Читать книгу Boomerang Hunter - Jim Kjelgaard - Страница 4

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When he came out on the ledge that overlooked the water hole, Balulu shifted his boomerang to his left hand and squatted on his haunches. His tame, dog-like dingo, Warrigal, padded silently forward and crouched beside him. Balulu let his right hand rest on the big red dingo's furry neck and breathed a silent thanks. Most of the Desert People's tame dingoes had already gone to the cooking fires, and the few that remained to the tribe would not long escape the same fate. The finest of hunting dogs were valueless when there was so little to hunt, and even when the eyes saw some tame dingo as a valued hunting companion, the hungry belly that saw it as food presented a more powerful argument. But eating the remaining dingoes was no solution, Balulu realized; the Desert People desperately needed to find a new supply of game, and soon. Otherwise, the tribe would starve.

Balulu stared intently at the water hole, one of the very few not yet drunk up by the Devil Who Lived Where the River Had Flowed. This and three similar water holes marked a rough triangle to which the Desert People had been restricted for the past seven seasons. If there was little game to be found near them now, there was even less elsewhere.

His gaze fixed on the water hole, Balulu tightened his grip on Warrigal and thought back to previous hunts. From the maturity of his fifteen years he remembered clearly that, a mere three years ago, the water hole into which he now looked had been hidden by the river. The scrub in the parched valley that now stretched before him had been green, not gray. Rather than dust flats and withered vegetation, there had been grass and succulent plants on both sides of the river. So many big kangaroos came to feed in the meadows then that even unskilled hunters were able to kill them. For the tribe's Senior Hunters, it was child's play.

Balulu thought about his first kangaroo hunt, when he had been but a stripling, and Warrigal an eight-month-old puppy with much to learn about the art of hunting.

Led by Morula, the Senior Hunters had stolen forth and concealed themselves in the scrub. Balulu and the other youths who hoped to become Senior Hunters, aided by the women and children, had driven the feeding kangaroos toward the ambushed spearsmen.

Such a hunt, with those of greater experience hidden in a manner that would enable them to make the most effective use of spears and boomerangs, and the rest chivvying game toward them, was time-tested and approved. As the kangaroos turned in alarm from the weapons of the Senior Hunters, the youths closed in, hoping to make kills of their own. That is how Balulu had killed his first full-grown kangaroo, a great red male.

That had been three summers ago, and it was their last great feast. Remembering it now, Balulu licked his lips longingly. Then the Desert People used to live from season to season, wandering from water hole to water hole, taking game as they pleased. Now they lived from day to day, searching ceaselessly for game that became ever scarcer.

The Devil Who Lived Where the River Had Flowed had brought the change about. So said Loorola, the tribe's Witch Doctor. In any event, Balulu knew that the river had flowed, at varying levels, since the oldest member of the Desert People could remember. As long as there was enough water, there had been no lack of game for the men to hunt or roots for the women to dig. Though individual members of the tribe had known spear-pierced bellies, devil-haunted bellies, or food-rejecting bellies, those able to eat had seldom known a hungry belly.

All that had been before the Devil drank up the whole river. Thereafter, said Loorola, the Devil gained control of the sky, from which he allowed no rain to fall. Deprived of water, the grasses shriveled and many of the edible roots died. When there was no more to eat, birds and beasts that had once abounded either starved to death or went elsewhere. Perhaps the Devil had taken them away.

Only the wild dingoes, once-proud beasts that had become as miserable and humbled as the surviving members of the tribe, remained in any number. They ringed every night's camp, dogged anyone who ventured forth for any reason, followed every march when camps were changed, and snatched anything they could whenever they were able to get it.

Balulu turned to glance at the pack that was following him and Warrigal. There were seven of the beasts, so lean-flanked and slat-ribbed that their heads seemed grotesquely large in comparison to shrunken bodies. They had been on the trail of Balulu and Warrigal since early this morning, hoping to catch Balulu off guard, or to steal anything he was unable to carry away if he made a kill. At no time had they come within range of Balulu's boomerang, and now they were waiting just beyond such range.

That was how they acted during the day, but woe betide anyone caught away from a protecting fire at night. The emaciated dingoes were as swift and deadly by darkness as they ever were in full sunlight, and at night the advantage was theirs. No member of the tribe who left his night fire did so without a weapon in hand.

Balulu paid little attention to the pack. The wild dingoes might come within easy spear range, and they would still be safe from him.

The last survivor of the Dingo Totem in his tribe, he had even been denied the morsel of meat that might have been his share when the Desert People started eating their tame dingoes. Wild or tame, Balulu could neither kill nor eat a dingo, for they were his sworn brothers and in the body of one of them lived his other self. If he killed a dingo it was even possible that he would be killing himself, for if his life had no place to go when it took leave of his body, it must perish too.

Looking east across the Australian desert, Balulu saw a faint intermingling of shadows. Actually the shadows were mountains where, in former happy times, the Desert People had hunted for a part of every year. They used to go to the mountains when the mali was in bloom, showing that the hot summer was approaching, and stay in the highlands until the killing frosts came.

For the past two summers, however, they had not gone to their usual haunts in the mountains. Every sprig of vegetation in the high country lived by rainfall, so the mountains were hardest hit by drought. Only the greatest and most deeply rooted trees, such as the sky-piercing eucalyptus, retained any leaves at all and even those were shriveled. The smaller trees and shrubs rattled naked branches to every wind that blew. Once-lush patches of grass had become mere playgrounds for dust devils. The highland water holes had turned to slime-covered puddles, then to bowls of dried, cracked mud. The tribe no longer went to the mountains because there was no hope there. One might deny a hungry belly, but he must have water or die.

Conditioned by ages of aridity, the desert had fared somewhat better than the mountains. But even the hardiest of desert plants need some water, and the drought had levied an enormous tribute.

Balulu stared at the mountains, and thought about the Devil Who Lived Where the River Had Flowed. Did he rule everywhere, as Loorola said, and were all living things doomed? Or was there a far place beyond the Devil's power, where rivers still flowed and game was plentiful?

Balulu had given much thought to the Devil of late. Was it real, or was it just something that Loorola had made up to conceal his own waning powers? A good witch doctor should be able to make rain when it was needed, but it was plain that Loorola could no longer do so, for whatever reason.

Turning back to the water hole, Balulu became instantly aware that there had been a change within the past few seconds, since the last time he'd looked. The slender, four-foot outline resembled a shadow, but it was not a shadow. It had a lizard's shape and lizards were good to eat. Boomerang in one hand and spears in the other, Balulu backed quietly away from the front of the ledge. Knowing game had been sighted, Warrigal paced beside him. Once out of sight of the lizard, Balulu ran down the sloping end of the ledge and cautiously approached the spot where he had seen the saurian. There was a cluster of boulders here, and Balulu kept behind the largest as he advanced in a crouch, his bare feet soundless on the hot, dry sand. Warrigal slunk at his heels.

Laying down all his weapons but his two throwing spears, Balulu took one in each hand and peered around the boulder. The lizard had not moved. In one motion Balulu drew back his arm and threw. The slender, stone-tipped shaft flew true, transfixing the lizard just back of the front legs. In three strides Balulu was on the thrashing saurian, had thrust his second spear through the neck, and pinned it to the ground.

Snarling and snapping, Warrigal rushed up, but there was no need for the dingo's help. The lizard was dead. Balulu shouldered his prize, retrieved the rest of his weapons, and headed back to the tribe.

The Desert People were camped in a swale that was sheltered from night winds and was almost unobstructed by boulders or vegetation. The open camp was a point which was never neglected now; if the wild dingoes attacked they would be sighted in ample time. Looking down from the rim of the swale, Balulu saw the tribes people clustered about fires and smelled roasting meat. His heart turned cold.

In the days when hunting had been good, every hunter had kept at least one tame dingo to assist in the chase and some had whole packs. This morning, when Balulu left, there had still been six hunting dingoes in camp. Now there were only four, and the smell of roasting meat explained itself. Balulu touched Warrigal's head.

"They shall never have you, my brother," he promised.

The dingo beside him, Balulu strode into camp and pretended not to see the many hungry glances that were directed at him. He went straight to a sizable boulder, the only one in camp, and laid his game beside it with the head pointing at the sacred mark that Loorola had inscribed on the boulder.

Stooping, Balulu used his flint-headed stabbing stick to cut as much meat as he needed for Warrigal and himself.

This stabbing stick was Balulu's particular pride, for its flint head was the only one in the tribe, and far keener of edge than the chipped-stone heads the Desert People used to tip their throwing spears. His father had traded for it with a wandering hunter from a tribe far to the north, years ago, and it had become Balulu's when his father had been killed in a fight with the Mountain People.

Leaving the rest of the lizard, which automatically became community property after the successful hunter had his choice, Balulu went to the little depression near which he slept and blew dead ashes from the cooking fire there.

He laid dry twigs on the hot coals that were exposed, then divided the lizard meat into two equal piles and let Warrigal choose. The dingo gulped his portion raw, but Balulu cooked his in the hot sand and ashes. Then he went to sleep with Warrigal's furry body for a pillow. The last thing he was aware of was the moaning of wild dingoes, already coming nearer camp as dusk thickened.

At break of day, a man got up and went to the fire that Balulu had used last night. He poked among the still-smouldering embers with a saltbrush withe that had burned partly through. The charred end scraped harshly in the morning stillness, and at this indication that life was stirring in camp, the dingoes out in the scrub began an excited whimper.

Balulu, who never slept so soundly that he did not know subconsciously what was going on, came to full wakefulness when the man rose. Balulu saw who it was who had arisen. Rono, leader of the tribe and proud wearer of the emu plume, hoped to find some morsel of food that Balulu had overlooked last night. As he poked about the fire, he was not Rono alone, he was any member of the tribe. But was the desperate hope he expressed worthy of a leader? Balulu felt a sudden contempt.

Rono had become leader after Morula grew too old, though it was true that he had become so only because nobody among the remaining Senior Hunters felt equal to challenging his claim. Rono was still leader, and as such he was theoretical ruler of everyone in the tribe except the few old grandmothers who remained alive. The grandmothers feared no one, and chief or anyone who asserted domination over them was sure to feel their tart tongues.

A little wind rippled the emu plume Rono wore in his hair. No petty mark of distinction, that plume must be plucked, while competent witnesses observed, from a full-grown and unwounded bird. Such an achievement was far from trivial. First one must approach near enough to pluck a plume, and emus, although they could not fly, could run like the wind. Furthermore, an adult emu, standing nearly as tall as a man, could, and often did, inflict dangerous wounds with its powerful, three-toed feet. Of all who aspired to wear the coveted plume, only the bravest won that mighty honor.

Balulu stirred uneasily. It ill befitted a wearer of the emu plume to poke in a dying fire for food that was not there, like a scavenging kea parrot that flies after hunting dingoes in the hope of getting some offal. But Rono was by no means alone in doing things he never would have done if conditions were normal. The whole tribe was different.

It was a puzzling change that Balulu could not understand, but it certainly existed. Balulu knew only that the tribe was made up of people, and people had always been superior to animals. But when the river stopped flowing and the rain ceased to fall, the resulting famine somehow seemed to pull people down so that they were ever closer to animals. It was not a good thing, but Balulu could see no way to change it.

Suddenly, out in the scrub beyond the swale, a red-furred dingo leaped high in the air, snapped its jaws twice, and fell back to earth. Jumping up and snatching a boomerang, Balulu raced toward the place, Warrigal beside him. Rono, who had also seen the dingo leap, was already running. Rono held the saltbrush withe with which he had been poking the fire, as he would have carried a spear. There was no time to return to his fire for a proper weapon.

Both of the aborigines knew that, in full daylight, the camp-following dingoes would retreat from two armed men. But first they'd try to tear apart and devour their fallen comrade. They must not be permitted to do so; the tribe needed food too desperately.

Rono had already reached and was looking down at the fallen dingo when Balulu, still twenty yards away, identified the thing that had killed it. The sluggish wind carried a sweet and sickish odor that was like no other.

The scent was that of a black snake, a deadly viper whose venom invariably brought death unless one was able to find and apply certain ground-hugging herbs that defied even a black snake's poison. Nor was there ever much time in which to find the herbs. Most things that felt a black snake's fangs died soon afterwards. Some lived only seconds, but usually these ran afoul of big snakes with a great store of venom. From the speed with which the dingo had died, this snake must be a monster. Dingoes, even when half-starved, did not die easily, although it was not unusual for one to fall to a black snake.

Coming up to the dead dingo, Balulu stopped, looked, and threw his boomerang. It arced gracefully into the scrub, and a clump of grass began to shake violently as the snake went into its death throes.

Rono looked around. "What for?" he demanded angrily.

"I am of the Dingo Totem," Balulu reminded him. "The snake killed a dingo, my wild brother. I have avenged his death."

"It might have killed another dingo," grumbled Rono, "and so provided us more food."

"In thinking of his belly, Rono forgets his lore," Balulu said disdainfully. "Who waits to eat until black snakes kill dingoes for him, will have a pinched belly."

"That is true," Rono conceded reluctantly, "but the wild dingoes have become very wary and are hard to come near enough to kill."

"The snake is food now," Balulu pointed out.

"Yes," Rono agreed. "The snake is food now."

They caught up the dead dingo and the dead snake and started back to camp.