Beyond the beaded curtain I could see Wolli hovering, a black shadow in the sun. ‘What’s this all about?’ I asked, getting to my feet.
Kennie had moved in closer, the two of us facing them. Westrop hesitated. And Lennie said, ‘It was Wolli put us on to him. An old black, bin living here ever since he got his skull cracked in that cave-in. They call him Half-Bake. Wolli thought there was another way into the mine.’ He looked at Westrop and nodded. ‘He was right, too.’
He wouldn’t say where the entrance was, but he admitted it hadn’t been used for maybe forty years. ‘You must be mad,’ I told him. ‘That mine’s a death trap. And to go into it by a disused entrance …’
‘No business of yours,’ Westrop said, and I saw his mind was made up and nothing I could do would dissuade him. And then, as he was following Lennie out to the patio, he turned. ‘If we don’t meet up with Ed Garrety down the mine, tell him I’ll be back. And I’ll know the truth by then. Yuh tell him that. And don’t try to follow us, see.’ He nodded and ducked out through the flyscreen, leaving us standing there.
Shortly afterwards we heard the sound of their truck driving off. It was then I started for the Land-Rover. But when we reached it the back tyres were almost flat, the air still hissing out. ‘Nice friends you have.’ Kennie’s voice shook as he bent to examine the knife slits plainly visible.
There was no other vehicle available, the ute not there and the aged Land-Rover in the workshop by the petrol pump with the battery flat and the fuel line broken. We started out to search the rest of the buildings for the old miner, but we didn’t find him. We found where.he had been, in a half-derelict hut on the far side of the compound across which the aborigine girl had run so swiftly. The hut was surrounded by the debris of human life, plastic bottles and rusting cans with flies swarming; inside it was a slum with nobody there. We searched all the buildings, but there wasn’t an aborigine on the place, and though we called his name, and that of the girl, there was no answer, the settlement utterly deserted.
We went to work on the Land-Rover then, cursing the flies as we sweated at tyre levers hot as branding irons. We were in the process of getting the covers back on when Janet’s voice brought me round in my heels. She was shouting at me, her face white with tiredness, her eyes blazing. She seemed to be accusing me of something, but in the exhaustion of working in the heat after a sleepless night my mind was slow to grasp what it was about. I just sat back on my heels and let her tongue lash over me, until at last it dawned on me that the old abo must have gone running to her and she thought we were responsible for scaring him out of what wits he had.
When I told her it was two miners from Nullagine, she didn’t argue. She didn’t apologize either. She just seemed to accept it, and though she calmed down, she was still breathing heavily as though she had just run a marathon in the heat, her nostrils quivering and the skin below the eyes and around the mouth very white. I got to my feet then. I thought she was going to pass out. She put her hand to her forehead, wiped ineffectually at the caked dust, and then abruptly sat down on the ground. ‘I was on Cleo,’ she murmured. ‘All the way to the mine. Then back. And Sarah met me.’
The old man was the girl’s uncle. I hadn’t realized that. ‘She said two white men, and when I saw you here …’ She closed her eyes. ‘Why? What were they after?’
‘Another way to the mine.’ Her eyes were fixed on me, very large as I explained how they had tried to get into Golden Soak the previous night.
She nodded wearily. ‘I knew something had happened. I went to bed about eleven and he still hadn’t come back. He’s been down there every day since you left. And this morning, the house silent and his room empty, the bed not slept in.’ She leaned her head in her hands. ‘What is it?’ It was a question aimed at herself more than me. ‘It’s not money. He’s never given a damn about money. I’ve had to look after that. What is it?’ She was staring up at me again, her lips trembling. ‘He’s been so strange.’ And then she said, ‘I was out all day yesterday with the boys — another bunch they’d found, up by the Deadman Hill. I was beat.’ She leaned forward. ‘Miners, you said — what do they want?’ And then suddenly urgent — ‘Were they the ones who were here before?’
I didn’t answer that. I didn’t want her to know what Westrop was after. ‘We’ll finish getting these covers on, then we’ll go down there.’
She nodded. ‘I’ve just been to the shaft myself. Daddy was on the third level. I could hear him picking at the rock, beyond a fall in one of the smaller galleries. He was furious when he found I was there.’ Her lips were trembling again, the sweat breaking out in beads on her forehead. ‘What’s happened? What’s he doing down there? He won’t tell me anything.’ And suddenly tears welled in her eyes and she got quickly to her feet. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’ She turned and hurried towards the house.
‘What’s up with her? Everybody seems crazy around here.’ Kennie was staring at me, a bewildered look on his face.
I was back at the Land-Rover then. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get the spare on for a start. Then we’ll have our coffee and get down there and find out.’
By the time we’d got the last cover on and the wheel bolts tightened she had the coffee ready. She’d washed and put some lipstick on, but she still looked desperately tired, her face drained of colour. I asked her about the abo they called Half-Bake. ‘They said he was working at Golden Soak when the cave-in took place.’
She nodded, but absently, her mind elsewhere.
‘And he’s been here ever since?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does he remember things?’
‘How do you mean — what things?’
‘About what happened here afterwards,’ I said. ‘The cave-in occurred in 1939. Your grandfather’s journal doesn’t help. But this man might know. I’d like to have a word with him.’
But she wouldn’t agree to that. ‘I don’t think he’d know the difference between you and the men who were asking him questions. Reminding him, like that — it was cruel.’
I drank the rest of my coffee, knowing it was no good, and she didn’t say anything about another entrance. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’ll get going now.’
She wanted to come with us, of course, but I told her No. I didn’t know what she was going to find and I didn’t want her along. She was too tired, anyway. She came with us to the Land-Rover. ‘He may not hear you calling to him down the shaft.’ And she began to tell me how to reach that drift on the third level.
‘I know where it is,’ I told her.
She nodded. ‘Yes, of course. I forgot.’
The significance of her words passed me by, for by then I was behind the wheel and started the engine. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. I’ll find him and bring him back with me.’
‘Yes, but what about those men?’
‘An entrance that hasn’t been used for at least thirty years isn’t going to let them just walk into the third level. They’ll need to work at it, and that’ll take time.’ She stared uncertainly, wanting to believe me. ‘We’ll be about three hours,’ I said.
She nodded, her eyes red-rimmed in the sun, her pale hair blowing in the hot breeze. I turned the Land-Rover and headed down the track to the paddock, leaving her standing there, a still small figure motionless in my driving mirror. It was just after eleven, barely an hour since Westrop had left. By now he would be at Golden Soak, and if he hadn’t run into Ed Garrety on the way, he might at this moment be working his way into the mine by the alternative entrance. I was trying to visualize where it might be as I crossed the cattle grid and put my foot down hard. Previously, driving this track, we had taken the switchbacks and the dry stone watercourses at leisurely speed. Now I was in a hurry, and I just hoped the springs would take it and that our tyre patches would hold up to the blistering intensity of the sun and the heat of gravel friction.