Barby stopped at the tanks, waved to Bony and proceeded to fill his tins. The dogs came across to make friends and then lie in the hut shadow with Bony. One of the rabbits charged out through the doorway, and the dogs simply were not interested. They accepted rabbits with the boredom with which they tolerated their stick-fast fleas.
Barby eventually came over to squat and load a pipe.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Layin’ off?”
“Toughening a youngster,” replied Bony. “Where are you camped?”
“Couple of miles round the Lake. There’s millions of rabbits coming to water, and I’m gonna fence a strip of coast and trap ’em.”
The cook was no longer a cook. He wore a grubby grey flannel vest, old and patched tweed trousers and rubber-soled sand-shoes which once could have been white. The sun already had sizzled his face and bare arms, had puckered his hazel eyes and stiffened his brown hair.
“If I had a farthing for every rabbit around this Lake,” he said with slow emphasis, “I’d claim to own half Australia. Heard over the air once that there’s five million rabbits in Australia. Well, all but ten of ’em is drinkin’ at Lake Otway.”
“All but ten million?”
“All but ten. Eight, nine, ten. Those ten is down at Canberra laughing at the scientists. You think that mysotis any good to bump off all the rabbits in Australia?”
“Myxomatosis!” corrected Bony. “No. It’s partially effective, I think, on small farms and along rivers where the mosquitoes are busy.”
“The rabbit’ll beat the scientists, don’t you reckon?” Barby persisted.
“The rabbits will beat any germ, any man, any thing,” Bony said with conviction. “What the people in the cities and towns cannot grasp is the immensity of this land mass called Australia, and another thing they cannot grasp is that the Australian rabbit has been fighting droughts, sun, eagles and foxes, poison baits and George Barbys for a hundred years, and is still winning.”
“Too right they have,” Barby agreed, earnestly. “Nothing’s going to stop ’em. Why, the young does when they’re six weeks old begin to litter fives and sevens every six weeks after. They’re the greatest breeding machines that ever was. Let ’em multiply, I says.”
“They do eat feed and drink water needful for stock,” Bony mildly countered.
“So what?” Barby asked. “They ain’t doin’ no real harm to Australia. The rabbit is the poor man’s food and always has been. If the scientists do knock them out, which they won’t, and if the squatters do rear twice as many sheep, will the price of mutton be any lower? Will the cost of blankets and clothes be any cheaper? Or the price of tobacco and booze come down any? No hope. But the squatters and the farmers will be able to buy more motorcars and machinery to rust away in the paddocks, ’cos they’re too damn lazy to put ’em under cover, and they’ll pay a bit more in taxes to let the blasted politicians have more world tours and get higher pensions when the people heaves ’em out into the cold, cold snow. And that’s all the scientists are being paid to bump off the rabbits for.”
“Don’t worry,” soothed Bony. “Brer Rabbit will last for ever. How are you to clean them up here?”
“Drop-netted fences. Stop ’em getting to the water. Or stop ’em makin’ back from water. Water they must have. And feed they must have. Wish Red could turn up. Me and him can skin five thousand a day. He’s a champ. And five thousand a day for five years wouldn’t be missed round Lake Otway. How are you gettin’ on with the gals at the out-station?”
The unexpected question momentarily rocked Bony.
“Pleasantly enough,” he replied disarmingly.
“Bit stuck up with you?”
The indirect reference to his birth was not missed. As it was not intended to hurt, Bony took firm hold of the cue and played the stroke.
“Perhaps they think I’m dumb. A caste earning good money. Be nice to him, and he’ll be persuaded to send down to the city for expensive presents.”
“That’s about it, Bony. They never tried it on me, but there’s them they have. Chisellers, they are. Been here too long. But blokes like me and you can see through them. You hear about the feller who was drowned in this Lake?”
“Yes. Red mentioned him at dinner one day.”
“Name of Gillen, Ray Gillen. Went swimming in the Lake one night and stayed put. So they say. Me and Red has other thinks about that. I was trapping at the time, but living at the men’s quarters. Things were getting sort of tense, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh! How, tense?”
Barby had let his pipe get cold, and he picked up an ember from Bony’s fire, balanced it on the bowl and drew noisily.
“It’s a sort of history,” he said. “Beginning from when them women came out from Broken Hill. Everything was smooth as pie then and they certainly made a difference. The young ’un could ride; Martyr used to take her out to look at the Lake and things.
“Then, accordin’ to Red, there was a sort of bust-up. Red added a sum and probably got the wrong answers, but Martyr suddenly stopped taking the girl out riding. Seems that the mother complained she was left to do all the work, but it could be she was jealous at the daughter getting off with Martyr.
“Anyhow, after that it got sort of quiet, right up to the time Gillen came. He came from Ivanhoe way, and he had to push his bike the last half-mile to this place ’cos it broke down. He had tucker with him, so he camped a day or two right here and tried to fix the bike. When he couldn’t, he walked to the out-station with the part that wanted fixing, and it happened all the blokes were out. So he stayed there till Martyr came home, and Martyr repaired the part and give him a job the next morning.
“From then on things hotted up at the out-station. Both the women fell for Gillen, and he was supposed to be after the girl. Then there was a fight between him and MacLennon, and although Mac’s done some ring work, Gillen beat him. He’d take the girl out on his bike. Then he’d take the mother for a ride, and they didn’t know which of ’em he was after. He almost came to bashing Carney who camped with him and, being of about the same age, they sort of stuck together. Lester said something cross-eyed, and Gillen floored Lester, and apologized next morning. The women got into holts over nothing, so they said, but under it was Gillen. Then one night we all goes to bed, and he decides to go swimming, and that was the last anyone seen of him.”
“Any trouble that day?” Bony asked.
“No. Been no trouble for a week. The night he went for a swim we was all playing poker in the quarters.”
“Money?”
“No. Matches.”
“Gillen had a suitcase,” Barby went on. “It was a flash case, too. He kept the key on a cord with a gold locket round his neck. And one day Red was sittin’ on Carney’s bed yarning to Gillen, and Gillen wanted a change of undies, and takes off the cord to open the case. And after he took ’em out he had to kneel on the lid to lock the case, it was that full.
“The day after Gillen was missed, Martyr got me and Lester to look see while he goes through the case to find out who Gillen’s relations are. I didn’t know then what Red saw about Gillen kneeling on the lid, not when Martyr opened the case. The case wasn’t full at all. It was less than three parts full. It’s only after Red and me talked it over that we wonder what happened to the inside of that case from the time Red seen Gillen open it to the time I seen Martyr open it. It wasn’t as though Gillen’s few things on the bed table made up for it. They didn’t.”
Opportunity favoured Bony.
“You say Gillen always kept the case locked. And the key on a cord round his neck. How did Martyr open it?”
“How? Why, he just pushed the catches aside. Cripes, Bony! You’re all there. I never thought of that angle. That case wasn’t locked when Martyr opened it.”
“Martyr didn’t have the key and the locket on the cord?”
“Not that I remember. No, he couldn’t of had. Gillen had the cord round his neck. He never took it off,
that I do know as well as Red.”
“And you think someone took something from that case?” Bony prompted.
Barby nodded, slowly, significantly.
“Yair, Bony. Money was took from that case.”
“Money!”
“A lot of money. I’ll tell you why I’m sure it was money. Seven or eight days before Gillen got drowned, I was along the shore one night looking at me traps. There was a moon, good enough for me to work without a light, and I’m coming back from the end of me trapline ... I was workin’ a hundred spring traps ... when I heard voices, and I just had time to slip behind a tree.
“I seen it was Harry Carney with young Joan Fowler. They wasn’t walkin’ arm-in-arm. Just walkin’ polite. Joan says, calm as you like: ‘I’m not marrying on a few hundred pounds, Harry.’ And Harry says: ‘Well, the four hundred odd I’ve got saved up would give us a good start.’ She says: ‘That’s what you think. It wouldn’t go far these days. When I marry you you’ll have to be rich. And you know what to do.’
“Harry says: ‘Now look, Joan, I couldn’t do that, even though the money musta been stolen, and he wouldn’t dare to make a song and dance about it being stolen from him.’ Well, that’s what I hear ’em say before they got too far away. I waited by that tree and presently they comes back, still arguing about a lot of money someone’s stolen and what could be stolen in turn. Joan says: ‘Aren’t I worth it, Harry? Think of the wonderful times we’d have. You know I love you.’ Harry still says he couldn’t do it, whatever she wanted him to do about stealing stolen money. And she was still kidding him on when they got out of my hearing.”
“And you think Carney knew there was a lot of money in Gillen’s suitcase?” Bony pressed, nonchalance well acted.
“Yes. I didn’t know what to think at the time, but I thunk it out since.”
“But Joan didn’t marry Carney, so Carney couldn’t have taken money from Gillen’s case.”
“That’s so, Bony. But Carney knew the money was in the case, and he told Joan about it. I’ll bet he looked inside the case that morning he woke up and found Gillen hadn’t come back. He could have taken the money then and planted it somewhere. Or someone could have beaten him to it. If it was the money missin’ what sunk the tide in Gillen’s case, then someone’s got it and whosoever is still at the out-station, ’cos not a man left the place since Gillen was drowned.”
Bony looked dumb, frowning perplexedly at the cooktrapper.
“I don’t get it,” he admitted. “If anyone took a lot of cash from Gillen’s case, then why didn’t he go on a bender? If Carney took it why didn’t he run off with Joan?”
“That beats me, too, Bony. But I’m as sure as we’re sittin’ here that Carney and Joan knew about a lot of money in Gillen’s case, so much money that it must have been stolen. P’raps, when Carney wouldn’t lift it, Joan got someone else to do it, and that someone double-crossed her. There’s doublecrossing all round, if you ask me. They’re all like hungry dogs watchin’ each other to find out where the bone’s buried. And nicely planted that bone is, I’ll bet.”
“You may be right,” conceded Bony, feigning admiration of Barby’s perspicacity.
“I’m right enough,” Barby averred. “And you and me could do a deal. You keep your eyes and ears open. Tip me off about what goes on over there. We might find that planted dough, and then we go fifty-fifty. We can easily face out in my ute, and nothing could be said by nobuddy.”
Chapter Eight
Effervescence
ANOTHER WEEK WAS devoured by the year, and nothing happened save that the two aborigines were sent with sheep to Sandy Well and Lester returned to his chores as rouse-about. Now the thermometer registered above the century every day, and the Lake began to look grey and tired.
One still morning an audience waited within the deep shade cast by the pepper tree, an audience comprising nine dogs chained to roughly-made kennels and a young woman dressed in white. Her hair held the sheen of bronze, and her eyes ... well, dogs, of course, are colour-blind.
Bony came riding a grey horse, and the girl laughed because the horse trotted. Only once had she seen a horse trotting with a rider up, and that at a Ceremonial Parade in Adelaide. When a hundred yards past the audience, Bony turned and rode back at a canter, and now the girl could but admire the action of the horse and the seat of the rider. They passed for the third time, at a gallop, the red dust springing away from the grey-tipped arrow.
Horse and rider returned again to pose for the audience, the horse standing like a statue. The pose was broken abruptly when Bony fell off the horse and lay on the ground with a foot trapped within a stirrup-iron. The girl became genuinely concerned. The horse remained a statue. Bony twisted his leg in an effort to free the foot, and the girl cried:
“Can I help? Shall I grab his bridle?”
Bony tugged at a thong, and the stirrup-leather parted from the saddle. He stood, smiling at the astonished girl. He returned the stirrup-leather to the saddle, dropped the reins, walked a little way from the horse and pretended to shade his eyes to admire a view. The horse flicked a fly away with an ear-waggle. Bony went back to him, leaned against a shoulder. Nothing happened. He shifted position and leaned hard against the animal’s rump, the toe of one foot resting negligently on the instep of the other. He lit a cigarette, blew smoke elegantly skyward, and asked:
“D’you think he’ll do?”
Joan Fowler’s eyes shone, and Bony was immensely pleased with himself, for he was experiencing one of the lesser triumphs so vitally necessary to the maintenance of the pride which sustained him in the eternal war of the two races fighting for his soul. The feeling of triumph passed, leaving him refreshed.
“He’s not one of the youngsters, is he?” Joan doubted.
“He was a youngster three weeks ago. Too soft yet for real work. Like to ride him sometime?”
“I really would.”
“You shall. But no prolonged gallops.” He smiled and she forgot he was twice her age. “D’you think I’ve earned my morning smoko?”
“Of course. It must be time.”
Then we will return this gentleman.”
He removed the saddle, slipped the bridle, and the horse found a sandy patch and went down for a roll.
With the girl beside him, he ignored the horse and walked to the yards, in through the gateway. The horse got up, undecided what to do until he heard Bony’s whistle, whereupon he trotted into the yard and bunted Bony’s back.
“I expect he wants his piece of cake.” Bony produced a handful of crumbly cake from a pocket and, leaving the horse in the yard, they proceeded to the annexe for smoko.
“And Mother’s been thinking you men got down on her cake extra well these last two weeks,” Joan remarked.
“You have no idea how your mother’s cake has been appreciated,” he said gravely, although his eyes twinkled.
“I do now.”
“Keep the secret of training horses ... until I’ve trained my last horse at Lake Otway.”
Mrs Fowler was sitting at the men’s table, her dark eyes smouldering, her lips smiling. Joan poured tea for Bony and herself, saying:
“The Boss ought to be here soon. He left at seven; so Mr Martyr told me.”
“You’re not dressed up like that because the Boss is coming,” her mother stated vehemently. “What’s the idea?”
The veneer of sophistication returned to the girl. Her eyes were masked by insolence, and deliberately she baited:
“Don’t be jealous, Mother.”
Faintly perturbed by the expressions on their faces, Bony suavely intervened.
“No quarrelling, now. It’s much too hot. A hundred and nine in the shade.”
“You keep out of it,” snapped the elder woman. “And while I’m on the subject, let me tell you this. You’re only a temporary hand here, and I won’t have you and Joan slinking away and scheming.”
“Mother! That’s enough.”
“That’s what you
think. I’m not blind nor soft.”
“You are both, my dear parent,” sneered the girl.
“And you’re nothing but a brainless clot. You’ve proved that time and again. You’re so full of yourself you think no one can see round corners.” The woman swung back to Bony. “And you’re a bigger fool that you look if you believe anything she tells you.”
The girl attempted to speak, was shouted down. Bony calmly sipped his tea, hoping to learn more about women.
“She’s only using you up,” Mrs Fowler continued, her voice raised and dark eyes blazing. The storm of anger suddenly increased so that her voice shook and syllables slipped. “She’s got you in and she’ll bilk you, like she’s bilked others. Young and luscious, eh? The itch of any man. But I’m warning you she’s more poisonous than a bottle of strychnine. Don’t you...”
“Why don’t you go and jump in the bloody lake?” asked the “young and luscious”. “You’ve had your day and can’t take it, that’s what’s wrong with you. Shut up!”
“You...” Mrs Fowler fought for control enough to scream the words. “You fool, you couldn’t even seduce a sailor.”
“Enough, my lady mother. Let’s have a cup of tea in peace.”
“And I’m not soft,” went on the older woman. “Neither is MacLennon. He’ll stop your slimy tricks. And if you think we don’t know about your little schemes you’re mistaken. You won’t get away with any more. You won’t...”
Joan snatched up the milk jug and dashed its contents against her mother’s face. She held the jug behind her shoulder to throw that, and Bony hastily removed it from her hand before she could resist. The mother gasped and wiped her eyes with the hem of her apron, and the girl turned on Bony.
“Get out and leave me to calm her down.”
There is a time for masculine discretion, and this was it. Bony filled his cup, took another slice of cake, and retreated. The door slammed shut behind him, and he sat on a case and continued his smoko. He had been there less than a minute when Lester appeared, and the watery eyes lit with momentary interest and the sniffle was almost an explosion.
Death of a Lake Page 6
