Bony and the Mouse Page 7

  “When I opens me mouth, Nat, they all droop. Anyway, nothing come out of that Mrs Lorelli murder. They brought the plain-clothes men from Kalgoorlie, and they hunted around for a couple of weeks, and spent most of their wages in my pub. Good for business. Same thing happened when the lad, Moss, got his throat slit out near the mine, only they stayed longer and spent more on beer. Same sandshoes, Nat. Same man wearing them. And—this is where you’ll come in, Nat—the same lies told about them sandshoe tracks by the blacks.”

  “Just a minute,” interposed Bony. “Did that lubra, Mary, always stay...?”

  “You hold your horses, Nat,” growled Melody Sam. “I’m tellin’ this yarn. We’ll get back to her some time. It’s them sandshoe tracks now, and I’m the boss, remember.”

  “Sorry,” humbly murmured Inspector Bonaparte.

  “Good! Now when the abo wench was killed and the Laverton tracker pointed out the tracks, Harmon didn’t have the sense to send for plaster of paris and make casts of ’em. But he did make casts of the sandshoe tracks at the Lorelli homestead, and at the mine, about the young Moss killing. He’s got two sets of print casts, and he’s got two reports on ’em. Follow me?”

  “Yes ... I think so,” replied Nat the yardman.

  “You will in a minute. Now, there’s three murders; there’s two plaster casts of the same set of sandshoe tracks; and there are three reports got off the blacks in different parts of the country. The sandshoe tracks agree, and the reports agree. Understand?”

  “Yes,” replied Bony.

  “Now, take the trackers’ reports as one. It says the feller wearing the sandshoes had a size eight foot, is a white-feller, and would weigh round about 160 pounds (their estimate being on the weight of Constable Harmon), and that he limps with the right leg. And that’s all. Now wait.”

  Melody Sam rose and stepped off the hard sidewalk to the dusty road of Main Street. He strode over to his statue, where he turned to face outward along the road to Laverton, and returned to the seat.

  “No mucking things up, Nat,” he said. “You go see my tracks and tell what you read in ’em.”

  Bony obliged.

  “They are the tracks of a white man, wearing size eight boot. He weighs about 140 pounds. He’s an old man but still strong walkabout feller. He has been sick, but has recovered from the sickness. He placed the toe of his left foot farther out than usually, intending to deceive me, his tracker.”

  “Ah!” breathed Melody Sam. “I thought so. I been thinking so. Now you tell me this, Nat, you tell me why them black trackers didn’t read more into them sandshoe tracks than they let out. Why, I had an abo lad once who could have told me more about that murderer than the feller ever knew about himself, and those three trackers were all the same ... ruddy experts. All they say is that he’s white, that he has a size eight, that he weighs as much as Harmon or me, and that he limps a bit. Nothing else. Why, that boy I had could have told me what the feller et for dinner, or got close to it.”

  “H’m!” emitted Bony, secretly admiring this knowledgeable old quartz reef. “I see what you’ve got on your mind.”

  “Good! Then you see what I want you here for. I want you right on the job when the next killing is done, and then you can tell as much about the killer as those three black bastards must know, and kept to themselves.”

  “Think the police could have kept it back to help in their investigation?” asked Bony.

  “Sure they didn’t,” promptly countered Melody Sam.

  “Seems like we’ll have to wait for another killing,” Bony said calmly, to match the mood of his seat companion.

  “Yes, seems we shall, Nat. Nothing makes sense. As Harmon says, there’s no plan, no sensible tie-up with even two murders, let alone the three. One black, two white. Two women, one man, the lad. One woodened with a waddy or something, one with his throat cut, one strangled. Harmon’s got a book over there called A Thousand Homicides. We been reading it up. There’s nothing in it like our Daybreak murders. You want a drink?”

  “No. What about you?”

  “When I’m off it, I’m off it, Nat. Cripes! Where did he jump from?”

  On the Laverton road stood a naked black figure gazing towards them. His hair was bunched high above his forehead. He stood straight, and was less than medium height.

  “Hey you, come here!” shouted Melody Sam. The aborigine advanced. “Well, I’m blowed, Nat, This here is Harmon’s tracker, Abie.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Barman’s Morning

  HE WAS still young. Three short cicatrices across his midriff had but recently healed. As with all these western inland tribes, his legs were mere spindles, his hips were narrow, his chest was deep, and his shoulders slightly sloping. The stomach was shrunken and hard, and the hands, the one holding a short stick and the other two six-foot spears, were big, compared with the size of the thin, sinewy arms.

  Standing at the edge of the sidewalk, his splayed feet shuffled the dust, and being confronted by the eyes of white men, his own were restless, and never met their gaze.

  “You been long time, Abie,” began Melody Sam. “You been bring letter-stick, eh? Give it.”

  The short stick was offered. It was about six inches in length, and had been scraped by a quartz or granite chip, scorched by fire and polished by sandstone mixed with saliva. Two encircling cuts gave the stick three divisions, and within two of the divisions, short cuts had been made, the third division untouched. It was, as Bony knew, as indeed did old Melody Sam, a ceremonial letter-stick.

  Melody Sam put forth his hand, and the stick was placed on it. The old man studied the markings, nodded sagely, looked up into the steady eyes watching him. Now, Bony knew that Sam, the white man, had been initiated into this desert tribe. He put out his hand for the letter-stick, and downward flashed the spears barring his hand from it.

  Who was he to touch that letter-stick which had been adequately ‘sung’ with magic brought from afar and rubbed into churinga stones, and from the churinga stones rubbed into the message of goodwill? As he stood, the points of the spears rose with him, now two feet of driving space between them and his chest. Their points were of fire-toughened mulga. Without haste, Bony pulled his shirt up from the belted trousers, and revealed the cicatrices marking his body.

  The dark eyes in the chocolate-skin face glistened, the spear points were lowered and then swept upward as the hafts were pressed against a hard shoulder. Bony thrust the shirt hem into place and sat down. Again he offered to take the stick, and this time was permitted. Melody Sam waited, then chuckled, saying:

  “Got you bluffed, Nat.”

  “This is a special stick, Sam,” Bony replied. “This stick is from the chief to another chief—you, Sam. It says two nights and one day. After that, as you remarked, it has me bluffed. Excepting, of course, that you have been properly sealed into their tribe.”

  Melody Sam beamed his pleasure.

  “Good on you, Nat! That’s the boy. You’re better than I thought. Yes, the stick says the mob will be coming in early the day after tomorrow, and will I have plenty big tucker for ’em.”

  He spat on the dust at his feet, stooped and pressed into the spittle the end of the stick which had no markings. Then, lightly touching his forehead with this same end, he presented it to the ‘postman’ for return delivery. Abie accepted the stick in his left hand, and there it would remain until delivered. He smiled, looked from one to the other, that the smile should include both, and was about to turn away when Melody Sam said:

  “Wait! You been see Constable Harmon?”

  The aborigine shook his head. Sam offered a two-ounce plug of chewing tobacco, and Abie gracefully accepted it. Sam said:

  “Then you been clear out fast. Constable Harmon catch you, he been kickum your backside, you been no more his tracker.”

  Abie revealed at last his racial sense of humour. He pursed his lips and made the sound known to white civilisation as ‘the raspberry’, laughed, turned about, st
rode away to the Laverton road, and seemed to vanish in his own foot dust.

  “You know, Nat,” said Melody Sam, “they call ’em ‘nigs’, they call ’em savages, they call ’em this and that, but they’re the only decent people living in the world today. And d’you know what? The sloppy fools down in the cities want to have ’em brought in and made to live in houses and go to work, and eat pork and beef off china plates, and all that. I don’t hold with it. I don’t hold with forcing them people into our own dirty, murderous, sinful state we call civilisation.”

  “I’m with you there, Sam,” agreed Bony. “What was the full message?”

  “Oh, they’ll be coming to Daybreak some time the day after tomorrow. Been away many weeks, living on goannas and things, and putting their young men through the initiation hoops, and the young gals turned into women. See Abie’s stomach? Flat as a board. So Iriti, the old man, sends me word, knowing that there’ll be a beast ready slaughtered for ’em to guzzle and cram their stomachs and make ’em sleep for a week.”

  “You always kill the fatted calf?” inquired Bony warmly.

  “Why not?” replied Sam. “We run our cattle over their land. We get taxed for it, but the abos don’t get the taxes. So I give a beast when they come in from their walkabouts.”

  “Good to see that Abie didn’t keep away from Daybreak because he was frightened of being accused of killing the parson’s maid,” Bony said. “Those welts on his midsection weren’t done ten years ago.”

  “No!”

  “No. He’s been away all this time on tribal business.”

  “Musta been. Likely enough the tribal business of being cut about to get on with his initiation. I had the idea it was all done at the same time.”

  “Not always, and not everywhere. That aborigine girl, Mary, did she always remain when the tribe went on walkabout?”

  “It was the first time she did stay back, and the last, but that wouldn’t bring her relations into it, would it, Nat?”

  “No, by no means.”

  “What I thought,” agreed Sam. “That gal was murdered by this sandshoe-wearing white bastard, all right. And one of these days them abos is goin’ to sniff him out, and we’ll have another killing. I won’t have...”

  “Hey, Sam, it’s gone twelve o’clock,” wailed a voice, and over by the end pepper tree, giving shadow to the stone Melody Sam, stood the council staff. Sam whipped his enormous timekeeper from its waistcoat pocket, glanced at it, lurched to his feet and glared at Bony.

  “Fine sort of yardman you are, Nat,” he shouted. “Gone noon, and no one to serve the population with a drink. Get to your bar, man.” Abruptly lowering his voice he went on: “I’m goin’ to yabber with Harmon about them abos coming in. And don’t you forget you are hired twice, and twice the wages of ten pounds a week and keep.”

  Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte nodded gravely, rose and entered the bar with the council staff treading on his heels.

  “Hard doer, ain’t he?” grumbled the council staff, smoothing the wispy grey moustache, and leaning with Australian elegance against the bar counter.

  “You mean the boss,” surmised Bony, pulling beer. “I don’t believe he’s over eighty.”

  “He is, though. Luck! I been here in Daybreak thirty-eight years, and when I came he was just the same as he is now. He don’t alter.”

  “He was telling me he owns the town, even the church.”

  “He owns everything, Nat,” responded Ellis solemnly. “All of Daybreak and a couple million acres round about Daybreak. Was that Abie you and him was talkin’ to?”

  “Melody Sam said he was.”

  “What’s to do? Did he say?”

  “That the mob will be coming in the day after tomorrow. Old Sam promised them a beast.”

  “Always gives ’em plenty of tucker when they come in,” Ellis said, approvingly. “Nobody ever yet starved in Daybreak. He’ll be telling Fred Joyce to kill a extra beast tomorrow night.”

  “You said Sam owns a lot of land. Runs cattle on it?”

  “Not himself he don’t. Has partners to run them places. He don’t do much himself outside the pub, and there’s times when the pub wouldn’t pay for itself. Not like it usta be. Not the people round about now. Not the gold to be found. Thirty years ago there was three hundred prospectors living at Dryblowers; now there’s not more than fifteen. Trade’ll buck up later today, though. Always does mail day. Fill ’er up, Nat, then I’ll be gettin’ home for lunch.”

  “Where will the blacks be camping?” asked Bony, topping up the glass following the subsidence of the collar.

  “Generally at the north end of Bulow’s Range. Down a bit there’s a lot of surface granite, and they got rock holes there. Then there’s another camp over in the mulga. Have their ceremonies in there, and plants their chief men there, too. I never been in that forest. People say it’s the best mulga forest in the State. I don’t care if it is. Daybreak’s forest is enough for me.”

  Several men entered the bar, and the council staff left. All wanted to know if the strange aborigine was Harmon’s onetime tracker, and it was apparent that the entire township was aware of the visit. Bony could not but observe the demeanour of these townsfolk, for their nonchalance was unusual in view of crimes of violence of comparatively recent date. Everyone seemed normally alert, and it could not be said they were bucolic. He could detect no undercurrents of fear or suspicion or mass emotion.

  Fred Joyce, the butcher and Tony’s employer, came in for a drink, smiled at the barman, and, when opportunity occurred, asked Bony if he would break in a couple of colts.

  “Harmon’s pretty pleased with his grey, Nat,” he said. “Told me he’s got wonderful action and enough stamina to win the Melbourne Cup.”

  “That’s a grand horse, Fred,” Bony responded. “He came to it easy, and if Harmon toughens him gradually he’ll have a sure winner.”

  “Well, you think about them two I want broken in, will you? Only hack on the job is the old dead-beat young Tony rides, and he’ll never ride properly if he don’t get on something a bit more lively. Besides, as it is, he takes too much time rounding up the cattle.”

  Bony drifted to serve others, and presently came back to attend to Joyce.

  “Think you’ll make much of that feller? Carr, I mean. Seems a bit sullen.”

  “Lot of good in him; lot of bad, Nat. No chance. Dragged up by the back hair. Father a drunk, mother worse. Jailbirds both of ’em. Wonder is how kids like him ever lived beyond day-old babies. Tony’s in the Victoria Delinquent School before he’s ten. And he’s in and out as fast. You know, escaping, pinching cars, selling parts. Up the grade to bashings, and knocking women about for their handbags. And then the great break. Hitch-hiked, jumped the rattlers all the way across the Nullarbor to Kalgoorlie. There he sticks me up, and after a lot of trouble I went bail for him and got him out. And half-way on the track to Daybreak he tried to nab my car.”

  Bony worked, and returned to the butcher.

  “Tony tried to take the car from you,” he prompted.

  “Nearly tricked me, too,” Joyce said grimly. “I give him the biggest belting of his life. Game as they come, he was, but when I’d conquered him he’d both eyes bunged up, four teeth knocked out, a broken rib Sister Jenks had to set when I got him here. And, Nat, ever since as quiet as a lamb.”

  “You think he’ll settle down?”

  “Doubt it sometimes,” replied Joyce. “What’s bred, you know. Men are like horses: good, indifferent, bad. And some just plain hopeless. If Tony don’t settle down here he never will anywhere else. Trouble is, the kid’s record’s against him. No one here’ll give him a fair go exceptin’ my wife, and, you wouldn’t believe it, Miss Harmon, the policeman’s sister.”

  “Speaks well enough of you,” Bony said, and Joyce laid his huge hands on the counter, and clenched his fists.

  “Tony never forgot these,” he said. “We never had any kids. If I’d had sons I would never have had to use the
se on ’em. Why? They would have been slapped early in the piece, like I was, and you, I suppose, and like most law-abiding men. Kids are like colts. Well, be seeing you. Think about them colts I want breakin’.”

  Joyce departed, and presently the others left in a bunch. Bony was polishing glasses when Melody Sam appeared with Constable Harmon. There being no customers, Constable Harmon breasted the counter. He named his drink, Sam called for ginger ale, and both were served by Inspector Bonaparte.

  “You taking the grey out this afternoon, Nat?” Harmon suggested. “Still has some rough edges, as you’ll agree.”

  Like Joyce the butcher, Harmon was large, and he also had hands like grappling-irons. His small hazel eyes were friendly and his voice was warm. Horse made him human, and horse was the link between himself and any other man who also was horse.

  “Yes, if the boss won’t mind,” Bony agreed, and Melody Sam snorted, and said the barman could have every afternoon off.

  Melody Sam had passed to the cupboard in the rear wall and from it took his violin, wrapped lovingly in cloth. He proceeded to wax the bow and deftly tune the strings.

  “Was wonderin’ when the old boy would get around to his music,” whispered Harmon. “Fill her up, Nat, and I’ll get going. Don’t forget to tell him he plays good, and he’s your uncle for life.”

  Melody Sam began to play, and the policeman drained his glass, winked at Bony and departed. Bony fell to polishing the used glasses and Melody Sam passed to the front entrance and stepped outside, still playing. When Bony went to the door, he saw Sam wandering down Main Street under the pepper trees, and being greeted by dogs that sat back and howled.

  Chapter Ten

  Sounds Within the Silence

  THAT THE northern end of Bulow’s Range was the highest point was proved by the surveyor’s trig built there with boulders to form a tall cairn, and on the afternoon the aborigines were due to return from walkabout Bonaparte sat on the summit of the cairn, and his horse stood drowsily aside. The great arc of the horizon extending from the western edge of the mulga forest, round to the tips of several residuals rising above it, and so on round to the eastern limitless lands, confronted Bonaparte with that part of his ego from which there was no escape, and which, like love itself, there is never real desire to escape.