Behind Mt. Baldy

by Christopher Cummings

  Peter nodded. “And she went missing, kidnapped by those bird smugglers.”

  “And she gave you the flick in favour of Andrew Collins,” Stephen added.

  “Bite your bum!” Graham snapped.

  Roger knew that losing Tina to his rival, another navy cadet, had hurt Graham. To change the subject he said, “I wonder if Mt Baldy is the end of our hike?”

  “Could be,” Graham replied, biting his lip and studying the distance.

  “I hope we don’t have to climb it,” Roger added.

  The others laughed. “Do you good,” Stephen said.

  “Here comes a car,” Peter said looking around. They all waited and a minute later a white police car appeared, followed by another.

  “It’s those cops,” Stephen said.

  The boys stood up. Graham began folding the maps. The cars were parked at the side of the clearing and five police got out and walked towards them: Inspector Sharpe and his two Detectives and Sergeant Grey and his constable.

  Inspector Sharpe spoke first. “Hello, kids, did you find anything?”

  “Only our map reading clue,” Graham replied, holding up the yellow cardboard in its plastic bag.

  Inspector Sharpe nodded. “Fine. Have you got far to go?”

  “About twenty kilometres. We won’t make it today,” Graham answered.

  “Did you find anything else, any clues which might help us?”

  “No sir.”

  “Would you mind helping us look? I’ve sent for more men but they won’t get here much before dark.”

  The boys looked at each other. Stephen looked doubtful. Graham frowned. But Roger didn’t see how they could refuse. He answered. “Yes sir, we’ll help. It doesn’t matter where we camp. What do you want us to do?”

  Stephen glared at him but Roger ignored him. He did want to help the police solve the mystery. “Do we know who the man is yet sir?” he asked.

  “No we don’t. The body has been taken into Atherton and the doctor will start an autopsy then. But we don’t know who he was, or why he was killed, or who killed him. All we know is that he was an old man; seventy or eighty at a guess, and he was shot.”

  They were organized as a line across the centre of the car park and began to slowly walk forward, searching as they went. Ten minutes of thorough looking in every cranny and around every rock, tree and bush uncovered nothing. By then the line had become ragged and they were in the edge of the forest.

  It was quite gloomy under the dark pines but there was still a lot of undergrowth. Mostly this was knee high grass or ferns but with clumps of other bushes and the odd boulder. The ground sloped downhill. Roger began following a faint path which seemed to peter out. He looked into the forest and shivered. ‘This place gives me the creeps!’ he thought.

  Then his eye noticed some crushed weeds. He bent to look. No doubt about it. Someone had trodden on them walking into the forest. He was about to call out when something else caught his eye in the grass. His heart suddenly beat faster and he sucked his breath in sharply.

  “Inspector! Sir! Over here!”

  They all came at the run, crowding round. Roger held out his arms. “Keep back,” he instructed, then he pointed. “Someone trod on that plant sir, and there,” he bent to part the grass, “is a cartridge case.”

  The Detective Sergeant came forward and picked up the shiny brass case using a twig and popped it into a small plastic bag. He held this up for Inspector Sharpe to study.

  “9mm Parabellum,” Inspector Sharpe grunted. “Now we are getting somewhere. OK, line up again and look very carefully for more clues, tracks, cartridge cases, blood stains and so on.”

  The group lined up again and began walking slowly downhill through the pine forest. Almost at once Roger pointed to another crushed fern. Then another.

  “Good boy! Keep going. We will track them,” Inspector Sharpe said.

  Peter called out, “Here’s a track too. Someone’s run down through here.”

  They waited while Inspector Sharpe looked. “Either the murderer or his victim, or possibly an accomplice,” he said.

  They went slowly on. Roger felt very excited. His heart thumped and his eyes scanned eagerly. They went downhill for about a hundred paces before Stephen called out. He was back behind them a few paces pointing at a tree trunk at eye height.

  Fresh sap oozed from a small hole in the tree trunk. It had trickled down, red-gold in colour, and congealed.

  “Is that a bullet hole sir?” he asked.

  Inspector Sharpe came and squinted at it. “Could be. Got a knife? Have a go at digging in there but try not to scrape the bullet if it is one. We’ll keep going.”

  Stephen licked his lips and seemed to go pale. He looked around. “I ... I don’t want to stay here on my own,” he said.

  Roger looked around. It was quite gloomy and spooky. But still he felt some scorn for Stephen and it made him feel happier.

  Inspector Sharpe looked irritated. “Constable, help dig out the bullet,” he ordered.

  “The old man must have run down here with someone chasing him,” Roger suggested.

  “Could be. Let’s keep looking,” Inspector Sharpe agreed.

  Roger went back to searching. A broken twig here, a piece of crushed weed there, flattened grass, all showed the direction. They went on down a steeper slope and through several clumps of lantana for another hundred metres.

  Then Roger’s senses noted a change. He paused and looked more carefully.

  “Sir, here. Another cartridge case!” He pointed to his feet. While it was being picked up he went on to something which had attracted his curious eye.

  As he bent to look at a splintered scar a few centimetres long on the side of a tree his nose, and then his ears, made him look beyond it. A swarm of flies was buzzing above the ferns. Roger looked more closely, wondering what the black coating on the grass and ferns was. Then he froze and for a moment could neither move nor breathe.

  Nausea welled up and he gagged. Panting with fear and swallowing to hold down the rising vomit he turned and caught Inspector Sharp’s eye and beckoned. “Sir,” was all he could whisper.

  It was dried blood.

  Inspector Sharpe nodded grimly. He called the others in. “We will search the area shoulder to shoulder on hands and knees but avoid that area.” He pointed at the area of crushed and soiled grass and ferns.

  “Is ... is that blood sir?” Peter gasped.

  “Yes it is.”

  “Oh my God!” Peter gasped. He looked quite sickly. Graham looked grim. By then Roger had regained control of his stomach. He looked down, then pointed.

  “Another cartridge case sir. And it’s different.”

  So it was. It was slightly longer and the brass was a different colour.

  “Two guns,” the Detective Sergeant grunted as he picked it up.

  “They went down that way, dragging the body,” Roger said, pointing along a line of crushed ferns and grass.

  “God Roger, you’re a bloodhound today!” Graham cried.

  Roger grinned but it was more of a sickly grimace as there was so much dried blood that no tracker dog was needed.

  They followed the trail easily for a hundred metres till they came to the reeds on the edge of the lake. Half a kilometre away was the peninsula with Camp Barrabadeen on it and, in the distance, beyond the cape, the buildings at Tinaroo Dam.

  “This is probably where they chucked the body in,” Inspector Sharpe suggested.

  “Why didn’t they bury it, or weight it down with stones to hide it?” Peter asked.

  “Don’t know. They may have been in a hurry or thought it wouldn’t be found quickly,” Inspector Sharpe replied.

  Roger looked out over the lake and shivered as his imagination recreated the horrible scene.

  Graham also looked out over the water. “That sun is getting a bit low,” he said. Roger looked and noted that the sun was dipping behind a shoulder of the Lamb Range to the North West.

  Gr
aham checked his watch. “It’s five o’clock. It’ll be dark in less than an hour. Can we go and find somewhere to camp while it’s still light, please Inspector?”

  “Yes. Off you go and thank you. You’ve all been very helpful, especially you,” Inspector Sharpe said, indicating Roger. Then he went on, “Sorry. I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Roger sir, Roger Dunning.”

  CHAPTER 4

  NIGHT BY THE LAKE

  The three boys went back up the hill past the murder scene until they came to Stephen and the constable, who was still gouging at the tree. Stephen asked where they were going.

  Graham answered, “The Inspector said we can go. We’re going to find somewhere to camp.”

  “Not around here!” Stephen replied, his eyes flicking anxiously around.

  “Alright. We’ll walk on. There’s another camping area a few kilometres on. We should reach it before dark if we step it out,” Graham replied.

  Roger groaned inwardly. Step it out! Besides he wanted to stay here to help look for more clues. But the others obviously didn’t. They said goodbye to the constable and walked up the hill to the lookout.

  Once there they were on the mach in two minutes. Roger barely had time to pull on his webbing and pack and have a drink before the others, led by Stephen, were moving.

  And step it out they did. They went down the hill to the main road so fast Roger slipped twice and was lucky not to have a fall. He called out for them to slow down, but in vain.

  The sun was gone from the clearing. All of their side of the mountains was now in shadow but, as yet, the air wasn’t cold. The boys turned right onto the main forestry road and marched briskly along.

  Roger quickly fell behind. His aches and pains rapidly returned and he was soon plodding, puffing and sweating freely. Graham and Stephen vanished around a bend a hundred metres ahead. Peter looked back, then halted till Roger reached him.

  The two walked in silence. Roger’s shoulders ached and he could feel sore leg muscles, a pinched right little toe, rubbing on his left heel, chafing inside his thighs and soreness around his hips but he said nothing. Instead he gritted his teeth and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other a fast as he could.

  He paid no attention to the scenery. Most of the time there was little to see, just a tunnel in the rainforest, but a few times they passed across the heads of bays and inlets of the huge lake. Only two cars passed them.

  It slowly got darker and darker. The sky overhead went from bright blue to indigo. Roger began to fear they would have to spend the night camped in the rainforest just off the road. They had done that on previous hikes when they had miscalculated and he had not enjoyed it. Now he glanced into the jungle, which looked all spooky in the twilight, and knew he didn’t want that.

  “I wonder how much further,” he grumbled.

  “Another kilometre or two I’d say,” Peter replied.

  “Graham and Stephen could have waited for us,” Roger complained.

  Peter made no answer. The two continued their march. Darkness seemed to close around them so that it became difficult to see far into the jungle, or to make out details. The road became a grey ribbon. Roger started to worry about snakes. ‘They come out at night to hunt,’ he thought unhappily. He told himself it was winter and most snakes went into hibernation. Then he remembered the red-bellied black and was twice as scared.

  At each bend Roger hoped to see the other two waiting. He and Peter rounded the next bend. To Roger’s dismay another gloomy straight a few hundred metres long stretched ahead. It was now too dark to see his watch or read a map. He wondered where he had packed his torch.

  “Some sort of a clearing ahead,” Peter said. They plodded up to it.

  To Roger’s relief they got a view out over the lake to the south. As they came out of the tunnel of jungle the twilight seemed to be drawn back and in the distance there were even the last rosy tints of the sun on some hilltops. A turnoff led down to the right into a picnic area.

  This was a small peninsula a couple of hundred metres in extent. Most of it was a lawn of mowed grass dotted with a few large trees. Several cars and tents were scattered across it. Roger didn’t say so but he was very glad there were other campers there.

  Stephen called to them from a toilet block built in the edge of the forest. He pointed to where Graham was erecting his shelter. Roger plodded the fifty paces and, with a loud sigh, dropped his pack. He eased off his webbing and just stood for a minute, trembling slightly.

  “Roger, where’s your hutchie?” Graham asked. “There are only these two trees. We can put up two between them.”

  Roger just wanted to lie down but he knelt at his pack and fumbled with the straps. Graham had tied a nylon rope around one tree at chest height. Then he proceeded to tie the rope around the other tree and to strain it taut. Next he draped his and Stephen’s ‘shelters individual’ over them. These were standard army issue - sheets of plastic with clips so that two could be joined together to make a tent.

  Within the time it took Roger to pull his shelter out of the top of his pack Graham had pulled each corner of the ‘hutchie’ into position and fastened it to the ground with a wire tent peg. This formed an A-shaped tent. Peter shook his shelter open and took Roger’s from him and began to clip them together. Roger just sat down and leaned back on his pack. He stretched out his legs and groaned.

  Graham came to help Peter. “Don’t just sit there Roger. Put your pullover on or you’ll get a chill,” he said.

  Roger closed his eyes and swore under his breath. He felt exhausted but he did not dare say so for he knew Graham would pour scorn on him with comments on what a short distance they had come. Sometimes Graham could be a real pain. ‘Just because he can walk 30 or 40km in a day!’ But he was right. Roger felt the cooling sweat was giving him a distinct chill.

  With an effort Roger rolled over and sat up. He groped in his pack and extracted his pullover. By the time he had struggled into it Graham and Peter had joined their hutchie to the first one. Stephen came back from the toilet, reminding Roger he badly needed to go.

  Twilight was closing in fast and the toilets were already hidden in the black wall of the jungle. Roger found his torch and struggled to his feet. He made his way painfully to the building. It was quite dark inside and he did not linger but after washing his face he felt better.

  On the way back to the campsite Roger noted there were five other groups of campers but none was within fifty metres of them. All seemed to have pressure lanterns or fluorescent lamps and the sound of music and voices made a hole in the darkness. The smell of steak sizzling on a barbeque gave Roger sharp pangs of hunger.

  By the time Roger rejoined the others Graham and Stephen both had their hexamine stoves alight. The flames gave a cheerful and homely feeling. Roger picked up his gear and dumped it so as to face the others, forming a rough circle. He sat down on his bedroll and began digging in his webbing for his stove and mess tins. He opened the metal stove, broke a square of hexamine in half and lit it with a match, then placed it in the stove. The smell of the burning chemical was something he loved. It made him salivate at the thought of food.

  The flame flickered brightly in the gentle breeze. He poured water into an aluminium mess tin and placed it on the stove to heat. Then he rummaged in pouches and pack for his Milo, condensed milk and food.

  Stephen spoke up, interrupting the companionable silence. “What’s that you’re heating Graham?”

  “Braised steak and onions,” Graham replied, scooping the contents of a can into his mess tin.

  “Looks like it’s already been eaten and passed through,” Stephen said.

  Roger glanced across as Stephen shone his torch onto Graham’s food. It looked a disgusting brown mess.

  “Reminds me of the German Concentration Camp joke,” Peter chipped in.

  “Which one?” Graham asked, stirring the mess and quite unperturbed.

  Peter changed his voice to give a Germanic
accent. “Today ve haf der gut news and der bad news. First der bad news. There is nothing to eat but horse manure. Now der gut news. Zere is plenty of it.”

  Graham and Stephen both guffawed loudly. Roger smiled even though he’d heard it before.

  “What are you eating Roger?” Graham asked.

  Roger held up a can. “Beef meatballs and onion gravy for starters.”

  “For starters. You mean you’ve done your usual trick of bringing twice as much food as the rest of us,” Peter asked.

  “No,” Stephen cut in, “it’s the onions. They’re for starters, essential for all farters.”

  Roger smiled. He was used to their jibes and they were his friends. He poured hot water into his cup canteen to make Milo; squeezed condensed milk into it, then sucked the tube before recapping it. Already he was starting to feel better. The hot drink made, he opened the can of food and emptied it into the mess tin, put the other half of the hexamine tablet into the stove and began to heat his meal.

  After stirring the food he sipped at the hot drink. “Ah! That’s better. I needed that,” he murmured.

  The meal proceeded for about half an hour. It was completely dark by then. There was no moon and apart from the lights of the other campers there was only the twinkle of some distant farmhouses far across the lake.

  Roger cleaned his mess tin and put on water for another cup of Milo. He then took off his boots and socks and began to examine his feet by the light of his torch.

  “Roger! What a pong!” Peter called.

  “Nearly got a blister on my heel,” Roger replied, examining the pink flesh critically.

  Graham had begun measuring distances on the map, using the edge of a piece of paper to follow the curves in the road.

  “How far have we walked?” Roger asked as he took out a roll of Elastoplast.

  “About ten kilometres,” Graham replied.

  “Not too bad, considering,” Peter commented.

  “Where do you think Captain Conkey planned on us to be tonight if we hadn’t.. .. er.. hadn’t been delayed?” Roger asked.

  Graham looked at the map. “Probably at ‘The Chimneys’,” he decided.