Читать книгу We of the Never-Never - Jeannie Gunn - Страница 7

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From sun-up to sun-down on Tuesday, the train glided quietly forward on its way towards the Never-Never; and from sun-up to sun-down the Măluka and I experienced the kindly consideration that it always shows to travellers: it boiled a billy for us at its furnace; loitered through the pleasantest valleys; smiled indulgently, and slackened speed whenever we made merry with blacks, by pelting them with chunks of water-melon; and generally waited on us hand and foot, the Man-in-Charge pointing out the beauty spots and places of interest, and making tea for us at frequent intervals.

It was a delightful train—just a simple-hearted, chivalrous, weather-beaten old bush-whacker, at the service of the entire Territory. “There’s nothing the least bit officious or standoffish about it,” I was saying, when the Man-in-Charge came in with the first billy of tea.

“Of course not!” he said, unhooking cups from various crooked-up fingers. “It’s a Territorian, you see.”

“And had all the false veneer of civilisation peeled off long ago,” the Măluka said, adding, with a sly look at my discarded gloves and gossamer, “It’s wonderful how quietly the Territory does its work.”

The Man-in-Charge smiled openly as he poured out the tea, proving thereby his kinship with all other Territorians; and as the train came to a standstill, swung off and slipped some letters into a box nailed to an old tree-trunk.

At the far end of the train, away from the engine, the passengers’ car had been placed, and as in front of it a long, long line of low-stacked sinuous trucks slipped along in the rear of the engine, all was open view before us; and all day long, as the engine trudged onwards—hands in pockets, so to speak, and whistling merrily as it trudged—I stood beside the Măluka on the little platform in front of the passengers’ car, drinking in my first deep, intoxicating draught of the glories of the tropical bush.

There were no fences to shut us in; and as the train zig-zagged through jungle and forest and river-valley—stopping now and then to drink deeply at magnificent rivers ablaze with water-lilies—it almost seemed as though it were some kindly Mammoth creature, wandering at will through the bush.

Here and there, kangaroos and other wild creatures of the bush hopped out of our way, and sitting up, looked curiously after us; again and again little groups of blacks hailed us, and scrambled after water-melon and tobacco, with shouts of delight, and, invariably, on nearing the tiny settlements along the railway, we drove before us white fleeing flocks of goats.

At every settlement we stopped and passed the time of day and, giving out mail-bags, moved on again into the forest. Now and again, stockmen rode out of the timber and received mail-bags, and once a great burly bushman, a staunch old friend of the Măluka’s, boarded the train, and greeted him with a hearty hand-shake.

“Hullo! old chap!” he called in welcome, as he mounted the steps of the little platform, “I’ve come to inspect your latest investment”; but catching sight of the “latest investment” he broke into a deafening roar.

“Good Lord!” he shouted, looking down upon me from his great height, “is that all there is of her? They’re expecting one of the prize-fighting variety down there,” and he jerked his head towards the Never-Never. Then he congratulated the Măluka on the size of his missus.

“Gimme the little ’uns,” he said, nearly wringing my hand off in his approval. “You can’t beat ’em for pluck. My missus is one of ’em, and she went bush with me when I’d nothing but a skeeto net and a quart-pot to share with her.” Then, slapping the Măluka vigorously on the back, he told him he’d got some sense left. “You can’t beat the little ’uns,” he declared. “They’re just the very thing.”

The Măluka agreed with him, and after some comical quizzing, they decided, to their own complete satisfaction, that although the bushman’s “missus” was the “littlest of all little ’uns, straight up and down,” the Măluka’s “knocked spots off her sideways.”

But although the Territory train does not need to bend its neck to the galling yoke of a minute time-table, yet, like all bush-whackers, it prefers to strike its supper camp before night-fall, and after allowing us a good ten minutes’ chat, it blew a deferential “Ahem” from its engine, as a hint that it would like to be “getting along.” The bushman took the hint, and after a hearty “Good luck, missus!” and a “chin, chin, old man,” left us, with assurances that “her size ’ud do the trick.”

Until sundown we jogged quietly on, meandering through further pleasant places and meetings; drinking tea and chatting with the Man-in-Charge between whiles, extracting a maximum of pleasure from a minimum rate of speed: for travelling in the Territory has not yet passed that ideal stage where the travelling itself—the actual going—is all pleasantness.

As we approached Pine Creek I confided to the men-folk that I was feeling a little nervous. “Supposing that telegraphing bush-whacker decides to shoot me off-hand on my arrival,” I said; and the Man-in-Charge said amiably: “It’ll be brought in as justifiable homicide; that’s all.” Then reconnoitring the enemy from the platform, he “feared” we were “about to be boycotted.”

There certainly were very few men on the station, and the Man-in-Charge recognising one of them as the landlord of the Playford, assured us there was nothing to fear from that quarter. “You see, you represent business to him,” he explained.

Every one but the landlord seemed to have urgent business in the office or at the far end of the platform, but it was quickly evident that there was nothing to fear from him; for, finding himself left alone to do the honours of the Creek, he greeted us with an amused: “She doesn’t look up to sample sent by telegram”; and I felt every meeting would be, at least, unconventional. Then we heard that as Mac had “only just arrived from the Katherine, he couldn’t leave his horses until they were fixed up”; but the landlord’s eyes having wandered back to the “Goer,” he winked deliberately at the Măluka before inviting us to “step across to the Pub.”

The Pub seemed utterly deserted, and with another wink the landlord explained the silence by saying that “a cyclone of some sort” had swept most of his “regulars” away; and then he went shouting through the echoing passages for a “boy” to “fetch along tea.”

Before the tea appeared, an angry Scotch voice crept to us through thin partitions, saying: “It’s not a fit place for a woman, and, besides, nobody wants her!” And in a little while we heard the same voice inquiring for “the Boss.”

“The telegraphing bush-whacker,” I said, and invited the Măluka to come and see me defy him. But when I found myself face to face with over six feet of brawny quizzing, wrathful-looking Scotchman, all my courage slipped away, and edging closer to the Măluka, I held out my hand to the bushman, murmuring lamely: “How do you do?”

Instantly a change came over the rugged, bearded face. At the sight of the “Goer” reduced to a meek five feet, all the wrath died out of it, and with twitching lips and twinkling eyes Mac answered mechanically, “Quite well thank you,” and then coughed in embarrassment.

That was all: no fierce blocking, no defying. And with the cough, the absurdity of the whole affair, striking us simultaneously, left us grinning like a trio of Cheshire cats.

It was a most eloquent grinning, making all spoken apology or explanation unnecessary; and by the time it had faded away we thoroughly understood each other, being drawn together by a mutual love of the ridiculous. Only a mutual love of the ridiculous, yet not so slender a basis for a lifelong friendship as appears, and by no means an uncommon one “out bush.”

“Does the station pay for the telegrams, or the loser?” the landlord asked in an aside, as we went in to supper and after supper the preparations began for the morrow’s start.

The Sanguine Scot, anxious to make amends for the telegrams, was full of suggestions for smoothing out the difficulties of the road. Like many men of his type, whatever he did he did it with all his heart and soul—hating, loving, avenging, or forgiving with equal energy; and he now applied himself to helping the Măluka “make things easy for her,” as zealously as he had striven to “block her somehow.”

Sorting out pack-bags, he put one aside, with a “We’ll have to spare that for her duds. It won’t do for her to be short. She’ll have enough to put up with, without that.” But when I thanked him, and said I could manage nicely with only one, as I would not need much on the road, he and the Măluka sat down and stared at each other in dismay. “That’s for everything you’ll need till the waggons come,” they explained; “your road kit goes in your swag.”

The waggons went “inside” once a year—“after the Wet,” and would arrive at the homestead early in June. As it was then only the middle of January, I too sat down, and stared in dismay from the solitary pack-bag to the great, heaped-up pile that had been sorted out as indispensable. “You’ll have to cull your herd a bit, that’s all,” Mac said; and needlework was pointed out as a luxury. Then books were “cut out,” after that the house linen was looked to, and as I hesitated over the number of pillow-cases we could manage with, Mac cried triumphantly: “You won’t need these anyway, for there’s no pillows.”

The Măluka thought he had prepared me for everything in the way of roughness; but in a flash we knew that I had yet to learn what a bushman means by rough.

As the pillow-cases fell to the ground, Mac was at a loss to account for my consternation. “What’s gone wrong?” he exclaimed in concern. Mac was often an unconscious humorist.

But the Măluka came with his ever-ready sympathy. “Poor little coon,” he said gently, “there’s little else but chivalry and a bite of tucker for a woman out bush.”

Then a light broke in on Mac. “Is it only the pillows?” he said. “I thought something had gone wrong.” Then his eyes began to twinkle. “There’s stacks of pillows in Darwin,” he said meaningly.

It was exactly the moral fillip needed, and in another minute we were cheerfully “culling our herd” again.

Exposed to Mac’s scorn, the simplest comforts became foolish luxuries. “A couple of changes of everything is stacks,” he said encouragingly, clearing a space for packing. “There’s heaps of soap and water at the station, and things dry here before you can waltz round twice.”

Hopefulness is always infectious, and before Mac’s cheery optimism the pile of necessities grew rapidly smaller. Indeed, with such visions of soap and water and waltzing washerwomen, a couple of changes of everything appeared absurd luxury. But even optimism can have disadvantages; for in our enthusiasm we forgot that a couple of cambric blouses, a cotton dress or two, and a change of skirts, are hardly equal to the strain of nearly five months constant wear and washing.

The pillow-cases went in, however. Mac settled that difficulty by saying that “all hands could be put on to pluck birds. The place is stiff with ’em,” he explained, showing what a simple matter it would be, after all. The Măluka turning out two cushions, a large and a smaller one, simplified matters even more. “A bird in the hand you know,” he said, finding room for them in the swag.

Before all the arrangements were completed, others of the Creek had begun to thaw, and were “lending a hand,” here and there. The question of horses coming up, I confided in the helpers, that I was relieved to hear that the Telegraph had sent a quiet horse. “I am really afraid of buck-jumpers, you know,” I said, and the Creek looking sideways at Mac, he became incoherent.

“Oh, look here!” he spluttered, “I say! Oh, look here! It really was too bad!” Then, after an awkward pause, he blurted out, “I don’t know what you’ll think, but the brute strayed first camp, and—he’s lost, saddle and all.”

The Măluka shot him a swift, questioning glance; but poor Mac looked so unhappy that we assured him “we’d manage somehow.” Perhaps we could tame one of the flash buck-jumpers, the Măluka suggested. But Mac said it “wouldn’t be as bad as that,” and, making full confession, placed old Roper at our service.

By morning, however, a magnificent chestnut “Flash,” well-broken into the side-saddle, had been conjured up from somewhere by the Creek. But two of the pack-horses had strayed, and by the time they were found the morning had slipped away, and it was too late to start until after dinner. Then after dinner a terrific thunderstorm broke over the settlement, and as the rain fell in torrents, Mac thought it looked “like a case of to-morrow all right.”

Naturally I felt impatient at the delay, but was told by the Creek that “there was no hurry!” “To-morrow’s still untouched,” Mac explained. “This is the Land of Plenty of Time; Plenty of Time and Wait a While. You’ll be doing a bit of waiting before you’ve done with it.”

“If this rain goes on, she’ll be doing a bit of waiting at the Fergusson; unless she learns the horse’s-tail trick,” the Creek put in. On inquiry, it proved that the “horse’s-tail trick” meant swimming a horse through the flood, and hanging on to its tail until it fought a way across; and I felt I would prefer “waiting a bit.”

The rain did go on, and, roaring over the roof, made conversation difficult. The bushmen called it a “bit of a storm”; but every square inch of the heavens seemed occupied by lightning and thunder-bolts.

“Nothing to what we can do sometimes,” every one agreed. “We do things in style up here—often run half-a-dozen storms at once. You see, when you are weather-bound, you might as well have something worth looking at.”

The storm lasted nearly three hours, and when it cleared Mac went over to the Telegraph, where some confidential chatting must have taken place, for when he returned he told us that the Dandy was starting out for the homestead next day to “fix things up a bit.” The Head Stockman however, waited back for orders.

The morning dawned bright and clear, and Mac advised “making a dash for the Fergusson.” “We might just get through before this rain comes down the valley,” he said.

The Creek was most enthusiastic with its help, bustling about with packbags and surcingles, and generally “mixing things.”

When the time came to say good-bye it showed signs of breaking down; but mastering its grief with a mightily audible effort, it wished us “good luck,” and stood watching as we rode out of the little settlement.

Every time we looked back it raised its hat, and as we rode at the head of our orderly little cavalcade of pack horses, with Jackeroo the black “boy” bringing up the rear, we flattered ourselves on the dignity of our departure. Mac called it “style,” and the Măluka was hoping that the Creek was properly impressed, when Flash, unexpectedly heading off for his late home, an exciting scrimmage ensued and the procession was broken into fragments.

The Creek flew to the rescue, and, when order was finally restored, the woman who had defied the Sanguine Scot and his telegrams, entered the forest that fringes the Never-Never, sitting meekly upon a led horse.