Golden Soak

ONE

We drove through the night, tarmac at first, a single track with verges of red gravel, then dirt. And the country, in the clear cloudless dawn, flat as a pan. We were into the northern part of the Yilgarn Block, metamorphosed rock, all gibber, the gravel eroded in situ, hardly any watercourses, but a great salt lake before we ran into Wiluna. Kennie was driving then and I was dozing, my eyeballs pricking with tiredness, the heat already building. I had nearly hit a kangaroo in the grey hour before the dawn, but there weren’t many of them here on the edge of the Gibson.

We were through the rabbit fencing, heading west for Meekatharra, the sun behind us, everything very sharp in the clarity of the early light, the dirt of the road running like a red ribbon through an infinity of spinifex and bare sunscorched rocks. ‘What about a brew-up?’ Kennie’s thin little beard was thick with dust, his long hair blowing in the wind from the open window. His teeth were even and very white as he smiled at me through the dust. ‘I could use a good brew right now, eh?’

I nodded and he drew into the shade of the next patch of mulga. It was a kind of acacia, but thin stuff, half dead and full of ants, the air breathless. The flies came at us in a cloud as soon as we had stopped.

Without Kennie it would have taken me three days to get back to the Pilbara. It wasn’t only the shared driving, it was the fact that he knew how to live bush — something at least he owed his father. Within minutes he had a fire going, the billy on and the bacon in the pan. Except for the flies, it was the finest breakfast I had had in Australia — the quiet and the huge sense of space, the close feeling of companionship. I was relaxed then, thinking how lucky I was, what a wonderful world. We didn’t talk much after we had fed, just sat there smoking and drinking thick Indian tea. It’s old — old geologically. That was what Petersen and Carter had said. It’s unique. And now I was out there, looking at it, remembering their words, the country as old as time and my mind involuntarily going back to Genesis and ancient, primitive gods. ‘Do you know much about the aborigine?’ I asked him.

But he shook his head. ‘Only what a Native Affairs Officer told us in a lecture he gave at the school. He made them seem a remarkable people, every day in their lives filled by the excitement of survival. Christ, look at it! I’d get a great kick if I could survive out here on my own, no tinned food, no cans of petrol, no gun, nothing but what I’d found and made. Reck’n that fellow was one of the really good ones, for he talked about living for a period in the Gibson. To survive, like that — ‘ He shook his dusty head, an almost dreamy look in those greenish eyes, now sun-crinkled at the corners. ‘And living like that, from hand-to-mouth — subsisting, no more — and yet the Dreamtime, all their myths, the complicated sacred side of their lives. After I’d heard that man speak I found myself looking at the poor bastards in Kalgoorlie in a different light. They’re a very strange people — but I respect them now. Imagine it — out there …’ He jerked his head towards the east. ‘Nothing but your wits, the knowledge handed down to you by your elders, and your bare hands. I wouldn’t survive for twenty-four hours.’

Later I was to remember that conversation, but at the time, replete and plagued with ants, the flies thick, I was too hot and tired to give a damn about the aborigines, accepting his words as part of the companionship developing between us, nothing more. A small wind rose, drifting red dust like a river across the road, and at Meekatharra we stopped for petrol and a long cold drink of beer. And then we were heading north, the tarmac running out into dirt after about fifty miles and the sun dimmed by a brown cloud of wind-blown sand that coated the Land-Rover and ourselves. It was a hell of a drive, until shortly after noon the wind suddenly dropped, the air clean again and the sun burning. Cheese and tomatoes, a long siesta among the ghost gums of a dry water course, then on again with the sun setting into the Gibson, the dark shape of hills standing like islands in a red-brown sea. Some where near Mundiwindi we lit a fire, cooked ourselves a meal. ‘What happens when we get to Jarra Jara?’

‘I don’t know.’ I was too tired, too battered with the jolting to think about that. Janet I knew would be glad about the analysis, but I wasn’t so sure about her father. We had our swags unrolled on the hard ground, and lying there, gazing up at the stars, I wished I knew him better.

‘This man Garrety, what’s he like?’

‘All right.’

‘Yes, but those samples — he don’t know about them. That’s right isn’t it? You said last night — ‘

‘Aren’t you tired?’

‘Yes, of course I’m tired.’

‘Then go to sleep.’

‘I can’t. I’m too excited.’ His cigarette glowed in the darkness. ‘Everbody I talked to — the old-timers, I mean — they seemed to know all about the Garretys and this station of theirs, the mine. It’s part of the history of the North West.’ But I had closed my eyes and in a moment the murmur of his young voice was lost in sleep.

He shook me awake shortly after three, the billy boiling and the stars still bright, and half an hour later we were on the road again. Dawn was breaking and Mt Whaleback a solid hump against the paling sky as I took the cut-off by the old airfield where I had waited for Janet to pick me up. Kennie stirred and stretched his legs. ‘How much further?’

‘About sixty miles — two hours if we don’t break a spring in the gullies.’

‘Christ! It’s back of beyond.’ His voice was sleepy. ‘What’s this girl like — tough?’

‘She rides a camel when they’re mustering.’

‘Sounds like dampers for breakfast and I could do with a good big steak.’

He went to sleep again and I drove all the rest of the way to Jarra Jarra. It was just after eight we crossed the cattle grid into the paddock. We topped the rise and there was the homestead just as I had seen it the first time, like a deserted settlement in the blazing sun with the galahs a flock of grey shot through with pink, bursting out of the trees at the rattle of our approach.

We stopped in the shade, the homestead silent, no dog barking, no camel crouched there by the further bole, only the galahs wheeling. ‘Reck’n they start at first light.’ Kennie pushed open the door and got stiffly out. ‘Most of these outback stations start early this time of year.’ He was thinking only of the breakfast he had been hoping for. He followed me between the out buildings, across the patio and into the dim cool of the wire netted room. It was empty, the house silent. I called Janet’s name, but there was no answer, the stillness heavy with the heat.

‘There must be somebody around.’ I went through into the passageway, to the door of Ed Garrety’s den. I thought perhaps he might be listening to the radio. I couldn’t remember where the morning sked was. But the door was locked, no answer to my call. I tried the kitchen then. A pot of tea and cups on the scrubbed wood table, the paraffin stove cold and nothing on it but a kettle, the water in it lukewarm. A current of hot air behind me and I turned to glimpse dark eyes watching out of a black face. The eyes were huge. ‘Sarah?’ A flash of teeth, a nervous giggle and the face of the black servant girl was gone. ‘Sarah!’ But by the time I reached the door she was running across an open compound towards some huts, running like a startled deer.

There was nothing for it but to cook our own breakfast, and when we had finished it, we sat dozing in the cane chairs in the cool house. We were both of us very tired and I was dead asleep when the sound of a vehicle woke me. I expected it to be Ed Garrety. Instead, it was Westrop who came in through the beaded flyscreen from the patio. He stopped at the sight of me. I had got to my feet and for a moment we stood there facing each other, both of us too surprised to say anything.

‘What do you want?’ I asked him.

‘Garrety. Where is he — still down the mine?’

‘I’ve no idea. We’ve only just arrived.’

‘And the girl?’ He moved towards the passage.

‘There’s nobody here,’ I said.

He paused then, looking at me doubtfully. ‘Yuh sure?’ And when I didn’t say anything, he turned and went outside, and I heard him talking to somebody. He was back almost immediately, coming in with that old swaggering gait, and suddenly I knew what he reminded me of — the digger of Australian legend, the battle-scarred veteran of the wars they had fought across the world. It wasn’t only that he had a wide-brimmed hat on his head and his khaki longs tucked into high boots, it was the long hard face, the steady eyes creased by the sun. His appearance, his whole bearing reminded me of Anzac Day and those pictures of floods of khaki wading ashore at Suvla Bay from old coal-burning troopships. ‘Yuh could help me,’ he said, standing hesitant. ‘No hard feelings, eh?’ He smiled, the dour look gone and a flash of warmth.

‘No, of course not.’

He nodded. ‘Sit down then. I’d like to talk to yuh.’ He dropped into a chair, running his hand over the stubble of his pointed chin and staring at me as I resumed my seat. ‘You’re probably the only man, apart from Garrety, who’s been down Golden Soak in years. Did you get into all the levels?’

‘Who told you I’d been down there?’

‘Prophecy. Yuh didn’t expect her to keep it to herself, did yuh? Yuh were down there getting ore samples the night we dumped yuh on the Highway.’ That flicker of a smile again. ‘Something I didn’t expect. But you’ve been down there, that’s the point.’ He leaned forward, his elbows on the cane arms of his chair. ‘Did you see anything that struck you as unusual, anything odd?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Hell!’ he said. ‘Yuh must have seen something. Yuh were pretty shaken, Prophecy said — and yuh didn’t seem to want to talk about it.’

‘You’d be shaken if you’d been down there,’ I told him. ‘I was on my own and another cave-in could occur at any time.’ But I think he knew it wasn’t that, for he was staring at me very intently, waiting, and I was remembering the footprints, the strange atmosphere in that third level. ‘What are you getting at?’ I asked, suddenly certain he knew something I didn’t.

‘Garrety,’ he said. ‘I want to know what he’s up to down there.’

‘Didn’t Prophecy tell you?’

‘Oh, sure. He’s found the reef. There were a couple of prospectors and some truckers in the night Prophecy passed your quartz samples around the bar. By now just about everybody in WA must know he’s found the reef again. So what’s the point of him working down there on his own?’

‘You’d better ask him.’

‘I’m asking yuh. The samples yuh took came from a side gallery, Prophecy said. Beyond a rock fall, that right?’

I nodded, wondering what he was getting at, seeing the white of the quartz again, remembering the feeling of near panic that had come over me.

‘What caused the fall?’ And when I told him the rock was badly faulted, the fall was almost certainly the site of the 1939 cave-in, he said, ‘Look. We were down there last night and his Land-Rover was parked up the gully. When we reached the mine entrance we were faced with that Alsatian of his, barking its head off. Then he came out, all covered in dust and looking like a bloody Cyclops with his miner’s lamp blazing in the darkness. I didn’t see the gun at first, but I know the sound of a bolt slamming a round in the breech, too right I do. What’s he so scared about?’

‘Prospectors — people like you.’ But he shook his head and I sat there staring at him, a ghastly thought in my mind, for there was a curious tension in him, an undercurrent of excitement. ‘He owns the mine, so you can’t claim.’ Silence and the thought growing in my mind. ‘You’re Mcllroy’s nephew, aren’t you?’ He was suddenly very still, his mouth clamped shut. ‘And you’re from Sydney.’

‘Wot if I am!’ The crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened, his voice hard and flat.

‘You must be all of forty and you’ve never been in the Pilbara in your life before, never shown the slightest interest in your uncle’s death. Why now?’

‘That’s my business.’

‘And you came here from Darwin, straight out of hospital. So it’s something you learnt in hospital — either there or in Vietnam.’ I was guessing and the expression in his eyes told me I was right. ‘What is it? What was it made you come down I

here and get a job as near to Jarra Jarra as you could?’

He got up then, coming towards me, and now the tension showed in his eyes. I didn’t move and he stood there, staring down at me. ‘S’pose McIlroy never went into the Gibson?’ he leaned down, his face close to mine. ‘S’pose he died right here?’

It was out now, the thought in my mind put into words, and Westrop staring at me, trembling slightly like a hound on the scent. ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘You know where his truck was found. He died somewhere to the east of Lake Disappointment.’

He nodded. ‘That’s the story.’

‘You don’t believe it.’

‘No.’ He was still standing over me, but more relaxed as he said slowly, ‘Yuh see, when he left Nullagine, he didn’t go into the Gibson. He came here.’

‘How do you know?’

He hesitated. ‘Okay, I’ll tell yuh. It was a man called Gray. Tommy Gray. He was in the hospital bed next to me and all one night he was rambling on about his childhood here. His father was a doctor in this shire, so what he said was dinkum, and one of the things he was on about was Pat Mcllroy’s death.’

‘And McIlroy came here?’

‘That’s what Tommy said.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know why, he just did, that’s all.’

‘Gray’s dead, is he?’

‘Yes. Died the following night, a long knife wound in the guts turned septic.’

‘In other words he was delirious.’

‘Of course he was delirious. Otherwise, he’d never have talked the way he did. Oh to hell with it!’ he added angrily. ‘Yuh wouldn’t understand. We didn’t have any of yuh Pommies in that war. Yuh don’t know what it was like, and if I told yuh he was screaming like an injured rabbit part of the time …’ He took a step towards me, leaning his face close again and gripping my arm. ‘Wot’s Garrety doing down that mine? Now come on, be fair. Either he’s mad, like his father, or he’s trying to cover something up. They never found Mcllroy’s body, did they?’

‘You don’t really care what happened to him.’ I said it harshly. It was the Monster, of course. It was Mcllroy’s Monster that had brought him here, the will o’ the wisp lure of a mountain of copper. It had to be. And Westrop looking at me with a little smile and saying, ‘No, I guess you’re right. I don’t give a damn. But that doesn’t mean …‘He was interrupted by the rattle of the beaded fly screen and he turned, his body blocking my view. ‘Did yuh find him?’ he asked. And another voice answered, ‘Sure I did. But getting it out of him wasn’t so easy. Like Wolli said, he’s a bit gone in the head.’

Westrop moved then and I saw it was Lennie, the wrinkled mummified face cracking in a grin as he looked across at me. ‘So you’re back eh? I told Phil you would be.’

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.

‘There all night, she said.’ Kennie had to shout to make me hear above the roar of the engine, the rattle of the aged chassis. ‘Must be pretty tired by now.’

I nodded. ‘Maybe we’ll meet him coming back.’ He had told Janet he wouldn’t be long. I hoped we would meet him.

‘What is it he’s looking for if he’s already found the reef?’ But I didn’t answer. I was tired and though I was driving as fast as I could on that lousy track, the nearer I got the less I seemed to want to arrive. It wasn’t premonition. It was just that driving was in itself sufficient activity for my depleted reserves. In the end, I drove in silence, and as we left Mt Robinson behind us, I found myself dreading the moment when I saw the mine buildings again with that thin, solitary chimney towering black against the blinding white of the sky. A sound of thunder rumbled in the distance. But no sign of rain, the whole oven vault above empty of the smallest cloud.

It was eleven minutes to twelve when the mine buildings came abruptly into view round that red outcrop of rock. But everything was obscured, the iron chimney a blurred pencil-line, half lost in a haze of dust. It hung over the gully and plain below, a red miasma that had both of us choking with our handkerchiefs across our faces as we drove into it. ‘Dust storm,’ Kennie yelled.

But I knew it wasn’t a dust storm. ‘No wind.’

‘Mebbe wind out there.’ He nodded east towards the Gibson. But if this was Gibson sand, driven and suspended over miles of bush, we would have felt the weight of the wind and we’d have been in the sand all the way. Whatever it was, it was entirely local, and with my heart suddenly pounding I drove past the tin-tattered buildings wrapped in dust and swung the Land-Rover up the track towards the dark shadow of the mouth of the gully. I was on headlights then, everything choked with fine red dust, and where the old workings began it was pouring out of the ground, red boiling smoke billowing up and a great pit just in front of us. If I’d been going downhill I wouldn’t have had a hope, but because of the gradient I was able to stop the Land-Rover dead. Even so the front wheels were on the very edge of that enormous boiling unbelievable cavity.

An eruption? A crater?

‘What the hell’s happened?’ Kennie was staring.

But I think I knew. I think we both knew as the dust smoke veered and the ragged nature of the pit showed in the headlights.

‘Christ! It’s a cave-in.’

We got out, handkerchiefs pressed tight over our mouths. It wasn’t just one pit. It was a series of pits. All the old workings opened up into gaping holes that vented dust. The whole mine must have collapsed internally. I was thinking of Ed Garrety then as we climbed towards the entrance, wishing to God we’d met him on the track. Down there he hadn’t a hope. Even if he were still alive, I didn’t think there was a chance of a rescue team reaching him.

The entrance, when we reached it, was still there, the rock mouth gaping and billowing dust, no sign of the wooden door. It was impossible, so soon after the cave-in, to reach the shaft, and I just stood there, gazing about me, too appalled to do anything but wonder how I was going to break the news to Janet.

‘That the door you spoke about?’

We had started back and he was pointing to a heavy rectangle of wood lying on the far side of die gully. It has been blown there by the force of the air rushing out of the mine. I was thinking of the two lower levels, the dangerous sloping: the whole thing must have come down like a pack of cards.

The dust-boil had lessened by the time we got back to the side of the old costeans, the headlights of the Land-Rover dimmed by the strange fluorescence of sunlight on dust, a glow that hurt the eyes after the darkness of the gully. We climbed in, not saying a word, and I backed and turned and drove into the brightness, the mine buildings growing ghostly in the iridescent light. ‘The noise,’ Kennie said. ‘Remember? Like thunder. It must have been a hell of a collapse.’

‘Yes.’ I was out of the gully now, following the tramlines down.

‘Couldn’t be anyone alive down there, not after that. We must have been two miles away when we heard it. And it was his own fault really. He must have known it would collapse at any moment.’

Kennie’s face was white below the dust film, his eyes scared.

I said: ‘I’m going back to the homestead now. Janet has to be told. And then she can get the authorities on the radio. We’ll come back when the dust has settled and see if the shaft is still intact.’

He nodded, but reluctantly, his long-fingered hands clasped tightly about his knees.

‘Then there’s Westrop. If we can find out where the other entrance …’ A figure appeared in the red haze at the corner of the crusher shed. I had reached the bottom of the tramlines then and had just turned left past the mine office. I didn’t recognize him at first. He jerked to a stop as though shocked into immobility at the sight of us. The iron grey hair, and stooped, slightly rounded shoulders — I hardly dared believe it. But as I slowed to a stop the Alsatian joined him and I knew it really was Ed Garrety.

‘What’re you doing here?’ His voice shook, his eyes seemingly half afraid, his body literally snaking with nervous exhaustion. He looked at the point of collapse. ‘Were you here when — ‘ His Adam’s apple worked as though the dust he’d absorbed had clogged his throat.

‘No — about two miles away.’ I said. ‘Thank God you weren’t in the mine.’

He nodded vaguely. ‘Two miles away. You heard it?’

‘Like thunder,’ Kennie cried excitedly. ‘And then all the dust. We thought you were a goner for sure.’

He nodded slowly, seeming to relax a little. ‘You saw Janet?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s back at home then.’ He seemed relieved. But when I told him about Westrop and how he’d learned of another entrance to the mine he went still as death.

‘You say — they’re down there now?’ He seemed to have difficulty getting the words out.

‘I hope not, but I don’t know.’

He shook his head as though unwilling to accept responsibility for others getting themselves involved. His face grey beneath the stubble, his breath short, his eyes desperately weary.

‘Do you know where the other entrance is?’

He didn’t answer. He seemed completely dazed.

‘Do you know where it is?’ I repeated. ‘Can you show us?’

He nodded slowly. ‘That explains it.’ He was speaking to himself, the words coming in a whisper.

‘Explains what?’

‘The other vehicle. An old Chev. I’d only just seen it, down by the shearing shed!’ And then he seemed to pull himself together as if he had suddenly reached a decision. ‘You follow me.’ He called to the Alsatian and walked slowly passed the mine office, his head bowed and moving slackly, uncertainly, a man near the end of his tether living in a nightmare. He disappeared behind the building that housed the crushing plant and a moment later the ute appeared. He drew up beside me, the Alsatian leaning her head out of the window, her tongue lolling. ‘Have you got helmets?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’ He nodded, and I followed in his dust stream, round the comer of the building, out on to a track that skirted the scrub-grown mounds of the tailings dump, running out into the flat land beyond. We stopped beside the Chev. It had Oration Downs Tin Mine painted on the side, and beyond it, the tattered tin of the old shearing shed stood blistering in the sun, gaps torn in the roof and the door hanging drunkenly on broken hinges. Ed Garrety led the way inside and it was like an oven, the wheels and belt drives for the clippers dim in the darkness above the shearing platform. The big wooden clip bailer had been pushed over on to its side revealing a hole in the ground with rough-hewn steps. ‘No dust in here, so we’ll probably find the gallery blocked by a fall.’ Ed Garrety’s voice was bleak. ‘Three of them you said, didn’t you?’

‘That’s right. Westrop, a Kalgoorlie miner named Lennie, and the native who used to work for you — Wolli. You saw them last night.’

He nodded, staring down at the dark hole and the steps going down.

‘Did Westrop tell you he was Mcllroy’s nephew?’

‘He didn’t need to. I knew already.’ And he added, ‘The damned fool! Why couldn’t he let it rest, instead of digging up old rumours, believing anything Wolli told him?’

I too, was staring at the steps, wondering what we’d find in that long-disused gallery, thinking of those men deep underground, locked in by a fall most likely, or dead of suffocation. ‘He’s convinced McIlroy came here before disappearing into the Gibson.’

‘That’s right. He did.’ Ed Garrety turned his head, staring at me, the blue of his eyes accentuated by the red dust that filmed his face. He stood there, very still for a moment, as though bracing himself for more questions. Then he nodded and turned away. ‘Well, better see what’s down there.’ And he donned his helmet. We did the same, switching on our lamps, and taking the pick and shovel we had brought with us from the Land-Rover, we followed him down into the black hole of that underground gallery.