Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

Steps of Progress

BONY’S new camp was established just south of the Karwir-Meena boundary fence where it left the sand-dune country to run across flat land for three-quarters of a mile before turning southward to cross the several depressions or channels. To the west from the front of the camp, which was splendidly shaded by two cabbage-trees, the eye was at once attracted by the netted barrier passing north of the camp. Beyond it some fifty yards a fine specimen of mulga grew in solitary state on the wide ribbon ofclaypans that separated the sand-dunes from the flat grey country.

Adhering to the trunk of that solitary tree Bony had discovered the wisp of green cable silk.

It was now the second afternoon following that on which Young Lacy had brought out the gear and assisted Bony to make this new camp. Throughout the preceding day Bony had hunted for aboriginal spies and had found none. From the fence round to Green Swamp, he had examined the claypan ribbon fronting the dunes, hoping to pick out on the surface traces of one or more tracks made by The Black Emperor when it rained six months before. During the first part of the second day he and the dogs had ranged over adjacent Meena country, examining sand-dunes and flat lands. Bony had found no further clue; but still he was certain that this area of country could provide him with all the pieces of the jig-saw puzzle if only he could delve beneath the surface laid by the rain and the wind and the heat of the sun.

After breakfast he had been violently sick, and for lunch he had been satisfied with a few plain biscuits and a pannikin or two of tea. Feeling now a little better, he decided again to examine that solitary mulga-tree. Before, he had been reluctant to spend time here lest he should betray his interest to those watching spies.

When he climbed over the barb-top barrier, the dogs followed, refusing to remain in the camp shade despite the heat of the day. The mare standing in the improvised yard near the camp raised her head to watch, but soon began again to doze, grateful for the spell from work.

Bony came to a standstill before the tree. Yes-there was the faint dent on the bark he had made with his thumb-nail to mark the exact place where he had found the wisp of cable silk. On a former visit to this tree he had walked round and round it for several minutes without seeing anything to arouse his interest. And now as though the trunk were the hub of a wheel, line of vision a spoke, and himself a section of the rim, Bony again slowly circled the tree a bare two feet from it. Finding nothing abnormal when making a general examination of the straight trunk, he decided to look for clues in support of his theory of the wisp of cable silk.

It was not until he had closely examined the base of the trunk for several minutes that Bony decided that an area of faint discolouration, in the centre of which was a curved line some two inches long, was a bark bruise. Any man with less bush erudition than Bony would never have seen the mark, and would certainly not have guessed what had made it-the heel of a man’s boot. It was immediately below his own mark where the wisp of cable silk had been.

Twenty minutes later he discovered another bruise, this one being opposite the mark made by his thumbnail and some sixty-two inches from the ground. It extended half-way round the trunk and was about five inches wide. Bony sighed his triumph before turning to the bored dogs to whom he said:

“We progress, my canine friends. To-day we have taken a further step, a confident step. I have now proof of my theory of what happened to Anderson, the theory that I built up from the wisp of cable silk. From this side of the fence a party of aboriginals doubtless saw Anderson riding down the slope of the sand-dune on the other side of the fence. Probably insults were passed over the barrier, and then, enraged, Anderson jumped from his horse, neck-roped it to a fence post, leapt the barrier and rushed about the blacks intending to whip them.

“Remembering what their race had suffered at his hands, they declined to be whipped and decided to give him the father of a hiding. There was a fierce struggle until the white man was knocked unconscious. He was dragged to this tree. One of the blacks went to the horse and removed a stirrup-leather; with it Anderson was made a helpless captive, the long strap being passed round the trunk and his neck and buckled where his hands could not reach it. The wound made on the tree by the strap is approximately sixty-two inches up from the ground, because Anderson was a six-foot man and his knees were slightly relaxed.

“On regaining his senses, Anderson faced his enemies, one of whom had his whip with the green cable silk cracker. Probably they told him what they were going to do. The fellow with the whip made a trial cast to learn its exact length, and the silk cracker smacked the trunk above Anderson’s head. After that the flogging began in earnest, and continued until the captive again became unconscious. His body slumped downward and he was hanged by the strap.

“Yes-that’s about how it happened, Hool-’Em-Up and you, you imitation bull terrier. An ugly affair altogether. Now we’ll give the trunk of this tree another overhaul. We’ll examine the bark square inch by square inch just in case it has caught anything else on its raised and serrated edges.”

Going to ground, Bony began to circle the tree. He took it in successively higher layers until at last he came to stand on his feet. An hour was spent thus, his eyes small and steady, his brows knit and the whole of his mind directing his eyes. And when he stood before the mark he had made with his thumb-nail, he brought his eyes close to the bark several inches below the mark. Then quickly he moved his head to either side and squinted diagonally across the place, for only now and then when the soft wind moved it, did the light fallglintingly on a human hair. Like the silk it was caught fast by the bark.

“So-another-step-we-take-to-day!” he cried so loudly that the dogs rushed to jump up about him. “We find a hair of the man who was strapped to this tree, doubtless caught by the bark as he made a frantic effort to escape the whip lash. It is light-brown in colour, and, I should say, two inches in length. Anderson’s hair was light-brown. There in that single hair, to be seen only when light strikes upon it at an angle, is the final brick of the building of my theory. I’m lucky, I’ll not deny. It is the only tree within many yards. It is not a smooth-skinned leopardwood-tree, but a mulga-tree, the bark of which is rough and hard. Nero, and Wandin, and Malluc-you scoundrels-as Dryden wrote, beware the fury of a patient man.”

Bony successfully detached the hair and imprisoned it within a cigarette paper which he placed in an envelope, later to be marked Exhibit Three.

“Oh yes, we now know that Anderson was strapped to this tree and flogged with the whip he himself used to flog Inky Boy,” Bony remarked to the dogs. “There he hung suspended by the stirrup-leather. Then what happened? What happened then? Why, the blacks had to conceal the body. They must have been confident before they killed Anderson that John Gordon was riding away from the Channels with a mob of sheep, but even so they must have seen the danger to themselves in the possibility that Gordon might return to the locality in search of other sheep. Thus they would not have carried the body away to another place.

“They would have done one of two things. With pointed mulga sticks they would have dug a grave out there in that soft, flat ground. Or they would have carried the body up among the dunes and buried it at the foot of the eastern slope of one of them, knowing that the prevailing westerly wind would push the dune farther and farther over and on it. Ah-yes-I can see a lot of manual labour in front of me.”