Such is Life

J >> Joseph Furphy >> Such is Life

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This etext was produced by Col Choat.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I UNEMPLOYED

CHAPTER II Tuesday, Oct. 9--GOOLUMBULLA; TO RORY'S

CHAPTER III Friday, Nov. 9--CHARLEY'S PADDOCK; BINNEY; CATASTROPHE

CHAPTER IV Sunday, Dec. 9--DEAD MAN'S BEND! WARRIGAL ALF DOWN; RESCUE TWICE;
ENLISTED TERRIBLE TOMMY, ETC.

CHAPTER V Wednesday, Jan. 9--TRINIDAD PAD., PER SAM YOUNG; CONVLAVE

CHAPTER VI Saturday, Feb. 9--RUNNYMEDE; TO ALF JONES'S

CHAPTER VII Friday, March 28--WILCANNIA SHOWER; JACK THE SHELLBACK;
Saturday, March 29--TO RUNNYMEDE;
TOM ARMSTRONG AND MATE

CHAPTER I

Unemployed at last!

***

Scientifically, such a contingency can never have befallen of itself.
According to one theory of the Universe, the momentum of Original Impress
has been tending toward this far-off, divine event ever since a scrap
of fire-mist flew from the solar centre to form our planet.
Not this event alone, of course; but every occurrence, past and present,
from the fall of captured Troy to the fall of a captured insect.
According to another theory, I hold an independent diploma
as one of the architects of our Social System, with a commission
to use my own judgment, and take my own risks, like any other unit of humanity.
This theory, unlike the first, entails frequent hitches and cross-purposes;
and to some malign operation of these I should owe my present holiday.

Orthodoxly, we are reduced to one assumption: namely, that my indomitable
old Adversary has suddenly called to mind Dr. Watts's friendly hint
respecting the easy enlistment of idle hands.

Good. If either of the two first hypotheses be correct,
my enforced furlough tacitly conveys the responsibility of extending
a ray of information, however narrow and feeble, across the path
of such fellow-pilgrims as have led lives more sedentary than
my own--particularly as I have enough money to frank myself in a frugal way
for some weeks, as well as to purchase the few requisites of authorship.

If, on the other hand, my supposed safeguard of drudgery has been cut off
at the meter by that amusingly short-sighted old Conspirator,
it will be only fair to notify him that his age and experience,
even his captivating habits and well-known hospitality, will be treated
with scorn, rather than respect, in the paragraphs which he virtually forces me
to write; and he is hereby invited to view his own feather on the fatal dart.

Whilst a peculiar defect--which I scarcely like to call an oversight
in mental construction--shuts me out from the flowery pathway of the romancer,
a co-ordinate requital endows me, I trust, with the more sterling,
if less ornamental qualities of the chronicler. This fairly equitable
compensation embraces, I have been told, three distinct attributes:
an intuition which reads men like sign-boards; a limpid veracity;
and a memory which habitually stereotypes all impressions except those
relating to personal injuries.

Submitting, then, to the constitutional interdict already glanced at,
and availing myself of the implied license to utilise that homely talent
of which I am the bailee, I purpose taking certain entries from my diary,
and amplifying these to the minutest detail of occurrence or conversation.
This will afford to the observant reader a fair picture of Life,
as that engaging problem has presented itself to me.

Twenty-two consecutive editions of Lett's Pocket Diary,
with one week in each opening, lie on the table before me; all filled up,
and in a decent state of preservation. I think I shall undertake
the annotation of a week's record. A man might, if he were of a fearful heart,
stagger in this attempt; but I shut my eyes, and take up one
of the little volumes. It proves to be the edition of 1883.
Again I shut my eyes while I open the book at random. It is the week
beginning with Sunday, the 9th of September.

SUN. SEPT. 9. Thomp. Coop. &c. 10-Mile Pines. Cleo. Duff. Selec.

The fore part of the day was altogether devoid of interest or event.
Overhead, the sun blazing wastefully and thanklessly through
a rarefied atmosphere; underfoot the hot, black clay, thirsting
for spring rain, and bare except for inedible roley-poleys, coarse tussocks,
and the woody stubble of close-eaten salt-bush; between sky and earth,
a solitary wayfarer, wisely lapt in philosophic torpor.
Ten yards behind the grey saddle-horse follows a black pack-horse,
lightly loaded; and three yards behind the pack-horse ambles listlessly
a tall, slate-coloured kangaroo dog, furnished with the usual
poison muzzle--a light wire basket, worn after the manner of a nose-bag.

Mile after mile we go at a good walk, till the dark boundary
of the scrub country disappears northward in the glassy haze, and in front,
southward, the level black-soil plains of Riverina Proper mark
a straight sky-line, broken here and there by a monumental clump or pine-ridge.
And away beyond the horizon, southward still, the geodesic curve carries
that monotony across the zone of salt-bush, myall, and swamp box;
across the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee, and on to the Victorian border--say,
two hundred and fifty miles.

Just about mid-day, the station track I was following intersected
and joined the stock route; and against the background of a pine-ridge,
a mile ahead, I saw some wool-teams. When I overtook them,
they had stopped for dinner among the trees. One of the party was
an intimate friend of mine, and three others were acquaintances;
so, without any of the ceremony which prevails in more refined circles,
I hooked Fancy's rein on a pine branch, pulled the pack-saddle off Bunyip,
and sat down with the rest, to screen the tea through my teeth
and flick the diligent little operatives out of the cold mutton
with the point of my pocket-knife.

There were five bullock-teams altogether: Thompson's twenty;
Cooper's eighteen; Dixon's eighteen; and Price's two teams of fourteen each.
Three of the wagons, in accordance with a fashion of the day,
bore names painted along the board inside the guard irons. Thompson's was
the Wanderer; Cooper's, the Hawkesbury; and Dixon's, the Wombat.
All were platform wagons, except Cooper's, which was the Sydney-side pattern.

To avoid the vulgarity of ushering this company into the presence
of the punctilious reader without even the ceremony of a Bedouin
introduction--(This is my friend, N or M; if he steals anything,
I will be responsible for it): a form of introduction, by the way,
too sweeping in its suretyship for prudent men to use in Riverina--I shall
describe the group, severally, with such succinctness as may be compatible
with my somewhat discursive style.

Steve Thompson was a Victorian. He was scarcely a typical bullock driver,
since fifteen years of that occupation had not brutalised his temper,
nor ensanguined his vocabulary, nor frayed the terminal "g"
from his participles. I knew him well, for we had been partners in dogflesh
and colleagues in larceny when we were, as poets feign, nearer to heaven
than in maturer life. And, wide as Riverina is, we often encountered
fortuitously, and were always glad to fraternise. Physically,
Thompson was tall and lazy, as bullock drivers ought to be.

Cooper was an entire stranger to me, but as he stoutly contended
that Hay and Deniliquin were in Port Phillip, I inferred him to be a citizen
of the mother colony. Four months before, he had happened to strike
the very first consignment of goods delivered at Nyngan by rail,
for the Western country. He had chanced seven tons of this, for Kenilworth;
had there met Thompson, delivering salt from Hay; and now the two,
freighted with Kenilworth wool, were making the trip to Hay together.
Kenilworth was on the commercial divide, having a choice of two evils--the
long, uninviting track southward to the Murrumbidgee, and the
badly watered route eastward to the Bogan. This was Cooper's first experience
of Riverina, and he swore in no apprentice style that it would be his last.
A correlative proof of the honest fellow's Eastern extraction lay
in the fact that he was three inches taller, three stone heavier,
and thirty degrees lazier, than Thompson.

I had known Dixon for many years. He was a magnificent specimen
of crude humanity; strong, lithe, graceful, and not too big--just such a man
as your novelist would picture as the nurse-swapped offspring
of some rotund or ricketty aristocrat. But being, for my own part,
as I plainly stated at the outset, incapable of such romancing,
I must register Dixon as one whose ignoble blood had crept through scoundrels
since the Flood. Though, when you come to look at it leisurely,
this wouldn't interfere with aristocratic, or even regal, descent--rather
the reverse.

Old Price had carted goods from Melbourne to Bendigo in '52; a hundred miles,
for £100 per ton. He had had two teams at that time, and,
being a man of prudence and sagacity, had two teams still,
and was able to pay his way. I had known him since I was about the height
of this table; he was Old Price then; he is Old Price still;
and he will probably be Old Price when my head is dredged with the white flour
of a blameless life, and I am pottering about with a stick,
hating young fellows, and making myself generally disagreeable.
Price's second team was driven by his son Mosey, a tight little fellow,
whose body was about five-and-twenty, but whose head, according to
the ancient adage, had worn out many a good pair of shoulders.

Willoughby, who was travelling loose with Thompson and Cooper, was a whaler.
Not owing to any inherent incapacity, for he had taken his B.A.
at an English university, and was, notwithstanding his rags and dirt,
a remarkably fine-looking man; bearing a striking resemblance to Dixon,
even in features. But as the wives of Napoleon's generals could never learn
to walk on a carpet, so the aimless popinjay of adult age can never learn
to take a man's place among rough-and-ready workers. Even in spite of
Willoughby's personal resemblance to Dixon, there was a suggestion
of latent physical force and leathery durability in the bullock driver,
altogether lacking in the whaler, and equiponderated only by a certain air
of refinement. How could it be otherwise? Willoughby, of course,
had no horse--in fact, like Bassanio, all the wealth he had ran in his veins;
he was a gentleman. Well for the world if all representatives of his Order
were as harmless, as inexpensive, and as unobtrusive as this poor fellow,
now situated like that most capricious poet, honest Ovid, among the Goths.

One generally feels a sort of diffidence in introducing one's self;
but I may remark that I was at that time a Government official,
of the ninth class; paid rather according to my grade than my merit,
and not by any means in proportion to the loafing I had to do.
Candidly, I was only a Deputy-Assistant-Sub-Inspector,
but with the reversion of the Assistant-Sub-Inspectorship itself
when it should please Atropos to snip the thread of my superior officer.

The repast being concluded, the drivers went into committee
on the subject of grass--a vital question in '83, as you may remember.

"It's this way," said Mosey imperatively, and deftly weaving into his address
the thin red line of puissant adjective; "You dunno what you're doin'
when you're foolin' with this run. She's hair-trigger at the best o' times,
an' she's on full cock this year. Best watched station on the track.
It's risk whatever way you take it. We're middlin' safe to be collared
in the selection, an' we're jist as safe to be collared in the ram-paddick.
Choice between the divil an' the dam. An' there's too big a township o' wagons
together. Two's enough, an' three's a glutton, for sich a season as this."

"I think Cooper and I had better push on to the ram-paddock,"
suggested Thompson. "You three can work on the selection.
Division of labour's the secret of success, they say."

"Secret of England's greatness," mused Dixon. "I forgit what
the (irrelevant expletive) that is."

"The true secret of England's greatness lies in her dependencies,
Mr. Dixon," replied Willoughby handsomely; and straightway the serene,
appreciative expression of the bullock driver's face, rightly interpreted,
showed that his mind was engaged in a Graeco-Roman conflict
with the polysyllable, the latter being uppermost.

"Well, no," said Mosey, replying to Thompson; "no use separatin' now;
it's on'y spreadin' the risk; we should 'a' separated yesterday.
I would n't misdoubt the selection, on'y Cunningham told me the other day,
Magomery's shiftin' somebody to live there. If that's so, it's up a tree,
straight. The ram-paddick's always a risk--too near the station."

"The hut on the selection was empty a week ago," I remarked.
"I know it, for I camped there one night."

"Good grass?" inquired a chorus of voices.

"About the best I've had this season."

"We'll chance the selection," said Mosey decidedly. "Somebody can
ride on ahead, an' see the coast clear. But they won't watch
a bit of a paddick in the thick o' the shearin', when there's nobody
livin' in it."

"Squatters hed orter fine grass f'r wool teams, an' glad o' the chance,"
observed Price, with unprintable emphasis.

"Lot of sense in that remark," commented Mosey, with a similar potency
of adjective.

"Well, this is about the last place God made," growled Cooper,
the crimson thread of kinship running conspicuously through his observation,
notwithstanding its narrow provinciality.

"Roll up, Port Phillipers! the Sydney man's goin' to strike a match!"
retorted Mosey. "I wonder what fetched a feller like you on-to
bad startin'-ground. I swear we did n't want no lessons."

Cooper was too lazy to reply; and we smoked dreamily, while my kangaroo dog
silently abstracted a boiled leg of mutton from Price's tuckerbox,
and carried it out of sight. By-and-by, all eyes converged
on a shapeless streak which had moved into sight in the restless,
glassy glitter of the plain, about a mile away.

"Warrigal Alf going out on the lower track," remarked Thompson, at length.
"He was coming behind Baxter and Donovan yesterday, but he stopped
opposite the station, talking to Montgomery and Martin, and the other fellows
lost the run of him. I wonder where he camped last night?
He ought to be able to tell us where the safest grass is, considering
he's had a load in from the station. But to tell you the truth,
I'm in favour of the ram-paddock. If we're caught there, we'll most likely
only get insulted--and we can stand a lot of that--but if we're caught
in the selection, it's about seven years. Then we can make the Lignum Swamp
to-morrow from the ram-paddock, and we can't make it from the selection.
So I think we better be moving; it'll be dark enough before we unyoke.
I've worked on that ram-paddock so often that I seem to have
a sort of title to it."

"But there's lots o' changes since you was here last," said Mosey.
"Magomery he's beginnin' to think he's got a sort o' title
to the ram-paddick now, considerin' it's all purchased. Tell you what I'll do:
I'll slip over in two minits on Valiparaiser, an' consult with Alf.
Me an' him's as thick as thieves."

"I'll go with you, Mosey," said I. "I've got some messages for him.
Keep an eye on my dog, Steve."

Mosey untied the fine upstanding grey horse from the rear of his wagon;
I hitched Bunyip to a tree, and mounted Fancy, and we cantered away together
across the plain; the ponderous empty wagon--Sydney-side pattern--with
eight bullocks in yoke and twelve travelling loose, coming more clearly
into detail through the vibrating translucence of the lower atmosphere.
Alf did n't deign to stop. I noticed a sinister smile on his sad, stern face
as Mosey gaily accosted him.

"An' how's the world usin' you, Alf? Got red o' Pilot, I notice.
Ever see sich a suck-in? Best at a distance, ain't he? Tell you
what I come over for, Alf: They say things is middlin' hot here on Runnymede;
an' we're in a (sheol) of a (adjective) stink about what to do with our frames
to-night. Our wagons is over there on the other track, among the pines.
Where did you stop las' night? Your carrion's as full as ticks."

"I had them in the selection; took them out this morning after they lay down."

"Good shot!"

"Why, I don't see how it concerns you."

"The selection's reasonable safe--ain't it?"

"Please yourself about that."

"Is the ram-paddick safe?".

"No."

"Is there enough water in the tank at the selection?"

"How do I know? There was enough for me."

"I say, Alf," said I: "Styles, of Karowra, told me to let you know,
if possible, that you were right about the boring rods;
and he'll settle with you any time you call. Also there's a letter for you
at Lochleven Station. Two items."

"I'm very much obliged to you for your trouble, Collins," replied Alf,
with a shade less of moroseness in his tone.

"Well, take care o' yourself, ole son; you ain't always got me
to look after you," said Mosey pleasantly; and we turned our horses
and rode away. "Evil-natured beggar, that," he continued.
"He's floggin' the cat now, 'cos he laid us on to the selection
in spite of his self. If that feller don't go to the bottomless
for his disagreeableness, there's somethin' radic'ly wrong about Providence.
I'm a great believer in Providence, myself, Tom; an' what's more,
I try to live up to my (adj.) religion. I'm sure I don't want to see
any pore (fellow) chained up in fire an' brimstone for millions o' millions
o' years, an' a worm tormentin' him besides; but I don't see
what the (adj. sheol) else they can do with Alf. Awful to think of it."
Mosey sighed piously, then resumed, "Grand dog you got since I seen you last.
Found the (animal), I s'pose?"

"No, Mosey. Bought him fair."

"Jist so, jist so. You ought to give him to me. He's bound to pick up a bait
with you; you're sich a careless &c., &c." And so the conversation ran
on the subject of dogs during the return ride.

On our reaching the wagons, it was unanimously resolved that the selection
should be patronised. This being so, there was no hurry--rather the reverse--
for the selection was not to be reached till dusk.

You will understand that the bullock drivers' choice of accommodation
lay between the selection, the ram-paddock, and a perisher on the plain.
The selection was four or five miles ahead; the near corner of the ram-paddock
about two miles farther still; whilst a perisher on the plain is seldom
hard to find in a bad season, when the country is stocked for good seasons.
Runnymede home station--Mooney and Montgomery, owners; J. G. Montgomery,
managing partner--was a mile or so beyond the further corner
of the ram-paddock, and was the central source of danger.

Presently the tea leaves were thrown out of the billies;
the tuckerboxes were packed on the pole-fetchels; and the teams got under way.
Thompson pressed me to camp with him and Cooper for the night,
and I readily consented; thus temporarily eluding a fatality which was
in the habit of driving me from any given direction to Runnymede homestead--
a fatality which, I trust, I shall have no farther occasion to notice
in these pages.

We therefore tied Fancy beside Thompson's horse at the rear of his wagon,
and disposed Bunyip's pack-saddle and load on the top of the wool;
the horse, of course, following Fancy according to his daily habit.

A quarter of a mile of stiff pulling through the sand of the pine-ridge,
and the plain opened out again. A short, dark, irregular line,
cleanly separated from the horizon by the wavy glassiness of the lower air,
indicated the clump of box on the selection, four miles ahead;
and this comprised the landscape.

Soon we became aware of two teams coming to meet us; then three horsemen
behind, emerging from the pine-ridge we had left. As the horsemen
gradually decreased their distance, the teams met and passed us
without salutation; sullenly drawing off the track, in the deference
always conceded to wool. Victorian poverty spoke in every detail
of the working plant; Victorian energy and greed in the unmerciful loads
of salt and wire, for the scrub country out back. The Victorian carrier,
formidable by his lack of professional etiquette and his extreme thrift,
is neither admired nor caressed by the somewhat select practitioners
of Riverina.

Then the three horsemen overtook Cooper, pausing a little,
after the custom of the country, to gossip with him as they passed.
According to another custom of the country, Thompson, Willoughby and I
began to criticise them.

"I know the bloke with the linen coat," remarked Thompson.
"His name's M'Nab; he's a contractor. That half-caste has been with him
for years, tailing horses and so forth, for his tucker and rags.
Mac's no great chop."

"He lets his man Friday have the best horse, at all events," said I.
"Grand-looking beast, that black one the half-caste is riding."

"By Jove, yes," replied Willoughby. "Now, Thompson--referring to
the discussion we had this morning--that is the class of horse we mount
in our light cavalry."

"And that strapping red-headed galoot, riding the bag of bones beside him,
is what you would call excellent war-material?" I suggested.

"Precisely, Mr. Collins," replied the whaler. "Nature produces such men
expressly for rank and file; and I should imagine that their existence
furnishes sufficient rejoinder to the levelling theory."

"Quite possible the chap's as good as either of you," remarked Thompson,
seizing the opportunity for reproof. "Do you know anything against him?"

"Well, to quote Madame de Staël," replied Willoughby;
"he abuses a man's privilege of being ugly."

"Moreover, he has left undone a thing that he ought to have done," I rejoined.
"He ought to be taking a spell of carrying that mare. And pat he comes,
like the catastrophe of the old comedy"...

"'Day, chaps," said Rufus, as he joined us. "Keep on your pins, you beggar"--
and he drove both spurs into his mare's shrinking flanks.
"Grey mare belongs to you, boss--don't she?--an' the black moke
with the Roman nose follerin'? I was thinkin' we might manage
to knock up some sort o' swap. Now this mare's a Patriarch, she is;
and you might n't think it. I won this here saddle with her
at a bit of a meetin' las' week, an' rode her my own self--an' that's
oc'lar demonster. I tell you, if this here mare had a week spell,
you could n't hold her; an' she'd go a hundred mile between sunrise an' sunset,
at the same bat. Yes, boss; it's the breed does it. I seen some good horses
about the King, but swelp me Gawd I never seen a patch on this mare;
an' you might n't think it to look at her jist now. Fact is, boss,
she wants a week or a fortnit spell. Could n't we work up
some sort o' swap for that ole black moke o' yours, with the big head?
If I got a trifle o' cash to boot, I would n't mind slingin' in this saddle,
an' takin' yours. Now, boss, don't be a (adj.) fool."

"To tell you the truth," I replied, "that black horse has carried a pack
so long that he's about cooked for saddle. But he does me right enough."

"Then I'll tell you what I'll do!" exclaimed Rufus impulsively.
"Look here! At a word! I'll go you an even swap for that little weed
of a grey mare! At a word, mind! I'm a reckless sort o' (person)
when I take the notion! but without a word of exaggeration,
I would n't do it on'y for being fixed the way I am. This here mare's got
a fortune in her for a man like you."

"Now howl' yer tongue!" interposed M'Nab, who, with the half-caste--a lithe,
active lad of eighteen--had joined us. "Is it swappin' ye want wi' decent men?
Sure thon poor craytur iv a baste hes n't got the sthrenth fur till kerry
it own hide, let alone a great gommeril on it back. An' thon's furnent ye!
Hello, Tamson! begog A did n't know ye at wanst."

"Good day, Mr. M'Nab. Alterations since I delivered you that wire at Poondoo.
Been in the wars?" For M'Nab was leaning forward and sideways in his saddle,
evidently in pain.

"Yis," replied the contractor frankly. "There was some Irish rascals
at the pub. thonder, where we stapped las' night; an' wan word
brung on another, an' at long an' at last we fell to, so we did;
on' A'm dam but they got the betther o' me, being three agin wan.
A b'lee some o' me ribs is bruk."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Thompson, straining a point for courtesy.

"Are you an Orangeman too, sonny?" I asked the half-caste aside;
for the young fellow had a bunged eye, and a flake of skin off his cheek-bone.

"No, by Cripes!" responded my countryman emphatically. "Not me.
That cove's a (adj.) liar. He don't give a dam, s'posin' a feller's soul
gits bashed out. Best sight I seen for many a day was seein' him
gittin' kicked. If the mean beggar'd on'y square up with me,
I'd let summedy else do his"----

"Thon's a brave wee shilty, sur-thon grey wan o' yours,"
broke in the contractor, who had been conversing with Thompson,
whilst looking enviously at Fancy, hitched behind the wagon. "Boys o' dear,"
he added reflectively, "she's jist sich another as may wee Dolly;
an' A've been luckin' fur a match fur Dolly this menny's the day.
How oul' is she, sur?"

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