The Barrakee Mystery

Chapter Nine

The Washaways

TEN MILES west of Cattle Tank they reached the Washaways. It had been a standing joke for years that Thornton repeatedly stated he would have abridge, 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 amanagership.

“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 perannum, 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 theGovernment 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 beforeI 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 possible 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, Unclelooks 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 ofbelar. 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.

“Oh, why don’t we live here instead of by the old river?” exclaimed the girl when they dropped down towards the cluster of neat buildings.

“It is beautiful, Kate, isn’t it?” replied the squatter. “It is unfortunate, though, that the lake is filled so rarely. Remember Thurlow Lake when it is dry and wind-blown, Kate?”

“Yes, it is horrid then. Here is Mrs Watts waiting for us. I’ve never seen her yet without a small child hanging to her skirts.”

A large, pleasant-faced woman, a little more than thirty, opened the gate leading into the miniature garden, when they pulled up before it. Mrs Watts was abushwoman, one of the smallband of heroic women who live cheerfully and happily in the semi-wilds of Australia. The Women of Barrakee were her nearest female neighbours, and Barrakee was seventy-nine miles east. She loved her husband and adored her six children. She cooked for him and them, she gave her children their primary education, and she incessantly struggled with the elements to make the garden a tiny paradise.

“Come in, come in,” she exclaimed in a low, sweet voice. “The tea is made and the scones are just out of the oven. Kate-Oh Kate, my dear, what are the young men doing to leave you stillheartwhole? But there,” with a sharp glance at Dugdale, “as George says, the young men today haven’t got much backbone.”

“I don’t know so much about that,” Kate rejoined. “Ralph hasn’t said anything yet, but he’ll be a whirlwind when he starts.”

Mrs Watts’ blue eyes, set wide in her big face, beamed upon the young man. Ralph smiled in his quiet way and said:

“It will be Desdemona and Othello, or the Sheik and the lovely white girl, darkness matched to fairness, black opal against a white diamond.”

“Now, now, we’ll have no Romeo and Juliet just at present,” interrupted the squatter genially. “Wait till we get our wool to Sydney and the advance cheque in the bank. I’ll be richer then than I am now-till the tax-gatherers hunt me up. Where’s George, Mrs Watts?”

“He went out to the Five Mile, Mr Thornton. I’m expecting him back any minute,” she said. “But what are we doing standing here? Come in-come in.”

The child clinging to her voluminous skirt was swept off its feet by the turn she made to lead them into the house liked loved relatives she had not seen for years. Her happiness was infectious. Even Dugdale’s heartache was banished for the time being.