The Fugitive’s Story
THEBOUNDARYfence at this end, like that north of the homestead, terminated far out into the mud of the lake, and beyond the efficient barrier a line of old posts told of past years when the mud had been harder and the fence needed additional extension.
Bony sat on the shore-dune and looked at Lake Eyre. He was unable to recall anything more depressing than this vast plain of dark mud fading into the opaque vacuum of neither earth nor sky. This late afternoon there was nothing of the glamorous magic created by the mirage, nothing to break the flat monotony which brought him abruptly to question his sanity for sitting there and looking at it. Even the dunes were more interesting. They, at least, were actively shedding their headgear of sand and building elsewhere.
What at first he thought was a crow only gradually commanded full attention. The object was a long way out over the mud, and moved in a brownish haze. It wasn’t hopping like a bird, or walking like one, and minutes later it took size and shape to reveal itself as a dog.
Obviously it was a wild dog, but what it was doing there was not obvious.
Salt! Was that the answer? It might be, because there was no evidence of salt in Bony’s range. That it was a dingo was practically certain, and wild animals will often travel extraordinary distances and to extraordinary places for salt. Still intrigued, Bony realized suddenly that the sun had gone down, and he was conscious of the rising wind removing sand from under him, so that he was sitting deeper and deeper into the dune. The dog, the lake, the world could go hang this evil evening which night would blessedly banish, and he tramped down the dune to the flat where was the hut.
There wasn’t much of a wood supply, so he gathered sticks and dead roots as he progressed, and among the debris he picked up was a piece of board. The load he dumped beside the hearth, then made sure the lamp was full, and lit the wick. His fire was out and he built another, and then he strapped the bells to the necks of the horses, and shortened their hobble chains. The final chores done, he was returning to the hut when the wind brought to him a man’s sobbing cry.
On the crest of landward dune stood an aborigine. He was naked save for shorts. He carried no weapon. Standing there, his legs to the knees were almost obliterated by the flying sand-mist. Then he collapsed and plunged head-first down the steep slope, his body riding in an avalanche of sand.
He was trying to stand when Bony reached him.
“Why the hurry, Charlie? What’s the matter?”
There was caked blood on the left side of Charlie’s head, and splotched over his right shoulder. His eyes were glazed with fatigue, and now his legs were useless. Exerting tremendous effort, he managed to emit a sound like the word ‘hut’. Wrapping one of Charlie’s arms about his neck, Bony half dragged and half carried him to the hut, where he dumped him on the bunk, and stood in the doorway expecting to see enemies cresting the sand ridge over which Charlie had come.
No one, nothing, appeared. The wind brought the tinkle of the horse bells telling that they were feeding undisturbed. Behind him the rasping of the aborigine’s breathing was gradually diminishing, and he slammed the door and wedged it with the piece of case board. Then he fed Charlie water, a tablespoon of it, at long intervals.
For an aborigine to be so knocked out indicated how stern the chase had been, how relentless the pursuers. The pounding chest slowly ceased its labouring, and then came a succession of long sighs, and finally Charlie tried to sit up, and was pushed down.
“So theabos are after you,” said Bony.
“Yair. Wild fellers. Ole Canute brought ’em. Smoked for ’em. They nearly got me, and I’d already had enough in a brawl in our own camp.”
“Calm down, Charlie,” Bony urged. “All safe here with me. I’ll get the billy going, and we’ll eat, and then we’ll talk. Head ache?”
“Like hell.”
“They try to spear you?”
“Tossed a couple at me.”
“Theymust be annoyed.” Bony slung the billycan on the hook over the fire, then dug into a saddle-bag for aspirin, and cartridges for the automatic. Fortunately, the iron hut wouldn’t burn, and the iron was in fairly good condition. There was the point that the aborigines’ spears could be driven through the iron, but this he doubted as he knew of no precedent. Giving Charlie two tablets and a small amount of water, he said:
“Met Harry Lawton today. He told me there had been a fight in the camp night before last. Is that where your head was injured?”
“Crack on the head in that fight. Shoulder gashed by a spear when it whanged past me.”
“Close as all that, eh? Must be serious. These wild fellers, where did they come from?”
“Other side of the Neales. They must have travelled fast to of got down here in the time. First thing I know of ’em, I’m having a drink at the bore where you met Harry. Four of ’em. I cleared out fast.”
“You were still on my tracks?”
“Yair.”
“How come you were in the camp when the fight took place? You were not on my tracks then.”
Charlie sat up despite Bony’s motion to lie still. His scalp was opened and would need stitching, and the sight of the wound recalled Bony to having seen somewhere in the hut a packing needle and twine. The shoulder wound looked less ugly, but had bled much, and the final tumble down the dune, having added sand to perspiration, completed a picture of sufficient grotesqueness to make a man laugh-or shudder. Charlie rolled a cigarette, and Bony lit it for him, and waited for the reply to his last question.
“Your bloody smokes started it,” mumbled Charlie, “I was keeping well back, like you said, when I seen ’emgoing up, and ’costhey was in line I couldn’t read ’em, but I knew they was sent for Canute. They sort of stonkered me.” The whites of Charlie’s eyes betrayed the inherent fear of the inexplicable, and explained his following actions. “So I sit down and wait to see Canute’s smokes, and when none came, I worked it out I ought to go back to the camp and find out what to do.”
Now the eyes gleamed, and the nostrils flared.
“I got back when Canute and Murtee and the Old Men were having a palaver, and the first thing Murtee says to me is about the tracks we left at the bore camp the night before. That Canute, he’s acunnin ’ old bastard. He got to know about Meena tracking me, and he sent young Wantee off tracking her. And Wantee told him all about us camping with you.
“They had Meena hobbled to a tree with a bit of old rope, and Murtee tells me theygoin ’ to knock her on one knee to make out it’s an accident, instead of smashing both knees ’cosPierce would be a wake up. And while they’retellin ’ me, I seen a tomahawk biting into a tree, and I grabbed it out and ran to Meena, and she seen me coming and put her leg over the tree root, so’s I could chop the rope off her with one hit.”
Charlie was re-living the scene. The nerves of his face were jumping, making his eyes roll, and his mouth was wide and grinning. His arms illustrated the description of what followed.
“There’s Murteeyellin ’ to the mob to get me, and all Igot’s a tomahawk. They don’t like that, and knows I’d of sunk it anywhere I could. I’m ready for ’em, and then the next thing happened was Sarah. That Sarah! Seems they’d tied her up to a tree too, and Meena got her loose.” Charlie laughed. His voice rose to excited shouting. “Sarah, she’s got a tree all to herself, and she wops it against Murtee’s head like she’s Ma Kettle and Murtee don’t argue. Then the mob is on to me. Rex islookin ’ for it, and I’mdecidin ’ where I’ll bury the tomahawk in him, when Meena gets between and goes to blind him with her fingernails. Anyway, I gets in a smack with the flat of the blade, rememberin ’ just in time that Rex and me is mates. And out goes Rex.
“There’s old Canute yelling what to do, and the mob’s getting close to him, and me in the middle. I can hear that dirty black bastardtellin ’ ’emnot to kill us, and then I gets a wallop on me head and I’m out. Next thing I see is Sarah standing on Canute’s belly. Then she jumps up and down on it, and Canute don’t do any more yelling. I see Rex up on his feet and he’sbashin ’ young Whistler who’s tearing out Meena’s hair, and after that what come in front went down, and I had a waddy instead of the tomahawk, and I don’t know how. Anyway, they’re going down as they comes up, and suddenly there’s not so many, and it’s getting dark after a couple of ’emsort of rolls over the fire.
“After a bit the truck come with the boss and Arnold and the others. We’re all stonkered by now, but that fool Jimmy Wall Eye makes a swipe at Arnold and Arnold woodens him. That finishes the deal, and after finding there’s no one dead, but a lot of ’emstill sleeping, they go off back to the homestead, takin ’ Sarah and Meena with ’em.
“Nextmornin ’ we all clear out. You know how it is, Inspector. All the lubras get the young gum leaves and mash ’emwith their teeth, so’s they have a mouthful of pap, and they push the stuff into cuts and wounds and plaster Lake mud over the lot. Canute, or someone, tells ’emto leave me alone. I can go to hell, and think I’d better go bush while things cool down. Think best I can do is to go back totrackin ’ you, and I’mdoin ’ this when I see Canute’s smokes and the smokes what the wild blacks sent up. Canute called for a corroboree, but the next thing was them wild fellers coming at me at the bore. They’ll be around somewhere now.”
“A good fight, eh?” dryly commented Bony, and Charlie grinned.
“You’retellin ’ me. That Sarah! Heavy as aridin ’ hack. And both feet up in the air and down on Canute’s belly.”
“And she used a tree as a waddy?” Bony chuckled.
“Mustapulled it out of the ground, a dead stump ten feet long,” shouted Charlie. “That Sarah!”
“And Meena really enjoyed it?” pressed the delighted Bony.
“I’ll say. That Meena! That Meena!” Charlie rocked with ecstasy of the memory. “You should of…”
The hut wall received a terrific blow and cut short the story. In the ensuing silence both men froze against the backdrop of the wind, and at a distance a guttural halting voice shouted:
“You come out, you Charlie feller. Big-feller policeman, you stop there. You all right.”
Bony aimed his pistol in the direction of the voice and sent a bullet through the iron. There were no more shouted instructions. Even the wild blacks would know better than to attack openly a representative of the white man’s law: Could they lay hands on Charlie, he would disappear and never be found.
They dined off Yorky’s tinned herrings in tomato sauce, and drank much tea heavily laced with sugar, and then Bony suggested treating Charlie’s wounds.
“They’re all right,” laughed Charlie as though it were a joke. “They’ll keep.”
“Don’t argue,” snapped Bony. “You must have the scalp stitched up. Can’t go on looking like that. Make Meena sick.”
“That Meena! You reckon so?”
“I certainly do. I’ve got some salve. Let’s see if Yorky has any antiseptic”
They poked about, and Charlie came up with a can of tar.
“Hereyar. Heat her up and it’ll do. Sew me up like a camel. Okee?”
“You’d get me into jail for cruelty to dumb animals. No. Best thing is kerosene. I’ve a hold-all in this bag with some strong thread.”
The wound was ugly to behold. Bony persuaded Charlie to sit on a case with his face in his hands to protect his eyes, his elbows on his knees. The parted scalp was lacerated along the edges, glued to the skull with sand, and at least four inches long. Water inside the hut was now limited to a couple of pints, and it was a long time until day broke, when, Bony was confident, he could go to the well.
Fortunately for Charlie, the hold-all contained a couple of darning needles, and, having threaded these, Bony dropped them and the thread into a tin containing kerosene. To distract the patient’s attention, he mentioned having seen the dingo out on the mud.
“Funny thing about them dingoes,” Charlie said, not flinching as Bony sponged the open wound with kerosene. “Reckon they go right across the lake to the other side. I seen a bitch with her pups once. They were coming in, the old gal and four beaut pups. Looked gold in the earlymornin ’. You know, like four baby suns and one big one. I watched ’em. Seen the pups was keeping close to the mother, andd’you know why?”
“Why?” said Bony fitting a piece of leather into the palm of his hand to drive the needle. “This is going to hurt me more than it will hurt you,” he thought, but didn’t say.
“They wasfollowin ’ a pad,” replied Charlie, and moved not a fraction as the needle pierced the lip of the parted scalp. “Them dingoes know their way across. They follow their own roads across the mud. The pups waskeepin ’ closeso’s not to muddy their feet. I could see the track they was following. I went down to the dog pad and walked out a bit to meet the dingo and her pups and see what they do. And they just turned round and went out again, still following the pad. How’s the sewing?”
“Halfway through,” encouraged Bony. “How old would you say the pups were?”
“ ’Bout five weeks, might be six.”
“She couldn’t have brought them across the lake from the other side. She must have taken them out from your side for a walk?”
“Don’t think. She didn’t go out on the pad she was coming in on. No fresh tracks telling it, anyway.”
“How far did you go out on the path?”
“Couple of hundred feet. Could have gone a bit more, but I knew I wouldn’t catch up with them pups.”
“Many such pads?”
“No. That one’s half a mile this side of the homestead.”
“Interesting,” drawled Bony. “Well, the job’s done. Here’s a rag to wipe your eyes clear. You’ll have to get someone to cut the stitches in about a week, if you’re not dead from tetanus.”