Arthur Upfield - The bushman who came back

“Murtee tell me I track you, I see where you go and what you do,” replied Charlie, still sullen.

“But you were working for the station.”

“I told Boss I was sick.”

“What did Mr Wootton say?”

“Nothing. But he put Bill Harte on to tracking me, see if I was sick.” Charlie laughed. “Soon lost Bill Harte.”

“How do you know Mr Wootton put Bill Harte on to you?”

“I seen Billridin ’ slow-like behind me. He was keeping to cover.”

“And Mr Wootton told Bill Harte to track you? How do you know that?”

“Hemusta. Bill never heard me tell Boss I was sick.”

“All right, leave that. Murtee told you to track me along. Why did he tell you to do that?”

“Dunno. Murtee Medicine Man.”

“Has Murtee got Linda’s dolls?”

The question certainly surprised Charlie, and Meena said:

“Course not. Linda’s dolls are in her playhouse.”

“Two of them are. Ole Fren Yorky and Meena are not. They’re gone. Someone took them. Who?”

“No blackfeller took ’em,” asserted Charlie, and Meena watched him like a suspicious wife. She said:

“I’ll tell Sarah. Sarah’ll find out. Maybe Mr Wootton, or one of the men took them. Them dolls belonged to Linda.”

“Too right,” agreed Charlie. “I made ’em.”

“Where are Yorky and Linda? You tell me.”

Reaction to this question satisfied Bony for the moment. He put another searcher.

“How many trucks went up to the Neales for your trackers?”

“Two. Arnold and Jim Holly from over Wandirna.”

“You all came back on those trucks?”

“All the men, and some of the lubras. Meena and Sarah and others.”

“Well, then, who stayed behind, to walk back?”

Charlie rolled off a dozen names, including Canute, and further questioning disclosed a doubt in Charlie’s mind that Murtee was in the camp when the trucks came. He had not returned to the homestead on either of the trucks, both Charlie and Meena were sure. They saw Murtee two days afterwards in the camp by the creek. Canute was there, too, and they spent most of every day rubbing churinga stones against their foreheads and squatting over a little fire well apart from the others.

“When you got back, Meena, what did you do? Go tracking for Yorky, too?”

“No. Sarah was put to cooking at the homestead, me to help her and look after the house. Plenty of people about then.”

“You don’t know where Yorky and Linda went?”

Meena shook her head.

“Does Sarah know?”

Again the girl replied negatively.

“Does Canute know?”

Shutters fell before her eyes. One moment they were expressive, the next moment they were blank. Charlie was frowning, and when Bony looked his way, the shutters had dropped too. Silence reigned about the fire. Above, the heavy silence was disturbed by the conversation of a wedge of ducks.

Bony pretended not to notice the fallen shutters, and went on with his questions. At once the shutters were raised and he was again receiving co-operation. He learned that Mr Wootton had not been chasing Mrs Bell. That Arnold hadn’t been making up to her. That William Harte had ‘put it on her’ to marry him, and that Harry Lawton said he was going to push his luck. He learned, too, that Wootton had threatened to sack Harry Lawton if he went on baiting Ole Fren Yorky, imitating his voice and his peculiar manner of walking. Knowing the answer, he asked:

“Did you see Mrs Bell after she was shot?”

Both shook their heads vigorously.

“Wasn’t she shot in the back?”

Both brightened at being able to answer in the affirmative.

“Made a nasty mess of her blouse, so Constable Pierce told me.”

They agreed with Constable Pierce, and nonchalantly, Bony made a mark on the ground-a question mark. On looking at them, his brows raised, they nodded.

“You never saw her,” he said. “Howd’you know?”

And the shutters fell again.

Prodding The Enemy

ONROUSINGfrom an early cat-nap, the Three Sisters told Bony the time was about midnight. There were wild ducks on the bore-created pond, and he was puzzled by what could possibly interest them in water where no weeds could grow, and spent a lazy moment in reaching the conclusion that they were resting. Far away a cow bellowed, and, even farther than the cow, a pack of dingoes broke into a howling chorus.

The night was still and warm. Nearer him than the fire, Meena lay sleeping on her side, her head resting on an arm. By the pack-saddle, Charlie slept, lying on his back, his head resting on the ground. Bony dozed off again, and when he stirred next time, the Three Sisters said it was five o’clock, and dawn was tinting the east pale sea-green.

The billy was half full of the last tea brew, and this Bony heated by placing the can on the broken-open fire embers. Sipping the blue-black tea, and chain-smoking what he had the audacity to call cigarettes, he squatted over the red embers as his maternal ancestors had done, feeling about him the influences of five hundred generations ofCanutes andMurtees, and their Charlies andMeenas.

He was concerned this morning by the points of conversation of the previous evening, for all the points when welded strongly indicated aboriginal participation in what appeared to be a crime in which only white people were involved.

It could be claimed that no crime committed by a white person on or against another white person in this Lake Eyre Basin could be unknown by the aborigines, for there are many who believe that nothing can happen without aboriginal knowledge, whether it be the death of an eagle or the changed shape of a sand dune. In strong support of this contention was the fact that Canute, blind as he was, saw with the eye of his mind the shape of the bloodstain on the back of the murdered woman. Canute had passed that knowledge to others of his tribe by, or with the assistance of, his dijeridoo, at the same time passing it to Bony, who had been present. Before that moment of receiving the blurred picture, which to others nearer to Canute would be clear as crystal, Bony had seen no photograph of it, nor read a description of it in any report.

It was an item of information known by Canute when he and his tribe were all supposed to be fifty miles from the scene of the crime, and as nothing can reside in a man’s mind unless drawn into it from outside, from whom had he received the description of a bloodstain roughly in the form of a question mark?

When Bony had bluntly asked the man and the woman still sleeping nearby how Canute knew of that mark, shutters fell. They might now know how or from whom Canute was informed, but they did know he had been so informed, and they could have gained their knowledge in the same way and at the same time that Bony had. They would not question Canute, would accept the fact that he knew, and be content to ignore something which did not concern them.

Then why had Canute passed the knowledge to his followers? Was it to impress upon them his authority, and to confirm a ruling he and his Medicine Man had proclaimed? Where are Yorky and Linda Bell, those two sleepers had been asked, and the shutters had fallen swiftly as though he might read the answer in unguarded eyes.

This would account for lack of evidence of concern about the fate of Linda Bell. It would support the opinion that the interest of the aborigines in tracking the man and the child waned long before it could reasonably be expected to do. For your aborigine is the greatest child lover of all human races, and Bony was sure that Yorky would have been tracked right to the tip of Cape York had he murdered Linda Bell.

The rested ducks skittered across the glass-like surface of the small lake, to take off on the next leg of their journey, and within minutes it would be full light. Standing, Bony gazed on the sleeping lovers who dared not defy the authority governing their hearts and minds, and he was compelled to admire the degree of discipline to which they had been brought, and to pity them for the freedom thus denied them. He took a towel to the water, stripped and walked to the centre of the small lake, when it but reached his knees, and lowered himself into it and watched the changing lights in the sky above.