To Run Is To Crawl
CONSTABLEPIERCEcame, lunched with Wootton and Bony, teased Meena and complimented Sarah, and after two hours in conference with Bony, departed for Loaders Springs. The journey homeward seemed to him of short duration, so much was his mind occupied by impressions which confounded all preconceptions of the man he had met.
Bony was waiting in the shade of the ridge pine trees for the men to come in from the duties assigned to them that morning. He could see them, stringing down the background slopes, riding tired and thirsty horses, and he watched them free their mounts to drink or take a sand-bath. In addition to the four white men there were now four aborigines. There was no fraternizing, the aborigines taking buckets to the reservoir tanks and washing in readiness for dinner.
Pierce had left food for thought as well as the plaster casts duplicating those he had sent down to Adelaide. Bony had gathered much to add to the policeman’s tersely written reports, especially material assisting him to fill in mere sketches of people and places.
Now Ole Fren Yorky stood clear to Bony, who had never seen him. Pierce had revealed the man in a light less shadowed than he had been in a report of a murder suspect, for the policeman living in a small community is able to be far less isolated than when he lives in a large community. The few are neighbours; the many animated units.
Pierce had been stationed at Loaders Springs for eleven years. He was able to say that Yorky was well behaved when in town, and this opinion was not affected by Yorky’s weaknesses, one being that although he had a room at the hotel, he could be found sleeping on the bench outside, and on two occasions in winter had been discovered sleeping in a station cell.
Bony was informed of matters he would not without necessity enter into a report. He said that the previous owners of Mount Eden were confident that Meena, Sarah’s daughter, was begotten by Yorky. He said, too, that long before he came to Loaders Springs, Yorky had been a participant in several brawls, and he drew the picture of a man who, although of small physique, had been dynamite in his prime. People are so apt to see a man as he is, and forget what he was.
It is obvious that a man in Pierce’s situation would have opinions and theories which he could not reveal to a superior unless asked to do so. And Bony had seldom found co-operation withheld by such as Constable Pierce, who found pleasure in giving it.
“There’s men who tease Yorky about his height,” Pierce had said. “Tales told about him like this one. Yorky carried a swag bigger than himself, and once when he was walking to Loaders with a swag up, he passed right through the place because he couldn’t see it for the swag! There’s another story of him being in a crowded bar all evening, and towards closing time a feller said to him: ‘Hullo, Yorky! Haven’t seen you in years!’ and Yorky said he’d been standing before him for the last two hours.
“So what have we? A wisp of a man who once could fight his way out from under a heap of he-men, and had become old and conscious of his loss of physical strength. A little man always resentful of chipping about his size. Of late years he had to bottle up what at one time had been released with fists and boots. Gradually he turned more to the aborigines and farther from the whites. He could have resented something Wootton said quite innocently, or something said by the men, even something said or not done by Mrs Bell. They’re allagin ’ him. So he decided to steal something loved by everyone… young Linda. And when Mrs Bell stepped into it, he killed her.”
“Tell me about the men. Anything against them?” Bony had asked, and Pierce had replied:
“Nothing much. Young Lawton’s been in trouble once or twice. Fights over the young lubras, chiefly. The last time Canute complained about him, I told Lawton that if it happened again I would advise Canute to sool all his bucks on to him and compel him to leave the district. Once I had to serve a summons on Bray for not complying with the Taxation Regulation, and Bill Harte took to a couple of roughs passing through town who held him up for money.” Pierce chuckled. “You should have seen them. Crouch had to nurse ’emfor a couple of days before he could turn them loose.”
“Ah! Dr Crouch!”
“Yair. A character. Three-bottles-of-whisky-per-day man. Bets on flies crawling up a window. Tall, powerful man with a grouchagin ’ the Government, no matter what government. And is such a doctor that, did I arrest him, the entire district would set out to tar and feather me.”
“And Wootton, Pierce?”
“Told me he’d been a general storekeeper in New South. Came to Australia forty-odd years ago. Made good. Married and had two sons. Both of them joined the Army, and both were killed in action. That killed the wife. Wootton wanted to be a pastoralist, always wanted to be the big landowner, so he sold his business and bought Mount Eden.”
“And Mrs Bell?”
“Nice little woman. Wootton engaged her through an agency in Adelaide. We found out that her husband had left her a couple of years before. My wife liked her. But then my wife likes everyone. She lets out my prisoners sometimes if they spin a good tale, and I’ve got to go after ’emand bring them in again.”
So, over to Bony. The Law had had no troubles worth telling with Canute and his people. Canute and several of the Elders, including Murtee, wore clothes but were almost as distant from white influence as are the wildabos. The younger people like Meena and Charlie and Rex, were civilized and reasonably well educated, thanks to the Missioner, but nevertheless were rigidly controlled by their Elders.
Although it was now late and Sarah would ring the dinner gong any minute, the afternoon continued hot and still. The crows were waking into activity, and Bony idly watched three of them coming from across the lake while he continued to ponder on the character sketches presented by Constable Pierce. A willi-willi, red and dense and powerful, its column of dust and debris revolving at terrific speed, marched down the western dunes to the lake. Lake Eyre refused to feed it. It first cut off theWilli’s feet, then its legs, then masticated the swaying body, working upwards until only the head was left wagging stupidly a thousand yards high.
Here, in this land, to run was to crawl. In this land, the ancient legends were reality; the lake was dead, but the surrounding land was sleeping under the hot sun, waiting for the water to return and transform its dust into verdancy.
Another night came to comfort men as a cloak for the naked, and when another day dawned, Bony was astride his horse and travelling northward from Mount Eden.
He followed the cement-hard white beach, flanked on one side by embankments of red sand, and on the other by the sea of rusty mud. Here and there the tracks of cattle told where animals had ventured on to the mud a few yards to lick the salt from its crust. He came at long intervals to the mouth of an ancient river, or to the lip of an inlet. The land constantly changed for him; the sea of mud never. The only thing lacking in this picture was water. Given water to hide the mud, to cool the breeze, this beach could be named Crescent Parade, and this one ahead Little Cove, and the one traversed a natural for a Nudist Colony.
When Yorky with the child had left Mount Eden, he would have kept to this iron-hard shore, knowing that even the aborigines could not track them, and knowing, too, that he would have to step from it at some place or other, and that the aborigines would know that as well. He had certainly won a remarkable victory. He would have been guided by the Universal Controller of Life, Water.
Bony found no sand-soakage in the creek beds. Once he walked out on the mud, when his feet sank ankle-deep into it, and with a digging stick he holed down to the clay bed, and found no seepage.
Towards sundown he saw ahead a line of dots extending on to the lake. The dots grew to black columns, collapsed to become a row of drunken aborigines, and finally became fence posts, extending for a mile out, and the fence must have been hastily erected years back, following the swift slaughter of this inland sea. However, near the ‘coast’ new wires had been strung to keep Mount Eden cattle within the boundary, for this was the boundary fence once patrolled by Ole Fren Yorky, and which Bony now determined to follow, to examine Yorky’s camps.
This night he spent beside a small iron hut near a bore. There was a gate here giving egress to the unfenced country to the north. Inside the hut were several thirty-gallon oil tanks now containing weevilly flour, and small tins of tea and sugar, matches and plug tobacco, light rope, tar in bottles, and kerosene in a tin; without doubt a camelman’s camp.
The following night Bony spent at another of Yorky’s camps, this time a three-sided shed constructed with tree branches, and situated on the bank of a creek where water lay a foot deep above coarse sand. Long after the water had disappeared it could be obtained by digging.
At neither of these two camps was there sign of human visitors. Bony had seen no human tracks beside the netted fence. He had observed no smoke signals, no suspicious movements amid the prevailing mirage, which hemmed him all day long.
Next morning, the first warning stirred the hairs at the back of his neck. During the afternoon he was convinced that he was being followed. And when he camped again at one of Yorky’s old camps he was elated by his first evidence since he began this investigation, of the sand dune coming to him.
It was the third night from the homestead, and he slept in a single blanket on aclaypan some hundred yards from the glowing embers of the camp fire. He was undisturbed, and started the following day before sun-up, keeping to the fence, his destination the next watering place but a mile from the road to Loaders Springs, the fence having followed a great arc.
At noon he was still being trailed, and knew that the tracker was keeping several miles behind him. It was unnecessary for the tracker to see what he did, where he went, for the tracks left by his horses, and his own when he dismounted, would be easily read.
In a city, of course, you slip around a corner and wait to see who comes after you. But how to deal with an Australian sleuth who maintains his distance from you by many miles?
On coming to a mile-wide flat bearing nothing butfoothigh tussock grass, Bony decided to wait for the tracker beyond the low sand ridges on the far side.
As anticipated, the terrain was suitable. He tethered his horses on a patch of wild rye amid a small area of wait-a-bit and box trees, and himself lay at ease in the shade cast by a cotton bush. Before him was the flat, gently pulsating in the ground mirage. He could see the opposing ridges over which he had crossed to ride down to the flat.
An eagle came low to prospect him and the horses. He waved a hand to tell the bird there was nothing dead, and the eagle soared aloft to continue its eternal aerial patrol. Bony was lucky that the crows hadn’t followed him from the last camp, and that no others had yet taken up their espionage.
It is ever an advantage to know what the enemy knows and does not know. The tracker knew that Bony was travelling from one of Yorky’s water camps to the next. Therefore, he could not know that Bony was now waiting for him. On the other hand, he would not know if Bony decided to deviate, chose to make temporary camp to brew tea, or take a nap, and so he would proceed with extreme caution, and when coming to the first flat he would watch for signs that his quarry could be lingering just beyond it.
As usual at this time, the day was hot, and humidity low, the shade temperature at the distant homestead being in the vicinity of 120 degrees. There was no wind, and against the golden-dusted sky individual clouds were born, grew to giants, dwindled to dwarfs and died. They first appeared as white dots, swiftly extending, thus creating great shadows laden with cool air, and bringing about the disturbances fashioning the strictly local windstorms called willi-willies.
The favoured march of the willi-willies is from north to south, and they were travelling this line, not many being in sight at the same time, seldom more than three. One passed close to Bony, whipping his hair and drying the perspiration on his face. It moved with steady speed at about thirty miles an hour, whirling sand and debris upward into its red body, roaring like a beast when passing over the scrub. Yet another halted on the flat, performed a jig, rocked as if about to collapse with fatigue, finally became thrice in size and reached high speed as though a living thing.
What with the heat, the sticky flies, the eagles and the willi-willies, Bony was left with no cause for boredom. With the patience of his maternal ancestors, he waited, and was beginning to believe he would still be waiting the next day when a feminine willi-willi came tripping to the distant sand ridges. She paused there, seemingly shrinking from the open space, a little fearful of venturing farther. Then, mustering courage, she advanced cautiously.
Wisps of dead grass and herbage formed her feet, shimmered her red gown with gold to the waist. Her slim body rose to several hundred feet, swaying gently in a swooning waltz as she proceeded. A gambler here would be in paradise, for he could back his hunch without taking into account pulled horses or stacked cards, and Bony was backing this willi-willi to pass on his left, when the unpredictable happened.
As they are conceived by a gentle eddy so the willies die in an eddy. This one began to die when but a hundred yards from Bony. Something gross and unsporting punched her in the tummy, but she staggered onward in increasing tempo as though striving to keep up with the orchestra.
Bony betted she wouldn’t reach his side of the flat, and won. Suddenly she lost her head, and lifted her skirt as though to cover her shamed head.
Absorbed in the fate of the female, he saw not the male, for there was Charlie racing to cover, he having almost crossed the flat in the centre of a revolving column of sand.