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Title: Bush studies
Author: Barbara Baynton
Release date: April 11, 2026 [eBook #78420]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Duckworth & Co, 1902
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78420
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSH STUDIES ***
BUSH STUDIES
~BARBARA BAYNTON~
BUSH STUDIES
BY
BARBARA BAYNTON
LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.,
3, HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
MDCCCCII.
PRINTED BY R. FOLKARD AND SON,
22, DEVONSHIRE STREET, QUEEN SQUARE, BLOOMSBURY,
LONDON, W.C.
TO
HELEN McMILLEN
OF SYDNEY
NEW SOUTH WALES
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A Dreamer 1
Squeaker’s Mate 15
Scrammy ’And 44
Billy Skywonkie 79
Bush Church 106
The Chosen Vessel 142
NOTE.
SCRAMMY ’AND.
“Scrammy” indicates malformation of either hand or foot.
BILLY SKYWONKIE.
“Skywonkie” signifies weather-prophet.
A DREAMER.
A swirl of wet leaves from the night-hidden trees decorating the
little station, beat against the closed doors of the carriages. The
porter hurried along holding his blear-eyed lantern to the different
windows, and calling the name of the township in language peculiar to
porters. There was only one ticket to collect.
Passengers from far up-country towns have importance from their
rarity. He turned his lantern full on this one, as he took her
ticket. She looked at him too, and listened to the sound of his
voice, as he spoke to the guard. Once she had known every hand at the
station. The porter knew everyone in the district. This traveller was
a stranger to him.
If her letter had been received, someone would have been waiting
with a buggy. She passed through the station. She saw nothing but an
ownerless dog, huddled, wet and shivering, in a corner. More for
sound she turned to look up the straggling street of the township.
Among the sheoaks, bordering the river she knew so well, the wind
made ghostly music, unheeded by the sleeping town. There was no other
sound, and she turned to the dog with a feeling of kinship. But
perhaps the porter had a message! She went back to the platform. He
was locking the office door, but paused as though expecting her to
speak.
“Wet night!” he said at length, breaking the silence.
Her question resolved itself into a request for the time, though this
she already knew. She hastily left him.
She drew her cloak tightly round her. The wind made her umbrella
useless for shelter. Wind and rain and darkness lay before her on the
walk of three bush miles to her mother’s home. Still it was the home
of her girlhood, and she knew every inch of the way.
As she passed along the sleeping street, she saw no sign of life
till near the end. A light burned in a small shop, and the sound of
swift tapping came to her. They work late to-night, she thought, and,
remembering their gruesome task, hesitated, half-minded to ask these
night workers, for whom they laboured. Was it someone she had known?
The long dark walk--she could not--and hastened to lose the sound.
The zigzag course of the railway brought the train again near to
her, and this wayfarer stood and watched it tunnelling in the teeth
of the wind. Whoof! whoof! its steaming breath hissed at her. She
saw the rain spitting viciously at its red mouth. Its speed, as it
passed, made her realise the tedious difficulties of her journey,
and she quickened her pace. There was the silent tenseness, that
precedes a storm. From the branch of a tree overhead she heard a
watchful mother-bird’s warning call, and the twitter of the disturbed
nestlings. The tender care of this bird-mother awoke memories of her
childhood. What mattered the lonely darkness, when it led to mother.
Her forebodings fled, and she faced the old track unheedingly, and
ever and ever she smiled, as she foretasted their meeting.
“Daughter!”
“Mother!”
She could feel loving arms around her, and a mother’s sacred kisses.
She thrilled, and in her impatience ran, but the wind was angry and
took her breath. Then the child near her heart stirred for the first
time. The instincts of motherhood awakened in her. Her elated body
quivered, she fell on her knees, lifted her hands, and turned her
face to God. A vivid flash of lightning flamed above her head. It
dulled her rapture. The lightning was very near.
She went on, then paused. Was she on the right track? Back, near
the bird’s nest, were two roads. One led to home, the other was the
old bullock-dray road, that the railway had almost usurped. When
she should have been careful in her choice, she had been absorbed.
It was a long way back to the cross roads, and she dug in her mind
for landmarks. Foremost she recalled the “Bendy Tree,” then the
“Sisters,” whose entwined arms talked, when the wind was from the
south. The apple trees on the creek--split flat, where the cows and
calves were always to be found. The wrong track, being nearer the
river, had clumps of she-oaks and groups of pines in places. An
angled line of lightning illumined everything, but the violence of
the thunder distracted her.
She stood in uncertainty, near-sighted, with all the horror of the
unknown, that this infirmity could bring. Irresolute, she waited for
another flash. It served to convince her, she was wrong. Through the
bush she turned.
The sky seemed to crack with the lightning; the thunder’s suddenness
shook her. Among some tall pines she stood awed, while the storm
raged.
Then again that indefinite fear struck at her. Restlessly she pushed
on till she stumbled, and, with hands out-stretched, met some object
that moved beneath them as she fell. The lightning showed a group of
terrified cattle. Tripping and falling, she ran, she knew not where,
but keeping her eyes turned towards the cattle. Aimlessly she pushed
on, and unconsciously retraced her steps.
She struck the track she was on when her first doubt came. If this
were the right way, the wheel ruts would show. She groped, but the
rain had levelled them. There was nothing to guide her. Suddenly she
remembered that the little clump of pines, where the cattle were, lay
between the two roads. She had gathered mistletoe berries there in
the old days.
She believed, she hoped, she prayed, that she was right. If so, a
little further on, she would come to the “Bendy Tree.” There long
ago a runaway horse had crushed its drunken rider against the bent,
distorted trunk. She could recall how in her young years that tree
had ever after had a weird fascination for her.
She saw its crooked body in the lightning’s glare. She was on the
right track, yet dreaded to go on. Her childhood’s fear came back. In
a transient flash she thought she saw a horseman galloping furiously
towards her. She placed both her hands protectingly over her heart,
and waited. In the dark interval, above the shriek of the wind, she
thought she heard a cry, then crash came the thunder, drowning her
call of warning. In the next flash she saw nothing but the tree. “Oh,
God, protect me!” she prayed, and diverging, with a shrinking heart
passed on.
The road dipped to the creek. Louder and louder came the roar of its
flooded waters. Even little Dog-trap Gully was proudly foaming itself
hoarse. It emptied below where she must cross. But there were others,
that swelled it above.
The noise of the rushing creek was borne to her by the wind, still
fierce, though the rain had lessened. Perhaps there would be someone
to meet her at the bank! Last time she had come, the night had been
fine, and though she had been met at the station by a neighbour’s
son, mother had come to the creek with a lantern and waited for her.
She looked eagerly, but there was no light.
The creek was a banker, but the track led to a plank, which, lashed
to the willows on either bank, was usually above flood-level. A
churning sound showed that the water was over the plank, and she must
wade along it. She turned to the sullen sky. There was no gleam of
light save in her resolute, white face.
Her mouth grew tender, as she thought of the husband she loved, and
of their child. Must she dare! She thought of the grey-haired mother,
who was waiting on the other side. This dwarfed every tie that had
parted them. There was atonement in these difficulties and dangers.
Again her face turned heavenward! “Bless, pardon, protect and guide,
strengthen and comfort!” Her mother’s prayer.
Steadying herself by the long willow branches, ankle deep she began.
With every step the water deepened.
Malignantly the wind fought her, driving her back, or snapping the
brittle stems from her skinned hands. The water was knee-deep now,
and every step more hazardous.
She held with her teeth to a thin limb, while she unfastened her hat
and gave it to the greedy wind. From the cloak, a greater danger,
she could not in her haste free herself; her numbed fingers had lost
their cunning.
Soon the water would be deeper, and the support from the branches
less secure. Even if they did reach across, she could not hope for
much support from their wind-driven, fragile ends.
Still she would not go back. Though the roar of that rushing water
was making her giddy, though the deafening wind fought her for every
inch, she would not turn back.
Long ago she should have come to her old mother, and her heart gave a
bound of savage rapture in thus giving the sweat of her body for the
sin of her soul.
Midway the current strengthened. Perhaps if she, deprived of the
willows, were swept down, her clothes would keep her afloat. She took
firm hold and drew a deep breath to call her child-cry, “Mother!”
The water was deeper and swifter, and from the sparsity of the
branches she knew she was nearing the middle. The wind unopposed by
the willows was more powerful. Strain as she would, she could reach
only the tips of the opposite trees, not hold them.
Despair shook her. With one hand she gripped those, that had served
her so far, and cautiously drew as many as she could grasp with
the other. The wind savagely snapped them, and they lashed her
unprotected face. Round and round her bare neck they coiled their
stripped fingers. Her mother had planted these willows, and she
herself had watched them grow. How could they be so hostile to her!
The creek deepened with every moment she waited. But more dreadful
than the giddying water was the distracting noise of the mighty wind,
nurtured by the hollows.
The frail twigs of the opposite tree snapped again and again in her
hands. She must release her hold of those behind her. If she could
make two steps independently, the thicker branches would then be her
stay.
“Will you?” yelled the wind. A sudden gust caught her, and, hurling
her backwards, swept her down the stream with her cloak for a sail.
She battled instinctively, and her first thought was of the
letter-kiss, she had left for the husband she loved. Was it to be his
last?
She clutched a floating branch, and was swept down with it. Vainly
she fought for either bank. She opened her lips to call. The wind
made a funnel of her mouth and throat, and a wave of muddy water
choked her cry. She struggled desperately, but after a few mouthfuls
she ceased. The weird cry from the “Bendy Tree” pierced and conquered
the deep throated wind. Then a sweet dream voice whispered “Little
Woman!”
Soft, strong arms carried her on. Weakness aroused the melting idea
that all had been a mistake, and she had been fighting with friends.
The wind even crooned a lullaby. Above the angry waters her face rose
untroubled.
A giant tree’s fallen body said, “Thus far!” and in vain the athletic
furious water rushed and strove to throw her over the barrier. Driven
back, it tried to take her with it. But a jagged arm of the tree
snagged her cloak and held her.
Bruised and half conscious she was left to her deliverer, and the
back-broken water crept tamed under its old foe. The hammer of hope
awoke her heart. Along the friendly back of the tree she crawled, and
among its bared roots rested. But it was only to get her breath, for
this was mother’s side.
She breasted the rise. Then every horror was of the past and
forgotten, for there in the hollow was home.
And there was the light shining its welcome to her.
She quickened her pace, but did not run--motherhood is instinct in
woman. The rain had come again, and the wind buffeted her. To breathe
was a battle, yet she went on swiftly, for at the sight of the light
her nameless fear had left her.
She would tell mother how she had heard her call in the night, and
mother would smile her grave smile and stroke her wet hair, call her
“Little woman! My little woman!” and tell her she had been dreaming,
just dreaming. Ah, but mother herself was a dreamer!
The gate was swollen with rain and difficult to open. It had been
opened by mother last time. But plainly her letter had not reached
home. Perhaps the bad weather had delayed the mail boy.
There was the light. She was not daunted when the bark of the old dog
brought no one to the door. It might not be heard inside, for there
was such a torrent of water falling somewhere close. Mechanically
her mind located it. The tank near the house, fed by the spouts was
running over, cutting channels through the flower beds, and flooding
the paths. Why had not mother diverted the spout to the other tank!
Something indefinite held her. Her mind went back to the many times
long ago when she had kept alive the light while mother fixed the
spout to save the water that the dry summer months made precious. It
was not like mother, for such carelessness meant carrying from the
creek.
Suddenly she grew cold and her heart trembled. After she had seen
mother, she would come out and fix it, but just now she could not
wait.
She tapped gently, and called “Mother!”
While she waited she tried to make friends with the dog. Her heart
smote her, in that there had been so long an interval since she saw
her old home, that the dog had forgotten her voice.
Her teeth chattered as she again tapped softly. The sudden light
dazzled her when a stranger opened the door for her. Steadying
herself by the wall, with wild eyes she looked around. Another
strange woman stood by the fire, and a child slept on the couch. The
child’s mother raised it, and the other led the now panting creature
to the child’s bed. Not a word was spoken, and the movements of these
women were like those who fear to awaken a sleeper.
Something warm was held to her lips, for through it all she was
conscious of everything, even that the numbing horror in her eyes met
answering awe in theirs.
In the light the dog knew her and gave her welcome. But she had none
for him now.
When she rose one of the women lighted a candle. She noticed how,
if the blazing wood cracked, the women started nervously, how the
disturbed child pointed to her bruised face, and whispered softly to
its mother, how she who lighted the candle did not strike the match
but held it to the fire, and how the light bearer led the way so
noiselessly.
She reached her mother’s room. Aloft the woman held the candle and
turned away her head.
The daughter parted the curtains, and the light fell on the face of
the sleeper who would dream no dreams that night.
SQUEAKER’S MATE.
The woman carried the bag with the axe and maul and wedges; the
man had the billy and clean tucker bags; the cross-cut saw linked
them. She was taller than the man, and the equability of her body
contrasting with his indolent slouch, accentuated the difference.
“Squeaker’s mate” the men called her, and these agreed that she
was the best long-haired mate that ever stepped in petticoats.
The Selectors’ wives pretended to challenge her right to womanly
garments, but if she knew what they said, it neither turned nor
troubled Squeaker’s mate.
Nine prospective posts and maybe sixteen rails--she calculated this
yellow gum would yield. “Come on,” she encouraged the man; “let’s
tackle it.”
From the bag she took the axe, and ring barked a preparatory circle,
while he looked for a shady spot for the billy and tucker bags.
“Come on.” She was waiting with the greased saw. He came. The saw
rasped through a few inches, then he stopped and looked at the sun.
“It’s nigh tucker time,” he said, and when she dissented, he
exclaimed, with sudden energy, “There’s another bee! Wait, you go on
with the axe, an’ I’ll track ’im.”
As they came, they had already followed one and located the nest. She
could not see the bee he spoke of, though her grey eyes were as keen
as a Black’s. However she knew the man, and her tolerance was of the
mysteries.
She drew out the saw, spat on her hands, and with the axe began
weakening the inclining side of the tree.
Long and steadily and in secret the worm had been busy in the heart.
Suddenly the axe blade sank softly, the tree’s wounded edges closed
on it like a vice. There was a “settling” quiver on its top branches,
which the woman heard and understood. The man, encouraged by the
sounds of the axe, had returned with an armful of sticks for the
billy. He shouted gleefully, “It’s fallin’, look out.”
But she waited to free the axe.
With a shivering groan the tree fell, and as she sprang aside, a
thick worm-eaten branch snapped at a joint and silently she went down
under it.
“I tole yer t’ look out,” he reminded her, as with a crow-bar, and
grunting earnestly, he forced it up. “Now get out quick.”
She tried moving her arms and the upper part of her body. Do this; do
that, he directed, but she made no movement after the first.
He was impatient, because for once he had actually to use his
strength. His share of a heavy lift usually consisted of a
make-believe grunt, delivered at a critical moment. Yet he hardly
cared to let it again fall on her, though he told her he would, if
she “didn’t shift.”
Near him lay a piece broken short; with his foot he drew it nearer,
then gradually worked it into a position, till it acted as a stay to
the lever.
He laid her on her back when he drew her out, and waited expecting
some acknowledgment of his exertions, but she was silent, and as
she did not notice that the axe, she had tried to save, lay with
the fallen trunk across it, he told her. She cared almost tenderly
for all their possessions and treated them as friends. But the
half-buried broken axe did not affect her. He wondered a little, for
only last week she had patiently chipped out the old broken head, and
put in a new handle.
“Feel bad?” he inquired at length.
“Pipe,” she replied with slack lips.
Both pipes lay in the fork of a near tree. He took his, shook out
the ashes, filled it, picked up a coal and puffed till it was
alight--then he filled hers. Taking a small firestick he handed her
the pipe. The hand she raised shook and closed in an uncertain hold,
but she managed by a great effort to get it to her mouth. He lost
patience with the swaying hand that tried to take the light.
“Quick,” he said “quick, that damn dog’s at the tucker.”
He thrust it into her hand that dropped helplessly across her chest.
The lighted stick falling between her bare arm and the dress, slowly
roasted the flesh and smouldered the clothes.
He rescued their dinner, pelted his dog out of sight--hers was lying
near her head, put on the billy, then came back to her.
The pipe had fallen from her lips; there was blood on the stem.
“Did yer jam yer tongue?” he asked.
She always ignored trifles he knew, therefore he passed her silence.
He told her that her dress was on fire. She took no heed. He put it
out, and looked at the burnt arm, then with intentness at her.
Her eyes were turned unblinkingly to the heavens, her lips were
grimly apart, and a strange greyness was upon her face, and the
sweat-beads were mixing.
“Like a drink er tea? Asleep?”
He broke a green branch from the fallen tree and swished from his
face the multitudes of flies that had descended with it.
In a heavy way he wondered why did she sweat, when she was not
working? Why did she not keep the flies out of her mouth and eyes?
She’d have bungy eyes, if she didn’t. If she was asleep, why did she
not close them?
But asleep or awake, as the billy began to boil, he left her, made
the tea, and ate his dinner. His dog had disappeared, and as it did
not come to his whistle, he threw the pieces to hers, that would not
leave her head to reach them.
He whistled tunelessly his one air, beating his own time with a
stick on the toe of his blucher, then looked overhead at the sun and
calculated that she must have been lying like that for “close up
an hour.” He noticed that the axe handle was broken in two places,
and speculated a little as to whether she would again pick out the
back-broken handle or burn it out in his method, which was less
trouble, if it did spoil the temper of the blade. He examined the
worm-dust in the stump and limbs of the newly-fallen tree; mounted
it and looked round the plain. The sheep were straggling in a manner
that meant walking work to round them, and he supposed he would have
to yard them to-night, if she didn’t liven up. He looked down at
unenlivened her. This changed his “chune” to a call for his hiding
dog.
“Come on, ole feller,” he commanded her dog. “Fetch ’em back.” He
whistled further instructions, slapping his thigh and pointing to the
sheep.
But a brace of wrinkles either side the brute’s closed mouth
demonstrated determined disobedience. The dog would go if she told
him, and by and bye she would.
He lighted his pipe and killed half an hour smoking. With the
frugality that hard graft begets, his mate limited both his and her
own tobacco, so he must not smoke all afternoon. There was no work
to shirk, so time began to drag. Then a goanner crawling up a tree
attracted him. He gathered various missiles and tried vainly to hit
the seemingly grinning reptile. He came back and sneaked a fill of
her tobacco, and while he was smoking, the white tilt of a cart
caught his eye. He jumped up. “There’s Red Bob goin’ t’ our place fur
th’ ’oney,” he said, “I’ll go an’ weigh it an’ get the gonz” (money).
He ran for the cart, and kept looking back as if fearing she would
follow and thwart him.
Red Bob the dealer was, in a business way, greatly concerned, when
he found that Squeaker’s mate was “avin’ a sleep out there ’cos a
tree fell on her.” She was the best honey strainer and boiler that he
dealt with. She was straight and square too. There was no water in
her honey whether boiled or merely strained, and in every kerosene
tin the weight of honey was to an ounce as she said. Besides he was
suspicious and diffident of paying the indecently eager Squeaker
before he saw the woman. So reluctantly Squeaker led to where she
lay. With many fierce oaths Red Bob sent her lawful protector for
help, and compassionately poured a little from his flask down her
throat, then swished away the flies from her till help came.
Together these men stripped a sheet of bark, and laying her with
pathetic tenderness upon it, carried her to her hut. Squeaker
followed in the rear with the billy and tucker.
Red Bob took his horse from the cart, and went to town for the
doctor. Late that night at the back of the old hut (there were
two) he and others who had heard that she was hurt, squatted with
unlighted pipes in their mouths, waiting to hear the doctor’s
verdict. After he had given it and gone, they discussed in whispers,
and with a look seen only on bush faces, the hard luck of that woman
who alone had hard-grafted with the best of them for every acre and
hoof on that selection. Squeaker would go through it in no time. Why
she had allowed it to be taken up in his name, when the money had
been her own, was also for them among the mysteries.
Him they called “a nole woman,” not because he was hanging round the
honey tins, but after man’s fashion to eliminate all virtue. They
beckoned him, and explaining his mate’s injury, cautioned him to keep
from her the knowledge that she would be for ever a cripple.
“Jus’ th’ same, now then fur ’im,” pointing to Red Bob, “t’ pay me,
I’ll ’ev t’ go t’ town.”
They told him in whispers what they thought of him, and with a
cowardly look towards where she lay, but without a word of parting,
like shadows these men made for their homes.
Next day the women came. Squeaker’s mate was not a favourite with
them--a woman with no leisure for yarning was not likely to be. After
the first day they left her severely alone, their plea to their
husbands, her uncompromising independence. It is in the ordering of
things that by degrees most husbands accept their wives’ views of
other women.
The flour bespattering Squeaker’s now neglected clothes spoke
eloquently of his clumsy efforts at damper making. The women gave him
many a feed, agreeing that it must be miserable for him.
If it were miserable and lonely for his mate, she did not complain;
for her the long, long days would give place to longer nights--those
nights with the pregnant bush silence suddenly cleft by a bush voice.
However, she was not fanciful, and being a bush scholar knew ’twas a
dingo, when a long whine came from the scrub on the skirts of which
lay the axe under the worm-eaten tree. That quivering wail from the
billabong lying murkily mystic towards the East was only the cry of
the fearing curlew.
Always her dog--wakeful and watchful as she--patiently waiting for
her to be up and about again. That would be soon, she told her
complaining mate.
“Yer won’t. Yer back’s broke,” said Squeaker laconically. “That’s
wot’s wrong er yer; injoory t’ th’ spine. Doctor says that means
back’s broke, and yer won’t never walk no more. No good not t’ tell
yer, cos I can’t be doin’ everythin’.”
A wild look grew on her face, and she tried to sit up.
“Erh,” said he, “see! yer carnt, yer jes’ ther same as a snake w’en
ees back’s broke, on’y yer don’t bite yerself like a snake does w’en
’e carnt crawl. Yer did bite yer tongue w’en yer fell.”
She gasped, and he could hear her heart beating when she let her
head fall back a few moments; though she wiped her wet forehead with
the back of her hand, and still said that was the doctor’s mistake.
But day after day she tested her strength, and whatever the result,
was silent, though white witnesses, halo-wise, gradually circled her
brow and temples.
“’Tisn’t as if yer was agoin’ t’ get better t’morrer, the doctor says
yer won’t never work no more, an’ I can’t be cookin’ an’ workin’ an’
doin’ everythin’!”
He muttered something about “sellin’ out,” but she firmly refused to
think of such a monstrous proposal.
He went into town one Saturday afternoon soon after, and did not
return till Monday.
Her supplies, a billy of tea and scraps of salt beef and damper (her
dog got the beef), gave out the first day, though that was as nothing
to her compared with the bleat of the penned sheep, for it was summer
and droughty, and her dog could not unpen them.
Of them and her dog only she spoke when he returned. He d----d him,
and d----d her, and told her to “double up yer ole broke back an’
bite yerself.” He threw things about, made a long-range feint of
kicking her threatening dog, then sat outside in the shade of the old
hut, nursing his head till he slept.
She, for many reasons, had when necessary made these trips into town,
walking both ways, leading a pack horse for supplies. She never
failed to indulge him in a half pint--a pipe was her luxury.
The sheep waited till next day, so did she.
For a few days he worked a little in her sight; not much--he never
did. It was she who always lifted the heavy end of the log, and
carried the tools; he--the billy and tucker.
She wearily watched him idling his time; reminded him that the wire
lying near the fence would rust, one could run the wire through
easily, and when she got up in a day or so, she would help strain and
fasten it. At first he pretended he had done it, later said he wasn’t
goin’ t’ go wirin’ or nothin’ else by ’imself if every other man on
the place did.
She spoke of many other things that could be done by one, reserving
the great till she was well. Sometimes he whistled while she spoke,
often swore, generally went out, and when this was inconvenient, dull
as he was, he found the “Go and bite yerself like a snake,” would
instantly silence her.
At last the work worry ceased to exercise her, and for night to bring
him home was a rare thing.
Her dog rounded and yarded the sheep when the sun went down and there
was no sign of him, and together they kept watch on their movements
till dawn. She was mindful not to speak of this care to him, knowing
he would have left it for them to do constantly, and she noticed that
what little interest he seemed to share went to the sheep. Why, was
soon demonstrated.
Through the cracks her ever watchful eyes one day saw the dust rise
out of the plain. Nearer it came till she saw him and a man on
horseback rounding and driving the sheep into the yard, and later
both left in charge of a little mob. Their “Baa-baas” to her were
cries for help; many had been pets. So he was selling her sheep to
the town butchers.
In the middle of the next week he came from town with a fresh horse,
new saddle and bridle. He wore a flash red shirt, and round his neck
a silk handkerchief. On the next occasion she smelt scent, and
though he did not try to display the dandy meerschaum, she saw it,
and heard the squeak of the new boots, not bluchers. However he was
kinder to her this time, offering a fill of his cut tobacco; he had
long ceased to keep her supplied. Several of the men who sometimes in
passing took a look in, would have made up her loss had they known,
but no word of complaint passed her lips.
She looked at Squeaker as he filled his pipe from his pouch, but he
would not meet her eyes, and, seemingly dreading something, slipped
out.
She heard him hammering in the old hut at the back, which served for
tools and other things which sunlight and rain did not hurt. Quite
briskly he went in and out. She could see him through the cracks
carrying a narrow strip of bark, and understood, he was making a
bunk. When it was finished he had a smoke, then came to her and
fidgetted about; he said this hut was too cold, and that she would
never get well in it. She did not feel cold, but, submitting to his
mood, allowed him to make a fire that would roast a sheep. He took
off his hat, and fanning himself, said he was roastin’, wasn’t she?
She was.
He offered to carry her into the other; he would put a new roof on it
in a day or two, and it would be better than this one, and she would
be up in no time. He stood to say this where she could not see him.
His eagerness had tripped him.
There were months to run before all the Government conditions
of residence, etc., in connection with the selection, would be
fulfilled, still she thought perhaps he was trying to sell out, and
she would not go.
He was away four days that time, and when he returned slept in the
new bunk.
She compromised. Would he put a bunk there for himself, keep out of
town, and not sell the place? He promised instantly with additions.
“Try could yer crawl yerself?” he coaxed, looking at her bulk.
Her nostrils quivered with her suppressed breathing, and her lips
tightened, but she did not attempt to move.
It was evident some great purpose actuated him. After attempts to
carry and drag her, he rolled her on the sheet of bark that had
brought her home, and laboriously drew her round.
She asked for a drink, he placed her billy and tin pint besides the
bunk, and left her gasping and dazed to her sympathetic dog.
She saw him run up and yard his horse, and though she called him, he
would not answer nor come.
When he rode swiftly towards the town, her dog leaped on the bunk,
and joined a refrain to her lamentation, but the cat took to the bush.
He came back at dusk next day in a spring cart--not alone--he had
another mate. She saw her though he came a roundabout way, trying to
keep in front of the new hut.
There were noises of moving many things from the cart to the hut.
Finally he came to a crack near where she lay, and whispered the
promise of many good things to her if she kept quiet, and that he
would set her hut afire if she didn’t. She was quiet, he need not
have feared, for that time she was past it, she was stunned.
The released horse came stumbling round to the old hut, and thrust
its head in the door in a domesticated fashion. Her dog promptly
resented this straggler mistaking their hut for a stable. And the
dog’s angry dissent, together with the shod clatter of the rapidly
disappearing intruder, seemed to have a disturbing effect on the
pair in the new hut. The settling sounds suddenly ceased, and the
cripple heard the stranger close the door, despite Squeaker’s
assurances that the woman in the old hut could not move from her bunk
to save her life, and that her dog would not leave her.
Food, more and better, was placed near her--but, dumb and motionless,
she lay with her face turned to the wall, and her dog growled
menacingly at the stranger. The new woman was uneasy, and told
Squeaker what people might say and do if she died.
He scared at the “do,” went into the bush and waited.
She went to the door, not the crack, the face was turned that way,
and said she had come to cook and take care of her.
The disabled woman, turning her head slowly, looked steadily at her.
She was not much to look at. Her red hair hung in an uncurled bang
over her forehead, the lower part of her face had robbed the upper,
and her figure evinced imminent motherhood, though it is doubtful if
the barren woman, noting this, knew by calculation the paternity was
not Squeaker’s. She was not learned in these matters, though she
understood all about an ewe and lamb.
One circumstance was apparent--ah! bitterest of all bitterness to
women--she was younger.
The thick hair that fell from the brow of the woman on the bunk was
white now.
Bread and butter the woman brought. The cripple looked at it, at her
dog, at the woman. Bread and butter for a dog! but the stranger did
not understand till she saw it offered to the dog. The bread and
butter was not for the dog. She brought meat.
All next day the man kept hidden. The cripple saw his dog, and knew
he was about.
But there was an end of this pretence when at dusk he came back
with a show of haste, and a finger of his right hand bound and
ostentatiously prominent. His entrance caused great excitement to
his new mate. The old mate, who knew this snake-bite trick from its
inception, maybe, realised how useless were the terrified stranger’s
efforts to rouse the snoring man after an empty pint bottle had been
flung on the outside heap.
However, what the sick woman thought was not definite, for she kept
silent always. Neither was it clear how much she ate, and how much
she gave to her dog, though the new mate said to Squeaker one day
that she believed that the dog would not take a bite more than its
share.
The cripple’s silence told on the stranger, especially when alone.
She would rather have abuse. Eagerly she counted the days past and
to pass. Then back to the town. She told no word of that hope to
Squeaker, he had no place in her plans for the future. So if he spoke
of what they would do by-and-bye when his time would be up, and he
able to sell out, she listened in uninterested silence.
She did tell him she was afraid of “her,” and after the first day
would not go within reach, but every morning made a billy of tea,
which with bread and beef Squeaker carried to her.
The rubbish heap was adorned, for the first time, with jam and fish
tins from the table in the new hut. It seemed to be understood that
neither woman nor dog in the old hut required them.
Squeaker’s dog sniffed and barked joyfully around them till his
licking efforts to bottom a salmon tin sent him careering in a
muzzled frenzy, that caused the younger woman’s thick lips to part
grinningly till he came too close.
The remaining sheep were regularly yarded. His old mate heard him
whistle as he did it. Squeaker began to work about a little burning
off. So that now, added to the other bush voices, was the call from
some untimely falling giant. There is no sound so human as that from
the riven souls of these tree people, or the trembling sighs of their
upright neighbours whose hands in time will meet over the victim’s
fallen body.
There was no bunk on the side of the hut to which her eyes turned,
but her dog filled that space, and the flash that passed between this
back-broken woman and her dog might have been the spirit of these
slain tree folk, it was so wondrous ghostly. Still, at times, the
practical in her would be dominant, for in a mind so free of fancies,
backed by bodily strength, hope died slowly, and forgetful of self
she would almost call to Squeaker her fears that certain bees’ nests
were in danger.
He went into town one day and returned, as he had promised, long
before sundown, and next day a clothes line bridged the space between
two trees near the back of the old hut; and--an equally rare
occurrence--Squeaker placed across his shoulders the yoke that his
old mate had fashioned for herself, with two kerosene tins attached,
and brought them filled with water from the distant creek; but both
only partly filled the tub, a new purchase. With utter disregard of
the heat and Squeaker’s sweating brow, his new mate said, even after
another trip, two more now for the blue water. Under her commands he
brought them, though sullenly, perhaps contrasting the old mate’s
methods with the new.
His old mate had periodically carried their washing to the creek, and
his mole skins had been as white as snow without aid of blue.
Towards noon, on the clothes line many strange garments fluttered,
suggestive of a taunt to the barren woman. When the sun went down she
could have seen the assiduous Squeaker lower the new prop-sticks and
considerately stoop to gather the pegs his inconsiderate new mate had
dropped. However, after one load of water next morning, on hearing
her estimate that three more would put her own things through,
Squeaker struck. Nothing he could urge would induce the stranger
to trudge to the creek, where thirst-slaked snakes lay waiting for
someone to bite. She sulked and pretended to pack up, till a bright
idea struck Squeaker. He fastened a cask on a sledge and harnessing
the new horse, hitched him to it, and, under the approving eyes of
his new mate, led off to the creek, though, when she went inside, he
bestrode the spiritless brute.
He had various mishaps, any one of which would have served as an
excuse to his old mate, but even babes soon know on whom to impose.
With an energy new to him he persevered and filled the cask, but the
old horse repudiated such a burden even under Squeaker’s unmerciful
welts. Almost half was sorrowfully baled out, and under a rain of
whacks the horse shifted it a few paces, but the cask tilted and the
thirsty earth got its contents. All Squeaker’s adjectives over his
wasted labour were as unavailing as the cure for spilt milk.
It took skill and patience to rig the cask again. He partly filled
it, and just as success seemed probable, the rusty wire fastening the
cask to the sledge snapped with the strain, and springing free coiled
affectionately round the terrified horse’s hocks. Despite the sledge
(the cask had been soon disposed of) that old town horse’s pace then
was his record. Hours after, on the plain that met the horizon,
loomed two specks: the distance between them might be gauged, for the
larger was Squeaker.
Anticipating a plentiful supply and lacking in bush caution, the new
mate used the half bucket of water to boil the salt mutton. Towards
noon she laid this joint and bread on the rough table, then watched
anxiously in the wrong direction for Squeaker.
She had drained the new tea-pot earlier, but she placed the spout to
her thirsty mouth again.
She continued looking for him for hours.
Had he sneaked off to town, thinking she had not used that water, or
not caring whether or no. She did not trust him; another had left
her. Besides she judged Squeaker by his treatment of the woman who
was lying in there with wide-open eyes. Anyhow no use to cry with
only that silent woman to hear her.
Had she drunk all hers?
She tried to see at long range through the cracks, but the hanging
bed clothes hid the billy. She went to the door, and avoiding the
bunk looked at the billy.
It was half full.
Instinctively she knew that the eyes of the woman were upon her. She
turned away, and hoped and waited for thirsty minutes that seemed
hours.
Desperation drove her back to the door, dared she? No, she couldn’t.
Getting a long forked propstick, she tried to reach it from the door,
but the dog sprang at the stick. She dropped it and ran.
A scraggy growth fringed the edge of the plain. There was the creek.
How far? she wondered. Oh, very far, she knew, and besides there
were only a few holes where water was, and the snakes; for Squeaker,
with a desire to shine in her eyes, was continually telling her of
snakes--vicious and many--that daily he did battle with.
She recalled the evening he came from hiding in the scrub with a
string round one finger, and said a snake had bitten him. He had
drunk the pint of brandy she had brought for her sickness, and then
slept till morning. True, although next day he had to dig for the
string round the blue swollen finger, he was not worse than the many
she had seen at the “Shearer’s Rest” suffering a recovery. There was
no brandy to cure her if she were bitten.
She cried a little in self pity, then withdrew her eyes, that were
getting red, from the outlying creek, and went again to the door. She
of the bunk lay with closed eyes.
Was she asleep? The stranger’s heart leapt, yet she was hardly in
earnest as she tip-toed billy-wards. The dog, crouching with head
between two paws, eyed her steadily, but showed no opposition. She
made dumb show. “I want to be friends with you, and won’t hurt her.”
Abruptly she looked at her, then at the dog. He was motionless and
emotionless. Beside if that dog--certainly watching her--wanted to
bite her (her dry mouth opened), it could get her any time.
She rated this dog’s intelligence almost human, from many of its
actions in omission and commission in connection with this woman.
She regretted the pole, no dog would stand that.
Two more steps.
Now just one more; then, by bending and stretching her arm, she
would reach it. Could she now? She tried to encourage herself by
remembering how close on the first day she had been to the woman, and
how delicious a few mouthfuls would be--swallowing dry mouthfuls.
She measured the space between where she had first stood and the
billy. Could she get anything to draw it to her. No, the dog would
not stand that, and besides the handle would rattle, and she might
hear and open her eyes.
The thought of those sunken eyes suddenly opening made her heart
bound. Oh! she must breathe--deep, loud breaths. Her throat clicked
noisily. Looking back fearfully, she went swiftly out.
She did not look for Squeaker this time, she had given him up.
While she waited for her breath to steady, to her relief and surprise
the dog came out. She made a rush to the new hut, but he passed
seemingly oblivious of her, and bounding across the plain began
rounding the sheep. Then he must know Squeaker had gone to town.
Stay! Her heart beat violently; was it because she on the bunk slept
and did not want him?
She waited till her heart quieted, and again crept to the door.
The head of the woman on the bunk had fallen towards the wall as in
deep sleep; it was turned from the billy, to which she must creep so
softly.
Slower, from caution and deadly earnestness, she entered.
She was not so advanced as before, and felt fairly secure, for the
woman’s eyes were still turned to the wall, and so tightly closed,
she could not possibly see where she was.
She would bend right down, and try and reach it from where she was.
She bent.
It was so swift and sudden, that she had not time to scream when
those bony fingers had gripped the hand that she prematurely reached
for the billy. She was frozen with horror for a moment, then her
screams were piercing. Panting with victory, the prostrate one held
her with a hold that the other did not attempt to free herself from.
Down, down she drew her.
Her lips had drawn back from her teeth, and her breath almost
scorched the face that she held so close for the starting eyes to
gloat over. Her exultation was so great, that she could only gloat
and gasp, and hold with a tension that had stopped the victim’s
circulation.
As a wounded, robbed tigress might hold and look, she held and looked.
Neither heard the swift steps of the man, and if the tigress saw
him enter, she was not daunted. “Take me from her,” shrieked the
terrified one. “Quick, take me from her,” she repeated it again,
nothing else. “Take me from her.”
He hastily fastened the door and said something that the shrieks
drowned, then picked up the pole. It fell with a thud across the
arms which the tightening sinews had turned into steel. Once, twice,
thrice. Then the one that got the fullest force bent; that side of
the victim was free.
The pole had snapped. Another blow with a broken end freed the other
side.
Still shrieking “Take me from her, take me from her,” she beat on the
closed door till Squeaker opened it.
Then he had to face and reckon with his old mate’s maddened dog, that
the closed door had baffled.
The dog suffered the shrieking woman to pass, but though Squeaker, in
bitten agony, broke the stick across the dog, he was forced to give
the savage brute best.
“Call ’im orf, Mary, ’e’s eatin’ me,” he implored. “Oh corl ’im orf.”
But with stony face the woman lay motionless.
“Sool ’im on t’ ’er.” He indicated his new mate who, as though all
the plain led to the desired town, still ran in unreasoning terror.
“It’s orl er doin’,” he pleaded, springing on the bunk beside his old
mate. But when, to rouse her sympathy, he would have laid his hand on
her, the dog’s teeth fastened in it and pulled him back.
SCRAMMY ’AND.
Along the selvage of the scrub-girt plain the old man looked long and
earnestly. His eyes followed an indistinct track that had been cut by
the cart, journeying at rare intervals to the distant township. At
dawn some weeks back it had creaked across the plain, and at a point
where the scrub curved, the husband had stopped the horse while the
woman parted the tilt and waved goodbye to the bent, irresponsive old
man and his dog. It was her impending motherhood that made them seek
the comparative civilisation of the township, and the tenderness of
her womanhood brought the old man closer to her as they drove away.
Every week since that morning had been carefully notched by man and
dog, and the last mark, cut three nights past, showed that time was
up. Twice this evening he thought he saw the dust rise as he looked,
but longer scrutiny showed only the misty evening light.
He turned to where a house stood out from a background of scrub.
Beside the calf-pen near it, a cow gave answer and greeting to the
penned calf. “No use pennin’ up ther calf,” he muttered, “when they
don’t come. Won’t do it ter-morrer night.” He watched anxiously
along the scrub. “Calf must ’ave got ’is ’ed through ther rails an’
sucked ’er. No one else can’t ’ave done it. Scrammy’s gorn; ’twarn’t
Scrammy.” But the gloom of fear settled on his wizened face as he
shuffled stiffly towards the sheep yard.
His body jerked; there was a suggestion of the dog in his movements;
and in the dog, as he rounded up the sheep, more than a suggestion of
his master. He querulously accused the dog of “rushin’ ’em, ’stead er
allowin’ Billy (the leader) to lead ’em.”
When they were yarded he found fault with the hurdles. “Some ’un ’ad
been meddlin’ with ’em.” For two pins he would “smash ’em up with
ther axe.”
The eyes of the sheep reflected the haze-opposed glory of the setting
sun. Loyally they stood till a grey quilt swathed them. In their eyes
glistened luminous tears materialised from an atmosphere of sighs.
The wide plain gauzed into a sea on which the hut floated lonely.
Through its open door a fire gleamed like the red, steaming mouth
of an engine. Beyond the hut a clump of myalls loomed spectral and
wraith-like, and round them a gang of crows cawed noisily, irreverent
of the great silence.
Inside the hut, the old man, still querulous, talked to the listening
dog. He uncovered a cabbage tree hat--his task of the past year--and
laid upside down, on the centre of the crown, a star-shaped button
that the woman had worked for him.
“It’s orl wrong, see!” The dog said he did. “’Twon’t do!” he shouted
with the emphasis of deafness. The dog admitted it would not. “An’
she done it like thet, ter spile it on me ’er purpus. She done it
outer jealersy, cos I was makin’ it for ’im. Could ’ave done it
better meself, though I’m no ’and at fancy stitchin’. But she can’t
make a ’at like thet. No woman could. The’re no good.” The dog did
not dispute this condemnation.
“I tole ’er ter put a anker jes’ there,” he continued. He pointed to
the middle of the button which he still held upside down. “Thet’s no
anker!” The dog subtly indicated that there was another side to the
button. “There ain’t,” shouted the old man. “What do you know about
an anker; you never see a real one on a ship in yer life!” There was
an inaudible disparaging reference to “imperdent kerloneyals” which
seemed to crush the dog. To mollify him the man got on his knees, and
bending his neck, showed the dog a faded anchor on the top of the
cabbage tree hat on his head. A little resentment would have served
the dog, but he was too eager for peace.
Noting this, the old man returned to the button for reminiscences.
“An’ yet you thort at fust a thing like thet would do.” There was a
sign of dissent from the dog. “Yer know yer did--Sir. An’ wot’s more
yer don’t bark at ’er like yer used ter!”
The dog was uneasy, and intimated that he would prefer to have that
past buried.
“None er thet now; yer know yer don’t.” Bending the button he
continued, “They can’t never do anythin’ right, an’ orlways,
continerally they gets a man inter trouble.”
He had accidently turned the button, he reversed it looking swiftly
at the dog. “Carn’t de nothin’ with it. A thing like thet! Might as
well fling it in the fire!” He put it carefully away.
“W’ere’s ’e now?” he asked abruptly. The dog indicated the route
taken by the cart.
“An’ ’ow long as ’e bin away?” The dog looked at the tally stick
hanging on the wall. “Yes, orl thet time! What does ’e care about me
an’ you, now ’e’s got ’er! ’e was fust rate afore ’e got er. Wish I
’ad er gorn down thet time ’e took their sheep. I’d er seen no woman
didn’t grab ’im. They’re stuck away down there an’ us orl alone ’ere
by ourselves with only ther sheep. Scrammy sez ’e wouldn’t stay if ’e
wus me. See’s there any signs er ’em comin’ back!”
While the dog was out he hastily tried to fix the button, but failed.
“On’y mist, no dust?” he asked, when his messenger returned. “No
fear,” he growled, “’e won’t come back no more; stay down there an’
nuss ther babby. It’ll be a gal too, sure to be! Women are orlways
’avin’ gals. It’ll be a gal sure enough.”
He looked sternly at the unagreeing dog. “Yer don’t think so! Course
yer don’t. You on ’er side? Yer are Loo!”
The dog’s name was “Warderloo” (Waterloo) and had three
abbreviations. “Now then, War!” meant mutual understanding and
perfect fellowship. “What’s thet, Warder?” meant serious business.
But “Loo” was ever sorrowfully reminiscent. And accordingly “Loo” was
now much affected and disconcerted by the steady accusing eyes of the
old man.
“An’ wot’s more,” he continued, “I believe ye’ll fool roun’, ye’ll
fool aroun’ ’er wusser nor ever w’en she comes back with ther babby.”
At this grave charge the dog, either from dignity or injury, was
silent. His master, slowly and with some additions, repeated the
prophecy, and again the dog gave him only silent attention.
“’Ere she comes with ther babby,” he cried, flinging up his arms in
clumsy feigned surprise. Loo was not deceived, and stood still.
“Oh I’m a ole liar, am I? Yit’s come ter thet; ez it? Well better fer
I ter be a liar ’n fer you ter lose yer manners,--Sir.”
In vain Loo protested. His master turned round, and when poor Loo
faced that way, he drew his feet under him on the bunk and faced
the wall. When the distressed Loo, from outside the hut, caught his
eye through the cracks, he closed his own, to stifle remorse at the
eloquent dumb appeal.
Usually their little differences took some time to evaporate; the
master sulked with his silent mate till some daring feat with snake
or dingo on the dog’s part mollified him. Loo, probably on the look
out for such foes, moved to the end of the hut nearest the sheep.
Two hasty squints revealed his departure, but not his whereabouts,
to the old man, who coughed and waited, but for once expected too
much from poor Loo. His legs grew cramped, still he did not care to
make the first move. It was a godsend when an undemonstrative ewe and
demonstrative lamb came in.
Before that ewe he held the whole of her disgraceful past, and under
the circumstances, “er imperdence--’er blarsted imperdence--” in
unceremoniously intruding on his privacy with her blanky blind udder,
and more than blanky bastard, was something he could not and would
not stand.
“None er yer sauce now!” He jumped down, and shook his fist at the
unashamed, silent mother. “Warder,” he shouted, “Warder, put ’em out!”
Warder did so, and when he came back his master explained to him that
the thing that “continerally an’ orlways” upset him was “thet dam
ole yeo.” It was the only sorrow he had or ever would have in life.
“She wusn’t nat’ral, thet ole yeo.” There was something in the Bible,
he told War, about “yeos” with barren udders. “An’ ’twarn’t as though
she didn’t know.” For that was her third lamb he had had to poddy.
But not another bite would he give this one. He had made up his mind
now, though it had been “worritin’” him all day. “Jes’ look at me,”
showing his lamb-bitten fingers. “Wantin’ ter get blood outer a
stone!”
He shambled round, covered the cabbage-tree hat and the despised
woman-worked button carefully; then his better nature prevailed.
“See ’ere!” and there was that in his voice that indicated a moral
victory. He took off the cloth and placed the button right side up
and in its proper place. “Will thet do yer?” he asked.
After this surrender his excitement was so great, that the dog shared
it. He advised War to lie down “an’ ’ave a spell,” and in strong
agitation he went round the sheep yard twice, each time stopping to
hammer down the hurdles noisily, and calling to War not to “worrit;
they’s orlright now, an’ firm as a rock.”
Through these proceedings the ewe and lamb followed him, the
lamb--lamb fashion--mixing itself with his legs. He had nothing
further to say to the ewe, but from the expression of her eyes she
still had an open mind towards him. Both went with him inside the
hut. Were they intruders? the dog asked. He coughed and affected not
to hear, went to the door, looked out and said the mist was gone, but
the dog re-asked. “I think, War, there’s some er that orker’d little
dam fool’s grub lef’” he said, gently extricating the lamb from
between his legs, “an’ it’ll on’y spile. ’Jes this once ’an no more,
min’ yer, an’ then you skiddy addy,” he said to the ewe. He carried
the lamb outside, for he would not finger-suckle it that night before
Waterloo.
From his bunk head he took an axe, cut in two a myall log, and
brought in half. He threw it on the fire for a back-log, first
scraping the live coals and ashes to a heap for his damper.
He filled and trimmed his slush lamp, and from a series of flat
pockets hanging on the wall he took thread, needle, and beeswax. He
hung a white cloth in a way that defined the eye of the needle which
he held at long range; but vary as he would from long to longest the
thread remained in one hand, the needle in the other. Needle, thread,
light, everything was wrong, he told War. “Es fer me, thenk a Lord
I ken see an’ year’s well’s ever I could. Ehm War! See any change?”
War said there had been no change observable to him. “There ain’t no
change in you neither, War!” he said in gratitude to the grizzled
old dog. But he felt that War had been disappointed at his failure,
and he promised that he would rise betimes to-morrow and sew on the
button by daylight.
“Never mind, War; like ter see ’em after supper?” Comradeship was
never by speech better demonstrated.
From the middle beam the old man untied two bags. Boiled mutton was
in one, and the heel of a damper in another.
“No blowey carn’t get in there, eh?” the dog looked at the meat
uncritically, but critically noted the resting place of two disturbed
“bloweys.”
“No bones!” He had taken great care to omit them. “Neow!” As ever,
War took his word; he caught and swallowed instantly several pieces
flung to him. At the finish his master’s “Eny?” referred to bones.
War’s grateful eyes twinkled. “Not a one.” “Never is neow!” had
reference to a trouble War had had with one long ago.
It was now time for his own supper, but after a few attempts he
shirked it. “Blest if I evven fergot t’bile th’ billy; funny ef me t’
ferget!” He held his head for a moment, then filled the billy, and in
a strange uncertainty went towards and from the fire with it, and in
the end War thought there was no sense at all in putting it so far
from the blaze when it had to boil.
“Tell yer wot, War, w’ile it biles us’ll count ’em. Gimme appertite,
ehm, War?”
War thought “countin’ ’em” was the tonic. Then together they closed
the door, spread a kangaroo skin on the floor, and put the slush lamp
where the light fell on it. The man sat down, so did War, took off
his belt, turned it carefully, tenderly, and opened his knife to cut
the stitching. This was a tedious process, for it was wax thread, and
had been crossed and re-crossed. Then came the chink of the coins
falling. The old man counted each as it rolled out, and the dog
tallied with a paw.
“No more?” Certainly more, said War. A jerk, tenderly calculated,
brought another among the seductive heap.
“All?” no--still the upraised paw. The old man chuckled.
“Ole ’en gets more b’ scratchin’.” This was the dog’s opinion, and
a series of little undulations produced another, and after still
further shaking, yet another.
War was asked with ridiculous insincerity, “All?” and with ridiculous
sincerity his solemn eyes and dropped paw said “all.” Then there
was the honest count straight through, next the side show with its
pretence of “disrememberin’,” or doubts as to the number--doubts
never laid except by a double count. In the first, so intent was the
man, that he forgot his mate; though his relief in being good friends
again, had made him ignore his fear.
But the dog had heard an outside sound, and, moving to the door,
waited for certainty. At this stage the man missed his mate’s eyes.
He lay face downward, covering his treasure, when he realised that
his friend was uneasy. And as the dog kept watch, he thrust them
back hurriedly, missing all the pleasure and excitement of a final
recount.
With dumb show he asked several questions of his sentinel, and
took his answers from his eyes. Then, when Warder relieved began
to walk about, the old man with forced confidence chaffed him. He
sought refuge from his own fears by trying to banish the dog’s, and
suggested dingoes at the sheep yard, or a “goanner” on the roof.
“Well ’twas ’possum,” he said, making a pretence of even then hearing
and distinguishing the sound.
But round his waist the belt did not go that night. Only its bulk in
his life of solitariness could have conceived its hiding place.
He bustled around as one having many tasks, but these he did
aimlessly. With a pretence of unconcern he attempted to hum, but
broke off frequently to listen. He was plainly afraid of the dog’s
keen ears missing something. But his mate’s tense body proclaimed him
on duty.
“I know who yer thort ’twas, Warder!” They were sitting side by
side, yet he spoke very loudly. “Scrammy ’and, Ehm?” He had guessed
correctly.
“An’ yer thort yer see ’im lars’ night!” He was right again.
“An’ yer thort ’twas ’im that ’ad bin ramsakin’ the place yesterday,
when we was shepherdin’. An’ yer thort ’t must ’ave bin ’im shook
the tommy!” The dog’s manner evinced that he had not altered this
opinion. The old man’s heart beat loudly.
“No fear, Warder! Scrammy’s gone, gone ’long ways now, Warder!” But
Warder’s pricked ears doing double duty showed he was unconvinced.
“’Sides, Scrammy wouldn’t ’urt er merskeeter,” he continued. “Poor
ole Scrammy! ’Twarn’t ’im shook the tommy, Warder!” The dog seemed to
be waiting for the suggestion of another thief having unseen crept
into their isolated lives, but his master had none to offer. Both
were silent, then the man piled wood on the fire, remarking that he
was going to sit up all night. He asked the dog to go with him to the
table to feed and trim the slush lamp.
Those quavering shadows along the wall were caused by its sizzeling
flare flickering in the darkness, the dog explained. “Thort it
mighter bin ther blacks outside,” the man said. “They ain’t so
fur away, I know! ’Twar them killed ther lamb down in ther creek.”
He spoke unusually loudly. He hoped they wouldn’t catch “poor ole
one-’anded Scrammy.” He said how sorry he was for “poor ole Scrammy,
cos Scrammy wouldn’t ’urt no one. He on’y jes’ came ter see us cos ’e
was a ole friend. He was gone along ways ter look fur work, cos ’e
was stoney broke after blueing ’is cheque at ther shanty sixty miles
away.”
“I tole ’im,” he continued in an altered voice, “thet I couldn’t
lend ’im eny cos I ’ad sent all my little bit er money (he whispered
‘money’) to ther bank be ther boss. Didn’ I?” Emphatically his mate
intimated that this was the case. He held his head in his shaking
hands, and complained to the dog of having “come over dizzy.”
He was silent for a few moments, then, abruptly raising his voice, he
remarked that their master was a better tracker than “Saddle-strap
Jimmy,” or any of the blacks. He looked at the tally stick, and
suddenly announced that he knew for a certainty that the boss and his
wife would return that night or early next morning, and that he must
see about making them a damper. He got up and began laboriously to
mix soda and salt with the flour. He looked at the muddy coloured
water in the bucket near the wall, and altered his mind.
“I’ll bile it first, War, same as ’er does, cos jus’ neow an’ then t’
day I comes over dizzy-like. See th’ mist t’s even! Two more, then
rain--rain, an’ them two out in it without no tilt on the cart.” He
sat down for a moment, even before he dusted his ungoverned floury
hands.
“Pint er tea, War, jes’ t’ warm ther worms an’ lif’ me ’art, eh!”
Every movement of the dog was in accord with this plan.
His master looked at the billy, and said, “’twarn’t bilin’,” and
that a watched pot never boiled. He rested a while silently with his
floury hands covering his face. He bent his mouth to the dog’s ear
and whispered. Warder, before replying, pointed his ears and raised
his head. The old man’s hand rested on the dog’s neck.
“Tell yer wot, War, w’ile it’s bilin’ I’ll ’ave another go at ther
button, cos I want ter give ’im ther ’at soon as he comes. S’pose
they’ll orl come!” He had sat down again, and seemed to whistle his
words. “Think they’ll orl come, Loo?”
Loo would not commit himself about “orl,” not being quite sure of his
master’s mind.
The old man’s mouth twitched, a violent effort jerked him. “Might be
a boy arter orl; ain’t cocky sure!” His head wagged irresponsibly,
and his hat fell off as he rolled into the bunk. He made no effort
to replace it, and, for once unheeded, the fire flickered on his
polished head. Never before had the dog seen its baldness. The change
from night-cap to hat had always been effected out of his sight.
“War, ain’t cocky sure it’ll be a gal?”
The dog discreetly or modestly dropped his eyes, but his master had
not done with concessions.
“Warder!” Warder looked at him. “Tell yer wot, you can go every
Sunday evenin’ an’ see if ’tis a boy!”
He turned over on his side, with his face to the wall. Into the
gnarled uncontrolled hand swaying over the bunk the dog laid his paw.
When the old man got up, he didn’t put on his hat nor even pick it
up. Altogether there was an unusualness about him to-night that
distressed his mate. He sat up after a few moments, and threw back
his head, listening strainingly for outside sounds. The silence
soothed him, and he lay down again. A faded look was in his eyes.
“Thort I ’eard bells--church bells,” he said to the dog looking up
too, but at him. “Couldn’t ’ave. No church bells in the bush. Ain’t
’eard ’em since I lef’ th’ ole country.” He turned his best ear to
the fancied sound. He had left his dog and the hut, and was dreaming
of shadowy days.
He raised himself from the bunk, and followed the dog’s eyes to a
little smoke-stained bottle on the shelf. “No, no, War!” he said.
“Thet’s for sickness; mus’ be a lot worser’n wot I am!” Breathing
noisily, he went through a list of diseases, among which were palsy,
snake-bite, “dropersy,” and “suddint death,” before he would be
justified in taking the last of his painkiller.
His pipe was in his hidden belt, but he had another in one of those
little pockets. He tried it, said “’twouldn’t draw’r,” and very
slowly and clumsily stripped the edge of a cabbage tree frond hanging
from the rafter, and tried to push it through the stem, but could
not find the opening. He explained to the intent dog that the hole
was stopped up, but it didn’t matter. He placed it under the bunk
where he sat, because first he would “’ave a swig er tea.” His head
kept wagging at the billy. No, until the billy boiled he was going
to have a little snooze. The dog was to keep quiet until the billy
boiled.
Involuntarily he murmured, looking at his mate, “Funny w’ere ther
tommy’awk’s gone ter!” Then he missed the axe. “My Gord, Warder!”
he said, “I lef’ the axe outside; clean forgot it!” This discovery
alarmed the dog, and he suggested they should bring it in.
“No, no!” he said, and his floury face grew ghastly.
He stood still; all his faculties seemed paralyzed for a time, then
fell stiffly on his bunk. Quite suddenly he staggered to his feet,
rubbed his eyes, and between broken breaths he complained of the bad
light, and that the mist had come again.
One thing the dog did when he saw his master’s face even by that
indifferent light, he barked low, and terribly human.
The old man motioned for silence. “Ah!” His jaw fell but only for a
moment. Then a steely grimness took possession. He clung to the table
and beckoned the dog with one crooked finger. “Scrammy?” cunningly,
cautiously, indicating outside, and as subtly the dog replied. Then
he groped for his bunk, and lay with his eyes fixed on the billy, his
mouth open.
He brought his palms together after a while. “’Cline our ’earts ter
keep this lawr,” he whispered, and for a moment his eyes rested on
the hiding place, then turned to the dog.
And though soon after there was a sinister sound outside, which
the watchful dog immediately challenged, the man on the bunk lay
undisturbed.
Warder growling savagely went along the back wall of the hut, and
despite the semidarkness his eyes scintillating with menace through
the cracks, drove from them a crouching figure who turned hastily
to grip the axe near the myall logs. He stumbled over the lamb’s
feeding-pan lying in the hut’s shadow. The moonlight glittering on
the blade recalled the menace of the dog’s eyes. The man grabbed the
weapon swiftly, but even with it he felt the chances were unequal.
But he had planned to fix the dog. He would unpen the sheep, and the
lurking dingoes, coming up from the creek to worry the lambs, would
prove work for the dog. He crouched silently to again deceive this
man and dog, and crept towards the sheep yard. But the hurdles of the
yard faced the hut, and the way those thousand eyes reflected the
rising moon was disconcerting. The whole of the night seemed pregnant
with eyes.
All the shadows were slanting the wrong way, and the moon was facing
him, with its man calmly watching every movement. It would be dawn
before it set. He backed from the yard to the myall’s scant screen.
Even they had moulted with age. From under his coat the handle of the
axe protruded. His mind worked his body. Hugging the axe, he crept
towards some object, straightened himself to reach, then with the
hook on his handless arm, drew back an imaginary bolt, and stooping
entered. With the axe in readiness he crept to the bunk. Twice he
raised it and struck.
It was easy enough out there, yet even in imagination his skin was
wet and his mouth was dry. Even if the man slept, there was the dog.
He must risk letting out the sheep. He covered the blade of the axe
and went in a circuit to the sheep, and got over the yard on the
side opposite to the hut. They rushed from him and huddled together,
leaving him, although stooping, exposed. He had calculated for this,
but not for the effect upon himself. Could they in the hut see him,
he would be no match for the dog even with the axe. Heedlessly,
fear-driven, he rushed to where he could see the door, regardless of
exposing himself. Nothing counted now, but that the dog or the old
man should not steal upon him unawares.
The door was still closed. No call for “Warder!” came from it, though
he stood there a conspicuous object. While he watched he saw an ewe
lamb make for the hut’s shelter. He stooped, still watching, and
listened, but could hear nothing. He crept forward and loosened the
hurdles. Never were they noisier, he was sure. He knew that the sheep
would not go through while he was there. He crept away, but although
the leader noted the freed exit, he and those he led were creatures
of habit. None were hungry, and they were unused to feeding at night,
though in the morning came man and dog never so early they were
waiting.
Round the yard and past the gateway he drove them again and again. He
began to feel impotently frenzied in the fear that the extraordinary
lightness meant that daylight must be near. Every moment he persuaded
himself that he could see more plainly. He held out his one hand and
was convinced.
He straightened himself, rushed among them, caught one, and ran it
kicking through the opening. It came back the moment he freed it.
However it served his purpose, for as he crouched there, baffled,
he unexpectedly saw them file out. Then they rushed through in an
impatient struggling crowd, each fearing to be last with this invader.
When he “barrowed” out the first, he had kept his eyes on the hut,
and had seen an old ewe and lamb run to it and bunt the closed door.
But if there was any movement inside, the noise of the nearer sheep
killed it.
They were all round the hut, for above it hung the moon, and they
all made for the light. He crept after them, his ears straining for
sound, but his head bobbing above them to watch the still closed
door.
Inside, long since, the back-log had split with an explosion that
scattered the coals near enough to cause the billy to boil, and the
blaze showed the old man’s eyes set on the billy. The dog looked
into them, then laid his head between his paws, and still watching
his master’s face, beat the ground with his tail. He whined softly
and went back to his post at the door, his eyes snapping flintily,
his teeth bared. Along his back the hair rose like bristles. He sent
an assurance of help to the importunate ewe and lamb. As the sheep
neared the hut, he ran to the bunk, raised his head to a level with
his master’s, and barked softly. He waited, and despite the eager
light in his intelligent face, his master and mate did not ask him
any questions as to the cause of these calling sheep. Why did he not
rise, and with him re-yard them, then gloatingly ask him where was
the chinky crow by day, or sneaking dingo by night, that was any
match for them, and then demand from his four-footed trusty mate the
usual straightforward answer? Was there to be no discussion as to
which heard the noise first, nor the final compromise of a dead-heat?
The silence puzzled the man outside sorely; he crouched, watching
both door and shutter. The sheep were all round the hut. Man and dog
inside must hear them. Why, when a dingo came that night he camped
with them, they heard it before it could reach a lamb. If only he had
known then what he knew now! His hold on the axe tightened. No one
had seen him come; none should see him go! Why didn’t that old fellow
wake to-night? for now, as he crept nearer the hut, he could hear the
whining dog, and understood, he was appealing to his master.
He lay flat on the ground and tried to puzzle it out. The sheep had
rushed back disorganised and were again near the hut and yard. Both
inside must know. They were waiting for him. They were preparing for
him, and that was why they were letting the dingoes play up with the
sheep. That was the reason they did not openly show fight.
Still he would have sacrificed half of the coveted wealth to be
absolutely certain of what their silence meant. It was surely almost
daylight. He spread out the fingers of his one hand; he could see
the colour of the blood in the veins. He must act quickly, or he
would have to hide about for another day. And the absent man might
return. To encourage himself, he tried to imagine the possession
of that glittering heap that he had seen them counting on the mat.
Yet he had grown cold and dejected, and felt for the first time the
weight of the axe. It would be all right if the door would open,
the old man come out and send the dog to round up the sheep. It was
getting daylight, and soon shelter would be impossible.
He crept towards the hut, and this time he felt the edge of the axe.
Right and left the sheep parted. There was nothing to be gained now
in crawling, for the hostility of the dog told him that he could be
seen. He stood, his body stiffened with determination.
Mechanically he went to the door; he knew the defensive resources
of the hut. He had the axe, and the stolen tomahawk was stuck in
the fork of those myalls. He had no need for both. The only weapon
that the old fellow had was the useless butcher’s knife. His eyes
protruded, and unconsciously he felt his stiffened beard.
He breathed without movement. There was no sound now from man or dog.
In his mind he saw them waiting for him to attack the door; this he
did not debate nor alter. He went to the shutter, ran the axe’s edge
along the hide hinges, pushed it in, then stepped back.
Immediately the dog’s head appeared. He growled no protest, but the
flinty fire from his eyes and the heat of his suppressed breath,
hissing between his bared fangs, revealed to Scrammy that in this
contest, despite the axe, his one hand was a serious handicap.
With the first blow his senses quickened. The slush lamp had gone out
and there was no hint of daylight inside. This he noted between his
blows at the dog, as he looked for his victim. It was strange the old
fellow did not show fight! Where was he hiding? Was it possible that,
scenting danger, he had slipped out? He recalled the dog’s warning
when his master was counting his hoard. The memory of that chinking
belt-hidden pile dominated greedily. Had the old man escaped? He
would search the hut; what were fifty dogs’ teeth? In close quarters
he would do for him with one blow.
He was breathing now in deep gasps. The keen edge of the axe severed
the hide-hinged door. He rushed it; then stood back swinging the axe
in readiness. It did not fall for the bolt still held it. But this
was only what a child would consider a barrier. One blow with the axe
head smashed the bolt. The door fell across the head of the bunk, the
end partly blocking the entrance. He struck a side blow that sent it
along the bunk.
The dog was dreadfully distressed. The bushman outside thought the
cause the fallen door. Face to face they met--determined battle in
the dog’s eyes met murder in the man’s. He brandished an axe circuit,
craned his neck, and by the dull light of the fire searched the hut.
He saw no one but the dog. Unless his master was under the bunk, he
had escaped. The whole plot broke on him quite suddenly! The cunning
old miser, knowing his dog would show his flight by following, had
locked him in, and he had wasted all this time barking up the wrong
tree. He would have done the old man to death that minute with fifty
brutal blows. He would kill him by day or night.
He ran round the brush sheep yard, kicking and thrusting the axe
through the thickest parts. He had not hidden there, nor among the
myall clump where he had practised his bloody plot. The dog stood at
the doorway of the hut. He saw this as he passed through the sheep on
his way to search the creek. He was half minded to try to invite the
dog’s confidence and cooperation by yarding them.
He looked at them, and the moonlight’s undulating white scales across
their shorn backs brought out the fresh tar brand 8, setting him
thinking of the links of that convict gang chain long ago. Lord, how
light it must be for him to see that!
He held out his hand again. There was no perceptible change in the
light. There were hours yet before daylight. He moulded his mind to
that.
The creek split the plain, and along it here and there a few she-oak
blots defined it. He traversed it with his eyes. There were no likely
hiding places among the trees, and it would be useless to search
them. Suddenly it struck him that the old man might be creeping
along with the sheep--they were so used to him. He ran and headed
them, driving them swiftly back to the yard. Before they were in he
knew he was wrong. Again he turned and scanned the creek, but felt
no impulse to search it. It was half a mile from the hut. It was
impossible that the old man could have got there, or that he could
have reached the more distant house. Besides, why did the dog stay at
the door unless on guard? He ran back to the hut.
The dog was still there, and in no way appeased by the yarding of the
sheep. He swore at the threatening brute, and cast about for a gibber
to throw, but stones were almost unknown there. A sapling would serve
him! Seven or eight myall logs lay near for firewood, but all were
too thick to be wielded. There was only the clump of myalls, and the
few stunted she-oaks bordering the distant creek. To reach either
would mean a dangerous delay. Oh, by God, he had it! These poles
keeping down the bark roof. He ran to the back of the hut, cut a step
in a slab, and putting his foot in it, hitched the axe on one of
the desired poles and was up in a moment. He could hear the cabbage
fronds hanging from the rafters shiver with the vibration, but there
was no other protest from inside.
He shifted a sheet of rotten bark; part of it crumbled and fell
inside on the prostrate door, sounding like the first earth on a
coffin, in a way that the dog particularly resented. He knelt and
carefully eyed the interior. The dog’s glittering eyes met his. The
door lay as it had fallen along the bunk. The fire was lightless, yet
he could see more plainly, but the cause was not manifest, till from
the myalls quite close the jackasses chorused. From his post the dog
sent them a signal. Quite unaccountably the man’s muscles relaxed.
“Oh, Christ!” he said, dropping the pole. He sprang up and faced the
East, then turned to the traitorous faded moon. The daylight had come.
The sweat stung his quivering body. Slowly, he made an eye circuit
round the plain; no human being was in sight. All he had to face was
a parcel of noisy jackasses and a barking dog! He would soon silence
the dog. He took the pole and made a jab at the whelping brute. One
thing he noticed, that if he did get one home, it was only when he
worked near the horizontal door. His quickened senses guessed at
the reason. He could have shifted the door easily with his pole, yet
feared, because, if the old man were under, he would expose himself
to two active enemies. He must get to close quarters with the dog,
and chop him in two, or brain him with the axe.
He ripped off another sheet of bark, and smashed away a batten that
broke his swing. Encircling a rafter with his hooked arm, he lay
flat, his feet pressing another just over the bunk, because only
there would the dog hold his ground. One blow well directed got home.
He planted his feet firmly, and made another with such tremendous
force that his support snapped. He let go the axe and it fell on the
door. He gripped with his hand the rafter nearest, but strain as he
would he could not balance his body. He hung over the door, and the
dog sprang at him and dragged him down. In bitten agony, he dropped
on the door that instantly up-ended.
It was daylight, and in that light the power of those open eyes set
in that bald head, fixed on the billy beside the dead fireplace, was
mightier than the dog. His unmaimed hand had the strength of both. He
lifted the door and shielded himself with it as he backed out.
But that was not all the dog wanted. At the doorway he waited to see
that the fleeing man had no further designs on the sheep.
It was time they were feeding. Though the hurdles were down, even
from the doorway, the dog was their master. He waited for commands
from his, and barked them back till noon.
Several times that day the ewe and lamb came in, looked without
speculation at the figure on the bunk, then moved to the dead
fire-place. But though the water in the billy was cold, the dog would
not allow either to touch it. That was for tea when his master awoke.
There was another circumstance. Those blow flies were welcome to the
uncovered mutton. Throughout that day he gave them undisputed right,
but they had to be content with it.
Next day the ewe and lamb came again. The lamb bunted several
irresponsive objects--never its dam’s udder--baaing listlessly.
Though the first day the ewe had looked at the bunk, and baaed,
she was wiser now, though sheep are slow to learn. Around that
dried dish outside the lamb sniffed, baaing faintly. Adroitly the
ewe led the way to the creek, and the lamb followed. From the bank
the lamb looked at her, then faced round to the hut, and baaing
disconsolately, trotted a few paces back. From the water’s edge the
mother ewe called. The lamb looked at her vacantly, and without
interest descended. The ewe bent and drank sparingly, meaningly.
The lamb sniffed the water, and unsatisfied, complained. The hut
was hidden, but it turned that way. Again the ewe leisurely drank.
This time the lamb’s lips touched the water, but did not drink. Into
its mouth raised to bleat a few drops fell. Hastily the mother’s
head went to the water. She did not drink, but the lamb did. Higher
up, where the creek was dry, they crossed to tender grass in the
billabong, then joined the flock for the first time.
Through the thicker mist that afternoon a white tilted cart sailed
joltingly, taking its bearings from the various land marks rather
than from the undefined track. It rounded the scrub, and the woman,
with her baby, kept watch for the first glimpse of her home beyond
the creek. She told her husband that there was no smoke from the
nearer shepherd’s hut, but despite his uneasiness, he tried to
persuade her that the mist absorbed it.
It was past sun-down, yet the straggling unguarded sheep were
running in mobs to and from the creek. Both saw the broken roof of
the hut, and the man, stopping the horse some distance away, gave the
woman the reins and bade her wait. He entered the hut through the
broken doorway, but immediately came out to assure himself that his
wife had not moved.
The sight inside of that broken-ribbed dog’s fight with those buzzing
horrors, and the reproach in his wild eyes, was a memory that the man
was not willing she should share.
BILLY SKYWONKIE.
The line was unfenced, so with due regard to the possibility of
the drought-dulled sheep attempting to chew it, the train crept
cautiously along, stopping occasionally, without warning, to clear
it from the listless starving brutes. In the carriage nearest the
cattle-vans, some drovers and scrub-cutters were playing euchre,
and spasmodically chorusing the shrill music from an uncertain
concertina. When the train stopped, the player thrust his head
from the carriage window. From one nearer the engine, a commercial
traveller remonstrated with the guard, concerning the snail’s pace
and the many unnecessary halts.
“Take yer time, ole die-ard,” yelled the drover to the guard. “Whips
er time,--don’t bust yerself fer no one. Wot’s orl the worl’ to a man
w’en his wife’s a widder.” He laughed noisily and waved his hat at
the seething bagman. “Go an’ ’ave a snooze. I’ll wake yer up ther
day after termorrer.”
He craned his neck to see into the nearest cattle-van. Four were
down, he told his mates, who remarked, with blasphemous emphasis,
that they would probably lose half before getting them to the scrub
country.
The listening woman passenger in a carriage between the drover and
the bagman, heard a thud soon after in the cattle-truck, and added
another to the list of the fallen. Before dawn that day the train had
stopped at a siding to truck them, and she had watched with painful
interest these drought-tamed brutes being driven into the crowded
vans. The tireless, greedy sun had swiftly followed the grey dawn,
and in the light that even now seemed old and worn, the desolation of
the barren shelterless plains, that the night had hidden, appalled
her. She realised the sufferings of the emaciated cattle. It was
barely noon, yet she had twice emptied the water bottle, “shogging”
in the iron bracket.
The train dragged its weary length again, and she closed her eyes
from the monotony of the dead plain. Suddenly the engine cleared its
throat in shrill welcome to two iron tanks, hoisted twenty feet and
blazing like evil eyes from a vanished face.
Beside them it squatted on its hunkers, placed a blackened thumb on
its pipe, and hissed through its closed teeth like a snared wild cat,
while gulping yards of water. The green slimy odour penetrated to the
cattle. The lustiest of these stamped feebly, clashing their horns
and bellowing a hollow request.
A long-bearded bushman was standing on the few slabs that formed a
siding, with a stockwhip coiled like a snake on his arm. The woman
passenger asked him the name of the place.
“This is ther Never--Never,--ther lars’ place Gord made,” answered
one of the drovers who were crowding the windows.
“Better’n ther ’ell ’ole yous come from, any’ow,” defended the
bushman. “Breakin’ ther ’earts, an’ dyin’ from suerside, cos they
lef’ it,” he added derisively, pointing to the cattle.
In patriotic anger he passed to the guard-van without answering her
question, though she looked anxiously after him. At various intervals
during the many halts of the train, she had heard some of the
obscene jokes, and with it in motion, snatches of lewd songs from
the drovers’ carriage. But the language used by this bushman to the
guard, as he helped to remove a ton of fencing wire topping his new
saddle, made her draw back her head. Near the siding was a spring
cart, and she presently saw him throw his flattened saddle into it
and drive off. There was no one else in sight, and in nervous fear
she asked the bagman if this was Gooriabba siding. It was nine miles
further, he told her.
The engine lifted its thumb from its pipe. “Well--well--to--be--sure;
well--well--to--be--sure,” it puffed, as if in shocked remembrance of
its being hours late for its appointment there.
She saw no one on the next siding, but a buggy waited near the
sliprails. It must be for her. According to Sydney arrangements she
was to be met here, and driven out twelve miles. A drover enquired as
the train left her standing by her portmanteau, “Are yer travellin’
on yer lonesome, or on’y goin’ somew’ere!” and another flung a twist
of paper towards her, bawling unmusically, that it was “A flowwer
from me angel mother’s ger-rave.”
She went towards the buggy, but as she neared it the driver got in
and made to drive off. She ran and called, for when he went she would
be alone with the bush all round her, and only the sound of the
hoarse croaking of the frogs from the swamp near, and the raucous
“I’ll--’ave--’is--eye--out,” of the crows.
Yes, he was from Gooriabba Station, and had come to meet a young
“piece” from Sydney, who had not come.
She was ghastly with bilious sickness,--the result of an over-fed
brain and an under-fed liver. Her face flushed muddily. “Was it a
housekeeper?”
He was the rouseabout, wearing his best clothes with awful
unusualness. The coat was too long in the sleeve, and wrinkled across
the back with his bush slouch. There was that wonderful margin of
loose shirt between waistcoat and trousers, which all swagger bushies
affect. Subordinate to nothing decorative was the flaring silk
handkerchief, drawn into a sailor’s knot round his neck.
He got out and fixed the winkers, then put his hands as far as he
could reach into his pockets--from the position of his trousers he
could not possibly reach bottom. It was apparently some unknown law
that suspended them. He thrust forward his lower jaw, elevated his
pipe, and squirted a little tobacco juice towards his foot that was
tracing semi-circles in the dust. “Damned if I know,” he said with a
snort, “but there’ll be a ’ell of a row somew’ere.”
She noticed that the discoloured teeth his bush grin showed so
plainly, were worn in the centre, and met at both sides with the pipe
between the front. Worn stepping stones her mind insisted.
She looked away towards the horizon where the smoke of the hidden
train showed faintly against a clear sky, and as he was silent, she
seemed to herself to be intently listening to the croak of the frogs
and the threat of the crows. She knew that, from under the brim of
the hat he wore over his eyes, he was looking at her sideways.
Suddenly he withdrew his hands and said again, “Damned if I know.
S’pose its alright! Got any traps? Get up then an’ ’ole the Neddy
while I get it.” They drove a mile or so in silence; his pipe was
still in his mouth though not alight.
She spoke once only. “What a lot of frogs seem to be in that lake!”
He laughed. “That’s ther Nine Mile Dam!” He laughed again after a
little--an intelligent complacent laugh.
“It used ter be swarmin’ with teal in a good season, but Gord
A’mighty knows w’en its ever goin’ ter rain any more! I dunno!” This
was an important admission, for he was a great weather prophet.
“Lake!” he sniggered and looked sideways at his companion. “Thet’s
wot thet there bloke, the painter doodle, called it. An ’e goes ter
dror it, an’ ’e sez wot ’e ’ll give me five bob if I’ll run up ther
horses, an’ keep ’em so’s ’e ken put ’em in ther picshure. An’ ’e
drors ther Dam an’ ther trees, puts in thet there ole dead un, an’ ’e
puts in ther ’orses right clost against ther water w’ere the frogs
is. ’E puts them in too, an’ damned if ’e don’t dror ther ’orses
drinkin’ ther water with ther frogs, an’ ther frogs spit on it!
Likely yarn ther ’orses ud drink ther water with ther blanky frogs’
spit on it! Fat lot they know about ther bush! Blarsted nannies!”
Presently he enquired as to the place where they kept pictures in
Sydney, and she told him, the Art Gallery.
“Well some of these days I’m goin’ down ter Sydney,” he continued,
“an I’ll collar thet one ’cos its a good likerness of ther
’orses--you’d know their ’ide on a gum tree--an’ that mean mongrel
never paid me ther five bob.”
Between his closed teeth he hissed a bush tune for some miles, but
ceased to look at the sky and remarked, “No sign er rain! No lambin’
this season; soon as they’re dropt we’ll ’ave ter knock ’em all on
ther ’ead!” He shouted an oath of hatred at the crows following after
the tottering sheep that made in a straggling line for the water.
“Look at ’em!” he said, “Scoffin’ out ther eyes!” He pointed to where
the crows hovered over the bogged sheep. “They putty well lives on
eyes! ‘Blanky bush Chinkies!’ I call ’em. No one carn’t tell ’em
apart!”
There was silence again, except for a remark that he could spit all
the blanky rain they had had in the last nine months.
Away to the left along a side track his eyes travelled seachingly, as
they came to a gate. He stood in the buggy and looked again.
“Promised ther ‘Konk’ t’ leave’im ’ave furst squint at yer,” he
muttered, “if ’e was ’ere t’ open ther gate! But I’m not goin’ t’
blanky well wait orl day!” He reluctantly got out and opened the
gate, and he had just taken his seat when a “Cooee” sounded from his
right, heralded by a dusty pillar. He snorted resentfully. “’Ere ’e
is; jes’ as I got out an’ done it!”
The “Konk” cantered to them, his horse’s hoofs padded by the
dust-cushioned earth. The driver drew back, so as not to impede the
newcomer’s view. After a moment or two, the “Konk,” preferring closer
quarters, brought his horse round to the left. Unsophisticated bush
wonder in the man’s face, met the sophisticated in the girl’s.
Never had she seen anything so grotesquely monkeyish. And the nose
of this little hairy horror, as he slewed his neck to look into
her face, blotted the landscape and dwarfed all perspective. She
experienced a strange desire to extend her hand. When surprise
lessened, her mettle saved her from the impulse to cover her face
with both hands, to baffle him.
At last the silence was broken by the driver drawing a match along
his leg, and lighting his pipe. The hairy creature safely arranged a
pair of emu eggs, slung with bush skill round his neck.
“Ain’t yer goin’ to part?” enquired the driver, indicating his
companion as the recipient.
“Wot are yer givin’ us; wot do yer take me fur?” said the “Konk”
indignantly, drawing down his knotted veil.
“Well, give ’em ter me fer Lizer.”
“Will yer ’ave ’em now, or wait till yer get ’em?”
“Goin’ ter sit on ’em yerself?” sneered the driver.
“Yes, an’ I’ll give yer ther first egg ther cock lays,” laughed the
“Konk.”
He turned his horse’s head back to the gate. “I say, Billy Skywonkie!
Wot price Sally Ah Too, eh?” he asked, his gorilla mouth agape.
Billy Skywonkie uncrossed his legs, took out the whip. He tilted his
pipe and shook his head as he prepared to drive, to show that he
understood to a fraction the price of Sally Ah Too. The aptness of
the question took the sting out of his having had to open the gate.
He gave a farewell jerk.
“Goin’ ter wash yer neck?” shouted the man with the nose, from the
gate.
“Not if I know it.”
The “Konk” received the intimation incredulously. “Stinkin’ Roger!”
he yelled. In bush parlance this was equal to emphatic disbelief.
This was a seemingly final parting, and both started, but suddenly
the “Konk” wheeled round.
“Oh, Billy!” he shouted.
Billy stayed his horse and turned expectantly.
“W’en’s it goin’ ter rain?”
The driver’s face darkened. “Your blanky jealersey ’ll get yer down,
an’ worry yer yet,” he snarled, and slashing his horse he drove
rapidly away.
“Mickey ther Konk,” he presently remarked to his companion, as he
stroked his nose.
This explained her earlier desire to extend her hand. If the “Konk”
had been a horse she would have stroked his nose.
“Mob er sheep can camp in the shadder of it,” he said.
Boundless scope for shadows on that sun-smitten treeless plain!
“Make a good plough-shere,” he continued “easy plough a cultivation
paddock with it!”
At the next gate he seemed in a mind and body conflict. There
were two tracks; he drove along one for a few hundred yards. Then
stopping, he turned, and finding the “Konk” out of sight, abruptly
drove across to the other. He continually drew his whip along the
horse’s back, and haste seemed the object of the movement, though he
did not flog the beast.
After a few miles on the new track, a blob glittered dazzlingly
through the glare, like a fallen star. It was the iron roof of the
wine shanty--the Saturday night and Sunday resort of shearers and
rouseabouts for twenty miles around. Most of its spirits was made on
the premises from bush recipes, of which blue-stone and tobacco were
the chief ingredients. Every drop had the reputation of “bitin’ orl
ther way down.”
A sapling studded with broken horse-shoes seemed to connect two
lonely crow stone trees. Under their scanty shade groups of dejected
fowls stood with beaks agape. Though the buggy wheels almost reached
them, they were motionless but for quivering gills. The ground both
sides of the shanty was decorated with tightly-pegged kangaroo skins.
A dog, apathetically blind and dumb, lay on the verandah, lifeless
save for eyelids blinking in antagonism to the besieging flies.
“Jerry can’t be far off,” said Billy Skywonkie, recognising the dog.
He stood up in the buggy. “By cripes, there ’e is--goosed already,
an’ ’e on’y got ’is cheque lars’ night.”
On the chimney side of the shanty a man lay in agitated sleep beside
his rifle and swag. There had been a little shade on that side in the
morning, and he had been sober enough to select it, and lay his head
on his swag. He had emptied the bottle lying at his feet since then.
His swag had been thoroughly “gone through,” and also his singlet and
trouser pockets. The fumes from the shant-grog baffled the flies.
But the scorching sun was conquering; the man groaned, and his hands
began to search for his burning head.
Billy Skywonkie explained to his companion that it was “Thet fool,
Jerry ther kangaroo-shooter, bluein’ ’is cheque fer skins.” He took
the water bag under the buggy, and poured the contents into the open
mouth and over the face of the “dosed” man, and raised him into a
sitting posture. Jerry fought this friendliness vigorously, and,
staggering to his feet, picked up his rifle, and took drunken aim at
his rescuer, then at the terrified woman in the buggy.
The rouseabout laughed unconcernedly. “’E thinks we’re blanky
kangaroos,” he said to her. “Jerry, ole cock, yer couldn’t ’it a
woolshed! Yer been taking ther sun!”
He took the rifle and pushed the subdued Jerry into the chimney
corner.
He tilted his hat, till, bush fashion, it “’ung on one ’air,” and
went inside the shanty. “Mag!” he shouted, thumping the bar (a plank
supported by two casks).
The woman in the buggy saw a slatternly girl with doughy hands come
from the back, wiping the flour from her face with a kitchen towel.
They made some reference to her she knew, as the girl came to the
door and gave her close scrutiny. Then, shaking her head till her
long brass earrings swung like pendulums, she laughed loudly.
“Eh?” enquired the rouseabout.
“My oath!” “Square dinkum!” she answered, going behind the bar.
He took the silk handkerchief from his neck, and playfully tried
to flick the corner into her eye. Mag was used to such delicate
attentions and well able to defend herself. With the dirty kitchen
towel she succeeded in knocking off his hat, and round and round the
house she ran with it dexterously dodging the skin-pegs. He could
neither overtake nor outwit her with any dodge. He gave in, and
ransomed his hat with the “shouts” she demanded.
From the back of the shanty, a bent old woman, almost on all fours,
crept towards the man, again prostrate in the corner. She paused,
with her ear turned to where the girl and the rouseabout were still
at horse-play. With cat-like movements she stole on till within
reach of Jerry’s empty pockets. She turned her terrible face to
the woman in the buggy, as if in expectation of sympathy. Keeping
wide of the front door, she came to the further side of the buggy.
With the fascination of horror the woman looked at this creature,
whose mouth and eyes seemed to dishonour her draggled grey hair.
She was importuning for something, but the woman in the buggy
could not understand till she pointed to her toothless mouth (the
mission of which seemed to be, to fill its cavernous depths with
the age-loosened skin above and below). A blue bag under each eye
aggressively ticked like the gills of the fowls, and the sinews of
the neck strained into bassi relievi. Alternately she pointed to
her mouth, or laid her knotted fingers on the blue bags in pretence
of wiping tears. Entrenched behind the absorbed skin-terraces, a
stump of purple tongue made efforts at speech. When she held out her
claw, the woman understood and felt for her purse. Wolfishly the old
hag snatched and put into her mouth the coin, and as the now merry
driver, followed by Mag, came, she shook a warning claw at the giver,
and flopped whining in the dust, her hands ostentatiously open and
wiping dry eyes.
“’Ello Biddy, on ther booze again!”
The bottle bulging from his coat pocket made speech with him
intelligible, despite the impeding coin.
He placed the bottle in the boot of the buggy, and turning to Mag,
said “Give ther poor ole cow a dose!”
“Yes, one in a billy; anything else might make her sick!” said Mag.
“I caught ’er jus’ now swiggin’ away with ther tap in ’er mug!”
He asked his companion would she like a wet. She asked for water, and
so great was her need, that, making a barricade of closed lips and
teeth to the multitude of apparently wingless mosquitoes thriving in
its green tepidity, she moistened her mouth and throat.
“Oh, I say, Billy!” called Mag as he drove off. Her tones suggested
her having forgotten an important matter, and he turned eagerly.
“W’en’s it goin’ ter rain?” she shrieked, convulsed with merriment.
“Go an’ crawl inter a ’oller log!” he shouted angrily.
“No, but truly, Billy.” Billy turned again. “Give my love to yaller
Lizer; thet slues yer!”
They had not gone far before he looked round again. “Gord!” he cried
excitedly, “Look at Mag goin’ through ’er ole woman!”
Mag had the old woman’s head between her knees, dentist-fashion, and
seemed to concentrate upon her victim’s mouth, whose feeble impotence
was soon demonstrated by the operator releasing her, and triumphantly
raising her hand.
What the finger and thumb held the woman knew and the other guessed.
“By Gord. Eh! thet’s prime; ain’t it? No flies on Mag; not a fly!” he
said, admiringly.
“See me an’ ’er?” he asked, as he drove on.
His tone suggested no need to reply, and his listener did not. A
giddy unreality took the sting from everything, even from her desire
to beseech him to turn back to the siding, and leave her there to
wait for the train to take her back to civilization. She felt she had
lost her mental balance. Little matters became distorted, and the
greater shrivelled.
He was now more communicative, and the oaths and adjectives so
freely used were surely coined for such circumstances. “Damned” the
wretched, starving, and starved sheep looked and were; “bloody” the
beaks of the glutted crows; “blarsted” the whole of the plain they
drove through!
Gaping cracks suggested yawning graves, and the skeleton fingers of
the drooping myalls seemingly pointed to them.
“See me an’ Mag?” he asked again. “No flies on Mag; not a wink ’bout
’er!” He chuckled in tribute. “Ther wus thet damned flash fool, Jimmy
Fernatty,” he continued “--ther blanky fool; ’e never ’ad no show
with Mag. An’ yet ’e’d go down there! It wus two mile furder this
way, yet damned if ther blanky fool wouldn’t come this way every
time, ’less ther boss ’e wus with ’im, ’stead er goin’ ther short
cut,--ther way I come this mornin’. An’ every time Mag ud make ’im
part ’arf a quid! I wus on’l there jus’ ’bout five minits meself, an’
I stuck up nea’ly ’arf a quid! An’ there’s four gates (he flogged the
horse and painted them crimson when he remembered them) this way,
more ’n on ther way I come this mornin’.”
Presently he gave her the reins with instructions to drive through
one. It seemed to take a long time to close it, and he had to fix the
back of the buggy before he opened it, and after it was closed.
After getting out several times in quick succession to fix the back
of the buggy when there was no gate, he seemed to forget the extra
distance. He kept his hand on hers when she gave him the reins, and
bade her “keep up ’er pecker.” “Someone would soon buck up ter ’er if
their boss wusn’t on.” But the boss it seemed was a “terrer for young
uns. Jimmy Fernatty ’as took up with a yaller piece an’ is livin’
with ’er; But not me; thet’s not me! I’m like ther boss, thet’s me!
No yeller satin for me!”
He watched for the effect of this degree of taste on her.
Though she had withdrawn her hand, he kept winking at her, and she
had to move her feet to the edge of the buggy to prevent his pressing
against them. He told her with sudden anger that any red black-gin
was as good as a half chow any day, and it was no use gammoning for
he knew what she was.
“If Billy Skywonkie ’ad ter string onter yaller Lizer, more ’air on
’is chest fer doin’ so,” (striking his own). “I ken get as many w’ite
gins as I wanter, an’ I’d as soon tackle a gin as a chow anyways!”
On his next visit to the back of the buggy she heard the crash of
glass breaking against a tree. After a few snatches of song he
lighted his pipe, and grew sorrowfully reminiscent.
“Yes s’elp me, nea’ly ’arf a quid! An’ thet coloured ole ’og of a cow
of a mother, soon’s she’s off ther booze, ’ll see thet she gets it!”
Then he missed his silk handkerchief. “Ghost!” he said, breathing
heavily, “Mag’s snavelled it! Lizer ’ll spot thet’s gone soon’s we
get ’ithin cooee of ’er!”
Against hope he turned and looked along the road; felt every pocket,
lifted his feet, and looked under the mat. His companion, in reply,
said she had not seen it since his visit to the shanty.
“My Gord!” he said, “Mag’s a fair terror!” He was greatly troubled
till the braggart in him gave an assertive flicker. “Know wot I’ll
do ter Lizer soon’s she begins ter start naggin’ at me?” He intended
this question as an insoluble conundrum, and waited for no surmises.
“Fill ’er mug with this!” The shut fist he shook was more than a
mugfull. “’Twouldn’ be ther first time I done it, not ther lars’.”
But the anticipation seemed little comfort to him.
The rest of the journey was done in silence, and without even a peep
at the sky. When they came to the homestead gate he said his throat
felt as though a “goanner” had crawled into it and died. He asked her
for a pin and clumsily dropped it in his efforts to draw the collar
up to his ears, but had better luck with a hair-pin.
He appeared suddenly subdued and sober, and as he took his seat after
closing the gate, he offered her his hand, and said, hurriedly, “No
’arm done, an’ no ’arm meant; an’ don’t let on ter my missus--thet’s
’er on the verander--thet we come be ther shanty.”
It was dusk, but through it she saw that the woman was dusky too.
“Boss in, Lizer?” There was contrition and propitiation in his voice.
“You’ve bin a nice blanky time,” said his missus, “an’ lucky fer you:
Billy Skywonkie ’e ain’t.”
With bowed head, his shoulders making kindly efforts to hide his
ears, he sat silent and listening respectfully. The woman in the
buggy thought that the volubility of the angry half-caste’s tongue
was the nearest thing to perpetual motion. Under her orders both got
down, and from a seat under the open window in the little room to
which Lizer had motioned, she gave respectful attention to the still
rapidly flowing tirade. The offence had been some terrible injustice
to a respectable married woman, “slavin’ an’ graftin’ an’ sweatin’
from mornin’ ter night, for a slungin’ idlin’ lazy blaggard.” In
an indefinable way the woman felt that both of them were guilty,
and to hide from her part of the reproof was mean and cowardly.
The half-caste from time to time included her, and by degrees she
understood that the wasted time of which Lizer complained was
supposed to have been dissipated in flirtation. Neither the shanty
nor Mag had mention.
From a kitchen facing the yard a Chinaman came at intervals, and with
that assumption of having mastered the situation in all its bearings
through his thorough knowledge of the English tongue, he shook his
head in calm, shocked surprise. His sympathies were unmistakeably
with Lizer, and he many times demonstrated his grip of the grievance
by saying, “By Cli’ Billy, its a bloo’y shame!”
Maybe it was a sense of what was in his mind that made the quivering
woman hide her face when virtuous Ching Too came to look at her. She
was trying to eat when a dog ran into the dining-room, and despite
the violent beating of her heart, she heard the rouseabout tell the
boss as he unsaddled his horse, “The on’y woman I see was a ’alf
chow, an’ she ses she’s the one, an’ she’s in ther dinin’-room ’avin’
a tuck in.”
She was too giddy to stand when the boss entered, but she turned her
mournful eyes on him, and supporting herself by the table, stood and
faced him.
He kept on his hat, and she, watching, saw curiosity and surprise
change into anger as he looked at her.
“What an infernal cheek _you_ had to come! Who sent you?” he asked
stormily.
She told him, and added that she had no intention of remaining.
“How old?” She made no reply. His last thrust, as in disgust he
strode out, had the effect of a galvanic battery on her dying body.
Her bedroom was reeking with a green heavy scent. Empty powder boxes
and rouge pots littered the dressing table, and various other aids
to nature evidenced her predecessor’s frailty. From a coign in its
fastness a black spider eyed her malignantly, and as long as the
light lasted she watched it.
The ringing of a bell slung outside in the fork of a tree awoke her
before dawn. It was mustering--bush stocktaking--and all the station
hands were astir. There was a noise of galloping horses being driven
into the stockyard, and the clamour of the men as they caught and
saddled them. Above the clatter of plates in the kitchen she could
hear the affected drawl of the Chinaman talking to Lizer. She trod
heavily along the passage, preparing the boss’s breakfast. This
early meal was soon over, and with the dogs snapping playfully at
the horses’ heels, all rode off.
Spasmodic bars of “A Bicycle Built for Two” came from the kitchen,
“Mayly, Mayly, give me answer do!” There was neither haste nor
anxiety in the singer’s tones. Before the kitchen fire, oblivious to
the heat, stood the Chinaman cook, inert from his morning’s opium.
It was only nine, but this was well on in the day for Ching, whose
morning began at four.
He ceased his song as she entered. “You come Sydiney? Ah! You mally?
Ah! Sydiney welly ni’ place. This placee welly dly--too muchee no
lain--welly dly.”
She was watching his dog. On a block lay a flitch of bacon, and
across the freshly cut side the dog drew its tongue, then snapped at
the flies, “That dog will eat the bacon,” she said.
“No!” answered the cook. “’E no eat ’em--too saw.”
It was salt; she had tried it for breakfast.
He began energetically something about, “by-an’-bye me getty mally.
By Cli’ no ’alf cas--too muchee longa jlaw.” He laughed and shook
his head, reminiscent of “las’ a night,” and waited for applause.
But, fascinated, she still watched the dog, who from time to time
continued to take “saw” with his flies.
“Go ou’ si’, Sir,” said the cook in a spirit of rivalry. The dog
stood and snapped, “Go ou’ si’, I say!” No notice from the dog “Go
ou’ si’, I tella you!” stamping his slippered feet and taking a fire
stick. The dog leisurely sat down and looked at his master with mild
reproof. “Go insi’ then, any bloo’y si’ you li’!” but pointing to
their joint bed-room with the lighted stick. The dog went to the
greasy door, saw that the hens sitting on the bed were quietly laying
eggs to go with the bacon, and came back.
She asked him where was the rouseabout who had driven her in
yesterday.
“Oh, Billy Skywonkie, ’e mally alri’! Lizer ’im missie!” He went on
to hint that affection there was misplaced, but that he himself was
unattached.
She saw the rouseabout rattle into the yard in a spring cart. He let
down the backboard and dumped three sheep under a light gallows.
Their two front feet were strapped to one behind.
He seemed breathless with haste. “Oh, I say!” he called out to her.
“Ther boss ’e tole me this mornin’ thet I wus ter tell you, you wis
ter sling yer ’ook. To do a get,” he explained. “So bundle yer duds
tergether quick an’ lively! Lizer’s down at ther tank, washin’. Le’ss
get away afore she sees us, or she’ll make yer swaller yer chewers.”
Lowering his voice, he continued: “I wanter go ter ther shanty--on’y
ter get me ’ankerchief.”
He bent and strained back a sheep’s neck, drew the knife and steel
from his belt, and skilfully danced an edge on the knife.
She noticed that the sheep lay passive, with its head back, till its
neck curved in a bow, and that the glitter of the knife was reflected
in its eye.
BUSH CHURCH.
I.
The hospitality of the bush never extends to the loan of a good horse
to an inexperienced rider. The parson bumping along on old Rosey, who
had smelt the water of the “Circler Dam,” was powerless to keep the
cunning experienced brute from diverting from the track. With the bit
in her teeth, her pace kept him fully occupied to hold his seat. At
the edge of the Dam, old Rosey, to avoid the treacherous mud, began,
with humped back and hoofs close together, to walk along the plank,
that pierwise extended to the deeper water. The parson’s protests
ended in his slipping over the arched neck of the wilful brute, on to
the few inches of plank that she considerately left for him. The old
mare drank leisurely, then backed off with the same precaution, and
stood switching the flies with her stunted tail. The parson followed
her and thankfully grabbed the reins. After several attempts to get
up on the wrong side, he led the exacting animal to a log. He removed
the veil he wore as a protection from the sticky eye-eating flies,
so that Rosey might recognise him as her erstwhile rider. It was at
this stage that “flash” Ned Stennard, always with time to kill and a
tongue specially designed for the purpose, rode up and gave him lurid
instructions and a leg up.
He had come to their remoteness, he told Ned, as they rode along,
to hold a service at a grazier’s homestead some miles distant.
Under Ned’s sympathetic guidance he pulled up at the sliprails of a
cockey’s selection to announce these tidings. It was Ned’s brother’s
place, but Ned, who was not on speaking terms with his sister-in-law,
rode on and waited.
A group of half-naked children lay entangled among several kangaroo
pups, in a make-believe of shade from a sickly gum tree. A canvas
bag, with a saddle strap defining its long neck, hung from a bough,
and the pups were yelping mildly at its contents, and licking the
few drops of blood that fell. The parson saw the children rub the
swarming flies from their eyes and turn to look at him. An older
girl, bare-footed and dressed in a petticoat and old hat, was
standing near a fire before the wide opening that served as a doorway
to the humpy. She had a long stick, and was employed in permitting
an aged billy-goat to bring his nose within an inch of the simmering
water in the bucket slung over the fire.
“Are your parents in?” he asked.
“You aint ole Keogh?” said the girl.
When he admitted that he wasn’t, he saw her interest in his
personality was gone. “Are your mother and father in?”
The thirsty billy was sneaking up again to the water, and she let him
advance the prescribed limit before she made the jab that she enjoyed
so thoroughly. “Mum’s gorn ter Tilly Lumber’s ter see t’ ther kid,
and ther rester them’s gorn ter ther Circler Dam.”
He made known his mission to the girl, but she didn’t divide her
attention. The water would soon be too hot for the billy to drink,
and there was no fun to be got out of the pups. For when she took
the salt pork out of the canvas bag and put it in the bucket, they
wouldn’t try to get it out of boiling water.
Doubtful of his success, the parson rejoined Ned, and along the dusty
track they jogged. The parson’s part in the dialogue was chiefly
remonstrative as to the necessity of Ned’s variegated adjectives. And
he had frequently to assure the bushman that it would be useless for
him to search in his clerical pockets for tobacco, as he didn’t smoke.
At the Horse Shoe Bend they overtook hairy Paddy Woods of eighteen
withering summers. Paddy was punching and blaspheming a nine mile
day out of his bullocks. These were straining their load along with
heads bent close to the dust-padded track, silent, for all the whip
weals, but for a cough to free their mouths and nostrils from dust.
Old Rosey, an inveterate yarner, pulled up abruptly; but Paddy, who
had his day’s work cut out to a minute, gave a voiceless side-long
nod in recognition of the parson’s greeting, and went on driving his
team. Probably his share of the conversation, mainly catechismal,
would have been yea and nay nods, but for catching Ned’s eye when the
parson asked if he were married. Paddy struck an attitude of aged
responsibility, and, tipping Ned an intelligent wink, made a pretence
of searching through a dusty past, and replied that he thought he
was. The parson, giving him the benefit of the doubt, enquired if
there were any children for baptism. Paddy, still with an eye on Ned,
reckoned that the number of his offspring was uncertain, but promised
that as soon as he delivered his load of wool he would have a day’s
“musterin’ an’ draftin’ an’ countin’ an’ ear-markin’” and send him
the returns. Ned’s loud laugh and “Good old Paddy” had not the effect
on its young-old recipient’s well-filled tobacco pouch that he had
hoped. The disgusted parson was trying to urge Rosey onward, but
Rosey refused to leave her pleasant company till Ned brought his
switch across her back.
Ned stayed with Paddy long enough to tell him that, in his opinion,
the black-coated parson was “nothin’ but a sneakin’ Inspector, pokin’
an’ prowlin’ roun’ fur ole Keogh”--the lessee of the run, and their
common enemy. He added that the green veil he wore over his eyes was
a “mast” (mask), but that it didn’t deceive him. Tobaccoless Ned
tried further to arouse practical admiration from pouch-full Paddy,
by adding that he would ride after this disguised Inspector, “pump
’im dry as a blow’d bladder, an’ then ’ammer ’ell outer ’im.” But
even this serious threat against the parson’s stock-in-trade had no
fruitful result, and putting his empty pipe back he galloped after
his companion.
As they rode along, the parson in admiration watched the wiry little
bushman dexterously winking both eyes to the confusion of the flies,
and listened to the substitution of words of his own coinage dropped
red hot into the conversation in place of the sulphurous adjectives.
Soon there was but little unknown to Ned’s listener of the inner
history--and with such additions as contrasted unfavourably with his
own--of every selector on this sun-sucked run. In order of infamy
Ned placed the lessee first; a good second came the Land Agent in
the little township whence this pilgrim parson had come. But this
fact was made clear to him, that were the lessee ten times richer,
the Land Agent ten times more unscrupulous, were “dummy” selectors
occupying every acre, Ned was more than a match for them all.
At a later stage of their journey, when he turned again to the
narratives of his cockey brethren, another circumstance stood out.
It was only when Ned had exhausted the certainty, probability, and
possibility of increase among the mares, cows, ewes, and nannies of
his and the other cockeys’ flocks and herds, that he would descend to
the human statistics, and the parson found that impending probability
and possibility entered largely into Ned’s computation of these.
From time to time they sighted the cockeys’ humpies, but Ned, intent
on making the most of his amazed listener, kept him on the track to
his destination by promising to call at all the selections on his
way back, and tell them that there was to be a service to-morrow
morning. To emphasise his thoroughness, he added, with a wink of bush
freemasonry, that he would “on’y tell two sorts--them wot arsts me,
an’ them wot don’t.” And this clerical brother, newly initiated into
the mysteries of bush craft, could not have found a better messenger.
But the wonder expressed in his eyes, as he watched this new labourer
in the vineyard cantering briskly away to bear the glad tidings,
would have changed to awe could he have heard the varied versions Ned
gave to the scattered families as to the need of their being at the
grazier’s homestead the first thing next day. Moreover, most of the
conversation related by Ned as having taken place between the parson
and him would have been as new to the former as it was to Ned’s
audience. For the adjectives with which he flavoured the parson’s
share proved him to have readily and fluently mastered the lurid bush
tongue.
It was shearing time, and being also the middle of the week, most
of the men were away. Those who were at home left their dinners,
and came outside to talk to him. A visitor at meal times is always
met outside the humpy, and the host, drawing a hand across a greasy
mouth, leads the way to the nearest log. The women of the bush have
little to share, and nursing the belief that how they live is quite
unknown to one another, they have no inclination to entertain a
caller. Two of the daily meals consist mainly of sliced damper dipped
in a pan of fat, that always hangs over the fire. Mutton at shearing
time is a rarity, as the men feed at the sheds. Wild pigs caught and
killed by the women make the chief flesh food, but these are often
scarce in the dry season.
And in addition Ned was no favourite among the women. This was
partly from his being “flash,” but more from his reputation for
flogging his missus. Ned, moreover, had tried to force his example
on the male community by impressing upon them his philosophy, that
it was the proper thing to hit a woman every time you met her, since
she must either be coming from mischief or going to it. As to his
flashness, he considered he had something to be flash about. He had
been twice to Sydney; and not only could he spell by ear, but, given
an uncertain number of favouring circumstances, he could use a pen to
the extent of putting his name to a cheque. Certainly before he would
attempt this, Liz, his missus, had to pen up the goats, shut the hut,
and, with the dogs and the kids, drive the fowls a mile from the
house, and keep them there till Ned fired a gun. Left to himself, Ned
would tear out a cheque, lay it on the table, place a block of wood
on the bottom edge of the paper, to keep his hand from travelling
off it to the table below. Then he had to tie his wrist to the left
side of his belt--he was left-handed--in such a manner that his hand
could not stray to the foreign region above the cheque, ink the pen
with his right hand, and place it in the left. But even then the task
was often unaccomplished. Sometimes he would be so intent on trying
to keep the EDWARD on the line, that it would run to the end of the
paper, excluding the STENNARD, and, despite Ned’s protests anent
insufficient space, the bank did not approve of part of the signature
being placed on the back of the cheque. When he tried to write small
and straight, the result generally seemed satisfactory till a careful
analysis showed a letter or so missing. Or, just as success seemed
probable, his cheque book would give out, or his pen break. It was
bad for Liz and her own boy Joey when either of these accidents
occurred, for he would fire no gun, and, despite all the perspiring
activity of Liz, the kids, and the dogs, some of the fowls would make
their way home to roost on the hut when night came. For allowing him
to be disturbed “jes as I wus gettin’ me ’and in” he would “take it
outer” Liz, or, what was worse to her, “outer” Joey.
But on this occasion Ned, ever resourceful and now hungry, refused to
be led to a log. His reputation for startling discoveries was against
him, but he knew that many of them must have seen him riding past
with a black-coated stranger, and he trusted to that to support the
story his ingenious imagination had ready for them. Authoritatively
he demanded in each case to see the missus. They came ungraciously,
but after his dark, bodeful hints as to the necessity of their
attending service at the grazier’s homestead next day, he was invited
inside and a place was cleared for him at the table. Quite recklessly
they plied him with pints of tea and damper and dip, sprinkled with
salt, and in some extravagant instances with pepper. And Ned took
these favours as his due, though he knew he was no favourite.
Flogging and flashness were lost sight of by these anxious women, as
they listened to all he had to say. They coaxed him to wait while
they searched among the few spare clothes in the gin cases with
hide-hinged lids, for land receipts, marriage lines, letters from
Government Departments, registered cattle brands, sheep ear-marks,
and every other equipment that protects the poor cockey from a
spiteful and revengeful Government, whose sole aim was “ter ketch
’em winkin’” and then forfeit the selection. All of these documents
Ned inspected upside down or otherwise, and pronounced with unlegal
directness that “a squint et them ’ud fix ’im if thet’s wot ’e’s
smellin’ after.” He told them to bring them next day. Those of the
men who had swapped horses with passing drovers, without the exchange
of receipts, were busy all afternoon trumping up witnesses.
II.
Next morning the minister was sitting in the rocking chair on the
verandah of the grazier’s house. He had a prayer book in one hand and
a handkerchief in the other, with which he lazily disputed the right
of the flies to roost on his veil. This gave an undulating motion to
the chair which was very soothing after old Rosey’s bumping. He saw
a pair of brown hands part the awning enclosing the verandah. Then a
black head, held in the position of a butting animal, came in view.
Free of the screen, the head craned upwards. He saw a flat, shrewd
face, with black beady eyes set either side of a bridgeless nose. A
wisp of dried grass hung from the wide mouth.
“Sis wants er ride in thet ther cock ’orse yer in,” said the mouth,
ejecting the grass with considerable force in his direction.
Sis’ had worked her head in by this. She was fair, with nondescript
hair and eyes, and she was “chawrin’”.
“Wer’s ther cock ’orse, Jinny?” she asked, for the chair was not
rocking.
“Ridey it an’ let ’er see it; an’ undo this,” commanded Jinny.
“Come round to the front,” said the minister mildly, and pointing to
the opening opposite the door.
They came in and walked up to him, with hoods hanging by the strings
down their backs.
“Have you come alone?”
“The ether uns er comin’. Me an’ Sis giv’ ’em ther slip; we didn’
wanter ’ump ther dash kid.”
“How far have you walked?”
“Yer parst our place yesserday mornin’. Didn’ yer see me an’ ther
billy? Gosh, we nigh bust oursels at ther way yer legs stuck out.
Fust I thort yer wus ole Keogh. Yer rides jes’ like er Chinymun.” The
dark one did all the talking.
“Our Sis wants er ride in this,” she continued. She gave the chair
a lurch that sent the parson’s feet in the air. To avoid the
threatened repetition he gripped both sides and planted his feet
firmly on the boards.
The younger one poked a stem of dried grass from her mouth through
the mesh of the veil in a line with his left ear. Thoroughly routed,
he sprang up, and the elder child leapt in.
“’Ere they cum, Jinny,” warned Sis.
Jinny peeped through the awning. “So they is. You gammon ter them we
aint cum, w’en they arsts yer,” she said to the parson, “an’ we’ll
sneak roun’ ther back. Eh, Sis?”
Mammy and Daddy--commonly called “Jyne” and “Alick” even by their
offspring--came in with four children, all younger than Jinny and
Sis. Jyne carried the youngest “straddled” across her hip.
The most pronounced feature of Jyne’s face was her mouth, and it
seemed proud of its teeth, especially of the top row. Without any
apparent effort, the last tooth there was always visible. She was a
great power in the bush, being styled by the folk themselves “Rabbit
Ketcher,” which, translated, means mid-wife. And the airs Jyne gave
herself were justifiable, for she was the only “Rabbit Ketcher”
this side of the township. To bring a qualified mid-wife from
civilization would have represented a crippling expenditure to these
cockies. Jyne’s moderate fees were usually four-legged.
“D’y ter yous,” said Alick, blinking his bungy eyes, and smiling
good-naturedly at the parson and at the grazier and his wife. He sat
down without removing his hat. Jyne’s teeth saluted them but without
any good nature. Jinny and Sis sneaked in behind their mother.
“You young tinkers,” cried Jyne, “tyke this chile this minute.” Her
voice, despite the size of her mouth, came through her nose. She put
the baby on the floor, and, taking off her hood, mopped her face with
the inside of her print dress.
“We wus lookin’ fer you an’ Alick,” said Jinny to her mother, and
winking at the parson.
“Yes, you wus,--with ther ’ook,” answered Jyne.
Without further introduction she slewed her head to one side, shut
one eye knowingly, and said to the staring minister, “Ther ain’t a
wink about Jinny.”
The unblinking daughter instantly offered an illustration of her
wakefulness. “Yer orter seen me an’ gran’dad th’ ether mornin’. ’E
wus milkin’ ther nannies, an’ ther billy you seen ’e wus jes close
agen ’im. I sneaks up to ther billy an’ gives ’im er jab. Lawr ter
see ’im rush et ole Alex an’ bunt ’im! ’E’d er killed th’ ole feller
on’y fer me. Wou’dn’ ’e, mum?”
“Yer a bol’ gal,” said mum in a proud voice.
The bewildered minister, to turn the conversation, took a vase of
wild flowers.
“They belong to the lily tribe, I think,” said the hostess. “They are
bulbous.”
“Wile hunyions,” sniffed Jyne, making no attempt to conceal her
contempt for this cur of a woman, who thought so much of herself that
she always brought a nurse from town.
Then came Alick’s brother, “Flash” Ned; they were as unlike as
brothers sometimes are. Ned greeted the parson with bush familiarity.
He had his hat on one side, and was wearing a silk Sydney coat that
reached to his heels. He was followed by Liz with their family of
five. Joey stayed outside, and from time to time dexterously located
his step-father. He was Liz’s child by an early marriage--at least,
she always said she had been married.
Perched on Liz’s head was a draggled hat that a month ago had been
snow white. This also was one of Ned’s Sydney purchases. It was the
first time Liz had worn it, but she and the children had overhauled
it many times and tried it on. This privilege had been extended to
all the women whose curiosity and envy had brought them to Liz’s
place. Jinny had called on her way to church, and the missing end of
the white feather, after being licked of its ticklesomeness, was now
in her safe keeping.
Jyne, catching sight of Joey, invited him inside. But the boy, at a
warning glance from his mother, slunk further back. He had run in
the wrong horse for his step-father that morning, and was evading a
threatened hiding that was to remove both skin and hair. Liz would
gladly have taken the hiding herself in place of Joey, but her
interference, as she knew to her cost, would mean one for herself
without saving the boy.
But for all this Liz thought she was fairly happy. For it was not
every day that Ned tried to sign a cheque or that the sheep got
boxed, or that his horse refused to be caught. Nor did it always rain
when he wanted it fine. Things did not go wrong every day, and he did
not beat her or Joey unless they did. A pound of lollies for her and
the kids from a dealer’s cart when one came round, would make her
think him the best husband in the world.
There was between Jyne and Ned the opposition that is instinctive
between commanding spirits. Liz yielded obedience first to Ned then
to Jyne.
“Ow’s Polly?” enquired Liz, her countenance showing the gravity of
the question.
“Arst ’im,” snarled Jyne, baring her fangs and looking at uneasy
shuffling Alick. “Makin’ ’er dror three casts er worter ten mile, an’
er thet way. Wil’ pigs eatin’ ’er as I cum along.”
“No!” said Liz, though she had known it all yesterday. News of such
catastrophes soon spread in the bush.
“Better corl me a liar at onct,” snapped Jyne.
Next to arrive were Jyne’s mother and Alick’s father, both of whom
lived with Jyne. The old woman rode on a horse astride a man’s
saddle. The old man led it. She had Jyne’s mouth, or rather Jyne
had hers, but the teeth were gone. The old man greeted the parson
reverently, blew with his breath on the seat, and wiped it carefully
with the handkerchief he had taken from his hat. Even then before
sitting he raised the tails of the coat he had been married in
so long ago. Until Ned’s Sydney purchase his had been the only
decorative coat in the district.
Tilly and Jim Lumber, with their ten-days-old baby, followed. Jim was
the champion concertina player and bullock driver in the district. He
came as the representative of the several families across the creek,
whom energetic Ned had rounded up the day before. He had been chosen
by them for his size and strength to do battle on their behalf. Ned’s
effort to frighten those women whose husbands were away shearing
into the necessity of attending service had over-reached itself, and
they had been afraid to come. But they had entrusted their precious
documents to Jim’s powerful keeping. He had his own registered brand
tied up in a spotted handkerchief. This he dropped with a clank
beside him as he sat sheepishly and gingerly on the edge of a chair.
He was over six feet, but he sat with his head almost between his
knees, till he resembled a quadruped. His shirt front bulged like
a wallet with his clients’ papers. He slyly took stock of those
assembled. Spry little Tilly got the credit of having done all the
courting. Even after marriage she had always done his share of the
talking.
“Ow’s ther kiddy maroo?” said Alick to Jim, lisping from the size of
the plug he had just bitten. He had a fatherly interest in all Jyne’s
“rabbit ketchin’.”
Jim, who never used his voice except to drive his bullocks, answered
with a subterranean laugh.
“Noo bit er flesh,” said Ned, nodding at the baby.
“Ow’s Polly this mornin’?” gravely enquired Tilly, as she took a seat
near Jyne.
“Ah, poor Polly,” quavered Jyne’s mother, and sparing Jyne by telling
of Polly’s untimely end.
“Well, I’m blest; what a lorse!” said the sympathetic Tilly. She
repeated a well-known story of the bu’stin’ of a poley cow last year.
Jyne took the baby, and began to rate the mother mildly for “walkin’
seven mile ser soon,” but Jyne’s mother interposed with a recital
of “wot I dun w’en Jun (John) wur two days old.” John was present,
fully six feet of him, grinning with a mouth bigger than Jyne’s, but
mercifully hidden by a straggled moustache.
However, Jyne was not to be outdone even by her own mother, and the
narrative of her last, assisted in many minor details by Jinney, aged
eleven, left little to be desired in the way of hardihood.
Liz kept her teething baby respectfully silent by industriously
rubbing its lower gum with a dirty thumb. She expressed her surprise
at Jyne’s phenomenal endurance by little clicks of the tongue,
shakes of the head, and other signs indicative of admiration and
astonishment. When Jyne finished, she began eagerly on an experience
of her own. “Well, w’en I wus took with Drary (short for Adrarian),
think I could fin’ ther sissers?”
Jyne, who knew that the recital of a daring feat was coming,
enquired, “W’en yer wus took with Joey?”
“No,” said Liz, stopping short with a nervous click in her voice, and
looking at Ned.
The next item was ventriloquising by Jyne per medium of Tilly’s
uneasy baby. “My mammy, she sez, yer dot me all o’a hoo, she sez.
No wunny, she sez, me can’t keep goody, she sez, ’ith me cosey all
o’a hoo, she sez.” She had been examining the baby’s undergear,
and at this stage her tone of baby banter suddenly changed to one
of professional horror. “My Gawd, Tilly!” she cried, the drooping
corners of her mouth nearly covering her upper teeth. “Look w’er
er little belly-bands is--nearly un’er ’er arms,” she explained,
probably to the company, but looking directly at the clergyman. And,
with true professional acumen, she intimated that had she not been on
the spot, an intricate part of the little one’s anatomy in another
minute would “’a bust out a bleedin’ an’ not all ther doctors in ther
worl’ couldn’ astoppt it.”
The minister was very busy, meanwhile, blushing and getting his books
in order, and with this congregation of ten adults and eighteen
children he began, “Dearly beloved brethren----”
Jim Lumber gripped his bullock brand, took a swift look at him and
turned to Tilly. It had been settled between them that she was to do
the talking. Alick, who, despite his father’s efforts to enlighten
him as to the nature of a church service, and encouraged by Jyne’s
remark that “they’d eat nothin’,” had also brought his valuable
documents in his shirt front, thrust in a groping hand.
For a few minutes the adults listened and watched intently, but the
gentle voice of the parson, and his nervous manner, soon convinced
them that they had nothing to fear from him. Ned had been ’pokin’
borak’ at them again; they added it to the long score they owed him.
The children wandered about the room. Jinny and Sis invited their
little sister to “Cum an’ see ther pooty picters in the man’s book,”
and they assisted the minister to turn over the leaves of his Bible.
Alick’s father, who was from the North of Ireland, and, for all his
forty years in the bush, had not lost his reverence for the cloth,
bade his grand-daughters beseechingly to “quet,” whereupon Jinny
showed him quite two inches of inky tongue. Ink was a commodity
unknown in Jinny’s home, and all the unknown is edible to the bush
child.
“Woman!” he said, appealing to Jinny’s mother, “whybut you bid ’er to
quet?”
“You orter be in er glars’ ban’ box w’er ther ain’t no children;
thet’s w’er you orter be,” answered Jyne.
He beckoned to one straggler, a girl of six, with Alick’s face, who
came to him promptly and sat on his knee.
Presently her brown hand stroked his old cheek. “Gran’ dad,” she said.
“Choot, darlin’,” he whispered, reverently.
The child looked at him wonderingly. “I says you’s gran’ dad,” she
repeated, “not ole Alick.”
He laid his white head on hers.
“Gran’ dad, ole Tommy Tolbit’s dead.”
Turning his glistening face to Liz in momentary forgetfulness, he
said solemnly, “The knowledge of this chile!”
“Ole Talbert” had been dead for two years, and the knowledgable child
had been surprising him so, at least twice a week.
“We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep,” murmured
the minister.
The smaller children wandered in and out of the bedrooms, carrying
their spoils with them. But Jinny and Sis had drawn the now disabled
rocking chair up to the window, and were busy poking faces at two of
Liz’s children, who were standing on the couch inside. One of these
made a vicious smack with a hair-brush at Jinny’s tongue, flattened
against the glass. The ensuing crash stopped even the parson for a
moment.
Bravely he began again. He paused occasionally for a sudden
subterranean laugh to cease or to put one book after another on the
shelf behind him out of the children’s reach. Just as he read the
last line of the Te Deum, “Oh Lord in Thee have I trusted, let me
never be confounded,” one of Liz’s children tugged at his trousers,
with a muzzled request that his teeth might be freed from a square of
pink soap. Another offered to the baby Liz was nursing a pincushion
she brought from the bedroom.
“Jyne,” called Jinny from the verandah, “’Ere cums young Tommy Tolbit
by ’isself. You wus right, Jyne; she ain’t cummin’!”
Even Jyne’s gums gleamed; she looked triumphantly at Alick her
husband, at Liz, then at all but Ned.
In shambled Tommy, moist and panting. He had been a drover, and had
recently taken up a selection on the run. He was a bridegroom of a
month’s standing. His missus had been a servant at one of the hotels
in the township.
“Made a start!” he remarked. His voice gave the impression that he
did not mind their not waiting for him.
“Missus ain’t comin’?” enquired Alick, trying to atone to Jyne for
overloading Polly.
“Not ter day,” said the bridegroom, but his voice intimated that in
all probability she would have been able to come to-morrow.
“No!” said Jyne, putting him under fire, and trying to keep the crow
out of her voice.
“Ain’t very well, is she? Didn’ eat a very ’earty breakfuss this
mornin’?” And a further remark suggested that even if the meal had
been hearty, the usual process of assimilation had not taken place.
“Ow’s Polly?” he enquired.
“Cooked,” said Jyne, instantly diverted.
“Go on!” said the bridegroom, with well feigned astonishment. His
breathless and perspiring state had been caused by his “going on” to
capture one of the wild suckers that had been eating Polly.
“Let us pray,” said the minister. His host, hostess, and Alick’s
father knelt, but the rest sat as usual.
The knowledgable child, considering the grandfather’s position an
invitation to mount, climbed on his back. Making a bridle of the
handkerchief round the old fellow’s neck, and digging two heels into
his sides, she talked horse to him. The protesting old man bucked
vigorously, but it was no easy task to throw her.
The clergyman gave out his text, and the sermon began.
Jyne’s children commenced to complain of being “’ungery” and a
fair-sized damper was taken from a pillow-slip. This, together with
two tin tots and a bottle of goat’s milk, was given to Jinny and she
was told to do “ther sharin’.”
The hostess asked Jyne in a whisper to send them to the verandah, and
for a time there was comparative quiet. Such interruptions as “Jinny
won’t gimme nun, Arnie” (Auntie) from Liz’s children being checked by
Jyne with “Go an’ play an’ doan’ ’ave ser much gab, like yer father.”
“Thet greedy wretch uv er Jinny is guzzlin’ all ther milk inter ’er,
Jyne,” from her own children, was appeased by her promise to “break
ther young faggit’s back w’en I get ’ome.”
There was a wail of anguished hunger from Liz’s empty children that
aroused paternal sympathy in Ned. “Sep me Gord,” he said, “some
wimmen is like cows. They’ll give ther own calf a suck, but if anyone
else’s calf cums anigh ’em they lif’ their leg an’ kick it ter
blazes.”
Jyne tossed her head and, with a derisive laugh, expressed the
opinion that “It ’ed fit sum people better if ther munny wasted in
buyin’ flash coats an’ rediclus ’ats wus spent in flour bags.”
For a short space only the voice of the preacher sounded, as, in
studied stoicism, he pursued his thankless task. Occasionally they
looked at him to see “’Oo ’e wus speakin’ ter,” but finding nothing
directly personal, even this attention ceased.
Liz leant across to Tilly Lumber and asked, “Fowl layin’?”
“Ketch ’em er layin’ et Chrissermus.”
Ned told how he had brought home a number of law books from Sydney,
and that he and an old man he had picked up “wus readin’ ’em.” It was
his intention to absorb such an amount of knowledge that all he would
have to do with the lessee of the run--an ex-barrister--would be to
put him in a bail. What would follow was graphically illustrated by
Ned’s dropping his head, gripping an imaginary bucket between his
knees, and opening and shutting his hands in rhythmic up and down
movements. Some of his audience, remembering his threats and warning
against the parson, thought this pantomime must have an ominous
meaning for the preacher.
But sceptical Jyne was not impressed. “Upon me soul,” she said, “sum
people is the biggest lyin’ blowers that ever cockt er lip.”
Alick, always for peace, stepped into the breach. “Comin’ along jes’
now,” he said, shifting his plug of tobacco from one side to the
other, and aiming at the flies in the fireplace with the juice, “we
’as a yarn with Mick Byrnes. ’E ’as ther luck of er lousy calf. ’E
sez ’e got eightpence orl roun’ fer ’ees kangaroo skins. Damned if I
can.”
“Now a good plan ’ed be,” said Ned, “ter get a good lot, sen’ ’em
down ter them Sydney blokes. Slip down yerself, go ter ther sale,
don’ let on ’oo yer are, an’ run ’em up like blazes. Thet’s wot I’ll
do with my wool nex’ year.”
This plan seemed commendable to Alick. “By Goey,” he said, his mild
eyes blinking.
Jyne never, on any occasion, showed the slightest interest or
attention when Ned was speaking, unless to sniff and lay bare her
bottom teeth, but here she remarked, “Sum people ’ud keep runnin’ ter
Sydney till ’e ’asen’ er penny ter fly with.”
“If sum people with ser much jawr, an’ ’er mouth ’es big ’es ’er torn
pocket, belonged ter me,” said Ned, “I’d smash er ugly jawr.”
Jyne slewed hers to an awful angle in his direction, “I’d like ter
see yer try it.”
A look of agony came into the eyes of the grazier’s wife as she heard
the door of the dining-room open. The children were so quiet, that
she knew they were up to mischief.
She heard Jinny’s hoarse whisper. “Orl of yez wait an’ I’ll bring
yer sumsin’.” On the dining-room table was the cold food prepared
for the clergyman’s dinner. She looked across at her husband with
dumb entreaty. He, with eyes devoutly on the carpet, was listening
intently to Ned’s account of how he nearly made the squatter take a
“sugar doodle” (back somersault) when he heard that he had been to
Sydney.
“’Day Keogh,” sez I.
“’Oo ’ave I ther ’oner of speakin’ ter?” sez ’e.
“Mr. Stennard,” I sez.
“Oh indeed,” ’e sez, “very ’appy ter make yer acquaintance, Mr.
Stennard, Esquire,” ’e sez.
“Never mind no blarsted acquaintance,” I sez, “w’en are yer goin’ ter
take yer flamin’ jumbucks orf my lan’?” I sez.
“Your lan’,” ’e sez, “I didn’ know you ’ad any lan’ about ’ere,” ’e
sez.
“Oh, didn’ yer,” I sez, “you ner ther Lan’ Agent won’ frighten me
orf,” I sez, “gammonin’ I’m on er reserve,” sez I, “I’ve paid me
deposit, an’ I’ve been ter Sydney,” I sez, “I put me name ter a
cheque,” sez I, “an’ ----”
Jyne ceased sniffing, to laugh long and loudly. “Gawd, eh!” she said,
with her eyes on the ceiling and apparently appealing to the flies.
“Wot ’erbout sech game cocks plantin’ under ther dray w’en old Keogh
kem bullyin’ w’en we fust kem out ’ere?”
Ned went hastily out at the front door “ter squint at ther jumbucks,”
three miles away. Joey, who had been peering round that door, now
appeared at the back.
“Come in, Joey,” snorted Jyne. “No one ain’t game ter ’it yer w’en
I’m ’ere.”
The minister still preached, but he had only old Alick for a listener.
The hostess’ mental picture of Jinny “sharin’” her dinner for
three among that voracious brood was distracting. Only the fear of
suffering in the clergyman’s mind as one of “them” kept her to her
seat. She could give the sermon no attention, but listened to Sis
licking her fingers, and wondered if it was the vinegar or the wine
that caused Jinny’s cough. Presently Jinny set that doubt at rest by
coming in odorous, and with the front of her dress wine-stained.
“Little ’un snoozin’!” Jinny remarked, lurching giddily towards
her to merrily twirl her fist in the snoozer. The snoozer’s mother
wondered if they had shut the dining-room door. Soon the noise of the
fowls scattering the crockery told her they had not.
“Thum busted fowls is eatin’ orl yer dinner,” said Jinny dreamily.
“’Unt ’em out an’ shet ther door,” said sympathetic Jyne.
“You go, Sis, I’m tired.” Jinny laid her giddy head on the floor, and
went to sleep.
“Liz,” said Jyne, maliciously, for she immediately grudged Sis’
efforts to chase the fowls out of the dining-room. “Wot’s thet there
flower?” pointing to the vase.
“Wile huniyon,” said Liz, promptly.
“Er, is it? Thet’s orl yer know. Thet’s a bulbers, thet is. Thet’s
ther noo name fer it.” She looked at the grazier’s wife and laughed
ironically.
“Bulbers! yer goat,” said Liz, laughing dutifully.
The sermon was over, and the worried minister began the christening.
The naming of the hostess’ baby was plain sailing. He then drew
towards him a child of about two years, and asked, “What is this
child’s name?”
“Adrarian,” said Liz. An old shepherd reading to her a love story had
so pronounced the hero’s name. It staggered the minister, until his
hostess spelt “Adrian.”
“What is its age?”
“About two year.”
This was too vague for him, and he pressed for dates. But for these
dwellers in the bush the calendar had no significance. The mother
thought it might be in November. “Cos it wus shearin’, an’ I’d ter
keep Teddy at ’ome ter do ther work.” Teddy was “about ten.” From
these uncertainties the clergyman had to supply the dates for his
official returns to the Government.
“But Lawd,” as Jyne remarked to ease his perplexity, “wot did it
matter fer a brat of er boy.” She had a family of six, and all were
girls.
There was much the same difficulty with all the others, an exception
being Tilly Lumber’s baby of under a fortnight. A cowardly look came
into the minister’s eyes as he turned to this grotesque atom already
in the short coat stage. He remembered Jyne’s awful discovery of a
little while back, and shirked the duty of holding it even for a
moment.
The christening was a matter that had some personal interest for
the elders, and they grouped round the minister. Bridegroom Tommy,
striking the mossy back of Alick’s old father, suggested that he and
Jyne’s mother should get spliced, and he expressed the opinion of the
fruitfulness of such union within record time as a set-off dig at
Jyne.
She instantly balanced matters between herself and the incautiously
smiling Liz and the laughing unfilial Ned, “Stop scratchin’ yer
’ed, miss; anyone ’ud think there wus anythink in it,” she said to
Liz’s eldest girl, who was brushing the christening water from her
hair. Ned’s stepson she invited to come nearer, and tell her who had
blackened his poor eye. She advised the silent lad “ter get a waddy
ther nex’ time anyone bigger’n yer goes ter ’it yer.” And she gave
him directions by twirling an imaginary waddy swiftly, its circuit
suddenly diverting in a line with Ned’s skull.
It was long past noon when the ceremony was ended. The minister
drained his glass of water, mopped his face, and heaved a deep sigh.
As the whole congregation still sat on, he gave them a hint that
“church” was out, and their presence no longer required. He spoke
with a show of concern of how very hot they would find the walk home,
and to further emphasise his meaning, he shook hands with all the
adults, and walked to the verandah. Without the slightest concern
they sat on, listening intently to the sounds the hostess made in
trying to scrape together a meal for the clergyman. Apparently they
all meant to stay the day.
The grazier’s wife appeared for a moment to beckon him to go round
the house into the dining-room. He sat down to the remains of the
dinner the children had left.
At that moment Jinny, who had been awakened for the christening,
looked round the door. “Our Sis wants ter know w’en’s ’er supper’s
goin’ ter be!” she said.
This perhaps was an acknowledgment that Sis had already dined.
THE CHOSEN VESSEL.
She laid the stick and her baby on the grass while she untied the
rope that tethered the calf. The length of the rope separated them.
The cow was near the calf, and both were lying down. Feed along the
creek was plentiful, and every day she found a fresh place to tether
it, since tether it she must, for if she did not, it would stray
with the cow out on the plain. She had plenty of time to go after
it, but then there was baby; and if the cow turned on her out on the
plain, and she with baby,--she had been a town girl and was afraid
of the cow, but she did not want the cow to know it. She used to run
at first when it bellowed its protest against the penning up of its
calf. This satisfied the cow, also the calf, but the woman’s husband
was angry, and called her--the noun was cur. It was he who forced her
to run and meet the advancing cow, brandishing a stick, and uttering
threatening words till the enemy turned and ran. “That’s the way!”
the man said, laughing at her white face. In many things he was worse
than the cow, and she wondered if the same rule would apply to the
man, but she was not one to provoke skirmishes even with the cow.
It was early for the calf to go “to bed”--nearly an hour earlier than
usual; but she had felt so restless all day. Partly because it was
Monday, and the end of the week that would bring her and baby the
companionship of its father, was so far off. He was a shearer, and
had gone to his shed before daylight that morning. Fifteen miles as
the crow flies separated them.
There was a track in front of the house, for it had once been a wine
shanty, and a few travellers passed along at intervals. She was not
afraid of horsemen; but swagmen, going to, or worse, coming from the
dismal, drunken little township, a day’s journey beyond, terrified
her. One had called at the house to-day, and asked for tucker.
Ah! that was why she had penned up the calf so early! She feared more
from the look of his eyes, and the gleam of his teeth, as he watched
her newly awakened baby beat its impatient fists upon her covered
breasts, than from the knife that was sheathed in the belt at his
waist.
She had given him bread and meat. Her husband she told him was sick.
She always said that when she was alone, and a swagman came, and she
had gone in from the kitchen to the bedroom, and asked questions
and replied to them in the best man’s voice she could assume. Then
he had asked to go into the kitchen to boil his billy, but she gave
him tea, and he drank it on the wood heap. He had walked round and
round the house, and there were cracks in some places, and after the
last time he had asked for tobacco. She had none to give him, and he
had grinned, because there was a broken clay pipe near the wood heap
where he stood, and if there were a man inside, there ought to have
been tobacco. Then he asked for money, but women in the bush never
have money.
At last he had gone, and she, watching through the cracks, saw him
when about a quarter of a mile away, turn and look back at the
house. He had stood so for some moments with a pretence of fixing his
swag, and then, apparently satisfied, moved to the left towards the
creek. The creek made a bow round the house, and when he came to it
she lost sight of him. Hours after, watching intently for signs of
smoke, she saw the man’s dog chasing some sheep that had gone to the
creek for water, and saw it slink back suddenly, as if the man had
called it.
More than once she thought of taking her baby and going to her
husband. But in the past, when she had dared to speak of the dangers
to which her loneliness exposed her, he had taunted and sneered at
her. She need not flatter herself, he had coarsely told her, that any
body would want to run away with her.
Long before nightfall she placed food on the kitchen table, and
beside it laid the big brooch that had been her mother’s. It was the
only thing of value that she had. And she left the kitchen door wide
open.
The doors inside she securely fastened. Beside the bolt in the back
one she drove in the steel and scissors; against it she piled the
table and the stools. Underneath the lock of the front door she
forced the handle of the spade, and the blade between the cracks in
the flooring boards. Then the prop-stick, cut into lengths, held the
top, as the spade held the middle. The windows were little more than
portholes; she had nothing to fear through them.
She ate a few mouthfuls of food and drank a cup of milk. But she
lighted no fire, and when night came, no candle, but crept with her
baby to bed.
What woke her? The wonder was that she had slept--she had not meant
to. But she was young, very young. Perhaps the shrinking of the
galvanized roof--yet hardly, since that was so usual. Something had
set her heart beating wildly; but she lay quite still, only she put
her arm over her baby. Then she had both round it, and she prayed,
“Little baby, little baby, don’t wake!”
The moon’s rays shone on the front of the house, and she saw one
of the open cracks, quite close to where she lay, darken with a
shadow. Then a protesting growl reached her; and she could fancy she
heard the man turn hastily. She plainly heard the thud of something
striking the dog’s ribs, and the long flying strides of the animal
as it howled and ran. Still watching, she saw the shadow darken
every crack along the wall. She knew by the sounds that the man was
trying every standpoint that might help him to see in; but how much
he saw she could not tell. She thought of many things she might do to
deceive him into the idea that she was not alone. But the sound of
her voice would wake baby, and she dreaded that as though it were the
only danger that threatened her. So she prayed, “Little baby, don’t
wake, don’t cry!”
Stealthily the man crept about. She knew he had his boots off,
because of the vibration that his feet caused as he walked along the
verandah to gauge the width of the little window in her room, and the
resistance of the front door.
Then he went to the other end, and the uncertainty of what he was
doing became unendurable. She had felt safer, far safer, while he
was close, and she could watch and listen. She felt she must watch,
but the great fear of wakening baby again assailed her. She suddenly
recalled that one of the slabs on that side of the house had shrunk
in length as well as in width, and had once fallen out. It was held
in position only by a wedge of wood underneath. What if he should
discover that! The uncertainty increased her terror. She prayed as
she gently raised herself with her little one in her arms, held
tightly to her breast.
She thought of the knife, and shielded her child’s body with her
hands and arms. Even its little feet she covered with its white
gown, and baby never murmured--it liked to be held so. Noiselessly
she crossed to the other side, and stood where she could see and
hear, but not be seen. He was trying every slab, and was very near
to that with the wedge under it. Then she saw him find it; and heard
the sound of the knife as bit by bit he began to cut away the wooden
support.
She waited motionless, with her baby pressed tightly to her, though
she knew that in another few minutes this man with the cruel eyes,
lascivious mouth, and gleaming knife, would enter. One side of the
slab tilted; he had only to cut away the remaining little end, when
the slab, unless he held it, would fall outside.
She heard his jerked breathing as it kept time with the cuts of the
knife, and the brush of his clothes as he rubbed the wall in his
movements, for she was so still and quiet, that she did not even
tremble. She knew when he ceased, and wondered why. She stood well
concealed; she knew he could not see her, and that he would not
fear if he did, yet she heard him move cautiously away. Perhaps he
expected the slab to fall. Still his motive puzzled her, and she
moved even closer, and bent her body the better to listen. Ah! what
sound was that? “Listen! Listen!” she bade her heart--her heart that
had kept so still, but now bounded with tumultuous throbs that dulled
her ears. Nearer and nearer came the sounds, till the welcome thud of
a horse’s hoof rang out clearly.
“Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” she cried for they were very close
before she could make sure. She turned to the door, and with her baby
in her arms tore frantically at its bolts and bars.
Out she darted at last, and running madly along, saw the horseman
beyond her in the distance. She called to him in Christ’s name, in
her babe’s name, still flying like the wind with the speed that
deadly peril gives. But the distance grew greater and greater between
them, and when she reached the creek her prayers turned to wild
shrieks, for there crouched the man she feared, with outstretched
arms that caught her as she fell. She knew he was offering terms if
she ceased to struggle and cry for help, though louder and louder
did she cry for it, but it was only when the man’s hand gripped
her throat, that the cry of “Murder” came from her lips. And when
she ceased, the startled curlews took up the awful sound, and flew
shrieking over the horseman’s head.
* * * * *
“By God!” said the boundary rider, “its been a dingo right enough!
Eight killed up here, and there’s more down in the creek--a ewe and a
lamb, I’ll bet; and the lamb’s alive!” And he shut out the sky with
his hand, and watched the crows that were circling round and round,
nearing the earth one moment, and the next shooting skywards. By
that he knew the lamb must be alive; even a dingo will spare a lamb
sometimes.
Yes, the lamb was alive, and after the manner of lambs of its kind
did not know its mother when the light came. It had sucked the still
warm breasts, and laid its little head on her bosom, and slept till
the morn. Then, when it looked at the swollen disfigured face, it
wept and would have crept away, but for the hand that still clutched
its little gown. Sleep was nodding its golden head and swaying its
small body, and the crows were close, so close, to the mother’s
wide-open eyes, when the boundary rider galloped down.
“Jesus Christ!” he said, covering his eyes. He told afterwards how
the little child held out its arms to him, and how he was forced to
cut its gown that the dead hand held.
* * * * *
It was election time, and as usual the priest had selected a
candidate. His choice was so obviously in the interests of the
squatter, that Peter Hennessey’s reason, for once in his life, had
over-ridden superstition, and he had dared promise his vote to
another. Yet he was uneasy, and every time he woke in the night (and
it was often), he heard the murmur of his mother’s voice. It came
through the partition, or under the door. If through the partition,
he knew she was praying in her bed; but when the sounds came under
the door, she was on her knees before the little altar in the corner
that enshrined the statue of the Blessed Virgin and Child.
“Mary, Mother of Christ! save my son! Save him!” prayed she in the
dairy as she strained and set the evening’s milking. “Sweet Mary! for
the love of Christ, save him!” The grief in her old face made the
morning meal so bitter, that to avoid her he came late to his dinner.
It made him so cowardly, that he could not say good-bye to her, and
when night fell on the eve of the election day, he rode off secretly.
He had thirty miles to ride to the township to record his vote. He
cantered briskly along the great stretch of plain that had nothing
but stunted cotton bush to play shadow to the full moon, which
glorified a sky of earliest spring. The bruised incense of the
flowering clover rose up to him, and the glory of the night appealed
vaguely to his imagination, but he was preoccupied with his present
act of revolt.
Vividly he saw his mother’s agony when she would find him gone. At
that moment, he felt sure, she was praying.
“Mary! Mother of Christ!” He repeated the invocation, half
unconsciously. And suddenly, out of the stillness, came Christ’s name
to him--called loudly in despairing accents.
“For Christ’s sake! Christ’s sake! Christ’s sake!” called the voice.
Good Catholic that he had been, he crossed himself before he dared
to look back. Gliding across a ghostly patch of pipe-clay, he saw a
white-robed figure with a babe clasped to her bosom.
All the superstitious awe of his race and religion swayed his brain.
The moonlight on the gleaming clay was a “heavenly light” to him, and
he knew the white figure not for flesh and blood, but for the Virgin
and Child of his mother’s prayers. Then, good Catholic that once more
he was, he put spurs to his horse’s sides and galloped madly away.
His mother’s prayers were answered.
Hennessey was the first to record his vote--for the priest’s
candidate. Then he sought the priest at home, but found that he was
out rallying the voters. Still, under the influence of his blessed
vision, Hennessey would not go near the public houses, but wandered
about the outskirts of the town for hours, keeping apart from the
towns-people, and fasting as penance. He was subdued and mildly
ecstatic, feeling as a repentant chastened child, who awaits only the
kiss of peace.
And at last, as he stood in the graveyard crossing himself with
reverent awe, he heard in the gathering twilight the roar of many
voices crying the name of the victor at the election. It was well
with the priest.
Again Hennessey sought him. He was at home, the house-keeper said,
and led him into the dimly-lighted study. His seat was immediately
opposite a large picture, and as the housekeeper turned up the lamp,
once more the face of the Madonna and Child looked down on him, but
this time silently, peacefully. The half-parted lips of the Virgin
were smiling with compassionate tenderness; her eyes seemed to beam
with the forgiveness of an earthly mother for her erring but beloved
child.
He fell on his knees in adoration. Transfixed, the wondering priest
stood, for mingled with the adoration, “My Lord and my God!” was the
exaltation, “And hast Thou chosen me?”
“What is it, Peter?” said the priest.
“Father,” he answered reverently, and with loosened tongue he poured
forth the story of his vision.
“Great God!” shouted the priest, “and you did not stop to save her!
Have you not heard?”
* * * * *
Many miles further down the creek a man kept throwing an old cap into
a water-hole. The dog would bring it out and lay it on the opposite
side to where the man stood, but would not allow the man to catch
him, though it was only to wash the blood of the sheep from his mouth
and throat, for the sight of blood made the man tremble.
Transcriber’s Note:
Words in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_.
Underlined text is surrounded by tildes, ~like this~. Words may have
multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text.
These have been left unchanged, as were jargon, dialect, obsolete and
alternative spellings. Final stops missing at the end of sentences
were added. Duplicate words at line endings were removed. Punctuation
was standardized. Four misspelled words were corrected. Unprinted
letters were added to three words:
‘... who from time to t[ime] continued to take ...’
‘... She [fea]red more from the look of his eyes,...’
‘... and [l]ooked under the mat ...’
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