Arthur Upfield - Sands of Windee

Bony’s explanation, tendered the following morning, was not fully satisfying. He promised, however, to reveal more in the immediate future. He had yet to deal with the inevitable difficulties of disclosing not what really happened, but what was supposed to have happened. Without waiting for Mrs Bumpus to rise and cook breakfast, and declining with thanks Sergeant Morris’s hospitality, he left for Windee in Slater’s car, arriving at the homestead about eight o’clock.

Here he found one of the four men brought out by Father Ryan temporarily installed as cook. The four men were eating breakfast in the homestead kitchen, and Father Ryan, Marion, and Mrs Poulton were at theirs in the dining-room. The previous evening it had been arranged that Slater should take the four men and Father Ryan out to the scene of the fire.

Breakfast over, the little priest came into the kitchen with Marion Stanton and jovially inquired if everyone was ready.

“You go on, Father. I shall be riding a hack,” Bony said.

“All right,” nodded Father Ryan, and after aurevoirs to the women he and his pressed volunteers were carried off by Slater.

“Now, Miss Marion, if you will give me a few moments, there is something I want to say,” Bony stated smilingly.

“Very well. Let us go to the office.”

There he said:

“Permit me to be seated at this desk for a minute, will you?” and, Marion consenting, he wrote rapidly some fifty words on a sheet of block paper, folded it, placed with it the paper he had stolen from Mrs Thomas and the jewellers’ letter, sealed the papers in an envelope, sealed the envelope with red wax, and wrote on the envelope: To be opened on the morning Miss Marion Stanton is married. Bony’s wedding present.

Rising to his feet, he approached her and gave the envelope into her hands. For a little while she was silent, reading and re-reading what he had written on it. Then, suddenly looking up, she saw him regarding her with laughter in his eyes.

“Bony-this is not a joke, Bony, is it?” she asked perplexedly.

“Well, no. It is not”-confidentially. “You will remember that recently you asked my advice about a certain trouble which had befallen your father and you. The sooner you become married the quicker will the load of worry be lifted from your father’s shoulders, and consequently from your own. The jack that will lift the load is contained in that envelope, but you are not to use it until the day you are to be married.”

“It is all very strange. But how am I to get married when my-when Dash is being hunted? Oh, why all this mystery? We seem surrounded by mystery. There is mystery about you, too.”

“Well, well, it will not long remain so, Miss Stanton,” Bony cried. “I have already lifted the shadow a little. Mrs Thomas is leaving Mount Lion by the mail coach this morning. Sergeant Morris has discovered that, after all, he has no grounds for arresting Dot and Dash. And now I want you to loan me Grey Cloud.”

“Loan you Grey Cloud? Why?”

“Because he is the fastest horse in the western district of New South Wales.”

“Yes-but why?”

“Because the faster the horse I ride the quicker I shall catch up with Dot and Dash. And the sooner I catch up with Dot and Dash-well, the sooner you will be able to open that envelope.”

“Bony, what are you?”

He saw the trouble and the wonder in her steady, cool grey eyes; saw, too, how the corners of her mouth trembled a little. Her breathing was more rapid than normally, and her fingers played about the envelope they held as though she were lost in the darkness and sought for the light. Looking at her, Bony felt no qualms now at the hard path he had chosen to tread, for he knew then, as he had known all along, that she regarded him as of her own colour, and was not that a salve to his bruised soul?

“Bony, what are you?”

At the repetition of her question he chose, wilfully, to misunderstand her. His eyes clouded as ever they did when he remembered or was reminded of what he was.

“Just a poor half-caste, Miss Stanton-a breaker of horses and a builder of stockyards,” and, seeing the protest rush into her eyes, he added swiftly: “Have you any news this morning of the progress of the fire?”

“Very little, Bony. Father rang up this morning and said that it looked terrific, and that they all were engaged in burning a break, excepting the riders who are mustering the sheep in all the paddocks near it.”

“Have they seen anything of Dot and Dash?”

“Yes. They reached Carr’s Tank late last evening and took two of Ned Swallow’s horses, saying that Dad had sent them out. Ned Swallow said, too, that they went off south.”

“Ah! And what did old Jeff say about Bony?”

“I’d-I’d rather not repeat his words”-and Marion laughed for the first time that day.

“They would be forcible; they certainly would,” Bony chuckled. “Now where precisely is this Carr’sTank? Are there any maps of the country here?”

“Yes. This one on the wall is a large-scale map of the district.”

Side by side they stood examining the huge map. Marion pointed out Carr’s Tank, and, seeing a box of assorted coloured pins, Bony marked the place with a red one. Just for an instant he re-studied the map, then suddenly he emptied the pins out on a near-by table, and, in a tone of voice she never had heard him use before, he said:

“Pick me out all the red pins-quickly, please.”

As fast as she sorted and handed the pins asked for he stuck them here and there over the map, until at last he stopped and stood back.

“Here we have marked all the waters north, west and south of Carr’s Tank,” he murmured, so softly that the change in his tone was startling. He appeared lost in the maze of a problem of his own making. “Water, Miss Marion, is the source of all life. It is the main element that permits man to live; yes, and horses and sheep and rabbits, even the little wagtail birds. Now, of the two men, Dot is the experienced bushman. He was born in Arizona, a country of wild open spaces. He has spent years in Central Australia. He is an experienced gold-prospector, for the dolly-pot in the blacksmith’s shop is his. Probably, nay logically, he has prospected for gold in the Mount Brown district, and he knows the Rufus country, extending westwards from Mount Brown far out into South Australia. Yes. He would know the country. But, it is reported they went south from Carr’s Tank. Ah, foolish, foolish Mr Dot! Little mistakes lead to great falls. Had you told Swallow, for doubtless Swallow tells the tale, that you were heading to the north-east towards Mount Brown and the hilly scrub country thereabouts, you would have been wiser. In which case, had you truthfully desired to go there, you would have gone on toNullawil. Instead, you turned south to Carr’s Tank from Range Hut. But from there you will go west-west and then north-west. For southward lies the more settled pastoral country. Well, well, well!”

For five long minutes he was silently engrossed by the map. Marion sought to read his thoughts, but failed. He stood there as a man of stone, but when presently he sighed and turned to her the whole of that vast region of sand and scrub, gibber plain and hill ranges was transferred to his brain like a photographic print.

“That map is of great help, Miss Stanton,” he said smoothly. “Permit me now to go out and catch Grey Cloud. In the interim, will you kindly ask Mrs Poulton to put up a little bread and meat, five or six pounds of flour, and small quantities of tea and sugar, into a sugar-sack? Get me also two tins of tobacco and a packet of cigarette papers.”

“You are going now?”

“At once. Every delay of a minute means the postponement of the day you open that envelope.”