Corroboree (37 page)

Eyre stared at him. ‘You mean to tell me that you killed Arthur because you thought that those two bountyhunters had to be avenged?'

‘Not I, Mr Walker-sir. Ngurunderi.'

‘And how exactly did—
Ngurunderi
make this requirement known to you?'

‘There have been signs, Mr Walker-sir, ever since those men were buried.'

‘What signs, precisely?' Eyre snapped at him.

Joolonga said, ‘In the sky, sir. That is where Ngurunderi made his home. Two clouds, shaped this way; then a single cloud.'

Eyre was both furious and frightened. If Joolonga had really killed Arthur; then the rest of them were equally at risk. Who knows what exotic excuses he could find to murder Dogger, or Christopher, or Eyre himself, when they were sleeping? The expedition would have to be called off; and they would have to take Joolonga back to Adelaide as their prisoner. Unless of course, they summarily executed him here.

‘Why in God's name didn't you tell me about any of this?' Eyre demanded. ‘What earthly right do you think you had to take this matter into your own hands? You're a danger to yourself and you're a danger to all the rest of us, as well. Damn it, Joolonga, if you believed you saw a sign from Ngurunderi, why didn't you say anything about it? That's what you've been brooding about, isn't it? And now you've killed Arthur, and brought the whole expedition to a useless halt. It's over. It's finished. And you're responsible.'

‘Ngurunderi would have stopped us himself, sooner or later, Mr Walker-sir. Far better to sacrifice Mr Mortlock, and spare the rest of us.'

‘Joolonga, I don't give a damn about Ngurunderi. I don't give a damn for your hocus-pocus and I don't give a damn for you. This is a Christian expedition and we shall abide by Christian morality.'

Joolonga put down his dish. ‘An eye for an eye, Mr Walker-sir? Isn't that what it says in your good book?'

‘Joolonga—you were supposed to be our guide. You were supposed to protect us in the bush. You were not supposed to set yourself up as our judge and executioner.'

Joolonga raised one hand, the light-coloured palm facing towards Eyre. ‘This is my country, Mr Walker-sir, and in my country I know how to protect the people in my care. Believe me, Mr Walker-sir, there was no other way. Mr Mortlock's spirit was forfeit. When men die wrongly, the one who brought about their death has to die, too. It is the balance of life.'

Eyre said, with a dry throat, ‘How did you kill him? Come on, Joolonga, I want to know.'

Joolonga reached into the pocket of his coat and produced a packet made of tanned kangaroo-hide. He unwrapped it, and then held out on the palm of his hand a pointed white bone, almost pistol-shaped, highly polished. It looked like the shin-bone of a euro, or a small red.

‘I said from the first, sir, that he had the mark of death on him.'

‘You didn't say that it was you who had pointed the bone.'

‘Would you have believed me, Mr Walker-sir, if I had told you that this bone had brought about Mr Mortlock's sickness? Do you believe me now?'

‘Give it to me,' said Eyre.

Joolonga carefully laid the pointing-bone on to Eyre's palm. Eyre felt the weight of it: it seemed to be unusually heavy for a bone so small. And even through the kangaroo-hide wrapping, he was sure that it felt cold. A dry, ancient artefact from a magical age. As cold as the night. As frigid as the Southern Cross.

‘That was all you did to Arthur? Point this bone at him?'

‘That was all that was necessary, Mr Walker-sir.'

‘Eyre slowly stood up straight. He didn't know what to say. Joolonga had suddenly confronted him with one of the greatest tests of his religious convictions since he had decided not to take holy orders. He had set out on this expedition with the unusual but firm belief that
all
faith, no matter how it was expressed, found equal favour in the eyes of God—that God's power and influence could be called upon in any language, by any ritual, and that God
would answer any prayer, regardless of whether it was addressed to Yahweh or Allah or Baiame.

As long as those who called for help were ready to acknowledge the moral supremacy of a higher Being, then all of God's strength could be theirs.

Eyre had believed that Yanluga's spirit could be laid to rest by Yonguldye the medicine-man. But could he now bring himself to believe that Joolonga had killed Arthur Mortlock simply by pointing a bone at him? If he could, then Joolonga was a fearful threat to all of them, and to the whole expedition. Or perhaps he wasn't—because if he
had
killed Arthur, then everything he had said about Ngurunderi, and the necessity for avenging the killings of Chatto and Rose—well, it was conceivable that all that had some basis in reality, too.

If on the other hand Joolonga
hadn't
killed Arthur, he could still be very dangerous. After all, he had pointed the bone at him with the
intention
of killing him; and he seemed quite pleased that Arthur had died. Next time, he might try murdering his white companions with something less innocuous than a kangaroo's shin-bone—like a knife or a rifle.

Then there was the possibility that Joolonga was lying, and that he had deliberately poisoned Arthur's food. There were plenty of virulently poisonous fruits in the scrub, especially the brilliant red macrozamia nuts, and certain yams. Joolonga may even have stolen poison from Eyre's medical supplies. There were small bottles of salt of lemons and pearlash in his box, both of which could bring on bloody vomiting, and even madness.

At last, however, Eyre gave Joolonga back his bone. ‘I'm going to put you on trust,' he said quietly. ‘I cannot arrest you here, nor can I put you in irons. You would just become an encumbrance. Nor would there be any point in shooting you, since we need your guidance to continue. And we
are
going to continue. We are going to pursue this expedition of ours to wherever it may lead us. We are going to find Yonguldye and we are going to find the
inland sea; and we are not going to return to Adelaide until we do. We have a great destiny to fulfil, and we shall fulfil it with glory.'

Joolonga watched him, warily. ‘Yes, Mr Walker-sir,' he acknowledged.

‘Yes
, Mr Walker-sir,' Eyre repeated. ‘Because you are going to behave yourself from this moment on. No more insolence, no more contemptuous behaviour, no more mumbo-jumbo or pointing of bones. If you try to harm any one of us in any way, then I warn you now that I will personally kill you, at once. You are a guide, and you will guide us, and that is all.'

‘You accuse me of Mr Mortlock's murder, Mr Walkersir?'

‘Yes, Joolonga, I do.'

‘Then what will you do when we return to Adelaide?'

‘I will have you arrested and tried.'

Joolonga said, ‘You are a brave man to tell me that, sir. Either brave or foolish.'

‘Not as foolish as you think, Joolonga. If you see us through this expedition, and bring us back safely, then it may be possible for me to forget the way in which Mr Mortlock died; and simply to say that he was suffering from food-poisoning.'

Joolonga sat back, hugging his knees, and slowly grinned. ‘You are an interesting man, Mr Walker-sir. You seem to be one who dreams, and yet your dreams move mountains. Perhaps we are all dreaming with you.'

Eyre said nothing; but slid cautiously back down the gully to the camp-fire, where Dogger and Christopher were finishing their supper.

‘I was just telling Joolonga to buck his ideas up,' said Eyre.

‘About time, too, coal-black bastard,' sniffed Dogger.

‘I find him impossible,' said Christopher. ‘He's the strongest case for keeping the blackfellows uneducated that I've ever come across. Obstinate, wilful, badtempered, and bloody ugly.'

‘Don't imagine the blackfellows think very much of
your
looks,' grinned Dogger, nudging Christopher in the ribs. ‘Whenever they see a bright-red fizzog like yours, they say, “Time to wake up, it's sunrise.” They do have a sense of humour, you know.'

Christopher said, ‘Are we going to go on, now that Arthur's dead?'

Eyre nodded. ‘There's nothing to go back for; and every reason for going on.'

‘And you're sure you can trust Joolonga? You seemed to be having rather a testy discussion with him up there.'

‘I was simply reminding him that, out here, the first duty of each of us is to his companions, and to the whole expedition.'

Dogger spat into the fire. ‘Eyre's right, you know. You don't have to worry about trust in the outback, Joolonga needs us just as much as we need him. The only time that you ever have to worry about trust is when you've run out of everything—food, horses, water, and leather boots. That's when you start looking at each other and imagining each other as cutlets and chops.'

His spit sizzled in the fire, and he suddenly realised what he'd done. He looked up towards the night sky, and took off his hat, and said, in an apologetic voice, ‘Sorry, Arthur. Forgot myself there, for a moment.'

By noon the following day, the temperature had already risen to 100. They rode single file through a distorted landscape of brindled scrub and twisted bushes, under a sky that was as blue as a sudden shout.

Joolonga rode ahead, with Eyre a little way behind. Somehow, their talk yesterday evening had excited a fresh awareness between them; and although Eyre remained as suspicious of Joolonga as ever, he began to sense that the Aborigine guide was just as determined to see this expedition through as he was himself; and that for their different reasons they both needed to see this extraordinary act of social and geographical drama brought to whatever conclusion history might demand.

It might end in the bush, with exhaustion, and bones. It might end in frustration and giving-up. It might end in magnificent triumph. But both of them had made up their minds with equal strength that it would succeed.

Dogger said to Eyre, as they sat under the patient shade of their horse a little after midday, swatting at the flies which crawled all over their faces and arms, ‘Do you know something, Eyre? About an hour ago, I asked myself a question.'

‘What question was that?' Eyre wanted to know. He took a carefully measured mouthful of warm leathery water, swilled it around his mouth, and then swallowed it.

‘I asked myself: Dogger, I asked, what in blazing hell are you doing here, sitting on this horse, sweating your way through the bush like a boiled bandicoot, when you could be back on Hindley Street in the comfortable arms of Mrs McC, well-drunk on ice-cold beer, and with a belly full of pot-pie? That's what I asked myself.'

Eyre looked at him, brushing away again and again a persistent fly that seemed determined to land on the same
spot on the side of his nose, whatever happened. ‘What was the answer?' he asked Dogger, with a smile.

‘The answer was, I don't know. I suppose I'm like the sailor; who every time he went to sea, he was homesick; and every time he came home, he was seasick.'

From the shadow of his horse, where he was lying with his head back on his carefully rolled-up jacket, with the casual air of a reclining picnicker, Christopher said, ‘I think I'd give a year of my life to be back at the racecourse now, eating an ice, and watching Mr Stewart's Why Not in the three o'clock. It would be a fine thing to see a decent elegant horse again, instead of these equine elephants.'

At that very moment, there was a loud clattering noise; and Christopher shrieked, and sprang up from under the horse, flapping his hands at his shirt and britches. ‘Bloody thing pissed on me! Of all the bloody nerve!'

Eyre and Dogger laughed until they were weak, rolling and kicking around in the dust. Eyre at last stood up, coughing the dust out of his lungs, and put his arms around Christopher's shoulder. ‘My dear chap. Don't you know that you should never malign a horse within earshot.'

‘And especially not within pizzle-shot,' put in Dogger. ‘By God, I've seen some fellows jump. But you!'

They rode on, into the afternoon. As they rode, the land subtly changed from mallee scrub to flat salt marshes, dried out in glittering swirls of pink and white, like ground glass, and dotted with tussocks of tough grass. The wind persisted hot north-westerly, keeping the temperature high, and a flock of bustards rose against it, and then circled lazily in the air.

By mid-afternoon, the land began to rise a little, and they were riding again through scrubby savannah, with an occasional scattering of stunted mulga trees on the low horizon. The spinifex grass was so sharp that sometimes it drew blood from the horses' legs; and the ground between each clump was uncompromisingly stony and hard. But shortly after four o'clock they reached a twisting
gully; and at the far end of it was a small reflecting pool of water, its sides stained like a geological rainbow with the various minerals which had evaporated from it during the dry season. A frightened collection of red gums grew around the pool, and their branches were thick with zebrafinches.

Joolonga dismounted, and led his horse down to the edge of the water. Eyre followed him; then Christopher and Dogger. Weeip and Midgegooroo began to unpack some of the leather water-bottles, so that they could replenish their supplies.

The water in the pool was low, and tasted metallic; but it was cooler and fresher than the water they had been drinking from their bottles. Dogger knelt down by the edge of the pool and drank until water gushed out of the sides of his mouth; then washed his face in it.

Eyre said to Joolonga, ‘No sign of Yonguldye.'

Joolonga replaced his midshipman's hat and looked around. Then he beckoned to Eyre, and the two of them climbed up the far side of the gully until they reached a second ravine, which must have been carved out centuries ago by the water which once flowed through these plains. There were signs of an Aborigine encampment here: a fire which had been left to burn after the nomads had left, and which had blackened the grass all up one side of the ravine. Bones, pieces of wood, and three shelters made out of mulga branches and woven grass.