Death of a Lake

by Arthur W. Upfield

  They could escape the flies by entering the hut, but the interior of the hut wasn’t to be borne longer than a few seconds. Two could have gone down the well and stood on the platform supporting the pump seventy feet underground. There the temperature was about sixty degrees, but the cramped position would be too much and the climb down and up the ladder fastened to the wall of the shaft not lightly to be undertaken by the allegedly weakest of the party, Joan Fowler.

  Barby plunged an old cooking apron into a water-bucket, and with this about his head and shoulders he took the bucket to refill. There were no birds attempting to drink the water in the trough; there wasn’t a bird on the wing. The water in the trough was hot.

  While filling his bucket from the tank, Barby heard the crows in the tree from which one had fallen dead, and threw an old jam tin among the branches. Several crows flew from the close-set foliage, loudly complaining, and before they had proceeded a dozen yards from the shelter they turned and almost fell back into it.

  “Hot water on tap,” Barby said on his return to the hut shade. “See them crows? They’ll put on a turn soon, believe you me.”

  Bony alone appeared interested.

  Barby set down the bucket and the galah fell into the hole made for it before water could be poured into the hole. The cats didn’t move, and he poured water on them. They refrained from licking the water from their fur. One of the dogs looked as though about to die, and he procured a pair of hair clippers and proceeded to shear it, for something to do.

  “Hell of a long time since she was as hot as this,” Lester said. “Must be over 120 degrees in this shade, anyhow. The old man usta tell of a heat-wave they had when he run the pub. It was so hot all you had to do to light a match was to hold it in the sun for a sec.”

  Carney extracted a wax vesta from a box and tossed it from the shadow. He lay watching it for some time before saving:

  “Not as hot as your old man’s pub, Bob. I say, George, what about taking a run to the homestead in the ute? Something to do to pass the time.”

  “Too hot to shift the ute,” Barby objected. “Besides, we’d go less than a mile when her petrol would be all gas and she’d stop dead. I’m staying right here. Look! Your match is burnt.”

  “You’d be right ... about the petrol turning to gas,” Carney agreed. “That’s it! That’s why no one has come from the River. Car’s stuck up on the track somewhere. Hell, they’ll be hot if they are.”

  He tossed another match to fall on the shadeless ground and waited for it to ignite. A second crow fell from the tree, but he didn’t remove his gaze from the match.

  Something to do was becoming a powerful need, even for Bony. Merely to sit and wait was, psychologically, to add another ten degrees to the temperature. He draped his shirt over his head and shoulders and went for a bucket of water. That was something to do and he felt better even though the short journey back with the filled bucket made him feel slightly giddy.

  The gentle wind direct from an imagined furnace continued. It softly rustled the leaves of the cabbage tree. It sent the sap from all the tree branches down the trunks to the roots, and branches weakened by termites or dry rot began to crash to the ground. Bony saw one branch fall, and heard others fall from distant trees along the creek. To Carney he said:

  “Supposing that Martyr’s utility held him up and he was unable to reach Sandy Well, what would have happened at the River homestead?”

  “Well, the Boss would have tried to raise the out-station last night at seven as usual,” Carney replied, having waited for the sun to fire his second match. “Not being able to raise anyone he might get the cook at Sandy Well to have a go. Then he’d decide that the telephone at the out-station must be out of order, and he’d know Martyr had a spare one and would ring through sometime. This morning when the Boss rang through at half-past seven, and got nothing, he’d reckon the line was down between here and Sandy Well.”

  “And knowing nothing about the fire, and there being nothing important to discuss, the Boss would patiently wait?”

  “Yair. Wait on the cool homestead veranda, while one of his daughters supplied him with iced gin slings.”

  “Has the cook, or anyone at Sandy Well, a motor vehicle?”

  “No. If Martyr don’t contact him by this evening, the Boss might get one of the riders at the Well to follow the line out from here. And if no one turns up here by nine tonight, I reckon something serious has happened to Martyr.”

  “I am beginning to think that,” admitted Bony. He glanced at MacLennon, who was lying on his back and hadn’t spoken for more than an hour. The girl was sitting against the hut wall, her eyes closed, a spray of gum leaves serving her as a fly-whisk. Barby spoke:

  “What we all want this warm day is a good feed of treblyhot curry. I’m goin’ to make one that’ll turn your eyes back to front.”

  Lester voted the curried tinned meat “a corker”. Barby certainly put everything he had into it, but no persuasion would induce MacLennon to get up and eat.

  “Let the hunk starve,” advised Joan, and when Lester was about to jibe, Barby restrained him.

  Bony saw the white cockatoo drop dead from a near box tree, and he anticipated that, despite Barby’s attention, the pet galah would not live the day through. The hot wind died away, but its departure gave no relief. What did bring relief, although of short duration, was the shouted declaration by MacLennon that he was “going home”.

  “To hell with the lot of you,” he told them when on his feet. “I’m going home now.”

  “Oh well, have a nice time,” drawled Carney.

  The big man strode into the sunlight, and Bony called after him that he had forgotten his hat. MacLennon mightn’t have heard, for he walked on, his over-long hair matted with sweat and dust.

  “Come back for your hat, Mac,” shouted Barby, but the big man did not turn, did not halt, and they watched him pass over the sandbar and knew he intended following the flats.

  “Ruddy idiot,” snorted Barby, and poured water over his cats.

  Bony drenched a shirt with water and draped it about his head. He picked up MacLennon’s hat and took down a waterbag from a wire hook.

  “Let the fool go if he likes, Bony,” Joan urged.

  “Yair,” supported Lester. “He won’t go far. Thirst’ll hunt him back here.”

  “It will be something to do,” Bony told them, and set off after MacLennon.

  The sunlight burned his arms and “bounced” off the red earth to hurt his eyes, but these discomforts were little to what he met when he passed over the sandbar to the depression.

  The rank water in the Channel, its banks, the man-made traps and the wreckage of wire netting were a horrible picture which Bony tried to shun. Beyond the Channel, MacLennon was walking direct over the depression towards the distant out-station, and the mirage heightened his massive figure, making him a giant wading into the ocean.

  Bony shouted but the man took no need. To run after him, even to hasten, would be to fall victim to the power from which he hoped to save MacLennon. As bad as the burning heat was the fierce light, which had no colour and contained an element of density, itself threatening to impede movement. His eyes shrank inward to the shade of the garment protecting his head, and for long moments he was compelled to keep the lids tightly lowered.

  He did not see MacLennon struck by the sun, did not see him till about to pass him, and then MacLennon was groping on his hands and knees, and was blind and babbling.

  “Get up and come back with me,” commanded Bony.

  MacLennon did not hear. He was following a small circle, and Bony was horribly reminded of the drowning rabbits. When Bony poured water from the bag upon the back of his head, neck and shoulders, he betrayed no reaction, and continued his unintelligible babbling.

  Bony slapped a naked shoulder and shouted in an effort to make the man stand. Beyond this, common sense halted effort, for physical exertion beyond the minimum would bring collapse. He did think his urging
was successful when Mac-Lennon abruptly stood. He made five long strides, bringing the knees high and keeping his arms flung wide as though in balance. Then he crashed, falling on his face and lying still.

  Bony knelt beside him and sheltered him with his own shadow. The warning to himself was unmistakable. The ground about the fallen man was magnified with such brilliance that the pin-points of rusty clay on a sliver of débris, the hairs on MacLennon’s neck, even the nodules of dust on the man’s back, appeared as large protuberances.

  Despite the warning, Bony succeeded in turning MacLennon on his back ... when death was evident.

  During a long moment Bony fought for self-control. The bad moment passed, and his maternal ancestors crowded about him, whispering and cajoling. They pleaded with him to remain passive if only for a minute. They told him of their battle with this homicidal sun, brought to him their lore and wisdom. They implored him to drink and pour the remainder of the water on his head.

  But the bag was empty.

  Presently he felt a little better though vertigo remained a threat. He peered from the protection offered by the shirt to estimate distance to the sandbar. He found that the shore dunes were closer, and he could see a tea-tree bush growing between two dunes. It looked black against the red sand, and black spelled shade.

  In the act of standing he remembered the crows, and couldn’t leave MacLennon entirely to them, so he stepped from his trousers and made the garment a covering for his head: the shirt he laid over the dead face.

  The ground heaved as he walked away from MacLennon. He fought back the impulse to run to the tea-tree shade, and slowly the bush grew in size, and slowly its shade came to meet him and became large enough to accept him.

  He remembered he had once seen a thermometer at a homestead registering a point above 122 degrees, but that day the wind was blowing strongly. Today, here and now, there was no wind, not a current of air to be felt by the skin. The windless day is opportunity for the sun.

  He was debating the subject of heat apoplexy, and the relation to it of perspiration, or lack of it, when he realized he could not remain in this shade without water. Already thickening saliva was swelling his tongue and gumming his lips.

  He espied the nearest shade fifty yards towards the creek, a black ribbon lying over the ground cast by the trunk of a dead belar. Where the shadow joined the foot of the tree crouched a rabbit, and he did not see the rabbit until, struck by his foot, it fled into the sunlight. He watched it run to a steep sand dune, watched it scrambling upward and dislodging a minor avalanche. The animal was near the summit when it gave a convulsive leap, rolled down the slope and lay still.

  “That was quicker than MacLennon got it,” he said, and knew he couldn’t have been vocal.

  Thus from shadow to shadow he accomplished the journey back to the creek trees, and, remembering the guest at Johnson’s Well, he put on his trousers and crossed the creek with the empty water-bag on his head for protection.

  They noted the absence of his shirt and MacLennon’s hat.

  “You caught up with the fool,” Lester stated as fact.

  Bony nodded and sat with them in the hut shadow, now larger in area. There was a pannikin of warm tea beside Lester, and he “sloshed” his mouth with the liquid because he couldn’t part his lips.

  “A bit generous, giving him your shirt,” snorted Barby, and again Bony nodded, now able to draw the liquid in between his lips and about the swollen tongue. Pride was digging into him. It would never do to permit these men and the girl to realize how soft he was, how close he’d come to meeting Sol’s bolt. They were watching him closely, and with wellacted casualness he emptied the pannikin and borrowed Lester’s tobacco and papers. Having made the cigarette, and having fought down the desire for more tea, he accepted a match from Carney.

  “MacLennon didn’t go far,” he said, and was inwardly pleased he was able to speak clearly. “About half a mile on from the Channel.”

  “What d’you mean?” asked the girl, impatiently.

  “What he said,” Carney told her. “Without a hat, and no shirt on, course he wouldn’t get far.”

  “Well, I hope he’s dead,” Joan snapped, and, without looking at her, Bony related his adventure.

  “And you left your shirt on him,” Barby said.

  “I remembered the crows,” Bony told them, and the girl sneered.

  “More fool you, Bony,” she jibed, and laughed.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Proceed as Usual

  HOURS LATER when the shadows were noticeably longer, Bony suggested that someone should accompany Barby to the outstation and, if no one was there, take the track to Sandy Well to locate Martyr and the main homestead. The suggestion found favour, and everyone wanted to go with Barby.

  “All right! We’ll all go. Better than sitting on our sterns. What’s to be done about MacLennon?”

  The question was put to Bony, and the others, waiting for his views, didn’t realize how much his ego was boosted. Lester sniffled:

  “Could do with a morgue, there’s bodies all over the scenery.” He was told by Carney to shut up, and Bony said:

  “Because of the birds and the dingoes, the body should be put inside the hut. We could make a start now. While the body is being brought in, perhaps someone could bake something to go with George’s tins of beef. We must take plenty of water in case we break down when trailing Martyr.”

  It was arranged that Lester get on with baking scones, the girl would prepare another curry, and Bony would fill petrol tins with water. Carney went off with Barby in the utility. Eventually, the dogs having been fed, the cats attended to and the pet galah imprisoned in his cage, the party left Johnson’s Well.

  The sun was then a mighty crimson orb low over the depression, and it was setting when they arrived at the outstation. No voice hailed them, and Lester insisted on leaving the vehicle to look at the thermometer under the pepper trees.

  “What next?” snarled Barby, but stopped none the less. “Sun going down, getting a bit cool, and he wants to see if it’s true.”

  Lester jumped to the ground and slouched to the instrument. They saw him peering at it. He straightened and peered again. Then he shouted:

  “A hundred and nineteen and a bit. Caw! Wonder it ain’t busted.”

  Forgetting to sniffle, he climbed on to the body of the ute.

  “You sure?” demanded Carney.

  “Take a deck yourself,” snapped Lester. “A hundred and nineteen now. What must she have been round about two this afternoon? A flamin’ record, I bet.”

  They left the empty out-station, took the track up the long slope, and passed over the crest where Bony had observed the dust left by Martyr. No one looked back. Those on the tray body stood to look over the cabin top. They could see the track winding ahead for several miles. It was empty.

  The normally red land, now covered by areas of dry grass dotted by clumps of belar and mulga, was apricot and silver in the waning evening light. They were grateful for the breeze created by the speed of the utility, and for the conquest of wind over flies.

  Now and then Lester, clinging with Bony and Carney to the cabin top, sniffled and snorted.

  “A hundred and nineteen at six o’clock!”

  It was dark when they topped the following swell, and there Barby braked the vehicle to a stop, for far away blazed the lights of several vehicles coming their way. It being obviously unnecessary to go further, Barby turned the ute, cut his engine and climbed from the cabin.

  Three,” he said. “Martyr in his ute, the Boss in his chromium chariot, and Red driving the juggernaut.”

  “Hardly be Red, George. He wouldn’t be able to keep up,” Carney pointed out.

  “There’s three coming, anyhow.”

  “The third is probably being driven by a policeman,” offered Bony, and after that no one spoke.

  Presently the lights caught them, and ultimately the first car stopped a few yards away. From the driver’s window t
he overseer called:

  “Righto, George! Get going back. I can give room here.”

  The girl got in beside Martyr. Carney went with Barby, Lester seemed undecided, but followed Carney. Bony vanished. He reappeared beside Sergeant Mansell, who was driving the third vehicle.

  “Been a hot day, Sergeant,” he remarked when climbing into the rear seat.

  “Terrible,” replied the heavy man in plain clothes and, being uncertain of the identity Bony wished recognized for the benefit of the man sitting with him, added:

  “A hundred and twenty-four at Menindee. One degree lower at Porchester homestead.”

  “Must be a record, surely.”

  “Easily. Broken Hill radio just said it’s been 117 degrees down in Sydney. Dozens of people collapsed. Nearly did myself. Fires raging in Victoria. Doctor here wouldn’t leave till four o’clock.”

  “Too damned hot to move,” declared the doctor.

  “You might introduce us. Sergeant.”

  “Sure. Detective-Inspector Bonaparte ... Doctor Clive.” The acknowledgements were given. “How do we go, Inspector?”

  “As we were for the moment,” replied Bony. “I am thankful you were able to come along, Doctor. There are three bodies to be dealt with: death by fire, assumed; death by drowning, assumed; and death by heat, easily established.”

  “Quite a job,” murmured the doctor, and would have put a question had not Sergeant Mansell interrupted.

  “The drowning case Gillen, by any chance?”

  “Yes. I located his remains yesterday resting on dead Lake Otway. Man named MacLennon—you know him, perhaps— was struck by the sun. We were camped in the shadow of a hut, and I believe the heat upset him even before he determined to walk back to the out-station without a hat or a shirt. You can deal with the heat case on the spot, but the other two must be referred to a pathologist.”