Bundaar ran for the stable door, sprang inside for the key and was out in a flash, locked the door and raced for the Police Office where my father was. He burst into the room with eyes staring from his head and cried out, “Sarjun, sarjun, I clear out dreckly, this minute! I no stand this. I sack myself—Government can keep my last two week pay. When I roll my swag I will bring you the key of the stable. I go back horse-breaking for Mr Mosely on Tibbereena.”

“Sit down, Bundaar,” ordered my father, “and tell me what’s the trouble. Have those two young constables been playing more larks up at the stable?” They had mixed brown sugar in the sand Bundaar used to polish the stirrup irons, buckles, bits, etc., and had caused him to have a stickiness on his hands and the stable gear.

“No, sarjun, it is not them,” answered Bundaar urgently. “It is that Dr Hayne and Jim Ashby! They dig up the old warrior chief’s grave. Old Bungaree nearly die from fright—everyone in camp clear out Boggabri way. No, Jim Ashby bring a bundle of that old warrior chief’s bones for Dr Hayne to leave in forage store-room where I sleep. I leave, sarjun, can’t stand that! I no Namoi River tribe man, but I blackfellow and tonight I can’t stop in my bed in forage room along that old warrior chief’s bones. Tonight I know, him ghost sit on bundle of bones and look and look at me for not bury him bones in his grave now all his tribe run away frightened. And I know ghost will blame me now!”

“Light up your pipe, Bundaar,” said my father soothingly. “Don’t worry, no one is going to put the old warrior chief’s remains in the forage room with you. I’ll go and tell Ashby to take them away from here. And while you are waiting here, sweep this room out for me.”

Down at the stable Jim Ashby was waiting for the key, but went along with my father to the gaol, and took the bones to the tower up on the wall. Bundaar the tracker was too good a man with sick or injured horses to lose, and had given proof of being able to track over stony land away from a road, or upon soft ground, or over animal pads. And father was not going to lose him if he could help it. At a later date Dr Hayne cleaned and packed the remains of the old warrior chief and sent them to the Australian Museum in College Street, Sydney, and also the sawn-off slab from the old box-tree carved stump. Some years ago the old sawn-off box stump slab was still there amongst other aboriginal tree carvings. The set up skeleton of the old warrior chief may be there also.

So that was that, as told by Stan Ewing.

Watching the digging up of the old chief’s skeleton, the wailing despair of Bungaree, the horror of Bundaar the tracker, the immediate fly-away reaction of his friends the blacks, made a lasting impression on the white boy’s mind. Years later when he reached manhood, and the ageing Bungaree had confided to the “sarjun”, “Me go soon!” young Ewing got the old aboriginal and the old sergeant together. Bungaree was now the last of his tribe. And the young man asked his father to try hard, before it was too late, to get the story of that long dead warrior chief from old Bungaree.