Beyond the Black Stump by Nevil Shute

Author:Nevil Shute [Shute, Nevil]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780307474032
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-10-11T23:00:00+00:00

Six

THEY did not stop for long at Laragh Station, but the Judge was able to give them a little more information about Mannahill. “I understand that Mr. Rogerson employs four white men,” he told them. “He had a married foreman in addition, but he left last month. I have not heard of an appointment to succeed him. Perhaps it was unwise of Mr. Rogerson to leave the station in the absence of a foreman … But then, of course, it was for Anzac Day.”

“Sure,” said Stanton. “Who was this guy that cut his throat?”

“I think perhaps that was a man called Airey. He was a saddler and harness maker, a very depressed little man, and with a terrible weakness for strong drink.”

“Well, who’s Jim Copeland, then?”

“He is an English boy, jackerooing. He comes from Black-heath, near London. I think he has only been in Australia for a few months. I doubt if he had settled down yet. Perhaps he was homesick.”

“What’s jackerooing?”

“Working as an apprentice, to learn the work.”

Stanton thought for a minute. “There’s Bert Hancock, who was on the radio. How many others are there there?”

“I think only the station cook—of the white men, that is to say.”

“What’s his name?”

“They call him Fortunate. I never heard him called anything else. Perhaps that is his name.” He mused for a moment. “If I were to hazard a guess,” he said mildly, “I would say that he is an Englishman, or perhaps a Welshman, who had jumped his ship, as they say here. Mr. Rogerson once told Mr. Regan that Fortunate was most reluctant to go off the station, from which he assumed that he was probably in Australia illegally.”

“A hot citizen,” observed Stanton.

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s okay. I just meant that maybe the police would take an interest in him. They seem to be quite a bunch of boys at Mannahill.”

“No better and no worse than on any other property in the north,” the Judge said. “I am inclined to think that Mr. Rogerson made a great mistake in leaving them without a foreman.”

Stanton Laird drove on to Mannahill with Tex, with a slightly enhanced opinion of the Judge. Beneath the ageing and dissipated exterior there was still a good deal of shrewd common sense. For the first time he began to wonder who it was that really ran the excellent property that was Laragh Station, whether it was Tom Regan with his stomach ulcers or Pat Regan with his tame mouse, or whether in truth it was the Scots ex-barmaid aided by the disgraced stipendiary who had once been a schoolmaster at Eton, assisted by the many children. Perhaps it was a combination of them all, a harmonious partnership tolerant of human frailties that had evolved over the years. It wasn’t the way that things were run in Topeka Exploration Inc., or in the town of Hazel for that matter, but set in the Lunatic Range of West Australia it seemed to work.

He got to Mannahill at about noon.

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