Three men… one inside and two outside the tank… Lester, Carney, MacLennon. He doubted it was Lester among the carcasses because Lester hadn’t been carrying a fork or shovel when last seen among the dune scrub at dusk.
He returned over his course to cut again the odour of the dead birds, and then warilyproceeded up-wind to draw as close to the worker as possible in order to identify him on a skyline when he clambered out. And he had been in the selected position less than three minutes when he heard a suspicious sound… down-wind.
Bony brought his face close to the ground to obtain a skyline to see what made this sound, the air current passing from him making his nose useless. The place was alive with rabbits. He saw the skulking shape of a fox moving swiftly and with enviable silence, and was sure the fox hadn’t betrayed itself. Then he saw a shape without identifiable form, and knew it must be within a dozen feet ofhimself. It was advancing with extreme caution, slowly, silently, until its breathing identified it for Bony as a man. A fourth man.
Likean goanna Bony slid to one side, keeping that low-to-earth figure in view. It passed close by, continued towards the tank till it vanished in the complete darkness against it.
The fourth man? GeorgeBarby, or Richard Martyr?
The phrase “It’sgonna be good!” stirred in the well of his mind. He ordered memory to haul it to the surface while helay inert, vision strained to register any movement against his sky-line. The implement being used to empty the tank was a garden fork. He could see the load of carcasses lifted above the tank rim, see the fork shaken, hear the handle bumped against the iron to free it. The man laboured diligently, yet it was some time before Bony heard the tines scrape over the iron floor as though searching for something.
“It’sgonna be good!” Ah! An aborigine had said that nine years previously when he and Bony were about to witness, from the top of a tree, a brawl between two sections of a tribe. A dark bulge grew atop the tank. Before it became recognizable a greater mass rose between it and Bony… that fourth man… When the fourth man moved slightly to the side as he advanced, the shape on the tank rim was like an enormous spider walking its web. On dropping to the ground he vanished and the sound of his landing came clearly.
Other sounds reached Bony, soft and sinister noises culminating in a sound like a snake being slammed against a tree branch by a kookaburra. A man shouted the one word “You…” and then this same voice shouted “By…” Again the snake was slammed against the branch, and the man said softly this time “No!” as though saying it dreamily to himself.
There was a low scuffling in the black void against the tank. The man lying against the creek bed withdrew, rolling rubble down to the dry bed. Over by the hut, someone ploughed with devastating noise through the heap of tins and refuse. Then a shapeless thing loomed over Bony, and he slid to one side to avoid tripping the fourth man, who departed to the point from which he had first appeared. Thereafter there was nothing but the soft movements of the rabbits and the incessant conversation by the birds on the distant lake.
Bony retreated, covering a hundred yards without creating sound enough to upset the rabbits playing all about him. Now on his feet, he strode to the drafting yards, circled wide the horse yards and the hut and so arrived at the Lake onBarby’s side of the Channel. He sprinted to the Channel, swam it with least noise possible, and began the four-mile journey to the out-station at a lope.
He had to be in bed before the men returned to the quarters, and first must ascertain who was about. That Mac and Carney had followed Lester, Bony was sure, but it could be that neither was aware of the other having trailed Lester. It could be that Lester had been trailing either Carney orMacLennon. Who the fourth man was, was a further item to accompany Bony as he ran silently over the flats.
The morning would reveal who had been bashed when he left the tank, either by his appearance or by his absence. Werehis own absence from the quarters discovered, the guise of disinterested horse-breaker would be shot to pieces.
Chapter Thirteen
Lester is Confidential
THEHOUSEWASwithout light, but the bulb still blazed in the sitting-room at the quarters. The dogs were quiet, yet the darkness might well conceal a watcher. Bony circled wide to reach his room via its back window, and found a watcher. She was within the deeper darkness of the machinery shed, and from her the exceedingly gentle wind conveyed to Bony her perfume. Joan Fowler’s presence made him gamble with time. He spent five minutes seeking out other watchers, found none, and slid over the sill of his bedroom window.
Soundlessly he removed the sand-shoes and donned his pyjamas. That was easy. It was not easy to lay himself on his bed without making it complain, but he achieved it as the result of previous practice.
Silence was an empty stage upon which not even the calls of the water-birds intruded. Silence was an enemy defeated by inherited instincts and aboriginal training, but it triumphed over the white man. Bony heard the faint noise made by Carney, who entered the room next to his by the same ingress, the window.
Long, long minutes passed into limbo. Then the bed beyond the room occupied by Carney squeaked whenMacLennon put his weight upon it.
As Lester occupied the bedroom on the far side of the sitting-room, Bony could not blame himself for failing to hear Lester’s return.
More long minutes passed, when Carney moved and uttered a soft expletive. Bony heard him leave his room, then light steps on the veranda. He saw his dark figure looming in the oblong of the door-frame.
“Hey, Bony!”Carney called. “You awake?”
“Wash that? What’smarrer?” asked Bony.
“Got any aspirin? I’ve a rotten headache.”
“Aspirin! May be some in my case. Put the light on.”
Carney the bird digger? Carney making sure the horse-breaker hadn’t been up to tricks?”
Swinging his legs off the bed, Bony withdrew his case from under the bed and groped under its lid. He blinked at Carney. Carney was in night attire. His fair hair was ruffled. He looked undamaged.
“Don’t know what I ate to bring it on,” he said. “Thanks. I’ll get some water. What time is it?”
“No idea,” Bony replied.“Time for a smoke, anyway. Have you been out on a jag?”
“Been playing cards with the women. Only coffee to drink.”
The brown eyes were round and wary, and Bony purposefully fumbled with the cigarette paper and tobacco. They missed nothing, taking in the condition of Bony’s bedding, his clothes, his boots. The canvas shoes they failed to see, for they were inside the case.
“Last man in left the light on, Bony. What time did you go to bed?”
“About half-past ten, I think. There was no one about, so I left it on.”
“Well, switch the ruddy light off and shut up,” shoutedMacLennon.
“All right! All right!”Carney called, and winked at Bony.
He passed to the door, paused with his hand on the switch. Bony nodded and he switched off the light. Bony heard him pouring water from the bag suspended from the veranda roof. Then the sitting-room light was flicked off and Carney dropped on his bed as though intentionally making it complain.
The next morning he met Carney coming from the shower-house and inquired about the head.
“Good! Those tablets fixed it in five minutes,” replied Carney.“Goin’ to be a stinker of a day by the feel of the sun.”
“Seems likely.”
Bony showered and towelled. He heardMacLennon on the veranda when he was combing his straight black hair, andMacLennon was advising Lester to ‘rise and shine’, else he’d be late for breakfast. MacLennon needed to shave, but otherwise was tidy and clean, and he nodded to Bony when turning from Lester’s room, saying:
“Bob must have gone off early after the horses.”
Carney carelessly agreed and joined Bony at the end of the veranda. They looked upon Lake Otway, an unruffled sheet of molten metal seemingly making afraid the gulls hesitant at the verge, and a cormorant pe
rched on the marker. The level was thirteen inches. Carney said nothing. The breakfast call was given.
As usual, Mrs Fowler served the breakfast. Other than the ‘good mornings’ and the question and answer concerning Lester, conversation was at zero. Joan didn’t appear. Carney was first to leave the table, and when Bony passed outside the annexe he found Carney gazing narrowly towards the horse yards.
Coming round the outside of the yards was Lester. He was on foot and carrying a bridle.
“Seems, like Bob got tossed,” Carney remarked. “Looks for trouble, Bob does. Won’t put a saddle on the night horse, and that mare can’t be trusted.”
Together they walked to the end of the buildings backed by the pepper trees and waited for Lester, who was dragging a foot. MacLennon joined them, and it was he who asked Lester, without evincing much concern, what had happened, Lester’s jaw was dark with contusion. His head was awry. The right eye was bloodshot but not bruised. He sniffled and tried to jeer at himself.
“Heaved off,” he said.“Treacherous bloody mare. Caught me bending as I was rounding up themokes. The neck strap broke and she got free and cleared off on me.”
“Feelin’ a bit sick, by the look of you,”MacLennon snapped, his lip lifted in a sneer of derision. “Looks likeyou been fighting or something.”
Lester’s eyes hardened and became small, like wet beach pebbles. He would have snarled a counter had not the quiet voice of the overseer slipped it aside.
“Go and lie down on your bunk, Bob,” Martyr ordered. “I’ll come later and practise on you. Mac, ride out to Sawyer’s Dam after you bring in the workers. Bony won’t mind youusing his hack. Take a deck at the weaners. And get back as soon as you can. It’s going to hot up properly, and there’s no necessity for any of us to fry. By the way, you fellows, your light was on too late again last night.”
“Yair,” admitted Carney, who occasionally slurred his speech. “Last up forgot.”
Martyr’s pale-grey eyes hardened as Lester’s had done, and he clipped:
“If it happens again, I remove all the bulbs. Some of the batteries are sick. The dynamo is sick. I’m sick of talking about it.”
They dispersed, Bony to saunter to the yards to await the return ofMacLennon with the horses. He rolled a cigarette and watched the overseer walking to the office. Martyr suffered a slight limp. He came from the office carrying a medical kit and crossed to Lester’s room. Ten minutes later he returned to the office, and five minutes after that Mrs Fowler crossed to the quarters carrying a breakfast tray.
At the morning smoko, Mrs Fowler had Bony to herself. She was wearing a coral-pink overall, which suited her, and she was evidently pleased with the situation.
“It’s going to be unbearably hot today,” she said while filling the cups with strong tea. “I do hate this heat.”
“Thermometer under the pepper trees saysit’s 108 degrees. It must be 208 degrees in your kitchen,” Bony guessed, and wasn’t far off the mark.
“Must be… with bread baking. Your work must be exhausting.”
“Unfair to the horses. I’m knocking off at lunch for the day. Took a filly along to Johnson’s Well to work off some steam. The Lake seems about finished, doesn’t it?”
“Looks just yellow mud to me.”
“Who won last night?” Bony asked, and the woman’s dark brows rose questioningly.
“But we didn’t play last night. Joan was out somewheretill late. With you?”
“I’ve been here three weeks,” Bony said with assumed severity. “Candidly, do I appear to you as a skirt chaser?”
“No-no, you don’t, Bony.” Then she smiled. “You could try yourself out some time. Keeps a man young… and a woman, too. Everyone’s a bit slow here, you know. I’ll bet you’ve had plenty of women chasing you before now. You can’t make me believe you’re not scientific.”
“Ah!” Bony breathed, and smiled his beaming smile. “Once upon a time when I was young and bold I rode away with a squatter’s daughter. The squatter and his men pursued us, soon caught up because my horse was carrying a double load. I’ll take a cup of tea and a portion of cake over to Lester, if you don’t mind.”
He stood and filled a pannikin.
“What happened when the men caught up with you?” demanded Mrs Fowler, and Bony wondered if she was being naive.
“I dumped the lady upon a saltbush and rode on and on,” he said. “And I never went back to that station. In fact, there are so many stations to which I cannot return that I have to think hard before asking for work at one.”
Smiling deep down into Mrs Fowler’s warming eyes, he placed a piece of cake on his own plate and, with a cup of tea, wended his way to Lester, who was sitting on the broken arm-chair on theverandah. An expertly placed bandage was about the stockman’s neck and much adhesive tape fixed lint to his jaw.
“How is the neck?” Bony asked.
“Not so bad. Bit stiff. Sort of ricked it when I hit the ground.”
“It mightn’t have happened if you hadn’t forgotten to wear your spurs.”
“You could be right,” Lester agreed. “Tain’toften I forget ’em. Musta been dopey. I woke up at dawn and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to go for the workers ’fore breakfast.”
“The first time you forgot them, too. The spurs, I mean.”
Lester glanced direct, then swerved away from the bright blue eyes. Quietly and with slow emphasis, he asked:
“Youtalkin ’double?”
“For your sake, Bob.”
“How come?”
“IfMacLennon tracked you when he went after the working horses, he mightn’t find the place where the stable horse threw you this morning. Of course, if you thought to mess up the ground somewhere, and faked the horse’s tracks where she was supposed to have bucked you off, it would substantiate your story.”
“Are youtellin ’ me I wasn’t dumped this morning?” Lester asked.
“Yes. There is something going on here I don’t understand. I’m here only to do a spot of breaking, and it’s nothing to do with me, but I couldn’t help seeing that neither Carney norMacLennon believed you were dumped. After all, you’ve never done me a bad turn, and I’m only giving you a warning.”
There was another long silence, which Bony terminated.
“You see, Bob, it was like this. MacLennon could have noticed you forgot your spurs. You always wear spurs. You put them on when you dress in the morning as sure as you put on your trousers. There is something else, too. Someone has forked all the shags out of the tank at Johnson’s Well. Was done last night. When you limped back this morning and told us your story, I could smell on you those dried birds. The smell wasn’t strong, but you were to windward ofMacLennon and Carney as well as me. It’s no business of mine why you went to Johnson’sWell and emptied that tank.”
The inevitable sniffle. A chuckle without humour.
“What else did you see at Johnson’s?”
“Nothing.”
“Tracks youmusta seen.”
“No. The rabbits wiped out your tracks.”
The possessive pronoun was not missed.
“You seenno other tracks?”
“As I said… the rabbits…”
“Yair, I heard.”
Lester pondered and Bony patiently waited. The veranda roof creaked under the torture of the sun. Beyond its shade the earth was polished by the sun, light red on the summit, dark red in the gullies of the miniature dunes kicked up by human feet all the way to the house on the far side of the open space. The shadows cast by the distant house, the out-buildings backed by the pepper trees, were black. White patches in one such shadow were the gasping hens.
“You know, Bony,” Lester drawled, “there’s something up between Ma Fowler and Mac and between Harry and Joan what’s different to just playing ring-a-ring-a-roses. Right now those two women will be watching us, wondering what we’re saying, wondering what we know and what we don’t know. If I talk, you keep it to yourself?�
��
“Don’t talk if you’d rather not,” urged Bony. “As I’ve told you I’ll be gone with my cheque in a couple of weeks. I mentioned those birds at Johnson’s merely as a warning because I saw how suspicious Carney and Mac were this morning.”
“I know, andI’m not liking you less for it, Bony. It’s because you’re only casual, and because you got eyes, that I reckon you could do me another good turn. Ify’would.”
“Of course.”
“Well, I got to start with them two women,” Lester proceeded and at once proved he could think straight. “They came here, and mighty soon got everything changed over at the house and with the cooking and such. We could see theywas on the make, but they was good sports and played around. You know how it is for a few blokes in a place like this.
“After Ray Gillencome here, things were stirred up a bit. Mac had beenchasin ’ Ma Fowler and Harry had been after Joan when she was passed up by Martyr, who, I suppose, reckoned he’d have to be careful, or take the sack from Wallace. Ray was a good bloke in all ways. Them women played up to him, but he was toocunnin ’ to be properly caught. He’d take one and then the other out of an evening on his motor-bike. He’d tease ’emand make ’emwild, and kiss ’emwhen theywasn’texpectin ’ him to, and all that. He was alwayscrackin ’ jokes andbettin ’ he’d do anythingbetter’n the next… and always winning, too.
“One dayme and Ray was sent to patch up the yards at Johnson’s Well and we went there on his bike. We took our lunches as it was a long job. And that day Ray told me he was suspicious that someone had opened his suitcase and gone through his things.
“He swore he always kept his case locked, and that the locks weren’t just ordinary and easy to pick. Always had the key with a gold locket on a string tied round hisneck. I seen it there. Everyone did. Even when he went swimming he had that key and locket round his neck.
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