Arthur Upfield - No footprints in the bush

“A lubra! Me a lubra!” exclaimed Flora.

Rex smiled and blew a smoke ring.

“The word lubra translated is woman,” he said. “All women, black, white, ander -brindle, are lubras. As a matter of fact, my father and mother were married blackfellow’s way when they were children and when neither of them participated in the ceremony. Having foreseen the possibility of your uncle being obstinate, the Illprinka blacks were persuaded by me to marry us some weeks ago.”

Flora’s eyes became hard and her mouth like the grim mouths of her ancestors whose portraits hung on the dining-room walls.

“Well, then supposing uncle does surrender the station to you in exchange for my safe return. You couldn’t accept the property. You couldn’t live on it. You’d be arrested for the murder of Sergeant Errey and Mit-ji.”

“Not a bit of it, Flora,” he countered swiftly. “Who saw me bomb that car? Why, only a half-caste detective, who’s little better than an ordinary police tracker, and old Burning Water. What they might say wouldn’t carry any weight against my word that I wasn’t near the confounded car. The car accidentally caught fire and the driver became panicky and sent it over the edge of the road and down into the gully. I can lay my hands on eight Illprinka men who would swear they saw it happen.

“Oh, I’ll be safe enough, because when father makes the exchange, the station for you, he’ll swear not to prosecute me for forging his signature to cheques, and that’s the only thing he can prove against me. Then, when I own McPherson’s Station, I’m going to take in all this open country, or a big slab of it, and I’ll be the biggest squatter in Australia and will be known as the Australian Cattle King. And then you might consent to marry me white fellow’s fashion.”

So confidently did Rex talk that he almost convinced Flora by his argument. Come to think of it, only Bony and Burning Water saw the sergeant’s car bombed, and therewere Illprinka men near the place, for hadn’t they tried to obtain the sergeant’s attache case from Bony?

“You think all that over, Flora,” he said, slowly. “As I have just told you, I am going to bea somebody in the not distant future with or without your uncle’s submission. As my wife, married white fellow’s fashion and not blackfellow’s fashion, you’d bea somebody too. Make things easier, you know.”

Then she read the look in his eyes. He wanted to marry her with her willing consent: he would take her without her consent and without proper marriage if-

“Then I have really three days, this being the seventeenth I think you said?”

“Yes, three whole days,” he said, to add: “Three long days and nights, dear. Well, I must be off. I’ve had to take the plane engine partly down in an overhaul long overdue. I’ll tell Tootsey to bring you a bath and your clothes. Dinner will be served at seven, and the cook is really good. A Chinaman and more a friend than a servant. Accept my advice. You are free to go where you wish. But don’t be so silly as to try to escape. There is a hundred miles between you and the homestead. You wouldn’t get far before my people caught up with you and brought you back with aching feet. They are fine trackers, you know.”

Nodding coolly and smiling, he walked from the room and disappeared beyond the curtained entrance. She could hear him calling for Tootsey, and presently Tootsey came in, carrying a canvas bath and a huge bucket of hot water.

Refreshed and dressed in clothes which had been washed and ironed, having used a man’s hair brushes and a silver backed comb, all Flora wanted was a pinch of powder.

She had three days. And Rex’s aeroplane was temporarily grounded by an engine overhaul. And he didn’t know about Bony having sent for Captain Loveacre. So conceited was he that he hadn’t even asked her what Bony had done after Dr Whyte’s plane had been destroyed. He was so in love with his own vaunted cleverness that he considered Bony to be only a black tracker employed by the police. In that frightful conceitlay hope of salvation.

She passed from her “room” into the larger one, where she stood with astonishment whilst regarding its details. Scarlet cloth was stretched from floor to ceiling. The ceiling was of the same material and colour. Scarlet grass mats were plentiful over the hard termite cement floor. A polished table was flanked with polished oak chairs. A standard petrol lamp supported a giant red shade. There was a large bookcase filled with volumes, and two massive screens composed entirely of mirror glass.

The wide but rather low entrance to this room attracted her. Standing there, she gazed across a half-mile expanse of level claypan to the bordering range of high sand-dunes. She saw no one, but she could hear the soft clank of iron on iron. Stepping out from the room she looked back at the “house” to see only the waving tops of cane-grass and lantana teased by the high wind, the “house” entrance but a shadow.

Zero Hour

THERE was in Rex McPherson much of the material with which great men are fashioned, but his vanity upset his judgment in the valuation of the details of a scheme necessary for its success.

Was he not Rex McPherson? Had he not destroyed opposition by destroying Dr Whyte’s aeroplane? Was not the possession of Flora a loaded gun in his hands pointed at his stubborn parent? Was he not secure from assault with his outflung Illprinka scouts before and the cane-grass swamp behind him? The next move in the game would have to be played by his father: meanwhile he could conduct an overdue overhaul of his aeroplane engine.

With Mit-ji dead and Itcheroo either dead or hostile to him, his source of information from the enemy’s camp was stopped. Even this he regarded as of little importance. He took no steps to learn the reactions of those at the homestead to his theft of Flora, believing as he did that he was truly master of the situation. Thus he had not tapped the telephone line to Shaw’s Lagoon, and he knew nothing of the coming of Captain Loveacre with a machine-gun mounted on an aeroplane.

He had placed a screen of almost a hundred aborigines in a great arc between himself and the homestead, being fully confident that these wild blacks would be more than a match for the softer and more civilized Wantella aborigines who might be employed by his father. But Burning Water had made an opening in the screen by killing two of the Illprinka men, and the opening was sufficiently large to permit a thinking aborigine and a subtle half-caste to pass through.

Rex had, too, placed certain men to relay back to him his father’s signal of surrender which surely would be made when the high wind gave place toa calm. Having doneall this he was content to glory in his own cleverness and to remain inactive.

Flora he treated with suave politeness, but it was rather the politeness of the cat that knows the mouse will inevitably make a fatal mistake. He found no reason to be crude as a host. He saw no reason to press advances because, so he had decided, Flora was merely a stepping stone to the realization of his great ambition to be somebody. Should his father continue to be stubborn, then would be the time to take Flora, with her consent if at all possible, without it if not. Meanwhile it would be foolish to antagonize her.

Flora had awakened the day before Loveacre flew from Roma to St Albans. It was the second day of high wind and rolling dust clouds. Other than the vast lubra, ironically called Tootsey, Flora came into contact with no other native. Unable to concentrate on the books in the bookcase, wanting to escape her horribly apprehensive thoughts, she wandered about the “house” and even walked outside it.

At the close of each of the two days of wind Tootsey beat the walls and the ceilings with a leafy branch to remove the dust which had penetrated through the walls of cane-grass packed between wire-netting. She dusted the furniture and watered the floors of the large living-room and Flora’s bedroom. Flora could find no other rooms, and she never found the kitchen. But when she visited the hangar she saw in one corner of it a stretcher bed and dressing-table, and then understood that she was occupying Rex’s bedroom.