No footprints in the bush b-8

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Pardon me! Kindly desist, Mr McPherson.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Greek Meets Greek

  “THANK you, Mr McPherson. Remain quite still,” Bony requested. “The reason why I am refraining from pressing hard on the trigger is not because I have strong views against capital punishment. Thank you, Burning Water. Make very sure that Mr McPherson has no other weapon about his clothes. To continue: I always have great sympathy for the dependants of murdered people, and none whatever for the murderers. I regard the life of a murderer as of no more value than the life of a snake.”

  Burning Water had taken from Rex’s hip pocket a dainty but efficient automatic pistol, and now with practised hands he examined the weapon and found it was fully loaded.

  “Now, my brother, maintain strict attention to Mr McPherson. I am aware you want to shoot, but don’t forget the inconvenience which might follow the report of a shot,” urged Bony.

  “Charming fellows,” sneered Rex.

  Bony turned now to Flora who, still breathing rapidly and white-faced, was staring incredulously from Bony to Burning Water and back again to Bony.

  “A little sip of brandy, eh, Miss McPherson?” he asked. “Two sips for you: six for me.”

  She tried to speak, failed, and began to cry. She was suffering from terrible reaction. Her hands were trembling.

  “You will be better in a minute,” Bony predicted. “It is seldom that I touch spirits, but this evening I must take a glass of Mr McPherson’s brandy. I am not so well as usual. Ah, that’s better! Now for a cigarette. Ah, that’s still better. We aren’t out of the bog yet, but you are comparatively safe. You are going home with Burning Water. Tonight you will have to travel far and fast, and you will require all your strength. Will you take another sip or two of brandy?”

  Flora shook her head. The trembling of her hands had subsided. There was growing colour in her ashen face.

  “Oh Bony, thank heaven you’ve come. I-I-”

  “Trust old Bony to do his stuff,” he said, smiling. “That is not my expression. It has been used by those of my critics who are more direct than elegant.”

  Now he knelt before her and, without asking permission, proceeded to remove her shoes and place on her feet the Kurdaitcha boots he slipped from his own feet. The shoes he joined together by knotting the laces, and then placed them in her hands, saying:

  “You must take these with you. Burning Water and I have planned every detail of your escape, and you must try to ask no questions because time is of vital importance.”

  He stood up and regarded her with an encouraging smile.

  Looking up at him, Flora was startled by his appearance. He was wearing only a pair of trousers. Nevin’s black shirt was wrapped about his right foot, and she had seen him limping badly when he went to the table for the brandy and the cigarettes.

  “Go on, Rex, do something,” Burning Water urged.

  Rex McPherson laughed, and he laughed as Flora had heard him laughing in the old days.

  “You’d like to shoot, wouldn’t you,” he said, with his teeth bared. “You’d be signing your own and Flora’s death warrants if you did. But my turn will come again.”

  “I doubt it, Mr McPherson,” Bony said.

  Now he proceeded to examine the walls behind the stretched scarlet cloth masking the wired walls of cane-grass, makinghimself sure there were no other exits from the room other than that by which they had entered. He moved the table and set two chairs opposite each other. The brandy and glasses and the box of cigarettes he placed to his satisfaction.

  “If Mr McPherson would take the chair opposite. Back, Mr McPherson. Careful, Burning Water. Conduct Mr McPherson until I take over.”

  “Quite like the pictures, isn’t it?” Rex sneered.

  “More so, Mr McPherson. Much more so. On the screen the guns aren’t really loaded,” Bony told him, continuing to place emphasis on the title. “Kindly keep your hands on the table and remember that any involuntary contraction of my forefinger will cause an explosion. Burning Water you must start without further delay. Bring my rifle and place it against my left leg. Good! I can now keep my eyes on Mr McPherson and the entrance. We shall be quite comfortable.”

  “What kind of game are you playing?” asked Rex.

  “I will be happy to explain it later. We have plenty of time. Now, Miss McPherson and Burning Water, off you go.”

  The girl came and stood behind Bony.

  “But why aren’t you coming, too?” she asked. “You can’t stay here. There’s at least twenty Illprinka men about. You’ll never get away from them once they know you’re here.”

  “There is little reason to be concerned about me, Miss McPherson.” Then in tones she had never heard him use, he added: “Now be off. You are wasting time, Burning Water! Get going at once.”

  Rex watched the chief and Flora pass out by pushing aside the edge of the cane-grass curtain, and then he laughed.

  “How fard’youexpect Flora to get tonight? She’ll drop with fatigue when they’ve travelled ten miles. And if she’s able to get twenty miles before sun-up my bucks will catch up with them. You must be a fool if you think those Kurdaitcha boots will stop the Illprinka tracking them.”

  “Thank you for your cigarettes, Mr McPherson. I was perishing for a smoke. You may be correct in your prognostications, but their fulfilment or otherwise will hardly concern us. Of more immediate concern is ourselves. We have a long night to get through without boring each other. I overheard you telling the guard he could go to his quarters and camp for the night. The lubra was less willing to obey a similar order. She hung about outside the curtain for some considerable time, and I was beginning to think it necessary to club her when she departed and later her snoring could be heard. Now, provided you behave yourself, we can be assured of peace and content till breakfast time arrives.”

  “Then, I think, we will both die-you first.”

  “Melodramatic, eh?”

  “Life itself is melodramatic.”

  “There’s comedy, too. Why are you staying here? Why not have trussed and gagged me, or, as Burning Water suggested, have taken me some distance away and then murdered me?”

  “There are objections to either course,” Bony replied. “Two days ago I was bitten on the foot by a saltbush snake. Burning Water was quick but not quick enough. Then, whilst he was attending to me, there was an intrusion by two Illprinka blacks who had to be dealt with. I am, in consequence of the snake bite and the condition of the wound, almost too lame to cross this room. My forced role is to keep you entertained as long as possible.”

  “We must talk about something, I suppose.”

  “By all means. Let’s talk about you, shall we?”

  “If the subject interests you. Make a start.”

  “Thank you. Tell me how you worked Itcheroo to steal from my swag Sergeant Errey’s attache case.”

  “Yes, that’s a beginning,” assented Rex, lighting a cigarette of the dozen Bony pushed towards him from the box. There was vibration in his voice betraying seething anger, and the struggle to speak calmly evidently was made in order to maintain equality with Bonaparte’s self-control.

  “When a magic man of the Illprinka party I had on hand to make sure no evidence survived the tragic accident to the car, informed me through another magic man that you had been a witness, and that you had picked up from the ground a flat and square object, I knew it must be a case of some kind. I then sent a communication to Itcheroo about it, telling him to meet you and Burning Water and see if either of you carried such a case. If not, then the case would be in your luggage. He was to obtain it if possible and burn it.

  “I understand that he, having great power over a housemaid named Ella, persuaded her to take it from your swag whilst you were in the bathroom. Itcheroo subsequently burned the case and its contents. How did you come to associate Itcheroo with the theft?”

  “I found Itcheroo the following morning sitting beside a little fire and
sending thought messages. In the fire were still remnants of the case and the sergeant’s notebooks.”

  Rex regarded Bony steadily. He was beginning to understand that this quiet man was superior to a police tracker. Contempt was being replaced by a degree of respect which in turn aroused fear.

  “Itcheroo got a nasty crack from one of the horses, didn’t he?” he asked.

  “Itcheroo was killed.”

  “Oh! Well, perhaps that was fortunate.”

  “I am inclined to think it was for you less fortunate than you believe.”

  The clock chimed ten and Rex glanced at it.

  “Itcheroo could have told many tales. So could Mit-ji. I am like all the great kings. When a man becomes dangerous, remove him. If one doesn’t he will removeone. I would have brought Itcheroo here in the plane, but he was tired or something and you people were in a great hurry. It was quite an exciting finish, that race, wasn’t it?”

  “Very. I am glad to know that Itcheroo did not kill Miss McPherson. She was, of course, unconscious when he was carrying her?”

  “Of course. He clubbed her. Too severely, the fool. Flora was unconscious for two days. Poor girl!”

  “I agree, Mr McPherson. You know, you puzzle me. You were reared by two doting grandparents and an easy father. They provided you with plenty of money. You could have gone high, and yet you threw it all to the winds. Seldom has any boy and young man been so greatly favoured.”

  “Favoured!” sneered Rex, leaning towards Bony. “Favoured, my foot! How the helld’you make that out?”

  “Even when your income was stopped through the action of a dishonest trustee, you could eventually have become your father’s partner, and then owner of McPherson’s Station.”

  The crimson base of Rex’s complexion was swiftly more evident when at last anger was beating down his self-control.

  “It all sounds all right, doesn’t it?” he said, heatedly.“Money! Money can’t make our skins white, can it? Money can’t even prevent us being insulted, regarded either as dangerous animals or pet poodles. You know that. You must know it. We can’t mix on equality with white people.”

  “But,” interposed Bony, “you and I and others like us can put on the armour of pachyderms. People who try to insult me because of my birth never hurt me. In fact, they provide human study that interests me. I am always interested by the unfortunate people who suffer from the inferiority complex which they so clearly reveal by using insulting words and by being snobbish. Far from being hurt, I am always pleased because it is an acknowledgment of my superiority to them. I still don’t understand why you, having the advantages you did have, should have cast yourself outside the pale.”

  “No? Then you must be dense or ignorant, or satisfied with being a lackey to the whites,” Rex said, still heated. Bony was not to know it, but Rex was now become the old self known to Flora. His eyes were flashing. “The money was a curse, not a blessing,” he went on. “When I first went to school and they knew I had money to burn, my school mates crowded me like the born spongers they were. I was invited to their homes, but if I smiled at their sisters the girls would vanish. Behind my back they called me the nigger. I was worse off than if I’d been a full blood. And, to get down to a base, whose fault was it? Is your father still alive?”

  “I never knew him,” Bony answered. “Keep your hands well forward on the table.”

  “I know mine,” snapped Rex. “For what I am he is to blame. I hate him. I’ve hated him ever since that day I really saw myself for the first time. A fellow called me a dirty half-caste and we fought. I sent him to hospital, but he mauled me and I was attending to my face with the aid of a mirror. I wasn’t dirty, but I was a half-caste. I hated myself that day, but I hated my father much more.

  “Why did I run off with Flora? Why did I get money by forging his name to cheques? Why did I come here and carve for myself a station and steal the old man’s cattle to stock it with? Why-oh blast! Why everything? Because I hate him. Because I am going to force the whites to respect me. Because I am going to make them acknowledge me as an equal. A dirty half-caste, eh? Well, I’m going to prove that a half-caste is as clever as any white man.”

  “How?” asked Bony, and with his left hand he reached for the brandy and a glass. It was eleven-thirty, and he was feeling deadly weary.

  “How!”Rex almost shouted. “To date I haven’t been ruthless enough. From now on I’m going to have no mercy on anyone. I’ll have no mercy on Flora tomorrow when my bucks fetch her back. As for you, you interfering fool, your finish will come in a way you won’t like. Then I am going to get McPherson’s Station and add all this open country to it. After that I’ll join the Illprinka to the Wantella people. I’ll train the bucks to be soldiers. And then, if the government sends police or soldiers against me I’ll engage in a war.

  “I won’t have a chance, eh? I’ll have every chance to win. What about the Boers? What about the Abyssinians and now the Chinese? They weren’t licked easily. And even if I lose I’ll go down as the man who avenged the aborigines.

  “Why should the damn lordly whites take all Australia from the aborigines?” he demanded to know, and would not wait for an answer from the man opposite him who was himselffighting to subdue the mental lethargy threatening him.

  “But I’m not standing for it, d’youhear?” Rex banged the table with his clenched fists. “I’m going to hit back before I’m finished. I’m going to leave my mark on Australia, to be remembered for hundreds of years either as the Australian Cattle King or the Avenger of the Aborigines. And you-well, as you’re in the same boat with me, I’ll give you a chance. What about joining me? What about being my Chief of Staff? Your name, too, would be remembered.”

  Bony was perturbed by the necessity of bringing his mind to bear on the suggestion. Reaching for a cigarette, he said:

  “If you hadn’t attempted to run, if you had been content to walk, you would have gone far towards achieving that ambition of yours. Where you have failed-”

  “I haven’t failed,” shouted Rex, springing to his feet, oblivious of the automatic pointed at him. “I haven’t started yet.”

  “Where you have failed,” continued Bony, “is by not recognizing forces which neither you nor I, nor a million like us, can withstand. I refer to the forces of human evolution. Just wait and let me have my say. Sit down. I’m not forgetting to watch you. That’s better. Why have the Australian blacks become submerged? Why have the Abyssinians been conquered? Because humanity is no different from the animals and the insects in the jungles. There the strong devour the weak. It is the same in the human world. The weak go to the wall. Those who will not struggle to survive, will not compete with competitors, must go under.

  “You cannot, as one man, realize that fantastic dream of yours of avenging past crimes against the aborigines. You can’t as Rex McPherson, everbecome the Cattle King of Australia. You have incurred a debt for the murder of Sergeant Errey and those others, and civilization will exact payment. You will ask me to join you. My dear fellow, I understand your hatred of the whites, even your hatred of your father. But you have tried to conquer your enemies with bombs and you threaten to try again with guns and trained aborigines. I have conquered my enemies with my mind as a gun and knowledge as ammunition. You have tried to move a mountain; I have succeeded in moving a grain of sand.”

  “Give me a drink, as I suppose I mustn’t reach for the bottle,” Rex urged. The tip of his tongue was passing across his lips and on his wide browglistened drops of perspiration.

  “Water?” asked Bony.

  “A little.”

  There followed a long silence, punctuated by the ticking clock. They smoked incessantly and occasionally drank. Then the clock struck twelve, and presently Rex said:

  “Whybe a fool? If you joined up with me we could do great things. You’re a thinker. I can see that. You can have no hope of getting away from here, even if you shoot me.”

  Now before retiring to her bed of gum-leaves,
Tootsey had eaten an enormous dinner. Her dreams, therefore, were of violence so terrible that she awoke at last and lay trembling and cold. And in this state of wide wakefulness, she heard Rex McPherson’s shouted speech, not a word of which could she understand. Despite the colour of her skin and her race, she was naturally curious, and the shouted words she could hear indicated that Rex boss was taming the white woman. Tootsey decided to observe how the taming was proceeding.

  Leaving her bed of gum-leaves, she tip-toed to the curtain of cane-grass which she found being gently swung inward by the light south wind. By lying down she could see into the living-room every time the curtain was swung inward, and what she saw interested her exceedingly. The magnificent “boss,” arrayed in resplendent evening clothes, was certainly in one of his tempers, but what intrigued Tootsey was the fact that he did not seem to be angry with the strange man who was seated at the table pointing a pistol at the boss.

  The absence of Flora did not have much weight with Tootsey, but the fact that Rexboss was standing when a pistol was aimed at him had great weight. Tootsey knew that pistols could send men back into the trees and stones from which they had first come as spirit babies, and she didn’t want Rexboss to be sent back into such a place.

  Back in a tree, or a stone, or an ant hill, Rexboss could not provide her with such lovely dresses, and she was sure that if the strange man killed him the supply of white man’s tucker, especially the sugar, would end. That must not be, and she crept away to arouse the Illprinka men.

  The chief and two others accompanied her back to the entrance and looked under the curtain when the breeze lifted it. Being a crafty man, the chief clearly foresaw what would happen if they rushed into the room. Rexboss would go back into a stone or something, and no longer would he be head man, because under Rex boss’s protection he had committed many tribal crimes.