Golden Soak

by Hammond Innes

  We slept stretched out beside the Land-Rover and I was woken in the middle of the night by a black man on a horse. It was one of the two Jarra Jarra boys. He sat his horse in the darkness calling my name in a way I barely recognized, and when I stood up, he said, ‘Come, you come quick. Jan say you come.’ The others were awake by then and to my surprise Duhamel knew something of the language — one of the few people I met in Australia who ever bothered. ‘It’s not a dialect I know, but far as I can gather the Boss has disappeared and the girl’s gone to Lynn Peak to look for him. She told this feller to come down here and get you.’

  Put like that I could visualize her panic, the native boy riding through the night and Janet heading for the Andersons’ place, driving the ute flat out in the hope of catching up with her father. We got going straight away. We were sleeping in our clothes and all we had to do was roll up our swags and toss them in the back, say goodbye to Georges Duhamel and his drillers and hit the track.

  I was thinking then of the rock drawings, of the Soak as it had been before the white men came, a source of water for ritual gatherings of life in time of drought, and remembering all that had happened there since Big Bill Garrety started blasting that quartz for gold. I knew that if I were Ed Garrety I’d leave the mine alone. I knew exactly what I’d do, and as I drove through the night up that track I was determined to turn the homestead inside out in search of the missing pages of that Journal.

  Oh yes. I knew they were missing. Whatever Janet might say, you don’t end your life story like that — not when you’ve been keeping a record as long as he had. He might conceal the truth about Mcllroy’s death from his son, but I couldn’t believe he hadn’t confided it to his Journal. And Ed Garrety, reading it after his death, had done the only thing he could; but whether he had destroyed those pages, or merely hidden them away -that was something I couldn’t be sure about. Janet said she had searched the house, but she would hardly have searched her father’s den, not without his permission, and she certainly wouldn’t have gone through his private papers. If he hadn’t burned them, that’s where the missing papers would be, in that room amongst the litter of papers that had strewn his desk, the chairs, even the floor, when I had last seen him.

  I was thinking of the Gibson then, clear of the dry watercourses and driving flat out, the dirt track faintly red in the headlights. Why else would he want me to witness a new will? And the Land-Rover loaded for a two-week journey, the faithful Tom waiting beside it. I knew nothing about the Gibson, only that my tourist map showed it blank, apart from the Canning Stock Route, and the end of summer not a good time to drive the red wastes of one of Australia’s worst deserts. Was he bent on suicide? Or did he really believe in the Monster? Pushed to the point of desperation, did all Australians clutch at straws? ‘Ever been in desert country?’ I asked Kennie.

  ‘The edge of the Nullarbor, that’s all.’

  ‘Not the Gibson?’

  ‘Jesus! no.’

  ‘What about your father? He ever been in the Gibson?’

  ‘Part of the Canning, yes. But no dogger goes into the desert and no white man strays from the Woomera Range tracks if he can help it.’

  We crossed the grid into the paddock, the Windbreaks a familiar outline against the stars. There was nobody about as we drew up by the poinciana trees, no sound when I cut the engine, the outbuildings silent shadows. The house was open, her bed not slept in, no sign of life and the door of her father’s den locked, but nobody there. Back in the cool house Kennie had lit a candle and was staring at the table still laid for two.

  ‘Doesn’t look as though they had any supper.’

  I went into the kitchen. Two steaks uncooked beside the paraffin stove, potatoes in a pan and onions already sliced. She had obviously waited supper for him, hoping against hope that he’d return, and then about eleven, or a little after, had finally decided he wasn’t coming back. It would have taken the boy about an hour and a half to ride to the mine and he had woken me shortly after one.

  ‘Well, what do we do now?’ Kennie asked.

  ‘Wait till she gets back,’ I said. There was nothing else we could do, and I told him to see if he could work the petrol pump. ‘If you can, then fill the Land-Rover’s tank, the jerri-cans, too, and we’ll need spare cans for water. Then get some sleep.’

  ‘And you?’

  I told him what I was going to do. ‘And if I find what I’m looking for, and Janet doesn’t bring him back, then we’ll have a lot of driving ahead of us, so get some sleep.’

  I went outside then, round the house to the window of his den. There was no glass, only the flyscreen, and that was easily dealt with by slipping the blade of the knife up the edge of it to release the catch. I had brought candles with me and, once inside, I lit one, the soft glow showing the room much as it had been when I was last there, an untidy litter of files and papers. The only difference was that the desk top had been cleared except for a sealed envelope marked Will and beside it a brief note written in a rather shaky hand:

  My darling Jan,

  This may be goodbye - in which case do not grieve. It will be a merciful release. I am going on a long journey now and I have little hope that it will prove successful. If it does, then maybe we can find some happiness. But I am very tired now, too tired to face any longer the hopeless struggle to keep Jarra Jarra.

  And you, though you love the place as I do, must be tired of the struggle too. Little of happiness I have been able to give you and to say that it was not all my fault is no answer.

  God bless you, my child, and do not fret. Tom will see me to the end, and after that I pray you will make a new and better life for yourself. Your loving father, He had signed it simply ‘Ed’, and standing there in the candlelight, reading it through again, I felt a lump in my throat. It was such a desperate, sad letter. I put it back on the desk beside the will, wondering whether Janet had read it before she left.

  I moved the candle from the desk and began going through the piles of papers, the silence of the house reminding me of Drym, a waiting stillness. And as the candle burned lower and the past, with its deeds, its birth and death and marriage certificates, its accounts and correspondence, filled the silence with the hopes and fears of those that had peopled the house for more than half a century, a feeling of depression settled over me, my eyes growing tired with peering at dusty papers faded with age. And reading what I had no right to read, I began to realize how hard a struggle Ed Garrety had had, the debts he had paid, the effort he had made to restore the land, the constant battle to rebuild from nothing. Above all, the loneliness of the man, and all the time the sense of hopelessness growing.

  In the end I sat down at the desk exhausted. No sign of the missing pages of the Journal. I added a fresh candle to die old, not caring any more. Somewhere to the east of Lake Disappointment, deep in the Gibson Desert… . If Janet didn’t find him, then that’s where I would have to look. But should I? What was the point of bringing him back? He had fought his battle and now he was finished. To bring him back would be like resuscitating somebody who had deliberately thrown himself into a river. I must have fallen asleep there at his desk for the next thing I knew the candle was guttering with the draught from the open door and Janet was standing there, the pale first light of dawn showing through the empty window, her face white with exhaustion. ‘You didn’t find him.’

  ‘No. The Andersons hadn’t seen him.’ She came a few steps into the room, her eyes on the letter. ‘You’ve read it?’

  ‘Yes. I shouldn’t have, but I did.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She was surprisingly calm. In the long drive to Lynn Peak and back she seemed to have come to terms with the situation. But accepting it had meant putting her emotions in cold storage, so that there was an almost frozen quality about her calmness. She had guessed where he was headed. ‘I thought he’d take the track east from Ethel Creek. That’s twenty miles south from where our backtrack joins the Highway. But they hadn’t seen him either and
there wasn’t a sign of any tyre tracks. Anyway, I had Yla with me and I think she’d have known.’

  ‘Could he make it across country?’ I asked.

  But she didn’t think so. ‘In the Gibson, maybe, but between the Highway and the desert it’s hill country and I’m sure he’d go for one of the tracks.’

  I turned to the world aeronautical chart on the wall. It was the Hamersley Range chart, No. 3229, and though the Highway was almost on the edge of it, it did indicate the start of another track running east from Mundiwindi. But that was nearly a hundred miles south of Ethel; a hundred miles of ribbed gravel, dried-up creek beds and bulldust. It would have taken her half a day at least.

  She came and stood beside me as I tried to project it on to the big tourist map. It certainly looked the most direct route to Lake Disappointment, through Mt Newman, then south from the Sylvania homestead and east from Mundiwindi. But when I pointed it out to her, she shook her head. ‘That track only goes as far as the old rabbit fence. That’s what I’ve been told anyway. It stops at Savory Creek. After that it’s just desert.’ She pointed to a second track running almost east from Sylvania. ‘I think he’d more likely take that. It isn’t shown on this map, but it continues across the Highway to the Murramunda homestead and on to Jiggalong Mission, again on the line of the rabbit fence. Daddy knows it. He’s been to the Mission. And there’s another track goes from Murramunda up to Walgun. He might have taken either.’

  I asked her when he had left, but she didn’t know. She had been over beyond the Windbreaks with one of the boys most of the day.

  I went back to the desk and flopped into the chair again. He already had at least half a day’s start. Not much hope of catching up with him and none of finding him once he was into the Gibson. ‘I was looking for the rest of the Journal,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I guessed that’s what you were doing.’

  ‘If we had that, we might know the location he’s headed for.’ I leaned back, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, staring round the room. ‘You got any ideas?’

  ‘You’ve been through all the papers?’

  I nodded. ‘Most of them.’

  She sighed. ‘Well, I’ll go and make some tea. I need something to wake me up.’

  Dawn broke as we sat there drinking it in that untidy office, both of us certain he was heading for the Gibson, but neither of us knowing quite why or what to do about it. ‘Janet.’ I was staring down at my empty cup, feeling unsure of myself and not at all happy about what I was going to say. ‘Your father was right, wasn’t he, when he said McIlroy disappeared in the desert?’

  ‘You’ve heard then.’ Her voice was a whisper, barely audible. ‘What they’re saying — this rumour. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’

  I looked at her, her face frozen and pale. ‘Yes. Are you quite sure in your own mind that McIlroy didn’t die here at Jarra Jarra?’

  ‘You’re suggesting my grandfather killed him?’

  ‘No. No, I’m not suggesting anything. I wouldn’t know. But you, living here, growing up here … I just want to know what you think really happened.’

  She looked away towards the window, the colours flushing with the dawn. ‘I don’t know,’ she said after a while. ‘I’ve thought about it a lot these last few days, ever since the inquest.’ The tears suddenly started to her eyes. ‘Oh God!’ she breathed. ‘It’s horrible - horrible. All these years. Why can’t they let it rest?’ And she bowed her head slowly, her hair all limp and dusty and falling across her face. ‘If they’d only forget it. That wretched man still haunts the place. Her hands clenched. ‘I hope he’s rotting in hell, the bastard!’

  I put my hand out to touch hers and her fingers gripped hold of mine. ‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘that’s what your father is trying to do - lay Mcllroy’s ghost.’

  She nodded, holding my hand hard. And then she suddenly lifted her head, staring at me a little wildly. ‘But how would he know where to look?’

  ‘The Journal,’ I said. ‘Those missing pages.’

  ‘Maybe.’ But there was doubt in her voice and her eyes were troubled. And then she said a strange thing. She said, ‘I’ve had this hanging over me all my life. The rumours. I mean. Daddy wouldn’t talk about it - ever. Not even when I was grown up. If I mentioned it, he’d close up like a clam and a sort of terrible blank look would come over his face. I thought when I typed out that Journal - I thought somehow I’d be able to read between the lines. But there was nothing. And when I began turning the house upside down for the missing pages, he got very angry, said I was wasting my time, that I already had all that Grandpa had ever written.’

  Silence then and her eyes staring. ‘You believe these rumours.’ She said it accusingly. ‘Well, don’t you? Why not be honest, you believe what they’re saying - that Big Bill Garrety killed him and buried his body in the mine.’

  I didn’t say anything. What could I say? It fitted, and the Pilbara was a tough world in those days with not much chance of the law catching up on him. I pushed back the chair and got to my feet. ‘You’ll radio a report on the morning sked, will you?’

  She hesitated, half shaking her head. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Not yet, Alec. If I do that… . No, I can’t.’ And then she was standing, very close, her hand on my arm. ‘Alec. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be relying on you like this.’ She hesitated, staring up at me, all her loneliness laid bare as she added, ‘But I can’t help it.’

  I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ve nobody either.’ I said it lightly, squeezing her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll catch up with him.’ I don’t think she was convinced any more than I was, and of course she wanted to come with us. But I told her it was essential she stayed with the radio. ‘If you don’t hear from me after a week, then do your best to get an air search organized. We’ll be going to Mt Newman for petrol and stores first. Then the Sylvania homestead. After that we’ll head for this other homestead you mentioned.’

  ‘Murramunda?’

  ‘Yes.’ I left her then and went to wake Kennie.

  While he was getting dressed I checked the Land-Rover, now heavily laden with jerricans of petrol and others marked ‘water’. The guns were there, the shovels and the sand mats, food containers, bucket, axe, saw, petrol funnel. I went across to the workshop, gathering into an old sack all the Land-Rover spares I could see. Janet came to see if she could help and I sent her off to look for more containers, anything that would hold water and petrol.

  I was checking that the compass we had used on our geophysical was still in the dashboard locker when I remembered we would need the map from Ed Garrety’s den. At least it would take us as far as the Highway. I went back to the little room littered with papers and ripped it off the wall. That was how I discovered the Gibson desert map. It was another aeronautical chart - Oakover River No. 3230 and the same size as the Hamersley Range chart so that it had been completely covered by it, the two of them Sellotaped to the wall together.

  I stood there for a moment, staring at it, vaguely wondering why he hadn’t taken it with him. Had he forgotten it was there? Kennie called to me he was ready and I took the charts out and spread them on the bonnet of the Land-Rover. The Oakover River chart showed the track eastward from Sylvania crossing the Highway and then splitting in two at the Murramunda homestead. Both tracks led to the Walgun homestead, the left-hand one direct, the other via the Jiggalong Mission and turning sharply north to make two sides of a triangle. There was nothing to the east of it, only desert. But from Walgun a track ran through the abandoned rabbit fence to the Talawana homestead and then due east between the Horsetrack and Poisonbush ranges and on through the Wells, Emu and McKay ranges to join the Canning Stock Route north-east of Lake Disappointment at Well 23. The Stock Route ran diagonally right across the chart as far as Well 45. But at Well 24, which was marked Karara Soaks, another track ran eastward into an area that was a topographical blank, and it was here, 40 miles or more beyond the Midway Well that I noticed a faint mark on the paper. It was
in the form of a rough circle and looked as though it had been made by the point of a pencil and then rubbed out, the surface of the paper very slightly roughened.

  ‘You found a map then?’

  I looked up to find Kennie at my elbow. And then I saw Janet coming out of the house. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’ll take us to the Lake anyway.’ And I folded the charts and tossed them into the Land-Rover.

  She had a Thermos full of coffee and two skin waterbags, the sort you hang on the side of your truck so that the water sweats through the bag and keeps cool. ‘Don’t forget,’ I said as we climbed into the Land-Rover, ‘if you haven’t heard from me after a week, then you’ll know we’re in trouble.’