Arthur Upfield - No footprints in the bush

“I’ll get them out. Where are those trees we used to anchor the crate to, Burning Water?”

“They areback a little way, Harry. You could leave the aeroplane in my charge.”

“Right oh! I’ll get the cases first, though.”

Willing hands took the two suitcases from him, and Burning Water began to call names and to shout orders. Almost as though they were professional groundsmen, the aborigines turned the machine and proceeded to trundle it towards the foot of the higher land. Flora slipped an arm through the doctor’s and called to Bony to accompany them. And then when he was walking beside her she slipped her other arm through his. In step like soldiers, they walked towards the homestead, preceded by the suitcase carriers, escorted and followed by torch bearers. For Bony, too, it was a happy landing.

“Why ever did you take the risks of flying in the dark?” Flora asked Whyte. “You might easily have got lost.”

“I intended coming in daylight, but I had to land miles south of Shaw’s Lagoon and repair a broken oil pipe,” he said in defence. “Time I’deffected the repairs it was almost dark. Just as easy to come on as to go back. The people at the township lighted a bonfire in the street to give me my position. I dropped my message there. You must have got it.”

“Oh yes, it was telephoned through. We got quite a thrill preparing the fire and torches. We had no time to spare.

“I saw the light on the veranda from way back over thehills, I suppose old Jack took it out on to the lawn.”

“AndThe McPherson?”

“He is out on the run,” Bony cut in.

“Great man,” asserted the flying doctor. “I’m glad he’s not as tough as he looks, and that he doesn’t look as tough as those birds in the dining-room. Byhokey! He and his father have done a wonderful job of work out here, don’t you think, Bony?”

“It requires time to get it all into proper perspective.”

“It took me quite a time to realize that the place is almost in the middle of Australia,” Flora confessed. “Uncle says it would not have been possible on the other side of the border in Queensland on account of the heavy taxation and uncertainty of tenure.”

“I wonder what the devil they do with all the tax money they get,” remarked the doctor. “You wouldn’t think the politicians could spend it all, would you?”

“They give me some of it,” Bony said, laughing.

He left Flora to take her guest into the house andhimself went on to the office where he belatedly rang Nevin and told him the facts concerning McPherson. Now and then the overseer grunted his annoyance and impatience.

“I thought it was something like that,” he growled. “The boss threatened to take it on last time the Illprinka raided the cattle and killed them two blacks at Watson’s Bore. Why in hell didn’t he let me go with him?”

“Possibly he thought of your wife and children and the aborigines out there,” Bony said, soothingly, and Nevin immediately countered with:

“They could all have been shifted in to the homestead. Oh well, if he and the nigs shoot up them Illprinka fellers it’ll do a lot of good and we’ll have a bit of peace. Aint that Rex a devil! Cripes, I’d like to get a rifle sight on him. I’ll call you first thing in the morning to hear the latest.”

Bony was smoking his inevitable cigarettes when Burning Water entered the office and sat down at the table. Bony regarded him, and sighing, said:

“Did you see the manner in which the doctor flicked his eyeglass into his eye? If only I could do that. If only I could appear before my chief when he is angry with me, andflick a monocle into my eye and look through it calmly as though he were a beetle. Alas, my brother and my son and my father, we are but savages.”

“He told me it took years of trying,” Burning Water said with no envy in his voice.“But what of it? Jack Johnson, the Wantella medicine man, can cure as well as this white doctor. Doctor Whyte can’t sit down by a little fire and send thought pictures to another man far away. He can’t track anything save a horse. But he can fly a machine.”

Bony blew smoke and regarded the chief through it.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I will get the doctor to fly me over the Illprinka country. From the air we could see wagon or truck tracks, and Rex must use one or the other to transport his petrol from somewhere. Whatd’youthink of those smoke signals now?”

“I think they were a trick.”

“Don’t you think it seems to indicate that Rex wants us to believe his headquarters are at Duck Lake?”

“Yes, that may be so.”

“And that it is likely, to say the least, that the huge area of cane-grass at the western end of the plain would be an excellent hiding place for him and his blacks and his aeroplane?”

Burning Water nodded agreement, saying:

“And after the trip over the Illprinka country what will you do?”

“Afterthat, or it might be before, I am going to ask Doctor Whyte to join me in persuading Miss McPherson to leave with him for Birdsville. I have a sound basis for thinking she is in personal danger, worse luck, and I feel she is. I think that Rex baling up his father this afternoon was a hastily formed plan which has nothing to do with the threat expressed in his note and the plan he had conceived at the time. You and I will have to guard the girl as long as she is here.”

“And after she has gone, what do we do?” insisted the chief.

“You and I will become two lubras who will stamp out a dangerous fire.”

“That will be a good thing,” again agreed Burning Water. Then he smiled, saying: “We may have to run about a great deal before the fire is put out. You will want your wind. Once I smoked many cigarettes, and I know.”

Bony chuckled.

“Thanks for the advice, Doctor Burning Water. I’ll certainly cut them down-after tonight. And now for this night. Will you keep watch on Miss McPherson’s room until about three o’clock? That would give me a few hours sleep, and I shall want to be awake when in the air over the Illprinkacounty.”

“As you wish.”

“Have you a rifle?”

“No, but I have this.”

Bony’s eyebrows rose when with incredible speed an automatic pistol was snatched from the chief’s dillybag and levelled at the window. For the second time Bony sighed with envy.

“It took years of practice,” explained Burning Water. “I once read about the two-gun men in America. A motor-car explorer left the books with me, and I determined to be as quick on the draw as the two-gun men.”

“Can you aim straight, you confounded enigma?”

“Straight enough, my brother who is another enigma.”

Bony arose to his feet and stood looking down into the now humorous black eyes.

“Before this adventure is closed,” he said, “I’m going to like you.”

Flora saw no more of Bony that night, but Doctor Whyte did. He found him sitting in the darkness of his room when he retired.

“Hullo! Am I in the wrong room?”

“No, Harry. I want to talk to you, to explain fully to you why I am here at McPherson’s Station, and why I am going to urge you to join forces with me in persuading Miss McPherson to leave with you for Birdsville tomorrow afternoon.”

“Good! There’s a spot of bother here I know, from what Flora told me. She seems anxious about the old bloke. There’s a half-caste son of the old bloke in the background, isn’t there?”

Dr Whyte was not much taller than Bony, but he was more strongly built. His face was marred by a scar crossing his forehead and another striking downward across the left side of his chin. His nose had been broken and badly repaired. When in a serious mood, as he was whilst Bony talked, his face was expressionless. The features, too, remained immobile for seconds together. The hands were passive. And yet about the man was an air of strength causing Bony to wonder if it was due to training or inherited from men born to command.