Beyond the Black Stump (12 page)

David led the way back through the sitting-room into the kitchen. He had laid the kitchen table in anticipation of his guest; the chipped cups, the discoloured pewter spoons, were neatly arranged upon a clean tablecloth laid on the battered, soiled old table. A kettle was boiling on a Primus stove that stood on the blackened, wood-burning range. An ancient, rather rusty kerosene refrigerator added to the heat of the room, and there were many flies.

David made the tea in a chipped enamel teapot, blackened with soot on the bottom, poured it out, and offered his guest one of the unpleasant rock-cakes of the gin’s making. “I’m afraid it’s all a bit rough,” he said. “It’s coming good,
though. You come along in six months’ time and you won’t know the place.”

“Sure,” said Stanton. “There must be a lot to do when you take on a place like this.”

David sipped the hot tea. “Well, of course—there is. I’m at it all the time, from dawn to dusk. It’s a bad property, of course,” he said candidly. “If it was a good one I wouldn’t be here running it, at my age. Three hundred and twenty thousand acres, but very little water. There’s over a hundred thousand acres up your end that we can’t use at all.”

The geologist blinked at the figure. “Can’t use it?”

David nodded. “There’s not a puddle on it. Everything that falls soaks straight into the ground.” He paused. “I’ve never seen most of it.”

“Never seen it? A hundred thousand acres?”

“That’s right. I’m always meaning to take the jeep and drive across, but I’ve been too bloody busy on the parts that are some good.”

The geologist asked, “Would that be the part towards our camp?”

“That’s right. I can’t run any stock between this homestead and your camp. All the good part of the property is west from here.”

Stanton smiled. “Maybe you won’t be so mad at what I’m going to ask, then. The strata on the Laragh side are falling to the west, so far as I can see, and now I’m working close up to your fence. The Department haven’t asked for us to prospect on your property, have they?”

David shook his head. “I haven’t seen anything. You’re quite welcome, though.”

“You wouldn’t mind if we go wandering around with plane tables and levels, with a jeep?”

“Of course not.”

“What about some lines of shot holes for a few seismic readings? That would mean a couple of trucks on the land, and a few little explosions.”

“I can’t stop you,” said David, “and I wouldn’t want to. I mean, we’ve only got a pastoral lease, and if the Department write and say they want you to come here, we can’t say no. But, letter or no letter, Stan, you’re very welcome. We’ve got no sheep there because there’s not a drop of water for
them, and most of it I’ve never seen myself. If you go on it I’ll be glad to know what’s there.”

“That’s mighty nice of you,” said the geologist. “I’ll certainly tell you everything we find.” He paused in thought. “It could be that we might know something about the water prospect in this district by the time we’re through.”

“I wanted to ask you about that,” David said. “You
do
prospect for water, as well as oil?”

“Uh-huh,” said Stanton. “It’s one and the same thing. There are porous kinds of rock strata and impervious kinds of rock strata, just those two. Water or oil or coca cola—they’ll soak down into the porous strata and get trapped by the impervious strata. Once I get the undersurface picture of this whole locality set down on paper, then maybe I’ll know where water might lie or where oil might lie. Till then I’d just be guessing.”

“I’d be very grateful for anything that you can tell me about the chance of water on Lucinda.”

“It doesn’t look so promising right now,” said the geologist. “But there—that’s only guessing. How deep would you drill?”

“Some of the bores on Mannahill go down two thousand feet. I don’t think they go as deep as that on Laragh.”

The geologist opened his eyes. “You’d go as deep as that, though?”

“If we knew that there was water there I think we would. It’ld pay to do so. It’s just a matter of finding the capital then.”

Stanton nodded slowly. “I guess that might not be so easy in these parts.”

“It’s not impossible,” said David. They chatted for a quarter of an hour and then the geologist got to his feet. “Time I was getting back to work,” he said. “The boys ’ll be wondering what happened to me.”

They went out to his jeep. “Come over to our camp some time, David, ’n take a look around. We got nothing much to offer you except ice cream. Miss Regan said that she’d be over to have some of that, but she hasn’t shown up yet.”

“I’d like to do that, Stan,” the boy said. “I’d like to have a look at how you make these seismic observations, too.”

“Certainly.” The geologist stood by the jeep, looking around. The low hills of red earth, covered in the greenish, dusty-look spinifex, swelled up towards the south in the
golden light of the descending sun; did that show an anticline? He paused in thought, looking around, and then turned to the Englishman.

“You got a mighty lot of country to pick from,” he said. “There should be water here some place.”

David grinned. “We could use it.”

“Let’s keep our fingers crossed,” said the geologist. He got into the jeep and started the motor. “’Bye now.”

He drove back following the track that led to Laragh, passed through the Bloody Gate and shut it carefully after him, and turned north between the cemetery and the boundary fence. A few sheep grazed on the spinifex within the cemetery area, and as he drove a kangaroo got up and bounded away between them. He stopped the jeep and watched it as it ran away over a low rise; it checked in its bounding run and swerved to the right, and then went bounding on till it was lost to sight. He wondered what it was that had made it swerve like that. It looked as if the spinifex there was a different colour, sort of dead-looking.

He was in no hurry. He stopped the motor and got out of the jeep, and walked in the direction taken by the kangaroo. He walked about a quarter of a mile, and a faint odour in the air assailed him, a very familiar smell. On the crest of a small rise he found what he was looking for. There was an area of ground, only about ten yards square, an outcrop of sandstone with a little granitic conglomerate. There was a fissure in the rock, and a smell of natural gas.

He bent to the fissure, sniffed it carefully, and tried to light it with a match, but it would not burn. He stood up thoughtfully, and looked around. It was within the cemetery area; the single strand of wire ran about two hundred yards to the north. There was nothing with which he could mark the place, and he had no instruments with him. He studied the fence line carefully, and walked towards it at right-angles, counting his paces; when he got there he tied his handkerchief in a firm knot on the wire. Then he made his way back to the jeep and drove on to his camp.

There was a strange jeep drawn up by the tents, and as he drove up he saw the bright colours of women’s print frocks. He realised that Mrs. Regan and Mollie had driven over to visit with them, and he quickened his pace. He drove in and got out of the jeep and went to meet them.

“I’m real sorry I wasn’t here when you came,” he said.
“I picked this afternoon of all afternoons to go visiting at Lucinda.”

“Don’t fash yeself, Mr. Laird,” said Mrs. Regan. “The boys have been looking after us and giving us ice cream.”

“I invited them to stay for supper, Stan,” said Spencer. “The trouble is there’s only strawberry ice cream in the freezer, and you promised Miss Regan she’d have maple.”

Stanton was distressed. He turned to the girl. “I’m real sorry, Mollie,” he said. “We had maple quite a while, waiting for you to come, ’n then the boys got kind of tired of it, so we switched.”

“I got some maple in the freezer now, boss,” said Ted. “It’ll be hard in about an hour.”

The girl laughed. “It’s terrible nice of you to take so much trouble. I’ve had about half a pound of strawberry already. It’s awfully good ice cream.”

Relieved, Stanton turned to her mother. “Would you be able to stay ’n have supper with us, Mrs. Regan? The boys would like it if you could.”

“We’d be pleased to, Mr. Laird. It’s all cold at home, and the Countess can give that to the men. We’ll have to be back by eight o’clock, though, or they’ll be sending out a search party.”

Spencer Rasmussen glanced at his watch. “The six o’clock schedule will be on in half an hour,” he said. “We can speak to them on the natter session after that.” He meant, on the radio.

“Oh, that would do fine. I’d better speak myself if you can get them.”

“I’ll take care of that,” said Hank. He usually operated the set. “I’ll come ’n tell you when they’re on.”

Mollie turned to Stanton and said, “What did you think of Lucinda, Stan?”

“It’s kind of small,” he said. “I guess he’ll get it pretty nice, though, by the time he’s through. He’s certainly a worker.”

She nodded. “I know. It’s such an awful pity that he hasn’t got a better property to work on. There’s hardly any water there at all.”

Mrs. Regan had gone off with Ted to the cook tent, where he was showing her his stainless steel kerosene pressure cooking stove, his cadmium-coated aluminium freezer, and his water softener and cooler, with great pride.
Stanton piloted Mollie to follow them, thinking that she would take an interest in these things, and this gave him an opportunity to say a few words aside to Spencer Rasmussen.

“You know what?” he enquired. “There’s a gas seepage, a little one, between here and the Bloody Gate, ’bout a quarter of a mile east, in the cemetery.”

“There is?”

“I’ll show you in the morning.”

“It wouldn’t be a decomposing body? Seems like that cemetery’s getting kind of crowded.”

“I don’t reckon that it’s that. I know gas when I smell it.”

He joined the ladies at the cook tent. They were amazed at the fine quality of the equipment with which Ted worked. “There isn’t a thing hardly that’s not stainless steel or aluminium,” Mrs. Regan said in wonder. “Even the table’s got a stainless steel top …” She stood looking around her. “It must all have cost a fortune. I’ve never seen so many stainless steel things in one place.”

The Americans were slightly embarrassed. “Don’t you have stainless steel things in your kitchens, Ma’am?”

“Oh yes, we do. But not so much as this, or such good quality.” She picked up a stainless saucepan. “It’s got a ground bottom and all, but it’s so
light.”

Stanton asked Ted, “What do we get for supper tonight?”

“Fried chicken, sausages, and hot cakes, boss. I got some biscuits in the oven. Fruit salad ’n ice cream. Coffee.”

“I guess that ’ll do.” He turned to Mollie, smiling. “Sounds like a real American meal,” he said. “I hope you’ll be able to eat it.”

“It sounds delicious.”

He took them round the camp, into his own sleeping tent first. Again they were naïvely astonished at the comforts with which the Americans had equipped their camp, which seemed so natural to them. The pressure water system in the showers conserving water by the use of fine, high-power jets intrigued them. “It’s better than we’ve got at Laragh,” Mrs. Regan said. “I never saw a camp fitted up like this before.”

“Maybe it’s the sort of work we do,” said Stanton a little apologetically. “We use some mighty delicate instruments, and they need mighty delicate maintenance. I guess you’ve got to live a bit differently if you’re going to do fine work in camp.”

He took them to the observation truck and showed them the galvanometers, the gravimeters, and the magnetometers. For a time he tried to explain to them how these things worked and what they were each for, but he soon gave that up. The scientific principles were outside their experience; to them it was as if he had been speaking in a foreign language when he spoke of matters that were his normal life and work. He had experienced this before in his own family; his mother had never been able to grasp exactly what he did or how he did it. He was content to leave it so, only demonstrating to them the complexity of the instruments to make his point about the camp.

“It’s just like the insides of a clock, only much more delicate,” Mollie said. “If that goes wrong, have you got to put it right?”

“Either that, or send eleven hundred miles to Perth for another one.” He shut the case of the gravimeter carefully and put it back into its dustproof box. “You want to be clean and cool and in good shape before you start ’n pull that down,” he said. “I guess that has a bearing on the camp equipment that we take along.”

She nodded. “I see what you mean.”

He took her to the office tent, where his drawing board was set up, and a table that supported the black cases of the radio transreceiver. Hank was there, tuned in and waiting; a low chatter of medical consultation came from the loudspeaker. He disregarded that, and showed them the plan upon his drawing board, the sections of the strata so far as he had been able to deduce them at that stage. The drawing meant little to them, but the air photographs meant more, and now he was able to explain to them upon the photographs a little of what happened underground.

Ten minutes later, Hank said, “Natter session coming on now, Stan. I told them a while back we wanted Laragh.”

“Okay. Let us know when you’ve got them.”

He took his guests through into the mess tent next door, a marquee with a long table down the middle, a couple of deck chairs, and a side table with a litter of magazines on it. Presently Hank shouted that Laragh was on the air. Stanton took Mrs. Regan back to the set, leaving Mollie in the mess tent, thinking that the older woman might need help in operating a radio telephone. He need not have worried; the set was as normal to Mrs. Regan as her kitchen stove. She
spoke for a few minutes to the Judge, telling him where they were and giving him instructions about supper to retail to the Countess. Then they went back to the marquee.

They found Mollie engrossed in the advertisement pages of the
Saturday Evening Post
. She looked up as they came in, but did not put the magazine down. “You do have lovely things in America,” she said. “Tell me, are these pictures real?”