Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

Gordon was still frowning when he said:

“Do you think that was wise? Bonaparte is bound to hear of all that eventually, and then he’ll bring you into it.”

“Oh, I’m brought into it already.” And Diana told of the trap Bony had set for her baited with imagined kisses on a telephone instrument, and his knowledge of their meeting near the bloodwood-tree. Despairingly, she cried:

“He finds out everything, John. Nothing can be kept from him. Our only hope is that he will be forced to give up.”

The man’s arm tightened about her waist, and the added pressure broke the straw of her composure. She clung to him tightly.

“Oh, John, what will they do when he finds out everything, finds Anderson?” she cried.

“They will probably be most dramatic,” was his answer. “But I keep assuring you that he won’t find Anderson. Without proof that Anderson is dead, Bonaparte, or his superiors, can do nothing. Now, sweetheart, don’t you worry so. There’s no real reason to worry. You know, you haven’t once to-day told me that you love me.”

“Oh, but you know I do. I wish I could stay here with you for ever. I’d like to ride away with you to the fabled Inland Sea and there find an island off its shore where you and I could find our bower house. Instead-I must go. Look at the sun. It’s getting late.”

Gordon watched her ride away homeward until she was engulfed by the coldly indifferent trees. Then he vaulted the barrier and strode, his eyes blazing with anger, across the half-mile of country to where Jimmy Partner and Abie were waiting with the horses-Abie with thick masses of feathers on his feet. At Gordon’s approach they arose. They saw anger in his face.

“What’s the matter, John?” inquired Jimmy Partner.

Gordon came to stand immediately before the man who could put him on his back with one hand. His voice was brittle when he asked:

“Do you know anything about the boning of the detective?”

Jimmy Partner’s gaze fell to his feet. Then:

“Yes, John,” he said softly. “I thought it a good way to get rid of the detective. He’s been finding out too much. I wongied with Nero and Wandin, and they agreed to get the bone-”

Gordon’s right fist crashed between the downcast eyes. Opportunity was his to measure distance, and Jimmy Partner was looking down at the ground. The black wrestler collapsed. Furiously Gordon turned upon the shrinking Abie, shouted at him to get busy wiping out the traces of the meeting at the fence; and when Jimmy Partner rose unsteadily to his feet, he saw as through a mist his friend and boss riding away towards the Meena homestead.

Since the day Diana Lacy had visited Meena, and had assisted in the salvaging of John’s hairs, Mary Gordon had daily guarded his comb and brushes and the pillows, and had kept watch on the house even while she milked the cows.

Unsatisfied curiosity regarding what had really happened that day of rain when her son and Jimmy Partner had not returned home till an agonizingly late hour, was now balanced by the thought that, knowing nothing, she could admit nothing. What she thought and guessed were little secrets of her own, and her faith in her son was untarnished.

This afternoon of the lovers’ meeting at the boundary fence, she expected John and Jimmy Partner home at six o’clock, and by half-past five the meat was brown in the oven, the peach pie cooked and being kept hot beside the stove, and the potatoes in their jackets were just put on to boil. She heard the wicket gate click and then jar shut, and, knowing it was neither John nor Jimmy Partner, she stepped to the door-to be confronted by Wandin.

Gaunt but stately, this personage of the Kalchut tribe was unusually excited.

“Johnny Boss him not home, missus?”

“No, not yet, Wandin. What do you want?”

Wandin’s eyes were wide, his breathing fast. He grinned and said:

“You come with me, eh? All rabbits they go walk-about. They clear outer here. They go quick, too right.”

“The rabbits going, Wandin?”

“Too right, missus. They go walkabout. Bimeby no rabbits here Meena Lake. You come see, eh?”

Mary gave a swift glance to the cooking dinner, hastily removed her house apron, tossed it on to the couch, and hurried after the tall, stalking figure of Wandin. He led her southward of the house for some two hundred yards and then up to the summit of the lake-encircling dunes.

The hot sun streamed over the vast empty bed of the lake, casting the long shadows of the dunes across the little valley to the lesser dunes merging into the base of the upland. The end of the tree-belt was a further hundred yards south of Mary and Wandin, and they could see for miles from the south round to the north-east. From the south-east came a cool and strangely fragrant wind.

“Look, missus!” urged Wandin. “See, the rabbits clear out on walkabout. Look at that feller.”

He pointed, and Mary watched a rabbit pass over the dune on which they were standing. It passed only a few feet from them, unafraid, as though utterly unconscious of them. It ran down the steep lee-side slope, crossed the little valley and ran up the slope of the lesser dune. Its progress was unnatural, as Mary observed.

She watched others pass on either side, all running in the same direction, the progress of each unnatural. Normally a rabbit, even when hungry and making out for feed, always runs in short spurts, with a period of sitting up for observation at the end of each run. This evening there was no stopping for observation. The rabbits evinced no sign of fear, either of those who stood on the summit of the dune, or of the carrion birds whirring above them.

The birds knew of this abnormality, especially the crows. Of recent months the crows and eagles had increased enormously, and now the sky was filled with them. The crows were cawing vociferously, and the eagles were gliding with seldom a wing flap, some low to ground, the higher birds like dust motes against the sky.

Mary turned full circle, slowly, spellbound by this genesis of a rabbit migration. Wherever she looked she saw running rodents. They were crossing the lake, coming towards her, passing her, running away from her to the south-east whence came the strangely fragrant little wind. All were running into the wind and in the same direction, all running in that unnatural, purposeful manner.

“Bimeby no rabbits at Meena,” Wandin predicted. “Plenty feed bimeby after rain come. Long time now ’fore rabbits so thick at Meena.”

Mary quite forgot her cooking dinner. When she turned again to the lake the sun was appreciably lower above the smoke-blue Meena Hills. Low upon the barren dust plain of the lake bed and coloured by the sun, hung a film of scarlet gauze created from dust raised by the running rabbits. Each rabbit was the point of a dust-spear; each rabbit was like a speck of flotsam carried by a strong current to the south-east, a current never varying in its movement.

Wandin drew Mary’s attention to the horseman coming from the south, riding fast down the long ground slope. Although he was a mile distant she recognized the horse and her son who rode. Remembering the dinner, she uttered a little exclamation, but found herself unable to be drawn from this vantage point that offered a grandstand seat for the opening of a mighty drama. She could hear the excited cries of the aborigines and their children, cries sometimes drowned by the cawing of the crows. A rabbit passed so close to Wandin that he was able to kick out at it and send it rolling down the slope. It continued on its course as though unaware of the interruption. The sunlight falling obliquely upon the eastern land rise was painted scarlet by the dust following the leaders of the horde, and the far edge of this dust was creeping to the land summit as though a red coverlet were being drawn across the world.