Joe Wilson and His Mates

JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES

by Henry Lawson

Transcriber’s Note: This etext was entered twice (manually) and

electronically compared, by Alan R. Light This method assures a low rate

of errors in the text--often lower than in the original. Special thanks

go to Gary M. Johnson, of Takoma Park, Maryland, for his assistance in

procuring a copy of the original text, and to the readers of

soc.culture.australian and rec.arts.books (USENET newsgroups) for their

help in preparing the glossary. Italicized words or phrases are

capitalized. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.

*****

An incomplete glossary of Australian, British, or antique terms and

concepts which may prove helpful to understanding this book:

“A house where they took in cards on a tray” (from Joe Wilson’s

Courtship): An upper class house, with servants who would take a

visitor’s card (on a tray) to announce their presence, or, if the family

was out, to keep a record of the visit.

Anniversary Day: Mentioned in the text, is now known as Australia Day.

It commemorates the establishment of the first English settlement in

Australia, at Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour), on 26 January 1788.

Gin: An obvious abbreviation of “aborigine”, it only refers to *female*

aborigines, and is now considered derogatory. It was not considered

derogatory at the time Lawson wrote.

Jackaroo: At the time Lawson wrote, a Jackaroo was a “new chum” or

newcomer to Australia, who sought work on a station to gain experience.

The term now applies to any young man working as a station hand. A

female station hand is a Jillaroo. Variant: Jackeroo.

Old-fashioned child: A child that acts old for their age. Americans

would say ‘Precocious’.

‘Possum: In Australia, a class of marsupials that were originally

mistaken for possums. They are not especially related to the possums of

North and South America, other than both being marsupials.

Public/Pub.: The traditional pub. in Australia was a hotel with a

“public” bar--hence the name. The modern pub has often (not always)

dispensed with the lodging, and concentrated on the bar.

Tea: In addition to the regular meaning, Tea can also mean a light snack

or a meal (i.e., where Tea is served). In particular, Morning Tea (about

10 AM) and Afternoon Tea (about 3 PM) are nothing more than a snack, but

Evening Tea (about 6 PM) is a meal. When just “Tea” is used, it usually

means the evening meal. Variant: Tea-time.

Tucker: Food.

Shout: In addition to the regular meaning, it also refers to buying

drinks for all the members of a group, etc. The use of this term can be

confusing, so the first instance is footnoted in the text.

Sly-grog-shop: An unlicensed bar or liquor-store.

Station: A farm or ranch, especially one devoted to cattle or sheep.

Store Bullock: Lawson makes several references to these. A bullock is

a castrated bull. Bullocks were used in Australia for work that was

too heavy for horses. ‘Store’ may refer to those cattle, and their

descendants, brought to Australia by the British government, and sold to

settlers from the ‘Store’--hence, the standard draft animal.

Also: a hint with the seasons--remember that the seasons are reversed

from those in the northern hemisphere, hence June may be hot, but

December is even hotter. Australia is at a lower latitude than the

United States, so the winters are not harsh by US standards, and are not

even mild in the north. In fact, large parts of Australia are governed

more by “dry” versus “wet” than by Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter.

--A. L.

JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES

Author of “While the Billy Boils”, “On the Track and Over the

Sliprails”, “When the World was Wide, and other verses”, “Verses,

Popular and Humorous”, “Children of the Bush”, “When I was King, and

other verses”, etc.

The Author’s Farewell to the Bushmen.

Some carry their swags in the Great North-West

Where the bravest battle and die,

And a few have gone to their last long rest,

And a few have said “Good-bye!”

The coast grows dim, and it may be long

Ere the Gums again I see;

So I put my soul in a farewell song

To the chaps who barracked for me.

Their days are hard at the best of times,

And their dreams are dreams of care--

God bless them all for their big soft hearts,

And the brave, brave grins they wear!

God keep me straight as a man can go,

And true as a man may be!

For the sake of the hearts that were always so,

Of the men who had faith in me!

And a ship-side word I would say, you chaps

Of the blood of the Don’t-give-in!

The world will call it a boast, perhaps--

But I’ll win, if a man can win!

And not for gold nor the world’s applause--

Though ways to the end they be--

I’ll win, if a man might win, because

Of the men who believed in me.

Contents.

Prefatory Verses--

The Author’s Farewell to the Bushmen.

Part I.

Joe Wilson’s Courtship.

Brighten’s Sister-In-Law.

‘Water Them Geraniums’.

I. A Lonely Track.

II. ‘Past Carin’’.

A Double Buggy at Lahey’s Creek.

I. Spuds, and a Woman’s Obstinacy.

II. Joe Wilson’s Luck.

III. The Ghost of Mary’s Sacrifice.

IV. The Buggy Comes Home.

Part II.

The Golden Graveyard.

The Chinaman’s Ghost.

The Loaded Dog.

Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left.

I. Dave Regan’s Yarn.

II. Told by One of the Other Drovers.

The Ghostly Door.

A Wild Irishman.

The Babies in the Bush.

A Bush Dance.

The Buck-Jumper.

Jimmy Grimshaw’s Wooing.

At Dead Dingo.

Telling Mrs Baker.

A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs.

The Little World Left Behind.

Concluding Verses--

The Never-Never Country.

Part I.

Joe Wilson’s Courtship.

There are many times in this world when a healthy boy is happy. When he

is put into knickerbockers, for instance, and ‘comes a man to-day,’ as

my little Jim used to say. When they’re cooking something at home that

he likes. When the ‘sandy-blight’ or measles breaks out amongst the

children, or the teacher or his wife falls dangerously ill--or dies, it

doesn’t matter which--‘and there ain’t no school.’ When a boy is naked

and in his natural state for a warm climate like Australia, with three

or four of his schoolmates, under the shade of the creek-oaks in the

bend where there’s a good clear pool with a sandy bottom. When his

father buys him a gun, and he starts out after kangaroos or ‘possums.

When he gets a horse, saddle, and bridle, of his own. When he has his

arm in splints or a stitch in his head--he’s proud then, the proudest

boy in the district.

I wasn’t a healthy-minded, average boy: I reckon I was born for a poet

by mistake, and grew up to be a Bushman, and didn’t know what was the

matter with me--or the world--but that’s got nothing to do with it.

There are times when a man is happy. When he finds out that the girl

loves him. When he’s just married. When he’s a lawful father for the

first time, and everything is going on all right: some men make fools

of themselves then--I know I did. I’m happy to-night because I’m out of

debt and can see clear ahead, and because I haven’t been easy for a long

time.

But I think that the happiest time in a man’s life is when he’s courting

a girl and finds out for sure that she loves him and hasn’t a thought

for any one else. Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps,

and keep them clean, for they’re about the only days when there’s a

chance of poetry and beauty coming into this life. Make the best of them

and you’ll never regret it the longest day you live. They’re the days

that the wife will look back to, anyway, in the brightest of times as

well as in the blackest, and there shouldn’t be anything in those days

that might hurt her when she looks back. Make the most of your courting

days, you young chaps, for they will never come again.

A married man knows all about it--after a while: he sees the woman world

through the eyes of his wife; he knows what an extra moment’s pressure

of the hand means, and, if he has had a hard life, and is inclined to be

cynical, the knowledge does him no good. It leads him into awful messes

sometimes, for a married man, if he’s inclined that way, has three times

the chance with a woman that a single man has--because the married man

knows. He is privileged; he can guess pretty closely what a woman means

when she says something else; he knows just how far he can go; he can go

farther in five minutes towards coming to the point with a woman than an

innocent young man dares go in three weeks. Above all, the married man

is more decided with women; he takes them and things for granted. In

short he is--well, he is a married man. And, when he knows all this, how

much better or happier is he for it? Mark Twain says that he lost all

the beauty of the river when he saw it with a pilot’s eye,--and there

you have it.

But it’s all new to a young chap, provided he hasn’t been a young

blackguard. It’s all wonderful, new, and strange to him. He’s a

different man. He finds that he never knew anything about women. He sees

none of woman’s little ways and tricks in his girl. He is in heaven one

day and down near the other place the next; and that’s the sort of thing

that makes life interesting. He takes his new world for granted. And,

when she says she’ll be his wife----!

Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps, for they’ve got a

lot of influence on your married life afterwards--a lot more than you’d

think. Make the best of them, for they’ll never come any more, unless

we do our courting over again in another world. If we do, I’ll make the

most of mine.

But, looking back, I didn’t do so badly after all. I never told you

about the days I courted Mary. The more I look back the more I come to

think that I made the most of them, and if I had no more to regret in

married life than I have in my courting days, I wouldn’t walk to and fro

in the room, or up and down the yard in the dark sometimes, or lie awake

some nights thinking.... Ah well!

I was between twenty-one and thirty then: birthdays had never been any

use to me, and I’d left off counting them. You don’t take much stock in

birthdays in the Bush. I’d knocked about the country for a few years,

shearing and fencing and droving a little, and wasting my life without

getting anything for it. I drank now and then, and made a fool of

myself. I was reckoned ‘wild’; but I only drank because I felt less

sensitive, and the world seemed a lot saner and better and kinder when

I had a few drinks: I loved my fellow-man then and felt nearer to him.

It’s better to be thought ‘wild’ than to be considered eccentric

or ratty. Now, my old mate, Jack Barnes, drank--as far as I could

see--first because he’d inherited the gambling habit from his father

along with his father’s luck: he’d the habit of being cheated and losing

very bad, and when he lost he drank. Till drink got a hold on him. Jack

was sentimental too, but in a different way. I was sentimental about

other people--more fool I!--whereas Jack was sentimental about himself.

Before he was married, and when he was recovering from a spree, he’d

write rhymes about ‘Only a boy, drunk by the roadside’, and that sort of

thing; and he’d call ‘em poetry, and talk about signing them and sending

them to the ‘Town and Country Journal’. But he generally tore them up

when he got better. The Bush is breeding a race of poets, and I don’t

know what the country will come to in the end.

Well. It was after Jack and I had been out shearing at Beenaway shed in

the Big Scrubs. Jack was living in the little farming town of Solong,

and I was hanging round. Black, the squatter, wanted some fencing done

and a new stable built, or buggy and harness-house, at his place

at Haviland, a few miles out of Solong. Jack and I were good Bush

carpenters, so we took the job to keep us going till something else

turned up. ‘Better than doing nothing,’ said Jack.

‘There’s a nice little girl in service at Black’s,’ he said. ‘She’s more

like an adopted daughter, in fact, than a servant. She’s a real good

little girl, and good-looking into the bargain. I hear that young Black

is sweet on her, but they say she won’t have anything to do with him. I

know a lot of chaps that have tried for her, but they’ve never had any

luck. She’s a regular little dumpling, and I like dumplings. They call

her ‘Possum. You ought to try a bear up in that direction, Joe.’

I was always shy with women--except perhaps some that I should have

fought shy of; but Jack wasn’t--he was afraid of no woman, good, bad, or

indifferent. I haven’t time to explain why, but somehow, whenever a girl

took any notice of me I took it for granted that she was only playing

with me, and felt nasty about it. I made one or two mistakes, but--ah

well!

‘My wife knows little ‘Possum,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll get her to ask her out

to our place and let you know.’

I reckoned that he wouldn’t get me there then, and made a note to be on

the watch for tricks. I had a hopeless little love-story behind me, of

course. I suppose most married men can look back to their lost love; few

marry the first flame. Many a married man looks back and thinks it was

damned lucky that he didn’t get the girl he couldn’t have. Jack had been

my successful rival, only he didn’t know it--I don’t think his wife knew

it either. I used to think her the prettiest and sweetest little girl in

the district.

But Jack was mighty keen on fixing me up with the little girl at

Haviland. He seemed to take it for granted that I was going to fall in

love with her at first sight. He took too many things for granted as far

as I was concerned, and got me into awful tangles sometimes.

‘You let me alone, and I’ll fix you up, Joe,’ he said, as we rode up

to the station. ‘I’ll make it all right with the girl. You’re rather

a good-looking chap. You’ve got the sort of eyes that take with girls,

only you don’t know it; you haven’t got the go. If I had your eyes along

with my other attractions, I’d be in trouble on account of a woman about

once a-week.’

‘For God’s sake shut up, Jack,’ I said.

Do you remember the first glimpse you got of your wife? Perhaps not in

England, where so many couples grow up together from childhood; but it’s

different in Australia, where you may hail from two thousand miles away

from where your wife was born, and yet she may be a countrywoman of

yours, and a countrywoman in ideas and politics too. I remember the

first glimpse I got of Mary.

It was a two-storey brick house with wide balconies and verandahs all

round, and a double row of pines down to the front gate. Parallel at the

back was an old slab-and-shingle place, one room deep and about eight

rooms long, with a row of skillions at the back: the place was used for

kitchen, laundry, servants’ rooms, &c. This was the old homestead before

the new house was built. There was a wide, old-fashioned, brick-floored

verandah in front, with an open end; there was ivy climbing up the

verandah post on one side and a baby-rose on the other, and a grape-vine

near the chimney. We rode up to the end of the verandah, and Jack called

to see if there was any one at home, and Mary came trotting out; so it

was in the frame of vines that I first saw her.

More than once since then I’ve had a fancy to wonder whether the

rose-bush killed the grape-vine or the ivy smothered ‘em both in the

end. I used to have a vague idea of riding that way some day to see. You

do get strange fancies at odd times.

Jack asked her if the boss was in. He did all the talking. I saw a

little girl, rather plump, with a complexion like a New England or Blue

Mountain girl, or a girl from Tasmania or from Gippsland in Victoria.

Red and white girls were very scarce in the Solong district. She had the

biggest and brightest eyes I’d seen round there, dark hazel eyes, as I

found out afterwards, and bright as a ‘possum’s. No wonder they called

her ‘’Possum’. I forgot at once that Mrs Jack Barnes was the prettiest

girl in the district. I felt a sort of comfortable satisfaction in the

fact that I was on horseback: most Bushmen look better on horseback. It

was a black filly, a fresh young thing, and she seemed as shy of girls

as I was myself. I noticed Mary glanced in my direction once or twice

to see if she knew me; but, when she looked, the filly took all my

attention. Mary trotted in to tell old Black he was wanted, and after

Jack had seen him, and arranged to start work next day, we started back

to Solong.

I expected Jack to ask me what I thought of Mary--but he didn’t. He

squinted at me sideways once or twice and didn’t say anything for a long

time, and then he started talking of other things. I began to feel wild

at him. He seemed so damnably satisfied with the way things were going.

He seemed to reckon that I was a gone case now; but, as he didn’t say

so, I had no way of getting at him. I felt sure he’d go home and

tell his wife that Joe Wilson was properly gone on little ‘Possum at

Haviland. That was all Jack’s way.

Next morning we started to work. We were to build the buggy-house at

the back near the end of the old house, but first we had to take down

a rotten old place that might have been the original hut in the Bush

before the old house was built. There was a window in it, opposite the

laundry window in the old place, and the first thing I did was to take

out the sash. I’d noticed Jack yarning with ‘Possum before he started

work. While I was at work at the window he called me round to the other

end of the hut to help him lift a grindstone out of the way; and when

we’d done it, he took the tips of my ear between his fingers and thumb

and stretched it and whispered into it--

‘Don’t hurry with that window, Joe; the strips are hardwood and hard to

get off--you’ll have to take the sash out very carefully so as not to

break the glass.’ Then he stretched my ear a little more and put his

mouth closer--

‘Make a looking-glass of that window, Joe,’ he said.

I was used to Jack, and when I went back to the window I started to

puzzle out what he meant, and presently I saw it by chance.

That window reflected the laundry window: the room was dark inside and

there was a good clear reflection; and presently I saw Mary come to the

laundry window and stand with her hands behind her back, thoughtfully

watching me. The laundry window had an old-fashioned hinged sash, and I

like that sort of window--there’s more romance about it, I think. There

was thick dark-green ivy all round the window, and Mary looked prettier

than a picture. I squared up my shoulders and put my heels together and

put as much style as I could into the work. I couldn’t have turned round

to save my life.

Presently Jack came round, and Mary disappeared.

‘Well?’ he whispered.

‘You’re a fool, Jack,’ I said. ‘She’s only interested in the old house

being pulled down.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on the business

round the corner, and she ain’t interested when I’M round this end.’

‘You seem mighty interested in the business,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘This sort of thing just suits a man of my rank in

times of peace.’

‘What made you think of the window?’ I asked.

‘Oh, that’s as simple as striking matches. I’m up to all those dodges.

Why, where there wasn’t a window, I’ve fixed up a piece of looking-glass

to see if a girl was taking any notice of me when she thought I wasn’t

looking.’

He went away, and presently Mary was at the window again, and this

time she had a tray with cups of tea and a plate of cake and

bread-and-butter. I was prizing off the strips that held the sash,

very carefully, and my heart suddenly commenced to gallop, without any

reference to me. I’d never felt like that before, except once or

twice. It was just as if I’d swallowed some clockwork arrangement,

unconsciously, and it had started to go, without warning. I reckon it

was all on account of that blarsted Jack working me up. He had a

quiet way of working you up to a thing, that made you want to hit him

sometimes--after you’d made an ass of yourself.

I didn’t hear Mary at first. I hoped Jack would come round and help me

out of the fix, but he didn’t.

‘Mr--Mr Wilson!’ said Mary. She had a sweet voice.

I turned round.

‘I thought you and Mr Barnes might like a cup of tea.’

‘Oh, thank you!’ I said, and I made a dive for the window, as if hurry

would help it. I trod on an old cask-hoop; it sprang up and dinted my

shin and I stumbled--and that didn’t help matters much.

‘Oh! did you hurt yourself, Mr Wilson?’ cried Mary.

‘Hurt myself! Oh no, not at all, thank you,’ I blurted out. ‘It takes

more than that to hurt me.’

I was about the reddest shy lanky fool of a Bushman that was ever taken

at a disadvantage on foot, and when I took the tray my hands shook so

that a lot of the tea was spilt into the saucers. I embarrassed her too,

like the damned fool I was, till she must have been as red as I was, and

it’s a wonder we didn’t spill the whole lot between us. I got away

from the window in as much of a hurry as if Jack had cut his leg with a

chisel and fainted, and I was running with whisky for him. I blundered

round to where he was, feeling like a man feels when he’s just made an

ass of himself in public. The memory of that sort of thing hurts you

worse and makes you jerk your head more impatiently than the thought of

a past crime would, I think.

I pulled myself together when I got to where Jack was.

‘Here, Jack!’ I said. ‘I’ve struck something all right; here’s some tea

and brownie--we’ll hang out here all right.’

Jack took a cup of tea and a piece of cake and sat down to enjoy it,

just as if he’d paid for it and ordered it to be sent out about that

time.

He was silent for a while, with the sort of silence that always made me

wild at him. Presently he said, as if he’d just thought of it--

‘That’s a very pretty little girl, ‘Possum, isn’t she, Joe? Do you

notice how she dresses?--always fresh and trim. But she’s got on her

best bib-and-tucker to-day, and a pinafore with frills to it. And it’s

ironing-day, too. It can’t be on your account. If it was Saturday or

Sunday afternoon, or some holiday, I could understand it. But perhaps

one of her admirers is going to take her to the church bazaar in Solong

to-night. That’s what it is.’

He gave me time to think over that.

‘But yet she seems interested in you, Joe,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you

offer to take her to the bazaar instead of letting another chap get in

ahead of you? You miss all your chances, Joe.’

Then a thought struck me. I ought to have known Jack well enough to have

thought of it before.

‘Look here, Jack,’ I said. ‘What have you been saying to that girl about

me?’

‘Oh, not much,’ said Jack. ‘There isn’t much to say about you.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘Oh, nothing in particular. She’d heard all about you before.’

‘She hadn’t heard much good, I suppose,’ I said.

‘Well, that’s true, as far as I could make out. But you’ve only got

yourself to blame. I didn’t have the breeding and rearing of you. I

smoothed over matters with her as much as I could.’

‘What did you tell her?’ I said. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

‘Well, to tell the truth, I didn’t tell her anything much. I only

answered questions.’

‘And what questions did she ask?’

‘Well, in the first place, she asked if your name wasn’t Joe Wilson; and

I said it was, as far as I knew. Then she said she heard that you wrote

poetry, and I had to admit that that was true.’

‘Look here, Jack,’ I said, ‘I’ve two minds to punch your head.’

‘And she asked me if it was true that you were wild,’ said Jack, ‘and I

said you was, a bit. She said it seemed a pity. She asked me if it was

true that you drank, and I drew a long face and said that I was sorry

to say it was true. She asked me if you had any friends, and I said none

that I knew of, except me. I said that you’d lost all your friends; they

stuck to you as long as they could, but they had to give you best, one

after the other.’

‘What next?’

‘She asked me if you were delicate, and I said no, you were as tough as

fencing-wire. She said you looked rather pale and thin, and asked me if

you’d had an illness lately. And I said no--it was all on account of

the wild, dissipated life you’d led. She said it was a pity you hadn’t

a mother or a sister to look after you--it was a pity that something

couldn’t be done for you, and I said it was, but I was afraid that

nothing could be done. I told her that I was doing all I could to keep

you straight.’

I knew enough of Jack to know that most of this was true. And so she

only pitied me after all. I felt as if I’d been courting her for six

months and she’d thrown me over--but I didn’t know anything about women

yet.

‘Did you tell her I was in jail?’ I growled.

‘No, by Gum! I forgot that. But never mind I’ll fix that up all right.

I’ll tell her that you got two years’ hard for horse-stealing. That

ought to make her interested in you, if she isn’t already.’

We smoked a while.

‘And was that all she said?’ I asked.

‘Who?--Oh! ‘Possum,’ said Jack rousing himself. ‘Well--no; let me

think---- We got chatting of other things--you know a married man’s

privileged, and can say a lot more to a girl than a single man can. I

got talking nonsense about sweethearts, and one thing led to another

till at last she said, “I suppose Mr Wilson’s got a sweetheart, Mr

Barnes?”’

‘And what did you say?’ I growled.

‘Oh, I told her that you were a holy terror amongst the girls,’ said

Jack. ‘You’d better take back that tray, Joe, and let us get to work.’

I wouldn’t take back the tray--but that didn’t mend matters, for Jack

took it back himself.

I didn’t see Mary’s reflection in the window again, so I took the window

out. I reckoned that she was just a big-hearted, impulsive little thing,

as many Australian girls are, and I reckoned that I was a fool for

thinking for a moment that she might give me a second thought, except

by way of kindness. Why! young Black and half a dozen better men than me

were sweet on her, and young Black was to get his father’s station and

the money--or rather his mother’s money, for she held the stuff (she

kept it close too, by all accounts). Young Black was away at the time,

and his mother was dead against him about Mary, but that didn’t make

any difference, as far as I could see. I reckoned that it was only

just going to be a hopeless, heart-breaking, stand-far-off-and-worship

affair, as far as I was concerned--like my first love affair, that I

haven’t told you about yet. I was tired of being pitied by good girls.

You see, I didn’t know women then. If I had known, I think I might have

made more than one mess of my life.

Jack rode home to Solong every night. I was staying at a pub some

distance out of town, between Solong and Haviland. There were three or

four wet days, and we didn’t get on with the work. I fought shy of Mary

till one day she was hanging out clothes and the line broke. It was the

old-style sixpenny clothes-line. The clothes were all down, but it was

clean grass, so it didn’t matter much. I looked at Jack.

‘Go and help her, you capital Idiot!’ he said, and I made the plunge.

‘Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson!’ said Mary, when I came to help. She had the

broken end of the line and was trying to hold some of the clothes off

the ground, as if she could pull it an inch with the heavy wet sheets

and table-cloths and things on it, or as if it would do any good if she

did. But that’s the way with women--especially little women--some of ‘em

would try to pull a store bullock if they got the end of the rope on

the right side of the fence. I took the line from Mary, and accidentally

touched her soft, plump little hand as I did so: it sent a thrill right

through me. She seemed a lot cooler than I was.

Now, in cases like this, especially if you lose your head a bit, you get

hold of the loose end of the rope that’s hanging from the post with one

hand, and the end of the line with the clothes on with the other, and

try to pull ‘em far enough together to make a knot. And that’s about

all you do for the present, except look like a fool. Then I took off

the post end, spliced the line, took it over the fork, and pulled, while

Mary helped me with the prop. I thought Jack might have come and taken

the prop from her, but he didn’t; he just went on with his work as if

nothing was happening inside the horizon.

She’d got the line about two-thirds full of clothes, it was a bit short

now, so she had to jump and catch it with one hand and hold it down

while she pegged a sheet she’d thrown over. I’d made the plunge now,

so I volunteered to help her. I held down the line while she threw

the things over and pegged out. As we got near the post and higher I

straightened out some ends and pegged myself. Bushmen are handy at most

things. We laughed, and now and again Mary would say, ‘No, that’s not

the way, Mr Wilson; that’s not right; the sheet isn’t far enough over;

wait till I fix it,’ &c. I’d a reckless idea once of holding her up

while she pegged, and I was glad afterwards that I hadn’t made such a

fool of myself.

‘There’s only a few more things in the basket, Miss Brand,’ I said. ‘You

can’t reach--I’ll fix ‘em up.’

She seemed to give a little gasp.

‘Oh, those things are not ready yet,’ she said, ‘they’re not rinsed,’

and she grabbed the basket and held it away from me. The things looked

the same to me as the rest on the line; they looked rinsed enough and

blued too. I reckoned that she didn’t want me to take the trouble, or

thought that I mightn’t like to be seen hanging out clothes, and was

only doing it out of kindness.

‘Oh, it’s no trouble,’ I said, ‘let me hang ‘em out. I like it. I’ve

hung out clothes at home on a windy day,’ and I made a reach into the

basket. But she flushed red, with temper I thought, and snatched the

basket away.

‘Excuse me, Mr Wilson,’ she said, ‘but those things are not ready yet!’

and she marched into the wash-house.

‘Ah well! you’ve got a little temper of your own,’ I thought to myself.

When I told Jack, he said that I’d made another fool of myself. He said

I’d both disappointed and offended her. He said that my line was to

stand off a bit and be serious and melancholy in the background.

That evening when we’d started home, we stopped some time yarning with

a chap we met at the gate; and I happened to look back, and saw Mary

hanging out the rest of the things--she thought that we were out of

sight. Then I understood why those things weren’t ready while we were

round.

For the next day or two Mary didn’t take the slightest notice of me,

and I kept out of her way. Jack said I’d disillusioned her--and hurt her

dignity--which was a thousand times worse. He said I’d spoilt the thing

altogether. He said that she’d got an idea that I was shy and poetic,

and I’d only shown myself the usual sort of Bush-whacker.

I noticed her talking and chatting with other fellows once or twice, and

it made me miserable. I got drunk two evenings running, and then, as it

appeared afterwards, Mary consulted Jack, and at last she said to him,

when we were together--

‘Do you play draughts, Mr Barnes?’

‘No,’ said Jack.

‘Do you, Mr Wilson?’ she asked, suddenly turning her big, bright eyes on

me, and speaking to me for the first time since last washing-day.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do a little.’ Then there was a silence, and I had to

say something else.

‘Do you play draughts, Miss Brand?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I can’t get any one to play with me here of an

evening, the men are generally playing cards or reading.’ Then she said,

‘It’s very dull these long winter evenings when you’ve got nothing to

do. Young Mr Black used to play draughts, but he’s away.’

I saw Jack winking at me urgently.

‘I’ll play a game with you, if you like,’ I said, ‘but I ain’t much of a

player.’

‘Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson! When shall you have an evening to spare?’

We fixed it for that same evening. We got chummy over the draughts. I

had a suspicion even then that it was a put-up job to keep me away from

the pub.

Perhaps she found a way of giving a hint to old Black without committing

herself. Women have ways--or perhaps Jack did it. Anyway, next day the

Boss came round and said to me--

‘Look here, Joe, you’ve got no occasion to stay at the pub. Bring along

your blankets and camp in one of the spare rooms of the old house. You

can have your tucker here.’

He was a good sort, was Black the squatter: a squatter of the old

school, who’d shared the early hardships with his men, and couldn’t see

why he should not shake hands and have a smoke and a yarn over old times

with any of his old station hands that happened to come along. But he’d

married an Englishwoman after the hardships were over, and she’d never

got any Australian notions.

Next day I found one of the skillion rooms scrubbed out and a bed fixed

up for me. I’m not sure to this day who did it, but I supposed that

good-natured old Black had given one of the women a hint. After tea

I had a yarn with Mary, sitting on a log of the wood-heap. I don’t

remember exactly how we both came to be there, or who sat down

first. There was about two feet between us. We got very chummy and

confidential. She told me about her childhood and her father.

He’d been an old mate of Black’s, a younger son of a well-to-do English

family (with blue blood in it, I believe), and sent out to Australia

with a thousand pounds to make his way, as many younger sons are, with

more or less. They think they’re hard done by; they blue their thousand

pounds in Melbourne or Sydney, and they don’t make any more nowadays,

for the Roarin’ Days have been dead these thirty years. I wish I’d had a

thousand pounds to start on!

Mary’s mother was the daughter of a German immigrant, who selected

up there in the old days. She had a will of her own as far as I could

understand, and bossed the home till the day of her death. Mary’s

father made money, and lost it, and drank--and died. Mary remembered

him sitting on the verandah one evening with his hand on her head, and

singing a German song (the ‘Lorelei’, I think it was) softly, as if to

himself. Next day he stayed in bed, and the children were kept out of

the room; and, when he died, the children were adopted round (there was

a little money coming from England).

Mary told me all about her girlhood. She went first to live with a sort

of cousin in town, in a house where they took in cards on a tray, and

then she came to live with Mrs Black, who took a fancy to her at first.

I’d had no boyhood to speak of, so I gave her some of my ideas of what

the world ought to be, and she seemed interested.

Next day there were sheets on my bed, and I felt pretty cocky until

I remembered that I’d told her I had no one to care for me; then I

suspected pity again.

But next evening we remembered that both our fathers and mothers were

dead, and discovered that we had no friends except Jack and old Black,

and things went on very satisfactorily.

And next day there was a little table in my room with a crocheted cover

and a looking-glass.

I noticed the other girls began to act mysterious and giggle when I was

round, but Mary didn’t seem aware of it.

We got very chummy. Mary wasn’t comfortable at Haviland. Old Black

was very fond of her and always took her part, but she wanted to be

independent. She had a great idea of going to Sydney and getting into

the hospital as a nurse. She had friends in Sydney, but she had no

money. There was a little money coming to her when she was twenty-one--a

few pounds--and she was going to try and get it before that time.

‘Look here, Miss Brand,’ I said, after we’d watched the moon rise. ‘I’ll

lend you the money. I’ve got plenty--more than I know what to do with.’

But I saw I’d hurt her. She sat up very straight for a while, looking

before her; then she said it was time to go in, and said ‘Good-night, Mr

Wilson.’

I reckoned I’d done it that time; but Mary told me afterwards that she

was only hurt because it struck her that what she said about money might

have been taken for a hint. She didn’t understand me yet, and I didn’t

know human nature. I didn’t say anything to Jack--in fact about this

time I left off telling him about things. He didn’t seem hurt; he worked

hard and seemed happy.

I really meant what I said to Mary about the money. It was pure good

nature. I’d be a happier man now, I think, and richer man perhaps, if

I’d never grown any more selfish than I was that night on the wood-heap

with Mary. I felt a great sympathy for her--but I got to love her. I

went through all the ups and downs of it. One day I was having tea in

the kitchen, and Mary and another girl, named Sarah, reached me a clean

plate at the same time: I took Sarah’s plate because she was first, and

Mary seemed very nasty about it, and that gave me great hopes. But all

next evening she played draughts with a drover that she’d chummed up

with. I pretended to be interested in Sarah’s talk, but it didn’t seem

to work.

A few days later a Sydney Jackaroo visited the station. He had a good

pea-rifle, and one afternoon he started to teach Mary to shoot at a

target. They seemed to get very chummy. I had a nice time for three or

four days, I can tell you. I was worse than a wall-eyed bullock with

the pleuro. The other chaps had a shot out of the rifle. Mary called ‘Mr

Wilson’ to have a shot, and I made a worse fool of myself by sulking. If

it hadn’t been a blooming Jackaroo I wouldn’t have minded so much.

Next evening the Jackaroo and one or two other chaps and the girls went

out ‘possum-shooting. Mary went. I could have gone, but I didn’t. I

mooched round all the evening like an orphan bandicoot on a burnt ridge,

and then I went up to the pub and filled myself with beer, and damned

the world, and came home and went to bed. I think that evening was

the only time I ever wrote poetry down on a piece of paper. I got so

miserable that I enjoyed it.

I felt better next morning, and reckoned I was cured. I ran against Mary

accidentally and had to say something.

‘How did you enjoy yourself yesterday evening, Miss Brand?’ I asked.

‘Oh, very well, thank you, Mr Wilson,’ she said. Then she asked, ‘How

did you enjoy yourself, Mr Wilson?’

I puzzled over that afterwards, but couldn’t make anything out of it.

Perhaps she only said it for the sake of saying something. But about

this time my handkerchiefs and collars disappeared from the room and

turned up washed and ironed and laid tidily on my table. I used to keep

an eye out, but could never catch anybody near my room. I straightened

up, and kept my room a bit tidy, and when my handkerchief got too dirty,

and I was ashamed of letting it go to the wash, I’d slip down to the

river after dark and wash it out, and dry it next day, and rub it up to

look as if it hadn’t been washed, and leave it on my table. I felt

so full of hope and joy that I worked twice as hard as Jack, till one

morning he remarked casually--

‘I see you’ve made a new mash, Joe. I saw the half-caste cook tidying

up your room this morning and taking your collars and things to the

wash-house.’

I felt very much off colour all the rest of the day, and I had such

a bad night of it that I made up my mind next morning to look the

hopelessness square in the face and live the thing down.

It was the evening before Anniversary Day. Jack and I had put in a good

day’s work to get the job finished, and Jack was having a smoke and a

yarn with the chaps before he started home. We sat on an old log along

by the fence at the back of the house. There was Jimmy Nowlett the

bullock-driver, and long Dave Regan the drover, and big Jim Bullock the

fencer, and one or two others. Mary and the station girls and one or

two visitors were sitting under the old verandah. The Jackaroo was

there too, so I felt happy. It was the girls who used to bring the chaps

hanging round. They were getting up a dance party for Anniversary night.

Along in the evening another chap came riding up to the station: he was

a big shearer, a dark, handsome fellow, who looked like a gipsy: it was

reckoned that there was foreign blood in him. He went by the name of

Romany. He was supposed to be shook after Mary too. He had the nastiest

temper and the best violin in the district, and the chaps put up with

him a lot because they wanted him to play at Bush dances. The moon had

risen over Pine Ridge, but it was dusky where we were. We saw Romany

loom up, riding in from the gate; he rode round the end of the

coach-house and across towards where we were--I suppose he was going to

tie up his horse at the fence; but about half-way across the grass he

disappeared. It struck me that there was something peculiar about the

way he got down, and I heard a sound like a horse stumbling.

‘What the hell’s Romany trying to do?’ said Jimmy Nowlett. ‘He couldn’t

have fell off his horse--or else he’s drunk.’

A couple of chaps got up and went to see. Then there was that waiting,

mysterious silence that comes when something happens in the dark and

nobody knows what it is. I went over, and the thing dawned on me. I’d

stretched a wire clothes-line across there during the day, and had

forgotten all about it for the moment. Romany had no idea of the line,

and, as he rode up, it caught him on a level with his elbows and scraped

him off his horse. He was sitting on the grass, swearing in a surprised

voice, and the horse looked surprised too. Romany wasn’t hurt, but the

sudden shock had spoilt his temper. He wanted to know who’d put up that

bloody line. He came over and sat on the log. The chaps smoked a while.

‘What did you git down so sudden for, Romany?’ asked Jim Bullock

presently. ‘Did you hurt yerself on the pommel?’

‘Why didn’t you ask the horse to go round?’ asked Dave Regan.

‘I’d only like to know who put up that bleeding wire!’ growled Romany.

‘Well,’ said Jimmy Nowlett, ‘if we’d put up a sign to beware of the line

you couldn’t have seen it in the dark.’

‘Unless it was a transparency with a candle behind it,’ said Dave Regan.

‘But why didn’t you get down on one end, Romany, instead of all along?

It wouldn’t have jolted yer so much.’

All this with the Bush drawl, and between the puffs of their pipes.

But I didn’t take any interest in it. I was brooding over Mary and the

Jackaroo.

‘I’ve heard of men getting down over their horse’s head,’ said

Dave presently, in a reflective sort of way--‘in fact I’ve done it

myself--but I never saw a man get off backwards over his horse’s rump.’

But they saw that Romany was getting nasty, and they wanted him to play

the fiddle next night, so they dropped it.

Mary was singing an old song. I always thought she had a sweet voice,

and I’d have enjoyed it if that damned Jackaroo hadn’t been listening

too. We listened in silence until she’d finished.

‘That gal’s got a nice voice,’ said Jimmy Nowlett.

‘Nice voice!’ snarled Romany, who’d been waiting for a chance to be

nasty. ‘Why, I’ve heard a tom-cat sing better.’

I moved, and Jack, he was sitting next me, nudged me to keep quiet. The

chaps didn’t like Romany’s talk about ‘Possum at all. They were all fond

of her: she wasn’t a pet or a tomboy, for she wasn’t built that way,

but they were fond of her in such a way that they didn’t like to hear

anything said about her. They said nothing for a while, but it meant a

lot. Perhaps the single men didn’t care to speak for fear that it would

be said that they were gone on Mary. But presently Jimmy Nowlett gave a

big puff at his pipe and spoke--

‘I suppose you got bit too in that quarter, Romany?’

‘Oh, she tried it on, but it didn’t go,’ said Romany. ‘I’ve met her sort

before. She’s setting her cap at that Jackaroo now. Some girls will run

after anything with trousers on,’ and he stood up.

Jack Barnes must have felt what was coming, for he grabbed my arm, and

whispered, ‘Sit still, Joe, damn you! He’s too good for you!’ but I was

on my feet and facing Romany as if a giant hand had reached down and

wrenched me off the log and set me there.

‘You’re a damned crawler, Romany!’ I said.

Little Jimmy Nowlett was between us and the other fellows round us

before a blow got home. ‘Hold on, you damned fools!’ they said. ‘Keep

quiet till we get away from the house!’ There was a little clear flat

down by the river and plenty of light there, so we decided to go down

there and have it out.

Now I never was a fighting man; I’d never learnt to use my hands. I

scarcely knew how to put them up. Jack often wanted to teach me, but I

wouldn’t bother about it. He’d say, ‘You’ll get into a fight some day,

Joe, or out of one, and shame me;’ but I hadn’t the patience to learn.

He’d wanted me to take lessons at the station after work, but he used to

get excited, and I didn’t want Mary to see him knocking me about. Before

he was married Jack was always getting into fights--he generally tackled

a better man and got a hiding; but he didn’t seem to care so long as

he made a good show--though he used to explain the thing away from a

scientific point of view for weeks after. To tell the truth, I had a

horror of fighting; I had a horror of being marked about the face; I

think I’d sooner stand off and fight a man with revolvers than fight him

with fists; and then I think I would say, last thing, ‘Don’t shoot me

in the face!’ Then again I hated the idea of hitting a man. It seemed

brutal to me. I was too sensitive and sentimental, and that was what

the matter was. Jack seemed very serious on it as we walked down to the

river, and he couldn’t help hanging out blue lights.

‘Why didn’t you let me teach you to use your hands?’ he said. ‘The

only chance now is that Romany can’t fight after all. If you’d waited

a minute I’d have been at him.’ We were a bit behind the rest, and Jack

started giving me points about lefts and rights, and ‘half-arms’, and

that sort of thing. ‘He’s left-handed, and that’s the worst of it,’ said

Jack. ‘You must only make as good a show as you can, and one of us will

take him on afterwards.’

But I just heard him and that was all. It was to be my first fight since

I was a boy, but, somehow, I felt cool about it--sort of dulled. If the

chaps had known all they would have set me down as a cur. I thought of

that, but it didn’t make any difference with me then; I knew it was a

thing they couldn’t understand. I knew I was reckoned pretty soft. But

I knew one thing that they didn’t know. I knew that it was going to be

a fight to a finish, one way or the other. I had more brains and

imagination than the rest put together, and I suppose that that was the

real cause of most of my trouble. I kept saying to myself, ‘You’ll have

to go through with it now, Joe, old man! It’s the turning-point of your

life.’ If I won the fight, I’d set to work and win Mary; if I lost, I’d

leave the district for ever. A man thinks a lot in a flash sometimes; I

used to get excited over little things, because of the very paltriness

of them, but I was mostly cool in a crisis--Jack was the reverse. I

looked ahead: I wouldn’t be able to marry a girl who could look back and

remember when her husband was beaten by another man--no matter what sort

of brute the other man was.

I never in my life felt so cool about a thing. Jack kept whispering

instructions, and showing with his hands, up to the last moment, but it

was all lost on me.

Looking back, I think there was a bit of romance about it: Mary singing

under the vines to amuse a Jackaroo dude, and a coward going down to the

river in the moonlight to fight for her.

It was very quiet in the little moonlit flat by the river. We took off

our coats and were ready. There was no swearing or barracking. It seemed

an understood thing with the men that if I went out first round Jack

would fight Romany; and if Jack knocked him out somebody else would

fight Jack to square matters. Jim Bullock wouldn’t mind obliging for

one; he was a mate of Jack’s, but he didn’t mind who he fought so long

as it was for the sake of fair play--or ‘peace and quietness’, as he

said. Jim was very good-natured. He backed Romany, and of course Jack

backed me.

As far as I could see, all Romany knew about fighting was to jerk one

arm up in front of his face and duck his head by way of a feint, and

then rush and lunge out. But he had the weight and strength and length

of reach, and my first lesson was a very short one. I went down early

in the round. But it did me good; the blow and the look I’d seen

in Romany’s eyes knocked all the sentiment out of me. Jack said

nothing,--he seemed to regard it as a hopeless job from the first.

Next round I tried to remember some things Jack had told me, and made a

better show, but I went down in the end.

I felt Jack breathing quick and trembling as he lifted me up.

‘How are you, Joe?’ he whispered.

‘I’m all right,’ I said.

‘It’s all right,’ whispered Jack in a voice as if I was going to be

hanged, but it would soon be all over. ‘He can’t use his hands much more

than you can--take your time, Joe--try to remember something I told you,

for God’s sake!’

When two men fight who don’t know how to use their hands, they stand a

show of knocking each other about a lot. I got some awful thumps,

but mostly on the body. Jimmy Nowlett began to get excited and jump

round--he was an excitable little fellow.

‘Fight! you----!’ he yelled. ‘Why don’t you fight? That ain’t fightin’.

Fight, and don’t try to murder each other. Use your crimson hands or, by

God, I’ll chip you! Fight, or I’ll blanky well bullock-whip the pair of

you;’ then his language got awful. They said we went like windmills, and

that nearly every one of the blows we made was enough to kill a bullock

if it had got home. Jimmy stopped us once, but they held him back.

Presently I went down pretty flat, but the blow was well up on the head

and didn’t matter much--I had a good thick skull. And I had one good eye

yet.

‘For God’s sake, hit him!’ whispered Jack--he was trembling like a leaf.

‘Don’t mind what I told you. I wish I was fighting him myself! Get a

blow home, for God’s sake! Make a good show this round and I’ll stop the

fight.’

That showed how little even Jack, my old mate, understood me.

I had the Bushman up in me now, and wasn’t going to be beaten while

I could think. I was wonderfully cool, and learning to fight. There’s

nothing like a fight to teach a man. I was thinking fast, and learning

more in three seconds than Jack’s sparring could have taught me in three

weeks. People think that blows hurt in a fight, but they don’t--not

till afterwards. I fancy that a fighting man, if he isn’t altogether an

animal, suffers more mentally than he does physically.

While I was getting my wind I could hear through the moonlight and still

air the sound of Mary’s voice singing up at the house. I thought hard

into the future, even as I fought. The fight only seemed something that

was passing.

I was on my feet again and at it, and presently I lunged out and felt

such a jar in my arm that I thought it was telescoped. I thought I’d put

out my wrist and elbow. And Romany was lying on the broad of his back.

I heard Jack draw three breaths of relief in one. He said nothing as

he straightened me up, but I could feel his heart beating. He said

afterwards that he didn’t speak because he thought a word might spoil

it.

I went down again, but Jack told me afterwards that he FELT I was all

right when he lifted me.

Then Romany went down, then we fell together, and the chaps separated

us. I got another knock-down blow in, and was beginning to enjoy the

novelty of it, when Romany staggered and limped.

‘I’ve done,’ he said. ‘I’ve twisted my ankle.’ He’d caught his heel

against a tuft of grass.

‘Shake hands,’ yelled Jimmy Nowlett.

I stepped forward, but Romany took his coat and limped to his horse.

‘If yer don’t shake hands with Wilson, I’ll lamb yer!’ howled Jimmy; but

Jack told him to let the man alone, and Romany got on his horse somehow

and rode off.

I saw Jim Bullock stoop and pick up something from the grass, and heard

him swear in surprise. There was some whispering, and presently Jim

said--

‘If I thought that, I’d kill him.’

‘What is it?’ asked Jack.

Jim held up a butcher’s knife. It was common for a man to carry a

butcher’s knife in a sheath fastened to his belt.

‘Why did you let your man fight with a butcher’s knife in his belt?’

asked Jimmy Nowlett.

But the knife could easily have fallen out when Romany fell, and we

decided it that way.

‘Any way,’ said Jimmy Nowlett, ‘if he’d stuck Joe in hot blood before us

all it wouldn’t be so bad as if he sneaked up and stuck him in the back

in the dark. But you’d best keep an eye over yer shoulder for a year or

two, Joe. That chap’s got Eye-talian blood in him somewhere. And now the

best thing you chaps can do is to keep your mouth shut and keep all this

dark from the gals.’

Jack hurried me on ahead. He seemed to act queer, and when I glanced

at him I could have sworn that there was water in his eyes. I said that

Jack had no sentiment except for himself, but I forgot, and I’m sorry I

said it.

‘What’s up, Jack?’ I asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Jack.

‘What’s up, you old fool?’ I said.

‘Nothing,’ said Jack, ‘except that I’m damned proud of you, Joe, you

old ass!’ and he put his arm round my shoulders and gave me a shake.

‘I didn’t know it was in you, Joe--I wouldn’t have said it before,

or listened to any other man say it, but I didn’t think you had the

pluck--God’s truth, I didn’t. Come along and get your face fixed up.’

We got into my room quietly, and Jack got a dish of water, and told one

of the chaps to sneak a piece of fresh beef from somewhere.

Jack was as proud as a dog with a tin tail as he fussed round me.

He fixed up my face in the best style he knew, and he knew a good

many--he’d been mended himself so often.

While he was at work we heard a sudden hush and a scraping of feet

amongst the chaps that Jack had kicked out of the room, and a girl’s

voice whispered, ‘Is he hurt? Tell me. I want to know,--I might be able

to help.’

It made my heart jump, I can tell you. Jack went out at once, and there

was some whispering. When he came back he seemed wild.

‘What is it, Jack?’ I asked.

‘Oh, nothing,’ he said, ‘only that damned slut of a half-caste cook

overheard some of those blanky fools arguing as to how Romany’s knife

got out of the sheath, and she’s put a nice yarn round amongst the

girls. There’s a regular bobbery, but it’s all right now. Jimmy

Nowlett’s telling ‘em lies at a great rate.’

Presently there was another hush outside, and a saucer with vinegar and

brown paper was handed in.

One of the chaps brought some beer and whisky from the pub, and we had

a quiet little time in my room. Jack wanted to stay all night, but I

reminded him that his little wife was waiting for him in Solong, so he

said he’d be round early in the morning, and went home.

I felt the reaction pretty bad. I didn’t feel proud of the affair at

all. I thought it was a low, brutal business all round. Romany was a

quiet chap after all, and the chaps had no right to chyack him. Perhaps

he’d had a hard life, and carried a big swag of trouble that we didn’t

know anything about. He seemed a lonely man. I’d gone through enough

myself to teach me not to judge men. I made up my mind to tell him how I

felt about the matter next time we met. Perhaps I made my usual mistake

of bothering about ‘feelings’ in another party that hadn’t any feelings

at all--perhaps I didn’t; but it’s generally best to chance it on the

kind side in a case like this. Altogether I felt as if I’d made another

fool of myself and been a weak coward. I drank the rest of the beer and

went to sleep.

About daylight I woke and heard Jack’s horse on the gravel. He came

round the back of the buggy-shed and up to my door, and then, suddenly,

a girl screamed out. I pulled on my trousers and ‘lastic-side boots and

hurried out. It was Mary herself, dressed, and sitting on an old stone

step at the back of the kitchen with her face in her hands, and Jack was

off his horse and stooping by her side with his hand on her shoulder.

She kept saying, ‘I thought you were----! I thought you were----!’ I

didn’t catch the name. An old single-barrel, muzzle-loader shot-gun was

lying in the grass at her feet. It was the gun they used to keep loaded

and hanging in straps in a room of the kitchen ready for a shot at a

cunning old hawk that they called ‘’Tarnal Death’, and that used to be

always after the chickens.

When Mary lifted her face it was as white as note-paper, and her eyes

seemed to grow wilder when she caught sight of me.

‘Oh, you did frighten me, Mr Barnes,’ she gasped. Then she gave a little

ghost of a laugh and stood up, and some colour came back.

‘Oh, I’m a little fool!’ she said quickly. ‘I thought I heard old

‘Tarnal Death at the chickens, and I thought it would be a great thing

if I got the gun and brought him down; so I got up and dressed quietly

so as not to wake Sarah. And then you came round the corner and

frightened me. I don’t know what you must think of me, Mr Barnes.’

‘Never mind,’ said Jack. ‘You go and have a sleep, or you won’t be

able to dance to-night. Never mind the gun--I’ll put that away.’ And he

steered her round to the door of her room off the brick verandah where

she slept with one of the other girls.

‘Well, that’s a rum start!’ I said.

‘Yes, it is,’ said Jack; ‘it’s very funny. Well, how’s your face this

morning, Joe?’

He seemed a lot more serious than usual.

We were hard at work all the morning cleaning out the big wool-shed and

getting it ready for the dance, hanging hoops for the candles, making

seats, &c. I kept out of sight of the girls as much as I could. One side

of my face was a sight and the other wasn’t too classical. I felt as if

I had been stung by a swarm of bees.

‘You’re a fresh, sweet-scented beauty now, and no mistake, Joe,’ said

Jimmy Nowlett--he was going to play the accordion that night. ‘You ought

to fetch the girls now, Joe. But never mind, your face’ll go down

in about three weeks. My lower jaw is crooked yet; but that fight

straightened my nose, that had been knocked crooked when I was a boy--so

I didn’t lose much beauty by it.’

When we’d done in the shed, Jack took me aside and said--

‘Look here, Joe! if you won’t come to the dance to-night--and I can’t

say you’d ornament it--I tell you what you’ll do. You get little Mary

away on the quiet and take her out for a stroll--and act like a man. The

job’s finished now, and you won’t get another chance like this.’

‘But how am I to get her out?’ I said.

‘Never you mind. You be mooching round down by the big peppermint-tree

near the river-gate, say about half-past ten.’

‘What good’ll that do?’

‘Never you mind. You just do as you’re told, that’s all you’ve got to

do,’ said Jack, and he went home to get dressed and bring his wife.

After the dancing started that night I had a peep in once or twice. The

first time I saw Mary dancing with Jack, and looking serious; and the

second time she was dancing with the blarsted Jackaroo dude, and looking

excited and happy. I noticed that some of the girls, that I could see

sitting on a stool along the opposite wall, whispered, and gave Mary

black looks as the Jackaroo swung her past. It struck me pretty forcibly

that I should have taken fighting lessons from him instead of from poor

Romany. I went away and walked about four miles down the river road,

getting out of the way into the Bush whenever I saw any chap riding

along. I thought of poor Romany and wondered where he was, and thought

that there wasn’t much to choose between us as far as happiness was

concerned. Perhaps he was walking by himself in the Bush, and feeling

like I did. I wished I could shake hands with him.

But somehow, about half-past ten, I drifted back to the river slip-rails

and leant over them, in the shadow of the peppermint-tree, looking at

the rows of river-willows in the moonlight. I didn’t expect anything, in

spite of what Jack said.

I didn’t like the idea of hanging myself: I’d been with a party who

found a man hanging in the Bush, and it was no place for a woman round

where he was. And I’d helped drag two bodies out of the Cudgeegong river

in a flood, and they weren’t sleeping beauties. I thought it was a pity

that a chap couldn’t lie down on a grassy bank in a graceful position in

the moonlight and die just by thinking of it--and die with his eyes

and mouth shut. But then I remembered that I wouldn’t make a beautiful

corpse, anyway it went, with the face I had on me.

I was just getting comfortably miserable when I heard a step behind me,

and my heart gave a jump. And I gave a start too.

‘Oh, is that you, Mr Wilson?’ said a timid little voice.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Is that you, Mary?’

And she said yes. It was the first time I called her Mary, but she did

not seem to notice it.

‘Did I frighten you?’ I asked.

‘No--yes--just a little,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know there was any

one----’ then she stopped.

‘Why aren’t you dancing?’ I asked her.

‘Oh, I’m tired,’ she said. ‘It was too hot in the wool-shed. I thought

I’d like to come out and get my head cool and be quiet a little while.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it must be hot in the wool-shed.’

She stood looking out over the willows. Presently she said, ‘It must be

very dull for you, Mr Wilson--you must feel lonely. Mr Barnes said----’

Then she gave a little gasp and stopped--as if she was just going to put

her foot in it.

‘How beautiful the moonlight looks on the willows!’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘doesn’t it? Supposing we have a stroll by the river.’

‘Oh, thank you, Mr Wilson. I’d like it very much.’

I didn’t notice it then, but, now I come to think of it, it was a

beautiful scene: there was a horseshoe of high blue hills round behind

the house, with the river running round under the slopes, and in front

was a rounded hill covered with pines, and pine ridges, and a soft blue

peak away over the ridges ever so far in the distance.

I had a handkerchief over the worst of my face, and kept the best side

turned to her. We walked down by the river, and didn’t say anything for

a good while. I was thinking hard. We came to a white smooth log in a

quiet place out of sight of the house.

‘Suppose we sit down for a while, Mary,’ I said.

‘If you like, Mr Wilson,’ she said.

There was about a foot of log between us.

‘What a beautiful night!’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘isn’t it?’

Presently she said, ‘I suppose you know I’m going away next month, Mr

Wilson?’

I felt suddenly empty. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I thought you knew. I’m going to try and get into the

hospital to be trained for a nurse, and if that doesn’t come off I’ll

get a place as assistant public-school teacher.’

We didn’t say anything for a good while.

‘I suppose you won’t be sorry to go, Miss Brand?’ I said.

‘I--I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Everybody’s been so kind to me here.’

She sat looking straight before her, and I fancied her eyes glistened.

I put my arm round her shoulders, but she didn’t seem to notice it. In

fact, I scarcely noticed it myself at the time.

‘So you think you’ll be sorry to go away?’ I said.

‘Yes, Mr Wilson. I suppose I’ll fret for a while. It’s been my home, you

know.’

I pressed my hand on her shoulder, just a little, so as she couldn’t

pretend not to know it was there. But she didn’t seem to notice.

‘Ah, well,’ I said, ‘I suppose I’ll be on the wallaby again next week.’

‘Will you, Mr Wilson?’ she said. Her voice seemed very soft.

I slipped my arm round her waist, under her arm. My heart was going like

clockwork now.

Presently she said--

‘Don’t you think it’s time to go back now, Mr Wilson?’

‘Oh, there’s plenty of time!’ I said. I shifted up, and put my arm

farther round, and held her closer. She sat straight up, looking right

in front of her, but she began to breathe hard.

‘Mary,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Call me Joe,’ I said.

‘I--I don’t like to,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it would be right.’

So I just turned her face round and kissed her. She clung to me and

cried.

‘What is it, Mary?’ I asked.

She only held me tighter and cried.

‘What is it, Mary?’ I said. ‘Ain’t you well? Ain’t you happy?’

‘Yes, Joe,’ she said, ‘I’m very happy.’ Then she said, ‘Oh, your poor

face! Can’t I do anything for it?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s all right. My face doesn’t hurt me a bit now.’

But she didn’t seem right.

‘What is it, Mary?’ I said. ‘Are you tired? You didn’t sleep last

night----’ Then I got an inspiration.

‘Mary,’ I said, ‘what were you doing out with the gun this morning?’

And after some coaxing it all came out, a bit hysterical.

‘I couldn’t sleep--I was frightened. Oh! I had such a terrible dream

about you, Joe! I thought Romany came back and got into your room and

stabbed you with his knife. I got up and dressed, and about daybreak

I heard a horse at the gate; then I got the gun down from the

wall--and--and Mr Barnes came round the corner and frightened me. He’s

something like Romany, you know.’

Then I got as much of her as I could into my arms.

And, oh, but wasn’t I happy walking home with Mary that night! She was

too little for me to put my arm round her waist, so I put it round

her shoulder, and that felt just as good. I remember I asked her who’d

cleaned up my room and washed my things, but she wouldn’t tell.

She wouldn’t go back to the dance yet; she said she’d go into her room

and rest a while. There was no one near the old verandah; and when she

stood on the end of the floor she was just on a level with my shoulder.

‘Mary,’ I whispered, ‘put your arms round my neck and kiss me.’

She put her arms round my neck, but she didn’t kiss me; she only hid her

face.

‘Kiss me, Mary!’ I said.

‘I--I don’t like to,’ she whispered.

‘Why not, Mary?’

Then I felt her crying or laughing, or half crying and half laughing.

I’m not sure to this day which it was.

‘Why won’t you kiss me, Mary? Don’t you love me?’

‘Because,’ she said, ‘because--because I--I don’t--I don’t think it’s

right for--for a girl to--to kiss a man unless she’s going to be his

wife.’

Then it dawned on me! I’d forgot all about proposing.

‘Mary,’ I said, ‘would you marry a chap like me?’

And that was all right.

*****

Next morning Mary cleared out my room and sorted out my things, and

didn’t take the slightest notice of the other girls’ astonishment.

But she made me promise to speak to old Black, and I did the same

evening. I found him sitting on the log by the fence, having a yarn on

the quiet with an old Bushman; and when the old Bushman got up and went

away, I sat down.

‘Well, Joe,’ said Black, ‘I see somebody’s been spoiling your face for

the dance.’ And after a bit he said, ‘Well, Joe, what is it? Do you want

another job? If you do, you’ll have to ask Mrs Black, or Bob’ (Bob was

his eldest son); ‘they’re managing the station for me now, you know.’ He

could be bitter sometimes in his quiet way.

‘No,’ I said; ‘it’s not that, Boss.’

‘Well, what is it, Joe?’

‘I--well the fact is, I want little Mary.’

He puffed at his pipe for a long time, then I thought he spoke.

‘What did you say, Boss?’ I said.

‘Nothing, Joe,’ he said. ‘I was going to say a lot, but it wouldn’t be

any use. My father used to say a lot to me before I was married.’

I waited a good while for him to speak.

‘Well, Boss,’ I said, ‘what about Mary?’

‘Oh! I suppose that’s all right, Joe,’ he said. ‘I--I beg your pardon. I

got thinking of the days when I was courting Mrs Black.’

Brighten’s Sister-In-Law.

Jim was born on Gulgong, New South Wales. We used to say ‘on’

Gulgong--and old diggers still talked of being ‘on th’ Gulgong’--though

the goldfield there had been worked out for years, and the place was

only a dusty little pastoral town in the scrubs. Gulgong was about the

last of the great alluvial ‘rushes’ of the ‘roaring days’--and dreary

and dismal enough it looked when I was there. The expression ‘on’ came

from being on the ‘diggings’ or goldfield--the workings or the goldfield

was all underneath, of course, so we lived (or starved) ON them--not in

nor at ‘em.

Mary and I had been married about two years when Jim came----His name

wasn’t ‘Jim’, by the way, it was ‘John Henry’, after an uncle godfather;

but we called him Jim from the first--(and before it)--because Jim was a

popular Bush name, and most of my old mates were Jims. The Bush is full

of good-hearted scamps called Jim.

We lived in an old weather-board shanty that had been a sly-grog-shop,

and the Lord knows what else! in the palmy days of Gulgong; and I did

a bit of digging [‘fossicking’, rather), a bit of shearing, a bit of

fencing, a bit of Bush-carpentering, tank-sinking,--anything, just to

keep the billy boiling.

We had a lot of trouble with Jim with his teeth. He was bad with every

one of them, and we had most of them lanced--couldn’t pull him through

without. I remember we got one lanced and the gum healed over before

the tooth came through, and we had to get it cut again. He was a plucky

little chap, and after the first time he never whimpered when the doctor

was lancing his gum: he used to say ‘tar’ afterwards, and want to bring

the lance home with him.

The first turn we got with Jim was the worst. I had had the wife and Jim

out camping with me in a tent at a dam I was making at Cattle Creek; I

had two men working for me, and a boy to drive one of the tip-drays,

and I took Mary out to cook for us. And it was lucky for us that the

contract was finished and we got back to Gulgong, and within reach of

a doctor, the day we did. We were just camping in the house, with our

goods and chattels anyhow, for the night; and we were hardly back home

an hour when Jim took convulsions for the first time.

Did you ever see a child in convulsions? You wouldn’t want to see it

again: it plays the devil with a man’s nerves. I’d got the beds fixed up

on the floor, and the billies on the fire--I was going to make some tea,

and put a piece of corned beef on to boil over night--when Jim

(he’d been queer all day, and his mother was trying to hush him to

sleep)--Jim, he screamed out twice. He’d been crying a good deal, and

I was dog-tired and worried (over some money a man owed me) or I’d have

noticed at once that there was something unusual in the way the child

cried out: as it was I didn’t turn round till Mary screamed ‘Joe!

Joe!’ You know how a woman cries out when her child is in danger or

dying--short, and sharp, and terrible. ‘Joe! Look! look! Oh, my God! our

child! Get the bath, quick! quick! it’s convulsions!’

Jim was bent back like a bow, stiff as a bullock-yoke, in his mother’s

arms, and his eyeballs were turned up and fixed--a thing I saw twice

afterwards, and don’t want ever to see again.

I was falling over things getting the tub and the hot water, when the

woman who lived next door rushed in. She called to her husband to run

for the doctor, and before the doctor came she and Mary had got Jim into

a hot bath and pulled him through.

The neighbour woman made me up a shake-down in another room, and stayed

with Mary that night; but it was a long while before I got Jim and

Mary’s screams out of my head and fell asleep.

You may depend I kept the fire in, and a bucket of water hot over it,

for a good many nights after that; but (it always happens like this)

there came a night, when the fright had worn off, when I was too tired

to bother about the fire, and that night Jim took us by surprise. Our

wood-heap was done, and I broke up a new chair to get a fire, and had

to run a quarter of a mile for water; but this turn wasn’t so bad as the

first, and we pulled him through.

You never saw a child in convulsions? Well, you don’t want to. It must

be only a matter of seconds, but it seems long minutes; and half an

hour afterwards the child might be laughing and playing with you,

or stretched out dead. It shook me up a lot. I was always pretty

high-strung and sensitive. After Jim took the first fit, every time he

cried, or turned over, or stretched out in the night, I’d jump: I was

always feeling his forehead in the dark to see if he was feverish, or

feeling his limbs to see if he was ‘limp’ yet. Mary and I often laughed

about it--afterwards. I tried sleeping in another room, but for nights

after Jim’s first attack I’d be just dozing off into a sound sleep,

when I’d hear him scream, as plain as could be, and I’d hear Mary cry,

‘Joe!--Joe!’--short, sharp, and terrible--and I’d be up and into their

room like a shot, only to find them sleeping peacefully. Then I’d feel

Jim’s head and his breathing for signs of convulsions, see to the fire

and water, and go back to bed and try to sleep. For the first few nights

I was like that all night, and I’d feel relieved when daylight came.

I’d be in first thing to see if they were all right; then I’d sleep till

dinner-time if it was Sunday or I had no work. But then I was run down

about that time: I was worried about some money for a wool-shed I put up

and never got paid for; and, besides, I’d been pretty wild before I met

Mary.

I was fighting hard then--struggling for something better. Both Mary and

I were born to better things, and that’s what made the life so hard for

us.

Jim got on all right for a while: we used to watch him well, and have

his teeth lanced in time.

It used to hurt and worry me to see how--just as he was getting fat

and rosy and like a natural happy child, and I’d feel proud to take him

out--a tooth would come along, and he’d get thin and white and pale and

bigger-eyed and old-fashioned. We’d say, ‘He’ll be safe when he gets his

eye-teeth’: but he didn’t get them till he was two; then, ‘He’ll be safe

when he gets his two-year-old teeth’: they didn’t come till he was going

on for three.

He was a wonderful little chap--Yes, I know all about parents thinking

that their child is the best in the world. If your boy is small for his

age, friends will say that small children make big men; that he’s a

very bright, intelligent child, and that it’s better to have a bright,

intelligent child than a big, sleepy lump of fat. And if your boy is

dull and sleepy, they say that the dullest boys make the cleverest

men--and all the rest of it. I never took any notice of that sort of

clatter--took it for what it was worth; but, all the same, I don’t

think I ever saw such a child as Jim was when he turned two. He was

everybody’s favourite. They spoilt him rather. I had my own ideas about

bringing up a child. I reckoned Mary was too soft with Jim. She’d say,

‘Put that’ (whatever it was) ‘out of Jim’s reach, will you, Joe?’ and

I’d say, ‘No! leave it there, and make him understand he’s not to have

it. Make him have his meals without any nonsense, and go to bed at a

regular hour,’ I’d say. Mary and I had many a breeze over Jim. She’d

say that I forgot he was only a baby: but I held that a baby could be

trained from the first week; and I believe I was right.

But, after all, what are you to do? You’ll see a boy that was brought up

strict turn out a scamp; and another that was dragged up anyhow (by the

hair of the head, as the saying is) turn out well. Then, again, when

a child is delicate--and you might lose him any day--you don’t like to

spank him, though he might be turning out a little fiend, as delicate

children often do. Suppose you gave a child a hammering, and the same

night he took convulsions, or something, and died--how’d you feel about

it? You never know what a child is going to take, any more than you can

tell what some women are going to say or do.

I was very fond of Jim, and we were great chums. Sometimes I’d sit

and wonder what the deuce he was thinking about, and often, the way he

talked, he’d make me uneasy. When he was two he wanted a pipe above all

things, and I’d get him a clean new clay and he’d sit by my side, on the

edge of the verandah, or on a log of the wood-heap, in the cool of the

evening, and suck away at his pipe, and try to spit when he saw me do

it. He seemed to understand that a cold empty pipe wasn’t quite the

thing, yet to have the sense to know that he couldn’t smoke tobacco

yet: he made the best he could of things. And if he broke a clay pipe

he wouldn’t have a new one, and there’d be a row; the old one had to be

mended up, somehow, with string or wire. If I got my hair cut, he’d

want his cut too; and it always troubled him to see me shave--as if he

thought there must be something wrong somewhere, else he ought to have

to be shaved too. I lathered him one day, and pretended to shave him:

he sat through it as solemn as an owl, but didn’t seem to appreciate

it--perhaps he had sense enough to know that it couldn’t possibly be the

real thing. He felt his face, looked very hard at the lather I scraped

off, and whimpered, ‘No blood, daddy!’

I used to cut myself a good deal: I was always impatient over shaving.

Then he went in to interview his mother about it. She understood his

lingo better than I did.

But I wasn’t always at ease with him. Sometimes he’d sit looking into

the fire, with his head on one side, and I’d watch him and wonder what

he was thinking about (I might as well have wondered what a Chinaman

was thinking about) till he seemed at least twenty years older than me:

sometimes, when I moved or spoke, he’d glance round just as if to see

what that old fool of a dadda of his was doing now.

I used to have a fancy that there was something Eastern, or

Asiatic--something older than our civilisation or religion--about

old-fashioned children. Once I started to explain my idea to a woman I

thought would understand--and as it happened she had an old-fashioned

child, with very slant eyes--a little tartar he was too. I suppose

it was the sight of him that unconsciously reminded me of my infernal

theory, and set me off on it, without warning me. Anyhow, it got me

mixed up in an awful row with the woman and her husband--and all their

tribe. It wasn’t an easy thing to explain myself out of it, and the row

hasn’t been fixed up yet. There were some Chinamen in the district.

I took a good-size fencing contract, the frontage of a ten-mile paddock,

near Gulgong, and did well out of it. The railway had got as far as the

Cudgeegong river--some twenty miles from Gulgong and two hundred

from the coast--and ‘carrying’ was good then. I had a couple of

draught-horses, that I worked in the tip-drays when I was tank-sinking,

and one or two others running in the Bush. I bought a broken-down waggon

cheap, tinkered it up myself--christened it ‘The Same Old Thing’--and

started carrying from the railway terminus through Gulgong and along the

bush roads and tracks that branch out fanlike through the scrubs to the

one-pub towns and sheep and cattle stations out there in the howling

wilderness. It wasn’t much of a team. There were the two heavy horses

for ‘shafters’; a stunted colt, that I’d bought out of the pound for

thirty shillings; a light, spring-cart horse; an old grey mare, with

points like a big red-and-white Australian store bullock, and with the

grit of an old washerwoman to work; and a horse that had spanked along

in Cob & Co.’s mail-coach in his time. I had a couple there that didn’t

belong to me: I worked them for the feeding of them in the dry weather.

And I had all sorts of harness, that I mended and fixed up myself. It

was a mixed team, but I took light stuff, got through pretty quick, and

freight rates were high. So I got along.

Before this, whenever I made a few pounds I’d sink a shaft somewhere,

prospecting for gold; but Mary never let me rest till she talked me out

of that.

I made up my mind to take on a small selection farm--that an old mate of

mine had fenced in and cleared, and afterwards chucked up--about thirty

miles out west of Gulgong, at a place called Lahey’s Creek. (The places

were all called Lahey’s Creek, or Spicer’s Flat, or Murphy’s Flat, or

Ryan’s Crossing, or some such name--round there.) I reckoned I’d have

a run for the horses and be able to grow a bit of feed. I always had a

dread of taking Mary and the children too far away from a doctor--or a

good woman neighbour; but there were some people came to live on Lahey’s

Creek, and besides, there was a young brother of Mary’s--a young scamp

(his name was Jim, too, and we called him ‘Jimmy’ at first to make room

for our Jim--he hated the name ‘Jimmy’ or James). He came to live with

us--without asking--and I thought he’d find enough work at Lahey’s

Creek to keep him out of mischief. He wasn’t to be depended on much--he

thought nothing of riding off, five hundred miles or so, ‘to have a look

at the country’--but he was fond of Mary, and he’d stay by her till I

got some one else to keep her company while I was on the road. He would

be a protection against ‘sundowners’ or any shearers who happened to

wander that way in the ‘D.T.’s’ after a spree. Mary had a married sister

come to live at Gulgong just before we left, and nothing would suit her

and her husband but we must leave little Jim with them for a month or

so--till we got settled down at Lahey’s Creek. They were newly married.

Mary was to have driven into Gulgong, in the spring-cart, at the end

of the month, and taken Jim home; but when the time came she wasn’t too

well--and, besides, the tyres of the cart were loose, and I hadn’t time

to get them cut, so we let Jim’s time run on a week or so longer, till I

happened to come out through Gulgong from the river with a small load of

flour for Lahey’s Creek way. The roads were good, the weather grand--no

chance of it raining, and I had a spare tarpaulin if it did--I would

only camp out one night; so I decided to take Jim home with me.

Jim was turning three then, and he was a cure. He was so old-fashioned

that he used to frighten me sometimes--I’d almost think that there was

something supernatural about him; though, of course, I never took any

notice of that rot about some children being too old-fashioned to live.

There’s always the ghoulish old hag (and some not so old nor haggish

either) who’ll come round and shake up young parents with such croaks

as, ‘You’ll never rear that child--he’s too bright for his age.’ To the

devil with them! I say.

But I really thought that Jim was too intelligent for his age, and I

often told Mary that he ought to be kept back, and not let talk too much

to old diggers and long lanky jokers of Bushmen who rode in and hung

their horses outside my place on Sunday afternoons.

I don’t believe in parents talking about their own children

everlastingly--you get sick of hearing them; and their kids are

generally little devils, and turn out larrikins as likely as not.

But, for all that, I really think that Jim, when he was three years old,

was the most wonderful little chap, in every way, that I ever saw.

For the first hour or so, along the road, he was telling me all about

his adventures at his auntie’s.

‘But they spoilt me too much, dad,’ he said, as solemn as a native bear.

‘An’ besides, a boy ought to stick to his parrans!’

I was taking out a cattle-pup for a drover I knew, and the pup took up a

good deal of Jim’s time.

Sometimes he’d jolt me, the way he talked; and other times I’d have

to turn away my head and cough, or shout at the horses, to keep from

laughing outright. And once, when I was taken that way, he said--

‘What are you jerking your shoulders and coughing, and grunting, and

going on that way for, dad? Why don’t you tell me something?’

‘Tell you what, Jim?’

‘Tell me some talk.’

So I told him all the talk I could think of. And I had to brighten up,

I can tell you, and not draw too much on my imagination--for Jim was a

terror at cross-examination when the fit took him; and he didn’t think

twice about telling you when he thought you were talking nonsense. Once

he said--

‘I’m glad you took me home with you, dad. You’ll get to know Jim.’

‘What!’ I said.

‘You’ll get to know Jim.’

‘But don’t I know you already?’

‘No, you don’t. You never has time to know Jim at home.’

And, looking back, I saw that it was cruel true. I had known in my heart

all along that this was the truth; but it came to me like a blow from

Jim. You see, it had been a hard struggle for the last year or so; and

when I was home for a day or two I was generally too busy, or too tired

and worried, or full of schemes for the future, to take much notice of

Jim. Mary used to speak to me about it sometimes. ‘You never take notice

of the child,’ she’d say. ‘You could surely find a few minutes of an

evening. What’s the use of always worrying and brooding? Your brain will

go with a snap some day, and, if you get over it, it will teach you a

lesson. You’ll be an old man, and Jim a young one, before you realise

that you had a child once. Then it will be too late.’

This sort of talk from Mary always bored me and made me impatient with

her, because I knew it all too well. I never worried for myself--only

for Mary and the children. And often, as the days went by, I said to

myself, ‘I’ll take more notice of Jim and give Mary more of my time,

just as soon as I can see things clear ahead a bit.’ And the hard days

went on, and the weeks, and the months, and the years---- Ah, well!

Mary used to say, when things would get worse, ‘Why don’t you talk

to me, Joe? Why don’t you tell me your thoughts, instead of shutting

yourself up in yourself and brooding--eating your heart out? It’s hard

for me: I get to think you’re tired of me, and selfish. I might be cross

and speak sharp to you when you are in trouble. How am I to know, if you

don’t tell me?’

But I didn’t think she’d understand.

And so, getting acquainted, and chumming and dozing, with the gums

closing over our heads here and there, and the ragged patches of

sunlight and shade passing up, over the horses, over us, on the front of

the load, over the load, and down on to the white, dusty road again--Jim

and I got along the lonely Bush road and over the ridges, some fifteen

miles before sunset, and camped at Ryan’s Crossing on Sandy Creek for

the night. I got the horses out and took the harness off. Jim wanted

badly to help me, but I made him stay on the load; for one of the

horses--a vicious, red-eyed chestnut--was a kicker: he’d broken a

man’s leg. I got the feed-bags stretched across the shafts, and the

chaff-and-corn into them; and there stood the horses all round with

their rumps north, south, and west, and their heads between the shafts,

munching and switching their tails. We use double shafts, you know, for

horse-teams--two pairs side by side,--and prop them up, and stretch bags

between them, letting the bags sag to serve as feed-boxes. I threw the

spare tarpaulin over the wheels on one side, letting about half of

it lie on the ground in case of damp, and so making a floor and a

break-wind. I threw down bags and the blankets and ‘possum rug against

the wheel to make a camp for Jim and the cattle-pup, and got a gin-case

we used for a tucker-box, the frying-pan and billy down, and made a good

fire at a log close handy, and soon everything was comfortable. Ryan’s

Crossing was a grand camp. I stood with my pipe in my mouth, my hands

behind my back, and my back to the fire, and took the country in.

Reedy Creek came down along a western spur of the range: the banks here

were deep and green, and the water ran clear over the granite bars,

boulders, and gravel. Behind us was a dreary flat covered with those

gnarled, grey-barked, dry-rotted ‘native apple-trees’ (about as much

like apple-trees as the native bear is like any other), and a nasty bit

of sand-dusty road that I was always glad to get over in wet weather.

To the left on our side of the creek were reedy marshes, with frogs

croaking, and across the creek the dark box-scrub-covered ridges ended

in steep ‘sidings’ coming down to the creek-bank, and to the main road

that skirted them, running on west up over a ‘saddle’ in the ridges and

on towards Dubbo. The road by Lahey’s Creek to a place called Cobborah

branched off, through dreary apple-tree and stringy-bark flats, to the

left, just beyond the crossing: all these fanlike branch tracks from the

Cudgeegong were inside a big horse-shoe in the Great Western Line, and

so they gave small carriers a chance, now that Cob & Co.’s coaches and

the big teams and vans had shifted out of the main western terminus.

There were tall she-oaks all along the creek, and a clump of big ones

over a deep water-hole just above the crossing. The creek oaks have

rough barked trunks, like English elms, but are much taller, and higher

to the branches--and the leaves are reedy; Kendel, the Australian

poet, calls them the ‘she-oak harps Aeolian’. Those trees are always

sigh-sigh-sighing--more of a sigh than a sough or the ‘whoosh’ of

gum-trees in the wind. You always hear them sighing, even when you can’t

feel any wind. It’s the same with telegraph wires: put your head against

a telegraph-post on a dead, still day, and you’ll hear and feel the

far-away roar of the wires. But then the oaks are not connected with the

distance, where there might be wind; and they don’t ROAR in a gale, only

sigh louder and softer according to the wind, and never seem to go above

or below a certain pitch,--like a big harp with all the strings the

same. I used to have a theory that those creek oaks got the wind’s voice

telephoned to them, so to speak, through the ground.

I happened to look down, and there was Jim (I thought he was on the

tarpaulin, playing with the pup): he was standing close beside me with

his legs wide apart, his hands behind his back, and his back to the

fire.

He held his head a little on one side, and there was such an old, old,

wise expression in his big brown eyes--just as if he’d been a child for

a hundred years or so, or as though he were listening to those oaks and

understanding them in a fatherly sort of way.

‘Dad!’ he said presently--‘Dad! do you think I’ll ever grow up to be a

man?’

‘Wh--why, Jim?’ I gasped.

‘Because I don’t want to.’

I couldn’t think of anything against this. It made me uneasy. But I

remembered *I* used to have a childish dread of growing up to be a man.

‘Jim,’ I said, to break the silence, ‘do you hear what the she-oaks

say?’

‘No, I don’t. Is they talking?’

‘Yes,’ I said, without thinking.

‘What is they saying?’ he asked.

I took the bucket and went down to the creek for some water for tea. I

thought Jim would follow with a little tin billy he had, but he didn’t:

when I got back to the fire he was again on the ‘possum rug, comforting

the pup. I fried some bacon and eggs that I’d brought out with me. Jim

sang out from the waggon--

‘Don’t cook too much, dad--I mightn’t be hungry.’

I got the tin plates and pint-pots and things out on a clean new

flour-bag, in honour of Jim, and dished up. He was leaning back on the

rug looking at the pup in a listless sort of way. I reckoned he was

tired out, and pulled the gin-case up close to him for a table and put

his plate on it. But he only tried a mouthful or two, and then he said--

‘I ain’t hungry, dad! You’ll have to eat it all.’

It made me uneasy--I never liked to see a child of mine turn from his

food. They had given him some tinned salmon in Gulgong, and I was afraid

that that was upsetting him. I was always against tinned muck.

‘Sick, Jim?’ I asked.

‘No, dad, I ain’t sick; I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’

‘Have some tea, sonny?’

‘Yes, dad.’

I gave him some tea, with some milk in it that I’d brought in a bottle

from his aunt’s for him. He took a sip or two and then put the pint-pot

on the gin-case.

‘Jim’s tired, dad,’ he said.

I made him lie down while I fixed up a camp for the night. It had turned

a bit chilly, so I let the big tarpaulin down all round--it was made to

cover a high load, the flour in the waggon didn’t come above the rail,

so the tarpaulin came down well on to the ground. I fixed Jim up a

comfortable bed under the tail-end of the waggon: when I went to lift

him in he was lying back, looking up at the stars in a half-dreamy,

half-fascinated way that I didn’t like. Whenever Jim was extra

old-fashioned, or affectionate, there was danger.

‘How do you feel now, sonny?’

It seemed a minute before he heard me and turned from the stars.

‘Jim’s better, dad.’ Then he said something like, ‘The stars are looking

at me.’ I thought he was half asleep. I took off his jacket and boots,

and carried him in under the waggon and made him comfortable for the

night.

‘Kiss me ‘night-night, daddy,’ he said.

I’d rather he hadn’t asked me--it was a bad sign. As I was going to the

fire he called me back.

‘What is it, Jim?’

‘Get me my things and the cattle-pup, please, daddy.’

I was scared now. His things were some toys and rubbish he’d brought

from Gulgong, and I remembered, the last time he had convulsions, he

took all his toys and a kitten to bed with him. And ‘’night-night’ and

‘daddy’ were two-year-old language to Jim. I’d thought he’d forgotten

those words--he seemed to be going back.

‘Are you quite warm enough, Jim?’

‘Yes, dad.’

I started to walk up and down--I always did this when I was extra

worried.

I was frightened now about Jim, though I tried to hide the fact from

myself. Presently he called me again.

‘What is it, Jim?’

‘Take the blankets off me, fahver--Jim’s sick!’ (They’d been teaching

him to say father.)

I was scared now. I remembered a neighbour of ours had a little girl die

(she swallowed a pin), and when she was going she said--

‘Take the blankets off me, muvver--I’m dying.’

And I couldn’t get that out of my head.

I threw back a fold of the ‘possum rug, and felt Jim’s head--he seemed

cool enough.

‘Where do you feel bad, sonny?’

No answer for a while; then he said suddenly, but in a voice as if he

were talking in his sleep--

‘Put my boots on, please, daddy. I want to go home to muvver!’

I held his hand, and comforted him for a while; then he slept--in a

restless, feverish sort of way.

I got the bucket I used for water for the horses and stood it over the

fire; I ran to the creek with the big kerosene-tin bucket and got

it full of cold water and stood it handy. I got the spade (we always

carried one to dig wheels out of bogs in wet weather) and turned a

corner of the tarpaulin back, dug a hole, and trod the tarpaulin down

into the hole, to serve for a bath, in case of the worst. I had a tin of

mustard, and meant to fight a good round for Jim, if death came along.

I stooped in under the tail-board of the waggon and felt Jim. His head

was burning hot, and his skin parched and dry as a bone.

Then I lost nerve and started blundering backward and forward between

the waggon and the fire, and repeating what I’d heard Mary say the last

time we fought for Jim: ‘God! don’t take my child! God! don’t take my

boy!’ I’d never had much faith in doctors, but, my God! I wanted one

then. The nearest was fifteen miles away.

I threw back my head and stared up at the branches, in desperation;

and--Well, I don’t ask you to take much stock in this, though most old

Bushmen will believe anything of the Bush by night; and--Now, it might

have been that I was all unstrung, or it might have been a patch of sky

outlined in the gently moving branches, or the blue smoke rising up. But

I saw the figure of a woman, all white, come down, down, nearly to the

limbs of the trees, point on up the main road, and then float up and up

and vanish, still pointing. I thought Mary was dead! Then it flashed on

me----

Four or five miles up the road, over the ‘saddle’, was an old shanty

that had been a half-way inn before the Great Western Line got round as

far as Dubbo and took the coach traffic off those old Bush roads. A man

named Brighten lived there. He was a selector; did a little farming,

and as much sly-grog selling as he could. He was married--but it wasn’t

that: I’d thought of them, but she was a childish, worn-out, spiritless

woman, and both were pretty ‘ratty’ from hardship and loneliness--they

weren’t likely to be of any use to me. But it was this: I’d heard talk,

among some women in Gulgong, of a sister of Brighten’s wife who’d gone

out to live with them lately: she’d been a hospital matron in the city,

they said; and there were yarns about her. Some said she got the sack

for exposing the doctors--or carrying on with them--I didn’t remember

which. The fact of a city woman going out to live in such a place, with

such people, was enough to make talk among women in a town twenty miles

away, but then there must have been something extra about her, else

Bushmen wouldn’t have talked and carried her name so far; and I wanted

a woman out of the ordinary now. I even reasoned this way, thinking

like lightning, as I knelt over Jim between the big back wheels of the

waggon.

I had an old racing mare that I used as a riding hack, following the

team. In a minute I had her saddled and bridled; I tied the end of a

half-full chaff-bag, shook the chaff into each end and dumped it on to

the pommel as a cushion or buffer for Jim; I wrapped him in a blanket,

and scrambled into the saddle with him.

The next minute we were stumbling down the steep bank, clattering and

splashing over the crossing, and struggling up the opposite bank to the

level. The mare, as I told you, was an old racer, but broken-winded--she

must have run without wind after the first half mile. She had the old

racing instinct in her strong, and whenever I rode in company I’d have

to pull her hard else she’d race the other horse or burst. She ran low

fore and aft, and was the easiest horse I ever rode. She ran like

wheels on rails, with a bit of a tremble now and then--like a railway

carriage--when she settled down to it.

The chaff-bag had slipped off, in the creek I suppose, and I let the

bridle-rein go and held Jim up to me like a baby the whole way. Let the

strongest man, who isn’t used to it, hold a baby in one position for

five minutes--and Jim was fairly heavy. But I never felt the ache in my

arms that night--it must have gone before I was in a fit state of mind

to feel it. And at home I’d often growled about being asked to hold the

baby for a few minutes. I could never brood comfortably and nurse a baby

at the same time. It was a ghostly moonlight night. There’s no timber in

the world so ghostly as the Australian Bush in moonlight--or just about

daybreak. The all-shaped patches of moonlight falling between ragged,

twisted boughs; the ghostly blue-white bark of the ‘white-box’ trees; a

dead naked white ring-barked tree, or dead white stump starting out here

and there, and the ragged patches of shade and light on the road that

made anything, from the shape of a spotted bullock to a naked

corpse laid out stark. Roads and tracks through the Bush made by

moonlight--every one seeming straighter and clearer than the real one:

you have to trust to your horse then. Sometimes the naked white trunk of

a red stringy-bark tree, where a sheet of bark had been taken off, would

start out like a ghost from the dark Bush. And dew or frost glistening

on these things, according to the season. Now and again a great grey

kangaroo, that had been feeding on a green patch down by the road, would

start with a ‘thump-thump’, and away up the siding.

The Bush seemed full of ghosts that night--all going my way--and being

left behind by the mare. Once I stopped to look at Jim: I just sat

back and the mare ‘propped’--she’d been a stock-horse, and was used

to ‘cutting-out’. I felt Jim’s hands and forehead; he was in a burning

fever. I bent forward, and the old mare settled down to it again. I kept

saying out loud--and Mary and me often laughed about it (afterwards):

‘He’s limp yet!--Jim’s limp yet!’ (the words seemed jerked out of me by

sheer fright)--‘He’s limp yet!’ till the mare’s feet took it up. Then,

just when I thought she was doing her best and racing her hardest, she

suddenly started forward, like a cable tram gliding along on its own and

the grip put on suddenly. It was just what she’d do when I’d be riding

alone and a strange horse drew up from behind--the old racing instinct.

I FELT the thing too! I felt as if a strange horse WAS there! And

then--the words just jerked out of me by sheer funk--I started saying,

‘Death is riding to-night!... Death is racing to-night!... Death is

riding to-night!’ till the hoofs took that up. And I believe the old

mare felt the black horse at her side and was going to beat him or break

her heart.

I was mad with anxiety and fright: I remember I kept saying, ‘I’ll be

kinder to Mary after this! I’ll take more notice of Jim!’ and the rest

of it.

I don’t know how the old mare got up the last ‘pinch’. She must have

slackened pace, but I never noticed it: I just held Jim up to me and

gripped the saddle with my knees--I remember the saddle jerked from the

desperate jumps of her till I thought the girth would go. We topped the

gap and were going down into a gully they called Dead Man’s Hollow, and

there, at the back of a ghostly clearing that opened from the road

where there were some black-soil springs, was a long, low, oblong

weatherboard-and-shingle building, with blind, broken windows in the

gable-ends, and a wide steep verandah roof slanting down almost to the

level of the window-sills--there was something sinister about it, I

thought--like the hat of a jail-bird slouched over his eyes. The place

looked both deserted and haunted. I saw no light, but that was because

of the moonlight outside. The mare turned in at the corner of the

clearing to take a short cut to the shanty, and, as she struggled across

some marshy ground, my heart kept jerking out the words, ‘It’s deserted!

They’ve gone away! It’s deserted!’ The mare went round to the back and

pulled up between the back door and a big bark-and-slab kitchen. Some

one shouted from inside--

‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s me. Joe Wilson. I want your sister-in-law--I’ve got the boy--he’s

sick and dying!’

Brighten came out, pulling up his moleskins. ‘What boy?’ he asked.

‘Here, take him,’ I shouted, ‘and let me get down.’

‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked Brighten, and he seemed to hang

back. And just as I made to get my leg over the saddle, Jim’s head went

back over my arm, he stiffened, and I saw his eyeballs turned up and

glistening in the moonlight.

I felt cold all over then and sick in the stomach--but CLEAR-HEADED in

a way: strange, wasn’t it? I don’t know why I didn’t get down and rush

into the kitchen to get a bath ready. I only felt as if the worst had

come, and I wished it were over and gone. I even thought of Mary and the

funeral.

Then a woman ran out of the house--a big, hard-looking woman. She had

on a wrapper of some sort, and her feet were bare. She laid her hand on

Jim, looked at his face, and then snatched him from me and ran into the

kitchen--and me down and after her. As great good luck would have it,

they had some dirty clothes on to boil in a kerosene tin--dish-cloths or

something.

Brighten’s sister-in-law dragged a tub out from under the table,

wrenched the bucket off the hook, and dumped in the water, dish-cloths

and all, snatched a can of cold water from a corner, dashed that in,

and felt the water with her hand--holding Jim up to her hip all the

time--and I won’t say how he looked. She stood him in the tub and

started dashing water over him, tearing off his clothes between the

splashes.

‘Here, that tin of mustard--there on the shelf!’ she shouted to me.

She knocked the lid off the tin on the edge of the tub, and went on

splashing and spanking Jim.

It seemed an eternity. And I? Why, I never thought clearer in my life. I

felt cold-blooded--I felt as if I’d like an excuse to go outside till

it was all over. I thought of Mary and the funeral--and wished that that

was past. All this in a flash, as it were. I felt that it would be a

great relief, and only wished the funeral was months past. I felt--well,

altogether selfish. I only thought for myself.

Brighten’s sister-in-law splashed and spanked him hard--hard enough to

break his back I thought, and--after about half an hour it seemed--the

end came: Jim’s limbs relaxed, he slipped down into the tub, and the

pupils of his eyes came down. They seemed dull and expressionless, like

the eyes of a new baby, but he was back for the world again.

I dropped on the stool by the table.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s all over now. I wasn’t going to let

him die.’ I was only thinking, ‘Well it’s over now, but it will come on

again. I wish it was over for good. I’m tired of it.’

She called to her sister, Mrs Brighten, a washed-out, helpless little

fool of a woman, who’d been running in and out and whimpering all the

time--

‘Here, Jessie! bring the new white blanket off my bed. And you,

Brighten, take some of that wood off the fire, and stuff something in

that hole there to stop the draught.’

Brighten--he was a nuggety little hairy man with no expression to be

seen for whiskers--had been running in with sticks and back logs from

the wood-heap. He took the wood out, stuffed up the crack, and went

inside and brought out a black bottle--got a cup from the shelf, and put

both down near my elbow.

Mrs Brighten started to get some supper or breakfast, or whatever it

was, ready. She had a clean cloth, and set the table tidily. I noticed

that all the tins were polished bright (old coffee- and mustard-tins

and the like, that they used instead of sugar-basins and tea-caddies and

salt-cellars), and the kitchen was kept as clean as possible. She was

all right at little things. I knew a haggard, worked-out Bushwoman who

put her whole soul--or all she’d got left--into polishing old tins till

they dazzled your eyes.

I didn’t feel inclined for corned beef and damper, and post-and-rail

tea. So I sat and squinted, when I thought she wasn’t looking, at

Brighten’s sister-in-law. She was a big woman, her hands and feet were

big, but well-shaped and all in proportion--they fitted her. She was a

handsome woman--about forty I should think. She had a square chin, and

a straight thin-lipped mouth--straight save for a hint of a turn down

at the corners, which I fancied (and I have strange fancies) had been a

sign of weakness in the days before she grew hard. There was no sign

of weakness now. She had hard grey eyes and blue-black hair. She hadn’t

spoken yet. She didn’t ask me how the boy took ill or I got there, or

who or what I was--at least not until the next evening at tea-time.

She sat upright with Jim wrapped in the blanket and laid across her

knees, with one hand under his neck and the other laid lightly on him,

and she just rocked him gently.

She sat looking hard and straight before her, just as I’ve seen a tired

needlewoman sit with her work in her lap, and look away back into the

past. And Jim might have been the work in her lap, for all she seemed to

think of him. Now and then she knitted her forehead and blinked.

Suddenly she glanced round and said--in a tone as if I was her husband

and she didn’t think much of me--

‘Why don’t you eat something?’

‘Beg pardon?’

‘Eat something!’

I drank some tea, and sneaked another look at her. I was beginning to

feel more natural, and wanted Jim again, now that the colour was coming

back into his face, and he didn’t look like an unnaturally stiff and

staring corpse. I felt a lump rising, and wanted to thank her. I sneaked

another look at her.

She was staring straight before her,--I never saw a woman’s face change

so suddenly--I never saw a woman’s eyes so haggard and hopeless. Then

her great chest heaved twice, I heard her draw a long shuddering breath,

like a knocked-out horse, and two great tears dropped from her wide

open eyes down her cheeks like rain-drops on a face of stone. And in the

firelight they seemed tinged with blood.

I looked away quick, feeling full up myself. And presently (I hadn’t

seen her look round) she said--

‘Go to bed.’

‘Beg pardon?’ (Her face was the same as before the tears.)

‘Go to bed. There’s a bed made for you inside on the sofa.’

‘But--the team--I must----’

‘What?’

‘The team. I left it at the camp. I must look to it.’

‘Oh! Well, Brighten will ride down and bring it up in the morning--or

send the half-caste. Now you go to bed, and get a good rest. The boy

will be all right. I’ll see to that.’

I went out--it was a relief to get out--and looked to the mare. Brighten

had got her some corn* and chaff in a candle-box, but she couldn’t eat

yet. She just stood or hung resting one hind-leg and then the other,

with her nose over the box--and she sobbed. I put my arms round her neck

and my face down on her ragged mane, and cried for the second time since

I was a boy.

* Maize or Indian corn--wheat is never called corn in

Australia.--

As I started to go in I heard Brighten’s sister-in-law say, suddenly and

sharply--

‘Take THAT away, Jessie.’

And presently I saw Mrs Brighten go into the house with the black

bottle.

The moon had gone behind the range. I stood for a minute between the

house and the kitchen and peeped in through the kitchen window.

She had moved away from the fire and sat near the table. She bent over

Jim and held him up close to her and rocked herself to and fro.

I went to bed and slept till the next afternoon. I woke just in time

to hear the tail-end of a conversation between Jim and Brighten’s

sister-in-law. He was asking her out to our place and she promising to

come.

‘And now,’ says Jim, ‘I want to go home to “muffer” in “The Same Ol’

Fling”.’

‘What?’

Jim repeated.

‘Oh! “The Same Old Thing”,--the waggon.’

The rest of the afternoon I poked round the gullies with old Brighten,

looking at some ‘indications’ (of the existence of gold) he had found.

It was no use trying to ‘pump’ him concerning his sister-in-law;

Brighten was an ‘old hand’, and had learned in the old Bush-ranging and

cattle-stealing days to know nothing about other people’s business. And,

by the way, I noticed then that the more you talk and listen to a bad

character, the more you lose your dislike for him.

I never saw such a change in a woman as in Brighten’s sister-in-law

that evening. She was bright and jolly, and seemed at least ten years

younger. She bustled round and helped her sister to get tea ready. She

rooted out some old china that Mrs Brighten had stowed away somewhere,

and set the table as I seldom saw it set out there. She propped Jim up

with pillows, and laughed and played with him like a great girl. She

described Sydney and Sydney life as I’d never heard it described before;

and she knew as much about the Bush and old digging days as I did. She

kept old Brighten and me listening and laughing till nearly midnight.

And she seemed quick to understand everything when I talked. If she

wanted to explain anything that we hadn’t seen, she wouldn’t say that it

was ‘like a--like a’--and hesitate (you know what I mean); she’d hit the

right thing on the head at once. A squatter with a very round, flaming

red face and a white cork hat had gone by in the afternoon: she said

it was ‘like a mushroom on the rising moon.’ She gave me a lot of good

hints about children.

But she was quiet again next morning. I harnessed up, and she dressed

Jim and gave him his breakfast, and made a comfortable place for him

on the load with the ‘possum rug and a spare pillow. She got up on the

wheel to do it herself. Then was the awkward time. I’d half start to

speak to her, and then turn away and go fixing up round the horses, and

then make another false start to say good-bye. At last she took Jim up

in her arms and kissed him, and lifted him on the wheel; but he put his

arms tight round her neck, and kissed her--a thing Jim seldom did

with anybody, except his mother, for he wasn’t what you’d call an

affectionate child,--he’d never more than offer his cheek to me, in his

old-fashioned way. I’d got up the other side of the load to take him

from her.

‘Here, take him,’ she said.

I saw his mouth twitching as I lifted him. Jim seldom cried nowadays--no

matter how much he was hurt. I gained some time fixing Jim comfortable.

‘You’d better make a start,’ she said. ‘You want to get home early with

that boy.’

I got down and went round to where she stood. I held out my hand and

tried to speak, but my voice went like an ungreased waggon wheel, and I

gave it up, and only squeezed her hand.

‘That’s all right,’ she said; then tears came into her eyes, and she

suddenly put her hand on my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek. ‘You be

off--you’re only a boy yourself. Take care of that boy; be kind to your

wife, and take care of yourself.’

‘Will you come to see us?’

‘Some day,’ she said.

I started the horses, and looked round once more. She was looking up at

Jim, who was waving his hand to her from the top of the load. And I saw

that haggard, hungry, hopeless look come into her eyes in spite of the

tears.

I smoothed over that story and shortened it a lot, when I told it to

Mary--I didn’t want to upset her. But, some time after I brought Jim

home from Gulgong, and while I was at home with the team for a few days,

nothing would suit Mary but she must go over to Brighten’s shanty and

see Brighten’s sister-in-law. So James drove her over one morning in the

spring-cart: it was a long way, and they stayed at Brighten’s overnight

and didn’t get back till late the next afternoon. I’d got the place in a

pig-muck, as Mary said, ‘doing for’ myself, and I was having a snooze

on the sofa when they got back. The first thing I remember was some one

stroking my head and kissing me, and I heard Mary saying, ‘My poor boy!

My poor old boy!’

I sat up with a jerk. I thought that Jim had gone off again. But it

seems that Mary was only referring to me. Then she started to pull grey

hairs out of my head and put ‘em in an empty match-box--to see how many

she’d get. She used to do this when she felt a bit soft. I don’t

know what she said to Brighten’s sister-in-law or what Brighten’s

sister-in-law said to her, but Mary was extra gentle for the next few

days.

‘Water Them Geraniums’.

I. A Lonely Track.

The time Mary and I shifted out into the Bush from Gulgong to ‘settle on

the land’ at Lahey’s Creek.

I’d sold the two tip-drays that I used for tank-sinking and dam-making,

and I took the traps out in the waggon on top of a small load of rations

and horse-feed that I was taking to a sheep-station out that way. Mary

drove out in the spring-cart. You remember we left little Jim with

his aunt in Gulgong till we got settled down. I’d sent James (Mary’s

brother) out the day before, on horseback, with two or three cows and

some heifers and steers and calves we had, and I’d told him to clean up

a bit, and make the hut as bright and cheerful as possible before Mary

came.

We hadn’t much in the way of furniture. There was the four-poster cedar

bedstead that I bought before we were married, and Mary was rather proud

of it: it had ‘turned’ posts and joints that bolted together. There was

a plain hardwood table, that Mary called her ‘ironing-table’, upside

down on top of the load, with the bedding and blankets between the

legs; there were four of those common black kitchen-chairs--with apples

painted on the hard board backs--that we used for the parlour; there was

a cheap batten sofa with arms at the ends and turned rails between the

uprights of the arms (we were a little proud of the turned rails); and

there was the camp-oven, and the three-legged pot, and pans and buckets,

stuck about the load and hanging under the tail-board of the waggon.

There was the little Wilcox & Gibb’s sewing-machine--my present to Mary

when we were married (and what a present, looking back to it!). There

was a cheap little rocking-chair, and a looking-glass and some

pictures that were presents from Mary’s friends and sister. She had her

mantel-shelf ornaments and crockery and nick-nacks packed away, in the

linen and old clothes, in a big tub made of half a cask, and a box

that had been Jim’s cradle. The live stock was a cat in one box, and in

another an old rooster, and three hens that formed cliques, two against

one, turn about, as three of the same sex will do all over the world. I

had my old cattle-dog, and of course a pup on the load--I always had a

pup that I gave away, or sold and didn’t get paid for, or had ‘touched’

(stolen) as soon as it was old enough. James had his three spidery,

sneaking, thieving, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs with him. I was taking

out three months’ provisions in the way of ration-sugar, tea, flour, and

potatoes, &c.

I started early, and Mary caught up to me at Ryan’s Crossing on Sandy

Creek, where we boiled the billy and had some dinner.

Mary bustled about the camp and admired the scenery and talked too much,

for her, and was extra cheerful, and kept her face turned from me as

much as possible. I soon saw what was the matter. She’d been crying

to herself coming along the road. I thought it was all on account of

leaving little Jim behind for the first time. She told me that she

couldn’t make up her mind till the last moment to leave him, and that,

a mile or two along the road, she’d have turned back for him, only that

she knew her sister would laugh at her. She was always terribly anxious

about the children.

We cheered each other up, and Mary drove with me the rest of the way

to the creek, along the lonely branch track, across native-apple-tree

flats. It was a dreary, hopeless track. There was no horizon, nothing

but the rough ashen trunks of the gnarled and stunted trees in all

directions, little or no undergrowth, and the ground, save for the

coarse, brownish tufts of dead grass, as bare as the road, for it was

a dry season: there had been no rain for months, and I wondered what I

should do with the cattle if there wasn’t more grass on the creek.

In this sort of country a stranger might travel for miles without

seeming to have moved, for all the difference there is in the scenery.

The new tracks were ‘blazed’--that is, slices of bark cut off from both

sides of trees, within sight of each other, in a line, to mark the track

until the horses and wheel-marks made it plain. A smart Bushman, with

a sharp tomahawk, can blaze a track as he rides. But a Bushman a little

used to the country soon picks out differences amongst the trees, half

unconsciously as it were, and so finds his way about.

Mary and I didn’t talk much along this track--we couldn’t have heard

each other very well, anyway, for the ‘clock-clock’ of the waggon and

the rattle of the cart over the hard lumpy ground. And I suppose we

both began to feel pretty dismal as the shadows lengthened. I’d noticed

lately that Mary and I had got out of the habit of talking to each

other--noticed it in a vague sort of way that irritated me (as vague

things will irritate one) when I thought of it. But then I thought, ‘It

won’t last long--I’ll make life brighter for her by-and-by.’

As we went along--and the track seemed endless--I got brooding, of

course, back into the past. And I feel now, when it’s too late, that

Mary must have been thinking that way too. I thought of my early

boyhood, of the hard life of ‘grubbin’’ and ‘milkin’’ and ‘fencin’’ and

‘ploughin’’ and ‘ring-barkin’’, &c., and all for nothing. The few months

at the little bark-school, with a teacher who couldn’t spell. The cursed

ambition or craving that tortured my soul as a boy--ambition or craving

for--I didn’t know what for! For something better and brighter, anyhow.

And I made the life harder by reading at night.

It all passed before me as I followed on in the waggon, behind Mary in

the spring-cart. I thought of these old things more than I thought of

her. She had tried to help me to better things. And I tried too--I had

the energy of half-a-dozen men when I saw a road clear before me,

but shied at the first check. Then I brooded, or dreamed of making a

home--that one might call a home--for Mary--some day. Ah, well!----

And what was Mary thinking about, along the lonely, changeless miles? I

never thought of that. Of her kind, careless, gentleman father, perhaps.

Of her girlhood. Of her homes--not the huts and camps she lived in with

me. Of our future?--she used to plan a lot, and talk a good deal of our

future--but not lately. These things didn’t strike me at the time--I was

so deep in my own brooding. Did she think now--did she begin to feel

now that she had made a great mistake and thrown away her life, but must

make the best of it? This might have roused me, had I thought of it. But

whenever I thought Mary was getting indifferent towards me, I’d think,

‘I’ll soon win her back. We’ll be sweethearts again--when things

brighten up a bit.’

It’s an awful thing to me, now I look back to it, to think how far apart

we had grown, what strangers we were to each other. It seems, now, as

though we had been sweethearts long years before, and had parted, and

had never really met since.

The sun was going down when Mary called out--

‘There’s our place, Joe!’

She hadn’t seen it before, and somehow it came new and with a shock to

me, who had been out here several times. Ahead, through the trees to

the right, was a dark green clump of the oaks standing out of the creek,

darker for the dead grey grass and blue-grey bush on the barren ridge in

the background. Across the creek (it was only a deep, narrow gutter--a

water-course with a chain of water-holes after rain), across on the

other bank, stood the hut, on a narrow flat between the spur and the

creek, and a little higher than this side. The land was much better than

on our old selection, and there was good soil along the creek on both

sides: I expected a rush of selectors out here soon. A few acres round

the hut was cleared and fenced in by a light two-rail fence of timber

split from logs and saplings. The man who took up this selection left it

because his wife died here.

It was a small oblong hut built of split slabs, and he had roofed it

with shingles which he split in spare times. There was no verandah, but

I built one later on. At the end of the house was a big slab-and-bark

shed, bigger than the hut itself, with a kitchen, a skillion for tools,

harness, and horse-feed, and a spare bedroom partitioned off with sheets

of bark and old chaff-bags. The house itself was floored roughly, with

cracks between the boards; there were cracks between the slabs all

round--though he’d nailed strips of tin, from old kerosene-tins, over

some of them; the partitioned-off bedroom was lined with old chaff-bags

with newspapers pasted over them for wall-paper. There was no ceiling,

calico or otherwise, and we could see the round pine rafters and

battens, and the under ends of the shingles. But ceilings make a hut hot

and harbour insects and reptiles--snakes sometimes. There was one

small glass window in the ‘dining-room’ with three panes and a sheet

of greased paper, and the rest were rough wooden shutters. There was a

pretty good cow-yard and calf-pen, and--that was about all. There was

no dam or tank (I made one later on); there was a water-cask, with the

hoops falling off and the staves gaping, at the corner of the house, and

spouting, made of lengths of bent tin, ran round under the eaves. Water

from a new shingle roof is wine-red for a year or two, and water from

a stringy-bark roof is like tan-water for years. In dry weather the

selector had got his house water from a cask sunk in the gravel at

the bottom of the deepest water-hole in the creek. And the longer the

drought lasted, the farther he had to go down the creek for his water,

with a cask on a cart, and take his cows to drink, if he had any. Four,

five, six, or seven miles--even ten miles to water is nothing in some

places.

James hadn’t found himself called upon to do more than milk old ‘Spot’

(the grandmother cow of our mob), pen the calf at night, make a fire

in the kitchen, and sweep out the house with a bough. He helped me

unharness and water and feed the horses, and then started to get the

furniture off the waggon and into the house. James wasn’t lazy--so

long as one thing didn’t last too long; but he was too uncomfortably

practical and matter-of-fact for me. Mary and I had some tea in the

kitchen. The kitchen was permanently furnished with a table of split

slabs, adzed smooth on top, and supported by four stakes driven into the

ground, a three-legged stool and a block of wood, and two long

stools made of half-round slabs (sapling trunks split in halves) with

auger-holes bored in the round side and sticks stuck into them for legs.

The floor was of clay; the chimney of slabs and tin; the fireplace

was about eight feet wide, lined with clay, and with a blackened pole

across, with sooty chains and wire hooks on it for the pots.

Mary didn’t seem able to eat. She sat on the three-legged stool near the

fire, though it was warm weather, and kept her face turned from me.

Mary was still pretty, but not the little dumpling she had been: she was

thinner now. She had big dark hazel eyes that shone a little too much

when she was pleased or excited. I thought at times that there was

something very German about her expression; also something aristocratic

about the turn of her nose, which nipped in at the nostrils when she

spoke. There was nothing aristocratic about me. Mary was German in

figure and walk. I used sometimes to call her ‘Little Duchy’ and ‘Pigeon

Toes’. She had a will of her own, as shown sometimes by the obstinate

knit in her forehead between the eyes.

Mary sat still by the fire, and presently I saw her chin tremble.

‘What is it, Mary?’

She turned her face farther from me. I felt tired, disappointed, and

irritated--suffering from a reaction.

‘Now, what is it, Mary?’ I asked; ‘I’m sick of this sort of thing.

Haven’t you got everything you wanted? You’ve had your own way. What’s

the matter with you now?’

‘You know very well, Joe.’

‘But I DON’T know,’ I said. I knew too well.

She said nothing.

‘Look here, Mary,’ I said, putting my hand on her shoulder, ‘don’t go on

like that; tell me what’s the matter?’

‘It’s only this,’ she said suddenly, ‘I can’t stand this life here; it

will kill me!’

I had a pannikin of tea in my hand, and I banged it down on the table.

‘This is more than a man can stand!’ I shouted. ‘You know very well that

it was you that dragged me out here. You run me on to this! Why weren’t

you content to stay in Gulgong?’

‘And what sort of a place was Gulgong, Joe?’ asked Mary quietly.

(I thought even then in a flash what sort of a place Gulgong was. A

wretched remnant of a town on an abandoned goldfield. One street, each

side of the dusty main road; three or four one-storey square brick

cottages with hip roofs of galvanised iron that glared in the heat--four

rooms and a passage--the police-station, bank-manager and schoolmaster’s

cottages, &c. Half-a-dozen tumble-down weather-board shanties--the three

pubs., the two stores, and the post-office. The town tailing off into

weather-board boxes with tin tops, and old bark huts--relics of the

digging days--propped up by many rotting poles. The men, when at home,

mostly asleep or droning over their pipes or hanging about the verandah

posts of the pubs., saying, ‘’Ullo, Bill!’ or ‘’Ullo, Jim!’--or

sometimes drunk. The women, mostly hags, who blackened each other’s and

girls’ characters with their tongues, and criticised the aristocracy’s

washing hung out on the line: ‘And the colour of the clothes! Does that

woman wash her clothes at all? or only soak ‘em and hang ‘em out?’--that

was Gulgong.)

‘Well, why didn’t you come to Sydney, as I wanted you to?’ I asked Mary.

‘You know very well, Joe,’ said Mary quietly.

(I knew very well, but the knowledge only maddened me. I had had an idea

of getting a billet in one of the big wool-stores--I was a fair wool

expert--but Mary was afraid of the drink. I could keep well away from it

so long as I worked hard in the Bush. I had gone to Sydney twice since

I met Mary, once before we were married, and she forgave me when I came

back; and once afterwards. I got a billet there then, and was going to

send for her in a month. After eight weeks she raised the money somehow

and came to Sydney and brought me home. I got pretty low down that

time.)

‘But, Mary,’ I said, ‘it would have been different this time. You would

have been with me. I can take a glass now or leave it alone.’

‘As long as you take a glass there is danger,’ she said.

‘Well, what did you want to advise me to come out here for, if you can’t

stand it? Why didn’t you stay where you were?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘why weren’t you more decided?’

I’d sat down, but I jumped to my feet then.

‘Good God!’ I shouted, ‘this is more than any man can stand. I’ll chuck

it all up! I’m damned well sick and tired of the whole thing.’

‘So am I, Joe,’ said Mary wearily.

We quarrelled badly then--that first hour in our new home. I know now

whose fault it was.

I got my hat and went out and started to walk down the creek. I didn’t

feel bitter against Mary--I had spoken too cruelly to her to feel that

way. Looking back, I could see plainly that if I had taken her advice

all through, instead of now and again, things would have been all right

with me. I had come away and left her crying in the hut, and James

telling her, in a brotherly way, that it was all her fault. The trouble

was that I never liked to ‘give in’ or go half-way to make it up--not

half-way--it was all the way or nothing with our natures.

‘If I don’t make a stand now,’ I’d say, ‘I’ll never be master. I gave up

the reins when I got married, and I’ll have to get them back again.’

What women some men are! But the time came, and not many years after,

when I stood by the bed where Mary lay, white and still; and, amongst

other things, I kept saying, ‘I’ll give in, Mary--I’ll give in,’ and

then I’d laugh. They thought that I was raving mad, and took me from the

room. But that time was to come.

As I walked down the creek track in the moonlight the question rang in

my ears again, as it had done when I first caught sight of the house

that evening--

‘Why did I bring her here?’

I was not fit to ‘go on the land’. The place was only fit for some

stolid German, or Scotsman, or even Englishman and his wife, who had no

ambition but to bullock and make a farm of the place. I had only drifted

here through carelessness, brooding, and discontent.

I walked on and on till I was more than half-way to the only

neighbours--a wretched selector’s family, about four miles down the

creek,--and I thought I’d go on to the house and see if they had any

fresh meat.

A mile or two farther I saw the loom of the bark hut they lived in, on

a patchy clearing in the scrub, and heard the voice of the selector’s

wife--I had seen her several times: she was a gaunt, haggard Bushwoman,

and, I supposed, the reason why she hadn’t gone mad through hardship

and loneliness was that she hadn’t either the brains or the memory to go

farther than she could see through the trunks of the ‘apple-trees’.

‘You, An-nay!’ (Annie.)

‘Ye-es’ (from somewhere in the gloom).

‘Didn’t I tell yer to water them geraniums!’

‘Well, didn’t I?’

‘Don’t tell lies or I’ll break yer young back!’

‘I did, I tell yer--the water won’t soak inter the ashes.’

Geraniums were the only flowers I saw grow in the drought out there.

I remembered this woman had a few dirty grey-green leaves behind some

sticks against the bark wall near the door; and in spite of the sticks

the fowls used to get in and scratch beds under the geraniums, and

scratch dust over them, and ashes were thrown there--with an idea of

helping the flower, I suppose; and greasy dish-water, when fresh water

was scarce--till you might as well try to water a dish of fat.

Then the woman’s voice again--

‘You, Tom-may!’ (Tommy.)

Silence, save for an echo on the ridge.

‘Y-o-u, T-o-m-MAY!’

‘Ye-e-s!’ shrill shriek from across the creek.

‘Didn’t I tell you to ride up to them new people and see if they want

any meat or any think?’ in one long screech.

‘Well--I karnt find the horse.’

‘Well-find-it-first-think-in-the-morning and.

And-don’t-forgit-to-tell-Mrs-Wi’son-that-mother’ll-be-up-as-soon-as-she-can.’

I didn’t feel like going to the woman’s house that night. I felt--and

the thought came like a whip-stroke on my heart--that this was what Mary

would come to if I left her here.

I turned and started to walk home, fast. I’d made up my mind. I’d take

Mary straight back to Gulgong in the morning--I forgot about the load I

had to take to the sheep station. I’d say, ‘Look here, Girlie’ (that’s

what I used to call her), ‘we’ll leave this wretched life; we’ll leave

the Bush for ever! We’ll go to Sydney, and I’ll be a man! and work my

way up.’ And I’d sell waggon, horses, and all, and go.

When I got to the hut it was lighted up. Mary had the only kerosene

lamp, a slush lamp, and two tallow candles going. She had got both rooms

washed out--to James’s disgust, for he had to move the furniture and

boxes about. She had a lot of things unpacked on the table; she had

laid clean newspapers on the mantel-shelf--a slab on two pegs over the

fireplace--and put the little wooden clock in the centre and some of

the ornaments on each side, and was tacking a strip of vandyked American

oil-cloth round the rough edge of the slab.

‘How does that look, Joe? We’ll soon get things ship-shape.’

I kissed her, but she had her mouth full of tacks. I went out in the

kitchen, drank a pint of cold tea, and sat down.

Somehow I didn’t feel satisfied with the way things had gone.

II. ‘Past Carin’’.

Next morning things looked a lot brighter. Things always look brighter

in the morning--more so in the Australian Bush, I should think, than in

most other places. It is when the sun goes down on the dark bed of the

lonely Bush, and the sunset flashes like a sea of fire and then fades,

and then glows out again, like a bank of coals, and then burns away to

ashes--it is then that old things come home to one. And strange, new-old

things too, that haunt and depress you terribly, and that you can’t

understand. I often think how, at sunset, the past must come home to

new-chum blacksheep, sent out to Australia and drifted into the Bush.

I used to think that they couldn’t have much brains, or the loneliness

would drive them mad.

I’d decided to let James take the team for a trip or two. He could drive

alright; he was a better business man, and no doubt would manage better

than me--as long as the novelty lasted; and I’d stay at home for a

week or so, till Mary got used to the place, or I could get a girl from

somewhere to come and stay with her. The first weeks or few months of

loneliness are the worst, as a rule, I believe, as they say the first

weeks in jail are--I was never there. I know it’s so with tramping or

hard graft*: the first day or two are twice as hard as any of the rest.

But, for my part, I could never get used to loneliness and dulness; the

last days used to be the worst with me: then I’d have to make a move, or

drink. When you’ve been too much and too long alone in a lonely place,

you begin to do queer things and think queer thoughts--provided you have

any imagination at all. You’ll sometimes sit of an evening and watch the

lonely track, by the hour, for a horseman or a cart or some one that’s

never likely to come that way--some one, or a stranger, that you can’t

and don’t really expect to see. I think that most men who have been

alone in the Bush for any length of time--and married couples too--are

more or less mad. With married couples it is generally the husband who

is painfully shy and awkward when strangers come. The woman seems to

stand the loneliness better, and can hold her own with strangers, as a

rule. It’s only afterwards, and looking back, that you see how queer you

got. Shepherds and boundary-riders, who are alone for months, MUST have

their periodical spree, at the nearest shanty, else they’d go raving

mad. Drink is the only break in the awful monotony, and the yearly or

half-yearly spree is the only thing they’ve got to look forward to: it

keeps their minds fixed on something definite ahead.

* ‘Graft’, work. The term is now applied, in Australia, to

all sorts of work, from bullock-driving to writing poetry.

But Mary kept her head pretty well through the first months of

loneliness. WEEKS, rather, I should say, for it wasn’t as bad as it

might have been farther up-country: there was generally some one came

of a Sunday afternoon--a spring-cart with a couple of women, or maybe

a family,--or a lanky shy Bush native or two on lanky shy horses. On

a quiet Sunday, after I’d brought Jim home, Mary would dress him and

herself--just the same as if we were in town--and make me get up on one

end and put on a collar and take her and Jim for a walk along the creek.

She said she wanted to keep me civilised. She tried to make a gentleman

of me for years, but gave it up gradually.

Well. It was the first morning on the creek: I was greasing the

waggon-wheels, and James out after the horse, and Mary hanging out

clothes, in an old print dress and a big ugly white hood, when I heard

her being hailed as ‘Hi, missus!’ from the front slip-rails.

It was a boy on horseback. He was a light-haired, very much freckled boy

of fourteen or fifteen, with a small head, but with limbs, especially

his bare sun-blotched shanks, that might have belonged to a grown

man. He had a good face and frank grey eyes. An old, nearly black

cabbage-tree hat rested on the butts of his ears, turning them out at

right angles from his head, and rather dirty sprouts they were. He wore

a dirty torn Crimean shirt; and a pair of man’s moleskin trousers rolled

up above the knees, with the wide waistband gathered under a greenhide

belt. I noticed, later on, that, even when he wore trousers short enough

for him, he always rolled ‘em up above the knees when on horseback, for

some reason of his own: to suggest leggings, perhaps, for he had them

rolled up in all weathers, and he wouldn’t have bothered to save them

from the sweat of the horse, even if that horse ever sweated.

He was seated astride a three-bushel bag thrown across the ridge-pole of

a big grey horse, with a coffin-shaped head, and built astern something

after the style of a roughly put up hip-roofed box-bark humpy.* His

colour was like old box-bark, too, a dirty bluish-grey; and, one time,

when I saw his rump looming out of the scrub, I really thought it was

some old shepherd’s hut that I hadn’t noticed there before. When he

cantered it was like the humpy starting off on its corner-posts.

* ‘Humpy’, a rough hut.

‘Are you Mrs Wilson?’ asked the boy.

‘Yes,’ said Mary.

‘Well, mother told me to ride acrost and see if you wanted anythink. We

killed lars’ night, and I’ve fetched a piece er cow.’

‘Piece of WHAT?’ asked Mary.

He grinned, and handed a sugar-bag across the rail with something heavy

in the bottom of it, that nearly jerked Mary’s arm out when she took

it. It was a piece of beef, that looked as if it had been cut off with a

wood-axe, but it was fresh and clean.

‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ cried Mary. She was always impulsive, save to me

sometimes. ‘I was just wondering where we were going to get any fresh

meat. How kind of your mother! Tell her I’m very much obliged to her

indeed.’ And she felt behind her for a poor little purse she had. ‘And

now--how much did your mother say it would be?’

The boy blinked at her, and scratched his head.

‘How much will it be,’ he repeated, puzzled. ‘Oh--how much does it weigh

I-s’pose-yer-mean. Well, it ain’t been weighed at all--we ain’t got no

scales. A butcher does all that sort of think. We just kills it, and

cooks it, and eats it--and goes by guess. What won’t keep we salts down

in the cask. I reckon it weighs about a ton by the weight of it if yer

wanter know. Mother thought that if she sent any more it would go bad

before you could scoff it. I can’t see----’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Mary, getting confused. ‘But what I want to know is,

how do you manage when you sell it?’

He glared at her, and scratched his head. ‘Sell it? Why, we only goes

halves in a steer with some one, or sells steers to the butcher--or

maybe some meat to a party of fencers or surveyors, or tank-sinkers, or

them sorter people----’

‘Yes, yes; but what I want to know is, how much am I to send your mother

for this?’

‘How much what?’

‘Money, of course, you stupid boy,’ said Mary. ‘You seem a very stupid

boy.’

Then he saw what she was driving at. He began to fling his heels

convulsively against the sides of his horse, jerking his body backward

and forward at the same time, as if to wind up and start some clockwork

machinery inside the horse, that made it go, and seemed to need

repairing or oiling.

‘We ain’t that sorter people, missus,’ he said. ‘We don’t sell meat

to new people that come to settle here.’ Then, jerking his thumb

contemptuously towards the ridges, ‘Go over ter Wall’s if yer wanter buy

meat; they sell meat ter strangers.’ (Wall was the big squatter over the

ridges.)

‘Oh!’ said Mary, ‘I’m SO sorry. Thank your mother for me. She IS kind.’

‘Oh, that’s nothink. She said to tell yer she’ll be up as soon as she

can. She’d have come up yisterday evening--she thought yer’d feel lonely

comin’ new to a place like this--but she couldn’t git up.’

The machinery inside the old horse showed signs of starting. You

almost heard the wooden joints CREAK as he lurched forward, like an old

propped-up humpy when the rotting props give way; but at the sound of

Mary’s voice he settled back on his foundations again. It must have been

a very poor selection that couldn’t afford a better spare horse than

that.

‘Reach me that lump er wood, will yer, missus?’ said the boy, and he

pointed to one of my ‘spreads’ (for the team-chains) that lay inside the

fence. ‘I’ll fling it back agin over the fence when I git this ole cow

started.’

‘But wait a minute--I’ve forgotten your mother’s name,’ said Mary.

He grabbed at his thatch impatiently. ‘Me mother--oh!--the old woman’s

name’s Mrs Spicer. (Git up, karnt yer!)’ He twisted himself round, and

brought the stretcher down on one of the horse’s ‘points’ (and he had

many) with a crack that must have jarred his wrist.

‘Do you go to school?’ asked Mary. There was a three-days-a-week school

over the ridges at Wall’s station.

‘No!’ he jerked out, keeping his legs going. ‘Me--why I’m going on fur

fifteen. The last teacher at Wall’s finished me. I’m going to Queensland

next month drovin’.’ (Queensland border was over three hundred miles

away.)

‘Finished you? How?’ asked Mary.

‘Me edgercation, of course! How do yer expect me to start this horse

when yer keep talkin’?’

He split the ‘spread’ over the horse’s point, threw the pieces over the

fence, and was off, his elbows and legs flinging wildly, and the old

saw-stool lumbering along the road like an old working bullock trying a

canter. That horse wasn’t a trotter.

And next month he DID start for Queensland. He was a younger son and a

surplus boy on a wretched, poverty-stricken selection; and as there was

‘northin’ doin’’ in the district, his father (in a burst of fatherly

kindness, I suppose) made him a present of the old horse and a new

pair of Blucher boots, and I gave him an old saddle and a coat, and he

started for the Never-Never Country.

And I’ll bet he got there. But I’m doubtful if the old horse did.

Mary gave the boy five shillings, and I don’t think he had anything more

except a clean shirt and an extra pair of white cotton socks.

‘Spicer’s farm’ was a big bark humpy on a patchy clearing in the native

apple-tree scrub. The clearing was fenced in by a light ‘dog-legged’

fence (a fence of sapling poles resting on forks and X-shaped uprights),

and the dusty ground round the house was almost entirely covered with

cattle-dung. There was no attempt at cultivation when I came to live on

the creek; but there were old furrow-marks amongst the stumps of another

shapeless patch in the scrub near the hut. There was a wretched sapling

cow-yard and calf-pen, and a cow-bail with one sheet of bark over it for

shelter. There was no dairy to be seen, and I suppose the milk was set

in one of the two skillion rooms, or lean-to’s behind the hut,--the

other was ‘the boys’ bedroom’. The Spicers kept a few cows and steers,

and had thirty or forty sheep. Mrs Spicer used to drive down the creek

once a-week, in her rickety old spring-cart, to Cobborah, with butter

and eggs. The hut was nearly as bare inside as it was out--just a frame

of ‘round-timber’ (sapling poles) covered with bark. The furniture was

permanent (unless you rooted it up), like in our kitchen: a rough slab

table on stakes driven into the ground, and seats made the same

way. Mary told me afterwards that the beds in the bag-and-bark

partitioned-off room [‘mother’s bedroom’) were simply poles laid side

by side on cross-pieces supported by stakes driven into the ground, with

straw mattresses and some worn-out bed-clothes. Mrs Spicer had an old

patchwork quilt, in rags, and the remains of a white one, and Mary said

it was pitiful to see how these things would be spread over the beds--to

hide them as much as possible--when she went down there. A packing-case,

with something like an old print skirt draped round it, and a cracked

looking-glass (without a frame) on top, was the dressing-table.

There were a couple of gin-cases for a wardrobe. The boys’ beds were

three-bushel bags stretched between poles fastened to uprights. The

floor was the original surface, tramped hard, worn uneven with much

sweeping, and with puddles in rainy weather where the roof leaked. Mrs

Spicer used to stand old tins, dishes, and buckets under as many of

the leaks as she could. The saucepans, kettles, and boilers were old

kerosene-tins and billies. They used kerosene-tins, too, cut longways in

halves, for setting the milk in. The plates and cups were of tin;

there were two or three cups without saucers, and a crockery plate or

two--also two mugs, cracked and without handles, one with ‘For a Good

Boy’ and the other with ‘For a Good Girl’ on it; but all these were kept

on the mantel-shelf for ornament and for company. They were the only

ornaments in the house, save a little wooden clock that hadn’t gone for

years. Mrs Spicer had a superstition that she had ‘some things packed

away from the children.’

The pictures were cut from old copies of the ‘Illustrated Sydney News’

and pasted on to the bark. I remember this, because I remembered, long

ago, the Spencers, who were our neighbours when I was a boy, had the

walls of their bedroom covered with illustrations of the American Civil

War, cut from illustrated London papers, and I used to ‘sneak’ into

‘mother’s bedroom’ with Fred Spencer whenever we got the chance, and

gloat over the prints. I gave him a blade of a pocket-knife once, for

taking me in there.

I saw very little of Spicer. He was a big, dark, dark-haired and

whiskered man. I had an idea that he wasn’t a selector at all, only a

‘dummy’ for the squatter of the Cobborah run. You see, selectors were

allowed to take up land on runs, or pastoral leases. The squatters

kept them off as much as possible, by all manner of dodges and paltry

persecution. The squatter would get as much freehold as he could afford,

‘select’ as much land as the law allowed one man to take up, and then

employ dummies (dummy selectors) to take up bits of land that he fancied

about his run, and hold them for him.

Spicer seemed gloomy and unsociable. He was seldom at home. He was

generally supposed to be away shearin’, or fencin’, or workin’ on

somebody’s station. It turned out that the last six months he was away

it was on the evidence of a cask of beef and a hide with the brand cut

out, found in his camp on a fencing contract up-country, and which he

and his mates couldn’t account for satisfactorily, while the squatter

could. Then the family lived mostly on bread and honey, or bread and

treacle, or bread and dripping, and tea. Every ounce of butter and every

egg was needed for the market, to keep them in flour, tea, and sugar.

Mary found that out, but couldn’t help them much--except by ‘stuffing’

the children with bread and meat or bread and jam whenever they came up

to our place--for Mrs Spicer was proud with the pride that lies down in

the end and turns its face to the wall and dies.

Once, when Mary asked Annie, the eldest girl at home, if she was

hungry, she denied it--but she looked it. A ragged mite she had with her

explained things. The little fellow said--

‘Mother told Annie not to say we was hungry if yer asked; but if yer

give us anythink to eat, we was to take it an’ say thenk yer, Mrs

Wilson.’

‘I wouldn’t ‘a’ told yer a lie; but I thought Jimmy would split on me,

Mrs Wilson,’ said Annie. ‘Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.’

She was not a big woman. She was gaunt and flat-chested, and her face

was ‘burnt to a brick’, as they say out there. She had brown eyes,

nearly red, and a little wild-looking at times, and a sharp face--ground

sharp by hardship--the cheeks drawn in. She had an expression

like--well, like a woman who had been very curious and suspicious at one

time, and wanted to know everybody’s business and hear everything, and

had lost all her curiosity, without losing the expression or the quick

suspicious movements of the head. I don’t suppose you understand. I

can’t explain it any other way. She was not more than forty.

I remember the first morning I saw her. I was going up the creek to look

at the selection for the first time, and called at the hut to see if she

had a bit of fresh mutton, as I had none and was sick of ‘corned beef’.

‘Yes--of--course,’ she said, in a sharp nasty tone, as if to say, ‘Is

there anything more you want while the shop’s open?’ I’d met just the

same sort of woman years before while I was carrying swag between the

shearing-sheds in the awful scrubs out west of the Darling river, so I

didn’t turn on my heels and walk away. I waited for her to speak again.

‘Come--inside,’ she said, ‘and sit down. I see you’ve got the waggon

outside. I s’pose your name’s Wilson, ain’t it? You’re thinkin’ about

takin’ on Harry Marshfield’s selection up the creek, so I heard. Wait

till I fry you a chop and boil the billy.’

Her voice sounded, more than anything else, like a voice coming out of

a phonograph--I heard one in Sydney the other day--and not like a voice

coming out of her. But sometimes when she got outside her everyday

life on this selection she spoke in a sort of--in a sort of lost

groping-in-the-dark kind of voice.

She didn’t talk much this time--just spoke in a mechanical way of the

drought, and the hard times, ‘an’ butter ‘n’ eggs bein’ down, an’ her

husban’ an’ eldest son bein’ away, an’ that makin’ it so hard for her.’

I don’t know how many children she had. I never got a chance to count

them, for they were nearly all small, and shy as piccaninnies, and used

to run and hide when anybody came. They were mostly nearly as black as

piccaninnies too. She must have averaged a baby a-year for years--and

God only knows how she got over her confinements! Once, they said, she

only had a black gin with her. She had an elder boy and girl, but she

seldom spoke of them. The girl, ‘Liza’, was ‘in service in Sydney.’ I’m

afraid I knew what that meant. The elder son was ‘away’. He had been a

bit of a favourite round there, it seemed.

Some one might ask her, ‘How’s your son Jack, Mrs Spicer?’ or, ‘Heard of

Jack lately? and where is he now?’

‘Oh, he’s somewheres up country,’ she’d say in the ‘groping’ voice, or

‘He’s drovin’ in Queenslan’,’ or ‘Shearin’ on the Darlin’ the last time

I heerd from him.’ ‘We ain’t had a line from him since--les’ see--since

Chris’mas ‘fore last.’

And she’d turn her haggard eyes in a helpless, hopeless sort of way

towards the west--towards ‘up-country’ and ‘Out-Back’.*

* ‘Out-Back’ is always west of the Bushman, no matter how

far out he be.

The eldest girl at home was nine or ten, with a little old face and

lines across her forehead: she had an older expression than her mother.

Tommy went to Queensland, as I told you. The eldest son at home, Bill

(older than Tommy), was ‘a bit wild.’

I’ve passed the place in smothering hot mornings in December, when the

droppings about the cow-yard had crumpled to dust that rose in the

warm, sickly, sunrise wind, and seen that woman at work in the cow-yard,

‘bailing up’ and leg-roping cows, milking, or hauling at a rope round

the neck of a half-grown calf that was too strong for her (and she was

tough as fencing-wire), or humping great buckets of sour milk to the

pigs or the ‘poddies’ (hand-fed calves) in the pen. I’d get off the

horse and give her a hand sometimes with a young steer, or a cranky old

cow that wouldn’t ‘bail-up’ and threatened her with her horns. She’d

say--

‘Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. Do yer think we’re ever goin’ to have any rain?’

I’ve ridden past the place on bitter black rainy mornings in June or

July, and seen her trudging about the yard--that was ankle-deep in black

liquid filth--with an old pair of Blucher boots on, and an old coat of

her husband’s, or maybe a three-bushel bag over her shoulders. I’ve seen

her climbing on the roof by means of the water-cask at the corner, and

trying to stop a leak by shoving a piece of tin in under the bark. And

when I’d fixed the leak--

‘Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. This drop of rain’s a blessin’! Come in and have

a dry at the fire and I’ll make yer a cup of tea.’ And, if I was in a

hurry, ‘Come in, man alive! Come in! and dry yerself a bit till the rain

holds up. Yer can’t go home like this! Yer’ll git yer death o’ cold.’

I’ve even seen her, in the terrible drought, climbing she-oaks and

apple-trees by a makeshift ladder, and awkwardly lopping off boughs to

feed the starving cattle.

‘Jist tryin’ ter keep the milkers alive till the rain comes.’

They said that when the pleuro-pneumonia was in the district and amongst

her cattle she bled and physicked them herself, and fed those that were

down with slices of half-ripe pumpkins (from a crop that had failed).

‘An’, one day,’ she told Mary, ‘there was a big barren heifer (that we

called Queen Elizabeth) that was down with the ploorer. She’d been down

for four days and hadn’t moved, when one mornin’ I dumped some wheaten

chaff--we had a few bags that Spicer brought home--I dumped it in front

of her nose, an’--would yer b’lieve me, Mrs Wilson?--she stumbled onter

her feet an’ chased me all the way to the house! I had to pick up me

skirts an’ run! Wasn’t it redic’lus?’

They had a sense of the ridiculous, most of those poor sun-dried

Bushwomen. I fancy that that helped save them from madness.

‘We lost nearly all our milkers,’ she told Mary. ‘I remember one day

Tommy came running to the house and screamed: ‘Marther! [mother] there’s

another milker down with the ploorer!’ Jist as if it was great news.

Well, Mrs Wilson, I was dead-beat, an’ I giv’ in. I jist sat down

to have a good cry, and felt for my han’kerchief--it WAS a rag of a

han’kerchief, full of holes (all me others was in the wash). Without

seein’ what I was doin’ I put me finger through one hole in the

han’kerchief an’ me thumb through the other, and poked me fingers into

me eyes, instead of wipin’ them. Then I had to laugh.’

There’s a story that once, when the Bush, or rather grass, fires were

out all along the creek on Spicer’s side, Wall’s station hands were up

above our place, trying to keep the fire back from the boundary, and

towards evening one of the men happened to think of the Spicers: they

saw smoke down that way. Spicer was away from home, and they had a small

crop of wheat, nearly ripe, on the selection.

‘My God! that poor devil of a woman will be burnt out, if she ain’t

already!’ shouted young Billy Wall. ‘Come along, three or four of you

chaps’--(it was shearing-time, and there were plenty of men on the

station).

They raced down the creek to Spicer’s, and were just in time to save the

wheat. She had her sleeves tucked up, and was beating out the burning

grass with a bough. She’d been at it for an hour, and was as black as a

gin, they said. She only said when they’d turned the fire: ‘Thenk yer!

Wait an’ I’ll make some tea.’

*****

After tea the first Sunday she came to see us, Mary asked--

‘Don’t you feel lonely, Mrs Spicer, when your husband goes away?’

‘Well--no, Mrs Wilson,’ she said in the groping sort of voice. ‘I uster,

once. I remember, when we lived on the Cudgeegong river--we lived in

a brick house then--the first time Spicer had to go away from home I

nearly fretted my eyes out. And he was only goin’ shearin’ for a month.

I muster bin a fool; but then we were only jist married a little while.

He’s been away drovin’ in Queenslan’ as long as eighteen months at a

time since then. But’ (her voice seemed to grope in the dark more

than ever) ‘I don’t mind,--I somehow seem to have got past carin’.

Besides--besides, Spicer was a very different man then to what he is

now. He’s got so moody and gloomy at home, he hardly ever speaks.’

Mary sat silent for a minute thinking. Then Mrs Spicer roused herself--

‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about! You mustn’t take any notice of

me, Mrs Wilson,--I don’t often go on like this. I do believe I’m gittin’

a bit ratty at times. It must be the heat and the dulness.’

But once or twice afterwards she referred to a time ‘when Spicer was a

different man to what he was now.’

I walked home with her a piece along the creek. She said nothing for

a long time, and seemed to be thinking in a puzzled way. Then she said

suddenly--

‘What-did-you-bring-her-here-for? She’s only a girl.’

‘I beg pardon, Mrs Spicer.’

‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about! I b’lieve I’m gittin’ ratty.

You mustn’t take any notice of me, Mr Wilson.’

She wasn’t much company for Mary; and often, when she had a child with

her, she’d start taking notice of the baby while Mary was talking, which

used to exasperate Mary. But poor Mrs Spicer couldn’t help it, and she

seemed to hear all the same.

Her great trouble was that she ‘couldn’t git no reg’lar schoolin’ for

the children.’

‘I learns ‘em at home as much as I can. But I don’t git a minute to

call me own; an’ I’m ginerally that dead-beat at night that I’m fit for

nothink.’

Mary had some of the children up now and then later on, and taught them

a little. When she first offered to do so, Mrs Spicer laid hold of the

handiest youngster and said--

‘There--do you hear that? Mrs Wilson is goin’ to teach yer, an’

it’s more than yer deserve!’ (the youngster had been ‘cryin’’ over

something). ‘Now, go up an’ say “Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.” And if yer

ain’t good, and don’t do as she tells yer, I’ll break every bone in yer

young body!’

The poor little devil stammered something, and escaped.

The children were sent by turns over to Wall’s to Sunday-school. When

Tommy was at home he had a new pair of elastic-side boots, and there was

no end of rows about them in the family--for the mother made him lend

them to his sister Annie, to go to Sunday-school in, in her turn. There

were only about three pairs of anyway decent boots in the family, and

these were saved for great occasions. The children were always as clean

and tidy as possible when they came to our place.

And I think the saddest and most pathetic sight on the face of God’s

earth is the children of very poor people made to appear well: the

broken worn-out boots polished or greased, the blackened (inked) pieces

of string for laces; the clean patched pinafores over the wretched

threadbare frocks. Behind the little row of children hand-in-hand--and

no matter where they are--I always see the worn face of the mother.

Towards the end of the first year on the selection our little girl came.

I’d sent Mary to Gulgong for four months that time, and when she came

back with the baby Mrs Spicer used to come up pretty often. She came up

several times when Mary was ill, to lend a hand. She wouldn’t sit down

and condole with Mary, or waste her time asking questions, or talking

about the time when she was ill herself. She’d take off her hat--a

shapeless little lump of black straw she wore for visiting--give

her hair a quick brush back with the palms of her hands, roll up her

sleeves, and set to work to ‘tidy up’. She seemed to take most pleasure

in sorting out our children’s clothes, and dressing them. Perhaps she

used to dress her own like that in the days when Spicer was a different

man from what he was now. She seemed interested in the fashion-plates

of some women’s journals we had, and used to study them with an interest

that puzzled me, for she was not likely to go in for fashion. She never

talked of her early girlhood; but Mary, from some things she noticed,

was inclined to think that Mrs Spicer had been fairly well brought up.

For instance, Dr Balanfantie, from Cudgeegong, came out to see Wall’s

wife, and drove up the creek to our place on his way back to see how

Mary and the baby were getting on. Mary got out some crockery and some

table-napkins that she had packed away for occasions like this; and

she said that the way Mrs Spicer handled the things, and helped set the

table (though she did it in a mechanical sort of way), convinced her

that she had been used to table-napkins at one time in her life.

Sometimes, after a long pause in the conversation, Mrs Spicer would say

suddenly--

‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll come up next week, Mrs Wilson.’

‘Why, Mrs Spicer?’

‘Because the visits doesn’t do me any good. I git the dismals

afterwards.’

‘Why, Mrs Spicer? What on earth do you mean?’

‘Oh,-I-don’t-know-what-I’m-talkin’-about. You mustn’t take any notice

of me.’ And she’d put on her hat, kiss the children--and Mary too,

sometimes, as if she mistook her for a child--and go.

Mary thought her a little mad at times. But I seemed to understand.

Once, when Mrs Spicer was sick, Mary went down to her, and down again

next day. As she was coming away the second time, Mrs Spicer said--

‘I wish you wouldn’t come down any more till I’m on me feet, Mrs Wilson.

The children can do for me.’

‘Why, Mrs Spicer?’

‘Well, the place is in such a muck, and it hurts me.’

We were the aristocrats of Lahey’s Creek. Whenever we drove down on

Sunday afternoon to see Mrs Spicer, and as soon as we got near enough

for them to hear the rattle of the cart, we’d see the children running

to the house as fast as they could split, and hear them screaming--

‘Oh, marther! Here comes Mr and Mrs Wilson in their spring-cart.’

And we’d see her bustle round, and two or three fowls fly out the

front door, and she’d lay hold of a broom (made of a bound bunch of

‘broom-stuff’--coarse reedy grass or bush from the ridges--with a stick

stuck in it) and flick out the floor, with a flick or two round in front

of the door perhaps. The floor nearly always needed at least one flick

of the broom on account of the fowls. Or she’d catch a youngster and

scrub his face with a wet end of a cloudy towel, or twist the towel

round her finger and dig out his ears--as if she was anxious to have him

hear every word that was going to be said.

No matter what state the house would be in she’d always say, ‘I was jist

expectin’ yer, Mrs Wilson.’ And she was original in that, anyway.

She had an old patched and darned white table-cloth that she used to

spread on the table when we were there, as a matter of course [‘The

others is in the wash, so you must excuse this, Mrs Wilson’), but I saw

by the eyes of the children that the cloth was rather a wonderful thing

to them. ‘I must really git some more knives an’ forks next time I’m in

Cobborah,’ she’d say. ‘The children break an’ lose ‘em till I’m ashamed

to ask Christians ter sit down ter the table.’

She had many Bush yarns, some of them very funny, some of them rather

ghastly, but all interesting, and with a grim sort of humour about them.

But the effect was often spoilt by her screaming at the children to

‘Drive out them fowls, karnt yer,’ or ‘Take yer maulies [hands] outer

the sugar,’ or ‘Don’t touch Mrs Wilson’s baby with them dirty maulies,’

or ‘Don’t stand starin’ at Mrs Wilson with yer mouth an’ ears in that

vulgar way.’

Poor woman! she seemed everlastingly nagging at the children. It was

a habit, but they didn’t seem to mind. Most Bushwomen get the nagging

habit. I remember one, who had the prettiest, dearest, sweetest, most

willing, and affectionate little girl I think I ever saw, and she nagged

that child from daylight till dark--and after it. Taking it all round,

I think that the nagging habit in a mother is often worse on ordinary

children, and more deadly on sensitive youngsters, than the drinking

habit in a father.

One of the yarns Mrs Spicer told us was about a squatter she knew who

used to go wrong in his head every now and again, and try to commit

suicide. Once, when the station-hand, who was watching him, had his eye

off him for a minute, he hanged himself to a beam in the stable. The

men ran in and found him hanging and kicking. ‘They let him hang for

a while,’ said Mrs Spicer, ‘till he went black in the face and stopped

kicking. Then they cut him down and threw a bucket of water over him.’

‘Why! what on earth did they let the man hang for?’ asked Mary.

‘To give him a good bellyful of it: they thought it would cure him of

tryin’ to hang himself again.’

‘Well, that’s the coolest thing I ever heard of,’ said Mary.

‘That’s jist what the magistrate said, Mrs Wilson,’ said Mrs Spicer.

‘One morning,’ said Mrs Spicer, ‘Spicer had gone off on his horse

somewhere, and I was alone with the children, when a man came to the

door and said--

‘“For God’s sake, woman, give me a drink!”

‘Lord only knows where he came from! He was dressed like a new chum--his

clothes was good, but he looked as if he’d been sleepin’ in them in the

Bush for a month. He was very shaky. I had some coffee that mornin’,

so I gave him some in a pint pot; he drank it, and then he stood on his

head till he tumbled over, and then he stood up on his feet and said,

“Thenk yer, mum.”

‘I was so surprised that I didn’t know what to say, so I jist said,

“Would you like some more coffee?”

‘“Yes, thenk yer,” he said--“about two quarts.”

‘I nearly filled the pint pot, and he drank it and stood on his head

as long as he could, and when he got right end up he said, “Thenk yer,

mum--it’s a fine day,” and then he walked off. He had two saddle-straps

in his hands.’

‘Why, what did he stand on his head for?’ asked Mary.

‘To wash it up and down, I suppose, to get twice as much taste of the

coffee. He had no hat. I sent Tommy across to Wall’s to tell them that

there was a man wanderin’ about the Bush in the horrors of drink, and

to get some one to ride for the police. But they was too late, for he

hanged himself that night.’

‘O Lord!’ cried Mary.

‘Yes, right close to here, jist down the creek where the track to Wall’s

branches off. Tommy found him while he was out after the cows. Hangin’

to the branch of a tree with the two saddle-straps.’

Mary stared at her, speechless.

‘Tommy came home yellin’ with fright. I sent him over to Wall’s at once.

After breakfast, the minute my eyes was off them, the children slipped

away and went down there. They came back screamin’ at the tops of their

voices. I did give it to them. I reckon they won’t want ter see a dead

body again in a hurry. Every time I’d mention it they’d huddle together,

or ketch hold of me skirts and howl.

‘“Yer’ll go agen when I tell yer not to,” I’d say.

‘“Oh no, mother,” they’d howl.

‘“Yer wanted ter see a man hangin’,” I said.

‘“Oh, don’t, mother! Don’t talk about it.”

‘“Yer wouldn’t be satisfied till yer see it,” I’d say; “yer had to see

it or burst. Yer satisfied now, ain’t yer?”

‘“Oh, don’t, mother!”

‘“Yer run all the way there, I s’pose?”

‘“Don’t, mother!”

‘“But yer run faster back, didn’t yer?”

‘“Oh, don’t, mother.”

‘But,’ said Mrs Spicer, in conclusion, ‘I’d been down to see it myself

before they was up.’

‘And ain’t you afraid to live alone here, after all these horrible

things?’ asked Mary.

‘Well, no; I don’t mind. I seem to have got past carin’ for anythink

now. I felt it a little when Tommy went away--the first time I felt

anythink for years. But I’m over that now.’

‘Haven’t you got any friends in the district, Mrs Spicer?’

‘Oh yes. There’s me married sister near Cobborah, and a married brother

near Dubbo; he’s got a station. They wanted to take me an’ the children

between them, or take some of the younger children. But I couldn’t bring

my mind to break up the home. I want to keep the children together as

much as possible. There’s enough of them gone, God knows. But it’s a

comfort to know that there’s some one to see to them if anythink happens

to me.’

*****

One day--I was on my way home with the team that day--Annie Spicer came

running up the creek in terrible trouble.

‘Oh, Mrs Wilson! something terribl’s happened at home! A trooper’

(mounted policeman--they called them ‘mounted troopers’ out there), ‘a

trooper’s come and took Billy!’ Billy was the eldest son at home.

‘What?’

‘It’s true, Mrs Wilson.’

‘What for? What did the policeman say?’

‘He--he--he said, “I--I’m very sorry, Mrs Spicer; but--I--I want

William.”’

It turned out that William was wanted on account of a horse missed from

Wall’s station and sold down-country.

‘An’ mother took on awful,’ sobbed Annie; ‘an’ now she’ll only sit

stock-still an’ stare in front of her, and won’t take no notice of any

of us. Oh! it’s awful, Mrs Wilson. The policeman said he’d tell Aunt

Emma’ (Mrs Spicer’s sister at Cobborah), ‘and send her out. But I had to

come to you, an’ I’ve run all the way.’

James put the horse to the cart and drove Mary down.

Mary told me all about it when I came home.

‘I found her just as Annie said; but she broke down and cried in my

arms. Oh, Joe! it was awful! She didn’t cry like a woman. I heard a man

at Haviland cry at his brother’s funeral, and it was just like that. She

came round a bit after a while. Her sister’s with her now.... Oh, Joe!

you must take me away from the Bush.’

Later on Mary said--

‘How the oaks are sighing to-night, Joe!’

*****

Next morning I rode across to Wall’s station and tackled the old man;

but he was a hard man, and wouldn’t listen to me--in fact, he ordered

me off the station. I was a selector, and that was enough for him. But

young Billy Wall rode after me.

‘Look here, Joe!’ he said, ‘it’s a blanky shame. All for the sake of a

horse! And as if that poor devil of a woman hasn’t got enough to put up

with already! I wouldn’t do it for twenty horses. I’LL tackle the boss,

and if he won’t listen to me, I’ll walk off the run for the last time,

if I have to carry my swag.’

Billy Wall managed it. The charge was withdrawn, and we got young Billy

Spicer off up-country.

But poor Mrs Spicer was never the same after that. She seldom came up to

our place unless Mary dragged her, so to speak; and then she would talk

of nothing but her last trouble, till her visits were painful to look

forward to.

‘If it only could have been kep’ quiet--for the sake of the other

children; they are all I think of now. I tried to bring ‘em all up

decent, but I s’pose it was my fault, somehow. It’s the disgrace that’s

killin’ me--I can’t bear it.’

I was at home one Sunday with Mary and a jolly Bush-girl named Maggie

Charlsworth, who rode over sometimes from Wall’s station (I must tell

you about her some other time; James was ‘shook after her’), and we got

talkin’ about Mrs Spicer. Maggie was very warm about old Wall.

‘I expected Mrs Spicer up to-day,’ said Mary. ‘She seems better lately.’

‘Why!’ cried Maggie Charlsworth, ‘if that ain’t Annie coming running up

along the creek. Something’s the matter!’

We all jumped up and ran out.

‘What is it, Annie?’ cried Mary.

‘Oh, Mrs Wilson! Mother’s asleep, and we can’t wake her!’

‘What?’

‘It’s--it’s the truth, Mrs Wilson.’

‘How long has she been asleep?’

‘Since lars’ night.’

‘My God!’ cried Mary, ‘SINCE LAST NIGHT?’

‘No, Mrs Wilson, not all the time; she woke wonst, about daylight this

mornin’. She called me and said she didn’t feel well, and I’d have to

manage the milkin’.’

‘Was that all she said?’

‘No. She said not to go for you; and she said to feed the pigs and

calves; and she said to be sure and water them geraniums.’

Mary wanted to go, but I wouldn’t let her. James and I saddled our

horses and rode down the creek.

*****

Mrs Spicer looked very little different from what she did when I last

saw her alive. It was some time before we could believe that she was

dead. But she was ‘past carin’’ right enough.

A Double Buggy at Lahey’s Creek.

I. Spuds, and a Woman’s Obstinacy.

Ever since we were married it had been Mary’s great ambition to have a

buggy. The house or furniture didn’t matter so much--out there in the

Bush where we were--but, where there were no railways or coaches, and

the roads were long, and mostly hot and dusty, a buggy was the great

thing. I had a few pounds when we were married, and was going to get

one then; but new buggies went high, and another party got hold of a

second-hand one that I’d had my eye on, so Mary thought it over and at

last she said, ‘Never mind the buggy, Joe; get a sewing-machine and I’ll

be satisfied. I’ll want the machine more than the buggy, for a while.

Wait till we’re better off.’

After that, whenever I took a contract--to put up a fence or wool-shed,

or sink a dam or something--Mary would say, ‘You ought to knock a buggy

out of this job, Joe;’ but something always turned up--bad weather or

sickness. Once I cut my foot with the adze and was laid up; and, another

time, a dam I was making was washed away by a flood before I finished

it. Then Mary would say, ‘Ah, well--never mind, Joe. Wait till we are

better off.’ But she felt it hard the time I built a wool-shed and

didn’t get paid for it, for we’d as good as settled about another

second-hand buggy then.

I always had a fancy for carpentering, and was handy with tools. I made

a spring-cart--body and wheels--in spare time, out of colonial hardwood,

and got Little the blacksmith to do the ironwork; I painted the cart

myself. It wasn’t much lighter than one of the tip-drays I had, but it

WAS a spring-cart, and Mary pretended to be satisfied with it: anyway, I

didn’t hear any more of the buggy for a while.

I sold that cart, for fourteen pounds, to a Chinese gardener who wanted

a strong cart to carry his vegetables round through the Bush. It was

just before our first youngster came: I told Mary that I wanted the

money in case of extra expense--and she didn’t fret much at losing

that cart. But the fact was, that I was going to make another try for

a buggy, as a present for Mary when the child was born. I thought of

getting the turn-out while she was laid up, keeping it dark from her

till she was on her feet again, and then showing her the buggy standing

in the shed. But she had a bad time, and I had to have the doctor

regularly, and get a proper nurse, and a lot of things extra; so the

buggy idea was knocked on the head. I was set on it, too: I’d thought of

how, when Mary was up and getting strong, I’d say one morning, ‘Go round

and have a look in the shed, Mary; I’ve got a few fowls for you,’ or

something like that--and follow her round to watch her eyes when she saw

the buggy. I never told Mary about that--it wouldn’t have done any good.

Later on I got some good timber--mostly scraps that were given to

me--and made a light body for a spring-cart. Galletly, the coach-builder

at Cudgeegong, had got a dozen pairs of American hickory wheels up from

Sydney, for light spring-carts, and he let me have a pair for cost price

and carriage. I got him to iron the cart, and he put it through

the paint-shop for nothing. He sent it out, too, at the tail of Tom

Tarrant’s big van--to increase the surprise. We were swells then for

a while; I heard no more of a buggy until after we’d been settled at

Lahey’s Creek for a couple of years.

I told you how I went into the carrying line, and took up a selection at

Lahey’s Creek--for a run for the horses and to grow a bit of feed--and

shifted Mary and little Jim out there from Gulgong, with Mary’s young

scamp of a brother James to keep them company while I was on the road.

The first year I did well enough carrying, but I never cared for it--it

was too slow; and, besides, I was always anxious when I was away from

home. The game was right enough for a single man--or a married one whose

wife had got the nagging habit (as many Bushwomen have--God help ‘em!),

and who wanted peace and quietness sometimes. Besides, other small

carriers started (seeing me getting on); and Tom Tarrant, the

coach-driver at Cudgeegong, had another heavy spring-van built, and put

it on the roads, and he took a lot of the light stuff.

The second year I made a rise--out of ‘spuds’, of all the things in the

world. It was Mary’s idea. Down at the lower end of our selection--Mary

called it ‘the run’--was a shallow watercourse called Snake’s Creek, dry

most of the year, except for a muddy water-hole or two; and, just above

the junction, where it ran into Lahey’s Creek, was a low piece of good

black-soil flat, on our side--about three acres. The flat was fairly

clear when I came to the selection--save for a few logs that had been

washed up there in some big ‘old man’ flood, way back in black-fellows’

times; and one day, when I had a spell at home, I got the horses and

trace-chains and dragged the logs together--those that wouldn’t split

for fencing timber--and burnt them off. I had a notion to get the flat

ploughed and make a lucern-paddock of it. There was a good water-hole,

under a clump of she-oak in the bend, and Mary used to take her stools

and tubs and boiler down there in the spring-cart in hot weather, and

wash the clothes under the shade of the trees--it was cooler, and

saved carrying water to the house. And one evening after she’d done the

washing she said to me--

‘Look here, Joe; the farmers out here never seem to get a new idea: they

don’t seem to me ever to try and find out beforehand what the market is

going to be like--they just go on farming the same old way and putting

in the same old crops year after year. They sow wheat, and, if it comes

on anything like the thing, they reap and thresh it; if it doesn’t,

they mow it for hay--and some of ‘em don’t have the brains to do that in

time. Now, I was looking at that bit of flat you cleared, and it struck

me that it wouldn’t be a half bad idea to get a bag of seed-potatoes,

and have the land ploughed--old Corny George would do it cheap--and

get them put in at once. Potatoes have been dear all round for the last

couple of years.’

I told her she was talking nonsense, that the ground was no good for

potatoes, and the whole district was too dry. ‘Everybody I know has

tried it, one time or another, and made nothing of it,’ I said.

‘All the more reason why you should try it, Joe,’ said Mary. ‘Just try

one crop. It might rain for weeks, and then you’ll be sorry you didn’t

take my advice.’

‘But I tell you the ground is not potato-ground,’ I said.

‘How do you know? You haven’t sown any there yet.’

‘But I’ve turned up the surface and looked at it. It’s not rich enough,

and too dry, I tell you. You need swampy, boggy ground for potatoes. Do

you think I don’t know land when I see it?’

‘But you haven’t TRIED to grow potatoes there yet, Joe. How do you

know----’

I didn’t listen to any more. Mary was obstinate when she got an idea

into her head. It was no use arguing with her. All the time I’d be

talking she’d just knit her forehead and go on thinking straight ahead,

on the track she’d started,--just as if I wasn’t there,--and it used to

make me mad. She’d keep driving at me till I took her advice or lost my

temper,--I did both at the same time, mostly.

I took my pipe and went out to smoke and cool down.

A couple of days after the potato breeze, I started with the team down

to Cudgeegong for a load of fencing-wire I had to bring out; and after

I’d kissed Mary good-bye, she said--

‘Look here, Joe, if you bring out a bag of seed-potatoes, James and I

will slice them, and old Corny George down the creek would bring his

plough up in the dray and plough the ground for very little. We could

put the potatoes in ourselves if the ground were only ploughed.’

I thought she’d forgotten all about it. There was no time to argue--I’d

be sure to lose my temper, and then I’d either have to waste an hour

comforting Mary or go off in a ‘huff’, as the women call it, and be

miserable for the trip. So I said I’d see about it. She gave me another

hug and a kiss. ‘Don’t forget, Joe,’ she said as I started. ‘Think it

over on the road.’ I reckon she had the best of it that time.

About five miles along, just as I turned into the main road, I heard

some one galloping after me, and I saw young James on his hack. I got a

start, for I thought that something had gone wrong at home. I remember,

the first day I left Mary on the creek, for the first five or six miles

I was half-a-dozen times on the point of turning back--only I thought

she’d laugh at me.

‘What is it, James?’ I shouted, before he came up--but I saw he was

grinning.

‘Mary says to tell you not to forget to bring a hoe out with you.’

‘You clear off home!’ I said, ‘or I’ll lay the whip about your young

hide; and don’t come riding after me again as if the run was on fire.’

‘Well, you needn’t get shirty with me!’ he said. ‘*I* don’t want to have

anything to do with a hoe.’ And he rode off.

I DID get thinking about those potatoes, though I hadn’t meant to. I

knew of an independent man in that district who’d made his money out

of a crop of potatoes; but that was away back in the roaring

‘Fifties--‘54--when spuds went up to twenty-eight shillings a

hundredweight (in Sydney), on account of the gold rush. We might get

good rain now, and, anyway, it wouldn’t cost much to put the potatoes

in. If they came on well, it would be a few pounds in my pocket; if the

crop was a failure, I’d have a better show with Mary next time she was

struck by an idea outside housekeeping, and have something to grumble

about when I felt grumpy.

I got a couple of bags of potatoes--we could use those that were

left over; and I got a small iron plough and a harrow that Little the

blacksmith had lying in his yard and let me have cheap--only about

a pound more than I told Mary I gave for them. When I took advice, I

generally made the mistake of taking more than was offered, or adding

notions of my own. It was vanity, I suppose. If the crop came on well I

could claim the plough-and-harrow part of the idea, anyway. (It didn’t

strike me that if the crop failed Mary would have the plough and harrow

against me, for old Corny would plough the ground for ten or fifteen

shillings.) Anyway, I’d want a plough and harrow later on, and I might

as well get it now; it would give James something to do.

I came out by the western road, by Guntawang, and up the creek home; and

the first thing I saw was old Corny George ploughing the flat. And

Mary was down on the bank superintending. She’d got James with the

trace-chains and the spare horses, and had made him clear off every

stick and bush where another furrow might be squeezed in. Old Corny

looked pretty grumpy on it--he’d broken all his ploughshares but one, in

the roots; and James didn’t look much brighter. Mary had an old felt

hat and a new pair of ‘lastic-side boots of mine on, and the boots were

covered with clay, for she’d been down hustling James to get a rotten

old stump out of the way by the time Corny came round with his next

furrow.

‘I thought I’d make the boots easy for you, Joe,’ said Mary.

‘It’s all right, Mary,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to growl.’ Those boots

were a bone of contention between us; but she generally got them off

before I got home.

Her face fell a little when she saw the plough and harrow in the waggon,

but I said that would be all right--we’d want a plough anyway.

‘I thought you wanted old Corny to plough the ground,’ she said.

‘I never said so.’

‘But when I sent Jim after you about the hoe to put the spuds in, you

didn’t say you wouldn’t bring it,’ she said.

I had a few days at home, and entered into the spirit of the thing. When

Corny was done, James and I cross-ploughed the land, and got a stump or

two, a big log, and some scrub out of the way at the upper end and added

nearly an acre, and ploughed that. James was all right at most Bushwork:

he’d bullock so long as the novelty lasted; he liked ploughing or

fencing, or any graft he could make a show at. He didn’t care for

grubbing out stumps, or splitting posts and rails. We sliced the

potatoes of an evening--and there was trouble between Mary and James

over cutting through the ‘eyes’. There was no time for the hoe--and

besides it wasn’t a novelty to James--so I just ran furrows and they

dropped the spuds in behind me, and I turned another furrow over them,

and ran the harrow over the ground. I think I hilled those spuds, too,

with furrows--or a crop of Indian corn I put in later on.

It rained heavens-hard for over a week: we had regular showers all

through, and it was the finest crop of potatoes ever seen in the

district. I believe at first Mary used to slip down at daybreak to see

if the potatoes were up; and she’d write to me about them, on the road.

I forget how many bags I got; but the few who had grown potatoes in the

district sent theirs to Sydney, and spuds went up to twelve and fifteen

shillings a hundredweight in that district. I made a few quid out of

mine--and saved carriage too, for I could take them out on the waggon.

Then Mary began to hear (through James) of a buggy that some one had for

sale cheap, or a dogcart that somebody else wanted to get rid of--and

let me know about it, in an offhand way.

II. Joe Wilson’s Luck.

There was good grass on the selection all the year. I’d picked up

a small lot--about twenty head--of half-starved steers for next to

nothing, and turned them on the run; they came on wonderfully, and my

brother-in-law (Mary’s sister’s husband), who was running a butchery

at Gulgong, gave me a good price for them. His carts ran out twenty or

thirty miles, to little bits of gold-rushes that were going on at th’

Home Rule, Happy Valley, Guntawang, Tallawang, and Cooyal, and those

places round there, and he was doing well.

Mary had heard of a light American waggonette, when the steers went--a

tray-body arrangement, and she thought she’d do with that. ‘It would

be better than the buggy, Joe,’ she said--‘there’d be more room for

the children, and, besides, I could take butter and eggs to Gulgong,

or Cobborah, when we get a few more cows.’ Then James heard of a small

flock of sheep that a selector--who was about starved off his selection

out Talbragar way--wanted to get rid of. James reckoned he could get

them for less than half-a-crown a-head. We’d had a heavy shower of rain,

that came over the ranges and didn’t seem to go beyond our boundaries.

Mary said, ‘It’s a pity to see all that grass going to waste, Joe.

Better get those sheep and try your luck with them. Leave some money

with me, and I’ll send James over for them. Never mind about the

buggy--we’ll get that when we’re on our feet.’

So James rode across to Talbragar and drove a hard bargain with that

unfortunate selector, and brought the sheep home. There were about two

hundred, wethers and ewes, and they were young and looked a good breed

too, but so poor they could scarcely travel; they soon picked up,

though. The drought was blazing all round and Out-Back, and I think that

my corner of the ridges was the only place where there was any grass to

speak of. We had another shower or two, and the grass held out. Chaps

began to talk of ‘Joe Wilson’s luck’.

I would have liked to shear those sheep; but I hadn’t time to get a shed

or anything ready--along towards Christmas there was a bit of a boom

in the carrying line. Wethers in wool were going as high as thirteen

to fifteen shillings at the Homebush yards at Sydney, so I arranged to

truck the sheep down from the river by rail, with another small lot that

was going, and I started James off with them. He took the west road, and

down Guntawang way a big farmer who saw James with the sheep (and who

was speculating, or adding to his stock, or took a fancy to the wool)

offered James as much for them as he reckoned I’d get in Sydney, after

paying the carriage and the agents and the auctioneer. James put the

sheep in a paddock and rode back to me. He was all there where riding

was concerned. I told him to let the sheep go. James made a Greener

shot-gun, and got his saddle done up, out of that job.

I took up a couple more forty-acre blocks--one in James’s name, to

encourage him with the fencing. There was a good slice of land in an

angle between the range and the creek, farther down, which everybody

thought belonged to Wall, the squatter, but Mary got an idea, and went

to the local land office and found out that it was ‘unoccupied Crown

land’, and so I took it up on pastoral lease, and got a few more

sheep--I’d saved some of the best-looking ewes from the last lot.

One evening--I was going down next day for a load of fencing-wire for

myself--Mary said,--

‘Joe! do you know that the Matthews have got a new double buggy?’

The Matthews were a big family of cockatoos, along up the main road, and

I didn’t think much of them. The sons were all ‘bad-eggs’, though the

old woman and girls were right enough.

‘Well, what of that?’ I said. ‘They’re up to their neck in debt, and

camping like black-fellows in a big bark humpy. They do well to go

flashing round in a double buggy.’

‘But that isn’t what I was going to say,’ said Mary. ‘They want to sell

their old single buggy, James says. I’m sure you could get it for six or

seven pounds; and you could have it done up.’

‘I wish James to the devil!’ I said. ‘Can’t he find anything better to

do than ride round after cock-and-bull yarns about buggies?’

‘Well,’ said Mary, ‘it was James who got the steers and the sheep.’

Well, one word led to another, and we said things we didn’t mean--but

couldn’t forget in a hurry. I remember I said something about Mary

always dragging me back just when I was getting my head above water and

struggling to make a home for her and the children; and that hurt her,

and she spoke of the ‘homes’ she’d had since she was married. And that

cut me deep.

It was about the worst quarrel we had. When she began to cry I got my

hat and went out and walked up and down by the creek. I hated anything

that looked like injustice--I was so sensitive about it that it made

me unjust sometimes. I tried to think I was right, but I couldn’t--it

wouldn’t have made me feel any better if I could have thought so. I got

thinking of Mary’s first year on the selection and the life she’d had

since we were married.

When I went in she’d cried herself to sleep. I bent over and, ‘Mary,’ I

whispered.

She seemed to wake up.

‘Joe--Joe!’ she said.

‘What is it Mary?’ I said.

‘I’m pretty well sure that old Spot’s calf isn’t in the pen. Make James

go at once!’

Old Spot’s last calf was two years old now; so Mary was talking in her

sleep, and dreaming she was back in her first year.

We both laughed when I told her about it afterwards; but I didn’t feel

like laughing just then.

Later on in the night she called out in her sleep,--

‘Joe--Joe! Put that buggy in the shed, or the sun will blister the

varnish!’

I wish I could say that that was the last time I ever spoke unkindly to

Mary.

Next morning I got up early and fried the bacon and made the tea, and

took Mary’s breakfast in to her--like I used to do, sometimes, when we

were first married. She didn’t say anything--just pulled my head down

and kissed me.

When I was ready to start Mary said,--

‘You’d better take the spring-cart in behind the dray and get the tyres

cut and set. They’re ready to drop off, and James has been wedging them

up till he’s tired of it. The last time I was out with the children

I had to knock one of them back with a stone: there’ll be an accident

yet.’

So I lashed the shafts of the cart under the tail of the waggon, and

mean and ridiculous enough the cart looked, going along that way. It

suggested a man stooping along handcuffed, with his arms held out and

down in front of him.

It was dull weather, and the scrubs looked extra dreary and endless--and

I got thinking of old things. Everything was going all right with me,

but that didn’t keep me from brooding sometimes--trying to hatch out

stones, like an old hen we had at home. I think, taking it all round, I

used to be happier when I was mostly hard-up--and more generous. When I

had ten pounds I was more likely to listen to a chap who said, ‘Lend me

a pound-note, Joe,’ than when I had fifty; THEN I fought shy of careless

chaps--and lost mates that I wanted afterwards--and got the name of

being mean. When I got a good cheque I’d be as miserable as a miser over

the first ten pounds I spent; but when I got down to the last I’d buy

things for the house. And now that I was getting on, I hated to spend

a pound on anything. But then, the farther I got away from poverty the

greater the fear I had of it--and, besides, there was always before us

all the thought of the terrible drought, with blazing runs as bare and

dusty as the road, and dead stock rotting every yard, all along the

barren creeks.

I had a long yarn with Mary’s sister and her husband that night in

Gulgong, and it brightened me up. I had a fancy that that sort of a

brother-in-law made a better mate than a nearer one; Tom Tarrant had

one, and he said it was sympathy. But while we were yarning I couldn’t

help thinking of Mary, out there in the hut on the Creek, with no one to

talk to but the children, or James, who was sulky at home, or Black

Mary or Black Jimmy (our black boy’s father and mother), who weren’t

oversentimental. Or maybe a selector’s wife (the nearest was five

miles away), who could talk only of two or three things--‘lambin’’ and

‘shearin’’ and ‘cookin’ for the men’, and what she said to her old man,

and what he said to her--and her own ailments--over and over again.

It’s a wonder it didn’t drive Mary mad!--I know I could never listen to

that woman more than an hour. Mary’s sister said,--

‘Now if Mary had a comfortable buggy, she could drive in with the

children oftener. Then she wouldn’t feel the loneliness so much.’

I said ‘Good night’ then and turned in. There was no getting away from

that buggy. Whenever Mary’s sister started hinting about a buggy, I

reckoned it was a put-up job between them.

III. The Ghost of Mary’s Sacrifice.

When I got to Gudgeegong I stopped at Galletly’s coach-shop to leave the

cart. The Galletlys were good fellows: there were two brothers--one was

a saddler and harness-maker. Big brown-bearded men--the biggest men in

the district, ‘twas said.

Their old man had died lately and left them some money; they had men,

and only worked in their shops when they felt inclined, or there was a

special work to do; they were both first-class tradesmen. I went into

the painter’s shop to have a look at a double buggy that Galletly had

built for a man who couldn’t pay cash for it when it was finished--and

Galletly wouldn’t trust him.

There it stood, behind a calico screen that the coach-painters used to

keep out the dust when they were varnishing. It was a first-class piece

of work--pole, shafts, cushions, whip, lamps, and all complete. If you

only wanted to drive one horse you could take out the pole and put in

the shafts, and there you were. There was a tilt over the front seat;

if you only wanted the buggy to carry two, you could fold down the back

seat, and there you had a handsome, roomy, single buggy. It would go

near fifty pounds.

While I was looking at it, Bill Galletly came in, and slapped me on the

back.

‘Now, there’s a chance for you, Joe!’ he said. ‘I saw you rubbing your

head round that buggy the last time you were in. You wouldn’t get a

better one in the colonies, and you won’t see another like it in the

district again in a hurry--for it doesn’t pay to build ‘em. Now you’re a

full-blown squatter, and it’s time you took little Mary for a fly round

in her own buggy now and then, instead of having her stuck out there in

the scrub, or jolting through the dust in a cart like some old Mother

Flourbag.’

He called her ‘little Mary’ because the Galletly family had known her

when she was a girl.

I rubbed my head and looked at the buggy again. It was a great

temptation.

‘Look here, Joe,’ said Bill Galletly in a quieter tone. ‘I’ll tell you

what I’ll do. I’ll let YOU have the buggy. You can take it out and send

along a bit of a cheque when you feel you can manage it, and the rest

later on,--a year will do, or even two years. You’ve had a hard pull,

and I’m not likely to be hard up for money in a hurry.’

They were good fellows the Galletlys, but they knew their men. I

happened to know that Bill Galletly wouldn’t let the man he built the

buggy for take it out of the shop without cash down, though he was a

big-bug round there. But that didn’t make it easier for me.

Just then Robert Galletly came into the shop. He was rather quieter than

his brother, but the two were very much alike.

‘Look here, Bob,’ said Bill; ‘here’s a chance for you to get rid of your

harness. Joe Wilson’s going to take that buggy off my hands.’

Bob Galletly put his foot up on a saw-stool, took one hand out of his

pockets, rested his elbow on his knee and his chin on the palm of his

hand, and bunched up his big beard with his fingers, as he always did

when he was thinking. Presently he took his foot down, put his hand

back in his pocket, and said to me, ‘Well, Joe, I’ve got a double set of

harness made for the man who ordered that damned buggy, and if you like

I’ll let you have it. I suppose when Bill there has squeezed all he

can out of you I’ll stand a show of getting something. He’s a regular

Shylock, he is.’

I pushed my hat forward and rubbed the back of my head and stared at the

buggy.

‘Come across to the Royal, Joe,’ said Bob.

But I knew that a beer would settle the business, so I said I’d get the

wool up to the station first and think it over, and have a drink when I

came back.

I thought it over on the way to the station, but it didn’t seem good

enough. I wanted to get some more sheep, and there was the new run to

be fenced in, and the instalments on the selections. I wanted lots of

things that I couldn’t well do without. Then, again, the farther I got

away from debt and hard-upedness the greater the horror I had of it. I

had two horses that would do; but I’d have to get another later on, and

altogether the buggy would run me nearer a hundred than fifty pounds.

Supposing a dry season threw me back with that buggy on my hands.

Besides, I wanted a spell. If I got the buggy it would only mean an

extra turn of hard graft for me. No, I’d take Mary for a trip to Sydney,

and she’d have to be satisfied with that.

I’d got it settled, and was just turning in through the big white

gates to the goods-shed when young Black, the squatter, dashed past the

station in his big new waggonette, with his wife and a driver and a lot

of portmanteaus and rugs and things. They were going to do the grand

in Sydney over Christmas. Now it was young Black who was so shook after

Mary when she was in service with the Blacks before the old man died,

and if I hadn’t come along--and if girls never cared for vagabonds--Mary

would have been mistress of Haviland homestead, with servants to wait on

her; and she was far better fitted for it than the one that was there.

She would have been going to Sydney every holiday and putting up at the

old Royal, with every comfort that a woman could ask for, and seeing

a play every night. And I’d have been knocking around amongst the big

stations Out-Back, or maybe drinking myself to death at the shanties.

The Blacks didn’t see me as I went by, ragged and dusty, and with an

old, nearly black, cabbage-tree hat drawn over my eyes. I didn’t care

a damn for them, or any one else, at most times, but I had moods when I

felt things.

One of Black’s big wool teams was just coming away from the shed, and

the driver, a big, dark, rough fellow, with some foreign blood in him,

didn’t seem inclined to wheel his team an inch out of the middle of the

road. I stopped my horses and waited. He looked at me and I looked at

him--hard. Then he wheeled off, scowling, and swearing at his horses.

I’d given him a hiding, six or seven years before, and he hadn’t

forgotten it. And I felt then as if I wouldn’t mind trying to give some

one a hiding.

The goods clerk must have thought that Joe Wilson was pretty grumpy that

day. I was thinking of Mary, out there in the lonely hut on a barren

creek in the Bush--for it was little better--with no one to speak to

except a haggard, worn-out Bushwoman or two, that came to see her

on Sunday. I thought of the hardships she went through in the first

year--that I haven’t told you about yet; of the time she was ill, and I

away, and no one to understand; of the time she was alone with James and

Jim sick; and of the loneliness she fought through out there. I thought

of Mary, outside in the blazing heat, with an old print dress and a

felt hat, and a pair of ‘lastic-siders of mine on, doing the work of

a station manager as well as that of a housewife and mother. And her

cheeks were getting thin, and her colour was going: I thought of the

gaunt, brick-brown, saw-file voiced, hopeless and spiritless Bushwomen I

knew--and some of them not much older than Mary.

When I went back down into the town, I had a drink with Bill Galletly at

the Royal, and that settled the buggy; then Bob shouted,* and I took the

harness. Then I shouted, to wet the bargain. When I was going, Bob said,

‘Send in that young scamp of a brother of Mary’s with the horses: if

the collars don’t fit I’ll fix up a pair of makeshifts, and alter the

others.’ I thought they both gripped my hand harder than usual, but that

might have been the beer.

* ‘Shout’, to buy a round of drinks.--A. L., 1997.

IV. The Buggy Comes Home.

I ‘whipped the cat’ a bit, the first twenty miles or so, but then, I

thought, what did it matter? What was the use of grinding to save money

until we were too old to enjoy it. If we had to go down in the world

again, we might as well fall out of a buggy as out of a dray--there’d be

some talk about it, anyway, and perhaps a little sympathy. When Mary had

the buggy she wouldn’t be tied down so much to that wretched hole in the

Bush; and the Sydney trips needn’t be off either. I could drive down to

Wallerawang on the main line, where Mary had some people, and leave the

buggy and horses there, and take the train to Sydney; or go right on, by

the old coach-road, over the Blue Mountains: it would be a grand drive.

I thought best to tell Mary’s sister at Gulgong about the buggy; I told

her I’d keep it dark from Mary till the buggy came home. She entered

into the spirit of the thing, and said she’d give the world to be able

to go out with the buggy, if only to see Mary open her eyes when she saw

it; but she couldn’t go, on account of a new baby she had. I was rather

glad she couldn’t, for it would spoil the surprise a little, I thought.

I wanted that all to myself.

I got home about sunset next day, and, after tea, when I’d finished

telling Mary all the news, and a few lies as to why I didn’t bring the

cart back, and one or two other things, I sat with James, out on a log

of the wood-heap, where we generally had our smokes and interviews, and

told him all about the buggy. He whistled, then he said--

‘But what do you want to make it such a Bushranging business for?

Why can’t you tell Mary now? It will cheer her up. She’s been pretty

miserable since you’ve been away this trip.’

‘I want it to be a surprise,’ I said.

‘Well, I’ve got nothing to say against a surprise, out in a hole like

this; but it ‘ud take a lot to surprise me. What am I to say to Mary

about taking the two horses in? I’ll only want one to bring the cart

out, and she’s sure to ask.’

‘Tell her you’re going to get yours shod.’

‘But he had a set of slippers only the other day. She knows as much

about horses as we do. I don’t mind telling a lie so long as a chap has

only got to tell a straight lie and be done with it. But Mary asks so

many questions.’

‘Well, drive the other horse up the creek early, and pick him up as you

go.’

‘Yes. And she’ll want to know what I want with two bridles. But I’ll fix

her--YOU needn’t worry.’

‘And, James,’ I said, ‘get a chamois leather and sponge--we’ll want ‘em

anyway--and you might give the buggy a wash down in the creek, coming

home. It’s sure to be covered with dust.’

‘Oh!--orlright.’

‘And if you can, time yourself to get here in the cool of the evening,

or just about sunset.’

‘What for?’

I’d thought it would be better to have the buggy there in the cool

of the evening, when Mary would have time to get excited and get over

it--better than in the blazing hot morning, when the sun rose as hot as

at noon, and we’d have the long broiling day before us.

‘What do you want me to come at sunset for?’ asked James. ‘Do you want

me to camp out in the scrub and turn up like a blooming sundowner?’

‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘get here at midnight if you like.’

We didn’t say anything for a while--just sat and puffed at our pipes.

Then I said,--

‘Well, what are you thinking about?’

I’m thinking it’s time you got a new hat, the sun seems to get in

through your old one too much,’ and he got out of my reach and went to

see about penning the calves. Before we turned in he said,--

‘Well, what am I to get out of the job, Joe?’

He had his eye on a double-barrel gun that Franca the gunsmith in

Cudgeegong had--one barrel shot, and the other rifle; so I said,--

‘How much does Franca want for that gun?’

‘Five-ten; but I think he’d take my single barrel off it. Anyway, I can

squeeze a couple of quid out of Phil Lambert for the single barrel.’

(Phil was his bosom chum.)

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Make the best bargain you can.’

He got his own breakfast and made an early start next morning, to get

clear of any instructions or messages that Mary might have forgotten to

give him overnight. He took his gun with him.

I’d always thought that a man was a fool who couldn’t keep a secret

from his wife--that there was something womanish about him. I found out.

Those three days waiting for the buggy were about the longest I ever

spent in my life. It made me scotty with every one and everything;

and poor Mary had to suffer for it. I put in the time patching up the

harness and mending the stockyard and the roof, and, the third morning,

I rode up the ridges to look for trees for fencing-timber. I remember I

hurried home that afternoon because I thought the buggy might get there

before me.

At tea-time I got Mary on to the buggy business.

‘What’s the good of a single buggy to you, Mary?’ I asked. ‘There’s only

room for two, and what are you going to do with the children when we go

out together?’

‘We can put them on the floor at our feet, like other people do. I can

always fold up a blanket or ‘possum rug for them to sit on.’

But she didn’t take half so much interest in buggy talk as she would

have taken at any other time, when I didn’t want her to. Women are

aggravating that way. But the poor girl was tired and not very well, and

both the children were cross. She did look knocked up.

‘We’ll give the buggy a rest, Joe,’ she said. (I thought I heard it

coming then.) ‘It seems as far off as ever. I don’t know why you want to

harp on it to-day. Now, don’t look so cross, Joe--I didn’t mean to hurt

you. We’ll wait until we can get a double buggy, since you’re so set on

it. There’ll be plenty of time when we’re better off.’

After tea, when the youngsters were in bed, and she’d washed up, we sat

outside on the edge of the verandah floor, Mary sewing, and I smoking

and watching the track up the creek.

‘Why don’t you talk, Joe?’ asked Mary. ‘You scarcely ever speak to me

now: it’s like drawing blood out of a stone to get a word from you. What

makes you so cross, Joe?’

‘Well, I’ve got nothing to say.’

‘But you should find something. Think of me--it’s very miserable for me.

Have you anything on your mind? Is there any new trouble? Better tell

me, no matter what it is, and not go worrying and brooding and making

both our lives miserable. If you never tell one anything, how can you

expect me to understand?’

I said there was nothing the matter.

‘But there must be, to make you so unbearable. Have you been drinking,

Joe--or gambling?’

I asked her what she’d accuse me of next.

‘And another thing I want to speak to you about,’ she went on. ‘Now,

don’t knit up your forehead like that, Joe, and get impatient----’

‘Well, what is it?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t swear in the hearing of the children. Now, little

Jim to-day, he was trying to fix his little go-cart and it wouldn’t run

right, and--and----’

‘Well, what did he say?’

‘He--he’ (she seemed a little hysterical, trying not to laugh)--‘he said

“damn it!”’

I had to laugh. Mary tried to keep serious, but it was no use.

‘Never mind, old woman,’ I said, putting an arm round her, for her

mouth was trembling, and she was crying more than laughing. ‘It won’t be

always like this. Just wait till we’re a bit better off.’

Just then a black boy we had (I must tell you about him some other time)

came sidling along by the wall, as if he were afraid somebody was going

to hit him--poor little devil! I never did.

‘What is it, Harry?’ said Mary.

‘Buggy comin’, I bin thinkit.’

‘Where?’

He pointed up the creek.

‘Sure it’s a buggy?’

‘Yes, missus.’

‘How many horses?’

‘One--two.’

We knew that he could hear and see things long before we could. Mary

went and perched on the wood-heap, and shaded her eyes--though the sun

had gone--and peered through between the eternal grey trunks of the

stunted trees on the flat across the creek. Presently she jumped down

and came running in.

‘There’s some one coming in a buggy, Joe!’ she cried, excitedly. ‘And

both my white table-cloths are rough dry. Harry! put two flat-irons down

to the fire, quick, and put on some more wood. It’s lucky I kept those

new sheets packed away. Get up out of that, Joe! What are you sitting

grinning like that for? Go and get on another shirt. Hurry--Why! It’s

only James--by himself.’

She stared at me, and I sat there, grinning like a fool.

‘Joe!’ she said, ‘whose buggy is that?’

‘Well, I suppose it’s yours,’ I said.

She caught her breath, and stared at the buggy and then at me again.

James drove down out of sight into the crossing, and came up close to

the house.

‘Oh, Joe! what have you done?’ cried Mary. ‘Why, it’s a new double

buggy!’ Then she rushed at me and hugged my head. ‘Why didn’t you tell

me, Joe? You poor old boy!--and I’ve been nagging at you all day!’ and

she hugged me again.

James got down and started taking the horses out--as if it was an

everyday occurrence. I saw the double-barrel gun sticking out from under

the seat. He’d stopped to wash the buggy, and I suppose that’s what made

him grumpy. Mary stood on the verandah, with her eyes twice as big as

usual, and breathing hard--taking the buggy in.

James skimmed the harness off, and the horses shook themselves and

went down to the dam for a drink. ‘You’d better look under the seats,’

growled James, as he took his gun out with great care.

Mary dived for the buggy. There was a dozen of lemonade and ginger-beer

in a candle-box from Galletly--James said that Galletly’s men had a

gallon of beer, and they cheered him, James (I suppose he meant they

cheered the buggy), as he drove off; there was a ‘little bit of a

ham’ from Pat Murphy, the storekeeper at Home Rule, that he’d ‘cured

himself’--it was the biggest I ever saw; there were three loaves of

baker’s bread, a cake, and a dozen yards of something ‘to make up for

the children’, from Aunt Gertrude at Gulgong; there was a fresh-water

cod, that long Dave Regan had caught the night before in the Macquarie

river, and sent out packed in salt in a box; there was a holland suit

for the black boy, with red braid to trim it; and there was a jar of

preserved ginger, and some lollies (sweets) [‘for the lil’ boy’), and

a rum-looking Chinese doll and a rattle [‘for lil’ girl’) from Sun Tong

Lee, our storekeeper at Gulgong--James was chummy with Sun Tong Lee,

and got his powder and shot and caps there on tick when he was short of

money. And James said that the people would have loaded the buggy with

‘rubbish’ if he’d waited. They all seemed glad to see Joe Wilson getting

on--and these things did me good.

We got the things inside, and I don’t think either of us knew what we

were saying or doing for the next half-hour. Then James put his head in

and said, in a very injured tone,--

‘What about my tea? I ain’t had anything to speak of since I left

Cudgeegong. I want some grub.’

Then Mary pulled herself together.

‘You’ll have your tea directly,’ she said. ‘Pick up that harness at

once, and hang it on the pegs in the skillion; and you, Joe, back

that buggy under the end of the verandah, the dew will be on it

presently--and we’ll put wet bags up in front of it to-morrow, to

keep the sun off. And James will have to go back to Cudgeegong for the

cart,--we can’t have that buggy to knock about in.’

‘All right,’ said James--‘anything! Only get me some grub.’

Mary fried the fish, in case it wouldn’t keep till the morning, and

rubbed over the tablecloths, now the irons were hot--James growling

all the time--and got out some crockery she had packed away that had

belonged to her mother, and set the table in a style that made James

uncomfortable.

‘I want some grub--not a blooming banquet!’ he said. And he growled a

lot because Mary wanted him to eat his fish without a knife, ‘and that

sort of Tommy-rot.’ When he’d finished he took his gun, and the black

boy, and the dogs, and went out ‘possum-shooting.

When we were alone Mary climbed into the buggy to try the seat, and

made me get up alongside her. We hadn’t had such a comfortable seat for

years; but we soon got down, in case any one came by, for we began to

feel like a pair of fools up there.

Then we sat, side by side, on the edge of the verandah, and talked

more than we’d done for years--and there was a good deal of ‘Do you

remember?’ in it--and I think we got to understand each other better

that night.

And at last Mary said, ‘Do you know, Joe, why, I feel to-night

just--just like I did the day we were married.’

And somehow I had that strange, shy sort of feeling too.

The Writer Wants to Say a Word.

In writing the first sketch of the Joe Wilson series, which happened

to be ‘Brighten’s Sister-in-law’, I had an idea of making Joe Wilson a

strong character. Whether he is or not, the reader must judge. It seems

to me that the man’s natural sentimental selfishness, good-nature,

‘softness’, or weakness--call it which you like--developed as I wrote

on.

I know Joe Wilson very well. He has been through deep trouble since the

day he brought the double buggy to Lahey’s Creek. I met him in Sydney

the other day. Tall and straight yet--rather straighter than he had

been--dressed in a comfortable, serviceable sac suit of ‘saddle-tweed’,

and wearing a new sugar-loaf, cabbage-tree hat, he looked over the

hurrying street people calmly as though they were sheep of which he was

not in charge, and which were not likely to get ‘boxed’ with his. Not

the worst way in which to regard the world.

He talked deliberately and quietly in all that roar and rush. He is a

young man yet, comparatively speaking, but it would take little Mary a

long while now to pick the grey hairs out of his head, and the process

would leave him pretty bald.

In two or three short sketches in another book I hope to complete the

story of his life.

Part II.

The Golden Graveyard.

Mother Middleton was an awful woman, an ‘old hand’ (transported convict)

some said. The prefix ‘mother’ in Australia mostly means ‘old hag’,

and is applied in that sense. In early boyhood we understood, from

old diggers, that Mother Middleton--in common with most other ‘old

hands’--had been sent out for ‘knocking a donkey off a hen-roost.’ We

had never seen a donkey. She drank like a fish and swore like a trooper

when the spirit moved her; she went on periodical sprees, and swore on

most occasions. There was a fearsome yarn, which impressed us greatly

as boys, to the effect that once, in her best (or worst) days, she had

pulled a mounted policeman off his horse, and half-killed him with a

heavy pick-handle, which she used for poking down clothes in her boiler.

She said that he had insulted her.

She could still knock down a tree and cut a load of firewood with any

Bushman; she was square and muscular, with arms like a navvy’s; she had

often worked shifts, below and on top, with her husband, when he’d be

putting down a prospecting shaft without a mate, as he often had to

do--because of her mainly. Old diggers said that it was lovely to see

how she’d spin up a heavy green-hide bucket full of clay and ‘tailings’,

and land and empty it with a twist of her wrist. Most men were afraid of

her, and few diggers’ wives were strong-minded enough to seek a second

row with Mother Middleton. Her voice could be heard right across Golden

Gully and Specimen Flat, whether raised in argument or in friendly

greeting. She came to the old Pipeclay diggings with the ‘rough crowd’

(mostly Irish), and when the old and new Pipeclays were worked out, she

went with the rush to Gulgong (about the last of the great alluvial or

‘poor-man’s’ goldfields) and came back to Pipeclay when the Log Paddock

goldfield ‘broke out’, adjacent to the old fields, and so helped prove

the truth of the old digger’s saying, that no matter how thoroughly

ground has been worked, there is always room for a new Ballarat.

Jimmy Middleton died at Log Paddock, and was buried, about the last,

in the little old cemetery--appertaining to the old farming town on the

river, about four miles away--which adjoined the district racecourse, in

the Bush, on the far edge of Specimen Flat. She conducted the funeral.

Some said she made the coffin, and there were alleged jokes to the

effect that her tongue had provided the corpse; but this, I think, was

unfair and cruel, for she loved Jimmy Middleton in her awful way, and

was, for all I ever heard to the contrary, a good wife to him. She then

lived in a hut in Log Paddock, on a little money in the bank, and did

sewing and washing for single diggers.

I remember hearing her one morning in neighbourly conversation, carried

on across the gully, with a selector, Peter Olsen, who was hopelessly

slaving to farm a dusty patch in the scrub.

‘Why don’t you chuck up that dust-hole and go up country and settle on

good land, Peter Olsen? You’re only slaving your stomach out here.’ (She

didn’t say stomach.)

*Peter Olsen* (mild-whiskered little man, afraid of his wife). ‘But then

you know my wife is so delicate, Mrs Middleton. I wouldn’t like to take

her out in the Bush.’

*Mrs Middleton*. ‘Delicate, be damned! she’s only shamming!’ (at her

loudest.) ‘Why don’t you kick her off the bed and the book out of her

hand, and make her go to work? She’s as delicate as I am. Are you a man,

Peter Olsen, or a----?’

This for the edification of the wife and of all within half a mile.

Long Paddock was ‘petering’. There were a few claims still being worked

down at the lowest end, where big, red-and-white waste-heaps of clay and

gravel, rising above the blue-grey gum-bushes, advertised deep sinking;

and little, yellow, clay-stained streams, running towards the creek over

the drought-parched surface, told of trouble with the water below--time

lost in baling and extra expense in timbering. And diggers came up with

their flannels and moleskins yellow and heavy, and dripping with wet

‘mullock’.

Most of the diggers had gone to other fields, but there were a few

prospecting, in parties and singly, out on the flats and amongst the

ridges round Pipeclay. Sinking holes in search of a new Ballarat.

Dave Regan--lanky, easy-going Bush native; Jim Bently--a bit of a ‘Flash

Jack’; and Andy Page--a character like what ‘Kit’ (in the ‘Old Curiosity

Shop’) might have been after a voyage to Australia and some Colonial

experience. These three were mates from habit and not necessity, for

it was all shallow sinking where they worked. They were poking down

pot-holes in the scrub in the vicinity of the racecourse, where the

sinking was from ten to fifteen feet.

Dave had theories--‘ideers’ or ‘notions’ he called them; Jim Bently laid

claim to none--he ran by sight, not scent, like a kangaroo-dog. Andy

Page--by the way, great admirer and faithful retainer of Dave Regan--was

simple and trusting, but, on critical occasions, he was apt to be

obstinately, uncomfortably, exasperatingly truthful, honest, and he had

reverence for higher things.

Dave thought hard all one quiet drowsy Sunday afternoon, and next

morning he, as head of the party, started to sink a hole as close to the

cemetery fence as he dared. It was a nice quiet spot in the thick scrub,

about three panels along the fence from the farthest corner post

from the road. They bottomed here at nine feet, and found encouraging

indications. They ‘drove’ (tunnelled) inwards at right angles to the

fence, and at a point immediately beneath it they were ‘making tucker’;

a few feet farther and they were making wages. The old alluvial bottom

sloped gently that way. The bottom here, by the way, was shelving,

brownish, rotten rock.

Just inside the cemetery fence, and at right angles to Dave’s drive,

lay the shell containing all that was left of the late fiercely lamented

James Middleton, with older graves close at each end. A grave

was supposed to be six feet deep, and local gravediggers had been

conscientious. The old alluvial bottom sloped from nine to fifteen feet

here.

Dave worked the ground all round from the bottom of his shaft,

timbering--i.e., putting in a sapling prop--here and there where he

worked wide; but the ‘payable dirt’ ran in under the cemetery, and in no

other direction.

Dave, Jim, and Andy held a consultation in camp over their pipes

after tea, as a result of which Andy next morning rolled up his swag,

sorrowfully but firmly shook hands with Dave and Jim, and started to

tramp Out-Back to look for work on a sheep-station.

This was Dave’s theory--drawn from a little experience and many long

yarns with old diggers:--

He had bottomed on a slope to an old original water-course, covered with

clay and gravel from the hills by centuries of rains to the depth of

from nine or ten to twenty feet; he had bottomed on a gutter running

into the bed of the old buried creek, and carrying patches and streaks

of ‘wash’ or gold-bearing dirt. If he went on he might strike it rich

at any stroke of his pick; he might strike the rich ‘lead’ which was

supposed to exist round there. (There was always supposed to be a rich

lead round there somewhere. ‘There’s gold in them ridges yet--if a man

can only git at it,’ says the toothless old relic of the Roaring Days.)

Dave might strike a ledge, ‘pocket’, or ‘pot-hole’ holding wash rich

with gold. He had prospected on the opposite side of the cemetery, found

no gold, and the bottom sloping upwards towards the graveyard. He had

prospected at the back of the cemetery, found a few ‘colours’, and the

bottom sloping downwards towards the point under the cemetery towards

which all indications were now leading him. He had sunk shafts across

the road opposite the cemetery frontage and found the sinking twenty

feet and not a colour of gold. Probably the whole of the ground under

the cemetery was rich--maybe the richest in the district. The old

gravediggers had not been gold-diggers--besides, the graves, being six

feet, would, none of them, have touched the alluvial bottom. There

was nothing strange in the fact that none of the crowd of experienced

diggers who rushed the district had thought of the cemetery and

racecourse. Old brick chimneys and houses, the clay for the bricks of

which had been taken from sites of subsequent goldfields, had been put

through the crushing-mill in subsequent years and had yielded ‘payable

gold’. Fossicking Chinamen were said to have been the first to detect a

case of this kind.

Dave reckoned to strike the ‘lead’, or a shelf or ledge with a good

streak of wash lying along it, at a point about forty feet within the

cemetery. But a theory in alluvial gold-mining was much like a theory

in gambling, in some respects. The theory might be right enough, but old

volcanic disturbances--‘the shrinkage of the earth’s surface,’ and that

sort of old thing--upset everything. You might follow good gold along

a ledge, just under the grass, till it suddenly broke off and the

continuation might be a hundred feet or so under your nose.

Had the ‘ground’ in the cemetery been ‘open’ Dave would have gone to the

point under which he expected the gold to lie, sunk a shaft there, and

worked the ground. It would have been the quickest and easiest way--it

would have saved the labour and the time lost in dragging heavy buckets

of dirt along a low lengthy drive to the shaft outside the fence. But

it was very doubtful if the Government could have been moved to open

the cemetery even on the strongest evidence of the existence of a rich

goldfield under it, and backed by the influence of a number of diggers

and their backers--which last was what Dave wished for least of all. He

wanted, above all things, to keep the thing shady. Then, again, the old

clannish local spirit of the old farming town, rooted in years way back

of the goldfields, would have been too strong for the Government, or

even a rush of wild diggers.

‘We’ll work this thing on the strict Q.T.,’ said Dave.

He and Jim had a consultation by the camp fire outside their tent. Jim

grumbled, in conclusion,--

‘Well, then, best go under Jimmy Middleton. It’s the shortest and

straightest, and Jimmy’s the freshest, anyway.’

Then there was another trouble. How were they to account for the size of

the waste-heap of clay on the surface which would be the result of such

an extraordinary length of drive or tunnel for shallow sinkings? Dave

had an idea of carrying some of the dirt away by night and putting it

down a deserted shaft close by; but that would double the labour, and

might lead to detection sooner than anything else. There were boys

‘possum-hunting on those flats every night. Then Dave got an idea.

There was supposed to exist--and it has since been proved--another, a

second gold-bearing alluvial bottom on that field, and several had tried

for it. One, the town watchmaker, had sunk all his money in ‘duffers’,

trying for the second bottom. It was supposed to exist at a depth

of from eighty to a hundred feet--on solid rock, I suppose. This

watchmaker, an Italian, would put men on to sink, and superintend in

person, and whenever he came to a little ‘colour’-showing shelf, or

false bottom, thirty or forty feet down--he’d go rooting round and spoil

the shaft, and then start to sink another. It was extraordinary that

he hadn’t the sense to sink straight down, thoroughly test the second

bottom, and if he found no gold there, to fill the shaft up to the other

bottoms, or build platforms at the proper level and then explore them.

He was living in a lunatic asylum the last time I heard of him. And the

last time I heard from that field, they were boring the ground like a

sieve, with the latest machinery, to find the best place to put down a

deep shaft, and finding gold from the second bottom on the bore. But I’m

right off the line again.

‘Old Pinter’, Ballarat digger--his theory on second and other bottoms

ran as follows:--

‘Ye see, THIS here grass surface--this here surface with trees an’ grass

on it, that we’re livin’ on, has got nothin’ to do with us. This here

bottom in the shaller sinkin’s that we’re workin’ on is the slope to the

bed of the NEW crick that was on the surface about the time that men was

missin’ links. The false bottoms, thirty or forty feet down, kin be said

to have been on the surface about the time that men was monkeys. The

SECON’ bottom--eighty or a hundred feet down--was on the surface about

the time when men was frogs. Now----’

But it’s with the missing-link surface we have to do, and had the

friends of the local departed known what Dave and Jim were up to they

would have regarded them as something lower than missing-links.

‘We’ll give out we’re tryin’ for the second bottom,’ said Dave Regan.

‘We’ll have to rig a fan for air, anyhow, and you don’t want air in

shallow sinkings.’

‘And some one will come poking round, and look down the hole and see the

bottom,’ said Jim Bently.

‘We must keep ‘em away,’ said Dave. ‘Tar the bottom, or cover it with

tarred canvas, to make it black. Then they won’t see it. There’s not

many diggers left, and the rest are going; they’re chucking up the

claims in Log Paddock. Besides, I could get drunk and pick rows with the

rest and they wouldn’t come near me. The farmers ain’t in love with

us diggers, so they won’t bother us. No man has a right to come poking

round another man’s claim: it ain’t ettykit--I’ll root up that old

ettykit and stand to it--it’s rather worn out now, but that’s no matter.

We’ll shift the tent down near the claim and see that no one comes

nosing round on Sunday. They’ll think we’re only some more second-bottom

lunatics, like Francea [the mining watchmaker]. We’re going to get our

fortune out from under that old graveyard, Jim. You leave it all to me

till you’re born again with brains.’

Dave’s schemes were always elaborate, and that was why they so often

came to the ground. He logged up his windlass platform a little higher,

bent about eighty feet of rope to the bole of the windlass, which was a

new one, and thereafter, whenever a suspicious-looking party (that is

to say, a digger) hove in sight, Dave would let down about forty feet of

rope and then wind, with simulated exertion, until the slack was taken

up and the rope lifted the bucket from the shallow bottom.

‘It would look better to have a whip-pole and a horse, but we can’t

afford them just yet,’ said Dave.

But I’m a little behind. They drove straight in under the cemetery,

finding good wash all the way. The edge of Jimmy Middleton’s box

appeared in the top corner of the ‘face’ (the working end) of the drive.

They went under the butt-end of the grave. They shoved up the end of the

shell with a prop, to prevent the possibility of an accident which might

disturb the mound above; they puddled--i.e., rammed--stiff clay up round

the edges to keep the loose earth from dribbling down; and having given

the bottom of the coffin a good coat of tar, they got over, or rather

under, an unpleasant matter.

Jim Bently smoked and burnt paper during his shift below, and grumbled a

good deal. ‘Blowed if I ever thought I’d be rooting for gold down among

the blanky dead men,’ he said. But the dirt panned out better every

dish they washed, and Dave worked the ‘wash’ out right and left as they

drove.

But, one fine morning, who should come along but the very last man

whom Dave wished to see round there--‘Old Pinter’ (James Poynton),

Californian and Victorian digger of the old school. He’d been

prospecting down the creek, carried his pick over his shoulder--threaded

through the eye in the heft of his big-bladed, short-handled shovel that

hung behind--and his gold-dish under his arm.

I mightn’t get a chance again to explain what a gold-dish and what

gold-washing is. A gold washing-dish is a flat dish--nearer the shape

of a bedroom bath-tub than anything else I have seen in England, or the

dish we used for setting milk--I don’t know whether the same is used

here: the gold-dish measures, say, eighteen inches across the top. You

get it full of wash dirt, squat down at a convenient place at the edge

of the water-hole, where there is a rest for the dish in the water just

below its own depth. You sink the dish and let the clay and gravel soak

a while, then you work and rub it up with your hands, and as the clay

dissolves, dish it off as muddy water or mullock. You are careful to

wash the pebbles in case there is any gold sticking to them. And so till

all the muddy or clayey matter is gone, and there is nothing but clean

gravel in the bottom of the dish. You work this off carefully, turning

the dish about this way and that and swishing the water round in it. It

requires some practice. The gold keeps to the bottom of the dish, by

its own weight. At last there is only a little half-moon of sand or fine

gravel in the bottom lower edge of the dish--you work the dish slanting

from you. Presently the gold, if there was any in the dirt, appears in

‘colours’, grains, or little nuggets along the base of the half-moon of

sand. The more gold there is in the dirt, or the coarser the gold is,

the sooner it appears. A practised digger can work off the last speck of

gravel, without losing a ‘colour’, by just working the water round and

off in the dish. Also a careful digger could throw a handful of gold

in a tub of dirt, and, washing it off in dishfuls, recover practically

every colour.

The gold-washing ‘cradle’ is a box, shaped something like a boot, and

the size of a travelling trunk, with rockers on, like a baby’s cradle,

and a stick up behind for a handle; on top, where you’ll put your foot

into the boot, is a tray with a perforated iron bottom; the clay and

gravel is thrown on the tray, water thrown on it, and the cradle rocked

smartly. The finer gravel and the mullock goes through and down over a

sloping board covered with blanket, and with ledges on it to catch the

gold. The dish was mostly used for prospecting; large quantities of wash

dirt was put through the horse-power ‘puddling-machine’, which there

isn’t room to describe here.

‘’Ello, Dave!’ said Pinter, after looking with mild surprise at the size

of Dave’s waste-heap. ‘Tryin’ for the second bottom?’

‘Yes,’ said Dave, guttural.

Pinter dropped his tools with a clatter at the foot of the waste-heap

and scratched under his ear like an old cockatoo, which bird he

resembled. Then he went to the windlass, and resting his hands on his

knees, he peered down, while Dave stood by helpless and hopeless.

Pinter straightened himself, blinking like an owl, and looked carelessly

over the graveyard.

‘Tryin’ for a secon’ bottom,’ he reflected absently. ‘Eh, Dave?’

Dave only stood and looked black.

Pinter tilted back his head and scratched the roots of his

chin-feathers, which stuck out all round like a dirty, ragged fan held

horizontally.

‘Kullers is safe,’ reflected Pinter.

‘All right?’ snapped Dave. ‘I suppose we must let him into it.’

‘Kullers’ was a big American buck nigger, and had been Pinter’s mate for

some time--Pinter was a man of odd mates; and what Pinter meant was that

Kullers was safe to hold his tongue.

Next morning Pinter and his coloured mate appeared on the ground early,

Pinter with some tools and the nigger with a windlass-bole on his

shoulders. Pinter chose a spot about three panels or thirty feet along

the other fence, the back fence of the cemetery, and started his hole.

He lost no time for the sake of appearances, he sunk his shaft and

started to drive straight for the point under the cemetery for which

Dave was making; he gave out that he had bottomed on good ‘indications’

running in the other direction, and would work the ground outside the

fence. Meanwhile Dave rigged a fan--partly for the sake of appearances,

but mainly because his and Jim’s lively imaginations made the air in the

drive worse than it really was. A ‘fan’ is a thing like a paddle-wheel

rigged in a box, about the size of a cradle, and something the shape of

a shoe, but rounded over the top. There is a small grooved wheel on the

axle of the fan outside, and an endless line, like a clothes-line, is

carried over this wheel and a groove in the edge of a high light wooden

driving-wheel rigged between two uprights in the rear and with a handle

to turn. That’s how the thing is driven. A wind-chute, like an endless

pillow-slip, made of calico, with the mouth tacked over the open toe of

the fan-box, and the end taken down the shaft and along the drive--this

carries the fresh air into the workings.

Dave was working the ground on each side as he went, when one morning

a thought struck him that should have struck him the day Pinter went to

work. He felt mad that it hadn’t struck him sooner.

Pinter and Kullers had also shifted their tent down into a nice quiet

place in the Bush close handy; so, early next Sunday morning, while

Pinter and Kullers were asleep, Dave posted Jim Bently to watch their

tent, and whistle an alarm if they stirred, and then dropped down into

Pinter’s hole and saw at a glance what he was up to.

After that Dave lost no time: he drove straight on, encouraged by the

thuds of Pinter’s and Kullers’ picks drawing nearer. They would strike

his tunnel at right angles. Both parties worked long hours, only

knocking off to fry a bit of steak in the pan, boil the billy, and throw

themselves dressed on their bunks to get a few hours’ sleep. Pinter had

practical experience and a line clear of graves, and he made good time.

The two parties now found it more comfortable to be not on speaking

terms. Individually they grew furtive, and began to feel criminal

like--at least Dave and Jim did. They’d start if a horse stumbled

through the Bush, and expected to see a mounted policeman ride up at

any moment and hear him ask questions. They had driven about thirty-five

feet when, one Saturday afternoon, the strain became too great, and Dave

and Jim got drunk. The spree lasted over Sunday, and on Monday morning

they felt too shaky to come to work and had more drink. On Monday

afternoon, Kullers, whose shift it was below, stuck his pick through the

face of his drive into the wall of Dave’s, about four feet from the end

of it: the clay flaked away, leaving a hole as big as a wash-hand basin.

They knocked off for the day and decided to let the other party take the

offensive.

Tuesday morning Dave and Jim came to work, still feeling shaky. Jim

went below, crawled along the drive, lit his candle, and stuck it in the

spiked iron socket and the spike in the wall of the drive, quite close

to the hole, without noticing either the hole or the increased freshness

in the air. He started picking away at the ‘face’ and scraping the clay

back from under his feet, and didn’t hear Kullers come to work. Kullers

came in softly and decided to try a bit of cheerful bluff. He stuck his

great round black face through the hole, the whites of his eyes rolling

horribly in the candle-light, and said, with a deep guffaw--

‘’Ullo! you dar’?’

No bandicoot ever went into his hole with the dogs after him quicker

than Jim came out of his. He scrambled up the shaft by the foot-holes,

and sat on the edge of the waste-heap, looking very pale.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Dave. ‘Have you seen a ghost?’

‘I’ve seen the--the devil!’ gasped Jim. ‘I’m--I’m done with this here

ghoul business.’

The parties got on speaking terms again. Dave was very warm, but Jim’s

language was worse. Pinter scratched his chin-feathers reflectively till

the other party cooled. There was no appealing to the Commissioner for

goldfields; they were outside all law, whether of the goldfields or

otherwise--so they did the only thing possible and sensible, they joined

forces and became ‘Poynton, Regan, & Party’. They agreed to work the

ground from the separate shafts, and decided to go ahead, irrespective

of appearances, and get as much dirt out and cradled as possible before

the inevitable exposure came along. They found plenty of ‘payable dirt’,

and soon the drive ended in a cluster of roomy chambers. They timbered

up many coffins of various ages, burnt tarred canvas and brown

paper, and kept the fan going. Outside they paid the storekeeper with

difficulty and talked of hard times.

But one fine sunny morning, after about a week of partnership, they got

a bad scare. Jim and Kullers were below, getting out dirt for all they

were worth, and Pinter and Dave at their windlasses, when who should

march down from the cemetery gate but Mother Middleton herself. She was

a hard woman to look at. She still wore the old-fashioned crinoline and

her hair in a greasy net; and on this as on most other sober occasions,

she wore the expression of a rough Irish navvy who has just enough drink

to make him nasty and is looking out for an excuse for a row. She had

a stride like a grenadier. A digger had once measured her step by her

footprints in the mud where she had stepped across a gutter: it measured

three feet from toe to heel.

She marched to the grave of Jimmy Middleton, laid a dingy bunch of

flowers thereon, with the gesture of an angry man banging his fist down

on the table, turned on her heel, and marched out. The diggers were dirt

beneath her feet. Presently they heard her drive on in her spring-cart

on her way into town, and they drew breaths of relief.

It was afternoon. Dave and Pinter were feeling tired, and were just

deciding to knock off work for that day when they heard a scuffling in

the direction of the different shafts, and both Jim and Kullers dropped

down and bundled in in a great hurry. Jim chuckled in a silly way, as if

there was something funny, and Kullers guffawed in sympathy.

‘What’s up now?’ demanded Dave apprehensively.

‘Mother Middleton,’ said Jim; ‘she’s blind mad drunk, and she’s got a

bottle in one hand and a new pitchfork in the other, that she’s bringing

out for some one.’

‘How the hell did she drop to it?’ exclaimed Pinter.

‘Dunno,’ said Jim. ‘Anyway she’s coming for us. Listen to her!’

They didn’t have to listen hard. The language which came down the

shaft--they weren’t sure which one--and along the drives was enough to

scare up the dead and make them take to the Bush.

‘Why didn’t you fools make off into the Bush and give us a chance,

instead of giving her a lead here?’ asked Dave.

Jim and Kullers began to wish they had done so.

Mrs Middleton began to throw stones down the shaft--it was Pinter’s--and

they, even the oldest and most anxious, began to grin in spite of

themselves, for they knew she couldn’t hurt them from the surface, and

that, though she had been a working digger herself, she couldn’t fill

both shafts before the fumes of liquor overtook her.

‘I wonder which shaf’ she’ll come down,’ asked Kullers in a tone

befitting the place and occasion.

‘You’d better go and watch your shaft, Pinter,’ said Dave, ‘and Jim and

I’ll watch mine.’

‘I--I won’t,’ said Pinter hurriedly. ‘I’m--I’m a modest man.’

Then they heard a clang in the direction of Pinter’s shaft.

‘She’s thrown her bottle down,’ said Dave.

Jim crawled along the drive a piece, urged by curiosity, and returned

hurriedly.

‘She’s broke the pitchfork off short, to use in the drive, and I believe

she’s coming down.’

‘Her crinoline’ll handicap her,’ said Pinter vacantly, ‘that’s a

comfort.’

‘She’s took it off!’ said Dave excitedly; and peering along Pinter’s

drive, they saw first an elastic-sided boot, then a red-striped

stocking, then a section of scarlet petticoat.

‘Lemme out!’ roared Pinter, lurching forward and making a swimming

motion with his hands in the direction of Dave’s drive. Kullers

was already gone, and Jim well on the way. Dave, lanky and awkward,

scrambled up the shaft last. Mrs Middleton made good time, considering

she had the darkness to face and didn’t know the workings, and when Dave

reached the top he had a tear in the leg of his moleskins, and the blood

ran from a nasty scratch. But he didn’t wait to argue over the price of

a new pair of trousers. He made off through the Bush in the direction of

an encouraging whistle thrown back by Jim.

‘She’s too drunk to get her story listened to to-night,’ said Dave. ‘But

to-morrow she’ll bring the neighbourhood down on us.’

‘And she’s enough, without the neighbourhood,’ reflected Pinter.

Some time after dark they returned cautiously, reconnoitred their camp,

and after hiding in a hollow log such things as they couldn’t carry,

they rolled up their tents like the Arabs, and silently stole away.

The Chinaman’s Ghost.

‘Simple as striking matches,’ said Dave Regan, Bushman; ‘but it gave me

the biggest scare I ever had--except, perhaps, the time I stumbled in

the dark into a six-feet digger’s hole, which might have been eighty

feet deep for all I knew when I was falling. (There was an eighty-feet

shaft left open close by.)

‘It was the night of the day after the Queen’s birthday. I was sinking a

shaft with Jim Bently and Andy Page on the old Redclay goldfield, and

we camped in a tent on the creek. Jim and me went to some races that was

held at Peter Anderson’s pub., about four miles across the ridges, on

Queen’s birthday. Andy was a quiet sort of chap, a teetotaller, and

we’d disgusted him the last time he was out for a holiday with us, so he

stayed at home and washed and mended his clothes, and read an arithmetic

book. (He used to keep the accounts, and it took him most of his spare

time.)

‘Jim and me had a pretty high time. We all got pretty tight after the

races, and I wanted to fight Jim, or Jim wanted to fight me--I don’t

remember which. We were old chums, and we nearly always wanted to fight

each other when we got a bit on, and we’d fight if we weren’t stopped. I

remember once Jim got maudlin drunk and begged and prayed of me to fight

him, as if he was praying for his life. Tom Tarrant, the coach-driver,

used to say that Jim and me must be related, else we wouldn’t hate each

other so much when we were tight and truthful.

‘Anyway, this day, Jim got the sulks, and caught his horse and went home

early in the evening. My dog went home with him too; I must have been

carrying on pretty bad to disgust the dog.

‘Next evening I got disgusted with myself, and started to walk home. I’d

lost my hat, so Peter Anderson lent me an old one of his, that he’d worn

on Ballarat he said: it was a hard, straw, flat, broad-brimmed affair,

and fitted my headache pretty tight. Peter gave me a small flask of

whisky to help me home. I had to go across some flats and up a long dark

gully called Murderer’s Gully, and over a gap called Dead Man’s Gap,

and down the ridge and gullies to Redclay Creek. The lonely flats

were covered with blue-grey gum bush, and looked ghostly enough in the

moonlight, and I was pretty shaky, but I had a pull at the flask and a

mouthful of water at a creek and felt right enough. I began to whistle,

and then to sing: I never used to sing unless I thought I was a couple

of miles out of earshot of any one.

‘Murderer’s Gully was deep and pretty dark most times, and of course it

was haunted. Women and children wouldn’t go through it after dark; and

even me, when I’d grown up, I’d hold my back pretty holler, and whistle,

and walk quick going along there at night-time. We’re all afraid of

ghosts, but we won’t let on.

‘Some one had skinned a dead calf during the day and left it on the

track, and it gave me a jump, I promise you. It looked like two corpses

laid out naked. I finished the whisky and started up over the gap. All

of a sudden a great ‘old man’ kangaroo went across the track with a

thud-thud, and up the siding, and that startled me. Then the naked,

white glistening trunk of a stringy-bark tree, where some one had

stripped off a sheet of bark, started out from a bend in the track in a

shaft of moonlight, and that gave me a jerk. I was pretty shaky before

I started. There was a Chinaman’s grave close by the track on the top

of the gap. An old chow had lived in a hut there for many years, and

fossicked on the old diggings, and one day he was found dead in the

hut, and the Government gave some one a pound to bury him. When I was a

nipper we reckoned that his ghost haunted the gap, and cursed in Chinese

because the bones hadn’t been sent home to China. It was a lonely,

ghostly place enough.

‘It had been a smotheringly hot day and very close coming across the

flats and up the gully--not a breath of air; but now as I got higher I

saw signs of the thunderstorm we’d expected all day, and felt the breath

of a warm breeze on my face. When I got into the top of the gap the

first thing I saw was something white amongst the dark bushes over the

spot where the Chinaman’s grave was, and I stood staring at it with

both eyes. It moved out of the shadow presently, and I saw that it was

a white bullock, and I felt relieved. I’d hardly felt relieved when, all

at once, there came a “pat-pat-pat” of running feet close behind me!

I jumped round quick, but there was nothing there, and while I stood

staring all ways for Sunday, there came a “pat-pat”, then a pause, and

then “pat-pat-pat-pat” behind me again: it was like some one dodging and

running off that time. I started to walk down the track pretty fast,

but hadn’t gone a dozen yards when “pat-pat-pat”, it was close behind me

again. I jerked my eyes over my shoulder but kept my legs going. There

was nothing behind, but I fancied I saw something slip into the Bush to

the right. It must have been the moonlight on the moving boughs; there

was a good breeze blowing now. I got down to a more level track, and

was making across a spur to the main road, when “pat-pat!” “pat-pat-pat,

pat-pat-pat!” it was after me again. Then I began to run--and it began

to run too! “pat-pat-pat” after me all the time. I hadn’t time to look

round. Over the spur and down the siding and across the flat to the road

I went as fast as I could split my legs apart. I had a scared idea that

I was getting a touch of the “jim-jams”, and that frightened me more

than any outside ghost could have done. I stumbled a few times, and

saved myself, but, just before I reached the road, I fell slithering

on to my hands on the grass and gravel. I thought I’d broken both

my wrists. I stayed for a moment on my hands and knees, quaking and

listening, squinting round like a great gohana; I couldn’t hear nor

see anything. I picked myself up, and had hardly got on one end, when

“pat-pat!” it was after me again. I must have run a mile and a half

altogether that night. It was still about three-quarters of a mile to

the camp, and I ran till my heart beat in my head and my lungs choked up

in my throat. I saw our tent-fire and took off my hat to run faster. The

footsteps stopped, then something about the hat touched my fingers, and

I stared at it--and the thing dawned on me. I hadn’t noticed at Peter

Anderson’s--my head was too swimmy to notice anything. It was an old hat

of the style that the first diggers used to wear, with a couple of loose

ribbon ends, three or four inches long, from the band behind. As long

as I walked quietly through the gully, and there was no wind, the tails

didn’t flap, but when I got up into the breeze, they flapped or were

still according to how the wind lifted them or pressed them down flat

on the brim. And when I ran they tapped all the time; and the hat being

tight on my head, the tapping of the ribbon ends against the straw

sounded loud of course.

‘I sat down on a log for a while to get some of my wind back and cool

down, and then I went to the camp as quietly as I could, and had a long

drink of water.

‘“You seem to be a bit winded, Dave,” said Jim Bently, “and mighty

thirsty. Did the Chinaman’s ghost chase you?”

‘I told him not to talk rot, and went into the tent, and lay down on my

bunk, and had a good rest.’

The Loaded Dog.

Dave Regan, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony

Creek in search of a rich gold quartz reef which was supposed to exist

in the vicinity. There is always a rich reef supposed to exist in the

vicinity; the only questions are whether it is ten feet or hundreds

beneath the surface, and in which direction. They had struck some

pretty solid rock, also water which kept them baling. They used the

old-fashioned blasting-powder and time-fuse. They’d make a sausage or

cartridge of blasting-powder in a skin of strong calico or canvas, the

mouth sewn and bound round the end of the fuse; they’d dip the cartridge

in melted tallow to make it water-tight, get the drill-hole as dry as

possible, drop in the cartridge with some dry dust, and wad and ram with

stiff clay and broken brick. Then they’d light the fuse and get out of

the hole and wait. The result was usually an ugly pot-hole in the bottom

of the shaft and half a barrow-load of broken rock.

There was plenty of fish in the creek, fresh-water bream, cod, cat-fish,

and tailers. The party were fond of fish, and Andy and Dave of fishing.

Andy would fish for three hours at a stretch if encouraged by a ‘nibble’

or a ‘bite’ now and then--say once in twenty minutes. The butcher was

always willing to give meat in exchange for fish when they caught more

than they could eat; but now it was winter, and these fish wouldn’t

bite. However, the creek was low, just a chain of muddy water-holes,

from the hole with a few bucketfuls in it to the sizable pool with an

average depth of six or seven feet, and they could get fish by baling

out the smaller holes or muddying up the water in the larger ones

till the fish rose to the surface. There was the cat-fish, with spikes

growing out of the sides of its head, and if you got pricked you’d know

it, as Dave said. Andy took off his boots, tucked up his trousers, and

went into a hole one day to stir up the mud with his feet, and he knew

it. Dave scooped one out with his hand and got pricked, and he knew it

too; his arm swelled, and the pain throbbed up into his shoulder, and

down into his stomach too, he said, like a toothache he had once, and

kept him awake for two nights--only the toothache pain had a ‘burred

edge’, Dave said.

Dave got an idea.

‘Why not blow the fish up in the big water-hole with a cartridge?’ he

said. ‘I’ll try it.’

He thought the thing out and Andy Page worked it out. Andy usually put

Dave’s theories into practice if they were practicable, or bore the

blame for the failure and the chaffing of his mates if they weren’t.

He made a cartridge about three times the size of those they used in the

rock. Jim Bently said it was big enough to blow the bottom out of the

river. The inner skin was of stout calico; Andy stuck the end of a

six-foot piece of fuse well down in the powder and bound the mouth of

the bag firmly to it with whipcord. The idea was to sink the cartridge

in the water with the open end of the fuse attached to a float on

the surface, ready for lighting. Andy dipped the cartridge in melted

bees’-wax to make it water-tight. ‘We’ll have to leave it some time

before we light it,’ said Dave, ‘to give the fish time to get over their

scare when we put it in, and come nosing round again; so we’ll want it

well water-tight.’

Round the cartridge Andy, at Dave’s suggestion, bound a strip of sail

canvas--that they used for making water-bags--to increase the force of

the explosion, and round that he pasted layers of stiff brown paper--on

the plan of the sort of fireworks we called ‘gun-crackers’. He let the

paper dry in the sun, then he sewed a covering of two thicknesses

of canvas over it, and bound the thing from end to end with stout

fishing-line. Dave’s schemes were elaborate, and he often worked his

inventions out to nothing. The cartridge was rigid and solid enough

now--a formidable bomb; but Andy and Dave wanted to be sure. Andy sewed

on another layer of canvas, dipped the cartridge in melted tallow,

twisted a length of fencing-wire round it as an afterthought, dipped it

in tallow again, and stood it carefully against a tent-peg, where he’d

know where to find it, and wound the fuse loosely round it. Then he

went to the camp-fire to try some potatoes which were boiling in their

jackets in a billy, and to see about frying some chops for dinner. Dave

and Jim were at work in the claim that morning.

They had a big black young retriever dog--or rather an overgrown pup, a

big, foolish, four-footed mate, who was always slobbering round them

and lashing their legs with his heavy tail that swung round like a

stock-whip. Most of his head was usually a red, idiotic, slobbering grin

of appreciation of his own silliness. He seemed to take life, the world,

his two-legged mates, and his own instinct as a huge joke. He’d retrieve

anything: he carted back most of the camp rubbish that Andy threw

away. They had a cat that died in hot weather, and Andy threw it a good

distance away in the scrub; and early one morning the dog found the cat,

after it had been dead a week or so, and carried it back to camp,

and laid it just inside the tent-flaps, where it could best make

its presence known when the mates should rise and begin to sniff

suspiciously in the sickly smothering atmosphere of the summer sunrise.

He used to retrieve them when they went in swimming; he’d jump in after

them, and take their hands in his mouth, and try to swim out with them,

and scratch their naked bodies with his paws. They loved him for his

good-heartedness and his foolishness, but when they wished to enjoy a

swim they had to tie him up in camp.

He watched Andy with great interest all the morning making the

cartridge, and hindered him considerably, trying to help; but about noon

he went off to the claim to see how Dave and Jim were getting on, and to

come home to dinner with them. Andy saw them coming, and put a panful of

mutton-chops on the fire. Andy was cook to-day; Dave and Jim stood with

their backs to the fire, as Bushmen do in all weathers, waiting till

dinner should be ready. The retriever went nosing round after something

he seemed to have missed.

Andy’s brain still worked on the cartridge; his eye was caught by the

glare of an empty kerosene-tin lying in the bushes, and it struck him

that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to sink the cartridge packed with clay,

sand, or stones in the tin, to increase the force of the explosion. He

may have been all out, from a scientific point of view, but the notion

looked all right to him. Jim Bently, by the way, wasn’t interested in

their ‘damned silliness’. Andy noticed an empty treacle-tin--the

sort with the little tin neck or spout soldered on to the top for the

convenience of pouring out the treacle--and it struck him that this

would have made the best kind of cartridge-case: he would only have had

to pour in the powder, stick the fuse in through the neck, and cork and

seal it with bees’-wax. He was turning to suggest this to Dave, when

Dave glanced over his shoulder to see how the chops were doing--and

bolted. He explained afterwards that he thought he heard the pan

spluttering extra, and looked to see if the chops were burning. Jim

Bently looked behind and bolted after Dave. Andy stood stock-still,

staring after them.

‘Run, Andy! run!’ they shouted back at him. ‘Run!!! Look behind you, you

fool!’ Andy turned slowly and looked, and there, close behind him, was

the retriever with the cartridge in his mouth--wedged into his broadest

and silliest grin. And that wasn’t all. The dog had come round the fire

to Andy, and the loose end of the fuse had trailed and waggled over the

burning sticks into the blaze; Andy had slit and nicked the firing end

of the fuse well, and now it was hissing and spitting properly.

Andy’s legs started with a jolt; his legs started before his brain did,

and he made after Dave and Jim. And the dog followed Andy.

Dave and Jim were good runners--Jim the best--for a short distance; Andy

was slow and heavy, but he had the strength and the wind and could last.

The dog leapt and capered round him, delighted as a dog could be to find

his mates, as he thought, on for a frolic. Dave and Jim kept shouting

back, ‘Don’t foller us! don’t foller us, you coloured fool!’ but Andy

kept on, no matter how they dodged. They could never explain, any

more than the dog, why they followed each other, but so they ran, Dave

keeping in Jim’s track in all its turnings, Andy after Dave, and the

dog circling round Andy--the live fuse swishing in all directions and

hissing and spluttering and stinking. Jim yelling to Dave not to follow

him, Dave shouting to Andy to go in another direction--to ‘spread out’,

and Andy roaring at the dog to go home. Then Andy’s brain began to work,

stimulated by the crisis: he tried to get a running kick at the dog, but

the dog dodged; he snatched up sticks and stones and threw them at the

dog and ran on again. The retriever saw that he’d made a mistake about

Andy, and left him and bounded after Dave. Dave, who had the presence of

mind to think that the fuse’s time wasn’t up yet, made a dive and a grab

for the dog, caught him by the tail, and as he swung round snatched

the cartridge out of his mouth and flung it as far as he could: the dog

immediately bounded after it and retrieved it. Dave roared and cursed at

the dog, who seeing that Dave was offended, left him and went after Jim,

who was well ahead. Jim swung to a sapling and went up it like a native

bear; it was a young sapling, and Jim couldn’t safely get more than ten

or twelve feet from the ground. The dog laid the cartridge, as carefully

as if it was a kitten, at the foot of the sapling, and capered and

leaped and whooped joyously round under Jim. The big pup reckoned that

this was part of the lark--he was all right now--it was Jim who was out

for a spree. The fuse sounded as if it were going a mile a minute. Jim

tried to climb higher and the sapling bent and cracked. Jim fell on his

feet and ran. The dog swooped on the cartridge and followed. It all took

but a very few moments. Jim ran to a digger’s hole, about ten feet deep,

and dropped down into it--landing on soft mud--and was safe. The dog

grinned sardonically down on him, over the edge, for a moment, as if he

thought it would be a good lark to drop the cartridge down on Jim.

‘Go away, Tommy,’ said Jim feebly, ‘go away.’

The dog bounded off after Dave, who was the only one in sight now; Andy

had dropped behind a log, where he lay flat on his face, having suddenly

remembered a picture of the Russo-Turkish war with a circle of

Turks lying flat on their faces (as if they were ashamed) round a

newly-arrived shell.

There was a small hotel or shanty on the creek, on the main road, not

far from the claim. Dave was desperate, the time flew much faster in

his stimulated imagination than it did in reality, so he made for the

shanty. There were several casual Bushmen on the verandah and in the

bar; Dave rushed into the bar, banging the door to behind him. ‘My dog!’

he gasped, in reply to the astonished stare of the publican, ‘the blanky

retriever--he’s got a live cartridge in his mouth----’

The retriever, finding the front door shut against him, had bounded

round and in by the back way, and now stood smiling in the doorway

leading from the passage, the cartridge still in his mouth and the fuse

spluttering. They burst out of that bar. Tommy bounded first after one

and then after another, for, being a young dog, he tried to make friends

with everybody.

The Bushmen ran round corners, and some shut themselves in the stable.

There was a new weather-board and corrugated-iron kitchen and wash-house

on piles in the back-yard, with some women washing clothes inside.

Dave and the publican bundled in there and shut the door--the publican

cursing Dave and calling him a crimson fool, in hurried tones, and

wanting to know what the hell he came here for.

The retriever went in under the kitchen, amongst the piles, but, luckily

for those inside, there was a vicious yellow mongrel cattle-dog sulking

and nursing his nastiness under there--a sneaking, fighting, thieving

canine, whom neighbours had tried for years to shoot or poison. Tommy

saw his danger--he’d had experience from this dog--and started out and

across the yard, still sticking to the cartridge. Half-way across

the yard the yellow dog caught him and nipped him. Tommy dropped the

cartridge, gave one terrified yell, and took to the Bush. The yellow dog

followed him to the fence and then ran back to see what he had dropped.

Nearly a dozen other dogs came from round all the corners and under the

buildings--spidery, thievish, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs, mongrel sheep-

and cattle-dogs, vicious black and yellow dogs--that slip after you in

the dark, nip your heels, and vanish without explaining--and yapping,

yelping small fry. They kept at a respectable distance round the nasty

yellow dog, for it was dangerous to go near him when he thought he had

found something which might be good for a dog to eat. He sniffed at the

cartridge twice, and was just taking a third cautious sniff when----

It was very good blasting powder--a new brand that Dave had recently got

up from Sydney; and the cartridge had been excellently well made. Andy

was very patient and painstaking in all he did, and nearly as handy as

the average sailor with needles, twine, canvas, and rope.

Bushmen say that that kitchen jumped off its piles and on again. When

the smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog

were lying against the paling fence of the yard looking as if he had

been kicked into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust

under a barrow, and finally thrown against the fence from a distance.

Several saddle-horses, which had been ‘hanging-up’ round the verandah,

were galloping wildly down the road in clouds of dust, with broken

bridle-reins flying; and from a circle round the outskirts, from every

point of the compass in the scrub, came the yelping of dogs. Two of them

went home, to the place where they were born, thirty miles away, and

reached it the same night and stayed there; it was not till towards

evening that the rest came back cautiously to make inquiries. One was

trying to walk on two legs, and most of ‘em looked more or less singed;

and a little, singed, stumpy-tailed dog, who had been in the habit of

hopping the back half of him along on one leg, had reason to be glad

that he’d saved up the other leg all those years, for he needed it

now. There was one old one-eyed cattle-dog round that shanty for years

afterwards, who couldn’t stand the smell of a gun being cleaned. He it

was who had taken an interest, only second to that of the yellow dog, in

the cartridge. Bushmen said that it was amusing to slip up on his blind

side and stick a dirty ramrod under his nose: he wouldn’t wait to bring

his solitary eye to bear--he’d take to the Bush and stay out all night.

For half an hour or so after the explosion there were several Bushmen

round behind the stable who crouched, doubled up, against the wall, or

rolled gently on the dust, trying to laugh without shrieking. There

were two white women in hysterics at the house, and a half-caste rushing

aimlessly round with a dipper of cold water. The publican was holding

his wife tight and begging her between her squawks, to ‘hold up for my

sake, Mary, or I’ll lam the life out of ye.’

Dave decided to apologise later on, ‘when things had settled a bit,’ and

went back to camp. And the dog that had done it all, ‘Tommy’, the great,

idiotic mongrel retriever, came slobbering round Dave and lashing his

legs with his tail, and trotted home after him, smiling his broadest,

longest, and reddest smile of amiability, and apparently satisfied for

one afternoon with the fun he’d had.

Andy chained the dog up securely, and cooked some more chops, while Dave

went to help Jim out of the hole.

And most of this is why, for years afterwards, lanky, easy-going

Bushmen, riding lazily past Dave’s camp, would cry, in a lazy drawl and

with just a hint of the nasal twang--

‘’El-lo, Da-a-ve! How’s the fishin’ getting on, Da-a-ve?’

Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left.

I. Dave Regan’s Yarn.

‘When we got tired of digging about Mudgee-Budgee, and getting no gold,’

said Dave Regan, Bushman, ‘me and my mate, Jim Bently, decided to take a

turn at droving; so we went with Bob Baker, the drover, overland with a

big mob of cattle, way up into Northern Queensland.

‘We couldn’t get a job on the home track, and we spent most of our

money, like a pair of fools, at a pub. at a town way up over the border,

where they had a flash barmaid from Brisbane. We sold our pack-horses

and pack-saddles, and rode out of that town with our swags on our

riding-horses in front of us. We had another spree at another place, and

by the time we got near New South Wales we were pretty well stumped.

‘Just the other side of Mulgatown, near the border, we came on a big mob

of cattle in a paddock, and a party of drovers camped on the creek. They

had brought the cattle down from the north and were going no farther

with them; their boss had ridden on into Mulgatown to get the cheques to

pay them off, and they were waiting for him.

‘“And Poisonous Jimmy is waiting for us,” said one of them.

‘Poisonous Jimmy kept a shanty a piece along the road from their camp

towards Mulgatown. He was called “Poisonous Jimmy” perhaps on account

of his liquor, or perhaps because he had a job of poisoning dingoes on a

station in the Bogan scrubs at one time. He was a sharp publican. He had

a girl, and they said that whenever a shearing-shed cut-out on his side

and he saw the shearers coming along the road, he’d say to the girl,

“Run and get your best frock on, Mary! Here’s the shearers comin’.” And

if a chequeman wouldn’t drink he’d try to get him into his bar and shout

for him till he was too drunk to keep his hands out of his pockets.

‘“But he won’t get us,” said another of the drovers. “I’m going to ride

straight into Mulgatown and send my money home by the post as soon as I

get it.”

‘“You’ve always said that, Jack,” said the first drover.

‘We yarned a while, and had some tea, and then me and Jim got on our

horses and rode on. We were burned to bricks and ragged and dusty and

parched up enough, and so were our horses. We only had a few shillings

to carry us four or five hundred miles home, but it was mighty hot and

dusty, and we felt that we must have a drink at the shanty. This was

west of the sixpenny-line at that time--all drinks were a shilling along

here.

‘Just before we reached the shanty I got an idea.

‘“We’ll plant our swags in the scrub,” I said to Jim.

‘“What for?” said Jim.

‘“Never mind--you’ll see,” I said.

‘So we unstrapped our swags and hid them in the mulga scrub by the

side of the road; then we rode on to the shanty, got down, and hung our

horses to the verandah posts.

‘“Poisonous” came out at once, with a smile on him that would have made

anybody home-sick.

‘He was a short nuggety man, and could use his hands, they said; he

looked as if he’d be a nasty, vicious, cool customer in a fight--he

wasn’t the sort of man you’d care to try and swindle a second time.

He had a monkey shave when he shaved, but now it was all frill and

stubble--like a bush fence round a stubble-field. He had a broken nose,

and a cunning, sharp, suspicious eye that squinted, and a cold stony eye

that seemed fixed. If you didn’t know him well you might talk to him for

five minutes, looking at him in the cold stony eye, and then discover

that it was the sharp cunning little eye that was watching you all the

time. It was awful embarrassing. It must have made him awkward to deal

with in a fight.

‘“Good day, mates,” he said.

‘“Good day,” we said.

‘“It’s hot.”

‘“It’s hot.”

‘We went into the bar, and Poisonous got behind the counter.

‘“What are you going to have?” he asked, rubbing up his glasses with a

rag.

‘We had two long-beers.

‘“Never mind that,” said Poisonous, seeing me put my hand in my pocket;

“it’s my shout. I don’t suppose your boss is back yet? I saw him go in

to Mulgatown this morning.”

‘“No, he ain’t back,” I said; “I wish he was. We’re getting tired of

waiting for him. We’ll give him another hour, and then some of us will

have to ride in to see whether he’s got on the boose, and get hold of

him if he has.”

‘“I suppose you’re waiting for your cheques?” he said, turning to fix

some bottles on the shelf.

‘“Yes,” I said, “we are;” and I winked at Jim, and Jim winked back as

solemn as an owl.

‘Poisonous asked us all about the trip, and how long we’d been on the

track, and what sort of a boss we had, dropping the questions offhand

now an’ then, as for the sake of conversation. We could see that he

was trying to get at the size of our supposed cheques, so we answered

accordingly.

‘“Have another drink,” he said, and he filled the pewters up again.

“It’s up to me,” and he set to work boring out the glasses with his rag,

as if he was short-handed and the bar was crowded with customers, and

screwing up his face into what I suppose he considered an innocent or

unconscious expression. The girl began to sidle in and out with a smart

frock and a see-you-after-dark smirk on.

‘“Have you had dinner?” she asked. We could have done with a good meal,

but it was too risky--the drovers’ boss might come along while we were

at dinner and get into conversation with Poisonous. So we said we’d had

dinner.

‘Poisonous filled our pewters again in an offhand way.

‘“I wish the boss would come,” said Jim with a yawn. “I want to get into

Mulgatown to-night, and I want to get some shirts and things before I go

in. I ain’t got a decent rag to me back. I don’t suppose there’s ten bob

amongst the lot of us.”

‘There was a general store back on the creek, near the drovers’ camp.

‘“Oh, go to the store and get what you want,” said Poisonous, taking a

sovereign from the till and tossing it on to the counter. “You can fix

it up with me when your boss comes. Bring your mates along.”

‘“Thank you,” said Jim, taking up the sovereign carelessly and dropping

it into his pocket.

‘“Well, Jim,” I said, “suppose we get back to camp and see how the chaps

are getting on?”

‘“All right,” said Jim.

‘“Tell them to come down and get a drink,” said Poisonous; “or, wait,

you can take some beer along to them if you like,” and he gave us half

a gallon of beer in a billy-can. He knew what the first drink meant with

Bushmen back from a long dry trip.

‘We got on our horses, I holding the billy very carefully, and rode back

to where our swags were.

‘“I say,” said Jim, when we’d strapped the swags to the saddles,

“suppose we take the beer back to those chaps: it’s meant for them, and

it’s only a fair thing, anyway--we’ve got as much as we can hold till we

get into Mulgatown.”

‘“It might get them into a row,” I said, “and they seem decent chaps.

Let’s hang the billy on a twig, and that old swagman that’s coming along

will think there’s angels in the Bush.”

‘“Oh! what’s a row?” said Jim. “They can take care of themselves;

they’ll have the beer anyway and a lark with Poisonous when they take

the can back and it comes to explanations. I’ll ride back to them.”

‘So Jim rode back to the drovers’ camp with the beer, and when he came

back to me he said that the drovers seemed surprised, but they drank

good luck to him.

‘We rode round through the mulga behind the shanty and came out on the

road again on the Mulgatown side: we only stayed at Mulgatown to buy

some tucker and tobacco, then we pushed on and camped for the night

about seven miles on the safe side of the town.’

II. Told by One of the Other Drovers.

‘Talkin’ o’ Poisonous Jimmy, I can tell you a yarn about him. We’d

brought a mob of cattle down for a squatter the other side of Mulgatown.

We camped about seven miles the other side of the town, waitin’ for the

station hands to come and take charge of the stock, while the boss rode

on into town to draw our money. Some of us was goin’ back, though in

the end we all went into Mulgatown and had a boose up with the boss. But

while we was waitin’ there come along two fellers that had been drovin’

up north. They yarned a while, an’ then went on to Poisonous Jimmy’s

place, an’ in about an hour one on ‘em come ridin’ back with a can of

beer that he said Poisonous had sent for us. We all knew Jimmy’s little

games--the beer was a bait to get us on the drunk at his place; but we

drunk the beer, and reckoned to have a lark with him afterwards. When

the boss come back, an’ the station hands to take the bullocks, we

started into Mulgatown. We stopped outside Poisonous’s place an’ handed

the can to the girl that was grinnin’ on the verandah. Poisonous come

out with a grin on him like a parson with a broken nose.

‘“Good day, boys!” he says.

‘“Good day, Poisonous,” we says.

‘“It’s hot,” he says.

‘“It’s blanky hot,” I says.

‘He seemed to expect us to get down. “Where are you off to?” he says.

‘“Mulgatown,” I says. “It will be cooler there,” and we sung out,

“So-long, Poisonous!” and rode on.

‘He stood starin’ for a minute; then he started shoutin’, “Hi! hi

there!” after us, but we took no notice, an’ rode on. When we looked

back last he was runnin’ into the scrub with a bridle in his hand.

‘We jogged along easily till we got within a mile of Mulgatown, when

we heard somebody gallopin’ after us, an’ lookin’ back we saw it was

Poisonous.

‘He was too mad and too winded to speak at first, so he rode along with

us a bit gasping: then he burst out.

‘“Where’s them other two carnal blanks?” he shouted.

‘“What other two?” I asked. “We’re all here. What’s the matter with you

anyway?”

‘“All here!” he yelled. “You’re a lurid liar! What the flamin’ sheol do

you mean by swiggin’ my beer an’ flingin’ the coloured can in me face?

without as much as thank yer! D’yer think I’m a flamin’----!”

‘Oh, but Poisonous Jimmy was wild.

‘“Well, we’ll pay for your dirty beer,” says one of the chaps, puttin’

his hand in his pocket. “We didn’t want yer slush. It tasted as if it

had been used before.”

‘“Pay for it!” yelled Jimmy. “I’ll----well take it out of one of yer

bleedin’ hides!”

‘We stopped at once, and I got down an’ obliged Jimmy for a few rounds.

He was a nasty customer to fight; he could use his hands, and was cool

as a cucumber as soon as he took his coat off: besides, he had one

squirmy little business eye, and a big wall-eye, an’, even if you knowed

him well, you couldn’t help watchin’ the stony eye--it was no good

watchin’ his eyes, you had to watch his hands, and he might have

managed me if the boss hadn’t stopped the fight. The boss was a big,

quiet-voiced man, that didn’t swear.

‘“Now, look here, Myles,” said the boss (Jimmy’s name was Myles)--“Now,

look here, Myles,” sez the boss, “what’s all this about?”

‘“What’s all this about?” says Jimmy, gettin’ excited agen. “Why, two

fellers that belonged to your party come along to my place an’ put up

half-a-dozen drinks, an’ borrered a sovereign, an’ got a can o’ beer on

the strength of their cheques. They sez they was waitin’ for you--an’ I

want my crimson money out o’ some one!”

‘“What was they like?” asks the boss.

‘“Like?” shouted Poisonous, swearin’ all the time. “One was a blanky

long, sandy, sawny feller, and the other was a short, slim feller with

black hair. Your blanky men knows all about them because they had the

blanky billy o’ beer.”

‘“Now, what’s this all about, you chaps?” sez the boss to us.

‘So we told him as much as we knowed about them two fellers.

‘I’ve heard men swear that could swear in a rough shearin’-shed, but I

never heard a man swear like Poisonous Jimmy when he saw how he’d been

left. It was enough to split stumps. He said he wanted to see those

fellers, just once, before he died.

‘He rode with us into Mulgatown, got mad drunk, an’ started out along

the road with a tomahawk after the long sandy feller and the slim dark

feller; but two mounted police went after him an’ fetched him back. He

said he only wanted justice; he said he only wanted to stun them two

fellers till he could give ‘em in charge.

‘They fined him ten bob.’

The Ghostly Door.

Told by one of Dave’s mates.

Dave and I were tramping on a lonely Bush track in New Zealand, making

for a sawmill where we expected to get work, and we were caught in one

of those three-days’ gales, with rain and hail in it and cold enough to

cut off a man’s legs. Camping out was not to be thought of, so we

just tramped on in silence, with the stinging pain coming between our

shoulder-blades--from cold, weariness, and the weight of our swags--and

our boots, full of water, going splosh, splosh, splosh along the

track. We were settled to it--to drag on like wet, weary, muddy working

bullocks till we came to somewhere--when, just before darkness settled

down, we saw the loom of a humpy of some sort on the slope of a

tussock hill, back from the road, and we made for it, without holding a

consultation.

It was a two-roomed hut built of waste timber from a sawmill, and was

either a deserted settler’s home or a hut attached to an abandoned

sawmill round there somewhere. The windows were boarded up. We dumped

our swags under the little verandah and banged at the door, to make

sure; then Dave pulled a couple of boards off a window and looked in:

there was light enough to see that the place was empty. Dave pulled

off some more boards, put his arm in through a broken pane, clicked the

catch back, and then pushed up the window and got in. I handed in the

swags to him. The room was very draughty; the wind came in through

the broken window and the cracks between the slabs, so we tried the

partitioned-off room--the bedroom--and that was better. It had been

lined with chaff-bags, and there were two stretchers left by some

timber-getters or other Bush contractors who’d camped there last; and

there were a box and a couple of three-legged stools.

We carried the remnant of the wood-heap inside, made a fire, and put

the billy on. We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets on the

stretchers; and then we stripped and hung our clothes about the fire

to dry. There was plenty in our tucker-bags, so we had a good feed. I

hadn’t shaved for days, and Dave had a coarse red beard with a twist in

it like an ill-used fibre brush--a beard that got redder the longer it

grew; he had a hooked nose, and his hair stood straight up (I never saw

a man so easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head),

and he was very tall, with long, thin, hairy legs. We must have looked a

weird pair as we sat there, naked, on the low three-legged stools, with

the billy and the tucker on the box between us, and ate our bread and

meat with clasp-knives.

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ says Dave, ‘but this is the “whare” * where the

murder was that we heard about along the road. I suppose if any one was

to come along now and look in he’d get scared.’ Then after a while he

looked down at the flooring-boards close to my feet, and scratched

his ear, and said, ‘That looks very much like a blood-stain under your

stool, doesn’t it, Jim?’

* ‘Whare’, ‘whorrie’, Maori name for house.

I shifted my feet and presently moved the stool farther away from the

fire--it was too hot.

I wouldn’t have liked to camp there by myself, but I don’t think Dave

would have minded--he’d knocked round too much in the Australian Bush to

mind anything much, or to be surprised at anything; besides, he was more

than half murdered once by a man who said afterwards that he’d mistook

him for some one else: he must have been a very short-sighted murderer.

Presently we put tobacco, matches, and bits of candle we had, on the two

stools by the heads of our bunks, turned in, and filled up and smoked

comfortably, dropping in a lazy word now and again about nothing in

particular. Once I happened to look across at Dave, and saw him sitting

up a bit and watching the door. The door opened very slowly, wide, and

a black cat walked in, looked first at me, then at Dave, and walked out

again; and the door closed behind it.

Dave scratched his ear. ‘That’s rum,’ he said. ‘I could have sworn I

fastened that door. They must have left the cat behind.’

‘It looks like it,’ I said. ‘Neither of us has been on the boose

lately.’

He got out of bed and up on his long hairy spindle-shanks.

The door had the ordinary, common black oblong lock with a brass knob.

Dave tried the latch and found it fast; he turned the knob, opened the

door, and called, ‘Puss--puss--puss!’ but the cat wouldn’t come. He shut

the door, tried the knob to see that the catch had caught, and got into

bed again.

He’d scarcely settled down when the door opened slowly, the black cat

walked in, stared hard at Dave, and suddenly turned and darted out as

the door closed smartly.

I looked at Dave and he looked at me--hard; then he scratched the back

of his head. I never saw a man look so puzzled in the face and scared

about the head.

He got out of bed very cautiously, took a stick of firewood in his hand,

sneaked up to the door, and snatched it open. There was no one there.

Dave took the candle and went into the next room, but couldn’t see the

cat. He came back and sat down by the fire and meowed, and presently

the cat answered him and came in from somewhere--she’d been outside

the window, I suppose; he kept on meowing and she sidled up and rubbed

against his hairy shin. Dave could generally bring a cat that way.

He had a weakness for cats. I’d seen him kick a dog, and hammer a

horse--brutally, I thought--but I never saw him hurt a cat or let any

one else do it. Dave was good to cats: if a cat had a family where Dave

was round, he’d see her all right and comfortable, and only drown a fair

surplus. He said once to me, ‘I can understand a man kicking a dog, or

hammering a horse when it plays up, but I can’t understand a man hurting

a cat.’

He gave this cat something to eat. Then he went and held the light close

to the lock of the door, but could see nothing wrong with it. He found a

key on the mantel-shelf and locked the door. He got into bed again, and

the cat jumped up and curled down at the foot and started her old drum

going, like shot in a sieve. Dave bent down and patted her, to tell her

he’d meant no harm when he stretched out his legs, and then he settled

down again.

We had some books of the ‘Deadwood Dick’ school. Dave was reading ‘The

Grisly Ghost of the Haunted Gulch’, and I had ‘The Dismembered Hand’,

or ‘The Disembowelled Corpse’, or some such names. They were first-class

preparation for a ghost.

I was reading away, and getting drowsy, when I noticed a movement and

saw Dave’s frightened head rising, with the terrified shadow of it on

the wall. He was staring at the door, over his book, with both eyes.

And that door was opening again--slowly--and Dave had locked it! I never

felt anything so creepy: the foot of my bunk was behind the door, and

I drew up my feet as it came open; it opened wide, and stood so. We

waited, for five minutes it seemed, hearing each other breathe, watching

for the door to close; then Dave got out, very gingerly, and up on one

end, and went to the door like a cat on wet bricks.

‘You shot the bolt OUTSIDE the catch,’ I said, as he caught hold of the

door--like one grabs a craw-fish.

‘I’ll swear I didn’t,’ said Dave. But he’d already turned the key a

couple of times, so he couldn’t be sure. He shut and locked the door

again. ‘Now, get out and see for yourself,’ he said.

I got out, and tried the door a couple of times and found it all right.

Then we both tried, and agreed that it was locked.

I got back into bed, and Dave was about half in when a thought struck

him. He got the heaviest piece of firewood and stood it against the

door.

‘What are you doing that for?’ I asked.

‘If there’s a broken-down burglar camped round here, and trying any of

his funny business, we’ll hear him if he tries to come in while we’re

asleep,’ says Dave. Then he got back into bed. We composed our nerves

with the ‘Haunted Gulch’ and ‘The Disembowelled Corpse’, and after a

while I heard Dave snore, and was just dropping off when the stick fell

from the door against my big toe and then to the ground with tremendous

clatter. I snatched up my feet and sat up with a jerk, and so did

Dave--the cat went over the partition. That door opened, only a little

way this time, paused, and shut suddenly. Dave got out, grabbed a stick,

skipped to the door, and clutched at the knob as if it were a nettle,

and the door wouldn’t come!--it was fast and locked! Then Dave’s face

began to look as frightened as his hair. He lit his candle at the fire,

and asked me to come with him; he unlocked the door and we went into the

other room, Dave shading his candle very carefully and feeling his way

slow with his feet. The room was empty; we tried the outer door and

found it locked.

‘It muster gone by the winder,’ whispered Dave. I noticed that he said

‘it’ instead of ‘he’. I saw that he himself was shook up, and it only

needed that to scare me bad.

We went back to the bedroom, had a drink of cold tea, and lit our pipes.

Then Dave took the waterproof cover off his bunk, spread it on the

floor, laid his blankets on top of it, his spare clothes, &c., on top of

them, and started to roll up his swag.

‘What are you going to do, Dave?’ I asked.

‘I’m going to take the track,’ says Dave, ‘and camp somewhere farther

on. You can stay here, if you like, and come on in the morning.’

I started to roll up my swag at once. We dressed and fastened on the

tucker-bags, took up the billies, and got outside without making any

noise. We held our backs pretty hollow till we got down on to the road.

‘That comes of camping in a deserted house,’ said Dave, when we were

safe on the track. No Australian Bushman cares to camp in an abandoned

homestead, or even near it--probably because a deserted home looks

ghostlier in the Australian Bush than anywhere else in the world.

It was blowing hard, but not raining so much.

We went on along the track for a couple of miles and camped on the

sheltered side of a round tussock hill, in a hole where there had been a

landslip. We used all our candle-ends to get a fire alight, but once we

got it started we knocked the wet bark off ‘manuka’ sticks and logs and

piled them on, and soon had a roaring fire. When the ground got a little

drier we rigged a bit of shelter from the showers with some sticks and

the oil-cloth swag-covers; then we made some coffee and got through the

night pretty comfortably. In the morning Dave said, ‘I’m going back to

that house.’

‘What for?’ I said.

‘I’m going to find out what’s the matter with that crimson door. If I

don’t I’ll never be able to sleep easy within a mile of a door so long

as I live.’

So we went back. It was still blowing. The thing was simple enough by

daylight--after a little watching and experimenting. The house was built

of odds and ends and badly fitted. It ‘gave’ in the wind in almost any

direction--not much, not more than an inch or so, but just enough to

throw the door-frame out of plumb and out of square in such a way as to

bring the latch and bolt of the lock clear of the catch (the door-frame

was of scraps joined). Then the door swung open according to the hang of

it; and when the gust was over the house gave back, and the door swung

to--the frame easing just a little in another direction. I suppose

it would take Edison to invent a thing like that, that came about by

accident. The different strengths and directions of the gusts of wind

must have accounted for the variations of the door’s movements--and

maybe the draught of our big fire had helped.

Dave scratched his head a good bit.

‘I never lived in a house yet,’ he said, as we came away--‘I never lived

in a house yet without there was something wrong with it. Gimme a good

tent.’

A Wild Irishman.

About seven years ago I drifted from Out-Back in Australia to

Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, and up country to a little town

called Pahiatua, which meaneth the ‘home of the gods’, and is situated

in the Wairarappa (rippling or sparkling water) district. They have a

pretty little legend to the effect that the name of the district was not

originally suggested by its rivers, streams, and lakes, but by the

tears alleged to have been noticed, by a dusky squire, in the eyes of

a warrior chief who was looking his first, or last--I don’t remember

which--upon the scene. He was the discoverer, I suppose, now I come to

think of it, else the place would have been already named. Maybe the

scene reminded the old cannibal of the home of his childhood.

Pahiatua was not the home of my god; and it rained for five weeks.

While waiting for a remittance, from an Australian newspaper--which, I

anxiously hoped, would arrive in time for enough of it to be left (after

paying board) to take me away somewhere--I spent many hours in the

little shop of a shoemaker who had been a digger; and he told me yarns

of the old days on the West Coast of Middle Island. And, ever and anon,

he returned to one, a hard-case from the West Coast, called ‘The Flour

of Wheat’, and his cousin, and his mate, Dinny Murphy, dead. And ever

and again the shoemaker (he was large, humorous, and good-natured) made

me promise that, when I dropped across an old West Coast digger--no

matter who or what he was, or whether he was drunk or sober--I’d ask him

if he knew the ‘Flour of Wheat’, and hear what he had to say.

I make no attempt to give any one shade of the Irish brogue--it can’t be

done in writing.

‘There’s the little red Irishman,’ said the shoemaker, who was Irish

himself, ‘who always wants to fight when he has a glass in him; and

there’s the big sarcastic dark Irishman who makes more trouble and

fights at a spree than half-a-dozen little red ones put together;

and there’s the cheerful easy-going Irishman. Now the Flour was a

combination of all three and several other sorts. He was known from the

first amongst the boys at Th’ Canary as the Flour o’ Wheat, but no one

knew exactly why. Some said that the right name was the F-l-o-w-e-r, not

F-l-o-u-r, and that he was called that because there was no flower on

wheat. The name might have been a compliment paid to the man’s character

by some one who understood and appreciated it--or appreciated it without

understanding it. Or it might have come of some chance saying of the

Flour himself, or his mates--or an accident with bags of flour. He might

have worked in a mill. But we’ve had enough of that. It’s the man--not

the name. He was just a big, dark, blue-eyed Irish digger. He worked

hard, drank hard, fought hard--and didn’t swear. No man had ever heard

him swear (except once); all things were ‘lovely’ with him. He was

always lucky. He got gold and threw it away.

‘The Flour was sent out to Australia (by his friends) in connection with

some trouble in Ireland in eighteen-something. The date doesn’t matter:

there was mostly trouble in Ireland in those days; and nobody, that

knew the man, could have the slightest doubt that he helped the

trouble--provided he was there at the time. I heard all this from a man

who knew him in Australia. The relatives that he was sent out to were

soon very anxious to see the end of him. He was as wild as they made

them in Ireland. When he had a few drinks, he’d walk restlessly to and

fro outside the shanty, swinging his right arm across in front of him

with elbow bent and hand closed, as if he had a head in chancery, and

muttering, as though in explanation to himself--

‘“Oi must be walkin’ or foightin’!--Oi must be walkin’ or foightin’!--Oi

must be walkin’ or foightin’!”

‘They say that he wanted to eat his Australian relatives before he was

done; and the story goes that one night, while he was on the spree, they

put their belongings into a cart and took to the Bush.

‘There’s no floury record for several years; then the Flour turned up on

the west coast of New Zealand and was never very far from a pub. kept

by a cousin (that he had tracked, unearthed, or discovered somehow) at a

place called “Th’ Canary”. I remember the first time I saw the Flour.

‘I was on a bit of a spree myself, at Th’ Canary, and one evening I was

standing outside Brady’s (the Flour’s cousin’s place) with Tom Lyons and

Dinny Murphy, when I saw a big man coming across the flat with a swag on

his back.

‘“B’ God, there’s the Flour o’ Wheat comin’ this minute,” says Dinny

Murphy to Tom, “an’ no one else.”

‘“B’ God, ye’re right!” says Tom.

‘There were a lot of new chums in the big room at the back, drinking and

dancing and singing, and Tom says to Dinny--

‘“Dinny, I’ll bet you a quid an’ the Flour’ll run against some of those

new chums before he’s an hour on the spot.”

‘But Dinny wouldn’t take him up. He knew the Flour.

‘“Good day, Tom! Good day, Dinny!”

‘“Good day to you, Flour!”

‘I was introduced.

‘“Well, boys, come along,” says the Flour.

‘And so we went inside with him. The Flour had a few drinks, and then

he went into the back-room where the new chums were. One of them was

dancing a jig, and so the Flour stood up in front of him and commenced

to dance too. And presently the new chum made a step that didn’t please

the Flour, so he hit him between the eyes, and knocked him down--fair

an’ flat on his back.

‘“Take that,” he says. “Take that, me lovely whipper-snapper, an’ lay

there! You can’t dance. How dare ye stand up in front of me face to

dance when ye can’t dance?”

‘He shouted, and drank, and gambled, and danced, and sang, and fought

the new chums all night, and in the morning he said--

‘“Well, boys, we had a grand time last night. Come and have a drink with

me.”

‘And of course they went in and had a drink with him.

*****

‘Next morning the Flour was walking along the street, when he met a

drunken, disreputable old hag, known among the boys as the “Nipper”.

‘“Good MORNING, me lovely Flour o’ Wheat!” says she.

‘“Good MORNING, me lovely Nipper!” says the Flour.

‘And with that she outs with a bottle she had in her dress, and smashed

him across the face with it. Broke the bottle to smithereens!

‘A policeman saw her do it, and took her up; and they had the Flour as a

witness, whether he liked it or not. And a lovely sight he looked, with

his face all done up in bloody bandages, and only one damaged eye and a

corner of his mouth on duty.

‘“It’s nothing at all, your Honour,” he said to the S.M.; “only a

pin-scratch--it’s nothing at all. Let it pass. I had no right to speak

to the lovely woman at all.”

‘But they didn’t let it pass,--they fined her a quid.

‘And the Flour paid the fine.

‘But, alas for human nature! It was pretty much the same even in those

days, and amongst those men, as it is now. A man couldn’t do a woman

a good turn without the dirty-minded blackguards taking it for granted

there was something between them. It was a great joke amongst the boys

who knew the Flour, and who also knew the Nipper; but as it was carried

too far in some quarters, it got to be no joke to the Flour--nor to

those who laughed too loud or grinned too long.

*****

‘The Flour’s cousin thought he was a sharp man. The Flour got “stiff”.

He hadn’t any money, and his credit had run out, so he went and got

a blank summons from one of the police he knew. He pretended that he

wanted to frighten a man who owed him some money. Then he filled it up

and took it to his cousin.

‘“What d’ye think of that?” he says, handing the summons across the bar.

“What d’ye think of me lovely Dinny Murphy now?”

‘“Why, what’s this all about?”

‘“That’s what I want to know. I borrowed a five-pound-note off of him a

fortnight ago when I was drunk, an’ now he sends me that.”

‘“Well, I never would have dream’d that of Dinny,” says the cousin,

scratching his head and blinking. “What’s come over him at all?”

‘“That’s what I want to know.”

‘“What have you been doing to the man?”

‘“Divil a thing that I’m aware of.”

‘The cousin rubbed his chin-tuft between his forefinger and thumb.

‘“Well, what am I to do about it?” asked the Flour impatiently.

‘“Do? Pay the man, of course?”

‘“How can I pay the lovely man when I haven’t got the price of a drink

about me?”

‘The cousin scratched his chin.

‘“Well--here, I’ll lend you a five-pound-note for a month or two. Go and

pay the man, and get back to work.”

‘And the Flour went and found Dinny Murphy, and the pair of them had a

howling spree together up at Brady’s, the opposition pub. And the cousin

said he thought all the time he was being had.

. . . . .

‘He was nasty sometimes, when he was about half drunk. For instance,

he’d come on the ground when the Orewell sports were in full swing and

walk round, soliloquising just loud enough for you to hear; and just

when a big event was coming off he’d pass within earshot of some

committee men--who had been bursting themselves for weeks to work the

thing up and make it a success--saying to himself--

‘“Where’s the Orewell sports that I hear so much about? I don’t see

them! Can any one direct me to the Orewell sports?”

‘Or he’d pass a raffle, lottery, lucky-bag, or golden-barrel business of

some sort,--

‘“No gamblin’ for the Flour. I don’t believe in their little shwindles.

It ought to be shtopped. Leadin’ young people ashtray.”

‘Or he’d pass an Englishman he didn’t like,--

‘“Look at Jinneral Roberts! He’s a man! He’s an Irishman! England has

to come to Ireland for its Jinnerals! Luk at Jinneral Roberts in the

marshes of Candyhar!”

*****

‘They always had sports at Orewell Creek on New Year’s Day--except

once--and old Duncan was always there,--never missed it till the day he

died. He was a digger, a humorous and good-hearted “hard-case”. They all

knew “old Duncan”.

‘But one New Year’s Eve he didn’t turn up, and was missed at once.

“Where’s old Duncan? Any one seen old Duncan?” “Oh, he’ll turn up

alright.” They inquired, and argued, and waited, but Duncan didn’t come.

‘Duncan was working at Duffers. The boys inquired of fellows who came

from Duffers, but they hadn’t seen him for two days. They had fully

expected to find him at the creek. He wasn’t at Aliaura nor Notown. They

inquired of men who came from Nelson Creek, but Duncan wasn’t there.

‘“There’s something happened to the lovely man,” said the Flour of Wheat

at last. “Some of us had better see about it.”

‘Pretty soon this was the general opinion, and so a party started out

over the hills to Duffers before daylight in the morning, headed by the

Flour.

‘The door of Duncan’s “whare” was closed--BUT NOT PADLOCKED. The Flour

noticed this, gave his head a jerk, opened the door, and went in. The

hut was tidied up and swept out--even the fireplace. Duncan had “lifted

the boxes” and “cleaned up”, and his little bag of gold stood on a

shelf by his side--all ready for his spree. On the table lay a clean

neckerchief folded ready to tie on. The blankets had been folded neatly

and laid on the bunk, and on them was stretched Old Duncan, with his

arms lying crossed on his chest, and one foot--with a boot on--resting

on the ground. He had his “clean things” on, and was dressed except for

one boot, the necktie, and his hat. Heart disease.

‘“Take your hats off and come in quietly, lads,” said the Flour. “Here’s

the lovely man lying dead in his bunk.”

‘There were no sports at Orewell that New Year. Some one said that the

crowd from Nelson Creek might object to the sports being postponed on

old Duncan’s account, but the Flour said he’d see to that.

‘One or two did object, but the Flour reasoned with them and there were

no sports.

‘And the Flour used to say, afterwards, “Ah, but it was a grand time we

had at the funeral when Duncan died at Duffers.”

. . . . .

‘The Flour of Wheat carried his mate, Dinny Murphy, all the way in from

Th’ Canary to the hospital on his back. Dinny was very bad--the man was

dying of the dysentery or something. The Flour laid him down on a spare

bunk in the reception-room, and hailed the staff.

‘“Inside there--come out!”

‘The doctor and some of the hospital people came to see what was the

matter. The doctor was a heavy swell, with a big cigar, held up in front

of him between two fat, soft, yellow-white fingers, and a dandy little

pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses nipped onto his nose with a spring.

‘“There’s me lovely mate lying there dying of the dysentry,” says the

Flour, “and you’ve got to fix him up and bring him round.”

‘Then he shook his fist in the doctor’s face and said--

‘“If you let that lovely man die--look out!”

‘The doctor was startled. He backed off at first; then he took a puff at

his cigar, stepped forward, had a careless look at Dinny, and gave some

order to the attendants. The Flour went to the door, turned half round

as he went out, and shook his fist at them again, and said--

‘“If you let that lovely man die--mind!”

‘In about twenty minutes he came back, wheeling a case of whisky in a

barrow. He carried the case inside, and dumped it down on the floor.

‘“There,” he said, “pour that into the lovely man.”

‘Then he shook his fist at such members of the staff as were visible,

and said--

‘“If you let that lovely man die--look out!”

‘They were used to hard-cases, and didn’t take much notice of him, but

he had the hospital in an awful mess; he was there all hours of the day

and night; he would go down town, have a few drinks and a fight maybe,

and then he’d say, “Ah, well, I’ll have to go up and see how me lovely

mate’s getting on.”

‘And every time he’d go up he’d shake his fist at the hospital in

general and threaten to murder ‘em all if they let Dinny Murphy die.

‘Well, Dinny Murphy died one night. The next morning the Flour met the

doctor in the street, and hauled off and hit him between the eyes, and

knocked him down before he had time to see who it was.

‘“Stay there, ye little whipper-snapper,” said the Flour of Wheat; “you

let that lovely man die!”

‘The police happened to be out of town that day, and while they were

waiting for them the Flour got a coffin and carried it up to the

hospital, and stood it on end by the doorway.

‘“I’ve come for me lovely mate!” he said to the scared staff--or as much

of it as he baled up and couldn’t escape him. “Hand him over. He’s going

back to be buried with his friends at Th’ Canary. Now, don’t be sneaking

round and sidling off, you there; you needn’t be frightened; I’ve

settled with the doctor.”

‘But they called in a man who had some influence with the Flour, and

between them--and with the assistance of the prettiest nurse on the

premises--they persuaded him to wait. Dinny wasn’t ready yet; there were

papers to sign; it wouldn’t be decent to the dead; he had to be

prayed over; he had to be washed and shaved, and fixed up decent and

comfortable. Anyway, they’d have him ready in an hour, or take the

consequences.

‘The Flour objected on the ground that all this could be done equally as

well and better by the boys at Th’ Canary. “However,” he said, “I’ll

be round in an hour, and if you haven’t got me lovely mate ready--look

out!” Then he shook his fist sternly at them once more and said--

‘“I know yer dirty tricks and dodges, and if there’s e’er a pin-scratch

on me mate’s body--look out! If there’s a pairin’ of Dinny’s toe-nail

missin’--look out!”

‘Then he went out--taking the coffin with him.

‘And when the police came to his lodgings to arrest him, they found the

coffin on the floor by the side of the bed, and the Flour lying in it on

his back, with his arms folded peacefully on his bosom. He was as

dead drunk as any man could get to be and still be alive. They knocked

air-holes in the coffin-lid, screwed it on, and carried the coffin, the

Flour, and all to the local lock-up. They laid their burden down on the

bare, cold floor of the prison-cell, and then went out, locked the door,

and departed several ways to put the “boys” up to it. And about midnight

the “boys” gathered round with a supply of liquor, and waited, and

somewhere along in the small hours there was a howl, as of a strong

Irishman in Purgatory, and presently the voice of the Flour was heard to

plead in changed and awful tones--

‘“Pray for me soul, boys--pray for me soul! Let bygones be bygones

between us, boys, and pray for me lovely soul! The lovely Flour’s in

Purgatory!”

‘Then silence for a while; and then a sound like a dray-wheel passing

over a packing-case.... That was the only time on record that the Flour

was heard to swear. And he swore then.

‘They didn’t pray for him--they gave him a month. And, when he came

out, he went half-way across the road to meet the doctor, and he--to his

credit, perhaps--came the other half. They had a drink together, and

the Flour presented the doctor with a fine specimen of coarse gold for a

pin.

‘“It was the will o’ God, after all, doctor,” said the Flour. “It was

the will o’ God. Let bygones be bygones between us; gimme your hand,

doctor.... Good-bye.”

‘Then he left for Th’ Canary.’

The Babies in the Bush.

‘Oh, tell her a tale of the fairies bright--

That only the Bushmen know--

Who guide the feet of the lost aright,

Or carry them up through the starry night,

Where the Bush-lost babies go.’

He was one of those men who seldom smile. There are many in the

Australian Bush, where drift wrecks and failures of all stations and

professions (and of none), and from all the world. Or, if they do smile,

the smile is either mechanical or bitter as a rule--cynical. They seldom

talk. The sort of men who, as bosses, are set down by the majority--and

without reason or evidence--as being proud, hard, and selfish,--‘too

mean to live, and too big for their boots.’

But when the Boss did smile his expression was very, very gentle, and

very sad. I have seen him smile down on a little child who persisted in

sitting on his knee and prattling to him, in spite of his silence and

gloom. He was tall and gaunt, with haggard grey eyes--haunted grey eyes

sometimes--and hair and beard thick and strong, but grey. He was not

above forty-five. He was of the type of men who die in harness, with

their hair thick and strong, but grey or white when it should be brown.

The opposite type, I fancy, would be the soft, dark-haired, blue-eyed

men who grow bald sooner than they grow grey, and fat and contented, and

die respectably in their beds.

His name was Head--Walter Head. He was a boss drover on the overland

routes. I engaged with him at a place north of the Queensland border to

travel down to Bathurst, on the Great Western Line in New South Wales,

with something over a thousand head of store bullocks for the Sydney

market. I am an Australian Bushman (with city experience)--a rover, of

course, and a ne’er-do-well, I suppose. I was born with brains and a

thin skin--worse luck! It was in the days before I was married, and I

went by the name of ‘Jack Ellis’ this trip,--not because the police

were after me, but because I used to tell yarns about a man named Jack

Ellis--and so the chaps nicknamed me.

The Boss spoke little to the men: he’d sit at tucker or with his pipe

by the camp-fire nearly as silently as he rode his night-watch round the

big, restless, weird-looking mob of bullocks camped on the dusky

starlit plain. I believe that from the first he spoke oftener and more

confidentially to me than to any other of the droving party. There was a

something of sympathy between us--I can’t explain what it was. It seemed

as though it were an understood thing between us that we understood each

other. He sometimes said things to me which would have needed a deal of

explanation--so I thought--had he said them to any other of the party.

He’d often, after brooding a long while, start a sentence, and break off

with ‘You know, Jack.’ And somehow I understood, without being able to

explain why. We had never met before I engaged with him for this trip.

His men respected him, but he was not a popular boss: he was too gloomy,

and never drank a glass nor ‘shouted’ on the trip: he was reckoned a

‘mean boss’, and rather a nigger-driver.

He was full of Adam Lindsay Gordon, the English-Australian poet who

shot himself, and so was I. I lost an old copy of Gordon’s poems on the

route, and the Boss overheard me inquiring about it; later on he asked

me if I liked Gordon. We got to it rather sheepishly at first, but

by-and-by we’d quote Gordon freely in turn when we were alone in camp.

‘Those are grand lines about Burke and Wills, the explorers, aren’t

they, Jack?’ he’d say, after chewing his cud, or rather the stem of his

briar, for a long while without a word. (He had his pipe in his mouth as

often as any of us, but somehow I fancied he didn’t enjoy it: an empty

pipe or a stick would have suited him just as well, it seemed to me.)

‘Those are great lines,’ he’d say--

‘“In Collins Street standeth a statue tall--

A statue tall on a pillar of stone--

Telling its story to great and small

Of the dust reclaimed from the sand-waste lone.

*****

Weary and wasted, worn and wan,

Feeble and faint, and languid and low,

He lay on the desert a dying man,

Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go.”

That’s a grand thing, Jack. How does it go?--

“With a pistol clenched in his failing hand,

And the film of death o’er his fading eyes,

He saw the sun go down on the sand,”’--

The Boss would straighten up with a sigh that might have been half a yawn--

‘“And he slept and never saw it rise,”’

--speaking with a sort of quiet force all the time.

Then maybe he’d stand with his back to the fire roasting his dusty leggings,

with his hands behind his back and looking out over the dusky plain.

‘“What mattered the sand or the whit’ning chalk,

The blighted herbage or blackened log,

The crooked beak of the eagle-hawk,

Or the hot red tongue of the native dog?”

They don’t matter much, do they, Jack?’

‘Damned if I think they do, Boss!’ I’d say.

‘“The couch was rugged, those sextons rude,

But, in spite of a leaden shroud, we know

That the bravest and fairest are earth-worms’ food

Where once they have gone where we all must go.”’

Once he repeated the poem containing the lines--

‘“Love, when we wandered here together,

Hand in hand through the sparkling weather--

God surely loved us a little then.”

Beautiful lines those, Jack.

“Then skies were fairer and shores were firmer,

And the blue sea over the white sand rolled--

Babble and prattle, and prattle and murmur’--

How does it go, Jack?’ He stood up and turned his face to the light, but

not before I had a glimpse of it. I think that the saddest eyes on earth

are mostly women’s eyes, but I’ve seen few so sad as the Boss’s were

just then.

It seemed strange that he, a Bushman, preferred Gordon’s sea poems to

his horsey and bushy rhymes; but so he did. I fancy his favourite poem

was that one of Gordon’s with the lines--

‘I would that with sleepy soft embraces

The sea would fold me, would find me rest

In the luminous depths of its secret places,

Where the wealth of God’s marvels is manifest!’

He usually spoke quietly, in a tone as though death were in camp; but

after we’d been on Gordon’s poetry for a while he’d end it abruptly

with, ‘Well, it’s time to turn in,’ or, ‘It’s time to turn out,’ or he’d

give me an order in connection with the cattle. He had been a well-to-do

squatter on the Lachlan river-side, in New South Wales, and had been

ruined by the drought, they said. One night in camp, and after smoking

in silence for nearly an hour, he asked--

‘Do you know Fisher, Jack--the man that owns these bullocks?’

‘I’ve heard of him,’ I said. Fisher was a big squatter, with stations

both in New South Wales and in Queensland.

‘Well, he came to my station on the Lachlan years ago without a penny in

his pocket, or decent rag to his back, or a crust in his tucker-bag, and

I gave him a job. He’s my boss now. Ah, well! it’s the way of Australia,

you know, Jack.’

The Boss had one man who went on every droving trip with him; he

was ‘bred’ on the Boss’s station, they said, and had been with him

practically all his life. His name was ‘Andy’. I forget his other name,

if he really had one. Andy had charge of the ‘droving-plant’ (a tilted

two-horse waggonette, in which we carried the rations and horse-feed),

and he did the cooking and kept accounts. The Boss had no head for

figures. Andy might have been twenty-five or thirty-five, or anything in

between. His hair stuck up like a well-made brush all round, and his big

grey eyes also had an inquiring expression. His weakness was girls, or

he theirs, I don’t know which (half-castes not barred). He was, I think,

the most innocent, good-natured, and open-hearted scamp I ever met.

Towards the middle of the trip Andy spoke to me one night alone in camp

about the Boss.

‘The Boss seems to have taken to you, Jack, all right.’

‘Think so?’ I said. I thought I smelt jealousy and detected a sneer.

‘I’m sure of it. It’s very seldom HE takes to any one.’

I said nothing.

Then after a while Andy said suddenly--

‘Look here, Jack, I’m glad of it. I’d like to see him make a chum of

some one, if only for one trip. And don’t you make any mistake about the

Boss. He’s a white man. There’s precious few that know him--precious few

now; but I do, and it’ll do him a lot of good to have some one to yarn

with.’ And Andy said no more on the subject for that trip.

The long, hot, dusty miles dragged by across the blazing plains--big

clearings rather--and through the sweltering hot scrubs, and we reached

Bathurst at last; and then the hot dusty days and weeks and months that

we’d left behind us to the Great North-West seemed as nothing,--as I

suppose life will seem when we come to the end of it.

The bullocks were going by rail from Bathurst to Sydney. We were all one

long afternoon getting them into the trucks, and when we’d finished the

boss said to me--

‘Look here, Jack, you’re going on to Sydney, aren’t you?’

‘Yes; I’m going down to have a fly round.’

‘Well, why not wait and go down with Andy in the morning? He’s going

down in charge of the cattle. The cattle-train starts about daylight. It

won’t be so comfortable as the passenger; but you’ll save your fare, and

you can give Andy a hand with the cattle. You’ve only got to have a

look at ‘em every other station, and poke up any that fall down in the

trucks. You and Andy are mates, aren’t you?’

I said it would just suit me. Somehow I fancied that the Boss seemed

anxious to have my company for one more evening, and, to tell the truth,

I felt really sorry to part with him. I’d had to work as hard as any

of the other chaps; but I liked him, and I believed he liked me. He’d

struck me as a man who’d been quietened down by some heavy trouble, and

I felt sorry for him without knowing what the trouble was.

‘Come and have a drink, Boss,’ I said. The agent had paid us off during

the day.

He turned into a hotel with me.

‘I don’t drink, Jack,’ he said; ‘but I’ll take a glass with you.’

‘I didn’t know you were a teetotaller, Boss,’ I said. I had not been

surprised at his keeping so strictly from the drink on the trip; but now

that it was over it was a different thing.

‘I’m not a teetotaller, Jack,’ he said. ‘I can take a glass or leave

it.’ And he called for a long beer, and we drank ‘Here’s luck!’ to each

other.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I wish I could take a glass or leave it.’ And I meant

it.

Then the Boss spoke as I’d never heard him speak before. I thought for

the moment that the one drink had affected him; but I understood before

the night was over. He laid his hand on my shoulder with a grip like a

man who has suddenly made up his mind to lend you five pounds. ‘Jack!’

he said, ‘there’s worse things than drinking, and there’s worse things

than heavy smoking. When a man who smokes gets such a load of trouble on

him that he can find no comfort in his pipe, then it’s a heavy load.

And when a man who drinks gets so deep into trouble that he can find no

comfort in liquor, then it’s deep trouble. Take my tip for it, Jack.’

He broke off, and half turned away with a jerk of his head, as if

impatient with himself; then presently he spoke in his usual quiet

tone--

‘But you’re only a boy yet, Jack. Never mind me. I won’t ask you to take

the second drink. You don’t want it; and, besides, I know the signs.’

He paused, leaning with both hands on the edge of the counter, and

looking down between his arms at the floor. He stood that way thinking

for a while; then he suddenly straightened up, like a man who’d made up

his mind to something.

‘I want you to come along home with me, Jack,’ he said; ‘we’ll fix you a

shake-down.’

I forgot to tell you that he was married and lived in Bathurst.

‘But won’t it put Mrs Head about?’

‘Not at all. She’s expecting you. Come along; there’s nothing to see in

Bathurst, and you’ll have plenty of knocking round in Sydney. Come on,

we’ll just be in time for tea.’

He lived in a brick cottage on the outskirts of the town--an

old-fashioned cottage, with ivy and climbing roses, like you see in some

of those old settled districts. There was, I remember, the stump of a

tree in front, covered with ivy till it looked like a giant’s club with

the thick end up.

When we got to the house the Boss paused a minute with his hand on the

gate. He’d been home a couple of days, having ridden in ahead of the

bullocks.

‘Jack,’ he said, ‘I must tell you that Mrs Head had a great trouble at

one time. We--we lost our two children. It does her good to talk to a

stranger now and again--she’s always better afterwards; but there’s very

few I care to bring. You--you needn’t notice anything strange. And agree

with her, Jack. You know, Jack.’

‘That’s all right, Boss,’ I said. I’d knocked about the Bush too long,

and run against too many strange characters and things, to be surprised

at anything much.

The door opened, and he took a little woman in his arms. I saw by the

light of a lamp in the room behind that the woman’s hair was grey, and

I reckoned that he had his mother living with him. And--we do have odd

thoughts at odd times in a flash--and I wondered how Mrs Head and her

mother-in-law got on together. But the next minute I was in the room,

and introduced to ‘My wife, Mrs Head,’ and staring at her with both

eyes.

It was his wife. I don’t think I can describe her. For the first minute

or two, coming in out of the dark and before my eyes got used to the

lamp-light, I had an impression as of a little old woman--one of those

fresh-faced, well-preserved, little old ladies--who dressed young, wore

false teeth, and aped the giddy girl. But this was because of Mrs Head’s

impulsive welcome of me, and her grey hair. The hair was not so grey as

I thought at first, seeing it with the lamp-light behind it: it was like

dull-brown hair lightly dusted with flour. She wore it short, and

it became her that way. There was something aristocratic about her

face--her nose and chin--I fancied, and something that you couldn’t

describe. She had big dark eyes--dark-brown, I thought, though they

might have been hazel: they were a bit too big and bright for me, and

now and again, when she got excited, the white showed all round the

pupils--just a little, but a little was enough.

She seemed extra glad to see me. I thought at first that she was a bit

of a gusher.

‘Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come, Mr Ellis,’ she said, giving my hand a

grip. ‘Walter--Mr Head--has been speaking to me about you. I’ve been

expecting you. Sit down by the fire, Mr Ellis; tea will be ready

presently. Don’t you find it a bit chilly?’ She shivered. It was a bit

chilly now at night on the Bathurst plains. The table was set for tea,

and set rather in swell style. The cottage was too well furnished

even for a lucky boss drover’s home; the furniture looked as if it had

belonged to a tony homestead at one time. I felt a bit strange at first,

sitting down to tea, and almost wished that I was having a comfortable

tuck-in at a restaurant or in a pub. dining-room. But she knew a lot

about the Bush, and chatted away, and asked questions about the trip,

and soon put me at my ease. You see, for the last year or two I’d

taken my tucker in my hands,--hunk of damper and meat and a clasp-knife

mostly,--sitting on my heel in the dust, or on a log or a tucker-box.

There was a hard, brown, wrinkled old woman that the Heads called

‘Auntie’. She waited at the table; but Mrs Head kept bustling round

herself most of the time, helping us. Andy came in to tea.

Mrs Head bustled round like a girl of twenty instead of a woman of

thirty-seven, as Andy afterwards told me she was. She had the figure and

movements of a girl, and the impulsiveness and expression too--a womanly

girl; but sometimes I fancied there was something very childish about

her face and talk. After tea she and the Boss sat on one side of the

fire and Andy and I on the other--Andy a little behind me at the corner

of the table.

‘Walter--Mr Head--tells me you’ve been out on the Lachlan river, Mr

Ellis?’ she said as soon as she’d settled down, and she leaned forward,

as if eager to hear that I’d been there.

‘Yes, Mrs Head. I’ve knocked round all about out there.’

She sat up straight, and put the tips of her fingers to the side of her

forehead and knitted her brows. This was a trick she had--she often did

it during the evening. And when she did that she seemed to forget what

she’d said last.

She smoothed her forehead, and clasped her hands in her lap.

‘Oh, I’m so glad to meet somebody from the back country, Mr Ellis,’

she said. ‘Walter so seldom brings a stranger here, and I get tired of

talking to the same people about the same things, and seeing the same

faces. You don’t know what a relief it is, Mr Ellis, to see a new face

and talk to a stranger.’

‘I can quite understand that, Mrs Head,’ I said. And so I could. I never

stayed more than three months in one place if I could help it.

She looked into the fire and seemed to try to think. The Boss

straightened up and stroked her head with his big sun-browned hand, and

then put his arm round her shoulders. This brought her back.

‘You know we had a station out on the Lachlan, Mr Ellis. Did Walter ever

tell you about the time we lived there?’

‘No,’ I said, glancing at the Boss. ‘I know you had a station there;

but, you know, the Boss doesn’t talk much.’

‘Tell Jack, Maggie,’ said the Boss; ‘I don’t mind.’

She smiled. ‘You know Walter, Mr Ellis,’ she said. ‘You won’t mind him.

He doesn’t like me to talk about the children; he thinks it upsets me,

but that’s foolish: it always relieves me to talk to a stranger.’ She

leaned forward, eagerly it seemed, and went on quickly: ‘I’ve been

wanting to tell you about the children ever since Walter spoke to me

about you. I knew you would understand directly I saw your face. These

town people don’t understand. I like to talk to a Bushman. You know we

lost our children out on the station. The fairies took them. Did Walter

ever tell you about the fairies taking the children away?’

This was a facer. ‘I--I beg pardon,’ I commenced, when Andy gave me a

dig in the back. Then I saw it all.

‘No, Mrs Head. The Boss didn’t tell me about that.’

‘You surely know about the Bush Fairies, Mr Ellis,’ she said, her big

eyes fixed on my face--‘the Bush Fairies that look after the little ones

that are lost in the Bush, and take them away from the Bush if they are

not found? You’ve surely heard of them, Mr Ellis? Most Bushmen have that

I’ve spoken to. Maybe you’ve seen them? Andy there has?’ Andy gave me

another dig.

‘Of course I’ve heard of them, Mrs Head,’ I said; ‘but I can’t swear

that I’ve seen one.’

‘Andy has. Haven’t you, Andy?’

‘Of course I have, Mrs Head. Didn’t I tell you all about it the last

time we were home?’

‘And didn’t you ever tell Mr Ellis, Andy?’

‘Of course he did!’ I said, coming to Andy’s rescue; ‘I remember it now.

You told me that night we camped on the Bogan river, Andy.’

‘Of course!’ said Andy.

‘Did he tell you about finding a lost child and the fairy with it?’

‘Yes,’ said Andy; ‘I told him all about that.’

‘And the fairy was just going to take the child away when Andy found it,

and when the fairy saw Andy she flew away.’

‘Yes,’ I said; ‘that’s what Andy told me.’

‘And what did you say the fairy was like, Andy?’ asked Mrs Head, fixing

her eyes on his face.

‘Like. It was like one of them angels you see in Bible pictures, Mrs

Head,’ said Andy promptly, sitting bolt upright, and keeping his big

innocent grey eyes fixed on hers lest she might think he was telling

lies. ‘It was just like the angel in that Christ-in-the-stable picture

we had at home on the station--the right-hand one in blue.’

She smiled. You couldn’t call it an idiotic smile, nor the foolish

smile you see sometimes in melancholy mad people. It was more of a happy

childish smile.

‘I was so foolish at first, and gave poor Walter and the doctors a lot

of trouble,’ she said. ‘Of course it never struck me, until afterwards,

that the fairies had taken the children.’

She pressed the tips of the fingers of both hands to her forehead, and

sat so for a while; then she roused herself again--

‘But what am I thinking about? I haven’t started to tell you about the

children at all yet. Auntie! bring the children’s portraits, will you,

please? You’ll find them on my dressing-table.’

The old woman seemed to hesitate.

‘Go on, Auntie, and do what I ask you,’ said Mrs Head. ‘Don’t be

foolish. You know I’m all right now.’

‘You mustn’t take any notice of Auntie, Mr Ellis,’ she said with a

smile, while the old woman’s back was turned. ‘Poor old body, she’s a

bit crotchety at times, as old women are. She doesn’t like me to get

talking about the children. She’s got an idea that if I do I’ll start

talking nonsense, as I used to do the first year after the children were

lost. I was very foolish then, wasn’t I, Walter?’

‘You were, Maggie,’ said the Boss. ‘But that’s all past. You mustn’t

think of that time any more.’

‘You see,’ said Mrs Head, in explanation to me, ‘at first nothing would

drive it out of my head that the children had wandered about until they

perished of hunger and thirst in the Bush. As if the Bush Fairies would

let them do that.’

‘You were very foolish, Maggie,’ said the Boss; ‘but don’t think about

that.’

The old woman brought the portraits, a little boy and a little girl:

they must have been very pretty children.

‘You see,’ said Mrs Head, taking the portraits eagerly, and giving them

to me one by one, ‘we had these taken in Sydney some years before the

children were lost; they were much younger then. Wally’s is not a good

portrait; he was teething then, and very thin. That’s him standing on

the chair. Isn’t the pose good? See, he’s got one hand and one little

foot forward, and an eager look in his eyes. The portrait is very dark,

and you’ve got to look close to see the foot. He wants a toy rabbit that

the photographer is tossing up to make him laugh. In the next portrait

he’s sitting on the chair--he’s just settled himself to enjoy the fun.

But see how happy little Maggie looks! You can see my arm where I was

holding her in the chair. She was six months old then, and little Wally

had just turned two.’

She put the portraits up on the mantel-shelf.

‘Let me see; Wally (that’s little Walter, you know)--Wally was five and

little Maggie three and a half when we lost them. Weren’t they, Walter?’

‘Yes, Maggie,’ said the Boss.

‘You were away, Walter, when it happened.’

‘Yes, Maggie,’ said the Boss--cheerfully, it seemed to me--‘I was away.’

‘And we couldn’t find you, Walter. You see,’ she said to me, ‘Walter--Mr

Head--was away in Sydney on business, and we couldn’t find his address.

It was a beautiful morning, though rather warm, and just after the

break-up of the drought. The grass was knee-high all over the run. It

was a lonely place; there wasn’t much bush cleared round the homestead,

just a hundred yards or so, and the great awful scrubs ran back from the

edges of the clearing all round for miles and miles--fifty or a hundred

miles in some directions without a break; didn’t they, Walter?’

‘Yes, Maggie.’

‘I was alone at the house except for Mary, a half-caste girl we had, who

used to help me with the housework and the children. Andy was out on the

run with the men, mustering sheep; weren’t you, Andy?’

‘Yes, Mrs Head.’

‘I used to watch the children close as they got to run about, because

if they once got into the edge of the scrub they’d be lost; but this

morning little Wally begged hard to be let take his little sister down

under a clump of blue-gums in a corner of the home paddock to gather

buttercups. You remember that clump of gums, Walter?’

‘I remember, Maggie.’

‘“I won’t go through the fence a step, mumma,” little Wally said. I

could see Old Peter--an old shepherd and station-hand we had--I could

see him working on a dam we were making across a creek that ran down

there. You remember Old Peter, Walter?’

‘Of course I do, Maggie.’

‘I knew that Old Peter would keep an eye to the children; so I told

little Wally to keep tight hold of his sister’s hand and go straight

down to Old Peter and tell him I sent them.’

She was leaning forward with her hands clasping her knee, and telling me

all this with a strange sort of eagerness.

‘The little ones toddled off hand in hand, with their other hands

holding fast their straw hats. “In case a bad wind blowed,” as little

Maggie said. I saw them stoop under the first fence, and that was the

last that any one saw of them.’

‘Except the fairies, Maggie,’ said the Boss quickly.

‘Of course, Walter, except the fairies.’

She pressed her fingers to her temples again for a minute.

‘It seems that Old Peter was going to ride out to the musterers’ camp

that morning with bread for the men, and he left his work at the dam

and started into the Bush after his horse just as I turned back into the

house, and before the children got near him. They either followed

him for some distance or wandered into the Bush after flowers or

butterflies----’ She broke off, and then suddenly asked me, ‘Do you

think the Bush Fairies would entice children away, Mr Ellis?’

The Boss caught my eye, and frowned and shook his head slightly.

‘No. I’m sure they wouldn’t, Mrs Head,’ I said--‘at least not from what

I know of them.’

She thought, or tried to think, again for a while, in her helpless

puzzled way. Then she went on, speaking rapidly, and rather

mechanically, it seemed to me--

‘The first I knew of it was when Peter came to the house about an hour

afterwards, leading his horse, and without the children. I said--I

said, “O my God! where’s the children?”’ Her fingers fluttered up to her

temples.

‘Don’t mind about that, Maggie,’ said the Boss, hurriedly, stroking her

head. ‘Tell Jack about the fairies.’

‘You were away at the time, Walter?’

‘Yes, Maggie.’

‘And we couldn’t find you, Walter?’

‘No, Maggie,’ very gently. He rested his elbow on his knee and his chin

on his hand, and looked into the fire.

‘It wasn’t your fault, Walter; but if you had been at home do you think

the fairies would have taken the children?’

‘Of course they would, Maggie. They had to: the children were lost.’

‘And they’re bringing the children home next year?’

‘Yes, Maggie--next year.’

She lifted her hands to her head in a startled way, and it was some time

before she went on again. There was no need to tell me about the lost

children. I could see it all. She and the half-caste rushing towards

where the children were seen last, with Old Peter after them. The

hurried search in the nearer scrub. The mother calling all the time

for Maggie and Wally, and growing wilder as the minutes flew past. Old

Peter’s ride to the musterers’ camp. Horsemen seeming to turn up in no

time and from nowhere, as they do in a case like this, and no matter

how lonely the district. Bushmen galloping through the scrub in all

directions. The hurried search the first day, and the mother mad with

anxiety as night came on. Her long, hopeless, wild-eyed watch through

the night; starting up at every sound of a horse’s hoof, and reading

the worst in one glance at the rider’s face. The systematic work of the

search-parties next day and the days following. How those days do fly

past. The women from the next run or selection, and some from the town,

driving from ten or twenty miles, perhaps, to stay with and try to

comfort the mother. [‘Put the horse to the cart, Jim: I must go to that

poor woman!’) Comforting her with improbable stories of children who had

been lost for days, and were none the worse for it when they were

found. The mounted policemen out with the black trackers. Search-parties

cooeeing to each other about the Bush, and lighting signal-fires. The

reckless break-neck rides for news or more help. And the Boss himself,

wild-eyed and haggard, riding about the Bush with Andy and one or two

others perhaps, and searching hopelessly, days after the rest had given

up all hope of finding the children alive. All this passed before me as

Mrs Head talked, her voice sounding the while as if she were in another

room; and when I roused myself to listen, she was on to the fairies

again.

‘It was very foolish of me, Mr Ellis. Weeks after--months after, I

think--I’d insist on going out on the verandah at dusk and calling for

the children. I’d stand there and call “Maggie!” and “Wally!” until

Walter took me inside; sometimes he had to force me inside. Poor Walter!

But of course I didn’t know about the fairies then, Mr Ellis. I was

really out of my mind for a time.’

‘No wonder you were, Mrs Head,’ I said. ‘It was terrible trouble.’

‘Yes, and I made it worse. I was so selfish in my trouble. But it’s all

right now, Walter,’ she said, rumpling the Boss’s hair. ‘I’ll never be

so foolish again.’

‘Of course you won’t, Maggie.’

‘We’re very happy now, aren’t we, Walter?’

‘Of course we are, Maggie.’

‘And the children are coming back next year.’

‘Next year, Maggie.’

He leaned over the fire and stirred it up.

‘You mustn’t take any notice of us, Mr Ellis,’ she went on. ‘Poor Walter

is away so much that I’m afraid I make a little too much of him when he

does come home.’

She paused and pressed her fingers to her temples again. Then she said

quickly--

‘They used to tell me that it was all nonsense about the fairies, but

they were no friends of mine. I shouldn’t have listened to them, Walter.

You told me not to. But then I was really not in my right mind.’

‘Who used to tell you that, Mrs Head?’ I asked.

‘The Voices,’ she said; ‘you know about the Voices, Walter?’

‘Yes, Maggie. But you don’t hear the Voices now, Maggie?’ he asked

anxiously. ‘You haven’t heard them since I’ve been away this time, have

you, Maggie?’

‘No, Walter. They’ve gone away a long time. I hear voices now sometimes,

but they’re the Bush Fairies’ voices. I hear them calling Maggie and

Wally to come with them.’ She paused again. ‘And sometimes I think I

hear them call me. But of course I couldn’t go away without you, Walter.

But I’m foolish again. I was going to ask you about the other voices, Mr

Ellis. They used to say that it was madness about the fairies; but then,

if the fairies hadn’t taken the children, Black Jimmy, or the black

trackers with the police, could have tracked and found them at once.’

‘Of course they could, Mrs Head,’ I said.

‘They said that the trackers couldn’t track them because there was rain

a few hours after the children were lost. But that was ridiculous. It

was only a thunderstorm.’

‘Why!’ I said, ‘I’ve known the blacks to track a man after a week’s

heavy rain.’

She had her head between her fingers again, and when she looked up it

was in a scared way.

‘Oh, Walter!’ she said, clutching the Boss’s arm; ‘whatever have I been

talking about? What must Mr Ellis think of me? Oh! why did you let me

talk like that?’

He put his arm round her. Andy nudged me and got up.

‘Where are you going, Mr Ellis?’ she asked hurriedly. ‘You’re not going

to-night. Auntie’s made a bed for you in Andy’s room. You mustn’t mind

me.’

‘Jack and Andy are going out for a little while,’ said the Boss.

‘They’ll be in to supper. We’ll have a yarn, Maggie.’

‘Be sure you come back to supper, Mr Ellis,’ she said. ‘I really don’t

know what you must think of me,--I’ve been talking all the time.’

‘Oh, I’ve enjoyed myself, Mrs Head,’ I said; and Andy hooked me out.

‘She’ll have a good cry and be better now,’ said Andy when we got away

from the house. ‘She might be better for months. She has been fairly

reasonable for over a year, but the Boss found her pretty bad when he

came back this time. It upset him a lot, I can tell you. She has turns

now and again, and always ends up like she did just now. She gets a

longing to talk about it to a Bushman and a stranger; it seems to do her

good. The doctor’s against it, but doctors don’t know everything.’

‘It’s all true about the children, then?’ I asked.

‘It’s cruel true,’ said Andy.

‘And were the bodies never found?’

‘Yes;’ then, after a long pause, ‘I found them.’

‘You did!’

‘Yes; in the scrub, and not so very far from home either--and in a

fairly clear space. It’s a wonder the search-parties missed it; but it

often happens that way. Perhaps the little ones wandered a long way and

came round in a circle. I found them about two months after they were

lost. They had to be found, if only for the Boss’s sake. You see, in

a case like this, and when the bodies aren’t found, the parents never

quite lose the idea that the little ones are wandering about the Bush

to-night (it might be years after) and perishing from hunger, thirst,

or cold. That mad idea haunts ‘em all their lives. It’s the same, I

believe, with friends drowned at sea. Friends ashore are haunted for a

long while with the idea of the white sodden corpse tossing about and

drifting round in the water.’

‘And you never told Mrs Head about the children being found?’

‘Not for a long time. It wouldn’t have done any good. She was raving

mad for months. He took her to Sydney and then to Melbourne--to the best

doctors he could find in Australia. They could do no good, so he sold

the station--sacrificed everything, and took her to England.’

‘To England?’

‘Yes; and then to Germany to a big German doctor there. He’d offer a

thousand pounds where they only wanted fifty. It was no good. She

got worse in England, and raved to go back to Australia and find the

children. The doctors advised him to take her back, and he did. He spent

all his money, travelling saloon, and with reserved cabins, and a

nurse, and trying to get her cured; that’s why he’s droving now. She was

restless in Sydney. She wanted to go back to the station and wait there

till the fairies brought the children home. She’d been getting the fairy

idea into her head slowly all the time. The Boss encouraged it. But the

station was sold, and he couldn’t have lived there anyway without going

mad himself. He’d married her from Bathurst. Both of them have got

friends and relations here, so he thought best to bring her here. He

persuaded her that the fairies were going to bring the children here.

Everybody’s very kind to them. I think it’s a mistake to run away from a

town where you’re known, in a case like this, though most people do it.

It was years before he gave up hope. I think he has hopes yet--after

she’s been fairly well for a longish time.’

‘And you never tried telling her that the children were found?’

‘Yes; the Boss did. The little ones were buried on the Lachlan river at

first; but the Boss got a horror of having them buried in the Bush, so

he had them brought to Sydney and buried in the Waverley Cemetery near

the sea. He bought the ground, and room for himself and Maggie when they

go out. It’s all the ground he owns in wide Australia, and once he had

thousands of acres. He took her to the grave one day. The doctors were

against it; but he couldn’t rest till he tried it. He took her out, and

explained it all to her. She scarcely seemed interested. She read the

names on the stone, and said it was a nice stone, and asked questions

about how the children were found and brought here. She seemed quite

sensible, and very cool about it. But when he got her home she was back

on the fairy idea again. He tried another day, but it was no use; so

then he let it be. I think it’s better as it is. Now and again, at her

best, she seems to understand that the children were found dead, and

buried, and she’ll talk sensibly about it, and ask questions in a quiet

way, and make him promise to take her to Sydney to see the grave

next time he’s down. But it doesn’t last long, and she’s always worse

afterwards.’

We turned into a bar and had a beer. It was a very quiet drink. Andy

‘shouted’ in his turn, and while I was drinking the second beer a

thought struck me.

‘The Boss was away when the children were lost?’

‘Yes,’ said Andy.

‘Strange you couldn’t find him.’

‘Yes, it was strange; but HE’LL have to tell you about that. Very likely

he will; it’s either all or nothing with him.’

‘I feel damned sorry for the Boss,’ I said.

‘You’d be sorrier if you knew all,’ said Andy. ‘It’s the worst trouble

that can happen to a man. It’s like living with the dead. It’s--it’s

like a man living with his dead wife.’

When we went home supper was ready. We found Mrs Head, bright and

cheerful, bustling round. You’d have thought her one of the happiest and

brightest little women in Australia. Not a word about children or the

fairies. She knew the Bush, and asked me all about my trips. She told

some good Bush stories too. It was the pleasantest hour I’d spent for a

long time.

‘Good night, Mr Ellis,’ she said brightly, shaking hands with me when

Andy and I were going to turn in. ‘And don’t forget your pipe. Here it

is! I know that Bushmen like to have a whiff or two when they turn

in. Walter smokes in bed. I don’t mind. You can smoke all night if you

like.’

‘She seems all right,’ I said to Andy when we were in our room.

He shook his head mournfully. We’d left the door ajar, and we could hear

the Boss talking to her quietly. Then we heard her speak; she had a very

clear voice.

‘Yes, I’ll tell you the truth, Walter. I’ve been deceiving you, Walter,

all the time, but I did it for the best. Don’t be angry with me, Walter!

The Voices did come back while you were away. Oh, how I longed for you

to come back! They haven’t come since you’ve been home, Walter. You

must stay with me a while now. Those awful Voices kept calling me, and

telling me lies about the children, Walter! They told me to kill myself;

they told me it was all my own fault--that I killed the children. They

said I was a drag on you, and they’d laugh--Ha! ha! ha!--like that.

They’d say, “Come on, Maggie; come on, Maggie.” They told me to come to

the river, Walter.’

Andy closed the door. His face was very miserable.

We turned in, and I can tell you I enjoyed a soft white bed after months

and months of sleeping out at night, between watches, on the hard ground

or the sand, or at best on a few boughs when I wasn’t too tired to pull

them down, and my saddle for a pillow.

But the story of the children haunted me for an hour or two. I’ve never

since quite made up my mind as to why the Boss took me home. Probably

he really did think it would do his wife good to talk to a stranger;

perhaps he wanted me to understand--maybe he was weakening as he grew

older, and craved for a new word or hand-grip of sympathy now and then.

When I did get to sleep I could have slept for three or four days, but

Andy roused me out about four o’clock. The old woman that they called

Auntie was up and had a good breakfast of eggs and bacon and coffee

ready in the detached kitchen at the back. We moved about on tiptoe and

had our breakfast quietly.

‘The wife made me promise to wake her to see to our breakfast and say

Good-bye to you; but I want her to sleep this morning, Jack,’ said the

Boss. ‘I’m going to walk down as far as the station with you. She made

up a parcel of fruit and sandwiches for you and Andy. Don’t forget it.’

Andy went on ahead. The Boss and I walked down the wide silent street,

which was also the main road; and we walked two or three hundred yards

without speaking. He didn’t seem sociable this morning, or any way

sentimental; when he did speak it was something about the cattle.

But I had to speak; I felt a swelling and rising up in my chest, and at

last I made a swallow and blurted out--

‘Look here, Boss, old chap! I’m damned sorry!’

Our hands came together and gripped. The ghostly Australian daybreak was

over the Bathurst plains.

We went on another hundred yards or so, and then the Boss said quietly--

‘I was away when the children were lost, Jack. I used to go on a howling

spree every six or nine months. Maggie never knew. I’d tell her I had to

go to Sydney on business, or Out-Back to look after some stock. When

the children were lost, and for nearly a fortnight after, I was beastly

drunk in an out-of-the-way shanty in the Bush--a sly grog-shop. The old

brute that kept it was too true to me. He thought that the story of the

lost children was a trick to get me home, and he swore that he hadn’t

seen me. He never told me. I could have found those children, Jack. They

were mostly new chums and fools about the run, and not one of the three

policemen was a Bushman. I knew those scrubs better than any man in the

country.’

I reached for his hand again, and gave it a grip. That was all I could

do for him.

‘Good-bye, Jack!’ he said at the door of the brake-van. ‘Good-bye,

Andy!--keep those bullocks on their feet.’

The cattle-train went on towards the Blue Mountains. Andy and I sat

silent for a while, watching the guard fry three eggs on a plate over a

coal-stove in the centre of the van.

‘Does the boss never go to Sydney?’ I asked.

‘Very seldom,’ said Andy, ‘and then only when he has to, on business.

When he finishes his business with the stock agents, he takes a run out

to Waverley Cemetery perhaps, and comes home by the next train.’

After a while I said, ‘He told me about the drink, Andy--about his being

on the spree when the children were lost.’

‘Well, Jack,’ said Andy, ‘that’s the thing that’s been killing him ever

since, and it happened over ten years ago.’

A Bush Dance.

‘Tap, tap, tap, tap.’

The little schoolhouse and residence in the scrub was lighted brightly

in the midst of the ‘close’, solid blackness of that moonless December

night, when the sky and stars were smothered and suffocated by drought

haze.

It was the evening of the school children’s ‘Feast’. That is to say that

the children had been sent, and ‘let go’, and the younger ones ‘fetched’

through the blazing heat to the school, one day early in the holidays,

and raced--sometimes in couples tied together by the legs--and caked,

and bunned, and finally improved upon by the local Chadband, and got

rid of. The schoolroom had been cleared for dancing, the maps rolled and

tied, the desks and blackboards stacked against the wall outside. Tea

was over, and the trestles and boards, whereon had been spread better

things than had been provided for the unfortunate youngsters, had been

taken outside to keep the desks and blackboards company.

On stools running end to end along one side of the room sat about twenty

more or less blooming country girls of from fifteen to twenty odd.

On the rest of the stools, running end to end along the other wall, sat

about twenty more or less blooming chaps.

It was evident that something was seriously wrong. None of the girls

spoke above a hushed whisper. None of the men spoke above a hushed oath.

Now and again two or three sidled out, and if you had followed them you

would have found that they went outside to listen hard into the darkness

and to swear.

‘Tap, tap, tap.’

The rows moved uneasily, and some of the girls turned pale faces

nervously towards the side-door, in the direction of the sound.

‘Tap--tap.’

The tapping came from the kitchen at the rear of the teacher’s

residence, and was uncomfortably suggestive of a coffin being made: it

was also accompanied by a sickly, indescribable odour--more like that of

warm cheap glue than anything else.

In the schoolroom was a painful scene of strained listening. Whenever

one of the men returned from outside, or put his head in at the door,

all eyes were fastened on him in the flash of a single eye, and then

withdrawn hopelessly. At the sound of a horse’s step all eyes and ears

were on the door, till some one muttered, ‘It’s only the horses in the

paddock.’

Some of the girls’ eyes began to glisten suspiciously, and at last the

belle of the party--a great, dark-haired, pink-and-white Blue Mountain

girl, who had been sitting for a full minute staring before her, with

blue eyes unnaturally bright, suddenly covered her face with her hands,

rose, and started blindly from the room, from which she was steered in

a hurry by two sympathetic and rather ‘upset’ girl friends, and as she

passed out she was heard sobbing hysterically--

‘Oh, I can’t help it! I did want to dance! It’s a sh-shame! I can’t help

it! I--I want to dance! I rode twenty miles to dance--and--and I want to

dance!’

A tall, strapping young Bushman rose, without disguise, and followed the

girl out. The rest began to talk loudly of stock, dogs, and horses, and

other Bush things; but above their voices rang out that of the girl from

the outside--being man comforted--

‘I can’t help it, Jack! I did want to dance! I--I had such--such--a

job--to get mother--and--and father to let me come--and--and now!’

The two girl friends came back. ‘He sez to leave her to him,’ they

whispered, in reply to an interrogatory glance from the schoolmistress.

‘It’s--it’s no use, Jack!’ came the voice of grief. ‘You don’t know

what--what father and mother--is. I--I won’t--be able--to ge-get

away--again--for--for--not till I’m married, perhaps.’

The schoolmistress glanced uneasily along the row of girls. ‘I’ll take

her into my room and make her lie down,’ she whispered to her sister,

who was staying with her. ‘She’ll start some of the other girls

presently--it’s just the weather for it,’ and she passed out quietly.

That schoolmistress was a woman of penetration.

A final ‘tap-tap’ from the kitchen; then a sound like the squawk of a

hurt or frightened child, and the faces in the room turned quickly in

that direction and brightened. But there came a bang and a sound like

‘damn!’ and hopelessness settled down.

A shout from the outer darkness, and most of the men and some of the

girls rose and hurried out. Fragments of conversation heard in the

darkness--

‘It’s two horses, I tell you!’

‘It’s three, you----!’

‘Lay you----!’

‘Put the stuff up!’

A clack of gate thrown open.

‘Who is it, Tom?’

Voices from gatewards, yelling, ‘Johnny Mears! They’ve got Johnny

Mears!’

Then rose yells, and a cheer such as is seldom heard in scrub-lands.

Out in the kitchen long Dave Regan grabbed, from the far side of the

table, where he had thrown it, a burst and battered concertina, which

he had been for the last hour vainly trying to patch and make air-tight;

and, holding it out towards the back-door, between his palms, as a

football is held, he let it drop, and fetched it neatly on the toe of

his riding-boot. It was a beautiful kick, the concertina shot out into

the blackness, from which was projected, in return, first a short,

sudden howl, then a face with one eye glaring and the other covered by

an enormous brick-coloured hand, and a voice that wanted to know who

shot ‘that lurid loaf of bread?’

But from the schoolroom was heard the loud, free voice of Joe Matthews,

M.C.,--

‘Take yer partners! Hurry up! Take yer partners! They’ve got Johnny

Mears with his fiddle!’

The Buck-Jumper.

Saturday afternoon.

There were about a dozen Bush natives, from anywhere, most of them lanky

and easy-going, hanging about the little slab-and-bark hotel on the

edge of the scrub at Capertee Camp (a teamster’s camp) when Cob & Co.’s

mail-coach and six came dashing down the siding from round Crown Ridge,

in all its glory, to the end of the twelve-mile stage. Some wiry,

ill-used hacks were hanging to the fence and to saplings about the

place. The fresh coach-horses stood ready in a stock-yard close to the

shanty. As the coach climbed the nearer bank of the creek at the foot of

the ridge, six of the Bushmen detached themselves from verandah posts,

from their heels, from the clay floor of the verandah and the rough slab

wall against which they’d been resting, and joined a group of four or

five who stood round one. He stood with his back to the corner post

of the stock-yard, his feet well braced out in front of him, and

contemplated the toes of his tight new ‘lastic-side boots and whistled

softly. He was a clean-limbed, handsome fellow, with riding-cords,

leggings, and a blue sash; he was Graeco-Roman-nosed, blue-eyed, and

his glossy, curly black hair bunched up in front of the brim of a new

cabbage-tree hat, set well back on his head.

‘Do it for a quid, Jack?’ asked one.

‘Damned if I will, Jim!’ said the young man at the post. ‘I’ll do it for

a fiver--not a blanky sprat less.’

Jim took off his hat and ‘shoved’ it round, and ‘bobs’ were ‘chucked’

into it. The result was about thirty shillings.

Jack glanced contemptuously into the crown of the hat.

‘Not me!’ he said, showing some emotion for the first time. ‘D’yer think

I’m going to risk me blanky neck for your blanky amusement for thirty

blanky bob. I’ll ride the blanky horse for a fiver, and I’ll feel the

blanky quids in my pocket before I get on.’

Meanwhile the coach had dashed up to the door of the shanty. There

were about twenty passengers aboard--inside, on the box-seat, on the

tail-board, and hanging on to the roof--most of them Sydney men going up

to the Mudgee races. They got down and went inside with the driver for

a drink, while the stablemen changed horses. The Bushmen raised their

voices a little and argued.

One of the passengers was a big, stout, hearty man--a good-hearted,

sporting man and a racehorse-owner, according to his brands. He had

a round red face and a white cork hat. ‘What’s those chaps got on

outside?’ he asked the publican.

‘Oh, it’s a bet they’ve got on about riding a horse,’ replied the

publican. ‘The flash-looking chap with the sash is Flash Jack, the

horse-breaker; and they reckon they’ve got the champion outlaw in the

district out there--that chestnut horse in the yard.’

The sporting man was interested at once, and went out and joined the

Bushmen.

‘Well, chaps! what have you got on here?’ he asked cheerily.

‘Oh,’ said Jim carelessly, ‘it’s only a bit of a bet about ridin’

that blanky chestnut in the corner of the yard there.’ He indicated an

ungroomed chestnut horse, fenced off by a couple of long sapling poles

in a corner of the stock-yard. ‘Flash Jack there--he reckons he’s the

champion horse-breaker round here--Flash Jack reckons he can take it out

of that horse first try.’

‘What’s up with the horse?’ inquired the big, red-faced man. ‘It looks

quiet enough. Why, I’d ride it myself.’

‘Would yer?’ said Jim, who had hair that stood straight up, and an

innocent, inquiring expression. ‘Looks quiet, does he? YOU ought to know

more about horses than to go by the looks of ‘em. He’s quiet enough just

now, when there’s no one near him; but you should have been here an

hour ago. That horse has killed two men and put another chap’s shoulder

out--besides breaking a cove’s leg. It took six of us all the morning to

run him in and get the saddle on him; and now Flash Jack wants to back

out of it.’

‘Euraliar!’ remarked Flash Jack cheerfully. ‘I said I’d ride that blanky

horse out of the yard for a fiver. I ain’t goin’ to risk my blanky neck

for nothing and only to amuse you blanks.’

‘He said he’d ride the horse inside the yard for a quid,’ said Jim.

‘And get smashed against the rails!’ said Flash Jack. ‘I would be a

fool. I’d rather take my chance outside in the scrub--and it’s rough

country round here.’

‘Well, how much do you want?’ asked the man in the mushroom hat.

‘A fiver, I said,’ replied Jack indifferently. ‘And the blanky stuff in

my pocket before I get on the blanky horse.’

‘Are you frightened of us running away without paying you?’ inquired one

of the passengers who had gathered round.

‘I’m frightened of the horse bolting with me without me being paid,’

said Flash Jack. ‘I know that horse; he’s got a mouth like iron. I might

be at the bottom of the cliff on Crown Ridge road in twenty minutes with

my head caved in, and then what chance for the quids?’

‘You wouldn’t want ‘em then,’ suggested a passenger. ‘Or, say!--we’d

leave the fiver with the publican to bury you.’

Flash Jack ignored that passenger. He eyed his boots and softly whistled

a tune.

‘All right!’ said the man in the cork hat, putting his hand in his

pocket. ‘I’ll start with a quid; stump up, you chaps.’

The five pounds were got together.

‘I’ll lay a quid to half a quid he don’t stick on ten minutes!’ shouted

Jim to his mates as soon as he saw that the event was to come off. The

passengers also betted amongst themselves. Flash Jack, after putting the

money in his breeches-pocket, let down the rails and led the horse into

the middle of the yard.

‘Quiet as an old cow!’ snorted a passenger in disgust. ‘I believe it’s a

sell!’

‘Wait a bit,’ said Jim to the passenger, ‘wait a bit and you’ll see.’

They waited and saw.

Flash Jack leisurely mounted the horse, rode slowly out of the yard, and

trotted briskly round the corner of the shanty and into the scrub, which

swallowed him more completely than the sea might have done.

Most of the other Bushmen mounted their horses and followed Flash Jack

to a clearing in the scrub, at a safe distance from the shanty; then

they dismounted and hung on to saplings, or leaned against their horses,

while they laughed.

At the hotel there was just time for another drink. The driver climbed

to his seat and shouted, ‘All aboard!’ in his usual tone. The passengers

climbed to their places, thinking hard. A mile or so along the road the

man with the cork hat remarked, with much truth--

‘Those blanky Bushmen have got too much time to think.’

*****

The Bushmen returned to the shanty as soon as the coach was out of

sight, and proceeded to ‘knock down’ the fiver.

Jimmy Grimshaw’s Wooing.

The Half-way House at Tinned Dog (Out-Back in Australia) kept Daniel

Myers--licensed to retail spirituous and fermented liquors--in drink and

the horrors for upward of five years, at the end of which time he lay

hidden for weeks in a back skillion, an object which no decent man would

care to see--or hear when it gave forth sound. ‘Good accommodation

for man and beast’; but few shanties save his own might, for a

consideration, have accommodated the sort of beast which the man Myers

had become towards the end of his career. But at last the eccentric Bush

doctor, ‘Doc’ Wild’ (who perhaps could drink as much as Myers without

its having any further effect upon his temperament than to keep him

awake and cynical), pronounced the publican dead enough to be buried

legally; so the widow buried him, had the skillion cleaned out, and the

sign altered to read, ‘Margaret Myers, licensed, &c.’, and continued to

conduct the pub. just as she had run it for over five years, with the

joyful and blessed exception that there was no longer a human pig and

pigstye attached, and that the atmosphere was calm. Most of the regular

patrons of the Half-way House could have their horrors decently, and,

comparatively, quietly--or otherwise have them privately--in the Big

Scrub adjacent; but Myers had not been one of that sort.

Mrs Myers settled herself to enjoy life comfortably and happily, at

the fixed age of thirty-nine, for the next seven years or so. She was

a pleasant-faced dumpling, who had been baked solid in the droughts of

Out-Back without losing her good looks, and had put up with a hard life,

and Myers, all those years without losing her good humour and nature.

Probably, had her husband been the opposite kind of man, she would have

been different--haggard, bad-tempered, and altogether impossible--for

of such is woman. But then it might be taken into consideration that she

had been practically a widow during at least the last five years of her

husband’s alleged life.

Mrs Myers was reckoned a good catch in the district, but it soon seemed

that she was not to be caught.

‘It would be a grand thing,’ one of the periodical boozers of Tinned Dog

would say to his mates, ‘for one of us to have his name up on a pub.; it

would save a lot of money.’

‘It wouldn’t save you anything, Bill, if I got it,’ was the retort. ‘You

needn’t come round chewing my lug then. I’d give you one drink and no

more.’

The publican at Dead Camel, station managers, professional shearers,

even one or two solvent squatters and promising cockatoos, tried their

luck in vain. In answer to the suggestion that she ought to have a man

to knock round and look after things, she retorted that she had had one,

and was perfectly satisfied. Few trav’lers on those tracks but tried

‘a bit of bear-up’ in that direction, but all to no purpose. Chequemen

knocked down their cheques manfully at the Half-way House--to get

courage and goodwill and ‘put it off’ till, at the last moment, they

offered themselves abjectly to the landlady; which was worse than bad

judgment on their part--it was very silly, and she told them so.

One or two swore off, and swore to keep straight; but she had no faith

in them, and when they found that out, it hurt their feelings so much

that they ‘broke out’ and went on record-breaking sprees.

About the end of each shearing the sign was touched up, with an extra

coat of paint on the ‘Margaret’, whereat suitors looked hopeless.

One or two of the rejected died of love in the horrors in the Big

Scrub--anyway, the verdict was that they died of love aggravated by the

horrors. But the climax was reached when a Queensland shearer, seizing

the opportunity when the mate, whose turn it was to watch him, fell

asleep, went down to the yard and hanged himself on the butcher’s

gallows--having first removed his clothes, with some drink-lurid idea of

leaving the world as naked as he came into it. He climbed the pole, sat

astride on top, fixed the rope to neck and bar, but gave a yell--a yell

of drunken triumph--before he dropped, and woke his mates.

They cut him down and brought him to. Next day he apologised to Mrs

Myers, said, ‘Ah, well! So long!’ to the rest, and departed--cured of

drink and love apparently. The verdict was that the blanky fool should

have dropped before he yelled; but she was upset and annoyed, and it

began to look as though, if she wished to continue to live on happily

and comfortably for a few years longer at the fixed age of thirty-nine,

she would either have to give up the pub. or get married.

Her fame was carried far and wide, and she became a woman whose name was

mentioned with respect in rough shearing-sheds and huts, and round the

camp-fire.

About thirty miles south of Tinned Dog one James Grimshaw,

widower--otherwise known as ‘Old Jimmy’, though he was little past

middle age--had a small selection which he had worked, let, given up,

and tackled afresh (with sinews of war drawn from fencing contracts)

ever since the death of his young wife some fifteen years agone. He was

a practical, square-faced, clean-shaven, clean, and tidy man, with a

certain ‘cleanness’ about the shape of his limbs which suggested the

old jockey or hostler. There were two strong theories in connection with

Jimmy--one was that he had had a university education, and the other

that he couldn’t write his own name. Not nearly such a ridiculous nor

simple case Out-Back as it might seem.

Jimmy smoked and listened without comment to the ‘heard tells’ in

connection with Mrs Myers, till at last one night, at the end of his

contract and over a last pipe, he said quietly, ‘I’ll go up to Tinned

Dog next week and try my luck.’

His mates and the casual Jims and Bills were taken too suddenly to

laugh, and the laugh having been lost, as Bland Holt, the Australian

actor would put it in a professional sense, the audience had time to

think, with the result that the joker swung his hand down through an

imaginary table and exclaimed--

‘By God! Jimmy’ll do it.’ (Applause.)

*****

So one drowsy afternoon at the time of the year when the breathless day

runs on past 7 P.M., Mrs Myers sat sewing in the bar parlour, when a

clean-shaved, clean-shirted, clean-neckerchiefed, clean-moleskinned,

greased-bluchered--altogether a model or stage swagman came up, was

served in the bar by the half-caste female cook, and took his way to the

river-bank, where he rigged a small tent and made a model camp.

A couple of hours later he sat on a stool on the verandah, smoking a

clean clay pipe. Just before the sunset meal Mrs Myers asked, ‘Is that

trav’ler there yet, Mary?’

‘Yes, missus. Clean pfellar that.’

The landlady knitted her forehead over her sewing, as women do when

limited for ‘stuff’ or wondering whether a section has been cut

wrong--or perhaps she thought of that other who hadn’t been a ‘clean

pfellar’. She put her work aside, and stood in the doorway, looking out

across the clearing.

‘Good-day, mister,’ she said, seeming to become aware of him for the

first time.

‘Good-day, missus!’

‘Hot!’

‘Hot!’

Pause.

‘Trav’lin’?’

‘No, not particular!’

She waited for him to explain. Myers was always explaining when he

wasn’t raving. But the swagman smoked on.

‘Have a drink?’ she suggested, to keep her end up.

‘No, thank you, missus. I had one an hour or so ago. I never take more

than two a-day--one before breakfast, if I can get it, and a night-cap.’

What a contrast to Myers! she thought.

‘Come and have some tea; it’s ready.’

‘Thank you. I don’t mind if I do.’

They got on very slowly, but comfortably. She got little out of him

except the facts that he had a selection, had finished a contract,

and was ‘just having a look at the country.’ He politely declined a

‘shake-down’, saying he had a comfortable camp, and preferred being out

this weather. She got his name with a ‘by-the-way’, as he rose to leave,

and he went back to camp.

He caught a cod, and they had it for breakfast next morning, and

got along so comfortable over breakfast that he put in the forenoon

pottering about the gates and stable with a hammer, a saw, and a box of

nails.

And, well--to make it short--when the big Tinned Dog shed had cut-out,

and the shearers struck the Half-way House, they were greatly impressed

by a brand-new sign whereon glistened the words--

HALF-WAY HOUSE HOTEL,

BY

JAMES GRIMSHAW.

Good Stabling.

The last time I saw Mrs Grimshaw she looked about thirty-five.

At Dead Dingo.

It was blazing hot outside and smothering hot inside the weather-board

and iron shanty at Dead Dingo, a place on the Cleared Road, where

there was a pub. and a police-station, and which was sometimes called

‘Roasted’, and other times ‘Potted Dingo’--nicknames suggested by the

everlasting drought and the vicinity of the one-pub. township of Tinned

Dog.

From the front verandah the scene was straight-cleared road, running

right and left to Out-Back, and to Bourke (and ankle-deep in the red

sand dust for perhaps a hundred miles); the rest blue-grey bush, dust,

and the heat-wave blazing across every object.

There were only four in the bar-room, though it was New Year’s Day.

There weren’t many more in the county. The girl sat behind the bar--the

coolest place in the shanty--reading ‘Deadwood Dick’. On a worn and torn

and battered horse-hair sofa, which had seen cooler places and better

days, lay an awful and healthy example, a bearded swagman, with his arms

twisted over his head and his face to the wall, sleeping off the death

of the dead drunk. Bill and Jim--shearer and rouseabout--sat at a table

playing cards. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, and they had

been gambling since nine--and the greater part of the night before--so

they were, probably, in a worse condition morally (and perhaps

physically) than the drunken swagman on the sofa.

Close under the bar, in a dangerous place for his legs and tail, lay a

sheep-dog with a chain attached to his collar and wound round his neck.

Presently a thump on the table, and Bill, unlucky gambler, rose with an

oath that would have been savage if it hadn’t been drawled.

‘Stumped?’ inquired Jim.

‘Not a blanky, lurid deener!’ drawled Bill.

Jim drew his reluctant hands from the cards, his eyes went slowly and

hopelessly round the room and out the door. There was something in the

eyes of both, except when on the card-table, of the look of a man waking

in a strange place.

‘Got anything?’ asked Jim, fingering the cards again.

Bill sucked in his cheeks, collecting the saliva with difficulty, and

spat out on to the verandah floor.

‘That’s all I got,’ he drawled. ‘It’s gone now.’

Jim leaned back in his chair, twisted, yawned, and caught sight of the

dog.

‘That there dog yours?’ he asked, brightening.

They had evidently been strangers the day before, or as strange to each

other as Bushmen can be.

Bill scratched behind his ear, and blinked at the dog. The dog woke

suddenly to a flea fact.

‘Yes,’ drawled Bill, ‘he’s mine.’

‘Well, I’m going Out-Back, and I want a dog,’ said Jim, gathering the

cards briskly. ‘Half a quid agin the dog?’

‘Half a quid be----!’ drawled Bill. ‘Call it a quid?’

‘Half a blanky quid!’

‘A gory, lurid quid!’ drawled Bill desperately, and he stooped over his

swag.

But Jim’s hands were itching in a ghastly way over the cards.

‘Alright. Call it a---- quid.’

The drunkard on the sofa stirred, showed signs of waking, but died

again. Remember this, it might come in useful.

Bill sat down to the table once more.

Jim rose first, winner of the dog. He stretched, yawned ‘Ah, well!’ and

shouted drinks. Then he shouldered his swag, stirred the dog up with his

foot, unwound the chain, said ‘Ah, well--so long!’ and drifted out and

along the road toward Out-Back, the dog following with head and tail

down.

Bill scored another drink on account of girl-pity for bad luck,

shouldered his swag, said, ‘So long, Mary!’ and drifted out and along

the road towards Tinned Dog, on the Bourke side.

*****

A long, drowsy, half hour passed--the sort of half hour that is as long

as an hour in the places where days are as long as years, and years hold

about as much as days do in other places.

The man on the sofa woke with a start, and looked scared and wild for a

moment; then he brought his dusty broken boots to the floor, rested his

elbows on his knees, took his unfortunate head between his hands, and

came back to life gradually.

He lifted his head, looked at the girl across the top of the bar, and

formed with his lips, rather than spoke, the words--

‘Put up a drink?’ *

* ‘Put up a drink’--i.e., ‘Give me a drink on credit’, or

‘Chalk it up’.

She shook her head tightly and went on reading.

He staggered up, and, leaning on the bar, made desperate distress

signals with hand, eyes, and mouth.

‘No!’ she snapped. ‘I means no when I says no! You’ve had too many last

drinks already, and the boss says you ain’t to have another. If you

swear again, or bother me, I’ll call him.’

He hung sullenly on the counter for a while, then lurched to his

swag, and shouldered it hopelessly and wearily. Then he blinked round,

whistled, waited a moment, went on to the front verandah, peered round,

through the heat, with bloodshot eyes, and whistled again. He turned and

started through to the back-door.

‘What the devil do you want now?’ demanded the girl, interrupted in her

reading for the third time by him. ‘Stampin’ all over the house. You

can’t go through there! It’s privit! I do wish to goodness you’d git!’

‘Where the blazes is that there dog o’ mine got to?’ he muttered. ‘Did

you see a dog?’

‘No! What do I want with your dog?’

He whistled out in front again, and round each corner. Then he came back

with a decided step and tone.

‘Look here! that there dog was lyin’ there agin the wall when I went

to sleep. He wouldn’t stir from me, or my swag, in a year, if he wasn’t

dragged. He’s been blanky well touched [stolen], and I wouldn’ter lost

him for a fiver. Are you sure you ain’t seen a dog?’ then suddenly, as

the thought struck him: ‘Where’s them two chaps that was playin’ cards

when I wenter sleep?’

‘Why!’ exclaimed the girl, without thinking, ‘there was a dog, now I

come to think of it, but I thought it belonged to one of them chaps.

Anyway, they played for it, and the other chap won it and took it away.’

He stared at her blankly, with thunder gathering in the blankness.

‘What sort of a dog was it?’

Dog described; the chain round the neck settled it.

He scowled at her darkly.

‘Now, look here,’ he said; ‘you’ve allowed gamblin’ in this bar--your

boss has. You’ve got no right to let spielers gamble away a man’s dog.

Is a customer to lose his dog every time he has a doze to suit your

boss? I’ll go straight across to the police camp and put you away, and

I don’t care if you lose your licence. I ain’t goin’ to lose my dog. I

wouldn’ter taken a ten-pound note for that blanky dog! I----’

She was filling a pewter hastily.

‘Here! for God’s sake have a drink an’ stop yer row.’

He drank with satisfaction. Then he hung on the bar with one elbow and

scowled out the door.

‘Which blanky way did them chaps go?’ he growled.

‘The one that took the dog went towards Tinned Dog.’

‘And I’ll haveter go all the blanky way back after him, and most likely

lose me shed! Here!’ jerking the empty pewter across the bar, ‘fill that

up again; I’m narked properly, I am, and I’ll take twenty-four blanky

hours to cool down now. I wouldn’ter lost that dog for twenty quid.’

He drank again with deeper satisfaction, then he shuffled out,

muttering, swearing, and threatening louder every step, and took the

track to Tinned Dog.

*****

Now the man, girl, or woman, who told me this yarn has never quite

settled it in his or her mind as to who really owned the dog. I leave it

to you.

Telling Mrs Baker.

Most Bushmen who hadn’t ‘known Bob Baker to speak to’, had ‘heard tell

of him’. He’d been a squatter, not many years before, on the Macquarie

river in New South Wales, and had made money in the good seasons, and

had gone in for horse-racing and racehorse-breeding, and long trips to

Sydney, where he put up at swell hotels and went the pace. So after a

pretty severe drought, when the sheep died by thousands on his runs, Bob

Baker went under, and the bank took over his station and put a manager

in charge.

He’d been a jolly, open-handed, popular man, which means that he’d been

a selfish man as far as his wife and children were concerned, for

they had to suffer for it in the end. Such generosity is often born of

vanity, or moral cowardice, or both mixed. It’s very nice to hear the

chaps sing ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’, but you’ve mostly got to pay

for it twice--first in company, and afterwards alone. I once heard the

chaps singing that I was a jolly good fellow, when I was leaving a place

and they were giving me a send-off. It thrilled me, and brought a warm

gush to my eyes; but, all the same, I wished I had half the money I’d

lent them, and spent on ‘em, and I wished I’d used the time I’d wasted

to be a jolly good fellow.

When I first met Bob Baker he was a boss-drover on the great

north-western route, and his wife lived at the township of Solong on

the Sydney side. He was going north to new country round by the Gulf of

Carpentaria, with a big mob of cattle, on a two years’ trip; and I and

my mate, Andy M’Culloch, engaged to go with him. We wanted to have a

look at the Gulf Country.

After we had crossed the Queensland border it seemed to me that the Boss

was too fond of going into wayside shanties and town pubs. Andy had been

with him on another trip, and he told me that the Boss was only going

this way lately. Andy knew Mrs Baker well, and seemed to think a deal of

her. ‘She’s a good little woman,’ said Andy. ‘One of the right stuff. I

worked on their station for a while when I was a nipper, and I know.

She was always a damned sight too good for the Boss, but she believed in

him. When I was coming away this time she says to me, “Look here, Andy,

I’m afraid Robert is drinking again. Now I want you to look after him

for me, as much as you can--you seem to have as much influence with him

as any one. I want you to promise me that you’ll never have a drink with

him.”

‘And I promised,’ said Andy, ‘and I’ll keep my word.’ Andy was a chap

who could keep his word, and nothing else. And, no matter how the Boss

persuaded, or sneered, or swore at him, Andy would never drink with him.

It got worse and worse: the Boss would ride on ahead and get drunk at a

shanty, and sometimes he’d be days behind us; and when he’d catch up to

us his temper would be just about as much as we could stand. At last he

went on a howling spree at Mulgatown, about a hundred and fifty miles

north of the border, and, what was worse, he got in tow with a flash

barmaid there--one of those girls who are engaged, by the publicans up

country, as baits for chequemen.

He went mad over that girl. He drew an advance cheque from the

stock-owner’s agent there, and knocked that down; then he raised some

more money somehow, and spent that--mostly on the girl.

We did all we could. Andy got him along the track for a couple of

stages, and just when we thought he was all right, he slipped us in the

night and went back.

We had two other men with us, but had the devil’s own bother on account

of the cattle. It was a mixed-up job all round. You see it was all big

runs round there, and we had to keep the bullocks moving along the route

all the time, or else get into trouble for trespass. The agent wasn’t

going to go to the expense of putting the cattle in a paddock until

the Boss sobered up; there was very little grass on the route or the

travelling-stock reserves or camps, so we had to keep travelling for

grass.

The world might wobble and all the banks go bung, but the cattle have

to go through--that’s the law of the stock-routes. So the agent wired

to the owners, and, when he got their reply, he sacked the Boss and sent

the cattle on in charge of another man. The new Boss was a drover coming

south after a trip; he had his two brothers with him, so he didn’t want

me and Andy; but, anyway, we were full up of this trip, so we arranged,

between the agent and the new Boss, to get most of the wages due to

us--the Boss had drawn some of our stuff and spent it.

We could have started on the back track at once, but, drunk or sober,

mad or sane, good or bad, it isn’t Bush religion to desert a mate in a

hole; and the Boss was a mate of ours; so we stuck to him.

We camped on the creek, outside the town, and kept him in the camp with

us as much as possible, and did all we could for him.

‘How could I face his wife if I went home without him?’ asked Andy, ‘or

any of his old mates?’

The Boss got himself turned out of the pub. where the barmaid was, and

then he’d hang round the other pubs., and get drink somehow, and fight,

and get knocked about. He was an awful object by this time, wild-eyed

and gaunt, and he hadn’t washed or shaved for days.

Andy got the constable in charge of the police station to lock him up

for a night, but it only made him worse: we took him back to the camp

next morning and while our eyes were off him for a few minutes he

slipped away into the scrub, stripped himself naked, and started to hang