Bushranger of the Skies

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “On the evidence found at the site of the telephone wire break, and from what we discovered at the hut at Watson’s Bore added to the information Nevin has given us, the story runs something like this. I am sure of the general outline, but I may be in error regarding one or two of the details,” Bony said in preface.

  “The McPherson left here this morning intending to carry out a plan of action he had evolved against Rex. Rex had threatened to strike at him again, and he decided to get in the first blow.

  “Arrived at the hut, something cropped up to cause him to go on to the out-station. It might have been that he wanted calico with which to make ration bags, or needles and thread he might have forgotten, for he had determined to carry out a raid into the Illprinka country, where his party would have to travel light and yet not be able to delay for the catching of food. Armed with rifles, they would not dare to fire them at game as secrecy of movement would be important. Even the horses would be left at the boundary of the Illprinka country, for horses require attention and a guard, and they make very plain tracks.

  “Soon after The McPherson left here, Itcheroo lit a little fire and squatted beside it and flashed the news of the squatter’s departure to his opposite number in the Illprinka country. Rex therefore quickly learned of his father’s departure on what he would assume was a normal routine trip.

  “Arrived at Watson’s Bore The McPherson unloaded the rations if nothing else. As I have said, he may have forgotten calico or needles or thread, or he may have been persuaded to strengthen his party with the addition of two aborigines named Iting and Jack Johnson, both of whom are exceptionally clever in the bush. At the out-station he was told that Iting was away with Nevin who, with his men, was moving cattle away from the Illprinka country. So sure was he that Rex would strike again at the cattle, or even go to the length of attacking and destroying the homestead out there, he wrote a letter to Nevin and left five hundred cartridges for Nevin’s rifles.

  “And so, having warned Nevin of probable trouble, having told him to gather all the aborigines camped about the place to the outhouses and sheds about the house, he drove back to Watson’s Bore, taking with him Jack Johnson and gear for two riding horses. On the way, he decided to slip back here and get Burning Water to go with them in the place of the absent Iting.

  “You ask, perhaps, why he didn’t take Burning Water with him this morning. There is, however, a slight barrier between him and his life-long friend, and only after consideration did he alter his first decision. Your uncle, Miss McPherson, has for some time been wanting to stamp out a dangerous fire, and Burning Water says it is not his place to do so. When a fire becomes dangerous an aborigine calls a lubra to put it out, and in this case Burning Water regards himself as the lubra.

  “Meanwhile, Rex, knowing his father had gone outback in the car, and having failed to see any surrender signal, swiftly planned a counter move. With five of his bucks he travelled to the station road where it is crossed by the telephone line. The McPherson came along in his car, saw the break, and stopped to repair it, the wire having been cut, of course, by Rex.

  “We know that Rex wants his father to retire from the station and hand the property over to him, and it seems probable that he saw the opportunity of personally persuading his father to accept the transfer. Mark you, I say it is probable, not certain. Rex had with him a portable telephone, and he might have had the intention of compelling his father to call up the homestead office and ask either Miss McPherson or myself to go out to him as his car had broken down.

  “Anyway, whatever it was Rex wanted his father to do The McPherson refused to do it. I have the evidence to prove how determined is this young man. He obtained stalks of cane-grass and made fine splinters which he thrust under his father’s fingernails.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Flora, her face white and anguished.

  “This method of torture is never practised by the aborigines,” Bony went on. “In fact, the aborigines are not given to torture of any kind. Rex, however, is allied to the white race which, with other races, has indulged with energy in the art of inflicting pain. We know how long it takes to breed vice out of animals, even to breed out physical defects, so that the strange personality called Rex McPherson cannot be attributed to his mother or his mother’s people.

  “His objective when forcing The McPherson to use the portable telephone was to get me into his power or, which seems more likely, to get Miss McPherson into his power when he could use her as a powerful lever for his blackmail.”

  “But——” interrupted Flora.

  “One moment, please. The McPherson refused to accede to his son’s demands and so submitted to torture. Blood drops on the ground and the cane-grass splinters illustrate the method of torture. Failing to achieve his desire, Rex and his blacks returned to their country.

  “The McPherson revealed wonderful stoicism when he managed to mend the cut telephone wire, and then drove his car back to Watson’s Bore, for there are blood stains on the wire and on the steering wheel of his car.

  “At Watson’s Bore the aborigines concocted a medicament for his wounded fingers by pulverizing gum leaves on a nardoo stone and mixing the paste with beef fat. Then, with his hands bandaged, The McPherson instructed each of them to take a quantity of flour in a calico bag, those of them best able to use a rifle were given a weapon and cartridges, and the expedition set out whilst we were examining the scene where the telephone wire was cut.

  “The McPherson, to my way of reasoning, has gone off on a fruitless errand. He and the aborigines with him saw those Illprinka smoke signals and accepted their intelligence that a corroboree was to be held at Duck Lake and all Illprinka men were going back to Duck Lake. He probably has the idea of destroying Rex’s headquarters which he believes are situated at Duck Lake, to destroy the aeroplane and then if Rex escapes to hunt him down and destroy him. I think that those smoke signals form a part of Rex McPherson’s newest plan to obtain the station, and therefore should be disregarded. We must not forget that Duck Lake is far away and that the surrounding country does not offer the wonderful camouflage that that great area of cane-grass does at the western end of the plain.

  “The McPherson may succeed. I doubt it. He sees no farther than visible smoke signals: I try to see into the mind of——”

  Bony was stopped by the sharp ringing of the telephone bell. He rose without comment and placed the receiver to his ear. The others sat quite still, waiting, listening, trying to ascertain from Bony’s replies who was calling. Whilst speaking he kept his back to them. Then he replaced the receiver and turned to them, eyes sparkling and face smiling.

  “That was Constable Price,” he said. “Doctor Whyte has just passed over the township. He dropped a message asking them to tell us to have the landing ground here illuminated for his landing. He’ll be here in twenty minutes or half an hour. Burning Water! Race to the camp and bring all your people.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  A Happy Landing

  WHEN Henry Whyte emerged from protected adolescence to face the wide and very wicked world he was arrayed in the uniform of an officer of the Royal Air Force, and he was sent up into the blue to battle with his country’s enemies. Fortunately for him, that was in the summer of NVNU when German air power was paralysed, and thus he received a sporting chance of survival.

  Perhaps it was that he happened to be the seventh son of a seventh son, or it might have been that he was born in a year divisible by seven, but from the day of his first solo flight in training the history of his life was red-lettered with luck. At least this was said by his friends to account for his escapes from The Reaper.

  In his somewhat unordinary character was a streak of cautiousness which really ought to erase many of the red letters, for many of his escapes from death were directly due to forethought and thoroughness in planning for the future. He was one of many sons of the rich who burn with ambition to do something.

  After demobilization, Major Henry Whyte settled down
to win his medical degree, and, having accomplished this, he was looking about for a practice when he happened to read an article describing the work of the first Flying Parson in Australia, whose head-quarters were at Wilcannia, N.S.W., and whose parish was half the size of England. The corollary of the Flying Parson, of course, was the Flying Doctor.

  Thus it was that Doctor Whyte came to Australia in NVOT, then obtaining his transfer to the Australian register and taking a refresher course in aerial navigation. Ample means enabled him to begin his newly found career with means sufficient to stand the drain of two machines every year. They did not wear out, like motor cars.

  Selecting Birdsville for his headquarters, Doctor Whyte never hesitated to fly anywhere in all weathers to succour men and women, even to transport them to the town hospital, to search for lost explorers, and to enhance the well being of a meagre population inhabiting a vast area of country.

  He received Bony’s telegram, dispatched by Constable Price and purporting to be sent by McPherson, when he arrived home at four o’clock in the afternoon from a long trip. Glancing through his case-book and finding himself comparatively free, he left Birdsville at six on the QMM-mile journey to McPherson’s Station where he had gazed into shy blue eyes and had felt tender red lips clinging to his own.

  He ought to have arrived at the McPherson homestead when Flora and her small party were stopped at the break in the station telephone line, but then he was still engaged on the slight repairs to his engine the failure of which had caused a forced landing on a gibber plain one hundred miles south of Shaw’s Lagoon. He got off the ground just before night took possession of it.

  He ought then to have returned to Birdsville where his own landing ground would have been illuminated to receive him. What he did was to set off to locate a tiny outpost blanketed by night, unmarked by street lamps, an infinitesimal dot no larger than a pea on a football ground, trusting to his navigational skill to locate Shaw’s Lagoon and so be able to reset the course to McPherson’s Station.

  He made an error of a sixty-ninth of a degree in his calculations worked out when his machine was high above the shrouded world and flying in the twilight of the sky. The error was small, but it might well have ended in a disastrous night landing. He passed Shaw’s Lagoon fourteen miles to the west of the township, but quickly discovered his error and turned in an effort to find it—the pea lying on the football ground at night.

  Quite a famous character at Shaw’s Lagoon was one known to all and sundry as Beery Bill, an elderly alcoholic in monthly receipt of money from a trust fund sufficient to hire him a hut and to supply him with an almost unlimited number of schooners.

  Beery Bill had been away all day with Constable Price and others on the dreadful business of the burned car in the gully bed. During the journey, of course, the supply of schooners of beer was non-existent, and it can be easily imagined with what avidity Beery Bill carried on when the supply was renewed. It soon became evident that the enforced abstention had put Beery Bill out of his stride, as it were, because he became unwell for the first time during his sojourn at Shaw’s Lagoon and, to the amazement of the twenty inhabitants, he left the hotel to sit with his back against a pepper-tree in the street.

  It was quite dark. The oil lamps in the few houses and the hotel sent only sickly gleams through the open windows. Beery Bill sat and wondered what on earth had gone wrong with him, and was thus dismally engaged with introspection when he heard the far distant hum of the aeroplane engine.

  He was the only person in Shaw’s Lagoon who did hear it, and knowing that his eyes could show him things unseen by ordinary mortals, he also knew that his ears could not play him such tricks. Ah! Here was a chance to entrench himself on the best side of Constable Price, and off he trotted—he was beyond walking—to the police-station with the news.

  Out came Price to listen and to hear. Having expected to receive a telegram from the Flying Doctor it needed no inductive reasoning to arrive at the belief that he was hearing Doctor Whyte’s machine, and that Doctor Whyte had missed Shaw’s Lagoon and was returning in an effort to pick it out from the void beneath him.

  Thus it was that shortly after Doctor Whyte realized his mistake in his calculations and turned his machine he saw far down ahead a pin-prick of red light magically grow to become a leaping fire. Down he went until his altimeter registered a thousand feet and he was passing above the fire to see people standing about it and gazing upward at his navigation lights, to see the firelight painting the sides of small houses and the hotel, for the bonfire had been lit in the centre of the one and only street.

  Well, well! He’d always been lucky!

  On his pad he wrote the instructions to be telephoned to McPherson’s homestead. He wrote whilst the machine was climbing towards the lazy stars. He wrapped the paper about his pipe and tied it with fusing wire. Then he sent his ship down to within five hundred feet and dropped his message. Whilst circling the township, he saw a boy pick it up and race with it to Constable Price who had changed into uniform.

  Now having his position, with only a hundred miles still to fly he reset his course and flew away into the unreal world of void and dim starshine, depending on his instruments for height and speed and wind slip. The bonfire at Shaw’s Lagoon slid away beyond the tail, slid away to vanish beyond the rim of featureless void established only by the stars themselves. He sent the machine up four thousand feet and he had ample room to pass over the hill range whereon was that grove of six cabbage-trees.

  Probably he was somewhere over those cabbage-trees when he saw a pin-prick of light on the invisible horizon ahead of the propeller. It was a white light and his guess was correct that it was made by a petrol lamp on the homestead veranda. Six minutes later he was flying over the homestead, looking down on the light which had been moved on to the lawn, seeing the dim star light reflected by the water in the reservoir.

  He had arrived but not landed. He circled twice, and then saw the red spark born westward of the homestead, saw it grow into a scarlet flame, watched it swiftly become a towering beacon, and sending the machine towards it, he saw about the beacon a crowd of naked aborigines, a man dressed and a woman arrayed in white.

  Down he went in a giant spiral, noting the wind direction by the beacon’s smoke. A hundred feet outward from it the ground was invisible to him. Ah! Outward from the beacon in opposite directions flowed a necklace of rubies, jewels which shone the brighter the farther they got away from the fire. He sent his ship up now whilst watching the ruby necklace begin to curve to the west, extend westward like the distant lights of a street, become stilled like jewelled arms extended to invite protection and safety.

  Up and away towards the stars he climbed far to the west. Then he glided earthward with the engine just ticking over and the whine of the wind in the struts a new sound. He still could not see the ground, but down he went till the nose of the ship was directed to the open end of the avenue of torches, which excited aborigines whirled above their heads to keep them alight and burning fiercely. He felt the wheels touch ground, felt them touch again and then move over the slightly uneven surface. On went the brakes, gently at first, then harder to stop the ship from charging into the bonfire at the end of the fiery avenue.

  The ruby necklaces broke into two fragments when the torch bearers raced with shouts and screams towards him. He could see and hear Burning Water bawling at them to keep back, but on they came, giving the impression that his ship was about to be engulfed by a sea of fire and flying sparks.

  He watched impersonally the grey-haired chief and Bony race to the machine to keep back the excited aborigines, heard the chief’s mighty voice threatening, commanding. The fiery tide halted, here and there ebbed, became stilled. He saw the woman in white running to the ship, behind her a line of fire, and he never was able to recall how he reached ground. Now he was holding her in his arms and feeling the press of warm lips on his own.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A Spoke in Bony’s Wheelr />
  BREATHLESSLY, unwonted colour in her face, her blue eyes sparkling in the ruddy glare, Flora McPherson slipped from her lover’s arms and turned to present the visitor to the patiently waiting Bonaparte and the Chief of the Wantella Tribe.

  “Harry!” she cried, “this is Detective-Inspector Bonaparte.”

  Bony stepped forward and put out a hand. The doctor removed his gloves, ripped open the front of his flying suit, and fingered a monocle suspended by black cord. The monocle appeared to leap upward from the doctor’s forefinger and thumb. It reflected the firelight. Then it was perfectly poised in the right eye.

  “How d’you do, Inspector,” he said, and there was neither drawl nor affectation in his voice. “Bony for short, eh?”

  “All my friends call me Bony.”

  They shook hands.

  “To use an Australianism: too right,” the doctor agreed heartily. He was no fool, this young-old man who began life as a destroyer and now was a mender. “Bony it is, comrade. And a smack on the jaw if you call me anything but Harry. And there’s Chief Burning Water. How are you?”

  Dr Whyte took three steps forward to meet the chief of an aboriginal tribe, and Burning Water shook hands delightedly.

  “I am well, Harry,” he said, compelled to gaze slightly downward because of his height. “I have thought of you, and I have looked forward to your next visit. I hope you will stay long.”

  “Leave it to me,” and Dr Whyte brazenly winked. “How’s the infant? D’you still let her build chook houses on your tummy?”

  “I haven’t yet been able to blow them down,” Burning Water replied, laughing, and his people standing behind him joined in the chorus. The flying doctor stepped out of his suit, saying:

  “You would be a marvel if you did. Well well! I’m damned glad to see you all. What a landing!”

  “It was nice, wasn’t it?” Flora agreed. “Now you must be tired and hungry. So late to arrive, too. What about your cases?”