Wake In Fright by Kenneth Cook Page A

pervaded his whole body. He felt unnaturally alert, as though he had constantly the physical reaction of having just been made aware of danger.
    ‘What was in the pill you gave me?’ he asked Tydon as they drove off.
    ‘Benzedrine and stuff,’ said Tydon, ‘want another?’
    ‘No thanks.’
    One thing was certain now, thought Grant, once this hunting episode was over he would not return to Tydon’s hut.
    The sexual mania he could bear; the heat had to be borne anyway; Tydon’s breath was noxious, but not impossible; theman’s conversation was appalling, but probably sufferable for a time; but a diet of kangaroo’s testicles was altogether too much. He would set out to walk back to Sydney before he would stay with Tydon.
    Joe rummaged on the floor of the car and came up with a twenty-two rifle.
    ‘This is yours,’ he said to Grant.
    ‘Oh, thanks.’ It seemed quite a reasonable weapon, a single shot with a much scarred stock, but apparently unmarked barrel.
    Joe gave him a large handful of cartridges.
    ‘Plenty more here if you want them. Know how to use that?’
    ‘Yes, thanks.’ Grant worked the loading mechanism.
    ‘Done a bit of shooting?’
    ‘Oh, on the coast, a few rabbits now and then.’
    The car shuddered and the dog rose to the roof and came down, banging its jaw on the barrel of the rifle.
    ‘Are all the roads around here like this?’
    ‘This isn’t bad. You ought to go out to Mundameer.’
    ‘Where are we going now?’
    ‘Place out from Yindee we know. We’ll get a lot of’roos there.’
    ‘Do we shoot in the dark?’
    ‘Spotlight. We’ve got a beaut.’
    The sun was setting, dropping down below a cloudless horizon, glowing red through the dust haze low to the ground. To the east the plain melted into mauve and black.
    The township of Yindee popped out of the darkening country quite suddenly. It was one lone, long, low hotel.
    They pulled up right at the door, clumped over the inevitable wooden veranda and Dick called for four beers.
    ‘There’s a fox,’ said Joe.
    In the fading light about fifty yards down the road they could see it, padding along on the dust, looking as though it was going somewhere.
    Elaborately casual, Tydon, Joe and Dick walked back to the car. Grant followed them.
    They took out their rifles. Grant took out his.
    Three rifles cracked. Grant was still loading his.
    The fox swung around and lolloped back down the road. Dust flicked up around it as the bullets landed. It turned at right angles and began to run across the road, and then it dropped its neck, slid a little way, kicked and lay still.
    The greyhound was by now hysterical, but they did not let it out of the car.
    It had been an extremely good, or lucky, shot that had brought down the fox in that light. Grant, who had got inone shot, and rather thought he might have hit the fox, wanted to go and get it; but the others wouldn’t hear of it.
    ‘Mangy brute,’ said Joe, ‘not worth skinning. They never are out here.’
    So the fox was left on the road and they all went into the bar where the publican, unmoved by the fusillade at his front door, had set up the beer.
    Grant, who had been thinking a great deal about the paying for this beer, took out his ten-shilling note at the prompting of a furtive and unadmitted instinct, and tossed it on to the bar.
    Joe picked it up and handed it back to him.
    ‘No one who’s broke buys beer on The Yabba, mate,’ he said; and, as that was what Grant had half expected or hoped would happen, he took back the note after suitable protest.
    But he avoided looking at Tydon, who had begun to drink his beer already.
    He must not drink too much, thought Grant, just enough, and then if he found somewhere to sleep tonight he would be in fit shape to find work, or something, tomorrow.
    But how much was just enough? One beer was wonderful, so cool, so wet, so much desired by the dusty throat.
    Two beers slowed down the benzedrine-inspired drumming in his body.
    Three beers and