Power of Pinjarra

by Sandra Dengler

  “Was she as sick then as she is now?” Jase asked.

  “Yair. Passing red water. Very…very…not strong. Week. No. Him is seven days…”

  “Weak. That’s right.”

  Indirri wagged his head. Whitefeller yabba.

  When darkness robbed him of his sight, they made camp. At first light he was on the way again. Blackfellers don’t bother much with breakfast.

  Whitefellers do. No matter. Because Indirri was tracking the cow’s aimless wandering, he was still within half a mile of their camp when Jase ate a morning meal and rolled up their swags to join him.

  The track changed. “No more walkabout. Here him horseman. See? Horses, extra heavy. Mob now, come straight from south.”

  “How many in the mob?”

  That took some sorting. Indirri counted off the fingers of both hands and two more. “She still in back. Easy track now.”

  “How many horsemen?”

  “Three.”

  They tried turning the cow loose, hoping she’d head for home, wherever home was. She stood there. They took her under tow again.

  During the heat of midafternoon the cow fell over groaning. Jase put a bullet through her head. They skinned her. Neither horse liked carrying the hide.

  Now, what was this beside a thorn bush? Cautiously Indirri picked up a wad of black hair with strings in it, all stinking with whitefeller sweat. He frowned and handed it to Jase.

  Jase crowed, “I don’t believe it!” With a happy grin he hung the strings over his ears—a big, thick, black whitefeller beard!

  Darkness. Camp. First light. On the way. Indirri would jog a couple miles, then walk to rest the sweaty horses behind him. He had not felt this free, this much at home, for years. His soul sang in harmony with earth and sky.

  In the far distance, the railway traced a thin dark line to echo the flat horizon. The mob angled more toward the southeast. Just north of the railway the cattle tracks churned to a confused halt. The mob had been ringed here, held in place. Indirri ranged out and circled the mess. Here, exactly here, was where his cow entered the churned area.

  He pointed. “Him jump down train here. All mob jump down.”

  “Jump down? Or unload down a ramp?” Jase gestured with both hands. “A ramp; a wide board from the railway car to the ground.”

  Indirri double-checked his first analysis. “Jump. Very jump. No board. No marks. Him jump down. See—feet cut deep.”

  Jase slumped a bit in his saddle. “Now what? No tracking the train.” He brightened momentarily. “Kind of a pun there. The beard’s a nice bit for us, but not for the judge. It’s in our possession, so the prosecution will only say we invented it. End of track.”

  Discouraged, Indirri sat down in the burning dust of midday. For all his bush skills, he had failed.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Owner of Those Cows

  Indirri observed closely the blackfeller across the street. The man was sitting very loosely, his legs sprawled, on a bench under the verandah of a large building. Indirri eased himself onto the bench, as he had seen Marty do, under a verandah on this side of the street. With a forced casualness, he arranged his legs just so and crossed his arms.

  His casual exterior belied a most nervous and uncertain interior. Town. Indirri had on occasion viewed a town from afar—much afar—but this was the first he had ever actually been in one. He didn’t liked it a bit. Buildings like towering cliffs, bigger even than the barn on Pinjarra, crowded in on all sides. The trees grew much taller than usual. Noises and smells, penned in like Indirri himself, collected in one place or another. Town had all the stuff Indirri recognized as normal, and yet nothing was actually, truly normal here.

  The blackfeller across the street tipped a bottle up and drank heavily. Indirri had no bottle. He sat still, concerned that perhaps he would be identified as a Munjong because he had no bottle. Time passed. The feller across the street took another drink and started to sit up. As Indirri watched, slowly, majestically, the blackfeller tipped off balance and rolled off the bench quite literally onto his ear. He curled up where he fell, as a weary child would do, and after a few snuffling adjustments, went to sleep.

  Indirri suddenly realized his mistake. He had sat in the middle of the bench; that feller sat on the end. It was easy for the blackfeller to roll off, sitting on the end. Moving slowly, ever so naturally, so as to avoid notice, Indirri wormed his way a bit at a time down toward the end of the bench so that he could roll off similarly. He hoped no one was noticing his error. Several times over, he rehearsed his movements with the pictures in his mind that he might get the complex maneuver right the first time. Obviously, getting off one of these benches takes excellent coordination and a bit of practice.

  Whup. Jase flopped down beside him. Jase sat smack in the middle of the bench, so apparently he wasn’t intending to get off very soon. “How’s your clothes fit?”

  “Good-oh! Much easy wear these. More than other whitefeller clothes at Pinjarra. What name him give me clothes?”

  “St. Vincent de Paul.”

  “Ah. Yair.”

  “When you backtracked that cow, you could tell night from day, right? Most of the time.”

  “Night, one day, night, next day?”

  “Yair. Let’s say you got it right within two days. So by counting back I calculated when the train stopped to drop those cattle off, plus or minus two days. Came in here and talked to the stationmaster. Bingo!” He grinned and waved a thin white bark strip. “Here’s a copy of the bill of lading for a dozen cattle, loaded at Alpha just down the road. You got the day exactly right. And the stationmaster remembered which engineer. He’s on the train today, so now we go over to the railway station and talk to him. Ever been around a railway train up close?”

  “Naw. Him don’ need it.”

  Jase laughed. “Well, him needs it now. Come along.” And he sprang to his feet, smoothly and quickly.

  Should Indirri get off the bench like a blackfeller, or like a whitefeller? Perplexing.

  “Come on, will you?”

  The blackfeller’s intent was to take a nap, and Indirri’s was to walk away. Hoping that intent rather than race determined one’s actions, Indirri stood up. He glanced around quickly. No one noticed, no one commented. He hurried down the street after Jase.

  A dozen whitefellers and a few blacks lolled about the station platform, strolling up and down or sitting on benches. Indirri avoided benches; too many decisions. Jase leaned against the building, so Indirri leaned beside him.

  Jase looked casual enough, as he always looked, with a touch of the larrikin about him. But Indirri could sense in the young man an intensity, an urgency. There was a faint smell of anger in him, too.

  Here it came. Indirri steeled himself. He told himself there was nothing to fear. Look at all these people—not the least scent of fear in any of them. He arranged his body similarly to Jase’s and froze himself deliberately in place.

  No amount of preparation equipped him for the enormity of this terrifying monster. Big as a house, black as a starless night, it loomed greater and greater until it filled earth and sky before him. It attacked all his senses at once; smoke and hot iron assailed his nose and his taste, unimaginable shrieking and clanging sounds deafened him, the heat of its great belly roasted him as would a giant fire. Its multifarious parts churned and spewed smoke both black and white from half a dozen places.

  Jase turned to him and smirked. “Not bad, Indirri. I wouldn’t guess you felt afraid at all, except your eyes are this big and you’re covered in a cold sweat. Wanna wait here?”

  “Good-oh.” His voice croaked.

  Jase sauntered over to the thing. He stepped right up to it, close enough to touch. He talked to a whitefeller inside it who stood in an open box with a window. They shook hands before Jase climbed into the monster beside the whitefeller. He leaned against the inside of it talking and nodding. He gave a piece of the white bark to the man. The feller spent time looking at it and
doing something with it. By and by they shook hands again and Jase hopped down. He strolled back to Indirri, not in the least anxious to get away from the beast.

  Jase laughed, and a bit of the intensity had relaxed. He headed down into the town again and Indirri stayed close at his side. “We got it, Indirri! The reef. The mother lode. The engineer wrote me a statement here that he unloaded the stock out in the bush just this side of Ilfracombe—exactly where you tracked them to. Met by three riders who drove them north.”

  “Him know three man, him see him?”

  “Nope. Didn’t recognize them, but we don’t need that. We have the name of the shipper on the bill of lading here. Now we know who those ticky cows belong to.”

  They continued past the bench of Indirri’s recent experience. The blackfeller across the way was still asleep. They continued down to the Commercial Hotel paddock to their horses.

  Jase tightened his horse’s saddle girth. “Got another job for you, Indirri, but you hafta keep your clothes on for this one. Know that fake beard you found?”

  Indirri swung up into his saddle. “Yair.”

  “Want you to pick me out the gent that wore it. We’re gunner start looking with a visit to Ross Sheldon’s southside camp. He just happens to keep three drovers there.”

  They rode half a day at a rather rapid pace. The intensity returned in Jase—in his voice and in his actions. They passed very sorry-looking sheep and even worse-looking cattle. The grass and bush here were in far worse shape than the forage on Pinjarra. Cattle and sheep had gnawed the grass down into the roots and stripped branches off trees. Not even a wallaby would find a good meal here anymore.

  “Over there.” Jase drew his horse in and pointed to a stringybark hut beside a small paddock, where three men sat on stovewood spools around a flat surface, playing at cards. His snapping black eyes met Indirri’s. “Now, remember the drill? What you’re supposed to say?”

  “Yair.”

  “And remember you have to be certain. You sniff the gents over. If you can’t get a clear match—a definite yes—we’ll go look elsewhere. Understand?”

  As Jase pulled that wad of black hair out of his saddlebag, Indirri uncorked his waterbag. He splashed water up into his nose and snorted a few times. Jase handed the beard across. Indirri buried his face in it, inhaled both with mouth open and mouth closed, memorizing the nuance of odor. He handed it back, nodding, and Jase put it away.

  Jase grimaced. He unsnapped the cover on his holster and loosened the gun there. “Let’s give it a burl.”

  They rode forward into the camp. The three men stood up, watching Jase and Indirri as the station cat watches mice in the hayloft. With a friendly smile Jase introduced himself. The three men mentioned their names. Indirri smelled fear and anger here.

  Jase’s voice cooed like a pigeon’s. “Now this sounds silly as a goose at a tea party, but I’m hoping you gents will do me a big favor. I have a bet on with some bludgers down in Ilfracombe that Indirri here can tell what station a bloke works for just by the smell of him. Would you be so kind as to let Indirri take a whiff of you?” His hand rested easily on his holster.

  They looked at each other. They looked at Indirri. They looked at Jase. “Yair,” said one of them cautiously. “Why not?”

  Jase nodded. Indirri stepped up to the closest, a pot-bellied fellow, and sniffed around the man’s neck and ear. No.

  He tried the second, a man with a jagged white scar above his right eye. Yes. This was the one who had worn the beard.

  He sniffed the third. No. He stepped back. As they had rehearsed, he announced, “Sheldon man, all three.”

  Jase cocked his head. “That true? You Ross Sheldon’s stockmen?”

  “Yair. He can really do that by smelling?”

  Jase shrugged. “The straight oil. Never woulda guessed it myself. Looks like I’m losing a bet.” he backed up. “Well, ta, gentlemen.”

  They rode away with one eye out behind, so to speak.

  ****

  She owned this. She owned all this. Pearl looked out her office window, across from the hotel on the corner. It would be hers in February if she decided to close the deal. Next to it stood the general store. She owned that, too, now. The laundry had generated enough money to buy the restaurant, which had in turn produced the capital to purchase the general store—where once she had purchased flatirons on account because she didn’t have enough money to pay cash. The sunlight danced on the fruits of her ambition.

  She turned her attention back to the mail on her desk. A few bills. A carefully lettered envelope from a gentleman—probably a marriage proposal. A letter from Mum. She laid her hand on the little pile of envelopes. Here in a microcosm was her whole life: bills, a man she didn’t know asking for something she didn’t want, and word from a person she’d been distancing herself from. What an empty mailbox.

  Knuckles rapped on the office door. It swung open. “Your tea, mum. The scone is fresh.” With quick, slim fingers, Louise set up tea on the corner of Pearl’s desk. Louise was perhaps twenty-five at most—just a very few years younger than Pearl herself—but how old she acted and sounded! Elderly dowagers were not so cold and reserved as this tall, skinny, somber girl. “Will that be all, mum?”

  “Thank you.”

  Louise curtsied and swept out on silent feet.

  Suddenly tea held no interest at all. Pearl stood up and watched at the window a few moments. She stuffed the unopened mail in her bag, plucked her hat off the rack and adjusted it on the way out.

  Where was she going? She knew exactly where, even as she pretended to be strolling at random in Anakie’s dusty streets. Anakie had been in decline for some time now, but until recently the decline had been subtle. Nothing subtle about it now. Buildings stood vacant. Collapsed tents lay abandoned in vacant lots. She owned the store because she was the only one who would buy it from the retiring proprietor. It would supply her other investments at wholesale, even if its over-the-counter sales dropped. She held option on the hotel for the same reason: she was the only one interested in its purchase. On the surface, Anakie did not appear to be the best of investments.

  Pearl smiled to herself. Phooey on appearances. The laundry was still turning a quid for her, the restaurant with its reputation as the best eatery around was doing very well, and the general store was the only place in Anakie selling mining tools and hardware. For every miner and gem seeker going under, two others came pouring in to try their luck. And they all needed supplies.

  She came out into the wide railway yard and walked the length of the platform. Her feet had not crossed these boards since she set Luke Vinson on his way to Mossman to tilt at windmills.

  Here was that shed where Enid had lain and she had sat that terrible day. She had little dreamed that she would ever know God as Enid did. Well, she still didn’t, exactly. Enid had walked hand in hand with Him. Pearl always walked ten paces behind, it seemed.

  Marty. He had been there, too, on that day. How was he doing? She thought about his chocolate eyes, and those strong shoulders that had once shielded her from harm. Now there was a man. No posturing, no false boasting, no need to prove anything. She smiled at his memory.

  She sat down on the bench beside the ticket office. She could purchase a ticket to Brisbane this very moment if she wished. She could purchase the whole train, probably. She remembered the fire that once burned in her heart, the desire to travel to the city and marry well. So long ago, that was. Without Enid to share it the dream simply faded to nothing. Gone.

  Now here she sat, a spinster—a wealthy spinster, the object of many men’s affections and proposals. And propositions. If you have taste and scruples, it’s very lonely being a good-looking woman in a mining town.

  The shed. Enid had asked another thing of Pearl besides her accepting Jesus as her Savior. A list. Enid had wanted Pearl to keep track of all the good things that had come out of that tragedy. Until this moment, Pearl had forgotten Enid’s list.

  She pulled
the letters out of her bag. She opened Mum’s, scanned its three pages and folded it up. Every letter from Mum was the same. She let her hands fall in her lap. Then she rifled through her bag, produced a pencil and began to write on the back of the envelope.

  What good things had come of Enid’s travail? Pete Sark. That reprobate was now the Rev. Peter Sark, serving well and joyously. Considering what the man used to be, that alone might be looked upon as a miracle of sorts. Robert Riley, ambassador for Christ, without portfolio. He still stuttered, and since the accident his arm hadn’t worked right, but every Sunday he held Bible school for the ragamuffins living in the area. He loved children and they loved him, and every week he preached Jesus to them.

  The Enid Fowkes Library. Nearly every man (and most of the women, including the shady ones) felt the urge to give money for something, somehow, in Enid’s name. Anakie would never have obtained its extensive four-room library any other way. It was now patronized respectfully and constantly by lonely men from the mines.

  Most of the people here in town who had known Enid still went to church. A surprising number of them loudly proclaimed Jesus as Savior to anyone who would listen. Large numbers of people, though, had since moved on to other places. Pearl had no idea where they were or what they were doing. She wrote Fruit, in and out of season on the list.

  Anakie had a doctor now who had saved a number of lives over the years. The miners wouldn’t have united in their efforts to obtain medical service, and then supported it by subscription, had Enid not died for lack of it. Effective medical aid.

  She paused. To these people, the educated and the uneducated, Enid had represented Jesus Christ.

  The train was due soon, for here came the paper boy hawking the latest news. He always hit the platform around train time. The lad presented her with a choice: she could continue to reflect upon the past or she could escape into the trivia of the present.

  “Here, lad.” Her smallest coin was a shilling. “Keep the change.”

  She snapped the paper open. On the front page they were still arguing over whether to install sewer lines by the creek. Disposition of cases recently on the docket filled most of page two. The constable’s report took a very small column. Even crime was in decline. On page three—