Joe Wilson and His Mates Part 37

'He--he died very quietly,' said Andy, hitching round, and resting his elbows on his knees, and looking into the fireplace so as to have his face away from the light. Miss Standish put her arm round her sister.

'He died very easy,' said Andy. 'He was a bit off his head at times, but that was while the fever was on him. He didn't suffer much towards the end--I don't think he suffered at all.... He talked a lot about you and the children.' (Andy was speaking very softly now.) 'He said that you were not to fret, but to cheer up for the children's sake.... It was the biggest funeral ever seen round there.'

Mrs Baker was crying softly. Andy got the packet half out of his pocket, but shoved it back again.

'The only thing that hurts me now,' says Mrs Baker presently, 'is to think of my poor husband buried out there in the lonely Bush, so far from home. It's--cruel!' and she was sobbing again.

'Oh, that's all right, Mrs Baker,' said Andy, losing his head a little.

'Ned will see to that. Ned is going to arrange to have him brought down and buried in Sydney.' Which was about the first thing Andy had told her that evening that wasn't a lie. Ned had said he would do it as soon as he sold his wool.

'It's very kind indeed of Ned,' sobbed Mrs Baker. 'I'd never have dreamed he was so kind-hearted and thoughtful. I misjudged him all along. And that is all you have to tell me about poor Robert?'

'Yes,' said Andy--then one of his 'happy thoughts' struck him. 'Except that he hoped you'd shift to Sydney, Mrs Baker, where you've got friends and relations. He thought it would be better for you and the children.

He told me to tell you that.'

'He was thoughtful up to the end,' said Mrs Baker. 'It was just like poor Robert--always thinking of me and the children. We are going to Sydney next week.'

Andy looked relieved. We talked a little more, and Miss Standish wanted to make coffee for us, but we had to go and see to our horses. We got up and b.u.mped against each other, and got each other's hats, and promised Mrs Baker we'd come again.

'Thank you very much for coming,' she said, shaking hands with us. 'I feel much better now. You don't know how much you have relieved me. Now, mind, you have promised to come and see me again for the last time.'

Andy caught her sister's eye and jerked his head towards the door to let her know he wanted to speak to her outside.

'Good-bye, Mrs Baker,' he said, holding on to her hand. 'And don't you fret. You've--you've got the children yet. It's--it's all for the best; and, besides, the Boss said you wasn't to fret.' And he blundered out after me and Miss Standish.

She came out to the gate with us, and Andy gave her the packet.

'I want you to give that to her,' he said; 'it's his letters and papers.

I hadn't the heart to give it to her, somehow.'

'Tell me, Mr M'Culloch,' she said. 'You've kept something back--you haven't told her the truth. It would be better and safer for me to know.

Was it an accident--or the drink?'

'It was the drink,' said Andy. 'I was going to tell you--I thought it would be best to tell you. I had made up my mind to do it, but, somehow, I couldn't have done it if you hadn't asked me.'

'Tell me all,' she said. 'It would be better for me to know.'

'Come a little farther away from the house,' said Andy. She came along the fence a piece with us, and Andy told her as much of the truth as he could.

'I'll hurry her off to Sydney,' she said. 'We can get away this week as well as next.' Then she stood for a minute before us, breathing quickly, her hands behind her back and her eyes shining in the moonlight. She looked splendid.

'I want to thank you for her sake,' she said quickly. 'You are good men!

I like the Bushmen! They are grand men--they are n.o.ble! I'll probably never see either of you again, so it doesn't matter,' and she put her white hand on Andy's shoulder and kissed him fair and square on the mouth. 'And you, too!' she said to me. I was taller than Andy, and had to stoop. 'Good-bye!' she said, and ran to the gate and in, waving her hand to us. We lifted our hats again and turned down the road.

I don't think it did either of us any harm.

A Hero in Dingo-Scrubs.

This is a story--about the only one--of Job Falconer, Boss of the Talbragar sheep-station up country in New South Wales in the early Eighties--when there were still runs in the Dingo-Scrubs out of the hands of the banks, and yet squatters who lived on their stations.

Job would never tell the story himself, at least not complete, and as his family grew up he would become as angry as it was in his easy-going nature to become if reference were made to the incident in his presence.

But his wife--little, plump, bright-eyed Gerty Falconer--often told the story (in the mysterious voice which women use in speaking of private matters amongst themselves--but with brightening eyes) to women friends over tea; and always to a new woman friend. And on such occasions she would be particularly tender towards the unconscious Job, and ruffle his thin, sandy hair in a way that embarra.s.sed him in company--made him look as sheepish as an old big-horned ram that has just been shorn and turned amongst the ewes. And the woman friend on parting would give Job's hand a squeeze which would surprise him mildly, and look at him as if she could love him.

According to a theory of mine, Job, to fit the story, should have been tall, and dark, and stern, or gloomy and quick-tempered. But he wasn't.

He was fairly tall, but he was fresh-complexioned and sandy (his skin was pink to scarlet in some weathers, with blotches of umber), and his eyes were pale-grey; his big forehead loomed babyishly, his arms were short, and his legs bowed to the saddle. Altogether he was an awkward, unlovely Bush bird--on foot; in the saddle it was different. He hadn't even a 'temper'.

The impression on Job's mind which many years afterwards brought about the incident was strong enough. When Job was a boy of fourteen he saw his father's horse come home riderless--circling and snorting up by the stockyard, head jerked down whenever the hoof trod on one of the snapped ends of the bridle-reins, and saddle twisted over the side with bruised pommel and knee-pad broken off.

Job's father wasn't hurt much, but Job's mother, an emotional woman, and then in a delicate state of health, survived the shock for three months only. 'She wasn't quite right in her head,' they said, 'from the day the horse came home till the last hour before she died.' And, strange to say, Job's father (from whom Job inherited his seemingly placid nature) died three months later. The doctor from the town was of the opinion that he must have 'sustained internal injuries' when the horse threw him. 'Doc. Wild' (eccentric Bush doctor) reckoned that Job's father was hurt inside when his wife died, and hurt so badly that he couldn't pull round. But doctors differ all over the world.

Well, the story of Job himself came about in this way. He had been married a year, and had lately started wool-raising on a pastoral lease he had taken up at Talbragar: it was a new run, with new slab-and-bark huts on the creek for a homestead, new shearing-shed, yards--wife and everything new, and he was expecting a baby. Job felt brand-new himself at the time, so he said. It was a lonely place for a young woman; but Gerty was a settler's daughter. The newness took away some of the loneliness, she said, and there was truth in that: a Bush home in the scrubs looks lonelier the older it gets, and ghostlier in the twilight, as the bark and slabs whiten, or rather grow grey, in fierce summers.

And there's nothing under G.o.d's sky so weird, so aggressively lonely, as a deserted old home in the Bush.

Job's wife had a half-caste gin for company when Job was away on the run, and the nearest white woman (a hard but honest Lancashire woman from within the kicking radius in Lancashire--wife of a selector) was only seven miles away. She promised to be on hand, and came over two or three times a-week; but Job grew restless as Gerty's time drew near, and wished that he had insisted on sending her to the nearest town (thirty miles away), as originally proposed. Gerty's mother, who lived in town, was coming to see her over her trouble; Job had made arrangements with the town doctor, but prompt attendance could hardly be expected of a doctor who was very busy, who was too fat to ride, and who lived thirty miles away.

Job, in common with most Bushmen and their families round there, had more faith in Doc. Wild, a weird Yankee who made medicine in a saucepan, and worked more cures on Bushmen than did the other three doctors of the district together--maybe because the Bushmen had faith in him, or he knew the Bush and Bush const.i.tutions--or, perhaps, because he'd do things which no 'respectable pract.i.tioner' dared do. I've described him in another story. Some said he was a quack, and some said he wasn't.

There are scores of wrecks and mysteries like him in the Bush. He drank fearfully, and 'on his own', but was seldom incapable of performing an operation. Experienced Bushmen preferred him three-quarters drunk: when perfectly sober he was apt to be a bit shaky. He was tall, gaunt, had a pointed black moustache, bushy eyebrows, and piercing black eyes. His movements were eccentric. He lived where he happened to be--in a town hotel, in the best room of a homestead, in the skillion of a sly-grog shanty, in a shearer's, digger's, shepherd's, or boundary-rider's hut; in a surveyor's camp or a black-fellows' camp--or, when the horrors were on him, by a log in the lonely Bush. It seemed all one to him. He lost all his things sometimes--even his clothes; but he never lost a pigskin bag which contained his surgical instruments and papers. Except once; then he gave the blacks 5 Pounds to find it for him.

His patients included all, from the big squatter to Black Jimmy; and he rode as far and fast to a squatter's home as to a swagman's camp. When nothing was to be expected from a poor selector or a station hand, and the doctor was hard up, he went to the squatter for a few pounds. He had on occasions been offered cheques of 50 Pounds and 100 Pounds by squatters for 'pulling round' their wives or children; but such offers always angered him. When he asked for 5 Pounds he resented being offered a 10 Pound cheque. He once sued a doctor for alleging that he held no diploma; but the magistrate, on reading certain papers, suggested a settlement out of court, which both doctors agreed to--the other doctor apologising briefly in the local paper. It was noticed thereafter that the magistrate and town doctors treated Doc. Wild with great respect--even at his worst. The thing was never explained, and the case deepened the mystery which surrounded Doc. Wild.

As Job Falconer's crisis approached Doc. Wild was located at a shanty on the main road, about half-way between Job's station and the town.

(Township of Come-by-Chance--expressive name; and the shanty was the 'Dead Dingo Hotel', kept by James Myles--known as 'Poisonous Jimmy', perhaps as a compliment to, or a libel on, the liquor he sold.) Job's brother Mac. was stationed at the Dead Dingo Hotel with instructions to hang round on some pretence, see that the doctor didn't either drink himself into the 'D.T.'s' or get sober enough to become restless; to prevent his going away, or to follow him if he did; and to bring him to the station in about a week's time. Mac. (rather more careless, brighter, and more energetic than his brother) was carrying out these instructions while pretending, with rather great success, to be himself on the spree at the shanty.

But one morning, early in the specified week, Job's uneasiness was suddenly greatly increased by certain symptoms, so he sent the black boy for the neighbour's wife and decided to ride to Come-by-Chance to hurry out Gerty's mother, and see, by the way, how Doc. Wild and Mac. were getting on. On the arrival of the neighbour's wife, who drove over in a spring-cart, Job mounted his horse (a freshly broken filly) and started.

'Don't be anxious, Job,' said Gerty, as he bent down to kiss her. 'We'll be all right. Wait! you'd better take the gun--you might see those dingoes again. I'll get it for you.'

The dingoes (native dogs) were very bad amongst the sheep; and Job and Gerty had started three together close to the track the last time they were out in company--without the gun, of course. Gerty took the loaded gun carefully down from its straps on the bedroom wall, carried it out, and handed it up to Job, who bent and kissed her again and then rode off.

It was a hot day--the beginning of a long drought, as Job found to his bitter cost. He followed the track for five or six miles through the thick, monotonous scrub, and then turned off to make a short cut to the main road across a big ring-barked flat. The tall gum-trees had been ring-barked (a ring of bark taken out round the b.u.t.ts), or rather 'sapped'--that is, a ring cut in through the sap--in order to kill them, so that the little strength in the 'poor' soil should not be drawn out by the living roots, and the natural gra.s.s (on which Australian stock depends) should have a better show. The hard, dead trees raised their barkless and whitened trunks and leafless branches for three or four miles, and the grey and brown gra.s.s stood tall between, dying in the first breaths of the coming drought. All was becoming grey and ashen here, the heat blazing and dancing across objects, and the pale bra.s.sy dome of the sky cloudless over all, the sun a glaring white disc with its edges almost melting into the sky. Job held his gun carelessly ready (it was a double-barrelled muzzle-loader, one barrel choke-bore for shot, and the other rifled), and he kept an eye out for dingoes. He was saving his horse for a long ride, jogging along in the careless Bush fashion, hitched a little to one side--and I'm not sure that he didn't have a leg thrown up and across in front of the pommel of the saddle--he was riding along in the careless Bush fashion, and thinking fatherly thoughts in advance, perhaps, when suddenly a great black, greasy-looking iguana scuttled off from the side of the track amongst the dry tufts of gra.s.s and shreds of dead bark, and started up a sapling. 'It was a whopper,' Job said afterwards; 'must have been over six feet, and a foot across the body. It scared me nearly as much as the filly.'

The filly shied off like a rocket. Job kept his seat instinctively, as was natural to him; but before he could more than grab at the rein--lying loosely on the pommel--the filly 'fetched up' against a dead box-tree, hard as cast-iron, and Job's left leg was jammed from stirrup to pocket. 'I felt the blood flare up,' he said, 'and I knowed that that'--(Job swore now and then in an easy-going way)--'I knowed that that blanky leg was broken alright. I threw the gun from me and freed my left foot from the stirrup with my hand, and managed to fall to the right, as the filly started off again.'

What follows comes from the statements of Doc. Wild and Mac. Falconer, and Job's own 'wanderings in his mind', as he called them. 'They took a blanky mean advantage of me,' he said, 'when they had me down and I couldn't talk sense.'

The filly circled off a bit, and then stood staring--as a mob of brumbies, when fired at, will sometimes stand watching the smoke. Job's leg was smashed badly, and the pain must have been terrible. But he thought then with a flash, as men do in a fix. No doubt the scene at the lonely Bush home of his boyhood started up before him: his father's horse appeared riderless, and he saw the look in his mother's eyes.

Now a Bushman's first, best, and quickest chance in a fix like this is that his horse go home riderless, the home be alarmed, and the horse's tracks followed back to him; otherwise he might lie there for days, for weeks--till the growing gra.s.s buries his mouldering bones. Job was on an old sheep-track across a flat where few might have occasion to come for months, but he did not consider this. He crawled to his gun, then to a log, dragging gun and smashed leg after him. How he did it he doesn't know. Half-lying on one side, he rested the barrel on the log, took aim at the filly, pulled both triggers, and then fell over and lay with his head against the log; and the gun-barrel, sliding down, rested on his neck. He had fainted. The crows were interested, and the ants would come by-and-by.

Now Doc. Wild had inspirations; anyway, he did things which seemed, after they were done, to have been suggested by inspiration and in no other possible way. He often turned up where and when he was wanted above all men, and at no other time. He had gipsy blood, they said; but, anyway, being the mystery he was, and having the face he had, and living the life he lived--and doing the things he did--it was quite probable that he was more nearly in touch than we with that awful invisible world all round and between us, of which we only see distorted faces and hear disjointed utterances when we are 'suffering a recovery'--or going mad.

On the morning of Job's accident, and after a long brooding silence, Doc. Wild suddenly said to Mac. Falconer--