Читать книгу Ten Creeks Run - Miles Franklin - Страница 4

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Cooees summoned the muster to lunch. Near the house Mrs Saunders was met by the cook in wild excitement. Released from muzzles, and led by Teddy O'Mara's champions, the kangaroo dogs had carried out a raid on the beef cask. While the cook rushed to save something there, the big brindle had seized the midday round hot from the dish. The meat supply had been demolished. The cook had a gun and was firing wildly. Canine yelps indicated some of his targets. Teddy rushed to the rescue of his darlings regardless of his own safety. It looked like a dangerous imbroglio till Poole, Stanton, and others applied the brakes.

Mrs Saunders ordered a lunch of eggs, cheese, and tinned fish, and called for volunteers to shoot wild ducks for the evening dinner.

"If Bert hasn't lost his eye he can feed the multitude in a shot or two," said Stanton.

"Long Billy, as soon as you've had dinner, take a pack-horse and ask Mr Milford to let you have a wether to kill. You'll be back before bed-time."

The muster continued cheerfully towards the house. Milly led the saucy blue roan, which rubbed her head against her doting mistress with the assurance of an old hand.

"What's she goin' to do with the blanky filly?" inquired Long Billy.

"Take her to bed with her, p'raps," said Flash Billy disgustedly. "That's allers the way with a lady's hack. Good material spiled, I call 'em." He emitted voluble scares to Stanton about the treacherous filly's heels, but Milly was not to be separated from her, and hitched her to the palings at the bottom of the garden.

*

A jovial company sat down to the substituted meal. Mr Blenkinsop, gentleman at large, reviewed A. L. Gordon's poems and Mr Gladstone's latest speech. Others talked of the popularity of roller-skating, the coming pigeon match at Gundagai, or the need of a branch railway line to Bool Bool, and of the new bridge over the Yarrabongo. The bridge was to he officially opened during the coming month. Old Mrs Mazere of Three Rivers—Great-grandma Mazere—was to cut the ribbon.

Milly's mind was on the pony, and, finishing her pudding in a hurry, she stole away from her end of the table. The whole station staff was safe in midday meal or smoko, so she took her gear unobserved and placed the pretty little saddle of black hog-skin on the ornate cloth, braided like an officer's, and with horses' heads worked in the corners, and buckled the girths. She had sometimes turned Romp on her back when very tiny to play with her perfect hoofs—impossible that she could be spiteful or dangerous! They had come all the way from Turrill Turrill to Stan-ton's Plains one season, Dlilly riding old Lady Lochinvar with Romp following, and neither of the young things the worse for the long trek. "I'll not put any hot old crupper or breastplate on you, darling, and you aren't a villain, are you? It's that awful pig of a Flash Billy."

She kissed and fondled her pet affectionately, and examined the flank, to find it pricked with the spur. "Romp darling, you'll never buck again, will you, except in fun? And I'll not let that Flash Billy touch you again."

She made sure that no one was stirring to frustrate her, and mounted tremulously, Romp walked demurely down the hollow away from the house, without disturbing the heelers and kangaroo dogs snoozing on nefariously full bellies, thence to the open flat along the river and away like the wind, playmates frolicking together.

"Oh, you darling, darling love!" Milly flung down her reins and clasped the filly's neck in adoration, indulged her with a drink from the Slate Pool, from which ducks rose in clouds, and then tried various paces, shouting with glee, and fetched up at a stiff pace in view of the family and guests who had come out on the veranda. Milly was elated to prove the filly a lady. "Look" she cried. "Look! she doesn't buck or roll or do anything but be an angel like she always has been since she was the teeniest weeniest foal!"

The spectators ejaculated and expostulated. Milly was too engrossed to give ear.

"Look! She's got her head down." The greedy little brute had espied a mouthful of clover. "Look! and while she has her head down I can do what I like with her flank and she doesn't care. Who says she is spiteful and vicious? She hates Billy, and so do I, with his old spurs a mile long. Spurs are loathsome. All you have to do is to have a sort of feeling and horses will race like the wind. No one shall ever ride her now but me!"

"Horses," began Mr Eustace Blenkinsop, who had ridden from Bookaledgeree with Ronald Dice to spend some weeks sitting about or duck-shooting. "Horses," repeated Mr Blenkinsop, to whom everybody listened unless racing to the muster, or basting to get a beast killed before dark, or otherwise so pressed as to abrogate the polite respect which Mr Blenkinsop's old-world assurance of breeding and superiority commanded, "have a chivalrous affinity with the ladies."

"Get off that filly at once!" commanded Uncle Jack. "Whatever for? She's as tame as Lady Lochinvar."

"Evidently it is only men to whom she objects," reiterated Mr Blenkinsop.

"What do you say to letting me take Romp home just to set her paces?" said Poole. He had gone down the garden. "It looks as if she has been taught tricks."

"That would be loverly! Can I go home with you too?"

*

"The horses nowadays are a poor lot av dunkeys. Sure, they'd crumple up onder the horses that Poole turrned out up to tin or fifteen years ago, and as for old Poole that died a few years back, sure Oi remimber..."

Mick Muldoon stood with his face to the company and his back to the fire, a man of ripe virility as vouched by his hairiness. He had whiskers up to his eyes, they flowed afar on his chest, sprouted from his ears and nostrils and, by contrariness, were scantiest round his mouth, which could be discerned through the ambush, wide and loose, combining an expression of hilarity and ferocity. The dog he had been was discernible in his poise, in the spotted calfskin waistcoat with carved quandong buttons mounted in silver, and in the tilt of his hat, which he rarely doffed.

"Aw, you're allers blowing about the old days," said Flash Billy testily. "It stan's to reason they hadn't the horses we have now, when the breed's bein' improved all the time."

"Oi wouldn't waste me breath on ye," said Mick grandly. "Belting a good beast to pieces and teachin' it vicious thricks!"

"What's the good of listening to an old codger!" snorted Billy, irritable with fatigue and a day that had gone badly.

"Sure, ye're very flash now, Bill Bowes, but the day is soon coming whin my ould coat will fit your behoind, and ye won't be able to spile good beasts with dhirty thricks for y'r own profit, and ye'll have no ch'racter. Moi ch'racter will stand against anny man's."

"What's your 'ch'racter' ever done? You're barmy!"

It was evening in the men's hut. Certain identities like Billy, Teddy O'Mara, and Muldoon had the privilege of eating in the kitchen, but this evening had chosen the hut for its company.

"Hogan's ghost! Billy," exclaimed Long Billy, drifting in from the kitchen, "did you know that young Milly rode the Young Whisker filly up and down the place like hell at dinner-time? Sent her full lick with the reins swingin', an' grabbed up fistfuls of her flank, an' the filly takin' it like ole Flea Creek." Flea Creek, a famous slug, so named for his beginnings, was used to pack salt and pull the water-slide.

"Tell that to the marines!"

"There ain't ever anyone to be let ride her again but young Milly."

"Where did this fish-yarn spring up?" Billy was beginning to be uneasy.

"He's been maggin' to Ellen Humphreys in the kitchen," said Jerry Riddall.

"Ask her, if you don't want to believe me," persisted Long Billy.

"Phwat about yer ch'racter now, an' me being barmy, am Oi? Oi wasn't rared onder a bin, Oi'm tellin' ye," interposed Mick. "They're foindin' out yer thricks..."

"That's where you're dead wrong, you —— old billy-goat. Another word out o' you and I'll shy the bread at your ole pumpkin head." Billy got up, kicking a stool over, and left the hut.

"His girl is givin' him the turnip, that's what's up with him, an' he's too fond of thinkin' he's Lord Muck anyhow," said Long Billy.

"Yes," said Jerry Riddall, "an' I reckon young Mr Dice can run rings roun' him stickin' a buck."

"Talkin' o' girls and turnips and such," said Tommy Roper, "there'll be some fun here presently. Did yous twig the play at the yards today atween the boss and Dice?"

"Gam!" said Paddy Leary from Cuppinbingle. "What yer givin' us?"

"Anyone can see Dice and Aily Healey think they was made for each other, and at the same time the boss looks as if he's goin' to hang his hat on three hairs an' make up to her too."

"Fat lot o' chance he'd have, the ole goat. A girl'd be as likely to fall in love with a wombat." This was Tim Porter's idea.

"I dunno! Money makes the mare go," said Jerry.

"Aw, that ole pilgarlic! Ain't the Dices got a good place at Bookaledgeree? I'd rayther have it than either Ten Creeks or Jinninjinninbong, stuck up here among the wombats an' dingoes, or Turrill Turrill down there in the droughts," maintained Tim. "Big share this feller will have with all them young ones comin' on. Besides, Bookaledgeree is mortgaged over the ears and out the other side, an' old Healey would skin his grandmother and sell her hide if he was pushed, an' if ole Skinny Guts puts his moneybags before him it will be a slice of turnip for young Ronald all right."

"Aw, I dunno," repeated Jerry.

"Who do you bet on, Tommy, the ole cove or Ronald Dice?"

"I'll bet anyone my bridle against a new saddle pouch that the ole cove will come out top because ole Healey is as fierce and greedy as hell, I'm yous; an' the girl will be too weak in the knees to stan' up to him. Ole Healey is like all of them that can't keep money theirselves; he worships the spondulics. He thinks it can do everything."

"Well, so it can," said Jerry eagerly.

"It can do a lot all right, but then again there's a lot of things it can't do."

"Tell us some, Tommy."

"Well, I don't think money would buy the Young Whisker filly from Milly, an' money may make Ally Healey marry old SP-over-J, but I bet you all the money in hell it will never make her love him."

"And ch'racter," added Mick Muldoon. "Money will never buy ch'racter. But phwat do these prisint-day mongrels care about ch'racter? They used to talk about the ould lags, but if you treated the ould lags phroper they was daycint min. Oi've niver seen thim turrn on annyone who treated thim phroper, but these fellers, begor' if ye carried thim on your back for siven years and put thim down for tin minutes to take a spell, sure, they'd take opportunity of that tin minutes to rob ye."

"Here, Mick, never mind about your 'ch'racter' now. If you are such a know-all, why didn't ole Skinny Guts ever marry? Do you know?" It was Red Jimmy, the surveyor's link man, inquiring. His master was working in the district and not averse from a day at the muster or homestead.

"Av coorse Oi know. Oi know iverything about him, and whin Oi tell a thing it's true, not loike these liars wid nawthing in their heads."

"Never min' about that now—p'raps it's like the horses...tell us the story."

"Curradoobidgee Poole never married neither," observed Tim Porter.

"He was throwed over by that ole Miss Macorkaran, wasn't her said Jerry.

"Sure, a quischin is asked and ye haven't the breedin' to listen to a reply nor the brains to onderstand if ye did."

"I'm the man who knows most about it," piped old Bill Heffernan from Wamgambril Flats, where he engaged in trapping wallabies and dingoes. He had dummied for Larry Healey's uncle on Monaro in '61 when the Free Selection Act came in. He was dummying now for Stanton towards the head of the Wamgambril and had come in for the muster. The boss here was never after ole Jess Macorkaran. It was she that was after Bert Poole. He was a fine cut of an upstanding man in them days, for all he is a lap-dog now for all the little gurrls that call him uncle.

"And who was Poole after?" The link man had a newcomer's interest in sorting out the identities.

"He used to have eyes for none but Mrs Labosseer, mother of Mrs Harry Milford over the river," said Heffernan.

"Ye're wrong," said Mick. "Bert Poole was engaged to Mrs Labosseer's sister, Emily, daughter of the ould Mazere of Three Rivers, daughter of the same ould Mrs Mazere who is goin' to open the bridge."

"Her that was drownded in the Mungee, and Poole has never looked at no one since," contributed Tommy Roper. "Me ma used to tell me about it."

"Everyone knows about Bert Poole an' the Miss Mazere that was drownded in the Mungee, but Skinny Guts wasn't after her too, was he?"

"Sure, the boss here was hell-for-leather afther Mary Brennan, sister of ould Tim at The Gap, but she wouldn't look at him, and took the veil. That was away back in '57. No, it was '58. Tell ye how Oi remimber."

"We don't care how the hell you remember if you'll only spit it out," said Red Jimmy, who was listening open-mouthed.

"Oi'm the wan to blame for evening me wits to such an assimbly of gissobs," said Mick, retreating in lofty disdain into the ambush of his beard, from which he spat lustily.

"Well, Mick, I didn't insult you or rob you while I got off of your back for a spell or anythink," said Paddy Leary, a cheerful vassal. "Let's have the old stick's love affairs. I wouldn't have thought he'd ever have had enough juice in him to be in love."

"The dried-up ones is sometimes madder after the women than the pot-bellied ones. Look at ole—" began Tim Porter.

"Oh, go and shove your head in a bag and dry up for a bit— Mick has the floor," said Leary.

Mick re-emerged. Racially he was a born conversationalist or monologist: the solitary conditions of the boundaries of the back runs and the taciturnity of the colonials restricted his life. "The master here was woild afther the daughter of ould Tim Brennan that's been in his grave tin years an' more. Oi disremimber whether it was January or February—"

"Never min' wot you disremember, shoot ahead with the love story, for God's sake, an' be done with it."

"He! He!" cackled Jerry. "Tim's gone on Ellen Humphreys and wants the love—"

"I ain't, you —— fool. I want to turn in. We've got to be out before it's light. Why the hell wouldn't she marry him an' be done with it?"

"She niver married annyone. She took the veil an' died in ould Oireland an' was brought home an' buried at The Gap in the flower-garden there. Ye can see the paling fince and the tombstone anny toime ye have the moind."

"Ye're off the track," said Heffernan. "More people has been reared under a hen than knows it, and a duck hen at that. It was Emily Mazere that had 'em all roarin' like town bulls, all but black Poole, him that was sittin' up on the fence today beside young Milly, an' he contrarywise was the only one she wanted. Ole Denny Healey and his brother Larry, the dad of young Aily, was madder than any after her too, and two of the flashest coves that ever dragged a stockwhip in the dust."

"I've often heard mum and the ole man talkin' of it," said Jerry

Riddall. "Mum used ter work for ole Mrs Mazere. Mary Brennan was smitten on Mr Poole too, but others reckons it was the boss here, and that neither would give way about religion, and that's why Mary went for a nun and died of consumption when she was only thirty, an' that's what slewed the boss off the skirts and turned him to money-grubbin'."

"What for, when he had no girl to give it to?" inquired Tim Porter.

"Aw, I bet it ain't that what put him on the money-grubbin'. It's in a man, an' nothing won't take it out or put it in."

"You know so —— much you oughter set up as a lawyer."

"Well, I'm not so snotty about it as them that knows less," retorted Leary with a good-tempered grin.

"Seein' as Flash Billy's cake is baked, he can sell that old donkey supper hat of his to the boss. It's used to goin' mashin' an' hanging on by three hairs already," said Tommy Roper.

"Aw, an ole cove like that, he wouldn't be able—"

"Don't you believe it! When the spasm takes 'em, the old blokes goes barmier than the young ones."

"I reckon a girl would have to be cross-eyed to take old SPover-J while Ronnie Dice was in the runnin'," commented Tim Porter. "If I wuz a girl, I'd rather live on the smell of an oiled rag with a feller like Ronnie than take old Ten Creeks with Turrill Turrill throwed in to fatten dingoes."

"But it ain't what you or Aily thinks; it's what ole Larry says that goes, an' he'd rather marry any one of them female daughters of his to a black snake if it had money than to a angel without," maintained Tommy Roper.

"Every dog has his day," observed Heffernan. "Ole Poole had a hell of a fine day, not only all the purty fillies mad after him, but he was the greatest rider and shot, and cleared up the bushrangers, and still goin' strong."

"You're —— well right," agreed Leary.

"My —— oath I'm right. The missus here is workin' herself cross-eyed to collar him now, and Milly would jump at him for a stepfather."

"Fat lot er chance ole Lucy's got if he's never looked at no one since his sweetheart was drownded."

"He might give way when he gets old and silly. He's a goodlookin' bloke yet, an' a nice one too. I'd rather work for him than ole Skinny Guts any day," said Tim Porter.

"For the Old Harry's sake stop yer everlastin' maggin'," complained Long Billy from the inner chamber, where bunks of stringybark stretched in three tiers round the walls. The window was a wooden shutter; wide cracks between the shrunken slabs provided daylight and ventilation. The rouseabout was ready to call it a day after buckjump-riding in the forenoon and a long, hard ride to fetch a sheep in the afternoon. "Come on in, some of you damn' fellers, or the bugs an' fleas will walk away with me. It ain't fair. They're all mustered on me. Come an' take your share. I don't want to be a fattenin' paddick for the whole —— lot."

*

The Milfords arrived next morning, bringing with them Kerry, the famous photographer, and the expedition to Bull Creek was deferred in favour of posing before the camera, while the ringing music of horseshoes being shaped on the anvil by a succession of blacksmiths for the forefeet of stock horses never ceased. In a few of the surviving houses of the locality, where there remains an old hand to preserve things of the past, there may still be found stereoscopes and views perpetuating the musters of Ten Creeks Run and Jinninjinninbong. Through the twin lenses blood horses, long dust, and their daring or dainty riders, now stiff and frail, stand out in seemingly solid relief, so hauntingly still that they touch the heart to tears.

Milly with streaming hair was photographed on Romp, and the Misses Farquharson and Healey on their respective animals showed their hour-glass waists and soft young faces above stiffing collars. Teddy O'Mara and Mick Muldoon, SP-over-J, the mad sailor cook, the new surveyor, Flash Billy the Breaker, Paddy Leary, the brazen kangaroo dogs, the blood colts and fillies, Flea Creek, all are preserved for those who can pick them out, as well as a round dozen or more to whom even Larry Healey or Harry Milford cannot put the names today.

There were no moving-picture cameras then to pickle these gladiators in motion in the ordinary day's work, as they performed feats that no rodeo could now excel. The youth of today would deem the old-time commonplaces of that muster impossible, or but senility's drivelling of the glory of days that are gone. In these days there is only one of the Milfords left; for lack of a sympathetic audience, he never talks of his exploits. The young fellows snorting about in motors have no interest for him, and he is nervous in their machines, he who that summer in natural daring rode blood colts down a ridge of black Mount Corroboree, while even the hardened spectators held their breath for the outcome! That spring, too, it was Harry Milford, aided by Larry Healey—the only rider who could keep near him—who put the Bull Flat mob into the trap-yards back of Mount Corroboree after a run lasting from 9 a.m. till 5 p.m.

The stereoscope shows none of this, but only a stillness haunting as the memory of a voice that has lately enchanted and dropped for ever to silence. In the cavern of the lenses all has been stricken to colourless rigidity, granite boulders, flowering trees and shrubs, men and maids, horses and dogs alike, for ever petrified in youth unchanging beside the leaping lacy Coolgarbilli, singing on its way to old Mother of Waters.

Old Blenkinsop—"gentlemanly ole feller"—is shown on Scutty, an imported mare so named for her docked tail, and owing to which she had been early set apart for stud purposes, for the natives would as lief been seen abroad with a Jonah minus an eye as on a beast so mutilated. Black Harry, the horse-shooter, stood on the top rail. He had shot fifteen hundred horses in those hills for their hides and tails, and by mistake potted one of old Tom Saunders's brood-mares, only old Tom did not take that view of it. Harry had consequently done a term of two years, which did not increase his popularity with the Farquharsons, whose poor relation he was. Poole was taken teaching Corroboree to lead, a part of his education which had been overlooked.

He had put in the morning on the job. "Come, I'll give you a wrinkle," he said to Flash Billy, who obeyed sulkily. "Look out for that trick business—it won't do your reputation any good, unless you think of joining a circus."

Flash Billy made no reply then, but observed to his associates later, "Damned silly ole molly-coddle—you'd think he was trainin' cows. Gone clean barmy in his ole days."

Lucy Saunders joined Milly to watch Poole with the colt.

"Mother, can't I go home with Uncle Bert and Romp? He says I can."

"You are getting too big now to be bothering Uncle Bert."

Milly was no blood relation to Poole. When a toddler she had fought with Marcia Mazere at Three Rivers for the right to sit on his knee. When told that she must give place because Marcia was his real niece Milly had acted so like convulsions that Herbert Poole, J.P., restored her to normality by adopting her as one of his complete nieces and taking her on the right knee; Marcia refused to surrender her hereditary right to the left. Though Milly was long past tantrums, her affection for her Uncle Bert increased rather than diminished. Famous horseman that he was, he took delight in her equestrian promise, while he to the child was a lucky-bag that had yielded such booty as Lady Lochinvar, Romp, and a saddle and bridle.

"She'd be no trouble, Lucy, if you'd like to let her come. Ma will enjoy supervising her lessons, and if she gets tired of her she could go to Ada for a change."

"How would she get home again?"

"Pooh! I could come by myself if I'd only be let. Tell you what. Couldn't Uncle Bert take me down to see Aileen at Neangen and Uncle Jack could bring me home from there? I heard him telling Aileen that he had business that way."

"You could get home easy enough," said SP-over-J, to stop further overhearings.

"Goody! I'll pack my valise. Couldn't I ride Romp?"

"She and the colt are a bit too green. We don't want to dishearten them at the beginning. You better stick to old Ready-money."