The frowns on the brows of the elders had grown angrier, then more and more uneasy, as Red Kangaroo addressed the tribe. But now Jerrabri leapt up in blazing anger and, motioning to the oldest of his wives, strode across to Red Kangaroo.

“I am giving you a tribeswoman for a wife!” he shouted hoarsely. “Since you have complained there were no marriageable women in the tribe when you were made a new warrior, here is your wife. Take her!” And he pushed his eldest wife forwards.

But Red Kangaroo motioned her away and angrily faced the chief.

“You can’t give me what I haven’t asked you to give!” he shouted. “When I needed a woman of our tribe as wife by just right you and the elders saw that there was none forthcoming. So I went out and got my own. And now neither you nor any other man can force your unwanted wife upon me!”

“So say you—cub warrior of barely two summers!” snarled the chief. “And now I tell you this! It is the order of the elders and my right as chief that I take one of these Coonabarabran women as my wife in exchange for the wife I have just given you! I take this one!” and he reached out and grabbed Nareen’s hair and jerked her towards him.

She snapped at his wrist as she snatched the nulla from his girdle and clubbed him straight upon his big, broad face. With a startled “Whough!” he fell upon his back, blood spurting from his nostrils to dye crimson his jet-black beard as he glared up at her while she hissed, “Handle your own wives as you will, but I am Red Kangaroo’s wife and I’ll kill any man who dares lay a hand upon me!”

The chief snatched a boomerang from his belt and leapt up in mad fury, but Red Kangaroo sprang against him and savagely wrenched the weapon from his hand.

“Ah! Chief Jerrabri, the woman-killer! Not of my wives though!” he snarled. “If you’re a man, Jerrabri, then you fight me, not my woman! Here’s your boomerang, but—it needs a man to throw it in fight against a man!” And he threw the weapon hard at the chief’s feet.

Not a whisper broke the silence as the two glared face to face, hands clenching and unclenching, the elder man’s teeth gritting in rage, eyes blazing hate for hate. On any other occasion they would have been straight at one another’s throats, but Jerrabri instantly realized that this hated stripling had caught him in a trap from which there was no escape except for the victor in an arranged duel to the death. That boomerang, thus contemptuously tossed at his feet, was the tribal challenge. And this accursed Red Kangaroo had the right to make it before all the tribe.

For the chief had just broken two tribal laws before them all. No man may take, or attempt to take, by force a wife from a tribesman who has stolen her from a hostile tribe. And no man has the right to throw a war or hunting weapon, or hold one in his hand to strike the wife of a fellow tribesman. The husband alone possesses that right over his wives.