Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

Was the idea of sleep being suggested to his mind?

For five or six long minutes Bony fought the demon of panic, while his motionless body rested on his heels. Little beads of moisture glistened on his broad forehead and at the corners of his mouth. His will eventually beat down the panic. Now he knew that he could and would pretend to submit to the suggestion to sleep. Uncertainty in the immediate future would be unbearable.

In simulation Bony rose to stretch his arms and to yawn. He made a little hole in the soft sand of the ground to take his hip and settled himself so that he lay on his left side facing the horse, his head resting on his left forearm and his right hand tucked away under his body, the fingers firmly curved about the butt of his automatic pistol. His eyes partially closed, and his mind at work countering the suggestion to sleep, he maintained a steady watch on the dozing horse, while listening to the chattering galahs.

The minutes passed in slow procession. The invisible birds screamed once and then flew to another tree to continue their chattering in which now was certain anger. Then the horse awoke to toss her head, then to stand without movement and to stare at a point beyond Bony’s range of vision.

Slowly now she began to move the angle of her head, and to Bony it was obvious that she was watching something moving, something that was approaching him. Then he saw it. A tall black figure slowly became detached from the trunks of a tree standing in shadow. The man was entirely naked save for the masses of feathers about his feet.

It was Wandin. His hair was glued with clay and encircled with a ring fashioned fromcanegrass. He carried no weapon, neither waddy nor spear. He carried, like any one might carry a saucer filled with tea, a curved piece of bark. When he entered the sunlight Bony saw clearly his face fixed by the expression of hatred, his eyes alive like black opals.

How carefully he carried the piece of bark in his right hand! It might have been filled to the brim with liquid, but, as Bony knew, it contained not liquid but powder. Without sound, the aboriginal drew near and nearer to the recumbent man so sorely tempted to shoot with the weapon he kept hidden beneath his body. What Wandin was going to do could be prevented now, but not for always. What he did not achieve now another would achieve in the future.

And so Wandin came to stand close to Bony. His right hand carried the bark over Bony’s body and tilted it so that the powder fell in a mist upon him. That Bony continued inactive, that he did not spring to his feet and shoot down this sorcerer carrying out a further step in the boning, said much for the half-caste’s courage and power of will. He began to tremble when Wandin retreated, but gave no sign that he was awake.

So the blacks had been tracking him for weeks, and intuition had again served him well. The Kalchut were behind the disappearance of Jeffery Anderson, and knowing Bony to be a danger to them, they were preparing to remove him.

Well, they could get on with their boning. He would fight it with all the strength of his mind, and again he would triumph over his aboriginal ancestry as he had so often done before. He would put on the armour of the white man and carry the weapons of mockery and cynicism. By the shade of the Little Corporal himself! Was he a savage? Was he an ignorant nomad of the bush? Was he a child to suffer palpitation of the heart because a black ghost had appeared in broad day? Was he a mental weakling to suffer evil born in lesser minds, to be frightened away from this absorbing investigation by the mental power of a people free of the curse laid upon Adam?

He pretended to awake. He sat up, stared about, scrambled to his feet and gathered sticks with which to replenish the fire. He knew the worst now, and now he felt strong.

Pointed Bones and Eagle’s Claws

THE most potent magic is that brought from a great distance.

When the world was young, when the white men, probably, weregug-guggering like apes, an old Pittongu man left the Murchison Range to travel far to the north. Like a knight of a much later age, he was well armed, carrying with him stone axes, stone knives, barbed spears, and a particularly deadly magic calledmaringilitha.

One day, when well forward on his journey, he dropped some of themaringilitha which, on striking the ground, caused a great explosion. The old Pittongu (bat) man was blown into dust, as were all his weapons, and on the place arose a great stone surrounded by very many little stones. Into the big and all the little stones entered the bat man’smaringilitha magic, so that these stones became of great commercial value to the tribes who owned the land, theWorgaia and theGnanji.

The most daring members of these tribes from time to time collected little stones and sang into them their own particular curses, then wrapped each stone in paper bark and tied the bark with human hair string. To all the tribes far south and east this new form of magic, calledmauia, came to be considered one of the most potent forms of magic that could be employed against an enemy.

Several of these stones had in the course of inter-tribal trade come into the possession of the Kalchut tribe, and were safely kept, with the sacred articles used in initiation ceremonies, in the secret storehouse situated somewhere among the hills east of Meena Lake.

Previous to Bony’s visit to theGordons, Nero and several of his older men had travelled to the storehouse, from which they had taken one of themauia stones and the pointing bone apparatus. Subsequently Wandin had set out with themauia stone in the dilly-bag suspended from his neck, to await a favourable opportunity of “opening” Bony’s body that the magic of the pointed bones might more easily enter it.

Seen only by the galahs, he had watched the meeting of Bony and Sergeant Blake, and then, when the policeman had departed, he had sat with his arms rested on his hunched knees and his forehead pressing down upon his arms, and willed Bony to sleep. Thinking he had achieved this, he scraped particles off themauia stone on to a piece of bark, carried the bark to the recumbent form of the half-caste, and spilled over him the dust of the magic stone.

Having then retreated to a secret camp, he made a fire and placed on it the piece of bark, watching to see how the bark would burn. It burned slowly, telling Wandin that the prospective victim would die slowly.

Out of the tribe’s sight that night he and his chief held a conference about a little fire. It was decided to perform the boning during the night of the full moon, when, it was thought, the dreaded Mindye, so fearful of the light, would tarry at his home.

Thus, when the full orb of the copper-coloured moon rose above the sharp rim of the uplands east of the lake, Nero and Wandin stole from the camp, regarded fearfully by the men and the women who suspected a deed of magic was to be committed this night. They passed the Meena homestead almost immediately below the veranda on which John Gordon sat reading to his mother who was knitting. On went Nero and Wandin, their naked feet making no sound, their black bodies covered only with trousers, until they stopped before a tree killed by lightning and never since used by the nesting birds.

It was Nero who knelt before the tree and Wandin who climbed on his broad back to reach a hand into a great hole in the trunk. From this hole he brought out the pointing bone apparatus which he thrust into his dilly-bag.

Neither man spoke and, turning away, they began the journey to the secret camp. Nero walked first, taking unusual care never to touch a fallen stick with his feet, careful to followclaypans as much as possible, Wandin walking in his tracks so that it would appear that only one man walked abroad this night.