And at that moment one came running, eyes wide, breathless with his news. ‘Unyama! Beside the hut of Kuduna’s kinsman! The mark of the toeless man!’
Unyama’s mouth fell open. Ooloo broke the awed silence. ‘It is not surprising,’ he said. ‘Did I not say the spirits were with us last night? The Toeless Thing is a creature of the ghosts which killed Urgali. Is it not a fact that many saw the tracks of Urgali moving toward the spreading tree, but who among us saw tracks of the killer?’
The old men sought each other’s eyes, wonderingly. ‘There were no tracks,’ they said. ‘Only Urgali’s.’
When they had gone to investigate and Ooloo was alone with Wendourie, the Narranyeri man said, ‘The spirits have been kind to you.’
The young man said blandly, ‘And to you, clever one. May it ever be so.’ He looked about him, assuring himself none was within earshot. ‘It shall be a secret between us that you swung into the great gum from a branch on the west and climbing inward, waited till Urgali came from the east; then, leaning as he was about to reach up, struck. Afterwards you climbed to a far branch and leaped.’
‘You, too, are clever,’ Ooloo smiled. ‘But the tracks of the toeless one? Can this astonishing thing be explained?’
Wendourie showed all his teeth. ‘I have thought much since I first saw the toeless tracks,’ he said. ‘Those I saw cannot be explained but they may be imitated frighteningly by cutting bark in the shape of a man’s feet and binding it to his naked soles.’ He added in another tone, ‘I am sorry your magic leaf was blown away. Do you really believe the spirits took it?’
Ooloo shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said. He glanced round cautiously, then, opening his belt, revealed to Wendourie the scrap of whiteness lying within. ‘I took the precaution of saving part of it,’ he said. ‘This, skillfully used, and with the aid of some strange dream I shall think up, will make me a powerful man among my own people.’
Wendourie asked with difference, ‘Would I be impertinent if I asked your permission to accompany you on part of your return journey? I feel there is much I could learn from you quickly which, without you, only the years could teach.’
In the middle of the next day Ooloo and Wendourie stood together on a high hill, their faces wet with the sweat of exertion, and gazed down upon an endless vista of trees which smothered the surface and hid the contour of the land, concealing plain and precipice alike. No thing stirred.
Ooloo pointed with his throwing-stick. ‘There lies my territory,’ he said. ‘Beyond the Narranyeri is the land of the Wirriwirri; beyond the Wirriwirri, the Bulpanarra and beyond them, ‘tis said, a tribe so ignorant it has not yet learned how to procure water from gum scrub roots. But beyond and far beyond… what?’
‘Nothing,’ Wendourie replied promptly. ‘The world ends.’
Ooloo blinked at him. ‘Perhaps,’ he said slowly. They stood, busy with disturbing thoughts, till their ears caught the sound of rustling leaves and then a little breeze fanned their heated bodies and simultaneously they lifted their heads, sniffing.
‘The great water…the great mysterious water,’ Ooloo said. ‘Even here the salt fills our nostrils.’ Half to himself, he murmured, ‘How strange if there were another side to it from which men might cross…’
‘I have stood and watched in awe,’ Wendourie said. ‘It can be peaceful as the billabong and then suddenly turbulent and angry, its voice more frightening than the bull-roarer. It would devour even the biggest canoes.’
Ooloo nodded. ‘True,’ he agreed. ‘None would dare risk their lives.’ He lifted his shoulders in a characteristic shrug. ‘Still, it is a pity Kuduna died before he told what he had seen.’
As he stood watching Wendourie’s black body merge and lose itself in the tangle of scrub, in the distant north-east Captain Madge of the ketch Ulysses, making its way from Sydney with a small party of colonists for the new settlement at Brisbane, was sitting in his cabin, a glass of grog in his hand, a Bible on his knee, and on the table before him the log in which he had lately written:
August 17, 1847: This day, the sea being calm with a light breeze, moored in a little cove very lovely to behold alongside a rock ledge providing a natural dock and giving us six fathoms no less. Being greatly enamoured of the place and the morrow being her wedding anniversary, nothing would satisfy Mistress Turner but her husband should make an excursion ashore to gather branches of the golden blossoms growing abundantly in scrubland bordering a flat pasture. Facilities for disembarking being good and weather mild, Mr Turner decided to land the light dray and our horse and go a little inland for to spy out the country and perhaps obtain game. Party returned safely aboard with no game and nothing to show for their pains but a load of blossoms which they pulled from the trees as the dray passed beneath. No sign of savages but serpents being observed they remained in dray for fear of being bit. Mr Scott, descending once, almost stepped upon a giant snake and was right glad to clamber back to safety.
August 18, 1847: The rain which fell during the night with some violence ceased early this morning and dawn brought a beautiful day, to be marred, unhappily, by a distressing incident. Mr Turner, watching from the deck, observed movement in the near bushes ashore and, suspecting savages, and first shouting as a warning, fired a shot to frighten them away. Sent two men ashore to investigate who returned with a poor naked heathen whom Mr Turner had accidentally shot dead, but he and the other gentlemen being by this time deeply engaged with the ladies in preparation for the festivities, thought it befitting to say naught to mar their lightheartedness and had my men dispose of the body.
Feeling a little sad at heart and asking God’s forgiveness for our part in this calamity, tide and breeze being favourable, sailed from this most lovely spot amid the laughter of the ladies and gentlemen and with Mr Scott’s little daughter sitting prettily in the stern, a garland of golden blossoms about her neck, singing to herself as she tore up an old newspaper and watched the scraps float away through the air like birds making for the bush.
CARTER BROWN
Carter Brown, the pseudonym of British-born Alan Geoffrey Yates, must easily be Australia ’s most prolific author. At the time of his death in May 1985, a Sydney newspaper estimated he had written 270 books, selling more than 70 million copies in 14 different languages. A more recent estimate by his widow, Mrs Denise Yates, is 325 novels.
Yates was a genuine pulp writer and he established himself on the market when pulp was king. Before the crime thrillers that established the Carter Brown name, Yates churned out numerous westerns, science fiction and horror stories under various pen-names including Paul Valdez, Tom Conway and Tex Conrad. However he will always be better known as Carter Brown.
Literary recognition remained elusive. Not that it seemed to matter too much. The Carter Brown thrillers, all paperback originals published by Horwitz, sold extremely well in Australia, the United States and numerous foreign markets. Yet the critics ignored him. An exception was Anthony Boucher, who reviewed crime fiction for the New York Times Book Review and was himself a pulp writer of considerable talent. In the 850-odd columns he wrote for the Times, he found time to champion Carter Brown. Paradoxically, Boucher disliked the Raymond Chandler stories.
Yate’s adventures were largely set in the United States yet he didn’t visit the country until many years into his career. That didn’t particularly matter as the background he used was a purely idealised view of how big cities should be, especially the mean streets where heroes created order out of chaos.