again.

He nodded. ‘You start on the trenches then. I'll be back in time to give you a hand with the corner pegs. At least we'll get those in before dark.' He was already offloading the timber, and then, as he started to get in behind the wheel, he paused. ‘Any message?'

I shook my head. What the hell message could I send her? And as I stood watching him drive off the shoulder into the gully, I was thinking that it hurt that she hadn't written, hadn't even bothered to answer my letters.

He was back just as I had hammered in the last corner peg and was starting on the intermediary trenches. ‘No fence posts,' he said. ‘But I got some shed timbers.'

‘You saw her, did you?'

He nodded, staring at me rather strangely.

‘Is she all right?'

‘Yes, she's all right.' But he didn't sound very sure.

‘You told her what we were doing?'

‘Yes. She said we could do what the hell we liked. It didn't make any difference and she didn't care now.'

‘Did you tell her we were pegging it for Jarra Jarra?'

‘Sure. But I don't think it registered.' He hesitated, still with that strange look in his eyes. ‘Tell you the truth,' he said, ‘she seemed sort of dried-up inside.'

‘How do you mean?'

He shrugged. ‘Oh, I dunno. Scared maybe – about the cattle, the future. But she seemed dazed, half dead if you like –'sthough nothing mattered any more. But she let me take all I needed from one of the old sheds.'

If I hadn't been so anxious to get the claim registered, I'd have driven up to the homestead myself. As it was, we went right on into the dark, working by the Land-Rover's headlights. We finished pegging just after ten, had some food and started straight away, headed for Marble Bar.

Driving through the night along that ribbed highway, I had plenty of time to think about what Kennie had told me. The hell of it was Coondewanna still had to be proved, and the Monster, even if we found it, would take years to develop. Mining prospects don't bring rain. They don't put green growth back into a drought-ridden land. And all the wealth in the world cannot bring a dead man to life again.

Dried-up inside
Kennie had described her, and now that I was in the outback again I could appreciate how she must feel, the loneliness of her solitary life eating into her like a canker, destroying the natural resilience of youth. God knows, I now knew what loneliness was like, but strangely enough, the loneliness of a prison cell is quite different from the loneliness of a vast empty country. There is a curious protectiveness in four walls. Prison shuts you off from the world outside. Here, in this dusty, arid, desert world, the exposure to elemental forces was total and crushing.

I was tired when we finally got into Marble Bar. We both were, for the ribbed dirt road and the speed at which we'd been driving had made it difficult to sleep. Trucks and Land-Rovers were parked both sides of the sloped tarmac of the main street and there was a queue for breakfast at the Ironclad. There was a crowd, too, gathered outside the Mines Department building, waiting for the office to open. We parked just off the tarmac at the bottom of the slope and cooked our breakfast. I didn't notice Culpin until we had joined the queue of prospectors and he came out after registering his claim. He had Smithie with him and he walked straight past us, a quick sideways glance of his eyes the only sign of recognition.

It was almost eleven by the time we were through. The crowd of vehicles had thinned by then, but a Chev ute was backed close up against our roo guard, Culpin leaning against it, waiting for us. ‘Claimed above Golden Soak, did you?' And when I didn't say anything, he added, ‘Too bad. I missed it by a day. Remember?' He was smiling, trying to be friendly. ‘Smithie here reckons you're lucky. The Swede said the same.' He came away from the side of the ute. ‘What about the Gibson? You goin' to be lucky there, too?'

‘What do you want?' I asked him.

‘We could team up,' he said, his eyes squinted against the sun-glare from the tarmac. ‘I know that desert country. You don't.' And he added, as though it made a difference, ‘I got the use of a helicopter, when I want it.' He waited, watching me, his legs straddled and his hands thrust into his belt. A big survey truck roared past us. ‘All right,' he said. ‘But I'm warning you. You try and go into the Gibson without me and I'll make dam' sure you never get beyond the Soaks. For your own good,' he added, thrusting his head forward.

Out of the tail of my eye I saw Kennie suddenly very tense, his face white with anger. ‘You t-try that, Pa, and I'll …' He checked himself, and then with more control: ‘The Monster doesn't belong to you. It belongs to –'

‘Belongs to nobody till a claim's registered. You know that as well as I do.' He had swung round and was facing his son. ‘If Alec wants to risk his life, that's his concern. No reason for you to risk yours. You stay here. Understand?'

‘That's for him to decide,' I said.

‘No, it bloody isn't. I'm his father and he does what I tell him. Right?' He wasn't looking at me. He was watching Kennie and I think he knew this was the moment when the boy would finally rebel, for he went on quickly: ‘Now you listen to me, boy. A man's already lost his life out there. Mebbe it wasn't Alec's fault. But he was alone with him at the time, and as I told his daughter, when a fortune's at stake men don't always act the way they should.'

‘You told Janet Garrety that?' I should have beaten the daylights out of the bastard there and then, but I was too appalled to do anything.

And then Kennie stepped forward and was standing there between me and his father, his body literally trembling with fury. ‘You ch-cheapen everything,' he stammered. ‘You and that man Kadek. You t-talk of a f-fortune. You can't think beyond your pocket. You've never understood there are other things in life. That's what's wrong with this country. It was men like you slaughtered the blacks, destroyed the ecology so that most of the land's now desert. First the sheep, and now minerals.' And he went on, the words pouring out of him, his lean body tense, ‘You don't b-bloody understand the word ecology. You can't see that it's people like you that'll destroy Australia. Take, take, take … you never think of giving. You never have. Well, let me t-tell you this – the reason I'm going with Alec is because if he finds it he'll do what Ed Garrety would have done. He'll use the money to enrich the land, not himself. It'll go to Janet and she'll carry out her father's wishes. You understand?'

Culpin was staring at him open-mouthed. ‘You believe that,' he muttered. And then he thrust his head forward, his small eyes glaring. ‘So he's pulled the wool over your eyes the way he did Les Freeman. You can't kid me, boy. The Gibson's tough and nobody goes into it unless there's money in it.'

‘You honestly think that?' Kennie was looking at him with disbelief. ‘There are Native Affairs officers, missionaries – there was an American professor and his wife who spent a whole year there, living with an aborigine family. You think they did it for money?' There was a moment's silence, and then he said, ‘You don't understand what I'm talking about, do you?'

‘No, I don't,' his father snapped. And Smithie said, ‘Come on, Chris, we're pegging my claim now an' I don't want anybody getting in ahead of me.'

Culpin hesitated. He was watching as Kennie turned away and got into the driving seat of our Land-Rover, his heavy forehead wrinkled in a frown. He looked strangely bewildered. ‘No,' he muttered to himself. ‘I'm buggered if I understand.' And he turned slowly and went to his own vehicle. They drove off, taking the track that followed the course of the Cougan River towards the Comet Mine. We kept to the tarmac, on the road that led to the Highway, and then we headed south, back to Nullagine and Lynn Peak.

We fed that evening with Andie and his family. He had seen Janet only once in the last three months. She had come in to collect the monthly supplies and cancel the order. ‘Christ knows what they're living on now at Jarra Jarra. We've had a little rain. No' verra much – just a quick storm. But I'm told they didna have a drop over to the west of here.'

The Lynn Peak bore was still flowing and after our meal we filled up with water and got the petrol we needed. I was alone with him for a moment at the pump and I settled the Jarra Jarra account. I also gave him enough for another month's supplies and he promised to take them over himself. ‘Do I tell her who's paying for them?'

‘No,' I said. ‘Just tell her a friend sent them.'

He looked doubtful. ‘I'm no verra sure she'll accept that. She's proud, like her father, and they're not used to charity.'

I hesitated, thinking of the Gibson and the possibility that I might never come out of it alive. ‘All right,' I said. ‘Tell her it's from me – payment on account for something her father told me. That should do it.'

‘And do I tell her where you've gone?' The curiosity he had been bottling up all the time we had been at the homestead showed in his eyes.

‘You think you know?'

He nodded his round dark head. ‘Aye, the Gibson I reck'n.'

‘Well, keep it to yourself.'

‘And what if you get stuck out there?'

‘Give me to the end of the month,' I said. ‘If we're not back by then …' I didn't say any more because Kennie joined us. But Andie understood. By the end of three weeks we'd be out of water.

We got as far as Walgun before bivouacking for the night and we started again at first light. With the vehicle we now had and driving in daylight, we made much better time. We were beyond the Soaks and into the desert by sunset. Shortly before noon the following day we actually sighted Winnecke Rock, away to the north of us, and by nightfall we were camped somewhere close to the spot where Ed Garrety had disappeared. Dusk was closing in and we did not start searching for the
rira
until dawn the next day.

It should have been easy to locate, knowing roughly where it was and the whole area of that rock conglomerate extending a dozen acres and more. But nothing was easy in that rolling sand sea, our view obscured by the troughs, and even from the tops nothing visible but the next sandhill and the intervening valley floor. The directions were from the actual soak so that it was essential to find it. We operated a box search, working our way steadily eastward on a six mile front, and again it wasn't the
rira
we sighted first, but Ed Garrety's abandoned Land-Rover.

We saw it away at the end of a shallow trough. We were on the southward leg then and it was half-hidden by a new drift of sand, only the canopy showing. The broken rock of the
rira
started just beyond it, over a slight rise, the astonishing green of the kurrajong tree visible as soon as we walked to the top of the dune.

I showed Kennie the rock shelter where we had huddled against the fury of the sandstorm, the soak in its rock basin marked with the dark of moisture welling to the surface. It was damper now that winter had cooled the ground, and by scraping out handfuls of sand, we were able to produce something very near to a puddle of water. At least we wouldn't die of thirst and we celebrated with a can of beer each. But we didn't drink it there. The soak and the rock shelter was too unhappy a place for me, the memory of Ed Garrety very strong. I wished to God he was with us now. But it had been his choice, and surely a man has a right to die in his own time.

We had parked our Land-Rover alongside his and we drank our beer standing by the tailboard, small birds darting among the spinifex. flashes of blue, and some delicate little grey birds that looked like finches. It was hot in the sun, but not as hot as I remembered it, the sky clear blue and no vestige of cloud on the horizon. ‘Where do we go from here?' Kennie asked. And I knew by the way he said it that this was a question he'd been wanting to ask for a long time.

‘It's not going to be easy,' I said, remembering how long it had taken to find the
rira
. ‘They're not compass directions. They depend on the sun, some trees, and the distance a man can walk in a day.' I had been over it in my mind so many times, but that didn't make it any less vaguer, more like the wishful thinking of an aborigine seeking payment for a lie. ‘From Kurrajong Soak walk short day into sunrise, find'im three ngalta. Then, facing high sun, walk till him half set. Small gibber hill, all rock him same ngalta.' I looked at him, wondering what he'd make of it. ‘That's all, except that McIlroy added a note to say that ngalta was how the black had described the green of the copper deposit.'

‘A bit vague, innit?' Kennie's features were creased in a frown. ‘Short day into sunrise; that's presumably east – north of east if you take short day to mean it's winter. How long do you reck'n a short day's march – twenty miles?'

‘I doubt whether you or I would cover as much as that.' I was remembering the two night treks I had done, the sand and the spinifex and how exhausted I had been. ‘But an aborigine might.'

He nodded. ‘Call it fifteen then, and take a bearing on tomorrow's sunrise. Shouldn't be far out. But I doubt whether we'll find the ngalta. That's the abo word for the kurrajong tree. Right? It has water bearing roots and the blacks can practically live off the seeds when they're ripe. Those trees will surely have disappeared after all these years.'

‘What about the kurrajong here?'

‘Could be a new one, a seedling.'

In the end we agreed we would drive fifteen miles on our sunrise bearing, then north for eight. After that we'd start a box search working steadily eastward and hoping for the best. By then we had finished our beer, and after a quick meal, we began repairing the fuel line of Ed Garrety's Land-Rover, watched by a goanna and interrupted periodically by flights of small birds coming in to the soak. It took us the rest of the afternoon to get the engine going and clear the sand drift that had built up around the chassis. And that evening after sunset we buried the remains of Ed Garrety's body. Kennie had found it while stalking the goanna with my rifle. It was away to the south, just beyond the edge of the
rira
, the covering of drifted storm sand blown away to expose the whitened bone of the skull and one skeletal hand. It was something I could have done without, and after a restless night, cold and plagued by ants and the presence of several small snakes, we took a compass bearing on the sun as it heaved itself up over the horizon like an erupting orb of red-hot metal.