Only three weeks before, as we hunted for it through scrub and bush and
creek-bed, the Yellow Hole had been one of our Unknown Waters, tucked
snugly away in an out-of-the-way elbow of creek country, and now we
found it transformed into the life-giving heart of a bustling world of
men and cattle and commerce. Beside it stood the simple camp of the
stockman—a litter of pack-bags, mosquito-nets, and swags; here and there
were scattered the even more simple camps of the black boys; and in the
background, the cumbrous camp of the Chinese drovers reared itself up in
strong contrast to the camps of the bushfolk—two fully equipped tents
for the drovers themselves and a simpler one for their black boys. West
of the Yellow Hole boys were tailing a fine mob of bullocks, and to the
east other “boys” were “holding” a rumbling mob of mixed cattle, and
while Jack and Dan rode here and there shouting orders for the “cutting
out” of the cattle, the Dandy busied himself at the fire, making tea as
a refresher, before getting going in earnest, the only restful, placid,
unoccupied beings in the whole camp being the Chinese drovers. Not made
of the stuff that “lends a hand” in other people’s affairs, they sat in
the shade of their tents and looked on, well pleased that men should
bustle for their advantage. As we rode past the drovers they favoured us
with a sweet smile of welcome, while Dan met us with a chuckle of
delight at the sweetness of their smile, and as Jack took our
horses—amused both at the drovers’ sweetness and Dan’s appreciation of
it—the Dandy greeted us with the news that we had “struck it lucky, as
usual,” and that a cup of tea would be ready in “half a shake.”
Dan also considered we had “struck it lucky,” but from a different point
of view, for he had only just come into camp with the mixed cattle, and
as the bullocks among them more than completed the number required, he
suggested the drovers should take delivery at once, assuring us, as we
drank the tea, that he was just about dead sick of them “little Chinese
darlings.”
The “little Chinese darlings,” inwardly delighted that the Maluka’s
simple trust seemed as guileless as ever, smugly professed themselves
willing to fall in with any arrangement that was pleasing to the white
folk, and as they mounted their horses Dan heaved a sigh of
satisfaction.
But Dan’s satisfaction was premature, for it took time and much
galloping before the “little Chinese darlings” could satisfy themselves
and each other that they had the very finest bullocks procurable in
their mob. A hundred times they changed their minds: rejecting chosen
bullocks, recalling rejected bullocks, and comparing every bullock
accepted with every bullock rejected. Bulk was what they searched
for—plenty for their money, as they judged it, and finally gathered
together a mob of coarse, wide-horned, great-framed beasts, rolling in
fat that would drip off on the road as they travelled in.
“You’d think they’d got ’em together for a boiling-down establishment,
with a bone factory for a side line,” Dan chuckled, secretly pleased
that our best bullocks were left on the run, and, disbanding the
rejected bullocks before “they” could “change their minds again,” he
gathered together the mixed cattle and shut them in the Dandy’s new
yard, to keep them in hand for later branding.
But the “little Chinese darlings” had counted on the use of that yard
for themselves, and finding that their bullocks would have to be
“watched” on camp that night, they stolidly refused to take delivery
before morning, pointing out that should the cattle stampede during the
night, the loss would be ours, not theirs.
“Well, I’m blowed!” Dan chuckled, but the Maluka cared little whether
the papers were signed then or at sun-up; and the drovers, pleased with
getting their way so easily, magnanimously offered to take charge of the
first “watch”—the evening watch—provided that only our horses should be
used, and that Big Jack and Jackeroo and others should lend a hand.
Dan wouldn’t hear of refusing the offer. “Bit of exercise’ll do ’em
good,” he said; and deciding the bullocks would be safe enough with Jack
and Jackeroo, we white folk stretched ourselves in the warm firelight
after supper, and, resting, watched the shadowy mob beyond the camp,
listening to the shoutings and gallopings of the watchers as we chatted.
When a white man watches cattle, if he knows his business he quiets his
mob down and then opens them out gradually, to give them room to lie
down, or ruminate standing without rubbing shoulders with a restless
neighbour, which leaves him little to do beyond riding round
occasionally, to keep his “boys” at their posts, and himself alert and
ready for emergencies. But a Chinaman’s idea of watching cattle is to
wedge them into a solid body, and hold them huddled together like a mob
of frightened sheep, riding incessantly round them and forcing back
every beast that looks as though it might extricate itself from the
tangle, and galloping after any that do escape with screams of anxiety
and impotency.
“Beck! beck!” (back), screamed our drovers, as they galloped after
escaped beasts, flopping and wobbling and gurgling in their saddles like
half-filled water-bags; galloping invariably after the beasts, and
thereby inciting there to further galloping. And “Beck! beck!” shouted
our boys on duty with perfect mimicry of tone and yells of delight at
the impotency of the drovers, galloping always outside the runaways and
bending them back into the mob, flopping and wobbling and gurgling in
their saddles until, in the half light, it was difficult to tell drover
from “boy.” Not detecting the mimicry, the drovers in no way resented
it; the more the boys screamed and galloped in their service the better
pleased they were; while the “boys” were more than satisfied with their
part of the entertainment, Jackeroo and Big Jack particularly enjoying
themselves.
“They’ll have ’em stampeding yet,” Dan said at last growing uneasy, as
more and more cattle escaped, and the mob shifted ground with a rumbling
rattle of hoofs every few minutes. Finally, as the rumbling rattle
threatened to become permanent, a long drawn-out cry of “Ring—ing” from
Big Jack sent Dan and the Quiet Stockman to their saddles. In ten
minutes the hubbub had ceased, Dan’s master-hand having soothed the
irritated beasts; then having opened them out he returned to the camp
fire alone. Jack had gone on duty before his time and sent the “little
Chinese darlings” to bed.
Naturally Dan’s cattle-tussle reminded him of other tussles with ringing
cattle; then the cattle-camp suggesting other cattle-camp yarns, he
settled down to reminiscences until he had us all cold thrills and skin-
creeps, although we were gathered around a blazing fire.
Tale after tale he told of stampedes and of weaners piling up against
fences. Then followed a tale or two of cattle Iying quiet as mice one
minute, and up on their feet crashing over camps the next, then tales of
men being “treed” or “skied,” and tales of scrub-bulls, maddened cow-
mothers, and “pokers.”
“Pokers,” it appears, have a habit of poking out of mobs, grazing
quietly as they edge off until “they’re gone before you miss ’em.” Camps
seem to have some special attraction for pokers, but we learned they
object to interference. Poke round peaceful as cats until “you rile
them,” Dan told us, and then glided into a tale of how a poker “had us
all treed once.”
“Poked in a bit too close for our fancy while we were at supper,” he
explained, “so we slung sticks at him to turn him back to the mob, and
the next minute was making for trees, but as there was only saplings
handy, it would have been a bit awkward for the heavy weights if there
hadn’t have been enough of us to divide his attentions up a bit.” (Dan
was a good six feet, and well set up at that.) “Climbing saplings to get
away from a stag isn’t much of a game,” he added, with a reminiscent
chuckle; “they’re too good at the bending trick. The farther up the
sapling you climb, the nearer you get to the ground.”
Then he favoured us with one of his word-pictures: “There was the
sapling bending like a weeping willow,” he said, “and there was the stag
underneath it, looking up at me and asking if he could do anything for
me, taking a poke at me boot now and then, just to show nothing would be
no bother, and there was me, hanging on to the sapling, and leaning
lovingly over him, telling him not to go hanging round, tiring himself
out on my account; and there was the other chaps—all light
weights—laughing fit to split, safe in their saplings. ’Twasn’t as funny
as it looked, though,” he assured us, finding us unsympathetic, “and
nobody was exactly sorry when one of the lads on duty came along to hear
the fun, and stock-whipped the old poker back to the mob.”
The Maluka and the Dandy soon proved it was nothing to be “treed.”
“Happens every time a beast’s hauled out of a bog, from all accounts,
that being the only thanks you get for hauling ’em out of the mess.”
Then Dan varied the recital with an account of a chap getting skied once
who forgot to choose a tree before beginning the hauling business, and
immediately after froze us into horror again with the details of two
chaps “lying against an old rotten log with a mob of a thousand going
over ’em”; and we were not surprised to hear that when they felt well
enough to sit up they hadn’t enough arithmetic left between ’em to count
their bruises.
After an evening of ghost stories, a creaking door is enough to set
teeth chattering; and after an evening of cattle-yarns, told in a cattle
camp, a snapping twig is enough to set hair lifting; and just as the
most fitting place for ghost stories is an old ruined castle, full of
eerie noises, so there is no place more suited to cattle-camp yarns than
a cattle camp. They need the reality of the camp-fire, the litter of
camp baggage, the rumbling mob of shadowy cattle near at hand, and the
possibilities of the near future—possibilities brought home by the sight
of tethered horses standing saddled and bridled ready “in case of
accidents.”
Fit surroundings add intensity to all tales, just as it added intensity
to my feelings when Dan advised the Maluka to swing our net near a low-
branched tree, pointing out that it would “come in handy for the missus
if she needed it in a hurry.”
I favoured climbing the tree at once, and spending the night in it, but
the men-folk assuring me that I would be “bound to hear them coming,” I
turned in, sure only of one thing, that death may come to the bush-folk
in any form but ennui. Yet so adaptable are we bush-folk to
circumstances that most of that night was oblivion.
At sun-up, the drovers, still sweetly smiling, announced that two
bullocks had strayed during some one’s watch. Not in theirs, they
hastened to assure us, when Dan sniffed scornfully in the background.
But Dan’s scorn turned to blazing wrath, when—the drovers refusing to
replace the “strays” with cows from the mixed cattle in hand, and
refusing also to take delivery of the bullocks, two beasts short—the
musterers had to turn out to gather in a fresh mob of cattle for the
sake of two bullocks. “Just as I was settling down to celebrate Sunday,
too,” Dan growled, as he and Jack rode out of camp.
Forty years out-bush had not been enough to stamp generations of
Sabbath-keeping out of Dan’s blood, although he was not particular which
day of the week was set apart for his Sabbath. “Two in a fortnight” was
all he worried about.
Fortune favouring the musterers, by midday all was peace and order; the
drovers, placid and contented, had retired to their tents once more,
reprieved from taking delivery for another day and night, and after
dinner, as the “boys” tailed the bullocks and mixed cattle on the
outskirts of the camp, to graze them, we settled down to “celebrate our
Sabbath” by resting in the warm, dry shade.
Here and there upon the grassy incline that stretched between the camp
and the Yellow Hole, we settled down each according to his taste; Dan
with his back against a tree trunk and far-reaching legs spread out
before him; the Maluka, Jak [sic], and the Dandy flat upon their backs,
with bent-back folded arms for pillows, and hats drawn over eyes to
shade them from the too dazzling sunlight; dogs, relaxed and spread out,
as near to their master as permitted, and the missus “fixed up” in an
opened-out, bent-back grassy tussock, which had thus been formed into a
luxurious armchair. At the foot of the incline lay the Yellow Hole,
gleaming and glancing in the sunshine; all around and about us were the
bush creatures, rustling in the scrub and grasses—flies were conspicuous
by their absence, here and there shafts of sunlight lay across the gray-
brown shade; in the distance the grazing cattle moved among the timber;
away out in the glorious sunshine, beyond and above the tree-tops,
brown-winged, slender Bromli kites wheeled and circled and hovered and
swooped; and lounging in the sun-flecked shade, well satisfied with our
lot, we looked out into the blue, sunny depths, each one of us the
embodiment of lazy contentment, and agreeing with Dan that “Sunday
wasn’t a bad institution for them as had no objection to doing a loaf
now and then.”
That suggesting an appropriate topic of conversation to Dan, for a
little while we spoke of the Sabbath-keeping of our Scottish
forefathers; as we spoke, idly watching the circling, wheeling Bromli
kites, that seemed then as at all times, an essential part of the
sunshine. To the bush-folk of the Never-Never, sunshine without Bromli
kites would be as a summer’s day without the sun. All day and every day
they hover throughout it, as they search and wait and watch for carrion,
throwing dim, gliding shadows as they wheel and circle, or flashing
sunshine from brown wings by quick, sudden swoops, hovering and swooping
throughout the sunshine, or rising to melt into blue depths of the
heavens, where other arching, floating specks tell of myriads there,
ready to swoop, and fall and gather and feast wherever their lowest
ranks drop earthwards with the crows.
Lazily we watched the floating movement, and as we watched, conversation
became spasmodic—not worth the energy required to sustain it—until
gradually we slipped into one of those sociable silences of the
bushfolk—silences that draw away all active thought from the mind,
leaving it a sensitive plate ready to absorb impressions and thoughts as
they flit about it, silences where every one is so in harmony with his
comrades and surroundings that the breaking of them rarely jars—spoken
words so often defining the half-absorbed thoughts.
Dimly conscious of each other, of the grazing cattle the Bromli kites,
the sweet scents and rustling sounds of the bush, of each other’s
thoughts and that the last spoken thought among us had been Sabbath-
keeping, we rested, idly, NOT thinking, until Dan’s voice crept into the
silence.
“Never was much at religion meself,” he said, lazily altering his
position, “but Mrs. Bob was the one to make you see things right off.”
Lazily and without stirring we gave our awakened attention, and after a
quiet pause the droning Scotch voice went on, too contented to raise
itself above a drone: “Can’t exactly remember how she put it; seemed as
though you’d only got to hoe your own row the best you can, and lend
others a hand with theirs, and just let God see after the rest.”
Quietly, as the droning voice died away, we slipped back into our
silence, lazily dreaming on, with Dan’s words lingering in our minds,
until, in a little while, it seemed as though the dancing tree-tops, the
circling Bromli kites, every rustling sound and movement about us, had
taken them up and were shouting them to the echo. “How much you will be
able to teach the poor, dark souls of the stockmen,” a well-meaning
Southerner had said, with self-righteous arrogance; and in the brilliant
glory of that bush Sabbath, one of the “poor, dark souls” had set the
air vibrating with the grandest, noblest principles of Christianity
summed up into one brief sentence resonant with its ringing commands:
Hoe your own row the best you can. Lend others a hand with theirs. Let
God see to the rest.
Men there are in plenty out-bush, “not much at religion,” as they and
the world judge it, who have solved the great problem of “hoeing their
own rows” by the simple process of leaving them to give others a hand
with theirs; men loving their neighbours as themselves, and with whom
God does the rest, as of old. “Be still, and know that I am God,” is
still whispered out of the heart of Nature, and those bushmen,
unconsciously obeying, as unconsciously belong to that great simple-
hearted band of worshippers, the Quakers; men who, in the hoeing of
their own rows have ever lived their lives in the ungrudging giving of a
helping hand to all in need, content that God will see to the rest.
Surely the most scrupulous Quaker could find no fault with the “Divine
Meeting” that God was holding that day: the long, restful preparation of
silence; that emptying of all active thought from the mind; that droning
Scotch voice, so perfectly tuned to our mood, delivering its message in
a language that could pierce to the depths of a bushman’s heart; and
then silence again—a silence now vibrating with thought. As gradually
and naturally as it had crept upon us, that silence slipped away, and we
spoke of the multitude of sounds and creatures about us, until, seeing
deeper and deeper into Dan’s message every moment, we learned that each
sound and creature was hoeing its own row as it alone knew how, and, in
the hoeing, was lending all others a hand with theirs, as they toiled in
the Mighty Row of the Universe, each obedient to the great law of the
Creator that all else shall be left to Him, as through them He taught
the world that no man liveth to himself alone.
“You will find that a woman alone in a camp of men is decidedly out of
place,” the Darwin ladies had said; and yet that day, as at all times,
the woman felt strangely and sweetly in place in the bushmen’s camp. “A
God-forsaken country,” others of the town have called the Never-Never,
because the works of men have not yet penetrated into it. Let them look
from their own dark alleys and hideous midnights into some or all of the
cattle camps out-bush, or, better still, right into the “poor dark
souls’” of the bush-folk themselves—if their vision is clear
enough—before they judge.
Long before our midnight had come, the camp was sleeping a deep, sound
sleep—those who were not on watch—a dreamless sleep, for the bullocks
were peaceful and ruminating, the Chinese drovers having been “excused”
from duty lest other beasts should stray during “some one’s” watch.
Soon after sun-up the head drover formally accepted the mob, and, still
inwardly marvelling at the Maluka’s trust, filled in his cheque, and,
blandly smiling, watched while the Maluka made out receipts and
cancelled the agreement. Then, to show that he dealt little in simple
trust, he carried the receipts and agreement in private and in turn, to
Dan, and Jack, and the Dandy, asking each if all were honestly made out.
Dan looked at the papers critically (“might have been holding them
upside down for all I knew,” he said later), and assured the drover that
all was right. “Which was true” he added also later, “seeing the boss
made ’em out.” Dan dealt largely in simple trust where the boss was
concerned. Jack, having heard Dan’s report, took his cue from it and
passed the papers as “just the thing”; but the Dandy read out every
word in them in a loud, clear voice, to his own amusement and the
drovers’ discomfiture.
The papers having been thus proved satisfactory, the drovers started
their boys with the bullocks, before giving their attention to the
packing up of their camp baggage, and we turned to our own affairs.
As the Dandy’s new yard was not furnished yet with a draughting lane and
branding pens, the mixed cattle were to be taken to the Bitter Springs
yard; and by the time Jack had been seen off with them and our own camp
packed up, the drovers had become so involved in baggage that Dan and
the Dandy felt obliged to offer assistance. Finally every one was ready
to mount, and then we and the drovers exchanged polite farewells and
parted, seller and buyer each confident that he knew more about the cash
for that cheque than the other. No doubt the day came when those drovers
ceased to marvel at the Maluka’s simple trust.
The drovers rode away to the north-west, and as we set out to the south-
east, Dan turned his back on “them little darlings” with a sigh of
relief. “Reckon that money’s been earned, anyway,” he said. Then, as
Jackeroo was the only available “boy,” the others all being on before
with the cattle, we gathered together our immense team of horses and
drove them out of camp. In open order we jogged along across country,
with Jackeroo riding ahead as pilot, followed by the jangling,
straggling team of pack- and loose horses, while behind the team rode
the white folk all abreast, with six or eight dogs trotting along behind
again. For a couple of hours we jogged along in the tracks of Jack’s
cattle, without coming up with them, then, just as we sighted the great
rumbling mob, a smaller mob appeared on our right.
“Run ’em into the mob,” Dan shouted; and at his shout every man and
horse leapt forward—pack-horses and all—and went after them in pell-mell
disorder.
“Scrub bulls! Keep behind them!” Dan yelled giving directions as we
stampeded at his heels (it is not all advantage for musterers to ride
with the pack-team) then as we and they galloped straight for Jack’s mob
every one yelled in warning: “Hi! look out there! Bulls! Look out,”
until Dan’s revolver rang out above the din.
Jack turned at the shot and saw the bulls, but too late. Right through
his mob they galloped, splitting it up into fragments, and in a moment
pack-horses, cattle, riders, bulls, were part of a surging, galloping
mass—boys galloping after bulls, and bulls after boys, and the white
folk after anything and everything, peppering bulls with revolver-shots
(stock-whip having no effect), shouting orders, and striving their
utmost to hold the mob; pack and loose horses galloping and kicking as
they freed themselves from the hubbub; and the missus scurrying here and
there on the outskirts of the melee, dodging behind bushes and scrub in
her anxiety to avoid both bulls and revolver-shots. Ennui forsooth!
Never was a woman farther from death by ennui.
Finally the horses gathered themselves together in the friendly shelter
of some scrub, and as the woman sought safety among them, the Maluka’s
rifle rang out, and a charging bull went down before it. Then out of the
thick of the uproar Sambo came full gallop, with a bull at his horse’s
heels, and Dan full gallop behind the bull, bringing his rifle to his
shoulder as he galloped, and as all three galloped madly on Dan fired,
and the bull pitching blindly forward, Sambo wheeled, and he and Dan
galloped back to the mob to meet another charging outlaw and deal with
it.
Then in quick succession from all sides of the mob bulls darted out with
riders at THEIR heels, or riders shot forward with bulls at their heels,
until the mob looked like a great spoked wheel revolving on its own
axis. Bull after bull went down before the rifles, old Roper, with the
Maluka riding him, standing like a rock under fire; and then, just as
the mob was quieting down, a wild scrub cow with a half-grown calf at
her heels shot out of the mob and headed straight for the pack team, Dan
galloping beside her and cracking thunderclaps out of a stock-whip.
Flash and I scuttled to shelter, and Dan, bending the cow back to the
mob, shouted as he passed by, at full gallop: “Here you are, missus;
thought you might like a drop of milk.”
For another five minutes the mob was “held” to steady them a bit before
starting, and then, just as all seemed in order, one of the prostrate
bulls staggered to its feet—anything but dead; and as a yell went up
“Look out, boss! look out!” Roper sprang forward in obedience to the
spurs, just too late to miss a sudden, mad lunge from the wounded
outlaw, and the next moment the bull was down with a few more shots in
him, and Roper was receiving a tribute that only he could command.
With that surging mob of cattle beside them, the Maluka and Dan had
dismounted, and were trying to staunch the flow of blood, while black
boys gathered round, and Jack and the Dandy, satisfied that the injuries
were not “too serious,” were leaning over from their saddles
congratulating the old horse on having “got off so easy.” The wound
fortunately, was in the thigh, and just a clean deep punch for, as by a
miracle, the bull’s horn had missed all tendons and as the old
campaigner was led away for treatment he disdained even to limp, and was
well within a fortnight.
“Passing the time of day with Jack,” Dan called the scrimmage; as we
left the field of battle and looking back we found that already the
Bromli kites were closing in and sinking and settling earthwards towards
the crows who were impatiently waiting our departure—waiting to convert
the erst raging scrub bulls into white, bleaching bones.
Travelling quicker than the cattle, we were camped and at dinner at
“Abraham’s”—another lily-strewn billabong—when the mob came in, the
thirsty brutes travelling with down-drooping heads and lowing deeply and
incessantly. Their direction showing that they would pass within a few
yards of our camp fire, on their way to the water, as a matter of course
I stood up, and Dan, with a chuckle, assured me that they had “something
else more important on than chivying the missus.”
But the recollection of that raging mob was too vividly in mind, and the
cattle beginning to trot at the sight of the water, decided against
them, and the next moment I was three feet from the ground, among the
low-spreading branches of a giant Paper-bark. Jackeroo was riding ahead,
and flashed one swift, sidelong glance after me but as the mob trotted
by he trotted with them as impassive as a statue.
But we had by no means done with Jackeroo; for as we sat in camp that
night at the Springs, with the cattle safe in the yard, shouts of
laughter from the “boys’” camp attracted our attention, and we found
Jackeroo the centre-piece of the camp, preparing to repeat some
performance. For a second or so he stood irresolute; then, clutching
wildly at an imaginary something that appeared to encumber his feet,
with a swift, darting run and a scrambling clamber, he was into the
midst of a sapling; then, our silence attracting attention, the black
world collapsed in speechless convulsions.
“How the missus climbed a tree, little ’un,” the Maluka chuckled; and
the mimicry of action had been so perfect that we knew it could only be
that. Every detail was there: the moment of indecision, the wild clutch
at the habit, the quick, feminine lift of the running feet, and the
indescribably feminine scrambling climb at the finish.
In that one swift, sidelong glance every movement had been photographed
on Jackeroo’s mind, to be reproduced later on for the entertainment of
the camp with that perfect mimicry characteristic of the black folk.
And it was always so. Just as they had “beck-becked” and bumped in their
saddles with the Chinese drovers, so they imitated every action that
caught their fancy, and almost every human being that crossed their
path—riding with feet outspread after meeting one traveller; with toes
turned in, in imitation of another; flopping, or sitting rigidly in
their saddles, imitating actions of hand and turns of the head; anything
to amuse themselves, from riding side-saddle to climbing trees.
Jackeroo being “funny man” in the tribe, was first favourite in
exhibitions; but we could get no further pantomime that night, although
we heard later from Bett-Bett that “How the missus climbed a tree” had a
long run.
The next day passed branding the cattle, and the following as we arrived
within sight of the homestead, Dan was congratulating the Maluka on the
“missus being without a house,” and then he suddenly interrupted himself
“Well, I’m blest!” he said. “If we didn’t forget all about bangtailing
that mob for her mattress.”
We undoubtedly had, but thirty-three nights, or thereabouts, with the
warm, bare ground for a bed, had made me indifferent to mattresses, and
hearing that Dan became most hopeful of “getting her properly educated”
yet.
Cheon greeted us with his usual enthusiasm, and handed the Maluka a
letter containing a request for a small mob of bullocks within three
weeks.
“Nothing like keeping the ball rolling,”, Dan said, also waxing
enthusiastic, while the South-folk remained convinced that life out-bush
is stagnation.