Arthur Upfield - No footprints in the bush

“Rex McPherson wrote it.”

Again Bony made the sign and then sat down on his heels. Burning Water followed his action.

“We talk in confidence,” Bony said slowly. “I am glad you recognized me, and I appreciate your reluctance to reveal what The McPherson might not like. Let your mind be easy. The McPherson has told me everything: about Tarlalin, about Rex their son, about the troubles Rex created, about the abduction of Miss McPherson. What do you think-about Rex?”

“When the brat was born its head should have been dashed against a tree. It became a man with a mind more evil than a world filled withItcheroos. If The McPherson had but granted my request.”

“Oh! That was-?”

“I wanted him to let me and my bucks go into the Illprinka country and there exact justice for the crimes done against us. But The McPherson would not. He might have let us go if Rex McPherson had harmed Miss McPherson that time he abducted her.”

“I suppose it is that The McPherson still loves his son,” Bony suggested, and was surprised that he was wrong.

“No. The other thing is greater.”

“The other thing!”

“Justice.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Then listen. The McPherson is like Pitti-pitti who lived in the Land of Burning Water in the days of the Alchuringa. Pitti-pitti was half kangaroo, half snake. He made the eagles, the doves, the emus and the kangaroos, but he would not make snakes because he knew they were bad.

“One day a blackfellow went to him and asked him to make great trees to provide good shade from the sun as the scrub tree gave only poor shade. And so Pitti-pitti began to walk about over the Land of Burning Water making bloodwood-trees. But all the walking about made him tired, and he made two sons to help him with the work. One son was evil and the other was good: the good son loving the kangaroo part of his father, and the evil son admiring the snake part of him.

“The evil son went away behind a river of burning water, and there he laboured to make a snake. Not being as good as his father at making things, the evil son could only make a small snake, a little grey snake the colour of the saltbush. The little grey snake ran about all over the country dropping baby snakes, and presently many of the poor blackfellows were bitten and died very quickly. When the kangaroo-snake man found out what his evil son had done, he said:

“ ‘I loosed the snake in me when I made my evil son who made the little grey snake that ran about dropping little baby snakes that grew up to bite the poor blackfellows and make them die. It isall my fault that poor blackfellows are lying dead in the Land of Burning Water. What can I do to atone?’

“Awilly wagtail who heard him say that said to him:

“ ‘Agreat evil has been done. You first created the evil. You must finish the evil. If you don’t, the little grey snakes will kill all the poor blackfellows and none will be left to sit in the shade of the bloodwood-trees.’

“And so the kangaroo-snake man took his evil son to the top of a high hill, and there he bound his evil son to him and he jumped from the top of the high hill and both were killed. But the evil lived after him and his sacrifice was in vain.”

Burning Water, having finished his story which he and all his tribe believed to be pure history of those fabulous days of the Alchuringa, proceeded silently to smoke his pipe. The head band of white down, glued to a base of human hair, forced his grey hair upward to a waving plume. Even in the inelegant posture of sitting on his heels his bearing was graceful. Bony saw its intended allusion to McPherson.

“The McPherson has more than hinted to me his dislike of my coming to investigate the crimes which have been committed in the Land of Burning Water,” he said, quietly. “What you have said concerning Pitti-pitti and his evil son applies, of course, to The McPherson and his son, and The McPherson’s thoughts about his son. The McPherson must not be permitted to judge, sentence and put the sentence into effect.”

“It would be a thing greater than I could do,” asserted the alleged savage man. “But The McPherson is a great man. Sometimes I have thought him a greater man than his father. After he and I and some of the bucks had stopped Rex from carrying off Miss McPherson, he said to me he would punish Rex by banishing him from the Land of Burning Water. Yesterday he came to me. He said: ‘It is enough, Burning Water. Tomorrow-meaning today-I will call all the bucks from the run, and you and I will lead them into the land of the Illprinka and find Rex, and I will hang him as I was responsible for his birth.’ ”

It was as though a blind had been drawn upward to reveal another McPherson to Bony. He saw a man as near to the aborigines and their philosophy as Burning Water was to the white race and its philosophy. He saw a man steeped from early childhood in aboriginal thought; and, as he, Bony, had put on the veneer of white civilization, so McPherson had put on the veneer of the aborigines’ mentality.

“It would be a bad thing for him to do,” Bony told Burning Water.

“It would be a foolish thing for him to do, for, like Pitti-pitti he would not right the wrong done by his son,” Burning Water said, surprisingly. “What does a blackfellow do when he sees a dangerous fire?”

“He calls on the lubras to put it out,” Bony replied.

“Therefore,” continued the chief, “it is not The McPherson’s task to put out a fire which threatens to burn us all. All my life, The McPherson has been my friend and I have been his friend. This dangerous fire, called Rex, has put a barrier between us in this matter of the dangerous fire, he is the man and I am the lubra.”

They fell silent, the chief smoking his pipe, Bony his eternal cigarettes. Then:

“Do the Illprinka men trespass on your land much?”

“More and more. I have urged The McPherson to let the Wantella teach them a lesson, and he says always that the time is not yet. We have gone often into the Illprinka country to get back stolen cattle, but we never found them.”

Another period of silence held them smoking thoughtfully.

“Do you think it’s likely that The McPherson would surrender to his son’s demands?” asked Bony.

“No. He couldn’t do it now, when he knows we know how the sergeant and Mit-ji died. No, not that. He decided to act like Pitti-pitti did, back in the Alchuringa days.”

“Would you assist him to attempt to do that?”

Burning Water moved the direction of his gaze away from the questioner. He hesitated before saying:

“If the McPherson asked me to go with him to take and hang his son, I would plead with him not to go. But if The McPherson ordered me to accompany him I would obey. He is my chief. As I have told you, he is my friend.”

“Well, then, let us pass to another subject-Itcheroo,” Bony proceeded. “You remember that I put Sergeant Errey’s attache case in the swag before we left the camp of the cabbage-trees? Well, when I unrolled the swag in my room after having bathed yesterday evening, the case was not there. This morning I found Itcheroo squatted before a little fire and sending or receiving a mulga wire. In the ashes of his fire were the charred remains of the case and the sergeant’s notebooks.

“We need not bother ourselves at this time with thehows and whys of that theft, for overshadowing them is the fact that Itcheroo is in Rex McPherson’s service.”

“I have suspected it for some time,” replied Burning Water. “Mit-ji was another magic man, and I am glad Mit-ji is dead. Were Itcheroo to die we would be happier. Perhaps The McPherson will give his assent. There are those who wouldn’t miss with a spear once The McPherson said it was to be so.”