Cake in the Hat Box. Arthur W. Upfield
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a new baby. The information caused her face to soften, and the sun-ruined complexion was banished by a kind of glory.
“I’ll go and see her,” she cried. “What is it ... a boy?”
“Baby gal,” replied Sam, spitting at and hitting an ant. “Born day ’fore yestiddy. Sarah, she says if it’s another boy I can go swim with the crocs in the estuary. Turning out to be a gal, I’m still driving this here truck. When d’you aim to get in, Ezra?”
“Tomorrow week. See any other cattle on the hoof?”
“No ... not on this track. Masterton’s sending in a mob ... nine hundred, I heard. Well, better get on, I suppose. Aim to reach Whitchica some time tonight.”
“See you later.”
“You bet.”
Ezra Breen swung into his saddle. His sister slipped her leg over her horse’s head and put on her man’s felt hat. She smiled at Sam before turning her mount towards the distant river of beef. Ezra nodded and did not smile. Throughout the meeting he had not once smiled, and that was no oddity to Sam Laidlaw, who had known the Breens most of his life.
He clambered into the cabin of the transport and drove on up and over and down the succession of minor hillocks.
The basaltic cliffs of McDonald’s Stand rose to the sky to dominate Sam’s world for a little while. The track to the Breens’ station branched away to skirt the western spurs of Black Range, leaving the main track to follow the eastern flanks all the way to Agar’s Lagoon. The Rockies, the Himalayas, the Andes, all are greater than these mountains, but none in all the world resemble them.
The air was dustless, as clear as distilled water. Black Range, now running roughly parallel with the track, might have been a mile to the westward and actually was something like twelve miles. Since leaving Wyndham, Sam had met with no travellers save the Breens. Wild donkeys watched him from the hillsides, and kangaroos languidly removed themselves. The eagles passed him from one to the next while he crawled through their territory, and the turkeys ran away on absurdly stiff legs.
At noon Sam stopped to brew tea and gnaw into bread and meat, and about an hour after that camp fire had been left behind, his little eyes glinted with swift interest. The transport was then crossing the summit of a ‘bump’, and before he could decide what the object was on the summit of another ‘bump’ two miles ahead, he was driving down to cross another of the interminable gullies. On his again seeing the object, it was much nearer and recognizable as an American jeep.
It was motionless and facing his way. There was movement about it, chiefly on its canvas top, and he realized it was the vehicle used by Constable Martin Stenhouse, stationed at Agar’s Lagoon. Again it vanished as the transport dipped for another gully, and as the engine roared and whined and the transport creaked and complained, Sam cogitated on the motionless police car and decided that the policeman had stopped to shoot a turkey or a kangaroo.
When next he saw the jeep it was just beyond the radiator of the transport as the huge vehicle groaned and belched its way up the stony slope as steep as a house roof. Sam braked to an abrupt halt and switched off the engine. The silence flung itself against the sides of the cabin and bashed his ears, and he sat still to watch an eagle and several crows rise from the canopy of the jeep.
It was the canopy which distinguished this jeep for Sam Laidlaw, for it had been added by the policeman and old Syl Williams the blacksmith at Agar’s Lagoon. The sunlight was reflected by the narrow windshield so that Sam could not see into the jeep, but the presence of the birds made him uneasy.
He left the transport and approached the vehicle standing squarely on the narrow track. Not until he came abreast of the compactly sturdy product of a global war was he able to defeat the sun-reflecting windshield, and then saw seated behind the steering-wheel the slumped figure of Constable Stenhouse.
Because Stenhouse might be ill or asleep, he said:
“Good day-ee, Mr Stenhouse!”
The policeman did not move. He was seated with his head bent forward. One hand rested on the steering-wheel, which, because of the left-hand drive, was on the side farthest from Sam, who had stepped to the right. He walked round the back of the jeep and so reached the constable.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, and gently shook the motionless figure. “Cripes! Dead as hell!”
He raised the head and noted the wide eyes and the fallen jaw, and gently he permitted the head to regain its former position and stood back to take in the entire picture. That the jeep had been here for some time was proved by the close interest of very wary and wily birds, as well as by the condition of the dead man’s face.
There were dark marks under the vehicle, and Sam crouched and determined these marks to be dried blood. He looked into the vehicle and saw that dried blood covered the floor about the dead man’s feet.
“Done in ... looks like,” he said, aloud. “By the tracker, too. ’S’ava look.”
He rummaged among the gear behind the seat, finding, with the extra tyres and the tool-box, a tucker-box and one swag of blankets. There was no need to investigate the swag, for the outer canvas of the roll was heavily marked with the constable’s name.
There should have been a second swag, a much poorer outfit, and Sam removed filled petrol drums and other gear to make sure. The tracker’s swag was not there.
“Tracker musta shot you and cleared out,” Sam remarked to the corpse. “Mighta been an accident sort of, and the tracker’s walked back to Agar’s to report. Mighta been that way, but somehow I don’t think so. Assumin’ you was shot accidental, and the tracker decides to get back to Agar’s, he wouldn’t have bothered to carry his swag. No fear ... if I know them blacks. He’d have taken all the cooked food, and got out of most of his clothes and his boots and travelled light.”
Sam squatted on his heels and cut tobacco chips. He wished someone would come along and share the responsibility, for something would have to be done about this business, and a feller doesn’t want to go and do anything wrong which would make the cops nag at him. This policeman was dead all right, and the blood proved he hadn’t died in his sleep or of heart failure. The tracker must have had a lot to do with it.
In the first place, because there was no black tracker’s swag in the jeep it didn’t prove that there was no tracker. Stenhouse wouldn’t be out this far without a tracker, any more than he’d travel around these Kimberleys without a couple or more spare tyres. In the second place, the vanished swag indicated that the black had cleared out, either because he had killed the policeman or because the death of the policeman had frightened hell into him. What remained was a dead man sitting in his jeep, and Sam squatted on his heels and smoked while wondering what to do about it.
This particular ‘bump’ was ninety-odd miles from Agar’s, and on by far the roughest section of the entire trip from Wyndham. Nothing could be done for Constable Stenhouse, but what ought to be done with the body?
Sam knocked the ashes from his pipe, scratched his naked body under the armpits and stood up, having decided to leave Constable Stenhouse in his jeep. He was then confronted with the task of moving the jeep off the track, for it was not possible to drive his heavy transport past either side of it.
He tried pushing it forward, and, failing to move it, attempted to push it backward. This he did manage to accomplish by exertion of his great strength plus much profanity. When he had cleared the track, the cries of the birds produced a paramount thought, and unrolling the policeman’s swag he draped a blanket about the dead man, being then satisfied he could do no more.
Feeling the urge to get away, he swung the crank-handle of his transport and the resultant roar provided distinct comfort. His mind was on that tracker who must have been with Constable Stenhouse, and all about this scene were low trees and tall boulders providing adequate cover for an aborigine armed with a rifle ... or a long throwing spear.
Chapter Three
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