Facets
ON the morning of the first of November Sergeant Blake received this telegram:
Superintendent Browne leaving by plane to-day for Opal Town. Try to obtain Inspector Bonaparte’s consent to camp with him. Do all possible assist valued officer of the Department. Your action commended. Spendor.
Mrs Blake read this message twice before looking up to encounter her husband’s eyes.
“I said you would be doing the right thing by writing to Harry,” she said, very much the woman. “ ‘Your action commended.’ It might mean a transfer east, or even promotion. Anyway, you’re relieved of responsibility, or very soon will be. Harry ought to be here when?”
“Late this evening. That’s if he leaves early to-day. Don’t think he will, though, otherwise I wouldn’t have been urged to get Bony’s consent to camp with him.”
“When are you leaving for his camp?”
“About eleven,” Blake replied. “I’ve a few jobs to do in the office.”
“Well, I’m sending out a billy of fresh milk and some coffee. You try to persuade Bony to drink some. It’ll be better than only the brandy and water. Thank the good God that Harry is coming west to take him away. Such a nice man, too, in spite of his birth. What about taking a mattress and blankets in case Bony consents-?”
“It’d be no use. He won’t let me stay with him.”
Blake hurried back to the office to answer a telephone summons. He stepped smartly, for the load that had ridden him since he had written his letter to Superintendent Browne was now lifted. “Your action commended” sounded good. To his surprise he heard the voice of Old Lacy when he answered the call.
“Good day-ee, Sergeant. No, I’m not up. The leg is still ironed in plaster and the women won’t leave me alone. The lad has put an extension of the phone through to my bedroomso’s I can talk to the hands and shake ’emup. How’s Bony?”
“No better, Mr Lacy. He’s becoming very weak.”
“Has he still got the pains in his kidneys and where his liver ought to be?”
“Yes, gets them bad at night. He can’t sleep, and then when day comes he won’t, saying he mustn’t let up on his work.”
“Humph! Well, he’s got plenty of guts, that feller, I must say. I’ve been thinking about him a lot, and I’m getting damned worried. You remember when you came out here and I told you that a man suffering from the Barcoo sickness wouldn’t get pains where he’s got ’em?”
“Yes.”
“Well, as I said, I’ve been thinking and worrying a lot about Bony. I don’t believe he’s got the Barcoo sickness. I think he’s been boned by some of those Kalchut blacks. Stands to reason that having killed Jeff Anderson, as I’ve always thought, they would try to prevent anyone from sheeting the crime home to them. Bony being a half-caste gives them a pull.”
Blake raised the old argument of the triumph of education over such superstition.
“Education makes no difference, except that the boning takes longer to accomplish, Sergeant. Either he’s being boned or he’s being poisoned. The blacks would even do that, even poison the water when he was away from camp. I’m voting for the boning, anyway. He will have to clear out. There’s nothing else for it. If he doesn’t the bone will finish him. You’d better report his condition and advise his removal if he won’t go.”
“Yes, I suppose that is what had better be done,” agreed Blake, and added: “Miss Lacy been talking it over with you?”
“Well, yes, she mentioned that one day she met Bony and he told her his condition was something like the effects of being boned. She’s a bit worried, too. Now, look here. You being under Bony in rank, and probably not wanting to interfere, what if I write to Brisbane and tell ’emwhat we suspect?”
“Might be a good idea,” conceded Blake, thoughtfully.
“All right! I’ll write to-day, now. The lad is flying to town this afternoon with the mail. I’m sorry to have to do it, but we can’t let Bony die in trying to clear up what most likely will never be known. So long!”
“How’s the old leg?” Blake managed to get in before Old Lacy could hang up.
“What’s that? Oh, the leg! Gives me jip. They’ve got it hoisted to the roof, and the women won’t let me move. Linden says I’ll be here for weeks yet.” There was a throaty chuckle. “The quack wanted me to go to the hospital where he’d have me under his eyes, but I’m nothavin ’ any. When a man’s got to leave his home he can leave it in a box. I’m staying hereso’s I can keep a tally on things. I’m a long way from being dead or disinterested in my job.”
“There’s nothing like keeping cheerful to live long,” Blake said, himself cheerful.
He arrived at the Karwir boundary gate a few minutes before twelve o’clock. This place of meeting had had to be abandoned because of Bony’s increasing physical weakness. Blake drove on towards Karwir another mile and took the branch track to Green Swamp. Three miles from, the main road he came to the southern edge of the southernmost depression on which stood the corner post where the netted barrier ran north for two miles to turn east again opposite Bony’s tent camp. By now Sergeant Blake’s car had laid a trail over the several depressions and the narrow sand-banks separating them, and to-day when he sent the machine across each depression it was not unlike driving through lakes of water, so heavy was the mirage. The car’s tracks on the wide, flat depressions were barely discernible, but they could be seen crossing the sandbanks that appeared like a distant shore.
When he had crossed the northernmost of the depressions and was moving over the flat land towards the towering dunes of sand at the edge of which smoked Bony’s fire before the white tent, two dogs came racing to welcome him. They barked frantically about the car until it stopped a little distance from the fire.
Detective-Inspector Bonaparte was sitting on an empty petrol case in the shade of one of the two cabbage-trees. As Blake alighted from the machine, he rose to his feet, drew water from the nearby iron tank, and carried the billy to the fire. Bony looked an aged man. His body was bent. His face was a travesty, the cheeks being sunken, the eyes lustreless, the mouth a fixed grin. Only the voice was unaltered.
“Good day, Sergeant,” came the soft tones and pure accent. “It is good of you to come out this hot day.”
“Oh, the heat’s nothing. I’m used to it. How’re you feeling to-day?”
“Not good, Sergeant. Another bad night. I have just awakened from an uneasy sleep. I felt work beyond me this morning, but we will get to it again this afternoon. Anderson lies near here, I am positively sure. He cannot be beyond a mile away. As I told you yesterday, I have only to find his grave and then my investigation is complete.”
“Righto! We’ll get on with the burrowing among those dunes after lunch. I’ve brought out some milk and the wife says I’m to try you with some coffee. Think you could eat a little? What about a nice thin slice of ham and a lettuce salad?”
“I couldn’t eat, Blake. The coffee I will try. Kindly convey my thanks to Mrs Blake. Say to her that I should like to accept her delicacies, but I fear to do so. I’ve been keeping off the brandy as much as possible, too, especially during the day. Spirits depress me, and I cannot afford to be mentally depressed just now.”
Blake had milk heating in a saucepan.
“Old Lacy rang up just before I left,” he said, trying to speak lightly. “The old man had the telephone extended to his bedroom, and he’s happier now that he can ring up his overseer and stockmen. I’ll bet the nurse and Miss Lacy aren’t having too easy a time with him.”
“No, he would be a bad patient. How goes his leg?”
“Oh, just going on the same. Time is the only very important part of the cure. Old bones won’t knit fast, you know. He told me he was worried about you. It seems that the girl and he have been talking a bit, and the old man now believes that you haven’t got the Barcoo sickness but have been boned by the blacks.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes. It appears you put the idea into Miss Lacy’s head that day you met her coming back from Meena. I’m thinking she knows something about the boning and why it was done.”
“I have thought that, too. I told her I felt much like a man who was boned in order to let her know I suspected it. What makes you think she knows all about it?”
Blake related the gist of Diana’s conversation with him and with Mrs Blake.
“It seems to us that she wanted to impress us with the danger of your pegging out here alone, and she suggested that I should report your illness to headquarters so that they would insist on your retiring from the case. She seems anxious to get you out of the way, and now she has told Old Lacy what you said about feeling like a boned man, and she’s urging him to write to headquarters.”
“Really, Blake, that is too much,” Bony exclaimed. “Am I to be prevented from completing my case by the very man who wrote to headquarters so often insisting that the investigation be begun?” Blake’s ears were shocked by the terrible laughter. “I can just hear and see Colonel Spendor when he receives Old Lacy’s letter. ‘Damn and blast Bony! He rebelled against my orders. He’s got himself boned by the blacks, or is up against some other tomfoolery, and now he can stew in his own juice. He’s sacked and he has resigned, and now he can go to the devil. Write to Lacy and tell him that he’s got his detective and he can damn well keep him.’ That’s what Colonel Spendor will say when he receives Old Lacy’s letter.”
“Still, Miss Lacy’s interest in your position appears to indicate that-”
“She knows of the boning,” Bony carried on. “That’s no news. I know it, and I know she would like very much to have me removed by force in case I solve this mystery before I die. Oh, I’ve got them all cut and dried. I know as much about the killing of Anderson as though I had witnessed it, but what they did with the body I don’t know and cannot think. My brain won’t work.”
Blake stood up from brewing the coffee. He said:
“Well, it appears to me that finding a body in this country after it has been planted six months is too much to hope for. It is harder than going through a haystack to find a needle.”
“It is no more difficult than going through a haystack for a needle with an electro-magnet,” Bony objected. “The extent and variety of the country doesn’t matter. The time factor is of little account. My mind ought to be the electro-magnet in attracting the body of Anderson. Failure to discover the needle cannot be credited to the amount of hay or the littleness of the needle. It is my mind that fails, and my mind fails because it is upset by the boning. The object of the boning is to drive me away, but the object it has actually achieved has been to blunt my mental power. Without Anderson’s remains to prove that he is dead, all my work amounts to nothing, all the clues I have discovered are valueless.”
“Well, what about giving it up and returning at a later date when you have recovered your health?”
“We have so often argued the matter, Sergeant, that you begin to weary me. I will not give up. I have explained why I dare not give up. Once I let go my pride in achievement I become worse than nothing. This coffee is delicious. If only I can keep it down.”
“Sip it slowly,” urged Blake.
Four minutes later Bony was dreadfully sick. Blake held him, himself shaken by the terrible convulsions. He carried the emaciated body into the tent and laid it on the stretcher, and had almost to use force to persuade the detective to drink a stiff tot of raw brandy. Bony’s breath was painfully laboured and his face distorted by pain.
“ ‘May the bones pierce your liver and the eagle’s claws tear your kidneys to string,’ ” quoted the sick man, slowly and softly. “The bones keep thrusting through my liver and the eagle’s claws keep clamping on my kidneys. They stop my breathing, the eagle’s claws.”
“Lie quiet,” Blake entreated.
“That I mustn’t do. I must not give in.”
“Lie quiet for five minutes,” Blake said firmly.
Slowly the laborious breathing eased. The lids covered the blue eyes that once reflected the virile mind of a virile man in the prime of life. When was that, considered Blake? Only a week or two ago. Thank God, Browne was on his way by now. And when he had taken this wreck away the Kalchut blacks would be dealt with. By gad, he would deal with ’em. ’Bout time they were split up and civilized and the magic knocked out of them.
“Your five minutes are up, Sergeant,” Bony said, unsteadily. “I mustn’t give in. I think I want to smoke a cigarette. It’s a good thing the boning doesn’t stop the ability to smoke.”
“Have a drop more brandy?”
“No. I’ll be all right now. I should not have succumbed to temptation, but the coffee smelled delightful.”
Despite Blake’s urgings to remain on the stretcher Bony rose and walked shakily to the petrol case. Blake helped himself to more coffee and loaded and lit his pipe.
“Success in crime investigation, Sergeant, depends on the ability of the investigator to put himself into the mind of the criminal,” Bony said, after a few minutes of silence that emphasized the stillness of the day. “Supposing you had seen Anderson riding down from the dunes that day it rained, and that after an argument you killed him. What would you have done with the body?”
Blake pondered before replying:
“I think, like you, that I would have taken it to the side of a sand-dune that looks like a wave about to crash on a beach and there at the foot of it I would have scooped out a hole and pushed the body in, knowing that the next wind would push the dune farther over it.”
“Wouldn’t you have seen the rain falling, the sky promising more rain, and known that when the sand of the dune was wet it would be a long time before the wind exerted its power over it again?”
“Ah-probably I would,” agreed the policeman.
“I think we have been wasting time among the dunes.”
“Then Anderson must lie out on that flat, soft ground bordering the depression.”
“Yes, he must,” Bony said. “And yet- Try to see yourself standing somewhere near here, with the body at your feet, and the problem of its disposal hammering at your brain. You have been riding all day and you have no digging tools with you. All you have is your hands and the ends of sticks with which to make a hole.”
“Why are you so sure that Anderson was buried here and not taken a good way away?” pressed Blake, as though he wanted time to conceive himself faced by such a dilemma.
“Because the men who killed him would know what every bushman knows-that no matter where a man may be, no matter how far he may be from human habitation, when in the bush he can never know when he will be met by someone. No, Anderson’s killers wasted no time in burying him, and ran as little risk as was possible. Here they could see to a great distance on all sides; and since there were more than one, one could watch from the summit of a dune while the other dug the grave.”
“Could they have ridden across to the Green Swamp hut and got a shovel or even a crowbar?” inquired Blake.
He did not see the faded blue eyes flash into momentary brilliance. When he did look at Bony, the dark lids hid the blue eyes.
“One could have ridden over to the hut and brought back a shovel and even a crowbar,” Bony answered. “That seems unnecessary, though.”
“Yes, I suppose so, when there’s so much soft ground available. How are you feeling now?”
“A little better but I do not feel able to do any work. This afternoon we’ll just sit and talk, if you will be good enough to keep me company for an hour or two.”
About the time that Sergeant Blake left Bony’s camp, Diana Lacy and John Gordon met some two miles westward of the bloodwood-tree on the Karwir boundary. Not since that day Bony arrived at Karwir had these two met, and this meeting had been delayed by Old Lacy’s accident, which had vastly added to the girl’s household tasks. Her increasing alarm at the reports of Bonaparte’s health had at last dictated an appointment arranged through a discreet person in Opal Town.
“Oh, John I’ve got so much to tell you and so little time to do it in, as I must be home by five o’clock,” Diana cried. “Let me go and please let me talk.”
“Very well,” reluctantly assented her lover. “Let’s sit on that tree trunk over there in the shade. I’ve been wondering about you, aching for your kisses. Afterwards, I guessed why you didn’t turn up the day following your visit to Meena, but it was a fearful disappointment.”
In the tree shadow they sat, John’s arm about Diana’s slim waist, her head resting against his shoulder, his lips caressing her dark hair. She told of Bony’s discovery of the piece of green cable silk, of the hair found on the tree trunk, the hair that had not come from the head of Jeffery Anderson. Then she told of her meeting with Bony after her last visit to Meena.
“I gave the feather-filled mattress to Jimmy Partner,” Gordon admitted. “I had to know what this detective was doing, and there were no birds on the lake to provide feathers for the blacks’ feet. They should have burned the case. I suppose they didn’t trouble even to obliterate the camp.”
“Yes, that might be so, dear, but don’t you see, the Inspector found no one at home when he visited Meena. He went inside to place the mattress case on the end of the dresser. I’m sure he went into your room and took some of your hair from your brushes. That’s what he went there for. I could see that he suspected you when the microscope proved that the hair he had taken from the tree wasn’t Anderson’s. He must know by now that it wasn’t Anderson but you who was tied to the tree that day.”
“We know that Bonaparte found the piece of cable silk,” Gordon said calmly, so calmly that Diana twisted her body in order to look at him. “After he got the dogs, the blacks were forced to keep well wide of him, but we know that he found marks on the tree trunk that interested him enormously. It doesn’t really matter what he finds and what he learns so long as he doesn’t find the body, and he won’t find that.”
“But, dear-”
“Supposing he has found sufficient on which to reconstruct the affair, what can he prove from what he has found? Nothing of any importance. He can’t prove that Anderson is dead. We know that he has been walking about all over the place, digging into the base of sand-dunes, and that sometimes Sergeant Blake has been helping him. He knows he can’t do anything until he finds the body, and, as I have just said, he’ll never do that.”
A silence fell between them for a little while. Then the girl sighed and said:
“I wish I were not so worried about it.”
“I’m not greatly worried about it, sweetheart,” Gordon told her. “I’m worried only about the possibility of Bonaparte putting in a confidential report that may affect the Kalchut in a roundabout manner. Neither mother nor I want to see official interference with them. That would mean their swift de-tribalizationand inevitable extinction. No matter how kindly officialdom might deal with them, once they are interfered with it is the beginning of the end.”
“But the time must come when-”
“Yes, dear, that too is inevitable, but weGordons are going to delay the inevitable as long as possible. This Anderson business is going to make matters doubly hard for us. In death, Anderson will do the Kalchut more harm than he did when alive.”
“And you feel really sure the Inspector won’t find him?” pressed Diana.
“Quite sure.”
Again they fell silent, and again the girl broke the silence.
“Well, the Inspector can’t last much longer. He’ll have to go away soon.”
“Go away soon. What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know he’s very sick?”
“No.”
“You don’t? Didn’t the blacks who have been watching him tell you?”
“No.”
“That’s strange, dear. The Inspector has been frightfully ill with the Barcoo sickness. Sergeant Blake says he’s so ill that he can hardly walk at all. Are you sure you don’t know anything about it?”
“I’ve said so. The blacks never mentioned it to me. They would have known. How long has he been ill?”
Violet eyes searched deeply the hazel eyes regarding her beneath puzzled brows. Gordon saw in the violet eyes a dawning horror, and then he was listening to her account of Bony’s attack of the Barcoo sickness, of Bony’s reference to the likeness of his symptoms to those suffered by the victim of the pointed bone, of her father’s conviction that Bony had been boned. And while she recited all this her heart was lightened of its load of suspicion that her lover had induced the boning, for in his eyes horror and anger swiftly blazed.
“The blacks did bone him,” she cried, just a little shrilly. “That’s why they didn’t tell you he was so ill. Oh, John, and I’ve been thinking you might have got them to do it to drive the Inspector away from Karwir.”
“Of course I didn’t. If they have boned the detective they did it off their own bat, knowing quite well I wouldn’t stand for it.” Gordon pursed his lips, worry now settled upon him in earnest. “D’youthink Bonaparte knows he’s been boned?”
“Yes, John, I do. I-I think he’s the bravest man I’ve ever met. He’d sooner die than give up. Oh, I’ve done what I could to get him away, indirectly, of course. I suggested to Mrs Blake and her husband that the Sergeant should report Bonaparte’s illness to his headquarters, and I’ve persuaded dad to write down to Brisbane about it.”
Gordon was still frowning when he said:
“Do you think that was wise? Bonaparte is bound to hear of all that eventually, and then he’ll bring you into it.”
“Oh, I’m brought into it already.” And Diana told of the trap Bony had set for her baited with imagined kisses on a telephone instrument, and his knowledge of their meeting near the bloodwood-tree. Despairingly, she cried:
“He finds out everything, John. Nothing can be kept from him. Our only hope is that he will be forced to give up.”
The man’s arm tightened about her waist, and the added pressure broke the straw of her composure. She clung to him tightly.
“Oh, John, what will they do when he finds out everything, finds Anderson?” she cried.
“They will probably be most dramatic,” was his answer. “But I keep assuring you that he won’t find Anderson. Without proof that Anderson is dead, Bonaparte, or his superiors, can do nothing. Now, sweetheart, don’t you worry so. There’s no real reason to worry. You know, you haven’t once to-day told me that you love me.”
“Oh, but you know I do. I wish I could stay here with you for ever. I’d like to ride away with you to the fabled Inland Sea and there find an island off its shore where you and I could find our bower house. Instead-I must go. Look at the sun. It’s getting late.”
Gordon watched her ride away homeward until she was engulfed by the coldly indifferent trees. Then he vaulted the barrier and strode, his eyes blazing with anger, across the half-mile of country to where Jimmy Partner and Abie were waiting with the horses-Abie with thick masses of feathers on his feet. At Gordon’s approach they arose. They saw anger in his face.
“What’s the matter, John?” inquired Jimmy Partner.
Gordon came to stand immediately before the man who could put him on his back with one hand. His voice was brittle when he asked:
“Do you know anything about the boning of the detective?”
Jimmy Partner’s gaze fell to his feet. Then:
“Yes, John,” he said softly. “I thought it a good way to get rid of the detective. He’s been finding out too much. I wongied with Nero and Wandin, and they agreed to get the bone-”
Gordon’s right fist crashed between the downcast eyes. Opportunity was his to measure distance, and Jimmy Partner was looking down at the ground. The black wrestler collapsed. Furiously Gordon turned upon the shrinking Abie, shouted at him to get busy wiping out the traces of the meeting at the fence; and when Jimmy Partner rose unsteadily to his feet, he saw as through a mist his friend and boss riding away towards the Meena homestead.
Since the day Diana Lacy had visited Meena, and had assisted in the salvaging of John’s hairs, Mary Gordon had daily guarded his comb and brushes and the pillows, and had kept watch on the house even while she milked the cows.
Unsatisfied curiosity regarding what had really happened that day of rain when her son and Jimmy Partner had not returned home till an agonizingly late hour, was now balanced by the thought that, knowing nothing, she could admit nothing. What she thought and guessed were little secrets of her own, and her faith in her son was untarnished.
This afternoon of the lovers’ meeting at the boundary fence, she expected John and Jimmy Partner home at six o’clock, and by half-past five the meat was brown in the oven, the peach pie cooked and being kept hot beside the stove, and the potatoes in their jackets were just put on to boil. She heard the wicket gate click and then jar shut, and, knowing it was neither John nor Jimmy Partner, she stepped to the door-to be confronted by Wandin.
Gaunt but stately, this personage of the Kalchut tribe was unusually excited.
“Johnny Boss him not home, missus?”
“No, not yet, Wandin. What do you want?”
Wandin’s eyes were wide, his breathing fast. He grinned and said:
“You come with me, eh? All rabbits they go walk-about. They clear outer here. They go quick, too right.”
“The rabbits going, Wandin?”
“Too right, missus. They go walkabout. Bimeby no rabbits here Meena Lake. You come see, eh?”
Mary gave a swift glance to the cooking dinner, hastily removed her house apron, tossed it on to the couch, and hurried after the tall, stalking figure of Wandin. He led her southward of the house for some two hundred yards and then up to the summit of the lake-encircling dunes.
The hot sun streamed over the vast empty bed of the lake, casting the long shadows of the dunes across the little valley to the lesser dunes merging into the base of the upland. The end of the tree-belt was a further hundred yards south of Mary and Wandin, and they could see for miles from the south round to the north-east. From the south-east came a cool and strangely fragrant wind.
“Look, missus!” urged Wandin. “See, the rabbits clear out on walkabout. Look at that feller.”
He pointed, and Mary watched a rabbit pass over the dune on which they were standing. It passed only a few feet from them, unafraid, as though utterly unconscious of them. It ran down the steep lee-side slope, crossed the little valley and ran up the slope of the lesser dune. Its progress was unnatural, as Mary observed.
She watched others pass on either side, all running in the same direction, the progress of each unnatural. Normally a rabbit, even when hungry and making out for feed, always runs in short spurts, with a period of sitting up for observation at the end of each run. This evening there was no stopping for observation. The rabbits evinced no sign of fear, either of those who stood on the summit of the dune, or of the carrion birds whirring above them.
The birds knew of this abnormality, especially the crows. Of recent months the crows and eagles had increased enormously, and now the sky was filled with them. The crows were cawing vociferously, and the eagles were gliding with seldom a wing flap, some low to ground, the higher birds like dust motes against the sky.
Mary turned full circle, slowly, spellbound by this genesis of a rabbit migration. Wherever she looked she saw running rodents. They were crossing the lake, coming towards her, passing her, running away from her to the south-east whence came the strangely fragrant little wind. All were running into the wind and in the same direction, all running in that unnatural, purposeful manner.
“Bimeby no rabbits at Meena,” Wandin predicted. “Plenty feed bimeby after rain come. Long time now ’fore rabbits so thick at Meena.”
Mary quite forgot her cooking dinner. When she turned again to the lake the sun was appreciably lower above the smoke-blue Meena Hills. Low upon the barren dust plain of the lake bed and coloured by the sun, hung a film of scarlet gauze created from dust raised by the running rabbits. Each rabbit was the point of a dust-spear; each rabbit was like a speck of flotsam carried by a strong current to the south-east, a current never varying in its movement.
Wandin drew Mary’s attention to the horseman coming from the south, riding fast down the long ground slope. Although he was a mile distant she recognized the horse and her son who rode. Remembering the dinner, she uttered a little exclamation, but found herself unable to be drawn from this vantage point that offered a grandstand seat for the opening of a mighty drama. She could hear the excited cries of the aborigines and their children, cries sometimes drowned by the cawing of the crows. A rabbit passed so close to Wandin that he was able to kick out at it and send it rolling down the slope. It continued on its course as though unaware of the interruption. The sunlight falling obliquely upon the eastern land rise was painted scarlet by the dust following the leaders of the horde, and the far edge of this dust was creeping to the land summit as though a red coverlet were being drawn across the world.
“Blackfeller go walkabout to-morrowp’raps,” Wandin said. “Blackfeller like rabbit, rabbit like blackfeller. Stop one place long timegoodoh. Then little wind come and he no longer stop one place. He go walkabout or he sit down long time and die. Johnny Boss he leave Jimmy Partner and Abie in bush. Look, missus, Johnny Boss he hurry. Waffor?”
When John Gordon was a hundred yards from them, Mary waved to him to join them on this grandstand of fine red sand. She saw the evidence of the horse’s pace in the white foam flecking its shoulders, and then she saw her son’s face made almost ugly with anger. He sent the horse up the yielding slope of the dune and leapt to the ground before them. The horse neighed and, because the reins were not trailed to the ground, turned away and trotted to the yards and the drinking trough.
“All the rabbits are going,” Mary cried excitedly.
Gordon glanced at her, and she received a small thrilling shock at sight of his blazing eyes. To Wandin, he said:
“Have you and Nero been boning that beeg feller blackfeller p’liceman?”
Without hesitation, Wandin replied:
“Yes, Johnny Boss. Him find out too-”
A clenched fist, from the knuckles of which the skin was stripped, crashed to the point of his jaw, and Wandin spun round and fell on his face and chest upon the soft sand of the dune.
Mary stood quite still, her work-worn hands clasped and pressed to her mouth to stifle a scream. Gordon nodded to her, his face a grin of fury, and then ran down the dune and vanished beyond the house. Wandin, sprawling at her feet, called up to her:
“WafforJohnny Boss do that, missus?”
Gordon ran to the gate beyond the house, cleared it like a racing dog, and continued to run along the winding path to the aborigines’ camp. It was deserted, all were away watching the rabbit migration. From the camp Gordon hurried on round the lake shore, and so found Nero squatted over a little fire, an ebony gargoyle and as motionless as one.
Nero did not hear the white man’s approach. He did not even hear the snap of the stick trodden upon by Gordon. His mind was concentrated on the terrible work of killing a man miles away. He toppled over and sprawled beside his little fire when the side of Gordon’s riding boot connected with his stern quarters. As one awakening from a pleasant dream, with his hair and beard dripping red sand, he was picked up and shaken till his eyes appeared likely to drop from their sockets. Then he was flung backward to the ground; and, when he regained his breath and conquered his dizziness, he saw John Gordon squatting beside his little fire and rolling a cigarette.
“Wafforyoukickum like that grey gelding?” he whined.
“Go along to the house and bring Wandin. Run, you devil.”
Nero was long past the real running age, but he made a valiant effort to move faster than his usual gait, his mind most uneasy, his body a little tired from the enforced exertion. The minutes slipped by and Gordon smoked and seldom moved. The rage gradually subsided and left him a little ashamed. He did not look up when the soft crunching of naked feet on soft sand reached him.
“Sit down along me,” he ordered.
Wandin and Nero squatted on either side of him.
“Who told you to bone the blackfeller p’liceman?”
“Jimmy Partner, Johnny Boss,” replied Nero. “Y’see, Johnny Boss, that beeg feller blackfeller p’liceman him find tree and him find green hair from Anderson’s whip feller. Bimeby him find Anderson. Then him make things crook for our Johnny Boss.”
The final phrase, “our Johnny Boss,” spoke a volume of affection. Gordon stared into the small fire, finding it too difficult to look up into the two pairs of appealing black eyes.
“Why you not tell me you bone detective feller?”
“You tellum no point the bone any more, Johnny Boss. Long time back you tellum that. You say bone-pointing no play fair, likeum you said one time me nohittem Wandin with cricket bat feller that time Wandin hehittem me with ball feller. You only little Johnny Boss then.”
So for many days and nights these two, with others of the elder bucks to assist, most probably, had taken turn and turn about to squat over a lonely little fire and will another human being to death, because they thought danger threatened him, not themselves. They hated for him, not for themselves. By the white man’s standards they might be children, but they had employed a weapon fashioned by ten thousand generations, whilst wearing the crown named loyalty. Was he not one of them? Had he not been initiated into the Kalchut tribe? Had he not been entrusted with secrets so zealously guarded by the old men? An enemy was trying to harm him. The enemy must be destroyed. Gordon stood up and they with him. Anxiously they looked into his eyes and were overjoyed to see that the anger had gone from him.
“You no point the bone again, eh?”
Wandin caressed his jaw and Nero certain portions of his plump body.
“No fear, Johnny Boss. We tellum Jimmy Partner git to hell outer it.”
Gordon grasped Wandin by his left arm and Nero by his right arm, and drew them close to him.
“Me sorry feller Ihittem you. You good feller black-fellers. You my fathers and my brothers, but me I’m Johnny Boss, eh?”
“Too right, Johnny Boss.”
“To-morrow you all, lubras and children, go on walkabout Meena Hills. You stay out there till I tellum you come back Meena. Me, I take Jimmy Partner and Malluc. You bin tellum Malluc come along house. In the morning you tellum lubras come along store for tucker.”
A gaunt face and a round one expanded in cheerful grins.
“Now yousittem down all night anddrawum bones and eagle’s claws outer blackfeller p’liceman. You tellum little pointed bones and little sharp claws come outer him.”
“All right, Johnny Boss, we tellum so.”
Gordon’s hands squeezed hard before he left them and returned to the deserted camp, and then along the path back to the gate. Near the horse yards Jimmy Partner and Abie were unsaddling, and Jimmy Partner, forgetful of his enormous strength and wrestling prowess, left his horse and retreated.
“Come here, Jimmy Partner,” Gordon ordered.
The aboriginal hesitated for a moment, then advanced slowly to meet Gordon. When they were near Gordon held out his hand and said:
“I’m sorry I hit you, Jimmy, but you did wrong to get Nero and Wandin to use the bone. The results might be bad, not to the detective but to the Kalchut. Shake hands.”
Jimmy Partner grinned although to do so pained the bridge of his nose. He grasped Gordon’s skinned hand and Gordon did not wince.
“That’s all right, Johnny Boss,” Jimmy Partner said with surprising cheerfulness. “Your crack was only a fly tickler. I didn’t think I was doing any harm-to you.”
“To me, no, but to the Kalchut, the boning might have most harmful results. Don’t you ever again persuade the Kalchut to act without my orders. Better see to your face before you come in for dinner.”
“Me face! Oh, Abie did that when we were sparring out in the paddock. It was quite an accident, wasn’t it, Abie?”
And with knit brows John Gordon left them to walk over to the house.