Unyama looked uneasy. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Wendourie shall be brought before us tomorrow. If this woman exists we shall question her.’
‘One moment, if you please, headman,’ Ooloo begged. He leaned toward Wendourie. ‘Think well, young man. Is there not something that may help prove the truth of your story? Something which, perhaps, till now you have forgotten or refrained from mentioning.’
Wendourie hesitated; then, with sudden resolve, he thrust his fingers into the folds of his possum-skin belt. He said, as he withdrew his hand, ‘This I will give to no man but Unyama or his guest.’
Unyama frowned at what Wendourie was holding and held back, but Ooloo took it while the medicine man peered. ‘It is a leaf,’ Urgali suggested.
‘Have you ever seen such a leaf?’ Wendourie asked. ‘Is there a feather so light? Do you know of a leaf so thin or so white?’
Urgali said offhandedly, ‘In far parts grow many curious plants. This one has been blown hither.’
‘Examine closely,’ Wendourie invited the Narranyeri man. ‘You will note there are no veins.’
‘It is smothered in veins,’ the medicine man contradicted as Ooloo held the thing up to the sun.
‘No,’ Ooloo said meditatively. ‘They are not veins because they connect with no common stem. There is no stem.’
Unyama spoke uneasily. ‘Do you think, Wendourie, this thing was left by the monster of which you spoke?’
‘I do not know,’ Wendourie said. ‘I saw it clinging to a bush.’
‘It is of no consequence,’ Urgali said. ‘It is evident that Wendourie seeks to divert our minds and delude us with this leaf he has happened upon. Drowning in his own infamy, he clutches at reeds. But I warn him, this pallid thing he has plucked from a bush of his imagining will not save him from the vengeance of Kudana’s kinsman. He may clutch at the reed but the waters of the billabong will close over him.’
Unyama whispered to Ooloo, ‘He does this sort of thing rather well but, personally, it bores me.’
It had not escaped the Narranyeri man’s notice that, although Urgali ranted with assurance, he was a little puzzled and concerned about the thing he had maintained was a leaf. ‘This may mean much,’ Ooloo said.
‘Or little,’ Urgali scoffed. ‘If the thing were placed in my hands I would study it tonight and learn its implication.’
Wendourie shook his head. ‘Tonight you can describe it to the ghosts.’
The medicine man drew himself up proudly. ‘That will I do,’ he said thunderously, ‘for am I not all-powerful?’
‘There is in Ooloo’s hand something more powerful than medicine men,’ Wendourie said quietly.
‘Pah,’ Urgali exploded. ‘More powerful than I, say you?’ He frowned at the headman. ‘Did I not suck devil stones from your wife’s cousin? Have I not a belt made from the hair of a witch’s mother-in-law that will heal battle wounds?’ He went on, boastfully, ‘Can I not spit into a man’s footmark and render him lame? And did I not and but recently, as a simple experiment, throw into the body of a total stranger, and at a distance, a barbed stick attached to an invisible string which I tugged – to bring first intolerable pain, then death?’
Unyama shuffled uneasily but Ooloo stiffened on his seat on the tree stump. ‘Are such things possible?’ he murmured. ‘Is it really true, great Urgali, this matter of the barbed stick and the invisible string?’
‘That and many other wonders have I worked with surprising ease,’ the medicine man said grandly, ‘Tonight I will float in the air and confer with ghosts. Tomorrow I will bring before Unyama the woman Wendourie coveted.’ He strode off, limping, and all waited in silence till he had disappeared.
Unyama sighed. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said, ‘now we’ve offended him. Wendourie has not helped his case by mocking him. Perhaps it would have been better had I permitted Kuduna’s uncle to use his spear. However, tomorrow Urgali will tell us what the spirits advise and bring before us the young woman. We may then be able to put Wendourie to death with an easier conscience.’ He dismissed the assemblage.
In the early dark Ooloo left the stifling hut of the headman, leaving him snoring by the fire, and made his way to where the young men were guarding Wendourie. Hospitality demanded they should open the way for him. ‘Young man,’ he began, when he was alone with the prisoner, ‘you spoke boldly, questioning the power of Urgali. Have you no faith in medicine men?’
‘In Urgali, none, Welcome guest.’
‘And yet he had killed at a distance, throwing at a stranger an invisible barb held by an invisible string.’
‘He has said it.’
‘I know it to be true.’
Wendourie considered this. ‘Since you say it, it must be the truth,’ he said slowly. ‘I am bewildered. I have been taught to believe but often I doubt. There is this business of soaring in the clouds, for instance.’
‘Urgali has promised tonight to confer with ghosts.’
‘Tomorrow, when the sun rises,’ Wendourie said with a half-smile, ‘there will be a great rustling of leaves and shaking of branches in the highest gumtree. Those who watch will see him leap to the ground. All will be able to follow his tracks back to his hut. But, if they searched, they would see also the earlier tracks he made when he walked to the tree in the darkness before dawn. They would see the marks on the bole and know that he had climbed up as well as down.’
Ooloo regarded the young man steadily. ‘Then, if one dared be abroad at the dread hour before dawn about which your medicine man warned the tribe, he might see Urgali on the way to his ghosts?’
‘Is there one who would dare?’ Wendourie asked. ‘I will tell you now there is none among the Munamulla.’ He shrugged his shoulders and added bitterly, ‘It will be said Urgali’s ghosts are against me and he will drag before Unyama some timid girl out of whom he has frightened the wits and she will confess that I loved her and Kuduna loved her and it will be made manifest that I killed him because of my jealousy.’
Ooloo took from his belt that which Wendourie had given him. ‘If this be a leaf,’ he said, ‘there is no leaf like it in all our world. With this strange thing a man might become mighty in magic.’
Wendourie said, ‘I know not what it is but it has some connection with the monster whose tracks I followed and the devil sounds I heard.’ He hesitated and asked, ‘Why do you speak to me with such kindness?’
‘Because,’ Ooloo told him, ‘I believe you have spoken the truth even as my son who is grievously dead would have spoken. To none have I told this but he, too, questioned the magic of the medicine men.’
‘And you?’ Wendourie asked. ‘How much do you believe?’
‘Some things I believe,’ the older man said simply, ‘but often, like you, I am bewildered. If at times there is deception, it does not follow there is never truth.’ He hesitated briefly and went on softly, ‘If I had this leaf for my very own, I might accomplish much. Will you give it to me?’
‘Is it not in your hands? I cannot take it from you?’
‘Nevertheless, I ask for it.’
‘You have been kind. It is yours.’
Ooloo smiled. ‘With this magic I shall save your life.’
Abruptly he left.
In the morning, early, Urgali the medicine man was found dead of a blow and lying beneath the tallest gum. His tracks made it clear that he had been going toward the tree and had almost reached the trunk when he had been struck down by the nulla-nulla found lying beside his body. The headman had been barely awakened with the news than there came a wailing from the hut of the kinsman of Kuduna. The man’s wife told how, in the dread hour against which they had been warned, her husband had heard a strange voice softly calling his name. She had begged him to ignore it but, vastly curious, he had put his head outside. No more than his head, she was sure, but she saw his whole body shoot into the dark without and he had not returned. She had waited, trembling, till dawn and found him but a few yards from the hut, lying beneath a small tree, his head mangled. A bloodstained nulla-nulla lay beside him.