LITMIR.BIZ

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up to the evening’s debauch. The air was padded with tobacco smoke and Bony’s ears began to ache from the incessant roar.

      In the middle of a verse, Silas looked down at Jasper, bent swiftly over him, brushed the black beard with the back of his hand. With pantherish agility, he straightened and swung round to the company, and for a second his small blue eyes glittered and his mouth was fashioned in a ferocious snarl. Instantly, the expression vanished and he was calling for more whisky, and cursing ’Un for being so slow.

      A man lurched between Bony and the Breens, and when next Bony was able to see them, Silas was again bending over Jasper and doing something with what appeared to be a length of dark-green whipcord. No one watched Silas, save Bony, and he watched ‘from the corner of an eye’. The postmaster implored him to take a dash from his rum bottle with his beer. His eyes were standing out like those of a crab. A hairy man of cubic proportions endeavoured to mount the bar counter and was hauled back by another hairy man.

      “Come on, Jasper! Your shout!” roared Silas, now with his back to the counter. “Come on, Jasper, ole cock. Never let the Breens down. Gonna shout?”

      Jasper Breen was sitting with his head tilted slightly forward. The head nodded in uniformity with the action of Silas Breen’s right leg.

      “Good ole Jasper,” shouted Silas. “Jasper’s call, gents.”

      “Good ole Jasper,” echoed the crowd.

      Twice more Jasper Breen ‘shouted’ at the instigation of his brother, and then Silas was saying they were going home and roaring for passage way. Picking up the chair with his brother still in it, he strode to the door, crashing down men unable to flatten themselves against the rear wall or the bar counter. Bony, who was pressed against the wall, saw Jasper’s face and saw also the end of the green cord tied to Jasper’s beard and which disappeared into the neck of the man’s shirt.

      Jasper Breen’s head lolled. He was decidedly out to it.

      Silas, carrying his brother outside, followed by the company, put down the chair beside the truck, then lifted Jasper into the driving cabin and arranged him to lean back in the far corner. He turned the truck on the narrow track, shouting to the uproarious crowd, and with the hooter blaring drove out of town.

      Chapter Two

      The Road Block

      Sam Laidlaw had been driving transports over the Kimberley tracks for five years, and what he could do with fencing wire to effect running repairs to the huge vehicles he commanded would sound unbelievably fantastic to modern garage mechanics. Sam’s job was a fantastic one: the tracks were fantastically tortuous, the ranges were fantastic in shape and colouring, and throughout the night the sky was fantastically streaked with shooting stars.

      Sam left the seaport of Wyndham on August 16th, his six-wheeler loaded with ten tons of stores for stations south of Agar’s Lagoon. For ten miles the track was almost level as it crossed the flats south of Wyndham, a ship sailing on a sea of grass as yellow and as tall as ripe wheat. Thereafter it proceeded up an ever-narrowing valley between flat-topped ranges sparsely covered with stunted scrub and armoured with red and grey granite. The ranges merged into a maze with walls a thousand feet high, and the surface of the track was of loose stone and slate, level at no place for more than ten feet.

      Sam’s speed at most was twelve miles an hour and gear-changing was a continuous necessity. Narrow, deep, steep-sided creeks yawned like cracks opened by an earthquake, making it appear impossible for a vehicle having the length of Sam’s transport ever to cross them. Ridges of bare rock were like monstrous teeth gnashing at the tyres, causing the vehicle to roll and lurch and buck like a ship in a typhoon.

      From Wyndham to Agar’s Lagoon is about 240 miles, and Sam usually covered this distance in two days.

      When day broke on the morning of the 17th, Sam Laidlaw’s transport was approximately eighty miles from Wyndham. Sam had slept in the cabin, and to begin his day he had merely to leave his two blankets, thrust his feet into boots which were never laced, and go to ground to relight his camp fire and boil water for a brew of tea. He was large and fat and hard, and other than the boots he wore only a pair of astonishingly oily shorts. The skin of his arms and torso was the colour of a medlar, and that of his cropped hair and wiry beard akin to gingerbread.

      Sam ate standing up, a three-inch sandwich of bread and meat in one paw and the billy-can from which he drank gripped in the other. He stood with his legs wide apart like a colossus frightening the Ogres now slinking into the mountain caverns.

      Breakfast finished, he was ready for the day’s run, for the oiling and fuelling had been done the night before. He slung the tucker-box on to the loading, jamming it down between bagged flour, tossed the billy-can into the cabin, and swung the starting handle as easily as a woman employs flattery. And whilst the engine was warming, he loaded his pipe with tobacco chipped from a plug the colour of ebony.

      Like a slug heaving over a rockery, the six-wheeled transport roared and whined and lurched and bumped southward. The sun was high when from the welter of ridges and peaks ahead there emerged to distinction a mighty tower of red granite, and with the passing of time the nearer hills sank downward to reveal in all its grandeur this dominating northern extremity of Black Range, the southern claws of which threatened Agar’s Lagoon.

      McDonald’s Stand it was called, and the track approached it like a nervous snake, veering slightly towards it and often shying hard away. The truck roared on, Sam sucking at his empty pipe and gripping the wheel with both hands save when the left flashed to the gear stick.

      He did not see the cattle. For one thing, he had to keep his gaze on the track, and, for another, the beasts were chameleon against the background of their precise colouring. They were opened out wide, and fed as they walked. When Sam did see the cattle, he halted the transport and fell to loading his pipe as he watched them.

      The horseman on the nearer wing turned back when the cattle had passed the truck. Sam left the cabin and stood in the attitude of legs wide apart so familiar to many. The horseman rode without effort. A second rider left the herd. Sam completed the lighting of his pipe, and turned back to the cabin to procure several letters, and on again confronting the approaching horsemen; the nearer was within twenty yards.

      The rider wore a wide-brimmed hat. A tunic shirt of rough material was belted into the top of rough cotton trousers, the bottoms of which were tucked into short leather leggings. The wide leather belt about the waist carried a holster containing a heavy revolver. A gauntleted hand held the reins, and the other a looped stock-whip. A man! Could have been until the distance dwindled to five yards.

      Sam smiled broadly and called: “Good day-ee, Kim!”

      Candid grey eyes gazed down at him. Off came the hat, and hair the tint of new copper gleamed in the sunlight. The voice was low and strong.

      “Good day-ee, Sam! How’s things?”

      “Pretty good, Kim,” replied Sam. “Heard up at Wyndham you was on the road. Usual mob?”

      Kimberley Breen nodded. The second horseman arrived. He also greeted the transport driver with a “Good day-ee, Sam!” His eyes flawlessly matched those of the girl, and his voice was strong, vibrant. He came to ground and proceeded to roll a cigarette, the spurs to his boots clinking musically.

      Six feet three, and twelve stone weight, dressed and accoutred like the girl, Ezra Breen dwarfed the transport man but was not in turn dwarfed by the girl atop the horse. He accepted the letters, pocketing them without comment, and lit his cigarette before saying:

      “Where bound, Sam?”

      “Whitchica. How’s Silas and Jasper? Ain’t seen ’em in months.”

      “They’re all right. Us Breens is always all right.”

      The eyes were pale grey disks in a face complexioned like Sam’s face ... and chest ... and legs. The shoulders were wide and the hips deceptively narrow, the long legs filling the trousers as though they were tights. By comparison Sam Laidlaw was a jellyfish.

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