“You have offered to co-operate with me, even after I have written out my resignation from the Force. You are whiter than your skin, Blake. I accept your offer, but still you must be patient with me, be content with the part I shall allot you. Oh, I shall want your assistance all right. Above all I shall want the contact with all that you represent. Will you try to meet me here at six o’clock every evening from now on?”
“Yes, I can do that.”
“Then I will be waiting for you. If I am not you need not wait for me, for I will be detained on my work. On your way back to-night I want you to stop at Pine Hut and there smash the battery jars inside the telephone box.”
A quick frown came into, then passed from the military face.
“Very well, I’ll do that,” assented Sergeant Blake.
Chapter Sixteen
Things Below the Surface
BONY made the two dogs his willing slaves by a method known to the aborigines. They were friendly animals, two rangy members of the great canine League of Nations. One looked something like a Queensland heeler, and in the other there was a distinct strain of the bull terrier. After making a fuss of them, Bony gently forced the nose of each up and into an armpit. Having freed them, he turned to the interested Sergeant, the dogs leaping about him.
“They’ll do,” he said. “They are of the mixed breed I wanted, intelligent, loaded with stamina and hunting mad. For weeks I have been the hunted; now I become the hunter. Au revoir! I’ll expect you here to-morrow evening at six. Remember to smash those batteries inside the telephone box at Pine Hut, and then be indignant at the vandalism should questions be asked. Nothing of the boning to anyone, remember, and find out, if you can, who is the Kalchut medicine man. You will do all that?”
“I will. You can depend on me.”
And so Bony walked over to his horse and led it to the Karwir boundary gate, the two dogs jumping about horse and man, the horse obviously pleased by the companionship. Blake watched until they all disappeared among the trees beyond the fence.
At a walking pace, Bony rode for two miles towards Green Swamp when, abruptly, he swung his horse round, urged her into a gallop back over her own tracks, and shouted to the dogs. The mare snorted, and the dogs yelped into excited frenzy.
“Hool ’em Sool ’em!” shouted the half-caste.
The enthusiastic dogs raced ahead of the galloping horse. They wanted no urging to enter into this new game with their new master. For a while the hunting pack raced back towards the boundary fence, and then southward of it to sweep in wide semicircles through the mulga forest, Bony constantly urging the dogs to “Sool ’em!”
An observer would have thought he had taken leave of his senses. The road to Karwir was crossed several times; the boundary fence appeared more than once to block them. Then the chase would swerve from it and head southward, then to the east or west, the dogs constantly urged to “Sool ’em up.” They startled a kangaroo, they put up a dozing rabbit, they chased goannas into trees, and always Bony cried to them, and they followed him. Thus, like a mad huntsman, Bony hunted the black spies who moved without leaving tracks, who could easily defy him but not the dogs.
“Either the blacks cleared out when they saw Blake unload the dogs and guessed their purpose, or they have given up spying on me, being satisfied that after their boning I will no longer be dangerous,” he observed to the horse when he was standing beside her and the panting dogs lay stretched on the ground. The dogs yelped when they heard his voice and the winded horse raised her drooping head.
“Yes, my friends. I thought it was so, because for the first time for weeks I do not feel that sensation of cold at the back of my head and neck. And now for camp and dinner and bed.”
They were on the branch road to Green Swamp, and Bony walked leading the mare, the dogs trotting wearily beside him. The galahs were coming from and going to the water in the sheep troughs beside the well at Green Swamp, some to chatter, others to scream defiance as they passed overhead. When the man and his companions entered the line of box-trees surrounding the swamp, the sun was resting on the western scrub line and the soft wind carrying Bony’s cigarette smoke before him promised a cool night.
Now the box-trees thinned as Bony walked beneath them to their southern edge where the ground rose sharply to the low plateau on which were situated the hut, the well and the windmill. He saw with quickened interest the column of blue smoke slanting away low over the ground to the eastern boundary, then saw that the smoke column was based upon a mound of smoking debris marking the site of the hut.
The dogs, smelling the water in the troughs, raced away towards them. The horse whinnied and nudged Bony’s back to hurry him. He took her to the nearest of two troughs; and while she drank, he gazed a little blankly at the smouldering debris two hundred yards distant from the well, the gloom deepening among the lower lying box-trees, the sky swiftly being painted with bars of red, green and indigo blue.
It was useless to search for possible tracks; there was little doubt that the hut had been deliberately destroyed by people who would have been careful to leave no tracks. No one, other than the blacks, would have had cause to commit such an act of incendiarism.
Bony’s mind went back to the early morning of that day. He recalled having heaped white ash over the glowing red embers of his breakfast fire on the wide hearth before closing the door and leaving for the day’s work. Any fire insurance man would have agreed that he had done everything needful to prevent fire. There had been no wind this day till late evening; but there had been several whirlwinds marching drunkenly across the land, and one of these might have passed over the hut and, with its back draught, scattered the embers over the hut’s wooden floor.
The odds in favour of such a happening were small; those in favour of deliberate incendiarism very many. The hut was a white man’s home. It was, too, Bony’s temporary home. Its destruction would not only greatly inconvenience Bony when time had become of vital value; it would drive him closer to the bush and to the influences of the bush that were to assist the aborigines in their boning. It would be all to their advantage to delay him in his investigation by making him journey daily to and from the homestead, twelve miles to the south. As a matter of routine, Bony searched for tracks and found none.
The advancing night was sliding across the sky, pushing down to the sun’s couch the colourful draperies of departing day, when Bony took the mare to a patch of dry tussock grass and there hobbled her short. Then he made a fire beneath one of the box-trees and heated water in his quart-pot, while the dogs watched him with eyes saying plainly that they were hungry. And when they came to understand that there was nothing to eat they lay down beside their new master while he dined on hot water and cigarettes.
For several hours, Bony squatted on his heels to ponder on this latest development and to plan for the future. He felt tired and safe from observation, and yet he could not free his mind of an unease akin to that of approaching death.
It was after ten o’clock when he removed his riding boots, added wood to the fire, scooped a hole in the ground to take his hip, and composed himself for slumber, the dogs curled at his feet. Yet sleep was denied him. Imps pricked his skin, and when his mind was losing consciousness vague and terrible shapes rushed at him to awaken him fully with cold shock. Fear was like a devil that came to gloat over him every time the fire died down, and at one o’clock he began to feel severe abdominal pains that kept him awake until the new day dawned. Only then did he fall into an oft-interrupted sleep from which finally he was roused by the barking dogs and the roaring hum of an aeroplane engine.
With eyes heavy from lack of sleep and muscles protesting against the torturing long night, Bony arose to watch the plane arriving from the homestead many hours before he had expected it. The machine circled once before dropping beyond his view to land where the several depressions became one to enter Green Swamp. Bony’s gaze swept southward to where he had hobbled his horse, and although he was
unable to see her, he could hear the tinkle of the bell suspended from her neck. He met Young Lacy coming from the plane, carrying a fore-quarter of mutton in a calico bag and the microscope in its wood box.
“Good day, Bony!” he was greeted by Young Lacy, who added: “Why, you’ve been and gone and burned Green Swamp Mansion!”
“It was burned down when I arrived here last evening. I don’t know how it happened, and I am sure I left the small breakfast fire safe on the hearth,” Bony explained. “It’s most unfortunate.”
“For you it must be,” came the cheerful agreement. “Anyway, it’s no loss to Karwir. I’ve been wanting the old dad to pull it down and build a decent place here. How did you get on for tucker?”
“Hot water and cigarettes. I am glad you flew over this morning: we’d all have been pretty hungry by this afternoon. Did you happen to bring any tea?”
“You bet. I never fly without tea and a billycan and a tin of water. Oh, and a tin of plain biscuits. Here, you take the meat and get going on some chops. I see the axe beside the alleged woodheap wasn’t burned. I’ll go back for the tea and things.”
Five minutes later the dogs had been fed, chops were grilling on the coals, and water was beginning to stir in the new billycan.
“I’m sorry about this place being burned down,” Bony was saying. “I’m responsible, you see.”
“Oh rot! Good job the joint did burn. Did you lose much in it?”
“Only toilet gear and underwear.”
“Bad luck. What do you intend doing now? You look like a feller who’s been on the ran-tan for a week.”
Bony sighed, saying:
“I feel it. Do you think Mr Lacy would be generous enough to send me out camp gear and horse feed? You see, I have reached the conclusion that this part of Green Swamp is of the utmost importance to my investigation, and to ride to and from the homestead every day would take too much time.”
“Of course it would,” Young Lacy promptly agreed. “I came this morning because this afternoon the old man wants me to take a truck into town and bring out a load of paints and other stuff. I can bring out all you need this afternoon, and then go on to town. What about your personal wants?”
“Well, Blake is coming out this evening and he could bring the things I require. I’ll make out the list for you to take to him. As for the camp gear, I wonder, now. Could you bring a small tank for water? You see, having to put up a camp, I’d like to have it at the foot of the dunes where the north fence runs down to the flat country bordering the north channel. If you could——”
“Of course! I could truck the camp gear to where you want it, bring a tank over here and fill it and then leave it at the camp. No trouble.”
For the first time this day Bony smiled.
“You are most helpful and I thank you,” he told Young Lacy. “Ah, I’m feeling better already. I had a rotten night. A touch of the Barcoo sickness. You might bring out some aspirin and a bottle or two of chlorodyne. This case is beginning to open up and I cannot afford to fall sick. By the way, how long now have your sister and John Gordon been in love?”
“About a year, I think. John’s a decent sort but—I say, how did you know—about them?”
“Guessed it,” Bony replied, casually.
“Well, don’t mention it to the old dad, will you? He thinks the sun shines out of Diana, and he’d go to market if he knew. You see, John’s comparatively poor to what Diana and I will be some day. He’s hoping that Diana will marry a duke or something, although how he can expect her to meet a duke here on Karwir I don’t know. And then, there’s another thing. Mother having died, the old man would be ditched without her, you understand. Things being as they are, Diana and John want to keep their affair quiet for a few years.”
“Yes, I understand,” Bony said, softly. “I have thought it might be that way. If your father would readily consent to their marriage, would they marry, do you think?”
The fingers of a brown hand combed the unruly red hair and hazel eyes regarded Bony frankly.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” replied Young Lacy. “If they married it would mean Diana going to live at Meena Lake, and she won’t leave the old dad. Karwir is willed to me, so John couldn’t very well come to live at Karwir. And there’s his mother.”
“Of course! I appreciate the situation, but matters will come right in the end. I had no authority to mention the affair, and I trust you will forget I did mention it.”
“Oh, that’s all right. Well, I suppose I had better get back. I’ll have to pack up the camp gear you’ll need. I’ll be out about three o’clock.”
They rose together from about the fire, and Bony accompanied Young Lacy to the machine; expertly turned into the light wind, it rose to fly away towards the homestead. As Bony walked back to his fire depression sat upon him, and, spiritually, he cried aloud against the fate that had made him what he was and not as the young airman to whom life was a living joy.
It would be at least five hours before he could expect to hear the hum of the truck engine; and, as men in Australia have done for countless ages, Bony squatted over a little fire and now and then absently pushed inward the burning ends of little sticks. He squatted in sunlight, and it seemed that he squatted in shadow cast by a blood wood-tree. It was his mind that was in shadow, this he knew. He could not force it into the sunshine, the spectrum of which contained the rays of hope, health, and ambition. He knew himself to be stricken with an illness not to be conquered by medicine. Hypnotism might succeed, but only in circumstances and in a place far distant and different from this.
Almost all his life this man of two races had sailed a sea over which he had been blown by the wind of ambition towards the Land of Great Achievement. But below the surface of the sea lurked monstrous things, shadowy things that waited, waited always to drag him under and down to a worse existence than that known by his maternal ancestors. And now his craft was discovered to be unseaworthy and was floundering, and the monstrous shadowy shapes were close to the surface waiting patiently to claim him.
The phrase “I am boned,” was hammered upon his mind. It was exactly the same as the phrase “I am sentenced to death.” His mind was ruled by the hideous implication of the idea expressed by the word “boned.” In sympathy with his state of mind, his nerves and muscles were beginning to rebel against normal unconscious control. He felt tired and ill, as a man does who is due for a bout of influenza. But the will to live, the will to achieve, was still strong, and with devastating suddenness it rebelled against the inevitability of the boning.
Bony was on his feet, as though lifted there by the sight of a death-adder. His handsome features were distorted by impotent rage, and facing towards Meena he began to shout:
“Kill me! Go on, blast you, kill me! I defy you to do it. You can’t do it to-day, or to-morrow, or next week or next month. I’m going to live long enough to finish this job. You kill me, you black swine! You can’t do it. I’m half white, d’you hear! I’m a million miles above you, and you can’t drag me down. I’m going to find Jeffery Anderson, and you can’t stop me finding him. I’ll find him. I’ll make him walk the earth and stalk about your camps and point a fleshless finger at you all. Go and tell that to old Nero and Wandin and all the others. You fools! You can’t beat me down, not Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. Go on, do your worst and be damned to you. Go and tell Nero——”
As though a shovel-nose spear had entered his back, Bony collapsed to the ground. He writhed and moaned as though, seized by the shark-teeth of despair, he were being pulled down beneath the surface of this brilliant and colourful day. There was none to comfort him, to encourage him, in this land so empty of human beings. None watched, not even the men with blood and feathers on their feet. They knew; they did not have to watch. The dogs had stood stiffly to look in the direction to which Bony had shouted, hoping he was urging them forward to the hunt; but detecting the fearsome ring in his voice, they came to him, softly wh
impering, one to lick his neck, the other to bury a cold nose in the hot palm of a hand.
And like a light penetrating the fog, the touch of one dog’s tongue and the other’s nose, and the sound of their soft cries, guided Bony back. He ceased his moans and the writhing of his body. He heaved a long-drawn sigh. He sat up to hug the dogs close to his sides with his arms, and the two mongrels whimpered their pleasure and wanted to lick his face. Presently Bony spoke:
“We mustn’t let go like that again,” he said. “No, not like that. Oh no! We mustn’t let the old bone take full charge like that ever again. After all we are men and we can die like men if and when we have to. To go down like that is just what the bone-pointers are trying to make us do. They want us to lie down and slowly perish without making an effort to resist them. We will resist them, won’t we? We’ve got to find Anderson who is lying somewhere not a great distance from us at this moment. We’ve got to find those who killed him. We’ve got to think not of ourselves but of the investigation, of Marie, of the boys, of old Colonel Spendor, who is my friend although he sacks me sometimes—the old Commissioner who has always believed in me, always secretly acclaimed me as the best detective in Australia, who has helped me to become what I am.
“Find Anderson, that’s what we’ve got to do, my dear old Sool-’Em-Up and Hool-’Em-Up. We’ve got to smell him out of his grave, raise him up and make him tell us who slew him and why. We’ve got to work, to hunt day and night, to find Anderson and beat the bone. Oh curse the bone! Let’s forget it! Come on, let’s to work!”
Chapter Seventeen
Steps of Progress
BONY’S new camp was established just south of the Karwir-Meena boundary fence where it left the sand-dune country to run across flat land for three-quarters of a mile before turning southward to cross the several depressions or channels. To the west from the front of the camp, which was splendidly shaded by two cabbage-trees, the eye was at once attracted by the netted barrier passing north of the camp. Beyond it some fifty yards a fine specimen of mulga grew in solitary state on the wide ribbon of claypans that separated the sand-dunes from the flat grey country.
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