The Complete Stories of Alan Marshall

by Alan Marshall

  Tim saw her many times over the next few months. He got to know her well. She had a deep curiosity. She often studied him from the shelter of some rock on the mountain side before slipping quietly away. He had seen other dogs, too, mongrels with her blood in them. But he was not involved with them. He had set out to destroy one animal—the dingo bitch. She was famous, so was he.

  He studied her for months. He knew she always came in fairly fast. She trotted along a track, her head low, her tongue dripping. She never paused but kept up her tireless trot for miles. She always went out by a different track. When making back to the higher country she went slowly, pausing to roll on the grass or sniff at a tree-trunk she knew would attract other dingoes. She had killed and her hunger was satisfied.

  When coming in on wild moonlight nights, she sometimes stopped and raised her head and her throat would vibrate in a quavering howl, a sound that always gave Tim a disturbing feeling of fear. His reaction to the howl of a dingo had never been removed by familiarity with the sound. The uncomforted voice of the bitch drew him into an experience of utter loneliness. It was the cry of a living thing in isolation and it united his yearnings with her own.

  He discovered an old sheep track coming down from the craggy top of the range where it ended on a treeless flat. Here sheep were often grazing. He set two traps on this track. He set them with skill and left them. Some day she would use that track. Months of rain and sun would remove all evidence of their existence. They would wait.

  He sought the sheep tracks she had used recently. On one that followed the crest of a spur he found her tracks, clear and distinct, unweathered by rain and wind. She always trotted along ridges rather than through valleys. She liked open country for travel and avoided those tracks that demanded she cross a creek. She was always reluctant to leave a cattle or sheep pad on which she found herself. She followed them for miles lifting her front legs high in a style that had been cultivated on the tussocky uplands above the tree-line. On this track Tim set his traps in the form of a letter ‘H’. He selected a spot where the track was flanked by bleached tussocks that formed a dense cover she would naturally avoid.

  The dog-traps Tim was carrying were like oversized rabbit-traps, each with two springs. The teeth of the wide jaws did not meet. This prevented the dog’s leg from being severed instead of held.

  Tim wore old gloves which were caked with the dried blood of a brumby. He spread a bag on the track, placed a trap beside it, then cut an outline round the trap with an old shear blade, pushing the blade deep into the soil. He removed the outlined sod by prising it free with the blade until it could be lifted intact and placed carefully on the bag. He placed the topsoil on one corner, the bottom soil on another so that he could return them to their original position in the set. The set trap fitted exactly into the excavation.

  He enjoyed doing this. All his past experiences were directing him and they grew in value as he pondered on his skill and knowledge. He suddenly felt linked with all men who knew their craft and worked well, a great army of men with whom he walked shoulder to shoulder.

  He never touched the soil. He transferred each root-bound lump with the blade. Beneath the raised plate he thrust dry grass, pushing it carefully into position to prevent soil collecting there. He did not place paper above the plate as in rabbit trapping. It would be likely to rustle when a dog stepped close to it.

  He buried the chains attached to the traps with the same care. At the end of each chain a strand of wire increased its length and ended by being fastened to a ‘drag’, a log of wood Tim had selected because of its shape. They were not too heavy and would enable the dingo to drag them some distance without subjecting her leg to a strain that would severe it.

  When the traps and chains were covered he carried the bag on which surplus soil was lying and shook it some distance away. He then used the bag to ‘blow’ the set. He waved the bag above the set blowing away loose crumbs of earth. Using the shear blade he scattered dry leaves and broken cow manure above the area on which he had been working until all evidence of his work had vanished.

  He stood up and looked down at his work with satisfaction. The longer the traps stayed in the ground the better his chance of catching her.

  He passed near the set two days later but it hadn’t been disturbed, then on the fourth day after a gusty night of wind he reined his horse beside the track and looked down on the scarified earth over which he had worked so carefully. Two of the traps had been sprung. Dirt and stones had been scratched over them in what seemed to be a gesture of contempt. She had come trotting down the track, following it with her head down. She had continued between the arms of the ‘H’ then stopped dead at the bar. Here she had stood a moment deadly still—the last four pawmarks were deeply indented—sniffing at the polluted air. She had then backed carefully out, stepping into the tracks she had already made, until she was free of the enclosure. It was here she had turned and ripped up the stones and earth in an attempt to render the hidden steel harmless. Tim sat on his horse and looked at her answer. There was a faint smile on his face.

  In the months that followed he tried every trick he knew. Wearing gloves stained with blood he had dropped poisonous crystals into slashes made in the flanks of freshly-killed brumbies. He had shot only thin horses. He believed a dingo, knowing it had swallowed poison, could throw up the flesh of a fat horse. She had eaten round the slashes. He tried poisoning the carcasses of sheep she had slain. She ignored them.

  But still she killed, leaving a trail of dead animals on the Swampy Plain, out by Bogong, on the slopes of the Blue Cow. She was killing with more than usual ferocity as if danger had made her desperate.

  He dragged putrid legs of sheep by a rope tied to his saddle, leading her for miles to baits of fresh liver with deadly mouths slashed into them. She often followed these trails, scratching dirt over each bait as she reached it. On one occasion she had carried two of the baits and dropped them on top of a third that lay on an open pad beneath the sun. Beside this pile of poisoned meat she had left her dung.

  A further symbol of her contempt? Tim kicked it to one side and smiled. She had no mind for such gestures. It was the heavy odour of putrid flesh that inspired her to leave the smell of her presence for the benefit of other dogs.

  On a small flat open to the sky Tim found a pool of clear water. The banks were undermined, and matted dry grass clung to these banks and hung over the water immersing their pale, brittle stems beneath the surface. On one side there was a gap in the encircling grass and here on a tiny beach of grey mud she had left the imprint of her battered paws.

  Tim studied them, then looked around him. The flat was treeless except for a bushy snow gum growing some twenty yards away. He knew that after a dingo drank she would trot to the nearest tree where she would stand or lie down for a while in the shade. There were no tracks to the tree—the grass was too thick—but there was an impress on the grass beneath it that suggested she had lain there.

  He set four traps around the tree. When he had finished, the grass, the earth, the littered bark were as if no hand had touched them. He was pleased and stood for a moment anticipating victory.

  Two days later he stood there again. She had sprung the traps with scratched dirt. She had drunk at the spring, trotted to the tree and stood there a moment with senses alert while her sensitive nose detected the evidence of his work. Then the fear and the destruction of what she feared. Tim understood her. He loaded the traps on to his horse and rode away and there was no anger nor resentment in him.

  He followed her with the rifle and fired at her from distances that demanded keener eyes than he possessed to hit her. He watched the spurt of dust rise near her feet then trailed her until her tracks petered out among rocks that littered the uplands.

  She became increasingly wary of him—she feared guns and rifles—and he began finding it difficult to get within sight of her. He moved from hut to hut on the high country, following reports of her killing, and camping for week
s in some remote shelter built by cattlemen and only visited for a week or two each year.

  He wintered at the Geehi Hut on the track to Khancoban. He packed in his stores and was never short of tucker. He was used to solitude. When Spring came to the mountains he followed the retreating snow to the top. For a week he searched for her tracks then found them criss-crossing the pitted earth behind a flock of climbing sheep. She had killed one of the stragglers.

  There were moments when he felt she was indestructible, that all his skill was useless against her instinct to survive. He sometimes felt there wasn’t a trail from the top in which he hadn’t buried his traps; no clearing he hadn’t baited.

  He had made it a habit to make a regular visit to the old trail in which he had set his traps when first he came to the mountains. Almost a year had passed since he had hidden them beneath the track she once had made. Snow had covered them since then; bleak winds had flattened the soil above them, sun and rain and frost had removed all trace of man and the track wound upwards in an unbroken line that smelt of wild grass and the presence of Spring.

  His mare knew the way. She moved at a brisk walk through the tussocks while he sat relaxed in the saddle, the reins dropping from her neck. He had no feeling of anticipation. This visit had become a habit.

  When he first saw her crouched upon the track, draggled, panting, surrounded by the torn earth of her struggling, he experienced a leap of excitement that was almost a pain, so intense it was. The air had no motion and he sat in a still silence savouring his triumph. He could hear distance shouts of acclaim from beyond the accusing mountains, cheering . . .

  The moment passed and his shoulders sagged to the burden of the accusation. He alighted from the mare and walked to her. Two traps held her helpless, their naked jaws clamped on a front and hind leg. They had lain in darkness beneath the track for more than a year and the smell of the earth had become their smell. The chains were taut from the drags which had prevented her from struggling into the concealing grass.

  As he approached she wriggled backwards taking up what slack was available to her, then she faced him, crouching low, her muzzle resting on the earth, her fangs bared in a soundless snarl.

  They confronted each other, the old man and the greying dingo, both killers who had reached a final reckoning. And Tim knew it in a clouded way. Hundreds of slain dingoes marked the trail of his lonely passage. Her pathway was a line of torn sheep lying motionless across the mountain uplands where she was born. He was surprised that she didn’t reveal in her appearance the murderer of her reputation. Sheepmen saw her as inspired by an evil joy in slaughter. The mind that directed her was to them the cold and calculating instrument of a criminal. Now Tim saw her as a lonely old dingo scarred by pellets of shot, by traps and the teeth of hunters’ dogs. He was a bit like that himself, he thought, but his scars didn’t show. They lay beneath the confident smile, the pride in killing; hers denied him his pride.

  ‘I’ll bring you back her hide,’ he had told them.

  But when I kill her, he reflected, I kill myself. I’ll go back to being an old-age pensioner. No more slaps on the back, shouting in pubs. No more invitations to stay at the homesteads of wealthy graziers. I’ll return to my hut and die in my hut and that will be the end of it all.

  He stood watching her, torn by indecision. He wanted to go on living with himself, he wanted to be able to walk with his head up, with dignity. When he did act it was with sudden desperation. Reason had bowed its head.

  He seized a heavy stick and advanced upon her, his face twisted with an anguish his powerful arms denied. She waited for him, shrinking closer to the earth, her glaring eyes desperate. The snarl she had held in silence now found voice in a vibrating growl of defiance and she sprang as he raised the stick aloft. She took up the slack of both chains in her spring and the blow he brought to the side of her head jerked her sideways as the tightened chains arrested her leap. She fell on her side to the ground, her head thrown back, her four legs taut and quivering.

  He hit her again, not with frenzy but with a kind of despair, then turned and walked back to his mare. He suddenly felt old and tired and he walked stiffly. With his head resting against the saddle he drew deep breaths of replenishment until the cold sense of betrayal passed and he could stand erect.

  He walked back to her body lying prone on the ground and released her paws from the grip of the traps. He dragged her to one side, her head bouncing loosely over the stones. Her worn teeth were bared in one last horrible grimace from which Tim turned his eyes.

  He’d made up his mind. He buried her there beneath the tussocky grass and he did it with the same care he used in setting a trap. When he straightened up, the grass was waving in the mountain wind above her grave and the sheep track was the same as it was before he’d strewn it with death. Cloud shadows rippled up the mountain side like the quick and silent passing of her feet, and an eagle soared down the wind.

  It was a good place to rest.

  Mrs Hookey’s Dick

  He had been crying. ‘Mum’s dying,’ he said.

  I felt stricken. ‘What a bastard!’

  ‘Yes, it is a bastard,’ said Dick.

  I knew his mother well. She was always confronting tragedy. She was a short swarthy woman with strands of untidy hair projecting from behind her ears. She had a deep masculine voice that rose to a falsetto when she was abusing anyone. Her abuse was always directed at those who criticised Dick.

  ‘My Dick had nothing to do with it,’ she would shout across the fence at one of his detractors. ‘Don’t you come blaming him.’

  Dick was a tall gangling youth with loose legs that never quite straightened to a stride. He had a thin narrow face with a prominent nose and a loose underlip but his eyes had always been gleaming of plans of adventure when I was his schoolmate.

  He was devoted to his mother and often brought her small gifts—china ornaments depicting girls with lace petticoats and floral frocks carrying baskets of flowers, a woman with a dove nestling against her cheek, ornaments that suggested a springtime world known only to Mrs Hookey in her dreams. She arranged them in a line along her kitchen mantelpiece where the drape protected them from the rising steam of saucepans.

  Each week he brought her a bag of over-ripe bananas.

  ‘She likes them half-rotten,’ he explained to me; then to counter any criticism of her taste he added, ‘And so do I.’

  And now she was dying. She was familiar with death in all its violent forms; not her own but Dick’s death which she was always anticipating.

  I think it began when Dick was kicked on the balls by a horse and lost one. This was the first death Mrs Hookey suffered, the death of her grandchildren.

  I don’t think Dick worried much about his loss ‘though I’ll admit it’s a bit of a bastard,’ he told me once.

  ‘Yes, it’s a bastard all right,’ I agreed.

  He then added in explanation of his mother’s concern, ‘Mum thought more of my balls than any other part of me. It hit her hard.’

  ‘It must have been a bastard for her,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, it certainly hit her hard,’ he said.

  I was returning on a holiday to the country town where I had been born and I pulled up in front of his gate to have a yarn with him. He lived in a gable-end house with a small verandah sheltering the front door. From the verandah to the front fence was only a couple of yards but Dick had always referred to this narrow plot of land as ‘the garden’. Some struggling geraniums grew along the verandah’s edge but these had been crushed by his dog which had circled in them to make a nest when the day was hot.

  Dick had been standing on the verandah when I pulled up. He came over to the fence and told me about his mother and I suddenly imagined her lying on her bed staring at the ceiling.

  ‘What happened to her?’ I asked.

  ‘She was standing in front of the stove frying me some bacon and eggs and she suddenly put her hand to her shoulder then she went down. God! I co
uldn’t believe it. She’s never had anything wrong with her. She was lying there and her face was all twisted. You could see she was in pain. I had to do something. But what the hell can you do. I got down and held her head but she just looked at me. She was crook all right. I then dashed next door and got Mrs Stevens. She’s a cranky old bitch but she did a good job with Mum. She helped me carry her into the bedroom then I got the doctor and I thought he’d never get here. He didn’t do much. He’s been every day since but he reckons she’s had it. She won’t last long. Do you know Aunt Nell? She’s Mum’s sister. She’s with her now. It’s a bastard. I never thought this’d happen to me.’

  ‘What did the doctor say was wrong with her?’

  ‘Her heart, he reckoned.’

  Dick came through the gate and stood with his back to the car staring gloomily at the house. ‘You’ve just got to wait.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I reached into the car to get a packet of cigarettes and he noticed my camera lying on the seat. It was a cheap, old-fashioned bellows model but to Dick it suggested glossy portraits of the kind you see in photographers’ windows.

  ‘Hey! Do you take photos?’ He had shed his grief for the moment, responding to some idea that had taken its place.

  I explained that I had brought the camera with me to take some snaps of the places where we had played as kids. ‘Like that old well where we thought a witch lived, and I want to get a photo of old Tom’s shed, the one in which he kept the apples.’

  Dick wasn’t listening. ‘Now look! Mum’s never had her photo took. We’ve got bugger-all to remember her by. I want to have a photo of me with my arm around her. You could take it over the end of the bed. She can’t sit up but we’ll prop her up somehow.’