There was no way, of course, I could assess the mining potential of the Gully, but once I had seen it I should at least have a visual impression and some idea of the physical problem of dealing with what looked like a heavy overburden of fallen rock. This would enable me to handle my leasing negotiations with some degree of confidence. And if it came to that, then I hoped Miriam would also have had a look at it on her way up to visit Ice Cold. If she hadn’t, then I could produce some pictures to show her what the problems were.
There were problems, no doubt of that. Extraction for one. And the danger of working with the threat of another slide hanging over the place. I was under the overhang now, the cliffs bulging above the makeshift track, and all to the right of me, filling the whole cleft, a great mass of jagged rocks, some of them as big as the bunkhouse I had just left, and through the middle of it, already cutting and smoothing a way for itself, the white foaming waters of a small torrent that showed the cold green of melted snow where it lay calm in pools among the rocks. The noise of it, the dark cliffs looming — the place was so much starker than Ice Cold, the feeling of emptiness so much greater, the sun lost behind the mountains, everything in shadow, the endless rushing sound of water, a sound that seemed to grow in volume as I followed the track round into the Gully itself.
Once into this cavernous gut the full extent of the slide became apparent. The whole side of a mountain, benches and all, had fallen away, spilling over most of a great bowl that was like a crater with snow sloped all round it. Here the track cut diagonally across the body of the slide, the marks of the bulldozer blade quite clear in places. The sound of the torrent gradually lessened as I moved onto the floor of the bowl, fingers of water now coming in from all directions to meet in the centre, tumbling down through bare, ice-scarred rock to go rushing out through the rift of the Gully in one single stream.
The floor of the bowl was not flat, great outcrops of bare rock partitioning it off, the track weaving its way round massive rock features, some as big as a Norman castle. In this gloomy and sunless place there was an extraordinary sense of geological power.
After crossing one or two of the tributary streams coming down from the snow slopes above I was far enough into the centre of the bowl to take a picture looking back at the Gully, its V shape blackened by shadow, the problem of mineral extraction very obvious, all the foreground a wild jumble of rocks. Ahead of me now was the first of the big outcrops and as I picked my way towards it over the boulder-strewn surface of the track I stopped several times searching for a way to the top of it. But the rock was quite vertical and very smooth at the base, ice-worn probably; in the spring, when all the mountains round dripped melted snow, the volume of water rushing into the bowl and out through the Gully would be very considerable.
I don’t know when I heard it first, for the sound of it only gradually reached my consciousness. It was like the roar of a distant waterfall or another torrent beyond the second sprawling outcrop of rock that was just coming into view as I followed the track round the base of the first. I was on bare, ice-worn rock then, water flowing across it.
Between that first outcrop and the next the water deepened in places. I splashed through it, having long since stopped worrying about getting my feet wet. Halfway between the two outcrops I stopped to take another picture; then I stood there for a moment looking around me. Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breathes, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things … Those lines of Milton flashed into my mind as I wondered how on earth Tony Tarasconi, or anybody else for that matter, thought he could mine for gold here in this desolation of rock and snow, the whole place frozen solid for six months of the year, a raging fury of ice-cold water for perhaps a third of the remainder. That would leave four months, just four months out of the twelve, and the track to be recreated annually. It was a hopeless proposition and my advice to Miriam would unquestionably be to lease it out to anyone fool enough to attempt the impossible, but on a sharing or royalty basis, so that if the lessee did uncover a pocket of nugget gold she would get a share of it.
I would have turned back then, I think, but looking at the big outcrop ahead I thought I saw a way I could climb to the top of it. Its height wasn’t more than fifty feet or so, and it was flat-topped, so that the long run of it should enable me to get shots covering the whole basin. The roar of the water ahead seemed to have stopped now as though the source of it had been suddenly cut off. I guessed it was some trick of the topography, the sound blanketed by the massive extent of the outcrop I was approaching.
The way up looked quite easy, except for the first few feet. This again was vertical and smooth. I picked my way slowly along the length of it, searching for a foothold, and at the far end found a sloping fault with a crack for my fingers above. I was just hoisting myself up when I heard the clink of metal on metal, and a voice said, ‘Wot you do here, feller?’
I turned, my heart in my mouth. Where the outcrop ended a man stood, a rifle in his hand. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, his hair, black and straight, hanging almost to his neck, his face broad and flat, his eyes slitted and slightly puffed, the skin dark. ‘Wot you do?’ he repeated with a jerk of the rifle in my direction, all the fringes on his Indian jacket of soft skin dancing as he moved his hands. He was a short man, his denims tucked into calf-length leather boots stained with mud except where water had washed the uppers clean. All this I took in in a flash, his presence so unexpected I almost let go my hold on the rock. ‘You must be Jack McDonald,’ I said. He was obviously Indian.
‘Jack-Mac.’ He nodded. ‘Wot your name?’ And when I told him, he said, ‘You got business here?’
I dropped to the ground and tried to explain, but the business of a lawyer seemed beyond his comprehension. He stared at me woodenly, and continued to stare when I asked him what he was doing down here in the Gully. ‘Are you hunting?’ I asked.
He didn’t reply, his brown eyes fixed on mine, his broad forehead creased in concentration. The only sound in the cold shade of the amphitheatre was the murmur of water flowing endlessly down the sloping floor of rock and silt. ‘You remember Mrs Halliday visiting the mine?’ I asked. ‘About three weeks ago.’
‘Mrs Halliday. Yes.’ He nodded, his eyes watchful.
‘Did she come down here?’ And when he didn’t answer, I asked him who else had visited Ice Cold recently. ‘Tarasconi? McKie? Who?’
He shook his head, his face impassive, totally blank. I started to move round him, but he blocked my way, the gun pointing and his hand on the trigger. ‘You go back plees.’ And when I started to argue, he said, ‘Come. I show you Ice Cold mine. Here nothing. See nothing here.’ And he started to push me back the way I had come.
I think I would probably have done as he said, for I had been standing still now for several minutes and I was feeling cold, particularly my feet which were in a rivulet of water that was rimmed in ice, but at that moment I heard it again, the sound of water cascading down. Or was it? The sound had started so suddenly. The flow of a waterfall doesn’t stop and start, it goes on and on. And he had moved to block my way.