Arthur Upfield - Death of a Lake

Barby plunged an old cooking apron into a water-bucket, and with this about his head and shoulders he took the bucket to refill. There were no birds attempting to drink the water in the trough; there wasn’t a bird on the wing. The water in the trough was hot.

While filling his bucket from the tank, Barby heard the crows in the tree from which one had fallen dead, and threw an old jam tin among the branches. Several crows flew from the close-set foliage, loudly complaining, and before they had proceeded a dozen yards from the shelter they turned and almost fell back into it.

“Hot water on tap,” Barby said on his return to the hut shade. “See them crows? They’ll put on a turn soon, believe you me.”

Bony alone appeared interested.

Barby set down the bucket and the galah fell into the hole made for it before water could be poured into the hole. The cats didn’t move, and he poured water on them. They refrained from licking the water from their fur. One of the dogs looked as though about to die, and he procured a pair of hair clippers and proceeded to shear it, for something to do.

“Hell of a long time since she was as hot as this,” Lester said.“Must be over 120 degrees in this shade, anyhow. The old manusta tell of a heat-wave they had when he run the pub. It was so hot all you had to do to light a match was to hold it in the sun for a sec.”

Carney extracted a waxvesta from a box and tossed it from the shadow. He lay watching it for some time before saving:

“Not as hot as your old man’s pub, Bob. I say, George, what about taking a run to the homestead in theute? Something to do to pass the time.”

“Too hot to shift theute,” Barby objected. “Besides, we’d go less than a mile when her petrol would be all gas and she’d stop dead. I’m staying right here. Look! Your match is burnt.”

“You’d be right… about the petrol turning to gas,” Carney agreed. “That’s it! That’s why no one has come from the River. Car’s stuck up on the track somewhere. Hell, they’ll be hot if they are.”

He tossed another match to fall on theshadeless ground and waited for it to ignite. A second crow fell from the tree, but he didn’t remove his gaze from the match.

Something to do was becoming a powerful need, even for Bony. Merely to sit and wait was, psychologically, to add another ten degrees to the temperature. He draped his shirt over his head and shoulders and went for a bucket of water. That was something to do and he felt better even though the short journey back with the filled bucket made him feel slightly giddy.

The gentle wind direct from an imagined furnace continued. It softly rustled the leaves of the cabbage tree. It sent the sap from all the tree branches down the trunks to the roots, and branches weakened by termites or dry rot began to crash to the ground. Bony saw one branch fall, and heard others fall from distant trees along the creek. To Carney he said:

“Supposing that Martyr’s utility held him up and he was unable to reach Sandy Well, what would have happened at the River homestead?”

“Well, the Boss would have tried to raise the out-station last night at seven as usual,” Carney replied, having waited for the sun to fire his second match. “Not being able to raise anyone he might get the cook at Sandy Well to have a go. Then he’d decide that the telephone at the out-station must be out of order, and he’d know Martyr had a spare one and would ring through sometime. This morning when the Boss rang through at half-past seven, and got nothing, he’d reckon the line was down between here and Sandy Well.”

“And knowing nothing about the fire, and there being nothing important to discuss, the Boss would patiently wait?”

“Yair. Wait on the cool homestead veranda, while one of his daughters supplied him with iced gin slings.”

“Has thecook, or anyone at Sandy Well, a motor vehicle?”

“No. If Martyrdon’t contact him by this evening, the Boss might get one of the riders at the Well to follow the line out from here. And if no one turns up here by nine tonight, I reckon something serious has happened to Martyr.”

“I am beginning to think that,” admitted Bony. He glanced atMacLennon, who was lying on his back and hadn’t spoken for more than an hour. The girl was sitting against the hut wall, her eyes closed, a spray of gum leaves serving her as a fly-whisk. Barby spoke:

“What we all want this warm day is a good feed of trebly-hot curry. I’mgoin ’ to make one that’ll turn your eyes back to front.”

Lester voted the curried tinned meat ‘a corker’. Barby certainly put everything he had into it, but no persuasion would induceMacLennon to get up and eat.

“Let the hunk starve,” advised Joan, and when Lester was about to jibe, Barby restrained him.

Bony saw the white cockatoo drop dead from a near box tree, and he anticipated that, despiteBarby’s attention, the pet galah would not live the day through. The hot wind died away, but its departure gave no relief. What did bring relief, although of short duration, was the shouted declaration byMacLennon that he was ‘going home’.

“To hell with the lot of you,” he told them when on his feet. “I’m going home now.”

“Oh well, have a nice time,” drawled Carney.

The big man strode into the sunlight, and Bony called after him that he had forgotten his hat. MacLennon mightn’t have heard, for he walked on, his over-long hair matted with sweat and dust.

“Come back for your hat, Mac,” shouted Barby, but the big man did not turn, did not halt, and they watched him pass over the sandbar and knew he intended following the flats.

“Ruddy idiot,” snorted Barby, and poured water over his cats.

Bony drenched a shirt with water and draped it about his head. He picked upMacLennon’s hat and took down a water-bag from a wire hook.

“Let the fool go if he likes, Bony,” Joan urged.

“Yair,” supported Lester. “He won’t go far. Thirst’ll hunt him back here.”

“It will be something to do,” Bony told them, and set off afterMacLennon.

The sunlight burned his arms and ‘bounced’ off the red earth to hurt his eyes, but these discomforts were little to what he met when he passed over the sandbar to the depression.

The rank water in the Channel, its banks, the man-made traps and the wreckage of wire netting were a horrible picture which Bony tried to shun. Beyond the Channel, MacLennon was walking direct over the depression towards the distant out-station, and the mirage heightened his massive figure, making him a giant wading into the ocean.

Bony shouted but the man took no need. To run after him, even to hasten, would be to fall victim to the power from which he hoped to saveMacLennon. As bad as the burning heat was the fierce light, which had no colour and contained an element of density, itself threatening to impede movement. His eyes shrank inward to the shade of the garment protecting his head, and for long moments he was compelled to keep the lids tightly lowered.

He did not seeMacLennon struck by the sun, did not see him till about to pass him, and thenMacLennon was groping on his hands and knees, and was blind and babbling.

“Get up and come back with me,” commanded Bony.

MacLennondid not hear. He was following a small circle, and Bony was horribly reminded of the drowning rabbits. When Bony poured water from the bag upon the back of his head, neck and shoulders, he betrayed no reaction, and continued his unintelligible babbling.

Bony slapped a naked shoulder and shouted in an effort to make the man stand. Beyond this, common sense halted effort, for physical exertion beyond the minimum would bring collapse. He did think his urging was successful whenMacLennon abruptly stood. He made five long strides, bringing the knees high and keeping his arms flung wide as though in balance. Then he crashed, falling on his face and lying still.