Father was one of those people that gets shut of a deal of trouble in
this world by always sticking to one thing. If he said he'd do this or
that he always did it and nothing else. As for turning him, a wild bull
half-way down a range was a likelier try-on. So nobody ever bothered him
after he'd once opened his mouth. They knew it was so much lost labour.
I sometimes thought Aileen was a bit like him in her way of sticking to
things. But then she was always right, you see.
So that clinched it. Mother gave in like a wise woman, as she was. The
clergyman from Bargo came one day and christened me and Jim--made one
job of it. But mother took Aileen herself in the spring cart all the way
to the township and had her christened in the chapel, in the middle of
the service all right and regular, by Father Roche.
There's good and bad of every sort, and I've met plenty that were no
chop of all churches; but if Father Roche, or Father anybody else, had
any hand in making mother and Aileen half as good as they were, I'd turn
to-morrow, if I ever got out again. I don't suppose it was the religion
that made much difference in our case, for Patsey Daly and his three
brothers, that lived on the creek higher up, were as much on the cross
as men could be, and many a time I've seen them ride to chapel and
attend mass, and look as if they'd never seen a 'clearskin' in their
lives. Patsey was hanged afterwards for bush-ranging and gold robbery,
and he had more than one man's blood to answer for. Now we weren't like
that; we never troubled the church one way or the other. We knew we were
doing what we oughtn't to do, and scorned to look pious and keep two
faces under one hood.
By degrees we all grew older, began to be active and able to do half a
man's work. We learned to ride pretty well--at least, that is we could
ride a bare-backed horse at full gallop through timber or down a range;
could back a colt just caught and have him as quiet as an old cow in
a week. We could use the axe and the cross-cut saw, for father dropped
that sort of work himself, and made Jim and I do all the rough jobs of
mending the fences, getting firewood, milking the cows, and, after a
bit, ploughing the bit of flat we kept in cultivation.
Jim and I, when we were fifteen and thirteen--he was bigger for his
age than I was, and so near my own strength that I didn't care about
touching him--were the smartest lads on the creek, father said--he
didn't often praise us, either. We had often ridden over to help at the
muster of the large cattle stations that were on the side of the range,
and not more than twenty or thirty miles from us.
Some of our young stock used to stray among the squatters' cattle, and
we liked attending the muster because there was plenty of galloping
about and cutting out, and fun in the men's hut at night, and often a
half-crown or so for helping some one away with a big mob of cattle or
a lot for the pound. Father didn't go himself, and I used to notice that
whenever we came up and said we were Ben Marston's boys both master and
super looked rather glum, and then appeared not to think any more about
it. I heard the owner of one of these stations say to his managing man,
'Pity, isn't it? fine boys, too.' I didn't understand what they meant. I
do now.
We could do a few things besides riding, because, as I told you before,
we had been to a bit of a school kept by an old chap that had once seen
better days, that lived three miles off, near a little bush township.
This village, like most of these places, had a public-house and a
blacksmith's shop. That was about all. The publican kept the store, and
managed pretty well to get hold of all the money that was made by the
people round about, that is of those that were 'good drinking men'. He
had half-a-dozen children, and, though he was not up to much, he wasn't
that bad that he didn't want his children to have the chance of being
better than himself. I've seen a good many crooked people in my day, but
very few that, though they'd given themselves up as a bad job, didn't
hope a bit that their youngsters mightn't take after them. Curious,
isn't it? But it is true, I can tell you. So Lammerby, the publican,
though he was a greedy, sly sort of fellow, that bought things he knew
were stolen, and lent out money and charged everybody two prices for the
things he sold 'em, didn't like the thought of his children growing up
like Myall cattle, as he said himself, and so he fished out this old Mr.
Howard, that had been a friend or a victim or some kind of pal of his in
old times, near Sydney, and got him to come and keep school.
He was a curious man, this Mr. Howard. What he had been or done none
of us ever knew, but he spoke up to one of the squatters that said
something sharp to him one day in a way that showed us boys that he
thought himself as good as he was. And he stood up straight and looked
him in the face, till we hardly could think he was the same man that
was so bent and shambling and broken-down-looking most times. He used
to live in a little hut in the township all by himself. It was just big
enough to hold him and us at our lessons. He had his dinner at the inn,
along with Mr. and Mrs. Lammerby. She was always kind to him, and made
him puddings and things when he was ill. He was pretty often ill, and
then he'd hear us our lessons at the bedside, and make a short day of
it.
Mostly he drank nothing but tea. He used to smoke a good deal out of a
big meerschaum pipe with figures on it that he used to show us when he
was in a good humour. But two or three times a year he used to set-to
and drink for a week, and then school was left off till he was right.
We didn't think much of that. Everybody, almost, that we knew did the
same--all the men--nearly all, that is--and some of the women--not
mother, though; she wouldn't have touched a drop of wine or spirits to
save her life, and never did to her dying day. We just thought of it
as if they'd got a touch of fever or sunstroke, or broke a rib or
something. They'd get over it in a week or two, and be all right again.
All the same, poor old Mr. Howard wasn't always on the booze, not by
any manner of means. He never touched a drop of anything, not even
ginger-beer, while he was straight, and he kept us all going from nine
o'clock in the morning till three in the afternoon, summer and winter,
for more than six years. Then he died, poor old chap--found dead in his
bed one morning. Many a basting he gave me and Jim with an old malacca
cane he had with a silver knob to it. We were all pretty frightened of
him. He'd say to me and Jim and the other boys, 'It's the best chance
of making men of yourselves you ever had, if you only knew it. You'll be
rich farmers or settlers, perhaps magistrates, one of these days--that
is, if you're not hanged. It's you, I mean,' he'd say, pointing to me
and Jim and the Dalys; 'I believe some of you WILL be hanged unless
you change a good deal. It's cold blood and bad blood that runs in your
veins, and you'll come to earn the wages of sin some day. It's a strange
thing,' he used to say, as if he was talking to himself, 'that the girls
are so good, while the boys are delivered over to the Evil One, except a
case here and there. Look at Mary Darcy and Jane Lammerby, and my
little pet Aileen here. I defy any village in Britain to turn out such
girls--plenty of rosy-cheeked gigglers--but the natural refinement and
intelligence of these little damsels astonishes me.'
Well, the old man died suddenly, as I said, and we were all very sorry,
and the school was broken up. But he had taught us all to write fairly
and to keep accounts, to read and spell decently, and to know a little
geography. It wasn't a great deal, but what we knew we knew well, and
I often think of what he said, now it's too late, we ought to have made
better use of it. After school broke up father said Jim and I knew quite
as much as was likely to be any good to us, and we must work for our
living like other people. We'd always done a pretty fair share of that,
and our hands were hard with using the axe and the spade, let alone
holding the plough at odd times and harrowing, helping father to kill
and brand, and a lot of other things, besides getting up while the stars
were in the sky so as to get the cows milked early, before it was time
to go to school.
All this time we had lived in a free kind of way--we wanted for nothing.
We had plenty of good beef, and a calf now and then. About this time I
began to wonder how it was that so many cattle and horses passed through
father's hands, and what became of them.
I hadn't lived all my life on Rocky Creek, and among some of the
smartest hands in that line that old New South Wales ever bred, without
knowing what 'clearskins' and 'cross' beasts meant, and being well aware
that our brand was often put on a calf that no cow of ours ever suckled.
Don't I remember well the first calf I ever helped to put our letters
on? I've often wished I'd defied father, then taken my licking, and
bolted away from home. It's that very calf and the things it led to
that's helped to put me where I am!
Just as I sit here, and these cursed irons rattle whenever I move my
feet, I can see that very evening, and father and the old dog with a
little mob of our crawling cattle and half-a-dozen head of strangers,
cows and calves, and a fat little steer coming through the scrub to the
old stockyard.
It was an awkward place for a yard, people used to say; scrubby and
stony all round, a blind sort of hole--you couldn't see till you were
right on the top of it. But there was a 'wing' ran out a good way
through the scrub--there's no better guide to a yard like that--and
there was a sort of track cattle followed easy enough once you were
round the hill. Anyhow, between father and the dog and the old mare he
always rode, very few beasts ever broke away.
These strange cattle had been driven a good way, I could see. The
cows and calves looked done up, and the steer's tongue was out--it was
hottish weather; the old dog had been 'heeling' him up too, for he was
bleeding up to the hocks, and the end of his tail was bitten off. He
was a savage old wretch was Crib. Like all dogs that never bark--and men
too--his bite was all the worse.
'Go and get the brands--confound you--don't stand there frightening the
cattle,' says father, as the tired cattle, after smelling and jostling a
bit, rushed into the yard. 'You, Jim, make a fire, and look sharp about
it. I want to brand old Polly's calf and another or two.' Father came
down to the hut while the brands were getting ready, and began to look
at the harness-cask, which stood in a little back skillion. It was
pretty empty; we had been living on eggs, bacon, and bread and butter
for a week.
'Oh, mother! there's such a pretty red calf in the yard,' I said, 'with
a star and a white spot on the flank; and there's a yellow steer fat
enough to kill!'
'What!' said mother, turning round and looking at father with her eyes
staring--a sort of dark blue they were--people used to say mine and
Jim's were the same colour--and her brown hair pushed back off her face,
as if she was looking at a ghost. 'Is it doing that again you are,
after all you promised me, and you so nearly caught--after the last one?
Didn't I go on my knees to ye to ask ye to drop it and lead a good
life, and didn't ye tell me ye'd never do the like again? And the poor
innocent children, too, I wonder ye've the heart to do it.'
It came into my head now to wonder why the sergeant and two policemen
had come down from Bargo, very early in the morning, about three months
ago, and asked father to show them the beef in his cask, and the hide
belonging to it. I wondered at the time the beast was killed why father
made the hide into a rope, and before he did that had cut out the brand
and dropped it into a hot fire. The police saw a hide with our brand on,
all right--killed about a fortnight. They didn't know it had been taken
off a cancered bullock, and that father took the trouble to 'stick' him
and bleed him before he took the hide off, so as it shouldn't look dark.
Father certainly knew most things in the way of working on the cross.
I can see now he'd have made his money a deal easier, and no trouble of
mind, if he'd only chosen to go straight.
When mother said this, father looked at her for a bit as if he was sorry
for it; then he straightened himself up, and an ugly look came into his
face as he growled out--
'You mind your own business; we must live as well as other people.
There's squatters here that does as bad. They're just like the squires
at home; think a poor man hasn't a right to live. You bring the brand
and look alive, Dick, or I'll sharpen ye up a bit.'
The brand was in the corner, but mother got between me and it, and
stretched out her hand to father as if to stop me and him.
'In God's name,' she cried out, 'aren't ye satisfied with losing your
own soul and bringing disgrace upon your family, but ye must be the ruin
of your innocent children? Don't touch the brand, Dick!'
But father wasn't a man to be crossed, and what made it worse he had
a couple of glasses of bad grog in him. There was an old villain of a
shanty-keeper that lived on a back creek. He'd been there as he came
by and had a glass or two. He had a regular savage temper, father had,
though he was quiet enough and not bad to us when he was right. But the
grog always spoiled him.
He gave poor mother a shove which sent her reeling against the wall,
where she fell down and hit her head against the stool, and lay there.
Aileen, sitting down in the corner, turned white, and began to cry,
while father catches me a box on the ear which sends me kicking, picks
up the brand out of the corner, and walks out, with me after him.
I think if I'd been another year or so older I'd have struck back--I
felt that savage about poor mother that I could have gone at him
myself--but we had been too long used to do everything he told us; and
somehow, even if a chap's father's a bad one, he don't seem like other
men to him. So, as Jim had lighted the fire, we branded the little red
heifer calf first--a fine fat six-months-old nugget she was--and then
three bull calves, all strangers, and then Polly's calf, I suppose just
for a blind. Jim and I knew the four calves were all strangers, but we
didn't know the brands of the mothers; they all seemed different.
After this all was made right to kill a beast. The gallows was ready
rigged in a corner of the yard; father brought his gun and shot the
yellow steer. The calves were put into our calf-pen--Polly's and
all--and all the cows turned out to go where they liked.
We helped father to skin and hang up the beast, and pretty late it was
when we finished. Mother had laid us out our tea and gone to bed with
Aileen. We had ours and then went to bed. Father sat outside and smoked
in the starlight. Hours after I woke up and heard mother crying. Before
daylight we were up again, and the steer was cut up and salted and in
the harness-cask soon after sunrise. His head and feet were all popped
into a big pot where we used to make soup for the pigs, and by the time
it had been boiling an hour or two there was no fear of any one swearing
to the yellow steer by 'head-mark'.
We had a hearty breakfast off the 'skirt', but mother wouldn't touch a
bit, nor let Aileen take any; she took nothing but a bit of bread and
a cup of tea, and sat there looking miserable and downcast. Father said
nothing, but sat very dark-looking, and ate his food as if nothing was
the matter. After breakfast he took his mare, the old dog followed;
there was no need to whistle for him--it's my belief he knew more than
many a Christian--and away they went. Father didn't come home for
a week--he had got into the habit of staying away for days and days
together. Then things went on the old way.