Corroboree (45 page)

The medicine-man screamed with fury and fright, but Eyre shouted at him even more loudly,
'Keep still! Keep quiet! This is a rifle! Keep quiet or else I'll kill you!
'

Yonguldye twisted and struggled, but Eyre held him tightly around the neck with his elbow; and then gave him a hard punch in the small of the back with his knee. ‘You want to die, Yonguldye?' he yelled at him. ‘You want to meet Ngurunderi?'

The name of the god beyond the skies silenced the medicine-man almost at once. He lay still, panting a little, and Eyre could feel his withered skin sliding up and down over his protuberant ribs as he breathed. Now that he was at the very end of the shelter, he could see the triangular light of the dawning day at the entrance, and the startled outlines of Yonguldye's wives, one of whom was whimpering, and twisting her hair in anxiety.

‘Very well, now,' said Eyre. ‘I want you to make your way outside. Outside, do you understand me? But don't try to run away, or call for anybody to help you, because I will shoot you dead. Is that clear?'

Yonguldye said, ‘I curse on you.'

‘Save your curses for when I've gone,' Eyre told him. ‘Now, let's get going.'

Grumbling and coughing, Yonguldye crawled out of his
tantanoorla
, and stretched himself in the pale blue light of early morning. All around the gorge, last night's fires were smouldering, so that the mountains were hazy with fragrant smoke; and the gathered tribes of Wirangu and Nyungar lay scattered on the ground in their skins and their shelters like the casualties of a massacre. But the
massacre was only sleep, and soon the tribesmen would be rising again, and Eyre would have almost no chance of escaping from the gorge whatsoever.

‘Hurry,' he told Yonguldye, and prodded him towards his own small shelter, where Dogger and Christopher were waiting with Minil and Midgegooroo. Behind them, Yonguldye's wives crowded fearfully at the entrance to his
tantanoorla
, watching as their husband and Mabarn Man was taken away from them. Yonguldye lost his footing on the rocks, and Eyre prodded him again. ‘Quick, or I'll kill you here and now, and take my chances.'

Yonguldye hesitated and stiffened when he saw Minil crouching there with Eyre's companions; and said something blistering to her in Nyungar. Minil turned her face away from him, and refused to answer, and Eyre said, ‘Come on, Yonguldye. We don't have any time for recriminations.'

‘Funny-looking bugger, isn't he, without his hat?' Dogger remarked.

Yonguldye haughtily ignored this gibe. His sparse woolly hair was knotted all over with bows of possum-skin twine, giving his head the appearance of a black decorated pineapple. He looked fiercely from one of his captors to the other, and Eyre was quite sure that he was silently wishing sickness and death on them all. Personally, Eyre preferred to risk any kind of curse, rather than submit to having his brains beaten out.

‘Come on,' he said. ‘Dogger, you go first; then Minil; then Christopher and Midgegooroo. I'll keep our friend Yonguldye with me as a shield.'

Tribesmen were beginning to wake and rise as they made their way through the encampment. Some were blowing on fires to breathe them back into life; others were going down to the creek-bed with gourds and skin bags to fetch water. They passed one family who were all asleep except for one of the wives, who had been woken up by her hungry dingo pup. She was yawning as she suckled the brindled wild dog at her breast.

Somehow, they seemed to pass through the smoke almost unnoticed as if they were ghosts. Perhaps nobody recognised Yonguldye without his head-dress. Perhaps Eyre and Christopher and Dogger were so dirty now that on first inspection they passed as blackfellows. It was only when they began to climb the rock-face back up towards the ridge that they heard a cry of distress, probably from one of the medicine-man's wives; and then a general clamour of alarm.

Eyre looked back quickly. He could see Joolonga in his midshipman's hat, running towards Yonguldye's shelter. All over the floor of the gorge, and up on the balconies of rock above them, tribesmen were rising and calling and taking up their spears.

‘Now you will die,' crowed Yonguldye, toothlessly.

‘Now you keep quiet and climb as fast as your skinny legs will carry you,' Eyre retorted. He could see that Dogger had passed the waterfall now, holding his kangaroo-skin
buka
in front of his belly in a rather matronly way to protect it from the abrasive rocks, and that Minil was close behind him, climbing with all the agility of a young rock-wallaby.

Eyre was necessarily slower. Yonguldye was elderly, and climbed the slippery rocks with difficulty; and Eyre had to keep the rifle pointing at his back. By the time Eyre had crossed the waterfall, grunting with the effort of levering himself over the green and greasy rocks, Joolonga and a rush of tribesmen had arrived at the foot of the rock-face, brandishing spears and clubs and fighting boomerangs.

Eyre twisted himself around, and called out, ‘Joolonga!'

‘Where are you going, Mr Walker-sir?' Joolonga shouted back.

‘For a long walk, Joolonga; and I'd prefer not to have your company.'

‘You must come back down, Mr Walker-sir. There is no escape that way.'

‘We'll see.'

‘These people will kill you, Mr Walker-sir. Yonguldye is their clever-man. You cannot take him with you.'

‘I have no intention of taking him with me. He is my hostage, that is all. As soon as I am clear of the mountains, I will let him go.'

‘I am only thinking of your own well-being, Mr Walker-sir.'

‘I am very touched,' Eyre shouted back. ‘I suppose you were thinking of my well-being when you brought me here. I suppose you were thinking of how salutary it would be for me to have my brains knocked out, and eaten for breakfast by this aged buzzard in return for his opals, and his route to the inland sea.'

‘Why do you make such accusations, Mr Walker-sir?' called Joolonga.

‘Because I know now what you and Yonguldye were saying last night.'

‘Who told you, sir? That girl? That girl knows nothing; she is mad from sickness.'

‘She may be, Joolonga; but in my opinion she's a lot less dangerous than you are.'

Eyre began to climb further, pushing Yonguldye ahead of him. At last he reached the crest of the ridge. Christopher and Minil and Midgegooroo were already halfway across the grassy slope up to the next ridge, heading back towards the creek where they had left Weeip the night before. The morning was quite bright now, and the first stab of sunlight appeared between the broken stumps of the mountains. Yonguldye limped as he walked, and groaned as if his feet hurt, but Eyre kept pushing him on with the muzzle of his rifle, and saying, ‘Faster, come on, you can walk faster than that!'

As they reached the top of the next ridge, four or five Aborigines appeared on the lower ridge behind them, rapidly followed by more. Eyre shouted to Dogger, ‘It's all right. They won't try to attack us as long as we have Yonguldye!' But even before he had finished speaking, there was the whop-whop-whop sound of a boomerang,
then another, and two of them flew overhead like giant sycamore seeds and landed close by, in the grass.

It was then that Yonguldye dropped flat on his face on to the ground. Eyre seized hold of his shoulder, and tried to pull him upright, but the medicine-man crouched down and refused to get up.

‘Do you want me to kill you?' Eyre screamed at him. But then he realised what Yonguldye must already have realised: that he was almost certainly incapable of shooting him in cold blood.

‘Get up!' Eyre hissed at him. ‘Get up, or I'll blow your head off your shoulders!' But still Yonguldye huddled amidst the lemon-grass, all ribs and bony spine, like an elderly kangaroo. Another boomerang flapped over Eyre's head, and this time he heard a cry. He looked up and saw that the boomerang had struck Christopher on the back of the leg, and brought him down.

‘For God's sake, get on to your feet!' he shouted at Yonguldye; but the medicine-man only covered his ears with his hands, to show his contempt for all of Eyre's desperate threats. Eyre was about to leave him, when there was a tremendous report, and his rifle went off in his hands, recoiling so violently that it jumped out of Eyre's grasp and tumbled into the grass. Yonguldye let out a high, effeminate shriek, and jerked and writhed on the ground in agony, and then lay still, shuddering a little, like a lizard which Eyre had once accidentally crushed beneath the wheels of his bicycle.

Eyre left him, and ran through the scrub towards Christopher, who was trying to stagger up on to his feet. Eyre weaved and dodged from side to side as he ran, in case any more boomerangs were being thrown after them. But long before he could reach the limestone outcropping where Christopher had fallen, he heard another sound, far more frightening than the flackering of boomerangs. It was the humming of spears, launched from woomeras; and the next thing he knew, the sky was dark with what
the Aborigines called ‘the long rain' a torrential shower of quartz-tipped death-spears.

Three spears clattered on to the rock beside Christopher, who had fallen back down again now, clutching his leg. Another sang past Eyre and stuck into the ground, quivering.

Eyre shouted, ‘Christopher! Christopher, get up!' But it was plain that Christopher's leg had been too badly bruised by the boomerang for him to walk; it was even possible that the bone was broken.

It was then that Midgegooroo appeared over the brow of the ridge, running low and quickly. He looked like a dark scuttling crab against the pale pink limestone rock. Eyre watched in relief and gratitude as he picked Christopher up without any hesitation at all and lifted him bodily on to his broad black back. He heard Dogger whistle shrilly in encouragement as Midgegooroo reached the brow of the ridge again, and shouted out, ‘Back to the horses! Dogger, I've lost Yonguldye! Cover me!'

But then a death-spear came flying through the air as accurately as if it were a black pencil-line being swiftly drawn against the pale blue of the sky with a ruler. It struck Midgegooroo right in the back, missing Christopher by inches, and Eyre, who was much closer now, heard the crunch of quartz-tipped spear-wood dig right into his flesh.

Midgegooroo staggered, and let out a hoarse, high cry; but somehow he kept on balancing his way across the bare limestone ridge, with Christopher still dangling over his shoulders, until he had reached the other side, where the rocks fell away, and he was out of spear-shot. Then with the death-spear trailing noisily against the ground behind him, he slowly sagged to the ground like an emptying sack, letting Christopher fall awkwardly against an outcropping of rocks and bushes.

Minil, who had been halfway down the creek-bed to the place where they had left Weeip, turned and climbed back up the hill, kneeling down beside Christopher and feeling his leg, to find out how bad his injury was. Eyre was
surprised to see that she completely ignored Midgegooroo, as if he were dead already; but then Eyre supposed that with a death-spear lodged in his back, that was probably true. He said, ‘Dogger! Open fire! Hold the bastards off!'

Dogger knelt down on the limestone, and took aim at the Aborigine warriors who were now running towards them across the grass. He was an experienced shot, even if he was rusty, and the leading warrior fell into the bushes without even a shout. Eyre clambered over towards Midgegooroo, and eased the satchel of ammunition from around his neck; trying not to look into Midgegooroo's grey and desperate face, or at the bloody froth which bubbled at the corners of his mouth. He slung the satchel over to Dogger, and called, ‘See if you can get another one in!'

Dogger reloaded with relaxed skill; and when the Aborigines were less than fifty paces away, he fired again, hitting another one right between the eyes, so that the blood sprayed up from the top of his head like an ornamental fountain. The other warriors hesitated, and retreated a few steps, while Dogger loaded up for the third time.

Eyre, keeping his head low, knelt down beside Midgegooroo and said, ‘You're going to be all right. Don't worry. Once we get the spear out of you, you'll soon recover.'

Midgegooroo's expression was sweaty and strained, an agonised gargoyle. He shook his head again and again, and said, ‘No, sir. No, sir.'

Dogger fired one more shot, which went wide. Eyre heard the bullet singing off the distant rocks.

‘We'd better make ourselves scarce,' said Eyre. ‘Here—give me some help with Midgegooroo.'

Dogger came over at a low crouch. He turned Midgegooroo over a little way, and examined the spear. The entire head was buried in Midgegooroo's back, and sticky blood was coursing over his black muscles, and on to the grass. As gently as he could, Dogger tugged at the spear, but Midgegooroo whimpered with such pitiful agony that
he let it go. Dogger looked at Eyre, and said, ‘Death-spear, no doubt about it.'

‘What can we do?' Eyre asked him.

Dogger shook his head. ‘Not much, except push the whole thing all the way through him. There are teeth on the end of this thing, flakes of sharpened quartz. You can't pull it out the way it went in, not without tearing half his back off. I've seen it before. An old chum called Keith Cragg, out at Broken Hill. We had to push the spear right through his lung to get it out; and he only lived for half-an-hour after that. Kept coughing up blood and singing about his wife. Couldn't stand the name Madge ever after.'

‘What then?' said Eyre, urgently, lifting his head so that he could see how close the tribesmen were approaching. Then he turned back to see how Christopher was getting on. It looked as if Minil had managed to help him on to his feet, because now he was hopping down towards the creek-bed, with his arm around Minil's shoulders.

Dogger sniffed, and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Can't see much option,' he said.