Corroboree (41 page)

Dogger laughed; and snorted. But all the same, he looked around the gorge with sudden apprehension, as if Weeip's fear had attracted the first flickering coldness of Koobooboodgery, the night spirit. Christopher coughed into his hand.

‘I feel the devil-devil, Mr Wakasah. Something bad here. Yea though I walk through the alley of the valley of death.'

Eyre glanced up at Joolonga. ‘Joolonga?' he asked. ‘Do you sense anything?'

Joolonga took off his midshipman's hat and raised his flat nose to the wind. He remained like that for a few moments, his face concentrated and fierce, but then he said, ‘Only fires, Mr Walker-sir. No evil spirits.'

‘Well, then,' said Eyre, and stood up. ‘Let's go and see if we can find our man. You know, I'm almost sorry I didn't bring my bicycle. Can you imagine what a rip it would be to cycle all the way down that creek-bed?'

Dogger picked up his rifle, and slung it on to his back. ‘Surprising how a few hills can cheer a fellow up, isn't it? It's the flatness that makes you feel like giving up, and killing yourself. One old dogger I knew, Bill Hardcastle, he used to curse the desert for hours on end, because it was flat. You never heard such language in your whole life; and every insult for flat that you could think of. He used to say that it was all God's fault, the desert. God ran out of ideas, he said, and said to the Angel Gabriel, what shall I do with the rest of this world? And Gabriel said, “Oh, I shouldn't bother if I were you; leave it flat.” So that's what He did. Mind you, he could catch dingoes, could Bill; even the ones that could sniff out a trap from a mile away. He'd set up scarecrows and windmills alongside his traps; just enough to catch the dog's attention, so that the dog wouldn't notice where it was walking. Then snap, and the dog was catched. God's featureless folly, that was one of the names he called the desert. Poor old Bill.'

‘Why “poor old Bill”?' asked Christopher.

Dogger spat inaccurately at a lump of euro dung on the rocks. ‘Gave up dogging, did Bill, went back to Melbourne, and tripped over a mounting-block by the side of the road and broke his neck.'

With Joolonga leading the way, and Eyre close behind him, they climbed the side of the gorge. The rock was flaky in places, and once or twice Eyre missed his footing and skidded backwards, sending showers of stones down on Christopher's head; but at last they crested the gorge and found themselves walking along a high spine of mauvish-coloured limestone, with the higher peaks around the Yarrakinna ochre-mine rising off to their left, blood-red against a blood-red sky.

They crossed a low, gentle valley of lemon-scented grasses. Here and there, they came across clumps of the startling red-and-black flowers which had been named for Captain Sturt—Sturt's desert pea. They had petals like the gaudy hoods of elfish cardinals, hung up in the vestry.

The air was aromatic with eucalyptus oil and the dryness of emu bushes but now Eyre, too, could pick out the distinctive smell of cooking-fires. Joolonga was twenty or thirty paces ahead of him now, his head down, following the tracks of Yonguldye's people through the grassy sand.

Christopher said, ‘I hope we know what we're getting ourselves into.'

Eyre ran his hand through his tangled curls. ‘Don't worry about it, old chum. I've talked to Joolonga, and Joolonga says that the Aborigines really want us here. To them, this expedition is vitally important. Apparently, it was foretold in the dreamtime; and it has some sort of magical significance for them.'

‘I'm still not desperately happy about it,' remarked Dogger, laconically. ‘They're a funny lot, these bush blackfellows. Different from the tame characters you see around town. Funny ideas; and very quick to take the huff.'

The ground had been steadily rising, and the grass becoming increasingly sparse, until they were walking on
bare limestone again; over ridges that had been scoured by sand and worried by water. At last, they saw the bright blue haze of cooking-smoke rising up ahead of them; and Joolonga turned to Eyre and raised ten fingers twice, which meant twenty fires, at least.

‘Quite a gathering,' said Eyre. ‘It seems as if we're expected.'

Christopher held back. ‘Eyre, listen—we ought to approach these people with the greatest of caution.'

Eyre walked back and took hold of the straps of Christopher's satchel, and drew him forward. ‘They're not going to hurt us, I promise you. Tell him, Joolonga. They think that I'm a messenger from the spirit world, or something like that. Everything's going to be perfectly all right.'

Dogger said to Joolonga, ‘What's your opinion, squash-face? You're supposed to be the guide. Do you know these people? What are they, Wirangu?'

‘Some Wirangu, some Nyungar, maybe some from Murray River.'

‘Are they friendly, or what? And what's all this about our friend here being a messenger from the spirit world?'

‘It is what they believe, Mr Dogger. It is a long-ago story which they now seem to think has come true.'

‘And has it?'

‘We must see, Mr Dogger,' said Joolonga.

At that moment, so silently that even Joolonga was startled, three skeleton-figures rose up from the rocks nearby; three Aborigine warriors smeared with grease and pipeclay and ochre, their hair wound with twine and decorated with scores of wind-twirled emu feathers. Each of them carried a long spear and a woomera; with clubs tied around their waists. One of them also had a dead tern hanging around his waist, a bird he must have caught while waiting and watching for Eyre's expedition to make its way up the mountains.

‘Christopher, Dogger,' said Eyre, and beckoned them to stand closer to him. All three of them raised their rifles, and cocked them ready for firing. Midgegooroo remained
where he was; but Joolonga raised one hand and stepped forward, until he was fewer than ten paces away from the nearest tribesman. He spoke quickly, first in Nyungar, which was the nearest that South Australia's tribes had to a common language; and then in Wirangu. The tribesman did not deign to reply at first, but looked haughtily from Joolonga to his three white companions, and then to Midgegooroo.

‘What did you say to him?' asked Eyre.

‘I said that you were the chosen
djanga
, and that you were seeking to talk to Yonguldye the Mabarn Man.'

Tell him again,' said Eyre.

‘Wait,' advised Joolonga.

They stood their ground. It was beginning to grow dark now; and against the gradually thickening sky, the three Aborigine warriors looked as wild and primaeval as Cro-Magnon men. One of them pointed with his spear at Midgegooroo, and indicated that he should move closer to Eyre and Christopher and Dogger; and this Midgegooroo reluctantly did. Eyre lifted his rifle-stock up to his shoulder, and took aim at the tribesman who stood furthest off to the left. He was silhouetted sharply against the last of the daylight, and made by far the easiest target.

‘Be careful, Mr Walker-sir,' said Joolonga. ‘If you should shoot by mistake, there is no telling what they might do.'

Tell them again that I am the
djanga
who has come to talk to Yonguldye, Eyre insisted. ‘And also tell them that we are all
ngaitye
. We are all friends.'

Joolonga hesitated, but then rapidly spoke to the tribesmen again.

‘If you want my opinion,' said Dogger, ‘We should drop the lot of them here and now, before they know what's hit them; and then leg it back to the horses at top belt.'

‘Ssh,' said Eyre. ‘He's answering.'

Now, the leading tribesman was saying something to Joolonga. The language sounded to Eyre like Wirangu, although he couldn't be certain. There was a distinctive guttural clacking about Wirangu which Eyre recognised
from the way in which Yanluga used to talk to his horses. The tribesman seemed to feel very vehemently about what he was saying, because he kept rapping his throwing-stick against the shaft of his spear, and ducking and nodding his head. Sometimes his voice was a breathy murmur; at other times he was shouting as if he were apoplectically furious that they had arrived here without asking his permission. All the time Joolonga remained impassive, his hat set very straight on his head, one arm tucked into his impressive coat like Napoleon, but trouserless, with his scrotum and his penis elaborately wound up with twine.

At last the tribesman's haranguing appeared to be over. He stepped back two or three paces, and stood quite still, the wind ruffling his feather head-dress. Joolonga made two or three quick gestures in sign-language, and then walked back to Eyre. To Eyre's surprise, Joolonga's forehead and cheekbones were shining with sweat, and he was shivering.

‘What was all that about?' asked Eyre.

‘He says that we must follow him, but that he expects us to observe certain proprieties.

‘What proprieties?'

‘We must leave all of our clothing here; and our weapons.'

‘What?' demanded Dogger. ‘You expect me to walk baby-bum-naked into a camp full of mad Aborigines, without even a rifle to guard my particulars. Come on, Eyre. This is ridiculous.'

Eyre looked towards the tribesman who had spoken to Joolonga. ‘Ask him what his name is,' he said.

‘Joolonga turned around and called out to the tribesman, who lifted his spear and said, ‘Parilla.'

Joolonga translated, ‘That is his familiar name, not his family name. It means “cold”, or “the cold one”.'

‘Well, you can call
me
the cold one if I have to go down and meet those blackfellows without my clothes on,' put in Dogger.

But Eyre called out to Parilla, in a challenging voice.
‘Parilla! You go without clothes! But what man would ever go without his weapons? Not you! Well, nor will we!'

Anxiously, gabbling sometimes, Joolonga translated. Parilla listened seriously, occasionally nodding his head; and then he turned and spoke to his two lieutenants. Joolonga murmured to Eyre, ‘This could mean some trouble, Mr Walker-sir. Parilla is a fierce tribal warrior; he does not like to be ridiculed, especially by a white man. It seems to me that he does not believe that you are the
djanga;
or even if he does, he feels enmity towards you.'

Without any warning at all, Parilla stooped, picked up a stone, and hurled it straight at Eyre's face. Eyre didn't even have time to think about dodging away; but the stone was thrown so accurately that it did nothing more than graze his cheekbone, and flick an instant line of bright red blood across his skin.

There was a clockspring silence between them. Joolonga backed away a little. Christopher raised his rifle now, and aimed it directly at the second tribesman. Even Dogger kept quiet, except for a spasmodic sniff, and warily flicked his eyes from one warrior to another.

Below them, off to the right, where the cooking-smoke was coming from, they heard the first cry of a great chant. To Eyre, the sound was completely electrifying; because it must have come from the throats of a hundred Aborigines; and it made the entire evening vibrate, as if the limestone bedrock of the Flinders mountains themselves were humming like a tuning-fork. A flock of fairy martins, hunting insects in the dusk, swooped and turned as if the sound of human voices had deflected them in flight.

Eyre lifted his rifle again and pointed it at Parilla's head. the Aborigine remained motionless, his expression unreadable beneath the thick pipe-clay and ochre that striped his cheeks and his forehead. The rifle was heavy and Eyre knew that he would have to be quick before his aim started to waver. He was no marksman; and although the distance between them was only fifteen paces, it was so gloomy now that it would be easy to make a fatal mistake.

Dogger said, ‘We'd be well advised to walk quietly away now, Eyre. I'm not funning with you.'

Eyre said, ‘If we walk away now, they'll never let us go. And besides, we still have our duty.'

‘I rather think our prime duty is to stay alive,' said Christopher, with deep unhappiness.

Eyre ignored him. He had been challenged by Parilla; only a glancing, childish blow with a stone; the kind of blow with which the tribesman would have teased an uninitiated youth. But he had done it to see whether Eyre really was the
djanga
he proclaimed himself to be, or just another scavenging white man. Eyre had no way of knowing it for certain, but he sensed that if they tried to retreat without accepting Parilla's challenge, they would be speared where they stood, like Weeip's writhing bandicoot.

Joolonga blurted, ‘Mr Walker-sir—' But Eyre squeezed the rifle's trigger, and there was an abrupt loud report, as if two boomerangs had been slapped together right next to his ears, and a spurt of bright orange fire from the pan; and then a cloud of brown smoke.

Everybody turned to stare at Parilla in shock. But the Aborigine warrior was still standing, although he was swaying slightly in delayed reaction to being fired at. The most remarkable sight, however, was his head-dress of emu feathers. The shot had blown it completely to pieces, leaving his thickly-greased hair standing on end in a parody of utter fright, and the air around his head full of whirling, floating feathers.

The echo of the shot came back from the distant mountains, and far away there was a flurry of birds. But then came the laughter: first from Midgegooroo, then from Dogger and Christopher, and finally from Parilla's own tribesmen. The laughter subsided for a moment, but then Parilla himself reached up gingerly and patted his hair; and he began to laugh, too, an odd clacking high-pitched chuckle.

‘By God I think you've rediscovered your sense of humour,' said Dogger, wiping his eyes with the back of
his sleeve. ‘Look at the poor bastard. He looks as if he's seen a devil-devil.'

Only Joolonga remained unsmiling. Eyre had taken on the challenge of Parilla against his advice, and won it; without bloodshed, and without any loss of dignity on either side. Joolonga stood to one side, his hands crossed behind his back so that they lifted up his coat-tails, and flapped them up and down like a cockerel's tail, intermittently baring his stringy brown buttocks.