Passing of Lake Otway
WHENTHEGROUNDat foot was still hotter than the rays of the setting sun, they went down to the Lake… everyone, including the women. When the overseer and the two women had emerged from the house, the men had automatically joined them, as though magnetized by inevitability. No one spoke as they crossed the iron-hard flats to the softermarge which had been covered with water only that morning.
The pale-yellow solidified light that had been Lake Otway this last day of its existence was now a tarnished wafer of old gold, heavy, metallic, flat. Far outward from the ‘shore’ blemishes constantly appeared, dabs of nigger-brown which moved to draw silver lines quickly erased. The divers couldn’t dive any more, and they sat upon the metallic wafer like little china ducks, and here and there in grand but terrible isolation the ibis and the heron and the crane stood motionless as though dead.
Far out beyond them the ducks were congregated as the pelicans had gathered, and they waited for the leaders to take off along the sky-ways to far-away waters. Two cormorants perched atop the marker post, their wings drooping to dry as though in mockery of the Lake. The only note of joy in life was struck by the gulls who rode upon the golden wafer, high and clean and beautiful.
Bodies rested on themarge, bodies rested along the edge of the water, the countless bodies of fish. Beyond the dead fish the doomed sought frantically to evade the inevitable. Their broad backs were the dark dabs on the wafer of gold, their bodies drawing the silver lines’ upon it. The marker post no longer registered.
After the sun had gone the colour of Lake Otway swiftly changed, taking from the western sky its coating of crimson, and Mrs Fowler cried:
“Isn’t it awful? It’s like a plate of tomato soup.”
AndMacLennon said:
“By this time tomorrow we’ll be able to walk across without getting our boots muddy.”
Yet again the night came upwards from the ground. It turned the water to molten lead. It crept like a mist over the flats, about the feet of the watchers, dimming the greyish legs of the cranes. It drew everything down and down as though Earth and everything upon it was a hell being banished from the glory of the sky.
The sky was salmon-pink to the west, merging with emerald-green, passing to the blue of Bony’s eyes down by the eastern horizon. They could not see the beginning of the bird migration, but through the rising night there came to the watchers the whirring of wings, faint and yet momentous. Then beneath the celestial canopy appeared the ducks in formations, moving fast and sure. The wading birds flap-flapped their way upwards, and the cormorants weaved about them. Presently only the gulls remained. The gulls hovered about the watchers like the ghosts of the departed.
“I’m going to the house,” Mrs Fowler decided, hysteria in her voice. “I’ve had enough.”
She moved away through the rising night towards the bluff. The face of the bluff and the walls of the buildings were dove-grey, but the windows were oblongs of blood. Lester spoke, and the woman spun about as though struck.
“Tomorrerwe’ll be able to look around for Ray Gillen.”
“Why bring that up?” drawled Carney.
“Why not? We all beenwaitin ’ to find him, ain’t we? Ray’s somewhere about… what’s left ofhim. ”
“Don’t count me in,” flashed Carney. “I’m not interested in finding Ray Gillen. Never was. I had nothing to do with him… not like some people.”
“Well, you can all ride out tomorrow,” Martyr said, quietly. “Gillen ought to be found and be decently buried. And then we ought to suffer less from bickering.”
Mrs Fowler hurried away, and the gulls fluttered after her, flew on beyond her and vanished against the dark face of the bluff. Bony felt a hand rest lightly on his forearm, and brought his gaze down to Joan’s face.
“I didn’t think the Lake would die like that,” she said, slowly. “It’s left it all naked and stiff like a… like a real body.”
“You have seen a real body?”
“I read books, stupid.”
They proceeded to the bluff steps. He asked:
“What did Lester mean when he said everyone has been waiting for the Lake to dry out in order to find Gillen’s body?”
“It’s been in our minds for a long time,” replied the girl. “You see, Ray Gillen was a… he was hard to forget. If Lester or Mac had been drowned, we’d have forgotten all about them by now. Did you hear what Carney said?”
“That he isn’t interested in finding Gillen’s body, yes.”
“When he goes riding tomorrow you keep close by. He’s interested all right. Ray used to wear a gold locket round his neck. Probably still there. Ray promised me that locket, and if Carney gets it he won’t give it up. You get it and give it to me. Will you?”
“If he promised it to you,” Bony said, with assumed doubt.
“He did, I tell you. Now no more. But remember, that locket belongs to me.”
Having arrived at the steps hewn into the bluff face, she ran up them and was nowhere in view when Bony reached the top. Lights sprang up in the house and someone switched on the light in the men’s quarters.
Bony found Carney already in the sitting-room settling down to read a magazine. Lester slumped into the arm-chair on the veranda, and Bony joined him to sit on the boards and roll a cigarette.
“Stinker of a night, ain’t it?” Lester complained, and Bony agreed. “Sort of night that dynamo engine gets on me nerves. Bang, bang, bang, right into me head.”
“I think I’ll carry my bunk outside for the night,” Bony decided.“Too hot in the room.”
“Good idea. You might give me a hand with mine. Set ’emup back of the building where they’ll be in the shade first thing in the morning. Blasted heat-waves. Can’t stand ’emlike Iusta. Hear how Carney bit just now when I said abouthuntin ’ for Gillen?”
“Methinks he doth protest too much.”
“Caw! Youmusta got that off Martyr. He knows a lot of them sayings. Puts ’eminto his poetry, too.”
“He writes poetry?”
“Pretty good at it. You understand it?”
“Genuine poetry, yes.”
“Can’t stand a bar of it.”
MacLennonappeared from the darkness.
“Took a screw at the thermometer,” he said.“A hundred and three. In the shade! In the night! A hundred and three! Be a bitch of a day tomorrow.”
“We’re sleeping outside,” Bony told him. “Give me a hand with the beds?”
At break of day the flies woke every man, and Carney said he had had the bush and would quit.
“Better not,” advisedMacLennon.“Mightn’t be safe.”
They glared at each other, and Carney, becoming angry, drawled:
“If I want to quit, I quit, Mac. What you might be thinking don’t trouble me.”
“No? Well, go ahead and see what happens. No one quitson his own .”
“Yair, that’s right,” interposed Lester. “No one quits till we agrees on thedivi.” The interjection appeared to calm the others. They both stared at Lester, and Carney said:
“It’s up to you, Bob. Spill it.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t. It’s up to you or Mac.”
“Aw, what’s the use,” snarledMacLennon. “Shut uptalkin ’ like kids. Yougoin ’ to work the horses in this heat, Bony?”
“This morning, anyway,” replied Bony. “Mustn’t let up on two I’m taking through the hoops. I’ll put in a couple of hours before breakfast.”
They lapsed into sullen silence. Bony dressed and walked to the stables for the fed horse, and knew they watched him. The risen sun already burned his flesh when he rode out for the youngsters, and when the breakfast gong was struck no living thing voluntarily ventured from the shade.
“If only the wind would rise,” Carney said as, with Bony, he paused to look out over the Lake as they crossed to the annexe.
“If only to shoo the flies from pestering our eyes.”Bony heartily agreed. “As you did this morning, I feel like quitting. Too hot to work. Might put in a week with George and the rabbits. That’s not water down there. The water has vanished.”
“Yes. Bloody shame.”
The gleaming shield still covered Lake Otway, but now areas of mottled grey dulled the shield, and Bony fancied that, even as he watched, these areas were expanding. Following breakfast, he looked again at the Lake. Those grey areas were spreading fast as the last of the surface moisture was sucked up by the murderous sun.
At morning smoko, the temperature in the pepper tree shade was 117 degrees, and on Lake Otway there wasn’t sufficient moisture to service a postage stamp.
Nevertheless, the depression wasn’t yet hard enough to bear a horse, and Martyr had sentMacLennon out on a job, and he himself had taken Carney on the utility to work some miles away. Lester, who had been told to take life easy, was hugging the shade of thequarters veranda and reading a sporting paper when Bony rode off to visit George Barby.
He found the trapper had shifted camp to Johnson’s Well, and that he had begun the erection of his fence around the Channel. Barby was cooking at a fire outside the hut when Bony arrived and neck-roped his horse to a shady tree.
“How’s things?” shouted Barby. “Come in out of the sun and have a cuppa tea.”
The dogs barked with no enthusiasm. The galah, perched on a biscuit tin, kept its beak wide open and panted, its wings drooping and reminding Bony of the cormorants. The cats watched Bony, their mouths wide and pink, and their flanks working like bellows. And Barby, lean and tough, was naked save for the towel tethered about his middle with string.
“Prettyflamin ’ hot, ain’t it?” he said, pouring the ‘cuppa’ into a tin pannikin for his guest.“Sugar on the truck. Bit of brownie in the box.”
“A hundred and seventeen when I left,” Bony told him.
“Don’t talk about it. I give up labour. Even the blasted cats can’t take it. Look at ’em. Got to nurse ’em. Watch!”
Taking the canvas water-bag from the hook suspended from the hut veranda, he stroked one of the cats and without difficulty persuaded it to lie flat on its back. Slowly he tipped the bag and poured the comparatively cool water on the animal’s tummy, and the cat squirmed with pleasure and began to purr. In like fashion, he treated the other cat and, to Bony’s amusement, the galah flopped off the biscuit tin and came staggering to them, wings trailing, beak wide with distress.
“If you think I’mgoin ’ to keep on doing this all day, you’re mistaken,” Barby protested.
The galah tumbled over its head to lie on its back like the cats. Barby scooped a rough hole in the sand and poured water into it. He held a finger low and the bird clasped it and suffered itself to be lifted and lowered into the hole, back downward. Then Barby sloshed water over it, and the bird sat up like an angry old man and swore. Then it lay down again and would have purred if able.
“Ruddy characters,” Barby claimed. “Poor bastards, they can’t stand this heat.” Genuine pity stirred his voice, and he tried to hide it by saying: “There’sseven or eight crows in that tree where you tied your horse. If it gets much hotter they’regoin ’ to perform. You know who chucked allthem birds out of that tank?”
“Should I?” countered Bony. “When was it done?”
“Night before last. Anyone missing from thequarters night before last?”
“MacLennon, Lester, Carney.”
“What about Martyr?”
“I don’t know about him,” Bony smiled. “I mentioned to the men that the birds in the tank were to within a few inches of the top. It puzzled them, and Lester said they were not that high when he looked in some time ago.”
“Wonder what they expected to find,” chortled Barby.“Money? Hell! Gillen? Perhaps. You got no idea who it was?”
“Lester. He was bashed on leaving the tank.”
Bony told of Lester’s ruse to allay suspicion by saying he had been tossed, and Barby grinned.
“I knew it was Lester,” he said, triumphantly. “I was over here at sun-up yesterday morning, gettingdrinkin ’ water, and right against the tank I found his old beret. He never went anywhere after dark without it. So Bob Lester can’t know where Ray Gillen’s money is planted. Wonder why they bashed him.”
“You don’t know who bashed him?”
Barby’sdark eyes were abruptly hard.
“No. Think I should?”
“As I see it, George, Carney and Mac followed Lester. They waited for him to empty the tank. When he jumped out, one of them bashed him
… hard enough to knock him out for several hours. Doesn’t it appear to you that Carney andMacLennon both were after the money and thought it possible that Lester found it among the dead birds?”
“Looks like it, don’t it?”
“Therefore, Carney andMacLennon also cannot know where Gillen’s money is.”
“H’m!” grunted the trapper. “Bit of a mix-up, eh?”