Death of a Lake. Arthur W. Upfield
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decided Gillen to seek work at Lake Otway.
There arose the inevitable doubt when a strong swimmer takes a swim shortly before midnight and is drowned, and has among his possessions a large sum of easily spendable cash. A telegram to the senior officer of police at Menindee produced a result which could be looked at from several points. The Sergeant replied that none of the people employed at Lake Otway left after Gillen was drowned. Then no one of those employed with Gillen could have stolen his money, for surely had one done so he wouldn’t stay on, but leave to enjoy the spending of it. But the fact that not one person had left was also decidedly odd, for all of them save the overseer could be typed as members of the great floating population who seldom stay in one place for more than a year.
And so, fifteen months after Gillen was assumed drowned, Inspector Bonaparte climbed into the cabin of a three-ton truck in the guise of a horse-breaker, Sergeant Mansell and Mr Wallace, the owner-manager of Porchester Station, being the only persons aware of his identity.
The horse-breaker was smoothly dressed in brown twill shirt and trousers, well worn elastic-sided riding boots, and an old broad-brimmed felt. And on the load was his neatly rolled swag of blankets and normal equipment. The truck driver wore a patched pair of greasy grey trousers, a blue denim shirt, whiskers seven days old and no boots. He was twice Bony’s weight and one inch shorter. The Boss had referred to him as Red Draffin.
Once clear of the homestead paddocks and the obstructing gates, Bony rolled a cigarette and settled for the long run. The sun this day of late January was hot and the air was clear. Bony was home, and the simple people like Red Draffin are at home here, too. Red trailed a shower of sparks from his pipe by knocking it against the outside of the door, and said:
“So you’re from Queensland, eh? From old Uradangie. Long time back when I was up there. Usta be five pubs in my time. They still doing business?”
“Four are. The Unicorn was burned down.”
“That so! Hell! Remember the Unicorn. She was kept by ole Ted Rogers. Ruddy doer he was. So was his ole woman. They took turns in minding the bar ... week and week about. Neither could last longer than a week at a time. End of the week’s spell in the bar, and both of ’em was a cot case. I did hear that Ted Rogers died in the horrors.”
“So did Mrs Rogers. She was in the horrors when the pub went up.”
“Was that so!” Red Draffin spat with vigour and almost automatically drove the loaded vehicle along the track twisting about low sand dunes, across salt and blue-bush flats, over water-gutters, and across dry creeks. “Well, Ma Rogers could always drink as good as Ted, and he was extra. I seen him open a bottle of rum and drain the lot without winkin’. Hell! Men was men in them days. What brought you down south?”
“Change of country,” Bony replied. “I get around.”
“I usta,” admitted Red Draffin. “Never stayed on one fly-speck more’n a month.”
“You have settled down?”
“Yair. You blows out in the end, y’know. You find that the sandhill beyond the next one’s just the same, and that Orstralia is just a pancake dotted with pubs wot are all alike. Course, times have changed a lot. The coming generation is too sap-gutted with fruit juices and milk in their tea, and nowadays if a man has a go of the horrors he ain’t liked. Once on a time if a man didn’t have the horrors he wasn’t reckoned a man’s shadder.”
“Had a bender lately?” Bony politely inquired.
“No, not for a long time now. I’m gettin’ on, and after a bender I suffers something terrible from indigestion. Got to take a bit of care of meself.”
“How old are you?”
“Don’t rightly know. Last census time, the Boss estimated me at sixty years. What d’you reckon about carb soda?”
“For the horrors?”
“No, me indigestion.”
“I’ve been told that carb soda is good for anything.”
“’Bout right, too. Read in the paper that a bloke in Russia lived to be a hundred and forty ’cos he washed everyday in carb soda. Might take that on meself. Carb soda’s cheap enough.”
Bony thought the suggestion an excellent idea, but asked:
“How long have you been working on Porchester?”
“Me? Nine years and a bit. I’ve kinda settled on Porchester. Wallace is a good boss, and, as I said a mile or two back, the pubs in Menindee is just the same as they usta be up at Uradangie. Whisky’s got more water in it and they charges six times more, that’s all.”
“You’d know this run, then?”
Red Draffin spat at the passing wind, flexed his shoulders.
“I know every water-hole, every sandhill, every blade of grass on Porchester. Every ruddy sheep knows me be name, and this year there’s over sixty thousand of ’em. Never took much to horses, though. You like horses ... musta.”
“Yes, I like horses. What’s the overseer like at Lake Otway?”
“Mister Martyr? Good enough,” replied Draffin. “Knows his work. Done no one a bad turn that I ever heard about. Keeps his place and expects us to keep ours. You married?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too. Lasted eleven days and a bit. Found out me wife was married to a butcher in Cobar. She cleared out with a shearer, and me and the butcher’s been good cobbers ever since. Women! You go careful with the women at Lake Otway.”
“There are women?”
“Two. Mother does the cookin’ and the daughter does the housemaiding.” Draffin chuckled. “Ruddy termites, both of ’em.”
“How so?”
They eats into a man’s dough from the inside out. And there’s blokes wot likes it. Wouldn’t leave the place. Reckons they got a good chance with the daughter or the mother. They sends away to Sydney or Adelaide for presents for ’em. You’ll be a wake-up in no time.”
They passed a deserted hut built of pine logs, used only at the shearing season. An hour later they sighted a windmill and two huts partially surrounded by a high canegrass wall.
“Sandy Well,” Draffin said. “Get a bit of lunch here.”
“Half-way house?”
“That’s right. Twenty-six mile to the homestead and twenty-six on to the Lake. Feller called George Barby cooks here when he ain’t fur-trapping. Good bloke, George Barby, though he is a pommy.”
Three dogs came racing to meet the truck and escort it to the door in the canegrass wall. From the view of the surrounding sandhills Bony deduced that the wall was essential when the storms raged.
Through the door there emerged a slightly-built man, dark of hair and pale of skin. He was wearing white duck trousers and a white cotton vest. After him came an enormously fat pet sheep, and after the sheep came two outsized black and white cats. Finally there appeared a tame galah, red of breast and grey of back. The parrot waddled forward absurdly, flapped its wings and raised its rose-tinted comb while shrieking its welcome.
The pet sheep chased Red Draffin round the truck, and George Barby said to Bony:
“Come on in and have a cuppa tea.”
Chapter Three
The Thinker
For a man of sixty, Red Draffin could move. So, too, could the pet sheep. The bootless, whiskered man appeared from behind the truck and raced for the door in the wall, the large wether hard astern and bouncing the sand with legs like props. Shouting with laughter, the truck driver kept the hard, butting head at bay with one hand and with the other he thrust a plug of black tobacco between his teeth, bit off a chunk and presented it to the sheep.