“Oh, yes. Jacky Musgrave was with him.”
“And Jacky’s missing?” Cummins interpolated.
“That’s so,” replied Irwin. “Any of Jacky’s mob working for you?”
“Yes. One. He’s away on walkabout.”
“I didn’t see any aborigines when we arrived,” Bony remarked. “None here?”
Cummins nodded and laughed. “Plenty,” he replied. “But they all went down the creek aways day before yesterday.” What he fancied was in Bony’s mind made him ask: “Think that’s anything to do with Jacky Musgrave?”
“Possibly. Have you noticed an unusual number of smokes recently?”
“No, haven’t seen any.”
“There was something that stirred up the blacks, though,” said Mrs Cummins.
Irwin glanced at the old pendulum clock on the mantel, and Bony rose to thank their host and hostess and express the hope that he would meet them again. Both escorted them to the utility, and they departed to the accompaniment of hearty farewells, the barking of dogs and the excited crowing of roosters.
“Most of these stations have a transceiver, I suppose?” Bony asked when his fingers were engaged making a cigarette.
“All of ’em,” Irwin answered. “The wireless and the aeroplane and the refrigerator have changed life considerably. People can now gossip to their heart’s content to their neighbours over forty, sixty, a hundred miles of space.”
“They have to keep off the air at certain periods, I understand.”
“Yes, for periods which are kept clear for telegrams and the Flying Doctor Service.”
“And do you find that the station people do refrain from talking of police movements?”
“Oh yes. They’re strongly cooperative there. Same with everything else. Notice Cummins’s reaction to the news about Stenhouse?”
“Yes. He was wondering how Stenhouse came to be north of Agar’s Lagoon. I received the impression that he didn’t like Stenhouse.”
“Me, too.”
The track ran southward, following an ever-widening valley prodded by the long red fingers of the ranges pointing towards Jacky Musgrave’s country. They passed a well from which radiated lines of troughing. Red cattle were drinking, and other cattle were standing in the spinifex and looking exactly like the termite hills. Far to the south-west a low, flat-topped range, isolated and singular on that quarter of flat country, gleamed opalescent gold under the opalescent blue sky.
“Looks like a range, doesn’t it?” remarked Irwin. “That’s the wall of the meteor crater. Full mile round, as I said. Steeper than a house roof, and the interior at least three hundred feet below the top of the wall.”
“What’s down inside, d’you know?”
“Nothing much. Floor’s flat, or almost so. Small desert trees growing down there. In the dead centre, a lake forms after a good rain.”
“Any official name given to it?” pursued the interested Bony.
“No. People hereabout call it ‘The Racecourse’.”
“And what’s beyond it?”
“Fair country for miles down to the desert. Never been there. Stenhouse went several times. Brought Jacky Musgrave back with him on his first trip.” Irwin chuckled. “Seems to me that Stenhouse got on better with the blacks than he did with the whites.”
Imperceptibly the track veered to the east, and the water-courses increased in number to reduce speed to ten miles an hour. The range fingers became blunted and still others appeared like headlands defying an ocean.
The sun went down, and the sky darkened to indigo blue above a land of spinifex which whitened to snow towards the desert. It was dark when they reached the homestead of Leroy Downs, to be welcomed again by excited dogs and men who carried lanterns.
“Good night, Mr Lang.”
One of the men raised his lantern.
“Damme! It’s Constable Irwin. Welcome, welcome! Just in time for dinner. Bob, run and tell Mum Mr Irwin’s here with a friend.”
“Inspector Bonaparte,” Irwin said.
“Welcome to you, Inspector. Come on in. Ah, you didn’t forget to bring our mail. Thanks. How’s things with you, an’ all?”
Bony blinked as he entered the living-room and joyed at the faces smiling at him. Lang himself was short and fat. Mrs Lang was tall and inclined to scragginess. Two young men and two young women accepted him with polite interest and Constable Irwin with unmasked pleasure, and before they could get breath again the cattlemen set up glasses and a bottle of whisky on the table already laid for dinner.
“Mind putting us up for the night, Mrs Lang?” asked Irwin. “Anywhere’ll do.”
“Of course,” answered Mrs Lang. “You’re not going on from here tonight, not if we know it. Why, it’s years since we saw you. Sit down, Inspector, and make yourself perfectly at home. Why, we haven’t had a visitor for weeks.”
Bony beamed at her and bowed.
“Your welcome is truly appreciated,” he said. “By the way, didn’t Constable Stenhouse call on you recently?”
“Constable Stenhouse! No. He hasn’t been down this way since last March.”
Chapter Seven
The Mulga Wire
IN SILENT AGREEMENT with Bony, Irwin made no additional reference to Stenhouse, and both surrendered to the warm hospitality extended to them by this Lang family. Their approach to Bony was restrained only by their inability to sum him up. Irwin was one of themselves. He spoke as they did, thought as they did. Bony’s speech was not of their school, and they found difficulty in squaring his personality with his official police status.
After dinner Lang ushered his guests into the sitting-room, which, like the living-room, was plainly but expensively furnished. The usual family photographs decorated the walls, and shelves supported at least a hundred books. Between two curtained windows stood a modern transceiver.
“Heard your name in the local news session the other night, Inspector,” Lang said when his guests were seated. “Good job about these murders in Broome being stopped.” His large round face broadened into a smile. “Not after another murderer now, by any chance?”
“Yes, we are.”
The smile vanished.
Bony related the main facts concerning the death of Constable Stenhouse, and Lang, with his sons, listened without comment.
“The circumstances are peculiar,” Bony proceeded. “Stenhouse was supposed to be down this way last Monday. I understand that you wrote to him with reference to an assault on a woman named Mary Jo.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Constable Stenhouse acknowledged your letter?” Bony asked.
“No, not a word.”
“He left Agar’s Lagoon on the 12th and stayed that night at Red Creek Station. He left Red Creek the following morning to come here. In his diary he wrote that he called here and took a statement from Mary Jo, then went on to Richard’s Well, where he stayed the night of the 13th.”
Lang flushed slightly.
“Stenhouse never called here,” he asserted. “Hasn’t been here since last March. Don’t get it.”
“D’you think it possible he could have passed through here on his way to Richard’s Well without you knowing it?”
“Impossible. There’s only the one track. Even if he came through in the middle of the night we’d know, the blacks would know, and the ruddy dogs would have barked the roof off. You said Stenhouse was dead in his jeep. Didn’t he have a tracker with him?”
“Jacky Musgrave was with him when he left Agar’s Lagoon and when he left Red Creek homestead. Jacky Musgrave has disappeared. His swag wasn’t in the jeep, and the constable’s rifle is missing.”
“Looks like Jacky Musgrave shot him.”
“It does, superficially. What we fail to understand is why Stenhouse was ninety miles to the north of Agar’s Lagoon when he was supposed to be on patrol duty down this way. He and his tracker certainly did leave Red Creek last Monday, taking the track for Leroy Downs. Could he have tur
ned off anywhere to return to Agar’s Lagoon?”
The cattleman pursed his lips. His sons glanced at each other and remained silent.
“There’s an old donkey-wagon track. It turns off the present track about a quarter of a mile this side of what we call White Gum Creek. I used to drive a donkey team that way to Agar’s Lagoon in the very early days when we took up this country. Haven’t used it for years, not since the first war. I don’t think Stenhouse could have got his jeep over it. Do you, Bob?”
“Don’t think.” Bob completed the manufacture of a creditable cigarette. “We were out there a couple of months back. Still see where Pop shifted rocks to get round bad places with the wagon. No. I don’t think even a jeep could be got through to Agar’s that way.”
The second son drawled: “Still, if Stenhouse did tackle Pop’s donkey track, we’d see easily enough soon after the turn-off. Sandy ground all the way to the ranges. I wouldn’t say Stenhouse didn’t do it. Reckon he’d get anywhere with anything.”
“Well, we’ll run out to that turn-off and have a look,” decided Lang. “If we find the tracks of his jeep, then he did tackle my old wagon trail, and he did have more guts than I’ve got these days.”
“How far would it be to the township by that track?” Bony asked.
“About sixty miles. Used to take me and the donkey wagon a fortnight to do it. It’s past eight. The air’s free. Shall we contact Richard’s Well and find out if Stenhouse got there?”
“Like other parts of the interior, I suppose everyone listens in during free hours,” Bony said, smilingly, and the three Langs grinned. “I would like to keep our visit to you from the public ear. We’ll leave it until we prospect that turn-off tomorrow.” Mrs Lang appeared with her daughters and Bony was instantly on his feet. “Sit here, Mrs Lang. This chair is so comfortable that I have to fight to remain awake.”
The women sat, Mrs Lang with obvious relief, the girls primly.
“You’re all looking very serious,” she exclaimed.
Her husband related the finding of the murdered policeman. The girls, both in their early twenties, uttered cries of horror. Their mother looked grim.
“It’s not for us to judge,” she said, quietly, “He that raiseth the sword shall die by the sword. His wife was a brave little thing. He broke her heart. We didn’t like him, Inspector Bonaparte, but we always welcome everyone.”
Bony managed to push the subject into the background and the evening passed pleasantly. The following morning, fortified by the most delicious steak and eggs, he and Irwin set off with Lang in the station utility, the two sons and an aborigine riding at the rear.
“Are there any boys from the Musgrave Range working for you?” Bony asked the cattleman.
“No. Don’t care much for ’em. They’re too unreliable, too wild. Reckon Stenhouse got the pick of the lot when he chose Jacky Musgrave. He thought a lot of Jacky, and Jacky thought a lot of him. Seems that Stenhouse was sort of unbalanced. What affection he had in his make-up he gave to his pet tracker.”
“How old would Jacky be?”
“Difficult to tell the age of some of these blacks. Jacky’d be somewhere about twenty to twenty-five. Short, and ugly as hell. When running wild he’d be as thin as a grass stem. Stenhouse fattened him so’s he was wider and thicker than me.”
The utility was riding over a sea of spinifex dotted with the red termite hills, and the grass rising from the cushions waved like opening oats in the light wind. Far ahead the gums marking a creek appeared like silver candles burning a green flame. Bony, who sat between Lang and Irwin, said:
“From what you know of the relationship between Jacky Musgrave and Stenhouse, you doubt the tracker shot Stenhouse?”
“I don’t think he would. Bob and me were talking about that this morning. My lad knows more about the blacks than I do. When he was a baby he crawled round with aborigine babies, and later on with the young bucks. He’s been initiated into the local tribe. Thinks nearer to ’em than I do, or his mother. Bob reckons Jacky was done in when Stenhouse was.”
Two minutes later, Lang abruptly reduced speed to three miles an hour, saying:
“It was about here I usta turn off to those ranges. Long time ago that was, and my wagon-tracks won’t be seen.” He glanced back through the rear window. “The young fellers are standing up looking for where Stenhouse turned off … if he did.”
“The turn-off having been wiped out by the years since you laid down that wagon track, how, d’you think, did Stenhouse know there was a track across those ranges?” asked Bony.
Lang laughed mirthlessly, and he kept his reply until he stopped the truck.
“Stenhouse knew everything. I told him about it years ago, how me and the wife hitched sixty-two donkeys to our old wagon and drove ’em over them ranges to take up this country, and how we drove ’em in a wagon once a year to Agar’s for stores and clothes and a bit of timber and roofing iron. Stenhouse was a king-pin of a bushman, and don’t forget he had Jacky with him.”
They left the truck and joined the two sons and the aboriginal, a well set-up young fellow called Monty.
“What d’you reckon, boys?” asked Lang while his pipe dangled from his teeth and his hands were employed cutting tobacco chips. He was well beyond sixty, and actually appeared tougher than either of his sons.
“He never turned off anywhere from home to here,” Bob stated. “Reckon if Stenhouse wanted to hide his tracks he’d have turned off at the bed of the creek and got Jacky to smooth out the traces for a coupler hundred yards. That’s what I’d have done, anyhow.”
“All right, we’ll try it out,” agreed the cattleman. “We’ll prospect up the creek away. See that bluish rock standing on yonder slope … there between them summits? Well, that usta be our first camp up from this side. My wagon track passes close to that rock. Stenhouse could have turned off anywhere and crossed this spinifex plain to reach that rock. After that he’d have to keep to my wagon track all the way over. Let’s prospect the creek.”
The creek was shallow, the bed sandy and approximately fifty yards wide.
Since the last rush of water from the ranges had passed to leave the creek bed smooth, cattle had trampled the coarse sand into confusion. The sand was dry and fairly firm, and at once Bony acknowledged the probability that Stenhouse had driven his light jeep along that dry bed. Monty smiled approval of Bony’s powers. Both saw the man-made irregularities which even the tracker had failed to eliminate.
The party set out and, as Bob Lang had deduced, they came abruptly to the tracks of a truck or car along the creek bed.
Half an hour later, the party came to the place where the jeep had been driven from the creek bed and had taken to the plain, headed to that singular bluish rock.
“No need to go farther,” Bony said. “The evidence is clear enough. Having crossed the ranges where would he come out?”
“He’d come to a gully which would bring him to the main road about a mile on the aerodrome side of the township,” replied the cattleman. “Damned if I get it. If he wanted to get back there why didn’t he take the track through Red Creek, the way you came, the way we go to Agar’s? I wouldn’t take a blitz-buggy across them ranges.”
“He certainly had his reasons,” Bony pointed out. “By the way, would he have had knowledge of your operations?”
“Meaning?”
“Last night you mentioned that you had dispatched your last mob of fats to Wyndham … that is, for this season. Therefore it would be unlikely you would again muster this section of your country for some considerable time.”
“That’s so.”
Joe Lang chipped in:
“Stenhouse would know that having sent away our last mob for this year we’d be taking things kind of easy for awhile, and not likely to be riding this country.”
Bob said:
“Seems like Stenhouse took to that old track so’s to put the Cumminses wrong, making them think he’d come on to us and wo
uld be going home past Richard’s Well. He didn’t want ’em to know he’d gone back to Agar’s.”
Irwin chuckled, and there was no harshness in his eyes.
“Told you before, Bob, you’d make a heck of a good policeman.”
Bob flushed beneath the tan, grinned at the constable, looked sheepishly at his father and said he wouldn’t be happy down in Perth doing recruit training.
They set off back to the truck, and returned to the homestead, where they were met by the two girls and ‘ordered’ in for lunch. Everyone exhibited disappointment when Bony decided they must leave after lunch, and such was that meal that he felt inclined to stay and sleep throughout the afternoon.
The entire family accompanied them to Irwin’s utility, reluctant to let them go. Bony took Bob’s arm and led him away.
“Tell me, Bob, have you seen any smokes these last few days?” he asked.
“Yes. Corroboree smokes. The blacks at Red Creek are having a corroboree.”
Bony told him of the smokes seen by Laidlaw and interpreted by Charlie, Bob’s brown eyes directed to his and Bob’s mind working at top. When Bony finished, Bob shook his head, saying:
“I think Charlie made a guess on what you drew for him. Still, I might be wrong. The corroboree at Red Creek might have something to do with Jacky Musgrave. It could work out this way.”
Bob squatted on the ground and with a finger drew a map, Bony squatting with him. The map showed the Kimberley Ranges, and dots represented McDonald’s Stand, Red Creek homestead and the place whereon they were. It was done with the facility of a practised hand.
“Those western blacks might know something about the shooting of Stenhouse and what happened to Jack Musgrave. They wouldn’t be interested in Stenhouse, but they would be in Jacky, assumin’ Jacky was shot too. The signals they sent up would be relayed down to the Musgrave blacks. Assumin’ again that this is what those smokes meant, that Jacky was killed with Stenhouse, then it could be that the corroboree now going on at Red Creek is about Jacky. A Musgrave black is working down there with them. There’s an old magic man living here. If you’d wait, I’d go and have a chip with him.”
Bony - 19 - Cake in a Hat Box Page 5