Bony - 19 - Cake in a Hat Box Page 8

  “What did the trackers say about them?” Bony asked, and Clifford regarded the two aborigines squatting on their heels beside the jeep. Annoyance flashed into his eyes, and he ad­mitted he had had little experience in handling trackers, and thought his handling of these two had created a sullen obstinacy in them.

  “Shall I have a go at them?” suggested Irwin, and Bony asked him to wait.

  “Did this reaction occur after you saw the smoke signals this morning?”

  “Yes, it began then.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it, Clifford,” Bony said easily. “The great brains of Scotland Yard and the Federal Bureau of Investigation would have done no better. We’ll return to the Breens. You spoke to them?”

  “I did. We caught up with them about forty miles beyond McDonald’s Stand. Didn’t see them coming back. They must have been past the turn-off to Alverston’s. I asked Ezra if he had noticed the smokes, and he said no. I asked him if his riders had read them, and he said he didn’t know. He shouted to an old feller to leave the cattle and join us, and the old man shook his head and said, ‘Suppose-um corroboree’.”

  “Ezra didn’t see anything of Stenhouse?”

  “No. Was certainly surprised to hear about it.”

  Bony exhaled cigarette smoke and appeared to be intensely absorbed. Clifford, knowing that question and answer is the best means of conveying information, waited. Sitting on the ground, Irwin played five-stones.

  “Were you speaking to the girl, Kimberley?” Bony asked.

  “Kimberley Breen! There was no woman with the outfit. Saw Jasper Breen. The cattle were only a quarter-mile off the track. And there were four abo riders.”

  “Jasper didn’t leave the cattle?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Had you met the Breens before then?”

  “Yes. Saw them several times when I was stationed at Wyndham.”

  Bony subsided into meditative silence. He rolled a cigarette, and appeared in no haste to strike a match. Clifford, who had been associated with Bony in the investigation into the murders at Broome, wondered what was going on behind the half-closed eyes, but Irwin, to whom time was of no greater im­portance than it is to the wild aborigines, continued tossing his five stones. When Bony did speak, there were four stones on the back of the constable’s hand, and the hand became motion­less.

  “Sam Laidlaw says he spoke with both Kimberley and Ezra Breen. He said, too, that Kimberley promised to visit his wife when she arrived in Wyndham. Laidlaw said nothing of seeing Jasper Breen. What do you two make of that?”

  Irwin said:

  “Seems that Jasper caught up with the cattle and took Kimberley’s place, she returning home. Six riders with that outfit would be plenty. How were they travelling, Clifford? With cook-truck or pack-horses?”

  “Pack-horses.”

  “All right, Irwin. See what you can do with those trackers,” Bony ordered, and the loose-limbed, red-headed bear of a man ambled away. Seeing again the expression of annoyance on the younger man’s face, and his own natural reaction to the cause being to encourage, Bony said, gently:

  “These aborigines have many traits similar to dogs, Clifford. They’re full of knowledge and helpful in their own country, and are nervous and suspicious when away from it. We feed them and clothe them and we bring them to understand enough of our language to communicate. They smoke our tobacco and ride our horses, many of them drive our cars and trucks, and are able to repair windmills and pumps.

  “Nevertheless, they retain their tribal customs and cling to inherited instincts and convictions. They are loyal to white men living for a long time in their own locality, and suspicious of all others. It takes years of association and study to reach even the middle of the bridge spanning the gulf between them and us. Be patient. A thousand years are as nothing in this timeless land, and when the last aboriginal sinks down to die, despite the veneer imposed on him by our civilization, he will be the same man as were his forebears ten thousand years ago. Have you a pistol?”

  Clifford mentally blinked. He was young enough to flush, and sensible enough to accept sound advice.

  “Thank you, sir. Yes, I’ve a thirty-two automatic.”

  “I would like to borrow it. Cartridges?”

  “Half a box, sir.”

  “I would be obliged if you would transfer the weapon and the ammunition to my small suitcase on the seat of the utility … without the trackers observing what you are doing.”

  Clifford departed, and Bony strolled along the track, his hands pressed into the small of his back. He was finding it diffi­cult to accept his own advice given Clifford in view of what he thought might result from those smoke signals. Irwin came to him to report.

  “Charlie says that those smokes this morning told him that the Musgrave blacks were coming north into this country. Larry … that’s the young feller … agrees with Charlie that the Musgrave fellers are either bent on finding Jacky or execut­ing their justice on the bloke who killed him.”

  “How are they taking it … Charlie and Larry?”

  “All right. But they aren’t too easy about it. Reckon the Musgrave blacks won’t interfere with the mob up here. All they’ll be after is the feller who killed Jacky.”

  “Meaning the feller who killed Stenhouse, Irwin.”

  Irwin chuckled.

  “Seems we’re to have competitors, don’t it?”

  “Very serious competitors, too. We must work, or they’ll beat us to it. Send the trackers back to Agar’s with Clifford. Get them going right away.”

  Irwin left Bony standing and facing Black Range, which he did not see, and when Clifford and the trackers had disappeared down the track, he sat in the utility and waited. He waited for fifteen minutes before Bony joined him.

  “Drive slowly to the turn-off,” he ordered. “We’ll call on the Breens … Silas and Kimberley … and listen politely to what they have to say, and their stockmen.”

  Irwin turned the vehicle.

  “What are you making of this business?” he asked.

  “It would appear that Stenhouse and his jeep were rolled on to a magic carpet and flown through the air to where Laidlaw found him. We have much travelling to do over these extra­ordinary mountains, and the speed having to be kept down to ten miles an hour causes me to feel like the nightmare victim trying to run in iron boots.”

  The turn-off track to the Breens’ homestead was even worse than the Great Northern Highway. Irwin needed to concen­trate on his driving and to employ his strength to fight the rebellious steering-wheel. Black Range advanced and thrust forward great buttresses sheathed in dark-red armour. The westering sun vanished, and presently they were negotiating the slope of a gully which became a gorge, and the surface of the supposed track was bare rock, mostly dull grey, sometimes rich chocolate, sometimes jade green.

  Bony gazed downward into this great cleft in the Range. It became no wider the higher they climbed, and the almost per­pendicular opposite slope would have defeated a goat. The utility rolled over loose stones, and bucked over miniature ridges, running in low gear, and Bony wasn’t liking the ex­perience. He was enormously thankful that the weather was clear and the rock dry to which the tyres could cling.

  That men had driven this way half a hundred donkeys harnessed to a loaded wagon seemed utterly impossible. It was still harder to believe that Silas and Jasper had driven over this track in their truck at night. Here and there was the evidence of human labour which had made it possible.

  It was six o’clock when the rock wall gave up frustrating the little truck, and the evening sky was draped between pinnacles of red ironstone. The climb became less steep, and with re­markable abruptness they passed over the low rim of a shallow bowl where grew the singular baobab trees, their excessively gnarled limbs leafless at this time. Within the bowl grew ripen­ing grass, and across it flowed a tiny stream to escape through a cleft in the western edge.

  “What d’you say to camping here?” suggested Bony
, and Irwin made no attempt to hide his satisfaction. He stopped the vehicle beneath one of the baobabs, then alighted and stretched his arms and grinned, saying:

  “It’ll be cold, but there’s plenty of wood.”

  They uprooted dead wait-a-bit and mulgas and dragged them close to replenish the camp fire. They brought water from the stream and brewed tea and ate of Mrs Ramsay’s provender. And the sun went down behind the lip of the bowl, and wal­labies came to feed on the grass and drink at the stream. Apostle birds arrived with a rush of wings to create apparent uproar, but actually voicing their joy in living. They settled into their large nests, as many as could crowding into each, for there are no birds so imbued with the community spirit.

  “What lies on the other side?” Bony asked when they had eaten.

  “Space,” replied Irwin.

  They sauntered to the edge of the bowl, and Bony contem­plated what was a vision rather than a vista. A wide valley lay between them and a distant purple range … the valley an eiderdown of apple-green ‘bumps’ and the gullies etched in black. Spanning the valley far to the north a ridge of bluish rock was fashioned to the sky-line of a great city of the Orient.

  “I camped here about five years ago,” Irwin said. “After dawn is when you see the colours. Beyond that line of blue rocks is the Breens’ homestead.”

  “What d’you know about the Breens?” asked Bony, and Irwin gave his peculiar chuckling laugh.

  “The sons are a tough lot,” he said, faint admiration in his voice. “The old people were even tougher … must have been. The old man and Mrs Breen came from Queensland, looking for land, and why they took up that land instead of going down south, beats me.

  “Anyway, they got over this range and down there, and took up a thousand square miles. Starting with nothing exceptin’ the donkey wagon, a few cows and a dozen hens. They battled along, some say by stealing a bull and a few more cows, and living on ’roos and the smell of axle-grease.

  “They had three sons and the one daughter. There was no flying to hospital for Mrs Breen. Women were tough in those days … or passed out. Old Silas died in 1929. Fell ill … no doctor … no wireless … no death certificate … a grave marked with a hefty wooden cross. I never met either of the old people, but I’m told that after the old man went out, Mrs Breen bossed the boys as her husband had done … with a clenched fist in preference to an open hand. She died in 1934, when the girl was only seven years old, and Kimberley was reared by her three brothers.

  “Silas and Jasper had no education, and can only just read and write. Ezra did spend four years at the State School in Broome, and he got Kimberley through the Correspondence Course posted up by the Education Department. Did you happen to meet Father O’Rory?”

  “No. Tell me about him.”

  “Grand old man. Been up here years. He read the service over old Silas and Mrs Breen when they’d been dead a long time, and he christened the kids when he called on his annual tour. Wanted Kimberley sent to a convent to be educated. Fought hard, too. The boys wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “They appear to have prospered,” Bony commented.

  “Up to a point,” agreed Irwin. “Manage to muster four hundred head for the Meat Works every season, but that’s a poor effort, for most of their country’s good beef land. The Breens live rough, like their parents. Satisfied with little, and yet royalty to themselves. No one like the Breens … in their own estimation. Never gave any serious trouble, but we’ve heard of wild doings now and then.”

  Irwin fell silent and Bony did not speak. The quilt of the valley was sinking beneath a purple overlay. The sun stood on its edge on a ridge, promised to look at them again, and van­ished. The purple darkened to indigo blue, and the summits of the Range about the two men brightened from red to gold, an iridescent gold. The red monoliths and the cross-barrier of rock sank into the blue of the valley, and soon the summits were like carved mahogany pillars supporting a diamond-studded roof.

  Two hours later, Bony and Irwin were lying in their blankets either side the fading camp fire. Bony tossed the end of his last cigarette for the day into the embers, and languidly he said:

  “A man shot Stenhouse, and, almost certainly, shot Jacky Musgrave, too. Result … the white law represented by you and me is set in motion against him. A mighty force, the white law. He was a fool, that man who shot Stenhouse. When he murdered Stenhouse, he had to murder Jacky Musgrave, and then he brought into action against himself a second and even more powerful force … the black law. If we don’t apprehend the murderer, the representatives of the black law will.”

  Irwin gazed between the branches of the baobab tree above them, watching the endless procession of shooting stars. Bony murmured:

  “Remember that late evening we were travelling to the Langs, and the spinifex grass lying flat and ghostly white to­wards the desert? I can see passing over that white sheet a dark cloud, coming up from the Musgrave Range and the great desert, swift, silent, irresistible.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Kimberley Breen

  THE RANGES had withheld many things from Kimberley Breen, but they had lavishly bestowed upon her their colours. All that Bony had been told about her hair was fact. Her eyes were large and grey, flecked with blue. Her face was oval and vital with health.

  Three naked babies lay on their backs on a blanket spread in the sunlight. They were tiny babies and jet-black. Bead-black eyes were bright, and the soles of the little feet kicking at the sun were almost pink. One gurgled when Kimberley lightly pressed her finger on his tummy. Another industriously sucked her thumb, and the third yawned and resolutely strove to keep his eyes open.

  Around Kimberley and the babies stood several lubras, and twice their number of children and dogs. The women were vastly amused at Kimberley’s interest in their babies, and some of the younger children were solemnly jealous. They were as free of clothes as the babies; the older children and the women wearing shapeless dresses of coloured cotton.

  The Breens’ homestead was pisé-built and iron-roofed. The walls were a yard thick, and such was its rambling shape it was not easy to estimate the number of rooms. High veranda roofing gave shade from the hot sun and shelter from the tor­rential summer rain, and upon the bare earth floor stood painted tubs in which grew vigorous ferns. A covered way connected the main house with the kitchen and other buildings, and beyond this covered way a garden extended to a low precipitous cliff of weathered limestone. On the cliff three wind-lites charged batteries to provide light and power. Two windmills beside the near-by creek raised water from an almost fathomless hole, and tubular piping built the masts for the wireless aerial. It was a picture of permanency and solidity.

  Over by the creek a man snouted, and instantly the lubras and the children were tensed and silent. They were like hens made abruptly immobile by the arrival of a noiseless hawk. Then the women sighed, and one cried:

  “Car bin come, Missus.”

  Kimberley rose from the blanket on which she had been kneeling beside the babies, and listened. She could hear nothing beyond the windmills. Then one of the dogs barked, and a score of others were quickly roused to frenzy, and the flock of some two hundred goats grazing on a distant ‘bump’ abruptly lifted their heads. The aborigine over by the creek had heard the oncoming vehicle seconds before the dogs heard it.

  The truck came on. The dogs barked louder. The lubras and the children faded into obscurity, and with them went the babies and the blanket.

  Constable Irwin stopped the utility, and slid from it to meet Kimberley, who had walked to the shelter of the front veranda. He slicked his fingers through his fair hair, hitched up his trousers, and laughed into Kimberley’s large grey-blue eyes.

  “Day-ee, Kim! How’s things?”

  “So-so, Mr Irwin. What are you doing over this way?”

  She saw the second man who remained by the truck, and noted the absence of trackers on the back of it. She smiled up at Irwin and Irwin realized it was indeed a beautiful d
ay and a wonderful country.

  “Just touring around, Kim,” he said. “You hear about Con­stable Stenhouse?”

  “Yes. On the air last night and this morning. A dreadful thing to have happened. Are you going to stay a bit?”

  “Yes … like to. I’ve Inspector Bonaparte with me.”

  “Inspector Bonaparte!” Kimberley echoed, emphasis on the rank. “Oh! Just look at me! Could he wait … while I change?”

  “He could, but why change?” Irwin chuckled. “You look good to me, Kim.”

  She was wearing a faded blue blouse belted into old blue trousers having a darker blue patch on the seat. She backed away to the house entrance, her face flushing, her eyes troubled, and saying:

  “Oh, I couldn’t meet an Inspector, Mr Irwin, not like this. You take him into the living-room and I’ll change and get the girls to make tea. I’ll not be long.”

  Continuing to back to the door and in through the doorway, she disappeared. Irwin heard her calling for Mary and Joan and Martha, and, smiling, he returned to the utility.

  “We’re invited in for afternoon tea,” he said to Bony.

  “We shall certainly appreciate that.”

  Irwin conducted Bony into the house and to a large room which might have been furnished by people now dead two hundred years, that is if one could shut out the modern radio transceiver and the two electrics suspended from the beamed ceiling.

  Bony sat on a carved mahogany chair stuffed with horse­hair and weighing a hundredweight. In the centre of the room stood a teakwood table capable of seating twenty. On the bare earth floor, composed of termite hills packed to the hardness of cement, were dyed goat-skin rugs. The yawning mouth of a great open fireplace was filled with silver grass, and upon the three-inch-thick mantelshelf stood a Swiss cuckoo clock, several cracked ornaments, and racks of pipes. There were oleographs of Queen Victoria, a cardinal, a child in a tub reaching for a cake of soap, and another of an abbey, as well as two coloured portraits, of a bewhiskered man, appearing uncomfortable in a choker collar and massive cravat, and a woman still beautiful, whom Bony guessed were the original Breens.