The Sergeant: “This woman has not been here for six weeks, your
Worship.”
Mrs Johnson (who has him set and has been waiting for him for a year or
so): “It's a damned lie, Mr Isaacs. I was here last Wednesday!” Then,
after a horrified pause in the Court: “But I beg _your_ pardon, Mr
Isaacs.”
His Worship's head goes down again. The “laughter” doesn't come here,
either. There is a whispered consultation, and (it being Christmas-time)
they compromise with Mrs Johnson for “five shillings or the risin',” and
she thanks his Worship and is escorted out, rather more hurriedly than
is comportable with her dignity, for she remarks about it.
The members of the Johnsonian sisterhood have reason to be thankful for
the “lift” she has given them, for they all get off lightly, and even
the awful resister of Law-an'-order is forgiven. Mrs Johnson has money
and is waiting outside to stand beers for them; she always shouts for
the boys when she has it. And--what good does it all do?
It is very hard to touch the heart of a woman who is down, though they
are intensely sympathetic amongst themselves. It is nearly as hard as it
is to combat the pride of a hard-working woman in poverty. It was such
women as Mrs Johnson, One-Eyed Kate, and their sisters who led Paris to
Versailles; and a King and a Queen died for it. It is such women as
Mrs Johnson and One-Eyed Kate and their sisters who will lead a greater
Paris to a greater Versailles some day, and many “Trust” kings and
queens, and their princes and princesses shall die for it. And that
reminds me of two reports in a recent great daily:
Miss Angelina De Tapps, the youngest daughter of the well-known
great family of brewers, was united in the holy bonds of matrimony
to Mr Reginald Wells--(here follows a long account of the smart
society wedding). The happy pair leave en route for Europe per the
--next Friday.
Jane Johnson, an old offender, again faced the music before Mr
Isaacs, S.M., at the Central yesterday morning--(here follows a
“humorous” report of the case).
Next time poor Mrs Johnson will leave _en route_ for “Th' Island” and
stay there three months.
The sisters join Mrs Johnson, who has some money and takes them to a
favourite haunt and shouts for them--as she does for the boys sometimes.
Their opinions on civilization are not to be printed.
Ginger and Wingy get off with the option, and, though the fine is heavy,
it is paid. They adjourn with Boko Bill, and their politics are lurid.
Squinny Peters (plain drunk--five bob or the risin'), who is peculiar
for always paying his fine, elects to take it out this time. It appears
that the last time Squinny got five bob or the risin' he ante'd up the
splosh like a man, and the court rose immediately, to Squinny's intense
disgust. He isn't taking any chances this time.
Wild-Flowers-Charley, who recently did a fortnight, and has been out
on bail, has had a few this morning, and, in spite of warnings from and
promises to friends, insists on making a statement, though by simply
pleading guilty he might get off easily. The statement lasts some ten
minutes. Mr Isaacs listens patiently and politely and remarks:
“Fourteen days.”
Charley saw the humour of it afterwards, he says.
But what good does it all do?
I had no wish to treat drunkenness frivolously in beginning this sketch;
I have seen women in the horrors--that ought to be enough.
“ROLL UP AT TALBRAGAR”
Jack Denver died at Talbragar when Christmas Eve began,
And there was sorrow round the place, for Denver was a man;
Jack Denver's wife bowed down her head--her daughter's grief was wild,
And big Ben Duggan by the bed stood sobbing like a child.
But big Ben Duggan saddled up, and galloped fast and far,
To raise the longest funeral ever seen on Talbragar.
-_Ben Duggan_.
Both funerals belonged to Big Ben Duggan in a way, though Jack Denver
was indirectly the cause of both.
Jack Denver was reckoned the most popular man in the district (outside
the principal township)--a white man and a straight man--a white boss
and a straight sportsman. He was a squatter, though a small one; a real
squatter who lived on his run and worked with his men--no dummy, super,
manager for a bank, or swollen cockatoo about Jack Denver. He was on
the committees at agricultural shows and sports, great at picnics and
dances, beloved by school children at school feasts (I wonder if they
call them feasts still), giver of extra or special prizes, mostly sovs.
and half-sovs., for foot races, etc.; leading spirit for the scrub
district in electioneering campaigns--they went as right as men could go
in the politics of those days who watched and went the way Jack Denver
went; header of subscription lists for burnt-out, flooded-out, sick,
hurt, dead or killed or otherwise knocked-out selectors and others,
or their families; barracker and agitator for new provisional schools,
assister of his Reverence and little bush chapels, friend of all manner
of wanderers--careless, good-hearted scamps in trouble, broken-hearted
new chums, wrecks and failures and outcasts of any colour or creed, and
especially of old King Jimmy and the swiftly vanishing remnant of his
tribe. His big slab-and-shingle and brick-floored kitchen, with its
skillions, built on more generous plans and specifications than even the
house itself, was the wanderer's goal and home in bad weather. And--yes,
owner, on a small scale, of racehorses, and a keen sportsman.
Jack Denver and Big Ben Duggan were boys together on the old selections,
and at the new provisional bark school at Pipeclay; they went into the
Great North-West together “where all the rovers go”--stock-riding and
droving and overlanding, and came back after a few years bronzed and
seasoned and with wild yarns.
Jack married and settled down on a small run his father had bought near
Talbragar, and his generous family of tall, straight bush boys and tall,
straight bush girls grew up and had their sweethearts. But, when Jack
married, Big Ben Duggan went back again, up into Queensland and the
Great North-West, with a makeshift mate who had also lost his mate
through marriage. Ever and again, after one, and two, and three
years--the periods of absence lengthening as the years went on--Big Ben
Duggan would come back home, and stay a while (till the Great North-West
began to call insistently) at Denver's, where he would be welcomed
jubilantly by all--even the baby who had never seen him--for there was
“something about the man.” And, until late on the night of his return,
he and Jack would sit by the fire in winter, or outside on the woodheap
in summer, and yarn long and fondly about the Wide Places, and strange
things they knew and understood.
How sudden things are! Ben was back (just in time for the holidays and
the Mudgee races) out of the level lands, where distance dwells in her
halls of shimmering haze, after following her for five years.
They were riding home from the races, the women and children in carts
and buggies, the men and boys on horseback--of course. They raced each
other along the road, across short cuts, through scrub and timber, and
back to the slow-coming overloaded vehicles again, some riding wildly
and recklessly. Jack Denver was amongst them, his heart warmed with
good luck at the races, good whisky to wet it, and the return of his old
mate. “We're as good as the best of the young 'uns yet, Ben!” he cried,
as they swung through the trees. “Ain't we, you old--?”
And then and there it happened.
A new chum suggested that Jack had more than he thought aboard and was
thrown from his horse; but the new chum was repudiated with scorn and
bad words and indignation by bushmen and bushwomen alike--as indeed he
would be by any bushman who had seen a drunken rider ride.
“I learnt him to ride when he was a kiddy about so high,” said old
Break-the-News Fosbery, resentfully gasping and gulping, “and Jack
wasn't thrown.” It was thought at first that his horse had shied and run
him against a tree, or under an overhanging branch; but Ben Duggan
had seen it, and explained the thing to the doctor with that strange
calmness or quietness that comes to men in the midst of a life's grief.
Jack was riding loosely, and swung forward just as the filly, a fresh
young thing, threw back her head; and it struck him with sledge-hammer
force, full in the face.
He was dead, even before they got him to Anderson's Halfway Inn. There
was wild racing back to town for doctors, and some accidents; one horse
was killed and another ridden to death. Others went as a forlorn hope in
search of Doc. Wild, eccentric Yankee bush “quack,” who had once saved
one of Denver's little girls from diphtheria; others, again, for Peter
M'Laughlan, bush missionary, to face the women--for they couldn't.
Big Ben Duggan, blubbering unashamed by the bedside, put his hand on
Mrs Denver's shoulder, as she crouched there, wild-eyed, like a hunted
thing. “Nev--never mind, Mrs Denver!” he blurted out, with a note as of
indignation and defiance--just for all the world as if Jack Denver had
done a wrong thing and the district was down on him--“he'll have the
longest funeral ever seen in these parts! Leave that to me.” Then some
of the women took her out to her daughter's. Big Ben Duggan gave terse
instructions to some of the young riders about, and then, taking the
best and freshest horse, the cross-country scrub swallowed him--west.
The young men jumped on their horses and rode, fan-like, east.
They took Jack Denver home. They always took their dead home first,
whenever possible, and no matter the distance, before taking them to
their last long home; and they do it yet, I suppose. They are not always
so particular about it in cities, from what I've seen.
But this was a strange funeral. They had arranged mattress and sheet in
the bottom of a four-wheeler, and covered him with sheet, blanket, and
quilt, though the weather was warm; and over the body, from side to
side of the trap, they had stretched the big dark-green table-cloth from
Anderson's dining-room. The long, ghostly, white, cleared government
road between the dark walls of timber in the moonlight. The buggies and
carts behind, and the dead-white faces and glistening or despairingly
staring eyes of the women--wife, daughters, and nieces, and those who
had come to help and comfort. The men--sons and brothers, and few mates
and chums and sweethearts--riding to right and left like a bodyguard, to
comfort and be comforted who needed comfort.
Now and again a brother or son--mostly a brother--riding close to the
wheel, would suddenly throw out his arm on the mud splasher, of buggy or
cart, and, laying his head on it, sob as he rode, careless of tyre and
spokes, till a woman pushed him off gently:
“Take care of the wheel, Jim--mind the wheel.”
The eldest son held the most painful position, by his mother's side in
the first buggy, supported by an aunt on the other side, while somebody
led his horse. In the next buggy, between two daughters, sat a young
fellow who was engaged to one of them--they were to be married after the
holidays. The poor girls were white and worn out; he had an arm round
each, and now and again they rested their heads on his shoulders. The
younger girl would sleep by fits and starts, the sleep of exhaustion,
and start up half laughing and happy, to be stricken wild-eyed the next
moment by terrible reality. Some couldn't realize it at all--and to most
of them all things were very dreamy, unreal and far away on that lonely,
silent road in the moonlight--silent save for the slow, stumbling hoofs
of tired horses, and the deliberate, half-hesitating clack-clack of
wheel-boxes on the axles.
Ben Duggan rode hard, as grief-stricken men ride--and walk. At Cooyal he
woke up the solitary storekeeper and told him the news; then along that
little-used old road for some miles both ways, and back again, rousing
prospectors and fossickers, the butcher of the neighbourhood, clearers,
fencers, and timber-getters, in hut and tent.
“Who's that?”
“What's up?”
“What's the matter?”
“Ben Duggan! Jack Denver's dead! Killed ridin' home from the races!
Funeral's to-morrow. Roll up at Talbragar or the nearest point you can
get to on the government road. Tell the neighbours and folks.”
“Good God! How did it happen?”
But the hoofs of Ben's horse would be clattering or thudding away into
the distance.
He struck through to Dunne's selection--his brother-in-law, who had not
been to the races; then to Ross's farm--Old Ross was against racing, but
struck a match at once and said something to his auld wife about them
black trousers that belonged to the black coat and vest.
Then Ben swung to the left and round behind the spurs to the school
at Old Pipeclay, where he told the schoolmaster. Then west again to
Morris's and Schneider's lonely farms in the deep estuary of Long Gully,
and through the gully to the Mudgee-Gulgong road at New Pipeclay. The
long, dark, sullenly-brooding gully through which he had gone to school
in the glorious bush sunshine with Jack Denver, and his sweetheart--now
but three hours his hopelessly-stricken widow; Bertha Lambert, Ben's
sweetheart--married now, and newly a grandmother; Harry Dale--drowned
in the Lachlan; Lucy Brown--Harry's school-day and boy-and-girl
sweetheart--dead; and--and all the rest of them. Far away, far away--and
near away: up in Queensland and out on the wastes of the Never-Never.
Riding and camping, hardship and comfort, monotony and adventure,
drought, flood, blacks, and fire; sprees and--the rest of it. Long dry
stretches on Dead Man's Track. Cutting across the country in No Man's
Land where there were no tracks into the Unknown. Chancing it and
damning it. Ill luck and good luck. Laughing at it afterwards and joking
at it always; he and Jack--always he and Jack--till Jack got married.
The children used to say Long Gully was haunted, and always hurried
through it after sunset. It was haunted enough now all right.
But, raising the gap at the head of the gully, he woke suddenly and came
back from the hazy, lazy plains; the
Level lands where Distance hides in her halls of shimmering haze,
And where her toiling dreamers ride towards her all their days;
where “these things” are ever far away, and Distance ever near--and
whither he had drifted, the last hour, with Jack Denver, from the old
Slab School.
“I wonder whether old Fosbery's got through yet?” he muttered, with
nervous anxiety, as he looked down on the cluster of farms and scattered
fringe of selections in the broad moonlight. “I wonder if he's got there
yet?” Then, as if to reassure himself: “He must have started an hour
before me, and the old man can ride yet.” He rode down towards a farm on
Pipeclay Creek, about the centre of the cluster of farms, vineyards, and
orchards.
Old Fosbery--otherwise Break-the-News--was a character round there. If
he was handy and no woman to be had, he was always sent to break the
news to the wife of a digger or bushman who had met with an accident.
He was old, and world-wise, and had great tact--also great experience in
such matters. Bad news had been broken to him so many times that he had
become hardened to it, and he had broken bad news so often that he had
come to take a decided sort of pleasure in it--just as some bushman are
great at funerals and will often travel miles to advise, and organize,
and comfort, and potter round a burying and are welcomed. They had
broken the news to old Fosbery when his boy went wrong and was “taken”
(“when they took Jim”). They had broken the news to old Fosbery when his
daughter, Rose, went wrong, and bolted with Flash Jack Redmond. They had
broken the news to the old man when young Ted was thrown from his horse
and killed. They had broken the news to the old man when the unexpected
child of his old age and hopes was accidentally burnt to death. So the
old man knew how it felt.
The farm was the home of one of Jack Denver's married sisters, and, as
there was no woman to go so far in the night they had sent old Fosbery
to tell her. Folks were most uneasy and anxious, by the way, when they
saw old Fosbery coming unexpectedly, and sometimes some of them got a
bad start--but it helped break the news.
“Well, if he ain't there, I suppose I'll have to do it,” thought Ben as
he passed quietly through the upper sliprails and neared the house. “The
old man might have knocked up or got drunk after all. Anyway, no one
might come in the morning till it's too late--it always happens that
way--and--besides, the women'll want time to look up their black
things.”
But, turning the corner of the cow-yard, he gave a sigh of relief as
he saw old Fosbery's horse tied up. They were up, and the big kitchen
lighted; he caught a glimpse of a shock of white hair and bushy white
eyebrows that could have belonged to no one except old Break-the-News.
They were sitting at the table, the tearful wife pouring out tea, and by
the tokens Ben knew that old Fosbery had been very successful. He rode
quietly to the lower sliprails, let them down softly, led his horse
carefully over them, put them up cautiously, and stood in a main road
again. He paused to think, leaning one arm on his saddle and tickling
the nape of his neck with his little finger; his jaw dropped, reflecting
and grief forgotten in the business on hand, and the horse “gave” to
him, thinking he was about to mount. He was tired--weary with that
strange energetic weariness that cannot rest. It was five miles from
Mudgee and the news was known there and must have spread a bit already;
but the bulk of the Gulgong and Gulgong Road race-goers had passed here
before the accident. Anyway, he thought he might as well go over and
tell old Buckolts, of the big vineyard, across the creek, who was a
great admirer of Jack Denver and had been drinking with him at the races
that day. Old Buckolts was a man of weight in the district, and was
always referred to by all from his old wife down, as “der boss,” and by
no other term. The old slab farmhouse and skillions and out-houses,
and the new square brick house built in front, were all asleep in the
moonlight. The dogs woke the old man first (as was generally the
case), as Ben opened the big white home gate and passed through without
dismounting.
“Who's dat? Who voss die [there]?” shouted the old man as the horse's
hoofs crunched on the white creek-bed gravel between the two houses.
“Ben Duggan!”
“Vot voss der matter?”
“Jack Denver's dead--killed riding home from the races.”
“Vot dat you say?”
Ben repeated.
“Go avay! Go home and go to sleep! You voss shoking--and trunk. Vat for
you gum by my house mit a seely cock mit der bull shtory at dis hour of
der night?”
“It's only too true, Mr Buckolts,” said Ben. “I wish to God it wasn't.”
“You've got der yoomps, Pen. Go to der poomp and poomp on your head and
den turn in someveers till ter morning. I tells von of der pot's to gif
you a nip and show you a poonk. Vy! I trink mit Shack Denver not twelf
hour ago!”
But Ben persisted: “I'm not drunk, Mr Buckolts, and I ain't got
the horrors--I wish to God I was an' had. Poor Jack was killed near
Anderson's, riding home, about six o'clock.”
Though Ben couldn't see him, he could feel and hear by his tones, that
old Buckolts sat up in bed suddenly.
“_Mein Gott_! How did it happen, Pen?”
Ben told him.
“Ven and veer voss der funeral?”
Ben told him.
“Frett! Shonny! Villie! Sharley!” shouted the old man at the top of his
voice to the boys sleeping in the old house. “Get up and pring all der
light horses in from der patticks, and gif dem a goot feet mit plenty
corn; and get der double-parrelled puggy ant der sinkle puggy and der
three spring carts retty. Dere vill pe peoples vanting lifts to-morrow.
Ant get der harnesses and sattles retty. Vake up, olt vomans!” (Mrs
Buckolts must have been awake by this time.) “Call der girls ant see to
dere plack tresses. Py Gott, ve _moost_ do dis thing in style. Does his
poor sister know over dere across the creeks, Pen? Durn out! you lazy,
goot-for-noddings, or I will chain you up on an ants' bed mit a rope
like a tog; do you not hear that Shack Denver voss dett?”
“I vill sent some of der girls over dere first thing in der morning.
Holt on, Pen, ant I vill sent you out some vine.”
Ben rode with the news to Lee's farm where Maurice Lee--at feud with
Buckolts and a silent man--was, for he had known Denver all his life,
and had gone, in his young days, on a long droving trip with him and Ben
Duggan.
A little later Ben returned to the main road on a fresh horse. He turned
towards Gulgong, and rode hard; past the new bark provisional school
and along the sidings. He left the news at Con O'Donnell's lonely tin
grocery and sly-grog shop, perched on the hillside--(“God forgive
us all!” said Con O'Donnell). He left the news at the tumble-down
public-house, among the huts and thistles and goats that were left of
the Log Paddock Rush. There were goats on the veranda and the place
seemed dead; but there were startled replies and inquiries and matches
struck. He left the news at Newton's selection, and Old Bones Farm, and
at Foley's at the foot of Lowe's Peak, close under the gap between Peak
and Granite Ridge. Then he turned west, at right angles to the main
road, and took a track that was deserted except for one farm and on
every alternate Sunday. He passed the lonely little slab bush “chapel”
of the locality, that broke startlingly out of the scrub by the track
side as he reached it; and left the news at Southwick's farm at the
end of the blind track. At more than one farm he left the bushwoman
hurriedly looking up her “black things;” and at more than one, one of
the boys getting his bridle to catch his horse and ride elsewhere with
the news.
Ben rode back, through the moonlight and the moon-shadow haunted
paddocks, and the naked, white, ringbarked trees, along Snakes Creek,
parallel with the main road he had recently travelled till he struck
Pipeclay Creek again lower down. He turned down the track towards
the river, and at the junction left word at Lowe's--one of the old
land-grant families. The dogs woke an old handy man (who had been “sent
out” in past ages for “knocking a donkey off a hen-roost”--as most of
them were) and Ben told him to tell the family.
At Belinfante's Bridge across the Cudgegong Ben struck a big camp of
bullock-drivers, some going down with wool and some going back for more.
“Hold on, Ben,” cried Jimmy Nowlett, from his hammock under his wagon as
Ben was riding off--“Hold on a minute! I want to look at yer.”
Jimmy got his head out of his bunk very cautiously and carefully, and
his body after it--there were nut ends of bolts, a heavy axle, and
extremely hard projections, points, and corners within a very few short
inches of his chaff-filled sugar-bag pillow. Slipping cannily on to
his hands and knees, he crawled out under the tail-board, dragging his
“moles” after him, and stood outside in the moonlight shaking himself
into his trousers.
Jimmy was a little man who always wore a large size in moleskins--for
some reason best known to himself--or more probably for no reason at
all; or because of a habit he'd got into accidentally years ago--or
because of the motherly trousers his mother used to build for him when
he was a boy. And he always shook himself into his pants after the
manner of a woman shaking a pillow into a clean slip; his chin down on
his chest and his jaw dropped, as if he'd take himself in his teeth,
after the manner of the woman with a pillow, were he not prevented by
sound anatomical reasons.
“You look reg'lerly tuckered out, Ben,” he said, “an' yer horse could do
with a spell too. Git down, man, and have a pint er tea and a bite.”
Ben got down wearily and knew at once how knocked up he was. He sat
right down on the hard ground, embracing and drawing up his knees, and
felt as if he'd like never to get up again: while Jimmy shook some chaff
and corn that he carried for his riding hack into a box for the horse,
and his travelling mate, Billy Grimshaw, lifted his big namesake half
full of cold tea, on to the glowing coals by the burning log--looking
just like an orang-outang in a Crimean shirt.
Ben got a fresh horse at Alfred Gentle's farm under the shadow of
Granite Ridge, and then on to Canadian (th' Canadian Lead of the roaring
days), which had been saved from the usual fate by becoming a farming
township. Here he roused and told the storekeeper. Then up the creek to
Home Rule, dreariest of deserted diggings.
He struck across the ages-haunted bush, and up Chinaman's Creek, past
“the Chinamen's Graves,” and through the scrub and over the ridges for
the Talbragar Road. For he had to see Jack Denver home from start to
finish.
Glaring, hot and dusty, lay the long, white road; coated with dust that
felt greasy to the touch and taste. The coffin was in a four-wheeled
trap, for the solitary hearse that Mudgee boasted then was to meet them
some three miles out of town--at the racecourse, as it happened, by
one of those eternal ironies of fate. (Jones, the undertaker, had had
another job that morning.) The long string of buggies and carts and
horsemen; other buggies and carts and horsemen drawn respectfully back
amongst the trees here and there along the route; male hats off and
held rigidly vertical with right ears as the coffin passed; and drivers
waiting for a chance to draw into the line.
Think of it; up early on the first morning, a long day at the races, a
long journey home, awake and up all night with grief and sympathy. Some
of the men had ridden till daylight; the women, worn out and exhausted,
had perhaps an hour or so of sleep towards morning--yet they were all
there, except Ben Duggan, on the long, hot, dusty road back, heads
swimming in the heat and faces and hands coated with perspiration and
dust--and never, never once breaking out of a slow walk. It would
have been the same had it been pouring with rain. I have seen funerals
trotting fast in London, and they are trotting more and more in
Australian cities, with only “the time” for an excuse. But in the bush I
have never seen a funeral faster than the slowest of walks no matter who
or what might wait, or what might happen or be lost. They stood by their
dead well out there. Maybe some of the big, simple souls had a sort of
vague idea that the departed would stand a better show if
accompanied as far as possible by the greatest possible number of
friends--“barrackers,” so to speak.
Here all the shallow and involuntary sham of it, the shirking of a dull
and irksome duty--a bore, though the route be only a mile or so. The
satisfied undertaker, and the hard-up professional mutes and mourners
in seedy, mouldy, greeny-black, and with boozers' faces and noses and a
constant craving for beer to help them bear up against their grief and
keep their mock solemn faces. Out there you were carried to the hearse
or trap from your home, and from the hearse or trap to your grave--and
with infinite carefulness and gentleness--on the shoulders of men, and
of men who had known and loved you.
There had been wonder and waiting in the morning for Ben Duggan; and
the women especially, on the way home, when free from restraint, were
greatly indignant against him. To think that he should break out and go
on the drunk on this day of all days, when his oldest mate and friend
was being carried to his grave. The men, knowing how he had ridden all
night, found great excuses; but later on some grew anxious and wondered
what could have become of him.
Some, returning home by a short cut, passed over Dead Man's Gap beyond
Lowe's Peak.
“Wonder what could have become of Ben Duggan.” mused one, as they rode
down.
There and then their wonders ceased.
A party of road-clearers had been at work along the bottom, and there
was much smoke from the burning-off, which must have made the track dim
and vague and uncertain at night. Just at the foot of the gap, clear
of the rough going, a newly-fallen tree lay across the track. It was
stripped--had been stripped late the previous afternoon, in fact; and,
well, you won't know, what a log like that is when the sap is well
up until you have stepped casually on to it to take a look round. A
confident skip, with your boot soles well greased, on to the ice in a
glaciarium for the first time would be nothing to it in its results, I
fancy. (I remember we children used to scrape the sap off, and eat
it with satisfaction, if not with relish--white box I think the trees
were.)
Ben must have broken into a canter as he reached the level, as indeed
his horse's tracks showed he did, and the horse must have blundered in
the smoke, or jumped too long or too short; anyway, his long slithering
shoe marks were in the sap on the log, and he lay there with a broken
leg and shoulder. He had struck it near the stump and the sharp edge of
an outcrop of rock.
There was more breakneck riding, and they got a cart and some bedding
and carried Ben to Anderson's, which was handiest, if not nearest, and
there was more wild and reckless riding for the doctor.
One got a gun, and rode back to shoot the horse.
Ben's case was hopeless from the first. He was hurt close to that big
heart of his, as well as having a fractured skull. He talked a lot of
the selections and old John Tierney, of the old bark school; and the
Never-Never country with Jack--and, later on, of the present. “What's
Ben sayin' now, Jim?” asked one young bushman as another came out of the
room with an awestruck face.
“He's sayin' that Jack Denver's dead, killed ridin' home from the races,
an' that the funeral's to-morrow, an' we're to roll up at Talbragar!”
answered the other, with wide eyes, a blank face and in an awed voice.
“He's thinkin' to-day's yisterday.”
But towards the end, under the ministrations of the doctor, Ben became
conscious. He rolled his head a little on the pillow after he woke, and
then, seeming to remember all that happened up to his stunning fall, he
asked quietly:
“What sort of a funeral did Jack have?”
They told him it was the biggest ever seen in the district.
“Muster bin more'n a mile long,” said one.
“Watcher talkin' about, Jim?” put in another. “Yer talkin' through yer
socks. It was more'n a mile an' a half, Ben, if it was er inch. Some of
the chaps timed it an' measured it an' compared notes as well as they
could. Why, the head was at the Racecourse when the tail was at Old--”
Ben sank back satisfied and a little later took the track that Jack
Denver had taken.