Bushranger of the Skies

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Flora’s eyes became hard and her mouth like the grim mouths of her ancestors whose portraits hung on the dining-room walls.

  “Well, then supposing uncle does surrender the station to you in exchange for my safe return. You couldn’t accept the property. You couldn’t live on it. You’d be arrested for the murder of Sergeant Errey and Mit-ji.”

  “Not a bit of it, Flora,” he countered swiftly. “Who saw me bomb that car? Why, only a half-caste detective, who’s little better than an ordinary police tracker, and old Burning Water. What they might say wouldn’t carry any weight against my word that I wasn’t near the confounded car. The car accidentally caught fire and the driver became panicky and sent it over the edge of the road and down into the gully. I can lay my hands on eight Illprinka men who would swear they saw it happen.

  “Oh, I’ll be safe enough, because when father makes the exchange, the station for you, he’ll swear not to prosecute me for forging his signature to cheques, and that’s the only thing he can prove against me. Then, when I own McPherson’s Station, I’m going to take in all this open country, or a big slab of it, and I’ll be the biggest squatter in Australia and will be known as the Australian Cattle King. And then you might consent to marry me white fellow’s fashion.”

  So confidently did Rex talk that he almost convinced Flora by his argument. Come to think of it, only Bony and Burning Water saw the sergeant’s car bombed, and there were Illprinka men near the place, for hadn’t they tried to obtain the sergeant’s attaché case from Bony?

  “You think all that over, Flora,” he said, slowly. “As I have just told you, I am going to be a somebody in the not distant future with or without your uncle’s submission. As my wife, married white fellow’s fashion and not blackfellow’s fashion, you’d be a somebody too. Make things easier, you know.”

  Then she read the look in his eyes. He wanted to marry her with her willing consent: he would take her without her consent and without proper marriage if——

  “Then I have really three days, this being the seventeenth I think you said?”

  “Yes, three whole days,” he said, to add: “Three long days and nights, dear. Well, I must be off. I’ve had to take the plane engine partly down in an overhaul long overdue. I’ll tell Tootsey to bring you a bath and your clothes. Dinner will be served at seven, and the cook is really good. A Chinaman and more a friend than a servant. Accept my advice. You are free to go where you wish. But don’t be so silly as to try to escape. There is a hundred miles between you and the homestead. You wouldn’t get far before my people caught up with you and brought you back with aching feet. They are fine trackers, you know.”

  Nodding coolly and smiling, he walked from the room and disappeared beyond the curtained entrance. She could hear him calling for Tootsey, and presently Tootsey came in, carrying a canvas bath and a huge bucket of hot water.

  Refreshed and dressed in clothes which had been washed and ironed, having used a man’s hair brushes and a silver backed comb, all Flora wanted was a pinch of powder.

  She had three days. And Rex’s aeroplane was temporarily grounded by an engine overhaul. And he didn’t know about Bony having sent for Captain Loveacre. So conceited was he that he hadn’t even asked her what Bony had done after Dr Whyte’s plane had been destroyed. He was so in love with his own vaunted cleverness that he considered Bony to be only a black tracker employed by the police. In that frightful conceit lay hope of salvation.

  She passed from her “room” into the larger one, where she stood with astonishment whilst regarding its details. Scarlet cloth was stretched from floor to ceiling. The ceiling was of the same material and colour. Scarlet grass mats were plentiful over the hard termite cement floor. A polished table was flanked with polished oak chairs. A standard petrol lamp supported a giant red shade. There was a large bookcase filled with volumes, and two massive screens composed entirely of mirror glass.

  The wide but rather low entrance to this room attracted her. Standing there, she gazed across a half-mile expanse of level claypan to the bordering range of high sand-dunes. She saw no one, but she could hear the soft clank of iron on iron. Stepping out from the room she looked back at the “house” to see only the waving tops of cane-grass and lantana teased by the high wind, the “house” entrance but a shadow.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Zero Hour

  THERE was in Rex McPherson much of the material with which great men are fashioned, but his vanity upset his judgment in the valuation of the details of a scheme necessary for its success.

  Was he not Rex McPherson? Had he not destroyed opposition by destroying Dr Whyte’s aeroplane? Was not the possession of Flora a loaded gun in his hands pointed at his stubborn parent? Was he not secure from assault with his outflung Illprinka scouts before and the cane-grass swamp behind him? The next move in the game would have to be played by his father: meanwhile he could conduct an overdue overhaul of his aeroplane engine.

  With Mit-ji dead and Itcheroo either dead or hostile to him, his source of information from the enemy’s camp was stopped. Even this he regarded as of little importance. He took no steps to learn the reactions of those at the homestead to his theft of Flora, believing as he did that he was truly master of the situation. Thus he had not tapped the telephone line to Shaw’s Lagoon, and he knew nothing of the coming of Captain Loveacre with a machine-gun mounted on an aeroplane.

  He had placed a screen of almost a hundred aborigines in a great arc between himself and the homestead, being fully confident that these wild blacks would be more than a match for the softer and more civilized Wantella aborigines who might be employed by his father. But Burning Water had made an opening in the screen by killing two of the Illprinka men, and the opening was sufficiently large to permit a thinking aborigine and a subtle half-caste to pass through.

  Rex had, too, placed certain men to relay back to him his father’s signal of surrender which surely would be made when the high wind gave place to a calm. Having done all this he was content to glory in his own cleverness and to remain inactive.

  Flora he treated with suave politeness, but it was rather the politeness of the cat that knows the mouse will inevitably make a fatal mistake. He found no reason to be crude as a host. He saw no reason to press advances because, so he had decided, Flora was merely a stepping stone to the realization of his great ambition to be somebody. Should his father continue to be stubborn, then would be the time to take Flora, with her consent if at all possible, without it if not. Meanwhile it would be foolish to antagonize her.

  Flora had awakened the day before Loveacre flew from Roma to St Albans. It was the second day of high wind and rolling dust clouds. Other than the vast lubra, ironically called Tootsey, Flora came into contact with no other native. Unable to concentrate on the books in the bookcase, wanting to escape her horribly apprehensive thoughts, she wandered about the “house” and even walked outside it.

  At the close of each of the two days of wind Tootsey beat the walls and the ceilings with a leafy branch to remove the dust which had penetrated through the walls of cane-grass packed between wire-netting. She dusted the furniture and watered the floors of the large living-room and Flora’s bedroom. Flora could find no other rooms, and she never found the kitchen. But when she visited the hangar she saw in one corner of it a stretcher bed and dressing-table, and then understood that she was occupying Rex’s bedroom.

  The hangar was farther within the fringe of the cane-grass and lantana. Its open front was semi-masked with curtains of cane-grass woven by the Illprinka women. Within she found Rex working on his engine, and so bored was she with her own company that she talked with him for an hour on the subject of aeroplanes. When she left him she realized that on one matter he was profoundly learned and sane.

  Early the second evening after a day of wind she walked as far as the sand-dunes, climbed them and gazed northwestward over the great swamp. It effectively hid the “house” and the hangar from her, for even the entrance to the
house appeared to be one shadow of many. From the sky no house or hangar, or any other object could be seen.

  Now more confident in herself, and feeling that Rex’s interest was impersonal, her hope of being returned to the homestead rose higher. She was sure her uncle would capitulate and retire to the city, and although she liked the inland the prospect of living with him in the city was not distasteful. Anyway, she could look after him better down there, and he could even live with her and Harry when they were married.

  Came the morning of the eighteenth when Rex greeted her at breakfast with:

  “Hullo, cousin! Good morning! You look charming. Try these duck eggs and bacon. Tea or coffee?”

  “Coffee, thanks,” she said, guardedly returning his smile. “Engine work finished yet?”

  “No. I’ve to fit together two parts of the wrong size. Can’t trust people to do anything right. Order a particular size and they’ll send another size. A pilot has to be an engineer and fitter these days.”

  “You’re remarkable in your way,” she told him.

  “Of course,” he agreed. “I’m going to rise high, dear. There is nothing a man cannot do if he makes up his mind to do it. I made up my mind I’d fly a plane. I then made up my mind I would know all about an aeroplane and its engine. Then I decided that in case of a forced landing in the bush I had better know how to effect repairs.”

  “No signal yet from uncle?” she asked.

  “No. And I haven’t expected it. This wind will prevent smoke signals, you know. Don’t worry. The dad will give in and go down to the city to live. He’ll feel a little lost, but he will get over that. You will look after him, I suppose.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “I shall be the boss of McPherson’s Station which will be four to five times bigger than it is now when I’ve taken up much of this open country. I am going to be the biggest squatter in Australia. I’m going to be somebody.”

  Be somebody! Was that the force driving him? Was the universal dream of men and women of being somebody in this man a force, a fire, sending him along the road to destruction? Flora regarded him wonderingly, and, he thought, admiringly.

  She spent the morning doing nothing. The day was calm and cool, for a light breeze came from the south. She wondered if Captain Loveacre had reached the homestead, and what Bony and Dr Whyte were doing and thinking. Like Rex, she was confident her uncle would surrender his station in exchange for herself. After lunch, taken alone, she retired to her room where she lay and read by the light of the lamp.

  At three o’clock by the little clock standing on the makeshift dressing-table, Tootsey entered her room with a tray of afternoon tea. This was unusual. Tootsey had never been communicative, but now she said:

  “Missis stay here. Rex boss say so.”

  To Flora’s questioning she merely shook her white-crowned head. And to Flora’s astonishment she took the chair and, placing it square in the doorway, sat down. Frowning, Flora said:

  “Go away, Tootsey. I don’t want you there.”

  “Missis stay here. Rex boss say so,” repeated Tootsey, and Flora knew the lubra had been taught the two phrases.

  An hour later another lubra appeared and stood guard at the room’s entrance. She was certainly Tootsey’s opposite number. She, too, had fattened on good living. But she was naked save for the pubic tassel, and she was armed with a waddy fashioned from a mulga root. Tootsey was not particularly ugly, but this woman was hideous. Fat and sand mixed solidified her scanty hair to hanging rolls. Her body scent was appalling. Flora asked, sternly:

  “What are you doing there?”

  She received no reply. The lubra’s stare was steady and hard. She held the waddy as though it were made of paper. So Tootsey now was her gaoler, and this naked savage woman was Tootsey’s assistant.

  Flora was confined to her room for the remainder of that day and succeeding night, but the following morning when Tootsey awakened her with a cup of tea, she said:

  “Missis eat with Rex boss. Missis go out.”

  Rex was already at breakfast when she entered the living-room, and Flora now understood that when Tootsey said she was to go out she meant only to go out to the living room, for there standing in the uncurtained entrance was an armed aborigine.

  “Morning, Flora,” Rex greeted her, and his phrasing as well as his face told her that something had happened.

  “There’s a strange aeroplane flying around. Do you know anything about it?”

  He was again the old, passionate, fiery Rex.

  “I expect it’s the aeroplane flown by a Captain Loveacre,” she said. “Inspector Bonaparte sent for Captain Loveacre that day you destroyed Dr Whyte’s plane.”

  “Oh! That’s news. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “Because I had forgotten about it.”

  “What else haven’t you told me?”

  “Nothing else that you don’t know,” she answered, pretending indifference though feeling the shock that the old Rex lurked below the suave personality of the new. “It was Inspector Bonaparte who asked Dr Whyte to come. He wanted the doctor to fly him over the Illprinka country. When you destroyed the doctor’s aeroplane, he thought of Captain Loveacre.”

  “Loveacre, eh, my dear! I have heard of Captain Loveacre. He’s quite a somebody, too. Well, he won’t do any harm. He won’t locate my headquarters.” Rex leaned back in his chair and laughed, and Flora was reminded of the aborigine standing in the doorless entrance. “All the aeroplanes in the Commonwealth wouldn’t find us. And supposing they, did, what then?

  “If this place was located from the air and they sent a ground force against us, that ground force wouldn’t get within eighty miles of us before we would know about it. Think I haven’t thought of the possibility of an invading ground force? I have, indeed, my sweet. I have planned for all eventualities. Long before the ground force could arrive we would have left, retreated to an even more secret place.”

  He expected her to ask where, and she asked the question.

  “Do you know how much there is of this cane-grass and lantana swamp?” he inquired, flashingly. “I’ll tell you. At its widest point it is eleven miles across. It is forty-two miles in length. For months water will lie over great areas of it making it impassable almost to dingoes. My secret place is in the middle, and the road to the secret place is a secret, too. You and I, dear, would be undisturbed there for ever.”

  In the middle of the afternoon she heard the aeroplane coming fast towards the swamp. She ran into the living-room governed by the idea of running out of the “house” and attracting Captain Loveacre’s attention. But there was the guard standing just inside the entrance, and now masking the entrance was a curtain of woven cane-grass.

  All the following morning she sat in the living-room with her back to the guard. It was like waiting for the executioner. Time by the large clock paradoxically raced and yet stood still. The ticking of the clock became a torture, and yet she knew she could not bear to see it stopped.

  She drank her afternoon tea in her room but could not eat. Her ears ached through straining to register the sound of an aeroplane engine. All she heard was the whine of the light wind in the cane-grass walls. The large clock in the outer room struck the hour of five. After the passing of an eternity, it struck six. Time stood still. Flora sat on the bed waiting, her nerves tortured. The outer clock struck seven.

  Then she heard movement in the living-room and could wait no longer. She had to know if the smoke signal had been received. The suspense was no longer to be endured.

  In the living-room Tootsey was setting dishes on the table. The aborigine was still guarding the entrance. It may not have been the same man. They looked alike to Flora. And then she was staring in Tootsey’s black eyes and knowing she was deserted by her uncle who loved his station better than her, deserted by Harry and by Bony and Burning Water, deserted by the world and all that was decent and worth living for. For Tootsey was smiling at her like a woman who is je
alous.

  Like an animal forced from one cage to another, Flora turned back to her room. Whatever should she do? What on earth could she do? There was only the chair with which to defend herself. Her pistol was gone. A knife! Probably there were knives on the table in the other room. She could hear Rex speaking to Tootsey, and then he called her.

  “Come on, Flora! Dinner is served!”

  “Go away!” shouted Flora. “Leave me alone.”

  “Don’t be damned stupid,” Rex called back. “Come on, now! There’s grilled chops and mashed potatoes, a fruit pie and custard made with condensed milk. There’s coffee and biscuits and nuts. I have brought a bottle of brandy to mark the great occasion.”

  The great occasion! She was saved. She was going back to the homestead. Her uncle had capitulated to Rex.

  Flora ran to the entrance, stopped. She gulped air into her lungs. She patted her hair and squared her shoulders. Then, lifting the curtain, she passed into the living-room.

  Her lower jaw almost dropped. Rex was in evening clothes. He looked magnificent. He would not be in evening clothes if he was going to fly her back to the homestead.

  Slowly Flora approached the table. There were no knives on the table. She sat down to look at Rex, and Rex lifted a cover to disclose curry and rice. On the table were only spoons. Even the bread was cut. Rex said:

  “I’m sorry. I thought it was to be grilled chops. But Ah Ling can make curry, real curry. There’s wild ducks in this one. Will you take a little rice?”

  “Thank you,” replied Flora, and her own voice sounded distant. “Didn’t uncle send up the smoke signal?”

  “Er—no, dear. He forgot to make it, or he has gone on a journey, or he has even decided to keep his station.”