The Barrakee Mystery Read online

  Thornton was absent-mindedly examining, on the trunk of the gum near which he stood, a deep incision some nine to ten inches in length. The tree-wound was fresh and still bleeding sap. He noticed two raised bumps in the centre of the gash, at equal distance from the ends. He took no further notice of it. He did not even mention it to the two policemen.

  Had he known, this was the one and only clue to the murderer of King Henry.

  Chapter Eight

  A Round of Inspection

  THE POLICE returned to Wilcannia without having secured a clue to the murder of King Henry. By the sergeant’s orders the body was interred in the tiny cemetery near the homestead, which already contained five graves.

  There was one point that occurred to Sergeant Knowles two days later, and, ringing up the station, he said to the squatter:

  “That girl, Nellie Wanting—does she live in the blacks’ camp?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how did she cross the river the afternoon she met us on her way to the homestead? I noticed no boat at the camp.”

  “I’m afraid I have no information on that point,” the station-owner replied. “I’ll see her and find out. You’ll agree that she didn’t swim the river like her alleged father.”

  “No. She didn’t swim.”

  The explanation, when forthcoming, was simple enough. As has been said, the level of the river was very low, and at a point about half a mile above the blacks’ camp an outcrop of rock formed the bed of the river at the lower rim of a deep hole. Most of the rocks were now uncovered and provided easy and safe stepping stones.

  Although Thornton was in daily communication with the police-sergeant at Wilcannia, nothing occurred to help forward a solution of the mystery. The week’s work went on, that of Barrakee with its usual orderliness and regularity. The squatter prayed for rain.

  Blair, with McIntosh for his offsider, was sent out to the back of the run with the bullock team to clean out a dry surface tank with a scoop. Clair went about his odd jobs, gaunt and taciturn. The only person for whom the murder still had a painful interest was Frank Dugdale.

  At the time he denied having seen anyone revealed by the lightning, he could almost have sworn that the white-clad figure hurrying through the garden was Kate Flinders. This was his reason for suppressing that fact.

  Whilst scouting the possibility of Kate having killed the black fellow, he could not but conclude that she was implicated. The why and the wherefore of this worried him to distraction.

  And then one evening he saw Alice, the maid, and Mabel, the laundress, leave the house to stroll up the river, and experienced an unaccountable sense of relief when he noted that both girls were dressed in white. Upon that came instant recollection of having seen the young lubra, Nellie Wanting, dressed all in white, on more than one occasion. Mrs Thornton, too, generally wore a white costume. So that, instead of the hurrying figure at the garden gate being definitely Kate Flinders, it might, with equal plausibility or otherwise, have been that of one of four other women.

  On realizing this, Dugdale felt immeasurable relief. His conviction that he had seen Kate Flinders in the lightning flash was now replaced by the conviction that he had not. And so indifferent did he become, as did Thornton and the other men, that this murder of a mere semi-civilized aboriginal was very quickly relegated to the sphere of forgotten crimes. Had King Henry been a white man, this indifference would have been impossible.

  One morning in early April, when the sun was rapidly losing its summer intensity, Thornton ordered Dugdale to get out the big car for a run to Thurlow Lake.

  The squatter never had taken to car-driving and usually delegated the job to the sub-overseer. Dugdale had the car outside the double garden-gates that morning about ten o’clock, when Ralph appeared carrying the last of three hampers and a moment later was followed by the squatter and Kate. Dugdale’s heart missed a beat, and he could have groaned and shouted at one and the same moment in anticipation of the bitter sweetness of being in her society most of that day.

  Thornton and his niece occupied the rear seat and Ralph sat beside the driver. After an assurance from the book-keeper that the out-back mail was all in the bag in the boot, they glided away over the grey river flats.

  Once out of the home paddocks and off the flats, they had a straight run of twelve miles over a good hard track, across a blue-bush plain. It was the finest piece of road on the run, and the great car leapt into its stride like an unleashed kangaroo-dog. On the elderly man the speed made no emotional impression but the girl it almost thrilled.

  Looking between the two in front, she watched the speedometer register forty, forty-five, fifty five, sixty-two miles an hour. From the indicator her eyes went to the small powerful hands caressing the wheel, iron hands that could handle equally well a spirited or vicious horse.

  “My! That was lovely,” she gasped when they pulled up before the first gate. “It’s not so quick as you have done it, Dug. But better luck next time.”

  “And what is the quickest time we have done it in?” he asked, without turning his head. Ralph opened the gate and they moved slowly beyond it.

  “Sixty-four, the time before last,” she replied at once.

  “That’s nothing,” Thornton remarked. “One time last February, when I had an important appointment, and we were late, Dug hit her up to seventy-eight.”

  “No, really! Oh Dug, you’ve been cheating me of fourteen miles an hour.”

  Ralph having shut the gate and got in, the sub-overseer let in the clutch. He said gently:

  “The back country is rather proud of the Women of Barrakee. If it were known that I ever endangered the life of one of them I would be due for a rough time.”

  “Oh, Dug, but it’s quite safe,” she said reproachfully.

  “Quite,” he agreed. “Unless a wheel comes off, or a tyre blows out, or the steering-gear fails, or I want to sneeze.”

  “Well, if you keep me down to only sixty-four, I shall never forgive you.”

  “I would do anything in reason to avoid that,” he said gravely. “But not to avoid it will I risk your life.”

  Eighteen miles from the homestead they pulled up at a boundary-rider’s hut, near a great earth dam. The stockman was out in one of his paddocks, so his mail was left on the table, the door shut again, and they went on, stopping sometimes to open the few gates dividing the eight- and twelve-mile-square paddocks, once to take a survey of a flock of three thousand sheep.

  “They’re not looking bad, Dug, considering the dry time,” their owner decided.

  “No, they look quite all right, so far. Pity we can’t have a good rain to bring on the feed for the lambs,” came from the sub-overseer.

  “We might get it yet. How much water left at the Basin Tank?”

  “About two feet.”

  “Humph! Remind me that we send O’Grady out there to get the bore and engine in order next Monday. Right! We’ll get on.”

  The stockman at Cattle Tank had just come home when they arrived there. He was a lank, bow-legged man about forty, and when they pulled up he lounged beside the car, after removing his felt to Kate Flinders, who said:

  “Good morning, David.”

  “Morning, Miss Flinders,” he returned with conscious awkwardness.

  “How’s the sheep, David?” inquired the squatter.

  “The weaners are losing a bit, but the wethers in top paddock are holdin’ their own.”

  They conversed for ten minutes about sheep. At one time Kate, who often accompanied her uncle on these journeys of inspection, asked the squatter why he tarried so long at these places, talking over matters of which the evening telephone reports must have fully advised him. And this was his reply:

  “My dear, if you led the life these men lead, you would not like to see your boss flash past in his car. You would enjoy a short chat with him, or with any other human being.”

  When Thornton decided to go on, she had ready a large square basket, which she offered to
David.

  “Auntie sent this out to you, David,” she said. “Leave the basket on the table, and we’ll get it on our way home if you are out.”

  David smiled, a genuinely grateful smile. No wonder Mrs Thornton was known affectionately far and wide as the “Little Lady”. She always gave her husband baskets of eggs and fruit for the riders, adding butter in the winter.

  “Now we forgot Alec’s basket, Uncle,” she said when they moved off. “Don’t let me forget to give it him on our way back. Has David got his mail?”

  “I gave it to him, Kate,” Ralph informed her.

  “What, Ralph, have you just awoken? That is the first time you’ve spoken since we started.”

  “The wise are always silent,” he said, with a smile, looking back at her. “As a matter of fact, I have been thinking.”

  “Oh—of what, if I am not rude?”

  “You are, but I’ll tell you,” he said. “Peculiarly enough I was thinking of Nellie Wanting, and I arrived at the stupendous conclusion that she would be a really pretty girl if she was white.”

  Kate Flinders laughed deliriously. Dugdale suddenly smiled. Thornton was absorbed in watching the country, i.e. the state of the sheep feed.

  “I believe, Ralph,” she said, “that you are falling in love with little Nellie Wanting, the lady of colour.”

  “You would, doubtless,” he replied dryly, “be much astonished if I did.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Washaways

  THE MILES west of Cattle Tank they reached the Washaways. It had been a standing joke for years that Thornton repeatedly stated he would have a bridge, or series of bridges across this maze of creeks, winding in and out among themselves like the strands of a rope. The bridges, however, never materialized.

  On Barrakee these creeks, divided by steep box-lined banks, ran from north to south, and in flood-time carried water from the Paroo to the Darling, a kind of overflow. The Paroo itself, when it does run water, empties it into the Darling, just above Wilcannia.

  The Barrakee road to Thurlow Lake crossed five creeks, forming the Washaways at that point, in three-quarters of a mile, and it was on the west bank of the last of them that Thornton directed Dugdale to pull into the shade of a great box-tree for lunch.

  Kate Flinders always enjoyed these alfresco lunches. While she set out the food on the car’s running-board to baffle the myriads of ants, Dugdale gathered the wood for a fire, and Ralph filled the billy from one of the two canvas water-bags hanging from the side of the car.

  Dugdale invariably arrogated to himself the task of boiling the billy, and whilst he was thus engaged the squatter announced that that morning the annual Land Lottery was opened.

  As a sop to the insatiable hunger for land in the western half of New South Wales, the Government “resumes” a dozen or so small areas of land every year from the big pastoral leases, and these areas, commonly known as “blocks”, are offered to the public. For every block thus thrown open there are up to a hundred applicants. A Land Board, consisting of two or three highly-salaried gentlemen, eventually visits the bush towns and hears the applicant’s qualifications. Since no special qualifications are demanded and since the qualifications of past successful applicants are by no means uniform, the necessary qualifications for success are purely a matter of guesswork to the bush public.

  Hence this annual allotment of blocks is humorously called, in many places, the “Great Land Lottery”. To Frank Dugdale, any one of these blocks would enable him, in a few years, to ask Kate to marry him. Success in the Lottery would be infinitely quicker than waiting weary years for a managership.

  “Do you know any of the blocks, Mr Thornton?” he asked promptly.

  “Yes. One of them is Daly’s Yards paddock.”

  Dugdale’s eyes gleamed.

  Daly’s Yards was a large paddock on Tindale Station, and joined the west boundary of Barrakee. In area it was some 25,000 acres, and, whilst this does not constitute a large area for Australia, everyone knew that Daly’s Yards was well scrubbed, and that there was a very fine surface dam in the west, and a good well in the east. The rent would be about thirty pounds per annum, and the value of the water supply—to be paid by arrangement to the owners of Tindale—would be something like six hundred pounds. Ownership of such a lease meant independence in less than ten years.

  “There will be a lot in for that block,” murmured Dugdale.

  “Are you going to put in for it, Dug?”

  The sub-overseer tossed a handful of tea into the boiling water, and allowed it to boil for half a minute, before taking the billy off the fire.

  “I am, Ralph,” he replied grimly. “It will be the fifth time I’ve put in for the Lottery, and I might win a block. What other blocks are out, Mr Thornton?”

  The squatter mentioned a few he had memorized from the Government Gazette announcement.

  “You’d find it fairly lonely living on a block by yourself, Dug,” he suggested.

  “For a start, yes,” Dugdale agreed, stirring the tea to induce the leaves to sink. “But if I got Daly’s Yards it wouldn’t be long before I had a house built. And with a house I might induce a woman to marry me.”

  “There is that possibility, I admit,” agreed the squatter dryly.

  “If I were extra special nice, would you propose to me, Dug?”

  He looked up into the smiling face. He, too, was smiling, but his eyes did not smile. She remembered his eyes long afterwards.

  “If I were lucky enough to win a block, I would not be lucky enough to win you,” he told her, laughing. “It would be most improbable that one would win two such prizes in a lifetime.”

  “But isn’t it considered the thing to do, if one wins a block, to appreciate one’s stupendous luck by heading a syndicate of one’s friends to invest in Tattersall’s Melbourne Cup Sweep?” asked Ralph.

  “It is the custom.”

  “Then that shows belief in a run of luck,” the young man pointed out. “You’d better not be extra special nice, Katie, or you’ll find yourself married.”

  “If you come trying to steal my niece, Dug, you and I will engage in debate,” said the squatter with assumed gravity. “When you become a pastoralist, you’ll have no time for anything but to keep paying the taxes.”

  “I’ll pay them all right.”

  “I know you will. The tax-gatherers will see to that. But you’ll be kept busy, I assure you. Australia, with a population less than that of London, can’t keep up European appearances on the lavish scale of a sixty-million people without taxing us, our children, and our children’s children, to the bone.”

  “Bother politics,” interrupted Kate irreverently. “Here, help yourselves to these sandwiches, and let’s talk about Sir Walter Thorley.”

  “That scoundrel,” the squatter shouted.

  “That absent owner of half Australia!” ejaculated Dugdale.

  The effect of that name on the two sheepmen was astonishing.

  “You have poured petrol on the fire now, Kate,” laughed Ralph.

  “I think he is a lovely man,” added Kate daringly, finishing her petrol.

  Thornton choked. Dugdale bit savagely into his sandwich. Distaste for Sir Walter Thorley was common to both, but their reasons were different.

  Dugdale, a member of the great homeless, land-hungry army, detested not so much the person as the combine whose head Sir Walter was. This combine had bought up station after station, so that now it owned hundreds and hundreds of miles of Government landed property. It dismissed the employees, sold the sheep, allowed the buildings and fences to rot, and stocked each station that successively fell under what was called the “Blight”, with cattle, in charge of one poorly paid white man and half a dozen blacks.

  Mr Thornton and his associate squatters, the majority of whom elected to reside anywhere but on their properties, were incensed against the Birthday Knight, because he cynically ignored the clause in each of his leases which specified that the holder must do all p
ossible to keep down the wild dogs. Sir Walter’s cattle stations were notoriously among the finest breeding grounds of the sheepman’s deadliest enemy.

  By no stretch of imagination could Kate Flinders be accused of hoydenishness. She was, however, the kind of girl who regards all men as wilful boys, and sometimes she took keen delight in rousing them. Once she had told the Little Lady:

  “I love teasing Uncle and Dug. When roused, Uncle looks just like Mr Pickwick scolding Mr Snodgrass, and Dug grits his teeth as though he would like to bite me.”

  But, once having roused them, she did all she could to reduce them speedily again to normal.

  “Well, if you don’t like my mentioning Sir Walter, I won’t,” she said placidly. “Let’s talk about the Land Lottery.”

  So, until the end of lunch, they discussed the advantages of the various blocks, and the chances their personal friends had of obtaining one of them.

  After leaving the Washaways, the road ran over undulating grass country, bearing here and there clumps of belar. Six miles west of the maze of creeks they came to yet another hut, called One Tree Hut, with its well. Here lived two boundary-riders, and to one of these Kate gave a hamper packed by the Little Lady.

  These men, being under the administration of the overseer, Thornton did not engage long in conversation. The last lap of the journey, twenty miles, was covered in leisurely fashion.

  Approaching Thurlow Lake the road takes one up a slight rise to a belt of oak-trees, and, when through these, the lake of brilliant blue and the white-walled, red-roofed buildings of the out-station burst suddenly into view.

  At midday Thurlow Lake is a glittering blue diamond, lying on an immense expanse of dark green velvet. Roughly circular in shape, with a diameter of two miles, the blue water is edged by a ring of brilliant green box-trees with an outer border of radiant red sand-hills, the whole surrounded by the omnipresent dark green bush.

  To emerge from the high belt of oaks is like meeting the sea after a weary, dusty, interminable country tramp.