Читать книгу The Squatter King - A Romance of Bush Life - Edward S Sorenson - Страница 3

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There was nothing very grand about Morella. It was a plain shingle-roofed cottage, half hidden in a cluster of trees and partially covered with vines, that had marked a lonely mailman's stage before the little township of Wonnaroo had come into existence. Yet, looking at it from her seat on a grassy slope at the back, Keira Warri thought there was no place to compare with it on Biroo Creek.

Keira was 18, a pretty girl with a wealth of auburn hair, and—some one had said—the "prettiest eyes in town."

Her brother, a quiet-looking lad of 16, came up the bank with a hoe in his hand, and threw himself down in the shadows near her.

"I'm going to clear out," he said. "I'm doing no good here."

Keira looked at him in surprise, but almost instantly her eyes twinkled with amusement.

"Who hit you, Sid?"

"That," answered the boy, nodding at the needlework in her lap. "You're sewing for Mrs. Joe Steel, aren't you?"

"Yes." She bent over her work, and the smile faded from her face.

"I had a suspicion that it was getting low tide with the mater," said Sid, "but I didn't know till yesterday that you were taking in sewing."

"Why shouldn't I?" asked Keira. "I haven't much else to do."

"Oh, you're not doing it for exercise, or to oblige the old lady at the store. Own up, we're getting among the breakers, aren't we?"

"Worse times might come, Sid," she answered evasively. "And it's good policy to gather fuel while you can keep the pot boiling."

"Not a very heartening job though, keeping it boiling with little sticks." Sid reflected, looking again at the stitching needle as though the thing hurt him. "If it requires that sort of stoking," he continued, "it's time I took a hand."

"Don't you be in a hurry. You've got to go to college —"

"And you're going to stitch, stitch, stitch, to keep me there? Not this chicken."

"Mother wants you to have a profession; failing that, she will get you into a bank, or something of the kind."

"That's no good to me," said Sid. "I'm going into the bush."

"What could you do there? You've had no experience."

"Haven't I? I can ride for one thing," Sid answered.

"Quiet horses," Keira added. "But some horses buck, you know."

"Well, it only wants a little practice to learn to sit them."

"But suppose you get hurt during the practice? Lots of people get killed off horses?"

"I must take my chance like the rest. The best were newchums at the start," Sid reasoned. "Anyhow, I can ride a good deal better than some of the men I've seen knocking about here. I wouldn't get much wages at first, but ever so little would be a help. You'd have one less, to keep too"

"You're a dear good brother, Sid," said Keira, as she bent down and kissed him. "But I don't think mother would let you go on a squattage. She has a horror of such places since poor father's fate."

What that fate was no one had any definite knowledge. At the time Keira referred to he was the owner of Kanillabar, a big cattle run a hundred miles from Wonnaroo. Those were happy days for the Warris. The only thing that was wanting was sufficient water for the stock. The waterholes were few and far between, and in ordinary dry seasons the cattle had to go long distances for a drink. Then a big drought came, and Warri went west in search of country to save his stock from perishing. A stockman named Dick Cranston, and two aborigines went with him. They took a pack-horse and enough provisions for a fortnight.

For a pastoralist in the back parts of Queensland, Warri was a notoriously poor bushman. His sense of locality was so dull that he got lost on his own run. He was a rugged character, with little learning. Though he mixed with the best people in the district, he was unmistakably a misfit in a toney drawing-room. But he was a rough diamond, with apparently plenty of money. His social eminence he owed to this, and to the influence of his wife, who was a woman of education and refinement.

The end of the fortnight did not bring him back; two months passed, and still there came no tidings of the explorers. Then one evening Dick Cranston returned alone. They had reached the bank of a stream called Mingo Creek, Cranston related, when a thunderstorm came on. They hobbled their horses out, and sheltered in the hollow of a tree, where they placed their saddles and bags. It rained nearly all night, and they slept together among the baggage. In the morning it was found that the horses had crossed the creek, which was then running armpit deep. The blacks refused to go into it, saying that it was a bunyip water. Leaving Cranston making a damper, Warri went across himself; and that was the last that was seen of him.

Heavy rain set in, and it continued all day. The creek rose a banker, and Cranston was unable to cross or track the horse hunter. He searched for days along the bank, living on what he could catch in the bush; for the bags had been plundered during an unsuccessful hunt after the horses. The latter were afterwards picked up, having made back as far as they could get to their old haunts; but no trace could be discovered of the two blacks, whom Cranston said had deserted him by the flooded creek.

After his return to Kanillabar, Cranston managed the squattage for Mrs. Warri. His management very quickly involved her in financial difficulties. She got tired of it all, and at last sold out to Captain Byrne, who had financed her for some time, and retired to the quietude of Morella. At the same time Dick Cranston, to the surprise of everybody, bought the flourishing hotel business in Wonnaroo.

That bit of family history remained ever fresh in the boy's mind; never did he see the sun go down but he saw in fancy a lost white man wandering with the blacks. That far western bush that was still "No Man's Land," or the Never Never, as they termed it in Wonnaroo, called to him in his waking moments, beckoned him in his dreams. In leisure hours he had often loitered at Cranston's hotel, the "Bushman's Rest," where squatters, stockmen and teamsters gathered when in town. He listened to their quaint yarns with absorbing ears, and heard many a tale of adventure that influenced his young mind. He knew that it was a rough life in the lonely haunts of those men; but that had no weight with him. Riding after cows on the old pony, and watching the drovers crossing below Morella, had given him a strong taste for the work. But he had hopes of being something more than a stockman. In one's teenhood life is full of hopes and promises.

"Perhaps, some day, I'll win back what we've lost," he remarked after a meditative silence.

"With an extra big slice of luck," said the more practical Keira. "You don't know how far out of reach those grapes are. Still I'm glad you're ambitious. It's good to aim always at something higher. But you don't' mean to go outback?"

"Yes, I do." He spoke as one whose mind was inexorably set.

"What about your studies?"

"My next course is bullocks and brumbies," Sid declared."

Keira laughed softly. "I'm afraid you're in for a hot lecture," she said. "Mother's been planning your career since you were born. She doesn't know she's got a rebel."

"It's for her sake—and yours—I'm going."

"When?"

"Day after to-morrow."

Keira looked at him sideways with lifted brows.

"What a hurry we're in all at once!" she exclaimed, still treating the matter lightly. Then a thought struck her. "Who's going with you?"

"Nobody."

"Who's been talking to you about it"

"Nobody," he answered again.

"Well, what put the madcap idea into your head?" asked Keira.

"What's madcap about it?" Sid demanded. "I've never thought of doing anything else," he continued. "I'm not going to be shut up in an office, anyway."

"If mother objects, you won't leave by the window, will you?"

"She won't object if you have a talk with her. You can talk her over if you like."

Keira gathered up her work and rose to her feet.

"Will you tell her after tea?" he insisted.

"All right," said Keira. "But look out for squalls."

After tea Mrs. Joe Steel, the storekeeper's wife, came in, and in five minutes, contrary to Sid's wishes, she knew all about his arrangements. But she helped to soften the mother's disappointment, and to convince her that the open air life, whatever he followed, was better for the boy than being cooped up in a stuffy office.

They talked the matter over for two hours, and while they talked Sid mingled with the town folk, most of whom for nine months in the year could be found out of doors. In midsummer the closer atmosphere of the rooms urged them forth, but they went out just the same when it was necessary to wear great coats, and mufflers round their necks.

There is a glamour, an appealing force, an impelling charm, in the brooding Australian night that attracts alike the old bachelor from his little slab hut, the staid married folk, the courting couples and romping youngsters from cot and mansion. Even the coldest winter months rarely drive the latter to seek the shelter of the home roof. They will play merrily in the open air as long as that license is given them, and it is "mother" who has to hunt them in. That is one of the features of Australian life—the mothers calling their bairns to roost from street and lawn, from park and paddock. And they know that the field grows nightly wider and more enticing, and proportionately the traditional hearth becomes cheerless; that the life is sweet and bracing, but, it fosters no love for home.

When schooldays are over and the time of parting comes, the boy mounts his horse, or slings the swag across his shoulder, and departs with a light good-bye and a promise to write soon, which he often forgets, hundreds and thousands of miles away through lonely bush; and though the mother watches him go with tear-dimmed eyes, he holds his head erect and whistles cheerily down the track. He leaves his sweetheart in the same way—though with a pain unguessed—for aching months, and even years, till some drover's mob brings him back to her neighbourhood.

It is the outdoor life, the outdoor training in childhood, that makes the Australian a lightsome rover. He can lay him down to sleep where night finds him, and sleep comfortably with only the grassy earth for mattress and the sky for canopy. When a covering is necessary, a tent answers the purpose. To the genial climatic conditions, and the wide sweet forests, must be added the heritage of pioneers, in whom the wanderlust was strong, and whose lives were spent in lonesome wilds. Naturally the happy Southland has a big floating population to whom the warm earth is bed, the blue sky is roof, and Australia is home; naturally Sid, whose father was a hard-riding squatter of the early School, thought lightly of leaving the comforts of Morella and the few simple pleasures of Wonnaroo for the ruggedness of Fartherout.