TWENTY YEARS AFTER.
Marmot's store stood at the end of Birralong, at the top of the township
road, which was, in reality, the main road, along the sides of which
Birralong had sprung up. It stood on the summit of a rise which sloped
upwards through the town, so that it occupied a commanding position such
as became the local post-office--for Marmot had the distinction of being
postmaster as well as monopolist storekeeper of the district. One
advantage of the site was that from the verandah which graced the front
of the building a view could be obtained from end to end of the township
to the east, and away along the road to the west--the road which went,
_via_ Taylor's Flat, over Boulder Creek, away to the great expanse of
the West.
The store was a long, weather-board structure of four walls, and a
sloping roof of corrugated iron, unadorned save by an array of
cylindrical tanks--also of corrugated iron--at each corner, for being on
the top of a rise, there was no chance of possessing a well or a
waterhole; and upon the contents of the tanks, saved from the rain, the
residents depended for their water supply. The interior of the
structure was as simple as the exterior. A passage-way ran down the
centre between two counters, which extended the entire length of the
building, and upon which Marmot displayed some of the varied assortment
of articles he stocked for the benefit of his customers. Their range
being somewhat wide, the counters could not hold all the samples, and
upon shelves running along the walls behind the counters, upon the floor
on the passage in front of the counters, round the doorway and out on
the verandah, as well as from the cross-beams of the roof, other
articles were displayed. A man might not be able to buy anything from a
tin-tack to a sheet anchor on demand, but Marmot was quite prepared to
furnish him with tin ware and lamp-glasses, saddlery or axe heads and
handles, wool bales, sacking, pipes and tobacco, wax vestas and dress
materials, flannel, hardware and soft goods, canned provisions and
patent medicines, cotton for tents, boots, hats, flour, galvanized iron
for roofs and water-tanks, barbed wire, kerosene oil, "reach-me-downers"
or ready-made tweed suits, moleskins and Crimean shirts, sheath knives,
cartridges and firearms, fire and life assurance proposals, postal
notes, postage stamps, and money orders, as well as a few other minor
details which might from time to time be called for. Behind the main
building was another, which served as a store for the produce obtained
either by purchase or in payment for outstanding "tallies" of goods
supplied, a small annexe to the main building giving sleeping
accommodation to Marmot, who, being a man of frugal habits and simple
mind, "ran the store on his own," as they said in Birralong. His
customers, as a general rule, were neither too proud nor too busy to
mind lending him a hand at making up their orders, for when a man went
to the store at Birralong, he went in a spring-cart or dray, if he were
going to buy, and as often as not accompanied by any female attachment
he might have about his selection, so that he was never pushed for time.
Facing the store, and along the side of the road, a row of posts fitted
with ring-bolts stood for the convenience of customers who came in
riding or driving, and chose to hitch up their horses. A verandah, ten
feet wide, and with a roof resting on square, hard-wood posts,
ornamented the front of the building, and formed, to the majority of the
Birralong folk, its chief attraction--for it was here that men gathered
to smoke a friendly pipe with one another, and discuss such items of
news as are likely to be met with in a bush township. As a general rule,
these related to the domestic and private affairs of neighbours, and it
was said that if any one had a doubt as to the course which events and
circumstances were taking with him, he had only to ascertain what was
said on Marmot's verandah; every one's business was known better there
than to the persons whom it mostly concerned.
The number of houses which made up the township was not large. A hundred
yards back from the roadway the local saw-mill made the air melodious,
all the working hours of the day, with the ringing song and whirr of the
buzz-saws--a pleasant sound to listen to from the cool shade of a
verandah on the hot, drowsy days of summer, when the clear, dry air was
redolent with the scent from the neighbouring gums. Farther down the
township stood the local smithy, where, bush horses rarely being shod,
the work of the smith was combined with that of wheelwright and the
making of galvanized iron water-tanks. An occasional job of repairing
some farming implement necessitated the blowing up of the forge and the
swinging of the anvil hammers, the sounds of which, mingling with those
of the buzz-saws, would have led a chance visitor to regard Birralong as
a thriving, busy centre.
Beyond the smithy were the school-house and the local constable's
cottage, a few more cottages occupied by the schoolmaster, the smith,
the saw-miller, and some unofficial residents, and, at the end of all,
the Carrier's Rest, the township hotel. The roadway through the town was
very dusty, and the dust, in the long, hot, dry seasons, lay upon the
iron roofs of the houses--tin, it was locally called--and clung to the
verandah posts and walls. A passing traveller on horseback, or in a
dray, raised clouds of it, which drifted over everything and covered
everything with a light film, but yet did not drive the inhabitants into
the Carrier's Rest, for the Birralong people were sober, as they usually
are in bush townships--sober, that is, as things are understood in the
Southern Land of sunshine and freedom. Occasionally a man would come
down the road who perhaps had not seen so much civilization for years
before; who had, perhaps for years, been away in some outlying portion
of the outlying West, boundary riding round a paddock or stock riding on
a station; or, perchance, fossicking up and down the gullies of broken
country under the mistaken idea that the specks and grains of gold he
found, and which just kept him in "tucker," would lead him some day to a
mighty reef which would make him a millionaire in a night; but who, in
all those years, had drunk nothing but tea or water, and eaten nothing
but beef and damper, living a glorious, free, untrammelled life, with
the scent of the eucalypt ever in his nostrils and the pure, clear air
of the bush ever in his lungs. And such a man, entering upon a new
world, as it were, in his return to civilization, would greet that
civilization--with a nip.
In an hour he would be "on a bender;" in three he would be "on the
bust;" in six the "town would be red;" and soon afterwards the man
himself would be stretched out across the door of the Carrier's Rest,
senseless, helpless, "blind." Any one entering or leaving the bar
stepped over him as he lay, so as not to disturb him while he was
"sleeping it off" in the cool; and possibly some looked down on him with
pity, and some with contempt, while yet others were moved to envy and
exultant admiration. But generally the township went to Marmot's rather
than to the Rest--generally.
There were occasions--such as when a Queensland horse won the Melbourne
Cup, or when a drought broke up, or produce values took a leap, or the
resident constable was transferred--when the township, speaking
figuratively, migrated from one end of the town to the other, and
Marmot's was deserted for the good of the Rest. There was a breezy
freshness in the neighbourhood then, a wave of primitive
goodfellowship, as it were, with a period of hazy indistinctness
separating it from the time when the rising sun brought with it a
succeeding wave of virtuous antagonism and a distressing dryness of the
throat.
But such occasions were rare--too rare, some thought--and, as a general
thing, Birralong had a reputation for sobriety, and maintained it with
dignity.
A few days before, there had arrived at the Carrier's Rest a party of
three men, who were on their way to the West, where, according to the
story they told, they had found a wonderfully rich gold-field. Many a
story of that kind had already been told in Birralong, both at the Rest
and on Marmot's verandah, and the Birralong folk were sceptical,
especially those who on former occasions had been induced, on the
strength of the story, to furnish stores on credit, or take a
contributing interest in the newly found claim; in either case receiving
in return only the knowledge that, even in matters connected with
gold-mining, humanity is sometimes frail. They had not been averse,
however, to pay visits to the Rest and give their support to the
proposals the strangers had made, with the characteristic
open-handedness of miners, to toast success and thumping returns from
the new field. But beyond that their enthusiasm had not gone, except in
one instance, and he had thrown in his lot with the three and had
journeyed away in their company.
It was that which was puzzling Birralong. The last man in the district
whom they expected to be carried away by the glib tales of nuggets by
the bucketful and gravel running two ounces to the dish, was Tony
Taylor; still less did they expect that he would leave his selection
home, to say nothing of the charms of Birralong and Marmot's verandah,
for a wild-cat yarn of travelling fossickers. He was one of the
brightest lights in the district, handsome, dare-devil Tony. There was
not a horse he could not ride, and his rivals had brought some pretty
tough buckjumpers to test him at different times--"fair holy terrors,"
they called them--but Tony sat them, even when girth and crupper had
carried away. He was the only individual who had been able to solve the
mysteries of the form of the balls and the bumps in the cushions of the
alleged billiard table which the owner of the Rest had bought many years
before in a coastal town, and which had not been improved by a
five-weeks' journey inland on a bullock-dray. He had always held the
proud position of "ringer" in the shearing-sheds of the stations round
Birralong, beating all comers by never having a tally of less than a
hundred sheep shorn a day, and that with the old-fashioned hand-shears.
The winner of the local races had always been ridden by Tony, and he had
been known to lose the whole of his shearing earnings at euchre and win
them back, together with all the money on the board, by wagering his
next year's cheque. The feminine portion of the population for miles
round had a bright eye for Tony whenever he appeared; but only one did
he seriously fancy, according to the authority of Marmot's verandah, and
she, by the same token, fully reciprocated his feelings, and was,
moreover, the admitted beauty of the district. And yet Tony, not
apparently on the spur of the moment, but calmly and with his eyes open,
had thrown in his lot with the three fossickers, and had gone off
without scarcely a word to any one. Why, Birralong collectively did not
know, for there had not been time as yet for an assemblage to take place
on the verandah of Marmot's store. The riddle would not long remain
unsolved when it had.
The hour of the evening meal had come and gone; the buzz-saws had ceased
to whirr and sing and the anvil hammers to ring through the still, hot
air. The sun had left his perch overhead, and was sinking slowly towards
the horizon, making the trees and houses throw long streaks and patches
of shadow of soft purple-blue, which is so peculiarly Australian, across
the yellow dust of the roadway. The mosquitoes were beginning to leave
their shelters, and occasionally, within the shadows, the ping-zing of
their high-toned note could be heard as one drifted by the ear. The
wood-fire smoke rose straight and steadily from kitchen chimneys, as the
sticks, set alight to boil the billy for tea, gradually went out, and
the aromatic scent of it floated through the air, seeming to fit in with
the chromatic whistle of the magpies from the gum trees in the paddocks.
But the men who were gathered round Marmot's verandah noted nothing of
these things. Marmot himself, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, sat on a
box of Barret twist tobacco in the doorway, where he had the benefit of
any draught there might be, and the majority of the adult male members
of the population were sitting or standing around.
"It gets me. That's what it does, gets me clean," Marmot exclaimed. "Why
Tony----well, there, he's the one lad I'd have taken into the store here
to lend me a hand."
The immensity of the admiration and confidence implied by the remark for
the moment silenced every one. No higher compliment could be paid by
Marmot.
"It's a darned rum go," Smart, the saw-miller, observed solemnly. "He,
who came as a kid and wanted to see if my band-saw 'ud take his head off
in one swish--he, Tony Taylor, who knew enough at ten to spot the winner
of the Cup, to go and get landed by a fossicker's yarn. There's a darned
rum go."
"Yes; and where's the cause of it all?" Marmot asked. "There must be a
cause. We'd all be black-fellows and earth-worms if it wasn't for a
cause. There must be a cause, if we could only find it. Look for the
cause, says I, in a case that's a bit mixed. But there ain't no cause in
this, as I can see."
"Ain't there?" a man leaning against the end post of the verandah
exclaimed. "Ain't there no cause? That's just your blooming error."
"Well, I'm no bush lawyer," Marmot replied, with a glance round the
gathering. "It's more nor I can reason out."
"Look here," exclaimed the man, a selector who lived a couple of miles
out from the township in solitary grandeur, and had an opinion, which
might be right or wrong but was always strong, on every conceivable
subject under the sun, especially the opposite sex, whom he cordially
detested; "I'll tell you what's up. You believe me, a woman's to blame
in this."
"Good iron, Slaughter," some one replied. "They're always the trouble."
"Yes, they are," Slaughter went on. "Anywhere they're the trouble, but
in the bush----well, they're real daisies in the bush; that's what they
are, real daisies."
"But you don't mean----hullo, here's Cullen coming. He'll know what's in
the wind," Marmot exclaimed, as he caught sight of the blacksmith coming
along the road.
As Cullen reached them a cloud of dust appeared on the road to the west,
and he had stepped on to the verandah and exchanged greetings, and had
been asked to explain the problem which was occupying their minds,
before the cause of the dust-cloud went by at a hand-gallop in the form
of two saddle-horses, one ridden by a long-legged, wiry, sandy-haired
youth, and the other by a girl. She turned in her saddle as she rode
past, and waved her hand to those on the verandah, and even on
Slaughter's face there came the suspicion of a smile.
"That's it," Cullen said, as he jerked his head in the direction of the
two riders.
"Wha--at?" every one but Slaughter exclaimed; and he, with the smile
growing grim on his face, remarked--
"I told yer."
"It's so," Cullen went on. "Sam Nuggan was in to-day with a chipped cog
off his reaper, and he says, 'Cullen,' he says, 'I've got it.' 'No!'
says I. 'Yes!' says he. 'It's all along of that yaller head and young
Dickson of Barellan.'"
The smith paused to push the glowing tobacco farther into the bowl of
his pipe; and his audience, listening intently, almost started at the
resounding smack Slaughter gave his thigh as he exclaimed--
"I told yer! Bli'me! I told yer."
"Go on, Bill," Marmot said impatiently. "Never mind the pipe. Let's have
the yarn."
"You've got it," Cullen answered, as he squatted down with his back
against one of the verandah posts, and puffed with almost aggressive
deliberation at his strong, coarse tobacco.
"Go on, go on," Marmot repeated. "That ain't no cause, the yaller head
and that cornstalk from the station. Tony ain't the lad to be put off
with that. Don't you believe it. There's more about the yarn. Give us
what Nuggan said."
The remainder of the expectant townsmen repeated the request loudly,
volubly, and picturesquely.
"Well, it's like this," Cullen at last went on. "Nuggan told me as man
to man, and now I tell you as man to man, too, and that's square."
"Oh, that's square," Marmot chimed in; and the others repeated the
formula.
"Well, you see, there's something that shouldn't be but is somehow about
Tony which no one quite knows what it is though they knows it shouldn't
be, and that's what Nuggan said," Cullen observed fluently but
obscurely.
"But what's that?" Marmot began as Cullen paused.
He held up his hand, with his pipe between the finger and thumb,
impressively, and Marmot stopped.
"You mean to say you ain't noticed it?" he asked, pointing his pipe-stem
at Marmot. "Nor you? Nor you? Nor you?" he continued slowly, as he swept
his arm round and covered each man in turn.
Slaughter was the only man who answered. He said--
"Yes; her yaller head's made all of you fools. I told 'em it was a
woman."
"It ain't that," Cullen went on seriously. "It's the likeness, the
likeness that ain't there. You understand?"
No one pleaded ignorance, and the smith pulled at his pipe to make sure
it had not gone out before resuming.
"Taylor--the old chap, I mean--has sort of ginger hair. His
misses--well, she runs mousey. The young 'uns is mostly ginger, and them
that ain't is mousey. Tony--you know same as I do, Tony's as black in
the hair as a black-fellow, and blacker."
"That's so," Smart observed from the corner post where he was leaning.
"Now, I'll allow there's not much of old Taylor about the look of Tony.
There's a bit of the misses--about the eyes somehow, that makes him like
her."
"That's so," Smart repeated; and every one else was silent, being
interested, for Cullen generally had information, albeit he did
sometimes tie it up in words that neither his hearers nor himself could
understand.
"Then there's the cause," he exclaimed impressively. "There's the fust
cause."
"Where?" Marmot inquired wonderingly. A cause was too great an
attraction for him to permit his missing one voluntarily.
"Why, there," Cullen responded. "Tony's not a bit like Taylor; he _is_ a
bit like the misses, and he's different to all the rest."
"That's it. The woman," Slaughter snarled. "They're always the trouble
in this world. I'd yard 'em up like----"
"Dry up," Marmot exclaimed sharply. He was too involved over the cause
to want to hear Slaughter's well-worn theories on the management of the
other sex. "Where's the cause?" he asked.
"Well, put it plainer. Tony's like his mother, but how d'ye know he
ain't _more_ like his----"
"Smoke!" Marmot cried. "I get it. And yaller head found it out?"
"I don't go after for to say that," Cullen said ponderously. "And Sam
Nuggan, he don't go after for to say that. But he heard him and her one
night as they were riding in, him bringing her back from some moonlight
ride they was always getting up--he heard her say to him, 'But who do
you take after, Tony?' And next day, so Sam Nuggan says, Taylor and his
misses was talkin' a lot and Tony was watchin' a lot, and then he ups
and comes into the township, and the next he hears he'd gone off with
them gully-rakers."
"But it do seem to me----" Smart began.
"That's as clear as I can put it," Cullen interrupted quickly. "There it
is, all in front of you. Tony said he'd come back and report what the
field was in a week or so, and when he comes back, watch him and yaller
head. The yaller head's the cause of it, you take my tip."