A lesser man’s neck might well have been broken. In any case, the twist it received whilst his body was still in the air was infinitely worse than Dugdale’s smash to the jaw. When finally his body did come to rest with a dull thump, it was to feel the not inconsiderable weight of Blair, who jumping high, landed with both feet on the small of his back.
The third policeman had got a ju-jitsu hold on Dugdale and the second was gathering himself to fling his weight into the melee. Blair saw Dugdale’s helplessness, saw his captor’s broad back, saw the third member of the enemy forces charging upon him, heard the leader coughing up sand and gasping for wind.
The little man gave vent to a roaring laugh of ineffable happiness. The tip of his beard was level with his eyes, blazing and alight with glory. Ignoring the charging policeman, he estimated the distance between the back of Dugdale’s captor and himself to a bare inch, took a short run, launched himself in the air with terrific velocity, and crashed the ju-jitsu expert’s legs from under him. Never losing an instant, he was on his feet before Dugdale and his captor found the ground. Laughing again, he ran to meet the second policeman who was closing in upon him, ran forward as though eagerly welcoming a long lost brother, and smote that man between the eyes so mightily that he dropped as though dead.
Knocked down and winded though he was, the ju-jitsu expert merely exchanged one paralysing grip for another. He was master of the art, yet was unfortunate in having devoted his art to the subjugation of Dugdale and not of Fred Blair. Whilst Dugdale was a straightout boxer who could be overcome by the other two policemen, Blair was a rough-and-tumble, eat-’em-alive-oh! whirlwind fighter, bringing to his aid extraordinary nimbleness of feet, terrific punching ability, strong teeth, and dexterously used boots.
Having put one man to sleep and observing that the leader would require just two more seconds to get the “crick” out of his neck, Blair proceeded to finish the liberation of Dugdale already begun.
The expert had his victim down under him. He was on his knees holding Dugdale’s arms in a bone breaking grip. Blair mounted the broad back like a little child riding on its father’s back at home. But there Blair’s childlikeness ended. He slid one hand over the crown of the expert’s head and, twining his fingers in the hair above the man’s forehead, began to pull backward. The pull being anything but slow or gentle, it was a wonder Blair did not pull either the policeman’s head or his scalp off. As it was, the expert became the victim and bellowed.
Just then, however, Blair was picked up like a noxious insect by the big leader and hugged in a breathless grip. He saw that Dugdale managed to worm his way out from beneath the expert’s body just before that performer recovered from his surprise; and then, finding that his head was lower than the big man’s face, so that he could not knock it out of shape with the back of his head, Blair devoted a few seconds to tattooing tender shins with the heels of his boots.
That eased the situation but did not relieve him of restraint. Hearing the smack of fist against flesh somewhere outside his line of vision, Blair laughed again, and, seizing the opportunity, dug one iron hard elbow with devastating force into his opponent’s stomach.
Even when turning his head to obtain a better position for the second attack he saw that the man he had knocked unconscious was very ill with a kind of mal de mer, and that Dugdale and his partner were giving an exhibition of the fistic art before the interested Watts family and two station hands. What he failed to see was that, no longer able to resist the temptation, Henry McIntosh, reared in the rough-and-tumble atmosphere of the wharves, handed Tiger into the care of one of the hands and proceeded to take his part in the war. The time arrived when the leader, holding Blair in his powerful arms, suddenly saw a maze of shooting stars, followed by a great light which preceded a greater darkness. The contact of a bootheel—removed from the foot for the purpose—with a man’s unprotected head is liable to cause such effects.
The leader sagged at the knees, and Blair, discovering himself a free man, turned to observe the hugger collapse with ’Enery beyond, the boot upraised for a second blow.
“I ain’t got no time just now, ’Enery,” Blair snarled, “but when I ’ave I’ll do you up, boots and all, for trying to spoil this scrap. No one told you to interfere.”
Dugdale was still engaged in a heart-to-heart argument, and the policeman, recovering from his sickness, lurched to his feet to continue the combat. He was mightily sick, but very game.
“Take yer time now, Giles, me lad,” Blair counselled pleasantly. “I don’t forget how you made me whitewash the jail, but I bear no malice, I don’t. Take yer time—take yer time!”
Giles took his time. His introduction to Fred Blair had taken place some two years earlier, and consequently he knew precisely the little man’s prowess. Swaying for a moment or two, he wiped away the imaginary lights dancing before his eyes, and then called on Mr Watts in the King’s name.
“Better do a bunk, Mister Watts,” Blair advised.
Waiting, the little terror saw Dugdale floored by a straight left which produced generous admiration for the giver of it. He saw, too, the sunlight glint on handcuffs and waited no more. The policeman was caught bending. Also he was caught unawares, and the impact of Blair’s boot sent him sprawling on his face for a yard or two beyond the gasping, prostrate Dugdale.
“Git away, Dug—I’ll manage ’em,” Blair roared. “’Enery, Mister Dugdale’s ’orse.”
The tumbled one was rising, but received a swinging blow against his ear which sent him down again. The second man was tripped and flung with amazing rapidity into the arms of the anxious, uncertain Mr Watts. The two station hands cheered. Then Dugdale was lifted on Tiger and the reins thrust into his hands. He was feeling giddy and sick, and almost without sense; almost but not quite, for he had sense enough to urge the grey into a smart canter along the track to the Washaways.
The leader now returned to active service. The three policemen were mad, fighting angry, for their horses had been freed from the stockyards and the prisoner was speeding away on the only horse then at the homestead.
They pummelled and fought the little bullocky till blood flowed in streams from all combatants, and till eventually superior force and superior weight bore Blair to the earth; whereupon, at long last, he was handcuffed in no gentle fashion. One eye closed, the other was closing. A broad grin developed in spite of his awful face. He said:
“For that, gentlemen all, I’ll whitewash yer blasted jail three times. It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Flash Harry Deals the Cards
FROM THURLOW LAKE to the Washaways was twenty six miles. Six miles west of the Washaways was One Tree Tank and a hut where lived a rider named Flash Harry. It was from Flash Harry that Dugdale hoped to secure a fresh mount.
Now, while the rider of Tiger still felt a little dazed—while his jaw ached and bore the mark, rapidly colouring, of the policeman’s fist—there was no real excuse for Dugdale’s forgetting the telephone wire. Not being an habitual criminal, the cutting or breaking of the single wire between Thurlow Lake and Barrakee never entered his mind. It is probable, too, as he himself admits, that if he had thought of the telephone he still would have felt secure, since the possibility of further troopers barring his way was remote. But the fact was that the country was alive with policemen, all engaged, or till just then engaged, in closing in upon Sinclair before he met Knowles and his death.
Henry Lockyer was about thirty years old, tall, lank, and dark, with a hint of China in his make up. He wore brown elastic-sided riding boots, kept always in the highest condition of polish, white moleskin trousers, ever white, a black silk shirt, a sky blue kerchief, and a wide brimmed felt hat which he only removed when he went to bed.
Flash Harry was eating a late lunch—he had been out all day—and a police trooper was sitting down to a pannikin of tea and a slice of brownie, his tunic removed for ease, his peaked cap on the table beside him.
&nb
sp; “What beats me is all this hullabaloo about a bloke who knocks a nig,” Flash Harry was saying. “Why, when I was over in West Australia a few years ago, me an’ a feller called Purple Joe shot seventeen of ’em afore breakfast one morning.”
“But New South Wales is not West Australia,” the trooper observed with a grin. “And King Henry wasn’t a wild nigger exactly.”
“Aw well, I suppose a bloke—”
Flash Harry paused in the supposition he was intending to put forward. The telephone bell rang four times, which was the ring for him; for all the huts were on the single line and each hut had its own particular ring. Languidly he got to his spurred feet and stalked to the instrument. A moment later, turning to the trooper, he said:
“One of your blokes at Thurlow Lake wanting to talk to you.”
For several minutes the trooper was engaged at the phone. Flash Harry heard references to Dugdale and Blair and Mc-Intosh, and became interested; so, when the other resumed his seat, he inquired:
“What’s gone wrong now?”
“Seems to have been a brawl at Thurlow Lake,” the trooper told him. “Some of our fellows were instructed to arrest Dugdale, the late sub-overseer, but Blair and McIntosh barged in and Dugdale got away. He’s heading here, and I’ve to arrest him.”
“What for? What’s he done?”
“Dunno properly. Appears Dugdale has a wallet belonging to Clair. Clair and Sergeant Knowles met beyond the Paroo and Clair is dead—shot.”
“Humph!” Flash Harry regarded the youthful trooper thoughtfully. Then: “Well, you won’t have much difficulty in collaring Dugdale. He can’t cross the Washaways now—they’re running a banker.”
“Still, orders is orders, and Dugdale’s got to be apprehended. I am just going to sit here and arrest him when he walks in.”
“Humph!” Again Flash Harry looked thoughtfully at his visitor. A silence fell between them: the trooper looking forward to making an easy arrest when three of his mates had failed; Flash Harry devising ways and means of outwitting the trooper and conveying a warning to the man from whom he had invariably received courtesy and kindness. And Dugdale’s attitude to him had been the more appreciated because Flash Harry was very self-conscious about his mixed ancestry.
The talk during the next hour was desultory. The second hour’s waiting found the trooper tunicked and hatted, his horse saddled and waiting for emergencies out of sight behind the chaff-house. From where they sat they could see along the straight open track for some three miles, and dusk was falling before they espied the white gelding coming at a slow, tired walk.
“He’ll be here in ten minutes,” estimated the trooper.
“Yes—in ten minutes,” Flash Harry agreed. “I’ll put on the billy. He’ll want a drink of tea.”
The trooper continued to watch the coming horseman. He heard the rider fill the billy from the petrol-tin bucket, heard, too, more wood being put on the glowing coals of the fire. Firelight flickered on the interior walls of the hut. No one saw Flash Harry get something hard and sinister looking from a small tin trunk.
So they sat, one on each side of the table, and waited. The minutes passed slowly, till eventually they could hear the grey gelding’s hoofs softly thudding. Whilst they could plainly see Dugdale dismount, he could not see them distinctly within the hut. He walked stiffly towards them. The trooper silently rose to his feet, handcuffs ready, anticipating easy victory. And then came Flash Harry’s drawling voice:
“Better sit down, old boy, or you’ll flop down.”
The trooper looked sideways at the owner of the drawling voice, and stared with dazed wonder right into the barrel of a revolver. Dugdale entered the hut. Again Flash Harry spoke, saying something about tea being made shortly.
“Oh!”
At the threshold Dugdale paused, taking in the scene with narrowed eyes and quickly taut muscles. The trooper was fascinated by the intimidating barrel, which never wavered. Flash Harry’s eyes gleamed beyond the small black circle, and in them the trooper saw deadly determination. The newcomer walked across to the fireplace which was behind Flash Harry.
“What’s the great scheme, Harry?” he asked.
“Oh, some feller rang up from Thurlow Lake giving orders that you were to be arrested,” Flash Harry replied evenly. “This is my hut, and there is no arrests going to be made inside it. It follows that, as I am king within these four walls, things go as I want ’em to go. Where are you heading for?”
“The river,” came from Dugdale, making tea in the now boiling billy. “That is, when I’ve had a drink of tea and a bite to eat. I’m dog tired.”
“Righto! Have a feed. The trooper an’ me will give each other the glad eye.”
“Then you want to mind your step,” the uniformed man informed Flash Harry. As a policeman he was very much annoyed, but as a sportsman he was optimistic. “When my chance comes, as it will do, things will happen. They’ll happen all right in any case.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Flash Harry remarked calmly. “Somehow things are always happening to me. In my time I’ve whitewashed more jails than I have fingers and toes. In fact, me and Blair are tradesmen.”
“Are your horses in the night paddock?” Dugdale asked.
“Yaas, Mister Dugdale. You’ll have to run ’em in if you want a fresh hack. Better take ‘The Devil’—he’s lively, but he’s a great swimmer, and it’s a lot o’ swimming you’ll have to do if you want to get to the ‘Gutter’.”
“Why, is the flood down the Washaways already?”
“If the water rises another foot, orl them creeks will become a single river. Me and the trooper are going to bet a level pound that both you and The Devil gits drownded: at least, I’m going to bet you do, and he is going to bet you don’t.”
“I’m not going to bet he doesn’t get drowned,” the trooper cut in emphatically. “I was down along the Washaways this morning, and they are not to be crossed without wings. You haven’t got a chance in the world, Dugdale, so you may as well tell this idiot to lower his fool gun and you come quietly with me. You’ll be making more rods for your back by carrying on.”
Dugdale sighed. He was cold, stiff, and weary. Whilst still determined to carry out Sinclair’s request, he was heartily sorry that he had ever undertaken it. It seemed preposterous that such a to-do should be made over his possession of a wallet explicitly confided to him by the dying Sinclair; but, having accepted the commission, he was not going to be daunted by the difficulties ahead of him, or the consequences of his defiance of the police.
Whilst he ate and drank, Flash Harry and the trooper maintained the tableau that might well have been labelled “Stalemate”. Never for an instant did either man’s eyes wander nor did the revolver waver. It was a pose trying enough for the stoutest nerves.
“I’ll be getting along, Harry,” Dugdale said at last. “I’m grateful for your assistance, which you might extend long enough for me to catch and saddle The Devil.”
“Well, don’t be too long,” came the drawling voice. “I always have one cigarette every half hour, and I’m sure our friend is dying for a draw, too. This ’ere act finishes directly you’re mounted, ’cos we must give the trooper a sporting chance. Now, about that there bet, it’s a level chance—”
Dugdale was compelled to smile on hearing the half sentence when crossing to the night paddock gate. Yet he wasted no time. Knowing that the paddock in area was only about three hundred acres, he started to cross it quickly with the intention of getting beyond the rider’s mounts and driving them into the catching yards. But luck favoured him for once. The two loose horses were not fifty yards beyond the hut, being attracted to that part of the paddock by the stranger horse ridden by the trooper.
The Devil was a gigantic black gelding, of uncertain temper but of unquestionable courage; and it was almost dark when Dugdale had him saddled and led him towards the hut door after allowing Tiger to go in search of grass.
Flash Harry was as good as his word
. Immediately Dugdale was astride The Devil, his gun dropped and the trooper rushed out and dashed for his horse. Out upon the track the black stretched his glossy neck and laid himself out into a hard gallop.
It can be truthfully said that most men are but indifferent bushmen on a dark night. Some there are, however, who can ride a straight course home when caught out in their paddocks after daylight has gone; but one bushman here and there is no less efficient on the blackest night than under the brightest sun. Dugdale was one of these latter, and an added advantage to his keen night vision was absolute knowledge of every single acre of the Barrakee run.
Knowing that the Washaways were aflood, he realized that the point of his attempted crossing would best be about a mile below the main track, where many of the interwoven creeks formed but three separate channels. The flood having risen to the level of the creek banks, there would be no possibility of fording them, and, whilst the width of the streams was no more than sixty yards, the danger would lie in even a good horse being unable to land on the precipitous banks.
He could hear the trooper’s horse thundering along behind him, and found that he could maintain the distance between them without allowing The Devil a slack rein. That was all to the good, because the fresher in wind and muscle The Devil was when they reached the creeks the greater the chances of safely crossing them.
Five miles along the track they came to a wire fence and a gate. Dugdale saw no necessity for putting his horse at either fence or gate, and, with a quiet smile, he dismounted and opened wide the two gates. He was through them and in his saddle when the trooper swept up.
“Now, Dugdale, stop the foolery and submit,” ordered the trooper, bringing out his heavy calibre revolver and kneeing his horse towards The Devil who, under pressure, sidled away.
“Be a sport, Smithy!” coaxed Dugdale. “I opened the gate for you, and I want to shut the gate because the sheep in the two paddocks will get boxed, and Mr Thornton has enough on his hands already without having to draft about nine thousand sheep. Let one of us dismount and shut the gates while the other stands by. Once both are mounted again we stand a level chance.”
The Barrakee Mystery Page 22