LITMIR.BIZ

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      “And don’t you forget, Mary,” Mrs Poulton warned her; at which Mary laughed much more soundfully than many a white woman, and the other gins as well as the bucks joined her as though it were a great joke.

      Young Jeff, geared in low, let out the clutch, and they slid away amid a chorus of “Good night, boss!” and sped forward over the zigzagging track with the hill shadows continuing to hug them.

      “They do mix up the language, for sure,” Mrs Poulton confided to the sergeant. “Marloo in their own language means kangaroo, and bungarra is a bushman’s word for goanna. There’s going to be some cuts and bruises at the end of that corroboree. There always is.”

      “It wouldn’t be a corroboree without a fight,” the policeman opined.

      “Indeed it wouldn’t. And that white-whiskered devil is the worst of the lot. Do you know what he did to Gunda because she ran away with Toff?”

      “No. She’s Moongalliti’s new wife, isn’t she?”

      “Yes, poor thing! Promised him when she was a baby like I might promise you an unweaned kitten,” the lady explained a little indignantly. “Anyway, a young buck from Queensland named Toff came down and she ran away with him. When old Moongalliti discovered it he sent Ludbi and Warn and Watti after them. Ludbi can track, you know. He tracked them nearly to the Queensland border, even though they kept to the high stony tablelands. Toff got away, but they brought back Gunda, who was judged by the old man. And what do you think? He ordered them to hold her down, and then got Ludbi to drive his spear underneath her knee-cap. For weeks she went about with a forked stick for a crutch. She’ll never be able to run any more, poor thing.”

      The sergeant added some condemnatory words to Mrs Poulton’s, but Jeff Stanton began to chuckle, and the others were compelled to join in with him.

      “The blacks know how to deal with disobedient wives, Mrs Poulton,” he said, still chuckling.

      “I think it is a shame. Poor thing! You ought to lock up that old devil, Mr Morris.”

      “I never interfere with ’em unless they go a-murdering,” was the sergeant’s viewpoint. “Anyway, I’ll bet Gunda thinks a lot more now of her husband.”

      Mrs Poulton sighed with evident perplexity. Then she admitted with a seemingly lighter heart: “Well, yes. She told me when I asked her if she didn’t hate Moongalliti that ’ole feller him no good husband, but he good to poor little Gunda. He give me puppy-dog. Me orl right now.’ ”

      When the car slid out on the northern plain of slightly undulating country, with here and there small areas covered thickly with flat, smooth pebbles, Bony was thinking of Ludbi’s tracking powers, and wondering why he and the others were so loath to track about Marks’s abandoned car. There was something very strange in that, and he decided that after the corroboree he must make friends with them, in a fashion that only his being a half-caste made feasible.

      The farther north they proceeded the more numerous became the clusters of trees which the headlights revealed, until the scrub was as thick as that which lay between the homestead of Windee and Mount Lion. Every eight to twelve miles they were stopped by a gate, which Bony got out to open and shut after the car had passed through. Mile after easy flowing mile was indicated by the ivory-faced speedometer until they saw in front a small red light and later the three trucks were revealed drawn up beyond the last gate. A match was struck and held against a cigarette, and for a second the round chubby face of Dot was shown them. And then they were halted behind the third truck, that owned by the strangely assorted partners. The drivers came back and stood near Jeff Stanton, who asked them if there had been any trouble on the road. On being assured that the trip had been uneventful, he said:

      “Well, go on and pull up behind the cart-sheds. Tell the fellows to make no noise, for I suppose we must conform to the regulations.”

      Engines hummed. They saw the first truck get away, and two minutes after—to avoid the dust—the second, and, after a further interval of a minute or so, that driven by Dash. Young Jeff made no start for a full five minutes, since Marion reminded him that Mrs Poulton and she were wearing clothes easily ruined by dust.

      Two miles brought them to the out-station named Nullawil. Bony glimpsed a house beyond a line of pepper-trees and several whitewashed huts and outhouses and then he was descending amidst a small crowd of men each of whom bore a glinting petrol-tin and a stick wherewith to beat it. Sensing an eager spirit of joyous expectancy, he felt a tin thrust under his arm and a short bar of iron slid into his hand, and heard Jeff Stanton say:

      “Padre, escort Mrs Poulton, please. Marion, your arm! the rest follow on in twos and don’t beat your tins until the right moment.”

      Chapter Twelve

      The House of Bliss

      The origin of tin-kettling is obscure, and to-day it is practised in Australia with more or less ritual—in the farming areas no ritual whatever. In Central Australia, however, where the huge holdings of land are held by city monopolists and oversea shareholders, women and marriages are rare. Tin-kettling a newly-wed pair is an event accompanied by a ceremonial of almost religious inflexibility, whilst with our modern motor transport a distance of eighty miles is but an evening’s jaunt. The beating of tinware is merely an adjunct to a house-warming party and the whole affair is often arranged by the bridal couple and the visiting friends beforehand.

      On this occasion there followed Stanton and his daughter nearly thirty people. Father and daughter led the procession through the gate in the wicket fence and halted before the main veranda steps, whereupon Jeff called in a loud voice:

      “Awake, ye sleepers in the House of Bliss! We are an-hungered and athirst.”

      No welcome was there. The house remained in complete darkness. The seconds slowly passed before the leading couple started to circle the house. Whereupon terrific din broke out from wildly-beaten tins—din that continued until the procession again halted at the veranda steps, when the echo of it was continued by numerous chained dogs and a great flock of awakened galahs roosting in the all-pervasive scrub.

      “Show us a glimpse of the House of Bliss!” Stanton shouted.

      Still no light appeared. Still the sleepers slept. Again Stanton led his procession of ear-splitting beaters round the house. The dogs yelped and howled, and the birds rose from their perches and fled. For the third time they came to the veranda steps, and for the third time Stanton called:

      “Open, ye dwellers in the House of Bliss!”

      And then a light sprang up in one of the rooms. A window was thrown open, and a voice raised in pretended anger came to them:

      “Enough! Who are you who should disturb the slumbers of those within the House of Bliss?”

      “We are friends of the bride and friends of the groom. We are in need of refreshment and desire to rest,” was Stanton’s reply.

      “Gladly then will you all be admitted.”

      The window was closed. Light after light sprang up in room after room, until there was not a dark room in the house. Suddenly the main door was thrown open. A brilliant petrol lamp was brought out and suspended from the veranda roof, and then the veranda fly-netted door was flung back and a man and a woman, both dressed in white, stood looking down on them.

      “Enter, friends of the bride!” entreated the woman.

      “And of the groom!” cried the man.

      “Enter our House of Bliss!” they invited together, and stood back whilst Stanton and Marion mounted the three steps. On the veranda a young man not yet thirty, slim, wiry, fair and good-looking, the born horseman indicated in his stance, and a young woman, small and dark and vivaciously pretty, waited to receive them. The men shook the hands of both with genuine good-fellowship, and the two ladies kissed and petted the bride with real affection.

      Bony was the last to be greeted. Dressed in a well-fitting grey suit and wearing

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