after that, hard times came upon little kur-bo-roo. there were none of his own family left, for the sickness had taken them all. his father and mother had been the last to die, and that made the blacks think that very probably bori, the evil spirit, had been especially angry with kur-bo-roo's family, because so many of them had died and the last terrible blow of the disease had fallen on their wurley. indeed, for awhile they argued as to whether it would not be better to kill kur-bo-roo too, so that so troublesome a family should be quite stamped out, with no further chance of annoying bori and bringing trouble upon the tribe. they did not spare him out of any idea of pity; but because so many men and boys had died that the tribe had become seriously weakened, and it seemed foolish to kill a strong and healthy fellow like kur-bo-roo. it was very important for a tribe to keep up its fighting strength, for there was always a chance that another band of blacks might come upon them and want to fight: in which case the weaker tribe might be swallowed up. so boy babies were thought a good deal of, and for that reason the blacks did not make an end of little kur-bo-roo.
but he had a very bad time, for all that. no one wanted him. he was nobody's boy; and that hurts just the same whether a boy be black or white. never was there so lonely a little fellow. the other children were half afraid of him, because the fear of bori's anger yet hung about him; they would not let him join in their games, and took a savage delight in hunting him away from their wurleys. another black family had taken possession of his father's wurley, and no home was left to him. he used to wander about miserably, often sleeping in the open air, curled up in the shadow of a bush, or in a hollow tree-stump. if it were cold or wet, he would creep noiselessly into a hut when he thought every one would be asleep—and quite often he was kicked out again.
he was always hungry now. his father and mother had taken such care of him, and had loved so much to keep him fed, that he had never learned how to find food for himself. he would wander about in the bush, looking for such things as his mother had brought him, but he knew so little that often he ate quite the wrong things, which made him very sick. he learned a good deal about food in that way, but the learning was not pleasant work.
it was a bad year for food. dry weather had come, and game was scarce; it was hard for the fighting-men to bring home enough for their own children, without having to provide for a hungry boy of six who belonged to nobody. kur-bo-roo used to hang about the cooking-places in the hope of having scraps of food thrown to him, but not many came his way. when so many were hungry the food was quickly eaten up. sometimes a woman, pitying the shrinking little lad, would hastily toss him a bone or a fragment of meat; and though you would not have cared for the way it was cooked, kur-bo-roo thought that these morsels were the most delicious he had ever tasted.
you see, a wild blackfellow has not much to think about except food. he has no schools, no daily papers, no market days, or picture shows, or telephones. the wild bush is his, and all he asks or expects of it is that it shall supply him with food. he knows that it means strength to him, and that strength means happiness, as a rule, when all that he has depends upon his own ability to keep it for himself. he does not reason things that way, for the blackfellow is simple, but he just eats as much as he can whenever he can get it, and that seems to agree with him excellently. that was the principle on which kur-bo-roo had been brought up, and it had made him the round, black, shiny baby that he had been until his parents died.
he was not nearly so round and shiny now. his little body was thin and hard, and he did not look so strong as before. it was not altogether lack of food that had weakened him—the want of happiness had a great deal to do with it.
he had found out that the tribe did not like him. not only was he nobody's boy, but he was the object of a kind of distrust that he could feel without at all understanding it; and he had learnt to shrink and cringe from blows and bitter words. once he had found a lace-lizard asleep on a rock, and, grasping his tiny waddy, had stolen up to it very carefully, all the instinct of the hunter blazing in his dark, sad eyes. the lizard, when it woke, was quick, but kur-bo-roo was quicker—the stick came down with all the force of his arm, and he carried off his prey in triumph, meaning to ask a woman who had sometimes been kind to him if she would cook it for him. but just outside the camp three big boys had come upon him as he was carrying his prey, and that had been the last that kur-bo-roo had seen of his lizard. he had fought for it like a little tiger—quite hopelessly, of course, but to fight had been a kind of dismal satisfaction to him, even though he was badly beaten in addition to losing his dinner; and that was specially unfortunate, for blacks think lizard a very great delicacy indeed. the boys ran off with it, jeering at the sobbing little figure on the ground; and they called him names that, even in his angry soreness, made him think. they said something to do with an evil spirit—he pondered over it, creeping into a clump of bushes. why should they call him that?
blacks always want a reason for any happening. sometimes they are satisfied with very foolish reasons; but they must have something to explain occurrences, especially if they are unpleasant ones. the sickness that had fallen on their tribe they put down to bori, as the medicine-man told them; but when the sickness had gone, it seemed only reasonable to believe that bori was satisfied and would leave them alone for awhile. so they could not understand why misfortune should still pursue them. another tribe had stolen part of their country, and they had been too weakened by the sickness to fight for it; and now had come the drought, making food harder than ever to obtain, and causing some of the babies to fall sick and die. they turned to the magic-men or sorcerers for explanation, and these clever people performed a great many extraordinary tricks to make things better. then, as they were really hard up for some object on which to throw the blame of their failure, it occurred to them to turn suspicion towards little kur-bo-roo.
kur-bo-roo went on with his unhappy little life, quite ignorant of the storms gathering round his woolly head. no one was ever kind to him, and he could scarcely distinguish one day from another; although he gathered a vague idea that in some way they were linking his name with the evil spirit, he did not understand what that meant. he kept on hunting round for food and water, and dodging blows and angry faces. if he had guessed that the magic-men were busily persuading the people that his family and he were the cause of the terrible year through which they had passed, he might have been more uneasy; but, in any case, he was only a very little boy, and perhaps he would not have understood. he had enough troubles to think of without looking out for more.
