"H'sh! Did you hear a coo-ee?"
I shook my head in some surprise. My host seemed a good fellow; but
hitherto he had proved an extremely poor companion, and for five
minutes, I suppose, neither of us had said a word. My eyes had fallen
from the new well, with its pump and white palings shining like ivory
under the full moon, to our two shadows skewered through and through by
those of the iron hurdles against which we were leaning. These hurdles
enclosed and protected a Moreton Bay fig, which had been planted where
the lid of the old well used to lie, so I had just been told; and I had
said I wondered why one well should have been filled in and another
sunk so very near the same place, and getting no answer I had gone
on wondering for those five minutes. So if there had been any sound
beyond the croaking of the crickets (which you get to notice about as
much as the tick of a clock), I felt certain that I must have heard it
too. I, however, was a very new chum, whereas Warburton of Gunbar was
a ten-year bushman, whose ear might well be quicker than mine to catch
the noises of the wilderness; and when I raised my eyes inquisitively
there was a light in his that made me uneasy.
"Hear it now?" he said quietly, and with a smile, as a seaman points
out sails invisible to the land-lubber. "I do--plainly."
"I don't," I candidly replied. "But if it's some poor devil lost in
the mallee, you'll be turning out to look for him, and I'll lend you a
hand."
His homestead, you see, was in the heart of the mallee, and on the edge
of a ten-mile block which was one tangle of mallee and porcupine scrub
from fence to fence. I shuddered to think of anyone being bushed in
that stuff, for away down in Warburton's eyes there was a horror that
had gone like a bullet to my nerves. I was therefore the more surprised
at the dry laugh with which he answered:
"You'd better stop where you are."
I could not understand the man. He was not only the manager of Gunbar,
but overseer and store-keeper as well, an unmarried man and a solitary.
One's first impression of him was that his lonely life and depressing
surroundings had sadly affected his whole nature. He had looked askance
at me when I rode up to the place, making me fancy I had at last found
the station where an uninvited guest was also unwelcome. After that
preliminary scrutiny, however, his manner had warmed somewhat. He
asked me several questions concerning the old country from which we
both came; and I remember liking him for putting on a black coat for
supper, which struck me as a charming conceit in that benighted spot,
and not a woman within twenty-five miles of us. His latest eccentricity
pleased me less. Either he was chaffing me, and he had heard nothing
(but his sombre manner made that incredible), or he was prepared to let
a fellow-creature perish fearfully without an attempt at rescue. I was
thankful when he explained himself.
"I know who it is, you see," he said presently, striking a match on the
hurdle and re-lighting his pipe. "It's all right."
"But who is it?" said I; for that would not do for me.
"It's Mad Trevor," he returned gravely. "Come now!" he added, looking
me in the face much as he had done before inviting me to dismount; "do
you mean to say you have got as far as this and never heard the yarn of
Mad Trevor of Gunbar?"
I made it clear that I knew nothing at all about it; and in the end he
told me the story as we stood in the station yard, and lounged against
those iron hurdles right under the great round moon.
"My lad, I was as young as you are when I came to this place; but
that's very near ten years ago, and ten years take some time in the
mallee scrub. Yes, I know I look older than that; but this country
would age anybody, even if nothing happened to start your white hairs
before their time. I'm going to tell you what did happen within my
first two months on this station. Mad Trevor was manager then, and he
and I were to run the show between us as soon as I knew my business.
To learn it, I used to run up the horses at five o'clock in the
morning, and run 'em out again last thing at night, for the drought
had jolly nearly dried us up, and in the yard yonder we had to give
every horse his nose-bag of chaff before turning him out. Well, between
sparrow-chirp and bedtime I was either mustering or boundary-riding,
or weighing out rations in the store, or taking them to the huts in
the spring-cart, or making up the books, or sweeping out my store, or
cleaning up the harness; but I never had ten minutes to myself, for old
Trevor believed in making me work all the harder because I was only to
get my tucker for it till I knew the ropes. And for my part I'm bound
to say I thoroughly enjoyed the life in those days, as I daresay you do
now. The rougher the job, the readier was I to tackle it. So I think
the boss was getting to like me, and I know I liked him; but for all
that, he was mad, as I soon found out from the men, who had christened
him Mad Trevor.
"It appeared that he had come to Gunbar some three or four years before
me, with his young wife and their baby girl, Mona, who was five years
old when first I saw her--riding across this very yard on her father's
shoulders. Ay, and I can see her now, with her yellow head of hair and
her splendid little legs and arms! She was forever on Mad Trevor's
back, or in his arms, or on his knee, or at his side in the buggy, or
even astride in front of him on the saddle-bow; and her father's face
beaming over her shoulder, and his great beard tickling her cheeks, and
he watching her all the time with the tenderest love that ever I saw
in human eyes. For, you see, the wife had died here on Gunbar, and lay
buried in the little cemetery we have behind the stock-yards; but she
was going to live again in little Mona; and Trevor knew that, and was
just waiting.
"But his trouble had driven him quite mad; for often I have been
wakened when I'd just dropped off, by hearing him come down the
verandah trailing his blanket after him; and away he was gone to camp
all night on his wife's grave. The men used to hear him talking to her
up there; it would have made your heart bleed for him, he was such a
rough-and-ready customer with all of us but the child.
"Well, one day we were out on the run together, he and I in the buggy.
It was to fix a new rope round the drum of the twelve-mile whim--at
the far side of the mallee, that is--and I recollect he showed me how
it was done that day so that I never needed showing again, and it was
because I was quickish at picking up such things that he liked me. But
a brute of a dust-storm came on just as we finished, and we had to wait
at the whim-driver's hut till it was over; and that was the first time
I ever heard him mention little Mona's name behind her back. For the
whim-driver had a fine coloured print, from some Christmas number,
stuck up over his bunk, and it was a treat to hear the poor boss beg
it from him to bring home to the little one. It was as though the bare
thought of the kid made a difference in the look of his eye and the
tone of his voice; for he had been swearing at the rope and us in his
best style; but he never swore once on the drive back, he only made
me hold the rolled print in my hand the whole time; and I had to take
tremendous care of it, and hand it over to him the moment we pulled up
in the yard here, so that he might give it to little Mona first thing.
But that was not to be: the child was lost. She had been missing since
the time of the dust-storm, which was mid-day, and all hands but the
cook who told us, and the nurse who was responsible and beside herself,
were out searching for her already.
"The boss took the news without immediately getting down from the
buggy, and with none of the bluster which he usually had ready for the
least thing. But his face was all hair and freckles, and I recollect
how the freckles stood out when he turned to speak to me; and to this
day I can feel the pinch of his fingers on the fleshy part of my arm.
"'Harry,' he says, in a kind of whisper, 'you must turn these two out,
and then run up Blücher and Wellington; and you must drive that nurse
girl away from this, Harry--you must take her away this very night. For
if my child is dead, I'll kill her too--by God, but I will!'
"But the nurse had seen us drive up, and as Mad Trevor crossed the yard
heavily, like a dazed man, she ran out from the verandah and threw
herself at his knees, sobbing her heart out. What he said to her first
I couldn't catch: I only know that in another moment he was crying
like a child himself. No wonder either, when the mallee is the worst
kind of scrub to get lost in, and there had been enough dust to clean
out deeper tracks than a child's, and when it was growing late in the
afternoon, and the poor little thing out for hours already. But it was
the most pitiful sight you ever saw--the servant girl in hysterics and
the poor old boss steadying his voice to take the blame off her he'd
said he'd kill. Ay, he was standing just in front of the verandah,
within three yards of where we are now, and that rolled-up print was
still in his hand.
"So no more was said about my carting the poor girl off that night; but
Wellington and Blücher were run up all the same, and at sundown they
were bowling the buggy away back to the twelve-mile with me in her. You
see, the twelve-mile whim-driver was Gunbar George, our oldest hand,
who knew every inch of the run, so the boss thought that George would
lay hold of little Mona sooner than he could, if she was in the mallee.
And that's where she was, we were all quite certain; and George was
certain too, when I told him; and he told of a man he himself had once
found in our mallee, stone-dead, with 'died from thirst' scratched in
the grime on the bottom of his quart pot, and all within a mile of this
very homestead.
"That wasn't a pretty story to leave behind with a new chum who was
going to camp alone in a lonely hut for the first time of asking, and
nothing to think about but the poor little bairn that was lost. I tell
you, I shall remember that night as long as I live, and how I felt when
I had seen the last of George and the buggy in the moonlight; for by
that time it was night, and just such another as this, with the moon
right overhead, as round as an orange, and not a cloud in the sky. Ah!
we have plenty of nights like that in the back-blocks, and one full
moon is as like the last as two peas, for want of clouds; and somehow
they always seem to come before they're due; yet it's a weary while to
look back upon, with that night at the end of all, like a gate after
five miles of posts and wire. Say now--have you never heard him all
this time?" He had paused, with his head bent and on one side.
I replied that I had heard nothing but his story; that what I wanted to
hear was the end of it, and that Mad Trevor would keep. He smiled when
I said that, and stood listening for another minute or more, with his
eyes drawn back into his head.
"Ah, well!" he tossed up his head and went on, "it came to an end in
time, like most nights; but the worst was before it began, when I
could hear George cracking his whip whenever I stood still. So I stood
still until I knew I should hear him no more, and then I blew up the
fire for my tea, for I had a fair twist after all that driving. But
Lord, you'll hear how your boots creak the first time you camp alone
in a hut--especially if it's a good one with a floor to it like our
twelve-mile! I tell you I took mine off, and then I put 'em on again,
because my stocking-soles made just as much noise in their own way,
and it was a creepier way. Then there are two or three rooms to the
hut out there--it's a fine hut, our twelve-mile--and I had to poke my
nose into them all before I could tackle my tea. And then I had to
walk right round the hut in the moonlight, as if it had been a desert
island. But it was lighter outside than in, for I had nothing but a
slush-lamp--you know, a strip of moleskin in a tin of mutton fat--and
I didn't understand the working of one in those days any better than I
suppose you would now. Well, then, the whim-water at the twelve-mile is
brackish, so I had to fill the billy at an open tank that was getting
low; but there'd been a tantalising little shower of sixty points a day
or two before that had made the water muddy; and I very well remember
that the billy looked full of tea before I opened my hand to slip
the tea in. Then the hut was swarming with bull-ants, and they came
crawling up the sides of the billy and into the tea where I had set it
to cool on the floor; and the light was so bad that I had to chance
those ants, because you couldn't tell them from tea-leaves. Well, I
could have enjoyed the experience, and thought of the fine letter home
it would have made, if I hadn't been thinking all the time of that poor
little thing in the mallee. I was just about as new a chum as you are
now, and there was a kind of interest in turning my pouch inside out
for the last pipeful of the cut-up tobacco I had brought up with me
from Melbourne. It was one of the last fills of cut-up that ever I had
until you handed me your pouch to-night, because when you once get used
to the black cakes you'll find you'll stick to them. So there I sat
and smoked my pipe on the doorstep, and kept looking at the moon, and
thinking of the old people in the old country, and wishing they could
see me just then. I daresay you think like that sometimes, but you'll
find you get over that too. It was worse to think of that little mite
in the mallee scrub, and how she had sat on my knee the night before;
and how she would come into my store when I was doing the books, spill
the flour about, and keep on asking questions. That's the store over
there, at the other side of the new well, with the bell on top and the
narrow verandah in front. I must show you little Mona's height on the
centre post: I had to measure her every morning after once getting her
to bed by telling her she only grew in her sleep.
"Well, thinking wouldn't do any good, and my last pipe of cut-up was
soon done, for it was nothing but powder. I had brought a cake of the
black stuff with me, but it was too strong for me in those days. So
then I thought I had better turn in, though it was only ten o'clock;
so I took my blanket and the slush-lamp to the little dark room at
the back, and pulled off my coat and boots, and spread my blanket on
George's bunk. And before I lay down--well, I thought I should like to
put in a prayer for the poor little thing that was lost; and I reckon
it was about the last time I was ever on my knees at that business,
for you'll find these back-blocks don't make a man more religious than
he need be. But it was a comfort to me that night; and, while I was
kneeling, a little kitten of George's, that I'd never noticed when I
first looked into the room, came out and went for my stocking-soles;
and that was another comfort, I tell you! Mind you, I was twelve
miles from a house, and five from the nearest fellow-creature, a
boundary-rider on the next run. I had never been able to get that out
of my head, so the kitten was a godsend, and though he would come on to
the bed to tickle my toes, I wouldn't have been without him for all I
was worth. I had a paper too--one of my home papers that I hadn't had
time to read; and I stuck up the slush-lamp, and strained my eyes at
the print until I couldn't keep them open any longer; and what with the
kitten, that was purring very loud at my feet (but the louder he made
it the homelier it sounded), I found myself tumbling off to sleep long
before I had expected to, and in better heart too.
"I suppose I must have slept for some hours, for when I woke the moon
was low and swollen, and hanging like a Chinese lantern in the very
middle of my open doorway. But I never looked at my watch; I lay there
staring at the setting moon, and listening for a repetition of the
sound that had roused me. I had not long to wait, but yet long enough
to make me wonder at the time whether I mightn't have heard it in my
dreams only. And then it came again--the long-drawn wail, the piercing
final cry of a coo-ee from one that had learnt to coo-ee before he
could speak. As my feet touched the floor I heard another coo-ee; as I
ran out into the moonshine there came a fourth; but the fifth was in my
ear before I knew that they all came from the mallee scrub that spreads
westward from here to within half a mile of the twelve-mile whim. Then
I answered as well as I knew how; but the acquirement was a very recent
one in my case; and besides, my wits were still in a tangle. For first
I thought it was the child herself, until I realised, with a laugh
at the absurdity of the idea, that she could neither walk so far nor
coo-ee like that; and then I supposed it must be some chance traveller
that had got bushed, like others before him, in that deadly mallee. But
all the while I was answering his coo-ees as best I could, and running
in my socks in the direction from which they seemed to come. And long
before I spied my man I made sure that it was Mad Trevor himself, for I
knew no other with such lungs, and who else would have searched for a
bairn of five so many weary miles from the spot where it had last been
seen?
"But, as a matter of fact, he himself had no notion where he was, until
he saw me standing in front of him in the low moonlight. Then he wanted
to know what I meant by coming back from the twelve-mile; for, don't
you see, he thought he had been coasting around the home-station all
night--and that'll tell you about our mallee! When I set him right he
just stood there, wringing his big hands like a woman; and it was worse
to see than when he cried like a child before the little one's nurse.
"Of course I got him to come back with me to the hut; and he leant on
my shoulder with his sixteen stone, and he just said, 'Well, Harry, I
don't believe she's in the mallee at all. I've been coo-eeing for her
the whole night, ever since you went; and George has been coo-eeing
for her ever since he came; and all hands have been coo-eeing for her
in the mallee all night long. And I don't believe she's there at all.
I believe she's somewhere about the homestead all the time. We never
looked there. What fools we all are. You shall make me a pannikin
of tea, and I'll turn in and have a sleep, Harry; and we'll go back
together when it's light; and we'll find her asleep in the chaff-house,
I shouldn't wonder, if they haven't found her already; you bet we'll
find her safe and sound in some hole or corner, the rogue! frightening
her old dad out of all his wits.'
"And indeed, as he spoke, he gave a mad laugh even for him; and I
shrank away from under his great hand, that would keep tightening on
my shoulder; and left him to sit down in the hut while I went to the
wood-heap, and then to the tank to rinse and refill the billy.
"But that notion of his about the homestead had been my notion too, in
a kind of way; only I had kept it to myself because they were all so
cock-sure it was the mallee, and they would know best. I was thinking
it out, though, as I chopped the wood, and thinking it out as I rinsed
the billy. Now, to do this where the water was clearest, I had to lean
over from a bit of a staging, the tank being low, as I told you. But
this time, through thinking so much more of Mona than of what I was
doing, I lost my balance, and very nearly toppled in. And then I had to
think no more, for in a flash I knew where little Mona was."
The instant he paused I saw him listening. He was standing in front of
me now, but my back was still to the little fig-tree, and my hands had
the hurdle tight. I neither spoke nor took my eyes off him till he went
on.
"Yes, she was under the ground you're standing on," said Warburton,
nodding his head as I started from the place; "she had fallen into the
old well, and pulled down the lid in trying to save herself. I knew it
at the moment I was near toppling into the twelve-mile tank that wasn't
one foot deep. It turned out to be so. But I was never surer of it than
when I went back to the hut, spilling the water the whole way, I was
in such a tremble. And the difficulty was to keep the knowledge--for
knowledge it was--from the poor boss; it had cheered him so to think
the child had never been near the mallee! Why, before daylight he dozed
off quite comfortably on George's bunk in my blanket; and I sat and
watched him, and listened to him snoring; and could have fetched the
axe from the wood-heap and brained him where he lay, so that he might
never know.
"And he took it so calmly after all! I do assure you, when we had
buried her alongside her mother, he stood where we are now, and set all
hands digging the new well and filling in the old, and swore at us like
a healthy man when we didn't do this or that his way. It was he who
designed those palings, and would have no more lids, but a pump; though
there was neither woman nor child on the station to meet with accidents
now, but only us men. And he was smoking his pipe when he planted this
fig, for I was by at the time, and remember him telling me his wife
had brought it from Moreton Bay in Queensland. I had seen it often in
a pot, and now I had to say whether it was plumb; and with his pipe in
his mouth and his head on one side he seemed as callous as you please.
And for three weeks, to my certain knowledge, he slept every night in
his room, and I would have thought nothing of sleeping there with him,
he was bearing it so grandly. Then came the full moon and the bright
nights again; and we heard him in the mallee, coo-eeing for the child
that lay beside her mother--him that had buried them both!
"Well, he didn't come back next morning, so now all hands turned out to
search for _him_. But we never found him all day, for he had crossed
his tracks again and again; and all next night we heard him coo-eeing
away for his dead child, but now his coo-ee was getting hoarse; and God
knows why, but none of us could manage to set eyes on him. It was I who
found him the day after. He was lying under a hop-bush, but the sun had
shifted and was all over him. His lips were black, and I felt certain
he was dead. But when I sung out he jumped clean to his feet, with his
fists clenched and his red beard blowing in the hot wind, and his face
and his eyes on fire. And if he had never been mad before, he was then.
"He opened his mouth, and I expected a roar, but I couldn't understand
a word he said until he had half emptied my water-bag.
"'What do you want with me?' he says at last; and of course I said I
wanted him to come back to the station with me. So he says, 'You leave
me alone--don't you meddle with me. I'm not coming back till I find
my little 'un that's bushed in this mallee.' So then I saw there was
nothing for it but firmness, and I said he must come with me--as if
it had been poor wee Mona herself. But he only laughed and swore, and
went on warning me not to meddle with him. Well, I was just forced to.
But sixteen stone takes a lot of weakening, and the last I saw of him
alive was his great freckled fist coming at my head. I went down like a
pithed bullock. And it was I who found him again the week after, when
he must have been all but a week dead--but I had heard him coo-eeing
every blessed night!"
He was listening again: whenever he paused, I caught him listening. I
was still to understand it, and the deep-down scare in his eyes.
"Stop a bit!" said I. "Don't tell me he's dead if he's only mad,
and you've got him in some hut somewhere. You say you can hear him
coo-eeing--I see you can."
Warburton of Gunbar heaved the saddest sigh I have ever heard.
"I hear him always," he said quietly, "when the moon is at the full. I
have done, all along, and it's close on ten years ago now. It's in the
mallee I hear him, just as he heard little Mona; yet they all three
lie together over yonder behind the stock-yards. H'sh, man, h'sh!" He
was gripping at my arm, but I twisted away from him even as himself
from Mad Trevor, because his listening eyes were more than enough for
me. "There's his coo-ee again!" he cried, raising a hand that never
quivered. "Mean to tell me you can't hear it now?"