Arthur Upfield - No footprints in the bush

The crimson base of Rex’s complexion was swiftly more evident when at last anger was beating down his self-control.

“It all sounds all right, doesn’t it?” he said, heatedly.“Money! Money can’t make our skins white, can it? Money can’t even prevent us being insulted, regarded either as dangerous animals or pet poodles. You know that. You must know it. We can’t mix on equality with white people.”

“But,” interposed Bony, “you and I and others like us can put on the armour of pachyderms. People who try to insult me because of my birth never hurt me. In fact, they provide human study that interests me. I am always interested by the unfortunate people who suffer from the inferiority complex which they so clearly reveal by using insulting words and by being snobbish. Far from being hurt, I am always pleased because it is an acknowledgment of my superiority to them. I still don’t understand why you, having the advantages you did have, should have cast yourself outside the pale.”

“No? Then you must be dense or ignorant, or satisfied with being a lackey to the whites,” Rex said, still heated. Bony was not to know it, but Rex was now become the old self known to Flora. His eyes were flashing. “The money was a curse, not a blessing,” he went on. “When I first went to school and they knew I had money to burn, my school mates crowded me like the born spongers they were. I was invited to their homes, but if I smiled at their sisters the girls would vanish. Behind my back they called me the nigger. I was worse off than if I’d been a full blood. And, to get down to a base, whose fault was it? Is your father still alive?”

“I never knew him,” Bony answered. “Keep your hands well forward on the table.”

“I know mine,” snapped Rex. “For what I am he is to blame. I hate him. I’ve hated him ever since that day I really saw myself for the first time. A fellow called me a dirty half-caste and we fought. I sent him to hospital, but he mauled me and I was attending to my face with the aid of a mirror. I wasn’t dirty, but I was a half-caste. I hated myself that day, but I hated my father much more.

“Why did I run off with Flora? Why did I get money by forging his name to cheques? Why did I come here and carve for myself a station and steal the old man’s cattle to stock it with? Why-oh blast! Why everything? Because I hate him. Because I am going to force the whites to respect me. Because I am going to make them acknowledge me as an equal. A dirty half-caste, eh? Well, I’m going to prove that a half-caste is as clever as any white man.”

“How?” asked Bony, and with his left hand he reached for the brandy and a glass. It was eleven-thirty, and he was feeling deadly weary.

“How!”Rex almost shouted. “To date I haven’t been ruthless enough. From now on I’m going to have no mercy on anyone. I’ll have no mercy on Flora tomorrow when my bucks fetch her back. As for you, you interfering fool, your finish will come in a way you won’t like. Then I am going to get McPherson’s Station and add all this open country to it. After that I’ll join the Illprinka to the Wantella people. I’ll train the bucks to be soldiers. And then, if the government sends police or soldiers against me I’ll engage in a war.

“I won’t have a chance, eh? I’ll have every chance to win. What about the Boers? What about the Abyssinians and now the Chinese? They weren’t licked easily. And even if I lose I’ll go down as the man who avenged the aborigines.

“Why should the damn lordly whites take all Australia from the aborigines?” he demanded to know, and would not wait for an answer from the man opposite him who was himselffighting to subdue the mental lethargy threatening him.

“But I’m not standing for it, d’youhear?” Rex banged the table with his clenched fists. “I’m going to hit back before I’m finished. I’m going to leave my mark on Australia, to be remembered for hundreds of years either as the Australian Cattle King or the Avenger of the Aborigines. And you-well, as you’re in the same boat with me, I’ll give you a chance. What about joining me? What about being my Chief of Staff? Your name, too, would be remembered.”

Bony was perturbed by the necessity of bringing his mind to bear on the suggestion. Reaching for a cigarette, he said:

“If you hadn’t attempted to run, if you had been content to walk, you would have gone far towards achieving that ambition of yours. Where you have failed-”

“I haven’t failed,” shouted Rex, springing to his feet, oblivious of the automatic pointed at him. “I haven’t started yet.”

“Where you have failed,” continued Bony, “is by not recognizing forces which neither you nor I, nor a million like us, can withstand. I refer to the forces of human evolution. Just wait and let me have my say. Sit down. I’m not forgetting to watch you. That’s better. Why have the Australian blacks become submerged? Why have the Abyssinians been conquered? Because humanity is no different from the animals and the insects in the jungles. There the strong devour the weak. It is the same in the human world. The weak go to the wall. Those who will not struggle to survive, will not compete with competitors, must go under.

“You cannot, as one man, realize that fantastic dream of yours of avenging past crimes against the aborigines. You can’t as Rex McPherson, everbecome the Cattle King of Australia. You have incurred a debt for the murder of Sergeant Errey and those others, and civilization will exact payment. You will ask me to join you. My dear fellow, I understand your hatred of the whites, even your hatred of your father. But you have tried to conquer your enemies with bombs and you threaten to try again with guns and trained aborigines. I have conquered my enemies with my mind as a gun and knowledge as ammunition. You have tried to move a mountain; I have succeeded in moving a grain of sand.”

“Give me a drink, as I suppose I mustn’t reach for the bottle,” Rex urged. The tip of his tongue was passing across his lips and on his wide browglistened drops of perspiration.

“Water?” asked Bony.

“A little.”

There followed a long silence, punctuated by the ticking clock. They smoked incessantly and occasionally drank. Then the clock struck twelve, and presently Rex said:

“Whybe a fool? If you joined up with me we could do great things. You’re a thinker. I can see that. You can have no hope of getting away from here, even if you shoot me.”

Now before retiring to her bed of gum-leaves, Tootsey had eaten an enormous dinner. Her dreams, therefore, were of violence so terrible that she awoke at last and lay trembling and cold. And in this state of wide wakefulness, she heard Rex McPherson’s shouted speech, not a word of which could she understand. Despite the colour of her skin and her race, she was naturally curious, and the shouted words she could hear indicated that Rex boss was taming the white woman. Tootsey decided to observe how the taming was proceeding.

Leaving her bed of gum-leaves, she tip-toed to the curtain of cane-grass which she found being gently swung inward by the light south wind. By lying down she could see into the living-room every time the curtain was swung inward, and what she saw interested her exceedingly. The magnificent “boss,” arrayed in resplendent evening clothes, was certainly in one of his tempers, but what intrigued Tootsey was the fact that he did not seem to be angry with the strange man who was seated at the table pointing a pistol at the boss.

The absence of Flora did not have much weight with Tootsey, but the fact that Rexboss was standing when a pistol was aimed at him had great weight. Tootsey knew that pistols could send men back into the trees and stones from which they had first come as spirit babies, and she didn’t want Rexboss to be sent back into such a place.