Arthur Upfield - The bushman who came back

Canute stood, saying:

“Let me know with my hands.”

Bony stood, removed his shirt, and the old man’s fingers traced the cicatrices on his back and chest. Then his fingers traced his features, and finally his hands to each fingertip. That being done, Bony resumed his shirt and they sat.

“Long time ago you sealed to Worcair people. Now you white-feller policeman,” pronounced Canute. After a long silence he asked: “What you want from Orrabunna men?”

“Two spirit people made by Charlie and given to Linda Bell.”

Canute again fell silent, and before Murtee spoke Bony knew that to the Medicine Man the buck had been passed.

Murtee stroked the thin grey beard falling from his lean face.

“Ole Fren Yorky and Meena have gone up to the sky. Mr Wootton and Missus Bell no good for sky. They make sky fall down.”

“Who took them from the playhouse along at homestead?”

“Kurdaitcha Man. I look into little fire and Kurdaitcha Man tell me. Kurdaitcha Man and spirit Meena and Ole Fren Yorky, all go up into sky?”

“Kurdaitcha Man, liar, eh!” charged Bony. “Ole Fren Yorky go up into sky maybe, but Meena still here. What for Kurdaitcha Man not take Meena up into sky, but take Spirit Meena up into sky?”

That was as far as he progressed. First Murtee and then Canute pushed him back over the gulf separating the two races, and began to treat him as a white visitor.

Murtee laughed as though amused. Canute chuckled mechanically. The other men smiled and joked among themselves. They wiggled their toes, bunched shoulders, scratched their arms. They occupied their side of the gulf, and Bony the side where stand the white men who actually believe the aborigines are ludicrous savages.

“What say you hand those dolls back to Mr Wootton to look after for Linda?” Bony suggested, and old Canute chuckled again and cheerfully denied any one of his people had taken them. Murtee shrugged, stroked his beard.

“Charlie’s ole dolls not in this camp. The ole dolls belong to Linda. Perhaps some day Linda come back, then she want them,” observed Murtee, laughing, without the slightest cause to laugh. Canute almost rolled over, such was his spurious front, and the others copied his lead. Bony laughed with them, making them uneasy because unsure if his merriment was real or mockery. Their faces grew swiftly serious when he leaned forward to the fire and withdrew several burning sticks, which he placed with flaming ends together, to form a separate fire.

Before this small fire he squatted, and across his bunched knees he rested a forearm, and with a metal tobacco box he rubbed his forehead, as though it were a magic churinga stone, before sinking his face to the forearm. They became distinctly uneasy, for Bony’s spirit might well be about to leave his body and talk with the Kurdaitcha Man up in the sky. Murtee whispered, and Canute thus followed the act. Referring to the Medicine Man living near Boulia where he had but recently been on investigation, Bony lifted his head, saying:

“Boulia feller, called Eruki, he been tell me he told you long time ago I was coming to Mount Eden. So you been talking to Eruki up in the sky. What say you now talk to Ole Fren Yorky and tell him to bring Linda Bell back to Mount Eden? All you blackfellers good fellers. You all been looking for tracks. Now you sit down and talk magic, like you talk magic to Eruki. You send your spirit, Canute, and your spirit, Murtee, up into sky to talk with Kurdaitcha Man. Tell him to come down and into Ole Fren Yorky and make him bring Linda back.”

They were again images, ebony images with opal flashing eyes. As he had confused five white men that morning, so now he left the black men equally confused. Rising to his feet, he stared down into each pair of flickering eyes, and then left the camp and passed into the wall of dark night.

If you cannot create a tree, plant a seed.

As soundlessly as he had approached the camp, he departed from it, and he had almost gained the road when a singular noise halted him. It was followed by another he could not tab, and, crouching to the ground to gain a skyline, he saw two figures under a low tree bordering the track. A man and a woman were facing each other. They were holding hands and swaying backward and forward like children playing.

Silhouetted against a dull screen, they were sharply etched nevertheless. The man freed the woman’s hands and then thrust his hands forward, palms upward like cups. The cups touched the woman’s breasts, and she lashed out and smacked the man’s face. The man laughed, though the blow must have been painful, and then he sprang forward and clasped the woman, whose face was tilted to take his kisses.

Bony veered to the left, silently walked parallel with the track until he was sure his retreat was unobserved.

“Well, well, and well, well!” he breathed. “Romantic Byron! Who listens once will listen twice; her heart be sure is not of ice, and one refusal no rebuff.”

Much Ado About a Bloodstain

THEFOLLOWINGmorning when Meena waited at the breakfast table, she placed the food before Wootton and Bony efficiently and with no trace of either nervousness or servility. Her large dark eyes never once met those of the guest, however, and yet there was no apparent avoidance, no revelation of consciousness of the visit to her camp. When she had departed for the kitchen Wootton asked:

“What’s your programme today?”

“Oh, I have to contact Pierce,” casually replied Bony. “First, though, I would like to talk with William Harte before he leaves for the day’s work. You won’t mind?”

“Not at all.” Wootton brushed his moustache with his napkin. “As I said yesterday, anything any of us can do. Did you inquire about the missing dolls at the blacks’ camp last night?”

It was a natural question, Bony having been absent from the homestead, and in view of the talk in the playhouse about the dolls.

“Yes, I did,” he replied. “I talked to Canute and his Medicine Man. Put it to them straight about the dolls. They both said they knew nothing, and were sure no one of their people had stolen them.”

“It must have been one of them, or one of us five white men,” argued Wootton. “No one else has been around the place since Harte last saw the dolls on the bench. As someone said yesterday, Yorky could have come back for them, but that would have been rather risky for him, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t the blacks have known?”

“Likely enough to both questions.”

“Then you think the blacks know where Yorky is hiding out?”

“Yes and no to that one, Mr Wootton.” Bony smiled disarmingly, adding, “You have not been long enough in this country to know that to hasten is to crawl, and to crawl is to hasten.”

“But the child, Inspector.”

“Her condition will not be bettered or worsened at this point. Permit me to ask the questions. Tell me, Mrs Bell was shot on February 7th. Late that night the policeman and the doctor arrived. When was the body taken to Loaders Springs?”

“Next day. The doctor took it in his station wagon. She was buried at Loaders Springs.”

“Did he leave before or after the aborigines came in the trucks sent for them?”

“He left after lunch, and the trucks didn’t return till after sundown. Why all this?”

“Now, now! I ask the questions. Charlie carved the dolls’ heads and tinted the faces. Who made the clothes?”

The cattleman frowned, obviously uncertain.

“Couldn’t rightly say. Mrs Bell, I think. Might have been Meena. Shall I call her?”

“Please do.”

Without rising, Wootton called, and the girl came, to stand placidly awaiting his orders.

“Meena, who made the clothes for Mr Wootton, Mrs Bell, and Ole Fren Yorky?”