The first rabbit appeared to their right, running over the sandbar, running fast and direct, never pausing to look for possible enemies, flogged by the craving for water after the hours of terrible heat. The fence stopped it, flung it back, and it crouched obviously not understanding what had barred its progress.
The animal was recognizable only by its colour and shape, all its natural attributes of caution, of swift alertness, of gentle and graceful movement having vanished during the hours of its torture by the sun. It pawed the netting, frantically, standing on its hind legs, and not having the sense to climb the netting like a cat. It tested the wire with its teeth before running along the fence, to reach at last an inward pointing V, and so finding the hole to pass through. It thrust indignant birds aside to lap the water.
Carney touched Bony’s arm and pointed over the depression.
“Fence won’t stand up long after dark,” he worried.
Beyond the birds the kangaroos were gathering. The nearest were squatting, erect, ears attuned to catch the sounds about the trap, nostrils twitching to register suspicious scents. Beyond them others came loping over the dry lake bed, and already the dust rose from their passage.
The birds maintained their uproar, filling the air about the men. Birds were drowned in the Channel. Birds were staggering about on the marge inside the fence, their feathers wet, shrieking anger and defiance, being buffeted by others and by rabbits.
There were now a dozen rabbits drinking. There were a hundred outside. They came like speeding drops of brown water over the dunes, over the flats, never halting, minus caution, motivated only by the urge to drink. They joined those at the fence, trickled through the holes to the water where they parted the birds to drink. The men watched the first waterladen rabbit enter a trap-yard.
An eagle appeared floating through the bird cloud. It tipped a wing and side-slipped to snatch a running rabbit. The rabbit hung by its rump from the iron beak, and they could see its pink mouth widen in a scream when, to stop its struggles, and to clear the lesser birds, the eagle drove its talons into its vitals. Through the birds on the flats, like a ship moving at sea, a dingo loped, betraying exhaustion, its red tongue lolling, its flanks tucked to its backbone. The dog took no notice of the rabbits or they of it. It butted the fence as though it were blind, sat and stared. The lolling tongue was drawn up under the snarling upper lip, and with the resolution of despair the animal drove at the netting, rose on hind legs to paw its way up and over. It plunged into the water and drank as it swam.
“I better fetch the guns,” Barby shouted.
“Bring mine, George!” requested MacLennon. “And that red box of cartridges on top of me swag. We gotta keep them ’roos off, or they’ll flatten the fence.”
Lester went with George, and Bony glanced at the girl sitting with her hands clasped across her drawn-up knees. Her eyes were hooded. The evening light tended to soften her features, to give her hair a more brilliant tint. Carney moved to sit close to her, but she did not speak in answer to what he said, did not permit the intrusion to disturb her evident absorption in the terrible struggle for survival.
Bony went down to the fence where the rabbits were beginning to mass in a wide ribbon. They were pouring through the V points. They were jammed against the wire. They were gnawing at it, and none took notice of Bony’s boots as he edged through them. A V point was choked by a rabbit that had died in the act of passing through, and he cleared the hole. He straightened the netting where the dingo had pawed it, and he witnessed the dog clamber over the opposite fence and lope slowly away.
The dusk was creeping over the depression, but the birds would not leave. They whirled about him like coloured snowflakes, and continued to cover the flats, and when he walked wide of the fence they reminded him of that evening Witlow and he had waded in Lake Otway and the ducks had parted before them and closed in after them.
On coming to the far end of the Channel he paused awhile to marvel at the number of kangaroos and to note that of all the animals they only still retained their normal attributes, and he was wondering if this was due to higher intelligence when his attention was caught by what could be the body of a large fish now beneath the coverlet of massed galahs. Had not the light been tricky, he might not have noticed this hump where one ought not to be.
Recalling Lester’s theory of what had happened to Gillen’s body, he walked on through the birds, who at this moment chose to rise with a roar of wings and screams of defiance and depart for roosts. Even when fifty yards off the hump he could not now see it, but eventually coming to it his curiosity was richly rewarded.
The skeleton was shrouded with tiny weeds which covered the floor of once Lake Otway, the weed now dead and brittle as it lay over the depression ... a perfect camouflage.
He turned and slowly walked back to the Channel. The ’roos crept after him. The rabbits came running between them, running after Bony, passing him, to run onward to the magnet of water. Without trouble, he caught one. It screamed and struggled. He put it down, and it ran on as though it had not been hindered.
Well, there was the unfortunate Gillen, and there were the men and the woman on the distant sandbar who had waited long for Lake Otway to die that they might find his remains. According to Lester, what the others wanted was the locket about the skeleton’s neck, the locket giving the clue to Gillen’s money. But Gillen’s money was under Lester’s bed. And Mrs Fowler was dead under the ruins of the homestead.
Again skirting the Channel, the last of the birds continued their struggle for water. Scores were drowned, others were drowning. The bodies of rabbits floated on the black surface. There were more living rabbits inside the fence than could find space at the water’s edge, and now and then one of the drinkers was bitten and it leaped forward to plunge into the water and swim. They swam like dogs. All headed away from the land as though strongly determined to reach the other side, but in every case when they had proceeded a yard or two they panicked and swam in an ever-narrowing circle until they lowered their heads below the surface as though compelled to suicide.
The traps were deep with animals. At each corner they were standing on hind legs, biting the wire to get out, and, like little chickens who crowd into a corner and smother, so did the rabbits.
The party on the sandbar was breaking up, and Barby came hurrying to Bony, offering a Winchester rifle and a box of cartridges. The excitement in the trapper’s eyes, the tremor in his voice, did not escape Bony or estrange his sympathy, for Barby was like a man who has stumbled on an outcrop of gold-loaded quartz.
“Goin’ to be big, Bony,” he cried. “I never knew it could be like this, did you?”
“No, George not like this,” Bony admitted. “I’ll go back to the tip of the Channel. Be sure to make the others understand where everyone is positioned, for when the moon goes down it will be very dark, and accidents can easily happen.”
“Yair. Right! I’ll tell them. No firing at the fence, or along it, either. Thanks for giving a hand.”
Bony made his way back to the extremity of the Channel ... made his way because he had literally to kick the rabbits from his path. The dusk was eating the salmon-pink dunes and the eagles were compelled at last to seek roosts on the topmost limbs of dead gums ... that is, if they roosted at all, which Bony, like many bushmen, doubted.
He waved his gun and shouted, and the Channel behind him was now itself a living thing. It actually appeared to breathe, to pulsate, to moan and heave. Rabbits brushed against his legs. Rabbits sped over his feet. Rabbits surged over the now invisible ground like ocean waves on shingle.
Although he hated it, he had to do his share of defending the fence. He shot a kangaroo that rose up within two yards of him, and thereafter shot many others, taking small comfort in that the slaughter would provide Barby with hides for his market.
All about the Channel the foxes were gathering and barking as though in sadistic approval of this flameless hell.
Chapter Twenty
IT WAS ALMOST dark before the birds ultimately gave up and retired. The guns barked spasmodically, and the crescent moon gave sufficient illumination to see creeping ’roos when but a few yards from the defenders. Had not thirst subdued caution the defenders might have won the battle: but what is to be done with a kangaroo who, taller than a man and twice his weight, bumps him aside like a woman determined to reach a bargain counter?
Barby came along the fence, chanting a lurid parody to give warning of his approach. Bony struck a match and, before the light expired, the trapper found him and sat with him on the ground.
“Keep ’em off for an hour if we can,” he said. “How you going?”
“So far so good,” replied Bony. “There will be quite a few ’roos around before midnight. Look at this gentleman.”
Bony struck another match and they found themselves confronted by an unusually large animal resting on its short forepaws and staring at them from what appeared to be the base of the small mountain of its hindquarters.
“Caw!” muttered Barby, and fired. “Funny the noise of the guns and yelling and screaming don’t have any effect, ain’t it? Y’know, if I told me relations in England about this they’d call me a bloody liar to me face. Even if I had a camera and flashbulbs they wouldn’t believe the pictures. If only we had a movie camera. The chaps are going to look for Gillen at daybreak.”
“Oh! No skinning, then?”
“Me and the rabbits can go to hell. Even the cook’s goin’ to hunt for Gillen soon’s it’s light.”
“Joan?”
“Yair. Carney was trying to get the others to search by a plan, but it looks like they’ll keep together for fear one finds and the others miss out.”
To all points, far and near, the foxes barked. The moon hung low across the depression, and now and then it was temporarily eclipsed by a moving animal.
“Let them hunt, George. I’ll give a hand with the skinning.”
“Thanks, Bony, old feller. They won’t find him. Gillen’s down on the bottom of the Channel, and by morning there’ll be a ton or two of dead rabbits on top of him. We’ll keep our eyes on ’em, all the same. I’ll make me way back to see to the V holes. Must keep ’em clear. I’ll shout and bawl when we knocks off and lifts the netting to let the mob in for a drink. They’ll be back tomorrow night.”
Barby left, and shortly afterwards a fox came close. Bony heard its panting, and then felt its breath strike against his face. He thrust the rifle forward and the muzzle encountered the fox, who snapped at the steel. Hastily Bony stood. Better to have an ankle bitten than his face or an arm.
It was only a few minutes after nine when he heard Barby shouting and the men answering and he proceeded to roll the netting up from the ground and sling it from the top of the stakes. Every step he took he trod on rabbits. They surged about his feet like strips of blanket energized with power. Then the netting ahead of him jerked under his hand and he knew, although he could not see, that a kangaroo was entangled in it.
Lights appeared in the direction of the sandbar, and someone carried a lamp along the fence to him. It was Carney, and Carney took his rifle to allow him to use both hands.
“Martyr should be here. Write a poem about it,” commented Carney. “The place is going to look sort of peculiar in the morning.”
“Probably just one big heap of rotting fur,” Bony predicted.
The light revealed a scene of such prodigious struggle for survival that both men were awed. A huge kangaroo squatted at the water and drank, flanked by a seething mass of rabbits, Gulliver crowded by the Lilliputians. A fox stood drinking with the rabbits under its belly, with a rabbit crouched between its forepaws and lapping the water. Another ’roo appeared, moving like a spider, flinging rabbits out of its path, its muzzle stretched forward as though the head was impatient of the lethargic body. It ranged alongside the fox, which continued imbibing. A half-bred dingo appeared in the radius of the lamplight, and it seemed to run on rabbits to reach the water it lapped and lapped as though determined never to stop.
Then men moved along the fence lifting the netting, before them a carpet of frantic animals trying to reach water, and after them a violent melee. Bony saw a ’roo turn from the water and accidentally swipe a fox with its tail. The fox was knocked into the water, and it continued to drink even as it swam.
“Aw, let the netting stop,” Carney urged when another kangaroo was entangled with the roll they had left suspended on the stakes. “There’ll be no fence in the morning, and the netting will never be fit for anything again.”
“I think you’re right,” Bony agreed, but they went on with the task till they were met by Lester on the same work.
“Cripes! You oughta see what’s in the traps,” he chortled. “Four million rabbits in each of ’em.”
“Have you counted them?” Bony inquired, and wished he hadn’t, for the question brought the sniffle.
“No. I give up when I got to ten thousand.”
They came to a trap-yard. The interior was a block of animals, only those on top of the mass being alive.
Barby came, saying dolefully:
“What a ruddy mess! Stonker the crows! You blokes will have to lend a hand in the morning. Money! Money! Money! Come on! Let’s eat.”
On the sandbar, Bony paused to listen. Mercifully hidden by the night, the titanic struggle for life-saving water created sound which could be likened by the imaginative to the snoring of a prehistoric beast, and that sound dwindled as Bony passed on beyond the sandbar, dwindled till he could no longer hear it, and was glad. But memory retained a picture of the green and the red lights which had ringed them as they lifted the netting ... the lamp-light reflected by the eyes of tortured animals.
Later, when they had washed and eaten and drunk enormous quantities of sugarless coffee, Barby brought up the subject of skinning his “catch”.
“We’ll get on with that later,” insisted MacLennon, and Lester sniffled and said:
“Yair. After we’ve found Gillen and the locket.”
“You remember what happened to you when you’d dug out them Paddy’s ducks,” snarled MacLennon. “That locket’s mine. And no bloody arguing.”
“Oh no it’s not,” Joan exclaimed, and, being near MacLennon, turned to smile contemptuously at him.
Bony spoke coolly:
“Where do you expect to find the remains of Gillen?” Everyone turned to him, everyone save Barby.
“On the Lake somewhere or other,” replied MacLennon. “You keep out, anyhow. Nothin’ to do with you.”
“Perhaps not,” conceded Bony. “On the other hand perhaps you would like to be saved much walkabout in the heat tomorrow.”
They crowded him. He looked at them in turn, their faces clearly revealed by the leaping firelight.
“Well, what’s to it?” demanded Carney.
“Merely that you should walk in circles and never find the remains of Ray Gillen. I will lead you, all of you, to the remains in the morning. After.”
“After! What d’you mean, after?” Lester asked.
“After we have skinned the rabbits in George’s two traps.”
“Strike me flamin’ blue!” exploded MacLennon. “What a hope.”
“Good on you, Bony,” chortled Barby, and Bony said:
“Fair’s fair. You help to skin the rabbits, and I take you to Gillen’s body. You don’t skin the rabbits, and you promenade in the gentle heat of western New South Wales. It’s all yours, dear brethren.”
The girl confronted Bony, mouth uplifted, eyes blue-green like opals.
“Truly, you know where he is?” she asked, admiringly.
“I know where the body is, as I told you. When the rabbits are skinned, I’ll take all of you to the place. Quite simple.”
The smile settled about her mouth, and on her turning to the men her voice contained an underlying note of steel. “You heard what Bony said, Harry, Mac and Bob. That’s final. You’ll
skin the damn rabbits. We’ll all go with Bony in the morning ... and don’t try to be clever.”
“Suits me,” agreed Carney.
“Me, too,” added Lester, and Bony silently complimented him.
Thereafter a truce settled on them and the subject of Gillen and his locket was not mentioned. For a while they squatted or sat inside the circle of firelight, and all agreed when Carney said that Martyr must have gone on to the main homestead after telephoning from Sandy Creek.
“No one will get here till about eleven tomorrow,” Lester estimated. “That’ll give us time to skin them blasted rabbits for George and then Bony will do what he promised.”
Half an hour later, Carney announced his intention of having some “shut-eye”, and the girl rose, saying she needed sleep if no one else did. And yet they waited for Bony.
Bony brought his swag and unrolled it in the firelight. He undressed only by removing his boots. Lester brought his swag and laid it on the ground nearby, and MacLennon and Carney did likewise. They were not going to lose Bony to any artful dodger, and he was highly amused when the girl staggered from behind the hut, carrying the bedding so carefully arranged for her.
To see them composed for sleeping within a few feet of the camp fire, it would be difficult to believe that the temperature of the night was above the century.
When the sky proclaimed the coming of the day, Barby had the coffee bubbling and was frying flapjacks and grilling kangaroo steaks, and before it was possible to read a newspaper away from the firelight, they trudged over the sandbar armed with skinning knives and bags to take the rabbit skins.
The Channel wasn’t to be seen. It was marked by the sturdy corner posts of the two trap-yards, and a few of the fence stakes. The rolled netting appeared here and there above the dun-coloured mass which covered the ground and stiffened the surface of the water invisible beneath the bodies of the drowned. Back from this dreadful immobility, the living were dazed like zombies. Kangaroos were gouging among the dead with their paws, thrusting their muzzles among the dead to make space to get at the water. Hundreds were sitting up at varying distances, with rabbits moving among them, and among the rabbits the foxes were walking with grotesque daintiness.
Death of a Lake Page 15