He was solid, this Tony Carr; thick and wide and not so tall. His bare forearms were sunburned to match the backs of the powerful wrists and hands. His features were rugged, his eyes brown like his hair, and at this moment his face did not support the dossier Bony had studied when in Perth.
“We have everything ready,” Bony said. “When I tell you to grip the ankle firmly, you must do that.”
Going to the girl, he placed a wet rag over her eyes, saying gently:
“It will hurt, but you must bear it. Think you can?”
“Yes. Oh, yes. Please get it out.”
Tony Carr didn’t watch this bush operation. Gripping the ankle as instructed, he felt her body rebel against the knife, heard her sharp cry, and himself felt the pain, and then felt the patient’s relief when her taut nerves relaxed, and she gave a long sigh. On being asked to release the ankle, he saw that the gentle stranger was packing the wound with gauze.
“My guess is that the town is something like four to five miles away. There’s a nursing sister there?”
“Yes, Sister Jenks. But Joy here lives at Dryblowers Flat. We goin’ to carry her?”
“Better not try that,” decided Bony, glancing swiftly at the semi-masked face of the girl. “You ride hard for the town and tell them to bring a truck and a stretcher. Tell Sister Jenks just what has happened. Now get going.”
The boy left at a gallop over the rough ground. The dog came and nuzzled the water bag, and Bony punched a dent into the crown of his hat and filled it for the famished animal. Testing the tea poured into the tin cup, and finding it cool enough, he added a little sugar, and knelt beside the girl and removed the now dry rag. Her large golden eyes were swimming in tears of exhaustion.
“This is going to be good,” Bony told her, slipping an arm under her shoulders. “‘Joy’, the young man said. ‘Joy Elder’ and you live at Dryblowers Flat. Now don’t gulp so. There’s plenty more, but we must take it slowly.”
When refilling the cup he heard her sobbing.
“I can’t help crying. I can’t...”
“Of course you must cry,” he told her. “Here’s a clean handkerchief. Cry all you want. Do you good. Now a little more tea, and then rest for a while. Your dog was famished too. Must have stayed with you all along.”
The girl nodded, and managed to call, and the dog came and crouched beside her. “He bailed up a kanga in the mulga, and when I got to him, the mother was fighting him off and she had a baby in her pouch. It was when I ran to haul him off the kanga that I got the stick in my foot, and I couldn’t do a thing about the kanga after that. So I crawled out to here, hoping Tony or Mr Joyce might come this way looking for cattle.”
“And you go out looking for garnets without wearing shoes?”
“Us girls don’t wear shoes exceptin’ when we go to church in Daybreak,” Joy explained, tiredly, and Bony thought that to talk was better than not. “Janet and I live with father, who’s a dryblower. Father’s pretty old, you see, and we haven’t much money. And besides, why wear out shoes? Father says we ought to, though. Then father says me and Janet are both as wild as brumbies, and we ought to be our age. I suppose we are wild and all that, but we can take care of ourselves. Pompy, you see, knows judo. All the kids have learned it off him.”
Wearily she said she was just over eighteen, and then fell asleep with his arm still about her shoulders. The ants were bad, and the flies too. He brought the blanket roll from the packhorse, and laid a blanket on hard clay-pan in the shadow and moved her to it. Then he sponged her face and sat beside her to prevent the flies from settling. He doubted she would have lived through the coming night. He wondered why no one had looked for her.
An hour later he was still keeping the flies at bay when three horsemen rode over the low ridge and down into the depression. Tony Carr was one of them. Another was large and hard, gimlet-eyed and stiff in the saddle. The third man was also large but not hard, and his eyes were frank. He rode loosely and with the ease of one used to horses all his life. They alighted, and the gimlet-eyed man advanced to stoop over the girl, listen to her breathing and lift the groundsheet to inspect her wounded foot. Straightening, his eyes widened. They were hazel and penetrating.
“Now, what’s your name, and where d’you come from?” he demanded.
“Who are you?” returned Bony.
“Police,” snapped the big man.
“The name is Nat Bonnar. I’ve come down from Hall’s Creek. I’m looking for horse work. I was on my way to Daybreak when I came across this young feller trying to make up his mind to cut the splinter from the girl’s foot. We did that, and he went off to Daybreak for help.”
“What time did you get here?”
“Between four and five, I suppose.”
“You ought to get nearer than that. Your kind can generally tell the time by the sun. What was this young chap actually doing when you first saw him?”
“As I said, making his mind up about cutting a stick from the girl’s foot.”
“When you got here, was she unconscious or asleep?”
“She was conscious. I heard her urging the young feller to cut the stick out.”
“And between you, you cut it out. Why didn’t you pack the girl on one of the horses and bring her up to town?”
“’Cos she was all in,” Carr replied for Bony, and was roughly told to shut up.
Tony’s hands were clenched, but the policeman continued to stare at Bony, waiting for him to answer the question.
“The girl was exhausted by pain and exposure and thirst,” Bony said evenly, and continued: “Also the golden rule is not to move an accident case until first examined by a medical expert.”
“Ah! Know-all, eh! When you first came in sight of this business, what was this young feller really doing?”
“He was kneeling beside the girl. He was looking at the stick protruding from the injured foot. In his right hand was a long, pointed knife. As it was obvious he wasn’t going to cut the girl’s throat, I tethered my horses, and knelt beside him. He said, in reply to the girl’s urging: ‘I can’t’, and I said: ‘I can’. We then proceeded to remove the stick.”
“You sure he wasn’t interfering with her?”
“Interfering with her!” echoed Bony, his eyes masked. And the big man snapped:
“That’s what I said. Come on. Out with it.”
“Nice clean mind you have,” Bony said and, indicating Tony, added: “Looks all right to me, No black eyes. No bones broken.”
“Huh! We’ll see what the girl says when she comes to. So you came from Hall’s Creek, eh! What were you doing up there?”
“Breaking in a couple of colts for the policeman.”
“So. And the policeman’s name?”
“Kennedy. Constable First-Class.”
“Oh! Soon check. I gotta horse you can break for me.”
He turned back to the girl, and Bony and Tony turned with him. The other man was bending over the girl, peering into her face, and on the girl’s other side the dog was crouched with belly just clear of the ground, and lips lifted to reveal white fangs. The dog went to ground when the man straightened and said to the policeman:
“Sleeping all right. Musta had all it took. Lucky these two happened along.”
“Yes,” agreed the policeman. “Coincidence. I don’t like coincidences. No one comes down here ever, except you, Tony Carr, and you must explain just why you came this way this afternoon. And you too, whatever’s your name. Blast! The stretcher party should be here by now.”
He strode away from them, proceeding to circle the place and examine the tracks left by horses and men, and must have seen the trail left by Joy Elder when crawling to the tree. It was then that the stretcher party appeared on the ridge, and he returned to meet them.
There were several men, two of them carrying the folded stretcher, and a young woman wearing blue slacks and a red jacket. As she came down to the floor of the depression, her walk bespoke the agility of youth. Bon
y estimated her age as well under thirty. Her hair was reddish-brown, and it glistened beneath the brim of the shallow straw hat.
Her interest was limited to the injured girl. They stood back watching her, noting that she felt the girl’s pulse, then regarded the bandage about the wounded foot, without touching it. She spoke to the girl and, receiving no answer, raised an eyelid.
“All right, Bert Ellis, bring the stretcher. The blankets first, please, and one to cover her. Better take her to town. She’ll need a little watching. You’ll supervise, Mr Harmon?”
“Righto, Sister,” agreed the policeman.
Sister Jenks stood, nonchalantly produced a cigarette-case, and removed a cigarette. A match was struck, and above the flame she looked into the masked blue eyes of Napoleon Bonaparte. She glanced away to the men engaged with the stretcher, protested at their work, and herself arranged the lifting of the inert girl to the stretcher and directed the manner of the covering. Bony was taking the now unwanted blanket roll to the pack-horse when he heard her call him. She wanted to know who he was. He told her.
“You removed the stick, I’m told.”
“Yes, Marm,” he replied, looking into her dark eyes, surveying the delicate features of the small face, not the least revealing being the determined chin.
“What did you do?”
He detailed the rough operation with the sterilised knife, the antiseptic and subsequent dressing.
“Sensible,” she voted. “You couldn’t have done better in the circumstances.”
“Thank you, Marm.”
“Oh, that’s all right ... Bonnar, I think you said? Don’t call me Marm. I’m Sister Jenks, and I’ve never been married. May I be inquisitive for half a minute?”
“For ten minutes do you wish, Sister.”
“All right. See if you’ll smile at my questions. Your mother was an aborigine?”
“I have been so informed,” Bony replied, smiling slightly.
“And your father was white?”
“That is additional information, Sister.”
“You are an oddity, Bonnar—a man of two races having adorable blue eyes. Are you not Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte?”
“Could be.”
“End of inquisitiveness, plus rudeness. No forgiveness asked. I am very glad you have come. We are not at all happy in Daybreak. You are working incognito?”
Bony nodded, saying:
“In this investigation a horsebreaker might succeed more quickly than a known detective.”
For the first time, Sister Jenks smiled, and Bony was obliged to keep pace with her.
“I hope to meet you again soon,” she said. “I must tell you what my aunt says about you, just to see how vain you’ll become. Now I must hurry after my patient. It’s going to be fun knowing you. And I shall keep your secret.”
Chapter Three
The New Yardman
WHEN BONY rode from the depression where grew the ghost gums, the men were loading the stretcher on to a utility stopped by rough ground half a mile up the long slope. The horsemen were riding to town on a more direct route.
Following the truck’s trail, he came to a track rising diagonally towards the town, and falling away in the other direction to a distant clump of sandalwoods, amid which could be seen dwellings which he guessed comprised Dryblowers Flat. He passed the butcher’s killing yards and skin shed, skirted the remains of Sam’s Find, and so came to Main Street by the back door.
Main Street was wide and divided by thriving pepper trees, each being encircled by a wooden bench. Main Street! Why ‘Main’ could not be determined, as there were no side streets. The number of people on the unmade sidewalks tended to surprise, as did the several cars and utilities parked angle-wise. There was a small crowd outside the house where the truck which had brought in the wounded girl was parked. Now dismounted, the policeman, young Carr, and the third rider were talking outside the police station.
Bony rode carelessly by them. He found the one hotel at the far end of Main Street, which there abruptly became the track, rising and falling over the vast land swells, to the distant rail-head at Laverton.
The hotel was the last building on the west side of Main Street. A small and neat school of arts faced it from the opposite side. Between these buildings was a stone statue of a man for ever gazing towards Laverton, or ever waiting to welcome the traveller to Daybreak. He wore no hat. His hair was unruly, and his moustache was full and slightly drooping. The left arm hugged to his side a violin and bow, and in the right hand, held forward as though in greeting, was what looked like a nugget of gold. Chiselled expertly into the low stone base was inscribed:
MR SAMUEL LOADER
Bony surveyed the Hotel Melody Sam, a single-storeyed wood-built erection having a long front. There was no one outside and, as far as he could see and hear, no one inside. Every other place of business was fairly busy.
Nodding to the stone man, he rode his horses into the hotel yard, in the centre of which grew a gnarled and solitary gum tree. Bordering the yard were horse-yards, stables and sheds, and a row of five bachelor’s bedrooms. He watered the horses and put them into an empty yard. No one was in view, and were it not for smoke issuing from a rear chimney the place could be thought deserted.
He entered the bar from the front, found it void of customers, discovered a compact woman seated on a high stool behind the counter and engrossed in a highly-coloured picture magazine.
“Evening!” she said, looking up. Her hair was jet-black and plastered to her head. Her face was red and polished like a gibber. A necklace of pearls first caught the eye, then the flash of diamonds on her hands.
“Evening!” politely countered Bony. “Now a nice cool beer. Then a room, and the adjuncts.”
“Travelling, eh?”
“Travelling is correct, Marm.”
The woman made no move to draw or pour a nice cool beer. She said:
“No beer. All the beer’s down under. So’s Melody Sam. So’s a case of gelignite and caps and fuse. You try to go down for beer, and we’ll go up in flames and smoke.”
The woman pretended more interest in her paper than in her customer, and thoughtfully Bony rolled a cigarette and was smiling when he struck a match. This bar-room was spotless, airy and empty. The floor was polished and on it no smallest litter indicated any business. The framed pictures of unnatural horses were clean and level, and the bar counter was neat with its tray and glasses. Peace, when all should have been uproar.
“I think you said something about gelignite.”
“And about fuse and detonators and such like,” agreed the woman, who could not be called a barmaid because, with the pearls, she was wearing a necklace of gold nuggets. “Yes, that’s how the beer is. All down below with Melody Sam. Haven’t seen you before.”
“Staying for a while, if you’ll fix me with a room. The name’s Bonnar, Nat Bonnar.”
The woman left her stool, and peered at the page of an open book on the narrow bench at the back of the bar. Returning, she said:
“Number Seven. Dinner’s at seven. Breakfast’s at seven. It’s all seven ... three of a kind.” Her dark eyes narrowed when she smiled, and when she smiled twenty odd years flew out of the door. He experienced the sensation of his face being explored, and he watched the expression in the dark eyes become one of warm interest when he held their gaze with his own. He knew precisely what was going on ... forgetfulness of his duality of race. She said:
“Sorry about the beer. He’ll come up soon. Been down there now for eight days. Has these turns, you know.”
Bony chuckled, and the woman smiled again.
“All crossed tracks to me,” he confessed. “I take it that Melody Sam is down in the cellar on a bender. And that he has explosives with him, which he will set off if anyone goes down after him, or the beer. That right?”
“Correct. He does it about twice a year. Sort of saves up for it. Plants a case of gelignite, and the doings, tin of kero and a lamp, and then witho
ut warning slips down there and swears he’ll blow the place to bits if ... As I said, if anyone goes down after him or more beer.”
“And you really believe he will blow the place up if...”
“I really think. Which is why I won’t go down there, or allow anyone else to. You see, Melody Sam owns the hotel and all, and after he dies I own the hotel and all. So I’m not having the hotel blasted.”
“It would be a pity, with the nearest hotel a hundred and fifty miles away at Laverton,” agreed Bony, matching the woman’s coolness. “What does the local policeman say about it?”
“What can he? Law says we keep open to provide food and drink for man and beast. Well, we’re open. We’re not compelled by law to serve wine and spirits and beer. We serve food and tea or coffee to people, and we have hay and water for horses. As it is, there’s plonk and spirits still on the shelves. The law don’t say the licensee has to sell beer he owns, and if he likes swilling on his own property, and sitting on a case of gelignite, well, there’s nothing in the law against that.”
“You could be right,” doubtfully agreed Bony.
“Oh, I know what I’m talking about.”
“But surely Melody Sam should be prevented from blowing the place to matchwood?”
“How?” contended the woman. “Assuming I allowed it, who would take a chance and go down below? No one that I know. Even the policeman wouldn’t take a chance. You wouldn’t either, not after you see Melody Sam holding a lighted match to the end of a short piece of fuse. No one’s game to go down, even if I agreed to it. No one’s game to come in here and ask even for a nobbler of whisky. That’s how it is, Bonnar. You staying?”
“If you can stand the tickling of anticipation to the soles of your feet, I can,” he said. “Anyway, almost two hours yet to dinner, and I may as well stay here and keep you company.”
“Nice of you. Come far?”
“From the Creek.”
“Oh, quite a way.”
“How are you called?”
“Katherine Loader. Kat for short.” The gold nuggets about her throat reflected shafts of sunshine when she laughed. “You’re Nat Bonnar. Nat for short. Kat and Nat! Married?”
Bony and the Mouse Page 2
