Bony and the Black Virgin Page 5

  Eric pondered, his gaze moving from man to man.

  “Decent of you to run out here today, what with all that and the police at L’Albert.”

  “Nothing we could do after yesterday. Was out at Blazer’s with the police and our aborigines all yesterday. The abos have no hope at all of back-tracking. Not after nearly four months and the windstorms. So I thought we’d bring you some petrol and oil. Where will you have it dumped?”

  Eric’s reaction was sheer amazement.

  “Petrol, Mr Long! Petrol!”

  The weathered face of the grey-eyed manager wore a smile.

  “I said petrol, Eric. I like a man who fights. Your dad said you must be very low on petrol, so we brought out a few drums to keep you going. Oh, don’t thank me. Fort Deakin’s got really too much on hand, and Lake Jane can repay when the drought’s over.”

  “Well!” Eric brushed his eyes. “I can’t thank you, not right now. Would you drop it off at Rudder’s? I’ll follow you there. Have to go for a load of water.”

  Half an hour later the station truck moved off, and, keeping well behind to avoid its dust, Eric drove his truck, the dog as usual riding beside him. At the canegrass shed they placed old tyres at the rear of the station truck and dropped the heavy forty-gallon drums of petrol on to them ... five blessed drums of petrol and two eight-gallon drums of engine oil. Pointer helped to roll the drums into the shed, and then Eric tried to voice his thanks once more.

  “Only a mere loan, Eric,” Long told him. Then to Pointer: “There’s a bag of stuff to leave, Jim.”

  Pointer climbed into the truck and handed down a sack and a wooden case, saying:

  “Something from the women, Eric. Any messages?”

  “Yes, plenty. Tell them I’m doing fine. Tell them ... you know ... just tell them.”

  He shaded his eyes from the westering sun while watching the truck to the paddock gate, and till it disappeared in its dust and the useless scrub beyond. He entered the shed and stood looking at the drums and the oil. Then he gazed at the case on the table and at the sack close by.

  In the case was a big slab of cake and four newly baked loaves of yeast bread, several tins of butter, and a dozen eggs. There was a roll of weekly newspapers, on which was written: ‘Good luck, Robin.’ Eric felt like dancing a jig. The sack contained about twenty pounds of sweet potatoes, a few carrots and five cabbages, and, at the bottom, a dozen or two passion fruit—all from the river garden at Fort Deakin’s main homestead. He rubbed a carrot on his shorts and proceeded to munch it. The dried product was nothing like this. He had eaten no fresh vegetables since leaving Mindee at the end of the Annual Bender.

  Now with the sack and the case safely stowed on the truck, he drove it down to the well reservoir tank, and proceeded to siphon water into the large tank carried on the truck. The light of the sun was red, being sieved through the dust haze. Bluey, the heeler dog, laid himself in the trough and licked at the water. Eric stepped from his shorts and boots and joined him, and so light was his mood of the moment, he splashed water over the heeler, who pretended anger by raising a lip to reveal his teeth.

  Presently the water in the tank was overflowing, and Eric flicked away the siphoning hose and replaced the tank lid. Then he saw the cows.

  There were three only. They stood a little back from the trough, gazing without interest at the truck and the man and dog. All that were left! Just three remaining in hell. Eric closed his eyes at sight of them, turned and stepped into the truck cabin, started the engine, and then paused with his hand on the gear-shift lever. For a moment or two he stared through the windscreen at the drab and desolate plain, over which were passing the waves of red haze.

  Abruptly he left the cabin and grabbed the sack and opened it.

  He held a cabbage under the nose of a cow, and she took not the slightest notice of it. He broke off a leaf and lifted her upper lip and rubbed it against her teeth, and she sighed and still failed to react. He rubbed it against her teeth once again, and then held it hard to a nostril, and now her upper lip twitched, still unbelieving, and presently she took it. On her trying for more, a repetition of this dream, he held the cabbage to her nose and then lowered it slowly, as her muzzle followed it down to the ground. The others received the gift in the same manner, one falling to her trembling knees the better to eat.

  The curious dog went from one cabbage litter to another, wrinkling his nose at the new scent. Eric returned to the sack beside the truck, and then portioned the sweet potatoes in little heaps under the noses of the cows. He told them they would no doubt have a slight tummy-ache, but what was a tummy-ache in payment for such a feast? In the sack he had tossed into the truck were five small carrots beside the passion fruit.

  “Better get going, Bluey, or we won’t even have the carrots,” he said, when starting the truck with its heavy load of water.

  So Carl Brandt had been found with his head bashed in. What a development! Where would they go from there? And the cows about to die, the last of them. And the sheep staggering about like reddish ghosts in a red hell of dust. But it had to rain some time, and there was plenty of oil and petrol back in the shed.

  The crimson sun was setting when he arrived at his camp and the water trough, about which the sheep were gathered and loudly baa-ing a cacophonous welcome. The crows skittered away into the murk, and kangaroos, at first indistinguishable among the sheep, escaped from the press of wool to retreat a few hundred yards.

  Eric parked the truck at the end of the long trough and proceeded to direct water from the tank into it. The dog ran barking to the camp, and Eric had to jump to ground to rescue sheep from being trampled in the rush of animals to drink. The dust from the cloven hooves was so thick he could barely see two yards. Once he trod on a fox lying beneath the belly of the trough, and the animal snapped at his leg. He could hear the dog barking, and shouted the order to lie down, although knowing the dog would not hear him in this din.

  “Up there! Take it easy, silly! Come on now, stand and drink like a lady!” he cried to his sheep, for his heart was light at the end of this good day, which had brought petrol and oil and hope.

  When at last the sheep had taken their fill and were lying down at distance from the trough, and beginning contentedly to chew cud, he stopped the flow of water, and carried the case of ‘eats’ to the table beside the tent. He was whistling, when from the tent stepped a girl having a round face and dark eyes, in which gleamed the light of stars.

  Chapter Eight

  Eagles See Afar

  JOHN DOWNER returned from the inquest in Mindee with no ill effects of alcohol, and settled into solitary existence at his homestead. About once every week Robin came over from L’Albert to fuss over him and seek news of Eric, and once during December Eric came in for a truck part and foodstuffs, and to tell of the increase of foxes that was adding to his troubles.

  The days wore on to Christmas Day, which John was forced to spend with the Pointers. They ate boiled mutton and caper sauce that day, Midnight Long having travelled fifty miles to bring the fresh meat. To kill a hen was become a crime when every egg was golden. They listened to the radio broadcasts and still waited for any news of police activity on the murders seemingly now dim in history.

  Jim and Eve Pointer took him home that evening, and on the way he told them that he had to go to the back of the shearing shed for something and then discovered that the cross he had made and erected on the grave of Paul Dickson had disappeared. He was sure it was too heavy for the wind to blow away. It was quite an entertaining little mystery.

  Two days after Christmas there began a three-day dust storm which blacked out the sun and imprisoned John in his house. At the end of it about four drops of rain fell on every square yard of country. On the last day of the year Eric came in to spend a couple of hours with him, pretending to be cheerful, stubbornly refusing to admit defeat, and admitting that the storm, plus the foxes, had cost him a hundred sheep.

  And the father, who was being
taught to suck eggs, loved his teacher this day.

  On the afternoon of New Year’s Day John was sitting on the veranda, when he noticed a number of eagles flying comparatively low far to the north. As many birds do, the eagles keep to their own defined areas unless they have a ‘kill’. There was no stock in his northern paddock, and he was sure there were no kangaroos.

  The area occupied by these many eagles was beyond the Crossing, and presently John’s attention was held by a faint dust-mist lying close to the coarse sand. It was strange, for there was no wind, and John went inside for his hat and then walked down to the great sand bar.

  Despite the dust storms, the twin wheeltracks still lay deep from one white beach to the other, and in these tracks there glinted silver and sometimes gold. Silver! Must be tin! There was a fortune in tin.

  John Downer hastened down the slope and stared at the fortune in tin. He noted that all over the sand bar tiny puffs of sand dust were being blown up like the sand-puffs blown by the ant-trappers deep in their circular pits. He ran out upon the bar between the wheel tracks.

  Still unbelieving, he knelt and dipped a finger into the ‘tin fortune’. Water! He held the wet finger close to his eyes. He licked the finger. It was water.

  Water lay deep in the tracks. It was percolating beneath the general surface of the Crossing, causing the sand to subside and thus create the dust puffs. From faraway Northern Queensland the flood rains sent water down the Paroo. Lake Jane was a backwash of the Paroo. Rain, fallen five months ago and a thousand miles away, was now flowing into land burned and bleached for want of rain.

  Lake Jane could be filled to the brim.

  Like a child, old John Downer furrowed a ditch between the wheel tracks, and he sobbed when watching the water welling along his ditch.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Nine

  Inspector Bonaparte Arrives

  THE MANAGER of a pastoral holding of three-quarters of a million acres isn’t a social nonentity, and if he continues in his appointment for some thirty years, he isn’t a fool.

  The main homestead at Fort Deakin, built beside the river above Mindee, stood in an oasis of lawns and citrus trees and trellised grape vines. It had two reception rooms and nine bedrooms, and adjacent to it was the office and the quarters for the domestic staff. What with the twenty-four-stand shearing shed, the store and equipment sheds and the men’s quarters, the homestead of Fort Deakin wasn’t unlike a small town.

  On the evening of March 26th, Midnight Long was seated at his desk in the office. There was now no book-keeper employed, now no hands other than the domestic staff, and, as there were no sheep or other stock to think about, Mr Long’s managerial tasks were few, and his office confined to writing reports and keeping records.

  He had just finished the evening gossip with his overseer at L’Albert when the line from Mindee asked for attention, and discarding one instrument for the other, he heard a man say:

  “Mr Long? I am Inspector Bonaparte, speaking from the Police Station. I have been assigned to investigate the murders of two men in your back country, and I am wondering if I could impose myself on your people at L’Albert for a few days.”

  “Inspector Bonaparte,” repeated Long, slowly, impressed by the voice coming from sixty miles downriver. “A few days! I believe you would be very welcome at L’Albert. Yes, of course. I thought the police had lost interest in those cases.”

  “In a general sense, yes, Mr Long. But I have taken over the interest, and I have been seconded to investigate from the ground up. If Sergeant Mawby transports me to your place in the morning, could I be taken to L’Albert, as the officers here are a little rushed at the moment?”

  “Take you out to L’Albert in the afternoon, if you wish, Inspector.”

  “Good of you. And thank you. Perhaps we could bring the mail, or anything else. I’ll ask Sergeant Mawby to speak.”

  The mail delivery being only twice a week, Long accepted the suggestion when Mawby spoke.

  “Appreciate your co-operation, Mr Long. Make it an expense entry against my department. Inspector Bonaparte says he may be on the job a week or a year, so why shouldn’t the department pay up? Looks sideways at every penny we spend on petrol and suchlike.”

  “We’ll all be glad to have him, Sergeant. Have I heard his name before, outside of the history books?”

  “You have. By the way, in case I forget tomorrow, the wife wants to thank Mrs Long for that remedy she sent down. Seems to relieve her a little. All right, we’ll leave about eight.”

  Once more isolated from the outside world, Midnight Long pensively filled a pipe, and with slow deliberation struck a match. Drawing towards him the Day Journal, he flicked the pages to the last entry, made this day, and added the gist of telephone conversations.

  So they were going to re-open the investigation seemingly dropped. When was it the police departed from L’Albert following the finding of Brandt? Here it is. ‘Body found December 9. Police departed December 15.’ Now it was March 26th ... three months. Additional three months of wind and dust storms, and shifting sand and no rain. What could a man hope to uncover now? It was six months since Paul Dickson was murdered at Lake Jane.

  The strong lean fingers turned the pages. Ah! January 1st, New Year’s Day. A present for John Downer, for the overflow water reached Lake Jane that day. There was a quote: ‘Water, water everywhere and not a blade of grass to eat.’ The pages were turned. An entry figuratively jumped at him. He read: ‘Pointer reported today that Lake Jane sheep reduced to eighty-three which were slaughtered to stop expense.’ The date was February 11th.

  Closing the book, Midnight Long switched off the light and found his wife in the small sitting-room, where she was knitting and listening to the gossip on the two-way radio which covers so vast a network of Outback Australia.

  “Have we heard about a police inspector named Bonaparte?” he asked, and without hesitation she replied:

  “Yes. Elsa wrote about him two years ago. He spent several days at their place investigating a murder or something.”

  “Ah! Of course. I remember now. He’s coming here tomorrow.”

  “Oh! Staying? He’s a half-caste or something, I think Elsa mentioned.” Mrs Long could never be precise about anyone’s calling, business, or ambition. “Elsa did say he was most charming or something. Is he going to catch the murderer out at L’Albert?”

  “Possibly,” Long said dryly. “It’s what policemen are supposed to do. Sergeant Mawby will be bringing him this far, and I’ll run him out to the Pointers. They’ll want lunch, of course.”

  “As you say. I’ll tell Sarah in the morning. Er, a half-caste ... Perhaps...” Mrs Long was plainly doubtful.

  “I did hear Mawby address him as ‘sir’.”

  “In that case ... I’ll tell Sarah in the morning about the extra lunch.”

  All doubts vanished when Inspector Bonaparte was presented the following morning. He was wearing a tussore silk suit, and Mr Long had just relieved him of a panama hat. Mrs Long found herself being bowed to, and looking, while trying not to reveal astonishment, into clear blue eyes of a dominant personality.

  She was so impressed that when he departed with her husband for L’Albert she waved farewell from the veranda. The manager sensed in his passenger a new experience. Half-castes and others closely associated with the full-bloods who preferred station life to the aboriginal reserves and settlements were as familiar to him as the ordinary white stockmen. This was his first meeting with one having blue eyes, and who spoke authoritatively if a little pedantically.

  “I’ve seldom seen the country looking worse,” remarked Inspector Bonaparte. “Mawby told me you have sent away all your stock.”

  “On agistment. The owners are thinking of selling everything except the rams they’ll keep for another six months. I don’t recall a longer drought.”

  “And no horses at this outstation of yours.” Bonaparte chuckled. “I could be destined for much walking, and I am not as
young as I was last week.”

  “Jim Pointer will be happy enough to run you about anywhere. He hasn’t much to do right now.”

  “Might ask him to take me over to Lake Jane. Twelve miles, I understand. You know, you should be sick and tired of policemen.”

  “Not at all,” Long said emphatically, and added: “Owners, Government officials, policemen, all tend to break up the monotony. The Pointers will welcome you warmly.”

  A pause in the conversation ended when Bonaparte said:

  “Miss Pointer, Miss Robin Pointer, is a very talented girl, I understand.”

  “An artist, yes. Plays the piano rather well, too. Convent education. Some of her pictures are memorable if a little, shall I say, macabre.”

  “Macabre!”

  “You’ll see. Very nice young woman. Trifle strong-minded, but not overbearing.”

  “Engaged to young Downer at Lake Jane, Mawby thinks.”

  “Premature, Inspector. We thought it might come to that. Could be the drought has delayed it. The young feller put up a great battle to save the Lake Jane sheep, but the drought beat him. Beat anything and anyone ... in time.”

  “The aborigines, where are they now?”

  “Half of them came to the river to camp. The others are living at a bore called Number Ten.”

  “You should try to persuade them to make rain.”

  “I did try,” admitted the manager, ruefully. “Last year I promised them the world if they made rain, but they wouldn’t play ball with me.”

  “I may succeed. I’ll try. You took two of them to Lake Jane when Mawby was there with his tracker, and you were at L’Albert, and out at Blazer’s Well, when your station aborigines were associated with that same tracker and another brought out from Wilcannia. The Wilcannia man came from Cobar, and Mawby’s tracker came from Mannum. What was your impression concerning the relationship between them and your own aborigines?”