Читать книгу Short Stories Volume 1 - John Arthur Barry - Страница 9

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"BE jakers, I'm dhry," exclaimed Barney Brennan, as he sat on his log; "give me a dhrink, one of yez," he continued, to the three troopers who lounged near, "an' take these darbies off, if yez be Christians at all, at all."

One of the policemen brought a tin pot full of water, and Barney made a clumsy attempt to carry it to his mouth.

"Take the cuffs off him for a while," said the sergeant-in-charge; "there's no danger of his giving us the slip; he can't very well carry the lock-up away, and he's behaved himself decently so far."

Barney, a big, powerful Irishman, with a face showing more of fun than the fierceness he was generally accredited with, exclaimed, "Thrue for ye, sarjint dear, it is a heavyish lump; but if ye'll give me a taste o' baccy for the owld dhudeen here, I'll lift it for ye, big and all as it is!"

"Catch," said the sergeant, as he threw him a cake of negrohead.

Then Barry rose, and, as he did, there rattled off his knees a long, steel chain, slight, but very strong, one end of which was padlocked to its own part around his body, just over the hips, and the other similarly fastened to the heavy brigalow log upon which he had been sitting.

As he rose to his full height, it could be seen that the prisoner was a veritable son of Auak; and wonder ceased that such precaution should have been taken to secure the union leader—for such Barney was supposed to be.

The "big strike" was over; but some of its consequences remained to be dealt with. Barney was one of them. Inciting the hands at Piallah, leading the attack on Bilbee wool shed, kidnapping non-unionists at Curra Curra, was his record. And the authorities had, after a good deal of urging, consented to capture and put him where he would be out of mischief during the coming shearing. Not only was Barney a prominent unionist, but he was also an extreme socialist. "Everything in common share and share alike" was the doctrine he preached. But he was no loafer, and "rung" every shed he went into. Nor did he make any difference between union and "scab" sheds, signing either agreement without remark. In the former he kept the men up to the scratch and saw that they worked well and fairly; in the latter he used his coaxing tongue to such effect that the board was generally emptied after the first two or three days that Barney had been at work. It had happened thus at Piallah, where he and his escort were now camped on the downward journey, and Mr. Holmes, the owner, had been put to much loss and expense through Barney's exertions.

So far as his socialism went, he was consistent in that he spent his money as fast as he earned it—not in drink, but in loans to his fellows in camp and thus rarely had a penny to his name.

It may be easily imagined that the wire-pullers in town had made the uttermost use in their power of such splendid material for their purpose; and it was owing mainly to suggestions and hints direct from Unionists' head-quarters that the big, warm-hearted, impulsive follow found himself in his present uncomfortable position of scapegoat for all the evil doings in the district.

And, although not devoid of brains, it had not yot dawned upon him that he was a cat's paw and a fool. That knowledge was to come later, per medium partly for aimless wandering in broken country and a low diet; partly of *St. Helena.

Spitting on his hands, he stopped and, with an immense display of exertion succeeded in lifting the log about two feet off the ground, then let it drop again.

"Ah," said he, "I ain't what I used to be that's sartain. I seen the day I could walk away with a stick like that, fair an' aisy, an' no bones made. But it's too wake I do be getting on Gov'ment tucker, so it is."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the policeman, "Your eyes were bigger 'n your belly that time, Barney, anyhow," as the prisoner seating himself again, commenced to cut up a pipeful of tobacco.

The police camp was situated close to Piallah wool shed, where, just at present, a few men were shearing stragglers. With their prisoner the troopers had decided to spell a couple of days and rest their horses. Mr. Holmes, the owner of the station, was one of the staunchest P.U. men in the district. It was an open secret, too, that he was financially embarrassed, and when Barney enticed his men away just when his wool was coming off nicely, he felt as if he could have shot him, on sight, with the greatest pleasure. To add to his troubles, there was one of the periodical droughts brewing, and artesian boring had failed, the water supply at the shed and in the adjoining paddocks was very limited.

But the squatter was a just man, and made allowances for the workers in his cooler moments that he denied to their leaders. In happier times Brennan had, season after season, been the "ringer" of Piallah, and Mr. Holmes was unfeignedly sorry to see so good a man in his present plight, although he had suffered much at his hands.

"At smoke oh,' a few of the shearers sauntered up to the camp. Amongst them Barney at once recognised an old mate—a unionist, working "scab." The man, as he caught Barney's eye, drew back. But, striding the length of his chain, the latter tapped him on the shoulder and whispered fiercely—"Make a divarsion as soon as it gets dark, ye turncoat villain! Get up a scruffle, d'ye hear? I'm toired o' this. If ye don't do as I tell ye, I'll be even wid ye, if I don't come out again for tin year. Moind that now!"

That night, as the sergeant was thinking about putting the fetters on his prisoner, from the shearers' hut, some 300 yards away, came a sudden sound of oaths and blows. Then a voice yelled: "Police! Murder!"

"They're after killin' one another over yonder," remarked Barney appreciatively, whilst the troopers made off at a run towards the disturbance, which proved, after much hearing of both sides, a mere purposeless brawl.

When they returned both Barney and his log were missing. It was pitch dark, and all they could do was to tear aimlessly around, calling upon shadows to "stand!" and cutting clusters of scrub off with revolver bullets.

* * * * * *

Meanwhile, Barney, carrying his primitive gaol on his shoulder with the greatest ease, held steadily on until he came to broken mulga ridges. At the foot of these he rested awhile and then entered them, imbued with fresh strength every time he thought of St. Helena and the seven years' "hard" that probably awaited him there.

Several times he tried to smash the lock that held him to the log; but it was too dark, and all the stones he could find were too soft.

At daybreak, exhausted, he crept into a thick clump of prickly needle-bush, and, after many attempts, succeeded in divesting himself from his tiresome companion. The loose chain he wound round his waist. He was too tired to do anything more than have a smoke and go to sleep.

His idea was to reach the coast if possible, thence to, by sea, work his passage into one of the southern colonies. To travel overland with such a personality as his, and escape detection was, he knew, hopeless.

Towards evening he woke with a terrible feeling of emptiness, hardly assuaged by a rabbit that he managed presently to knock over.

Bunnies, fortunately, were plentiful and tame, although very poor. But Barney suffered from thirst severely as time went on. Also, the weather grew dull; and whilst he plodded on imagining he was making a fairly straight course, he was in reality travelling in a circle—wandering at random amongst the rough stony country.

Gradually his boots wore to pieces, his clothes to tatters; he grew a bristly beard, stained with rabbits' blood; and on the fourth day he wanted to reach any place where he could give himself up and at once go straight to prison, chains and slavery being preferable to his present plight.

But he could not get out. He seemed entangled in a horrible labyrinth of ridges, each an exact facsimile of the last one. And an everlasting thirst got hold upon him and tormented him and would not be vanished, chew he ever so many roots.

On the fifth day, a tall, gaunt skeleton, with staggering bones, and parched lips and sunken eyes, he caught sight of an emu doing something with its head under a rock.

Sneaking up, he jumped on its back with intent to strangle it. But the creature threw him off in its ecstasy of terror like a feather, and went away like the wind.

Groping underneath the rock in a sort of dull curiosity, his hand encountered water—water cool and fresh. A little cavity, no longer than an average bucket in depth, it was that held it, but was, as Barney presently discovered, a spring that ever kept its level. And how the lost man revelled in that water, found only through one of those lucky chances by which at times lives are saved and fortunes won!

By this, having crossed his own tracks twice on a patch of red ground, he knew that he was bushed. If the weather had been hot he had died two days ago; but it still kept dull and cool, and for a while Barney made the spring under the big boulder his headquarters, venturing out with care, and trembling lest he should not find it again. His matches were exhausted long ago, and all he longed for now was the sight of a trooper's uniform or the black face of one of their trackers.

The next day, bethinking himself of the chain around his waist, which began to chafe, he lay down, and after hours of awkward beating broke the lock, and flung it clattering on the pebbles. Shattered stones surrounded him as he finished, and in some of them dull red gleams caught his eye. He took one up listlessly, and examined it. Then he sprung to his feet with a hoarse yell—

"Gowld, by the Howly Mother!'

But then he remembered that he was not in a country where the precious metal had ever been dreamt of as existing, and his spirits fell as fast as they had risen.

"Anyways, it doesn't matther," he muttered. "If I don't be findin' somebody, or somebody don't be finding me, I'll be peggin' out as sure's a gun—gowld or no gowld."

That afternoon the sun came out, and he made as straight a line westward as he could, half resolved to turn to the spring no more. And he had not gone two miles before he saw galvanised iron gleaming over the tops of the scrub below him.

* * * * * *

As Mr. Holmes, of, Piallah, sat in his office that evening a shadow fell across the open door. Looking up, and seeing the wild grim scarecrow standing there, he pulled out a drawer and produced a revolver.

"Be aisy with the pistil, sorr," said Barney, "It's a fade I'm wantin', sure enough, but not a lead wan."

"Good God!" exclaimed the squatter, "It's Brennan! Where the devil have you been to? My heavens! what a mess the man's in. Been bushed, hey? And starved, hey?" Then, in a voice of thunder across the yard, "Cook, give this fellow some tucker; hot soup first, if you've got any." Then to Barney, "There's a bathroom over there; go and have a wash whilst I see if I can't get some clothes out of the store for you. Go on now, you villain! You've given yourself up, remember. I'm a magistrate, and I take you in charge in the Queen's name. If you try to get away you're a dead man. How did the police miss you, I wonder? They found your log, though. Ha! ha! ha!"

"Not a word, you big scamp, or I'll shoot you," for Barney was beginning some incoherent sentence of thanks. But he was weaker than he imagined, and all at once he burst into a paroxysm of dry sobbing, whilst the kind-hearted squatter rushed over to the house and reappeared in a minute with a "stiffener" of whisky that, as the wanderer swallowed it, seemed to make a new man of him.

* * * * * *

"Gold, yes, it's gold right enough, Barney, my man!" said Mr. Holmes as, a couple of days afterwards, they stood on the spot where the runaway had spent so many weary hours. "And there's apparently, lots of it, too—a fortune I shouldn't wonder."

"Little or much, sorr," replied Barney, "you're in it."

"Thank you," replied the squatter. "But how about the socialist business? I'm not going into a spec. for the benefit of all the rag-tag-and-bobtail in the country!"

"I've been thinking' a lot, sorr," replied Barney with a twinkle in his eye, "sinse I was doin' the wild man. An' I belave we'll keep the firrum strikly as it shtands widout any Co. whativer. You're an honest man, Mr. Holmes, an' I knows that if I've got to go to Saint Helenay, as you says I have, that you'll look after my interests."

"I will, Barney,'' replied Mr. Holmes. "And in the morning I'll drive you into the township. I hope you'll get off light. You may depend on my doing my best; and I've got some influence at headquarters."

Barney not only got off, thanks to Mr. Holmes, with eighteen months, and without the "hard," but he was treated as a State prisoner, and "lived accordin'," as he himself put it, which meant that he was treated with all the consideration due to one of the partners in the wonderfully rich mine known at first as "Barneys Blow." But, as it was proved to be a "blow" that had come to stay, it's name was changed to the more imposing one of the "Golden Emperor," no shares in which are now purchasable at any price.

Barney got out of gaol after twelve months, on petition; married, and lives quietly in a northern city, whilst Mr. Holmes manages a big concern on what was once Piallah, known now as Emu Springs township. Amongst Barney's collection of curios figures prominently a big log of brigalow, a long steel chain, and two battered padlocks. But only his most intimate friends know the real history attached to these articles.

*Main Queensland penal establishment.