Читать книгу The Squatter King - A Romance of Bush Life - Edward S Sorenson - Страница 4

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As the mist was rising like wreaths of smoke from the grassy flats Sid carried his swag through Wonnaroo and set out on the road to Kanillabar. On the bridge that spanned Birro Creek he paused to take a last look at the yet sleeping houses, and at the old home, which he could just discern through the trees in the distance. Then he crossed over, and as he faced westward the feeling came over him that he had entered a new world—a world where he must think and act for himself.

He had half a crown in his pocket. He had discovered a pound note there while dressing that morning, and had secretly replaced it in his mother's purse. In vain too, they had urged him to take the pony. He thought of Keira tramping after the cows, and of the sulky in which they sometimes enjoyed a drive, and decided against it. He could easily have borrowed a horse and saddle had he wished, but he preferred to be independent. He had often heard his mother say: "I hate borrowing, and I hate lending;" and he had known her, many and many a time, to do without things that she badly wanted rather than borrow from her neighbours.

He was strong and hardy; he had been wood and water joey, gardener and general rouseabout at Morella since he was twelve years old, and one of his pleasures had been to tramp through miles of scrub and forest with a gun; so carrying the swag was no more irksome to him than it was to the seasoned battler. He was not proud of his position, neither was he ashamed of it; his thoughts were of the future when he was confident of winning to something that would be a salve to the wounded family pride.

He had not covered many miles when he was overtaken by Jake Gowrie, the mailman, who was starting out on his weekly trip to the backblock squattages. To people down east the township of Wonnaroo was far away in the backblocks, but to Jake, who was used to wide spaces, the term meant the outermost fringe of civilisation.

Jake was a tall, slim, wiry-looking man, who sat in his saddle with a slight stoop, and gazed into distances with half-closed eyes. His sunbrowned face was clean shaven, slightly wrinkled, and bore an expression suggestive of happy thoughts. Dressed in strong tweeds made for riding, Crimean shirt and plaited green hide belt, with a knitted pale-blue necktie, loose open grey coat, soft brown felt hat, and light laced boots—such was Jake Gowrie.

"Hulloa!" he said as he drew alongside. "I though I knew the back of you, but the bluey puzzled me. You're startin' on the wallaby pretty young, Sid."

"As well wear out that way as rust out," was Sid's rejoinder.

"Couldn't you raise a horse?"

"We've only got one, and thought he might be wanted at home," Sid answered.

"I could 'ave lent you one if you'd a told me," said Jake. "Where are you bound for?"

"Kanillabar."

"Hm!" said Jake, leaning his hands on the pummel of his saddle. "Ninety-four miles from the sandhill. What do you reckon to do it in?"

"About four days and a half."

"Lemme see! That's twenty-two mile! Good goin' this weather. I used to reckon twenty mile a day a fair average when I was tourin' with Matilda. I remember when I first set out. 'Twas down country, where there's more people to the hundred mile than you find out here. Instead o' campin' where sundown found me the first day, I went on till I came to a house. 'Twas the capital of a small sheep run—Solomon Klinker, sole proprietor, I informed the gentleman, as an excuse for disturbin' his dogs—he 'ad seven of 'em, all barkin' at once—that I was lookin' for a job. 'Lookin' purty late, ain't you?' he says, short an' grumpy. I explained that my knowledge of the local geography was a bit hazy, an' I'd been tryin' to fetch up at a lagoon I'd been misdirected to.

" 'Been meditatin' about supper, haven't you?' he snaps out. I admitted it wouldn't be a bad spec, considerin' the circs. 'Had a nap below the sliprails, didn't you?' he says, in the same gruff manner. 'No, I didn't,' I says. 'Why do you ask me that?' 'Thought you might 'ave overslept your self,' he says. 'You're a bit later than the usual sundowner.' With that he turned sharp round an' walked inside.

"For a few minutes there was a great clatter of table things, an' then he came to th' door again. I was sittin' on the step, havin' a rest. 'Why th' jumpin' fantods don't you come in!' he roared at me. 'Am I layin' the spiflicated table for meself?' I stepped in, an' that old chap treated me like as if I was his own son come back from a shipwreck. He spun yarns till 3 o'clock in the morning, an' he roused me up for breakfast at 6 o'clock a.m. sharp; an' that day I couldn't tour for shucks. I did only two mile. He was too darned hospitable altogether, was old Solomon Klinker."

He pulled out a stick of black twist as he finished speaking, and bit off a lump.

"Well," he said then, tucking the quid into his check, "I must get a bit farther. You'll be settled down to it when I see you again," he added, starting off. "So long, boy."

"Boy" made his camp-fire at a scrubby gully, a little more than twenty miles from Wonnaroo, and at a spot that had been the scene of a family picnic one merry Christmas time.

The sun was a soft red disc, poised on a hazy hilltop, as he took his towel and soap and went down to a big waterhole for a bath. When he returned with a billy of water he discovered that his rations and tucker had disappeared. There was no one in sight, but across a little patch of sand were the huge imprints of a naked foot.

"A thieving blackfellow!" he ejaculated. "By Christopher! that's hard luck."

It was no use boiling the billy; he had no tea. Neither had he a bite to eat. He had been in good spirits all day, but as the night shut down he felt as lonely and wretched as an outcast. Eighty-eight miles yet to go on an empty stomach was not an encouraging proposition. Still he had no thought of turning back.

Suddenly he brightened. 'Possums were playing about the grass and running up and down the tree-trunks. For, a minute or two he considered how he might catch one. Then he went to the brush on the gully bank, and, striking matches, searched about until he found a small, tough tree, with a stem the thickness of his finger, that would bend double without breaking. Cutting off a piece a couple of feet long, he tied one end of a bootlace to the top point of it, making the other end into a running loop, which he stiffened by carefully twisting it round a thin stalk of grass. Then with a jack-knife he cut a pole about ten feet long, to which he fastened the pliant stick with his other bootlace, so that, when he presently leaned it against a 'possum tree, the noose hung directly over the pole a little less than midway down. Then he returned to his fire and watched.

By-and-bye a 'possum descended, and taking the pole as the easier course to the ground, was at once caught by the noose, and swung underneath.

An hour later Sid took the blackened carcase from the coals, and with that and a pannikin of cold water he made a hearty meal.

He still had some of it left after an early breakfast, and wrapping it up for lunch, resumed his journey in good heart.

The day was hot, but thick timber checkered the winding track with cooling shade. Great grey kangaroos bounded away from either side, and stopping a short distance off gazed after the traveller. Long strips of curled bark hung down from the coolabahs, beating a tattoo on the trunk to every puff of wind. Crows called familiarly overhead, the squatter pigeons gave sweet greeting from the grass, and anon corollas rose from the ground and flew over him in shrieking flocks.

He was walking along briskly, spite of heat and rugged roads, when suddenly he heard a girl's voice singing behind a clump of bushes. He paused to listen. "Over the hills and far away" was the burden of her song.

"That's my destination, as far as I know it," thought Sid. "Over the hills and far away!"

As he turned off the road to investigate, the singer emerged from behind the clump. She was a little, bare-legged girl, driving a tandem team of goats attached to a box cart, which she had loaded with wood. Seeing the stranger, she whipped up Billy and Whiskers, and rattled merrily homeward.

Half a mile ahead was a selector's hut, surrounded by a dog-legged fence, through which the little wood-carter disappeared before he reached it.

A woman came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron, and surveyed him curiously as he approached. She was a natty, motherly-looking woman, with a kindly twinkle in her brown eyes.

"Is this the right road to Kanillabar?" Sid inquired.

"Yes, my boy; keep the mailman's track all the way to the Outcamp; then you keep straight ahead," the woman answered, waving her hand in the direction he was going. "You can't miss it, providin' you don't take the road to Goondi, which turns off to the right; or the road to Mooban, which turns off to the left."

"I was afraid I was wrong," he told her. "I didn't know there were any places on the way."

"Oh, this is Tibbinong," she smilingly informed him. "I don't suppose you'll find it on the map yet, as we've only settled here lately. Bill had to have some place for his bullocks, an' this was convenient for him, an' handy to town for me. Are you going to work at the station?"

"I don't know yet. I'm going out on spec."

"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, measuring him from head to feet with a compassionate glance.

"Are there any more places on the road?" Sid asked quickly.

"Goondi Outcamp, that's all."

"Anybody living there?"

"Only blacks. Kanillabar and Mooban keep horses there to change with when travellin' to an' fro. Kanillabar is your next. An' if you don't get a job there I don't know how you'll get on, I'm sure. You're heading out for the Never-Never country, my boy. If you're wise, you'll go back the other way."

"No," he said firmly, "I'm going right on."

"That's the spirit, old man!" said a deeper voice from the table inside. "Come an' have some dinner."

The speaker was a robust, black-bearded man in faded blue dungarees and striped shirt. He was a teamster, who carried stores to the far-western homesteads.

"Sit' in, old man," he said genially, and proceeded to carve a hot joint of salt meat. The little singer, who had been peeping round the doorpost, now sat demurely at the bottom end of the long table.

"If you were round this way in a couple of months' time," his wife remarked, as she put down another cup and saucer, "Bill might be able to give you a job with the team. He's spellin' his bullocks now, but he'll be going on the road again about then."

"I hope to have a cheque earned by that time," Sid returned, "if I haven't, I'll be a long way from here."

"Oh, he'll get on all right," said Bill, chuckling confidently. "I'll bet it'll take more than the kick of a mosquito to knock him out, anyway."

When the meal was over, Bill—whose other name was Bunty — gave him further directions as to the road; then, saying that he had to hunt up some bullocks, went off across the paddock with a saddle on his head and bridle in his hand.

Sid was about to pick up his swag when Mrs. Bunty remarked:

"You don't seem to be overloaded with rations, son."

"They're not very heavy," Sid admitted.

"Have you any?"

"N-no!"

"Give me your bags," she said incisively. "The idea of going on a track like that with nothing to eat—"

"I've got no bags—either," Sid reluctantly informed her.

"Well, I declare—here, you sit down there," she commanded, indicating a seat on the verandah. "The spell won't do you any harm."

She bustled inside, and soon he heard the sewing-machine going at a great rate. In half an hour she returned with four little bags well filled. Sid proffered the half-crown in payment, but she waved it away indignantly.

"You keep that in your pocket; you'll want it soon enough, maybe," she told him sympathetically. "We're not that hard up that we're got to take money for a bit of tucker."

She helped him to adjust his load, then shook hands with him and wished him luck. At nightfall he found himself at the side of a reedy waterhole. The sudden loud splashing of ducks swooping down into the water after dark, and the lonesome howls of dingoes in the surrounding bush, impressed that half-way camp in his memory. Lying beside his little blaze, his head pillowed on his boots and spare clothes, he gazed up at the brilliance of stars as drovers, do, unconsciously beginning that education of the bushman that serves as guide and timekeeper by night in strange and trackless regions.