Bony - 19 - Cake in a Hat Box

by Arthur W. Upfield

  The track led to the edge of a breakaway to give view of the homestead, winding downward to skirt the low cliff and cross­ing over level ground to pass round the detached kitchen.

  Bony thought the wild men had taken full possession, then quickly realized that the small crowd of aborigines about the kitchen were the station blacks. As he passed by, others appeared from inside the building, and yet more were sitting under the veranda roof of the main house. The camp beside the creek was deserted.

  Kimberley Breen appeared at the front door. She was wear­ing stockman’s clothes and a heavy revolver was strapped close to her hip. The evening colours played about her glorious hair as they play at sundown on the feathers of the parakeets, and Bony squared his shoulders and straightened his back.

  “I’m bothering you again, Miss Breen!”

  “Inspector Bonaparte!” Her voice was low, cool. There was no hint of panic when she added, “I’m glad you’ve come. We’re expecting trouble. Your truck broken down?”

  “No. I’m on foot … you mentioned trouble!”

  Her steady grey eyes examined him, his unshaven face, his dusty clothes, the significant sag of the right-hand pocket.

  “Come on in and eat.”

  He followed her into the house. She shouted to her lubras and they scurried away. She showed him where to wash, and when he entered the living-room, she was pouring tea into one of her valuable cups set beside the meal waiting for him. Opposite him sat Jack Wallace.

  Bony calmly met the slate-grey eyes and nodded non­chalantly. He said nothing, waited for Wallace to open up if he cared to. Kimberley said:

  “Our abos are terrified, Mr Bonaparte. They say the desert blacks have come for the killer of Jacky Musgrave. I don’t understand it, for I’m sure none of our people killed Jacky Musgrave.”

  “They are quite unpredictable, the wild blacks,” Bony side­stepped, and attacked cold beef the like of which is never purchased at a butcher’s shop. “I saw their tracks the other day.”

  “Where?” asked Wallace, softly and with marked restraint.

  “On the Range.” To Kimberley, Bony said, “All your brothers still away?”

  “Yes. Jasper and Ezra won’t be back for several days. Silas will be home any time. I wish Silas would come. You see, our boss stockman has cleared out, and all the others are jittery.”

  “D’you know why your boss stockman cleared out?”

  “No idea. He came home about two o’clock. Put his horse in the yards and shifted his gear to another horse. The others rushed over here saying Pluto’s Mob were coming, and now they won’t camp in their humpies and want to stay in the kitchen, even in the house. They’re all scared stiff.”

  “H’m! How long have you been here, Mr Wallace?”

  “Some time,” replied Wallace.

  “How long?”

  “Early this afternoon, if you must know.”

  Kimberley frowned. The delightfully soft lines of her mouth and chin vanished and the ruggedness of the mountains took over. A lubra entered carrying a tray on which was an apple pie and a jug of custard. Kimberley rose and switched on the lamp. The lubra removed Bony’s plate and set the sweet before him. He waited until she had gone. When he spoke, the voice was cold:

  “Cooperation at this time, Mr Wallace, would be diplo­matic.”

  “Course it would,” flashed Kimberley. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothin’ wrong with me, Kim,” replied Wallace, standing. “I’ll be starting for home.”

  “But you said you’d be staying the night because of the blacks being jittery,” Kimberley expostulated.

  “Better,” Bony added. “An hour ago I saw Patrick O’Grady riding hard for the Nine Mile Yards. Then he was off his horse and running … with about twenty wild men after him. They had speared the horse. I saw it done. I didn’t see Patrick speared, but I’ve no doubt he was.”

  Kimberley shook her head as though her hair was too tight against her temples. The light made it gleam like fine copper wire, and her eyes were apprehensive although her voice re­mained calm.

  “How far from here was that, Inspector?”

  “Two miles perhaps. O’Grady ran over a ridge to the north of me. The wild men were running across that ridge when last I saw them. They would either kill him running or catch him for questioning … first. The former, I think.”

  “Why question him?” asked Wallace, thickly.

  “On what he knew of the death of Jacky Musgrave. They found Jacky, you know.”

  “Where?” The dual question was like a bullet.

  “In the skeleton of a dead horse.”

  Wallace sat again.

  “You been busy, haven’t you?”

  Bony nodded, not looking up from rolling a cigarette. Kim­berley repeated the question she had asked with Wallace.

  “Near Black Well, Miss Breen. Someone must have told the Musgrave blacks where to look, but whoever he was he didn’t know or didn’t tell who killed Jacky Musgrave. The wild men took the body up into the Range, put it on a high staging and watched the grease fall on the stones beneath. Each stone repre­sented a man suspected of committing the murder, and the grease fell on two stones … telling that the men who murdered Stenhouse also killed his tracker.”

  “Men!” echoed Wallace. “Two men!”

  “Two men, Mr Wallace. They have executed their justice on one of the two men … Patrick O’Grady. They will now be intent on the other.”

  “But, Inspector, we know these blacks and their ways, but we can’t agree that grease-drops on stones prove who did a murder,” objected Kimberley.

  “Officially, Miss Breen, I am bound to support your view of wild men’s justice. I merely outlined what has happened to Jacky Musgrave’s body and to your boss stockman. We must recognize that the wild men became convinced that O’Grady was one of two men involved in the murder of their fellow; that they didn’t kill his horse and kill him for the mere thrill of the chase. That O’Grady bolted indicates a guilty conscience, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, it does. I’d better have all our abos in here tonight.”

  “And I must be off,” Wallace added.

  “It will be dark in half an hour,” Bony pointed out. “How are you travelling?”

  “Utility. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Might be as well to stay till morning.”

  “Yes, you’d better stay, Jack,” added Kimberley.

  Wallace stood, his mouth taut, but indecision in his flat grey eyes.

  “I’d better get along home,” he persisted as though to con­vince himself. “The old people’ll worry if I don’t. You’ll be all right with the Inspector, Kim.”

  He moved to the door, looked back, shrugged at what he saw in Kimberley’s eyes, and went out. They heard his engine roar to life, and they sat on and listened till the noise sur­rendered to the claws of approaching night.

  “Idiot,” Kimberley said. “He’s gone towards Nine Mile Yards, and the wild men are between here and the Nine Mile Yards, you said.”

  “Yes, in two parties,” Bony agreed. “Now let us look to our­selves. I suggest that the women and children be brought into the house, and that the men shut themselves into the kitchen. There are heavy shutters to all the windows … they could be closed?”

  “Yes, I think so. They haven’t been moved for years. They haven’t had to be … not in my lifetime.”

  At the house end of the covered way to the kitchen, Kim­berley clapped her hands. Black humanity poured from the kitchen, flowed towards them, and Kimberley shouted in their own dialect. Immediately she was understood, women and men shouted at each other. The women came across: old beldames, stout lubras, and slim young girls; youths and children of all ages; and Kimberley shepherded them into her house, where but a selected few had ever before been permitted in domestic service.

  Bony crossed to the men gathered about the kitchen. There were now thirty-seven men and eight youths who had been initiated into manhood
. He herded them into the kitchen and gave orders to close the heavy shutters to protect the two large windows.

  The younger men understood English, and Bony chose a man whose face bore the cicatrice of full initiation. He asked pleasantly:

  “What’s your name?”

  “Blinker.”

  “Then you come with me, Blinker, and loose all the dogs. You will be all right … with me.”

  Bony produced his pistol and Blinker was instantly assured. Together they walked into the gathering gloom, down to the creek, and loosed all the blacks’ mangy dogs, and, proceeding to the sheds, loosed from their kennels half a dozen Queens­land heelers. Joying in their freedom, the dogs raced about the homestead, engaged in a general fight, and were left to give warning of marauders.

  That the wild men would actually attack the homestead was doubtful, for even those deep in the great southern desert have learned to respect the machinery of white man’s law.

  Entering the kitchen with Blinker, Bony paused to survey this gathering of aborigines whose lifelong association with white folk had tended to eliminate their bad qualities and im­prove their good ones. He smiled at them, frankly and laugh­ingly, banishing the natural reserve of people unspoiled; for all these station aborigines are maintained by the homesteads in return for the labour given by the men, and thus have not been debased by money.

  “Why you feller bin flighten, eh?” he asked them. “You no bin killum Jacky Musgrave, eh?”

  “No fear,” replied Blinker.

  “You bin know who killum, eh?”

  Bony searched their faces and, beyond faces, their hearts. All returned his gaze, and there was no shuffling of feet, no soft laughter to hide embarrassment. An old man who looked to be a hundred and probably was little beyond sixty, had his tongue pierced, proving him to be a magic man. Again Bony smiled at them, and nudged Blinker to follow him outside, there inviting the stockman to sit with him and rest his back against the kitchen wall.

  “Why didn’t you go to Wyndham with the cattle, Blinker?” he asked nonchalantly.

  “Went as far as Camp Four with the cattle and then Jasper caught up with Stan and Frypan and old Stugger, an’ they took over from us.”

  “Oh!” Bony purposely remained silent for a full minute before putting his next question, again casting the baited line.

  “Didn’t the boss stockman go with you to Camp Four?”

  “No. He was out with Jasper when we left the Nine Mile Yards.”

  “And he wasn’t with Jasper and the others when they got to Camp Four?”

  “No. He had to stay home for a spell.”

  “H’m! Now he’s cleared right away, they tell me. Never said where he was heading. What time of day was it that Jasper and Frypan and Stan and Stugger took over the cattle?”

  “ ’Bout seven. Cattle was off night camp, any’ow. I was riding on a wing.”

  “And who told you to come home? Jasper?”

  “No. Ezra did. Jasper took over the other wing.”

  Again Bony deliberately refrained from casting his line until a full minute had passed.

  “Anyway, Blinker, you’re better off home having a spell. Were you talking to Jasper or the others that morning they took over?”

  Blinker laughed, softly, easily.

  “No fear,” he replied. “Ezra said go home; we come home.”

  “No argument, eh?” Bony chuckled. “Sure it was Jasper and not Silas you saw that morning?”

  Blinker this time laughed heartily.

  “Too right,” he said. “Silas don’t have black whiskers like Jasper.”

  “Good for you, Blinker. You go inside and tell that magic man I want him.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Machinery of Justice

  NO INTERIOR LIGHTING escaped from the house or the kitchen when Kimberley Breen emerged from the front entrance and accepted the chair Bony placed for her on the veranda. The dogs were silent. At least two were close, for they could be heard scratching at their stick-fast fleas. At a distance a cow bellowed and from distance still greater came the answering bellow of a bull.

  “I’ve put the women and children in two rooms,” Kimberley said, and paused as though giving Bony the opportunity to comment. “And I’ve locked the store-room and the living-room.”

  “A wise precaution in view of the delicious cake you keep in that hat box under the sofa,” Bony said. “I doubt that many southern women could bake a cake like that you gave Con­stable Irwin and me the other day.”

  “It’s one of my mother’s recipes. I’ve had plenty of time to learn cooking, you know. Jasper’s better at it than I am. Several of the lubras are good cooks, too. I taught them. It wasn’t easy. Do you know who killed Constable Stenhouse and his tracker?”

  “Do you?”

  The counter was played softly, robbing it of intended signi­ficance, and Bony waited for the next move.

  “No, I don’t. Wish I did. You coming here with Constable Irwin, and now coming alone, makes me fear … for us. You see, us Breens have always been a happy family. We’ve mostly been content living here among these mountains where we were born, and with aborigines who belong to us as much as the cattle on our country. And now Constable Stenhouse is killed and you come, and the wild desert men are here, so it seems we’re threatened with something we don’t understand. Do you know why Constable Stenhouse was shot?”

  “No, could you tell me?”

  She did not speak again for a long time, and Bony made no effort to urge her. A meteor blazed like a white rocket and he saw her clearly. She was sitting stiffly upright, her hands rest­ing on her knees, and was gazing directly to the front. When she did speak, her voice was low:

  “I think I could, but I’m not sure. Bad begets bad. You can see that in cattle sometimes. You can see it in goats, too. Jasper used to tell me that doing something bad never stopped at that. If you do a bad thing, other bad things will come from it.”

  “Jasper. Is he your favourite brother?”

  “They’re all my favourites. I never knew Father, and only just remember Mother. Silas was father to me. Very stern and just. Jasper was … I don’t know, but somehow Jasper seems to have been mother to me. I’ve always gone to Jasper to learn things. And Ezra … Ezra was always big brother to me. I used to fight him, and tease him, and be jealous of him, and he always tried to lord it over me, and make me do my lessons. I think they’re the best men on earth.”

  The slight emphasis on the personal pronoun gave the im­pression that Bony might not be in agreement, and not want­ing to fall into argument so loved by the Irish, he skipped that and came again to her reply to his last question.

  “Why, d’you think, was Constable Stenhouse shot?”

  “Because he was a bad man, bad all through. I only met his wife twice. The first time was when we were both little girls. The second time was when she was married to him, in at Agar’s. Constable Stenhouse came here several times when on patrol. No one liked him. Jack Wallace … Jack loved his sister like my brothers love me.”

  “And is that why you think Constable Stenhouse was shot?”

  “Yes.”

  Bony noted his own reaction to the soft yet decisive affirmative. This woman seated beside him in the dark, male-apparelled and armed, with frightened aborigines huddled in the house behind her, was an exceedingly interesting product of this land of fantasia. Discipline learned from one brother; the facts of life from another brother; elementary education gained through a third brother; and only twice in her life meeting the daughter of their nearest neighbour. Her voice was truly feminine, her enunciation surprisingly good under cir­cumstances and the influence of three bachelor brothers, two of whom he had seen and would not have classified as good companions for a growing girl child.

  “Why did Jack Wallace call on you this afternoon?” he asked.

  “Came to see Silas. I told him about our abos and he said he’d stay till Silas came home.”

  “Why? Did he know
that the desert blacks were here in the mountains?”

  “He said he knew from his own abos there was trouble about.”

  “And he came over to be sure you were all right?”

  “No. He came to see Silas.”

  Her voice was brittle, and Bony was warned and delayed his probing. The dogs remained quiescent, and the darkness continued to be disturbed by the processional meteors. Presently, he said:

  “He did intend to stay, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. Said he ought to as the boys were away. I told him I could manage our abos, and the wild blacks, too, come to that.” Kimberley laughed softly, and in its softness was iron. “Wants me to marry him. I’d sooner marry Bingil.”

  “The local magic man?”

  “Yes. I’ve told Jack he hasn’t a chance. I never told him why.”

  “He probably knows why, Miss Breen. Actually he was safer going home in his utility than standing by. The wild men are not after him.”

  “How d’you know?” she asked swiftly.

  “I have talked to Bingil, the magic man. Someone reported the murder of Jacky Musgrave to those western blacks who relayed the news south to the Musgrave blacks. Old Bingil got hold of the broad details somehow from one of the men con­cerned and he sent an uniniated boy to the western blacks to tell them to smoke-signal the news south as he himself couldn’t do it without discovery.”

  “I’ll fix that old poisoner,” Kimberley declared, adding, “in the morning.”

  “I’ve done it for you, Miss Breen. Leave well alone. Bingil acted in accordance with the alleged rights and privileges of the medicine-man. He knows who killed Jacky Musgrave, but neither you nor I or any living person would succeed in ex­tracting the name from him. Remember, his loyalties reach far beyond his own tribal section. And so he reported the death of Jacky Musgrave and did not name the killer, as that would be the business of Jacky’s relations to find out.”

  “Which they’ve done with their stones under the rotting body?”

  “Yes … although you and I did agree that their methods are somewhat chancy. Had Jack Wallace’s name been on one of their stones, they would have gone over the Range to find him. They would have gone last night.”