McCullock's Gold

by Lindsay Johannsen

  Chapter 12. The Odd Looking Grass Marks; and A Truth … of Sorts

  An hour after the moon went down Jack Cadney awoke. The darkness was now almost total, but his night vision was good and his eyes had soon adjusted to the starlight.

  He gathered up the two little spinifex bushes and checked the sky to orientate himself, then headed off toward the hill, barefooted. When its silhouette came into view he sat down. And there, using the bootlaces and completely by feel, he lashed one of the spinifex bushes to the sole of each foot, needles outward.

  A bit rude and crude, he decided, but with Tyler and Watts imagining him to be kilometres away he didn’t want his large bare footprints being found come daylight. In actual fact Cadney doubted they’d notice a rampaging bull camel’s tracks through the place, so was unconcerned about leaving a few odd looking grass marks.

  He stood up again and set about trying to get the hang of walking high-footed. The spinifex was the only means he had of disguising his tracks so it would just have to do. Hopefully it would last the distance.

  Soon he was padding soundlessly toward the high side of the Toyota, coming along the hill’s gentle western slope from a direction that kept him well clear of the sleepers. At the whitewood tree he picked up the sample carton and carried it off in the direction from which they’d driven up the hill that morning.

  The night was too dark for Cadney to see their tyre marks on the hillside, but he found them easily enough on reaching the soft desert sand. He followed them a short distance, then put the carton on the ground and sat down to remove the spinifexes.

  He wanted them in good enough condition to use again on returning, as trying to find more in the darkness would be nigh on impossible. Walking with a spinifex bush lashed to each foot was also tiresome.

  On standing up he pocketed the laces. Then, to mark his position, he put a fresh-broken mallee branch across the tracks. That done he took up the carton and moved on.

  Soon he came to another rise, a small spinifex-free mound that Tyler had driven across as they’d approached Appoota Mbulkara. There was no quartz reef here but there were plenty of quartz fragments lying about.

  Cadney put the sample box on the ground then grabbed a handful of dry grass and set fire to it with his cigarette lighter. As it burned toward his fingers he scouted around for a dead shrub.

  He’d no concern about the light being seen. It might be visible from the top of the hill but from anywhere else its glow would be lost in the intervening scrub. And who would see it anyway? Not Tyler and Watts, that was for sure. Even if they woke there’d be no reason for them to climb to the summit.

  As the flames approached his fingers he came on a dry bush; near the carton he used it to make a small fire. He then went to work.

  The sample box bore the name of an analytical laboratory on each side, reinforcing his belief that the samples would not be inspected again. He was in luck, too. The carton had not been taped shut. As he lifted out the bags he hoped his luck would continue.

  “Well it’s holding, at least,” he said aloud on finding the sample bags tied off with slipknots. He wouldn’t get all frustrated trying to unpick them by firelight.

  The gravelly soil there was similar to that on Appoota Mbulkara, and one by one Cadney emptied the dirt filled sample bags and filled them afresh. Their earlier contents went in a heap as Twofoot would want the material returned, if only to the old men’s area.

  Next he gathered some quartz fragments to replace the ones in the chip-filled bags, again keeping the original pieces together. On each exchange the portions were roughly matched and the bags tied as before.

  That done Cadney checked his work. “You’ll look pretty bloody stupid if there’s gold in this stuff too,” he muttered, re-tying one he wasn’t happy with.

  As he repacked the carton the last little flame began to flicker, and as he went to stand up it winked out.

  Cadney scraped some sand over the embers, then took up the sample box and set off walking back the way he’d come. On reaching the mallee-branch marker he sat down and once again tied the spinifex bushes to his feet – as earlier, completely by feel. This required a good deal of patience but eventually he was satisfied. He took up the box and went on.

  Tyler and Watts’ campsite was approached with caution, with Cadney moving forward a few metres at a time then standing still and listening. When the sounds of heavy slumber reached his ears he padded up to the whitewood tree and set down the carton, precisely where Watts had placed it earlier.

  Next he crept around the Land Cruiser to the table, where, on retiring, Tyler and Watts had left some things from the tuckerbox. Among them were food items: half a loaf of bread in a plastic bag and two pieces of cooked steak on a cloth-covered plate. Cadney could see no reason why the food shouldn’t go to a worthy charitable cause.

  It might help alleviate some poor blackfella’s hunger, he thought in a conversational manner. As he checked the sleeping figures again his thoughts ran on.

  You don’t mind do you Mister Tyler? …or you Mister Watts? No, of course you don’t.

  See, Mister Cadney; no dissent whatever. What a fine and noble gesture.

  He took some slices of bread from the plastic, tore a couple in half roughly and tossed them on the ground, scattering the pieces about as if a dingo had raided the camp during the night. Then, after lifting the cloth away, he held open the bread bag and replaced the missing slices with the steaks, all while continuing his imaginary dialogue.

  Bloody dingoes. You have to lock up everything in the bush or the buggers’ll get it, especially at night.

  —But Mister Cadney. There’s no dingoes here just now. There’s nothing for them to live on. It’s too dry.

  Excellent observation. And that meat wouldn’t have lasted five minutes if there had been. He inverted the plate on the ground to make the dingo raid look more convincing, totally unconcerned about the lack of substantiating dog tracks.

  Just then one of the men stirred. Cadney dropped down and squatted behind the table as the sleeper sat up.

  It was Tyler. He reached to the foot of his swag for a blanket, looked about briefly, pulled it over himself and rolled onto his side with his back to Cadney. After what seemed like an age his breathing became heavy and even again.

  Cadney remained there another ten minutes, watching the two figures in the darkness, wary of how deep their sleep might be. Eventually he stood up, certain their slumber was real. When neither one moved he stole soundlessly away.

  Getting clear of the hill was his main priority. Second-most was enjoying a tasty steak sandwich as soon as it was safe to do so. But as he crept away in the darkness his hunger overwhelmed him and within thirty metres one piece of meat had gone and almost half of the bread.

  He could just as easily have eaten the remainder but knew to keep it for later. Bonya was a long way off and unless a goanna or something threw itself at his feet he’d be hungry again before he was halfway there – not that there’d be too many goannas about just now.

  Away from the hill he sat down and removed the spinifex from his feet. Both tussocks had fretted away somewhat but any tracks he’d left would still be difficult to read – should anyone try and decipher them. He continued walking in the general direction of his boots.

  Finding them took Jack Cadney a great deal longer than expected and left him feeling decidedly foolish. By starlight the mallee thickets all looked the same, just shadowy masses of darkness. The only thing he could do was go from clump to clump groping around on his hands and knees feeling for them. Eventually he arrived at the right one.

  He didn’t bother with the laces. Instead he just banged the boots together to evict any squatters and pulled them on.

  After ten minutes of slopping northward he stopped near some mallee trees and lit a small fire on a clear patch of sand. There he sat down, pulled off his boots and set about rethreading the laces. It was a job well done, he assured himself with a feeling of satisfaction. Everyt
hing had gone smoothly and the odds of it being successful were good.

  The switch might still be discovered, of course. The outcome of that would be terrible but its chances would surely have to be slim.

  And he’d had no choice in the matter anyway. It was either change the samples and hope for the best or face the inevitable consequences. There had been no alternative options.

  Just as he finished rethreading the laces the fire began to die. He pulled on the boots, tied them tight, kicked some sand over the coals and stood up. Then, with the Southern Cross at his back and a silent appeal to the old men in the shadows, Jack Cadney set off on the long night’s walk to Marshall Bar.

  He arrived at the waterhole three hours after sunrise, having stopped along the way for another hour’s sleep. As expected, the kangaroos still in the area were maintaining a shallow soakage pit there and the water was clean.

  Cadney quenched the top half of his thirst then walked about three hundred metres downstream from the rock bar and found a shady concealment in which to have some more sleep. A couple of hours later, as he stood up to stretch, there came the sound of an approaching vehicle.

  He listened as it changed gears. It wouldn’t be a station vehicle as they rarely came to Marshall Bar, and it wasn’t someone from the Community out hunting. That only left his recent employers, Tyler and Watts. The Cruiser’s engine began labouring heavily as it recrossed upstream from the waterhole.

  Once up the bank the engine noise sped away. As it faded into the distance Jack Cadney contemplated a suitably diabolical, painful and drawn-out fate for the car’s occupants. When it was gone he shut the thought from his mind and sat down again to eat the remainder of the food they’d so generously donated.

  Back at the soakage he had another drink, after which he wandered up to the adjacent overflow channel. He was hoping to find a pie melon there, preferably a good sized specimen that was fairly ripe. Locating one took him a considerable time, however, as most of them had been eaten by wild camels.

  Eventually a survivor was found that suited his purpose. He pulled it off the half-withered vine and took it back to the main channel, to a large river gum with a horizontal trunk. Early in life a flood had lain the tree over, after which it simply went on with the business of growing.

  Cadney sat on the trunk and wedged the melon between his thighs. Then, using his knife, he cut a beer can-diameter sized circle around the stem, this being where the skin was thickest. After removing the piece he set off back to the soakage, along the way collecting a handy dry stick.

  There he made himself comfortable on the sand. Then, using the stick, he mushed-out the melon’s contents, taking particular care to not puncture the skin or tear the rim of the hole. Pie melons were perfectly edible and for someone desperate could be a life saver, but knowing how tasteless and full of seeds they were he wasn’t inclined to try it, certainly not after a nice steak sandwich.

  With the pulp gone he filled the melon shell with water – about a litre and a half he guessed. It was not very robust, but if carried carefully it should last the distance. He set off toward the riverbank, then once up on level going found his way across to the track. There Cadney began covering the ground with long rhythmic strides.

  He’d already decided to return by the way they had come, via the Marshall Bar track and the highway. Once at the highway he might get a ride, even if only to the Community turnoff.

  Going this way was much farther than the cross-country route his father had used, but in those days the Queensland track saw little in the way of vehicle traffic. It followed the stock route and was mostly used for droving cattle through to the Dajarra railhead. Even now, standing in the middle of the highway wasn’t exactly dangerous. Half a day might pass before a traveller came by.

  After ten minutes’ walking Cadney rounded the end of a ridge and saw in front of him a lop-sided mulga tree. It leant out over the track, its branches alive with happyjack babblers. As he drew nearer they began jumping around and shouting at each other.

  “Say what you bloody like,” he told them. “I’m going this way because I might get a ride.” He passed beneath the boisterous collection without looking up; the babblers flew on to the next tree and debated the proposition noisily.

  “Yes, I know,” he said as he caught up, “The old people always followed the creek. But they were used to it, ay. They thought nothing of a forty or fifty kilometre walk.”

  The birds chastised him sharply and left. “Yeah! And I don’t think much of it either!” he shouted after them.

  It was mid afternoon before Jack Cadney stepped onto the Plenty Highway’s gravel formation. Along from the junction were a few termite mounds, smaller versions of the giant desert structures in the spinifex country farther east. One of them was the right size and round-topped enough to sit on, so he detoured over to it to rest his legs and have a drink.

  Thirst satisfied, he checked the level. The melon shell was now below half full – plenty to see him home, even failing a ride. The falling temperature would be helpful, too.

  Ten minutes later he set off again.

  After covering nearly two and a half kilometres the sound of a distant engine came to Cadney’s ears. He stopped walking and turned to listen.

  The vehicle was approaching from behind … and it sounded like a truck.

  Ah well, he mused. At least it was heading in the right direction. And even a lift to the turnoff would be appreciated.

  In the event it was the station truck from the adjoining property, Tarlton Downs, and the driver was happy to take him all the way in to the settlement. To simplify matters Cadney said he’d had car trouble while out hunting and had no option but to walk home.

  A truth of sorts, he reflected. Just not the whole truth ... exactly.