Man of Two Tribes (2 page)

Chapter Two

AT breakfast the Easters were captivated by their official guest, but it was not until much later that day that they were able to analyse their reactions. Both were of what is loosely termed ‘the bush', and they had expected their guest to be the opposite of what he proved to be—one of them.

That he was of mixed races they had to accept, reluctantly. His features and bearing were far removed from the castes with whom they were familiar along these southern districts of Australia, for Bonaparte had entered the world in the mid-north of Queensland, and his maternal ancestry had been powerfully influenced by the impact of the Polynesian peoples. When meeting the calm blue eyes and listening to the soft accentless voice, it was so easy to forget the duality of races.

Bony had crossed the Nullarbor many times, by train and plane; once only by car following the old telegraph route which skirts the southern edge of the Plain where it drops to the narrow coastal belt. Never previously had he been professionally interested in this part of Australia, and he anticipated no hardships additional to those he had experienced closer to the centre, such as the mulga forests, the gibber deserts, the desolation of the salt-pan basins. Although these several geophysical areas are strikingly different, common to all is the force of opposition to man, varied only by the circumstances confronting the individual.

“You have an office with the usual map of Australia pinned to the wall?” he asked, well knowing that the Police Station is the cross carried by every policeman in the true outback.

Easter conducted him to his own particular cross, where he lit the oil-lamp suspended from the ceiling, permitting Bony to survey the usual littered desk, the usual wire files hanging from nails driven into the walls, and usual large-scale map. Mechanically constructing what could be assumed to be a cigarette, he stood with Easter before the map on which someone had etched with blue pencil the area marked Nullarbor, meaning no trees. The cartographer had drawn a rule-straight line from east to west, and named this the Transcontinental Railway, the line bisecting the area.

“Authorities differ over the extent of this Plain,” Bony said, without intention to teach but rather as a preface to what he had in mind to say. “It's probably much more than the estimate of thirty thousand square miles. What do you know of it?”

Easter's forefinger traversed the railway.

“Three hundred miles of dead straight line built on dead level ground, or what appears to the naked eye as dead level.” The finger flashed downward on the map to within an inch of the coastline, moved slowly upward to cross the railway, continued upward until seemingly stopped by a blue dot named Lake Wyola. “From here down to the coast is something like three hundred miles. No trees, no surface water except in rock-holes filled by rain. Just a vacuum spanned by a railway, the railway stops by nothing but a few houses and servicing depots. No out-lying homesteads excepting to the south and one to the north-west. No roads but that coastal one. No fences, only land and the sky. That woman didn't fall from the train.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I've a theory. No facts.”

“Give me the theory.”

“Well, I've always been interested in abnormal psychology,” Easter said. “Didn't take much notice of the Thomas case because it was just another husband-wife brawl, but after the trial we dug up the papers and read the reports
and got different ideas about the woman. When she disappeared, other things added up.

“I'd say Myra Thomas was vanity plus. She had tasted fame, strictly local though it was, but what a banquet during her trial! She finds herself hitting the headlines all over Australia. I'll bet no one received a bigger shock than she did when she was acquitted. What happened? She becomes the centre of nation-wide controversy, then within a week all the glory has faded, and the morons who screamed their admiration as she left court, deserted her to rush to the airfield to yell and scream their welcome to a foreign swooner. So, having dined with the gods, she must scramble under the table after the crumbs.”

Bony was frankly astonished by this lucid exposition.

“What happens next?” proceeded Easter. “She planned the disappearance, planned it to take place in the middle of the fabulous Nullarbor Plain, the only place of its kind in the world and famous for just that. So she vanishes from a famous train when in the middle of a famous Plain. Sounds like poetry, doesn't it? Dressed in her night things and wearing slippers, she left the train at Cook and entered a car or truck driven by a pal who took her by the only track to the coast road, from which point they could go east or west into smoke.

“She certainly got what she wanted—more and more publicity which made the publicity at the trial look like a social paragraph. Now she will lie low for some time, and then reappear with the yarn that she had a sudden attack of amnesia brought on by the dreadful horror of the murder. Imagine the headlines! The money in the story of her life! That's my theory.”

Easter found himself being studied.

“Were it not for evidence outside your knowledge,” Bony said, “I would strongly incline to agreement. I want you to understand that I do agree that she did not fall from the train or wander away from it.”

“I'm glad to hear that,” Easter said. “I thought...”

“I know, Easter. Look at this map again. See here, to north-east of the Plain and far beyond its border, is the new town of Woomera, and away in the desert extends the rocket range. Now, much nearer, only a few miles north of Ooldea, along this east side of the plain, is the new atomic-testing ground called Maralinga. What blacks there were in that country have long since migrated to the southern extremity of their ancient tribal land, down near the coast, and so all the country of the range and testing ground is empty of native population. Now, north of this railway, as you pointed out, is merely a vacuum. We here at Chifley are almost at the western edge of the Plain, and the only station homestead within miles and miles is situated to the northwest of Chifley and called Mount Singular. Am I correct?”

“Yes.”

“You know that Security at those Government establishments is very rigid. You don't know that Myra Thomas was a bad security risk during the war. D'you know a man named Patsy Lonergan?”

“Never seen him,” replied Easter. “Heard of him. Once a prospector, now a dingo trapper, or was before he died at Norseman a fortnight ago.”

“What do you know about him?” pressed Bony.

“Very little. Lonergan was trapping at Mount Singular for years, even before the present people took over the place, which is seventy miles north of the railway, and built on a bluff overlooking the Plain. He used camels, and like most old bushmen of his generation, he visited a township once every year for an extra good bender. Died when on that last one.”

“Relatives of his live at Norseman,” Bony supplemented. “When he died they naturally took possession of his personal effects, among which was his diary. Like many prospectors, Lonergan kept day-by-day notes of his catches, his lures and the condition of the ground feed and water-holes for his camels. His notes are cryptic, due to the old habit of the prospector giving nothing away so that should he turn up
with a pound of gold, no one could back-track him by stealing his notes. Other than the current diary, no others were found, so we must assume that, as the notebooks were filled, he destroyed them. I'll fetch the diary from my suitcase.”

Easter heard him talking to his wife in the kitchen, the tones of her voice conveying her easy acceptance of the visitor. He himself was feeling buoyant, for he had proof that his conduct of the search for the girl had been approved by the top brass. He was lighting his pipe when Bony returned with one of those long, ruled account books.

“From this diary,” Bony began, “we know that Lonergan left Mount Singular on his last tour of a trap-line on July Sth, and that he returned to Mount Singular on September 5th. The girl vanished on the night of August 28th–29th. In camp on the night of August 26th he wrote: ‘Camel feed pretty poor at Dead Oak Stump so came on to Nightmare Gutter. Got a half-bred pup at Dead Oak with Number Two. And two pure bred dogs at the 'roo I poisoned half a mile up the Gutter.' Those names mean anything to you, Easter?”

“Just a blank.”

“The next day, August 27th, Lonergan wrote: ‘Got to Bumblefoot Hole pretty late. Water still plenty. Country much better this nearer to home. Picked up a quarter-bred at Bluebush Dip. Number Three Lure got her. Trap at Bumblefoot was sprung. Used Number Four in her. Number Four no good.' Bumblefoot Hole strike a chord?”

“Not a note,” confessed Easter.

“Now the next day for Lonergan is August 28th,” Bony continued. “At the end of this day, the entry was: ‘Got to Big Claypan. Feed not too bad. Nothing in traps at Halfway Boozer. Brought the traps on and planted them for next trip. Weather been quiet and clear, but looks like rain tonight.' Still no chord?”

Easter shook his head, and Bony read the next entry:

“‘August 29th. Intended to camp at Lost Bell tonight, but was stuck up by a trap at the Three Saltbushes. Had to track
the trap for more than a mile to where the biggest dog I ever got dragged it before he give it the works. No rain come. Feed hanging out pretty well here at Three Saltbushes, but water in the soak dried up. Last night...' the vital night, remember, Easter, he spent at Big Claypan.... ‘Last night around five in the morning was woke up by a helicopter. Could see the blades against the sky it was that low. Sort of proves my suspicion I heard a plane when I was camped at Bumblefoot a long time back.'”

“Helicopter!” breathed Easter. “Out there on that night of August 28th–29th, the night the woman disappeared.”

“Where was the train at five o'clock that morning?” Bony asked.

“At Forrest being searched. Is that all about the helicopter?”

“There is no later mention. Lonergan goes on to report that he trapped a dog at Curley's Hate, and found a trap sprung at Pigface Valley. How many helicopters loose in your district?”

“Not one. Some at the testing ground. They sent a machine over to join in the search for the girl. Stayed two days. That was a week after we began looking for her.”

“They have two machines at Maralinga, and those machines were grounded from August 24th to September 6th, when one of them was despatched to hunt for the missing woman. When can we start for Mount Singular?”

“Mount Singular! Oh, any time. Inside an hour if you want.”

“Make it inside three hours, Easter. I have to send telegrams to Adelaide.”

“May I put a question?”

“Of course. As many as occur to you, Easter. Go ahead.”

“You said that the Thomas woman was a bad security risk during the war. What's the connection?”

“She wrote the script for a radio show called ‘Bless 'em All', primarily directed at the troops. It was before M.I., or
whoever was supposed to look after subversive activities, realised that vital information could be passed to the enemy via our radio services. The show was a weekly broadcast, and she was abruptly taken off it.

“The main point is that Myra Thomas was once a security risk, and is still faintly regarded as such. When she disappeared within a few miles—comparative—of the atomic testing ground and the rocket range, the Security people in Canberra added the fact to their record. And then, Easter, when old Lonergan's diary turned up and a check was made proving there was not one registered helicopter within a million miles of their precious secrets, they actually added two to two, and came up with what certainly looks something like four.”

“The relatives, then, sent the diary to Security?” surmised Easter.

“No. They handed the diary to the local police officer, who passed it on, and eventually it was received by your H.Q. in Perth. It was passed directly to Canberra, and at some conference or other it was realised that Lonergan hadn't mentioned in his diary which direction the mysterious machine was flying when he saw it, and no one knew where such places as Curley's Hate and Bumblefoot Hole happened to be, as they were not marked on their maps.

“Fortunately, the police were represented at that conference by a firm friend of mine, Superintendent Bolt, who argued that one man on the ground would be more likely to succeed in locating the mysterious helicopter, the people flying it, their activities, and the association with them, if any, by the missing Myra Thomas, than could possibly be learned by a couple of fleets of jets flying around the Nullarbor Plain. When they asked him who the man on the ground was to be, Bolt had the obvious answer.”

“You, of course,” Easter smiled.

“Of course,” Bony concurred without a smile. “Look! the day is dawning. The best time for meditation is when day dawns.”

Meditation at daybreak; when the sun rose! Easter stood, scratched his chin, and docilely followed Bony to the veranda. He felt like the man who hopes to win a five-pound prize in a lottery and wins fifty thousand. He had searched for a woman at first thought to have fallen from a train; and now was given a picture of a female spy, mysterious helicopters, rockets and atom bombs.

Chapter Three

THERE can be only one simile when telling of the Nullarbor Plain.

The jeep was like a ship on a completely calm ocean. To the east the sea was softly grey, and to the west it was softly green, and when the sun passed the meridian, the colours would be reversed. Astern of the jeep, three miles away, the tiny settlement of Chifley, despite reduction in size, appeared to be less than half a mile distant. The tiny houses guarded by the water-tower were the focal point of a fence built across the world. The wires could not be seen but the posts could be counted—telegraph posts flanking the ribbon of steel joining East with West Australia.

The track was merely twin marks of tyre-rasped earth and, between the marks and to either side, the foot-high saltbush was the universal covering. Neither ahead nor astern could the motor track be seen beyond fifty yards, and one felt it was an eyesore and ought not to be there. The first exploring vehicle had to avoid rock-slabs and sometimes a rock-hole, and every succeeding vehicle had rigidly kept to those same tracks.

“This Mount Singular?” asked Bony. “Large holding?”

“According to the Survey not particularly large, a thousand square miles or so,” replied Easter. “It's all open country, no boundary fences, and as there aren't any adjacent holdings, excepting to the south, the Weatherby cattle may graze over a million square miles of country, which varies a lot. Very few permanent waters. A salt-pan wilderness to the west, semi-desert to the north, this Plain to the East. I've never
been farther north than the homestead, and that was back in 'forty-nine.”

“The Weatherbys!” pressed Bony. “Old family? How many?”

“The first Weatherby took up the holding in 1900. By all accounts a hard doer who married a woman as tough as himself. Both died in the thirties and left the property to their two sons, Charles and Edgar. Edgar served up in the Islands during the war, and returned with his wife about the time I visited the homestead. They'd taken on a property in the west of New South which turned out no good, and the brothers decided to run in harness again. There's no white stockmen employed. Can't get whites these days. All the hands are aborigines.”

“Where is their outlet point?”

“Rawlinna chiefly. Much farther for them than Chifley but better country to travel in wet seasons. Old Patsy Lonergan must have gone out that way, because he never caught the train at Chifley.”

“Good citizens?”

“Never had the slightest trouble—officially.”

An hour later the scenery was precisely the same, and Bony spoke again of the Weatherbys.

“As you said a while back, the Weatherbys seem to be good citizens, officially. Ever meet them socially, Easter?”

“Oh, yes. When they come to Chifley, which isn't often, they always spend an hour or two with the wife. Elaine likes the women very much although the wife of the younger brother, Edgar, seems a bit moody. The two men are all right, too. They mind their own business and don't pry into ours. Never any trouble with their abos.”

“Eighty per cent of tribal strife has its origin in white interference,” Bony said, and then put another question:

“What communication have they with the outside?”

“Radio, that's all.”

“Didn't they assist in the search for Myra Thomas?”

“Oh, yes. Spent about a week with my gang. Brought a couple of trackers to team with mine. And a side of the best beef we've ever lived on. You interested in them extra specially?”

“Only for the same reason that I am interested in the people living at other homesteads to the south and the southwest. If Patsy Lonergan wasn't mentally unstable due to his solitary life, if he didn't imagine he saw that helicopter, then that helicopter must have a base, and that base must be on or in the vicinity of the Nullarbor,”

“Well, then, how do you propose to ‘track' that machine? Search every homestead on the perimeter of the Plain?”

“No. Assuming that we found the helicopter at some homestead, we'd learn nothing excepting that the owner hadn't registered it with the Civil Aviation Department, and so had been breaking certain regulations. My interest is in the object and purpose for which it is being used on assumably secret missions, and merely locating the base won't satisfy me if the owner doesn't choose to talk.”

“You're right there,” Easter pondered. “What about my first question, about how you intend to ‘track' that machine Lonergan says he saw?”

“I have letters from Lonergan's lawyer in Norseman, for the old fellow did own property and a sizable bank account for a prospector-dog-trapper. The letter empowers me, William Black, nephew of the deceased, to take over the camels, equipment and other things once owned by Lonergan and now at Mount Singular. Included in those possessions are the dog traps, and it will be my job to locate them. To do that, I have to back-track the old chap along his trap-line, and locate his camps which he named so peculiarly. And then I have to hope ... hope that I shall see or hear that helicopter, determine where it is going, and learn its business.”

“Hell! What a job!”

“Easier, perhaps, than we think at the moment. So, I am William Black, the old man's nephew. You will recall that I
visited you at your station this morning, as the Norseman policeman advised me, and it just so happened that you had to make the journey to Mount Singular for an official reason you have time to invent, and that you consented to have me accompany you.”

Easter said: “I see,” but Bony doubted it. They were silent during the next hour, at the end of which the scenery was exactly the same excepting that all that was left of Chifley was the water-tower looking like a black pebble lying on the horizon.

When Easter suggested lunch, Bony gathered dead brushwood and made a fire, and the policeman filled a billy-can and swung it from the apex of an iron triangle. The tucker-box was unloaded, and while the water was coming to the boil they stood and surveyed the Nullarbor Plain simply because there was nothing else to look at.

“Must be unpleasant when a wind storm is working,” Bony surmised, and Easter told of experiences when he had been glad to lie flat on his chest with a rock slab to anchor him to the ground.

“I understand there are no caves, caverns, blow-holes, north of the railway. Is that correct, d'you think?”

“None have been located,” replied Easter. “But that means nothing to me because the country north of the railway hasn't been fully explored. It's all the same country, north or south of where they built the railway. There are other points, too.”

“Such as?”

“It is said that the blow-holes are worked by ocean currents, that the sea tides force the air back into the galleries deep below and so create the underground wind. You know all that, of course.”

“And that the noises underground have been attributed by the aborigines to the stomach rumblings and movements of Ganba the Man-eating Snake,” Bony added.

“Just so. I've heard old Ganba roaring and rumbling below the surface and above it well down south of the railway. And I
have heard him on the rampage well north of the railway, too. Even farther north than we are now.

“You've heard that even the station abos hate being out on the Nullarbor, I suppose,” Easter went on. “Not only because of Ganba, but because there are wide areas where stock and horses won't pass over, and that spells underground cavities in the limestone, doesn't it? You really interested in caves and things?”

“No,” admitted Bony. “I have inherited horror of darkness in a hole, yet I do not suffer from claustrophobia.” He chuckled. “There it is, the fabulous Nullarbor Plain. All is visible, but what of those things that are under it? Up here we have space and sunlight and warmth. But no protection from the storms. Here there is nowhere to hide, no sanctuary, not even a tree to press your back against so that Ganba doesn't creep up on you. It would be decidedly unnatural for a man to enjoy such nakedness when standing on a bald world.”

They ate cold roast beef and bread well buttered, and each was attacked by a thought neither would ever admit. The jeep was a good companion, was the little secret thought. When Easter stood beside it, the crown of his felt hat was the highest point within the completely unbroken, completely level horizon.

Not yet was Easter accustomed to the change which had taken place in the previously dapper Inspector Bonaparte. The smartly-cut grey suit had been changed for a worn drill shirt tucked into almost skin-tight trousers of grey gaberdine. The trousers were grubby in the right places denoting habitual contact with a horse, and although there were no spurs to the elastic-sided boots, their condition also hinted at much riding. Here in the broad sunlight his parentage was more obvious.

Bony sensed the scrutiny. Easter said:

“Have you decided how you will contact me after I leave you at Mount Singular?”

Bony looked shyly away from the big man. “I don't know, Mr. Easter,” he drawled. Kicking a small stone, he regarded
with apparent interest the jeep's tyres. “I'll be all right though.” He laughed, superficially at nothing at all, gazed out over the Plain, anywhere but directly into the policeman's eyes. Continuing to kick at the stone, he repeated: “I'll be all right, though.”

“By heck!” exploded Easter. “You've got the caste off to a T.” Then suddenly serious, he added: “No offence meant.”

“None taken, Easter. You know I once read a book about a very successful man who discovered that his mother was a quarter caste, and he so despaired that he hanged himself. How stupid! Why, he had every reason, in fact, to be proud of his success, like me. I am at the top of my chosen profession, Easter, despite all the handicaps of birth. Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, Easter. With never a failure to his record. I never knew my father, and in any case it's a wise man who does, according to someone. I never knew my mother either. She was found dead under a sandalwood tree, with me on her breast and three days old. As you know, few go far in this country without the push of family, money, and social influence, but I have found my road in my own way, at my own pace, and no one tells me to do this or that.”

“You have to admit, sir, that you're unusual,” commented Easter.

“I know it. In spite of my parentage, I am unusual. Or is it because of my parentage?”

They packed the tucker-box and moved on under the midday sun. Later in the afternoon the horizon to the northwest to which they were travelling gradually humped into several blue-black pebbles, slowly to become rocks, to rise still higher from the sea to form the headlands of a coast when the Nullarbor was the bed of the Southern Ocean.

As the ship at sea, so did the jeep begin to skirt this coast, and soon they passed between two islands bearing trees, and a little later entered a wide inlet where the scrub on the high land either side came down to the beaches of narrow claypan
belts. Abruptly the jeep turned into a beach and ran up between the scrub tree to undulating country.

“There is something I want you to do on your return to Chifley,” Bony said. “Report the date you left me at Mount Singular. Add my last instruction to you, which is to make no attempt to contact me. Address the report to Box SS11, G.P.O., Adelaide. Clear?”

“Okay,” Easter replied. “About a mile to go, that's all.”

The track was now winding over the slight undulations bearing tussock grass, bluebush, currant and tea tree, and above all, the spaced bull-oak and the lesser belar. Cattle country, good cattle country.

Then the roof of a house appeared above the lower scrub, and eventually sheds and small dwellings.

The homestead was orderly, conspicuously tidy. About the main house of one storey and wide verandas was a white-painted picket fence, and when the jeep stopped before the main gate they could see the flower beds beyond and blooming rose bushes and water sprinklers which kept the creation alive.

In accordance with his role, Bony remained standing beside the jeep when Easter passed through the gateway to the front door. Before he could reach it, two women dressed in white appeared round the angle of the house to welcome him with obvious surprise and pleasure. What he said Bony could not overhear, but Easter also played the game right by not mentioning his passenger when invited to enter the house.

It was now about three-thirty, and Bony smoked two cigarettes and nothing happened. With the nonchalance of the aborigine, he loafed about the jeep and surveyed the place from the main house to the distant stock and horse yards. He could see a lubra taking washing from a line, and several aboriginal children playing under a distant oak. A little brown dog came to make friends with him, and a flock of black cockatoos came and departed with harsh caws.

Eventually, round the outside of the picket fence came an aborigine, walking with the effortless grace of the true wild man. Fully six feet in height, he was proof of good living. He wore an American-type wind-cheater, dungaree trousers tuckered into short leggings, and elastic-sided boots heavily spurred. A wide-brimmed felt hat completed the outfit.

Although fifty, he was clean-shaven. On both cheeks were cicatrices denoting manhood, and the hole in the septum through which is drawn the wand of the medicine man when in action told his rank. Over the wide face spread a smile not registered by the large black eyes. White teeth flashed when he said:

“Missus say for you come in for drink of tea.”

“All right,” Bony returned, looking shiftily at everything bar those black eyes. “A drink of tea would go good.”

Set beside Easter, D. I. Bonaparte was never insignificant. Set beside this fat aborigine, William Black felt himself a midget.

“You Kalgoorlie feller, eh?” probed the guide as they followed the fence.

“No. Diamantina.” They were passing under a sugar gum, and Bony slipped off his shirt and undervest for the black eyes to feast on the cicatrices he bore on chest and back and upper arms.