The Barrakee Mystery

Chapter Four

Dugdale Goes Fishing

FRANK DUGDALE, not quite twenty-eight years of age, held the position of sub-overseer on Barrakee Station. Ten years before he had found himself almost penniless and practically without friends. He had no recollection of his mother, and when, on the verge of bankruptcy, his father killed himself, the loss left him dazed and helpless.

Mr Dugdale senior was the sole representative of Dugdale amp; Co., Wool Brokers and General Station Agents, and at the time of the crash the son was about to enter the firm. From their schooldays his father and Thornton had been friends, and, whilst lamenting the fact that his friend failed to apply to him for financial assistance, the squatter had offered the youth the opportunities of a jackeroo.

The offer was eagerly accepted. Dugdale came to Barrakee and resided with the bookkeeper in the barracks. In ten years he had proved his worth. At the time that Ralph Thornton left college Dugdale was renowned for his horsemanship, his knowledge of wool, and his handling of sheep.

Of average height and build, his complexion was fair and the colour of his eyes hazel. Ralph and Kate were playing tennis when Dugdale passed, smoking his pipe and in his hand a fishing-line. For a moment he watched the flying figures in the golden light of the setting sun, and his pulse leapt as it never failed to do when he beheld Kate Flinders.

“Hallo, Dug! Are you going fishing?” asked the flushed girl, energetically gathering the balls to serve.

“No-oh no!” he drawled, with a smile. “I am going kite-flying.”

“Now, now, Dug! No sarcasm, please,” she reproved, half-mockingly.

Pausing in his walk he faced her, holding out the line for inspection, saying:

“I cannot tell a lie, as Shakespeare remarked to Stephen. Here is the kite-line.”

“Quite so,” she observed sweetly. “But you should conceal the spinner. Also your quotation is hideously mixed. It was Washington who boasted he never told a fib.”

“And Stephen lived a few centuries before Shakespeare,” Ralph contributed.

“Did he?” replied Dugdale innocently. “I fear my education is fading out. And what year did the lamented Stephen arrive upon the throne?”

“In the year eleven hundred.”

“BC or AD?”

“AD, of course, you ass.”

“Then I am constrained to marvel at your poor arguments. I distinctly said-”

“Goodbye, Dug, and good luck! Service!” cried Kate joyously. She was not sure of herself regarding Frank Dugdale. He said nice things, quaint and unexpected things. He was efficient, neat, and self-assured, but…

Reaching the river-bank, he descended to the boats, and just then the sun faded. This being unexpected for another half-hour caused him to look westward, when he saw a dense bank of clouds behind which the sun had disappeared. Selecting the lightest of the boats, he pulled out into the stream, proceeding to attach the shining spoon-spinner to the line, and then, pulling slowly again, he allowed it to run out over the stern. His end of the line he fastened to the top of thespringer -stick lashed to the side of the boat, so that when a fish “struck” the “springer” would hold it without the line snapping. Thespringer took the place of a second fisherman.

The line set, Dugdale slowly pulled up the sluggish stream, keeping to one side when the absence of snags allowed, pulling out and round the snags when he reached them.

Although the evening was brilliant the air was still and humid. The softest bird-cry, the faintest splash of a fish, was an accentuated sound. When a kookaburra chuckled, the devilish mockery in its voice struck upon the heart and mind of the fisherman as a portent.

Now, for several years, Dugdale had loved Kate Flinders. It was the white passion of pure love which seeks not possession but reciprocity, the acme of love which strives to keep the adored object on a pedestal; not to reach upward to bring it down.

Dugdale regarded the fulfilment of his love as hopeless. He knew himself a penniless nobody, the son of a bankrupt suicide. The highest point to which he could rise in the pastoral industry was a stationmanagership. To attain such a position would be the result of influence far more than of ability. There was no certainty in that dream. It was more probable that he might obtain an overseership; but he had decided that he could never ask Kate Flinders to accept an overseer for husband.

Whilst theThorntons always treated him as an equal, he realized that his position, social or financial, would never reach theirs. There was, however, one way in which his dreams could be realized, and that was to be lucky enough to win a prize in the great New South Wales Land Lottery.

If he were sufficiently lucky to win one of the prizes-and to be so he would have to be lucky enough to draw a placed horse in a lottery-he would possess an excellent foundation on which to build, with his knowledge of sheep and wool, a moderate fortune in a few years. About this, as about themanagership, was no certainty.

He had reached the bend at which Pontius Pilate and his people were camped. His boat was well over the hole gouged out by countless floods, but the spoon bait, many yards astern, was at the edge of the hole when the great cod struck.

The spring-stick bent over and down to the water. Leaving the oars, he jumped for the line, taut as a wire. The boat began to move stern-first, drawn by the fish, and Dugdale waited tensely for the moment when the fish would turn and give him the chance to gain line with which to play it.

The boat was travelling faster than when he had been pulling. Rigid with excitement, oblivious to the excited cries of the blacks on the bank, Dugdale waited. Thirty seconds after the fish had struck it turned, and dashed up-stream beneath the boat.

He gained a dozen yards of line before the fish reached the shortened length of its tether, and then began a thrilling fight. The dusk of day fell and deepened the shadows beneath the gums. The cloud bank, racing from the west, was at the zenith. It was almost dark before the fish gave up and sulked. Slowly he hauled it to the boat, a weight listless and lifeless, as though he had caught a bag of shingle.

That it was a huge fish he knew by its dead weight. Slowly he brought it alongside. The boat unaccountably rocked. For a moment he caught the outline of the broad green back, and then searched aimlessly with a foot for the crooked lifting-stick.

“Let me, boss,” someone said. “Bring him back alongside. Aye-a little more.”

Not daring to remove his gaze from the sulking cod, at any time likely to renew the fight, Dugdale saw a powerful black arm come into his vision holding the short stick crooked like a gaff.

The arm and stick suddenly moved with lightning swiftness. The small end of the gaff slid up into the gills, there was a heave that nearly upset the boat, and the great fish-which eventually scaled at forty-one pounds odd ounces-lay shimmering greenly in the gloom.

From the fish Frank Dugdale looked up at his timely helper, and beheld the very finest specimen of an aboriginal he had ever seen. The man was naked but for a pair of khaki shorts. The width of his chest, the narrowness of his hips, his powerful legs and arms now glistening with water, were magnificent. The colour of his skin was ebony-black, the colour of his thick curly hair snow-white.

He was old-Dugdale thought him to be near sixty-but the vices of white civilization had not touched him. When he spoke his accent was Australian. In his voice there was no trace of the tribe:

“That’s a bonzer fish,” he said. “I thought by the way he fought that he was a walloper and that you’d want a hand to land him.”

“Thanks for your help. I don’t think I would have landed him without it,” the fisherman conceded. “If you care to send someone along to the station in the morning for a part of it, you may.”

“Goodo! I’ll send my son, Ned. Any idea what the time is?” he asked.

“Must be about half past eight.”

“Thanks. I’ll get going. I got a meet on.”

And, without a splash, the aboriginal dived into the river, and disappeared in the gloom, now so profound that Dugdale only guessed he swam to the station side of the river.

The remainder of the tribe having gone back to their camp-fire, Dugdale disentangled the line and slowly wound it on the small length of board.

The boat was then in the gentle back-current of the bend, being imperceptibly taken up-river. Some few minutes were occupied in removing the spoon-spinner from the line: a few more in pensively cutting chips of tobacco for his pipe. Then, with it satisfactorily alight, he manned the sculls and slowly pushed himself forward into the main stream, and let himself drift down to the homestead.

He was a hundred yards from the landing-place when the first drop of rain, splashing the water near him, coincided with the sound of a thin whine abruptly culminating in a dull report similar to that made by a small boy hitting a paling with a cane.

It was a sound the like of which Dugdale had never before heard. It made him curious, but by no means alarmed. Without hurry he approached the landing-place, got out, and moored the boat.

It was while driving in the iron peg to fasten the boat that he was astonished to hear above him the gasp of human agony; and now, alarmed, he straightened up to listen further. There came a low thud; then silence.

For a moment he was paralysed, but only for a moment. In the pitchy darkness he clambered up the steep bank. At the summit the deluge fell on him. Again he listened. In the distance, towards the bottom fence of the garden, a dry stick cracked with a sound like a pistol-shot.

Immediately Dugdale stood there listening. Lightning flickered far away, but by its reflection he saw the narrow embankment on which he stood, he saw the dry billabong between it and thegarden, and he saw dimly the white-clad figure of a woman before the garden gate.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Slowly he went down into the billabong, feeling his way in the utter darkness. The lightning came again, flickering and brilliant. His gaze, directed on the garden gate, saw no white-clad figure. But the gate gave him direction in the darkness.

Still slowly he moved towards it. So dark was it that he almost ran into a gum-tree, his hands alone saving him from a nasty collision. Rounding the bole, he again took direction, and had just left when a glare of bluish light almost blinded him, and the instant following, thunder dazed him.

But, revealed by the flash, he saw right at his feet the form of the aboriginal who a short while before had helped him to land the great fish.

Calm suddenly settled upon the world and upon his mind as well. Producing a match-box, he struck a light and bent low. The whites of the staring eyes, fixed and glassy in the light of the match, and the terrible wound at the crown of the man’s head, left no room for doubt that the man was dead.

Yet the appalling discovery was not so acutely registered on Frank Dugdale’s brain as was the vision of a white-clad figure dimly seen at the garden gate not thirty yards distant.