Читать книгу Landtakers: The Story of an Epoch - Brian Penton - Страница 32

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Five men, two bullock drays, five hundred cattle, a thousand sheep--day after day, week after week they pushed out. At first the sun set in their faces. They crossed mountains where there were trees taller than ships' masts and so wide in girth that if a tunnel were driven into them a bullock dray might pass through with room and to spare for a horseman.

Once or twice they met a man with a drayload of wool, creeping through the ranges towards the sea. He pulled up, mopped his brow.

"Going far?" he wanted to know.

"Yes," Cabell answered.

"Downs?" the man asked.

"No."

"Maranoa?"

"Oh--wherever you like."

"No call to get uncivil," the man grumbled, but Cabell had ridden on to scowl at the hands, who had stopped in the hope of a few minutes' yarn with a stranger.

The little caravan straggled on again, down the other side of the mountains to the plains. Not a tree was to be seen for miles here, but the grass grew so high that a man might stand up in his stirrups and not see over the top of it.

Now the sun set on their left hand, day after day, week after week. Shepherds saw the smoke of their fires from miles away and tramped in for a chat. Gursey rose from the fire when they came, and sat in the shadows. He was clean-shaven now, more terrier-like than ever. He was always looking round at the bush, back the way they had come, as though expecting someone. Short shift these visitors got if Cabell found them about the place. "Sneaking around to get a look at the brands," he told himself, though it was pitch-black nights when the shepherds came.

Soon they were out in trackless, thinly settled country. Gursey became quieter, though he still looked back along the cart track-longingly, almost regretfully, now, it seemed.

But there were violent quarrels when Cabell proposed to stop and camp. Gursey nagged. They stayed in one place on the northwestern edge of the Downs for three months; in another farther north for nearly five. But Cabell gave way in the end to Gursey's entreaties, sneers, alluring descriptions of country farther north still and in towards the rich coastal mountains.

They struck camp.

One of the men died of black-water, and Cabell went back a hundred miles with the drays to get fresh stores and new hands. When he returned Gursey hid his face under his hat for a week, ate alone, till he saw that the two strangers Cabell brought back were harmless "hatters"--an old man and a lanky boy born in the bush.

On again. Day after day, week after week--the way Gursey and Red had gone when they escaped from Moreton Bay years before.

At dawn the hands started the cattle off the camp, then the sheep. Gursey yoked the bullocks to one of the drays and drove on ahead. They followed his tracks, and at sunset came upon the camp he had made. A big kettle of tea was standing by the fire, dampers were baking in the ashes, fires were piled ready for the cattle and the sheep.

All night a man rode round the cattle. At the campfire the rest would be smoking a last pipe before turning in to sleep till their watch.

Cranky Tom fell into deep thought and stroked his magnificent tobacco-stained whiskers, which looked as though a fine bird had folded its wings over his face. "Mr Kebbel, sir. Must be the first white men round these parts, Mr Kebbel, sir." Each word had to be pulled out of his mouth with both hands, a laborious business.

Sambo, the boy, looked at him contemptuously. "Whatyamean, first white man?"

Tom made a face as though stabbed by sudden pain, jumped up, stamped with both feet. "You agen?"

Sambo, young and cynical, had a sarcastic eye, which he kept on Tom, waiting for him to speak. He always had a parallel story to diminish the wonderful things that happened to Tom.

"Put yer peepers on that, will yer?" he said, throwing something into the firelight.

Cabell examined it. A buckle from a belt.

"Found it smornin'," Sambo explained. "Campfire'n' all."

Gursey glanced quickly at Cabell. Suddenly he got up and went out into the darkness. Cabell followed and found him striding up and down under the trees.

He laid a hand on Gursey's arm. "It won't be the same this time, Joe," he said compassionately. "You'll never have to go back."

"Ay," Gursey said bitterly. "Never go back. Never. Never."

They stood in silence, thinking of the future--each in his own way. Cabell's hand tightened slightly on Gursey's arm. Gursey's shoulder drooped as though a heavy weight had been laid on it.

At the fireside Tom was stroking his whiskers in deep thought again. "Ah!" he exclaimed at last. "Bird dropped it."

"Whatyamean, bird dropped it?"

"Seed one of them hawk-birds pick up a boot, fly off with it," Tom said, slapping his knee triumphantly at disposing of Sambo.

"Aw, that! That's nothin'," Sambo did not fail to remember. "Seen a eagle onct pick up a young blackfeller, boots'n'all."

"A-a-a-h!" Tom stamped round the fire angrily again. "Liar!"

"Better one than you'll ever be, ain't I?" Sambo tempted him.

"What's that?" Tom fired up. "Was one afore you was born."

Sambo grinned evilly and rolled down into his blankets, while Tom chuckled with deep satisfaction at an enemy overwhelmed.

"I might as well've let him shoot me, hang me, anything," Gursey said, "as be tied to your grindstone for the rest of my life, always sneaking off from a stranger with the fear of God leaping up in me at every footstep. And on top of it all ten to one I'll be nabbed again."

"Who could nab you? Nobody knows out here."

"You know."

"Well?"

Gursey waved his arms. "Oh, don't you think I can't feel you holding it over me already?" He limped away further into the night.

Cabell went back to the fire and lay down.

At two o'clock the cattle rise, sniff the air, bellow mournfully. The dogs get up from the fire and stretch themselves. The sheep stir and bleat. The watchman canters round, driving restless cows back into the mob. Cabell sits and watches nervously. Soon the cattle settle down again. The watchman rides in to rouse up his mate, smokes a pipe, and shakes down. Silence again under the immense dome of stars as big as fists. From down near the river tinkles the bell of a hobbled horse, one near by tears at the grass, a dog whimpers in its sleep; the sound of cattle chewing the cud, their soft breathing; the freshened fires crackle and leap, shining on their eyes; wild things scream far away in the darkness; the watchman's horse comes near, passes. Cabell glances at Gursey's empty blanket, shakes his head, and lies down. At the paling of the first star he is up, rousing the camp.

The bush began to thicken, mountains rose up starkly from the horizon. The cartwheels furrowed the earth, winding here and there to avoid a fallen tree, a patch of impenetrable scrub. The sheep coming after beat down the grass. It was the first road.

Day after day, week after week. They moved so slowly that it seemed they would never get anywhere. Summer became winter. Winter went and summer returned. Herds of kangaroos fled through the scrub. Birds rose in great flocks from under their feet. Blacks followed them and ran away at the sound of a gun.

Then the rain came. Torrents of rain for a month. Their clothes were never dry. They slept huddled together under the dray, got up to ride dispirited horses after weary sheep and cattle. The rivers rose and marooned them. The blacks returned more boldly. There was a skirmish. Sambo was wounded. The cattle stampeded. Nearly fifty were drowned, speared or lost.

They crossed the river. They took the wheels from the cart, lashed barrels on each side, and turned it into a boat. Thus they ferried across the precious sugar and flour, of which much had already been destroyed by weevils. Then they swam the sheep over. This not for one, but for five rivers.

The sheep lambed. They camped till the lambs were strong enough to be weaned and marked and travelled. On again--the landseekers, the forerunners, the men who first broke the silence of the sad, grey wastelands. A whole book might be written just about this.

The men got tired, tailing sheep and cattle by day, watching them by night. They had been on the march for nearly eighteen months, over hills so steep that they must cut a road for the waggon, through scrub so thick that they must hack every inch of the way, over sun-baked plains, over mud where the wheels sank to the axle. Cabell's temper got shorter and shorter. He wanted to stop here or here or here, but Gursey turned on him angrily and had his way. Another range of hills was rising out of the northeast. His cart tracks led them towards it.

Once more a road must be cut into the hillside, boulders rolled aside, a tunnel forced through undergrowth. The lawyer vines hung over everything, tearing the clothes off their backs and making festering sores on their bodies. The stinging tree reached out its heart-shaped leaves to touch them. Sambo brushed against it. He was twisted with agony.

Gursey turned and looked back. Only the bush melting into purple shadows round the whole wide horizon--still, silent, unpeopled. He nodded to Cabell. "Tomorrow."

At evening they entered the valley.

It lay between hills magenta-coloured in the distance, green with heavy timber and matted undergrowth near at hand. A wide, shallow river wound out of sight to east and west, enamelled over with the lights of the sinking sun. Here and there a big waterhole, clumps of trees, stretches of rolling open country like a park. Grey galahs flashed their pink breasts among the foliage, white cockatoos, perched in the gums, looked down at the intruders and screamed like old women. Flocks of black duck rose from the water or swam away into the reeds, spreading a corrugation of gentle ripples over the images of men and beasts as they crossed the river. The grass was high and green after the rains. A pleasant smell rose from the trampling feet of the cattle, the scent of sweet marjoram. The aromatic smell of wood, of smouldering leaves, of mud at the edge of the river, of water--the smell of the land. Now another smell overlay it--the smell of greasy wool, of sweating horses and cattle. It loaded the dry air, clear as crystal and slightly intoxicating. In the scrub the animals rustled with alarm at it and cried out.

Cabell stood up in his stirrups, looked round and smiled.

That night they broached the rum.

March the fifth, 1847.