Читать книгу Winds of Evil - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 10

Dreyton Refuses Promotion

The first to be seen of the Wirragatta homestead by anyone following the creek track from the Broken Hill road were the stockyards; and then, as he swung round a sharp bend in what had become the Wirragatta River, there came into view the trade shops, the men’s quarters, then the office-store building, and finally the large bungalow surrounded by orange-trees, which in turn were confined by a white-painted wicket fence.

To Donald Dreyton it was like coming to a palm-fringed oasis after a wearying journey over the desert. It was not quite five o’clock and work for the day had not stopped. The clanging of the blacksmith’s hammer on iron, the methodical clanking of the two windmills raising water to the tanks set on high staging, and the voices of the birds ever to be found in the vicinity of a dwelling, all combined to give him a feeling of prospective peace and content.

Some distance from the men’s quarters, which had first to be passed by anyone wishing to visit, Dreyton turned off the track to follow a pad leading down and across the dry bed of the river and skirting the top end of a beautiful lagoon beside which the homestead was built. On the river’s far side stood a small hut given entirely to the use of the two fence-riders.

The camels having been put into their especially fenced paddock, his gear carried into the hut, and he himself shaved and bathed and arrayed in white shirt and gabardine slacks with tennis shoes on his feet. Dreyton again crossed the river and sauntered to the office. The westering sun was gilding the tops of the gums and slanting between them to lay bars of gold on the surface of the waterhole about which the galahs and cockatoos created constant din. The homestead, being built on a shelf below the level of the bluebush plain, the township of Carie could not be seen. In its direction the cawing of innumerable crows indicated that the cowboy was at work killing mutton sheep.

Within the office Martin Borradale and Allen, the book-keeper, were at work before their respective tables, and at Dreyton’s entry the squatter glanced up sharply. An expression of slight worry gave quick place to a smile of welcome.

“Hullo, Donald! In again?”

“Yes, Mr. Borradale. I see that I have a day’s work along the Broken Hill road assisting that new man.”

“You need not trouble about that. He can finish it. How are things outback?”

“All right. I did another two strains of footing over the Channels. Might I suggest that when the bullock-wagon goes out again it takes a dozen rolls of netting and drops them at the Fifty-mile gate? I could get them from there to where the netting is wanted.”

“Yes, certainly,” Borradale instantly agreed. “The bullocky will be taking a load of rations outback next week.” He paused and tapped the table with a pencil end. Dreyton waited. Then: “I think I’ll send a couple of men and a horse-dray out there to do that footing. It will take you too long to complete it. Any rabbits along that section?”

“None. But I understand they are numerous less than thirty miles to the north-west.”

“That’s so. Yes, I’ll send men and a dray to do the work. Hear about Mabel Storrie?”

“Yes. Pretty filthy, isn’t it? How is she now?”

“Very bad, I hear. She was taken home this morning. Not only was she half-strangled, she was knocked about, too. Every one, of course, has the wind up.”

“Naturally. That new man—Fisher, he said his name is—seems to think that the girl regained consciousness on the road and then, dazed, walked away and tripped over a surface root at the place where she was found. Her head injuries, according to Fisher, were caused by that tree-root and not by the Strangler.”

“Is that so?” Borradale sighed, then fell to staring at the fence-rider.

“A strange fellow, Joe Fisher,” Dreyton said with conviction. “Is he a half-caste?”

“Yes. As you say, he is a remarkable fellow. He was camped at Catfish Hole the night Mabel Storrie was attacked, and he happened to be here when Lee called the next afternoon. Lee and I had him in. He argued like a lawyer and proved that he could not possibly have committed the crime.”

Dreyton smiled.

“He should have been a detective,” he said. “He’s wasting his time as a station rouseabout. Seems quite well educated. Are all half-castes like him?”

“Hardly,” dryly replied Martin. “The fellow evidently has had a good schooling. What about your coming back into the office?”

The fence-rider’s eyelids drooped before he glanced at the book-keeper. Martin went on:

“Allen wants to leave as soon as possible, because his mother is ill in Adelaide. I thought of you at once. You must be getting sick of the fence by now.”

“That I am not, Mr. Borradale,” Dreyton admitted smilingly. “Still, if Mr. Allen wishes to leave immediately, I will take over.”

“You will? Good man!”

Again the fence-rider flashed his quiet smile. “On one condition,” he stipulated.

“And that is?”

“That you really will try to get another book-keeper without delay. Honestly, I am far happier on the fence than I was when anchored to this office.”

The quick gratification in Martin’s face subsided.

“Very well,” he agreed. “I’ll do my best. You’re a strange fellow yourself to prefer that hard life on the fence.”

“It is not so hard. You try it.”

“Not I.” Martin swung round to face the book-keeper. “When do you want to go, Allen? By tomorrow’s coach?”

“Yes … if possible, Mr. Borradale. My mother’s condition is worrying me.”

“Then that settles it, Donald. Officially you begin here in the morning. Agreed?”

“Yes. And you will not fail to write to the agency for a new man?”

“Very well,” assented Martin ruefully.

He might have said more had not light footsteps been betrayed by the veranda beyond the open door. Into the office came Stella Borradale, dressed in tennis-rig and carrying two rackets. A swift smile broke on her face at sight of the fence-rider.

“Hullo, Donald!” she exclaimed coolly. “Are you really still alive? I wonder you did not choke to death in those two days of wind and sand.”

Dreyton’s face registered an answering smile, but no longer was his body relaxed in the easy stance of the bushman, and no longer were his eyes unguarded. When he addressed her, he spoke as easily as he had done to her brother.

“I wanted to be a rabbit, Miss Borradale, so that I could burrow deep,” he told her. “It was no use wishing to be an eagle. Those I managed to see were perched in dead trees and looked extremely miserable.”

“They could not have looked or felt more miserable than I,” Stella said lightly, taking the others into her confidence. “In addition to the physical discomforts I was obsessed by the dread that something would happen. It spoiled the dance, and I was thankful to get home. Haven’t the detectives arrived yet, Martin?”

Her brother shook his head, and both he and Dreyton noted the look of horror deep in her eyes.

“I hope they send someone better than Sergeant Simone,” she said quickly. “He is an obnoxious person.”

“I think that half-caste fellow, Joe Fisher, would do better,” offered Dreyton.

“I have not seen him,” the girl said indifferently, staring at the fence-rider.

She possessed the trick of steady scrutiny without being rude, and Dreyton knew that he was being examined and approved much as his mother used once to do when he returned home at the end of a term at school. Her friendliness, he was well aware, was due to the absence of snobbery in her mental make-up. Her present attitude to him she adopted with all the men. It was never taken as ground for familiarity. It has ever been the general rule for those who live in “Government House” to address the men by their Christian names, and the rule has been in force for so many generations that were a man addressed by his surname he would accept it as an insult.

“Donald is going to take Mr. Allen’s place pro tem.,” remarked Martin, breaking a silence. “Mr. Allen is leaving us tomorrow.”

“Indeed!” Again Stella examined the smoothly shaven, not unhandsome face, its keen cut features and the grey-blue eyes now regarding her. Then again she took them all into her confidence. “I am sorry you are leaving, Mr. Allen, and I hope you will find your mother much improved in health. We shall miss your tennis and bridge.”

“But we shall have Donald back,” her brother cut in, and he could not prevent satisfaction expressing itself in his voice.

“But I have not played tennis for more than a year,” Dreyton protested.

“That’s your fault,” Stella pointed out a little severely. “You would go fence-riding.”

The men’s cook was pounding his triangle.

“Better dine with us,” invited Martin.

“It’s kind of you to ask me, Mr. Borradale.” Dreyton made haste to reply, “but I am not yet your book-keeper. I must go to Carie this evening to refit. It would be possible for a book-keeper to dress like a fence-rider, but quite impossible for a fence-rider to appear as a book-keeper in his fence toggery. With your permission, Miss Borradale! Hang-dog Jack is so easily upset if delayed in serving dinner.”

She bent her head and smiled, and he turned and strode from the office, where brother and sister stared at each other for quite ten seconds.

Dreyton found Hang-dog Jack awaiting him in the long building devoted to the men’s kitchen dining-room. Five men were seated on the forms flanking the table. Bony being of their number. Standing at a bench on which stood a large iron pot of soup, and dishes of roast meat and vegetables, was the cook. Hang-dog Jack was an extraordinary person, both in his ability to cook and in his appearance.

He was of cubic proportions. His legs were short and his enormous arms abnormally long. His ugly face was square and crowned with a mop of black hair. A flattened nose, a wide and characterless mouth and a shapeless chin, were redeemed by a broad forehead and steady brown eyes. How he came by his “nom-de-track” no one knew. Some said it was due to his hang-dog facial expression; others that once he actually had hanged an unfortunate dog.

“Soup?” he snarled at Dreyton.

The fence-rider feinted and the cook ducked.

“Lookin’ fer fight, eh?” snarled Hang-dog Jack. “You come outside and I’ll wrastle you. In two ups I’ll dump you six times and give you the aeroplane spin.”

“I don’t believe in ‘wrastling’ with you,” mocked Dreyton. “Give me soup and a pleasant smile.”

The cook ladled soup into a tin plate and Dreyton took it, with knife, fork and spoon, to a place at the table where he met a barrage of greetings and questions.

A young fellow, obviously a horseman, who sat on Bony’s right and who was Tilly’s “boy”, Harry West, wanted to know if Dreyton had seen a piebald mare with a colt running at heels. Bill the Cobbler, an old man without a hair to his head, wished to know if Dreyton was feeling fit enough to write a letter for him to a “widder wot’s blackmailing me down in Adelaide”. Young-and-Jackson, so named because the famous hotel of that name in Melbourne was the only building he remembered seeing during his rare visits to that city, wished to know if Dreyton had seen Dogger Smith and “’Ow’s that old pioneer getting along?”

Beneath their questions was restraint. Dreyton could feel it. He nodded recognition to Bony, who was smiling happily. No one mentioned Mabel Storrie. Harry West asked if Dreyton would take a ticket in the station sweepstake on the Melbourne Cup.

“I don’t believe in sweepstakes,” snarled Hang-dog Jack.

“Then why did you buy two tickets?” demanded the organizer.

“I don’t believe in ’em, all the same.”

“What do you believe in?” asked Bill the Cobbler.

“I don’t believe in nothing,” argued the cook as though he enjoyed arguing.

“Not even beer?” mildly inquired Young-and-Jackson, blinking his green eyes rapidly.

“Not even in beer—at sixpence a small schooner.”

The scowl on the cook’s face was terrific. It amazed even Bony. With deliberate unconcern, Hangdog Jack lit an ancient pipe and casually blew smoke into the soup saucepan. Bony was thankful that the first course was past.