The pleasant days wore on until the less pleasant idea began to take
shape in Mr. Neuchamp’s mind that it had become necessary to consider
the route once more. This sojourn in Capua could not be indefinitely
prolonged. Either he must go back to Garrandilla or he must make
purchase of a station on his own account.
After due consideration of the Garrandilla scheme it became apparent
that another year of the routine life which he recalled would be
unendurably dull, whereas a new station, his own property, a cattle
run―for he was resolved to have no other―would abound in novelties, and
above all, in opportunities for carrying out his long-cherished plans
of reform.
The only difficulty in his path would be Paul’s uncompromising desire
to benefit him after his own fashion. For mysterious reasons he had
apparently decided that he, Ernest, was not fit to run alone, in a
pastoral sense, for another year at least. Mr. Neuchamp steeled himself
to attack his provisional guardian on this point on the very next
opportunity. He would enlist Antonia upon his side. He would
recapitulate the reasons which caused him to consider himself the equal
in experience of some pastoralists who had been all their lives in the
country. Surely a man did not come ten thousand miles across the sea to
a new, not to say unexplored country, to spend his life in looking on!
He would press Paul hard. He would convert him, and then, hey for
Eldorado, for Arcadia, for Utopia, with laws and ordinances framed by
Dictator Ernest Neuchamp.
While at the club, an institution which became more pleasant in his
eyes daily, and where he steadily enlarged the number of his
acquaintances, he kept his ears open as to opportunities for buying
station property advantageously. He had at one time been fixed in the
idea of purchasing the cattle station of Mr. Jermyn Croker, about which
that sceptical philosopher and Mr. Frankston had interchanged various
pleasantries more or less acidulated. But it so chanced that among the
honorary members who made their appearance from time to time at the
club, and enlivened or impressed its ordinary society, came a squatter
from another colony named Parklands.
With this young gentleman Ernest was much taken, and they soon struck
up a strong intimacy. Mr. Parklands was Australian-born, but not on
that account to be credited with any deficiency of energy; on the
contrary, he possessed so much vigour of body and of mind that if he
had degenerated in any way (as is a received theory with certain
writers), his progenitors must have been perfect steam-engines. He was
well known to have explored a very large proportion of the Australian
continent, to have formed, managed, bought, or sold at least a score of
cattle and sheep stations. His transactions comprised incidentally
thousands of cattle and tens of thousands of sheep. He had recently
returned from another colony where he had acquired an immense area of
newly-discovered country. He was on that account, he stated, ready to
sell the remnant of his property in New South Wales on favourable
terms.
Lal. Parklands was popular. A good-looking, pleasant fellow, went in
for everything―billiards, loo, racquets, dinners, theatres, and balls,
with the same zest, energy, and enjoyment which he threw into all his
business operations. He strongly advised Ernest to ‘tackle old
Frankston,’ as he expressed it, upon the subject of his independence,
and to go in for a station on his own hook without delay.
‘It isn’t because I’m selling out myself that I say it,’ he added, ‘but
the fact is, cattle are as low as they can possibly be, and the next
change _must_ be a rise. What do you say, Croker?’ he asked of that
gentleman, who now lounged up. ‘You have had something to do with
lowering the people’s spirits about their stock. If you’ll come to
Queensland with me next time I want to buy there, I’ll pay your
expenses.’
‘It is apparent,’ replied that gentleman, ‘that somebody is sure to
swindle Neuchamp, and you may as well do it as any one else. I thought
I was to have the honour, from what old Frankston said, but I suppose
you have made highly-coloured representations after the manner of
cornstalks.’
‘You are fatally wrong, as usual, Jermyn. I’ve made a pot of money out
of Rainbar, and if Neuchamp buys it and does as well, he’ll be able to
go back to Europe as a successful colonist in no time.’
‘If he takes Mr. Parklands as his model in speculation, management, and
conversation, he _must_ succeed in everything he undertakes,’ said Mr.
Croker with ironical approbation.
‘Come and have some sherry, old Bitters,’ said Mr. Parklands
cheerfully, ‘and then I’ll thrash you at billiards. Never saw an
Englishman I couldn’t give points to yet. Can’t lick us.’
Roused by this national reflection, Mr. Croker offered to play for
anything he chose to name, and Ernest betook himself to Morahmee. He
had determined to open the parallels without delay.
Full of this noble resolution, Mr. Neuchamp only waited until Antonia
had departed from the dining-room to commence the momentous project.
‘I begin to feel,’ said he artfully, ‘that my holiday is drawing to a
close. I don’t think I ever enjoyed town life thoroughly before. But
one can’t always be on furlough. I must join my regiment―must be off to
the bush again.’
‘What’s the hurry?’ said Mr. Frankston. ‘Nothing much ever goes on at a
station until the cold weather sets in. You will find Garrandilla
wretchedly dull after club-dinners, ball-going, boat-sailing, and all
the rest of it. Even the verandah here is considerably better of a hot
evening than those rascally slab huts.’
‘You have been a sailor, Mr. Frankston,’ said Ernest, ‘and you know
that when the sailing day comes, and the wind is fair, Jack must get on
board. I don’t suppose you find Captain Carryall would make much
allowance for lagging.’
‘No, faith. He would need to be a smart fellow to stand before Charley
if he kept him humbugging about when the bark was empty and the whaling
gear in trim. But you are not shipped as an A.B. anywhere as yet. Make
the most of your young life, Ernest, my boy―it won’t come twice.’
‘There is a time for all things,’ rejoined Mr. Neuchamp, who had small
reverence for play in the abstract; ‘I came to Australia principally
for work, and I shall be uneasy until I am fairly in harness. But
without beating about the bush, I am impatient to purchase a place of
my own, and unless you are inexorably averse to the step, in which case
I should give in, I feel the strongest desire to make a start on my own
account.’
‘Why won’t you be content to sail by my orders for a while?’ said Paul,
much disturbed. ‘If you knew how many young fellows I have seen ruined
all for the want of a little delay, for want of following the caution I
have given you, you would not be in such a hurry to risk your fortune
on a throw.’
‘But consider,’ said Ernest, perceiving, as he thought, a slight sign
of compromise in Paul’s candid face, ‘I am not exactly like other young
fellows, with the same intentions. I have had in reality more
experience in the time of my novitiate than they have had in double the
period. I have had road work, station work, sheep and cattle
management. I have had, from peculiar circumstances, more than ordinary
advantages of practical teaching, and I do myself consider that unless
I am duller than ordinary, I may be trusted to manage a moderate-sized
cattle station, if you will help me with your advice in the purchase.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Paul, passing through into the verandah, and
lighting the cigar of reflection, ‘I don’t know but that, as you say,
you have had rather more luck than common in your apprenticeship. You
have been before the mast, too, as we say on board ship, and that is a
great help. You are as steady as a church. That’s all to the good, no
doubt. But what I am afraid of is a sudden turn in prices―stock can
hardly be lower, to be sure. Well, well―you can only risk it. But I
don’t want to see you, as I have seen many a good fellow, lose his
money and the best years of his life, and either die, go to the devil,
or settle down to the banishment of an overseer’s berth.’
‘Like poor old Geoffrey Hasbene,’ said Ernest; ‘I don’t think I could
quite endure that, though the old fellow is resigned enough.’
‘I remember him well enough,’ said Paul; ‘it’s a good while since I
heard his name. I have seen him ruffling it with the best, and the
owner of a good station. He was not very fast either.’
‘And what ruined him?’
‘Partly bad luck, partly a careless, easy-going disposition. He thought
more of his house, his stables, and his garden than he did of his
stock, and that was the end of it. Mind you take warning by him.’
‘I hope I shall―but now that you think I may really make an attempt to
fly off the nest, might we not settle something about the probability
of a purchase to-night?’
‘Yes―perhaps―yes,’ answered Paul, seating himself with a resigned and
gloomy air. ‘I suppose you have heard of a place or two at the club.
There’s a good deal of business done there. Has Jermyn Croker said
anything to you further?’
‘Scarcely, but a young squatter named Parklands has a place that seems
suitable; he appears a nice fellow enough.’
‘Oh! young Parklands―humph! Very nice boy―quite sharp enough, but I
don’t suppose could let you in very extensively. Well, I’ll inquire
to-morrow; better leave that part of it to me. I’ll see about Croker’s
place also. Plenty of time. Market full of sellers, and very few
buyers. Cash very scarce. But that’s all in your favour. Antonia!’
‘Here, papa,’ said that young lady, joining them. ‘What is the matter?
has anything happened, that you look so serious?’
‘Well, that’s as it may be; Ernest here is bent upon buying a station
at once, and I have been trying to show him the prudence of waiting.’
‘But he can’t wait years and years,’ said Antonia, taking, to Mr.
Neuchamp’s great joy, her powerful aid to his side of the suit. ‘I
don’t think _you_ would have done it either, you impetuous old dear;
didn’t some one run away to sea like a naughty boy, and come back in a
ship of his own―eh?’
‘And suppose I did, you saucy puss, didn’t I run the risk of being
drowned, starved, burned, roasted alive, and all sorts of deaths; and
if I had a son, I should think it my duty to warn him against the sea,
as the worst profession in the world.’
‘And he would think it his duty to go in spite of you. Not that Mr.
Neuchamp would do anything contrary to your advice, I am sure,’ said
Antonia with a becoming blush, ‘but I think he is wise in wishing to
have a place of his own, and begin life in earnest. Besides, everybody
says a cattle station is so pleasant, I almost think I could manage one
myself.’
‘Pity they should be so far from Sydney, or you might come and try,’
said Ernest, with a grateful inflection in his voice. ‘Waratah would
distinguish herself in a camp, I feel sure.’
‘I daresay we should do nearly as well as certain―hem―English people,’
said she mischievously. ‘I have always thought from what I have heard
that life on a cattle station must be quite the romance of the bush.
There is a sort of Bedouin flavour about it, with a necessity for good
horsemanship that would fascinate me if I were a man.’
‘Go and play something, like a darling,’ said the old man. ‘I feel a
little like my namesake in the Bible―Saul, I mean―as if music could
conjure the evil spirit out of me.’
It was finally settled, therefore, on that fateful evening, that Mr.
Frankston should inquire about the station which Mr. Parklands had for
sale, and decide whether it or that of Mr. Jermyn Croker would be the
better investment.
The preliminary was carried out with business-like precision. Mr.
Frankston called upon the cheerful Parklands and the desponding Croker
and extracted from each, their separate temperaments notwithstanding,
the area of the runs, the number, age and sexes, and condition of the
cattle, and many other particulars, including the lowest price,
necessary to a true and just knowledge of the bargain. He, besides
this, set on foot inquiries among those of his numerous constituents
who happened to be neighbours, and finally, after all these
precautions, told Ernest that he thought Parklands’ place seemed the
cheaper, and that when it was formally placed under offer he had better
go and inspect it.
The negotiations having proceeded to this desirable length, Mr.
Neuchamp’s satisfaction was unbounded. He saw himself placed in the
position which he had long coveted, and pictured day-dreams. He would
be a territorial magnate, having the right to rule over a region larger
than the whole county wherein his paternal estate was situated. If he
could not impose new laws he could justly administer the old ones.
Visions of improved breeds of cattle, of a different method of treating
the station hands, of developing the capabilities of the run, of making
a fortune in a few years, and revisiting England. All these
achievements rendered possible by that first bold step in actual
colonisation, the purchase of a run, passed through his brain, with the
lightning-like rapidity that was wont to characterise such mental
evolutions, but which had of late been more infrequent. He did not
confide these plottings against the peace of the district which he was
to invade to Antonia. It was not from any decline of sympathetic
friendship, but chiefly because of late that young lady, now ever ready
to approve of his wish to begin upon his own responsibility, seldom
approved of his projects in advance of the age or of Australian
ordinary bush customs, which she maintained had been formed by very
shrewd and successful men.
It was necessary that Mr. Parklands and Mr. Neuchamp should meet at the
station, so that he himself should be able to exhibit its special
advantage. But that gentleman had far too many engagements to permit of
his starting off at once upon this particular errand.
It was therefore arranged that, on a certain date, Ernest should make
his appearance at a far inland township named Bilwillia, where he would
meet Mr. Parklands, who by that time would have ‘come across’ from the
Burra-warra-nonga, or some such easily pronounced locality, which he
was compelled to visit regarding the approval of a small lot of ten
thousand store cattle and fifty thousand wethers, under offer to him
for the Melbourne market.
As nothing was to be gained by immediate departure, Mr. Neuchamp
availed himself of this unexpected holiday with unrestrained
satisfaction and enjoyment. He feasted upon his favourite authors and
upon the newer publications which he was enabled to procure in Sydney,
thanks to the excellent public and private libraries. Antonia and he
renewed their literary labours and criticisms; and that young lady
immortalised herself and completely subjugated Jack Windsor, by making
a water-colour sketch of Ben Bolt in an attitude of mingled fear,
wrath, and desperation, when unexpectedly confronted with a German
band. It was Mr. Windsor’s deliberate conviction, emphatically
expressed, that ‘a young lady who could take off a horse like that―the
dead image of him―could do anything.’ In truth, horse and man formed,
at the moment, a study for an artist. The former with glaring eye, open
nostril, sudden arrest of action, and capacity for the wildest
outbreak; the latter sitting watchful, statuesque, centaur-like, a
personification of equestrian strength and grace.
As the distance to Bilwillia was great, and its reputation unfavourable
in the matter of horse-flesh, Ernest determined not to risk the safety
of Osmund, whom he left in snug quarters near Sydney.
Mr. Windsor, much to his disappointment, received news of the illness
of his mother, the only relative in the world, as he had often stated
to Ernest, for whom he possessed a grain of affection. He was more
strongly moved by the sudden announcement of her being sick unto death
than Mr. Neuchamp thought possible.
‘I don’t half fancy,’ he said, ‘sloping and leaving you to go and take
delivery of the place all alone by yourself, sir; and they say Mr.
Parklands knows a thing or two. However, he’s an off-handed chap, and
the best thing you can do is to leave the whole jimbang in his hands
altogether. If you go barneying about calves, or counting horses that’s
give in, he’ll best ye, as sure as you’re born. So your dart is to say
you don’t know nothin’ about cattle, and drop him in for the drafting
out calves under age, and all them sorts of things. Then, as he’s a
gentleman, he’s bound to give you a show. I ought to be along with you,
I know. But I haven’t seen my poor old mother for five years good, and
I _must_ go, if I was never to make a rise again.’
Jack departed, but he somehow found time to call at Walton’s inn on his
way to Appin, where his old mother lived and where he had spent his
childhood. Ben Bolt had but little breathing time once clear of Sydney
streets, and that wild steed of the desert was sensible of a decidedly
quickened circulation as he was pulled up in the inn yard, and turned
into a stall after a hurried and headlong manner.
As Mr. Windsor passed the door of the inn, he observed an immense
quadruped hung up at the posts, which, but for the saddle and bridle,
might have been taken for a strayed waggon-horse. The length of the
stirrup-leathers conveyed to a bushman’s intelligence the fact that the
rider of this Gargantuan steed was an individual of unusual length of
limb.
Passing quietly into the bar, and thence into a small parlour devoted
to the family and particular friends of the host, he discovered the old
couple, Miss Carry, and a stranger, whom he immediately associated with
the charger aforesaid and with the district of the Hawkesbury.
‘Well, Mr. Windsor, and who’d have thought of seeing you?’ said Mrs.
Walton. ‘Have you and Mr. Neuchum―and a nice gentleman he be,
surely―been in Sydney all this time? And where are you leaving for
now?’
‘We’ve been in Sydney all the time, and a very jolly place it is, Mrs.
Walton,’ said Jack, answering the old woman with his tongue and Carry’s
quick glance with his eyes. ‘Mr. Neuchamp’s just going up the country
to look at a cattle run, and I’m going home to Appin for a short
spell.’
‘What are you going to do there?’ said Carry; ‘I thought you went
everywhere with the young gentleman?’
‘My poor old mother’s very bad,’ said Jack, looking rueful, ‘and I must
be home to-night, some time or other; but I don’t think anything else
would have kept me from going up with the master, to see him all right
with this new station as he’s going to buy.’
‘Do you―live―at―Appin?’ said the stranger young man, taking about a
minute for the enunciation of each word, and speaking in a drawling,
though not nasal, monotone.
‘When I’m at home, which is about once in five years, I do,’ answered
Jack. ‘_You_ live on the Hawkesbury, and haven’t ever been far from the
river, I’ll swear.’
‘So I do, at Rooty Hill Farm, Nepean Point,’ said the New Hollander
with a smile, which broke first upon the edge of the round plump face
and gradually spread over it like the eddy in a pond.
‘How―did―you―come―to―know?’
‘By the look,’ said Jack coolly; ‘they don’t grow such men anywhere
else in the colony, except on the Hawkesbury flats. My name’s Jack
Windsor. What’s yours, old nineteen stun?’
‘I ain’t nineteen stun, I’m only seventeen,’ said the youthful giant,
whose voice, however, did by no means correspond with his stature,
being mild and small of timbre. ‘My name’s Harry Homminey, and I’ll
back our land to grow more corn to the acre, let alone pumpkins, than
any farm this side of the Blue Mountains.’
‘Like enough,’ answered Jack indifferently. ‘Shouldn’t wonder if you
took to pumpkins very kind when you was young. They’re great feeding
stuff. But your Windsor and Richmond farms is only handfuls after all.
How many acres have you got?’
‘A hundred and thirty-two,’ said the Netherlander, with just pride,
‘and never a tree or a stump on it.’
‘Well, what’s that?’ demanded the denizen of the waste. ‘Why, a child
can take up three hundred and twenty acres in the bush anywhere. I
wouldn’t be bothered with land unless I had a whole section to begin
with.’
‘It’s a deal better than no land at all; and that’s about what you
have, I expect,’ said the agriculturist, gradually coming to the
opinion and belief that Mr. Windsor was disposed to disparage him and
his fat acres before Carry Walton.
‘Never mind what I have, and keep a civil tongue in your head,’ said
Jack wrathfully; ‘I’ll give that round face of yours such a pasting
that they will not know you from a Lower Narran man, only by your
weight, when you go home. But I won’t be cross to-night, and the poor
old mother dying for all I know. Good-bye, Mrs. Walton; good-bye,
Carry. I must be off.’
Mr. Windsor departed into the night and they saw him no more, but I am
strongly of opinion that he managed to telegraph something to Carry
before he gained his saddle, and if it meant unalterable affection as
she understood it, whether it was the automatic process, or Morse’s,
who shall say?
Certain it is that she returned to the room with a serene countenance,
and listened apparently with intentness to the somewhat uninteresting
conversation of the man of maize and pumpkins, who eventually mounted
his massive charger and trampled along the highway towards the rich
levels of Nepean Point.
Mr. Neuchamp was so extremely anxious to make a commencement upon the
foundations of his own experience and management that he left Sydney a
week or two before the actual time necessary to reach the township of
Bilwillia, where he was to make rendezvous with Mr. Parklands. He
purchased for himself a befitting hackney, and, not having Jack
Windsor’s aid, was beguiled into the possession of a stiff,
short-legged cob, which his English tradition led him to believe would
be the exact animal for a long journey and indifferent keep. Having
gone part of the way by rail, he managed to reach the unromantic and
extremely hot township of Bilwillia more than three days before
Parklands could by possibility arrive, unless under the highly
improbable supposition that he had more time than he knew what to do
with.
Mr. Neuchamp was, as we have had before occasion to explain, by no
means destitute of resources. If there was any interest whatever to be
extracted from a locality, he was a likely man to discover and avail
himself of it. But he afterwards confessed that he then and there felt
more nearly reduced to the unphilosophical and indefeasible position of
utter dulness than he could have believed possible.
For if any place could possibly combine extremest degrees of isolation,
monotony, dreariness, and depressing discomfort, that place was
Bilwillia. It straggled around the edge of a sombre watercourse, the
ditchlike banks of which dropped perpendicularly through the clay, as
if dug by some savage engineer centuries since. Around, anear, afar,
all was plain and sky. The arid landscape was as boundless, monotonous,
as the sea. The salsolaceous plants, within ten feet of the unbarked
pine-posts of the rude verandah, were identical in appearance with
every plant for a hundred leagues. Hill nor tree nor stone was there
within a square of a thousand miles.
There were no books; no newspaper, save the _Bourke Banner_, a
fortnight old, containing sundry local incidents, a short leading
article, and a lengthy advertisement of Holloway’s Pills.
On the fourth day, about the exasperating period of noon, when the
‘blue fly sung in the pane,’ and all the slow torture of Mariana in the
moated grange transposed to southern latitudes seemed to be in process
of representation, Mr. Neuchamp, to his excessive delight, made out two
separate cortèges arriving from different directions. Both comprised
mounted men and spare horses, and either of them might well be the
long-expected Parklands. They were plainly steering across the wide
plain for the Bilwillia Inn.
The first cavalcade was headed by an unusually tall athletic-looking
personage riding a well-bred powerful horse, which evidently made
little of his somewhat unfair weight. A sharp-looking elfish black boy
and a stockman, at some distance behind, drove several spare animals,
including a packhorse, upon the tracks of their leader. As they arrived
at the inn, the gentleman in advance hung up his horse and walked into
the house, while his attendants proceeded to unsaddle the whole troop.
Almost immediately after the full and careful observation of this party
had been concluded by Mr. Neuchamp, rendered desperate by long
abstinence from decent society, the second group gradually ‘came up
from the under world,’ like a strange sail, and disclosed the form of a
charioteer, with an attendant and spare horses. The driving was like
unto that of the son of Nimshi, whom, in the matter of pace, Mr.
Parklands resembled. And that energetic and punctual personage it
proved to be.
‘How are you, Neuchamp?’ he called out cheerily, jumping down from an
express waggon with a driving seat. ‘Splendidly punctual, are we not?
Had to come sixty miles yesterday, and five-and-thirty this morning.
Can’t lick us!’
‘It was very good of you,’ said Ernest most sincerely, ‘to make a push.
I do not know what I should have done if I had had to wait another day
here.’
‘You don’t mean to say you came here before yesterday?’ cried Mr.
Parklands in tones of horror and amazement.
‘I came three days ago, I am sorry to say.’
‘Three days!’ groaned Parklands, ‘in this cursed hole. I wonder you
didn’t hang yourself, or go on the spree. But Englishmen never do that
till they have been three years out from home.’
‘Three years!’ said Ernest, rather amused. ‘Then there is a possibility
of my taking to inebriety in course of time. It is rather alarming!’
‘I have known many a good fellow take to it. All the same, I shouldn’t
say it was much in your line though, in three years or thirty. But
didn’t I see a tremendous long fellow go into the house, just as those
other horses came up?’
‘There was a very tall man at the head of yonder party,’ said Ernest,
looking over at the black boy and his companion, who was lighting a
fire and preparing to cook. ‘He is now in the hotel.’
‘Aymer Brandon for a thousand!’ said Mr. Parklands excitedly. ‘A very
old friend of mine, and the best fellow going. I suspect he has been
over to his runs, on the Warrego. I’ll soon lug him out.’
With this he dashed into the inn, and shortly reappeared in company
with the tall gentleman, who, indeed, only required to be seen once to
be easily recognised in future.
Mr. Aymer Brandon was presently introduced with great and joyous
_empressement_ by Mr. Parklands, who hung about him with schoolboy
abandon. He was so considerably above six feet in height that Mr.
Neuchamp and his friend, both well-built, middle-sized men, looked
abnormally short beside him. Broad-shouldered, deep-chested,
strong-limbed, his vast symmetrical frame seemed equally adapted to
feats of strength or of activity.
‘We are in luck, Neuchamp; Brandon happens to be going down to one of
his stations below Rainbar, and we can join forces―that is horses―and
tool down luxuriously, four-in-hand. Can’t lick us! I had a
presentiment we should come out double sixes when I started.’
Mr. Neuchamp thought it would be most pleasant travelling.
‘You see, your cob can go with the spare horses, which the boys will
drive after us. Couldn’t improve on the caravan if we’d planned for a
month.’
Ernest would have modified his anticipation of comfort had he been
aware that the larger proportion of the horses depended upon for this
rapid and efficient journeying were, at that very moment, wholly
unbroken to harness, having, so to speak, never seen a collar.
But this uncertainty of the future was as yet hidden from him, and the
whole party proceeded to lunch, which, in consequence of much
exhortation, with promises, and even threats, from Mr. Brandon and his
friend, was, with the help of the omnipotent bitter beer of Tennant, by
no means to be scorned in the wilderness.
‘What’s your waggon like, Sparks?’ queried Mr. Brandon privately.
‘Slap-up!’ answered he with confidence. ‘There’s no brake; but that
won’t matter, as two of the horses have been in harness before,
somewhere. We’ll do the hundred miles to Rainbar in two days
comfortably.’
‘Nothing more complete could be hoped for on the Darling,’ pronounced
his friend calmly, ‘so that’s settled. I subscribe the black boy and
five horses, which we can break in on the road. I hope the I. P.
(intending purchaser) is a good plucked one, or he is like to turn back
before reaching Rainbar, if he journeys with us in the waggon.’
An early start was arranged for next morning. Accordingly the half
uplifted disc of the red sun of the desert irradiated the whole party
on the farther bank of the river fully equipped for the road.
Aymer Brandon held the ribbons, while Parklands took the box-seat, in
order to be ready in case of a complication with the scratch team. Mr.
Neuchamp sat behind in company with Tom Fuller, a Rainbar stockman and
past-master in smashes of every kind, sort, and description on wheel or
in saddle, on land or water, mountain or plain. The black boy, Eachin,
rode in charge of the spare horses, amongst which was turned Mr.
Neuchamp’s Sydney cob. One of the unbroken horses was considerately
placed in the near wheel, the other in the off lead. It being evident
that all precautions had now been taken, Mr. Brandon sang out ‘Let go!’
to the volunteers who had assisted at the ticklish business of putting
to, and with a shout, a double-thonger, half a dozen wild plunges, and
an innocuous kick, the team settled down on the utterly perfect, firm,
sandy road to something like racing speed.
There was little conversation for the first mile. Without a brake, all
that could be done was to hold the team straight, shooting the gullies
fairly as they came. Ever and anon, as a bar touched his hocks, the off
leader kicked gaily over the traces, but finding the outer side yet
more uncomfortable, kicked back again with discretion beyond his years.
Three miles had been swallowed up ere the team steadied ever so
slightly. Then Brandon got his pull at them.
‘Good travelling, Neuchamp?’ said Mr. Parklands. ‘Do the journey easy
by to-morrow night. The day after I’ll show you the finest lot of
cattle in Australia―all reds, whites, and roans. Can’t lick ’em!’
‘Are they quiet?’ asks Mr. Neuchamp, as a vision of back country cattle
blacks and brindles, which he mentally vows to improve off the face of
the earth, crosses his brain.
‘Quiet?’ queries Parklands derisively, ‘why, you can’t kick’ em out of
your way.’
‘I am truly glad to hear that,’ says Mr. Neuchamp heartily; ‘quiet
cattle are so much pleasanter to draft.’
A ten-mile stage, at the highly meritorious pace alluded to, having
been slipped over, the monotony of Australian steppe-travelling was
varied by the introduction of two of Brandon’s troop. They were,
comparatively,
Wild as the wild deer, and untamed,
By ‘trace and collar’ undefiled.
The first introduced was a grand-looking old black horse, with a
superabundance of pluck and one hip down. He was substituted for the
off-side leader, who was turned over to Eachin. The alteration was
effected in five minutes, and old Darkie sailed off as though he had
been carefully coached since colthood. This state of affairs was
obviously too good to last. Not accustomed to winkers, the veteran,
catching his toe in a root, went down like a shot. Now occurred a
first-class complication.
‘Total wreck, with loss of all hands,’ concludes Mr. Neuchamp.
Not so. Parklands and Jim Fuller are down almost as soon as Darkie, and
fasten on the horses like bull terriers in a rat-pit, while Aymer
Brandon sits calmly in his place, and delivers his orders with the
imperiousness of the skipper whose mainmast has gone by the board.
This was the situation: when Darkie fell the team was doing ten miles
an hour. The wheelers swept over him, and he was brought up by the
fore-axle of the waggon. Both check-reins were carried away and the
lead bars broken. The near leader dashed round the back of the coach,
where he was pulled up with a round turn by the strong arm of Mr.
Brandon, who was engaged, as to his whip-hand, in rib-roasting Darkie
to make him ‘come out of that.’
‘Here, Jem!’ he sang out, ‘freeze on to this brute behind while I make
that three-cornered calamity come out of his earth.’
Darkie, finding his position under the waggon becoming too hot, emerged
dexterously, and stood upright under the off-wheeler, raising that
unsuspecting animal’s hindquarters upon his back. Having achieved which
he awaited the next move, which promptly came in the shape of two
terrific double-thongers. Upon this Darkie darted out, and at once
commenced to feed till again wanted.
‘My dear Parklands,’ commenced Mr. Neuchamp, underrating the variety of
bush expedients, ‘this is indeed unfortunate. I suppose we shall have
to camp here until the harness is repaired.’
‘Camp!’ exclaims Parklands in wild amaze, ‘we’ll be off in ten minutes.
Can’t lick us.’
And in good sooth, a pair of spare bars having been rigged, and the
checks spliced with bush buckles, within fifteen minutes they _were_
once more under weigh and doing their ten knots an hour comfortably.
At two o’clock Toolara, a station which was the property of Mr.
Parklands, and distant about seventy miles from Rainbar, was reached;
there a good luncheon was secured. At four o’clock start was made to do
the remaining twenty miles between them and Gregor’s shanty, where the
night was to be passed.
At Toolara the party was augmented by a tame dingo, belonging to Mr.
Parklands. He was most appropriately named Beelzebub. For, in his own
realm, the vast kingdom of this chief, he reigned unequalled.
A magnificent specimen of the Australian dingo, bright orange as to
colour with a white ring round the neck, he boasted of long sweeping
hair and was feathered like a Gordon setter. The intelligence expressed
by his flag was marvellous, and its language various and comprehensive
as that of a semaphore. His face alone, if fate had but permitted the
painting of it to Sir Edwin Landseer, would have been well worth a
thousand guineas at the Royal Academy. Plainly visible therein were
foresight, decision, craft, and self-control, in sufficient quantity to
furnish forth a Cabinet Ministry. You could not look upon the calm
countenance without feeling a conviction that against all ordinary foes
that gifted animal was safe, as Achilles upon the Trojan plain. Like
unto the Homeric hero he was invulnerable save in one point, the
poisoned bait, that talismanic safeguard which assures the pastoral
future of Australia.
To his credit be it stated, Beelzebub did not in any way identify
himself with the party, who were, through this discreet conduct, not
included in the anathemas he was destined to bring down on his own
head. He kept about a quarter of a mile from the road, in a course
parallel with the waggon.
Five miles had been travelled when the first victim to his fiendish
arts appeared. Norval, leisurely boiling the evening camp kettle, the
while watching his flock peacefully nibbling towards the yard, is
thunderstruck to see those splendid wethers, filled with salt-bush and
water, suddenly sundered as if by a red streak of lightning, and the
division farthest from him sent across the plain racing for their
lives, with the devil himself whipping in.
Then does that unhappy Gael pursue, with his longest strides and
Anglo-Ossianic oaths, but to no purpose. The astute dog-fiend, when the
fat-laden flyers had collapsed suddenly and hopelessly, through sheer
breathlessness, turns him round, curls his noble flag far over his
back, and, like the famed coyote, ‘vanishes through an atmospheric
crack.’
This trifling adventure was witnessed by Brandon, Parklands, and Mr.
Neuchamp with great interest. The sheep did not belong to them. The dog
was fully believed to be a dingo errant, running his diurnal stage of
duty. And, in the end, it would conduce to the benefit of the merino
interest, as Norval would be roused into a course of spasmodic
bait-laying, which possibly might bring a few genuine freebooters off
their perches. Aymer Brandon, after a hearty laugh all round and the
assertion from Sparks that they ‘couldn’t lick him,’ dropped the
whipcord on to his team and swept away over a splendid salt-bush plain,
level as a bowling green, though slightly differing in colour. As they
threaded a clump of box, the corpse (apparently) of Beelzebub was
descried stretched out under a tree, looking rather more dead than the
reality. The crafty one permitted himself to be passed without the
motion of a muscle, and was no more seen until a mile or two on, when a
cloud of dust, with a red thunderbolt darting to and fro therein,
proclaimed the fact that another shepherd was in process of
disestablishment.
The short Australian twilight had commenced, when Parklands took the
reins to pilot the coach into a deep horse-shoe bend unknown to
Brandon, near to the opposite bank of which stood the half-way house.
At a nobly undeniable pace did the gallant Sparks tool through the
glades of mighty red gum patriarchs, the roots of which, long fed by
river springs, deep piercing the soft alluvium, had made them loftier,
broader, wider of shade than the fatherland. He had shot more than one
polygonum creek, straight and true as an Indian the Saults St. Marie’s
boiling rapid, when Brandon shouted, ‘Where the blazes are you
driving―slap into the river? I can’t see how these nags will take a
water jump!’
‘By Jove!’ said the iron-nerved Sparks, as with a clever sweep he came
to anchor, the near wheels going several inches over the river bank in
the operation, with a drop to the water at an angle of seventy-five or
a hundred feet, ‘so I am. Jump out, boys. Can’t lick us.’
The events of the day had occasionally startled Mr. Neuchamp, but his
_sangfroid_ won the admiration of Parklands and his friend. He had
exhibited no tendency to jump out before he was told; and Brandon was
afterwards heard to state his conviction, that if Sparks had charged
the Darling four-in-hand with characteristic carelessness of results,
Ernest would have simply sat back and kept his chin up, in profound
undoubting faith that he would be landed safely upon the opposite bank.
The horses were promptly unharnessed and turned out amidst luxuriant
pasture, after which all hands crossed the Great River in Gregor’s
dug-out to that gentleman’s hotel. An apology for the primitive
appearance of the place was thought necessary by Parklands, so
considerate ever is the outgoing proprietor to the intending purchaser.
Ernest assured him that, though slightly inferior to the Royal, he had
already, since his arrival in Australia, been lodged more humbly.
Having witnessed one another’s signature in passable whisky, towels
were produced, and the dust of the day consigned to the river.
At ten o’clock p.m. all hands were ordered to bed by Aymer Brandon, in
spite of Sparks’s desire to describe a lovely damsel whom he had met
when last in Sydney. She was his sixteenth engagement, but
circumstances had compelled an irrevocable parting. Knowing that
another whisky would infallibly bring on a retrospective history of the
other fifteen, Aymer was inexorable and hunted the amorous Parklands to
bed, where he was heard to murmur softly, ‘Couldn’t lick her,’ as he
dropped off to sleep.
Beelzebub, arising with the lark, promoted the next adventure, as
follows: Gregor was out at cockcrow, to kill a sheep for morning chops,
but found himself all too late. His fold, a hundred yards from the
house, was dog-proof, with the exception of the hurdled gateway.
Reaching it, ‘all hunger-maddened and intent on blood,’ he found
another in possession actuated by similar motives. He beheld Beelzebub
in the very act of devouring a six-tooth ewe―not the class of sheep
usually selected for slaughter. ‘Stiffen those blank dingoes!’ roared
Gregor, ‘there goes a note!’ Charging wrathfully into the yard, and
unconsciously commending himself by name to his enemy, he assaulted the
‘Evil One.’ The instinct of the latter came primarily into play, thus
assaulted unawares, and he sprang at the high slanting poles, all
vainly. Not Cerberus himself could have cleared them. This false step
was but the weakness of a moment. Logical reasoning, the result of
civilised intercourse, reasserted its sway. Calm as Marlborough, he
then comprehended the situation with a glance, and proceeded to execute
the only strategical movement possible in the very pressing, or rather
depressing, condition of the engagement.
Gregor, upon observing his abortive attempt to clear the fence, had
rushed to the gate. The crafty one, with an innocent expression of
countenance, and his flag curled gracefully over his back, trotted
calmly towards him. Gregor timed the dog well, unknowing of his
resources, and aimed a kick at him which would have stove in a
thirty-ton cutter.
The Napoleon of dingoes, making a feint as if to dash through the gate,
stopped abruptly. The harmless boot expended its force and momentum,
with some inconvenience to its owner, against the gate-post. Ere a
second _coup de pied_ could be arranged, Beelzebub glided swiftly
through, with his flag erect and waving gently from side to side in
token of approval.
At breakfast Gregor gave a thrilling account of the havoc wrought in
his flock, and solemnly swore that he had lifted the dog, with one
kick, over the high palisades.
Parklands, knowing the culprit and the utter hopelessness of any human
effort to strike him without consent, felt no uneasiness. He also
forgot to mention that the dog belonged to him. When Gregor was out of
earshot Parklands (who was solely a cattle-owner), bursting with pride
at the prowess of his pet, offered to lay Mr. Neuchamp a cool hundred
that Beelzebub, bar baits, should eat all the sheep on any ordinary
station in six months.
Mr. Neuchamp, not having studied the habits and capacity of the
Australian dingo sufficiently to warrant his making a book on the
subject, declined the wager.
‘If I were you, Sparks,’ said Brandon, ‘the next time I was annexed by
a young woman and wished to be off the bargain, I should make her a
present of Beelzebub. If the “wily one” would not in a week sever the
tenderest domestic ties, I am mistaken in his character. Wouldn’t mind
even laying him against a mother-in-law.’
An early breakfast of chops, fresh from the slaughtered ewe, a short
but exciting voyage in the dug-out, and they espied their ‘connecting
link,’ who was equal to most occasions, standing with his horses ready
for harnessing. Their narrow escape on the preceding night was now
plainly legible in the wheel tracks, _just over_ the brink of the river
bank, and even the reckless Sparks acknowledged it to have been ‘a near
thing.’ Brandon now took the reins, lectured Sparks upon dangerous
driving, and spun through the vast umbrageous eucalypti, towards the
road.
Neither accidents nor offences occurred during the next twenty-five
miles, at the end of which luncheon was spread by the side of a
reed-bordered lagoon. As they had now entered upon the extensive
territory of the Rainbar run, Mr. Parklands caught a horse for himself,
as also Mr. Neuchamp’s cob, with a view to rounding up an occasional
mob of cattle and proving his vaunt as to their unsurpassed breeding
and docility.
The opportunity soon occurred. A small lot of some fifty or sixty head
appeared about a half-mile from the road. Away went Parklands with
Eachin and Mr. Neuchamp backing up. After a sharp ring or two the
cattle stood with the horsemen around them. To Mr. Parklands’
mortification and Brandon’s wild delight, everything being plainly
visible from the waggon, a huge coarse-horned, dun-coloured bullock
singled out and ‘went for’ Ernest without more ado. The appearance of
the brute was appalling, and his intention so obvious that Mr. Neuchamp
did not hesitate to turn and fly across the plain for his life. The
cob, though a fair roadster, was not constructed for violent exercise
at short notice. He held on gallantly, but _bos ferox_ gained
perceptibly on him. At the half-mile end his horns were level with the
cob’s quarters, and Mr. Neuchamp had concluded to throw himself off and
trust to the brute’s continuing his mad career, when the cob, feeling
that the game was up, stopped short, throwing his rider over his head.
The bullock hurled past them with a snort of wrath and defiance,
continuing his headlong course over the plain, in search of the first
congenial scrub. When Parklands came up Mr. Neuchamp was gazing at his
horse, which stood with its legs wide apart panting, with streams of
sweat running down his flanks and even his face. His ears were dangling
limply, and he looked very much indeed as if he were going to cry.
‘Really, Parklands,’ said poor Neuchamp, ‘if that is a specimen of a
Rainbar beast, I can well understand your saying that they will not get
out of your way.’
‘D―n the brute!’ quoth Sparks; ‘he does not belong to the run at all.
Didn’t you see the JS on his quarter? He is one of those infernal
scrub-danglers from the Lachlan come across to get a feed. I’ll shoot
the ill-conditioned wretch if ever I come across him again.’
Upon being assured both by Brandon and Parklands that this was really
the state of the case, Ernest continued his inspection of the remainder
of the mob, with which he was well satisfied. Not to risk any further
_contretemps_, Parklands then suggested a return to the known dangers
of the waggon. This also suited the cob, who looked as if he had
carried all his friend’s money in a race and lost it.
‘Ten miles from Rainbar,’ sang out Parklands. The words had hardly left
his lips when the fore part of the waggon sprang into the air.
‘Hang on behind!’ shouted Brandon; and another minute saw Sparks and
Jem Fuller fasten on to the hind axle, backing for their lives. ‘Man
the horses, Eachin! Jem, you cut a straight sapling while we rouse out
the saddle-straps for a splice.’
On inspection the pole was found to have snapped about a foot from the
fore-carriage, upon which the broken stump, catching the ground, had
turned that important part of the mechanism under the waggon, causing
the alarming jolt. The pole being ‘fished’ with a pine sapling and
numberless saddle-straps, the remaining ten miles were safely
accomplished rather under the hour, with the middle of the mended pole
trailing in the dust.
They were heartily welcomed at Rainbar by Mr. Brigalow, the overseer,
who produced some good whisky, and with an invention of his own, called
a geebung, a fair imitation of soda water was concocted, in which all
present drank success to the purchaser.
On the morning after their arrival at Rainbar no time was lost by the
restless Parklands, who was astir and alive to the utmost possible
extent at daylight. Mr. Neuchamp, too excited to sleep during the
night, had fallen asleep before dawn. He had but dozed off, it appeared
to him, and now here was Parklands rousing up everybody, catching
horses, whistling to the dogs, swearing at the black boys, throwing
missiles at Brandon’s door, and generally making as much noise as a
dozen ordinary people. Where work of any general nature is on foot in
the bush, breakfast is the first important stage, being indispensable,
as, whatever other meals may be partaken of provisionally or left to
chance, human nature urgently cries out for one ‘square meal,’ _pour
commencer_. The cook therefore came in for his share of intimidation
and criticism from this terrible early bird.
Eventually the whole party found themselves assembled for breakfast at
the comparatively early hour of 5.30 a.m., while through the unglazed
open windows they could see the partially filled horse-yard, in which
stood every available screw and stock-horse on the place.
‘Now, Neuchamp,’ commenced Mr. Parklands, only partially arresting the
process of deglutition, ‘we must come to a decision about the muster. I
am bound by the terms of my agreement with old Father Frankston―rather
a downy old bird, in spite of his jolly ways and out-and-out dinners―to
get in all the herd and count them over to you. I would rather not do
it, I confess; not because I’m afraid of my numbers, but it takes time.
I have to be in Melbourne in ten days, in Adelaide in three weeks.
Besides, it knocks the cattle about. Doesn’t it, Aymer?’
‘Of course it does,’ assented that gentleman; ‘but it has an element of
safety about it, as far as the purchaser is concerned.’
‘No doubt of that; but in cases where the books have been so regularly
kept for years, as Brigalow’s here, any man can see that he _must_ get
his numbers if he takes them by the book total, with a decent
percentage knocked off for deaths, etc., for fear of accidents.’
‘It occurs to me,’ interposed Mr. Neuchamp, remembering Windsor’s
advice, ‘that as I have actually no experience in taking over a herd
like this, if Mr. Brandon would kindly act for me in the whole matter,
I should be happy to leave the delivery in his and your hands, feeling
sure that he could arrange it with you, in my interest, better than I
could myself.’
‘I could have no objection, of course,’ said Parklands. ‘I think it a
very good idea on your part; and though Aymer is my oldest friend, yet
I fancy no one would accuse him of not doing you justice in such a case
as this. I don’t think they’d tell him so, at any rate.’
‘What a lazy beggar you are in small things, Sparks,’ said Aymer. ‘Why
don’t you muster the cattle, and have done with it? And why am I to be
exalted into the position of your head stockman, and expected to back
you up in all kinds of audacious fabrications in which I have no
personal interest?’
‘Who is lazy now?’ sneered Parklands. ‘Why can’t you oblige Neuchamp
and me also; it may be for the last time, for I shall never return from
Melbourne alive, if the girls are half as pretty as they used to be.
Besides, I give you full power to fix the percentage, inspect the
books, knock off the price―anything you like, in fact. As a seller of
unparalleled generosity, we can’t be licked.’
‘I shall feel really grateful, Mr. Brandon,’ said Ernest, ‘if you will
consent to be my arbitrator and friend in the business.’
‘Well,’ said Brandon, stretching his vast frame and rising slowly from
the breakfast-table, ‘if both parties combine against me there is
nothing but capitulation for it. I surrender. So we may go to work
forthwith. There are the books for ten years back―certainly very neatly
and regularly kept. Branded, so many; missing, so many; dead, so many;
sold, so many. It strikes me, however, that 1 per cent additional might
be added to the death-rate.’
‘All right, old boy, knock it off,’ exclaimed Parklands.
‘Then, as to the brandings, nothing of course counts under six months.
I observe that you and Brigalow had a very fair haul of calves about a
month ago. I suppose none of them came from those outlying Wanilmah
cattle of mine? We’ll scratch _them_ out of the count.’
‘You be hanged,’ explodes Parklands. ‘I believe that old
cattle-stealer, Weenham, that _you_ call an overseer, is a long way on
the debit side with me in the calf line. But scratch them out if you
like. I hope you’re contented now. I believe you’re standing in with
Neuchamp, and met accidentally by appointment at Bilwillia to have me.’
‘I’ve not quite done with you yet,’ said Brandon calmly, all unheeding
of the gradually rising thermometer of Sparks’s temper. ‘What about
those Back Lake cattle? It has just occurred to me that the last camp
we saw there two years ago, when I helped you muster, contained an
unusual number of “pigmeaters,” even for back country. You can’t charge
our friend full price for them.’
‘By Jove!’ exclaimed Parklands, ‘you’re a friend in need. Well, of
course we’ll make a deduction for them. Though as the country is so
splendid out there, and is easily watered by cutting a channel from the
river, I――’
‘Cost only two thousand pounds,’ murmured Aymer.
‘Go to blazes! Five hundred more likely,’ said the sanguine Sparks.
‘Well say a hundred off for “ragers.”’
‘Must have a hundred and fifty,’ placidly pleaded Brandon. ‘Think of
the danger and anxiety in muster times.’
‘You’re another!’ burst out Sparks, now justly indignant. ‘If I take
off another penny for anything, may I be――’
‘Well, I only want two more stock-horses now,’ persisted Brandon;
‘nothing here fit to call a horse that you could break your neck off
creditably.’
‘Where am I to get them, eh?’ asked Parklands despairingly.
‘Don’t mind taking the two wheelers you drove up. Neuchamp will find
them handy for practising four-in-hand with―the only fun he’ll be
likely to get here. And now, as I’m thoroughly exhausted and
demoralised by unmasking your villainy, we’ll adjourn to lunch. Can’t
lick us, eh, Sparks.’
‘Well, of all the cold-blooded, grasping, unprincipled screws that ever
imposed upon a warm-hearted proprietor under the cloak of early
friendship, you’re the biggest, you old humbug. Mr. Neuchamp, you never
made a better bargain in your life, thanks to this long impostor. Let
us have lunch on the strength of it; we’ll do the arithmetic
afterwards, and I shall be able to start at daylight. Can’t lick us!’
Somewhat comforted by the notion that he would be able to depart
without the enforced delay of a muster, and again commence one of his
long and rapid journeys, made with the tireless celerity of a Russian
lieutenant with despatches, Parklands ordered and attacked lunch with
his usual vigour and determination. Mr. Neuchamp in his turn was shrewd
enough to perceive that Brandon, having definitely, though unwillingly,
accepted the responsibility of acting for him, had decided with the
sternest impartiality between his friend and himself. He felt that
equally by this arbitration or by leaving it wholly to Mr. Parklands he
would in any case have been a considerable gainer by adopting Jack
Windsor’s advice, and he felt a lively satisfaction at the successful
result.
Lunch having been disposed of, the trio sat down to the calculation,
and the lowest attainable number of cattle, with their ratable
money-value per head, having been produced as the result of Aymer
Brandon’s subtraction and addition, Mr. Neuchamp gave a cheque for the
amount, signed with the hitherto unquestioned name of Ernest Neuchamp.
In return he received a receipt from Parklands, reciting below that he
had hereby purchased the right, title, and license to all those crown
lands situated in the county of Oxley, and comprising the runs of
Rainbar East and West, Warrah, Banda, North Banda, Back Banda, and
Outer Back Banda, with two thousand head of cattle, more or less,
branded LP, and the right to all cattle whatever bearing that brand not
absolutely proved to be sold or demised by the proprietor or by his
orders.
This feat fully accomplished, Mr. Neuchamp was congratulated by both
gentlemen upon being the proud possessor of one of the best cattle runs
of a very good district, and tolerably cheap too, as he was assured.
‘The fact is,’ said Mr. Parklands, ‘I should never have offered it at
this price; but I am going in extensively for a lot of new country upon
the Darr, and I want all the cash I can get hold of. It’s necessary to
buy money, you know, sometimes, and this is a case in point. If things
go right, in half a dozen years I shall be able to sell runs by the
dozen. Can’t lick us!’