Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

“When him and Sargint go in motor, Sargint him bin call ’imBony.”

“Bony!” echoed Gordon. “Oh! I’ve heard of him. You sure Sergeant call him Bony?”

“Too right! Then Sargint him come back and tellit me get to ’ell outer it and he pay me-three quid.”

“You give it money Johnny Boss,” ordered Nero, and Gordon pocketed the three pound notes later to be banked for the Kalchut.

The following silence was much prolonged. Nero sometimes emitted a soft grunt. Gordon smoked a couple of cigarettes. Wandin chewed vigorously, evidently still perturbed by the suddenness of the official dismissal. Then, when Gordon rose to his feet, the two aborigines rose with him.

“I’ll get along and tell Jimmy Partner to go out after the working horses,” he announced. “You tellum Inky Boy and Abie come along to horse yards. That Bony feller he no good. Young Lacy tellit me ’bout him. He clever feller all right. Malluc and his lubra can come along us, too. They all bring blankets. Make camp along boundary fence.”

Wandin and Nero grunted acceptance of these instructions, and John Gordon walked swiftly away into the darkness to take the path leading to the homestead.

The Hunt Begins

THE following morning Bony began the practical part of his investigation at Karwir. Bill the Better had found the working horses early and had them at the yards when Bony arrived at seven o’clock.

The Black Emperor was among them, but this morning it took Bony ten minutes to catch, bridle and saddle him; then he walked him across to the gate giving entry to Green Swamp Paddock and the road to Opal Town. The keenly interested groom, who had followed to the gate, even forgot to bet with himself that Bony would be tossed within sixty seconds. But the horseman in him made him want to cheer at the half-caste’s quick mastery of a horse that had long since forgotten how to buck. After a turn of pig-rooting, the animal was given his head and the steam was taken out of him by a long gallop. He was now amenable to reason and was ridden along a hundred-yards beat-first at the gallop, then at a canter, and finally at a walking pace, before being returned to the yards and unsaddled.

Bony was examining the tracks along the beat when theLacys, father and son, joined him, Old Lacy demanding to know what was the “idea.”

“I have to memorize The Black Emperor’s tracks,” Bony replied. “The shapes of his hoofs will not be like they were five months ago, but he hasn’t altered the manner in which he places his feet on the ground. A book could be written on how individual horses walk and canter and gallop. To the expert no two horses do these things alike. I forgot to ask- Has The Black Emperor been ridden, or run free, in this paddock since Anderson disappeared?”

“No,” replied Old Lacy. “He’s been running with the unwanted hacks in another paddock:”

“Ah! Then my task of finding his tracks made five months ago will be comparatively easy.”

“But, hang it, Bony, we all rode over this paddock hunting for the horse’s tracks immediately after Anderson disappeared!” objected Young Lacy, and Bony was about to make reply when the old man roared:

“Since when have you dared to be so familiar with the Inspector, lad?”

“Since yesterday,” Bony got in. “You see, all my friends call me Bony. Eric is accounted one of them. What about you?”

“Do me,” assented Old Lacy succinctly. “Curse the misters and the inspectors and things. Come on! We’d better go in for breakfast.”

Breakfast over, Old Lacy and Bony returned to the yards, the old man carrying a seasoned water-bag, Bony carrying his lunch and quart-pot. The few personal necessities required at Green Swamp hut were to be taken there later in the morning with the rations, bedding and horse feed.

“You can expect me only when I arrive,” Bony told Old Lacy. “I may be out there for days, perhaps weeks. I’ve got to go bush, to be one with the bush, to re-create the scene and imagine the conditions out there that day Anderson last rode away.”

“Well, remember that your room will always be ready for you, and that we’ll be glad to see you any time,” said the old man. “We’re plain folk, but we never have too many visitors. Anything you want out there, anything we can do, just ask in the ordinary way.”

“You are very kind,” Bony murmured.

“Not a bit, lad-er-I mean, Bony. I’m wanting to know what happened to Jeff. Y’see I didn’t treat him right, meaning that I could have treated him better, you understand. I suppose no man will ever actso’s he won’t do things he’ll some time regret. Youtakin ’ The Black Emperor?”

“No, much as I’d like to. He wants riding and I haven’t the time to ride him.” Bony laughed and went on. “You know, if I were a squatter, I wouldn’t have a flash horse on the place, except perhaps for pleasure riding. I’d reason thus: I pay men to boundary-ride the fences and to carry out stock work, not to ride a flash horse that interrupts the performance of such work.”

“By heck, there’s a lot in that, Bony.”

“There is. From now on I have to employ my mind searching for five-months-old tracks and clues hidden by the rain and the dust. How can I do that if I have constantly to keep looking to my horse, forcing it to go where I want it to go, guarding against being bucked off, crashed against a tree trunk, swept off its back by a tree branch? That kind of horse is of no use to me.”

So it was that Bony selected a mare of the famousYandama breed, a chestnut with white hocks and a white forehead blaze, old enough not to play the goat and quiet enough for a child to clamber between its legs.

It was a calm, warm day when at nine o’clock Bony entered Green Swamp Paddock to ride eastward along its southern fence. Yet he was not happy. He felt that Diana Lacy was prejudiced against him because he was a half-caste, and that her prejudice was largely due to shortcomings in himself at the moment of their meeting at the yards. In any other man such a matter would have been quickly pushed aside as of no moment; but in Napoleon Bonaparte failure to win the approval of this girl of Karwir was emphasized by that torturing imp named inferiority, ever so alive in his soul.

Karwir hospitality was admirable. The dinner of the preceding evening and the breakfast that morning had been good and well served. But during the dinner Diana had rarely spoken, and when she did speak, her frigid politeness revealed the full sting of her contempt. He had not seen her since, but he recalled how, during that meal, her blue eyes had regarded him with a coldly impersonal stare.

However, the sunlight and the soft breeze from the east, the movement of the fast walking mare, named Kate, and the quickly changed scene when they entered the mulga forest overlapping into this paddock from the southern country, quickly lifted the depression that was alien to Bony’s sunny nature. As a further anodyne, he listed the difficulties he had to surmount.

Into this paddock five months ago a man had ridden The Black Emperor a few hours before a heavy fall of rain. To ride round its boundary fences meant a journey of thirty-six miles. Most fortunately it was a small paddock, comprising only eighty square miles of plain, mulga and other scrub-belts, water channels and sand-dunes. He knew the shape of this paddock, the taking in of Green Swamp from Meena having produced an angled bite in its north-west corner.

Considering the lapse of time since Anderson rode out never to be seen again, the task of solving the mystery of his disappearance might well have seemed hopeless to a lesser man. Bony had no starting point such as the body of a murdered man, nor any clue to provide a basis for theory from which fact might emerge. What had happened to Anderson, to his hat, to his stockwhip, to the horse’s neck-rope? Where now were these three articles and the man? For days and weeks stockmen and the aborigines had hunted and found nothing. It was as though the falling rain were acid that dissolved solids and washed them into the thirsty earth.