Arthur Upfield - The Mountains have a Secret

“A beautiful place and a beautiful day,” Bony commented.

“ ’Tis so,” agreed the ancient indifferently. The tired eyes took in the new guest from his black hair to his shoes, and into them crept that gleam of hope. “You got any brass?”

TheYorkshireman’s name for money was startling, for there was no trace of the Yorkshire accent in the quavering voice.

“Not very much,” he was told, Bony recalling the request made by the son.

“Pity. No one seems to have any money. You got any guts?”

“Not much of that, either. Supposing I had-if you mean courage?”

The old man glanced furtively at the open window next to Bony’s bedroom. Then he moved his chair closer and whispered:

“I know where there’s lashings of booze. Jim and Ferris are going off to Dunkeld tonight, and the old woman goes to bed about ten. What say we raid the spirit store? It’s only just along the passage and I’ve got a key. Had it for years. They never found it on me. They don’t know I’ve got it. Inside the store there’s stacks of whisky and brandy and wine-stacks and stacks. Let’s have a night tonight, eh? Iain’t had a real drink in years and I’m as dry as a wax match. We could lock ourselves in there and drink and drink. Shall us?”

The voice was coaxing, wheedling. The eyes were now wide and imploring. The prisoner in the chair was a prisoner in a dying body. What an escape the prisoner envisaged, what an escape for an hour or so! There was pity in Bonaparte’s heart but no relenting, although he said:

“I must think it over.”

“Think it over!” scoffed the old man. “Think over a proposition like that! Free grog and as much as you can down in a coupler hours! And you want to think it over! The modern generation’s soft, that’s what it is. No guts-no-no- Whatd’you say your name is?”

“Call me John. What’s the matter with you?”

“With me!” was the indignant echo. “Nothin’sthe matter with me, young feller, exceptin ’ me arthritis and a touch of gout now and then and a hell of a dry throttle. I’ve got good health and plenty of guts, and Iain’tafeared ofraidin ’ a spirit store like you are. There’s the ruddy spirit store and I got a key to it. All I wants you to do is to go there with me after the old woman’s in bed and open the door for me ’cosI can’t get up at the lock. I tell you thereain’tnuthin ’ wrong with me.

“Nuts!” murmured the cockatoo with astonishing appropriateness. It mumbled something and then yelled: “Whatabouta drink?”

The Prisoners

“Reach me down that fowl,” pleaded old Simpson. “Lemmeget the feel of his neck in me hands. They only hang him up there to mock at me and put on me the evil eye. They don’t want me to get well and be the master in me own house.”

Tears of self-pity rolled down his withered cheeks and into the unkempt white whiskers, and Bony said:

“Have you lived here very long?”

A palsied forearm was drawn across the watering eyes; the old man’s lips trembled. Bony looked away for a moment or two and then was presented with a picture of youth and virility and courage.

“Afore you was born,” came the words of the picture, “me and the old woman came here back in the year one. There was no roads to anywhere then once we left Dunkeld, only a bit of track coming through these mountains to get into Baden Park. Every mile of that track was harder than twenty miles over plain country.”

Memory was wiping away the ravages of the years, overlaying the features with a make-up to re-create a man of yesteryear. The voice lost its quavering, was steady, and the eagerness of the pioneer flared into the light blue eyes.

“I was young in them days, and the old woman was younger than me. Idruv six bullocks in a dray and shedruv four horses to a buckboard. She wascarryin ’ Alf, too. Took us all of a fortnight to make the thirty miles. I had to build two bridges in them weeks, but Kurt Benson promised me land and a fair go if we could make it.

“We made it all right, and just in time. Settled right here beside the crick. The clearing here now was a clearing then, and when we had let the bullocks and the horses go that first evening, the old woman got her pains. It was raining like hell and cold. They want hospitals now and doctors. Soft, that’s what they are now.

“Any’ow, we cleared the land back from the crick and grew grapes and fruit. Benson, the present man’s father, was a good man and true. He helped us all he could, and later on he got us the licence and set us up, advertising in the papers for us, helping with the track and all.

“The first child got drowned in the crick when he was three, and Jim came along then and afterwards Ferris. We did well, me and the old woman. This all belongs to me, youunner -stand, and Iain’t dead yet. Jim’s been at me for years to give it to him, but thereain’t a chance. I signed a will and they don’t know where it is. They’d like to know, but they never will, not until after I’m gone. If they knew where that will is they’d burn it, and one night they’d leave the door of the spirit store open.”

“What for?” Bony asked without keen interest, for the story he had heard was not an uncommon one. The old man’s voice sank to a sibilant whisper.

“So’sI’d get inside and drink and drink and drink and never come out any more. Then I’d be another body in that spirit store, all stiff and cold. You wouldn’t let me stay in there and drink and drink until I was dead, would you? You listen and talk to me, you do. The others won’t. Jim won’t let ’em. Jim tells ’emthat I’m balmy, he tells ’emI imagines things. He calls ’emaway from me and leaves me to be tormented by that ruddy fowl. And his mother’s back of him.”

The cockatoo whirred its wings and screeched, and it was as though the cacophony wiped off the make-up, burned out the re-created man.

“Get to hellouta here!” yelled the bird.

The wisteria hid the veranda steps from Bony and the invalid, and they did not observe the approach of two men who came up the steps. They were dressed in riding-breeches, brown boots and leggings, and both were wearing wide-brimmed felts. Spurs jangled. One of the men laughed. They were young and lean and hard and stained darkly by the sun and the wind.

“What about a drink?” each asked of the cockatoo, the first with a foreign accent, the second with the clipped tones of a city-bred man. The bird replied with a raspberry and hung upside-down. When the men had entered the building the old man whispered:

“They’re Benson’s men.”

There was no apparent reason why the information should be so announced. The voice was tainted by fear, but there was no fear in the old eyes now regarding Bony with clear steadiness. He fancied that he saw mockery in them.

“D’youget many callers?” he asked, and the previous expression of self-pity flashed into the withered face.

“Not this time of year. Christmas and Easter we’re full up to the doors. They don’t let me sit here them times-not now. Didn’t mind it much when Ted O’Brien wasworkin ’ here and me and Teduster talk about the old days. But Jim got rid of Ted. Said he drank too much. Caught him dead drunk in the spirit store first thing onemornin ’.” The tears again rolled downwards into the whiskers. “Ain’tgot no one to talk to since Ted O’Brien was sacked. You’ll talk to me, won’t you? You won’t believe I’m balmy and steer clear of me, eh? Let’s be cobbers, and one night we can raid the spirit store. Let’s raid it tonight. Jim and Ferris are going to Dunkeld tonight. I heard Ferris tell the old woman about it.”

The conversation fell away into a monologue of complaints, and presently the two riders came out, followed by Jim Simpson. For a little while they stood above the veranda steps, talking in low voices, and when the man had gone Simpson came along to Bony and the old man. His smile did not include his father.