The Hunt Begins
THE following morning Bony began the practical part of his investigation at Karwir. Bill the Better had found the working horses early and had them at the yards when Bony arrived at seven o’clock.
The Black Emperor was among them, but this morning it took Bony ten minutes to catch, bridle and saddle him; then he walked him across to the gate giving entry to Green Swamp Paddock and the road to Opal Town. The keenly interested groom, who had followed to the gate, even forgot to bet with himself that Bony would be tossed within sixty seconds. But the horseman in him made him want to cheer at the half-caste’s quick mastery of a horse that had long since forgotten how to buck. After a turn of pig-rooting, the animal was given his head and the steam was taken out of him by a long gallop. He was now amenable to reason and was ridden along a hundred-yards beat-first at the gallop, then at a canter, and finally at a walking pace, before being returned to the yards and unsaddled.
Bony was examining the tracks along the beat when theLacys, father and son, joined him, Old Lacy demanding to know what was the “idea.”
“I have to memorize The Black Emperor’s tracks,” Bony replied. “The shapes of his hoofs will not be like they were five months ago, but he hasn’t altered the manner in which he places his feet on the ground. A book could be written on how individual horses walk and canter and gallop. To the expert no two horses do these things alike. I forgot to ask- Has The Black Emperor been ridden, or run free, in this paddock since Anderson disappeared?”
“No,” replied Old Lacy. “He’s been running with the unwanted hacks in another paddock:”
“Ah! Then my task of finding his tracks made five months ago will be comparatively easy.”
“But, hang it, Bony, we all rode over this paddock hunting for the horse’s tracks immediately after Anderson disappeared!” objected Young Lacy, and Bony was about to make reply when the old man roared:
“Since when have you dared to be so familiar with the Inspector, lad?”
“Since yesterday,” Bony got in. “You see, all my friends call me Bony. Eric is accounted one of them. What about you?”
“Do me,” assented Old Lacy succinctly. “Curse the misters and the inspectors and things. Come on! We’d better go in for breakfast.”
Breakfast over, Old Lacy and Bony returned to the yards, the old man carrying a seasoned water-bag, Bony carrying his lunch and quart-pot. The few personal necessities required at Green Swamp hut were to be taken there later in the morning with the rations, bedding and horse feed.
“You can expect me only when I arrive,” Bony told Old Lacy. “I may be out there for days, perhaps weeks. I’ve got to go bush, to be one with the bush, to re-create the scene and imagine the conditions out there that day Anderson last rode away.”
“Well, remember that your room will always be ready for you, and that we’ll be glad to see you any time,” said the old man. “We’re plain folk, but we never have too many visitors. Anything you want out there, anything we can do, just ask in the ordinary way.”
“You are very kind,” Bony murmured.
“Not a bit, lad-er-I mean, Bony. I’m wanting to know what happened to Jeff. Y’see I didn’t treat him right, meaning that I could have treated him better, you understand. I suppose no man will ever actso’s he won’t do things he’ll some time regret. Youtakin ’ The Black Emperor?”
“No, much as I’d like to. He wants riding and I haven’t the time to ride him.” Bony laughed and went on. “You know, if I were a squatter, I wouldn’t have a flash horse on the place, except perhaps for pleasure riding. I’d reason thus: I pay men to boundary-ride the fences and to carry out stock work, not to ride a flash horse that interrupts the performance of such work.”
“By heck, there’s a lot in that, Bony.”
“There is. From now on I have to employ my mind searching for five-months-old tracks and clues hidden by the rain and the dust. How can I do that if I have constantly to keep looking to my horse, forcing it to go where I want it to go, guarding against being bucked off, crashed against a tree trunk, swept off its back by a tree branch? That kind of horse is of no use to me.”
So it was that Bony selected a mare of the famousYandama breed, a chestnut with white hocks and a white forehead blaze, old enough not to play the goat and quiet enough for a child to clamber between its legs.
It was a calm, warm day when at nine o’clock Bony entered Green Swamp Paddock to ride eastward along its southern fence. Yet he was not happy. He felt that Diana Lacy was prejudiced against him because he was a half-caste, and that her prejudice was largely due to shortcomings in himself at the moment of their meeting at the yards. In any other man such a matter would have been quickly pushed aside as of no moment; but in Napoleon Bonaparte failure to win the approval of this girl of Karwir was emphasized by that torturing imp named inferiority, ever so alive in his soul.
Karwir hospitality was admirable. The dinner of the preceding evening and the breakfast that morning had been good and well served. But during the dinner Diana had rarely spoken, and when she did speak, her frigid politeness revealed the full sting of her contempt. He had not seen her since, but he recalled how, during that meal, her blue eyes had regarded him with a coldly impersonal stare.
However, the sunlight and the soft breeze from the east, the movement of the fast walking mare, named Kate, and the quickly changed scene when they entered the mulga forest overlapping into this paddock from the southern country, quickly lifted the depression that was alien to Bony’s sunny nature. As a further anodyne, he listed the difficulties he had to surmount.
Into this paddock five months ago a man had ridden The Black Emperor a few hours before a heavy fall of rain. To ride round its boundary fences meant a journey of thirty-six miles. Most fortunately it was a small paddock, comprising only eighty square miles of plain, mulga and other scrub-belts, water channels and sand-dunes. He knew the shape of this paddock, the taking in of Green Swamp from Meena having produced an angled bite in its north-west corner.
Considering the lapse of time since Anderson rode out never to be seen again, the task of solving the mystery of his disappearance might well have seemed hopeless to a lesser man. Bony had no starting point such as the body of a murdered man, nor any clue to provide a basis for theory from which fact might emerge. What had happened to Anderson, to his hat, to his stockwhip, to the horse’s neck-rope? Where now were these three articles and the man? For days and weeks stockmen and the aborigines had hunted and found nothing. It was as though the falling rain were acid that dissolved solids and washed them into the thirsty earth.
Such handicaps, however, to a man of Bony’s inherited tenacity and patience were, but a spur to sustained effort and the determination to succeed. The disappearance of the neck-rope, which was almost certain to have been attached to the animal, seemed to support the supposition that Anderson had been killed and his body carefully hidden. Had he merely been thrown the chances of his not being found were indeed small. Had he deliberately vanished, as so many men do every year in every city, without doubt he would have taken his hat, and, because he was such an expert with a stockwhip, he would have taken his precious whip. But why, supposing this were the case, should he have taken his horse’s neck-rope, but not the water-bag which, it was reasonable to expect, would have been indispensable to him?
Bony’s spirits rose high as he considered these difficulties. He smiled when recalling the sternly given verbal order that on no account was he to spend longer than two weeks on this case, for he had been sent only to quieten a boisterous letter writer. If in the time assigned him he discovered a lead hinting at foul play, then he could return to Karwir at a later date more convenient for the department overloaded with work.
As though he, Napoleon Bonaparte, cared twopence for orders once he began an investigation, and such an investigation as this promised to be! As though he were a mere policeman to walk this beat or that according to the orders of a superior! Bah!
Shortly after leaving the homestead gate the fence led him into the mulga where the ground was sandy and easily windblown, where grewbuckbush andspeargrass androlypoly. The stockmen riding the fence over the years had left a plainly discernible horse pad, and this pad was followed by Bony’s horse. Here was a country into which the light wind failed to penetrate, a reddish-brown world pillared by short dark-green tree trunks, and canopied by a brilliant azure sky. At twelve o’clock Bony reached the first corner, eight miles due east of the homestead.
Here he camped for an hour, boiling his quart-pot for tea and eating the lunch daintily prepared and enclosed in a serviette. So far, the country he had traversed could not possibly offer a clue to Anderson’s passing. The ground was too soft and sandy to have left unburied any clue.
From this first corner post the fence took a northward direction, and, after a further mile of the mulga forest, Bony emerged on to the plain that composed the southern half of the paddock. Now the sunlight was brighter and the wind could be felt. The horizon fled away for miles, cut here and there by cleanly ridged solitary sand-dunes and the tops of groves of trees raised into spires by the mirage. Five miles from the corner Bony came to an area ofclaypans across which his horse had to pass-and across which The Black Emperor must have passed when he carried Jeffery Anderson.
At theseclaypans Bony dismounted and led the horse with the reins resting in the crook of an arm. Now he walked in giant curves and smaller circles. Now he crouched to look across a claypan at an oblique angle. Four times he lay flat on his chest in order to bring the cement-like surface to within an inch of his eyes.
His examination of The Black Emperor’s tracks that morning had revealed to the half-caste that the gelding pressed harder with the tip of his off-side fore hoof than with that of the near-side fore hoof, and, to make a balance, harder with the near-side hind hoof than with the off-side hind hoof. When he had cut the animal’s hoofs in the yards the evening before, he had been careful to note the faint colouration of the growth since April, when Anderson had last cut them, and he had cut them as closely as possible to their former shape.
After five months it would have been stupid to expect to find The Black Emperor’s tracks on sandy ground, on loose surfaces such as composed most of the plain, or on surfaces scoured by the rainwater that followed Anderson’s disappearance. Theclaypans, however, always gave promise, for they could retain imprints for years, even if the imprints required the magnifying eyes of a Napoleon Bonaparte to see them. And, at irregular spaces across theseclaypans, Bony thought he could discern the faintest of indentations that could have been made by a horse before the last rain fell. He thought it, but he could not be sure.
For nearly eight miles Bony rode northward, again to dismount at the edge of the maze of sand-dunes stretching away into Mount Lester Station from Green Swamp. Here, where the fence rose from the comparatively level plain to surmount the dunes like a switchback railway, Bony and Lacy surmised Anderson to have stopped for lunch. A little way back from the fence grew a solitary leopardwood-tree, to which The Black Emperor could have been conveniently roped for the lunch hour.
Bony was now thrilling as might a bloodhound when in sight of the fugitive. He walked his horse to a tree distant from the leopardwood, neck-roped her to it, then returned to the leopardwood and began a careful examination of its trunk at about the height of the black gelding.
Now the bark of this tree is soft and spotted and green-grey, and Bony hoped to find on it the mark made by rope friction caused by an impatient horse. He found no mark. The tree grew above ground covered with fine sand, and those of its roots exposed he examined inch by inch for signs of injury from contact with an impatient horse’s stamping hoof. He found no such injury. With the point of a stick he dug and prodded the soft surface, hoping to uncover spoor buried by wind-driven sand. He found no spoor, but he unearthed a layer of white ash, caked by the rain and covered by dry sand blown over it after the rain. Here Anderson had made his lunch fire.
His blue eyes gleaming, Bony stood up and smiled as he made a cigarette and smoked it like a man knowing he deserved the luxury. Leaning against the smooth trunk of the tree, he faced to the east. To his right began the plain, to his left the sand-dunes, before him, some twenty yards distant, was the plain wire fence separating Karwir from Mount Lester Station.
Here Anderson had stood or sat while he ate his lunch. He had observed the rain clouds approaching. Possibly it already had begun to rain. He had decided that to visit the swamp and the hut would be unnecessary. What had he done then? Had he mounted his horse and continued northward along the fence? Had he climbed over the fence into Mount Lester Station for any reason, any possible reason? Far away to the south-east Bony could see the revolving fans of a windmill and what might be an iron hut at its foot. It was two miles off the fence. Had Anderson walked over there, even strapped the wires together and induced The Black Emperor to step over the fence that he might ride there? It was a possibility that might yet have to be accepted and investigated.
There wereclaypans all along the foot of the sand-dune country, but Bony did not stay to examine those near by, for Anderson would have crossed them before the rain fell and they would have provided him with a clue no more definite than those others had given him. Then, too, he was satisfied by the remains of the small fire that the man really had camped at this place for his lunch.
Again mounted, he followed the fence into the sand-dunes, into a world of fantastically shaped monsters, gigantic curling waves, roofs of sand that smoked when the wind blew, cores of sand tightened with clay particles to be fashioned by the wind into pillars and roughly inverted pyramids, nightmarish figures and slim Grecian vases.
For two miles Bony continued to ride over these dunes till he arrived at the second corner of the paddock. Here the plain wire fence joined a netted and barbed barrier, the northern fence of Green Swamp Paddock and the boundary fence of Karwir and Meena stations from this point to westward. To the eastward lay Meena and Mount Lester stations.
From here Bony’s course lay to the west, continuing over the dunes to their westward edge and for another mile before the third corner was reached; the fence then sent Bony southward to cross the wide and shallow depressions separated by the narrow ridges of sand on which grew only the coolabahs. Over these depressions the netted barrier was in bad condition, the netting having rotted at ground level since the depressions had last carried water. Now the netting was curled upward from the ground and an army of rabbits would have found it no barrier at all.
Where the fence again angled to the west to reach its fifth corner just westward of the gate spanning the road to Opal Town, lay the southernmost of the depressions. The corner was almost dead centre of this depression, and from it could be seen the track from the main road to the hut at Green Swamp.
Here Bony left the fence and rode eastward till he reached the road which took him into a wide belt of shady box-trees growing about the swamp. The hut was situated on the south side, erected on higher ground to be above possible flood level. For this reason, too, the well had been sunk and the mill erected over it. The place was well named Green Swamp, for a wall of green trees shut away the sand-dunes behind them.
As the sun was pushing the tip of its orb above these trees the next morning, Bony was riding towards the corner of the fence he had left the evening before, and he was no little astonished to see how badly the netted barrier needed repairs along this further section of it.
He had proceeded about a third of the distance to the main road gate when he saw ahead several men working on the fence. Then he saw the smoke of the campfire among the scrub trees and the tent twenty or thirty yards in Meena country. Approaching nearer the working party he saw that it consisted of three aboriginals. He passed the tent before reaching them, to observe the empty food tins littering the camp, indicating that it had been there several days. Coming to the workers, he cried:
“Good day-ee!”
“Good day-ee!” two of them replied to his greeting, the third continuing at work. They were footing the fence with new netting: digging out the old, attaching the new to the bottom of the main, above-ground wire and burying it, thus making it as proof against rabbits as when the barrier was first erected.
“The fence here is in bad condition,” remarked Bony, taking the opportunity of the halt to make a cigarette.
“That’s so,” agreed the man who had not replied to the greeting. From Sergeant Blake’s description, Bony recognized him.
His clear voice and reasonably good English, his powerful body and legs, tallied with Blake’s word picture of Jimmy Partner. He seemed to be a pleasant enough fellow and was obviously in charge of the party. Of the others, who appeared younger, one was shifty-eyed and spindle-legged, and the second, although more robust, had his face set in a stupid, uncomprehending grin.
“Have you been working here long?” asked Bony.
“Three days,” replied Jimmy Partner who, having leaned his long-handled shovel against the fence, drew nearer to Bony the better to examine him while he rolled a cigarette. “Haven’t seen you about before. You working for Karwir?”
“Well, not exactly for Karwir. I am Detective-Inspector Bonaparte, and I’m looking into the disappearance of Jeffery Anderson. Was the condition of this fence then like it is now?”
“No. It was bad, of course, but the April rain made it like this. Looking for Anderson, eh? I don’t like your chances. He was looked for good and proper five months back, and the wind has done a lot of work since then.”
“Oh, I fancy my chances are good,” countered Bony airily. “All I want is time, and I have plenty of that. What’s your name?”
The question was put sharply to the spindle-legged fellow and he goggled.
“Me! I’m Abie.”
“And what’s your name?”
The grin on the face of the other had become a fixture, and Abie answered for him.
“He’s Inky Boy,” he said.
Bony’s brows rose a fraction.
“Ah! You’re Inky Boy, eh! Sergeant Blake told me about you. You’re the feller that Anderson beat with his whip for letting the rams perish.”
Inky Boy’s grin vanished, to be replaced with an expression of furious hate. Jimmy Partner cut in with:
“An ordinary belting would have been enough. It wasn’t cause enough to thrash Inky Boy till he took the count. Still,” and he tossed his big head and laughed, “Inky Boy won’t never go to sleep and let any more rams perish.”
“I don’t suppose he will,” agreed Bony who did not fail to detect the absence of humour in Jimmy Partner’s eyes. “Well, I must get along. I may see you all again soon. Hooroo!”
He clicked his tongue, and Kate woke up and began to walk on. Jimmy Partner fired a last shot.
“You won’t find Anderson anywhere in Green Swamp Paddock,” he shouted. “If you do I’ll eat a rabbit, fur and all.”
Bony reined his horse round and rode back to them.
“Suppose I find him within ten miles of Green Swamp Paddock, what then?”
“I’ll eat three rabbits, fur and all. You won’t find him ’coshe’s not here. We all made sure of that when he disappeared. No, he bolted clear away. Sick of Old Lacy and Karwir. Anyway, what with things he done the country wasgettin ’ sick of him.”
“Well, well! It all has to be settled one way or the other, Jimmy, and I’m here to settle it. So long!”
Now as he rode away towards the boundary gate, Bony examined the new earth piled against the new footing. The extremely faint difference of the colouring of the newly-moved earth plainly informed him that this party of aboriginals had not begun work here three days back but only the morning of the day before, the morning he had left the Karwir homestead. He was aware, of course, that time is rarely accurately measured by an aboriginal, but it had been Jimmy Partner who had stated the period, and he was too intelligent, too well educated, inadvertently to have made such a mistake.
Bony came to the gate spanning the road to Opal Town, and saw the west fence of Green Swamp Paddock coming from the south to join the netted barrier beyond the gate. In it, too, there was a gate, a roughly made wire gate. Beyond it ran back the cleared line cut through the mulga forest along which was erected the boundary netted fence, and Bony instantly understood that no one standing on this road, or riding in a car, could have seen the white horse tethered to a tree on the Karwir side and a brown horse similarly secured on the other side.
To read the page of the Book of the Bush on which that meeting of Diana Lacy with an unknown had been printed, Bony opened the gate in the plain wire division fence, mounted again on its far side, and so rode the boundary fence in the Karwir North Paddock.
From the plane he had estimated that the meeting place was a full half mile from the gate and the road, hidden from any passer-by on the road by a ground swell. He rode a full mile before turning back over his horse’s tracks, for he must have passed the meeting place. He spent a full hour looking for the tracks of horse and humans. He failed utterly to discover them.