Читать книгу Gentlemen at Gyang Gyang - Miles Franklin - Страница 8

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The men went to saddle-shed or huts and the abode was quiet. Bernice's glances travelled down the valley to Fossickers' Range where a nest of peaks rose against a half-moon gap, and the reflected light of the sinking sun was casting a glow of purple and gold and green, and the sky above, between the great white clouds that had gathered, was turquoise—the turquoise that inclines to green.

Soon there was a racket of dogs being chained for the night, their masters next to be heard in rigorous ablution in sliced petrol tins outside the Cook's caboose. Those that were to appear inside had an extra session with shaving tackle and clean shirts.

When there was a woman or a very geebung man guest, certain members of the camp ate with the Boss in the general room of the main abode. Other times the whole turn-out took their grub in the kitchen to minimize work. They had to be their own housemaids and butler in the Boss's quarters. The Cook adhered rigidly to his own domain in housework. That evening discussion of the new arrival mingled with the banging of kitchen utensils.

"Well, Joe, what's the new piece like?" Bill Jamieson inquired of the Cook.

"Didn't git much of a squint at her. Looks rather a pasty-faced tart to me, an' her hair's a funny kind of grey."

"Aw hell, is she an ancient bird?"

"No, her hair ain't goin' grey. I betcher wot yer like," contested Peter Stockham—Red Peter, as he was called, another kitchen-man. "Some people's thatch looks like that always."

An oldish pasty-faced tart with grey hair! This, of unique ash-blonde beauty which set her apart in the studios of the old world!

"She may have gone grey with this disease she's come here to be cured from, but she's no old 'un, make no mistake about that," maintained Red Peter.

"Well, don't yous all lose yer heads at wonst with a whole live female right amongst us in our own backyard," said old Beardy Tom Holden.

"It's a chance for you, Beardy; a real grown-up tart with grey hair; none of these flappers," said Bill.

"Too right it is, Beardy," said the Cook. "Give out a contract to someone to grub out a little of your beard and you'll be right in the race."

"Wot with the basic wage an' the high price of livin', might cost too much," said Beardy, grinning. "An' all you young sparks has got such a turr'ble drooth on yez for the pooty faces and pink cheeks of girls that I'd have Buckley's of gettin' in the runnin'."

"You're so fond of the skirts, it looks as if your old woman muster run away from you to get a little rest," said Red Peter.

"An' Black Peter's so flaming scared of 'em that his tart must have walloped him till he had to skedaddle," contributed the Cook.

"It does look like that. Perhaps he'll mow his beard now. What in thunder does he grow a thing like that for—him a young man, an' one of the nobs, an' all?"

"You can hang me if I know," said Red Peter. "He can please himself as far as I'm concerned. He might be goin' to stay up rabbitin' this winter and it will keep him warm."

"I reckon a young bloke who lets his beard sprout must be as mad as a snake," contended Bill.

"Perhaps he does it to scare off the tarts. It makes him look like a blooming wowser all right," suggested another.

The Boss and his associate, Oliver Burberry of Myall Downs, and Harvey Liddle, alias the Dude, were among those confronting Bernice after the Cook's old bullock-bell had sounded. Spires was also of this company. Burberry and the Dude acted as butlers.

"I reckon you want to be in training for the championship to get the grub from the kitchen here before it is stone cold," remarked the latter, racing with a great meat-dish heaped with two legs of mutton.

Bernice sat on one side of Labosseer and Spires on the other. Black Peter did not appear till the pudding was being served, and sat as far down the table as he could, where the light of the kerosene lamp did not disclose to Bernice the ferocious scowl summoned to his face by Spires's pleasantries.

After dinner the men engaged in a game of five hundred. Bernice retired to her bed on the veranda to be guarded by the blackbutts and snow-gums, fairy-like in their perfumed blossom in the dim light of the stars, and the Southern Cross so near and kind that it seemed as if it could be plucked from the sky.

Peter refused to play and buried himself behind a paper. When Burberry and Liddle withdrew, Spires told his host that he was on Monaro picking up stray lots of stock on commission. Black Peter had a different idea of his machinations. He had been associated with Spires before today. He was not going to leave him alone with Labosseer any longer than necessary. Labosseer remarked that the last time he had seen Spires he had been working on Bringadah, the station adjoining Jindilliwah.

"Christmas! I was surprised to drop on to Peter today," Spires observed.

"You didn't know he was here?"

"No. He kidded me he was going to the United States about three years ago."

"Oh well, there is a spare bed in Peter's room and you can turn in there when you feel like it. Peter is not likely to object to an old mate."

"I hope not," said Spires suavely.

"He can have the whole room and I'll bunk in the hut," said Peter so decisively that Labosseer thought it politic to be silent.

"I don't want to turn you out, Peter, old cobber. I don't snore so badly as that," said Spires with a chuckle. It was all one where he bunked. Peter could not escape so long as he remained on the runs. It elated Spires to find him at Gyang Gyang. He took it as an omen that his lucky star had risen just when his coffers were empty. "The luck of a dead Chinaman to find him here!" he was thinking.