Irresistible Forces
CONSTABLECLIFFORD, with Irwin’s two trackers, was waiting in the jeep at the road junction. Young, dark, physicallycompact, he was the antithesis of the man who was thoroughly enjoying being Bony’s chauffeur. He spoke formally:
“As ordered, sir, I proceeded towards Wyndham after giving the boys every opportunity to back track the jeep and pick up Jacky Musgrave’s tracks. They could find nothing, and they’re both properly mystified.”
“Sidetracks?”
“Examined every one of them between here and forty miles off Wyndham. I went out to seeAlverston, and he says he saw nothing ofStenhouse after seeing him at Agar’s. He met no one on the road excepting that party of photographers coming south.”
“Did he see theBreens?” pressed Bony. “Relax, man.”
“Thank you, sir. No, Alverston didn’t see theBreens. He worked it out that when he met the photographers, theBreens and their cattle hadn’t reached the Wyndham road, and probably had only that morning left their cutting-out camp. We discussed those smokes Sam Laidlaw saw, and becauseAlverston’s homestead is tucked hard against a mountain it wasn’t possible for anyone there to have seen them.”
To Irwin’s growing amazement, Bony persisted in this subject of smoke signals.
“Have you seen any smokes since leaving Agar’s?”
Clifford had seen smoke signals early that morning. He was then north of the battlemented terminus of Black Range, called McDonald’s Stand. These smokes were far to the west.
“What did the trackers say about them?” Bony asked, and Clifford regarded the two aborigines squatting on their heels beside the jeep. Annoyance flashed into his eyes, and he admitted he had had little experience in handling trackers, and thought his handling of these two had created a sullen obstinacy in them.
“Shall I have a go at them?” suggested Irwin, and Bony asked him to wait.
“Did this reaction occur after you saw the smoke signals this morning?”
“Yes, it began then.”
“Well, don’t worry about it, Clifford,” Bony said easily. “The great brains of Scotland Yard and the Federal Bureau of Investigation would have done no better. We’ll return to theBreens. You spoke to them?”
“I did. We caught up with them about forty miles beyond McDonald’s Stand. Didn’t see them coming back. They must have been past the turn-off toAlverston’s. I asked Ezra if he had noticed the smokes, and he said no. I asked him if his riders had read them, and he said he didn’t know. He shouted to an old feller to leave the cattle and join us, and the old man shook his head and said, ‘Suppose-um corroboree’.”
“Ezra didn’t see anything ofStenhouse?”
“No. Was certainly surprised to hear about it.”
Bony exhaled cigarette smoke and appeared to be intensely absorbed. Clifford, knowing that question and answer is the best means of conveying information, waited. Sitting on the ground, Irwin played five-stones.
“Were you speaking to the girl, Kimberley?” Bony asked.
“Kimberley Breen! There was no woman with the outfit. Saw Jasper Breen. The cattle were only a quarter-mile off the track. And there were fourabo riders.”
“Jasper didn’t leave the cattle?”
“No, sir.”
“Had you met theBreens before then?”
“Yes. Saw them several times when I was stationed at Wyndham.”
Bony subsided into meditative silence. He rolled a cigarette, and appeared in no haste to strike a match. Clifford, who had been associated with Bony in the investigation into the murders at Broome, wondered what was going on behind the half-closed eyes, but Irwin, to whom time was of no greater importance than it is to the wild aborigines, continued tossing his five stones. When Bony did speak, there were four stones on the back of the constable’s hand, and the hand became motionless.
“Sam Laidlaw says he spoke with both Kimberley and Ezra Breen. He said, too, that Kimberley promised to visit his wife when she arrived in Wyndham. Laidlaw said nothing of seeing Jasper Breen. What do you two make of that?”
Irwin said:
“Seems that Jasper caught up with the cattle and took Kimberley’s place, she returning home. Six riders with that outfit would be plenty. How were they travelling, Clifford? With cook-truck or pack-horses?”
“Pack-horses.”
“All right, Irwin. See what you can do with those trackers,” Bony ordered, and the loose-limbed, red-headed bear of a man ambled away. Seeing again the expression of annoyance on the younger man’s face, and his own natural reaction to the cause being to encourage, Bony said, gently:
“These aborigines have many traits similar to dogs, Clifford. They’re full of knowledge and helpful in their own country, and are nervous and suspicious when away from it. We feed them and clothe them and we bring them to understand enough of our language to communicate. They smoke our tobacco and ride ourhorses, many of them drive our cars and trucks, and are able to repair windmills and pumps.
“Nevertheless, they retain their tribal customs and cling to inherited instincts and convictions. They are loyal to white men living for a long time in their own locality, and suspicious of all others. It takes years of association and study to reach even the middle of the bridge spanning the gulf between them and us. Be patient. A thousand years are as nothing in this timeless land, and when the last aboriginal sinks down to die, despite the veneer imposed on him by our civilization, he will be the same man as were his forebears ten thousand years ago. Have you a pistol?”
Clifford mentally blinked. He was young enough to flush, and sensible enough to accept sound advice.
“Thank you, sir. Yes, I’ve a thirty-two automatic.”
“I would like to borrow it. Cartridges?”
“Half a box, sir.”
“I would be obliged if you would transfer the weapon and the ammunition to my small suitcase on the seat of the utility… without the trackers observing what you are doing.”
Clifford departed, and Bony strolled along the track, his hands pressed into the small of his back. He was finding it difficult to accept his own advice given Clifford in view of what he thought might result from those smoke signals. Irwin came to him to report.
“Charlie says that those smokes this morning told him that the Musgrave blacks were coming north into this country. Larry… that’s the young feller… agrees with Charlie that the Musgrave fellers are either bent on finding Jacky or executing their justice on the bloke who killed him.”
“How are they taking it… Charlie and Larry?”
“All right. But they aren’t too easy about it. Reckon the Musgrave blacks won’t interfere with the mob up here. All they’ll be after is the feller who killed Jacky.”
“Meaning the feller who killedStenhouse, Irwin.”
Irwin chuckled.
“Seems we’re to have competitors, don’t it?”
“Very serious competitors, too. We must work, or they’ll beat us to it. Send the trackers back to Agar’s with Clifford. Get them going right away.”
Irwin left Bony standing and facing Black Range, which he did not see, and when Clifford and the trackers had disappeared down the track, he sat in the utility and waited. He waited for fifteen minutes before Bony joined him.
“Drive slowly to the turn-off,” he ordered. “We’ll call on theBreens… Silas and Kimberley… and listen politely to what they have to say, and their stockmen.”
Irwin turned the vehicle.
“What are you making of this business?” he asked.
“It would appear thatStenhouse and his jeep were rolled on to a magic carpet and flown through the air to where Laidlaw found him. We have much travelling to do over these extraordinary mountains, and the speed having to be kept down to ten miles an hour causes me to feel like the nightmare victim trying to run in iron boots.”
The turn-off track to theBreens ’ homestead was even worse than the Great Northern Highway. Irwin needed to concentrate on his driving and to employ his strength to fight the rebellious steering-wheel. Black Range advanced and thrust forward great buttresses sheathed in dark-red armour. The westering sun vanished, and presently they were negotiating the slope of a gully which became a gorge, and the surface of the supposed track was bare rock, mostly dull grey, sometimes rich chocolate, sometimes jade green.
Bony gazed downward into this great cleft in the Range. It became no wider the higher they climbed, and the almost perpendicular opposite slope would have defeated a goat. The utility rolled over loose stones, and bucked over miniature ridges, running in low gear, and Bonywasn’t liking the experience. He was enormously thankful that the weather was clear and the rock dry to which the tyres could cling.
That menhad driven this way half a hundred donkeys harnessed to a loaded wagon seemed utterly impossible. It was still harder to believe that Silas and Jasper had driven over this track in their truck at night. Here and there was the evidence of human labour which had made it possible.
It was six o’clock when the rock wall gave up frustrating the little truck, and the evening sky was draped between pinnacles of red ironstone. The climb became less steep, and with remarkable abruptness they passed over the low rim of a shallow bowl where grew the singular baobab trees, their excessively gnarled limbs leafless at this time. Within the bowl grew ripening grass, and across it flowed a tiny stream to escape through a cleft in the western edge.
“Whatd’yousay to camping here?” suggested Bony, and Irwin made no attempt to hide his satisfaction. He stopped the vehicle beneath one of the baobabs, then alighted and stretched his arms and grinned, saying:
“It’ll be cold, but there’s plenty of wood.”
They uprooted dead wait-a-bit and mulgas and dragged them close to replenish the camp fire. They brought water from the stream and brewed tea and ate of Mrs Ramsay’s provender. And the sun went down behind the lip of the bowl, and wallabies came to feed on the grass and drink at the stream. Apostle birds arrived with a rush of wings to create apparent uproar, but actually voicing their joy in living. They settled into their large nests, as many as couldcrowding into each, for there are no birds so imbued with the community spirit.
“What lies on the other side?” Bony asked when they had eaten.
“Space,” replied Irwin.
They sauntered to the edge of the bowl, and Bony contemplated what was a vision rather than a vista. A wide valley lay between them and a distant purple range… the valley an eiderdown of apple-green ‘bumps’ and the gullies etched in black. Spanning the valley far to the north a ridge of bluish rock was fashioned to the sky-line of a great city of the Orient.
“I camped here about five years ago,” Irwin said. “After dawn is when you see the colours. Beyond that line of blue rocks is theBreens ’ homestead.”
“Whatd’youknow about theBreens?” asked Bony, and Irwin gave his peculiar chuckling laugh.
“The sons are a tough lot,” he said, faint admiration in his voice. “The old people were even tougher… must have been. The old man and Mrs Breen came from Queensland, looking for land, and why they took up that land instead of going down south, beats me.
“Anyway, they got over this range and down there, and took up a thousand square miles. Starting with nothingexceptin ’ the donkey wagon, a few cows and a dozen hens. They battled along, some say by stealing a bull and a few more cows, and living on ’roosand the smell of axle-grease.
“They had three sons and the one daughter. There was no flying to hospital for Mrs Breen. Women were tough in those days… or passed out. Old Silas died in 1929. Fell ill… no doctor… no wireless… no death certificate… a grave marked with a hefty wooden cross. I never met either of the old people, but I’m told that after the old man went out, Mrs Breen bossed the boys as her husband had done… with a clenched fist in preference to an open hand. She died in 1934, when the girl was only seven years old, and Kimberley was reared by her three brothers.
“Silas and Jasper had no education, and can only just read and write. Ezra did spend four years at the State School in Broome, and he got Kimberley through the Correspondence Course posted up by the Education Department. Did you happen to meet FatherO’Rory?”
“No. Tell me about him.”
“Grand old man. Been up here years. He read the service over old Silas and Mrs Breen when they’d been dead a long time, and he christened the kids when he called on his annual tour. Wanted Kimberley sent to a convent to be educated. Fought hard, too. The boys wouldn’t stand for it.”
“They appear to have prospered,” Bony commented.
“Up to a point,” agreed Irwin. “Manage to muster four hundred head for the Meat Works every season, but that’s a poor effort, for most of their country’s good beef land. TheBreens live rough, like their parents. Satisfied with little, and yet royalty to themselves. No one like theBreens… in their own estimation. Never gave any serious trouble, but we’ve heard of wild doings now and then.”
Irwin fell silent and Bony did not speak. The quilt of the valley was sinking beneath a purple overlay. The sun stood on its edge on a ridge, promised to look at them again, and vanished. The purple darkened to indigo blue, and the summits of the Range about the two men brightened from red to gold, an iridescent gold. The red monoliths and the cross-barrier of rock sank into the blue of the valley, and soon the summits were like carved mahogany pillars supporting a diamond-studded roof.
Two hours later, Bony and Irwin werelying in their blankets either side the fading camp fire. Bony tossed the end of his last cigarette for the day into the embers, and languidly he said:
“A man shotStenhouse, and, almost certainly, shot Jacky Musgrave, too. Result… the white law represented by you and me is set in motion against him. A mighty force, the white law. He was a fool, that man who shotStenhouse. When he murderedStenhouse, he had to murder Jacky Musgrave, and then he brought into action against himself a second and even more powerful force… the black law. If we don’t apprehend the murderer, the representatives of the black law will.”
Irwin gazed between the branches of the baobab tree above them, watching the endless procession of shooting stars. Bony murmured:
“Remember that late evening we were travelling to theLangs, and thespinifex grass lying flat and ghostly white towards the desert? I can see passing over that white sheet a dark cloud, coming up from the Musgrave Range and the great desert, swift, silent, irresistible.”