an ebook published by Project Gutenberg Australia
Title: Green Grey Homestead
Author: Steele Rudd
eBook No.: 2400261h.html
Language: English
Date first posted: Sept 2024
Most recent update: Sept 2024
This eBook was produced by: Walter Moore
To D.B.S.... Recalling spent hours that were flooded with gladness ... gladness that sparkled in quip and in quest; bringing back thoughts of bluest blue mountains, mem’ries of shade-trees when winds in their boughs crooned songs that were old, crooned songs that were new, crooned songs to the future ... the songs that came true.
S.R.
Most of this book appeared from time to time in the Sydney Bulletin, and chapter four, under the title of “The Letter under the Mirror”, was published in O’Brien’s Best Short Stories of the World.
Dedication
Publisher’s Note
Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 4.
Chapter 5.
Chapter 6.
Chapter 7.
Chapter 8.
Chapter 9.
Chapter 10.
Chapter 11.
Chapter 12.
Chapter 13.
Chapter 14.
Chapter 15.
Chapter 16.
Chapter 17.
Chapter 18.
Chapter 19.
Chapter 20.
You’ll be single when the idea of taking up a homestead first gets you; sober and steady-going, too. You’ll be sick of knocking round, working for wages which you don’t always collect. You’ll be longing to settle down on a place of your own; to be your own boss and have a little wife, and nice kids.
So you’ll decide one night, when in bed feeling lonely, to take the plunge, and chance the ducks. When you tell your friends — there won’t be many of them — they’ll be amused at first and will figure you’re contemplating matrimony — getting the cage ready to put the bird in. They’ll be old homesteaders themselves, and their wives, who’ll be grandmothers, will stir your vanity by approving of your intentions and telling you you’re wise for not doing what their husbands did; and they’ll screw faces at the old men squatting there at the fire gazing into the flame as if waiting for a shower of money to come flying out of it. “Caught their birds before they had the cage to put them in”, they’ll upbraid. “And hawked us round the country with them looking for work, instead of having houses ready for us to live in.”
‘There’ll be nothing like that about me”, you’ll grin. And those old women will be working all the time they’re talking, slashing into basins of cream with spoons and licking their fingers as the butter comes.
So by-and-by, you’ll begin to save your wages to pay the first instalments on the homestead, and make the start. Old Silas King, the big gun of the district, who’ll have scraped areas of land together during his sixty-odd years and is a J.P., and a church man, will have advised you when working for him to get a homestead and take a wife to help you do something big in the world.
“Pshaw!” he had scoffed. “A strong healthy young man like you, Dick Gall, shouldn’t be afraid to tackle a homestead. Tut! Tut! Get hold of a block, no matter how small,” he urged, “whether you have the money or not — get it before the land is all gone, and think about paying it off after. Look at me; when I selected my first block I hadn’t sixpence left to work it with; the Lands Office took it all. But I stuck it, and by attending church regularly I’ve come through; and look at me now.”
So in a year or two you’ll hear of a block of good land open for homestead selection, and you’ll find out all about it from the storekeeper, or someone who reads the newspaper. You’ll be told to “keep it quiet”, and not let on to a soul that you’re going in for it. Then you’ll withdraw your savings from the bank and into the Lands Office you’ll go with your application. There’ll be anxious moments for you after that, and for a lot of others, too! Though you’ll hope it will be someone worse off than yourself who’ll draw the block if you don’t draw it, you’ll be praying hard all the same that all the applications will be informal except your own!
But your luck’ll be in. Your bread will be cast on the water, for in time you’ll get a Government letter telling you you’ve drawn “homestead block No. 0000, situate in the Parish of Maloney, County Joe, containing 160 acres, more or less.”
Laws! how you’ll shake when you read it, as if it was a summons! But when you finish the last word you’ll smile and poke your chest out, and feel taller.
When the first Sunday comes round you’ll mount your horse and off out to inspect your property.
You’ll ride all over it filled with the proud spirit of ownership. Every inch of it and everything on it will be yours— the growing timber; the logs and firewood lying about; hundreds of fencing-posts that some poor cove’s split and had to abandon; the old sheepyard and shepherd’s hut that were erected by someone who went insolvent; even the wild flowers and dam stones’ll be yours! How you’ll admire it all!
And while your horse’ll be snatching at the grass as if he knew it was yours and wanted to sample it and give opinion on its quality, you’ll remain in the saddle gazing and trying to calculate its total worth.
There’ll be a couple of hills to take your fancy as sites for houses and yards, but you won’t know which to decide on. It’ll be a wonderful look-out, and that homestead’ll seem just a big Christmas-tree to you, hanging with prizes. Then you’ll start wondering what would be a good name for it? Being Australian, you’ll think of “Wonggonggera” and “Turmurrumi” and “Yalcalbah” and other fancy abo names. Perhaps you’ll be in a joking mood and think of calling it “Saint Elmo Square”, or “The Boulevard”, or “Imperial Paradise”, then you’ll laugh and ride on a bit further.
You’ll strike up along Red Rock Gully, to see the water in the spring. It’ll be because of the water that you and everyone applied for the block. And it will be the only waterhole for miles around that was never known to go dry in a drought. At least, that will be what you’ve heard from the old hands who used to camp near it when they were kangaroo-shooting for a living.
Following a beaten track you’ll “switch-back” that gully till you come to a grassy flat in a hollow of the range. The flat will be bare as bark and sprinkled over with cowdung that’s mostly out of season, and bleached bones and horns. The hollow will be a camping-ground for all beasts that come to water there. And how your eyes will sparkle and your heart beat fast when you see the water shining under a high clay wall, with wavelets no bigger than a gum-leaf rippling to the wind! It will be a spectacle! You’ll just miss colliding with a couple of old cows in your hurry to get to that waterhole to look down into it. And the longer you look into it the deeper it will seem to be. The deepest part, though, won’t be more than a couple of feet— according to the amount of mud and bones that will be in it. But it will be twelve feet wide and more. And the water will be very clear — that is if the cattle haven’t been puddling in it.
Though old yellow bones will protrude round the edges, you won’t see them; you’ll only have eyes for the beauty and the gold in it. After a while, you’ll see your horse and yourself reflected in it.
That homestead will grow on you as a wonderful discovery, and you’ll look down the gully and up at the rock sides feeling like Captain Cook when he found Australia. There’ll be green grass three feet long, hanging down draping the cliff; and the bones lying underneath on the rock bottom will give tragic evidence of what became of animals that were tempted to reach down for it! And the bees coming to the water and flying off at every angle will tell of the honey on your homestead, so you’ll decide to stop coves from trespassing in search of bees’ nests, by writing a public notice to them, soon as you get home.
There’ll be gums and wattle and wild apple trees hanging over that spring, too — all rich in blossom. The smell of them’ll be everywhere. And the gathering of birds hopping about the limbs and on the rocks, greeting you as if they had word of your coming, will make you feel you created the homestead yourself, and everything on it.
But while standing there in thought, your horse’ll be fidgeting for a drink. He isn’t concerned about birds and bees or with making a fortune; so you’ll hop off his back, give him the reins, and let him help himself. While he’s inching cautiously into the water, stretching his neck snorting at the bees to blow them out of reach of his nose, you’ll remove your hat and get down to it on the flat of your stomach yourself. Lovely and cool it’ll be; and in the middle of your thirst you’ll lift your head to take breath, and smack your lips as if it was a brewery you’d come into. You’ll glance up to see how the horse is enjoying it, and will notice he’s taking it in like a pump. His tail and ears will work as if they were handles, and you’ll see the water hurling up along his neck as if there was an elevator in him. You’ll grin at the hurry he’s in, too, then start into it again yourself. Keeping time with the horse.
While you’ll be sucking it up there’ll be a string of quiet cattle sauntering along a track skimming the edge of the clay cliff way above you, a hundred feet and more. Like cattle often do, they’ll get shoving one another at the most dangerous angles, till one slips a cloven hoof over the edge and disturbs a hundredweight of loose cliff that’s been on the balance for many a year. Then it will leap out and come whistling down, touching nothing but air till it squashes the water, right where you and your horse are drinking, and between your heads! Laws! You won’t know what happened. But when you find your feet, and wipe the mud out of your eyes and the water from your hair and look around, there won’t be a living thing near. Your horse will be turning round about eighty yards away, holding his head high, his tail up in line, the bridle-reins hanging. He’ll be all splashed, too, and looking scared and indignant. And all the old cows that were lying about when you came up, as if they had finished with the world and were only waiting for a pass to the next, will be on their feet staring at you, taking you for an evil spirit, and ready to stampede. The silvery-throated birds, too, will scent something amiss, for there won’t be a sound coming from them. And, way up above, the brutes that made all the trouble will be staring innocently down in line at you. Even a black goanna scooting round a tree-butt will keep his beady eye on you till he climbs high enough to feel safe. Every living thing round that waterhole, and above, and below it, will regard you as a disturbing element. When you look on the water again, which will have changed colour, there’ll be a jagged corner of that hundredweight of cliff poking over its surface, and a couple of dragon-flies will be holding a love meeting on it. A shudder will creep down your back and run up it again, and you’ll ask yourself, “What would I have done if that dam’ rock had landed on my head?”
Then you’ll move off, thankful, and sneaking round your horse, and keeping wide so as not to startle him. The dull-brained, quizzing old cows will move curiously after you, making sure you’re a spook. And not till you’re on the horse again and looking yourself will they believe it is you. But when you roar at them, waking the gorge with echoes they’ll just lower their heads, close their eyes again and look satisfied; and the birds will all start chirping as if it had just come daylight. Then you’ll round up those cattle, waving your hat at them for a whip, to see what their brands and earmarks are. Gee! They’ll all belong to old Silas King! Every hoof of them. And the brutes eating your grass, and drinking your good water! He has had the use of your homestead without paying rent for it for half a life-time! And his boundary-fence, in which is an opening four panels wide for the cattle to go in and out, will only be a few hundred yards off! “To take some of your advice is all right,” you’ll reason, “but that don’t mean I’m going to let you have the use of my property for nothing, Mr. King.” So you’ll rush them away, shouting at them, hustling them through the opening back into his paddock. Then you’ll dismount to hang your horse up while you mend the fence, so that they won’t return to commit further trespass. And when you’re riding off feeling you’ve done good work those cattle will be standing watching, indignant-looking; and you’ll wish you had a good dog to put on their heels and send them stampeding to Halifax.
Crossing a ridge covered with broom-brush, pebbles and flint stones, from where you’ll get a close view of the sunlit plains beyond, bronzewing pigeons and quail will fly up, and you’ll recollect how Mrs. Fitzpatrick said that country where there are plenty of pigeons is best for raising turkeys. And all in a moment you’ll see yourself growing great flaming gobblers by the hundred, at a time when no one has any, and getting top price for them in the market. And as you move on over the ridge, there’ll be so many big goannas creeping about, dragging their long tails after them, that you’ll figure another couple of quid a week revenue from the oil that’s inside them.
Leaning here and there against trees will be snares set to catch ’possums, by someone. You’ll stare hard at them. “The darn cheek. Setting snares on a bloke’s land to catch his ’possums with!” You’ll say, “None of that any longer!” And you’ll kick those snares over, taking away the copperwire for your own use.
Before you’ve ridden all over it, the value of your homestead will go up and up till it’s worth twenty quid an acre. You’ll see the house and barn and yards built. The house will have a verandah all round, painted chocolate; the barn and stable roofed with iron; a windmill will be twirling beside them, and the yards full of cows walking in and out of the bails, and a big roan bull shaking his head, expostulating and looking angrily through the rails because he’s not allowed in to have all his own way.
The world will move rapidly with you now; and after another look round you’ll head for home again. Your home will be at “Caledonia”, old Bob Sankey’s farm, where you worked for five years. And of course it will be Sunday — you wouldn’t be away from “Caledonia” if it wasn’t. You’ll catch up to old Silas King himself on the way. He’ll be driving home from church in his new sulky. He always drives by himself on Sunday. His thoughts don’t get crowded in it and it gives him room for pious reflection. But he’ll have a hymn-book beside him on the seat for company. And as you come up, proud that you know him to speak to, and bursting to tell him the good news, you’ll feel like a sinner breaking the Sabbath.
“Getting back from church, Mr. King?” you’ll call out humbly across the wheel as you come up springing in the saddle.
“Yes — yes,” he’ll answer, surprised, and clutching the reins tight, “and it’s where everyone should be getting back from.”
Though you know old Silas would make a low pass in a test for keeping the Commandments, you’ll be shy of starting an argument. So you’ll be tactful and tell him you acted on his advice, and applied for a homestead block for yourself, and got it.
“A homestead — where?” he’ll ask, looking hard at you. Not knowing that he wanted that block of land for years because of water on it, or that he had moved Members of Parliament, and Government officials and friends to have it thrown open for selection “on the quiet”, and had put in a dozen dummy applications for it, you’ll innocently tell him all, and ask his opinion of it.
“WHAT! Spring Gully!” he’ll snarl. “That country is no good for you; ’twouldn’t feed a bandicoot!”
You will think him a curious old man, and put it down to liver.
Then he’ll look closer at you, and talk of the costly improvements you’ll have to make, and that you’ll be called upon to pay him half the cost of a boundary-fence he put up twenty years ago, “at the rate of fifty pounds a mile!”
You won’t have anything to say after that. And when leaving him at the cross-roads you’ll hardly hear him chuckling “you were a fool to go in for it — a damn young fool!”
But that night in bed when you put out the light, you’ll see your homestead gleaming out there under the range, with all its grass and timber, and animals and birds. And you’ll see it in the years ahead with a railway to it; a procession of farm-hands, of plough-teams and waggons at work; a dairy herd in full swing. Buyers of wheat coming and going; agents offering you forty pounds an acre, walk in walk out; the local banker calling and lifting his hat to you — and you’ll laugh beneath the blankets and reckon old Silas King can go and hang himself.
You’ll be three years on the little grey homestead, working hard and becoming well-known and respected; you’ll receive kindly handturns from one and another, and be known to them all as Dick Gall. At the township your neighbours when they call for their mail will ask if “there’s anything for Dick Gall?” and take back goods for you from the store.
But you’ll have a couple of years to go yet before getting your deeds and the little homestead is your own and you are properly settled. And you won’t be properly settled till you get the right kind of woman for a wife to look after you.
You’re battling along all right, though, one way and another, going your hardest from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same; and most of the old homesteaders around, careful of overwork themselves, will appraise you favourably and reckon you’re a goer, and admit you are knocking your place into shape pretty well. You’ll get tired of it though, sometimes. Cooking and sweeping, and washing and chamber-maiding weren’t in the picture when you took up the holding. And after a year or two it begins to get pretty lonesome away back there by yourself, and no one but the dog and cat — who are not always on friendly terms — to pass the time with.
Still, there are hours when it’s far from lonesome — nights when there’s a dry storm on, and the lightning is superb, making flicker screens of the walls and darting down the chimney and out the door; and the thunder cracking, and bursting so close and continuous that your heart troubles you, and the cat gets panic and scoots about as if it was scalded, rushing into your bedroom, and planting under your bunk, and rushing out again when the next crack comes and the house rocks like a wooden horse, to surrender near the fire waiting its doom with its back up and fur ruffled … Jerusalem! the electricity flashing round is like the fire that went out from the Lord and devoured Nadab and Alihu, the two meddling fool— sons of Aaron! And all the bombarding will make you feel the heaven over your head has turned to brass and sulphur, and the Lord in His wrath is making powder and dust of the little grey homestead. Gee! You’ll think of flying out the door, then fleeing seven different ways to escape destruction. But remembering the long arm of the Lord, you’ll prefer being struck dead in your own home to rolling over outside in the dark, and in some hole, perhaps, where you’d never be found and your carcase become as meat unto the native dogs and all the fowls of the air. But after a while — a terrible while it will seem to you and the cat — the storm starts to die instead, and to get out of range, and the flicker screen fades out, too. Your heart will stop kettle-drumming, and so opening the door which you closed when you found the lightning make a thoroughfare of the home, an inch or two, you’ll squint out into the night. Seeing a window somewhere in the sky, with a star shining in it, you’ll know the Lord isn’t going to destroy the earth yet awhile, or smite you in the knees, or on the legs, or make you and your little homestead a proverb or a byword … Opening it a little wider, you’ll begin talking to the dog again. “It’s all over, I reckon, Rover,” you’ll say, “but it was pretty rough while it lasted, eh, old chap?” And Rover, who was snorting all through the disturbance, you having thrown him a shoulder of mutton that went unhealthy on you during the day, will open his eyes and look up at you in sympathy, and without shifting his head. His head is between his paws, which are protruding on either side of his nose like two splints with nails in them. Looking out again, you’ll see the storm had begun an offensive against the new settlement way over on Washpool Plain, where a community of migrants are settled for life. You’ll get a new feeling then, you’ll laugh and give it to Rover as your opinion that those chums over there will be under their beds saying their prayers, and wishing they had hold of the good Bishop of London, or whoever it was lured them into a life of velvety days and pale peaceful nights of a new land!
But in the daytime your neighbours, the McClevertys, and the Ryans, and the Moriartys, and the rest, will remember you in your hours of melancholy, and will want to care for you, and make your life brighter — especially those of them who have marriageable daughters, and they’ll all have a few over twenty-seven anyway. Most homestead mothers feel it’s hard for a single man, when he comes in at the end of a long day, to have to prepare his own supper, and they reckon a place gets dull and uninhabitable without the touch of a woman’s hand — and that a man does, too, if he’s a bachelor. So, after talking it over among themselves, and wondering how you might take it, Mrs. Ryan, one day when you happen to be at their place having a cup of tea, will offer to go over with one of the girls one morning and scrub the place out for you; and if you have any shirts and collars and things you’d like washed and ironed, they’ll be glad to laundry them along with their own; also if you have any currants or raisins, and a few fresh eggs over there they’ll bake you enough cakes to do you the whole of the week … And it won’t be any trouble to them. You’re not prepared for anything like that, for it will mean their seeing the inside of you, and knowing how you live! And while they all wait for you to say what you think, you’ll blush and grin, and shake your head and get self-conscious, and you will tell them you’re used to doing it, and don’t mind at all; that you prefer doing it. And while you are lying you’ll reach for your hat, so as to get away before they can press you any further. But you want to show them you’re grateful, so you’ll pull your hat on at the door, and tell Mrs. Ryan that you reckon she and the girls have enough to do in their own place, without thinking about yours. Then old Tim Ryan himself will rise up, smiling placidly, and placing his big hand on your shoulder will look down into your face and tell you: “Not at all, Dick, not at all… Divil th’ bit o’ bother will it be to th’m. Sure it’s nothing. Just look at th’m — as big an’ sthrong as cattle — all exceptin’ little Katie, perhaps!” And old Tim, who has more whiskers than wealth, and, taken lengthways, is the biggest man in the district, will shake you in a burst of friendship till you are compelled to stiffen the joints of your neck to hold your head on. A well-wishing neighbour old Tim is, and ever ready to help with the services of the family, and the cheerful dignified spirit he does it in is a pleasant feature.
“I won’t want anything done — not for a while”, you’ll kind of choke. Then off you’ll go, blasting old Tim, and wishing you hadn’t gone near him to help load his pigs at all.
That evening though, when you finish supper, you’ll start on the verandah, and house, with a long-handle shovel, cleaning away the mud. Then you’ll get down on your knees inside, and do some scrubbing. And before you go to bed, which will be late, everything in the little homestead, in case of surprises, will be clean and healthy, and in apple-pie order.
There’ll be nights in the little grey homestead when you’ll sit smoking and meditating and planning for the future. The cat will be curled up contented at your feet before the fire, and thoughts that come to a man when married life begins to call to him will be passing through your brain.
You’ll be disturbed by hearing footsteps on the verandah and voices making friends with Rover. And Rover will be rapping his toenails on the hardwood boards and frantically whimpering a welcome, instead of raising Cain, as he does when someone arrives without the password. You’ll know at once it’s young Bob McCleverty and his brother, little Artie, coming for a yarn, and you’ll return to life again. You’ll feel glad, too, for you’ve got to like those two quiet, drawling homestead lads, though at first you were slow to admit them to your circle. And they’ve got a liking for you that’s uncommon. There’s a novelty or something about the solitude of your little homestead — an air of romance of some kind — that’s absent from their own abode. Perhaps it’s because there’s no restraint and no “old man” to consider. The furniture is more comfortable, and there’s more light and company in their own home, yet they’ll leave it all, no matter how cold or dark the night, to prowl and fossick across paddocks, helping each other through barb-wire fences, bounding high over grass patches likely to harbour snakes — so as not to disturb the vermin — and go to yours. If your light isn’t visible when they come over the last ridge and you seem to be in darkness, they’ll pause to consider; and if young Bob reckons you’ve turned in — little Artie never reckons anything; he’s a silent, faithful follower of the other — they’ll retrace their steps and make the most of whatever’s going on at home.
So you’ll give young Bob and little Artie a royal welcome, pointing to seats and telling them not to be bashful and to make themselves at home. Perhaps you’ll hop up and drag the seat across to the fire for them — that’s if you haven’t twisted your ankle, or chopped your toe half-off, or jambed your hand in something that day. And soon as they’ve taken a look round to see what changes have happened to the scenery since they visited you last, and addressed a few words to the cat, you’ll ask if there’s anything fresh over their way, or what’s doing. And young Bob will drawl: “On’y the same ol’ thing.” But you know it isn’t the harvest, or the weather, or the cows they’ve come to yarn about. They’re sick to death of such things and hate the sight and sound and smell of them.
You retailed to them on their last visit some of your adventures when droving ’way out back and doing horse— breaking and stock-riding at Wonggongera and Pickenjinnie, and the thrills you put into it all seduced the minds of young Bob and little Artie, fired their imaginations and left them with a desire for more. But a fight that you mentioned in particular and didn’t finish got a grip of them, and they’ve been burning ever since to hear all about it and to hear you tell it again from the beginning. And soon as young Bob reminds you of it, little Artie will draw close to the table, rest his elbows on it, wedge his chin between his hands, and fix his eyes on you as if you were the Oracle. Young Bob himself will lean back and pull out a pipe in anticipation of something unusual.
“Oh, yairs,” you’ll chuckle, “it was all over an argument about a horse.” And when you pause a moment to refresh your memory, young Bob, thinking you mightn’t be going to proceed further, will echo encouragingly: “A argument about a ’orse?” And little Artie’s twinkling eyes will be riveted on yours like a snake contemplating murder, and not a hair of him will move.
A city boob he looked like, you’ll remember; one of them cranks who spends his time working out cross-word puzzles — a spare, wiry cove, medium tall, stooped in the shoulders; might have been a shade past twenty. You forget whose horse it was, but because you just happened to mention that its brand was blotched this city coot pulled out a quid and wanted to make a bet about it. You knew you’d be betting on a certainty, and told him you didn’t want to take his money. But, spare your days, if he didn’t stick his nose into your face and tell you he had met swags of mugs like you who didn’t want to take money; so you asked him quiet what it was he was trying to get at.
“Don’t y’ understand King’s English? Didn’t y’ ever go to school?” And he pokes his nose in a bit closer to you. There was only one answer to that stuff; so you gave it to him, peeled off your coat and started rolling up your sleeves.
“You did?”
Young Bob will put down his pipe and leave his mouth open, and little Artie’s bulging eyes will shine and twinkle. But you’re not concerned about them; you’re thinking now seven years back. And in your minds eye is a close-up of a cleared patch among some myall-trees; several horses with saddles on and four or five phantom forms in whiskers… So off went his coat, too, and it became a dramatic moment. Then off went his shirt. Cripes! When he stripped you saw he was a different cove; his muscles stood out, and he had a chest on him! A suspicion went through you that you had struck a pug — one of the crowd that travel round on the lookout for boobs. You verified your suspicions when his mate chipped in offering to back him for a fiver an’ fight to a finish.
“Moses!” from young Bob, but not a sound from little Artie.
Of course you didn’t want your mates to go taking bets on you; you weren’t looking for fight — only defending yourself from insult. All you knew about fighting, anyway, was what you learned at old Condamine school, where you were king, and along the droving routes in years after. But mates are mates out back, and they out with their money, and brought it to a head. Then the backers all started kicking the dead sticks and leaves and things away to clear a ring. Well, darn him, you thought, if he is a blasted pug, he’s only got two hands and two eyes; and so you squared up to him. No hand-shaking — none o’ that make-believe business — and he started putting on frill, crouching, working round you, moving his fists like pendulums, and glaring at you like a wild dog watching his chance to spring. You never had a cove face you like this before, and you began to feel a burden on your mind. All the same, you decided to give him all you had. Behind, you could hear your mates kicking away more dead leaves and stuff, otherwise they were silent as if it was all a burial service. So he kept on crouching and side-stepping, and you made up your mind to let him break the ice, and whatever move he made you’d swing the right at him and put every ounce of punch you had into it. All at once he made a feint at you and you let go the right at his head and got it! Cripes, it was a sensation! Like hitting a cricket ball fair and hard when you couldn’t see it coming and expected to hear the wickets rattling. The sensation it gave him was different. His head went back so far that he must have seen his backer, who was behind him, throw up his hands in astonishment.
“Holy!” from young Bob, but little Artie is dumb and his eyes won’t leave yours.
You didn’t get over the surprise you got soon enough to give him the other, and another, and another; and, like a roped bull with its head down, he came at you, shooting both hands into your body, you catching them on your ribs and forearms and a final one shaving the down off the point of your chin. Ghost! And the cow all the time was hissing and calling you a bum, and scum, till he landed you one on your nose that made you feel it was decapitated. The blood trickled into the corners of your mouth and in your fury kept you busy blowing it out… Stars! how you remembered he could hit, and when he saw how the fluid was flowing from you, it maddened him more, and he came at you again. Gee! But somehow or other his head got under your arm, and you squeezed down hard on it, holding him like a cow in a bail. Out of it he couldn’t get, and you jabbed and punched and bashed his face and mouth and eyes, while your mates yelled to you to stick to him and give him hell, and his mates danced round, distracted, shouting “Break! Break! Break!” But only when your arms got aching and you thought you’d broke him into mince did you break, and then he danced away sniffing and spitting and slandering you more. But you grinned at the mess you’d made of him and asked him how he was liking it.
And by the living Mike you went after the crawler with the fury of Jack Dempsey. But he was clever. He ducked and side-stepped, then swung a right and left at your jaw, as if they were fired from a cannon. If it wasn’t instinct, you don’t know what it was; but you saw them both coming, got your head out of the way, and uppercut him under the chin just when he slipped toward you, and, mother o’ Mike! his head went up and his—
“Here, cripes, look at this cove!” young Bob interrupts, calling attention to little Artie, who has gradually risen to his feet and is leaning across the table still gazing at you, but trembling, showing his teeth, crunching them, as if he had got tetanus or had taken poison. In a second the fight will go out of your mind. But young Bob is disgusted at the behaviour of his young brother for spoiling the finish.
“Sit down, y’ goat!” he’ll protest, “and don’t make an ass of yourself.”
But you can see the little chap can’t help himself, and you’ll reach for a grip of him, talking kindly to him, asking him what’s the matter, telling him not to be excited, and calling to young Bob to bring a pannikin of water and to be quick about it. And young Bob will see there’s something the matter, too, and in his hurry to bring the water will tramp on the cat, who’ll make a startling noise under his feet. And pale as a ghost he’ll stand staring while you’re administering the water; but instead of taking a drink little Artie’s jaws will suddenly spring open and a yell will come from him that will out-do the cat and start Rover rushing round outside trying to get in to investigate. After a while his yells will tail off into weeping and sobbing, and you and young Bob will feel a lot easier in your minds. But in the end you’ll be putting on the kettle to make hot tea for him, before letting him go home, and all the time you’ll be helping young Bob to think of things that will make the kid laugh.
Next morning, perhaps about ten o’clock, you’re returning from the factory in the milk-cart, sitting up singing and swaying with the motion of it, and light-hearted and hopeful among the jangling empty cans, and one that’s full of whey. You’ll drive in through the gate into the little grey homestead as if it was the land of Canaan, and your eyes will fall on two startling figures coming across your pumpkin ground, carrying parcels and a basket, looking like two movie stars on location. They’ll be big Nellie Ryan and little Katie Ryan, and Mrs. Ryan won’t be with them at all.
“Ghost!” you’ll mumble, turning a bit pale, “they meant to come all right!” And then you’ll fold up. On the way to the piggery, where you’ll deliver the can of whey to a family of expectant squeaking swine, you’ll be blessing yourself again for going near old Tim Ryan, and getting into all this woman’s business! But it can’t be helped now, and as big Nellie and little Katie approach the house you’ll be taking the horse out and fumbling the harness. Rover will be barking hard, too, making out they’re enemies and that he’s got a stiff job on, though he knows them as well as he knows you; and looking across to Ryan’s homestead, “Tuam”, they call it, you’ll see Mrs. Ryan watching from the verandah to see how the girls get on.
Of course you’ll have to go round to the front of your quarters to meet them, and when you are nearly there you’ll order Rover to go and lie down, and ask him what he thinks he’s barking at? You do this to keep cool and collected … A little nearer, and you’ll grin and say: “Hello, did y’ think he was going to eat y’?” And big Nellie will smile, and dragging the sides of her hat down over her cheeks will tell you they’ve come over to tidy up the place for you, if you’ll just show them the run of it, and where the things are they’ve to take back? You’ll stammer and blush and be sorry for all the jolly trouble they’re going to for nothing. And Nellie will say, “Oh, no!” while Katie will screw up her nose and look about. “There it is — that’s it”, and you’ll open the door to them — “but you won’t want me any longer.” And off you’ll bolt before big Nellie can fix her smile on you again, or little Katie stretch her neck far enough to see all that’s inside.
They’ll throw the windows open, and put something against the door to keep it from closing; then stare hard at your housekeeping and your furniture for a minute or so as if they had come to learn something new. But soon big Nellie will have her cape off and an apron on and be hard at work in the kitchen. And while she’s firing the stove and getting hot water ready, and clearing your shelves of dishes and things, little Katie, who is a girl of twelve or thirteen and just coming on, will tip-toe to the door of your bedroom and peep in as though she suspected someone was in hiding or in bed there. When no one jumps up or sings out to her she’ll go right in and look around at the little that’s there and handle whatever is on the table. Your brush and comb she’ll drop and pull faces at as if they harboured plague; but your silver watch she’ll open and fool with, and put to her ear, and wind up. There’ll be a letter of five or six pages kept from flying away by your murky little mirror which serves as a paperweight. It’s a letter from Sarah McCleverty to Bill Baker, which was dropped along the factory road by Bill for you to find … You hadn’t read it all yet because you haven’t had time, and you know it’s Bill Baker’s letter by the envelope, which you used soon as you got home to light the fire with. “Your sweetheart, Sarah”, told you near enough who the author of it was, and you’ll be going to restore it to Bill next time you meet him. Little Katie will see that letter and wonder what you have stood the mirror on it for? Girls, like grown-ups, always like to see things kept in their proper places. That’s the difference between them and men. So while she’s looking at herself in the glass and smiling different ways to see which of them suits her best, her hand will be fondling the letter as if it was a doll. Deciding on one of the smiles as the best for her complexion, she takes more interest in the letter. The first two words of it: “My lovest”, will hold her and she’ll open her eyes, and the smile will be forgotten. Then she’ll rush to the last page, and when she reads “Your sweetheart, Sarah”, you can tell she’s found a great gold mine … She’ll turn back quick to the beginning, and when she’s taken in the first few lines there’ll be a broad grin on her face, but she’s pretty careful of the step is little Katie. So she’ll put the letter down and run to the front door to see where you are, and what kind of work you’re setting yourself. She’ll see you hooking the horses to the plough. Then taking the broom she’ll tell big Nellie, who’s turning the kitchen inside out and decorating the shelves with nicked paper, and looking as pleased as though you had just brought her into it as your bride, that she’ll give the rooms a sweep over; and off back little Katie will skip to your bedroom and to Baker’s love letter… She’ll sit on your bunk with it, and hold the broom between her knees so as to be ready for work at the sound of someone coming. She isn’t a rapid reader of love-letters, not having had much practice as yet, and Sarah McCleverty doesn’t write copperplate or spell according to the dictionary or the local schoolmaster. But she’s worrying through it all right, smiling, and gaping, and getting red sometimes, and excited-looking at others; then putting it down sudden, but without losing the place, and slipping to the door again she’ll see how you’re getting on with your job. A word or two more with Nellie, then making a flourish on the floor with the broom, back she’ll creep to Sarah and Bill again … Though some of it will seem to be shocking to her, little Katie will want to read every word of that letter.
Meantime you’ll be ploughing away up and down, singing out to the horses to make yourself more important because you think someone’s listening, and stopping always at the headland nearest to the house to clean the plough … And when you’ve cleaned it you’ll be keeping an eye on the house; and you’ll see homely-looking smoke coming out of the chimney, and big Nellie coming out of the house with papers and rags and all kinds of rubbish to burn; and sometimes she’ll be getting water out of the tank, or throwing some out of a dish, and looking up at you as she throws it… And seeing the smoke, and her moving about and looking across at you, will make the little homestead seem a different place; and you’ll begin to feel what it must be like to fellows who have their own wives on theirs. You’ll notice too, that big Nellie is a fine stamp of a woman, and that she’s smart on her feet. You’ll be taking longer and longer after each round to clean the plough, too; and when little Katie leaves the house and comes running across to the fence calling out: “Nellie says will you come and have a cup of tea now, Mr. Gall?” your heart’ll give a jump! … Hokey! “Tea!” you’ll echo, as if you didn’t quite understand. “It’s all waiting on the table —” and back will fly the busy little Katie.
“Cripes!” you’ll mutter; and leaving the horses standing there — they would stand there all day if you asked them to — you’ll rub the soil off your hands on to your trousers, and rake your moist hair with your fingers, and creep cautiously through the fence. You’ll drag a fistful of leaves from a gum bush as you saunter across the green patch to the house and be crunching them as you wonder what to say when you go in … Big Nellie meeting you at the door with real mountain bloom on her cheeks will invite you to “Come along, Mr. Gall, before your tea gets cold.” Angels of light! You were never met at your own door like this before! But somehow you feel it’s her door, and you’re a visitor being welcomed. Cripes, though! When you come in and look round you hardly recognise it! It’s undergone a metamorphosis. You look down on the floor but don’t like walking on it with your dusty, milk-stained bluchers. And the sight of the table! At one end of it is spread a white linen cloth, wherever it came from, ironed like a dress shirt, and on it, set in fashion, are the teapot, a cup and saucer, the sugar basin with a spoon in it, a big bowl of butter that’s not yours, a plate of scones, a bottle of home-made melon jam, that isn’t yours either, the milk jug all brightened up, and a serviette, wherever it also came from! At the other end will be a big bunch of flowers leaning over and ducking their heads about. Heavens! You feel it’s your wedding breakfast you’re sitting down to without the parson, or a best man, and you don’t seem to know where the chair is when you are going to sit.
“Do you like milk an’ sugar in your tea, Mister Gall?” And Nellie, while you’ll be nodding you do, because you can’t find your voice, will start pouring you out a cup, and calling to little Katie to see that “the cake in the oven doesn’t burn, like a good girl”.
Your cloudy, milk-splashed shirt and pants and dusty brown arms don’t silhouette well against the white linen table cloth, and bright tea things, and the comparison will make you uncomfortable in your own home. You nearly spill the tea over it in consequence. Then when you lift your cup with precaution you get a nervous attack and the cup stops half-way up like a hotel lift, and wobbles in your hand. My! how you’ll put it down, quick, and reach for the scones to kill time with — that’ll be till big Nellie makes herself scarce. But when she suddenly runs out to the kitchen to take the cake out of the oven that little Katie, who has found a Jews’ harp, doesn’t know is burning like Rome was when Nero was fiddling, you’ll hurl that cup of tea down like beer and send a scone or two and most of the butter after it.
In a minute or two more you’ll be getting composed and feel a bit at home. You’ll lean back in the chair and look out to see if the horses are standing all right. Of course you know they’ll be half asleep, and that no one but yourself or someone shaking a feed of corn at their heads could awaken them. You have drunk all the tea but you sit there wondering if big Nellie will come in again before you go out. You feel you would like to have a wise conversation with her. She doesn’t seem to be coming so you’ll start to go. But when you make a noise getting up she’ll come hurrying in apologizing, and asking would you have liked another cup of tea. Laws! How you’ll wish you could reel off compliments like the goofy city swanks who charm the women on steamers and in tea-shops! But you only shake your head and smile, and twirl your old hat, and tell her you must be getting over to the plough again, now.
“My word, you’re getting on with it; you’ll soon have all that paddock finished, won’t you?” she’ll say. And the way she’ll say it will burn your ears, and the skin on your face will shine like Moses’ did when he came down off Mount Sinai after the big interview.
“If I only had someone always here to do the housekeeping for me” — you’ll say, laughing amiably, and backing to the door, “I could do a lot more — and better, don’t you think so?” “A good many of them don’t, though —” And big Nellie, who will know what you are hinting at, will also know that some family men do a lot of ploughing inside, beside the kitchen fire. “I wouldn’t be one of them sort —” And you’ll step out and be off smiling, and reckoning you got in a good word for yourself, anyway.
When you start the plough again you’ll talk like a brother to the horses and feel as if you are cultivating the Garden of Eden. More and more you will keep your eyes on the home, and when little Katie issues from it to empty a dish or something, you’ll wave to her like a brother-in-law, and she’ll shake the dish at you like a relation.
Meanwhile, big Nellie having done all she can see to do in the kitchen and living-room will turn her energies to your bedroom. And while she’s hanging things up on nails, and making your bed, and wondering if you wear pyjamas and where they can be, little Katie will be hovering about watching to see if she will observe Baker’s love-letter which she takes for granted was written to you. But big Nellie, who isn’t there to pry into your correspondence, passes it over, as a matter of respect, and little Katie will get restless and point to it, and pull inviting little faces.
“A letter from some of his people, I suppose”, big Nellie will observe at last, but giving attention to the arranging of some red roses on your table. But little Katie won’t be satisfied. She must have big Nellie read that letter somehow or other without giving herself away.
“It starts with ‘My lovest’ ”, and little Katie will start humming a tune—
“With what?” and suddenly evincing some interest big Nellie will glance at the love-letter.
“And it looks like Sarah McCleverty’s writing too”, little Katie will pause to add, and then go on humming more. Big Nellie’s face will flush, and she’ll look closer at the epistle, and little Katie, pleased with herself, will run out to the door to see if you’re sticking well to your work, and to give her sister a good chance to enjoy the letter as she did herself. You’ll be scraping mud from the mould board when she looks out, and you’ll wave to her when you’re putting the scraper back in its place, and she’ll wave to you, and for big Nellie’s benefit she’ll remain a while, waving more. And big Nellie, who also will conclude without evidence to the contrary, that the letter was written to you, will be rushing her eyes over its pages like wireless, and with blood mounting to her cheeks and fire flying from her eyes. But she’ll drop it like poison when she hears little Katie coming in again, and start cleaning the mirror, and striving to appear disinterested. But little Katie will know a lot, too.
“What’s in it? Is it from Sarah McCleverty?” she’ll want to know, looking innocent and anxious, and breathing short.
“Do you think I would read Mr. Gall’s letters, or anyone’s, you silly girl?” Nellie will choke, hardly knowing what to do about it; she’ll be disappointed in you, and hateful of the McCleverty girl.
“Oh, you have! That’s not how it was!” and lifting one of the displaced sheets, little Katie will start perusing it boldly.
“Don’t you!… What if Mr. Gall was to come in!” and Nellie will take it from her… “Run out and see if the towel I hung on the line is dry — and bring me the broom.”
And little Katie will fly off faster than ever, but only because she wants big Nellie to finish the letter so that she can talk to her about it on equal terms and without being accused of wrong-doing. And she knows from what’s in it that big Nellie will be bursting to read it all. Women are curious like that. But this time little Katie will stay out much longer, and be waving the towel to you; and when she’s going inside again she’ll sneak on tip-toe and catch Nellie glaring in hate at the last lines and clenching her teeth. “Oh! you’ve read it,” she’ll shout, pouncing on her triumphantly. And then: “I know what’s in it… it’s from S — M —, who I said, isn’t it?”
Big Nellie won’t say anything. She’ll be confounded — “And there’s a lot of bad things in it, isn’t there?”
Then big Nellie will put the letter under the mirror again, and say: “Get our basket, Katie! … And we’ll take back the jam and scones and everything we brought. He can bring his washing over to Mother, himself, if he likes… Come away out; and don’t do any more for him. Booh, don’t let his old dog touch you!”
And out they go.
Crossing the paddock they’ll be holding their heads down and keeping a deaf ear. And when you wave and call out to them: “So long; are you going?” they won’t see or hear you. Little Katie would like to look at you though, and give you a smile, too; but big Nellie will be telling her not to.
And so you’ll stare after them, and think and puzzle, but you can’t make it out.
When first you took up the little grey homestead you counted on growing wheat and barley and maize, and leaving milk alone. Grain-growing was more dignified and manlier than strumming on Strawberry’s teats while she chewed her cud and beat time with her tail. And being a bachelor — what all young homesteaders with any real respect for women ought to be — you’d have time to cook yourself good meals, and attend to your laundry occasionally. And you’d be able to go for a ride to some of the places on Sunday afternoons — perhaps on holidays as well, if you heard about them in time. Instead of slaving morning, noon, and night, you’d make a white man’s job of farming and show a lot of them how to be their own bosses and masters of their own fate.
So contrary to local wisdom and tradition, you start off and plough and harrow and sow, and then pray and wait for the seed to come up and grow, and, when it grows, for it to escape blight and all other afflictions that old hands warn you crops are heir to if you don’t look out. And after a couple of seasons of ploughing and sowing and the rest, you find you haven’t “looked out” hard enough or something, and then you meditate a lot at night, instead of sleeping, till you lose flesh and look as if you had been put through a clothes-wringer; and you move and mope about like a shell with the life gone from it. When you’re out of kerosene and candles at the same time, and you have to meditate and smoke in the dark, it will come home to you what a great part a little illumination plays in the comforts of a homestead, even one like yours; almost as great a part as a little hanging plays in the discomforts of gaol life. But it all helps to get you into the habit of going to bed early and beating the birds in the morning, and makes you well versed in the secrets of homesteading, and teaches you how hard it is to stand on your own feet, and that as far as society is concerned you are fairly in the wilds.
At last when the old hands, who paid dearer for their knowledge than you, keep on shaking their heads and warning you not to leave Strawberry out, and telling you that ten or twelve of her, which would be enough for one man to manage, would mean as many pounds a month regular in your pocket, and at the same time, if you couldn’t shake off the habit, you could still keep on ploughing and sowing, you decide on a change of policy, and chance the ducks.
So out of meditating and smoking in the dark, one day comes a close conversation with the storekeeper. You’ve conversed closely with him before, and found him sympathetic and white all over. You’ve sold him the remnant of a crop you harvested and he’s got a contra account against you. It’s been against you for eight or ten months and growing faster than the corn did. But he’s not reminding you of the account — he’s listening to your conversation about Strawberry, to the fresh hopes you see in her success, but more especially to the difficulty you see in squaring his bill and buying a few of her from the proceeds of the crop at the same time. And when he says, “That’s all right, Dick, don’t worry; I’ll pay you in full for the corn and you can buy the cows and repay me monthly from your milk money”, your heart will weigh light again, and you’ll canter all the way home with your hat hanging to the back of your neck, whistling and feeling like Napoleon hurrying from Elba to mobilise a new army.
All that night cows bulging with milk will trail through your brain, tramping all over you, poking you out of bed with their horns — herds of them there’ll be. Next day in clean shirt and pants you’ll get across your saddle-horse and ride into Terence Riley’s farmyard at milking-time with a hand fumbling in your pocket, and running your eye over any of his herd that are lying about, like a butcher looking for fats.
“Hello, Dick, me bhoy”, Terence himself from under the flank of young Rosie will greet you as your head shows over the yard-rails. “An’ where is it ye’re off to?”
“Looking for a few head o’ cows,” you’ll tell him, dismounting — “if I can pick ’em up cheap enough.”
“Well, you’ve come to the right place”, Terence will say, winking at the boy in the next bail. “No one ever got anything else but cheap cows from Riley’s.”
And while he empties his bucket and calls to someone to fetch Polly and Kittie an’ Gooseberry into the yard, you move amongst the soft-eyed creatures regarding them critically and covetously.
“Money wouldn’t buy her”, Terence, joining you, will declare as you stroke the back of a satin-skinned, companionable little beast. “She’s pure bred, be an imported Government bull, and has been givin’ her five gallons for the last twelve months an’ more. But there’s Biddie standin’ in th’ corner there just as good, if not better, that I’ll sell cheap to you. An’ ’tis only because the farm’s carrying more than it should that I would sell her, or any of th’m at all. ’Tis like parting with me heart’s blood.”
Then you’ll examine Biddie, and a host of others that Terence will lead you to, studying them hard. And while you’re studying them and he’s fondling them, and reciting pedigrees, a conviction that you don’t know so much about dairy-cows as you thought you did will grow on you. So far as you can judge they’re all good milkers and super-animals. But as to how much milk any of them is capable of giving and the quality of it you’ve nothing but Riley’s word to guide you. You know enough, however, not to delude yourself that he’s going to dispose of six of the best if he can unload six of the worst on to you. So after chopping and changing you decide to take a half-dozen — “Beautiful animals, the like of ’em can’t be got anywhere in th’ distric’ ” — and because Riley “never likes to see anyone go away feelin’ dissatisfaction”, you’re getting them “cheaper than anyone else would get them”. Then off you go, the pride of ownership filling you with fresh hopes as you flick those milkers along the lane to your little homestead. You’ll be a much prouder man in twelve months’ time, though, when a dairy expert visits the homestead and teaches you something about testing and grading, and you learn, what Riley himself didn’t know, that you bought for a fiver a head cows worth a tenner and more!
You’re a man of the milking-yard now, and you talk cow and think cow. You’re a shareholder in the local Co-operative Dairying Co., too, and every morning when you deliver your couple of cans and see them weighed you walk through with hands in your pockets inspecting the plant and appurtenances, and wondering if the hands are earning their screws and if the cheese-maker couldn’t perform the duties of secretary as well and save the shareholders a hundred or two a year.
The spirit of the employer will get into your blood, too, and you’ll think about engaging a man — one who knows how to handle and work horses, and can milk with both hands, and doesn’t mind roughing it a bit until you get further on your feet.
“You’ll have a ’ard job to get one”, the old hands will tell you. “It’s not work, it’s waitin’ on that men want now — until they get a few quid together, and then away they go.” But someone tells you that Macpherson found one at the township for a quid a week — a pretty good man he was, only he got sick and had to go away to the hospital. So one day you go off in your new secondhand spring-cart to the township specially to hunt for a man.
‘There was a chap here only a little while ago,” the publican will tell you, “and he was askin’ about a job, too. He might be just the cove to suit you. Hold on till I see if he’s about.”
And while you hold on, looking up at the bottles, and packets of cigarettes and dice on the shelves and sniffing the odour of stale beer rising out of a cask in a corner, he goes out and yells like a bullock-puncher (he was one in fact, before going into business) to all who can hear to tell that red-whiskered cove he’s wanted in the bar, and to look lively. Then, returning, he’ll take a murky cloth and start wiping some glasses. And he’ll be forecasting the weather for you when the red-whiskered cove — who also has red eyes and a red nose and a red handkerchief — appears, hesitating and staring as if he suspected it might be April Fool’s Day or some other catch.
“You were wanting a job, weren’t you, Whiskers?” the publican will question, and so great will be the other’s relief on finding it isn’t April Fool’s Day, or that you aren’t a policeman, that for the moment he can’t remember if he wants a job or not.
“Well, this chap wants a man for his farm. There’s a chance for you.” And the publican will pass him round the counter into your presence and take up the murky cloth again.
You’ll ask Whiskers what sort of a hand he is amongst horses? If he can plough? And has he ever done any milking?
"Horses? Plough? Milk?” Whiskers seems surprised at you asking such questions.
“And what about your wages?”
Whiskers will leave that to you. But you would rather he stated a figure himself. You’re afraid of slipping by mentioning something bigger than he expects. Whiskers has no idea, not having been long in the district.
“A quid?” you question, timorously.
Whiskers, undecided, turns his red face on the publican in search of guidance.
“That’s the usual thing”, Boniface will lie promptly, more in his own interests than yours, as he places three glasses on the counter. “And you’re darn lucky to get it. Now, what’s it going to be?”
Whiskers calls for a rum. Not being a drinking man you shake your head.
“Have a ginger-ale — that won’t hurt you”, the publican will advise, filling his own from a bottle of tea. You change your mind and agree to a ginger-beer. The publican lifts his and wishes you both the best of luck. Whiskers puts his down first; then, telling you he’s going to get his swag and will meet you outside, he vanishes.
You’ll reckon he ought to suit you and will be turning to the door to go off, when Bung will out with: ‘That’ll be eighteen pence!”
As well as being surprised, you’ll get a scare, because money is the last thing you carry about with you. You want all your pockets for carrying washers, and nuts, and nails, and twine and stuff that comes in handy. But you remember that by a piece of good luck there’s a florin somewhere about you that you’ve been hawking round for months, and you start searching for it.
And when you discover it among some binder-twine you toss it on the counter as if you were dam pleased to get rid of it. In your hurry to be off before Bung in his generous way calls for another round of drinks, you forget your change.
Arrived at the homestead, you tell Whiskers he can make his quarters in the house along with yourself. Though you’re his employer, you don’t want to draw a social line or look down on him. And you apologize to him for the untidy state he’s found the place in. But Whiskers does not mind — he’s been accommodated in places a lot worse. So long as there are no fleas he doesn’t care. Fleas keep him awake when he ought to be asleep. And Whiskers will be a man who requires a lot of sleep.
And while you’re putting the kettle on and buzzing round preparing a bit of dinner before starting him on the plough, Whiskers will unfold his swag and be making a bed for himself in a corner, on the floor. He won’t have any sheets or pillows, but he’ll sort out his hairbrush and comb and clay-pipes and tobacco and matches; and there’ll be a bottle which he’ll keep covered, and handle gently as if it were a baby and he its mother putting it to bed.
When you both have dined — Whiskers better than you — you’ll be scurrying round again returning the butter and bread and beef to their different places in the kitchen, and stacking up the dirty dishes, putting off the evil hour of washing-up till night, and at the same time communicating to Whiskers all that it will mean to you if you can, with his help, get thirty acres of wheat under in time for the rain, and some new land broken up before Christmas. And while you’re scurrying and enthusing Whiskers will be standing in the doorway smoking and agreeing with you, and stepping aside whenever you want to go out or come in.
Putting on your hat and closing the door, you’ll take him out and introduce him to the plough-team. You’ll harness them up in his presence, showing him certain marks by which to identify their respective collars and winkers — the backhands won’t matter so much. Whiskers won’t be listening, but he’ll be stroking the horses’ foreheads and filling their eyes with smoke, and grinning.
“Now then”, and you take hold of the reins eagerly and start off, driving the team to the paddock. Whiskers will follow, covering you and keeping in step like a soldier. When you “Waay!” the team at the barb-wire gate, he’ll “Waay!” too, and stand while you drop the reins and open it. You’ll hook them to the plough while he knocks the ashes from his pipe; and taking the handles you’ll go a round or two, giving him hints and calling his attention to little things to keep in view; and all the time he’ll be stalking behind you, studying the footprints you’re leaving in the moist furrow, and looking back at intervals to see if you’re doing straight work.
‘There you are,” you’ll gasp at the finish; “now go ahead” — and you’ll hand the plough over to him. He’ll tighten his hat and dawdle a while, hoping you’ll depart to your own job without waiting to watch how he starts his. He would sooner you returned in an hour’s time, after he’s had some practice. But you’ll be anxious to see how he shapes. So you’ll speak to the horses for him, and off they go. You’ll stand watching, expecting to see an exhibition of ploughing — something unusual. And you see it. The plough will start wriggling and jumping, and Whiskers will wriggle and jump with it. And what the mould-board fails to turn over he’ll be trying to kick over. He’ll soon be trying to kick it all over. You’ll feel as if you had lost heavily at the races; then, trying to cheer yourself by remembering that everything is new to Whiskers, and thinking he might do better after a while, you’ll go off to the milking-yard to fix up another bail.
You’re putting finishing touches to the bail now, trying to see how it works; humming tunes to yourself, and thinking about bringing the cows in, when loud profanity is wirelessed across the gully to you in waves. Looking through the yard-rails you see the plough-horses facing one another across the plough, and, rearing and shaking their heads and falling back on their rumps; and Whiskers will be running round, first to the tail of one, then to the tail of another. Love me, how you leave the yard and run to the rescue, ripping your pants and your flesh in falling through the barb-wire fence without being aware of it!
“Pshaw!” and Whiskers will spit when you’ve pacified the team and collected the broken harness. “This is no good to me! Those — horses ought to be running with brumbies.”
But you won’t feel offended. You’ll know that men sometimes make a smoke-screen of their tempers to hide incompetency; so you do your best to smile.
Later, in the milking-yard, when Whiskers struggles through with one cow while you’re polishing off the other five, you’ll try to smile again and tell him that you know it’s always hard for a man to strike form at first. But Whiskers, on whom bad humour will seem to be settled for good, will tell you it’s not his (unprintable) game. “Stockriding is what I’ve been at — dashing through the mulga on a good horse — throwin’ scrubbers head over tip and tying them down — not messin’ round with blanky plough-horses and cows.”
After supper, though, when you’ve washed up and Whiskers is lounging on his bed stealing swigs from the bottle whenever you go out to the kitchen, he’ll be in better humour, and you’ll like his company. He’ll relate weird accounts of his experiences out west ’midst thirst and privation and death. And while he’s relating them to you the wind-haunted trees outside will be swaying and sobbing, and the dog, in fear of lurking dingoes, will be whimpering at the door.
“Did ever you read any of the po’try a cove called Boake used to write?” he’ll ask.
You haven’t, of course, but you’ve heard some of Henry Lawson.
“Not him — this cove, Boake, was a stockman on the Thompson when I was out there. He was a drover an’ a ’orseman … And you, livin’ in a hole like this, never read ‘Where the dead men lie?” Well I’ll give it to y’…”
And when, to the accompaniment of the moaning trees and the scratching of the dog at the door, Whiskers, his big eyes fixed on you like red mantles burning in the dim light, droles:
“Out where the grinning skulls bleach whitely,
Out where the wild dogs chorus nightly,
Under the salt-bush sparkling brightly—
That’s where the dead men lie!”
You’ll think ghosts and fancy the hand of one is feeling your hair. And just as he concludes, and the dog suddenly shoves the door open, and the wind rushes in, you’ll let out “Hell!" and give a jump. So will Whiskers himself.
* * * *
Next morning. Instead of rushing off, after you call and shake him a number of times, to round up the cows, Whiskers will mope round in a homesick sort of way. And when you tell him cheerfully that you can see all the horses on the ridge-side, he’ll shake his head and say: “Oh, blime me, Boss — I think I’ll chuck it in.”
Of course you’re not sorry; you’ll be pleased, but you don’t want to show your pleasure, so you’ll tell him that it rests with himself.
“Full pay for yesterday, then, an’ we’ll be quits?”
You won’t object to that even though he only put in half a day, and a dog darn bad half!
“And you’ll run me up in the cart after breakfast?”
That’ll make you bite your lip, but you’ll say “orright!” And confounding him under your breath, you’ll go off for the cows.
* * *
But next day when you discover that Whiskers had your fancy stockwhip, and your razor, and snake-skin belt, in his swag while you were driving him in, and hoping he’d come and see you again sometime, you’ll curse him hard and far above your breath!
It’ll be a damp, drizzling day, a day when homesteaders turn their hands to plaiting green-hide into rope and reins, or to ring-barking. And you, with the help of Wattie Nutt, who, in passing, has taken refuge at the back of the old shed from a sharp shower, will be sharpening your axe on the grindstone; for you’ll have a notion of “doing a bit of ringing in one of the gorges where the grass always seems to be sour”. And as Wattie turns the grindstone and you hold the axe you’ll both talk between jolts and grunts and stoppages about scrubs and timber.
“There isn’t much of the good stuff left now, Dick”, Wattie will lament. “Most of the rosewood and blackbutt and oak has pretty well disappeared from these parts altogether. There’s a fair amount of silky oak left in the ranges, but it’s so dam hard to get at that it takes more than it’s worth to cut and haul.”
“That’s so, Wattie”, you’ll grunt in agreement, for he’ll be tugging and jerking your rickety grindstone in such a way to speed it up that you’ll require your two eyes and two hands to hold the axe in position, and save your fingers from being amputated.
“And as for the cedar, though my old man used to reckon that it once was as plentiful around here as ironbark and box, you never see a tree standing now.”
“I’ve never seen a cedar sapling in my life that I can remember, unless on a precipice in some of those mountain hollows, where a beggaring goat could hardly keep its feet, to say nothing of a man with a team of bullocks.”
“Strange thing that, Wattie.” You’ll snatch the implement from the creaking, jolting grindstone. Taken unawares Wattie will put in several rapid revolutions of waste energy.
“I’ve noticed it, too” — you’ll pass your thumb over the edge of the axe to test it — “and never by any chance do you see any of the old stumps about either.”
“What did they do with it all?” Wattie will wonder; “there was no market much for it then.”
“Knocked it all down and burnt it up to clear their holdings and fulfil conditions, I suppose”, you’ll muse, taking up a billy of water and pouring some of the contents over the face of the axe and over the grindstone. “But lots of the old homes, even cow-sheds and lofts and gate-posts, still standing, have the best cedar in them.”
As you cautiously apply the axe to the grindstone again, at the same time warning Wattie to “turn a bit slower this time”, his thoughts will be carried back to boyhood, and, lifting his voice above the rocking and “clock-clocking” of the whirling, grating grindstone, will reveal a philosophic side to his nature.
“I can remember old man McGarry sawing down the last of the big cypress pines that grew near his place under the Macpherson Ranges”, he’ll tell you almost sadly. “I was only a kid then, but I felt that the old man and the fellow he had helping him were murderers!”
You’ll risk taking your eyes from the wobbling grindstone to cast a glance of understanding at Wattie. His eyes, though, won’t meet yours. They’ll be fixed on the ground, and he’ll be absorbed in reflection as he turns the handle. Changing his mind, he’ll continue:
“And I’ll never forget my feelings, Dick, when staring up at that lonely, lofty, silent tree, standing there before it fell. It had become a link in the lives of us boys when hunting the bush for bears and birds’ nests. To us that old tree was a monarch — the king of trees in the ranges, and some mighty big box and ironbark grew about the Macpherson then, Dick.”
“Wonder it didn’t die of loneliness when it was the only one left standing,” you’ll jerk out, “for a tree will fret itself to death, you know!”
“It didn’t, Dick, and though ‘maggies’ were always warbling and yabbering amongst its green boughs in summer time, and parrots screaming, we never thought of pelting them there.”
You’ll flash another glance of understanding at Wattie as you make a non-stop change to turn the blade of the axe … “And gad, Dick, as the darned old cross-cut see-sawed and see-sawed at its trunk, I felt it was myself it was going through! And so acutely that I was on the verge of running away so as not to be in sight when it fell, for I trembled at the thought of hearing it fall… and of seeing it down and dying with its old green cloak around it! And then, though I didn’t know why, just as it gave the first crack, I ran in shouting to them to stop! Not to cut that old tree down! and tugged at old McGarry’s dangling shirt-tail!”
You’ll suddenly lift the axe from the grindstone again to grin curiously at Wattie.
“I’ve had that feeling too, Wattie,” you’ll tell him, “but what a risky thing you did running in when the darn tree was starting to crack!”
“Wasn’t it!” he’ll admit. “But if you’d heard those old bent-backs yelling to me ‘to run to hell from there — it’s going to fall’, and had seen how, when the tree gave several cracks, they abandoned the saw and ran for safety themselves, you’d have had your feelings changed as I had mine. Instead of protesting you’d have thrown yourself down in the long grass and laughed.”
“I can see it all,” you’ll smile, passing your thumb over the edge of the axe-blade again, “but I suppose the old vandals made no use of the tree — just left it to the weather or the first bush fire.”
“I suppose so, Dick,” he’ll agree, wistfully, “but I could have cried when I heard the crash and saw the old monarch down full length on the earth, never to rise again. For there it lay when I ran back, filled with a kid’s idea of doing something to save it, its limbs broken and crushed and the sap oozing from its wounds like blood from one of us.”
“I know, Wattie, I know” — and you’ll take a seat on the ground with your back against the wall of the old shed and the axe across your knees — “I’ve seen it all, and felt the same as you.”
“And what seemed strange to me” — he’ll continue — “was how soon the sun started to ravish it in its helplessness, just like a wild animal devouring its crippled prey. For almost immediately the fresh green foliage began to droop and curl, and the song that it crooned to the winds, even when the cross-cut was severing its vitals, was silenced! And on my soul, Dick, you couldn’t imagine how I hated those old fellows as I hung over the stump.”
“I can, Wattie”, you’ll affirm.
“The same sort of pity came to me, Dick, that fellows often feel when they stand over a bullock they’ve just pethed or bulleted in a killing-yard, and put their hands on its still warm body. Even though the brute had done its best to put its horns through them they feel a bit sorry for having ended its life.”
“I’ve felt it, Wattie”, you’ll admit reflectively.
Then as he rakes away the loose earth to shape a place to sit opposite you, you’ll ask, “Did you ever look down upon a scrub of cypress pine from the top of a high mountain?”
“Lots of times, Dick — and never wanted to take my eyes off it.”
“What a sight it is!” you’ll remember; “no other timber that I know of makes such a picture. Though crowded together the tops of the trees seem set evenly, all pointing skyward like church spires, and tumbling away for miles in massed squares and triangles.”
“And when you’re down amongst them, Dick, the masses of ferny branches hang round the trunks like cloaks, but what clinging things they are to gallop through!”
“Gad, don’t I know”, thoughtfully from you.
“Of course you saw a lot of it one time, Dick”, and a glow of admiration in his face will stir your memory.
“On Western Creek,” you’ll recall — “along with Jim Houston and Jack Fitz.”
“Great horsemen, the pair of them, Dick.”
“I hunted wild cattle with them in the pine scrubs out there” — you’ll tell him — “and what scrubs they were. They had been at it for years, and how they knew the lay of the country, those two fellows, and every move of the wild mobs! But the game was new to me. Though you could ride like hell in the ranges and sit bucks with your pipe in your mouth, you soon found you had a lot to learn in the pines.”
“It makes a new-chum of you, doesn’t it?” from him.
“It did of me, Wattie, for I blundered behind Houston and Fitz for a whole week, often losing sight of them altogether, and hardly ever seeing a sign of the mob we were after!”
“And you one of the best horsemen on the ranges then, Dick!”
“Till one day, Wattie, we struck the biggest, wildest, and swiftest mob ever met out there, and yarded over a hundred of them.”
“You did!” in astonishment from Wattie.
“I had a good mount that day — a black horse called Trooper, three-parts thoroughbred, by Leopold, fast and handy; a horse I gave an old stockman who was quitting the game ten pounds for, and he had had a couple of weeks’ spell.”
“I know the sort, Dick.”
“It was about midday, and the mob was camping well out from the pine scrub when we came on them. A curious thing, too, Wattie, that Fitz, as we rode quietly along, had just said what a find it would be if we started a mob there! And no sooner were the words out of his mouth when, gad! there in front of us were five hundred if there was a hoof, covering three or four acres of ground, most of them lying down, the rest standing in the shade of scattered collibah trees, chewing the cud and flicking the flies off with their tails.”
“Wars! What luck!” Wattie will gasp.
“Luck! We could hardly believe they were scrub cattle at all, just for the moment… ‘Hell! Look out, chaps!’ I remember Houston calling, then in an instant all that were lying on their feet, and the whole mob, with an affrighted snort that stirred the air, jumped into their stride, tails up over their backs, and thundered off. In open order, in massed formation, in line, but all following the lead of two bulls, a black and a red, they made for the pine scrub a quarter of a mile away.
‘“Stick to them, chaps, one of you on each side’, Fitz shouted — I can almost hear him now — as we rapped our heels into our horses, and grabbed a short grip of the reins — ‘I’ll follow them up.’
“What a race it was! But we never caught sight of each other again until it was all over.”
“Ghost! I see them going, Dick, with you fellows after them”, Wattie will chuckle excitedly.
“They cut the pace, too, Wattie,” you’ll continue, “reaching the pines almost abreast of each other. I flashed level with the ned ones, a young bull and a white cow were nearest me, I remember, just as we hit the thick of it. But Trooper, with eyes set, had chosen his path. I crouched on his neck, dropped him the reins, and into the cypress we dashed and ‘swished’. There were no thorns and entanglements; but how dense and dark it all was! Had I time to think I must have thought that scrub was filled with spirits of darkness. But I clung with my heels as I crouched, my head tucked under, leaving the pace and the course to Trooper. And how he tore and swept me as part of himself through those clustering pines!”
“Holy, I can see the two of you, Dick.”
“The going was soft though, and level as a table, Wattie; there wasn’t a stone or a gully, but the swishing and tearing of the mob was like the roaring of the sea, and I kept in touch with the mob by ear. Suddenly there came brief flashes of light, and into the narrow open space we raced. Trooper crossed it like crossing a lane, and as I lifted my head I saw the white cow on my left, and let out a whoop of triumph for the others to hear. Then into more pines and dimness again! … But that narrow break was only the first of others much wider to follow. They came in rapid succession until right out in the open we burst, scrubbers and horsemen together. Gad, Wattie! if I live to be a hundred I shall never forget the riding and shouting and charging that followed!”
“You yarded a lot of them, though, Dick?” and Wattie’ll rise excitedly.
“But they broke through the yard in the night, old chap, and got back to the cypress again!” you’ll answer.
You’ve pulled through two more years on your little homestead, and the deeds are in sight. The Crown Lands ranger has been along taking stock of your improvements, and giving you advice on the making of farms and farmers. The knowledge he reveals will be wonderful — equalled only by the super-knowledge of the Intelligence Bureau man. He’ll stay the night with you, too, and eat you out of bread, and sleep as sound as Bunyan’s pilgrim in your bed while you toss about on a shakedown in your living-room.
But you battle on, following the plough and the sun from day to day, tailing the dairy herd, and trotting along to and from the factory. And though you’ve seen the main creek desolate of water, and your hay withered, and the grass eaten out, and very little green anywhere about, and heard the chums in the migrant colony over on the plain murmuring like a remnant of Philistines despairing, you’re still smiling.
You’re still a bachelor, too, doing your own laundry and chambermaiding, and cooking — putting junks of salt beef on to boil before going to bed, and making dampers whenever you have unexpected guests to your table, or the township baker runs out of dough, or forgets to leave your loaf on the gate-post.
Your methods of housekeeping, too, haven’t improved like your dairy herd, or your ideas of gathering corn and reaping ears. Still, you are getting on; you are called a landholder now, which carries weight; and you’re among those who have a stake in the country, and are its backbone … You’re invited to join in movements afoot for the good of the district. Agents for separators, and harvesters and headers, and milking machines, and sewing machines, and insurances, all put you on their visiting list; and the local M.L.A., as well as his numerous rivals, call to see you, and blather inspiration about taxation, and a railway past the green-grey homestead, and a station at your gate. Even your old cowyard hat with all its air holes will be a lot too small for you, you’re feeling so important.
You’re asked to attend progress meetings, too, to get the telephone extended from the township to Smith, and a post office opened there … Smith is the latest name given your area by someone in authority down in the city … It is given to perpetuate to posterity a notable who crammed a lot into a short busy life before being called to account. You’re asked to sign petitions, too, praying the Shire Council to put a culvert over Dog’s Gully, and to deal with a diseased quadruped that is playing dog-in-the-manger at the creek-crossing. And when you’ve put your quavering signature to them, below old Silas King’s and Tim Ryan’s, and crossed the “h” instead of the “t”, and placed a pool of ink over the “i” instead of a dot, you’ll thrill with the brief authority of a ratepayer.
Because you think a lot and say little, and look as if the spirit of the dove has descended on you, you’ll be reckoned a brainy chap — a man with a wealth of knowledge hidden in him. So one day when the Lukins, and Miskins, and Abrahams and others, who for years have been sending their kids per horse, and per milk-cart, and German waggon, to school at the township, decide to fight for their rights and apply for a school all to themselves at Smith, you’ll bolt your supper and go along to a meeting of parents. It will be a historic meeting. At first you’ll feel doubtful about going, thinking you might be out of order, being a bachelor. But Murphy, in whose house the meeting will be held, will rule you well in order.
“G’hon with you!” he’ll pipe, “what difference do ud make, man, if you haven’t e’er a chisseler? It dersent say you won’t have be the time the school is builded. Our own have stopped goin’ for long enough, plaise God, and it isn’t lookin’ as if there was goin’ to be any more in their plaice —”
Mrs. Murphy, who is wearing long ear-rings, and has a shawl about her shoulders, and is seated in a corner of the room sewing and listening, will interrupt him: “No, indeed, it isn’t, thanks to goodness, and you needn’t be sorry about it either.” And after a big laugh he’ll go on:
“Well, there’s Abrahams and Lukin and Miskin there, though they can pool a fair lot between them, they kant make up what’s required by the Department before the school can be builded, so Murphy here is goin’ to put down his monigram for a couple more anyway, and Dick Gall can surely do the same?”
“Just listen to the talk of him —” Mrs. Murphy will break in again. “Why, ’tis conspiracy you’re after, Pat.”
“Who the divil’s to know if it is?” Murphy will retort — “and a school at Smith — Wallaby Valley is the right name — will send up the value of Dick Gall’s homestead, anyone can tell him that.”
So you’ll accept the situation by merely remarking, “I don’t mind — if you’re satisfied, I am.” And add a couple of offspring to the list of eligibles.
“An’ what’s better still —” Murphy will determine with shining face — “just hand over that writing pin to him, Abrahams, and we’ll app’int Dick Gall secretary to the movement, for no man is abler than him to do ’ud. And I’m not jokin’ about it naither..
“And why should anyone be jokin’?” Mrs. Murphy will pause to bite off another thread — “for doesn’t us all know he can do it better than any wan widout such a cradle of talk, Pat.”
And so, blushing and grinning, you’ll adjust the pen to your hard, stiff fingers, and record the names of those present, and that Mr. Pat Murphy was voted to the chair. Then after a mixed argument about a chairman’s casting vote, and a bet between Miskin and Murphy as to when the school at the township was first opened, you’ll put down: “It was moved by Mr. Miskin, and seconded by Mr. Abrahams, that in the opinion of this meeting of parents the time has come for the Department to build a school at Smith, late Wallaby Valley, and that the secretary writes giving the number of children — carried unanimously.”
“And put this to ud”, the chairman will modestly direct: “Mr. Pat Murphy, the oldest risident in the distric’, who was in the chair, offered to give for nothing an acre of his land to build the school, providin’ — and don’t leave it out — providin’ that he don’t have to pay for the surveyin’…”
“In his usual generous-hearted style, why don’t you put? —” from Mrs. Murphy.
Then the meeting will close with thanks to the chairman, and when you’ve gathered up the minutes and are looking round to see where you left your hat, Murphy, who is very proud of himself at the moment, will ask: “What’s your hurry — sure there’s lots of time, man. Ye’ve no old woman waitin’ to see how’ll you get to bed.”
And Mrs. Murphy, gnawing at the cotton thread again, will chuckle: “Sure when you’ve given him a couple o’ childer why kant y’ be daicent and let him have a wife?”
While the room is ringing with mirth you’ll feel the blood tingling through your spine and gathering in your cheeks, and a suspicion that you’re being made a joke of will haunt you and start you wishing you had stayed at home and gone to bed. But Wally Lukin, who was dumb all through the meeting, will wake up and come to your rescue.
“You didn’t put in it —” he’ll remark — “how far the youngsters have to go to school from here, I don’t think, did yer?”
“We didn’t then, Wally —” Murphy will approve — “nor how many there are, either, an’ ’tis important, ’tis very important. So let us take the number of them: — see — there’s your own, how many is there of th’m?”
“Six of th’ young Lukins —” from Mrs. Murphy, as she tosses her sewing about.
“Six Lukins — put it down, Misther Secretary.”
“And nine of the Miskins —” confidently from Mrs. Murphy.
“Oh, good Lord!” and Murphy will stare incredulously at Miskin before bursting into laughter.
“And seven Abrahams”, from Mrs. Murphy above the noise.
“Seven for you?" and shifting his amused gaze to Abrahams, Murphy will break into fresh mirth, and wiping the tears from his eyes with his knuckles will conclude: “It isn’t a school you fellows want, it’s a reformat’ry.”
“For themselves, Pat, or for the childer?” Mrs. Murphy will ask as she takes out some stitches.
And as the mirth sinks again, Murphy will continue: “Well, now, that’s how many altogether, Dick?”
You’ll tell him, “Twenty-two.”
“And yours and my own, another four — but we better make it half a dozen between us, three each, what do you think, Dick?”
And while you’re thinking and grinning Mrs. Murphy will suggest: “And as ye men have childer so easily put them down triplets.” There will come another outburst; and then the chairman will mention distances.
“Eight miles and a half, mine has to go,” Abrahams will testify meekly.
“That’s as good as nine. Put down nine miles for them,” the chairman will direct — “and they goes over a mountain, too, doan’t them, Abrahams? And through a scrub hangin’ alive with snakes and death adders, and runnin’ wild with dingoes?”
Abrahams will hesitate, and Mrs. Murphy, surveying a half-finished garment, will add: “And with lions an’ tigers an’ leopards.”
“Put down about the snakes and adders and dingoes”, the chairman, ignoring Mrs. Murphy, will instruct.
Then Miskin, who has been to factory meetings, will raise a point.
“Oughtn’t it to be in a motion, Mr. Chairman?”
“It can be put in a motion if you like or in a ’mendment, it doesn’t matter a gradle which —”
“If it’s to go in a letter what in the name o’ God do you want it in a motion or a ’mendment for?” Mrs. Murphy, tiring of stitching, will ask spiritedly.
“Order! will ye ower there — Mr. Miskin have the floor!”
“Well, I declare!” and Mrs. Murphy, smiling to herself, will renew the sewing.
But Miskin won’t move any motion, so you’ll complete the minutes, and the chairman will close the business again with the hope that if they get a male teacher it’ll be one with wit and breeding.
“You old fool, Pat,” Mrs. Murphy will intrude once more, “a schoolmaster with wit an’ breeding would be kept for the Zoo.”
With a broad grin you’ll find your hat, and when you’ve said “good night, everyone”, Murphy will accompany you out to your horse… He’ll walk silently beside you as if there’s something on his mind … and when you throw the reins over the horse’s head he’ll take hold of the bridle bit.
“I spose that’ll be all right, Dick?” he’ll question looking up at you, “puttin’ the names of childer down to ourselves?”
Cripes! you’ll suddenly feel it’s all wrong; your blood’ll kind of freeze, and you’ll stare between your horse’s ears and drag hairs from his mane.
“And wan other thing, Dick —” Murphy’ll whisper in a way that will make the night seem more haunted than the mopokes behind the sheds — “Dersent y’ think for a small school like it will be that Julia, my daughter, would suit well to teach th’ chisseler? … I’m only askin’ your opinion, you understan’.” You haven’t any opinion that matters much about Julia; but under the light of the blazing stars and a sinking moon, you’ll go home brooding over the youngsters you have parented, and wondering how you can get rid of that secretaryship.
A bright velvety afternoon. You’re working on your cowyard, bringing it up to date, and putting in round stuff, throwing out sheets of old iron and curls of ironbark and scraps of barb-wire. Old Tim Ryan and young Bob McCleverty are giving you a hand. Old Tim will be standing pawing his whiskers, recalling the massacre of station sheep in ’68, on the very spot where your homestead stands, and Young Bob will be standing taking it all in, while you’re grunting and straining to hold up the heavy end of a mighty sapling-rail that will bruise the feet off you if you fumble and let it drop, and when suddenly Rover will let the world know that a sulky with two ladies in it is making for the front door of the home. Their appearance will be a surprise. Old Tim, in the act of demonstrating a squatter dodging a flying spear, will break off suddenly to glance round. Young Bob will put his head through a panel of the yard and discover, “It’s Mrs. Juba Lee and Josie King.”
Ghost! You’ll drop the mighty sapling with a crash and jump back bursting to call them a pair o’ dam’ fools. But you won’t get your intentions recorded. Instead, you’ll smile through the blood that’s rushing to your face, and stare with them at the movements of the sulky. It will stop at your front verandah — you haven’t got a back one yet — and Mrs. Juba Lee, who has charge of the reins, will be looking about for sight of you.
“They’re lookin’ for ye, Dick”, Old Tim will suggest, concernedly, and Young Bob, with a rising temperature because they might drive across the yard, will urge you to “cut over quick, an’ see them, an’ me an’ Mister Ryan will be putting up th’ next panel”. Then he’ll bend slowly over the sapling that you dropped, and be looking back between his legs for Old Tim to co-operate. Though he’s Young Bob, he’s fairly old, and has a shyness about meeting women when they’re dressed up, equalled only by your own.
“Yes, gahn, man! Gahn!” and Old Tim will attach himself to the sapling alongside Young Bob.
So you’ll crawl out of the enclosure, casting perturbed glances at the dirt on yourself and tightening your belt. And as you slouch along the crooked little track that you and Rover and the ’possums have worn, you’re lost in an abyss of discomfiture; your courage falls like the leaves of a tree; you’re in a sort of dream, and you look down at the red ants going along ahead of you, and coming forward to meet you; and while you walk on them as if they had no feelings, and no right to live, you wish to heavens you could be turned into one of them. Just when you’ve only ten or twelve more yards to cover, and the wind sporting with the drooping leaf of your old hat will show you the two women sitting under their flashing red and blue parasols, watching you coming, and the horse pricking his ears at you, you’ll suddenly remember having burst the seat of your pants straining to up-end a gatepost before Old Tim and Young Bob arrived to give a hand. Mighty! You don’t know if your shirt is protruding through the rent or not, and it’s too late now to put your hand behind to feel. And, conscious all at once of the gentle breezes finding their way to your bare skin, the aperture will feel enormous, and it will prey on your mind.
“Hello, Mister Dick Gall!” Mrs. Juba Lee, who has a pleasing way and charming informality, will greet you. She’s one in a roomful is Mrs. Lee. What you’ll answer won’t be clearly heard by them — nor by yourself either — and you’ll lift your hand as if you were going to stop your hat from flying off instead of raising it. Then Mrs. Lee will be sorry they didn’t notice you were working at the yard or they would have driven over and saved you the walk. And she’ll ask, “Don’t you know Miss King — Josie King?” Of course you know her in a sort of a way — you used to see her about the home when you worked for Old Silas, her father; but you didn’t look right at her because you were propping yourself as close to the horses as you could squeeze on account of the sudden trouble on your mind.
Crossing your legs to steady yourself, and looking like a section in a dog-leg fence, your eyes will meet Josie’s by accident. And, what will be surprising, she’ll be smiling down at you. She who was always reckoned proud and stuck up, and was never allowed by her father to speak to working men! And she’ll show such a set of teeth when she smiles that you’ll want to see them again.
And the flush in your face, and the shaking of your hands, and the shortness of your speech will all be put down by them to your modesty. They’ve heard you talked of as being very modest.
Flashing her large, motherly eyes round the homestead, Mrs. Lee will mentally note your methods and habits. In a glance or two she’ll measure you as correctly as a cobbler would measure you for a pair of boots. She’s been through a lot of pioneering herself has Mrs. Lee — worked beside Juba in the fields; lived with him under canvas; shed gallons of tears over his shattered hopes; helped to make a man of him in the end. She’ll take stock of your improvements, and the plan you’ve laid out the little homestead on.
And while you’re uncomfortable because you can’t think of anything to say to Josie, she’ll rescue you by breaking into admiration of the splendid avenue of trees you have formed by leaving the gums that were growing in line with each other and grubbing out the others. Not having noticed your ingenuity and sense of the artistic before, she’ll be full of enthusiasm. She’ll infect Josie with it, too, and the combined compliments and the smiles they’ll give you will make you blush more than ever; and you’ll grin and shake your head till your forget all about your pants.
You’ll be going to uncross your legs, too, to square yourself and put out your chest, when by chance you’ll look down and catch a view of your shadow. Holy! You’ll see a part of yourself projecting and moving when you move, like the ear of a calf. For a moment you can’t make out what part of you it is, and you’ll be wondering, till suddenly it will explode on you like a bomb that the tail of your shirt is hanging out. Laws, what a start you’ll get! And how you’ll change your position, dropping your hands by your thighs and spreading out your fingers! And you’ll be wondering if they noticed it.
“But it’s substance, not shadows, that interests women.” So Mrs. Lee, enthusing more, will remark the simple handy way you’ve hung your gate; and the patent boot-scraper you have. Your little vegetable garden, too, and fowl roost, will take her attention, and you’ll begin to feel proud and comfortable and be getting carried away again. But when Josie, who’s been looking round, is suddenly taken with the patent armchair on your verandah, shaped out of a hollow log, the approbation they both bestow on it is nearly your undoing. Without thinking you’ll turn round to look at the patent yourself; but all at once you’ll front face again, and look up into their faces, with your eyes blinking, and your hands twitching.
Changing the subject, Mrs. Lee will start pulling at her glove, and telling you what it is they’ve really come to see you about. Miss King and she are collecting a little money to give the school kids over their way a Christmas treat. And she’ll give you to understand that they haven’t called to dun you, but they’ve come out of respect and as a courtesy.
Mrs. Lee knows to the sixpence, pretty well, what your farm revenue amounts to, and what you can afford in donations and what you can’t. She also knows that to pass you by, out of pity and sympathy, would cut you deeper and leave more on your mind than waking up in the morning and finding one of your cows had turned up her heels. So, producing the list, which is flowing over with names and looks like a diagram of wireless waves, she’ll tell you they only expect a small contribution, “as you’re a single man, Dick”. But when you’re married and have a lot of children to send along to eat their share of the cakes and sandwiches, you’ll be expected to donate a lot more. And though she’ll beam first on Josie while she’s saying all this, and then on you, a queer feeling will come over you — an intuition — which will keep you from looking at Josie, and Josie from looking at you. But it’s the first time you’ve been asked for a subscription, and it comes on you as a first-born, and so your heart will open to it like a door. But it’s Josie’s job to record the donations, so while she taps her pink lips with the head of a silver-mounted pencil she’ll be looking down with her brown eyes, waiting for you to name the amount. That will be a trying moment. You’ll be overwhelmed with a spirit of bigheartedness; figures will fly to your brain as if you were a bank; your eyes will dance and glisten as though you’re enjoying a new sensation; your shadow will be neglected again, and at last you’ll blurt out: “Make it a quid.”
“Oh, Dick Gall!” Mrs. Lee will laugh, blushing crimson for your dog-gone recklessness. And Josie, when she gets her breath, will gasp, “Mister Gall!”
“That’s all right,” you’ll endorse with a grin — “it doesn’t often happen.”
But, like a mother to you, Mrs. Lee will tell Josie to put down two shillings, reckoning it’s quite enough, and more than some who’ll be sending along a cart-load of youngsters are giving.
“Quite enough, Mr. Gall”, Josie will confirm, and her voice will sound as music to you.
“All right, if y’ think so,” you’ll chuckle agreeably — “an’ if you wait a while I’ll go in an’ get it for y’.”
You’ll be in the act of turning right round again to go off into your castle, when the shadow will once more catch your eye. Laws! What a predicament you’ll be in then. They’ll notice your hesitation, and the fresh colour that rushed to your cheeks. But they’ll think it occurred to you that your treasury is empty, and so Mrs. Lee, to help you out, will tell you “not to mind — it doesn’t matter; it’ll do anytime”. But you don’t want to let them think you haven’t got any money, so you’ll get a sublime idea, and waving your hand to a big gum swaying on the other side of them, you’ll observe that it isn’t often four native bears can be seen up one tree. And while they’re looking round, laughing, and trying to locate the fourth bear, you’ll be taking three long fox-trot steps backwards, telling them at the same time where the fourth one is perched, till suddenly you turn round on to the verandah like a hunted wallaby.
Though you fancy you managed it all right, the ladies will turn their heads just in time to see your shirt-tail wagging as you disappear into your castle!
Next minute you’ll be sitting on the corner of the table holding your heart and your breath, and sighing, “Oh, hell!” But, of course, you won’t see the pathetic smile they’ll give each other, or hear Mrs. Lee whisper, “Th’ poor fellow!” They’ll be real understanding women, acting to others as they would have others act to them.
But having got your breath back, and feeling safe inside, you’ll be breaking your neck screwing and twisting to find out the total damage to your pants. Hokey! You would never have believed it! They are nearly split in halves! And thanking the Lord, in your delusion, that the women didn’t see them, you’ll get out of those pants as though they were infested with bull-ants, and pull on others in great haste.
Putting your hand on a couple of bob, out you’ll go again, smiling confidently and looking a different chap, as you slouch forward to the sulky, asking if they have seen the fourth bear yet? And out of the corner of her eye Mrs. Lee will notice your lightning change, and that you rubbed them on the floor before putting them on, thinking to make them look like a pair you discarded. But you won’t be aware of what she’s noticed; so you’ll go on reckoning that women are as most people think.
When they’re ready to go, and are shaking hands with you, and you’re blushing up again, you’ll promise faithfully to go to the picnic, and to go early, so as to help put up the swings, and collect the wood for boiling the tea-buckets. Then you’ll open the gate for them, and stand by ready to wave when they look back. But you won’t have to wave.
Still, when you turn away to go off to Old Tim and Young Bob again, you’ll be uplifted, and you’ll grin broadly, and feel like a martyred hero rising out of his own ashes.
It will be a cold night at Green Grey Homestead, the coldest you remember (you’ve forgotten all the others), and after you’ve had supper and washed up and put the bread away and scattered the crumbs from the table on to the floor with the dish cloth and made the humpy look shipshape, you’ll be crouched in front of the fire, not reading the paper as some would, but smoking hard and thinking. It’ll run through your head that now when fats are scarce is the time to get a good price from the butcher for the two steers he offered you a low figure for in the middle of summer. Finally deciding to sell them for a fiver apiece, you’ll turn your thoughts to the bees’ nest in the gully near your cultivation paddock. It’s been there in that silver-leaf ironbark for three years. Your neighbours know of it, too, and some have wondered why you have never robbed it. Just now you feel you would like a feed of honey; you’re tired of the same old jam — melon jam mostly, with pumpkin-seeds in it, bought at the local store. You haven’t tackled a bees’ nest since you were a kid; still, you were pretty good at ribbing them then; never getting more than a dozen stings or so; and you’ll reckon that, this old silver-leaf being hollow as a cave, there should be a couple of kerosene-tins of honey in it at least — more than enough to do you for the rest of the winter, and perhaps another half a tin or so that you could pass to the Murphys. You can give liberally when it’s your own honey and is not costing you anything.
But just when you’re wondering if you’ve got a piece of mosquito-net anywhere in the humpy to wear as a veil so as the bees won’t have it all their own way, Curly Ginty, from down on the plain, will walk in on top of you, complaining of the “blasted cold”, and telling you you’re “all right in here, Dick, beside a burning fire”.
Of course, your thoughts will be suddenly scattered, and for the moment you’ll feel kind of shamed that he caught you sitting there thinking to yourself. For Curly, a big fellow with longish hair and a constant grin and a loud voice, isn’t a close friend of yours and has rarely paid you a visit before. You’ll know, though, that he’s in with the Rileys, who do a bit of horse-dealing and horse-breaking, and you’ll go to rise to welcome him. But Curly won’t know any ceremony.
“Stop where you are”, he’ll tell you. “What do you think I am — a prince who can’t look after himself?” Then reaching for a stool he’ll adjust it near the fire, and he’ll look curiously round your humpy before beginning to talk. Then he’ll talk loud, and laugh loud, too, and often. He’ll ask what you did with the little jumping horse you used to have? And while you’re trying to tell him and feeling proud about it, he’ll be standing up stirring the fire by kicking it together with his boot and talking about something else. Then he’ll sit again, not having listened to a word you said, and start telling you the pranks the Rileys and he got up to one time over the Range with “Hungry” Hawran’s cattle and horses. He’ll tell you how they took a mob of Old Hungry’s cows as “coachers” to the scrub one moonlight night and “lost the whole jolly lot”; and how they used to ride the tails of Hungry’s horses that were spelling there, and swim them in a waterhole the next day to wash the sweat marks off ’em.
You’ll get so interested in all Curly is telling you, and the way he’s telling you, that you won’t notice the sparks that fly out of the fire and lodge in your lap and burn small holes in your moleskins. And the number of times he’ll rise and swing his arms about demonstrating and kicking the box over will make you laugh. And when you fancy — which you will — in the middle of it that you heard a tree fall, he’ll remember a song Dan Riley used to sing in the camp at night, and break out loudly into the first verse of it. Then you’ll laugh till you hear the report of a gun somewhere, when you’ll suddenly stop and listen curiously. He’ll listen with you.
“That sounded in the gully somewhere”, you’ll reckon wonderingly, with your ears still cocked.
“If there’s going to be any shooting here I’ll leave it to you, Dick”, Curly will say. “You got a gun. I haven’t. I’m off!” And snatching his hat, out the door and into the night he’ll go without even saying so-long.
Beyond the report of that gun there’ll be nothing, except fleas perhaps, to disturb your rest during the night. But in the morning, when you’re rounding up the milkers that camp in the gully, you’ll wonder for a moment if you’re really awake or walking in your sleep. The tree with the bees’ nest will be cut down and lying across your cultivation fence, and robbed of the honey!
“So that was your — game, Mr. Curly Ginty!” you’ll explode, and almost choke. And in your mind you’ll see the Rileys felling the tree and getting the honey while he was entertaining you. Then you’ll hear the gun-report again, signalling him that the job was finished.
Turning away you’ll vent your feelings on the loitering cows. “Get along, blast you, get along!” you’ll hiss. And you’ll keep on blasting them till they’re in the yard, and you’re sitting under one of them, squeezing the milk from her.
It will be a crisp, velvety Queensland morning in May — one of those mornings when, though fighting against irregular rainfall, middlemen and officialdom, you’ll feel it’s grand to be alive and amongst it all. You’ll have returned to your little homestead after having delivered the morning’s milk to the factory, and will be preparing to carry on where you had left off late the evening before, pulling your bit of corn, while round about the yard the dairy cows will still be camped, contentedly chewing at the cud. Dissimulating, willie-wagtails will be hopping and dancing about the backs of them, waltzing from their tails to their horns, and serenading them, even giving the unsophisticated, unsuspecting, surly old Jersey bull a turn at the same time, plucking and pinching beaksful of hair from their coats, and flying off to upholster their nests with the stolen goods. In the art of cheerful and barefaced purloining, the “sweet-pretty-little-William” has no equal in the feathered world. But you’ll pay no attention as you pass him by.
Before you reach the corn-paddock, however, a string of polo-players sporting white breeches and top-boots, with polo-sticks strapped behind their shoulders, each mounted on a good style of hack and leading a pair of clipped, corn-fed ponies, all in the pink of condition, and looking hard and tough and fit to play for an empire, will suddenly catch your eye. Then you’ll stand and stare while your heart’ll go faster. Those polo men will pull up short out of a canter — a long, long canter it will have been, too — and passing through your open gate in treble file will hail you loud and joyously by your Christian name, inquiring in chorus: “Why the devil ain’t you getting ready to go in to see the match?”
Great stars! Before you can get over your surprise and make answer, they’ll be riding right up to you, asking:
“Don’t you play at all now, Dick? Have you given the game up altogether?”
“Darn me eyes! Why, it’s th’ Philp boys!” you’ll jerk out, grinning in happy recognition of them.
And, failing to ride you down, they’ll draw in, gathering all round you, chuckling and laughing like the real sportsmen they are. Of course you’ll know them — the three famous mountain riders who, since the time their father used to strap them to the saddle, have known no life other than that on the back of a horse, and with whom in days past you played polo and rode scores of miles and locomoted hundreds more to play it — you could hardly forget them!
Ah, me, you’ll be pleased to see those old mates again, even though on appearances they have done better than you in the world since you separated. And you’ll notice they’ve scarcely grown a day older in the saddle. And they’ll be just as pleased to see you.
“Willie, Eddie, and Artie,” you’ll repeat proudly, almost inaudibly, as you look at their troop of ponies, greys, bays and browns, all over. And when one by one, while adjusting their reins, they’ll reach down from the saddle to shake hands with you, the ponies will be champing the bits, stamping, swinging about in a half right and left kind of fashion, crowding you, shoving you with shoulders and hindquarters as if ready and eager to trample you in the dust of your own little homestead.
But you won’t be thinking of the law of self-preservation: your blood will start tingling and your eyes dancing at sound of those voices and sight of the top-boots and spurs, bright stirrups and polo-sticks again. And when you gush impulsively: “Ghost! Wouldn’t I like to be one of you going to have another smack at it!” you’ll have said all that your heart will allow you at the moment.
Then when those mountain-reared brothers, filled with quiet gladness, will hope to see you playing with them again one day, and making those runs you used to make on Hippy down the side and round the wings, putting in those near-side forward hits on her that used to paralyze those who tried to ride you off, your memory will fly back to matches at Toowoomba, Spring Creek, Ipswich, Emu Creek, Brisbane and other places, and your eyes will glimmer till the scene before you and the green sward beneath is a phantom polo-ground with the dairy-cows portion of the spectators, and you yourself standing there booted and spurred, puffing and leaning on a polo-stick!
But on the boys asking, “Have you got a pair of shoeing-pincers on the homestead, Dick?” you’ll come quickly out of that day-dream.
“Yes, course!” you’ll say with feelings of fresh pride — the pride of proprietorship.
As the ponies swing round you’ll scurry across, leading the way to your blacksmith shop, a flat-roofed bark shed, with two sides and one end to it. The other end is its open door. Inside there’ll be a forge with a small bellows installed and other fittings — an anvil, a heap of old iron, a pile of miscellaneous horseshoes, tongs, hammers, hooks, broken swingle-trees, scraps of wire, and greenhide, and a broken dray-shaft. You’ll be proud of your blacksmith shop, too — proud because you designed and built it yourself, and collected everything that is in it. And while the Philp boys are dismounting at the shop-door sorting out the ponies and fastening the reins of some of them, you’ll be tossing tools about in search of the pincers and a hammer.
“Which of them first?” you’ll ask, brandishing a rasp as well as the pincers; but when on looking round you’ll see one of the boys bent double with the gray pony’s front foot held fast between his knees, at the same time motioning you to hand him the tools, you’ll think of his snow-white riding-pants and the chances of their getting ripped by the nails, and him having to take the field, as you have had to do yourself times before, with a handkerchief tied round his leg to hide his shame. Then you’ll ask him what he’s up to, and bending beside him, you’ll reach for the pony’s foot and place it between your own knees. He’ll stand by hitching at his belt and holding the halter-rein to keep the animal still for your benefit. Like a skilled craftsman you’ll handle the rasp and pincers, and in a minute or so you’ll be lugging and twisting that shoe till you toss it aside. And when the others, looking on, will compliment you, you’ll grin proudly, and go on attending to the rest, putting the rasp on them and trimming their hooves. You’ll straighten up at the finish, perspiring; and with a pain in your back you’ll move amongst those ponies, patting them, scrutinizing them and asking about their breeding and the rest.
And when the brothers, without discounting the merits of any, will assure you with enthusiasm that none of them ever was and never will be as good, or half as good, as the Hippy mare you used to play on in the days gone by, your memory will fly back to her achievements, and to the thrills and triumphs you shared with her.
“That little bay bloke there of Artie’s beside you”, one will suggest, indicating a pony on whose hindquarters you will be leaning, “is something like Hippy was when you first played her, Dick”.
“Something,” you’ll agree — “a bit higher perhaps, but hasn’t her rein or chest.”
“He hasn’t Hippy’s face either,” another brother will supplement as they all start collecting the ponies and gathering the reins together — “nor her brains and gameness.” Then, as all three reach the saddles: “Her sort, Dick, are few and far between!”
You won’t say anything at the moment, for you can’t help picturing the little mare in your mind, and thinking what a wonder she really was. One you had bred and reared and trained yourself; one that had carried you so often into the limelight; and a faithful companion to you in the saddle and out of it. And the thoughts of her will stir feelings that will dim your eyes, till a further question or two will lift you out of your brief reverie.
“She was out of a Blackbutt mare,” you’ll answer, “by Young Olympic, a trotter on the Clifton side, if you remember?”
And as they gaze down on you, their eyes brimming with the light of fellowship of horse, while they adjust their halter reins and fumble with neatly-booted feet for the off stirrup-irons, you’ll go on to explain feelingly, as though you were speaking of a lost relation, that you had her for two or three years after leaving their part of the world and giving up the game. And, stroking the pony nearest you on his arched and glowing neck, you’ll add after a silence: “I took her with me on a big droving trip to the Cooper, and across the Barkly, and just as she used to follow a polo-ball she would keep on the heels of a beast. A marvellous mare at ‘cutting out’ on a camp, Gad she was!”
The others, shaking their heads approvingly as they sit erect in the saddles, will “guess she would be!”
“She would never take up with other horses at night,” you’ll continue, “and no matter where it was or what sort of country we were going through, no brumby mobs could entice her away with them.”
“And the stallions at the head of some of those mobs running along the Culgoa and the Warrego were a daring dam bad lot, too!” the eldest brother reminded of past adventures of his own, will put in.
“No matter how dark the night was,” you’ll go on, “if I lifted my head from under the blanket and called out her name — or if I was mooching round quietly by myself, as you know a fellow does out there sometimes, or along with a mate — she’d whinny to me to let me know she was about. And if I didn’t answer she’d come closer and whinny again.
“Great as she was at polo,” you’ll tell them, “I think she was even better after stock. The last time I rode her was after cattle over the Dividing Range, not many miles from here, on Ma-Ma Creek. After mustering most of the day on her, I was making back with young Gower, carrying a tomahawk that we’d found near an old sawpit.”
“In a red-cedar gully off the creek?” one of them will suggest, and you’ll nod in agreement.
“And coming along under Tipsy Point,” you’ll proceed, “one of those long herring-gutted, yellow-and-white goannas, not unlike three or four feet of centipede, about a hundred yards on ahead of us, was scurrying for its life across our track, making for a big old-man gum-tree. There’d been no rain for a good while, so the grass was pretty well eaten out and bare.” Anticipating you, the boys will start chuckling.
‘“Watch me head that cove before he reaches th’ tree!’ I said to Gower. And the darn goanna had only about twenty yards or so to go to reach it. But before Gower had time to grin I touched Hippy with my heels and off she went like a shotgun; and holding the tomahawk as a polo-stick I rode like a bushranger, making record reckonings of pace and distance. Gad! When the yellow crawler heard the rattle of her hooves he put the pace on, working his stumpy legs like machinery and wriggling from his head to his tail.”
The brothers, leaning back in their saddles, will applaud the goanna in mirth, idly chorusing: “And who won, Dick?”
“Th’ darn yellow wriggler beat us for the tree by a yard, and was starting up it as Hippy flashed past, darn near putting her off-front foot on his tail.”
“Remember the match we played against Spring Creek, Dick?” one in no hurry to go will ask with fervour. And slowly shaking your head and seeming to smile away back to the past, you’ll stroke the coat of the flea-bitten grey before you in silent thought.
“You won that match on Hippy for us, Dick, when you went right through the lot of them, and got that last goal with an under-th’-neck cut — a beauty it was!”
You’ll remember it all.
“They had us walloped up to that. Marsden and Caswell were playing the game of their lives — Marsden reckless as Hell, riding across us and over us and on our heels.”
You’ll chuckle, thinking of Marsden swinging out, wheeling at racing pace, swerving and riding off without ever pulling a rein.
“We took you out of No. 3 and put you up in the front”, they’ll remind you with gleaming eyes. “And by the terrors, if Hippy didn’t shake them up that day nothing ever did! From side to side and end to end she kept them riding after her like Hell, and I don’t think you missed a stroke, Dick. Derned if you did!”
Seeing them still smiling down on you, and making no signs of going, you’ll find your voice again.
Their mirth will broaden.
“But you know what a champion Hippy was at wheeling full gallop?” you’ll continue. “Well, soon as she passed the tree — scattering dust and dead leaves over th’ goanna, too — I brought her round in her stride, right on her haunches, an’ back she raced, taking the old gum on the opposite side; and as we flew past again the tail of the dog-scared goanna was wriggling level with my shoulder. Taking a potshot at it with the tommy, darned if I didn’t amputate it at the butt — the cleanest job you ever saw!”
The roars that will come from the polo men will start the ponies jumping.
“And when I wheeled her again,” you’ll grin, “and looked up into the tree with Gower, there was our noble goanna perched on the highest branch, and when he turned his eyes down on us you never saw anyone look so darned indignant!” As the mirth subsides the brothers will enquire: “What did you do with Hippy, Dick — sell her?”
“In a way I did”, you’ll tell them. “I let Tom Allen have her for twenty quid after she got in foal to a hairy-legged, wooden-headed draught-horse. Tom played her a while, and then sold her for a hundred to a cove who came along buying polo-ponies for the Hordens. But I can’t imagine city fellows doing any good on a mare like Hippy.”
Then in turn the Philp boys will reach down across their horses to bid you so-long and shake hands warmly. And as you watch their mounted forms stringing out through your gateway, you’ll live again in fancy those days when you, too, rode through mountain passes, and over sunlit plains to line-up and mark your man on the polo fields of the south and east of Queensland.
It’ll be Christmas Week. The annual change in the solemn, plodding homesteaders will have set in strong. They’ll be making special trips to the township to buy a “few little extra things”; and some will take their wives and families with them, though most times it will be the wives who will take the husbands.
You yourself, though still a bachelor doing your own bit of washing and cooking and sweeping out, will trot along like the rest for a pound or two of raisins to try your hand on a pudding, and perhaps you’ll plunge on a hat and a couple of flannels as well.
And what a bureau of information the store will be to the lot of you!
“D’you know who’s come home for Christmas?” you’ll hear from the bustling storekeeper as you step on the verandah and reach the door. But before he can get any further his wife, who’s at the other end of the counter helping in the rush, will broadcast: “Willie Hagon and the two McNamaras.”
“And is it true?” the oldest customer will ask as he squeezes one of his feet into a new blucher, “that Sam Telford is back after being in th’ Never-Never for fifteen or seventeen years?”
‘That’s so”, the storekeeper, scooping currants out of a bin for Mrs. Flinn, will proclaim. “He came back a day or two ago.” Then there’ll be a pause to place the currants on the scales. And in the pause Mrs. Storekeeper will take up Sam Telford and give full details of his arrival, adding that “he’s going to stay at Rudd’s place, so they told us.”
Mention of Sam Telford will almost take your breath away. “What’s that?” you’ll ask, pushing your way in among the women and kids. “You mean Sam Telford whose father was killed by th’ blacks?”
“Th’ same”, proudly from the storekeeper, as he squints closely at the scales for the third or fourth time.
“And a smart-looking man he’s turned out, too,” will come from Mrs. Storekeeper, for the benefit of the lady customers, “with his beard and strapped trousers, though he must be middle-aged now.”
“Sam Telford back, eh?” you’ll smile, letting the raisins and the hat and flannels slip out of your head. “Me an’ him were pals for years out on the Warrego and the Cooper. Gad, I must see old Sam before he’s off again, wherever he is.”
“You’ll see him, Dick”, the storekeeper, taking back a few more of Mrs. Flinn’s currants to make the load lighter for her to carry, will assure you — “He’s sure to be in here again with some of the Rudds. We’ll tell him about you, and where your place is.”
“And tell him I’ve got whips of room for him”, you’ll say and out you’ll stride as if you’ve finished your shopping. But before reaching your horse you’ll stop abruptly and return with a foolish looking grin on your face.
It’ll be Christmas Eve now. Having had your dinner you’ll be standing in the doorway filling your pipe. The rubbish lying about will catch your eye and start you wondering if it wouldn’t be as well to clean it up and make the place look a bit tidy in case you might have a visitor or two. The thought has scarcely entered your head when you’ll realise that three horsemen have entered the gate and are almost at your door. How on earth you didn’t see them sooner has got you beat! And while you’re feeling puzzled, two of them, one a boy, will greet you mirthfully, the first addressing you as Dick, the other as R-R-Richard. The third will regard you with twinkling eyes and a broad smile. In an instant, of course, you’ll recognise Dave and Joe Rudd, though you will have seen little of them for over a year.
“Don’t you know who this bloke is, Dick?” Dave will ask, pointing proudly to Sam Telford as they all dismount.
“We’ve b-b-brought him over to s-s-see y’ and to have after-n-n-noon tea, Dick”, Joe’ll stutter with even more pride that Dave, for they’ll both be in charge of the lion.
“Sam!” you’ll exclaim proudly, and, bounding from the verandah, you’ll grab his hand and he’ll grab yours. Then looking you up and down he’ll reckon you haven’t altered a dam bit.
Leading the way, you’ll invite him into “the castle” (Dave and Joe will require no invitation). “And tell us what you’ve been doing since that Christmas — how many years ago? when we parted out on Maguire’s old cattle station.”
“About seventeen”, Sam will remember.
“I s-s-say, Dick,” Joe will break in, “them hens o’ yours has been eatin’ pumpkin s-s-seed.”
“Why?” you’ll ask indifferently, looking at the fowls that are dodging about. “What makes you think that, Joe?”
“Be th’ w-w-way they l-l-lean back when they walk an’ shove their hind p-p-part along like p-p-penguins.”
“Like your gran’mother!” Dave will guffaw at his young brother.
“They won’t l-l-lay any m-m-more eggs for y’, Dick,” Joe, ignoring Dave, will persist as they step on to the verandah, “unless y’ give them p-plenty o’ s-s-salts.”
“Was that what they used to give ’em to you for?” Dave will guffaw again; and Sam and you will break into mirth as you enter the castle.
“You’re surprised, I suppose, Sam,” you’ll begin, dragging the chairs together, “to find I’ve turned out a cockie? But tell us something about the West. I suppose if a fellow like me was taken there now blindfold and let go, he wouldn’t know where he was. And how did old Maguire get on — make his pile?”
“Oh, the old man passed out long ago, Dick”, Sam, who’s a good talker and no ordinary bushman, will answer as he rests the left boot on his right knee and toys with the rowel of his spur. “Fay — the daughter — you remember her — came in for everything when he died, and took over the station herself, and managed it splendidly, too.”
You’ll look surprised that a bit of a girl as she’ll appear to your mind could run a large cattle station — a job that lots of men wouldn’t tackle.
“A girl managin’ a station?” Dave will grin doubtingly. “Cripes, there must be a lot of the man in her.”
“No,” Sam will answer quietly; “a fine-looking girl she is, very tall, a great horsewoman, very game, very determined, and quite at home, day or night, in any part of the Bush. Very few men better than her.”
“And how big is th’ s-s-station, S-S-Sam?” Joe will want to know; “and how many kuk-kuk-cattle has she got on it?”
“Well I suppose you could ride in a straight line for a hundred miles or so without crossing the boundary of it”, he’ll be told.
“W-w-what?” from Joe. “A ’undred m-m-mile?”
“Ghost!” Dave will add.
“And about twenty thousand head of cattle when I was there. But for a while she lost some big mobs. A couple of ‘gentlemen’ buyers used to call and take a hundred or so off her hands at her own price and hand them over to their men, staying over-night themselves playing and singing songs, while a second lot of men moved off with a thousand head or so, keeping in the tracks of the others, but travelling by night.”
“Hokey!” Dave will gasp, leaning across the table, while Joe will echo: “A th-th-thousand!”
“The time came, though” — Sam will pause to put down his foot and stretch out his two long bowlegs in comfort — “when she got even with them.”
“W-what did she d-d-do, Sam?” from Joe.
“Lay a trap for them?” from Dave.
“Well, this is one instance. I was up to my eyes in it with her, as it happened.”
“Cripes! He never told us this one before”, Dave will gush in anticipation.
Then Sam will lean forward, press his palms down hard on his thighs, and with eyes opening wide, and glistening like the leaves of the myall in a sun-shower, will proceed:
“We were mustering on the western, side along Boomerong Creek — you’ll remember it, Dick?”
You’ll nod, of course, whether you remember it or not. “There was Fitzmaurice, the head stockman; Gongoola, a half-caste reared on the station; Fay Maguire, and yours truly. Fay was riding her grey mare, Britomarte, a splendid beast among stock; in fact, we were all mounted on the station’s best.”
“I reckon you would be, Sam,” you’ll break in reminiscently, your eyes starting to light up as in fancy you see and scent the mobs and the mulga; “but the old place never had a bad horse on it.”
“As a rule we could muster a couple of thousand head of cattle at that end of the run, but this time we hadn’t been a couple of hours on the Creek when Gongoola, with a shake of his head, decided, ‘No cattle been runnin’ here for long time!’ “I agreed with him, but Fitzmaurice kept a still tongue. So we worked Boomerong Creek the whole of that day, only coming across about a hundred head, and made the old hut out there our headquarters.”
“And did the girl”, Dave will put in with a curious grin, “camp with all you blokes?”
“Safety in numbers, Dave”, Sam will answer. “Besides, Gongoola took care of her. Well, next day we came across some tracks ’way up the river. At first only an odd one or two, stragglers. But further along we got on the tracks of a mob. They came out of a belt of mulga, swam the river, crossed the boundary and headed due west. As it happened, we were all together, having made the spot where we picked up the first tracks our meeting-place. The time would be about noon. As each of us rode studying those tracks in silence, our thoughts all ran in the one direction. For there it was written on the ground, as plain as if it was printed on paper, that a mixed mob of at least a thousand head had been driven off the run — and driven by five horsemen, two of them on shod horses!”
“Holy! Eh!” And Dave will gape open-mouthed.
“ ‘Gone about three days’, Gongoola said as we all came together again. For a few moments we just sat in our saddles looking at one another.
“ ‘What do you want us to do, Miss Maguire?’ Fitzmaurice asked at last, speaking slowly while he dragged hairs from his horse’s mane.
“ ‘To follow them up as fast as we can, of course’, she answered sharply. And when we caught the look that flashed from her eyes we knew that she meant it, too, woman or no woman.
“ ‘Not much use rushing after them now when they’ve got three days’ start’, he demurred. ‘There’s no cattle country to the west of here that I know of, and you’ll find those tracks will swing right south before going far and get lost in the lagoon country.’
“ ‘That will be for us to find out’, she answered. ‘Now hurry, men, get the spare horses and packs, and we’ll follow them.’”
“And sh-sh-she was a woo-woo-woman, was she?” Joe will stutter in astonishment.
To which Dave will answer: “You don’t think she was a man, do y’?”
“N-n-no,” from Joe again — “an’ I d-d-don’t think you are either, D-D-Dave.”
“In less than a couple of hours we were on those tracks again, trailing them at a fair pace with our faces to the west, Gongoola leading the way. I can see him now as plain as I could see him then — leaning over his horse’s shoulder, his eyes scanning the ground, while his silence made him seem uncanny. Towards nightfall those tracks increased, showing another mob had joined in, the grass and herbage became scarcer and the water we came to was only soakage.
“Gongoola at intervals would turn his head to tell us it was right, but Fitzmaurice all the time was troubled with doubts.”
“W-W-What was that y’ s-s-said, Sam?” Joe not understanding will inquire.
Sam will explain and go on: “Before it got dark we came upon a fair-sized water-hole untouched by cattle or stock of any kind, and camped beside it for the night.”
“Cripes, and wasn’t she frightened?” Dave will wonder.
“Not the least; anyway, she didn’t show it. Y’see the Bush had been mother to Fay Maguire. Besides, Gongoola kept an eye on her sleeping-place, lifting his head at intervals to see she was not disturbed. I can see that camp now. A solitary owl, I remember, looked down upon the lot of us from the branch of a withered tree, blinking in the dim light of the stars.”
“I seen them l-l-like that, round our culti-v-v-vation”, Joe will say.
“Oh, shut up!” and Dave in reproval will press his foot on Joe’s. Joe will rescue it and kick out at Dave.
“Next morning we got going early and followed on till about three or four o’clock in the afternoon, when Fitzmaurice seemed to lose hope. Though he said little he looked back at every turn. He seemed to be making calculations of the distance we had come — of the number of miles it was to the fringe of mulga that now lay behind far over the plain. To the rest of us who gazed ahead in search of new objects, the gleaming stretches seemed to be dipping over a horizon that led to God knows where.”
“Cripes!” Dave, leaning back from the table, will whisper to you — “Sam can tell it all right!” But you’ll nudge him to keep silent.
“As we trailed along the horses suddenly made a bound and snorted. To our surprise a calf staggered to its feet from the shade of a salt-bush. It had knocked up, and been abandoned by the raiders. The poor little brute was famishing, and hadn’t long to live, and at sight of it we figured that that driven mob was not far off. As it staggered from horse to horse mistaking them in turn for its mother, Fitzmaurice took out his revolver and looked meaningly at Fay Maguire.
“ ‘It’s the kindest thing to do, I suppose’, she said.”
“And d-d-did he sh-sh-shoot it, S-S-Sam?” Joe will ask.
“Of course he did, y’ goat!” Dave will snigger disrespectfully.
“Another hour and a hot wind blew up — the hottest I was ever in. You’d think it was coming out of a furnace. It seemed to finally decide Fitzmaurice and suddenly he reined in. ‘It’s madness, Miss Maguire,’ he said, ‘to go any further. We’ve scarcely any rations left; and if there’s no grass and water on ahead, what’s going to happen to the lot of us?’
“She put it to Gongoola.
“‘Cattle-stealers know plenty of good country out here,’ he grinned, ‘or they wouldn’t take big mob.’ Gongoola was always logical.
“‘But this mob might only be wandering off to Halifax!’
Fitzmaurice argued. ‘Cattle take those fits sometimes.’
“‘Are you becoming afraid?’ she asked, her brown eyes flashing. ‘If you are, I expect you can find your way home.’
“‘I’m not afraid,’ he protested, ‘but I’m not going to be a dam fool any longer either, not for all the cattle on earth.’ With that he turned his horse and left us.”
“Cripes! Went back on his own, eh!” from Dave.
“Yes, and Gongoola and I went on with her to see it out.”
“She was pup-pup-plucky all right!” Joe decided.
“‘It’s hard to believe a man could be such a cur’, was all she said as we continued to run those tracks into the setting sun.
“The wide plain now appeared to be coming to an end. Two pinnacles came in sight; and we could see that the country sloped away on either side of them into lightly-timbered valleys. Gongoola, pointing his whip-handle, grinned. Fay Maguire could only stammer a word or two in her excitement.
“Passing between these pinnacles, standing there like a natural gateway, we got the surprise of our lives. Before us as far as we could see were rich grass lands, with clumps of forest trees. ‘What country is this, Gongoola?’ Fay Maguire asked in wonder. But the half-caste was as much astonished as she. A little further on we reined in to gaze with amazement upon a lake, and all along it, and out from it, cattle, cattle, sleek fat contented cattle! We hadn’t gone above a mile further before Gongoola cried out, pointing to a dozen head or so grazing quite near: ‘Here — look! Them been Homestead bullocks — got ’m our brand T.M. — look it!’
“‘So this is where they all are!’ Fay Maguire muttered. ‘The plant of cattle-thieves!’
“And all I could say was that I was damned.
“We’d hardly recovered from the surprise when a well-mounted chap came riding leisurely across to us. ‘Hello, you Billy Fitzmaurice!’ Gongoola called to him. Then I gasped ‘Mighty!’ For he was our head stockman’s brother!”
“Cripes!” Dave will break out, “so that was why the cow went back! He knew.”
Then there will be an interruption. The doorway of your home will be darkened by a burly, bewhiskered figure standing in it gazing on the group of you, and brandishing a green switch that he used as a riding-whip.
“D-D-Dad!” Joe, looking up, will stutter, and turn attentively to Sam again. But Sam will be looking up, too.
“Cripes!” Dave will whine in protest to Dad — “you spoilt it, comin’ in!”
“So this is where you all are?” Dad will roar. “With your heads together like sheep in a storm hidin’ from the thunder an’ lightnin’, an’ a hundred of someone’s pigs out there in your cultivation, Dick, spoilin’ your corn an’ pumpkins!”
“Pigs! ” and you foul Sam and the table in your haste to get out to the rescue.
And Sam and the others will follow to give you a hand.
You’ll find the evenings getting long and hard to put in at the little homestead. They’ll pall on you sometimes and fill you with memories of the old home you knew years now far arear. And it will all be because you’ve at last made up your mind to get married. You’ll sit thinking and wondering if you are going to do the right thing or not. With no one to consult or confide in, it will be harder for you to decide. So you’ll continue thinking on and dreaming back, turning over little mistakes, false steps and chances let slip, while your pipe will burn out and Rover, stretched as usual at your feet, will sigh and snore in his sleep.
Knocking the ash from the pipe into the fire and pondering more and more, you’ll start counting up what you’ve got to marry on. You’ll estimate the value of your stock and improvements, including the horse-collar you found on the way home from the factory, and a new bucket and a good two-inch rope that some absent-minded beggar left at your windmill; then you’ll add the increased value of your holding as per the shire rate-notice, which, of course, will be fifty per cent, below real value, for the shire councillors, as you’ll know, are shareholders themselves. Then, when you’ve appraised the cash value of your growing wheat-crop and included factory returns for six months ahead as a fair thing, you’ll have made your assets look so satisfactory that you’ll start smiling and liberally filling your pipe again. You’ll confess to the snoring Rover that you feel you were a dashed fool ever to have been afraid of getting married, and that you’re dog-darn sorry you didn’t do it long ago.
Soon you’ll be chuckling to yourself, “Now who the deuce would have thought I’d ever be worth so much as that?” when a friendly kick on the door and sounds of welcome voices outside will bring you back to yourself again. Even Rover will prick his ears and look pleased for your sake, jealous as he is of you.
The visitors will be the two Ryan boys and young McCleverty; knowing that you are soon to be spliced, they’ve come over to spend the last of many good evenings with you. Single fellows in the bush all know that when one of themselves gets married it’s the last of him as far as his old mates are concerned. On the Ryan boys and young McCleverty, who’ve always found your bachelor quarters more of a home to them than their own abode, your passing into married life will have a very melancholy influence; though, of course, they’d be the last to make you aware of it. Bush youths are like women in that respect.
“Here he is,” they’ll chuckle gladly as they file in out of the darkness, “filling his old cherry pipe as usual, and talkin’ to th’ bloomin’ dawg, an’ lettin’ th’ darn fire go out — and us blokes freezin’. Cripes!”
Grinning happily, you’ll greet them with a “Hello!” and motion them to sit down. But Mickie Ryan, the leader of the trio, remarking censoriously that “he hasn’t got a darn stick to put on it”, will go out to visit the woodheap while the others, seating themselves in their accustomed places, will cheerfully advise the dog to keep his feet and tail out of the way if he doesn’t want them squashed.
Then Mickie Ryan will enter again loaded up with wood, and when the fire is blazing brightly and Rover sitting up blinking his eyes in appreciation of it and everyone settled comfortably, you’ll want to know what the latest is.
On past occasions they’d invariably drawl, “Nothin’ much; only the same thing, Dick!” But on this evening their eyes will light up, and, turning beaming faces on each other, they will hesitate, each expecting one of the others to make answer. Then Mickie Ryan, remembering he’s the eldest, will act as spokesman.
“By laws, Dick,” he’ll smile, “we’ve got something fresh this time — something that the four of us here could make money out of.”
“Money!” you’ll grin; and you’ll feel your blood beginning to tingle.
“It’s right, Dick,” the other two, their eyes sparkling, will confirm, “but wait till he tells you.”
“Ghost, yes, Dick,” Mickie will proceed; “you’ll think so, too, directly. Remember the time you and me saw those wild pigs at the head of King’s Creek, near Stevenhausen’s, close up three years ago?”
“There wasn’t more than half a dozen of them, was there?” you’ll say — you’ll remember that, too.
“Well, us coves were up at the head of the creek a couple of days ago, these two chaps and me, and instead of half a dozen — Christopher! we came across sixty or seventy of them.”
“I counted fifty myself from where I was”, young McCleverty will put in excitedly.
“But you didn’t see all those that I saw”, Johnny Ryan in turn will claim proudly.
“Course there must have been a ’ell of a lot more that none of us seen,” Mickie will go on, impressing you; “and there were all kinds of them, too, Dick, some fat as fools, and they all went like hunted devils for the undergrowth along the creek soon as they saw us.”
You’ll get interested and start visualising those wild pigs. You’ll think of their increasing numbers — begin estimating the value of them, calculating the chances of securing them — till your blood in anticipatory pride of possession will circulate rapidly.
“The ones that I got close to were round and sleek as any you’ve got topped off in your sties now, Dick — would have brought a fiver a head easy, the way pigs were going a couple of weeks ago”, young McCleverty will exaggerate; and Johnnie Ryan will vouchsafe that this old man “never sent better away, with all the feed he puts into them”.
After moments of silence, during which you’ll be thinking profoundly, and Rover will be settling his hairy form snugly round about your feet again, the others will wonder if it would be possible to get the beggars into a yard somehow or other, all the time looking to you for the solution.
“Well,” you’ll respond slowly, “they’re a good distance from the railway to do much with them after you’d put them in the yard, but the four of us here could get a lot of sport yarding them.”
That will rouse the hunting spirit in your visitors, and their eyes will flash suddenly as street-lamps just lighted.
“I never did any yarding of wild pigs”, young McCleverty will stutter with enthusiasm, wriggling into a more uncomfortable position on his box seat, while the Ryan boys will reckon that “a cove would want to be on a pretty good horse — and a pretty handy one, too — to yard ’em in that sort of country, wouldn’t he?”
Not only will the spirit of pursuit and of possession have gripped you, but you’ll be stirred now to a consciousness of superiority by the way they’re looking to you. And while they’re regarding you with eyes brimming with expectation your mind will rush back to those reckless years you spent ’way back in the wilds of the West; and your visitors, remembering the thrilling tales you had recounted in evenings gone by, will ask:
“What sort of horses did you fellows have when you used to hunt the wild pigs on the Maranoa, Dick?”
“Gad, they were the best that ever any fellow put a leg across”, you’ll be pleased to answer, for it will be back to those very horses and pig-hunts your mind had taken you.
“Tell us about it, Dick!”
And again you’ll recount to them how Wallumbilla Creek, below the old head station and across by Pickenjinnie flats, was alive with wild pigs when you were there. That was after the banks had taken over and the station was pretty well deserted and getting over-run with prickly-pear. The few head of cattle, some of them cleanskins, you’ll remember, were worked by the hands on Blythedale, further up. Long Alec MacLennan was in charge of the two places, and you were one of the stockmen. You’ll smile reflectively as you confess that all any of you did most of the year was to watch the prickly-pear spreading and the wild pigs breeding in it as fast as rabbits.
“How many were there, Dick?” will come eagerly from young McCleverty.
“God knows, youngster,” you’ll grin, shaking your head — “as many as the stars.”
“And all sorts of them, too, I suppose?” and with unceasing enthusiasm the Ryan boys will jerk their seats closer to you regardless of Rover exhibiting a nervous vigilance lest they stood on his toes or his tail.
“All sorts and all sizes,” you’ll continue; “but on the day I’m thinking of no one had any time to tell how many or see what they were like!” The day you’ll be thinking of was one filled with scrub pigs — rushing, barking, savage hogs.
“It was a hunt got up by MacLennan to help the cockies who had chanced taking up selections from the Government on the northern end of Wallumbilla, among the wallabies,” you’ll explain. “There was nothing else there that I remember except sand and scrubs of sandalwood. The Government, though, was supplying the cockies with wire-netting on time-payment to keep the wallabies off their selections; so MacLennan offered them pigs for nothing to stock their sties so long as they would come along and take a hand in catching them.”
“That wasn’t too bad of him”, the Ryan boys will enthuse. And young McCleverty will add: “Cripes it wasn’t!”
“And there was a city chap MacLennan was looking after,” you’ll proceed — “visiting the station, he was, on a holiday. He was out of an office, and wrote books. He had never before been among wild pigs, he said; so Mac, who was always out for sport, even with the station-hands, reckoned we’d have a bit of fun. Of course, our fellows kept taking it in turns to tell him of the dangers that were in pig-hunting, and warning him to hold his reins and the pommel tight when the galloping started, and not to get up into the front nor fall too far into the rear, and especially to keep wide of trees. I heard him ask one of the station-hands if any of the pigs had greasy tails, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a look of simplicity on his face that you’d think could only have been put there by Nature.”
As the others burst into mirth and Rover yawns and whimpers you’ll take a moment or two off to join the merriment.
“Anyway,” you’ll begin again, “everyone had to meet at the yards of the old Wallumbilla homestead pretty early in the morning of the pig-hunt to get a fresh horse. It was a glorious morning, too; but the big homestead house, with its verandahs and cedar fittings — built half a century before, and with Lawd knows how many rooms — was fast decaying because of neglect, and was empty of everything but an eating-table, an old chair or two, and a couple of miserable bunks; while in the fruit and flower gardens that once were all around it, now grew only rank grass, amongst which an old cow poked and foraged. But as the pig-hunters met and dismounted it was the horses in the yards rather than the old homestead that held their interest. There must have been at least twenty head of them — blacks, greys, bays and piebalds, all clean-skinned, fresh and fit-looking, staring and whinnying through the rails as the huntsmen approached from different quarters.”
“Hokey, eh!” and the eyes of your audience will gleam again in the dull light.
“Those who had decided to change on to station mounts were off their own before you could say ‘knife’, hoisting their saddles on to the cap of the yard, and pulling their bridles off. But the cockies, who had come only a couple of miles, most of ’em, remained seated in their saddles waiting for the party to get ready. They had empty sacks strapped across the pommels to bring back a sucker or two as part of their share of the spoils.”
“They reckoned they were going to be in the harvest all right” — and Mickie Ryan will cause another round of cheerful cackle.
“And all of them on their old draught nags,” you’ll admit with a smile; “but those station horses, as they stood there in the yard, flash and well-bred, staring, snorting and crushing each other — I can see them now as plain as I could then — their eyes flashing, their heads lifted, looking at you as if they had never seen a white man before.”
“Cripes! and they all broke-in horses?” in amazement from young McCleverty.
“Yes, broken,” you’ll admit, “and most of ’em eight-and ten-and twelve-year old; but there hadn’t been much work for them to do, and they’d had long spells. I can see us all hurrying and scrambling through the rails of the yards now, with the bridles in our hands, bustling one another for the pick of the mob — or what we reckoned was the pick.”
“And what sort did you get, Dick?” young McCleverty will interrupt. “The best one?”
“What sort!” you’ll repeat significantly. ‘The sort you don’t see much of now — a strong, low-set, well-put-together little bay, with a quick eye, a broad chest and clean legs.”
“One that would carry you all day, and be hard to hold at the end of it, I bet”, Mickie Ryan will add in proud endorsement.
“Two chaps from Mount Hutton — both good judges of a horse, too — had fixed their eyes on him, and I just beat them for him by a couple of inches. Of course, when I saw he was their pick, too, I felt as if I had drawn first prize in Tattersall’s big sweep.”
“And wasn’t he all right, Dick?” anxiously from young McCleverty.
“I’ll tell you directly”, and you’ll start grinning meaningly again.
“Was he broken-winded?” from Mickie Ryan. Mickie knew a lot about broken-winded horses.
“No, he wasn’t,” you’ll admit, broadening your grin, “but he dam nearly had mine broken.”
Your audience will chuckle in chorus and kick about, and disturb Rover, who’ll wisely draw in his feet and shift his tail.
“I led him out and was saddling him up in a bit of a hurry,” you’ll explain, “when MacLennan himself, girthing up a tall, brown stockhorse beside him, looked across and said: ‘You’re not a bad judge of horseflesh, Dick; but running wild pigs in the pear isn’t cutting-out on a cattle-camp, you know, and you better girth that fellow tight and put a crupper on him’.”
“Cripes!” — from the Ryan boys — “you struck a’ outlaw?”
“Not exactly”, and you’ll adjust yourself in your chair, at the same time resting one of your feet on Rover’s soft ribs. “He was always quiet enough after he’d settled down; but before he’d settle down with you he was the damnedest buckjumper the station ever knew.”
“Oh, ’ell!” and all three will regard you with expressions of sympathy.
“And he’d get to it the moment anyone was on him. Before I’d hardly hit the saddle he was at it — round and round, and squealing, and nearly getting me in the first couple. Gad, the girths strained and creaked. His head went clean out of sight — must have gone somewhere between his hind legs. Between the fright I got and the squeals he gave and the yells of the other fellows to hang on, I didn’t know what was happening, or where the diggings I was till he bumped like a blooming flywheel into the cockies’ horses, scattering them like forty mad armed policemen, and straightening me right up in the saddle and giving me a fresh grip of the reins and placing my feet back in the stirrups again. Then I knew my luck was in and I was right and —”
You’ll pause to smile at the others for gaping and looking so excited; and while you are pausing you’ll put your other foot on Rover’s ribs and he’ll pretend not to notice any difference.
“And from out amongst them he came with his head in sight, but between his knees, and down the slope from the yard he went bucking as if he had a flank-rope on and a lot of ginger under his tail. I got to him then; but he was crumpling and bucking himself into such a ball that I was rapping my heels together behind his hindquarters. When he got on to the open flat he gave the bucking best, and started stretching himself to a gallop. It was a question then of pulling him or letting him go for his blasted life till he pumped himself out.”
“I’d have let the cow go — I would!” Mickie will say vindictively.
‘That’s what I had to do, as it happened,” you’ll renew; “for just when I had given a couple of pulls at the reins and was snatching for breath, who should come rattling up beside me but the novice from the city, and on one of the swanky piebalds! Right up, brushin’ the little bay’s flanks, he came; then right beside me, his stirrup-irons clashing mine.”
“What! The city cove who knew nothing?” young McCleverty will echo.
“I could only just flash a glance, at him, for a cove has to watch a horse that’s been bucking with him, not knowing when he might suddenly down with his head again and into it. But in that one glance I saw it was him. And he started talking to me as if we were both in here, or sitting on the cap of the yard, instead of reefing and swinging through trees that might knock your brains out. ‘You stuck to him well, but he nearly had you’, I remember him shouting; then, lifting his voice louder, ‘Let him go! Take it out of him! A couple of furlongs — come on!’ He let the piebald out, laughing at me over his shoulder. And I let go the little bay. Through the wild lime-trees and sandalwoods we went hammer and tongs and close together. And just behind us all the others were coming like blazes.”
“He was no blooming novice, Dick!” from Johnny Ryan.
“Novice!” you’ll repeat, grinning. “A couple of looks across at him, and I saw he had the best hands I’d ever seen on a pair of bridle-reins in thick timber.”
“And he came out of an office, you said”, with a puzzled expression from Mickie Ryan.
“There was nothing of the office about him now”, you’ll smile. “He wasn’t only sitting the piebald as light as a blade of grass, but was riding with his head half-turned screwed in line with the horse’s ears, both his hands pressed down on the shoulder blades; the crown of his head set down against the wind, to keep his hat on; his face towards me, and all the time looking out of the tail of one eye to watch where he was going. And we were going, too. Gad, how the sandalwood crashed!”
“Holy! He didn’t learn to ride like that in a’ office!” the others will exclaim in admiration.
“He was part of his horse if ever a rider was, wherever he learned it, that’s all I can say”, you’ll answer. “And while the hanging boughs and limbs — you know what they mean — were smacking and belting me hard enough, he was gliding and swinging clear of the whole darn lot; and getting ahead of me, too! When he was a length or two in the lead he rose in the saddle and took hold of the piebald’s head. Then I took a pull, too, and as we were steadying down chuckling breathlessly to each other, he began dropping me friendly hints on riding in thick timber.”
“What!” the Ryan boys will break in. “Giving you hints, Dick — a city cove?”
“Yes”, you’ll smile. “But remember that I had only about an hour before been advising him what snags to look out for, and how to guide his horse when the galloping started — well, it made me feel a bit of a fool, though he didn’t seem to remember anything about it.”
A burst of merriment at your expense will come from the others.
“A lot of fellows have only themselves to blame”, he said, when he had reined up, leaning over and patting the piebald on the neck, “for getting hurt in the timber. They never seem to learn that a horse has more brains than his rider, is a better judge of space and has quicker and surer eyesight. All you have to do when you have the pace up, and the timber is getting thicker and thicker, is to get your eye into sympathy with his, leave his mouth alone, swing with him and guide him if you want to with your knees and your body.”
“And what did you reckon about it, Dick?” young McCleverty will ask curiously.
“I knew darned well he was right, for I had seen him demonstrate it”, you’ll answer. “But before I could say anything about it to him up came the whole army of pig-hunters again, MacLennan himself at the head of them, and the selectors with their heavy draught mounts and empty sacks bringing up the rear. Wallumbilla Creek was only a few hundred yards ahead of us then, and a bend in one of its long, narrow, deep waterholes, with ti-trees overhanging the banks, had just come into view. They were hailing us with shouts of laughter, when suddenly their voices changed to cries of ‘Look out! Look at th’ blanky pigs leaving the water!’ And sure enough there were pigs all colours by the score scrambling over the opposite bank — and in the Devil’s own hurry, too!”
“ ‘After them for your lives, chaps!’ shouted MacLennan, heeling and whipping his tall, brown camp-horse. And by the Lord Harry we went for our lives, too, and for the lives of those pigs. Every cove there had his horse under the whip from the first bound. We were on to the creek, striking at an angle, MacLennan still in the lead, the rest of us covering space a chain wide to the right and left of him. We saw the water for a stretch of a hundred yards or so glistening, splashing and churning as fresh-startled pigs made out of it to follow those that had already climbed the banks and were scurrying to the prickly-pear scrub over on Pickenjinnie flats. The field of us raced at the creek; then with wild shouts over the edge in twos, threes and fours together! Plunk! Flop! Grunt! Under; up to the surface again; a short swim; then up and over the opposite bank, men and horses wet and slimy, blindly scrambling, the whips going, bumping broadside into one another, clutching for fresh grips of the slippery reins, eyes straining for sight of the dam pigs!”
“Hokey!” the Ryan boys will gasp, while young McCleverty will be too excited to speak.
“When I got over you never saw such a sight. Pigs! There was a mob of them two hundred yards long — black, sandy, piebald, all sizes, all ages and sexes, going like hares for the thickest pear, not more than a quarter of a mile off.”
“Christopher!” from the Ryans.
“I wasn’t first over. I don’t know who was, really. But when I looked across to the right of me there was the city chap, the piebald all slush and looking like a black horse, right on his own, and about a dozen pigs not more than a couple of chains ahead of him.”
“He was no city bloke!” Mickie Ryan will reaffirm.
“No,” you’ll agree — “what he didn’t know about the Bush wasn’t fit to mention.
“Then the fun really started. That mob of blooming pigs, with the lot of us hot of them, spurring and flogging, seemed to fairly fly over the short distance. It soon was a neck and neck go with some of us, though most of the hogs were holding their lead. They had managed to reach the scattered pear — clumps of the cursed stuff that stand out from the thick scrub like sentinels. Those scared hogs scooted in strings and disappeared round clumps, and then hit out in other directions! Ghost, if they didn’t turn the hunt into an obstacle-race on us! ”
Loud excited mirth from the Ryans.
“Of course we couldn’t pull and slew our horses round and in and out of those darn clumps and keep the pace up, too! We had to make hurdles of them; and taking them in our stride turned the hunt into a grand steeplechase. Wars! It was Over! Over! Over! keeping your eye on the pig you had marked for your prize all the time. And, my stars! those hurdles kept getting closer and closer, and higher and broader, till the little bay, game as a tiger, blundered in trying to take three in quick succession, and, landing in the middle of the last clump objected to the thorns and prickles, and started bucking his way out, and —”
“And w-what, Dick?” young McCleverty will stutter eagerly.
“While I wasn’t thinking of him, but watching the darn pig I was after, he dropped me right in the middle of the blanky prickly-pear!”
“Hell!” the others will roar, for they will know all about pear; and taking advantage of the noise, Rover will liberate himself from the weight of your feet, and withdraw to another corner of the room.
“You must have been in a mess, Dick?” Mickie will suggest feelingly.
“I couldn’t see out of my eyes for dam prickles,” you’ll admit with a shudder, “and had them all over my body for weeks, though I stripped off in the creek and was rubbed with sand by the other fellows for about an hour!”
“And how many pigs did they get altogether?” the Ryans will inquire.
“None of them got a darn one,” you’ll answer grimly — “except the city chap. He stuck to a black sow, in and out, and over everything, till he ran her to a standstill. And when she bailed up she had a snout on her as long as the nose of the smithy’s bellows, and she barked at him and everyone else like a retriever dog.”
“Cripes!” the Ryans will conclude disappointedly — “that wasn’t much to get out of a hunt.”
“We mightn’t get any more than that if we go after this lot on King’s Creek!” young McCleverty, his excitement abating, will suggest.
“Except that, instead of a sow that will bark, you might get a big old boar with tusks a foot long who’ll rip your horse up, or take your leg off", you’ll conclude.
After returning from Pilton, where once you had been a stockman, you’ll be sitting alone reflecting on the galloping days gone by.
The old station was more like a rising township now than a squatter’s headquarters. It had a row of shingle-roofed huts, spacious stables, a carpenter’s shop, butcher’s shop, store, and blacksmith’s forge, where the best horse-shoeing was done for fifty miles around. The “big house” of English architecture, built of red cedar from the ranges, stood in the centre of a glorious garden where grapes, peaches, apricots, oranges, lemons and even bunya pines grew in profusion. The Governor being English an English oak was also growing there. Perhaps the oak was to remind him of home and hearten him under stress of the melancholy of the Australian Bush.
Long-whiskered men, boundary riders, fossickers and shepherds with ruined eyesight astride long, hollow-backed, one-eyed slow-walking horses nodding their grey heads in tune to the strides of them like roosters stepping across a farm paddock on the lookout for grasshoppers, sometimes called at the homestead. The best of stock-horses and hacks were bred on Pilton in your days, and the stockmen were lighthearted, adventurous spirits to whom horses and feats of horsemanship were the great things in life. How to breed ability in horses, how to handle and ride them, how to know the bush, were the problems that occupied their minds — not those of humanity or of government.
“Did y’ see them scrubbers that’s been comin’ out of Lagoon Creek?” you’ll remember a fossicker asked one day.
“Scrubbers?” they echoed in surprise. Had he asked had they seen nuggets of gold lying in the creek he couldn’t have surprised them more. For as long as they could remember mobs of wild cattle had inhabited the scrubs of the Great Dividing Range, and from time to time small lots of station beasts missed in the musters would stray off the run to join with the outlaws. In those weird mountain haunts they inbred and increased till no one had any idea as to their numbers. By day they confined their movements to the scrubs, rarely calling to each other, coming out at night to feed on the rank grasses and shrubs in the creek bends and forest valleys. The roaring of the bulls on such occasions would thrill you to the marrow. At long intervals news would be brought to the station of a mob seen in broad day a mile or two from the scrub, perhaps camped boldly in the open valleys. Also that a huge white bullock or a red and white one was among the number.
“Come with us next Saturd’y night and show us where they run”, they raptured. “We’ll lend you a horse; and camp near the scrub and give them a go for it at daylight in th’ mornin’?”
The fossicker said he didn’t mind.
Then old Joe, a bullock-driver for thirty hard years, recalled memories:
‘There was one o’ my bullicks then with th’ lagoon scrubbers,” he said, “a red an’ white one. I wer’ workin’ him when he went off one night after I unyoked. ‘Cocky’, he was called in th’ team. We was on th’ range then haulin’ posts for the fence on the plains, ten years ago! Billy Hall seen him over there long after with a mob, and the McCullaghs they seen him. But none o’ them couldn’t ever run him out; and I believe he wer’ a dam lot th’ wildest of th’ mob. He’d be a fourteen-year-old bullick if he wer’ alive now.”
* * *
Then you’ll think of a bright moonlight night in the ranges — a night that softened even the hardest of those lithe, eager-eyed stockmen as they rode in file down the sides of the great range. There were five of us in the party. A light breeze rustled the foliage of the trees. Startled marsupials hopping across our path stopped, and facing us erect, displayed their white breasts like broken signal-posts. Night birds greeted us in their weird haunting notes. Slowly and cautiously we descended into the silent valleys of Lagoon Creek, where the greasy slippery rockbeds shone like layers of silver beneath the moon. There the fossicker took the lead and headed off through the blady green scrub. With true bush craft he rode right on to it. But only a deserted camp was there. All that remained of it were the sapling frame, the ashes of the fireplace, and an empty bag or two.
We unsaddled, hobbled the horses, started a fire, and when the billy was boiled sat around and had supper. Lonely environment. Up the creek the great range rose in grim silence, the moon seeming to rest on it. Below us the big scrub, giving out haunting sounds that crowded our brain with thoughts of a great tomb filled with generations of dead souls and their secret woes. We talked but little, and then only in hushed tones, for this was the wild cattle country, and wild cattle are suspicious things and easily alarmed. After some had smoked a couple of pipes we walked quietly round the horses to see that all was right with them; then rolled ourselves in our blankets and tried to sleep. But our minds were too active — and too filled with visions of what the morning would bring — for slumber. Yet, the night passed rapidly enough.
Soon the dawn would break — we could see it coming with all its tints and streaks of glory. As we stood waiting awhile beside the horses, our arms leaning on the saddles, the big scrub that was dimly outlined began to take shape. The notes and songs and whistles of birds out of number broke out all around us, and what overnight had seemed the silent tomb of dead generations suddenly turned into a concert hall of nature.
“It is only about half a mile across”, the fossicker said as he mounted stiffly and led the way again. We followed without talking, but reaching down from force of habit to feel if our girths were right. As we moved across a swelling in the landscape grown over with cherrywood the grey dawn flushed to crimson. The sun was not far off. Down the sloping side, rustling through the cherry-bush, we entered Lagoon Creek, a shallow, pebble-bedded watercourse that cut its way through daisy beds, and hollows, and grassy flats. Running across, and swallowing it up a mile or so down, was the lagoon scrub, looking in the distance as even as a clipped hedge. Wet to the girths with the dew off the grass the horses tossed their heads and sniffed the morning air. Ascending a low bank we suddenly came upon a quantity of cow-dung and cattle tracks. Our hearts went pit-a-pat, and every eye searched the bush around. Still not a word was spoken. On ahead a clump of grass trees and patches of wallaby bush obscured an open valley coated with feathery grass from view. The fossicker threw back a meaning glance, and pointed to the grass and trees. We moved up beside him, taking a shorter grip of our reins — “Look out behind these trees”, he said — and then:
“There!” someone cried as the wild mob rose from their camping place, and off! And gad, what a mob — a hundred at least — red, white, black, brindle and blue — cows, bulls, bullocks, heifers and half-grown calves. With their tails on their backs they careered over that open valley for the big vine scrub.
“Head them!” cried Eustace; and out jumped every horse, into the clump of grass trees and out the other side. “Ride like hell!” from someone as the way was clear and the mob in full view. So we did; our heels and hands went hard at the horses while the going looked good. Over an embankment, up the slope of a hill rushed the scrubbers close packed, a white beast at the tail of them, a string of black bulls in the lead. Around the black wattles; into the creek again and out of it, plunging and splashing and crashing. Hugging the left side of it they thundered along — the rattle of hoofs in the rear of them coming closer at every stride. Into a wilderness of saplings, bumping them, swaying them, smashing them. Now away from the creek, throwing dust up like the whirl of a windstorm — “Stick to them!” came from beside me in a wind-choked voice. Then the rattle of irons and the flapping of heels. As the dingo makes for his lair, the fox for his hole, the ’roo for the ridges, the wild cattle made for the scrub. A few moments more and they were into it. But Burton was catching them, passing them; then around to the head of them went the brown horse. On his heels came the rest of us, the old fossicker trotting along in the rear. The mob were bewildered; they stopped in amazement; we flew through the trees, and in line turned and faced them. The scrub was behind us. A line of wild heads, spear-horned, short-horned, cock-horned, stared hard at us. Streaks and strings of froth hung from the mouths of them.
“Woh!… Werp!… Woh-h there!” and sharp cracks rang out to distract them. Would they turn and give tail or — Gad, what moments of excitement they were! A black cow, broken-horned and scarred, snorted and went for us. “Look out!… Woh-h!” But now the whole maddened mob were snorting and charging us. The rest was all shouts, and all bluff and spurring and wheeling and swearing. At the point of the horns they turned us and scattered us. “Ride on, there’s a bull right behind you!” But Greygo, caught napping, was gored in both his hindquarters! Then into the scrub on all sides of us they vanished, twisting and jerking their heads to glide the horns through. Two, though, were baffled. Right out from the scrub Burton was racing and shouldering a red and white bullock with horns a yard wide, while Eustace was wheeling and lashing a warrior cow. Uniting our forces we smothered them, hustled them, gave them no chances till we brought them right home and into the yard.
* * *
All the station people gathered at the yard to view those scrubbers. And how the captives resented their presence! and they snorted, and shaking their heads pawed at the dust; then charged at the panels.
“You dersen’t tell me”, said old Joe, “that that’s my Cocky?”
The manager endorsed what the brand was.
“Dem me if I don’t think so”. The dim eyes of the old bullock man strained through the rails. Then lifting his voice he roared — “Wah Cocky!… Woh-h! Come here!"
The scrubber instantly turned and looked as though he’d heard something that was familiar.
All of us chuckled.
“Gee back, Cocky — you — loafing wild scrub dog!”
Cocky was bewildered. He trotted across the yard, turned and stared again and seemed to understand.
“That’s him," old Joe concluded with a joyous chuckle — “but, good lord, ain’t he growed?”
Then with a sigh you’ll come out of your dreams, and rise to stir the fire.
It will be a bright moonlight night, almost as bright as day — brighter than many days — but there’ll be no inducement for you to move out and walk about in it with your concertina, “making sweet melody and singing many songs”.
You’ve just returned from the city — from Sydney, this time — where you’ve spent a full month’s holiday, the first real holiday you had for six years. So you’ll be sitting with your elbow on the table gazing down at Rover scratching himself on the floor at your feet, and enjoying the holiday over again in your mind, smiling over some of the incidents — even chuckling and rousing Rover’s interest. He’ll suddenly cease pursuing the fleas and look up at you curiously.
Dave and Joe Rudd, who have been looking forward to your return, will enter upon you with boisterous greeting, guffawing and chuckling and passing a friendly word or two to Rover as one of the family.
“Cripes! Back again, eh, Dick?” Dave dropping into a chair without bothering to shake hands will drawl, while Joe, squatting near the ashes of the fireplace, will stutter:
“An’ n-not lookin’ too bad a-a-after it, neither.”
“And blow me,” you’ll grin, looking happily from one to the other, “if I wasn’t thinking about it, going all over it again just when y’ came in.”
“W-w-what was y’ th-thinkin’ of it, D-Dick,” Joe will ask — “th’ shop winders or th’ coves s-s-sellin’ apples or th’ g-girls?”
You’ll grin at Joe and answer: “There was no end of shop windows, as many of them as trees an’ logs between here and heaven knows where. And as for girls, Joe, the flocks of them dressed up like rainbows and with skirts on them about as long as emus’ tails that pour out of shops and dens and lanes and holes and corners between five an’ six in the evening, after knocking off work, as they call it, and rush for trams an’ boats an’ trains an’ motor-cars — would make you wonder whatever in th’ name of the milkcan in the corner there could half o’ them find to do, or why they were ever kept after being born!”
“When I was down,” Dave will put in grievously, “none of th’ blokes ever did anythin’ either. There they was in mobs stuck in offices and behind counters doin’ nothin’ that anyone could see ’cept pinchin’ th’ girls an’ chasin’ ’em round tables pullin’ at ’em an’ askin’ who they were out with on Satu’dee, an’ did they want anyone with ’em on Sundee? Beehivin’ an’ sweetheartin’ is about what all of ’em do in them places, I reckon.”
“I saw plenty of that, too, Dave,” you’ll agree; “but what I was smiling to myself most for was what I saw of the sort of life they live in flats, as they call them.”
“What do y’ m-m-mean be f-f-flats, D-Dick — f-f-flat heads?” Joe will ask.
“No — lucen flats, y’ goat!” Dave will guffaw at Joe.
“They’re the places that thousands of them live in,” you’ll explain — “instead of houses. Houses some of them were once, but now made into kennels. And you never saw the likes of some of them. What were mansions and halls and swell residences once they’ve stuck three and four more storeys on to and turned them into these flats — ‘self-contained homes’, they call some of them.”
“W-w-what does that m-m-mean?” Joe will ask — “th-that they t-t-tucker themselves?”
“That I’m not certain about myself; but those that I saw contained a couple of coves or a couple of women, or perhaps a small family. But all divided off into sort of pens.”
“Same as we divide th’ cowstalls and pigsties?” from Dave.
“You’ve about struck it, Dave.”
“An’ quicker than he s-s-struck th’ g-g-gold he’s b-b-been lookin’ for up th’ g-g-gully for th’ last y-year”, Joe will interrupt.
“Alwez puttin’ your spoke in where it ain’t wanted!” Dave will snap, looking down cynically upon his brother.
“It was McGreen who showed me some of the flats”, you’ll resume. “He lives in one himself. You chaps will remember him, I suppose. He worked about here years ago doing council jobs.”
Dave will have a recollection of him, but Joe will shake his head and thoughtfully drop a fistful of ashes into Rover’s ear. The latter will suddenly and vigorously shake his head and throw some of the ashes into Dave’s eye. Dave, rubbing the optic, will reach for Joe and demand: “ ’Ere, what th’ ’ell are y’ doin’?”
After chuckling at Dave, you’ll proceed again:
“He left and went to Sydney when his old man died, and became a land-agent and a flat expert.”
“Wh-what’s a flat expert, Dick?” from Dave, who’ll still be rubbing his eye. “Anything to do with machinery?”
“A expert in f-f-flat-irons or s-s-somethin’, I s-s-pose”, Joe’ll venture.
“Goat!” — from Dave.
Explaining that you scarcely know what it means yourself, you’ll go ahead: “Well, Mac took me to this flat of his right at the top of a pile of buildings as high as a mountain; and to get up to his little ‘home’ we climbed the Lawd knows how many steps and stairs winding and zigzagging like that old cattle-track over the range at Hirst Vale, excepting that you saw no scenery or anything to remind you there was a God or Nature, but all walls, walls with doors in them, shut tight like the doors of the cells of a gaol.”
“Oh, ’ell!” — feelingly from Dave.
“And not the habitations of free white people with nothing on their minds. And so, when we reached the top, McGreen, stopping before one of these doors and puffing like a horse, took out his key, flung it open and pointed the way in lordly sort of style for me to enter and sez, ‘There you are, Dick — this is our headquarters.’ Then he walks round pointing out the furniture to me, and the different apartments, and all the comforts of th’ darn caboose.”
“Pup-pup-partments?” Joe will query.
‘That’s what Mac called them”, you’ll answer. “Two rooms they amounted to — and half of one was the kitchen!”
“And where th’ diggings did they have their beds?” Dave will interrupt again.
“One bed was in th’ ‘front room’,” you’ll grin, “along with the dining-table and the mantelpiece and the chairs and packets of cigarettes and beer bottles and photos of girls high-kicking without a stitch on.”
“It m-must have b-b-been as good as goin’ to th’ pup-pup-picture-show” — mirthfully from Joe.
“ ’Cept that you didn’t pay anythin’, eh, Dick?” Dave will add.
“The other bed, a sort of stretcher, was in the kitchen, where there was more packets of cigarettes and more empty bottles, and a little gas stove with a dirty frying-pan on it, and a toasting-fork and a billy-can of milk (about as big as a tin matchbox, the billy was), and a sink full of cups and saucers and plates waiting to be washed up.”
“D-D-Dick, D-Dick,” Joe’ll object, “you can’t s-s-stuff us that McGrGreen is livin’ in a place l-l-like that!”
“And thousands of others, Joe, as I’ve told you.”
“Worse’n bloomin’ pigs!” Dave will grunt.
“Pigs!” you’ll exclaim. “Lots of them think they’re princes and fairies. And to see some o’ them coming out in the mornings — laws! Flash as racehorses.”
“And w-wimmen?” from Joe.
“Women and girls — ‘flappers’, ‘tarts’, ‘skirts’, ‘flames’, they call them — and smelling like scented wheat and smut and covered with powder and paint, half an inch thick on some of them. The secret of youthfulness’, they call it — especially those who are about fifty.”
“They ought to be hanged!” — from Dave.
“And the partitions between their flats would make you fellows grin. Between Mac’s kitchen and the one in the same ‘home’, where a couple of tarts lived, was only a light frame of board. A cat or a dog could have knocked it over, and the height of it was about five-foot-six. Hearing some plates rattling and a pan sizzling Mac looked over the top of it and passed the time of evening to his nextdoor neighbour. Of course I had a look over too” — you’ll pause to chuckle, while your listeners stare in wonderment — “and, ghost! there were women’s fancy things that had been washed hanging across to dry on a string clothes-line!”
“A clothes-l-l-line in the kuk-kitchen?” Joe’ll repeat; and Dave will guffaw: “Cripes, they’re worse than th’ blacks!”
“And, ‘Hellow, Miss Powdery’, said Mac, and of course, I pulled my head back, seeing a woman there — ‘getting ready for tea?’
“ ‘Trying to,’ Mr. McGreen,’ she answered, ‘and I’m all on my own. Mabel’s stopping in town to have dinner at th’ Australia with a friend; then off for a motor-car spin.’
“She’s got all the luck’, says Mac, and winked.
“ ‘It’s with a friend of hers who’s up from Adelaide for the Show.’
“ ‘Oh, yes, I see’, says Mac, and winked back over his shoulder at me.”
“S’pose he reckoned she was tryin’ to pull his leg?” Dave will suggest innocently.
“Mac knew all right”, you’ll smile. “He told me all about it afterwards. But to go round the big places in the city where the eating-shops and lounges, as they call them, are!” You’ll break out in a new vein, and shift the venue. “At about eleven o’clock in the day, and from five to six when a lot of them have knocked off work — Hokey! You’ll see how a woman with the new ideas can put away cocktails, as they call ’em, and gin and cigarettes; and plenty that haven’t got any ideas at all. And their lips — wide-cut lips a lot of them have, too — red as if they had been brought up eating prickly-pear fruit! There you’ll see them in scores puffing at cigarettes after sampling th’ gin, showing their legs with silk stockings on, crossing them and recrossing them to attract attention, and with shoes costing two or three quid with silver buckles and diamonds on them.”
“Cripes!” from Dave. “And who pays for ’em?”
“Don’t ask me”, you’ll smile. “I asked Mac that question myself. But to see them sipping th’ gin, then lifting their heads and puffing out smoke like hens on a hot day drinking water, was something to think about.”
Here you will rise to welcome Ted Williams, telling him to come in — “there’s only Dave and Joe here”.
“And w-w-wasn’t there any men among them, D-Dick?” Joe will ask.
“Men?” you’ll echo, sitting down again at the table. “There were dudes and toffs an’ bald-headed old blokes full of money.”
“And what would the men be doing, Dick?” Dave will ask.
“Offsiding for th’ women,” you’ll answer — “lighting the cigarettes for them as if it was a favour worth a lot more than you’d think, and beckoning to the white-coated waiters to keep the glasses full.”
“Cripes, eh!” from Dave.
“They w-w-would be the leaders of th’ m-m-mob”, Joe will reckon; then Dave and Ted Williams will join him in mirth.
“And to see them all squatting round bits of tables,” you’ll conclude — “nothing like this one here o’ mine — with their legs coiled round the legs o’ them, and around their own legs, and around some of the old blokes’ legs, and all of them looking like families of silkworms groping blindly for each other in a tin — well it was all I wanted to see of th’ city!”
An autumn evening in May. After tea you’ll short-cut through the grass paddocks on a visit to Don Oberhart, a couple of blocks beyond your little homestead. Rover, accompanying you, will be in his element hunting en route, and repeatedly giving useless chase to invisible quarry, returning after each fruitless effort, to pant noisily at your heels.
Your visit to Don will be one of sympathy and encouragement. Having changed his policy and pinned his faith to wheat-growing, he put all his eggs into one basket for several seasons in succession and lost. When you arrive you will find Barney McGee there on the same errand, talking and laughing glibly for Don’s benefit.
Neither of you, however, would for worlds let Don know the real purport of your visit; and you’ll each lie cheerfully in giving your opinions of the prospective yield and the golden future of wheat-growing generally. You’ll reckon the values of wheat lands must in time rise stupendously, and when they do rise those who “hang on” will be on the pig’s back. At last Don, who often enough has himself taken a hand in cheering others up, will turn from the fireplace and grunt: “Yes, they’ll be on the pig’s back right enough, if they’re not on their own or in the grave!”
Then you’ll make a clumsy attempt to change the subject. But Barney, who has broken more laws and told more lies and got out of more tight places than you probably ever dreamed of, will come to the rescue.
“Do ye know what it was I was thinking of the other day, Richard?” he’ll break in with a broad smile on his sun-flamed face, and shaking his iron-grey head wisely.
You won’t know, of course.
“Well, damme if I wasn’t thinking of picking up a likely sort of hack somewhere with foot enough to win a handicap or two, and making a few pounds as well as getting some fun out of it.”
“Well, why don’t you, Barney?” you’ll grin.
“I was thinking more than once that that’s what I ought to darn well go in for”, Oberhart will put in cynically. “I might make more out of race-courses than out of rusty wheat paddocks. Couldn’t lose any more, anyway, and it wouldn’t be any worse gambling.”
“The thing is to pick up the right sort of horse,” Barney will emphasise — “one of the kind that Terence McGee bought for a couple of pounds from a drover who was drinking at Ryan’s pub.”
“Buttonhole?” Oberhart will remember. “You’d go a long way before picking up another like him for the same money, or for a couple of hundred either! He turned out to be a thoroughbred, one of C. B. Fisher’s imported horses, sent west to serve some station mares on the Barcoo. I remember him.”
“And when Terry put a bushel or two of corn into him and the brushes on him,” Barney will enthuse for your benefit, “Gad, but he was the finest looking animal ever ye clapped eyes on, though before that he was just a sleepy old clothes-peg of a sheep-drover’s moke.”
“Terry could judge a horse in the rough, what a lot of ’em can’t do; that was the reason”, Don will say, dropping into the armchair he had made for himself out of half a beer-barrel, to smoke thoughtfully, while you reflect on the merits and make of some of the best hacks you knew and rode in bush races.
“He won every race that Terry started him in”, Barney will rattle on, smoothing his brow with his rough palm, and fixing his grey roguish old eyes first on you, then on Oberhart. “And after being sold for £500, damme if he didn’t win the Brisbane Cup for the fellow who bought him from Terry, and then went south.”
You’ll think of the meagre monthly cheque you receive from the factory in return for all your hard constant labour, and sigh enviously.
“What’s that long-tailed brown thing you keep running about your place doing nothing?” Oberhart after a silence will ask casually.
“A long-tailed thing? Oh! Miss Maranoa, ye mean.” And Barney, breaking into a chuckle, will suspect the other of a joke of some kind. “She’s one of the idle rich,” he’ll add — “lives on the fat of th’ farm without doing a hand’s turn for her support — like Richard here.” And he’ll laugh as he fancies he has turned the joke on you.
As though he hadn’t heard, Oberhart will continue between puffs from his pipe: “You’ve had her a long while, Barney. What do you call her Miss Maranoa for? Not a bad cut of a mare. I was watching her trotting along your fence the other day.”
“Sure I’ve had her for five year — since she were a pet foal”, Barney suddenly becoming grave will reply. “Her mother, fastest mare that ever wheeled a beast in th’ bush, died in th’ foaling of her ’way out there in the ranges. And when old Mick Maranoa fell into the hands of the bank and rolled up his swag, which was all he had left out of a couple of thousands, to clear away with, the Devil only knew where to, he left the foal with me to look after till he’d come back, and if he didn’t come back I was to reckon it my own for the paddocking of it. ‘And’, sez he, as he went off, ‘handle it at two years, Barney, just to keep it quiet, but don’t let anyone ride it at all!’ And divil a man has ever been on Miss Maranoa’s back but myself.”
“Old Mick Maranoa’s mare?” you’ll suddenly wake up, gaping wonderingly at Barney. “A well-built bay with black points and a beautiful head, was she?”
“She was all that”, Barney McGee will affirm, while Don Oberhart, his curiosity aroused, will stare inquisitively at you.
“He won the first handicap held by the squatters at the Plains with her,” you’ll continue, “and rode her himself with a red swag strapped before him on the saddle.”
“Gad!” Barney will laugh, “I believe I’ve heard him sphake of it, Dick, but I usen’t always take a deal of notice of him, for ’twas always horses and races and rumours of races that he liked to talk about. There was no depth in him. But he was the fine horseman — few there were who could ride like him, especially when he had a couple of Ryan’s rums on board.” Sitting up straight and eyeing Barney closely you’ll ask, “Do you know what that foal was by?”
“You mean the mare, Miss Maranoa, Richard?” from Barney.
“Yes — a mare now.”
“How the divil would I know, Richard?” Barney will chuckle. “But do you know yourself?”
‘This is getting interesting” — and Don, sitting up, too, will knock the ashes from his pipe.
“Well, yes, I do, since you’ve told me what you know, and I’m the only person that does know. Old Terry, wherever he is, doesn’t know and never did know.”
“Why, what’s the strong of it, Richard?” Oberhart will ask. “Some horse-planting trick?”
You’ll shake your head and answer: “No, but I was working for Jimmie Williams when he rented Greenmount and had Melbourne and Challenger and Kyogle and Italian and Wild Wave sent there for a while, and Jim Edwards, who was managing the place, was allowed to take in a few mares at a high fee to Wild Wave and Challenger, but they had to be pedigreed mares with a certificate.”
“By th’ powers, there’s something behind all this.” And Barney, drawing closer, will fix you again with his little grey eyes.
“Old Mick Maranoa brought this mare of his that I’ve described,” you’ll continue, “to be mated with Waverley, but Edwards”—
“Do you mean, Richard,” Barney will interrupt excitedly, “that Miss Maranoa is got by Waverley? Why, he was one of the greatest thoroughbreds that were ever imported, and won a lot of blue ribbons — sure ye must be dreaming, Richard?”
“Yes, what’s the matter with you, Richard?” and Don will gaze dubiously upon you, too.
“I don’t say anything of the sort,” you’ll go on, “for Edwards wouldn’t take the mare without a certificate, though he was sure she was at least three-quarter thoroughbred. But,” you’ll pause to stare alternately into their faces — “but this mare you have, if she’s the foal of Mick Maranoa’s mare, was got by Melbourne — a greater racehorse than ever Waverley was.”
‘‘Melbourne?’’ Barney will echo in amazement.
“How do you know that, Richard?” from Don.
“Because I had a job at Greenmount under Edwards, I suppose”, you’ll answer discreetly.
“But you said he wasn’t taking mares without pedigrees?”
“Neither was he to Waverley or Kyogle”, you’ll repeat. “Well, there were times when I was in charge of the stud for half an hour or so, when Edwards was attending to other things. He was attending to other things on the day when Mick Maranoa left the stock mare we’re talking about; and to tell you the truth, whether out of kindness or devilment I don’t know, I saw Melbourne enter the yard where she was about five minutes after Mick had gone. You can guess the rest! Edwards returned about twenty minutes later, when Melbourne was back in the stable again. But soon as he saw the old stallion he suspected, and asked me a lot of awkward questions. And it was the only time that ever I seriously lied to save my skin or my job.”
“Upon my soul!” and Barney’s muscle will twitch with suppressed excitement.
“If that’s the case,” Oberhart will suggest calmly, “you’ve got a thoroughbred mare in your paddock, Barney, by a cup-winner and the sire of Archie and Wreatmeat and Yabba! So what in the name of Erin do you want thinking of picking up a hack to win a couple of handicaps for? There might be a goldmine in this Miss Maranoa for all we know.”
“Well, I’m certain of this,” you’ll answer,— “that the foal Mick Maranoa’s mare dropped was by Melbourne and no other.”
Then in silence you’ll study both their faces as if expecting them to thank you for having handed them a goldmine.
Suddenly the mood of Barney McGee will change. “Pshaw!” he’ll say. “It mightn’t have been the same foal at all, or the same mare either. And Mick Maranoa knew far too much about horses to leave a thoroughbred foal in th’ keeping of anyone — not to save his soul, he wouldn’t.”
“What are you giving us?” Oberhart will interrupt indignantly, while you too will stare wonderingly at Barney.
But Barney will feign not to understand. “Let’s get away home,” he’ll suggest, “and not be deludin’ one another any longer about races and racehorses and th’ like. It must be dark outside, I’m thinking.” And rising and saying good-night to Oberhart, he’ll lead the way out of the door, chuckling.
Arriving home Barney will display a caution and excitement that will seem mysterious even to Mrs. McGee, his faithful companion and drudge for thirty years and more.
“Jamesy!” he will call to his eldest son, who is in bed. “Soon as ’tis light and before you bring the cows in, put Miss Maranoa into th’ stable and lock the door, and say never a word to no one that she’s there. And Katie” — going to his wife’s door — “if anyone calls to ask questions about Miss Maranoa, ye knows nauthin’ about her — ye understand?”
Though Mrs. McGee will understand enough, she will ask from under the blankets: “Whatever on earth has come into your head now, Barney, that you’re so concerned all at once about old Mick Maranoa’s pet foal? Are you afraid that someone is going to steal her from you? Or is Mick himself coming back at last to pay all he owes for the paddocking of her? It would be a blessing if he would.”
“Never mind all that,” Barney will answer, closing up the house; “but just keep quiet on what I’m telling you in case anyone might come to ask questions about what isn’t their business.”
That night you’ll lie in your bed thinking and recalling those days when you worked at Williams’s stud-farm under Edwards, the manager. And in fancy you’ll see Mick Maranoa arriving there again, leading his stock mare, and hear him, in the absence of a certificate, pleading in vain for Edwards to mate her with Wild Wave or Challenger. Then, as Mick departs dejectedly but leaving the mare to be called for on his return from town the following days, and Edwards goes off to supervise the stackbuilding, you’ll hear again a mighty crash of a stable door, a joyous roar of a stallion, a sudden responsive love squeal; and then you’ll see Melbourne, his glossy coat shining in the sun, his eyes afire, his neck arched, bounding across the yard, and Maranoa’s stock mare glancing with glad eyes over her shoulder at his approach, and swinging and swaying her flowing tail in assurance of his reception. “Gad!” you’ll burst right out, rising from the bed, “this Miss Maranoa, got by Melbourne, could be a cup-winner!”
* * *
A glorious Boxing Day ’way back in the ’seventies — the first race-meeting held at Mt. Sibly. ‘The Mount” consisted of waste country reserved by a Government of squatters for “closer settlement”, and bordering this reserved area were mighty stations, such as Headington Hill, Eton Vale, Clifton and Pilton, all lying there within their cheap, pointed sheep fences, like living land sharks.
The race-meeting itself was a squatters’ outing. They provided the prizes, shaped the course, marked it out near the foot of the mount. They ran the meet, in fact, all over: took charge of the scales; rang the bell in warning for each race, and “clerked” the course. Also, they provided the performers — rare imported horses, some were, too! The few cockies came along, bringing their families in carts, to look on and spend a shilling or two at the booth if they were lucky enough to have any about them to spend.
But Barney McGee, being a genial, head-wagging Irishman, was an exception. Barney, who was a “sport”, turned up leading a bay moke in the rough that he had entered for the Double-rein Bridle. Beside him Jamesy, “th’ son”, walked proudly, while Maggie, the ten-year-old daughter, trotted breathlessly along on the off-side of the animal.
They came in touch with the crowd, a galaxy of horsemen, buggy-pairs, fours-in-hand, horsemen and horsewomen (these all in belltoppers), families in spring-carts, drays and all the rest, gathered beneath the shade of the wild apple-trees. Their friends, catching view of them, began calling out: “What have you there, Barney? Something imported?”
“Sure, ’tis nothing of a prestige to be imported in this country,” he’ll laugh while taking a shorter grip of the reins, and nudging the son to keep further away, “for ’tis imported myself I am.”
And to “She’s only got six thoroughbreds against her”, he’ll respond: “I wish it were seven, for being thoroughbreds they’d think it’s th’ Day of Rest, and she’d have it all her own way.” But soon the bell will sound the time to saddle-up for the Double-rein Bridle.
“Are ye ready?” Barney’ll ask of the son, as he girths the bay mare tightly. “Shtand ye away, Maggie.” Then gripping the son by the bare foot he’ll toss him into the saddle and adjust the reins for him.
“Now go your hardest, Jamesy,” Maggie will counsel proudly, “and don’t let any of them beat you.”
“Listen to her!” th’ son will grunt, touching Lady McGee lightly with his bare heels and moving her through the staring, laughing, wondering crowd.
Grabbing Maggie by the hand Barney will rush away to take up a position near the winning-post upon Maloney’s waggon, that has on it a couple of bales of chaff as an improvised staging.
“Fifty to five you can’t pick it in one, Bell?” one purse-proud squatter will call to another.
“What about the bay thing with the bare-footed boy on it?” Bell replies. “What odds it won’t win?”
“Twenty to one.” And Bell will toss him a sovereign.
“Why, that’s my mare ye’re backing”, Barney will say excitedly to him.
“Well, I’ve seen worse looking thoroughbreds than her in the rough. Can the boy ride?”
“Phwat! Can Jamesy ride?” Barney will splutter. “Can a duck swim or a business man steal?”
Instantly the crowd, yelling “Off!” will break in, and Barney and Maggie will go perilously near falling from the bales of chaff into the long grass below.
“Good start! Good start!” is all that anyone can hear for several moments. Then: “Young Leopold! Clifton! Brown Hodgson! Rainbow! Rainbow taking the lead.”
Another silence.
Suddenly from a throng of throats: “What about the rough thing? Lady McGee! She’s gaining on them!”
Shouts of mirth mingled with surprise will rise up. Barney himself will stand stolid. But Maggie, carried away by excitement, will clap her hands and cry, “Go it, Miss Maranoa!” until her parent, pinching her arm, will hiss: “Will ye shut up yer Miss Maranoa and remimber ’tis Lady McGee!” and Maggie will shut up suddenly.
As the field moves up into the straight with the “rough thing” three lengths in the lead and Jamesy in his bare feet sitting her like a rock or a staghorn, the crowd of squatters will be bewildered. But Barney McGee’s cocky friends, few though they be, will rush round and cheer him as though another Napoleon had jumped up.
“Your mare’s won,” they’ll shout, “and, by damn, has licked the head off all the imported wonders!”
Though shaking like a leaf, Barney will stand on the waggon watching Lady McGee being led to the scales and the son lifted from the saddle and placed on them. Barney wasn’t one of those to count chickens before they were hatched.
But the moment “Weight” is declared, he will grab Maggie by the hand again, and jumping from the waggon will rush to congratulate Jamesy and fondle and pat the restless perspiring mare. Then turning suddenly to Maggie he will shout: “Run home, girrl, quick, an’ tell yer mother that Lady McGee have won th’ Double-rein Bridle!”
The home is two miles away, but, starting off, Maggie will run like a hare pursued by a hawk.
And while Maggie is running, those who had lost a wager or two will turn to Bell and say: “You knew something about the roughie!”
But Bell will only smile.
* * *
Three years or so later.
There’ll be much excitement at the cheese factory one morning after New Year, when the papers arrive. The suppliers, some seated in their carts, will be calling to each other: “Miss Maranoa that old Barney McGee and Bell the squatter own between them won the treble yesterday, and is a hot favourite for the Brisbane Cup.”
Some will laugh and some will cheer for Barney McGee. But you, biting at your underlip, will keep silence.
A few afternoons following, you and Don Oberhart will be at the railway station unloading your drays and puffing and sweating and feeling dejected, when Barney, wearing a new tailor-cut tweed suit and smoking a cigar, will step from the up-train, and crossing to the goods-shed, will greet you both with a broad smile and a warm handshake.
You’ll both respond like a pair of invalids, until he adds: “She was th’ foal that was got by Melbourne from Mick Maranoa’s mare all right, as Richard here well knew, and was the only one who did know, and Mick himself died away out back, and Bell the squatter was his trustee. And so, of course — well, I suppose ye understand?”
A couple of months have passed since Mrs. Juba Lee and Josie King called and collected your sub. to the school treat, but hardly a day has gone by when you haven’t been thinking of the time you’ll have. The day’ll be slow coming; but, when at last the morning of it does arrive, you’ll be up and into your pants and boots, and out to put a fire on; and in a minute or two you’ll be blowing hard into a pannikin of scalding tea to cool it, looking out at intervals for signs of daylight. Like trains and things when a man’s in a tearing hurry, the dawn will be running late. But you’ll give it another ten minutes or so, according to your idea of the time. Then if it doesn’t start to show over the dark wall of range to the east you won’t wait any longer; you’ll go on after the cows and horses without it, and let it catch up.
But it doesn’t begin to show, and at last you move out into the darkness, groping your way around the yard for the track leading off into the hollow where the stock generally settle when they’ve had their fill. And Rover, wondering what’s the matter, will accompany you. He’ll have more confidence in the dark and in himself than you; and, as if making little of you as a superior being, he’ll demonstrate how the Creator was more generous in his gifts to a dog than to you, for while you’re mooning your way in uncertain fashion he is scampering off into the gloom, racing through trees and brush and fallen timber for the mere joy of it. To cloak your feelings of inferiority you’ll descend to the low-down shabby spirit of the human, and “blast” him, and order him away to a place you shouldn’t be thinking of on a morning like this. Of course he won’t go — he wouldn’t desert you, in fact, just now, not if you killed him for it.
So you’ll grope along trying to keep to the track, when all at once you’ll nearly fall head first over a plough horse that’s sound asleep in the long grass. Mighty! Old Nugget’ll wake up as if you were someone come to shoot him. He won’t be able to find his legs half fast enough; but when he does he’ll bound up and stamp round snorting in terror. And when you lift your voice and blast his eyes as you did Rover’s he’ll gallop off and you’ll hear him thundering and blundering over things as if the devil was pursuing him. Next minute you’ll hear the rest of the horses whinnying anxiously to one another from different angles, and then the lot of them, taking to their heels, ’ll tear recklessly in pursuit of Nugget. You’ll stand listening in — your heart in a flutter lest some will come to grief in a gully or against a tree.
And while following the sounds your attention will be attracted to other noises higher up the ridgeside among the loose stones. You’ll turn your ear and catch sounds of cloven hoofs and the cracking of knuckle-bones and joints, accompanied by a mumbling “Moo!” In a second you’ll know it’s the darn dairy herd, and that they also have taken you for an evil spirit. And when they start running, making an unearthly row, you’ll grind your teeth and peer down at your feet and round about in search of Rover. You’ll feel that he’s the cause of it all, and you’ll want to deliver him a square, solid kick in the ribs while the facts are fresh in your mind. And while you’re peering blindly around for him, Rover will be sitting on his tail a few yards out of reach, looking at you with love and affection in his eye.
A few minutes more and the grey dawn will start to break in streams of light; the dark, eerie objects about you will take shape; Rover in the flesh will appear beside you; not a hundred yards away, the dairy herd will be bunched together, staring back at you; the horses will be at the yard; and the little homestead and its familiar surroundings will all reveal themselves.
It’s broad daylight now, and you begin to think it’s getting late; that the morning will be gone before you can get a move on. So you address a few words of instruction to the cows, and tail them along to the yard, whistling in imitation of the birds chorusing across the gully, and wondering if you’ll get your work done in time.
It will be surprising how soon the sun will follow the dawn, and how high it will be in the sky when you finish up at the yards, load the milk-cart, attend the horses, pigs and poddies and fowls; snatch a bit of breakfast and off to the factory.
You won’t waste many minutes at the factory, and on the way back you’ll put up a record for a horse and cart over four miles. You won’t wait to close the gate — leaving it open for once won’t matter. So you’ll pull the harness off the puffing horse, pour a can of whey over the heads of the squealing swine, throw the saddle on your hack and hurry to the house for a wash and change to your Sunday togs.
Nothing is in your head now but the treat and getting there. Your laundry will be in fair order, for the Ryan woman ironed a shirt and collar for you only two or three weeks ago, and except for being speckled a bit the collar will be white as snow. Your socks, though, want heeling and toeing; still, when your boots go over them, they won’t be noticed. And if you find you have to pull your boots off to take part in a high jump or something got up for adults you’ll decide to be careful about it and pull the socks off along with the boots. Your feet and legs will need a wash, though; the soil of the cultivation paddock is clean enough in its way, and different to the germ-laden dust of the cities; still, it changes the colour of your limbs and makes you look a skewbald. So you’ll get a tub under the tap of the tank and double yourself up in it before you turn the water on. Lawd! It’s so long since you were under the tap in all your nakedness that, when you let it flow, it’ll fall on your humped back like a cataract of knives and needles. You’ll shudder and yell, and Rover, who’ll be eyeing you sideways all the time, and forming a dog’s opinion of you, in the nude, will gather round the tub barking at you. But you’ll keep on shuddering and yelling, taking no notice of him until you suddenly feel his two paws on your shoulders, his hard-worn claws scraping their way down your bare back, and his joyful bark in your ear; then you’ll howl and roar at him, and in your wrath upset the tub and yourself backwards. And when you kick the empty vessel from you with both feet and rise, you’ll cast reflections on Rover’s pedigree and chase him two different ways round the home with a missile in your hand.
But you won’t take long dressing; and with a last look round, as you lean from the saddle and pull the gate after you, you’ll touch the horse with your heels and off! Gee! The feelings that’ll be in your head and in your heart will keep lifting you in the stirrups as you rip and rattle along the lanes. And when you come in sight of the picnic-ground there’ll be numbers of carts and sulkies and saddle-horses already there. The carts and sulkies will be surrounded by women chattering and calling greetings and questions and suggestions to one another. They’ll be the working-bee, and they’ll be lifting out baskets of crockery and provender and opening them up; and standing off a piece under some trees will be a circle of old cronies in cropped whiskers, all shaking their heads and expressing surprise at having lived to meet one another again at the same spot on the same day that they met a year before.
As you ride in through the open gate, dragging your hat over your face so that no one will see how self-conscious and uncertain you are of yourself, the local schoolmaster, with a line of boys, will be trailing a rope round looking for a safe tree to erect a swing on. There will be family groups, too, standing about — some of them migrants that were never at a treat before — holding each other by the hand and looking as if they felt uncertain of a welcome. Some more, mostly young couples, will come flying and crushing in behind you on dancing, prancing horses, flashing riding whips as if they were entering a show-ring to pick up prizes for the best hacks.
Putting your horse away in the shade, you’ll avoid the women for the present, and make for the old cronies in whiskers. You have more confidence in them and know they’ll be easy to pal in with. They’ll be telling each other all about the weather; how much rain they got out of the storm that broke over a couple of nights before. Though you’ll be standing, listening and smiling for quite a while, they won’t notice you’ve joined them until you mention that scarcely a drop fell at your place. Then they’ll turn to you, and shake hands with you, and ask have you, too, taken a day off to come to the treat. And they’ll think it strange that you didn’t get anything out of that storm! From some of their places it looked as if it was falling in torrents over your way — like wheat coming out of a winnower. But old Haley, who was nearly flooded out, and is proud of being specially favoured by Providence, won’t be a little surprised — he will remember that your part of the country, “alez were a dry corner”.
After a while you’ll get restless, and feel a flat tyre. You’ll be snatching and blowing at the flies, and looking across from under your hat at the women. And some of them, when your eyes are the other way, will be looking across at you; and then Bill Buck, old Silas King’s handyman, in his shirt-sleeves, will drive in with Josie, bareheaded, beside him in a four-wheeler, packed behind with tins and cases of sandwiches and stuff. Without knowing why, you’ll begin to feel different. The old cronies will all look up and stare; and when Josie smiles and nods at them as she rolls past like the Duchess of York, they’ll feel pleased and will chorus, “Hello, Bill!” Whether Josie saw you standing there and meant those smiles for you you’re not quite sure, but her coming just when you were feeling like a flat tyre will seem like an answer to a prayer.
Following the vehicle with their dim eyes and watching it draw up under the trees, where Josie’ll jump out and greet their wives and daughters with handshakes, those old cronies will glow with the spirit of equality. And your heart will start beating ahead of time when you hear old Bob Smith come out with, “Now, look you at that! And everyone a’sayin’ she were stuck up.” But you’ll be sliding away from the old cronies, looking as if you’re interested in everything but women. You won’t feel valiant enough to slay a lion in a pit, but with a clothes-prop you’d take on a dozen old-men ’roos in a paling yard.
“Hello, Dick Gall, you’re just in time! We want a good fire made.” You’ll know it’s the voice of Mrs. Juba Lee, and it’ll come to you like the Lord wording the Israelite from out the clouds. So you’ll try and look surprised as you turn to them, grinning and flushing.
“And we want the tarpaulin put up after you’ve made the fire, Mr. Gall” — this will come from Josie King, who’s in charge of the sandwich section, and she’ll have her sleeves rolled above the elbows, and will be trying an apron on, and smiling at you. You’ll get confused, the blood will rush to your face, and forgetting about the fire you’ll ask where the tarpaulin is.
But Mrs. Lee won’t forget, though she’ll understand and see through your blushes. “No, you don’t”, she’ll laugh. “We want our fire first, and they can have you all to themselves after.”
So, coming to your senses, you’ll discard your coat, tossing it away as if you’d finished with it for ever, and there’ll be a pile of wood and a fire started quicker than if it had been struck by lightning.
Inspired now with the spirit of achievement, you’ll unroll the tarpaulin, and when Josie, who’ll leave the others to carry on, will take hold and help to push and drag it over the limb of a fallen tree — when Josie comes close to you, and you feel her breath and the touch of her soft hand against your hard one — you’ll get into such a flurry that you’ll be pulling and dragging the dam thing the wrong way. And how your heart’ll palpitate when at last you find yourself alone with her under the blessed thing for a second! But she won’t seem to notice, she’ll be concerned only about making a good job of it. At least, that’s how it’ll impress you.
And just when the job’s finished and you’re standing surveying it, grinning at her in expectation of the word of praise that’ll mean such a lot, long Phil Ryan, a cove your own age, with spurs on his heels and flashing a riding whip, will poke his nose in and say: “Givin’ him some work to do, Miss King? He can do with it — no one ever sees him workin’ on that farm of his. Can y’ give me a job? There’s a seven-foot snake out on the road that someone killed; would you like me to get it and chop it into sandwiches for the workin’-bee?”
How you will look at him; and when Josie goes off you’ll feel you could punch him.
But your feelings will change when the schoolmaster calls out, wanting to know if there’s anyone can climb a rope hand over hand and fasten it to the limb to complete the swing, and Mrs. Juba Lee shouts back that Dick Gall can. You’re not sure you can yourself, but you won’t let on, so you’ll grin cheerfully and roll up your sleeves. It’ll seem a pretty stiff climb up that rope when you look at it, and the limb will be rotten! But Mrs. Lee said you can do it, and as no one else is competing you’ll squat calmly on the grass beside the dangling hemp, and while a mob gathers round to watch, off will go your boots, leaving your socks on! You won’t think of them till you’re half-way through with the climb, and while you’re straining your arms and gripping with your feet and thinking about the dam limb, you’ll hear them laughing under you and the kids calling one another to look at the big hole in your socks, and their mothers telling them to shut up. It’ll take a lot of heart out of you; you’ll weaken in the arms and for the moment you’ll kick and dangle as if you were fighting to defeat the executioner. “Stick to it,” the schoolmaster will urge; “you haven’t got much farther to go!” To you it’ll seem a mile, and when you shut your eyes and set your teeth and take fresh grips, and kick your legs getting astride the limb as if you were swimming, one of the socks will leave your foot and float down among the spectators. It will cause a stir. Old McClure will rescue it from the kids and mind it for you till you descend, and when you reach earth you’ll be puffing, and in a hurry to put your boots on again.
Your services will be in great demand now — there’ll be scarcely anything you won’t be asked to take a hand in. But whether you’re on the tea buckets or carrying round buns or swinging the girls, your eye will be roaming round in search of Josie. You’ll be wanting to keep her in view. She’ll be your inspiration and source of enthusiasm. There’ll be times, too, when you fancy she’s been looking to see where you are. And when big Nellie Ryan, who hasn’t spoken to you for eighteen months, finds you are friendly with Josie, whom she doesn’t like, she’ll forget her coolness towards you and start asking you things, and always running across you by accident and getting more friendly every time. It’ll puzzle you a good deal, her following you about; but, of course, you won’t be experienced enough to tumble to what it means.
After the kids and most of the adults have been fed several times on cakes and sandwiches and it’s getting near three or four o’clock, a game of rounders for the working-bee will be started, and you and Pat Smith asked to pick sides. That’ll be a momentous moment. Hoaky! How you’ll be fidgetin’ and intriguing in your mind to win the toss so as to make Josie your first pick and have her on your side. Your luck will be in, too; but just when you shout her name as if she was on fire and other girls start shoving her across to you, old Silas King will come driving on to the ground with a flabby swell from the city beside him in the buggy. He doesn’t drive a car. The swell has a habit of visiting the Kings whenever there’s anything on in the locality.
“Enjoying yourselves — enjoying yourselves! Quite right; quite right!” old Silas will mumble to all of you as he draws up to park the four-wheeler. You won’t have seen much of the old gasper since you beat him for your little homestead, and you can’t help feeling that you’d sooner go and twist a lion’s tail than face him. So, watching his movements out of the corner of your eye as he steps out of the buggy, leaving the swell in it, you’ll be consoling yourself by thinking he might have forgotten all about the land matter anyway. So, heading through the crowd, taking no notice of the ball flying past his ear, the old chap’ll tell Josie that he has brought Mr. Draper along and wants her to look after him and see he gets a cup of tea and something to eat.
Of course Josie will be too sweet-natured not to seem glad about it, but a colouring of disappointment’ll come to her cheeks when she puts down the bat; and, noticing the old chap has left you out of the nods he’s given to the others, she’ll call his attention to you with — “You know Mr. Gall, Papa?”
A queer feeling will come over you when you hear your name from her! You’ll get ready to give him your hand and welcome him to the picnic. But old Silas will only give you a sour look, then ask how you’re getting on over there among the bandicoots — have they eaten you out yet?
While you’re trying to recover he’ll go off with Josie to the buggy; and when you hear the girls whispering near you that he’s the ugly bachelor whom old Silas wants Josie to marry because he’s got money, you’ll get a fit of absent-mindedness and forget which side you are on; and, though you’ll be glad when the game is finished, you’ll feel disconsolate when you see old Silas mooching off with the schoolmaster and leaving Josie to the other fellow. You can’t keep your eyes away from them, and you’d like to know what the city dope’s game is.
Later, when you find it’s time you were going home to milk your cows, and that city interloper is still laughing and talking to Josie as if he expected to be set to music, you’ll feel a desperate urge. You must have a word of some kind with her before you go; so, after telling the others that you are off, and calling “So-long!” you’ll get on your horse and ride as close as you can to the buggy, heading for the gate.
“Oh, are you going, Mr. Gall?” Josie’ll ask, turning from Draper, and looking up at you with warm blood in her cheeks.
“Yes, must be making tracks now”, you’ll answer, reining up and feeling you could hop off and strangle the swell with the silk tie he is wearing. Then, holding up her hand to you and smiling, Josie’ll hope you enjoyed the day.
My word — you did! And all the way home you’ll reckon that everything would have been splendid only for that city swell coming in the buggy.
And next day, and for days and days after, the same thoughts will keep your mind alive; and, unlike the early cloud and the morning dew, the school treat will be a long time passing away.
You left the ploughing to canter to the railway station to order a wheat truck. You have just returned and it’s getting dusk. You’ve been trying Newchum’s paces along the lane, and, warmed up, his eyeballs are dilating and he’s looking his noblest. “What did you think of her, old horsey?” you’ll question like a big kid, patting him on the neck as you pull the bridle off. “Wouldn’t you like to be me — wouldn’t you, if you was a man? Don’t I know y’ would!”
Only the Lord can tell whether the horse understands or not. But as he swings round to roll in the dust he’ll nicker as if he did.
Later, seated at table over the steak you’ve fried, you’ll take Rover into your confidence. You’ll talk to him while he sits on his tail listening. When you fall into silence he’ll whimper and bark. “You ain’t met her yet,” you’ll tell him, “but if you’d been with me this evening you would — you old scoundrel! I met her near th’ railway, and I’m going to her place on Sunday. You’re not — no matter who’s there I’m to go. And I’m not to mind what Papa thinks. How would you like to be me, Rover — wouldn’t you sooner be me than the city dope who was trying to mash her at the picnic, looking as if he had just finished a term of epidemics? Cripes, wouldn’t anyone?”
But proud as you are of yourself, you’re feeling shaky and nervous when Sunday arrives. Being favoured by Josie King will be one thing; bracing up to go and see her in her home when you know her old man hasn’t a spark of approbation in his make-up for you, and has developed a habit of reading you like a criminal lawyer, will be quite another thing. Still, you’re facing it for her. And while you’re getting ready, fastening your collar and tie, looking at yourself in the little mirror while your horse is hanging up outside, you’ll be building castles in the air, castles in comparison with which Solomon’s mansion, built with the help of three score and ten thousand hewing wood for it in the mountains, and three thousand six hundred overseeing, will be only a modest shack. So, closing the door behind you, you’ll approach your horse, pulling your hat down in front, pushing it up behind to please your fancy; then into the saddle and off like a despatch-bearer you’ll rattle.
It’s a wonderful day, the sky pale blue, the air clear, the hills and valleys green; the wild flowers blooming, everything gay and glittering, nothing dull or brown or withering, not even the old rail fences or the dead timber. Full of secret hopes you’ll tear along the lanes as if you had all the angels with you.
Coming in sight of “The Meadows” you’ll steady the pace and get back to earth again. A procession of thoughts will run through your head that will make you uncomfortable. You’ll start asking yourself should you really go or not? Will Josie be home? If you don’t see her about what’ll you say to him?
Drawing nearer the farmyard you’ll hear the windmill pumping, and you’ll be getting the most out of your eyesight.
To the left, on the wide verandah of the home, there’ll be a host of people lounging in squatters’ chairs and hammocks. They’re visitors; most of them women. How in the name of anyone can you be expected to dismount and mingle with that lot! Josie must have gone mad. You don’t know the way to the front of the house — when you worked for old Silas years ago you never got any further than the kitchen. And you don’t want to go any further now.
They’re turning their heads, gawking, wondering who you are. What are you going to do now? Instead of Newchum wheeling and bolting off with you, he keeps stepping out briskly, tossing his head, snatching the bit, showing how glad he feels. You grind your teeth and screw up your courage as you open the gate and enter the yard. A tribe of dogs rush to meet and serenade you.
Being the Sabbath, which old Silas King is careful to see kept sacred at “The Meadows” since he has become prosperous and religious, the farm hands will be sitting about in the shade. You’ll pass a cold nod to them; ride on to the stable, ducking your head under a clothes-line to keep clear of a row of uninhabited things.
Putting the horse away, you glance round the gravelled path leading to the front verandah. You’ll reproach yourself for being a darn fool; and you feel that your hour is at hand and you’ve been betrayed into the hands of the enemy.
“Unless I’m blind it’s Dick Gall.” You’ll look round and be confronted by Bill Buck, the handyman of “The Meadows”. He’s shuffling solemnly towards you, looking as if he was under instructions to eject you. But when he asks, “Who is it you want to see — Mr. King?” and informs you that the Boss never sees anyone about business on Sunday, you’ll start beating about the bush. And when you’ve made yourself feel a fraud and a liar, and Bill can’t make head or tail of you, Josie’ll come tripping across the yard looking like a fairy in her white silks, her hair waving in the wind, to save you.
“Oh, you did come, Richard?” She doesn’t call you Dick. And she’ll smile with her eyes and lips and teeth. “I was beginning to wonder if you really would.” At that Bill will touch his hat and make off. And while you’re colouring up and gathering yourself together Josie’ll give a little laugh and invite you to the front verandah.
You go off with her like a big pet stupid sheep being led to slaughter.
“We’ve some visitors,” she’ll tell you, looking up curiously into your face, “but they’re only Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Craig, Miss Fairfield and her sister and two friends, and Mr. Draper — a friend of Pa’s — and a few others.”
“Mr. Draper?” you’ll mumble, as if the name was poison, with the same effect that strychnine would have on you.
“He’s talking to Pa,” and this time Josie will touch your arm and look up at you in such a way that, instead of tasting strychnine, you’ll feel you’ve taken champagne. Gee! you’re a new man in an instant. She’s inspired you. Instead of a sheep you’re a lion being led to the wolves by a dove.
You’re walking firm, erect, bold; such a feeling never came over you before. Out of the slough of your humbleness she’s exalted you to a pedestal of bravery. You mount the verandah step for step with her; you’re laughing with her; you’re taking your hat off; smoothing your hair out of your eyes and looking like a party leader taking the platform. Old Silas and Draper and the others are gaping at you. In a voice of gladness Josie introduces you first to one, then to another, as “Mr. Richard Gall”. Even to Pa, who, if you had darkened the sun and caused stars and hail to fall on the lawn, couldn’t look more surprised. She’s determined to make you known. Extending your hand to old Silas, you’ll grip his limp fist and shake it heartily, inquiring after his health and expressing pleasure at his robust appearance. You’ll greet the swell Draper in the same jovial spirit, recalling that you saw him at the school picnic. Then, displaying all the manners you know (you weren’t always a lone, motherless homesteader), you’ll bow and smile to the ladies; stoop gracefully to restore to Mrs. Craig a book that has fallen from her lap to the floor, and remain standing till Josie is seated.
Putting you out of his mind, old Silas will sulkily continue the conversation. He’ll address his remarks to Draper and the ladies — to everyone but you. You’ll listen respectfully to their views, waiting the opportunity to express your own. Catching Josie’s eye you’ll clear your throat and observe to old Silas: “Just so, Mr. King, but always making the man with the most money top-dog doesn’t get the world anywhere. It is the greatest men who should be the servants of the others.”
“What!” old Silas will frown on you.
“Servants of the others!” Mr. Draper will sneer, looking meaningly at everyone but you.
“That’s what Christ was”, Josie will say, and beam on you.
“Christ! How dare you, girl!” Pa will explode.
“I really think it’s time to go”, Mr. Draper will rise to his feet.
“We must be moving, too”, from the others.
“And Gall, too”, Pa will growl towards Josie.
Josie’s eyes will flash. “Richard is staying, Pa!” she will say.
And you’ll look sheepish while the others disperse.
The flush will still be in your cheeks, and in Josie’s, too; and she’ll be holding out a plate inviting you to a ginger-nut, when old Silas will return. It’ll be plain what he’s returned for. There’s no polish about Silas. He’s blunt and proud and ignorant.
“Are you coming here to see my daughter, Gall?” And he’ll stare at you with unfriendly eyes.
Seeing you’re speechless, Josie will rebuke him with, “Pa!”
“I don’t know who you are,” Silas will say, ignoring Josie; “you worked for me years ago at odd jobs, like lots of others, but that didn’t make you a friend of mine, or of my family’s. I don’t know you; or where you are from; or anything about you.”
With the colour deepening her cheek, and her eyes flashing more and more, Josie will look a picture. And, though you don’t feel quite yourself, you’re not afraid. But you’re thinking hard.
“You might fancy you don’t know me, Mr. King”, you’ll tell him in a quiet way. “But you knew my father once; you worked for him when he owned Borrodale Downs.”
“You a son of Donald Gall’s? A son of his?”
That’s all old Silas will be able to articulate or even think for a second or two, for he’ll be on the verge of emotion.
Then, calling to the others to come here, he’ll introduce you proudly as “the son of Donald Gall, the squatter, who took up Borrodale Downs in the ’sixties, and was the first to bring Clydesdales to this country. And an old friend of his.”
And then you’ll know you’re set.
Bringing home a cow with a young calf is different to bringing home a friend to dinner. It’s one of the things the Government didn’t tell you about when informing you of the richness of the soil, the salubrity of the climate, the heavy rainfall and other happy conditions that would surround your green grey homestead.
But you’ll get to know about it all in good time. And one day, when in the middle of the ploughing and you are going for dear life to finish before the ground gets too hard; and when there’s a paddock of lucerne waiting to be cut before the leaf falls and a couple of chains of broken fence to be mended, and the roof of the barn to be pitched a couple of feet higher, and the building to be made bigger, and (according to the agricultural experts) a hundred acres of bush-hay to be cut as a stand-by for a rainy day, the Grogan kids will come tearing home from school after losing your newspaper on their way, and a letter you’ve been waiting for for months with a cheque in it for the sale of pigs, to tell you that Mr. Jerry Moriarty told his boys to tell them to tell you that when he was out on the Commonage he saw a red cow of yours with a white back, and it had a young calf sucking her; and that if you don’t go out soon and get her someone else will, and brand the calf.
“A red cow with a white back?” you’ll repeat, shaking your head doubtingly. No, you’ll be sure he’s making a mistake. But the kids were certain that Mr. Moriarty said it was a red cow with a white back, and that she had your brand on, and had a young calf, and was yours. Then you’ll think a lot, recalling the colour and image of every beast ever you owned, and letting them pass in procession through your mind as if it was a dip, till at last you’ll feel you’re being offered a live cow and calf for nothing, and don’t like to take them. Yet, somehow you’ll get a better opinion of Jerry Moriarty’s knowledge of cattle than you had before, and you’ll reckon it would be hard for him, who’s always riding about the bush and knows everyone’s brand, and is more interested in other people’s stock than he is in his own, to make an error of that kind.
Also, in your heart you’ll feel she can’t belong to you, no matter what her brand is. Still, you won’t want to convince yourself quite that she’s not your property, for if she’s not yours, whose can she be? So you’ll ponder and reason with yourself until you’ve finished the milking and the Grogan kids have found the paper and the letter with a cheque in it. But after you’ve fed the poddies and fallen out with a couple of them for bunting into you as if you were their mother and had teats hanging all round you, you’ll get a brain-wave.
You’ll remember that when you put your little herd out on the Commonage after buying feed for them all through the last big drought, and went to muster them after the rain came, that some were missing, you reckoned they were dead — you were surprised they weren’t all dead — and among them was a little red heifer with a white back, not much larger than a dog, that you had reared on the bucket. “Cripes, that must be her!” you’ll chuckle, slapping yourself on the leg. “Grown into a cow, and got a calf!” Then you’ll be off, hot-foot, to the house, calling out to the dog, and calling yourself a goat.
There will be no ploughing for you that day. You’re on to Newchum after breakfast and off to the Commonage. The plough horses will stand at the fence watching you going with approving eyes. They’d rather meet you in the saddle than between the handles of the plough. Before you’re out of sight of the homestead you’ll meet Wilkins on his way to the factory, and you’ll stop to tell him where you are going. He’ll say, “Yairs”, and “Y’ don’t tell me”, while filling his pipe from your tobacco and squinting at you through a fly-veil. And when he’s lit his pipe and is just going to drive on again he’ll say: “Nearly all o’ mine died out on that blarsted place; but now, on what you’ve been tellin’ me, p’raps some of them’s alive yet, too.”
And at the factory he’ll spread the news that heifers of yours that died on the Commonage in the big drought have all come to life again, and have got calves, and that you’ve gone out to bring them all in to milk. Before noon it’ll be known all round the country, and talked of round dinner tables; and there’ll be some who’ll feel pleased to hear that someone’s having a bit of luck, even if they are not themselves — and some who won’t.
The Commonage, you’ll find, isn’t laid out like an experimental farm. It’s a large area of waste range country hurled over with rocks and fallen timber and precipices, and with a big hell-hole and a little hell-hole occupying most of the area — country that early squatters despised, and so was dedicated by Government to the shire council for the use of small settlers, township people, horse-planters and cattle-duffers. The township people use it when they want firewood, or when they have an old horse or a cow that’s likely to die on their hands and run up a bill for being dragged out of the town and burnt; and horse-planters use it all the year round for improving the breed of other people’s horses. There will be no gate or sliprails to the Commonage, and the only boundary lines ever it had were surveyors’ marks cut into trees, and most of the trees you’ll find have been cut down for bees’ nests, and slabs, and fencing posts. You’ll know it when you’re on it by the abundance of bleached bones and scattered horns lying about; and the knee-caps and knuckle-bones shining on the ridge-sides and in all the hollows will look like crops of mushrooms.
It’ll be a good season, too, following the drought, and though there’ll be little real grass there’ll be plenty of vegetation and herbage and green bushes, and the tree-clad ridges will be heavily decked with blossoms and drugged with the drowsy humming of locusts. And, of course, there’ll be birds of bright plumage chortling and fluttering in the trees, but as you won’t be looking for material to split poetry out of, and won’t belong to a Sketch Club or a Nature Study Society, you’ll not have much of an eye or an ear for parrots and pee-wees and the like, except maybe wonga pigeons or scrub turkeys, which you could eat — if you had a gun. And you won’t be there to collect beetles and bones for the Museum, either; or to see if the kangaroo brings its joey into the world same as cats and cows and realistic artists do, or if it brings it to light through a pouch. So you’ll ride ahead over ridges, and in and out of hollows with nothing in your head but a red cow with a white back; and you’ll strain for sight of her in places where there’ll be no cows of any colour, or bulls or steers either, till your head aches and your eyes feel sore. Your great hope will be to come across her on the tableland, such as it will be, for you’ll have no wish to go down into “big hell-hole”, or “little hell-hole”, in search of her. You’ve been down in those holes more than once, and prayed to the Almighty for guidance all the time you were trying to get out of them again. And as the search goes on what an imaginative mind you’ll have! Every animal that reveals itself to you camped in the undergrowth, or meditating under a tree or scratching itself against a stump, will seem to be a red cow with a white back, and will start your heart jumping till you get right on to it. And those that will be lying down with anything like a red skin, you, of course, will stir up and have a look at their brand. And some of them, lying down chewing th’ cud, and dreaming of grass and seasons long gone by, will be hollow-eyed, scaly, whip-marked, old working bullocks that will take a lot of stirring up, too!
You’ll work your way round a big mountain to a flat above the springs, where once there was an old station-yard and a slab hut with augur-holes bored in it big enough to hold a gun barrel — a hut used by the squatters when the blacks were said to be bad, and later by horse-planters to camp in when it rained, when you’ll catch sight of a mob of cattle through the tree-tops. A track little wider than a plank will take you round the mountain, and the short cuts it will make on the broken sides and stiff climbs will fill you with pride for the bovine as a path-finder. You’ll be about to descend the last pinch, your eyes will be bursting and your heart thumping at sight of the mob of all colours, grazing peacefully over on a flat. Suddenly, with a start, Newchum will stop, his ears pricked, and he will stare hard. You’ll get a start, too, for a horseman will be scratching and grunting his way up to meet you.
He’ll be a grizzly-faced old chap with a bumper of white whiskers, and seemingly born in Solomon’s time. And he’ll be astride an old brown cob, once a great horse, and still as game as a jumper ant. When the old chap, riding loose as Oxford bags and wearing a spur on one of his heels, and the remains of a cabbage-tree hat on his head, struggles to the top of the pinch where you’ll be waiting, he’ll want to know things: “Phwat th’ devil are y’ blockin’ the track for? Can’t y’ get out of th’ way of a man’s horse? Isn’t th’ mountain wide enough fr ye?”
Then you’ll grin, and ask him did he see a red cow with a white back anywhere that’s got a young calf? “Did I see phwat?” he’ll yell, waving a waddy at you that he’s carrying in place of a whip. You’ll ask him again and he’ll grunt: “Huh … Don’t I want all the eyes I have to see me own baists without seein’ other people’s? … Phwat’s that back there lookin’ up at ye but a red cow with a white back? Are ye a new chum? Gahn wid you!” And on he’ll shuffle, scrambling up and up and round that windhaunted old mountain, while you look after him and think of Jim Marsden’s Old Dad in “Robbery Under Arms”. Then you’ll take the track again and corkscrew down off that pinch.
There, looking at you, as the old chap said, will be a red cow with a white back! How your heart will jump and your blood tingle! Gosh! You’ll ride round and round her while she’ll turn and turn, keeping an eye on you, and wondering what your game is, for cows, like humans, are suspicious of strangers. She’ll be a youngish cow, in full milk, and not long been sucked. That must be her, right enough, but you’ll want to see the brand, for until you do you’ll feel like a cove with a quid on a horse that’s half a length in front but has five or six more lengths to go to win. As if to oblige you she’ll turn the other way before making off, and there on her milking side, plain as print, will be your brand — “T2D”. You’ll feel yourself rising right out of the saddle, and for a while you’re floating in air. Then you’ll remember all about her, and wonder how you ever forgot her. Then, touching Newchum with your heels, you’ll shoot out and head her.
She’ll stand again, staring indignantly at you, and holding her head a lot higher. Then you’ll address words of greeting to her, and like a big kid ask her where her calf is? By inches her tail will go up on the rising tide of excitement; then off she’ll go again, this time with a snort. But you won’t try to head her again — not just then — you’ll be thinking of the calf. You’ll know, of course, not being from the city, that a cow with a calf a few days old always puts it to sleep somewhere, after giving it a suck, same as your own mother used to do with yourself; that for a cradle she’ll make use of the heads of fallen trees, or undergrowth, or long grass, and that when she sees the offspring curled up snug and comfortable she strolls off to forage a mouthful for herself, and doesn’t return to the spot until it’s time for refreshments again, or she gets word that the youngster has got out of bed, and is in danger in some way.
So leaving her to herself you’ll start hunting round for the calf, riding steadily about, here, there, and everywhere, examining fallen timber, bushes and the rim of the undergrowth. You’ll shout into places and make all sorts of wild noises and sometimes you’ll get off and heave sticks to frighten the little devil out of his sleep, and give himself away. All the time the cow will be feeding, pretending she’s not a bit interested in you, until you get “cold” — and right away from the hiding-place. Then she’ll lift her head and stare at you as if she’s getting afraid you’ll find her offspring. But that’ll be all bluff. And after a while, when “hot”, she won’t lift her head at all, but watch you out of the corner of her eye; and she’ll stop wagging her ears so as to catch every sound.
And while you’re hunting round you’ll come across a white cow that’s been dead a couple of days. You’ll stand looking at her corpse. Poor devil! Her legs will be stiff and pointing to the sun. She’s had a calf, too, you can see, and the wild dogs have been at her. But a gentle breeze blowing from her will make even Newchum snort and swing round, and you’ll let him go off his own way.
Thinking of the calf again you’ll remember old Stopes telling you how he once induced a cow to find its calf by bellowing like one himself. So you’ll hang Newchum up somewhere, and putting your hands to your mouth you’ll become a lost, lonely calf wanting its mother, until you get hoarse and thirsty. And every time you’ll glance round expecting to see the cow making in haste for the spot where her infant is, she’ll be feeding in the same old spot, perhaps just going to lie down for a camp. That will try your temper, and feeling you’d like to have old Balaam to swear for you, you’ll mount Newchum again and start driving the cow about, anywhere she likes to go, in hopes that she’ll take it in her head to go where the calf is. But she’ll go everywhere that the calf isn’t; and after a while you’ll feel nothing but a fool for letting yourself be made an ass of by a cow.
The sun will be getting over a bit now, too, and it will sink pretty early in the Great Divide.
You’ll be sitting in the saddle, pulling at Newchum’s mane, thinking and looking worried, when suddenly from off the wind away on the rim of the undergrowth will come a couple of bellows with a lot of SOS feeling in them. Then a hell of a moo from the cow; and when you look in her direction she’ll be galloping her hardest for the undergrowth, roaring like murder. Then up from the gullies and down off the ridges will come other cattle, bellowing their hardest, too, and kicking up a dust as if they were mobilising for the next war. And while you’re staring and wondering what all the hullobaloo is about, a red calf will come bounding blindly out of the undergrowth, bellowing as if the devil had hold of it, and behind it will be a white calf hustled by a couple of dingoes.
Laws! You won’t want to know any more. For a furlong or so, you’ll work overtime in the saddle, yelling to let the dogs know you’re coming; but even before Newchum can cover the distance there’ll be a cordon of wild-eyed cattle formed round those calves, some of them with their heads down snorting and charging at the slinking dingoes. The yellow curs will tuck their bushy tails between their legs and side-bound them; and all you will see of them when you arrive on the scene is the whites of their eyes leering back over their shoulders at you as they disappear into the undergrowth.
The commotion won’t last long; and the mob will break rank and scatter themselves about. Then you’ll make friends with the red cow with the white back, who’ll be standing looking grateful, and embracing the red calf, which has also a white back, and will be sucking at her eagerly, and wagging its tail. You won’t be sure of its gender at first glance, for at that age, with the woolly hair covering them, it’s always hard to tell without handling whether calves are bulls or heifers. But while you’ll be admiring the pair, and figuring what the increase will be from them in five years or so, the white calf, who’s been wasting time with a couple of old bullocks that he’s mistaken for cows, will waddle over to your cow, and claiming her for his mother will start sucking her on the off-side and wagging his tail like one o’clock.
At first you’ll be amused, expecting him to get a kick on the jaw that’ll knock him silly, but to your surprise, the cow will turn her head to him and start licking and caressing him. “Cripes!” you’ll gasp — “it’s hers, too! She’s got twins!” Yet there’s something about that calf that makes it hard for you to believe it’s true — the colour, for one thing. Still, there he is, sucking away, and your cow mothering him. You’ll look the other cattle over for a cow in milk and a likely mother, but nearly all of them will be old and dry, and shrivelled, and no more likely to have calves than Chinamen. Your doubts about that calf’s parentage will start to grow, and while you want to get rich as quick as anyone, knowing that lots got rich and became Js.P. by their cows having two and more calves, you won’t want to risk going to gaol.
So you’ll sit there in the saddle looking him over and over, and pondering, when all in a second you’ll get another brainwave. Why you didn’t get it sooner will be your only wonder. That calf will belong to the dead cow lying in the gully! You’ll see nothing in him now but a sure key to quod! So you’ll slip between the little beggar and your cow, and “hoosh” him away, and crack the whip at him and race after him for a hundred yards or so, till the poor little brute, the life half scared out of him, will disappear over the head of the gully where his dead mother lies. Then you race back and hustle your cow and her legitimate calf off that flat and up the track leading round the lonesome mountain, at intervals looking back in fear the wretched orphan might be following!
Safe on the top of the first climb you’ll spell for a moment to let them get their wind, so as not to knock the calf up too soon. You’ll know, of course, that he’ll knock up sooner or later, somewhere, before you get home, and that you’ll have to carry him in front of you on the saddle. But you want him to walk as far as he can. Then from out of the stillness and the solitude of the gully, away below, will come a plaintive cry from the abandoned motherless thing that will touch you in a soft spot. And when the cow, more humane than you, and less selfish, hears it, she’ll lift her head and answer back, and answer back again and again, and will object to going further without him! Laws! What a criminal you feel all the rest of the way home!
Next morning, when you and your dog rise and gather proudly round the new cow and calf, the cries of that helpless little quadruped that you left to starve out there on the Great Divide will still sound in your ears, and you’ll wish he had perished with his mother, and that you had never seen him!
Though it will take you a couple of years to establish a footing at old Silas King’s place, and win his consent to your courting Josie, you’ll get her all the same, and have a great wedding, too— the greatest ever known in the district, and at old Silas’s expense, and in his house.
It will seem as if everything is being taken out of your hands, at first, and that you are no one, especially when he invites nearly all the guests, selecting only those who are friends of his. But you’ll soon realise that his arrangements will save you a lot of work as well as worry and expense, which will make up for a lot. Besides, you’ll be able to give more time to her during the wedding-eve, and everything will go off pleasantly for both of you on the day. Then you’ll go off yourselves — go off full of joy and sunshine and plans for the future, after the wedding breakfast, and the kissing and handshaking, to spend your honeymoon. You’ll spend it at home at your little grey homestead. It will be quieter there, and you’ll be left more to yourselves than you would be at a strange place. But you won’t decide to spend it there merely because it possesses those virtues and advantages, but more because, having put your heads together a score of times, months before, and thought everything out carefully, you both concluded that unless “Papa” comes good with a hundred or two in cash as a wedding present for all she’s done for him in the home, and in the dairy, helping to make him independent, you won’t be able to afford a trip anywhere, as you’ll want all the money you’ve scraped together and saved to pay for the furniture and additions to the house. And though old Silas has got over all the objections he had to you, personally, and holds the wedding at his house for you, and tells the guests with tears in his voice when replying to the toast of the bride’s parent, that he’s sure she’s selected the right man for her husband — “a good, industrious, God-fearing dinkum young Aussie” — and though he’s proud to have you for a son-in-law, you won’t see his cheque among the presents displayed on the table … In the excitement of becoming a father-in-law he’ll forget all about it. But you’ll feel nothing but good towards him for you’ll know he doesn’t mean anything by it — that’s it’s only a part of his nature. Lots of well-to-do men, and fathers of families, in these advanced years, are absent-minded about money and presents.
When at last you’re stealing away on the quiet from the festival with your bride in her travelling dress on your arm, and all the old women gathering round her, to say the last good-bye, and whispering hints in her ear, old Silas will be engaging some of the favoured guests in the parlour where no flirting and dancing are going on, and he’ll be hanging his pious lip and shaking his head and sighing like a martyr as he tells them that you ought to be able to afford to take her for a trip to the Blue Mountains, or somewhere, for your honeymoon, if you were any sort of a cove at all, especially after all the help he’s been giving you! But as you’ll be rolling along the lanes in the sulky while he’s saying it, with your arm round Josie, and smiling under her hat at her whenever you risk taking your eyes off the horse, you, of course, won’t hear him, and will not be perturbed by the impression he’s giving them of you and the splendid light he’s putting himself in as a benefactor and helpful parent. So you’ll spend your honeymoon in your own way, and enjoy it perhaps as much as a prince or a millionaire would. And the little home you’ll take Josie to will be as comfortable as most of the homes that young couples begin married life in in the bush … Besides, being on the spot in half an hour or so, the time you would otherwise have wasted travelling long distances by rail or boat, and strolling about seashores, and streets and parks, you can devote to building a wash-house, or something, for Josie, or making her a vegetable garden; and you’ll be able to undo a lot of little things you did on your own account months before, and do them all over again under her direction and to her liking, and so have the place looking just as she wants it to look when her young friends come along to pay their first visits. And a bride’s young friends are always full of eyes and enthusiasm for the place she’s living in when first they visit it — especially the female section of them. It relieves their depression and gives them hope of the future.
The first to call, though, will be old Silas, himself. One afternoon he’ll arrive leisurely in his sulky, gazing cynically about at everything on your little homestead as he approaches. Of course, you won’t be expecting him, and when Josie excitedly announces that “Papa is coming, Dick! Here’s Papa!” and runs out to meet him, you’ll get in a funk, and start scraping dough from your hands so that he won’t see you’ve been filling in the honeymoon by showing Josie how you used to make dampers for yourself when you were “batching”.
“Well, please God, I’m glad to see you, my girl, and how are you getting along in your new home?” Papa will greet her. “The Lord in his goodness is watching over the two of you, I hope.” Then as he enters the door: “Dick, I suppose is out and hard at work again?”
Josie, blushing and smiling proudly on your behalf, will answer that you’ll be there in a minute; that neither of you have done anything yet, “except to milk the cows in the morning; and it wouldn’t do not to milk them”.
“No, no, of course” — Silas will agree, taking stock of the bit of furniture you’ve started the home with, as he settles himself on the new sofa — “they’d soon be all ruined if you didn’t.”
Meanwhile you’ve freed the infernal dough from your fingers, straightened your shirt-sleeves, and, combing your hair with your hand, you’ll come from the kitchen and welcome your father-in-law in a stammering, uncertain voice, with a face beaming with fabricated grins. Though it’s your honeymoon, you can’t help feeling ashamed of being discovered inside the house idling the happy hours away, and at an hour, too, when you know everyone else in the district is out in the fields working for their lives. And you can’t converse freely and get as near to your father-in-law as you would like to when all the time you are doubtful how to address him — whether you should call him “Papa”, the same as Josie does, or stick to “Mister King”. Several times it will be on the tip of your tongue to call him “Papa”, but never being brought up to calling your Old Man by such a polished high-falutin’ appellation, the attempt will stick in your throat and nearly choke you …
But after awhile you’ll begin to feel more like a relation; and when at last he asks in an interested way, “Are you going to plant any barley this year, Dick, or put all your ground under wheat?” you’ll unthinkingly come out with: “Oh, I think I’ll put it all under wheat, Papa” — and soon as you hear what you’ve said you’ll turn crimson and grin like a criminal. And when you see Josie trying to keep from laughing, and old Silas himself staring and biting at his under-lip as if it was your tongue he had between his teeth, you’ll feel sorry you spoke, and inwardly determine to see him dead before you’ll make such an ass of yourself again!
Still, you’ll forget all about it in a minute or two; and you’ll get on so well together that you’ll be showing him everything you’ve done to make the little home comfortable for Josie, and detailing the improvements you’ve made to the farm, and all that you intend making; to all of which old Silas will nod approval and appreciation … And when Josie in her turn shows him the wide-end verandah that you added to the house for her, and explains in raptures that all she wants now to complete her joy is a small room on the end of it so she can accommodate an extra visitor any time there might be a rush, or “where you could sleep, yourself, Papa,” she’ll enthuse — “whenever you decide to come and stay for a week with us”, you’ll start wondering with a fast-beating heart if old Silas will open his purse and build the room for you. Just for the moment a beneficent look on his face will give you the impression that he might. But it will only be for a moment. Instead of opening his purse he’ll open your eyes.
“There’s a room on the verandah of that little old deserted place on the reserve, Dick”, he’ll suggest, turning to you. “It would just suit this verandah if no white ants have got into it.”
“Where all the goats camp?” you’ll grin in disparagement, and casting a glance of disappointment at Josie.
“But you won’t want the goats!” he’ll bark at you. “And if the timber is still sound you ought to be able to get it as a bargain from the Council; and it wouldn’t take you more than a day to pull it down and cart it away while the weather is fine.”
You’ll look at him as if he was your enemy, and for a while you can’t decide what answer to make. But, reading your face like a barometer, Josie will change the subject: “And there is one other thing, though, that Dick has got to get, yet, for me, Papa”, she’ll say, with a cheerfulness that only a woman can be capable of perpetrating.
“Well, if there’s only one, you haven’t got a very long list of wants for him to satisfy, my girl” — her parent will interrupt. “You’re not like your poor mother was — God rest her in her narrow bed! — when she got married.”
And for a moment or two he’ll close his eyes in pious reflection.
“And that’s a good sulky horse,” Josie will conclude. “One I can have to drive whenever I go out without worrying Dick for one that he is working.”
“Yes” — old Silas will concur, regarding her thoughtfully with his hollow eyes. And once again you’ll get a notion that he means to do something big and generous. You’ll know that his grass paddocks are over-run with horses of all descriptions, and your keen mind will run on the familiar forms of several young colts, any one of which would make an ideal sulky horse for a woman.
“A good sulky horse, my girl?” he’ll echo in reflection — and you’ll reckon your father-in-law is going to come good this time for sure — perhaps make a present of two of those horses, one to each of you. In fact, before he can speak the word you’ll be quietly reckoning that to save questions being raised in the future it would be wise to get him to write out a receipt for them right on the spot; also you’ll be wondering whether it would be wiser to put your registered brand on them both or wait till Josie applies for a brand of her own to put on hers… But when at last old Silas opens his mouth to speak he’ll turn to you again and remark: “Well, horses are very cheap just now, Dick, and you oughtn’t to have any trouble getting what you want at the sale-yards, on almost any Saturday.”
Oh mighty! A sinking feeling will come over you again; but you’ll feebly agree with him. Then recovering, you’ll reckon the first thing you are going to do when you get back into harness is run into the sale-yards with a few quid in your pocket and see how horses are going. You’ll be inclined to let the matter end there, but your father-in-law was always fond of talking about horses, and will wonder that you haven’t got a few spare ones running on your farm, “for you never know when you want them”, he’ll add, as lightly as though acquiring horseflesh is as easy to you with limited means as gathering firewood… But when you start coughing instead of answering him, he’ll gaze through the window at your yards and cow-sheds and ask: “How many cows are you milking?”
But here, Josie, like the splendid helpmate she promises to be, will come to your rescue again, with: “Dick’s been milking ten up to now, Papa; but with me to help him from this on he’ll be milking twenty.”
“Huh!” old Silas will grunt, “that’s not much of a change to get married for, girl. You could get plenty of milking at home when you were single.”
“But we’ll be milking for ourselves now, Papa”, Josie’ll laugh, while you’ll add a few confirmatory nods and grins.
“Yes — yes— quite so — quite so”, from old Silas. Then remembering his time is short; that he only snatched an hour to drive over to see how you were both getting along, and further expressing his gladness at finding you both so well and happy, and in want of nothing, he’ll take his departure. But before stepping into the sulky he’ll consign Josie again to your care, telling you that “she’s in your hands now, and take care of her — take care of her”.
Then standing together watching him rolling away down the road you’ll turn to Josie, and drawing her to you in the altitude of emotion, your cheek to hers, you’ll croon in her ear: “And I am takin’ care of you, Josie, ain’t I?”
The honeymoon will be fading out now, and you’ll be back in harness again. But you’re beginning to find you’re a different man. Life has become more serious to you; you’re an independent person, in your own eyes, and in the eyes of Josie’s friends who come to see her. You’ll realise how quickly a young wife can raise her husband in the esteem of others, and how he can convince himself that it’s all due to his own merits!
So the months go by. You’ve reaped a good harvest and waved your first sheaf. You’re finding it’s almost as cheap for two to live as it is for one. Yet, as much as you love each other, and pull evenly together, the same constant, self-contained unvarying society somehow palls. There is something lacking. You don’t quite understand what it is… Not being an artist, or alleged painter of realism your mind won’t dwell on creative effort, or the imitating of nature as a solution. Still, you’ll be making the most you can of everything, and doing your best to make life pleasant and prosperous and easy for Josie. She’ll be doing her best, too, to help and uplift you — cooking, making, mending, saving and comforting. And she’ll become engaged in sewing and cutting out a new sort of clothes and things from patterns lent her by Mrs. Eady and Mrs. Boody on the next homesteads… This will seem to be special work she has undertaken which you won’t be informed about, until one day she’ll startle you by complaining of not being well, and telling you to go at once for her friend, Mrs. Browne. Cripes! You’ll nearly be taken ill, too! You’ll turn pale. Then you’ll think of the horse and sulky, you haven’t a car yet, and half bewildered you’ll run for the winkers. All the poetry will go out of married life for you as you leave Josie alone and rush up the paddock to catch Snip. As bad luck will have it, there’s not an animal within call of the yard — they are all up on the ridge. And just when you locate Snip, after running, blundering and puffing till you’re fit to drop, it will suddenly dawn on you that he won’t let anyone but Josie, herself, catch him in the paddock. Holy! What are you going to do? And being one of the cunning ones, he won’t submit to being yarded on foot! So you’ll approach him downheartedly, coaxing, grovelling, crawling to him. But all your efforts will be useless, for he’ll calmly look at you, and cocking his tail in disrespect will trot off out of reach. An idea will come to you. You’ll run back to the house to put on a dress and hat of Josie’s and return to Snip. You’ve put them on and have come out of the house again, when — salvation! the voice of your father-in-law greets you! You’ll stop, surprised. So will he. “What in God’s name, man, are you dressed up like that for?” — he will ask — “Are you demented?” But when you gasp out everything to him, he’ll become more alarmed and concerned than you.
“For God’s sake, here, man —” he will choke, alighting to the ground — “get into my sulky, and go for your life — go for your life! … You had a right to have your own horse harnessed and ready every night, and every day!”
Next minute you’ll be flogging your way along the wide lane at breakneck pace to Mrs. Browne’s place, while old Silas will hobble back home on foot, grunting and mumbling grievously at every turn: “’Twas no place for a man to find himself at such a time — at such a time! … Young fools… they will get married… will get married.”
You’ll have a son an’ heir, now, as big Mrs. Browne, the nurse, will call your first-born, and a feeling different to anything you ever experienced before will tingle through you — a feeling of pride of parenthood and family responsibility. A determination, too, to work your hardest and make money, and become successful, and provide Josie with a servant and to give the youngster a good education, and make a doctor, or a lawyer, or a Governor of him, and a credit to his country, will take possession of you.
And you’ll be glad when the time comes for big Mrs. Browne to roll up her paraphernalia and depart for her home as you were to land her whole and safe at the door of yours a month or so before, after propelling and bumping her in furious fashion over infamous roads in old Silas’ sulky that he loaned you. For you’ll be able to talk freely to Josie again, and be at liberty to admire and fondle the baby in your own way and say the little things you want to say of it, and to it, and be your real self once more.
And as you drop to your knees in prayerful attitude on the floor to get a close-up of the little, red, drowsy thing that’s just dined like a leech, and is resting on its back in its mother’s lap she’ll smile upon it, and pucking its cheeks tenderly will croon “Ba-by, ba-by”; then suddenly she’ll call on you to look at it “smiling”. Though you’re gazing studiously at the helpless brat, even more studiously than you would at a new calf, you won’t be sure that you noticed the smile.
“Oh, yes, Dick, it did—” Josie, puckering the pudgy cheeks some more with fingers and thumb, will proudly affirm: ‘There! there, now, again — look, look — oh look, Dick!”
“Oh, yes, I saw that time”, you’ll pleasantly lie, but not being endowed with the senses of a young mother you can be forgiven for your blindness and discretion.
But when Josie in her flights of rapture implores you to “give the dear little darling a kiss”, a quivering at the back of your neck, and feeling of uncertainty as you spread out your hairy arms to grope for support as you lower your big head will make you think you’re taking a risk of colliding with it and committing murder! All the same, it will be a new and curious experience for you, kissing your son an’ heir — different in every way to kissing Josie, herself, for the first time, or for the fifty-first time. It will seem like starting out to manufacture an affection, and you won’t thrill over it any more than if you had applied your lips to a protoplasm or blanc-mange.
Next moment, though, as Josie’s joy of motherhood increases, and she adjures you to “kiss the dear little darling again, Richard, kiss its little legs, they’re so sweet”, giving the stumpy, red limbs which she’ll expose purposely, a running fire of them, herself, you’ll feel like a criminal that’s recalled to receive a further sentence. When you were courting and made up your mind to ask her to be your wife, and she agreed to everything, you certainly didn’t foresee that all this sort of stuff was to be included in the arrangement.
Still, you’ll be conscious that, after all, it’s only one of the many duties never numerated — one that comes only with fatherhood — the finishing touch to man’s recreative skill. And so you’ll console yourself in the knowledge that now you’re a family man you must take things as they come, the unpleasant with the pleasant, and you’ll grin through and put up with them.
“No, no, not ‘little Dickie’ ” — Josie will presently protest. “‘Richard’ we must always call him, dear, not a nick-name like lots do.” Then, bending over the son an’ heir, “Oh, you darling”, and she’ll push one of its stubby feet into her mouth, as if it was a lump of toffee.
Starting to share Josie’s passion for the bairn your dull eyes will sparkle, as you wonder “how long it will be before he’s running about and following me down th’ paddock?”
“But we mustn’t let the little dear walk too soon, Richard”, Josie will safeguard, covering the infant’s nakedness lest the wind gets at it. “Mrs. Browne says that’s why a lot of babies — and she never saw a better-shaped baby than this little darling, Richard, and its the heaviest ever she’s brought into the world—why a lot of them, Richard, grow up to be bandy-leg men. Their legs bend under them if they walk too soon, even when they are perfectly formed like this little dear’s. And our little Richard —” kissing the youngster again — “musn’t have bandy-legs. No, no, no, he mustn’t, must he, ducky.” And she’ll kiss it with greater energy.
“I wonder what he’ll really be like, Josie, when he’s a man?” you’ll enthuse, placing a hand lightly and proudly on the brat’s head, the skull of which isn’t unlike an egg with a soft shell — “looking at him now you would hardly imagine him ever being different, would you?”
“Oh, yes, Richard, I can — for he’s going to be very tall and awful clever — I’m sure. Mrs. Browne said he has a wonderful forehead for a first baby, no other baby that ever she knew had one like it; and we’ll send him to school every day, Richard, and you’ll go with him the first day to put his name down and tell the master to take care of him, and see the other boys don’t hit him, and perhaps I’ll go with him, too, and we’ll get him all the best books that he’ll want to pass his scholarship to the Grammar — the Toowoomba Grammar, we’ll send him to, Richard, it wouldn’t be far to go to see him there, or for him to come home in vacation. They marry well who go to the Toowoomba Grammar, so will Richard —” here she’ll laugh.
“I’ll pick a good pony for him to ride, too,” you’ll put in — “and make a great horseman of him as well as a scholar. The foal that Bluebell has now will be the one for him — it’s going to be a grey, and it’ll be at its best as a five-year-old, just when this little nipper —”
“Oh, you mustn’t start calling our darling a ‘nipper’, Richard, or you’ll never get out of the way of it!” Josie will interrupt — “always say Richard.”
“Richard,” you’ll repeat — “but hoakey” — you’ll excitedly diverge, “did I tell you before, Josie, that they were both born on the same day — he, and Bluebell’s foal?”
“No, Richard; were they?”
“They were, and at the same hour.”
“Oh, poor little Bluebell! You never told me, and on the same day!”
“The same hour!” you’ll gush.
‘Then I hope you have been kind to her, Richard”, she’ll pause to reflect.
“She’s doing well, Josie — they both are”, you’ll assure her. “She’s been running on the range, where there’s plenty of good grass and water; and if you saw the foal you’d be surprised. A beauty, and races about the ridges out there like a young kangaroo. Gee! I wish this little coney here —” placing your hand lightly again on your offspring’s skull — “could race like it.” Then removing your hand you’ll feel among the folds of its long white robe for a touch of its little red feet.
“But I don’t think we’ll let Richard have much to do with horses, Richard, so many accidents happen; and look at all the boys, and men also, who have been killed off them! Oh, no, you precious little darling” — showering a fresh consignment of kisses on the son an’ heir — “it would never do to let you take any risks at all, never! never! never!”
“Well, I don’t suppose he’ll ever do much milking?” you’ll meditate mercenarily.
“Milking?” Josie’ll almost choke, “milking! What everyone can do! Such a beautiful darling in a dirty old milking yard, among a lot of dirty old cows? Oh, Richard, how could you think of it?”
“I wasn’t thinking of it altogether, Josie —” you’ll shuffle clumsily, “and I wouldn’t have let you help me in the yard, if I could’ve avoided it; hanged if I would.”
“It doesn’t matter about me, Richard —” Josie’ll assure you bravely, “it’s my duty to be where you are. But this little duck” — more kisses — “was given to us for something better than milking. Weren’t you, little blue eyes?” and Josie will play with the dimpled cheeks again.
“Well, now what do you reckon he’ll be, Josie,” you’ll ask — “a, what’ll I say — clergyman?”
“Oh, well,” she’ll hesitate, “it would be wonderful, of course, for our Richard to be a clergyman, and for us, too, but—”
You’ll grin meaningly, and wait. “But I’d sooner see the little duck something different so as he’ll have the money and the position and the will and all that, Richard, to help the poor clergymen themselves to do what’s right, and be a really great man, which he is going to be Richard.”
“To be a shepherd of the shepherds, you mean, Josie?” you’ll grin.
“Well, yes, Richard”, she’ll agree, uncovering the brat’s lower extremities again and planting fresh kisses on the soles of its feet, then: “Look, look at the little dear smiling again, Richard!” And when you’ll have looked and nodded obligingly she’ll conclude: “for, of course, we want him to be good as well as clever; don’t we, my beautiful, my precious?”
“But I think a lawyer would be the best to make of him, Josie,” you’ll finally decide, rising to your feet from the hard boards and bending over them both with a wise air, and your hands behind your back — “that’s what we’ll make him.”
“Oh, I think so, too, Richard,” Josie’ll agree, “but it’s a pity they are so common.”
“How grand it’ll be to see him standing there in the court,” you’ll enthuse, “a black silk gown hanging round him and a white curly wig on his head, addressing the old judge and a jury, perhaps defending me in a row like the one I had with Tim Buckley over that block of land on the range —”
“And winning the case for you, too, Richard — for his father,” Josie’ll burst out — “how splendid! It will be lovely! And I’m sure he will, too.”
“Yes, Josie,” you’ll warm up — “and I can see him, and hear him addressing them now” — stretching out one of your arms and placing a foot on the end of the sofa in vain barristerial pose — “Subject to your Honour’s direction on the law relating to lands leased by the Crown tenants, gentlemen of the jury, I say, and as sensible men you must agree with me, that the defendant when he agreed to sublease this land to my client he knowingly and wilfully —”
Here Josie will interrupt you:
“Richard! Richard!” — she’ll cry — “look at baby! — you’ve made it sick! He’s vom-vomiting! Run for Mrs. Browne, Richard — run!”
But when you’ve recovered from the fright, you’ll see little Richard, as you had often, as a boy, seen the baby in your own family — lying on his back, mildly puling. But your mother, who was hardened, took it calmly. Not being hardened, however, you won’t feel as unconcerned over the puling Richard as your mother would. And in spite of yourself, you’ll share Josie’s fears; you’ll show it by waving your arms and stamping your heavy feet and exclaiming: “Oh! poor little bloke! Turn him over, Josie — quick! Turn him ’fore it chokes him!”
Then you’ll smile again, and go to work for little Richard, and be a happy man ever after.