Bony and the White Savage Page 7

  Although Bony wasn’t interested in Ted Jukes he pretended to be for Emma’s sake, and then went back to the first where Marvin stood with his brothers. Emma said in answer that Marvin would be fifteen years old, and, moving on, every picture of him betrayed the exhibitionist. His hair was carefully combed with the Napoleon quiff pasted into position, and in several ways he looked not unlike the Emperor from the eyebrows upward. He appeared with a flower in his coat lapel; with a book elegantly poised, with a writing-pad on the top of crossed legs, and an expression of intellectual concentration.

  In the following pictures where Ted Jukes, who had his mother’s colouring and features, appeared with Marvin Rhudder, Bony noted it was the latter who attained predominance of place and attitude, and that in those pictures minus Marvin, Emma’s son was more at ease, more sure of himself.

  Emma, still shyly watching this man who had entered their lives, witnessed the expression on his dark face change to one of puzzlement. She was aware he saw nothing of what lay beyond the oblong of the rear door, that what he was seeing none would ever know. Slowly his lean fingers closed the album, and the long hands lifted it and placed it down farther from him, and somehow she knew it was done merely to avoid pushing it away when finished with, like one of Karl’s blood-and-gutzers. He said:

  “Thank you, Emma, for permitting me to share something dear to you. Now please answer me one more question, knowing the answer comes from your heart. It is this: Were you Marvin’s mother, would you help, sustain, protect him, still love him?”

  Emma pondered for a moment. Then she crossed to the desk with the album. She stood awhile gazing down at it before closing the drawer. When she turned about the movement was swift, but her voice was low.

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Nine

  A Hut With a History

  MATT CAME in before lunch and Bony called for the Land Department’s maps of the area. These they studied together, and the result was a picture of the subdivisions of both the Rhudder and Jukes properties marked by the fences, old bush tracks and gates and waters.

  On the table with the maps was the plaster cast of Luke’s footprint, and when Emma suggested she would like to lay the cloth, Bony took the cast to his room, and the plans were put away. Matt opened a bottle of beer, and for several minutes Bony stood just outside the door, sipping from the glass and examining a problem. He recalled Sasoon’s report on the official visit to the Rhudder homestead, when Jeff Rhudder slightly stressed the verb in its past tense ... “What did you come down for?” Why, indeed, had Luke come from Perth a day or so after Marvin arrived home, if not in connexion with that arrival? He was now to return to Perth on the coming Friday. What had happened, or what had been accomplished, relative to the purpose of his visit?

  Before Luke called on his way to Timbertown, Bony had planned to place observers on the ridge overlooking the Inlet. It was his reason for inviting Sasoon down this coming evening, but the plan now would have to be put into operation as soon as possible.

  At Timbertown there was, fortunately, an automatic exchange, and he rang through to Sasoon.

  “I want two trackers down here to camp for several days. Could you spare your Constable Breckoff for a day or two to establish the camp and certain routine?”

  “Right away, Nat,” Sasoon replied without hesitation.

  “But not in daylight. No one at your end must know of the engagement of the trackers or the reason. Clear?”

  “Yes, that’s plain. Can do.”

  “Good! See you both as fixed this morning. About eight. Luke in town?” Sasoon said Luke had been there for a couple of hours. “Before you leave call on the postmaster as we arranged.”

  At lunch, Bony asked Matt when the yards and adjacent hut had last been used, and Matt said it was three months ago, and he was thinking of mustering cattle there for marketable beasts. This pleased Bony greatly, for there would be no fresh horse-tracks to confuse, and no human prints about the hut. Could he have a horse this afternoon? Of course he could. He rode away immediately after lunch, leaving Matt wondering, and Emma quietly expectant.

  The horse was black, strong, a knowledgeable stock horse, free in action and having a tendency to be stubborn until Bony discussed with him the necessity of co-operation. The day was beyond reproach, a faint wind bringing the music of the surf to the hills and the song of the bees among the wild flowers in the dells.

  The man dressed in brown shirt and slacks, black hair wild in the breeze looked good, too. Astride this mettlesome gelding, there was nothing in his seat of the cavalryman or mounted police trooper, and nothing of the animal of training and discipline. Both were as free of inhibitions as Bellerophon on the back of Pegasus.

  They followed what was little better than a trail, probably opened when Matt first took up the Rhudder land west of the Inlet, for on it were the indentations of truck wheels and cattle hooves, and the ‘road’ lay across hillsides massed with scrub, and dells where grew the cedar woods and the jarrahs and mighty karri. It lay across the fern floors of wider valleys, spongy and giving forth the aroma of Time beyond the conception of Man. They passed by gatherings of paper-bark trees, all twisted and grey and as old as Methuselah. And they came to a wire-gate in the wire-fence crossing the northern boundary of the Rhudder land.

  Soon thereafter the country became more open with wide areas of good grass, and Bony urged the horse onward with shouts and bush song, and the animal laid his ears back and thoroughly enjoyed the spasm of wildness in his rider. Gradually the noise of the sea increased, and gradually the timber changed to gum saplings, with beyond them to the left the sheen of water. Bony rode from the track and headed down the slope through the saplings and to the long grassy slope ending at the west shore of Rhudder’s Inlet.

  Ah! Hope fulfilled! There were cattle feeding or lying down along this western slope. Far to the south the sun glinted on the windows of the homestead, and a little to the right the white sand-bar imprisoned the water. Without doubt those at the homestead would see the stranger from the Murchison District ‘pushing’ cattle up and from the slope as part of another of Matt’s cattle musters. This Bony proceeded to do with pistol-cracking stock-whip, and occasional shout. When opposite the homestead, the west wind would surely carry the sounds across the water. He was a northern stockman assisting his host with a chore.

  However, the chore did not prevent him from doing a little work for the State.

  Riding along the slope, turning the cattle up and into the timber and scrub, he maintained vigilant attention to the shore, and thus, eventually coming opposite the house found where the Rhudder boat had been beached, having on three occasions been drawn up to the dry sand. Sure that he was being watched, he did not pause for a moment, riding on to the junction of the sand-bar with the slope and then up the slope to skirt the inner edges of the tea-tree.

  Whilst still in view of those at the homestead, he turned away from the cliff into the sparse scrub and better grassland, as though intending to return at the rear of the disturbed cattle and again urge them towards the cattle yards. It was when out of sight, that he swung about to gallop to the cliff edge behind Australia’s Front Door.

  So clear was the day that it appeared possible to toss a stone to the top of it. The tide was ebbing but the sand-flat between it and the cliff base was still covered. The water looked motionless and in places where the wind was defeated by rocks he could see from his elevation the sand-ripples.

  Reining back his horse he rode westward outside the tea-tree, the animal content to walk at a smart pace. In little less than half a mile he had to cross a wide but shallow water-gutter, and here looked for tracks and did see the imprints of sand-shoes of small size which must have been worn by Sadie Stark.

  Matt was right when he said that the coast farther west was superior for shell hunting, for the iron front of the cliffs was less steep, much more indented, and rose above miniature coves and inlets. Farther on the land was higher, the cliffs again precipit
ous and unguarded by rock out-thrusts. In a small cove Bony found Sadie Stark with her collecting basket, a tiny figure in dark blue and grey slacks, and wearing sand-shoes.

  Riding towards the hut and yards, Bony recalled the boat marks. Today, at any rate, Sadie hadn’t crossed in the boat, but by the sand-bar. He conjured the picture of her, stooping over the gravel patches, a tiny lone figure on all this tremendous coast.

  The stockyards, built with heavy rails and uprights, and the small slab hut with its paperbark roof, were situated outside a ring of paperbark trees, all grey-white of trunk and branch. Inside the ring was a flat expanse which in wet weather would be a shallow lagoon.

  Having neck-roped the horse to a tree, Bony felt the bark to be dry and yielding. He was able to tear off a strip, to find it composed of layer above layer of paper-thin wafers which could be parted without trouble. Under the outer one the wafers were flesh-coloured, and he estimated that fifty of them made the thickness of the bark he had torn away, and there were wafers under that. Should each layer represent a year’s growth these trees must be hundreds of years old.

  Other matters were much more important, and, discarding the bark, he circled the yards to find, as Matt had said, that they hadn’t been used for months.

  Leaning against a massive gate-post, he studied the situation of the hut whilst rolling and smoking a cigarette. The hut was a hundred-odd yards outside the paperbarks. It was obviously of one room only, having a chimney and one door, and no window. The ground about it, as elsewhere, had been churned to dust by cattle hooves, and rain had hardened the thin crust, and the wind had eventually removed the crust and driven the dust against tree-falls and cattle droppings. It required little effort to scoop a hole with the heel of his boot and bury the cigarette butt.

  As it was normal for anyone coming to this place to want to look inside the old hut, he strode to it without bothering about his tracks. Before opening the door, he went round the back, to find there a well. He found, too, that the ground surface about the hut was not as that over which he had crossed from the yards and his interest was quickened by what to him was obvious. A previous visitor had carefully wiped out his tracks by smoothing the surface with a leafy tree-sucker. When it was done was impossible to estimate, for the wind had blotted out the minute ripples produced by the sweeping leaves.

  Opening the door wide, he stood looking into the interior. The floor was of white-ant nest, first laid as rubble, then watered and pounded flat to dry like cement. Opposite the door was a rough table hinged to the wall and supported with corner props. Above it was a shelf, and on this were several large tins originally containing biscuits. Beside the table was a wood case which at one time contained two four-gallon tins of petrol or oil, and plainly used as a seat.

  Stepping inside he found no disorder, and his first interest was in the open hearth. Fine wood ash there was, inches deep.

  There was a short-handled shovel in a corner and Bony dug among the ash, disclosing nothing unusual. Looking up the chimney he could see the sky but no spider webs, which after three months could be expected. He returned to the table. Under it and where it joined the wall there were no webs nor were there any in and about the case. The beams supporting the roof were festooned with web, as were the corners.

  The place had been occupied quite recently.

  Bony closed the door and sat on the case in the almost complete darkness, and now he closed his eyes the better to concentrate on what his nose might detect. Sniffing with intent, he decided that the air wasn’t as stale as three months would have made it. There was the smell of eucalyptus oil mixed with ... Of course, it was wood smoke clinging to the walls and the roof, and incorporated with it was the smell of grilling meat. He remembered seeing the wire griller hanging from a wall nail, found it in the dark, and by touch knew it had been used within the last month.

  His nose registered another smell, and he was tiring of the effort to establish it when he named it. The smell of a human being, and not an unwashed human being, either. It contained a soapy component, and presently Bony thought it likely to be of shaving soap. There was yet another, the third scent which was not more prominent than the others in this general mixture.

  After several minutes of trying to track down this third scent he surrendered on the principle of pushing a thing out of the mind when the mind itself will claim it.

  Three months since anyone had been here, according to Matt’s knowledge. Well, the origins of these three scents were certainly less than three months old. Although it seemed unlikely, it could be that Marvin had stayed at this hut, unlikely because he would be unaware when Matt would again muster stock, or ride to inspect the yards.

  Having fastened the door, Bony proceeded on his routine investigation of the surrounding country, making first a small circle, then a larger and so on, and found that cutting each circle towards the Inlet was the evidential mark of the leafy sucker. Now he walked towards the Inlet, zigzagging to and fro across the imagined straight line until the scrub trees ahead began to admit the open space of the Inlet. He was obliged to step across a wide water gutter where the sand had been left rippled by the last run of water. Here he paused to examine the gutter in both directions, and smiled grimly when he found a small area of sand that had been smoothed to obliterate a footprint. From within fifty yards of the hut to this place, a man could walk from grass tussock to tussock and not leave a print, and the grass tussocks continued on the far side towards the Inlet.

  He who had been so careful to obliterate his prints, and avoid leaving so many others, had been making for the Inlet where the boat had left its marks, and it would not be possible to proceed five hundred yards beyond an ancient, lightning blasted red gum-tree without being seen from the homestead.

  It isn’t in the nature of the aborigine to give up until forced by circumstances, and Bony, being allied with them, continued on to the gum-tree. The lightning bolt had spared one branch to cast a deep shade, and about the tree, cattle had camped and churned the ground as that about the yards and hut. Close to the butt of the tree, the leafy sucker had again been used to smooth out a track.

  The ground had not been so treated beyond the tree, and it was obvious that the person he had been tracking had come only so far and not on to the Inlet. The tree became significant.

  From various quarters, Bony studied it from the butt upward to the shattered crown a few feet above the remaining branch. The study resulted in observing a broken sucker which had sprouted from the trunk at the place where it could be easily climbed.

  Climb a tree! Adults don’t climb trees unless for birds’ eggs. Now an adult did climb this one to discover the purpose of the previous climber. Bony found it not at all difficult, and soon he came to the junction of the living branch and then on and up to the blasted top which he found jagged-edged and hollowed by the fire resulting from the strike.

  Down to the junction of the branch the trunk was merely a fire-hollowed shell having a diameter of something like five feet. Bony peered down into the gloom, and could see an object which could well be a box with metal fittings.

  Chapter Ten

  Bony’s Surprise

  THE GREAT karri tree split the glowing sunset sky like an iron wedge when all the dogs broke into frenzied barking so unlike their greeting of a car coming up from the Inlet. A magpie skittered from the arboreal roof above the house, and somewhere a kookaburra ha-ha-ha’d as though finding humour in the magpie’s antics.

  Emma had prepared an early dinner this evening, and now Karl came in from locking up the hens and tending to the hungry calves. Matt and Emma went out to welcome Senior Constable Sasoon and his Elsie. Karl shouted at the dogs and their uproar was replaced by the voices of the women raised by the meeting of two friends of long standing. The scene wasn’t unusual, made even commonplace when the policeman removed from his car a carton of beer.

  “Evening, Nat!” he said almost casually to Bony. “How’s things?”

  “I hope, excelle
nt,” gravely replied Bony.

  “Been a good day, eh?”

  “Wonderful. Perfect weather.”

  “Didn’t notice, much. Been busy all afternoon. Dry as dust.” Proving he was on special terms with the Jukes, Sasoon brought up two bottles of beer, winked at Karl to fetch an opener, and himself brought glasses from the dresser. “Breckoff will be here about eleven.”

  “He was able to collect the trackers?” Bony asked.

  “Yes. Only one young one, though. Old Lew is the other. Lew can’t jump high these days, but he’s a wise old coot. You got work for ’em?”

  “Work!” echoed Bony, smiling. “They’re in for a real holiday.”

  “Lucky swabs. Wish I was. Well, here’s how.”

  They sat, Australian fashion, at the table, the men in open-neck shirts and sleeves rolled high. The two women went off on their own affairs, and Karl was invited by Bony to sit in with the party.

  “I have appointed Karl the timekeeper,” Bony stated. “What time did Luke pass on his way home, Karl?”

  “Twenty past five,” replied the member of the Jukes family. “Didn’t come in.”

  Sasoon laid a typed report before Bony, saying:

  “When in town today, he went to the post office twice, the first to dispatch two telegrams and make a phone call to Perth, the second time to collect two telegrams. He went into a store where he bought tobacco and two expensive boxes of chocolates. He spent a couple of hours this morning with two men in the hotel, and again visited the hotel with a man who’s a stranger to us.”

  Taking up the paper, Bony read:

  1. 10.12 this a.m. Reply-paid telegram to Postmaster at Mount Magnet. Message: Am expecting important telegram from Sydney. Please let me know immediately if same received, and post it on to me.