“Cleared out! Not ’im. Why, ’e wanted to marry Miss Lacy to get the flamin’ station so’s ’e could sack me.”
“Indeed!”
“Too right ’e did. But ’e couldn’t put that acrost Old Lacy. Well, I must get along with the milk, Inspector. See you after.”
A forthright little man, but hardly a man killer, thought Bony as he crossed the dry bed of the creek above the long waterhole supplying the homestead. Anderson must have been an evil man, a violent man who perished through violence, one who might well have lived to perish at the end of a rope.
A few minutes after three o’clock Young Lacy’s plane alighted, with Bony in the passenger’s seat, on the wide ribbon of white claypan encircling the lake bed, just below the plateau on which Meena homestead was built. Together pilot and passenger followed the faint path up through the sand-dunes to the plateau where John Gordon and his mother had come to meet them.
Bony took an instant liking to this man and this woman. Young Lacy effected the introduction, and Bony’s first impression was confirmed when both accepted him without the slightest hesitation.
“Welcome to Meena, Mr Bonaparte,” Mary cried with faint excitement. “We have so few visitors that those we do have are very welcome indeed.”
“We expected you before,” Gordon said, frankly extending his hand. “It’s a pity our lake is dry.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Mrs Gordon agreed. “The sound of the waves is just like the surf, and the air is always cool even during the summer.”
“I’ve had no opportunity to come over before to-day,” Bony told them. “After what I have heard about your great interest in the aborigines—they occupy a warm place in my heart, you know—this visit gives me very great pleasure.”
“We can talk about them for hours, John and I,” Mary said, still controlled by that faint excitement. “But let’s go along to the house. It will be so much cooler on the veranda.”
Chatting to him all the way, she conducted the detective into the house, and through it to reach the veranda overlooking the great basin of the empty lake. There she made both him and Young Lacy comfortable, before bustling away to prepare the afternoon tea.
“I understand, Mr Gordon, that you represent the third generation of Gordons occupying this country,” Bony remarked.
“Yes, that’s so. My grandfather was the first to take up this land. We Gordons have clung to it through many bad droughts, and in return the land has given us a living. Grandfather was very Scots, you know, and they say that the Scots are the world’s best servants to the land.”
“I think so, too,” agreed Young Lacy. “But I’m not so sure that the Australian-Scots are such good servants to a netted boundary fence.”
The glint of humour in his hazel eyes caused Gordon to smile.
“Don’t you worry, Eric,” he said. “I’ve just got all that footing across the Channels completed. Jimmy Partner told us that Mr Bonaparte passed them twice when he and the others were doing it. I haven’t seen the job, but I can trust Jimmy Partner to have made it good.”
“Doesn’t that fence belong to Karwir?” inquired Bony.
“No. It’s half and half with Meena,” replied Gordon. “Karwir paid to have it built, and Meena agreed to maintain it with materials supplied by Karwir. Where the fence bounds Meena and Mount Lester the arrangement is the other way round.”
“Oh yes! By the way, Mr Gordon, if we might get a little business talk over and done with, Blake in his report on this Anderson case says that Jimmy Partner and you mustered sheep away from the Channels where they pass through the fence into Karwir. Were you and Jimmy Partner together the whole of that afternoon of the eighteenth of April?”
“No. We separated, I should say, about three o’clock. I left Jimmy Partner to drive a mob of sheep towards Meena, and then went on to see if I could pick up another mob. You see, the Channels are very boggy in wet weather, and it was raining.”
Whilst listening, Bony’s face was bland, and the usual keenness was absent from his eyes. He had been made to feel that he was a most welcome guest at Meena, and his questions were being put with no little diffidence. His first impression of this confident young man was wearing well. He could detect no unease in either his voice or his eyes.
“Did you discover any more sheep near the Channels?”
“Yes. I picked up a mob between that corner right on the southernmost depression and the road gate. It was then, I think, about half-past four.”
“Who reached home first?”
“Jimmy Partner got back a little before nine and I reached home shortly after him.”
“Neither of you saw Anderson that day?”
“No.”
“Or his horse?”
“No. Jimmy Partner and I were several times near the boundary fence where we could have seen him riding it on the far side had he passed when we were there.”
“Thank you, Mr Gordon. Just one more question. After Jimmy Partner left you, could he have doubled back to the boundary where, by chance, he might have met Anderson?”
Gordon flushed a trifle. He replied steadily:
“He could but he didn’t. The mob of sheep I left in his charge he drove five miles nearer the homestead before leaving them. I know he did this because the next day I went out for them and brought them to the yards here. I found them about where he said he had left them. He had gone off with the tribe on walkabout to Deep Well.”
“Thank you.”
“There’s another thing. At three o’clock, when we first saw the netted fence that day, Anderson should have reached the gate over the main road and been on his way straight to Karwir. Oh, I’ve worked out his probable movements that day, knowing the time he left the homestead. He would have been well past the Channels at three o’clock.”
“Well, then, what time did you cross the main road when bringing the sheep away from the Channels?”
“I couldn’t tell you the time but it was getting dark.”
“You didn’t see any fresh tracks on that road—horse tracks or motor tracks?”
For the first time Gordon hesitated to reply. Then:
“There may have been tracks of horse or car,” he said. “It was growing dark and I didn’t notice. But I think I’d have noticed if there had been any because I crossed the road where the ground is sandy, and where fresh tracks would have been plain.”
Bony sighed, for at this moment Mary Gordon appeared carrying a large tray.
“Well, I’m glad we have got the business part of our visit over. You know, the warmth of your reception to me, a detective-inspector, on duty as it were, embarrasses me. You, Mrs Gordon, instead of glaring at me and plainly hinting you would like to see the last of me, go to great trouble to give us afternoon tea.”
“I think I would offer a cup of tea to my greatest enemy,” she said smilingly. “It is a good old bush custom to boil the billy directly anyone arrives.”
“How true, Mrs Gordon. How did you and Mr Gordon get along with Jeffery Anderson?”
Now he saw indignation flash into her eyes, and the eyes of her son become agate-hard. It was the son who spoke.
“We never had anything to do with him save on two occasions when he injured our people. I mean, of course, the blacks here. We always call them our people. My father did. So did my grandfather.”
Bony rose to accept tea and a cake from his hostess, and, having resumed his chair, he said:
“Tell me about your people, as you so wonderfully call the unfortunate aborigines. I should like to hear about the first and second Gordons, too, if you will.”
He noted the flame of enthusiasm leap into their eyes as the woman’s gaze met that of her son. It was a torch, lit by the first Gordon, accepted by her from the second Gordon when he died to hand on to her son. He now carried it, but she marched with him. Very softly, she said to the young man:
“You tell Mr Bonaparte, John. You can tell it so much better than I can.”
“I don’t agree with you, mother, but I’ll do my best,” the son said, glancing at her and smiling gently. “Of course, Mr Bonaparte, neither mother nor I ever saw Grandfather Gordon. Father told us a great deal about him so that we feel we actually know him. He was a big, hard, raw-boned Scotsman who knew what he wanted and who knew how to keep what he got against all comers.
“Long before he came here, when he was a mere boy, he witnessed the slaughter of a party of blacks near the junction of the Darling River with the Murray. They were all shot down, first the men and then the women and children to the smallest baby. The only crime those blacks committed was to offer objection to their land being taken from them, and the food the land gave them.
“We must admit that then it was an age of brutality. All over the world, in every allegedly civilized country, men were flogged for next to nothing, and hanged for very little more. Millions were enslaved, the stench still clung to the torture chambers, and it was not uncommon for people to die of starvation.
“Grandfather grew to become a tough and hard man, but he was just. When he came out here and found this lake of water and the blacks who had lived beside it for unknown time, he saw that there was plenty of room for both them and him. He became their friend—and that wasn’t hard to accomplish, since they had never before had dealings with a white man.
“Of course there were minor troubles in the beginning, but grandfather settled these troubles, not with a gun, or with poison, but with his fists. The Kalchuts were fortunate in having as their chief a man named Yama-Yama, the present chief’s father. Yama-Yama was an intelligent man, and he and Grandfather Gordon between them drew up a kind of charter in which it was agreed that grandfather would not hunt kangaroos or other native animals, not shoot the birds on the lake, and not interfere with the blacks in any way. On their part they agreed not to kill cattle, or attack a white man, or interfere in any way with Grandfather Gordon or anyone belonging to him.
“Thereafter life for Grandfather Gordon and his wife ran smoothly until one of his shepherds interfered with one of the lubras. Yama-Yama said they would kill the shepherd. Grandfather told them to carry on, and, after the man was killed, he reported his death as due to accident. Never again did he employ a white man.
“You see, the preservation of the Kalchut tribe has been made possible by the fact that no road passes through the station. Westward of those hills beyond the lake there lies a great desert of sand-dune country, and thus Meena Lake occupies a land pocket, as it were.
“There were many things done by Grandfather Gordon that were wise and far-seeing. He never issued the blacks with rations unless drought destroyed their food-supplies, and then he issued only meat and flour. He and his wife never insisted that the blacks wear white men’s clothes: in fact, they frowned upon any alteration in their mode of living. My father continued that policy as far as he was able, and my mother and I have followed it, too, although we have been compelled to go as far as allowing the blacks to wear trousers and shirts when they want to.
“We have made mistakes, not being as wise as Grandfather Gordon and not having his really autocratic power. We have dreaded the coming of a missionary as much as official protectorship and interference. So far the Kalchut has escaped both. To-day our people follow the customs and tribal rites of their ancestors, and they and we have been blessed by an excellent chief in old Nero.
“Some of their customs, of course, we Gordons have had to frown upon, gradually getting them prohibited. Then we have had to meet the ambition of the men of Jimmy Partner’s generation who have wanted to go and work on neighbouring stations, but we’ve got over one of the objections to their doing this by starting a banking account into which their wages are paid.
“The banking account is a communal one administered jointly by mother and me. It supplies cash for bare necessities—for food when it is needed, clothes for the winter and a ration of tobacco throughout the year. The account has been swollen by the tribe’s fox hunting and rabbit trapping these last few years. So that the few things the men and women have come to want have been supplied to them through their own efforts. They are far from being mendicants.
“Grandfather Gordon clearly saw that civilization was a curse laid on man, not a blessing. My father saw the shadow of civilization slowly creeping towards the Kalchut tribe, and my mother and I have constantly battled to delay its coming, knowing that the tribe would be overwhelmed, and wiped off the face of the earth. I hope you are not being bored, but you asked me to ride my hobby-horse, you know.”
“Bored!” exclaimed Bony, his eyes shining. “Please go on.”
Bony’s dark and youthfully handsome face was alight. Young Lacy sat without movement. And Mary Gordon stared steadily out over the lake bed towards the distant blue hills, as though she were seeing her husband and son slaying the beast called civilization. John Gordon sighed before continuing.
“We are fighting a losing battle, mother and I,” he said as though he too saw the picture Bony imagined his mother was seeing. “These people we call our people have never had the curse of Adam laid on them. They have never delighted in torture. They have never known poverty, for they have never known riches and power over their fellows. They cannot understand the necessity to work when the land provides them with simple needs. The strong succour the weak, and the aged always get first helping of the food. They never think to crush a fellow in order to gain a little power.
“They have known real civilization for countless ages. Before the white and yellow and other black races learned to speak to their kind, these Australian aborigines were conversing intelligently. They practised Christian socialism centuries before Christ was born. They have evolved an apparently complicated although really simple social structure which is wellnigh perfect. They don’t breed lunatics or weaklings. They never knew filth and disease before the white man came to Australia.
“And now the shadow of civilization falls on them although they don’t know it. Civilization came to shoot them down, to poison them like wild dogs, and then, to excuse itself, to depict the victims of its curse as half-wits in its comic papers, to sneer at them as naked savages, to confine them to reserves and compounds. It has taken away their natural food and feeds them on poison in tins labelled food.
“As I have pointed out, our geographical situation has been most favourable to the Kalchut. Our only serious trouble was with Anderson. My grandfather would have sooled the blacks on to exact their justice, but mother and I dared not do that when he raped a lubra maid working at Karwir homestead and nearly flogged Inky Boy to death. We had to combine with Old Lacy to hush up those crimes against our people, fearing to draw the official eyes of civilization in their direction.
“I don’t think, Inspector, that you’ll find Anderson dead, and if he is dead, I am certain our people did not compass his death. We knew that day where, approximately, every member of the tribe was. They trust us as much as we trust them, and we would have been told instantly had one or more waylaid Anderson and killed him.”
“Then we agree, Mr Gordon, that the only member of the tribe who could have killed Anderson was Jimmy Partner?” Bony asked.
The question caused Mary Gordon to cry, loudly:
“Oh but, Inspector, Jimmy Partner wouldn’t have killed him. Why, I reared Jimmy Partner. He grew up with John. He’s one of us.”
“It was a question I was bound to ask,” Bony told her gently.
“Of course, you had to,” Gordon agreed. “All the same, Jimmy Partner couldn’t have killed him. He was with me up till three o’clock when Anderson should have been miles past the Channels and riding along the road home.”
Bony had actually forgotten his cigarettes, and now he abruptly relaxed and felt his clothes for tobacco and papers.
“I’m glad I came,” he said quietly. “Why, for a few minutes I think I have been living outside the shadow of civilization. Just think if the world were as pure and life as simple as it was in Austr
alia before ever Dampier saw it. Ah, but then, I should not have been happy, I suppose. There was no crime higher than the elementary crime of stealing your neighbour’s wife. No, no! After all, I think I prefer the shadow in which crime and bestiality thrives.”
They laughed with him, and Young Lacy’s interest was diverted.
“By gum, John, you’ve got some rabbits over here,” he exclaimed.
“Some! We’ve got millions. I’ve never seen so many around Meena Lake. They’re thicker than they were in 1929. The Kalchuts are doing very well out of them, however, and this summer, if it doesn’t rain, will see the end of them.”
They all went down to the machine about which the curious aborigines were gathered. Nero was presented to Bony who was not impressed by the chief. He looked for, but failed to see, Wandin and Inky Boy and Abie. Then Mary Gordon was warmly inviting him to call soon and often, and her son was urging him to seek from Meena any help he might require.
And all the way back to Karwir a phrase repeated itself in Bony’s mind, the words written with black and evil smoke. The Shadow of Civilization! How real was the shadow to these heroic Gordons, how menacing to the happy Kalchut tribe ignorant of its inevitable doom!
It was full time that the Creator of man wiped out altogether this monster called civilization and began again with the aborigines as a nucleus.
Chapter Eleven
Menace
THE net gain to Bony from his work throughout the following week was exactly nothing. One full day was spent in the Karwir North Paddock, another day along the west boundary of Mount Lester Station, and a third in examining the Meena country immediately north of Green Swamp Paddock. His reading of the Book of the Bush was fruitless, but even so, at the end of this week he felt still more sure that he was being opposed, actively opposed, in this investigation.
About eleven o’clock this Monday morning he was riding the mare, Kate, northward to the mulga forest in which lay the netted boundary fence, and he was still on the plain when he heard behind him the sound of the Karwir aeroplane. The machine passed him at low altitude. Young Lacy waved down to him and he answered the greeting. In the passenger’s seat was Diana Lacy. She did not wave. The pilot was flying his machine above the road to Opal Town, and Bony wondered why he was not taking the more direct route to the township, crossing over Green Swamp four miles to the east.
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