Arthur Upfield - The bushman who came back

He was glad to remove the boards from his feet and pause for a smoke, and it was something of a shock to realize that his interest in these surroundings had subjugated the purpose of the journey. Where the pad met the dry patch, the dogs had scratched their paws clean of mud.

Having rested, he returned to the pad, noting once again that his board tracks were exceedingly light, and when examining the depressions with his fingertips, he learned that the resilience of the mud would within hours entirely obliterate them. That the pad itself remained clear was due to the number of dogs that had used it since water covered the mud so long ago.

This dry patch of only a few yards wide and a hundred in length was a resting place, as he himself was using it. The marks of claws on the hard surface proved that. It was perhaps four miles from the shore, now distorted by the mirage creating wide rivers in the declivities, and vast lakes between the slopes of gibber-covered uplands. Vast sheets of ‘water’ lay about, the mud surface visible only within a radius of half a mile.

Not only dogs, but crows had rested on this ‘island’ in the mirage. And not only crows had stayed a little while, gone on. Two spent matches told of human visitation. The matches told him nothing but that… which was most satisfying.

To leave this patch of hard land was as easy as to arrive, there being only the one pad. Refreshed, Bony fastened the mud shoes and continued along this highway of the dingoes, the mirage receding before him, and ever flowing after him, the immediate surround always the same-flat, uniform of colouring, the top surface lifted to brittle pieces of crisp mud crust. A journey deadly monotonous, were it not for the little mysteries.

Why did the pad turn sharply to the right, continue in that direction for a quarter mile, again turn left, to continue the overall course to the east? Why did it proceed for three miles more straight than a man-made path, and then zigzag over a full mile? There was nothing which could be seen to account for this.

The day wore on, and he was beginning to wonder what kind of night he would spend if he had to camp on this narrow dog pad, when again the pad angled sharply. It had reached the border of a large area pitted by open holes the size of a florin. The dogs had not crossed it, had skirted it, and he saw why when a green finger emerged from one of the holes, beckoned to him, sank again into the mud. Then while he watched, other green fingers appeared, beckoned, and disappeared.

Curiosity was suddenly submerged by desire to get away from this place of the unknown; the beckoning fingers became the miasma of a nightmare, and the board shoes the leaden feet of it.

An hour later he was thankful to reach another patch of bone-dry mud, to rest and take stock of his progress. The sun said four o’clock. There was no landmark, and how far out in the lake he had come it was not possible to assess.

This hard patch was about an acre in extent, and having rested his aching muscles, he strolled over it and found evidence of a dingo rest, and again the spent matches. Of human tracks there were none, the ground being too hard to register any.

He decided to spend the night here, although he could not dismiss from his mind those sinister green fingers. He was less concerned by his food supply than by the three pints of water he now carried in the canvas bag.

Since daybreak he had consumed one pint, and, despite the aid of the pebble he had sucked all day, he felt this was the minimum for existence. The aborigines could live for a week and more on half a gallon of water, but not D. I. Bonaparte with his preference for countless cups of tea.

Until the sun went down, it was not possible to see land, and Bony occupied time by testing for water under the mud. He had found a short swathe of tree debris, among which was a four-foot stick, and although he didn’t find water even by seepage, he did uncover the mystery of the erratic course of the dingo pad. The true bottom of Lake Eyre was not flat, as the surface of the mud overlay indicated, but rather was similar to the sea bottom, with its valleys and hills and mountains. The dogs followed the summit of ridges, and the two areas of hardened mud merely covered the tops of subterranean hillocks; and that area of mud from which upthrust those extraordinary green fingers must mark a valley or chasm.

The mirage ebbed, to form long silver strips, and these shallows disappeared slowly, to vanish entirely when the huge red fireball tipped the distant uplands. There was the land ten miles away, and there was an object three miles away which certainly was a moving human being.

Seated on the hard mud, his arms clasping his knees, Bony watched and waited for the being to identify himself. Slowly colour faded from the sky, and the lake revealed all its true starkly drab and loathsome self, from which the sky blenched. As the minutes passed, the figure on the mud appeared to be no nearer, and yet was following the pad by which he had travelled. The dusk deepened, and there was no skyline, no background to gain a silhouette and so learn whether the person was white or black.

When half a mile from Bony, when he could dimly follow movement, the figure stopped, stood for a few seconds, finally sank to the pad. It was obvious that the man did not know of this second resting place, and had decided to park himself before darkness blinded him to the depths of mud either side of him.

For a space, Bony lay on his back looking at the unwinking stars, only those of the first dimension able to penetrate the high level haze. Restless, he sat again, smoked cigarette after cigarette, being careful to shield the flame of matches, and knowing it wasn’t his match flares that had determined the follower to walk that pad in the dark.

He heard the impact of mud with shoe one minute before the figure emerged from the darkness to reach the island in the mud and give vent to a sigh of satisfaction. The figure stooped tounstrap the boards, and then its identity was revealed.

Bony chuckled.

“Welcome, wife!” he called. “Welcome!”

He advanced, struck a match, saw the dark eyes meeting his own above the tiny flame. She stood silent, waiting for reprimand, making no movement when he slipped behind her and eased from her back the rope slings holding the laden sugar sack.

“Your eyes are better than mine, Meena, but I am sure your legs ache more than mine do.”

“I thought you would be angry,” she said, and obeyed when he suggested she sit with him. “Are you?”

“Not at the moment. Why did you come?”

“Yorky has a rifle.”

“I have, too.”

“Yorky is a dead shot, Inspector.”

“You may call me Bony. I am a dead shot, too.”

“Yorky might kill Linda. I came to stop him.”

“Well, leave it. When did you eat last?”

“Before I left Mount Eden.”

“Then you must eat before you explain, and before I become angry, if I do. And, somehow, Meena, I cannot believe I shall ever be angry with you.”

The starlight emphasized the vastness of this place in which was no security against natural forces, no protection from unknown powers. The wind came softly, in fitful little gusts, bringing scents unknown to them, and strangely repellent. Presently, Meena said:

“What were those green things coming up out of the mud?”

“Whatever they were, I feared them,” admitted Bony.

“Could be Carlinka,” the girl said, and when Bony pressed for information, she went on: “Story told by Canute. In the Alchuringa Days three blackfellers out hunting met a giant centipede. The centipede said: ‘Don’t kill me. I’m Carlinka.’ So they didn’t kill him. They turned him over on his back and scooped sand over him. They found they couldn’t cover him properly because his legs waved about so much, and then a dingo came along and said he’d help, and he did by scratching up the sand till all they could see of Carlinka was the tips of his feet wiggling about.”