“It weathered droughts before Grandfer Gordon came, and it didn’t have no money and no bank then.”
“Rot! Times are not what they were, Jimmy.”
For seven years, since he had reached his twentieth year, Jimmy Partner had drawn station hand’s wages from Meena. It had been no easy task to make him save a little of the money earned, but once the pounds and the shillings were in the bank there was no getting it out, since it was controlled jointly by Mrs Gordon and her son.
They controlled, too, an account for the Kalchut tribe, paying into it all money earned by the tribe by the sale of rabbit and fox skins, drawing from it money to buy the meagre clothes necessary for winter wear. The Kalchuts were no mendicants, and never had been, and during these last few years they had reaped a harvest of fur around Meena Lake. The supply to them of the white man’s rations had always been kept down to a minimum and the accounts accurately kept.
“Anyhow, you seen Nero?” inquired Jimmy Partner.
“No, why?”
“He come along half-hour ago to say that big feller black-feller p’liceman come to Opal Town.”
Gordon’s easy attitude at once became stiff, and into the hazel eyes flashed unease.
“What for? Did Nero say?”
“No,” answered Jimmy Partner indifferently.
“What else did Nero say?”
“Nothin’. Only to tell you when you came home. Wandin sent him the mulga wire, I suppose.”
“Is that so? Well, I don’t quite understand it, and dinner must be ready. See you later.”
Gordon was walking towards the gate in the wicket fence surrounding the house when his mother beat a triangle with an iron bar, announcing that dinner was ready. Seeing her son coming, Mary stood at the edge of the veranda, her tall, spare figure encased in blue striped linen that had the effect of reducing her age and the number of lines about her smiling eyes.
“There’s a cheque come from the skin agents for seventy-two pounds odd for the rabbit skins the blacks consigned last month,” she said brightly.
“They may want it if this dry spell keeps up,” John said, smiling at her. “Anything else?”
“Only receipts and a letter from the windmill people. How did you find South Paddock?”
“Still in good nick, but the cattle are falling off a little.”
She turned away to the living-room-kitchen and he to the bathroom detached from the main building. Fifteen minutes later this household sat down to dinner as it had done for years: John occupying his father’s place at the head of the table, his mother at his right, Jimmy Partner at the other table end. They spoke of the skin cheque, the rabbits, the season and the stock, the cricket and the chaos of Europe and Asia.
The John and Mary Gordons are not rare in the inland, but the presence of an aboriginal at their table is so. Jimmy Partner was a splendid product of “beginning on them young.” He was a living example, showing to what degree of civilization an Australian aboriginal can reach if given the opportunity. He sat before this table upright and mentally alert. He ate with no less politeness than did the woman who had reared him that he might be a companion to her own child when it was evident he would have no brother. He spoke better than many a white hand, and his voice was entirely free of the harsh accent to be heard in the voices of many university professors, and other literate Australians. He could and did discuss well the topics found in the weekly journals that he read. His personal habits were above reproach. He was the crown of achievement set upon the heads of Mary Gordon and her dead husband.
At the close of the meal John Gordon reached for tobacco and papers and matches, but Jimmy Partner began his customary after-dinner service of washing the dishes whilst the “missus” attended to her bread batter. John crossed to the hen house to lock the fowls safely in from the foxes, and then in the dusk of advancing evening he passed through the gate in the wire fence and so trod the winding path taken by his mother that night of rain in April.
At the camp the tired children were playing as far distant from the communal fires as fear of the dreaded Mindye, that bush spirit ever on the watch to take black-fellows who wandered at night, would permit. The lubras were gossiping in a group near one of the bag and iron humpies and the men were talking gravely whilst crouched about another fire. All the children ran to “Johnny Boss” to escort him into the camp, a toddler clinging to each hand. The lubras ceased their chatter and, unabashed, smiled at him. The men saluted him with:
“Good night, Johnny Boss!”
Observing Nero squatted over a little fire a hundred odd yards distant from the camp, Gordon replied to their salutations, patted the toddlers on their black heads, and walked on to join the chief, his pace unhurried, his face lit by the lamp of prideful affection for all these sixty odd members of the Kalchut tribe.
Old Nero squatting on his naked heels before his little fire was not unlike an ant standing at bay before an enemy, when its body is upright and almost touching the ground. His little fire was being fed with four sticks that now and then were pushed farther into the glowing mound of red embers. John squatted likewise on his heels opposite the chief, so that the little fire was between them and the tiny flames made dark-blue the spiral of smoke rising like a fluted column between their heads.
“Good night, Johnny Boss,” Nero said softly, his black eyes regarding the white man casually but benignly.
When he spoke Gordon used a different language from that in which he conversed with his mother and Jimmy Partner. Nero, like others of the tribe, had been saved from becoming de-tribalized.
“Jimmy Partner he say you tellum big feller black p’liceman come to Opal Town,” he said, interrogatively.
“Too right, Johnny Boss. Wandin he bin tellit me mulga wire.”
“What Wandin mean beeg feller blackfeller p’liceman?”
Nero shook his whitened head.
“No tellum,” he replied.
“What he come for? Find Jeff Anderson, eh?”
“P’haps. He not say properly. He not make smoke signals. Nero not ready.”
Gordon fell to staring downward at the tiny glowing fire whose light reddened the fat old face so close to his own. A pair of old dungaree trousers covered Nero from the waist down, and the firelight revealed the flint cuts crossing his torso. Neither man rose to stand beside this aboriginal fire for relief of leg muscles. Neither found it necessary to obtain any relief from a posture so foreign to people less “primitive” than the race to which Nero belonged.
The fact that Nero had made this little fire held significance for John Gordon. Urgent affairs of state demanded that Nero, being the tribe’s head man, should commune with the spirits, and Gordon knew very well that the matter of importance now being considered was the purport of the message sent by Wandin in Opal Town without the aid of wires or a wireless transmission set.
“What time Wandin tellum you about beeg feller black-feller p’liceman?” he asked.
Nero carefully rearranged the tips of the burning sticks to give additional light, and then he drew with a finger point on the ground, a perpendicular mark from the base of a horizontal mark, the horizontal mark representing the shadow cast by the perpendicular one about two o’clock.
“You been trying hearim Wandin again?”
Nero nodded, saying:
“Wandin, he no talk.”
They fell silent again, and over Nero’s shoulders Gordon saw the children gradually close in about the communal fires, and disappear one after the other to the humpies. The lubras began to do likewise until only the men remained in his sight. Usually a little boisterous, this night their spirits appeared to be repressed by the conference at the little fire.
Gordon was about to rise preparatory to returning to the house when several of the dogs began to bark. Those at the communal fire shouted at them, and from barking they fell to whimpering. Then from out the encircling blackness beyond the near box-trees, Gordon saw emerge the tall and gaunt fig
ure of Wandin.
“Wandin come,” he said to Nero whose back was towards the traveller from Opal Town.
Wandin passed first to those about the communal fire, and one of the young men rose and brought him water in an old billycan. Wandin drank long and deeply, then, giving the billy back to the same young man, he crossed to the little fire and without greeting squatted between Nero and Gordon. Not until he had bitten a chunk of tobacco from a plug did he say, his voice low and guttural:
“Sargint pay me. Tellum git to hell outer it.”
Gordon offered no remark and Nero remained silent. At the expiration of a full minute’s chewing, Wandin went on:
“White blackfeller p’liceman come on mail car. He eat tucker along Sargint and missus. Then he have wongie along Sargint in office feller. White blackfeller wantum know ’bout old Sarah, an’ Sargint he tellum she goodoh. White blackfeller him wantum know what time Abie he come go to Deep Well that time we go walkabout an’ sit down Painted Hills.”
A course of tobacco chewing interrupted the tale, Then:
“I sit down close office feller window. I hear beeg feller white blackfellow tellit Sargint he find out ’bout Jeff Anderson. The Sargint he look-see outer window and see me, an’ he tellit me go into office feller. In office feller I see white blackfeller. All flash like Johnny Boss when he go Opal Town. White blackfellow he wantum know totem feller all belong me. Then he do this——” Wandin pulled apart the throat of his shirt. “Then he say ah you beeg feller blackfeller, eh? You know plenty magic, eh, all too right. He laugh. Him plenty beeg p’liceman all right.”
Again Wandin fell to chewing, and Gordon knew full well that to reveal impatience would be to commit error. Then Wandin went on:
“Sargint him bin tellit me got to ’ell outer it. So I go sit-down and send message. Long time I send message. I say one beeg feller blackfeller p’liceman ’cos I no gabbit half-caste p’liceman. Bimeby him and Sargint go out to motor and go way out to landing feller belonga plane. I go, too. Bimeby plane him come and I look-see Young Lacy get out and bimeby him and half-caste p’liceman go in plane feller and fly away Karwir.”
Again Wandin became silent. Nero grunted but did not speak, waiting for Johnny Boss to answer the riddle.
“What name half-caste p’liceman?” questioned Gordon.
“When him and Sargint go in motor, Sargint him bin call ’im Bony.”
“Bony!” echoed Gordon. “Oh! I’ve heard of him. You sure Sergeant call him Bony?”
“Too right! Then Sargint him come back and tellit me get to ’ell outer it and he pay me—three quid.”
“You give it money Johnny Boss,” ordered Nero, and Gordon pocketed the three pound notes later to be banked for the Kalchut.
The following silence was much prolonged. Nero sometimes emitted a soft grunt. Gordon smoked a couple of cigarettes. Wandin chewed vigorously, evidently still perturbed by the suddenness of the official dismissal. Then, when Gordon rose to his feet, the two aborigines rose with him.
“I’ll get along and tell Jimmy Partner to go out after the working horses,” he announced. “You tellum Inky Boy and Abie come along to horse yards. That Bony feller he no good. Young Lacy tellit me ’bout him. He clever feller all right. Malluc and his lubra can come along us, too. They all bring blankets. Make camp along boundary fence.”
Wandin and Nero grunted acceptance of these instructions, and John Gordon walked swiftly away into the darkness to take the path leading to the homestead.
Chapter Seven
The Hunt Begins
THE following morning Bony began the practical part of his investigation at Karwir. Bill the Better had found the working horses early and had them at the yards when Bony arrived at seven o’clock.
The Black Emperor was among them, but this morning it took Bony ten minutes to catch, bridle and saddle him; then he walked him across to the gate giving entry to Green Swamp Paddock and the road to Opal Town. The keenly interested groom, who had followed to the gate, even forgot to bet with himself that Bony would be tossed within sixty seconds. But the horseman in him made him want to cheer at the half-caste’s quick mastery of a horse that had long since forgotten how to buck. After a turn of pig-rooting, the animal was given his head and the steam was taken out of him by a long gallop. He was now amenable to reason and was ridden along a hundred-yards beat—first at the gallop, then at a canter, and finally at a walking pace, before being returned to the yards and unsaddled.
Bony was examining the tracks along the beat when the Lacys, father and son, joined him, Old Lacy demanding to know what was the “idea.”
“I have to memorize The Black Emperor’s tracks,” Bony replied. “The shapes of his hoofs will not be like they were five months ago, but he hasn’t altered the manner in which he places his feet on the ground. A book could be written on how individual horses walk and canter and gallop. To the expert no two horses do these things alike. I forgot to ask—— Has The Black Emperor been ridden, or run free, in this paddock since Anderson disappeared?”
“No,” replied Old Lacy. “He’s been running with the unwanted hacks in another paddock:”
“Ah! Then my task of finding his tracks made five months ago will be comparatively easy.”
“But, hang it, Bony, we all rode over this paddock hunting for the horse’s tracks immediately after Anderson disappeared!” objected Young Lacy, and Bony was about to make reply when the old man roared:
“Since when have you dared to be so familiar with the Inspector, lad?”
“Since yesterday,” Bony got in. “You see, all my friends call me Bony. Eric is accounted one of them. What about you?”
“Do me,” assented Old Lacy succinctly. “Curse the misters and the inspectors and things. Come on! We’d better go in for breakfast.”
Breakfast over, Old Lacy and Bony returned to the yards, the old man carrying a seasoned water-bag, Bony carrying his lunch and quart-pot. The few personal necessities required at Green Swamp hut were to be taken there later in the morning with the rations, bedding and horse feed.
“You can expect me only when I arrive,” Bony told Old Lacy. “I may be out there for days, perhaps weeks. I’ve got to go bush, to be one with the bush, to re-create the scene and imagine the conditions out there that day Anderson last rode away.”
“Well, remember that your room will always be ready for you, and that we’ll be glad to see you any time,” said the old man. “We’re plain folk, but we never have too many visitors. Anything you want out there, anything we can do, just ask in the ordinary way.”
“You are very kind,” Bony murmured.
“Not a bit, lad—er—I mean, Bony. I’m wanting to know what happened to Jeff. Y’see I didn’t treat him right, meaning that I could have treated him better, you understand. I suppose no man will ever act so’s he won’t do things he’ll some time regret. You takin’ The Black Emperor?”
“No, much as I’d like to. He wants riding and I haven’t the time to ride him.” Bony laughed and went on. “You know, if I were a squatter, I wouldn’t have a flash horse on the place, except perhaps for pleasure riding. I’d reason thus: I pay men to boundary-ride the fences and to carry out stock work, not to ride a flash horse that interrupts the performance of such work.”
“By heck, there’s a lot in that, Bony.”
“There is. From now on I have to employ my mind searching for five-months-old tracks and clues hidden by the rain and the dust. How can I do that if I have constantly to keep looking to my horse, forcing it to go where I want it to go, guarding against being bucked off, crashed against a tree trunk, swept off its back by a tree branch? That kind of horse is of no use to me.”
So it was that Bony selected a mare of the famous Yandama breed, a chestnut with white hocks and a white forehead blaze, old enough not to play the goat and quiet enough for a child to clamber between its legs.
It was a calm, warm day when at nine o’clock Bony entered Green Swamp Pa
ddock to ride eastward along its southern fence. Yet he was not happy. He felt that Diana Lacy was prejudiced against him because he was a half-caste, and that her prejudice was largely due to shortcomings in himself at the moment of their meeting at the yards. In any other man such a matter would have been quickly pushed aside as of no moment; but in Napoleon Bonaparte failure to win the approval of this girl of Karwir was emphasized by that torturing imp named inferiority, ever so alive in his soul.
Karwir hospitality was admirable. The dinner of the preceding evening and the breakfast that morning had been good and well served. But during the dinner Diana had rarely spoken, and when she did speak, her frigid politeness revealed the full sting of her contempt. He had not seen her since, but he recalled how, during that meal, her blue eyes had regarded him with a coldly impersonal stare.
However, the sunlight and the soft breeze from the east, the movement of the fast walking mare, named Kate, and the quickly changed scene when they entered the mulga forest overlapping into this paddock from the southern country, quickly lifted the depression that was alien to Bony’s sunny nature. As a further anodyne, he listed the difficulties he had to surmount.
Into this paddock five months ago a man had ridden The Black Emperor a few hours before a heavy fall of rain. To ride round its boundary fences meant a journey of thirty-six miles. Most fortunately it was a small paddock, comprising only eighty square miles of plain, mulga and other scrub-belts, water channels and sand-dunes. He knew the shape of this paddock, the taking in of Green Swamp from Meena having produced an angled bite in its north-west corner.
Considering the lapse of time since Anderson rode out never to be seen again, the task of solving the mystery of his disappearance might well have seemed hopeless to a lesser man. Bony had no starting point such as the body of a murdered man, nor any clue to provide a basis for theory from which fact might emerge. What had happened to Anderson, to his hat, to his stockwhip, to the horse’s neck-rope? Where now were these three articles and the man? For days and weeks stockmen and the aborigines had hunted and found nothing. It was as though the falling rain were acid that dissolved solids and washed them into the thirsty earth.
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