Free The Golden Soak by Hammond; Innes

women.’ And then, suddenly serious again. ‘Daddy’s quite hopelessly possessive about that bloody mine. Won’t let anybody go near it.’ She got up. ‘I’ll get you the Journal. Then at least you can read about it – how it all started.’ She came back a few minutes later with an old box file full of typed pages. She opened it and placed it on the table in front of me. ‘You’ll learn more from this than you would from Daddy. Sometimes I think he’s scared of Golden Soak.’
    â€˜Because it’s unsafe?’
    â€˜No, it’s more complicated than that – a love-hate feeling he has.’ She was turning the pages of typescript. ‘I can’t explain. I don’t really understand it myself. But when he was a young man, think how exciting it must have been for him. Going down there, working with the miners – it made a change from riding fences and working sheep in the heat and the dust. And the miners themselves, he always says they were a different breed. He got a great kick out of the fact that we had a mine on the station.’ Her fingers smoothed a page. ‘There you are. December 22nd, 1905, and a drought every bit as bad as we’ve got now. Start reading from there.’
    â€˜But why should he hate the mine?’
    â€˜I think you’ll understand when you read some of the later passages.’ Her hand was on my shoulder, her breath on my cheek, and I heard her sigh. ‘He won’t talk about it. But I know he does hate it.’ She straightened up. ‘You’ve got to remember what a drain Golden Soak has been. It never made money, not after the first few years. And yet, owning a mine like we do, there’s always the hope at the back of our minds – that one day it’ll turn out beaut and make our fortunes and we’ll be rich and live happily ever after.’ She was laughing, a note of wistfulness. ‘You read that while I clear the things away. Then you’ll understand how my grandfather must have felt, why we all have this stupid, quite illogical feeling that we’re sitting on a fortune, a sort of Pandora’s box, if only we knew how to open the lid.’
    â€˜The official price of gold hasn’t changed in thirty years,’ I said gently.
    â€˜I know that. But it doesn’t make any difference. I still dream dreams that one day.…’ She shrugged, turning quickly away and beginning to clear the table. ‘Maybe after a few days, if you can spare the time, Daddy’ll get used to you being here and I’ll be able to persuade him to take you down. Actually, I’ve never been down myself. The ladders are gone and the winch gear broken. He always said it was too dangerous.’ She went out then and by the light from the single bulb and the flickering candles I began to read Big Bill Garrety’s account of driving cattle from the Turee Creek area to the goldfields at Nullagine:
    22nd Dec: Two more soaks gone and the last bore run dry. Buried a dozen carcases and started driving the live beasts at sundown. About 60 head. Maurie told me two days back they’re short of meat at the goldfields now and the miners paying high prices. But these poor beasts are skin and bone and I doubt I’ll get more than a score of them through. Camped at dawn where some eucs gave a little shade for us and the cattle. Made only 9 miles during the dark and still another 12 to Pukara. If that waterhole is dry, then there’s nothing between here and the Fortescue, unless I take them into the gullies below Coondewanna and up through the homestead. But Pukara should be all right – it’s one of the blackman’s sacred waterholes inhabited by the ghosts of two Watersnake men of the Dreamtime. They sprinkle penis blood there. I’ve seen them do it. But not my two jackaroos – they’re from down around Kunderong .
    23rd Dec: Left 7 dead, starting again at