Bushranger of the Skies

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Well, I was hoping so,” Bony ventured.

  “Coo!” snorted the cook. “Can’t you wait for breakfast? Think a man’s a slave to be makin’ tea all day and all night?”

  “Stow your noise, and let me at the tea billy,” said the ancient, and strode towards the kitchen range whereupon stood a steaming billycan. As he passed Bony, he winked one eye. Taking two bright tin pannikins from a row hanging on wall hooks, he filled them and returned to the table. “Here you are, mister! Help yourself to milk and sugar, and don’t take any notice of our local poisoner. He’s not too bad.”

  Having well laced his tea with milk, he removed the square board, covering a seven-pound jam tin serving as a sugar basin, and proceeded to help himself to spoonful after spoonful.

  “Hey!” cried the cook. “You go easy on the sugar.”

  Again the lid closed over one bright eye, whilst the other sparkled at Bony.

  “Stow your noise,” again came the command. “First you’re a slave and then you’re not. First you blackguards the boss and then yell because he might go bankrupt. You are the most cussedest poisoner I’ve ever come in contact with.”

  The cook grabbed a pannikin from the wall, filled it, and stalked to the table. If anything, his mood was a little lighter. He indicated the ancient with a motion of his long head.

  “He thinks hisself smart,” he said to Bony, adding directly to the allegedly smart one: “Anyhow how’s things up your street?”

  They sat on the form flanking the long table, and the cook began the loading of a black pipe with jet-black tobacco.

  “Not too good, Alf,” the old man replied, his bright eyes clouding. “Something’s ’appened what I can’t make out. You know that bed in front where them Madam Leroy standards is growing?”

  “Yes. Didn’t you show ’em to me that day you swore you’d ask for your cheque if the hoppers came again. They come the next week, but you’re still ’ere.”

  “That’s the bed,” asserted the old man, triumphantly. “Well, on the grass near that bed, what d’you think I found?”

  “Dunno. Not a quid note, I’ll bet. I’ll bet there ain’t one on the flamin’ station. What did you find?”

  Bony, seeing that he was supposed to ask the same question, asked it.

  “I found a dent deep enough to put me hand in.”

  “A dent!” exclaimed the cook. “What kind of a dent?”

  “Just a dent, Alf, just a dent. And in that dent was a lot of dry sand. Now—you tell me how dry sand got into that dent; and how the dent got into the lawn when last evening there wasn’t no dent, and the lawn was wet from watering and there wasn’t any sand, wet or dry, on the lawn at all.”

  “Well, I suppose the flamin’ wind blow’d the sand into that dent, you old fool,” growled the cook.

  “Stow your noise!” snarled the ancient, and gulped loudly at his tea. “I tell you there wasn’t no dent there last evening, and no sand, wet or dry, in the dent last evening. What I’m asking you is to tell me how that dent got there.”

  “How the hell do I know how the dent got into your lawn?” asked the cook.

  “Well, as your mind’s a bit weak, Alf, I tell you something else what I can’t make out.”

  The cook rose to his feet, stalked to one of the open windows and expectorated a stream of diluted nicotine.

  “There’s lots of things you ain’t making’ out this mornin’. What’s this new one?”

  The old man stood up, seemingly the better to make his remarks clearer by means of sauce bottles, milk jug and sugar tin.

  “Now, this here’s the bed of them Madam Leroys,” he began. “This here is the dent on the lawn. Now here, in this part of the Madam Leroy rose bed, is where I seen a disturbance of the ground, and under the disturbance I finds a treacle tin. It’s been buried there.”

  “One of the dorgs, I suppose.”

  “Dorg me eye. In that treacle tin was a lot of dry sand, the same as the dry sand in the dent. Now why should anyone bury a treacle tin with sand in it, in my best rose bed?”

  “Yes,” Bony said in support. “Why should anyone bury a treacle tin in that rose bed?”

  “How do I know?” demanded the cook. “Why do dorgs bark? Why do men work like slaves? Why do motor steerin’ gears go bung at the wrong time? Why do airplanes fly around after dark? Why do nigs walk about carryin’ suitcases?”

  “Suitcases!” exclaimed Bony.

  “That’s what I said,” stoutly maintained the cook. “Early this morning’ I seen Itcheroo walkin’ away from the stockyards, carryin’ a suitcase. All he wanted to complete the pitchur was a top ’at.”

  “Was it a large suitcase?” pressed Bony.

  “Large! It wasn’t much larger than a fair sized damper. What with the nigs carryin’ suitcases around before breakfast, and dents and dry sand and airplanes and things, the world’s comin’ to a pretty fine pitch.”

  “The world!” sneered the old man. “What d’you know about the world?”

  “More’n you do, anyhow. You ain’t seen the flamin’ world for the last seventy years,” replied the cook.

  II

  Bony was admiring the roses when the breakfast gong was struck and Flora McPherson emerged from the house.

  “Good morning, Inspector! Don’t you think old Jack is wonderful, growing these roses in the middle of Australia?”

  “I am uncertain which is the more wonderful—the garden or the gardener,” Bony smilingly said. “Good morning!”

  She caught his mood, standing with black hair teased by the breeze and gazing southward over the plain into which already was creeping the mirage, the burning water. She was thinking that to rely on first, or even second, impressions is an error. Bony said:

  “I met the gardener only an hour ago. How old is he, do you know?”

  “Well, Jack says he’s only seventy-one, but uncle knows he must be over ninety.”

  “Ninety! Then he will not be old until he’s past a hundred and twenty.”

  “He’s one of the great originals,” she said, as they walked slowly to the house. “Old Jack came here with grandfather; drove one of the bullock wagons. It was grandmother and he who first started the garden here. The locusts came and destroyed it time and again, but Jack now defies them by protecting all the garden with sheets of hessian. Have you seen the cemetery?”

  “No.”

  “It’s over there beyond those sugar gums. You should visit it sometime. It’s a shrine. Ah, here’s uncle looking for his break-fast. Morning, uncle!”

  “Morning dear! Morning, Inspector!”

  McPherson’s bearing was again erect, defiant of the world.

  “I have been admiring the garden,” Bony said when he had followed the girl up to the veranda. And there he sighed loudly, adding: “I do wish you people would call me merely Bony. My wife does. So do my three boys. So does my Chief Commissioner and my department chief. It’s Bony, lend me a quid—meaning a pound. It’s Bony, give us a tray-bit—meaning give me a threepenny piece. It’s Bony, do this or go there. No one ever thinks of me as a detective.”

  He said this with such gravity that both the girl and the squatter were nonplussed.

  “I seldom think of myself as a detective,” he went on. “My Chief Commissioner is a violent man destined to die with his boots firmly laced to his feet. He damns and blasts me. My wife calls me from my study (where I may be reading of the latest method of bringing out finger-prints on clothes), to cut the wood or fire the chimney, she being a firm believer in the superiority of fire over a brush to effect the removal of soot. So, you see, when I am addressed as Inspector I look around for this strange fellow.”

  He followed the girl to the breakfast-room where covered dishes on a side table awaited them.

  “I am so used to being called Bony that were you to call me Bony it would be a distinct pleasure.”

  “Goes with me,” assented McPherson.

  “And I will call you Bony, too, if you will forge
t to be a detective and hide nothing from me,” supplemented the girl.

  Bony’s brows rose a fraction.

  “Hide anything from you, Miss McPherson!”

  “Yes—Bony. I want to know just what did happen to Sergeant Errey. I want to know why you ordered the lights to be put out when that aeroplane was coming last night. I want to know why uncle was shouting at you last night when you were in the office. I’m not a fool flapper, you know.”

  Bony flashed a glance at his host, to see him staring down at his plate. Then, steadily, he regarded the girl opposite him at table. He noted again her wide brow, her clear blue eyes, her firm chin—the McPherson chin, the mould of chin possessed by all those tough men in kilt and colourful jacket who glared from the walls of the dining-room. In her face was something greater than mere beauty. He said, quietly:

  “No, you are not a fool flapper, Miss McPherson. However, the information you seek will occupy time in the giving, and I’m a hungry man. They say that when men are hungry they are bad tempered. I would hate to reveal my bad temper to you. After breakfast we will talk about things. Toast?”

  The meal proceeded, and Bony drew McPherson to talk about the dam wall which the squatter, assisted by the blacks, had built. McPherson was the first to rise from the table.

  “I have a job of work to do on the run this morning. I’ll be home for lunch, dear.”

  When he had gone, Flora and her guest rose and, at Bony’s suggestion, they passed out to the veranda where the girl was made comfortable in a lounge chair and provided with a cigarette. She had taken two whiffs of the cigarette before Bony began the story about the destruction of Errey’s car. After that she forgot it, till it burned her fingers and she tossed it impatiently aside. From the crime of murder committed from an aeroplane, Bony told of the skirmish on the plain with the Illprinka blacks, and the dropping of the message in the treacle tin by the pilot of the plane that flew over the house the evening before.

  “He’s mad,” she whispered. “I think Rex has always been mad, but uncle wouldn’t, or couldn’t, ever see it. Poor uncle! He used to be so—so different, before Rex came home from school.”

  “You know about Tarlalin?”

  “Yes, I know. And I understand, too. A love story is always—a love story. I told you about the cemetery—the shrine—you must go and see. What are you going to do about Rex?”

  “That is a question I have been asking myself,” Bony replied. “You see, I am less concerned with the catching of criminals than with the investigation into the crime. It is the building of a case for presentment to the actual police, who act accordingly, which appeals to my somewhat peculiar mind. I came here, hoping to be confronted with an outstanding mystery that would tax all my powers. Shortly after arrival I was made happy by the prospect of an outstanding investigation. And now ... And now ... I feel that the investigation has taken charge of the investigator.

  “You ask me what I am going to do about Rex? Normally I would doubtless retire from the case and leave the police, and possibly the military, to hunt this madman in the open country and effect either his arrest or destruction. I am beginning to think I ought to do otherwise; that I ought to be a real policeman for once, and go after Rex myself. The police—and no doubt there are many excellent bushmen among them—may well fail to arrest Rex McPherson, because he is living in open country, hundreds and hundreds of square miles of it, protected by wild blacks who, with their cunning bushcraft, would certainly be able to prevent his capture.

  “Of course, Rex McPherson would be captured in the end, but before his capture was effected it is probable that more lives would be taken by him and his blacks, and some taken by the bush itself. Which is why I think I ought, this once, to be a policeman. Burning Water and I could do more than all the outside men, and do it more swiftly.”

  The girl sighed audibly. Then:

  “It is going to break uncle’s heart. It’s breaking now, I think. It would be a mercy if a star fell on Rex. I wonder what he’ll do next?”

  “I would like to know what he’s contemplating,” Bony said, his smooth brow unusually furrowed. “We’ll have to take precautions. You need not be nervous of a repetition of that early adventure, for I am seeing to it that you will be guarded.”

  “Thank you—Bony.” They were silent for a space, and then she said: “I’m not nervous, but I’m terribly, terribly afraid of him. Rex is tall and handsome and his eyes flame at one. In them there’s something which terrifies me.”

  “You know,” Bony said, lightly but with conviction, “I can be an excellent policeman when I like. I have told your uncle already today that my Chief says I am a wretchedly poor policeman. I use my adjective, not his. You need not fear Rex McPherson because I am going to arrest him, and hand him to a judge and jury. Meanwhile, you would make my mind easy if you did not go out riding, or leave the homestead. Will you grant me that request?”

  She nodded her raven head and raised her eyes to him.

  “I expect you have wondered how I, a half-caste, have risen to the rank of inspector in the police force,” he went on, and she knew he was talking to give her time to regain composure. He told her of his mission-rearing, his passage through High School and the University, of the early love affair that went wrong and drove him back to the bush, and of his long career as an investigator.

  “Eventually I married a wonderful woman who, too, is a half-caste,” he said in conclusion. “We have three boys, the eldest of whom is attending my old University and who is going to be a doctor-missionary. So you see, Miss McPherson, what a jolly fine fellow I am.”

  That made her laugh, and partly defeated the depression visible in her eyes.

  “I would like to ask you a question,” he said.

  Again she nodded her head.

  “Are you in love with Doctor Whyte?”

  Now her eyes became big. A blush swiftly covered her cheeks.

  “Thank you, Miss McPherson,” he said, gravely. “I am glad to know it because I have, in your uncle’s name, asked Doctor Whyte to pay us a visit. Now I must hurry away, and hope you will excuse me. I’ll listen for the morning tea call. I like strong tea, and have observed that you do, too. Au revoir!”

  Bony bowed and left her; left her to listen to the dwindling sound of his footsteps on the termite-nest garden path. Another half-caste! It was singular how she feared one half-caste, and now was so sure she liked this one. Why, he was almost the nicest man she ever had met.

  An offshoot of the great Worcair Nation, the Wantella Tribe had never been as numerically strong as the Illprinka Tribe which was an offshoot of the Illiaura Nation. The beginning of the original homestead, and the construction of the first wall across the gully to the west of the house, at once provided for the members of the Wantella Tribe additional supplies of food and water: and it was to prevent a continuance of the pollution of this water supply by the wild blacks that the first McPherson constructed a low wall across a gully to the east of the house to supply what became a permanent camp drawing to the vicinity of the homestead the many groups of individuals comprising the tribe. Each of these groups was governed by the old men whose word was the law; and when the groups came together to perform some important series of ceremonies, or by reason of the reduction of waterholes, caused by drought, there was much quarrelling and fighting and killing, resulting in the splitting again of the tribe into the respective groups.

  For twelve years the united tribe remained in a ferment of quarrelling and killing, caused chiefly by the intrigues conducted by the leaders of the groups who struggled for the leadership of the tribe. Then there emerged a man strong enough to unite the groups, subdue the warring elements, remove the more persistent opposition, and gather into a Council of Old Men those who would support him. He was the father of Chief Burning Water.

  The son of one of the malcontents was Itcheroo, now elderly and bitter, a man suspected of magic, communicating with the spirits of the Alchuringa, pointing the bone and other n
asty practices. He, with others of his ilk, were ready companions for such as Rex McPherson, and only by chance had Itcheroo not been one of the party assisting Rex McPherson in the abduction of Flora. Which is why he was still walking the stage of life.

  Itcheroo had often accompanied Rex McPherson on women-hunting expeditions into the country of the Illprinka Tribe, and he was the first to ally himself with Rex McPherson on the return from his exile to take up residence in the land of the Illprinka.

  Itcheroo was a traitor to his tribe, and to the man who wisely governed it through Chief Burning Water. For his services Itcheroo expected no reward; his hatred of Chief Burning Water and his intense admiration for the evil Rex McPherson were more than sufficient. He liked to practise magic, not because of any desire to use it for acquiring property, but because of a desire to be feared.

  With these two spurs to drive him, he had become proficient in the black art of pointing the bone and, among other things, in the less sinister practice of mental telepathy. He was able to project through space mental pictures to be received by minds open to receive them; and he was able to clean his mind, like a slate is cleaned of writing by a sponge, and so receive thought-pictures projected by a distant mind.

  And now Itcheroo squatted on his heels, close to what had become a little, almost smokeless fire. His crossed forearms rested on his knees, and his forehead was resting on his magic churinga stone (which no other human eyes ever had seen) that now was resting on the upper of his crossed arms.

  His disciplined mind was astonishingly controlled. Normally it was like that of the white man, or any other man, open to receive impressions and ideas and thoughts, passing in procession so swiftly that much was waste material. Now there was but one thought occupying his mind, one impression, one mental picture, the picture of a small attaché case being consumed by the flames of a fire.