Arthur Upfield - Man of Two Tribes

A nasty day. Theabos would be reluctant to move out of their camp. Good!

Continuing the next stage, they found it necessary to lean a fraction backward to counter the pressure of the wind, and walking seemed comparatively effortless. The wall followed them, not quite at their speed, until it broke, and the ends raced forward to curve inward until other portions broke and soon short sections were racing across the Plain like squadrons of golden cavalry, some moving faster than others, and often the slowest energised to run the fastest. One mass sped past the travellers, scattering its mush after it, growing swiftly smaller until it was in turn broken into bunches which formed into great balls. And the balls of straw became rapidly smaller until, with final collapse, they flattened amid the eternal saltbush.

Thus was the disintegration of one of these mighty walls of straw, and after that there was nothing to distract the travellers’ attention from muscles beginning to complain now that the imagined danger was no more.

Bony espied a belt of bluebush some hundred yards long, a small forest of trees three feet high on the sea of saltbush, and here was found shelter from the wind, but also increased heat from the sun, and small flies to torment them. Gratefully they sat on the ground, and only Maddoch assisted Bony to find dead bush with which to boil water for tea.

Jenks cursed the flies, and Riddell declared he would go no farther this day, no matter what the flies did. Bony smiled at Maddoch, and Maddoch tried to return the smile but failed.

“Make a cigarette for Myra,” Bony asked him, and squatted beside the fire and rolled one for himself.

They must have come eight miles. Eight added to nine totalled seventeen. Those swathes of straw mush would obliterate what tracks they could not avoid making, also the broken bush his companions had left without thought that eagle eyes might see and read the tale. They were still not far enough from jail to be safe from the warders.

The discomforts of this noon camp would, he hoped, be allies, and when the meal had been eaten, he relaxed and waited for the allies to do the prodding, permitting the fire to die when the smoke of it would have kept the flies at bay. He lay with his eyes closed, and pictured the Plain dwarfed to map reading size, and placed imaginary pins to mark Patsy Lonergan’s camps, and that far eastward position of the caverns. He had set out with the intention of following the third leg of a triangle, and he was confident that he was doing just this, the objective being Bumblefoot Hole, where there was water and a little food, and certain shelter.

To locate Bumblefoot Hole would be to find the needle in the stack, but there was that ‘rock’, that point of high land beyond the horizon which would presently give him a bearing, provided he could bring its shape to coincide with the mental picture he had retained.

The Plain was presenting a new face to this first of the summer windstorms. Coming down from the vast desert lands, it bore a light-brown dust which foreshortened still farther the encircling horizon, which painted the sun light red, which tinted with soft purple thesaltbush, and the bluebush it shadowed royal blue. The sky was white, like the belly of a shark. And the wind was silent, save where it hissed past the ears, and this sound seemed to be within the mind, and the pressure of it against the body was as a thrust by the unseeable and the unknowable.

Riddell began to shout, and Bony opened his eyes to see the big man flailing his arms and fighting the flies, the filth of a nation streaming from his mouth in the frenzy of his desperation. Brennan said something, and in an instant they were exchanging blows. Myra looked at Bony and shrugged. Maddoch came to crouch before Bony. Tears were sliding down his dusty face and forming rivulets of light red paint. Flies were glued to the corners of his mouth, and were crawling into his nose and the corners of his eyes.

“We’ll have to go back,” he cried. “The caverns are better than this.”

“You go forward, not backward, Clifford,” Bony said sternly. “There can be no going back.”

“But this… I had no idea, Inspector.”

Inspector! It belonged surely to a previous incarnation, and he wanted to correct it, to insist that he was ‘Bony’ to his friends, and he remembered then that respect, even fear, must go with command.

“What are those lunatics fighting about?” he asked coldly. Maddoch turned to watch when the combatants were separated by the stocky Jenks ambling between them and turning about as though no tax had been levied on his physical strength, to walk between them again.

“We may as well go on,” Bony called. “We’ll take it easy, and hope for a hole or a cave to camp in for the night. What about it?”

He risked the friendly question, yet was confident of their answer. Almost eagerly they agreed, and he handed his blanket roll to Riddell, andhimself carried the half-full water drum.

The morale-slaying Plain took them instantly to itself, for they were like mariners leaving safe anchorage when leaving the belt of bluebush. No ship under them, no steel walls about them. Soon there was no place to leave astern and no place to steam ahead.

There was only the nightmarish uniformity of flat plain kept steady by a cloudless sky. You can ride a camel, a horse, a jeep, and close your mind to this Nullarbor, find exquisite relief in the cinema programme the mind will screen. But on your feet, you have to walk with eyes open and the mind naked to reality.

And when the sun said: “I’ve had enough of looking at you,” and turned to more interesting insects below, they had no cave, no hole in the ground, no bluebush amid which to crouch. The sky caught fire from the sun’s hot trail and the high-flung dust wove mighty draperies of scarlet before Space, shutting it out, as though blown upon by Evil itself. The colour in the folds deepened to magenta, then to black, and finally blessed night came.

One tiny spark glowed in the darkness, tended by a man who pushed together the ends of burning sticks. About him lay the blanket-cocooned figures of restless sleepers. He was contented, not by food but by the miles he had brought those restless sleepers, this day which was thankfully ended.

The Lucky Man

THEsun rose with a bound and looked at them suspiciously. From somewhere centre of the Nullarbor to its western edgelay six narrow shadows, and a seventh which petered out at about a mile. The seventh shadow was cast by Lucy.

There was no wind. No clouds. The air was cool, and there were no flies. It was one of those days when you wonder what the heck you are doing just where day found you. You wake, you stand up, and there you are. You wonder where you came from and where you are going. But the point is that if you are going anywhere at all, it will be by way of your sore feet which are somewhere at the end of your aching legs.

Bony inspected not detectives, but a bedraggled and dejected squad. He had to refasten Maddoch’s blanket roll, and retie Myra’s blanket shoe, and sling the half-empty water drum to sit comfortably into the small of his back. The squad wanted to remain there for several hours. Maddoch urged the return to the caverns.

“We are heading for a large depression named Bumblefoot Hole,” was Bony’s bait, “where there is water, plenty of it, and stores I left on my way north. We can camp there for a week if necessary. Now we have to keep moving because our only water supply is diminishing. So, come on!”

The girl followed after him, and Brennan again was the rear link. Presently, Brennan began: “Left, right, left, right, left… left… left.” That helped quite a lot, and when Myra broke into ‘Tipperary’ and all joined in, it was better still. At the end of the first hour, their spirits had risen, to sink again when they realised that the rest-halt was exactly the same as the breakfast camp, only there were no empty tins or fire ash. And at the next halt they merely halted. Company awaited them at the third hour’s halt-a colony of jerboa rats.