“It’s nothing, and it doesn’t hurt,” he quickly told her. “I was riding under a mulga-tree in the dark when a low branch gave me a knock. There’s no damage done, so don’t worry about it or I’ll have to take you in hand and talk to you seriously for being a bad woman. Now, what’s for dinner? I’m hungry. And here’s Jimmy Partner.”
The cloud in her big eyes passed, but she followed him with a bottle of embrocation, to fuss about him until he applied some of it to the bluish mark.
When they sat down to dinner it was still raining.
Chapter Two
The Bush Takes a Man
BILL THE BETTER began his day’s work at seven in the morning when he rode out into the horse paddock to bring in the working hacks for the stockmen stationed at the homestead of the great Karwir cattle station.
He was a shrimp of a man, this Bill the Better. Scanty hair failed to cover a cranium that would have delighted Cesare Lombroso who, it will be remembered, determined criminals by their heads. A long nose appeared to divide the gingery moustache which he constantly pulled down by the ends, and watery blue eyes invariably contained an expression of great hope of a brighter future.
On this morning of the nineteenth of April the alarm clock awoke Bill the Better as it did every weekday, and instantly the quiet of the iron roof announced to him that the rain had ceased and that the horses would be wanted.
Only the two station cooks were astir thus early, and uttering a lurid curse that he was the unfortunate third, Bill the Better set off for the stable, at the side of a maze of cattle and horse yards, for the night horse. It was then he saw the big, jet-black gelding, bridled and saddled, standing beyond the gate spanning the road to Opal Town.
“Crummy!” he said loudly. “That there’s Handerson’s ’orse. Ha! Ha! I might win that two quid off Charlie yet.”
The Karwir groom swerved from the line he was following to the stable to follow another line that brought him to the hardwood gate. There, resting his arms on the top rail, he regarded the horse whilst a smile played over his irregular features. Raising his voice, he said directly to the gelding:
“Ha! Ha! So you didn’t bring Mister Blooming Jeffery Handerson ’ome? So you left ’im somewhere out there in Green Swamp Paddock, did yer? Well, I’m hopin’ you broke his flamin’ neck, and then I’m hopin’ you turned back to him and kicked the stuffin’ outer ’im. Then I wins a coupler quid and does a chortle, rememberin’ that time that Mister Bloomin’ Jeffery Handerson took to me.”
Turning away from the gate, Bill the Better walked across to that gate in the canegrass hedge surrounding the big house, washing his hands with invisible soap and blithely whistling. It being a part of his duties to keep tidy the garden within the canegrass fence, as well as to clean the many windows of the rambling house, he knew the room occupied by Mr Eric Lacy who was known over an enormous area of country as Young Lacy, the son of Old Lacy.
Bill the Better tapped vigorously on the window of Young Lacy’s bedroom until the window was raised and beyond appeared a tousled red head and a pair of keen hazel eyes. Once again the groom was washing his hands with invisible soap, and he said with satisfaction somewhat extraordinary:
“The Black Emperor’s standing outside the Green Swamp gate. Mr Handerson’s saddle and bridle still on ’im. Lunch bag looks empty. No tracks made by Mr Handerson showing as ’ow he left the animile there and come on acrost to ’is room, or any tracks showin’ that ’e came as far as the gate on The Black Emperor’s back.”
The clipped voice of Young Lacy issued from the room.
“Wait there, Bill. I’ll be out in a second.”
It was five seconds and no more when Young Lacy joined Bill the Better. He was arrayed in a wonderful dressing-gown of sky-blue with scarlet facings. His deep red hair was unbrushed and unruly. Of medium height and yet robust of body, his feet protected by yellow slippers, he did not speak until they were outside the garden gate. Bill the Better was continuing to wash his hands with invisible soap and was still whistling a lively tune.
“Doesn’t it strike you that Mr Handerson may be lying out in Green Swamp Paddock seriously injured?” inquired Young Lacy, deliberately prefixing the name with an aspirate. Some twenty-five years old, he looked a bare nineteen.
“Too right!” replied Bill the Better. “I got a coupler quid on ’im being dead, and a quid on ’im being that busted up that ’e’s got to be taken to the hospital at St Albans. As I lost seven and a tray over the flamin’ rain, I’m sorta wanting to make a bit over on Mr Handerson.”
“I suppose you’d bet on your funeral?”
“Yes, any time you like, Mr Lacy. I’m game to bet you a level fiver you dies first outer us two. We can put the money in an envelope wot can be kept in the office safe and handed out to the winner.”
“Tish, man! You’re a ghoul.”
Arrived at the gate giving entry to Green Swamp Paddock and the road to Opal Town, Bill the Better swung it open sufficiently to permit them to pass and then reclosed it. The great black gelding now stared at them with wide, white-rimmed eyes, his ears flattened and his legs iron-stiff, a beautiful horse and yet the devil incarnate. Without hesitation, Young Lacy walked to it and caught up the broken and trailing reins.
“Didn’t The Black Emperor have a neck-rope on him when Mr Handerson left yesterday morning?” asked Young Lacy.
“’Anged if I know. Mr Handerson usually put a neck-rope on this little dove.”
Two pairs of expert eyes focused their gaze carefully to examine the horse.
“Only damage I can see is the reins,” said Bill the Better. “’E musta chucked Mr Handerson clear and then, most likely went back to finish ’im orf with ’is teeth and ’is hoofs. Ah well! Them that arsts for it generally gits it sooner or later. Betcher a quid, even money, Mr Handerson’s lying quite cold.”
“You don’t like Mr Handerson, do you, Bill?” Young Lacy said it more as a statement of fact than a question. He was looking into the saddle-bag at the folded serviette that had been wrapped about the missing man’s lunch.
“Oh, I like ’im well enough when I’m liable to make money outer ’im. Other times I don’t feel particular brotherly.”
“Well—no good standing here. You nip out for the horses, Bill. I’ll put The Black Emperor into the yards and then call the boss.”
“Righto, Mr Lacy. Better leave me outer the search party, ’cos if I seen Mr Handerson lying hurt I might pass ’im with me eyes shut.”
“Pleasant little blighter,” murmured Young Lacy, crossing back to the house after having put the gelding into the yards. He found his father drinking coffee in his room preparatory to dressing and going to meet the men gathered outside the office waiting for their orders. A tall, well-set-up man despite his seventy years, his keen grey eyes bored into those of his son.
“Any sign of Jeff?” he demanded, his voice resonant and containing a faint burr.
“No, but The Black Emperor was found standing outside Green Swamp gate by the groom. I’ve just put him into the yards. He’s undamaged, and so are the saddle and bridle, except the reins which are broken at the buckle end. Jeff isn’t in his room. He must be lying out hurt.”
Old Lacy caressed his prominent Roman nose with the fingers of his left hand. His right held the coffee cup. The clear eyes indicated a quick brain.
“Ha-um! Jeff must be getting childish,” he said. “I’ll have a look-see at the horse. Confound Jeff! He’s upset the day’s routine.”
Young Lacy nodded that he heard and then went to the kitchen where the only maid on the house staff gave him a cup of tea.
“Mr Anderson’s not in his room, Mr Lacy,” she said.
“I know that, Mabel. His horse is back. Mr Anderson must have met with an accident. Have you taken tea to Miss Lacy?”
“Yes. She was wanting to know if Mr Anderson had come home during the night.”
“Then you slip along and tell her about the horse coming home without him.”
“You there, lad?” called Old Lacy from the hall, and Young Lacy hurried out to accompany the older man to the yards. Having circled the suspicious horse, the old man said:
“Must have thrown his rider long before the rain stopped. No mud on him. Any idea when the rain did stop?”
“No. I didn’t put my light out till after one, and it was still raining then.”
Old Lacy continued to inspect the horse, and then he said:
“Ah-um! We’ll take a look for tracks beyond the gate.”
Together the two men walked to the right of the two gates in the six-wire fence running parallel with the creek. The sun was making diamonds of the water lying in the claypans and in the wheel tracks far along the road. The subdivision fence separating Green Swamp Paddock from North Paddock ran to a hair stretched to infinity across the grass plain. Having passed beyond the gate and come to halt on the road to Opal Town, the old man spoke with conviction in his strong voice.
“The Black Emperor got to the gate long before the rain stopped last night,” he said, staring at the ground. “See, his tracks are almost but not quite wiped out by the rain. He came home following the road. You’d better get your breakfast, lad, and I’ll put every available man up on a horse. You’ll have to organize a muster of the paddock. Pity the ’drome’s too boggy to let you get the plane aloft. I’d better ring up Blake. We might want his tracker out here.”
Sergeant Blake was breakfasting with his wife when the telephone shrilled a summons to the office, one of the two front rooms of the station building which fronted the only street in Opal Town. The senior police-officer controlling a district almost as large as England and Wales was dapper but tough. His weathered face emphasized the grey of his well-brushed hair and carefully trimmed short grey moustache. His wife, a large woman his own age—forty-six—made no remark on this early call, and silently placed her husband’s half-eaten breakfast chops into the open oven.
Correctly dressed in uniform, the Sergeant thudded along the passage to the telephone. From beyond miles of mulga forest and open plain a deep, booming voice spoke.
“That you, Blake? Lacy here. Sorry to ring you up so early. I fear that Jeff Anderson has met with an accident somewhere out in our Green Swamp Paddock. May want your help later.”
“What’s happened?” asked Blake, his voice metallic.
“I sent Anderson into Green Swamp Paddock yesterday morning to ride the fences. He hadn’t come home last night, and we thought it likely enough that he had camped for the night at the hut out at the swamp, seeing that it was raining and that we always keep a few rations at the hut.
“Knowing Anderson, we didn’t worry much about him, but this morning the groom found his horse with saddle and bridle still on him waiting outside the paddock gate. I have looked the animal over. It hasn’t been damaged nor has the saddle or bridle, except the reins which the horse had been dragging and treading on. It looks as though Anderson was thrown. I’ve sent every available man with the lad to muster the paddock.”
“I understood that Anderson was an exceptionally good horseman. What’s the horse like?”
“The worst on Karwir, Blake. The Black Emperor.”
“Humph! I’ve heard of him. Horse and man a good match, eh?”
“You’re right,” agreed Old Lacy with some reluctance. “Still, Anderson likes that type of horse and he could well manage The Black Emperor. Now the position this morning is this. The ground is too soggy for the lad to take the plane up, so he can’t make a search from the air. The road is so wet that I don’t think a car could be driven far without becoming well bogged. It’s on the cards that Anderson was parted from his horse yesterday afternoon at some point at the northern end of the paddock. If that happened late in the afternoon he would be almost sure to make for the hut if he could manage it, or even if he wasn’t hurt—in which case the men would meet him walking home this morning. The chances are in favour of his having been thrown, then, unhurt, camping at the hut last night and now walking home. On the other hand he may be lying seriously hurt and suffering from exposure.”
“Yes, that may be,” Blake agreed. “What d’you want me to do?”
“Nothing just now. But I thought that later on, if the men haven’t found Anderson, you might send a constable and your tracker out—even come out yourself. Or you could ring up the Gordons and ask John Gordon to ride over with a couple of the blacks. If Anderson doesn’t turn up, or can’t be located by two o’clock, we can be sure he’s come a cropper.”
“It might be better to get Gordon to take a couple of the Kalchut blacks over to Green Swamp Paddock than to attempt to get there from here by car,” Blake stated. “Ring me up after dinner. I’ll be on hand all day. Been a good rain, hasn’t it?”
“It has that. We had an inch and seventy points. Let’s hope it means the beginning of a good wet winter. All right, I’ll ring you again early this afternoon. Good-bye.”
Again seated at the breakfast table, Sergeant Blake related the story to a news-hungry wife who was, too, a devout Methodist. She quoted:
“‘He that taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword.’ A violent man will surely meet with violence.”
“It’s not yet proved that Jeff Anderson has met with violence,” her husband pointed out.
“No, but it will be proved some time if not now. As I’ve often said, you’ll be taking Jeffery Anderson before he’s much older, mark my words. Where’s Abie this morning? He hasn’t come for his breakfast.”
“He’s lying in, I suppose. And the horse waiting for a feed. Abie’s getting that way that I’ll have to shake him up. They all go the same in time. Can’t keep away from the tribe more than a month.”
Breakfast over, Blake rose and lit a pipe. Without hat he stepped down into the yard at the rear of the building and crossed it to the stables on the far side. Here a horse was always kept ready for duty, although Blake ran his own car and one of his two constables owned a motor cycle outfit. It was the tracker’s main duty to exercise, feed and groom the horse, and he camped in one of the vacant stalls.
To Blake’s astonishment the stretcher provided for the tracker was not occupied, nor were there lying about it any articles of spare clothing or the stockwhip of which he was so proud. The sleek brown mare in the adjacent stall whinnied her request for breakfast, and, with a heavy frown between his eyes, the Sergeant took her out to water at the trough. He shouted several times for Abie. There was no reply. Blake was now convinced that the tracker had left to rejoin his tribe. He had been at the stable at ten o’clock the previous night. Out in the yard Blake met one of his two constables.
“Seen Abie this morning?” he asked, grey eyes glinting.
“No, Sergeant.”
“Must have cleared out. Nothing belonging to him now in his quarters, and Kate neither watered nor fed. I’ve just attended to her. You’d better groom her, and then you can ride her out to Mackay’s place and get that return fixed up.”
Throughout the morning Blake worked in the station office, having for companion his other constable who pounded on a typewriter with his index fingers. After lunch he called Meena Station.
“Gordon speaking.”
“Good day, Mr Gordon. You seen anything of Abie? Not in his quarters at breakfast time.”
“No, I haven’t. The tribe cleared out for Deep Well early to-day. I didn’t see them go. Abie might have been with them.”
Gordon described the message at Black Gate.
“Well, Abie’s not on hand to-day. Did the tribe go on walkabout to see old Sarah?”
“Oh yes. Jimmy Partner went, too. Grandma Sarah is dying out at Deep Well, and they’ve all gone there to do the usual thing when she’s dead. Nero is the only black left here in camp, and he’s having a gum-leaf bake for rheumatism. At least he was when I went to the camp after breakfast. Could see nothing of him but his head. How much rain did you get in town?”
“A hundred and fifty-two points. What did you have?
”
“A hundred and forty-eight. Must have been a general rain. Did you hear what Karwir got?”
“Yes. Karwir got a hundred and seventy. Old Lacy rang me up early this morning to say that Jeff Anderson is missing. His horse was found outside the paddock gate this morning, and all hands, led by Young Lacy, are out mustering the country for him.”
“Strange!” exclaimed John Gordon. “Anderson is a pretty good rider, you’ll admit. What paddock was he working in?”
“Green Swamp. Left to ride the fences yesterday morning. Old Lacy says it’s too boggy for the plane to get off the ground out there.”
“Jimmy Partner and I were working in our East Paddock which is as you know north of Karwir’s Green Swamp Paddock. We were getting small mobs of sheep away from the Channels on account of the rain making bogs of them. We were often in sight of the boundary fence but we never saw Anderson. Let me know when you get news from Karwir, will you? I mayn’t be here, but mother will.”
Shortly after four o’clock Old Lacy again rang Sergeant Blake. He reported:
“The lad has sent Bill the Better home to say they haven’t come across Jeff Anderson. They back-tracked The Black Emperor along the road for about a mile to where the hoof marks were wiped out by the rain. There are no signs that Anderson reached the hut and camped there overnight. They’ve found no track or sign of horse or man. D’you think you could send out or come out with your tracker? Road ought to be drying by now. My girl took me out to the boundary gate in the car this afternoon.”
Blake reported the disappearance of Abie, and its probable cause.
“I’ll get in touch with Gordon and ask him to ride after the tribe and bring over a couple of trackers. They ought to be on the job first thing in the morning—if Anderson hasn’t been found before nightfall.”
The Bone is Pointed Page 2