Arthur Upfield - No footprints in the bush

“What an introduction to the race!” exclaimed Bony.

“I was to be further astonished by him when he played me at tennis at which I thought I was passably good,” she went on. “You ought to see him and uncle as captains of matched cricket teams.” Flora laughed. “And you ought to see the blacks playing cricket, too. Oh no! Burning Water was never a travesty in clothes. Why, he is theMcPhersons ’ greatest achievement in Australia, and if the blacks had been given the chances the Maoris got in New Zealand they would today have been as cultured and as good citizens.”

“I see that you have a deep admiration for their qualities,” Bony murmured, charmed by the forthrightness with which this girl expressed herself.

“I have. What is it that makes the world go round?”

“Money.”

“No.”

“Love.”

“No. I’ll tell you. It’s loyalty. Only the basest of us are not actuated by loyalty: loyalty to one’s class, to one’s people, to one’s ideals. The blacks are as loyal as the best of us. Here they are loyal to their rites and beliefs and customs, to Burning Water and to uncle. They call him not the boss butThe McPherson. I’ll own they were drifting when Burning Water and uncle pulled the tribe together, but that was no fault of theirs. They have helped to make McPherson’s Station. Burning Water helped Uncle with the dam wall. Uncle has achieved much, but his greatest achievement is Burning Water.”

“You get along very well with your uncle?”

“Of course. Uncle appeals to my mothering instinct.”

“And do you like living here so far from the cities?”

“Again of course. In the city I am a mere cipher. Here I am able to give full scope to a gift for organization. I ama somebody. Besides, I am a throw-back.”

“Indeed!” Bony said, with well simulated incredulity.

“Yes, it’s the truth. Both my mother and father hated the bush. I’m like my grandmother and the wives of all those men pictured in the dining-room. I’m more loyal to the clan than my mother was, but don’t think I’m not being loyal to her, will you?”

“Certainly not; and that is the truth, because I want especially to please you this afternoon. I have a favour to ask. I am going to ask you to go away from McPherson’s Station until this Rex McPherson affair is wound up.”

“Oh, but that would be silly,” she countered. “Where’s the necessity?”

“The necessity lies in your uncle andmyself having complete freedom from concern for your safety. Rex threatens to strike again and harder still. He might destroy this house, and everyone in it, with his bombs. He might even attempt to abduct you again. I have the feeling that his next attack will be even more spectacular than what has already happened.”

“Was this why you asked Doctor Whyte to visit us?” she asked.

“No. I spoke the truth when I said I wanted him to take me up to see a portion of the Illprinka country. However, if you did consent to take a holiday in one of the cities you would be rendering both your uncle and me a service. Doctor Whyte could fly you as far as Broken Hill and the railway.”

“I’m not going.”

“The situation here may develop in such a manner that your presence would create fatal restrictions. You see, we’ll have to act against Rex McPherson. He cannot be permitted to continue. It will mean going away into the open country after him, and if you are still here either your uncle or Burning Water, with the majority of the bucks, will have to stay to guard you.”

“I can look after myself.”

“It is probable that you will be confronted by a personal danger from a bad half-caste, and when a half-caste is bad-well, he is so. He has already proved in a shocking manner how ruthless he is. I fear I will have to press the urgency of your taking a holiday.”

“Why be annoying?” Florademanded, her eyes afire.

“Not annoying, surely, Miss McPherson. Possibly persistent.”

“Then don’t be persistent. When you are persistent I can’t help thinking you are a detective.”

“But really, all joking aside-”

“I am not joking. I am not leaving McPherson Station. I’m not running away from a bad half-caste. Grandmother never ran away when the homestead was threatened by the blacks. If Rex threatens me I shall kill him. See…”

Her hand went swiftly to the neck of her low-cut blouse to appear again holding a small automatic pistol. The swiftness of the action aroused Bony’s admiration, and silently he watched her return the weapon to the soft-leather holster strapped beneath her left armpit.

“I know how to use it, too,” she said, firmly and a little pale. “Burning Water coached me.”

“Burning Water appears to be proficient in many branches of sport,” Bony surmised.

“Now you’re being sarcastic,” she flamed at him.

“I am sorry, Miss McPherson. I should not have made that remark,” he told her contritely. “I fear it’s a bad habit I’ve got from my Chief Commissioner, who in condemnation of anyone asserts they must be sickening for something. But really I am a little uneasy about you, and that is my excuse. If you promise me not to hesitate to use that weapon if you are ever threatened by danger I would be less uneasy about you.”

“It will not be necessary for me to make the promise. But I’m not going away and you mustn’t make me.”

“Make you!” he echoed. “How could I make you?”

“You could make me go all right. I know that, and so do you. But please don’t insist. I’d feel cowardly if I ran away-even when you had made me.”

Bony sighed loudly, with pretended pain.

“To hear you speak one would think I was a real policeman,” he said, and laughed. “What I said was only a suggestion.”

Bony stepped off the veranda into the hot sunlight and, with his hands clasped behind his back, trod the yielding paspalum grass lawn to arrive at the bottom fence and there lean against one of the squared and white-painted posts.

Beyond this fence the ground sloped sharply downwards to the mile-wide verge of claypans two to three hundred feet below the higher ground. Vast sheets of burning water covered the table-flat verge of the plain so that the low tobacco-bush and acacias beyond were raised to tall masts, waving palms and fantastic shapes to be likened to nothing on earth. Effectively hidden was that wide belt of old-man saltbush in which Bony and Chief Burning Water had skirmished with the Illprinka blacks.

The land shoulders, west and east of the homestead jutting farther into the lower land, shortened the view of the plain’s extent. The road to Shaw’s Lagoon slipped furtively down the slope where it furtively entered the stream of burning water. Thence it undulated over the plain, crossed the far verge of claypans and rose upward to twist among the distant hills and flow for mile upon desolate mile towards the farthest west outpost of civilization and white law.

It was no wonder that McPherson considered himself, as his father had done, to be a kind of dictator who made laws, who exacted obedience to his laws and punished disobedience. Like his father, he would not long survive if he ever became timid enough to rely on a yell for a policeman to acquit himself of “an annoyance.”

Bonaparte was not yet used to this garden which in itself was a monument to human courage and tenacity and dauntless effort to create and maintain beauty. Here and there the sprinklers shed their rainbow hued showers upon the gleaming grass. There grew two fine lily-of-the-valley gums, castingbroadbased spear-heads of inviting shade. Over there, roses climbed an arch of trellis and made a sanctuary of the seat below them. To the west and the north an eight-feet-high wall of cane-grass protected the garden from the withering hot winds.