Arthur Upfield - Murder down under

“You won’t slip away and leave us in the lurch?” queried the Spirit of Australia, his tall, straight figure a head above the others.

“I will not. You have my word.”

“I’ll back it, blokes,” Hurley cried. “Come on! Let’s give this knob an overhaul.”

But five minutes later, before the area of granite could be thoroughly searched, they heard Bony’sshout, and, running and leaping over the uneven surface, they rejoined the detective with the exuberance of schoolboys.

“Got ’em?” they shouted with exultation.

“Yes.”

Pointing to the ground, Bony smiled in a way which made John Muir shiver. To the crowd there was revealed on the ground no scratch, no faintest impression.

The huge granite rock south of the original site of Burracoppin, when it was dependent on the passing traffic on the old York Road for existence from the custom of the prospectors to and from the new-found goldfields of Southern Cross and Coolgardie, must cover an area of four hundred acres. Towering above the original site of the Burracoppin Hotel, marked now by the fragments of thousands of bottles, the hill of granite appears like a great sea-washed rock; whilst from other points the imaginative observer may picture a miniature barren range cooling after one of the cataclysms which shook the world in its youth. It was on this huge rock that Bony once had sat and gazed on the valley of the wheat belt through which passes the Perth-Kalgoorlie railway.

Having taken every precaution not to be seen by chance searchers, having taken advantage of every crevice, every gully, every water runnel, Landon had reached a position on the highest peak whereon was built a surveyor’s trig, like a beacon to warn England of Napoleon’s invasion.

The man lay in a shallow declivity which, after rain, held gallons of water. There was now no water there, for the fierce sun long had sucked it into vapour. The hunted commanded a clear view of every side of that particular peak, and, being on the highest peak, even long-range rifle bullets could not reach him.

He had arrived there long before dawn, in time to witness the passing of the night-running mail-and-passenger trains at Burracoppin. He was convinced that the shadows converging upon him while he struggled with Bony were the figures of policemen, and he was sufficiently intelligent to know that all avenues of possible escape would have been closed to him before the attempted arrest had been made. Yet so sudden the final wrecking of that life of sensual abandon, when he had become lulled into security by the seeming apathy of the police, that it was not before he had reached the Burracoppin Rock that he realized the hopelessness of his case.

When standing near the trig, watching the lights of the passing trains, his mind had been swamped with despair. Time had returned to him a measure of calmness, and he had grimly decided that he would fight, and, if possible, kill many of his relentless enemies, before he turned the revolver upon himself. Before the dawn had come he had gone down to the old town water soak, filled the petrol-tin bucket attached to the windlass rope, and, having raided a solitary garden of all the vegetables he could carry, had returned to the trig, with water and food to last him many days.

The early sun began to heat the rock. There was no wind to keep down the temperature, and he lay in the long shadow cast by the trig, constantly peering round the carefully built cone of boulders. Now and then fits of helpless rage made him writhe. If only he had not been so supremely foolish as to have lingered near the Loftus homestead waiting a chance to get possession of the money hidden in the flock mattress, he might have boarded one of those trains before the cordon was properly drawn. On one of those trains, preferably that bound to Kalgoorlie, he could have travelled fifty or one hundred miles before dropping off at a wayside station to make a clean break for life.

Now, in broad daylight, he regretted his action remaining on the rock, in losing all that precious time during which he might have slipped through the cordon. It was too late now. Death had become a living entity, a stalking monster which sooner or later would reach him through his own stupidity; either by his own hand or by the hands of enraged men, or from the caress of the hangman’s rope about his neck. There was no escaping death. Yesterday he lived without fear of it. Today he faced its creeping approach with so much horror that he could not clearly think. Then he saw the stalking death, and his teeth clenched fiercely to prevent his crying out at his loss of the remnants of his manhood.

With awful fascination Landon watched Bony and his followers cross a small clearing a quarter of a mile from the eastward edge of the great rock. He tried to count the number of men, but failed. They were bunched too closely together. Well, he would get many of them before they got him. Without doubt they were on his tracks, for he remembered crossing that clearing. Fool! Oh, fool! Why had he not kept on? Why had he stayed there to fight against inevitable death?

Better end this agony now, at once. He looked at the revolver, pointing the muzzle at his eye, imagined the leaping flame and the tearing, smashing bullet streaking through his brain like a comet-and hastily pointed the weapon from him. No, he couldn’t pull the trigger. He excused himself on the plea that he might make a mistake, might only wound himself, and then tossed aside the revolver and clawed his face with his nails, so hateful was the realization of his cowardice.

When again he looked up and then down over the rock curves, he saw one of the pursuers. Now he was fighting for strength of mind, struggling to banish that devil of fear by conjuring mental pictures of dramatic scenes in which he was the hero. Probably, had not Bony appeared just when he did, on the edge of the scrub, which came almost to the east foot of the granite spurs, Landon might have regained self-control and died a brave if vileman.

The appearance of the two detectives and the small crowd of followers dissolved Landon’s morale as a snowflake in the hell of his imagination. He collapsed mentally. Physically he became governed by the subconscious imp of Fear which dwells deep in the mind of every man and woman.

With the swiftness and the snakelike glide of a goanna he ran down the western slope, carrying with him only the revolver, so great being his panic that he left behind him the small box of cartridges. Reaching the encircling spur, he raced away, anywhere, with no sense of direction, with no thought of direction, possessed by the one overwhelming desire to escape those human bloodhounds.

For fully half a mile he ran in a headlong rush, tearing his passage through belts of dense scrub which shredded his clothes and lashed his face, quickly bathed in perspiration, his magnificent chest coming to heave like that of a panting dog. He stopped only when he reached the summit of a quartz ridge, and then, looking backward, could see the peaks of the Burracoppin Rock through the tops of a line of white gums. Men were running about the rock like ants about a pebble.

On he went, senselessly wasting his strength by the rapidity of his progress. He came to the old York Road at the crossroad which led in a gentle fall to the Burracoppin railway station. A car was speeding up the road towards him. Himself concealed in the bush, he saw four men, other than the driver, and their gun barrels were pushed out over the car’s sides. They were as sportsmen out for rabbits. He was the rabbit.

Utterly exhausted, he reached a smaller granite mass half a mile due south. There he flung himself down on the sun-heated rock, vainly trying to conquer the demon that rode him. Stupidly he looked at his empty hands, vainly tried to flog his mind to tell where he had dropped the revolver. Time! The passing of time made no impression on his mind. He could think of nothing but that carload of men who looked like sportsmen out for rabbits. His hands rubbed up and down his shredded trousers, the fingers working as the legs of caught crabs. The corners of his handsome mouth sagged. His face was grimed with sweat and dust. Every nerve in his body twitched.