the driver, who was now filling the radiator from the tin. “I’m dragging a wheel-chain from now on, like the petrol-wagons drag a chain down in the cities.”
“Might be as well,” agreed the fat man. “I’d sooner have the screws than be blown up. Cripes! No wonder me wife’s mother has to lie down when the wind blows like this. She says the electricity in these storms takes all the strength out of her.”
The grin on the driver’s face became a wide smile.
“Better get her to wear thick rubbed-soled shoes. Then the next sand-storm will charge her with static till she blows to pieces,” he suggested.
“Not a bad idea,” conceded the fat man without smiling, but his dust-rimmed eyes were twinkling when he turned back to enter the car. Fisher was chuckling delightedly as he called “Good day” and left the driver fixing one of his wheel-chains to the rear bumper-bar.
The wind sang its menacing song as he plodded northward, a small swarm of flies hovering in the back draught produced by his body and the swag on his back, the left side of his face and his left hand continuously stung by the sand particles. Before and behind him the buckbush charged the fence rampart, sometimes singly and at times like a squadron of horses, many to leap right across the track. Now and then a filigree ball would strike the swagman’s head, either to bounce from it or to collapse against it and wrap straw about his face and neck.
The horrible discomforts of this evil day were for a while lessened by thinking of the phenomenon of the electrically charged body of the car. Fisher was not sure that the driver’s explanation of the cause was correct, although it was certainly feasible. Petrol-wagons had been known to explode, or ignite, by the static charge generated, so some said, by the constant movement of petrol within the tank. It was certainly interesting. This may be the real cause of aeroplanes exploding in mid-air during great storms. It was, indeed, a problem of interest to a thinking man.
Fisher came upon the swagman mentioned by the car driver. He was trying to boil water in a small billy at a fire partially sheltered by a track-side bluebush. That he was an old man of fixed ideas was already proved by his refusal of a lift this terrible day. At Fisher’s sudden appearance he leapt to his feet, with surprising agility, obviously much frightened.
“Good day!” shouted Fisher. “D’you mind me boiling my billy at your fire?”
The old man stretched his bent body, venting a sigh of relief.
“I suppose you can,” he consented grudgingly. “You pass a car?”
“Yes. The driver had stopped to fill his radiator, and the machine was so charged with static electricity that he couldn’t remove the cap. He said there is more electricity in these wind-storms than there is in a thunder-storm.”
“’Course there is,” agreed the old man readily. “You don’t ’ear no thunder, but the electricity’s in the air all right. You get a cat a day like this and rub ’er fur and see the sparks fly! I know a bloke wot gets a terrible ’eadache when she blows, so’s he’s got to lie down. Where you headed for today?”
“This side of Carie, I think,” Fisher replied. “On Nogga Creek. There is water in Catfish Hole, isn’t there?”
They were by this time seated on their swags in what shelter the bluebush provided. At the mention of Nogga Creek and Catfish Hole the old man froze, and he leant nearer his chance companion to stare with a fixity which defied the dust.
“Ya-as, there’s water in Catfish Hole, I’m told,” he said, much more slowly. “You a stranger in these ’ere parts?”
“I have not been this way before,” Fisher admitted.
“Ho! But you’ve heard what’s been going on around Carie?”
The old man’s billy coming to the boil, he flung into the water half a handful of tea, removed the utensil and waited for Fisher’s answer.
“Er—no.”
“You haven’t, eh? Well, I’ll tell you. What’s been going on around Carie is what wouldn’t let me camp at Catfish Hole for all the tea in China.”
“The car driver said the same thing. What is the matter with the place?”
“Murders—two of ’em to date, that what’s the matter. Me, I’m George Smith, and I wouldn’t camp there for ten million quid. You take my advice and don’t you camp there tonight—or ever until the Strangler is caught.”
“The Strangler?”
“That’s what they calls ’im. The year afore last, at this time, he done in a half-caste girl where Thunder and Nogga cricks become Wirragatta River. And then last March he strangled a young feller named Marsh just this side of the township. He’s due now to strangle someone else, and it ain’t gonna be me. Don’t you let it be you.”
“What does he do it for?”
“He don’t do it for nothink bar the pleasure he gets outer corpsing people. That’s the wust of it. There ain’t no proper reason. ’Course the police can’t do nothink. They can ’ound us about, mate, but they ain’t no good at catchin’ murderers. Then this strangler, he does his killing at the end of a day like this and when it’s certain sure it’ll blow like hell again the next day so’s his tracks will be wiped out.”
“Where, then, did you camp last night?” Fisher asked.
“Me! I camped in the Carie lock-up. They wouldn’t let me camp in the stables behind the pub, so I arst the constable to let me camp in the jail. That’s about the safest place I know.”
Fisher added tea to the water boiling in his billy. To the old man he appeared to be unreasonably calm.
“I’m telling you not to camp at Catfish Hole, or anywheres outside Carie.”
“Ah, yes! Thank you for the warning. I will certainly remember it. It all sounds a little unhealthy.”
“Unhealthy! Too right it’s unhealthy. It ain’t healthy to be strangled, is it?”
Although the subject was of absorbing interest to the old man, it was not unduly protracted. It was difficult, for one thing, to talk when sand-laden air and flies competed in entry to one’s mouth. The two men parted after the most casual of nods and immediately each was swallowed by the sweeping sand waves.
Joe Fisher was of medium height, slight of frame and yet strong, steady on his feet despite the buffeting of the wind. Like a man long used to the track he carried his swag of blankets and spare clothing within a sheet of stout unbleached calico. The small canvas water-bag gripped by his right hand was stained red by the oozing moisture, and, as the billy was strapped to the swag, his left hand was free to battle constantly with the flies. His face and bare arms were caked by the sand grains. His face and hair below the rim of the old felt hat were dyed a light red. Only the blue of his eyes defied the red fog.
There was a hint of grim tenacity in the dim picture of the shadowy man’s determined tramp northward in such bad weather. He could have found shelter, but no comfort, in the lee of the fence, but methodically and at even pace he passed along the track which now did not reveal wheel-tracks; not even those of the car he had recently met.
At last the sun was no longer to be seen in the troughs of the sand waves, for it was too westerly. The wind was losing its strength a fraction, but the sand dust remained as dense. Knowledge of his own part of the country suggested that at sundown the wind would either veer to the south and blow cool and cleanly on the morrow, or lull during the night and at sunrise begin again to blow stronger yet.
Time passed and still he continued the steady tramping to the north, above him the lowering red blanket of sand particles, about him the red-brown fog which now and then was tenuous, and sometimes seemingly solid. Then presently the box-trees bordering Thunder Creek came marching to meet him from out the murk, holding invitation to the traveller with their gnarled and twisted branches.
On gaining