Читать книгу The Will of the Tribe - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 10

The Little Pets

Bony was unperturbed by the apparently negative result of his call on Gup-Gup and his Medicine Man. Individually they ran true to type and, together, had behaved normally.

Coincidently, the power vested in a commanding officer and his adjutant over a battalion is roughly analogous to the government of an Australian tribe, and, as the battalion is the unit of an army division, so is the tribe the unit of a nation. A soldier will agree that a well-run battalion is one governed by a martinet of a commanding officer, sugared by an adjutant who is popular with the men: or vice versa: a splendid balance being thus achieved.

Gup-Gup was the sugar and Poppa the vinegar in the diet of this Deep Creek tribe of the Bingongina Nation. In another tribe of this same nation the balance in command might well be reversed. More often than not, tribal rebellion is due to too much sugar or too much vinegar.

It was probable that Gup-Gup had been elected chief by the Old Men of his tribe on the demise of the previous office-holder, and it was not unreasonable for Bony to put his term at seventy years, a period covering the change from the completely wild state to that of peaceful co-existence with the white race. The chief would not be ignorant of the process of disintegration already beginning to threaten his people by the steady encroachment of civilization: in fact Mrs Leroy, who enjoyed his confidence, had been so informed.

As for Poppa, it was most likely he had been appointed to his office by his predecessor, having been especially trained because of his singular attributes, revealed in early manhood, and, also, having survived the severe physical trials set out by centuries-old custom. Your white doctor cures with drugs and sympathy. Poppa would cure with herbs and fear. Your white priest prevents much sin with the threat of hell fire: Poppa would curtail much back-sliding with the fear of the Kurdaticha Man and the Great Snake. What Freud revealed by his writings, Poppa would have learned very early in his training.

Neither of these unwashed aristocrats was a fool: both would have been stoutly admired by Machiavelli. They would not incur the hostility of the law by trying to evade responsibility for a minor crime committed by one of their people, such as stealing from a homestead store or killing a white man for interfering with a lubra. Bony was considering with growing confidence that the cause of the shuttered eyes was an abstract one such as loyalty to a white man or men, or fear of a neighbouring tribe more powerful than they, and less influenced by white-fellow law.

These matters he reviewed while sitting on a log on the bank of Deep Creek overlooking the water dammed back by the concrete wall. The site was well chosen, for the Creek here had itself dug deeply at an elbow, permitting the water to extend for a hundred yards to the far side, and bank up round the bend above. Water beetles and other insects constantly ringed the surface of this dam, and, upon it, the shadows of the dancing leaves played silent music.

Bony had his back to the house and was unaware of Mister Lamb until determinedly nudged in the back. A few moments after he had obliged Mister Lamb with a cigarette, he was joined by Rosie and Hilda Brentner. They sat either side of him and drummed their heels against the log.

“Are you looking at our dam?” asked Hilda.

“I was thinking how pretty it is with the water-beetles hard at work and leaf shadows dancing on the surface. It looks deep, though. I suppose no one ever bathes here?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Rosie. “We do. Not right down there; up the creek where the water is shallow. Old Ted’s teaching us to swim. Tessa can swim, but she won’t any more.”

“Why ever not?” Bony pressed.

“Well, she was swimming right down there one day when Captain came and saw her. And he laughed and teased her, and she wouldn’t go in again ever. Can you swim?”

“When I fall in. Your father and mother don’t mind people swimming in the dam?”

“Oh, no. There’s plenty of rain water for the house in the tanks,” replied Rosie, and Hilda further explained, “It comes down off the roof when it rains.”

“I see. D’you play much with the little boys and girls from the camp?”

“Sometimes we do, Bony,” Hilda said. “That’s when we all go for a walk with Captain. He takes us out on the desert and we all pretend we’re tracking a Musgrave black. Alfie or someone is the Musgrave, and we track him, and he tries to throw us off by wiping out his tracks, and Captain shows us how to find them again.”

“You like Captain, I can see.”

“Captain’s the most wonderful man in all the world excepting Daddy,” declared Hilda, and her sister took her up on this point.

“He’s not. Old Ted is.”

“He is not,” vowed Hilda. “Captain beat him in the fight. We saw it.”

Rosie slipped off the log to confront her sister and scold, “That’s a secret. We promised Tessa never to tell. You know we did.”

Little Hilda bit her nether lip and looked like crying, and Bony said that perhaps Tessa meant not to say anything of it to anyone at the homestead. As he wasn’t anyone at the homestead, it wouldn’t matter about the secret. This dried the tears before they fell, and he asked if they had any pets to show him.

Each took a hand, and they showed him Mrs Bluey and her small puppies. From these they escorted him to a large aviary, containing some hundred lovebirds, and then to call on Bob Menzies in his own yard, Mister Lamb following faithfully and, now and then, trying to jog Bony’s memory by nudging a leg.

“We saw you give Mister Lamb a cigarette,” he was accused by Hilda.

“Did you now. He seems to like a cigarette.”

“He likes cake-tobacco, too,” supplemented Rosie. “He steals it off Jim if he can get into the kitchen without being seen. Steals the potatoes, too.”

“And what does Jim say to that?” inquired the enchanted Bony.

“He rushes Mister Lamb outside and tells him he’s going to shoot him. Course he won’t, you know. Would you like to ask Jim if he’s baked raspberry tarts this morning?”

“Ooo! D’you think he would give us some? Let’s try.”

Approaching the kitchen they could see that the door was open, and Jim Scolloti working within. The little girls hung back with seeming bashfulness, and Bony advanced to plead with the cook. He was about six feet from the door when he was struck from behind with tremendous force. The ramming lifted him off his feet and, without contacting the door frame, he was thrown into the kitchen where he landed on all fours at the cook’s feet.

“That ain’t no way to come into a man’s kitchen,” complained Jim Scolloti, walking round Detective Inspector Bonaparte as though interested in a pet crocodile. “Suppose it was that flamin’ sheep what sort of shoved you. He’s liable.”

Dignity slightly ruffled, Bony stood and turned to look out of the doorway. There was Mister Lamb eyeing him with satanic triumph and, beyond him, were the two small girls gazing solemnly, as though anxious to know the cook’s verdict about the raspberry tarts. Beginning to feel sore, Bony’s sense of humour yet rescued him.

“The flaming sheep is decidedly liable,” he agreed. “I’ve never been tossed by a bull, but the sensation must be something like. What I actually came for was to suggest that, if you had baked raspberry tarts this morning, you might be generous.”

Scolloti’s lively dark eyes appeared to flicker, and he pulled at his grey beard thoughtfully. On a bench behind him were several large dishes of various confectionery and, to test a theory, Bony asked if this was his pastry-baking morning.

“Yes, Inspector, so it is,” replied Scolloti. “Those imps know it, too. What you came for was to be pocketed. I got pocketed once. Mister Lamb’s the greatest snooker play in Orstralia.

“I’m beginning to feel I was pocketed by the greatest snooker player in Australia,” Bony averred, and sat on a case beside the main table. The cook occupied a chair. His eyes flickered from the doorway back to Bony.