Nightmare Gutter was a zig-zagging crack twenty feet wide and some ten feet deep, an obvious barrier to the traveller northward bound, for old Lonergan had with the shovel cut a road down and up the far side. Here he had camped, and here Bony camped.
The next night, camp was at Dead Oak Stump, and, as noted in the diary, the camel feed was poor. Dead Oak Stump! The name indicated a tree, and there wasn’t a tree for hundreds of miles. He found the carcass of the half-grown dog Lonergan had recorded, but not for some time did he locate the stump.
It was less than eighteen inches high and told of a tree, old when it died, a tree that must have lived before William One upset the Saxons. The stump was so dry-rotted that Bony could have knocked it out with the axe, and refrained, thinking that this old stump must have had sentimental value for Patsy Lonergan.
A man mentally unbalanced is incapable of sentiment. That stump would make a snug fire on a cold night, where all the fuel was brushwood, which burned barely long enough to boil water. Old Lonergan probably loved this Plain, every mile of it, although each mile was exactly like every other mile. He came to this place at long intervals, and would, as Bony now did, stand and gaze at a tree stump because it was rare and therefore precious. It had been his stump, as this was his camp, like the other camps he had made and called his own. Likely enough he greeted it, fare-welled it, remembered it often and wondered how it fared during his absence.
And thus Bony’s faith in the dead man’s mental integrity was strengthened.
Time by the stars was eleven-thirty, and he had been asleep for two hours when he dreamed he heard Ganba and woke to hear Lucy muttering in alarm. Sitting up in his blankets beside the now dead fire, he detected the far-off noise of an engine, coming to them from the south-west. The sound was not the rhythmical tune of an aeroplane flying at great height, and in volume it increased but slowly. Eventually it passed to the north-east, and several miles eastward of Bony’s camp and, although Bony knew little of aircraft engines, he was sure that this machine was not an aeroplane.
He heard it again shortly before three o’clock, returning on the same course.
When day broke he was ready for it, but he gave the camels another hour to feed. He was feeling gleeful, as any man would whose hunch was being proved by fact. Before the sun rose to blur distance with its colour-loaded brush, he could see a red-brown stain above the northern horizon; and beyond the edge of the world that way, perhaps thirty or forty miles, was the limit of the Nullarbor Plain, for that red mark was sand, the sand of the Central Desert which, following a great rain, will bloom like Eden. And at some pin-point on that vast map the aircraft had touched down, remained a little while, then taken off to return to base. That pin-point had to be found.
A change had taken place in this man of two races, a change begun by the angry threat of Ganba when at Bumblefoot Hole, and carried forward by the sound of that aircraft. Ever the inherited influences of the two races warred for the soul of Napoleon Bonaparte, and it was the very continuity of this warfare which had created Detective Inspector Bonaparte, and which time and again prevented him from sinking back into the more primitive of the two races. When Constable Easter and his wife met him he was suave, outwardly arrogant, inwardly humble, conscious, and justifiably so, of his long succession of triumphs, not only over criminals but over that half of himself he feared. Now the Easters might not have recognised him.
When at Mount Singular, he had acted the character of the half-caste to perfection. Now he acted, without conscious effort, the character of the full-blood aborigine, for his maternal instincts were in the ascendant.
Today his eyes were never still. From his face was gone the usual expression of calm confidence. He glanced constantly to the rear, jerking his head when normally he would have made the movement with deliberation. The Plain was at long last making itself felt, as it had made itself wholly felt on the full bloods, to the extent that they would not spend a night on it. It could be that the change in this man was being transmitted to Millie.
Today she walked on her toes. Today her cat ears constantly turned to the rear, and constantly she looked to the right and to the left.
Chapter Eight
Barriers of Straw
THE PLAIN was a tessellated pavement, hurrying black shadows coming to meet the camels and giving the rider the impression that he was travelling at high speed. The sky this morning was uniform cadmium between isolated clouds, and the wind from the northern desert was warm and scented, yet filled with the promise of heat and dust.
About mid-morning Bony sighted an abnormal feature which proved to be an apparently endless ribbon of straw about twenty feet wide, and in places a foot thick. It lay approximately east-west, and from the condition of the straw, he thought it must be at least a year old.
Reference in the diary to the Buckbush Road had aroused his interest and, now that he gazed upon it, he was reminded of the Yellow Brick Road to The Wizard of Oz. A mile or two farther on was another buckbush road, and the next day, yet a third ribbon which was much less weathered, and which gave the answer to the riddle.
There was a year of wonderful life and vigour in what is stupidly called the ‘Dead Heart of Australia’, when the alleged desert bloomed with an extraordinary profusion of flowers, and when all the earth was vivid green with buckbush.
This annual shrub will grow to the size of a water ball, and when dead is a sphere of filigree straw. The wind snaps it from the parent stalk and rolls it onward. Millions of these balls, driven by the wind, will roll over the ground like hurdling horses, will pile against fences until the barrier is such that the following balls ‘run’ up and over.
At the end of this fertile year, the north wind had driven the buckbush from the desert uplands down to the Plain, and the saltbush had opposed it until it had gathered into a rope many feet high and many feet thick, when the entire rope of miles in length had rolled on and on. Then, when the wild wind had dropped, the ropes of straw became stationary, and the rain had come to sodden and rot them.
Old Lonergan had named one of his camps The Brisbane Line, the term being a sarcastic reference to an imagined plan of defence when the Japanese were doing their stuff. It was the fourth camp north of Bumblefoot Hole, and on the southern edge of a straw barrier which Bony estimated as being twelve feet high. As far as he could see to east and west, there was no break save that at the camp, which had been made by the old trapper with the smashing blade of a shovel. And there it would remain until another mighty wind moved it on again.
Beyond this wall of straw the going was again dangerous, being littered with rock chips; areas of rock roofing beneath which were caverns and passages. Bony saw holes, some having a diameter of a few inches, others of several feet. Many holes were easily seen, others were masked by saltbush, but Millie knew the track and never once faltered or evinced fear. All day they had travelled over this dangerous country, and Bony hoped to camp at what Lonergan called The Belfry. The horizon, still distant, was now broken by what seemed to be ridges of red rock, but were the summits of sand dunes.
There was certainly nothing between him and those sand dunes indicative of a church, and when the sun was sinking under the Plain his attention was drawn to a swirling column of dark ‘smoke’ issuing from the ground as though from volcanic action.
The camels had no fear of this place: Millie hastened her pace to reach it. The ‘smoke’ endlessly whirled upward to be flattened as though by a cold wedge when less than a hundred feet above ground, and Bony could detect the units comprising a great host of bats. They came up from a small replica of Bumblefoot Hole, and so entranced by them was he that he was almost thrown out of the saddle when Millie ‘flomped’ to her knees, yawned, and told him to get on with the job of making camp.
There, but a few feet beyond her head, was the site of Lonergan’s camp fires.
The bank of the hole nearest the camp shelved slightly to the cliff-face, and from this face the bats continued to issue,
in number not to be estimated. Obviously they inhabited an underground cavern, which Bony had no intention of exploring. He found Lonergan’s water hole and, having watered the camels, he lit a fire and watched the emergence of the bat army.
Night was chasing Day beyond land’s end, and the bat cloud banished the glory of the evening sky as Bony shovelled earth over his fire, laid out his bedding, and drew the unpitched tent over himself and the dog, who liked bats even less than he. There would be no bread baking this night, and when Millie and Curley came close for their usual crusts, to find the cupboard bare, they put themselves down beside the tent covering and sulkily went to sleep.
Their bells roused Bony at dawning. Then the sky was clear and the stars were bright, but with the daylight came the bats from all quarters, to hover again like a rain cloud which formed a living water-spout gradually descending into the cavern. Before the sun rose there wasn’t a bat above ground.
The days passed and the camps were left behind: Lunatic’s Moan, a blow-hole from which air rushed with a continuous moaning noise; Lover’s Lane, where was a rock-hole between two great barriers of straw. Since Lonergan was last here, both barriers had been moved and the trapper’s path wiped out but Millie ploughed through the masses, a ton of which would dwarf a cathedral.
It rained half an inch the night they spent at Curley’s Hate, and the next day they walked up from the Plain on to the wind-ribbed sand of the desert, then turned east to reach the extremity of Lonergan’s trap-line, where they found his fire-site in the shadow of two belar trees. Trees! O blessed trees! To hear the soft sunset-wind singing its lullaby in a roof of trees! Far into the night Bony sat by his fire of solid wood, and frequently praised old dead Patsy for having named this place The Bushman’s Home.
The rain had filled the shallow claypans between the dunes, and water had run into the deeper depressions along the verge of the Nullarbor Plain. On the lower dunes the young buckbush attracted the camels, but even so soon after the rain the wind crested the high dunes with red feathers.
The rain provided independence of rock-holes, but it was also disadvantageous in that it wiped smooth this page of the Book of the Bush, and thus much valuable information would be withheld until time enabled the new printing to be done.
Bony remained in camp at The Bushman’s Home for two days, scouting on foot, when he chanced on a group of kangaroos, and bagged one. Wild dogs were here, and rabbits were numerous, and all this world was kind and protective.
But inland from this northern ‘coast’ the country rapidly deteriorated. Penetrating it for three miles, he found that the dunes dwindled into a sea of spinifex slopes and naked gibber flats, the gibber stones so polished by the wind-driven sand particles that the upper surfaces reflected the sun with such power as to torture the eyes. Far to the north lay a line of flat-topped residuals, red and bare, and onward for two thousand miles it would be just the same as this picture of the Great Inland Desert, populated by aborigines never in contact with the white man, and so dispersed that for one to be killed by a rocket would almost be an impossibility.
Bony wondered who the heck would want to open this back door to Australia’s atomic secrets.
From this point he travelled along the verge of the Plain where the going was easy, making to the east to ‘cut’ the line of flight of the aircraft he had heard when at Dead Oak Stump. Fortunately the surface water held. Kangaroos were numerous, and the rabbits promised the summer, if it behaved, to make of themselves a plague. Bony passed colonies of jerboa rats; the roofs of the ‘houses’ well secured from the wind with stones. Bell birds mocked from the scrub trees, and at night wedges of ducks lanced across the sky. The crows were busy too, and altogether Bony found these days most pleasant.
When the camels first became restless, he attributed it to their normal dislike of unfamiliar country, there being nothing else to account for it. The country was open. The weather remained perfect. He found no tracks of wild aborigines nor any other indication of their proximity. Lucy was neither restless nor suspicious, and normally a man can place full reliance on a dog to inform him of anything unusual.
On being confident that he had actually ‘cut’ the aircraft’s line of flight, he camped under a most ancient box tree growing on the edge of the Plain. This night he pondered on his next move, squatting beside his fire, and, as men of all nomadic races have done, he drew with a pointed stick a map on the ground, and marked on it the railway, the stop named Chifley, the homestead at Mount Singular, and the imagined course of the aircraft.
When he had heard it at Dead Oak Stump, the destination of the aircraft was at one of two points: either to the north of his present camp, or short of his present camp—between it and some place out on the Plain. His position was not less than two hundred miles from the nearest known homestead, Mount Singular. Having recently been able to live off the country, the food in his bags would support him for seven or eight days, when supplies could be replenished at Bumblefoot Hole.
Before sleeping, he decided to prospect the desert for four days, after which he would be compelled to turn back and travel south along that imagined line of flight of the aircraft.
Having to cover as much country as possible in those four days, he was leading his camels off the Plain and high into the dunes before the sun was up, and luck favoured him, only to withdraw the gift within two hours.
He was prompted to halt his camel train and look rearward over the great Plain, the sun not yet risen, and the morning air like crystal, the far edge of the Plain like the lip of a tall cliff one sees from a mere hundred yards back. Then his roving eyes abruptly stilled, to become a stare to annihilate distance.
Crows, a dozen of them, so far away as to appear to be ink-blots. A dead rabbit? A dead kangaroo? Neither. Oh! for a pair of binoculars! Something was surely moving out there, the opposite of the black crows. It was white. Like a white crow but couldn’t be. It was like a white handkerchief, being waved to attract his attention.
Down again on the lower elevation of the Plain, he could no longer see even the crows. This mattered not at all. Lucy went ahead as usual, thrusting into the gentle south wind. The camels followed the walking man, happy to have their faces turned homeward.
Yet the happiness continued not for long. They had proceeded for a mile, and now Bony could see the crows and the white object of their interest when Millie tugged back on her noseline, and he halted to see what was wrong. He could find nothing wrong. He could see nothing to excite them. The ground was firm. Impatiently he called to them and went on.
Another half mile, and they did come to an area indicating subterranean cavities. He had to select a twisting passage to avoid the bare rock and to keep to the close growing saltbush.
The white object fluttered above the ground. It wasn’t a handkerchief, but was certainly fabric of some kind. Not yet could he determine the agency keeping it in motion.
Minutes later he knew what the white object was—a silk scarf, and it was poised by an uprush of air from a blowhole precisely like a ball on a water-jet in a shooting gallery.
To be bothered with the whys at this time was to wool-gather. To be bothered with fractious camels was equally waste of time. He took the throwing ropes from his saddle and spent less than three minutes in roping both animals so that they couldn’t rise from their knees.
With the rifle he caught the fluttering scarf and drew it from the air current. It was of fine quality silk. It bore no initials, but was certainly a woman’s scarf. When he peered into the blow-hole, the air beat upon his face. He sniffed, and the smell baffled him. He could detect only that the odour was not entirely composed of damp rock and water, bats, or the smell of any burrowing rodent. Coffee? No! Surely not coffee?
Leaving the blow-hole, he prospected. Lucy began to bark. The warning chill at Bony’s neck made him turn about. The crows appeared to have lost their reason; there was nothing he could see. He circled the blow-hole, and so found the large hole five feet
in diameter and about centre of flat bare limestone rock.
Behind him Lucy barked furiously, and he turned quickly, the chill on the neck now of ice.
He was confronted by four wild aborigines. Each was aiming a spear tipped with flint, the butt resting in the socket of a throwing stick. Their faces were impassive. Their eyes were wide and steady, like their bodies, their arms, their weapons.
Chapter Nine
Adversity is but a Spur
LEAVES and fine twigs were entwined with the wild men’s hair, and damp earth clung to their knees and chests. The stalking of their quarry had been accomplished with the perfection of the greatest masters on earth.
Cicatrices on faces and chests and thighs proved full initiation into the Luritja Nation, the remnants of which still occupy the Central Desert. They were small, incredibly tough, and had the endurance of the dingo. Their hair was bunched high by a band of snake-skin, that of three being black, that of the fourth being grey, and matching the straggly beard. He was a medicine man.
The condition of thighs and stomachs indicated they were living on white man’s food. Oddity number one. Oddity number two was the unacceptable coincidence that they delayed appearance until Bony was looking at the large entrance to a cavern.
He could have employed the rifle, could have shot one, but only one, before he himself fell to the spears of the others. The formula: “I am Inspector Bonaparte, and I arrest you for …” was so much piffling eye-wash in this situation. Obviously it was not their intention to kill him and make off with the food and gear; otherwise their spears would now be halfway through his body.
The medicine man, who was the natural leader, beckoned him forward, and when he complied, the others slipped around behind him and continued on until they were with the camels, and then the medicine man held out a hand for the rifle, and motioned Bony to sit on the ground. There he was as much a captive as though weighed with a hundred-weight of manacles.
Bony - 21 - Man of Two Tribes Page 6