Sam’s speed at most was twelve miles an hour and gear-changing was a continuous necessity. Narrow, deep, steep-sided creeks yawned like cracks opened by an earthquake, making it appear impossible for a vehicle having the length of Sam’s transport ever to cross them. Ridges of bare rock were like monstrous teeth gnashing at the tyres, causing the vehicle to roll and lurch and buck like a ship in a typhoon.
From Wyndham to Agar’s Lagoon is about 240 miles, and Sam usually covered this distance in two days.
When day broke on the morning of the 17th, Sam Laidlaw’s transport was approximately eighty miles from Wyndham. Sam had slept in the cabin, and to begin his day he had merely to leave his two blankets, thrust his feet into boots which were never laced, and go to ground to relight his camp fire and boil water for a brew of tea. He was large and fat and hard, and other than the boots he wore only a pair of astonishingly oily shorts. The skin of his arms and torso was the colour of amedlar, and that of his cropped hair and wiry beard akin to gingerbread.
Sam ate standing up, a three-inch sandwich of bread and meat in one paw and the billy-can from which he drank gripped in the other. He stood with his legs wide apart like a colossus frightening the Ogres now slinking into the mountain caverns.
Breakfast finished, he was ready for the day’s run, for the oiling and fuelling had been done the night before. He slung the tucker-box on to the loading, jamming it down between bagged flour, tossed the billy-can into the cabin, and swung the starting handle as easily as a woman employs flattery. And whilst the engine was warming, he loaded his pipe with tobacco chipped from a plug the colour of ebony.