The Barrakee Mystery

by Arthur W. Upfield

  How long he did sleep he never would say, although he knew precisely by the position of the sun when he fell asleep and its position when he awoke. He was awakened by a masculine cough, but the process of his awakening was confined to the quiet opening of his eyes. Before him, sitting on an oil-drum, was the smiling Ralph Thornton.

  “Had a good nap?” he asked.

  “I was thinking out a problem,” Bony lied. “It has ever been my misfortune that I cannot sleep in daylight.”

  Ralph laughed at the glibly-spoken double falsehood.

  “Is your name Napoleon Bonaparte?” was his second question. “Those were my baptismal names. But”—solemnly—“I call myself Bony.”

  “Well, Bony, are you acquainted with a lady named Martha?”

  “I have that pleasure.”

  “Then it will interest you to know that Martha is looking for you with a waddy in her hand,” said the grinning youth. “She says you stole her No.9’s.”

  “The human mind is always liable to delusions,” Bony murmured. And then, seeing Ralph look curiously at his clue, he added blandly: “That piece of clay contains my problem.”

  “Ah! And the problem is—”

  “The problem is a difficult one, because it requires imagination to study it and to find a solution,” explained the half-caste, picking up the slab of clay and holding it carelessly, knowing the unlikeliness of the young man’s observing the bootprint. “In this lump of matter,” he went on, “we hold a universe. Let us in imagination crush it to fragments and separate a fragment from the mass.

  “Here we fall back on facts, for on examining our fragment we find that it is composed of atoms. Separating one of the atoms, we see before us a solar system—sun, moon and planets.

  “Behold, then, established facts, reality, truth. Behold now Bony’s sublime imagination. The ordinary human mind is limited. It clings to facts, measurements, and scales. My mind rises above all three. At the bottom of the scale—the human scale made by the human mind—we have the atom, a miniature solar system, invariably in close proximity to countless other solar systems. At the top end of the scale we have our vast far-off solar system and our immeasurable universe. But perhaps you are not interested.”

  “I am. Please go on.”

  “Well, then, listen attentively,” commanded Bony, a reincarnation of Plato talking to his students. “You may deride imagination, but imagination rules the world, the universe. I have shown you the bottom and the top of our scale—our average human scale. I will now show you that Bony’s mind recognizes no scale, no limit. My imagination invents a super-super-microscope, and with super-instruments takes up one of the planets in the atom and sees a world composed of yet smaller atoms—atoms from a world within an atom which forms part of our world.

  “My sublime imagination invents a telescope which ranges beyond and out of our universe, and I see that our solar systems are but neighbouring atoms, the whole comprising, let us say, a stick of wood on a greater world. I see, too, a man walking towards the inert stick of wood, and the time he takes to move each of his feet is a million of our years, our little whizzing years. The man lays down his swag. He is thirsty. He wishes to boil his billy. And, casting around for fuel, he picks up the stick of wood wherein is our world, our solar system, our universe, and with other sticks of wood starts a fire. Time to him is eternity to us; time to us is eternity to the atoms in this lump of clay. Half a million of our years expire whilst he draws a match across his match-box. The fire catches the wood, our universe; and soon we are gone, turned into floating gas.

  “The Bible says: ‘In the beginning.’ We think it means the beginning of our world. Even Bony’s imagination cannot conceive the Beginning, or the End.”

  The lad was gazing at the half-caste with rapt interest. Bony noted his intelligent face, and smiled; and when Bony smiled one lost sight of his colour and saw only a calm, dignified countenance lighted by dark-blue eyes, whose far-seeking gaze bespoke, at times, the visionary. The man’s egotism was simple, almost unconscious. His mind was high above the average human standard, and he was honest enough to take pride in the fact.

  “Where did you learn all this?” Ralph asked.

  “In books, in men, and animals, in sticks of wood and lumps of clay, in the sun, moon, and stars,” Bony told him. “My imagination, as I have said, is without limit; but there are very severe limits to my knowledge. Still, should I live another thirty years, those limits may be widened a little.”

  “My mother tells me you are keen on Napoleon,” Ralph said.

  “Your mother, sir, is a good woman. She sees goodness where goodness is found. Naturally, she would find it in the Emperor. ‘Honour thy father that thy days may be long, but honour thy mother that thy soul may live for ever!’ I honour neither my father nor my mother.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because they did not honour me. My mother was black, my father white. They were below the animals. A fox does not mate with a dingo, or a cat with a rabbit. They disobeyed the law of the wild. In me, you see neither black nor white, you see a hybrid.”

  “Oh, I think you are too hard on yourself,” Ralph objected.

  “Not a bit,” Bony replied. “I am what I am. I am not ashamed of it, because it is not my fault. But I feel sometimes as if black and white are at war in me, and will never be reconciled.”

  They looked at each other silently for a while. Then Ralph said, in his frank way:

  “I think I can imagine your feelings, Bony. But, though you bear marks of your people’s guilt, they have at least bequeathed you a fine brain, and I think that a great brain is the greatest gift a man can have.”

  Bony smiled once again. Then he said, in a lighter tone:

  “Plenty of grey matter is an asset, isn’t it?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chasing a ‘Killer’

  RALPH THORNTON had fallen under the spell of a half-caste detective. The quiet, thoughtful young heir to Barrakee felt strangely drawn to this link uniting the worlds of black and white, with his imaginative flights, quaint philosophy, and colossal vanity withal.

  Bony’s headquarters had written to say that the imprint he had made of Martha’s boot did not correspond in important details with the one upon the slab of clay he had dug out of the ground near the garden gate. A simple yet effective plan was then carried out, with the cooperation of John Thornton, to obtain the bootprints of Clair.

  A pretext was found to get Clair away from the Basin one morning. Ralph had been directed to call for him with the light truck, and to take the gaunt man to another part of the run to help repair a windmill. An hour after the two had left the Basin, the squatter and Bony arrived there, and the latter took plaster impressions of several of Clair’s tracks.

  April continued dry, brilliant, and warm, and ended in a burst of unusual heat. At ten o’clock on the morning of the last day the sun was powerful in spite of its growing swing to the north.

  That really hot morning of the last day of April saw Ralph and Kate Flinders riding in what was known as the North Paddock. The young man had been ordered to ride the thirty-odd miles of fence which formed its boundary, and turn in from it any sheep that might be ‘hanging on it’—a sheepman’s phrase meaning sheep that are hugging the fence instead of moving towards the great water-tank in the centre of the paddock.

  Kate having elected to accompany him, much to his delight, Ralph had supervised the placing of her light lunch in the saddlebag and, in addition, the strapping of a quart pot to her saddle. The two were young, light-hearted, and rode mettlesome hacks that would prefer a galloping race to alternate walking and cantering.

  They were cantering across a wide flat side by side, when suddenly the young man pulled up and went back a dozen yards, his eyes searching the ground. When the girl turned, Ralph was off his horse and walking in small circles with the earnest downward scrutiny of a Scotsman looking for a lost sixpence. Dismounting also, Kate joined her companion in searching f
or tracks.

  “There’s nothing here, Ralph,” she said presently. “What did you think you saw?”

  “I didn’t ‘think’ I saw anything, Katie,” he told her, still moving in circles, his horse’s reins over his arm. “No, I didn’t ‘think’ anything. Here, quite plainly, we have the tracks of three ewes and two lambs. Do you see them?”

  “I see sheep-tracks,” was her reply.

  “Yes, and they are travelling our way along the fence, and they are not walking. In fact, Katie, they are being chased by a dingo.”

  “A dingo! Are you sure?”

  “Quite. Here and there are his tracks. We’ll follow them for a while. They are quite fresh.”

  Copying him, she mounted her horse and followed just behind, watching with a curious sense of proprietorial pride the way he unerringly rode his horse over the tracks. Only occasionally did she see a sheep-track on the hard ground of the flat, never once that of the dog.

  Across the flat they came to a line of low sand-hills, and here she saw distinctly the tracks of three sheep and two lambs, as well as those of the pursuing dog. But her knowledge of tracks did not indicate to her which way the sheep were travelling, how many there were of them, and if they were walking or running.

  Once off the sand-hills, the tracks on the hard surface were again invisible to her, but Ralph led the way, twisting first to the left and then again to the right close to the five-wire fence. In and out of timber belts, across another flat, and to yet another line of low sand-hills Ralph urged his horse, never once removing his gaze from the ground a yard or two beyond his animal’s head. And on the summit of the sand-hills, he yelled: “Come on, Kate!” Seeing his horse leap into a gallop, her own mount was eager to follow. The wind whistled in her ears and the pace became hard. Beyond the figure of her companion, a quarter of a mile distant, she saw the white mass of a dead sheep, saw beside it the red tawny shape of a wild dog. The dog, seeing them, stared at their oncoming rush for some six seconds, and then, turning, became a red streak flying northward, parallel with the fence.

  The horses were wild for a gallop. Seeing the fleeing dog in the lead, the excitement of the chase gripped them no less than it did their riders.

  Through the fence was the dog’s one salvation, but it did not realize it. At first increasing the distance between itself and its pursuers in a tremendous burst of speed, the horses’ greater stamina soon outstayed the increase and, for some two miles, dog and horses kept their relative positions. But the speed of both horses and dog began rapidly to lessen.

  Immediately the dog showed signs of fatigue, Ralph gently pulled back his horse whilst keeping close to the fence, with the purpose of edging the dog away from it. Once it got beyond the fence it would have won the race, for the fence would have balked the riders, who were not mad enough to put untrained mounts at it.

  Slowly but inevitably they drew near the sheep murderer, who led them across flat and sand-hill, and through belts and clumps of dense mulga. Quite suddenly the dog turned to the left, running along a narrow margin of clay-pan between flat and sand-hill.

  When the dog turned, Kate immediately did likewise, but Ralph took a greater curve, bringing their positions relatively parallel, then about four hundred yards behind the quickly-tiring dog.

  Sometimes it looked back at them, ears flattened, tongue lolling and dripping foam. Every hundred yards now its speed slackened, and slowly Ralph reined back his mount to an easy canter. There was plenty of time, the dog was well away from the fence, and two riders were behind him wide apart and able to head him off the fence, should he turn that way. There was nothing that could save the dog from imminent vengeance.

  From a long lope the dog’s gait dropped into a laboured trot. The tender flesh between the cushions of its foot-pads was full of torturing burrs, and with a pitiful whimper it essayed to sit for a moment to extract them with its teeth.

  But Ralph was upon him, and with a fresh burst of speed the wild dog increased its lead. Keeping his horse to its easy canter, all his actions closely followed by the girl, the young man pressed forward and, when he saw that the dog was almost done, he unbuckled his right stirrup-leather and, drawing it out of the saddle, gathered buckle and end together and swung the stirrup-iron like a sling in a circular motion, the iron forming a ring of burnished light.

  The wild dog was now done up. Kate’s heart was sick with pity for its condition, but Ralph’s eyes were blazing with hate, his mind being filled with the picture of the torn, dead sheep.

  Then followed a spell of sharp dodging, the dog allowing the rider to keep constantly at its heels. Dog and horse whirled and doubled back, circled and angled for half an hour. Never for a moment could the dog shake off Nemesis. Every second its actions were slower.

  Finally it stopped suddenly and, whirling round, snapped at Ralph’s horse’s forefeet. The stirrup-iron was still whirling in its gleaming circle. The dog, seeing it, became fascinated. Kate closed her eyes, but those of the dog remained fixed on the revolving steel.

  When the girl looked again, the dog was dead, and Ralph was dismounting. His face was red with excitement and his horse’s head was lowered, its sides heaving from the fatigue of the race. Kate slipped to the ground beside her companion.

  “It’s a big brute, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “It’s the ‘Killer’.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  The dog’s depredations had become serious. For several years it had killed sheep after sheep, and all the efforts of the doggers to trap it had been in vain. The Pastoral Protection Board paid two pounds for every dog’s scalp, and as a further incentive John Thornton had offered a reward of thirty pounds for the capture of this particular dog. It was estimated that the “Killer” had murdered quite half a thousand sheep during the six years of its activities on the Barrakee run.

  Several times it had been seen in the act by stockmen, and the tallied descriptions left no doubt as to the identity of the dead animal with the “Killer”. Ralph produced his pocketknife and skinned the beast from nose to tail, taking a thin strip of hide down its back. Rolling the scalp into a ball, he tied it to his saddle.

  “We are not more than a mile from the tank, Katie,” he said. “I vote we go straight there and boil our quarts. The horses want a spell.”

  “Very well. If they want a spell as badly as I want a pannikin of tea, they must want it bad. And, by the look of the poor things, they do.”

  By the time the riders reached the tank the horses had cooled off, and, loosening the girths, they allowed the animals to drink before hitching the reins to the tank fence. A washing of hands followed, and then came the boiling of the two quart pots and making of tea. In the shade of the engine-house they ate their lunch.

  The boy and girl were strangely silent during the meal. Kate was looking forward to the expression of joy on the weather-beaten, kindly face of her uncle when he saw the scalp and heard the story of the chase. But Ralph was thinking of the Little Lady’s talk with him about the girl at his side.

  He had given much thought to Kate from that quite new angle. That he loved Kate he had not the slightest doubt. He had always loved her. He always would. But he had loved her, and did love her, as a sister only. He was not sure what the sexual love of man and woman, which should be the basic urge to marriage, really was. Never having been in love, it was not unnatural that he should confuse brotherly love with loverly love.

  The result of deep cogitation was that he felt positive he would be happy married to Kate, if she could find happiness in being married to him. Any doubts as to the quality of his love for her were eventually banished from his mind in a laudable decision to please his foster-mother in all things.

  A young man not yet twenty, his power to love was great. The almost worshipping love the Little Lady bore for him was every whit reciprocated. The tie between them, being without passion, was indeed a wonderful and beautiful thing, and in a si
milar way but lesser degree he loved Kate Flinders.

  “I say, Katie,” he said suddenly, “do you love me?”

  “Of course,” she replied, as if the fact were nothing out of the way. And then, looking at him, she saw that his dark face was deeply flushed.

  “Yes, I know you love me that way, Katie,” he said slowly. “But—”

  He stopped suddenly on observing the blood mantling in her face. In that moment it came to him that never before had he realized how beautiful Kate Flinders really was, and for the first time he felt a leaping desire to possess her.

  “But, dear, I want to know if you love me—if you could love me sufficiently well to marry me,” he said. “You see, we have always got on splendidly, haven’t we? And it occurred to me that it would be a really terrible thing if another fellow came along and collared you away out of my life, as it were. I love you, Katie dear, and I am certain we should be happy. Besides, it would so please those at home.”

  He had taken one of her hands whilst speaking, and her eyes had fallen from his frank gaze. His last sentence took her mind back to that time she rode with her uncle, and the stumblingly-worded ambition of the big-hearted man who had been so good to her came back to her, as indeed it had done since repeatedly. John Thornton had planted the seed in her mind, as his wife had planted a similar seed in the mind of Ralph; and, both being heartwhole, the seeds of suggestion had taken root.

  “What have you to say, Kate?” Ralph asked softly.

  Suddenly she looked at him. He was very handsome, very gentle, brave, and clever; fine in every way. She admired him intensely.

  “If you wish it, Ralph, I’ll marry you,” she said.

  “Goodo, Katie darling!” he said, suddenly smiling. “This, I think, is where I kiss you.”

  “Yes, I think it is, Ralph dear,” she agreed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Three Letters—and a Fourth

  RALPH THORNTON kept his two items of news until dinner was over and the family were sitting in the long main room of the house, part dining and part drawing room. Kate was playing softly on the piano an old Italian love song sent her by a girl friend in Sydney. Although she was quite happy about having consented to marry Ralph, she was perplexed. She felt that she was not so happy as she ought to be; that though her happiness was comforting it was not the tumultuous emotion so rapturously described by the novelists.