Man of Two Tribes (12 page)

Chapter Twenty

THIS wall of straw was something like ten feet high and as many thick, and whether or no it was the same wall he had smashed through with the shovel some twenty miles to the west was not of interest to Bony. He tore and stamped his way through, the others following with little difficulty, and when beyond, he led them to the right for several hundred yards, and there lit a fire well away from it, the wall itself now blanketing the light from anyone north of it.

With the aid of firelight, he checked his companions' gear and found nothing missing. Then, for a psychological reason, he made them help him scoop and tramp a chamber inside the wall in which to sleep, giving the illusion of safe shelter.

He rationed himself to four hours' sleep, Lucy tethered to an ankle, and on waking found the sun gilding the fragile roof of the sleeping chamber and silvering its walls. It was not unlike being within a case woven by silkworms, the strands of straw like satin opalescence. The straw shimmered and gave forth music, the music of gentle surf beyond the mouth of a silver and gold cave, and Bony knew that the wind was rising—a blessing from the north, because a south wind might carry their scent for a mile and more to be registered by keen aboriginal noses.

The sun said it was nine o'clock as he built a fire on the ashes of the previous one, and filled the billy-can for tea. Squatting on his heels, he tackled the problem of how long to permit his companions to sleep, in view of their present position relative to those wild aborigines.

They were now nine miles from the caverns and twelve from the desert lands where those wild men camped.
Although improbable, it was still possible that the aborigines would visit the caverns about sun-rise, and might chance to cross the tracks evidencing the flight of the prisoners. It was a risk that had to be accepted.

Provided the aborigines left the desert lands at sun-rise, and determined to return by sun-set to avoid camping on the Plain at night, their range would be up to twenty miles. And the fugitives were but twelve miles from the desert.

There must be no needless delay.

The water boiled, and tossing a handful of tea into the billy, he waited twenty seconds before removing the brew from the fire. Then, on walking to the wall, he noted that the wind was causing it to tremble, and that the sound of the ‘surf' was now loud and near.

Rousing the sleepers, he told them to come to the fire for breakfast and bring everything with them.

As they emerged from the wall, each one stopped and stared, and Bony watched them to measure their first resistance to the Plain. Their eyes widened. Their faces registered the disbelief of what they saw, and he knew he could give them now no time to think. With the gear in their arms they walked stiffly to the fire.

“Thought you said we could camp all day in that straw stuff,” Riddell complained. “Five minute sleep and you rouse us out.”

“I could sleep for a year,” yawned the girl. “What about awash? I need it.”

“No wash until we find water,” Bony said. “I thought we might camp here for a day, but the wind is now making the wall tremble, and if it rises much more, the wall will begin to move, and also we haven't come far enough to be safe. So eat and drink, and we'll move on.”

They were sullen until Brennan asked how the wall came to be there. The explanation provided opportunity to distract them.

“Certainly looks like something's goin' to happen to it,” Jenks surmised. He was standing, a pannikin of tea in one hand, and a meat-and-bread sandwich in the other. “Caw! So this is the Great Nullarbor Plain. Well, you can have it for mine. And if I was at sea I'd say it's goin' to blow like hell.”

“Yes, we'll pack up and start before that wall rolls on and over us. We'll find a safer place than this to camp.”

Bony rolled his own swag and that which the girl had to carry. He was obliged to assist the others, too, for they were not yet proficient.

“I'll carry your swag, Joe, as you will have the water,” he told the big man. “Today I'll not have to carry the dog.”

“Okay! Every little bit helps as the monkey said when he...”

“Hold my mirror for a second or two,” Myra asked, and D.I. Bonaparte, F.R.M.I. steadied her small mirror while she did her hair and ‘put on her face' with the aid of a tongue-moistened rag. “What a sight I am. Couldn't you find me some red ochre or something the blacks use?”

“You never know what we'll find, Myra. At the moment I find you looking well and attractive. As we walk, make a mental list of all the things you will buy at the shops.”

“Yair,” growled Riddell. “And I'll be thinking of all the beers I'll be buying.”

“What do we use for money?” demanded Brennan, and Maddoch cheerfully said he had money enough in a bank to keep them all drunk for a year.

On this note they listened to Bony's briefing.

“We start off in single file as we did last night. We'll walk for an hour by the sun, and then spell for a quarter of an hour. You follow me, Myra, and you, Mark, bring up the rear. Now you may talk as much as you like, even sing. In fact, singing would be a help. And don't look at the Plain too much. It will still be there this evening.”

They moved off, Bony now with no sense of danger of them falling into a hole or over a cliff-like bank into another Bumblefoot Hole. The dog at first strained on the leash, and
presently Bony freed her and she trotted on ahead, happy at last.

They were like a small caterpillar crawling across an aerodrome, and soon the wind found them and tore at the girl's hair, scampered through the men's hair, and when now and then Bony looked back at them they were staring across the world to the not-so-distant edge, the verge of cliff that couldn't possibly have any foundation.

Then Maddoch shouted:

“Look at the straw!”

The party stopped, to gaze in wonderment at what was happening. They could see neither the eastern nor the western limit of what appeared as a pale-yellow snake, alive and menacing, its body rippling in effort to digest a meal. Here and there it bulged towards them, at places it rolled over and over, and at no place was torn asunder. Bony knew it could roll over a man and do no hurt, but it appeared to be as weighty as molten metal. Brennan said, as though being the last man he would be the first to be trampled:

“Get on. Why wait around here?”

The wall proved to be an opportune spur, the wind coming from the rear being another, and Bony estimated their speed at almost three miles in that first hour. Then the wall appeared to be moving after them as fast as they walked, so that it was no farther back although it was smaller as the twisting action shredded it gradually, leaving a carpet of mush on the ground after it. As there was no suggestion of a spell, Bony kept moving for another hour, when two and a half miles had been added to the day's total.

A nasty day. The abos would be reluctant to move out of their camp. Good!

Continuing the next stage, they found it necessary to lean a fraction backward to counter the pressure of the wind, and walking seemed comparatively effortless. The wall followed them, not quite at their speed, until it broke, and the ends raced forward to curve inward until other portions broke and soon
short sections were racing across the Plain like squadrons of golden cavalry, some moving faster than others, and often the slowest energised to run the fastest. One mass sped past the travellers, scattering its mush after it, growing swiftly smaller until it was in turn broken into bunches which formed into great balls. And the balls of straw became rapidly smaller until, with final collapse, they flattened amid the eternal saltbush.

Thus was the disintegration of one of these mighty walls of straw, and after that there was nothing to distract the travellers' attention from muscles beginning to complain now that the imagined danger was no more.

Bony espied a belt of bluebush some hundred yards long, a small forest of trees three feet high on the sea of saltbush, and here was found shelter from the wind, but also increased heat from the sun, and small flies to torment them. Gratefully they sat on the ground, and only Maddoch assisted Bony to find dead bush with which to boil water for tea.

Jenks cursed the flies, and Riddell declared he would go no farther this day, no matter what the flies did. Bony smiled at Maddoch, and Maddoch tried to return the smile but failed.

“Make a cigarette for Myra,” Bony asked him, and squatted beside the fire and rolled one for himself.

They must have come eight miles. Eight added to nine totalled seventeen. Those swathes of straw mush would obliterate what tracks they could not avoid making, also the broken bush his companions had left without thought that eagle eyes might see and read the tale. They were still not far enough from jail to be safe from the warders.

The discomforts of this noon camp would, he hoped, be allies, and when the meal had been eaten, he relaxed and waited for the allies to do the prodding, permitting the fire to die when the smoke of it would have kept the flies at bay. He lay with his eyes closed, and pictured the Plain dwarfed to map reading size, and placed imaginary pins to mark Patsy Lonergan's camps, and that far eastward position of the caverns. He had set out with the intention of following the
third leg of a triangle, and he was confident that he was doing just this, the objective being Bumblefoot Hole, where there was water and a little food, and certain shelter.

To locate Bumblefoot Hole would be to find the needle in the stack, but there was that ‘rock', that point of high land beyond the horizon which would presently give him a bearing, provided he could bring its shape to coincide with the mental picture he had retained.

The Plain was presenting a new face to this first of the summer windstorms. Coming down from the vast desert lands, it bore a light-brown dust which foreshortened still farther the encircling horizon, which painted the sun light red, which tinted with soft purple the saltbush, and the bluebush it shadowed royal blue. The sky was white, like the belly of a shark. And the wind was silent, save where it hissed past the ears, and this sound seemed to be within the mind, and the pressure of it against the body was as a thrust by the unseeable and the unknowable.

Riddell began to shout, and Bony opened his eyes to see the big man flailing his arms and fighting the flies, the filth of a nation streaming from his mouth in the frenzy of his desperation. Brennan said something, and in an instant they were exchanging blows. Myra looked at Bony and shrugged. Maddoch came to crouch before Bony. Tears were sliding down his dusty face and forming rivulets of light red paint. Flies were glued to the corners of his mouth, and were crawling into his nose and the corners of his eyes.

“We'll have to go back,” he cried. “The caverns are better than this.”

“You go forward, not backward, Clifford,” Bony said sternly. “There can be no going back.”

“But this.... I had no idea, Inspector.”

Inspector! It belonged surely to a previous incarnation, and he wanted to correct it, to insist that he was ‘Bony' to his friends, and he remembered then that respect, even fear, must go with command.

“What are those lunatics fighting about?” he asked coldly. Maddoch turned to watch when the combatants were separated by the stocky Jenks ambling between them and turning about as though no tax had been levied on his physical strength, to walk between them again.

“We may as well go on,” Bony called. “We'll take it easy, and hope for a hole or a cave to camp in for the night. What about it?”

He risked the friendly question, yet was confident of their answer. Almost eagerly they agreed, and he handed his blanket roll to Riddell, and himself carried the half-f water drum.

The morale-slaying Plain took them instantly to itself, for they were like mariners leaving safe anchorage when leaving the belt of bluebush. No ship under them, no steel walls about them. Soon there was no place to leave astern and no place to steam ahead.

There was only the nightmarish uniformity of flat plain kept steady by a cloudless sky. You can ride a camel, a horse, a jeep, and close your mind to this Nullarbor, find exquisite relief in the cinema programme the mind will screen. But on your feet, you have to walk with eyes open and the mind naked to reality.

And when the sun said: “I've had enough of looking at you,” and turned to more interesting insects below, they had no cave, no hole in the ground, no bluebush amid which to crouch. The sky caught fire from the sun's hot trail and the high-flung dust wove mighty draperies of scarlet before Space, shutting it out, as though blown upon by Evil itself. The colour in the folds deepened to magenta, then to black, and finally blessed night came.

One tiny spark glowed in the darkness, tended by a man who pushed together the ends of burning sticks. About him lay the blanket-cocooned figures of restless sleepers. He was contented, not by food but by the miles he had brought those restless sleepers, this day which was thankfully ended.

Chapter Twenty-one

THE sun rose with a bound and looked at them suspiciously. From somewhere centre of the Nullarbor to its western edge lay six narrow shadows, and a seventh which petered out at about a mile. The seventh shadow was cast by Lucy.

There was no wind. No clouds. The air was cool, and there were no flies. It was one of those days when you wonder what the heck you are doing just where day found you. You wake, you stand up, and there you are. You wonder where you came from and where you are going. But the point is that if you are going anywhere at all, it will be by way of your sore feet which are somewhere at the end of your aching legs.

Bony inspected not detectives, but a bedraggled and dejected squad. He had to refasten Maddoch's blanket roll, and retie Myra's blanket shoe, and sling the half-empty water drum to sit comfortably into the small of his back. The squad wanted to remain there for several hours. Maddoch urged the return to the caverns.

“We are heading for a large depression named Bumblefoot Hole,” was Bony's bait, “where there is water, plenty of it, and stores I left on my way north. We can camp there for a week if necessary. Now we have to keep moving because our only water supply is diminishing. So, come on!”

The girl followed after him, and Brennan again was the rear link. Presently, Brennan began: “Left, right, left, right, left ... left ... left.” That helped quite a lot, and when Myra broke into ‘Tipperary' and all joined in, it was better still. At the end of the first hour, their spirits had risen, to sink again when they realised that the rest-halt was exactly the same as the breakfast camp, only there were no empty tins or fire ash.
And at the next halt they merely halted. Company awaited them at the third hour's halt—a colony of jerboa rats.

Here they made a fire and brewed a half-billy of tea, and Bony did his best to interest them in the habits of this rodent bearing the scientific name of Leporillus. Their houses were different in size and shape, but all were expertly constructed of woven bush, and all but two had roofs weighted with stones to defy the wind.

Jenks banged the side of his foot against a house, and Brennan removed the stones from the roof of another, when out sped a rodent of the size of a common rat, leaping in hops, its long hind legs and short fore-legs giving it the appearance of the genuine marsupial.

Bony allowed two hours' rest. Maddoch and Myra lay face down, pressing their eyes into their arms to defeat the flies, which were not really vicious. Only Lucy was happy. She snuffled at the rats' houses, and Brennan laughed uproariously when a rat bolted from the back door of one and a rabbit fled through the front door, and Lucy couldn't make up her mind which to chase.

Jenks was the most restless. He stood often to gaze at the Plain, eyes small, lips betraying nervous reaction to something his mind could not accept.

“How far we come today?” asked Riddell. “Only seven blasted miles! And half the day gone! We only doin' fourteen miles a day?”

“We should cover more when we become hardened, Joe.” Bony said.

“Howja know we done seven miles?” pressed the big man.

“By the sun we have walked for three separate hours. Walking speed of the normal man unencumbered is two and a half miles to the hour. As we are all encumbered and weary, I am being generous in estimating our speed at only a fraction under the two and a half.”

“Then how far are we from them caverns?”

“About forty miles.”

“And how far to this Bumblefoot Hole you been tellin' us about?”

“I cannot say with any degree of accuracy, Joe. I am hoping it will be a little less than fifty miles.”

“So!” Riddell pondered. “Oughta do it on our heads.”

“Of course we'll do it. And another hundred miles beyond Bumblefoot Hole. Were you doubtful?”

“Well...”

“We'll get there,” he was assured, and noting the glint in the blue eyes, he turned to gaze with Jenks at the absence of scenery.

“Think we bluffed the abos?” asked Brennan, sitting with Bony.

“I'll be more confident of that, say, tomorrow night. It's quite possible, you know, that they may never discover our departure. Having visited us the other day, they could think we were safe enough, and go off on their own affairs for several weeks. Think you could also carry Myra's swag this afternoon?”

“Sure!” drawled Brennan. “Anything to help a lady. Let's get going.”

Left ... right ... left. Nothing to look at. The endless shuffle of left foot ... right foot ... left foot. Eyes front and directed to the heels of the man ahead. Sing! To hell with singing. Talk! What's the use? Daydream of city lights, of wallowing in beer, of a feast of women! Lights and beer and women! What in hell are they? Saltbush and jerboa rats! Crawling like lice on a two-bob bit! Better to have stayed with old doc in those caverns where there's water and no flies, no need to think, only listen to old doc's stories. Ruddy fool to take on this.

It was after four o'clock when Bony saw a shadow where none should be, a black line some five hundred yards to the right. He veered towards it, and hope was born, grew to maturity when the shadow thickened, and he saw what was a miniature Bumblefoot Hole.

Lucy ran on and disappeared, and presently they stood at the lip of a shelving bank, ending in a rocky floor sloping to the foot of a cliff at the far side. There were the shadows—of small eaves. There were a dozen old-man saltbush offering real wood instead of light brush, a fire to bake bread. If only water!

“Looks good to me,” cried Mark Brennan. “A hole's better than all of this Plain.”

Bony agreed, and turned to share their relief. His brows straightened in a swift frown. His eyes narrowed as their glance swept over the Plain. Sharply he asked:

“Where's Maddoch?”

They looked at each other, then down at the saltbush into the small depression less than half an acre in extent.

“When I looked back about half an hour ago, Maddoch was walking ahead of you, Jenks. What happened to Maddoch?”

The sailor's eyes opened wide, despite the flies. He regarded Bony as though being asked the most ridiculous question. He glanced at Myra Thomas: he gazed all about him, his jaw slack.

“Cliff!” he exclaimed. “He was in front of me at that. Where's he got to? I don't know. Must be down there. Must have got ahead of us without seeing him.”

“You hit him with a rock or something?” mildly enquired Brennan, and the subtlety of the suggestion didn't even register.

Bony focused the picture he had seen when last he had looked back. They had not been strictly in line of file, but Maddoch was certainly of the number of those who followed his lead. Everyone was walking with face down and shoulders humped under the load carried. It was probable, almost certain, that Jenks and Brennan who came after him had at the same time been mentally occupied elsewhere than on the Nullarbor Plain, and could, therefore, easily have failed to notice Maddoch drop out.

“He's gone back to the caverns,” guessed the girl. “Said he wanted to. The idiot.”

“Ought to see him,” shouted Jenks, staring to the east, and Brennan agreed, although he gazed to the west, and Riddell, catching the idea, looked to the north.

Bony was sure he could see any object within three miles, as high as Maddoch stood. Half an hour back, when he had seen Maddoch with the party, they were about a mile, or a little more, from this place where he was missed.

Assuming that Maddoch had dropped out without being seen, and having the intention of returning to the caverns, he would start walking to the north, simply because it was opposite to the line of march. But not for long would he continue northwards. Within minutes he would veer to the left or the right, according to which leg was longer than the other.

There being no natural objects to guide him, to lure him, he would inevitably walk in a circle, the problem being how far would Maddoch walk before making a halt, after which he would set off on another circle.

That he, Bony, could see a walking man clearly for three miles meant little on this tricky Plain, where distance is distorted, and sound judgment not possible.

“You must camp and I'll go back to look for him.” Bony led the way down to the floor of the hole. They helped to make a fire, and then Bony, noticing that Lucy's muzzle was wet, found a rock-hole half-filled with water, and covered with green slime.

“You may use this water sparingly to wash with,” he said, “but not to drink unless first boiled. Brennan, I am placing the drum of clean water in your charge. You see that bush?”

“Yes.”

“If I am not back by sun-rise tomorrow, make a fire under it. Make a smoke. Understand?”

“Yes, but ... you can't leave us like this. What'll we do if you can't find your way back?”

“Yes, what'll we do, Inspector?” echoed Jenks. “If Maddoch chooses to clear out, let him go. He's askin' for what he gets.”

“Too right! Too ruddy right!” snarled Riddell. “Let him rot.”

Bony stared at each man, stared them down.

“Leave Maddoch. I can't leave Maddoch. I don't yet know who murdered Mitski, and I'm taking Mitski's murderer all the way.”

It is said that a man spends his life struggling to return to the protection of the womb, and it was this impulse which drove the little man who loved peace and security to seek the mother he had lost when as a small child he was left, sensitive and alone. He married, not the comforter, the protective mother, but a shrew, and the climax of the tragedy was inevitable.

For Maddoch first the legal jail and then detention in the caverns had provided protection from the raw world he had feared. Although he would never admit it, even to himself, the period spent in jail had been the happiest of his life, and that spent in the Nullarbor caverns had given much in compensation for the unnecessary crudities. The craving for protection afforded by the known caverns had reached its peak when gazing upon the tiny houses of the jerboa rats.

Inspector Bonaparte wouldn't turn back, so he decided he must slip away and seek the warm comfort and safety of those caverns where there were no flies, no glaring sun, no torturing left, right, left, right.

Gradually he edged himself out of the line; slowly he fell back, the last two men passing without lifting their heads. For a moment he stood watching them. Then he realised that at any moment the leader might see him standing there like a fool. Down he went to sprawl amid the saltbush, to lie still.

Then he was running. The run became a trot, the trot a hurried walk. He glanced backward. The party had vanished. He was free to walk on and on to where Dr. Havant waited.
Dr. Havant would be so pleased to see him, so happy to hear that Clifford Maddoch couldn't bear to think of the doctor being so alone, and had come back to keep him company.

Presently he was conscious that the sun had disappeared. H'm! Must have come a long way. Can't be much farther to go. He tripped and fell hard on his chest, scrambled up and gazed about with bovine curiosity for what had snared his foot.

However, it wasn't so important, and he had yet to find Dr. Havant. The evening brought the horizon closer, and it was so quiet that he could hear the soft swish when a foot brushed a bush. Then it was suddenly moonlight, and he knew he must be close to the caverns for he had crawled from the caverns into the moonlight.

Following this thought a sound far away came rushing upon him, engulfing him within a voice that screamed. He didn't recognise the cry of the brolga.

He was lying on the ground. He could feel the cool touch of saltbush under his face. He was running; he knew he was running; knew he was crawling on hands and knees, was certain he was drawing nearer and nearer to the little hole down which he would crawl to Dr. Havant. That little hole! Maddoch shrieked with mirth. His wife would never be able to crawl into that little hole. She was too big, too damn big, the screaming bitch.

The moon was up there, too. For a long time he gazed at her, but the moon persisted in moving so that he had to turn his head when it was painful to do so. Blast the moon! He closed his eyes and the moon was gone, and it was daylight. He was looking along his arm. He could see his hand resting on the ground, palm upward. And beyond his hand stood a kangaroo, cleaning its face with a paw, like a cat.

A kangaroo! Perhaps Dr. Havant would know how to kill it and they could eat its tail. Kangaroo soup was a luxury for sure. Once he had tasted some at a dinner somewhere. The kangaroo took no notice of him, didn't see him. That's funny!
The kangaroo came and sniffed at his finger-tips. Well, now! How extraordinary! The kangaroo actually jumped up and now sat right on his hand.

It was perfect from nose to tail. The colour of its coat was fawn and there was a tiny streak of white down its soft warm belly. Maddoch, with strange violence, closed his hand and imprisoned the kangaroo.

Sitting up without opening his hand, and this was done with spasmodic effort, Maddoch gazed at the tail of the prisoner and chuckled gleefully at the prize he would present to the lonely Havant. He tried to stand, failed, and tried again, continuing to hold the kangaroo in his closed hand. A foot appeared in front of him, and he looked up to see his wife. He opened his mouth to scream, and the woman became Inspector Bonaparte, who said:

“A pair of giant compasses would not have drawn a better circle for me to follow than you did with your feet, Clifford. Come along, now. Get up, and we'll find the camp where there'll be coffee waiting, and something to eat.”

An arm lifted him. He knew his burning feet were dragging.

“Where were you when Mitski was killed, Clifford?” the persuasive voice asked, and only after many attempts to speak did he say:

“Coming from the Jeweller's Shop, Inspector. I saw him near the boulder.”

“You didn't kill him, did you?”