Chapter 25. Finishing By Lunch Time; and Remembering Your Mates
The next morning Jack Cadney went hunting. He’d been thinking about doing this for a few days, though with nowhere particular in mind, but events had kept him busy otherwise. Now he was in need of information and a hunting expedition was the perfect means of acquiring it.
His destination would be the northern end of the Jervois Ranges, except that he would detour in to Great Northern and say g’day to the drillers. Hopefully he would find out how they were going and when they might be finished there. He could then move on the ironstone as soon as the drill trucks departed.
Ten minutes later Cadney was on the highway, barrelling across the Bonya Creek toward Jervois Range. He slowed at the turnoff, sped up again, eased off at the washed out watercourse, hammered the Holden mercilessly through its ruts and sped on.
Soon mallee and spinifex became open scrubland, then, after a few more kilometres, the low rocky outcrop country south of the mines. At the mines turnoff Cadney simply hauled the station wagon broadside onto the narrower road and powered it straight again, the notion of slowing never crossing his mind.
Around the next corner Drillstar’s trucks and equipment came into view, still on the Great Northern rise and clearly visible in the distance above the gum trees in the creek. Even from there he could see that the drill was operating well south of where the ironstone gourd was buried, so his father need concern himself no further on that account.
Jack Cadney still had plenty to worry about, though, like the whereabouts of Messrs Tyler and Watts. No one from the Community had seen the buggers lately or noticed any additional tracks, so hopefully they hadn’t taken the gold already and cleared out. —But would they have come to Great Northern and dug it up with the drillers watching on?
It didn’t seem likely. Pricks like those two would rather do their dirty-work without witnesses present. ―Him too, for that matter – on this occasion anyway – because the fewer people seeing Jack Cadney here and wondering what he was doing, the better, and that included the Drillstar crew.
But where were Tyler and Watts? Hopefully not watching the drillers’ activities from a hill somewhere and waiting for them to move away as well, because having the gold stolen from under their noses was not something that pair would regard lightly. They’d come looking for him immediately should they even imagine him responsible for the gold’s not being there – let alone on seeing him take it – and they’d be looking for blood. This meant he’d have to leave the pit as he found it … or as near to that state as was humanly possible, anyway.
Then Cadney had another thought and his heart sank. Tyler and Watts may already have the gold. They could have back-tracked and recovered it as soon as he and Frazier had departed there, or they might have returned later that night – or any night for that matter. And they wouldn’t have given up on not finding the ironstone as expected. They’d assume there’d been a mix-up and gone straight to the other end. Jack Cadney suddenly found himself dreading what he might find on looking there.
After slowing to cross the Unka’s stony channel he swung onto the drillers’ well used work track. This took him along the old Lucy Creek road and around the western side of Reward Hill, following which it turned away from the Lucy track and led him up onto the Great Northern rise.
Once there he parked the yellow Holden on an abandoned drill pad, a hundred metres north of where Grundy was currently working. When the driller realised who it was he called one of the other men to the controls and walked over to greet him.
Cadney met the big man half way. He was out looking for a kangaroo, he said, and thought he’d call in and say g’day.
Everything was going well, Grundy informed him. This was the last hole at Great Northern; on finishing it they’d be moving everything back to camp and servicing the drill ready for an early start in the morning.
“Our next area is immediately south of Reward,” he explained, where the creek crosses the line of lode between the hill and Tom Hanlon’s old show. The Geo wants to check the ore horizon there and is predicting some really good intersections.”
The two then yarned for a while as they watched the drillhead creep slowly downward. When it approached the limit of its travel Grundy excused himself and returned to the controls.
Cadney watched as they winched up the core tube and sent down an empty one, then wandered back to the car as they added a rod to the drill string. But the question of the gold was gnawing at him badly, so he took a toilet roll from the glove box and ambled off toward the old waste heaps, at the same time making sure a good length of its tail was visible to the drillers. Despite their distance the heaps were the nearest place affording privacy.
On returning he made a casual detour past the isolated eastern pit where the ironstone was buried. He could only manage a quick look as he went by, not wanting to be seen doing anything out of the ordinary, but a quick look was enough; the trench had not been disturbed since he was there with Frazier. ―And tomorrow, with Great Northern deserted, Appoota Mbulkara’s stolen gold could start on its long delayed journey home.
Back at the car Cadney jammed the toilet roll into the glove compartment and keyed the engine. The starter responded briefly then stopped. He stepped out, unwired the bonnet, propped it open, found himself a handy fist-sized rock, banged each of the battery connections a couple of times and tried the starter again. The motor wound over tiredly, gagged a couple of times and came to life. As soon as it was running reasonably well he leapt out again, dropped and rewired the bonnet hastily then hurried back before the engine could stall.
At the bottom of the rise he turned north onto the old Lucy track and there noticed two sets series of tyre marks, both made by the same vehicle. Cadney ignored them; they were several days old and might have been made by anyone – Tyler and Watts, the local Station Toyota, some four wheel drive enthusiasts or rock hounds – and with the pit undisturbed they had no bearing whatever on matters. What he needed to do now was focus on getting a kangaroo for Magdalena and Twofoot.
After turning across the line of lode he slowed to negotiate the rough section through the rocky ridges, then a short time later was traversing the open woodlands away from the ranges. The chances of finding a big kangaroo buck out here were good, so he kept to a moderate speed and scouted the country each side of the road as he drove along. Suddenly the vehicle tracks swung away toward the escarpments.
Cadney hit the brakes and followed, more by impulse than curiosity. They led him to the small open valley behind the granite hills and terminated at an abandoned campsite. Leaving the engine idling, he stepped out for a quick look around.
Nothing remained that might indicate who’d been there. The campfire had been buried and the area was clean. Nor were the tracks of any help; they were just standard four-be tyre marks and not fresh anyway.
On the ground near where the camp fire had been Cadney noticed half a dozen fist-sized non-local stones. They appeared to be discarded country-rock specimens from the Jervois mining area – and poor examples at that, he decided.
“Geologists…” he muttered, shaking his head. Then he remembered something. The other day, at Reward Hill, when they’d found Tyler and Watts digging in the pit, hadn’t Frazier mentioned Watts grabbing a few sample rocks as he’d climbed out? They’d seemed pretty ordinary, he’d said – what he’d seen of them.
He checked the lie of the valley. “Yes, Mr Cadney,” he informed himself. “And this is just the sort of place those shonks would hide themselves and their standard-tyred four-be.” Yet there was something at odds with this picture, something that seemed totally wrong. Suddenly Cadney realised what it was.
“Okay, Sherlock,” he pronounced. “If it was them, then where’s their rubbish? At Appoota Mbulkara they threw it under a bush.
“Maybe it’s different here,” he reasoned. “Maybe leaving rubbish here would be leaving potential evidence.”
He started walking to the n
earby sandy channel that drained the valley and halfway there found a fragment of blue polyester fabric. It was twice the size of a credit card and charred and wrinkled by fire – most likely carried off in the updraught as flames consumed the rest, he decided.
But why burn the thing? …Unless it was torn or the sun had ruined it. He put the piece in his pocket. “Bloody plastic tarps,” he grumbled. “They never do last. The UV buggers ‘em quick. And making them like that means you’ll soon be buying another.”
There was nothing in the gully. Without further comment he returned to the Holden and resumed his hunting. It was not Jack Cadney’s day, however; the few kangaroos he did see were all on the move, hopping purposefully in twos and threes towards some unknown goal.
Following them in the hope they might stop was pointless, because they never did, they always went faster, and doing so tended to make them more wary in the future. As a result – and despite having covered a considerable distance – Cadney found himself returning home empty handed.
On reaching Bonya he parked at the rear of the Community Store and went looking for Danny Papa. A good pick and shovel would make tomorrow’s digging a lot easier and he’d heard Dan had bought himself new ones.
“Not a problem,” Danny said when Cadney asked the favour. “You can break the buggers in for me. I didn’t want to buy ‘em but the old girl’s got a project in mind.” He led Cadney to the house next door and retrieved the implements from his lockup shed. “Just drop ‘em back when you’re done,” he added.
Cadney thanked him and agreed to do so.
Dan was curious. “So what’s the go? Are you onto a bit of gold?”
Cadney jerked around, coughing and spluttering to conceal his laughter. After some hawking and spitting he turned back.
“Bloody flies,” he said straight-faced. “—Yeah Dan; I am as a matter of fact, only don’t tell no bugger, ay. More gold than you could imagine, old mate. More gold even than you could dream about. In fact, Danny Boy, you wouldn’t believe how much gold I’m going to be digging up, even if I spent the next couple of hours trying to tell you.
“I am going to dig up SO - MUCH - GOLD, Dan, that...”
“All right all right, I get the picture,” Dan cut in. “But just remember who your mates are, won’t you.”
Cadney looked at him with a slightly hurt expression. “Well gees, Cuz. Course I will.”
* * *
Later that same day Simon Tyler and Alex Watts arrived back at their secluded Jervois Range campsite. They didn’t notice that a baldy tyred car had used their bush track and they didn’t notice its driver had taken a walk around.
Instead they busied themselves with their cooking and sleeping arrangements, then started on preparing dinner before the daylight faded.