Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

By degrees Bony took stock of the remarkable change within himself. He was astonished by the absence of pain from his body, for no longer did the darting pain-arrows shoot through him like white-hot comets. Timidly he moved himself on the stretcher bed, and instead of pain there was that delightful desire to animate muscles. And with this physical well-being had come the return of health to his mind. Gone was the heavy, cramping depression that like a dark fog had blinded his mental vision. His mind this morning felt free and illuminated by a radiance not of earthly day.

Something had happened away over at Meena Lake to interrupt the willing of his death.

For several minutes Bony’s freed mind energetically attacked this thought, energetically because the new-won freedom delighted it. It was thus engaged when simultaneously the two dogs camping at the tent’s entrance growled, and then, with nerve-torturing abruptness, broke into frenzied barking. Together, they raced to the skirting boundary fence, leapt over the barrier and sped away to a distant point to the north-west. The barking stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

The ensuing silence was unbroken even by the watching butcher-bird. A shaft of yellow light was laid along one slope of the canvas roof by the rising sun. Then to Bony’s straining ears came the dull thudding of the hooves of a horse approaching the fence from the north-west. An iron-clanked, and presently the dogs returned to the tent. One pressed a cold nose against Bony’s forearm, the other attempted to lick his face. Thus they announced the arrival of a visitor.

Bony softly ordered them to be quiet. They obeyed, one taking his stand beside the stretcher, the other sitting against the tent wall. Both listened with ears cocked. Then a not unpleasant voice shouted:

“Good day-ee, boss!”

It was the voice of an aboriginal.

Both dogs growled, but both tails wagged.

“Good day, there! Whatd’you want?”

“Me Malluc.”

According to age-old custom Malluc had halted fifty yards from the camp, waiting for permission from the occupier to enter.

Malluc! Now what did he want here so early in the morning? Bony demanded his business.

“Johnny Boss, hesentum letter feller.”

“You bring letter feller here,” instructed Bony. A letter from John Gordon! It might be so, but it might mean an open attack by the people who had so persistently boned him. The small automatic pistol was drawn from beneath the pillow. He heard the light sound of boots crunching loose sand. Again Bony ordered the dogs to be quiet.

Into the triangle presented by the raised flaps normally hanging before the entrance to the tent appeared the figure of an aboriginal, tall and grey of hair and beard. He was wearing a suit of very old dungarees, and his feet were encased in elastic-sided riding boots much too large for them. He carried the white envelope in his left hand. There was no weapon in his right hand, nor was one attached to his person, and the boots on the feet precluded the possibility of a spear being dragged along the ground by his toes. He smiled broadly at Bony who had raised himself the better to see the visitor.

“Drop the letter feller,” ordered Bony, who then, when the order was obeyed, urged one of the dogs to: “Fetch it, Hool-’Em-Up.”

The dog, understanding that the order was for him, advanced to the letter and brought it to Bony. Malluc retreated but remained in view. Bony opened the letter and read:

I regret to hear that you are ill of the Barcoo sickness. I learned of it only yesterday. I am sending to you the Kalchut medicine man, knowing him to be an expert on gastric troubles. If any man can effect a swift cure, Malluc can do so. He has treated both my mother and me with great success.

The development was so curious that Bony could not at once decide what to do. That these aboriginal medicine men could effect cures for diverse complaints he was well aware. Still, the process of willing him to death had been interrupted. Of that he felt sure. That John Gordon had stopped the boning was likely enough; but might the coming of Malluc mean a different kind of attack upon him, an attack of physical violence, since the attack of mental violence had been stopped? To permit a hostile aboriginal near him when he was physically weakened by the torture of the boning would be the height of stupidity.

The figure of Malluc disappeared from the triangle opening of the tent. The butt of the pistol was comforting to Bony’s hand. If the attack was to be made it would not be delayed, but an attack appeared to be illogical in face of Gordon’s letter. And then the figure of Malluc reappeared before the tent doorway.

He now wore the insignia of his profession. A human hair string tufted his long grey hair high above his forehead, and suspended from this hair string, so that they rested against the forehead, were five gum leaves. Through his nose was thrust a nine-inch stick with needle-pointed ends. He had discarded his white man’s clothes and boots, now wearing only the pubic tassel of kangaroo skin. On his chest and abdomen, brilliantly white against the black of his skin, was emblazoned the Kalchut sacred drawing, an artistic masterpiece done in pigments that had defied the friction of his clothes.

He was indeed a medicine man, and Bony was induced to submit to treatment by the knowledge that no medicine man of the inland tribes may do evil. Their role is to cure. What probably assisted Bony in making his decision was his inherited respect for any aboriginal doctor, and his inherited faith in their power to heal.

“What you do, boss?” asked Malluc. “You crook feller all right. You full of pointed bones and eagle’s claws. Me fine feller medicine man. Malluc him see him bones and him claws in your insides.”

Bony was aware that, as the show of pointing the bone must precede the actual working of the evil, so the show of healing would have to precede the actual treatment. He understood, too, that although the boning had ceased he was still in a condition bordering on prostration and that it would take weeks for his body to become strong again. Often the curative effects of the medicine concocted for gastric complaints were astonishing in their swiftness. And so he said:

“You good feller blackfeller, Malluc. You make me strong, eh?”

Malluc grinned, nodded and again vanished. A few seconds later Bony heard the crackling of firewood thrown upon the still hot ashes of his campfire. Knowing that the medicine man would require his body outside, Bony slowly pushed his legs over the edge of the stretcher and sat up. Immediately pain entered him like swords of fire, to send him down upon the bed, groaning aloud.

Then Malluc entered.

“Too right you crook feller,” he said. “You bin sung by the little pointed bones and the eagle’s claws. Me see ’emin your insides all swim about like blackfish feller.”

Slipping his arms under his patient, Malluc saw the small-bore automatic pistol but evinced no curiosity. He was now much more a doctor than an aboriginal. Without effort, he lifted Bony and carried him outside the tent, laid him down gently at the edge of the fire-heat and began to strip off his pyjamas.

After the terrible spasm of pain, Bony lay breathing fast, his “insides” feeling as though in the grip of a steel-gauntleted hand. The sweat of terror dampened his forehead. Hope engendered by his awakening that morning had gone from him, and while he watched Malluc he realized that if the boning did not stop he would die. His iron resistance was at long last beaten down, and only in a detached kind of manner did he observe Malluc take from a gunny sack a roll of thin bark and empty the handful of dried leaves it contained into a billy. Malluc then added water and placed the billy to heat at the fire.