Читать книгу Man of Two Tribes - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 7

A Ship at Sea

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 salt-bush 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 south-west. 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 brush-wood 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 north-west 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.

“My father was brother to old Patsy Lonergan,” he explained. “Patsy just died in Norseman. I come along for his camels and gear.”

He prodded a forefinger into the fat covering the stockman’s ribs, and they both laughed.