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COLONIAL BORN
[Illustration: THE HORSE AND ITS RIDER DASHED OUT OF THE SMOKE.
[_Page 287._]
COLONIAL BORN
A TALE OF THE QUEENSLAND BUSH
BY
G. FIRTH SCOTT
AUTHOR OF
"THE TRACK OF MIDNIGHT," "THE ROMANCE OF AUSTRALIAN EXPLORING,"
"AT FRIENDLY POINT," ETC.
_WITH SIX ILLUSTRATIONS BY PERCY F. S. SPENCE_
LONDON
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON AND COMPANY
_LIMITED_
TO
THE ORIGINAL AILLEEN
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE ROMANCE OF TAYLOR'S FLAT 1
II. TWENTY YEARS AFTER 16
III. THE BELLE OF BIRRALONG 30
IV. THE ROUT OF BOULDER CREEK 40
V. THE SWAY OF GOLD 59
VI. THE LADY OF BARELLAN 80
VII. THE EVOLUTION OF SLAUGHTER 93
VIII. SKINNING THE WILD CAT 110
IX. CHORDS AND DISCORDS 128
X. THE RACE FOR GOLD 146
XI. BILLIARDS MADE EASY 161
XII. RIVAL ISSUES 180
XIII. TONY VISITS THE FLAT 193
XIV. THE FINDING OF PETERS'S REEF 204
XV. BLACK AND WHITE 219
XVI. TWO SIDES OF A STORY 233
XVII. A BUSHMAN'S BANKER 246
XVIII. A TANGLED SKEIN 260
XIX. STRANDS IN THE COIL 274
XX. THE LAST LOOP 293
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE PAGE
THE HORSE AND ITS RIDER DASHED OUT OF THE
SMOKE _Frontispiece_
"THANK YOU," SHE SAID 30
"THEN ROLL THE SWAG AND BLANKET UP, AND LET
US HASTE AWAY" 56
"I AIN'T NO STRANGER, MISS" 100
CAPERED ROUND THE BOULDER 216
THROUGH THE BUSH IT WENT, RACING LIKE MAD 268
COLONIAL BORN
CHAPTER I.
THE ROMANCE OF TAYLOR'S FLAT.
Where the road to the west from Birralong dips down to the valley of
Boulder Creek, a selection stretches out on the left-hand side, well
cleared and fenced, and with the selector's homestead standing back a
couple of hundred yards from the main road. Slip-rails in the fence,
serving as a gateway, open on to the half-worn track which runs from the
roadway to the house; and on either side of it there are cultivation
paddocks, the one verdant with lucerne, and the other picturesque with
the grey sheen of iron-bark pumpkins showing from among the broad leaves
of the still growing vines.
The house, unpretentious and substantial, has long since taken to itself
the nondescript hue to which the Australian sun soon reduces the
unpainted surface of hard-wood slabs and shingles. A square, heavy
chimney, smoke-stained and clumsy at the base, rises above the sloping
roof at one end, and a roughly fashioned verandah runs along the front
of the house, the opposite end to where the chimney is situated being
occupied by an odd collection of water-tanks. By the side of the door,
and under shelter of the verandah, a saddle is standing on end, while a
bridle hangs from a peg in the wall overhead. A heap of two-foot logs is
near the water-tanks, with a short-handled axe stuck in an upturned
stump which does duty for a chopping-block.
Behind the house a few gum trees in the paddocks lead the eye to where
the untouched bush grows thick and sombre in the strength of crowded
timber, the bleached trunks of the dead ring-barked trees, where the
sunlight plays upon them, gleaming white against the dark purple-blue of
the distant foliage. Towards the valley of the creek the land slopes
away, and over the course of the stream a faint, blue, vapoury haze
hangs in the hot air, beyond which the high table-land on the other side
rises like a ridge, the deep tones of its shadows so strongly impressed
against the clear transparency of the sky that it seems to be
wonderfully near, until the stretch of vapoury haze below corrects the
trick of vision. The roadway, as it passes the boundary fence of the
selection, gleams yellow under the strong glare of the sun, until,
winding behind the clustering trees and bushes, it disappears.
It is a scene fair to look upon, either to one in search of change and
contrast, or to one whose perceptions are softened by the glamour and
charm of Australian association; but especially to the man whose energy
and toil made the bush yield at that one point to the needs of
civilization. He, stolid, hard-working bushman, with no ambition for
anything beyond what he termed "bush graft and square meals," leaned
over his slip-rails and looked up and down the road, wondering what else
a man wants for contentment beyond work, food, and sleep.
For years he had been a lonely man, living by himself in solitary
bachelor simplicity, but withal contentedly, peacefully, happily.
Fifteen miles down the creek there was a cattle station, but none of the
station hands ever came round by the selection; and Taylor was never
disposed, for the sake of a brief yarn, to ride the score of miles he
would have to cover to get to the men's huts. A dozen miles to the east,
over a stretch of timbered table-land, the nucleus of a bush township
was struggling to assert itself, and thrive, in spite of the weighty
handicap of the name of Birralong, and the fact that, after five years'
existence, it had not succeeded in passing the preliminary stage of bush
township life--the stage when a "pub," a store, a constable's cottage,
and a post-office make up the official directory, the constable
combining with his own the offices of postmaster, and another individual
representing both the branches of distributing industry, or, in bush
parlance, "running both the shanty and the store." There were other
residents in the township besides these two; men who came along the road
from the east to the west, some with business and some in search for it;
some with a record they wanted to leave behind, and some with an empty
past they hoped to turn into a well-filled future in the mighty plains
of the rolling lands of the virgin western country; men of all
qualities and shades of vice and virtue; stockmen, mailmen, and drovers;
stray gold-seekers, fossickers, or prospectors; swagsmen who were
_bona-fide_ bushmen, and swagsmen who, as sundowners, only arrived at a
station or a township too late in the day to be given work, but not too
late to participate in the open hospitality of the bush; shepherds,
selectors seeking land, and timber-getters moving on to the scrubs of
the table-land beyond the creek; but men, always men, who brought the
population of the township up to tens, but never yet to hundreds, and
who in a few days had gone further west--mostly--and whose places were
taken by others.
But to that township in the early days of its existence Taylor rarely
went, for even amidst a floating population there are floating jests,
and the man at whose expense they are made does not learn to appreciate
them any the more by reason of new arrivals learning them and keeping
them alive. To the men of the township his selection, which he had
proudly named Taylor's Flat, was known as Taylor's Folly; and the owner
of it, dull-witted and slow of speech, was loth to face the raillery his
presence always called forth.
Away to the south, forty miles from the Flat, was another township,
whither Taylor, when he first took up the land, was compelled to go to
pay the instalments of the purchase money to the local Government
official. On the occasion of the visit when the last instalment was
paid, Taylor saw at the hotel, where he stayed the night, a fresh-faced
immigrant girl. She had not been long enough in the country to lose the
fresh, ruddy hue from her plump cheeks, but long enough to be wearied by
the heat and the worry, of which, experience taught, the ideal life she
had dreamed about was really composed.
Perhaps it was the colour on her cheeks; perhaps it was the winsome look
which came into her eyes as he told her, in an unprecedented burst of
confidence, of the quiet contentment of his life on the selection; but
until he returned to it, in all the natural pride of actual
proprietorship, Taylor was unaware that anything had occurred to
interfere with the even tenor of his existence. As it was, everything
seemed to have suddenly lost its charm; the steadily increasing bulk of
the largest pumpkins no longer brought enthusiasm to him; the
satisfaction of sitting, when the sun was nearing the horizon, with his
pipe between his lips, and his legs stretched out in front of him, in
well-earned rest, under the shelter of his verandah, was no longer
manifest; his own society and the companionship of his stock brought no
comfort into his life, now strangely restless and uneasy. It was not in
the nature of the man to reason it out, but dimly into his mind there
came a connection between the state of affairs and his visit to the
southern township. There had been a light spring-cart in the place which
had attracted his fancy and roused as much covetousness as his nature
was capable of feeling, and to that he attributed his dissatisfaction,
persuading himself that the possession of that spring-cart would bring
back all the old lethargic content of his life.
He returned to the township, and peace came to his mind as he sat at the
long, bare table which occupied the centre of the living-room of the
hotel, munching the beef and damper the red-cheeked girl brought to him.
Vaguely the idea came to him that the presence of such a girl at his
homestead would be a decided improvement to the loneliness he had for
the first time experienced on his return from his former visit to the
township, and with characteristic brevity he made the suggestion to her
that if she were in want of another place, he was prepared to offer her
one at his selection, where she would have no mistress but herself, and
none to attend to but him. She jumped at the chance of peace and quiet
in the bush, and closed upon his offer there and then.
Two days later, Taylor, peaceful and contented, was returning to the
selection, driving the spring-cart which had roused his fancy, and in
which there also travelled his wife--the red-cheeked girl--and her few
belongings.
For a time everything went well, and both yielded to the conviction that
they had obtained all that was necessary to insure their earthly
happiness. Then the life began to pall.
She was the first to feel it. Brisk and energetic, she was through with
her house-work before the day was many hours old, and the time hung
terribly on her hands, for the peace and calm she had so longed for at
the bush hotel began to grow very monotonous and trying.
Taylor had enough to keep him going all the day out on his land, but she
had nothing when the work round the house was done. He, moreover, had
the chance of an occasional chat with a passing traveller along the
road; but she never saw a woman's face during her first year at the
Flat, and however much a woman may scorn the companionship of her
sisters when she is surrounded by them, she finds her days unduly long
when she is cut off from their society altogether.
As the months passed on into the year, and his wife commenced to develop
undreamed-of resources of temper, Taylor began to wonder to himself
whether he had not been "got at over the marriage business."
At the end of the first year, on his visit to the southern township for
his stores, he took his wife with him in the spring-cart, and they spent
a few days at the hotel where she had previously been employed. It had
changed hands in the mean time, and the newcomer had with him a family
of children. During the stay, and on the return journey, there was no
sign of the acrid temper his wife had displayed at the selection; but as
soon as they were home again it broke out. When he was in the house she
railed at him, and if he stayed away among his fences and his stock, she
grumbled, as soon as he returned, at his absence.
He left the house before a furious outburst which he was quite unable to
understand, and, passing down the track to the slip-rails, leaned upon
them in the hopes of solving the riddle. An old sundowner, chancing to
pass along the road, stopped in the hopes of a yarn. But Taylor was in
no mood to talk on any other subject than that which was worrying him.
He accordingly poured out his tale to the old man, who, having heard it,
suggested that perhaps the cause of it all lay in the worry and trouble
of the children, or, as he termed them, kids. "There ain't no kids,"
Taylor retorted in irritation; and the old man, looking at him
quizzically, observed, "Oh, there ain't no kids, ain't there? Well,
then, there y'are."
This new factor in the problem worried Taylor still more when the old
man, with an uncomplimentary allusion to the sagacity of the owner of
Taylor's Folly, continued his way. But time was kind, and he grew more
learned when premonitory symptoms of the approach of a light from
another world were manifest, and peace lay on his wife's tongue and
sweetness ruled her temper.
Then there came the light which made the mother glad and the father
bewildered, for, as he explained to the neighbour who came from forty
miles away to lend her aid, he knew "nothin' about the rearin' of that
sort of stock."
He left his fences alone that day and spent the hours hanging round the
house, taking periodical trips into the room where the mother and the
child lay, and retiring with a serious shake of the head and a muttered
explanation of his want of knowledge on the subject. Then he was
startled by being suddenly called into the room, where he stood,
strangely abashed and helpless, while the light flickered and went back
to its own world. The mother wailed and sorrowed, and Taylor moped and
wondered, until, between them, the neighbour was severely taxed to keep
things going.
The next night he wandered away from the house to the little railed-in
mound in a corner of the paddock where he had put all that remained of
the stock he did not know how to rear. He stood with his arms resting on
the slim fence and his eyes looking away into the evening's mists,
trying, with the aid of a pipe, to drive away the disquietening effect
the expression in his wife's eyes had upon him, and to understand
something of the emptiness that had somehow come into his life since he
had lain, as tenderly as his rough hands could, the fragile little form
in its simple grave.
As he stood, as nearly dreaming as it was possible for him to be, he
became conscious of the figure of a man running hastily towards him from
the direction of the roadway.
"Mate! For the love of God! Is there any women about?" the man exclaimed
as he came near.
"Women?" Taylor repeated vacantly.
"Yes, women," the man replied. "My missus's been took bad down there by
the dray, and if there ain't----"
"Here! Come on!" Taylor shouted, his own recent experience sharpening
his wits. "Follow me, quick."
A few seconds later and the neighbour was speeding away through the
bush, and Taylor was sitting by his wife's side, ill at ease and silent
as he tried to decide whether it would do any harm to any one if he
re-lit the pipe he had allowed to go out in the excitement of the
moment. His wife, catching something of the message so hastily
delivered, lay still with wide-open eyes and straining ears.
"Bill! I 'eard it cry, I 'eard it cry," she exclaimed suddenly. "There
'tis again, only louder," she added, as she essayed to sit up in bed
just as the neighbour hurried into the room.
"He said she'd gone, poor thing, before I got there; but we must try to
save this," she said, as she placed in the lonely mother's arms the tiny
morsel of humanity.
"_I_ will, _I_ will," the other cried as she clutched at the babe,
clasping it to her breast as she rocked to and fro and crooned over it.
Taylor looked at her vaguely for a moment, and into his mind there stole
a new and strange impulse. The emptiness that had been manifest to him
as he stood leaning over the slim rail across the paddock seemed to fill
up until his throat grew tight and his eyes moist, and for the first
time in his life he experienced a satisfaction that had to do with
neither eating nor working. He put one hand for a moment on his wife's
shoulder, and with the extended forefinger of the other touched the
small chubby hand that lay against her breast. Withdrawing it, he stood
for a moment undecided whether to repeat the experiment, when the
neighbour bustled up, and Taylor shuffled out of the room and into the
cool air of the night. There he remembered the man who was in a worse
plight than he had been, and he went to seek him.
He found him standing by a horse on the roadside, just beyond the
boundary fence.
"You had better camp at the house for to-night," Taylor began, as he
leaned over the fence and strained his eyes in an endeavour to make out
where the dray the man had mentioned was standing.
"No; thanks all the same," the man answered. "I've fixed up everything,
and can shove along."
"But there's the little 'un; and what about the--the other?" Taylor
asked, as he put his foot on one rail and made as though to climb over
the fence.
The man came up to him from the shadow.
"I've fixed all that up. She'll come along with me, while I leave the
little 'un here, if you don't mind, till I've time to come back for it.
This is Taylor's Flat, ain't it?"
"Yes," Taylor answered. "And I am Taylor."
"I guessed as much," the other replied; "they told me back along the
road I should reach here about dark."
"Which way did you come?" Taylor asked.
"West," the other answered briefly.
"Far back?" Taylor inquired, somewhat puzzled at the arrival of a woman
from the lonely wilderness of the west.
"Fairish," the other replied evasively; and Taylor grew suspicious.
"What were you doing, coming from the west with a woman like that in the
dray?" he asked. "Seems to me it's a bit queer."
"Does it, mate? Well, I'm sorry, but I can't help that. I've enough to
do without going into private matters. Do you mind keeping the youngster
for a time? He wouldn't have much of a chance if I take him with me."
Taylor's mind, never very active, reverted to the scene he had witnessed
before he left his wife and the orphan babe.
"You couldn't take him if you wanted to," he exclaimed. "My missus only
lost hers yesterday, and she'd never give this one up now."
"Then you've had a bit of bad luck yourself?" the stranger said quickly.
"Well, you know what it is, just as I do, and you'll know why I want to
shove along. Good-bye, mate. You've done a real kind act to me. And see,
if I don't get back in time, call him Tony, will you?"
"Tony?" Taylor repeated.
"That's it; after me, that is. But I hope I'm back. Anyhow, so long,"
the man said, as he turned away and proceeded to mount his horse.
"Here, hold on," Taylor exclaimed.
But the man did not seem to hear, and Taylor was halfway over the fence
when the sound of a woman's voice, calling him, came from the direction
of the hut. He paused and listened. It was the neighbour calling him.
The man had started his horse, and in a few minutes would be well on his
way. He could soon overtake the man now and learn something more
definite as to the parentage of the child he was practically adopting.
He felt that more was due to him than the scant information that had
been supplied; that the man who had called for his help, and received
it, ought to be more explicit than he had been, and ought to show more
confidence in him than to go off, as soon as the child was disposed of,
in silence and mystery.
"Here, hold on," he repeated, as he climbed over the fence; but as he
reached the ground on the other side he heard the cry repeated from the
direction of the hut, and he paused, irresolute.
There might be a repetition of the scene that had occurred when he was
called the previous day; the life of this second little creature might
be going out like that of the other, and Taylor felt uneasy when he
remembered the anguish in the mother's eyes and the wailing sorrow of
her voice. If he ran after the man he would escape all that, for it
would be over by the time that he returned; but even as the thought
passed through his brain he resented it. Something of the feeling he had
experienced when he saw his wife clutch at the child came to him, and
without further heed for the stranger, he scrambled back over his fence
and ran to the hut.
At the door he met the neighbour.
"She wouldn't rest till I called you," she said, jerking her head
towards the interior. "Where's the other chap?"
"He's gone on," Taylor answered, as he went into the room and over to
the bed where his wife lay.
She looked at him with a soft smile on her face.
"Look at him, Bill," she said, as she lifted the rough coverlet
sufficiently to show where the little head was nestled on her arm. "He's
come back to me from the other world."
* * * * *
For days Taylor waited, expecting that the man would come back or send
word; but as nothing was seen or heard of him, he took counsel with his
wife and the neighbour.
"Seems queer, that chap not doing anything," he said one evening,
shortly before the neighbour left for her own home. "How will we name
him?" he went on, glancing over at the sleeping infant his wife was
holding in her arms. "He ain't ours really."
"He is ours. He is mine, _mine_," his wife answered quickly, as she held
the baby tighter to her, and looked at her husband with a savage
jealousy in her eyes.
"But there was that chap----" Taylor began.
"I don't care. I won't give him up. He's mine," she interrupted. "No
one's going to have him; no one--never," she continued, as she rose to
her feet and walked up and down the room, with her face bent over the
child she held so closely to her.
The neighbour caught Taylor's eye and signed him to be quiet.
"Of course no one will have him but you," she said quietly. "I'd like to
see who'd take him when Taylor's here. Why, he hasn't been round his
boundary fences even, he's so took up with him."
Mrs. Taylor stopped in her walk, and turned to her husband with the
jealous gleam still flickering in her eyes.
"Would you give him up, Bill?" she asked.
"Not me," he answered.
"Then we'll talk about his name," she interposed, before he could say
more. "He's going to be called Richard Taylor."
"But that chap asked me--he said, 'Call him Tony, after me.' That's what
he said, and I said----"
"I don't care what you said or what he said," she interrupted. "He
should have stayed and looked after him, and not sneaked off in the
dark, if he wanted to name him. Mrs. Garry says so too; don't you, Mrs.
Garry?"
Mrs. Garry, directly appealed to, had to sustain the opinion she had
already expressed in private.
"But I said I would," Taylor asserted. "I said I'd call him Tony."
"Well, call him Tony. Name him as Richard Taylor, and call him Tony for
short," Mrs. Garry suggested.
"Tony!" Mrs. Taylor exclaimed scornfully. "What sort of a name do you
call that? Why, it's only fit for a black-fellow."
"It'll do for short," Taylor said. "We'll name him Richard Taylor, and
call him Tony for short."