Читать книгу Bony and the White Savage - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 8

One Tree Farm

Passing the second farm from Timbertown, the road became a rough track, winding and often steeply graded. Onward, Bony found himself in what any stranger would accept as a primeval forest. From the floor of green bracken and fern rose the jarrahs and cedarwoods, widely spaced, as the best of them had long since been gathered to the mills. The sunlight was beaming between their limpid crowns to cast green-gold pathways on the bracken, and, at this time of day, to polish the creamy grey-blue trunks of enormous karri trees.

On the green floor it was cool and completely still. The wind was blowing at two hundred feet: close to the ground the silence was the silence of a cathedral, with the vocal sounds of the tomtit, the honey-eater, and the lorikeet intruding through the great arched entrance.

Being unable to drive and appreciate this forest, Bony stopped his car, and leaned against it to gaze along the deep fold of a narrow valley. His last assignment had been in the country inland from Shark Bay east of Gladstone, in the arid lands of low scrub and blistering summer heat and searing sunlight. This forest so wonderfully clean of foreign growths wasn’t Australia: it was paradise.

The track was a slow one, and there was plenty of time, anyway. It was an hour later that he came to a bar ramp in a wire-fence, and twenty minutes afterwards came to a turn-off sign-posted ONE TREE FARM. Then he was driving towards the one tree and the tiny doll’s house his side of it, with other tiny buildings on the far side. The doll’s house was confined within a picket-fence, and Bony stopped his car outside the gate and stood entranced by the one tree. There was only the one tree, because fruit-trees and wattles and a couple of cedarwoods beside the track were toys to be bought at a store.

Bony had admired the occasional karri tree beside the road down from Bridgetown; he had been enthralled by the karri trees still standing in the forest, but this one was truly majestic. From behind him a man said:

“Girth at the butt sixty-eight feet. A hundred and seventy-seven feet up to the first branch.” Bony’s eyes slipped their gaze up the perfect column of blue-grey, up and up with never a halt to disapprove of a blemish, up to the first mighty branch, still upward to encounter the next branches. “Two hundred and eighty-six feet to the top,” said the man. “Proved by the surveyors. Make a dent in the roof if it fell on the house, wouldn’t it?”

As Bony’s gaze had moved upward like a climbing monkey to the topmost branches, so now it descended down the trunk to the ground. Almost reluctantly, he turned about to the man who had spoken.

“I take it you’re Mr Bonnar,” said Matt Jukes, plain curiosity in his dark eyes. Without his hat it could be seen he was balding, the greying hair forming a dark halo resting on his ears. “Mrs Sasoon told us you were coming. Come on in and meet the wife.”

“Thank you,” Bony responded as they shook hands. “Yes, Mrs Sasoon said she would ring you. Gave me a parcel to bring along.” He obtained the parcel from the back seat and then halted at the gate in the picket-fence to look back at the tree. “Well, that is a tree of trees. I’ve seen mountain ash in Gippsland but they’re pygmies.”

Matt led the way to the rear door of the doll’s house, and ushered him into the large living-kitchen-room of a rambling homestead. Emma came to meet the visitor, and in Bony’s mind was the thought that Sasoon’s wife was large and slow in action, and placid of mind, and this woman was small and vital and quick.

“It’s nice to see you, Mr Bonnar,” she told him. “Elsie has been raving about you to us. Said you are a friend of our Rose and her husband. Now do sit down, and I’ll pour you a cup of tea. It’s time for the morning break, anyway. And how did you leave Rose and the children?”

“Mrs Sasoon didn’t mention my business?” Bony asked.

“No, she said you were on holiday. D’you take sugar? Just help yourself.”

“Thank you.” Bony smiled at them, and sipped the tea. “I find myself still a little awed by your karri tree. How old could it be?”

“Probably only a couple of feet shorter when Tasman sailed the water of this coast, and that was 1642,” Jukes answered, and there was no evading the pride in his voice. “Biggest tree left standing down this way, and it’ll always stand while we’re alive. It belongs to us.”

“I don’t believe that,” Bony said charmingly, and added with truth: “You belong to it.”

“That’s right, Mr Bonnar,” Matt agreed, “It’s what my father said in his time.” He discoursed about recorded giants and told stories of even bigger karri trees which had flourished and fallen before the coming of the white man to stand abashed by the vision of what they must have been when standing. And then when Emma brought up her daughter again, Bony turned his mind to more serious affairs. He said:

“Your buttered scones were delicious, and now that you cannot get them back from me, I will make a confession. Please hear me out before telling me to go. I have here a letter from your daughter which doubtless will tell you a little about me. Several days ago I called on her and her husband. I then explained who and what I am, and the purpose of my intended visit down here, and they were pleased to give me this letter of introduction. Having talked with Constable Sasoon and his wife about you, I am encouraged to take you into my confidence and seek your co-operation in the work I have to do.

“I am supposed to be the manager of a cattle and sheep property away up in the Murchison District. I like fishing, and I am supposed to be a keen amateur photographer and have with me a camera and some pictures to support the claim. Actually, I am a detective-inspector, and actually my assignment is to apprehend a man you know, viz: Marvin Rhudder.”

They had both become taut, the woman stilled with her hands in her lap, the man’s hands clenched and resting on the table. Bony went on:

“I don’t know this part of Australia and the coast, but Sasoon says, and he has pressed the point, that a man holed up down here wouldn’t be dug out by an army, and might be by one man acting alone. This is the type of assignment which I have accepted more than once, proving past history in that sometimes it takes an army of detectives to round up one criminal, and other times it demands only one man to corner a gang of crooks.

“In the old-time story-books great detectives were ever the masters of disguise. I am a master in the art of fabricating a fictitious background, and every detail supporting my claim to be the manager of a station in the Murchison District has been firmed in presumed fact, so that anyone wishing to test will find every detail substantiated. Which is why the senior officer at Geraldton and I called on your daughter and explained about the Rhudder problem. They both gladly consented to give me this letter of introduction. Here it is, and here I am.

“And as for the children, Mrs Jukes, I found all four of them just splendid, and when I retire, which I don’t suppose I shall, I am going to buy a house like theirs and live in Geraldton.”

Jukes and his wife remained quiescent after Bony ceased speaking, and he poured himself another cup of tea and began to roll a cigarette. Matt then said:

“Our Rose wouldn’t of told you about what Marvin Rhudder did, I suppose?”

“No. However, Sasoon did hint at some bad trouble years ago when he told me he was sure you would be glad to help me as much as you can.”

“I’ll help you, too right I’ll help,” came flooding from Matt Jukes, his eyes blazing and his beard standing out from his chin. “Old Faust traded his soul with the devil for youth, and I’d trade mine for the chance to get my hands on young Rhudder.”

“Now, Matt! Please, Matt!” cried Emma, laying a hand over his fist. The man fought for composure and won, but his voice trembled when he spoke again.

“That swine dishonoured our Rose, and he broke his father’s heart. Me and old Jeff were boys together. We had our fights and our good times, and we grew up like brothers, and where one had bad fortune, the other always went to his help. We begat children and they all grew up close, playing together, schooling together, adventuring together. You wait till you see old Jeff Rhudder. ’Taint the sciatica what’s made him old afore his time. What’s made it bad for all of us down here is that we raised Marvin as high as the top of yonder karri, and he went and fell not to the ground but for a mile or more under it. Too true, I’ll help you, Mr Bonnar.”

“I’ve been hoping you would, Mr Jukes. Sasoon tells me you know this coast as well as the back of your hand, and that is where we think Marvin is holed up. Or somewhere in the nearby forests. Because of the lapse of time, I’ve first to be assured he is still down here, and then find him and have him apprehended. And I can expect no assistance from his own people.”

“No, you won’t get any help from them. Let me tell you about Marvin, as from the beginning. Let’s go outside and talk.”

Matt rose and strode to the doorway, and Emma cast a look at Bony which was both appealing and encouraging. They sat on a bench against the wall, and again Bony was confronted by the great tree which now dwarfed the picket fence to a line of matching sticks.

“The kids called themselves the Inlet United. There were the three young Rhudders: Marvin, Luke and Mark. There were our two: Ted and Rose. And there was Sadie Stark, the daughter of the woman who’s been housekeeping for Mrs Rhudder for many years.” Matt paused to light his pipe. “Six of ’em. They was always close; grew up close, you might say, until the explosion.”

Emma came from the house and quietly sat next to Bony, and her husband proceeded with the occasional hesitation of the man wanting to choose his words. “Six of ’em, remember. Four boys and two girls. No other children. No neighbours. Marvin was ever the leader, beside being the eldest. What he led ’em into down on the coast made our hair stand on end when we heard tell of it. He saved Sadie from drowning one day and pulled our Ted out from under a sneaker some other time.

“Just imagine those six kids, reared like babies together, going to school on the milk truck to Timbertown, sometimes having a fight, sometimes ganging up to fight the kids in town. We watched ’em growing up, me and Emma and Jeff and his wife, and we were proud of every one of them like they could of been all our own.

“To Marvin learning was as easy as falling out of that karri. He went to High School at Bunbury, and from the High he passed to the Teachers’ College up in Perth. Went in for writing stories for the magazines, and could do it without failing anywhere at the College.”

Matt stopped to attend to his pipe, and on the other side of Bony, Emma sat with her hands in her lap and in that immobile state he had seen her in before. Her husband sighed, and went on:

“Learnin’! Learnin’ wasn’t anything to Marvin. Read a poem, shut the book, then recite it. Go to chapel, listen to the sermon, come and repeat what the minister said from first to last. Did his course at the Teachers’ College and then entered the Theological College intending to be a preacher. Us oldies, and all the kids what had grown up with him, could see the sun shining on him.

“Well, come the time that Marvin was home from the Theological College on the long summer vacation. He was filled out, tall and big. He took the service at chapel on three Sundays, and he was good. I still remember him preaching on the life of Joseph, but never mind that. As I said he was good, and it was only afterwards that Emma said she and Rose didn’t think he was as good as us men thought. Women, Mr Bonnar, can think and look deeper than men.

“Then comes the time he has to go back to college. Our Rose is a little poorly, and we think a spell in Perth would do her good. So it’s planned for her to spend a month with her aunt up there, and as it’s a long train journey everyone thinks it a good idea for her to travel up with Marvin. The train leaves at eight in the morning, and Luke is to take them to Timbertown.

“When they call to pick up Rose who’s all ready, Luke says he’s forgotten papers Jeff wants put into the bank, and he says he’ll go back home on the timber truck what’s due to pass on to the Inlet, get the papers and go on the truck to Timbertown, and so, after doing the business, come back home with the car.

“Off goes Rose with Marvin, luggage and all, all excited by the trip, looking her best in a blue dress and white hat and shoes. The driver of the truck and Luke found her on the track, on her hands and knees, groping about like she couldn’t see, the blue dress in shreds. I wasn’t handy when they brought her home. I didn’t see her till after Emma had tended to her, and Emma said she looked like she’d been passed through a chaff-cutting machine.

“Looking over the years, me and Emma don’t know if we made a mistake at that time. We should have rung the policeman to stop the raging tiger, but we didn’t. We’re isolated here. We keep our troubles to ourselves. At one time Mrs Stark had been a hospital nurse, and so Ted went down for her. Luke went after Marvin, but Marvin had driven on through Timbertown, and it wasn’t till a fortnight later that the car was found at Kalgoorlie, left there by Marvin when he went through to the Eastern States.”

Matt sighed his deep years-long anguish, was quiet for several minutes, and then asked the question he must have asked himself a thousand times:

“Why? Tell me why? Tell me how come an upstanding young feller should of done that? He’s come of good stock. He’s reared by God-fearing parents. He’s loaded with gifts by the Almighty. And in a flash like, he turns from a human being into a bloody savage. You tell me how that can be.”