East of Outback (9 page)

Those huge dark eyes studied Diz, and Colin detected a spark in them. “Why are you doing all this for me?” she asked.

Dizzy stared at the teapot awhile. Was he trying to choose the right words, or was he groping for an answer? He looked up. “You still a kid, y’know? Lotsa bad things happen to you, and you still a kid. Maybe you need some help yet, getting started in the world, I mean. Me, I’m here, I can help. So why not, eh? People done me lotsa favors. Now I pass ’em along. Someday you pass ’em along to someone else.”

She propped both elbows on the table and sat silently for a few minutes. Her eyes glistened again. “The first day you found me, you said I was safe with you. I really am. You can’re know how good it is to feel safe when you’re a girl.” Her eyes rose to meet his. “Thank you.” She looked at Colin. “You, too. You’ve been very good, both of you.”

Very good?
Colin pondered the words. He enraged his father, broke his mum’s heart, literally ripped his family apart. Very good? How could those words refer to him?

Dizzy finished his tea in one gulp and stood up. “Let’s go find that hotel room with a bath. Then we gotta find Col’s uncles. If we’re gonna get rich mining gold, we wanna smell good, eh?”

Colin stood too, feeling suddenly relieved, as if a great stone were lifted from his back. Others still weighed him down, but he somehow felt better about himself. “What’s the best way to go about finding my uncles, do you think Diz?”

“Two ways.” Dizzy offered Lily a hand, but she didn’t take it, rising herself and smoothing her baggy clothes. “I can put a bullet in the ceiling, and when the constable come running in we can ask him. Or, we can promise the barman we don’ shoot holes in his ceiling if he tell us where to find ’em.”

“Let’s try the quiet way first.” Colin stepped up to the bar, and addressed the tender. “We’re looking for a Liam or Aidan Sloan. They own a mine here, I’m told.”

The man nodded, gesturing toward a nearby table, “You already met their foreman, Flannery.”

Colin twisted around to gaze at the man who was now looking right at him. They had indeed met. A few minutes ago, Dizzy had pointed his revolver square at him. Now what?

Colin’s father had often accused him of deviousness and indecision. This was no time for either. He crossed boldly to the miner and extended his hand. “Mr. Flannery, sir, if our friendship keeps on as it began, I expect we’re in for one bonzer time of it. I’m Colin Sloan, your bosses’ nephew.”

The big man stared at him. “And meself is good and sorry I ever got out o’ bed this morning.”

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

B
LOOD AND
W
ATER

In twenty years the Golden Horseshoe had yielded over one hundred tons of gold, though its owners claimed that these days, in 1925, the mine was hardly paying its way. The Great Boulder had produced nearly four million ounces so far. The Perseverance and the great and mighty Ivanhoe put over a million ounces of gold apiece into their owners’ pockets. The Sloan brothers’ Southern Star provided, at most, a bit of sugar for their tea.

Colin stood on the decking of the Southern Star’s shaft and gawked at the view spread out before him in the clear, golden light of morning. Jumbles of tin-roofed buildings, some very large and others mere shanties, cluttered the rolling landscape that swept down from the mine and up the next rise. Midway, an enormous black smokestack rose several hundred feet straight up. Colin counted five great poppetheads, the only ones he could see from this angle. Elevated tram trestles spread out like spider legs from the poppetheads. On the far rise stood a rank of tall, cylindrical water tanks—the desalinizing plant. He could see not a single tree.

Most of the equipment looked rusted, much of it in disuse or abandoned, but Kalgoorlie was still Kalgoorlie, the town on the fabulous Golden Mile. Colin felt an excitement here, an anticipation. Here he felt he would find what he was seeking. Here his soul, or at least his pocketbook, would triumph.

It must be the fact that mines are hidden away below ground that makes them less than impressive on the surface
, thought Colin. The Southern Star boasted no towering poppethead, no elevated tram tracks, no jaw crusher or stamp mill. A simple tin roof on one-story stilts covered the shaft and supported some pulleys under its rafters. Twenty feet away, its only power source stood waiting for some action. There a stout post perhaps fifteen feet high held a huge horizontal reel, and an old gray horse in harness stood in a circular path beneath the reel, ready to turn it. A system of heavy ropes connected the reel with the pulleys at the shaft.

Flannery tugged on a rope by the shaft. Seconds later a brass bell up in the rafters responded with a dull clank. Flannery walked out to the gray horse and swatted it on the rump. It lurched forward and began to plod around its circle. The heavy ropes wound ever so slowly from down the shaft up through the pulleys and onto the reel. The pulleys creaked; it all seemed so primitive.

A rusty cage rose slowly out of the shaft. When a stopper knot in the rope hit the pulleys the stoic old horse quit plodding. Out of the cage stepped a fat, balding little man with a red nose. If he’d had a beard, he would have been the perfect image of Father Christmas in grimy overalls.

He scowled, and exploded to Flannery, “You bloody galah! If you’d been down there where you’re supposed to be, this never woulda happened!”

Flannery scowled back. “So, you changing my day off again?”

“What?”

“Anytime something goes wrong below, it’s on my day off. Then you change my day off to another day. So what is it now?”

“You’re getting a bit mouthy, Flannery.” The fat man stopped and stared at Colin. “I oughta know you.”

“Colin. Cole Sloan’s son, out from Sydney.”

“Well, you don’t say. My, oh my, oh my!” The fat man turned and yanked on the rope Flannery had just pulled. “Gotta get Liam up here. My, oh my!”

If he’s going for Uncle Liam, then he must be Aidan
, Colin figured. Flannery turned the gray horse around and ran the cage back down the shaft.

“So, you’re Colin! Look at them Sloan eyes. Bet your papa’s right proud o’ you.”

Proud of me? He can’t tell me often enough how rotten I am, Colin thought bitterly
.

Colin waved a hand toward Dizzy. “Let me introduce my mate, Desiderio Romales.”

Dizzy extended a hand. If Uncle Aidan saw it he ignored it. “Howd’y’do, Romales.” Then he wrapped an arm around Colin’s shoulders. “What brings you out to Kalgoorlie, lad? Not bad news from home, I hope.”

“No, sir. Mum and Papa are fine. I just didn’t want to work in Sydney, and was hoping perhaps there’d be work out here for me.”

Uncle Aidan paused, studying him with bleary eyes. “Perhaps there is. Perhaps there is.” For the first time he looked—really looked—at Dizzy. “Understand, the price of gold is down, and the Southern Star isn’t what she used to be. We can put on maybe one man, but not two.”

Dizzy pursed his lips. “Sure, I unnerstan’, Mr. Sloan. I unnerstan’ better’n you think.”

Colin frowned. Dizzy didn’t usually read in prejudice that wasn’t there. Surely he was wrong.

Dizzy nodded toward Colin. “Think I go look aroun’ some, Col. You and your uncles, you got lots to talk about. Come by this evening maybe, eh?”

“Right-o.” Colin watched his friend saunter away toward the horses.

Uncle Aidan was watching, too. In fact he watched quite intently as Dizzy mounted and rode away on the dun. The bay mare threw her head high and whinnied after her old track mate.

The bell clanked and Flannery whacked the gray horse, winding the cage rope up again.
How do they get up and down when there is no one on the surface to run the reel?
Colin wondered.

Slowly, laboriously, the old cage emerged with a man who looked far more like Papa than the tubby Uncle Aidan. Colin was introduced to his Uncle Liam, who was quite a magnificent spectacle. Apparently he was prepared to spend the day below, and yet he was dressed in his Sunday best. His patent leather shoes shone, and a necktie in the very latest style gleamed on his crisp white shirt. He had Papa’s lithe build and graceful movement. Colin calculated him to be nearly six years younger than Papa, and yet he seemed older.

“Looking for work,” Uncle Liam mused. He raised his voice. “Flannery! While you were off merrily doing the block, the boko did a perish. We’re strapped. Go close up down on three. Where were you, anyway?”

“Sitting in the Exchange, thinking of ways to poison the nag,” Flannery snarled. He climbed into the cage and hooked up a thin rope with well-spaced knots the length of it. Then he unhooked the heavy rope, and began lowering himself down into the black hole, hand over hand with the knotted rope.

So that’s how they do it, Colin thought
.

Uncle Liam glowered at the descending cage. Under his breath he described the Irish Flannery with adjectives Colin would not dare speak at home.

“When would you be prepared to commence work, lad?” Uncle Aidan sounded ebullient. It was nice to be welcomed as a responsible adult instead of an errant child!

Colin shrugged. “Immediately, sir.”

“No, no. Not ‘sir.’ I’m your Uncle Aidan. Call me Uncle.” His voice dropped a notch. “Colin, we’d love to hire you immediately, but there’s a problem.”

“More than one,” grumbled Uncle Liam.

“True,” Uncle Aidan pressed on. “The most recent, and most disastrous, occurred totally beyond our control. You see, Colin, we find the use of horses to be more economically sound than to employ engines requiring costly fuels. The gray mare over there is our above-ground animal. The below-ground animal, a lovely blood bay gelding, died of unknown causes just this morning.”

“Sorry to hear it.” Colin tried to picture getting a horse down that shaft and could not. They must have taken the blood bay down by some other route.

Uncle Aidan went on. “We’ll show you the whole operation, of course. Proud of it. Briefly, we dig on any of five levels and load sledges with the ore. The below-ground horse draws the ore to the shaft here, where we transfer it to buckets and haul it to the surface.”

“Using the gray horse.”

“Precisely. Every week, according to schedule, we haul the ore to a stamp mill. The mill processes it for a percentage of the final yield. Much more economical for us in the long run than to build and operate our own stamp mill.”

“So you get your whole week’s income at once.”

“Clever boy! Dinkum lad! Yes. Now you see our problem. Without a below-ground horse, we can’t move the sledges, which means we can’t get the ore to the shaft to be raised. We’ll not be able to send our ore to the mill on schedule—the whole thing is thrown off, don’t you see?”

“So, you’ll buy another horse.”

“Too right. But the Southern Star operates on a very narrow edge. Expenses have eaten up last week’s income. Perhaps we can sell something. But until we get ore out and money in, you see, we’ll have to forego employing you. Or even paying Flannery, for that matter.”

Uncle Liam scowled at the thought. “Why the fair cow had to up and die now—of all the rotten timing. Last week would have been less cruel, or next. But this week, when we’re low—”

Colin saw where his duty lay, and he hated to do it. With his mare below ground for a week he’d have to walk anywhere he wanted to go. Around town wouldn’t be too bad, but what if Diz or Lily got jobs down in Boulder or somewhere? He’d be walking for miles! Stone the crows!

Ah, well. Blood is thicker than water. And they really needed the help. “If all you want her for is a week or so, there’s your below-ground horse.” Colin nodded toward his bay mare.

“Oh, my. No, we couldn’t.” Uncle Aidan wagged his head, and his jowls jiggled.

“Why not?” Uncle Liam’s voice seemed tuned to a perpetual whine.

“True, it’s only for a week or so. A fortnight at most. Still, Liam, it’s a serious imposition, particularly for a flash young fellow like this who’s wanting to get out and about on a Saturday night.” Uncle Aidan tossed Colin an exaggerated wink.

Colin grinned. “I’m loaning you my horse; you loan me your above-ground horse if I need it.”

“Ah. Well. That would work, wouldn’t it? Perhaps. Perhaps.” Uncle Aidan wrapped his arm once more around Colin’s shoulders. “Lad, we’re glad you’ve honored us by coming.”

They walked together down to the house, an extremely modest little bungalow with a tin roof. Whitewash flaked in great patches from the bricks. “Coolgardie brick,” Uncle Liam explained. “Rotten stuff. You try to put a hole in it, it disintegrates. Won’t hold paint.”

Uncle Aidan seemed to claim one side of the cottage and Uncle Liam the other. Colin refrained from asking why they avoided trespassing on each other’s holding; it was, after all, such a small house. They set Colin up with a pallet in the back room, a pantry attached to the kitchen. It would serve well enough; he didn’t plan to be home much anyway, and it was free.

After a light lunch of porridge, they returned to the mine.

Whatever Colin expected a mine to be—close, dark and stuffy—this was worse. Miles worse. Uncle Aidan worked the reel as Uncle Liam and Colin descended from sun to gloom to blackness. Liam led Colin from level to level, through one drift then another, and they all looked the same—rough and gritchy pitch dark walls that closed in tight all around. Colin knew he could never work down here; not only would he be lost instantly in this blinding maze, he’d go daft from the grasping closeness.

He followed Uncle Liam down still another level, and thought about the endless windswept sea. Much as he disliked his former job opening shell, nothing could surpass the working conditions on that lovely open deck. Where was Captain Foulard now? he wondered. Had he launched his brand new lugger yet?

Uncle Liam stopped in front of a rope strung loosely across the tunnel. “The Star ends here, and the Hard Yakka goes on down the drift. Don’t know who owns it now; went into receivership. They say you can walk the two miles from Boulder to the top end of Kal without once coming to the surface. So many of the claims interconnect like this.”