Arthur Upfield - Death of a Lake

Joan was hanging to the big man’s shirt and kicking at his ankles. Carney got in a walloper, and Lester began the count. Calmly, without the trace of a smile, George Barby remarked to Bony:

“When thieves fall out, honest men like you and me steps in.”

Bony was reminded of a picture of hounds pulling down a stag. He retrieved the locket and the miniatures, replaced the pictures, and pocketed the locket. Then he smiled at Barby:

“It must be time for smoko, George.”

“Yair. Very dry argument this morning, Bony.”

Carney was kneeling and waving his hands as though in obeisance to King Sol. Joan was behindMacLennon and doing her utmost to scalp him. MacLennon was yelling, and Lester was urging Joan to ‘pull his ears off’. Then Carney left the ground in a flying tackle and the combatants became a heap. Bony turned away, and Barby walked at his side and said:

“Did you hear Ray Gillen laughing and laughing?”

“Yes, I heard it,” Bony replied, gravely. “I thought it was ghostly merriment.”

They came to the Channel, invisible beneath the covering of drowned animals. The crows were now the flakes of a black snowstorm, and dotted on the flats the eagles were gorging. Here and there, farther away, daintily walked the emus, their tail feathers billowing like the skirts of a ballerina. The kangaroos had gone, but a few of the galah host still lingered about the dunes.

“Funny about that letterMacLennon said Carney found in Gillen’s suitcase,” Barby drawled. “Whatd’you make of it?”

“I wish thatMacLennon had been a little more elucidative, George. It does seem that Carney found such a letter in Gillen’s case, and we may assume that Carney found that letter after Gillen went swimming, that he was anxious about the money, having been told by Joan how much there was, Joan having been told by Gillen. Which supports what you overheard that night when Joan and Carney discussed money. We now know why no one left Lake Otway after Gillen was drowned. Why everyone was so interested in Lake Otway’s inevitable demise. Did you ever see Gillen writing letters?”

“Can’t say I ever did,” replied Barby, taking up one of the bags containing rabbit pelts.“Never said anything about his mother or father, or about any pals.”

Bony heaved a bag to his back, and together they went on. Near the sandbar, Bony turned to see the three battlers and the referee walking slowly after them. They were widely spaced, and obviously not engaged in friendly conversation.

“It is going to be abnormally hot today,” he told Barby. “I wonder what has happened to Martyr. Someone ought to have arrived by now. Must be after nine o’clock.”

“Ought to come any time. I’mgoin ’ to get on withstretchin ’ these skins. Won’t have a chance after the mob gets here. Betcher theSergeant’ll be outaskin ’ questions. What do we say about the locket?”

“Haven’t decided. I think the police will be far too interested in the fire and the fate of Mrs Fowler to bother about Gillen’s remains just now. Have you enough bows for all these pelts?”

“Not near enough.”

“Then I’ll cut some more after smoko.”

They dumped the heavy loads in tree shadow. The dogs welcomed them dispiritedly. The cats yawned and went to sleep again. The pet galah screeched, and Barby opened its cage door and it fell over itself, such was its haste to gain freedom. A rabbit had found a bread-crust at the edge of ash marking the fire site… and continued to eat.

Bony took empty water-buckets to the reservoir tank, and saw rabbits crouching under the long trough. The trough was empty and he removed the chock from under the ball valve and permitted water to gush into it. Immediately, crows appeared to caw raucously, and galahs came to perch on the trough edges. Barby’s dogs jumped into the water and lapped as it ran under their tummies. The rabbits beneath the trough waited for the water to drip from the iron seams.

The warriors entered camp, Carney carrying the third bag of skins. They were sullenly silent, and the men stripped to the waist and carried towels to the trough to bathe their bruises and abrasions. On his way with filled buckets, Bony encountered Joan, whose left cheek was still inflamed by the smack fromMacLennon. She actually smiled at him, but it didn’t raise his blood pressure.

In sullen silence a meal was eaten, and afterwards Bony took a file to a heap of old fencing wire and cut lengths to be bent to U shape. Lester assisted Barby to stretch the pelts over the bows and thrust them upright by pushing the points into the soft ground. The skins were board-hard and dry in less than twenty minutes, and eventually were removed and packed into a wool-sack.

When it was ten o’clock, the heat was almost combustible. Lester estimated the temperature to be about 112 degrees; Carney 115 degrees. The cats demanded watered tummies, and the galah sought similar attention from the solicitous Barby. Immediately the tea-billy was empty, another was placed on the fire, smokeless and almost invisible in the glare of the sun.

The men and the girl clung to the shadow cast by the hut. Whenever they drank, perspiration oozed from face and body within minutes. Joan had a basin of water and she saturated somebody’s shirt and draped it about her head. Carney wished they had a pack of cards.

It was just before eleven, and Lester was voicing doubt that Martyr could have reached the telephone at Sandy Well, when the crow fell from the cabbage tree where Bony had tethered his horse. It uttered a long-drawn c-a-a-h as it nosedived to the ground without a flutter.

“Last time I seen anything like that,” Lester said, “thelocal shade temperature was 123 degrees.”

“That’s what it is here and now,” Carney stated with conviction.

“Assuming that Martyr’s utility broke down between Lake Otway and Sandy Well, what would he do?” Bony asked, and Carney answered him.

“He’d try and fix the trouble. He had a full gallon water-bag for himself, and atinful for the radiator. And a mile off the track midway there’s a well called The Shaft. If he couldn’t get the lump of junk to go, he’d wait till night and walk on to Sandy Well.”

“And if he didn’t get to Sandy Well by nine last night, more’n likely there’d be no one in the River office to answer his ringing,” supplemented Barby. “That would mean he’d camp there and wait for the Boss to ring at half-past seven this morning.”

“What do you think Wallace would do on being told about the fire?”persisted Bony, actually to break up a moody silence.

“He’d tell Martyr he’d be out as soon as he could. He’d know wewas all right, and Martyr was all right,” replied Barby. “Mr Wallace would ring the police at Menindee, and the Sergeant would have to get a doctor, and as far as I know the nearest doctor would be at Broken Hill, seventy miles off. Or he might come out without a doctor. I reckon Wallace would come out without waiting for the Sergeant.”

“What good would a doctor do? Tell us that,” sharply urged Joan.

“A doctor has to certify how your mother died,” Bony said, adding: “And also how Gillen died.”

Something to do

AFTERDAYSANDnights when the air had remained still, the wind came. It was neither strong nor gusty: a gentle wind in pressure, but hated for its heat. It came from over the depression, came over the sandbar and down along the creek bed to destroy even the imaginary coolness of the shadows. It lacked even the virtue of strength sufficient to worry the flies.

They could escape the flies by entering the hut, but the interior of the hut wasn’t to be borne longer than a few seconds. Two could have gone down the well and stood on the platform supporting the pump seventy feet underground. There the temperature was about sixty degrees, but the cramped position would be too much and the climb down and up the ladder fastened to the wall of the shaft not lightly to be undertaken by the allegedly weakest of the party, Joan Fowler.