Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

She had walked slowly for five minutes when a ruddy glow illuminating the trees ahead indicated the camp. Presently she was able to see the red eyes of several banked fires and one that burned brightly before a humpy constructed with bags andcanegrass. On either side of this fire stood an aboriginal. Its roseate light revealed further rough humpies but no other inhabitants of the camp.

He who stood with his back to the humpy was short of stature. His body was thick with good living, but his legs were astonishingly thin. His hair and straggly beard were white, and the look of him belied the power he held over the entire Kalchut tribe. Nero was an autocrat.

The other man Mary also instantly recognized. In his elastic-sided riding boots he stood six feet in height, with his arms folded across his white cotton shirt, now all steaming from the heat of the fire. The sight of him made Mary Gordon falter in her slow walking. He was Jimmy Partner for whose return with her son she had been waiting.

In heaven’s name why was he talking to Nero at this hour? Nine o’clock is a very late hour for aborigines to be outside their humpies. To be sure, only Nero was outside now in the rain, but something most unusual must have happened for Jimmy Partner to have come to the camp at nine o’clock at night, and in the pouring rain, and to have got Nero to come out of his humpy to talk with him in the light of a replenished fire.

It is doubtful if any woman in all this wide district of western Queensland knew the aborigines better than did Mary Gordon. To her they were not children; nor were they semi-idiots or mere savages. Why, she had raised Jimmy Partner in her own home, and Jimmy Partner had grown up to be a brother to John in all save birth and race. He was a member of this Kalchut tribe, fully initiated, and still he was apart from it, electing to live in the men’s hut, to eat with John and herself in the kitchen-living-room, to work for wages and to be always loyal and trustworthy. Early that morning he and John had left to ride the fences of East Paddock, and now, at nine o’clock at night, he was here talking to old Nero and John was not yet home.

Her mind accepted the extraordinary situation even whilst she made nine steps forward towards the fire. Then its possible significance burst in her mind like a bomb exploding. Jimmy Partner had come to seek Nero’s aid-as she had come to do-to find and bring in her son-alive, perhaps dead.

History repeats itself!

She began to run, her gaze directed to the face of Jimmy Partner, and the face of Jimmy Partner showed alarm. He was speaking rapidly but softly, and he was emphasizing points with the index finger of his right hand. Nero was relegated to an inferior position in this conference. She could not see Nero’s face, for his back was towards her, but she did see his round head constantly nod in assent to what Jimmy Partner was saying.

Now the camp dogs heard her flying feet and set up their chorus of barking. The men on either side of the fire drew farther apart and stared about, becoming tense in attitudes of listening. She saw then that Jimmy Partner saw her. He came swiftly to meet her.

“John! What has happened to John?” she demanded, pantingly.

Now the firelight was behind Jimmy Partner and she was unable to read his face although she did see the white of his eyes when he drew close to her.

“Ah-Johnny Boss is all right, missus,” he replied, his voice deeper than the average aboriginal voice and even more musical. “He left me to put a mob of sheep out of East Paddock ’cosof the rainmakin ’ the Channels boggy. He sent me on home. He’s all right, missus.”

Relief surged like a tide from her heart to her weary mind, to banish the numbing terror. Yet it seemed to draw strength from her legs and she swayed forward and would have fallen had not Jimmy Partner quickly placed his great hands beneath her elbows.

“I tell you Johnny Boss is all right, missus,” he said, now more confidently. “He’ll be back home any minute. We been droving small mobs of sheep away off the Channels all afternoon.”

“Yes, yes!” Mary cried. “But why didn’t you come home and tell me, Jimmy? What are you doing here when you know the dinner’s getting cold and I’m so anxious?”

“Well, missus, I didn’t think. True. This morning we found over beside Black Gate a sign message for Nero from Mitterloo saying he wanted the tribe to go across to Deep Well where poor old Sarah is very crook and looks like dying. So I rode this way home to tell Nero about it, and the tribe’s going off on walkabout first thing in the morning. Better go home, missus. I’m coming now. Perhaps Johnny Boss is there already. Here, let me light the lamp.”

Thank God that that imp was a liar to keep shouting that history repeats itself. Consciously now she noted Jimmy Partner’s flimsy shirt again drenched by the rain.

“You hurry home,” she said with her old time authority over two boys who would regard their bodies as though they were made of wood or iron. “No hat on your head, as usual. No coat; just a cotton shirt over a vest. And standing here in the cold rain.”

“I’m all right, missus. I’ll get me horse and be home before you.”

Nero had vanished inside his humpy and now the dogs were quiet. With the lamplight to give her feet confidence, Mary hurried back along the natural path, feeling the urge to laugh and knowing the emotion for hysteria. Back again at the wire gate she was joined by two dogs as she was fastening it, and she then wanted to cry out her joy, for they were John’s dogs. Over by the harness shed she heard the clink of stirrup-irons and, with the dogs escorting her, she ran across to the dark form of a horse.

“John! Oh, John!” she cried. “I’ve been so worried about you. I-I thought you were lying out hurt.”

She saw his slim form beside the greater bulk of the horse, halted when the animal moved between them, shaking itself, to trot to the trough beside the windmill. Then she was clinging to her son, and he was saying, the school-given accent still in evidence: “I’m all right, mother. I wanted to get the sheep away from the Channels. What a rain, dear! We must have had an inch already. Let’s hope it’ll rain six inches and fill the lake.”

A dull tattoo of hoofs preceded the arrival of Jimmy Partner who ground his feet before his horse could stop. Quick fingers began their work of removing the saddle.

“I told Nero about the message at Black Gate,” he said.

“Oh!” responded John Gordon a trifle vaguely, then hastened to add: “Oh, the message! Yes, that’s right, Jimmy. The tribe will start off for Deep Well first thing in the morning. Old Sarah is due to pass out. She must be the oldest lubra of the Kalchut. Now hurry along and get washed and change those clothes. Have you got clean shirt and vest and pants?”

“Too right, Johnny Boss.”

Mother and son began the walk across to the house, marked in the void by the light in the kitchen-living-room.

“I’m sorry we’re so late,” John Gordon said, slipping an arm about the gaunt figure. “Didn’t think this rain was coming when we left this morning, and I would have worried all night had I left the sheep on the Channel country.”

“But I’ve been so anxious, dear, so terribly anxious,” she complained. “I couldn’t help thinking of that night twelve years ago.”

The arm about her increased its pressure.

“I know,” he said, tenderly. “You are a bit of an old worry pot, aren’t you? The fact is that you have been too closely associated with the blacks, especially the lubras, and have borrowed much of their belief in the supernatural. Because poor dad failed to come home one night, you needs must imagine that I won’t turn up. It’s piffle when you come to think of it, isn’t it? Anyway, I’m home safe and sound, and it’s raining good and hard and looks like raining all night, and perhaps it will rain for a week and we’ll have feed and water for years. I don’t see anything to worry about, but everything to dance about.”