Arthur Upfield - The bushman who came back

“No. Mr Wootton is a careful man, my mother says.”

He set her down on the hard beach, and thankfully removed his mud shoes. Yorky and Meena were looking up at the laughing Charlie standing on the sand ridge, a white handkerchief about his neck.

Behind the ridge a white man sat with his knees hunched and his face resting on his arms. There was blood on the crown of his head. His rifle lay a dozen feet away, a Winchester.

“Is this the friend you were telling us about, Yorky?” asked Bony, and the little man looked vaguely about before nodding.

Breaching a Wall

BEFORETHEdominant sun rose again, Bony was writing his report on the veranda at Mount Eden. He was wearing steel-blue silk pyjamas under a sky-blue dressing-gown, and although he had spent a full hour under the shower late the previous night, he had this morning showered again, and carefully tended his straight black hair.

At six a.m. through thefrench windows came Meena with tea and biscuits, and Bony found it difficult to reorientate this young woman wearing a white apron over a bright green dress, and red shoes clip-clopping on the veranda floor, with that girl in the once-white shorts who had accompanied him across miles of scabrous mud.

“Good morning, Meena! You’re looking delightfully fresh this morning. And how is Linda?”

“Like a crane with its head under a wing.” Meena smiled her own indescribable smile, which would live for ever in Bony’s memory. “Looks like she’ll sleep all day, too. What will happen to her?”

“Well, from what Mr Wootton said last night, I believe he intends to adopt Linda.”

“Make her his own little daughter! Oh, that’ll be beaut. Then she’ll be staying here for always?”

“Excepting when she will be away at school in Adelaide, and that will be some time ahead. Is Sarah happy to have Yorky back?”

This time the smile ended in gurgling laughter, and Meena managed to say:

“That Yorky! He was sitting in the kitchen after supper, and Sarah was all talk, talking at him. Suddenly he was fast asleep, andd’you know what? She picked him up like he was Linda and carried him to her room and put him to bed. And crying all the time, after all she said she’d do to him.”

“And did I see you and Charlie holding hands on the truck last night coming back from that hut?”

“I had to let him for a little while. Then old Murtee told him to stop. He said didn’t Charlie know I was your woman, that you bought by blackfeller trade with Canute. Went crook, ole Murtee did.” The smile began and quickly vanished. “That Murtee’s a bigger wowser than the missioner.”

“Now we are gossiping, Meena. Take away this tray and leave me to my writing. And don’t forget that you are my woman, not Charlie’s.”

Gazing into his stern face, so unbalanced by the twinkle in the blue eyes, she said with siren softness:

“I’m not arguing about that, Bony.”

Bony lit another cigarette, and discovered that concentration on the report demanded effort. He was busy, however, when Sarah tapped her iron triangle, and a few minutes later the cattleman called him to breakfast.

“Feeling better for a good sleep?” Wootton asked and, on being assured, added: “What’s the drill today?”

“After breakfast, I’d like to talk to everyone,” replied Bony. “Might we have them all on the side veranda? Then we all go to Loaders Springs for statements to Constable Pierce. I told Pierce we’d be there at eleven.”

“We shall have to leave at nine.” Mr Wootton looked at Bony appealingly. “About Linda. Think you could help by supporting my application to adopt her? We spoke of it last night, remember, and Pierce was keen when he went off with his prisoner.”

“As far as I know there are no near relatives entitled to claim her. However, the authorities would have to be sure that she would be cared for properly. I have no doubt you could give that guarantee, and later today I’ll offer a few suggestions which should support you. Thank you, Meena, I’ll have bacon and soft fried eggs. Never again tinned meat. And, Meena, close the door.”

Linda had fallen asleep too confused and weary to probe Meena’s story of her mother having been bitten by a snake. She woke to find Bony sitting on the edge of the bed and nursing the replica of her mother.

“You are having breakfast in bed, Linda,” he said. “Meena is bringing it. Afterwards, we are all going to town to buy a present for Meena. But that’s a secret.”

“And see my mummy at the doctor’s? Is she better?”

“I’m afraid not. It was bad. It was too late and everyone was away at the time.”

Bony offered the doll, but what Linda saw in his eyes and face caused her to twist aside the bedclothes and seek warmer comfort in his arms. When Meena came with the breakfast tray the shock had been cushioned, and he left the child being coaxed to eat her breakfast.

Passing to the side veranda, he found Mr Wootton waiting with all his staff bar one, who was within Constable Pierce’s lock-up, and, having lit a cigarette, he said:

“It is not customary for an investigating officer to address all his original suspects at a gathering like this, but I decided to do so, chiefly because I’ve had to contend with grave obstruction built by loyalties.

“Loyalty, as you must know, is often in error, and is certainly not a virtue limited to one nation, one race or colour. About this you will agree as I proceed.

“On the morning that Mrs Bell was murdered, three men rode off to work on horses, one drove a truck for roofing-iron, and Mr Wootton left by car for town. When the men returned they found Mrs Bell shot dead, and Linda missing. It was a wild windy day, but they found tracks which they were sure were left by Yorky, and remember, before Mr Wootton returned and told them he had that morning found Yorky at the deserted aborigines’ camp.

“Then it was automatically accepted that Yorky was the murderer. Efforts were made to track him, but not until late next day could aborigines be brought back from Neales River, and sent to track Yorky early the following morning. There was only one man in everybody’s mind. Yorky. No other person was suspect, and so no other man’s tracks would have been of interest.

“On my arrival, I found universal anger that the crime had been committed, but an almost unanimous good opinion of the man who was thought to have committed it. Everyone told me that Yorky was a nice fellow, and that his last bender must have sent him crackers. Opportunity for murder was present, the means were proved, but the motive was hidden.

“What gave me furiously to think was the behaviour of the aborigines. They lost interest in tracking Yorky, gave up before it could be expected of them, in view of the fact that Yorky is a white man and that he had taken away a white child. Yorky was said to be very close to them by long association, and, were this so, then it could be assumed that they knew where he was hiding. Effort to prove this assumption gradually achieved results. I was confronted by two tasks: to find the murderer of Mrs Bell, and to locate Linda Bell.

“I don’t claim to be an anthropologist, but I do know that the aborigines in the central districts of Australia have been very much less influenced by the outside world than have the aborigines in the far north by the Melanesians and the Polynesians. These central Australian aborigines are being erroneously referred to as Stone Age men, when in fact they were thinkers and dreamers long before the Stone Age. The anthropological furrow ploughed across the Lake Eyre Basin by Spencer and Gillen at the end of the last century hasn’t since been deepened by a fraction of an inch in furthering our knowledge of this, the most ancient race. At risk of being reviled by the alleged experts in this field, I admit that I gained my first lead in my investigation from Chief Canute and his dijeridoo.