Arthur Upfield - Man of Two Tribes

Bony wondered who the heck would want to open this back door to Australia’s atomic secrets.

From this point he travelled along the verge of the Plain where the going was easy, making to the east to ‘cut’ the line of flight of the aircraft he had heard when at Dead Oak Stump. Fortunately the surface water held. Kangaroos were numerous, and the rabbits promised the summer, if it behaved, to make ofthemselves a plague. Bony passed colonies of jerboa rats; the roofs of the ‘houses’ well secured from the wind with stones. Bell birds mocked from the scrub trees, and at night wedges of ducks lanced across the sky. The crows were busy too, and altogether Bony found these days most pleasant.

When the camels first became restless, he attributed it to their normal dislike of unfamiliar country, there being nothing else to account for it. The country was open. The weather remained perfect. He foundno tracks of wild aborigines nor any other indication of their proximity. Lucy was neither restless nor suspicious, and normally a man can place full reliance on a dog to inform him of anything unusual.

On being confident that he had actually ‘cut’ the aircraft’s line of flight, he camped under a most ancient box tree growing on the edge of the Plain. This night he pondered on his next move, squatting beside his fire, and, as men of all nomadic races have done, he drew with a pointed stick a map on the ground, and marked on it the railway, the stop named Chifley, the homestead at Mount Singular, and the imagined course of the aircraft.

When he had heard it at Dead Oak Stump, the destination of the aircraft was at one of two points: either to the north of his present camp, or short of his present camp-between it and some place out on the Plain. His position was not less than two hundred miles from the nearest known homestead, Mount Singular. Having recently been able to live off the country, the food in his bags would support him for seven or eight days, when supplies could be replenished at Bumblefoot Hole.

Before sleeping, he decided to prospect the desert for four days, after which he would be compelled to turn back and travel south along that imagined line of flight of the aircraft.

Having to cover as much country as possible in those four days, he was leading his camels off the Plain and high into the dunes before the sun was up, and luck favoured him, only to withdraw the gift within two hours.

He was prompted to halt his camel train and look rearward over the great Plain, the sun not yet risen, and the morning air like crystal, the far edge of the Plain like the lip of a tall cliff one sees from a mere hundred yards back. Then his roving eyes abruptly stilled, to become a stare to annihilate distance.

Crows, a dozen of them, so far away as to appear to be ink-blots. A dead rabbit? A dead kangaroo? Neither. Oh! for a pair of binoculars! Something was surely moving out there, the opposite of the black crows. It was white. Like a white crow but couldn’t be. It was like a white handkerchief, being waved to attract his attention.

Down again on the lower elevation of the Plain, he could no longer see even the crows. This mattered not at all. Lucy went ahead as usual, thrusting into the gentle south wind. The camels followed the walking man, happy to have their faces turned homeward.

Yet the happiness continued not for long. They had proceeded for a mile, and now Bony could see the crows and the white object of their interest when Millie tugged back on her noseline, and he halted to see what was wrong. He could find nothing wrong. He could see nothing to excite them. The ground was firm. Impatiently he called to them and went on.

Another halfmile, and they did come to an area indicating subterranean cavities. He had to select a twisting passage to avoid the bare rock and to keep to the close growing saltbush.

The white object fluttered above the ground. It wasn’t a handkerchief, but was certainly fabric of some kind. Not yet could he determine the agency keeping it in motion.

Minutes later he knew what the white object was-a silk scarf, and it was poised by an uprush of air from a blowhole precisely like a ball on a water-jet in a shooting gallery.

To be bothered with the whys at this time was to wool-gather. To be bothered with fractious camels was equallywaste of time. He took the throwing ropes from his saddle and spent less than three minutes in roping both animals so that they couldn’t rise from their knees.

With the rifle he caught the fluttering scarf and drew it from the air current. It was of fine quality silk. It bore no initials, but was certainly a woman’s scarf. When he peered into the blow-hole, the air beat upon his face. He sniffed, and the smell baffled him. He could detect only that the odour was not entirely composed of damp rock and water, bats, or the smell of any burrowing rodent. Coffee? No! Surely not coffee?

Leaving the blow-hole, he prospected. Lucy began to bark. The warning chill at Bony’s neck made him turn about. The crows appeared to have lost their reason; there was nothing he could see. He circled the blow-hole, and so found the large hole five feet in diameter and about centre of flat bare limestone rock.

Behind him Lucy barked furiously, and he turned quickly, the chill on the neck now of ice.

He was confronted by four wild aborigines. Each was aiming a spear tipped with flint, the butt resting in the socket of a throwing stick. Their faces were impassive. Their eyes were wide and steady, like their bodies, their arms, their weapons.

Adversity is but a Spur

LEAVESand fine twigs were entwined with the wild men’s hair, and damp earth clung to their knees and chests. The stalking of their quarry had been accomplished with the perfection of the greatest masters on earth.

Cicatrices on faces and chests and thighs proved full initiation into the Luritja Nation, the remnants of which still occupy the Central Desert. They were small, incredibly tough, and had the endurance of the dingo. Their hair was bunched high by a band of snake-skin, that of three being black, that of the fourth being grey, and matching the straggly beard. He was a medicine man.

The condition of thighs and stomachs indicated they were living on white man’s food. Oddity number one. Oddity number two was the unacceptable coincidence that they delayed appearance until Bony was looking at the large entrance to a cavern.

He could have employed the rifle, could have shot one, but only one, before he himself fell to the spears of the others. The formula: “I am Inspector Bonaparte, and I arrest you for…” was so much piffling eye-wash in this situation. Obviously it was not their intention to kill him and make off with the food and gear; otherwise their spears would now be halfway through his body.

The medicine man, who was the natural leader, beckoned him forward, and when he complied, the others slipped around behind him and continued on until they were with the camels, and then the medicine man held out a hand for the rifle, and motioned Bony to sit on the ground. There he was as much a captive as though weighed with a hundred-weight of manacles.

Eyes glittered but the spears remained poised while Bony removed his coat and shirt. They remained like sculptured figures at a white man’s exhibition as he gained his feet and slowly turned about for them to see the cicatrices on his own back, he blessing old Chief Illawarrie of the far north, who had inducted him into the Mysteries of the Alchuringa Days.

What astonished them was that he, who was not wholly of their race, had been sealed into a Nation of the Ancient People. The leader spoke to the others, but they remained silent and made no sign. As intended by Bony, the situation became complicated, and often engineered complications will save such a tight situation.