No footprints in the bush b-8

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “I thought it was something like that,” he growled. “The boss threatened to take it on last time the Illprinka raided the cattle and killed them two blacks at Watson’s Bore. Why in hell didn’t he let me go with him?”

  “Possibly he thought of your wife and children and the aborigines out there,” Bony said, soothingly, and Nevin immediately countered with:

  “They could all have been shifted in to the homestead. Oh well, if he and the nigs shoot up them Illprinka fellers it’ll do a lot of good and we’ll have a bit of peace. Aint that Rex a devil! Cripes, I’d like to get a rifle sight on him. I’ll call you first thing in the morning to hear the latest.”

  Bony was smoking his inevitable cigarettes when Burning Water entered the office and sat down at the table. Bony regarded him, and sighing, said:

  “Did you see the manner in which the doctor flicked his eyeglass into his eye? If only I could do that. If only I could appear before my chief when he is angry with me, andflick a monocle into my eye and look through it calmly as though he were a beetle. Alas, my brother and my son and my father, we are but savages.”

  “He told me it took years of trying,” Burning Water said with no envy in his voice.“But what of it? Jack Johnson, the Wantella medicine man, can cure as well as this white doctor. Doctor Whyte can’t sit down by a little fire and send thought pictures to another man far away. He can’t track anything save a horse. But he can fly a machine.”

  Bony blew smoke and regarded the chief through it.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, “I will get the doctor to fly me over the Illprinka country. From the air we could see wagon or truck tracks, and Rex must use one or the other to transport his petrol from somewhere. Whatd’youthink of those smoke signals now?”

  “I think they were a trick.”

  “Don’t you think it seems to indicate that Rex wants us to believe his headquarters are at Duck Lake?”

  “Yes, that may be so.”

  “And that it is likely, to say the least, that the huge area of cane-grass at the western end of the plain would be an excellent hiding place for him and his blacks and his aeroplane?”

  Burning Water nodded agreement, saying:

  “And after the trip over the Illprinka country what will you do?”

  “Afterthat, or it might be before, I am going to ask Doctor Whyte to join me in persuading Miss McPherson to leave with him for Birdsville. I have a sound basis for thinking she is in personal danger, worse luck, and I feel she is. I think that Rex baling up his father this afternoon was a hastily formed plan which has nothing to do with the threat expressed in his note and the plan he had conceived at the time. You and I will have to guard the girl as long as she is here.”

  “And after she has gone, what do we do?” insisted the chief.

  “You and I will become two lubras who will stamp out a dangerous fire.”

  “That will be a good thing,” again agreed Burning Water. Then he smiled, saying: “We may have to run about a great deal before the fire is put out. You will want your wind. Once I smoked many cigarettes, and I know.”

  Bony chuckled.

  “Thanks for the advice, Doctor Burning Water. I’ll certainly cut them down-after tonight. And now for this night. Will you keep watch on Miss McPherson’s room until about three o’clock? That would give me a few hours sleep, and I shall want to be awake when in the air over the Illprinkacounty.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Have you a rifle?”

  “No, but I have this.”

  Bony’s eyebrows rose when with incredible speed an automatic pistol was snatched from the chief’s dillybag and levelled at the window. For the second time Bony sighed with envy.

  “It took years of practice,” explained Burning Water. “I once read about the two-gun men in America. A motor-car explorer left the books with me, and I determined to be as quick on the draw as the two-gun men.”

  “Can you aim straight, you confounded enigma?”

  “Straight enough, my brother who is another enigma.”

  Bony arose to his feet and stood looking down into the now humorous black eyes.

  “Before this adventure is closed,” he said, “I’m going to like you.”

  Flora saw no more of Bony that night, but Doctor Whyte did. He found him sitting in the darkness of his room when he retired.

  “Hullo! Am I in the wrong room?”

  “No, Harry. I want to talk to you, to explain fully to you why I am here at McPherson’s Station, and why I am going to urge you to join forces with me in persuading Miss McPherson to leave with you for Birdsville tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Good! There’s a spot of bother here I know, from what Flora told me. She seems anxious about the old bloke. There’s a half-caste son of the old bloke in the background, isn’t there?”

  Dr Whyte was not much taller than Bony, but he was more strongly built. His face was marred by a scar crossing his forehead and another striking downward across the left side of his chin. His nose had been broken and badly repaired. When in a serious mood, as he was whilst Bony talked, his face was expressionless. The features, too, remained immobile for seconds together. The hands were passive. And yet about the man was an air of strength causing Bony to wonder if it was due to training or inherited from men born to command.

  Presently Bony’s soft voice ceased. He had permitted no surmise of the other’s character and physical aspect to be betrayed by his eyes, and he did not know that Dr Whyte had been similarly employed. In the doctor, Bony had found strength. In Bony, the doctor discovered a combination of qualities which gripped his interest.

  “You can count on me,” he told Bony. “I’d like to stay on and help make the world hereabouts do a spot of humming, but, as you say, and I agree with you, Flora will have to go to a place of much greater safety.”

  “You appreciate the importance of the fact of McPherson being away on his own business, leaving me tied here in case Rex makes a move in Miss McPherson’s direction?”

  “Of course. Why, Rex McPherson might even bomb the house. He must be mad, don’t you thing?”

  “He’s an egoist who would be a danger to world peace if he was a national leader. I wonder now. Do you see this affair as McPherson apparently seesit. He wants to deal with it himself, to keep it a family secret.”

  “Quite! And you being a policeman will have to follow the rails and let it become a public entertainment.”

  Bony smiled.

  “What would you do about it?” he asked.

  “Keep it a family secret if it could be done,” the doctor answered. “It’s the McPherson family that’s suffered-excepting, of course, Sergeant Errey and his family, and I’ve no doubt that the old man will provide handsomely for Errey’s widow and the boy.”

  “That is one reason why I would like to forget I am supposed to be a policeman, but it is not the more important of two reasons supporting my intention to report Errey’s murder as a car accident,” Bony went on. “I would rather not state the more important reason, but should you ever visit the homestead cemetery, and gaze upon the tomb of Tarlalin, you may be able to make a good guess. Now I’m off to bed.”

  He rose and walked to the window.

  “By the way. Would you be so kind as to take me up in your machine and show me a little of the Illprinka country-say tomorrow morning?”

  “Certainly. I suppose there’s plenty of juice in store here?”

  “I saw several forty-gallon drums all full.”

  “Good! I’ll be with you in the morning. Good night!”

  Burning Water called Bony at three o’clock, and by eight the aeroplane had been refuelled and was left standing surrounded by the ever-curious aborigines, whilst its pilot and Bony rode back on the truck to the house.

  Flora was waiting for them to come for breakfast.

  “Bony and I are going aloft for an hour or two,” the doctor told her, smiling into her eyes. “Then I must start for home and work. It’s going to blow late today
or tomorrow, and it might blow so hard as to make the trip unpleasant.”

  “Then you will be leaving this afternoon! Oh!”

  The girl was dismayed. Bony was made hopeful and the doctor was gratified. He led the attack.

  “Don’t worry, Flora, me gal! You’re coming with me. You’re looking peaked and the change will do you good.”

  “Looking peaked!” she exclaimed and rose from the table to regardherself in the mirror above the mantelshelf. “Looking peaked, indeed. Why, you two have been conspiring.”

  “We have agreed that a short holiday would do you a world of good,” Whyte said, helpinghimself to toast.“Convinced of it.”

  “Indeed!”

  “I have tried to, Miss McPherson,” Bony said gravely. “It concerns me that you are open to attack from a dangerous man who apparently will stop at nothing. Your uncle having gone off to carry out plans of his own, and Dr Whyte having to return to his patients, you are left in a not particularly secure position when Burning Water and I leave.”

  Setting down his cup, he produced an excessively grimed sheet of paper smeared with what even Flora could see was blood.

  “When last night I told the story of what had happened to your uncle. I did not remember this note he left in his car. I will read it to you because it will, I hope, convince you.

  “It begins: ‘Dear Bony. Was bailed up at telephone break by Rex. Wanted me to speak into portable telephone box and get Flora out there alone. Look out for her. Get her away. Rex damaged my fingers and I can’t write more.’ It is signedD. M.”

  “Let me see it, please.”

  Bony rose and gravely placed the sheet on the table before her. She looked up at him after a swift glance at the note, saying: “That’s not uncle’s writing.”

  “We must not omit the damage done to your uncle’s fingers,” Bony countered, and returned to his chair. “Now, please, listen to me for a minute.”

  Swiftly he outlined the enormous difficulties of locating and arresting Rex McPherson, the dangers and hardships, the probable time that she would be almost defenceless.

  “If you decide that you will not leave with Harry, then I will not be able to leave you alone here,” he said, slowly. “I think that those smoke signals have led your uncle on a wild-goose chase, and that he will fail in what he wishes to accomplish. In fact he and his party might well all be massacred. So, Miss McPherson, please go off on that holiday advised by your doctor and leave me free to stamp out a dangerous fire.”

  “But I can look after myself,” Flora protested. “Rex wouldn’t dare come here.”

  “He’ll dare anything.”

  “Better give in and come to Birdsville with me,” pleaded Whyte.

  “No. I am not going to run away.” Impulsively, she rose and passed round to stand close to Bony. “I know you can make me go away, Bony, but please don’t make me. I’ll promise not to be stupid or careless. You see, I fear Rex terribly, and if I ran away I’d begin to fearfear . Let me stay and fight it out with you and uncle. The Nevins could come in from the out-station and be with me. Tom Nevin would stand no nonsense from Rex, and besides his wife and children would be safer here. Please.”

  Bony’s steady gaze wavered. Her intense earnestness defeated him, and he had not thought of bringing Nevin and his family in to the homestead.

  “Women have ruled nations,” he said. “I can well understand how they did it. I’ll ask Nevin to come in today. If he will, you may stay. If he won’t, you will have to leave with Harry. Is that a bargain?”

  “Yes. Nevin will come for me if not for you. And don’t worry about me, please. I’ll be all right.”

  “You wouldn’t hesitate to shoot-if necessary?”

  “I would not,” she answered, and he thought she had never looked more like those men on the canvases.

  Nevin agreed to pack up and come in to the homestead. In fact, he seemed anxious to do so and promised to leave as soon as possible in order to complete the trip during daylight.

  From the office Bony crossed to the blacks’ camp and roused Burning Water per medium of the elder wife.

  “The doctor and I are going up this morning,” he told the chief. “It’s a thousand to one that Miss McPherson will want to come along and watch the take-off. I’ve telephoned to Nevin and he’s coming in at once with his family and as many of the blacks out there as can squeezethemselves on to the truck. I want you to come now to the ground, and after we have left to keep close to the girl until we get back.”

  “You are wise, my brother and my son and my father. So was Illawalli when he made you a great one,” Burning Water said. “I’ll come with you. Some of the bucks are down with the plane?”

  “They were when we refuelled it. Yes, they’ll still be there. I wonder where Itcheroo is this morning.”

  Burning Water went back and spoke with the elder wife for a few moments. On his return he looked worried.

  “Itcheroo went early into the bush,” he said. “Why not stamp out that dangerous fire before it becomes too fierce?”

  “No, my brother. I have a use for Itcheroo.”

  As Bony had anticipated, Flora insisted on accompanying them to the aeroplane, and then stood with Bony and Burning Water watching the pilot swing the propeller and subsequently warm up the engine. When he was satisfied, Whyte got to ground again and joined them.

  “She’s all right,” he said.“As sweet as a lady of my acquaintance. We’ll get away when you’re ready, Bony. Expect us back by noon, Flora, and as hungry as arctic sledge dogs.”

  “I’ll be on the lookout for you,” she promised. “Here Bony, you must put on the coat. You’ll probably find it cold.”

  Bony slipped on the heavy serge coat belonging to McPherson, wished the girlaurevoir, and left her with Burning Water and the small crowd of aborigines to walk with Whyte to the waiting machine.

  The engine was purring softly and the propeller was reflecting a disc of colourless light. One of the blacks shouted, but neither Bony nor the doctor turned about to see the cause as the blacks had been shouting to each other.

  Then above the purring of the aeroplane engine there burst on their eardrums a greater sound rising swiftly in crescendo. Bony spun round to face westward, to face the girl and the crowd of aborigines, to see above and beyond them the silver-grey aeroplane which had destroyed Sergeant Errey’s car. With the wind behind itit was coming with terrific speed, coming down and towards them.

  “Back!” he shouted to the doctor. “Come away. It’s Rex and he might bomb your plane and kill us.”

  He dragged the reluctant doctor from the machine into which they had been about to enter. The silver-grey plane came down to a hundred feet, passed over their heads, then climbed a sky road as though it were a bouncing meteor. The blacks were stunned to silence whilst they watched the invader make a giant half-circle and return.

  “Scatter!” shouted Bony, and running to the girl, he grasped her arm and urged her away from the crowd.

  “Whatever is he going to do?” Flora cried.

  “I don’t know. He might bomb Harry’s plane. He might bomb us if we bunch into a mass. Now wait. We’ve no cover. It is useless to scatter more than we are now.”

  The silver-grey machine was coming down and slowly, its engine ticking over. They could see the helmeted, goggled man in its cockpit. Then the great wings were spread above them, and the shining body passed comparatively slowly over them. They saw the bomb leave the underside of the fuselage, saw it fall like a drop of quicksilver to strike the cockpit of the doctor’s aeroplane. Came then a loud report, a burst of flame, a gathering plume of smoke which the wind carried eastward.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Another Spoke in Bony’s Wheel

  “WHAT a rotten sportsman-to kill a sitting bird!”

  The flying doctor’s voice was cool, a quality noted by Bony whose mind was concentrated on the wonder of a man being able to think along two lines of thought at the same time. He stood gazing upon th
e roaring flames and the vast black smoke clouds rolling over the claypans past the foot of the homestead garden. He was thinking what a pity it was that such an example of man’s inventive genius could be so easily destroyed. At the same time he was thinking what a wonderful opponent this Rex McPherson was proving to be.

  The flying doctor proceeded to step out of his flying suit, and Bony recalling that he was still wearing McPherson’s heavy overcoat, removed it. Then, as though directed by an order, the three “fell in” and silently began the walk back to the homestead.

  Presently the doctor said, conversationally:

  “It’s a great tragedy that that fellow wasn’t born in time and in circumstances permitting him to take part in the last Great War. He’s got guts. He’s got flying temperament. He’s got that valuable war-gift, ruthlessness.”

  “It is going to be a pity that he was born too soon to take part in the next war,” Bony said so calmly that Flora flashed at him a resentful glance. “I am afraid, doctor, you will have to stay longer than was arranged.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to slog you one if you call me anything but Harry-Mister Napoleon Bonaparte.”

  “That would grieve me, Harry.”

  Flora wanted to laugh, recognized the danger of hysteria, and controlled herself. That men suffering such loss and disappointment should thus speak to each other did not seem to be natural. She was furiously angry. The doctor said:

  “It would give me tremendous gratification to slog someone hard and often. That crate was the best I’ve ever had, and I’ve only had it six months. It cost four thousandquidlets -Australian.”

  He uttered the word Australian as an afterthought, and Flora wanted screamingly to ask him what difference it made. If only she could see her lover “slogging” that hateful Rex!

  “Insured?” Bony asked.

  “Half. What’s the odds? I’m stranded without a machine.”

  “We will go to the office and smoke a cigarette. Then we must bestir ourselves. Effects are the offspring of causes. The destruction of your machine was caused by two bombs. The bombs exploded because they were dropped. The dropping was caused by the release of mechanism caused by the hand of Rex McPherson. He was there in his aeroplane to drop the bombs at the right split-second because he knew your plane was there. He knew your plane was there because an Illprinka magic man told him, and the Illprinka man knew because Itcheroo, a Wantella magic man, told him. Itcheroo is the person fit and proper to take your slogs.”