Man of Two Tribes Read Online Free

women very much although the wife of the younger brother, Edgar, seems a bit moody. The two men are all right, too. They mind their own business and don’t pry into ours. Never any trouble with their abos.”
    â€œEighty per cent of tribal strife has its origin in white interference,” Bony said, and then put another question:
    â€œWhat communication have they with the outside?”
    â€œRadio, that’s all.”
    â€œDidn’t they assist in the search for Myra Thomas?”
    â€œOh, yes. Spent about a week with my gang. Brought a couple of trackers to team with mine. And a side of the best beef we’ve ever lived on. You interested in them extra specially?”
    â€œOnly for the same reason that I am interested in the people living at other homesteads to the south and the southwest. If Patsy Lonergan wasn’t mentally unstable due to his solitary life, if he didn’t imagine he saw that helicopter, then that helicopter must have a base, and that base must be on or in the vicinity of the Nullarbor,”
    â€œWell, then, how do you propose to ‘track’ that machine? Search every homestead on the perimeter of the Plain?”
    â€œNo. Assuming that we found the helicopter at some homestead, we’d learn nothing excepting that the owner hadn’t registered it with the Civil Aviation Department, and so had been breaking certain regulations. My interest is in the object and purpose for which it is being used on assumably secret missions, and merely locating the base won’t satisfy me if the owner doesn’t choose to talk.”
    â€œYou’re right there,” Easter pondered. “What about my first question, about how you intend to ‘track’ that machine Lonergan says he saw?”
    â€œI have letters from Lonergan’s lawyer in Norseman, for the old fellow did own property and a sizable bank account for a prospector-dog-trapper. The letter empowers me, William Black, nephew of the deceased, to take over the camels, equipment and other things once owned by Lonergan and now at Mount Singular. Included in those possessions are the dog traps, and it will be my job to locate them. To do that, I have to back-track the old chap along his trap-line, and locate his camps which he named so peculiarly. And then I have to hope ... hope that I shall see or hear that helicopter, determine where it is going, and learn its business.”
    â€œHell! What a job!”
    â€œEasier, perhaps, than we think at the moment. So, I am William Black, the old man’s nephew. You will recall that Ivisited you at your station this morning, as the Norseman policeman advised me, and it just so happened that you had to make the journey to Mount Singular for an official reason you have time to invent, and that you consented to have me accompany you.”
    Easter said: “I see,” but Bony doubted it. They were silent during the next hour, at the end of which the scenery was exactly the same excepting that all that was left of Chifley was the water-tower looking like a black pebble lying on the horizon.
    When Easter suggested lunch, Bony gathered dead brushwood and made a fire, and the policeman filled a billy-can and swung it from the apex of an iron triangle. The tucker-box was unloaded, and while the water was coming to the boil they stood and surveyed the Nullarbor Plain simply because there was nothing else to look at.
    â€œMust be unpleasant when a wind storm is working,” Bony surmised, and Easter told of experiences when he had been glad to lie flat on his chest with a rock slab to anchor him to the ground.
    â€œI understand there are no caves, caverns, blow-holes, north of the railway. Is that correct, d’you think?”
    â€œNone have been located,” replied Easter. “But that means nothing to me because the country north of the railway hasn’t been fully explored. It’s all the same country, north or south of where they