Arthur Upfield - Murder down under

The Rabbit-AndThe Hunters

THE SUN, rushing upward from the bottom of the world, began to flood the sky above the Loftus farm. While the first beam of its light sank downward to the farm it painted with the whiteness of snow the squadrons of tiny puff clouds hanging without movement in the still air, so still that the smoke from the smouldering haystack rose in a straight column to within a few hundred feet of the clouds, where it mushroomed into a brilliantsnowcap.

But this morning, there were no watchers of beautiful natural phenomena. Although so early, men were gathering together in parties, were converging on the wheat town in their motorcars and trucks, for all night Bony had been engaged in rousing the farmers in the district. Faced with much loss of time before police reinforcements could be hurried to the district, Bony had purposely released the essential facts, knowing that by so doing he would arouse the countryside to assist in the capture of Landon by cutting off all roads of escape.

A party of a dozen men stood in a group on the summit of the long granite rock west of the Loftus homestead, watching Bony walking slowly along the strip of soft moss-grown earth between the rock and the line of dense scrub. Each of them carried either a rifle or a shotgun. A little in front of them, keeping them back from the working half-caste, as it were, stood Detective-Sergeant John Muir.

The watchers saw Bony now in his hereditary element, far removed from a lady’s bedroom. His hands were clasped behind his back; his head was thrust forward and his face downward. Presently he stopped, dug his heel into the spongy earth to make a mark, and then, looking up and at them, he crossed the short distance to the rock. He said:

“Gentlemen, as Sergeant Muir has told you, I have been engaged by the Western Australian Police Department to track down Mick Landon. I have no objection to you watching me at work. You may have the privilege of observing at work the finest tracker in Australia, for I have done much work for the Queensland police, if you leave behind you your weapons.

“Understand this. The Law requires the person of Mick Landon. At present I am the Law which demands the person of the supposed murderer of George Loftus that hestand his fair trial before a qualified judge and a jury of his peers. There”-Bony waved a hand to indicate all the vast extent of western bush-“there in that bush is Landon. I am going to get him for the Law. If you insist on bringing your firearms so that you may shoot him at sight, so that you may cheat the hangman of his fees, I shall refuse to make any effort-now. But, later, I shall start off on his tracks and get him today, tomorrow, or next week.”

Several of the men murmuredprotestingly. Their mass temper was ugly, and Bony’s only assistant was John Muir. The detective-sergeant would have spoken to them impulsively had not Bony, with most rare impulsiveness, stepped in front of him.

The crowd of angry men could not well be managed by the two policemen. They not only desired to take the law into their own hands, but in their eagerness to do so would constantly obstruct Bony and threaten to destroy the hunted man’s tracks. All the policemen but one on the staff at Merredin were guarding important roads, searching motorcars and trucks, and the railway stations at which every train would stop. They, with parties of volunteers, were the nets set at the rabbit holes of a huge warren. In the bush ran the frantic rabbit.

“Please think,” Bony urged the small crowd with forced calmness. “Let us look at your picture. Armed, you come on Landon. You riddle him with bullets and shot. In an instant his agony is over. He is dead. He is at peace. Now look at my picture. He knowshow hopeless are his chances of escape, because he will guess I am on his tracks. He is taken alive. He stands in the dock fighting a losing battle for his life. Observe the sweat of terror on his face. He is condemned, and dies his first death. Cannot you see him dying a thousand times while he waits to hear the footsteps of the hangman? And you would be merciful to him. You would be merciful to one who stole Loftus’s wife and murdered Loftus himself. You would be merciful to one who, although accidentally, shot Miss Jelly and then prevented me from going to her assistance. Come now! Which picture do you prefer?”

“What about it, sergeant? Will he hang?” demanded the Spirit of Australia in his powerful voice.

“I have never beenmore sure of a man being hanged,” Muir replied grimly.

The crowd whispered among themselves. Then the old-young giant said:

“All right! We leave our guns behind. Ted can take ’emdown to the constable guarding the house. But when wegets Landon we will see that he arrives safely at the Merredin lock-up.”

Over Bony’s sharp features flashed a whimsical smile, but his deep blue eyes continued to sparkle with emotion. There were those among the crowd with sufficient imagination to cause them to thank their lucky stars that they were not the rabbit.

“I am glad to find that you are men of perspicacity,” he said in his grand manner. “At all times, please, keep behind me in as compact a body as possible. The sergeant will follow immediately behind me, in order to protect me should Landon be lying in ambush. Landon is armed. If he shoots me dead, if he shoots Mr Muir dead as well, even if he shoots half of you dead, then the survivors remember to take Landon alive to the hangman and not dead to the coroner.”

Having known Bony for years, John Muir was astonished by the hatred in both the voice and the face of this otherwise calm and gentle-natured man. Hitherto Bony had revealed mental detachment in his placidly conducted, unhurried man-hunting. Muir did not understand Bony’s friendship with the two Jelly girls and did not know of the remorse his friend suffered at having taken Lucy Jelly to the Loftus house, with its tragic result.

For the first dozen yards of the trail any one of those men could have tracked Landon, but when once Bony plunged into the thick-growingbogeta bush the ground became iron-hard and covered with the dead and blackened needle-pointed leaves. Yet, for Bony, the ends of broken branches and stripped twig tips blazed a trail easy to follow.

The thick-growing bush gave place abruptly to larger and more varied bush, with here and there comparatively open spaces where grew white gums and gimlet-trees. Here a short curve, as though drawn with a pencil, there a turned stone, now a newly broken dead twig, once a shining brass shell from Landon’s revolver, all indicated the hunted man’s mental condition. Until then he had not remembered to replace the discharged cartridges with live ones. Both Bony and Muir wondered how many live cartridges Landon did possess. For distances of several yards Bony, the tracker, saw nothing to aid him, but by now he knew that Landon took longer steps with his left leg and, therefore, was prone to circle always to the right. Save the empty cartridge shell, the following crowd saw Landon’s tracks but five or six times in a mile. They could not see the little links of the long chain over which Bony almost ran, sure and faultless.

With John Muir close behind him, and behind the sergeant the crowd of eager men, Bony suddenly came on to a strip of clear mossy ground edging the gentle slope of a granite rock. Not having seen this “knob” during his walk from the great Burracoppin Rock to the Loftus homestead sometime previously, he turned to those who followed, saying:

“Can anyone tell me the area of this rock?”

“About forty acres,” someone replied.

“Thank you! Landon stepped on to the rock at this place. Unless he is still on the rock in hiding, he must have stepped off it. I shall see where he left it. I suggest that you men walk over the rock to make sure he is not here whilst I walk round its edge to pick up his tracks, if he has gone farther on. Please don’t move off the granite till I have picked up his tracks; otherwise you might destroy them.”