East of Outback (8 page)

Of all the big and small towns spread throughout Australia, Kalgoorlie boasted the wildest, headiest of reputations. According to the stories, every gambler and shill in Australia graduated from her famous Two-Up school. Lurid tales professed that every girl and woman in the town was absolutely gorgeous, and available for a price. If the yarns were halfway credible, life in this remote mining town roared and hooted, laughed heartily, ended violently, thumbed its nose at the proper world outside. Kalgoorlie’s reputation promised howling Saturday nights in some of the world’s wildest pubs.

For half an hour, as they rode from Kalgoorlie’s scattered outskirts inward, Colin waited with bated breath for the fabled town to flame into the deliciously exciting life it was famous for. Amid the constant drone of flies, Kalgoorlie seemed to doze.

Dizzy drew his dun to a halt in front of the postal station. “Don’ know, Col. Think ever’body here decide to be respectable and moved to Perth?”

“Maybe they’re all at work.”

“Wheels on the poppethead out there haven’t turned since I started watching them. And half the stores and houses look boarded up.
Muerto
. Dead. Plain and simple.”

“What’s the poppethead?”

Dizzy turned in his saddle and pointed. A wooden skeleton five stories tall towered beyond the sheet-iron roofs. Built like a railway trestle and shaped like a gigantic windmill, its open lattice-work of wooden beams supported not vanes but huge wheels at the top. Various horizontal structures, like shored-up railway trestles, angled off near roof level, carrying mine buckets or cars. It all looked very industrious, and larger than life.

“They use it to bring up ore from deep down. The wheels, they’re like pulleys, y’know?”

“I’ve seen three or four of these around the area.”

“Sí, and none of ’em moving, you notice.”

Colin swung his leg forward over his horse’s neck to avoid Lily, who sat motionless behind the saddle. He slid to the ground and tried the post office door. Locked.

“Good thing we ain’ in no hurry. Le’s wait, eh?”

“Yair, guess so. Coming on suppertime, anyway.”

On the assumption that it would be the establishment the locals favored, and therefore have the best food, they chose a pub with the most motor cars parked out front. Colin avoided disturbing Lily again by walking his bay the short distance, and tied the animal to a porch post two doors down from the pub.

Heading for the door, he stopped short. Lily remained back by the horses, watching Dizzy and Colin with those huge, dark, gamin eyes.

“Coming?” Colin called.

“I don’t have any money,” she shrugged.

“That’s all right. Diz here, he doesn’t have any money, either.”

With the same passivity she shared with Max, Lily let herself be escorted emotionless into the pub between her two traveling companions.

As Colin stepped from sun into gloom he wondered if entering this pub with Lily was a mistake. She appeared to be the only female in the establishment—not even a barmaid could be seen in this male bastion of ale and noise. Dizzy had seen through her little-boy masquerade instantly. Would these grizzled ruffians also?

No worries. Nobody paid any attention to the newcomers. The two dozen men in this stuffy little pub sat at the tables with their backs turned to the door, or hung off the bar, watching some speaker in the corner. A miner by dress and language, the orator harangued about the shabby way all those t’other-siders treated Westralians, calling them sandgropers and ignoring their unique needs, and how the Perth people made no effort to help. Perth was as bad as Sydney, when it came to support. “Secede!” bellowed the orator. “They claim they need us, but they’re not ready to do anything for us. We abso-bloody-lutely don’t need them!”

Colin led the way to the only available table in the place, a little round wobbly one in the back corner. He flopped in a chair, grateful to be sitting on something that didn’t require straddling. Lily sat down with her back to the room.

Dizzy smirked, “Always heard there’s lots happening in Kalgoorlie, but if I knew it was politics I woulda stayed home. I find someone to wait on us.” And he wandered off to the bar.

Did Lily seem nervous? It looked so to Colin. He took off his hat and hung it on his knee. He ran his fingers through his dirty hair. Tonight he would purchase hotel rooms, a single for each of them—bathing facilities, a comfortable bed with sheets and a real pillow, electric lights.

Dizzy was back. “They got mutton stew or beef and potatoes. Whatya want?”

“Beef.” Colin looked at Lily. She hesitated, then nodded. “And tea. Get a big pot of tea.”

Dizzy grinned. “This is gonna be pretty good; get to eat something I didn’ hafta shoot first.” He walked away. Perhaps Dizzy missed civilization as much as Colin did.

Civilization. Colin thought of the family camping he had once known; how Mum and Papa enjoyed getting away from town for a while. Colin wondered where they’d come from originally. None of Papa’s current friends had known him as a youth. Either he had cashed in his old friends on a complete set of new ones, or he came from somewhere other than Sydney. Colin didn’t know. He did feel Mum had been a city girl back in Ireland, many years ago—before she knew Papa.

His family had camped occasionally as a form of relaxation from the busyness of city life. Colin had just spent the last nine weeks camping and now looked forward to a comfortable respite in this city. Fate behaved as weirdly as their animals.

Dizzy returned with a pint of ale. He settled in a chair to watch the political process that made Australia unique—oratory lubricated liberally with alcohol.

He finally removed his hat to scratch his head. When Colin mentioned a hotel with a bath, a broad grin spread across Dizzy’s tanned features. He leaned forward. “I asked where all the trees north of town went. They said they all got cut down for firewood to stoke the deesa, deeso—the plant where they take the salt outta the water. All the water here is salty.”

“Desalinizing plant.
Every
tree, you say?”

“Looks so. Tha’s a lotta water to distill.”

The tea came, and eventually plates mounded high with beef, potatoes and carrots. Colin was not fond of carrots, but right now they looked good.

As he picked up his fork, his conscience was pricked. He had not asked a blessing on his food—something he never did anymore. Somehow, out on the track, it didn’t seem quite so important. Here at a table, with silverware and plates and the other accouterments of civilization, the sin of omission smarted fiercely. He closed his eyes a moment and hypocritically prayed to a God he was not the least sure existed. Then he dug in, and theological considerations slipped away. Real gravy. Aaahh.

Presently Colin became aware of a hulking form near his elbow. A burly miner was standing at their table. He stared at Lily. “Don’t I know ye from somewhere?” Irish. He had the same accent Colin’s mum used when she was very tired.

The huge eyes glanced up and quickly flicked away. Lily muttered, “No, sir. I’m new here.”

The miner reached out suddenly and yanked her hat off. Her long black hair tumbled down her back. “I knew it! Harry, tell me if this ain’t Niel’s Lillipilli.”

A voice from another table roared, “Sure is!”

The miner leered. “Ye got muckle nerve, lass, running off from y’r husband like that.”

“He’s not my husband!” Lily’s eyes, big as saucers, flitted with terror from Colin to Dizzy.

“He put a twenty-pound reward out for ye. Say g’day to y’r friends, little lady; y’re going home now.” And the fellow started to lift her out of her chair by one arm.

Before Colin could stand up, Dizzy’s chair was already flying, tipped over, and Dizzy was on his feet. He held a long-barreled revolver steady, solidly pointed at the miner’s heart. So swift was he, Colin had not even seen him pull it out of his belt.

The fellow stared at Dizzy for a long moment. “This is a runaway bride. Ask anybody here.”

The rest of the room was staring now, too. Even the orator had ceased, and the silence hung heavier than the cigarette smoke.

Lily started to speak, but Dizzy held up a hand. Soft as rain his voice crooned, and that gun never wavered. “Have a seat, frien’, and join us, while I ask anybody here. Col, loan him your chair, eh?”

Colin stood up and stepped aside. Warily, as if afraid it would collapse beneath him, the miner sat down.

“Ta. Now. Before you blokes get thinking ‘bout rewards, le’s ask the lady’s side of it, eh? Lily, you never talked about yourself; tha’s all right. But now’s the time you tell your side. Speak up.”

Her hands trembled. She licked her lips and spoke directly to Dizzy. Her eyes never left his face, as if to seek strength there, and his eyes never left the miner’s.

“My mum died last year down behind Kambalda, so I went into Coolgardie to find a job. I got a job right away with Othniel Banks, cleaning and cooking. A few weeks later he said he wanted more than cleaning and cooking, he wanted-” She shuddered. “I wouldn’t. So he locked me in a closet for a couple of days—to show me who’s the boss, he said. Then he—uh, he made me be his mistress. He locked me up in his cellar whenever he was away from the house. It was seven months before he got careless about the lock, and I could get away. But I never married him. He’s not my husband.”

Dipping his head toward the crowd in general, as was his habit, Dizzy’s voice continued firm and gentle, “There now. Which of you blokes attended this lady’s wedding, eh? Got any witnesses?”

Silence, thick and brooding.

Dizzy kept his eyes on the miner, then stole a glance at Lily. “Did you steal from him?”

“I took eight pounds,” her voice quavered.

“How much did he pay you—wages?”

“Nothing. He never paid me.”

“What’s a good cook worth, Col? Twenty pounds a month? That’s a hunnert-forty. So this Othniel still owes her a hunnert thirty-two, eh? He the one who cut your arm?”

A constable came bursting in the door and stopped cold, uncertain what was in the air, what to do.

She nodded. “The morning I got away, before he went to work. He was mad at me. Usually he just hit me, but this time—”

“Stand up an’ show the gentlemen here your arm, señorita.”

She hesitated. Her eyes moved to the constable.

“Do it.”

Reluctantly she rose, peeled her jacket off and rolled up her sleeve. The raw scar flashed in the gloom.

Abruptly, Dizzy tipped his gun away toward the ceiling. He stuffed it in his belt at the small of his back and sat down. “If you still intend to take her back, I guess you will. I can’t keep her safe forever. But any man here who collects twenty pounds for her is so low a snake’d hafta duck to get under him. Anybody disagree with that?”

No one stirred. Lily stood like a slave on an auction block, her head down, studying the floor. Tears welled in her eyes and coursed down her cheeks, the first tears Colin had ever seen her shed.

The constable finally ambled forward, addressing not Dizzy but the miner. “You wish to press charges, sir?”

“No.” The miner wagged his head. “No. Let it pass.” He looked at Lily. “Niel said ye stole more than jus’ money from ’im.”

“These clothes I’m wearing,” she barely murmured.

“Them rags?” The miner stood up suddenly. “Sure’n he shoulda paid ye to take ’em.” And he walked away from the table shaking his head.

Conversation picked up in patches, here and there. The constable chided Dizzy for a couple of minutes about exposing a gun in a public place, but he didn’t confiscate it. Colin watched Lily’s face as she sat down; the familiar look of resignation had returned, the expression that said she didn’t care what anyone did to her. Her nose and eyes were wet, and he handed her his handkerchief. The constable turned and left without further comment.

Dizzy picked up his overturned chair as if nothing had happened and sat down again, returning to finish his cold dinner. “This Othniel,
es un gordo, no?
He’s a fat man?”

Lily nodded. “How did you know?”

“Y’r clothes, they big enough my horse can wear ‘em.”

She muffled a giggle and smiled. It was the first smile the men had seen on her face. First the tears, then the smile, the first cracks in her dark armor.

“How’d you get so far so fast, eh? Your wound was maybe a week old when we found you, all infected like it was.”

“I rode the stagecoaches until my money ran out,” she whispered, her head down. “I even rode with a camel train awhile, until one of the camel drivers started getting personal with me. I went on foot another two days and then I ran into you.”

Dizzy nodded. “What’s next?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’ either. Col here, he wants us to take a bath so we don’ offend the horses, and get some sleep. Tomorrow, I guess we all look for jobs, eh?”

Colin laughed. “What’d that miner call you? Lillipilli? Know what that is, Diz?”

“No. Wha’s a lillipilli?”

Lily said nothing, so Colin answered. “A sweet fruit from a gum tree, like a cherry. Mum buys them from the Aboriginal women for pie.”

“Sweet fruit. Mmm.” Dizzy looked at Lily and nodded. “Yeah, it fits.” He swallowed the last of his dinner, as if it might be awhile before he ate again, and pushed his plate away. “Now, Lily, you listen. I spoke the truth when I said I can’t protect you forever. But you draw us a map, show us where this Othniel’s place be. Maybe he still come around for you, y’know? You turn up missing, we go look for you, eh? And you let us know where you are if you get a job. Let us check it out for you.”

She nodded, looking grateful for the first time, then whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“’Bout what?” Dizzy reached for the teapot.

“Causing you trouble.”

“You did’n cause no trouble. You did’n ask for none o’ this, eh?” He poured himself a cup of tea, draining the pot. “Now. One other thing. You read and write good?”

She shook her head. “Not very good.”

“You’ll need that, y’know. But I can’t do it for you, jus’ like I can’t protect you forever. You decide to take the respons’bility, you come to me. I help you learn to read and write better. Col, too. He’s smart. But him, me, we can’t do it for you. You gotta do it for yourself, y’know?”