Arthur Upfield - The bushman who came back

“Any sign of Canute and his people, Bill?”

“Sort of local? Naw, Mr Wootton. They’re never to hand when wanted. They’ll be away up on the Neales by now, living on lizards and ants, going for corroborees and such like, and putting the young fellers through the hoop.”

“Charlie promised he would come back early to give a hand with the muster.”

“You’ll see Charlie when you see Meena. And that’ll be when Canute says so. He’s their boss. You can send ’emto the Mission Station, teach ’emto read and write and sing hymns, but in the end they do just what old Canute tells ’em.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Mr Wootton agreed explosively. “All right, Bill. Want anything from town?”

“Well, you could bring me acoupla pairs of them grey pants you got me last winter. Oh, an’ what about a couple of ladies’ handkerchiefs? Small ones with lace round the edges, and the letter ‘L’ in the corner. Thestore’ll have them kind. I got a sort of sister called… why, hullo, Linda, I didn’t see you.”

“You did so, Bill,” argued Linda, from whose face disappointment had been banished by joy.

“Oh, Linda!” said Mr Wootton. “Will your mother allow you to go with Arnold?”

“Mother says not to, Mr Wootton. Mother says I have to stay and help her because Meena and the others are still away.”

“I didn’t think of that, Linda. Of course you must help your mother. All right, Bill. I’ll not forget the handkerchiefs and the box of nut chocolates.”

Mr Wootton re-entered his office, and Linda accompanied Bill to the yards, where the other riders were saddling up. She watched them leave, and then went back to the house, and demurely dried breakfast dishes for her mother.

After that, lessons at the kitchen table until nine o’clock, when Mrs Bell sounded the house gong, made tea, and provided buttered scones. Mr Wootton came to the kitchen for morning tea, standing the while, and noting on a pad the items Mrs Bell needed. Linda accompanied him to the car shed, and stood watching as the dust and sun-glare took the car up into the sky over the track to Loaders Springs.

She was now free for the remainder of the morning, free to be herself, free to chide and scold and love, instead of being chided and loved. There beside the car shed was her own circular house, a circular house having canegrass walls and a canegrass thatched roof, and a wood floor three feet above ground to keep the snakes and ants out; a little house for a little girl, built by the girl’s sweethearts.

Thus far, just another day for Linda Bell.

She ran up the two steps and through the thick grass doorway to enter her house, leaving the buffeting wind outside, and meeting with calm silence. There was a real window set in the thick grass wall, and the window faced to the south, from which the cool winds of winter came. There was a table with the legs shortened, and a chair with the legs shortened. There was a rough bookstand and real books on the shelves, and on top of the stand were four dolls.

One doll was the exact likeness of her mother. Another was the image of Mr Wootton. The third was a lovely young woman with straight black hair and large dark-brown eyes, and the fourth was an elderly man with weak blue eyes, a long face, and drooping grey moustache.

Linda stood before the dolls, and said:

“Meena! What’s the date? No, it’s not February 10th, Meena. You should know the date. You went to Mission School. All right, Ole Fren Yorky, you tell me the date. February 9th! Of course it isn’t February 9th.” Linda glared at the doll with the weak blue eyes and the absurdly drooping grey moustache. She mimicked her mother: “Ole Fren Yorky, I’m asking you to tell me the date today. Oh dear! Won’t you ever learn!”

So the conversation with the four dolls continued over a wide range of subjects, including a box of chocolates with nuts on top, and lace-edged hankies with the letter L in the corner. She was seated in the chair, the dolls on the table before her. She had straightened Mr Wootton’s tie, and had combed Meena’s hair, and was intently trying to twirl points of Ole Fren Yorky’s moustache when the report of a rifle obliterated the low buzzing of the blowflies.

“Now, Ole Fren Yorky, stay still,” she scolded. “Your moustache is getting disgraceful. That’ll be Mr Wootton out there shooting the crows. You know very well how naughty they are, and have to be shot sometimes.”

Ole Fren Yorky wouldn’t be still, and Linda had to concentrate on gaining compliance with her efforts. Minutes later, she remembered that Mr Wootton had left an hour before for Loaders Springs. A tiny frown puckered her dark brows. She pushed Ole Fren Yorky to one side, and had put her hands to the table to push her chair away from it, when there appeared in the doorway the original Ole Fren Yorky.

Terror leaped upon her. The man’s weak blue eyes were now hot and blazing. He ran forward, a light swag at his back, a rifle in his left hand. Linda sprang out of the chair, and then found herself unable to move. A bare arm gripped her about the waist and she was lifted. She opened her mouth to scream, and her face was pressed hard into a sweaty chest, and no longer was it just another day.

Murder in Eden

UNTILFOURo’clock it was just another day for Arnold Bray.

Like many big men, Bray was deliberate in thought as well as action, and this led people to believe him to be slow in both. Under thirty, he received the respect of men of his class much older than himself, and from men much younger who noted his powerful physique.

He was that asset to all pastoral properties-the man of all trades, and it was quite unnecessary for Wootton to advise him how to remove iron sheets from a roof. The building to which he drove this day was situated some twelve miles from the Mount Eden homestead, and had been used as a shearing shed in a period when sheep were reared, only to be severely attacked by wild dogs. In this land where rust is reduced to a minimum by the dry atmosphere, the roof iron was worth salvaging.

By three o’clock Arnold had removed enough iron for a sound load, and, having lashed it securely from the high wind he would encounter on leaving this shelter amid tall blue gums, he took time to boil water and brew a quart pot of tea. It was three-thirty when he called the dogs into the truck cabin and started for the homestead.

Once beyond the trees, the wind buffeted the load and made steering on the narrow and little-used track something of a task. The truck hummed powerfully as it moved up a long and gradual slope to the summit of the highlands, which were never more than two hundred feet above the lowlands marked so clearly by creek and swamp and depression. Here on the bare slopes lay vast areas of ironstone gibbers, closely packed like cobbles, evenly laid into the cement base of earth-clay, and so polished by the wind-driven sand grains that they reflected the sunlight in a glassy glare.

Here, this day, earth and sky merged without an horizon. Arnold could not have seen the summit of the long slope had he looked for it, so masked was this world of open space and wind and dust by the distortion of sunlight. A tall solitary tree became a mere broken sapling; a boulder reached in a few seconds had appeared to be a dozen miles distant; what had seemed to be a barrier of sand was actually a faint fold in the earth.

Abruptly, in front of Arnold’s truck was the homestead; the square of buildings, the line of pines, the braked windmills, all like a picture left upon the floor and covered with the dust of years-long neglect. Yet the homestead was two hundred feet below the truck, and a mile away.

The wind was blowing to the truck, a gusty wind which stockmen would find slightly unpleasant, not unbearable. The two dogs squatting on the seat beside the driver were happy until but half a mile from the homestead. Then, at the same time, both tensed, began sniffing, finally joined in a chorus of low lament.