Bony Buys a Woman

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Eventually he left the office and carefully closed the door, and I believe him when he says he was partially blinded by the sunlight, and that he didn’t see Mrs Bell lying on the ground until about to trip over her body. He heard sounds inside the house, which, I’ve no doubt, was the transceiver being smashed. Befuddled with whisky, still a little blinded by the sunlight, he says he picked up his rifle and swag, and was intending to clear out, when Harry Lawton appeared and said: ‘By crikey, Yorky, what the hell did you shoot her for? You must be crackers.’

  “Such was Yorky’s mental state that he gazed with terror at the weapon in his hands, then at the body. From the confusion of mind emerged one idea. His rifle was his dearest possession; he had cleaned it the morning before Mr Wootton had stopped at the camp, and now, sniffing at the muzzle, he could register the smell of the expended cartridge.

  “He said, dully: ‘Yair, I must be.’

  “Lawton said: ‘You killed her all right. I saw you fire. I rode over from the yard to see Mrs Bell about me lunch I’d forgotten to take out, and I saw you. I don’t want to be mixed up with it, Yorky. You better clear out and keep going.’

  “Yorky panicked. He filled his gunny-bag with rations and cooked foods, and said he’d cross the lake to an island he knew of in the middle. Lawton asked how he was going to stay there without food and water, and Yorky told him there were rabbits, and that he could find water.

  “It would appear that Lawton was greatly concerned about Yorky, and Yorky told him there were rations in the hut on the south end of the boundary fence. Lawton assured Yorky that he would replenish the food at the hut, that Yorky wasn’t to worry. Just stay out on his island. And he had better take the kid with him.

  “Yorky says that he argued against taking Linda, and that he was overruled into doing so. He was tormented still by the effects of a long carousal, partly revived by a small dose of whisky, and more than revived by too much in too short a time. We can imagine his state if we cannot wholly sympathize with him. Always a quick thinker, Lawton found it easy to think for Yorky, telling him that mates have to stick together, that he would do all he could to put off the trackers and the dirty coppers, and so on. ‘Yorky’s good friend!’

  “Lawton knew what Yorky in his condition did not know, that the floods were about to enter the lake. He foresaw that Yorky on his island would wake one morning to find it surrounded by water, and would be marooned there. And, finally, Linda opened two doors for him.

  “Having shot Mrs Bell, he knew he would have to destroy Linda, for although the child had not appeared, he could not risk her seeing him cross to his horse and ride away. The shooting of Mrs Bell had, been done in mad lustful anger. It was with cold deliberate purpose that Lawton determined that Yorky take Linda with him, for then she would drown with him.

  “All this came out in his confession last night to Constable Pierce. He was a young man who ought never to live in conditions of such isolation—not without a woman. When he was stopped from interfering with the lubras, he stood on the brink of an abyss, when he turned his mind to the only woman at Mount Eden. I have no doubt his claim that she encouraged his advances was due to imagination. All the men absent, he returned to conquer by compulsion, and when Mrs Bell ran from him he thought she was running to Linda. About to rush after her, he found the swag with the rifle leaning against it, snatched up the rifle, pumped a cartridge into the breach and fired. Recognizing Yorky’s swag, he wiped off his own fingerprints, and put the weapon back where it had been, and before finding Yorky, re-entered the house to smash radio and telephone.

  “Now to tidy up the plan which almost evolved itself. Yorky said he would have to get his mud shoes. Lawton urged him to collar Linda from the playhouse while he went to Yorky’s room for the boards. There was more quick thinking now when confronted by the desperate urge to get Yorky away with Linda. Obtaining the mud shoes, he met Yorky coming from the playhouse, carrying the child, and he hurried them round the back of the office to avoid the body. And, lastly, now knowing that the boss had seen Yorky, and in order to make sure it would be known Yorky was at the homestead, he obtained a pair of Yorky’s old boots and made the prints for Bill Harte and others to see.

  “Although Yorky could not remember shooting Mrs Bell, he was bullied into thinking he must have done. Lawton knew that his ‘frame’ would collapse once I found Linda and Yorky. When he knew I was about to do that, he determined to prevent the four of us ever getting off the mud, and on learning from Yorky that the shortest track from his island came in at the boundary hut, he anticipated we would return that way. He had taken rations and the dolls to that hut for Yorky to collect.

  “Now, Charlie, you tell.”

  Charlie’s round face rippled into a wide smile.

  “Well, Inspector, you told me to fox Harry Lawton and do nothing only if he started shooting somebody. After you went out on the mud I was watching Harry, when Meena jawed me about making her some mud shoes for her to go after you. That Meena! Time I done them shoes for her, Harry and the rest have cleared out, and I asked the boss where Harry went. The boss said to Yorky’s old fence hut down south.

  “All the spare horses are gone, too, so I had to walkabout down there, and it’s sundown when I came to the camp, and Harry’s cookin’ a feed for himself. Doin’ what you said, just fox him, I has to do a perish that night, and next day late, when Harry mooches over to the lake sand dunes, I gets me chance at tucker in the hut.

  “In the afternoon I seen Harry mucking about with caseboards, and I knows what he’s up to. But he don’t do nothing that night, and the next morning he’s gone. I track him to the lake and see where he’s taken to the dingo pad, but I can’t see him ’cos the sun’s in me eyes.”

  Charlie burst into prolonged chuckling.

  “There’s me sitting like a crow on a windmill, and there’s Harry out there with a rifle what I haven’t got. I can’t fox him on the mud, so I goes to the hut to get a feed and a drink. After that, I lie on the dunes waiting for Harry to come back, but he don’t, and next day I decides I’d better get back to the homestead and tell the boss all about it, even if I been told not to tell anyone anything about Harry.

  “I’m on me way along the beach when I hears shooting out on the lake. So I rushed back. Then I sees Harry well out. The sun’s my way, and I can see he’s coming to the shore, and fast. He’s still got his rifle, so I burrows up and watches him. Then I see the Inspector comin’ after him, a long way back. Harry gets to land, whips off his shoes and runs for the sandhills. There’s a shot and Harry gets it in his leg. He gets to cover and starts shooting, so I has to creep up behind him, and at the same time tell the Inspector it’s me what’s doin’ the stalkin’.”

  Once again Charlie broke into chuckling laughter.

  “I got him okee all right. Right on the bonk.”

  When the Mount Eden party left town for the Mission, Constable Pierce went with them. The Mission wore its Sunday atmosphere, for it was after four o’clock, and none of the children were in evidence. The doors of the little church were wide, and at the main entrance waited the Missioner to greet the visitors.

  Between him and Bony with Wootton and Pierce was a short conference, then the Missioner entered the church, and Arnold said to Charlie:

  “Come on, you. You’re for it.”

  Charlie, who was wearing a white cotton shirt and flannel trousers, might have been going to the guillotine, and after he left there appeared the Missioner’s wife, who brought a colourful garland of flowers which she placed around Meena’s neck. Wearing a white silk dress, patterned with red roses, nylon stockings and white shoes, all of which Mr Wootton had that day bought for her, Meena recoiled with startled eyes on receiving this token of distinction.

  “What’s it all mean?” she asked Bony, who had slipped her arm through his own. “You’re married already. You told me.”

  “By right, Meena, Yorky should be doing this,” he said, and Constable Pierce laughed and nudged
Yorky. “But as you are my woman, I have the honour of giving you away at your wedding. Everything has been arranged. Mr Wootton is going to build you a cottage at Mount Eden, so that you may keep an eye on him and Linda.”

  Linda, wearing her favourite pink dress, smiled shyly at her pretty Meena.

  The church was filled by the Mission children. Charlie and his best man were waiting, and the Missioner’s wife was playing the organ. With Meena on his right arm, and Linda’s hand on his left, Bony walked the one and only aisle.

  Charlie was stunned; Bony presented him with the golden ring, which he was still admiring when Linda reminded him to put it on Meena’s finger.

  In the vestry Charlie and his bride signed the register, then Meena turned about to the smiling Bony, her eyes twin black opals, and flung her arms about his neck, kissed him hard and more than once. The astonishment of the onlookers turned to merriment when Charlie laughed so heartily that he had to regain control to shout:

  “That Meena.”