Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

Old Lacy caressed his prominent Roman nose with the fingers of his left hand. His right held the coffee cup. The clear eyes indicated a quick brain.

“Ha-um! Jeff must be getting childish,” he said. “I’ll have a look-see at the horse. Confound Jeff! He’s upset the day’s routine.”

Young Lacy nodded that he heard and then went to the kitchen where the only maid on the house staff gave him a cup of tea.

“Mr Anderson’s not in his room, Mr Lacy,” she said.

“I know that, Mabel. His horse is back. Mr Anderson must have met with an accident. Have you taken tea to Miss Lacy?”

“Yes. She was wanting to know if Mr Anderson had come home during the night.”

“Then you slip along and tell her about the horse coming home without him.”

“You there, lad?” called Old Lacy from the hall, and Young Lacy hurried out to accompany the older man to the yards. Having circled the suspicious horse, the old man said:

“Must have thrown his rider long before the rain stopped. No mud on him. Any idea when the rain did stop?”

“No. I didn’t put my light out till after one, and it was still raining then.”

Old Lacy continued to inspect the horse, and then he said:

“Ah-um! We’ll take a look for tracks beyond the gate.”

Together the two men walked to the right of the two gates in the six-wire fence running parallel with the creek. The sun was making diamonds of the water lying in theclaypans and in the wheel tracks far along the road. The subdivision fence separating Green Swamp Paddock from North Paddock ran to a hair stretched to infinity across the grass plain. Having passed beyond the gate and come to halt on the road to Opal Town, the old man spoke with conviction in his strong voice.

“The Black Emperor got to the gate long before the rain stopped last night,” he said, staring at the ground. “See, his tracks are almost but not quite wiped out by the rain. He came home following the road. You’d better get your breakfast, lad, and I’ll put every available man up on a horse. You’ll have to organize a muster of the paddock. Pity the ’drome’stoo boggy to let you get the plane aloft. I’d better ring up Blake. We might want his tracker out here.”

Sergeant Blake was breakfasting with his wife when the telephone shrilled a summons to the office, one of the two front rooms of the station building which fronted the only street in Opal Town. The senior police-officer controlling a district almost as large as England and Wales was dapper but tough. His weathered face emphasized the grey of his well-brushed hair and carefully trimmed short grey moustache. His wife, a large woman his own age-forty-six-made no remark on this early call, and silently placed her husband’s half-eaten breakfast chops into the open oven.

Correctly dressed in uniform, the Sergeant thudded along the passage to the telephone. From beyond miles of mulga forest and open plain a deep, booming voice spoke.

“That you, Blake? Lacy here. Sorry to ring you up so early. I fear that Jeff Anderson has met with an accident somewhere out in our Green Swamp Paddock. May want your help later.”

“What’s happened?” asked Blake, his voice metallic.

“I sent Anderson into Green Swamp Paddock yesterday morning to ride the fences. He hadn’t come home last night, and we thought it likely enough that he had camped for the night at the hut out at the swamp, seeing that it was raining and that we always keep a few rations at the hut.

“Knowing Anderson, we didn’t worry much about him, but this morning the groom found his horse with saddle and bridle still on him waiting outside the paddock gate. I have looked the animal over. It hasn’t been damaged nor has the saddle or bridle, except the reins which the horse had been dragging and treading on. It looks as though Anderson was thrown. I’ve sent every available man with the lad to muster the paddock.”

“I understood that Anderson was an exceptionally good horseman. What’s the horse like?”

“The worst on Karwir, Blake. The Black Emperor.”

“Humph! I’ve heard of him. Horse and man a good match, eh?”

“You’re right,” agreed Old Lacy with some reluctance. “Still, Anderson likes that type of horse and he could well manage The Black Emperor. Now the position this morning is this. The ground is too soggy for the lad to take the plane up, so he can’t make a search from the air. The road is so wet that I don’t think a car could be driven far without becoming well bogged. It’s on the cards that Anderson was parted from his horse yesterday afternoon at some point at the northern end of the paddock. If that happened late in the afternoon he would be almost sure to make for the hut if he could manage it, or even if he wasn’t hurt-in which case the men would meet him walking home this morning. The chances are in favour of his having been thrown, then, unhurt, camping at the hut last night and now walking home. On the other hand he may be lying seriously hurt and suffering from exposure.”

“Yes, that may be,” Blake agreed. “Whatd’you want me to do?”

“Nothing just now. But I thought that later on, if the men haven’t found Anderson, you might send a constable and your tracker out-even come out yourself. Or you could ring up theGordons and ask John Gordon to ride over with a couple of the blacks. If Anderson doesn’t turn up, or can’t be located by two o’clock, we can be sure he’s come a cropper.”

“It might be better to get Gordon to take a couple of the Kalchut blacks over to Green Swamp Paddock than to attempt to get there from here by car,” Blake stated. “Ring me up after dinner. I’ll be on hand all day. Been a good rain, hasn’t it?”

“It has that. We had an inch and seventy points. Let’s hope it means the beginning of a good wet winter. All right, I’ll ring you again early this afternoon. Good-bye.”

Again seated at the breakfast table, Sergeant Blake related the story to a news-hungry wife who was, too, a devout Methodist. She quoted:

“ ‘He thattaketh up the sword shall perish by the sword.’ A violent man will surely meet with violence.”

“It’s not yet proved that Jeff Anderson has met with violence,” her husband pointed out.

“No, but it will be proved some time if not now. As I’ve often said, you’ll be taking Jeffery Anderson before he’s much older, mark my words. Where’s Abie this morning? He hasn’t come for his breakfast.”

“He’s lying in, I suppose. And the horse waiting for a feed. Abie’s getting that way that I’ll have to shake him up. They all go the same in time. Can’t keep away from the tribe more than a month.”

Breakfast over, Blake rose and lit a pipe. Without hat he stepped down into the yard at the rear of the building and crossed it to the stables on the far side. Here a horse was always kept ready for duty, although Blake ran his own car and one of his two constables owned a motor cycle outfit. It was the tracker’s main duty to exercise, feed and groom the horse, and he camped in one of the vacant stalls.

To Blake’s astonishment the stretcher provided for the tracker was not occupied, nor were there lying about it any articles of spare clothing or the stockwhip of which he was so proud. The sleek brown mare in the adjacent stall whinnied her request for breakfast, and, with a heavy frown between his eyes, the Sergeant took her out to water at the trough. He shouted several times for Abie. There was no reply. Blake was now convinced that the tracker had left to rejoin his tribe. He had been at the stable at ten o’clock the previous night. Out in the yard Blake met one of his two constables.

“Seen Abie this morning?” he asked, grey eyes glinting.

“No, Sergeant.”

“Must have cleared out. Nothing belonging to him now in his quarters, and Kate neither watered nor fed. I’ve just attended to her. You’d better groom her, and then you can ride her out to Mackay’s place and get that return fixed up.”