The Barrakee Mystery b-1

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Now if that D. hadn’t found the bloke and the tart canoodling under the mulberry-tree, the husband-’Enery, you are notpayin ’ attention. Wot’s gone wrong with you, ’Enery?”

  Blair gazed over the top of his spectacles with serenity. He was fully aware of the presence of the visitors. From Henry, Blair slowly shifted his gaze round over his shoulder and stared hard into the eyes of the mounted policeman. Deliberately he laid the paper down on the ground, and as deliberately placed his spectacles on the paper.

  “Good day-ee,” he said coldly.

  “Good morning,” Knowles repeated.

  “ ’Enery, take the sergeant’sannimile and tie it to that tree over there. Then git one of them feeds and shove it under theannimile’s nose,” Blair ordered grandly, adding, as though as an afterthought: “And, ’Enery, if the sergeant andme comes to an argument, you will not interfere.”

  Henry grinned vacantly and took charge of the sergeant’s horse. As ordered, he tied it by its neck-rope to a tree. Bony tied his mount to another tree. Henry slouched over to where some twenty roughly-made big hessian bags were set together, filled with chaff and bran in readiness for the team’s dinner, and from the outer edge took up two of the bags. Blair indicated the freshly-made billy of tea with his pipe-stem.

  “Have a drink of tea, Sarge, and a bite of brownie,” he said acidly. “You’ll want all your strength. Good-day-eeBony. Since when have you become a john’s offsider?”

  “Since yesterday, Fred,” replied Bony easily. “Bill Clair escaped arrest yesterday, and I’ve been called upon to track him.”

  “Oh! Andwot’s Bill been and done now? The sugar is in the tucker-box, Sarge. Take plenty. It’s fattening. You, too, Bony. Wot’s Clair done?”

  “I hold a warrant for his apprehension on a charge of murder, Fred,” interjected Knowles. “Where is that brownie you spoke of?”

  The sergeant was as much at home in a bullock-driver’s camp as at a station homestead. With a pannikin of black tea and a slice of eggless cake he seated himself before Blair and allowed his eyes to go roaming about the camp.

  “ ’Enery,” remarked Mr Blair, “from a divorce we come to murder-sootablesubjects for a Sunday morning. Who did you say Clair ’as bin and shot up, Sarge?”

  “I don’t think I mentioned the victim’s name.”

  “Every day and all day, Mister Knowles, you aregitting cleverer and cleverer,” remarked Blair with studied calmness. “However-” He picked up spectacles and paper, placed the former on his nose, the latter across his knees. Ignoring his guests, he said: “You will remember,’Enery, that we were reading about the scene under the mulberry tree when we were rudely interrupted. It appears that the ’usband…”

  Blair was too much for Bony. The half-caste choked, while Knowles joined in hearty laughter. Henry giggled and broke into a guffaw when the situation became clear to his slow brain. With slight jerks Blair’s goatee beard rose. Seeing the sign, the sergeant interposed before the storm broke:

  “Sorry Blair,” he said with twinkling eyes. “But let’s leave the husband and get back to Clair. I want him for the killing of King Henry, and Bony here says he believes Clair has come this way. Have-”

  “Are you telling me, Sarge, that you are a-chasin’ a white man for knocking anabo on the head?” Blair demanded.

  “That is the strength of it.”

  “Then I don’t wonder any longer that I’ve got to pay seven shillings in taxes on every pound of tobacco I buy,” Blair gasped. “To think that I have to pay you, a full-blown sergeant, to go mooning about after a gentleman because said gentleman corpsed a useless, worthlessabo. Now, wot do you think about that, ’Enery?”

  Henry looked as though he knew nothing. Blair turned to Bony, saying:

  “Andwot makes you ‘think’ Clair came this way? If you’re a tracker you should know whether he came this way or not, not ‘think’.”

  “In Clair we have a man who is by no means a fool,” Bony explained. “Clair adopted the blood-and-feather method of avoiding being tracked.”

  “Blood and feathers! Sounds like a Buffalo Bill penny dreadful,” murmured Blair.

  “Exactly,” blandly agreed Bony. “It is the only method successfully adopted by the blacks to escape their enemies. I knew, however, that I should find evidence of Clair’s passage, as I did; for I came across several grains of sugar which Clair had dropped, and that sugar was but six miles from here-in fact, directly between here and the Basin, where he was working.”

  “Well, now! Ain’t that wasteful?” Blair said. “Fancy dropping sugar about the place, and sugar the price it is.”

  “I suppose Clair stayed here last night, Fred?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Ah! And which way did he go when he left?” Knowles asked sharply.

  “He hasn’t left yet, to my knowledge.”

  The sergeant’s eyes narrowed. Bony smiled. He was a better judge of human character than was his inferior in the force.

  “Then where is he?” came the demand.

  “I believe he is lying down in my tent,”came the calm, ominously calm, reply. Immediately Knowles was on his feet. So, too, was the little bullock-driver. Henry’s face widened in a grin of anticipation. Bony smiled again, but Bony’s eyes were everywhere. And he was sure Blair lied when he admitted that Clair had been there the night before. Knowles moved towards the tent beneath a box-tree. Blair stood resolutely between it and the policeman. With studied deliberation he rolled up the sleeves of his vest to his armpits. In his eyes was a light of pure joy, whilst the tip of his beard was level with his nose.

  “That ’ere tent is my property, my house,” he proclaimed. “Unless you have a search-warrant you don’t enter it.”

  “Don’t be silly, Blair. Stand aside.”

  The little man backed to the door of the tent. The policeman followed.

  “Come on, Sarge!” Blair pleaded. “You’ve been looking for a brawl for years. Just us two, now. A level go.”

  It might have been a “level go” had not Bony laughed.

  A suspicion of disappointment clouded Blair’s blazing eyes. And the sergeant, realizing that the little man was lying to gain a fight, to him the very breath of life, stepped back, and smiled.

  “I suppose I shall have to show you a warrant, Blair,” he said, pulling out of a pocket a bundle of documents. Selecting one, he showed it to the chagrined Blair, who, stepping aside, raised the tent flap and bowed mockingly.

  Withinwas a stretcher-bed, and an assortment of blankets and clothes on the ground which evidently was Henry’s sleeping place. Clair, of course, was not there.

  Knowles glanced over the camp. A table-top wagon afforded noconcealment, neither did a small heap of yokes and scooping gear. Seeing several bags of chaff and horse-feed, he said:

  “Are you feeding the bullocks?”

  “Looks like it,”came the sulky reply. “No ground feed hereabouts, and themannimiles ’aveto work hard.”

  Bony walked about the camp, his gaze always on the ground. Whilst Knowles was fruitlessly questioning Blair, he made a wide detour and finally looked over and down into the partly cleaned-out earth tank or dam. It was when returning to camp that he saw and picked up a small white feather, a feather whereon was one smear of dried blood. It was, he knew, a pelican’s feather.

  The half-caste sauntered back to the baffled Knowles.

  “If Clair has passed this way he has gone on,” he announced. “I suppose Thurlow Lake is the next place west?”

  “Yes,” Knowles assented. Then, turning to Blair, he said with annoyance: “It won’t help you to prevaricate. I want the truth now. Did Clair camp here last night?”

  “I’ve told you a hundred times that he did,” replied the little volcano, with a broad grin.

  The sergeant snorted, or the venting of his exasperation sounded like it. He strode to his horse, followed by the still smiling tracker. Together they mounted. Together they nodded farewell to the now seated Bl
air. The spectacles were once more on the little man’s nose, the paper on his knees.

  “As I was saying, ’Enery, the ’usbandand the D. came upon the sinful wife and-Oh, good day-ee, Sarge; good day-ee, Bony!-her lover beneath the mulberry-tree. Stay where you are, ’Enery, for a minute. Let them git well away. They’re off to Thurlow Lake to take poor old Bill Clair, or try to. Now, shin up that tree, ’Enery, and watch ’emout of sight.”

  Henry climbed the tree pointed out to him. Blair read to himself for quite five minutes; then:

  “Are they over the rise yet, ’Enery?” he asked.

  “Just on the top, Fred,” announced the watcher.“Now they ’avegone.”

  “Goodo! Just stay there and keep a look-out for a bit. They might circle and come back.”

  Blair sauntered over to the feed-bags. He pulled several away till he came to those in the centre. These, too, he moved.

  “Righto, Bill, old lad!” he said. “The coast is clear.”

  Up from a narrow deep hole William Clair arose as Venus from the sea. His limbs were cramped. He said:

  “I’ll never bashno moreabos, Fred.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Pool

  WHEN THE squatter remarked to Kate Flinders that he thought Ralph was thinking out some problem he was nearer to the truth than he suspected. Exactly what the problem was the young man did not know, nor did he realize even that he was working out a problem. When he told his foster-parents that he would prefer to become an ordinary station hand to reaching the summit of Church or State service, he was voicing what was really the mysterious lure of the bush for those born in it, as well as for many born out of it.

  What seafarer, compelled by old age to live always ashore, does not long for the sea, the smell of the sea, the moods of the sea? The scents, the moods, the changing yet eternal aspect of the bush of Central and outer Central Australia had become necessary, impelling, to Ralph Thornton during his last college term. Unconsciously throughout the long years of his childhood the bush had got into his blood, calling with increasing insistence in these latter years that were shaping his manhood.

  Having drunk afternoon tea in company with the Little Lady and discussed Clair’s impending arrest, the young man procured bathers and towels and walked up the river to a deep hole where the water was crystal clear. On that late afternoon the air, too, was crystal clear, and warm despite the lateness of the autumn. He felt an unaccountable gladness that he was there walking beneath the grand old gums bordering the dear old Darling, which now had ceased to run. The bed of the river was quite dry along the stretches between the holes at the bends, and in the hole at the station Ralph saw Frank Dugdale fishing. He was glad Dugdale did not wish to accompany him.

  Ralph’s bathing-pool lay half a mile up from the blacks’ camp, a twelve-foot hole in the bed of the river, with a diameter of twenty feet or so; and at last the young man stood in his bathers on the brink, looking down in a fascinated manner at the white sand bottom showing in large patches between the gnarled snake-like limbs of sunken tree-snags.

  One particularly large patch of clear ground lay right below him, and whilst watching he saw the graceful form of a superb codfish glide slowly across it. It was a large fish, and the magnifying thickness of the water made it appear larger than it was. Ralph seated himself at the edge of the pool to watch it.

  The young man had seen the fish at every visit. He knew precisely where that fish retreated when the water was disturbed either by his body or with stick or stone. It took refuge among some heavy snags lying to one rocky side of the pool. The entrance of the refuge was plainly visible, and it was an entrance which Ralph believed could be closed by removing a short length of snag lying across another and heaping up several other snags.

  If the entrance to the fish’s lair could be closed against the fish, it was his intention to take with him a black fellow’s shortened throwing-spear and give battle to the cod. For the fish was as quick as lightning in action, as wild as the wildest dingo, and the most exciting moments so far in the young man’s life had been the taming of wild things.

  When again he moved, the fish was immediately below him. Ralph rose with that stealthy slowness of movement which had characterized his actions when he had caught and saddled the outlaw horse-the stealthy slowness which appears to hypnotize the creatures of the wild-the kind of movement which very few civilized white men had retained, and which is to be seen in perfection among uncivilized North American Indians.

  Drawing back from the edge of the pool, Ralph climbed the steep river-bank and reached the gum-tree that was leaning over the water. And there, taking his stand on one of the limbs thirty feet above the pool, the venturesome youth manoeuvred his position till he was right above the mass of snags which formed the fish’s lair or retreat.

  There hewaited, judging the depth, ascertaining the correct springing kick the branch would give when he dived. Lithe, supple, and beautiful, his body showed darkly against the green foliage of the tree, like a statue of Adonis set high against a background of climbing vines.

  The fish investigated a mussel-shell that closed abruptly and clung with amazing strength to a large slab of rock. A yabby or gilgie, a miniature crayfish, partly emerged from its hole, in which position it remained as if daring the fish to make a dash. A small school of fish swam languidly over the largest of the sand patches and braved the cod lying in the shadow by swimming closer at their peril. For the great fish was suddenly among them.

  Ralph saw them but as silver sparks eddying and swirling about the green, flashing killer. It was then that his body swooped down to the pool and disappeared below its surface with hardly a splash. He and the cod arrived at the fish’s lair almost together, the cod about a second too late.

  The boy beheld the fish back-water, as it were, with great swiftness. Looking up, he saw the agitated surface of the pool reflecting the trees and sky above in a shimmer of green and silver. He stood gripping one snag to keep himself down for a second or two, deciding which of the others to try to move to block the fish’s retreat. It was the short cross-length which must be taken out, and, giving it a tug, he found that its long submergence had covered it with fine slimy growths.

  A swiftstoop, and he filled his hands with sand to make them grip. Then, bracing himself with one foot against the lower snag, he pulled with all his strength.

  The cross snag gave way. The upper snags came to rest upon the lower. The entrance was sealed, the fish balked. Ralph bent his knees to give him the spring to the surface. He straightened them suddenly in the spring. But he did not rise. His right foot was caught between the lower and the next snag.

  Atug, and his foot was still imprisoned. A greater effort brought no release. A surge of terror swept over his mind, such terror as not even nightmare had brought within his experience. Realization that he was caught, doomed to death, seemed to stun him as effectually as a blow to the head. Then quite suddenly his stunned sensation gave place to a great calmness, during which his mind raced as never had it raced before. Strangely, however, his mind was already becoming detached from his body, as a separate and independent entity.

  “It is the finish,” cried the struggling entity.“God! it’s the end. Dug is miles away and will give no help. Oh, Mother, how grieved you will be! They’ll come searching presently, Father and Dug, and some of the men. They’ll look down and see my white body, still and limp, see my wide mouth and staring eyes. Oh! I can’t-I can’t hold out much longer. I must open my mouth-I must. If only I had a chance!”

  Then came to him a greater terror than the last-the final terror of dissolution, instinctive in us all. It caused Ralph’s thoughts to become chaotic, his limbs to thrash in one supreme struggle. He heard the air bubbles rising from his mouth, heard the gurgling cry for help those bubbles contained. His sight failed and revived almost the next moment. The pain of his clenched jaws became an intolerable agony whilst the conflict between the mental and the physical worlds drew to a clo
se.

  And when the inevitable moment came-when at the very climax of horror, Ralph’s mouth opened wide-it was to draw into his red-hot lungs clean, beautiful air.

  So this was death! The pain had gone, as had gone the roaring in his ears. Death was not so terrible after all. In fact, it was delightfully restful. A soft, yielding something supported his neck and shoulders. And how strange it was that in this dark, restful world a crow would mournfully caw-caw! And then the young man’s eyes were open, and he was looking up into other eyes-big black eyes filled with wistfulness, a mistiness of unshed tears. And when his gaze became properly focused he saw that he was looking into the lovely face of Nellie Wanting, the aboriginal girl.

  “Stay still, Misther Ralph,” she implored softly. “Bime-by your strength come, and we get out.”

  She was standing on a narrow ledge of rock, the water reaching her breasts. She held Ralph closely against her, his head supported by her shoulder, his neck encircled by her arm. Her free hand was clutched against the rim of the pool for support.

  When the young man realized that he was alive-realized that the air was flooding his lungs-he began to laugh for very joy. Returning strength surged through his body, the confident strength of youth. His voice trembled, however.

  “Let me go, Nellie. I’m all right now,” he said.

  But, though she loosened her clasp of him, she did not entirely let him go; wherein she was wise, for it required effort on Ralph’s part to clamber out upon the dry rim of the pool, where reaction robbed him of strength once more, and he was violently sick.

  The sickness passed quickly, however, and, raising his head, he forced a smile at the anxious girl sitting in her drenched clothes beside him. Then giddiness overcame him, and when he lay down and closed his eyes the girl reached over, and, taking up the towels, covered him with them.

  “Lie still!” she whispered. Her voice was rich and sibilant, soft and caressing. Moving her body, she came to sit closer to him, supportingherself by one arm whilst leaning over him.