The bushman who came back b-22 Page 2

  Inside the kitchen, they called for the child, waiting for her reply. Here, where the wind was baffled, the silence was hot and familiar. Their shouts fled away into the rooms beyond, to crouch in corners and wait for them. When they entered the spacious living-room they were halted by the wreckage of the expensive transceiver, and by the smashed telephone instrument. It was the first time Eric had been there, but Arnold had often serviced the telephone.

  There was no further damage. Nothing had been disturbed. Eric found the axe with which the instruments had been destroyed, lying under a chair where it had been carelessly flung.

  The dust was crossing the open square, tinting the buildings, brazing the hard clay ground. Above, the crows were streaking black comets against the glassy roof of white flame. Eric said:

  “More ruddy crows than when we kill a beast. Blast ’em!”

  Arnold made no comment, and Eric followed him in a further systematic search, beginning at the canegrass meat-house, trying the locks of the office and the store room, proceeding to the playhouse.

  The four dolls were on the table, Ole Fren Yorky toppled and lying on his back. The place was in its usual tidy disorder, familiar to both men. There was nowhere here for Linda to hide. Leaving, they looked under the floor, knowing they could see beyond the structure, hoping against vanquished hope. They had finished with the men’s quarters, a building containing four bedrooms and a common-room, when Arnold saw young Harry Lawton dismounting at the stockyard gates.

  His shout stopped the young man from freeing the horse, brought him to them, large spurs jangling, red neckerchief flapping.

  “You’ll want your horse,” Arnold said. “There’s been a shooting. Mrs Bell is dead and Linda has vanished.”

  “Hell!” exploded Harry. “Linda couldn’t have shot her ma. What else happened?”

  “Ain’tthat enough?” demanded Eric, and waited for instructions from Arnold.

  “You fellers get going. Ride around. Look for tracks. Look for… you know. Look for Linda. Somebody came after the boss left for town. The bloody crows didn’t shoot Mrs Bell.”

  They obeyed without question that steady authoritative voice, and Arnold went back to the quarters and leaned against the front wall and chipped at a tobacco plug. He was cold deep down in his mind, so enraged that, now no one was near to see, his grey eyes were wide and blazing.

  The question tormented him. Who had done this grim thing? A traveller? Hardly. No tracks went beyond Mount Eden, save the little-used track to the old homestead called Boulka, and he himself had just come in by that track. A traveller was as rare as an iced bottle of beer on the centre of Lake Eyre. All the blacks were away on the Neales River, fifty miles to the north. The nearest town, Loaders Springs, was more than forty miles to the southwest, and the nearest homestead was something like a hundred and ten miles away round the southern verge of the lake.

  There was left… what? Five white men who had eaten breakfast here at Mount Eden, and any one of those men, including himself, could have returned, unknown to the others, and murdered the woman. And the kid? No… no! That Arnold wouldn’t accept. Every man of them loved Linda. Knowing he would find no tracks, Arnold yet sought for tracks of strangers, or tracks betraying unusual movement out of time.

  He was trudging about the hard, sand-blasted ground when Bill Harte joined him. Neither spoke, both staring into the eyes of the other. Harte was small, wiry, bow-legged, and iron-fisted. Under the weathered complexion lay the barest hint of mixed ancestry. The tight lips parted in what could have been a snarl, but his voice was low and clipped.

  “Met Eric on the way in,” he stated. “Told me. No sign of the girl?”

  “No sign of anything, Bill. You see around. You’re better than I am at it.”

  They walked to the body, and Harte lifted the bag.

  “She was running when she was shot,” he said. “She was running from the kitchen door, and whoever shot her was standing in the doorway. Betcher on that. Prob’ly wasrunnin ’ to grab up Linda. Lindamusta been in her playhouse when it happened. You looked there, of course?”

  Arnold didn’t reply to the obvious. Harte moved away, almost at the run, crouching to bring his eyes closer to the ground, and the big man, watching, realized that he was a mere amateur tracker beside Bill Harte. All the others were superior to him, too, but then all of them together knew less than he of welding iron or repairing a pump.

  What to do now? Something had to be done with the body. It had lain there for hours, and the ants were investigating it. Arnold judged by his shadow that it was close to five o’clock, when Wootton’s return could not be far off. Harte was running about the outbuildings, like a distraught dog. The others were nowhere in sight. Yes, something had to be done beside just standing about. The boss might be late, mightn’t get back till after dark.

  From the carpenter’s shop he brought several wooden pegs and a hammer. The pegs he hammered into the hard ground so that they outlined the body, then he dusted the ants from it, turned it over, and for a space looked down upon the pained face and the wide grey eyes in which revolt against death was so plain.

  Without effort, Arnold Bray took up the body and carried it to the woman’s bedroom, where he placed it on the bed and then found a spare sheet with which to cover it. Cover the Dead… She had been a good woman, above him in so many things, a woman he had admired humbly when there had been women he had admired, but not humbly. The possible motive for this thing, so much worse than mere murder you read of in the papers, persisted in entering his mind, although he fought it back with savage anger. And so preoccupied was he by the futility of it all that without conscious animation he drew the blind, and then passed from room to room to draw down every blind.

  Bill Harte called from the rear door, and Arnold went to him, hope reborn, and slain again when he looked into Bill’s eyes.

  “Come with me,” Harte said harshly. “You check.”

  He led the way to the underground tank which had cemented floor and walls and a canegrass roof rising to a pyramidal summit. From this place he proceeded a dozen steps to the rear of the meat-house, where he halted and stared at the ground against the grass wall in the lee.

  “Whatd’you see?” he demanded.

  Arnold saw nothing at first, save the imprints of a dog. Then larger prints appeared to grow on the light-red ground, so that the dog’s prints faded into insignificance. What now he was seeing were three prints made by a man’s boots. They were unusual in that there were no heel marks.

  “Youmusta seen those prints some time or other,” Bill stated.

  “If I did I don’t recall them,” admitted Arnold. “Still, they look like the prints of a man running. No heel marks. I know! Ole Fren Yorky walks like he’s always running. They’re his tracks.”

  “Yair. Yorky made ’em.”

  “But Yorky’s in town on a bender.”

  “Couldn’t be. Yorky made them tracks four-five hours ago. That right what Eric says about the telephone and the transceiver?”

  Arnold nodded. He said with sudden determination:

  “I’m driving the truck to meet the boss. He’ll have to go back to town to report to Pierce and bring men out to join in the hunt for Yorky. Yorky’s got Linda… if he hasn’t killed her. Yorky’s got to be nabbed, and quick. If he’s killed Linda you keep him away from me.”

  Chapter Three

  The Deceitful Land

  WITHINMINUTESof a crime being reported in a city, a superbly organized Police Department, backed by modern scientific aids, goes into action. It was not to the discredit of Senior Constable Pierce that he was thwarted by inability to see without lights over an area of something like ten thousand square miles of semi-desolation; because the weather was against him in a land where the weather can aid or baffle keen eyes and keen brains.

  He arrived with the doctor from Loaders Springs shortly after nine on that night following the murder of Mrs Bell. It was then black night, the stars blotted out by dus
t raised all day by the mighty wind. Before dawn a new transceiver was working at the Mount Eden homestead, and a new telephone installed. At dawn two trucks left to locate the aborigines and bring back all the males, to be put to tracking. Soon after dawn cars and trucks began to arrive, bringing neighbours from homesteads fifty, sixty, a hundred miles distant, and at dawn other men rode out from homesteads still farther distant to patrol possible lines of escape for the murderer of Mrs Bell, and the abductor of her daughter.

  The man called Ole Fren Yorky, born in Yorkshire, brought to Australia when he was fifteen, outwitted bushmen reared in this vastness of land and sky, and the native trackers of whom the world has no equal. His tracks were discovered at the vacated camp of the aborigines situated less than a mile from the homestead, and beside the canegrass meat-house within yards of the house kitchen door; those two places sheltered by the wind. He carried a Winchester. 44 repeating rifle, and the woman had been shot by a bullet of this calibre.

  Men discussed the motive, but more important was the finding of Linda Bell, alive or dead. Her fate was of paramount importance, for until the child’s body was found, hope remained in the hearts of the hunters.

  The initial verve of the hunters gradually degenerated into doggedness. The aborigines lost interest, rebelled against the driving of the white men, as though convinced that Yorky, with the child, had won clear of their ancient tribal grounds.

  The white force dwindled, men being recalled to their homestead to attend chores which could no longer be neglected, and at the end of four weeks the organized search was abandoned.

  Three days after Constable Pierce informed Wootton of the official abandonment of the search, the station owner was told of the coming of another policeman. Wootton had engaged Sarah, from the aborigines’ camp, as cook, and Sarah’s daughter, Meena, as maid, and the routine of the station was as though interruption had never been when this morning, as usual, Meena brought to the living-room table the large tray bearing Mr Wootton’s breakfast. Cheerfully he said “Good morning”, and shyly demure as usual, Meena responded.

  Meena was in her early twenties. She had lost the awkward angularity of youth, and was yet distant from ungainliness reached early by the aborigines. Not a full blood, her complexion was honey, and her features were strongly influenced by her father, even her eyes being flecked with grey. Wearing a colourful print dress protected by a snow-white apron, her straight dark hair bunched low on her neck, and with red shoes on her feet, she was an asset to any homestead, and, in fact, was appreciated by Mr Wootton. Her voice was without accent, soft and slow.

  “Old Canute say for me to ask you for tobacco in advance. He’s been giving too much to Murtee, and Murtee says he used his to stop old Sam’s toothache.”

  “Sam’s toothache, Meena!” exclaimed Mr Wootton. “Why, old Sam must have lost his last tooth fifty years ago.”

  “Old Sam lost his last tooth before I was born. But old Canute’s run through his tobacco. He says if Mr Wootton won’t hand out, then tell Mr Wootton what about a trade.”

  “A trade! Explain, Meena.”

  “Canute says for you to give him a plug of tobacco, and he’ll tell you something you ought to know.”

  “Oh,” murmured Mr Wootton. “Sounds like blackmail to me. D’you know what this something is I ought to know?”

  “Yes, Mr Wootton. I know. Canute told me.”

  “And you won’t tell unless I promise to give that wily scoundrel a plug of tobacco?”

  The expression of severity on the cattleman’s face subdued Meena. For the first time she shuffled her feet on the bare linoleum. She spoke two words revealing the unalterable position she occupied.

  “Canute boss.”

  Wootton’s experience of aborigines was limited, but he did know the force and authority wielded by the head man of a native clan, and thus was aware that the girl was behaving naturally, was merely a go-between as the messenger between Canute and himself. Severity faded from his green eyes.

  “All right, Meena. I’ll trade. Pour me a cup of coffee.”

  The girl poured the coffee, then, standing away from the table, she said:

  “Old Canute say to tell you big-feller policeman come soon.”

  Again Mr Wootton did not scoff.

  “How does Canute know that?” he asked quietly. “I was talking with Constable Pierce on the phone less than an hour ago, and he knew nothing about another policeman coming here. Canute’s only guessing, Meena. Not worth a plug of tobacco.”

  “Him and Murtee sit-down beside little fire last night,” Meena said seriously. “Little fire. By themselves. The lubras not allowed to look.”

  “But you did, eh?”

  “I am not a lubra.”

  “But you believe this silly magic?”

  “Canute, Head Man. Murtee, Medicine Man.”

  Wootton sensed the utter finality of this statement.

  “I’ll advance the tobacco, Meena. Tell Canute it will be a plug short next ration day. And tell Charlie and Rex to come back to work. Mustering to be done. They’ve been loafing around too long.”

  Meena looked down at the seated man, encountering frankly his hard green eyes and sensing the powerful magnetism of the white man. She smiled as though because of his surrender, but knew there had been no surrender.

  When in Loaders Springs next day, Wootton mentioned the tobacco incident to Constable Pierce, who seemed less sceptical than the cattleman, but agree it was a good tale to spin for a plug of tobacco.

  However, the aborigines were right on the mark. At the third dawning following the announcement made by Canute per Meena, Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte was seated against one of the pine trees overlooking the Mount Eden homestead, and down in the house yards was a riding hack and pack-horse which had brought him from the south two hours previously.

  The stars were fading, and from the abyss below the ridge appeared a pavement of molten lead. Then it was as though lead ran in streams and rivers, was poured into bar-moulds, and soon all these isolated sheets of metal fused into a great plain of lead, spreading to the east, the north, and the south, until the vast slate supported the dome of the greening sky. When fan-tails of light further illuminated the sky, the sheen of the leaden expanse beneath faded, cold, ugly, inert.

  There before Napoleon Bonaparte was The-Sea-That-Was; its headlands and its bays and its inlets, the coast stretching to the south and to the north, its level, silent surface of mud destitute of vegetation all the way to the far horizon, and farther still. Lake Eyre! The last puddle, sometimes to be filled with river water from the north, of The-Sea-That-Was, a puddle sixty miles wide and a hundred long.

  Down in the viscous mud lie the bones of monstrous reptiles and animals, and man-catching birds. Along the curving shores, buried by drifting sand, are the mounds of shell fish gathered by the ancestors of Canute’s tribe for feasts that kept them fat for generations.

  What is geographically named ‘the Lake Eyre Basin’ roughly comprises two hundred thousand square miles, and most of it is below sea level. Save along the western edge, where run the rare trains northward to Alice Springs, the white population is less than two hundred, and the aborigines number but a hundred more. The rivers, when they run every decade or so, run uphill. Sand dunes float in the air and kangaroos leap from cloud to cloud. The horizon is never where it ought to be. A tree one moment is a shrub, and the next a radio mast. A reptilian monster sunning itself on a mountain ridge is, after all, a frilled lizard sprawled on the dead branch of a tree partially buried in a sand dune.

  In this deceitful land a man and a child had vanished.

  That had been an Everest of a problem for Senior Constable Pierce, and Bony, who came five weeks later, had to concede much to the policeman’s reputation as a bushman and to all those many white men who had joined in the search. A deceitful land, yet it would not deceive any one of them to whom an area of two hundred thousand square miles would be on a par with a square mile of city block
s to the city dweller.

  A man must eat, and during the hot summer months could not live a day without water. He dare not move a mile from water without carrying a supply, and water sources, other than the bores and at homesteads, were few indeed, after eleven rainless months. Every remaining supply had been watched by men whose eyes wouldn’t fail to register the tracks of wild dogs, aborigines, cattle, and, if unable to decipher smoke signals, would note the whereabouts of aborigines, either in their wild state or semi-civilized. Were Ole Fren Yorky still alive, and there was no expressed doubt that he was, he had achieved remarkable success in eluding the finest desert men on earth.

  They had been the prospectors trying to locate a man and a child. Now that Bony was arrived, he was, perforce, the mining engineer who would have to delve beneath the surfaces of this deceitful land.

  So that when he came to Mount Eden after all prospecting had been done, he didn’t fork a horse and race it here and there, or board a jeep and add to the normal dust, because it was apparently assumed that Yorky and the child were not lost, and, because of Yorky’s bush experience, were not dead of thirst. Therefore, lives and planes hadn’t been risked.

  There were facts that could not be denied, and facts that could be assumptions, and assumptions that could be facts. A woman had been shot with a. 44 rifle, and her daughter had been abducted from the homestead. A man seen near the homestead on the morning of the crime had left tracks within a few yards of the position of the body. When last seen, he had been carrying a. 44 Winchester rifle.

  The weekly windstorm raged that day, and those few tracks were sheltered from the wind by the homestead buildings. The man, with the child, had gained a lead over the searchers of some twenty hours, and overD. I. Bonaparte, five weeks.

  Not a man had seen them since that day. Not one searcher had found a track left by either man or child, no tell-tale fire site, no sign of them whatsoever. Facts were few, assumptions many. One was that Yorky hadn’t shot the mother and abducted the child, but that one of the five white men had returned that day, had shot the woman, with Yorky as witness, and the child also. Then had taken Yorky and the child to a distant place, and buried the bodies at the front of a moving sand dune, so placing the full responsibility on Ole Fren Yorky.