Breakaway House

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Very well! You’ll go to gaol then?”

  “That’s in your hands.”

  “It is,” agreed Tremayne grimly. Into his weather-mined face crept an expression of savage determination. “Look! You thought I was going to blackmail you for money, didn’t you,” he said levelly. “I’m not that sort. As you know, a man named Hamilton was killed and flung down an old mine shaft. And my brother has disappeared. You might remember him – a young chap named John Robbins who worked at Myme for several weeks.”

  “Yes, I remember him.”

  “Well, I’m here to find out what happened to him. I’m not interested in gold-stealers as such. Like most of us on these goldfields, I don’t regard gold-stealing as a serious crime. But I do regard murder as a serious crime, and, as I said, I’m here to find out what happened to my brother. You have got my word, promise, oath, never to mention you as my informant. Now, who’s mixed up in this crowd? Tonger?”

  “I’m relying on your word, mind! Yes, I think, he’s one.”

  “And Buck Ross?”

  Williams nodded.

  “Who’s at the top?” Tremayne persisted.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think – for your freedom’s sake.”

  “I tell you, I don’t know,” Williams said vehemently. “I’ve wondered often enough and tried to guess, but I’ve too much sense to go around asking questions.”

  “Is Jake Matthews another?”

  “Yes. And so was Ted Winters, Violet Winters’ brother. He was shot four years back by a policeman. I reckon Violet Winters can tell you more about things than I can.”

  “Oh, so she’s in with them, too?”

  “I don’t think so. But she used to keep ’ouse for Ted in Myme.”

  “Well, what about those flash signals? What do they mean?”

  “I can’t tell you. I never took no notice of ’em,” Williams replied earnestly. “I met pack trains before the other night, and seen riders when decent men are in bed. They leaves me alone and I leaves them alone. Our businesses don’t clash, if you get me. Beside Hamilton who was discovered shot, there was Peterson found in a back street in Telfer Range up north, his ribs kicked in and him cold. A drunken brawl, they said. There was Sam Smythe, two years before him. He was run over by a truck driven by Tonger’s boss stockman, Whitbread. Whitbread was fined for driving without lights. I know for a fact that Robbins never passed Breakaway House. You’re going to be the next, and I’m gonna foller you. Can’t you understand what you’re up against?”

  “I’m beginning to understand, Mug.”

  “No, you’re not,” Williams stated fiercely. “You think that this push is just a mere bale-’em-up Kelly gang, riding ’orses and shooting blokes to leave ’em alongside a track. Why, they uses motor-cars. They uses a plane; I’ve heard its engine. It lands some place near Breakaway House homestead. They ain’t just pinching gold out of Myme. There’s Teller Range and other mines. That’s all I know, Mr Tremayne. Now we’re quits.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE ATTACK

  HOW true the saying that “in the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love”! Why, old Saint Anthony, ancient and withered, would this Wednesday have winked at a passing dryad, as he reclined on a bed of everlasting flowers beneath one of the vivid green kurrajongs. The sun, softly brilliant, made of the countless mica particles on the headland slopes cloths of diamonds, scarfs of rubies, and ropes of lapis lazuli. The air was as motionless and as clear as distilled water, perfumed like an Eastern harem, dwarfing distance and banishing from the eyes and the mind man’s awareness of the chains binding him to earth.

  When Harry Tremayne left Bowgada at one o’clock he rode southward along the road to Breakaway House, but coming to the turn west down the breakaway headland, he continued south riding in a line which skirted the apex of breakaway bays, and crossed the base lines of headlands and promontories, till he reached a wide fiord running east for many miles.

  Here he dismounted and led his horse down the steep shingle-littered slopes which fell in the form of rock-lipped steps to a floor of white quartz chips so pure and so thick, that it looked like a glacier. Here the reflected sunlight had such a glare that it produced discomfort, and it was with relief that he presently gained the valley proper, and rode at a smart walk over the saltbush flats towards the western breakaway.

  Six miles south of Bowgada, he was six miles south of Breakaway House, and three miles south of the balancing rock. No chance observer at Breakaway House would see him crossing the valley, as might have been the case had he crossed via Acacia Well.

  To the south-west, far beyond the valley, rose an almost straight but oft-broken column of smoke, black against the blue sky. A similar column rose a little to the north of Breakaway House, broken into bars of brown, following one after the other to join in a cloud thousands of feet above the earth, a cloud capped with brilliant white like that of a water cloud.

  “They don’t look like corroboree calls, Major,” Tremayne said to his horse, the bush habit of talking to dumb animals strong within him. “Those columns are too disjointed to be a simple signal. They convey a message more complicated than that. Oh! And there are Ned and Nora sending on that message or answering it.”

  Four thin straight columns rose from the low horizon at a point a little east of south where Tremayne knew was a watering station called Fowler’s Tank, the place to which Filson had removed Ned and Nora.

  “Something’s got ’em going, Major. We’ll pay Ned and Nora Hazit a visit in the sweet bye and bye.”

  With time to spare, the horse was permitted choice of its speed, and, now and then, choice, too, of a fancied titbit of saltbush. His master’s mind was occupied with problems and theories raised by the conversation with Mug Williams.

  The suggestion that the gold-stealers, if that’s what they were, used an aeroplane held no water when Brett Filson tackled it, for the plane was owned and flown by the renowned Colonel Lawton, M.C., D.S.Q., a man of integrity, undoubted courage and wealth. He owned a huge cattle run in the Kimberleys and another somewhere near the Ninety Mile Beach on the north-west coast, and he never travelled from one to the other, or between them and Perth, or between Perth and Melbourne, save in his own plane. He and Morris Tonger were friends of long standing. Occasionally he visited Breakaway House where a landing ground had been prepared for him. The bait would have to be enormous to entice Colonel Lawton across the borderland of the law.

  Four or five times during the year this flying ace paid a visit to Tonger, on his way either to or from his Kimberley station. Tremayne had once met him, finding him a keen quiet man, about forty-five years old, a man whose face was broken and scarred by many minor accidents, a man’s man, a man to follow anywhere.

  Frances would be able to tell him something about Lawton, although Lawton would have nothing to do with the job in hand. Hang it! This wasn’t a time to think of gold and gold-stealing. It was a day especially created by the Almighty for a meeting between a man and a maid. There was the balancing rock in the dead centre of that knife-edged line of breakaway, and there presently he would be with Frances, gazing into her dark brown eyes and watching the smiles alternate with tiny frowns of displeasure at his levity.

  So Violet Winters’ brother had been one of the gang; met one night by two troopers as he was leaving Myme with a pack-horse loaded with fifteen ounces of ore, he had opened fire with a Winchester rifle and had wounded one of the mounted constables before he was shot dead. Silly fools, both those policemen! Why hadn’t they allowed Winters to pass, and then tracked him to his destination? Such an affray was almost bound to have embittered Violet against all policemen, and she as a source of help appeared negligible.

  “We’re going along like the wounded knight in the picture, Major,” he cried suddenly. “Hold up and keep moving.”

  Over saltbush flats, across quartz-studded water-gullies and wider sand-filled creek beds, as they neared it the balancing ro
ck grew from a minute pebble into a stone. The dark headland to the north crept out to meet them, the headland beyond which lay Breakaway House; and, to the south, a low, sloping, rock-strewn bar of land crept out to cut them off from that quarter. It was as though the horse were a ship approaching a sheltered harbour within a rock-bound bay.

  Immediately before them lay a wide belt of thick Bogota which they entered after crossing the north-south boundary fence along which, far to the north, could be seen the revolving fans of the Acacia mill. Tremayne found it easier to walk and lead the horse through the timber belt, the tough bogota being less like trees and more like giant bushes, and much tougher than mulga. In places they grew so thick that he was forced to make wide detours, using the water-gullies. This obstruction having been passed, he saw that there still remained thirty minutes to the trysting hour, but that the trysting place was only a mile distant.

  From beyond the breakaway drifted rifle reports, reports containing a significant sharpness which denoted that the weapons used were military .303 service rifles. That there were two, Tremayne could distinguish; and he judged the riflemen to be then situated some distance beyond and directly behind the balancing rock.

  Kangaroo shooters probably. They were using a type of weapon ideal for the purpose, provided the hunters were crack shots, for the cost of the ammunition was prohibitive to men making many misses.

  Tremayne frowned. In general with bushmen he favoured the Winchester or the Savage for hunting purposes. The service weapon fired a bullet which travelled too far for safety, and cases had been recorded where such a bullet, ricochetting from tree or boulder, had travelled on for a mile or more becoming a grave danger to man and beast.

  He was now crossing the imaginary line to be drawn from the horns of the bay. Before him the balancing rock, a huge hundred-ton boulder, was set on the extremity of a short precipitously-faced promontory which, had water lapped this dry shore, would have made a fine jetty.

  Eagerly his eyes sought for a flash of white or colour at the foot of the balancing rock to indicate that Frances Tonger awaited him. For despite her steadfast statement that she would not keep the assignation, there had been something in her eyes during their last dance which made him confident that she would be there.

  Still, he was a little early. It was yet ten minutes to three o’clock. And if he had to wait an hour, two hours, what would such a short period of time be when balanced against the reward of again being in her presence?

  Horse and man reached the foot of the slope rising to the line of rock debris littering the base of all those miles of cliffs, a debris masking the weatherworn holes and caves and giant cracks in the cliff itself. This slope supported old man saltbush growing five and six feet in height, spaced widely over a carpet of foot-high annual saltbush. The mica particles sent upward their colourful flashes of reflected sunlight, and here and there lay quartz chips like isolated snowflakes.

  Three hundred yards before him now rose the sheer blunt face of this short promontory, a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet in height. From this angle only the upper portion of the balancing rock was visible beyond the edge, betraying the fact that between it and the huge boulder was a ledge several feet in width.

  Yes! There was Frances! She was there just back from the cliff edge. Tremayne could see a coloured handkerchief being waved in greeting, and he, all eagerness to be at her side, swept off his wide-brimmed hat and reined back his horse which, for three seconds, became motionless.

  Tremayne just glimpsed the flash of the rifle before the light of the day went out…

  TIME passed slowly, unnoticed by the man lying near an old man saltbush, and disregarded by the horse which nibbled at the saltbush and possibly wondered why his beloved master slept so long; time spent impatiently by three eagles circling above Tremayne, too suspicious to alight as long as the saddled horse lingered.

  The westering sun had cast the shadow of the balancing rock far beyond the prone man and the grazing animal by the time Tremayne’s eyes opened to stare up at the azure sky. His head ached atrociously, the Hammer of Thor pounding at it with ceaseless strokes. His throat was parched and his lips stiff with dryness. Effort demonstrated that to move his head was too painful, and, in any case, desire to get up was entirely absent.

  What had happened? Oh! He remembered. He had been shot at, deliberately, coldly, mischievously shot at. Frances! No, no, no! It wasn’t Frances – it couldn’t be Frances! But who else? Who else knew, or was likely to know, he had arranged to come here? But it couldn’t be Frances! What an absurdity!

  There was Hamilton. They killed him and threw his body down a mine shaft. There was John. What had they done with him? There was Peterson, kicked to death, and Smythe, beaten to death and allegedly run over by a truck.

  It was about here he had seen those flash signals, signals which Williams had seen at other times. It appeared likely enough that near this balancing rock was something which had to be concealed even at the cost of a man’s life. Why, having shot at him had not the gunman made sure of his work?

  Go easy – tracks!

  And an old man saltbush concealed him from the promontory and the balancing rock. It might well be that the person who had fired at him was still up there, waiting, watching, determined to fire again, in fact doubly determined to kill if he knew that his first shot had failed. For he would then also be aware that Tremayne knew it was a deliberate act.

  Becoming satisfied that he was masked by the saltbush from any person on the westward heights, Tremayne eventually succeeded in the attempt to sit up. He could see his horse feeding further down the slope. The shadow line walled the passage of time, and his watch proved it to be twenty minutes after five o’clock.

  So he had lain there two hours and a half, less a minute or so!

  Oh, for about six bottles of aspirin! Oh, for the water-bag, strapped to Major’s chest!

  With his fingers he carefully felt the short gash along the scalp on the top rear part of his head. It had bled, but not much. On one side his hair was matted with blood. Well, “Lucky Tremayne” it had been up in the Kimberleys, and it now seemed to be “Lucky Tremayne” on the Murchison.

  Looking about him, he saw the tracks of the horse, saw just where Major had been pulled up, saw where his own body had fallen and the one plunge the horse had taken in quick-passing fright. There were no other tracks. No one, man or woman, had come there to ascertain if he really were dead.

  Two hours and a half now since he had been murderously attacked. Should he run on a zig-zag course to his horse and race away? During such movements they would be unlikely to hit him. Yet if he remained where he was, and waited, the person who fired that shot might come to investigate, in which case, he, Tremayne, would find out who the gunman was. Deciding to wait, he took from his pocket a small but efficient automatic pistol.

  CHAPTER XVII

  A PLEASANT HOST

  SAVE for the eagles and Major’s restless tail, nothing moved, and save for the occasional hum of a blowfly, attracted by the smell of blood, the early evening was soundless.

  Tremayne wanted to smoke, but in the clear air of this perfect day, to do so would betray him to any watcher. His head ached less violently, and the pain of his wound was slight. It was now protected by his hat but he wondered if during his unconsciousness the busy flies had “blown” it. It would have to be scoured with carbolic.

  No longer were the kangaroo hunters active. They had sussed on beyond gun-shot distance, or had called it a day. The attempt on his life worried him because he could not banish the suspicion that indirectly it was brought about by Frances Tonger. He had been so confident that she would be at the foot of the balancing rock, and if she had not actually fired the shot – perish the thought – had she found there the man who had fired it? What then had happened? She could not possibly have failed to see Major, and surely she would have regained her horse and investigated.

  But, since she had not done so, either she had been pr
evented or she had not come. Had her absence been voluntary? If not, what had prevented her? And to whom had she said that he, Tremayne, would be at the balancing lock that afternoon? Or was there a watchful guard permanently stationed at some point within the arms of this wide “bay”?

  Now what to do? Major’s rump was towards him, and the pricked ears denoted that sharp eyes were watching something somewhere near the point of the southern arm. After a little while the horse showed signs of tenseness, and then he whinnied. He was calling to a horse, which might mean a man on the back of a horse.

  Then into Tremayne’s range came two horsemen, riding together towards Major, and after half a minute’s speculation, he decided that one was an Aborigine and the second none other than Morris Tonger. Neither carried a rifle, nor were rifles fastened to their saddles in scabbards.

  The Bowgada overseer pocketed his pistol and fell to making a cigarette. There was no further necessity to remain still and wait. Tonger would not attempt to kill him.

  When they reached Tremayne’s horse, Tonger’s companion secured the reins which he handed to his employer, then dismounted and proceeded to back-track Major. For a minute Tremayne watched the tracking as the man walked faithfully over Major’s meandering progress.

  But then Tonger, suddenly sighting the seated Tremayne, uttered an ejaculation and hurried forward with the horses. “Good day!” he snapped. “What are you doing here?”

  Tremayne rose to his feet to regard first Morris Tonger and then the other man who, on closer observation, turned out to be a powerful half-caste.

  “I found that several of Bowgada’s cattle had broken through the boundary fence from the paddock south of Acacia Well, and I took a look in this paddock to see if I could pick them up before they became boxed with yours. Then I got a crack on the head from a bullet which put me out for several hours, according to the sun.”