We of the Never Never

J >> Jeanie Mrs. Aeneas Gunn >> We of the Never Never

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

The "little Chinese darlings," inwardly delighted that the Maluka's
simple trust seemed as guileless as ever, smugly professed themselves
willing to fall in with any arrangement that was pleasing
to the white folk, and as they mounted their horses Dan heaved a sigh
of satisfaction.

But Dan's satisfaction was premature, for it took time and much
galloping before the "little Chinese darlings " could satisfy
themselves and each other that they had the very finest bullocks
procurable in their mob. A hundred times they changed their minds:
rejecting chosen bullocks, recalling rejected bullocks, and comparing
every bullock accepted with every bullock rejected. Bulk was what
they searched for--plenty for their money, as they judged it,
and finally gathered together a mob of coarse, wide-horned,
great-framed beasts, rolling in fat that would drip off on the road
as they travelled in.

"You'd think they'd got 'em together for a boiling-down establishment,
with a bone factory for a side line," Dan chuckled, secretly pleased
that our best bullocks were left on the run, and, disbanding
the rejected bullocks before "they " could" change their minds again,"
he gathered together the mixed cattle and shut them in the Dandy's
new yard, to keep them in hand for later branding.

But the "little Chinese darlings" had counted on the use of that
yard for themselves, and finding that their bullocks would have
to be "watched" on camp that night, they stolidly refused to take
delivery before morning, pointing out that should the cattle
stampede during the night, the loss would be ours, not theirs.

"Well, I'm blowed!" Dan chuckled, but the Maluka cared little
whether the papers were signed then or at sun-up; and the drovers,
pleased with getting their way so easily, magnanimously offered
to take charge of the first "watch"--the evening watch--provided
that only our horses should be used, and that Big Jack and Jackeroo
and others should lend a hand.

Dan wouldn't hear of refusing the offer. "Bit of exercise'll do
'em good," he said; and deciding the bullocks would be safe enough
with Jack and Jackeroo, we white folk stretched ourselves in the
warm firelight after supper, and, resting, watched the shadowy
mob beyond the camp, listening to the shoutings and gallopings
of the watchers as we chatted.

When a white man watches cattle, if he knows his business he
quiets his mob down and then opens them out gradually, to give
them room to lie down, or ruminate standing without rubbing
shoulders with a restless neighbour, which leaves him little to do
beyond riding round occasionally, to keep his "boys" at their
posts, and himself alert and ready for emergencies. But a Chinaman's
idea of watching cattle is to wedge them into a solid body, and hold
them huddled together like a mob of frightened sheep, riding
incessantly round them and forcing back every beast that looks
as though it might extricate itself from the tangle, and galloping
after any that do escape with screams of anxiety and impotency.

"Beck! beck!" (back), screamed our drovers, as they galloped
after escaped beasts, flopping and wobbling and gurgling in their
saddles like half-filled water-bags; galloping invariably after
the beasts, and thereby inciting there to further galloping.
And "Beck! beck!" shouted our boys on duty with perfect mimicry
of tone and yells of delight at the impotency of the drovers,
galloping always outside the runaways and bending them back
into the mob, flopping and wobbling and gurgling in their saddles
until, in the half light, it was difficult to tell drover
from "boy." Not detecting the mimicry, the drovers in no way
resented it; the more the boys screamed and galloped in their
service the better pleased they were; while the "boys" were more
than satisfied with their part of the entertainment, Jackeroo and
Big Jack particularly enjoying themselves.

"They'll have 'em stampeding yet," Dan said at last growing
uneasy, as more and more cattle escaped, and the mob shifted
ground with a rumbling rattle of hoofs every few minutes.
Finally, as the rumbling rattle threatened to become permanent,
a long drawn-out cry of "Ring--ing" from Big Jack sent Dan
and the Quiet Stockman to their saddles. In ten minutes the hubbub
had ceased, Dan's master-hand having soothed the irritated beasts;
then having opened them out he returned to the camp fire alone.
Jack had gone on duty before his time and sent the "little Chinese
darlings" to bed.

Naturally Dan's cattle-tussle reminded him of other tussles with
ringing cattle; then the cattle-camp suggesting other cattle-camp
yarns, he settled down to reminiscences until he had us all cold
thrills and skin-creeps, although we were gathered around a blazing
fire.

Tale after tale he told of stampedes and of weaners piling up
against fences. Then followed a tale or two of cattle Iying quiet
as mice one minute, and up on their feet crashing over camps
the next, then tales of men being "treed" or "skied," and tales
of scrub-bulls, maddened cow-mothers, and "pokers."

"Pokers," it appears, have a habit of poking out of mobs, grazing
quietly as they edge off until "they're gone before you miss 'em."
Camps seem to have some special attraction for pokers, but we learned
they object to interference. Poke round peaceful as cats until
you rile them," Dan told us, and then glided into a tale of how
a poker "had us all treed once."

"Poked in a bit too close for our fancy while we were at supper,"
he explained, "so we slung sticks at him to turn him back to the mob,
and the next minute was making for trees, but as there
was only saplings handy, it would have been a bit awkward for the
heavy weights if there hadn't have been enough of us to divide his
attentions up a bit." (Dan was a good six feet, and well set up at
that.) "Climbing saplings to get away from a stag isn't much of a
game," he added, with a reminiscent chuckle; "they're too good at
the bending trick. The farther up the sapling you climb, the nearer
you get to the ground."

Then he favoured us with one of his word-pictures: "There was
the sapling bending like a weeping willow," he said, "and there
was the stag underneath it, looking up at me and asking if he
could do anything for me, taking a poke at me boot now and then,
just to show nothing would be no bother, and there was me,
hanging on to the sapling, and leaning lovingly over him, telling
him not to go hanging round, tiring himself out on my account;
and there was the other chaps--all light weights--laughing fit
to split, safe in their saplings. 'Twasn't as funny as it looked,
though," he assured us, finding us unsympathetic, "and nobody was
exactly sorry when one of the lads on duty came along to hear
the fun, and stock-whipped the old poker back to the mob."

The Maluka and the Dandy soon proved it was nothing to be "treed."
"Happens every time a beast's hauled out of a bog, from all accounts,
that being the only thanks you get for hauling 'em out of the mess."
Then Dan varied the recital with an account of a chap getting skied
once who forgot to choose a tree before beginning the hauling
business, and immediately after froze us into horror again with
the details of two chaps "lying against an old rotten log with a mob
of a thousand going over 'em "; and we were not surprised to hear
that when they felt well enough to sit up they hadn't enough
arithmetic left between 'em to count their bruises.

After an evening of ghost stories, a creaking door is enough to set
teeth chattering; and after an evening of cattle-yarns, told in
a cattle camp, a snapping twig is enough to set hair lifting;
and just as the most fitting place for ghost stories is an old
ruined castle, full of eerie noises, so there is no place more suited
to cattle-camp yarns than a cattle camp. They need the reality
of the camp-fire, the litter of camp baggage, the rumbling mob
of shadowy cattle near at hand, and the possibilities of the near
future--possibilities brought home by the sight of tethered horses
standing saddled and bridled ready "in case of accidents."

Fit surroundings add intensity to all tales, just as it added
intensity to my feelings when Dan advised the Maluka to swing
our net near a low-branched tree, pointing out that it would
"come in handy for the missus if she needed it in a hurry."

I favoured climbing the tree at once, and spending the night in it,
but the men-folk assuring me that I would be "bound to hear them
coming," I turned in, sure only of one thing, that death may come
to the bush-folk in any form but ennui. Yet so adaptable are we
bush-folk to circumstances that most of that night was oblivion.

At sun-up, the drovers, still sweetly smiling, announced that
two bullocks had strayed during some one's watch. Not in theirs,
they hastened to assure us, when Dan sniffed scornfully in the
background.

But Dan's scorn turned to blazing wrath, when-- the drovers
refusing to replace the "strays" with cows from the mixed cattle
in hand, and refusing also to take delivery of the bullocks,
two beasts short--the musterers had to turn out to gather in a fresh
mob of cattle for the sake of two bullocks. "Just as I was settling
down to celebrate Sunday, too," Dan growled, as he and Jack rode
out of camp.

Forty years out-bush had not been enough to stamp generations
of Sabbath-keeping out of Dan's blood, although he was not
particular which day of the week was set apart for his Sabbath.
"Two in a fortnight" was all he worried about.

Fortune favouring the musterers, by midday all was peace and order;
the drovers, placid and contented, had retired to their tents
once more, reprieved from taking delivery for another day and night,
and after dinner, as the "boys" tailed the bullocks and mixed
cattle on the outskirts of the camp, to graze them, we settled down
to "celebrate our Sabbath " by resting in the warm, dry shade.

Here and there upon the grassy incline that stretched between the
camp and the Yellow Hole, we settled down each according to his
taste; Dan with his back against a tree trunk and far-reaching legs
spread out before him; the Maluka, Jak [sic], and the Dandy flat
upon their backs, with bent-back folded arms for pillouws, and hats
drawn over eyes to shade them from the too dazzling sunlight;
dogs, relaxed and spread out, as near to their master as permitted,
and the missus "fixed up" in an opened-out, bent-back grassy
tussock, which had thus been formed into a luxurious armchair.
At the foot of the incline lay the Yellow Hole, gleaming and glancing
in the sunshine; all around and about us were the bush creatures,
rustling in the scrub and grasses--flies were conspicuous by their
absence, here and there shafts of sunlight lay across the gray-brown
shade; in the distance the graizmg cattle moved among the timber;
away out in the glonous sunshine, beyond and above the tree-tops,
brown-winged, slender Bromli kites wheeled and circled and hovered
and swooped; and lounging in the sun-flecked shade, well satisfied
with our lot, we looked out into the blue, sunny depths,
each one of us the embodiment of lazy contentment, and agreeing
with Dan that "Sunday wasn't a bad institution for them as had no
objection to doing a loaf now and then.

That suggesting an appropriate topic of conversation to Dan,
for a little while we spoke of the Sabbath-keeping of our Scottish
forefathers; as we spoke, idly watching the circling, wheeling
Bromli kites, that seemed then as at all times, an essential part
of the sunshine. To the bush-folk of the Never-Never, sunshine
without Bromli kites would be as a summer's day without the sun.
All day and every day they hover throughout it, as they search and
wait and watch for carrion, throwing dim, gliding shadows as they
wheel and circle, or flashing sunshine from brown wings by quick,
sudden swoops, hovering and swooping throughout the sunshine,
or rising to melt into blue depths of the heavens, where other
arching, floating specks teU of myriads there, ready to swoop,
and fall and gather and feast wherever their lowest ranks drop
earthwards with the crows.

Lazily we watched the floating movement, and as we watched,
conversation became spasmodic--not worth the energy required
to sustain it--until gradually we slipped into one of those sociable
silences of the bushfolk--silences that draw away all active
thought from thc mind, leaving it a sensitive plate ready to absorb
impressions and thoughts as they flit about it, silences where
every one is so in harmony with his comrades and surroundings
that the breaking of them rarely jars--spoken words so often
defining the half-absorbed thoughts.

Dimly conscious of each other, of the grazing cattle the Bromli
kites, the sweet scents and rustling sounds of the bush, of each
other's thoughts and that the last spoken thought among us had
been Sabbath-keeping, we rested, idly, NOT thinking, until Dan's
voice crept into the silence.

"Never was much at religion meself," he said, lazily altering his
position, "but Mrs. Bob was the one to make you see things right
off." Lazily and without stirring we gave our awakened attention,
and after a quiet pause the droning Scotch voice went on, too
contented to raise itself above a drone: "Can't exactly remember
how she put it; seemed as though you'd only got to hoe your own row
the best you can, and lend others a hand with theirs, and just let
God see after the rest."

Quietly, as the droning voice died away, we slipped back into
our silence, lazily dreaming on, with Dan's words lingering in our
minds, until, in a little while, it seemed as though the dancing
tree-tops, the circling Bromli kites, every rustling sound and
movement about us, had taken them up and were shouting them to
the echo. "How much you will be able to teach the poor, dark souls
of the stockmen," a well-meaning Southerner had said, with
self-righteous arrogance; and in the brilliant glory of that bush
Sabbath, one of the "poor, dark souls" had set the air vibrating
with the grandest, noblest principles of Christianity summed up
into one brief sentence resonant with its ringing commands:
Hoe your own row the best you can. Lend others a hand with theirs.
Let God see to the rest.

Men there are in plenty out-bush, "not much at religion," as they
and the world judge it, who have solved the great problem of "hoeing
their own rows" by the simple process of leaving them to give others
a hand with theirs; men loving their neighbours as themselves,
and with whom God does the rest, as of old. "Be still, and know
that I am God," is still whispered out of the heart of Nature,
and those bushmen, unconsciously obeying, as unconsciously belong
to that great simple-hearted band of worshippers, the Quakers;
men who, in the hoeing of their own rows have ever lived their lives
in the ungrudging giving oI a helping hand to all in need, content
that God will see to the rest.

Surely the most scrupulous Quaker could find no fault with the
"Divine Meeting" that God was holding that day: the long, restful
preparation of silence; that emptying of all active thought from
the mind; that droning Scotch voice, so perfectly tuned to our mood,
delivenng its message in a language that could pierce to the depths
of a bushman's heart; and then silence again--a silence now vibrating
with thought. As gradually and naturally as it had crept upon us,
that silence slipped away, and we spoke of the multitude of sounds
and creatures about us, until, seeing deeper and deeper into Dan's
message every moment, we learned that each sound and creature was
hoeing its own row as it alone knew how, and, in the hoeing, was
lending all others a hand with theirs, as they toiled in the Mighty Row
of the Universe, each obedient to the great law of the Creator
that all else shall be left to Him, as through them He taught
the world that no man liveth to himself alone.

"You will find that a woman alone in a camp of men is decidedly
out of place," the Darwin ladies had said; and yet that day,
as at all times, the woman felt strangely and sweetly in place
in the bushmen's camp. "A God-forsaken country," others of the town
have called the Never-Never, because the works of men have not yet
penetrated into it. Let them look from their own dark alleys
and hideous midnights into some or all of the cattle camps out-bush,
or, better still, right into the "poor dark souls'" of the bush-folk
themselves--if their vision iS clear enough--before they judge.

Long before our midnight had come, the camp was sleeping a deep,
sound sleep--those who were not on watch--a dreamless sleep,
for the bullocks were peaceful and ruminating, the Chinese drovers
having been "excused" from duty lest other beasts should stray
during "some one's" watch.

Soon after sun-up the head drover formally accepted the mob,
and, still inwardly marvelling at the Maluka's trust, filled in
his cheque, and, blandly smiling, watched while the Maluka made
out receipts and cancelled the agreement. Then, to show that he
dealt little in simple trust, he carried the receipts and agreement
in private and in turn, to Dan, and Jack, and the Dandy, asking
each if all were honestly made out.

Dan looked at the papers critically ("might have been holding
them upside down for all I knew," he said later), and assured
the drover that all was right. "Which was true" he added also
later, "seeing the boss made 'em out." Dan dealt largely in simple
trust where the boss was concerned. Jack, having heard Dan's report,
took his cue from it and passed the papers as "just the thing ";
but the Dandy read out every word in them in a loud, clear voice,
to his own amusement and the drovers' discomfiture.

The papers having been thus proved satisfactory, the drovers
started their boys with the bullocks, before giving their attention
to the packing up of their camp baggage, and we turned to our own
affairs.

As the Dandy's new yard was not furnished yet with a draughting
lane and branding pens, the mixed cattle were to be taken
to the Bitter Springs yard; and by the time Jack had been seen off
with them and our own camp packed up, the drovers had become so
involved in baggage that Dan and the Dandy felt obliged to offer
assistance. FinaUy every one was ready to mount, and then we
and the drovers exchanged polite fareweUs and parted, seller
and buyer each confident that he knew more about the cash for that
cheque than the other. No doubt the day came when those drovers
ceased to marvel at the Maluka's simple trust.

The drovers rode away to the north-west, and as we set out to
the south-east, Dan turned his back on "them little darlings"
with a sigh of relief. Reckon that money's been earned, anyway,"
he said. Then, as Jackeroo was the only available "boy," the others
all being on before with the cattle, we gathered together our
immense team of horses and drove them out of camp. In open order
we jogged along across country, with Jackeroo riding ahead as pilot,
followed by the jangling, straggling team of pack- and loose horses,
while behind the team rode the white folk all abreast, with six or
eight dogs trotting along behind again. For a couple of hours we
jogged along in the tracks of Jack's cattle, without coming up with
them, then, just as we sighted the great rumbling mob, a smaller
mob appeared on our right.

"Run 'em into the mob," Dan shouted; and at his shout every man
and horse leapt forward--pack-horses and all--and went after them
in pell-mell disorder.

"Scrub bulls! Keep behind them! "Dan yelled giving directions
as we stampeded at his heels (it is not all advantage for musterers
to ride with the pack-team) then as we and they galloped straight
for Jack's mob every one yelled in warning: "Hi! look out there!
Bulls! Look out," until Dan's revolver rang out above the din.

Jack turned at the shot and saw the bulls, but too late. Right
through his mob they galloped, splitting it up into fragments,
and in a moment pack-horses, cattle, riders, bulls, were part of
a surging, galloping mass--boys galloping after bulls, and bulls
after boys, and the white folk after anything and everything,
peppering bulls with revolver-shots (stock-whip having no effect),
shouting orders, and striving their utmost to hold the mob;
pack and loose horses galloping and kicking as they freed themselves
from the hubbub; and the missus scurrying here and there on
the outskirts of the melee, dodging behind bushes and scrub
in her anxiety to avoid both bulls and revolver-shots. Ennui forsooth!
Never was a woman farther from death by ennui.

Finally the horses gathered themselves together in the friendly
shelter of some scrub, and as the woman sought safety among them,
the Maluka's rifle rang out, and a charging bull went down before it.
Then out of the thick of the uproar Sambo came full gallop,
with a bull at his horse's heels, and Dan full gallop behind
the bull, bringing his rifle to his shoulder as he gaUoped, and as
all three galloped madly on Dan fired, and the bull pitching
blindly forward, Sambo wheeled, and he and Dan galloped back to the mob
to meet another charging outlaw and deal with it.

Then in quick succession from all sides of the mob bulls
darted out with riders at THEIR heels, or riders shot forward
with bulls at their heels, until the mob looked like a great
spoked wheel revolving on its own axis. Bull after bull went
down before the rifles, old Roper, with the Maluka riding him,
standing like a rock under fire; and then, just as the mob was
quieting down, a wild scrub cow with a half-grown calf at her heels
shot out of the mob and headed straight for the pack team, Dan
galloping beside her and cracking thunderclaps out of a stock-whip.
Flash and I scuttled to shelter, and Dan, bending the cow back
to the mob, shouted as he passed by, at full gallop: "Here you are,
missus; thought you might like a drop of milk."

For another five minutes the mob was "held" to steady them a
bit before starting, and then, just as all seemed in order, one
of the prostrate bulls staggered to its feet--anything but dead;
and as a yell went up "Look out, boss! look out!" Roper sprang
forward in obedience to the spurs, just too late to miss a sudden,
mad lunge from the wounded outlaw, and the next moment the bull
was down with a few more shots in him, and Roper was receiving
a tribute that only he could command.

With that surging mob of cattle beside them, the Maluka and Dan
had dismounted, and were trying to staunch the flow of blood,
while black boys gathered round, and Jack and the Dandy, satisfied
that the injuries were not " too serious," were leaning over
from their saddles congratulating the old horse on having "got off
so easy." The wound fortunately, was in the thigh, and just
a clean deep punch for, as by a miracle, the bull's horn had
missed all tendons and as the old campaigner was led away for
treatmen he disdained even to limp, and was well within
a fortnight.

"Passing the time of day with Jack," Dan called the scrimmage;
as we left the field of battle and looking back we found that
already the Bromli kites were closing in and sinking and settling
earthwards towards the crows who were impatiently waiting our
departure--waiting to convert the erst raging scrub bulls
into white, bleaching bones.

Travelling quicker than the cattle, we were camped and at dinner
at "Abraham's"--another lily-strewn billabong--when the mob came in,
the thirsty brutes travelling with down-drooping heads and lowing
deeply and incessantly. Their direction showing that they would
pass within a few yards of our camp fire, on their way to the water,
as a matter of course I stood up, and Dan, with a chuckle, assured me
that they had "something else more important on than chivying the missus."

But the recollection of that raging mob was too vividly in mind,
and the cattle beginning to trot at the sight of the water, decided
against them, and the next moment I was three feet from the ground,
among the low-spreading branches of a giant Paper-bark.
Jackeroo was riding ahead, and flashed one swift, sidelong glance
after me but as the mob trotted by he trotted with them as impassive
as a statue.

But we had by no means done with Jackeroo; for as we sat in camp
that night at the Springs, with the cattle safe in the yard,
shouts of laughter from the "boys'" camp attracted our attention,
and we found Jackeroo the centre-piece of the camp, preparing to
repeat some performance. For a second or so he stood irresolute;
then, clutching wildly at an imaginary something that appeared to
encumber his feet, with a swift, darting run and a scrambling
clamber, he was into the midst of a sapling; then, our silence
attracting attention, the black world collapsed in speechless
convulsions.

"How the missus climbed a tree, little 'un," the Maluka chuckled;
and the mimicry of action had been so perfect that we knew it could
only be that. Every detail was there: the moment of indecision,
the wild clutch at the habit, the quick, feminine lift of the running
feet, and the indescribably feminine scrambling climb at the finish.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19