Bony - 29 - The Lake Frome Monster Read online

  When Bony first came to Quinambie and the Border Fence, the aborigines had been sittim-down-do-nothing. Then he had deliberately prodded them into action by having Newton publish the suspicion that he was a police­man in disguise. And now having occupied several days and nights with discussion, it had been decided to be rid of him. They had a secret which he might uncover.

  How would the men crouching over their little fire argue about him? What was their point of view? Like the whites he was an itinerant bush worker; that is, on the surface. He was thought to be a policeman but there was no proof of it, and thus persuasion not violence would be adopted. To begin with, anyway.

  So they crouched over their little fire and united the power of their wills to disturb the balance of his mind. The purpose was to subjugate him to intimidation precisely as the hypnotist prepares his subject to accept his commands.

  Provided the bore water did not eventually have un­pleasant results, then Bony felt sure he was becoming the subject of thought transference and would be the victim of extremely subtle assault. Proof would be provided that the aborigines did have something to hide, and that some­thing must be the manner of the death of Maidstone. It was possible, but only faintly possible, that Nugget re­sented being transferred from one section to another and had persuaded his tribe so to act. The point to be admitted without equivocation was that he, Bony, was half abori­gine and that his aboriginal half was much stronger than the white ancestry in his make up. Thus he was as open to victimization as a full blood.

  Bony knew that it was fear that killed: fear killed many of his people in spite of all that medical science could do to save them. He also knew that doctors everywhere were finding more and more connections between physical symptoms and mental and emotional upsets. He also knew well that thought could be transmitted—instances of tele­pathy over vast distances were a well established fact. But he also knew that he was still of his race and countless centuries of acceptance of the fact that a man must die when the bone was pointed at him was still strong in him. It was more than the case of the intellectual who still re­fused to walk under the ladder because his parents had told him it was unlucky. He had felt this conflict between his intellect and his emotions before. Once before he had suffered the five bones and the eagle’s claws of the boning apparatus being pointed at him. This was when he had fallen foul of the Kalchut tribe while trying to find the killer of a man who had foully misused members of that tribe. This time he was not prepared to submit to the sprinkling of the powder which the natives used symboli­cally to open up the bodies of their victims so that the magic transmitted by the bones might the more easily enter. This time he was not prepared to undergo the con­flict within himself that followed and the hovering between life and death which only outside intervention had ended in his favour. Certainly he would probably not voluntarily give up the will to live, but even the depression and lassi­tude which would inevitably follow the first stages of the boning would be enough to hinder his judgement when he needed it to be at its most acute.

  One thing was on his side. He knew that in these days when the aborigines knew that the death of any individual, black or white, brought probings and questions and pos­sibly charges of murder, the decision to point the bone would only be taken after due deliberation round the camp fire, and not until round that very fire one of the mauia stones in which the potent magic employed in bone-point­ing resided had been carefully ground and sufficient particles produced to enable the dust to be sprinkled over a sleeping Bonaparte.

  “There is only one way,” he thought to himself. “I must stop this at the source. If the kind of life I have lived has taught me anything,” he pondered, “one thing has been self-evident, one must always face one’s fear and never suppress it.”

  He sat in solemn thought for a moment. Suddenly he remembered something he had forgotten to do on the day he had left his home. He went over to his battered suitcase and fumbled in the pocket of the sports coat which he had discarded when he had donned the working clothes he wore on the Fence.

  It took only a few minutes to saddle Rosie and after making a few preparations, Bony was on his way to Quin­ambie. It was a long and tiring ride and the more difficult because he didn’t know exactly where the aborigines were camped and he certainly didn’t want to call at the home­stead and so give the alarm. It was important that it should be dark when he arrived and to find the camp site would be difficult, even had he known exactly where it was. Even then he might not be able to find Old Moses and the Medi­cine Man, whom he felt sure were at the bottom of the attempt to injure him which was now being planned.

  Bonaparte made a wide circle round Quinambie until he picked up a trail which indicated that workmen had travelled to and from the station. He followed a course parallel to the trail until he came to a collection of bark and galvanized shanties. This, he thought, must be where the tribe lived. There was almost a full moon and the camp showed little sign of life apart from dogs slinking round the huts. Bony stopped and looked round him until he saw a convenient clump of mulga trees and there he dismounted and tethered Rosie. He had noted that there was a series of high rocky outcrops behind the camp and here, he thought, if anywhere, would be the retreat of the Medicine Man and his helpers. Cautiously he worked his way to­wards these outcrops. Suddenly, as he crossed the first outcrop he saw that a gully ran in front of him and turned slightly behind the ridge.

  Bony crept as silently as he knew, using the moonlight as far as possible to avoid treading on sticks, or dried bark which would crackle. Although it was a cold night he felt perspiration on the palms of his hands and knew that the fear which was his heritage was walking with him. Sud­denly, he stopped sharply. The smoke of a small fire was rising from behind a huge rock. Silently he worked his way until he could see without being seen. There, round a small fire, were three aborigines, completely naked except for a fringe of feathers attached to their feet. As their bodies glistened in the firelight, so they gazed intently in­to the small fire, while one, whom he took to be Charlie, the Medicine Man, slowly scraped particles from a small stone on to a piece of bark lying in front of him. Not a muscle moved in any of the three faces, which could have been carved of stone. The power of their concentration was so intense that Bony also felt his breath loud in his throat and breathing was almost difficult. All at once he felt foolish and inadequate. Here he was, face-to-face with an age-old ceremony, which neither he nor the white men for whom he worked and among whom he lived would ever understand. His plans seemed trivial and childish, but somehow he knew he must break the power of that concentration—somehow, no matter the consequences, he must make this ceremony seem ridiculous. His limbs felt as if they had leaden weights attached and it was only with a supreme effort of will that he forced himself on. Noise­lessly, he approached until he was hidden behind the nearest rock not five yards from the fire. There was no change in the trance-like state of the three seated round the fire. Suddenly, Bony put a hand in his pocket and threw a paper packet over the heads of the fire-sitters. The packet fell into the fire with a soft “wuff”. The three startled natives jumped to their feet, and then a firecracker started to explode, scattering the fire in all directions. Still with the fear of the spirits of darkness that they were invoking in their hearts, the three natives fled.

  Bony felt the tension go out of his body. The packet he had promised to his youngest son and forgotten to give him before he had left home had scattered the forces of evil with the embers of the fire. Once broken by ridicule, Bony felt that no more attempts would be made to kill him by pointing the bone at him. Indifferent now as to what eyes were watching him, he returned to Rosie and rode back to his camp.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Attack is Switched

  ON HIS way back to camp Bony shot a kangaroo to provide himself with fresh meat for the following day. After a full day’s work on the Fence he camped at sundown and made the usual cooking fire. He washed in two pints of water and after giv
ing the suddy liquid to Old George, dined off salt beef and damper, with jam on the damper for the sweet. The camels wandered off for their dinner and aided by the firelight he baked a damper for the next day. The stars shone without winking, a cool wind came from the south, and nothing happened to disturb the peace of night. Bony sighed and relaxed. His depression had lifted. No longer was his tribal ancestry being used against him.

  Old George was a good camper. At the end of a day carrying his heavy load he was ready to lie down immedi­ately his tummy was full, when had he been willing Rosie would have gone farther afield and to a much later hour. She wouldn’t leave George and the Monster would not leave her, and it was seldom they were more than half a mile from camp when Bony went for them in the morning.

  Poor old George! Bony decided to give him a holiday and put the Monster to work. How the Monster would react was unknown after so long a period of freedom. In some respects he was behaving perfectly, and so Bony laid him beside the pack saddle which slowly and with care he lifted on to the great hump. The Monster grunted and showed the tip of his uvula, was “hooshed” at and allowed to twitch himself so that the saddle settled. He did not hug the ground as Rosie did when annoyed, and there was no difficulty in slipping the chest and belly bands under him to clamp the saddle into place. Whilst being loaded his protests were merely half-hearted, and Bony told George how lucky he was.

  “If you behave yourself the rest of the day we shall be a happy family,” observed Bony, nudging him to his feet. The warning bell was slung from his neck and he walked be­hind Old George.

  It was a happy family, too, but the next day the Monster behaved erratically. The warning bell stopped, and Bony, turning about, saw that he had broken the nose-line from George’s tail and was standing quite still and looking back. He did not want to move when Bony went to him and refastened the line to George’s tail, this time more securely.

  The same antic happened half an hour later. They were on fairly open country of low ground swells, lightly tim­bered. Bony could see nothing moving, but was definitely suspicious. Whatever it was he could not scent it as the wind was against it. The other animals were not affected.

  “I think I’ll investigate,” Bony said. “Down you go.”

  Roping one foreleg to prevent him getting up, Bony put down Old George and Rosie, took his rifle and walked back along the Fence. The shadow was no longer over the land. The sky was empty of cloud. The wind was cool and from the south, and Bony went back a mile without seeing anything alive save the eagles high above.

  He began the return to his camels on the far side of the Fence, and almost at once found the naked imprints of two aborigines who had been walking in the same direction. He kept with them and found where they had left the Fence and entered a stand of mulgas. They had passed through the trees, had emerged on the far side and gone on away to the west.

  The tracks were fresh, and Bony would remember them a year hence. What had been their business? Were they on an innocent walkabout, or were they following Bony and his camels? Had their act of leaving the Fence and entering the trees been dictated by seeing Bony leave his camels to investigate? Their tracks showed they had made no hurried move through the mulga, and to have followed them farther would have achieved nothing, for once know­ing they were followed the natives would simply vanish like a mirage.

  It was likely that they were Lake Frome aborigines. Bony thought the Quinambie blacks would take longer to make their next move. The incident taken by itself could not be seriously accepted as part of any other scheme to make life unpleasant for the stranger, but it had become obvious that word had gone out that Bony was to be diverted from this investigation. Just how far the natives would go in the matter of direct violence Bony did not know. Bony roused his camels and proceeded southward, not entirely satisfied either way.

  The next incident was decidedly more serious. He had retired to his bunk beside the camp fire and was smoking his last cigarette for the day when the clatter of the bell carried by Old George told that this animal had abruptly stood up. They were not more than a quarter-mile from camp and had been lying down for more than an hour. It was now ten o’clock.

  Now the bell round a camel’s neck is a great recorder of mood and movement. The initiated can tell exactly what the animals are doing. The bell announces when they are feeding, when they are lying down for the night. To Bony it told when Old George was biting the lice on his hide, when he was shifting to throw off worrying ants, when he was getting up and beginning again to feed. All these various actions would be copied by his companions, and finally the bell would tell in which direction they were moving on.

  This night the bell clattered when Old George stood up. It then stopped. The ensuing silence indicated that he was standing and merely chewing the cud, but after several minutes during which the bell did not clang there was something obviously peculiar about George just merely standing without movement.

  Bony waited for the bell and the bell remained silent. The strap might have broken when the animal stood, or the tongue of the bell might have come adrift. Without the guiding bell, it could be difficult to find the animals the following morning. Not troubling to dress, in his pyjamas, Bony set off to find his camels and the defective bell, taking a spare bell with him.

  The night was quiet and dark. The sparse scrub loomed higher than in daylight. He walked circumspectly between the trees in the direction tolled by the now silent bell, and only when he had proceeded half a mile did he decide he must have passed his camels. Then he circled and did this for an hour before giving up and returning to his camp, to rely on tracking them in daylight.

  As the day broke he was dressed and sipping a pan­nikin of tea, and when it was light enough to see the light tracks left by the large and padded feet he followed these tracks to the place where the three camels having fed had lain down for the night. There was no mistaking the marks left by their heavy bodies. Neither was there any misread­ing of the tracks of a lubra who had advanced to the beasts causing George to stand and ring his bell. The prints of naked feet told a story plainly enough.

  The woman doubtlessly had stuffed grass into the bell. She had removed the hobbles from the animals, had mounted one of them and led the remaining two away in a north-easterly direction, for she left no tracks beside those of the camels. Meticulously Bony followed the animals’ tracks. He followed them for four miles to where the woman had dismounted, re-hobbled the beasts, and cleared the bell of grass. Her tracks showed that she had departed to the east. Now Bony listened and found he could barely hear the bell away to the north.

  The camels were feeding between two timbered sand ridges, a distance from his camp of fully five miles. That was the distance Bony had to tramp back to camp with them for breakfast and then begin the day’s work.

  The conditions on this Border Fence were harsh enough without having to begin the day with a ten-mile tramp, and no ordinary Australian working man would put up with it. Employment wasn’t that scarce. The organizers of this act of sabotage would know that full well, as they would know that repeated doses of the same tactics would surely remove this working man from a locality where he was not wanted.

  Who would want him out of it? Who was behind the animosity of the aborigines? For no apparent reason Nugget could want him off the Fence so that he could regain his old section. The lubra who had removed the camels could be that young woman Needle Kent had named as some kind of relative. Nugget’s motive was prob­ably obscure, but important enough to him. Then there was Jack Levvey who needed a boss stockman and offered the job. Irritating tactics would not be beyond him. One could go backwards and forwards over these suppositions and get nowhere until these controlled machinations became still more serious and finally disclosed a lead.

  The Monster, too, was not happy that day. He kept look­ing back, his eyes bright with suspicion, till Bony caught his feeling of unrest and wondered if they were being kept under surveillance. There was nothing tangible to confirm
the suspicion, but during the afternoon he transferred the saddle and loading from the Monster to Old George and permitted the former to follow without a nose-line. Once, the Monster dawdled far behind, and then caught up with the train as though fearful of being lost. That he was annoyed was evidenced by the manner in which he chewed cud, his jaws moving with almost vicious determination, to have done with it.

  However, there was no incident and when Bony camped they seemed content and in good temper. After sundown he freed them in shortened hobbles, and attacked the cooking chores whilst listening to the bell. The dusk gathered and he marked the position where they were feeding.

  Later on he made his bunk a short distance from the fire on the clean ground, and then permitted the fire to die down as he squatted beside it and smoked. The evening passed in meditation, and presently the bell clattered to tell him that Old George was lying down for the night. Now he took the nose-lines and unhurriedly walked to where they were resting, approaching with the light wind blowing towards them. Eventually by lying on the ground he could distinguish the shape of their humps against the skyline, and approaching still closer sat with his back against a tree trunk.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Two Up a Tree

  IT WAS a cabbage tree, one of the best to provide shade in summer heat. In shape not unlike an apple tree, its foliage was full and bright green and its branches horizontal and stout. Bony rested against it, but not for long.

  It was not any sound, but a feeling of slight chill which arose to settle at the nape of his neck that warned him of danger, that self-same feeling which stiffens a sentinel kangaroo to warn his dozing companions abruptly that all is not right in their world. Bony stiffened and lay full length on the ground to seek skylines. Old George raised his head, and the bell clanged once.