Back of Sunset

“All right, I’ll tell them to make it as soon as they can.” Steve looked at Keating. “We’ll go in and have a look at your mate, Mr. Keating. See what we can do for him.”

“He’s pretty crook,” said Keating. “I hope you’re a good doc.”

Steve said nothing as he got into the cabin of the truck beside Keating. The man’s half-drunk, he thought, and probably worried stiff about his mate.

Steve’s watch was still going, and he timed the seven-mile drive into the station homestead: thirty-five minutes. The pindan scrub was thick in this part of the country; Keating explained that the cattle grazed in open country south of the homestead. The red dusty track wound through the scrub almost without direction; branches grabbed at the truck as if to hold it back. Three slim boabs loomed up in the headlights like ambushing bushrangers and Keating swung the truck out of their way just in time. A mob of wild donkeys crossed their path, eyes white with fright; they drove at a branch lying across the track and it turned into a huge snake and slithered away. A bird dived at the headlights and fell to one side, a flurry of blood and feathers. They crossed two creeks, bumping slowly through a foot of water over the fords, and whirled at speed for less than a minute over an open clay-pan. Keating threaded the truck through a vast field of giant anthills, climbed a hill in low gear and said, “There she is.”

The homestead lay below them, a single light showing from the main building and fires glowing in the blacks’ camp a hundred yards behind it. Keating took the truck slowly down the track and crossed the open space, past the yards and the sheds, to the house. As Steve got out of the truck he saw that this was no comfortable homestead, one in which its occupant took any pride. It was a galvanised iron shack of only two large rooms; a small kitchen stood off on its own at the back. Steve ducked his head as he walked in the low doorway, holding back the screen door that hung on one hinge. Slums, he thought; even out here you get them.