Arthur Upfield - Death of a Swagman

He had seen a pair of old trousers in a far corner of the hut and for the second time he edged past the swinging corpse, the soul of him in revolt. When he regained the open air he wrapped the door handles within the trousers and the parcel he pushed under the raised floor of the hut near the doorstep. The door he wedged shut with a wood chip from the wood heap. And then, with a feeling of thankfulness, he crossed to the cane-grass meat house, peeped inside at the safe on its tall legs set in jam tins filled with water, and finally squatted on its south side with its wall as a back rest.

It was noonday and the shadow cast by the meat house would not have covered a plate. He was oblivious to shadow and sunlight; the making of a cigarette was entirely automatic. He was unconscious of the nearer, the inner, languorous silence which lay heavily over the dazzling white scene of white sand, but the buzzing of the blowflies was a constant and sinister reminder of what was within the hut, whilst the noise created by a party of distant crows at first made no impression on his mind.

A state of ecstasy lifted him up, urging him into activity which had to be resisted. What he had predicted to Sergeant Marshall but an hour since, that another would be buried shortly in the cemetery, would take place. For a lie will beget lies, and murder will beget murder. And now he knew for certain what he hadexpected, that the man who had killed Kendall had not fled but remained in or close to Merino.

The whys and wherefores of this latest death could be divided into two sections: those concerning the dead man and the circumstances of the discovery of the body; and those concerning the living man who had so carefully obliterated his tracks. The dead could wait, could be left to Dr Scott and Marshall, and to Coroner Jason. The living was his concern, for that living man who flailed out his tracks was the quarry he, Napoleon Bonaparte, was here to hunt. It was the ecstasy of the hunter that was now lifting him up, that was coursing through his veins like a fire, liquid fire refined by generations of the most cunning, the most patient, and the most relentless hunters this world has ever known.

Rising to his feet, he walked to the place where he had outlined with a match the marks made by a flail of strips of hessian sacking. Slowly he followed the regular series of marks over the steps made by a man, visualizing the action of the flail on the fine sand. First the hard pressure on the ground to fill in the deep indentations, then the lighter touches with the ends of the strips. The flail could smooth the sand, leaving the faintest marks for only the most expert of trackers to see, but the flail wielder could not re-create the delicate sand ripples made by the fingers of the West Wind.

Time must have been necessary, and also daylight. The operation was carried out most probably immediately following the dawn of the day, for the wind of yesterday would certainly have covered those hair-fine marks had they been made the morning before. Presently he stopped to find himself close to the well.

The marks led him to the windmill over the well, and from there to the stand on which was the iron reservoir tank. There was an iron ladder giving access to the wooden platform on which the tank rested some fifteen feet above the ground. The marks were closer here at the foot of the ladder, as though for some reason or other the man had gone up that ladder to the tank. The marks continued on past the ladder and Bony continued to follow them east towards the Walls of China. And at the foot of the Walls, where the foot of the lowest sand dune rested on the plain, the flail marks ceased and there began larger, light indentations which at this shadowless time of day were barely more easily followed.

From this point back to the hut the flail had been used. From here on and up the Walls the man had considered the flail unnecessary to wipe away the tracks made by his feet encased in loose hessian.

Whether the man had come down this way or had gone back this way Bony could not determine; therefore he could not know if he was following the man’s tracks or backtracking him, and the only way to find out was to continue.

On the soft and fine sand of the slopes the imprints were hardly deeper than the cover of a book and as large as the impression made by an elephant. They led him up a minor gully between the lower dunes, twisting about to take still other gullies, until finally they reached the comparative flat top of the Walls of China. Onward they went directly eastwards over the field of dazzling white sand. Bony halted to take stock of his position.

The sunlight was reflected by the iron roofs of Merino situated midway up the vast rise of land reaching to the western horizon. The bush lay like an old and moth-eaten brown carpet, the holes in it red with the sandy soil; and the green of the pepper-trees lining the street of the township made striking contrast. To the north, close to the huge sand range, were the roofs of Wattle Creek homestead, and the sun glinted on the fans of a windmill in action. At Bony’s feet was the little iron hut and mill at Sandy Flat; whilst to the south, also close to the Walls of China, roofs and a windmill marked the home of Mrs Sutherland.

It appeared mathematically impossible for the entire bulk of this mighty sand range to have been raised from the strip of white sand country upon which it was founded. As yet he could see no eastern limits, for the bushlands to the east were lower than the “roof” on which he stood. Here and there pillars of sandstone rose like monoliths from the “roof”, some twenty feet, others thirty feet high. And those pillars possibly indicated that the Walls of China had not been raised by the wind but by an earth upheaval, that out of the bowels of the earth this section of white sand had been heaved to become the sport of the West Wind, to wear it out and away from the hard cores.

Bony turned to the east and continued to follow the almost invisible tracks of the man who wore sacking about his feet. Ahead, about midway to the farthest limits seen of the sand range, a party of crows were vociferously engaged with something lying on the sand. The object he could not see, but their antics proved that something did lie there. Some of the birds were flying in erratic circles; others were on the white sand like blots of ink on paper.

The man tracks did not extend directly to the object of interest to the crows, but when they reached a point close to it, he left the tracks and walked the short distance to ascertain what it was. At his approach the birds whirled upward in flight, cawing angrily, some to alight on the sand and continue their loud protest at his intrusion.

In a small and shallow declivity lay the body of an animal which Bony instantly recognized as young Jason’s brown and white dog with the nail missing in its right forepaw: The crows had ripped out its entrails, but the manner in which the dead animal lay revealed clearly that it had died from takinga poison bait.

Bony considered, thoughtfully gazing over the roof of sand and thereby maintaining the anger of the crows. He could see nothing other than the roof of the Walls of China, limited to the east and west by the blue of the sky, to the south and north by endless slopes and summits of whalebacks lying in shimmering faintly purple opalescence. And here and there those strange cores of sandstone behind which could shelter a corps of spies… or one man armed with a rifle.

Within yards of the carcass the crows had obliterated the last tracks made by the living animal. Bony found them at the edge of the crow-disturbed area, and backtracked. He came to the place where the unfortunate animal had lain in a spasm of agony and, still farther along, to another where it had endured probably its first. Continuing to backtrack, he reached the slight indentations made by the man who had visited Sandy Flat, and then it was established that the man had been on his way to Sandy Flat from the east country, and that the dog had been following his trail when it picked up the poison bait.