Madman's Bend. Arthur W. Upfield
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that he had little cash. He could get credit at the hotel, but it would be limited, and as Lush was the type who must keep up a bold front he would certainly leave when the hotel closed at ten o’clock. It was his habit when drunk to drive at not more than ten miles an hour along the dirt track. Too bad he didn’t drive at sixty and break his neck, Jill Madden thought.
The hundred-year-old American clock, infinitely more reliable than the modern product, whirred and bonged the midnight hour. The vibrations died, and the fury outside again clamped itself about the house. The girl reached for the rifle and again checked the cartridge in the breech and the magazine. She was icily resolute to defend her mother and herself.
One of the two dogs, chained to kennels built of old iron, barked, and Jill thought of the lambs and the enemy foxes, and then of the shearing due to be contracted out next month. She recalled Ray Cosgrove saying he wanted her to marry him, then thought of Ray’s mother, who owned Mira Station. Mrs Cosgrove would certainly forbid anything of the kind, and for that she couldn’t be blamed. She was wealthy, and Ray was like a blazing lighthouse on her horizon. The thought of his marrying the stepdaughter of the lisping, drunken Lush would give Mrs Cosgrove a heart attack.
The dog barked again. The sound seemed far away and beyond the noise created by the wind through the trees and the worried-loose shed roofs. It was not unusual in winter months for the wind to blow night and day for a week, with never a cloud to mask the sun or dim the diamond stars.
The handle of the door was twisted and then the door was shaken.
The girl’s left hand flew to her mouth to prevent herself from crying out, then dropped to grip the rifle. The hand about the stock slid over for the finger to curve about the trigger.
A boot thudded against the door, and her stepfather shouted, “Open up, there! What the hell! Let me in, you bitch.”
“Go and sleep in the woolshed,” Jill said. “Keep away from here.”
“What’s that you said?” shouted Lush, and Jill repeated it.
“Doss in the woolshed?” he yelled. “Doss—” A river of filth streamed through the plain wall-board door.
When it dried up the girl could hear nothing, until her mother wailed and then called out, “What is it, Jill? Who’s that outside? I didn’t hear the utility.”
“Stay quiet, Mother. I’ll deal with this.”
The man must have had an ear to the keyhole.
“‘Stay quiet,’ she says! Gimme an axe. I want an axe.” Lush pounded on the door with boot and fist. The dogs barked furiously, and presently the phrase “Gimme an axe” was continuously repeated in dwindling volume, indicating that Lush had gone for the wood-heap axe.
“Was that William?” asked Mrs Lush, leaning weakly against the frame of the bedroom doorway. Her bandaged head made her look grotesque, the bandage disarrayed to permit her to see with bloodshot eyes. Then: “What are you doing with that rifle, child?”
“I’m going to keep him out, now and for always. I’m going to frighten him out.”
“Then be careful, be careful! Oh God! What have we come to?”
The girl stood, aiming the rifle at the door from her hip.
Lush returned, to kick at the door and yell: “Now, you in there! I’m coming in, see? You let me in or I axe my way in, and if I have to do that you’ll get worse than you ever got. And you too, Jill. I’ll start on you good and proper, my oath I will.”
The girl aimed the rifle at the ceiling, and fired.
“Get away from that door,” she shouted. “Get away if you’re sober enough to understand. I’ll fix you if you don’t.”
“You’ll fix me! What a laugh!”
The axe smashed at the door. The edge of the blade showed through and was withdrawn for another blow. The girl worked the lever of the rifle to discharge the empty shell and force another cartridge into the breech. The next blow brought the axe-head right through the wood hard against the lock. The girl aimed from the shoulder and fired.
The axe remained in the door. Both dogs were barking, and they seemed much nearer in the momentary lull of the wind. The clock bonged once. The wind came again to thrash the gums along the river, and Mrs Lush screamed:
“You’ve shot him, Jill! You’ve shot him!”
Chapter Two
A Pair of Gossips
The township of White Bend stopped growing in 1920. The hotel, the post-office and the police station, one bank and one general store serve the few inhabitants and the surrounding sheep and cattle stations. Built on high ground on the west bank of the Darling, the remains of its early prosperity may still be seen in the rotting wharf and the wind-wrecked shed.
Constable John Lucas thought highly of White Bend. It was his first station, his wife was a local girl, and he loved the river at first sight. Still in his early thirties, athletic and interested in everything and everyone, he considered the job of conveying Detective Inspector Bonaparte up-river to Bourke a very pleasant chore. There was no obsequiousness in his manner, nor any sign of superiority due to Bonaparte’s mixed ancestry.
Lucas had heard of Bonaparte at rare intervals, but had not known that he was in his territory until a station manager telephoned to ask if he could convey the Inspector to Bourke and the air service. Accordingly, having contacted his superior at Bourke, he left White Bend with Bonaparte shortly after noon on July 19.
The River Darling is unique on several counts. Unlike the Murray, of which it is a tributary, it has character and atmosphere. The land it spans is flat. Though it runs roughly six hundred miles from Walgett to Wentworth at its junction with the Murray, the Darling so twists and turns that its overall course is something like eighteen hundred miles. Save at the major bends the channel is steeply banked as though fashioned by men with gigantic ditching machinery, and the banks are of the same gradient, the same width apart, and the same height from Wentworth to Bourke. Along all its course the river is shaded and sheltered from the summer sun and the winter winds by massive red-gums forming an almost unbroken avenue. Along this river men have found a strange peace of mind, strange in quality and duration, and they have heard siren voices calling them back no matter how long they have been absent or how distant they may be.
The road from Wilcannia to Bourke follows the west bank of the Darling, but, because of the river’s many twists, touches it only at the major bends, these bends being sometimes ten or a dozen miles apart. The land outside almost all the major bends is higher than average, and, since it gives height above flood, level and a permanent water supply from the great hole excavated by the river in flood, it is favoured as a site for homesteads.
“You know, I’ve often thought that when I retire I’ll build a house beside this river,” remarked the man known to many merely as Bony.
“Might come to it myself one day,” declared the policeman, his fair hair whipped by the strong north-east wind, his grey eyes alight. “Plenty of fishing and shooting. No wonder the old pensioners build themselves shacks a mile or less from a township. Who the heck would want to live in a city?”
“Difficult to understand why anyone should,” responded Bony, the wind making his dark-blue eyes small. “Car coming,” he added.
“Mail, probably,” said the policeman. Two minutes later he nodded to the driver of the heavy car and was given a wave by a youth with flaming red hair. “Leaves Bourke at eight, and due at White Bend at one. Faster than the old days with the Cobb & Co. coaches. You remember them? Before my time.”
“No,” replied Bony. “The change to motors occurred about the time I was first looking at Australia.”
When they passed the tip of a major bend he was able to look down at the great water-filled hole and along the bed of the river, down which a tiny stream meandered to the next hole.
“When