‘Yes,’ I said and we moved away, each of us trying to size the other up. ‘You were at Golden Soak last night.’
‘What’s that to do with yuh?’
‘I was staying with the Garretys at Jarra Jarra.’ He didn’t say anything, standing there with his beer in his hand, the stubble on his chin catching the light and glistening with sweat.
‘That mine’s been closed for years.’
‘Okay, it’s been closed for years. So what’s it to do with yuh?’
‘I saw Wolli this afternoon.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What did Wolli tell yuh?’
‘Nothing. Only that I’d better speak with you.’
‘About what?’
‘Your reason for going there.’
‘Did Ed Garrety send you?’
‘Not exactly. I’m naturally interested — ‘
‘So you think I know something about that mine Garrety don’t?’ He gave a quick laugh, and with that laugh I was conscious of tension in him. ‘Well, mebbe I do, but I’m not telling a goddammed Pommie.’ He took a gulp at his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Yuh go back to Jarra Jarra and tell the old bugger next time I come I’ll be armed, an’ if he pulls a gun on me again … Christ! I wasn’t ten years in the Army for nothing. Yuh tell him that.’
‘He owns the mine,’ I said. ‘You were trespassing and he’d every right …’
‘Okay, he owns it. But it won’t be long now and I can wait.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They’re broke, aren’t they? That’s what they tell me here, that it won’t be long before the mine, the station, the whole lot will be up for sale.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Is that why yuh’re here — to value the mine for them?’ He leaned forward and gripped my arm. ‘Yuh bin down there?’
I shook my head and he seemed relived. ‘I’m not interested in gold,’ I said.
‘Then what are you interested in?’
‘Copper.’
He looked at me as though he’d never heard of the stuff. ‘There’s no copper at Golden Soak.’ He said it quietly, a thin smile and his eyes cold. ‘What the hell are yuh after?’
And when I told him it was the location of Mcllroy’s Monster that bought me to Nullagine, he burst out laughing. ‘Yuh must be joking.’ He turned to his mates. ‘Here, fellers. Here’s a chap says he’s come all the way out from the Old Country to find McIlroys Monster.’ They crowded round me, laughing, joking, asking questions, too happy in their drink to play it any way but the way he wanted it. ‘ Yuh believe that one, you’ll believe anything.’
‘That’s Wolli’s story …. Yep, trots it out pat soon as he’s short of the ready …’ And then an older man with no teeth and the face of a dried-up mummy: ‘Funny thing though, finding his truck like that, empty, with no body, not even his skeleton.’
‘Well, wot d’yuh expect, out there between the Great Sandy and the Gibson?’
‘That’s right — it’d be covered by sand in no time.’
‘It’s gibber country.’
‘No, it ain’t. It’s sand — like it is all the way to the Alice.’
‘It’s gibber, I tell yuh. All red gravel.’
‘How d’yuh know? Yuh ain’t never been there.’
‘Its wot they say.’
‘Who says — Wolli I s’pose?’
‘No, his father.’
‘Yuh weren’t around these parts when Wolli’s Father was alive.’
‘Its wot I heard,’ the fellow added lamely and they all laughed.
‘Funny thing,’ the little mummy-faced man said again, ‘but Wolli’s father never talked about it — never mentioned the Monster once as far as I know.’
‘Why should he, Lenny? I tell yuh, it’s just a load of crap dreamed up by that black bastard to get himself a few beers.’
But the little man shook his head. ‘Oh no, it weren’t. I was in Kalgoorlie at the time an’ it was all in The Miner, ‘bout how McIlroy heard of this mountain of copper from some abo who’d walked into the bank at Port Hedland asking for a loan in return for the location. McIlroy was a gambler, everybody knows that. Now wot was the feller’s name?’ He scratched his bullet head. ‘Buggered if I can remember it now. But he got his loan and went bust on the de Bernales shares … I remember now. Warrampi. That was the abo’s name. Well, then Pat McIlroy took off into the blue — his last big gamble — an’ that didn’t come off either. I remember the pitchers in the papers, too — one of him leaving Port Hedland. Another as he drove through Marble Bar an’ him standing in the back of his truck making speeches. Yuh’d’ve thought they’d’ve stoned him for losing their money like that. Instead they cheered him.’
‘Yuh’re joking,’ a voice said, and Lenny laughed and shook his head. ‘I ain’t, yuh know. I can see the pitchers now. He was a small man, neatly dressed, and he stood there in the back of the truck an’ he didn’t call it a mountain of copper — he called it his Monster. That’s wot got him the headlines — Mcllroy’s Monster.’
‘He must’ve had the gift of the gab.’
‘Sure he did. He was Irish.’
Somebody had bought another round and I found myself with a full glass in my hand again.
‘Did you ever meet McIlroy?’ I asked. ‘I was told he came from Kalgoorlie.’
But Lenny shook his head. ‘I was just a kid at the time. My father knew him ‘cos he worked at the Great Boulder. I remember him saying he always reckoned McIlroy would come to a sticky end — either that or he’d finish up a millionaire. A clerk, I think, he said, but a boss’s man with a tongue that could turn iron pyrites into gold. Come to think of it, I did see him once — it was up at the mine and my Dad pointed him out to me getting into a flash English car. There’s a man, he said, makes more money in a day playing the market than I make working my guts out underground in a whole year. But it was the car I was interested in — an MG sports it was, all white with a long bonnet and big headlights. Bloody silly, a car like that in Kal, but no doubt it served its purpose. He was a show-off and clever as a monkey.’
I had a picture to show the sort of man McIlroy was, but nothing about the copper deposit that had sent him to his death. AH Lenny could tell me was what he’d read in the Kalgoorlie Miner, and that was pretty vague, for he was only twelve years old at the time. ‘It was the abos found the truck. They’d been walkabout — some corroboree — and by the time the police got wind of it the tracks were all obliterated. Nothing to show where he’d been or whether he’d found his Monster.’
I asked him if there’d been anything in the papers about McIlroy having an aborigine with him on the expedition, but he didn’t know. ‘All I remember for sure is that the truck’s back axle was broken, and that’s only because I was getting interested in cars then. I don’t recall anything about an abo.’
‘Then what’s Walli talking about?’
‘Look,’ he said, ‘yuh’re new out here, ain’t yuh, same as Phil. Well, put yourself in Walli’s place, half Australia fossicking around for minerals and this old story every bit as good as Lasseter’s Reef. It’s worth a few beers every time a stranger comes into the bar here and that’s all he cares. He’s short of money and he likes his booze, see. Nothing else to it. That’s what I keep telling Phil — but there you are — ‘ He shrugged and downed the rest of his beer.
I looked around for Westrop, but he was no longer beside me, and when I went to order another round, I saw him in the main bar with Walli.
Drinking there with the Grafton boys, I was able to confirm what Andie had told me, that Westrop had only been at the tin mine a matter of two months and he’d come down from Darwin, straight out of hospital after his discharge, looking for a job. He knew nothing about mining, but he’d been a sapper and could drive bulldozers. ‘It’s open cast mining, see.’
A soldier, straight out of Vietnam with no knowledge of mining; it seemed odd that he should be so interested in Wolli. And that night visit to Golden Soak. ‘Are you sure he wasn’t a prospector before he joined the Army?’
They laughed at that. ‘I tell yer, he don’t know a dam’ thing about mining.’
‘But he’s got books. He’s learning.’