Bony - 09 - Death of a Swagman Page 15

  On leaving the homestead, instead of following the road to Merino till the right-hand turn was reached, he rode close beside the Walls of China, which rose on his left side in steep ramparts and slopes of sand supporting never a blade of grass nor a shoot of scrub. The wind came from his right, the west, fairly steadily and at an estimated velocity of fifteen miles an hour. It carried towards the Walls the sand grains flung upward by the hoofs of his horse and it blurred with white mist the curving lines of the summits upon which rested the blue sky. The sun was hot and good to feel on bare arms and neck and right cheek, and now and then Bony expanded his chest and breathed deeply. He was inclined to sing, for his spirit was uplifted.

  This was his country. The vast, almost mountainous range of snow-white sand to his left, and the red bush-covered land rising gently on his right to the far distant horizon beyond and higher than Merino, was his city. The endless white sand flats separated by water gutters which rarely knew water were his streets. The very ground itself was his newspaper, supplied to him freshly clean and new after every moderately windy day.

  Over the broad sand flats he rode a horse anxious to gallop, anxious to be free, to stretch the muscles of his legs and whistle the wind through distended pink nostrils. Well, during the immediate days ahead, the horse should have its wish, for there were hundreds of square miles of land to be surveyed, land over which a man had twice passed to and from the sinister hut at Sandy Flat.

  He came to the eastern fence of the half-mile-square horse paddock, a fence which hugged the foot of the Walls, and when he reached the southern corner he rode for three hundred yards to pass the hut and to examine the water troughs. The truck’s wheel tracks were plain, as were the tracks of the driver from truck to hut and back. Yet even so soon, the wind was filling in those tracks. A few sheep were drinking at one of the troughs; several others were lying down far out and chewing the cud. The ground indicated that comparatively few stock were watering here, that the water holes in the paddocks were still serving the majority.

  He gave his horse a drink and then rode again past the hut to the gate of the horse paddock, went through it, loosed the horse, and hung saddle and bridle over a rail sheltered by a small roof of iron. The horse galloped away, and Bony walked back to the hut. By the sun it was then a few minutes after five o’clock.

  In place of the door handles sent down to the fingerprint section a length of fencing wire had been passed through the hole and knotted, its outer end angled to slip down over a nail driven into the doorframe. This primitive doorcatch Bony lifted up and then pushed inward the door, smiling grimly at the unwarranted precaution so soon after the visit of the truck driver. He even peered through the space between door and frame to ascertain if anyone stood behind the door with a strip of hessian sacking ready in his hands. On the table were the rations, a tucker box and meat in a calico bag, and his strapped swag.

  Having raised the drop window in the back wall, he took two petrol-tin buckets to fill at a tap beneath the reservoir tank. The outside indicator showed that the tank was four-fifths filled, and so there was no necessity to release the mill. On getting back to the hut with his water supply, he made a fire on the open hearth and slung over it a filled billycan of water for tea. In the tucker box was fresh bread and cooked meat, so no cooking had to be done this evening. Then the jam tins, in which stood the legs of the meat safe in the small cane-grass hutment, had to be filled with water to defeat the ants, which in these parts defied even the shifting sand. After that he unrolled his swag on the bunk and prepared his bed for the night.

  The sun could be seen framed within the trap window. It was huge and blood-red, and the light it shed into the hut splashed crimson upon the bunk, the table, and the floor near the door. The air was cooling, but the flies remained “sticky”, and even when the sun did vanish beneath the tree-bordered horizon they remained active, loath to leave Bony’s arms and face.

  The wind was not as strong now, but it promised to blow throughout the night and the following day, and when he had washed the dishes after his meal and stood on the doorstep smoking a cigarette, he saw that the truck’s wheel tracks were almost obliterated. His own—excepting those against the door­step—were wholly so.

  As the twilight deepened he sat on the doorstep and smoked, the nature lover in him entranced by the slowly changing colours of the Walls of China.

  The wind’s plaintive moan at the corners of the hut failed to drown from his ears its hissing over the sand ripples all about. Unaccountably a cold arrow sped up the flesh covering his spine and made him glance over his shoulder at the dark interior of the hut limited by the oblong opening of the drop window. The same swift glance noted the crossbeam from which had dangled a dead man.

  “There are times,” he mused aloud, “when my mother in me makes me too sensitive. I can smell the blood of men, and I can feel their spirits near me. Now, now, Detective Inspector Bonaparte, stand no nonsense from Bony.”

  He stood up, stretched himself, turned into the hut, and relit the fire to brew some coffee. By its light he let down the drop window and fastened it. The lamp he did not light. He returned to the doorstep, wishing that the night was past. The crackling of the fire he found a comfort.

  Now the Walls of China were masked in black without a single eyehole. They presented a complete void above which floated the stars. The wind continued to moan at the hut corners and to play over the sand ripples, its noise sufficient to drown the sound of the bush banshee’s footsteps or the hessian-blanketed steps of the man who had strangled the swagman and then hanged his body. The banshee never made a mistake once it got on the tracks of a blackfellow caught away from his own campfire at night, but surely the man with sacking about his feet must make a mistake sooner or later!

  When the billycan on the fire began to sing its boiling song Bony rose once again and made coffee, which he took to his doorstep with pannikin and sugar. Soon afterwards invisible wings fluttered above the hut roof, and again the icy arrow sped up his spine to chill the hair of his head. A thin sigh escaped his lips when from the roof of the cane-grass meat house came the “mo-poke, mo-poke” of the night bird.

  The sky above the Walls was becoming diffused with a peculiar sheen and the stars were losing their brilliance. He sighed with relief. Far away to the south appeared a chain of strange clouds—the taller summits bathed in the light of the rising moon.

  The moon was high above the Walls of China when Bony rose and, entering the hut, rerolled his swag and took it over to lay out upon the sandy floor of the meat house. He took his tucker box and rations, which he placed within the safe. He lay upon his bed and smoked his last cigarette for the evening, and somehow he found the air sweeter to breathe.

  Bony was awakened by a rhythmic clanging sound. He sat up abruptly, listening, straining his ears. He knew what that noise was. The windmill was in action.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Adventure by Moonlight

  SPLINTERS OF MOONLIGHT lay upon the floor of the cane-grass meat house. The wire-netted door was wide open, and beyond it could be seen a section of white sand beneath the star-filled sky. The wind still blew, whispering secrets into the clefts of the sand ripples, and hissing with the soft music of bursting sea suds through the tough grass of the hutment. Dis­cordantly, without rhythm but with an inevitable regularity, there came to Bony’s straining ears the “clang … clang … clang” of the windmill in action.

  Surely he had not released the mill to take the wind! For an instant he checked upon himself, knowing then that he had not even interfered with the mill. It was not an old mill. The original paint was still in good condition. When he had visited the tank to draw water for his own use the tail fan was swung into line with the wind. That position of the tail was maintained by a strong wire fastened near the ground to a lever bar, which in its turn was kept in position by an iron pin. For the mill to gain freedom, that iron pin would have had to be withdrawn or, alternatively, the wire would have had to
break.

  The remote chance of the wire breaking was debated by Bony whilst he pulled on his riding boots. The chance was remote, for the mill was not old and that wire was not likely to be worn in any place.

  There could be no legitimate reason for anyone to release the mill. The reservoir tank was almost full and there was hardly any stock as yet coming to drink here. Leylan and all his hands at the homestead knew that he, Bony, was camping here this night, and it could not be imagined that any of the hands would be sent to release the mill after ten o’clock, the hour that Bony had retired. From the position of the moon, it was now verging upon two o’clock.

  The banshee? Oh rot! Cut out that stuff, Bony!

  Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte moved toward the open netted door on his hands and knees. When he emerged into the moonlight he almost faced the front of the hut. For nearly a minute he regarded that sinister dwelling, noting how deserted it looked and that the door was fastened shut. He tried to recall if he had closed it. Unsuccessful, he began to crawl round the circular cane-grass meat house, keeping tight against the wall, until he reached the narrow segment of black shadow on its south-eastern side. In this shadow he stood up, pressing with his back against the wall and wishing that it had been made of brick, not grass.

  The scene presented to him was almost as clear as at high noon. The Walls of China rose tier upon tier in snowy white­ness. To the south was the reservoir tank on its tall stand. He could see the black shadow about its wooden supports, and he could see the moonlit sandscape beyond and between the sup­ports. The mill towered higher than the reservoir tank, its iron stand laying a maze of narrow shadows below it. The “wheel” of wind vanes was revolving fast. Almost facing Bony, the light of the moon blended the vanes into a solid disk of bright silver. And outward from the mill above the covered well radiated the three long lines of troughing, black upon the bril­liantly lit white sand.

  Nothing moved in all that far-flung waste of white sand save the wind vanes of the mill. The sheep that had come to drink at sunset had gone away out into the feed.

  The control wire must have broken.

  Unhurriedly, almost casually, Bony visually examined every object made by man and set down there on the white sand. There were no shadows cast by Nature’s handiwork. There was no living thing beneath the mill, and after a full minute he was convinced that nothing alive lurked in the shadow cast by the reservoir tank. A man could remain concealed by lying down beyond any one of the trough lines, but to do that he must continue to lie full length.

  Yes, that control wire must have broken this very night through a million-to-one chance. And yet …

  For the third time during his stay at Sandy Flat the icy arrow sped up the flesh covering his spine and became lodged in his scalp. Somewhere in Bony’s sensitive being a warning chord was being struck.

  All was not right with the place, despite the power of the moonlight and the paucity of objects casting shadows to con­ceal danger. The entire picture was illumined clearly enough, and the shadow-casting objects easily totalled. The mill, the reservoir stand and tank, the three lines of troughing, the hut, and the meat house against which he was leaning made but seven objects set upon a ruffled sheet of white cloth. Yet the number seemed to be wrong, either one too many or too few compared with the number which had been impressed upon his mind whilst he sat on the hut doorstep the previous evening and smoked cigarettes. The westering moon shed its glare full upon the vast face of the Walls of China. Upon it there were no shadows.

  The minutes were ticked off the sheet of Time by the moon’s inevitable passage down the pale blue bowl of the sky, and still Bony continued to remain passive, leaning back against the cane-grass meat house, now and then changing his weight from foot to foot. That inherited sense of unseen danger re­mained strongly in him. There was something wrong about the place, a something which had not been wrong with it when he made up his bunk in the meat house and fell asleep.

  The vanes of the mill followed each other round and round to fashion an opalescent disk, raising and depressing the long iron rod connected to the pump deep within the well. Why should anyone release the mill in the middle of the night when water was not necessary? Well, one objective could be to awaken him, to take him to the mill to shut it off and so make a target of him with a rifle. Why that? The killer of Kendall and the swagman, the man whom he was seeking, might have learned who and what he was, and might be lying down on the far side of one of the trough lines, waiting for him.

  Then abruptly Bony froze.

  The wooden floor of the stand upon which the tank rested was larger than the tank itself, and coming round into Bony’s view on the edge of the tank flooring was the dark figure of a man. He was holding to the top edge of the open tank as he stepped round the edge of the flooring, to reach the iron ladder leading to the ground. He was halfway down that lad­der when Bony left the shadow of the meat house.

  Determined to identify this man who released windmills in the middle of the night, Bony’s objective was to get as close as possible to him before he reached the bottom of the ladder down which he came with his face to it. The sand smothered all sound of Bony’s racing feet, and when he was still twenty yards from the tank stand the man stepped down from the bottom rung.

  Bony fell forward, scooping a small rampart of sand before him as he did so. In those swift seconds whilst the man was bringing his second foot to the ground and then turned to face towards the mill, Bony’s body was concealed by the sand rampart he had flung up.

  The man did not turn fully towards where Bony lay, but began to walk towards the mill. Each of his feet was bound loosely with hessian sacking, and the heart of the foxing half-caste exulted and sent the blood pounding through his arteries. He desired mightily to rush forward and arrest this climber of tank stands, this mover over sand with hessian-covered feet, and it was one of the rare occasions that he lamented an objection to carrying a gun, without which to attempt the arrest of a man so suspect would be folly.

  Recognition, possible in the moonlight, was out of the ques­tion, for about the fellow’s head was a cloth hood.

  He walked to the mill, where he pulled down the lever bar of the control wire and shut off the mill, and, having done that, he left the mill, stepped over a trough line, and set off southward, keeping roughly parallel with the Walls of China.

  Bony permitted him to proceed for a hundred yards before he rose to his feet and followed, determined to keep him in sight and to follow him to his abode, confident that he did not carry a rifle, and mindful that shooting with revolver or auto­matic pistol is at such a range extremely erratic.

  The man went through two wire fences; and through those fences went his tracker. Thence onward to the south, hugging the great sand range, illumined by the full moonlight, onward for half a mile when the quarry abruptly stopped and looked back.

  Bony had not time to go to ground, but he did have time to freeze into a tree stump, one knee bent and one upraised bent arm, his face partially hidden by the angle of his head, in which position he was just able to watch the man ahead. His quarry was standing quite still as though trying to recall if he had passed a tree stump.

  It became obvious that he was uncertain about it. To make sure, he began to retrace his steps, and he had not covered twenty yards towards the motionless detective when Bony saw in the hand of the crooked right arm the glint of metal, a weapon held ready for action.

  The aspect of that hooded man whose feet were submerged in flapping strips or sacking was a little unnerving. He came towards Bony like a soundless wraith accompanied by an equally soundless shadow lying from him towards the Walls. The “tree stump” came alive and moved backwards. The man appeared to hesitate, then came on till, eventually, he stopped. Bony stopped … and waited. The distance between them was less than ninety yards.

  Bony was in command of the situation. He could follow at a distance dictated by himself. If the other man returned in an effort to checkmate him
, he could retreat and continue to maintain what was reasonable to think was a safe pistol-shooting distance.

  The hooded man made another move, coming forward swiftly, and, as quickly, Bony went back towards the mill. Again the hooded man stopped and again Bony stopped. Across the intervening white sand they stared, to one the necessity to throw off his tracker, to the other the determination to continue tracking his quarry. And not far off the new day.

  Movement in the hooded man ceased after his two arms seemed to cross in front of his body. Bony instantly broke into movement, for the meaning of those crossed arms was that the pistol hand was brought to rest on the left forearm to gain steadiness. The pistol snapped and the bullet whined past Bony’s left side. The weapon was an automatic, possibly a .38, and if accuracy at approximately one hundred yards is most difficult, the distance was certainly not beyond the range of the discharged bullet.

  Bony’s movements became a crouching dance, and he danced back and back from the hooded man, who was now coming on once more. Again he stopped, rested the weapon on his forearm, and fired.

  The noise was carried by the westerly wind towards and over the Walls of China, and he knew that there was no possi­bility of anyone in Merino hearing the shooting, even if anyone in the township was astir so early in the morning. Nevertheless, he desisted from further shooting and stopped once again.

  Bony decided to increase the safety limit before he also stopped.

  “Now you’re biting your fingernails, aren’t you, my friend?” he said conversationally. He knew that his voice could not reach the other, but he went on: “You are finding yourself in a bit of a hole, eh? You cannot very well chase me around the country, and you cannot have me chasing you around either. You have to get out of that rig before daylight when someone mounted on a horse might observe with interest this little comedy of ‘I chase you and you chase me’. And to add to the complications is the fact that, despite your footwear, I still can track you … should I lose sight of you … which I won’t.”