The Steam Mole Page 6

  So they found themselves shunted down there, to off-load three tons of crushed rock in the rain while the two guards sat and smoked in the cab with the engine driver and fireman. There were five other gangs, each in a cattle truck half-full of gravel. It wasn’t, to Jack’s eye, going to work. That was fine. He helped to make sure it wouldn’t. He dumped his sack-load carefully into the culvert, and tipped a wink at the others—barring Quint—to do the same. They’d got good at working around the would-be trusty. The man was nervous, but still working toward ingratiating himself with the new military guards. And Jack bided his time. They carried load after load, while the rain sheeted down.

  “Big rain,” said Jack.

  One of the others laughed grimly. “Nothing to what’ll be comin’. North end gets plenty…but all at once.”

  “Guess we won’t tell them the culvert is blocked and the bridge is going to wash away,” said Jack with grim satisfaction.

  Naturally, Quint did, as soon as they got near the engine, singing out and pulling them closer, the others angry and reluctant. Jack had to smile to himself. You couldn’t fake this kind of stuff. And Quint had already made himself known to the troopers on guard duty. They weren’t the elites training at the camp. They were just sappers, and sour with the job, too.

  “Ah, hell’s teeth,” a soldier swore as he got down from the cab. He turned to his fellow. “Come on. I’m not getting wet while you sit here like Lord Muck.”

  “I’ll get my rifle wet,” complained the other.

  “Leave it in the bloody cab. Mine’s wet already.” He pointed at the prisoners. “Go on, you lot, get back to it.”

  They turned and began their chained shuffle while the guards jogged toward the water. When they were a good distance off, Jack fell over, pulling Quint down, and at the same time hitting him with the fist-sized rock he’d picked up in the stream. “Pick him up with me and walk closer to the engine,” he said quietly. “Sorr? Mr. Driver, sorr,” he called out, “this feller’s fallen and hit his head.”

  The driver put his head out and Jack pitched the rock as hard as he’d ever thrown a cricket ball—but from a lot closer. And he’d been a first class player, once. It hit the driver on the side of the head, and then they were running forward. The fireman, who had come to see why his driver had pitched out of the cab with a groan, took a swing at them with a shovel and found himself grabbed by six desperate men hauling a groaning seventh. They sat on the fireman and held a sharp shovel to his throat.

  Jack knew how to get a steam engine going. “More coal, boys,” he said, opening the fire door and the dampers. “And any of you who can shoot, deal with the armed guard if he comes back. He’ll be out to kill us, so I suppose we may as well play by their rules.”

  “They don’t seem to have noticed. They’re down at the water,” said Deloraine. “Man, have you gone crazy? Taking the locomotive? They’ll shoot us all for this.”

  “They’ll kill us or work us to death anyway, Rainey,” said Donner.

  “It’s too late now, anyway,” said Jack. “Here we go.” He turned the lever and the engine began to roll slowly but steadily away up the hill, with the squealing of metal on metal. “More coal. Come on! More coal.”

  Behind them in the rain, someone shouted. Jack opened the throttle as far as it would go. Looking back on the slow curve away from the creek he could see two uniformed men running toward them. And one knelt down.

  “How’s your shooting?” asked Jack, as something ricocheted off metal farther back on the train.

  The adult aboriginal, Marni, had taken the rifle with the calm assurance of someone who’d used one often. “Better n’ his,” he said, and shot. “Blast. Winged him.”

  Jack could shoot, too, but from the cab of the rattling train, he doubted he could do anything like as well as Marni. The other man still ran after the train, the driver now up and running behind him, with blood on his face.

  “Give them the fireman.”

  They flung the man off into the bushes. Jack managed, in all the fear and tension, to feel a little sorry for the fellow, but he might be better off of the train.

  It was not a very fast little steam locomotive, and there was a slight upgrade from the creek before a flattening, and then they were on a long upgrade away. The runner might almost catch the train, if he was fit enough, on the second grade. Jack had noticed it was the old three-link coupling joining the carriages. He knew enough to know what that meant. He grabbed the fire-door lever and a short section of bar, knelt down next to Lampy, and inserted the points into the leg iron chain. He twisted the two bars in opposite directions, and the chain snapped.

  “You need to jump from carriage to carriage to the guard’s van,” Jack told Lampy. “The caboose…there’ll be a big brake wheel. Release it and get back here as fast as possible.”

  Lampy relished being free of that dog chain on his leg, even if it meant he had to make the terrifying jump from the coal tender to the cattle trucks and then onward to the next and the next to the caboose, a little four-wheeled van with a running board and a small verandah. He clambered across to that, and down. And the door was locked. He got onto the running board. Clinging to the rail, he edged his way around to the back verandah, the wheels clickety-clacking on the rails inches from his feet. The back door was open.

  The room wasn’t empty, though. It had a guard in it. A guard who hadn’t…yet…put the brake on properly, because he hadn’t…yet…stirred from his drunken stupor. A bottle of cheap rum lay on the floor next to him. Lampy had seen that often enough with his father. But the clack and rattle was bound to wake him eventually, even if the shouts and the gunshots didn’t. And it looked like the other prisoners had caught on. There was fighting going on.

  He could jump—at this speed that was not that much of a risk, and then he would be free, and given the weather, they would never catch him.

  If he went in there…that big drunk might either catch or kill him. It was no time for thinking or hesitating. But he couldn’t help but see in his memory his father bleeding, dying, but still swearing at him and trying to get up.

  He swallowed, then opened the door quietly. Not that it would make more noise than the steel wheels on the rails, but it was all he could do to soothe his fear. The hot little cabin stank of the cheap rum, only helping bring the bad memories back to his head as he wrestled the brake wheel, with half an eye on the guard. It finally came easily. He could feel the train start to accelerate. The clatter and rattle far louder now than the dragging squeak of the brake had been. But…if the guard woke, he’d just put it on again. The wheel was attached to the shaft with a split-pin.

  Lampy hauled at the pin. It didn’t move. He looked around for something, anything, to stick through the eye to give him leverage. Next to the guard’s hand lay a clasp knife. The man was definitely stirring. Gritting his teeth, Lampy grabbed the knife, stuck it in the pin eye, and hauled the pin out. The heavy cast iron wheel fell off with a clang. Lampy snatched it up…

  The drunken guard was awake, staring blearily at him. Lampy flung himself out of the door and hurled the wheel and knife away as the guard staggered toward the doorway. Lampy realized, too late, that he should have hung onto the knife. He had to vault onto the running board of the swaying train and swing himself onto the front verandah, as the guard turned and came staggering back to the locked door. The few seconds it took for the guard to open the door were all it took for Lampy to jump the gap, haul himself up, run frantically along the cattle truck, and jump to the next. And on. At the tender he found the others already busy, still chained, but making a human chain down to the coupling.

  The Irishman hung down there.

  “Jump, boyo!” he yelled. “Well done.”

  Lampy clung to the edge of the swaying tender, and there was another jerk, and the carriages banged the buffers…and then began to slip back as the locomotive accelerated again.

  Freed of its load, the little engine surged upward toward the grade.


  “Haul me up,” shouted Jack, and they did. They crawled, dragging the semiconscious Quint along, back to the bucketing and rattling little loco’s cab.

  “I forgot the brake in the caboose,” said Jack. “Devil away, I nearly lost my hand down there.”

  “You forgot about the guard, too,” said Lampy.

  “To be sure, I never thought of it!” exclaimed Jack. “Sorry lad. You did well, then.”

  It was another five miles to the end-of-the-line camp, and Jack had no intention of being with the train then. He also had very little intention of being chained up for longer than he had to be. The engine had tools, and it had levers. He pulled the various fire irons from the rack. He held them out as he adjusted the throttle with his other hand.

  “Break the chain, and we take these with us for the rest later.”

  The other prisoners were used to taking his orders by now. “What’s the ‘rest’ you’re talking about?” asked Lampy. Maybe he had doubts after Jack had forgotten the guard. Or maybe he just thought faster than the rest of them.

  “We get off in a creek and shake off the dogs by staying in it. We let the engine trickle on. I’d like to send it to blow up and crash at the end of the line, but there’s no sense telling them something’s wrong before someone gets there from Three-mile Creek.”

  “And him?” One of the men pointed at the treacherous Quint.

  “It’ll be for the best, for now, to take him with us,” said Jack, looking at Quint’s frightened eyes.

  Jack knew the value of a known traitor, even if those who followed him might easily kill Quint first and listen later.

  Besides, he didn’t like killing people, least of all in cold blood.

  Lampy had spent the last two years around his father’s “friends,” if you could call them that. He hadn’t had much contact with other white men, besides that kind. This one with the strange accent and mad ideas was something different.

  He was a bit soft. He didn’t want to kill Quint.

  But then…he hadn’t held back, either, taking the train, dealing with the guards and the fireman. And he wasn’t stupid.

  There was something else, too. Thanks to the Irishman, Lampy knew he could get away from all the things that crowded in on his head. Away to the desert and the open land where things were…cleaner. Clearer.

  He’d come back to his father when his uncle had been shot. Now…he wasn’t sure how or where he was going to go, but he was never going back to the city fringes again. He was staying out here.

  Free.

  “End o’ the line. Get out all you layabouts. End o’ the line,” bellowed the conductor, as the clamps on the rolling line released and left the carriage stationary at the Dajarra platform. He hadn’t bothered to check the baggage wagon that Mick had smuggled her into. It was odd to not be moving after two days. The clank and rattle were almost part of her now.

  Clara took a deep breath, adjusted her hat, took a tighter grip on her parasol, and picked up her reticule and bandbox. She wondered what Mrs. Darlington would have said of her appearance after all this time sleeping on the train, with quite inadequate facilities for washing and no mirror to do her hair properly. Huh. She liked clothes, but this was more important.

  She stepped out onto the platform and walked away. The key, she’d decided, was to make sure that the train had left before they could put her onto it. After that…well, she really didn’t have a plan, beyond vague ideas about how close this was to Queensland. And now that she’d seen the scale of the country, she wondered if she’d been absolutely silly. In hindsight the whole idea was just crazy. She’d had too little sleep and too much worry…

  And now she was here, walking along the platform to the wrought-iron stairs, trying to look as if she walked this way every day. Above her, steel girders soared to the high, pitched roof of the power station, to her left were the huge winding drums rolling endless silver cable. The smell of coal and the wafts of hot oil pervaded the place. And so far, although they stared, no one had challenged her. A lot of the men looked as if they might, though.

  And then someone did. “’Scuse me, Missy,” said a tall, young man with a puce Spencer-coat with green epaulettes.

  Her stomach knotted.

  The big, young man beamed at her. “Can I carry yer bag, Missy?”

  “Er. Yes, please.” She handed it to him gratefully.

  “Where are you going, Missy?” he asked.

  “I would like to go and see Mr. McGurk.”

  He nodded. That obviously made her being there perfectly all right. And having someone escort her was obviously all the passport she needed. “We could walk a little slower, please,” she said.

  So they positively dawdled. It would have driven Clara mad…if she hadn’t been playing for time. Mick from Sheba had said the clankers normally only stayed as long as it took to off-load mail, men, and supplies, and to take aboard anyone who had to go back. Her bag carrier was doing his best to engage in small talk, but, Clara realized, he must have used up nearly all his courage coming to talk to her. He couldn’t be more than three years older than her. Every time he said anything he turned puce enough to match his jacket. She did her best at small talk for him. He was, she discovered, a sub-foreman on the steam mole Passara. He told her of the Passara’s virtues, and the number of tons of coal she used, and the number of chains they dug, and of re-tipping the drill bits, as they walked along corridors lit with brass fittings…rather like those in the submarine. And then they came to a large wooden door with a brass nameplate that read: H.M. McGurk, Forward Operations Manager.

  Her escort set her bag down.

  “Thank you kindly, sir,” Clara said, curtseying as if this was Dublin not Dajarra Power Station.

  He bowed. “It’s an honor, Missy.” He blushed to the roots of his hair. “If I could ask your name, Missy?”

  “Clara. Clara Calland,” she said, offering her hand politely.

  He shook it as if it were a flimsy piece of porcelain. “Tom Whelan, Missy. Anything, absolutely anything that I can do for you, just ask for me.”

  It made her smile. She wasn’t really used to boys falling over themselves for her yet. But as Sandy had said on the way to Alice, they didn’t see many girls up here. Her escort blushed all over again, and having run out of things to say, fled. Clara braced herself, a little lifted by this, and knocked.

  “Enter,” said a slightly testy voice from inside. Clara’s courage shrank down again as she did. The little, round, bald-headed man behind the desk full of papers, tapping away at a small pneumatic abacus, didn’t look up for a moment…and then did.

  He dropped his pipe, and hastily had to rescue it and his papers. He stood up. He was shorter than she was. “Good gracious. To what do I owe this pleasure?” He sounded, now, more amused than irritated. But just a little wary, too. “What brings you to Dajarra, young lady?”

  There was no point in delaying too much now. The train had almost certainly headed back to Sheba. “Please, sir, I have to speak to Tim Barnabas.”

  He blinked. “And I assume he’s here at my station. You’re a very determined young woman, to get all the way here. Has he got you into the family way? I can put a garnishee on his pay for that.”

  Clara was shocked. “No!”

  McGurk took this in. “I think I may have started on the wrong foot,” he said, more gently. “Perhaps if we start again. Your accent says to me you’re not from Westralia.”

  “I’m from Ireland. I only arrived in Westralia about two weeks ago, with my mother, on the submarine. Maybe fifteen days…It’s hard to keep track with the funny hours.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. McGurk. “Yes, I do remember noticing that one of the new contract workers came off a submarine. We do get foreign people trickling over the border with the metal smugglers, but not many submariners. Pardon me. We don’t often get young ladies here. Actually, I don’t think we’ve ever had one here before. A bit of a surprise to me. I…um…do get letters about…other ma
tters from women. I was mistaken. So, you’ve come from Ceduna to see Mr. Barnabas. Alone?”

  Clara nodded. “I didn’t know how else to speak to him.”

  “There is telephony as far as Sheba. And we get telegrams relayed to us on the trains.”

  “It’s not something I could explain on a telegram. It’s…well, my mother is dying.” Clara felt a tear run down her cheek.

  McGurk was silent for a while. And then he said, quietly, “I’m sorry. I completely misunderstood.” He stood up and looked at a huge list pinned to the felt on the wall of his office. “Here you are. Tim Barnabas. He’s on the steam mole that’s currently at the cutting head, under Shift-captain Vister.” He rubbed his chin, awkwardly. “I’m not sure how much good it will do you, young lady, to speak with your father. The company is very inflexible about leave from contracts.”

  Clara gaped. Her father? Then she realized what the man thought. Fortunately, he was looking at another list.

  “They’ve finished their shift and will be on their way back soon. They should arrive in three hours.” He smiled at her. “In the meanwhile…maybe you’d like something to eat? A cup of tea? I could show you around the station. It’s not often I get to give the guided tour. I think the last person was our Minister of Science and Agriculture, and he used to be an engineer himself.”

  It had been a while since Clara had last eaten…but even longer since she’d last washed. “I’d love that. But…is there any chance of…of some ablutions. Or is water too short here?”

  He laughed. “You’d be surprised, Miss Barnabas. We’re on the great artesian basin and we have a good strong bore. Besides, it’s as dry as a…well, very dry out there now, but when we get a wet, we’ve got flooding problems. It’s why the termite way follows the higher ground, although it would be very much easier to keep to the lower areas. We try not to burrow too much. It’s keeping the rails at as slight a gradient and with as few a curves as is possible that’s important. We have to do a lot of scouting and surveying to get it right, my word we do. Anyway. Let me organize a bath for you.”