Читать книгу Landtakers: The Story of an Epoch - Brian Penton - Страница 28

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Two glasses of Dennis's poison ratified a deal. Two thousand sheep and four hundred cattle had changed hands, and Flanagan's order-to-pay was safely stowed away in the knotted end of his handkerchief.

"Been havin' a go in your way?" Dennis asked Cabell. Sinking his wounded pride in the office of district gossip, he smiled, cringed, served them out of his private bottle.

"Nothing to speak of," Cabell told him. "I chased a convict over the river just before it broke the banks and now I can't get back for a while. That's all."

"Was he drownded?"

"Yes, he was drowned."

For this concession Dennis leant across the bar and told them, "It's cleaned old Mahony out. Saw his house go past this mornin' with a dog up on the roof howlin' fit to bust. His cows've bin comin' down legs-up these three days. No sign of the old man yet, though."

"Huh." Cabell finished his drink.

"Damn lucky if he's feeding the fishes. It's better than trying to feed yourself in this hole," one of the drinkers interjected. He was caked with mud from head to foot and a lump of dry mud hung in his beard like a blood globule.

"Drinkin' himself blind five days," Dennis hastened to explain behind his hand. "Caught near Badger's--two years' wool went--bullocks--everything."

The man edged down the bar. "No women, no booze, and work your guts out to see yourself break out in scab and the wool washed away down to the sea." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at a man who stood near the door watching the flooded river. "Him, for instance. Just married, and there's his wife all on her lonesome fifty miles the other side of Redbank, with all the damn cannibal blacks sitting round to get at her kidney-fat."

Cabell shrugged. "Hard luck," he said, and turned away.

The man stared at his back vacantly, then moved down the bar again.

The only other person beside Cabell who seemed comparatively indifferent to the flood was Peppiott. He leant on the bar with his head in his hands. A skull had come up under his florid skin, his eyes had fallen in. Jostled by newcomers to the bar, he became aware of vague realities behind the engrossing shadows, picked up his big body and shuffled off to a corner to stand and stare for as long as he was left alone at the wall a few inches in front of his nose. Occasionally he threw back his head and laughed or kicked the wall savagely, became silent, staring again.

Cabell gave him a passing glance of pity, as one looks at the misfortunes of a stranger.

Weighty thoughts clouded the amiability in Flanagan's eyes. He considered his reflection in the bottom of the glass, considered the side of Cabell's face, considered the reflection again.

"If ye'd take my advice," he said, "the country's good up the coast."

"So I've heard," Cabell said.

"Hmn. Thinking of the Downs?"

"Well--perhaps."

A more reserved and independent, less friendly Cabell--a change sensed rather than seen. The soft contours of the olive-skin cheeks had flattened down a little maybe, the eyes no longer jumped about from landscape to brawling drunkard with restless discontent. That and perhaps a little note of arrogance and contempt in the way he spoke. "Here, I've brought you those cattle and sheep. Get a man to help me into the yards with them," was all he had said when Flanagan opened the door to him two nights ago.

"Got them. Holy saints! Where from?"

"Oh, out of those gullies where you lost yourself."

That from a limejuicer!

They had another drink and went out into the steamy sunlight. Dennis and the man who had lost his wool roused themselves to gaze thoughtfully after Cabell--why, perhaps they could have explained no better than Flanagan.

Flanagan paused at the door. "Funny thing now, you lettin' that lag get the slip of you in the river, Cabell," he said. He rubbed his beard and stared at the sky.

"Funny?"

"Yes." He continued to consider, with wrinkled brows, a bizarre problem located among the broken clouds. "When ye come to think of it. Man might've thought ye'd pick him up and get him to give ye a hand with all them cattle, now."

"I told you he was drowned."

"Ye-es. So ye did." Flanagan nodded two or three times. "Funny thing, now," he said, "the way ye got all them cattle down three miles to my place, fixed up the man he had there in the gully and all. . . ."

An old gin followed them to their horses with thin, grey palm outstretched. "Gib him toombacca, Marmy," she begged.

Cabell threw her a lump of twist. She picked it out of the mud, put it in her mouth and went back to the door.

Flanagan stood looking at Cabell's horse for some time, then ran his hand down a foreleg. "Bit heavy in the bone, eh?" he said. "Where'd ye get this one?"

Cabell nodded towards Murrumburra.

"Funny thing," Flanagan said, sitting on his heel and squinting up at Cabell, "funny thing never seeing that roan of mine."

Cabell took the reins off the post, climbed into the saddle, and squirmed his crutch against the hot leather. "McGovern must've sold it."

"Damn funny thing!" Flanagan rose and took hold of the bridle. Most of the amiability was gone from his face now. "Take my tip," he said confidentially. "Ye'd better go some place a mighty long way from here. Some place McGovern wouldn't think of or nobody come sneakin' round after a runaway convict."

Cabell walked the horse out into the yard. "Well, so long," he said, touched the gelding with his heels, and in a splash of muddy water cantered off up the road.

Flanagan watched him out of sight, spat in the mud, and returned to the bar. The outstretched hand of the gin he thrust roughly aside, which shows how the small matter of a roan stallion may wither even the sources of a charitable nature.