At the oil rig Stanton grinned, and said, “I’ll say that they were terribly intoxicated. I guess that’s what happens in this country when the manager goes off to Perth ’n takes his family.”
“Except at Laragh,” replied Mr. Rasmussen.
“Laragh’s different,” said Stanton Laird. “I’d say they’re kind of pickled—it don’t do them any harm. Besides, they’ve got an ex-barmaid in the driver’s seat.”
“That’s right,” said Mr. Rasmussen. “A Scotch barmaid in the driver’s seat. Maybe that’s what you want to run a ranch here, in this country.”
Stanton went off to find Tex, to collect the first-aid box, fill up the jeep, and get rolling on the new road to Laragh and Mannahill. Spencer Rasmussen sat on by the radio set, patiently fingering his telegram for Perth. He could not send it till this drama was played out, for Jerry Lee was still listening for Mannahill, the doctor still listening at his extension in the hospital.
Presently Mannahill came on the air again. “This is Bert Hancock here. I think he’s dead, Doc.”
The doctor asked sharply, “Did you do what I told you to do? Did you sew up that wound in his throat?”
“There didn’t seem no call to, Doc. He ain’t breathing.”
A somewhat macabre discussion followed, dealing with the processes of death. The doctor was at first disinclined to believe Mr. Hancock and to go and make him do as he was told, but finally he came round to believe that the man probably was dead. That belief raised problems of a different order.
“There’ll have to be an inquest,” he said, “and that means that I’ll come out and do a post-mortem before you bury him. I’ll come out right away in the aeroplane; I’ll be with you this afternoon, soon after dinner. Now, you’ll have to make the body decent, Mr. Hancock. Where is he now? Over.”
“’E’s out on the verandah, Doc, all in a lot of blood. Real nasty.”
The doctor thought for a moment. It was probably asking too much to suggest that they should wash the body. He was inured to such things; better do that himself when he got there. He said, “I want you to lift him up and lay him out flat on his back, now. Have you got a long table you can lay him out on? Over.”
Mr. Hancock said reluctantly, “Well, Doc—there’s the dining-room table what we eats our tucker off.”
The doctor said, “Well—perhaps that’s not very suitable. Can you make a trestle table? Have you got any trestles? Over.”
“We got those, Doc There’s some trestles down by the stockyard.”
“All right. Get a couple of those trestles up to the verandah, and make a trestle table with three planks, and put the body on it lying on its back, and cover it over decently with a sheet. That’s all you’ve got to do. I’ll be with you in about three hours’ time. I’ll bring the constable if I can get hold of him, but I think he’s out of town.”
So that was arranged; the radio drama was over, and Mr. Rasmussen was able to dictate his Topex telegram to Jerry Lee. On the ground the drama was by no means over; the sense of it was strong in Stanton Laird as he swung the jeep to a standstill before Laragh Station homestead, in a cloud of red dust.
Six
THEY did not stop for long at Laragh Station, but the Judge was able to give them a little more information about Mannahill. “I understand that Mr. Rogerson employs four white men,” he told them. “He had a married foreman in addition, but he left last month. I have not heard of an appointment to succeed him. Perhaps it was unwise of Mr. Rogerson to leave the station in the absence of a foreman … But then, of course, it was for Anzac Day.”
“Sure,” said Stanton. “Who was this guy that cut his throat?”
“I think perhaps that was a man called Airey. He was a saddler and harness maker, a very depressed little man, and with a terrible weakness for strong drink.”
“Well, who’s Jim Copeland, then?”
“He is an English boy, jackerooing. He comes from Black-heath, near London. I think he has only been in Australia for a few months. I doubt if he had settled down yet. Perhaps he was homesick.”
“What’s jackerooing?”
“Working as an apprentice, to learn the work.”
Stanton thought for a minute. “There’s Bert Hancock, who was on the radio. How many others are there there?”
“I think only the station cook—of the white men, that is to say.”
“What’s his name?”
“They call him Fortunate. I never heard him called anything else. Perhaps that is his name.” He mused for a moment. “If I were to hazard a guess,” he said mildly, “I would say that he is an Englishman, or perhaps a Welshman, who had jumped his ship, as they say here. Mr. Rogerson once told Mr. Regan that Fortunate was most reluctant to go off the station, from which he assumed that he was probably in Australia illegally.”
“A hot citizen,” observed Stanton.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s okay. I just meant that maybe the police would take an interest in him. They seem to be quite a bunch of boys at Mannahill.”
“No better and no worse than on any other property in the north,” the Judge said. “I am inclined to think that Mr. Rogerson made a great mistake in leaving them without a foreman.”
Stanton Laird drove on to Mannahill with Tex, with a slightly enhanced opinion of the Judge. Beneath the ageing and dissipated exterior there was still a good deal of shrewd common sense. For the first time he began to wonder who it was that really ran the excellent property that was Laragh Station, whether it was Tom Regan with his stomach ulcers or Pat Regan with his tame mouse, or whether in truth it was the Scots ex-barmaid aided by the disgraced stipendiary who had once been a schoolmaster at Eton, assisted by the many children. Perhaps it was a combination of them all, a harmonious partnership tolerant of human frailties that had evolved over the years. It wasn’t the way that things were run in Topeka Exploration Inc., or in the town of Hazel for that matter, but set in the Lunatic Range of West Australia it seemed to work.
He got to Mannahill at about noon. He came first to the horse yard, and there he found the Laragh jeep, with a good deal of activity going on. Pat Regan, for once without his mouse, was riding bareback on a horse controlled only with a halter, and with two coloured stockmen he was driving a small mob of horses from the horse paddock into the yard, swearing at them volubly. Mollie Regan was carrying saddles from the harness room to the yard.
She broke off when she saw the oil men. “Oh, Stan, I’m glad you’ve come!” she said. “They’re in the hell of a mess here.”
“I know it,” he replied. “We heard the radio, and came on over.” He glanced at her. “What are you doing with the horses?”
“It’s this boy Copeland, the jackeroo. We’ve got to find him—he’s out somewhere in the bush. Dad says he’ll probably be dead by sunset.”
The tropical sun blazed down on the red, arid land out of a cloudless sky, brazen and pitiless. So long as you had shade to work in and plenty to drink it was not unpleasant, but in the bare country with no shade, no water, no horse, and perhaps no hat it was a very different matter. “Six or seven miles, and then you’re finished, in the heat of the day,” she explained. “Dad says he’ll be walking in a circle, but he might have got a long way out from here during the night, keeping straight so long as the stars lasted.”
Stanton nodded. “What can we do to help?”
“I don’t know—the country’s too rough for your jeep. I’ll ask Dad in a minute. Can either of you ride a horse?”
“Why, certainly,” Stanton said. “I can ride.”
“Really ride, Stan? Well enough to ride with us all day?”
“Certainly,” he repeated. “I was raised on a ranch, back home in Oregon.”
“Of course—I was forgetting. Well, that makes one more man. What about you, Tex?”
The electrician shook his head. “I guess you’ll have to count me out. I never rode no horse.”
“Well, that makes five of us, with
the two coloured boys. I’ll tell Daddy in a minute. We’ll want a lot more people. I think you’ll have to sit upon the radio, Tex.”
“Okay.”
Stanton Laird asked, “What’s happened to the man who was here—Bert Hancock? And there’s a cook here, isn’t there—a man called Fortunate?”
“Bert Hancock’s flat out on his bed, dead to the world,” she said succinctly. “Dad threw a bucket of cold water on him, but he just slept on. He probably went back on the grog after laying out Bill Airey. Fortunate’s walking about, but he’s no good to us.”
Pat Regan rode up to the rails and slipped from the horse, agile in spite of his seventy years. “Well, Glory be to God, I’m glad to see you, Mr. Laird,” he said. “Ye’d not see the like of this between Dublin and County Kerry, or in the whole of the United States of America, either.”
“Stan can ride, Dad,” the girl said. “Ride well. Tex can stay with the radio.”
“Isn’t that a great mercy, now?” He swung round on the coloured boys. “Saddle up one more horse, ye black bastards. Five.” He held up all the fingers of one hand, counting them with the thumb. “Five horses.” He climbed the rails of the yard and came to the jeep, a red-headed, active old man in soiled working trousers and shirt open down his chest, hardly sweating from his exertions. “We’ll go up to the homestead now the way we’ll see if we can talk to anybody on the wireless,” he said. “It’s ten more men that we’ll be after needing, with their saddles.”
They got into the jeep and drove on to the buildings. They stopped at the bunk house, a row of single cabins opening on to a common verandah with a messroom and the kitchen at the end. On the verandah was the trestle table that the doctor had ordained, with the body on it covered over with a sheet. Beside it was the man called Fortunate, very busy. At some previous point in his career he had held a job as a chef. That morning, after laying out the body, he had dressed himself for the post-mortem, putting on his white chef’s apron and his tall white cap, newly starched and very clean and white. On the trestle table beside the body he had all his butcher’s knives laid out, and he was busily engaged in sharpening them to a razor edge. A bottle of gin stood beside the body, and from time to time he would pause in his work to take a swig from that.
“Holy smoke!” said Tex. “What in blazes does that guy think he’s doing?”
“Sure, and he’s away out of his mind,” Pat Regan said. “He thinks he’s going to do the post-mortem when the doctor comes. Just leave him be and he’ll not trouble you, unless maybe he goes to eat the insides of a clock.”
He jumped out of the jeep and strode into the end cabin. Bert Hancock was there on the bed, snoring heavily. The red-headed old man lifted him by the collar of his shirt and dealt him four stinging slaps upon his face. The head sagged from side to side, but the man did not rouse.
The grazier threw him back upon the bed, lit a wax match from the tin box held in his belt, and held the little finger of the left hand in the flame. The man muttered in his sleep, but did not rouse.
“Sure, he’s a grand sleeper,” he said in disgust. “It’s the gin and the whisky does that to a man,” he explained to Stanton. “Ye’d never see a man the way he is on rum. The rum’s a kindly sort of drink, and easy on the stomach.”
They went back to the jeep and drove on to the homestead. The liquor store at the end of the homestead verandah had been broken into, and there were bottles everywhere, half-full bottles of spirits, empty bottles, broken bottles; the place was in a terrible mess. “Wasn’t it the grand Anzac Day the boys were after having?” old Pat Regan remarked. “Sure, and you’d think that they’d been drinking a wake to the glory of Bill Airey’s soul before his time.”
The office door that opened on to the verandah was swinging open, the lock smashed. They went in there and found the wireless set. Tex slipped into the seat before it and found it was already switched on; Bert Hancock must have left it so. There was still current in the battery, however. “This is Mannahill,” he said. “Mannahill Station calling. Will anybody listening come in. Come in anybody. Over.”
Immediately Jerry Lee came in; he had evidently been keeping a listening watch. “Hastings Flying Doctor here, Six Easy Dog. Receiving you, Mannahill, strength three. Pass your message. Over.”
Pat Regan took the microphone and explained the position. He learned that the doctor was in the air and on the way to them; he should be with them in about an hour. Stations around would be notified that more riders were required at Mannahill immediately. If possible Jerry Lee would get a radio message to the aeroplane in the air, telling it where to land in order to pick up more riders with their saddles. It was arranged that, before starting off upon the search, Pat Regan with the coloured stockmen would drive a few more horses into the horse yard to help the riders who might come by air or by truck later. Tex would remain at Mannahill on listening watch.
“Ye’d better take the batteries from all the cars and trucks that ye can find, the way ye’ll keep it going,” the old man said.
They left Tex at the homestead and drove back to the yard. The horses were ready for them, and the old man set the order for the search. The coloured boys, of course, knew every inch of the property and were in no danger of getting lost. He himself would not get lost, but did not know the property. Mollie would not get lost if she were given a road as a lifeline. Stanton would be useless on his own, and of unknown ability as a rider.
“Sure, and the boy might be any place,” he said. “Just any place at all, and maybe not upon his feet by now but crept into a bit of shade.” He sent one of the coloured boys to the west to work through to north. He himself took the sector from north to east, because that was in the direction of Laragh and he knew the country better on that side. He sent the other coloured boy into the sector from east to south, and he sent Mollie and Stanton to ride together in the sector from south to west because the track out to the coast ran through that sector like a backbone, and Mollie knew the track. “Ye might find him out along that way, I’m thinking,” he said. “Drunk as he was, maybe he took the road. Don’t stay by the road, for he’d be after leaving it as soon as he got crazed. Watch the road, though, the way you’d see his footmarks in the dust.”
He saw them mounted, and made sure that each had a full water bottle. Then he swung up into the saddle himself and they separated, each going his own way.
Mollie and Stanton Laird rode together out from Mannahill south-west along the track. They cantered for a few hundred yards to get the freshness from the horses, but the sun blazed down and very soon the horses had had enough and they slowed to a walk. As they cantered the girl watched the American furtively, to see if he could really ride. She was pleased, and faintly surprised in spite of what he had told her, to see that he rode well and had his horse well under control. The saddle was somewhat different from the western saddles that he was accustomed to, and the snaffle was strange to him, but he rode very long, in the way that she was accustomed to see men ride, not gripping with his knees. The oil geologist had told her nothing but the truth when he had said that he could ride all day. Somehow, she had thought that Americans could only ride a car.
They rode in silence, Stanton busy with his own thoughts. At first he was concerned only with the mastery of the strange horse and the strange saddle and the strange bridle, but being satisfied with those his mind turned back to the last time he had ridden, which was with Chuck back home in Oregon. Chuck’s riding was for ever over; when he got back to Oregon he would not be able to tell Chuck of this strange ride that he was undertaking now, as he would have liked to tell him, sucking a coke out of a plastic straw, perhaps in the Piggy-Wiggy café on Main Street with all the Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs parked by the meters in the sun outside. He would have enjoyed telling Chuck about this country, and Chuck would have enjoyed hearing about it, and with that thought he realised that in this country, harsh and arid as it was, Chuck might have found fulfilment. Here, Chuck would have found no need to be
at up trains at night with one landing light on to achieve a little excitement in a humdrum life of training flight cadets; his daily living might have given him the adventure that he needed.
He turned to the girl, to share the thought with her. “You know somethin’?” he said. “I believe Chuck would have liked this country.”
She raised her eyes from the dust that she had been studying for traces of the jackeroo. “Whatever put that into your head?” she asked.
“I dunno,” he said vaguely. “I guess things happen here that he’d have known how to handle.” He chuckled. “Things like that guy Fortunate with all his knives. I’d just not know what to do with a guy like that. But he’d have known.”
“The best thing to do with a man like that is to leave him alone,” she said. “Keep well away from him, and hope he cuts his own throat with one of his knives.”
He turned to her. “Wouldn’t you be frightened of a guy like that?”
She laughed. “I wouldn’t get myself in a position to be frightened of him, Stan,” she said. “When a man’s in that condition a girl wants to keep well away.”
“I’d say that’s right,” he said. There was a saneness in her approach to fear that he could only admire. Things of this nature were not new to her; she had known them and known of them from her childhood, so that they did not terrify. All her life she had lived with men who drank heavily and mastered the drink; inevitably she had known others who did not master it. She had learned from her mother’s knee the wisdom garnered by a Scots barmaid in the bars of country towns; she knew all types of men for what they were, and she was not afraid of them.
They rode on together down the road, scanning the dust, the grey-green clumps of spinifex, the patches of red earth that showed between, the gnarled and stunted trees that gave no shade. They stopped after an hour and took a drink from their water bottles; then they decided to ride out and go parallel with the road, one on each side of it, keeping in sight of each other but perhaps a mile apart. In that way they could sweep the country better.