The Bone is Pointed b-6 Page 8

  Here he camped for an hour, boiling his quart-pot for tea and eating the lunch daintily prepared and enclosed in a serviette. So far, the country he had traversed could not possibly offer a clue to Anderson’s passing. The ground was too soft and sandy to have left unburied any clue.

  From this first corner post the fence took a northward direction, and, after a further mile of the mulga forest, Bony emerged on to the plain that composed the southern half of the paddock. Now the sunlight was brighter and the wind could be felt. The horizon fled away for miles, cut here and there by cleanly ridged solitary sand-dunes and the tops of groves of trees raised into spires by the mirage. Five miles from the corner Bony came to an area ofclaypans across which his horse had to pass-and across which The Black Emperor must have passed when he carried Jeffery Anderson.

  At theseclaypans Bony dismounted and led the horse with the reins resting in the crook of an arm. Now he walked in giant curves and smaller circles. Now he crouched to look across a claypan at an oblique angle. Four times he lay flat on his chest in order to bring the cement-like surface to within an inch of his eyes.

  His examination of The Black Emperor’s tracks that morning had revealed to the half-caste that the gelding pressed harder with the tip of his off-side fore hoof than with that of the near-side fore hoof, and, to make a balance, harder with the near-side hind hoof than with the off-side hind hoof. When he had cut the animal’s hoofs in the yards the evening before, he had been careful to note the faint colouration of the growth since April, when Anderson had last cut them, and he had cut them as closely as possible to their former shape.

  After five months it would have been stupid to expect to find The Black Emperor’s tracks on sandy ground, on loose surfaces such as composed most of the plain, or on surfaces scoured by the rainwater that followed Anderson’s disappearance. Theclaypans, however, always gave promise, for they could retain imprints for years, even if the imprints required the magnifying eyes of a Napoleon Bonaparte to see them. And, at irregular spaces across theseclaypans, Bony thought he could discern the faintest of indentations that could have been made by a horse before the last rain fell. He thought it, but he could not be sure.

  For nearly eight miles Bony rode northward, again to dismount at the edge of the maze of sand-dunes stretching away into Mount Lester Station from Green Swamp. Here, where the fence rose from the comparatively level plain to surmount the dunes like a switchback railway, Bony and Lacy surmised Anderson to have stopped for lunch. A little way back from the fence grew a solitary leopardwood-tree, to which The Black Emperor could have been conveniently roped for the lunch hour.

  Bony was now thrilling as might a bloodhound when in sight of the fugitive. He walked his horse to a tree distant from the leopardwood, neck-roped her to it, then returned to the leopardwood and began a careful examination of its trunk at about the height of the black gelding.

  Now the bark of this tree is soft and spotted and green-grey, and Bony hoped to find on it the mark made by rope friction caused by an impatient horse. He found no mark. The tree grew above ground covered with fine sand, and those of its roots exposed he examined inch by inch for signs of injury from contact with an impatient horse’s stamping hoof. He found no such injury. With the point of a stick he dug and prodded the soft surface, hoping to uncover spoor buried by wind-driven sand. He found no spoor, but he unearthed a layer of white ash, caked by the rain and covered by dry sand blown over it after the rain. Here Anderson had made his lunch fire.

  His blue eyes gleaming, Bony stood up and smiled as he made a cigarette and smoked it like a man knowing he deserved the luxury. Leaning against the smooth trunk of the tree, he faced to the east. To his right began the plain, to his left the sand-dunes, before him, some twenty yards distant, was the plain wire fence separating Karwir from Mount Lester Station.

  Here Anderson had stood or sat while he ate his lunch. He had observed the rain clouds approaching. Possibly it already had begun to rain. He had decided that to visit the swamp and the hut would be unnecessary. What had he done then? Had he mounted his horse and continued northward along the fence? Had he climbed over the fence into Mount Lester Station for any reason, any possible reason? Far away to the south-east Bony could see the revolving fans of a windmill and what might be an iron hut at its foot. It was two miles off the fence. Had Anderson walked over there, even strapped the wires together and induced The Black Emperor to step over the fence that he might ride there? It was a possibility that might yet have to be accepted and investigated.

  There wereclaypans all along the foot of the sand-dune country, but Bony did not stay to examine those near by, for Anderson would have crossed them before the rain fell and they would have provided him with a clue no more definite than those others had given him. Then, too, he was satisfied by the remains of the small fire that the man really had camped at this place for his lunch.

  Again mounted, he followed the fence into the sand-dunes, into a world of fantastically shaped monsters, gigantic curling waves, roofs of sand that smoked when the wind blew, cores of sand tightened with clay particles to be fashioned by the wind into pillars and roughly inverted pyramids, nightmarish figures and slim Grecian vases.

  For two miles Bony continued to ride over these dunes till he arrived at the second corner of the paddock. Here the plain wire fence joined a netted and barbed barrier, the northern fence of Green Swamp Paddock and the boundary fence of Karwir and Meena stations from this point to westward. To the eastward lay Meena and Mount Lester stations.

  From here Bony’s course lay to the west, continuing over the dunes to their westward edge and for another mile before the third corner was reached; the fence then sent Bony southward to cross the wide and shallow depressions separated by the narrow ridges of sand on which grew only the coolabahs. Over these depressions the netted barrier was in bad condition, the netting having rotted at ground level since the depressions had last carried water. Now the netting was curled upward from the ground and an army of rabbits would have found it no barrier at all.

  Where the fence again angled to the west to reach its fifth corner just westward of the gate spanning the road to Opal Town, lay the southernmost of the depressions. The corner was almost dead centre of this depression, and from it could be seen the track from the main road to the hut at Green Swamp.

  Here Bony left the fence and rode eastward till he reached the road which took him into a wide belt of shady box-trees growing about the swamp. The hut was situated on the south side, erected on higher ground to be above possible flood level. For this reason, too, the well had been sunk and the mill erected over it. The place was well named Green Swamp, for a wall of green trees shut away the sand-dunes behind them.

  As the sun was pushing the tip of its orb above these trees the next morning, Bony was riding towards the corner of the fence he had left the evening before, and he was no little astonished to see how badly the netted barrier needed repairs along this further section of it.

  He had proceeded about a third of the distance to the main road gate when he saw ahead several men working on the fence. Then he saw the smoke of the campfire among the scrub trees and the tent twenty or thirty yards in Meena country. Approaching nearer the working party he saw that it consisted of three aboriginals. He passed the tent before reaching them, to observe the empty food tins littering the camp, indicating that it had been there several days. Coming to the workers, he cried:

  “Good day-ee!”

  “Good day-ee!” two of them replied to his greeting, the third continuing at work. They were footing the fence with new netting: digging out the old, attaching the new to the bottom of the main, above-ground wire and burying it, thus making it as proof against rabbits as when the barrier was first erected.

  “The fence here is in bad condition,” remarked Bony, taking the opportunity of the halt to make a cigarette.

  “That’s so,” agreed the man who had not replied to the greeting. From Sergeant Blake’s description, Bon
y recognized him.

  His clear voice and reasonably good English, his powerful body and legs, tallied with Blake’s word picture of Jimmy Partner. He seemed to be a pleasant enough fellow and was obviously in charge of the party. Of the others, who appeared younger, one was shifty-eyed and spindle-legged, and the second, although more robust, had his face set in a stupid, uncomprehending grin.

  “Have you been working here long?” asked Bony.

  “Three days,” replied Jimmy Partner who, having leaned his long-handled shovel against the fence, drew nearer to Bony the better to examine him while he rolled a cigarette. “Haven’t seen you about before. You working for Karwir?”

  “Well, not exactly for Karwir. I am Detective-Inspector Bonaparte, and I’m looking into the disappearance of Jeffery Anderson. Was the condition of this fence then like it is now?”

  “No. It was bad, of course, but the April rain made it like this. Looking for Anderson, eh? I don’t like your chances. He was looked for good and proper five months back, and the wind has done a lot of work since then.”

  “Oh, I fancy my chances are good,” countered Bony airily. “All I want is time, and I have plenty of that. What’s your name?”

  The question was put sharply to the spindle-legged fellow and he goggled.

  “Me! I’m Abie.”

  “And what’s your name?”

  The grin on the face of the other had become a fixture, and Abie answered for him.

  “He’s Inky Boy,” he said.

  Bony’s brows rose a fraction.

  “Ah! You’re Inky Boy, eh! Sergeant Blake told me about you. You’re the feller that Anderson beat with his whip for letting the rams perish.”

  Inky Boy’s grin vanished, to be replaced with an expression of furious hate. Jimmy Partner cut in with:

  “An ordinary belting would have been enough. It wasn’t cause enough to thrash Inky Boy till he took the count. Still,” and he tossed his big head and laughed, “Inky Boy won’t never go to sleep and let any more rams perish.”

  “I don’t suppose he will,” agreed Bony who did not fail to detect the absence of humour in Jimmy Partner’s eyes. “Well, I must get along. I may see you all again soon. Hooroo!”

  He clicked his tongue, and Kate woke up and began to walk on. Jimmy Partner fired a last shot.

  “You won’t find Anderson anywhere in Green Swamp Paddock,” he shouted. “If you do I’ll eat a rabbit, fur and all.”

  Bony reined his horse round and rode back to them.

  “Suppose I find him within ten miles of Green Swamp Paddock, what then?”

  “I’ll eat three rabbits, fur and all. You won’t find him ’coshe’s not here. We all made sure of that when he disappeared. No, he bolted clear away. Sick of Old Lacy and Karwir. Anyway, what with things he done the country wasgettin ’ sick of him.”

  “Well, well! It all has to be settled one way or the other, Jimmy, and I’m here to settle it. So long!”

  Now as he rode away towards the boundary gate, Bony examined the new earth piled against the new footing. The extremely faint difference of the colouring of the newly-moved earth plainly informed him that this party of aboriginals had not begun work here three days back but only the morning of the day before, the morning he had left the Karwir homestead. He was aware, of course, that time is rarely accurately measured by an aboriginal, but it had been Jimmy Partner who had stated the period, and he was too intelligent, too well educated, inadvertently to have made such a mistake.

  Bony came to the gate spanning the road to Opal Town, and saw the west fence of Green Swamp Paddock coming from the south to join the netted barrier beyond the gate. In it, too, there was a gate, a roughly made wire gate. Beyond it ran back the cleared line cut through the mulga forest along which was erected the boundary netted fence, and Bony instantly understood that no one standing on this road, or riding in a car, could have seen the white horse tethered to a tree on the Karwir side and a brown horse similarly secured on the other side.

  To read the page of the Book of the Bush on which that meeting of Diana Lacy with an unknown had been printed, Bony opened the gate in the plain wire division fence, mounted again on its far side, and so rode the boundary fence in the Karwir North Paddock.

  From the plane he had estimated that the meeting place was a full half mile from the gate and the road, hidden from any passer-by on the road by a ground swell. He rode a full mile before turning back over his horse’s tracks, for he must have passed the meeting place. He spent a full hour looking for the tracks of horse and humans. He failed utterly to discover them.

  Chapter Eight

  The Trysting Place

  THE frown drawing Bony’s narrow brows almost together was chased away by a quick smile. Then he frowned again, squinted rapidly at the sun, flashed a glance at his own shadow, thus judging the time to be a quarter after ten o’clock, and decided to boil water in his quart-pot for tea.

  “Delightful!” he cried softly as he neck-roped the mare to a shady cabbage-tree, then made a fire and set the filled quart-pot against the flame. “I believe I can guess correctly what has been done to bluff poor old Bony, as though poor old Bony, alias Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, could be bluffed. What a beautiful tree is that bloodwood! What a striking feature it makes in this most limited locality! How shady, how ideally situated amid this low scrub, to be a trysting place easy to remember. When I was young, and the world was young, and the girl I loved with me! Dear me, I must be careful.”

  It was almost a freak of nature, this tree growing away from a creek or billabong. Its foliage was brilliant and full, its wood beneath the bark as red as blood. In its symmetry, in its virile life, the bloodwood is the very king of all the gums.

  This tree was not difficult to climb, and Bony climbed it till he could climb no higher. Now the fence was dwarfed, and he could see along its cut line the white gate spanning the road, and far away over the tops of the lesser scrub. And there, a mile or two to the east, was rising, in interrupted lengths, a column of brown smoke that swelled into a mushroom-shaped cloud five thousand feet above the world. And Bony’s eyes blazed and his nostrils twitched with the excitement growing in his mind.

  It was a perfect day for this ancient method of conveying a signal, and the mind of Napoleon Bonaparte laboured to solve the meaning of this one. That it was merely a signal conveying an idea and not a message, Bony came to be confident. The spacing of the smoke bars was too ragged for the sending of a message which through naturally imposed limits had to be nothing more than a generality. And what the blacks working on the fence would have to tell their own people would be much more involved than a generality such as: “I’m coming home,” or, “You come over here.”

  So quiet the day amid these drowsing trees that, when the water in the quart-pot boiled over the rim, Bony heard the hiss of its sputtering on the hot embers of the small and smokeless fire. A crow came from the south, circled about the bloodwood, cawed thrice and alighted in a mulga-tree just beyond the fence, there to watch with its head cocked to one side this strangely behaving animal that could kill with a noise, and throw stones and sticks.

  For a little while longer Bony remained on his high bough, alternately gazing eastward along the fence towards the gate and the black fencers’ camp, and away to the north-west where were situated Meena Lake and Meena homestead. He hoped to see a smoke signal rise in that quarter, and when none did he was still more confident of the purpose of the signal made by Jimmy Partner and his friends.

  “Drama and a little comedy mixed with the spoon of tranquillity give the cake of life,” he said to the watching crow. “Drama without comedy or comedy without drama produces thesoddy dough of phantasmagoria. First the wager of eating rabbits, fur and all, and now the broadcasting of news by a method forgotten by the world save among the allegedly primitive peoples.”

  On reaching the ground he made tea with the water remaining in the quart-pot, and carrying the brew to the shade of a thriving cu
rrant bush he reclined on the soft warm earth to sip the black liquid and to smoke a chain of cigarettes. The crow cawed once because the bloodwood hid the man from it, then flew cawing in a giant circle before perching in a tree from which it could watch with only its black head and one beady eye to be seen.

  “My dear undertaker, I’m not yet dead,” Bony blithely remarked to it. “In fact, I am more alive than I have been for a long time. This case is beginning to unfold before me as a flower unfolds to be kissed by the new-risen sun. You didn’t know I was a poet, did you? I mayn’t look like one, but then I don’t look like a detective-inspector.

  “For the first time, no, the second, in my career I am apparently opposed by aborigines, worthy opponents, opponents who never make the stupid mistakes fatally made by the so clever, so highly civilized white man. I wonder how! Did those blacks signal my passing their camp in a code arranged just to fit the news, or did they signal the announcement that one of them was about to begin a broadcast? And having begun the broadcast, which of them is now seated on the ground with his arms resting on his raised knees and his forehead resting on his arms while he transfers to the mind of another at Meena thought pictures of my arrival at the camp, my statement concerning the discovery of Anderson, my passing on to the road, and possibly my being camped just here?

  “Everyone of them was a young man, and therefore the probability is that the signal merely announced that I have arrived on the job.”

  The crow cawed, and then realistically gurgled like a man being strangled.

  “Be quiet,” Bony said to it. “Now let me go back to that instant when I saw a cut line through the scrub, a line of netted fence along the centre of the cut line, and a white horse and a brown one tethered to a tree either side of the barrier. Those horses were standing not far from this place.”

  Bony closed his eyes, and found that before he could concentrate he had first to subdue the excitement created by the smoke signals. Presently he became tranquil, his mind amenable to control. He imagined the roar of the aeroplane engine. Imagination lifted the curtain to show not the last act but the prologue. He saw again the white gate spanning the Karwir track growing larger and larger till it vanished below the machine at the instant he turned his head to gaze along this same cut line. Again he saw the two horses standing motionless in the shade cast by trees. And now he saw beyond and above the white horse the tall, vivid green bloodwood-tree. The white horse was standing in the shade cast by a tree growing nearer to the gate than was the bloodwood.