Save in the living-room of Mike Conway’s house, there were no lights in the houses, and Bony paused to peer around the edge of the side drapes.
He could see Mike and his wife standing before the bell indicator. Neither spoke nor turned away. They continued to stand regarding the indicator, and above their heads one white disc covered the black ground of the board. He was there several minutes, and both the Conways remained standing at the board, almost immobile in their intensity, until both moved as though released from the tension when the black orifice beside the white disc vanished as the second disc fell before it.
Chapter Twenty
Chief Tracker at Cork Valley
“HI, NAT! Wake up!”
Bony groaned, turned on the bed, and again Mike Conway called him. He felt he could not have slept more than five minutes. He applied a match to the wick of his lamp, and when Conway came down the steps, with Red Kelly following, they saw a very sleepy Nat, now with his bare feet to the floor.
“Been some quare goings on, Nat, me bhoy,” Red said, and sat on the only chair. “Thought perhaps ye might help us out.”
Bony blinked his eyes, looked from Red to Mike, reached for papers and tobacco, and automatically fell to rolling one of his cigarettes.
“Funny time of night to have queer things going on,” he said, faint complaint in his voice. “Helping out’s all right but why not wait till daytime?”
“Well, ’tis like this …”
“I’ll explain, Red,” Mike cut in. “It isn’t often we have intruders in this valley, Nat, but we seem to have had them tonight. They’ve been round the piggery, and they made their way out up by the road. We’d like to have you do some tracking first thing. You know, tell us how many there are, and all that.”
Unhurriedly, Bony struck a match and lit the cigarette, both men watching him.
“That won’t be hard,” he said, blowing smoke. He glanced at the table clock, turning its face towards him. “Only five. Hour and a half to go to break of day. Why the rush? You don’t expect me to track in the dark, do you?”
“True enough, Nat,” agreed Mike. “Thought by the time you’d dressed and had breakfast, we’d be set to start. Besides, there are things to tell you, to explain so you’ll understand.”
“That’s so, Mike,” agreed Red. “Getting close to the festival, and we want the country clean for that. You’ll cooperate, like?”
“Needn’t ask. The coffee made yet?”
“That’s the laddo,” approved Red, standing, and Mike said he’d have the coffee brewed in two minutes and a drop of the ‘doings’ to help it down.
The fire was strong on the open hearth and the coffee was simmering on the stove when Bony arrived in the living-room. Red Kelly sat on a dining-chair, either nervous of occupying Grandma’s wheeled chair or forbidden, and Mike served them with cups of coffee and cups of ‘wine’ which by now Bony had learned to appreciate and never to ‘fumble’. The few steps from his shed to the house had informed him how cold the morning was.
“Well?” he said, interrogatively. “How d’you know you’ve had intruders? Lost any pigs or anything? And how do you know they’ve left by the road? Could be still in the valley.”
“That’s what we got to find out,” rumbled the red giant. “Want you to track ’em if you can.”
“How do you know you’ve had intruders?” persisted Bony.
“Because they were seen,” replied Red.
“How many?”
“How do we know? That’s what we want you to tell us.”
“We’re wasting time,” quietly Mike interrupted.
“No, we’re not. We’re just getting down to rock, Mike.”
It was peculiar that Conway seldom exerted himself in opposition to Red Kelly, intellectually so greatly inferior, until he despaired at the big man’s stubbornness. His patience was extreme and yet limited; the patience of the doting parent of the unruly child. Now he said:
“They were not seen, Nat. They were heard crossing the bridges. Their weight on the bridges set off the alarm indicator. Mate and I watched the indicator up there tell the story. We were thinking that if you started from the top bridge as soon as day breaks you might catch ’em up.”
“You’re talking about the road we came in by that day you picked me up, aren’t you?” asked Bony, and Mike nodded. “Then having crossed the top bridge they would have to pass your brother’s house. Didn’t he happen to see them? He sleeps on the veranda. No dogs there?”
“He sleeps on the veranda, and he has a couple of dogs. They didn’t pass the house.”
“Then we’ll find out which way they did go. Easy enough.” Bony helped himself to coffee. “Have you had fellers mooching about the valley before I came here?”
“Well, now, that’s sayin’,” Red replied, now looking at Bony with dawning suspicion. “Now what …”
“The only count the police are on my tail for is thinking I stole a chook,” Bony cut in. “The police aren’t going to tramp all over these mountains and stalk around at night just to catch up with me, a chook thief. The reason isn’t me. The reason must be something else, and that’s nothing to do with me. Is this the first time you’ve had prowlers?”
“No,” replied Mike. “We’ve had them in the past.”
“Well, what did you do then?”
“Nothing—stayed quiet for a period.”
“But we can’t stay quiet for any period now,” interjected Red. “There’s the festival in ten days, and no one wants that put off.”
“Why should it be?” asked Bony.
Red now looked at Mike, and Mike returned his look with pensive eyes. The question made both uneasy. Red began to explain, hesitated, left it to Mike, and Conway was less assured than Bony had ever found him.
“Our festival isn’t public,” he said. “Strangers aren’t accepted. Us Conways and Kellys run it, and all our friends from outside come to it. Our neighbours, and suchlike. There’s speeches, and games for the children, and a bit of play-acting at night, and as much food and drink, and the rest. We don’t want to be spied on.”
“Which is why we got to have the country all about nice and clean,” added Red.
They saw Bony glance at the clock. They watched him make a cigarette, fingers automatically working, and even the huge Red Kelly conquered his impatience. It was the nearest approach either man came to suspecting this darkly inscrutable man was beyond the class of the ordinary country worker. Through the smoke he exhaled, Bony could see the danger in their eyes.
“Could be the same fellers we saw in the mountains, and they could be the same that crossed the valley when I was lifting spuds,” he told them. “You’ll recollect that after we got back from the mountain trip I wanted to go after those bush-walkers, and hang on their tracks for a month if necessary. You said, ‘Oh, no, Nat. We couldn’t trust you on that job. Why, you might join up with ’em and be a policeman.’ ”
“ ’Twas no such thing,” shouted Red, and Mike told him to keep his voice down.”
“Near enough,” agreed Bony, resuming his pose of indignant innocence. “You say the bridges are fitted with alarms. You say you heard those men passing over them on their way out. You don’t say if you heard ’em come in, so they didn’t come down here by the bridges. You say track them on out: I say back track ’em to find where they got in. Find out that, and that particular hole might be stopped.”
“Now you’re tarkin’,” Red said, admiringly.
“Talking comes naturally,” Bony claimed. “You have one-track minds. You send a scout on ahead, and haven’t a scout behind. You want me to track ahead, and don’t think to do some back tracking, like the aborigines would do. Now you run me up in the truck to the top bridge, and afterwards we’ll back track from the piggery. Ever put the beagles to following a scent?”
“Them dogs are no good on anyone’s smell.”
“I’ll make ’em good before I’m through,” boasted Bony. “Let’s go.
”
From the top bridge Bony tracked two men to the rim top, proved at several places with visual evidence that they had veered sharply away from the white house, and then bore back to gain the road taking them on to the Macquarie Pass.
He described them as being heavier than Red, due to the packs they carried. He proved there were but two men, one of whom smoked ‘tailor-made’ cigarettes, and the other chewed gum, and both Mike Conway and Red were impressed. Bony was to learn that these men, and others of Cork Valley, were excellent bushmen: their sense of direction was almost instinctive, and they had a shrewd ‘eye’ for a level slope; but their knowledge of ground work was practically nil.
Following a late breakfast, the party went to the piggery where the ground was scored by the tracks of turning vehicles. The tracks of the two men were not here, but Bony found them at the first of the two bridges: the bridge they must have crossed when the alarm rang in the cave behind the waterfall, and he wondered just where they were when he was circling wide to get back to his underground room.
They had certainly crossed this bridge, for he found their tracks beyond it. He proceeded to back track. They had passed within a hundred yards of the base of the fall, coming from the east, from the point where, according to Rosalie, O’Halloran had found Torby with his geologist’s hammer.
“You sure they came this way?” Mike asked.
“Clear enough to me,” replied Bony.
“Didn’t get closer to the fall?” added Red, looking at Bony with eyes almost buried by the deep frown.
“Not so far. We’ll go on.”
They hadn’t gone on forty yards before Bony indicated footprints and outlined them for clarity. Further proof was discovered a few minutes later in the ashes of a small fire estimated to be not less than eighteen hours old.
“They could have camped here for a day,” Bony estimated.
Red and Mike were told to remain at the ash heap, and they watched him circle the camp. On joining them, he said:
“They went to the fall where there’s a sort of natural basin. Probably went for water because they came back here after lighting their fire.”
“When? Can you say that?” demanded Red, and Bony said it was likely to be the previous evening. Red was relieved, and looked so. “Don’t seem no use going any further.”
“Must find out how they come down to the valley,” objected Bony, and moved off before Red could argue.
The trail led them across deep water gutters, over grass patches and through low scrub to several stately ghost gums growing at the foot of a massive outcrop of granite streaked by pink quartz, and which formed the foot of cliffs rising to the rim. Here the trail turned left, parallel with the cliff front.
Abruptly, Bony halted and gazed at the granite outcrop. The others watched him, saying nothing. He advanced to the rock and bent to peer closely at it. Picking up rock fragments he examined them, and both men continued silently to watch.
He knew what he had found, but he made a pretence of being greatly interested in this place, before saying:
“Gold! Might be gold, but I wouldn’t bet on it. You people been looking for it? Was gold ever found in the valley?”
“Me old father did a deal of prospectin’ around, but he never come on to any,” replied Red. “Faith, and I want a drink. What about going home for a toothfull?”
“An idea,” Bony temporised. “Anyway, we might have got on to the purpose of those fellers being in the valley. They could be prospectors. Look! They broke bits off the rock here, and broke out pieces of the quartz. Only …”
“Only what?” insisted Red Kelly.
“Only they didn’t do it yesterday. It was done weeks ago.”
Red wanted the information to be more exact, and Bony evaded a closer estimate.
“Let’s go on. Might find something else to tell a story.”
“To hell with it, Nat, I’m needing a drink. It’s nearly noon,” protested Red.
Bony ignored the plea, and they were forced to follow him. The tracks led along the cliff base and skirted a section of almost sheer slope studded with protruding boulders and sparse trees, and where this section ended at another outcrop, Bony stopped and looked up to the summit from which a narrow ledge offered a foothold to a less precipitous slope.
“They came down here,” he said and sat on a boulder to roll a cigarette.
Red and Mike Conway were regarding each other, Mike with perplexity, and Red with his right eyebrow raised in what might have been humour had it not been for the light in his ice-blue eyes. Mike said, faintly defiantly:
“All right, we could have made a mistake.”
“Yes, me for agreein’,” Red said, coldly and quietly for him. Mike gazed up at the rim, and what his eyes saw might not have been registered by his mind. “We made mistakes, Nat, me bhoy. We been thinking those fellers came in down the track you went out by with the horses. We been thinking we had all the ways in taken care of. Leastways, Mike’s been thinkin’ so. Now, I’m for home and a drink.”
“One shot of gelignite could break that ledge up there, and take care of this way down,” Bony said, and Red nodded and said that would be done. “Anyway, we know now how those snoopers came into the valley, and how they went out.”
“Yes, and I promised the women to take them to Bowral to do some shopping this afternoon. Come on!” moodily remarked Mike. “We’ll go into all this again tomorrow.”
Red was saying he remembered where there were a dozen dog traps they could set at likely places to catch a snooper, when they reached the settlement. The women were already dressed for what appeared to be a rare outing, and after lunch Mate Conway, Rosalie and three other women left in the truck, Mate Conway having Bony’s measurements for new sports clothes to wear at the festival. When they returned they found Bony playing draughts with Grandma.
Chapter Twenty-one
Anniversary Eve
AS OFTEN happened, there was no rain this season, and Bony continued with the potato digging for another week. The deciduous trees, planted by the early settlers, had now lost their leaves, and the Australian stalwarts clung to their foliage and waited to shed their bark instead. The days were cold and sparkling. The heavy mists rolled into the valley early in the evening. Bony didn’t know it, but the tang of Ireland pervaded Cork Valley.
Human activity gradually increased. Conway drove his truck to town every day, and the Kelly’s green sedan often raised the dust of the snaking road to the rim. Bony wondered how often the bell indicator in Conway’s house attracted the attention of the women.
The festival date was obviously drawing near, and when pressed by the children at table, Bony still failed to guess its name and nature. What did the eleventh of November enshrine in the hearts of these people? It wasn’t Armistice Day, for he had seen no evidence of interest. Captain Cook didn’t land at Botany Bay on this day of the year, and as far as he could recall, it wasn’t William the Conqueror’s birthday.
He had much to occupy his mind. He felt that at long last the Mountain was beginning to move towards him, and often he went back to that scene beyond the fall to capture the vocal nuances behind the words spoken by Mike Conway and Red Kelly.
It had obviously been the place where Eric Torby had entered Cork Valley those many months before. This was strongly supported by the evidence of a geologist’s hammer having employed on the rock close to it. It could not have been a coincidence that the two snoopers had come down from the rim by the way taken by Torby. After leaving Cork Valley, Torby hadn’t lived long enough to inform anyone of that way down, and the only reasonable surmise was that the way down was known to the excise people or police before Torby had entered the valley. Unless, of course, there was a traitor among the men of Cork Valley.
What was the mistake admitted by Mike Conway, the mistake for which Red Kelly had refused to accept full responsibility? Bony soon realised it would be fruitless to ponder this question until something else could be associated with
it, and for that to come his way he would need to be patient and alert.
The day following the incident, the boom of an explosion showed that his advice to destroy the ledge high above the floor of the valley had been taken. Subsequent blasting operations in other parts of the encircling mountains, denoted the blocking of other entrances to this rabbit burrow, and there was further evidence of unusual activity by the growing number of horses in the paddocks on the Kelly side of the wall.
The eleventh day of November was the anniversary day of the festival, but for some reason it had been advanced to July the first. It baffled Bony until he found that the likely answer was that the weather in November is clear, and that as fogs favoured the running of spiritous liquor, so the fogs would favour the celebrations of this festival to which everyone looked forward with increasing enthusiasm. He was certain that the withholding of its name was due only to their desire for him to guess, and since it was obvious to everybody else, his obtuseness was cause for merriment.
On the third day before the festival, everyone in Cork Valley became unusually busy. There were then two additional women at the home of the Conways, and about the other houses, Bony noted women and men he hadn’t previously seen. More chimneys emitted smoke. More pigs were slaughtered and two fat bullocks were also killed behind the piggery.
Bony was asked to offside for Joe Flanagan, the settlement’s electrician, and with Joe driving an old bomb of a utility, they inspected the bridges. Joe climbed under each of them and Bony handed him tools as required. He presented Joe with the screwdriver found in the water by the bridge and Joe said it was his favourite and was happy to have it again. There were more bridges than Bony thought, and he became engrossed when, with Joe, he fitted alarm points beneath old planks ‘carelessly’ laid across water gutters. Finally, miles of buried wiring had to be tested.
They got along well together, Joe finding Bony tireless and intelligent with tools, and never averse to tackling an awkward job. At midday they would light a fire and brew a billy of tea, and invariably Joe would produce his bottle for the pre-lunch swig. They would eat the sandwiches and cake provided, and spend an hour smoking and talking, sometimes of Joe’s overseas tours, sometimes of Cork Valley and its people. Often Joe was loquacious; all reserve now vanished.
Bony - 25 - Bony and The Kelly Gang Page 15
