The Will of the Tribe. Arthur W. Upfield
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we got home about eleven in the morning and Old Ted returned from Beaudesert about four. Young Col was still away at Eddy’s. He returned the next day, the 24th, and this day I worked here in the office and Old Ted repaired saddlery. We had a spell on the 25th. On the 26th we prepared to leave for the muster, and on the 27th we left at seven in the morning. It was this day that the plane people saw the body. Enough?”
“During the period was there any unrest, any trouble with your Aborigines?”
“They were quiet as usual,” replied Brentner, sitting down again.
“Thank you. Now I’ll state my own position. I’ve been seconded by my Department to an instrumentality of the Federal Government to find answers to two questions. One question is how did the man found dead in the Crater penetrate this far into the Kimberley Region without having been reported by the station homesteads? And the other is what was he doing prior to his death? It is known who he was, and thus the answers to these questions are important to the Federal Instrumentality, which is not interested particularly in how he met his death.”
“Oh!” softly exclaimed Rose Brentner. “Who was he then?”
“It was the question I asked, and I was not informed, it being thought extraneous to the purpose of my investigation. However, the Western Australian Police Department sought, and was granted, my seconding to investigate the killing of this, even to me, unknown man. It would appear that I am to serve two masters.”
Rose Brentner watched the long brown fingers rolling a cigarette, and then she studied the dark brown face on which Aboriginal race moulding was absent. The face was neither round nor long. The nose was straight, the mouth flexible. The brows were not unlike a veranda to shadow the unusual blue eyes and, although the black hair was now greying at the temples, it was virile and well kept. Then he was looking at her and the features vanished before the power of the eyes.
“It is agreed, I believe, that anyone travelling through the Kimberleys is reported, when arriving at or passing through a station, over the radio network. Such a person is news for everyone here and, because of the great distances between the station homesteads, the constantly known whereabouts of the traveller is almost vital for his own safety.”
Bony now took Brentner into his confidence, and Howard leaned forward as though he thought he might miss something.
“Without doubt you are familiar with the geography of this north-west corner of Australia, but I will use the simile of the open fan to illustrate the circumstances about this case. We will place the handle of the opened fan at Lucifer’s Couch. Out along the left vane, or whatever it is, lie half a dozen homesteads on the track to Derby. Out along the centre are half a dozen homesteads, including the town of Hall’s Creek, on the track to Wyndham. And along the right vane other homesteads lie on the track to Darwin. The traveller enters these Kimberleys by one of those tracks, as there is no other. It is my opinion that the traveller could come here only across the desert to the south, from a point on its perimeter a thousand odd miles away.
“He couldn’t cross that desert without the wild Aborigines knowing all about him, any more than a traveller can cross the Kimberleys without the station Aborigines knowing all about his movements. You, Mr Brentner, and Constable Howard, will surely agree with me that the Aborigines still removed from long and close association with the whites also have a broadcasting system, developed through past centuries, and I think you will agree with me, too, that espionage organizations set up by outside governments are amateurish by comparison with the methods employed by these Australian Aborigines, who could make the cloak-and-dagger boys stand gaping at street corners.
“Forgive me for being repetitious. I shall be asking for your co-operation and should be grateful did I receive it. Your own Aborigines know who killed that man and who put him in the Crater. They might not have had anything to do with the crime, but their elders surely know the details. Thus we proceed without taking into our confidence any Aborigine, including Captain and Tessa. Will you think about it?”
Rose Brentner smiled and stood, saying, “Of course, Bony. Just look at the time! Dinner will be ready in an hour and I’ve to dress. Can we continue afterwards?”
“I may have to test your hospitality for several weeks, and we must not permit ourselves to be bored by any one subject.”
Bony was assured that no subject could be boring to people starved for outside contacts and was conducted to a pleasant room facing across the compound to the creek trees. Having been given the hint by Howard, he changed into more formal clothes and, on hearing a triangle beaten with a bar, made his way to the dining-room. Here he found his host and Howard, with two young men, gathered before a sideboard, and was offered beer or sherry.
A red-bearded, blue-eyed man was presented to him as Old Ted, and a boy looking no older than sixteen was presented as Young Col. Young Col’s hair was fair and over-long, and his hazel eyes glinted with mischief. Both spoke with polished accents.
“We have heard about you, Inspector,” Young Col said, raising his glass as though to toast. “Nothing to your discredit. Could I be wrong, Ted?”
“Not this time,” replied the bearded man and, raising his glass, added, “Here’s to the Guest of Honour. May his stay with us always be peaceful.”
“It always will, provided you call me Bony.”
“Delighted. What d’you reckon, Chief?” inquired the red man.
“Comes easy to the tongue,” agreed the cattleman.
Tessa came in, this time with the two children. Bony greeted them and smiled into their excited eyes. A tall thin man in chef’s livery appeared, carrying a large platter, and was followed by a young Aborigine woman, wearing cap and apron over a black dress, bearing another tray.
The room, the appointments, the company, Bony found most pleasing, and he quickly realized it was due to Rose Brentner’s long influence over this homestead. Her husband talked easily, the young men teased Howard, the children asked questions without seeming to intrude, and Tessa supervised their meal. He was promised introduction to a Mister Lamb, who was a pet sheep, to a Mrs Bluey, the mother of a litter of five pups, and to a pet kangaroo called Bob Menzies.
He met Mister Lamb the following morning when, after arranging with Howard about times he could be contacted by radio, and having watched the policeman’s jeep disappear beyond the creek crossing, he was made aware of this animal by being bunted gently against his leg. Little Hilda then informed him that Mister Lamb requested a cigarette, and she was enumerating Mister Lamb’s virtues and vices when she was called to the school-room by her mother.
Rose beckoned and Bony joined her on the veranda. She said, “Come along in for morning tea. I’m dying to gossip, and I want to know all about you. The men will be busy all morning, so I have my chance.”
“Everyone knows all about me,” he told her, lightly.
“I don’t. I’m an inquisitive woman. To us you are wonderfully unusual.”
“I am the most unusual man in Australia,” was the humorously expressed claim. He was laughing and she knew it was at himself. As he told her of his origins and the highlights of his career, victories over himself rather than over others, the sense of superiority which had been with her was expunged from her mind. She admitted she hadn’t been able to brew tea in a billy-can when she came to Deep Creek as a bride, and she spoke of the many amenities she had missed, and the blessings she had been given. Eventually he asked if he might talk shop, and to this she nodded.
“I’d like to go into your experiences on that day the plane people dropped the message,” he said. “It was a bad day, wasn’t it?”
“Everything went wrong from the moment I read the message.”
“So I’m given to understand. You couldn’t get the transceiver working, and yet Mr Leroy found no difficulty in opening up. There is the possibility that someone disconnected something to delay word getting to Howard, and then made the connexion just before Leroy got here. What do you think?”
“It