“Smoke.”
“No smoke. No nothin’. Go on, work her out. How’d grandpa do it?”
“My old man! He’d work that one. He could do anything with nothing but his sweat.”
“Perhaps it could be done this way,” Bony interposed as Grandpa might well be a gnawed bone of contention. “Along the ridge there are three trees. They can be seen quite distinctly from the cliff, three trees about the same distance apart, and the middle one much younger than the outside ones. Now if Marvin was coming up from the Inlet and that middle tree could be bent towards one of the others, then the fellow down on the cliff would know, wouldn’t he?”
“There you are, Pop. Dead easy,” mocked Fred.
“I seen those trees,” sneered Lew. “How d’you make one bend towards another one? All of ’em’s too tough to bend.”
“But the branches can be bent,” contributed Bony. “There’s one sticking out parallel with the ridge and at right angles with the cliff. We obtain a length of fence-wire, attach one end to the branch and bend the branch down when Marvin is sighted. How’s that?”
“Out, Nat. You’ve skittled the wicket,” Fred said brightly. “No one at the homestead would see the wire.”
“They’d see the branch bend like a train signal dropped,” Lew declared. “It’d have to be done pretty slow, making out it was the wind bending that branch. Shall we try her out, Nat?”
Thus did Bony gain co-operation without high-hatting these two, and Fred offered to obtain wire from Matt’s back fence. Having the wire, they examined the trees which were growing some eight feet behind and down from the summit, and selected a branch growing horizontally from the middle one. The end of the wire was fashioned to a hook, and Fred then had half an hour of exercise before succeeding in tossing it over the branch without disturbing it and so betraying human agency at work.
Bony stayed at the camp for lunch. They had a fry-pan, but as he had brought thick steaks which looked prime, he scoured the blade of the long-handled shovel, greased it slightly and cooked the meat in this fashion over the hot coals of the smokeless fire. They called Constable Breckoff to the feast, and he attended without bothering to dress. Afterwards he and Bony occupied the ridge, and the two aborigines collapsed in the shade and went to sleep.
“It was either Marvin who had that light or someone from the house returning from visiting him,” Bony said, blinking his eyes and wishing he could sleep, too. “Whoever it was, needed a torch last night climbing down or up the cliff.
“I shall have to split the party. I’ll take Lew and camp in that tea-tree. You will stay here with Fred. After being a forward post this will now be the base. I’ll go back presently and get a ground-sheet and a blanket as we may have to spend several nights over there. Some time tonight Lew and I will hike across to an old hut where there’s water, and we’ll fill a tin there.
“As I pointed out to the abos, anyone in the tea-tree cannot see anyone leaving the house for the beach or cliff-top. So we devised a method whereby you can warn us and not give your position away to the Rhudders, or to Marvin who could be active in that tea-tree in daytime.” Bony explained the method, concluding with:
“Pulling down the branch must be done very slowly, little by little, and when down it must be kept in that position to be sure Lew or I shall notice it. I don’t think I mentioned it but there is in the main room a telescope on a pedestal. A good one. We cannot be certain that this position hasn’t been detected, and a watch on us maintained. They could have noted sunlight from the glasses, even an exposed movement up here. It’s unlikely but possible.
“The objective is that neither Lew nor I is discovered, for discovery would be fatal to success. You can do nothing if you see a light at night, but that is balanced out by our ability to move about freely at night. Therefore, you get your sleep and man the post from first to last light of day. And be prepared to get an order from me to contact Sasoon for supporting action.”
“That’s all clear, Nat. You got a gun, I suppose?”
“I have. It’s more often in my suitcase than handy for employment. I’ll have a gun, you may be sure. My wife would never forgive me if Marvin shot and killed me. You know what wives are.”
“ ’Fraid I don’t,” Breckoff said, laughing.
“Doubtless you will, Tom. I’ll leave you now and return in an hour or two.”
Emma was laying a cloth for the afternoon tea-break when Bony walked into her living-room.
“I was planning to arrive at the psychological moment,” he told her. “Where’s Matt?”
“In the carpenter’s shop making something, I think,” Emma replied.
“Has he fixed up the siren?”
“Yes.” Emma giggled. “Goes off good, too.”
Stepping to the dresser she turned to look at him, and with her left hand behind her pulled open a drawer. From outside the house there came a wailing noise to be heard half a mile away. Bony smiled his satisfaction, and Emma said:
“The fire brigade’ll arrive in a minute.”
The brigade arrived at top speed, hatless, coatless, armed with a two-inch wood chisel. Seeing Bony, Matt wiped his forehead with a forearm, grinned, sat down.
“I didn’t hear you come back, Nat,” he said sheepishly, and then laughed. “Works all right, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, but don’t go too far from the house,” Bony urged. “I’ve got news for you that will make you more cautious, both of you.”
He told them about the mystery light, and added: “It’s the first plain intimation that Marvin is still down there, and I’m taking Lew with me to flush him out. Go on, Emma, pour the tea. Later I’ll want you to find for me a ground-sheet and a blanket, and tucker and a petrol-tin for water. Now for Sasoon.”
Sasoon wasn’t in his office, and presently Elsie answered the call to say he was out somewhere with the other constable, and would he ring back?
“Doesn’t matter, Elsie. A message will do. You have pad and pencil handy?” He knew that Matt and Emma were silent and expectant, and chose the moment to impress them further of the seriousness of the situation, should Marvin Rhudder ever break this way. “Right. Take this, Elsie, please. ‘Hold yourself for instant action. Take the telephone to bed with you.’ Yes, that’s all, Elsie, and thank you. Thanks, too, for the supper last night. Emma! Oh, all right, all right! I’ll tell her you want to gossip non-stop.”
Chapter Nineteen
The Secret Cave
THE SUN was huge and lustreless, a red sphere which sank into the Indian Ocean beyond the Leeuwin Light. While one counted ten, the sky at zenith above the ridge to the graveyard of the sun was a soiled pink drape, becoming as the wrapping of a five-thousand-year-old mummy before night came to obliterate the obscenity.
“Smoke from bush fires,” was Bony’s opinion.
“Storm,” commented Lew, the Wise Man behind Australia’s Front Door.
They manned the post on the ridge, and in the dell below, Constable Thomas Breckoff was wondering anxiously how to thicken a fish stew. With him was Fred who had advised mashing the potatoes and adding the mash to the bubbling stew in the large billycan. Away at the homestead, Sadie Stark was taking the herd of milkers to the night pastures, and Mark Rhudder was carrying pails of skimmed milk to feed the yarded calves. Pale smoke was rising from a chimney and drifting across the Inlet, and Mrs Rhudder was pottering about her garden. The gulls dotted the shores of the quiet water, and from the ocean came the beat and slap of the eternal surges.
The stew turned out to be quite good, with the addition of a little pepper and a shake or two of salt. In the light of the fire they ate with relish, and Breckoff additionally with pride. In the calm and cool of the night they went up again to the look-out, there to talk and take care to shield the strike of a match. Other than a point of dull light at the homestead and the far-away slashes of the lighthouse against the sky, the world was painted out with black.
For something better to occupy time, Bony br
ought up the subject of Marvin Rhudder, and his early years, and reaped a moderate harvest.
“Were you at a cricket match in Timbertown just before Marvin Rhudder left that last time?”
“Too right,” promptly replied Fred. “I don’t ever forget that game. Marvin tried to kill me. Remember, Pop?”
“Ought to, as I was umpiring for the Inlet United. The Timber Fallers beat the Inlet that time. Could of been what upset Marvin.”
“He was always upset, even in them days, Pop. You know that. He was the meanest bastard what ever lived.” Fred fell silent, and it was Breckoff who spurred him. “Well, the Inlet United came up to play the Timber Fallers. I was working in town then, and I played against the Inlet. As usual when he was home, Marvin was captain of the Inlet, and he won the toss against the Fallers and said they’d bat first.
“Marvin sent in Ted Jukes and a bloke called Harry the Puke, because he couldn’t drink without being sick, as their openers. Well, Ted Jukes got himself set, and he’d piled up thirty-odd runs when Harry was clean bowled, and Marvin put himself in as next bat. After that over, I got put on bowling for a spell, and the first one I sent down to Marvin he hit a boundary.
“Give the swine his due, Marvin was a good bat although he was always showing off. You know, taking extra time to get his block, taking more time than anyone else would do in shaping up for the strike. Everyone having to know it was the Great Marvin flashing his bat like he was Don Bradman. Twice I appealed for leg-before, and both times the verdict was against me; once by pop, here.
“Anyway, I got Ted Jukes caught out. Forty-something, it was, and a good score for Ted. And Marvin being at my end and waiting for the next batsman to come out, I said to him: ‘It’s going to be your push-over next.’ ” Fred paused to light a cigarette with a shielded match before coming to the climax of his story.
“The next ball I sent down to him he missed and I nearly got his wicket. It wasn’t a hard ball, and it riled him pretty good. Then I sent him a nice easy one he could have hit for a boundary, intending to get him with my next. Well he came running up the pitch to the ball in flight, and I could see he wasn’t going to hit no boundary. He drove it straight back at me with all his might. I could see the ball coming like a comet. I tried to catch it and didn’t have a hope. It got me fair in the guts, and as I was waiting for the pain in the split second before it caught me I saw by his face that he’d done it on purpose, tried to and did.”
“Then you was carried off the field and put into hospital,” supplemented Lew.
“Nice bloke,” Breckoff interposed.
“When I got out of hospital he was out of the picture,” Fred said, sadly. “One thing about Marvin was that he couldn’t fight. I could use myself, couldn’t I, pop?”
“Too true,” agreed Pop, and retired into silence.
“How did he get on with the girls?” asked Bony.
“You mean Rose Jukes and Sadie Stark? Treated ’em like dirt, like he treated all the others in Timbertown. They liked it, too. You could see ’em wanting to grovel like a thrashed pup. White or black, they all went for Marvin like he was a film groaner.”
“Including Rose and Sadie?”
“Including them, it seemed like to me,” answered Fred. “Course they was raised with Marvin and a bit more used to him. But the others!”
Bony couldn’t see the shrug which must have followed, and he pondered the question of taking young Fred with him in preference to the far more experienced bushman his father would be. Lew and Fred gave other pictures of Marvin Rhudder, or rather pictures of him from different angles. He had never been a hero to these aborigines, and probably had never tried to suppress in their presence those facets of his character he had so successfully hidden from white people, including the mental specialists. A Kedic! That he had ever been.
Carrying light blanket rolls and a well-filled gunny-sack Bony and Lew left camp before midnight. Not a star showed, and although the moon lightened the sky it failed to show, either. Without talking they covered the several miles to the hut by two-o’clock, and rested and smoked, and filled a four-gallon tin with water. It proved to be an awkward burden which they carried in turn.
The moon had set and the night was black. It had been decided, in view of the slight wind from the east, to reach the coast a mile westward of Australia’s Front Door and the pathway down to the beach. Timing was important. They had to arrive at safe concealment before day broke and after a probable night visitor to Marvin’s hideaway had returned to the homestead.
Bony chose to follow Lew who was familiar with every yard of this country, every water-gutter and empty creek carrying water to the paperbark swamp as the land inclined away from the cliff. He trod almost on Lew’s heels, and never once tripped over a root or unevenness of ground, mutely acclaiming the aborigine’s bush lore and eyesight. Arriving at the cliff scrub, Lew unloaded himself and whispered that they should wait for day to give its first sign.
Being the current water-carrier, Bony gladly acquiesced.
“How far are we from the cliff path behind the Door?” Bony asked when they were sitting with backs against a tree-clump, and had voted for no smoking.
“A good mile and a half. We’d better move soon’s first sign of dawn, and that’ll be late, replied Lew.
“You would know pretty well every cave there is, eh?”
“No fear, Nat. There’s more caves and holes between here and the Leeuwin than marbles in a lottery barrel, and I seen the marbles in one once.”
“Then you pick one you do know somewhere about opposite the Door, and we’ll camp on the cliff above it. It must be near there that Marvin’s camped.”
Lew agreed, saying it would be silly to use that rough way down if Marvin’s hideout was far on one side of it or the other.
“Just this side of it there’s a good sort of cave me and Fred think Marvin could be usin’. Then there’s another one with a water-hole in the rock what’s not far from where we are now.”
“We must camp close to the place where the torchlight was seen. Anyway, for a start. I’m ready to move when you say.”
“Should of brought a dog. They got better smellers than us.”
“I doubt that they’d have a keener nose than you, Lew. Give us plenty of time.”
“All right. We could start now and slow up a bit if we’re too early getting near the Door. If I swerve it’ll be only to have the wind right for me smeller. That Marvin’s no new chum.”
They moved off, Bony allowing Lew to keep well ahead, often unable to see him and certainly never hearing him, the noise of the surf masking immediate sounds, had there been any. Presently the sky took light to itself, and against it could be seen the tops of the tree-clumps. Beside one of these Lew waited.
“Don’t think so far there’s anyone around,” he said. “Go on?”
“Better.”
Half an hour later it was possible to see the ground between the clumps, and the cliff edge silhouetted against the sea, and Bony was relieved from growing anxiety when Lew stepped from inside a clump and beckoned.
“Good enough here, Nat. Come in and stay till we can see.”
What Lew meant was to get into the seclusion of the clump, and, because the interior was so dark, to remain inactive until day was strong enough to show the twisted branches and the dry debris of twigs and leaves which would create unusual noises if disturbed. The waiting period passed to show them the maze of slanting trunks and branches forming the skeleton work of the massed leaf covering, and then it was possible to select a semi-cleared space on which to make camp. This was right on the verge of the cliff.
Parting the leaf mass, Bony was able to look down at the sea almost at high tide. It was still comparatively flat, although restless even behind Australia’s Front Door. To the left he made out the zigzagging path, and beyond it the overhang of rock extending for many hundreds of yards where no way down could be offered.
“There’s a fair-sized cave right unde
r us,” Lew said. “Goes in a long way like a big house with plenty of rooms. Could be Marvin’s camped there. There’s a lot of entrances like holes to a rabbit burrow. Be a good place for him.”
Bony saw now that anyone from the homestead would not pass their hidden camp to get down the beach, and further that anyone coming from the homestead could not be seen until they were on the way down at that point. He thought Lew could have chosen a better position, but decided to remain at least for a few hours. He crawled to the landward side of the clump, and was given an uninterrupted view of the ridge with its easily distinguishable trees. The signal branch was in position. Having eaten he told Lew he could sleep until noon, and Lew rested his head on his blanket roll and slept instantly. During the morning Bony alternated his attention between the beach and the ridge, and carefully removed dead timber to facilitate this divided task. He slept during the afternoon and into late evening, and Lew reported no movement. At sundown the cloud wrack thinned to permit the light of the sun to redden the Door panels, and ultimately to give the moon slight influence over the night.
All night long one of them peered over to the beach and along the cliff to the way down to it. Morning came to find the sky again painted with grey cloud and the sea as grey and leaden.
“Going to storm, all right,” commented Lew, and wryly added: “Marvin’s gonna be nice and dry. Us! You can wring me out and I’ll wring you.”
“We earn our wages the hard way, Lew. It’s not raining yet, though, and if it rains real hard we’ll retreat to the hut. About time something happened.”
It happened about an hour after the sneaker rolled in behind Australia’s Front Door. Bony was watching the tide creeping over the wide sand-flat to the rock on which he and Matt sat that first day, when Lew announced that the signal was down.
The black eyes were wide, and the mouth was drawn to part the lips and show the new white dentures in the canine’s grin of anticipation. It had been a long and boring wait. The additional waiting seemed to be endless.
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