Arthur Upfield - No footprints in the bush

“Do you know where we are?”

“Oh, yes. We are close to the south side of the valley. We’ll have to cross the valley presently to gain the north side, and then we will have to look out when walking through the bush not to step on an Illprinka man. On the claypans it’s safer, because the blacks won’t be camped so far from shelter from the night wind.”

“O-o-h! My poor feet!”Flora softly exclaimed. “I’m sorry, Burning Water. I’ve no right to complain.”

“I am hardened to walking, Miss McPherson. It makes a great difference. I’m sorry, but time is up.”

Her own shoes certainly gave her a measure of relief, and now Burning Water pulled her arm through his crooked arm, and although she tried hard to maintain independence of action, she found herself increasingly placing her weight on him. The travelling became rough, deep water gutters barring their passage, and down and over and up these gutters Burning Water carried her. Save for the gutters the way was ever clear, for although she was blinded by the darkness, he appeared able to see as well as a night animal.

She had lost count of the number of short halts, but actually it was at the termination of the sixth halt, when they had walked seventeen miles and it was three o’clock in the morning, that her legs refused longer to serve her.

“I can’t-oh, I can’t go on,” she sobbed.

“Don’t worry, Miss McPherson,” he told her, although he was beginning to dread seeing the first sign of approaching day. He stung the rifle across his back and then, stooping, he lifted her in his arms.

“Let me down, please,” she requested without a trace of urgency. “I mustn’t give in. I mustn’t be a child. Let me down.”

“Lie quiet, Miss McPherson. You are not heavy.”

“Aren’t I? You’re so strong, Burning Water, and so kind. And don’t call me Miss McPherson. I would rather you call me Flora.”

“Thank you-Flora. Perhaps tonight it would be all right. Tomorrow, when the day is bright, you will again be Miss McPherson, the mistress of McPherson’s Station. I will be just Burning Water. You know, away back in the old days, when I called the McPherson Donald or Don, and we used to fight and make our noses bleed, old Mrs McPherson would say: ‘Now, you boys come into the kitchen for a scolding.’ And we both would say, ‘All right, mother, and after thescolding will you give us a slab of toffee?’ She always did.”

She could see his head silhouetted against the sky, the head crowned by the tufted hair, but when she closed her eyes it was so easy to forget that he was an aborigine. Grave and thoughtful, he yet could delight in playing that game with a small child, when his task was to blow down a “chook house” of matches built on his stomach. He carried Flora fully half a mile before he put her down.

“We mustn’t stop,” he told her, his breath hissing. “Now please don’t think I’m being familiar, but I am going to put my arm round your waist and help you along.”

There began again the agonizing torture of lifting her feet, pushing them forward, putting her weight on them.

“Are we going to any particular place?” she asked.

“Yes. A place where we can defy all the Illprinka men and wait for Captain Loveacre and Dr Whyte to find us and pick us up in the aeroplane. We have to get there before Rex’s Illprinka bucks catch up.”

“Is it-is it much farther to go?” she asked, dully.

“Another seven miles.”

“Seven miles. Oh, I can’t. How far have we come?”

“Nearly eighteen miles, I think. We have travelled fast, as Bony told us to. You have done well, Flora.”

Time came to have no meaning. She was dimly conscious of walking on a treadmill, and suddenly this stopped and she found herself lying on a soft mattress. She thought she was on the south veranda of the homestead, and she tried to recollect when she had had the mattress taken there. Then she saw the silhouette of Burning Water’s head and realized she was being carried. Presently that period passed into blissful sleep which in turn passed to the consciousness that again she was being held up whilst her legs were moving and her feet were scuffling across hard claypan.

She was amazed to find it was daylight. The sky ahead was rose-tinted, and in the rosy glow were tiny puff clouds stained all gold. The valley lay stretched to the far horizon which was on fire. They were skirting the feet of the bulging slopes rising to the northern high land. The sun was about to rise.

“How much farther?” she asked piteously.

“Less than three miles,” Burning Water replied, his voice anxious, his magnificent body drooping. “You see that headland beyond the tobacco-bush? That’s sanctuary.”

He had carried the girl for half-mile stages, and had been obliged to support her and almost drag her in between those stages. It made no mark on Flora’s mind that they were following the centre of a long line of claypans, that the walking was easy on this cement-hard surface. She did not know that keeping to the bush towards the centre of the valley were several stalking Illprinka men, members of Rex’s screen, that these men were fresh and strong and that their own pace was less than a mile an hour. Nor did she see those men, five in number, leave the bush and begin to run towards them as though intending to prevent their further advance. Abruptly Burning Water lowered her to the ground.

The sharp report of his rifle galvanized her into full consciousness. She saw Burning Water lying full length on the claypan and cuddling the stock of the weapon which discharged a devastating bullet at point blank range for three hundred and fifty yards. She saw a black body stretched on the claypan about a hundred yards away, and four others armed with spears and shields fleeing towards the bush.

Then Burning Water was bending over her and lifting her in his arms to stand her on her awful feet. The walking began again and now memory of those black forms energized her mind to will effort. How long the walking continued did not interest her. It appeared to be hour after hour without pause, without rest, and then she found herself being lifted and wanted to protest at being “slung” across a broad shoulder.

Her annoyance, however, was nothing compared to the relief her feet and legs received. She heard Burning Water utter a sharp exclamation, and she felt his body exert greater effort. She wondered but was too exhausted to ask him the reason. She did not see what he saw when, glancing back, he saw far away along the claypan verge of the valley a large party of naked aborigines running like hounds.

At the foot of the headland there was a sandy slope falling gently to the claypan verge. It was little more than a hundred yards in width, and when Burning Water reached it the Illprinka men were a mere three hundred yards behind and screaming their excitement and blood lust.

Half way up the slope Burning Water staggered and fell. His mouth was wide open. His face was contorted by the agony of terrific effort, and his eyes were red discs. Up he lurched to stoop and raise Flora, to heave her across his shoulder with her face to his back. She then saw their pursuers less than a hundred yards behind them. Some were fitting the hafts of their spears into the sockets of throwing sticks: others were yelling and lifting high their feet like the emus.

When Burning Water fell again it appeared to Flora that her fatigue vanished beneath the appalling fear. She was on her feet when Burning Water rose to his, and he flung an arm about her waist and dragged her on up the slope of yielding sand towards the base of the headland. In front of her was the usual line ofdebris, and among this jetsam from the cliff face was a huge boulder standing like a monument to mark the very front of the headland. Burning Water was urging her to run. A spear passed them and buried its fire-hardened point in the deep sand. Flora guessed that behind the boulder must be a cave in which they could shelter, and she was astonished when Burning Water voluntarily flung himself, and dragged her down with him, to the base of the stone.