“So it is. Could be he grasped it as he died, tore it from his killer’s head. Yes, could be. And that wouldn’t be Carl Brandt. Now where the hell is Brandt?”
Both were now anxious to be out of the shed, and, outside, they gazed about as men wholly undecided what next to do; until Eric proceeded to the dog kennels near the fowl house.
The chains attached to them entered the dark interior. Eric fell to his knees to gaze into a kennel, then reached inside and withdrew the body of a half-grown kelpie. He withdrew from the second kennel another kelpie, also dead, and, standing again, knelt down at them, mute and frozen with horror.
It was not yet finished. Within the netted yard were the twenty-odd fowls, all dead of thirst.
The sun was low in the west, and the little wind had died. It was completely silent, as, the water trough being empty, there were no crows present.
“I don’t get it,” admitted old John, his lips trembling.
“I do,” Eric said, and there was hate in his eyes. “Carl Brandt killed that stranger, and then he cleared out and left the dogs chained up and the fowls without water. The dirty swine. The heeler...”
He left, running to skirt the house to reach the blue heeler, tougher than the kelpies, and still alive. The old man trudged away to the shearing-shed, hoping to find tracks, and found nothing left by the wind to read. Weather-wise, he was convinced that the tragedy had occurred not less than a week previously. In that period the wind had often been wild and hot with early spring.
Now that he was familiar with the problem, the tension subsided in John Downer’s mind, and the physical stresses imposed by age and a month’s hard drinking returned. He found Eric at the back door. The heeler had been placed on the ground beneath the rain-tank, and Eric was permitting the tap to drip water on the animal’s saliva and sand-caked grinning jaws. The dog’s eyes were partially open, and they, too, were caked with dust.
“Me and that dog’s alike, lad. We both need a snort,” rasped John. “Fetch the bottle.”
Eric left for the truck, and John knelt beside the heeler and carefully raised its head. There was no recognition, no response, and gently he laid it down and fought to master the trembling in his hands, which flowed upward through his arms and down to reach his heart. He accepted the whisky bottle from Eric and called for a pannikin.
The long swig of neat spirit coursed through him and banished the tremors. He half filled the pannikin with water and added whisky, opened the dog’s jaw and dripped the diluted spirit into its mouth. At first it dribbled out, and then the body shuddered and the throat muscles worked to permit swallowing. Breathing came with the sound of a man sawing wood.
“Might save him,” said John, standing. “Here, take a nip, lad. Then we’ll get to hell out of here, boil the billy, and think what we have to do. Back to the truck. You bring the heeler.”
They drove half a mile to the junction of a track with that to L’Albert, where John made a fire and Eric filled the billy, and this common chore helped them both back to normality, the father ready to become subordinate to the son he had encouraged to lead.
“What d’you reckon?” he asked.
“We’ll have to go back to L’Albert and the telephone,” Eric replied. “Have to contact Mawby and report all this.”
“Yes, I suppose we ought, lad. What about the sheep, though? Have to see to them. Rudder’s Well might be broken down or something.”
“The sheep’ll have to wait. We have a murder on our hands, remember.”
John Downer felt disappointment as he watched his son toss half a handful of tea into the boiling water and lift the billy off the fire with a stick. Abruptly explosive, he shouted:
“Sheep wait, be damned! They’re all we got left of nine thousand. Lose them, and we walk off Lake Jane.”
“Our job is to report to the police as soon as possible. You know that,” argued the now stubborn Eric.
“To hell and gone with the police!” John continued to shout. “Our job’s to look out for the sheep. The feller in the shed ain’t dying for lack of water, and Brandt’ll be lying snug by this time. Damn him, damn him to hell! What a mess to come home to.”
Eric said, sipping hot tea and nibbling a biscuit:
“All right, then. We go out to Rudder’s. We unload at the shed there. You camp there for the night, and I’ll run back to Jim Pointer’s place and use their telephone. That suit?”
“Yes. Should of worked it out in the first place. You can plan things when you want.”
The heeler lying on the seat between them, they started on the four mile journey to the paddock where existed the remnants of the sheep flocks they had built to nine thousand by the beginning of the drought. The entire stock watered at the well sunk by a contractor named Rudder.
The sun was gone, and the early evening light tended to magnify the passing scrub trees and the widely scattered bush, whilst the areas of bare sand were salmon-pink, or rippled like purple velvet.
“Can’t help wonderin’ who that dead feller is,” remarked John, determinedly puffing at a sick pipe. “Beats me. Must have come here by the back way, across country from a northern station, perhaps Mount Brown. Has a game of cards with Brandt. One of ’em cheats. There’s an argument. That stranger did look bashed to the side of the head, didn’t he?”
“Don’t let’s talk about it, Dad,” pleaded Eric. “What a day! What a heck of a day!”
“Can’t help talking about it, lad. Got to think of Carl Brandt, escaped murderer. He might be holding up out here at Rudder’s. Could be anywhere. We’ve a rifle on the truck, haven’t we?”
“The forty-four is under the seat. How’s Blue?”
“Got a hope. One eye open, anyway. And there’s a wriggle to his tail now you say his name.”
They were passing through a belt of spindly mulga when the old man cried cheerfully:
“The mill’s still working, lad.”
Three minutes later they came to the Rudder’s Well paddock, and John alighted to open the gate, and leave it open for Eric to shut on his return. From the gate it was less than half a mile to the well and its windmill, with the canegrass, open-fronted shed a couple of hundred yards their side of it.
“Any sign of Brandt?” asked Eric, concentrating on his driving.
“No, none. No smoke from the fireplace. Couple of crows perched on the roof. The sheep are in to water. Things seem to be all right.”
The waning light was steel, the vista of open plain was grey. Above the plain hung a grey dust-fog raised by the sheep, now drinking at the trough line, or, having drunk, lying down a little distance from it.
The truck was stopped at the shed, and Eric volunteered to remove the load while his father took the rifle and went to the well to see by the marker that the reservoir tank was a third full. It was now too late to look over the sheep, or approach the few cows and a bull which once had been the pride of his heart.
Eric stowed the load within the shed, and set the tucker box and bread and vegetables on the rough table. It was ground-dark when John returned, and the crows were drawn into the silence of night, which seemed to hold apart from the world the plaintive baa-ings of the distant sheep.
“Don’t look to be that Brandt’s about,” John said. “We going to eat before you go?”
“Not me. I’ll wait to eat at L’Albert. Your swag’s here, and the tucker. The heeler’s on a bag by the petrol drums. He’s coming good. Could be all right by morning. Now I’d better get on back to the telephone and Mawby.”
“Of course, lad. Don’t worry about me and the dog. Camp with the Pointers if they ask you to. I left the gate open. You close it. Good luck!”
He watched the departing truck’s lights stop at the gateway, saw the vehicle go on into the night of trees beneath the dancing stars. Then, in the shed again, he put a match to a hurricane lamp, and stood eating slices of bread, and fish from a tin, and completed ‘dinner’ with a dose from the bottle.
Ah, to hell wit
h town! It was good while it lasted but it couldn’t beat home and the sheep. He felt it strange, sitting on a case and smoking, that for the first time for what seemed many moons he was able to think, and to survey all the old problems of the drought that came crowding back for attention, plus the new problem of a dead man in his machinery shed, and the hired hand gone on a long journey. Well, to see to the dog, and then for a real long sleep.
The heeler’s eyes were wide open to greet him in the lamplight. The tail wagged, although with effort. The nose was wet and cool, but the head was too heavy to lift.
John opened a jar of meat extract and made a strong broth with cold water. He had to support the dog so that it could drink, and in him was vast pity, for on two memorable occasions he himself had come nigh to death from thirst.
Afterwards he blew out the lamp, and, taking his swag of blankets to a distant bull oak, unrolled them to fashion a mattress. Then he went back for the dog, and eventually he fell asleep with an arm about the heeler, and in his other hand the rifle.
Chapter Three
Sergeant Mawby Takes Command
MAN AND dog slept undisturbed, and at break of day John Downer built a fire on the open fireplace in front of the shed, and went back to the tree for the dog and his bedding.
The emaciated animal lay on a bag in the warmth of the fire, which halted for a while the strengthening light of the new day. The old man sipped tea and smoked his pipe while standing and facing outward over the desolate scene to-be. The crows were already cawing.
John Downer was the leaseholder of a hundred and fifty thousand acres of land; a pastoralist, a man of substance—what was left of substance after three years of drought. Sixty years in the past he had entered the ring of life as horse tailer in a droving outfit, and now he was still ahead on points, although the growing daylight would reveal the latest reverses.
Away back in 1930 he had been the Fort Deakin overseer, living at L’Albert with his wife and young Eric. In that year he had been successful with the Western Lands Board in gaining the grant of this hundred and fifty thousand acres resumed from the leasehold of Fort Deakin, which his wife had named Lake Jane because then the lake was full of water. He had built the homestead, made and lost money, had been able to send Eric to a public school in Melbourne.
Eric had done so well, too. He had just gained entry to the University to study for a medical degree when his mother died, and in spite of opposition, he had returned home.
John Downer, king of all he could survey, and more, a kingdom of barely less than two hundred and fifty square miles, yet a mere back paddock compared with the great Fort Deakin, which still boasted three-quarters of a million acres. Not quite five feet five inches in his high-heeled boots, his body still hard and rounded, he didn’t need glasses to survey his kingdom, and not yet had he to be fitted with dentures. People thought he was nearing sixty, but he knew he was seventy-four.
The casualties! A mulga splinter and tetanus had taken his wife five years before this day, and Nature’s withholding of rain had reduced his sheep to a little below a thousand when he and Eric had gone to town for the Annual Bender.
A Kingdom! It needs a stout heart to be king of such.
He had given the dog a mash of meat extract and tinned meat, and had breakfasted on tinned meat and bread, with further pannikins of tea, when Midnight Long arrived in his utility. Long was sparse and tough, fifty and grey. The sobriquet had been bestowed for his habit of returning to his river homestead from an inspection of his run and the sheep long after midnight.
“They want you in at Lake Jane, John,” he said, cutting chips for his pipe, and waiting for the old man to load his dog and himself on to the seat beside him. “Eric’s busy with Mawby. Things looks pretty bad out here, eh?”
“Could be worse, I suppose,” offered John, settling into the utility. “Could be seven hundred sheep left today. Oughtn’t to have gone to Mindee on the Annual this year.”
“Would have made no difference had you stayed around ... as far as the sheep’s concerned. You could have done nothing more than Brandt did while he worked here. I assume he did his job. Always found him dependable.”
“Seems to have done it to the time he mur ... the time of the murder.”
“Bad show, John. Don’t make head or tail of it. I took a look-see at the dead man, and I’ve never seen him alive. Eric says neither you nor he has, and both Mawby and Constable Sefton have never seen him in Mindee. Now what did Brandt ... But we’ll save it. The police will be asking the questions. You know about the river flooding down?”
“Heard in Mindee.”
“Biggest river since ’27, so they say. Could bring water down the Backwash and fill your Lake Jane.”
“So!” mocked Downer. “Reminds me of the mariners’ saying: ‘Water, water everywhere. And not a blade of grass to eat.’ We don’t want water trickling over the ground; we want it falling from the blasted sky in floods.”
“It’ll come from that way, too, as you rightly know. Must come.”
“It’s a point,” agreed the old man, stroking the head of the heeler resting on a thigh. “You all get here this morning?”
“Yes. Mawby and Sefton came to my place late last night, bringing a tracker. The doctor and a police photographer flew out from the Hill this morning. I brought a couple of abos from L’Albert. Looks as though you’ll save the heeler. Pity about the kelpies. Not like Brandt to leave ’em all tied up like that. Must have thought they’d follow him, and give him away some place.”
Midnight Long braked the utility to a halt before the front steps, and Eric came down from the veranda to meet them.
“Mawby says we may have our own house back,” he said, faintly bitter. “He and Sefton are about with the others, and the L’Albert aborigines are burying the dead man away back from the shearing shed. I objected to having him planted in our cemetery, and when I told Mawby to take the body back to Mindee, he didn’t seem to like it.”
“Couldn’t expect him to,” remarked Midnight Long dryly.
“Perhaps not,” agreed Eric. “Anyway, come on up. Bit early for lunch, but I have a meal ready.”
Soon after they reached the living-room, Mawby and his colleagues came in by the rear door. Besides the sergeant, there was a young-looking man, obviously the doctor because he didn’t look like a policeman and carried a brown bag; a man who did look like one and who carried a camera; and Constable Sefton, tall, large and mulga-like in outward toughness. The introductions having been made, and hosts and guests seated, Sergeant Mawby took command.
“Nice being here,” he said, his brown eyes beaming at the Downers. “Pity about this murder, though. Sort of spoils the day. Ah! Cup of tea! I’ll be asking for half a dozen.”
“The feller was killed, then?” asked John.
“Doctor Truscott, here, says he was hit with a blunt instrument, as the saying goes; both heavy and blunt. About twenty hits. And no one seems to know who he is. You never saw him before?”
“Not to my knowledge,” replied John.
“Must have drifted down from the north. We don’t know him in Mindee. What time did you get home yesterday?”
“I told you that,” interposed Eric, and blandly Sergeant Mawby pointed out that he was putting the question to his father.
“About five-ish, I think,” answered Downer patiently. “Bit hazy about the time. I was sufferin’, as you’ll understand.”
“Don’t we all!” agreed Mawby, smiling broadly. “Anyway, it isn’t important. What we would like to nail, though, is the time that that feller was killed. Doctor Truscott thinks it was about a week. Nothing alive about the place, except the crows?”
“Only the heeler. We saved him.”
“Oh! There was a live dog, then? Chained to his kennel like the others?”
“That’s so. He was all in. Must have been there a week.”
“Ah! Now that’s what I call co-operation. Could you be a little more definite, doctor?”
/> “An autopsy would have assisted us....”
“Now, doctor, you would not have wanted that feller on the plane with you, and I didn’t want him with me all the way to Mindee.” Mawby lit his pipe. “Well, Constable Cliff has his pictures. You can sign the death certificate, and Mr Long, being a Justice, can sign for the burial. Before we leave, I’ll get you Downers to make a statement of what you found here, and we’ll have the abos put their prints to a joint statement of their work this morning.”
“There will be an inquest?” murmured Midnight Long.
“Of course, sir. Now there is a little matter I’d like to mention.” The sergeant produced a spill of paper, and, pushing back the tablecloth, carefully unrolled the paper to disclose a lock of hair. “This hair was found clutched in the dead man’s hand, and it would appear to have been pulled from the head of his killer. According to Doctor Truscott, the first blow to his head mightn’t have caused instant death, so we may assume from the hair that there was a struggle, and the disarray in this room indicates that the struggle took place here. Constable Sefton, describe Carl Brandt.”
“Age about forty-five. Weight about a hundred and forty. Fair hair tinged with grey at the temples. Blue eyes. Long face. Has a slightly foreign accent.”
“So you see, gentlemen, this hair didn’t come from the head of Carl Brandt.”
John Downer, sitting next to the sergeant, leaned sideways to look more closely at the lock of hair.
“That hair wasn’t pulled from anyone’s head,” he said sharply. “It’s been cut off, either with a sharp knife or scissors.”
“Just so, John, just so,” agreed Sergeant Mawby.
Chapter Four
Some Wells are Deep
JOHN DOWNER took over the chore of preparing lunch, and with him in the kitchen-living-room was Midnight Long, the others being busy outside somewhere, and, according to Eric, rushing around in circles. Downer thoughtfully asked:
Bony and the Black Virgin Page 2