Arthur Upfield - Murder Must Wait

But nothing betrayed movement, animal or human, and Bony went to ground and arranged his tucker bag across his shoulders like a rucksack, slung his glasses like a punter, patted the automatic in its holster under his arm-pit. He was approximately two miles north of the Settlement.

There was plenty of cover… patches of saltbush, clumps of trees, dry watercourses. Canny white scouts can put up a good show… against other white scouts. When opposed to aborigines, however, there is no show. The Australian bush north of the Murray looks to be splendid scouting country to anyone not conversant with its trickery. You think you are walking uphill when the ground is table-flat. You see a shallow creek, and the water does run uphill. You’d bet on it, and lose. You think a sand-dune is ten miles away and it isn’t even one mile distant. You know that a tree clump is only a couple of hundred yards to the left and you would walk an hour before gaining its shade. And should you think you can escape the aborigines hunting for you, just think again. The mirage you can see spreads over the horizon like vast inland seas; the mirage you cannot see makes a giant gum of ablue-bush, and a patch of red pig-weed a hundred-foot-high sand-dune. You’d never see the wild aborigines deep in the mirage because they know how to make a mirage cover them.

From trees, from dune summits, from behind old-man saltbush, Bony looked for dust spurts, for smoke spirals, and he maintained watch on the eagles and the crows, and his ears reported the moods of cockatoos and galahs.

Finally, heated to the point of exhaustion, wet with perspiration, and slightly groggy on legs unaccustomed to such prolonged exertion, he lay behind a lantana bush and peered between its thin cord-like stems to see water, and beyond the water the green branches masking the small tent. The lubra was preparing food for the baby.

Being thus assured that the baby was still at this secret camp, Bony retreated to a tree growing on high ground, and he hadn’t to go far up into that tree before gaining a position from which he commanded all approaches to the camp.

On his perch high above the ground, he sipped the tepid coffee and ate sparingly of Mrs Yoti’s sandwiches. A rabbit couldn’t enter that camp without being noted, and as the Ruler of this World reluctantly moved down the western arc of the sky, his nerves were tautened by the waiting upon events, and his mind became increasingly anxious by the shadow of doubt cast upon that old reliable-Intuition.

A rabbit ventured from its burrow to run swiftly to the creek and drink, and this seemed to be a call to the birds. The blue wrens and the lovebirds poured into the sky, and the eagles dropped lower to earth. The galahs and cockatoos appeared in flocks to take their evening drink. And from behind the nearest tree to the camp stepped Tracker Fred Wilmot.

He must have called, for the lubra came from the tent and joined him at the lazy fire. Bony could see their white teeth when they laughed and joked, and when Fred poked the lubra in the ribs and she playfully slapped his face. That they were lovers was plain enough; that they were newly weds was proven by the ready acceptance of the woman’s orders.

Fred filled a billycan from the creek and placed it on the fire. He accompanied the lubra to the tent, where she handed to him a tin bath and a blanket and supervised the spreading of the blanket and the placing of the bath. He was then ordered to bring water from the creek for the bath, and add warm water from the billycan over the fire.

The lubra carried a bundle and knelt on the blanket, and the man stood near, watching the woman unfolding the bundle. She looked up at him and laughed, and then from the wrappings she lifted the naked child.

A burnished shaft of sunlight fell upon the group. The chocolate skin of the man and the woman gleamed in that golden shaft, and, between them, the white skin of the tiny infant.

TheSower

THROUGHTHEbinoculars Bony observed the lubra bathing and dressing the infant in garments taken from the suitcase and wrapping about it a large white shawl. The man sat on his heels watching the operation and sometimes laughing at the lubra, and, when all was done, the bath was returned to the tent and they sat with the baby between them.

Bony could see the flash of their teeth when they teased and laughed, and his own eyes shone like sapphires. He was feeling elation stronger than satisfaction engendered by prognostications proved to be correct, for now the curtain was about to rise on a drama first created in the womb of Time, and the child was prepared and waiting to play its part.

The shadows had further lengthened by twenty minutes when from the trees masking the creek to Bony’s left appeared a buckboard drawn by two horses and driven by white-haired Chief Wilmot. The elderly aborigine appeared to be in no haste, and of this the horses seemed to be aware, as the turnout leisurely continued along Bony’s side of the creek until stopped opposite the secret camp.

Tracker Fred Wilmot took up the suitcase and the blanket and led the way across the shallow water, the lubra following with the child. He held the baby whilst she climbed to the body of the vehicle and settled herself with her back to the high driving seat. She reclaimed the baby, and the suitcase and the blanket were stowed on what looked like firewood.

All these preparations for a journey were accomplished without the excitement normal to aborigines. There was no shouting, no flurry, proving that the purpose of the journey was not associated with an ordinary walkabout. Further, wily old Wilmot had left the Settlement via the river road bridge, then followed the course of the creek where the creek trees were between himself and the Reverend Mr Beamer. Hence no shouting at the horses, and no shouting when near the secret camp.

Fred Wilmot having joined his father on the driving seat, the Chief urged the horses into action with his whip, and they were heading towards Bony’s tree. That tree was a shield for Bony as he raced away across open country to gain cover in a clump of needlewoods, there to wait for the buckboard to appear and confirm the driver’s course. Thus from cover to cover he kept ahead of the travellers, who, he was convinced, had one of but two destinations in mind, and he was gratified that the speed of this ‘FlightInto Egypt’ was only slightly higher than that of the original exodus.

Going ahead of the travellers gave him all the advantages. The general direction being north-westerly, the men on the driving seat of the buckboard were facing the westering sun, where the sharp-eyed lubra sitting with her back to the driving seat would encounter no such hindrance to her watch for possible pursuit.

When a mile from the creek, the driver became less cautious, shouting when laying his whip to the horses, and doing both from habit rather than to increase progress, and this the animals understood, for their spasmodic trotting quickly relapsed to an indolent walk. Thus Bony on foot was not extended, his only concern on leaving each successive cover was being sure no one waited ahead of him.

Eventually he crossed the track to Ivanhoe not far from the she-oaks where Yoti had dropped him, proceeding then to the cover of an old-man saltbush. If the aborigines on reaching that track drove towards Ivanhoe, their destination would bethose Devil’s Marbles recently visited by Alice McGorr and himself. Should they continue across the track, then their journey’s end would be the Ancient Tree dead centre of the wide depression.

TheWilmots were not interested in the Ivanhoe Track.

Now assured, Bony sped westward, in an hour coming to the rim of what in the long ago had been a large lake, roughly circular and two miles across. For a minute he scanned the entire rim, and for another made certain that no one was camped under or in the vicinity of the Tree. Between it and the rim there wasn’t cover enough for a cow to hide her calf. When theWilmots reached the rim, Bony was concealed in the Tree and so watched the vehicle advancing across the depression, the dust from wheels and hooves rising to float above it like a veil of spun gold.