Arthur Upfield - Sands of Windee

He now awaited two things: the arrival of the aboriginal tribe and the receipt of Marks’s or Green’s official history. If a certain happening was mentioned in the history, it would justify his referring to an eminent authority the small thin silver disk, with the details regarding Marks, for positive identification. Should his own theory as to that silver disk be substantiated, then the death of the man Marks was proved.

On the evening of the third day of his cooking activities one of the riders informed him that the blacks would reach their main camping-ground, half a mile down the creek, where there was another deep water-hole, that night. Bony smiled and waited patiently. And the following evening, while he was washing up, a guttural voice spoke to him from the doorway, and there he saw Moongalliti’s cunning old face.

“Goo’-day-ee, Cook!” greeted the chief, with a broad happy grin as though welcoming a lifelong friend.

“Good day!” drawled Bony, carrying on with his work.

“Alf, ’e bin gone Mount Lion for pop-eye?” came the friendly inquiry.

“That so. Full up with grog by this time.”

Moongalliti laughed heartily, seating himself on the doorstep. Then: “You’mthe new cook, eh?”

“Yes.”

“What say? Bimeby yougibbit tucker, eh?”

“Perhaps.”

“You come long way? You no Windee feller, eh?”

“No. I come from North Queensland.”

“Um! Nor’ Queensland-long way, eh? Wot ’emyour totem?”

It was a question Bony had been expecting. The sergeant had told him that the totem of those people was the emu; and, to make him akin to them, he said: “My totem-emu. My lubra mother she emu totem.”

Moongalliti beamed, and regarded Bony with fresh interest. “Good, eh?” he exclaimed with seeming enthusiasm. Then he said something in his native dialect which Bony could not understand; and the half-caste told him in a North Queensland native dialect that Moongalliti was a spirit-slaying, bone-pointing old scoundrel, which that important personage likewise did not understand. He reverted to his broken English.

“You young feller bin-bin… You young feller bin made-bin made buck?” he inquired casually.

That was another question Bony had been waiting for. Laying aside the plate he was drying, he removed his white apron, and pulled up his shirt about his neck, and old Moongalliti saw welts made by a sharp flint on Bony’s chest, and chuckled with satisfaction.

“Youorlri ’, eh?” was his judgment.

Bony turned about and showed Moongalliti his back. Across his shoulders was cut a rough square and in its centre a circle, and when Moongalliti saw these his black eyes bulged and he crept closer to Bony, the better to examine the brand.

“My!” he said, almost in a sigh. “You beeg feller chief, Nor ’ Queensland, eh?”

Turning, Bony nodded, set his shirt in order, then resumed the apron of his calling. Moongalliti’s attitude towards the stranger half-caste had become almost deferential. He now was convinced that Bony had been through the initiation ceremony making of him a man, but he was astounded to see that Bony was very high in the mysterious cult, little known even among the blacks, which may be compared in many respects to the craft called Freemasonry.

Inwardly Bony was delighted to find that the old fellow recognized that sign. It would smooth away many difficulties of access to the heart and the mind of the chief or king of this small tribe.

Moongalliti left presently with as much waste and unused food as he could carry. Bony watched him across to the creek-bed, where he was met by an old white-haired gin and a much younger one who limped badly. With a lordly air Moongalliti gave them the food to carry, andhimself walked on before them. The next evening, and in the future, it would be the women who would come begging for food. The reason the chief had come himself that night was to “place” the strange half-caste, the new cook.

Thenceforward every morning two young lubras passed the kitchen on their way to work at the “Government House”, andrepassed on their way back to their camp every evening. At Bony they cast curious shy glances, and since he doubted not that both he and they were watched by Moongalliti or Ludbi, or others of the bucks, he made no overtures to them whatever. Regularly, when the men had finished dinner and he was cleaning up, two and sometimes three of the oldest gins came along asking for tucker, and tothese Bony made himself particularly pleasant.

To several of the young bucks Jeff Stanton offered employment at white man’s wages, but this they declined until such time as the corroboree was past. Judicious questioning of the hands, particularly of Jack Withers, elicited the fact that Moongalliti’s tribe consisted of forty-three adults, ofwhom eighteen were women, and an unknown number of children of all ages. The stockman, the man of the atrocious squint, was at all times exceedingly interested in the blacks, and was chaffed unmercifully by the others, who professed to consider him in danger of becoming a “combo”, or a white man who is married-more or less-to a lubra.

In any case, to Bony, who comforted his romantic heart with the salve of sympathy, Jack Withers related details regarding prominent members of the tribe which were useful to Bony, as well as obviating the necessity of too much questioning of Moongalliti. For Bony wanted that gentleman to think he was uninterested in the tribe just then.

And now nearly every day therearrived a strange aboriginal and sometimes a three-quarter or a half-caste. These, Withers explained, were relatives and members of the tribe come in from neighbouring stations for the corroboree. Going about their work in the paddocks, they had come across a sign informing them of the coming corroboree, and there and then asked for their pay and left their employment. Some came in buckboards, others on horseback, and one arrived on a resplendently new bicycle.

The majority of these late-comers were youths and quite young men. It was common knowledge among the whites and the adult blacks what they were facing. The young fellows themselves made shrewd guesses but appeared resigned. Singly they were induced to go hunting by several of the bucks and Moongalliti, and when purposely drawn near a certain place, which was a singular knob of ironstone twenty feet in height, the young man was suddenly seized by his companions and thrown to the ground. Quite heedless of his yells in their own excitement, they held him fast whilst Moongalliti proceeded to use a stone with a razor edge in such fashion that the yells became shrieks. After various cuts had been made the open gashes were plugged with a compound of mud and healing herbs and bound with rag-it used at one time to be grass-rope-whereupon the now adult buck was taken to an out-camp and kept there until it was time to remove the mud plugging, when the flesh would never again close over the cuts.

That went on for several days, till every uninitiated youth was made a buck, and then one day the whole of the male population came into the main camp triumphantly escorting the graduates, on whose heads was set a cone of dried mud and grass and their own hair. The gins acclaimed them and the smaller children regarded them with envy. Around the fire that night they felt themselves to be heroes, as indeed they must have been, remembering Moongalliti’s stone knife.

The stage now was set for the corroboree.

Jack Withers reported great activity in the black camp. From five to seven gins visited Bony every evening, and one of them, very ugly and fat, to whom no buck at the time was married, regarded Bonywtih favourable eyes. Deliberately and openly the unscrupulous Bony courted her. Besides her portion of scraps and old bread, he made for her delectable peach pies and crowned her happiness one evening with a great slab of toffee. After the others had gone she lingered and assisted in the clean-up for the day, and little by little Bony obtained-at least in part-the information he desired without giving her the faintest suspicion of what lay behind a few leading questions put to her at long intervals.