Bony - 27 - The Will of the Tribe

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Bony had his back to the house and was unaware of Mister Lamb until determinedly nudged in the back. A few moments after he had obliged Mister Lamb with a cigarette, he was joined by Rosie and Hilda Brentner. They sat either side of him and drummed their heels against the log.

  “Are you looking at our dam?” asked Hilda.

  “I was thinking how pretty it is with the water-beetles hard at work and leaf shadows dancing on the surface. It looks deep, though. I suppose no one ever bathes here?”

  “Oh, yes,” replied Rosie. “We do. Not right down there; up the creek where the water is shallow. Old Ted’s teaching us to swim. Tessa can swim, but she won’t any more.”

  “Why ever not?” Bony pressed.

  “Well, she was swimming right down there one day when Captain came and saw her. And he laughed and teased her, and she wouldn’t go in again ever. Can you swim?”

  “When I fall in. Your father and mother don’t mind people swimming in the dam?”

  “Oh, no. There’s plenty of rain water for the house in the tanks,” replied Rosie, and Hilda further explained, “It comes down off the roof when it rains.”

  “I see. D’you play much with the little boys and girls from the camp?”

  “Sometimes we do, Bony,” Hilda said. “That’s when we all go for a walk with Captain. He takes us out on the desert and we all pretend we’re tracking a Musgrave black. Alfie or someone is the Musgrave, and we track him, and he tries to throw us off by wiping out his tracks, and Captain shows us how to find them again.”

  “You like Captain, I can see.”

  “Captain’s the most wonderful man in all the world ex­cepting Daddy,” declared Hilda, and her sister took her up on this point.

  “He’s not. Old Ted is.”

  “He is not,” vowed Hilda. “Captain beat him in the fight. We saw it.”

  Rosie slipped off the log to confront her sister and scold, “That’s a secret. We promised Tessa never to tell. You know we did.”

  Little Hilda bit her nether lip and looked like crying, and Bony said that perhaps Tessa meant not to say anything of it to anyone at the homestead. As he wasn’t anyone at the homestead, it wouldn’t matter about the secret. This dried the tears before they fell, and he asked if they had any pets to show him.

  Each took a hand, and they showed him Mrs Bluey and her small puppies. From these they escorted him to a large aviary, containing some hundred lovebirds, and then to call on Bob Menzies in his own yard, Mister Lamb following faithfully and, now and then, trying to jog Bony’s memory by nudging a leg.

  “We saw you give Mister Lamb a cigarette,” he was ac­cused by Hilda.

  “Did you now. He seems to like a cigarette.”

  “He likes cake-tobacco, too,” supplemented Rosie. “He steals it off Jim if he can get into the kitchen without being seen. Steals the potatoes, too.”

  “And what does Jim say to that?” inquired the enchanted Bony.

  “He rushes Mister Lamb outside and tells him he’s going to shoot him. Course he won’t, you know. Would you like to ask Jim if he’s baked raspberry tarts this morning?”

  “Ooo! D’you think he would give us some? Let’s try.”

  Approaching the kitchen they could see that the door was open, and Jim Scolloti working within. The little girls hung back with seeming bashfulness, and Bony advanced to plead with the cook. He was about six feet from the door when he was struck from behind with tremendous force. The ramming lifted him off his feet and, without contacting the door frame, he was thrown into the kitchen where he landed on all fours at the cook’s feet.

  “That ain’t no way to come into a man’s kitchen,” com­plained Jim Scolloti, walking round Detective Inspector Bonaparte as though interested in a pet crocodile. “Suppose it was that flamin’ sheep what sort of shoved you. He’s liable.”

  Dignity slightly ruffled, Bony stood and turned to look out of the doorway. There was Mister Lamb eyeing him with satanic triumph and, beyond him, were the two small girls gazing solemnly, as though anxious to know the cook’s verdict about the raspberry tarts. Beginning to feel sore, Bony’s sense of humour yet rescued him.

  “The flaming sheep is decidedly liable,” he agreed. “I’ve never been tossed by a bull, but the sensation must be some­thing like. What I actually came for was to suggest that, if you had baked raspberry tarts this morning, you might be generous.”

  Scolloti’s lively dark eyes appeared to flicker, and he pulled at his grey beard thoughtfully. On a bench behind him were several large dishes of various confectionery and, to test a theory, Bony asked if this was his pastry-baking morning.

  “Yes, Inspector, so it is,” replied Scolloti. “Those imps know it, too. What you came for was to be pocketed. I got pocketed once. Mister Lamb’s the greatest snooker play in Orstralia.

  “I’m beginning to feel I was pocketed by the greatest snooker player in Australia,” Bony averred, and sat on a case beside the main table. The cook occupied a chair. His eyes flickered from the doorway back to Bony.

  “You could call it billiards,” he tendered. “I used to play soccer one time, so it could be soccer, but a soccer goal is a damn sight bigger than them door posts, and they’re big­ger than a table pocket. I’ve seen some good cannon shots at billiards, but then Mister Lamb never makes no cannon shot. Just as well, too, ’cos if he played cannon shots a bloke’s liable to be hurt bouncin’ off a door post.”

  “Who instructed Mister Lamb?” Bony asked, still inter­ested.

  “An Abo we calls Captain. The Boss brought the lamb off a sheep station when Rosie was beginning to crawl about. Time Rosie’s trotting, the lamb’s growed to a hefty wether, and she’d hang on to his wool and ride him everywhere he thinks to go. He’d eat anything from sweets to spuds, with tobacco and cake if he could pinch ’em. He got that way he could hardly stand, and we had to put him on a diet.”

  “You don’t say,” murmured Bony.

  “I do say. We had to cut out sugar and pastry and such like, and increase his tobacco. But he gotta brain. One night he et the vegetable garden nigh clean out, and we found he could lift up the gate latch and push. Then one morning I comes in here and finds him laying in front of the stove. In the pantry I’d left about forty pounds of top-grade spuds, and there’s not a spud left. They was all down his neck.”

  “Did he take, to billiards by watching the players?” scepti­cally asked Bony.

  Scolloti spread his hands and shrugged.

  “You don’t believe, but you will if you’re here long enough. It was Captain who taught him snooker. He used to tease Mister Lamb and get him to chase after him. Once Mister Lamb caught him and sent him for a boundary. Then Captain got an idea. Them ruddy Abos is full of ideas. Captain stuck two sticks in the ground and made a straw man to stand between ’em. Then he gets astride Mister Lamb and aims him. In no time at all Mister Lamb gets that good the straw man can be pulled back a bit, and he can pocket it between the sticks. J’you know what?”

  “What?” asked the enthralled Bony.

  “I seen it meself. I was standin’ about here, opposite the door. I seen Captain making this way, and I seen young Rosie and the lamb away out. And she’s aiming Mister Lamb at Captain. Well, you should’a been here. He sends Captain right in without touching either side, and Captain lands with his face against this far wall. Served him right, and I told him so. And ever since that day Mister Lamb don’t want to be aimed. He can do his own aiming at the drop of a hat. Never misses.

  “Got me hard and proper as I told you. Got the Boss once. Got Old Ted, and a few more at odd times. You see, we’re so used to him being around, we forget he’s waiting for a chance to cue.”

  “He won’t get a second chance at me,” Bony said forth-rightly.

  “I don’t know about that, Inspector. When Old Ted got pocketed he said that familiarity breeds contempt. That’s about the sum of it.”

  “A truism, indeed. Do you think either Rosie or Hilda aimed Mister Lamb at me?�
��

  “Don’t think so.” Jim Scolloti pondered the problem. The bridge of his nose wrinkled, and his black eyes flashed to the open door. “Course, I wouldn’t put it past either of ’em to sort of nudge Mister Lamb’s head to take a look at where you was going. Why don’t you arrest ’em on suspicion?”

  There was a flurry, and Rosie dashed into the kitchen to glare with blazing eyes up at the tall Scolloti. Hilda came to stand tremblingly behind her. Rosie’s voice was shrill.

  “I didn’t aim Mister Lamb, Jim Scolloti. I wasn’t any­where near him. And you said just a minute ago he didn’t want any aiming. You did so.”

  “Now, don’t you go getting your hair off, chicken,” im­plored the cook. “I didn’t say you did aim him, and you was both just outside the door listening and heard what I said.”

  “Correct,” Bony agreed, officiously. “You say you didn’t aim Mister Lamb at me, and I always accept the word of a lady. Now there isn’t anything to it, is there?”

  The anger faded from the brown eyes, and Rosie nodded and tried to smile. Scolloti exclaimed at the time and de­clared he’d get the sack if he didn’t prepare the lunch and would they all get out of his flaming kitchen.

  Bony seized opportunity by the beard. He asked for rasp­berry tarts, and Scolloti gave two to each of them; they strolled to the garden seat under a date palm and silently munched. Then, having wiped his sticky fingers on a handkerchief, Bony spoke to Mister Lamb, who was licking up the flaky crumbs and oddments of raspberry jam.

  Little Hilda said, on the verge of tears, “Bony, I aimed Mister Lamb. I won’t do it again.”

  Chapter Seven

  “What Do You Think of Tessa?”

  AT DINNER Kurt Brentner gave a news flash.

  “A bunch of politicians headed by the Minister of the interior are on their way,” he said. “Left Derby this morn­ing by car. Intend to inspect the Kimberleys and the North­ern Territory. They’ll camp two nights at Hall’s and, during their stay, there’ll be a conference with the pastoralists on the best ways of developing the North.”

  “Oh, shall you be going?” Rose asked and her husband nodded. “We shall be going, if it suits you.”

  “It will be nice for them. Perfect camping weather,” mur­mured Old Ted.

  “Wonderful,” agreed Young Col. “But what hardships!”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Old Ted gazed sorrowfully at Brent­ner. “How many in the party?”

  “Sixteen; totalling politicians plus secretaries; plus ex­perts.”

  “Sixteen! Plus wives makes it thirty-two. That’ll mean sixteen cars, sixteen drivers; two police guides in one jeep; cook and off-sider in a cook truck; two common men and truck with camp gear, said common men to erect and dis­mantle tents, etc. Something wrong somewhere.”

  Rose asked sweetly, “What, Mr Iconoclast?”

  “Only sixteen, Mrs Brentner. Last year there were twenty-one. Year before nineteen. Year before that …”

  “Trade recession,” Young Col offered. “A hundred thou­sand people out of work proves it. Mustn’t make too much of a splash, or the hoi polloi might tear down the Bastille. Moderation is called for. Holidays for politicians must be spread wider than is usual. Do you think they’ll leave the beaten track this time, Boss, and come down here? We could show them our Crater: introduce them to Mister Lamb.”

  Young Rosie struggled to suppress laughter, exploded, was frowned at by her mother, who said with faint protest, “If the Canberra politicians don’t come up here and hear of our problems, how can we expect them to understand our needs and to develop these vast, almost uninhabited areas? I can see nothing wrong with it. Rosie, what is the matter? Why are you giggling?”

  “It’s Young Col’s fault, mother. He made me see Mister Lamb pocketing the Minister.”

  Although amused, Bony did not enter the conversation on this subject of luxurious tours for politicians during the winter months of supremely beautiful weather. He lost inter­est when argument arose over the probable cost to the tax­payers, the number of winters such tours were made, and the number of years left before the Asians walked into the country and developed it without holidays for their poli­ticians. Some were questions old Gup-Gup could have ans­wered off-hand.

  He studied Tessa and talked with Hilda, sitting beside him. The child had not joined her sister in merriment, and Bony induced her not to dwell hardly on her pricking con­science. Tessa, he noted, gave much of her time to the chil­dren, who accepted her strictures with neither fuss nor objec­tion. Her demeanour, her table manners, her dress sense were all tributes to Rose Brentner’s care and affection.

  Later this evening he had the opportunity to talk with her and, having persuaded her over the hurdle of native re­serve, found her most responsive to his leads. She told him that at the beginning of the following year she was to go down to a teachers’ college in Perth and that she was look­ing forward to the adventure, although sure she would greatly miss home life at Deep Creek. She wanted to know of his educational attainments and about his family, as Rose Brentner had told her something of it.

  “When you graduate from college, I understand you will return to teach the local children. Is that right?”

  “Yes, Inspector. We are hoping to do what Mrs Leroy did and go farther than she was able. Mr Brentner says he will build a school house. It’s always been my ambition.”

  “Splendid! I was talking to Gup-Gup this morning. D’you think he’ll agree to it?”

  A tiny frown puckered her fine brows for a moment, and her large and expressive eyes reflected determination. She said, “He’ll have to. We’ll make him, and Poppa. They think they can keep the tribe from being assimilated for ever. How can they? This North country will have to be developed soon, and more and more people will come here to settle. Even the politicians are reading the writing in the sky.”

  Bony looked at the girl from a new angle. There was nothing vulgar, loud or brash either in speech or appear­ance, nor was there even a hint of the female Aborigine’s reluctance to talk openly to a man.

  “You are a remarkable girl, Tessa,” he told her, and she accepted the compliment with natural ease. “You know, there have been situations in my career when I’ve found myself acting as a kind of bridge spanning the gulf between the Aboriginal and the white mind. If you realize your ambition you might well build a far stronger bridge, be­cause you are thinking as a white woman. How often do you visit the camp?”

  “Oh, I go along to see my mother sometimes. She isn’t very well. If it wasn’t for her I’d go there very rarely. I wonder if you know why?”

  “Perhaps I do. May I guess?”

  Tessa nodded, and he fancied he saw pleading in her eyes.

  “I am only half black, and yet I, too, have felt the pull towards my mother’s race. It’s tremendously powerful, as its effect on so many promising Aborigine scholars witnesses. The strongest weapon I have to use in defence is pride. Pride in my career, in my sons, and in my wife who is like me. I’ve never failed to finalize an assignment. I shall not fail with this one. Pride is the only rock I have to hold on to. Is my guess right?”

  Again she nodded, and, as she was sitting sideways to the light, he was unable to be sure that shutters had dropped before her eyes. With no trace of alarm in her voice, she said, “Yes, you are right, Inspector. I thought you would know, and I believe your weapon is the only one. I’ve had to use it so often.”

  “The farther you go in your chosen career the easier it will be to wield, Tessa. I’ll tell you what you could do to strengthen your arm. Come to regard your people objec­tively, and you could do that by writing a history of the tribe before old Gup-Gup dies and takes it all with him. Ever thought of that?”

  “Yes, I have,” she replied. “I began to plan it, and then I found out that Captain is attempting it, and I left it to him and compiled a book of legends. I am still adding to it, and I was hoping you’d find time one day to recount many I don’t know.”

 
“Surprise on surprise,” Bony told her, lightly. “I’d be glad to. And Captain is writing a history! I must persuade him to let me look at that—and your collection of legends, too, if you will. It would seem he is much closer to the tribe than you. Is he as advanced in education as you are?”

  Tessa required time to formulate the answer, and Bony was happy to know she was being careful.

  “He reads a lot,” she said. “He writes a wonderful hand. But he hasn’t the weapon you have, and I found I have. Yes, I’d like you to see my legends, and thank you for con­senting to add to them. Mine are mainly on the northern tribes, with one or two of the Ilpirra and none of the Ora­bunna.”

  When Old Ted crossed the room to join them with the remark that the interrogation by the Great Detective had continued long enough, Bony betrayed nothing of the slight irritation he felt, and when he went off to bed he was de­lighted with the evening.

  At breakfast, taken in the outside day-house, he chose to sit between Young Col and Old Ted. Only the men were present, the women having their breakfast later, as was customary. As is also customary, after the first greeting, the men seldom spoke until they fell to loading a pipe or mak­ing a cigarette. It was Kurt Brentner who said, “Better ride out to Eddy’s Well, Col, and look-see to the mill and tanks.” He glanced at the red-bearded man. “You mentioned saddle repairs, Ted. You might do some of it while tending the pumping engine; Tanks are getting low, and the garden ought to have another soaking. Tessa and the kids can do that. They like paddling around.”

  “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.