Arthur Upfield - Man of Two Tribes

“It was as well I was tossed down among you, Mark.”

“Yair. I’ll tell you something, Inspector, although it’s not up my alley, and the blokes in Goulburn would call me for everything. The rock Mitski was killed with, Myra found on her bed the same morning. Told me she found it, anyway. I chucked it down Fiddler’s Leap.”

He had chucked it down Fiddler’s Leap-the blunt instrument of murder. Just like that. Why? Because the blokes in Goulburn would call him for everything if he aided a police officer. Now for the confidence, when association in hardship and unity of objective was breaking down one loyalty and building another.

“Was there blood on the rock?” Bony asked.

“Yair. A smear in one place. It killed Mitski all right.”

“When did Myra discover the rock on her bed?”

“When, Inspector?”Brennan frowned under compulsion to exercise his mind. “She did say, ’cosI asked her. I know. It was after she’d done the breakfast things.”

“She didn’t mention it to me, Mark.”

“I told her not to.”

“Why?”

“Oh, you know how it is. Blimey! You must know.”

“Perhaps I do. Whoever murdered Mitski tried to place the blame on Myra. Unless Myra committed the murder and told you a tale about finding the rock on her bed.”

“Could be either way, Inspector. Why worry at it? Mitski’s dead. Body’s well down under. Let it lie, let it lie.”

They joined the party and Bony explained that Brennan had been attacked by giddiness. No one said anything, but the expression he caught in the eyes of the girl and Maddoch told him they understood what he meant, and warned him they would need watching.

Forward. Effort without motive. You walk a street and there is a lamp standard ahead to walk to, to pass, to leave behind you. Something is always happening. Nothing happened here save the speeding cloud shadows, and for them you ought to be grateful. You came from nowhere, and you are going to nowhere, for nowhere isn’t a place or a thing. You count your steps: a hundred, a thousand, a million, and you are on the same spot you were on in the beginning.

The sun took the road to the highlandserrating the western horizon. The clouds dried up, first the little clouds. Human shadows lengthened. Clouds! So what! Shadows! So what! Go on, feet! Go on… Step over this bloody bush, feet!

Abruptly Bony stopped. Automatically they halted, to find him looking at Lucy. The dog’s nose was pointing south of west. Her thin tail trembled. She glanced back, and Bony called:

“Go on…sool’em!”

Lucy veered to follow the line of her nose-the scent her nose was registering. They followed, and now and then she signalled with her tail.

The cloud shadows had gone, but another appeared ahead, a shadow which thickened, lengthened.

“What’s shesniffin ’ at?” asked Riddell, and Brennan replied:

“Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and parsnips andbrussels sprouts.”

“Could be at that,”sniggered Jenks.

The commander felt obliged to retain respect. He said:

“I have been wondering who would first see Bumblefoot Hole. I thought I would have to point it out, but Lucy saved me the trouble. It’s just ahead. And friends of mine are waiting to welcome us. Like Lucy, I can scent them.”

Half-Way Inn

THEYstood silent, four men and a woman numbed by fatigue, and Bony justly proud of having brought them thus far. They watched Lucy leaping like a goat down to the floor of Bumblefoot Hole, and run like a hare to meet the camels, who greeted her with lofty, albeit warm, affection.

“Well, there it is,” Bony said, cheerfully. “We’ll have to go round the rim to take the only path down. This place may not appear to you as such, but to me it looks and feels like home.”

Millie regarded them with assumed unconcern, but Curley spread his rear legs and closed his fore-legs in the unmistakable gesture of impatience. On arriving at the old fireplace, they flung their packs and the water drum from weary bodies, and slumped to the ground.

It was Bony who made the fire and set a billy of water against it.

These four men who had withstood jail routine, and as successfully resisted the utter boredom of confinement in Nature’s dungeons, were now rapidly deteriorating. The woman was still driven by iron determination to survive that she might enjoy rewards she had certainly not earned, and she had been least affected by the Plain. True, Bony had saved her as much as possible, which she had taken for granted, causing him to ponder on the ruthless urge to batten on everyone for her own advantage.

She was sitting now with her eyes closed, still fighting the effects of the odds against her from both the Plain and Bony’s leadership. Jenks merely stared about. Mark Brennan sighed with relief from an ordeal having nothing to do with weariness, and Maddoch had sprawled forward to bury his face in his arms.

Under the circumstances, they had done remarkably well these last few days, when the ground covered had been nearer twenty than fifteen miles per day.

Bony was pouring tea when Lucy came to tell him that both she and the camels were thirsty. He gave her water in the crown of his old felt hat, but foresaw that watering the camels would be difficult. On explaining the difficulty to Riddell, that gentleman said the camels could rot, and this released a violent tirade from Myra, explosively betraying the state of her nerves.

Lucy having failed to aid them, Millie led Curley forward to make known their protest. Now without fettering hobbles, she stalked silently to the camp and stuck her muzzle into the empty billycan. The interested Curley romped through the group, scattering them wildly, and nuzzled the packs as though he could smell bread crusts. And then he stretched his long neck in appeal to Bony, his twitching split upper lip so dry and hot and needing water, his large black eyes pleading.

Bony again called for assistance, and surlily they gave it. It meant keeping the animals at bay with sticks while Bony dipped, with a half-gallon can, about eight gallons of water from the rock-hole to a rock-basin.

The sun had gone to bed and dusk was shrouding Bumblefoot Hole when they had eaten. Bony suggested a cave apiece and sleep, and neither Riddell nor Jenks needed further prompting. Maddoch was almost unconscious, and Brennan dragged him off to another cave, where he rolled him into his blanket and settled into his own.

Then all was quiet and darkening. The camels were down and Bony was weighing in his hands the bag containing the remainder of the flour.

“Off to bed for you too,” he told Myra firmly. “There’s a cave over there just right for you.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Bake bread when the fire burns down. How are your feet?”

“Still sore. They need a wash. I need a wash all over. Could I put water into the rock-basin and really wallow?”

“Yes, water’s plentiful. I’ll bale some out of the hole for you.”

“Would I be safe, d’you think?”

“Of course. The camels won’t hurt you.”

“I wasn’t thinking of the camels, Inspector.”

“Well, the men are all tucked up.”

“All except one,” she said, faintly pert.

Anger slowly welled to flush his dark forehead, and his eyes blazed. Saying nothing, he took the can to the water-hole and baled. The girl crouched beside the fire until he came and snatched up a blanket, taking it to the hole and fashioning a rough screen.

She was away for half an hour. She was refreshed of body, and Bony hoped also of mind. He said:

“Stay awhile. I want to talk to you. You need not waste your time on sex innuendo. It’s a language I do not understand.” He stirred the loaf baking in the ashes and decided it required further time. “When Mitski was killed, where were you?”