We of the Never-Never Part 18

I pleaded with the Maluka, but the Maluka pleading for just a little more rest and feeding-up, while Cheon gulped and choked in the background, I gave in, and eating everything as it was offered, s.n.a.t.c.hed what rest I could, getting as much entertainment as possible out of Cheon and the staff in between times.

For three days I lay obediently patient, and each day Cheon grew more affectionate, patting my hands at times, as he confided to the Maluka that although he admired big, moon-faced women as a feast for the eyes, he liked them small and docile when he had to deal personally with them.

Until I met Cheon I thought the Chinese incapable of affection; but many lessons are learned out bush.

Travellers--house-visitors--coming in on the fourth day, I hoped for a speedy release, but visitors were considered fatiguing, and release was promised as soon as they were gone.

Fortunately the walls had many cracks in them--not being as much on the plumb as Johnny had predicted, and for a couple of days, watching the visitors through these cracks and listening to their conversation provided additional amus.e.m.e.nt. I could see them quite distinctly as, no doubt, they could see me; but we kept a decorous silence until the Fizzer came in, then at the Fizzer's shout the walls of Jericho toppled down.

"The missus sick!" I heard him shout. "Thought she looked in prime condition at the Springs." (Bush language frequently has a strong tw.a.n.g of cattle in it.)

"So I am now," I called; and then the Fizzer and I held an animated conversation through the walls. "I'm imprisoned for life," I moaned, after hearing the news of the outside world; and laughing and chuckling outside, the Fizzer vowed he would "do a rescue next trip if they've still got you down." Then, after appreciating fervent thanks, he shouted in farewell: "The boss is bringing something along that'll help to pa.s.s some of the time--the finest mail you ever clapped eyes on," and presently patient and bed were under a litter of mail-matter.

The Fizzer having brought down the walls of conventionality, the traveller-guests proffered greetings and sympathy through the material walls, after which we exchanged mail-news and general gossip for a day or two; then just as these travellers were preparing to exchange farewells, others came in and postponed the promised release. As there seemed little hope of a lull in visitors, I was wondering if ever I should be considered well enough to entertain guests, when Fate once more interfered.

"Whatever's this coming in from the East?" I heard the Maluka call in consternation, and in equal consternation his traveller-guest called back: "Looks like a whole village settlement." Then Cheon burst into the room in a frenzy of excitement: "Big mob traveller, missus.

Two-fellow-missus, sit down," he began; but the Maluka was at his heels.

"Here's two women and a mob of youngsters," he gasped. "I'm afraid you'll have to get up, little 'un, and lend a hand with them."

Afraid! By the time the village settlement had "turned out" and found its way to the house, I was out in the open air welcoming its members with a heartiness that must have surprised them. Little did they guess that they were angels unaware. Homely enough angels, though, they proved, as angels unaware should prove: one man and two women from "Queensland way," who had been "inside" for fifteen years, and with them two fine young lads and a wee, toddling baby--all three children born in the bush and leaving it for the first time.

Never before had Cheon had such a company to provide for; but as we moved towards the house in a body--ourselves, the village settlement, and the Maluka's traveller-guests, with a stockman traveller and the Dandy looking on from the quarters, his hospitable soul rejoiced at the sight; and by the time seats had been found for all comers, he appeared laden with tea and biscuits, and within half an hour had conjured up a plentiful dinner for all comers.

Fortunately the chairs were all "up" to the weight of the ladies, and the remainder of the company easily accommodated itself to circ.u.mstances, in the shape of sawn stumps, rough stools, and sundry boxes; and although the company was large and the dining-table small, and although, at times, we feared the table was about to fulfil its oft-repeated threat and fall over, yet the dinner was there to be enjoyed, and, being bush-folk, and hungry, our guests enjoyed it, pa.s.sing over all incongruities with simple merriment--a light-hearted, bubbling merriment, in no way comparable to that "laughter of fools," that crackling of thorns under a pot, provoked by the incongruities of the world's freak dinners. The one is the heritage of the simple-hearted, and the other--all the world has to give in exchange for this birthright.

The elder lads, one fourteen and one ten years of age, found Cheon by far the most entertaining incongruity at the dinner, and when dinner was over--after we had settled down on the various chairs and stumps that had been carried out to the verandah again--they shadowed him wherever he went.

They were strangely self-possessed children; but knowing little more of the world than the black children their playmates, Cheon, in his turn, found them vastly amusing, and instructing them in the ways of the world--from his point of view--found them also eager pupils.

But their education came to a standstill after they had mastered the mysteries of the Dandy's gramophone, and Cheon was no longer entertaining.

All afternoon bra.s.s-band selections, comic songs, and variety items, blared out with ceaseless reiteration; and as the men-folk smoked and talked cattle, and the wee baby--a bonnie fair child--toddled about, smiling and contented, the women-folk spoke of their life "out-back," and listening, I knew that neither I nor the telegraph lady had even guessed what roughness means.

For fifteen years things had been improving, and now everyone was to have a well-earned holiday. The children were to be christened and then shown the delights of a large town! Darwin of necessity (Palmerston, by the way, on the map, but Darwin to Territorians). Darwin with its one train, its telegraph offices, two or three stores, banks and public buildings, its Residency, its Chinatown, its lovers' walk, its two or three empty, wide, gra.s.s-grown streets bordered with deep-verandahed, iron-built bungalow-houses, with their gardens planted in painted tins--a development of the white-ant pest--and lastly, its great sea, where s.h.i.+ps wander without tracks or made ways! Hardly a typical town, but the best in the Territory.

The women, naturally, were looking forward to doing a bit of shopping, and as we slipped into fas.h.i.+ons the traveller guests became interested.

"Haven't seen so many women together for years," one of them said.

"Reminds me of when I was a nipper," and the other traveller "reckoned"

he had struck it lucky for once. "Three on 'em at once," he chuckled with indescribable relish. "They reckon it never rains but it pours."

And so it would seem with three women guests within three weeks at a homestead where women had been almost unknown for years.

But these women guests only stayed one night, the children being all impatience to get on to the telegraph line, to those wires that talked, and to the railway, where the iron monster ran.

Early in the morning they left us, and as they rode away the fair toddling baby was sitting on its mother's pommel-knee, smiling out on the world from the deep recesses of a sunbonnet. Already it had ridden a couple of hundred miles, with its baby hands playing with the reins, and before it reached home again another five hundred would be added to the two hundred. Seven hundred miles on horse back in a few weeks, at one year old, compares favourably with one of the Fizzer's trips. But it is thus the bush develops her Fizzers.

After so much excitement Cheon feared a relapse, and was for prompt, preventive measures; but even the Maluka felt there was a limit to the Rest Cure, and the musterers coming in with Happy d.i.c.k's bullocks and a great mob of mixed cattle for the yards, Dan proved a strong ally; and besides, as the musterers were in and Happy d.i.c.k due to arrive by midday, Cheon's hands were full with other matters.

There was a roly-poly pudding to make for Dan, baked custard for the Dandy, jam-tarts for Happy d.i.c.k, cake and biscuits for all comers, in addition to a dinner and supper waiting to be cooked for fifteen black boys, several lubras, and half-a-dozen hungry white folk. Cheon had his own peculiar form of welcome for his many favourites, regaling each one of them with delicacies to their particular liking, each and every time they came in.

Happy d.i.c.k, also, had his own peculiar form of welcome. "Good-day! Real glad to see you!" was his usual greeting. Sure of his own welcome wherever he went, he never waited to hear it, but hastened to welcome all men into his fellows.h.i.+p. "Real glad to see you," he would say, with a ready smile of comrades.h.i.+p; and it always seemed as though he had added: "I hope you'll make yourself at home while with me." In some mysterious way, Happy d.i.c.k was at all times the host giving liberally of the best he had to his fellow-men.

He was one of the pillars of the Line Party. "Born in it, I think," he would say. "Don't quite remember," adding with his ever-varying smile, "Remember when it was born, anyway."

When the "Overland Telegraph" was built across the Australian continent from sea to sea, a clear broad avenue two chains wide, was cut for it through bush and scrub and dense forests, along the backbone of Australia, and in this avenue the line party was "born" and bred--a party of axemen and mechanics under the orders of a foreman, whose duty it is to keep the "Territory section" of the line in repair, and this avenue free from the scrub and timber that spring up unceasingly in its length.

In unbroken continuity this great avenue runs for hundreds upon hundreds of miles, carpeted with feathery gra.s.ses and shooting scrubs, and walled in on either side with dense, towering forest or lighter and more scattered timber. On and on it stretches in utter loneliness, zigzagging from horizon to horizons beyond, and guarding those two sensitive wires at its centre, as they run along their single line of slender galvanised posts, from the great bush that never ceases in its efforts to close in on them and engulf them. A great broad highway, waiting in its loneliness for the generations to come, with somewhere in its length the line party camp, and here and there within its thousand miles, a chance traveller or two here and there a horseman with pack-horse ambling and grazing along behind him; here and there a trudging speck with a swag across its shoulders, and between them one, two, or three hundred miles of solitude, here and there a horseman riding, and here and there a footman trudging on, each unconscious of the others.

From day to day they travel on, often losing the count of the days, with those lines always above them, and those beckoning posts ever running on before them and as they travel, now and then they touch a post for company--shaking hands with Outside: touching now and then a post for company, and daily realising the company and comfort those posts and wires can be. Here at least is something in touch with the world something vibrating with the lives and actions of men, and an ever-present friend in dire necessity. With those wires above him, any day a traveller can cry for help to the Territory, if he call while he yet has strength to climb one of those friendly posts and cut that quivering wire--for help that will come speedily, for the cutting of the telegraph wire is as the ringing of an alarm-bell throughout the Territory. In all haste the break is located, and food, water, and every human help that suggests itself sent out from the nearest telegraph station. There is no official delay--there rarely is in the Territory--for by some marvellous good fortune, there everything belongs to the Department in which it finds itself.

Just as Happy d.i.c.k is one of the pillars of the line party, so the line party is one of the pillars of the line itself. Up and down this great avenue, year in year out it creeps along, cutting scrub and repairing as it goes, and moving c.u.mbrous main camps from time to time, with its waggon loads of stores, tents, furnis.h.i.+ngs, flocks of milking goats, its fowls, its gramophone, and Chinese cook. Month after month it creeps on, until, reaching the end of the section, it turns round to creep out again.

Year in, year out, it had crept in and out, and for twenty years Happy d.i.c.k had seen to its peace and comfort. Nothing ever ruffled him. "All in the game" was his nearest approach to a complaint, as he pegged away at his work, in between whiles going to the nearest station for killers, carting water in tanks out to "dry stage camps," and doing any other work that found itself undone. d.i.c.k's position was as elastic as his smile.

He considered himself an authority on three things only: the line party, dog-fights, and cribbage. All else, including his dog Peter and his cheque-book, he left to the discretion of his fellow-men.

Peter--a speckled, drab-coloured, p.r.i.c.k-eared creation, a few sizes larger than a fox-terrier--could be kept in order with a little discretion, and by keeping hands off Happy d.i.c.k; but all the discretion in the Territory, and a unanimous keeping off of hands, failed to keep order in the cheque-book.

The personal payment of salaries to men scattered through hundreds of miles of bush country being impracticable, the department pays all salaries due to its servants into their bank accounts at Darwin, and therefore when Happy d.i.c.k found himself the backbone of the line party, he also found himself the possessor of a cheque-book. At first he was inclined to look upon it as a poor subst.i.tute for hard cash; but after the foreman had explained its mysteries, and taught him to sign his name in magic tracery, he became more than reconciled to it and drew cheques blithely, until one for five pounds was returned to a creditor: no funds--and in due course returned to Happy d.i.c.k.

"No good?" he said to the creditor, looking critically at the piece of paper in his hands. "Must have been writ wrong. Well, you've only yourself to blame, seeing you wrote it"; then added magnanimously, mistaking the creditor's scorn: "Never mind, write yourself out another.

I don't mind signing 'em."

The foreman and the creditor spent several hours trying to explain banking principles, but d.i.c.k "couldn't see it." "There's stacks of 'em left!" he persisted, showing his book of fluttering bank cheques.

Finally, in despair, the foreman took the cheque-book into custody, and d.i.c.k found himself poor once more.

But it was only for a little while. In an evil hour he discovered that a cheque from another man's book answered all purposes if it bore that magic tracery, and Happy d.i.c.k was never solvent again. Gaily he signed cheques, and the foreman did all he could to keep pace with him on the cheque-book block; but as no one, excepting the accountant in the Darwin bank, knew the state of his account from day to day, it was like taking a ticket in a lottery to accept a cheque from Happy d.i.c.k.

"Real glad to see you," Happy d.i.c.k said in hearty greeting to us all as he dismounted, and we waited to be entertained. Happy d.i.c.k had his favourite places and people, and the Elsey community stood high in his favour. "Can't beat the Elsey for a good dog-fight and a good game of cribbage," he said, every time he came in or left us, and that from Happy d.i.c.k was high praise. At times he added: "Nor for a square meal neither," thereby inciting Cheon to further triumphs for his approval.

As usual, Happy d.i.c.k "played" the Quarters cribbage and related a good dog-fight--"Peter's latest "--and, as usual before he left us, his pockets were bulging with tobacco--the highest stakes used in the Quarters--and Peter and Brown had furnished him with materials for a still newer dog-fight recital. As usual, he rode off with his killers, a.s.suring all that he would "be along again soon," and, as usual, Peter and Brown were tattered and hors-de-combat, but both still aggressive.

Peter's death lunge was the death lunge of Brown, and both dogs knew that lunge too well to let the other "get in."

As usual, Happy d.i.c.k had hunted through the store, and taken anything he "really needed," paying, of course, by cheque; but when he came to sign that cheque, after the Maluka had written it, he entered the dining-room for the first time since its completion.

With calm scrutiny he took in every detail, including the serviettes as they lay folded in their rings on the waiting dinner-table, and before he left the homestead he expressed his approval in the Quarters:

"Got everything up to the knocker, haven't they ?" he said. "Often heard toffs decorated their tables with rags in hobble rings, but never believed it before."

Happy d.i.c.k gone, Cheon turned his attention to the health of the missus; but Dan, persuading the Maluka that "all she needed was a breath of fresh air," we went bush on a tour of inspection.

CHAPTER XVI

Within a week we returned to the homestead, and for twenty-four hours Cheon gloated over us, preparing every delicacy that appealed to him as an antidote to an outbush course of beef and damper. Then a man rode into our lives who was to teach us the depth and breadth of the meaning of the word mate--a st.u.r.dy, thick-set man with haggard, tired eyes and deep lines about his firm strong mouth that told of recent and prolonged tension.