I can safely say that, after tonight, those suspicions have only strengthened.
After the funeral for Lucas' uncle, we found ourselves consulting with MacKenzie that morning. He once more explained his need for help with the mine robberies and death of MacGuire, and the others agreed. He barely looked at me, but I could tell he looked with contempt. It is a good thing I am good at playing the "dumb foreigner" as need be, and even better at biting my tongue.
MacKenzie offered the others use of his horses for transport, and I ended up sharing one with McCloud on the way to the mine. It was late in the morning when we arrived, and already hot, though not unbearable. I think McCloud may have been the only one breaking a sweat; he's not the most used to these climes, something I have teased him about before. We mostly spent the day around Yirrimburra looking into local information and meeting people, and learned quite a bit about the local color, but nothing of great import. Call me rather paranoid, but I kept feeling watched. Then again, I am used to such treatment by now, both by prospective clients and white men in general, and this is much kinder treatment than I usually receive. Besides, the beer was good at the pub, and Neville's earlier odd behavior and memory loss were a more primary concern as of yet.
As for the Mine, it was easy enough to get there, and mostly empty since the work day hadn't begun yet. The only one there was that red-bearded man, Mick I believe his name was, standing near the entrance to the elevator. On explanation of why we were there, we were allowed down, but not without protective gear. It soon became clear why once we hit the lowest level - the floor was slick with damp and mud, water dripping from the ceiling into murky puddles, and the footing was treacherous. To make things more difficult, the ceiling was beginning to crumble, and the occasional shower of pebbles rained down from above. Once, a rock even struck Neville in the head, and it may have killed him if not for the helmet he wore. Certainly dangerous... As for the mine itself, all seemed normal as we approached the cave-in location where MacGuire perished, until McCloud noticed something odd.
"Hey, look at this," he said, brushing some muck off a nearby wall. Strange mottled marks were in the clay and rock, and embedded were a few shiny metal pellets. "Looks like buckshot... that some sort of mining technique, Neville?"
"What, you bloody daft, mate?" He responded, aghast. "What kind of a cunt sets off a shotgun in a collapsing mine shaft? It's a good way to get yourself dead, it is..."
His foot shifted, then we all heard a crunch, and a few seconds later we found he'd stepped on the offending shotgun shell, proving McCloud's thoughts right. Someone had indeed shot a shotgun off in this tunnel, but why? Then Lucas called our attention, and we discovered a tunnel leading up at an angle - hand-dug, with a single boot-print in the center halfway up the slope. It was alarmingly clear, that boot-print, clear enough to tell that there was a chip in the heel and that it was clearly a dress boot, not a work boot. Whomever the print belonged to, it was clear they were not a worker... and they had come in through that hand-dug tunnel. But why?
"Robbers, perhaps?" I suggested. "I noticed there were pickaxe marks in the walls as well..."
"Maybe," suggested McCloud. "This is a gold mine, remember, MacKenzie said as much. Maybe there's rustlers in the area, sneaking in, taking the gold down here. You saw the caution signs earlier, nobody would come down here to check. Too dangerous."
"Well, then that means perhaps MacGuire, he was caught at the wrong time." Ludwig slid awkwardly back down the muddy embankment and righted himself. "Perhaps he caught someone stealing, shot as a warning, and caused the tunnel to cave in on himself. How very unfortunate..."
I was about to reply when we all heard a shuffling from the tunnels above, like two people moving about. They did not sound as sure-footed as miners do, nor did they sound like they were working. This could only mean one thing - the robbers had returned to the scene of the crime.
McCloud, leaving his false leg behind to reduce the noise he made, scrambled up the slope to check while the rest of us waited. After what seemed like hours of tense waiting, he slid back down, looking determined.
"Well?" Ludwig asked, eyes wide. "What did you find?"
"There's two of them," McCloud answered, brushing the dirt off himself and reattaching his leg. "A Phil and a Ray. One of them is armed, and I think they might be brothers. Phil had a chip in the heel of his left boot, like the footprint we found earlier. I ended up on the third level after climbing that slope, and there's ladders there, which I think must be how they got in. They were talking about 'getting the rest of the goods, then leaving'. I think we found our robbers, fellas, and that means we gotta be fast if we want to catch them. We need to get up top, tell Mick he needs to get the police on this yesterday to guard the ladders, and then we can catch them ourselves."
"That's a good plan," said Lucas, "Take the elevator up, and they'll be stuck down here while we block off the other exit."
Again, I was going to reply when the shuffling grew closer, and we realized we had little time. We reacted by taking the elevator up, letting Mick know about the situation, and then taking the ladders back down to block the intruders on their own level. Catching up with them proved easier than we thought, and as soon as they saw our numbers they didn't even shoot. They simply gave up, and tried a convenient lie to explain they were workers... which of course, failed, since they weren't in proper gear. From there, the two confessed that yes, they had been stealing from the mine, and yes, they were Phil and Ray Keelor, sons of the late Ted Keelor. Their father had died in his sleep suddenly after months of horrible nightmares, and they had to watch. Without their father, who previously worked down in the mines, they had no means of income. Nobody was hiring in town since all of the work was leaving, so they took to stealing the gold in a small vein Ted found when he was working in the lower reaches. They'd been doing this for months, and accrued somewhere close to two thick bags full of gold nuggets.
One night, while they were busy mining, they heard a noise and saw Peter MacGregor coming after them down the tunnel with a shotgun. Phil fired a warning shot after MacGregor threatened him with the gun, and the tunnel just collapsed on top of the man. Phil swore up and down he didn't mean for the man to die, and did not know how dangerous the tunnel was - there weren't any signs up at this end of the tunnel, and he just wanted to scare MacGregor. For obvious reasons, though, he and his brother could not go to the police, for fear of being framed for the murder. MacKenzie, he said, had never much liked him or Ray, and because the constable was such close friends to MacKenzie there was no way the constable wouldn't charge them with the murder of one of the mayor's closest friends. That's what he did to Bill Poul, Phil said, ruined the man's reputation and consequentially his whole life. Now the man spent his time living on the fringes, trading, and occasionally going to town for beer or supplies, and they didn't want to end up shunned like him. All they wanted to do was finish getting the rest of the gold, and then they would turn over a new leaf for good and live as honest men.
Of course, we asked questions - who was this Bill Poul, why did MacKenzie hate him, and what did he do? But Phil and Ray had no answers, suggesting maybe the library knew. They just didn't want to get caught, and offered to be of assistance to us in Yirrimburra if we'd keep their activities secret. Feeling sorry for the penniless men and knowing the stakes, McCloud and I quickly agreed, while the others agreed on principle. It simply would not have been right to tell the police about them, not when they were in such trouble and only wished to make a life for themselves after their father's death. As for Bill, if we wanted to speak with him, we'd need to do it at the pub, or at dusk near Rainbow Rock where he camped.
From there, it was just a question of letting them escape while the police were distracted, which McCloud handled. Of course MacKenzie was there, and he seemed overly suspicious - more so than before - about us. I cannot imagine what set him off, but it did not sit well with me. I was especially concerned when he mentioned not to speak with the layabouts around town, and mentioned being careful what we did. Had he somehow overheard us? I have seen and experienced too many strange things by now to believe in coincidences. Was the constable following us? My paranoia has never steered me wrong before, and has often kept me alive...
Paranoid or not, Bill was clearly the next stop on our agenda. We waited quietly at the Yirrimburran Arms until dusk to see if he arrived there, then when he did, we followed him slowly. Soon, we came to Rainbow Rock, which was not far from the mine, and found him sadly eating canned beans, lost in thought before a fire near his lean-to. My heart broke for the man, so carelessly tossed aside by a rich man's cruelty, but we had no time for sympathy. We had questions to ask, and answers to obtain.
It was Lucas who first approached Bill, as we reasoned a native Australian might make him less jumpy. We immediately tried to get into the questioning once he seemed comfortable, but at the first mention of MacKenzie he clammed up. A little persuasion was necessary, and when we explained our situation, he finally told his story, glancing over his shoulder the entire time.
When Bill was a young man, he befriended the local Aboriginal tribesmen in the area, learning much from them and teaching them much about the white man's culture. Everyone in the area knew Bill was friends with the tribesmen, and some did not approve of it while others encouraged his curiosity. One awful day in 1885, however, Fred MacKenzie came to him bleeding from a terrible gash in his leg, his friends behind him. They were angry, and they forced him, at gunpoint, to find the tribe for them because he was the only one who knew their location. Knowing what the gang was going to do to the tribe, Bill tried to lead them astray, but they caught onto him and he had no choice but to show them.
The battle that ensued was incredibly one-sided. Spears flashed, bullets pierced the air with sharp, thunderous cracks, and when all was over the entire tribe was dead. Men, women, children - even their tamed pet dingoes had been killed. It was a massacre, and Bill had an absolute nervous breakdown seeing it. Then, MacKenzie threatened him with death if he ever so much dared to speak a word about the incident. From that point forward, as MacKenzie and his friends grew rich and influential and started Yirrimburra, MacKenzie had seen to it that Bill's life was hell. He ensured the man never got a job, ever. He ensured nobody believed or trusted him, so even if he did testify it would be thrown out of court. And, he ensured that the entire town shunned him, backing murderers who got off without so much as a single minute of jail time. Now, Bill knew something was coming for the men, something related to the unjust deaths of the tribe, and he feared it may come for him too by association, but who would believe him? MacKenzie made sure that nobody would.
That put a fire in my belly, and I'm certain in the bellies of the others. The man had been forced to do something terrible by a group of heartless killers, and now his life was essentially worthless because the murderers were influential. Neville swore profusely, and promised up and down that he would seek vengeance for Bill and clear his name, while the others asked where they may find more information about the slayings. Bill refused to give any more clarification, terrified for his life, and told us to seek out the library - there were articles about the slaughter, he said, but then he would mention nothing more and returned to eating.
We had no choice but to leave, but as we did so we all felt watched and then heard a noise. McCloud and Neville went towards the undergrowth to see what it was, and were alarmed by something, so we ran over. Lo and behold, there was an Aboriginal man in the brush, hiding and watching, one side of his face terribly scarred. I saw the sympathetic pain in McCloud's eyes, echoed by the two Australian ex-soldiers, and knew the injury had been done by some tool of war. The Aboriginal man did not speak English well, but explained he only wished to be left alone, and so we did so. Yet, something seemed wrong about him. Something dangerous. Something that hinted at a nameless pain, and a thirst for righting some terrible wrong... But there was no way anyone had survived the massacre, had they? No, certainly not...
As we left, we passed the scrap heap for the mine, filled with rusting equipment and dangerous animals. Yet, something strange occurred then, sounds like screaming and rifle shots, and sights of someone or something running into the brush. As quickly as they arrived, they were gone... and I realized this meant that perhaps, the ghosts of that lost tribe were here, haunting this area. Could their tribal grounds have been here before the mine was built, or was this simply where they had been camping for the time being? Neville and Lucas tell me that the Aboriginals are a nomadic peoples, somewhat like the Maasai tribes from my homeland, but more mobile and not a herding peoples.
That evening was otherwise peaceful as we slept, yet the next morning was not. As we awoke, we saw out the boardinghouse window a great crowd near a tree in the center of the town. When we readied ourselves and arrived, we saw something far worse - Bill Poul, dead and lying against the tree, a frayed and recently cut rope around his neck. The police were already crawling all over the scene, and the constable was trying to shoo people away.
"There's nothing to see here, just a suicide," he said, but we knew better. Neville even got loud-mouthed with the constable, and later with MacKenzie when he arrived, but to no avail - the crowd looked at us suspiciously, and MacKenzie glared at the intrusion.
"Don't you have something else to be doing?" he asked, and that was enough for us. Neville continued to curse Mackenzie as we left, but at the least we had not riled the clearly vengeful crowd. Who else would MacKenzie have told to do this? Who else would have listened to him? Who else could have lynched a man so easily? Certainly not the elderly MacKenzie himself... and I was not in the mood or the position to argue with possible murderers.
Besides, the Library beckoned, and it was safe and cool inside. The search was not hard as we looked through old newspapers, as the late Bill Poul had suggested, and soon we found what we desired - evidence that MacKenzie and his friends were not only responsible for the slaughter, but had gotten away with it. Two articles mentioned the trial and Not Guilty verdict, and that only strengthened our thoughts that we needed to leave Yirrimburra, and let the curse or whatever was killing all these men take its toll. Why save a mass-murderer, or warn him about it? As for the town, well, it could survive and elect a new mayor, could it not? And there was even a convenient reason for us to take the train and leave according to the articles - in the next town over lived the prosecutor, a retired detective named David King. Surely he would still be living, and would be able to explain his side of the case.
We need all the help we can get in this circumstance, anything to either leave MacKenzie to his dark fate or to get him jailed on charges of murder. Perhaps this prosecutor could help us. I certainly do not see why we should stay in Yirrimburra any longer - after all, as McCloud has told me that the Americans say, "It is better to cut one's losses and run."
-- Muuzaji, Properly Paranoid (June 20th, 1928)