Beat Not the Bones Read Free Page A

Kairipi on the coast. Patrol ends at Maiola. You can take a boat up that far. The district officer goes up every six months from Kairipi. Eola’s about here, three miles west along the river.’ He tapped his finger on the map.
    â€˜Eola,’ repeated Nyall.
    â€˜Outside patrolled Territory,’ said Warwick.
    â€˜Eola,’ said Jobe again impressively. ‘I was having a look around these parts. I’ve got a boat, been doing a bit of ­pearling up in the north. I took the boat up the Bava River and in one of the villages I came across one of these ornaments. They said they didn’t make them there, and I traced it back to Eola.’
    He paused. The two men were silent, their eyes turned intently to his face. He went on. ‘Eola’s a river village. You know the sort of thing … twenty or thirty grass huts built on the bank of the river. Big long house in the middle of the place, for the men – no women allowed – you know. Where they do all their hocus-pocus nonsense. Pretty wild people. Only half a dozen of them had ever seen a white man before. One of them had been down to Kairipi. They get a bit of trade stuff through from Maiola. A couple of them had cotton ramis on, and they had some tins of bully beef.’
    â€˜Were they at all hostile?’ asked Warwick.
    Jobe became vague. This was a subject that he did not wish to go into. These government fellows were always worrying whether the locals were hostile. Wouldn’t even let you carry a gun. A man would be a fool to go into the jungle without a gun, but it might frighten the poor bloody natives.
    â€˜Bit nervy at first, you know,’ he said airily. ‘Only natural. Not used to white men. Soon got used to me, though. Got quite fond of me after a bit, you might say.’
    â€˜And the gold?’ said Nyall.
    â€˜There’s a lot in the village,’ said Jobe, dropping his voice to a whisper. ‘Some of the old men wear those things round their necks, like pearl shell, you know. I’d say they was beaten out nuggets. And they’ve got a lot of rough stuff stuck away, and one special bit they make a fuss about that would be worth a few thousand on its own. There must be more of it round the place.’
    â€˜Did you look when you were there?’ said Warwick.
    Jobe shook his head. This far he would not go.
    â€˜Why would they value it!’ said Nyall, turning to the anthropologist. ‘It couldn’t have any utilitarian value, and these things are so crudely made they’re nothing to look at. The pearl shell is at least ornamental.’
    Warwick shrugged his shoulders. ‘There might be a hundred reasons, it’s hard to say how these things begin. Take those two rocks in the middle of the harbour. They’re more or less sacred, or used to be. There’s a legend about them. There’d be magic behind this somewhere. Where do they keep the gold?’
    â€˜In the long house, or whatever you call it. The big hut in the middle of the village where all the men get together, and dance and eat and howl and God knows what.’
    â€˜In the long house!’ exclaimed Warwick. ‘How on earth did you get in there? I had to wait in a village for three months once before they’d even let me look at it.’
    Jobe shifted uneasily. He had not been prepared for these questions. He knew well how taboo the long houses were; in fact it was there that the trouble had started.
    â€˜Well, when I first got to the place,’ he said, ‘I saw some of the old men wearing ornaments like these, and I asked them if they had any more. There was an old bird who’d been to Kairipi and spoke a bit of police motu, and we could more or less understand each other. They was pretty cagey at first and wouldn’t say anything, but I managed to break them down. I had some trade goods with me, and I handed them around to sort of sweeten them up. Then one day