Arthur Upfield - No footprints in the bush

“Oh! Well, we’ll leave Itcheroo for the time being. Did you see Doctor Whyte when he was here two months ago?”

“Yes.” Burning Water chuckled. “I found Doctor Whyte kissing Miss McPherson in the garden.”

“Did you like him?”

“He is a brave man. He flew his aeroplane upside-down, and he made it fall like a leaf falling from a gum-tree. He took me for a ride one day he was here. I liked it.”

“Where did he land his machine?”

“On the edge of the plain beyond the great dam. The McPherson had all my people removing the sand walls between the claypans to make a landing ground.”

“I have sent for Doctor Whyte,” Bony told Burning Water. “I would like him to take me out over the country of the Illprinka. Meanwhile I want you to call on two or three of your reliable bucks to maintain guard round the house at night, for in my mind is the possibility that when next Rex McPherson strikes he will try again to abduct Flora McPherson. The message indicates that he is still determined to force his father to retire and hand the station over to him. That would presuppose he thinks no one saw him kill the sergeant and Mit-ji; or he is mentally deranged and cannot view the inevitable consequences of that act. Do you think he is mad?”

“No. He’s like the white man’s devil. He thinks he is the greatest man in the world who need fear no other man.”

Bony stood up, and Burning Water rose to stand facing him.

“Would you,” began Bony, “would you accompany me into the land of the Illprinka to take Rex McPherson and bring him back to be handed over to the police for trial and judgment?”

“If The McPherson said-”

“Never mind The McPherson in this matter. It is between you and me.”

For half a minute the chief of the Wantella did not reply.

“I would. It would be a good thing for us to go into the land of the Illprinka and take Rex McPherson. That would bring peace to The McPherson and to Miss McPherson and to all my people.”

Bony smiled and held out both his hands. They were gripped in black ones.

“We may go tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. Now draw for me a map of the tribal lands.”

Chief Burning Water took up a stout twig and, selecting sand which was level, he drew a large-scale diagram of McPherson’s Station and the land westward and north-westward of it, filling in with ranges of sand-dunes, creeks and watercourses, and vast areas of cane-grass swamps.

“This last winter has been the best season for some years,” Bony reminded Burning Water. “When Rex came to live in the open country, and afterward till this last winter, the seasons were dry, almost droughty. Now-can you mark, on the map, waterholes in which water would be almost permanent?”

Burning Water marked three positions on the sand-map: one at the western extremity of the plan lying through McPherson’s Station, another a little to the north of west of the McPherson homestead, and the third farther to the north.

For several minutes Bony studied the plan. Then he looked up into the watching eyes of Burning Water, saying:

“I will think of these matters, and we will talk of them again. Do you know what an enigma is?”

“Yes. It is a riddle,” instantly replied the chief.

Bony smiled, and gave the sign Sturt had seen.

“You are an enigma,” he said, laughingly.

More Facets

AFTER lunch, taken with Flora McPhersonteteatete as McPherson had not returned from his business on the run, Bony lounged on the cool south veranda. The morning had passed without certain watchers having seen a column of black, oily smoke signalling surrender to Rex McPherson’s astounding demands; and in Bony’s mind was speculation regarding the manner and the time young McPherson would execute the threat dropped from his plane.

Bony would have liked much to know the purpose of his host’s trip outback because, according to Chief Burning Water, the squatter’s decision the previous day had been to call all the aborigines to the homestead. Today, McPherson might well be taking measures to safeguard his cattle from another attack by the Illprinka blacks.

The feeling was gaining strength that the investigation was taking charge of him, that forces were moving which would ultimately nullify his efforts to finalize work he had been sent to do. Himself always master of an investigation, he now suspected that, were he not particularly “alive,” he would become but a minor participant in it, in which case a blow might be given his vanity, with dire results to those dependent on him, as well as himself. Like the illustrious man whose name he bore, his first failure would mark the beginning of the end of Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte and the emergence from that personality of a half-caste nomad of the bush. Success had become a drug: failure of the supply would spell the end of a brilliant career.

Two roads were open to him. He could retire along that road leading to security in the success he had already achieved of unmasking the man who had committed the crimes tabulated for his investigation. He was able to prove that one particular man had instigated the theft of McPherson’s cattle, had been thus directly implicated in the murder of two aboriginal stockmen, and was responsible for much inter-tribal unrest. His allotted part had been accomplished; the remainder was the concern of the ordinary police who would without doubt charge the criminal with the murder of Sergeant Errey.

The other road, however, beckoned him with imperative gestures. But this road was fogged by McPherson’s attitude of quiet hostility, by his determination to tread a path of his own, and by the inaccessibility of the criminal so early unmasked. To follow this road meant undertaking strenuous hardship and facing grave danger to achieve in success nothing more than already achieved, save an additional supply of that drug on which he so much depended.

To follow the second road was to travel far into the “open” country inhabited by a tribe of fierce and relentless aborigines, and there apprehend a wily half-caste armed with the latest weapons provided by science and aided by a people who are past masters in the art of concealment and evasion. Locating and arresting a criminal in a large city would be child’s play in comparison, for Rex McPherson could move at will over a hundred and fifty thousand square miles of semi-desert country. It would mean undertaking the work of a large body of police and aircraft.

Such a force might well demand a year to achieve the arrest or destruction of Rex McPherson. McPherson’s idea of taking a party of the Wantella blacks into the open country to exact justice was more likely to succeed and in a much shorter period of time. More likely to succeed but not likely to succeed, wherein lay a subtle difference.

He was still pondering this matter when Flora McPherson stepped out to the veranda, where she was received by a suavely polite man who arranged for her a chair and offered her a tailor-made cigarette from the silver box he had brought from the lounge.

“Now tell me what deep schemes you are trying to hatch,” she said, seriously.

“They are about you and Doctor Whyte,” he told her as though to lie wasan impossibility. “I have been expecting to hear that the flying doctor has left Birdsville to visit us, and I have been hoping to hear of his departure because I rather want him to show me from the air as much of the Illprinka country as possible. Then, too, I have been thinking of Burning Water. What a travesty he must have appeared in clothes.”

“Indeed, he wasn’t,”came the instant defence. “He wore clothes as naturally as you do-as uncle does. I came here first on a Sunday, and I was introduced to a tall attractive black man wearing a suit of spotless duck and white tennis shoes. I had never imagined an aborigine wearing anything but dirty rags and speaking in a kind of guttural broken English. You see, the only aborigines I’d ever seen were those haunting the stations of the Transcontinental Railway.”