Bony and the Mouse

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “I could beat it out of him,” snarled Harmon.

  “And have yourself tossed out of the Department. Remember, we can’t charge him on what we have.”

  The roofs of Lorelli’s homestead shone under the sky. A dark dot on the grey-brown earth grew large and larger still, to resolve into three men standing beside the pin-like pillars that were gateposts. Bony ordered Harmon to pass the road junction to talk with Lorelli and his two hands.

  “As I said, he went west down to the mill,” Lorelli informed them. “He can’t go farther than the mill. No, a range of sandhills would stop him cutting back across country to reach the Laverton road. He’s run himself into a dead end.”

  2

  Harmon stopped his car on the crest of a long and gradual descent to the motionless windmill topping the well, with the mulga forest immediately beyond. It was the type of country seemingly open, without shadows, deceptively massed termite hillocks and dry gutters to provide an army of snipers with adequate cover. And by the well stood Joyce’s utility.

  “Don’t see him,” complained Harmon. “Could be lying doggo behind the well-coping. You like it, you tell me, Nat. Damn! Ought to be more respectful.”

  “I don’t like it,” stated Bony. “You ever been shot at?”

  “Once. But then I was hot. Now I’m stone cold. Makes a difference. How are you with a rifle?”

  “Better with an automatic, my own. But I left it at home in Queensland. No sign of Joyce down there. He could be in the forest; and, as you point out, he could be lying in wait behind the well, or behind the nearest forest mulgas. Only one way to settle it.” Bony glanced at his companion. “I seldom wager with money. I bet a pound he’s in the forest. Let me drive—in case I lose. You get in the back with the rifle. And if you have to shoot, wing him.”

  Harmon wormed his way over the seat-back, and Bony took the wheel. Above the noise of the engine he heard the policeman checking the rifle. The forest, the motionless windmill came up to meet them, and a crow flew ahead and settled on the mill’s topmost vane.

  “What about that bet?” Bony asked Harmon, and Harmon said:

  “Not a chance. I happened to see that crow.”

  The crow proving that Joyce was neither inside his utility nor concealed behind the well-coping did not remove the possibility that he was taking cover behind one of the mulgas at the forest edge less than three hundred yards distant. The bird cried defiance at the car and flew away, and Bony eventually braked to a halt behind the utility to gain as much cover as possible from a marksman behind a tree.

  “I’ll prospect,” Bony said.

  Exhibiting nonchalance he did not feel, he passed round the utility to look into the driving cab. There was nothing there. On the tray of the vehicle were two four-gallon drums, one containing petrol, and the other water, without which no journey in this country is undertaken.

  At the mill troughs cattle had come for water and the ground hereabouts was churned by their hooves. There was, however, no difficulty in detecting that Joyce had walked from his utility to the forest. He weighed a hundred and sixty pounds, perhaps a little more. The good tracker could see the imprints of his boots; the expert now decided that Joyce had been carrying a load, adding to his weight another forty or fifty pounds.

  “In the forest without doubt,” Bony said on joining Harmon behind the cover of the utility. “Ignition key in the lock. He carried a load—food, most likely, in addition to his rifle.”

  “If he’s thinking of lying up and shooting it out, that won’t help him any,” Harmon said. “Time’s against him.”

  “So is the forest,” Bony asserted. “And the weather.”

  “The weather!” snorted the policeman. “Do we take the utility back to Daybreak?”

  “We could be charged with illegally using,” patiently Bony reiterated. “Joyce might have gone into the forest to catch rabbits, or to compose a poem on the magic of those trees. On returning he would find his property stolen.”

  “All right, Nat. Stop talking like a bloody lawyer.”

  “The petrol could evaporate whilst the owner is away. Get me an adjustable wrench, and then empty that drum.”

  Crawling under the vehicle, Bony unscrewed the tank plug, waited for the tank to empty, then screwed back the plug.

  “Must have been ten gallons in the tank,” he said. “How much in the drum?”

  “Full,” replied Harmon.

  “Fourteen gallons on leaving Daybreak, about. Food in a sack, by his tracks. Yes, Harmon, he must have loaded up when he knew we were in conference. He must have prepared his getaway before he had that little gossip with me in the bar. And so it was that little gossip over the bar counter which decided him to bolt for the forest, and not for Kalgoorlie. Now back to Daybreak.”

  There was no firing from the mulgas as the car moved up the slope. Neither man spoke during the journey back to Lorelli and his road block. There, Bony asked:

  “D’you think the weather will hold?”

  “Now the man’s talking about the weather,” snarled Harmon, and Lorelli, tall, lean, dark, gazed at the sky and nodded. Bony stooped and plucked a handful of dust from the ground, held his hand high and permitted the dust to trickle through his fingers, and watched intently the dust-fall.

  “Yes, the weather will hold,” he said, smiling. But there was no smile in his abruptly blazing eyes.

  3

  It was three o’clock.

  The aborigines, numbering close on forty males, from old men to stalwart youths, had eaten from the larders of Daybreak, and now were smoking or chewing tobacco given by Melody Sam, who had also seen to it that their dilly-bags were filled with spare plugs. Outside the compound, the white population, including the children who had refused school, were gathered in a wildly speculative crowd.

  Bony had had ten difficult minutes with Mrs Joyce, finally being satisfied that she knew nothing of her husbands’ murderous activities. And now he took Harmon and Melody Sam aside from the aborigines, Sam having been brought up to date with the latest development. With cold voice and icy eyes, Bony said:

  “Sam, all these white people out there are yours. They are under your command. All these aborigines here are in my command. Harmon, now is your chance. You are the Law. You are to keep a record of everything that happens, dates and times. I shall get this fellow without losing a man, and hand him to you on a golden salver garnished with positive proof of his guilt. Where’s Tony?”

  Sam bellowed for Tony, and the young man hurried from the office.

  “Tony, you have never been in the army, where you would have learned much,” Bony began. “No discipline has been your downfall. You shall be my aide. Responsibility will be beneficial, and you shall be loaded with it. You will stay by me, and carry out any order I give. I don’t want to turn round and find you picking buttercups in the next State? Clear? Now we will confer with Iriti and his medicine-man.”

  Melody Sam’s eyes were shining with excitement. Tony’s shoulders had lost their slouch and his mouth was grimly firm. Harmon looked resigned. He might be the Law, but felt that something had slipped somewhere. Bony did not call Iriti; he went to him.

  The scene was not so strange as might appear. With the edge of his hand Bony smoothed the ground, and with a finger rapidly drew a map of the mulga forest, Lorelli’s well and the utility, Daybreak and Dryblowers Flat, and especially marking the aborigines’ ceremonial ground. About this sand map, white men and black elders squatted on heels, the others standing behind them. When Bony spoke, the young man who had interpreted at the first talk now assisted.

  “Fred Joyce run away in his utility. He has a rifle and ammunition, and plenty of tucker. He left the utility at this well, and carried his rifle and tucker into the mulga.

  “Why did he do that? I tell you. When he left Daybreak he thought Constable Harmon was going to arrest him. He travel pretty quick. When he left Daybreak he said to himself: ‘No good going to Kalgoorlie because Constable Harmon he sen
d mulga wire to police fellers there to arrest him. No good going anywhere to get away from Constable Harmon. Better to make for ceremonial ground.’ There he’ll be safe from blackfellers, knowing they can’t kill him on their ceremonial ground, and would not risk one of themselves being killed there. He knows that if white men go for him there, he can shoot one, perhaps two or three before they kill him. Then there will be blood on the sacred place.”

  Bony’s finger lifted from the spot on the sand map. He waited for what he had said to sink into minds having to span a gulf to reach his own. They grunted softly, and he knew they could see the picture. They were now not mentally withdrawn. They waited with restrained eagerness to be shown the next picture.

  “Big-feller policeman down in Kalgoorlie, he tell Constable Harmon to bring Fred Joyce down to Kalgoorlie, where old-man white-fellers say what they do with him. Us no killum Fred Joyce, no bash-um, nothing like that. We tell Fred Joyce to come out of mulga, and he say: ‘No fear.’ He say: ‘You come here for me, I shoot.’ Okee?”

  This picture they understood.

  Now Bony stood up with both hands filled with dust. They watched the dust fall in thin streams to the ground, and not a breath of moving air motivated it. They watched him look steadily at the sky, and then at the scanty foliage of the ancient gum tree. They were beginning to understand this new picture. Down on his heels again, Bony said:

  “You fellers tell Fred Joyce come out of mulga. You go on telling, eh? Sun go out, and come up, and go out again, and up again, and you all the time tell Fred Joyce to come out from the mulga. Tell him mulga no good feller. Tell him Constable Harmon he good feller. What you say to that?”

  Iriti spoke to his medicine-man. Nittajuri stood with dust in his hands and watched it fall. He went away to the gum tree and appeared to be looking for insects beneath its shredding bark. The sunlight gleamed on his dark chocolate skin, as on patches of satin. Beneath the tree he took up dust and let it fall.

  On returning to the group, he talked with Iriti, and presently Iriti agreed with the decision he made. The chief took time, probably to impress his people, before saying in effect:

  “Fred Joyce we turn into a mulga seed, all nice and tight inside the case. We burn and burn, and the case cracks open and the seed jumps right out into Constable Harmon’s jail.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The Cat

  THE FIRST and second nights since Frederick Joyce fled into the forest of broad-leaf mulga passed without incident. The stars had gleamed without winking. The weather continued utterly calm. By day, the occasional twitter of love birds and the cawing of crows did not penetrate into the forest, nor did the voices of the men who had been stationed in a broad-water gutter giving protection from a rifleman lurking behind the mulgas.

  The camp site had been chosen by Iriti. It was a mere two hundred yards from the forest on the rising slope to Daybreak. Why it was chosen Bony didn’t bother to ask, for, like the cat, he was completely relaxed and confident that the end would come with the emergence of the mouse ... if the weather remained static.

  Iriti and his elders adopted Bony’s plan with the enthusiasm with which they would have agreed on a long and endurance-testing manhunt. This was a new experience, this employment of their ‘magic’ opposed to a white-feller killer wanted by the white-feller policeman, and, like all primitives, they determined to be triumphant.

  Immediately following agreement to co-operate, Iriti had sent his young men and women to patrol the entire circumference of the forest, with orders not to be seen by the fugitive, and to send up a smoke signal did he decide to leave it.

  In camp with Bony were Harmon and Tony Carr. Melody Sam and Ellis with another man visited them at night and brought food and water. Iriti and Nittajuri and two very old aborigines rostered themselves to attend a small fire fed by no more and no less than five sticks placed like the spokes of a wheel, the fire of glowing coals being the hub. In turn each man crouched over this tiny fire for an hour, and at the end of his period of duty the man would stand, rub the cramp from his legs and wipe perspiration from his face.

  They were not bored. Constable Harmon was. He said:

  “If this thing works, Nat, I’ll hop on one leg from here to Laverton.”

  “Don’t be rash,” advised Bony. “You would look damn silly.”

  “I’ve known a number of instances of magic that can’t be explained,” Harmon went on. “But I’ve never heard of pulling a man out of a belt of scrub like pulling a cork out of a bottle. Their thought transference, or telepathy, might act on another abo, but Fred Joyce is a white man.”

  “But just as susceptible to the nature weapon we are now using,” countered Bony. “Apart from the aborigines’ magic, which we may or may not believe in, we must admit to the power of our nature weapon. Which, Harmon, is a state where sound is absent. You have encountered this phenomenon for a moment or two, an hour or so. I have, too. An entire night when not one tiniest sound reaches the human ear. You mentioned an occasion when on patrol you felt compelled to wake your sleeping camels that their neck bells would clang. In the forest there is now that kind of silence.

  “Men have endured long periods of solitary confinement. Still, in the dungeon there is not the absence of sound, no matter how silent it may appear to be. The prisoner himself creates sounds of movement, of his own respiration, of his own voice, and these vibrations rebound from the walls for his ears to register and his mind to feed on.

  “But out here, in that forest, there are no walls, and what sounds the prisoner himself makes are engulfed, never to return to comfort him. If there be no natural sounds to come to him, he is subjected to an unnatural imbalance.”

  “All right; then why the mumbo-jumbo over that little fire?” persisted Harmon. “It’s not the fire that makes ’em sweat after an hour of looking at it.”

  “When in association with these really wild aborigines,” Bony continued seriously, “you must have met with many puzzling incidents. There is, for you and me, and other bushmen, only the one explanation—the power of thought projection, or telepathy. Put this to an anthropologist, and he smiles, retreats to his academic castle and lowers the drawbridge.

  “It doesn’t matter at the moment whether you or Tony agree with me or not. It is my belief that those aborigines have been continuously strengthening our nature weapon—minus sound—by willing Joyce to come to us. No matter if we do agree it is a steam-hammer to crack an egg. In addition, the aborigines are giving valuable assistance to achieve the same end. They are watching every yard of the forest’s edge and, without being seen by Joyce, will make him sense they are there. If we liken the weapon of silence to a knife, we may say they are keeping a razor-sharp blade beautifully polished. They will, I think, give you a surprise before long.”

  “Hope so,” grumbled the still doubtful policeman. “There they go again. The medicine-man’s going to give the telepathy stunt a go.”

  Later this day Harmon received his surprise. From the air, so it appeared, materialised the one-time police tracker, Abie. He advanced and proffered to the policeman a .44 Winchester repeating rifle. Harmon frowned, and Tony Carr gazed from it to him, saying:

  “That’s the boss’s rifle. He’s only got that one. He’s lent it to me now and then.”

  “I suggested to Iriti that the rifle might be taken from Joyce without violence,” Bony explained. “We shall now be able to move about without the risk of being shot at.”

  “They’re good, Nat, we got to admit,” Harmon said delightedly. He slapped Abie heartily on the back, and Abie grinned his pride and pleasure. He wanted to know how it had been done, and had Abie speared Joyce to do it. Abie shook his head, and stalked away. And vanished.

  Now they could stand and, standing, could look at the forest.

  “I’ve seen them trees a million times,” Tony said, “but I’ve never seen ’em like that. I don’t want to see them either. Drive any man crazy.”

  The day passed, and th
e unwinking stars were again glued to the celestial bowl. Sam and his assistants came with food and water, and Sam chuckled gleefully when told about the rifle.

  “Must have come on the boss when he was asleep,” Tony contributed, and Melody Sam playfully dug his fist into Tony’s ribs.

  “He wasn’t asleep, lad. If he’d been asleep he’d have had the gun cuddled up under him like a bitch cuddles a pup. Look at them there sitting round the fire, working like hell on Fred. They can’t do a thing without putting on an act. Got to kid themselves.”

  “Mumbo-jumbo!” snorted Harmon. “They can do enough without that fire-squat act.”

  They sat about a little fire of their own, and presently Sam suggested for the tenth time that Bony tell them what lay behind the murders at Daybreak.

  “It would be indiscreet to do so before the arrest of Joyce,” Bony said, “but it is a man’s prerogative to be indiscreet now and then. So I shall give you the bones of this case, which could well be included in your volume of A Thousand Homicides.

  “When I decided to come to Daybreak in the guise of a horsebreaker, I loaded myself with many disadvantages, and one of them was being a nomadic stranger in a small and very tight community, where everyone almost is related to everyone else. I couldn’t ask a hundred careless questions and hope for even one of the answers to be productive. I could trust no one with the exception of Sister Jenks. So I had to wait for the ace to come my way, the top card giving me the motive for those murders.

  “You came up with the ace, Harmon, and I did not then recognise it for a card, let alone an ace. We were taking tea with your sister, and somehow the subject of Kat’s interest in me came into the conversation, and you mentioned that the Loader women always knew what they wanted, and referred to Fred Joyce as being in the position of supporting you. Thus you informed me, indirectly, that Mrs Joyce was Sam’s granddaughter, and Kat’s sister. That card became the ace only after Kat was killed, and the entire plan behind the murders was then made plain.