Arthur Upfield - Sands of Windee

Mr Bumpus’s main bar was a spacious room, which was not too large in thefar-gone prosperous days, but now always seemed uncomfortably big. Within, Father Ryan found four men playing two-up-everyone knew the police were not in town-and Mrs Thomas seated on a barrel at the farther end of the bar drinking from a glass mug reputed to hold an imperial pint. Mr Bumpus was drawing drinks for the two-up players, and the entrance of the little priest made him pause in the act of pumping beer, and the gamblers freeze into statues of almost ludicrous guilt.

On the round, cherubic face of the priest was no evidence of the perturbation of his mind. Having caught the men red-handed, he seized the slight additional power the situation afforded him. Softly he said:

“Ah! Two-up! An illegal game. Played on public premises, too. Your premises, Bumpus! Very serious. Bumpus, call your wife!”

“Tell her she’s wanted by the Church,” put in Mrs Thomas.

“Wotd’you want her for?”

“Call your wife, Bumpus!”

“The Church demands your wife, Bumpus. Render unto me beer and plenty of it, and unto the Church your wife,” Mrs Thomas said very loudly, but distinctly.

One of the gamblers, raw-boned, unshaved, one who appeared in visage and dress as if he had stepped off the deck of a pirate ship in the “Jolly Roger” days, sauntered along to the woman, whom he addressed in a slow, drawling voice and regarded with a facial expression so truly terrific that even Mrs Thomas was awed.

“Yousain’tmeanin’ no offence to Father Ryan, areyous, mum?”

Mrs Thomas, fortunately, held her peace.

“I’m kinder gladuv that,” proclaimed the man, known to every policeman in West New South Wales as “Stormbird”. The fingers of one huge sun-blackened hand fondled his throat significantly, and dimly Mrs Thomas realized that chivalrous regard for her sex was a weakness unknown to Stormbird. Before Father Ryan could intervene, Mrs Bumpus entered the bar.

“Good evening, everybody!” she exclaimed with a giggle. “Hallo, Father Ryan; good evening!”

“Good evening!” replied the little priest, smiling broadly. “I asked for you because I want you to take charge of the bar while Bumpus drives these four boys and me out to Windee in his car. See that you have enough petrol, Bumpus, before we start.”

“Wot’sthe stunt, Pardray?” demanded Bumpus.

“Just a little commission for you, Bumpus. Hurry up! Now, you boys, onedrink apiece before we start. There is work and plenty of it waiting us at Windee.”

“Tell us theidee, Father,” the Stormbird pleaded, obviously careful of his speech.

Father Ryan paid Mrs Bumpus and lighted a cigar of the kind which her husband always boasted was the best Havana procurable.

“I understand the back of Windee is afire. I’m after thinking every man of us will be needed. I intend going along to do what I can, and I know quite well that you all would consider yourselves insulted if I went without you when men are wanted.”

“My…! Yes, Pardray, uv course,” drawled the Stormbird.“Uvcourse!”

“Naterally,” interjected a second man.

“Don’t you men be such fools as to go away from here this time ofnight! Have a drink on me!” shrilled Mrs Thomas, slipping off her barrel and coming towards the group via the bar counter, needed as a stay. She brought up against the Stormbird, who, stooping, leered down on her.

“Yousain’tmeanin’ no offence, areyous?” he asked softly.

Mrs Thomas sat on the floor and began to weep.

From out of the evening twilight beyond the door Mr Bumpus’s motor-hootertold them he was waiting.

Man and Dog

PICTURE A CIRCLE one mile in diameter, as dry as the Sahara, as bare of bush and tree as that great region, and the loose ankle-deep dust covering it finer than any on the Sahara, almost as fine as flour. In the centre of the circle a great earth tank, windmill, and watering troughs, and near it a ramshackle structure by courtesy called a hut. Across the circular desert a fence cutting it exactly in halves. On one side of the fence a slow-moving, milling mass of sheep from which the red dust floats upward in a long slant to the south, with a horseman on the outer edge of the mass moving slowly in a larger arc, to and fro, keeping the mass in one place hard against the fence. On the other side of the fence a similar mass of sheep, moving, ever moving, as a dull white circular disk, and-on that side farthest from the fence, and therefore farthest from the horseman-a single slow-trotting dog.

In this manner Ned Swallow and his Kelpie bitch held some six thousand sheep until help should arrive.

Beyond the hut, towards the hills, four saddle-hacks raced about the fenced horse-paddock measuring precisely one square mile in area. It was noted by the solitary man that horses always galloped so when rain was approaching, but when the sun went down this evening their liveliness was not caused by the approach of rain, but by the huge menacing cloud rising from earth to sky-vault in the north. Even the horse ridden by Ned Swallow telegraphed nervousness to his rider.

In the north-east sky hung a great mass of clouds, blue-black underneath, its west and southern edges wonderfully deep and brilliantly lit in tones ranging from white, through gold, to purple by the sun already sunk before the mulga-line horizon. The mass was passing slowly eastward. From it lightning flickered and thunder grumbled, and here and there from its black base hung diaphanous veils of falling spray, hanging but a short distance from the main cloud body, as though the spray was turned into gas or steam when it met the heated air nearer the earth. From this cloud, forty minutes before, had fallen the demon, fire.

Here and there over the remainder of the sky space sailed the iceberg clouds as seen earlier in the day by Bony, so mighty in aspect that it seemed wonderful they did not crash on the world from their very weight.

The galahs were retreating from Carr’s Tank to their roosting-places among the eastern hills. The last battalion left in the magic light that in a few minutes would be gone. Above, so high that the sunlight still held it, flew a giant eagle, no larger, as seen from the ground, than a gnat. From all sides the kangaroos came hopping in to drink, unhurried, as yet unfearful of the smoke-cloud to the north. And from the north the wind blew gently, very softly, but steadily.

Now the light on the plain died down. The edge of the scrub appeared to rush away from the man and vanish in the gathering darkness. Up from the now invisible plain eastward rose the range of hills, to remain visible for yet a little longer-hills that seemed to rest on a carpet of dark grey velvet. Constantly Swallow’s eyes searched the hills generally, and one thrustingspur in particular, for round the spur lay the track from Windee. At the last second, just before the shadows of the plain swept upward to envelop the hills, the watching man saw a rapidly lengthening ribbon of dust rise from the top to half-way down the spur, and then, cut out, become lost in the rushing shadows. Relief was coming.

The task set Ned Swallow and his dog by the Fire Demon was not a light one. One flock of sheep he could have managed to work into the mile-square horse-paddock with the help of his dog. But his dog was urgently required to keep in one place the second flock of sheep in the other paddock. To have attempted to box the two flocks, to have endeavoured to put the dog’s flock through the gate beside the dam to mix with the one he held, meant that they would lose either one or the other. One of the flocks, knowing of the attempt to hold them, would have broken away for the scrub and the miles of grass which lay in the present path of the fire. And, once there, the fire would sweep on them, chase them to the south boundary fence of the paddock, and there devour them at its will.