Such Is Life (39 page)

Between one thing and another, it might have been about three in the afternoon when, with Pup reposing by my side, I finally settled down to an after-dinner smoke from the sage meerschaum often deservedly noticed in these annals.

The two greatest supra-physical pleasures of life are antithetical in operation. One is to have something to do, and to know that you are doing it deftly and honestly. The other is to have nothing to do, and to know that you are carrying out your blank programme like a good and faithful menial. On this afternoon, the latter line of inaction seemed to be my path of duty—even to the extent of unharnessing my mind, so that when any difficulty did arise, I might be prepared to meet it as a bridegroom is supposed to meet his bride. Therefore whenever my reasoning faculties obtruded themselves, I knapp'd 'em o' the coxcombs with a stick, and cry'd ‘Down, wantons, down.' Briefly, I kept my ratiocinative gear strictly quiescent, with only the perceptive apparatus unrestrained, thus observing all things through the hallowed haze of a mental
sabbath. There is a positive felicity in this attitude of soul, comparing most favourably with the negative happiness of Nirvana.

“Taking it easy, Tom?” conjectured a familiar voice.

“No, Steve,” I murmured, without even raising my eyes. “Tea in the quart-pot there. What are you after? Or is someone after you?”

“Prospecting for a bite of grass.”

“Well, you've bottomed on the wash. Thought you were out to Kulkaroo, with salt?”

“Just getting down again, with a half-load of pressed skins. Bullocks living on box-leaves and lignum. Rode over to get the geography of this place by daylight. Saunders, the fencer, told me about it this morning. He's got a ten-mile contract away on Pool-kija, and he's going out with three horses and a dray-load of stores for himself. Dray stopped on the road for the last week, with his wife minding it. Horses supposed to be lost in the lignum on Yoongoolee, and him hunting them for all he's worth. Keeps them planted all day, and tails them here at night. He wouldn't have laid me on, only that he's going to drop across them to-morrow morning, and shift.”

“Anyone coming with you to-night?”

“Baxter and Donovan. It's a good step to travel—must be ten or twelve mile—but this grass is worth it. Safe, too, from what I hear. Might get two goes at it, by taking the bullocks out at daylight, and planting them till night. However, I must get back, to meet the other chaps with the mob.”

“Well, I'll be here when you come.”

Thompson turned his horse, and disappeared round a promontory of lignum. By this time, the sun was dipping, dusky red, toward the smoky horizon; so I addressed myself to the duties of the evening, which consisted in taking my horses and Pup to the water, and bringing back a supply for myself. Also, as a concession to the new aspect of things, I took the bell off Cleopatra.

Daylight had now melted into soft, shadowless moonlight; and the place was no longer solitary. Dozens of cattle were scattered round, harvesting the fine crop of grass; and Thompson, with his two confederates, joined me. During daylight, I had made it my business to find a secluded place, bare of grass, where a fire could be kindled without offending the public eye; and to this spot the four of us repaired to see about some supper.

Before the first match was struck, a sound of subdued voices behind us notified the coming of two more interlopers.

One of these was Stevenson, a tank-sinker, now on his way northward with twenty-two fresh horses—fresh, by the way, only in respect of their new branch of industry, for the draft was made-up entirely of condemned coachers from Hay, and broken-down cab-horses from Victoria.

The other arrival was a Dutchman, who brought his two ten-horse teams. A thrifty, honest, sociable fellow he was; yet nothing but the integrity of narrative could possibly move me to repeat his name. It was Helsmok, with the ‘o' sounded long. The first time I had addressed him by name—many years before—a sense of delicacy had impelled me to shorten the vowel, also to slur the first syllable, whilst placing a strong accent on the second. But he had corrected me, just as promptly as Mr. Smythe would have done if I had called him Smith, and far more civilly. He had even softened the admonition by explaining that his strictness arose from a justifiable family pride, several of his paternal ancestors having been man-o'-war captains, and one an admiral—in which cases, the name would certainly seem appropriate. But some Continental surnames are sad indeed. The roll-call of Germany furnishes, perhaps, the most unhappy examples. There are
bonâ fide
German names which no man of refinement cares about repeating, except in a shearers' hut or a gentlemen's smoking-room.

“Shadowed you chaps,” remarked Stevenson, replying to the bullock drivers' look of inquiry. And he also applied himself to the kindling of a small fire.

“Jis' missed my ole camp by about ten chain!” cheerfully observed Saunders, entering the arena with a billy in one hand and a small calico bag in the other. “I was makin' for her when I heard you (fellows) talkin'. More the merrier, I s'pose.” And he set about making a third little fire.

“Gittin' out with loadin', Helsmok?” asked Donovan, while we waited the boiling of the billies.

“Yoos gittin' dan mit der las' wool,” replied the Dutchman. “I make der slow yourney; but, by yingo, I mus' save der horses.”

“Ought to change that name of yours, Jan,” remarked Thompson, with real sincerity. “It's an infernal name for children to hear.”

“Literally so,” commented Stevenson.

“Alter it to John Sulphur-Burnin',” suggested Baxter.

“How'd Jack Brimstone-Reek do?” asked Donovan.

“Give it the aristocratic touch,” proposed Stevenson. “Sign your. self Jean Fumée de l'Enfer.”

“Why not the scientific turn?” I asked. “Make it Professor John Oxy-Sulphuret, F.R.S.—Foreigner Rastling for Selebrity.”

“My idear's Blue Blazes,” put in Saunders bluntly.

“Tank you, yentlemen,” replied the genial Mynheer. “Mineself, I enyoy der yoke. Bot I am brout of my name. Mit mine forefad-ders, it have strock der yolly goot fear of Gott into der Spaniar' und der English.”

“No wonder,” sighed Thompson, purposely misconstruing the honest vindication. “And it'll have the same effect on anybody that considers it properly. But for that very reason, it's not a decent name.”

“It is ein olt name, Domson,” argued the Dutchman.

“Old enough,” rejoined Thompson gloomily. “It was to the fore when Satan was slung out of heaven; and it'll be going as strong as ever when we're trying to give an account of ourselves. It won't be a joking-matter then.”

Nor was it any longer a joking-matter for our assembly. Soon, however, the billies were taken off the fires, and spiritual apprehension forthwith gave place to physical indulgence.

After supper, we adjourned to the open plain. The night was delicious; and for half-an-hour the congress was governed by that dignified silence which back-country men appreciate so highly, yet so unconsciously. Then the contemplative quiet of our synod was broken by the vigorous barking of Saunders's dog, at a solitary box tree, indicating a possum tree'd in full sight.

“Gostruth, that 'on't do!” muttered the fencer, hastily starting toward the dog. “That's visible to the naked eye about three mile on a night like now.”

“Recalls the most perfect pun within my knowledge,” remarked Stevenson. “A lady, travelling by coach, had a pet dog, which annoyed her fellow-passengers till one of them remonstrated. ‘I'm surprised that you don't like my dog,' says the lady; ‘he's a real Peruvian.' ‘We don't object to your Peruvian dog,' says the passenger, ‘but we wish he would give us less of his Peruvian bark'.”

Before our company had recovered from the painful constraint induced by this unfathomable joke, Saunders resumed his place, holding the dog by a saddle-strap taken from his own equator.

“Dead spit of my poor old Monkey,” remarked Thompson sadly, as he caressed the dog. “Never felt the thing that's on me more distinctly than when I lost poor Monkey.”

“Well, I offered you a fiver for him,” rejoined Donovan. “Never
know'd a man to have luck with a thing that he'd refused a good bid for. Picked up a bait, I s'pose?”

“Monkey would never have stayed with you,” replied Thompson. “That dog would have broke his heart if he'd been parted from me. Tell you how I lost him. Last winter, when I was loaded-out for Kenilworth—where I met Cooper—you might remember it was dry, and frosty, and miserable, and the country as bare as a stockyard; and mostly everybody loafing on Kooltopa. Well, I dodged round by Yoongoolee, stealing a bite of grass here, and a bite there; and travelling by myself, so as not to be worth ordering-off the runs; and staying with the bullocks every night, and keeping them in decent fettle, considering.

“So, one evening, I left the wagon on that bit of red ground at the Fifteen-mile Gate, and tailed the bullocks down in the dark to sample the grass in Old Sollicker's horse-paddock. About eleven at night, when the first of them began to lie-down, I shifted the lot to an open place, so as to have them all together when they got full. I was in bodily fear of losing some of them among the lignum, in the dark; for it's a hanging-matter to duff in a horse-paddock on Yoongoolee. I knew Old Sollicker was as regular as clockwork, and I was safe till sunrise; so I intended to rouse-up the bullocks just before daylight, to lay in a fresh supply. In the meantime, I settled myself down for a sleep.”

“Where was the (adj.) dog?” asked Baxter.

“Rolled up in the blanket with me, I tell you; and we both slept like the dead”—

“Owing to having no fleas on you?” suggested Stevenson.

“Don't know what was the cause; but the thing that woke me was the jingle of a Barwell horse-bell on one side, and the rattle of a bridle on the other. Sure enough, there was the sun half-an-hour high, and Old Sollicker about thirty yards off; and here on the other side was his two horses dodging away from him; and me in a belt of lignum, half-way between; and my twenty bullocks, as bold as brass, all feeding together in the open, a bit to the left of the horses. It was plain to be seen that the old fellow hadn't caught sight of the bullocks on account of the belt of lignum where I was planted; but he was making for an openish place, not twenty yards ahead of him, and when he got there it would be all up. So I grabbed hold of Monkey, and fired him at the horses. He was there! He went like a boomerang when I let him rip, and in two seconds he had the blood flying out of those horses' heels; and, of course, they streaked for the clear ground near the hut. As
soon as I let the dog go, I turned my attention to Sollicker. At the first alarm, he stopped to consider; then, when the horses shot past him, with the dog eating their heels, he rubbed his chin for about two minutes—and me trusting Providence all I was able—then he gave a sort of snort, and said, ‘Well, I be dang!' and with that he turned round and went toward his hut. That was the signal for me to clear; and in fifteen minutes I had all my stock in safety—bar poor Monkey; and I never saw him from that day to this.”

“You (adj.) fool! why didn't you hunt for him?” asked Donovan.

“And didn't I hunt for him till I was sick and tired? I spent half that day hunting for him; and next morning I went back seven mile, and called at the hut to ask Mrs. Sollicker if her old man had seen a magpie steer, with a bugle horn, anywhere among the lignum; and when I got clear of the hut, I whistled till I was blackin the face; and still no dog. I hunted everywhere; and still no dog. Vanished out of the land of the living. That dog would never leave me while he had breath in his body; and when he didn't come back, after he had chivied the horses, I might have”—

“Sh-sh-sh!” whispered Stevenson. And, following the direction of his look, we discerned the approaching figure of a man on horseback.

“Ben Cartwright,” observed Baxter, after a pause. “Anybody else comin', I wonder? Seems like as if people couldn't fine a bit o' grass without the whole (adj.) country jumpin' it.”

“I move that all trespassers ought to be prosecuted with the utmost vigour o' the (adj.) law,” remarked Donovan aloud, as the new-comer dismounted and liberated his horse, a few yards away.

“We should certainly be justified in taking the opinion of the Court on a test case,” added Stevenson. “Suppose we make an example of Cartwright? Oh, I beg your pardon!” For the intended sacrifice was just collapsing into an easy position beside the speaker.

“Been scoutin' for you (fellows) this last half-hour,” he remarked sociably, but in the suppressed tone befitting time and place. “Seen samples o' your workin' plant, an' know'd who to expect. Heard the dog barkin' jis' now. Soft collar we got here—ain't it?”

“How did you find it?” asked Thompson.

“Know Jack Ling—at the Boree Paddick, about four mile out there? Well, I worked on his horse-paddick las' night, an' he fol-lered me up this mornin', an' talked summons. But I ain't very
fiery-tempered, the way things is jis' now; an' I got at the soft side o' the (adj.) idolator; an' he laid me on here. Reckoned I'd mos' likely fine company.”

“One good point about a Chow boundary man,” observed Thompson. “So long as you don't interfere with his own paddock, he never makes himself nasty.”

My own experience of the morning led me to endorse this judgment; wherefore, if John didn't exactly rise in the estimation of the camp, he certainly reduced his soundings in its detestation.

“Comin' down with wool?” asked Baxter.

“Comin' down without wool, or wagon, or any (adj.) thing,” replied Cartwright. “Jist loafin' loose. Bullocks dead-beat. Left the wagon tarpolined at the Jumpin' Sandhill, a fortnit ago. Five gone out o' eighteen since then, an' three more dead if they on'y know'd it. Good for trade, I s'pose.”