Bushranger of the Skies

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Nevin—not a word, not a question,” Bony cried. “Miss McPherson is missing from the house, and Dr Whyte fears the worst. Time and speed are vital. Get those horses saddled and bridled, and muster the best riders. Imagine the house to be on fire and you organizing the men to fight it. Spring to it, man.”

  Bony spoke with terrific intensity, and Nevin without hesitation did spring to it. He turned and raced to the stockyards, shouting to the blacks to follow him. For a moment they ceased their uproar, and then excitement regained ascendance and they ran pell mell after him.

  Burning Water and the doctor followed Bony, who ran to the house, entering it by the front door. In the corridor beyond the hall he met one of the lubra maids, and at sight of him her smiling excitement changed to fear. He gripped her by the arm and she winced.

  “Where’s Miss McPherson?” he shouted at her, and dumbly she stared at him and over his shoulder at the two standing behind him. “Where is she?” persisted Bony.

  “Missus she gone,” wailed the lubra.

  Bony turned to the doctor:

  “When did you last see her?”

  “We had afternoon tea together on the veranda,” replied Whyte, his mouth grim. “She said she’d go to her room and change for dinner. Said she’d be only an hour at most. I stayed and read a book, and then, when she hadn’t come out again ten minutes ago, I went to see where she was. I’ve searched the house. Ella went into her bedroom. She wasn’t there either.”

  “You show me Miss McPherson’s bedroom, quick,” urged Bony. He was more controlled now. His voice was imperative.

  She ran like a doe kangaroo along the passage and stopped outside a door. Without knocking, Bony went in. He stared about the pleasant room and swiftly appraised its contents and condition. Clothes lay on the bed, the kind of clothes suitable for evening wear. A kimono lay over a chair. The girl had gone to dress two hours before, and she had not even begun to dress when she had left her room. Bony bounded to the open French windows. Standing in the frame, he called:

  “Burning Water, go and fetch the men’s cook and Old Jack. Harry, get away across to the yards and hurry Nevin with the men and horses. See that horses are prepared for us three. Wait there with them.”

  His mind registered replies indicating obedience to his orders. There was no questioning Bony’s authority in such an emergency. The first phase of mental excitement produced by the calamitous news had subsided, and now Bonaparte was calm and mentally taut.

  Stepping beyond the windows, he found himself on the same west veranda upon which opened the windows of his own room. Recently this veranda had been treated with used oil from motor crankcases, and the wood was almost black. Now the wind of the day had deposited a thin layer of fine sand over the boards, and a lesser man than Bony would easily have seen the imprints of Flora’s shoes on it. But a lesser man than Bony would not so quickly have read her recent actions in the footprints.

  She was still wearing her house shoes when she passed out to the veranda, walked across it and stood talking with someone who stood on the path between the veranda and the lawn. Then she returned to her room, emerged presently and again crossed the veranda and stepped off it to the path.

  The path, like all the garden paths, was composed of the “cement” of termite nests, broken and rolled level and further cemented with water. On this path, too, lay the dust deposited by the wind, and there Bony saw plainly the imprints of naked feet, and those of Flora’s shoes.

  With knees bent and arms hanging loosely, Bony crouched and stared over the paspalum grass short cut and evenly rolled. He could see nothing on it until his gaze extended to a wide circular patch recently drenched by one of the sprinklers, and crossing that patch went the man’s foot-marks and the woman’s shoe imprints. They had walked to the cemetery.

  Bony ran to the door in the cane-grass wall, edged himself round it, stepped swiftly through the entrance into what he had termed a shrine. There was no one there. The fountain still played. A willy wagtail danced on the grass. In the wall on the far side was a hole large enough to permit a man to pass through.

  Beyond this opening in the cane-grass the ground was dry and sandy. Naked feet imprints and those made by the girl’s shoes extended to the bank of the gully below the great wall of the reservoir. Sinister fact that they had not crossed the gully over the wall—where they could have been seen by any one at the rear of the house.

  Bonaparte turned and raced through the cemetery and across the lawn to the gate in the garden fence behind the house. There he was met by Burning Water, Old Jack, and the men’s cook.

  “Have either of you seen Miss McPherson this afternoon?” snapped Bony.

  Old Jack shook his bald head. Alf, the cook, emphasized his negative reply with lurid language.

  “Well, where have you been all the afternoon?” Bony demanded of the old man.

  “When I had shifted all the sprinklers after lunch time, I went over to have a pitch with Alf. I ain’t see Miss McPherson since afore lunch time.”

  “Well, have either of you seen any strange blacks about the place, or even any Wantella black being where he ought not to have been?”

  “Nope,” answered Old Jack, and Alf said:

  “Now lemme think. No, I can’t say as I have seen any strange nigs at all hanging around. I don’t seem to have seen any nigs at all afore the truck came in from the out-station. Wait a mo though. I seen ole Itcheroo standing on the dam wall afore afternoon drink-er-tea time. He was looking at hisself in the water, admiring himself like. Why, what’s the flamin’ hurry?”

  “Stow yer noise, you fool,” snarled Old Jack. “Them Illprinka blacks have run off with Miss McPherson, and d’you expect all hands to stay talking to you about Itcheroo looking at himself in the dam water?”

  Bony and Burning Water were racing across to the stockyards the former shouting for a horse. Aborigines were mounting and saddling and walking their eager horses. Whyte emerged from the press about the yards leading three horses, and Nevin rode out into comparatively clear air.

  “Come on!” shouted Bony, and leaping into the saddle of a strapping black gelding that sawed at its bit savagely, he cantered him to skirt the garden wall and so come to that recently made opening in the cane-grass.

  “Back a little,” shouted Bony. “She’s gone away with a black-feller—walked away—more than an hour ago.”

  Burning Water and Nevin and the doctor restrained their mounts to keep behind Bonaparte, to give him every chance not to lose those tracks. He rode his horse down the steep slope of the gully, and sensible of the situation, those behind him rode after him and not across the dam wall. The tiny stream down the gully bed—the overflow from the reservoir—was bordered with silver sand, and there deep and plain were Flora’s tracks and the imprints made by the naked feet. Dr Whyte called ahead to Bony:

  “Where’s she going? What’s she thinking about to walk away with a black? I don’t understand it.”

  Without comment, Bony led the ragged cavalcade up out of the gully to the scrubbed summit of the next land shoulder to the west of the homestead. Here the ground was hard but covered with “fingers” of drift sand. Lying along his horse’s neck as though anxious to place his head beyond the horse’s nose. Bony kept the anxious beast back to a jog trot, for once he lost the tracks valuable time would have been wasted picking them up again.

  For minutes Nevin lost them. For seconds Burning Water lost them. Then they would see the tracks ahead of Bony’s horse ridden by a relentless human hound. Now and then could be seen southward through the scrub the vista of the great plain parallel to which the tracks were running on and on before Bony: now down into a gully, now over a sand-crowned summit where grew no scrub and from which vantage point could be seen the plain and the rolling border of the high land extending to the promised couch of the sun.

  The leaders of the human pack were silent. So was the pack itself. Nevin’s pale blue eyes were squinting into the sunlight. Hatless, Dr Whyte
rode with the sun striking full upon his ashen face. Burning Water’s face was calm, like the face of a sphinx, but his eyes were large black opals. Hoof thuds, creaking leather, the occasional snort of a horse were the only sounds to the rear of Bonaparte. Ahead lay sunlit silence. Ahead lay that fearful shadow in which lurked flame like a spider deep in its webbed tunnel.

  Now the tracks led them out of the scrub to the ribbed slopes of the high land, led them downward to the lower and level country of the plain already beginning to be painted with growing sunset colours. Here the feet of the land shoulders were wearing shoes of green buckbush ending in curving edges of the claypans comprising the verge. The scene was not unlike that of a rocky coast. The buckbush might be imagined as the shingle beach, the claypans as the sand flats left dry by the receding tide, which in turn could be the herbal rubbish, capped by old-man saltbush. Ahead of Bony and his followers a great cape jutted far out on to the tideless, motionless land sea.

  Abruptly Bonaparte reined back his horse and shouted for a halt. His mount circled like a sitting dog biting for a flea whilst he leaned out and downward from the saddle reading this open page of The Book of the Bush. Presently he beckoned his lieutenants to him.

  “Here Miss McPherson refused to accompany any farther the blackfeller she had been walking with from the house. Her suspicions were aroused, and here she realized the trap she had fallen into. She turned to run back, then stopped and faced the aborigine. She fought him, and it seems, he knocked her senseless. From here his tracks go on alone. He carried the girl. We must——”

  One of the aborigines shouted and slipped off his horse and dragged it by the reins to a place several yards away where he picked up something. On his animal’s back once more, he rode to Bony and held out a small automatic pistol.

  “That is her pistol,” Burning Water said, and took it from the finder.

  “The black knocked it from her hand when she was about to fire, or he took it from her and threw it as far as he could,” Bony told them. “The tracks are going towards the foot of that headland. Spread out wide and keep your eyes on the ground in case the tracks branch right to the high land again or left across the plain. Come on!”

  Wisely Bony permitted his eager horse only to canter. Redheaded Tom Nevin rode on one side and Burning Water on the other. Whyte kept close behind him, and behind the doctor cantered the posse. Arriving at the headland, they began to skirt its steep face, and again Bony saw the tracks of the man only, tracks clearly indicating that the aborigine was carrying a heavy burden. The land beyond the headland came into view, the “coast” taking a wide northward sweep to form a deep “bay.” Like hounds seeing the prey, shouts of exultation came from the blacks, a cry of savage despair was uttered by the flying doctor, and a yell of rage from Bony.

  A little more than half a mile distant, the silver-grey aeroplane was resting on the wide claypan verge of the plain. Its propeller was turning over slowly. By the machine stood a tall man facing towards a naked aborigine who carried a white-clad form over a shoulder. Bony estimated that the aborigine with his burden was but twenty-five yards from the man standing by the machine. He was staggering with fatigue.

  Every one of these thirty or so horses had from early life been accustomed to racing for the yard o’ mornings before the cracking whip of the tailer. This early morning race for the yards they thoroughly enjoyed, and so it was that now they entered into this race with shrilling neighs of joy and snorting nostrils. Very rarely were they given their heads by those who rode them, and now not only were they given their heads, they were urged onwards by yells, shouts, screams, and flailing hats and slapping hands. No man wore spurs: there had not been time to procure them.

  They had to cover more than half a mile whilst a man carrying a woman covered less than twenty-five yards and handed her up to the airman now mounting to the cockpit of his machine Their riders, controlled by excitement of the chance, anguish and rage, laid themselves forward and settled down to win a sickening handicap.

  The thudding of hooves rose to a dull tattoo. The wind sang in Bony’s ears. The black gelding laid himself low. He became an effortless, well oiled piston.

  A bay mare with white forefeet slipped up alongside Bony. Her rider was naked, black. His white teeth were bared in a terrible grin, and on his face was sketched the lust of the chase. The bay mare took him ahead and he shrieked with triumph. His flat feet left the stirrups and rose to feel backward for the rear of the saddle, the mind of the rider temporarily unseated. It appeared that he was about to stand on his horse’s back when the animal suddenly crossed her forefeet. He flew from her back like a slung stone, to roll and roll over and over along the cement hard claypan. The rest thundered past his inert body.

  Nevin appeared on Bony’s left side, his red hair streaming behind him, a rifle grasped pistol fashion in his right hand. His eyes were wide open but his mouth was like a trap. Burning Water, mounted on a dapple grey mare, drew alongside Bony to the left side of Nevin, his plumed grey hair beaten flat by the wind, the reins in his teeth, his hands flailing the animal’s withers.

  Bony could hear Dr Whyte’s sobbed threats and curses close to his rear the doctor’s plaint being that his mount was only trotting. A chestnut gelding, riderless, swept past the leaders to take the lead, to kick his heels skyward, to pretend fury at the beating of the swinging irons.

  He did not seem to be moving at all when that black figure burdened with a limp white-dressed form swiftly drew to the aeroplane’s tail and began to move along the streamlined silver body towards the man in the cockpit waiting to take the burden.

  The aborigine who had been wearing the blue shirt when he arrived at the homestead on the truck, now mounted on a stocky bay, passed Bony on his right side like a gust of wind.

  He was standing in the stirrups, flailing his horse with a gumtree switch. The shirt tail streamed outward above the empty saddle. He was screaming at the top of his voice and his teeth were snapping like those of a vicious dog. Steadily he drew ahead. He wore no trousers. Bony could see the horse’s ears between the fellow’s spindly legs. He never forgot the picture.

  His own horse was running like a machine but could not take the lead from Blue Shirt and Burning Water. They could see, so close now were they, the helmet and upper part of the flying suit on the airman. The aborigine had reached him, was clinging to the fuselage, the girl still lying across his shoulder. The airman was leaning far over the side of the cockpit, placing his arms under the girl’s arms. They could see his face, working with passion, as he urged the black to help him.

  The thunder of the oncoming horses was beginning to rumble in his ears. Success or failure, for him, lay in the passing of seconds. Slowly he was lifting Flora McPherson up and up to the edge of the cockpit, the aborigine now pushing from under the limp form, energized by the oncoming avengers.

  Blue Shirt still kept the lead. He still was screaming, riding his horse like a man will ride standing with each foot on the broad back of a horse. Burning Water was racing only a head behind, and a length behind came Bony, Dr Whyte, and a lubra riding a roan gelding with the lines of a racehorse.

  Bony saw hope and triumph in the doctor’s glaring eyes and pity filled his heart. His own horse appeared to be standing still. The lubra crept up and began to pass him. Her straggly black hair was lying out behind her head, straggly because of the demand for hair with which to make string. She was shrieking as though in the vilest of torment, but she rode hard to saddle and seemed to be but a back-muscle of the animal she rode. Nevin swung wide out from the lead, went away toward the plane, and Bony knew that he had estimated their chances and reckoned them to be poor. Then from behind them and planeward came the crack of Nevin’s rifle, and beyond the aeroplane’s propeller a bullet spurted dust.

  Dr Whyte cursed him. Nevin fired again, and this time they saw the rent in the tail of the machine made by the bullet. The range was too short to miss-hit the girl and those with her, and too long to pick off eith
er the airman or the aborigine hauling and pushing her into the cockpit.

  Blue Shirt now was a length ahead of Burning Water, and the chief was yelling at him to ride full tilt into the tail which was the nearest part of the machine to them. Only a strip of Flora’s white dress now was to be seen on the edge of the cockpit, and the aborigine was frantically jumping up to clutch the cockpit edge, ignored by the airman who was busy with the controls. Abruptly the engine roared and the machine quivered and began slowly to move forward.

  There was no iron-bound emotional control of the doctor’s features, no icy composure in the face of crisis, no cool calculation in the face of death itself. Training, hereditary reaction to personal danger was now non-existent. Hope had vanished. Triumph had become a mocking devil. His face was fearful to look upon.

  Burning Water was yelling to Blue Shirt to ride straight into the tail of the machine which was moving forward with increasing speed. Blue Shirt gained on it, his horse making a mighty effort. Then he funked it when he might have ridden into the tail and smashed it and so have prevented the machine from rising. At the last moment he reined his horse to the side and rode for the aborigine.

  The aborigine was now clinging to the edge of the cockpit. He looked back and they saw he was Itcheroo: His feet were jerking upward in vain searching for foothold. The helmeted airman turned to face the black hands clutching the cockpit. They saw the butt of the pistol rise and strike downward with fearful force on the black hands. Itcheroo screamed and let go his hold. He fell to the ground, and became a thing of arms and legs beneath the striking hooves of Blue Shirt’s horse. Over went the horse and down went Blue Shirt in dust.

  Nevin had stopped shooting. Burning Water held his horse’s nose level with the aeroplane’s rudder tip. The wind stream from the propeller raised dust which was blinding him, but he kicked his feet out of the stirrups, and hurled himself forward and sideways to the tail which was beginning to leave him behind. His hands struck the surface of the starboard rudderplane just as it lifted from the ground. The engine’s roar increased to mighty volume. For three or four seconds he clung with his finger nails, and then was swept back to lie on the ground in the enveloping dust.