LITMIR.BIZ

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      “No one can speak of the neck-rope with certainty, but I’m sure the horse carried a rope. The man wouldn’t go without it.”

      Bony rolled and lit a cigarette, and now leaned back in his comfortable chair and permitted his mind to relax. He was experiencing satisfaction that he had impressed this hard old man with his mental ability.

      “You will, I know, recognize the difficulties confronting me,” he said. “This case interests me. It is one worthy of my attention. My investigation may occupy me for a considerable time, so I dare to hope that you will not become bored with me if I am quartered on you for several weeks, even months.”

      “I don’t mind how long you are with us, Inspector,” Old Lacy said with emphasis. “Anderson was a good station man, but he had a bad temper. No doubt you’ve heard about him putting Bill the Better in hospital, and thrashing a black named Inky Boy. I made him square up over that, and one or two other matters, but when he had the damned cheek to ask me to persuade my gal to marry him, he reached the limit. You haven’t met my gal yet. She’s out riding this afternoon. You’ll see her later.”

      “A good horsewoman?” inquired Bony.

      “There’s no woman in these parts can beat her. When she’s riding Sally, a pure white mare, she looks a picture.”

      “Indeed! Is she out on Sally this afternoon?”

      “Yes.”

      Bony was seeing now a different picture, a picture seen in a flash of time—the white horse neck-roped to a tree a few yards back from the Karwir boundary fence, and the brown horse neck-roped to another tree on the Meena side of the barrier.

      “Miss Lacy was not in love with Anderson?” Bony mildly prompted.

      “In love with him! Of course not. She’s only twenty now, and he wanted to marry her a full year back. Hell! What he said to me after what I told him, wasn’t worth saying. Him my son-in-law!”

      “You didn’t sack him—evidently.”

      “Sack him!” again echoed Old Lacy, but now his eyes were twinkling. “Not me. Why, the place would have been dead without him. It’s been mighty quiet here since he disappeared. Anderson was never a good boss’s man, and he wasn’t any man’s boss. If I’d made him overseer that time my last one left, I’d have been always writing pay cheques and looking for new hands. Him my son-in-law! I’m getting old, but I’m not that old. Anyway, my gal had no time for him.”

      Bony laughingly said:

      “I suppose she is still heart-whole?”

      “Yes, she is that. Never had a love affair yet, to my knowing, and she would have told me if she had.”

      Still thinking of the meeting of the riders of a brown and a white horse that was undoubtedly Sally, Bony was not as certain as was his host on this point. A possibility occupied his mind for two seconds, and then he asked:

      “A violent man like Anderson would almost surely have enemies. The blacks would not be friendly towards him. What about the groom whom Anderson beat up and sent to hospital?”

      “A weed of a man. Like a rabbit. He was paid good compensation. You can leave him out. The blacks make a different matter of it, though. I have always thought they caught Anderson and fixed him in revenge for what he did to Inky Boy, as well as for a nasty business with a young gin employed here in my wife’s time.”

      Bony made a mental note of the seeming fact that his host’s sympathies were not with the victims of the missing man’s violent temper. It was strange that Old Lacy appeared still to have some regard for a man with whom his association had not been cordial. When Bony spoke again he did so with unusual slowness.

      “We must not lose sight of a possibility,” he said. “I expect that, like me, you have known of men being lost in the bush and, despite extensive searches, their bodies not being found till years afterwards, if ever. Anderson may have been thrown from his horse in Green Swamp Paddock and killed by the fall. That the paddock was thoroughly searched does not preclude the possibility. He may have received concussion, besides other injuries, and then have wandered right out of Green Swamp Paddock to die somewhere in adjoining country.”

      “All the country adjoining Green Swamp Paddock was carefully examined, because we recognized that possibility,” countered Old Lacy. “If he did that, what became of his hat, his stockwhip, and the horse’s neck-rope that I’m sure it had that day?”

      “I grant you that the absence of the neck-rope provides a strong counter-point to the thrown and injured supposition,” Bony conceded. “I would like to examine his horse, The Black Emperor. Could he be brought to the yards to-morrow morning?”

      “He could, but he’s over in the yards now with a mob of horses containing a couple of young uns the breaker’s working on. We’ll go across and look him over if you like.”

      They rose together, and Old Lacy led the way to the veranda door. He extolled the virtues of the great horse, but did not allude to its vices, while he conducted the detective through the garden and across the open space to the yards.

      In the same yard with The Black Emperor were a dozen other horses that gave him half the yard to himself. Bony’s eyes glistened when they saw this beast, and the soul of him thrilled to its jet-black beauty. A king of horses. Indeed, an emperor’s mount.

      “He’s six years old,” the squatter said, faint regret in his strong voice. “He’s the finest horse in Queensland to-day, but he’s no damned good. He’d throw a man and then kick him to death. Anderson and he were a good pair in more than in looks.”

      “I’ll ride him to-morrow if you will permit,” Bony said, a lilt in his voice. “What a beauty! Was he never shod?”

      “No.”

      “His feet want trimming.”

      “If you’re game to ride him, Sam, there, the breaker, and Bill the Better can put him into the crush and do his hoofs.”

      “Very well. They want doing. But I will cut the hoofs.”

      The Black Emperor snorted and laid back his velvety ears when Sam, a lank, seemingly indolent man, approached him with the bridle. But the horse was not to be caught so easily and eventually had to be roped, the old man continually shouting unnecessary directions. When The Black Emperor was in the crush, Bony trimmed the hoofs with the long chisel and mallet, expertly removing growth so that they became as nearly as possible the shape they were when the animal was last ridden by Anderson. He then led the horse from the crush back into the main yard, and Old Lacy and Sam and Bill the Better, sitting on the top rail, watched him subdue the brute’s temper until The Black Emperor stood quiet and apparently docile. Even when the bridle was removed the horse did not attempt to break away but permitted Bony to fondle his glossy black neck.

      “I would like to ride him to-morrow morning,” Bony said when he joined the others on the top rail of the yard. “He will be too unreliable for ordinary work, worse luck.”

      “Well, you bring him in with the horses in the morning, Bill,” instructed Old Lacy.

      Bill the Better was sitting beside Bony, and he said:

      “Bet you a coupler quid The Black Emperor will throw you.”

      “You would lose your money,” Bony replied, with a laugh.

      No one of the four noticed the girl on the white horse reach the gate spanning the road to Opal Town, nor did they notice her until she had led her horse to a position immediately below their high perch. Bony saw her first, and at once jumped to the ground. The old man said more loudly than was warranted:

      “Hullo, me gal! You home?”

      With remarkable agility considering his years, he lowered himself to the ground, to be followed by Sam who went back to his work and Bill the Better who took away the white mare.

      “Meet

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