Selected Stories (40 page)

I “WHIPPED the cat” a bit, the first twenty miles or so, but then, I thought, what did it matter? What was the use of grinding to save money until we were too old to enjoy it. If we had to go down in the world again, we might as well fall out of a buggy as out of a dray—there’d be some talk about it, anyway, and perhaps a little sympathy. When Mary had the buggy she wouldn’t be tied down so much to that wretched hole in the Bush; and the Sydney trips needn’t be off either. I could drive down to Wallerawang on the main line, where Mary had some people, and leave the buggy and horses there, and take the train to Sydney; or go right on, by the old coach-road, over the Blue Mountains: it would be a grand drive. I thought best to tell Mary’s sister at Gulgong about the buggy; I told her I’d keep it dark from Mary till the buggy came home. She entered into the spirit of the thing, and said she’d give the world to be able to go out with the buggy, if only to see Mary open her eyes when she saw it; but she couldn’t go; on account of a new baby she had. I was rather glad she couldn’t, for it would spoil the surprise a little, I thought. I wanted that all to myself.

I got home about sunset next day and, after tea, when I’d finished telling Mary all the news, and a few lies as to why I didn’t bring the cart back, and one or two other things, I sat with
James, out on a log of the wood-heap, where we generally had our smokes and interviews, and told him all about the buggy. He whistled, then he said:

“But what do you want to make it such a bushranging business for? Why can’t you tell Mary now? It will cheer her up. She’s been pretty miserable since you’ve been away this trip.”

“I want it to be a surprise,” I said.

“Well, I’ve got nothing to say against a surprise, out in a hole like this; but it ’ud take a lot to surprise me. What am I to say to Mary about taking the two horses in? I’ll only want one to bring the cart out, and she’s. sure to ask.”

“Tell her you’re going to get yours shod.”

“But he had a set of slippers only the other day. She knows as much about horses as we do. I don’t mind telling a lie so long as a chap has only got to tell a straight lie and be done with it. But Mary asks so many questions.”

“Well, drive the other horse up the creek early, and pick him up as you go.”

“Yes. And she’ll want to know what I want with two bridles. But I’ll fix her—
you
needn’t worry.”

“And, James,” I said, “get a chamois leather and sponge—we’ll want ’em anyway—and you might give the buggy a wash down in the creek, coming home. It’s sure to be covered with dust.”

“Oh!—orlright.”

“And if you can, time yourself to get here in the cool of the evening, or just about sunset.”

“What for?”

I’d thought it would be better to have the buggy there in the cool of the evening, when Mary would have time to get excited and get over it better than in the blazing hot morning, when the sun rose as hot as at noon, and we’d have the long broiling day before us.

“What do you want me to come at sunset for?” asked James. “Do you want me to camp out in the scrub and turn up like a blooming sundowner?”

“Oh well,” I said, “get here at midnight if you like.”

We didn’t say anything for a while—just sat and puffed at our pipes. Then I said:

“Well, what are you thinking about?”

“I’m thinking it’s time you got a new hat, the sun seems to get in through your old one too much,” and he got out of my reach and went to see about penning the calves. Before we turned in he said:

“Well, what am I to get out of the job, Joe?”

He had his eye on a double-barrel gun that Franca the gunsmith in Cudgegong had—one barrel shot, and the other rifle; so I said:

“How much does Franca want for that gun?”

“Five-ten; but I think he’d take my single barrel off it. Anyway, I can squeeze a couple of quid out of Phil Lambert for the single barrel.” (Phil was his bosom chum.)

“All right,” I said. “Make the best bargain you can.”

He got his own breakfast and made an early start next morning, to get clear of any instructions or messages that Mary might have forgotten to give him overnight. He took his gun with him.

I’d always thought that a man was a fool who couldn’t keep a secret from his wife—that there was something womanish about him. I found out. Those three days waiting for the buggy were about the longest I ever spent in my life. It made me scotty with everyone and everything; and poor Mary had to suffer for it. I put in the time patching up the harness and mending the stockyard and the roof, and, the third morning, I rode up the ridges to look for trees for fencing-timber. I remember I hurried home that afternoon because I thought the buggy might get there before me.

At tea-time I got Mary on to the buggy business.

“What’s the good of a single buggy to you, Mary?” I asked. “There’s only room for two, and what are you going to do with the children when we go out together?”

“We can put them on the floor at our feet, like other people do. I can always fold up a blanket or ’possum rug for them to sit on.”

But she didn’t take half so much interest in buggy talk as she would have taken at any other time, when I didn’t want her to.
Women are aggravating that way. But the poor girl was tired and not very well, and both the children were cross. She did look knocked up.

“We’ll give the buggy a rest, Joe,” she said. (I thought I heard it coming then.) “It seems as far off as ever. I don’t know why you want to harp on it to-day. Now, don’t look so cross, Joe—I didn’t mean to hurt you. We’ll wait until we can get a double buggy, since you’re so set on it. There’ll be plenty of time when we’re better off.”

After tea, when the youngsters were in bed, and she’d washed up, we sat outside on the edge of the verandah floor, Mary sewing, and I smoking and watching the track up the creek.

“Why don’t you talk, Joe?” asked Mary. “You scarcely ever speak to me now: it’s like drawing blood out of a stone to get a word from you. What makes you so cross, Joe?”

“Well, I’ve got nothing to say.”

“But you should find something. Think of me—it’s very miserable for me. Have you anything on your mind? Is there any new trouble? Better tell me, no matter what it is, and not go worrying and brooding and making both our lives miserable. If you never tell me anything, how can you expect me to understand?”

I said there was nothing the matter.

“But there must be, to make you so unbearable. Have you been drinking, Joe—or gambling?”

I asked her what she’d accuse me of next.

“And another thing I want to speak to you about,” she went on. “Now, don’t knit up your forehead like that, Joe, and get impatient——”

“Well, what is it?”

“I wish you wouldn’t swear in the hearing of the children. Now, little Jim to-day, he was trying to fix his little go-cart and it wouldn’t run right, and—and——

“Well, what did he say?”

“He—he” (she seemed a little hysterical, trying not to laugh)—“he said ‘damn it!’”

I had to laugh. Mary tried to keep serious, but it was no use.

“Never mind, old woman,” I said, putting an arm round her, for her mouth was trembling, and she was crying more than laughing. “It won’t be always like this. Just wait till we’re a bit better off.”

Just then a black boy we had (I must tell you about him some other time) came sidling along by the wall, as if he were afraid somebody was going to hit him—poor little devil! I never did.

“What is it, Harry?” said Mary.

“Buggy comin’, I bin thinkit.”

“Where?”

He pointed up the creek.

“Sure it’s a buggy?”

“Yes, missus.”

“How many horses?”

“One—two.”

We knew that he could hear and see things long before we could. Mary went and perched on the wood-heap, and shaded her eyes—though the sun had gone—and peered through between the eternal grey trunks of the stunted trees on the flat across the creek. Presently she jumped down and came running in.

“There’s someone coming in a buggy, Joe!” she cried, excitedly. “And both my white table-cloths are rough dry. Harry! put two flat-irons down to the fire, quick, and put on some more wood. It’s lucky I kept those new sheets packed away. Get up out of that, Joe! What are you sitting grinning like that for? Go and get on another shirt. Hurry—Why! It’s only James—by himself.”

She stared at me, and I sat there, grinning like a fool.

“Joe!” she said, “whose buggy is that?”

“Well, I suppose it’s yours,” I said.

She caught her breath, and stared at the buggy and then at me again. James drove down out of sight into the crossing, and came up close to the house.

“Oh, Joe! what have you done?” cried Mary. “Why, it’s a new double buggy!” Then she rushed at me and hugged my head. “Why didn’t you tell me, Joe? You poor old boy!—and I’ve been nagging at you all day!” And she hugged me again.

James got down and started taking the horses out—as if it was an everyday occurrence. I saw the double-barrel gun sticking out from under the seat. He’d stopped to wash the buggy, and I suppose that’s what made him grumpy. Mary stood on the verandah, with her eyes twice as big as usual, and breathing hard—taking the buggy in.

James skimmed the harness off, and the horses shook themselves and went down to the dam for a drink. “You’d better look under the seats,” growled James, as he took his gun out with great care.

Mary dived for the buggy. There was a dozen of lemonade and ginger-beer in a candle-box from Galletly—James said that Galletly’s men had a gallon of beer, and they cheered him, James (I suppose he meant they cheered the buggy), as he drove off; there was a “little bit of a ham” from Pat Murphy, the storekeeper at Home Rule, that he’d “cured himself”—it was the biggest I ever saw; there were three loaves of baker’s bread, a cake, and a dozen yards of something “to make up for the children”, from Aunt Gertrude at Gulgong; there was a fresh-water cod, that long Dave Regan had caught the night before in the Macquarie River and sent out packed in salt in a box; there was a holland suit for the black boy, with red braid to trim it; and there was a jar of preserved ginger, and some lollies (sweets) (“for the lil’ boy”), and a rum-looking Chinese doll and a rattle (“for lil’ girl”) from Sun Tong Lee, our storekeeper at Gulgong—James was chummy with Sun Tong Lee, and got his powder and shot and caps there on tick when he was short of money. And James said that the people would have loaded the buggy with “rubbish” if he’d waited. They all seemed glad to see Joe Wilson getting on—and these things did me good.

We got the things inside, and I don’t think either of us knew what we were saying or doing for the next half-hour. Then James put his head in and said, in a very injured tone:

“What about my tea? I ain’t had anything to speak of since I left Cudgegong. I want some grub.”

Then Mary pulled herself together.

“You’ll have your tea directly,” she said. “Pick up that harness at once, and hang it on the pegs in the skillion; and you,
Joe, back that buggy under the end of the verandah, the dew will be on it presently—and we’ll put wet bags up in front of it to-morrow, to keep the sun off. And James will have to go back to Cudgegong for the cart—we can’t have that buggy to knock about in.”

“All right,” said James—“anything! Only get me some grub.”

Mary fried the fish, in case it wouldn’t keep till the morning, and rubbed over the table-cloths, now the irons were hot—James growling all the time—and got out some crockery she had packed away that had belonged to her mother, and set the table in a style that made James uncomfortable.

“I want some grub—not a blooming banquet!” he said. And he growled a lot because Mary wanted him to eat his fish without a knife, “and that sort of Tommy-rot”. When he’d finished he took his gun, and the black boy, and the dogs, and went out ’possum-shooting.

When we were alone Mary climbed into the buggy to try the seat, and made me get up alongside her. We hadn’t had such a comfortable seat for years; but we soon got down, in case anyone came by, for we began to feel like a pair of fools up there.

Then we sat, side by side, on the edge of the verandah, and talked more than we’d done for years—and there was a good deal of “Do you remember?” in it—and I think we got to understand each other better that night.

And at last Mary said, “Do you know, Joe, why, I feel tonight just—just like I did the day we were married.”

And somehow I had that strange, shy sort of feeling too.

MOTHER MIDDLETON was an awful woman, an “old hand” (transported convict) some said. The prefix “mother” in Australia mostly means “old hag”, and is applied in that sense. In early boyhood we understood, from old diggers, that Mother Middleton—in common with most other “old hands”—had been sent out for “knocking a donkey off a hen-roost”. We had never seen a donkey. She drank like a fish and swore like a trooper when the spirit moved her; she went on periodical sprees, and swore on most occasions. There was a fearsome yarn, which impressed us greatly as boys, to the effect that once, in her best (or worst) days she had pulled a mounted policeman off his horse, and half-killed him with a heavy pick-handle, which she used for poking down clothes in her boiler. She said that he had insulted her.

She could still knock down a tree and cut a load of firewood with any Bushman; she was square and muscular, with arms like a navvy’s; she had often worked shifts, below and on top, with her husband, when he’d be putting down a prospecting shaft without a mate, as he often had to do—because of her mainly. Old diggers said that it was lovely to see how she’d spin up a heavy green-hide bucket full of clay and “tailings”, and land and empty it with a twist of her wrist. Most men were afraid of her, and few diggers’ wives were strong-minded enough to seek a second row with Mother Middleton. Her voice could be heard right across Golden Gully and Specimen Flat, whether raised in argument or in friendly greeting. She came to the old Pipeclay diggings with the “rough crowd” (mostly Irish), and when the old and new Pipeclays were worked out, she went with the rush to Gulgong (about the last of the great alluvial or “poor-man’s” gold-fields) and came back to Pipeclay when the Log Paddock gold-field “broke out”, adjacent to the old fields, and so helped prove the truth of the old digger’s saying, that no matter how thoroughly ground has been worked, there is always room for a new Ballarat.

Jimmy Middleton died at Log Paddock, and was buried, about the last, in the little old cemetery—appertaining to the old farming town on the river, about four miles away—which adjoined the district racecourse, in the Bush, on the far edge of Specimen Flat. She conducted the funeral. Some said she made the coffin, and there were alleged jokes to the effect that her tongue had provided the corpse; but this, I think, was unfair and cruel, for she loved Jimmy Middleton in her awful way, and was, for all I ever heard to the contrary, a good wife to him. She then lived in a hut in Log Paddock, on a little money in the bank, and did sewing and washing for single diggers.

I remember hearing her one morning in neighbourly conversation, carried on across the gully, with a selector, Peter Olsen, who was hopelessly slaving to farm a dusty patch in the scrub.

“Why don’t you chuck up that dust-hole and go up country and settle on good land, Peter Olsen? You’re only slaving your stomach out here.” (She didn’t say stomach.)

Peter Olsen (mild-whiskered little man, afraid of his wife): “But then you know my wife is so delicate, Mrs Middleton. I wouldn’t like to take her out in the Bush.”

Mrs Middleton: “Delicate be damned! She’s only shamming!” (at her loudest). “Why don’t you kick her off the bed and the book out of her hand, and make her go to work? She’s as delicate as I am. Are you a man, Peter Olsen, or a——?”

This for the edification of the wife and of all within half a mile.

Log Paddock was “petering”. There were a few claims still being worked down at the lowest end, where big, red-and-white waste-heaps of clay and gravel, rising above the blue-grey gum-bushes, advertised deep sinking; and little, yellow, clay-stained streams, running towards the creek over the drought-parched surface, told of trouble with the water below—time lost in bailing and extra expense in timbering. And diggers came up with their flannels and moleskins yellow and heavy, and dripping with wet “mullock”.

Most of the diggers had gone to other fields, but there were a
few prospecting, in parties and singly, out on the flats and amongst the ridges round Pipeclay. Sinking holes in search of a new Ballarat.

Dave Regan—lanky, easy-going Bush native; Jim Bently—a bit of a “Flash Jack”; and Andy Page—a character like what Kit (in
The Old Curiosity Shop
) might have been after a voyage to Australia and some Colonial experience. These three were mates from habit and not necessity, for it was all shallow sinking where they worked. They were poking down pot-holes in the scrub in the vicinity of the racecourse, where the sinking was from ten to fifteen feet.

Dave had theories—“ideers” or “notions” he called them; Jim Bently laid claim to none—he ran by sight, not scent, like a kangaroo-dog. Andy Page—by the way, great admirer and faithful retainer of Dave Regan—was simple and trusting, but, on critical occasions, he was apt to be obstinately, uncomfortably, exasperatingly truthful, honest, and he had reverence for higher things.

Dave thought hard all one quiet drowsy Sunday afternoon, and next morning he, as head of the party, started to sink a hole as close to the cemetery fence as he dared. It was a nice quiet spot in the thick scrub, about three panels along the fence from the farthest corner post from the road. They bottomed here at nine feet, and found encouraging indications. They “drove” (tunnelled) inwards at right angles to the fence, and at a point immediately beneath it they were “making tucker”; a few feet farther and they were making wages. The old alluvial bottom sloped gently that way. The bottom here, by the way, was shelving, brownish, rotten rock.

Just inside the cemetery fence, and at right angles to Dave’s drive, lay the shell containing all that was left of the late fiercely lamented James Middleton, with older graves close at each end. Agrave was supposed to be six feet deep, and local gravediggers had been conscientious. The old alluvial bottom sloped from nine to fifteen feet here.

Dave worked the ground all round from the bottom of his shaft, timbering—i.e., putting in a sapling prop—here and there
where he worked wide; but the “payable dirt” ran in under the cemetery, and in no other direction.

Dave, Jim, and Andy held a consultation in camp over their pipes after tea, as a result of which Andy next morning rolled up his swag, sorrowfully but firmly shook hands with Dave and Jim, and started to tramp out back to look for work on a sheep-station.

This was Dave’s theory—drawn from a little experience and many long yarns with old diggers:—

He had bottomed on a slope to an old original water-course, covered with clay and gravel from the hills by centuries of rains, to the depth of from nine or ten to twenty feet; he had bottomed on a gutter running into the bed of the old buried creek, and carrying patches and streaks, of “wash” or gold-bearing, dirt. If he went on he might strike it rich at any stroke of his pick; he might strike the rich “lead” which was supposed to exist round there. (There was always supposed to be a rich lead round there somewhere. “There’s gold in them ridges yet—if a man can only git at it,” says the toothless old relic of the Roaring Days.)

Dave might strike a ledge, “pocket”, or “pot-hole” holding wash rich with gold. He had prospected on the opposite side of the cemetery, found no gold, and the bottom sloping upwards towards the graveyard. He had prospected at the back of the cemetery, found a few “colours”, and the bottom sloping downwards towards the point under the cemetery towards which all indications were now leading him. He had sunk shafts across the road opposite the cemetery frontage and found the sinking twenty feet and not a colour of gold. Probably the whole of the ground under the cemetery was rich—maybe the richest in the district. The old gravediggers had not been gold-diggers—besides, the graves, being six feet, would, none of them, have touched the alluvial bottom. There was nothing strange in the fact that none of the crowd of experienced diggers who rushed the district had thought of the cemetery and racecourse. Old brick chimneys and houses, the clay for the bricks of which had been taken from sites of subsequent goldfields, had been put through the crushing-mill in
subsequent years and had yielded “payable gold”. Fossicking Chinamen were said to have been the first to detect a case of this kind.

Dave reckoned to strike the “lead”, or a shelf or ledge with a good streak of wash lying along it, at a point about forty feet within the cemetery. But a theory in alluvial gold-mining was much like a theory in gambling, in some respects. The theory might be right enough, but old volcanic disturbances—“the shrinkage of the earth’s surface”, and that sort of old thing—upset everything. You might follow good gold along a ledge, just under the grass, till it suddenly broke off and the continuation might be a hundred feet or so under your nose.

Had the “ground” in the cemetery been “open”, Dave would have gone to the point under which he expected the gold to lie, sunk a shaft there, and worked the ground. It would have been the quickest and easiest way—it would have saved the labour and the time lost in dragging heavy buckets of dirt along a low lengthy drive to the shaft outside the fence. But it was very doubtful if the Government could have been moved to open the cemetery even on the strongest evidence of the existence of a rich goldfield under it, and backed by the influence of a number of diggers and their backers—which last was what Dave wished for least of all. He wanted, above all things, to keep the thing shady. Then, again, the old clannish local spirit of the old farming town, rooted in years way back of the goldfields, would have been too strong for the Government, or even a rush of wild diggers.

“We’ll work this thing on the strict Q.T.,” said Dave.

He and Jim had a consultation by the camp fire outside their tent. Jim grumbled, in conclusion:

“Well, then, best go under Jimmy Middleton. It’s the shortest and straightest, and Jimmy’s the freshest, anyway.”

Then there was another trouble. How were they to account for the size of the waste-heap of clay on the surface which would be the result of such an extraordinary length of drive or tunnel for shallow sinkings? Dave had an idea of carrying some of the dirt away by night and putting it down a deserted shaft close by; but
that would double the labour, and might lead to detection sooner than anything else. There were boys ’possum-hunting on those flats every night. Then Dave got an idea.

There was supposed to exist—and it has since been proved—another, a second gold-bearing alluvial bottom on that field, and several had tried for it. One, the town watchmaker, had sunk all his money in “duffers”, trying for the second bottom. It was supposed to exist at a depth of from eighty to a hundred feet—on solid rock, I suppose. This watchmaker, an Italian, would put men on to sink, and superintend in person, and whenever he came to a little “colour” showing shelf, or false bottom, thirty or forty feet down—he’d go rooting round and spoil the shaft, and then start to sink another. It was extraordinary that he hadn’t the sense to sink straight down, thoroughly test the second bottom, and if he found no gold there, to fill the shaft up to the other bottoms, or build platforms at the proper level and then explore them. He was living in a lunatic asylum the last I heard of him. And the last time I heard from that field, they were boring the ground like a sieve, with the latest machinery, to find the best place to put down a deep shaft, and finding gold from the second bottom on the bore. But I’m right off the line again.

“Old Pinter”, Ballarat digger—his theory on second and other bottoms ran as follows:—

“Ye see,
this
here grass surface—this here surface with trees an’ grass on it, that we’re livin’ on, has got nothin’ to do with us. This here bottom in the shaller sinkin’s that we’re workin’ on is the slope to the bed of the
new
crick that was on the surface about the time that men was missin’ links. The false bottoms, thirty or forty feet down, kin be said to have been on the surface about the time that men was monkeys. The
secon’
bottom—eighty or a hundred feet down—was on the surface about the time when men was frogs. Now——”

But it’s with the missing-link surface we have to do, and had the friends of the local departed known what Dave and Jim were up to they would have regarded them as something lower than missing links.

“We’ll give out we’re tryin’ for the second bottom,” said Dave Regan. “We’ll have to rig a fan for air, anyhow, and you don’t want air in shallow sinkings.”

“And someone will come poking round, and look down the hole and see the bottom,” said Jim Bently.

“We must keep ’em away,” said Dave. “Tar the bottom, or cover it with tarred canvas, to make it black. Then they won’t see it. There’s not many diggers left, and the rest are going; they’re chucking up the claims in Log Paddock. Besides, I could get drunk and pick rows with the rest and they wouldn’t come near me. The farmers ain’t in love with us diggers, so they won’t bother us. No man has a right to come poking round another man’s claim: it ain’t ettykit—I’ll root up that old ettykit and stand to it—it’s rather worn out now, but that’s no matter. We’ll shift the tent down near the claim and see that no one comes nosing round on Sunday. They’ll think we’re only some more second-bottom lunatics, like Francea (the mining watchmaker). We’re going to get our fortune out from under that old graveyard, Jim. You leave it all to me till you’re born again with brains.”

Dave’s schemes were always elaborate, and that was why they so often came to the ground. He logged up his windlass platform a little higher, bent about eighty feet of rope to the bole of the windlass, which was a new one, and thereafter, whenever a suspicious-looking party (that is to say, a digger) hove in sight, Dave would let down about forty feet of rope and then wind, with simulated exertion, until the slack was taken up and the rope lifted the bucket from the shallow bottom.

“It would look better to have a whip-pole and a horse, but we can’t afford them just yet,” said Dave.

But I’m a little behind. They drove straight in under the cemetery, finding good wash all the way. The edge of Jimmy Middleton’s box appeared in the top corner of the “face” (the working end) of the drive. They went under the butt-end of the grave. They shoved up the end of the shell with a prop, to prevent the possibility of an accident which might disturb the mound above; they puddled—i.e., rammed-stiff clay up round the edges to keep the loose earth from dribbling down; and
having given the bottom of the coffin a good coat of tar, they got over, or rather under, an unpleasant matter.