Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

“Hool’emSool ’em!” shouted the half-caste.

The enthusiastic dogs raced ahead of the galloping horse. They wanted no urging to enter into this new game with their new master. For a while the hunting pack raced back towards the boundary fence, and then southward of it to sweep in wide semicircles through the mulga forest, Bony constantly urging the dogs to “Sool ’em!”

An observer would have thought he had taken leave of his senses. The road to Karwir was crossed several times; the boundary fence appeared more than once to block them. Then the chase would swerve from it and head southward, then to the east or west, the dogs constantly urged to “Sool ’emup.” They startled a kangaroo, they put up a dozing rabbit, they chased goannas into trees, and always Bony cried to them, and they followed him. Thus, like a mad huntsman, Bony hunted the black spies who moved without leaving tracks, who could easily defy him but not the dogs.

“Either the blacks cleared out when they saw Blake unload the dogs and guessed their purpose, or they have given up spying on me, being satisfied that after their boning I will no longer be dangerous,” he observed to the horse when he was standing beside her and the panting dogs lay stretched on the ground. The dogs yelped when they heard his voice and the winded horse raised her drooping head.

“Yes, my friends. I thought it was so, because for the first time for weeks I do not feel that sensation of cold at the back of my head and neck. And now for camp and dinner and bed.”

They were on the branch road to Green Swamp, and Bony walked leading the mare, the dogs trotting wearily beside him. The galahs were coming from and going to the water in the sheep troughs beside the well at Green Swamp, some to chatter, others to scream defiance as they passed overhead. When the man and his companions entered the line of box-trees surrounding the swamp, the sun was resting on the western scrub line and the soft wind carrying Bony’s cigarette smoke before him promised a cool night.

Now the box-trees thinned as Bony walked beneath them to their southern edge where the ground rose sharply to the low plateau on which were situated the hut, the well and the windmill. He saw with quickened interest the column of blue smoke slanting away low over the ground to the eastern boundary, then saw that the smoke column was based upon a mound of smoking debris marking the site of the hut.

The dogs, smelling the water in the troughs, raced away towards them. The horse whinnied and nudged Bony’s back to hurry him. He took her to the nearest of two troughs; and while she drank, he gazed a little blankly at the smouldering debris two hundred yards distant from the well, the gloom deepening among the lower lying box-trees, the sky swiftly being painted with bars of red, green and indigo blue.

It was useless to search for possible tracks; there was little doubt that the hut had been deliberately destroyed by people who would have been careful to leave no tracks. No one, other than the blacks, would have had cause to commit such an act of incendiarism.

Bony’s mind went back to the early morning of that day. He recalled having heaped white ash over the glowing red embers of his breakfast fire on the wide hearth before closing the door and leaving for the day’s work. Any fire insurance man would have agreed that he had done everything needful to prevent fire. There had been no wind this day till late evening; but there had been several whirlwinds marching drunkenly across the land, and one of these might have passed over the hut and, with its back draught, scattered the embers over the hut’s wooden floor.

The odds in favour of such a happening were small; those in favour of deliberate incendiarism very many. The hut was a white man’s home. It was, too, Bony’s temporary home. Its destruction would not only greatly inconvenience Bony when time had become of vital value; it would drive him closer to the bush and to the influences of the bush that were to assist the aborigines in their boning. It would be all to their advantage to delay him in his investigation by making him journey daily to and from the homestead, twelve miles to the south. As a matter of routine, Bony searched for tracks and found none.

The advancing night was sliding across the sky, pushing down to the sun’s couch the colourful draperies of departing day, when Bony took the mare to a patch of dry tussock grass and there hobbled her short. Then he made a fire beneath one of the box-trees and heated water in his quart-pot, while the dogs watched him with eyes saying plainly that they were hungry. And when they came to understand that there was nothing to eat they lay down beside their new master while he dined on hot water and cigarettes.

For several hours, Bony squatted on his heels to ponder on this latest development and to plan for the future. He felt tired and safe from observation, and yet he could not free his mind of an unease akin to that of approaching death.

It was after ten o’clock when he removed his riding boots, added wood to the fire, scooped a hole in the ground to take his hip, and composed himself for slumber, the dogs curled at his feet. Yet sleep was denied him. Imps pricked his skin, and when his mind was losing consciousness vague and terrible shapes rushed at him to awaken him fully with cold shock. Fear was like a devil that came to gloat over him every time the fire died down, and at one o’clock he began to feel severe abdominal pains that kept him awake until the new day dawned. Only then did he fall into an oft-interrupted sleep from which finally he was roused by the barking dogs and the roaring hum of an aeroplane engine.

With eyes heavy from lack of sleep and muscles protesting against the torturing long night, Bony arose to watch the plane arriving from the homestead many hours before he had expected it. The machine circled once before dropping beyond his view to land where the several depressions became one to enter Green Swamp. Bony’s gaze swept southward to where he had hobbled his horse, and although he was unable to see her, he could hear the tinkle of the bell suspended from her neck. He met Young Lacy coming from the plane, carrying a fore-quarter of mutton in a calico bag and the microscope in its wood box.

“Good day, Bony!” he was greeted by Young Lacy, who added: “Why, you’ve been and gone and burned Green Swamp Mansion!”

“It was burned down when I arrived here last evening. I don’t know how it happened, and I am sure I left the small breakfast fire safe on the hearth,” Bony explained. “It’s most unfortunate.”

“For you it must be,” came the cheerful agreement. “Anyway, it’s no loss to Karwir. I’ve been wanting the old dad to pull it down and build a decent place here. How did you get on for tucker?”

“Hot water and cigarettes. I am glad you flew over this morning: we’d all have been pretty hungry by this afternoon. Did you happen to bring any tea?”

“You bet. I never fly without tea and a billycan and a tin of water. Oh, and a tin of plain biscuits. Here, you take the meat and get going on some chops. I see the axe beside the alleged woodheap wasn’t burned. I’ll go back for the tea and things.”

Five minutes later the dogs had been fed, chops were grilling on the coals, and water was beginning to stir in the new billycan.

“I’m sorry about this place being burned down,” Bony was saying. “I’m responsible, you see.”

“Oh rot! Good job the joint did burn. Did you lose much in it?”

“Only toilet gear and underwear.”

“Bad luck. What do you intend doing now? You look like a feller who’s been on the ran-tan for a week.”

Bony sighed, saying:

“I feel it. Do you think Mr Lacy would be generous enough to send me out camp gear and horse feed? You see, I have reached the conclusion that this part of Green Swamp is of the utmost importance to my investigation, and to ride to and from the homestead every day would take too much time.”