Right and left the sheep parted. There was nothing to be gained now
in crawling, for the hostility of the dog told him that he could be
seen. He stood, his body stiffened with determination.
Mechanically he went to the door; he knew the defensive resources
of the hut. He had the axe, and the stolen tomahawk was stuck in
the fork of those myalls. He had no need for both. The only weapon
that the old fellow had was the useless butcher’s knife. His eyes
protruded, and unconsciously he felt his stiffened beard.
He breathed without movement. There was no sound now from man or dog.
In his mind he saw them waiting for him to attack the door; this he
did not debate nor alter. He went to the shutter, ran the axe’s edge
along the hide hinges, pushed it in, then stepped back.
Immediately the dog’s head appeared. He growled no protest, but the
flinty fire from his eyes and the heat of his suppressed breath,
hissing between his bared fangs, revealed to Scrammy that in this
contest, despite the axe, his one hand was a serious handicap.
With the first blow his senses quickened. The slush lamp had gone out
and there was no hint of daylight inside. This he noted between his
blows at the dog, as he looked for his victim. It was strange the old
fellow did not show fight! Where was he hiding? Was it possible that,
scenting danger, he had slipped out? He recalled the dog’s warning
when his master was counting his hoard. The memory of that chinking
belt-hidden pile dominated greedily. Had the old man escaped? He
would search the hut; what were fifty dogs’ teeth? In close quarters
he would do for him with one blow.
He was breathing now in deep gasps. The keen edge of the axe severed
the hide-hinged door. He rushed it; then stood back swinging the axe
in readiness. It did not fall for the bolt still held it. But this
was only what a child would consider a barrier. One blow with the axe
head smashed the bolt. The door fell across the head of the bunk, the
end partly blocking the entrance. He struck a side blow that sent it
along the bunk.
The dog was dreadfully distressed. The bushman outside thought the
cause the fallen door. Face to face they met--determined battle in
the dog’s eyes met murder in the man’s. He brandished an axe circuit,
craned his neck, and by the dull light of the fire searched the hut.
He saw no one but the dog. Unless his master was under the bunk, he
had escaped. The whole plot broke on him quite suddenly! The cunning
old miser, knowing his dog would show his flight by following, had
locked him in, and he had wasted all this time barking up the wrong
tree. He would have done the old man to death that minute with fifty
brutal blows. He would kill him by day or night.
He ran round the brush sheep yard, kicking and thrusting the axe
through the thickest parts. He had not hidden there, nor among the
myall clump where he had practised his bloody plot. The dog stood at
the doorway of the hut. He saw this as he passed through the sheep on
his way to search the creek. He was half minded to try to invite the
dog’s confidence and cooperation by yarding them.
He looked at them, and the moonlight’s undulating white scales across
their shorn backs brought out the fresh tar brand 8, setting him
thinking of the links of that convict gang chain long ago. Lord, how
light it must be for him to see that!
He held out his hand again. There was no perceptible change in the
light. There were hours yet before daylight. He moulded his mind to
that.
The creek split the plain, and along it here and there a few she-oak
blots defined it. He traversed it with his eyes. There were no likely
hiding places among the trees, and it would be useless to search
them. Suddenly it struck him that the old man might be creeping
along with the sheep--they were so used to him. He ran and headed
them, driving them swiftly back to the yard. Before they were in he
knew he was wrong. Again he turned and scanned the creek, but felt
no impulse to search it. It was half a mile from the hut. It was
impossible that the old man could have got there, or that he could
have reached the more distant house. Besides, why did the dog stay at
the door unless on guard? He ran back to the hut.
The dog was still there, and in no way appeased by the yarding of the
sheep. He swore at the threatening brute, and cast about for a gibber
to throw, but stones were almost unknown there. A sapling would serve
him! Seven or eight myall logs lay near for firewood, but all were
too thick to be wielded. There was only the clump of myalls, and the
few stunted she-oaks bordering the distant creek. To reach either
would mean a dangerous delay. Oh, by God, he had it! These poles
keeping down the bark roof. He ran to the back of the hut, cut a step
in a slab, and putting his foot in it, hitched the axe on one of
the desired poles and was up in a moment. He could hear the cabbage
fronds hanging from the rafters shiver with the vibration, but there
was no other protest from inside.
He shifted a sheet of rotten bark; part of it crumbled and fell
inside on the prostrate door, sounding like the first earth on a
coffin, in a way that the dog particularly resented. He knelt and
carefully eyed the interior. The dog’s glittering eyes met his. The
door lay as it had fallen along the bunk. The fire was lightless, yet
he could see more plainly, but the cause was not manifest, till from
the myalls quite close the jackasses chorused. From his post the dog
sent them a signal. Quite unaccountably the man’s muscles relaxed.
“Oh, Christ!” he said, dropping the pole. He sprang up and faced the
East, then turned to the traitorous faded moon. The daylight had come.
The sweat stung his quivering body. Slowly, he made an eye circuit
round the plain; no human being was in sight. All he had to face was
a parcel of noisy jackasses and a barking dog! He would soon silence
the dog. He took the pole and made a jab at the whelping brute. One
thing he noticed, that if he did get one home, it was only when he
worked near the horizontal door. His quickened senses guessed at
the reason. He could have shifted the door easily with his pole, yet
feared, because, if the old man were under, he would expose himself
to two active enemies. He must get to close quarters with the dog,
and chop him in two, or brain him with the axe.
He ripped off another sheet of bark, and smashed away a batten that
broke his swing. Encircling a rafter with his hooked arm, he lay
flat, his feet pressing another just over the bunk, because only
there would the dog hold his ground. One blow well directed got home.
He planted his feet firmly, and made another with such tremendous
force that his support snapped. He let go the axe and it fell on the
door. He gripped with his hand the rafter nearest, but strain as he
would he could not balance his body. He hung over the door, and the
dog sprang at him and dragged him down. In bitten agony, he dropped
on the door that instantly up-ended.
It was daylight, and in that light the power of those open eyes set
in that bald head, fixed on the billy beside the dead fireplace, was
mightier than the dog. His unmaimed hand had the strength of both. He
lifted the door and shielded himself with it as he backed out.
But that was not all the dog wanted. At the doorway he waited to see
that the fleeing man had no further designs on the sheep.
It was time they were feeding. Though the hurdles were down, even
from the doorway, the dog was their master. He waited for commands
from his, and barked them back till noon.
Several times that day the ewe and lamb came in, looked without
speculation at the figure on the bunk, then moved to the dead
fire-place. But though the water in the billy was cold, the dog would
not allow either to touch it. That was for tea when his master awoke.
There was another circumstance. Those blow flies were welcome to the
uncovered mutton. Throughout that day he gave them undisputed right,
but they had to be content with it.
Next day the ewe and lamb came again. The lamb bunted several
irresponsive objects--never its dam’s udder--baaing listlessly.
Though the first day the ewe had looked at the bunk, and baaed,
she was wiser now, though sheep are slow to learn. Around that
dried dish outside the lamb sniffed, baaing faintly. Adroitly the
ewe led the way to the creek, and the lamb followed. From the bank
the lamb looked at her, then faced round to the hut, and baaing
disconsolately, trotted a few paces back. From the water’s edge the
mother ewe called. The lamb looked at her vacantly, and without
interest descended. The ewe bent and drank sparingly, meaningly.
The lamb sniffed the water, and unsatisfied, complained. The hut
was hidden, but it turned that way. Again the ewe leisurely drank.
This time the lamb’s lips touched the water, but did not drink. Into
its mouth raised to bleat a few drops fell. Hastily the mother’s
head went to the water. She did not drink, but the lamb did. Higher
up, where the creek was dry, they crossed to tender grass in the
billabong, then joined the flock for the first time.
Through the thicker mist that afternoon a white tilted cart sailed
joltingly, taking its bearings from the various land marks rather
than from the undefined track. It rounded the scrub, and the woman,
with her baby, kept watch for the first glimpse of her home beyond
the creek. She told her husband that there was no smoke from the
nearer shepherd’s hut, but despite his uneasiness, he tried to
persuade her that the mist absorbed it.
It was past sun-down, yet the straggling unguarded sheep were
running in mobs to and from the creek. Both saw the broken roof of
the hut, and the man, stopping the horse some distance away, gave the
woman the reins and bade her wait. He entered the hut through the
broken doorway, but immediately came out to assure himself that his
wife had not moved.
The sight inside of that broken-ribbed dog’s fight with those buzzing
horrors, and the reproach in his wild eyes, was a memory that the man
was not willing she should share.
BILLY SKYWONKIE.
The line was unfenced, so with due regard to the possibility of
the drought-dulled sheep attempting to chew it, the train crept
cautiously along, stopping occasionally, without warning, to clear
it from the listless starving brutes. In the carriage nearest the
cattle-vans, some drovers and scrub-cutters were playing euchre,
and spasmodically chorusing the shrill music from an uncertain
concertina. When the train stopped, the player thrust his head
from the carriage window. From one nearer the engine, a commercial
traveller remonstrated with the guard, concerning the snail’s pace
and the many unnecessary halts.
“Take yer time, ole die-ard,” yelled the drover to the guard. “Whips
er time,--don’t bust yerself fer no one. Wot’s orl the worl’ to a man
w’en his wife’s a widder.” He laughed noisily and waved his hat at
the seething bagman. “Go an’ ’ave a snooze. I’ll wake yer up ther
day after termorrer.”
He craned his neck to see into the nearest cattle-van. Four were
down, he told his mates, who remarked, with blasphemous emphasis,
that they would probably lose half before getting them to the scrub
country.
The listening woman passenger in a carriage between the drover and
the bagman, heard a thud soon after in the cattle-truck, and added
another to the list of the fallen. Before dawn that day the train had
stopped at a siding to truck them, and she had watched with painful
interest these drought-tamed brutes being driven into the crowded
vans. The tireless, greedy sun had swiftly followed the grey dawn,
and in the light that even now seemed old and worn, the desolation of
the barren shelterless plains, that the night had hidden, appalled
her. She realised the sufferings of the emaciated cattle. It was
barely noon, yet she had twice emptied the water bottle, “shogging”
in the iron bracket.
The train dragged its weary length again, and she closed her eyes
from the monotony of the dead plain. Suddenly the engine cleared its
throat in shrill welcome to two iron tanks, hoisted twenty feet and
blazing like evil eyes from a vanished face.
Beside them it squatted on its hunkers, placed a blackened thumb on
its pipe, and hissed through its closed teeth like a snared wild cat,
while gulping yards of water. The green slimy odour penetrated to the
cattle. The lustiest of these stamped feebly, clashing their horns
and bellowing a hollow request.
A long-bearded bushman was standing on the few slabs that formed a
siding, with a stockwhip coiled like a snake on his arm. The woman
passenger asked him the name of the place.
“This is ther Never--Never,--ther lars’ place Gord made,” answered
one of the drovers who were crowding the windows.
“Better’n ther ’ell ’ole yous come from, any’ow,” defended the
bushman. “Breakin’ ther ’earts, an’ dyin’ from suerside, cos they
lef’ it,” he added derisively, pointing to the cattle.
In patriotic anger he passed to the guard-van without answering her
question, though she looked anxiously after him. At various intervals
during the many halts of the train, she had heard some of the
obscene jokes, and with it in motion, snatches of lewd songs from
the drovers’ carriage. But the language used by this bushman to the
guard, as he helped to remove a ton of fencing wire topping his new
saddle, made her draw back her head. Near the siding was a spring
cart, and she presently saw him throw his flattened saddle into it
and drive off. There was no one else in sight, and in nervous fear
she asked the bagman if this was Gooriabba siding. It was nine miles
further, he told her.
The engine lifted its thumb from its pipe. “Well--well--to--be--sure;
well--well--to--be--sure,” it puffed, as if in shocked remembrance of
its being hours late for its appointment there.
She saw no one on the next siding, but a buggy waited near the
sliprails. It must be for her. According to Sydney arrangements she
was to be met here, and driven out twelve miles. A drover enquired as
the train left her standing by her portmanteau, “Are yer travellin’
on yer lonesome, or on’y goin’ somew’ere!” and another flung a twist
of paper towards her, bawling unmusically, that it was “A flowwer
from me angel mother’s ger-rave.”
She went towards the buggy, but as she neared it the driver got in
and made to drive off. She ran and called, for when he went she would
be alone with the bush all round her, and only the sound of the
hoarse croaking of the frogs from the swamp near, and the raucous
“I’ll--’ave--’is--eye--out,” of the crows.
Yes, he was from Gooriabba Station, and had come to meet a young
“piece” from Sydney, who had not come.
She was ghastly with bilious sickness,--the result of an over-fed
brain and an under-fed liver. Her face flushed muddily. “Was it a
housekeeper?”
He was the rouseabout, wearing his best clothes with awful
unusualness. The coat was too long in the sleeve, and wrinkled across
the back with his bush slouch. There was that wonderful margin of
loose shirt between waistcoat and trousers, which all swagger bushies
affect. Subordinate to nothing decorative was the flaring silk
handkerchief, drawn into a sailor’s knot round his neck.
He got out and fixed the winkers, then put his hands as far as he
could reach into his pockets--from the position of his trousers he
could not possibly reach bottom. It was apparently some unknown law
that suspended them. He thrust forward his lower jaw, elevated his
pipe, and squirted a little tobacco juice towards his foot that was
tracing semi-circles in the dust. “Damned if I know,” he said with a
snort, “but there’ll be a ’ell of a row somew’ere.”
She noticed that the discoloured teeth his bush grin showed so
plainly, were worn in the centre, and met at both sides with the pipe
between the front. Worn stepping stones her mind insisted.
She looked away towards the horizon where the smoke of the hidden
train showed faintly against a clear sky, and as he was silent, she
seemed to herself to be intently listening to the croak of the frogs
and the threat of the crows. She knew that, from under the brim of
the hat he wore over his eyes, he was looking at her sideways.
Suddenly he withdrew his hands and said again, “Damned if I know.
S’pose its alright! Got any traps? Get up then an’ ’ole the Neddy
while I get it.” They drove a mile or so in silence; his pipe was
still in his mouth though not alight.
She spoke once only. “What a lot of frogs seem to be in that lake!”
He laughed. “That’s ther Nine Mile Dam!” He laughed again after a
little--an intelligent complacent laugh.
“It used ter be swarmin’ with teal in a good season, but Gord
A’mighty knows w’en its ever goin’ ter rain any more! I dunno!” This
was an important admission, for he was a great weather prophet.
“Lake!” he sniggered and looked sideways at his companion. “Thet’s
wot thet there bloke, the painter doodle, called it. An ’e goes ter
dror it, an’ ’e sez wot ’e ’ll give me five bob if I’ll run up ther
horses, an’ keep ’em so’s ’e ken put ’em in ther picshure. An’ ’e
drors ther Dam an’ ther trees, puts in thet there ole dead un, an’ ’e
puts in ther ’orses right clost against ther water w’ere the frogs
is. ’E puts them in too, an’ damned if ’e don’t dror ther ’orses
drinkin’ ther water with ther frogs, an’ ther frogs spit on it!
Likely yarn ther ’orses ud drink ther water with ther blanky frogs’
spit on it! Fat lot they know about ther bush! Blarsted nannies!”
Presently he enquired as to the place where they kept pictures in
Sydney, and she told him, the Art Gallery.
“Well some of these days I’m goin’ down ter Sydney,” he continued,
“an I’ll collar thet one ’cos its a good likerness of ther
’orses--you’d know their ’ide on a gum tree--an’ that mean mongrel
never paid me ther five bob.”
Between his closed teeth he hissed a bush tune for some miles, but
ceased to look at the sky and remarked, “No sign er rain! No lambin’
this season; soon as they’re dropt we’ll ’ave ter knock ’em all on
ther ’ead!” He shouted an oath of hatred at the crows following after
the tottering sheep that made in a straggling line for the water.
“Look at ’em!” he said, “Scoffin’ out ther eyes!” He pointed to where
the crows hovered over the bogged sheep. “They putty well lives on
eyes! ‘Blanky bush Chinkies!’ I call ’em. No one carn’t tell ’em
apart!”
There was silence again, except for a remark that he could spit all
the blanky rain they had had in the last nine months.
Away to the left along a side track his eyes travelled seachingly, as
they came to a gate. He stood in the buggy and looked again.
“Promised ther ‘Konk’ t’ leave’im ’ave furst squint at yer,” he
muttered, “if ’e was ’ere t’ open ther gate! But I’m not goin’ t’
blanky well wait orl day!” He reluctantly got out and opened the
gate, and he had just taken his seat when a “Cooee” sounded from his
right, heralded by a dusty pillar. He snorted resentfully. “’Ere ’e
is; jes’ as I got out an’ done it!”
The “Konk” cantered to them, his horse’s hoofs padded by the
dust-cushioned earth. The driver drew back, so as not to impede the
newcomer’s view. After a moment or two, the “Konk,” preferring closer
quarters, brought his horse round to the left. Unsophisticated bush
wonder in the man’s face, met the sophisticated in the girl’s.
Never had she seen anything so grotesquely monkeyish. And the nose
of this little hairy horror, as he slewed his neck to look into
her face, blotted the landscape and dwarfed all perspective. She
experienced a strange desire to extend her hand. When surprise
lessened, her mettle saved her from the impulse to cover her face
with both hands, to baffle him.
At last the silence was broken by the driver drawing a match along
his leg, and lighting his pipe. The hairy creature safely arranged a
pair of emu eggs, slung with bush skill round his neck.
“Ain’t yer goin’ to part?” enquired the driver, indicating his
companion as the recipient.
“Wot are yer givin’ us; wot do yer take me fur?” said the “Konk”
indignantly, drawing down his knotted veil.
“Well, give ’em ter me fer Lizer.”
“Will yer ’ave ’em now, or wait till yer get ’em?”
“Goin’ ter sit on ’em yerself?” sneered the driver.
“Yes, an’ I’ll give yer ther first egg ther cock lays,” laughed the
“Konk.”
He turned his horse’s head back to the gate. “I say, Billy Skywonkie!
Wot price Sally Ah Too, eh?” he asked, his gorilla mouth agape.
Billy Skywonkie uncrossed his legs, took out the whip. He tilted his
pipe and shook his head as he prepared to drive, to show that he
understood to a fraction the price of Sally Ah Too. The aptness of
the question took the sting out of his having had to open the gate.
He gave a farewell jerk.
“Goin’ ter wash yer neck?” shouted the man with the nose, from the
gate.
“Not if I know it.”
The “Konk” received the intimation incredulously. “Stinkin’ Roger!”
he yelled. In bush parlance this was equal to emphatic disbelief.
This was a seemingly final parting, and both started, but suddenly
the “Konk” wheeled round.
“Oh, Billy!” he shouted.
Billy stayed his horse and turned expectantly.
“W’en’s it goin’ ter rain?”
The driver’s face darkened. “Your blanky jealersey ’ll get yer down,
an’ worry yer yet,” he snarled, and slashing his horse he drove
rapidly away.
“Mickey ther Konk,” he presently remarked to his companion, as he
stroked his nose.
This explained her earlier desire to extend her hand. If the “Konk”
had been a horse she would have stroked his nose.
“Mob er sheep can camp in the shadder of it,” he said.
Boundless scope for shadows on that sun-smitten treeless plain!
“Make a good plough-shere,” he continued “easy plough a cultivation
paddock with it!”
At the next gate he seemed in a mind and body conflict. There
were two tracks; he drove along one for a few hundred yards. Then
stopping, he turned, and finding the “Konk” out of sight, abruptly
drove across to the other. He continually drew his whip along the
horse’s back, and haste seemed the object of the movement, though he
did not flog the beast.
After a few miles on the new track, a blob glittered dazzlingly
through the glare, like a fallen star. It was the iron roof of the
wine shanty--the Saturday night and Sunday resort of shearers and
rouseabouts for twenty miles around. Most of its spirits was made on
the premises from bush recipes, of which blue-stone and tobacco were
the chief ingredients. Every drop had the reputation of “bitin’ orl
ther way down.”
A sapling studded with broken horse-shoes seemed to connect two
lonely crow stone trees. Under their scanty shade groups of dejected
fowls stood with beaks agape. Though the buggy wheels almost reached
them, they were motionless but for quivering gills. The ground both
sides of the shanty was decorated with tightly-pegged kangaroo skins.
A dog, apathetically blind and dumb, lay on the verandah, lifeless
save for eyelids blinking in antagonism to the besieging flies.
“Jerry can’t be far off,” said Billy Skywonkie, recognising the dog.
He stood up in the buggy. “By cripes, there ’e is--goosed already,
an’ ’e on’y got ’is cheque lars’ night.”
On the chimney side of the shanty a man lay in agitated sleep beside
his rifle and swag. There had been a little shade on that side in the
morning, and he had been sober enough to select it, and lay his head
on his swag. He had emptied the bottle lying at his feet since then.
His swag had been thoroughly “gone through,” and also his singlet and
trouser pockets. The fumes from the shant-grog baffled the flies.
But the scorching sun was conquering; the man groaned, and his hands
began to search for his burning head.
Billy Skywonkie explained to his companion that it was “Thet fool,
Jerry ther kangaroo-shooter, bluein’ ’is cheque fer skins.” He took
the water bag under the buggy, and poured the contents into the open
mouth and over the face of the “dosed” man, and raised him into a
sitting posture. Jerry fought this friendliness vigorously, and,
staggering to his feet, picked up his rifle, and took drunken aim at
his rescuer, then at the terrified woman in the buggy.
The rouseabout laughed unconcernedly. “’E thinks we’re blanky
kangaroos,” he said to her. “Jerry, ole cock, yer couldn’t ’it a
woolshed! Yer been taking ther sun!”
He took the rifle and pushed the subdued Jerry into the chimney
corner.
He tilted his hat, till, bush fashion, it “’ung on one ’air,” and
went inside the shanty. “Mag!” he shouted, thumping the bar (a plank
supported by two casks).