Selected Stories (7 page)

“I’D been away from home for eight years,” said Mitchell to his mate, as they dropped their swags in the mulga shade and sat down. “I hadn’t written a letter—kept putting it off, and a blundering fool of a fellow that got down the day before me told the old folks that he’d heard I was dead.”

Here he took a pull at his water-bag.

“When I got home they were all in mourning for me. It was night, and the girl that opened the door screamed and fainted away like a shot.”

He lit his pipe.

“Mother was upstairs howling and moaning in a chair, with all the girls boo-hooing round her for company. The old man was sitting in the back kitchen crying to himself.”

He put his hat down on the ground, dinted in the crown, and poured some water into the hollow for his cattle-pup.

“The girls came rushing down. Mother was so pumped out that she couldn’t get up. They thought at first I was a ghost, and then they all tried to get hold of me at once—nearly smothered me. Look at that pup! You want to carry a tank of water on a dry stretch when you’ve got a pup that drinks as much as two men.”

He poured a drop more water into the top of his hat.

“Well, mother screamed and nearly fainted when she saw me. Such a picnic you never saw. They kept it up all night. I thought the old cove was gone off his chump. The old woman wouldn’t let go my hand for three mortal hours. Have you got the knife?”

He cut up some more tobacco.

“All next day the house was full of neighbours, and the first to come was an old sweetheart of mine; I never thought she cared for me till then. Mother and the girls made me swear never to go away any more; and they kept watching me, and hardly let me go outside for fear I’d——”

“Get drunk?”

“No,—you’re smart—for fear I’d clear. At last I swore on the Bible that I’d never leave home while the old folks were alive; and then mother seemed easier in her mind.”

He rolled the pup over and examined its feet. “I expect I’ll have to carry him a bit—his feet are very sore. Well, he’s done pretty well this morning, and anyway he won’t drink so much when he’s carried.”

“You broke your promise about leaving home,” said his mate.

Mitchell stood up, stretched himself, and looked dolefully from his heavy swag to the wide, hot, shadeless cotton-bush plain ahead.

“Oh, yes,” he yawned, “I stopped at home for a week, and then they began to growl because I couldn’t get any work to do.”

The mate guffawed and Mitchell grinned. They shouldered the swags, with the pup on top of Mitchell’s, took up their billies and water-bags, turned their unshaven faces to the wide, hazy distance, and left the timber behind them.

DRAW a wire fence and a few ragged gums, and add some scattered sheep running away from the train. Then you’ll have the bush all along the New South Wales Western line from Bathurst on.

The railway towns consist of a public house and a general store, with a square tank and a schoolhouse on piles in the nearer distance. The tank stands at the end of the school and is not many times smaller than the building itself. It is safe to call the pub “The Railway Hotel”, and the store “The Railway Stores”, with an “s”. Acouple of patient, ungroomed hacks are probably standing outside the pub while their masters are inside having a drink—several drinks. Also it’s safe to draw a sundowner sitting listlessly on a bench on the verandah, reading the
Bulletin.

The Railway Stores seems to exist only in the shadow of the pub, and it is impossible to conceive either as being independent of the other. There is sometimes a small, oblong weatherboard building—unpainted, and generally leaning in one of the eight possible directions and perhaps with a twist in another—which, from its half-obliterated sign, seems to have started as a rival to the Railway Stores; but the shutters are up and the place empty.

The only town I saw that differed much from the above consisted of a box-bark humpy with a clay chimney, and a woman standing at the door throwing out the wash-up water.

By way of variety, the artist might make a water-colour sketch of a fettler’s tent on the line, with a billy hanging over the fire in front, and three fettlers standing round, filling their pipes.

Slop sac suits, red faces, and old-fashioned, flat-brimmed hats, with wire round the brims, begin to drop into the train on the other side of Bathurst; and here and there a hat with three inches of crape round the crown, which perhaps signifies death in the family at some remote date, and perhaps doesn’t. Sometimes, I believe, it only means grease under the band. I notice that when a bushman puts crape round his hat he generally leaves it there
till the hat wears out, or another friend dies. In the latter case, he buys a new piece of crape. This outward sign of bereavement usually has a jolly, red face beneath it. Death is about the only cheerful thing in the bush.

We crossed the Macquarie—a narrow, muddy gutter with a dog swimming across, and three goats interested.

Alittle further on we saw the first sundowner. He carried a Royal Alfred, and had a billy in one hand and a stick in the other. He was dressed in a tail-coat turned yellow, a print shirt, and a pair of moleskin trousers, with big square calico patches on the knees; and his old straw hat was covered with calico. Suddenly he slipped his swag, dropped his billy, and ran forward, boldly flourishing the stick. I thought that he was mad, and was about to attack the train, but he wasn’t; he was only killing a snake. I didn’t have time to see whether he cooked the snake or not—perhaps he only thought of Adam.

Somebody told me that the country was very dry on the other side of Nevertire. It is. I wouldn’t like to sit down on it anywhere. The least horrible spot in the bush, in a dry season, is where the bush isn’t—where it has been cleared away and a green crop is trying to grow. They talk of settling people on the land! Better settle
in
it. I’d rather settle on the water; at least, until some gigantic system of irrigation is perfected in the West.

Along about Byrock we saw the first shearers. They dress like the unemployed, but differ from that body in their looks of independence. They sat on trucks and wool-bales and the fence, watching the train, and hailed Bill, and Jim, and Tom, and asked how those individuals were getting on.

Here we came across soft felt hats with straps round the crowns and full-bearded faces under them. Also a splendid-looking blacktracker in a masher uniform and a pair of Wellington boots.

One or two square-cuts and stand-up collars struggle dismally through to the bitter end. Often a member of the unemployed starts cheerfully out, with a letter from the Government Labour Bureau in his pocket, and nothing else. He has an idea that the station where he has the job will be within easy walking distance of Bourke. Perhaps he thinks there’ll be a cart or a buggy waiting
for him. He travels for a night and day without a bite to eat, and, on arrival, he finds that the station is eighty or a hundred miles away. Then he has to explain matters to a publican and a coach-driver. God bless the publican and the coach-driver! God forgive our social system!

Native industry was represented at one place along the line by three tiles, a chimney-pot, and a length of piping on a slab.

Somebody said to me, “Yer wanter go out back, young man, if yer wanter see the country. Yer wanter get away from the line.” I don’t wanter; I’ve been there.

You could go to the brink of eternity so far as Australia is concerned and yet meet an animated mummy of a swagman who will talk of going “out back”. Out upon the out-back fiend!

About Byrock we met the bush liar in all his glory. He was dressed like—like a bush larrikin. His name was Jim. He had been to a ball where some blank had “touched” his blanky overcoat. The overcoat had a cheque for ten “quid” in the pocket. He didn’t seem to feel the loss much. “Wot’s ten quid?” He’d been everywhere, including the Gulf country. He still had three or four sheds to go to. He had telegrams in his pocket from half-a-dozen squatters and supers offering him pens on any terms. He didn’t give a blank whether he took them or no. He thought at first he had the telegrams on him, but found that he had left them in the pocket of the overcoat aforesaid. He had learned butchering in a day. He was a bit of a scrapper himself and talked a lot about the ring. At the last station where he shore he gave the super the father of a hiding. The super was a big chap, about six-foot-three, and had knocked out Paddy Somebody in one round. He worked with a man who shore four hundred sheep in nine hours.

Here a quiet-looking bushman in a corner of the carriage grew restless, and presently he opened his mouth and took the liar down in about three minutes.

At 5.30 we saw a long line of camels moving out across the sunset. There’s something snaky about camels. They remind me of turtles and goannas.

Somebody said, “Here’s Bourke.”

“I’LL get down among the cockies along the Lachlan or some of those rivers,” said Mitchell, throwing down his swag beneath a big tree. “Aman stands a better show down there. It’s a mistake to come out back. I knocked around a good deal down there among the farms. Could always get plenty of tucker, and a job if I wanted it. One cocky I worked for wanted me to stay with him for good. Sorry I didn’t. I’d have been better off now. I was treated more like one of the family, and there was a couple of good-looking daughters. One of them was clean gone on me. There are some grand girls down that way. I always got on well with girls, because I could play the fiddle and sing a bit. They’ll be glad to see me when I get back there again, I know. I’ll be all right—no more bother about tucker. I’ll just let things slide as soon as I spot the house. I’ll bet my boots the kettle will be boiling, and everything in the house will be on the table before I’m there twenty minutes. And the girls will be running to meet the old cocky when he comes riding home at night, and they’ll let down the slip-rails, and ask him to guess ‘who’s up at our place?’ Yes, I’ll find a job with some old cocky, with a good-looking daughter or two. I’ll get on ploughing if I can; that’s the sort of work I like; best graft about a farm.

“By-and-by the cocky’ll have a few sheep he wants shorn, and one day he’ll say to me, ‘Jack, if you hear of a shearer knockin’ round let me know—I’ve got a few sheep I want shore.’

“ ‘How many have you got?’ I’ll say.

“ ‘Oh, about fifteen hundred.’

“ ‘And what d’you think of giving?’

“ ‘Well, about twenty-five bob a hundred, but if a shearer sticks out for thirty, send him up to talk with me. I want to get ’em shore as soon as possible.’

“ ‘It’s all right,’ I’ll say, ‘you needn’t bother; I’ll shear your sheep.’

“ ‘Why,’ he’ll say, ‘can
you
shear?’

“ ‘Shear? Of course I can! I shore before you were born.’ It won’t matter if he’s twice as old as me.

“So I’ll shear his sheep and make a few pounds, and he’ll be glad and all the more eager to keep me on, so’s to always have someone to shear his sheep. But by-and-by I’ll get tired of stopping in the one place and want to be on the move, so I’ll tell him I’m going to leave.

“ ‘Why, what do you want to go for?’ he’ll say, surprised, ‘ain’t you satisfied?’

“ ‘Oh, yes, I’m satisfied, but I want a change.’

“ ‘Oh, don’t go,’ he’ll say; ‘stop on and we’ll call it twenty-five bob a week.’

“But I’ll tell him I’m off—wouldn’t stay for a hundred when I’d made up my mind; so, when he sees he can’t persuade me he’ll get a bit stiff and say:

“ ‘Well, what about that there girl? Are you goin’ to go away and leave her like that?’

“ ‘Why, what d’yer mean?’ I’ll say, ‘Leave her like what?’ I won’t pretend to know what he’s driving at.

“ ‘Oh!’ he’ll say, ‘you know very well what I mean. The question is:
Are you going to marry the girl or not?’

“I’ll see that things are gettin’ a little warm and that I’m in a corner, so I’ll say:

“ ‘Why, I never thought about it. This is pretty sudden and out of the common, isn’t it? I don’t mind marrying the girl if she’ll have me. Why! I haven’t even asked her yet!’

“ ‘Well, look here,’ he’ll say, ‘if you agree to marry the girl—and I’ll make you marry her, any road—I’ll give you that there farm over there and a couple of hundred to start on.’

“So, I’ll marry her and settle down and be a cocky myself; and if you ever happen to be knocking round there hard up, you needn’t go short of tucker a week or two; but don’t come knocking round the house when I’m not at home.”

WE LAY in camp in the fringe of the mulga and watched the big, red, smoky, rising moon out on the edge of the misty plain, and smoked and thought together sociably. Our nose-bags were nice and heavy, and we still had about a pound of nail-rod between us.

The moon reminded my mate, Jack Mitchell, of something—anything reminded him of something, in fact.

“Did you ever notice,” said Jack, in a lazy tone, just as if he didn’t want to tell a yarn—“Did you ever notice that people always shoot the moon when there’s no moon? Have you got the matches?”

He lit up; he was always lighting up when he was reminded of something.

“This reminds me—Have you got the knife? My pipe’s stuffed up.”

He dug it out, loaded afresh, and lit up again.

“I remember once, at a pub I was staying at, I had to leave without saying good-bye to the landlord. I didn’t know him very well at that time.

“My room was upstairs at the back, with the window opening on to the backyard. I always carried a bit of clothes-line in my swag or portmanteau those times. I travelled along with a portmanteau those times. I carried the rope in case of accident, or in case of fire, to lower my things out of the window—or hang myself, maybe, if things got too bad. No, now I come to think of it, I carried a revolver for that, and it was the only thing I never pawned.”

“To hang yourself with?” asked the mate.

“Yes—you’re very smart,” snapped Mitchell; “never mind——. This reminds me that I got a chap at a pub to pawn my last suit, while I stopped inside and waited for an old mate to send me a pound; but I kept the shooter, and if he hadn’t sent it I’d have been the late John Mitchell long ago.”

“And sometimes you lower’d out when there wasn’t a fire.”

“Yes, that will pass; you’re improving in the funny business. But about the yarn. There was two beds in my room at the pub, where I had to go away without shouting for the boss, and, as it happened, there was a strange chap sleeping in the other bed that night, and, just as I raised the window and was going to lower my bag out, he woke up.

“ ‘Now look here,’ I said, shaking my fist at him, like that, ‘if you say a word, I’ll stoush yer!’

“ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘well, you needn’t be in such a sweat to jump down a man’s throat. I’ve got my swag under the bed, and I was just going to ask you for the loan of the rope when you’re done with it?’

“Well, we chummed. His name was Tom—Tom—something. I forget the other name, but it doesn’t matter. Have you got the matches?”

He wasted three matches, and continued—

“There was a lot of old galvanised iron lying about under the window, and I was frightened the swag would make a noise; anyway, I’d have to drop the rope, and that was sure to make a noise. So we agreed for one of us to go down and land the swag. If we were seen going down without the swags it didn’t matter, for we could say we wanted to go out in the yard for something.”

“If you had the swag you might pretend you were walking in your sleep,” I suggested, for the want of something funnier to say.

“Bosh,” said Jack, “and get woke up with a black eye. Bushies don’t generally carry their swags out of pubs in their sleep, or walk neither; it’s only city swells who do that. Where’s the blessed matches?

“Well, Tom agreed to go, and presently I saw a shadow under the window, and lowered away.

“ ‘All right?’ I asked in a whisper.

“ ‘All right!’ whispered the shadow.

“I lowered the other swag.

“ ‘All right?’

“ ‘All right!’ said the shadow, and just then the moon came out.

“ ‘All right!’ says the shadow.

“But it wasn’t all right. It was the landlord himself!

“It seems he got up and went out to the back in the night, and just happened to be coming in when my mate Tom was sneaking out of the back door. He saw Tom, and Tom saw him, and smoked through a hole in the palings into the scrub. The boss looked up at the window, and dropped to it. I went down, funky enough, I can tell you, and faced him. He said:

“ ‘Look here, mate, why didn’t you come straight to me, and tell me how you was fixed, instead of sneaking round the trouble in that fashion? There’s no occasion for it.’

“I felt mean at once, but I said: ‘Well, you see, we didn’t know you, boss.’

“ ‘So it seems. Well, I didn’t think of that. Anyway, call up your mate and come and have a drink; we’ll talk it over afterwards.’ So I called Tom: ‘Come on,’ I shouted. ‘It’s all right.’

“And the boss kept us a couple of days, and then gave us as much tucker as we could carry, and a drop of stuff and a few bob to go on the track with.”

“Well, he was white, any road.”

“Yes. I knew him well after that, and only heard one man say a word against him.”

“And did you stoush him?”

“No; I was going to, but Tom wouldn’t let me. He said he was frightened I might make a mess of it, and he did it himself.”

“Did what? Make a mess of it?”

“He made a mess of the other man that slandered that publican. I’d be funny if I was you. Where’s the matches?”

“And could Tom fight?”

“Yes. Tom could fight.”

“Did you travel long with him after that?”

“Ten years.”

“And where is he now?”

“Dead.—Give us the matches.”