LITMIR.BIZ

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affiliated with the Musgrave tribe who belong to this same nation. At the time of the Crater mystery, their ancient chief was called Gup-Gup, so spelt as coming closest to the Aboriginal pronunciation.

      Chief Gup-Gup ruled his people for many years prior to transferring to Deep Creek, the transfer being two decades after the falling of the meteor. Like the people of Hall’s Creek, he saw it fall.

      No one knew how old he was when Bony decided to visit him. His ragged white hair seemed to peep at one above the snakeskin band encircling his head. His shrunken chest was scarred with old cicatrices, as was his back with the totem of the frogmen. His arms and legs were merely skin-covered bones. He had borrowed much time, but his black eyes were the eyes of a young man.

      This morning, as was customary, he sat before a small fire, tending it by adding sticks gathered and piled beside him by the lubras. At his back was his wurley built of bark laid against a stick framework, for he scorned the white man’s cast-off corrugated iron and bags. He scorned, too, the white man’s clothing, being naked save for the pubic tassel and the dilly bag suspended from the neck by human hair string. He sat because unable to crouch upon his heels. As he owned no teeth, his nose almost contacted his chin.

      It was a warm day after the cool night, and the camp comprising humpies of old iron and bags about the central point of the communal fire, was alive with the cries of happy children and the shouts of the women busy doing little of anything important. Men gossiped over smaller fires, proving that a camp isn’t a camp without a fire. It was when the camp noises abruptly ceased that old Gup-Gup raised his head and saw, some fifty yards away, the squatting figure of Inspector Bonaparte.

      There came to the Chief the Medicine Man called Poppa. He was under fifty, of powerful build, rugged of feature and by no means without character when minus the septal-bone of his profession and the girdle about his head to raise the mop of greying hair. Wearing only a pair of drill slacks with a ragged hole at the right knee, Poppa was not a striking figure of mystery and authority this morning.

      “He is not, and there he is, the policeman at the homestead,” he said loudly, anger flaming his eyes and making his breathing fast. “He is the first to draw close without us knowing. It must be his lubra mother alive inside him.”

      “It could be so,” Gup-Gup placidly agreed, and rearranged the glowing ends of five sticks to brighten his fire, as though to give welcome to the visitor. “A white policeman would ride his horse among us and ask his questions and shout his orders. This one comes with knowledge. This one asks permission to enter the camp of strangers. Have him brought in.” Poppa shouted and two young men went forth to greet the visitor.

      Gup-Gup said, “He is the one who brought the white-feller law to the killers of Constable Stenhouse,² cunning feller, this one.”

      Bony advanced with the two men trailing behind. At the front of his wide-brimmed slouch hat was the badge of the Western Australian Police Force. He was wearing a drill tunic. On the epaulets were three wide black bars, but what these represented only Bony himself knew. Gup-Gup and Poppa accepted them as the insignia of high rank. When he reached them Bony stared at the camp and the stilled inhabitants, who faded into the background like gulls into the fog. He chose to squat on his heels, facing the two Aborigines from the far side of the fire.

      “My father and my mother and my uncle and my son, a long time back spoke to me of you, Gup-Gup. Illawalli was the Chief of my mother’s tribe.”

      “I have heard of Illawalli, of the Cassowary tribe,” admitted Gup-Gup without expression. “He lived and died far away.” Approbation crept into his voice. “He left with you the customs of our people. Of you I have heard much. You witnessed the killing of Jacky Musgrave’s killer: black-feller law. You found the killer of Constable Stenhouse: white-feller law. I know you were sealed by Illawalli.” The ancient man again re-arranged his firesticks, gazing moodily at them. Neither Bony nor Poppa spoke, and presently the Chief looked up to encounter the blue eyes of such power that, although they were not defeated, they did not conquer.

      “You know much,” conceded Bony. He completed the making of a cigarette, and avoided the mistake of taking up one of Gup-Gup’s fire-sticks for a light. “I know much, too. I know why you brought your people to camp here. That was good. I know you see many things of the future in your fire. You know I am a big-feller white policeman, not a black tracker. You know I can see to the back of your head and that in me is no fear of Medicine Men.”

      “I know that once long ago you were near boned to death by the Medicine Man of the Kalshut tribe,” Gup-Gup said.

      This ‘rocked’ Bony as the Kalshut tribe were sixteen hundred miles from the Kimberleys and the boning was done fifteen years before this day. No sign of the thrust betrayed its effect. He was about to counter it when the less subtle and experienced Poppa had to assert himself.

      “In the Alchuringa time there was a young man who tongued his Medicine Man,” interposed this modern specimen. “The Medicine Man took the young man’s tongue in his fingers and told him to run away and grow feathers on it. The feathers became wings which lifted him up to the branch of a tall tree. Then the tongue said, ‘I’m tired of all this flying about.’ And the feathers all said, ‘So are we.’ They all dropped out from the tongue, and the young man fell to the ground and was killed.”

      “In the time of last summer,” Bony related in turn, “there was a Medicine Man who poked out his tongue at a white policeman. The white policeman took the hands of the Medicine Man and put on them the manacles of steel. Then he put the Medicine Man inside a baobab tree, shut the door, and told him to break out if he could. Now the Medicine Man, who had manacles on his wrists, and his ankles as well, was in a sore fix. He began to cry out the boning curses upon the white policeman and, while he was doing this, the manacles got hotter and hotter and then turned to snakes that bit him into small pieces. And the small pieces escaped through a crack in the tree and went away dancing over the sandhills, and never more came together to make a Medicine Man.”

      From Gup-Gup issued a low chuckle.

      “Poppa, you keep your tongue behind your teeth. The old men need your medicine. The young men need your fear. The lubras need your discipline. You couldn’t tend to them from inside a gaol. I know. Long time ago I was in one.”

      Again he chuckled. “The white policeman and his three trackers were very tired time they put me into the gaol. But they put me there.” His voice became a whip. “Stop this lubra’s cackling, Poppa. Big-feller policeman tell why he came here, eh?”

      “As though you didn’t know, Gup-Gup,” Bony reproved. “I came for you to tell me about the man found dead in the Crater.”

      “That we don’t know. He was a white feller. Could be white-feller killing,” calmly responded Gup-Gup, and, as calmly, withdrew one of his fire-sticks and, with the red end, prodded a six-inch centipede that had crawled from his wood heap.

      “You don’t know!” Bony echoed. “You can tell me who boned me fifteen years ago and on the other side of the world, and you can’t tell me who killed the white feller in the Crater. Seems this tribe should get another Chief and another Medicine Man. Could be you two should be flung into gaol for a spell. You wouldn’t escape in small pieces, and it wouldn’t matter if you did because never would the pieces come together again to make Gup-Gup and Poppa.”

      The Medicine Man became absorbed in Gup-Gup’s idle arrangement of his fire-sticks, and the Chief’s hands betrayed the fact that fire-sticks were not at the moment of interest to him. He looked like an animated unwrapped mummy. He looked like a dirty bag of bones put together with wire and covered with dark-grey tights.

      “You very cunning fellers, I know,” Bony continued. “I’m a cunning feller, too. White-feller law says no killing. You know that. I know, and you know I know, that the white feller couldn’t have been put into the Crater without you knowing about it. So don’t talk like lubras and say you didn’t know he was put there days before the plane people saw him. It’s why you all went on walkabout that day the plane flew over.”

      “We went walkabout to initiation of our young

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