Bushranger of the Skies

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Haven’t you got your pistol?” he asked, despairingly. “Didn’t you bring your rifle? He’s loaded the machine with bombs and he’s off to destroy the homestead and perhaps all those there. Stop him! Shoot him, man!”

  Rex was in his seat. The engine was accelerated and the plane quivered. The propeller swept dust from under the plane against the rear wall. Tootsey was hauling on cords to roll up the grass blinds from the entrance.

  “I can’t shoot him,” Burning Water said, steadily. “It’s not my way. My rifle is beside you. Here’s my pistol. You can easily escape. There’s only the two lubras here. I’ve accounted for the cook and one old Illprinka man.”

  The plane was moving to the open entrance when Burning Water raced from the stretcher, reached the tail of the machine and then clambered along its gleaming body to the step insets serving the rear compartment. Tootsey had withdrawn to one side of the entrance and outside. Rex was concentrating his attention on taxi-ing the plane from the hangar, and besides he was sitting low down behind the front windshield. The tail bar had not left the ground and he neither saw nor felt the additional weight when Burning Water climbed into the rear compartment and slumped down.

  “There’s that Illprinka store-house place where we picked up Flora and Burning Water,” Dr Whyte told his pilot by leaning forward in his seat and shouting at the top of his voice.

  Whyte continued to use the glasses, searching the sky for the sliver-grey aeroplane. He knew from Flora that the machine was grounded in its hangar, but even she did not know for how long.

  From the horizon now emerged a ribbon dark-brown in colour, uniform, unbroken. The aeroplane “drifted” southward to cross the valley whilst it headed for the broadening dark-brown mass slipping beneath them. This was the cane-grass and lantana swamp, and when its nearest edge was but a mile distant the airmen could not see its farther side. Nothing stirred on it or beside it. There was no sign of life. A minute later Loveacre pointed downward and Whyte brought his glasses to bear in the direction.

  “He’s just taking off! By hokey, Loveacre! Now’s our chance. Remember, he’s faster than we are. Get alongside him for only one minute, and leave the rest to me.”

  “Hope he hasn’t a gun, too,” Loveacre shouted back. “He’s climbing fast, but he’s headed east. I’m going down now.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t have a gun when he bombed my crate,” Whyte asserted and then for the hundredth time manipulated the Lewis gun on its railed mounting.

  “He’s fast, all right,” shouted Loveacre, and on his face was a kind of glory. “Like old times ain’t it, comrade? Bust him wide open when we get alongside. We probably won’t get another chance, for if he hasn’t a gun he’ll get away from us. Mind your head!”

  Loveacre was beginning to flatten out his machine and to utilize the speed gained by the dive to take it alongside the silver-grey. They could see Rex McPherson looking at them. In another half-minute the machines would be flying side by side and then Whyte could take his gun into action. Then they saw a grey-tufted black head emerge upward from the rear compartment of the cockpit, and Dr Whyte swore and Loveacre shouted:

  “Curse it! There’s Burning Water!”

  Whyte groaned. In another three seconds he could have sped bullets into the silver-grey’s pilot, and now he was paralysed. Rex saw the gun aimed at him and he shook his gloved fist and turned his ship away. Loveacre’s plane followed, rapidly losing position.

  They distinctly saw the astonishment Rex McPherson felt when, on looking back at them, he saw Burning Water occupying the rear seat. They saw him jerk his body forward to reach a weapon. They saw Burning Water raise himself and smash the windshield in front of his compartment and then, against the pressure of the wind, force himself forward to grasp the edge of the front compartment. Now he was almost out of his compartment, hanging with one hand, the other grasping the pilot’s flying suit at the chest. The plane lurched, began to slip to starboard.

  Rex fired his automatic pistol but it did not appear that his aim was true because Burning Water now had both hands on the pilot and was pulling him toward himself. Rex was standing and smashing his assailant with the pistol. The plane was slipping down, its wings almost at right angles to the ground. Burning Water had his arms round Rex’s middle, and Loveacre and Whyte could see that the pistol arm was crushed against Rex’s side.

  Then both men in strong embrace appeared to “drift” from the silver-grey aeroplane which went into a nose dive. Down and down through the crystal clear air they fell, clasped together, slowly turning over and over.

  The pilot chute appeared like a puff of smoke. Then like a pricked balloon the main parachute appeared to follow the two bodies earthward. Abruptly it bellied, mushroomed, held for an instant, seemed to explode and then follow on down with the men all tatters and ribbons. Neither Whyte nor Loveacre continued to gaze that way. They watched the silver-grey aeroplane till it struck ground and became the base of a vast column of writhing black smoke.

  “He had bombs on that ship,” Loveacre told Whyte. “What do we do now?”

  “Try to locate Bony. Yes, he had bombs on board. But he didn’t know that Burning Water was aboard till he looked back at us. The black must have stowed away on his plane.”

  Loveacre turned his ship towards the swamp. They were in time to see the birth of another smoke column at the southern edge. Its growth was amazing. Within three minutes it formed a giant black shadow confronting them, and down at the foot of the shadow they saw figures running across the claypan road to the red dunes. They now saw other blacks emerge from the scrub of the valley and run towards the same dune.

  “There’s Bony!” shouted Whyte. “He’s holding up the crowd from the summit of that sandhill. Land for him, Loveacre, and leave the mob to me. Looks like he fired the blasted camp.”

  The plane dropped down the face of the rising black smoke that looked like a cliff of coal. It passed southward for a mile, turned and came northward, then sank till its wheels touched the claypan verge between the conflagration and the sand-dune range. Bony was lying on the summit of a whaleback. Father along the range black figures were moving like ants against the slopes, and one of these ants was a brilliant scarlet.

  Now Bony was running down the dune towards the ship. The Illprinka men, among whom was Tootsey, came slowly towards the running man, fearing rifle fire; a burst of machine-gun fire sent them racing for cover among the dunes.

  Although he was limping badly, Bonaparte gained the side of the machine. He was hauled up and into the roofless cabin, and they were confronted by his passionately angry face.

  “That was Burning Water with Rex McPherson,” he shouted. “Didn’t you see him? Why did you shoot the plane down?”

  “We didn’t, old man,” Whyte said. “Rex didn’t know Burning Water was in the observer’s seat behind him until he turned to look back at us. Then Burning Water grabbed him and they fell out together.”

  The anger faded from Bony’s eyes.

  On the way back to the homestead they sat together and Bony told them about Burning Water refusing to shoot Rex McPherson, explaining how by taking Flora to the Illprinka’s sacred storehouse he had condemned himself to death, and how he had decided to stamp out a dangerous fire to relieve his friend and chief of the trouble.

  “It might have been better to go out that way than to be always expecting a spear in the back,” Loveacre said. “But I don’t think I could have chosen that way.”

  Six months had passed and again Captain Loveacre had flown to McPherson’s Station, this time with Napoleon Bonaparte as his passenger.

  It turned out a wonderful day, a soft and cool wind blowing from the south, Dr Henry Whyte had come in his new aeroplane, and his passenger had been the minister from Birdsville. The minister had conducted the marriage in the dining-room from the walls of which hung the pictures of the bride’s magnificent ancestors.

  And now The McPherson stood with Captain Loveacre and Bony and the parso
n and Old Jack and the men’s cook at the fence at the bottom of the garden. And down the slope were grouped all the members of the Wantella Tribe, hushed, expectant. Old Jack was relating stories of the old days to Loveacre and the minister, and Bony was saying to the squatter:

  “Looking back on that terrible business I find it hard to believe that my visit here from first to last was only nine days. It is as well for me that it was only nine days, for I could find no fitting excuses to offer my Chief Commissioner for having made the decisions I did make. He proved very ... difficult. Of course, he is always difficult, but this time he was more so.”

  “You had a good deal of trouble, too, in hushing it all up, didn’t you?” asked The McPherson.

  “As a matter of fact I very nearly lost my job over it,” Bony replied, smilingly. “It was quite impossible to convince a man like Colonel Spendor of the poetry there is in the name Tarlalin. It was difficult to convince him that, the dangerous fire having been stamped out, there could be no justifiable reason in making the affair public and thus causing the innocent to suffer. The fact that you intended to, and eventually did, bestow a handsome annuity on Errey’s wife certainly assisted my efforts.”

  “I did what was right: neither more nor less,” claimed the squatter. “Before you go, I would like to take you along to the cemetery. I have something to show you.”

  “I would like to accompany you. It sounds as though Harry’s plane is taking off. Ah—yes! Here they come.”

  From the direction of the landing ground a sleek, modern, low-wing aircraft came roaring over the claypan verge and passed those on the slopes and at the garden fence on the same level. They could see Flora waving to them. The aborigines leaped and yelled and shrieked. The white folk waved and cheered. Then the machine had passed, was climbing steeply and, after circling the homestead once, flew away over the valley of burning water towards the radiant hills.

  “Well well!” exclaimed Loveacre. “That’s the end of a story I like. Fine fellow, Whyte, and dashed lucky, too. What a bride! And now I suppose, we must be off, too.”

  “Yes, I suppose you must, but I do wish you would stay the night,” McPherson said, regretfully.

  “Sorry, but I simply must be in Brisbane tomorrow.”

  “All right, captain. But just a moment. I want to show Bony something.”

  Together Bony and he walked over the thick lawn so ably preserved from the hot winds and the scorching sun by Old Jack. They skirted his sprinklers and his beds of standard roses, and passed through the door in the cane-grass wall into the shrine. McPherson conducted Bony to the three slabs of red granite under the centre one of which lay Tarlalin, and standing at her feet pointed to the left hand slab, but did not speak. And under the original name cemented in, Bony read the deeply chiselled words:

  Burning Water

  Chief of the Wantella

  “The McPherson’s justice,” murmured the squatter. “I had him brought and placed there. I could have done no less. The other was buried where he fell, but I got the minister to go out and read the service over him. When my time comes I shall die content in the knowledge that I shall sleep with Tarlalin, my wife, and Burning Water, my friend.”

  Bony nodded that he heard. He made no comment. He refrained from saying that the unfortunate Rex McPherson was greatly to be pitied. The squatter would not understand the influences that had warred for the mind of Rex McPherson. No white man ever would understand those influences, which were so well known to Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte.