Читать книгу Billabong Riders - Mary Grant Bruce - Страница 4

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THE worst of being married,” said Wally, “is that a man doesn’t want to leave home.”

“But some do, I believe,” remarked Norah.

“They’re the poor mutts who picked the wrong wife. I was pretty careful about that. I watched mine for years before I decided she was worthy of the honour of becoming Mrs. Meadows—ouch!—let my hair go, Norah, you vixen! I was only paying you a compliment.”

“I don’t think so much of your compliments,” said his wife. “They generally have a queer twist in them.”

“That’s because you’ve got a warped mind. I was giving you the highest praise I could think of—and I don’t believe you deserve it, after all. I ought to be glad to be leaving you. But, somehow, I’m not.”

“It’s the meals,” said Norah. “I’ve made you too comfortable. Large meals at regular hours—when you happened to be there to eat them, that is. And now you just can’t face camp cooking, with a cook who’ll probably give you chops three times a day, followed by stale bread and jam.”

“And well seasoned with dust,” agreed Wally. “I know it all; you needn’t rub it in. You may be a tyrant, but even you could learn a lot from a drovers’ cook. He knows he’s boss, and that he can’t be replaced, so he does just what he likes. And for all we know, we shan’t have a cook at all—didn’t the letter say the cook had cleared out?”

“I expect they’ll have found another by the time you and Jim get there. If not,” said his wife unfeelingly ... “Well, you learned to cook quite nicely when we camped out on our honeymoon!”

“I’ll keep that well to myself. I was a simple young lad in those days; and then, I had a pretty severe boss. Bossed me ever since, too, haven’t you?”

“Have I?” asked Norah—and smiled at him.

“Oh, I can stand it,” he said. “Even if I’m down-trodden, I certainly do hate the idea of going away for weeks. Queer, isn’t it?—a few years ago I’d have jumped at the chance of having a droving trip again, especially with Jim. But when it means leaving you and Davie ... well, it isn’t so good. We seem to have got into the way of doing things together, don’t we, Nor?”

“Well, we’ve been practising that since we were pretty small,” she said. “There were interruptions, of course, but they never lasted very long. By the way, the last time you went off after cattle to Queensland you left me behind. And—of course—you got into trouble. Don’t you dare do that again! I had to race up to Queensland to look after you.”

“You did it pretty thoroughly,” said Wally, grinning. “I’ve never been a free man since!”

“And you don’t seem to like the prospect of being free again. Poor old slave!” she laughed. “The truth is that when you’re once on the roads with a mob of cattle in front of you, you’ll enjoy every minute of it. New horses to ride, new country to see, new dogs to watch at work. And who knows what adventures!”

“Gosh, I hope not!” said Wally fervently. “The one thing a man hopes for when he’s droving is no adventures at all. All you want is the same old crawl, day after day, with nothing to disturb the bullocks. Adventures can’t mean anything but stampedes or trouble of some kind with the cattle—and that means losing beasts or getting them hurt—knocking the condition off them, anyhow. Don’t you go wishing me adventures, young Norah!”

“Bless you, I wasn’t wishing you any,” she laughed. “Only the fact is, they seem to come to this family of their own accord. We’ve always had them, and I expect we’ll go on having them. But you really ought to be safe from them this time. Especially as you’ll be extra well looked after.”

“Is that Jim’s idea? I’ll bet you that Tommy will be expecting me to watch over him like an old hen. And you know just how easy it is to keep an eye on Jim! If there’s any trouble about, Jim’s sure to spot it well ahead of anyone else—and be up to his neck in it.” Wally sighed. “He’s beaten me to it much more often than I’ve liked!”

“Oh, it’s not Jim’s idea,” she said. “He gave up trying to keep you out of mischief long ago. No, it’s the result of a heart-to-heart talk between Tommy and me this afternoon. Tommy and I often get hold of the same notion without saying anything to each other. Then I dash to tell her what I’ve thought up; and generally I meet her coming to tell me the very same thing.”

“You can’t have any private minds of your own at all!” stated Wally with conviction. “What villainy have you been hatching now?” He glanced out of the window, hearing feet on the gravel. “Here come Jim and Tommy—and Jim looking as solemn as an owl. He’s just oozing disapproval of something.”

“He would—at first,” said Norah. “But he’ll come round. Wally, you’ve got to back us up——.”

“If I had the ghost of an idea as to what I’m to back!” said the bewildered Wally. “You might at least——.” He broke off as Jim and Tommy came in. Jim certainly looked disapproving. His wife wore what Billabong called her “angel-child expression”: a mixture of extreme sweetness and serene determination. There was a twinkle in her eye as she looked at Norah.

“Jim is not a bit pleased with our plan, Norah. So I thought we had better come and tell you.”

“I should think I’m not!” stated Jim severely. “Wally, don’t you think it’s a mad idea?”

“Oh, rather!” said Wally. “Quite mad. Nobody’s told me yet what it is, but I don’t suppose that matters. If these two cooked it up, it’s bound to be mad, so the less I know about it the better.”

“Hasn’t Norah been breaking it to you? I thought you’d know all about it. Tommy’s been trying to get round me, so I came over to get you to help me make her see reason.”

“And I would,” said Wally patiently. “I most certainly would, if I thought there was any chance. Not that there often is, but I’d try. All the same, it would be easier if someone told me just a little about it. Only a rough outline, if you haven’t time for details!”

“It was such a good little plan, we thought, Wally,” said Tommy. “Quite simple, and so easy to carry out. Norah and I could not see any flaws in it at all. We thought we might be really useful.”

“And now you’ve found that there’s no chance you ever will be? I do feel sad for you both,” said Wally sympathetically. “But you can always keep on trying, you know, Tommy.” He gave her a searching look. “Speaking from the depths of my ignorance, of course, I’d say you hadn’t nearly finished trying about this whatever-it-is you’re hoping to bring off!”

Tommy gave a soft chuckle, and said nothing. Jim broke in impatiently.

“They want to come droving with us, Wal. D’you wonder I said it was a mad idea?”

“Gosh!” said the startled Wally. “Who thought up that one?”

“I told you it was a mutual brain-wave,” said Norah. “It shook me a bit at first, but as soon as I talked it over with Tommy I saw how easy it was. The gang is short-handed; and we’re quite handy with cattle. They’ll have plenty of spare horses; if we got tired of riding we could travel in the cook’s waggonette. It would only mean taking another tent, and you boys will have to take one anyway.”

“I am not so handy with cattle as Norah is,” put in Tommy. “But I might be very handy as a cook!”

“If you think I’m going to let you cook for a bunch of drovers——!” exploded Jim. “You don’t realise how rough it may be. All very well to help with cattle on Billabong: it’s mighty different to be on the roads all day in any sort of weather, and with no real comfort at night. And we don’t know what this gang is like. They may be quite the wrong sort for you two to travel with. Very nice to work with our own men here; but a strange gang’s quite another matter.”

“They would be quite meek with you and Wally there,” said Tommy.

“That’s all you know about drovers. They’re not a meek brand of men, as a rule: and they mightn’t care for having women in the camp.”

“But we needn’t be in their camp, Jim. We could have our own little camp at a discreet distance—until we got to know them. After that, I expect we’ll be invited over for sing-songs!”

The sudden conviction that this would, indeed, be extremely likely, for a moment deprived Jim of speech. Tommy went on calmly.

“You aren’t making allowances for the soothing influence of women about a camp. We would soothe from a good way off at first, of course——.”

“I’ll say you would!” uttered Jim.

“Certainly. But as time went on you would see these rough men becoming changed: checking their language——.”

“With bullocks?” gasped her husband.

“We would be careful to be out of the way if the bullocks were annoying them very much. Norah and I are so tactful. But when things were calm we would soon make friends. You wouldn’t mind if they brought us little gifts of bush flowers, would you?”

“If I could see that spectacle, I’d die happy!” said Wally solemnly. “Some of ’em may be abo’s, Tommy—you wouldn’t mind if their tokens of affection were eatable, would you? A nice young goanna, or a few fat witchetty-grubs.”

“I’d grill them for you,” she promised.

“But joking apart, Norah,” said Jim, “you do see the difficulties, don’t you? I know you’ve roughed it now and then, but Tommy hasn’t. If she were to knock up——.”

“As if I would!” put in Tommy. “You have no idea how tough I am!”

“I know you’d crack hardy until you were ready to drop. But if you had to give in—what then?”

“Well, we aren’t going into altogether uninhabited country,” said Norah. “There are nearly always farms and stations not very far from the stock-routes, aren’t there?—and most stations have telephones now. We could be dropped off at some friendly place and get a car to take us back to something like civilisation. That’s supposing one of us did knock up. Only, it’s not going to happen.”

“Jim,” said Tommy with great meekness—“if I promised to tell you directly I felt that I was within several days of knocking up ... when I would still have plenty of strength to ride away with Norah to civilisation? Would that make you feel better?”

“I doubt if you’d ever do it. And anyhow,” said Jim, shifting his ground, “what fun do you two think you’ll get? You’ve no idea how deadly dull droving can be.”

“But that’s what we hope to save you,” said his wife. “We’re going to make sure you’re never dull!”

“Wally, can’t you convince these lunatics that they are lunatics?” Jim’s voice was despairing.

Three pairs of eyes were turned on Wally. He looked from one to the other, hesitating.

“Well, droving can be a dull enough game, as you say, old man. I believe it might give it quite a spot of interest to take a couple of loonies along. Even if they only lasted a week ... well, we could stick it for that long. And there’s one thing—once they’d had to give in, they’d never dare to argue with us again. We’d be in our rightful places as lords and masters!”

“I ... wonder!” said Tommy softly. Norah said nothing: but her mouth twitched as she met his eyes.

“Well, have it your own way,” Jim said. “I think it’s mad, but we’ll give it a go. Now we’ll have to start planning on a new scale. You girls will need your own saddles: I wouldn’t let you use the oddments of saddles that the camp will have for spares.”

Tommy perched on the arm of his chair, leaning against his shoulder.

“Jimmy, when you give in you’re very nice,” she said. “You just start arranging things as if you’d wanted us to go all along!”

“Bless you, that’s just what I did!” he said. “Only I was a bit afraid for you. Never mind—we’ll knock all the fun we can out of it. You can’t take much kit, apart from bedding and saddlery. One suit-case apiece. Bathing togs and towels. No frills of any kind. Better pack a first-aid outfit. Anything else?”

“Camera and films,” said Wally. “I wouldn’t miss the chance of snapping Tommy as a drover. We’ll bring home pictures they’d give worlds to suppress!”

“Two can play at that game!” she warned him. “Jim, do we take our own cooking outfit?”

Jim did not answer for a moment. He was pondering an idea that had come to him.

“ ’Tell you what,” he said at length. “Say we take Lee Wing as cook for our party? That would simplify things very much, and there would be no question of intruding on the drovers’ camp, where you two are concerned—and that’s the very thing I want to avoid, with a gang I don’t know. And I don’t want you at the mercy of any old cook they may have been able to pick up.”

“You’re a brainy lad!” stated Wally. “This is going to be camping made easy.”

“Well, we might as well be fairly comfortable—with two lunatics in tow,” grinned Jim. “Lee Wing will jump at the chance, and it will certainly make all the difference to have him in charge of the tucker department. That old sinner can scare up a meal out of nothing more quickly than anyone I ever saw.”

He got up, pulling Tommy to her feet.

“Come on home, you managing woman! If we stay here any longer they’ll probably suggest taking Davie, too. And that would be about the last straw for the unfortunate bunch of drovers we’re going to astonish!”