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Bony-and a Prisoner
THE SUN at its zenith laid the shadow of Bony’s head about the toes of his boots. It beat down on him and the horse he was leading with a more pitiless heat than that of the roaring, crackling fire from which they had escaped, almost by seconds, early that morning. It heated the smooth gibber-stones to a temperature that would have fired a match held against any one of them.
Slowly horse and man were moving over a vast treeless expanse, a plain so gently undulating that it appeared deceptively flat, yet which gave effect to the mirage that offered delusive glimmering sheets of water in every direction. Here and there low, stunted bushes, greenish blue in colour, defied the scorching sun long after the tussock-grass had died. Tiny lizards, brown, grey, and green fled into the shelter given them by the bushes. An goanna, four feet long, with yellow-marked green body, snakish head and long tapering tail, slid with astonishing rapidity into its hole. Of other ground life there was none. Two thousand feet above the earth three eagles circled as so many manoeuvring aeroplanes. Little larger than pinheads, they swerved and circled with never a beat of a wing, waiting and watching, watching and waiting.
The man’s head was covered with a blue silk handkerchief, knotted at the corners. He walked at his normal pace, head bent downward, eyes following the tracks made by two horses. The gelding, which he led, followed with sagging head and lack lustre eyes. It was Grey Cloud, but he appeared to possess the chameleon power of changing colour, for now he was the colour of oldbrickwork, and his hair was matted and caked hard with the dust a thousand animals had raised in their race for life.
Grey Cloud then could neither gallop, nor canter, nor trot. His big heart was almost broken, and if he could not drink before night fell he would lie down never more to rise. Bony’s supply of water would not have filled a pint pannikin, and if he did not reach water by nightfall, then shortly after the dawn of the next day he would lose his reason, gradually discard his boots and his clothes, stagger a little way naked, and fall down on his face never again to rise and walk.
Yet still he possessed hope. He had circled in a great arc, and so had cut the partners’ tracks. Then he had followed them across the gibber-littered plain, where for long distances the tracks were invisible to a white man’s eyes, where the only indication of the passing of the men he sought was a freshly disturbed stone moved by a horse’s hoof. Those tracks must lead him to water eventually, for the horses ridden by Dot and Dash could not exist without a drink at least once in the twenty-four hours.
Bony’s head ached. His eyes felt like twin balls of simmering fire. It was far too agonizing to raise his head and look out over the plain that jazzed in the heated air. The silence of the world was that of the King’s Chamber in the Pyramid of Cheops, and when Grey Cloud plaintively whinnied the low musical cry startled the half-caste and caused him to stumble. Even then he dared not subject his tortured eyes to the glare of the plain. A whistling breath fanned his neck, and he became aware that Grey Cloud was very close behind him and was suddenly excited.
Then it was he forced himself to look up, and between blinking eyelids he saw a scattered clump of dwarfed scrub-trees a hundred yards ahead, and the forms of two horses tethered each to a tree. Grey Cloud tried to whinny again, but it was an imitation of water being sucked out of a sink. Now he was level with his master, now he pulled on the reins, now he was attempting to run forward; for among the trees lay a wide slab of rock, at whose foot aboriginals had laboriously widened a long crack in the rock that supported the slab.
Whilst partly controlling his horse, Bony untied one end of the long neck-rope brought for the purpose to tether him to a tree, and during the last frantic dash the animal made towards the rock-hole, Bony managed to whip his end of the rope round a tree and secure him.
“So they sent you, Bony?”
Bony in a dazed way heard Dash speaking. He saw Dash as though he looked at him through slightly frosted glass. He tried to speak, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and, knowing he would be unable to speak unless aided by water, he struggled with the frantic gelding till he loosed the canvas bag, whereupon he drank some of the contents and spat out the remainder.
“Give horse a drink, Dash,” he managed to force through cracked and bleeding lips.“In your hat. Two hatfuls only.”
“Righto! But mind how you tread. The place is alive with snakes. Dot was bitten.”
“Dot was bitten! Dot was bitten!” The phrase kept repeating, the consonants striking his brain with hammer blows. As through the frosted glass he saw a tree just out of reach of Grey Cloud’s hoofs, and, lurching to it, sat down with his back to the trunk; and only by long practice, for he could not see what he was doing, he rolled a cigarette. Slowly he smoked, his head resting against the tree, his eyes closed. Two minutes later Dash gave him a pannikin of cold tea, slightly sweetened. He managed a smile.
“You and Dot are my prisoners,” he said.
“I may be, but Dot has escaped you,” Dash said with his chin out-thrust. “We got here early this morning. It was just as dawn was breaking. Dot trod on a tiny snake not more than six inches in length. It struck him above his boot, and he died in less than ten minutes. I did all I could, but he went out.”
When Bony again spoke his voice was nearly normal, but Dash thought he was delirious.
“I am glad of that, Dash. It was best for him and for me, although it was not a nice death. If the law had taken its course he would have been hanged, and in other circumstances you would be hanged also.”
“I think not. Dot would have spoken,” Dash rejoined harshly.
“Well, well! We’ll talk of it later,” Bony murmured. “I’m all in. Bring mc a little more tea, and give Grey Cloud another hatful of water. No more.” And, when the tea had been brought him: “Don’t run away, Dash, my dear man! I’d only have to run after you, and I’m leg-weary.”
• • • • •
Four days later, when the sun was westering, Bony and his prisoner arrived at Carr’s Tank Hut. There was no one in occupation. The two men dismounted, and, after tying the horses to the hitching-posts close by, Bony with his head invited Dash to follow him inside.
There Dash proceeded to make a fire, and was aware that Bony went at once to the telephone and gave one long ring, which was the call for the Windee office. The prisoner knew that to get through to Mount Lion police-station, Bony would first have to ring up Windee. Then Bony was speaking.
“Yes, this is Bony. Yes, I have him here with me. Oh no, he has given no trouble. Does there happen to be a car or a truck available?”
A long pause. Then: “Oh, then please send him out for us, will you? You’ll come too? Very well. All right. Yes, everything is all right.”
Dash watched Bony replace the receiver. Then he heard: “Quick! Off-saddle! We must wash and shave and get into something clean. Miss Stanton is coming to claim my-yes, my dear Dash-you!”