Balancing Results
SIGNSOFwind were not disturbing until noon the next day, when the sky was streakily washed with slacked lime and the sun’s rays were tinged with red. Bony rode a hundred yards from the fence to accept the meagre shade of a patch of bull-oaks which, when first seen, appeared to be ten miles distant when actually they were within a mile, and looked to be thriving British oaks on a mountain top when they were half dead on the slope of a shallow rise.
The flies were in festive mood. Slightly smaller than the common house fly, Bony had kept them at bay with a leafy switch, like a pasha riding a small donkey, and now they followed him into the shade, to attack again as he removed the saddles from the tormented horses, not bothering to tether them as they were not so stupid as to wander into the sun-glare. At once they sought his company, when he, having made a small fire to boil water, found refuge in the rising heated air that he might convey food to his mouth, and the horses stood either side of him, their heads also in the hot air. Better the heat than flies drowning in the eyes.
Of Charlie he had seen nothing since the morning of yesterday, and so far nothing resulted from his trick smoke-signalling. He had observed no puzzling tracks, and since leaving Mount Eden homestead had found no sign of Ole Fren Yorky.
Still, in this country, the wise do not hasten to peer beyond the crest of a sand dune, but rather await the dune to come to them. And it indicated its intention of so doing when, later this day, Bony was continuing his journey along the endless boundary fence.
He and the fence were crossing a vast area of gibbers. Fortunately he was proceeding eastward, because it was impossible to see anything westward for the glare of reflected light from the ironstone armour covering the ground. Ahead some few miles, the fence would terminate at Lake Eyre, seventeen miles south of the Mount Eden homestead.
He saw the first of the smokes rising west of north, and so distant that they looked like gold straws sprouting from the mirage. There were three. One was continuous, one was broken at long intervals, and the third broken at short intervals. They lasted for about ten minutes and ended in a flat-top of dark-grey fog. Then four smokes rose from near or at Canute’s camp. Two were unbroken.
That was all, this day, and when night masked the heated earth, and Bony hadn’t reached Yorky’s next water-camp, he hitched his horses to scrub trees, sat with his back to another, and dozed fitfully until the first ray of dawn.
Before the sun rose, during those magic moments when this Earth is pure and without deceit, smokes rose from Canute’s camp, from far to the west, far to the south, and far beyond Mount Eden’s northern limits.
As Bony rode, a grim little smile puckered his firm mouth, and he said to the horse: “When everyone even remotely concerned in a crime sits down, then do something to make them stand. My smokes have certainly made someone stand.”
Before noon he came to a bore languidly spouting water on the far side of the fence, and remembered having camped here when journeying to Mount Eden. Passing through a gateway, he watered the horses and was filling the drums when he heard on the Mount Eden side of the fence a succession of shots sounding like rifle reports produced by a stock-whip. Minutes passed, then he saw the rider cantering to the gateway. He rode through to Bony’s camp fire, vaulting off the animal before it stopped.
“Day-ee, Inspector. How you doing?” asked Harry Lawton.
“So-so,” replied Bony. “Have a spot of tea?”
“My word.”
Young Lawton unstrapped the quart pot from his saddle, removed the cup-lid and filled it from Bony’s billy. He raised the cup and said:
“Good hunting! Flamin ’ hot, isn’t it? Going to blow like hell before night by the look of that sky.”
The brown eyes bespoke casual curiosity. The shaven face, the neck and chest revealed by the open shirt and the bare forearms had the smooth firmness of flesh possessed by Charlie, and were almost the same colour. Lawton’s trousers were of grey gabardine, his riding boots of quality kangaroo hide, and his spurs weregoosenecked and fitted with sixpences to make them jingle. He displayed the art of sitting on his heels without sitting on the spurs.
“What are you doing out this way?” asked Bony.
“Me? Oh, riding the ruddy fence and turning the cattle back towards the homestead. Cattle will hang around trying to get to the water this side of the boundary. You been missing some fun.”
“Oh!”
“My word!” Lawton grinned. “Been hell and low water down at theabos ’ camp. Best riot come ever. Yououghta see some of ’em. Rex is dragging an ear over his shoulder, Sarah’s lost half her teeth somewhere. Meena got hanks of her hair pulled out, and somebody wielded a waddy against old Murtee and outed him.”
“When did all this happen?” sharply inquired Bony.
“Night before last. Heck of a good go. We seen only the tail end of it. Bodies lying all over the joint when me and the boss and Arnold got there. Crikey! If only I had a movie camera. Been thinking a long time of getting one.”
“You pacified them?”
“Pacified ’em!” Lawton broke into a guffaw. “Strike me green, they was all pacified enough. Round about eight we heard theroarin ’ andscreamin ’. Boss came over from the house, but we told him to let ’emalone. He wanted to pacify ’emas you call it. Arnold said they’d quieten down by the time we wanted to sleep, and we were arguing about it when Meena came tearing up to say if something wasn’t done there’d be killings for sure.
“So we went along. Would have toted our guns, but Wootton wouldn’t have it. Said we didn’t want shotabos lying around. Like I told you, there was plenty ofabos lying around, but they wasn’t shot. You’d have laughed when we got the camp fire blazing for light. Kids screaming; lubras yelling; abos shouting dirt andabos crawling round looking for waddies and things they’d dropped.
“There was old Canuterollin ’ about, and when I asked him what he thought he was doing in his dungeon he tells me that a Kurdaitcha knocked him down. Feller called Jimmy Wall Eye thought he’d start something and made a lash at Arnold. You should have seen it. It was a beaut. Arnold prodded him on his good eye, and that fixed him.”
“But what was it all about?” asked the unsmiling Bony, and Harry Lawton laughed again and said no one knew or would tell. He went on:
“Next morning, the boss sent Arnold to the camp with the truck. Sent me with him. Said we had to gather up all the wounded and take ’emin to Doc Crouch to patch up. But thereain’t no wounded, noabos at all. They’d all cleared out except Sarah and Meena. They’re back on the jobcookin ’ and what not. Hell! I’ll have to get that camera. How Rex isgoin ’ to get his ear back on I can’t see.”
Lawton stowed his lunch-cloth into a saddle-bag, and the quart pot he strapped to the saddle, then, standing loosely beside Bony and rolling a cigarette, he said:
“Reckon I’ll be pushing off. Which way youmakin ’? Along to Yorky’s Lake camp?”
“Yes. How far from here?”
“ ’Bout six miles. Bit of horse-feed about the place, but crook in a dust-storm. You doing any good mooching about?”
“Not much,” admitted Bony.
“D’youknow what I reckon, Inspector? I reckon Yorky ditched the kid in asandhill, and got for his life over to the railway and jumped a train for the Alice. Easy done, y’know. Me and a mate jumped the rattler out of Loaders and put in a week up there on a bender, then jumped her back again to Loaders. Well, beseein ’ you.”
Harry Lawton didn’t mount that horse. He rose up and into the saddle. He did not dismount to open the gate and close it when passing into Mount Eden country; he did that chore from the saddle. Then he waved and cantered into the mirage, which made him look like an ant on a grasshopper. And, automatically, Bony gathered his lunch equipment.
The fracas at the aborigines’ camp disturbed him because he was sure the cause did not lie in his signals, but in that absence of Charlie and Meena for which they had not given adequate account. That Wootton had sent a truck to take the injured to Loaders Springs indicated the seriousness of the fighting.
Meanwhile there was yet one more of Yorky’s camps to inspect, and if this provided no clue to the mystery of his whereabouts, the possibility of his having escaped from this vast Lake Eyre Basin was a strong probability. Again riding along the Mount Eden side of the boundary fence, he went back over the visit of Harry Lawton, and his own impressions.
There are many HarryLawtons in the bush country proper, even in these days when Australian youth heads for safe government jobs. The spirit of adventure burns brightly in theLawtons and they are free of the herd instinct.
Debonair youth! The spurs, the wide felt hat, the open shirt, the belt holding the array of small pouches, including a holstered revolver, the delight in the long stock-whip having a bright green silk cracker to produce loud reports, ranging from slow rifle fire to the rat-tat-tat of a machine-gun, all told the story of zestful youth.
Harry Lawton could have started the uproar at the aborigines’ camp, where there were several maidens verging on womanhood. From what Pierce had said, Harry Lawton would accept cheerfully many defeats if balanced by a few triumphs. But the odds were in favour of the cause lying in Charlie and Meena and the suspected association with Inspector Bonaparte.
The first wind gust reached Bony about two o’clock. The sun was then distinctly yellow atop a canopy of light grey haze. Instead of the willi-willies, growing clouds of red dust rolled over the land, and on coming to the ‘coast’ dunes Bony found all the crests smoking fitfully, as though the storm was stoking fires below. The fence began to switch-back over ranges of sand, so that on coming to the summit of a range he saw down on the flat a dilapidated hut built of corrugated iron, a windmill over a well, and a rickety horse yard.
Having hobbled the horses to wander over to the drinking trough and seek a meal from the deceptively inedible herbage, Bony entered the hut of some ten feet by ten in area. Here again were the iron oil drums in which were rations of flour, tea, sugar, matches and tobacco, tinned meat and fish. Here again were oddments of ropes. On a bench-table was a hurricane lamp, and in a corner opposite the open fireplace a tin of kerosene. All the ordinary possessions of an ordinary bushman, save that this bushman named Yorky suffered no losses from wandering aborigines.
The strengthening wind had already made the hut’s iron sheets give tongue, but the dim interior was entirely free of the tormenting flies, and gave instant relief from the compelling omniscience of limitless space. Bony brought his gear inside and dumped it on the single bunk, and made a fire for a brew of tea; for no sensible man will drink unboiled water if he can ignite a flame and has tea in his kit, and so reduce the danger of stomach trouble.
Presently, sitting on a case at the bench-table, and sipping scalding hot tea, he smoked cigarettes and worked at his ledger, trying to balance efforts with results.
Was Yorky holed up inside or outside this station boundary fence? Facts could not be ignored. Inside the boundary of Mount Eden were camps at a water supply, and containing food stores. Outside was nothing but waterless aridity, save in the deep holes in the bed of the Neales River, and that was fifty miles away, and in country where even the aborigines on walkabout starved. The answer was certainly not to be found by riding haphazardly hither and yon.
A less patient man would have despaired at Bony’s accountancy.