from the back, wiping the flour from her face with a kitchen towel.
They made some reference to her she knew, as the girl came to the
door and gave her close scrutiny. Then, shaking her head till her
long brass earrings swung like pendulums, she laughed loudly.
“Eh?” enquired the rouseabout.
“My oath!” “Square dinkum!” she answered, going behind the bar.
He took the silk handkerchief from his neck, and playfully tried
to flick the corner into her eye. Mag was used to such delicate
attentions and well able to defend herself. With the dirty kitchen
towel she succeeded in knocking off his hat, and round and round the
house she ran with it dexterously dodging the skin-pegs. He could
neither overtake nor outwit her with any dodge. He gave in, and
ransomed his hat with the “shouts” she demanded.
From the back of the shanty, a bent old woman, almost on all fours,
crept towards the man, again prostrate in the corner. She paused,
with her ear turned to where the girl and the rouseabout were still
at horse-play. With cat-like movements she stole on till within
reach of Jerry’s empty pockets. She turned her terrible face to
the woman in the buggy, as if in expectation of sympathy. Keeping
wide of the front door, she came to the further side of the buggy.
With the fascination of horror the woman looked at this creature,
whose mouth and eyes seemed to dishonour her draggled grey hair.
She was importuning for something, but the woman in the buggy
could not understand till she pointed to her toothless mouth (the
mission of which seemed to be, to fill its cavernous depths with
the age-loosened skin above and below). A blue bag under each eye
aggressively ticked like the gills of the fowls, and the sinews of
the neck strained into bassi relievi. Alternately she pointed to
her mouth, or laid her knotted fingers on the blue bags in pretence
of wiping tears. Entrenched behind the absorbed skin-terraces, a
stump of purple tongue made efforts at speech. When she held out her
claw, the woman understood and felt for her purse. Wolfishly the old
hag snatched and put into her mouth the coin, and as the now merry
driver, followed by Mag, came, she shook a warning claw at the giver,
and flopped whining in the dust, her hands ostentatiously open and
wiping dry eyes.
“’Ello Biddy, on ther booze again!”
The bottle bulging from his coat pocket made speech with him
intelligible, despite the impeding coin.
He placed the bottle in the boot of the buggy, and turning to Mag,
said “Give ther poor ole cow a dose!”
“Yes, one in a billy; anything else might make her sick!” said Mag.
“I caught ’er jus’ now swiggin’ away with ther tap in ’er mug!”
He asked his companion would she like a wet. She asked for water, and
so great was her need, that, making a barricade of closed lips and
teeth to the multitude of apparently wingless mosquitoes thriving in
its green tepidity, she moistened her mouth and throat.
“Oh, I say, Billy!” called Mag as he drove off. Her tones suggested
her having forgotten an important matter, and he turned eagerly.
“W’en’s it goin’ ter rain?” she shrieked, convulsed with merriment.
“Go an’ crawl inter a ’oller log!” he shouted angrily.
“No, but truly, Billy.” Billy turned again. “Give my love to yaller
Lizer; thet slues yer!”
They had not gone far before he looked round again. “Gord!” he cried
excitedly, “Look at Mag goin’ through ’er ole woman!”
Mag had the old woman’s head between her knees, dentist-fashion, and
seemed to concentrate upon her victim’s mouth, whose feeble impotence
was soon demonstrated by the operator releasing her, and triumphantly
raising her hand.
What the finger and thumb held the woman knew and the other guessed.
“By Gord. Eh! thet’s prime; ain’t it? No flies on Mag; not a fly!” he
said, admiringly.
“See me an’ ’er?” he asked, as he drove on.
His tone suggested no need to reply, and his listener did not. A
giddy unreality took the sting from everything, even from her desire
to beseech him to turn back to the siding, and leave her there to
wait for the train to take her back to civilization. She felt she had
lost her mental balance. Little matters became distorted, and the
greater shrivelled.
He was now more communicative, and the oaths and adjectives so
freely used were surely coined for such circumstances. “Damned” the
wretched, starving, and starved sheep looked and were; “bloody” the
beaks of the glutted crows; “blarsted” the whole of the plain they
drove through!
Gaping cracks suggested yawning graves, and the skeleton fingers of
the drooping myalls seemingly pointed to them.
“See me an’ Mag?” he asked again. “No flies on Mag; not a wink ’bout
’er!” He chuckled in tribute. “Ther wus thet damned flash fool, Jimmy
Fernatty,” he continued “--ther blanky fool; ’e never ’ad no show
with Mag. An’ yet ’e’d go down there! It wus two mile furder this
way, yet damned if ther blanky fool wouldn’t come this way every
time, ’less ther boss ’e wus with ’im, ’stead er goin’ ther short
cut,--ther way I come this mornin’. An’ every time Mag ud make ’im
part ’arf a quid! I wus on’l there jus’ ’bout five minits meself, an’
I stuck up nea’ly ’arf a quid! An’ there’s four gates (he flogged the
horse and painted them crimson when he remembered them) this way,
more ’n on ther way I come this mornin’.”
Presently he gave her the reins with instructions to drive through
one. It seemed to take a long time to close it, and he had to fix the
back of the buggy before he opened it, and after it was closed.
After getting out several times in quick succession to fix the back
of the buggy when there was no gate, he seemed to forget the extra
distance. He kept his hand on hers when she gave him the reins, and
bade her “keep up ’er pecker.” “Someone would soon buck up ter ’er if
their boss wusn’t on.” But the boss it seemed was a “terrer for young
uns. Jimmy Fernatty ’as took up with a yaller piece an’ is livin’
with ’er; But not me; thet’s not me! I’m like ther boss, thet’s me!
No yeller satin for me!”
He watched for the effect of this degree of taste on her.
Though she had withdrawn her hand, he kept winking at her, and she
had to move her feet to the edge of the buggy to prevent his pressing
against them. He told her with sudden anger that any red black-gin
was as good as a half chow any day, and it was no use gammoning for
he knew what she was.
“If Billy Skywonkie ’ad ter string onter yaller Lizer, more ’air on
’is chest fer doin’ so,” (striking his own). “I ken get as many w’ite
gins as I wanter, an’ I’d as soon tackle a gin as a chow anyways!”
On his next visit to the back of the buggy she heard the crash of
glass breaking against a tree. After a few snatches of song he
lighted his pipe, and grew sorrowfully reminiscent.
“Yes s’elp me, nea’ly ’arf a quid! An’ thet coloured ole ’og of a cow
of a mother, soon’s she’s off ther booze, ’ll see thet she gets it!”
Then he missed his silk handkerchief. “Ghost!” he said, breathing
heavily, “Mag’s snavelled it! Lizer ’ll spot thet’s gone soon’s we
get ’ithin cooee of ’er!”
Against hope he turned and looked along the road; felt every pocket,
lifted his feet, and looked under the mat. His companion, in reply,
said she had not seen it since his visit to the shanty.
“My Gord!” he said, “Mag’s a fair terror!” He was greatly troubled
till the braggart in him gave an assertive flicker. “Know wot I’ll
do ter Lizer soon’s she begins ter start naggin’ at me?” He intended
this question as an insoluble conundrum, and waited for no surmises.
“Fill ’er mug with this!” The shut fist he shook was more than a
mugfull. “’Twouldn’ be ther first time I done it, not ther lars’.”
But the anticipation seemed little comfort to him.
The rest of the journey was done in silence, and without even a peep
at the sky. When they came to the homestead gate he said his throat
felt as though a “goanner” had crawled into it and died. He asked her
for a pin and clumsily dropped it in his efforts to draw the collar
up to his ears, but had better luck with a hair-pin.
He appeared suddenly subdued and sober, and as he took his seat after
closing the gate, he offered her his hand, and said, hurriedly, “No
’arm done, an’ no ’arm meant; an’ don’t let on ter my missus--thet’s
’er on the verander--thet we come be ther shanty.”
It was dusk, but through it she saw that the woman was dusky too.
“Boss in, Lizer?” There was contrition and propitiation in his voice.
“You’ve bin a nice blanky time,” said his missus, “an’ lucky fer you:
Billy Skywonkie ’e ain’t.”
With bowed head, his shoulders making kindly efforts to hide his
ears, he sat silent and listening respectfully. The woman in the
buggy thought that the volubility of the angry half-caste’s tongue
was the nearest thing to perpetual motion. Under her orders both got
down, and from a seat under the open window in the little room to
which Lizer had motioned, she gave respectful attention to the still
rapidly flowing tirade. The offence had been some terrible injustice
to a respectable married woman, “slavin’ an’ graftin’ an’ sweatin’
from mornin’ ter night, for a slungin’ idlin’ lazy blaggard.” In
an indefinable way the woman felt that both of them were guilty,
and to hide from her part of the reproof was mean and cowardly.
The half-caste from time to time included her, and by degrees she
understood that the wasted time of which Lizer complained was
supposed to have been dissipated in flirtation. Neither the shanty
nor Mag had mention.
From a kitchen facing the yard a Chinaman came at intervals, and with
that assumption of having mastered the situation in all its bearings
through his thorough knowledge of the English tongue, he shook his
head in calm, shocked surprise. His sympathies were unmistakeably
with Lizer, and he many times demonstrated his grip of the grievance
by saying, “By Cli’ Billy, its a bloo’y shame!”
Maybe it was a sense of what was in his mind that made the quivering
woman hide her face when virtuous Ching Too came to look at her. She
was trying to eat when a dog ran into the dining-room, and despite
the violent beating of her heart, she heard the rouseabout tell the
boss as he unsaddled his horse, “The on’y woman I see was a ’alf
chow, an’ she ses she’s the one, an’ she’s in ther dinin’-room ’avin’
a tuck in.”
She was too giddy to stand when the boss entered, but she turned her
mournful eyes on him, and supporting herself by the table, stood and
faced him.
He kept on his hat, and she, watching, saw curiosity and surprise
change into anger as he looked at her.
“What an infernal cheek _you_ had to come! Who sent you?” he asked
stormily.
She told him, and added that she had no intention of remaining.
“How old?” She made no reply. His last thrust, as in disgust he
strode out, had the effect of a galvanic battery on her dying body.
Her bedroom was reeking with a green heavy scent. Empty powder boxes
and rouge pots littered the dressing table, and various other aids
to nature evidenced her predecessor’s frailty. From a coign in its
fastness a black spider eyed her malignantly, and as long as the
light lasted she watched it.
The ringing of a bell slung outside in the fork of a tree awoke her
before dawn. It was mustering--bush stocktaking--and all the station
hands were astir. There was a noise of galloping horses being driven
into the stockyard, and the clamour of the men as they caught and
saddled them. Above the clatter of plates in the kitchen she could
hear the affected drawl of the Chinaman talking to Lizer. She trod
heavily along the passage, preparing the boss’s breakfast. This
early meal was soon over, and with the dogs snapping playfully at
the horses’ heels, all rode off.
Spasmodic bars of “A Bicycle Built for Two” came from the kitchen,
“Mayly, Mayly, give me answer do!” There was neither haste nor
anxiety in the singer’s tones. Before the kitchen fire, oblivious to
the heat, stood the Chinaman cook, inert from his morning’s opium.
It was only nine, but this was well on in the day for Ching, whose
morning began at four.
He ceased his song as she entered. “You come Sydiney? Ah! You mally?
Ah! Sydiney welly ni’ place. This placee welly dly--too muchee no
lain--welly dly.”
She was watching his dog. On a block lay a flitch of bacon, and
across the freshly cut side the dog drew its tongue, then snapped at
the flies, “That dog will eat the bacon,” she said.
“No!” answered the cook. “’E no eat ’em--too saw.”
It was salt; she had tried it for breakfast.
He began energetically something about, “by-an’-bye me getty mally.
By Cli’ no ’alf cas--too muchee longa jlaw.” He laughed and shook
his head, reminiscent of “las’ a night,” and waited for applause.
But, fascinated, she still watched the dog, who from time to time
continued to take “saw” with his flies.
“Go ou’ si’, Sir,” said the cook in a spirit of rivalry. The dog
stood and snapped, “Go ou’ si’, I say!” No notice from the dog “Go
ou’ si’, I tella you!” stamping his slippered feet and taking a fire
stick. The dog leisurely sat down and looked at his master with mild
reproof. “Go insi’ then, any bloo’y si’ you li’!” but pointing to
their joint bed-room with the lighted stick. The dog went to the
greasy door, saw that the hens sitting on the bed were quietly laying
eggs to go with the bacon, and came back.
She asked him where was the rouseabout who had driven her in
yesterday.
“Oh, Billy Skywonkie, ’e mally alri’! Lizer ’im missie!” He went on
to hint that affection there was misplaced, but that he himself was
unattached.
She saw the rouseabout rattle into the yard in a spring cart. He let
down the backboard and dumped three sheep under a light gallows.
Their two front feet were strapped to one behind.
He seemed breathless with haste. “Oh, I say!” he called out to her.
“Ther boss ’e tole me this mornin’ thet I wus ter tell you, you wis
ter sling yer ’ook. To do a get,” he explained. “So bundle yer duds
tergether quick an’ lively! Lizer’s down at ther tank, washin’. Le’ss
get away afore she sees us, or she’ll make yer swaller yer chewers.”
Lowering his voice, he continued: “I wanter go ter ther shanty--on’y
ter get me ’ankerchief.”
He bent and strained back a sheep’s neck, drew the knife and steel
from his belt, and skilfully danced an edge on the knife.
She noticed that the sheep lay passive, with its head back, till its
neck curved in a bow, and that the glitter of the knife was reflected
in its eye.
BUSH CHURCH.
I.
The hospitality of the bush never extends to the loan of a good horse
to an inexperienced rider. The parson bumping along on old Rosey, who
had smelt the water of the “Circler Dam,” was powerless to keep the
cunning experienced brute from diverting from the track. With the bit
in her teeth, her pace kept him fully occupied to hold his seat. At
the edge of the Dam, old Rosey, to avoid the treacherous mud, began,
with humped back and hoofs close together, to walk along the plank,
that pierwise extended to the deeper water. The parson’s protests
ended in his slipping over the arched neck of the wilful brute, on to
the few inches of plank that she considerately left for him. The old
mare drank leisurely, then backed off with the same precaution, and
stood switching the flies with her stunted tail. The parson followed
her and thankfully grabbed the reins. After several attempts to get
up on the wrong side, he led the exacting animal to a log. He removed
the veil he wore as a protection from the sticky eye-eating flies,
so that Rosey might recognise him as her erstwhile rider. It was at
this stage that “flash” Ned Stennard, always with time to kill and a
tongue specially designed for the purpose, rode up and gave him lurid
instructions and a leg up.
He had come to their remoteness, he told Ned, as they rode along,
to hold a service at a grazier’s homestead some miles distant.
Under Ned’s sympathetic guidance he pulled up at the sliprails of a
cockey’s selection to announce these tidings. It was Ned’s brother’s
place, but Ned, who was not on speaking terms with his sister-in-law,
rode on and waited.
A group of half-naked children lay entangled among several kangaroo
pups, in a make-believe of shade from a sickly gum tree. A canvas
bag, with a saddle strap defining its long neck, hung from a bough,
and the pups were yelping mildly at its contents, and licking the
few drops of blood that fell. The parson saw the children rub the
swarming flies from their eyes and turn to look at him. An older
girl, bare-footed and dressed in a petticoat and old hat, was
standing near a fire before the wide opening that served as a doorway
to the humpy. She had a long stick, and was employed in permitting
an aged billy-goat to bring his nose within an inch of the simmering
water in the bucket slung over the fire.
“Are your parents in?” he asked.
“You aint ole Keogh?” said the girl.
When he admitted that he wasn’t, he saw her interest in his
personality was gone. “Are your mother and father in?”
The thirsty billy was sneaking up again to the water, and she let him
advance the prescribed limit before she made the jab that she enjoyed
so thoroughly. “Mum’s gorn ter Tilly Lumber’s ter see t’ ther kid,
and ther rester them’s gorn ter ther Circler Dam.”
He made known his mission to the girl, but she didn’t divide her
attention. The water would soon be too hot for the billy to drink,
and there was no fun to be got out of the pups. For when she took
the salt pork out of the canvas bag and put it in the bucket, they
wouldn’t try to get it out of boiling water.
Doubtful of his success, the parson rejoined Ned, and along the dusty
track they jogged. The parson’s part in the dialogue was chiefly
remonstrative as to the necessity of Ned’s variegated adjectives. And
he had frequently to assure the bushman that it would be useless for
him to search in his clerical pockets for tobacco, as he didn’t smoke.
At the Horse Shoe Bend they overtook hairy Paddy Woods of eighteen
withering summers. Paddy was punching and blaspheming a nine mile
day out of his bullocks. These were straining their load along with
heads bent close to the dust-padded track, silent, for all the whip
weals, but for a cough to free their mouths and nostrils from dust.
Old Rosey, an inveterate yarner, pulled up abruptly; but Paddy, who
had his day’s work cut out to a minute, gave a voiceless side-long
nod in recognition of the parson’s greeting, and went on driving his
team. Probably his share of the conversation, mainly catechismal,
would have been yea and nay nods, but for catching Ned’s eye when the
parson asked if he were married. Paddy struck an attitude of aged
responsibility, and, tipping Ned an intelligent wink, made a pretence
of searching through a dusty past, and replied that he thought he
was. The parson, giving him the benefit of the doubt, enquired if
there were any children for baptism. Paddy, still with an eye on Ned,
reckoned that the number of his offspring was uncertain, but promised
that as soon as he delivered his load of wool he would have a day’s
“musterin’ an’ draftin’ an’ countin’ an’ ear-markin’” and send him
the returns. Ned’s loud laugh and “Good old Paddy” had not the effect
on its young-old recipient’s well-filled tobacco pouch that he had
hoped. The disgusted parson was trying to urge Rosey onward, but
Rosey refused to leave her pleasant company till Ned brought his
switch across her back.
Ned stayed with Paddy long enough to tell him that, in his opinion,
the black-coated parson was “nothin’ but a sneakin’ Inspector, pokin’
an’ prowlin’ roun’ fur ole Keogh”--the lessee of the run, and their
common enemy. He added that the green veil he wore over his eyes was
a “mast” (mask), but that it didn’t deceive him. Tobaccoless Ned
tried further to arouse practical admiration from pouch-full Paddy,
by adding that he would ride after this disguised Inspector, “pump
’im dry as a blow’d bladder, an’ then ’ammer ’ell outer ’im.” But
even this serious threat against the parson’s stock-in-trade had no
fruitful result, and putting his empty pipe back he galloped after
his companion.
As they rode along, the parson in admiration watched the wiry little
bushman dexterously winking both eyes to the confusion of the flies,
and listened to the substitution of words of his own coinage dropped
red hot into the conversation in place of the sulphurous adjectives.
Soon there was but little unknown to Ned’s listener of the inner
history--and with such additions as contrasted unfavourably with his
own--of every selector on this sun-sucked run. In order of infamy
Ned placed the lessee first; a good second came the Land Agent in
the little township whence this pilgrim parson had come. But this
fact was made clear to him, that were the lessee ten times richer,
the Land Agent ten times more unscrupulous, were “dummy” selectors
occupying every acre, Ned was more than a match for them all.
At a later stage of their journey, when he turned again to the
narratives of his cockey brethren, another circumstance stood out.
It was only when Ned had exhausted the certainty, probability, and
possibility of increase among the mares, cows, ewes, and nannies of
his and the other cockeys’ flocks and herds, that he would descend to
the human statistics, and the parson found that impending probability
and possibility entered largely into Ned’s computation of these.
From time to time they sighted the cockeys’ humpies, but Ned, intent
on making the most of his amazed listener, kept him on the track to
his destination by promising to call at all the selections on his
way back, and tell them that there was to be a service to-morrow
morning. To emphasise his thoroughness, he added, with a wink of bush
freemasonry, that he would “on’y tell two sorts--them wot arsts me,
an’ them wot don’t.” And this clerical brother, newly initiated into
the mysteries of bush craft, could not have found a better messenger.
But the wonder expressed in his eyes, as he watched this new labourer
in the vineyard cantering briskly away to bear the glad tidings,
would have changed to awe could he have heard the varied versions Ned
gave to the scattered families as to the need of their being at the
grazier’s homestead the first thing next day. Moreover, most of the
conversation related by Ned as having taken place between the parson
and him would have been as new to the former as it was to Ned’s
audience. For the adjectives with which he flavoured the parson’s
share proved him to have readily and fluently mastered the lurid bush
tongue.
It was shearing time, and being also the middle of the week, most
of the men were away. Those who were at home left their dinners,
and came outside to talk to him. A visitor at meal times is always
met outside the humpy, and the host, drawing a hand across a greasy
mouth, leads the way to the nearest log. The women of the bush have
little to share, and nursing the belief that how they live is quite
unknown to one another, they have no inclination to entertain a
caller. Two of the daily meals consist mainly of sliced damper dipped
in a pan of fat, that always hangs over the fire. Mutton at shearing
time is a rarity, as the men feed at the sheds. Wild pigs caught and
killed by the women make the chief flesh food, but these are often
scarce in the dry season.