Arthur Upfield - Winds of Evil

“Never had any children, did they?”

“One-a baby boy. It was born in the worst sand-storm I everknoo.”

“Indeed! What happened to it?”

“Died. Might have been just as well-with John Nelson for a father. Aye, a fine, ’andsomebloke was John Nelson. He was dark and soft spoken, and all the gals tore their ’air over him.”

The old man stirred the fire sticks together and in the growing blaze they saw that Harry West had dropped off to sleep beside them.

Grandfer Littlejohn

THE HEAT HAD been excessive all day, but such was the low humidity that none felt ill-effects when along the seaboard 118 degrees in the shade would have provided death with a harvest. And now the crimson sun was throbbing above the western scrub-line, the bluebush plain was painted with purple and blue, and Mrs. Nelson sat in her chair placed at the southern end of her balcony.

In the street below stood the dust-covered mail-car, its driver and passengers being waited on at dinner by Tilly, the beloved of Harry West. Near the car, talking to Constable Lee, stood the Wirragatta book-keeper, and a little farther along the street, on the far side, old Grandfer Littlejohn sat on his empty petrol-case seat outside his son’s house and conversed with a stranger to Carie, the man known there as Joe Fisher.

The sun disappeared and the distantsandhills changed colour from orange to red. Now and then Mrs. Nelson glanced down through the uprights of the balcony rail at the men standing by the mail-car, when she smiled only with her lips. Now and then she looked back to Bony and the town ancient, and then not even her lips smiled. At those times she glanced upward at the colourful sky her eyes narrowed and her beautiful hands trembled.

Presently the mail-car driver appeared, a tall youth dressed in city fashion, smoking a cigarette, wearing a vast cloth cap with the peak drooping over his right ear.

“Going to the ’Ill?” he asked the book-keeper.

“Yes. When, do you think, will we be starting?”

“When I’ve got me mails. I’m going for ’emnow.”

The driver went into his seat stern first, as had become the correct mode. The engine roared and cigarette-smoke mingled with exhaust fumes as the heavy car was turned round and driven to the post office. It was then that Fred Storrie stepped out to the veranda from Mrs. Nelson’s sitting-room.

“James said you wanted me to run up, ma’am,” he drawled.

From his elastic-sided riding-boots Mrs. Nelson’s beady eyes lifted their gaze to note the worn riding-slacks, the large, red, long-fingered hands, the faded khaki shirt, and finally the man’s sun-darkened face and its long black moustache and pale-blue eyes.

“Yes, Fred,” she said crisply. “This morning James told me that yesterday a man and his wife camped at Catfish Hole. Do you know anything about them?”

“Not much. The woman slipped into the tent when I went there this morning. I don’t know the man. Said they had come up from Menindee. He’s a prospector.”

As Fred Storrie did not know these people, Mrs. Nelson was sure she herself had never seen them.

“Well, did you tell the man it is not a good place to camp at?”

“I did. I told them what had happened to Mabel near by, and the man laughed. Said he was afraid of no one.”

Mrs. Nelson remained still. Her passivity was one of the several remarkable things about her.

“What’s his name? Did you find that out?”

“Yes. His name’s Bennet. He’s thick-set, muscular, about forty-five. Tough-looking customer.”

The mail-car drew up again before the hotel, and the driver shouted:

“Come on, now! All aboard!”

Long accustomed as they were to watching the mail-cars depart, Mrs. Nelson and Fred Storrie broke off their conversation to watch this one away. All was bustle down below them. The book-keeper and several others climbed into the car whilst the knot of bystanders and James called farewells. The usual mob of children ran about it. Constable Lee took no notice of them. They no more feared him than they feared old Littlejohn. The driver derisively tooted the horn, and then the car slid away, with a boy standing on the running-board to go as far as the Common fence and open the gate. And so on to Nogga Creek and Broken Hill.

“That book-keeper didn’t last long at Wirragatta,” stated Mrs. Nelson with sharp disapproval. “Couldn’t stand being so far away from the pictures, I suppose.-Now, Fred, about that couple at the Catfish Hole. We can’t be sure that that fool of a Simone arrested the right man, and we don’t want another murder. To allow that couple to camp at Catfish Hole is flying in the face of Providence. They are on your place and you must move them first thing in the morning.”

“I can’t shift ’em, ma’am, if they don’t want to go,” asserted Storrie.

“You can’t shift ’em!” echoed Mrs. Nelson. “Fiddlesticks! Haven’t I been generous to your Mabel and you? Haven’t I pensioned old Mrs. Marsh?” The claws began to be shown. “I’m not a benevolent society, Fred. I have lost a lot of money over these murders, what with Sergeant Simone coming here and upsetting Lee and keeping my bar shut at nights. I am not going to sit quiet here and have more people murdered, do you hear? You can’t shift ’em! Say you want the water. Say you’ve got sheep watering at Catfish Hole! Sayanything, but move them on first thing in the morning.”

“They won’t go, and I can’t shift ’em,” Storrie persisted. “I told the man that Catfish Hole wasn’t healthy. He said the climate suited him. I then told him he was on my land, and he asked if Catfish Hole was inside the freehold of the selection. When I said it wasn’t he flashed a piece of paper at me-a miner’s right. He says he intends pegging a claim to include the sand-bar at the bottom end of the water, ’coshe reckons it’ll wash gold. He says Iain’tgonna shift him; the police can’t shift him; and with that miner’s right me and you can’t shift him, either.”

Standing there leaning against the veranda rail, Fred Storrie looked down into the beady eyes of the leader of Carie.

“Gold!” she snorted.“Gold, my grandmother!”

“Might be gold there, all the same,” Storrie dared to argue. “My father once found colour two miles up Nogga Creek.”

Mrs. Nelson permitted her gaze to wander over the plain from which the sunset colours were being drained away.

“I tell you, Fred, I don’t like it,” she said. “If the man is murdered, I won’t support the woman, or do anything for either of them, but that Simone will come again and I’ll have another period of bad trade. It’s not good enough. Still, if that man holds a miner’s right and hepegs a claim, no one can move them by law. I’ll have to concoct some plan. I must think it over. Go down to the bar for a drink, and then stroll up along the street and tell that half-caste talking to that old dotard of a Littlejohn that I’d like him to come up.”

Storrie nodded, evidently pleased that the interview was over, and departed with silent, cat-like tread. Mrs. Nelson turned to face squarely to the south, then to observe the colour-shot dust raised by the mail-car, still floating above the track all the way to the emerald tree-line that was Nogga Creek. The hot colours were now fading from the sky across the blue-orange dome, beneath which hung ghostly white streamers of cloud mist. Tight-lipped, the old woman regarded this ominous sign.

Down in the street, Bony was comfortably seated beside Grandfer Littlejohn, who had been listening with the interest of the confirmed gossip to the details of Harry West’s banishment to a fence.

“Old Dogger Smith and young Harry will enjoytheirselves,” he said, his voice cracked and never for long remaining at the same key. “It’ll do that young rip a lot of good having to workproperly, and Dogger will see to that. Timesain’t what theyuster be, when men could ride ’orseswithout being threatened with being charged with riding to the public danger. Still, he had no business to ride Black Diamond, night or day.”