No footprints in the bush b-8

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Flora was sleeping despite the flies. Burning Water brewed the tea and then sat beside the fire on his heels. While waiting for the liquid to cool he watched the old men clustered together and all facing towards him. The younger men had disappeared into the distant bush, no doubt sleeping and recuperating from the run of twenty-five miles, but Burning Water dared not lie down for fear he might sleep.

  The shadows shortened. Now and then the leafy twigs waving above Flora’s face would fall to rest upon her for a space. Then Burning Water would rouse himself and perk them upward. To maintain wakefulness, he cleaned the rifle and his pistol and then kept loading and unloading the weapons.

  He was thus engaged when he heard the sound of the aeroplane engine, the sound he had been longing to hear. At first he could not locate the machine’s position in the glaring world of sunshine. The Valley was now partially filled with mirage water which distorted the waiting and watching Illprinka men into a high black mound.

  Then he saw it. It was to the east, approaching fast, following the course of the valley and a mere thousand feet above it. He snatched a burning stick from the fire, waved it swiftly about his head to produce flame, and applied the flame to the signal fire made ready. When the smoke from the fire began to rise the machine had passed, but those in it had seen the group of aborigines sitting in the hot sunlight on the claypan verge, when normally they would have been in the shade.

  “Let’s go back and see what those fellows are doing down there,” Dr Whyte said by telephone to Captain Loveacre. “There’s a black at the foot of the headland, and-why-there’s Flora lying down there with him. Bring her round, man. Slight wind from the south.”

  The twin-enginedmachine vanished from Burning Water’s eager eyes, only to come again to view farther away. It returned and flew past him over the excited Illprinka men, who now scattered and raced for the bush. Burning Water saw Dr Whyte waving to him. He waved back vigorously and lifted Flora and implored her to wake.

  “Miss McPherson!” he shouted unnecessarily. “It’s Doctor Whyte and the captain. They’re landing. Open youreyes, please and look.”

  “What is it-the Illprinka men?”

  “The aeroplane. It’s the captain and the doctor.”

  Not an Illprinka man could now be seen. The machine touched ground and began to taxi with whirring propeller blades towards the place the old men had occupied and keeping parallel with the face of the headland. Then it stopped opposite Burning Water, who began to carry Flora down the sand slope to the waiting flying doctor.

  “Watch the blacks!” shouted Burning Water.

  Whyte nodded. He reached down and took Flora up into the roofless cabin. Burning Water climbed up to join them. Flora was crying and stroking Whyte’s face whilst she lay in his arms.

  “Grand work, Burning Water,” shouted the doctor to makehimself heard above the engine noise. “Where’s Bony?”

  Burning Water described Bony’s situation when they parted and Bony’s probable desperate position at the moment.

  “I want the captain to fly me over to the other side of the valley and put me down,” he went on. “All the Illprinka men will be this side. Perhaps if the captain could fly me nearer Rex’s camp and put me down it would be better still. I must go back for Bony, my brother, and my son and my father.”

  “On your own?” asked Whyte, amazed.

  “Alone,” asserted Burning Water more grammatically. “Tell the captain. It wouldn’t take you long to fly me nearer to the cane-grass. Say ten or twelve miles, or even fifteen. I must reach Bony quickly. Then, perhaps you and the captain could come out this way again and see what might be seen. Have you any tucker?”

  Whyte nodded and pointed to a locker. He spoke to Loveacre and the captain revved the engines and set the machine along the ground in gathering speed.

  Burning Water passed sandwiches and then proceeded to eat hurriedly. He found bread and meat in the locker and placed the food in the sugar bag suspended from his neck, and then he felt the plane bump on the ground and begin to run along the claypan verge bordering the southern edge of the valley. The machine stopped and the engine roar subsided sufficiently to permit talking by shouting.

  “I go back,” he told Whyte. “From here I should reach the house in the cane-grass by two o’clock. All the Illprinka men may be out there where you picked us up, and if so I’ll get Bony from Rex. I’ll make a fire to tell you where we are. Goodbye, Miss McPherson.”

  He smiled into her wide eyes, wide because his leaving and the reason were fully understood. Then he disappeared from her sight over the side and dropped to the ground. Whyte, leaning over, saw him lacing on the Kurdaitcha boots. He spoke to Loveacre and the machine began to move away. Burning Water vanished among the scrub.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Curtains

  IMMEDIATELY Rex McPherson obtained Bony’s pistol he shouted to the Illprinka man to release his stranglehold.

  “Keep still, Mister Napoleon Bonaparte,” he ordered, emphasizing the prefix as Bony had done. Maintaining aim at Bony’s heart and his gaze at Bony’s eyes, he gave orders to the Illprinka man, who ran outside and could be heard shouting in the native dialect. Tootsey came in, accompanied by the naked lubra.

  Outwardly calm, Bony was warmed by self-reproach for the easy manner in which the initiative had been taken from him. He had given Flora and Burning Water a five hours’ start, but he planned to give them at least eight hours’ start, representing twenty miles before the inevitable pursuers were unleashed.

  With half-inch rope used for lashing camel packs, the Illprinka men swiftly and efficiently secured Bony to his chair, and then departed with Rex. They could be heard outside shouting eager assent to Rex, who was telling them not to bother with tracking the fugitives, who would be certain to keep to the valley and head for the homestead. Like a pack of dogs giving tongue, they set off on the hunt, their voices rapidly dwindling. Tootsey lowered herself into one of the cane chairs and the naked lubra squatted at the entrance. Within fifteen minutes Bony was sleeping.

  When he awoke sunlight was streaming in through the wide entrance, from which the cane-grass curtain had been removed. Tootsey was setting the table for breakfast. The pain had gone from Bony’s right foot, but he could not be sure whether this was due to the numbness produced by the rope binding the leg to the chair or if it indicated that the wound had discharged all the poison. He certainly felt very much better, mentally and physically, and he was wondering if he would be given breakfast, when Rex McPherson entered.

  “Good morning, Mr McPherson!” he said.

  “Ha, Mr Bonaparte! Good morning! I trust you spent a comfortable night,” returned Rex, unsmilingly. “Well now, as this will be your last day, and as I want you to be feeling very well, I suggest that you join me at breakfast. Tootsey! Unbind Mr Bonaparte’s arms, but see that his feet and legs are secure. Now, Mr Bonaparte, grilled chops and coffee. Don’t attempt to throw the knife.”

  “Your kindness would not permit such a display of bad manners, Mr McPherson,” Bony said lightly, adding, when his arms were free: “Ah! That’s better. In a moment the circulation will return. That coffee smells delicious.”

  “I never fail as a host,” boasted Rex, still without smiling. His body was passive and he had control over his face and tongue, but his flaming eyes betrayed the unbalanced mind. Bony took up the coffee cup with fingers aching with returning circulation and drank. The question he put might be supposed to have been the last to interest him.

  “You own sheep as well as cattle?”

  “Yes, I have a small flock,” admitted Rex. “Mutton sheep are more economical than store cattle when there are only two of us-myself and the cook. The blacks have their emus and kangaroos. As I mentioned last night, I have a plan to deal with you in a manner which should interest us both. I am going to take you up five or six thousand feet and tip you out over the swamp. You will have time to reflect, on your way down, on your stupidity in interfering with what d
idn’t concern you.”

  “What time is this interesting event to take place?” inquired Bony, already experiencing the glow produced by good food and drink.

  “Probably this afternoon,” Rex replied, and Bony could see he was enjoying the thrills of the sadist. “I have a little more work to do to my engine, tuning, you know. Then I have to extricate Flora and Burning Water from a stalemate.”

  “Indeed! You have, then, had news of them?”

  “Yes. I kept an old man back from the chase to receive progress reports, and a mulga wire was received an hour ago saying that Burning Water had taken Flora to the Illprinka’s sacred storehouse. Do you know what that means?”

  “It means that the Illprinka will not attack Miss McPherson and Burning Water while they remain in that sanctuary.”

  “Just so. It means also that Burning Water has condemned himself to death, and henceforth not for a moment will he be able to consider himself safe from an Illprinka spear. Even in his own country he will not be safe, for his own people will do nothing to protect him, even to warn him. I suppose you planned for them to reach that sanctuary?”

  “Only as a last resort. Burning Water must have been hard pressed.”

  “Yes. He beat my bucks by a head, as it were.”

  “Fine fellow, isn’t he?” Bony said.

  “Damn fool to condemnhimself like that. But he was always a little soft. Used to be the little Lord Fauntleroy I understand. His sacrifice, as I suppose he’ll think it, will be in vain because the blacks will watch until he and Flora are driven from the place by thirst.”

  “They may be picked up by Loveacre,” suggested Bony. “I understand that a plane could be landed quite close.”

  “There is just a chance of their rescue by Loveacre, but only a chance. I’ll be out there by twelve o’clock, and then I will destroy Loveacre’s plane with a bomb or two. That done we can leave them to the Illprinka, and you and I will go up over the swamp. I have heard it said that a man falling from a great height loses consciousness, but I don’t believe it. You will be conscious until the moment of impact.

  “I am going to have you taken to the hangar where I can keep my eyes on you whilst I work,” he said, and gave Tootsey an order. “I shall be behind you all the time, and should you make a break, I’ll shoot you not through the head but through a kidney. You are going to take that journey into the swamp where you’ll never be found.”

  Tootsey and the naked lubra freed Bony’s feet and legs, but for several minutes he was unable to stand. Then, with a lubra either side of him and grasping his arms, he was semi-dragged from the room and along the skirting claypan to the hangar. There they bound his wrists behind his back, bound his arms to his sides, pushed him down on to the stretcher bed, bound his ankles and legs, and bound him from neck to ankles to the stretcher itself.

  The place both astonished and interested Bonaparte. There stood the beautiful silver-grey aeroplane revealing with its shining surfaces the devoted attention of a man whose reason was certainly unseated by the obsession for power. The recent high wind had smothered parts of a long bench with sand grains, but no dust was now adhering to the aeroplane. Rex, dressed in mechanic’s overalls, was working on his engine from a wheeled platform. Bony could see a lathe and a tool rack, and there was a handcart loaded with cased petrol, which indicated that the petrol store was not inside the hangar.

  An hour passed, during which Rex never spoke. The lubras had gone. The wind maintained its soft whine in the walls and roof, and other than the occasional cawing of a crow and the clink of metal against metal this world of shadow andsunbars was, indeed, peaceful, until a naked aborigine entered and ran to speak with Rex.

  His news was serious, for Rex got down from the work platform to question him. Questions and answers passed between them for several minutes. Then the aborigine went out and Rex crossed to Bony who noted his flashing eyes and the dull-red base of his dark skin.

  “Loveacre and Whyte have picked up Flora and Burning Water,” he said, savagely. “You’ve won that trick, Mister Napoleon Bonaparte, but I’m going to win the next one. Those fellows think themselves smart, but I’m going to disillusion them. I’ve got an hour or two’s work yet to do, and then I’ll destroy Loveacre’s plane and give the old man ten minutes to make up his mind what he’ll do about the station.”

  “How would that forward your schemes?” asked Bony.

  “It won’t. But I won’t care once I’m sure the old man refuses to give in. When that happens I’m at war with him and with the world. I’ll go down in the end, I suppose, but it will be a glorious end and I’ll be remembered for many a long year.”

  Turning about, Rex almost ran to the aeroplane and sprang to the work-platform, where strangely enough the nervous reflexes of his body subsided and again he moved with the deliberation of the surgeon.

  Time passed slowly for Bonaparte. The sun-bars gave him the hours, and when Rex finally completed the engine tuning it must have been after three o’clock. He had worked without lunch, and now he clapped his hands when on his way to the washbasin beside the stretcher bed.

  “Now I’m ready for the air again we’ll see what’s doing,” he told Bony. “First a little lunch, then to load the bomb rack and fill the tanks. I should be back inside the hour, and then up you go to six thousand feet. I did think of taking you with me and doing all three jobs on the same flight, but first things first, eh?”

  Tootsey came in with a large tray loaded with tea and sandwiches. Seated on the stretcher Rex ate and drank and sometimes paused to describe what he intended doing and how he would wage warfare with the world. He offered Bony neither food nor tea. He did not offer him a cigarette.

  To open and pump the cased petrol into the plane’s tanks took quite some time, but his task was presently finished and then he carried his smallthermite bombs from the back of the hangar to load beneath the fuselage. This done he came towards the stand near the stretcher to wash his hands, and his face indicated intense satisfaction.

  “Aurevoir, Mister Fool Bonaparte,” he said whilst assuring himself that the ropes were tight and the knots secure. “You’ll do until I get back. Meanwhile pleasant thoughts.”

  Rex had donned his flying suit and was adjusting his parachute when Bony felt hands touching his bound wrists.

  “It’s me, Burning Water,” he heard a voice say. “I came in by making a hole through the wall. Where’s he going?”

  “Where! Why he’s off to bomb Captain Loveacre’s aeroplane and then destroy the homestead,” Bony cried, confident that the running engine would prevent his voice reaching Rex McPherson who was about to climb up into the front compartment of the cockpit.“Quick, Burning Water. Stop him. Shoot him. He’s mad.”

  The pressure of ropes vanished from Bony’s body, but he was helpless to move either his arms or his legs.

  “Haven’t you got your pistol?” he asked, despairingly. “Didn’t you bring your rifle? He’s loaded the machine with bombs and he’s off to destroy the homestead and perhaps all those there. Stop him! Shoot him, man!”

  Rex was in his seat. The engine was accelerated and the plane quivered. The propeller swept dust from under the plane against the rear wall. Tootsey was hauling on cords to roll up the grass blinds from the entrance.

  “I can’t shoot him,” Burning Water said, steadily. “It’s not my way. My rifle is beside you. Here’s my pistol. You can easily escape. There’s only the two lubras here. I’ve accounted for the cook and one old Illprinka man.”

  The plane was moving to the open entrance when Burning Water raced from the stretcher, reached the tail of the machine and then clambered along its gleaming body to the step insets serving the rear compartment. Tootsey had withdrawn to one side of the entrance and outside. Rex was concentrating his attention on taxi-ingthe plane from the hangar, and besides he was sitting low down behind the front windshield. The tail bar had not left the ground and he neither saw nor felt the additional weight when Burning Water climbed
into the rear compartment and slumped down.

  “There’s that Illprinka store-house place where we picked up Flora and Burning Water,” Dr Whyte told his pilot by leaning forward in his seat and shouting at the top of his voice.

  Whyte continued to use the glasses, searching the sky for the sliver-grey aeroplane. He knew from Flora that the machine was grounded in its hangar, but even she did not know for how long.

  From the horizon now emerged a ribbon dark-brown in colour, uniform, unbroken. The aeroplane “drifted” southward to cross the valley whilst it headed for the broadening dark-brown mass slipping beneath them. This was the cane-grass and lantana swamp, and when its nearest edge was but a mile distant the airmen could not see its farther side. Nothing stirred on it or beside it. There was no sign of life. A minute later Loveacre pointed downward and Whyte brought his glasses to bear in the direction.

  “He’s just taking off! Byhokey, Loveacre! Now’s our chance. Remember, he’s faster than we are. Get alongside him for only one minute, and leave the rest to me.”

  “Hope he hasn’t a gun, too,” Loveacre shouted back. “He’s climbing fast, but he’s headed east. I’m going down now.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t have a gun when he bombed my crate,” Whyte asserted and then for the hundredth time manipulated the Lewis gun on its railed mounting.

  “He’s fast, all right,” shouted Loveacre, and on his face was a kind of glory. “Like old timesain’t it, comrade? Bust him wide open when we get alongside. We probably won’t get another chance, for if he hasn’t a gun he’ll get away from us. Mind your head!”

  Loveacre was beginning to flatten out his machine and to utilize the speed gained by the dive to take it alongside the silver-grey. They could see Rex McPherson looking at them. In another half-minute the machines would be flying side by side and then Whyte could take his gun into action. Then they saw a grey-tufted black head emerge upward from the rear compartment of the cockpit, and Dr Whyte swore and Loveacre shouted: