Arthur Upfield - No footprints in the bush

“Great feller, Bony,” he said when they were walking towards the house. “The Police Heads think the sun shines out of his boots. He wants me to fetch a machine-gun, and he wants it fetched like you or I would ask for a match. How the devil am I to get a machine-gun? They don’t sell ’emin pawnshops. I charges off to interview the Chief Commissioner who’s one of the hardy damn and blast you, sir, warriors . ‘A machine-gun!’ he says, looking at me as though I were nutty. ‘Bony wants you and it, eh?’ he goes on. ‘All right, Captain. I’ll get one delivered to you tonight by the military, but for heaven’s sake don’t let Bony start a war or a revolution.’ ”

“He’s trying to prevent a revolution and a war combined, I think,” Whyte said, thoughtfully. “I don’t get him. He’s the first man who has ever made clay of me.”

“He puts me in the same boat,” Loveacre confessed. “I’m reminded of a bar of iron wrapped in velvet.”

“I can’t understand the source of his strength.”

“Can’t you? I can. It lies in the victories he has won over himself. Get him sometime to tell you about the war going on inside of him, the war of influences exerted to control him by the hereditary instincts of the races from which he has sprung. Think of the fearful handicap of his birth, and then remember the position he has gained by sheer intelligence and a diplomatic mind. He didn’t get to where he is by fair competition with equals.”

Dr Whyte told the story whilst acting host at the breakfast table, and now and then Captain Loveacre nodded his head but said nothing to interrupt the narrator. When they rose from the table, Whyte suggested they pass to the office and study Bony’s sketch plan, his table of signs, and the general plan of action.

“The proposition is attractive but hellish for you, Whyte,” Loveacre said whilst leaning over the rough sketch plan. “We’ve got to go slow, I can appreciate that. If you and I meet this bird in the air, and he’s alone, we’ve got to send him down for keeps. But until your girl is rescued we’ve got to go so slow that we’ll have to keep our feet wide to avoid tripping. Any idea where Bony and his aborigine chief will be right now?”

“Nevin says they won’t risk travelling in daylight, and that they ought to cover thirty miles a night. That places them within twenty miles of that cane-grass swamp.”

“Yes, that’ll be it,” agreed the captain. “It’s a likely place, too, for a man with an aeroplane. Always plenty of claypan country bordering that kind of swamp. You know, Bony’s handling this business in his usual far-seeing manner. Think of the uproar if he had called in the police and the military. It would have been a war without doubt, and gentle Rex McPherson would do in your girl when his back was to the wall. Hullo!”

Both men turned to stare at the apparition standing in the door frame.

“McPherson!” exclaimed the doctor.

The cattleman’s face was unshaven, dirty with grime. His eyes were bloodshot and singularly void of expression. His clothes were shapeless, torn and stained. On his left hand was a dirty bandage in tatters.

“Hullo, Whyte!” he said, mechanically, whilst staring at the captain.

“This is Captain Loveacre who has arrived this morning by air from Brisbane,” Whyte said in introduction. “Loveacre, this is Mr McPherson.”

“Glad to meet you,” Loveacre said easily. “Take a pew. You look tucked up. Shall I go across to the house and bring you a drink?”

“Nevin’s coming. He can go. What’s he doing here? Where’s Bony?”

“You heard about Flora?” asked the doctor, and Loveacre went out to meet Nevin. McPherson nodded, and Whyte proceeded to tell him of the abduction, of Bony and Burning Water having gone to locate the abductor’s camp and rescue the girl from him, and of the preparations for Captain Loveacre’s operations. During the telling, the captain entered with Nevin and the drink, and the squatter was given a stiff glass of whisky.

“So, Captain Loveacre, you are an airman?” McPherson said, having put down his empty glass. “Your trip will, I think, be for nothing. My son has won the game he’s been playing with me. I’ve no option but to surrender.”

The flying doctor sat down on the corner of the table desk and lit his pipe. He foresaw the battle ahead.

“Bony predicted that Rex would communicate with you. I assume that he did.”

“He did. We were half way to Duck Lake when he flew over before we could take cover. He dropped a letter. He knew the moment we passed off the station land. He knew where we were from hour to hour, for his blacks dogged us. I lost three of my men and brought back two who were badly wounded. As the boys say, I’m getting old and done for.”

“Not a bit of it sir,” Whyte said, roughly.

“Well, anyway, Rex has got the upper hand with me, and with you too. If I don’t send up my surrender smoke before six o’clock the day after tomorrow he’ll marry Flora-black-feller fashion. How does that strike you?”

It seemed that already McPherson was sensing opposition to his determination to submit. Whyte accepted the letter offered him, and noted the fearful condition of the fingers of the right hand. Aloud, he read:

DEAR FATHER:

I have Flora. I admire her immensely. She is more beautiful than ever, but I am willing to exchange her for the station, lock, stock and barrel, as grandfather would say. If you send up the surrender smoke before six p.m., 20 October, I will return her safe and sound. If not, then I marry her according to the somewhat casual custom of the blacks. What was good enough for my mother will be good enough for my cousin.

Your affectionate son,

Loveacre lit a cigarette. He was the least depressed man there, and he said:

“Well, there’s still two days left before the proposed marriage, Bony, and the black with him, will be within twenty miles of that cane-grass swamp. They ought to know by tomorrow morning if Rex is living about that swamp.”

“What swamp are you talking about?” demanded McPherson.

“The one at the western end of this valley, according to the map Bony drew and left with us. To me, as an airman, it seems the most likely place for Rex to have his headquarters. Bony must have his chance.”

“Have his chance!” shouted McPherson. “He had his chance to stop Rex taking Flora, didn’t he? He knew what happened to me, because in spite of the wind my bucks read his tracks. He knew what happened to the doctor’s aeroplane. He knew that Rex was after Flora because I wrote a note and left it in the car at Watson’sBore telling him so. And yet he goes to sleep and allows Rex to walk off with her.”

“If there’s any blame to be handed out, I’m to take it,” rasped Whyte. “Bony was here that afternoon working on the map and plans. He thought Flora would be safe enough over in the house with me. She simply walked off with Itcheroo.”

“And Itcheroo’s a corpse,” Nevin interjected.

“More’sthe pity,” McPherson ground out. “Anyway, matters being like they are, I’m going to send up the surrender signal.”

Dr Whyte spun round in the doorway to shout passionately:

“No you don’t. We’re not going to give in to that black devil. Flora’s my life, but as Loveacre points out we’ve got two days yet and Bony’s getting near that swamp.”

“Two days’ grace,” the squatter said. “If you two knew Rex like I do you wouldn’t accept two minutes’ grace from him. The smoke signal is going up today, this morning. Rex wouldn’t expect to see it before this morning on account of the wind. He’s got to see it, or be told about it by his people, before tonight. Decent men don’t offer a baby to a tiger.”