Walkabout - James Vance Marshall [17]
To the bush boy the little one’s tears were confirmation: confirmation of what the lubra had seen.He turned away. He left the worwora at the edge of the billabong; he left the lace-edged panties by the ashes of last night’s hearth. Slowly he walked away into the desert.
CHAPTER NINE
THE children watched him. The girl was very pale and breathing quickly. The boy was whimpering; shocked; frightened; caught up in a cross-fire of emotions he couldn’t begin to understand. But one fact did penetrate the haze of his bewilderment. The bush boy, for the second time since their meeting him, was deserting them: their life-line, once again, was drifting away.
Suddenly, violently, he flung off his sister’s hand and rushed stumbling into the desert.
‘Hey, darkie!’ His voice was frightened. ‘Come back. Come back.’
The bush boy walked on: unheeding, apparently unhearing: like a sleep-walker. But Peter wouldn’t be denied. Blindly he launched himself at the bush boy’s legs, clutching him round the knees.
‘You’re not to go,’ he panted.
And he hung on, like a leech.
The bush boy was jerked to a halt: was shaken out of his trance. He put his hands on the white boy’s shoulders, pushing him gently away. But Peter wouldn’t release his grip.
‘You’re not to go’ – he repeated it over and over again. ‘Not to go. Not to go. Not to go.’
The bush boy squatted down; so that his face was close to the little one’s; so that the little one could look into his eyes and see the terrible thing that was there. With their faces less than eighteen inches apart the two boys stared into each other’s eyes.
But to the bush boy’s astonishment, the little one didn’t draw back; gave no exclamation of terror; seemed to see nothing wrong. He got to his feet. Puzzled. For a moment hope came surging back. Perhaps the lubra had been mistaken: perhaps the Spirit of Death had been only passing through him, resting awhile as he passed from one tribe to another: perhaps he had left him now.
He retraced his steps, back towards the girl.
But as soon as he neared her, all hope drained away. For at his approach the lubra again shrank back; in her eyes all the former terror came welling up.
The bush boy knew then that he was going to die. Not perhaps today, nor tomorrow, nor even the next day. But soon. Before the coming of the rains and the smoking of spirits out of the tribal caves. This knowledge numbed his mind, but didn’t paralyse it. He was still able to think of other things. Of the queer strangers, for example – the lubra and the little one – of what would happen to them. When he died, they would die too. That was certain, for they were such helpless creatures. So there’d be not one victim for the Spirit of Death but three. Unless he could somehow save them?
Then in a moment of clarity he saw what he must do. He must lead the strangers to safety: to the final goal of his walkabout: to the valley-of-waters-under-the-earth. And they must waste no time. For who knew how much time they would have.
He gathered up the worwora, and smoothed out the ash of the fire.
‘Kurura,’ he said. And struck out across the desert. The little one followed him at once. But the lubra didn’t move. He thought for a long time that she had decided to stay by the billabongs, but in the end she too started to follow, but keeping a long way behind.
CHAPTER TEN
THE desert was neither flat nor monotonous; nor I was it like so many other deserts – the Gobi, the Steppes, or certain parts of the Sahara – featureless and devoid of colour. Its formation was varied: patches of sand, outcrops of rock, dried-up watercourses, salt-pans, faults, and frequent belts of vegetation. And its colours were strong: bold and harsh and sharply-defined: belts of yellow, blocks of bottle-green, patches of fire-flame red and fields of blood.
The bush boy led the way unhesitatingly: across the salt-pans, through the