Arthur Upfield - The bushman who came back

The reddish light gleamed on her shoulders and naked breasts, her slim arms, and was reflected by her eyes. He knew himself to be old only in pride bidding him to remember not what he was, but who he was. When he spoke his voice was unnecessarily harsh.

“Now tell me why you came.”

“It’s like I told you, true. Yorky has a rifle. So have you. You’re a policeman, like Constable Pierce. You go after Yorky. When Yorky sees you and fires, telling you to go away, you won’t because you’re a policeman. You will fire back if Yorky doesn’t give up. And he won’t. And there’s Linda. Sarah kidded Canute to tell about Yorky and Linda camped in the middle of the lake, and Canute told Sarah Yorky could stop all the policemen in the world from getting him. So I came to talk to Yorky. Better to talk than shoot.”

“Much better, Meena,” agreed Bony. “Who made your Kurdaitcha shoes?”

“That Charlie.” Meena looked down and smiled. “Me and Sarah told him. He wouldn’t at first, but we made him. Sarah was in a tantrum. We found Charlie hiding in the motor shed, and after a little time he made the mud shoes for me, all right.”

“The men, what were they doing when you left?”

“They were all gone. Constable Pierce came and went away with Mr Wootton. Like you said on the radio, they went to catch Yorky coming off the lake. The men rode away before Mr Wootton. The men took their guns, too. I heard Harry tell the others to shoot Yorky on sight.”

The quivering voice was an entity fleeing away into the silence, and presently it came again.

“You don’t know Yorky, Ins… Bony. Yorky wasn’t cruel to anyone. He never treated us aborigines like dirt. He was kind to everyone. He’s the kindest whitefeller who ever was, not a dingo to be hunted and shot.”

“Are you sure it was Harry Lawton who urged the others to shoot him on sight?” pressed Bony. And when she answered affirmatively, he said: “Take it easy. We have to be on that dog pad at first sight of dawn.”

The Corpse of The Past

THEYWEREfour miles on to the east when the sun blotted from that quarter the endless rusty mud and began hastily to lay the mirage over the putrescence of its own creation. It had been comparatively straight going, proving the dogs followed submerged ridges, when sharply the pad turned left towards the north and away from the glaring sun. Minutes later they saw movement at about half a mile, and stopped.

“What is it?” cried Meena, who was close behind Bony. “I don’t like it.”

A something rose and subsided erratically, never in the same place, and, without replying, Bony proceeded with his rifle more easily accessible to hand. They could see the lake floor was moving, and ultimately the pad skirted this area of disturbance. Great mud blisters rose and sank without bursting, the light glinting on them as though the skin was stretched taut with pus. There was no evidence indicative of thermal forces agitating this area of several square miles of turbulence.

“Go on, Bony. Don’t wait here. I don’t like this place,” Meena urged.

Far away something rose above the general level which was no blister. It was like a wave running end-forward, then abruptly it turned towards them and drew close in zigzag fashion. It suggested the movement of a great reptile swiftly passing under the mud which rose to curve away from its back. There was certainly no solidity anywhere except that under their feet. The wave thing skirted their end of the area and slowly sank among the recurring blisters.

“What’s doing it, Bony?” Meena whispered, but Bony merely shrugged and pressed on. What could he, the big-feller policeman, say in answer to so simple a question? How to explain something apparently behaving in opposition to natural laws? How to explain those green fingers? Or to bring logic to bear on the rotting corpse of This-Sea-That-Was?

The pad skirted the area for more than a mile, and twice the whale-like bank of mud rose and moved with astonishing speed as though the mass were a living thing. Merely a quarter mile from them, a hill of mud rose many feet, to disintegrate as though from internal combustion.

The sky was white, the sun itself tawny, and the wind came to hurry them onward to safety from this blistered menace. A possible explanation, in Bony’s opinion, was that this area of deep mud was agitated by water pouring into the northeast section of the lake, thus creating pressure and stress, and were this so, then danger to themselves was to be reckoned with.

He gained another opinion later when skirting a small area of liquid mud bearing distinct traces of oil. The wind then was so strong that the surface was ridged with sluggish ripples.

When the sun wassearingly hot on their backs, they came to the next dingo rest. Both were physically exhausted and disturbed by the implications of the mud’s behaviour, for should the water rise to cover the surface, the dog pad would disappear, and they would be engulfed.

“Two hours ago I urged you to go back. I do so now,” Bony said, and all the reaction he produced in the girl was a slow smile and a negative shake of the head.

“Yorky and Linda are somewhere out here,” she reminded him. “And I wouldn’t go back past those things for anything. You don’t seem to mind, though.”

“I mind all right, Meena. I’m not liking this at all.”

“I know. If there was a wall of fire half a mile on, you’d go straight through it instead of going back. The Missioner told us that pridegoeth before a fall. I hope you don’t fall.”

“We haven’t that kind of pride, you no more than I. You and I are merely animated shells crammed with fears and inhibitions, humility and pride. What white people might name courage is in us instinctive revolt against the abyss for ever opening at our feet. We must not fail. We dare not think of failure. So we must go on, even if we have to travel right across this abominable lake.”

They ate slowly. Sips of water immediately issued from them in the form of perspiration, the natural bodily function having ceased since leaving Mount Eden. For a little while they lay with their faces pressed into folded arms to give relief from the glare to eyes sore and heavy.

“You don’t really think Yorky shot Mrs Bell?” Meena asked without raising her head.

“No. But don’t ask me why he bolted with Linda. I couldn’t answer that.”

“D’youknow who did shoot her?”

“One of two men, possibly. It could be one of five men, but I think it’s one of two.”

“Which two, Bony?”

“It is now three hours to sundown, Siren. We should press on and hope to reach another dog rest before darkness stops us.”

“All set. I’m ready.”

She was lacing her mud shoes when he raised himself and blinked against the fierce light. He offered to carry her store of food, but she refused. She stood straight and strong, and the beauty of her body defeated the grime and dust and mud flakes adhering to it. Over her deep-gold face was the smile again, a smile of daring, with a dash of inscrutable woman.

Now and then she watched him pushing on ahead, seemingly making light of the gear he carried and finding no difficulty with the boards, and, as with their maternal forebears, both possessed that rare ability of closing their minds to physical discomfort and concentrating only on the important matter of arriving.

They came to a break in the pad of several yards, and after tentatively testing the surface, managed to cross by hurrying. Another area was pocked by mounds two feet high, and from the mounds came sucking and gurgling sounds. Bony, having heard and seen the giant earthworms of Gippsland, wondered how enormous must these worms be, if worms did produce the sounds and the surface casts.