“Oh, but you know I do. I wish I could stay here with you for ever. I’d like to ride away with you to the fabled Inland Sea and there find an island off its shore where you and I could find our bower house. Instead-I must go. Look at the sun. It’s getting late.”
Gordon watched her ride away homeward until she was engulfed by the coldly indifferent trees. Then he vaulted the barrier and strode, his eyes blazing with anger, across the half-mile of country to where Jimmy Partner and Abie were waiting with the horses-Abie with thick masses of feathers on his feet. At Gordon’s approach they arose. They saw anger in his face.
“What’s the matter, John?” inquired Jimmy Partner.
Gordon came to stand immediately before the man who could put him on his back with one hand. His voice was brittle when he asked:
“Do you know anything about the boning of the detective?”
Jimmy Partner’s gaze fell to his feet. Then:
“Yes, John,” he said softly. “I thought it a good way to get rid of the detective. He’s been finding out too much. I wongied with Nero and Wandin, and they agreed to get the bone-”
Gordon’s right fist crashed between the downcast eyes. Opportunity was his to measure distance, and Jimmy Partner was looking down at the ground. The black wrestler collapsed. Furiously Gordon turned upon the shrinking Abie, shouted at him to get busy wiping out the traces of the meeting at the fence; and when Jimmy Partner rose unsteadily to his feet, he saw as through a mist his friend and boss riding away towards the Meena homestead.
Since the day Diana Lacy had visited Meena, and had assisted in the salvaging of John’s hairs, Mary Gordon had daily guarded his comb and brushes and the pillows, and had kept watch on the house even while she milked the cows.
Unsatisfied curiosity regarding what had really happened that day of rain when her son and Jimmy Partner had not returned home till an agonizingly late hour, was now balanced by the thought that, knowing nothing, she could admit nothing. What she thought and guessed were little secrets of her own, and her faith in her son was untarnished.
This afternoon of the lovers’ meeting at the boundary fence, she expected John and Jimmy Partner home at six o’clock, and by half-past five the meat was brown in the oven, the peach pie cooked and being kept hot beside the stove, and the potatoes in their jackets were just put on to boil. She heard the wicket gate click and then jar shut, and, knowing it was neither John nor Jimmy Partner, she stepped to the door-to be confronted by Wandin.
Gaunt but stately, this personage of the Kalchut tribe was unusually excited.
“Johnny Boss him not home, missus?”
“No, not yet, Wandin. What do you want?”
Wandin’s eyes were wide, his breathing fast. He grinned and said:
“You come with me, eh? All rabbits they go walk-about. They clear outer here. They go quick, too right.”
“The rabbits going, Wandin?”
“Too right, missus. They go walkabout. Bimeby no rabbits here Meena Lake. You come see, eh?”
Mary gave a swift glance to the cooking dinner, hastily removed her house apron, tossed it on to the couch, and hurried after the tall, stalking figure of Wandin. He led her southward of the house for some two hundred yards and then up to the summit of the lake-encircling dunes.
The hot sun streamed over the vast empty bed of the lake, casting the long shadows of the dunes across the little valley to the lesser dunes merging into the base of the upland. The end of the tree-belt was a further hundred yards south of Mary and Wandin, and they could see for miles from the south round to the north-east. From the south-east came a cool and strangely fragrant wind.
“Look, missus!” urged Wandin. “See, the rabbits clear out on walkabout. Look at that feller.”
He pointed, and Mary watched a rabbit pass over the dune on which they were standing. It passed only a few feet from them, unafraid, as though utterly unconscious of them. It ran down the steep lee-side slope, crossed the little valley and ran up the slope of the lesser dune. Its progress was unnatural, as Mary observed.
She watched others pass on either side, all running in the same direction, the progress of each unnatural. Normally a rabbit, even when hungry and making out for feed, always runs in short spurts, with a period of sitting up for observation at the end of each run. This evening there was no stopping for observation. The rabbits evinced no sign of fear, either of those who stood on the summit of the dune, or of the carrion birds whirring above them.
The birds knew of this abnormality, especially the crows. Of recent months the crows and eagles had increased enormously, and now the sky was filled with them. The crows were cawing vociferously, and the eagles were gliding with seldom a wing flap, some low to ground, the higher birds like dust motes against the sky.
Mary turned full circle, slowly, spellbound by this genesis of a rabbit migration. Wherever she looked she saw running rodents. They were crossing the lake, coming towards her, passing her, running away from her to the south-east whence came the strangely fragrant little wind. All were running into the wind and in the same direction, all running in that unnatural, purposeful manner.
“Bimeby no rabbits at Meena,” Wandin predicted. “Plenty feed bimeby after rain come. Long time now ’fore rabbits so thick at Meena.”
Mary quite forgot her cooking dinner. When she turned again to the lake the sun was appreciably lower above the smoke-blue Meena Hills. Low upon the barren dust plain of the lake bed and coloured by the sun, hung a film of scarlet gauze created from dust raised by the running rabbits. Each rabbit was the point of a dust-spear; each rabbit was like a speck of flotsam carried by a strong current to the south-east, a current never varying in its movement.
Wandin drew Mary’s attention to the horseman coming from the south, riding fast down the long ground slope. Although he was a mile distant she recognized the horse and her son who rode. Remembering the dinner, she uttered a little exclamation, but found herself unable to be drawn from this vantage point that offered a grandstand seat for the opening of a mighty drama. She could hear the excited cries of the aborigines and their children, cries sometimes drowned by the cawing of the crows. A rabbit passed so close to Wandin that he was able to kick out at it and send it rolling down the slope. It continued on its course as though unaware of the interruption. The sunlight falling obliquely upon the eastern land rise was painted scarlet by the dust following the leaders of the horde, and the far edge of this dust was creeping to the land summit as though a red coverlet were being drawn across the world.
“Blackfeller go walkabout to-morrowp’raps,” Wandin said. “Blackfeller like rabbit, rabbit like blackfeller. Stop one place long timegoodoh. Then little wind come and he no longer stop one place. He go walkabout or he sit down long time and die. Johnny Boss he leave Jimmy Partner and Abie in bush. Look, missus, Johnny Boss he hurry. Waffor?”
When John Gordon was a hundred yards from them, Mary waved to him to join them on this grandstand of fine red sand. She saw the evidence of the horse’s pace in the white foam flecking its shoulders, and then she saw her son’s face made almost ugly with anger. He sent the horse up the yielding slope of the dune and leapt to the ground before them. The horse neighed and, because the reins were not trailed to the ground, turned away and trotted to the yards and the drinking trough.
“All the rabbits are going,” Mary cried excitedly.
Gordon glanced at her, and she received a small thrilling shock at sight of his blazing eyes. To Wandin, he said:
“Have you and Nero been boning that beeg feller blackfeller p’liceman?”
Without hesitation, Wandin replied:
“Yes, Johnny Boss. Him find out too-”
A clenched fist, from the knuckles of which the skin was stripped, crashed to the point of his jaw, and Wandin spun round and fell on his face and chest upon the soft sand of the dune.
Mary stood quite still, her work-worn hands clasped and pressed to her mouth to stifle a scream. Gordon nodded to her, his
face a grin of fury, and then ran down the dune and vanished beyond the house. Wandin, sprawling at her feet, called up to her:
“WafforJohnny Boss do that, missus?”
Gordon ran to the gate beyond the house, cleared it like a racing dog, and continued to run along the winding path to the aborigines’ camp. It was deserted, all were away watching the rabbit migration. From the camp Gordon hurried on round the lake shore, and so found Nero squatted over a little fire, an ebony gargoyle and as motionless as one.
Nero did not hear the white man’s approach. He did not even hear the snap of the stick trodden upon by Gordon. His mind was concentrated on the terrible work of killing a man miles away. He toppled over and sprawled beside his little fire when the side of Gordon’s riding boot connected with his stern quarters. As one awakening from a pleasant dream, with his hair and beard dripping red sand, he was picked up and shaken till his eyes appeared likely to drop from their sockets. Then he was flung backward to the ground; and, when he regained his breath and conquered his dizziness, he saw John Gordon squatting beside his little fire and rolling a cigarette.
“Wafforyoukickum like that grey gelding?” he whined.
“Go along to the house and bring Wandin. Run, you devil.”
Nero was long past the real running age, but he made a valiant effort to move faster than his usual gait, his mind most uneasy, his body a little tired from the enforced exertion. The minutes slipped by and Gordon smoked and seldom moved. The rage gradually subsided and left him a little ashamed. He did not look up when the soft crunching of naked feet on soft sand reached him.
“Sit down along me,” he ordered.
Wandin and Nero squatted on either side of him.
“Who told you to bone the blackfeller p’liceman?”
“Jimmy Partner, Johnny Boss,” replied Nero. “Y’see, Johnny Boss, that beeg feller blackfeller p’liceman him find tree and him find green hair from Anderson’s whip feller. Bimeby him find Anderson. Then him make things crook for our Johnny Boss.”
The final phrase, “our Johnny Boss,” spoke a volume of affection. Gordon stared into the small fire, finding it too difficult to look up into the two pairs of appealing black eyes.
“Why you not tell me you bone detective feller?”
“You tellum no point the bone any more, Johnny Boss. Long time back you tellum that. You say bone-pointing no play fair, likeum you said one time me nohittem Wandin with cricket bat feller that time Wandin hehittem me with ball feller. You only little Johnny Boss then.”
So for many days and nights these two, with others of the elder bucks to assist, most probably, had taken turn and turn about to squat over a lonely little fire and will another human being to death, because they thought danger threatened him, not themselves. They hated for him, not for themselves. By the white man’s standards they might be children, but they had employed a weapon fashioned by ten thousand generations, whilst wearing the crown named loyalty. Was he not one of them? Had he not been initiated into the Kalchut tribe? Had he not been entrusted with secrets so zealously guarded by the old men? An enemy was trying to harm him. The enemy must be destroyed. Gordon stood up and they with him. Anxiously they looked into his eyes and were overjoyed to see that the anger had gone from him.
“You no point the bone again, eh?”
Wandin caressed his jaw and Nero certain portions of his plump body.
“No fear, Johnny Boss. We tellum Jimmy Partner git to hell outer it.”
Gordon grasped Wandin by his left arm and Nero by his right arm, and drew them close to him.
“Me sorry feller Ihittem you. You good feller black-fellers. You my fathers and my brothers, but me I’m Johnny Boss, eh?”
“Too right, Johnny Boss.”
“To-morrow you all, lubras and children, go on walkabout Meena Hills. You stay out there till I tellum you come back Meena. Me, I take Jimmy Partner and Malluc. You bin tellum Malluc come along house. In the morning you tellum lubras come along store for tucker.”
A gaunt face and a round one expanded in cheerful grins.
“Now yousittem down all night anddrawum bones and eagle’s claws outer blackfeller p’liceman. You tellum little pointed bones and little sharp claws come outer him.”
“All right, Johnny Boss, we tellum so.”
Gordon’s hands squeezed hard before he left them and returned to the deserted camp, and then along the path back to the gate. Near the horse yards Jimmy Partner and Abie were unsaddling, and Jimmy Partner, forgetful of his enormous strength and wrestling prowess, left his horse and retreated.
“Come here, Jimmy Partner,” Gordon ordered.
The aboriginal hesitated for a moment, then advanced slowly to meet Gordon. When they were near Gordon held out his hand and said:
“I’m sorry I hit you, Jimmy, but you did wrong to get Nero and Wandin to use the bone. The results might be bad, not to the detective but to the Kalchut. Shake hands.”
Jimmy Partner grinned although to do so pained the bridge of his nose. He grasped Gordon’s skinned hand and Gordon did not wince.
“That’s all right, Johnny Boss,” Jimmy Partner said with surprising cheerfulness. “Your crack was only a fly tickler. I didn’t think I was doing any harm-to you.”
“To me, no, but to the Kalchut, the boning might have most harmful results. Don’t you ever again persuade the Kalchut to act without my orders. Better see to your face before you come in for dinner.”
“Me face! Oh, Abie did that when we were sparring out in the paddock. It was quite an accident, wasn’t it, Abie?”
And with knit brows John Gordon left them to walk over to the house.
Chapter Twenty-two
More Facets
BONY was to remember all his life his awakening on the morning of the second of November. During the night something wonderful had happened to him, and for some time he pondered on what this could be.
The white roof of the box tent was dully opaque, for the sun had not yet risen. It was delightfully cool, and the flies that had taken up their abode with him still slumbered on the sloping canvas panels. Perched on the topmost branch of one of the protecting cabbage-trees, one of Australia’s leading songsters began its serenade to the new day, going through its range of four distinct tunes over and over again. This butcher-bird and two magpies had taken possession of the camp, greatly to the annoyance of the crows.
By degrees Bony took stock of the remarkable change within himself. He was astonished by the absence of pain from his body, for no longer did the darting pain-arrows shoot through him like white-hot comets. Timidly he moved himself on the stretcher bed, and instead of pain there was that delightful desire to animate muscles. And with this physical well-being had come the return of health to his mind. Gone was the heavy, cramping depression that like a dark fog had blinded his mental vision. His mind this morning felt free and illuminated by a radiance not of earthly day.
Something had happened away over at Meena Lake to interrupt the willing of his death.
For several minutes Bony’s freed mind energetically attacked this thought, energetically because the new-won freedom delighted it. It was thus engaged when simultaneously the two dogs camping at the tent’s entrance growled, and then, with nerve-torturing abruptness, broke into frenzied barking. Together, they raced to the skirting boundary fence, leapt over the barrier and sped away to a distant point to the north-west. The barking stopped as abruptly as it had begun.
The ensuing silence was unbroken even by the watching butcher-bird. A shaft of yellow light was laid along one slope of the canvas roof by the rising sun. Then to Bony’s straining ears came the dull thudding of the hooves of a horse approaching the fence from the north-west. An iron-clanked, and presently the dogs returned to the tent. One pressed a cold nose against Bony’s forearm, the other attempted to lick his face. Thus they announced the arrival of a visitor.
Bony softly ordered them to be quiet. They obeyed, one taking his stand beside the stretcher, the o
ther sitting against the tent wall. Both listened with ears cocked. Then a not unpleasant voice shouted:
“Good day-ee, boss!”
It was the voice of an aboriginal.
Both dogs growled, but both tails wagged.
“Good day, there! Whatd’you want?”
“Me Malluc.”
According to age-old custom Malluc had halted fifty yards from the camp, waiting for permission from the occupier to enter.
Malluc! Now what did he want here so early in the morning? Bony demanded his business.
“Johnny Boss, hesentum letter feller.”
“You bring letter feller here,” instructed Bony. A letter from John Gordon! It might be so, but it might mean an open attack by the people who had so persistently boned him. The small automatic pistol was drawn from beneath the pillow. He heard the light sound of boots crunching loose sand. Again Bony ordered the dogs to be quiet.
Into the triangle presented by the raised flaps normally hanging before the entrance to the tent appeared the figure of an aboriginal, tall and grey of hair and beard. He was wearing a suit of very old dungarees, and his feet were encased in elastic-sided riding boots much too large for them. He carried the white envelope in his left hand. There was no weapon in his right hand, nor was one attached to his person, and the boots on the feet precluded the possibility of a spear being dragged along the ground by his toes. He smiled broadly at Bony who had raised himself the better to see the visitor.
“Drop the letter feller,” ordered Bony, who then, when the order was obeyed, urged one of the dogs to: “Fetch it, Hool-’Em-Up.”
The dog, understanding that the order was for him, advanced to the letter and brought it to Bony. Malluc retreated but remained in view. Bony opened the letter and read:
I regret to hear that you are ill of the Barcoo sickness. I learned of it only yesterday. I am sending to you the Kalchut medicine man, knowing him to be an expert on gastric troubles. If any man can effect a swift cure, Malluc can do so. He has treated both my mother and me with great success.
The Bone is Pointed b-6 Page 22
