'Think they're long gone.'
I could see myself getting to like this bloke. So calm in a pressure-cooker situation, so measured, and yet thoughtful. Capable of humour, even, at a time like this.
'Camel's going to stay back here, with the… with the bodies. He'll wait for the police. Frankly, he's still a little too shaken up to be of much use. What did you say your friend's name was?'
'Hazel.'
'Hazel. Okay, if she's out there we'll find her. But we'd better check the camp first. If you're up to it.'
Which we did. And which I wasn't. Bernie went into the shack alone, while Mai and I sat in the Hino.
The roaring swarm of flies told me that Bernie was checking the bodies. He came out a minute or two later, shaking his head.
'Unbelievable!' he muttered. 'He did a good job. Poor old buggers. I covered them up; least we can do is give them a little dignity.'
I nodded my appreciation. Not everyone out here would have been so sensitive.
'Let's see if there's anyone alive around here.'
A quick search of the camp revealed neither dead nor living. A slower search, this time out as far as the horse yards, told us that Hazel's little bay was missing. The maze of hoof prints around the yard made it impossible to track. But if Hazel had managed to get away, I was sure she'd head for the gaol.
When I said this to Bernie, he glanced at Mai, who nodded his agreement, then we climbed back aboard the Hino.
'Okay,' said Bernie, 'let's go!'
Ghost Roads
I took them cross country, and we hit the track not far from where we'd had our disastrous encounter with Blakie. I caught a glimpse of poor Camel in the distance, crouching forlornly by a small fire. Sweet drove up and filled him in on our plans. After the vaguest of acknowledgments from the battered, bearded one we set off to find Hazel.
I took them via the Long Yard shortcut, but the track faded into a faint set of wheel marks, then disappeared altogether in a patch of whippet grass. I decided to give directions from the back of the truck, just as the late Tony D'loia had done, and it was as I was changing places that I spotted the first hoof prints in the sand.
Her horse? I wondered. Maybe.
A little further on, at the northern gate, I picked out a foot print. Not just a foot print, the foot print, the only one in the world I knew at a glance. The crack in the heel, the long, skating arch.
'She's been here!' I cried. 'We're on the right track.'
Bernie gave me a cheery thumbs up.
I climbed aboard, grinning with relief, confident that she was still alive.
My confidence took a downward spiral a few kilometres later when we found the horse itself, lame and alone. We doubled back, searching for the spot where she'd abandoned it. We dismounted, fanned out. We did eventually pick up her tracks, but it took us a good hour to do so, and even then it was only because I'd guessed where she was going. She was heading for the gaolhouse, but taking the longest, toughest route, covering her tracks and cutting across country.
I was puzzled. What was the point? Me she could fool easily enough. But Blakie? Blakie could have tracked a bird through the air.
We pushed on, Mai taking a turn at the wheel now. I took them up through the foothills, over the jump-up, then round the western side of the ranges. From time to time, when something caught my attention, I'd pull him up with a thump on the roof.
Once it was a set of scuff marks, where she'd fallen to the ground. Another time, at the Ngurulu soakage, we came across the remains of a dried-out camel, its teeth little tombstones, its skin rotting away like a carpet left out in the rain.
In the soak itself were fresh holes, but no water.
She was getting thirsty.
Then we found hand prints, stretching for thirty or forty metres. Hand prints! I thought. She's on her knees. Christ, she must be getting desperate. Was she injured? Or worse, driven out of her mind by the horrors she'd witnessed back at the camp?
The anxiety gnawed at my insides. I could feel her fear. Sometimes, touching her hand prints or studying an acacia bush under which she'd rested, I could almost smell it.
I found myself drumming the roof of the Hino in frustration. I longed to speak to her, to touch her, to reassure her that help was at hand. Christ! I thought, what a godawful nightmare the last few weeks have been for her. First her father, then the rest of her family. Thank God Winnie and the kids were in town when Blakie struck.
We hit the plains and the miles flew by, the wind rattled my eardrums.
The two miners sat in front, neither of them making more than the odd comment. I stood on the tray, clutching the bar and yelling out any change of directions, but our course was usually obvious. Bernie flashed a reassuring smile through the rear window now and again, but for the most part they just stared at the horizon, focusing on the job at hand.
Occasionally they consulted a map. I knew the country better than either of them, of course - I'd grown up among its sun- scoured hills and hollows - and didn't need a map. I wasn't looking for landmarks, I was looking for variations. Things out of place. It was something I'd learned from Lincoln. Visitors to the desert sometimes remark upon the amazing long-range vision of those old blackfellers, but it's not their eyes. Half the poor buggers are just about blind. It's their minds. So well do they know the lie of the land that they're quick to spot anything up and running.
And that was how it happened: a dead branch beside the track suddenly sprouted wings and burst into a mopoke. As I followed its line of flight I spotted a tiny blur, out on the far side of the burnt scoria that stretched out under the stern gaze of the Brothers Grim.
'Over there!' I yelled, bashing on the roof so hard I put a dent in it. 'Something moving!'
The truck pulled up. 'Which way?' yelled Bernie, his head half out the window as he shaded his eyes and peered into the afternoon glare.
'Bit more to the left!'
He tried to follow the line of my outstretched arm, then climbed up beside me. 'You've got better eyes than me, Emily.'
'Follow the line of desert oaks until you come to the gap in the cliffs.' The cliffs, coincidentally, that I'd been standing upon earlier this morning as I sat and peered out over the plains over which I now found myself travelling. Jalyukurru.
'She's just below it, see? Near the rocks.'
They were, in fact, a damn sight more than rocks. They were the Tom Bowlers. Karlujurru. Diamond Dove. An appropriate place to find her, given her dreaming, but explaining their significance to my rescuers was the least of my concerns right now.
Bernie Sweet shaded his eyes, scrutinised the horizon. 'Right!' he said, suddenly excited. 'Got her! Got her!'
He yelled some directions at Mai, then stood beside me as we bounced out over the rough terrain.
'What a relief,' he said, and relieved he certainly looked. He was almost buoyant, the wind whipping his smooth, handsome face and working his lips into a smile. He relaxed, leaned against a fuel drum tied to the railing. 'We'll get her into town,' he said. 'She'll need medical attention.'
'She's alive, Bernie. That's enough for me. And I'm going to make sure she stays that way.'
Not that there was danger of anything to the contrary, given the way she was moving. She looked to be in a damn sight better nick than I was. The blur gradually crystallised into a running woman: pumping arms and flowing legs, blue dress, the sun gleaming off her ragged hair. It was my precious Nungarayi all right.
'Hazel!' I yelled.
She kept going. Must have been still out of range.
We closed. I called again, and was surprised when she didn't hear me that time. 'Give her a blast of the horn!' I yelled to Mai, who grinned blearily at me - about the closest thing to an emotion I'd seen from him - and obliged with a chorus of enthusiastic blarps that rang around the red hills.
If anything the horn seemed to stir her into a new burst of energy. She left the track and began heading up the incline, up in the direction of the rocks
of Karlujurru.
'Hazel!' I screamed so loudly I strained my vocal cords. 'It's Emily.'
She kept moving. I leapt into the air, gesticulating wildly.
I was in mid-air when it struck me: something doesn't tally here.
Such was the force with which the intuition hit that I momentarily lost my balance, slipped and skidded in the gravel bouncing about the Hino's floor.
Gravel? Not exactly. I'd grazed my hand in the fall, and took a closer look at the minute fragments embedded in my palm.
Splinters of blue light shot away from the raw skin.
I picked up a handful of crushed rock from the floor.
It was sprinkled with blue fragments, fractured and faceted on one side, smooth, round and gleaming on the other. It was only my seeing it in the context of a mining truck that made me recognise the stone for what it was: crushed core samples.
Awfully fucking familiar core samples. I felt an icy wind blow through my heart.
The pieces of the puzzle flew together of their own accord, and oh! the picture they made. At last I understood what was going on. God knows, it had taken me long enough, but I knew who had killed Lincoln. And Jangala. And Maggie. I even knew who'd killed Marsh's bloody cattle. I knew why they'd been killed. And how.
I knew everything about the string of deaths except how to prevent Hazel's and my own from being added to their number.
Boiling Oil
Hazel was staggering now, but still moving. I could feel the terror that was coursing through her veins: something very much like it was coursing through my own.
But then another emotion flared up and through me like a wildfire.
Fury.
What had I been? Fuckwitted? Blind? Racist, even, against my own people. All of the above and more.
Well fuck em, I thought. Not any more. Not any more. If I was going down I was going down swinging. And kicking, biting, scratching, gouging, raking and making use of whatever came to hand, foot or fingernail. I glanced at Bernie.
'We couldn't have found her without you,' he said, his blue eyes beaming merrily.
'No,' I smiled back, 'don't suppose you could've.'
A blur of movement on his right side.
It was only the fact that I was expecting it that stopped the hammer in his fist from smashing my skull. I rolled with the blow, but it still sent me reeling out over the dropsides.
He thumped on the roof and the vehicle pulled up. I heard him jump down, walk back towards me.
'Nothing personal, Emily,' I heard him mutter.
Jesus, I thought, it's fucking personal to me.
He came closer, and I lay still, my eyes closed but my brain braced and working furiously.
A cry from Mai - 'C'mon, quick! Other one's pissin off!' - called him away, doubtless to return when he'd taken care of Hazel. I heard the door slam, the truck start up.
I opened my eyes. The truck began to move. No time to think. No options. I threw myself forward and grabbed hold of the tow- bar. The rocks ripped bitter weals into my flesh as I dragged myself up over the tailgate. I collapsed onto the floor, my legs shredded, my skin dancing with pain.
How much time did I have? Bugger all. The truck slowed as it hit the rough ground leading up to Karlujurru, but Hazel was less than a hundred metres away.
I crouched in the shelter of the forty-four and scanned the truck desperately, looking for a weapon. Shovels? Crowbars? Sledgehammers? Fucking pointless. They had a gun in there. Shovels and crowbars? All I'd be doing was providing them with a bit of light entertainment.
The forty-four.
I tapped. It was full. I grabbed the hammer, ripped the bung out. Full of super.
I glanced at the blokes up front. All eyes on the next kill, they hadn't noticed me.
What could I use for a torch?
I whipped off what was left of my shirt, pulled the matches out of my pocket and tackled the knots that held the drum. Braced myself. I put a match to the shirt. It was cheap crap. Perfect. Went up like a flare. I got a grip on the forty-four, put a foot up on the backboard and heaved.
Thump!
They heard that all right. Felt it, too. The vehicle slammed to a halt. Petrol came surging out onto the floor and I launched myself out over the tailgate.
Somewhere in mid-flight I flicked the burning shirt back over my shoulder.
I hit the ground rolling. Splinters of pain lanced my back. I'd landed on rock. Rock? Shelter, I thought hopefully. I tumbled into a granite outcrop as sheets of metal and screams and a wall of flame flew about me.
I clenched my eyes. Stars exploded, indigo rivers ran down shafts of red and yellow gold. Metal melted, plastic boiled. I squeezed everything that could be squeezed - my eyes into twisted slits, my knees into my tits, my body into a ball as the air shuddered and shook. Rocks burst. My eardrums threatened to do the same. Burning embers and ashes and sparks of glass lashed my bare back. My bones were on fire, my marrow sizzled. I gasped for burning rags of air. I froze, I cried, I screamed until my throat throbbed.
Time warped. I lay for an incalculable span - somewhere between seconds and forever - tumbling in a vacuum.
Then I crawled away, vaguely astonished that I was able to do so.
A dirty black cloud boiled above me. The sun had gone a streaky green, the sky greasy.
I climbed out of the blackened little hollow that had saved my life. Attempted to stand. Wobbled for a while, then made it to my feet. The chorus of pain that screamed from every corner of my body told me I was still all there.
I staggered up to where I'd last seen Hazel, giving the burning vehicle a wide berth and a glance quick enough to ensure there were no survivors. I didn't hang around - there were some bloody awful odours coming from the inferno and they didn't all smell like burning oil and rubber. I studied the wreck for a moment, and made out the charred remains of a corpse. I couldn't tell which one of them it was. It looked as though he'd made it out of the cabin, burning as he crawled, but in his thrashings had rolled back under the truck and been consumed.
Hazel was some thirty or forty metres away, lying face down in the scree on the outskirts of Karlujurru.
I staggered up the slope and put a hand upon her shoulder. 'Hazel…'
She sprang about, wild eyed and sucking air, her mouth twisted into the beginnings of a scream.
Then she saw who it was and the relief swept across her face.
'Oh Emily…'
I fell into her arms and we kissed each other's battered faces.
'It's okay, Haze,' I whispered. 'It's okay…'
'Those papalurtu…'
'We're safe now, darling. I burnt the bastards.'
'They killed… them old people.'
'I know. Took me long enough, but I got it in the end.'
We huddled desperately against one another, then she looked at me and shook her head.
'Jesus, Emily,' she muttered, 'thanks for helping em track me down.'
'Sorry about that.'
'Thought I shook em off till you showed up.'
'I only just figured em out meself. Took your wind-chime, didn't they?'
Her eyes crinkled suspiciously. 'What?'
'Your wind-chime. That was what they were after.'
'How'd you know that?'
'Because they took mine as well. Tried to make it look like the Sandhill Gang.'
'I was waterin the horses when they come in. Watched em kill the old ones.' She paused, stared at the west, shook her head. 'Oh Emily, I don't understand. That feller went about it as cool as if he was butcherin a beast.' She shuddered and gagged, resumed her tale with a whimper. 'Poor olgamin, she try to run. That silly little waddle of hers, you know? He got her with a crowbar. And the wind-chime - yeah, one of em was smashin it up in the back of the truck when he spotted me.'
'I've been such a fuckwit.'
'I don't understand. Those stones, what are they, gold or something?'
'The blue band's labradorite. Pretty, but not valuable. T
he interesting bit's the boring-looking stuff at the other end. Olivine, Jack reckoned at first glance. I took a closer look at a chunk of it today. He wasn't far off the mark. It's dunite.'
She looked at me blankly. 'Dunite?'
'Don't you remember it from that old mining book we used to read? Gouging the Witwatersrand?'
'Dunite. Maybe I remember the name. What's it worth?'
'On its own, nothing. But alongside of it you got norite, labradorite. Band of anorthosite in the upper strata. You beginning to see a pattern?'
'You always been the pattern part of the outfit, Emily. Me, I never get past the shapes and colours.'
I kissed her forehead. 'That's why we fit together so well, Haze. Must admit, though, I probably read about these things more than you do. I was brushing up on my reading just the other day, before they flogged my book. The little crystal on your window ledge is part of the pattern too.'
'I thought it was some sort of fool's gold.' The Moonlight mob had been forever bringing minerals into Jack, hoping they were of value. This one was.
'It isn't pyrite,' I told her. 'It's sperrylite.'
She shrugged. 'Oh, you know, Emmy… All those rites an lites. Might as well be starlight to me.'
'It's platinum, Haze. A crystallised form of platinum. Blakie gave it to you, didn't he?'
'Yuwayi.'
'That's what this is all about. Platinum. Worth more than gold. Worth killing for. Or so these scum suckers reckoned. Boss was a South African, too.'
'What's that got to do with it?'
'Well, some of them have a certain… panache when it comes to working with blackfellers, for one. But they've also got…'
'The Bushveld.'
I nodded. 'Still the largest platinum reef in the world. Mostly in a dunite matrix. Bloke knew what he was looking at. I reckon I know where he was looking, too.'
'So do I.' She waved an arm at the rocks above. 'Right here. How'd you figure it out?'
'The painting in the gaolhouse.'
'The diamond dove?'
'It's a map of the area. Should have twigged straightaway, but I didn't start using my head until I saw the original.'
Diamond Dove Page 26
