This gully had now become the graveyard of Jarra Jarra and all Ed Garrety’s hopes. God knows how many head were starving to death there. The sick reek of it hung in the air and one wretched cow, still just alive and lying with its starved udder draped like a pancake over a boulder, blocked our way so completely that I had to get out and shoot it and then drive over it. I switched on my headlights in the gloom of the gully, and lying sleepless for a long time that night under the stars I could still see its eyes, enormous in the bony skull and crawling with flies, a sad patience in their expression as it waited motionless for the end.
We had seen nobody on the drive down to Golden Soak and when we reached the shoulder of Coondewanna the hollow was deserted, the little piles of dust samples still there around the hole Duhamel’s rig had drilled. And now, as we waited for the broadcast with our portable standing on the tailboard of the Land-Rover, I was thankful that Culpin had not returned to re-peg his claim. Presumably the Bamboo Springs prospect had proved more promising. The newscaster’s voice, tinny and unnatural in that wild, remote setting, began reading the details from the Government Gazette as they were phoned through from Perth. The new regulations called for corner pegs 5-foot high and 6-foot trenches in addition to the substantial 3-foot comer posts Culpin had erected and the 4-foot angled trenches he had dug. And further pegs or cairns 3-foot high set in 4-foot long trenches were required at 15-chain intervals. The ABC announcer had read slowly enough for us to take it all down, and when he had finished, we read it through and then checked our stock of timber. Even allowing for the use of Culpin’s posts, we hadn’t enough to fill in along the sides of the claim every 330 yards.
‘We could peg at the corners, register the claim and fix the intermediary pegs later,’ Kennie suggested. But I shook my head. I wasn’t taking any chances this time. ‘Okay. Then we need some more timber.’ He was looking at me and I knew what he was thinking, what we were both thinking, that there would be fence posts available at the Garrety homestead.
‘You going, or shall I?’
‘You,’ I said. I didn’t want to face Janet, not yet — not until I’d got this claim pegged and had been into the Gibson again.
He nodded. ‘You start on the trenches then. I’ll be back in time to give you a hand with the corner pegs. At least we’ll get those in before dark.’ He was already offloading the timber, and then as he started to get behind the wheel, he paused. ‘Any message?’
I shook my head. What the hell message could I send her? And as I stood watching him drive off the shoulder into die gully, I was thinking that it hurt that she hadn’t written, hadn’t even bothered to answer my letters.
He was back just as I hammered the last corner peg and was starting on the intermediary trenches. ‘No fence posts,’ he said. ‘But I got some shed timbers.’
‘You saw her, did you?’
He nodded, staring at me rather strangely.
‘Is she all right?’
‘Yes, she’s all right.’ But he didn’t sound very sure.
‘You told her what we were doing?’
‘Yes. She said we could do what the hell we liked. It didn’t make any difference and she didn’t care now.’
‘Did you tell her we were pegging it for Jarra Jarra?’
‘Sure. But I don’t think it registered.’ He hesitated, still with a strange look in his eyes. ‘Tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘she seemed sort of dried-up inside.’
‘How do you mean?’
He shrugged. ‘Oh, I dunno. Scared maybe — about the cattle, the future. But she seemed dazed, half dead if you like — ‘sthough nothing mattered any more. But she let me take all I needed from one of the old sheds.’
If I hadn’t been so anxious to get the claim registered, I’d have driven up to the homestead myself. As it was, we went right on into the dark, working by the Land-Rover’s headlights. We finished pegging just after ten, had some food and started straight away, headed for Marble Bar.
Driving through the night along that ribbed highway, I had plenty of time to think about what Kennie had told me. The hell of it was Coondewanna still had to be proved, and the Monster, even if we found it, would take years to develop. Mining prospects don’t bring rain. They don’t put green growth back into a drought-ridden land. And all the wealth in the world cannot bring a dead man to life again.
Dried-up inside Kennie had described her, and now that I was in the outback again I could appreciate how she must feel, the loneliness of her solitary life eating into her like a canker, destroying the natural resilience of youth. God knows, I now knew what loneliness was like, but strangely enough, the loneliness of a prison cell is quite different from the loneliness of a vast empty country. There is a curious protectiveness in four walls. Prison shuts you off from the world outside. Here, in this dusty, arid, desert world, the exposure to elemental forces was total and crushing.
I was tired when we finally got into Marble Bar. We both were, for the ribbed dirt road and the speed at which we’d been driving had made it difficult to sleep. Trucks and Land-Rovers were parked both sides of the sloped tarmac of the main street and there was a queue for breakfast at the Ironclad. There was a crowd, too, garnered outside the Mines Department building, waiting for the office to open. We parked just off the tarmac at the bottom of the slope and cooked breakfast. I didn’t notice Culpin until we had joined the queue of prospectors and he came out after registering his claim. He had Smithie with him and he walked straight past us, a quick sideways glance of his eyes the only sign of recognition.
It was almost eleven by the time we were through. The crowd of vehicles had thinned by then, but a Chev ute was backed close up against our roo guard, Culpin leaning against it, waiting for us. ‘Claimed above Golden Soak, did you?’ And when I didn’t say anything, he added, ‘Too bad. I missed it by a day. Remember?’ He was smiling, trying to be friendly. ‘Smithie here reckons you’re lucky. The Swede said the same.’ He came away from the side of the ute. ‘What about the Gibson? You going to be lucky there too?’
‘What do you want?’ I asked him.
‘We could team up,’ he said, his eyes squinted against the sun-glare from the tarmac. ‘I know that desert country. You don’t.’ And he added, as though it made a difference, ‘I got the use of a helicopter when I want it.’ He waited, watching me, his legs straddled and his hands thrust into his belt. A big survey truck roared passed us. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But I’m warning you. You try and go into the Gibson without me and I’ll make dam’ sure you never get beyond the Soaks. For your own good,’ he added, thrusting his head forward.
Out of the tail of my eye I saw Kennie suddenly very tense, his face white with anger. ‘You t-try that, Pa and I’ll…’ He checked himself, and then with more controclass="underline" ‘The Monster doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to — ’
‘Belongs to nobody till a claim’s registered. You know that as well as I do.’ He swung round and was facing his son. ‘If Alec wants to risk his life, that’s his concern. No reason for you to risk yours. You stay here. Understand?’