Bony Buys a Woman

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Anything I got.”

  “True answers to my questions?”

  “What you want to know?”

  “I’m asking would you give true answers to my questions if I give you Meena?”

  Charlie nodded, and slowly a smile spread over his expressive face.

  “It’s a deal,” Bony said, and they shook hands over the tiny fire. “You answer all my questions, I give you Meena. You and Meena go off to the Missioner and be married properly when I say so. Okee?”

  “Okee, tough guy.”

  “I shall be tough, too. Where is the tribe’s treasure house?”

  “What! No!”

  “All right! No Meena for you.”

  Agony filled the black eyes. Sweat broke in great globules on the prominent forehead.

  “I can’t tell that,” cried Charlie. “You know I can’t tell that.”

  “I know where the treasure house is, but I am testing you to be sure you give true answers,” flagrantly lied Bony, and was given the information that the tribe’s cherished churinga stones, the magic pointing bones, and all the other relics which chained this tribe of the Orrabunna Nation to the generations of those who had lived and died before them, were in the keeping of a certain tree in a certain place.

  “All right, Charlie. Now I know you speak true. Forget about the treasure house. I am your friend; you are my friend. D’you know what plaster of Paris is?” Charlie shook his head.

  “Well, do you know what plasticine is?”

  “Yair, we worked with that at the Mission.”

  “Good! Plaster of Paris is in powder form, and when a little water is mixed with it, it turns to a paste, which dries hard pretty quickly.” Bony made a print of his hand on the ground and illustrated the process of taking casts. “That day Mrs Bell was shot, Constable Pierce made a plaster cast of the tracks behind the meat-house. I have that plaster cast and from it made the tracks below the veranda steps. So, Charlie, the tracks I made are exactly the same as those which were behind the meat-house. Get me?”

  “Yair. Then Yorky’s tracks behind the meat-house weren’t left by Yorky?”

  “That’s true. Someone else made those tracks, Charlie, to be sure that a whitefeller would find them. It just happened that no blackfeller saw them. Do you reckon they were good enough to trick Bill Harte and the others?”

  Charlie pondered, gravely serious.

  “That Bill Harte good bushman,” he said. “Them tracks pretty good, too. I reckon Bill’d fall for ’em?”

  “And the other whitefellers would, too?”

  “Yair, quicker than Bill Harte.”

  “Now you go down and wait for breakfast. Whisper to Meena that perhaps Yorky didn’t shoot Mrs Bell, but is taking the blame for it. Don’t tell Meena anything more than that.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Decision to Dynamite

  THE REACTIONS of Charlie and the women to the prints made with Pierce’s plaster cast were identical. They were shocked by seeing what they thought were Yorky’s tracks, and astounded by the probability that the original prints declared to have been clear behind the meat-house had been made with a pair of Yorky’s old working boots.

  Yorky, leaving Mount Eden for a spell at the township, would most certainly leave his working clothes and boots in one of the rooms at the quarters. Thus anyone could use the old boots to make the prints, and smooth out his own tracks as he retreated.

  The expert tracker, however, does not limit himself to the actual imprints of the feet. He takes into consideration the angle of each foot from the imaginary dead centre line, as well as the distance separating the prints, revealing the length of the stride, and which leg is shorter than the other.

  It is possible for a forger to make exact imprints of a man’s boots, but he cannot forge the spaces between the placings of the man’s feet accurately enough to deceive an aborigine. The aborigine himself could not make a perfect forgery on all counts.

  Constable Pierce, wise man, did not make plaster prints of individual tracks, but had made an extensive cast including two left and one right boot-print, and therefore the prints shown to Charlie and the women were exact replicas of those made behind the meat-house.

  Why it happened that no aborigine saw the tracks behind the meat-house could be understood. First Harte had found those tracks. He had taken Arnold to see them, and Eric Maundy. Wootton had seen them, too, but Wootton was no tracker. When Pierce arrived, he was told they were Yorky’s tracks, and he saw what he had been led to expect to see. So, the overall acceptance of the forged tracks being genuine, why bother to have them checked by the aborigines urgently needed for the task of tracing Yorky and the child?

  Nothing squared in this investigation. It was like a semi-deflated bag, which, when punched, bulged somewhere. The only person who could have no motive for forging those prints was Yorky.

  Questions: Who forged them and why? Why, if not to create conviction that Yorky had shot Mrs Bell and taken the child? Instead of one murder, there could be three murders? By the aborigines or the whites?

  Bony had waited for the sand dune to come to him. He had prodded a sleeping mystery and it had stirred. He had continued this investigation according to the rules laid down in the practice of crime detection. And now he was convinced that his efforts were being frustrated by a force which the rules had not taken into account. This being so, he showered and dressed in a mood which seldom bothered him.

  In the living-room he found Wootton making notes at his radio bench, and the cattleman’s mind was busy with the news he had received from a station to the northeast of Lake Eyre.

  “Water still pouring into the lake down the Diamantina and Warburton, as well as Coopers Creek,” he said. “Could be a mighty flood if those rivers continue to run.”

  “When did water last flow into the lake?” Bony asked.

  “Three years back, but the lake hasn’t been properly filled for fifty years, I believe.” Wootton sat and unfolded a napkin. They chose a cereal from the impeccable Meena. “It would take a hell of a lot of flooding to fill this lake.”

  “How do you account for the fact that the shore this side is still moist enough to cover a man’s boots with mud, only a short way from the beach?”

  “A question I asked a geologist. Pass, the sugar, please. Feller called around shortly after I came. Stayed a week. Interesting ideas. Main point seems that a time long ago Lake Eyre was a sea, with hills and dales and holes and things like under other oceans. Then the sea dried out, sort of, leaving the lake still holding water. When that dried out, all the water left was in the holes and things. Get me?”

  “Yes. Thank you, Meena. Bacon and eggs, please. Oh, yes, and coffee.”

  “Right. The original bottom of the lake is composed of the stuff that forms claypans, like the strip of beach all round. On top of that the wind has blown dust and sand and mullock in which frogs and fish and things have lived and perished, and added their remains. In other words, on the top of the original hard ground there’s this thick layer of mud. So what? Meena, I’ll have bacon and eggs, too. Well, when the water from the rivers and creeks flows into the lake, it spreads only a little way on the top because most of it seeps down to spread first between the hard bottom and the top mud, as well as having to fill up the deep holes and valleys. So that a heck of a lot of water must flow before the surface of the lake this side shows signs of it, and even then it will appear first under the mud.”

  “So that in three years, even longer, without rain, the lake doesn’t dry hard even close to shore.”

  “That’s about the strength of it, Inspector. Meena! Meena! My coffee.”

  The girl brought the coffee, and stood behind Bony’s chair. She waited for his toast rack to empty, then went to the kitchen for more, making no effort to be so attentive to the cattleman.

  “Could I use a horse this morning?” Bony asked. “Mine is too slow. And I don’t want a flash one, either. I have work to do. And I need a sugar sack.�
��

  “Of course. I’ll tell Charlie after breakfast. Meena! More toast. What’s the matter with you this morning, Meena? Why all the attention to Inspector Bonaparte, and damn little for me?”

  Meena apologized, and departed for more toast. Bony said:

  “You have not heard that Meena is now my woman?”

  “Meena your woman!” Wootton’s green eyes opened wide, and he squared his thick shoulders. “Don’t get it.”

  “Yesterday afternoon I bought her from Canute.”

  “You did! Didn’t know he owned her, although someone did tell me she was promised to Canute when she was a baby. Oh, so that’s why you wanted the tobacco. Reckon you got her pretty cheap. What do you think, Meena?”

  “Might be too dear, too.”

  Mr Wootton’s eyes passed over her, from head to red shoes and again to her face. From her he looked at Bony, saying:

  “Yes, you bought her cheap. May I ask for what reason?”

  “Make a profit on my bargain. Meena, please leave us. I am not going to tell secrets, nor will you.”

  The girl came closer, took up Bony’s used plate, smiled at Wootton, and almost ran from the room, delaying the giggle which escaped after she entered the kitchen.

  “Secrets!” murmured Wootton.

  “Lovers’ secrets,” Bony said, busy now with a cigarette. “Tell me. I saw that your fences at one time extended farther into the lake than they do now. How long ago was that?”

  “Years before I came here. Could have been when the boundary fence was first built. That was in 1923. I do know that. Many of the original posts still standing. Much of the netting had been renewed. But it’s still a good fence. You ride along it?”

  “Visited Yorky’s old camps. Rations at all of them. D’you keep a check on your rations store?”

  “Not a strict one. Why?”

  “Sarah hand out much to her tribe?”

  “Not that I know of. What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m wondering what Yorky is living on.”

  “Tucker on homesteads over in New South Wales, even across in Western Australia by this time. Surely you don’t think he’s hanging around Lake Eyre, do you?”

  “I have no proof either way. I hope to have it this afternoon. But the footprints behind the meat-house and stated to have been made by Yorky, I have now proved to be forgeries.”

  Wootton was obviously astounded.

  “Those tracks were not made by Yorky,” Bony went on. “Three aborigines support that opinion.”

  “But everyone, including Pierce, says they were.”

  “Did any aborigine see them when they were brought back from the Neales?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t think so. Everything was so rushed. Wait. Pierce had his tracker with him. I did see him looking at the tracks.”

  “The police tracker isn’t a local abo. He might or might not have noted Yorky’s tracks in Loaders Springs. Anyway, he would not be as familiar with Yorky’s tracks as the locals.”

  Thoughtfully the cattleman loaded his pipe. He said:

  “What does that infer?”

  “I’m not sure ... yet.” Bony rose. “Will you have that horse brought in for me?”

  “Right away.”

  Wootton was decidedly disturbed. Having instructed Charlie, he sat at his office desk for an hour without attending to the litter of documents. It being Sunday there was no smokeoh for the men, but about ten o’clock Meena came to tell him that tea was made. He went with her to the kitchen, then asked:

  “What’s all this about the Inspector buying you from Canute?”

  The girl smiled demurely, and her mother laughed loudly, but the cattleman could see no joke.

  “I suppose you know that the Inspector has a wife where he comes from, and sons almost young men?” he pressed.

  Both women laughed, and to neither question would they give answer with words. He was irritated by this evasion, and knew it was futile to be so. He felt that a good deal had happened here on his own territory of which he was ignorant, and that also irritated him. No man likes being a kind of pawn in his own business.

  Wootton was again in his office when he heard the thudding of hoofs, guessed that Bony was back, and waited expectantly. A few minutes later Bony entered the office, to put down on the desk the sugar sack he had borrowed. He had taken it away empty; it was now half-filled and tied securely.

  Bony asked for sealing wax, and Wootton watched the string knots heavily loaded with wax and sealed with the imprint of a thumb. Then the blue eyes were regarding him seriously.

  “The contents of this bag are of value impossible of assessment,” Bony said. “Could you make room for it in your safe?”

  “I think so,” assented Wootton. “What’s in it?”

  “I don’t wish to sound mysterious, but it would be best for you not to know. Maybe I shall ask you to give it back before tonight. I hope so. Under no circumstances hand it to anyone else, excepting Constable Pierce. He may be here later.”

  Wootton took the bag to his safe, rearranging account books and oddments to make room for it. He was further irritated by the secrecy of Bony’s sealing wax.

  “Would you like to keep the safe key?” he asked with asperity.

  “Thanks, but that wouldn’t do.” Bony smiled disarmingly.

  It was warm inside this room despite the window and door being open. They could hear the low roaring of a willi-willi, and within two seconds a wind rushed on the building as the core of the whirlwind passed behind the men’s quarters. The dinner gong, a triangular length of railway iron beaten with an iron bar by the mighty Sarah, broke the tension.

  “I have to wash-brush,” Bony said, and left the cattleman to follow more leisurely.

  Wootton was already in the living-room when Bony entered to use the telephone. A minute later Bony was speaking to Pierce.

  “About those footprints, Pierce. Did your tracker see them?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Did he make any comment?”

  “No.”

  “He accepted them as Yorky’s, you think?”

  “Must have done. He didn’t say they were not Yorky’s. Why?”

  “Well, they aren’t Yorky’s. The abos here tell me they are not, and they should know.”

  “But ... I don’t get it, Inspector.”

  “I don’t yet. The job was done well enough to deceive the men here, and yourself, but they didn’t trick the abos. I understand that not one of the local abos saw those tracks at the time. Correct?”

  “That’s so. We put ’em all on the hunt as soon as possible.”

  “All right, leave it for now. Another thing. If I don’t contact you by six tonight, come out here. I’ve given myself a difficult assignment. There is a sugar sack deposited in Mr Wootton’s safe which must be returned to the owner should anything happen to prevent me contacting you after six.”

  “Sounds grim. Who’s the owner?”

  “The contents of the bag will tell you that. Be on hand, I’ll ring again at six. I’m in the position of the man who, having tried to push the house down, has decided to blow it up.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Extracting Information

  CANUTE, KING of the remnants of a past civilization, had the game sewn up. Not for him a crown wobbling on an uneasy head. Not for him financial worries, domestic worries nor the problem of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. Like his ancestors, Canute knew all the secrets of living without heart disease or stomach ulcers.

  This afternoon he reclined at ease on an old bag spread in the shade of a wattle, and chewed tobacco. A small boy was shooing away any stray ant, and the chief lubra was baking yabbies caked with mud and buried in hot ashes. It was a beautiful day, in dark shadow; a wonderful existence for a man. It would have remained perfect had not a remembered voice said:

  “Take a little palaver with me, Canute.”

  The King sat up, drew his feet under his thighs, grunted his displeasure. The l
ittle boy ran off to the lubras now standing amazed that the big-feller policeman had entered camp without their awareness of his approach.

  “We have yabber-yabber, eh?” suggested Bony. “You tell Murtee and that old fellow who is your eyes, and the other old men. Then we all yabber-yabber, eh?”

  Canute shouted, and from various deep shadows men stretched and yawned, belched and muttered, momentarily froze on seeing the visitor squatting beside their Chief, and obeyed the order. The visitation was accepted as a tribal affair, and the King was led to his throne and his advisers grouped themselves about him.

  The case brought by Bony the previous day was still there, and he seated himself and again, with slow deliberation, fashioned a cigarette, lit it, and stared at each man in turn. There was Canute, heavy from easy living, grey of hair and beard, still powerful, probably still under seventy. There was his eyes, a very old white-haired and white-bearded man named Beeloo, who was a human lath and crippled, but mentally on top. There was Murtee, the Medicine Man, about forty years old, savage of aspect, still savage in mind, his tongue pierced and his body carved with flints, as befitted the holder of such office. Finally, there were six other men, all older than sixty. Not one had attended a whitefeller school.

  “You tellum those wild abos go back to camp?” Bony asked; and Canute nodded, on his face a sullen expression, ill-fitting his normal jovial nature.

  “You smoke for them again, and you all be sorry,” threatened Bony. “Which feller not go walkabout up to the Neales? Come on now, you tell pretty quick.”

  “All blackfeller went walkabout that time,” declared Canute.

  “You cunning feller, eh? Which blackfeller come back quick; come back look-see Mrs Bell lying dead outside kitchen door?”

  “No blackfeller do that,” replied Murtee.

  Bony expelled smoke, gazed at chattering finches in the tree above, deliberately inhaled and again blew smoke in a thin blue line. Ebony idols regarded him with shuttered eyes.

  “I look-see find Yorky and Linda. You say big-feller policeman no find Yorky and Linda. I say you know all the time where Yorky and Linda are camped. You say: ‘Go to hell.’ Now I go crook. Whitefeller law is more strong than blackfeller law. What for you not tell the lubras and the young men where Yorky and Linda are camped? What for you all cunning fellers like this? Mrs Bell wasn’t a lubra. Yorky isn’t a blackfeller. Linda is a white child. Nothing to do with blackfeller law. You tell, eh?”