Читать книгу The Last Lemurian: A Westralian Romance - G. Firth Scott - Страница 3

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We had finished our meal, and were lolling back on our blankets, smoking and 'swapping yarns,' before I had an opportunity to have a good square look at my companion.

He was a fine-built man, topping six feet, and with a frame loosely hung and wiry, after the fashion that comes to any one who has spent many years in the hot air of the Australian bush and engaged in the toil incidental to a life of pastoral pursuits. His full beard, like his hair, was tinged with grey, and I judged him to be well over forty-five years of age. His nose was straight and slender, but the most remarkable feature of the face was the eyes. They were of that peculiar blue which goes to a grey in a strong light, or when their owner yields himself to the seductions of a dolce far niente, and allows his mind to wander unchecked in half-dreamy reveries, but which becomes dark and flashing when he is aroused in temper or uses his mental powers vigorously.

I was studying him closely, so closely, indeed, that I had forgotten for the moment what I was doing, when he interrupted me with the word "Satisfied?"

The remark nonplussed me for a moment, and before I could find words for an answer he went on with a smile:

"You're quite right, my lad; always size up a man when you have the chance, though for my own part I prefer to do it directly I meet him. I took your measure before you got off your horse."

"Well, I was a bit struck," I began.

"Yes, I know," he interrupted. "But I was going to say something more. I took your measure, and, if I am not mistaken—and it isn't often that I am—you are just the sort that I want. I suppose you wouldn't mind a bit of rough mining, would you?"

"I have half made up my mind to go and have a look round Coolgardie," I answered. "They say there's a good show down that way for any one who gets in ahead of the syndicators."

"Maybe there is, but I don't think much of that part myself. I've been over the country, and—well, I may be wrong, but I reckon there's going to be a lot of money dropped there, if people don't mind and watch it. That isn't my lay, though. I'm after a bigger deal, I take it, and if you care to chip in, why, I want a mate, and for my part I'm on to take on with you."

"But what's the swindle?" I asked.

"Yes, I reckoned you were going to ask that; it's in your face and I'm glad it is. I like a man to look before he leaps."

He leaned forward to knock the ashes out of his pipe.

"Just let me charge up again and I'll tell you the yarn, and then you can say whether you're on or not, and we can go into details."

I waited while he cut up his tobacco, and, filling his pipe, lit it with a glowing ember. He lay back with his arms behind his head, and his legs stretched out in front of him and commenced his story, while I listened without interrupting him.

"I said I had been over the Coolgardie country," he began. "Well, so I was about a year ago, but I found nothing more than colour here and there, though I'm free to own I did not stay long. I was making for a range that I thought looked much more likely country, when I fell in with a mob of blacks. I've picked up a bit of their jabber in different parts, and although every tribe has its own version of a language, I was able to get along fairly well with them. My horses were a bit knocked up, and as they told me there was good feed at the place they were going to, I thought I might as well go that way too. There was good feed at their camping ground, and I gave the horses a fortnight's spell at it, and they wanted it, I can tell you, for Westralia is rats of a place to travel in generally."

"There was a rum old chap with the tribe, and he was particularly scared of me. I bailed him up one day and asked him what was wrong. He wouldn't speak for a time, but at last I got it out of him. It was this way. Once, a long time ago, when he was little more than a piccaninny, he had been away to the north-east from where we were camped, on some black fellow's trip or other. The party he was with had struck a desert, and, if such a thing can happen to a black, had got bushed. Anyway they wandered and wandered till they were nearly all dead, and only my old boy and two others were left, when they saw, away on the horizon, the blue shade of a range. They made for it with all the life that was left in them, and here comes the curious part of the yarn. When they got there they hunted around for water, which he said they had not tasted for a week, but I did not swallow that fairy tale. They found it, however, and were sleeping off the effects of their too copious libations—I have heard it said that men who are nearly dead with thirst get fairly groggy when they do reach water and drink their fill—when they were surprised by another tribe and carried off; where to, do you think?"

"Give it up," I said.

"Well, you see how tanned I am; I could as soon pass for a yellow as a white man, but the old boy said my colour only suggested that of the creature before whom they were taken. She was a yellow woman, as yellow as a nugget of gold, he said, and as big—oh! I was only a baby compared to her."

He laughed as he stretched out his arms and rolled over on to his side.

"The old chap didn't have a happy time of it and took the first opportunity to clear. He didn't wait for his mates, who, he maintained, were eaten alive by this yellow female. He somehow got away, and, failing to find his way home, joined the first tribe of blacks he fell in with after his escape, and had been with them ever since. But the part of the yarn that touched me the most was that, in the range, he said he saw whole lumps of gold. I showed him one of my specimens I had picked up, to help him out in his description of the lady's colour, and he said there were whole boulders of that stuff lying about in the ranges. I drew all the information I could out of the old man and located whereabouts in the Never Never country of Westralia that range ought to be, and now I'm on my way there to look for it; and you are too, if you care to join me. Do you feel that way?"

"But what about the tribe? Were they yellow too?" I asked, in order to gain time before answering his question.

"Oh, I forgot about that. They were all little chaps, he told me, dried up and shrivelled like smoke-cured mummies; but there was a big crowd of them if what he said was true, though I reckon he saw double generally, both as regards their number and the size of the woman. Anyhow, there may be something in the gold part of it, and if there is, it is worth having a shot at, don't you think?"

"It's a rough trip," I said.

"That's so," he answered. "But so it is to Coolgardie, especially from this side. It's bad enough from the other. But you take time before you make up your mind. I've a saddle horse and another for the pack. I'm going to finish my stores at Wyunga, and, if you care to join me, we can make a double purchase."

"I was going to Wyunga to fit out for my trip and look for a mate," I said.

He smoked on in silence, and I turned his proposal over in my mind. It sounded about as far away from the possibilities of life as it well could, and yet I was taken with it. Still more was I taken with the man, as he lay on the other side of the fire with his eyes fixed on me. He looked like a man who had seen more of life than the ordinary run; one who had been in the rough and tumble of Australian bush life, and had come through it all with strengthened nerves and toughened sinews. A man who would make an excellent mate in such a trip as that which he had suggested; for one needs a varied experience and a fund of resource to successfully grapple the difficulties of a journey through unknown country. My own experience was limited to the everyday routine of station life, and the most I had done in the way of travelling was to bring a few mobs of cattle some hundreds of miles from outlying stations to the southern markets when I was droving. But there is a great difference between following along well-known stock routes, and finding one's way through country where there is not even a fence to guide one; and the trip I had set myself across to Westralia was only possible to me if I picked up a suitable mate on the way. Well, here was the mate; and for the rest, gold was my present desire, and there was just as much chance of finding it in this blackfellow's range as there was in Coolgardie; for when all is said and done, it is chance that leads to success or failure in prospecting. Of course it was risky, but when one has had a taste of the ups and downs of Australian life, risk is not considered very carefully in a new venture. If it turns out well there is no necessity to bother, and if it fails one can always take up something else.

"I'm on. I'll join you and see how much there is in this blackfellow's yarn of the yellow woman and the golden range," I exclaimed.

He rose and stretched out his hand, and as I took it his fingers closed round mine and I felt as if I were being filled with some strange, warm fluid, which streamed from his fingers into my hand, up my arm, and through my entire frame. His eyes were still fixed upon mine, and his voice seemed to come from a long way off, and to sink like molten metal into my brain as I heard him say: "It's a bargain. Whether it's death or whether it's wealth, we're mates in it to the end."

And I answered him in his own words: "Whether it's death or whether it's wealth, we're mates in it to the end."

As I lay rolled up in my blankets that night I tried to think the matter over carefully and quietly; but I could not get away from a feeling of lively enthusiasm, which had come to me from the moment we had exchanged pledges. I tried hard to convince myself that the trip was so absolutely hair-brained as to be quite outside the province of ordinary speculation, and yet I was smiling to myself with a sense of elation at the great good fortune which had come to me. I was not one who had a very high opinion of the blacks as a rule; not that I had had very much experience of them on which to base any opinion, but in that I was only the same as almost all other bushmen. It was an accepted fact that the blacks were the champion liars of creation, and consequently I attached very little importance to the story I had heard of the wonderful and mysterious range. Rather was I fascinated with the man who had told it to me—my new mate, whose name I did not even know.

One of my first acts after waking was to try and remedy the defect, which in a more civilised community could hardly have occurred.

"My name's Dick Halwood," I said to my mate.

"I'm glad to hear it," he answered with a smile.

"And yours?" I inquired, as he did not seem to be going to mention it.

"Oh, I'm known generally as the Yellow Hatter," he said.

"Yes, but—" I began.

"Don't you know, my lad," he said, interrupting me, "that in bush parlance 'hatter' means a man who lives by himself, without a mate and without a name except what he chooses to give? Well, I'm a hatter, and have been these twenty years, and shall be till I strike it rich and can—well, never mind the rest. We're mates now, unless you care to go back on your word of last night."

For a moment I felt inclined to say that I would; but then some of the enthusiasm of the night before returned to me, and I exclaimed, "That's good enough for me."

And so he remained the Hatter to me until we had seen our little drama played out to the finish.