The Will of the Tribe

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Shortly after this shaking he fancied he saw, immediately to the front, a moving object. He halted, sniffed the air without result, listened to the soft crunch of sand and heard nothing. Stooping, he sought to bring the object against the sky, and found this could not be done. Upright again, he thrust his right hand into the side pocket of his tunic and brought out the automatic. The object was there, without doubt. He could sense its proximity. If it would move again.... A meteor flamed. Six feet from him a large kangaroo was balanced back against its tail, its powerful forearms extended to the grip when one of its hind legs could disembowel a man with a foot.

  Both man and animal were startled. Bony stepped aside, and the kangaroo went to ground and fled even as the meteor expired.

  An hour later a cool zephyr fanned Bony’s cheek and brought with it the smell of cattle camped till the dawn. He had passed them when the lowing of a cow gave their position. The false dawn came to warn him and, when the genuine dawn flared high into the eastern sky, he came to the mill and water tanks of Eddy’s Well. Long before he watched the sun rise he was concealed in the tall buffalo grass where the naked Aborigine had vanished.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Morticians

  LIKE a partridge on her nest, Bony sat in the buffalo grass with his back to a tree. To his front the grass provided a thin screen permitting clear sight of Eddy’s Well. The sun was gleaming on the mill vanes, slowly agitated by the early morning wind, which, he hoped, would not become strong and sing too loudly in the grass and so blanket other and more sinister sounds.

  Although not complacent he was confident he had left no tracks throughout the night journey save where he had fallen into the water-gutter and, as that was about four miles from the homestead, it was unlikely to be observed by an Aborigine. He was satisfied by the plans he had made to mask his absence from the homestead, and that, at this moment, Rose Brentner would have begun her act with Captain, demanding to be escorted to Gup-Gup and Company without delay. Captain would be so enmeshed in this contretemps to his story of illicit romance that no thought of Bony would occur, and it could well be midday before he realized that Bony was off-stage.

  Upon Captain’s troubled waters would blow the wind of Brentner’s interest in his working horses, further to unseat Captain’s normal equilibrium and make his morning a period of confusion in which the activities of the detective could have no place. Bony’s problem was to find the answer to the question Kurt Brentner had asked: Why send a spy to Eddy’s Well in haste to see what he did when the same spy or another could, without risk of discovery, find that out by tracking his horse? A possible answer, barely logical, was that the spy had been sent to overhear what was spoken at the lunch fire, his position behind the shed enabling him to do so.

  Bony thought it could reasonably be presumed that in this Eddy’s Well area there was something of great importance to the station Aborigines which it was desired he should not stumble upon, but what this could be would never become known while he, Bony, sat in the grass like a partridge on her nest.

  His position was at the southern edge of a delta-shaped area of water-courses and small lakes, amid desert gums and grass, the whole flooded when Deep Creek ran for a week, as previously told by Young Col. Now every yard of it was bone-dry, covered with grass as high as a man and, through it, the pads made by cattle to reach the well. It was no place for woollen shoes, and he had changed these for his riding boots.

  He climbed the tree, seeing then the skirting desert narrowing towards the north and enclosing grass and trees like a grey carpet speckled with green and brown. What could there possibly be, amid this dry, desolate, depressing, grass-delta, that he was not to discover unknown to the station Aborigines? It could have no connexion with the murder on Lucifer’s Couch. It could be associated with the history, the rites, the ceremonies of the local tribe, because, in the far past, this area would have been permanently covered with water and the home of wild fowl, and so the origin of many legends of great importance.

  He was about to descend to the ground when a crow found him and cawed while whirling about his tree. It became obvious that the bird had had a prior interest, when, venting protest at the unknown thing in the tree, it flew on over the grass land to settle in another, where it was joined by others whose cawing spoke of resentment at being disturbed. Knowing bird language is always a help and, having listened to it for thirty seconds, Bony decided that the conference wasn’t about animated beings.

  The horse lay on a cattle pad or trail through the grass. Its position proved that it had been headed for the well when death overtook it. On the forehead was a white star. The open mouth, the remains of the protruding tongue, the crusty white sweat-marks on the coat combined to prove that the unfortunate animal had been ridden bare-back until it collapsed from exhaustion. The rider had removed the bridle.

  That it had been dead less than twenty-four hours was plainly evident, and Bony was sure that it was the station horse named Star. From the edge of the grass he could see the mark ahead of the carcase, made by the rider when he crashed to ground on the trail. The story was clear: the sequel could come at any moment.

  Slipping back into the grass he selected a tree, which he climbed and gained a position which gave him sight of the carcase; here he waited and pondered upon the likely developments. The horse had been taken and ridden by the spy until it collapsed. The man had been thrown heavily. He had run on to the well to fulfil his mission. Discovery had sent him back to walk the fifteen miles to the homestead, where he would arrive long after the horsemen. The time would be shortly after five o’clock.

  By five o’clock Captain would know about the Aborigine seen at the well. He would know something serious had happened to the spy, and probably he was in conference with Gup-Gup when the man showed up to report the death of the horse. Discovery of the carcase would be very serious to the tribe in general and himself in particular, no matter when it was discovered, because no manufactured theory could be made to square with the estimated time of death, the location and the position of the carcase. It would have to be taken care of at once.

  At dawn this day, when Bony was concealed in a tree, a party of Aborigines would leave the station camp. Not before dawn because they hate being abroad during dark nights. Travelling fast, it would occupy four hours and the termination of the fourth hour was now. Meanwhile Captain would be engaged with the determined Rose Brentner and Gup-Gup, squirming on his hook, and, by this time, her husband would be ‘going to market’ about his absent horse. No one at the homestead would be wondering why Inspector Bonaparte was so late for breakfast.

  The crows had settled again after he left the carcase, and it was fully thirty minutes later when they rose in renewed uproar. Bony was thankful for the time-lapse, because their alarm at his arrival would not have been observed by the party now materializing to gather about the dead horse.

  There were eighteen men under the command of Poppa, and Bony ar-r-ed with keen anticipation of their problem of disposing of the body. To burn it would be to leave a large area of ash. To convey it to another place would be no solution. To dump it into Lucifer’s Couch would be absurd. To take it to another place and bury it might prove disastrous, as the wild dogs would surely burrow down to it and the crows would wait for their leavings and thus draw attention. There was one solution; to dig a deep pit, but they had no shovels and they had no lubras to dig a hole with digging sticks. It would mean much hard work, anyway.

  That they had brought knives indicated planning. They removed the forelegs with the shoulders. They removed the hind legs at the hips. That left the dismembered body intact, and with very little blood-letting. They had brought poles with them, and they used the poles as stretchers to carry away the remains, leaving Poppa and another to remove all evidence remaining on the ground.

  The Medicine Man and his assistant went off after the bearers, and the angry and frustrated crows revealed the way taken by the morticians. They were following the tra
il deeper into the grassland.

  Bony gave them twenty minutes before following along this same trail, the grass either side often higher than himself and the trail continuously winding and presenting angles he had to prospect with care. The tracks made by the party were plain on the dusty surface of the trail, and the crows were allies telling him how far ahead were the bearers.

  He halted to listen when men shouted; proceeding when the shouting ceased. Minutes later, on rounding a corner, he came face to face with a bull and, before the bull could recover from the encounter, he stepped into the grass and waited there while a long line of cattle passed on their way to the well. The Aborigines had driven a mob on to the trail to obliterate their own tracks and make certain that the scene of the equine tragedy was also obliterated.

  The cattle having passed, Bony kept to the grass, walking parallel with the trail, eventually coming to the place where the beasts had been driven to take it. Later on he peered for the hundredth time round a bend before proceeding and saw Poppa and his assistant beating out the tracks with leafy tree branches. Still later, he saw ahead, above the grass, an oddity: sharply rising ground the colour of the great desert.

  On drawing closer he could distinguish the small stones covering what appeared to be a blunt desert finger stabbing at the heart of the grassland, and then he witnessed the undertakers struggling up to the summit with their burdens. Arrived there, they set the poles down and began an operation the reason for which he could not observe. This accomplished, they returned to the poles, lifted them and appeared to up-end them. Thereafter, they seemed to be gathering rocks and stones and depositing them at a central point.

  Eventually the activity ceased, and the party moved back along the desert finger for several hundred yards where could be seen, above the general level, the top-most branches of several baobab trees. Here they disappeared for ten or fifteen minutes and, on coming again into Bony’s vision, they walked back to the tip of the finger, descended to the grass and vanished. They were not carrying anything Bony could detect. The thwarted crows settled among the baobabs.

  Bony settled, too, in the grass and, as the light wind was coming from the north, made and lit a cigarette. The Aborigines had, with little doubt, begun the journey back to the camp, and he was fully convinced of it when, three miles towards the homestead, there rose a column of disjointed smoke, the wind making it useless as a message save perhaps to announce a fact, the fact that the job was done announced to a waiting watcher at the camp.

  Bony permitted an hour to pass before he walked to the place where the poles had been up-ended. The poles were not there. They and the remains of the horse had been tossed into a long-abandoned prospector’s mine shaft and, after the remains, had been tossed stones and rock splinters from the mullock raised when mining.

  Mentally complimenting Poppa, he proceeded to the baobab trees and discovered that they grew in a deep basin of upthrust granite and areas of surface rock showing on the floor of sand. There were five baobabs, ancient, enormous in girth, scarred by time, their branches gnarled, the leaves isolated one from the other, seemingly monstrous relics still living after half a million years of borrowed time. Compared with the young and graceful baobabs on the mountain gullies, these were almost obscene.

  The sand areas were clean of tracks. On a wide slab of surface rock remained some of the ash from a large fire. On other surface rocks was similar ash, denoting much smaller fires. Almost in the centre of the basin the ashes of a small fire gave off wisps of smoke.

  This, Bony was convinced, was the tribe’s initiation camp. The major fire would be the Corroboree Fire, and the smaller sites would have been the fires over which the men held secret converse. The possible reason why Poppa and his companions had come here after disposing of the horse was for water. It was also likely that somewhere here would be the tribe’s treasure house where are kept the most powerful churingas, the pointing bones and the magic red and yellow ochres. If he could find that, he would indeed be powerful.

  The still hot fire on the sand claimed his interest. Why had the Aborigines made it there? They hadn’t been long enough out of his sight to cook anything. He had heard of such things being a decoy in reverse and with a thick stick he moved the ash aside and began to delve with his hands, scooping the sand from the hole he made, widening the hole and so going down for a dozen or fifteen inches, when he came upon a sheet of stiff and hard hide.

  Lifting this out with care he disclosed, lying on a second sheet, the pointing bones, a dozen carved churinga stones, cutting flints, lumps of gypsum, and a tiny ivory Buddha.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Buddha and Mister Lamb

  KNEELING AT the edge of the excavation, gazing at the instruments of magic, good and evil, it seemed to the man of two races that the world about him was hushed by his act of sacrilege. The silence became a weight pressing against his ears, and the Aborigine in him struggled to banish the other half of his personality.

  He was to remember that it was the ivory Buddha which provided a jolt of surprise, enabling him to retain the equilibrium which was sometimes threatened. The Buddha represented a foreign culture, and its presence so demanded an explanation that the other articles lost their sinister effect on him.

  The sheet of bark was a bed of red and white bird feathers glued with tree resin, and on this, beside the many cutting flints and lumps of gypsum, lay the full set of pointing bones and several spear heads also used as pointing instruments. The boning set consisted of five needle-pointed thin bones taken from kangaroos. Six to seven inches in length, the butts were attached to human hair string with tree gum, one of the bones at the end of the string being that actually pointed at the victim. To the other end of the string was fastened a pair of eagles’ claws and, similarly attached by hair to the main string, was a hair net containing what would be a powerful churinga stone full of magic.

  The spear heads and the large flints had a short hair string attached and, at the other end of the string, was the accompanying churinga in its hair net. These could be used more secretly by one man, whereas the complicated set of bones often required two to operate. Bony recalled when he was boned, feeling the grip of eagles’ claws wrenching at his liver and kidneys, and it was with extreme distaste that he lifted the collection on the hide and then found the purpose of the Aborigines’ visit.

  There was disclosed a floor of rock and, across the floor, a two-inch crack. When a splinter of rock was dropped, Bony heard it splash on water. With a grass stem a man could suck water from the reservoir and, Poppa having removed his instruments without permitting his companions to see them, each man had been able to refresh himself for the journey back to camp.

  Bony carefully replaced the tray and covered it with the top sheet of hide, then hastily filled in the excavation and lit a small fire on the site to leave it exactly as found. When again in the grass and having a tree for a back rest, he chain-smoked and sought for a possible explanation of the presence of the Buddha with the pointing bones.

  It was about two inches long and slightly less in width. Through the head, from ear to ear, a hole was bored to take a string or very fine gold chain, probably so that it could be suspended from the neck as a charm or talisman. That it had some significance in Poppa’s Cache of Magic could not be doubted, and the obvious answer was that a lugger crewman at Broome, or another port, had traded it with a coast Aborigine. This man had in turn traded with an island Aborigine, and it could have followed one of the mysterious trade routes to come into Poppa’s possession, gathering power when being ‘sung’ all along the way.

  The Aboriginal culture is like a well to the bottom of which no white man has ever descended to the water of complete knowledge and, because of the ever expanding influence of an alien white race, no white man ever will. Confusion has been created by the white man himself, to add to the certainty of frustration and defeat in his latter-day efforts to investigate. Today it isn’t possible to determine which are the legitimate l
egends and which the fabrications of imaginative white men.

  The obvious about anything associated with Aborigines cannot be trusted, and Bony had advanced no farther when, having slept till evening, he left the grass on the return to the homestead. It was shortly after the dawn that he appeared at the kitchen seeking a pannikin of tea, arrayed in a maroon gown, blue slippers and carrying a toilet bag and towel.

  “Mornin’, Inspector Bonaparte! How you coming?” was the cook’s greeting.

  “I’m hoping there’s left a pannikin of your first tea,” replied the cheerful Bony.

  “There’s never no hope, never at all. The kettle’s boiling. Empty the pot of leaves and make some more. I’m perishing. Where you been?”

  “Went over to the Beaudesert people to have a yarn, Jim. Have you been behaving yourself while I was away?”

  “Me! I wouldn’t know how,” answered the cook. “But the Boss’s been going crook, and the Missus went to market down at the blacks’ camp. And that sort of upset Mister Lamb who went and disgraced himself something terrible.”

  “H’m!” With impatience Bony waited for the tea to brew. “Just as well I gave myself a walking holiday. What did Mister Lamb do?”

  “He went and mis-cued.”

  “He did what?”

  Scolloti deftly dropped the last portion of smooth dough into the last of the greased tins, and wiped his floured hands on a rag. Then portentously he sat at the table, saying, “Pour us a pannikin, Inspector. I never been drunk on tea: wish I could. Yes, after all these years of unblemished record Mister Lamb mis-cued. It was yesterday morning. It was so bad I could of yowled tears of blood. He missed the pocket by a couple of yards.”