Curtains
IMMEDIATELY Rex McPherson obtained Bony’s pistol he shouted to the Illprinka man to release his stranglehold.
“Keep still, Mister Napoleon Bonaparte,” he ordered, emphasizing the prefix as Bony had done. Maintaining aim at Bony’s heart and his gaze at Bony’s eyes, he gave orders to the Illprinka man, who ran outside and could be heard shouting in the native dialect. Tootsey came in, accompanied by the naked lubra.
Outwardly calm, Bony was warmed by self-reproach for the easy manner in which the initiative had been taken from him. He had given Flora and Burning Water a five hours’ start, but he planned to give them at least eight hours’ start, representing twenty miles before the inevitable pursuers were unleashed.
With half-inch rope used for lashing camel packs, the Illprinka men swiftly and efficiently secured Bony to his chair, and then departed with Rex. They could be heard outside shouting eager assent to Rex, who was telling them not to bother with tracking the fugitives, who would be certain to keep to the valley and head for the homestead. Like a pack of dogs giving tongue, they set off on the hunt, their voices rapidly dwindling. Tootsey lowered herself into one of the cane chairs and the naked lubra squatted at the entrance. Within fifteen minutes Bony was sleeping.
When he awoke sunlight was streaming in through the wide entrance, from which the cane-grass curtain had been removed. Tootsey was setting the table for breakfast. The pain had gone from Bony’s right foot, but he could not be sure whether this was due to the numbness produced by the rope binding the leg to the chair or if it indicated that the wound had discharged all the poison. He certainly felt very much better, mentally and physically, and he was wondering if he would be given breakfast, when Rex McPherson entered.
“Good morning, Mr McPherson!” he said.
“Ha, Mr Bonaparte! Good morning! I trust you spent a comfortable night,” returned Rex, unsmilingly. “Well now, as this will be your last day, and as I want you to be feeling very well, I suggest that you join me at breakfast. Tootsey! Unbind Mr Bonaparte’s arms, but see that his feet and legs are secure. Now, Mr Bonaparte, grilled chops and coffee. Don’t attempt to throw the knife.”
“Your kindness would not permit such a display of bad manners, Mr McPherson,” Bony said lightly, adding, when his arms were free: “Ah! That’s better. In a moment the circulation will return. That coffee smells delicious.”
“I never fail as a host,” boasted Rex, still without smiling. His body was passive and he had control over his face and tongue, but his flaming eyes betrayed the unbalanced mind. Bony took up the coffee cup with fingers aching with returning circulation and drank. The question he put might be supposed to have been the last to interest him.
“You own sheep as well as cattle?”
“Yes, I have a small flock,” admitted Rex. “Mutton sheep are more economical than store cattle when there are only two of us-myself and the cook. The blacks have their emus and kangaroos. As I mentioned last night, I have a plan to deal with you in a manner which should interest us both. I am going to take you up five or six thousand feet and tip you out over the swamp. You will have time to reflect, on your way down, on your stupidity in interfering with what didn’t concern you.”
“What time is this interesting event to take place?” inquired Bony, already experiencing the glow produced by good food and drink.
“Probably this afternoon,” Rex replied, and Bony could see he was enjoying the thrills of the sadist. “I have a little more work to do to my engine, tuning, you know. Then I have to extricate Flora and Burning Water from a stalemate.”
“Indeed! You have, then, had news of them?”
“Yes. I kept an old man back from the chase to receive progress reports, and a mulga wire was received an hour ago saying that Burning Water had taken Flora to the Illprinka’s sacred storehouse. Do you know what that means?”
“It means that the Illprinka will not attack Miss McPherson and Burning Water while they remain in that sanctuary.”
“Just so. It means also that Burning Water has condemned himself to death, and henceforth not for a moment will he be able to consider himself safe from an Illprinka spear. Even in his own country he will not be safe, for his own people will do nothing to protect him, even to warn him. I suppose you planned for them to reach that sanctuary?”
“Only as a last resort. Burning Water must have been hard pressed.”
“Yes. He beat my bucks by a head, as it were.”
“Fine fellow, isn’t he?” Bony said.
“Damn fool to condemnhimself like that. But he was always a little soft. Used to be the little Lord Fauntleroy I understand. His sacrifice, as I suppose he’ll think it, will be in vain because the blacks will watch until he and Flora are driven from the place by thirst.”
“They may be picked up by Loveacre,” suggested Bony. “I understand that a plane could be landed quite close.”
“There is just a chance of their rescue by Loveacre, but only a chance. I’ll be out there by twelve o’clock, and then I will destroy Loveacre’s plane with a bomb or two. That done we can leave them to the Illprinka, and you and I will go up over the swamp. I have heard it said that a man falling from a great height loses consciousness, but I don’t believe it. You will be conscious until the moment of impact.
“I am going to have you taken to the hangar where I can keep my eyes on you whilst I work,” he said, and gave Tootsey an order. “I shall be behind you all the time, and should you make a break, I’ll shoot you not through the head but through a kidney. You are going to take that journey into the swamp where you’ll never be found.”
Tootsey and the naked lubra freed Bony’s feet and legs, but for several minutes he was unable to stand. Then, with a lubra either side of him and grasping his arms, he was semi-dragged from the room and along the skirting claypan to the hangar. There they bound his wrists behind his back, bound his arms to his sides, pushed him down on to the stretcher bed, bound his ankles and legs, and bound him from neck to ankles to the stretcher itself.
The place both astonished and interested Bonaparte. There stood the beautiful silver-grey aeroplane revealing with its shining surfaces the devoted attention of a man whose reason was certainly unseated by the obsession for power. The recent high wind had smothered parts of a long bench with sand grains, but no dust was now adhering to the aeroplane. Rex, dressed in mechanic’s overalls, was working on his engine from a wheeled platform. Bony could see a lathe and a tool rack, and there was a handcart loaded with cased petrol, which indicated that the petrol store was not inside the hangar.
An hour passed, during which Rex never spoke. The lubras had gone. The wind maintained its soft whine in the walls and roof, and other than the occasional cawing of a crow and the clink of metal against metal this world of shadow andsunbars was, indeed, peaceful, until a naked aborigine entered and ran to speak with Rex.
His news was serious, for Rex got down from the work platform to question him. Questions and answers passed between them for several minutes. Then the aborigine went out and Rex crossed to Bony who noted his flashing eyes and the dull-red base of his dark skin.
“Loveacre and Whyte have picked up Flora and Burning Water,” he said, savagely. “You’ve won that trick, Mister Napoleon Bonaparte, but I’m going to win the next one. Those fellows think themselves smart, but I’m going to disillusion them. I’ve got an hour or two’s work yet to do, and then I’ll destroy Loveacre’s plane and give the old man ten minutes to make up his mind what he’ll do about the station.”
“How would that forward your schemes?” asked Bony.
“It won’t. But I won’t care once I’m sure the old man refuses to give in. When that happens I’m at war with him and with the world. I’ll go down in the end, I suppose, but it will be a glorious end and I’ll be remembered for many a long year.”
Turning about, Rex almost ran to the aeroplane and sprang to the work-platform, where strangely enough the nervous reflexes of his body subsided and again he moved with the deliberation of the surgeon.
Time passed slowly for Bonaparte. The sun-bars gave him the hours, and when Rex finally completed the engine tuning it must have been after three o’clock. He had worked without lunch, and now he clapped his hands when on his way to the washbasin beside the stretcher bed.
“Now I’m ready for the air again we’ll see what’s doing,” he told Bony. “First a little lunch, then to load the bomb rack and fill the tanks. I should be back inside the hour, and then up you go to six thousand feet. I did think of taking you with me and doing all three jobs on the same flight, but first things first, eh?”
Tootsey came in with a large tray loaded with tea and sandwiches. Seated on the stretcher Rex ate and drank and sometimes paused to describe what he intended doing and how he would wage warfare with the world. He offered Bony neither food nor tea. He did not offer him a cigarette.
To open and pump the cased petrol into the plane’s tanks took quite some time, but his task was presently finished and then he carried his smallthermite bombs from the back of the hangar to load beneath the fuselage. This done he came towards the stand near the stretcher to wash his hands, and his face indicated intense satisfaction.
“Aurevoir, Mister Fool Bonaparte,” he said whilst assuring himself that the ropes were tight and the knots secure. “You’ll do until I get back. Meanwhile pleasant thoughts.”
Rex had donned his flying suit and was adjusting his parachute when Bony felt hands touching his bound wrists.
“It’s me, Burning Water,” he heard a voice say. “I came in by making a hole through the wall. Where’s he going?”
“Where! Why he’s off to bomb Captain Loveacre’s aeroplane and then destroy the homestead,” Bony cried, confident that the running engine would prevent his voice reaching Rex McPherson who was about to climb up into the front compartment of the cockpit.“Quick, Burning Water. Stop him. Shoot him. He’s mad.”
The pressure of ropes vanished from Bony’s body, but he was helpless to move either his arms or his legs.
“Haven’t you got your pistol?” he asked, despairingly. “Didn’t you bring your rifle? He’s loaded the machine with bombs and he’s off to destroy the homestead and perhaps all those there. Stop him! Shoot him, man!”
Rex was in his seat. The engine was accelerated and the plane quivered. The propeller swept dust from under the plane against the rear wall. Tootsey was hauling on cords to roll up the grass blinds from the entrance.
“I can’t shoot him,” Burning Water said, steadily. “It’s not my way. My rifle is beside you. Here’s my pistol. You can easily escape. There’s only the two lubras here. I’ve accounted for the cook and one old Illprinka man.”
The plane was moving to the open entrance when Burning Water raced from the stretcher, reached the tail of the machine and then clambered along its gleaming body to the step insets serving the rear compartment. Tootsey had withdrawn to one side of the entrance and outside. Rex was concentrating his attention on taxi-ingthe plane from the hangar, and besides he was sitting low down behind the front windshield. The tail bar had not left the ground and he neither saw nor felt the additional weight when Burning Water climbed into the rear compartment and slumped down.
“There’s that Illprinka store-house place where we picked up Flora and Burning Water,” Dr Whyte told his pilot by leaning forward in his seat and shouting at the top of his voice.
Whyte continued to use the glasses, searching the sky for the sliver-grey aeroplane. He knew from Flora that the machine was grounded in its hangar, but even she did not know for how long.
From the horizon now emerged a ribbon dark-brown in colour, uniform, unbroken. The aeroplane “drifted” southward to cross the valley whilst it headed for the broadening dark-brown mass slipping beneath them. This was the cane-grass and lantana swamp, and when its nearest edge was but a mile distant the airmen could not see its farther side. Nothing stirred on it or beside it. There was no sign of life. A minute later Loveacre pointed downward and Whyte brought his glasses to bear in the direction.
“He’s just taking off! Byhokey, Loveacre! Now’s our chance. Remember, he’s faster than we are. Get alongside him for only one minute, and leave the rest to me.”
“Hope he hasn’t a gun, too,” Loveacre shouted back. “He’s climbing fast, but he’s headed east. I’m going down now.”
“I’m sure he didn’t have a gun when he bombed my crate,” Whyte asserted and then for the hundredth time manipulated the Lewis gun on its railed mounting.
“He’s fast, all right,” shouted Loveacre, and on his face was a kind of glory. “Like old timesain’t it, comrade? Bust him wide open when we get alongside. We probably won’t get another chance, for if he hasn’t a gun he’ll get away from us. Mind your head!”
Loveacre was beginning to flatten out his machine and to utilize the speed gained by the dive to take it alongside the silver-grey. They could see Rex McPherson looking at them. In another half-minute the machines would be flying side by side and then Whyte could take his gun into action. Then they saw a grey-tufted black head emerge upward from the rear compartment of the cockpit, and Dr Whyte swore and Loveacre shouted:
“Curse it! There’s Burning Water!”
Whyte groaned. In another three seconds he could have sped bullets into the silver-grey’s pilot, and now he was paralysed. Rex saw the gun aimed at him and he shook his gloved fist and turned his ship away. Loveacre’s plane followed, rapidly losing position.
They distinctly saw the astonishment Rex McPherson felt when, on looking back at them, he saw Burning Water occupying the rear seat. They saw him jerk his body forward to reach a weapon. They saw Burning Water raise himself and smash the windshield in front of his compartment and then, against the pressure of the wind, force himself forward to grasp the edge of the front compartment. Now he was almost out of his compartment, hanging with one hand, the other grasping the pilot’s flying suit at the chest. The plane lurched, began to slip to starboard.
Rex fired his automatic pistol but it did not appear that his aim was true because Burning Water now had both hands on the pilot and was pulling him toward himself. Rex was standing and smashing his assailant with the pistol. The plane was slipping down, its wings almost at right angles to the ground. Burning Water had his arms round Rex’s middle, and Loveacre and Whyte could see that the pistol arm was crushed against Rex’s side.
Then both men in strong embrace appeared to “drift” from the silver-grey aeroplane which went into a nose dive. Down and down through the crystal clear air they fell, clasped together, slowly turning over and over.
The pilot chute appeared like a puff of smoke. Then like a pricked balloon the main parachute appeared to follow the two bodies earthward. Abruptly it bellied, mushroomed, held for an instant, seemed to explode and then follow on down with the men all tatters and ribbons. Neither Whyte nor Loveacre continued to gaze that way. They watched the silver-grey aeroplane till it struck ground and became the base of a vast column of writhing black smoke.
“He had bombs on that ship,” Loveacre told Whyte. “What do we do now?”
“Try to locate Bony. Yes, he had bombs on board. But he didn’t know that Burning Water was aboard till he looked back at us. The black must have stowed away on his plane.”
Loveacre turned his ship towards the swamp. They were in time to see the birth of another smoke column at the southern edge. Its growth was amazing. Within three minutes it formed a giant black shadow confronting them, and down at the foot of the shadow they saw figures running across the claypan road to the red dunes. They now saw other blacks emerge from the scrub of the valley and run towards the same dune.
“There’s Bony!” shouted Whyte. “He’s holding up the crowd from the summit of thatsandhill. Land for him, Loveacre, and leave the mob to me. Looks like he fired the blasted camp.”
The plane dropped down the face of the rising black smoke that looked like a cliff of coal. It passed southward for a mile, turned and came northward, then sank till its wheels touched the claypan verge between the conflagration and the sand-dune range. Bony was lying on the summit of a whaleback. Father along the range black figureswere moving like ants against the slopes, and one of these ants was a brilliant scarlet.
Now Bony was running down the dune towards the ship. The Illprinka men, amongwhom was Tootsey, came slowly towards the running man, fearing rifle fire; a burst of machine-gun fire sent them racing for cover among the dunes.
Although he was limping badly, Bonaparte gained the side of the machine. He was hauled up and into the roofless cabin, and they were confronted by his passionately angry face.
“That was Burning Water with Rex McPherson,” he shouted. “Didn’t you see him? Why did you shoot the plane down?”
“We didn’t, old man,” Whyte said. “Rex didn’t know Burning Water was in the observer’s seat behind him until he turned to look back at us. Then Burning Water grabbed him and they fell out together.”
The anger faded from Bony’s eyes.
On the way back to the homestead they sat together and Bony told them about Burning Water refusing to shoot Rex McPherson, explaining how by taking Flora to the Illprinka’s sacred storehouse he had condemned himself to death, and how he had decided to stamp out a dangerous fire to relieve his friend and chief of the trouble.
“It might have been better to go out that way than to be always expecting a spear in the back,” Loveacre said. “But I don’t think I could have chosen that way.”
Six months had passed and again Captain Loveacre had flown to McPherson’s Station, this time with Napoleon Bonaparte as his passenger.
It turned out a wonderful day, a soft and cool wind blowing from the south, Dr Henry Whyte had come in his new aeroplane, and his passenger had been the minister from Birdsville. The minister had conducted the marriage in the dining-room from the walls of which hung the pictures of the bride’s magnificent ancestors.
And now The McPherson stood with Captain Loveacre and Bony and the parson and Old Jack and the men’s cook at the fence at the bottom of the garden. And down theslope were grouped all the members of the Wantella Tribe, hushed, expectant. Old Jack was relating stories of the old days to Loveacre and the minister, and Bony was saying to the squatter:
“Looking back on that terrible business I find it hard to believe that my visit here from first to last was only nine days. It is as well for me that it was only nine days, for I could find no fitting excuses to offer my Chief Commissioner for having made the decisions I did make. He proved very… difficult. Of course, he is always difficult, but this time he was more so.”
“You had a good deal of trouble, too, in hushing it all up, didn’t you?” asked The McPherson.
“As a matter of fact I very nearly lost my job over it,” Bony replied, smilingly. “It was quite impossible to convince a man like Colonel Spendor of the poetry there is in the name Tarlalin. It was difficult to convince him that, the dangerous fire having been stampedout, there could be no justifiable reason in making the affair public and thus causing the innocent to suffer. The fact that you intended to, and eventually did, bestow a handsome annuity on Errey’s wife certainly assisted my efforts.”
“I did what was right: neither more nor less,” claimed the squatter. “Before you go, I would like to take you along to the cemetery. I have something to show you.”
“I would like to accompany you. It sounds as though Harry’s plane is taking off. Ah-yes! Here they come.”
From the direction of the landing ground a sleek, modern, low-wing aircraft came roaring over the claypan verge and passed those on the slopes and at the garden fence on the same level. They could see Flora waving to them. The aborigines leaped and yelled and shrieked. The white folk waved and cheered. Then the machine had passed, was climbing steeply and, after circling the homestead once, flew away over the valley of burning water towards the radiant hills.
“Wellwell!” exclaimed Loveacre. “That’s the end of a story I like. Fine fellow, Whyte, and dashed lucky, too. What a bride! And now I suppose, we must be off, too.”
“Yes, I suppose you must, but I do wish you would stay the night,” McPherson said, regretfully.
“Sorry, but I simply must be in Brisbane tomorrow.”
“All right, captain. But just a moment. I want to show Bony something.”
Together Bony and he walked over the thick lawn so ably preserved from the hot winds and the scorching sun by Old Jack. They skirted his sprinklers and his beds of standard roses, and passed through the door in the cane-grass wall into the shrine. McPherson conducted Bony to the three slabs of red granite under the centre one of which lay Tarlalin, and standing at her feet pointed to the left hand slab, but did not speak. And under the original name cemented in, Bony read the deeply chiselled words:
Burning Water
Chief of the Wantella
“The McPherson’s justice,” murmured the squatter. “I had him brought and placed there. I could have done no less. The other was buried where he fell, but I got the minister to go out and read the service over him. When my time comes I shall die content in the knowledge that I shall sleep with Tarlalin, my wife, and Burning Water, my friend.”
Bony nodded that he heard. He made no comment. He refrained from saying that the unfortunate Rex McPherson was greatly to be pitied. The squatter would not understand the influences that had warred for the mind of Rex McPherson. No white man ever would understand those influences, which were so well known to Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte.