‘We have a guest,’ Unyama said. ‘He cannot be deprived of our hospitality.’
‘Death waits for us all,’ Ooloo said quietly. ‘It will not mind waiting a little longer for Wendourie.’
‘Besides,’ the headman said, ‘it will pass the time of which we have more than enough.’ He called his guest’s attention to the approach of a young man, guarded on either side by three bucks. ‘See, here is Wendourie. Let us hear his story again that our friend may carry word of our justice to the Narranyeri.’
Ooloo, gazing at the young man who stepped, unarmed, before his headman, felt a sudden tug at his throat, for here was his own son again. The same age, the same proud stance, the same clear eye flashing defiance.
‘Wendourie,’ the headman said gravely, ‘would it not be wise to confess that all you have said is but a fine story and one that will go down to our children and their children and be repeated at campfires long, long after we have all joined the spirits?’
‘All I have spoken,’ the young man said, ‘is the truth.’
Unyama said, ‘So be it. Here is a stranger who is our welcome guest. He would hear what you have to say.’
Wendourie looked long and earnestly as if he would divine what manner of man Ooloo was. The old one said, ‘Be of courage.’
Wendourie bowed. ‘When the stranger goes he will take the truth with him.’
The medicine man, Urgali, made an impatient gesture. ‘So be it,’ he said and pointed a skinny finger. ‘You, Wendourie, went forth with your friend, Kuduna. But you returned alone. Why?’
Wendourie folded his arms. ‘It is as I have said. A hole was suddenly in his forehead and he was dead.’
‘A small hole, you said?’ The headman was anxious his guest should be impressed.
‘No larger than the top of my thumb,’ Wendourie agreed.
Urgali cried, ‘So small a thing! Had I been there I would have sucked the place and spat out the magic.’
Wendourie regarded him calmly. ‘Since you are so powerful, why did you not know what had happened?’
There was a murmur of surprise and awe at the boldness of the question. Unyama shifted uneasily on his seat, wondering how the medicine man would take it, but Ooloo, with his own private views, found his heart warming to the young man. Urgali made light of it. He bent double and cackled with thin laughter. ‘Why did I not know, simple one?’ he asked at length, looking toward the young men for support. ‘Because it never happened!’
The following laughter was quickly suppressed by Unyama. ‘This is not a campfire gossip,’ he said. ‘Let us behave with circumspection before our visitor. Let us make it plain to him what happened!’
Urgali bowed low. ‘With all respect,’ he said, ‘I submit it should first be made plain to our guest that our young men are not so effete that they die from trifling holes in their foreheads.’
‘It is known far and wide that we are a hardy race,’ Unyama said. ‘Let us not dally with self-evident facts. Proceed, Wendourie.’
The young man said, ‘We, Kuduna and I, were three days’ walk from here when…’
Urgali was waving his arms, shouting, ‘Hear, you of the Narranyeri. There was wrongdoing from the beginning. Three days from here in the direction which Wendourie took would take him into the territory of the Koliju.’ He whirled on the accused man. ‘Did you carry a message stick?’
‘No.’
‘You were trespassing with evil intent?’
‘No. I did not realise where we were.’
‘So!’ Urgali looked about him triumphantly. ‘The great hunter, Wendourie, was lost.’
The young men in the semicircle laughed and even the grey-heads smiled but Ooloo remarked smoothly, ‘It might be. Temporarily, of course. I myself, busy with my thoughts, have sometimes momentarily forgotten my exact whereabouts.’
Urgali spoke with false deference. ‘But you, welcome one, are weighted with years. You have much to ponder. Wendourie, however, is young and without responsibility.’ He pointed an emaciated finger at the youth. ‘I suggest to you that you lured Kuduna into foreign territory the more easily to hide his body.’
Unyama said testily, ‘Let us get on with the matter of the magic tracks. Proceed, Wendourie.’
The young man said, ‘Kuduna saw them first and called to me excitedly. It was late in the day but there was still time to follow them. They were like no tracks I have ever seen. At first they were a little confused but presently they became quite clear.’
Unyama beckoned one of Wendourie’s guards. ‘Bring two long sticks with blunt ends,’ he ordered and said in an undertone to his guest, ‘Now you will see something.’
The medicine man said, ‘We have had all this before.’
‘I am anxious to see and know all,’ Ooloo remarked suavely, and presently Wendourie was holding the sticks that had been brought, one in either hand, trailing them after him, pressing their ends into the dusty ground, making two roughly parallel lines.
He explained to Ooloo. ‘Thus were the tracks, but thicker and even and always even, and ever between them great marks made by some monster.’
‘Bigger than the pads of the great kangaroo?’ Urgali enquired.
‘Bigger and different.’
The medicine man appealed to the greyheads. ‘You who have hunted all your long lives, have you known pads larger than the giant kangaroo’s?’
Unyama turned to Ooloo. ‘Wendourie thought they were the marks of spirits. Is it not so?’
‘It was so,’ the young man agreed. ‘We were frightened and Kuduna was terrified by the sight and the strangeness of the smell but I persuaded him to follow the tracks. On and on they went, the two broad lines, never approaching each other and always with the same queer marks between, and suddenly Kuduna trembled and would go no further.’
‘But you,’ the medicine man interposed with sarcasm, ‘were unafraid?’
‘No,’ Wendourie said gravely. ‘I was very frightened because of what I had seen in the tree.’
‘Tell our guest what you had seen,’ Unyama said, watching Ooloo to note the effect of what was coming.
‘Someone… something had grasped a bough in passing.’
Unyama could not restrain himself. ‘Later,’ he told Ooloo eagerly, ‘he saw that other boughs had been grasped and the yellow blossoms and leaves scattered as though whole branches had disappeared.’
‘It is nothing,’ the medicine man said. ‘Children at their games…’
‘To grasp these branches,’ Wendourie said, ‘one would have had to sit upon my shoulders.’
‘To pluck the blossoms of which he speaks a man must need be a giant,’ Unyama emphasised, anxious that his guest should thoroughly understand.
‘I have a very clear picture.’ Ooloo said dryly, and addressed the young man. ‘You think, Wendourie, the hand that grasped the high branches and scattered the yellow blossoms belonged to the monster which made the strange tracks between the parallel lines?’
‘I did,’ Wendourie said, ‘and then I didn’t know what to think.’
‘Listen to this carefully,’ Unyama bade his visitor quite unnecessarily, for the Narranyeri man was absorbed in the recital.
Wendourie said, ‘Suddenly, in an open space, there were the tracks of a man.’
‘Coming from nowhere,’ Unyama implemented.
‘Ah!’ The medicine man smiled. ‘Tell us, young man, of the origin of these miraculous tracks.’
Unyama, greedy for his guest’s reaction, was not disappointed when Wendourie answered, ‘They were made by a man without toes.’
Urgali threw back his head and cackled. ‘And so,’ he cried, ‘now it seems we have two strange lines which never come closer each to the other, which is an impossibility as has been proved by every young man in the tribe who has experimented with trailing sticks; strange tracks of animals bigger than exist; and lastly, a man without toes!’