Death of a Lake. Arthur W. Upfield
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and the house managed expertly. The main cause of contention between these women, Martyr shrewdly guessed, was their closeness in age, for the mother was still young, still vitally attractive, retaining that something of wantonness she had bequeathed to the girl. The husband? No one knew anything of the husband.
Martyr recalled Lake Otway on his accepting the appointment. The Lake was dry then, and the domestic staff comprised a man cook and the lubra wife of one of the hands. The house was merely a place to sleep in; these two quarrelling women gave it life.
When he was entering the office the telephone rang twice. The call would be for George Barby, who cooked for stockmen at Sandy Well, midway between the main homestead and the out-station. Martyr seated himself at the desk and filled a pipe, and had applied a match when the telephone rang thrice ... the Lake call. He counted ten before taking up the instrument.
“Morning, Dick!” spoke a deep, tuneful voice.
“Morning, Mr Wallace.”
“How’s the Lake this morning?”
“Two feet ten. Gone down an inch since yesterday afternoon.”
“H’m! No sign of rain, and Inigo Jones says we needn’t expect any till March 18th. Feed still going off?”
“Within a couple of miles of the Lake, yes. Rabbits in millions. More ’roos, too, this last week than I’ve ever seen. Moving in from the dry areas. White Dam is down to four feet.”
“Better shift those hoggets, then,” advised the Boss. “In fact, Dick, we’d better think of shifting a lot of sheep from your end to the Sandy Well paddocks. When the Lake goes, it’ll go quick. The last foot of water could dry out in a day. It did last time, I remember. We lost two thousand ewes in the Channel that time. What d’you intend doing today?”
“I’ll send Carney out to ride White Dam paddock. And MacLennon to Johnson’s Well to make a report on the mill and pump and tank.”
“Better get Lester to go along with Mac, and remind ’em to lower a light down the well before they go down. The air will be foul after all this time.”
“All right, Mr Wallace. What about the horses? Any sight of a breaker?”
“Yes, I was coming to that,” replied the Boss. “Feller here now, wanting breaking work. Good references. I’ll send him out tomorrow on the truck. Let me know tonight what you want out there.”
“The breaker, is he to have a free hand?”
“As he’ll be working on contract, yes. Feed with the men, of course. The name’s Bony.”
“Bony what?”
“Just Bony. Talks like a uni’ professor. Queenslander, I think. When you’ve drafted off the youngsters for him, better send all the spares in here. We’ll put ’em in the Bend. Well, I’ll ring again tonight.”
The line went dead, and Martyr replaced the instrument and reached for his wide-brimmed felt. On leaving the office at the side of the house he faced across a two-acre space to the men’s quarters. Backed by a line of pepper trees to his right stood the store, the machinery and motor sheds, the harness room, the stable for the night horse, and beyond this line of buildings were the stock and drafting yards, the well and windmill, and the pumping house. The hands were waiting at the motor shed for orders.
There were seven men ... five white and two black. The aborigines were flashily dressed, the white men content with cotton shirts and skin-tight trousers which had been boiled and boiled until all the original colour had gone with the suds.
The overseer called a name, and one of the aborigines came to him and was told to ride a paddock fence fifteen miles in length. The other aborigine he sent to see that sheep had not huddled into a paddock corner. A Swede, who had been unable to conquer his accent despite forty years in Australia, he sent to oil and grease a windmill, and a short, grey-eyed, tough little man named Witlow he despatched to see if cattle were watering regularly at a creek water-hole. Carney, young, alert, blond, smiling, was sent to White Dam to note the depth of water again. There was left MacLennon, dour, black-moustached, dark-eyed and with a prognathous jaw. A good man with machinery.
“Want you to look-see over Johnson’s Well, Mac. You’ll have to take the portable pump to lower the water in the shaft. Get the well pump out and inspect. Have a go at the mill, too. Make a note of everything that needs replacement. The truck will be coming out tomorrow.”
“Just as well. The ruddy Lake won’t last much longer by the look of her, Mr Martyr.”
“And send a light down the well before you go down.”
“Oh, she’ll be all right.”
“That’s what the feller said up on Belar,” Martyr coldly reminded MacLennon. “That well is still all right, Mac, but the feller who went down without testing five years ago has been dead five years. You’d better take Lester to give a hand. Use the ton truck. I’ll tell Lester to draw your lunches.”
Lester was coming from breakfast and Martyr met him. He was middle-aged, shrivelled like a mummy by the embalming sun and wind. He affected a straggling moustache to hide his long nose. His pale-blue eyes were always red-rimmed and watery, and he was cursed by a sniffle which deputized as a chuckle. A good stockman, a reliable worker, for the time being Bob Lester was acting homestead rouseabout, doing all the chores from bringing in the working hacks early to milking cows and slaughtering ration sheep at evening.
“Morning, Bob!”
“Mornin’, Mr Martyr!” The watery eyes peered from under bushy grey brows.
“Not up your street Bob, but would you go with Mac to Johnson’s?” Without waiting for assent, Martyr concluded: “Draw your lunches, and give Mac a hand with the portable pump. By the way, the breaker will be coming out tomorrow.”
Lester sniffed.
“Tomorrow, eh! Do we know him?”
“I don’t. Goes by the name of Bony. A caste, from what the Boss implied. Ever hear of him?”
“No ... not by that name. Them sort’s terrible good with horses when they’re good, and terrible bad when they’re crook.” Lester claimed the truism. “You giving him an off-sider?”
“Haven’t decided,” replied the overseer, abruptly distant, and Lester sniffled and departed to ask Mrs Fowler to provide lunches.
Martyr strolled to the shed housing the power plant and started the dynamo. From there he crossed to the stock-yards, where the men were saddling horses. The night horse used by Lester to bring in the workers was waiting, and Martyr mounted the horse to take the unwanted hacks back to their paddock, a chore normally falling to the rouseabout. On his return, he assisted MacLennon and Lester to load the portable pump and saw they had the right tools for the work at Johnson’s Well, and after they had driven away he went into the house and stood for the second time this morning on the front veranda overlooking Lake Otway.
Although Richard Martyr was acknowledged to be a stock expert and a top-grade wool man, it had been said that he didn’t seem to fit into this background of distance and space bared to the blazing sky, but, in fact, he fitted perhaps a little too well. Moody, Mrs Fowler said of him; deep, was the daughter’s verdict. A psychiatrist would have been assisted had he known of Martyr’s secret vice of writing poetry, and could he have read some of it, the psychiatrist might have warned the patient to resist indulgence in morbid imaginings.
Even the coming dissolution of Lake Otway was beginning to weigh upon his mind, and his mind was seeking rhyming words to tell of it. Actually, of course, he was too much alone: the captain of a ship, the solitary officer of a company of soldiers, the single executive whose authority must be maintained by aloofness.
Because he had watched the birth of Lake Otway, he knew precisely what the death of Lake Otway would mean. He had watched the flood waters spread over this great depression comprising ten thousand acres, a depression which had known no water