Frightened People
BELIEVINGTHATALLthe Musgrave aborigines who had left their territory to investigate the death of Jacky were in that party which had ambushed the boss stockman, Bony doubted the soundness of his reasoning when, on walking another mile, he saw the imprints of naked feet.
He recalled that on first sighting Patrick O’Grady, the boss stockman was beyond the wild men hidden in the tall grass. O’Grady did not then know they were there, and yet was riding hard as though himself ridden by fear. Now it was plain that O’Grady had passed through one ambush only to fall victim to the second, and that between Bony and the homestead was the first ambush.
He plodded along the twisting track, head up, although his shoulders ached and his thigh muscles were hot wires. He was still confident of being of no concern to the wild men, whose single-track minds were now directed to those they thought had killed their relative. That the boss stockman was one of two men accused by the fall of human grease, and that by now he was dead, Bony was certain. The other had yet to meet his fate, and everything pointed to the belief of the wild men that this other man was at theBreens ’ homestead.
The sun was atop of Black Range. Two turkeys sailed gracefully to land beyond a patch of grass, and, abruptly changing their intention, they flap-flapped upward and away. Four kangaroos loped across the track much too hurriedly for normal progress to and from water. And in addition to these signs the hair at the back of Bony’s head seemed to prickle his scalp, and there was a cold itch between his shoulders as though his very flesh shrieked warning of silent spears in flight.
The track led to the edge of a breakaway to give view of the homestead, winding downward to skirt the low cliff and crossing over level ground to pass round the detached kitchen.
Bony thought the wild men had taken full possession, then quickly realized that the small crowd of aborigines about the kitchen were the station blacks. As he passed by, others appeared from inside the building, and yet more were sitting under the veranda roof of the main house. The camp beside the creek was deserted.
Kimberley Breen appeared at the front door. She was wearing stockman’s clothes and a heavy revolver was strapped close to her hip. The evening colours played about her glorious hair as they play at sundown on the feathers of the parakeets, and Bony squared his shoulders and straightened his back.
“I’m bothering you again, Miss Breen!”
“Inspector Bonaparte!”Her voice was low, cool. There was no hint of panic when she added, “I’m glad you’ve come. We’re expecting trouble. Your truck broken down?”
“No. I’m on foot… you mentioned trouble!”
Her steady grey eyes examined him, his unshaven face, his dusty clothes, the significant sag of the right-hand pocket.
“Come on in and eat.”
He followed her into the house. She shouted to her lubras and they scurried away. She showed him where to wash, and when he entered the living-room, she was pouring tea into one of her valuable cups set beside the meal waiting for him. Opposite him sat Jack Wallace.
Bony calmly met the slate-grey eyes and nodded nonchalantly. He said nothing, waited for Wallace to open up if he cared to. Kimberley said:
“Ourabos are terrified, Mr Bonaparte. They say the desert blacks have come for the killer of Jacky Musgrave. I don’t understand it, for I’m sure none of our people killed Jacky Musgrave.”
“They are quite unpredictable, the wild blacks,” Bony sidestepped, and attacked cold beef the like of which is never purchased at a butcher’s shop. “I saw their tracks the other day.”
“Where?” asked Wallace, softly and with markedrestraint.
“On the Range.”To Kimberley, Bony said, “All your brothers still away?”
“Yes. Jasper and Ezra won’t be back for several days. Silas will be home any time. I wish Silas would come. You see, our boss stockman has cleared out, and all the others are jittery.”
“D’youknowwhy your boss stockman cleared out?”
“No idea. He came home about two o’clock. Put his horse in the yards and shifted his gear to another horse. The others rushed over here saying Pluto’s Mob were coming, and now they won’t camp in their humpies and want to stay in the kitchen, even in the house. They’re all scared stiff.”
“H’m! How long have you been here, Mr Wallace?”
“Some time,” replied Wallace.
“How long?”
“Early this afternoon, if you must know.”
Kimberley frowned. The delightfully soft lines of her mouth and chin vanished and the ruggedness of the mountains took over. A lubra entered carrying a tray on which was an apple pie and a jug of custard. Kimberley rose and switched on the lamp. The lubra removed Bony’s plate and set the sweet before him. He waited until she had gone. When he spoke, the voice was cold:
“Cooperation at this time, Mr Wallace, would be diplomatic.”
“Course it would,” flashed Kimberley. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothin’ wrong with me, Kim,” replied Wallace, standing. “I’ll be starting for home.”
“But you said you’d be staying the night because of the blacks being jittery,” Kimberley expostulated.
“Better,” Bony added. “An hour ago I saw Patrick O’Grady riding hard for the Nine Mile Yards. Then he was off his horse and running… with about twenty wild men after him. They had speared the horse. I saw it done. I didn’t see Patrick speared, but I’ve no doubt he was.”
Kimberley shook her head as though her hair was too tight against her temples. The light made it gleam like fine copper wire, and her eyes were apprehensive although her voice remained calm.
“How far from here was that, Inspector?”
“Two miles perhaps. O’Grady ran over a ridge to the north of me. The wild men were running across that ridge when last I saw them. They would either kill him running or catch him for questioning… first. The former, I think.”
“Why question him?” asked Wallace, thickly.
“On what he knew of the death of Jacky Musgrave. They found Jacky, you know.”
“Where?”The dual question was like a bullet.
“In the skeleton of a dead horse.”
Wallace sat again.
“You been busy, haven’t you?”
Bony nodded, not looking up from rolling a cigarette. Kimberley repeated the question she had asked with Wallace.
“Near Black Well, Miss Breen. Someone must have told the Musgrave blacks where to look, but whoever he was he didn’t know or didn’t tell who killed Jacky Musgrave. The wild men took the body up into the Range, put it on a high staging and watched the grease fall on the stones beneath. Each stone represented a man suspected of committing the murder, and the grease fell on two stones… telling that the men who murderedStenhouse also killed his tracker.”
“Men!” echoed Wallace.“Two men!”
“Two men, Mr Wallace. They have executed their justice on one of the two men… Patrick O’Grady. They will now be intent on the other.”
“But, Inspector, we know these blacks and their ways, but we can’t agree that grease-drops on stones prove who did a murder,” objected Kimberley.
“Officially, Miss Breen, I am bound to support your view of wild men’s justice. I merely outlined what has happened to Jacky Musgrave’s body and to your boss stockman. We must recognize that the wild men became convinced that O’Grady was one of two men involved in the murder of their fellow; that they didn’t kill his horse and kill him for the mere thrill of the chase. That O’Grady bolted indicates a guilty conscience, don’t you think?”
“Yes, it does. I’d better have all ourabos in here tonight.”
“And I must be off,” Wallace added.
“It will be dark in half an hour,” Bony pointed out. “How are you travelling?”
“Utility. Don’t worry about me.”
“Might be as well to stay till morning.”
“Yes, you’d better stay, Jack,” added Kimberley.
Wallace stood, his mouth taut, but indecision in his flat grey eyes.
“I’d better get along home,” he persisted as though to convince himself. “The oldpeople’ll worry if I don’t. You’ll be all right with the Inspector, Kim.”
He moved to the door, looked back, shrugged at what he saw in Kimberley’s eyes, and went out. They heard his engine roar to life, and they sat on and listened till the noise surrendered to the claws of approaching night.
“Idiot,” Kimberley said. “He’s gone towards Nine Mile Yards, and the wild men are between here and the Nine Mile Yards, you said.”
“Yes, in two parties,” Bony agreed. “Now let us look to ourselves. I suggest that the women and children be brought into the house, and that the men shut themselves into the kitchen. There are heavy shutters to all the windows… they could be closed?”
“Yes, I think so. They haven’t been moved for years. They haven’t had to be… not in my lifetime.”
At the house end of the covered way to the kitchen, Kimberley clapped her hands. Black humanity poured from the kitchen, flowed towards them, and Kimberley shouted in their own dialect. Immediately she was understood, women and men shouted at each other. The women came across: oldbeldames, stout lubras, and slim young girls; youths and children of all ages; and Kimberley shepherded them into her house, where but a selected few had ever before been permitted in domestic service.
Bony crossed to the men gathered about the kitchen. There were now thirty-seven men and eight youths who had been initiated into manhood. He herded them into the kitchen and gave orders to close the heavy shutters to protect the two large windows.
The younger men understood English, and Bony chose a man whose face bore thecicatrice of full initiation. He asked pleasantly:
“What’s your name?”
“Blinker.”
“Then you come with me, Blinker, and loose all the dogs. You will be all right… with me.”
Bony produced his pistol and Blinker was instantly assured. Together they walked into the gathering gloom, down to the creek, and loosed all the blacks’ mangy dogs, and, proceeding to the sheds, loosed from their kennels half a dozen Queensland heelers. Joying in their freedom, the dogs raced about the homestead, engaged in a general fight, and were left to give warning of marauders.
That the wild men would actually attack the homestead was doubtful, for even those deep in the great southern desert have learned to respect the machinery of white man’s law.
Entering the kitchen with Blinker, Bony paused to survey this gathering of aborigines whose lifelong association with white folk had tended to eliminate their bad qualities and improve their good ones. He smiled at them, frankly and laughingly, banishing the natural reserve of people unspoiled; for all these station aborigines are maintained by the homesteads in return for the labour given by the men, and thus have not been debased by money.
“Why you feller binflighten, eh?” he asked them.“You no binkillum Jacky Musgrave, eh?”
“No fear,” replied Blinker.
“You bin know whokillum, eh?”
Bony searched their faces and, beyond faces, their hearts. All returned his gaze, and there was no shuffling of feet, no soft laughter to hide embarrassment. An old man who looked to be a hundred and probably was little beyond sixty, had his tongue pierced, proving him to be a magic man. Again Bony smiled at them, and nudged Blinker to follow him outside, there inviting the stockman to sit with him and rest his back against the kitchen wall.
“Why didn’t you go to Wyndham with the cattle, Blinker?” he asked nonchalantly.
“Went as far as Camp Four with the cattle and then Jasper caught up with Stan and Frypan and oldStugger, an’ they took over from us.”
“Oh!” Bony purposely remained silent for a full minute before putting his next question, again casting the baited line.
“Didn’t the boss stockman go with you to Camp Four?”
“No. He was out with Jasper when we left the Nine Mile Yards.”
“And he wasn’t with Jasper and the others when they got to Camp Four?”
“No. He had to stay home for a spell.”
“H’m! Now he’s cleared right away, they tell me. Never said where he was heading. What time of day was it that Jasper and Frypan and Stan andStugger took over the cattle?”
“ ’Boutseven. Cattle was off night camp, any’ow. I was riding on a wing.”
“And who told you to come home? Jasper?”
“No. Ezra did. Jasper took over the other wing.”
Again Bony deliberately refrained from casting his line until a full minute had passed.
“Anyway, Blinker, you’re better off home having a spell. Were you talking to Jasper or the others that morning they took over?”
Blinker laughed, softly, easily.
“No fear,” he replied. “Ezra saidgo home; we come home.”
“No argument, eh?”Bony chuckled. “Sure it was Jasper and not Silas you saw that morning?”
Blinker this time laughed heartily.
“Too right,” he said. “Silas don’t have black whiskers like Jasper.”
“Good for you, Blinker. You go inside and tell that magic man I want him.”