Arthur Upfield - No footprints in the bush

She was still wearing her house shoes when she passed out to the veranda, walked across it and stood talking with someone who stood on the path between the veranda and the lawn. Then she returned to her room, emerged presently and again crossed the veranda and stepped off it to the path.

The path, like all the garden paths, was composed of the “cement” of termite nests, broken and rolled level and further cemented with water. On this path, too, lay the dust deposited by the wind, and there Bony saw plainly the imprints of naked feet, and those of Flora’s shoes.

With knees bent and arms hanging loosely, Bony crouched and stared over the paspalum grass short cut and evenly rolled. He could see nothing on it until his gaze extended to a wide circular patch recently drenched by one of the sprinklers, and crossing that patch went the man’s foot-marks and the woman’s shoe imprints. They had walked to the cemetery.

Bony ran to the door in the cane-grass wall, edged himself round it, stepped swiftly through the entrance into what he had termed a shrine. There was no one there. The fountain still played. Awilly wagtail danced on the grass. In the wall on the far side was a hole large enough to permit a man to pass through.

Beyond this opening in the cane-grass the ground was dry and sandy. Naked feet imprints and those made by the girl’s shoes extended to the bank of the gully below the great wall of the reservoir. Sinister fact that they had not crossed the gully over the wall-where they could have been seen by any one at the rear of the house.

Bonaparte turned and raced through the cemetery and across the lawn to the gate in the garden fence behind the house. There he was met by Burning Water, Old Jack, and the men’s cook.

“Have either of you seen Miss McPherson this afternoon?” snapped Bony.

Old Jack shook his bald head. Alf, the cook, emphasized his negative reply with lurid language.

“Well, where have you been all the afternoon?” Bony demanded of the old man.

“When I had shifted all the sprinklers after lunch time, I went over to have a pitch with Alf. Iain’t see Miss McPherson since afore lunch time.”

“Well, have either of you seen any strange blacks about the place, or even any Wantella black being where he ought not to have been?”

“Nope,” answered Old Jack, and Alf said:

“Nowlemme think. No, I can’t say as I have seen any strange nigs at all hanging around. I don’t seem to have seen any nigs at all afore the truck came in from the out-station. Wait a mo though. I seen ole Itcheroo standing on the dam wall afore afternoon drink-er-tea time. He was looking athisself in the water, admiring himself like. Why, what’s theflamin ’ hurry?”

“Stowyer noise, you fool,” snarled Old Jack. “Them Illprinka blacks have run off with MissMcPherson, andd’you expect all hands to stay talking to you about Itcheroo looking at himself in the dam water?”

Bony and Burning Water were racing across to the stockyards the former shouting for a horse. Aborigines were mounting and saddling and walking their eager horses. Whyte emerged from the press about the yards leading three horses, and Nevin rode out into comparatively clear air.

“Come on!” shouted Bony, and leaping into the saddle of a strapping black gelding that sawed at its bit savagely, he cantered him to skirt the garden wall and so come to that recently made opening in the cane-grass.

“Back a little,” shouted Bony. “She’s gone away with a black-feller-walked away-more than an hour ago.”

Burning Water and Nevin and the doctor restrained their mounts to keep behind Bonaparte, to give him every chance not to lose those tracks. He rode his horse down the steep slope of the gully, and sensible of the situation, those behind him rode after him and not across the dam wall. The tiny stream down the gully bed-the overflow from the reservoir-was bordered with silver sand, and there deep and plain were Flora’s tracks and the imprints made by the naked feet. Dr Whyte called ahead to Bony:

“Where’s she going? What’s she thinking about to walk away with a black? I don’t understand it.”

Without comment, Bony led the ragged cavalcade up out of the gully to the scrubbed summit of the next land shoulder to the west of the homestead. Here the ground was hard but covered with “fingers” of drift sand. Lying along his horse’s neck as though anxious to place his head beyond the horse’s nose. Bony kept the anxious beast back to a jogtrot, for once he lost the tracks valuable time would have been wasted picking them up again.

For minutes Nevin lost them. For seconds Burning Water lost them. Then they would see the tracks ahead of Bony’s horse ridden by a relentless human hound. Now and then could be seen southward through the scrub the vista of the great plain parallel to which the tracks were running on and on before Bony: now down into a gully, now over a sand-crowned summit where grew no scrub and from which vantage point could be seen the plain and the rolling border of the high land extending to the promised couch of the sun.

The leaders of the human pack were silent. So was the pack itself. Nevin’s pale blue eyes were squinting into the sunlight. Hatless, Dr Whyte rode with the sun striking full upon his ashen face. Burning Water’s face was calm, like the face of a sphinx, but his eyes were large black opals. Hoof thuds, creaking leather, the occasional snort of a horse were the only sounds to the rear of Bonaparte. Ahead lay sunlit silence. Ahead lay that fearful shadow in which lurked flame like a spider deep in its webbed tunnel.

Now the tracks led them out of the scrub to the ribbed slopes of the high land, led them downward to the lower and level country of the plain already beginning to be painted with growing sunset colours. Here the feet of the land shoulders were wearing shoes of green buckbush ending in curving edges of the claypans comprising the verge. The scene was not unlike that of a rocky coast. The buckbush might be imagined as the shingle beach, the claypans as the sand flats left dry by the receding tide, which in turn could be the herbal rubbish, capped by old-man saltbush. Ahead of Bony and his followers a great cape jutted far out on to the tideless, motionless land sea.

Abruptly Bonaparte reined back his horse and shouted for a halt. His mount circled like a sitting dog biting for a flea whilst he leaned out and downward from the saddle reading this open page of The Book of the Bush. Presently he beckoned his lieutenants to him.

“Here Miss McPherson refused to accompany any farther the blackfeller she had been walking with from the house. Her suspicions were aroused, and here she realized the trap she had fallen into. She turned to run back, then stopped and faced the aborigine. She fought him, andit seems, he knocked her senseless. From here his tracks go on alone. He carried the girl. We must-”

One of the aborigines shouted and slipped off his horse and dragged it by the reins to a place several yards away where he picked up something. On his animal’s back once more, he rode to Bony and held out a small automatic pistol.

“That is her pistol,” Burning Water said, and took it from the finder.

“The black knocked it from her hand when she was about to fire, or he took it from her and threw it as far as he could,” Bony told them. “The tracks are going towards the foot of that headland. Spread out wide and keep your eyes on the ground in case the tracks branch right to the high land again or left across the plain. Come on!”

Wisely Bony permitted his eager horse only to canter. Redheaded Tom Nevin rode on one side and Burning Water on the other. Whyte kept close behind him, and behind the doctor cantered the posse. Arriving at the headland, they began to skirt its steep face, and again Bony saw the tracks of the man only, tracks clearly indicating that the aborigine was carrying a heavy burden. The land beyond the headland came into view, the “coast” taking a wide northward sweep to form a deep “bay.” Like hounds seeing the prey, shouts of exultation came from the blacks, a cry of savage despair was uttered by the flying doctor, and a yell of rage from Bony.