Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

“You tell Mr Bonaparte, John. You can tell it so much better than I can.”

“I don’t agree with you, mother, but I’ll do my best,” the son said, glancing at her and smiling gently. “Of course, Mr Bonaparte, neither mother nor I ever saw Grandfather Gordon. Father told us a great deal about him so that we feel we actually know him. He was a big, hard, raw-boned Scotsman who knew what he wanted and who knew how to keep what he got against all comers.

“Long before he came here, when he was a mere boy, he witnessed the slaughter of a party of blacks near the junction of the Darling River with the Murray. They were all shot down, first the men and then the women and children to the smallest baby. The only crime those blacks committed was to offer objection to their land being taken from them, and the food the land gave them.

“We must admit that then it was an age of brutality. All over the world, in every allegedly civilized country, men were flogged for next to nothing, and hanged for very little more. Millions were enslaved, the stench still clung to the torture chambers, and it was not uncommon for people to die of starvation.

“Grandfather grew to become a tough and hard man, but he was just. When he came out here and found this lake of water and the blacks who had lived beside it for unknown time, he saw that there was plenty of room for both them and him. He became their friend-and that wasn’t hard to accomplish, since they had never before had dealings with a white man.

“Of course there were minor troubles in the beginning, but grandfather settled these troubles, not with a gun, or with poison, but with his fists. TheKalchuts were fortunate in having as their chief a man namedYama-Yama, the present chief’s father. Yama-Yama was an intelligent man, and he and Grandfather Gordon between them drew up a kind of charter in which it was agreed that grandfather would not hunt kangaroos or other native animals, not shoot the birds on the lake, and not interfere with the blacks in any way. On their part they agreed not to kill cattle, or attack a white man, or interfere in any way with Grandfather Gordon or anyone belonging to him.

“Thereafter life for Grandfather Gordon and his wife ran smoothly until one of his shepherds interfered with one of the lubras. Yama-Yama said they would kill the shepherd. Grandfather told them to carry on, and, after the man was killed, he reported his death as due to accident. Never again did he employ a white man.

“You see, the preservation of the Kalchut tribe has been made possible by the fact that no road passes through the station. Westward of those hills beyond the lake there lies a great desert of sand-dune country, and thus Meena Lake occupies a land pocket, as it were.

“There were many things done by Grandfather Gordon that were wise and far-seeing. He never issued the blacks with rations unless drought destroyed their food-supplies, and then he issued only meat and flour. He and his wife never insisted that the blacks wear white men’s clothes: in fact, they frowned upon any alteration in their mode of living. My father continued that policy as far as he was able, and my mother and I have followed it, too, although we have been compelled to go as far as allowing the blacks to wear trousers and shirts when they want to.

“We have made mistakes, not being as wise as Grandfather Gordon and not having his really autocratic power. We have dreaded the coming of a missionary as much as officialprotectorship and interference. So far the Kalchut has escaped both. To-day our people follow the customs and tribal rites of their ancestors, and they and we have been blessed by an excellent chief in old Nero.

“Some of their customs, of course, weGordons have had to frown upon, gradually getting them prohibited. Then we have had to meet the ambition of the men of Jimmy Partner’s generation who have wanted to go and work on neighbouring stations, but we’ve got over one of the objections to their doing this by starting a banking account into which their wages are paid.

“The banking account is a communal one administered jointly by mother and me. It supplies cash for bare necessities-for food when it is needed, clothes for the winter and a ration of tobacco throughout the year. The account has been swollen by the tribe’s fox hunting and rabbit trapping these last few years. So that the few things the men and women have come to want have been supplied to them through their own efforts. They are far from being mendicants.

“Grandfather Gordon clearly saw that civilization was a curse laid on man, not a blessing. My father saw the shadow of civilization slowly creeping towards the Kalchut tribe, and my mother and I have constantly battled to delay its coming, knowing that the tribe would be overwhelmed, and wiped off the face of the earth. I hope you are not being bored, but you asked me to ride my hobby-horse, you know.”

“Bored!” exclaimed Bony, his eyes shining. “Please go on.”

Bony’s dark and youthfully handsome face was alight. Young Lacy sat without movement. And Mary Gordon stared steadily out over the lake bed towards the distant blue hills, as though she were seeing her husband and son slaying the beast called civilization. John Gordon sighed before continuing.

“We are fighting a losing battle, mother and I,” he said as though he too saw the picture Bony imagined his mother was seeing. “These people we call our people have never had the curse of Adam laid on them. They have never delighted in torture. They have never known poverty, for they have never known riches and power over their fellows. They cannot understand the necessity to work when the land provides them with simple needs. The strong succour the weak, and the aged always get first helping of the food. They never think to crush a fellow in order to gain a little power.

“They have known real civilization for countless ages. Before the white and yellow and other black races learned to speak to their kind, these Australian aborigines were conversing intelligently. They practised Christian socialism centuries before Christ was born. They have evolved an apparently complicated although really simple social structure which is wellnigh perfect. They don’t breed lunatics or weaklings. They never knew filth and disease before the white man came to Australia.

“And now the shadow of civilization falls on them although they don’t know it. Civilization came to shoot them down, to poison them like wild dogs, and then, to excuse itself, to depict the victims of its curse as half-wits in its comic papers, to sneer at them as naked savages, to confine them to reserves and compounds. It has taken away their natural food and feeds them on poison in tins labelled food.

“As I have pointed out, our geographical situation has been most favourable to the Kalchut. Our only serious trouble was with Anderson. My grandfather would have sooled the blacks on to exact their justice, but mother and I dared not do that when he raped a lubra maid working at Karwir homestead and nearly flogged Inky Boy to death. We had to combine with Old Lacy to hush up those crimes against our people, fearing to draw the official eyes of civilization in their direction.

“I don’t think, Inspector, that you’ll find Anderson dead, and if he is dead, I am certain our people did not compass his death. We knew that day where, approximately, every member of the tribe was. They trust us as much as we trust them, and we would have been told instantly had one or more waylaid Anderson and killed him.”

“Then we agree, Mr Gordon, that the only member of the tribe who could have killed Anderson was Jimmy Partner?” Bony asked.

The question caused Mary Gordon to cry, loudly:

“Oh but, Inspector, Jimmy Partner wouldn’t have killed him. Why, I reared Jimmy Partner. He grew up with John. He’s one of us.”