Man of Two Tribes (3 page)

“My father was brother to old Patsy Lonergan,” he explained. “Patsy just died in Norseman. I come along for his camels and gear.”

He prodded a forefinger into the fat covering the stockman's ribs, and they both laughed.

Chapter Four

HAVING been served tea in a tin pannikin and cake by an immense aborigine woman in the men's meal hut, Bony returned to the jeep where he had to wait for Easter only a few minutes.

The policeman appeared with the women, and they came together along the iron-hard path made from pounded ants' nests to stand for a moment, exchanging final messages. At the time Bony didn't know that these two women were sisters, and there appeared nothing in common to lead anyone to assume the relationship. The elder was large and genial, her eyes being grey and her mouth generous. The other was smaller and slight, her dark hair closely cut. Her eyes were large and intent, and her smile was obviously forced.

Both in their early thirties, neither wore make-up, and the complexion of both was the work of the sun and the wind. The larger woman asked to be remembered to Mrs. Easter, and the younger then reminded him not to forget the mail, which was odd, because Easter carried the mailbag under an arm.

These women, especially the younger, reminded Bony of someone he had met, and he was working on the puzzle in a way one does when passing an idle moment, when Easter shook hands formally and emerged from the gate. The women turned back to the house, and Easter came to the jeep into which he stored the precious mailbag.

“I sowed the wheat,” he said, softly. “The men are out but are expected back any time now. Told the women who you are, or are supposed to be, and your reason for coming.”

“Good! Take it all right?”

“Oh yes. Said they thought someone would come some time about Lonergan's gear, or would write about it. I've got that job fixed in mind you want me to do. Anything else?”

“Having accepted an assignment, my superiors exhibit astonishing impatience for results, Easter. Probably within a week or two you will receive an enquiry concerning me. Treat them kindly, Easter. Say I said, ‘Keep out and stay out.'”

“Or words to that effect.” Easter grinned, knowing that he faced away from the house. Bony removed his swag from the jeep as Easter climbed in behind the wheel.

That was all. The policeman turned the vehicle and without even a wave of the hand, departed.

Standing loosely, Bony rolled a cigarette and lit it like the man to whom time means nothing. He was aware that he was under observation, not necessarily by the white women, for whom he would be of little interest, but certainly by the aborigines to whom he wasn't related, even to the fiftieth degree of tenth cousin, and had no possible totem ties. From now forward he must be William Black.

Having tossed his swag into a scrub tree, safe from the assault of the homestead dogs when they returned from work, he walked the fifty odd yards to sit on a boulder overlooking the Nullarbor Plain. It was then four o'clock.

At ease, he gazed outward over the Plain, four hundred feet below. To the south and north were other dark headlands of this inland coast. Before him was space and sunlight to quicken a man's imagination, and behind lay the tree shadows, the rolling land and the dunes of white sand to give a sense of security and illusion of his own importance, providing comfort after the chill of nakedness imposed by the Plain.

No wonder the aborigines didn't like leaving this coast to venture far out on the sea of saltbush. They would want wood for real fires, not brush which makes a passing flash of heat. They would need something material back of them o' nights so that the Spirit of this land they named Ganba would not
steal upon them and breathe cold air between their naked shoulders. Man made only one careless slip in this country; by instinct the aborigines were never careless, and there are white men, but rare, who never make a slip and never are caught by Ganba.

Old Patsy Lonergan was one of these. He would leave this homestead with two camels and a dog, vanish within Easter's vacuum, and reappear after weeks to ‘put in' his dingo scalps and be credited with the bonus. He would repeat this, perhaps three times a year, and on the money enjoy a genuine bender lasting a fortnight or three weeks.

A foolish man? Of course not! There has to be a balance. If the body is starved it must be saved from death by food. And if the mind is pounded by threats of Ganba, then alcohol is an antidote, to balance the ledger of life, for alcohol is the open sesame to social conviviality so essential for the maintenance of sanity in the victim of solitude.

It was a pity that his current diary was begun only in the previous January, and that it covered merely the last expedition and that preceding it. Otherwise there might have been further reference to the aircraft he had heard when last at the camp he named Big Claypan.

He was a bright boy, that real nephew at Norseman who had located the diary. He had nous enough to understand the implication of the old man's note on the helicopter. His report on the mental state of his uncle, added to that of the local policeman, removed doubt that Lonergan had imagined he had seen it. Aircraft at night over that part of Ganba's country could have had no legitimate cause, its destination not a homestead, decidedly not a town or city, for none of these are within the vacuum.

The explosion that diary triggered! The messages and signals, the conferences! Spies sneaking around the back fence to watch atomic tests! As though the spies would be silly enough to leave Canberra where they gain all they want in cosy bars and at official cocktail parties.

Nonetheless, there was official as distinct from police interest; official interest being entirely confined to the preservation of what is called Security; police interest concerned merely with what had become of a missing person. And the two interests connected only by a sentence in a dingo trapper's diary.

A day or two at this homestead might provide a lead from the aborigines. Little escapes their observation. The head stockman had become friendly once he had seen proof of the stranger's sealing into the unknown tribe in faraway Queensland. Bony had given nothing of value beyond the ‘fact' of his relationship to Lonergan, and the purpose of his visit as well as the reason for being so far south of his Queensland tribe. And he had been given nothing of value excepting that the dingoes were not as numerous as some years and that they seemed to be keeping to the areas verging on the Plain.

Lonergan had owned two camels and a dog named Lucy. His gear and personal effects were still within the hut he always occupied when at the homestead and which he kept locked during his absences. His traps the head stockman knew little about and, with a chuckle quite divorced from humour, he told Bony that if he wanted to locate the traps he'd have to go out and find them. Where? In what direction? Another chuckle. A wave of the hand like a compass needle twitching from a flea bite.

No mention of a helicopter. But then no mention of the windmills, of the station utilities, of the Melbourne Cup about to be run. Black had asked no questions, not even where he might find his uncle's traps. Like the ordinary aborigine, William Black metaphorically pulled his forelock to the medicine man.

He watched Easter's jeep when it left the ‘coast' and went to sea, a tiny boat with an outboard engine, producing a short wake of thin dust. Finally all Black could see of it was the tiny dust puff which soon floated away. Seventy miles to Chifley! Just steer and wait for Chifley to come to you.

When the sun was casting its shadows far out upon the Plain, a slight noise caused Bony to turn and see the large man who was approaching him from the house. He walked with the unmistakable gait of the horseman, and was dressed in the unmistakable fashion of the cattleman, the faint tinkle of his spurs having been the sound to attract William Black.

“Good day-ee! You Black?”

Bony stood and with slow and bashful drawl replied that he was.

“I'm told you are Patsy's nephew. That right?”

Black essayed a smile of assent, kicked the dust with a boot, and from a shirt pocket produced the letter from the Norseman lawyer. He was a handsome man, this Weatherby, burned dark by the sun, made strong by the fight to succeed, poised like the man accustomed to giving orders. His dark eyes keenly examined the face of the lesser man, and his mind subconsciously noted the scuffing of the boot, the nervous reaction when in the presence of a superior. Accepting the letter, he broke the envelope and read it slowly as one habitually averse to scanning anything, be it a steer or a letter.

“All right, Black, you can collect your uncle's stuff. We don't want it, of course.” The voice was clear and deep, the accent ingrained by the ‘old' school. “All Patsy's things are stored in a hut we let him use. There's a credit on the books, too. What about that?”

William Black hesitated, and Mr. Weatherby snapped fingers.

“Well?”

“Better let it stay, Mr. Weatherby. The lawyer never said nothing about any money. I can tell him.”

“All right! Tell him. You had better come to the office for the key to the hut. And before you go, you must make out a list of the things you take. Write?”

“Yes, Mr. Weatherby.”

The cattleman moved away, and Black took his swag from the tree and slouched after him to the store building behind
the main house. The office was merely a corner of this store, stocked with foodstuffs, machinery parts, drapery, and a hundred other items needed on such a place.

“Now don't forget that list, Black,” Weatherby said. “I'll have it made in duplicate and you can sign one and I'll sign the other for the lawyer. In the morning I'll have the boys bring in the camels. The old man pass out comfortably?”

No hint of sympathy. Barely of interest. A hard man this Weatherby who, Bony surmised, was the elder of the brothers.

Again William Black sniggered, looked at everything save the man at the desk.

“Drunk as Chloe, Mr. Weatherby.”

The next question Weatherby put was wholly in order as the subject was the always problematic financial state of a gold prospector. He asked if Patsy Lonergan had left much of an estate, and was neatly informed that the lawyer hadn't read the will excepting to a daughter and another nephew.

“H'm! What part d'you come from?” was the question bound to be asked by any intelligent white man, and this one was satisfied with the answer, and didn't smile when William Black told him that Lonergan had spent several years in Queensland when a much younger man. The dinner triangle was beaten and Weatherby rose from behind the desk, saying:

“Your uncle was a tough old timer. You know, Black, now I come to think on him, he wasn't so silly as he made out sometimes. The country got him all right, there's no doubt about that. It'll get any man who goes into it alone for weeks and months, and the man who does go out alone prospecting for metals and scalps and suchlike may be a fool, but he's a damn courageous fool. Now you go along to the men's quarters for dinner. See you in the morning.”

“Thanks, Mr. Weatherby,” William Black said respectfully, and departed.

Already in the meal hut were several aborigines, including the head stockman, and two half-castes. The head stockman laughed at him, but pointed to the huge aborigine cook, saying:

“See her, Bill! She's the cook aroun' here. Good cook, too, but jus' nag and nag.”

There was a general guffaw, and William Black smiled at the lubra, having met her at afternoon smoko. She served him with a great heap of roast beef and vegetables, and laughingly told him to return for more. Indeed a happy race that employs laughter to hide many things, which includes nervousness with strangers.

They wanted to know where he came from, so he explained where the Diamantina country is, and how he came to travel down to Norseman, and how he was related to Patsy Lonergan. They were genuinely sorry to hear that Patsy had died, and laughed delightedly when he told them that Patsy passed on when ‘as drunk as Chloe'. And Bony knew that this friendly reaction to him was based on the opinion held by the medicine man-cum-head stockman, but they did not accept him as one of themselves and would not have been friendly to the stranger had he intended to seek work with them, or attempt to join their conservative community.

Following dinner, one of them pointed out Lonergan's hut, then all of them wandered away to the scrub behind the homestead where doubtless their humpies would be.

The hut contained but the one room. There was a rough bunk fashioned with poles, to which was stretched hessian bags and bearing on them a hessian mattress stuffed with straw. The late tenant had stowed his camel gear in here and Bony had to carry the pack-saddle and the riding-saddle outside before he could move about. Until it was almost dark he proceeded with the inventory, noting a pair of well-kept leather saddle-bags, a pair of five-gallon water drums, hobbles and noselines, a tucker-box, blankets, old clothes, including an overcoat with silk lapels which must once have been worn by a duke when waiting on Queen Victoria.

He was lighting a hurricane lantern when a sound at the door brought to notice the wriggling body of a small brown
dog of United Nations breed, small bright eyes, and ears which one ancestor had influenced to droop.

“Who are you?” asked William Black, and the dog entered and jumped to the bunk where she settled and coyly told him she was Lucy.

Chapter Five

EARLY the next morning the horse tailer brought in Lonergan's camels. Actually they were the descendants of the originally imported dromedaries of one hump, but like most words requiring slight effort to pronounce, the shorter and inaccurate designation was ever employed in Australia.

Millie and Curley were in fine condition, and Bony found them in a high-railed yard, placidly chewing cud, and in their eyes the expression of resignation to more ruddy work. Millie was lighter in colour than her boy friend, and both appeared docile. Millie had her nose-plug in position, but Curley wore a strong leather halter, the ragged hole in his nose telling a story.

“Had experience with camels, I suppose,” remarked Weatherby, who had approached with his brother to join Bony at the rails. The younger man was slighter than the other, even darker of hair and eyes, and he lacked the outward placidity of his brother.

“Yes,” admitted Bony, and returned his gaze to the camels.

“They're quiet enough, but a little tricky. Made the inventory of your uncle's gear?”

“Most of it, I reckon. There's still the traps. The old feller didn't bring them in.”

This was met with a silence attributable perhaps to the interest the others had in the camels. Ultimately the younger Weatherby said:

“As no one knows where old Patsy set his traps, you'll have to pass them up.”

“Looks like it,” agreed the older man. “I doubt that the abos even know which way the old boy put down his last trap
line. Be out west because that's where the dogs are this year. Hey! Ringer! Come here.”

The head stockman, who was leading a saddled mare from a yard, led her to his employer. He was looking hard and efficient this morning.

“Any idea where old Patsy worked his last trap line?” Weatherby asked, and Ringer smiled and kicked dust.

“Dunno,” he replied. “Ole Patsy cunnin' feller all right. Tommy seen camel tracks other side of the Splinter ... jus' before the rain. Could be, old Patsy worked them saltpans out there.”

“All right, Ringer. You get going, and don't forget to look-see at Mason's Hole.”

“Those traps hardly worth going after, even if you knew where to look,” remarked the younger Weatherby while rolling a cigarette. Casually Bony turned to him, his face empty of expression as they expected. This younger Weatherby seemed to be stronger in character than the other, and about him was an aura hinting at a far different background. Although dressed for riding and with that horsey appearance common to all cattlemen, he lacked the ease of movement.

“Better find 'em all the same,” persisted William Black. “The lawyer said I had to bring in everything belonging to my uncle.”

“Not worth the trouble and time,” stressed the younger man. “Still, if you want it that way...” Sliding off the rails, he walked away to the house, his body upright, his legs straight. The elder Weatherby said:

“Old Patsy pottered about this country for years. Where he set his traps no one bothered to ask. If you must go looking for traps, Black, just to satisfy a lawyer, then you'd better make for the Splinter and pick up the camel tracks from there—if you can, because it rained seventy points since Tommy was out there.”

“Where's this Splinter, Mr. Weatherby?”

“You take the Rawlinna track out by the blacks' camp for about three miles. At the three-mile there's a branch track out to a bore, six miles on. There's no track beyond the bore, but keep on for another twelve miles when you'll come to an upthrust of rock we call the Splinter. No water except in shallow rock-holes. You'll have to take what you can and go easy on what you take. Claypan water is too salt for men, but the camels can exist on it.” Weatherby slid to the ground. “Anyway, complete that inventory and we'll fix it before you leave. You take my tip and forget the traps.”

Bony remained on the rails like a man confronted by a problem. Lucy came and slipped under the bottom rail and pranced daintily about the camels in the yard, passing between their large flat pads with the familiarity of established comradeship.

The request for the inventory of Lonergan's property was reasonable. There wasn't much to it, and it was not intended to include the contents of a small and battered suitcase found under the bunk.

The willingness to have the camels yarded was also reasonable, as was the recitation of the difficulties surrounding the location of the dead man's traps. The attitude to him, William Black, of the Weatherbys was normal. The entire atmosphere of this homestead was normal, too.

There was, however, one oddity. The previous day the head stockman said that the wild dogs were working north of the homestead. This morning the head stockman had supported Weatherby's contention that the dogs were working over the salt-pan country to the west.

Returning to the old trapper's hut, Bony completed the inventory and checked the tinned foodstuffs and other items Lonergan had left within the saddle-bags and the tucker-box. Then, taking the stout calico ration bags, he crossed to the rear of the house to purchase what he needed.

An aborigine maid told him to go to the store where Mrs. Weatherby would serve him, and he had waited minutes
when the younger woman appeared and led him inside. The questing eyes gazed upon him without interest, and her expression gave him the feeling that she never really smiled.

“Now what is it you want?” she asked sharply, and so began the business of buying flour, sugar, tea, tinned meats and jam, salt and sauces, tobacco in plugs and cigarette papers and matches.

“P'raps Mr. Weatherby would set the bill against what's owed to my uncle,” suggested William Black, and the woman nodded agreement and pushed forward the docket for him to sign. “I've fixed up the list, too.”

“Then I'll make it out in duplicate. Wait.”

She typed with professional speed whilst Bony leaned against a stack of cases and wondered if he had actually seen her before coming to Mount Singular. Her husband, the younger Weatherby, intruded into his mind and rang a tiny bell which produced no answer to its demand. The machine spilled the papers and the carbon, and Mrs. Weatherby dipped a pen into ink and proffered it, saying:

“You write very well, Black.”

That was a slip, a small slip, in the building of the character of an itinerant half-caste, a faint flaw in otherwise perfect work, and he experienced annoyance added to that occasioned by the failure of the bell.

“Liked writing at school,” he said. “Not much good at anything else.” He signed both typed sheets, and regained his hand-written list. “Mr. Weatherby'll sign, too,” he said. “The lawyer...”

“Don't bother with them, Black.” Her large eyes were mere pools of brown and expressed nothing, and Bony wondered at the utter lack of entity. “I'll have Mr. Weatherby sign right now, and you can take a copy before you leave. All lawyers are fussy persons, and you needn't take much notice of what they say.”

He managed a shame-faced smile at his own stubbornness, thanked her in a casual manner and carried the rations back
to the hut, where he proceeded to set out the gear ready for packing on the camels. Lucy ran to meet him on his arrival at the yards.

The noseline, a light line to which a loop of twine was attached, was expertly tossed over Millie's head which was drawn down to slip the twine loop about her nose-plug. She wanted then to chew Bony's right ear, but there was no viciousness. The free end of the noseline was dropped to the ground while Curley was being attended to, and, to Bony's amusement, the dog daintily took hold of the line and led Millie to the yard gate.

Curley had to be dealt with differently. He held his great head high, and his eyes flashed with sudden rebellion as Bony approached him. As a youngster he had been cruelly treated, when the plug through the nostril had been torn out in his effort to avoid blows to his head. Like the cat, the camel can never be wholly conquered, and like the elephant, its memory is everlasting.

Bony managed to grip the end of the short rope dangling from the halter, and he pulled on this to bring the beast's head low enough to couple the halter line. The dog, leaving Millie at the gate, came and barked at Bony, and he dropped the line, which Lucy gripped by her teeth and, docilely, Curley followed her to join Millie.

She couldn't lead both camels at the same time, and so Bony took them to the hut where he ‘hooshed' Millie to her knees beside the riding saddle she was to carry. She didn't go down with any sign of happiness. In fact, she was playing a game and any intelligent student of camel psychology could follow it.

Now and then she pretended to make the attempt to rise. The saddle was lifted over her hump, and she pretended that it hurt. She moaned protests as the saddle was being strapped under her chest and down under her snakelike neck. One would think she was being subjected to gross indignity, and the act was put on solely for Curley's benefit. Curley was the
bad boy who had to be roused so that when his turn came he would be in a tantrum and perform to anger this biped who was putting her to work. Horses cannot think like that. Beside the camel, the horse is brainless.

As planned, Curley was ready for the fray when his turn came. Me pranced and bellowed when the halter line was hauled down and he was ordered to ‘hoosh'. He fell on one knee, and up again, to kneel on the other. He roared and danced; and Millie looked on, and her eyes plainly said to Bony: ‘How are you liking that?'

Bony unhurriedly took up a loading rope and tossed one end behind Curley's legs, and Curley knew that to rebel any longer would mean being tied down. So, without being ordered, he fell to his knees, grunted, and settled himself beside his pack-saddle. The game was over, and Millie sneered her contempt. A lion! Baa! Just another lamb.

The pack load must be accurately balanced. To each side of the straw-stuffed pack were hooked the saddle-bags and water-drums. On top were piled the spare rations, the swag, and the tent, the load then being roped. Through the rope was thrust the axe, and, to counter-balance the weight, the dozen iron tent pegs and telescopic pole. The riding saddle of iron was furnished with a bag cushion to sit behind the hump, and in the fore-part was strapped the tucker-box carrying food and eating utensils in current use. Another bag containing a fry-pan and billy-cans was fastened to this saddle and balanced by the rifle slung from the opposite side.

All this took a little time. The gear was in fairly good condition, but the rifle was a jewel, and had been the pride of old Lonergan's heart. A Savage, point OR, a high-powered weapon, it was kept and carried in a soft leather case.

“Seems that you know how to work these brutes,” remarked the elder Weatherby, who had approached from Bony's rear. “Here's your signed copy of the inventory. Still determined to look for the old feller's traps?”

Nodding, Bony gazed at his feet, then glanced up and past the big man's eyes.

“Have to give it a burl, Mr. Weatherby. Make a try just to say I did. I take the track out past the blacks' camp for three miles, then leave the track and follow one going on due west to hit the bore. That right?”

“That's right. And twelve miles on from the bore to hit the Splinter. There's no permanent water beyond the bore.”

“I'll give it a burl, anyhow.”

“If you must.”

Careful to the last, Bony kicked at the dust, gazed about the homestead as though sad at leaving it, essayed a shy smile, and said:

“Reckon I'll give a day out from the bore lookin' for them traps, and then I'll make south down to Rawlinna.”

“Good idea. Waste of time looking for them, Black.”

Bony urged the camels to their feet. He tied the end of Curley's halter line to the riding-saddle, took up Millie's noseline and proceeded to lead the string of two away from the homestead, out by the motor shed, past the men's quarters, which appeared wholly unoccupied, and then skirted the aborigines' camp, comprising bag humpies, lean-tos and smoking camp-fires about which squatted men, women and children, silent, watchful and interested in the departing strange man from the Diamantina.

Ten minutes later Bony was still walking, the noseline hung from the crook of an arm. Millie was resignedly chewing cud. Curley continued to moan. Lucy ran on ahead, constantly looking back.

And so began the search for Lonergan's last trap-line, that camp he named Big Claypan, from which he had seen the unknown helicopter, the search for a dust mote in a vacuum.