Joe Wilson and His Mates Part 23

II. Told by One of the Other Drovers.

'Talkin' o' Poisonous Jimmy, I can tell you a yarn about him. We'd brought a mob of cattle down for a squatter the other side of Mulgatown.

We camped about seven miles the other side of the town, waitin' for the station hands to come and take charge of the stock, while the boss rode on into town to draw our money. Some of us was goin' back, though in the end we all went into Mulgatown and had a boose up with the boss. But while we was waitin' there come along two fellers that had been drovin'

up north. They yarned a while, an' then went on to Poisonous Jimmy's place, an' in about an hour one on 'em come ridin' back with a can of beer that he said Poisonous had sent for us. We all knew Jimmy's little games--the beer was a bait to get us on the drunk at his place; but we drunk the beer, and reckoned to have a lark with him afterwards. When the boss come back, an' the station hands to take the bullocks, we started into Mulgatown. We stopped outside Poisonous's place an' handed the can to the girl that was grinnin' on the verandah. Poisonous come out with a grin on him like a parson with a broken nose.

'"Good day, boys!" he says.

'"Good day, Poisonous," we says.

'"It's hot," he says.

'"It's blanky hot," I says.

'He seemed to expect us to get down. "Where are you off to?" he says.

'"Mulgatown," I says. "It will be cooler there," and we sung out, "So-long, Poisonous!" and rode on.

'He stood starin' for a minute; then he started shoutin', "Hi! hi there!" after us, but we took no notice, an' rode on. When we looked back last he was runnin' into the scrub with a bridle in his hand.

'We jogged along easily till we got within a mile of Mulgatown, when we heard somebody gallopin' after us, an' lookin' back we saw it was Poisonous.

'He was too mad and too winded to speak at first, so he rode along with us a bit gasping: then he burst out.

'"Where's them other two carnal blanks?" he shouted.

'"What other two?" I asked. "We're all here. What's the matter with you anyway?"

'"All here!" he yelled. "You're a lurid liar! What the flamin' sheol do you mean by swiggin' my beer an' flingin' the coloured can in me face?

without as much as thank yer! D'yer think I'm a flamin'----!"

'Oh, but Poisonous Jimmy was wild.

'"Well, we'll pay for your dirty beer," says one of the chaps, puttin'

his hand in his pocket. "We didn't want yer slush. It tasted as if it had been used before."

'"Pay for it!" yelled Jimmy. "I'll----well take it out of one of yer bleedin' hides!"

'We stopped at once, and I got down an' obliged Jimmy for a few rounds.

He was a nasty customer to fight; he could use his hands, and was cool as a cuc.u.mber as soon as he took his coat off: besides, he had one squirmy little business eye, and a big wall-eye, an', even if you knowed him well, you couldn't help watchin' the stony eye--it was no good watchin' his eyes, you had to watch his hands, and he might have managed me if the boss hadn't stopped the fight. The boss was a big, quiet-voiced man, that didn't swear.

'"Now, look here, Myles," said the boss (Jimmy's name was Myles)--"Now, look here, Myles," sez the boss, "what's all this about?"

'"What's all this about?" says Jimmy, gettin' excited agen. "Why, two fellers that belonged to your party come along to my place an' put up half-a-dozen drinks, an' borrered a sovereign, an' got a can o' beer on the strength of their cheques. They sez they was waitin' for you--an' I want my crimson money out o' some one!"

'"What was they like?" asks the boss.

'"Like?" shouted Poisonous, swearin' all the time. "One was a blanky long, sandy, sawny feller, and the other was a short, slim feller with black hair. Your blanky men knows all about them because they had the blanky billy o' beer."

'"Now, what's this all about, you chaps?" sez the boss to us.

'So we told him as much as we knowed about them two fellers.

'I've heard men swear that could swear in a rough shearin'-shed, but I never heard a man swear like Poisonous Jimmy when he saw how he'd been left. It was enough to split stumps. He said he wanted to see those fellers, just once, before he died.

'He rode with us into Mulgatown, got mad drunk, an' started out along the road with a tomahawk after the long sandy feller and the slim dark feller; but two mounted police went after him an' fetched him back. He said he only wanted justice; he said he only wanted to stun them two fellers till he could give 'em in charge.

'They fined him ten bob.'

The Ghostly Door.

Told by one of Dave's mates.

Dave and I were tramping on a lonely Bush track in New Zealand, making for a sawmill where we expected to get work, and we were caught in one of those three-days' gales, with rain and hail in it and cold enough to cut off a man's legs. Camping out was not to be thought of, so we just tramped on in silence, with the stinging pain coming between our shoulder-blades--from cold, weariness, and the weight of our swags--and our boots, full of water, going splosh, splosh, splosh along the track. We were settled to it--to drag on like wet, weary, muddy working bullocks till we came to somewhere--when, just before darkness settled down, we saw the loom of a humpy of some sort on the slope of a tussock hill, back from the road, and we made for it, without holding a consultation.

It was a two-roomed hut built of waste timber from a sawmill, and was either a deserted settler's home or a hut attached to an abandoned sawmill round there somewhere. The windows were boarded up. We dumped our swags under the little verandah and banged at the door, to make sure; then Dave pulled a couple of boards off a window and looked in: there was light enough to see that the place was empty. Dave pulled off some more boards, put his arm in through a broken pane, clicked the catch back, and then pushed up the window and got in. I handed in the swags to him. The room was very draughty; the wind came in through the broken window and the cracks between the slabs, so we tried the part.i.tioned-off room--the bedroom--and that was better. It had been lined with chaff-bags, and there were two stretchers left by some timber-getters or other Bush contractors who'd camped there last; and there were a box and a couple of three-legged stools.

We carried the remnant of the wood-heap inside, made a fire, and put the billy on. We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets on the stretchers; and then we stripped and hung our clothes about the fire to dry. There was plenty in our tucker-bags, so we had a good feed. I hadn't shaved for days, and Dave had a coa.r.s.e red beard with a twist in it like an ill-used fibre brush--a beard that got redder the longer it grew; he had a hooked nose, and his hair stood straight up (I never saw a man so easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head), and he was very tall, with long, thin, hairy legs. We must have looked a weird pair as we sat there, naked, on the low three-legged stools, with the billy and the tucker on the box between us, and ate our bread and meat with clasp-knives.

'I shouldn't wonder,' says Dave, 'but this is the "whare"* where the murder was that we heard about along the road. I suppose if any one was to come along now and look in he'd get scared.' Then after a while he looked down at the flooring-boards close to my feet, and scratched his ear, and said, 'That looks very much like a blood-stain under your stool, doesn't it, Jim?'

* 'Whare', 'whorrie', Maori name for house.

I s.h.i.+fted my feet and presently moved the stool farther away from the fire--it was too hot.

I wouldn't have liked to camp there by myself, but I don't think Dave would have minded--he'd knocked round too much in the Australian Bush to mind anything much, or to be surprised at anything; besides, he was more than half murdered once by a man who said afterwards that he'd mistook him for some one else: he must have been a very short-sighted murderer.

Presently we put tobacco, matches, and bits of candle we had, on the two stools by the heads of our bunks, turned in, and filled up and smoked comfortably, dropping in a lazy word now and again about nothing in particular. Once I happened to look across at Dave, and saw him sitting up a bit and watching the door. The door opened very slowly, wide, and a black cat walked in, looked first at me, then at Dave, and walked out again; and the door closed behind it.

Dave scratched his ear. 'That's rum,' he said. 'I could have sworn I fastened that door. They must have left the cat behind.'

'It looks like it,' I said. 'Neither of us has been on the boose lately.'

He got out of bed and up on his long hairy spindle-shanks.

The door had the ordinary, common black oblong lock with a bra.s.s k.n.o.b.

Dave tried the latch and found it fast; he turned the k.n.o.b, opened the door, and called, 'Puss--puss--puss!' but the cat wouldn't come. He shut the door, tried the k.n.o.b to see that the catch had caught, and got into bed again.

He'd scarcely settled down when the door opened slowly, the black cat walked in, stared hard at Dave, and suddenly turned and darted out as the door closed smartly.

I looked at Dave and he looked at me--hard; then he scratched the back of his head. I never saw a man look so puzzled in the face and scared about the head.