The Lake Frome Monster. Arthur W. Upfield
wandering to and fro along the Fence. “I did three years on this section before I was made overseer. There ain’t an inch of it I haven’t done something to. I’ll bet you’ll have had it, time you knock off.”
Siberia! Nothing like Siberia! A living hell on earth when a storm blotted out sight and thrashed a man with buckbush, the bush of all sizes, up to four times that of a football composed of brittle filigree straw.
“When on your own you want to have a rifle with you,” advised Newton. “Topping one of these ranges you never know what’ll be on the next flat. Could be a brush turkey. It rained once and covered a flat and there were two-three million ducks on it. Another time I got two dogs. Ever seen a penentie?”
“Something of a fable, isn’t it?”
“Not here it isn’t. Got a jaw like a crocodile, and a body like a monarch goanna. You see one you keep wide, and if you open fire do it from opposite side of the Fence. Better not try it if the camels are on the same side. You’ll lose them for sure, for they’ll never stop going till they reach Sydney.”
“Quite a run, Sydney being eight hundred miles to the east,” Bony said, laughingly.
It was again up and over and down, the animals lurching up the steep sides of the ranges. Arriving at the summit of the last range, they looked down on a wide flat to a gate in the Fence.
“We’ll camp here,” Newton said, at the bottom of the last slope. “Expect you’ll want to have a dekko at Bore Ten.”
They put the camels down where there was plenty of dead wood, and unloaded and off-saddled. The animals were hobbled and freed of their nose-line which ran to wooden plugs drawn through a nostril. The sacks of salted meat were slung from tree branches and then the men walked to the gate.
Scrub grew on this flat. They passed through the gateway and almost at once emerged from the scrub to see spread before them a vast naked space. There was the bore, the sunlight making a twinkling ruby of the water eternally gushing from its metal head. So clear was the air this day that they could see the steam rising from the narrow stream, and could see too the wind raising ripples on a lake of water fed by the stream.
“There she is; here against this tree Maidstone leaned his motor-bike; the camera was hooked to a bough together with his water-bag. Those stakes along there a bit marks where his body was found. Don’t look like he was shot at night.”
Newton waited for a comment, but didn’t get it. He watched Bony survey the immense scene and return to look closely at the camp site.
“We’ll get back to camp, Ed,” Newton said, after a while. “Sun’ll be down soon, and we’ll water the camels at the bore in the morning.”
Chapter Three
Bony Takes a Second Look
Cattle had made the plain about Bore Ten. Cattle had eaten out the herbage, had killed the acacias, by first eating the leaves, and then scratching themselves against the dead trunks. The land was scored, and dead beasts or tree trunks were the genesis of the miniature sandhills kept to that size by the westerlies which carried excess sand on and on to begin the real hills over which passed the Fence. The bore and the lake it created appeared less than two hundred yards distant that morning even though Bony knew it was a full mile away. Brown and white marked cattle were feeding on rising ground beyond the water.
As Bony led his string of two camels after the three led by the overseer, he felt physically buoyant and completely satisfied. The air was so dry and so clean he felt pleasure in breathing it. The sand under his feet cushioned them from fatigue, and like Newton he found walking infinitely better than riding Rosie, who wasn’t saddled anyway. To cap it all he was now face-to-face with the challenge of clearing up Maidstone’s death. Here, where the crime was committed, must surely be something that other eyes had missed.
He drew up beside Newton when the latter halted at two stakes driven into the ground marking the place where the Quinambie overseer had found the body. There was not a trace of a track by animal or man.
“Lying face down with the head towards the east stake,” Newton said, whilst cutting tobacco from a plug for his pipe. “Musta been making back to his camp near the gate.”
“No proof,” Bony objected. “He could have swivelled about as he fell. He could have been going to the bore, not coming from it.”
“The police reckoned he was coming from the lake.”
“They’re liable to reckon anything,” argued Bony. “Never accept anything at face value is one of my strainer posts. We may contend which way he was walking when shot until there is proof of direction. We may promote suppositions into a thesis and waste time. The police think he was returning from the bore lake where he had gone for a billy of water to preserve the water he carried on the bike. The billy was found beside the body, emptied by his fall. That is what they think. I want proof.”
“Going to be hard,” decided Newton dryly. “You got a job at this distance from the shooting.”
He moved off and Bony paused to follow his train, as camels always behave better when in single file. The bells tinkled, the eagles flew high in their grand circling, and Bony was happy that all was well with his investigation and the obvious fact that it was going to be hard.
Eventually coming to the bore, they stopped to watch the ceaseless flow of water pouring from the angled piping. The water dropped in a great gush into a pool of its own making and then ran away along the trench before spreading to make the lake it had also created. It had been running like that for years and would run for many years yet, although there was a slight decrease in pressure.
“Why Number Ten?” Bony asked.
“Fella that sunk it had a contract to sink ten. This was the last of his contract. It’s not the official name, though.”
Again in single file they moved along the north side of the drain and then followed the edge of the lake. The sides of the drain and the edge of the lake were lined with mineral salts and a species of algae could be seen below the clear water. After about a quarter of a mile had been trodden round the lake Bony called out, and Newton stopped.
“I suppose you wouldn’t remember what the weather was like when Maidstone was killed?” he shouted. Newton shook his head and shouted back:
“Could tell you when back at camp. I keep a diary.”
They went on following the lake’s edge. The ground at that point was moist and presently it registered the tracks of cattle, and here Newton stopped again and turned his camels to the water. They seemed anxious not to wet their feet, and were not particularly anxious to drink. Standing beside his own two, Bony noted that Rosie was slightly disdainful, but that Old George drank heavily.
“Lower down the lake that far shore must be full six hundred yards away,” observed Bony. “Is the water deep in the middle?”
“Only at the original extension of the channel, where it’s up to your neck, accordin’ to Nugget. Some of his kids tried it.”
“Shallow enough at the edge. The wind could move it into tides. Proof! Those lines of dead algae prove it. Like seaweed.”
“You don’t miss much,” Newton conceded. “Sometimes there’s a lot of duck here, and swans, too. They don’t get much feed, so they must come down to rest on migration flights.”
Bony would have liked to explore this artificial lake further and determined to do so when alone. He refrained from asking further questions save for confirmation of a theory. He began by saying that that stop would be good enough to fill his water-drums and that it wasn’t necessary to go farther along the “shore”, and then asked:
“It would be about here that Maidstone would fill his billy, don’t you think?”
“About here, yes. No need to go farther along. Water’s the same anywhere on. Only makes tea.”
After