The Bone is Pointed. Arthur W. Upfield
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table, his mother at his right, Jimmy Partner at the other table end. They spoke of the skin cheque, the rabbits, the season and the stock, the cricket and the chaos of Europe and Asia.
The John and Mary Gordons are not rare in the inland, but the presence of an aboriginal at their table is so. Jimmy Partner was a splendid product of “beginning on them young.” He was a living example, showing to what degree of civilization an Australian aboriginal can reach if given the opportunity. He sat before this table upright and mentally alert. He ate with no less politeness than did the woman who had reared him that he might be a companion to her own child when it was evident he would have no brother. He spoke better than many a white hand, and his voice was entirely free of the harsh accent to be heard in the voices of many university professors, and other literate Australians. He could and did discuss well the topics found in the weekly journals that he read. His personal habits were above reproach. He was the crown of achievement set upon the heads of Mary Gordon and her dead husband.
At the close of the meal John Gordon reached for tobacco and papers and matches, but Jimmy Partner began his customary after-dinner service of washing the dishes whilst the “missus” attended to her bread batter. John crossed to the hen house to lock the fowls safely in from the foxes, and then in the dusk of advancing evening he passed through the gate in the wire fence and so trod the winding path taken by his mother that night of rain in April.
At the camp the tired children were playing as far distant from the communal fires as fear of the dreaded Mindye, that bush spirit ever on the watch to take blackfellows who wandered at night, would permit. The lubras were gossiping in a group near one of the bag and iron humpies and the men were talking gravely whilst crouched about another fire. All the children ran to “Johnny Boss” to escort him into the camp, a toddler clinging to each hand. The lubras ceased their chatter and, unabashed, smiled at him. The men saluted him with:
“Good night, Johnny Boss!”
Observing Nero squatted over a little fire a hundred odd yards distant from the camp, Gordon replied to their salutations, patted the toddlers on their black heads, and walked on to join the chief, his pace unhurried, his face lit by the lamp of prideful affection for all these sixty odd members of the Kalchut tribe.
Old Nero squatting on his naked heels before his little fire was not unlike an ant standing at bay before an enemy, when its body is upright and almost touching the ground. His little fire was being fed with four sticks that now and then were pushed farther into the glowing mound of red embers. John squatted likewise on his heels opposite the chief, so that the little fire was between them and the tiny flames made dark-blue the spiral of smoke rising like a fluted column between their heads.
“Good night, Johnny Boss,” Nero said softly, his black eyes regarding the white man casually but benignly.
When he spoke Gordon used a different language from that in which he conversed with his mother and Jimmy Partner. Nero, like others of the tribe, had been saved from becoming de-tribalized.
“Jimmy Partner he say you tellum big feller black p’liceman come to Opal Town,” he said, interrogatively.
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