The Channel Trap
BARBYADOPTEDTHEplan of trapping rabbits at water holes and dams, and the construction of his fences and traps was much more intricate than the wide-wing fences he had built on the Lake flats.
The entire Channel was enclosed with wire netting and here and there the wire was brought to a point facing the water, an opening at the point being made to permit rabbits to squeeze through. Thirst-crazed rabbits thus able to reach the water and take their fill could not retreat by the way they had come, and when searching for the way of escape would find it in an outward-pointing V inside one of the two large netted yards.
Bony arrived in good time to contribute his labour… physical… to the work of building the Channel trap. The men worked with good will. What energized them? What drove them despite the heat? Barby’s offer of a fair division of the ‘catch’ had its influence, but this was over-shadowed by the sporting instinct. Even Lester, with thousands of pounds under his bed, worked like a slave.
The job done, Barby went off to see how Joan was getting on with the cooking, saying he would bring herand refreshments, ‘to be in at the finish’. The others sat on the low mound spanning the mouth of the creek, and rolled smokes and tried to evade the glare of the sun striking at them across the great depression.
“I still reckon Georgeoughta been satisfied to fence only one side of that water and have only the one trap,”MacLennon argued. “If all the ’roosI’ve seen this last two weeks arrive here tonight, the ruddy fence will be flattened.”
Planof Barby’s netted fence and traps enclosing the Channel
“Have a try and keep ’emoff,” Carney said in his easy manner. “We’ve plenty of guns and ammo.”
“Yair,” agreed Lester. “By midnightthem traps should be two big blocks of fur.” He sniffled… as Bony knew he would. “Give George a job skinning ’em. Last him a week at least. When wegoin ’ to look for Ray Gillen?”
Easy attitudes visibly stiffened. Following a loaded silence, MacLennon asked:
“You in a hurry?”
“Yair,” replied Lester. “Like everyone else.”
The sun touched the far horizon over which the flood water had raced to create Lake Otway. The galahs and the white cockatoos came seeking the water and found it, whirling down to settle on the flats either side the Channel.
Birds that had been watering every evening for three years at Lake Otway now came to the Channel. They alighted on the flats either side the thin ribbon of water, made suspicious at first by the fence and traps, massing in great patches of colours. The galahs crowded together their grey backs and the dots of pink combs, and the MajorMitchel cockatoos splashed white and raised their combs to produce pink dots on white.
They topped every inch of the fence and the trap-yards and tumbled to the verge of the water and lowered and lifted their heads like mechanical toys. Every minute additionalflocks arrived. The crows came to whirl among those aloft and deliberately generate deeper suspicion in the vociferous parrots, and make still more shy the hundreds of emus who stalked the flats wide out.
“Better have a go for Gillen in the morning,” suggestedMacLennon, his voice raised to defeat the cacophony of the birds. “Whend’you reckon Martyr ought to be back?”
“Some time tonight, if the Boss doesn’t want him to go on to the River,” replied Carney. “Better hunt for Gillen in the morning, because after the Boss and the rest get out we won’t stand a chance. It seems to be a matter of pulling together… or else.”
“Should have looked for him today,” Lester said.
“You seem mighty anxious, Bob,” sneered the ex-fighter.
“Yair,” agreed Lester with ill-feigned nonchalance.“Seems we all got a stake in Gillen. Even me and George and Bony.”
“Meaning?” demandedMacLennon.
“You don’t needtellin ’, Mac. Gillen had a lot of dough. He had a locket. The locket leads to the dough, don’t it?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Carney.
Lester actually giggled before he sniffled.
“Not much gets past me,” he claimed, triumph pictured on his unshaven face.“Caw! Look at them birds.”
MacLennonwriggled sideways like a crab to bring himself closer and able to talk with less demand on his vocal chords. His broad features were distorted by anger.
“That locket belongs to me,” he shouted. “I won it off Gillen, see? What’s mine is mine. So you keep out of it, Bob. I’mmeanin ’ that.”
“Quite a few birds around, eh?” remarked Carney to Bony, obviously with the intention of easing the strain. Of these three men, his was the firmest character and he was now beginning to assert it.
The appearance of Barby and Joan Fowler could have been the cause ofMacLennon’s withdrawal from argument. The trapper carried a bucket of hot coffee and the girl had brought a loaded dish of sweet scones. Wearing a pair of light drill trousers and a man’s shirt, her almost blatant femininity was a travesty despite her powdered face and scarlet lips.
The first rabbit appeared to their right, running over the sandbar, running fast and direct, never pausing to look for possible enemies, flogged by the craving for water after the hours of terrible heat. The fence stopped it, flung it back, and it crouched obviously not understanding what had barred its progress.
The animal was recognizable only by its colour and shape, all its natural attributes of caution, of swift alertness, of gentle and graceful movement having vanished during the hours of its torture by the sun. It pawed the netting, frantically, standing on its hind legs, and not having the sense to climb the netting like a cat. It tested the wire with its teeth before running along the fence, to reach at last an inward pointing V, and so finding the hole to pass through. It thrust indignant birds aside to lap the water.
Carney touched Bony’s arm and pointed over the depression.
“Fence won’t stand up long after dark,” he worried.
Beyond the birds the kangaroos were gathering. The nearest were squatting, erect, ears attuned to catch the sounds about the trap, nostrils twitching to register suspicious scents. Beyond them others came loping over the dry lake bed, and already the dust rose from their passage.
The birds maintained their uproar, filling the air about the men. Birds were drowned in the Channel. Birds were staggering about on themarge inside the fence, their feathers wet, shrieking anger and defiance, being buffeted by others and by rabbits.
There were now a dozen rabbits drinking. There were a hundred outside. They came like speeding drops of brown water over the dunes, over the flats, never halting, minus caution, motivated only by the urge to drink. They joined those at the fence, trickled through the holes to the water where they parted the birds to drink. The men watched the first water-laden rabbit enter a trap-yard.
An eagle appeared floating through the bird cloud. It tipped a wing and side-slipped to snatch a running rabbit. The rabbit hung by its rump from the iron beak, and they could see its pink mouth widen in a scream when, to stop its struggles, and to clear the lesser birds, the eagle drove its talons into its vitals. Through the birds on the flats, like a ship moving at sea, a dingo loped, betraying exhaustion, its red tongue lolling, its flanks tucked to its backbone. The dog took no notice of the rabbits orthey of it. It butted the fence as though it were blind, sat and stared. The lolling tongue was drawn up under the snarling upper lip, and with the resolution of despair the animal drove at the netting, rose on hind legs to paw its way up and over. It plunged into the water and drank as it swam.
“I better fetch the guns,” Barby shouted.
“Bring mine, George!” requestedMacLennon. “And that red box of cartridges on top of me swag. Wegotta keep them ’roosoff, or they’ll flatten the fence.”
Lester went with George, and Bony glanced at the girl sitting with her hands clasped across her drawn-up knees. Her eyes were hooded. The evening light tended to soften her features, to give her hair a more brilliant tint. Carney moved to sit close to her, but she did not speak in answer to what he said, did not permit the intrusion to disturb her evident absorption in the terrible struggle for survival.
Bony went down to the fence where the rabbits were beginning to mass in a wide ribbon. They were pouring through the V points. They were jammed against the wire. They were gnawing at it, and none took notice of Bony’s boots as he edged through them. A V point was choked by a rabbit that had died in the act of passing through, and he cleared the hole. He straightened the netting where the dingo had pawed it, and he witnessed the dog clamber over the opposite fence and lope slowly away.
The dusk was creeping over the depression, but the birds would not leave. They whirled about him like coloured snow-flakes, and continued to cover the flats, and when he walked wide of the fence they reminded him of that eveningWitlow and he had waded in Lake Otway and the ducks had parted before them and closed in after them.
On coming to the far end of the Channel he paused awhile to marvel at the number of kangaroos and to note that of all the animals they only still retained their normal attributes, and he was wondering if this was due to higher intelligence when his attention was caught by what could be the body of a large fish now beneath the coverlet of massed galahs. Had not the light been tricky, he might not have noticed this hump where one ought not to be.
Recalling Lester’s theory of what had happened to Gillen’s body, he walked on through the birds, who at this moment chose to rise with a roar of wings and screams of defiance and depart for roosts. Even when fifty yards off the hump he could not now see it, but eventually coming to it his curiosity was richly rewarded.
The skeleton was shrouded with tiny weeds which covered the floor of once Lake Otway, the weed now dead and brittle as itlay over the depression… a perfect camouflage.
He turned and slowly walked back to the Channel. The ’rooscrept after him. The rabbits came running between them, running after Bony, passing him, to run onward to the magnet of water. Without trouble, he caught one. It screamed and struggled. He put it down, and it ran on as though it had not been hindered.
Well, there was the unfortunate Gillen, and there were the men and the woman on the distant sandbar who had waited long for Lake Otway to die that they might find his remains. According to Lester, what the others wanted was the locket about the skeleton’s neck, the locket giving the clue to Gillen’s money. But Gillen’s money was under Lester’s bed. And Mrs Fowler was dead under the ruins of the homestead.
Again skirting the Channel, the last of the birds continued their struggle for water. Scores were drowned, others were drowning. The bodies of rabbits floated on the black surface. There were more living rabbits inside the fence than could find space at the water’s edge, and now and then one of the drinkers was bitten and it leaped forward to plunge into the water and swim. They swam like dogs. All headed away from the land as though strongly determined to reach the other side, but in every case when they had proceeded a yard or two they panicked and swam in an ever-narrowing circle until they lowered their heads below the surface as though compelled to suicide.
The traps were deep with animals. At each corner they were standing on hind legs, biting the wire to get out, and, like little chickens who crowd into a corner and smother, so did the rabbits.
The party on the sandbar was breaking up, and Barby came hurrying to Bony, offering a Winchester rifle and a box of cartridges. The excitement in the trapper’s eyes, the tremor in his voice, did not escape Bony or estrange his sympathy, for Barby was like a man who has stumbled on an outcrop of gold-loaded quartz.
“Goin’ to be big, Bony,” he cried. “I never knew it could be like this, did you?”
“No, George not like this,” Bony admitted. “I’ll go back to the tip of the Channel. Be sure to make the others understand where everyone is positioned, for when the moon goes down it will be very dark, and accidents can easily happen.”
“Yair. Right! I’ll tell them. No firing at the fence, or along it, either. Thanks for giving a hand.”
Bony made his way back to the extremity of the Channel… made his way because he had literally to kick the rabbits from his path. The dusk was eating the salmon-pink dunes and the eagles were compelled at last to seek roosts on the topmost limbs of dead gums… that is, if they roosted at all, which Bony, like manybushmen, doubted.
He waved his gun and shouted, and the Channel behind him was now itself a living thing. It actually appeared to breathe, to pulsate, to moan and heave. Rabbits brushed against his legs. Rabbits sped over his feet. Rabbits surged over the now invisible ground like ocean waves on shingle.
Although he hated it, he had to do his share of defending the fence. He shot a kangaroo that rose up within two yards of him, and thereafter shot many others, taking small comfort in that the slaughter would provide Barby with hides for his market.
All about the Channel the foxes were gathering and barking as though in sadistic approval of this flameless hell.