We of the Never-Never Part 5

Every time we tried to answer him we bit our tongues as the buck-board leapt over the tussocks of gra.s.s. Once we managed to call back, "You won't feel the journey in a buck-board." Then an overhanging bough threatening to wipe us out of our seats, Mac shouted, "Duck!" and as we "ducked" the buck-board skimmed between two trees, with barely an inch to spare.

"I'm a bit of a Jehu all right!" Mac shouted triumphantly. "It takes judgment to do the thing in style"; and the next moment, swinging round a patch of scrub, we flew off at a tangent to avoid a fallen tree, cras.h.i.+ng through its branches and grinding over an out-crop of ironstone to miss a big boulder just beyond the tree. It undoubtedly took judgment this "travelling across country along the ridges"; but the keen, alert bushman never hesitated as he swung in and out and about the timber, only once miscalculating the distance between trees, when he was obliged to back out again. Of course we barked trees constantly, but Mac called that "blazing a track for the next travellers," and everywhere the bush creatures scurried out of our way; and when I expressed fears for the springs, Mac rea.s.sured me by saying a buck-board had none, excepting those under the seat.

If Mac was a "bit of a Jehu," he certainly was a "dead homer," for after miles of scrub and gra.s.s and timber, we came out at our evening camp at the Bitter Springs, to find the Head Stockman there, with his faithful, tawny-coloured shadow, "Old Sool em," beside him.

Dog and man greeted us sedately, and soon Dan had a billy boiling for us, and a blazing fire, and accepted an invitation to join us at supper and "bring something in the way of bread along with him."

With a commonplace remark about the trip out, he placed a crisp, newly baked damper on the tea-towel that acted as supper cloth; but when we all agreed that he was "real slap-up at damper making," he scented a joke and shot a quick, questioning glance around; then deciding that it was wiser not to laugh at all than to laugh in the wrong place, he only said, he was "not a bad hand at the damper trick." Dan liked his jokes well labelled when dealing with the unknown Woman.

He was a bushman of the old type, one of the men of the droving days; full of old theories, old faiths, and old prejudices, and clinging always to old habits and methods. Year by year as the bush had receded and shrunk before the railways, he had receded with it, keeping always just behind the Back of Beyond, droving, bullock-punching, stock-keeping, and unconsciously opening up the way for that very civilisation that was driving him farther and farther back. In the forty years since his boyhood railways had driven him out of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, and were now threatening even the Never-Never, and Dan was beginning to fear that they would not leave "enough bush to bury a man in."

Enough bush to bury a man in! That's all these men of the droving days have ever asked of their nation and yet without them the pioneers would have been tied hand and foot, and because of them Australia is what it is.

"Had a good trip out?" Dan asked, feeling safe on that subject, and appeared to listen to the details of the road with interest; but all the time the shrewd hazel eyes were upon me, drawing rapid conclusions, and I began to feel absurdly anxious to know their verdict. That was not to come before bedtime; and only those who knew the life of the stations in the Never-Never know how much was depending on the stockmen's verdict.

Dan had his own methods of dealing with the Unknown Woman. Forty years out-bush had convinced him that "most of 'em were the right sort," but it had also convinced him that "you had to take 'em all differently," and he always felt his way carefully, watching and waiting, ready to open out at the first touch of fellows.h.i.+p and understanding, but just as ready to withdraw into himself at the faintest approach to a snub.

By the time supper was over he had risked a joke or two, and taking heart by their reception, launched boldly into the conversation, chuckling with delight as the Maluka and Mac amused themselves by examining the missus on bushcraft.

"She'll need a deal of educating before we let her out alone," he said, after a particularly bad failure, with the first touch of that air of proprietors.h.i.+p that was to become his favourite att.i.tude towards his missus.

"It's only common sense; you'll soon get used to it," Mac said in encouragement, giving us one of his delightful backhanders. Then in all seriousness Dan suggested teaching her some of the signs of water at hand, right off, "in case she does get lost any time," and also seriously, the Maluka and Mac "thought it would be as well, perhaps."

Then the townswoman's self-satisfied arrogance came to the surface. "You needn't bother about me," I said, confident I had as much common sense as any bushman. "If ever I do get lost, I'll just catch a cow and milk it."

Knowing nothing of the wild, scared cattle of the fenceless runs of the Never-Never, I was prepared for anything rather than the roar of delight that greeted that example of town "common sense."

"Missus! missus!" the Maluka cried, as soon as he could speak, "you'll need a deal of educating "; and while Mac gasped, "Oh I say! Look here!"

Dan, with tears in his eyes, chuckled: "She'll have a drouth on by the time she runs one down." Dan always called a thirst a drouth. "Oh Lord!"

he said, picturing the scene in his mind's eye, "'I'll catch a cow and milk it,' she says."

Then, dancing with fun, the hazel eyes looked round the company, and as Dan rose, preparatory to turning in, we felt we were about to hear their verdict. When it came it was characteristic of the man in uniqueness of wording:

"She's the dead finis.h.!.+" he said, wiping his eyes on his s.h.i.+rt sleeve.

"Reckoned she was the minute I heard her talking about slap-up dampers"; and in some indescribable way we knew he had paid the woman who was just entering his life the highest compliment in his power. Then he added, "Told the chaps the little 'uns were generally all right." It is the helplessness of little women that makes them appear "all right" in the eyes of bushmen, helplessness being foreign to snorters.

At breakfast Dan expressed surprise because there was no milk, and the pleasantry being well received, he considered the moment ripe for one of his pet theories.

"She'll do for this place!" he said, wagging his head wisely. "I've been forty years out-bush, and I've known eight or ten women in that time, so I ought to know something about it. Anyway, the ones that could see jokes suited best. There was Mrs. Bob out Victoria way. She'd see a joke a mile off; sighted 'em as soon as they got within cooee. Never knew her miss one, and never knew anybody suit the bush like she did." And, as we packed up and set out for the last lap of our journey he was still ambling about his theory. "Yes," he said, "you can dodge most things out bush; but you can't dodge jokes for long. They'll run you down sooner or later"; adding with a chuckle, "Never heard of one running Mrs. Bob down, though. She always tripped 'em up before they could get to her."

Then finding the missus had thrown away a "good cup of tea just because a few flies had got into it," he became grave. "Never heard of Mrs. Bob getting up to those tricks," he said, and doubted whether "the missus'ld do after all," until rea.s.sured by the Maluka that "she'll be fis.h.i.+ng them out with the indifference of a Stoic in a week or two"; and I was.

When within a few miles of the homestead, the buckboard took a sharp turn round a patch of scrub, and before any one realised what was happening we were in the midst of a mob of pack horses, and face to face with the Quiet Stockman a strong, erect, young Scot, who carried his six foot two of bone and muscle with the lithe ease of a bushman.

"Hallo" Mac shouted, pulling up. Then, with the air of a showman introducing some rare exhibit, added: "This is the missus, Jack."

Jack touched his hat and moved uneasily in his saddle, answering Mac's questions in monosyllables. Then the Maluka came up, and Mac, taking pity on the embarra.s.sed bushman, suggested "getting along," and we left him sitting rigidly on his horse, trying to collect his scattered senses.

"That was unrehea.r.s.ed," Mac chuckled, as we drove on. "He's clearing out!

Reckon he didn't set out exactly hoping to meet us, though. Tam's a lady's man in comparison," but loyal to his comrade above his amus.e.m.e.nt, he added warmly: "You can't beat Jack by much, though, when it comes to sticking to a pal," unconscious that he was prophesying of the years to come, when the missus had become one of those pals.

"There's only the Dandy left now," Mac went on, as we spun along an ever more definite track, "and he'll be all right as soon as he gets used to it. Never knew such a chap for finding something decent in everybody he strikes." Naturally I hoped he would "find something decent in me,"

having learned what it meant to the stockmen to have a woman pitchforked into their daily lives, when those lives were to be lived side by side, in camp, or in saddle, or at the homestead.

Mac hesitated a moment, and then out flashed one of his happy inspirations. "Don't you bother about the Dandy," he said; "bushmen have a sixth sense, and know a pal when they see one."

Just a bushman's pretty speech, aimed straight at the heart of a woman, where all the pretty speeches of the bushfolk are aimed; for it is by the heart that they judge us. "Only a pal," they will say, towering strong and protecting; and the woman feels uplifted, even though in the same breath they have honestly agreed with her, after careful scrutiny, that it is not her fault that she was born into the plain sisterhood. Bushmen will risk their lives for a woman pal or otherwise but leave her to pick up her own handkerchief.

"Of course!" Mac added, as an afterthought. "It's not often they find a pal in a woman"; and I add to-day that when they do, that woman is to be envied her friends.

"Eyes front!" Mac shouted suddenly, and in a moment the homestead was in sight, and the front gate forty-five miles behind us. "If ever you DO reach the homestead alive," the Darwin ladies had said; and now they were three hundred miles away from us to the north-west.

"Sam's spotted us!" Mac smiled as we skimmed on, and a slim little Chinaman ran across between the buildings. "We'd better do the thing in style," and whipping up the horses, he whirled them through the open slip-rails, past the stockyards, away across the gra.s.sy homestead enclosure, and pulled up with a rattle of hoofs and wheels at the head of a little avenue of buildings.

The Dandy, fresh and spotless, appeared in a doorway; black boys sprang up like a crop of mushrooms and took charge of the buck-board; Dan rattled in with the pack-teams, and horses were jangling hobbles and rattling harness all about us, as I found myself standing in the shadow of a queer, unfinished building, with the Maluka and Mac surrounded by a mob of leaping, bounding dogs, flouris.h.i.+ng, as best they could, another "Welcome home!"

"Well?" Mac asked, beating off dogs at every turn. "Is it a House or a Hut?"

"A Betwixt and Between," we decided; and then the Dandy was presented, And the steady grey eyes apparently finding "something decent" in the missus, with a welcoming smile and ready tact he said: "I'm sure we're all real glad to see you." Just the tiniest emphasis on the word "you"; but that, and the quick, bright look that accompanied the emphasis, told, as nothing else could, that it was "that other woman" that had not been wanted. Unconventional, of course; but when a welcome is conventional out-bush, it is unworthy of the name of welcome.

The Maluka, knew this well, but before he could speak, Mac had seized a little half-grown dog--the most persistent of all the leaping dogs--by her tightly curled-up tail, and, setting her down at my feet, said: "And this is Tiddle'ums," adding, with another flouris.h.i.+ng bow, "A present from a Brither Scot," while Tiddle'ums in no way resented the dignity.

Having a tail that curled tightly over her back like a cup handle, she expected to be lifted up by it.

Then one after the other Mac presented the station dogs: Quart-Pot, Drover, Tuppence, Misery, Buller, and a dozen others; and as I bowed gravely to each in turn Dan chuckled in appreciation: "She'll do! Told you she was the dead finish."

Then the introductions over, the Maluka said: "Ann, now I suppose she may consider herself just 'One of Us.'"

CHAPTER VI

The homestead, standing half-way up the slope that rose from the billabong, had, after all, little of that "down-at-heels, anything'll-do"

appearance that Mac had so scathingly described. No one could call it a "commodious station home," and it was even patched up and shabby; but, for all that, neat and cared for. An orderly little array of one-roomed buildings, mostly built of sawn slabs, and ranged round a broad oblong s.p.a.ce with a precision that suggested the idea of a section of a street cut out from some neat compact little village.

The cook's quarters, kitchens, men's quarters, store, meat-house, and waggon-house, facing each other on either side of this oblong s.p.a.ce, formed a short avenue-the main thoroughfare of the homestead--the centre of which was occupied by an immense wood-heap, the favourite gossiping place of some of the old black fellows, while across the western end of it, and looking down it, but a little aloof from the rest of the buildings, stood the house, or, rather, as much of it as had been rebuilt after the cyclone of 1897. As befitted their social positions the forge and black boys' "humpy" kept a respectful distance well round the south-eastern corner of this thoroughfare; but, for some unknown reason, the fowl-roosts had been erected over Sam Lee's sleeping-quarters. That comprised this tiny homestead of a million and a quarter acres, with the Katherine Settlement a hundred miles to the north of it, one neighbour ninety miles to the east, another, a hundred and five to the south, and others about two hundred to the west.

Unfortunately, Mac's description of the House had been only too correct.

With the exception of the one roughly finished room at its eastern end, it was "mostly verandahs and promises."

After the cyclone had wrecked the building, scattering timber and sheets of iron in all directions, everything had lain exactly where it had fallen for some weeks, at the mercy of the wind and weather. At the end of those weeks a travelling Chinese carpenter arrived at the station with such excellent common-sense ideas of what a bush homestead should be, that he had been engaged to rebuild it.

His plans showed a wide-roofed building, built upon two-foot piles, with two large centre rooms opening into each other and surrounded by a deep verandah on every side; while two small rooms, a bathroom and an office, were to nestle each under one of the eastern corners of this deep twelve-foot verandah. Without a doubt excellent common-sense ideas; but, unfortunately, much larger than the supply of timber. Rough-hewn posts for the two-foot piles and verandah supports could be had for the cutting, and therefore did not give out; but the man used joists and uprights with such reckless extravagance, that by the time the skeleton of the building was up, the completion of the contract was impossible.

With philosophical indifference, however, he finished one room completely; left a second a mere outline of uprights and tye-beams; apparently forgot all about the bathroom and office; covered the whole roof, including verandahs, with corrugated iron; surveyed his work with a certain amount of stolid satisfaction; then announcing that "wood bin finissem," applied for his cheque and departed; and from that day nothing further has been done to the House, which stood before us "mostly verandahs and promises."