The Secret Camp
SAVEFORthe talking ripple at the bow, the boat and its crew made no sound. The ‘maiden moon’ had vanished and her starry lovers were lustreless.
The flow of the stream was negligible, and the only discomfort was created by mosquitoes. Facing to the bow, Bony pushed at the oars for three hours before he saw on the skyline of the north bank the tree marking the turn-off to the Settlement. Ten minutes later he was resting under the bridge carrying the main track over Settlement Creek.
By the stars it was then two o’clock… when all good aborigines should be fast asleep, sheltered and safe from the dreaded Kurdaitcha.
Under the bridge it was completely dark and, in this creek, no currents. The boat rested motionless, and Bony made a cigarette, lit it when hands and head were enfolded by a bag, and thereafter kept it cupped by his hands. Here the surfacing fish were almost lethargic, when those in the river had exhibited elan in their chase after smaller fry. The bullfrogs ‘clonk-clonked’ like bells minus tonal strength, and the invisible night birds committed their murders with unemotional efficiency.
There was no need for haste, and Bony, having finished his cigarette, greased the hole in the square stern of the craft to take a rowlock, and greased the rowlock before laying an oar in it. From now on he would propel the boat by the oar astern, and steer without error.
The bridge passed, and the trees almost met over the narrow waterway. The sculling oar and its rowlock made no sound, and it seemed to be the trees passing the boat, not the boat in motion. The lovesick stars were no lamps upon the dark waterway, and the trees slept unattended by wind. There was plenty of time to reach the far end of the waterway and hide the boat before dawn, when Bony hoped to be high in an ancient gum within fifty yards of the blacksmith’s shop and about that distance from Mr Beamer’s house.
Presently the trees halted in their procession to make way for clumps of lantana growing along the edge of the now shallow water. A few minutes after having entered this lantana section, Bony smelled smoke. Camp-fire smoke at three in the morning! Smoke when all camp fires would be out or damped down for the night! The air movement was from the Settlement to Bony, but such was the strength of the aroma its origin could not be a fire banked with ash ready to be broken open for breakfast cooking in the Settlement.
Bony ceased sculling, and the boat continued to ‘drift’ through the still water, and then abruptly the aroma was cut off and the rancid smell of mud returned. Gently the stern oar brought the boat round, and slowly it was propelled back over its course until again it was centred in the ribbon of invisible smoke, so sweetly aromatic.
Doubtless it was the weight of a cold twig which broke through the white ash covering the burning heart of the fire, because in the wall of black velvet suddenly appeared a flaming ruby to become an angry eye staring at the man in the boat. And for five long minutes Bony stared back at the angry red eye. It was then that the embers beneath the eye subsided when for a brief three seconds there lived a tiny flickering blue flame.
It wasn’t an old tree stump smouldering away for days. It was a camp fire, and just beyond it was a rough humpy constructed with tree branches. Thatmuch the tiny flames revealed before retiring to permit the red eye to continue its angry watch.
Bony sculled silently down the creek till coming opposite a large lantana clump partly growing in the water. Here he went ashore, pulling the boat into the cane-mass, and then as silently boring through the mass to dry land. On stepping forth from the lantana he was wearing the sheep-skin overshoes which would leave no imprints on these hard river flats.
He stalked that camp fire without making sound enough to disturb a finch, seeing its red eye where he expected to see it, and finally squatted behind a clump of low cane-grass situated within a few yards of it.
Save less than a dozen, all the aborigines had gone on walkabout. Those who had remained would be sleeping in huts, not here beside this stagnant backwater. There was no normal reason for this lonely humpy, indicated by the fire as being inhabited, excepting perhaps that an aborigine had brought here his newly-wedded bride. In view of the prowling Kurdaitcha not even the most obedient bride could be expected to honeymoon in such solitude.
The false dawn came, followed by darkness more intense, and a little cold wind to make Bony shiver. A fox barked as though at the squatting man, and seconds later barked again from far away. It was when that second bark had been blanketed by night, and Bony saw the first shaft of soft light high in the sky, that the baby cried.
There reached him the low murmur of gentle soothing; the baby quietened. The dawn shafts were spearing the night when the child cried again, this time demandingly. A woman said sleepily:
“Was’matter, little feller?”
The voice was the voice of an aborigine. The baby yelled, old enough to know how to claim attention, and, a moment after, the red eye vanished. The baby continued to cry, and soon there appeared a faint glow which grew swiftly bright to reveal the aboriginal woman tending her fire.
The blazing fire proved the humpy to be a tent almost made invisible by green tree branches. Bony could not see the mouth of the tent. The woman stood and the firelight showed her to be tall and graceful. She was wearing male attire, a suit of flannelette pyjamas, and her black hair was banded with a blue ribbon. Bony remembered her. She had been with old Wilmot when he visited the Settlement with Alice. She left the fire for the humpy, soothed the infant who wouldn’t be soothed, and came out carrying a feeding-bottle, a tin of powdered milk, and an old billycan. The billy she filled at the creek and placed over the fire.
The infant, understanding that screaming failed to bring instant doting attention, stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Like all the mothers of her race, this woman loved babies and was versed in the exquisite art of being cruel to be, kind. The baby was hungry and so food must be prepared for it, but to worry about the screaming would be the height of folly because the cry lacked that poignant note of pain. Calmly this woman watched the water heating, and only when it was boiling did she go to the tent and bring out a jug in which to mix the milk.
She brought cold water from the creek to cool the milk before pouring from the jug to the bottle, her movements unhurried, her face expressive of abiding content. Taking the bottle to the tent, she spoke to the baby and the baby started a yell which was stopped by the bottle teat. Thereafter the soft voicelullabyed.
Bony could remain no longer, for now the water of the creek was visible and the kookaburras were greeting the New Day with their ironical laughter. The boat was safe enough from chance discovery, and silently he walked up the creek and so to the red gum near the blacksmith’s shop.
The tree was bent by the years and scarred by innumerable climbing boys. They had made a path upward by the only way, and Bony climbed this path to reach a rough platform at the junction of two branches with the trunk, the work also of the Settlement children.
Like the woman at the fire, his movements were deliberate as he made himself comfortable on the roughly-woven sticks. He smoked two cigarettes, and now and then he smiled at little mental images and refused to permit ugly thoughts to disturb his mind.
Having pocketed the two cigarette-ends, he told his mind to sleep till nine o’clock. His mind slept. His mind awoke at nine o’clock when the sun was high and the ants already were up the tree gathering its sweet exudations.
A bull-ant objected to his presence, and he flicked it into space with a snapping forefinger. The marauding red ants took no notice of him, and he politely ignored them. He climbed, and at the higher elevation commanded a clear range of the Settlement.
Three magpies were warbling on the office roof, and the smoke from the Superintendent’s chimney was almost the colour of washing blue. Then a lubra in a white dress and white shoes emerged from the hospital to take something to the incinerator, and Dr Beamer appeared from his veranda to cross to the office. After him trotted a grossly fat fox terrier, who quickly gave up the idea of escort duty for the pleasure of rolling his left ear on the ground to remove stick-fast fleas.
At twenty past nine Bony saw the dust rising behind the car bringing Essen and his constables, and five minutes later the noise of the car propelled Mr Beamer from his office and his wife to the door of the house veranda. A conference was held, and ended by Mrs Beamer and one constable walking to the hospital and Mr Beamer with Essen and the other constable making for the lines of huts.
All quite normal. The Superintendent would know who of his people had not gone on walkabout, and what huts they occupied. Several figures rose from beside a communal fire, and others appeared from the huts, totalling nine. Finally, all gathered into a small party and walked from the huts to the hospital, Bony recognising old Chief Wilmot, his son Fred, the watch-mender, and he who ran the store. There was an ancient crone and two young women.
Questions. Did the Beamers know of that woman and baby living in the tent shrouded by green boughs? Did old Chief Wilmot know? Almost certainly, for nothing and no one would escape his notice. Bony gazed over the lesser tree-tops to the area of dark-green lantana, and failed to see the faintest wisp of smoke from that camp fire.
The policeman and Mrs Beamer entered the hospital, and Essen and Mr Beamer with the aborigines filed in, leaving one constable on guard at the door. Bony waited five minutes for the woman with the baby to appear, watched for the slightest betraying movement and saw nothing. Then he went to ground, the entire Settlement his for examination… for one hour.
The constable at the hospital door saw him cross behind the blacksmith’s shop to the lines of huts, noted the extraordinary footwear, and with great interest watched him as long as possible.
The ground was dry, flaky, hard beneath the flakes. Only from point to point was the ground powdered by feet; about the Superintendent’s house, where all traffic stopped, about the school and the hospital, was the ground churned to dust. Paths made by naked feet skirted the lines of huts, because off the paths waited the three-cornered jacks having needle-pointed spurs.
Bony’s first objective was the communal fire, still alive, and the huts closest to it. They were single-roomed shacks, containing a table and hard-bottom chairs, and mattresses of straw lying on the floor.
Utility blankets lay on one of two mattresses in the first hut he visited. A military greatcoat and a couple of cotton singlets served for a pillow. Hanging from nails driven into the walls was a military felt hat with the brim unclipped to the crown, an expensive stockwhip, a pair of goose-neck spurs in which the rowels had been replaced with sixpences to produce the louder ringing, and a gaudy silk scarf denoting feminine ownership.
The scarf was the only feminine item in this hut. There was a litter of comics, a pair of tan shoes, a bridle and a. 22 rifle in a corner.
Bony pondered on the two mattresses, so close together; only one in use. Taking great care not to displace the blankets, he looked under each mattress and found nothing. Whereupon he translated what he saw. The things hanging upon the wall, especially the hat and the spurs, said this was Tracker Wilmot’s hut. The unused mattress beside the used one, told of an absent wife. Recollection of Marcus Clark’s reference to a lubra named Sarah, the month-old bride, now added that to this, which totalled a graceful young lubra in the secret camp among the lantana.
In the next hut he found evidence of occupation by Tracker Fred’s father. Here again were two mattresses, both beingused, and placed as far apart as possible. The place was clean enough, due to Mr Beamer’s regular inspections, but the litter was an offence. Under one mattress Bony found a set of pointing bones and a skin bag containing many precious churinga stones and a set of rain stones as large as the hand and as green as polished jade.
The fact that these sacred articles were hidden under the Chief’s mattress and not in a sacred store-house, such as under a rock or in a tree, indicated that Chief Wilmot was unsure of the degree of his rejuvenated authority over his people, and that he was aware many of them were so ‘ruined’ by white civilisation that they would steal these tribal relics and sell them for a few plugs of tobacco.
The hut occupied by the watch-mender and the store bookkeeper gave nothing, as did those other huts into which he flitted.
As he anticipated, he found a path running direct from the huts to the secret camp in the lantanas, and so crossing an open space of two hundred yards. Convinced that the lubra with the baby would lie quiet within the tent, he followed the path and so came to anotherjunctioning with it. This path came from the direction of the office. On this path he found imprints of the shoes worn by the woman who had crept under Mrs Rockcliff’s bed.
The wearer had visited the secret camp, and she had returned by the same path. He followed the returning prints, followed them till they passed by the office and continued to the Superintendent’s house. The woman who had been under Mrs Rockcliff’s bed had emerged from and entered Mr Beamer’s house by the back door.