Bony and the Black Virgin Page 4

  “I don’t think we can go on, Robin,” he said miserably. “The drought’s ruining us slowly but surely. I have nothing, no prospects. Dad and I are going to finish up by walking off this place dead broke. It’s useless to go on.”

  “Rubbish. I mean your excuses.” The natural rose-pink of her face waned to leave it white and strained. “You love me. Take me in your arms and kiss me.” Her voice was low, pleading.

  “I don’t know,” he told her. “I really don’t know.” He reached for her, and she was in his arms and being kissed, and he was crying: “Oh, Robin, Robin! I don’t know! I truly don’t know.”

  Chapter Six

  Desolation

  IT WAS early November and every day was warm and promised heat soon to come, burning heat. This day was almost done, and no living thing would regret its passing.

  Eric Downer sat on a wood case at the open entrance to the grass shed at Rudder’s Well, stolidly smoking, the blue heeler lying beside him, now fully recovered.

  There down at the bottom of the gentle slope stood the mill astride the well. Beyond it extended a single-line water trough, encircled by a low rampart of skinned carcases. Beyond all this the unnatural desert extended to a horizon of dun-coloured withered and stricken scrub. And on this desert, approaching the well, were the sheep, walking in parallel lines, raising light-grey dust, to be wafted away by the wind.

  From another direction were coming the zombies, the animal zombies, the living dead. Only five. One short of the survivors of yesterday. They were coming along the verge of the barren plain, five cows walking with lowered heads, as though weeping for the absent bull. Their stomachs were suspended from ridged and knotted backbones, and shoulders and hips protruded like broken-off horns. The crows fluttered upward from the ring of carcases, and flew cawing with sinister mockery to meet the zombies, to flutter over them, and shriek at them to lie down and offer their eyes and tongues, because they were already dead.

  Here and there along the rampart of carcases were open spaces, and the first of the cows passed through one of these, followed by the others, and advanced to the trough line. There they stood at the trough, seemingly wondering what they came for, what had happened to the bull, for now and then one less feeble would glance back in an effort to see him.

  Eric saw the bull before they did. Then they lowered their heads and drank, as though to drink, after thirsting since the previous evening, was a necessary but uninteresting chore. Meanwhile, the bull was taking the pad they had arrived by. Now and then he stopped, as though pondering if he would go on, and, when moving, each leg worked as though seen in a slow-motion cinema film.

  The cows took their fill of water, languidly turned and staggered from the trough, and stood working throat muscles in effort to bring up water-moistened cud to chew, consisting mostly of bark and wind-broken twigs, spiced with old and calcined rabbit bones. They failed to see the bull when he stopped once again, and sank to his knees. They did not see him try to rise and only manage to move forward on his knees, his muzzle resting on the ground and his hindquarters raised comparatively high. And they didn’t see the crow that dropped to perch on the highest point of his hindquarters.

  He made a valiant effort to stand, failed, merely thrusting the muzzle along the pad for another yard or two. Courage! Death was whispering in his ears. The crow was tolling the bell: caw! caw! caw! And when the hindquarters finally sank, the crow continued to toil the bell.

  Taking up his rifle, Eric went to him, the heeler following. The bull barely managed to raise his head to watch him, rested his muzzle again on the ground at the man’s coming, and looked upward with eyes ringed with grey dust. Eric chose to see in those eyes pleading for release.

  ‘Tiki’ they named him when they bought him from Fort Deakin six years before. He was then three years old, shining with health and ready to charge anything, be it a man or a blow-fly. Tiki! The Pointers had given them the book Kon Tiki, and within months old Downer, who once had driven bullocks in a tabletop wagon, could walk up to him and pull his ears, and discuss the fortune there was going to be in his progeny.

  And now Eric stepped in close and patted Tiki behind the ears and pulled them. Old Tiki closed his eyes and seemed to nod, and Eric fired once.

  The sun was setting, and the wind fast falling to a calm that would last till morning. The sheep were nearing the trough, travelling in seven distinct lines, each line having its leader, the links of every line one behind the other. The leaders followed a pad or path made by the sheep at previous visits to the well. To state why, would be guessing. One leader was outstanding because she had a black nose, and this evening she came on slowly, the others following, making no attempt to by-pass her to reach the water.

  Eric walked among them, feeling the width of tails at the extremity of the spine, to ascertain if one was fit enough to slaughter for the larder at home. Instead, all he felt was hard bone segments. The leaders, now filled with water, turned to bunt their way back out of the press, walking on stiff legs for a little way, then waiting for followers to range up behind them. Here and there at the trough an animal went down, and Eric stood it up, and made way for it to clear the crush; some failed to remain standing, and others which were heavily loaded with water had not the strength to stand, and now never would.

  The light was blazing low in the sky beyond Lake Jane when he parked the truck and carried the carcase of a kangaroo to the fly proof safe inside the cool grass-built meat house, and, having washed and brushed up, he joined his father at the dinner table.

  “Anything fit, lad?” asked the old man.

  “Not one worthwhile. I shot a ’roo. They’re in better condition.”

  John regarded his son covertly, noting his mood of depression, and, to relieve it, he said, brightly:

  “Had a visitor today. Robin called over.”

  “What did she want?” inquired Eric without looking up.

  “Nothing. She brought me a little present.”

  “Oh!” Without a trace of curiosity. “Any news of finding Brandt yet?”

  “Not a scrap.”

  For several seconds neither spoke, and, again covertly, John regarded Eric and found that he looked not greatly different from the picture Robin had brought that afternoon. Light brown hair carefully brushed; grey eyes sombrely directed to the table; face square with a determined jaw, or an obstinate one. As always, he had changed from working togs to jacket and flannel trousers. The influence of his school was still strong.

  “Did Robin have no news at all?” he asked.

  “Yes. They say the river’s coming down the Paroo past Hungerford.”

  “I mean any news about the investigation?” Eric countered impatiently.

  “Don’t seem to be any,” replied John. “Robin says there’s nothing let out on the air about it, anyway. Fort Deakin is sending away the last of its breeding ewes and its rams. Going on agistment to a place on the Darling Downs. The horses went last week, and the Pointers will have only two milking cows left at L’Albert. Jim’s a bit worried about the future.”

  “Not the only one to be worried about the future. Nothing else?”

  Old John chuckled.

  “Been a fight in the abos’ camp. Must have been. Fred Tonto turned up at L’Albert looking like he’s passed through a mincing machine. Scalp cut open five inches, two fingers broken, only five or six teeth left of the full set, and two bung eyes he could hardly see out of. The Pointers fixed him up as best they could, and he wouldn’t go down to Mindee about his fingers.”

  “What was the fight about?” asked Eric, looking directly at his father, and pushing aside his plate. “Over a lubra, I’ll wager.”

  “The Pointers don’t know. Tonto wouldn’t say what it was about or who fought him. Anyway, as Robin put it, he’s now resting at L’Albert. Nuggety Jack brought him in from the Number Ten Bore.”

  Neither spoke again until the meal was ended and Eric had lit a cigarette and had stared at his father for a long
moment.

  “We have troubles, too,” he said. “We can’t afford to send our sheep away on agistment, so you say, and we can’t afford this and that.”

  “The time comes, lad, when nothing excepting agistment does any good,” the old man said, firmly. “The weather patterns aren’t changing to promise thunderstorms, and we won’t get rain until after Christmas ... if the northern monsoons come then.”

  “By Christmas we won’t have a sheep left,” Eric claimed.

  “Or a shilling left in the bank if we spend on what isn’t even a gamble any longer.”

  “Look!” snarled Eric, temper leashed. “Four miles out from Rudder’s is scrub we could lop for feed, and a morsel of saltbush. We cart water out there to the sheep and stop that everlasting walking. Eight miles a day on empty guts would kill anything.”

  “Cart water! With what? All the horses we got left couldn’t haul a wheelbarrow. What d’you cart water with?”

  “Truck.” With exploded fury, Eric crashed a fist upon the table. “I know what you’re going to say. Petrol costs money. We haven’t any money. We have only a couple of drums of petrol left. I know ... I know ... I know all about it. But I’m telling you we must do something. Damn you, I had to shoot old Tiki this evening.”

  John was silent for a moment before he said: “I thought Tiki would be first. It’s strange that the bulls give up sooner than the cows. Better to shoot the old feller than to let him linger.”

  “We’ll have to shoot the others,” blazed Eric. “And all the sheep. What’s the use of letting them walk and walk themselves to death with nothing but water in their stomachs, just to lie down and be tortured to death by the bloody crows? It can’t be allowed to go on. They don’t deserve slow death from thirst, torment by the filthy crows. We’ve got to slaughter them, clean and swift, and cash in on the skins. And have done with it all. If we can’t cart water.”

  “All right, lad, we’ll give it some thought. Don’t be upset, now. I know it’s bad to watch effort and money sinking into the sand and melting away, but it just can’t be helped.”

  “Money!” Eric echoed fiercely, glaring down at his father. “What the hell are you talking about? I’m not thinking of money. I’m thinking about agony. You made a fuss over old Tiki, didn’t you? You fussed with him when he was fat and strong. Well, I made a fuss over him this evening before I shot him. Don’t you understand even now? We’re holding in hell five cows and half a dozen horses, and well under seven hundred sheep. In Tiki’s eyes there was accusation, and I was the accused.”

  Eric flung away to the back door and slammed it after him.

  John sat on, his heart torn one way by pity for the starving animals and the other way by pity for his son.

  Chapter Seven

  Angels in Hell

  NOT TILL now did John Downer recognize, or think to recognize, the power contending for the soul of his son. To employ a phrase which explains a little-understood psychological process of change—‘The Bush was getting Eric’. As many men have a pre-disposition to alcohol, so others have predisposition to what might be termed the Spirit of the Bush. The degree of intelligence has nothing to do with alcoholism, and nothing to do with this absorption of a man by this Inland Australia, commonly and erroneously termed The Bush.

  John was not bankrupt, and when the drought first loomed as a menace he had urged his son to return to the city and take up his career from where he had relinquished it, Eric’s firm refusal, he was sure, wasn’t based wholly on the fact that his father would have had to carry on with the help of only a hired hand. He refused because, having broken with ambition, he was satisfied with the life circumstances had led him to choose.

  The Bush was getting Eric fast, but only now did his father think to recognize the symptoms. One: the Annual Bender this year produced in Eric no enthusiastic memories of it. Two: for the last four years Eric had declined the suggestion to take a holiday in the city and renew old school associations. Three: he seemed to have lost interest in women, typified by Robin Pointer. Four: he was permitting himself to be too greatly affected by the distress of the stock; and Five: moroseness had replaced natural gaiety. There was one more symptom yet to appear: the irresistible urge to live alone.

  It was John’s opinion that the best antidote for this Bush-coholism was work, rather than cold showers and changing for dinner. Work and sweat and thirst and flies and heat could bring a young man to his senses.

  “I’m a sheepman,” he told Eric. “I’m not one to cut their throats to get rid of ’em ’cos it happens to be dry weather. Your other idea is better. You go out and camp on the feed and cart water to ’em until our petrol supply is finished. We’ll consider the matter again when it is.”

  Not for many years had John spoken so firmly, nor so clearly revealed his character, which had raised him by the straps of his riding boots from a hired hand, and when Eric smiled his relief he felt hope for his future, as he thought he understood the problem.

  He understood it only in part.

  They went out far beyond Rudder’s Well, and selected a camp site in an area where there was top feed, i.e., scrub trees to lop for the leaves, and there they built a temporary trough line to be serviced by a fifteen-hundred-gallon tank to convey water from the well. The preparation occupied them three days, and then the old man in effect said: “It’s all yours, lad.”

  And then stayed at home, telling his dead wife all about it.

  The first heatwave of the summer arrived, lasted five days, and was followed by the first real windstorm. Eric trucked water from the well and prevented the sheep from passing the camp, mustering them to the unaccustomed watering place. After three days they came without mustering. And at the end of the fourth day, not one animal remained to die of exhaustion.

  Despite the heat, wearing only hat and shorts and boots, Eric lopped scrub, cut posts and rails with which he built a windbreak for his tent. He cut sandalwood branches and took them to the cows. In his spare time he took axe and water bag into the scrub belts and lopped branches for the sheep to feed upon. The day temperatures were above the century in the shade, whatever that happened to mean, and the wind brought continuous dust and sometimes dust storms which blotted out the sun.

  He tried to move the cows to his camping area, but they were too far gone to make the journey of only four miles. The horses smelled the water and wanted to drink there instead of going to the well, and he had to ‘shoo’ them away, for every gallon he could cart was essential for the sheep. Sometimes he battled with the kangaroos all night long, and in the morning, should there be a little water remaining in the trough, the galah cockatoos would congregate in their thousands and take every drop.

  Every third day he filled the truck’s petrol tank from the supply inside the canegrass shed at Rudder’s, and now and then measured the supply, and despaired.

  Early in December Eric had visitors. He was cutting scrub when he heard them coming, and hurried back to his camp to receive them, the heeler close behind, and as lean and seemingly as sun-blackened as he. At the camp arrived the Fort Deakin station truck, and from it stepped Midnight Long and Jim Pointer.

  “Making a go for it, Eric,” Long encouraged, following the exchange of greetings.

  “Doing what I can. Stopped the rot, or reduced it, anyway. How was the Old Man when you passed?”

  “He’s away down in Mindee for the inquest.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Eric. “How long has he been away?”

  “Five days,” Jim Pointer replied. “Don’t worry, Robin’s been tripping out to see to the chooks and things.”

  “I explained to Mawby the fix you’re in out here,” supplemented Midnight Long, “and he found you could be excused from attending. Promised to send your dad home in good shape.”

  “If he can catch up with him at the pubs. He doesn’t know the Old Man like I do.”

  “I know him better than you do, I think,” Long said quietly. “Known him a long time. He’ll come home when
the inquest lets him, knowing what you are doing, and everything.”

  “Shouldn’t have doubted,” admitted Eric, tossing tea into the water boiling on the fire, and then wiping the pestiferous flies from his sweat-drenched face. “I’ve been a little hard on him recently.”

  “Hard times,” Long said. “There’s other news, too. They found Carl Brandt.”

  “At last!” Eric exclaimed. “Where?”

  “Buried in a sandhill.”

  Eric lifted the billy from the fire and conveyed it to the rough bush table beside the tent, and also protected by the same windbreak. Then he said:

  “Buried in a sandhill?”

  “You tell, Jim. You found him.”

  “At the foot of a sandhill out a bit from Blazer’s.” Blazer’s Dam was situated between the out-station and the back boundary of Fort Deakin, and had been empty for more than a year. “I was out there the day before yesterday to bring in the pump. You know the hills to the west of the Dam that look like giant waves curling over to the claypans? Saw crows at something on the claypans and went to look-see. Carl Brandt.”

  “Perished?” asked Eric evenly.

  “Been dead for some time. Truscott says he was killed same way as Dickson. We reckon he was planted in the face of the sandhill and sand trodden down over him. Then the recent windstorms took the sand up again, and uncovered the body.”

  Eric, sitting on a case at the rough table, holding a pannikin of tea level with his mouth, stared with dust-rimmed eyes at his visitors. He was nibbling at cake they had brought, and unaware of the delicacy.

  “There must be more,” he said. “Go on. He killed Dickson, and now you say he himself was killed. I don’t get it.”

  “No one does yet,” admitted Long. “L’Albert’s alive with police from Broken Hill and out from Wilcannia. Doctor says Brandt was murdered. And there was no swag and no bike with the body. Not even his water bag. Nothing but the clothed body. If his head hadn’t been caved in, according to Truscott, I’d have thought he lost himself after leaving Lake Jane, and discarded his swag, then his bike, then his empty water bag, and just perished where Jim found him.”