“Med’cine.”
Malluc laughed, saying:
“Herb feller no belong Kalchut.” Then he remembered the rabbits and pointed to the mound of fur at the point of the V. “Bimeby plenty stink, eh? All no good feller. Skin-em-feller no good. Now no fish in Meena and now no rabbit feller at Meena. Blackfeller him do a perish.”
This appeared to be a joke, for he laughed uproariously, both hands pressed to his flat stomach. It was a joke with a lasting savour, for he continued to laugh while he attended to the brewing of his medicine and afterwards when he stood with the billy in one hand and tested the falling temperature of the liquid with the point of a dusty finger.
“You drink-em-down,” he urged when satisfied.
Bony drank without hesitation, and again he experienced that ecstatic glow spreading throughout his entire body.
A large billy of tea had been made when the utility returned with a load of poles, and Malluc and Bony carried the tea and pannikins and a loaf of brownie to the scene of the coming work.
“Get it down your necks quick,” Gordon ordered the men. “We have got to stop that leak as soon as possible. What a shot for a movie camera! Nothing like that down in Brisbane and Sydney, is there, Mr Bonaparte?”
“No, not even in the zoos,” agreed Bony. “It is the first migration I’ve ever seen and I shall never forget it. Have you seen one before?”
“Never. But my father and mother did years ago. Mother says that the rabbits then were not so numerous, but they left the lake country as suddenly and they came this way, too. This fence wasn’t up in those days, and when it was and this angle was created, the dad predicted this mess if another migration happened along. Now then, you chaps, let’s to it. You take the truck for another load of poles, Jimmy Partner. Come on, Malluc, you give me a hand wire-twitching poles to the posts.”
Bony felt regret that his physical condition barred him from taking a share in the labour. Gordon and Malluc lashed a twenty-foot pole to each fence post back from the corner for a hundred yards. With a brace and bit, Gordon bored a hole in every post to take one of the supporting wires, and, when Jimmy Partner returned, he stood on a case on the tray of the truck and was driven from pole to pole to bore holes in them at higher levels.
Fencing wire was run through the holes and then fastened to strainer posts. Rolls of wire netting were run out along the ground and then lifted to be suspended from the new-run wire while the lower selvedge was wired to the top of the netting in the actual fence. And so the waterfall of fur was stopped from splashing in brown foam down into Karwir.
The stoppage was effected shortly after twelve o’clock, by which time Bony had taken the billy back to the campfire and had made more tea for lunch. He shouted that lunch was ready.
The men drove across in the utility, and Jimmy Partner obtained a wash basin, soap and a piece of bagging. Hands were washed. On a length of American cloth Bony had set out the pannikins, the sugar tin, the tomato sauce, the meat and bread. A bag covered something laid down beside the American cloth.
“Feeling hungry, Jimmy Partner?” Bony inquired mildly.
“Too right, Mr Bonaparte. I could eat a whole sheep.”
Jovial, his round face was expanded in a hearty smile, and one never would have thought he had instigated the boning of a man to death.
“Well, here is the sheep,” Bony said invitingly, and stooping to the bag, he lifted it away to uncover three dead rabbits. Even Gordon chuckled.
“You eat-em-down,” urged Malluc, again pressing both his hands to his flat stomach.
“Too right, next year,” countered the aboriginal wrestler.
“Oh no,” objected Bony. “You eat them now, fur and all. Remember, you said you would when I was leaving your camp that time you were footing the fence.”
The smile faded from Jimmy Partner’s face.
“I said—” he began and stopped. “I said I would eat three rabbits, fur and all, if you found Anderson within ten miles of this boundary fence.”
“Well, keep your promise. I’ve found Anderson, and he is not even a mile away from the boundary fence.”
Bony stepped back. Jimmy Partner slowly stiffened his huge body and a scowl spread over his ebony features. Gordon had bent to reach down for a filled pannikin of tea, but now he became like a statue. Malluc appeared to be mystified. And then Jimmy Partner’s arms became bowed and slowly he advanced upon Bony. The movement continued until the automatic pistol halted him.
“Sit down!” came the order like the crack of a stock-whip.
Slowly the great athletic body went to ground.
“It is as well for you, Jimmy Partner, that I am not a vengeful man,” Bony said, quietly. “When I tell you that I found Jeffery Anderson buried beneath a claypan, you will not, I think, demand to be shown which claypan. And I will relieve you of the task of eating three rabbits, fur and all, in consequence of the work still to be done. Do not again be so rash when meeting Napoleon Bonaparte.
“Now, Mr Gordon, let us begin lunch. Do not permit my little revelation to spoil your appetite. I am happy to assure you that, being in possession of all the vital facts concerning the Anderson affair, I am not going to make any official move against you or Jimmy Partner.”
Gordon flushed, and came alive.
“That’s very decent of you, Mr Bonaparte. Knowing the facts, I’d like to explain why I acted as I did.”
“Not now, Mr Gordon,” urged Bony, smiling. “There is still more work to be done at the fence. Later, I should like to hold a conference when all matters can be explained and settled. Having completed my investigation, I must leave Karwir to-day. For the wonderful service you Gordons have rendered to the Kalchut tribe, I am going to make reward. Hullo, I hear the Karwir aeroplane!”
“Car, I think,” Gordon said listening.
“Plane all right,” said Jimmy Partner.
“Him motor feller,” voted Dr Malluc.
Chapter Twenty-four
A Mountain of Fur
HAVING written his letter to the Chief Commissioner, in which he stated the blacks’ bone-pointing as a fact and not as a suspicion, Old Lacy considered that he had done his duty. He continued to worry about Bony, however, and Diana came to understand that her father had been captivated by the man in spite of the stigma of his birth. When Old Lacy suggested that she should spend the afternoon in the open air, she sought her brother and persuaded him to take her in the aeroplane to visit Bony and then—if it could be managed-—the Gordons at Meena.
At one o’clock brother and sister were in the air, at the girl’s feet a box of comforts specially ordered by Old Lacy. At four thousand feet the air was cool and invigorating, making her face glow, her eyes sparkle.
The sun-heated world so far below was bisected by the subdivision fence and the road to Opal Town that skirted it. The horizon was sharp against the cobalt sky and broken only in the north-west by the Meena Hills, lying like blue black rocks set upon a black sea.
Diana delighted in these air trips, and she adored her pilot brother, so different, immediately he left the ground from the seemingly carefree man whose laughing eyes so effectively concealed thwarted ambition. Never had her confidence in his flying skill been shaken, and up here, so high above the heated earth, she thrilled to the sense of freedom from material bonds.
Young Lacy turned round in his seat in the forward cockpit to draw her attention with a hand to something ahead of them. For nearly a minute she could not determine what it was he wanted her to notice. There was nasty looking whirlie staggering towards where Pine Hut was hidden by the timber-belt, and there were several eagles beyond the boundary fence. The edge of this timber, in which ran the boundary fence, momentarily revealed individual trees as the belt slid over the curve of the world to meet them. She saw the road running more plainly through the scrub to the white painted boundary gate which, from a pinhead, was growing magically into a perfect oblong.
Now she saw the abnormality to which Young Lacy had
drawn her attention. Over the gate, and where the fence ran towards Green Swamp, hovered a tenuous red haze, so fine and so still that it could not have been made by sheep or cattle. Then she saw that this haze extended far back from the boundary fence, and her interest was increased to astonishment by the extraordinary number of eagles flying above it.
The road gate passed under them. The red haze was more dense at the gate, the road beyond was hidden by it and the usually sharp outlines of the trees were blurred. When over the border, Diana saw, partially obscured by the dust, what appeared to be a muddy stream of water.
Abruptly the earth swung upward on her right side. The engine roar almost died. The earth swung to for’ard and now there was the blur of the propeller between her and the scrub. The gate swung into her radius of vision, remained there for a little while, swung away and returned to appear ever so much bigger. Then the fence took position on her left side, and remained there with the tree tops only five hundred feet below. The ship rocked in the air pockets, but Diana did not notice this.
Down there against the fence the muddy water had resolved into animals. Rabbits! Rabbits running as close as sheep in a yard race. Outward from the fence the ground was alive with running rabbits, rabbits all running the same way. The rabbits had left Meena Lake!
The engine burst into its song of power, and now they were flying low along the road to Pine Hut and Opal Town. The girl could see beneath the red haze the army of rabbits crossing the road in the direction of Green Swamp, marching like an army without a van or a rear.
So absorbed was she by the animals on the ground that she failed to notice the birds until the machine almost collided with an eagle. There were hundreds and hundreds of eagles, like aeroplanes engaged in a titanic battle. Many came so close to the machine that she could see their unwinking agate eyes, and beyond the countless near ones could be seen countless others all the way to Meena Lake.
Young Lacy passed back to her a hastily scrawled note:
Too many eagles for my liking. They’re following the rabbit migration. Rabbits must be running into the Green Swamp fence angle. If the prop, isn’t smashed by an eagle you are going to see something that Hollywood can’t put on the screen.
The machine was now following one of the depressions. Like a main track it unwound to pass under them, and then Diana wanted to stand up the better to see that which opened her eyes to their widest. There was the fence angle up from which was rising a thick grey mist. The wings of the angle appeared to run into a dun-coloured quarter-circle. Then she saw the fence leaving the timber to cross the depression to the corner, and the river of fur flanking it, a river that poured like sluggishly moving mud towards and into a dun-coloured quarter-circle.
She saw the utility truck standing beside the campfire, and the men waving up to them. She saw John Gordon, and noted no one of the other three, before the world spun round and they were landing bumpily, rushing along the depression towards what appeared to be a great brown rock. Between this rock and the truck the plane stopped for a few seconds, while the pilot searched for a safe position in which to tie the machine. He taxied to the timber edge near the truck, close before a fallen box trunk to which a light line could be fastened to prevent a whirlie wrecking the machine.
In the silence so pronounced after the roar of the engine, Gordon’s voice was very small. He was looking up at Diana.
“Good day! Come to have a look at our rabbit drive?”
“Yes. It seems to be quite a successful one,” said Young Lacy. “Must be more than a dozen brace in the bag.”
“It—it’s terrific, John,” Diana exclaimed. “Why, look at the corner! They are piled in a solid mass!”
“A few birds about, too,” remarked the pilot.
“They have only just begun to arrive,” Gordon said, assisting the girl to the ground. “I brought Jimmy Partner and Malluc over with me, and the rabbits were then falling over the dead into Karwir like a waterfall. We’ve put up one line of netting above the fence netting, and it looks as though we’ll have to put a third line.”
Diana was so entranced by the spectacle that she failed to note the strained expression in her lover’s eyes. Speechless, as he seldom was, Young Lacy stood with the mooring rope in his hands, staring at the massed rodents and the mound surmounted by a frieze of living animals frenziedly searching for escape through the wire.
The task of mooring the machine was hastily accomplished, but Diana could not wait. She walked over the flat bottom of the channel to the fence, there to stand and stare and marvel. She heard Young Lacy talking to Bony and Gordon, but she was unable to turn to greet the detective so mastered was she by this drama of life gone mad.
There at Diana’s feet passed one of the endless streams of animals, hurrying, jostling, biting for space. They were flung from one kind of death to rush into another—the two arms of netted barrier. Farther out, tens of thousands milled and flowed like eddies in a steamer’s backwash. They completely covered the ground. They formed a cloth of fur, ridged here, humped there, reaching to the foot of the gigantic mound, crushed and suffocated at the apex of the angle where the topmost living layer was already nine feet from the earth.
Countless eyes glared upward at the girl and the two men standing on either side of her. Teeth worried at the wire. Teeth bit rumps and the bitten squealed. Mercilessly the sun beat down and heat generated by the massed bodies killed and killed. Like the plopping mud in the mud-lakes of New Zealand, units of the mass leapt high, screamed, and fell dead with heat apoplexy, to sink into the mass like stones. Death was busy among these animals so passionately desirous of life, and Diana felt strongly the urge to tear down the barrier, to give life with both hands.
“We’ll have to put up more topping, John,” Diana heard her brother say. “D’you notice any difference in the tide?”
“No,” replied Gordon.
“I don’t think the last of ’em have left Meena Lake yet, according to the dust haze we could see from up above,” Young Lacy said. “That topping will have to go higher and be brought farther out on both sides of the corner post. Is there enough netting on the job?”
“I think not. We’d better get busy. Even if only half the rabbits from Meena run into this angle …”
Diana was conscious that the men left her, save one, but she did not look round. Something of the hypnotic condition of the rabbits seemed to be controlling her. There were other sounds besides the death shrieks of sunstruck rabbits. The whirring of giant wings was increasing. The excited cawing of countless crows created pandemonium. Even the wires of the fence on which she leaned vibrated from the constant shock of alighting birds.
The birds appeared to have no fear. Great eagles planed low to ground, their legs extended. Others stood upon the ground and thrust forward their cruel beaks at rabbits running past them. Others flew labouringly, low to the ground, their talons sunk deep into living rodents and chased by a brigade of crows blaring out their massed caws. The fence top was lined with birds. They strutted outside the angle, eagles surrounded by crows, eagles gorging, crows fighting in black masses for the crumbs left by the eagles.
The sky was etched in whirls, by the heavy bombers and the funeral-black fighters. And from the north-west still further fleets were coming to plane in great circles lower and lower to join the groundlings. When the utility truck was moved from pole to pole the sound of its engine did not reach the girl and Bony who stood beside her. Bony spoke and she did not hear him. He had to raise his voice.
“One would never think that Australia could stage such a marvel,” he said.
“No one would believe it unless he saw it. I wouldn’t.” Diana became aware of Bony, and her eyes tightened a little when she added: “Hullo, Inspector! Are you feeling better?”
“I am a little better, thank you, Miss Lacy,” he replied. “I am expecting Sergeant Blake at any hour, when I shall ask him to take me to Karwir for my things and to thank your father for his great kindness to
me.”
The girl’s eyes did not so much as flicker.
“You are leaving? I think you are wise. Away from the bush you will be able to have proper treatment.”
“I have been receiving treatment from Dr Malluc,” Bony told her. “He has worked wonders with me. I am really going because there is no longer reason to stay. You see, I have completed my investigation.”
She stared at him, and in her violet eyes he saw tears. She spoke one word so softly that the birds’ uproar banished its sound.
“Indeed!”
Then she saw the aeroplane. She was standing westward of Bony and she saw it over his shoulder, a big twin-engined machine flying straight to land on the depression beyond the corner post. So loud were the birds that the noise of the engines did not reach them. Bony turned to gaze in the direction of her outflung hand. The machine rocked badly when about to make a landing, but the landing was effected with hardly a bump.
Now with their backs to the fence, they watched two men climb down its fuselage, and over Bony’s thin features spread a soft smile when he recognized the first as Sergeant Blake and the second as Superintendent Browne. There could be no mistaking either. A third man appeared, small and dapper, whose movements on the ground were sprightly. Bony recognized him. Captain Loveacre, one of Australia’s leading aces, had been associated with him on the Diamantina River.
The slight figure of Napoleon Bonaparte appeared to become a little more upright, a little taller. From watching the newcomers cross to the men at work with the netting, Diana turned to look at Bony. She was aroused by the look on his face, the look of a man seeing a vision.
So Colonel Spendor hadn’t deserted him because he dared to disobey orders! The all-powerful Superintendent Browne himself had come to Karwir to ascertain why he, Bony, had not reported for duty. They must want him badly down in Brisbane, for the Super to have come in Loveacre’s aeroplane.
They watched Young Lacy shake hands with Captain Loveacre and Superintendent Browne. They saw Young Lacy point to them, and then they watched the three men advance, Loveacre slightly in the lead. He had donned a straw panama, and now he was raising it to Diana although he continued to gaze at Bony.
Bony - 06 - The Bone is Pointed Page 25