Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

The discovery of this feather indicated that the man who was adopting the feathered feet method of leaving no tracks was careless or belittled Bony’s bushcraft, because no aboriginal desirous of escaping pursuers would fail constantly to glance behind to be sure that no feather from his feather-encased feet was left to provide a plain clue to his passing.

Still, Bony was not satisfied that one feather gave proof that he was being constantly followed and kept under observation. Although he was instinctively convinced of it, he wanted definite proof.

Mounting again, he rode towards the gate spanning the road to Opal Town, for the first time during his career being the hunted not the hunter. With almost terrible relentlessness he had tracked criminals; and now he was being tracked with that same relentlessness. To escape observation he might gallop the horse, and so leave the unmounted tracker behind. But this would not prevent the tracker following the horse’s tracks and eventually reading from the Book of the Bush the tale of Bony’s movements. Added to this, was the probability that he was being tracked and observed by more than one spy. Like every experienced bushman, Bony had acquired the mental trick of registering what the eyes note while the mind is otherwise occupied. Thus, while thinking of the surveillance of which he had become certain, he mentally noted that when he tossed aside the stub of his cigarette it followed the line of an arc to lie in the small shadow cast by a livingbuckbush.

Why was he being constantly trailed by the blacks? Why, unless in their own interests, or the interests of those directing them? Some connection between the trackers and the disappearance of Jeffery Anderson seemed almost certain.

After his visit to theGordons, Bony was strongly of the opinion that neither mother nor son knew anything that might help to solve the mystery of Anderson’s fate. Both were almost fanatically devoted to the ideal of maintaining the Kalchut tribe in its original state. It was likely that the ideal blinded them to things clearly to be seen by the more worldly-wise, among whom might well be members of the tribe itself. The woman had had no experience of the world beyond the bush, and the young man only that little gained when a boy at school. Like all idealists they would be easy victims to the wily, and who more wily than the aboriginal who had come in contact with the new civilization? Bony was now thinking that the odds favoured some other man than John Gordon being the one who had met Diana Lacy at the boundary fence.

There were so many possibilities that to dwell on them was hardly to put time to good use. The man she had met might have been a member of the Kalchut tribe. He might have been one of theMackays of Mount Lester Station, or someone from Opal Town. That he wanted Bony to know nothing of the meeting was proved by the removal of all traces of it.

“Yes,” he said softly to his horse. “There is ever so much more black than white in this affair. In fact, it might well be all black. There was Anderson, powerful and violent and suffering a sense of injustice after having been forced by Old Lacy to pay compensation to Inky Boy. There was Inky Boy whom Anderson flogged because of the loss of the rams through sheer laziness; Inky Boy would remember the flogging and soon forget the loss of the Karwir rams.

“TheGordons then take a hand in the business. Fearful that publicity may attack their ideal, they restrain the natural instincts of the blacks to set out for justice; and so Nero and his people plan to act independently of theGordons. One places the sign at Black Gate saying that old Sarah at Deep Well is dying, so that after the killing has been done excuse for the walkabout can be made to theGordons, and trackers cannot be called on immediately. The position where I found that piece of green cable silk from Anderson’s whip cracker goes far to support the theory that they tied him to a tree and flogged him as he had flogged Inky Boy.”

Of the thought of the finding of the cable silk was born another, a thought that made Bony involuntarily rein back his horse and stare up at the brazen sky: If the trackers had been following and observing him ever since his arrival, they would know of his discovery of the odd tracks left onclaypans by The Black Emperor. They would know, if not of the cable silk, then of his interest in the tree on which he had found it. If Anderson had been tied to that tree and flogged, and if subsequently Anderson had been killed while tied to it, or close beside it, they would know that he, Bony, was “getting warm.”

If it were proved, therefore, that they were planning physical violence against him, it was proof that interest in him had turned to fear of him. They were subtle, these people, and by all accounts they still practised their ancient rites. He was allied to them through his mother’s blood. He was susceptible to their magic, and with their magic they would strike at him.

Round came the horse to carry Bony back over her tracks. He now clearly remembered the flight of the cigarette stub that ended beside thebuckbush. It was like a picture drawn on the canvas of his mind. On reaching thebuckbush, he dismounted and with blazing eyes searched for the discarded cigarette end. It was not there. There were no human tracks, and yet the cigarette stub was no longer where he had dropped it only fifteen minutes before.

Powder of Bark

DESPITE the heat of the day, Sergeant Blake wore his uniform when he drove his car to meet Bony at the Karwir boundary gate. With his red face, grey hair and short clipped moustache, he appeared less at home in a motor-car than he would have been on the back of a horse on parade.

Almost exactly at twelve o’clock he braked the car before the white painted gate near which he saw Bony’s horse neck-roped to a shady tree; Bony himself was standing beside a fire in the shade cast by two robust cabbage-trees. The Sergeant turned off the track and parked the machine in the shadow of a mulga.

The appearance this day of Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte shocked Sergeant Blake. Bony appeared less well-favoured than the usual half-caste stockman, and was obviously not his former smiling self. Without a preliminary greeting, Bony said:

“So Old Lacy telephoned you my message. I didn’t think he would forget. Fill your own billy and make tea. We can talk as we eat.”

“Good idea!” Blake agreed. “But what’s happened? You look shaken by something or other.”

The smile that came to Bony’s face was forced.

“It is nothing,” he lied. “A touch of the sun. I am taking two aspirin tablets with my tea. Did you see Young Lacy’s plane?”

“Yes. He was having trouble and landed at Pine Hut to adjust the carburettor, so he said. The ground south of the hut is quite good enough to make a landing there.”

“Indeed! What time did you arrive there?”

“Half an hour back. Eleven-thirty. I stayed with him for ten minutes.”

Bony dropped half a handful of tea into the water boiling in his quart-pot and let it boil for ten or twelve seconds before he removed it from the fire. Blake, sitting squarely on the ground, regarded the water in his billy, slowly stirring.

“The plane passed me shortly after ten,” Bony said thoughtfully. “Young Lacy would have landed about ten-fifteen. You arrived there at eleven-thirty, so that Young Lacy had then spent an hour and a quarter adjusting the carburettor. Was he still fiddling with it when you left?”

“Oh no! They flew off to Opal Town before I left,” Blake replied, wondering at Bony’s extraordinary interest. He was, too, most uncomfortable in his tight-fitting tunic, and, when Bony suggested its removal, he took it off with a sigh of relief.