The Bone is Pointed

by Arthur W. Upfield

  The ensuing silence was unbroken even by the watching butcher-bird. A shaft of yellow light was laid along one slope of the canvas roof by the rising sun. Then to Bony’s straining ears came the dull thudding of the hooves of a horse approaching the fence from the north-west. An iron-clanked, and presently the dogs returned to the tent. One pressed a cold nose against Bony’s forearm, the other attempted to lick his face. Thus they announced the arrival of a visitor.

  Bony softly ordered them to be quiet. They obeyed, one taking his stand beside the stretcher, the other sitting against the tent wall. Both listened with ears cocked. Then a not unpleasant voice shouted:

  “Good day-ee, boss!”

  It was the voice of an aboriginal.

  Both dogs growled, but both tails wagged.

  “Good day, there! What d’you want?”

  “Me Malluc.”

  According to age-old custom Malluc had halted fifty yards from the camp, waiting for permission from the occupier to enter.

  Malluc! Now what did he want here so early in the morning? Bony demanded his business.

  “Johnny Boss, he sentum letter feller.”

  “You bring letter feller here,” instructed Bony. A letter from John Gordon! It might be so, but it might mean an open attack by the people who had so persistently boned him. The small automatic pistol was drawn from beneath the pillow. He heard the light sound of boots crunching loose sand. Again Bony ordered the dogs to be quiet.

  Into the triangle presented by the raised flaps normally hanging before the entrance to the tent appeared the figure of an aboriginal, tall and grey of hair and beard. He was wearing a suit of very old dungarees, and his feet were encased in elastic-sided riding boots much too large for them. He carried the white envelope in his left hand. There was no weapon in his right hand, nor was one attached to his person, and the boots on the feet precluded the possibility of a spear being dragged along the ground by his toes. He smiled broadly at Bony who had raised himself the better to see the visitor.

  “Drop the letter feller,” ordered Bony, who then, when the order was obeyed, urged one of the dogs to: “Fetch it, Hool-’Em-Up.”

  The dog, understanding that the order was for him, advanced to the letter and brought it to Bony. Malluc retreated but remained in view. Bony opened the letter and read:

  I regret to hear that you are ill of the Barcoo sickness. I learned of it only yesterday. I am sending to you the Kalchut medicine man, knowing him to be an expert on gastric troubles. If any man can effect a swift cure, Malluc can do so. He has treated both my mother and me with great success.

  The development was so curious that Bony could not at once decide what to do. That these aboriginal medicine men could effect cures for diverse complaints he was well aware. Still, the process of willing him to death had been interrupted. Of that he felt sure. That John Gordon had stopped the boning was likely enough; but might the coming of Malluc mean a different kind of attack upon him, an attack of physical violence, since the attack of mental violence had been stopped? To permit a hostile aboriginal near him when he was physically weakened by the torture of the boning would be the height of stupidity.

  The figure of Malluc disappeared from the triangle opening of the tent. The butt of the pistol was comforting to Bony’s hand. If the attack was to be made it would not be delayed, but an attack appeared to be illogical in face of Gordon’s letter. And then the figure of Malluc reappeared before the tent doorway.

  He now wore the insignia of his profession. A human hair string tufted his long grey hair high above his forehead, and suspended from this hair string, so that they rested against the forehead, were five gum leaves. Through his nose was thrust a nine-inch stick with needle-pointed ends. He had discarded his white man’s clothes and boots, now wearing only the pubic tassel of kangaroo skin. On his chest and abdomen, brilliantly white against the black of his skin, was emblazoned the Kalchut sacred drawing, an artistic masterpiece done in pigments that had defied the friction of his clothes.

  He was indeed a medicine man, and Bony was induced to submit to treatment by the knowledge that no medicine man of the inland tribes may do evil. Their role is to cure. What probably assisted Bony in making his decision was his inherited respect for any aboriginal doctor, and his inherited faith in their power to heal.

  “What you do, boss?” asked Malluc. “You crook feller all right. You full of pointed bones and eagle’s claws. Me fine feller medicine man. Malluc him see him bones and him claws in your insides.”

  Bony was aware that, as the show of pointing the bone must precede the actual working of the evil, so the show of healing would have to precede the actual treatment. He understood, too, that although the boning had ceased he was still in a condition bordering on prostration and that it would take weeks for his body to become strong again. Often the curative effects of the medicine concocted for gastric complaints were astonishing in their swiftness. And so he said:

  “You good feller blackfeller, Malluc. You make me strong, eh?”

  Malluc grinned, nodded and again vanished. A few seconds later Bony heard the crackling of firewood thrown upon the still hot ashes of his campfire. Knowing that the medicine man would require his body outside, Bony slowly pushed his legs over the edge of the stretcher and sat up. Immediately pain entered him like swords of fire, to send him down upon the bed, groaning aloud.

  Then Malluc entered.

  “Too right you crook feller,” he said. “You bin sung by the little pointed bones and the eagle’s claws. Me see ’em in your insides all swim about like blackfish feller.”

  Slipping his arms under his patient, Malluc saw the small-bore automatic pistol but evinced no curiosity. He was now much more a doctor than an aboriginal. Without effort, he lifted Bony and carried him outside the tent, laid him down gently at the edge of the fire-heat and began to strip off his pyjamas.

  After the terrible spasm of pain, Bony lay breathing fast, his “insides” feeling as though in the grip of a steel-gauntleted hand. The sweat of terror dampened his forehead. Hope engendered by his awakening that morning had gone from him, and while he watched Malluc he realized that if the boning did not stop he would die. His iron resistance was at long last beaten down, and only in a detached kind of manner did he observe Malluc take from a gunny sack a roll of thin bark and empty the handful of dried leaves it contained into a billy. Malluc then added water and placed the billy to heat at the fire.

  Now Malluc walked round and round his patient, stepping absurdly high, alternately stretching out a hand towards Bony and then jerking it smartly to himself. Meanwhile he recited in the Kalchut language:

  “I am the medicine man of the Kalchut Nation.

  “I am the great healer of the Kalchut Nation.

  “I am the master of all good magic, and no evil magic can touch me.

  “I am the child of Tatuchi and Maliche, the all powerful ones who dwell in the sky, who never were born, who never can die. They came down upon the earth. They saw Malluc, of the Kalchut Nation, and they said they would make Malluc of the Kalchut Nation a great medicine man. They took me into the bush and killed me with a magic spear. They cut me open and took out my insides and threw them away. They each took from their inside enough to give me new insides, and before they joined me together they put Atnongara stones among my new insides so that I could project them into the bodies of sick people.” (Meaning to inject an anti-toxin.)

  “So hear me, you little bones and you eagle’s claws.

  “I take you out from the insides of him who lies sick on the ground.

  “No use for you to run about his insides like fish looking for a hole in the ground. I suck you out. I unsing you of the evil magic sung into you.

  “I see you, little bones and eagle’s claws.

  “I am the medicine man of the Kalchut Nation.

  “Like water running down a gully bag magic runs from me.”

  Suddenly Malluc ceased his prancing walk and arm jerking, and he fell upon
his knees beside Bony and rolled him over on to his chest. He then applied his mouth to the small of Bony’s back and began vigorously to suck. For many minutes this sucking continued, until venting a gurgling cry, Malluc sprang to his feet, went to Bony’s head, and stooped, forcing Bony to look at him. And Bony saw him spit to the ground a small, pointed bone.

  At the end of a full hour’s sucking Malluc had “drawn from Bony’s insides” six little bones and two eagle’s claws, and, having rolled Bony upon his left side the better to observe, he pushed the bones and the claws on to a piece of bark with his nose stick. Then, taking the bark and stick some way away, he dug a hole with the stick and carefully buried the bark and the bones and the eagle’s claws. That done, he pushed the stick into position through his nose.

  Thus was the show completed.

  Smiling triumphantly, Malluc returned to his patient.

  “You goodoh, bimeby,” he assured Bony. “No little bones and eagle’s claws in your insides now. You drink blackfeller med’cine, and bimeby, one-two days, you walkabout goodoh.”

  Fetching the steaming brew in the billycan, he squatted beside his patient and again assured him of certain return to health and strength. Now and then he blew upon the grey liquid in the billy, often testing the temperature with a finger. Satisfied at last, he offered the billy to his patient, saying:

  “You drink-em-down.”

  Bony obeyed. The warm, thick liquid coursed down his gullet, entered his stomach. There it began to radiate a softly glowing heat. Bony could feel the heat creeping all about his “insides,” creeping upward to his shoulders and down his arms to his hands, downward into his legs to reach the toes. Malluc squatted over him, watching. The glow brought sweat bubbles to Bony’s face and arms and legs. It was so delicious that Bony sighed often with sheer ecstasy. And then Malluc lifted him nearer the fire, and entered the tent to bring out his day clothes and dress him in them.

  Malluc remained with his patient a further two hours, leaving only when assured that Bony could stand and walk, albeit falteringly.

  “You goodoh now,” he said, immensely pleased with himself and his patient. Bony held out his hands and Malluc took them, gripped them lightly, and then began to spoil everything by donning the old suit of dungarees. He turned, when on his horse, and waved a cheerful farewell.

  Bony trembled with weakness and yet wanted to shout aloud that he was freed of the pointing bone.

  Blake arrived at the camp about noon. His worry concerning Bony was accentuated by the delay of Superintendent Browne’s arrival, a delay caused by a forced landing near Windorah. His mind, however, was relieved to a great degree when he saw a decided improvement in Bony. Having heard the car approaching Bony had the tea billy on the fire.

  “Well, how are things to-day?” asked the sergeant when, escorted by the excited dogs, he carried his tucker box from car to tree shade.

  “I am feeling much better, Sergeant,” replied Bony. “I awoke this morning conscious of a change. And then, I have been receiving medical attention.”

  “Good! Dr Linden come to see you?”

  “No, Dr Malluc, M.O.K.”

  “Malluc! What do the initials stand for?”

  “Medical Officer to the Kalchut. He performed a surgical operation on me and was able to remove from my insides, as he called my—er, insides, six pointed bones and two eagle’s claws.”

  “And you feel better, eh?”

  “I feel much better. The pains have left me and my mind is freed of the dreadful depression. Of course, I am excessively weak. I am like a man up from a sick bed where he has been lying for six months. I think to-day that I could drink tea.”

  “What about a pint of meat extract? Do you more good than tea. Then I’ve brought a chicken and fresh bread, and butter kept hard with wet cloths.”

  “Yes, the meat extract, now, and perhaps a little slice of bread and butter.”

  During the meal Blake craftily watched Bony, and was delighted when it became evident that the sickness really had been conquered.

  “What’s behind Dr Malluc’s visit, d’you think?” he asked.

  Without comment, Bony gave him Gordon’s letter, and then he described the visit of the Kalchut medicine man.

  “Gordon, in his letter, refers to my illness as the Barcoo sickness,” Bony pointed out. “But Malluc tells me that little bones and eagle’s claws were darting about in my insides like blackfish, and he then produces six little bones and two eagle’s claws to prove it. He knew, therefore, before he came what was wrong with me and he provided himself with the claws and the bones.”

  “It looks as though Gordon didn’t know of the boning.”

  “I believe that he did not.”

  “And yet you think Gordon was mixed up in Anderson’s—”

  Bony was sitting on his petrol case, and now he leaned forward to stare at Blake.

  “Let us assume a hypothetical case,” he said. “You know Gordon, and you knew Anderson. Supposing Gordon slew Anderson in self-defence, when Anderson was striving to tie him to a tree and flog him as Inky Boy was flogged, what would you do?”

  “Seek a warrant for his arrest on a charge of manslaughter.”

  “Exactly. And why would you do that?”

  “It would be my duty.”

  “Again, exactly. You are the senior police-officer stationed at Opal Town. But, Blake, I am no longer an inspector attached to the Criminal Investigation Branch. Therefore, in such a case, I might not act as you would act in duty bound. Now then, let us assume that you were retired from the Force, and then learned the facts of our hypothetical case, what would you do, knowing Gordon and having known Anderson?”

  “We’re getting into deep water, don’t you think?” Blake prevaricated.

  “By no means—as yet. What about my question?”

  “I might do nothing about it,” answered Blake, after further hesitation.

  “I think there would be no might about it, Blake. I have for some time been thinking that a little good has come forth from what Colonel Spendor calls the sack. As a member of the Police Force I should be bound to maintain the machinery of the law set in motion by Old Lacy when he wrote his letters to the Chief Commissioner. As an ordinary citizen I can commit a merely minor sin against society by declining to set the machinery of the law in motion. In its way the law is a fearful thing. Once its machinery is started there is no stopping the machine. As you would be bound to maintain the machinery in running order, I shall confide in you no further. When we are old, and should we meet, I will then relate the details of this case. What you know of it will permit you to guess with some accuracy those details which I am withholding from you.”

  Blake grinned, but there was no mirth in his eyes.

  “I can guess so much,” he said, “that I concur in your decision about not confiding further in me. Privately, I think that the penalties imposed on whites for crimes against the blacks are not nearly severe enough. By the way, you remember you asked me to find out if the officer in charge here thirty-six years ago was still living, and if so whether he remembered an Irish woman working on Karwir at that time. I have had a letter from him. He is now retired and living at Sandgate.”

  “Ah—yes,” Bony murmured.

  “He says that he does remember an Irish girl working at Karwir in the year 1901. Her name was Kate O’Malley.”

  Bony smiled.

  “That small jotting of evidence may come in useful,” he said. “I wonder—I wonder if I might eat another thin slice of bread and butter?”

  “Think you’ll be able to master it?”

  “I think so. And then you may leave me. You must be sick and tired of visiting me daily, and your office work will have accumulated. I have only to locate Anderson’s grave, and now that will not be a difficult task.”

  After Blake’s departure, Bony carried a sack to the boundary fence. Many days before he had been compelled to cut the two topmost barbed wires, to lay the sack over the third barbed wire
and lever himself over. He was this afternoon so physically exhausted that, having reached the Meena side of the fence, he had to cling for a space to the barrier. But now, when he ought to have been lying down, he was energized by a crystal-clear brain. By a process of elimination, he had grown confident that Anderson could have been buried in very hard ground because less than two miles away, at Green Swamp hut, there were shovels and a crowbar.

  Often accompanied by Sergeant Blake, he had spent hours fossicking about the lee slopes of the sand-dunes. Hour after hour he and the dogs had hunted for a body below the surface of the flat lands west of the dunes and north of the northernmost depression. Now he began an examination of the wide line of claypans running along the foot of the dunes.

  Claypans are invariably to be found skirting sand-dunes. Here they separated the dunes from the flat lands, forming a grey ribbon a hundred odd feet in width. In the centre of this ribbon grew the mulga-tree on the trunk of which Bony had found the wisp of green sewing silk and the human hair.

  In size, claypans vary from a few square feet to many acres. These that Bony began to examine averaged about five hundred square feet. Somewhere far to the westward the prevailing westerly wind had gouged into the soft sandy soil and lifted billions of tons for many miles before depositing the sand grains in the form of these dunes. The top soil of sand having been thus removed, the wind set to work on the clay beneath, carrying particles of clay to deposit them on the dunes.

  The wind’s action on the dunes is to move them forward, leaving the heavier grains of clay to become waterholding bottoms of pools. In this manner rainwater is conserved in country as porous as a sponge; but as the sheets of water are seldom deeper than a few inches, the sun’s heat quickly evaporates them. The wind constantly playing on the surface of the water during the course of the evaporation creates a perfectly level surface of clay, and the sun’s heat bakes the clay to the hard consistency of a brick. Even heavily loaded trucks may pass across a claypan without leaving wheel depressions.