“One day you will meet an oncoming vehicle,” he remarked.

“Yair.”

The cigarette butt continued its dance. Like a lion springing from its lair, the car spun on to the floor of a wide valley, and followed a rule-straight yellow ribbon edged with wire fences. Beyond the fences flat paddocks were tiled with ploughed chocolate clods. Here and there were small neat farmsteads about which waved fast-growing maize. The time now being favourable to ask the driver for attention, Bony reminded him of Ginger.

“Dog,” replied Mike. “Greatest fightin’ dog I ever had. Red Irish terrier. Tackle anything from rats to the old man’s prize bull. Any stray dogs come around our place, Ginger got going. Usta tremble all over with a sorta joy. Always the same tactics, too. He’d kid the stray down towards the dam, sooling him to fight by pretendin’ he was scared. Then down by the dam he’d hop into him, and when the stray had had enough, Ginger would drag him into the water and drown him. Always drowned ’em, he did. D’youknow what?”

“Well?”

“The bloke what done our drownings musta seen Ginger doing his stuff, and got the idea off Ginger. Ed Carlow had been in a fight and the bloke held him under Answerth’s Folly till he drowned. And old Ma Answerth was held under, too. Same way as Ginger held his strays under.”

“There may be something in what you infer,” agreed Bony. “Many people know of Ginger’s methods?”

“Hundreds. I usta breed kelpies. Good many town dogs would come out to visit, and Ginger would attend to ’em. Then the owners would arrive and start an argument, but not before I’d buried the bodies.