LITMIR.BIZ

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Not now, but later, I would like to study the weather records over the last five years. But to no single person mention who or what I am.”

      Chapter Five

      The Fence-Rider

      It was by chance that Mounted-Constable Lee met Donald Dreyton several miles to the west of Carie on the boundary of Wirragatta Station. For five minutes they conversed across the netted barrier, and Dreyton learned of the brutal attack on Mabel Storrie. When Lee went on his business, Dreyton regarded the stiff military figure astride the grey gelding with the manner of one whose eyes are blinded by mental pictures.

      Behind the fence-rider stood one riding- and two pack-camels, animals possessing personality and able to think and reason.

      Dressed, this first day in November, in khaki slacks, a white cotton shirt, a wide-brimmed felt hat and elastic-sided riding-boots, with face and forearms tanned by the sun, Dreyton had the appearance of being over forty when actually he was but a little more than thirty years of age. Constant exposure, day and night, to the sun and the air had so darkened his skin that the peculiar blue-grey of his eyes was startlingly emphasized. The thin nose and mobile lips, added to the breadth of forehead, indicated intelligence above the average, whilst the two sharp lines between the brows bespoke constant mental activity. He was not a bushman born and bred, but in this was no oddity.

      It was seldom that Dreyton troubled to ride. For one thing his riding-camel vigorously objected to being kneeled to be mounted, nor would it consent to be climbed up and down whilst standing. At nearly every wire strain something was required to be done to the fence, and consequently Dreyton walked the ten to fourteen miles every day along his section of one hundred and eighty-three miles. It was doubtless this incessant walking that gave to his body its lithe grace of movement.

      Having filled a straight-stemmed pipe with rubbed chips of Yankee Doodle tobacco, having lit the pipe with a match ignited on the seat of his trousers, he resumed his patrol to Carie and the homestead of Wirragatta.

      It was almost four o’clock when he arrived at the corner post between the two black gates in the Common fence, there ruefully to observe the long rampart of dead buck-bush built by the wind against the fence running south from that point to Nogga Creek, where his section terminated, and for many miles beyond. So clear was the air he could see the individual trees bordering the creek, while Nelson’s Hotel and Smith’s bakery appeared to be within easy stone-throw.

      When again on the move, headed southward, Dreyton smiled a little grimly. He knew it to be certain that a pair of brilliant dark eyes would be observing him from the south end of the hotel’s upper veranda. Between Mrs. Nelson and him existed a kind of armed neutrality, created by her desire to know everything about Donald Dreyton and his determination that she should know as little as possible.

      Now he saw the man forking the imprisoned buckbush over the fence and experienced relief that this job he would not have to do before setting off again on another trip. For two hundred yards back from the creek the fence had been cleared of buckbush, and the worker leant on his long-handled fork whilst watching the approach of man and camels.

      Blue eyes set widely in a dark-brown face noted every detail of the fence-rider’s appearance, and then the thin-lipped mouth beneath the straight nose and the dark brows of this Australian half-caste resolved into a kindly smile.

      “Good day!” greeted Dreyton.

      “Good day!” responded Joe Fisher, alias Bony, alias Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. “It is a day to be appreciated after yesterday. A glorious wind, that. It has provided me with a job of work.”

      “So I see,” Dreyton said dryly.

      “And all day I have been observed, I hope with admiration, by someone on the hotel veranda. He, or she, owns a pair of glasses.”

      The fence-rider laughed with quick amusement and named the culprit. After that he stared at Bony, and, less openly, Bony stared at him. The result was that neither could “place” the other, and mutual interest quickened.

      “Mrs. Nelson is a woman possessed of a remarkably sharp sense of curiosity,” Dreyton explained. “She owns almost the whole of the township, and wishes to own everyone in it as well—You’re a stranger here, I take it.”

      “Yes. I came along on the look out for work,” Bony admitted. “I—er—put the hard word on Mr. Borradale for a job, and so, fortunately, clicked. Have you heard about the girl, Mabel Storrie?”

      “A rumour, yes.”

      “Ah! You are English, are you not?”

      “Of course. My accent, I suppose?”

      “Less your accent than your national reserve. I saw Constable Lee riding away along the fence to the west, and it is more than probable that you met. He was bound to talk of Mabel Storrie, and yet you say you have heard nothing more than a rumour about her and of her terrifying experiences near here the night before last.”

      “You are, then, a sort of bush Sherlock Holmes?”

      “I am,” admitted Bony gravely.

      Dreyton smiled.

      “In that case, you have examined the scene of the latest crime?” he said, not without sarcasm.

      “Certainly. I, too, have a sharp sense of curiosity.”

      “And discovered the murderer?”

      “Not yet,” confessed Bony, still grave. Dreyton laughed good-naturedly.

      “You are a strange fellow.”

      Bony unconsciously bowed. He was thinking that this fence-rider also was a strange fellow. He had seldom met men like this Donald Dreyton—so seldom, in fact, that he was as puzzled by him as he was puzzling to Dreyton.

      Then he thought he saw light, and asked, “How long have you been working on Wirragatta?”

      “Just two years now. I started here three days before the half-caste girl was murdered at Junction Waterhole. Heard about her?”

      Bony nodded.

      “Was that your first introduction to the bush proper? he asked carelessly.

      “It was. It was not a good moment for the introduction. You see, the detective fellow certainly thought I was the murderer.”

      So this fence-rider had had no experience of Australian blacks, because shortly after his arrival in the bush those then on Wirragatta had cleared away. And, too, shortly after his arrival, Alice Tindall had been strangled.

      “Would you care to see the place where Mabel Storrie was attacked?” asked Bony.

      “No, thanks. I am not that much interested in the details. On the road, wasn’t it?”

      “Yes, on the road,” Bony agreed. “She was left for dead on the road.”

      Again Dreyton laughed good-humouredly.

      “I am afraid, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, you are a little out in your statement of the crime,” he said. “Mabel Storrie was found some twenty yards off the road by the mail-car people.”

      “Admitted, my dear Watson. Even so, she was left for dead on the road. When she recovered consciousness, she walked blindly off the road for twenty-odd yards. Then she tripped over a tree-root, and in falling received a severe blow on her forehead. There she lay till she was found.” Dreyton’s blue-grey eyes narrowed. “How do you know all that?” he demanded. “Lee doesn’t know it.”

      “Lee? Oh, the policeman! Perhaps not. Perhaps he does and didn’t think to tell you. Come with me and I will prove my statement. We must run the grave risk of killing the cat on the hotel veranda. Even then I saw the sunlight reflected by her glasses.”

      Having vaulted the fence, Bony led the way up along the creek-bank till he halted at the edge of a fairly large sand patch. Across the patch was the upper surface of a tree-root,

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