Bony and the Kelly Gang by Arthur W. Upfield

Author:Arthur W. Upfield [Upfield, Arthur W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction - Classic Crime
ISBN: 9781875892907
Publisher: ETT Imprint
Published: 2008-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

A Recruit for the Rebels

ON THE sun going down beyond the welter of ridges Bony left the tor, and all the way back to the great cave he made sure he hadn’t been tracked by Steve. Both Jack and Brian Kelly were there before him, and all were interested to have his report.

“As you said this morning,” Bony began, “from that tor the stream you walked in can be seen. I wished I had glasses. I saw two men walking up stream about four o’clock. I don’t think they were carrying packs. They halted at the junction of the two streams, and poked about there for twenty minutes. Then they walked down stream again. They’re probably camped some distance down stream.”

“Blast ’em!” snapped Jack, and Bony argued.

“Better behind us than ahead of us. The way ahead is clear, I take it.”

“Yes,” Brian replied for the fat man.

“Then why worry? There’s no one to interfere with delivery to Mister O’Grady. On the way back we’ll have those fellers ahead of us, and if we can’t pass them we’ll have to slip round them. No difficulty there.”

“No dice, Nat. We don’t go back this way,” declared Jack, and Steve agreed with him.

“Not with the back loading we’ll have,” interjected Brian.

“There’ll be no back loading either,” Jack asserted.

“What’s wrong with the back loading? Dynamite?”

“No, Nat. Only sugar,” replied Brian, and Steve, who was grilling steaks, quietly cut in with:

“We don’t take the back loading. Now, let’s eat and get on with the job in hand.”

Sugar! Sugar is used in the distillation of spirits, and because of the risk that Mike Conway might be stopped and his truck searched, sugar had to be smuggled in by the back way, to supplement the small surplus above ordinary community use. And so by the story about the two men camped on the stream, Bony had hindered the trade in Mountain Dew, and hoped to learn of another track over these mountains between Cork Valley and O’Grady.

“Mike tell you we were to meet O’Grady with his truck?”

“Yes, and that I am to get his receipt for the forward loading and give ours for the back loading,” replied Bony in answer to Jack’s question.

“Well, gettin’ chased by those two fellers makes us take on another plan. We don’t deliver to O’Grady’s truck, but to a barn he’s got at the back of his farm. The track’s clear, and I seen O’Grady today and arranged it. Takes more time, but that can’t be helped. Get that?”

“Of course.”

“At the place we’ll tell you about, we’ll bypass Brian and the dogs. He’ll stay there until we leave the barn, and then he’ll be ahead of us on the way back. How’s that?”

“Good as far as it goes,” replied Bony. “But when I’m on this job I’m having a scout behind me as well as in front.”

“Argue that out with Red, Nat.”

“No trouble, Jack,” Bony airily assured him. “Now about that sugar we take back.”

The little fat man laughed outright, saying

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