Man of Two Tribes (6 page)

Chapter Eight

THE PLAIN was a tessellated pavement, hurrying black shadows coming to meet the camels and giving the rider the impression that he was travelling at high speed. The sky this morning was uniform cadmium between isolated clouds, and the wind from the northern desert was warm and scented, yet filled with the promise of heat and dust.

About mid-morning Bony sighted an abnormal feature which proved to be an apparently endless ribbon of straw about twenty feet wide, and in places a foot thick. It lay approximately east-west, and from the condition of the straw, he thought it must be at least a year old.

Reference in the diary to the Buckbush Road had aroused his interest and, now that he gazed upon it, he was reminded of the Yellow Brick Road to The Wizard of Oz. A mile or two farther on was another buckbush road, and the next day, yet a third ribbon which was much less weathered, and which gave the answer to the riddle.

There was a year of wonderful life and vigour in what is stupidly called the ‘Dead Heart of Australia', when the alleged desert bloomed with an extraordinary profusion of flowers, and when all the earth was vivid green with buckbush.

This annual shrub will grow to the size of a water ball, and when dead is a sphere of filigree straw. The wind snaps it from the parent stalk and rolls it onward. Millions of these balls, driven by the wind, will roll over the ground like hurdling horses, will pile against fences until the barrier is such that the following balls ‘run' up and over.

At the end of this fertile year, the north wind had driven the buckbush from the desert uplands down to the Plain, and
the saltbush had opposed it until it had gathered into a rope many feet high and many feet thick, when the entire rope of miles in length had rolled on and on. Then, when the wild wind had dropped, the ropes of straw became stationary, and the rain had come to sodden and rot them.

Old Lonergan had named one of his camps The Brisbane Line, the term being a sarcastic reference to an imagined plan of defence when the Japanese were doing their stuff. It was the fourth camp north of Bumblefoot Hole, and on the southern edge of a straw barrier which Bony estimated as being twelve feet high. As far as he could see to east and west, there was no break save that at the camp, which had been made by the old trapper with the smashing blade of a shovel. And there it would remain until another mighty wind moved it on again.

Beyond this wall of straw the going was again dangerous, being littered with rock chips; areas of rock roofing beneath which were caverns and passages. Bony saw holes, some having a diameter of a few inches, others of several feet. Many holes were easily seen, others were masked by saltbush, but Millie knew the track and never once faltered or evinced fear. All day they had travelled over this dangerous country, and Bony hoped to camp at what Lonergan called The Belfry. The horizon, still distant, was now broken by what seemed to be ridges of red rock, but were the summits of sand dunes.

There was certainly nothing between him and those sand dunes indicative of a church, and when the sun was sinking under the Plain his attention was drawn to a swirling column of dark ‘smoke' issuing from the ground as though from volcanic action.

The camels had no fear of this place: Millie hastened her pace to reach it. The ‘smoke' endlessly whirled upward to be flattened as though by a cold wedge when less than a hundred feet above ground, and Bony could detect the units comprising a great host of bats. They came up from a small replica of Bumblefoot Hole, and so entranced by them was he
that he was almost thrown out of the saddle when Millie ‘flomped' to her knees, yawned, and told him to get on with the job of making camp.

There, but a few feet beyond her head, was the site of Lonergan's camp fires.

The bank of the hole nearest the camp shelved slightly to the cliff-face, and from this face the bats continued to issue, in number not to be estimated. Obviously they inhabited an underground cavern, which Bony had no intention of exploring. He found Lonergan's water hole and, having watered the camels, he lit a fire and watched the emergence of the bat army.

Night was chasing Day beyond land's end, and the bat cloud banished the glory of the evening sky as Bony shovelled earth over his fire, laid out his bedding, and drew the unpitched tent over himself and the dog, who liked bats even less than he. There would be no bread baking this night, and when Millie and Curley came close for their usual crusts, to find the cupboard bare, they put themselves down beside the tent covering and sulkily went to sleep.

Their bells roused Bony at dawning. Then the sky was clear and the stars were bright, but with the daylight came the bats from all quarters, to hover again like a rain cloud which formed a living water-spout gradually descending into the cavern. Before the sun rose there wasn't a bat above ground.

The days passed and the camps were left behind: Lunatic's Moan, a blow-hole from which air rushed with a continuous moaning noise; Lover's Lane, where was a rock-hole between two great barriers of straw. Since Lonergan was last here, both barriers had been moved and the trapper's path wiped out but Millie ploughed through the masses, a ton of which would dwarf a cathedral.

It rained half an inch the night they spent at Curley's Hate, and the next day they walked up from the Plain on to the wind-ribbed sand of the desert, then turned east to reach the extremity of Lonergan's trap-line, where they found his
firesite in the shadow of two belar trees. Trees! O blessed trees! To hear the soft sunset-wind singing its lullaby in a roof of trees! Far into the night Bony sat by his fire of solid wood, and frequently praised old dead Patsy for having named this place The Bushman's Home.

The rain had filled the shallow claypans between the dunes, and water had run into the deeper depressions along the verge of the Nullarbor Plain. On the lower dunes the young buckbush attracted the camels, but even so soon after the rain the wind crested the high dunes with red feathers.

The rain provided independence of rock-holes, but it was also disadvantageous in that it wiped smooth this page of the Book of the Bush, and thus much valuable information would be withheld until time enabled the new printing to be done.

Bony remained in camp at The Bushman's Home for two days, scouting on foot, when he chanced on a group of kangaroos, and bagged one. Wild dogs were here, and rabbits were numerous, and all this world was kind and protective.

But inland from this northern ‘coast' the country rapidly deteriorated. Penetrating it for three miles, he found that the dunes dwindled into a sea of spinifex slopes and naked gibber flats, the gibber stones so polished by the wind-driven sand particles that the upper surfaces reflected the sun with such power as to torture the eyes. Far to the north lay a line of flat-topped residuals, red and bare, and onward for two thousand miles it would be just the same as this picture of the Great Inland Desert, populated by aborigines never in contact with the white man, and so dispersed that for one to be killed by a rocket would almost be an impossibility.

Bony wondered who the heck would want to open this back door to Australia's atomic secrets.

From this point he travelled along the verge of the Plain where the going was easy, making to the east to ‘cut' the line of flight of the aircraft he had heard when at Dead Oak Stump. Fortunately the surface water held. Kangaroos were numerous, and the rabbits promised the summer, if it
behaved, to make of themselves a plague. Bony passed colonies of jerboa rats; the roofs of the ‘houses' well secured from the wind with stones. Bell birds mocked from the scrub trees, and at night wedges of ducks lanced across the sky. The crows were busy too, and altogether Bony found these days most pleasant.

When the camels first became restless, he attributed it to their normal dislike of unfamiliar country, there being nothing else to account for it. The country was open. The weather remained perfect. He found no tracks of wild aborigines nor any other indication of their proximity. Lucy was neither restless nor suspicious, and normally a man can place full reliance on a dog to inform him of anything unusual.

On being confident that he had actually ‘cut' the aircraft's line of flight, he camped under a most ancient box tree growing on the edge of the Plain. This night he pondered on his next move, squatting beside his fire, and, as men of all nomadic races have done, he drew with a pointed stick a map on the ground, and marked on it the railway, the stop named Chifley, the homestead at Mount Singular, and the imagined course of the aircraft.

When he had heard it at Dead Oak Stump, the destination of the aircraft was at one of two points: either to the north of his present camp, or short of his present camp—between it and some place out on the Plain. His position was not less than two hundred miles from the nearest known homestead, Mount Singular. Having recently been able to live off the country, the food in his bags would support him for seven or eight days, when supplies could be replenished at Bumblefoot Hole.

Before sleeping, he decided to prospect the desert for four days, after which he would be compelled to turn back and travel south along that imagined line of flight of the aircraft.

Having to cover as much country as possible in those four days, he was leading his camels off the Plain and high into the
dunes before the sun was up, and luck favoured him, only to withdraw the gift within two hours.

He was prompted to halt his camel train and look rearward over the great Plain, the sun not yet risen, and the morning air like crystal, the far edge of the Plain like the lip of a tall cliff one sees from a mere hundred yards back. Then his roving eyes abruptly stilled, to become a stare to annihilate distance.

Crows, a dozen of them, so far away as to appear to be inkblots. A dead rabbit? A dead kangaroo? Neither. Oh! for a pair of binoculars! Something was surely moving out there, the opposite of the black crows. It was white. Like a white crow but couldn't be. It was like a white handkerchief, being waved to attract his attention.

Down again on the lower elevation of the Plain, he could no longer see even the crows. This mattered not at all. Lucy went ahead as usual, thrusting into the gentle south wind. The camels followed the walking man, happy to have their faces turned homeward.

Yet the happiness continued not for long. They had proceeded for a mile, and now Bony could see the crows and the white object of their interest when Millie tugged back on her noseline, and he halted to see what was wrong. He could find nothing wrong. He could see nothing to excite them. The ground was firm. Impatiently he called to them and went on.

Another half mile, and they did come to an area indicating subterranean cavities. He had to select a twisting passage to avoid the bare rock and to keep to the close growing saltbush.

The white object fluttered above the ground. It wasn't a handkerchief, but was certainly fabric of some kind. Not yet could he determine the agency keeping it in motion.

Minutes later he knew what the white object was—a silk scarf, and it was poised by an uprush of air from a blowhole precisely like a ball on a water-jet in a shooting gallery.

To be bothered with the whys at this time was to woolgather. To be bothered with fractious camels was equally
waste of time. He took the throwing ropes from his saddle and spent less than three minutes in roping both animals so that they couldn't rise from their knees.

With the rifle he caught the fluttering scarf and drew it from the air current. It was of fine quality silk. It bore no initials, but was certainly a woman's scarf. When he peered into the blow-hole, the air beat upon his face. He sniffed, and the smell baffled him. He could detect only that the odour was not entirely composed of damp rock and water, bats, or the smell of any burrowing rodent. Coffee? No! Surely not coffee?

Leaving the blow-hole, he prospected. Lucy began to bark. The warning chill at Bony's neck made him turn about. The crows appeared to have lost their reason; there was nothing he could see. He circled the blow-hole, and so found the large hole five feet in diameter and about centre of flat bare limestone rock.

Behind him Lucy barked furiously, and he turned quickly, the chill on the neck now of ice.

He was confronted by four wild aborigines. Each was aiming a spear tipped with flint, the butt resting in the socket of a throwing stick. Their faces were impassive. Their eyes were wide and steady, like their bodies, their arms, their weapons.

Chapter Nine

LEAVES and fine twigs were entwined with the wild men's hair, and damp earth clung to their knees and chests. The stalking of their quarry had been accomplished with the perfection of the greatest masters on earth.

Cicatrices on faces and chests and thighs proved full initiation into the Luritja Nation, the remnants of which still occupy the Central Desert. They were small, incredibly tough, and had the endurance of the dingo. Their hair was bunched high by a band of snake-skin, that of three being black, that of the fourth being grey, and matching the straggly beard. He was a medicine man.

The condition of thighs and stomachs indicated they were living on white man's food. Oddity number one. Oddity number two was the unacceptable coincidence that they delayed appearance until Bony was looking at the large entrance to a cavern.

He could have employed the rifle, could have shot one, but only one, before he himself fell to the spears of the others. The formula: “I am Inspector Bonaparte, and I arrest you for...” was so much piffling eye-wash in this situation. Obviously it was not their intention to kill him and make off with the food and gear; otherwise their spears would now be halfway through his body.

The medicine man, who was the natural leader, beckoned him forward, and when he complied, the others slipped around behind him and continued on until they were with the camels, and then the medicine man held out a hand for the rifle, and motioned Bony to sit on the ground. There he was
as much a captive as though weighed with a hundred-weight of manacles.

Eyes glittered but the spears remained poised while Bony removed his coat and shirt. They remained like sculptured figures at a white man's exhibition as he gained his feet and slowly turned about for them to see the cicatrices on his own back, he blessing old Chief Illawarrie of the far north, who had inducted him into the Mysteries of the Alchuringa Days.

What astonished them was that he, who was not wholly of their race, had been sealed into a Nation of the Ancient People. The leader spoke to the others, but they remained silent and made no sign. As intended by Bony, the situation became complicated, and often engineered complications will save such a tight situation.

The leader became human. From his dillybag of kangaroo skin, suspended from his neck by human hair, he produced a plug of tobacco and bit a chew. Bony dressed, squatted on his heels, and proceeded to roll a cigarette. The camels were no longer nervous, and Lucy lay beside Millie and watched. The warriors squatted, their spears on the ground beside them. Their prisoner was safe enough. Any one of them could have pinned Bony within seconds, and all his knowledge of ju-jitsu would have been of no avail. They had one superlative trick, and the thought of it made him wiggle his toes.

“What for you fellers do this?” he asked, and was surprised when the leader said:

“Wa for you come here, eh? You tell.”

Mission contact! Hermansburg, perhaps! Ooldea ... before the great Daisy Bates had to give up ... a visitor, perhaps, to Ooldea just long enough to gain a smattering of English.

“Dingoes,” replied Bony. “Patsy Lonergan my father and my uncle. Patsy Lonergan ... you know Patsy Lonergan?”

The name registered. They spoke softly among themselves.

“Patsy Lonergan die quick,” he told them, and nodded to the camels. “I get Patsy Lonergan's camels. Now I catch dingoes.”

Further soft interchange of opinions among them lasted a full minute. No reference had been made to the silk scarf which they must have seen fluttering above the blow-hole, and which they must have seen being crammed into a pocket. Finally two of the young men rose and proceeded to unload the camels, taking no notice of Lucy's barks of protest. The unloading completed, they removed Millie's noseline, and, despite Curley's objection, removed his leather halter. The ropes holding them down were removed and the animals were kicked to their feet and sent running. The leader shouted an order, and one of the men seized Lucy and the other bound her with the noseline.

The ropes were then securely knotted and one end fastened about Bony's chest. The unloading and freeing of the camels was puzzling him, and fastening the rope about him seemed for the purpose of conducting him to their camp, although even this was unnecessary.

The leader now motioned him to walk to the area of bare rock in the centre of which was the gaping opening of the cavern, and about this he could do nothing but obey. A few moments later he knew their intention was to lower him into the cavern. At the edge of the hole he turned in rebellion, and the leader, without emotion, said:

“Better you go with rope. Long way.”

Wisdom, if of sinister import. The great Inspector Bonaparte realised, when encountering those four pairs of relentless eyes, that it would be wise to accept the assistance of the rope as the floor of the cavern could be more than a few feet under the ground surface. Thus, without injury, he found himself on the floor of limestone, approximately twenty feet below the surface.

He was in a chamber roughly circular, and something like thirty feet in diameter, the walls curving inward as they
mounted to the orifice. The limestone floor was uneven. He saw the mouth of what appeared to be a long tunnel, down which burned a star of light. To one side, on a wide rock ledge stood low stacks of tinned food. There was an opening off this place, and, of all objects to quicken his amazement, he could see a large kerosene stove.

Then those above were jerking at the rope, requiring him to free himself of it. This he did, and they drew it up.

He could hear Lucy barking up top. From the tunnel issued a voice slightly distorted by echo, saying:

“I didn't do it! Damn you all, I didn't do it!”

It could have been Ganba, only Ganba is known to ignore English. Besides, Ganba doesn't need a light to aid him on his underground gallivanting.

It came again like the same voice, the words disproving it.

“You done it all right, you stinking rat.”

Movement above again drew Bony's attention. The opening was being masked by Curley's pack-saddle, and he had to leap aside to avoid it. After it, came the riding saddle, the pack-bags, and every item of his gear, including even the camel bells and the hobbles, everything save the rifle. The resultant clatter had no effect on the voice or voices, down the tunnel.

“You waited for him and smashed him with a rock. I didn't, I tell you! I didn't! Oh, leave him alone.”

Up above, a new sound, Lucy's frightened whimpering. She was being lowered by the rope, and when Bony caught her, the rope was drawn up. She licked his face happily as he swiftly unbound her.

“Sure he's dead, Mark?” said the tunnel. “My dear Myra, of course he's dead.”

The recollection of the automatic pistol was one of a chaotic sequence. The wild men had spent no time with the gear and his effects, other than to strip the camels and toss everything down after him, everything save that beautiful Savage rifle and the loading ropes. They would drive the
camels away, and even now might well be engaged in brushing out their tracks to complete the obliteration of all evidence leading to the discovery of this place.

As the dramatist might say, it wasn't in character. Most decidedly it was unorthodox. The possession of tobacco proved recent contact with whites. These people in that tunnel—who were they, what were they doing here? Myra Thomas! Who else? But prisoners, as he assuredly was. Those saddle-bags which contained his personal effects contained his own automatic.

He fell upon the bags, dragging them from under one of the water drums, swiftly unstrapped the off-side bag and delved for the weapon, small and compact, and deadly at twenty feet. He knew that the clip was full. A broken box of cartridges he slipped into another pocket, and the bag was restrapped and tossed back to the heap of gear littering the floor.

A voice in the tunnel said:

“Why, here's a ruddy dog!”

All English so far. No guttural voices. Lucy had found them.

“That's funny. How the hell did she get here? Must be someone up top. Come on! If she got in, we oughta get out.”

The light twinkled. It was being carried along the tunnel. Seated on the heap of his gear, Bony waited. The sunlight through the opening was falling slightly to his rear making him conscious of the fact that he occupied the commanding position in this situation now developing.

“She's a pet dog,” a woman said in the tunnel. “She loves being made a fuss of. What's your name, sweet?”

A man entered the chamber followed by the woman, then four men. They halted at the tunnel's mouth, appearing to Bony as ghosts lurking in a cobweb-festooned corner of a derelict dungeon. The woman held the wriggling dog, only her shape indicative of her sex, for she wore men's trousers and coat over a man's sports shirt. The man carrying the hurricane lantern was tall and hawk-faced. Another was big
and muscular. A shrimp of a man peered with weak eyes, and another seemed to have springs in his knees.

Every face was putty white, faces in which eyes glowed like dull coals in a dark room. They stood there staring at the stranger seated on the pile of gear, as though utterly unable to believe what they were seeing, until it seemed to Bony that in this tableau only the dog moved.

The woman released the dog, who ran to Bony and snuggled against him. Bony said, politely:

“How d'you do?”

They came forward, slowly, led by the woman. The tall man's face was insulted by the clothes he wore, for the sweeping breadth of the forehead, the mane of iron-grey hair, the cast of the mouth, and the expression in his dark eyes pictured intelligence above the average. His voice supported what his countenance portrayed.

“Who are you?” he asked, with the ‘old' school accent.

Bony recognised him.

“The name is William Black.”

“It conveys nothing, Mr. Black. How did you come to be here?”

“Dumped by wild aborigines.”

“Wild aborigines! How extraordinary. What are those things you are sitting on?”

“Camel gear.”

“Camel gear! Camels! Wild aborigines! Whom did you murder?”

The light-blue eyes were compelling, the eyes of a man accustomed to being obeyed. He was, Bony was aware, Dr. Carl Havant, a psychiatrist who practised in Sydney until eleven years ago.

“I cannot recall having murdered anyone,” Bony replied.

“I am still doubtful. What school did you attend?”

Ah! Clever indeed is the man who can adopt a fictitious character and maintain it under sudden stress. He had spoken in his usual manner.

“Never mind about that,” he said sharply. “Who are you, and what are you all doing here?”

“We are merely in residence.” The tall man regarded Bony gravely. “Would you oblige by telling us precisely where our residence is, we presume, in Australia?”

“We are now on the northern extremity of the Nullarbor Plain.”

“There, Maddoch! Did I not argue that we must be on the Nullarbor Plain?”

The dark eyes looked down upon the short man whose clothes hung upon him, and who appeared emotionally bankrupt. The man with the knees like springs answered for the little man.

“Could have been east Gippsland, like Clifford said. Could have been up north a bit from Perth, like I told you.”

“Yes, yes! Quite. Well, we are at the north of the Nullarbor Plain. And now, Mr. Black. You tell us that you were ‘dumped'—your own word—down here by wild aborigines. I've always thought that wild aborigines are to be found only in the north of Australia. Pardon repetition. Whom did you murder? Please do not hesitate, Mr. Black, or be alarmed.”

“Caw,” exploded the man with the springy legs, “I know this Mister Black now. I'd bet on it. Doc, and ladies and gents, meet Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte.”