Corroboree Read Free

see.’
    â€˜He said nothing, sir. But I couldn’t trust him. He didn’t even put up his hand to save himself.’
    Eyre thoughtfully put his hand over his mouth, and looked down at Biranga’s battered body. Biranga had been a fugitive from the South Australian police for nearly six years now, ever since the trouble over at Broughton, when two Aborigines had been shot by white farmers as a vigilante punishment for rape and murder. Four days later the farmers had been speared to death themselves by Biranga and several other tribesmen, including Jacky Monday and a boy called Dencil.
    Eyre had himself put up the offer of £10 for Biranga’s capture, dead or alive. Eyre was fair and considerate when it came to dealing with the tribesmen of the Murray River district; but also firm. Some of the blackfellows called him ‘Take-No-Nonsense’ after one of his own favourite phrases.
    Biranga, however, had successfully eluded Eyre and his constables, until today. He had been seen scores of times, although the majority of sightings had been very questionable, since a shilling was paid for each report, and most of the Aborigines around Moorundie would have sworn blind that they had seen a real live Bunyip for a penny, and a herd of Bunyips for twopence. Biranga had also been blamed for almost every unexplained theft or act ofvandalism for over four years. Eyre’s black trackers would make a desultory search in the bush whenever something went missing, and then come back to say, ‘Biranga took it. That’s what we heard.’ If Biranga had really been as industrious a larcenist as the Moorundie blackfellows tried to suggest, then he would have been walking around the bush with beehives, rifles, sheets of corrugated iron, and scores of blankets.
    Some of the blackfellows had said that Biranga was a ghost, because of his unusually pale skin. Captain Billington had suggested that he might be an albino. Wawayran had declared that he was a real phantom. But everybody agreed that he had to be caught. It was unsettling for all of the civilised Aborigines who lived on the missions, or as servants in European homes, if a wild black tribesman was running free, doing whatever he pleased, and cocking a snook at the white authorities.
    Governor McConnell had written to Eyre and added dryly, ‘I expect you to be able to report within a few weeks that you have been able to apprehend the native they call the Ghost of Emu Downs, the fellow Biranga.’
    The Ghost of Emu Downs, thought Eyre, as he looked down at Biranga’s broken body. Some ghost. Wawayran came up with a wet rag, and Eyre took it, and knelt down again, and began carefully to wipe away the pipe-clay that encrusted the dead Biranga’s forehead and cheeks.
    The face that appeared through the smeary clay was startlingly calm, as if the man had died peacefully and without fear, in spite of his terrible injuries.
    It was also an unusually cultured-looking face, almost European, although the forehead and the cheeks were decorated with welts and scars, marks which Eyre recognised as those of a warrior of the Wirangu. Eyre hesitated for a moment, and then peeled back one of the man’s eyelids with his thumb. The irises were brown; although not that reddish-brown which distinguished the eyes of so many Aborigines. Carefully, Eyre pushed the eyelid back.He was not squeamish about touching dead men: he had touched so many, and some he had embraced.
    He suddenly became aware that Charlotte was standing close behind him, looking down at the body.
    â€˜Charlotte,’ he said, ‘this is not a place for you.’ But there was very little hint of admonition in his voice. He knew that she had to look; that she would not be satisfied until she did.
    Charlotte said quietly, ‘He could almost be a white man.’
    â€˜Just pale, my dear. Some of them are. Sometimes it’s caused by disease. Poor food, that kind of thing. I’ve