Arthur Upfield - Winds of Evil

“ ’Coursethere is,” agreed the old man readily. “You don’t ’ear no thunder, but the electricity’s in the air all right. You get a cat a day like this and rub ’erfur and see the sparks fly! I know a bloke wot gets a terrible ’eadachewhen she blows, so’s he’s got to lie down. Where you headed for today?”

“This side of Carie, I think,” Fisher replied.“On Nogga Creek. There is water in Catfish Hole, isn’t there?”

They were by this time seated on their swags in what shelter the bluebush provided. At the mention of Nogga Creek and Catfish Hole the old man froze, and he leant nearer his chance companion to stare with a fixity which defied the dust.

“Ya-as, there’s water in Catfish Hole, I’m told,” he said, much more slowly.“You a stranger in these ’ere parts?”

“I have not been this way before,” Fisher admitted.

“Ho! But you’ve heard what’s been going on around Carie?”

The old man’s billy coming to the boil, he flung into the water half a handful of tea, removed the utensil and waited for Fisher’s answer.

“Er-no.”

“You haven’t, eh? Well, I’ll tell you. What’s been going on around Carie is what wouldn’t let me camp at Catfish Hole for all the tea in China.”

“The car driver said the same thing. What is the matter with the place?”

“Murders-two of ’emto date, that what’s the matter. Me, I’m George Smith, and I wouldn’t camp there for ten million quid. You take my advice and don’tyou camp there tonight-or ever until the Strangler is caught.”

“The Strangler?”

“That’s what theycalls ’im. The year afore last, at this time, he done in a half-caste girl where Thunder and Nogga cricks become Wirragatta River. And then last March he strangled a young feller named Marsh just this side of the township. He’s due now to strangle someone else, and itain’tgonna be me. Don’t you let it beyou. ”

“What does he do it for?”

“Hedon’t do it fornothink bar the pleasure he gets outer corpsing people. That’s thewust of it. Thereain’tno proper reason. ’Course the police can’t donothink. They can ’oundus about, mate, but theyain’t no good atcatchin ’ murderers. Then this strangler, he does his killing at the end of a day like this and when it’s certain sure it’ll blow like hell again the next dayso’s his tracks will be wiped out.”

“Where, then, did you camp last night?” Fisher asked.

“Me! I camped in the Carie lock-up. They wouldn’t let me camp in the stables behind the pub, so Iarst the constable to let me camp in the jail. That’s about the safest place I know.”

Fisher added tea to the water boiling in his billy. To the old man he appeared to be unreasonably calm.

“I’m telling you not to camp at Catfish Hole, oranywheres outside Carie.”

“Ah, yes! Thank you for the warning. I will certainly remember it. It all sounds a little unhealthy.”

“Unhealthy! Too right it’s unhealthy. Itain’t healthy to be strangled, is it?”

Although the subject was of absorbing interest to the old man, it was not unduly protracted. It was difficult, for one thing, to talk when sand-laden air and flies competed in entry to one’s mouth. The two men parted after the most casual of nods and immediately each was swallowed by the sweeping sand waves.

Joe Fisher was of medium height, slight of frame and yet strong, steady on his feet despite the buffeting of the wind. Like a man long used to the track he carried his swag of blankets and spare clothing within a sheet of stout unbleached calico. The small canvas water-bag gripped by his right hand was stained red by the oozing moisture, and, as the billy was strapped to the swag, his left hand was free to battle constantly with the flies. His face and bare arms were caked by the sand grains. His face and hair below the rim of the old felt hat were dyed a light red. Only the blue of his eyes defied the red fog.

There was a hint of grim tenacity in the dim picture of the shadowy man’s determined tramp northward in such bad weather. He could have found shelter, but no comfort, in the lee of the fence, but methodically and at even pace he passed along the track which now did not reveal wheel-tracks; not even those of the car he had recently met.

At last the sun was no longer to be seen in the troughs of the sand waves, for it was too westerly. The wind was losing its strength a fraction, but the sand dust remained as dense. Knowledge of his own part of the country suggested that at sundown the wind wouldeither veer to the south and blow cool and cleanly on the morrow, or lull during the night and at sunrise begin again to blow stronger yet.

Time passed and still he continued the steady tramping to the north, above him the lowering red blanket of sand particles, about him the red-brown fog which now and then was tenuous, and sometimes seemingly solid. Then presently the box-trees bordering Thunder Creek came marching to meet him from out the murk, holding invitation to the traveller with their gnarled and twisted branches.

On gaining their comparative shelter, Fisher found the wind to be much less forceful, butmore angry in its song of power. Over the plain it had softly whined; here it bellowed and roared. With quickened pace he crossed the flat, shallow and dry bed of the creek to gain its far bank, when he saw the pine-walled, iron-roofed house standing some two hundred yards back and east of the track. Here the air was clearer, the wind almost conquered by the trees. They circled beyond the house as though purposely planted to keep at bay the vast stretch of open country across which Fisher had been tramping all day.

Despite his statement that never before had he been this way, the man who called himself Joe Fisher knew that when he crossed Thunder Creek he would see the homestead of Fred Storrie’s Selection. Dimly in the distance he saw the box-trees bordering Nogga Creek. These two creeks came from the east to join in Wirragatta River less than a mile westward of the fence. And half a mile down the river below the junction of the creeks stood the homestead of the great Wirragatta Station.

In the swagman’s tortured blue eyes leapt strange exultation as he strode along the branch track to the selector’s house flanked by windmill and reservoir tanks on one side and bysheepyards on the other.

There was that about the front of the house plainly indicating that the door on this side was never used, and, as any swagman would, Fisher passed round the side of the house to its back door. Just beyond this door was a round iron water-tank before which stood a girl gazing vacantly at the terrible sky while water from the tap filled a bucket.

“Good afternoon!” the swagman said, pitching his voice to master the howl of the wind about the roof.

The meeting produced a remarkable result. The girl cried out, sprang about, and then pressing back against the tank stared with undoubted fear shining from her dark-brown eyes. The water continued to gush into the bucket and began to overflow and run to waste along the short brick drain.

“The tap,” said the swagman, regarding the running water with a slight frown of disapproval.

Without removing her gaze from his face, the girl permitted herself to sink on bending knees until her groping hand found the tap and so shut off the water.

“You seem to be fearful of something,” Fisher said. “I hope you are not afraid of me.”

The friendliness in his eyes and the flash of his well-kept teeth had its effect. The ice of her fear began quickly to melt, and it was with evident relief that she asked him what he wanted.

“If you could spare me a little meat,” he replied. “I am on my way north and I intend to camp beside the waterhole on Nogga Creek. Catfish Hole, isn’t it?”