The next bullet hit the mud several yards immediately in front of Bony. He saw the tiny spurt of mud so disturbed, and found consolation in the obvious fact that the marksman could not see where his bullets hit, and so correct his errors, for the impact raised no dust. The following bullet informed him that the marksman was immediately to his front, and probably behind a low declivity between two humps.
To his complete bewilderment, therefore, he witnessed the appearance of a dark figure at a point at least two hundred feet to the right of this place; and the figure was a man who was waving something white. Then in the shimmering light haze he saw that the man was moving in a crouching manner along the foot of the dunes, and towards the place where the rifleman should be. Bony aimed at this position and fired, and was rewarded by the miniature avalanche of sand marring the face of the dune.
Now there was distinct movement on the top of the ridge between the dunes, and two things happened. A bullet plopped into the mud on Bony’s left, and the man at the foot of the dunes began to run, still crouching, towards where the marksman must be. He was stalking the rifleman, and had taken advantage to cover ground when knowing that the marksman was concentrating on his shooting.
Good man! Bony proceeded to assist him further by now and then claiming the rifleman’s full attention. The stalker entered a shadow, disappeared. A bullet plopped into the mud eighteen inches in front of Bony’s rifle muzzle, and he realized that, fortunately, bullets did not ricochet off mud. Then he saw the white fabric being waved atop a sand ridge much nearer the marksman, and Bony tried to dig a furrow across the ridge.
Minutes passed. The sun sank lower still, even more effectively blinding Bony, who could now see only by shading his eyes. Shortly afterwards even that was useless. Lying there utterly helpless while the sun sank behind the sand ridge were moments suspended for ever. Now the distant land was sharply silhouetted against the light; for the first time the odds were in Bony’s favour. The shadows were gone, the light shimmer was banished. He could see clearly the scar of the avalanche made by his bullet on the virgin face of the dune behind which lurked his adversary.
Then he saw a movement directly over his sights, and settled to make this a victory shot, stilling his nerves, freezing his arms and neck muscles while beginning the slow pressure on the trigger. This was it. He could actually see the top of the fellow’s head over the smaller blob of rifle muzzle resting on the sharply etched red sand line against the saffron sky. He knew now that the range was well under two hundred yards, and in his hands was a superb weapon. Conditions were ideal. Now to dispatch a high-velocity bullet into the brain of the killer!
One fraction of increased pressure on the trigger and the bullet would have been sped, one fraction of a second more would have achieved finality. But the second passed and the pressure was stopped, for just beyond the marksman rose that waving white object. It rose above the ridge, revealing the head and body of the man waving as he mounted the opposite slope. The man lifted his arm, and his hand held a rifle or a waddy. Whichever it was, it was brought downward with severe force.
Then on the summit was an aborigine waving vigorously for Bony to come on.
Reaction almost caused Bony to sob from sheer frustration. He wanted to shout oaths and curses. Having waited all that time, having exposed himself to bullets all about him, having come to the moment of equalization, to be frustrated by a damned abo!
Standing, he sloughed the mud from his clothes, and congratulated himself that there wasn’t a smear on the rifle. Turning about he saw Yorky and Meena still far out, the man continuing to carry the child, and when the storm of unreasoning anger subsided, he placed the rifle on the mud without a qualm and went back to meet them.
“He pinned me to the mud,” Bony said. “Just when I was able to let him have it, that blasted aborigine clouted him.”
Yorky, standing like Atlas, screwed his face into a peculiar expression, part admiration, part incredulity.
“You pinned him behind that sandhill, too, for a full hour. I’d sooner be talking to Linda than lyin’ where you was. Better get going, Inspector. This mud’ll turn to soup any minute.”
“Let me carry Linda. Edge round me and go first. That aborigine ... I must admit ... is our friend for life.”
“It’s Charlie,” Meena said, quietly, and with infinite pride. “He’s still waving.”
Yorky headed the short procession, swaying drunkenly with fatigue, and followed by Bony with Linda astride his shoulders. The mirage vanished into the miasma of nightmare, and the land of salmon-pink urged them off the rusty-iron Lake Eyre.
“I don’t want to see that ole lake again.”
“Neither do I, Linda. I like lakes with cool water, like your private lake out there. And when I reach a shower I’ll stay under it all night.”
“You can’t. Mr Wootton wouldn’t like you wasting all that water.”
“Wouldn’t he?”
“No. Mr Wootton is a careful man, my mother says.”
He set her down on the hard beach, and thankfully removed his mud shoes. Yorky and Meena were looking up at the laughing Charlie standing on the sand ridge, a white handkerchief about his neck.
Behind the ridge a white man sat with his knees hunched and his face resting on his arms. There was blood on the crown of his head. His rifle lay a dozen feet away, a Winchester.
“Is this the friend you were telling us about, Yorky?” asked Bony, and the little man looked vaguely about before nodding.
Chapter Twenty-six
Breaching a Wall
BEFORE THE dominant sun rose again, Bony was writing his report on the veranda at Mount Eden. He was wearing steel-blue silk pyjamas under a sky-blue dressing-gown, and although he had spent a full hour under the shower late the previous night, he had this morning showered again, and carefully tended his straight black hair.
At six a.m. through the french windows came Meena with tea and biscuits, and Bony found it difficult to reorientate this young woman wearing a white apron over a bright green dress, and red shoes clip-clopping on the veranda floor, with that girl in the once-white shorts who had accompanied him across miles of scabrous mud.
“Good morning, Meena! You’re looking delightfully fresh this morning. And how is Linda?”
“Like a crane with its head under a wing.” Meena smiled her own indescribable smile, which would live for ever in Bony’s memory. “Looks like she’ll sleep all day, too. What will happen to her?”
“Well, from what Mr Wootton said last night, I believe he intends to adopt Linda.”
“Make her his own little daughter! Oh, that’ll be beaut. Then she’ll be staying here for always?”
“Excepting when she will be away at school in Adelaide, and that will be some time ahead. Is Sarah happy to have Yorky back?”
This time the smile ended in gurgling laughter, and Meena managed to say:
“That Yorky! He was sitting in the kitchen after supper, and Sarah was all talk, talking at him. Suddenly he was fast asleep, and d’you know what? She picked him up like he was Linda and carried him to her room and put him to bed. And crying all the time, after all she said she’d do to him.”
“And did I see you and Charlie holding hands on the truck last night coming back from that hut?”
“I had to let him for a little while. Then old Murtee told him to stop. He said didn’t Charlie know I was your woman, that you bought by blackfeller trade with Canute. Went crook, ole Murtee did.” The smile began and quickly vanished. “That Murtee’s a bigger wowser than the missioner.”
“Now we are gossiping, Meena. Take away this tray and leave me to my writing. And don’t forget that you are my woman, not Charlie’s.”
Gazing into his stern face, so unbalanced by the twinkle in the blue eyes, she said with siren softness:
“I’m not arguing about that, Bony.”
Bony lit another cigarette, and discovered that concentration on the report demanded effort. He was busy, however, wh
en Sarah tapped her iron triangle, and a few minutes later the cattleman called him to breakfast.
“Feeling better for a good sleep?” Wootton asked and, on being assured, added: “What’s the drill today?”
“After breakfast, I’d like to talk to everyone,” replied Bony. “Might we have them all on the side veranda? Then we all go to Loaders Springs for statements to Constable Pierce. I told Pierce we’d be there at eleven.”
“We shall have to leave at nine.” Mr Wootton looked at Bony appealingly. “About Linda. Think you could help by supporting my application to adopt her? We spoke of it last night, remember, and Pierce was keen when he went off with his prisoner.”
“As far as I know there are no near relatives entitled to claim her. However, the authorities would have to be sure that she would be cared for properly. I have no doubt you could give that guarantee, and later today I’ll offer a few suggestions which should support you. Thank you, Meena, I’ll have bacon and soft fried eggs. Never again tinned meat. And, Meena, close the door.”
Linda had fallen asleep too confused and weary to probe Meena’s story of her mother having been bitten by a snake. She woke to find Bony sitting on the edge of the bed and nursing the replica of her mother.
“You are having breakfast in bed, Linda,” he said. “Meena is bringing it. Afterwards, we are all going to town to buy a present for Meena. But that’s a secret.”
“And see my mummy at the doctor’s? Is she better?”
“I’m afraid not. It was bad. It was too late and everyone was away at the time.”
Bony offered the doll, but what Linda saw in his eyes and face caused her to twist aside the bedclothes and seek warmer comfort in his arms. When Meena came with the breakfast tray the shock had been cushioned, and he left the child being coaxed to eat her breakfast.
Passing to the side veranda, he found Mr Wootton waiting with all his staff bar one, who was within Constable Pierce’s lock-up, and, having lit a cigarette, he said:
“It is not customary for an investigating officer to address all his original suspects at a gathering like this, but I decided to do so, chiefly because I’ve had to contend with grave obstruction built by loyalties.
“Loyalty, as you must know, is often in error, and is certainly not a virtue limited to one nation, one race or colour. About this you will agree as I proceed.
“On the morning that Mrs Bell was murdered, three men rode off to work on horses, one drove a truck for roofing-iron, and Mr Wootton left by car for town. When the men returned they found Mrs Bell shot dead, and Linda missing. It was a wild windy day, but they found tracks which they were sure were left by Yorky, and remember, before Mr Wootton returned and told them he had that morning found Yorky at the deserted aborigines’ camp.
“Then it was automatically accepted that Yorky was the murderer. Efforts were made to track him, but not until late next day could aborigines be brought back from Neales River, and sent to track Yorky early the following morning. There was only one man in everybody’s mind. Yorky. No other person was suspect, and so no other man’s tracks would have been of interest.
“On my arrival, I found universal anger that the crime had been committed, but an almost unanimous good opinion of the man who was thought to have committed it. Everyone told me that Yorky was a nice fellow, and that his last bender must have sent him crackers. Opportunity for murder was present, the means were proved, but the motive was hidden.
“What gave me furiously to think was the behaviour of the aborigines. They lost interest in tracking Yorky, gave up before it could be expected of them, in view of the fact that Yorky is a white man and that he had taken away a white child. Yorky was said to be very close to them by long association, and, were this so, then it could be assumed that they knew where he was hiding. Effort to prove this assumption gradually achieved results. I was confronted by two tasks: to find the murderer of Mrs Bell, and to locate Linda Bell.
“I don’t claim to be an anthropologist, but I do know that the aborigines in the central districts of Australia have been very much less influenced by the outside world than have the aborigines in the far north by the Melanesians and the Polynesians. These central Australian aborigines are being erroneously referred to as Stone Age men, when in fact they were thinkers and dreamers long before the Stone Age. The anthropological furrow ploughed across the Lake Eyre Basin by Spencer and Gillen at the end of the last century hasn’t since been deepened by a fraction of an inch in furthering our knowledge of this, the most ancient race. At risk of being reviled by the alleged experts in this field, I admit that I gained my first lead in my investigation from Chief Canute and his dijeridoo.
“All the aborigines, so I was assured, were away on walkabout at the time Mrs Bell was murdered, and yet blind Canute knew the shape of the bloodstain on the dead woman’s back. That the shape had been described to him by Yorky, or by any other white man, could not be seriously considered, because to a white man the shape would be relatively unimportant. Therefore, one aborigine did not go with the tribe on walkabout; one aborigine actually saw the body and the shape of the bloodstain, which he conveyed to Canute.
“I was compelled to employ unorthodox means of finding that particular aborigine. He is called Beeloo, a very old man for whom the walkabout was too much for his strength. Beeloo stayed behind and went a little walkabout alone. Coming to the day Mrs Bell was killed, he knew it was a Thursday, and that every Thursday Mr Wootton went to Loaders Springs. He knew that, save for Linda, Mrs Bell would be alone at the homestead, and he decided to ask her for a plug of tobacco.
“On reaching the homestead by his own devious way, he saw Yorky and Linda out on the lake, and he saw, too, a man riding away on the track taken by Arnold in his truck earlier that day. Unfortunately, distance, plus dust, plus mirage distortion, prevented him from identifying the rider or even the colour of the horse. He looked upon Mrs Bell’s body, and then believed that Yorky was involved in the murder, and, finally, he knew where Yorky was heading to gain sanctuary.
“This adventure of Beeloo’s was ultimately reported fully to Canute, and still I haven’t yet answered the question of why Canute pulled his young men off hunting for Yorky. Yorky isn’t a blackfeller, but Yorky was sealed into Canute’s tribe and was married to Sarah by aboriginal rites. So Yorky, despite his colour, is one of themselves, and consequently entitled to their loyalty. That loyalty would remain even if Yorky had killed Mrs Bell.
“I was like a man bushed until I tested the prints said to have been left by Yorky and proved them to be forgeries. By whom? Not by Yorky, but by another who had planned to inculpate Yorky. That man must be he who was seen riding away. He was one of the three stockmen who had ridden from the homestead before Mr Wootton left, or someone from the station to the south of Mount Eden.
“At the time Yorky came back from town, I reasoned that he might know of the northern rivers in flood and yet be unaware of the seriousness of the flooding. I reasoned that the horseman seen by Beeloo would know where Yorky was going, would know about the flood-water sweeping into Lake Eyre, and be well aware of the probability of Yorky and the child being isolated on a sandbank in the centre, and therefore doomed. Lastly, I gambled that if he knew that I was to bring Yorky and Linda back from the lake, he himself would be endangered, and would make a move to stop us, and to disclose himself.
“I made that early broadcast so that that man would know my intention to seek out Yorky. The murderer had built an edifice to safeguard himself, and he knew it would crash to dust once I contacted Yorky.
“What he didn’t know is that, had he remained inactive, he might have got away with murder for lack of sufficient evidence to put him into the dock.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
A Present for Charlie
WOULD YOU care to tell your story, Yorky, or shall I?” Bony asked.
The little man was sitting on the floor, with his back against the house wall, and beside him sat the enormous Sarah. Finding him
self the object of general attention, Yorky swiftly looked down at his legs and was shaking his head when Sarah replied for him.
“You been tellin’ stories goodo, Inspector Bonaparte. You tell em’ better’n my ole fren Yorky.”
“Very well, Sarah. Yorky says that when Mr Wootton left him that morning at the camp, he started off for the homestead, but that shot of whisky given by the boss made him a little sleepy. So, before reaching the homestead gate, he slept for a period he cannot estimate, in the shade of a tree.
“Still jittery, he staggered on to the homestead, where he remembers seeing a saddled horse tethered to the yard gate, took little notice of it, and proceeded direct to the open door of the kitchen.
“There he heard voices within, voices raised in angry argument. A man was accusing Mrs Bell of encouraging him, and Mrs Bell was loudly denying anything of the kind. Not wishing to intrude or be discovered listening, Yorky dropped his heavy swag and leaned his Winchester rifle against it, intending to find Linda and talk with her for a little while. He says that when passing the office on the way to the playhouse, he noticed the key in the closed door, and remembered that Mr Wootton sometimes kept a bottle in the office. To use his own words, he was feeling ‘bloody terrible.’
“I think that in Yorky’s condition I might have succumbed to the same temptation. Anyway, Yorky entered the office and he found a bottle, a full bottle of whisky. He intended to take just one hearty nip and replace the bottle exactly where it was, but the nip was so hearty that the tide ebbed by one-third before he realized that a tiddler’s mouthful was actually a whale’s.
“He was sitting in the boss’s chair, and talking to an imaginary companion, when he heard the shot. At first he thought it was the boss shooting crows. Then he remembered that Mr Wootton had gone to town. He decided he had better leave the office, and found difficulty in recalling exactly where the bottle had stood before the tide went out.
Bony Buys a Woman Page 18
