Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

“The tensile strength?”

“No. You know what I mean.”

“I will tell you that, and several other things, for I think I could rely on you should the necessity to do so ever arise. I found a wisp of green cable silk adhering to the trunk of a tree at about the height of a man’s head. It was detached from the cracker of Anderson’s stockwhip, and I think it was so detached when he was about to thrash a man as he once thrashed Inky Boy. Immediately afterwards he was killed.

“The situation of the tree indicates the approximate locality where Anderson was killed-always assuming he was killed. It might well have been he who was tied to the tree trunk and flogged to death with his own whip. I have been prevented from making a minute examination of the tree trunk, and the locality, by the constant surveillance maintained by one or more aboriginals who have adopted the blood and feathers method of leaving no tracks. Do you think you could get me two dogs?”

“What sort of dogs?”

“Mongrel cattle dogs for preference. I must become a huntsman. Could you bring me out two?”

“Yes, I could borrow them from the butcher, I think. When will you want them?”

“I’ll let you know. In a day or so. By the way, how long have you been stationed here?”

“Eleven years. Ten years too long.”

“I have been instrumental in having two senior police officers stationed in outback districts promoted to eastern districts. If you want a thing done, remember always go to the wife of the man who can do it. Who was the officer stationed here before you?”

“Inspector Dowling, now stationed at Cairns. He was here eight years.”

“Oh. He won’t do. Find out for me who was stationed here thirty-six-seven-eight years ago. The officer at that time is certainly now retired, but he may not be dead. If he is alive, get in touch with him, and ask him if he remembers an Irish woman, probably cook, employed at Karwir. Got that?”

“Yes.”

“Then that will be all to-day. Have the two dogs ready to bring out here when I call for them. Be discreet.”

For some time after Blake had left, Bony squatted beside his lunch fire smoking the eternal cigarettes. Now and then he moved to ease his legs, but not once since the policeman had left him did he look up or about. He knew, because his scalp and back informed him of it, that he was being watched, and he thought he knew the position of the watcher by the constant chattering of two or three galahs in a tree somewhere beyond his horse.

He was well aware that to pursue the watcher amid the close cover provided by the mulga forest would be fruitless, and that a search for his tracks would also be fruitless. Squatted there in the shade cast by the cabbage-trees, he was assailed by temptation. He was probably facing grave danger to his life; and he knew that there could be no possible reflection on his career if he at once threw up this case and obeyed the order to return to Brisbane. By refusing to abandon this investigation, he might well be dismissed from the service, for on former occasions when he had disobeyed a similar order the Chief Commissioner himself had added the threat of dismissal in his own handwriting. There was nothing personal in the typewritten communication he had just received.

Yet he knew he would never succumb to the temptation. Pride was his weapon; his reputation his armour. He would go forward even if he lost his official position, even if he lost his life. Once he failed to solve a case, once he was conscious of failure, it would be the beginning of the end for him. And for Marie, his wife, and for the boys, too. For they and he owed rank and social standing only to his invincible pride.

This day he was very different from the man who walked the earth as Detective-Inspector Bonaparte. Within Bony’s soul constantly warred the opposing influences planted therein by his white father and his black mother, and according to external influences of the moment, so did the battle favour one side or the other. To the fact of his alliance with the aborigines he had blinded Colonel Spendor, many of his colleagues, and many people like theLacys and theGordons. But he had not blinded these Kalchut blacks. They knew him, knew that never with the hammer of pride and the file of success would he break the racial bond. Their blood flowed through his veins. Their beliefs and their superstitions were implanted in the very marrow of his bones, and all his advanced education could not make him other than what he was.

And now his soul was swiftly becoming ruled by his mother and her people, the rule hastened by the Kalchut tribe. Their shadow had fallen upon him, a half-caste, when it would have failed utterly to touch a white man. A white man would never have suspected himself of being watched and tracked by people who were never seen and who left no sign of their movements on ground that showed the imprint even of scorpions.

Yes, they could kill him as it seemed certain they were about to do. They could demand his body and take it. He could never be free of the blood, never escape them. Ah-but he could! He could escape them before they struck. He could return to Brisbane, and there rant and rave at being ordered to return and so claim that he was officially prevented from successfully completing this case. Yes, he could do that. But he himself would know it for an excuse. Defeated by fear, within six months he and his would become bush nomads. Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte would indeed become poor old Bony. Better death than that. Compared with that what would be death?

His unseen trackers had retrieved his discarded cigarette ends, because they had once been one with his person. No longer was his trackers’ attitude towards him a negative one. They had resolved on action. They, or someone who controlled them, determined to deal with him, to remove him because he was dangerous. And he, being what he was, was open to receive their magic with which they would kill him.

They were preparing to point the bone at him.

The act of pointing the bone was, of course, merely a theatrical show, having a psychological effect both on the bone-pointers and the victim. The power to kill lay not in the outward show but in the mental willing to death conducted by the executioners. Bony knew that the pointing bone could be used by any male member of nearly all the Australian tribes, but its success in killing depended on the mental power of the pointers. If the victim could conquer inherited superstitions, and then if his mind were stronger than the minds of the bone-pointers, he might escape death long enough for his relations to find out who was pointing the bone and at once exact vengeance.

Once the bone was pointed at him, Bony, his escape from death would depend on his ability to resist the minds willing death long enough for him to finish his job and return to Brisbane where the white men’s influences, plus the service of a hypnotist, would free him of the magic.

A light, cold finger ran its tip up Bony’s spine and touched the roots of his hair. The pointing bone had killed thatDieri man away at the back of Lake Frome. Bony’s mind recalled the fellow’s terror-stricken face on which was written the awful knowledge of his doom. Five days he had lived before he died in convulsions-the eagle’s claws buried in his kidneys and the bones piercing his liver and heart. There had been that half-caste just over the southern Queensland border, he who had run away with a chief’s favourite lubra. A pointed stick had been aimed at him, and he had taken two months to waste away to death despite a white doctor, a squatter and his wife, and Bony. The doctor had said it was the Barcoo sickness.

Bony’s eyes closed. Doubtless it was the heat of the afternoon or, perhaps, the smoke of the fire. Or was it? Bony’s subconscious mind urged him to stand up, urged him to race to his horse and ride like the wind to Opal Town to hire a car to take him to the distant railway. He ought not to feel the need to sleep. He never slept during the daylight hours. He should not want to sleep now when his mind was so occupied with this case, and so influenced by the menace crowding close.