"Baldy is going to light his pipe, and while he is stooping to get a firestick, I'll do him with the axe."
When Baldy turned towards the fire, Nosey grasped the axe and held it behind him. He waited a moment, and then entered the hut; but Baldy either heard his step, or had some suspicion of danger, for he looked around before takingup a firestick. At that instant the blow, intended for the back of the head, struck him on the jaw, and he fell forward among the embers. For one brief moment of horror he must have realised that he was being murdered, and then another blow behind the head left him senseless.
Nosey dragged the body out of the fireplace into the middle of the floor, intending, while he was doing a man, to do him well. He raised the axe to finish his work with a third blow, but Julia gave a scream so piercing that his attention was diverted to her.
"Oh, Nosey," she said, "what are you doing to poor Baldy? You are murdering him."
Nosey turned to his wife with upraised axe.
"Hold your jaw, woman, and keep quiet, or I'll do as much for you."
She said no more. She was tall and stout, had small, sharp, roving eyes; and Nosey was a thick-set man, with a thin, prominent nose, sunken eyes, and overhanging brows. He never had a prepossessing appearance, and now his look and attitude were so ugly and fierce that the big woman was completely cowed. The pair stood still for some time, watching the last convulsive movements of the murdered Baldy.
Nosey could now pride himself on having been "game to do his man," but he could not feel much glory in his work just yet. He had done it without sufficient forethought, and his mind was soon full of trouble.
Murder was worse than sheep stealing, and the consequences of his new venture in crime began to crowd on his mind with frightful rapidity. He had not even thought of any plan for hiding away the corpse. He had no grave ready, and could not dig one anywhere in the neighbourhood. The whole of the country round his hut was rocky-- little hills of bare bluestone boulders, and grassy hollows covered with only a few inches of soil--rocks everywhere, above ground and below. He could burn the body, but it would take a long time to do it well; somebody might come while he was at the work, and even the ashes might betray his secret. There were shallow lakes and swamps, but he could not put the corpse into any of them with safety: search would be made wherever there was water, on the supposition that Baldy had been drowned after drinking too freely of the gin he had brought from Nyalong, and if the body was found, the appearance of the skull would show that death had been caused, not by drowning, but by the blows of that cursed axe. Nosey began to lay all the blame on the axe, and said, "If it had not stood up so handy near the door, I wouldn't have killed the man."
It was the axe that tempted him. Excuses of that sort are of a very ancient date.