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The Dandy was to build his yard at this hole when it was found, but the difficulty was to find it. The Sanguine Scot had “dropped on it once,” by chance, but lost his bearing later on. All we knew was that it was there to be found somewhere in that corner of the run—a deep permanent hole, “back in the scrub somewhere,” according to the directions of the Sanguine Scot.
Of course the black boys could have found it; but it is the habit of black boys to be quite ignorant of the whereabouts of all lost or unknown waters, for when a black fellow is “wanted” he is looked for at water, and in his wisdom keeps any “water” he can a secret from the white folk, an unknown “water” making a safe hiding-place when it suits a black fellow to obliterate himself for a while.
Eventually we found our hole, after long wanderings and futile excursions up gullies and by-ways, riding always in single file, with the men in front to break down a track through scrub and grass, and the missus behind on old Roper.
“Like a cow’s tail,” Dan said, mentally reviewing the order of the procession, as, after dismounting, we walked round our find—a wide-spreading sheet of deep, clay—coloured water, snugly hidden behind scrubby banks.
As we clambered on, two bushmen all in white, a dog or two, and a woman in a holland riding-dress, the Măluka pointed out the inaptness of the simile.
“A cow’s tail,” he said, “is wanting in expression and takes no interest in its owner’s hopes and fears,” and suggested a dog’s tail as a more happy comparison. “Has she not wagged along behind her owner all afternoon?” he asked, “drooping in sympathy whenever his hopes came to nothing; stiffening expectantly at other times, and is even now vibrating with pleasure in this his hour of triumph.”
Bush-folk being old fashioned, no one raised any objection to the term “owner,” as Dan chuckled over the amendment.
After thinking the matter well out, Dan decided he was “what you might call a tail-less tyke.” “We’ve had to manage without any wagging, haven’t we, Brown, old chap?” he said, unconscious of the note in his voice that told of lonely years and vague longings.
As Brown acknowledged this reference to himself, by stirring the circle of hairs that expressed his sentiments to the world, Dan further proved the expansiveness of the Măluka’s simile.
“You might have noticed,” he went on, “that when a dog does own a tail he generally manages to keep it out of the fight somehow.” (In marriage as Dan had known it, strong men had stood between their women and the sharp cuffs and blows of life; “keeping her out of the fight somehow.”) Then the procession preparing to re-form, as the Măluka, catching Roper, mounted me again, Dan completely rounded off the simile. “Dogs seem able to wrestle through somehow without a tail,” he said, “but I reckon a tail ’ud have a bit of a job getting along without a dog.” As usual, Dan’s whimsical fancy had burrowed deep into the heart of a great truth; for, in spite of what “tails” may say, how few there are of us who have any desire to “get along without the dog.”
We left the water-hole about five o’clock, and riding into the Stirling camp at sundown, found the Dandy there, busy at the fire, with a dozen or so of large silver fish spread out on green leaves beside him.
“Good enough!” Dan cried at the first sight of them, and the Dandy explained that the boys had caught “shoals of ’em” at his dinner-camp at the Fish Hole, assuring us that the water there was “stiff with ’em.” But the Dandy had been busy elsewhere. “Good enough!” Dan had said at the sight of the fish, and pointing to a billy full of clear, sweet water that was just thinking of boiling, the Măluka echoed the sentiment if not the words.
“Dug a soakage along the creek a bit and got it,” the Dandy explained; and as we blessed him for his thoughtfulness, he lifted up a clean cloth and displayed a pile of crisp Johnny cakes. “Real slap up ones,” he assured us, breaking open one of the crisp, spongy rolls. It was always a treat to be in camp with the Dandy: everything about the man was so crisp and clean and wholesome.
As we settled down to supper, the Fizzer came shouting through the ant-hills, and, soon after, the Quiet Stockman rode into camp. Our Fizzer was always the Fizzer. “Managed to escape without help?” he shouted in welcome as he came to the camp fire, alluding to his promise “to do a rescue”; and then he surveyed our supper. “Struck it lucky, as usual,” he declared, helping himself to a couple of fish from the fire and breaking open one of the crisp Johnny cakes. “Can’t beat grilled fish and hot rolls by much, to say nothin’ of tea.” The Fizzer was one of those happy, natural people who always find the supply exactly suited to the demand.
But if our Fizzer was just our Fizzer, the Quiet Stockman was changing every day. He was still the Quiet Stockman, and always would be, speaking only when he had something to say, but he was learning that he had much to say that was worth saying, or, rather, much that others found worth listening to; and that knowledge was squaring his shoulders and bringing a new ring into his voice.
Around the camp fires we touched on any subject that suggested itself, but at the Stirling that night, four of us being Scotch, we found Scotland and Scotchmen an inexhaustible topic, and before we turned in were all of Jack’s opinion, that “you can’t beat the Scots.” Even the Dandy and the Fizzer were converted; and Jack having realised that there are such things as Scotchwomen—Scotch-hearted women—a new bond was established between us.
No one had much sleep that night, and before dawn there was no doubt left in our mind about the outside cattle coming in. It seemed as though every beast on the run must have come in to the Stirling that night for a drink. Every water-hole out-bush is as the axis of a great circle, cattle pads narrowing into it like the spokes of a wheel, from every point of the compass, and along these pads around the Stirling mob after mob of cattle came in in single file, treading carelessly, until each old bull leader, scenting the camp, gave its low, deep, drawn-out warning call that told of danger at hand. After that rang out, only an occasional snapping twig betrayed the presence of the cattle as they crept cautiously in for the drink that must be procured at all hazards. But after the drink the only point to be considered was safety, and in a crashing stampede they rushed out into the timber. Till long after midnight they were at it, and as Brown and I were convinced that every mob was coming straight over our net, we spent an uneasy night. To make matters worse, just as the camp was settling down to a deep sleep after the cattle had finally subsided, Dan’s camp reveille rang out.
It was barely three o’clock, and the Fizzer raised an indignant protest of: “Moonrise, you bally ass.”
“Not it,” Dan persisted, unfortunately bent on argument; “not at this quarter of the moon, and besides it was moonlight all evening,” and, that being a strong peg to hang his argument on, investigating heads appeared from various nets. “Seem to think I don’t know dawn when I see it,” Dan added, full of scorn for the camp’s want of observation; but before we had time to wither before his scorn, Jack turned the tables for us with his usual quiet finality. “That’s the west you’re looking at,” he said. “The moon’s just set”; and the curtain of Dan’s net dropped instantly.
“Told you he was a bally ass,” the Fizzer shouted in his delight, and promising Dan something later on, he lay down to rest.
Dan, however, was hopelessly roused. “Never did that before,” gurgled out of his net, just as we were dropping off once more; but a withering request from the Dandy to “gather experience somewhere else,” silenced him till dawn, when he had the wisdom to rise without further reveille.
After breakfast we all separated again: the Dandy to his yard-building at the Yellow Hole, and the rest of us, with the cattle boys, in various directions, to see where the cattle were, each party with its team of horses, and carrying in its packs a bluey, an oilskin, a mosquito net, a plate, knife, and fork apiece, as well as a “change of duds” and a bite of tucker for all: the bite of tucker to be replenished with a killer when necessary, the change of duds to be washed by the boys also when necessary, and the plate to serve for all courses, the fastidious turning it over for the damper and jam course.
The Măluka spent one day with Dan beyond the “frontgate”—his tail wagging along behind as a matter of course—another day passed boundary-riding, inspecting water-holes, and doubling back to the Dandy’s camp to see his plans; then, picking up the Quiet Stockman, we struck out across country, riding four abreast through the open forest-lands, and were camped at sundown, in the thick of the cattle, miles from the Dandy’s camp, and thirty miles due north from the homestead. “Whatever do you do with your time?” asked the South folk.
Dan was in high spirits: cattle were coming in everywhere, and another beautiful permanent “water” had been discovered in unsuspected ambush. To know all the waters of a run is important; for they take the part of fences, keeping the cattle in certain localities; and as cattle must stay within a day’s journey or so of water, an unknown water is apt to upset a man’s calculations.
As the honour of finding the hole was all Dan’s, it was named DS. in his honour, and we had waited beside it while he cut his initials deep into the trunk of a tree, deploring the rustiness of his education as he carved. The upright stroke of the D was simplicity itself, but after that complications arose.
“It’s always got me dodged which way to turn the darned thing,” Dan said, scratching faint lines both ways, and standing off to decide the question. We advised turning to the right, and the D was satisfactorily completed, but S proved the “dead finish,” and had to be wrestled with separately.
“Can’t see why they don’t name a chap with something that’s easily wrote,” Dan said, as we rode forward, with our united team of horses and boys swinging along behind us, and M and T and O were quoted as examples. “Reading’s always had me dodged,” he explained. “Left school before I had time to get it down and wrestle with it.”
“There’s nothing like reading and writing,” the Quiet Stockman broke in, with an earnestness that was almost startling; and as he sat that evening in the firelight poring over the “Cardinal’s Snuff-box,” I watched him with a new interest.
Jack’s reading was very puzzling. He always had the same book—that “Cardinal’s Snuff-box”—and pored over it with a strange persistence, that could not have been inspired by the book. There was no expression on his face of lively interest or pleasure, just an intent, dogged persistence; the strong, firm chin set as though he were colt-breaking. Gradually, as I watched him that night, the truth dawned on me: the man was trying to teach himself to read. The “Cardinal’s Snuff-box”! and the only clue to the mystery, a fair knowledge of the alphabet learned away in a childish past. In truth, it takes a deal to “beat the Scots,” or, what is even better, to make them feel that they are beaten.
As I watched, full of admiration, for the proud, strong character of the man, he looked up suddenly, and, in a flash, knew that I knew. Flushing hotly, he rose, and “thought he would turn in”; and Dan, who had been discussing education most of the evening, decided to “bottle off a bit of sleep too for next day’s use,” and opened up his swag.
“There’s one thing about not being too good at the reading trick,” he said, surveying his permanent property: “a chap doesn’t need to carry books round with him to put in the spare time.”
“Exactly,” the Măluka laughed. He was lying on his back, with an open book face downwards on his chest, looking up at the stars. He always had a book with him, but, book-lover as he was, it rarely got farther than his chest when we were in camp. Life out-bush is more absorbing than books.
“Of course reading’s handy enough for them as don’t lay much stock on education,” Dan owned, stringing his net between his mosquito-pegs, then, struck with a new idea, he “wondered why the missus never carries books round. Any one ’ud think she wasn’t much at the reading trick herself,” he said. “Never see you at it, missus, when I’m round.”
“Lay too much stock on education,” I answered, and, chuckling, Dan retired into his net, little guessing that when he was “round,” his own self, his quaint outlook on life, and the underlying truth of his inexhaustible, whimsical philosophy, were infinitely more interesting than the best book ever written.
But the Quiet Stockman seemed perplexed at the answer. “I thought reading ’ud learn you most things,” he said, hesitating beside his own net; and before we could speak, the corner of Dan’s net was lifted and his head reappeared. “I’ve learned a deal of things in my time,” he chuckled, “butreadingnever taught me none of ’em.” Then his head once more disappeared, and we tried to explain matters to the Quiet Stockman. The time was not yet ready for the offer of a helping hand.
At four in the morning we were roused by a new camp reveille of Star-light. “Nothing like getting off early when mustering’s the game,” Dan announced. By sun-up the musterers were away, and by sundown we were coming in to Bitter Springs, driving a splendid mob of cattle before us.
The Măluka and I had had nothing to do with the actual gathering in of the mob, for the missus had not “shaped” too well at her first muster and preferred travelling with the pack teams when active mustering was in hand. Ignominious perhaps, but safe, and safety counts for something in this world; anyway, for the poor craven souls. Riding is one thing; but crashing through timber and undergrowth, dodging overhanging branches, leaping fallen logs, and stumbling and plunging over crab-holed and rat-burrowed areas, to say nothing of charging bulls turning up at unexpected corners, is quite another story.
“Not cut out for the job,” was Dan’s verdict, and the Măluka covered my retreat by saying that he had more than enough to do without taking part in the rounding up of cattle. Had mustering been one of a manager’s duties, I’m afraid the house would have “come in handy” to pack the dog away in with its chain.
As the yard of the Springs came into view, we were making plans for the morrow, and admiring the fine mattress swinging before us on the tails of the cattle; but there were cattle buyers at the Springs who upset all our plans, and left no time for the bang-tailing of the mob in hand.
The buyers were Chinese drovers, authorised by their Chinese masters to buy a mob of bullocks. “Want big mob,” they said. “Cash! Got money here,” producing a signed cheque ready for filling in.
A Chinese buyer always pays “cash” for a mob—by cheque—generally taking care to withdraw all cash from the bank before the cheque can be presented, and, as a result, a dishonoured cheque is returned to the station, reaching the seller some six or eight weeks after the sale. Six or eight weeks more then pass in demanding explanations, and six or eight more obtaining them, and after that just as many more as Chinese slimness can arrange for before a settlement is finally made. “Cash,” the drover repeated insinuatingly at the Măluka’s unfathomable “Yes?” Then, certain that he was inspired, added, “Spot Cash!”
But already the Măluka had decided on a plan of campaign and, echoing the drover’s “Spot Cash,” began negotiations for a sale; and within ten minutes the drovers retired to their camp, bound to take the mob when delivered, and inwardly marvelling at the Măluka’s simple trust.
Dan was appalled at it; but, always deferential where the Măluka’s business insight was concerned, only “hoped he knew that them chaps needed a bit of watching.”
“Their cash does,” the Măluka corrected, to Dan’s huge delight; and, leaving the musterers to go on with their branding work, culling each mob of its prime bullocks as they mustered, he set about finding some one to “watch the cash,” and four days later rode into the Katherine Settlement, with Brown and the missus, as usual, at his heels.
We had spent one week out-bush, visiting the four points of the compass, half a day at the homestead packing a fresh swag; three days riding into the Katherine, having found incidental entertainment on the road, and on the fourth day were entering into an argument by wire with Chinese slimness. “The monotony would kill me,” declared the townsfolk.
On the road in we had met the Village Settlement homeward bound—the bonnie baby still riding on its mother’s knee, and smiling out of the depths of its sunbonnet; but every one else was longing for the bush. Darwin had proved all unsatisfying bustle and fluster, and the trackless sea, a wonder that inspired strange sickness when travelled over.
For four days the Măluka argued with Chinese slimness before he felt satisfied that his cash was in safe keeping while the Wag and others did as they wished with our spare time. Then, four days later, again Cheon and Tiddle’ums were hailing us in welcome at the homestead.
But their joy was short-lived, for as soon as the homestead affairs had been seen to, and a fresh swag packed, we started out-bush again to look for Dan and his bullocks, and, coming on their tracks at our first night camp, by following them up next morning we rode into the Dandy’s camp at the Yellow Hole well after midday, to find ourselves surrounded by the stir and bustle of a cattle camp.
“Whatever do you do with your time?” ask the townsfolk, sure that life out-bush is stagnation, but forgetting that life is life wherever it may be lived.
Only three weeks before, as we hunted for it through scrub and bush and creek-bed, the Yellow Hole had been one of our Unknown Waters, tucked snugly away in an out-of-the-way elbow of creek country, and now we found it transformed into the life-giving heart of a bustling world of men and cattle and commerce. Beside it stood the simple camp of the stockman—a litter of pack-bags, mosquito-nets, and swags; here and there were scattered the even more simple camps of the black boys; and in the background, the cumbrous camp of the Chinese drovers reared itself up in strong contrast to the camps of the bushfolk—two fully equipped tents for the drovers themselves and a simpler one for their black boys. West of the Yellow Hole boys were tailing a fine mob of bullocks, and to the east other “boys” were “holding” a rumbling mob of mixed cattle, and while Jack and Dan rode here and there shouting orders for the “cutting out” of the cattle, the Dandy busied himself at the fire, making tea as a refresher, before getting going in earnest, the only restful, placid, unoccupied beings in the whole camp being the Chinese drovers. Not made of the stuff that “lends a hand” in other people’s affairs, they sat in the shade of their tents and looked on, well pleased that men should bustle for their advantage. As we rode past the drovers they favoured us with a sweet smile of welcome, while Dan met us with a chuckle of delight at the sweetness of their smile, and as Jack took our horses—amused both at the drovers’ sweetness and Dan’s appreciation of it—the Dandy greeted us with the news that we had “struck it lucky, as usual,” and that a cup of tea would be ready in “half a shake.”
Dan also considered we had “struck it lucky,” but from a different point of view, for he had only just come into camp with the mixed cattle, and as the bullocks among them more than completed the number required, he suggested the drovers should take delivery at once, assuring us, as we drank the tea, that he was just about dead sick of them “little Chinese darlings.”
The “little Chinese darlings,” inwardly delighted that the Măluka’s simple trust seemed as guileless as ever, smugly professed themselves willing to fall in with any arrangement that was pleasing to the white folk, and as they mounted their horses Dan heaved a sigh of satisfaction.
But Dan’s satisfaction was premature, for it took time and much galloping before the “little Chinese darlings” could satisfy themselves and each other that they had the very finest bullocks procurable in their mob. A hundred times they changed their minds: rejecting chosen bullocks, recalling rejected bullocks, and comparing every bullock accepted with every bullock rejected. Bulk was what they searched for—plenty for their money, as they judged it, and finally gathered together a mob of coarse, wide-horned, great-framed beasts, rolling in fat that would drip off on the road as they travelled in.
“You’d think they’d got ’em together for a boiling-down establishment, with a bone factory for a side line,” Dan chuckled, secretly pleased that our best bullocks were left on the run, and, disbanding the rejected bullocks before “they” could “change their minds again,” he gathered together the mixed cattle and shut them in the Dandy’s new yard, to keep them in hand for later branding.
But the “little Chinese darlings” had counted on the use of that yard for themselves, and finding that their bullocks would have to be “watched” on camp that night, they stolidly refused to take delivery before morning, pointing out that should the cattle stampede during the night, the loss would be ours, not theirs.
“Well, I’m blowed!” Dan chuckled, but the Măluka cared little whether the papers were signed then or at sun-up; and the drovers, pleased with getting their way so easily, magnanimously offered to take charge of the first “watch”—the evening watch—provided that only our horses should be used, and that Big Jack and Jackeroo and others should lend a hand.
Dan wouldn’t hear of refusing the offer. “Bit of exercise’ll do ’em good,” he said; and deciding the bullocks would be safe enough with Jack and Jackeroo, we white folk stretched ourselves in the warm firelight after supper, and, resting, watched the shadowy mob beyond the camp, listening to the shoutings and gallopings of the watchers as we chatted.
When a white man watches cattle, if he knows his business he quiets his mob down and then opens them out gradually, to give them room to lie down, or ruminate standing without rubbing shoulders with a restless neighbour, which leaves him little to do beyond riding round occasionally, to keep his “boys” at their posts, and himself alert and ready for emergencies. But a Chinaman’s idea of watching cattle is to wedge them into a solid body, and hold them huddled together like a mob of frightened sheep, riding incessantly round them and forcing back every beast that looks as though it might extricate itself from the tangle, and galloping after any that do escape with screams of anxiety and impotency.
“Beck! beck!” (back), screamed our drovers, as they galloped after escaped beasts, flopping and wobbling and gurgling in their saddles like half-filled water-bags; galloping invariably after the beasts, and thereby inciting them to further galloping. And “Beck! beck!” shouted our boys on duty with perfect mimicry of tone and yells of delight at the impotency of the drovers, galloping alwaysoutsidethe runaways and bending them back into the mob, flopping and wobbling and gurgling intheirsaddles until, in the half light, it was difficult to tell drover from “boy.” Not detecting the mimicry, the drovers in no way resented it; the more the boys screamed and galloped in their service the better pleased they were; while the “boys” were more than satisfied with their part of the entertainment, Jackeroo and Big Jack particularly enjoying themselves.
“They’ll have ’em stampeding yet,” Dan said at last growing uneasy, as more and more cattle escaped, and the mob shifted ground with a rumbling rattle of hoofs every few minutes. Finally, as the rumbling rattle threatened to become permanent, a long drawn-out cry of “Ring—ing” from Big Jack sent Dan and the Quiet Stockman to their saddles. In ten minutes the hubbub had ceased, Dan’s master-hand having soothed the irritated beasts; then having opened them out he returned to the camp fire alone. Jack had gone on duty before his time and sent the “little Chinese darlings” to bed.
Naturally Dan’s cattle-tussle reminded him of other tussles with ringing cattle; then the cattle-camp suggesting other cattle-camp yarns, he settled down to reminiscences until he had us all cold thrills and skin-creeps, although we were gathered around a blazing fire.
Tale after tale he told of stampedes and of weaners piling up against fences. Then followed a tale or two of cattle lying quiet as mice one minute, and up on their feet crashing over camps the next, then tales of men being “treed” or “skied,” and tales of scrub-bulls, maddened cow-mothers, and “pokers.”
“Pokers,” it appears, have a habit of poking out of mobs, grazing quietly as they edge off until “they’re gone before you miss ’em.” Camps seem to have some special attraction for pokers, but we learned they object to interference. Poke round peaceful as cats until “you rile them,” Dan told us, and then glided into a tale of how a poker “had us all treed once.”
“Poked in a bit too close for our fancy while we were at supper,” he explained, “so we slung sticks at him to turn him back to the mob, and the next minute was making for trees, but as there was only saplings handy, it would have been a bit awkward for the heavy weights if there hadn’t have been enough of us to divide his attentions up a bit.” (Dan was a good six feet, and well set up at that.) “Climbing saplings to get away from a stag isn’t much of a game,” he added, with a reminiscent chuckle; “they’re too good at the bending trick. The farther up the sapling you climb, the nearer you get to the ground.”
Then he favoured us with one of his word-pictures: “There was the sapling bending like a weeping willow,” he said, “and there was the stag underneath it, looking up at me and asking if he could do anything for me, taking a poke at me boot now and then, just to show nothing would be no bother, and there was me, hanging on to the sapling, and leaning lovingly over him, telling him not to go hanging round, tiring himself out on my account; and there was the other chaps—all light weights—laughing fit to split, safe in their saplings. ’Twasn’t as funny as it looked, though,” he assured us, finding us unsympathetic, “and nobody was exactly sorry when one of the lads on duty came along to hear the fun, and stock-whipped the old poker back to the mob.”
The Măluka and the Dandy soon proved it was nothing to be “treed.” “Happens every time a beast’s hauled out of a bog, from all accounts, that being the only thanks you get for hauling ’em out of the mess.” Then Dan varied the recital with an account of a chap getting skied once who forgot to choose a tree before beginning the hauling business, and immediately after froze us into horror again with the details of two chaps “lying against an old rotten log with a mob of a thousand going over ’em”; and we were not surprised to hear that when they felt well enough to sit up they hadn’t enough arithmetic left between ’em to count their bruises.
After an evening of ghost stories, a creaking door is enough to set teeth chattering; and after an evening of cattle-yarns, told in a cattle camp, a snapping twig is enough to set hair lifting; and just as the most fitting place for ghost stories is an old ruined castle, full of eerie noises, so there is no place more suited to cattle-camp yarns than a cattle camp. They need the reality of the camp-fire, the litter of camp baggage, the rumbling mob of shadowy cattle near at hand, and the possibilities of the near future—possibilities brought home by the sight of tethered horses standing saddled and bridled ready “in case of accidents.”
Fit surroundings add intensity to all tales, just as it added intensity to my feelings when Dan advised the Măluka to swing our net near a low-branched tree, pointing out that it would “come in handy for the missus if she needed it in a hurry.”
I favoured climbing the tree at once, and spending the night in it, but the men-folk assuring me that I would be “bound to hear them coming,” I turned in, sure only of one thing, that death may come to the bush-folk in any form but ennui. Yet so adaptable are we bush-folk to circumstances that most of that night was oblivion.
At sun-up, the drovers, still sweetly smiling, announced that two bullocks had strayed during some one’s watch. Not in theirs, they hastened to assure us, when Dan sniffed scornfully in the background.
But Dan’s scorn turned to blazing wrath, when—the drovers refusing to replace the “strays” with cows from the mixed cattle in hand, and refusing also to take delivery of the bullocks, two beasts short—the musterers had to turn out to gather in a fresh mob of cattle for the sake of two bullocks. “Just as I was settling down to celebrate Sunday, too,” Dan growled, as he and Jack rode out of camp.
Forty years out-bush had not been enough to stamp generations of Sabbath-keeping out of Dan’s blood, although he was not particular which day of the week was set apart for his Sabbath. “Two in a fortnight” was all he worried about.
Fortune favouring the musterers, by midday all was peace and order; the drovers, placid and contented, had retired to their tents once more, reprieved from taking delivery for another day and night, and after dinner, as the “boys” tailed the bullocks and mixed cattle on the outskirts of the camp, to graze them, we settled down to “celebrate our Sabbath” by resting in the warm, dry shade.
Here and there upon the grassy incline that stretched between the camp and the Yellow Hole, we settled down each according to his taste; Dan with his back against a tree trunk and far-reaching legs spread out before him; the Măluka, Jack, and the Dandy flat upon their backs, with bent-back folded arms for pillows, and hats drawn over eyes to shade them from the too dazzling sunlight; dogs, relaxed and spread out, as near to their master as permitted, and the missus “fixed up” in an opened-out, bent-back grassy tussock, which had thus been formed into a luxurious armchair. At the foot of the incline lay the Yellow Hole, gleaming and glancing in the sunshine; all around and about us were the bush creatures, rustling in the scrub and grasses—flies were conspicuous by their absence, here and there shafts of sunlight lay across the gray-brown shade; in the distance the grazing cattle moved among the timber; away out in the glorious sunshine, beyond and above the tree-tops, brown-winged, slender Bromli kites wheeled and circled and hovered and swooped; and lounging in the sun-flecked shade, well satisfied with our lot, we looked out into the blue, sunny depths, each one of us the embodiment of lazy contentment, and agreeing with Dan that “Sunday wasn’t a bad institution for them as had no objection to doing a loaf now and then.”
That suggesting an appropriate topic of conversation to Dan, for a little while we spoke of the Sabbath-keeping of our Scottish forefathers; as we spoke, idly watching the circling, wheeling Bromli kites, that seemed then as at all times, an essential part of the sunshine. To the bush-folk of the Never-Never, sunshine without Bromli kites would be as a summer’s day without the sun. All day and every day they hover throughout it, as they search and wait and watch for carrion, throwing dim, gliding shadows as they wheel and circle, or flashing sunshine from brown wings by quick, sudden swoops, hovering and swooping throughout the sunshine, or rising to melt into blue depths of the heavens, where other arching, floating specks tell of myriads there, ready to swoop, and fall and gather and feast wherever their lowest ranks drop earthwards with the crows.
Lazily we watched the floating movement, and as we watched, conversation became spasmodic—not worth the energy required to sustain it—until gradually we slipped into one of those sociable silences of the bushfolk—silences that draw away all active thought from the mind, leaving it a sensitive plate ready to absorb impressions and thoughts as they flit about it, silences where every one is so in harmony with his comrades and surroundings that the breaking of them rarely jars—spoken words so often defining the half-absorbed thoughts.
Dimly conscious of each other, of the grazing cattle the Bromli kites, the sweet scents and rustling sounds of the bush, of each other’s thoughts and that the last spoken thought among us had been Sabbath-keeping, we rested, idly,notthinking, until Dan’s voice crept into the silence.
“Never was much at religion meself,” he said, lazily altering his position, “but Mrs. Bob was the one to make you see things right off.” Lazily and without stirring we gave our awakened attention, and after a quiet pause the droning Scotch voice went on, too contented to raise itself above a drone: “Can’t exactly remember how she put it; seemed as though you’d only got to hoe your own row the best you can, and lend others a hand with theirs, and just let God see after the rest.”
Quietly, as the droning voice died away, we slipped back into our silence, lazily dreaming on, with Dan’s words lingering in our minds, until, in a little while, it seemed as though the dancing tree-tops, the circling Bromli kites, every rustling sound and movement about us, had taken them up and were shouting them to the echo. “How much you will be able to teach the poor, dark souls of the stockmen,” a well-meaning Southerner had said, with self-righteous arrogance; and in the brilliant glory of that bush Sabbath, one of the “poor, dark souls” had set the air vibrating with the grandest, noblest principles of Christianity summed up into one brief sentence resonant with its ringing commands:Hoe your own row the best you can. Lend others a hand with theirs. Let God see to the rest.
Men there are in plenty out-bush, “not much at religion,” as they and the world judge it, who have solved the great problem of “hoeing their own rows” by the simple process of leaving them to give others a hand with theirs; men loving their neighbours as themselves, and with whom God does the rest, as of old. “Be still, and know that I am God,” is still whispered out of the heart of Nature, and those bushmen, unconsciously obeying, as unconsciously belong to that great simple-hearted band of worshippers, the Quakers; men who, in the hoeing of their own rows have ever lived their lives in the ungrudging giving of a helping hand to all in need, content that God will see to the rest.
Surely the most scrupulous Quaker could find no fault with the “Divine Meeting” that God was holding that day: the long, restful preparation of silence; that emptying of all active thought from the mind; that droning Scotch voice, so perfectly tuned to our mood, delivering its message in a language that could pierce to the depths of a bushman’s heart; and then silence again—a silence now vibrating with thought. As gradually and naturally as it had crept upon us, that silence slipped away, and we spoke of the multitude of sounds and creatures about us, until, seeing deeper and deeper into Dan’s message every moment, we learned that each sound and creature was hoeing its own row as it alone knew how, and, in the hoeing, was lending all others a hand with theirs, as they toiled in the Mighty Row of the Universe, each obedient to the great law of the Creator that all else shall be left to Him, as through them He taught the world that no man liveth to himself alone.
“You will find that a woman alone in a camp of men is decidedly out of place,” the Darwin ladies had said; and yet that day, as at all times, the woman felt strangely and sweetly in place in the bushmen’s camp. “A God-forsaken country,” others of the town have called the Never-Never, because the works of men have not yet penetrated into it. Let them look from their own dark alleys and hideous midnights into some or all of the cattle camps out-bush, or, better still, right into the “poor dark souls” of the bush-folk themselves—if their vision is clear enough—before they judge.
Long before our midnight had come, the camp was sleeping a deep, sound sleep—those who were not on watch—a dreamless sleep, for the bullocks were peaceful and ruminating, the Chinese drovers having been “excused” from duty lest other beasts should stray during “some one’s” watch.
Soon after sun-up the head drover formally accepted the mob, and, still inwardly marvelling at the Măluka’s trust, filled in his cheque, and, blandly smiling, watched while the Măluka made out receipts and cancelled the agreement. Then, to show thathedealt little in simple trust, he carried the receipts and agreement in private and in turn, to Dan, and Jack, and the Dandy, asking each if all were honestly made out.
Dan looked at the papers critically (“might have been holding them upside down for all I knew,” he said later), and assured the drover that all was right. “Which was true” he added also later, “seeing the boss made ’em out.” Dan dealt largely in simple trust where the boss was concerned. Jack, having heard Dan’s report, took his cue from it and passed the papers as “just the thing”; but the Dandy read out every word in them in a loud, clear voice, to his own amusement and the drovers’ discomfiture.
The papers having been thus proved satisfactory, the drovers started their boys with the bullocks, before giving their attention to the packing up of their camp baggage, and we turned to our own affairs.
As the Dandy’s new yard was not furnished yet with a draughting lane and branding pens, the mixed cattle were to be taken to the Bitter Springs yard; and by the time Jack had been seen off with them and our own camp packed up, the drovers had become so involved in baggage that Dan and the Dandy felt obliged to offer assistance. Finally every one was ready to mount, and then we and the drovers exchanged polite farewells and parted, seller and buyer each confident that he knew more about the cash for that cheque than the other. No doubt the day came when those drovers ceased to marvel at the Măluka’s simple trust.
The drovers rode away to the north-west, and as we set out to the south-east, Dan turned his back on “them little darlings” with a sigh of relief. “Reckon that money’s been earned, anyway,” he said. Then, as Jackeroo was the only available “boy,” the others all being on before with the cattle, we gathered together our immense team of horses and drove them out of camp. In open order we jogged along across country, with Jackeroo riding ahead as pilot, followed by the jangling, straggling team of pack-and loose horses, while behind the team rode the white folk all abreast, with six or eight dogs trotting along behind again. For a couple of hours we jogged along in the tracks of Jack’s cattle, without coming up with them, then, just as we sighted the great rumbling mob, a smaller mob appeared on our right.
“Run ’em into the mob,” Dan shouted; and at his shout every man and horse leapt forward—pack-horses and all—and went after them in pell-mell disorder.
“Scrub bulls! Keep behind them!” Dan yelled giving directions as we stampeded at his heels (it is not all advantage for musterers to ride with the pack-team) then as we and they galloped straight for Jack’s mob every one yelled in warning: “Hi! look out there! Bulls! Look out,” until Dan’s revolver rang out above the din.
Jack turned at the shot and saw the bulls, but too late. Right through his mob they galloped, splitting it up into fragments, and in a moment pack-horses, cattle, riders, bulls, were part of a surging, galloping mass—boys galloping after bulls, and bulls after boys, and the white folk after anything and everything, peppering bulls with revolver-shots (stock-whip having no effect), shouting orders, and striving their utmost to hold the mob; pack and loose horses galloping and kicking as they freed themselves from the hubbub; and the missus scurrying here and there on the outskirts of the mêlée, dodging behind bushes and scrub in her anxiety to avoid both bulls and revolver-shots. Ennui forsooth! Never was a woman farther from death by ennui.
Finally the horses gathered themselves together in the friendly shelter of some scrub, and as the woman sought safety among them, the Măluka’s rifle rang out, and a charging bull went down before it. Then out of the thick of the uproar Sambo came full gallop, with a bull at his horse’s heels, and Dan full gallop behind the bull, bringing his rifle to his shoulder as he galloped, and as all three galloped madly on Dan fired, and the bull pitching blindly forward, Sambo wheeled, and he and Dan galloped back to the mob to meet another charging outlaw and deal with it.
Then in quick succession from all sides of the mob bulls darted out with riders attheirheels, or riders shot forward with bulls at their heels, until the mob looked like a great spoked wheel revolving on its own axis. Bull after bull went down before the rifles, old Roper, with the Măluka riding him, standing like a rock under fire; and then, just as the mob was quieting down, a wild scrub cow with a half-grown calf at her heels shot out of the mob and headed straight for the pack team, Dan galloping beside her and cracking thunderclaps out of a stock-whip. Flash and I scuttled to shelter, and Dan, bending the cow back to the mob, shouted as he passed by, at full gallop: “Here you are, missus; thought you might like a drop of milk.”
For another five minutes the mob was “held” to steady them a bit before starting, and then, just as all seemed in order, one of the prostrate bulls staggered to its feet—anything but dead; and as a yell went up “Look out, boss! look out!” Roper sprang forward in obedience to the spurs, just too late to miss a sudden, mad lunge from the wounded outlaw, and the next moment the bull was down with a few more shots in him, and Roper was receiving a tribute that only he could command.
With that surging mob of cattle beside them, the Măluka and Dan had dismounted, and were trying to staunch the flow of blood, while black boys gathered round, and Jack and the Dandy, satisfied that the injuries were not “too serious,” were leaning over from their saddles congratulating the old horse on having “got off so easy.” The wound fortunately, was in the thigh, and just a clean deep punch for, as by a miracle, the bull’s horn had missed all tendons and as the old campaigner was led away for treatment he disdained even to limp, and was well within a fortnight.
“Passing the time of day with Jack,” Dan called the scrimmage; as we left the field of battle and looking back we found that already the Bromli kites were closing in and sinking and settling earthwards towards the crows who were impatiently waiting our departure—waiting to convert the erst raging scrub bulls into white, bleaching bones.
Travelling quicker than the cattle, we were camped and at dinner at “Abraham’s”—another lily-strewn billabong—when the mob came in, the thirsty brutes travelling with down-drooping heads and lowing deeply and incessantly. Their direction showing that they would pass within a few yards of our camp fire, on their way to the water, as a matter of course I stood up, and Dan, with a chuckle, assured me that they had “something else more important on than chivying the missus.”
But the recollection of that raging mob was too vividly in mind, and the cattle beginning to trot at the sight of the water, decided against them, and the next moment I was three feet from the ground, among the low-spreading branches of a giant Paper-bark. Jackeroo was riding ahead, and flashed one swift, sidelong glance after me but as the mob trotted by he trotted with them as impassive as a statue.
But we had by no means done with Jackeroo; for as we sat in camp that night at the Springs, with the cattle safe in the yard, shouts of laughter from the “boys’” camp attracted our attention, and we found Jackeroo the centre-piece of the camp, preparing to repeat some performance. For a second or so he stood irresolute; then, clutching wildly at an imaginary something that appeared to encumber his feet, with a swift, darting run and a scrambling clamber, he was into the midst of a sapling; then, our silence attracting attention, the black world collapsed in speechless convulsions.
“How the missus climbed a tree, little ’un,” the Măluka chuckled; and the mimicry of action had been so perfect that we knew it could only be that. Every detail was there: the moment of indecision, the wild clutch at the habit, the quick, feminine lift of the running feet, and the indescribably feminine scrambling climb at the finish.
In that one swift, sidelong glance every movement had been photographed on Jackeroo’s mind, to be reproduced later on for the entertainment of the camp with that perfect mimicry characteristic of the black folk.
And it was always so. Just as they had “beck-becked” and bumped in their saddles with the Chinese drovers, so they imitated every action that caught their fancy, and almost every human being that crossed their path—riding with feet outspread after meeting one traveller; with toes turned in, in imitation of another; flopping, or sitting rigidly in their saddles, imitating actions of hand and turns of the head; anything to amuse themselves, from riding side-saddle to climbing trees.
Jackeroo being “funny man” in the tribe, was first favourite in exhibitions; but we could get no further pantomime that night, although we heard later from Bett-Bett that “How the missus climbed a tree” had a long run.
The next day passed branding the cattle, and the following as we arrived within sight of the homestead, Dan was congratulating the Măluka on the “missus being without a house,” and then he suddenly interrupted himself “Well, I’m blest!” he said. “If we didn’t forget all about bangtailing that mob for her mattress.”
We undoubtedly had, but thirty-three nights, or thereabouts, with the warm, bare ground for a bed, had made me indifferent to mattresses, and hearing that Dan became most hopeful of “getting her properly educated” yet.
Cheon greeted us with his usual enthusiasm, and handed the Măluka a letter containing a request for a small mob of bullocks within three weeks.
“Nothing like keeping the ball rolling,”, Dan said, also waxing enthusiastic, while the South-folk remained convinced that life out-bush is stagnation.
Dan and the Quiet Stockman went out to the north-west immediately, to “clean up there” before getting the bullocks together; but the Măluka, settling down to arrears of bookkeeping, with the Dandy at his right hand, Cheon once more took the missus under his wing feeding her up and scorning her gardening efforts.
“The idea of a white woman thinking she could grow water-melons,” he scoffed, when I planted seeds, having decided on a carpet of luxuriant green to fill up the garden beds until the shrubs grew. The Măluka advised “waiting,” and the seeds coming up within a few days, Cheon, after expressing surprise, prophesied an early death or a fruitless life.
Billy Muck, however, took a practical interest in the water-melons, and to incite him to water them in our absence, he was made a shareholder in the venture. As a natural result, the Staff, the Rejected, and the Shadows immediately applied for shares—pointing out that they too carried water to the plants—and the water-melon beds became the property of a Working Liability Company with the missus as Chairman of Directors.
The shadows were as numerous as ever, the rejected on the increase, but the staff was, fortunately, reduced to three for the time being; or, rather, reduced to two, and increased again to three: Judy had been called “bush” on business, and the Macs having got out in good time.
Bertie’s Nellie and Biddie had been obliged to resign and go with the waggons, under protest, of course, leaving Rosy and Jimmy’s Nellie augmented by one of the most persistent of all the shadows—a tiny child lubra, Bett-Bett.
Most of us still considered Bett-Bett one of the shadows but she persisted that she was the mainstay of the staff. “Me all day dust ’im paper, me round ’im up goat” she would say. “Me sit down all right.”
She certainly excelled in “rounding-up goat,” riding the old Billy like a race-horse; and with Rosy filling the position of housemaid to perfection, Jimmy’s Nellie proving invaluable in her vigorous treatment of the rejected and the wood-heap gossip filling in odd times, life—so far as it was dependent on black folk—was running on oiled wheels: the house was clean and orderly, the garden flourished; and as the melons grew apace, throwing out secondary leaves in defiance of Cheon’s prophecies, Billy Muck grew more and more enthusiastic, and, usurping the position of Chairman of the Directors, he inspired the shareholders with so much zeal that the prophecies were almost fulfilled through a surfeit of watering. But Cheon’s attitude towards the water-melons did not change, although he had begun to look with favour upon mail-matter and station books, finding in them a power that could keep the Măluka at the homestead.
For two full weeks after our return from the drovers’ camp our life was exactly as Cheon would have it—peaceful and regular, with an occasional single day “out-bush”; and when the Măluka in his leisure began to fulfil his long-standing promise of a defence around my garden, Cheon expressed himself well-pleased with his reform.
But even the demands of station books and accumulated mail-matter can be satisfied in time, and Dan reporting that he was “getting going with the bullocks,” Cheon found his approval had been premature; for, to his dismay, the Măluka abandoned the fence, and began preparations for a trip “bush.” “Surely the missus was not going?” he said; and next day we left him at the homestead, a lonely figure, seated on an overturned bucket, disconsolate and fearing the worst.
Cheon often favoured an upside-down bucket for a seat. Nothing more uncomfortable for a fat man can be imagined, yet Cheon sat on his rickety perch, for the most part chuckling and happy. Perhaps, like Mark Tapley, he felt it a “credit being jolly” under such circumstances.
By way of contrast, we found Dan and Jack optimistic and happy, with some good bullocks in hand, a record branding to report for the fortnight’s work, and a drover in camp of such a delightful turn of mind that he was inclined to look upon every bullock mustered as “just the thing.” He was easily disposed of, and within a week we were back at the homestead.
We had left Cheon sad and disconsolate, but he met us, filled with fury, and holding a sack of something soft in his arms. “What’s ’er matter?” he spluttered, almost choking with rage. “Me savey grow cabbage”; and he flung the sack at our feet as we stood in the homestead thoroughfare staring at him in wonder. “Paper yabber!” he added curtly, passing a letter to the Măluka.
It was a kindly, courteous letter from our Eastern neighbour, who had “ventured to send a cabbage, remembering the homestead garden did not get on too well.” (His visits had been in Sam’s day). “How kind!” we said, and not understanding Cheon’s wrath, the Măluka opened the bag, and passed two fine cabbages to him after duly admiring them.
They acted on Cheon like a red rag on a bull. Flinging them from him, he sent them spinning across the stony ground with two furious kicks, following them up with further furious kicks as we looked on in speechless amazement. “What’s ’er matter?” he growled, as, abandoning the chase with a final lunge, he stalked indignantly back to us; and as the unfortunate cabbages turned over and lay still on their tattered backs, he began to explain his wrath. Was he not paid to grow cabbages, he asked, and where had he failed that we should accept cabbages from neighbours? Cabbages for ourselves, but insults for him! Then, the comical side of his nature coming to the surface as unexpectedly as his wrath, he was overcome with laughter, and clung to a verandah post for support, while still speechless, we looked on in consternation, for laughing was a serious matter with Cheon.
“My word, me plenty cross fellow,” he gasped at intervals and finally led the way to the vegetable garden, where he cut an enormous cabbage and carried it to the store to weigh it. The scale turned at twelve pounds, and, sure of our ground now, we compared its mighty heart to the stout heart of Cheon—a compliment fully appreciated by his Chinese mind; then, having disparaged the tattered results to his satisfaction, we went to the house and wrote a letter of thanks to our neighbour, giving him so vivid a word-picture of the reception of his cabbages that he felt inspired to play a practical joke on Cheon later on. One thing is very certain—everyone enjoyed those cabbages including even Cheon and the goats.
Of course we had cabbage for dinner that day, and the day following, and the next day again, and were just fearing that cabbage was becoming a confirmed habit when Dan coming in with reports we all went bush again, and the spell was broken. “A pity the man from Beyanst wasn’t about,” Dan said when he heard of the daily menu.
It was late in September when Dan came in, and four weeks slipped away with the concerns of cattle and cattle-buyers and cattle-duffers, and as we moved hither and thither the water-melons leafed and blossomed and fruited to Billy’s delight, and Cheon’s undisguised amazement and the line party, creeping on, crept first into our borders and then into camp at the Warlochs, and Happy Dick’s visits, dog-fights, and cribbage became part of the station routine. Now and then a traveller from “inside” passed out, but as the roads “inside” were rapidly closing in, none came from the Outside going in, and because of that there were no extra mails, and towards the end of October we were wondering how we were “going to get through the days until the Fizzer was due again,” when Dan and Jack came in unexpectedly for a consultation.
“Run clean out of flour,” Dan announced, with a wink and a mysterious look towards the black world, as he dismounted at the head of the homestead thoroughfare then, after inquiring for the “education of the missus” he added, with further winks and mystery, that it only needed a nigger hunt to round off her education properly but it was after supper before he found a fitting opportunity to explain his winks and mystery. Then, joining us as we lounged in the open starry space between the billabong and the house, he chuckled: “Yes, it just needs a nigger hunt to make her education a credit to us.”
Dan never joined us in the evenings without an invitation, although he was not above putting himself in the way of one. Whenever he felt inclined for what he called “a pitch with the boss and missus” he would saunter past at a little distance, apparently bound for the billabong, but in reality ready to respond to the Măluka’s “Is that you, Dan?” although just as ready to saunter on if that invitation was not forthcoming—a happy little arrangement born of that tact and delicacy of the bush-folk that never intrudes on another man’s privacy.
Dan being just Dan rarely had need to saunter on; and as he settled down on the grass in acceptance of this usual form of invitation, he wagged his head wisely, declaring “she had got on so well with her education that it ’ud be a pity not to finish her off properly.” Then dropping his bantering tone, he reported a scatter-on among the river cattle.
“I wasn’t going to say anything about it before the ‘boys,’” he said, “but it’s time some one gave a surprise party down the river;” and a “scatter-on” meaning “niggers in,” Măluka readily agreed to a surprise patrol of the river country, that being forbidden ground for blacks’ camps.
“It’s no good going unless it’s going to be a surprise party,” Dan reiterated; and when the Quiet Stockman was called across from the Quarters, he was told that “there wasn’t going to be no talking before the boys.”
Further consultations being necessary, Dan feared arousing suspicion, and to ensure his surprise party, and to guard against any word of the coming patrol being sent out-bush by the station “boys,” he indulged in a little dust-throwing, and there was much talking in public about going “out to the north-west for the boss to have another look round there,” and much laying of deep plans in private.
Finally, it was decided that the Quiet Stockman and his “boys” were to patrol the country north from the river while we were to keep to the south banks and follow the river down to the boundaries in all its windings, each party appointed to camp at the Red Lily lagoons second night out, each, of course, on its own side of the river. It being necessary for Jack to cross the river beyond the Springs, he left the homestead half a day before us—public gossip reporting that he was “going beyond the Waterhouse horse mustering,” and Dan finding dust-throwing highly diverting, shouted after him that he “might as well bring some fresh relays to the Yellow Hole in a day or two,” and then giving his attention to the packing of swags and pack-bags, “reckoned things were just about fixed up for a surprise party.”
At our appointed time we left the homestead, taking the north-west track for over a mile to continue the dust-throwing; and for the whole length of that mile Dan reiterated the “advantages of surprise parties,” and his opinion that “things were just about properly fixed up for one”; and when we left the track abruptly and set off across country at right angles to it, Sambo’s quick questioning, suspicious glance made it very evident that he, for one, had gleaned no inkling of the patrol, which naturally filled Dan with delight.
“River to-night, Sambo,” he said airily, but after that one swift glance Sambo rode after us as stolid as ever—Sambo was always difficult to fathom—while Dan spent the afternoon congratulating himself on the success of his dust-throwing, proving with many illustrations that “it’s the hardest thing to spring a surprise on niggers. Something seems to tell ’em you’re coming,” he explained. “Some chaps put it down to second-sight or thought-reading.”
When we turned in Dan was still chuckling over his cute handling of the trip. “Bluffed ’em this time all right,” he assured us, little guessing that the blacks at the “Red Lilies,” thirty miles away, and other little groups of blacks travelling down the river towards the lagoons were conjecturing on the object of the Măluka’s visit—“something having told them we were coming.”
The “something” however, was neither second-sight nor thought-reading, but a very simple, tangible “something.” Sambo had gone for a stroll from our camp about sundown, and one of Jack’s boys had gone for a stroll from Jack’s camp, and soon afterwards two tell-tale telegraphic columns of smoke, worked on some blackfellow dot-dash-system, had risen above the timber, and their messages had also been duly noted down at the Red Lilies and elsewhere, and acted upon. The Măluka was on the river, and when the Măluka was about, it was considered wisdom to be off forbidden ground; not that the blacks feared the Măluka, but no one cares about vexing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
On stations in the Never-Never the blacks are supposed to camp either in the homesteads, where no man need go hungry, or right outside the boundaries on waters beyond the cattle, travelling in or out as desired, on condition that they keep to the main travellers’ tracks—blacks among the cattle having a scattering effect on the herd, apart from the fact that “niggers in” generally means cattle-killing.
Of course no man ever hopes to keep his blacks absolutely obedient to this rule; but the judicious giving of an odd bullock at not too rare intervals, and always at corroborree times, the more judicious winking at cattle killing on the boundaries, where cattle scaring is not all disadvantage, and the even more judicious giving of a hint, when a hint is necessary, will do much to keep them fairly well in hand, anyway from openly harrying and defiant killing, which in humanity is surely all any man should ask.
The white man has taken the country from the black fellow, and with it his right to travel where he will for pleasure or food, and until he is willing to make recompense by granting fair liberty of travel, and a fair percentage of cattle or their equivalent in fair payment—openly and fairly giving them, and seeing that no man is unjustly treated or hungry within his borders—cattle killing, and at times even man killing by blacks, will not be an offence against the white folk.
A black fellow kills cattle because he is hungry and must be fed with food, having been trained in a school that for generations has acknowledged “catch who catch can” among its commandments; and until the long arm of the law interfered, white men killed the black fellow because they were hungry with a hunger that must be fed with gold, having been trained in a school that for generations has acknowledged “Thou shalt not kill” among its commandments; and yet men speak of the “superiority” of the white race, and, speaking, forget to ask who of us would go hungry if the situation were reversed, but condemn the black fellow as a vile thief, piously quoting—now it suits them—from those same commandments, that men “must not steal,” in the same breath referring to the white man’s crime (when it finds them out) as “getting into trouble over some shooting affair with blacks.” Truly we British-born have reason to brag of our “inborn sense of justice.”
The Măluka being more than willing to give his fair percentage, a judicious hint from him was generally taken quietly and for the time discreetly obeyed, and it was a foregone conclusion that our “nigger hunt” would only involve the captured with general discomfiture; but the Red Lilies being a stronghold of the tribe, and a favourite hiding-place for “outsiders,” emergencies were apt to occur “down the river,” and we rode out of camp with rifles unslung and revolvers at hand.
Dan’s sleep had in no wise lessened his faith in the efficiency of dust-throwing, and as we set out he “reckoned” the missus would “learn a thing or two about surprise parties this trip.” We all did, but the black fellows gave the instruction.
All morning we rode in single file, following the river through miles of deep gorges, crossing here and there stretches of grassy country that ran in valleys between gorge and gorge, passing through deep Ti Tree forests at times, and now and then clambering over towering limestone ridges that blocked the way, with, all the while, the majestic Roper river flowing deep and wide and silent on our left, between its water-lily fringed margins. It would take a mighty drought to dry up the waters of the Territory—permanent, we call them, sure of our rivers and our rains. Almost fifty miles of these deep-flowing waterways fell to our share; thirty-five miles of the Roper, twelve in the Long Reach, besides great holes scattered here and there along the beds of creeks that are mighty rivers in themselves “during the Wet.” Too much water, if anything, was the complaint at the Elsey, for water everywhere meant cattle everywhere.
For over two hours we rode, prying into and probing all sorts of odd nooks and crannies before we found any sign of blacks, and then, Roper giving the alarm, every one sat to attention. Roper had many ways of amusing himself when travelling through bush, but one of his greatest delights was nosing out hidden black fellows. At the first scent of “nigger” his ears would prick forward, and if left to himself, he would carry his rider into an unsuspected nigger camp, or stand peering into the bushes at a discomfited black fellow, who was busy trying to think of some excuse to explain his presence and why he had hidden.
As Roper’s ears shot forward and he turned aside towards a clump of thick-set bushes, Dan chuckled in expectation, but all Roper found was a newly deserted gundi camp, and fresh tracks travelling eastwards—tracks left during the night—after our arrival at the river, of course.
Dan surveyed the tracks, and his chuckles died out, and, growing sceptical of the success of his surprise party, he followed them for a while in silence, Sambo riding behind, outwardly stolid, but no doubt, inwardly chuckling.
Other eastward-going tracks a mile or so farther on made Dan even more sceptical, and further tracks again set him harking back to his theory of “something always telling ’em somehow,” and, losing interest in nigger-hunts, he became showman of the Roper river scenery.
Down into the depths of gorges he led us, through ferny nooks, and over the sandy stretches at the base of the mighty clefts through which the river flows; and as we rode, he had us leaning back in our saddles, in danger of cricking our necks, to look up at lofty heights above us, until a rocky peninsula running right into the river, after we had clambered up its sides like squirrels, he led the way across its spiky surfaced summit, and soon we were leaning forward over our horses’ necks in danger of taking somersaults into space, as we peered over the sides of a precipice at the river away down beneath us. “Nothing like variety,” Dan chuckled; and a few minutes later again we were leaning well back in our saddles as the horses picked their way down the far side of the ridge, old Roper letting himself down in his most approved style; dropping from ledge to ledge as he went, stepping carefully along their length, he would pause for a moment on their edges to judge distance, then, gathering his feet together, he would sway out and drop a foot or more to the next ledge. Riding Roper was never more than sitting in the saddle and leaving all else to him. Wherever he went there was safety, both for himself and his rider whether galloping between trees or beneath over-hanging branches, whether dropping down ridges with the surefootedness of a mountain pony, or picking his way across the treacherous “springy country.” No one knew better than he his own limits, and none better understood “springy country.” Carefully he would test suspicious-looking turf with a cautious fore-paw, and when all roads proved risky, in his own unmistakable language he would advise his rider to dismount and walk over, having shown plainly that the dangerous bit was not equal to the combined weight of horse and man. When Roper advised, wise men obeyed.