Bushranger of the Skies

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “We’ll have wind, I think, soon,” predicted Bony.

  “Yes, the sky promises wind,” Flora agreed. “I hate windstorms. One gets so sticky when they blow.”

  Bony pressed the stub of his cigarette into the ash-tray and said, cheerfully:

  “The weather signs urge me to offer a suggestion. In the motor shed I saw a smart single-seater. If your uncle doesn’t turn up in ten minutes, what about taking a run out to meet him?”

  “Excellent!” Flora cried, standing up. “I haven’t been away from the house for days. It’s my car you saw. May I drive?”

  “Were it my car you could drive,” Bony said, adding after a distinct pause: “I can drive but I much prefer to be a passenger so that I can admire the scenery. Shall we invite Burning Water and one other aborigine to come with us?”

  “I’ll run across to the camp and tell Burning Water,” said Bony. “Shall we meet at the motor shed in ten minutes?”

  The girl nodded her assent, and her eyes narrowed speculatively whilst watching him till he disappeared beyond the veranda. She was still standing thus when she heard him ringing the telephone in the office.

  “Mr McPherson is not home yet, Nevin,” Bony was saying while Flora was preparing for the drive. “I am going out to see what has delayed him. What is on your mind?”

  He distinctly heard the overseer sigh.

  “The boss came here for a couple of saddles and bridles,” Nevin began. “He wanted two of the nigs, but one was out with me and he took only one, a buck named Jack Johnson. I asks myself why he wanted two nigs and two saddles and bridles when there’s twelve nigs and twelve saddles and bridles at Watson’s Bore, where there’s not enough work for three nigs and saddles and bridles. D’you get me?

  “Then the boss leaves a letter for me which says a lot and yet doesn’t give much away. If I give much away to you he’s going to give me hell later on. So you see where I stand. On the other hand, the Illprinka crowd have been sending up smoke signals which means one thing and might mean something quite different.”

  “Hum! I appreciate your position,” Bony said, sympathetically. “What did Mr McPherson say in his letter to you?”

  “It’s the letter that’s baling me up. Oh blast! I’ll read it to you.” Then, when he had read the letter, he asked: “What d’you think of it?”

  “I think that, adding fact to fact, Mr McPherson left here this morning with the purpose of leading those blacks camped at Watson’s Bore on an expedition into the Illprinka country,” Bony answered. “When he arrived at Watson’s Bore something happened causing him to decide to fetch two additional men from the out-station.”

  “Just so,” Nevin cut in. “I reckon he intended starting off from Watson’s Bore with the mob of blacks and horses. Then we come to the break in the telephone line your side of Watson’s Bore by about thirty miles. That’s what’s upsetting me. I don’t like things I can’t understand.”

  “Nor I,” swiftly added Bony. “I’m going straight away to find where the telephone line was interfered with, and I want to see it before it becomes too dark. I’ll ring you immediately I get back. Yes. Not now. Time’s valuable.”

  Bony hung up and ran to the blacks’ camp, unmindful of his middle-aged dignity. He shouted to Burning Water and Itcheroo to come to him, and explained to them whilst they all returned to the homestead that he wanted their company. Arrived at the shed, Flora was found filling the tank of the single-seater. She asked for water for the radiator, and Itcheroo was told to fetch a bucket of water. Whispering, Bony said to the chief:

  “I don’t like the matter of that broken telephone line. More than an hour ago someone repaired the break. The McPherson was at the out-station for lunch. He went there for two aborigines and horse gear, and he left a letter saying he was going after Rex. I want you to come with me this evening to help protect Miss McPherson, if necessary. I am taking her because she’ll be safer with us than over in the house, and I’m taking Itcheroo because I want to keep my eyes on him. You’ll both ride in the dicky seat, and at the first sign of betrayal you smash him. Understand?”

  Chief Burning Water smiled.

  The car purred up the long gradient to the higher land beyond the yards, Flora driving, Bony seated beside her, the two aborigines sitting behind them. After the space of a few minutes, Bony said:

  “The evening is quite warm, isn’t it, Miss McPherson? Perhaps a little more speed would provide us with a cooler draught of air.”

  Flora’s heart beat. She had set a trap with her slow driving and he appeared to have been caught by it. Now satisfied that he was truly anxious about her uncle, she pressed harder on the accelerator pedal, saying:

  “If it’s speed you’d like, watch me drive.”

  The speedometer needle rose to forty-five miles an hour, the car swaying as it followed the winding track.

  “How far is it from the homestead to that part of the road where your uncle would first come to the telephone poles,” Bony asked casually.

  He glanced at the sun now three fingers above the scrubbed horizon, and she noted the action.

  “About nine miles,” she replied, braking the car to take deep sand-drifts lying over the track. Beyond the drifts she sent the needle up to forty miles an hour and kept it there, determined to make this man talk of what was in his mind. Presently he said:

  “Is this car only a seven horse-power machine?”

  Now Flora bit her lip and sent the needle to the fifty mark on the dial. The condition of the road made such speed positively dangerous.

  “Ah, that’s better,” Bony cried. “The air at this speed is pleasantly cool. It is going to be a nasty day tomorrow, I fear. Dust and heat and sticky flies.”

  The sun had set. The shadows were barely distinguishable. The glory of the sky coloured the world, painting the leaves of the bushes with purple and the trunks of the trees with indigo blue, filling the dells between the ridges of wind-driven sand with quicksilver. The scrub passed by and they emerged into that strange country of sand pillars crowned with living grass. The telephone poles came from the east to cross this country in company with the road.

  The men saw the sagging wire between two poles standing at either side of the track. At the lowest part it was a bare two feet above ground, but as the road passed near the right of the two poles the wire was not a danger. Flora stopped the machine.

  “Please, all of you, stay here,” commanded Bony.

  He got out, flashed a meaning glance at Burning Water. Flora turned in her seat to watch him. Burning Water appeared restless. Itcheroo seemed intensely interested. They saw Bony walking to the lowest extremity of the sagging wire. They saw him examine the knot joining the evident break. They watched him trotting over the uneven ground, his head thrust forward. He stopped once to pick up something and examine his find before thrusting it into a pocket. Presently he returned to the car, and Flora searched his face for news. All he said was:

  “Kindly drive fast to Watson’s Bore.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “On the Evidence”

  THE headlights illuminated the winding, uneven track, pencilling sharply the twin depressions made by car and truck wheels and along which Flora McPherson drove the single-seater. The lights merged into a searchlight sweeping from side to side. Grey, formless things became stark tree trunks: formless mounds became carved white sentinels, the old-man saltbush; declivities in the road became chasms waiting to engulf the car until at the last moment when their promise of destruction was changed into gentle invitation to follow the road.

  Flora had been driving for twenty minutes in a silence and now she asked, imploringly:

  “Well, what did you see? What did you find?”

  “I read only the first chapters of a first-class story,” he told her. “Believe me, I have no wish to appear to be mysterious, but I would like to read further, another instalment, before telling you the story up to a point which could be said to conclude Book One. How many books th
ere are going to be written before the story ends I am unable to state, even to guess.”

  “I am very curious—and anxious,” Flora said.

  “Of course! I can understand that,” he said, quickly. “I will tell you one thing now, and you must be satisfied with it. Your uncle drove from Watson’s bore to where we stopped the car just now. He was there some time, probably mending the wire break, and then he turned his car and drove like we are now doing towards Watson’s Bore. It is not unlikely that he will be there when we arrive.”

  They talked of other matters, disjointedly and spaced by periods of silence, for something like an hour when Flora said she thought they were approaching the hut at Watson’s Bore. Then they appeared to be crossing a vast desert, and a moment later the beam of the headlamps angled downward to reveal a belt of scrub waiting to accept the car.

  The bush rushed to meet them, and passed on either side like white water passing a ship. It vanished, and again it seemed that they were crossing a stony desert which actually was plain country studded with annual saltbush. The air was cool but not cold. The stars were unwinking and yet sleepy. Quite abruptly before them was the ghostly hut silhouetted against black velvet.

  No light gleamed through the single window. No spiralling smoke rose from the round iron chimney. No dogs barked a welcome. No one came from the doorway to shout a cheery “good night” when the girl braked the car to a gentle stop.

  Bony called:

  “Hullo, there! Any one at home?”

  His reward was the friendly mewing of a cat, and the cat stalked with erect tail into the lamps’ pathway.

  “They’ve all gone away,” said Flora.

  “Every one is out, evidently,” agreed Bony. “They haven’t long been gone, however, for the cat is neither hungry nor thirsty and looks well fed and contented. Burning Water! Go into the hut, please, and light the slush-lamps. Itcheroo—stay where you are.”

  They saw Burning Water’s tall body outlined in the door frame when he struck a match before entering. They saw him pass inside, and then interior light was born and grew to become strong as he applied fire to the fat-lamps.

  “Itcheroo! Go now into the hut,” ordered Bony.

  “You sounded severe when you spoke to Itcheroo,” Flora commented.

  “Possibly. My impression of Itcheroo is not good. Ah! is that not the front of a car peeping from round the corner of the hut?”

  “I don’t know. It may be. Your eyes are sharp, Bony. Let’s see.”

  He was round to her side of the single-seater before she could open the door, and although self-dependent and liking independence, his gallantry pleased her. Together they walked to the hut corner.

  “It’s uncle’s car all right.”

  Bony halted to look swiftly over its outlines and its position.

  “Deliberately parked here without doubt,” he said. “I’ll examine it more closely later. Let us go inside.”

  They found Burning Water standing with his back to the large open fireplace. Itcheroo was sitting on an up-ended petrol case. The place shouted a hasty departure, for on the table were ration bags and tinned jam, packets of matches and even plugs of tobacco. Sugar was spilled and mixed with spilled tea. There was a wash basin containing traces of a dark green paste. Strips of unbleached calico lay on the floor, here and there on floor, table and forms were lengths of white thread some still passed through the eyes of needles.

  “Sit down, please, for a moment, Miss McPherson,” requested Bony.

  She and the two aborigines watched him as though he were a conjurer about to exhibit a trick. With a boot toe he kicked at the blankets left in a mound on the floor. He picked up a card-board carton and saw that it had contained one hundred soft-nosed, steel-jacketed bullets used in high-powered rifles. From the edges of the mound of still hot ashes in the fireplace he found pieces of three similar cartons and charred portions of the black oiled paper used in the interior wrapping. Lastly he picked up the basin containing the residue the dark-green paste which he touched and sniffed.

  “I will not keep you long,” he said, and passed outside where he remained for nearly ten minutes. On returning he sat down beside the girl and began rolling a cigarette.

  “I hardly like to offer you one of my own made cigarettes, Miss McPherson,” he said, calmly, giving no indication of what he had found or seen or done outside. “Would you like to try to make one for yourself?”

  “No thanks. I don’t want to smoke now. What have you——”

  She felt his boot toe press gently on her foot and stopped what she was going to say. Just beyond the far side of the table sat Itcheroo, his eyes black discs encircled with white. Burning Water was about to speak when Bony cut in.

  “You were camped here when the two stockmen were killed and the cattle stolen, eh Itcheroo?”

  “No fear, boss,” asserted Itcheroo, vigorously. “That time I camped back at station feller homestead.”

  “Oh yes, so you were. It was Mit-ji who was out here then, wasn’t it, Itcheroo?”

  “Too right, boss. Sergeant he took Mit-ji in his car to Shaw’s Lagoon.”

  “And,” Bony continued, “was killed when the sergeant was killed in his car. Mit-ji was all burned up, like the sergeant. Mitji he no more sit down along little fire and send mulga wire to Illprinka man who run and tell Rex McPherson. Mit-ji no more tell sergeant about Rex McPherson, eh? He cunning feller that Rex McPherson. He put fire to sergeant’s car and burn Mit-ji all up ’cos he think Mit-ji tell-um sergeant all about him. What say I take you in car to lock-up feller in Shaw’s Lagoon? Rex McPherson he come long quick and put fire to car, eh?”

  Itcheroo blanched.

  “You tell this feller boss where Rex McPherson camps all time, eh?” pressed Bony. “Then I not take you to lock-up at Shaw’s Lagoon and then Rex McPherson he not put fire to car and burn you all up.”

  Itcheroo rose to his feet, and Burning Water tautened his leg muscles to spring. Itcheroo stood glaring down at Bony, and Bony stared steadily at him. The half-caste wished to travel only to a point along a particular road. He waited for Itcheroo to speak. And Itcheroo became sullen and sat down. He didn’t laugh it off, as he would have laughed to turn aside an awkward question put to him by a tourist who then would have retired with the conviction that he was “very primitive.” No. He stared with frightened eyes at a man he knew was as close to him mentally as was Burning Water.

  “You cunning feller, eh?” Bony told him, and rose from the form.

  He knew quite well it would be but waste of time to threaten or question further. It was more than likely that Itcheroo would not know where Rex McPherson had his headquarters, for that young man would prohibit his mental telegraphists from broadcasting the information. He had hardly hoped to obtain such valuable information so easily, and the purpose of his questioning was primarily to upset Itcheroo’s mind and thus confuse it to the extent of failing to put two to two. “Come! We’ll go home,” he said.

  “But——” Flora began to object.

  “The puzzle we can work out over a cup of coffee. Shall I drive?”

  Offering no objection, the girl followed him out to the car into the passenger’s seat to which he gallantly handed her. Itcheroo appeared with Burning Water after the fat-lamps had been puffed out.

  “Not a word until the coffee is steaming fragrance before me,” Bony said to Flora when the car had been parked in the shed. “I am tired with thinking but very much awake. I would like you to come with us, Burning Water. You can send Itcheroo back to camp.”

  “You shall have the coffee within ten minutes, Bony. The kitchen fire will still be in, but the cook will have gone to bed. What will you have, Burning Water? Coffee or tea?”

  “As you will be making it, coffee certainly,” was the answer. “It is now more than two years since you made coffee for me.”

  “Is it that long? It’s your own fault, Burning Water. Where, are we going to have supper?”

  “I suggest
the office,” Bony said. “I promised Nevin I would tell him the results of our trip.” Flora went on towards the house, and Bony whispered to Burning Water: “Go with her. Never let her walk alone in the dark. Say you’d like to help her with the coffee and things. I still am like the dingo who feels danger from down wind.”

  He was slumped into the swivel chair beneath the hanging oil lamp in the office when Flora entered, followed by Burning Water carrying a large tray; and, on his feet in the instant, he made room on the table desk for the tray and stood waiting for the girl to be seated. He closed the door then, and asked Burning Water to shut the window.

  Flora McPherson sat in her uncle’s office chair set to the long side of the table desk, and proceeded to dispense coffee and sandwiches to a half-caste who sat at one end of the table and to a full-blooded aborigine chieftain who graced the other end.

  Truly no Australian woman ever before served two such men. Glancing covertly at Bonaparte, she noted his neat appearance, his wavy hair ruffled by the wind, his slim body and hands having the fingers of the surgeon, fingers now so expertly busy rolling cigarettes, his keen-featured face tilted downwards towards his task. She glanced at Burning Water, Chief of the Wantella Tribe, noted his massive torso, ebony black in the light of the lamp, the arm bands of human hair, the dillybag slung from his neck with human hair and containing among other things a small automatic pistol which could leap into a hand at will. She noted the forehead band of white birds’ down, and the tall tufted grey hair lifted high above it. Burning Water saw her looking at him and he smiled.

  “The McPherson is a great man,” he reminded her. “And Jack Johnson and Tich are good men, too.”

  “I know, I can’t help worrying, and thinking that uncle is acting wrongly. I am just aching to know what happened.”

  “Ah!” sighed Bony, and setting down his cup he regarded Chief Burning Water. “I’ll tell a story and when I have finished you can tell me where I told it wrongly. These sandwiches are delicious, Miss McPherson, and the merest dash of brandy in the coffee—Thank you.