Colonial Born Part 17

The life of the bush was silent, save for the gra.s.shoppers and an occasional stridulation from an energetic cicada (locust, as the bush-term has it, and which, like many another bush-name, seems to have been given because it was inappropriate, for the cicada is anything but a locust, while the "gra.s.shopper" is nothing else). The leaves of the gums hung motionless, with their sharp edge turned to the sun-glare, so as to let the fierce heat strike on the stems and curl the shed-bark into long festoons--and puzzle the minds of the new chums why broad leaves cast no shade. Under the folds of the shed-bark the lizards cuddled asleep, and occasionally a tree-snake shared their shelter; while far down, squeezing into the farthest corner, away from the heat and glare, and away from their unwelcome neighbours, the green tree-frogs spread their ball-pointed toes and turned their golden eyes up to the light to watch the coiled mystery as they slept.

The iron of the store-roof popped and crackled now and then as a sheet of "galvanized," expanding, strained on a nail and buckled. And yet from further down the township road there came the whirr and shriek of Smart's buzz-saw rending its way through hard-wood logs; the clang and jangle of Cullen's hammers as they fell on iron and anvil; and more sleepily, more drowsily, more in keeping with the hot languor of the day, the hum of the children's voices as they chanted their task in unison on the open verandah of the school-house. Marmot, listening and heeding, thought, and the thoughts grew in importance in his mind and in impressiveness, until, forgetful that the court was not sitting and that he was alone, he took the pipe from his lips, and, pointing the stem down the dusty, sun-scorched track, exclaimed--

"The cause--the fust cause--the great cause--the cause of our being a nation--_the_ nation; yes, bust me, _the_ nation--is--what?"

He waited for an answer from the silence of the verandah, and, receiving none, save the crackle of the sheets of iron in the roof, pointed with his pipe-stem in the direction of the sounds from the township.

"That!" he exclaimed. "There it is--energy--go--good Anglo-Saxon go.

That's what makes us what we are. Here's the bush asleep. If there's any n.i.g.g.e.rs in it, they're asleep. Even the lizards are asleep. The trees stop growing, and won't even make a shade; but us--do we stop? No! There ain't nothin' that'll stop us. We didn't make the world altogether maybe, but, by smoke, we're making it fit for our needs. Who'd work this hot spell except us? Who'd run this country except us? Here's Australia; there's Africa; there's America; there's India; and there's "home;" and who runs the lot if it ain't us? And what's the world outside of that lot? A few paddocks full of dargoes and black-fellows ready to cut each other's throats if it wasn't for us."

He put his pipe once more between his lips, and sat thinking in silence.

The buzz-saw whirred and jarred; the hammers clanged and jangled; the school-children droned and hummed; and beyond Marmot saw in his fancy the selections whence they came to school. Always the same picture, inasmuch that in each there was work. Here a man was working with his hoe in his pumpkin patch; there another cared for his maize; a third was splitting shingles for the roof of a shed he was building; a fourth was splitting logs with a heavy maul and wedge for fencing rails; a fifth was fixing water-tanks to be ready when the rain came; while a sixth was digging a waterhole in the hard, baked earth also to be ready for the rain. On every selection, as it came into Marmot's mind, there was work going on--work that made the tanned skins of the workers glisten with the beads of sweat; work that made moving pictures against a background of nature at rest. Inside the selection houses the women did their share, and sometimes outside as well. Beyond the houses and the selections, in the gullies of the ranges, men worked as they sought for mineral wealth when the sun was high, as well as when it was low; on the big paddocks of the station the bush slept, and the flocks and herds huddled wherever shelter could be found, but the men were never still, not even in the station homesteads. Everywhere that the mind of Marmot wandered, every scene that came to him as he sat and mused, showed white men, the men of the Anglo-Saxon blood, tireless, restless, working. Only when men of other races, dark-skinned, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, pa.s.sed his mental vision, was there the stillness of lazy rest; and Marmot was pleased, for he loved to prate of the Anglo-Saxon and the work they had done, and would do, for the world that gave them birth.

His meditations were interrupted by the sound of many voices, and he rose from his seat and went to the edge of the verandah, so as to command a better view up the road. A wide column of dust, or a cloud made up of columns, moved down the centre, the sunlight gleaming on the dust-cloud, making it nearly opaque, and rendering the figures of the men within it almost invisible. It approached rapidly, and part of it rolled along as an advance guard, filling the air that Marmot breathed till he coughed and swore. When the main body arrived, he felt it in his eyes and nostrils, and the men who tramped on to the verandah and into the store were covered with it, so that, as they moved, it came in small puffs from their clothes and boots.

The men trooped past him and into the store, talking and chaffing, their clothes toil-stained and ragged, their faces tanned nearly black by the sun.

"Now, then, old brusher, where's your reach-me-downers?" one asked.

"Sling out a pound of twist as a start," another demanded.

"Two revolvers and a bag of shot," a third wanted; while others clamoured for tent-calico, blankets, sheath-knives, and such like necessaries, and, growing impatient at not being attended to at once, tramped out on to the verandah, where they sat on their swags as they filled their pipes.

"There's no rum in the show, boys," a man exclaimed, as he appeared in the doorway. "It's all up at the pub."

"Come on, then," the last man to arrive, and who had just slung his swag to the ground by the horse-posts, cried, as he swung his swag on to his shoulder again.

Like a body of ants swarming on to a victim they had come from the road to the store. Now they streamed out again and gathered in the roadway, calling to one another, chaffing one another, and worrying those who still lingered inside to hasten along and bring the storekeeper with them.

Then, with Marmot in the lead, they pa.s.sed slowly down the township road, and as they pa.s.sed the various centres of industry which had so roused Marmot's admiration earlier in the day, a hush fell upon the machinery and the workers ceased their labours, while the procession in the direction of the Rest grew larger. It was just such an occasion as justified the expansion of bush hospitality, and Birralong, recognizing the fact, went out as a man to meet it. The school-children, as they trooped away home, carried the message with them to their fathers and their brothers that the prospectors had come in from the ranges with a team-load of nuggets, and that there was a pile of them on the bar table at the Rest being melted. The news travelled, as such news will, and many a man on a neighbouring selection was moved to thought. Half the farming implements in the district were damaged or out of order, and flooring-boards were at a premium, to judge by the numbers of clients who, during the early evening--school only broke up at four--rode or drove up to the smithy and the saw-mill, and had perforce to seek the proprietors farther afield.

Since the arrival of the trio who led Tony away the Rest had not known such an entertainment. There was drought in the land, and water was so scarce on many a selection that washing was a luxury which stood adjourned till the rain came, and so the Rest had been allowed to slumber. But a good store of necessaries, as so regarded at a bush hotel, was in the house, for a drought is usually followed, sooner or later, by a flood; and in a country where rain is rare and sunshine frequent, that which in more humid countries is regarded with displeasure, is hailed in droughty lands as an occasion for festivity and mirth; hence the Rest was well stocked, so as to be ready for the rain.

The accommodation for housing an unlimited number of visitors, however, was not quite so apparent, but when those visitors were men who had for years past known no other roof than a tent, and often none other than the sky, sleeping quarters were not difficult to obtain, especially as each man had his blankets--or what pa.s.sed for such--with him. There were paddocks round the Rest and calico enough for a hundred tents in Marmot's store, and with gold in their pockets, the fossickers of Boulder Creek asked for nothing more--in the way of shelter.

The diggers shared their good fortune royally with their comrades and friends, and song and jest circulated, as well as the encourager of both, and the atmosphere in the big, lumbering room which served the purpose of a bar, was filled with laughter and tobacco-smoke on the first night of the arrival.

Subsequently other elements supervened--elements which had their origin in the influence of potent libations acting on natures by no means warped by conventional thought, but which, under that influence, were stripped of the scanty robes they wore, and stood before the world naked in all the simplicity and crudity of first principles.

There was a guest already staying at the Rest when the crowd of diggers arrived--a guest whose suave manner and smooth tongue had been used to ingratiate himself with the proprietor of the Rest, but which had only tended to induce a lurking suspicion against him. Men used to the blunt methods of unadulterated human nature are p.r.o.ne to be sceptical of the motives which underlie what they tersely define as "chin-oil."

He, a slim, long-limbed man, with a sharp-featured face and shifty eyes, who said his name was Tap, lingered round the bar as the diggers trooped in, and smiled and cringed as he heard the order given to "Fill 'em up, fill 'em all up." When his gla.s.s was charged, he sidled up to a group, and asked, in his smooth voice, whether any one had found a nugget.

The man nearest, a burly, sunburned specimen, with a voice like a bull's and a vocabulary limited in everything save profanity, turned and looked at him.

"Nuggets?" he said, with a large embellishment of adjective, as he produced a canvas bag from inside his shirt and opened the mouth of it, revealing a store of gold. "We've all got 'em--enough to buy"--and he indicated Birralong.

"Oh, I am glad," the smooth-tongued Tap rejoined. "You must have worked hard; and in the hot weather too."

The man swallowed the contents of his gla.s.s, and set it down with a bang on the table as he fixed his eyes on Tap's face, and from the succeeding observations Tap realized that his sympathy and would-be friendly overture had been as gall in the mouth of his companion, who, unused to anything save the rugged bluntness of a wild, free life, took the mealy-mouthed sentence as a slight on his intelligence. The storm was averted by Tap inviting him to "have another," and, with delicate humility, taking the burly man's gla.s.s up to the bar in order to have it replenished--and also charged against the score of the burly man. Then he discreetly moved away, and mingled with other groups, always reaching one as the order was being given, and moving on to another before the time came for the "shout" to get round to his turn, until he had learned conclusively that every one of the men had a fair-sized bag of gold somewhere in his possession, and felt satisfied that he had imbibed as much as he could conveniently carry at their expense.

Slipping out of the room quietly and unostentatiously, he went round to the paddock where his horse was, saddled it, and rode away. The sounds of uproarious mirth came to him from the direction of the Rest, and he smiled furtively.

"It's right into our hands," he said to himself, as he rode along in the direction of the Three-mile.

He followed the track, dimly defined in the evening gloom, with the certainty of one who traverses a well-known route. The red flicker of firelight showed through the simple window as he approached the hut, and he went up to the door, after turning his horse loose in the paddock, and pushed it open. Inside, the firelight showed two men sitting on rough-made stools in front of the fireplace, while a third lay on a stretcher at the far end of the room.

One of the two men turned round quickly.

"Hullo, Barber, I didn't know you were back," Tap said in a subdued voice. "But I'm so glad, because----"

"Shut the door," the man interrupted abruptly.

"All right," Tap answered, as he turned and did the man's bidding.

"Walker hasn't turned up, but there's a lot of them come in, and they've all got gold," he went on, as he came over to the fire.

The man lying on the stretcher half raised himself, and the firelight fell on his face.

"Oh, you're there," Tap said, as he saw and recognized Gleeson. "I was going to say----"

Barber turned round again and fixed his eyes on Tap's face.

"What about Gleeson's men?" he asked.

"I didn't hear if they were there or not, but Gleeson can go in himself to-morrow. They won't know him now, after the night they're having."

"If Walker's not there he's waiting for them somewhere," Gleeson said.

"Then it's good enough for you to get in and start the game before they come," Barber said; adding, "And maybe you'll have sense enough to hold your tongue after the last experience you had. And you too, Tap, d'ye hear? I'm boss of this show, and don't you forget it."

The two men addressed did not answer; and Slaughter, sitting in front of the fire and looking into the red ma.s.s with eyes that were dazed and l.u.s.treless, wondered what all the comings and goings and muttered conversation, which had so inexplicably supplanted the still solitude of the Three-mile, had to do with him and his selection.

CHAPTER XI.

BILLIARDS MADE EASY.

There was a lurid atmosphere at Birralong during the days that the diggers held high revel at the Rest. The sun blazed down pitilessly on the land, stricken sore by the drought; for it was the season of the year when the rain should have come in copious downfalls to moisten the parched soil, and when thunderstorms, accompanied by the vivid gleam of tropical lightning, should have come to cool and clear the air. But no rain came; not even a cloud obscured the blue of the sky for a moment, and not a suspicion of dew fell during the hours of darkness. Only the lightning came, as soon as the sun was down, blazing, flaring, and flashing round the horizon and high overhead; disturbing the darkness as the patter of a tattoo disturbs silence; punctuating the night into periods of sombre, awful blackness by moments of dazzling, blinding white fury, that made the eyes tingle through the succeeding moments of dark, and the ears shrink and tremble, antic.i.p.ating the rending thunder-crash which never came. And always was the air hot and dry, and the wind, when it blew, was as a breath from the mouth of a volcano.

The gra.s.s, withered and brown, fell away into dust; the leaves hung limp and flaccid on the trees; the cultivation areas of the selections were parched and dismal; and to add to the tribulation of the selectors, swarms of gra.s.shoppers were abroad, swooping down in clouds, made up of myriads, upon everything that was green or bore the semblance of green, and never moving on until only the bare earth and the stripped tree branches were left.

It was such a season when some excuse was to be made for congregating at the Rest, and the advent of the diggers, with money to spend and a desire to entertain everybody who came within coo-ee of them, gave any excuse needed, not only to the selectors, but also to the men of Birralong.

Great things were going to be done as soon as the period of festivity was over, and the miners returned to the field and settled down steadily once more to toil and industry. Many a hard-working selector, who remembered his parched paddocks and bony stock, thought of throwing in his lot with the men he had formerly referred to as gully-rakers, when he saw the lavish expenditure, not only at the Rest, but at Marmot's, made possible by the gold they had won. Nor were the establishments at either end of the township alone in profiting. There would be a great demand for tools when the claims were started again, and Cullen had orders for picks by the ton; while the possibility of reefs being discovered, and tunnels and shafts being necessary to work them, filled Smart with enthusiasm at the amount of sawn timber which would be required in the early months of the coming year. It was evidently a period of boom in the history of the town, and to pa.s.s the time until the festive season was over, many a form of entertainment was suggested.

A race meeting was absolutely necessary, everybody urged, the diggers for the fun of the thing, the selectors with an eye to business, for the diggers had no horses, and as they might like to run their own, sales were not improbable.

In the mean time some one suggested a euchre tournament and a billiard handicap, and, in a day, what attention every one of the miners could spare from the other attractions of the Rest, was absorbed in the double struggle. In a couple of days, as far as they were able to understand clearly, the majority of the men had lost a considerable portion of the gold they had brought in; but no one seemed to have won it. Tap, who had returned to the Rest, usually had a hand in the games that were going; and Gleeson, who mingled with the crowd as a stranger to the other, also joined in the fun, though mostly on the billiard-table. They were the only two who never lost.