Stay at home till you hear from me. Shift the blacks into the sheds and keep them from going away. I am expecting trouble from the Illprinka. Rex has threatened again, and we know what he is. I don’t think he and the wild blacks will come here, but you can’t take chances. I am leaving five hundred cartridges for the rifles on the shelf above the door. If Jack Johnson and Iting are not away I’ll be taking them with me. Flora will be all right at the homestead. That inspector will be there and he’s no fool, but I’ve got to beat him and deal with Rex myself. You know how it is. So long!
The letter, sealed into an envelope, he left on the writing table and, talking about calves and young galahs, he was accompanied by the children to the car from which he took the boxes of cartridges and returned with them to the office. From the veranda he shouted for Jack Johnson and Iting.
A black urchin told him Iting was away with the men, and a chain of voices extending down the creek took up the cry for Jack Johnson. Presently he appeared, a man as tall as Burning Water but walking with a slouching gait. Over-long arms dangled from massive shoulders. Aprognathous jaw, a pimple of a nose, a protruding frontal bone and deep-set eyes, combined to make a face truly ape-like. A thin piece of bone was thrust through his nose, and from the forehead-band of red birds’ down dangled five gum leaves.
Jack Johnson, one-time sparring partner to the young McPherson: now the Wantella medicine man. Jack Johnson, the most horrific looking aborigine in the back country: yet famed for his patient good humour and skill in healing. His voice was gruff:
“Good day, boss!” he greeted the squatter.
“Good day, Jack. I want you and Iting to come with me to Watson’s Bore, but they say Iting is away after the cattle. You come all right?”
The deference to the aborigine’s wishes was significant. It indicated an understanding of aboriginal affairs which to the aborigines are of as great importance as affairs are to white people. That Jack Johnson wore only the pubic tassel announced his non-employment by the station, and, his freedom of action. Yet there was no hesitation in his voice-or in his mind. The McPherson wanted him. That was enough.
“Too right, boss! What we do, eh? Cattle ride?”
“No, Jack. I want you to come with Tich and me and the others. We’re going out into the Illprinka country.”
Now the black eyes gleamed and the lips parted to reveal grinning teeth.
“You go without me, boss, and I kick up a hell of a row,” the fellow said, clenching his enormous hands.
“I wouldn’t go without you, Jack Johnson,” McPherson said softly, affected by the man’s loyalty of which he had never felt doubt. “But not a word to any one, understand? Fetch a couple of saddles and bridles from the harness shed, and put them in the car.”
Again, quite willingly, he talked of birds and animals with the two little girls who clung to his rough hands. They passed into the house where he chatted to the lonely woman of things he thought would interest, but when she looked at him he sensed the uneasy fear in her mind concerning the renegade son.
The woman and her two children emerged with him from the house half an hour later and accompanied him to the car about which was gathered that portion of the Wantella tribe temporarily camped here. In the back seat of the car sat Jack Johnson, bolt upright, solemnly important, proud of the distinction.
There followed a scene illustrative of McPherson’s closeness to these allegedly primitive people. From the car he took a five-pound box of plug tobacco and presented each lubra and each buck with a gift. He knew them all, their names and their totem and their relationships; his knowledge of the last was extraordinary. He asked one old woman how her rheumatism was, and another how her burned leg was getting on; if this young man had taken that young woman to wife; and another when he was going to be sealed into the tribe. And the while he spoke to them the two white children clung to the hem of his old coat and the white woman chatted and laughed with her black sisters. When he drove away it was to the accompaniment of men’s shouts and women’s shrill cries of farewell.
It was half-past two o’clock when he reached Watson’s Bore.
Tich, obviously untroubled by the consumption of the cigar, welcomed them with broad smiles and the intelligence that the spare horses were yarded. The inevitable tea had to be sipped scalding hot and the five minutes spent in smoking and gossip. After that McPherson brought into the hut a part-bolt of unbleached calico and needles and thread, and started the two aborigines at the task of making small ration bags. On such an expedition as he was about to lead there would be no time for hunting food.
They were thus engaged when the absent stockmen returned, to pour like black water into the hut with the intelligence about the Illprinka smoke signals. The black water then had to pour out again, carrying McPherson with it, and, to obtain a better view, he and Jack Johnson climbed to the hut roof and sat astride the apex.
“Looks like they’re going to hold a corroboree away over at Duck Lake,” he shouted down to those on the ground. “Whatd’youthink?”
“Too right, boss,” they and Johnson agreed, the latter adding: “All them Illprinka men go away back from our boundary.”
The squatter reached the ground before he spoke again.
“It’ll give us a chance to move a long way into the Illprinka country in quick time,” he said. “It lets us in through an open gate. They’ll be at the corroboree for days, but we must give them a chance to get away back. I’ll go to the homestead for Burning Water and one or two more, and we’ll wait till near sundown before leaving.”
The squatter saw the significance of those signals but he failed to look into the mind directing them. He saw only the surface, the fact that the withdrawal of the Illprinka men to Duck Lake would mean the removal of the human screen protecting his son’s head-quarters. He was governed by the thought of exacting the McPherson justice, of dealing with an “annoyance” in the established McPherson manner.
An expeditionary force numbering no more than twenty would have distinct advantagesover a more numerous enemy. Such a force would be able to move more swiftly and secretly than a large body of men. The horses would have to be discarded to reduce the chances of discovery before the moment of attack. His force would be partly armed with rifles to blast a way to Rex, the fountain-head of dishonour and disaster out there in country inhabited only by wild aborigines, in country beyond the law’s normal reach and authority. If it could possibly be prevented there would be no outside publicity.
These thought occupied his mind whilst he drove his car along the road to the homestead, a mere track crossing undulating country belted with low scrub, paved with clay-pans, ridged by sand-dunes and graded by strips of plain.
The telephone posts carrying the single wire to the outermost post of white civilization came westward to flank the winding road when the road crossed a wide area of wind-scoured land dotted with fantastically shaped cores of sand still to be removed by the wind and the rain and the sun’s heat. The track wound in and out among these sand-cores, passing sometimes under the telephone wire, and presently McPherson saw ahead the wire lying across the road.
A break! It had not been broken when he passed a few hours before on the outward journey, but it is the last straw presented here by the alighting of a bird or the buffeting of awilli-willi that finally parts rusting wire.
He stopped the car to effect repairs, having the leg irons and body harness of the linesman on the car’s floor, and by chance he stopped the car beside a sand-core shaped not unlike a small cathedral. And he was standing on the running board with head and shoulders over the side whilst “fossicking” for the tools when he heard from behind him the voice which always had been clipped, concise and unemotional.
“Come backward with your hands empty, father.”
He knew the voice only too well, the flat tones beneath which lurked the cultural training, and even before he obeyed the command and stepped down to the ground the fire of anger burned into his neck and face. His actions, however, were deliberate, unhurried. The unknown depths of his son’s character he suspected.
And so he turned to look upon Tarlalin’s son, in his heart the desire that he would not witness the man’s smile. About Rex McPherson were five Illprinka men, desert blacks, three wearing not even the public tassel, their bodies caked with grime, their hair and beards rolled into tassels of filthy fat and grit. Rex was dressed in khaki drill shirt and trousers. He was shaved and clean and spruce, and despite his rage McPherson felt a degree of pride.
“Come forward, father, away from the car,” Rex ordered.
There was a vast difference between this half-caste and Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte’s skin was a medium brown: this man’s skin was almost black, prevented from being black by a reddish tinge. He was six feet tall, fairly proportioned but not big. His features were devoid of the aborigine’s cast, strikingly handsome. His teeth were clean and perfect in formation. His eyes were small and black and steady in action.
“You dirty renegade!” shouted the squatter.“You rotten murderer! What are you doing on my land? Are there no limits to your effrontery, you blackguard? You yourself murdered Sergeant Errey, if you didn’t actually kill my stockmen. Why, you-”
“Now, now, father, calm yourself,” Rex urged, suavely polite, a smile on his face, cold hate in his eyes. “Did you get my note in the treacle tin? I aimed to drop it on the front lawn, but it was dark, you remember.”
“I got it all right,” ground out McPherson. “What of it?”
“What of it, my ancient parent? Why I expected to see your surrender smoke this morning. Did you forget about it?”
“You know I didn’t forget about it,” shouted McPherson. “You must be mad if you’ve any hope of getting my property. I may be ancient, but, by heck, I’m still a man. And anyway, youfool, you wouldn’t have the station five minutes before you’d be hauled off for trial and execution.”
“Tuttut, father!” Rex implored, and there was insult in the word father. “I will have to continue the campaign I see. You haven’t tasted sufficiently my growing power. When I have the station, as well as the Illprinka country, and then all the blacks at my call, I’ll defy a regiment of soldiers to capture me. I know what I’m doing, and what I am going to do. Age is always so stubborn, father, and you are growing old.”
Before McPherson could again shout his rage, his son spoke an order and the Illprinka men rushed the squatter and proceeded, despite his struggles, to bind his arms to his sides with common white man’s rope. Panting from exertion, McPherson saw Rex vanish beyond the sand-core, to reappear a moment later carrying a portable telephone. He was pushed towards the half-caste who sat on the ground with the machine by his legs, and he was cuffed behind the knees to force him to sit beside the machine. Then one of the blacks brought to Rex the homestead end of the severed line and this end was attached to the portable telephone.
“Now, father, I am going to call up Flora for you. You are going to tell her that your car has broken down and you want her to drive out here for you.”
“Oh quit your father-ing, you mealy-mouthed devil. What’s your idea? Tell me that. Talk like a man-if you can.”
“Nownow, father, don’t be impatient. All in good time. The idea, as you call it, is this. I ring the telephone. You call for Flora. You tell Flora your car has broken down and to come out here for you. You see, you are so stubborn. I want you to retire from business and hand the station over to me. All you have to do is to arrange about the deed of gift and sign it. In the present circumstances, of course, you could not do that, but you will transact the business if you know Flora is with me and will becomemyer -wife if you unduly delay in the transfer of the property.”
“Bah, you rat! I’ll call Flora all right.”
“Should you alarm her, should you raise her suspicions that all is not quite as it should be, I shall deal with you severely. Such hostile action taken by you won’t stop me eventually getting my own way.”
McPherson’s mind raced.
“Of course, father,” continued Rex inexorably, “that detective you have staying with you might want to accompany Flora, but he won’t really be in the way. However, you could tell Flora in a casual tone that you think the little trip would do her good, and that you are not keen for the detective to accompany her as you don’t like the fellow.”
McPherson glowered and his lips creased in contempt.
“Go to the devil,” he said wearily.