The Steam Mole (19 page)

That wasn't all they found. There was the snake, too. It was a gwarder. “Careful. They bite. It's poison,” Lampy warned.

Jack seemed unworried by the snake in their path. It was too small to eat, but not too small to bite. Lampy wondered if the man just didn't know snakes. “Australian Brown Snake I think,” said the Irishman, proving him wrong. “We don't have snakes in Ireland. They fascinated me as a result, I think. I used to catch them and keep them when I was a student at Cambridge. Mary did
not
approve!” He moved slowly and deliberately, breaking a long branch from the stunted mulga, and breaking twigs to make a little fork.

“What you going to do?” asked Lampy, fascinated.

“Catch it. It should fit into that egg shell.”

They had one emu egg that they'd kept intact—with just a finger-wide hole in it to drain the egg out. The contents they'd eaten, but the shell Jack had in his bucket. He trapped the snake, then picked it up. Holding it just behind the head, he had the interesting task of getting it into the egg, which he plugged with some leaves.

“A few scorpions and it would be the makings of a great hand grenade,” said the Irishman.

He was mad, decided Lampy.

Linda returned to the bungalow with Dr. Calland as the heat of the day set in. Most people would rest now, but both of them were still somewhat wound up by the events at the railroad office. They sat
talking about what could possibly have happened there. The truth was, neither had any real idea.

“I'm afraid, Linda, that I am going to have to take the trip up to Dajarra,” said Dr. Calland. “I'd love to take you along, but I suspect your parents wouldn't allow it.”

Linda shook her head regretfully. “Not very likely, Dr. Calland. I am supposed to be back at school, and the trip will take you at least four days. My father's suddenly very keen on my education.”

“He should be. You're a bright young woman,” said Dr. Calland. It meant a bit more coming from her, as Linda was sure she didn't do socially polite lies very well. “I'll pursue whatever enquiries we can this afternoon and evening. I've asked Captain Malkis to book our journey on this railway, and we'll leave tomorrow. I hate wasting all this time. And thank you so much for yours.”

There was a polite knock. It was Captain Malkis. “Bit of a setback, ma'am. We attempted to book two carriages on the northbound rail…and it appears that Discovery North Railroad has managed to take some steps to prevent it. They claim the trains are fully booked for some weeks. We could go west, via Kalgoorlie, on the line owned by Marram Rail. There's a link to Alice Springs every week from there, and then across to Sheba. The link to Dajarra is of course owned by Discovery North again. I've sent Lieutenant Ambrose around to talk to Colonel Clifford, to see if we can claim police need and requisition the carriage.”

Dr. Calland got up and clenched her fists. “More time for them to cover up, more time for Clara, and possibly Tim, to get into deeper trouble. I feel every hour is precious. I was wondering…if it was possible for that horrible Mr. Rainor to fly someone up to this place, why we can't do the same?

“A good idea, ma'am. I'll investigate,” said the captain. He turned to Linda. “I wonder, Miss, if you would know anything about it?”

“Not really. I mean, I know they fly from Boomerang Fields, and
they fly patrols. They're part of the army, I think. I do know they can be hired for…for really important things. It costs a lot.”

“There are times when money is less important than other matters,” said Clara's mother, firmly. “And right now I have money. I hope it won't cost so much I don't have spare for the
Cuttlefish
, Captain, but I think this needs doing now.”

He nodded. “The desert is a bit like the sea, ma'am. It'll kill you if you don't know it. If…if they have decided to cross over to Queensland from there, and Tim is not dead, but this is just some kind of cover-up then they're in the desert. And neither of them know it. If they're trying to cross it…the sooner we get there the better.”

“Well, we need to hire an airship, then. Linda, where is this ‘Boomerang Fields'?”

“Well, it's on the flats beyond Mandynonga. Quite a long way. And I don't think they have many airships, really. They have a few blimps, but it's where the flying wings take off from.”

To the questioning look, Linda shrugged. “I don't know. They're heavier-than-air, not like airships, I think. Look, why don't you ask my father? He's involved with them…I know he's been off into the desert to see some experimental stuff he's not supposed to tell us about.”

“And does he?” asked the captain, with a slight smile.

“Not much, no. Well. Not anything. My stepmother agonized about them blowing up and killing him. He said that was unlikely, and laughed.”

“It's a good idea. Let us call Mr. Darlington.”

Linda could only hear half the conversation. But the words “hornet's nest” were definitely part of it. Of course, well-bred ladies shouldn't eavesdrop, but she wished she could hear both sides. She'd put up with being less well-bred for a while.

Dr. Calland put down the telephone horn and looked at them from over her glasses, an impish smile on her face for the first time Linda could recall. “Your father thinks it would be a good idea for us to get out of town as soon as possible, before we get ourselves
arrested. He will contact the Air Wing of the army and make arrangements, but he doubts if it will be possible before first thing tomorrow morning. They don't like to fly at night. Part of their cost savings has been to hire transport planes out to civilian use. He doesn't approve, but does think it very convenient for us.”

“I gather Rainor is making a stink, is he?” asked the captain.

“His lawyers are. They've demanded an immediate bail hearing. So he may be a free man again by this afternoon. The hearing is scheduled for five thirty.”

“If it succeeds he'll do his best to put a spoke in our wheel,” said the captain.

“And if he fails, his lawyers will. Maxwell Darlington says it would be best if we simply weren't available for a few days. His friend Clifford has said there are ongoing investigations that have come out of this, but it's slow work.”

Clara awoke, cold, from a troubled sleep, and sat looking out at the dark land and endless starscape above. Here, far from the coal smoke of Europe, and even the coal smoke of the east coast, she could see stars beyond anything she'd ever dreamed of back in Ireland. Yes, they'd seen stars at night on
Cuttlefish
quite as clearly as this, but there had always been a wary eye on the horizon in case of an enemy ship's lights.

Here there was nothing.

Except…that wasn't true. That red spark on the dark of the landscape, below the stars, against the dark that must be a hill…that red spark must be a fire.

A fire out here—where she'd seen no sign of life for days. Hope rose like a tide in her. She put it down as hard as she could. It could be someone searching for her. It could be the aboriginals that were supposed to live out here, somehow.

In the cold of the predawn darkness Clara set about priming the steam mole's furnace. It was more difficult when she couldn't see what she was doing. It was only when she'd finally got it lit that she remembered the little carbide lamp hanging on a hook near the roof. By then it was grey, rather than black out, and she had no more need of it. Now she just had to get sufficient pressure of steam to head for a fire she could no longer see.

She had a good bearing on it, though, lining up her seat and the back corner porthole. She could vaguely make out landmarks by now. She got out of the cab again and drew a long straight line on the sandy soil with the shovel. There were dry tussocks of grass out here, but they were quite scattered and not enough to stop her from making a fifty-yard-long line. Now all she'd have to do was turn the steam mole and drive down the line, then pick markers—just as they'd learned on the
Cuttlefish
—and line them up. If she could find any markers on this landscape…There were places where there were rocks and other features, but there was also a lot of flat land stretching into sameness.

In a few minutes she was able to get the mole moving, turned around, and travelling down her line. Fortunately, there was a twist of darker land—could be the scrubby trees of this place—and a round, low hill in front of another range of hills that she could line up and head toward. She had no idea from how far off she could have seen that fire in the darkness. She'd decided she had to keep searching as long as she could, or until she knew Tim was dead. She just couldn't bear the thought of leaving him out there.

She trundled on toward the rounded hill. There was no sign of smoke from the fire she'd seen as the sky turned from blue-grey, to red-tinged, to blue.

The emu eggs were more than one meal for the two of them. Lampy cooked them by burying them under the sand and making the fire on top of them, and he contrived a rough basket to carry them in, disdaining the fire bucket, still half filled with water, that Jack was lugging along. “We dig some roots here. I show you. They good for water. I'm showin' you lots, cause when we see that railway, I'm gunna leave you to get to it on your own. Not goin' near them railway-men. You maybe have ten-fifteen mile to walk.”

“Anyone who tries to give you problems will have to deal with me first,” said Jack. “They should be pleased enough to know about that railway and the troops on it. That's trouble, and it's coming here.”

“Trouble for Westralia. What do I care?” said Lampy with a shrug. “Now this is the leaf you look for, see? We dig here. You got a digging stick?”

“Wish I'd brought a shovel,” said Jack, setting to work.

“Then you got to carry it. Here you find another stick if that one go break, or if you need your hands to throw a spear, they're free to throw.”

Jack's ever-fertile mind absorbed all of this, as well as the fact that this young, bitter man almost certainly knew more about survival out here than most soldiers in the King's army. They could, if they were armed and motivated, make a force to be reckoned with. If the Westralians or the Empire could be bothered, it would seem that in the aboriginals the British Empire had a willing tool, given the way Lampy felt about Westralia. Jack just hoped the Empire was
too arrogant to realize it. The British Army firmly believed they were the best soldiers in the world. And maybe in European and conventional battle terms they were.

Out here, with distances and small numbers, it might be a different matter. Water and supplies would be key, but a small, mobile, locally knowledgeable guerilla force could tie up a lot of conventional soldiers. The Boers had nearly bled the British Empire white, in South Africa in the 1900s, after all.

The Irishman was a strange one, thought Lampy. Almost not like a whitefeller, except that he also knew nothing. Well, nothing about the land. Maybe back in his own country he could do things there. He knew a bit about snaring rabbits. Uncle had said they used to be thick, back before the sun got so hot you had to hunt at night, or dawn or dusk.

It was worrying that he was so slow. They were doing maybe thirty miles a day. Lampy knew that on his own he could do twice that. A man on a horse might do eighty. Mind you the horse would need water and feed and rest, and a man might still outrun it. A man, not a whitefeller from Ireland, not even one who was practicing with a spear and a throwing stick. It was funny, but yet…very pleasing to hand on the things he'd been taught.

The Irishman was a thinking man. A clever one, even if the two 'roo legs were smelly stuff, making them easier for the dogs to trail.

A little later, he realized that that, too, was part of Jack's plan. By late that afternoon, they could hear the dogs, and at one stage, caught sight of the chase. It wasn't that large a group: five dogs, three men—one an aboriginal tracker, the other two troopers—and seven horses.

“They be on us soon, man. They must have stopped in the heat,” said Lampy.

“One scent dog and four chasers,” said Jack. “Well, we can't outrun them, so we'll have to deal with them. We need the trail good and clear and down into that channel. Let's drag the meat. I want the scent dog chasing that.”

“And us, man.”

“And us, while it's with us.”

They set off through the spinifex and down into the scrubby trees of the braided channel, along it, dodging between the deadwood, and to what Jack grunted was “ideal”—an in-cut sandy bank with a steep scramble up it to a fringe of malee.

“Go along the edge. As soon as you're out of sight, hang the meat on a tree, out over the drop—my shirt on it. Jump down, cut back onto our trail, and come back here. We've got maybe five minutes.”

That Jack
, Lampy thought, shaking his head, but doing it. The meat, with Jack's shirt on it, he hung out on a branch over the edge of the sand wall so the dogs would have to jump to and tear at it, then fall down and scramble all the way back up again. Then he took a running jump and landed way out on the sand of the dry river bed and ran back.

Jack was busy with the rest of the tough cord he'd taken from the cabin of the locomotive. The sun was down, and the cool of dusk would bring relief soon…if they lived that long. Lampy could hear the dogs yammering. “I need your shirt, too,” said Jack, hastily. “Here, push it up on the bucket, and we need to get up that tree.”

It wasn't much of a goolibah tree, but they scrambled up it as the dogs crossed the braided sand. The dogs hit the bank and scrabbled their way up it as the riders followed. Now there was no need for tracking, the blackfeller was with the horse string at the back and the two troopers rode as if this was some kind of happy fox hunt. They hunched low over their horses' necks as they spurred their mounts at the bank.

And at the top they hit the tight-stretched cord, carefully spanned between two tall, solid old dead goolibah stumps. The cord hit the lead rider on his arms and across the neck, sending him catapulting
back out of the saddle. The other, ducking just in time, caught the snapping rope across his face. The second rider almost managed to stay in the saddle, lost his stirrup, and tumbled down the bank. Their horses heaved up, their momentum unchecked, and kept going, riderless and panicked.

Lampy and Jack jumped down from their hideout as the tracker, riding the center horse in the mob of spare horses, tried to haul his steed to a halt. The remounts strung on halters on either side of his horse tried to turn away, but some left and some right, with plunging heads and threshing hooves. The tracker lost his seat but managed to roll backward out of the chaos. The man who'd been catapulted was less lucky. He was under the hooves, and Lampy saw his face sliced by one.

The other trooper, face cut to the bone and shocked, still managed to unlimber his rifle…and fire a shot into the shirt-wearing fire bucket swinging on a branch. He worked the bolt as Jack threw his egg. It hit the rifle as he fired, and the bullet creased across Lampy's thigh as he threw his spear. Both of them screamed.

Jack had already jumped down and wrestled with the trooper, who had a spear in his side and only had one hand on his rifle. It was a short, nasty clinch, and the trooper fell.

There was no pain yet. Just shock. Lampy dived over the edge and scrambled to grab the rifle as the tracker came running up. “You stay still. I don't want to kill you, but I will,” said Lampy through gritted teeth, pointing the rifle at the tracker. The pain was starting now. Like a wave of fire running up his leg.

Jack came running. “You all right?”

“Shot me,” grunted Lampy, sitting down. He held out the rifle he'd grabbed to Jack and held his leg.

Jack took the rifle and knelt down next to him. “You,” he said to the tracker. “Get those horses.” The beasts plunged about all over the place. “Try and run and I'll shoot you.” He ripped aside Lampy's bloody trouser leg and exposed the wound.

It was bleeding, a long gash about seven inches long ran diagonally across the front of his thigh.

Jack exhaled, plainly relieved. He squeezed Lampy's shoulder. “You'll live, son. Anything else hurt?”

“Uh. My ankle doesn't feel too good,” he said, pointing at the opposite foot. “I landed kind of bad when I jumped down after he shot me. Ouch!” he yelled as Jack manipulated it.

“Hard to tell, as I don't have the experience,” said Jack, “but it looks like you either sprained it or broke it. You got lucky with the bullet and unlucky with the fall.”

The tracker seized his chance, with Jack's attention on Lampy. One of the horses had broken its halter, and he slipped himself up onto it and kicked it into a gallop.

Jack raised the rifle, fired, and then dropped it as he ran to grab the broken halter line before the other horses followed.

The man still fled, but he wasn't on horseback anymore. The horse had been creased or wounded, or just frightened, but its rider had lost his seat.

Gritting his teeth, Lampy picked up the rifle. He'd never fired one before, but the troopers might not both be dead. He was sure the second one, the one that had shot him, moved.

Meanwhile, Jack had found a saddlebag with hobbles, tether ropes, and stakes…and a stock whip—and just in time, because the dogs came back.

The whip changed their minds very fast about what they wanted to do. Lampy would have shot them, but Jack and the whip were in the way. Jack could use that whip, as Lampy saw when the dazed, wounded trooper sat up. Jack tied him up like a turkey with a horse tether. It was getting dark by then, and Jack found a lamp and the trooper's bag of supplies. That had some lint, Epsom salts, iodine, and some crepe bandage.

“Right. I'll see to the soldier in a minute. I reckon that hole in your thigh is bled clean. Let's bandage it up, and I'll strap your ankle
while I'm at it.” Lampy's thigh had a furrow about a quarter inch deep through it. “Painful? A shock, but incredibly lucky, Lampy,” said Jack. “Like your ankle, it'll heal. And like your ankle, the less it's walked on, the better. Can you ride a horse?”

What other work was open for blackfellers, except being stockmen? He'd ridden nearly as much as he'd walked, since he was little. He managed a smile. “Can a 'roo jump?”

“Good lad. We're better off now, even with you hurt. We've got four horses, some water bags, some food, two rifles, flysheet, three swags, a good amount of ammunition…”

“And two ruined shirts and a dented fire bucket.”

“Heh,” said Jack. “To be sure. But I'll get the clothes off the trooper the horses trampled. They'll be bloody, too, but a hat and a shirt are necessary out here, especially for me, with my fine pale skin and all.”

Jack then did his best for the surviving trooper. Lampy's spear, with its bone point, had hit the man at an angle on the rib cage and spiked down into his abdomen. It was still lodged there.

“This is going to hurt,” said Jack. “I'll do my best for you, but you'll be coming with us. If I leave you here, you'll die. And it's likely we'll need the horses and the water, and I'm in no hurry for you to tell your friends, so I'm not sending you back. By the time the dogs and tracker get back we should be a long way off. Behave yourself, and you'll get to live. Don't, and we'll shoot you. You were going to let us be ripped apart by the dogs.”

“Orders to keep you alive,” said the man, sullenly, looking as if he might just pass out again. “Was after the dogs to stop 'em.”

“Change of orders, then?”

“Yes. Should have shot you all.”

“Hold that thought while I pull the spear out of you. Or would you rather I left it in?”

“Out…please.”

“Brace yourself.”

Lampy heard him scream, and Jack staggered back with the spear. He plugged the wound, bandaged it as best he could, tied the man's hands, then took on the next unpleasant task.

“I'll cave the bank in on your companion. It's the best I can do, and it might keep him from the dingoes. I can't take time to bury him properly. What was his name?”

The other soldier seemed surprised. “Corporal John Merrick. From Tyford,” said the wounded man, weakly.

Jack dragged Corporal Merrick to the edge of the bank and went up and kicked down a solid fall of earth. He tied a rough cross and planted it on the pile, took off his hat, and stood there in the lamplight.

“He'd have killed you, Jack, and they don't bury us,” said Lampy, feeling puzzled by this.

“I know. But I live by my rules, not theirs. And a dead man is no danger to anyone. I wanted to know his name so his kin can know, one day at least, that he's dead. The worst thing you can do to a family is to leave them wondering.”

Lampy found himself nodding in the darkness.