“Hallo! Dick. You here! Why, I thought you were away up tea-planting in
Assam.”
“And I thought you were comfortably settled down on the ancestral acres
by this time.”
“No such luck. The ancient cousin is still very much to the fore. Has
taken to himself a new wife in fact, and a new lease of life along with
her. She has presented her doting husband with a very fine heir; and,
well, of course, after that little Willie was nowhere, and departed for
pastures new.”
“Make your fortune, eh! Made it?”
“Of course. Money-making game riding tracks on Jinfalla! Made yours?”
“Money-making game riding tracks on Nilpe Nilpe.”
The two men looked at each other, and laughed. In truth, neither looked
particularly representative of the rank and aristocracy of their native
land. The back blocks are very effectual levellers, and each saw in the
other a very ordinary bushman, riding a horse so poor, the wonder was
he was deemed worth mounting at all. Both were dusty and dirty, for the
drought held the land in iron grip, and the fierce north wind, driving
the dust in little whirls and columns before it, blew over plains bare
of grass and other vegetation as a beaten road.
Around them was the plain, hot and bare of any living creature, nothing
in sight save a low ridge bounding the eastern horizon, a ridge which
on closer inspection took the form of bluffs, in most places almost
inaccessible. Overhead was the deep blue sky, so blue it was almost
purple in its intensity, with not a cloud to break the monotony. Sky and
desert, that was all, and these two Englishmen meeting, and the shadows
cast by themselves and their horses, were the only spots of shade for
miles.
“Sweet place!” said Guy Turner, looking round. “Warmish too. Wonder what
it is in the shade?”
“In the shade, man. There ain’t any shade, unless you count the shadows
of our poor old mokes, and mine’s so poor, I ‘ll bet the sun can find
his way through his ribs. I ‘ve been in the sun since daybreak, and I
reckon it is somewhere about boiling point.”
“I suppose it must be over 1600. What the dickens did you come out for?”
“Well, seeing it’s been like this for the last three months, and is
likely to go on for three more, as far as I can see; it ain’t much good
stopping in for the weather; besides there’s this valuable estate to be
looked after. But to-day I rode over for the mails.”
“What, to the head-station?”
“Lord, no! The track to Roebourne passes along about twenty miles off
over there, and I get the boss to leave my mail in a hollow tree as he
passes.”
“Trusting, certainly. There ‘s some good about this God-forsaken
country.”
Dick Stanesby, or, to give him his full name, Richard Hugh De Courcy
Stanesby, shrugged his shoulders scornfully.
“Evidently, Dick, that mail wasn’t satisfactory. Has she clean forgot
you, Dick, the little white mouse of a cousin, with the pretty blue
eyes? She was mighty sweet on you, and------”
But there was a frown on Dick’s usually good-tempered face. He was in no
mind to take his old chum’s pleasantry kindly, and the other saw it, and
drew his own conclusions therefrom.
“Chucked him over, poor beggar, I suppose. Hang it all! Women are all
alike; once a man’s down, he’s forgotten,” but he did not speak his
thoughts aloud. He looked away across the sweltering plain, and said
casually,
“Where do you hang out, old man?”
Stanesby pointed east in a vague sort of manner, that might indicate
South Australia, or far distant New South Wales.
“Got a shanty on the creek there,” he said laconically.
“Creek, is there a creek? The place looks as if it hadn’t seen water
since the beginning of the world.”
“Oh, there’s a creek right enough. I believe it’s a big one when it
rains, but it hasn’t rained since I ‘ve been here, and there ain’t much
water in it. Just a little in the hole opposite the hut. The niggers say
its permanent. Springs, or something of that sort.”
“Niggers! That’s what I ‘ve come over about. They’ve worried the life
out of us on Jinfalla. Taken to spearing the cattle, and the men too if
they get a chance. Old Anderson thinks we ought to have some ‘concerted
action,’ and settle the matter once for all.”
“H’m. Wipe ‘em out, I suppose he means?”
“It’s what a squatter generally means, isn’t it, when he talks about the
blacks? Sounds brutal, but hang it all, man, what the devil is a fellow
to do? They ‘re only beasts, and as beasts you must treat ‘em. Look
here, there was a young fellow on our run, as nice a boy as you ‘d wish
to see--his people were something decent at home, I believe, but the
lad had got into some scrape and cleared out, and drifted along into the
heart of Western Australia here. He was riding tracks for old Anderson
about two hundred miles to the west there. He didn’t come in last week
for his tucker, so they sent word for me to look him up.”
“Well?” for Turner paused, and drew a long breath.
“Well--same old nip, of course. His hut was burnt, and he and his
hutkeeper--I tell you, Dick, it won’t bear talking about--he was a lad
of twenty, and the hutkeeper was an old lag, might have been seventy to
look at him, but when I found their bodies down by the creek, I couldn’t
tell which was which.”
“It’s bad,” said Stanesby, “very bad. What did you do?”
“Buried ‘em, of course, my mate and I, and shot the first buck we came
across skulking in the bush. What would you have us do?”
“It’s all bad together,” said the other man, with an oath. “The blacks
about here are tame enough if you let ‘em alone, but these young fellows
get meddling with their women, and--well----”
“That ‘s all very well, but you didn’t find a mate too ghastly a corpse
to look at, or you wouldn’t take the matter so coolly. You ‘d have done
just as I did. Something must be done, old man, or the country won’t be
habitable.”
They had been riding along slowly, side by side, one man eager, anxious,
interested, the other evidently with his thoughts far away. The mail he
had got that morning was stuffed into his saddlebags, and the news it
brought him made him think longingly of a home in far-away England, a
creeper-covered house, and a cosy room with a bright fire, and the rain
beating pleasantly on the windows. Rain--he had not seen rain for three
long years. Always the hard blue sky and the bright sunshine, always the
dreary plain, broken here and there by patches of prickly bush and still
more thorny spinifex, always the red bluffs marking the horizon, clean
cut against the cloudless sky.
Habitable? Such a country as this habitable? It had given him bread for
the last three years, but--but--he felt burning in his pocket the letter
summoning him home--telling of the death, the unexpected death, of his
young cousin, that made him master of that pleasant home, that filled
his empty pockets. What did anyone ever dream of living in such a
country for--driving the unlucky niggers back and back? What need
for it? What need? Far better leave it to the niggers, and clear out
altogether.
Had Gladys forgotten? He wondered. The little white mouse of a cousin,
as Turner called her, who had cried so bitterly when he left, and even
now answered his letters so regularly, those letters that had come to
be written at longer and longer intervals as home ties weakened,
and the prospect of seeing her again slowly died away. Had she
forgotten--had she? She looked like the sort of woman that would be
faithful--faithful--well, as faithful as any one in this world could
be expected to be, as faithful as women always are to their lovers in
distant lands. Turner had been sweet there once too, curious he should
meet him just now; he had forgotten her surely, or he would never have
referred to her so casually. Yes, Turner had forgotten, and yet he had
been very bad too--strange how completely a thing like that passes out
of a man’s life. Could he take up the broken threads just where he left
off--could he? So sweet and tender as she was, so quiet and restful.
There was that other one, who loved him after her fashion too, but--pah,
it was an insult to Gladys to name her in the same breath--she--she--The
country was not habitable--a doghole unfit for a European; what was
Turner making such a song over the niggers for?
“Old man,” said Turner, he had been telling to unlistening ears the tale
of how the blacks had speared, in wanton mischief, a mob of two hundred
cattle on Jinfalla, not fifteen miles from the home station, “old man,
you see it would be just ruination to let this go on. Either they or we
must clear out. We can’t both live here, that’s certain.”
“Always the same old yarn wherever the Englishman goes, always the same
old yarn. Poor niggers!”
“Well, what’d you have?” said the other warmly; “something’s got to be
done.”
“I ‘m going to cut it all.”
“What?” Turner stopped his horse and looked his companion full in the
face. “Cut it all?”
“My cousin ‘s dead.”
“John Stanesby?”
“John Stanesby.”
“And Heyington ‘s yours?”
“And Eastwood too.”
“Good Lord!”
There was silence for a moment. Then Turner said again:
“You can marry Gladys Rowan now.”
“Yes.”
Then he added, as if as an afterthought, “If she ‘ll have me.”
“No fear of that,” said Turner with a sigh. Then he turned to his old
chum, and stretching over laid a kindly hand on his arm, “I congratulate
you, old chap.”
“Thank you.” And they rode on in silence, the one man thinking bitterly
that if ever he had cherished a spark of hope of winning the woman he
had loved he must give it up at last, the other trying to realise the
good fortune that had come to him.
And an hour ago he had been as this man beside him--only one little hour
ago!
“How far do you reckon it to the head-station? Fifty miles?”
“Fifty? Nearer eighty I should say.”
“Then I guess I ‘ll put up at your place. How far’s that?”
“About ten miles.”
“All right. Lead on, master of Heyington.”
To refuse a man hospitality in the bush--such a thing was never heard
of, and, though Stanesby said no welcoming word, it never occurred to
Turner to doubt that he was more than welcome.
“It’s right out of your way.”
Turner stared.
“Good Lord! What’s ten miles, and we haven’t met for years. I must say,
old chap, you don’t seem particularly pleased to see an old chum.”
“I--they ain’t so plentiful I can afford to do that. No, I was thinking
of going in to the station with you.”
“Right you are, old man, do you? Only we’ll put up at your place for the
night--my horse’s pretty well done--and go on in the morning.”
Stanesby said nothing, only turned his horse’s head slightly to the
left. Save the red bluffs away to the east there was nothing to mark the
change of direction. There was no reason apparently for his choosing one
direction rather than another.
They rode in silence, these two who had been college chums and had not
met for years. Possibly it was the one man’s good fortune that raised
a barrier between them. It was not easy for Turner to talk of present
difficulties and troubles when, as Stanesby said, he was going to “cut
it all”; it was not easy for him to speak of bygone times when the other
man was going back to them, and he would be left here without a prospect
of a change. And Stanesby said nothing, he could only think of the great
difference between them; and yesterday there was nothing he would have
liked better than this meeting with his old friend, which to-day fell
flat. No, he had nothing to say. Already their paths lay wide apart.
An hour’s slow riding brought them to the creek Stanesby had spoken of.
There was no gentle slope down to the river, the plain simply seemed to
open at their feet, and show them the river bed some twenty feet below.
Only a river bed about twenty yards wide, but there was no water to be
seen, only signs, marked signs in that thirsty land, that water had been
there. Down where the last moisture had lingered the grass grew green
and fresh, and leafy shrubs and small trees and even tangled creepers
made this dip in the plain a pleasant resting-place for the eye wearied
with the monotony of the world above it.
“By Jove!” cried Turner, surprised.
“Told you so,” said his companion, “but it ain’t much after all. Fancy
calling that wiry stuff grass in England, and admiring those straggly
creepers and shrubs. Why we wouldn’t give ‘em house-room in the dullest,
deadest corner of the wilderness at home.”
“Lucky beggar!” sighed the other man. “But you see they ‘re all I ‘m
likely to have for many a long year to come. Hang it all, man, I bet you
‘d put that shrub there, that chap with the bright red flower, into your
hot-house and look after him with the greatest care, or your gardener
would for you.”
“It’d require a d----d hot house,” said Stanesby laconically, wiping his
hot face.
They did not descend into the bed of the creek, the ground was better
adapted for riding up above, and a mile further along they came upon a
large blackfellows’ camp stretched all along the edge of a water-hole.
“The brutes,” said Turner; “bagging the water of course.”
“They ‘d die if they didn’t, I suppose. This, and the hole by my place
is the only water I know of for forty miles round. After all they were
here first, and if I had my way they’d be left to it.”
“All very well for you to talk,” grumbled Turner. “Do they look worth
anything?”
Certainly they did not. The camp was a mere collection of breakwinds
made of bark and branches, more like badly-stacked woodheaps than
anything else, and the children of the soil lay basking in the sun,
among the dogs and filth and refuse of the camp, or crouched over small
fires as if it were bitter cold. The dogs started up yelping, for a
blackfellow’s dog doesn’t know how to bark properly, as the white men
passed, but their masters took no notice. A stark naked gin, with a
fillet of greasy skin bound round her head, and a baby slung in a net on
her back, came whining to Turner with outstretched hands. She had mixed
with the stockkeepers before, and knew a few words of English.
“Give it terbacker along a black Mary. Budgery{1} fellow you,” but he
pushed her away with the butt end of his whip.
“My place’s not above a mile away now,” said Stanesby, as they left the
precincts of the camp behind them.
“I wouldn’t have those beggars so close, if I were you. Some fine
morning you’ll find yourself--”
“Pooh! They’re quite tame and harmless. I ‘ve got a boy from them about
the place, and he’s very good as boys go. Besides, I ‘m off as soon as
possible.”