The Will of the Tribe Page 6

  “Work!” moaned Young Col. “A man’s work’s never done. I work my fingers to the bone for you, Boss. There’s no fun in life. Even the Minister won’t call and meet Mister Lamb. Wish I were a detective, just lolling about and trying to jerk the grey matter.”

  “You might like me to ride with you today,” Bony said. “I can be pleasant company.”

  “Better than my own, pal. It’s a bet. Now you’ve dealt it out, Boss, what are you going to do?”

  “Read a love romance on the veranda and take an occasional sip of canned beer,” replied the Manager, and young Col appealed to his fellow slave.

  “What d’you know?”

  “Between tending the pump engine and mending the saddles, I’ll turn the pages for him and help him bend his elbow.”

  “You do that. We mustn’t let him overtax his strength.” Brentner grinned good naturedly at Bony, and the young man added, “I’ll collect the lunches, Bony. See you over at the yards.”

  “Are you seeing any light?” Brentner asked Bony when Old Ted and Col had left. “What are you thinking about this business at the Crater?”

  “I visited the camp yesterday,” Bony said, evading the issue. “I talked to Gup-Gup and Poppa. How old d’you think Gup-Gup is?”

  “A hundred, must be. All the time I’ve known him he’s sat at his little fire. Does nothing else. The Medicine Man’s a loafing scoundrel if ever there was one. Still, I leave both of ’em to Captain.”

  “Taking the camp as a central point, is this Eddy’s Well the nearest watering place for your cattle?”

  “On the desert side, yes.”

  “A well and mill farther out?”

  “Yes. Place we call Dead Man’s Drop, thirty-odd miles beyond Eddy’s. Then, coming round to the south-east, there’s Bore Number Three and then Paradise Rocks close to seventy miles south of the Crater. If you go out there you’ll get a surprise. Permanent water surrounded by acacias. Not safe, though. The wild blacks claim it’s theirs.”

  I must visit these places, Bony decided. “Just between us, Gup-Gup and Company could tell something about the mystery man in the Crater. Well, I’ll go with Young Col. See you later.”

  “Good! Ask Col to tell Captain to turn the yarded horses out into the paddock, will you? I didn’t think of it.”

  Young Col was saddling up when Bony joined him and conveyed Brentner’s message. Young Col shouted it to Captain who then left his work on the current youngster and came to the yard rails.

  “You met Captain, Inspector?” Col asked.

  “No. I watched him at work the other day. How do, Captain! They keeping you busy?”

  The Aborigine, who could model as a Greek Olympian, grinned and said some horses could think and the one in hand was a thinker and being stubborn. His round face was creaseless, his eyes bold and now almost merry. He asked where they were off to and Bony told him.

  They rode into the desert, sometimes cantering, sometimes walking the horses close. Young Col explained that Deep Creek continued its course for seven miles before emptying its flood waters over a huge area to the southward; this area, covered with buffalo grass, criss-crossed by water gutters, supported box and other trees, the whole desolate and depressing. At the southern extremity was Eddy’s Well, and it was easier riding to proceed direct than follow the Creek.

  Crossing the great elbow of the desert gave the sense of nakedness induced by limitless spaces. Here grew the spinifex and stunted jamwoods, the porcupine grass in large clumps, all separated by wide areas of light-red sand. To the south rose a line of yellow sand-dunes cutting beautifully into the rim of the brilliant sky. The homestead and its buildings sank from view behind them and, after three hours, they could see ahead the windmill and reservoir tank at Eddy’s Well at the southern tip of the grass country.

  Cattle had eaten out the grass about the well for half a mile. The troughs, two of them, ran outward from the linked reservoir tanks. Above them stood the windmill, dwarfing the low iron shed which housed the pumping engine, for use when the wind failed for long periods. On the north side of the well and two hundred yards from it stood an open-fronted shed with its back to the west winds, and, close by, a small horse-yard. As Young Col said, a depressing place.

  “Can be either good or bad,” he enlarged, when they were eating Jim Scolloti’s lunch at the fireplace several yards in front of the shed. “I was stationed here once for two weeks and it nearly drove me up the wall. It wouldn’t happen, of course, when the Creek ran a banker for a week, and all through this grass country the small lakes and gutters were black with ducks. Got here one day and saw what no one could forget. Old Ted and I came out next week with guns. Filled a couple of sacks with ducks. When they got up the sun went out. She was terrific.”

  “You like the life, though, don’t you?”

  The hazel eyes gleamed with enthusiasm, and the fair hair was tossed back from the broad forehead.

  “My dad owns a couple of sheep properties down in Vic.,” Col said. “Wanted me to go in for sheep: manage a place eventually. I wanted to see Australia first. Got this far and been here ever since. To hell with sheep on the Riverina! Cattle and old Brentner will do me.”

  “What about city life?” asked Bony. “What about the girls and bright lights? Don’t you hanker after them?”

  “When I was stuck here for a fortnight, I surely did, Bony. This ruddy country gets a man all right. Last time I went down to Melbourne for a spell, I ached to get back again. Suppose I’ll have to go down for keeps some time or other. Please the Great White Patriarch. Old Ted’s father and mother were killed in a car accident, so he’s got nothing to go back to. Inherited a lot of dough, though. The Kimberleys have got him, like they’ve got me and Brentner, even Mrs Brentner.” Then he asked, “What do you think of Tessa?”

  Chapter Eight

  Young Col’s Problem

  “I HAVEN’T given much attention to Tessa,” Bony said, wondering at the sudden change of subject no less than at the question. Young Col was sitting cross-legged on the ground, the expiring camp fire between them. Now he didn’t look years younger than his age, and the cheeky attitude to life was replaced by a thoughtful study of Bony.

  “I mean, where d’you think she’s going?” persisted Col. “Mrs Brentner is set on sending her to a teachers’ college, and all that. I don’t doubt she’ll pass out qualified; then what?”

  “The general idea seems to be that when she has qualified she’ll return and begin teaching. Here, I presume. What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, what do you think about a white man marrying a black woman?”

  “I don’t approve of mixed marriage,” replied Bony, still puzzled. “The woman I married is like me. We suffer at times from condescension; sometimes from sheer rudeness.”

  Col’s eyes were small and in them lurked anxiety.

  “Go on,” he urged.

  “Well, you are twenty years old, I understand, and Tessa is, say, eighteen. A good age to marry.... But, you being white and Tessa being black, the inevitable outcome would be that in ten years, when you would be thirty and Tessa twenty-eight, you would be going on to the prime of life and Tessa would have arrived at the prime of life. Add a further ten years.... You see that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I see it all right.”

  Col Mason rolled a cigarette, while watching the thin spiral of smoke rising from the almost dead fire-ash. Bony waited, thinking of another young man who found the problem unsolvable.

  “It would, of course, be marriage or nothing,” Bony continued. “Even if the Brentners gave their consent to marriage, there would still be the State to settle with. Association out of wedlock would be disastrous for you.”

  Col glanced up to encounter the sympathetic blue eyes.

  “For me! I wasn’t talking for myself. It’s Old Ted I’m thinking about. You see, Old Ted’s a gonna on Tessa. He’s a decent bloke, and I’d hate for him to fall over his feet. Then it’s sort of complicated as Captain has i
deas about Tessa too. Tessa adds her bit to stir those two up, and sometimes I get worried over Old Ted.”

  “I understand they had a fight. Was that over Tessa?”

  “So you know about that?”

  “Yes. I know about that. It seems to be a secret, though.”

  “We kept it dark from the Brentners. Captain was too good for Ted. Made a mess of him, and we cooked up the tale that he was thrown from his horse and had his foot caught in the stirrup and was dragged some ways. That fight was brought on by Tessa. You wouldn’t think...”

  “Fights have been brought about by school teachers, Col.”

  “You wouldn’t think Tessa was a scheming bitch, would you?”

  “No.” Bony forbore to chuckle. “You know, Col, girls of seventeen and eighteen, and women of forty or fifty are what you said. A woman is always scheming about some man or other. Tell me more about Little Miss Muffet.”

  “You’ll keep it dark?”

  Bony nodded.

  “I don’t think the Boss subscribed a hundred per cent to the foot-in-the-stirrup yarn,” Col went on. “Don’t ask me. I’ve the feeling that Captain wasn’t hotted up enough to fight Ted, and that the Boss did the final stoking to put Ted in his place. He’s a cunning cove, Brentner. Course, the Boss might have been sooled on by Mrs Brentner to sool Captain on to Ted, something like that.”

  Bony thought this theory plausible, and said so, but returned to Tessa. “Tessa knows how to ravish a bloke, Bony. You know, looks at you with both eyes wide open and an adoring look in ’em. Tried it on me more than once. I’ve seen her working on Ted. She’s one of those tabbies who has to work on a man or burst.”

  “And you think something is going to burst, anyway?”

  Slowly Young Col nodded.

  “One reason why I was disappointed this morning when Brentner said the politicians wouldn’t be coming to Deep Creek was that if they came and stopped a night or two they’d take minds off a girl who’s firing a couple of pots,” he said thoughtfully. “Then, when the Boss told us he would be going to Hall’s for the conference, that meant he’d take Mrs Brentner and the kids with him, and that Ted would go too, and perhaps me as well. That would leave Tess with Captain, and Old Ted would know that, of course.”

  “When did the fight occur?”

  “Couple of weeks after the last mustering.”

  “Were you present?”

  “No. I found Ted cleaning his rifle and saw his face and he told me. He was that mad I was sure he was going to do some shooting. Goes berserk. Completely loses his block when he gets that way. I had trouble calming him down and getting him to agree with the stirrup yarn to account for his condition. I have a lot of time for Ted, you understand. Only real cobber I’ve ever had.”

  After a period of moody silence, Bony made the suggestion that it might be wise to put the problem to Brentner, and to this Col said he was sure Brentner’s solution would be to sack Old Ted as he couldn’t get rid of Captain.

  “Brentner’s solution could be to send Tessa off to the college,” countered Bony.

  “Don’t think so,” argued Col. “She’s not ready. Anyway, Mrs Brentner wouldn’t agree to it.”

  “A string covered with knots, Col. We shall have to give thought to undoing the knots. What’s your opinion of Captain?”

  “Give him an inch; takes a yard. Thinks he’s next to the Boss. Hellish good with horses, though. Keeps the Abos in order. We want stockmen, he sees to it we get them. I’ve never taken to him, no particular reason.”

  “To go back to the fight. What brought the pots to the boil? What triggered it?”

  “Why, the skirt,” replied Young Col; then realizing he was using a ‘square’ word, hastily added, “The black baby, of course.”

  “You mistake me,” objected Bony. “The black baby was the cause, but what was it which triggered the effect?”

  “Oh, I see what you mean.” Col frowned at the dead fireash. Bony idly regarded the horses, idly until his mind registered their interest in something beyond the line of his vision. “I don’t know what triggered ’em, Bony. The pots had to come to the boil sometime, I suppose.”

  “Not necessarily, Col. The pots could simmer on and on and never boil over. Are there any horses out here?”

  “No. I can’t think what could have brought about the fight.”

  “Try. Think back before the fight. The fight came about two weeks after you returned from the muster, remember?”

  Young Col pondered, and Bony noted that the horses’ interest in what had captivated them had passed. Farther out from the mill a long line of cattle was approaching. The trees standing on clean ground stood as though painted on canvas. In the distance, where the grass grew under the ragged and ugly gums, they appeared to be standing on melting snow. A crow whirled by and circled to perch on the mill and, there, gave tongue in defiance. Col was still hunting in his storehouse of memories when the horses again became interested in the grass at the rear of the two men. Softly Bony said, “There could be someone behind the shed. Ready to investigate?”

  Then he was on his feet and racing for the corner, leaving Col still grappling with the answer concerning the fight. Bony ran round one end of the shed to see, fleeing from it across the clear ground to the trees and the grass, the naked figure of an Aborigine. Turning about, he collided with Col, and, recovering from the shock, ran to the horses. To give the young man his due, he was tightening the saddle girth under his horse when Bony slipped the saddle from his filly and rose to straddle the bare back. He was a hundred yards away after the running Aborigine when Col, now riding, saw Bony give up the chase as the Aborigine plunged almost head first into the grass, the height of a man’s shoulders.

  Bony criss-crossed the direct line to the shed and thus picked up the Aborigine’s tracks, proving the man had come from the grass to the shed, where he had laid himself down close to the rear wall.

  “A wild black,” exclaimed Col. “First time I ever saw one this far north. Could be others about. They might be planning to spear a beast. They do sometimes, you know, but not this far north. It’ll slay the boss. He reckons he came to a sort of agreement with ’em.”

  “How?” pressed Bony, dusting his ill-used saddle and placing it on the filly, still a little excited.

  “There’s a beaut rock-hole with permanent water about seventy miles south of the Crater. We leave a beast there in a brush-yard twice a year for the blacks to slaughter, and they leave our herds alone. Saves them chasing after a herd and spearing half a dozen to get one, like they did here when they wounded nine and ate only a quarter of one of ’em.”

  “And who contacted the wild men to make that treaty?”

  “Captain and Gup-Gup.” Col regarded Bony nervously when adding, “You won’t believe it, perhaps, but old Gup-Gup looks into his fire and radio’s. Takes believing, but there’s something to it, I think. Lots of yarns up here that’s a bit tall.”

  “I can imagine,” Bony replied, and mounted. Later, their jogging horses close, he said, “That Aborigine might have been one of Gup-Gup’s crowd.”

  “Aw, I don’t know,” objected Col. “Gup-Gup’s crowd don’t run around naked. Boss wouldn’t have it. He’d go to market if he thought one of them was out to kill a beast. There wouldn’t be a logical reason for that. They get all the beef they can eat.”

  “I was thinking it likely that the Abo was trying to listen to what we were saying. He walked from the grass to the shed, keeping the shed between himself and us.”

  “Listening to what we...” Col broke off to ponder with a heavy frown. He rode the strong brown gelding which he forked with deceptive looseness, and it, like the filly, was smartly walking, knowing they were on the return to the yards and freedom. He said, “’Fraid I can’t buy that.”

  Deciding not to press the point, yet convinced that the Aborigine was not one of a party intending to spear cattle at the well, Bony rode on and pondered. It did appear that the odds were many against th
e assumption that any one of the local tribe would be so interested in what they said as to travel fifteen miles from the camp on foot if the tribe hadn’t a horse. He asked about this, and Col said they had no horses of their own.

  “Does the boss lend them a horse now and then?”

  “Don’t think so,” replied Col. “What’d they want to borrow a horse for? The bucks get enough riding with us.”

  Fifteen miles on foot out here and fifteen miles back to the Creek surely did stretch the odds. The horses were keen to be back, and Bony allowed his to break into an easy canter, Col following behind, bursting into a song about a Baby on Fifth Avenue he ‘lurved’ with all his aching ’art. A swoony tale, it was possible that it laid balm to Young Col’s sad mood. Bony wouldn’t know. His mind followed a train of thought, and the sequence was severed when Col stopped his dirge and shouted, making Bony rein his horse to a halt to permit the young man to catch up with him. He was no longer sad.

  “Hey, I’ve an idea you could be right,” he said. “That black bastard could have been listening to us. He could have been sent out by Captain to fox us. And that reminds me about how the fight was triggered off. I remember now. I thought there was something I should have remembered.”

  As Col wanted encouragement to state his bright recovery of memory, Bony rolled a cigarette and waited.

  “Yes, now I remember, Bony, what made the pots boil over. Old Ted wouldn’t say, but I’ll bet it was because he suspected Captain had put a lubra or someone to keep an eye on him all the time to see if he went after Tessa. That’ll be it. Ted did say something about everything was told to Captain. And then.... Yes, I remember, too, when we were in the Crater looking for tracks Ted pointed out that neither of us was ever free of a tail.”

  “When looking for tracks after the discovery of the body, I take it?”