The Will of the Tribe Read online

“Yes.” They rode on, and the silence that fell between them lasted for ten or eleven minutes.

  “When we were saddling up this morning, there were eleven working hacks left in the yard,” Bony said, thoughtfully. “By now they would have been returned to the horse paddock. We’ll see if one is missing. You would know them, I take it?”

  “Oh yes! What’s clicking?”

  “Let’s check if one has recently been galloped home ahead of us. And, by the way, do me a personal favour, will you?”

  “Why not?”

  “No reason why not. Keep our interest in that eavesdropping Abo to ourselves until I spring it.”

  Chapter Nine

  Captain’s Pretty Legend

  THE FENCED horse paddock was one square mile in area and, at the far side, was a gate to which Bony and Young Col rode, thus riding through the paddock to the horse-yards adjacent to the homestead. In this paddock there were now ten horses when there should have been eleven, and Young Col named the missing animal a gelding called Star.

  Captain was too intent on his work to note the audience of two who climbed up the rails of the yard to perch on the topmost one in time-honoured fashion. Half an hour later, when he did see them, he grinned appreciatively.

  “You can handle them, Captain,” Bony praised justifiably, and the Aborigine climbed to sit beside him and busy himself making a cigarette.

  “The Boss says I mesmerizes them before the handling,” stated Captain. “I told him if Mesmer was alive he would do as good. What d’you think, Inspector?”

  “An affinity with the animal. You all have that. Even I.”

  “You might like to give me a hand tomorrow with a proper swine of a filly. She’s going to extend me. She’ll probably keep me walking around for a week.”

  The softly spoken words were climaxed with soft laughter at himself, but beneath the laughter was the challenging hint of superiority with an unbroken horse.

  “I would not like,” countered Bony, also laughing softly at himself. “I am getting old and tired in the legs. Chased a wild Abo today, and he left me standing.”

  “A wild feller, eh! Where was he?”

  “At Eddy’s Well. Of course, he might not have been as wild as he looked, because he carried no spears or waddy. Any of your people get around like that?”

  “Out at Eddy’s Well! Not at Eddy’s Well or on the Creek, Inspector. A wild feller, surely. Did you see him, Col?”

  “Going for his life,” agreed Young Col cautiously. “Dived into the grass like a good ’un.”

  “Not so good,” said Captain. “Could be others with him. You tell the Boss?”

  “Only just got back,” answered the tutored Col. “Anyway, I’m not certain he was a wild black. His hair looked too short for one. What d’you think, Inspector?”

  “I didn’t notice,” answered Bony guilelessly. “Anything unusual for a wild black to be as far north as Eddy’s Well?”

  “They get around sometimes,” Captain said with seeming indifference. “I’d better tell the Boss, anyway.”

  Also with apparent indifference, Bony said, “Yes, you do that, Captain, while I trot along and talk with Gup-Gup and Poppa. By the way, how did the Medicine Man come to be tagged with that name?”

  Captain heaved himself off the rail to the ground and opened a gate to free the horse into another and smaller paddock. Bony found Col looking at him and he signed to the young man to leave for his quarters. He proceeded to the Aborigine’s camp. He was but half-way when Captain caught up to him.

  “Look, Inspector, why worry old Gup-Gup about this wild black? Gup-Gup’s a hundred not out. He’s too old to worry about anything.”

  “I am drawing nigh to a hundred not out,” Bony snapped. “I don’t like worry, either. What do you suggest?”

  “Well, it’s like this,” Captain said, halting. “I’m a sort of Public Relations Executive.” Bony’s brows shot upward. “I can read books, you know. I went to school for years. I don’t roll in the dust at a camp fire at night just for something to do. Now you tackle Gup-Gup about a wild black being out at Eddy’s Well, and Gup-Gup is going to order a walkabout just when the Boss’ll be looking for half a dozen blacks to help in the rethatching. Neither you nor Young Col are sure it was a wild black. It could have been a station black out there with a young lubra, and if Gup-Gup gets to hear about that there will be trouble. And my job’s to stop trouble before it begins.”

  Bony pretended indecision.

  “It could be as you say, Captain. Yes, it could have been one of the bucks out there with a young lubra. It has happened, hasn’t it? They could have had a camp in the grass, and he could have been at the well for water. H’m! It’s not my job to stir up trouble with station Aborigines. I’d be slated for it. Think we should keep it from Mr Brentner?”

  “No, but you could leave it to me, Inspector. Station business: a problem like this. He’ll probably say leave well alone.” A slow smile spread over the not unattractive face. “Can’t help bringing out old clichés. The Salvo padre at Derby was down on them but we learned them quick.”

  They had been standing, and now Bony produced tobacco and papers and squatted on his heels. Captain also squatted, apparently not unwilling and under the impression that Bony would no longer be difficult.

  They rolled cigarettes and each waited for the other to open the next phase, the one craftily conveying the impression of ineptitude; the other convinced he had to deal only with a white-police-trained half-caste, to be held in contempt by both white and black.

  “I think we might do a deal, you and I,” began Bony, looking up from lighting the cigarette. “Brentner was telling me you’re a valuable liaison officer and that he owes much to you for managing the bucks on station work. To balance that, from your own words I get the conviction that the tribe owes a lot to Brentner and his Company. That seems to be the position. Correct?”

  “Yes.” Captain held his burning match by the cold clinker end and watched the flame consume the other end. “You were telling Gup-Gup of the wasting away of tribal customs and discipline among the Abos being assimilated. You weren’t the first. I’ve been at him and Poppa, too. I went to school in Broome, and I saw then what’s going on, although only a kid. The Padre wanted me to take up mission work. D’you know what? I refused because the way of the white is bad compared with the way of the black man in this country.”

  “It’s a long road,” admitted Bony.

  “It sags in the middle. The Abo leaves his state and walks downhill, and he might, I say he might, walk up again to the white state. But the end of the road is always lower than the beginning for the Aborigine. You must agree.”

  “I do, but there is no other road for the Aborigine, and civilization insists that he take it.”

  “Which is why civilization must be defied as long as possible.” Captain’s dark eyes probed in an effort to read what lurked in Bony’s mind. “Tessa says you’re interested in legends. I’ll tell you one. In the days of the Alchuringa there was a great scientist and, with the earth of a beautiful garden and his own spittle, he made a man. Then he made a woman, and the woman always walked before the man.

  “One day, when the great scientist went into the garden to talk with the man, it was the woman who came first, the man being ashamed and hiding behind her. This angered the Creator, and He ordered that the front doors of the Garden be opened and the man and woman thrust outside. A day or so later, the Creator was walking sadly in his Garden when he beheld an Aborigine approaching and behind this man was an Aborigine woman. The Creator asked how they got into His Garden, and they said that when He banished out the front door those two white people, they crept in by the back door. He let them stay because always the woman walked behind the man, as it is to this day.”

  “You made up that legend,” Bony said, and Captain nodded saying, while pointing towards the camp, “There still remains a tiny piece of the Garden. Mrs Leroy used to say that the Garden exists in a man’s heart, that he
can tend it or banish himself from it. The white man says to hell with all that. I own the country, and these black people must be raised up and integrated with my civilization. He actually believes that his way of life is better than ours: he can’t understand that we don’t want to be dragged from the Garden he once lived in, we don’t want to be dragged down to his level.”

  “Did Mrs Leroy tell you the story of King Canute?”

  “Yes, she did,” replied Captain. “A good legend, too.”

  “King Canute’s sea is the white civilization in Australia today. It cannot be kept back. But enough, Captain. We’re getting ourselves bushed. We agree on so many points that I wonder if we could agree on another. I think that Gup-Gup must know who carried the body of the white man into the Crater. Can we agree there?”

  “Yes, I think he knows that, Inspector.”

  “Then, for the good of his people, should he not say what he knows?”

  “Of course not. I said just now that the whites want to drag us down to their level, and Gup-Gup isn’t going to help them do it. I wouldn’t inform if I knew. I never put it to Gup-Gup. I don’t want to know. That affair had nothing to do with us. My job is to keep my people free. They are my people. One day I shall be their Chief.”

  “You strive to maintain the status quo?”

  Captain nodded, and Bony was sure he knew the meaning of the phrase. He was a revelation. The Aborigines have produced ministers of religion. They have produced teachers. This man had chosen another mission: to save his tribe as long as was possible from the degradation of being assimilated into the white civilization. Bony said as much and Captain frankly agreed.

  “Then my mission here is a threat to your mission, is it not?”

  “No, I don’t think so, Inspector.” Captain gazed away to the camp and repeated his opinion as though to reassure himself.

  “My mother having been of your race, I shall be sorry if it becomes so,” Bony said, and, again encountering the black eyes, found them shuttered against him.

  Chapter Ten

  Captain Stages a Play

  WHILE CHANGING for the evening, Bony thought of the encounter with Captain, and what Captain might have become had he been able to loosen even fractionally the tribal bonds. He recalled blind Mrs Leroy, seeing her seated with her hands clasped on her lap and speaking of Captain as though he were her own son, in whom she had had such hope and had been given only disappointment. Then there was Tessa, who, superficially, had broken the tribal links, which yet might prove too strong.

  Having primed Young Col to say nothing of the missing horse and to support the theory that the Aborigine behind the shed was a wild man, until something developed to prove otherwise, Bony had dressed leisurely and so found Kurt Brentner and his white stockmen already in the day-house waiting for the dinner gong. It was obvious they were discussing the Eddy’s Well incident, for Brentner at once asked for his opinion.

  “The fellow was entirely naked, even the pubic tassel being absent,” he said. “He carried no spears or other weapon, which seems to blur the picture of a wild Aborigine. Anyway, a moment before coming in I observed a party of Aborigines approaching as though they were a deputation. As I talked with Captain shortly after we returned, perhaps he has found the answer.”

  “He might at that. He’s a fool, Bony.”

  Captain appeared in the doorway. He had changed his old trousers for smart drill and was wearing a clean white shirt. His hair was combed and on his feet were canvas shoes. Brentner called, “What’s to do? Come on in.”

  “After Inspector Bonaparte spoke to me about the Aborigine seen at Eddy’s, I made inquiries at the Camp,” Captain began. He betrayed no nervousness, no hesitancy, no shuffling of feet. “With the help of Poppa, I found that young Lawrence and Wandin, Mary’s daughter, had left camp four days ago. They’ve been camped in the grass half a mile from the Well, and Lawrence says he went there for water; he got as far as the shed when Young Col and Inspector Bonaparte appeared and trapped him there. There’s nothing much to it as they’re to be married black-feller fashion next month. They beat the gun, that’s all.” Captain smiled, and the cattleman grinned. “Poppa says he’ll deal with them. They’re outside in case you’d like to talk.”

  Brentner nodded, and there appeared the Medicine Man with a young Aborigine and a younger lubra. The lubra was wearing what looked like a nightdress much too large for her, and Poppa, in old baggy trousers and no shirt, failed to achieve the distinction of his rank. Indicating the sinners, he said, “This Wandin and this Lawrence feller been away from Camp three nights, Boss. Wandin’s mother started yowling. She’s to blame. She shut her eyes, and the young men shut their eyes about Lawrence clearing out with Wandin. They came back at sun-down. They broke a taboo, and the penalty will be put on them, never you bloody well fear.”

  Poppa was magnificent in outraged sense of the decencies. The girl began to snivel and the lover tried to dig his toes into the hard floor. He was sullen and Poppa roared, “You stop that yowling, Wandin.”

  Brentner rose from his chair and slowly advanced to stand immediately before the local Lady Chatterley and her gamekeeper. He spoke softly and with a bite in his voice.

  “Lawrence, my lad, I’m leaving you to the tribal laws and penalty. What the penalty is I don’t want to know. You’re a good cattleman which is all I need to know. But you’re a fool, Lawrence. White-feller law would have done nothing if you had been shot like a dingo. Wild black fellers have no business at Eddy’s, and you had no business getting around like one. You know that. You know we won’t stand for you camp fellers running about naked. Only Gup-Gup can do that, and he don’t wander off with young lubras no more.” Swinging aside to face Poppa, he raised his voice to add, “I’m relying on you to see to it that your people don’t run around with nothing on.”

  He returned to his chair, and Captain motioned to the entrance. The sinners slunk away and Poppa stalked after them. Bony watched their figures fading into the fast falling night, saw them disappear towards the compound gate. He heard Captain say, “A sliver of wood under a knee-cap will stop them running off like that again. There’ll be no more trouble, Boss.”

  “You know your own job, Captain. Thanks for dealing with this matter,” Brentner told him, and he was about to depart when Rose Brentner appeared. There was a distinct gleam in her eyes which captivated Bony.

  “What did you say, Captain?”

  “That there’ll be no more trouble, Missus.”

  “But before that you said something about a sliver of wood. What was that again?”

  Her athletic figure was straight, and her brown eyes blazing. The Aborigine stood firmly on his feet, and his voice was firm, too. He said, “The usual penalty for a man and a woman running off together is a spear thrust under the woman’s knee-cap, and a spear thrust in the back for the man. As Lawrence and Wandin were to be married black-feller fashion, a sliver of wood will keep both in camp a few weeks.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” exclaimed Rose Brentner. “It shall not be. You will tell Gup-Gup and Poppa what I say. The very idea is abhorrent.”

  Captain stood his ground and glanced at Brentner for assistance. Tessa appeared behind Rose, and Rose asked if there was anything to prevent the shameless delinquents being married at once.

  “The period of probation, Missus,” replied Captain and Tessa took him up on this point.

  “There’s no period of probation following the act of unlawful intercourse.”

  “Now we’re getting all legal,” complained Captain and again appealed to Brentner. Smiling appreciatively, Bony actually fumbled the making of a cigarette. He made his contribution, “Intercourse hasn’t yet been proved.”

  The cattleman chuckled and his wife tried to freeze him. Tessa was about to speak again and thought better of it.

  “Well!” exclaimed Rose. “I live and learn, I must say. Captain, you will stop the laming: at once. Tomorrow I’ll talk to Gup-Gup and Poppa. Tell t
hem so.”

  Yet again Captain wordlessly appealed to Brentner and, this time, received his nod of acquiescence. The silence following his departure was terminated by Rose addressing her husband.

  “Kurt, you weren’t really going to allow that laming, were you?”

  “Just politics, dear,” Brentner said placatingly. “Away back in the Year One the Abos passed an Act dealing with premarital and unlawful intercourse. The penalties for infringement were as you’ve just heard. The Ages alter little if anything. There’s no difference between the blacks and us. An Act is defied by many voters and it’s then called a bad Act, and bad in law. Justice is seen to be done, but isn’t. Gup-Gup and Poppa know full well that to lame those two would mean I would have to report it and Howard would come out to investigate it.”

  “Are you sure? Poppa seemed very determined.”

  “Of course, I’m sure,” her husband said. “In this case justice will be seen done, but won’t be done. They’ll lay those two on the ground, sharpen the slivers of wood, make a great song and dance about pretending to lame the criminals, and shut up about it. They don’t want official interference any more than we want officialdom to interfere with them. Damn it, there’s the gong and the sherry on the sideboard. Come on, everyone!”

  After dinner, the two little girls invited Bony to inspect their school work but, once they got him to the school-room, they exhibited no interest in academic learning save along the path to Aboriginal legends. Much amused by the diplomacy employed, Bony insisted on looking through and admiring their books and projects. When Tessa appeared she was complimented and, having gracefully accepted the praise, she consented to the children listening to legends for just one hour.

  It was an hour long remembered by Bony. He sat at the table smoking his extraordinary cigarettes. The children sat opposite and, with paper and pencil, the Aboriginal girl made notes. He told one relating the adventures of the ancestor of the Urabunna who made a lot of gypsum which he tossed up into the sky, and which came down again in the form of rain and men and women; which is why the Urabunna are called Rain Men. There is another, which he related this evening, concerning an ancestor of the Arunta Nation. In the Alchuringa a kangaroo named Ungutnika was afflicted with boils. He put up with these boils for a long time then, in anger, he pulled them out and threw them down and at once they became great boulders. And ever since, when a man wishes to afflict an enemy with boils, all he need do is to throw some toy spears at one of the stones, taking in evil magic, and, subsequently, hurl them in the direction of the enemy.