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.’
She nodded dumbly, standing there, the Alsatian beside her and one hand absently stroking its head. And as Kennie started the engine, I leaned my head out of the window. ‘Better get started on those cattle. You’ve only got till the end of February.’
‘You know there’s no water for them this side of Coondewanna.’
‘Have a look at Golden Soak then,’ I said. ‘There was plenty of water at the four level and now the mine’s collapsed that soak might start working again.’ And I nodded to Kennie to get going. Not much of a chance, but anything was better than having her hang around the place with nothing to do but wait.
We took the backtrack to Mt Newman, colour flooding the landscape as the sun’s light grew behind the Ophthalmia Range. And two hours later, in a garage in Newman township, we got news of Ed Garrety. He had brought his Land-Rover in for servicing just before lunch the previous day and had finally set out around five-thirty.
I had talked to enough Aussies, seen enough of their country now, to have no illusions about what lay ahead. The bush was the nearest thing to hell on earth, they said, and bush bashing like trying to drive through barbed wire entrenchments. But surely that depended on the locality. It couldn’t all be as bad as that, and the desert wasn’t the same as the bush. Surely to God it would be more open. I ordered a set of new tyres and instructed the foreman to give the Land-Rover a thorough overhaul, tipping him a ten-dollar note to get the job done in a hurry. After breakfasting at the Walkabout, we shopped for stores, then went in search of more jerricans, loading them full of fuel into the back of the Land-Rover until there wasn’t an inch of space left. It was almost midday before we were finally ready, everything checked, and on our way.
We reached the Sylvania homestead shortly after one, but Ed Garrety had not called there and they had seen no sign of his Land-Rover. We were in flat country then, the hills behind us as we took the eastward track, and an hour later we had crossed the Highway and were at Murramunda. The heat was intense, the place abandoned. The track continuing eastward was fairly good and we were able to make Jiggalong in two-wheel drive. Ed Garrety had not called there, but we found an abo who had seen the dust streamer of a vehicle heading for the Walgun homestead shortly after sundown. We had a cooling drink of water and then drove on, the track running northward now.
The sun was setting as we reached Walgun, and though the place seemed deserted, an abo in a singlet and shorts eventually answered the blare of our horn. No whitefella had stopped there, the previous night, but he showed us the fresh tyremarks of a vehicle heading up the track to Balfour Downs.
There were low hills to the north of us now as we drove through the gathering dark and it was night when we passed by the Balfour Downs homestead. We did not stop, driving east-north-eastward to the old abandoned rabbit fence and the source of the Oakover River, still in two-wheel drive. But though the going had been pretty fair, we were utterly exhausted by the time we reached the Talawana homestead. No lights, no sign of life. We camped by Talawana Pool, which was dry in the starlight. A meal and a couple of hours’ sleep, then we were on the long drive eastward towards Lake Disappointment, and in about ten miles we were reduced to four-wheel drive, the track invaded by spinifex and saltbush, the going slow.