Death of a Lake. Arthur W. Upfield
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nudged her, and as one the fifteen sprang for it. Twelve got through before the gate barred three.
With the patience of a row of Jobs, the rail-sitters watched for thirty minutes Bony merely sauntering after those three horses, round and round the yard walls. They could hear his tongue clicking, and the seemingly careless slapping of hand against a thigh, and they watched as the three animals slowly tired and became bored with this seemingly endless roundabout.
When Bony finally stood in the yard centre, the three horses also stilled to watch him, ears thrust forward, nostrils quivering. He moved quietly towards them, talking softly, and they stiffened and shivered and whistled through pink-lined nostrils. Then they would break and rush to another corner. The watchers lost count of the number of “tries” before one horse stood, forefeet braced, nostrils flaring, muscles trembling, and waited for man’s next movement.
Bony walked to this horse, his eyes upon the eyes of the horse, his voice low, crooning, himself creating the impression of irresistible power. The horse became as of hewn marble. The gap between it and the man narrowed till but two feet separated them. The horse couldn’t back, for the yard wall was hard behind it; it could lunge forward, but it didn’t dare. Instead, it brought its soft muzzle towards the man, and its body seemed to lean forward over the braced forelegs.
“He’s hypnotizing the bastard,” hissed Lester to the overseer, and Martyr ignored the comment.
Bony’s right hand rose slowly to touch the animal’s jaw. The horse shivered violently. The human hand slid from the jaw to the rippling shoulder muscles, and the watchers witnessed fear die away and muscles gradually calm. They saw Bony patting the shoulder, slip a hand under the horse’s throat, pass up the arched neck to the ears. Then Bony slowly turned his back to the horse, remained in that position for half a minute before walking away.
The second horse proved more difficult, but the third was like the first, and finally Bony climbed the rails to sit beside the overseer, and roll a cigarette. No one spoke. Having applied a match to the smoke, Bony said:
“You have a handy paddock for the mokes?”
“Yes. What do you think of them?”
“Passable. I’d like the lot taken out to the paddock and yarded again this afternoon.”
“Why?” asked Martyr. “You’ve got ’em for the day, haven’t you?”
“I want them to become used to yarding without rebellion. I want them to become so accustomed to these yards that they will never give trouble when being driven to any yard. And I want to handle them so that they will stand while I climb over them, under them, all round them. They have to be quiet before I ride them, because I’m no buck-jumper rider. I don’t break a horse, I train him.”
“All right, if that’s the way you want it.”
“Thanks. You might ask your riders to leave their whips behind. There’s too much noise, too much excitement. Later, I’ll get them used to a whip cracking against their ears.”
Martyr ordered Carney and MacLennon to return the youngsters to the paddock and to bring them to the yards again after lunch. Lester seemed inclined to remain, and was told to get on with his chores. Alone, Martyr said:
“Haven’t seen you in this district before.”
“First time I’ve been down this way. The Diamantina’s my country.”
“Oh. Then why come?”
Bony chuckled.
“Woman trouble,” he said, and from Martyr’s nod knew he had been accepted.
Chapter Five
Below Surface
At the close of his first week as horse-breaker, Bony knew he had successfully “edged” himself into this small community, and further, he was confident that there were strange under-currents in this community, opposed to him and to two other men ... Kurt Helstrom and Earle Witlow.
Helstrom, always addressed as Swede, was grey and tall and long-jawed. He had a strong sense of humour which he himself appreciated most and it made no impression upon his ebullient nature when others appreciated it not at all. He preferred the company of Earle Witlow to anyone else’s and it appeared that Witlow liked the Swede. Witlow, much younger, looked much older, for he was a sun-dried raisin of a man who spoke but rarely to anyone other than Helstrom.
The others, that is Lester, Carney and MacLennon, for the two aboriginal stockmen were quite apart, while not openly hostile to each other were bound by an invisible cord which would have been accepted by anyone less intuitive than Bony as the clannishness of old employees.
Witlow had been employed at Porchester Station for four years, but at Lake Otway for only the last seven months, and the Swede had been put on the pay-roll eight months back. Neither had been at Lake Otway when Ray Gillen came, or when Gillen was drowned. Lester had been working on Porchester for fifteen years and he had gone to the city every year for a spell, but not after Gillen had come to Lake Otway. MacLennon’s service had begun three years ago, and Carney had ridden paddocks about Sandy Well for two years before being transferred to the out-station shortly after Lake Otway had been born.
Lester and MacLennon and Carney had been working here when Gillen vanished that moonlit night. That was fifteen months back, and not one of them had left the place for a spell since then. One man of several working under such conditions of isolation might decide not to take a spell, his ambition to knock up a good cheque, but it was rare enough to be an oddity for three men to work more than a year without a holiday.
The same tag applied to the Fowler women. They had come to Lake Otway shortly after its birth and had remained ever since without once leaving the out-station. Like the men, they bought their clothes per mail-order, but, being women, it was a trifle odd how they had so long resisted the shops.
There was another matter to spur speculation. The two women, the three men and Barby, the cook, were much more concerned by the coming death of Lake Otway than seemed normal, certainly more so than Witlow and the Swede, and when Bony coloured the known facts concerning Gillen with impressions gained during this first week breaking horses he felt that the death of Lake Otway could coincide with the climax of a drama which began when Raymond Gillen came.
He had had no further opportunity to probe Red Draffin, as Draffin had returned to the main homestead the day after he brought Bony and the load to the Lake. Draffin had certainly voiced suspicions, but it had been to a casual worker who would not long remain, concerning especially the suitcase and contents belonging to the vanished Gillen. In view of the fact that it was officially believed that Gillen possessed twelve thousand odd pounds in notes of low denominations. Draffin’s remarks about the “tide” having ebbed in that suitcase appeared significant.
As Bony had foreseen, this was not an investigation wherein he could bamboozle suspects with questions and hope to bring out the solution with the slickness of city detectives backed by willing informers. Actually he had but one problem: to establish Gillen’s fate, which, because of the non-location of twelve thousand pounds, cast grave doubt that the man’s fate had been accidental drowning.
Seven people were here when Gillen vanished, and those seven people were still at Lake Otway, including George Barby, who was only twenty-six miles distant and who wanted to return for the trapping.
Twelve thousand pounds is quite a sum. No bank held it in safe keeping, it being reasonable to assume that as Gillen came into possession of the money lawfully there would have been no cause for him to have banked the money in an assumed name. It was also reasonable to assume that Gillen would have done something about it had it been stolen from him. Thus, until proved otherwise, it must be assumed that Gillen arrived at Lake Otway with twelve thousand pounds “in the kip”.
Twelve thousand pounds in notes of low denomination make up quite a parcel. A bank manager had demonstrated the size of the parcel to Bony before he left Brisbane, and that parcel could be the difference between the high and the low “tide” noted by Red Draffin.