Читать книгу Bony and the Mouse - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 6

Table of Contents

The man was oblivious of Bony’s proximity. The woman lay with her eyes closed, and her light-gold hair was draggled, her face stained and white. She said:

“Go on, Tony Carr, cut it out. You got to cut it out.”

“I tell you I can’t. I couldn’t do it,” reacted the man.

The long knife was lifted from his hands, and he was aware that someone knelt beside him before moving his gaze from the woman’s foot, to encounter the blue eyes of a stranger. Swift in defence, he explained:

“She got a rotten splinter in her foot, and she wants me to cut it out. Look at it! It’s dug in inches. She’s been here since yesterday morning. She’s had it. I found her with her mouth stopped up tight with her tongue ‘cos of thirst.”

The stake was driven in just behind the toes, deep in the sole and almost to the heel. It was fifteen or sixteen inches long, iron-hard, a wind-break from a mulga.

“I want a drink, Tony Carr,” moaned the girl, for she was not yet twenty, and now her eyes were open, and golden, like her hair.

“Didn’t ought to have any more for a bit,” said the young man, looking appealingly at the stranger. “You mustn’t give ’em a lot when they’re like that.”

“You make a fire and I’ll fetch water and things we’ll want.”

Retaining the knife, an old butcher’s killing knife honed to razor-sharpness, Bony brought a water-drum, billy-can and quart pot, tea and sugar, and a simple first-aid kit.

“I came this way to push cattle up to the yards,” Carr explained, as Bony made his preparations. “I see her dog on a rock. The dog is famished, and then I see Joy Elder lying here. She says she was looking for garnets. Her and the dog put up a kanga with a fair-sized joey, and the dog chased the kanga over the fence into the mulga, and she went in after and landed her foot on a stick lying buried with the point just sticking up like.

“She knows that no one ever goes in there, so she crawled out under the fence and got this far. Couldn’t pull the stick out, and couldn’t walk with it in. A mug could see she couldn’t. That was early yesterd’y morning. When I got here she can’t talk. Tongue swollen that big. So I dripped water from me bag on her tongue till it sort of loosened up, like the blacks say you gotta do. You can’t let ’em have a lot of water straight off. Look, mister, I’m slaughterman at the butcher’s, but I can’t take that stick out. What are we gonna do?”

He was solid, this Tony Carr; thick and wide and not so tall. His bare forearms were sunburned to match the backs of the powerful wrists and hands. His features were rugged, his eyes brown like his hair, and at this moment his face did not support the dossier Bony had studied when in Perth.

“We have everything ready,” Bony said. “When I tell you to grip the ankle firmly, you must do that.”

Going to the girl, he placed a wet rag over her eyes, saying gently:

“It will hurt, but you must bear it. Think you can?”

“Yes. Oh, yes. Please get it out.”

Tony Carr didn’t watch this bush operation. Gripping the ankle as instructed, he felt her body rebel against the knife, heard her sharp cry, and himself felt the pain, and then felt the patient’s relief when her taut nerves relaxed, and she gave a long sigh. On being asked to release the ankle, he saw that the gentle stranger was packing the wound with gauze.

“My guess is that the town is something like four to five miles away. There’s a nursing sister there?”

“Yes, Sister Jenks. But Joy here lives at Dryblowers Flat. We goin’ to carry her?”

“Better not try that,” decided Bony, glancing swiftly at the semi-masked face of the girl. “You ride hard for the town and tell them to bring a truck and a stretcher. Tell Sister Jenks just what has happened. Now get going.”

The boy left at a gallop over the rough ground. The dog came and nuzzled the water-bag, and Bony punched a dent into the crown of his hat and filled it for the famished animal. Testing the tea poured into the tin cup, and finding it cool enough, he added a little sugar, and knelt beside the girl and removed the now dry rag. Her large golden eyes were swimming in tears of exhaustion.

“This is going to be good,” Bony told her, slipping an arm under her shoulders. “ ‘Joy’, the young man said. ‘Joy Elder’ and you live at Dryblowers Flat. Now don’t gulp so. There’s plenty more, but we must take it slowly.”

When refilling the cup he heard her sobbing.

“I can’t help crying. I can’t ...”

“Of course you must cry,” he told her. “Here’s a clean handkerchief. Cry all you want. Do you good. Now a little more tea, and then rest for a while. Your dog was famished too. Must have stayed with you all along.”

The girl nodded, and managed to call, and the dog came and crouched beside her. “He bailed up a kanga in the mulga, and when I got to him, the mother was fighting him off and she had a baby in her pouch. It was when I ran to haul him off the kanga that I got the stick in my foot, and I couldn’t do a thing about the kanga after that. So I crawled out to here, hoping Tony or Mr. Joyce might come this way looking for cattle.”

“And you go out looking for garnets without wearing shoes?”

“Us girls don’t wear shoes exceptin’ when we go to church in Daybreak,” Joy explained, tiredly, and Bony thought that to talk was better than not. “Janet and I live with father, who’s a dryblower. Father’s pretty old, you see, and we haven’t much money. And besides, why wear out shoes? Father says we ought to, though. Then father says me and Janet are both as wild as brumbies, and we ought to be our age. I suppose we are wild and all that, but we can take care of ourselves. Pompy, you see, knows judo. All the kids have learned it off him.”

Wearily she said she was just over eighteen, and then fell asleep with his arm still about her shoulders. The ants were bad, and the flies too. He brought the blanket roll from the pack-horse, and laid a blanket on hard clay-pan in the shadow and moved her to it. Then he sponged her face and sat beside her to prevent the flies from settling. He doubted she would have lived through the coming night. He wondered why no one had looked for her.

An hour later he was still keeping the flies at bay when three horsemen rode over the low ridge and down into the depression. Tony Carr was one of them. Another was large and hard, gimlet-eyed and stiff in the saddle. The third man was also large but not hard, and his eyes were frank. He rode loosely and with the ease of one used to horses all his life. They alighted, and the gimlet-eyed man advanced to stoop over the girl, listen to her breathing and lift the groundsheet to inspect her wounded foot. Straightening, his eyes widened. They were hazel and penetrating.

“Now, what’s your name, and where d’you come from?” he demanded.

“Who are you?” returned Bony.

“Police,” snapped the big man.

“The name is Nat Bonnar. I’ve come down from Hall’s Creek. I’m looking for horse-work. I was on my way to Daybreak when I came across this young feller trying to make up his mind to cut the splinter from the girl’s foot. We did that, and he went off to Daybreak for help.”

“What time did you get here?”

“Between four and five, I suppose.”

“You ought to get nearer than that. Your kind can generally tell the time by the sun. What was this young chap actually doing when you first saw him?”

“As I said, making his mind up about cutting a stick from the girl’s foot.”

“When you got here, was she unconscious or asleep?”

“She was conscious. I heard her urging the young feller to cut the stick out.”

“And between you, you cut it out. Why didn’t you pack the girl on one of the horses and bring her up to town?”

“ ‘Cos she was all in,” Carr replied for Bony, and was roughly told to shut up.

Tony’s hands were clenched, but the policeman continued to stare at Bony, waiting for him to answer the question.

“The girl was exhausted by pain and exposure and thirst,” Bony said evenly, and continued: “Also the golden rule is not to move an accident case until first examined by a medical expert.”

“Ah! Know-all, eh! When you first came in sight of this business, what was this young feller really doing?”

“He was kneeling beside the girl. He was looking at the stick protruding from the injured foot. In his right hand was a long, pointed knife. As it was obvious he wasn’t going to cut the girl’s throat, I tethered my horses, and knelt beside him. He said, in reply to the girl’s urging: ‘I can’t’, and I said: ‘I can’. We then proceeded to remove the stick.”

“You sure he wasn’t interfering with her?”

“Interfering with her!” echoed Bony, his eyes masked. And the big man snapped:

“That’s what I said. Come on. Out with it.”

“Nice clean mind you have,” Bony said and, indicating Tony, added: “Looks all right to me. No black eyes. No bones broken.”

“Huh! We’ll see what the girl says when she comes to. So you came from Hall’s Creek, eh! What were you doing up there?”

“Breaking in a couple of colts for the policeman.”

“So. And the policeman’s name?”

“Kennedy. Constable First-Class.”

“Oh! Soon check. I gotta horse you can break for me.”

He turned back to the girl, and Bony and Tony turned with him. The other man was bending over the girl, peering into her face, and on the girl’s other side the dog was crouched with belly just clear of the ground, and lips lifted to reveal white fangs. The dog went to ground when the man straightened and said to the policeman:

“Sleeping all right. Musta had all it took. Lucky these two happened along.”

“Yes,” agreed the policeman. “Coincidence. I don’t like coincidences. No one comes down here ever, except you, Tony Carr, and you must explain just why you came this way this afternoon. And you too, whatever’s your name. Blast! The stretcher party should be here by now.”

He strode away from them, proceeding to circle the place and examine the tracks left by horses and men, and must have seen the trail left by Joy Elder when crawling to the tree. It was then that the stretcher party appeared on the ridge, and he returned to meet them.

There were several men, two of them carrying the folded stretcher, and a young woman wearing blue slacks and a red jacket. As she came down to the floor of the depression, her walk bespoke the agility of youth. Bony estimated her age as well under thirty. Her hair was reddish-brown, and it glistened beneath the brim of the shallow straw hat.

Her interest was limited to the injured girl. They stood back watching her, noting that she felt the girl’s pulse, then regarded the bandage about the wounded foot, without touching it. She spoke to the girl and, receiving no answer, raised an eyelid.

“All right, Bert Ellis, bring the stretcher. The blankets first, please, and one to cover her. Better take her to town. She’ll need a little watching. You’ll supervise, Mr. Harmon?”

“Righto, Sister,” agreed the policeman.

Sister Jenks stood, nonchalantly produced a cigarette-case, and removed a cigarette. A match was struck, and above the flame she looked into the masked blue eyes of Napoleon Bonaparte. She glanced away to the men engaged with the stretcher, protested at their work, and herself arranged the lifting of the inert girl to the stretcher and directed the manner of the covering. Bony was taking the now unwanted blanket roll to the pack-horse when he heard her call him. She wanted to know who he was. He told her.

“You removed the stick, I’m told.”

“Yes, Marm,” he replied, looking into her dark eyes, surveying the delicate features of the small face, not the least revealing being the determined chin.

“What did you do?”

He detailed the rough operation with the sterilised knife, the antiseptic and subsequent dressing.

“Sensible,” she voted. “You couldn’t have done better in the circumstances.”

“Thank you, Marm.”

“Oh, that’s all right ... Bonnar, I think you said? Don’t call me Marm. I’m Sister Jenks, and I’ve never been married. May I be inquisitive for half a minute?”

“For ten minutes do you wish, Sister.”

“All right. See if you’ll smile at my questions. Your mother was an aborigine?”

“I have been so informed,” Bony replied, smiling slightly.

“And your father was white?”

“That is additional information, Sister.”

“You are an oddity, Bonnar—a man of two races having adorable blue eyes. Are you not Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte?”

“Could be.”

“End of inquisitiveness, plus rudeness. No forgiveness asked. I am very glad you have come. We are not at all happy in Daybreak. You are working incognito?”

Bony nodded, saying:

“In this investigation a horse-breaker might succeed more quickly than a known detective.”

For the first time, Sister Jenks smiled, and Bony was obliged to keep pace with her.

“I hope to meet you again soon,” she said. “I must tell you what my aunt says about you, just to see how vain you’ll become. Now I must hurry after my patient. It’s going to be fun knowing you. And I shall keep your secret.”