Bony - 27 - The Will of the Tribe

by Arthur W. Upfield

  No longer fearful for Tessa, Bony watched them. They were running freely, for Captain now did not hold Tessa captive. They were running not fast, but together, and Bony thrilled, knowing that Tessa had surrendered to the elfin call of her people, had put from her the slowly built influ­ences of white assimilation, even as she had discarded the white women’s clothes.

  They dwindled to tiny dolls animated on a cloth of gold speckled with black. The last of the sunlight created about each an aura having rainbow tints, and a moment or two later they appeared to ascend and vanish into the indigo sky at the world’s end.

  Bony climbed down the ladder into a world of commo­tion. The Aborigines were clustered into groups, shouting and gesticulating. Jim Scolloti was shouting at everyone as he led Mister Lamb with a halter rope to rub him down. Young Col with hair awry and eyes clear and hard said, “So that seems to be that.”

  “Think you could get one of the bucks to bring in the horses?” Bony asked. “May want them first thing in the morning.”

  “Can do. The Brentners’ll have to know of this, Bony, me lad. Rose will throw a seven, and Old Ted will be gunning after Captain.”

  “The situation demands calm thinking. Have the horses brought in before it’s too dark.” Bony’s eyes grew big and Col never forgot them. “And you keep away from the trans­ceiver.”

  He entered Captain’s hut. Picking up the rifle, he laid it on the table and against it placed notebooks and a wad of manuscripts found in a drawer. He added several bound books after cursory examination. He switched on the electric light, thinking of the Brentners’ generosity to Captain, as, too, of their generosity to Tessa, and presently found under the bed mattress another notebook, the second ivory Buddha and a wallet.

  On turning off the light, he found it almost dark, and he carried the ‘loot’ to the office and placed it in one of the steel cabinets. Young Col, who had followed him, said, “Where do we go from here, Bony? I heard the horses being brought in.” Bony asked if three or four could be fed for the night and the others turned out again, and Col said that could be done and went off to arrange it. Bony slipped the rifle behind the cabinet and went out to interview the cook.

  “Don’t bother about feeding us in the house, Jim. We’ll eat here tonight.”

  “All right, Inspector. Dinner’s mucked up a bit. I been attending to Mister Lamb. Had to dry him out somewhat. Now wasn’t that a to-do! Cripes, it was a sight I’ll never forget. As for Captain and Tessa, wait till the Boss gets home. He’ll roar and scream and jump up and never come down no more.”

  “These things sometimes happen, Jim,” Bony calmly as­sured him.

  “You’re telling me, as the American Sergeant used to say over the Dump.”

  After dinner, Bony took Young Col to the office.

  “I could be wrong, Col, but when Tessa and Captain came from the dam she went willingly,” he said, bringing the note­books and the rifle to the table. “You will probably not clearly understand what has happened to Tessa, the Abori­gines being closer to nature than the white man. There is much about Captain and his behaviour I don’t understand, but I must have time to find light in the darkness.”

  “We should report it to the Brentners,” Col said flatly.

  “Not yet. Not until the situation has been resolved. Cap­tain may bring Tessa back sometime tonight, or early to­morrow. Meanwhile I want you to collect all the guns about the place, beginning with this one, and hide them.”

  “From Captain?”

  “And from Old Ted.”

  On returning to the office, Young Col found Bony study­ing the wall map, and they discussed the station wells and the types of power pumps used.

  “Go on the air, please, and contact the Police Station,” Bony requested, turning away from the map. His hair was dishevelled. His voice was sharp, and both his hands and walk betrayed tension. When Howard spoke, he hastened to join Young Col at the bench.

  “Bonaparte here, Howard. I want you to leave first thing tomorrow with your trackers. Young Col will have a note for you if I am not here. Certain developments call for your assistance. The Brentners still in town?”

  “At the dance. I told Brentner I’d take any message from Deep Creek.”

  “Then say all is in order. But you leave at daybreak. Clear?”

  “Quite. Brentner told me they’d be heading for home about noon tomorrow. Staying on to farewell the Minister. It’s been a real do for Hall’s Creek.”

  “So far good,” Bony said. “Inform no one about leaving. It concerns no one.”

  Young Col looked with amazement at Bony, and Bony switched off the transceiver.

  “Crikey! It concerns the Brentners, Bony.”

  “Yes, but not the general public at their transceivers,” argued Bony, “not yet, anyway. Now listen. I was talking with Captain about certain results of my investigation when suddenly he produced a rifle. Tessa appeared and dressed him down, and he flew into a rage, tossed the rifle aside and rushed at her. You saw his chase after her. I expected a kill­ing. I know what happened to stop the threat. You saw them return to the dam into which Captain would have taken Tessa if Mister Lamb hadn’t been forward. You saw them emerge and run off into the desert, and we agree that Tessa then appeared not an unwilling captive. You will agree that, other than threatening me with a rifle, Captain hasn’t com­mitted a crime. Millions of young men have chased millions of young women since Adam and Eve were banished from Eden by the front door and an original Captain and Tessa stole into Eden by the back door. Clear?”

  “As sand in your eye,” replied Young Col. “But when Kurt and Mrs Brentner get home …” Col broke off and whistled.

  “Before they arrive home Captain might have brought Tessa back,” Bony pointed out. “I think it probable they will both return by breakfast time. They may return much sooner. Or they might keep going under the stars for a few hours and continue going at daylight. As the military gentle­men say, the position is fluid.”

  “Fluid all right, Bony. By the way they were travelling when I saw them they were headed for Paradise Rocks. Sixty-five miles and no water between. Captain will hole up with Maundin’s wild blacks. I’m betting on it. He won’t have the gall to face the Brentners.”

  “I’m inclined to bet on it, too.”

  “You told Howard you mightn’t be here when he comes. What’s your plan?”

  “I’ll leave just before daybreak. I’ll want the best horse. Think you could have it ready? I’ll have to write a report for Howard, and I’ll want more information from you.”

  “You wouldn’t go alone? You’ll wait for Howard and his trackers? Damn it, the wild blacks don’t play ring-a-roses. They play hard.”

  “Let us say there’s been an explosion at Deep Creek, with bits and pieces all over the station,” Bony said, again calm and outwardly confident. “We must try to salvage what we can.”

  Yet again Bony studied the map, having motioned Young Col to join him. They discussed the outlying waters for cattle, the possible natural rock-hole waters known to Young Col, distances, and general topography coming within the limits of Col’s knowledge. Admitting the possibility of Cap­tain returning voluntarily with Tessa, he planned on the probability that Captain would defy the law.

  He sent Young Col to Jim Scolloti to obtain meat and bread, tea and sugar and, from the store, a few plugs of tobacco. At ten o’clock he walked to the Camp and had a man rouse out Gup-Gup and Poppa and for an hour he squatted with them over the former’s little fire. On leaving them he had gained consent to perform certain acts at sun­rise.

  Young Col was asleep in a lounge chair in the office, and he let him sleep while he read Captain’s notebooks and wrote a letter for Constable Howard and another to Rose Brent­ner. Young Col was still sleeping when he left the house and mounted the horse and rose out into the desert, the eastern sky flagging the new day and the meteors flaming over Lucifer’s Couch.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Bony Gambles
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  THE NIGHT distils its comforts as well as its terrors. The day came, and Bony was standing beside a powerful roan gelding at the place where Captain and Tessa were last seen. There were their footprints on the yielding sand. Backward, they extended down a gentle slope till lost in the sparse foot-high bush covering the northern hem of the desert. Forward, they proceeded down an opposite slope, extending into the general plain having no limits, no land­marks.

  He had compelled the horse to walk all the way from the homestead to arrive here at this time, thereby conserving the animal’s strength and bringing himself to the beginning of tracking the runaways at the first moment when able to see their tracks. Distance from the homestead was approxi­mately three miles and, now mounted, he permitted the horse to proceed in an easy canter and gave himself entirely to the task of reading tracks.

  Certain facts had to be taken into consideration. The girl would be the weaker partner. She had led a sheltered and far from a strenuous life. She had become used to wearing shoes. She had run an exhausting race before taking this escape journey with Captain. She had run and walked three miles from the homestead to the top of this low ground-swell just before darkness fell, and she was still running and walking when she made the tracks now being followed by Bony. Bony conceded it a wonderful effort.

  As yet there were no highlight and shadow. The land was uniformly dun in colour, seemingly covered by a sheet of steel freezing it into changeless eternity. The sparse, low and brittle bushes had ceased to grow a million years before and would be so placed a million years hence. It was not last night Captain and Tessa left their tracks here in the dark: it had been when the world was being formed. Unlike the magic of the evening the light of the dawning is often re­pellent.

  Then the sun flashed above the horizon and the mica specks blazed with white and silver and amber lights, the bush quivered and warmed with breath, even the sand grains shivered and, if one listened, sang as the new heat warmed them.

  There had been two sets of prints, and now there were but one set, the prints of the man. The girl had reached the end of her endurance, and the man had gone on with her over a shoulder. The single set of prints flowed to the south, on and on over the light sand covering the harder base. Presently there rose from the general flatness a long ridge of reddish sand and, on coming to it, Bony found it less than five feet in height, wind-carved and clean of herbage.

  On the far side the man’s tracks ended at a jumble of prints, his own and those made by Tessa. Here the sand was disturbed and told a story. It began about midnight when the air was cold. The man was wearing only trousers but the woman was nude. As their wild ancestors did, they scooped a hole, laid themselves in it, scooped the displaced sand over themselves until only their faces were free. In this com­paratively warm bed they had rested.

  Beyond the ridge running east-west was another, and beyond that were doubtless others: waves of sand separated in the troughs by narrow strips of claypan. Bony could see the twin tracks marking the next sand slope, and, from that, the tracks mounting the next. He felt confident that Captain had left with Tessa to pass over these ridges before day broke, and what he expected happened when he rode down the last of them to the verge of a sea of tussock grass, grey and dead and yet resilient. Even for the experienced, this grass registered no footprints.

  The shore of this sea was a ribbon of white claypan, twelve yards wide and cement-hard. The grass extended to the west as far as could be seen, but to the south merely a mile, and this same distance to the east. Nothing moved upon its grey surface save several crows probably interested in a dead goanna or snake. If Captain and Tessa had crossed, they must have done so before he, Bony, rode down to the shore.

  On the far side, he dismounted on the claypan and rolled a cigarette. Now looking back to the north, he saw smoke signals being sent up at Gup-Gup’s orders. There were three, placed at equidistance: one unbroken, one broken repeat­edly, and the other less often. The homestead could not be seen, and the Kimberley mountains appeared like grey and brown rock-bars along the horizon. He estimated his pos­ition as being about fourteen miles south of Deep Creek, and this would place him slightly more than fifty miles from Paradise Rocks.

  According to Young Col there was no water north of Para­dise Rocks at this time, but then Young Col wouldn’t know the Aborigines’ secret waters, so jealously protected. Cap­tain would instinctively locate them and, as it was by no reasoning essential for him to proceed to Paradise Rocks, he and Tessa could have crossed the sea of grass in any direction to throw off probable police pursuit. What would surely unbalance Captain’s intentions was Gup-Gup’s signals call­ing on the wild blacks to capture them and return them to Deep Creek Camp, and he would doubtless be dismayed and believe himself to be trapped and betrayed. The time ele­ment would depend upon the distance between himself and Maundin’s tribe.

  At no point had Captain paused in their flight to erase their footprints. He would be familiar with this section of country, would know that on reaching it he could thwart his pursuers by crossing the grass, or by following the clay­pan edging it in either direction. The grass had been eaten short by cattle, leaving the rough residue like small bunches of bristles on a wire brush. It would not deter a man having Captain’s hardened feet, but would be impossible for Tessa who would have had to be carried across it. The alternative was to follow the claypan on which an elephant would not make a mark.

  Bony went over in mind the conference with Gup-Gup late the previous evening. He had offered to trade, and Gup-Gup had agreed. Although the Chief had volunteered very little, Bony had learned by questioning that the wild Aborigines would be following an annual timetable on walk­about to visit their secret places. This timetable would be governed by the season and was known to Gup-Gup, who said that Maundin and his people would now be holding a corroboree in camp some ninety miles to the south-west. The Chief said Captain would know this, and, on seeing the smoke signals, he would surely make for Paradise Rocks to the south-east.

  Bony rode the claypan strip round the eastern end of the grass, and came to the faint motor track from the home­stead to Paradise Rocks. The desert now offered vast spaces of long rises and falls, the slopes often imperceptible, the horizon seemingly distant by a hundred miles, or seemingly by not more than one.

  There were no tracks on the motor mark spanning the desert, and Bony felt no frustration by their absence, being confident that Captain would not delay by attempting to erase their tracks. He was being forced to Paradise Rocks, and he had two burdens to carry: the knowledge that his grandfather was opposed to his flight, and a woman soft­ened by civilization and lacking the powers of endurance normal in an Aborigine girl of her age.

  Paradise Rocks, and then what? Beyond Paradise Rocks there was nothing for Captain bar thirst and starvation, and he would be forced to turn west and be caught by Maundin’s bucks and be taken back to his own camp. Bony anticipated this would be Captain’s thought, and he hoped Captain would realize the situation and return to the home­stead with Tessa, hoped but yet was not confident. Without a weapon of any kind, Captain could not kill a bird or ani­mal, for which the water at Paradise Rocks would be a magnet.

  Therefore, he would not be surprised to see Captain and the girl coming to meet him as he rode at an easy pace to­wards Paradise Rocks. Neither would he be surprised if Captain lay concealed, permitting him to pass on, and then retreated to the Camp at Deep Creek.

  Early in the afternoon he cut their tracks when riding wide of the motor trail. The human tracks proved the fugi­tives were still ahead and that Tessa was still walking. Time and distance gave assurance that they could not be very far ahead.

  Towards noon the mirages became bothersome, ever threatening to deceive, offering concealment, and the light blazing upward from the sand-polished gibber fields hurt the eyes. There was no life to distract the mind, to give balance to reality. When Bony came to a wide area of sparse saltbush dotted by the stumps of swamp gums killed and b
lackened by fire, he found relief from what had become intolerable isolation.

  The tree stumps were of all sizes and of varied height. They were of all shapes and postures, for some of them leaned ready to be felled by the next windstorm, and, against many, dead buckbush lay thickly to make them look like columns of straw. Two stumps aroused Bony’s suspicions.

  They were close together and presented an anomaly as, elsewhere, the trees had grown widely apart. One was up­right, the other leaning away and seemingly ready to fall under the pressure of the next wind. They were a hundred-odd yards off the trail.

  Bony rode on, the picture of a horseman anxious to arrive at Paradise Rocks and water. His suspicious eyes, however, returned again and again to these stumps. The upright one still supported a fire-blackened branch and, against the top of the partially fallen stump, a mass of buckbush was trapped.

  Their juxtaposition created a flaw in this picture of arid desolation, and Bony turned his horse off the trail to in­vestigate. A waste of time, perhaps. He reined back the horse and sat staring at the stumps and then felt a trifle foolish. Nature never creates a uniform pattern.

  Dismounting, he neck-roped the horse to a stump, and withdrew the rifle from the scabbard. Keeping the weapon aimed at the upright stump, he advanced and still felt fool­ish yet determined to clear his mind of suspicion. They were perfect until he was fifteen yards from them, when the up­right stump shivered, lost rigidity. The branch fell. The stump seemed to twist, and the top took on the profile of a man. Then Captain was standing with hands to hips and feet on their toes. The other stump slowly collapsed and lay still.

  “What d’you think you are going to do, Inspector,” Cap­tain shouted derisively.

  “Pump a bullet into your right leg if you don’t do as you are told,” Bony called back. “I have water, and tucker, and a present for Tessa. You will follow me to the horse.”