Bony and the White Savage

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Into these wayward thoughts intruded a slim dark-eyed man of perhaps thirty years. He appeared quietly. He was dressed in gaberdine slacks and open-neck sports shirt, and old Jeff could not deny him. Matt and he rose, and the new comer was introduced as Mark, “Our youngest son.” Mark’s handshake was soft. His dark eyes were searching before they became reserved. He greeted Bony coolly, and Matt casually, and Emma with “How-ya, Emma,” before sitting on a straight-back chair as though he intended not to stay long.

  As they talked, Mark Rhudder appeared to listen intently, but Bony became sure he was not at all interested in what his father and Matt said, and very much so in what he, Bony, had to say. His first question was to Bony.

  “Just where is your place, Nat?”

  “East of a property called Narndee, which is east of Mount Magnet.” Bony added the statistics of his ‘property’, viz., area, carrying capacity, bores, etc., and was again sure, this time, that Mark was memorizing the figures.

  Mark, he felt, further tested him, saying:

  “Then you can’t be far off the Number One Vermin Fence.”

  “No, right against it with my south-west paddock.”

  “Read somewhere about that Fence, Nat. Goes from north to south right across the State, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s right. All of 1,130 miles from the Southern Ocean to the Indian Ocean at the Eighty Mile Beach.” Old Jeff wanted to know if the Great Fence served its purpose of keeping kangaroos, emus and other vermin from the western agricultural areas, and the subject continued with them until as silently as Mark appeared there came Sadie Stark to ask Mrs Rhudder:

  “Shall we have tea now?”

  “Of course, Sadie,” agreed Sarah, and stood. “Oh, you have met Mr Bonnar, Nat, haven’t you?”

  Across the intervening space, Bony bowed slightly and smiled, saying:

  “Yes, it was the other evening. How are you, Miss Stark?”

  “Oh, not Miss Stark. Sadie. We’re still outside the Mister Country, Nat,” he was reproved by his hostess. “Come along, everyone. A cup of tea will be nice.”

  Old Jeff had to take his own time to leave the veranda, and Bony considered himself fortunate because Jeff paused to tell him that the front door of mahogany came from a wreck in his grandfather’s day, and that the iron hinges were found in a cave three miles westward of Australia’s Front Door. The hall was spacious and they paused to examine the glass-topped specimen cases set against three of the walls. One case held coins: doubloons ducats, guineas and American gold dollars found, so Jeff said, by his ancestors who lived here at the Inlet. The other cases were filled with shells, hundreds of them, from great conch-shells to the minute specimens no larger than Egyptian scarabs, and of all colours.

  “They’re Sadie’s,” Jeff whispered as though it were a secret. “She collects shells. Been doing it for years. You get her to explain ’em sometime.” Then normally he said: “Yes, all those muskets and cutlasses and dress swords, and harpoons, the bullet moulds and the powder horns, they all were washed ashore, or came ashore with the half-drowned mariners. The coins, though, my father told me they came ashore in the pockets of drowned men, and his grandfather told him that while the gold came the family would prosper. It has, too. But the gold stopped years ago.”

  “They must have been tough characters in those days, Jeff.”

  “Not only tough, Nat. In those days there were new worlds to conquer and they had the spirit to conquer them. Not like the men of today. My son Marvin, now. He could of ... We’ll leave him, Nat. He’s a sword in my vitals. Come again, soon, and we’ll talk about those pages of history hanging there on the walls.”

  Following Jeff to the large dining-room, Bony felt pity for this man condemned to live out his last days in bitterness, and sorrow. If Jeff was harbouring his atrocious son, if he had sent him on his way more greatly in sorrow than in furious anger, who was he with three almost faultless sons to cavil or criticize?

  The dining-room picture windows faced to the northwest, taking in the entire Inlet and the rising, green hills beyond. There was a telescope on a brass stand and Bony flashed a glance to the hills and picked out the ridge where, he hoped, one of the aborigines was now on observation duty. Like the hall, this room contained specimen cases and some of the furniture was so antique and so beautifully kept that his love of beauty was quickened.

  He sat between Mrs Rhudder and Sadie Stark, and soon had to stand again when presented to Mrs Stark, tall, thin, alert with grey-blue eyes which looked steadily at him, probing, examining.

  “I see you are quite a conchologist,” he said to Sadie, and she, glancing sideways at him, keeping her face tilted to the table, reciprocated by nodding. He had the impulse to force her chin upward to see into her eyes, and perhaps her mind, and the impulse vanished when she turned to him and did for a moment meet his eyes.

  “I’ve always been interested in pretty things,” she told him, her mouth widening in a smile which reminded him strongly of the Madonna, aloof, mysterious, knowing all things ... especially men.

  He was drawn into the subject of fishing, and Mark added his warning about fishing alone off the rocks, saying how necessary it was to have a companion to watch for the sneaker.

  “My word, yes!” he was backed by his mother. “If you must rock fish, Nat, have someone with you. Call on us, and someone will go with you, and show you the best places, too.”

  He told them they were very kind, and that he would like to accept their offer one day before having to return home. Old Jeff repeated his invitation to come again, spend the day fishing and the evening yarning over dinner and a drink.

  Luke did not make his appearance, and Bony wondered where he might be, as no car had passed the Jukes’s homestead for Timbertown, and no car had left this place since they had been there.

  Driving home later in the afternoon, Matt said almost explosively:

  “That Marvin’s not about here any longer. I’ll bet on it. They’re all too easy in their minds. He’s cleared off, and they’re glad about it. Even old Jeff was better than usual.”

  During the next mile Bony continued to be introspective, and then he asked:

  “Mrs Rhudder has a queer way of expressing herself.

  “When we were leaving and I said I’d like to hook and land a two-hundred pound kingfish she said: ‘Remember: “Ambition is the main source of evil.”’ On the veranda she said that to the ants all grass blades are tall. She didn’t seem to me as being a reader of books.”

  It was Emma who answered him.

  “That’s from Marvin. He was always saying things like that.” She was silent for a space, and then said: “Used to remind me of a book we had about Oscar Wilde. More than once I thought he was trying to copy him.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The Six Scents

  CARE HAD to be taken with binoculars against sunlight. Care had to be taken with a camp fire which might smoke. A third precaution to be rigidly adopted was to avoid headlights when travelling between the Jukes’s homestead and the camp at the Ridge. A vehicle moving up a steep grade throws its light beams into the sky.

  Bony rode a quiet horse to Ridge Camp shortly after returning from the party at Rhudder’s Inlet. Lew was on duty. Outwardly this aborigine looked seventy when at fifty. He was stocky, tough, and deliberate in movements. His face was lined. His teeth being false were brilliant. His hair was white and clipped short, and his moustache was full and draped his chin. He had the glasses trained on Bony long before the latter sighted the camp.

  “Constable Breckoff and young Fred not back yet?” asked Bony.

  “Not yet,” replied Lew, voice accentless. “Might be late. About fourteen miles each way.”

  “What have you seen?”

  “Well, the Constable said I had to remember everything.” Lew smiled faintly as though he could not be expected to be a tape-machine, or something of the kind. Glancing at his wristwatch, he said: “No one left the place all morning. Come half-past
one Luke Rhudder went fishing. Must have gone fishing with a hand line ’cos he didn’t have a rod. Ten to three a car went down to the house and Matt Jukes and his Missus and you got out. You all had a yabber with Jeff and his missus in the garden. They went on up the veranda and you stayed a bit looking at the figureheads. Then you went on up and sat on the veranda for a bit. Mark came and sat, too. Then someone, I couldn’t see because she kept in the shadow, must have said for you all to go inside. You all came out twenty after five and drove up home. You had just hit the scrub when Luke came up from the beach, and went home. Coming back he didn’t have his gunny-sack.”

  First impression: normal for an aborigine of Lew’s age and time, and early background in association with one much later in life. Bony was delighted with him.

  “So, on returning from the beach he didn’t have his gunnysack?”

  “That’s right.” Lew’s black eyes steadily appraised the blue eyes of the man he had been told was a big-feller policeman. His eyes gave nothing of his thoughts, and they received nothing from Bony.

  “You can hand-line down there?” asked Bony.

  “Yes. But Luke had more than a hand line in the sack. Could be he had grub and a thermos. The sack didn’t look empty to me. And why should he leave a thermos and a hand line on the rocks? What about the fish? Must have caught some fish.”

  “Sound argument, Lew,” Bony agreed, and regarded approvingly the low tent-like sun-shield built with scrub branches, to protect the lens of the binoculars. “You know the house down there?”

  “Too right! Been inside, too. I saw the old coins and things, and one day Sadie Stark showed me her shells, wanting me to find one like some she had.”

  “You know all the Rhudders, eh?”

  “Yes. Knew old Jeff’s father. A hard case he was, for sure. Great axe man. He tanned my hide once for pinching his apples.” Lew chuckled deep in his throat. “Then he give me three of the best, and said I was to ask next time. He only had one eye, and us kids used to say he’d took it out to stick on the back of his head.”

  “You were down there as a small boy, eh?”

  “Us blacks used to camp a couple of miles up the river, as the Inlet was then. The blacks was always camped there. When they got a bigger school at Timbertown the Protector wanted our kids to go there, and we all shifted over to a camp put up by the Government.”

  “Did you go to school there, too?”

  “Me! No. That was only twelve years back.”

  “Then you’d know Marvin Rhudder and Luke and Mark pretty well.”

  “Too right! Fred sort of grew up with ’em. Fred’s my son. He’s with Constable Breckoff. I showed them Rhudder boys how to swim and ride. Showed Sadie Stark, too. Sometimes I worked for old Jeff. Sometimes for Matt Jukes.” Lew became pensive, saying: “Sooner be camped on the Inlet than where we are. But the women wants the kids educated. Not like in my old man’s days. In them days the men was the boss.”

  “Still, you are better off, I suppose,” prompted Bony.

  “Yes, I suppose so. We all has jobs most of the time, and you can’t beat education, can you?”

  “That’s true, Lew. You know why you’re here?”

  “Constable Breckoff told me and Fred. On the quiet, though.”

  “D’you know why Marvin is wanted?”

  “Bashing women like he bashed Rose Jukes?”

  “You know about Rose Jukes?” pressed the surprised Bony.

  “Yes. I was working for Matt when it happened, and Matt said I wasn’t to say anything but forget it. That’s what I done. Not my business.”

  Not his business; the white man’s business. This meeting with Lew was the first gift by Dame Fortune in the current case, and restraining a too eager interest, Bony dug more into fertile ground.

  “You’d know Marvin’s tracks when you see them again, eh?”

  “Never forget ’em,” replied Lew, adding with emphasis: “Never.”

  “How so?”

  “Am I telling you anything?” Lew asked, and chuckled again.

  “I’m hoping so,” answered Bony, responding to Lew’s lighter mood.

  “My old man was extra special. Him and his cobbers used to go and walk about away over beyond the Leeuwin Light. They were away that time old Jeff’s father got his eye knocked out splitting a log for shingles. He wouldn’t have no doctor, and there wasn’t one handy, anyway. Well, when my old man come home, Jeff’s father was getting around wearing one of them eye-shields. He’s out after cattle when my old man goes to the house asking for tobacco, and he seen Jeff’s father’s tracks about the place. He says to Jeff’s mother, ‘you got a stranger white feller walking around,’ and she says there’s no stranger. He says there is and that this stranger’s got only one eye, the right one.”

  “Not bad, Lew,” murmured Bony, admiringly. “Your father must have been good. But what has all this to do with Marvin?”

  “Well, like I told you, my old man was pretty good on tracking. I used to think he could tell what a feller was thinking about by looking at his tracks. More’n once he ordered me not to have anything to do with Marvin, kept on telling me Marvin was a Kedic feller. He’d show me Marvin’s tracks and how they told him Marvin was a Kedic.” Lew shrugged. “Well, he’s a Kedic, all right.”

  “Meaning he’s bad medicine all through? I’ve heard of the Kedics but by other names. What did your father’s people do about them? The same as other aborigines, I suppose?”

  “Expect so. Anyway, my old man told me that in his time when they found the tracks of a Kedic feller, they watch him and wait for him to be on his own in the scrub, and then kill him and burn him up. Kedic feller no good. Better kill him before he kills someone. Marvin is a Kedic, he always was. My old man said so, and my old man proved true, didn’t he?”

  “How do you know Marvin killed someone?” Bony asked. “Bash and rape, yes, but how do you know he killed someone?” There was mirth in Lew’s eyes when he said:

  “My old man was good.” He patted himself on the chest. “I’m good, too. When I went with the Senior to take casts of Marvin’s tracks I saw then he’d killed someone. He did, didn’t he?”

  Bony nodded. He had heard of such feats, and had tended to discount them as they reduced his own powers of track reading. There was no envy of this aborigine: he could use to advantage his own efforts in hunting down a man. Taking the glasses from Lew, he studied the figure leaving by the garden gate, saw it was Sadie. She had changed from her afternoon frock to a blue blouse and slacks. He asked:

  “How did your Fred get along with the Rhudder boys?”

  “Little feller with ’em he got along good,” Lew replied, and Bony waited for an implication to be explained. He saw Sadie walking beside the Inlet on her way to the sandbar and the beach.

  “Fred didn’t get along so good when they grew up, eh?”

  “No. He didn’t like being given the hard thing to do in play, and being called a black bastard by Marvin. There was something else, but Fred would never say. After that he gave ’em away.”

  “Sadie is off to the beach, with neither gunny-sack nor basket. What kind of a bushman was Marvin when he cleared out that time?”

  “Like the rest of ’em,” answered Lew. “They was all extra, I’d say. Learned a lot off us.”

  “And how to smooth out their tracks?”

  “They learned that, too.”

  “Think he’d bluff Fred, or you?”

  The low chuckle came and Bony passed the binoculars to the aborigine. With the naked eyes he could see Sadie now walking along the top of the great sand-bar, a fly on a long marble slab.

  His horse down at the camp snickered, and he repeated his last question.

  “He couldn’t bluff me or Fred. Not a hope. Might think he could. He got to thinking us blacks was grit in the eye. Sadie Stark’s not going to the beach. She’s following the tea-tree along the cliff. Must be going for a walk. Here’s Fred and the constable.”

  “I’ll go
down. You stay up here and keep the glasses on Sadie.”

  Constable Breckoff and his tracker were both of the same age, and akin also in physique, tall, tough, and young. The policeman grinned his greeting, for he was tired by the long day’s ride spoiled by too much motor-ease, and office-chair. Fred was unsaddling and Bony asked him to take his horse and theirs to water as he would be staying the night. Breckoff took the billy-can to the camp water-tank, and Bony stirred the fire embers and added dry wood.

  Rolling a cigarette while waiting for the water to boil, Bony asked how the day had gone with him.

  “Nothing in it. We crossed young Rhudder’s tracks coming in, and we back-tracked him to the old mill site. We rode wide and right to the coast about six miles east of the homestead. We didn’t cut his tracks going out, or the tracks of a horse he could have ridden. Pretty certain he hasn’t gone back to Albany, anyway.”

  “Lew claims that Fred is a good tracker.”

  “The best.”

  “Did you tell him or his father that Marvin is wanted for murder?”

  “No. The Senior said not to. Only wanted for bashing and rape. Lew know?” Bony told of what Lew had read in the tracks at the creek, and Breckoff whistled admiringly. “They’re beauts, eh?”

  “They’re tops,” conceded Bony. “I can’t think how Lew would know otherwise. You could spare him for a day?”

  “Whatever you say,” agreed Breckoff, tossing a half-handful of tea into the boiling water.

  “I want him to ride with me along the west boundary to see if Rhudder went by that way to the Leeuwin Light. We’ll leave before daylight. I’ll tell Lew.”

  When darkness ended Lew’s term of duty on the ridge, he came down to eat with them in the firelight, and to report that Sadie had disappeared into the tea-tree short of Australia’s Front Door. When she reappeared half an hour later she was carrying a gunny-sack slung by the strap from a shoulder, and the sack looked quite empty. They discussed the oddity that Luke had gone fishing with a gunny-sack and had returned without it. And the further oddity that Sadie had taken a walk along the cliff without a gunny-sack and had returned with one, empty.