Bony - 27 - The Will of the Tribe

by Arthur W. Upfield

  In June of the previous year three members of an Asian lugger crew had deserted at Wyndham. Two of these men had reached Derby on the west coast, and the third had reached Darwin after being reported by radio at Adelaide River. Late in August of this same year two strangers had visited the Deep Creek Aborigines and had fought Captain. Brentner had recorded these strangers as Aborigines and dismissed them. Were they the two Asians ultimately ar­rested in Derby? Brentner had written that Captain had told him that no foreign scum was going to upset his people. Brentner had also written in the work diary that Captain refused further information, and that it was his tribe’s busi­ness, anyway.

  ‘No foreign scum’ seemed to be a pointer which might be of interest to the Source from which Bony had accepted his assignment. He wondered if the Source had deliber­ately retained this information or had been too blind to give it significance.

  The Source wanted to know how the man on Lucifer’s Couch passed through the Kimberleys without being re­ported, and should be interested in two Asians travelling from Wyndham to Derby without having being reported. However, the deserting Asians might have sailed from Wyndham on a Derby-based lugger, and Captain might have referred to the strangers as foreigners had they belonged to a distant Aboriginal tribe or nation.

  There were the replies to the questions submitted to Mrs Leroy by letter, and Bony glanced at his notes.

  “Question One. Have you heard a legend about the Crater? No.

  Question Two. Have you heard the legend that after the white man would come the brown man, and after the brown man, the land would return to the Aborigines? No.

  Question Three. Have you ever seen a small ivory Buddha possessed by any person? No.

  Question Four. Reference to question three worn as a talisman by any person? No.

  Question Five. Has Captain visited towns other than Derby? If so, give first letter B. O. P. (Broome, Onslow, Port Hedland).”

  These three towns are south of Derby and, doubtless, Captain accompanied the Salvation Army padre on a south­ern tour, during the period he was at school in Derby. It was now becoming clear that Captain could answer the final questions.

  To employ an aphorism, the sun had had it and went plunging away towards Java, and Jim Scolloti, who was casual in everything save his cooking, was reminded of the time. He said something to Tessa, and Tessa proceeded to stalk Mister Lamb. Mister Lamb continued to watch the tree’d Captain and failed to see or hear the girl approach­ing at his rear. When he became aware of her it was too late to do anything except gratefully accept the shred of tobac­co abruptly thrust under his upper lip. Another Samson betrayed by a woman, meekly he was carried by the Philis­tine Captain to the fence, heaved over it and aimed at the fleeing Aborigines.

  During dinner, Bony asked Col if there was a carpenter’s shop in addition to the saddler’s shop.

  “Next to the saddler’s shop,” replied Young Col. “You wanting to make something?”

  “Equipped with tools, of course? Who has normal access to it?”

  “Anyone told by the Boss to do a job there. Always kept locked, and the key on a hook in the office. Tools are expen­sive, you know.”

  “How long ago did anyone work in the shop?”

  “How long?” Young Col concentrated, and Tessa looked as though wanting to help. “It would be before the first mus­ter this year, end of summer. Too busy with the cattle dur­ing winter, and there was no special job came up.”

  “It isn’t important,” Bony said, toying with biscuits and cheese. “Actually, I’ve been trying to fit a clue into your wordagram.” Turning to Tessa, he explained: “Young Col has been exercising his brain on a puzzle called a worda­gram. I’ll show you how to make one later on.” Turning back to Col he said, “Let’s try again, Col. Just who would be sent there to work?”

  “Oh, well, the Boss might tell Old Ted or me, even Cap­tain, to do something needful. Then the drill is to get the key from the office, and return it to the office immediately the job was done, after locking up, of course.”

  “All types of tools there, I suppose?”

  “Everything.”

  “I believe I’m getting warm, Col. What about old worn-out tools? Would they be passed out to the Aborigines, or left lying about?”

  “No fear. When we indent for new things like tools, the old stuff has to be sent to the Agent at Hall’s.”

  “What about axes and axe handles? Have they to be sent to the Agent?”

  “Not axes and tomahawks, only carpenter and saddler tools.”

  “I’m still warm,” Bony declared with enthusiasm. “But there is still the last time anyone worked in the carpenter’s shop.”

  “The work diary would give it. I’ll go and look if you wish.”

  “Perhaps I can tell you, Bony,” Tessa cut in. “I remember that Rosie’s work-box came unstuck. We couldn’t make the lid fit properly. Captain came for the shop key, and Rosie asked him to fix the box. He brought the box back when he returned the key.”

  “Wonderful, my Tessa, but what was the date?” Young Col insisted, and Tessa giggled triumphantly. She made them wait till she said, “It was the day Rosie gave me a lovely jewelled hair-comb on my official birthday, 20th April. Does that give the word for the puzzle, Bony?”

  “Yes, it does, Tessa. The word is saw. It will fit perfectly.”

  Bony skilfully switched to the subject of the dance to be held at Hall’s Creek this coming night and then to the return of the Deep Creek party the following day. When Tessa left for the coffee, he complimented Young Col on supporting him in the discussion about the wordagram, and promised to explain further on the morrow. Eventually, he visited the office to refresh his memory. In the work diary under the date 20 April, he read:

  “Ted left with cattle for Beaudesert. Col left to check cattle about Eddy’s Well. Went myself to Laffer’s Point to repair mill pump. Got back late, and Captain reported he had escorted Maundin off the premises as far as Eddy’s Well.”

  Recalling that Tessa had been wrong on a date, he checked backward and forward in the diary and could find no mention of Captain being sent to work in the carpenter’s shop.

  Young Col found him meditating when he came to switch on the radio for the expected contact by Kurt Brentner, and thus Bony heard the cattleman say they had decided to say in town for another day to attend the dance.

  This suited Bony as he wanted to investigate the matter of the sawn-cut poles before tackling Captain. After break­fast the next morning he set about this, seemingly wander­ing down the Creek without purpose. He visited Gup-Gup and talked with him and Poppa. He made a casual inquiry for Mitti and Wandin and was told they were still away on walkabout. He wandered about the camp, casually examin­ing the primitive wurleys and noting that the poles and sticks of the framework supporting the bark and discarded iron sheets had all been cut with an axe.

  In the early afternoon he sauntered up the Creek, paus­ing repeatedly to gaze idly at the scene whilst believing him­self under constant surveillance. He tossed stones into the reservoir, drove a flock of cockatoos from a tree by tossing a stick among them, and, where the water shallowed, crossed the Creek, for in the bend grew clumps of gum sap­lings.

  Here he found two which had been cut down at the height of a man’s waist. Without stopping, he observed the gum blobs which had oozed from the parent stem and also at the end of the bushy heads lying on the ground. These still retained their leaves, now dry and beginning to turn from grey to riven yellow.

  From these saplings had been taken the poles seen by Old Ted near Lucifer’s Couch. The cutting tool had been a saw. A saw had probably been used because the sound of an axe would have been heard at the homestead.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Captain Bursts a Seam

  BONY HAD afternoon tea with Young Col and Tessa and, through the thin grass wall of the day-house, watched Captain cross to the kitchen for his smoke tea, and, later, watched him leave his hut for the shower-house, w
earing a blue gown and canvas slippers. When, half an hour later, Bony entered his hut, he was wearing only cloth trousers, and his newly shaven face was shining almost as much as his combed hair.

  The place was orderly and clean. The blankets on the trestle bed were folded in army style. The window was open and set against it was a table on the far side of which Captain was seated reading a book. He stared when Bony drew forward a packing-case and sat opposite him, Bony’s back then being to the door.

  “ ‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said … and you may know the rest,” Bony began pleasantly, and fell to making a cigarette. “I hope I’m not disturbing you, but there are questions you could help me with.”

  Captain smiled, a smile as open as his eyes.

  “I’ll do my best, Inspector,” he said, and waited for Bony to apply a match to the cigarette.

  “Do you agree with me when I say it’s my belief that the stranger’s body was deposited in the Crater because the Crater, being of recent origin, is the only place not associ­ated through history, custom, legends, with your tribe?”

  “You are right when you say the Crater hasn’t any asso­ciation with my people, being of recent origin,” replied Captain, opening a tin of tobacco and proceeding to make a cigarette. “But as it must have been a white killing I’m sure, too, that they wouldn’t bother about whether or not it had any connexion with them.”

  “Sound logic, Captain, if it had been purely a white killing. I find myself opposed to that theory. I’m convinced that were it not a purely black killing, then it was half and half, meaning that the blacks had a part. Had the murder been done by whites only, they wouldn’t have bothered to carry the body to the Crater, because, as you have admitted, they would have no possible reason for doing so. They would have buried or burned the body. They wouldn’t have both­ered, even had they thought of it, to stage a death from thirst and exposure. The whites alone couldn’t be held responsible.”

  The cigarette made, Captain raised his eyes and regarded Bony whilst he held a match to it. His eyes were now blank, his features minus any expression. Bony continued.

  “There are, of course, other matters I’d like to discuss as well as your own unusual behaviour. I refer to your hav­ing had me tracked on several occasions. I refer, too, to the rather crude little play you staged with Lawrence and Wandin, and I think I’m entitled to be resentful of your contempt of my own capabilities.”

  Captain closed his book and pushed it aside against the raised window. He gazed at the scene of creek trees and homestead, and the desert falling away to the rim of the world on which lay Lucifer’s Couch.

  “You will agree, I’m sure, that Gup-Gup and people at Hall’s Creek are much more authoritative on when the meteor fell than the amateur geologists who visited the Crater only a few years ago. Gup-Gup and Company, sup­ported by the absence of Aborigine legends about the place, must be right. Agree?”

  Captain nodded, and turned again to look beyond the window.

  “Then you must agree that genuine legends are based much farther back in time than sixty years. I recall reading in Tessa’s book a legend having a political trend, the legend of the brown man following the white man, etc. She thought it was a genuine legend, and yet Mrs Leroy never heard of it. Did you imagine, create, that legend?”

  “What if I did? It’s no crime to invent legends.”

  “It is a crime to create a legend for a purpose other than entertainment, or at the expense of investigating anthro­pologists. Now did you or did you not invent that particular legend?”

  Captain again stared out the window, and when Bony insisted on a reply, his voice was sharp.

  “I asked you a question, Captain.”

  “Yes, I did, and what of it?”

  Bony was abruptly confronted by blazing dark eyes.

  “I’ll accept your answer pro tem. I’m told you have long had a laudable ambition, that you have adopted a mission. You yourself have supported it. I am in complete sympathy with it. I believe that the crime in the Crater is the result of a grave threat to that about which you and I are in accord. If you will believe that we are in accord, if you will trust me to work out a way whereby your tribe may be relieved of certain drastic results still to follow, then, for the salvation of your mission, assist me by being open and truthful. What is the significance of the little Buddha in the tribe’s treasure house?”

  The question brought Captain to his feet. He began to shout.

  “The treasure house is Poppa’s concern. I don’t know what’s in it. I’m not a medicine man. I’m not an old man.”

  “I was speaking of the ivory Buddha, giving that more im­portance than where I saw it,” Bony said, voice hard. “It represents a culture completely foreign to that of the Aus­tralian Aborigine. Now, sit down, and be rational.” Captain sat, and took time to regain normal stoical composure.

  “Gup-Gup says you were boned one time,” he said. “You could be boned again for interfering with the tribe’s treasure house.”

  “That would, indeed, be very bad for me, Captain. And for you, of course. You would have a great deal to explain of what lay behind the story of the runaway lovers. You would have to provide the Boss with reasons why Mitti rode Star to death, and why Poppa and others cut up the carcase and tossed the remains into a prospector’s mine shaft. And so much more to explain, too.”

  The Aborigine’s round and creaseless face was again turned to the window. Bony could just see the frown which settled for a moment, and which was followed by a firming of the outline of the chin. Then he was being regarded by eyes having no expression, blank eyes having no depth in the iris.

  “The trouble with you,” Bony continued, “the trouble with you is that you’re placed at the same disadvantages as is Tessa. She heard your story of the runaway lovers and, although she knew Wandin is Mitti’s lubra, she backed you in default. She was torn by two opposing loyalties, to her people and to the Brentners. Doubtless you have heard the truth that no man can serve two masters, and those who try invariably end in disaster. You are torn by the division of loyalties, as is Tessa. Now, Captain, you have to decide which master you are going to serve.

  “In fact I think you have already made the decision to serve your own people. If so, you have my admiration be­cause you’re able to serve them ever so much better than the white race, or the brown, or the yellow. The Aborigine in me cries to you to serve your people wisely and to say and do any and everything to extricate them from the mess they have fallen into on the death of the Crater Man.”

  “They had nothing to do with it, as I told you,” Captain avowed, eyes suddenly blazing, and the shutters lifted by the compelling emotion to safeguard his own. “Leave them out of it, Inspector. Leave them alone. Leave me out of it, too. The killing was nothing to do with them.”

  “Then tell me why you had me tracked?” The shutters fell before the eyes barring in the mind behind them, and Bony felt pity for the man wriggling on a hook, this man particularly whose partial assimilation with the white race had failed to withstand an influence yet to be disclosed.

  “Tell me why you accepted the opportunity given by Brentner’s absence on 20 April to obtain the key to the carpenter’s shop from Tessa for the purpose of borrowing a saw, a saw with which to cut two poles, fearing an axe would cause too much noise.”

  “So little Tessa told you that, eh?” Captain’s hands were tightening their fingers about each other.

  “Not consciously. Tell me why you cut the poles?”

  “To make something.”

  “The frame of a stretcher to carry the body to the Crater. That required two men. The two men had wrapped hessian bags about their feet to prevent tracks. They took the body over the Crater wall at its lowest point. They could not per­mit the body to remain on any part of the tribal ground every yard of which is hallowed by the centuries.” Bony’s voice rose a fraction, and the words were like a whip flay­ing the mind of the man pressed to the limit. “Why the hell did
n’t you bury the body in the Crater? Why the hell did you leave it for plane people to see? Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!”

  The voice appeared to flow out through window and doorway. Captain stood to look down at Bony with eyes again masked, and on his face resignation to make Bony momentarily under-estimate him.

  “All right, Inspector. I’ll show you,” he said and turned back to a shelf above Bony’s level of vision. He reached and took from the shelf a notebook, and his other hand lifted from the shelf a rifle. The notebook was dropped to the floor. The rifle was held in one hand, a finger on the trigger. Captain backed to the far end of the shelf, and the free hand reached for a cloth and small tin of oil.

  Bony sat still and gazed into the orifice of the rifle held rock-steady and aimed between his eyes. He said, “To shoot me would be the stupidest thing you could do.”

  “It will be accidental,” Captain told him, placing the oil-can and rag on the table. “We are talking about legends, remember. I am cleaning the gun and it goes off. I spring to my feet in horror, knock over the oil-can, so, fling the cloth to the ground, so, and rush out for help.”

  Came a flurry of skirts and there was Tessa. Neither man glanced at her, the one watching Bony, Bony looking into the gun-barrel.

  “Captain, put that rifle away,” Tessa shouted. “Put it down, I tell you. You silly idiot. You ridiculous thing, you. An accident, you’ll say. Are you deaf? Put that rifle away.”

  The rifle didn’t waver. Tessa feared to move. Bony said, with extraordinary effort to speak calmly, “If you shoot me, Captain, don’t forget to pour a little of the oil on the cleaning cloth.”

  “And don’t forget I’m here, Captain. Don’t you ever forget I’m here to see you do murder and to testify against you. You fool of a man. You silly silly boob. You. … If you shoot you’ll hang, Captain,” Tessa continued to implore.