The Sands of Windee. Arthur W. Upfield
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Bony Novels by Arthur W. Upfield
1 The Barrakee Mystery / The Lure of the Bush
2 The Sands of Windee
3 Wings Above the Diamantina
4 Mr Jelly’s Business/ Murder Down Under
5 Winds of Evil
6 The Bone is Pointed
7 The Mystery of Swordfish Reef
8 Bushranger of the Skies / No Footprints in the Bush
9 Death of a Swagman
10 The Devil’s Steps
11 An Author Bites the Dust
12 The Mountains Have a Secret
13 The Widows of Broome
14 The Bachelors of Broken Hill
15 The New Shoe
16 Venom House
17 Murder Must Wait
18 Death of a Lake
19 Cake in the Hat Box / Sinister Stones
20 The Battling Prophet
21 Man of Two Tribes
22 Bony Buys a Woman / The Bushman Who Came Back
23 Bony and the Mouse / Journey to the Hangman
24 Bony and the Black Virgin / The Torn Branch
25 Bony and the Kelly Gang / Valley of Smugglers
26 Bony and the White Savage
27 The Will of the Tribe
28 Madman’s Bend /The Body at Madman's Bend
29 The Lake Frome Monster
This corrected edition published by ETT Imprint, Exile Bay 2020
First published 1931.
First electronic edition published by ETT Imprint 2013.
First corrected edition published by ETT Imprint 2017.
Reprinted 2018, 2019.
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.
Inquiries should be addressed to the publishers.
ETT IMPRINT & www.arthurupfield.com
PO Box R1906,
Royal Exchange
NSW 1225 Australia
Copyright William Upfield 2013, 2017
ISBN 978-1-925416-91-6 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-922384-45-4 (ebk)
Digital distribution by Ebook Alchemy
Chapter One
Mr Napoleon Bonaparte
Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte of the Queensland police, was walking along a bush track on his way to Windee Station. On Windee Station, in the west of New South Wales, had happened something that had awakened his interest. Hence his presence in an Australian State not his own. Hence his garb as an ordinary bush tramp in search of work.
The season was early October, and summer was well begun. From a stockman’s point of view it promised to be for the rest of the year as bounteous as the preceding nine months. Spear grass on the plain, knee-high and golden, rippled as a ripe wheatfield. Blue-bush and mulga gleamed with the freshness and fullness of their sap. A flock of newly-shorn sheep which had rumbled away at Bony’s approach were in magnificent condition; galahs and cockatoos screamed and screeched, whilst over most of the land the fat and impish rabbit swarmed in astonishing numbers.
It was the third successive good year in New South Wales, and the wonder of it was deeply felt by Mr Bonaparte, who for two years had worked on a succession of more or less sordid cases in drought-bleached Central Queensland. Whilst walking with a bushman’s rolled swag of personal necessities within his blankets slung from his right shoulder, and carrying a blackened billy-can half-filled with cold tea, the disguised bush detective hummed the immortal refrain of the “Soldiers’ Chorus” in Faust.
He walked with the soft tread of the Australian aboriginal. Of medium height, free from impeding flesh, and hard as nails, there was yet in his carriage more of the white man than of the black. By birth he was a composite of the two. His mother had given him the spirit of nomadism, the eyesight of her race, the passion for hunting; from his father he had inherited in overwhelming measure the white man’s calm and comprehensive reasoning: but whence came his consuming passion for study was a mystery.
Bony, as he insisted on being called, was the citadel within which warred the native Australian and the pioneering, thrusting Britisher. He could not resist the compelling urge of the wanderlust any more than he could resist studying a philosophical treatise, a revealing autobiography, or a ponderous history. He was a modern product of the limitless bush, perhaps a little superior to the general run of men in that in him were combined most of the virtues of both races and extraordinarily few of the vices.
He was seated on his swag fastidiously rolling a cigarette when Sergeant Morris, of the New South Wales police, came into view round a bend of the track. Hearing the hoof-thuds, Bony looked up, saw the sergeant’s approach, smiled gently, and then completed his task. When the match that lit the cigarette had been tossed aside, the sergeant was opposite the half-caste, and was examining him from his motionless horse.
“Day!” he snapped.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant!” replied Bony politely.
“Where you heading?” the policeman demanded crisply.
“Windee”—in a pleasant drawl.
It must not be assumed from Sergeant Morris’s brusqueness that he was a martinet. He was a dog who growled much and bit seldom, and over his domain, which was half as large as England, he was respected and liked. He questioned Bony, not because he was suspicious of a stranger, but because he had ridden many miles and had fifteen more to ride to his home and office at Mount Lion. Bony presented an excuse for a smoke.
“Name?” he almost snarled.
“Bony,” suavely replied the half-caste.
“Bony? Bony what?”
“Baptized by the worthy missionary attached to a northern Queensland mission station with the names of Napoleon Bonaparte. You see, as a very small child, the matron found me eating Abbott’s life of that famous man, and she, alas, was a practical joker.”
Bony now was not smiling. The sergeant’s abruptness vanished. For a second his grey eyes were veiled, and then he was off his horse and standing directly facing the half-caste, who had risen to his feet.
“Am I to understand that you are the detective-inspector of that name?” he asked. Bony nodded. Morris regarded him keenly. He looked into a ruddy-brown face made up of the sharp features of the Saxon; he gazed into the wide-open, fearless blue eyes of the Nordic; and, whilst he looked, the many rumours, and the few authentic cases, which had come to his knowledge of this strange being flashed across his mind. Sergeant Morris shook hands but seldom. He shook with Bony. And Bony smiled. The sergeant knew then that he stood in the presence of a man not only superior in rank, but superior also in mentality.
“I have one or two documents to present to you,” Bony explained, “and, if I may make a suggestion, why not fill my billy-can from your water-bag and make tea whilst I hunt for them in the depths of my swag?”
“Agreed,