Motioning those with him to withdraw, he conscripted an aborigine who had assisted Rexboss to build the “house” and who knew how to use wire-cutters and wire. With this man, he went to the back of the room in which Flora had slept, and ordered the other to make a hole through the wall of wire-netting and cane-grass. When he crawled through the opening into the bedroom, the clock in the outer wall struck twice.
“Oh yes,” Rex was continuing, his voice raised almost to shouting. “After my plans mature I’ll be strong enough to defy the government. In this heart of the continent, I’ll be supreme. If I’m let alone I’ll be peaceful: if not, I’ll sting worse than a million scorpions.”
He could see the Illprinka chief creeping soundlessly across the floor towards Bony. Bony was sitting listlessly with his back to the stalker, the night taxing his endurance weakened by pain and fatigue. Rex went on, now smilingly:
“I think I’ll take you to about five thousand feet and tip you out, my friend. Then you will have time to think of your stupid refusal to join me. I’ll do that with Flora, when I’m tired of her, and old Burning Water, too.”
The Illprinka man made no sound when he rose to his feet at Bony’s back. Had Bony been normal he would have “sensed” the presence of the man. He was too late.
A black arm flashed over and down one shoulder and swept aside the pistol. Another encircled Bony’s neck and pressed hard against the powerful chest.
Rex pounced upon the pistol, and then danced away from the table, shouting threats and oaths and commands. Bony struggled to rise but failed. The lamplight flickered. The ticking of the clock became the sound of a hammer in his ears.
Chapter Twenty-four
Flight
FLORA’S reactions to the immediate prospect of escape and the distant prospect of safety and assured security were akin to the beginning of intoxication. She wanted to laugh, to shout, even to dance. Then she wanted to shriek with laughter at the absurd shoes of emu feathers on her feet. Fortunately for her, Bony’s feet were small and their use of the shoes had shaped them almost to fit her.
“Quiet!” breathed the Chief of the Wantella Tribe.
The stars were bright. The new moon hung low above the cane-grass and lantana country behind them. The walking was easy, for Burning Water kept to the claypans. He walked fast, and the girl was obliged to step more quickly to keep with him. When they had been walking for half an hour, he said:
“We expected difficulty with dogs, but Rex must have been afraid that dogs about his camp might betray it. It was good for us.”
“That’s strange,” Flora said. “Only now do I remember never having heard a dog bark once all the time I was there. But never mind the dogs, or their absence. Tell me what Bony is going to do back there with Rex. Why didn’t he come with us?”
“It is wise not to talk too much when it is sure an avenging party will come after us,” Burning Water said, and Flora knew by his voice that the subject of Bony was painful to him.
Despite the rubbing of the Kurdaitcha shoes every time her feet passed each other, despite the fact that they were so light and the ground so smooth, already her feet were beginning to ask for the accustomed leather shoes withcuban heels. Sinews and little bones in her feet were beginning to ache a little when Burning Water stopped.
“We will sit down and rest,” he said, and squatted on his heels.
“Rest!” she echoed. “Not yet, surely?”
“For five or ten minutes. It will help to keep strength.”
She sat on the warm ground beside him. Then she asked: “Are you tired?”
“No.” After a short period of silence he added: “But my heart is tired.”
“For Bony? Do you fear greatly for him?”
“Chief Illawalli was wise when he made Bony a great man among us, Miss McPherson,” Burning Water strongly affirmed. “Two nights ago a saltbush snake bit him: bit him on the foot. I did what I could-quick. Before I could finish with the treatment, I had to kill two Illprinka men who were waiting for dark to go and get a message dropped from Captain Loveacre’s aeroplane. The delay gave the poison a chance. Last night we travelled twenty miles to the cane-grass. Bony was very sick, and towards morning his foot pained much.”
“A saltbush snake! They’re deadly, aren’t they?”
“Yes. All today he lay deep in a fox hole which I covered with bush. I went looking for Rex’s house. We had no water. Then I saw the clothed lubra come out of one place and go into another place in the cane-grass, and I knew that was where you must be. I saw Rex come out and go into a big shadow, long and fairly low, and I knew that was where his aeroplane was. After dark I got water and took it to Bony. We waited. We daren’t make a fire to make tea. Then we crept close to the camp and began to watch.”
“Oh! Being so sick he ought to have come with us.”
“It is what I told him,” asserted Burning Water. “He said no. He said we would have to travel far and fast before day broke. He said he’d only be a drag on us, what with his sickness and bad leg. So he is staying behind to keep Rex from giving the alarm as long as possible.”
“How will he escape from Rex and the Illprinka men?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he’ll be able to. I wanted to take Rex some way into the bush and cut his black throat, but Bony said that would be murder. I suppose it would, white-fellow law, but I don’t think it would be murder when it means Rex or Bony. In the morning that clothed lubra will find him there and tell the Illprinka men. He’s hoping to keep Rex from doing anything till morning comes. We must get on.”
“How far have we come?”
“About six miles,” he replied.
“Six miles! Only six miles! What is the time? Do you know?”
“By the stars I should say it is about eleven o’clock. Would you like a drink of water?”
“Please.”
Soon after the beginning of the third stage, Flora felt yielding sand beneath her Kurdaitchashoes, and she felt herself walking up an incline. Presently she saw the curved back of a sand-dune against the sky. The hand claspingher own tightened, and her guide said:
“Walk on your toes and lift your feet high. We are crossing the rump of a great headland. We’ll come down to the valley again in about half a mile.”
When for the third time Burning Water stopped to rest, she asked if she might wear her leather shoes inside the masses of feathers. Burning Water took time to consider the matter. He found grounds for arguing for and against, and he decided in favour because speed was the first essential. On his knees, he assisted the girl with her footwear. Then:
“A little water?”
“Please: I wish it were coffee. Don’t you?”
“I do. But we daren’t make a fire to brew coffee. And I could never brew coffee like old Mrs McPherson used to.”
When for the fourth time they stopped, she said weakly:
“Oh, my feet are terrible. My legs are all stabbing pains.”
“Liestill, Miss McPherson,” he urged. “We’ll stay here for about twenty minutes, no longer. We have come only about eleven miles.”
“Do you know where we are?”
“Oh, yes. We are close to the south side of the valley. We’ll have to cross the valley presently to gain the north side, and then we will have to look out when walking through the bush not to step on an Illprinka man. On the claypans it’s safer, because the blacks won’t be camped so far from shelter from the night wind.”
“O-o-h! My poor feet!”Flora softly exclaimed. “I’m sorry, Burning Water. I’ve no right to complain.”
“I am hardened to walking, Miss McPherson. It makes a great difference. I’m sorry, but time is up.”
Her own shoes certainly gave her a measure of relief, and now Burning Water pulled her arm through his crooked arm, and although she tried hard to maintain independence of action, she found herself increasingly placing her weight on him. The travelling became rough, deep water gutters barring their passage, and down and over and up these
gutters Burning Water carried her. Save for the gutters the way was ever clear, for although she was blinded by the darkness, he appeared able to see as well as a night animal.
She had lost count of the number of short halts, but actually it was at the termination of the sixth halt, when they had walked seventeen miles and it was three o’clock in the morning, that her legs refused longer to serve her.
“I can’t-oh, I can’t go on,” she sobbed.
“Don’t worry, Miss McPherson,” he told her, although he was beginning to dread seeing the first sign of approaching day. He stung the rifle across his back and then, stooping, he lifted her in his arms.
“Let me down, please,” she requested without a trace of urgency. “I mustn’t give in. I mustn’t be a child. Let me down.”
“Lie quiet, Miss McPherson. You are not heavy.”
“Aren’t I? You’re so strong, Burning Water, and so kind. And don’t call me Miss McPherson. I would rather you call me Flora.”
“Thank you-Flora. Perhaps tonight it would be all right. Tomorrow, when the day is bright, you will again be Miss McPherson, the mistress of McPherson’s Station. I will be just Burning Water. You know, away back in the old days, when I called the McPherson Donald or Don, and we used to fight and make our noses bleed, old Mrs McPherson would say: ‘Now, you boys come into the kitchen for a scolding.’ And we both would say, ‘All right, mother, and after thescolding will you give us a slab of toffee?’ She always did.”
She could see his head silhouetted against the sky, the head crowned by the tufted hair, but when she closed her eyes it was so easy to forget that he was an aborigine. Grave and thoughtful, he yet could delight in playing that game with a small child, when his task was to blow down a “chook house” of matches built on his stomach. He carried Flora fully half a mile before he put her down.
“We mustn’t stop,” he told her, his breath hissing. “Now please don’t think I’m being familiar, but I am going to put my arm round your waist and help you along.”
There began again the agonizing torture of lifting her feet, pushing them forward, putting her weight on them.
“Are we going to any particular place?” she asked.
“Yes. A place where we can defy all the Illprinka men and wait for Captain Loveacre and Dr Whyte to find us and pick us up in the aeroplane. We have to get there before Rex’s Illprinka bucks catch up.”
“Is it-is it much farther to go?” she asked, dully.
“Another seven miles.”
“Seven miles. Oh, I can’t. How far have we come?”
“Nearly eighteen miles, I think. We have travelled fast, as Bony told us to. You have done well, Flora.”
Time came to have no meaning. She was dimly conscious of walking on a treadmill, and suddenly this stopped and she found herself lying on a soft mattress. She thought she was on the south veranda of the homestead, and she tried to recollect when she had had the mattress taken there. Then she saw the silhouette of Burning Water’s head and realized she was being carried. Presently that period passed into blissful sleep which in turn passed to the consciousness that again she was being held up whilst her legs were moving and her feet were scuffling across hard claypan.
She was amazed to find it was daylight. The sky ahead was rose-tinted, and in the rosy glow were tiny puff clouds stained all gold. The valley lay stretched to the far horizon which was on fire. They were skirting the feet of the bulging slopes rising to the northern high land. The sun was about to rise.
“How much farther?” she asked piteously.
“Less than three miles,” Burning Water replied, his voice anxious, his magnificent body drooping. “You see that headland beyond the tobacco-bush? That’s sanctuary.”
He had carried the girl for half-mile stages, and had been obliged to support her and almost drag her in between those stages. It made no mark on Flora’s mind that they were following the centre of a long line of claypans, that the walking was easy on this cement-hard surface. She did not know that keeping to the bush towards the centre of the valley were several stalking Illprinka men, members of Rex’s screen, that these men were fresh and strong and that their own pace was less than a mile an hour. Nor did she see those men, five in number, leave the bush and begin to run towards them as though intending to prevent their further advance. Abruptly Burning Water lowered her to the ground.
The sharp report of his rifle galvanized her into full consciousness. She saw Burning Water lying full length on the claypan and cuddling the stock of the weapon which discharged a devastating bullet at point blank range for three hundred and fifty yards. She saw a black body stretched on the claypan about a hundred yards away, and four others armed with spears and shields fleeing towards the bush.
Then Burning Water was bending over her and lifting her in his arms to stand her on her awful feet. The walking began again and now memory of those black forms energized her mind to will effort. How long the walking continued did not interest her. It appeared to be hour after hour without pause, without rest, and then she found herself being lifted and wanted to protest at being “slung” across a broad shoulder.
Her annoyance, however, was nothing compared to the relief her feet and legs received. She heard Burning Water utter a sharp exclamation, and she felt his body exert greater effort. She wondered but was too exhausted to ask him the reason. She did not see what he saw when, glancing back, he saw far away along the claypan verge of the valley a large party of naked aborigines running like hounds.
At the foot of the headland there was a sandy slope falling gently to the claypan verge. It was little more than a hundred yards in width, and when Burning Water reached it the Illprinka men were a mere three hundred yards behind and screaming their excitement and blood lust.
Half way up the slope Burning Water staggered and fell. His mouth was wide open. His face was contorted by the agony of terrific effort, and his eyes were red discs. Up he lurched to stoop and raise Flora, to heave her across his shoulder with her face to his back. She then saw their pursuers less than a hundred yards behind them. Some were fitting the hafts of their spears into the sockets of throwing sticks: others were yelling and lifting high their feet like the emus.
When Burning Water fell again it appeared to Flora that her fatigue vanished beneath the appalling fear. She was on her feet when Burning Water rose to his, and he flung an arm about her waist and dragged her on up the slope of yielding sand towards the base of the headland. In front of her was the usual line ofdebris, and among this jetsam from the cliff face was a huge boulder standing like a monument to mark the very front of the headland. Burning Water was urging her to run. A spear passed them and buried its fire-hardened point in the deep sand. Flora guessed that behind the boulder must be a cave in which they could shelter, and she was astonished when Burning Water voluntarily flung himself, and dragged her down with him, to the base of the stone.
Down at the foot of the sand slope the Illprinka men had halted, and stood staring at them. The great stone stood guard over the tribe’s sacred treasure house, and even within its shadow there must be no violence. In the shadow of the stone was sanctuary.
Chapter Twenty-five
Sanctuary
NONE but a few old men of the Illprinka tribe would ever dare approach near the great boulder fallen from the face of the headland in the dim and distant past. For any unauthorized buck, any woman or child, to be found near the stone would inevitably mean sentence of death, from which there could be no escape even from the protection of a friendly tribe.
When it fell the impact had cracked the rock, the extent of the crack being about two feet in width and seven or eight in length. The interior had been made weather tight with termite cement, and periodically the old men visited the sacred place toeffect repairs or to remove objects necessary for their ceremonies.
The boulder was the bank of the Illprinka Tribe. Here were kept the tribe’s churinga stones, the head of the sacred pole decorated with birds’ down and
hair alleged to have belonged to the tribe’s Alchuringa ancestor, bull-roarersand other sacred objects.
Normally Chief Burning Water, of the Wantella Tribe, would have avoided this place as he would have avoided a saltbush snake. By bringing a woman to it he could not increase the penalty he himself had incurred, the penalty of death which even in his own country would be meted to him. That he, an unauthorized person, had desecrated the Illprinka’s sacred store-house with his presence would not mean the desecration by the Illprinka people of the sacred store-house belonging to the Wantella Tribe. There would be no such retaliation.
Burning Water had taken Flora to a place where she would be safe not only from the Illprinka men but, also, from Rex McPherson, for even he would not dare defile the precincts of the sacred store-house with violence from the sky.
Presently Burning Water regained his wind and sat up. His action was watched anxiously by the old men who dreaded that he would open the “bank” and handle the “cash.” Had they known that Burning Water knew the locality of their sacred store-house, and that he would have dared to violate it with his presence, it is doubtful whether they would have pursued at all. They would have preferred to face Rex’s anger because of failure to capture the fugitives.
The sun’s heat was increasing, and Burning Water lifted Flora and carried her into the still long shadow cast by the boulder. He reassured her of their complete immunity from attack, and, having laid her down, he removed the Kurdaitcha boots and her own shoes. She thanked him wearily. The boots of emu feathers added to those removed from his feet provided for her quite a comfortable pillow.
“It’s all right now, Miss McPherson,” he told her. “We are safe here, and presently, perhaps, the flying doctor and the captain will come in the aeroplane and see us and take us back to the homestead.”
The extremity of safety about the sacred store-house would be fifty yards, and within fifty yards of their side of the boulder was an abundance of shrub providing wood for a fire. Burning Water gathered some of this wood to light a fire close to the storehouse. Whilst the water in the quart-pot was coming to the boil, he gathered dry wood for a signal fire and fresh boughs to create the dense smoke.
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