Arthur Upfield: The Barrakee Mystery

TheSundowner

WITH EYES fixed thoughtfully on the slow-moving muddy stream of the River Darling, William Clair lounged in the golden light of the setting sun. His frame was gaunt, his complexion burnt-umber, his eyes were blue and unflickering, his moustache drooping like that of a Chinese mandarin was jet-black, despite his fifty-eight years.

It was the beginning of March, and the river was low. The birds, perched on the up-thrusting snags, were taking their evening drink; the galah, the cockatoo, and the kookaburra mingling their screeches, chatterings, and maniacal laughter with the funeral caw-cawing of the sinister crows. Not a breath of wind stirred the light-reflecting leaves of the giant gums bordering the river. From gold the sunlight turned to crimson.

Just below Clair were moored three small boats. Behind him was the homestead of Barrakee Station, set amid theparadisaic oasis of cool green lawns edged by orange trees. A little down the river, above a deep hole at a bend, were the men’s quarters, the kitchen garden, the engine that raised necessary water into the two great receiving tanks set upon thirty-foot staging. Further down was the huge corrugated-iron shearing-shed, adjoined by the shearers’ quarters-all now empty. In the shearing-shed were Clair’s swag and ration-bags.

Half a mile upstream the river took a sharp turn to Clair’s left, and above the angle of the opposite bank a pillar of blue-gum smoke marked a camp-site. It was a camp of blacks, and interested the gaunt man mightily.

Beneath the gums the shadows darkened. The glory of the dying day laid over the surface of the river a cloth of crimson, patterned with shimmering silver rings where the small perch leapt for flies. The colour of the cloth dimmed magically to that of glinting steel. A kookaburra broke off his laughter and slept.

Clair waited, motionless, until the last glimmer of day had faded from the sky. Then, without noise, without haste, he slithered down the steep bank to where the boats were moored, pulled out the iron spike at the end of one of the mooring chains, softly coiled the chain in the bow, got in, and silently swung out the oars. The operation was so noiseless that a fox, drinking on the opposite side, never raised its head.

The “sundowner”, for Clair at that time was carrying his swag with no intention of accepting work, sat facing the bow and propelled the boat forward by pushing at the oars. There was no suspicion of the sound of water being dug into by oars, nor was there any noise of moving oars in the row-locks. Boat and man slid upstream but a darker shadow in the gloom beneath the overhanging gums.

At the bend, half a mile above, a dozen ill-clad figures lounged about a small fire, not for warmth, but for the sake of spirit-defying light. Clair pushed on silently for a further two hundred yards, when he slanted across the stream and landed.

It is the law of New South Wales that no white man shall enter a camp of blacks. Of this Clair was not ignorant. Nor was he ignorant, being well read, that laws are made for men, and not men for laws.

Avoiding fallen branches and water gutters with the ease of a born bushman, he passed through the darkness to the camp, where he halted some twenty feet from the fire.

“Ahoy! Pontius Pilate!” he called.

Lolling figures about the fire sprang up, tense, frightened at the suddenness of the voice in the night.

“I want to speak to you, Pontius Pilate,” called Clair.

A grizzled, thick-set aboriginal stared suspiciously in Clair’s direction. He gave a low-spoken order, and three gins hastened to the seclusion of a bough-constructed humpy. Then, striking an attitude of indifference, Pontius Pilate said:

“You want-it talk me; come to fire.”

When Clair entered the firelight the grizzled one and a youth of nineteen or twenty regarded him with unfriendly eyes. After a swift appraising glance, Clair sat on his heels before the fire and casually cut chips off a tobacco-plug for a smoke. The two aborigines watched him, and when he did not speak they edged close and squatted opposite the law-defying guest.

“Have a smoke?” said Clair, in a tone that held command. The elderly black caught the tossed plug, bit a piece out of it and handed it to his companion. The young man wore nothing but a pair of moleskin trousers; the elder nothing but a blue shirt.

“Only got one suit between you,” observed Clair unsmilingly. “Well, I reckon you can’t get sunburnt, sowhat’s the odds? You fellers belong to this part?”

“We come up from Wilcannialas ’ week,”came the literally chewed response. “Where you camped, boss?”

“Up river a bit. Is old Mokie down river, anyway?”

“Yaas-old Mokie, he married Sarah Wanting. You bin know Sarah?”

“I reckon so. Sarah must be getting old,” Clair replied, though as a matter of fact he had no idea to which of the manySarahs Pontius Pilate referred. Blacks marry and get divorced with a facility somewhat bewildering to the white mind. “I come down from Dunlop,” he went on. “Ted Rogers breaking-in horses up there.”

“He’s still there?” was the young man’s first speech.

“I think,”said Clair dreamily, “that I said it.”

The conversation was carried on disjointedly, punctuated by meditative smoking and tobacco-chewing. Then Clair put the question he had asked at countless camps in the course of many wandering years. No one present, not even the suspicious gossiping blacks, would have thought that his visit was solely for the purpose of asking this question:

“I knew anabo once, a terrible good horseman, feller called Prince Henry-no, not Prince Henry, some other name-tall big feller, old feller now. You know anabo called Prince Henry?”

“No Prince Henry,” demurred Pontius Pilate, the gravity of a great chief having settled over his ebony features. “You no mean King Henry?”

Not a muscle of Clair’s face moved. Not a sign betrayed more than ordinary interest.

“Maybe he was King Henry,” he said slowly. “Worked one time here at Barrakee, I think.”

“That’s him, boss,” agreed the elderly black. “King Henry, Ned’s father. This here is Ned-King Henry’s son.”

“Oh,” drawled Clair, glancing from one to the other. “And what’s your mother called, Ned?”

“Sarah Wanting.”

“Humph! Sarah believes in change.”

“Oh, but Sarah she leave old Mokie now King Henry come back,” chimed in Pontius Pilate, pride of knowledge shining in his eyes.

“Ah!” The exclamation came like a sigh from the gaunt man. “Then your father isn’t far away, Ned?”

“Nope. He come down fromNor ’ Queensland.”

“What’s he been doing up there? Thought he was a Darlingabo.”

“Dunno,” interjected the elder, and then innocently contradictedhimself. “Him bin do a get from white fellerwantakillum. White feller him dead now.”

“Oh! So the coast is clear at last, eh?” And thencame Clair’s momentous question:

“Where’s King Henry now?”

“Him down Menindee. King Henry him bin come upalongariver with Sarah. Going to camp with us.”

The puffs of tobacco-smoke came with unbroken regularity from the gaunt man’s lips. The gleam of satisfaction, of triumph, was hidden by narrowed eyelids. After a moment’s silence, abruptly he turned the conversation, and ten minutes later rose and left the camp.

Back at the boat, without sound, he unmoored it and stepped in. Without a splash, he pushed it across to the further tree-shadows, and, merely keeping it on its course, allowed the current to drift him gently by the camp, down to the station mooring-place.