Iron Hands
AT DAWN THE following Tuesday the wind began rapidly to freshen from the north, and when the pale-yellow sun rose sluggishly above the rim of the world it cast not black, but dirty grey shadows. By noon the sand waves were rolling over the bluebush plain, and the deadbuckbush again lay piled against the fence that Detective-Inspector Bonaparte had slaved to clean. The sun went down in a brown murk, but among the men opinions of the next day’s weather were divided.
Darkness arrived half an hour before due time, and Bony, who had most reluctantly decided to maintain an all-night vigil, slipped away from the homestead at five minutes to eight. He had prepared for a night’s absence from the men’s quarters with the story that Dr. Mulray and he were still fighting a game of chess and that they had determined to sit up till morning, if necessary, to finish it.
The night was not quiteso evil as that he had spent at Catfish Hole. The stars could be seen, if faintly, and the darkness was not absolute. The wind had dropped to a strong breeze, and, the temperature of the sand-particles being lowered by the going down of the sun, the wind had now no power to raise them off the ground.
With the cunning and the silence of his maternal ancestors, Bony moved without sound. Never a dead stick broke beneath his feet. He saw obstacles into which a white man would have blundered, over which a white man would have tripped, into which a white man would have plunged, with risk of broken bones.
On leaving the homestead he walked due north out on to the bluebush plain. Here he could not see the river trees, but he could see the weak spark of light which was the oil lamp suspended outside Nelson’s Hotel. The wind moaned and sighed dolefully about the bushes that appear so desirous of preserving their individuality by demanding plenty of space around them. Although Bony was forced to walk erratically to avoid them, he yet succeeded in keeping to a predetermined course.
Without once seeing either the river gums or the creek box-trees, he arrived at that solitary leopardwood-tree in which the crows had been quarrelling that afternoon he had tracked Donald Dreyton up into a box-tree. The Three Sisters and the Southern Cross announced the time to be a few minutes after nine o’clock.
Standing close to that side of the handsome, spotted trunk nearest the township, Bony made a cigarette, and then, with his coat removed and enveloping his head, he struck a match to light it. Thereafter he sat with his back to the tree, facing Carie, and smoked, confident that the west wind would not carry the scent of tobacco to the creek.
It was just such a night for which he had been waiting-a night when the aborigines’bunyip could be expected to walk, or swing along from tree to tree. Notwithstanding, Bony felt nervous and could not banish his nervousness. Here he sat trying to calm his nerves with cigarette-smoke, wearing a dark cloth coat with the collar turned up and pinned at his throat so that no portion of his white working shirt would be visible. In the right-hand pocket of the coat lay an automatic pistol of small calibre, and in the other was a reliable electric torch.
Who was this strangling beast who behaved like a monkey in trees, who killed with no motive save to gratify a lust to kill? Was his name on the list of persons supplied by Constable Lee? Was he a man, or was he, after all, the bushbunyip? Bony’s aboriginal blood tingled, and Bony’s white man’s mind fought to still the tingling. After a moment’s struggle the mind conquered the blood.
At this point of the investigation he was presented with several pertinent questions for which he could not supply the answers. He was decided that as the three crimes had been committed south of Carie the criminal must live in the township, or at Wirragatta or Storrie’s selection, and of the list of Lee’s names he had struck off all but eleven. These eleven men were “possibles”, but no one of them was a “probable” save, perhaps, Hang-dog Jack. They were:
HANG-DOG JACK, the cook
DONALD DREYTON, the book-keeper fence-rider
BILL THE COBBLER, station-hand
HARRY WEST, station-hand
FRED STORRIE, the selector
TOM STORRIE, the selector’s son
MARTIN BORRADALE, the boss of Wirragatta