The Mountains Have a Secret. Arthur W. Upfield
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crossed to the bridge spanning the creek. The sun was westering, its rays painting with amber and grey the iron face of the range towering high beyond the hotel it threatened to engulf. There was a track going away past the hotel towards the range which could not be beyond a mile away.
About the hotel and the clearing which it lorded was an outer silence emphasised the more by the small sounds living within it. The singing of the little water went on and on, accompanying the voices of hidden birds, the barking of a dog, the cry of the cockatoo. Three minutes later, seeming to emerge from the outer silence, came the humming of a car engine, low and almost musical.
At first Bony could not pick up its direction. The sound died away, lived again for a moment, and again sank into oblivion. A long thirty seconds passed before he heard it once more, and then could decide that the machine was somewhere at the foot of the range. Presently he saw it swiftly appear from the back-drop of bush and come gliding towards the hotel along the track which skirted the creek. It stopped at the side of the building, and Simpson appeared at that door by which Bony had left.
Although not “car-minded”, Bony saw that the machine was a particularly sumptuous Rolls-Royce. A uniformed chauffeur was at the wheel, the passengers being a man and a woman. Simpson walked to the side of the car and spoke to those within through the open window. What he said Bony could not hear, and it was the woman who betrayed the fact that he was speaking of the new guest—a mere involuntary movement of her face.
Then Simpson was standing back, standing upright, stiffly. The car began to move. It curved past the corner of the building to cross the clearing, and Bony received the impression of a stern masculine face and that of a woman distinctly handsome. The woman did not look at him, but the man did with one swift sidewise glance. The bush swallowed them and the car on its way to Dunkeld.
In all probability they were the Bensons of Baden Park, but their identity was of less import to Bony than the obvious fact that his map was inaccurate. On his map, the turn-off to Baden Park Station was half a mile beyond the bridge, on the road to Lake George, and not at the hotel.
He lingered on the bridge for five minutes or more before sauntering to the front veranda steps where he was greeted by the cockatoo with “Nuts!” There were chairs backed against the wall, and he sat in one near old Simpson, who visibly brightened at the prospect of talking with someone.
“A beautiful place and a beautiful day,” Bony commented.
“’Tis so,” agreed the ancient indifferently. The tired eyes took in the new guest from his black hair to his shoes, and into them crept that gleam of hope. “You got any brass?”
The Yorkshireman’s name for money was startling, for there was no trace of the Yorkshire accent in the quavering voice.
“Not very much,” he was told, Bony recalling the request made by the son.
“Pity. No one seems to have any money. You got any guts?”
“Not much of that, either. Supposing I had—if you mean courage?”
The old man glanced furtively at the open window next to Bony’s bedroom. Then he moved his chair closer and whispered:
“I know where there’s lashings of booze. Jim and Ferris are going off to Dunkeld tonight, and the old woman goes to bed about ten. What say we raid the spirit store? It’s only just along the passage and I’ve got a key. Had it for years. They never found it on me. They don’t know I’ve got it. Inside the store there’s stacks of whisky and brandy and wine—stacks and stacks. Let’s have a night tonight, eh? I ain’t had a real drink in years and I’m as dry as a wax match. We could lock ourselves in there and drink and drink. Shall us?”
The voice was coaxing, wheedling. The eyes were now wide and imploring. The prisoner in the chair was a prisoner in a dying body. What an escape the prisoner envisaged, what an escape for an hour or so! There was pity in Bonaparte’s heart but no relenting, although he said:
“I must think it over.”
“Think it over!” scoffed the old man. “Think over a proposition like that! Free grog and as much as you can down in a coupler hours! And you want to think it over! The modern generation’s soft, that’s what it is. No guts—no—no——What d’you say your name is?”
“Call me John. What’s the matter with you?”
“With me!” was the indignant echo. “Nothin’s the matter with me, young feller, exceptin’ me arthritis and a touch of gout now and then and a hell of a dry throttle. I’ve got good health and plenty of guts, and I ain’t afeared of raidin’ a spirit store like you are. There’s the ruddy spirit store and I got a key to it. All I wants you to do is to go there with me after the old woman’s in bed and open the door for me ’cos I can’t get up at the lock. I tell you there ain’t nuthin’ wrong with me.
“Nuts!” murmured the cockatoo with astonishing appropriateness. It mumbled something and then yelled: “What abouta drink?”
Chapter Three
The Prisoners
“Reach me down that fowl,” pleaded old Simpson. “Lemme get the feel of his neck in me hands. They only hang him up there to mock at me and put on me the evil eye. They don’t want me to get well and be the master in me own house.”
Tears of self-pity rolled down his withered cheeks and into the unkempt white whiskers, and Bony said:
“Have you lived here very long?”
A palsied forearm was drawn across the watering eyes; the old man’s lips trembled. Bony looked away for a moment or two and then was presented with a picture of youth and virility and courage.
“Afore you was born,” came the words of the picture, “me and the old woman came here back in the year one. There was no roads to anywhere then once we left Dunkeld, only a bit of track coming through these mountains to get into Baden Park. Every mile of that track was harder than twenty miles over plain country.”
Memory was wiping away the ravages of the years, overlaying the features with a make-up to re-create a man of yesteryear. The voice lost its quavering, was steady, and the eagerness of the pioneer flared into the light blue eyes.
“I was young in them days, and the old woman was younger than me. I druv six bullocks in a dray and she druv four horses to a buckboard. She was carryin’ Alf, too. Took us all of a fortnight to make the thirty miles. I had to build two bridges in them weeks, but Kurt Benson promised me land and a fair go if we could make it.
“We made it all right, and just in time. Settled right here beside the crick. The clearing here now was a clearing then, and when we had let the bullocks and the horses go that first evening, the old woman got her pains. It was raining like hell and cold. They want hospitals now and doctors. Soft, that’s what they are now.
“Any’ow, we cleared the land back from the crick and grew grapes and fruit. Benson, the present man’s father, was a good man and true. He helped us all he could, and later on he got us the licence and set us up, advertising in the papers for us, helping with the track and all.
“The first child got drowned in the crick when he was three, and Jim came along then and afterwards Ferris. We did well, me and the old woman. This all belongs to me, you unnerstand, and I ain’t dead yet. Jim’s been at me for years to give it to him, but there ain’t a chance. I signed a will and they don’t know where it is. They’d like to know, but they never will, not until after I’m gone. If they knew where that will is they’d burn it, and one night they’d leave the door of the spirit store open.”
“What for?” Bony asked without keen interest, for the story he had heard was not an uncommon one. The old man’s voice sank to a sibilant whisper.
“So’s I’d get inside and drink and drink and drink and never come out any more. Then I’d be another body in that spirit store, all stiff and cold. You wouldn’t let me stay in there and drink and drink until I was dead, would you? You listen and talk