Working with knit brow beside the play-maker was Mugille Bao-illna the song-maker. For Mullionkale would make the play, while Mugille Bao-illna¹⁵ would make the songs that would describe the happenings of that day as the players acted their parts.

It was a night of the full moon when at last the eagerly awaited corroboree was first played. The people squatting in their family groups facing the corroboree ground impatiently awaited the chief, Jerrabri, and the council of the elders, coming now solemnly to take pride of place. Then beside them, as an honour of the occasion, the Kubara, those young men who had last passed through the Bora, Red Kangaroo and his band of young warriors. Beside them again were the Biribrau, those serious-faced lads brought in as a great treat from bush solitudes where they were undergoing the last tests before facing the Bora. Yes, serious indeed were these lads, and they must now study the example of warriorhood soon to be staged before them. As the moon rose a low chant of voices seemed to come welling up from the listening heart of the bush itself, echoed hauntingly from on high where under the moon a flight of wild geese passed swiftly overhead. For two hours Red Kangaroo lived that great morning all over again, lost in the mimicry, the descriptive song, the perfect acting in dance of all that had happened from start to finish.

The enthusiastic tribe, strolling back to their gunyahs to sleep for what remained of the night voted old Mullionkale’s new corroboree, “The Making of a Warrior”, to be the best ever. Red Kangaroo did not sleep at all.

So much did Red Kangaroo appear to be the idol of all, so pleased was he at having struck a hearty blow in defence of his beloved tribe, that it was some months before he realized that Jerrabri and the elders and some among the older warriors frowned at the mention of his deeds. This knowledge made him bitter—indiscreetly so.

One fine morning the young warrior unexpectedly found the warrior Burradella walking through the bush beside him. Red Kangaroo strode along in respectful silence, for the younger warrior waits for the elder to speak. Red Kangaroo had been going to the green flats alone, to hunt that fine big bird that falls only to the spear of the skilled huntsman, the plain turkey. They walked in silence through the red and spotted gums, the sunlit loveliness of the yellow and white box. It was not until they were passing the Valley of the Winds that Burradella spoke.

“You are talking too much again,” he murmured.

“It does not seem to do me any good,” replied Red Kangaroo sulkily.

“It does you harm that you know nothing about,” said Burradella gravely. “Your tongue will yet spur others to action, then you will talk no more!”

They walked on in silence past thickets of wilga. Red Kangaroo felt a chill of dread. He whispered uneasily, “Has Nundoba the witchdoctor spoken?”