“Give me a drink, as I suppose I mustn’t reach for the bottle,” Rex urged. The tip of his tongue was passing across his lips and on his wide brow glistened drops of perspiration.
“Water?” asked Bony.
“A little.”
There followed a long silence, punctuated by the ticking clock. They smoked incessantly and occasionally drank. Then the clock struck twelve, and presently Rex said:
“Why be a fool? If you joined up with me we could do great things. You’re a thinker. I can see that. You can have no hope of getting away from here, even if you shoot me.”
Now before retiring to her bed of gum-leaves, Tootsey had eaten an enormous dinner. Her dreams, therefore, were of violence so terrible that she awoke at last and lay trembling and cold. And in this state of wide wakefulness, she heard Rex McPherson’s shouted speech, not a word of which could she understand. Despite the colour of her skin and her race, she was naturally curious, and the shouted words she could hear indicated that Rex boss was taming the white woman. Tootsey decided to observe how the taming was proceeding.
Leaving her bed of gum-leaves, she tip-toed to the curtain of cane-grass which she found being gently swung inward by the light south wind. By lying down she could see into the living-room every time the curtain was swung inward, and what she saw interested her exceedingly. The magnificent “boss,” arrayed in resplendent evening clothes, was certainly in one of his tempers, but what intrigued Tootsey was the fact that he did not seem to be angry with the strange man who was seated at the table pointing a pistol at the boss.
The absence of Flora did not have much weight with Tootsey, but the fact that Rex boss was standing when a pistol was aimed at him had great weight. Tootsey knew that pistols could send men back into the trees and stones from which they had first come as spirit babies, and she didn’t want Rex boss to be sent back into such a place.
Back in a tree, or a stone, or an ant hill, Rex boss could not provide her with such lovely dresses, and she was sure that if the strange man killed him the supply of white man’s tucker, especially the sugar, would end. That must not be, and she crept away to arouse the Illprinka men.
The chief and two others accompanied her back to the entrance and looked under the curtain when the breeze lifted it. Being a crafty man, the chief clearly foresaw what would happen if they rushed into the room. Rex boss would go back into a stone or something, and no longer would he be head man, because under Rex boss’s protection he had committed many tribal crimes.
Motioning those with him to withdraw, he conscripted an aborigine who had assisted Rex boss to build the “house” and who knew how to use wire-cutters and wire. With this man, he went to the back of the room in which Flora had slept, and ordered the other to make a hole through the wall of wire-netting and cane-grass. When he crawled through the opening into the bedroom, the clock in the outer wall struck twice.
“Oh yes,” Rex was continuing, his voice raised almost to shouting. “After my plans mature I’ll be strong enough to defy the government. In this heart of the continent, I’ll be supreme. If I’m let alone I’ll be peaceful: if not, I’ll sting worse than a million scorpions.”
He could see the Illprinka chief creeping soundlessly across the floor towards Bony. Bony was sitting listlessly with his back to the stalker, the night taxing his endurance weakened by pain and fatigue. Rex went on, now smilingly:
“I think I’ll take you to about five thousand feet and tip you out, my friend. Then you will have time to think of your stupid refusal to join me. I’ll do that with Flora, when I’m tired of her, and old Burning Water, too.”
The Illprinka man made no sound when he rose to his feet at Bony’s back. Had Bony been normal he would have “sensed” the presence of the man. He was too late.
A black arm flashed over and down one shoulder and swept aside the pistol. Another encircled Bony’s neck and pressed hard against the powerful chest.
Rex pounced upon the pistol, and then danced away from the table, shouting threats and oaths and commands. Bony struggled to rise but failed. The lamplight flickered. The ticking of the clock became the sound of a hammer in his ears.
Chapter Twenty-four
Flight
FLORA’S reactions to the immediate prospect of escape and the distant prospect of safety and assured security were akin to the beginning of intoxication. She wanted to laugh, to shout, even to dance. Then she wanted to shriek with laughter at the absurd shoes of emu feathers on her feet. Fortunately for her, Bony’s feet were small and their use of the shoes had shaped them almost to fit her.
“Quiet!” breathed the Chief of the Wantella Tribe.
The stars were bright. The new moon hung low above the cane-grass and lantana country behind them. The walking was easy, for Burning Water kept to the claypans. He walked fast, and the girl was obliged to step more quickly to keep with him. When they had been walking for half an hour, he said:
“We expected difficulty with dogs, but Rex must have been afraid that dogs about his camp might betray it. It was good for us.”
“That’s strange,” Flora said. “Only now do I remember never having heard a dog bark once all the time I was there. But never mind the dogs, or their absence. Tell me what Bony is going to do back there with Rex. Why didn’t he come with us?”
“It is wise not to talk too much when it is sure an avenging party will come after us,” Burning Water said, and Flora knew by his voice that the subject of Bony was painful to him.
Despite the rubbing of the Kurdaitcha shoes every time her feet passed each other, despite the fact that they were so light and the ground so smooth, already her feet were beginning to ask for the accustomed leather shoes with cuban heels. Sinews and little bones in her feet were beginning to ache a little when Burning Water stopped.
“We will sit down and rest,” he said, and squatted on his heels.
“Rest!” she echoed. “Not yet, surely?”
“For five or ten minutes. It will help to keep strength.”
She sat on the warm ground beside him. Then she asked: “Are you tired?”
“No.” After a short period of silence he added: “But my heart is tired.”
“For Bony? Do you fear greatly for him?”
“Chief Illawalli was wise when he made Bony a great man among us, Miss McPherson,” Burning Water strongly affirmed. “Two nights ago a saltbush snake bit him: bit him on the foot. I did what I could—quick. Before I could finish with the treatment, I had to kill two Illprinka men who were waiting for dark to go and get a message dropped from Captain Loveacre’s aeroplane. The delay gave the poison a chance. Last night we travelled twenty miles to the cane-grass. Bony was very sick, and towards morning his foot pained much.”
“A saltbush snake! They’re deadly, aren’t they?”
“Yes. All today he lay deep in a fox hole which I covered with bush. I went looking for Rex’s house. We had no water. Then I saw the clothed lubra come out of one place and go into another place in the cane-grass, and I knew that was where you must be. I saw Rex come out and go into a big shadow, long and fairly low, and I knew that was where his aeroplane was. After dark I got water and took it to Bony. We waited. We daren’t make a fire to make tea. Then we crept close to the camp and began to watch.”
“Oh! Being so sick he ought to have come with us.”
“It is what I told him,” asserted Burning Water. “He said no. He said we would have to travel far and fast before day broke. He said he’d only be a drag on us, what with his sickness and bad leg. So he is staying behind to keep Rex from giving the alarm as long as possible.”
“How will he escape from Rex and the Illprinka men?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he’ll be able to. I wanted to take Rex some way into the bush and cut his black throat, but Bony said that would be murder. I suppose it would, white-fellow law, but I don’t think it would be murder when it means Rex or Bony. In the morning that clothed lubra will find him there and tell t
he Illprinka men. He’s hoping to keep Rex from doing anything till morning comes. We must get on.”
“How far have we come?”
“About six miles,” he replied.
“Six miles! Only six miles! What is the time? Do you know?”
“By the stars I should say it is about eleven o’clock. Would you like a drink of water?”
“Please.”
Soon after the beginning of the third stage, Flora felt yielding sand beneath her Kurdaitcha shoes, and she felt herself walking up an incline. Presently she saw the curved back of a sand-dune against the sky. The hand clasping her own tightened, and her guide said:
“Walk on your toes and lift your feet high. We are crossing the rump of a great headland. We’ll come down to the valley again in about half a mile.”
When for the third time Burning Water stopped to rest, she asked if she might wear her leather shoes inside the masses of feathers. Burning Water took time to consider the matter. He found grounds for arguing for and against, and he decided in favour because speed was the first essential. On his knees, he assisted the girl with her footwear. Then:
“A little water?”
“Please: I wish it were coffee. Don’t you?”
“I do. But we daren’t make a fire to brew coffee. And I could never brew coffee like old Mrs McPherson used to.”
When for the fourth time they stopped, she said weakly:
“Oh, my feet are terrible. My legs are all stabbing pains.”
“Lie still, Miss McPherson,” he urged. “We’ll stay here for about twenty minutes, no longer. We have come only about eleven miles.”
“Do you know where we are?”
“Oh, yes. We are close to the south side of the valley. We’ll have to cross the valley presently to gain the north side, and then we will have to look out when walking through the bush not to step on an Illprinka man. On the claypans it’s safer, because the blacks won’t be camped so far from shelter from the night wind.”
“O-o-h! My poor feet!” Flora softly exclaimed. “I’m sorry, Burning Water. I’ve no right to complain.”
“I am hardened to walking, Miss McPherson. It makes a great difference. I’m sorry, but time is up.”
Her own shoes certainly gave her a measure of relief, and now Burning Water pulled her arm through his crooked arm, and although she tried hard to maintain independence of action, she found herself increasingly placing her weight on him. The travelling became rough, deep water gutters barring their passage, and down and over and up these gutters Burning Water carried her. Save for the gutters the way was ever clear, for although she was blinded by the darkness, he appeared able to see as well as a night animal.
She had lost count of the number of short halts, but actually it was at the termination of the sixth halt, when they had walked seventeen miles and it was three o’clock in the morning, that her legs refused longer to serve her.
“I can’t—oh, I can’t go on,” she sobbed.
“Don’t worry, Miss McPherson,” he told her, although he was beginning to dread seeing the first sign of approaching day. He stung the rifle across his back and then, stooping, he lifted her in his arms.
“Let me down, please,” she requested without a trace of urgency. “I mustn’t give in. I mustn’t be a child. Let me down.”
“Lie quiet, Miss McPherson. You are not heavy.”
“Aren’t I? You’re so strong, Burning Water, and so kind. And don’t call me Miss McPherson. I would rather you call me Flora.”
“Thank you—Flora. Perhaps tonight it would be all right. Tomorrow, when the day is bright, you will again be Miss McPherson, the mistress of McPherson’s Station. I will be just Burning Water. You know, away back in the old days, when I called the McPherson Donald or Don, and we used to fight and make our noses bleed, old Mrs McPherson would say: ‘Now, you boys come into the kitchen for a scolding.’ And we both would say, ‘All right, mother, and after the scolding will you give us a slab of toffee?’ She always did.”
She could see his head silhouetted against the sky, the head crowned by the tufted hair, but when she closed her eyes it was so easy to forget that he was an aborigine. Grave and thoughtful, he yet could delight in playing that game with a small child, when his task was to blow down a “chook house” of matches built on his stomach. He carried Flora fully half a mile before he put her down.
“We mustn’t stop,” he told her, his breath hissing. “Now please don’t think I’m being familiar, but I am going to put my arm round your waist and help you along.”
There began again the agonizing torture of lifting her feet, pushing them forward, putting her weight on them.
“Are we going to any particular place?” she asked.
“Yes. A place where we can defy all the Illprinka men and wait for Captain Loveacre and Dr Whyte to find us and pick us up in the aeroplane. We have to get there before Rex’s Illprinka bucks catch up.”
“Is it—is it much farther to go?” she asked, dully.
“Another seven miles.”
“Seven miles. Oh, I can’t. How far have we come?”
“Nearly eighteen miles, I think. We have travelled fast, as Bony told us to. You have done well, Flora.”
Time came to have no meaning. She was dimly conscious of walking on a treadmill, and suddenly this stopped and she found herself lying on a soft mattress. She thought she was on the south veranda of the homestead, and she tried to recollect when she had had the mattress taken there. Then she saw the silhouette of Burning Water’s head and realized she was being carried. Presently that period passed into blissful sleep which in turn passed to the consciousness that again she was being held up whilst her legs were moving and her feet were scuffling across hard claypan.
She was amazed to find it was daylight. The sky ahead was rose-tinted, and in the rosy glow were tiny puff clouds stained all gold. The valley lay stretched to the far horizon which was on fire. They were skirting the feet of the bulging slopes rising to the northern high land. The sun was about to rise.
“How much farther?” she asked piteously.
“Less than three miles,” Burning Water replied, his voice anxious, his magnificent body drooping. “You see that headland beyond the tobacco-bush? That’s sanctuary.”
He had carried the girl for half-mile stages, and had been obliged to support her and almost drag her in between those stages. It made no mark on Flora’s mind that they were following the centre of a long line of claypans, that the walking was easy on this cement-hard surface. She did not know that keeping to the bush towards the centre of the valley were several stalking Illprinka men, members of Rex’s screen, that these men were fresh and strong and that their own pace was less than a mile an hour. Nor did she see those men, five in number, leave the bush and begin to run towards them as though intending to prevent their further advance. Abruptly Burning Water lowered her to the ground.
The sharp report of his rifle galvanized her into full consciousness. She saw Burning Water lying full length on the claypan and cuddling the stock of the weapon which discharged a devastating bullet at point blank range for three hundred and fifty yards. She saw a black body stretched on the claypan about a hundred yards away, and four others armed with spears and shields fleeing towards the bush.
Then Burning Water was bending over her and lifting her in his arms to stand her on her awful feet. The walking began again and now memory of those black forms energized her mind to will effort. How long the walking continued did not interest her. It appeared to be hour after hour without pause, without rest, and then she found herself being lifted and wanted to protest at being “slung” across a broad shoulder.
Her annoyance, however, was nothing compared to the relief her feet and legs received. She heard Burning Water utter a sharp exclamation, and she felt his body exert greater effort. She wondered but was too exhausted to ask him the reason. She did not see what he saw when, glancing back, he saw far away along the claypan verge of the valley a lar
ge party of naked aborigines running like hounds.
At the foot of the headland there was a sandy slope falling gently to the claypan verge. It was little more than a hundred yards in width, and when Burning Water reached it the Illprinka men were a mere three hundred yards behind and screaming their excitement and blood lust.
Half way up the slope Burning Water staggered and fell. His mouth was wide open. His face was contorted by the agony of terrific effort, and his eyes were red discs. Up he lurched to stoop and raise Flora, to heave her across his shoulder with her face to his back. She then saw their pursuers less than a hundred yards behind them. Some were fitting the hafts of their spears into the sockets of throwing sticks: others were yelling and lifting high their feet like the emus.
When Burning Water fell again it appeared to Flora that her fatigue vanished beneath the appalling fear. She was on her feet when Burning Water rose to his, and he flung an arm about her waist and dragged her on up the slope of yielding sand towards the base of the headland. In front of her was the usual line of debris, and among this jetsam from the cliff face was a huge boulder standing like a monument to mark the very front of the headland. Burning Water was urging her to run. A spear passed them and buried its fire-hardened point in the deep sand. Flora guessed that behind the boulder must be a cave in which they could shelter, and she was astonished when Burning Water voluntarily flung himself, and dragged her down with him, to the base of the stone.
Down at the foot of the sand slope the Illprinka men had halted, and stood staring at them. The great stone stood guard over the tribe’s sacred treasure house, and even within its shadow there must be no violence. In the shadow of the stone was sanctuary.
Bushranger of the Skies Page 22