The Bone is Pointed Page 6

  “A violent man like Anderson would almost surely have enemies. The blacks would not be friendly towards him. What about the groom whom Anderson beat up and sent to hospital?”

  “A weed of a man. Like a rabbit. He was paid good compensation. You can leave him out. The blacks make a different matter of it, though. I have always thought they caught Anderson and fixed him in revenge for what he did to Inky Boy, as well as for a nasty business with a young gin employed here in my wife’s time.”

  Bony made a mental note of the seeming fact that his host’s sympathies were not with the victims of the missing man’s violent temper. It was strange that Old Lacy appeared still to have some regard for a man with whom his association had not been cordial. When Bony spoke again he did so with unusual slowness.

  “We must not lose sight of a possibility,” he said. “I expect that, like me, you have known of men being lost in the bush and, despite extensive searches, their bodies not being found till years afterwards, if ever. Anderson may have been thrown from his horse in Green Swamp Paddock and killed by the fall. That the paddock was thoroughly searched does not preclude the possibility. He may have received concussion, besides other injuries, and then have wandered right out of Green Swamp Paddock to die somewhere in adjoining country.”

  “All the country adjoining Green Swamp Paddock was carefully examined, because we recognized that possibility,” countered Old Lacy. “If he did that, what became of his hat, his stockwhip, and the horse’s neck-rope that I’m sure it had that day?”

  “I grant you that the absence of the neck-rope provides a strong counter-point to the thrown and injured supposition,” Bony conceded. “I would like to examine his horse, The Black Emperor. Could he be brought to the yards to-morrow morning?”

  “He could, but he’s over in the yards now with a mob of horses containing a couple of young uns the breaker’s working on. We’ll go across and look him over if you like.”

  They rose together, and Old Lacy led the way to the veranda door. He extolled the virtues of the great horse, but did not allude to its vices, while he conducted the detective through the garden and across the open space to the yards.

  In the same yard with The Black Emperor were a dozen other horses that gave him half the yard to himself. Bony’s eyes glistened when they saw this beast, and the soul of him thrilled to its jet-black beauty. A king of horses. Indeed, an emperor’s mount.

  “He’s six years old,” the squatter said, faint regret in his strong voice. “He’s the finest horse in Queensland to-day, but he’s no damned good. He’d throw a man and then kick him to death. Anderson and he were a good pair in more than in looks.”

  “I’ll ride him to-morrow if you will permit,” Bony said, a lilt in his voice. “What a beauty! Was he never shod?”

  “No.”

  “His feet want trimming.”

  “If you’re game to ride him, Sam, there, the breaker, and Bill the Better can put him into the crush and do his hoofs.”

  “Very well. They want doing. But I will cut the hoofs.”

  The Black Emperor snorted and laid back his velvety ears when Sam, a lank, seemingly indolent man, approached him with the bridle. But the horse was not to be caught so easily and eventually had to be roped, the old man continually shouting unnecessary directions. When The Black Emperor was in the crush, Bony trimmed the hoofs with the long chisel and mallet, expertly removing growth so that they became as nearly as possible the shape they were when the animal was last ridden by Anderson. He then led the horse from the crush back into the main yard, and Old Lacy and Sam and Bill the Better, sitting on the top rail, watched him subdue the brute’s temper until The Black Emperor stood quiet and apparently docile. Even when the bridle was removed the horse did not attempt to break away but permitted Bony to fondle his glossy black neck.

  “I would like to ride him to-morrow morning,” Bony said when he joined the others on the top rail of the yard. “He will be too unreliable for ordinary work, worse luck.”

  “Well, you bring him in with the horses in the morning, Bill,” instructed Old Lacy.

  Bill the Better was sitting beside Bony, and he said:

  “Bet you a coupler quid The Black Emperor will throw you.”

  “You would lose your money,” Bony replied, with a laugh.

  No one of the four noticed the girl on the white horse reach the gate spanning the road to Opal Town, nor did they notice her until she had led her horse to a position immediately below their high perch. Bony saw her first, and at once jumped to the ground. The old man said more loudly than was warranted:

  “Hullo, me gal! You home?”

  With remarkable agility considering his years, he lowered himself to the ground, to be followed by Sam who went back to his work and Bill the Better who took away the white mare.

  “Meet Inspector Bonaparte,” Old Lacy said. “Inspector, this is my daughter, Diana.”

  “Inspector—of what?” inquired the girl, her voice clear and her eyes critical.

  “Why, an Inspector of—” began Old Lacy, when Bony cut in.

  “Of nothing, Miss Lacy,” he said, bowing. “I am made happy by meeting you. I am supposed to be a policeman, but really I’m not, as Colonel Spendor would be ever ready to agree. My name is Napoleon Bonaparte, and I am an officer of the Criminal Investigation Branch.”

  Diana Lacy was petite and dark. She stood now regarding the dark handsome face of this stranger with whom her father had become quickly familiar, in itself a remarkable thing. The light switch tapped softly the leg of her jodhpurs, and her blue eyes were wide open despite the glare of the sunlight.

  Bony was swift to see the forceful personality behind the eyes of this Karwir woman who was still a girl. She was more like Old Lacy than was Eric her brother. Now debonair, his manner a trifle too polite, he was yet quick to see the flash of alarm in her eyes before it was replaced with an expression of faintly amused interest. She looked as though she had stepped from the pages of a society paper.

  “Inspector Bonaparte has come to solve for us the mystery of Jeff’s disappearance,” boomed Old Lacy. If the girl heard this she gave no indication of it. Her mind was working fast—and Bony knew it. She had perfect control over her features, but she had not thought of her hands—until she saw Bony glance at them. Then she knew that her hands were slowly clenching and unclenching, and casually she thrust them into the pockets of the jodhpurs.

  “It has been a great day for a gallop, Miss Lacy,” Bony remarked pleasantly. “And fine country to gallop over, too. I shall enjoy taking The Black Emperor out to-morrow.”

  “You should, Inspector,” agreed Old Lacy.

  The tension had ended and the girl turned to gaze between the yard rails at The Black Emperor.

  “You will want to be careful, Inspector Bonaparte,” she said without looking at him or her father. “Mr Anderson often said he had never ridden a horse having an easier action.” She turned towards them, glanced at the sun, and suggested crossing to the house for afternoon tea.

  “How did you come?” she inquired of Bony.

  “Your brother brought me from Opal Town in his aeroplane.”

  To her father Diana said:

  “Has anything been done for Mr Bonaparte’s accommodation?”

  “Yes. The lad got Mabel to fix a room. We’ve already had a drink of tea, but another won’t come amiss.”

  “I promise not to make more trouble than I can help, Miss Lacy,” Bony said when they were crossing to the garden gate. He was wondering a little at her coldness, and thought he could guess the reason of her unease immediately after he was presented to her. “Unfortunately for Karwir, I may be here some time. You see, beginning an investigation so long after the paramount events means great difficulties to be overcome.”

  If he successfully impressed her she did not let him know. She appeared to take him as she doubtless would take a fence—for granted. After a little silence she spoke, and now he decided that she was going to be on
e of the difficulties he mentioned.

  “Your stay here will not put us out, Mr Bonaparte,” she said, with disapproval but thinly veiled. “We can, of course, understand your difficulties, but you have come rather too late to do any good, don’t you think?”

  “Forgive me for disagreeing, Miss Lacy,” Bony assured her with undaunted cheerfulness. “You know, if I failed to solve this mystery I should be truly astonished.”

  They were now arrived at the gate which Bony held open for Old Lacy, who was chuckling, to pass first into the garden. He smiled at her whilst she stood waiting for her father, noted her trim small figure, her haughty face, the cold blue eyes with their violet irises. Then she was passing him, to flash at him a sidewise glance and to say softly, as though for his sole benefit:

  “It’s quite likely that you will be astonished.”

  Chapter Six

  Beside a Little Fire

  IT had not rained over Meena since that night of Mary Gordon’s suspense, and the pastoral prospects were very dark for vast areas of inland Australia. Hope, engendered by the April rain, slowly evaporated as the spring sunshine evaporated the moisture that had given a short impetus to plant life.

  Riding northward in the late afternoon of the day that Napoleon Bonaparte arrived at Karwir, John Gordon was feeling depressed, a condition of mind caused not by the imminence of a worrying summer so much as by the seemingly inevitable see-saw of life. At the beginning of the winter Meena Station had stood financially upon a sound foundation, but now at the beginning of the summer the foundation would have to be strengthened by the materials of economy and greater care for the stock.

  There was still an abundance of feed in the paddocks, but there was little prospect of this being replenished before the hot winds of summer wiped it off the face of the burning earth. Fortunately, thanks to the forethought of the second John Gordon who had put down many bores and wells, there was no water shortage on Meena even when the lake occasionally became dry.

  John Gordon the Third had spent all day in the Meena South Paddock, riding over the plain-stubble of ripened tussock grass, through the mulga-belts, and across the wide, barren depressions named the Channels. Often he had ridden by small communities of rabbits, isolated and with no young ones to prove that this was a normal summer.

  He approached Meena Lake from the south-west, his horse carrying him over a grassy plain and up an imperceptible gradient. The top of the gradient was reached without warning, and quite abruptly John Gordon came to look down and over the great bed of the lake. Save at three points, the lake was surrounded by sand-dunes backed by box-trees. One point was where the Meena Creek fed the lake with water from the distant hills to the north-west; another was the high plateau to the east whereon stood the red-roofed and white-walled buildings comprising the homestead; the third was the outlet creek which carried the overflow for two miles to spread it into the various channels.

  Although the water was gone, the blue jewel itself, the brilliant setting still remained. Outward from the lake’s bed, roughly circular and some two miles across, lay a wide ribbon of pure white claypan, edged by the reddish sand-dunes that in turn were bordered by the green of the trees. Ah, what a place when the jewel itself was there!

  And now when Gordon rode down the slope to the trees he came upon not isolated rabbit communities but the camp of a mighty host that entirely encircled the lake that was swiftly devastating the land that had given it birth.

  Evening was come and life that drowsed all the warm day was bestirring itself to fill a gigantic stomach. Along the ground slope outside the tree-belt rabbits sat cleaning themselves like cats, or gambolled about like kittens, before the entrances to countless burrows. Within the tree-belt itself untold numbers were eating the windfalls of the day—the leaves—and were nibbling at the bark of the surface roots. Gordon saw several of them high in the trees beneath which he passed; they had climbed a sloping trunk to get at the tender bark of young branches.

  Eagles, the great golden kings and the wedge-tails, planed low over the land or sailed with never a wing-flap high against the burnished sky. The crows were following the eagles, or cawing among the trees, or strutting over the earth like moving blots of ink. It was too early for the foxes, but they were there waiting to take their nightly toll of the rodents.

  The horse, now eager to be home, carried Gordon through the tree-belt and across the sand-dunes that now were wearing a garment of fur. Then onward down to the claypan belt where the going was easy. Here the man pressed his right knee hard against the horse’s side and the intelligent beast turned sharply to follow the white ribbon that would take them round to the homestead.

  Still a little of the herbal rubbish remained in the very centre of the lake, and the vanguard of the rabbit army was already on the move to feed upon it. Both before and behind John Gordon they were leaving the dunes to run across the bare grey rubble between claypan and herbage. Now and then an eagle would swoop, fly low above the ground, scatter rabbits right and left, and land at the instant its iron talons sank into the body of a screaming victim.

  For three years now had the rodents taken command of Meena Lake, breeding steadily and without halt until late the preceding summer when the water had vanished and there had been no green feed left on the surrounding uplands. The April rain had given the host another lease of reproductive life, and throughout the gentle winter endless relays of young rabbits had appeared, to grow to maturity in nine weeks, when the does began to vie with their mothers. Then, in early September, an unknown intelligence, foreseeing the drought, commanded the breeding to cease that the host might be strong to wage the battle with advancing Death.

  Familiarity, it is said, breeds contempt—or indifference—and Gordon failed to appreciate the glowing colours of the red and white homestead buildings set upon a red base and backed by a blue-green canopy. The horse carried him upward among the dunes to reach the edge of the plateau and thus to pass the main building and halt outside the harness shed.

  The man patted the animal before removing the bridle and allowing it to walk, shaking its hide, to drink at the trough. Two barking dogs claimed his attention. He freed them from their chains, and they raced madly about him as he walked across to the men’s quarters.

  All this belonged to him, and the three hundred thousand acres of excellent country surrounding it. In comparison with Karwir, and other great stations, Meena was almost a selection, but it provided the Gordons with a living as the lake had provided the Kalchut tribe with sustenance for countless years. Upon his shoulders rested responsibility inherited from the first and the second Gordons; for, besides his mother, there were the blacks under Nero who looked upon him as someone infinitely more powerful than their own chief. He could hear the cries of their children from along the lake’s shore, and as he drew near the men’s quarters he heard, too, the strains of an accordion being played with no little skill. John Gordon, unlike Eric Lacy, was years older than his age.

  Entering the men’s quarters he was met by a smiling Jimmy Partner who, softening his music, said:

  “Hullo, Johnny Boss! You lookin’ for a wrestle?”

  “Wrestle, my foot!” Gordon exclaimed somewhat impatiently. “Wrestling is all you think about. If I could only beat you now and then we’d hear less of it.” Then, as though to atone for the impatience, he laughed, saying: “Why, you big boob, if you couldn’t wrestle so well I could box you for the count any day.”

  White teeth flashed.

  “Too right you could, Johnny Boss. Good job I can wrestle, else you’d be walkin’ round with your head and your feet about a yard behind your tummy.”

  Jimmy Partner laughed at his own witticism, a deep-throated, musical laugh, and now he set the accordion upon the heat-blistered mantelshelf and stood up to fall into the true wrestler’s pose. Home before his tribal brother, he had already washed all over and was now wearing clean moleskin trousers and a white tennis shirt. His hair was brushed and parted down the centre,
and his dark-brown face was shining. Not excessively big but beautifully proportioned and in the prime of his life, he began to advance on John Gordon, moving on the balls of his feet and with his arms held out invitingly.

  Gordon backed swiftly out of the doorway and seized the wash-basin on the case standing near the door. It was still nearly full with Jimmy Partner’s recent suds.

  “Come on!” cried Gordon. “It’s here waiting for you, my Salvoldi.”

  Jimmy Partner did not emerge. From within he laughed again and shouted:

  “No, no, Johnny Boss! I’ve just put on a clean shirt. It’s the only clean one I’ve got, and the other’s drying.”

  “Very well, then. No nonsense, or you’ll get it,” Gordon told him laughingly, and, carrying the basin, he entered to see Jimmy Partner again seated and fondling his instrument. Setting the basin down on the table within easy reach, he sat himself beside it. The lighter mood subsided, and he became serious.

  “How were the traps?” he asked.

  “I seen ’em all,” Jimmy answered. “Two were sprung. There was a dingo in that one we set over near Black Gate.”

  “Good! Purebred?”

  “Not quite. Things is getting dry, Johnny Boss.”

  “Yes, they are, and it looks as though they’ll be pretty bad everywhere before the summer has gone. By that time you and the blacks will be richer than me.”

  “No fear,” instantly argued Jimmy Partner. “You want cash, you take it outer my bank. You can take the tribe’s money, too, when you want it. What’s money, anyhow?”

  “Ha-um! It won’t come to that, Jimmy. Do you know how much you’ve got in the bank?”

  “’Bout a hundred.”

  “A hundred and eighty-two pounds ten shillings.”

  “You can have it, Johnny Boss. All I want is another shirt.”

  “But mum got you shirts only last week. Where are they?”