We of the Never-Never Part 14

The Fizzer changes horses at Renner's Springs for the "Downs' trip"; and as his keen eyes run over the mob, his voice raps out their verdict like an auctioneer's hammer. "He's fit. So is he. Cut that one out. That colt's A1. The chestnut's done. So is the brown. I'll risk that mare.

That black's too fat." No hesitation: horse after horse rejected or approved, until the team is complete; and then driving them before him he faces the Open Downs--the Open Downs, where the last mail-man perished; and only the men who know the Downs in the Dry know what he faces.

For five trips out of the eight, one hundred and thirty miles of sun-baked, crab-holed, practically trackless plains, no sign of human habitation anywhere, cracks that would swallow a man--"hardly enough wood to boil a quart pot," the Fizzer says, and a sun-temperature hovering about 160 degrees (there is no shade-temperature on the Downs); shadeless, trackless, sun-baked, crab-holed plains, and the Fizzer's team a moving speck in the centre of an immensity that, never diminishing and never changing, moves onward with the team; an immensity of quivering heat and glare, with that one tiny living speck in its centre, and in all that hundred and thirty miles one drink for the horses at the end of the first eighty. That is the Open Downs.

"Fizz!" shouts the Fizzer. "That's where the real fizzing gets done, and n.o.body that hasn't tried it knows what it's like."

He travels its first twenty miles late in the afternoon, then, unpacking his team, "lets 'em go for a roll and a pick, while he boils a quart pot"

(the Fizzer carries a canteen for himself); "spells" a bare two hours, packs up again and travels all night, keeping to the vague track with a bushman's instinct, "doing" another twenty miles before daylight; unpacks for another spell, pities the poor brutes "nosing round too parched to feed," may "doze a bit with one ear c.o.c.ked," and then packing up again, "punches 'em along all day," with or without a spell. Time is precious now. There is a limit to the number of hours a horse can go without water, and the thirst of the team fixes the time limit on the Downs.

"Punches 'em along all day, and into water close up sundown," at the deserted Eva Downs station.

"Give 'em a drink at the well there," the Fizzer says as unconcernedly as though he turned on a tap. But the well is old and out of repair, ninety feet deep, with a rickety old wooden windla.s.s; fencing wire for a rope; a bucket that the Fizzer has "seen fit to plug with rag on account of it leaking a bit," and a trough, stuffed with mud at one end by the resourceful Fizzer. Truly the Government is careful for the safety of its servants. Added to all this, there are eight or ten horses so eager for a drink that the poor brutes have to be tied up, and watered one at a time; and so parched with thirst that it takes three hours' drawing before they are satisfied--three hours' steady drawing, on top of twenty-three hours out of twenty-seven spent in the saddle, and half that time "punching" jaded beasts along; and yet they speak of the "Fizzer's luck."

"Real fine old water too," the Fizzer shouts in delight, as he tells his tale. "Kept in the cellar for our special use. Don't indulge in it much myself. Might spoil my palate for newer stuff, so I carry enough for the whole trip from Renner's."

If the Downs have left deep lines on the Fizzer's face, they have left none in his heart. Yet at that well the dice-throwing goes on just the same.

Maybe the Fizzer feels "a bit knocked out with the sun," and the water for his perishing horses ninety feet below the surface; or "things go wrong" with the old windla.s.s, and everything depends on the Fizzer's ingenuity. The odds are very uneven when this happens--a man's ingenuity against a man's life, and death playing with loaded dice. And every letter the Fizzer carries past that well costs the public just twopence.

A drink at the well, an all-night's spell, another drink, and then away at midday, to face the tightest pinch of all--the pinch where death won with the other mail-man. Fifty miles of rough, hard, blistering, scorching "going," with worn and jaded horses.

The old programme all over again. Twenty miles more, another spell for the horses (the Fizzer never seems to need a spell for himself), and then the last lap of thirty, the run into Anthony's Lagoon, "punching the poor beggars along somehow." "Keep 'em going all night," the Fizzer says; "and if you should happen to be at Anthony's on the day I'm due there you can set your watch for eleven in the morning when you see me coming along." I have heard somewhere of the Pride of Harness.

Sixteen days is the time-limit for those five-hundred miles, and yet the Fizzer is expected because the Fizzer is due; and to a man who loves his harness no praise could be sweeter than that. Perhaps one of the brightest thoughts for the Fizzer as he "punches" along those desolate Downs is the knowledge that a little before eleven o'clock in the morning Anthony's will come out, and, standing with shaded eyes, will look through the quivering heat, away into the Downs for that tiny moving speck. When the Fizzer is late there, death will have won at the dice-throwing.

I suppose he got a salary. No one ever troubled to ask. He was expected, and he came, and in our selfishness we did not concern ourselves beyond that.

It is men like the Fizzer who, "keeping the roads open," lay the foundation-stones of great cities; and yet when cities creep into the Never-Never along the Fizzer's mail route, in all probability they will be called after Members of Parliament and the Prime Ministers of that day, grandsons, perhaps, of the men who forgot to keep the old well in repair, while our Fizzer and the mail-man who perished will be forgotten; for townsfolk are apt to forget the beginnings of things.

Three days' spell at Anthony's, to wait for the Queensland mail-man from the "other-side" (another Fizzer no doubt, for the bush mail-service soon culls out the unfitted), an exchange of mail-bags, and then the Downs must be faced again with the same team of horses. Even the Fizzer owns that "tackling the Downs for the return trip's a bit sickening; haven't had time to forget what it feels like, you know," he explains.

Inside to Anthony's, three days' spell, over the Downs again, stopping for another drink at that well, along the stage "that's a bit off," and back to the "kid's game," dropping mail-bags in twos and threes as he goes in, and collecting others as he comes out, to say nothing of the weary packing and unpacking of his team. That is what the Fizzer had to do by half-past eleven four weeks.

"And will go hopelessly on the spree at the end of the trip," say uncharitable folk; but they do not know our Fizzer. "Once upon a time I was a bad little boy," our Fizzer says now, "but since I learnt sense a billy of tea's good enough for me."

And our Fizzer is not the only man out-bush who has "learnt sense." Man after man I have met who found tea "good enough," and many more who "know how to behave themselves." Sadly enough, there are others in plenty who find their temptations too strong for them--temptations that the world hardly guesses at.

But I love the bush-folk for the good that is in them, hidden, so often, carefully away deep down in their brave, strong hearts--hearts and men that ring true, whether they have "learnt sense," or "know how to behave," or are only of the others. But every man's life runs parallel with other lives, and while the Fizzer was "punching along" his dry stages events were moving rapidly with us; while perhaps, aways in the hearts of towns, men and women were "winning through the dry stages" of their lives there.

CHAPTER XIII

Soon after the Fizzer left us the horse-teams came in, and went on, top-heavy with stores for "inside"; but the "Macs" were now thinking of the dry stages ahead, and were travelling at the exasperating rate of about four miles a day, as they "nursed the bullocks" through the good gra.s.s country.

Dan had lost interest in waggons, and was anxious to get among the cattle again; but with the trunks so near, the house growing rapidly, the days of sewing waiting, I refused point-blank to leave the homestead just then.

Dan tried to taunt me into action, and reviewed the "kennel" with critical eyes. "Never saw a dog makin', its own chain before," he said to the Maluka as I sat among billows of calico and mosquito netting. But the homemaking instinct is strong in a woman, and the musterers went out west without the missus. The Dandy being back at the Bitter Springs superintending the carting of new posts for the stockyard there, the missus was left in the care of Johnny and Cheon.

"Now we shan't be long," said Johnny, and Cheon, believing him, expressed great admiration for Johnny, and superintended the scrubbing of the walls, while I sat and sewed, yard after yard of oversewing, as never woman sewed before.

The walls were erected on what is known as the drop-slab-panel system--upright panels formed of three-foot slabs cut from the outside slice of tree trunks, and dropped horizontally, one above the other, between grooved posts--a simple arrangement, quickly run up and artistic in appearance--outside, a horizontally fluted surface, formed by the natural curves of the timber, and inside, flat, smooth walls. As in every third panel there was a door or a window, and as the horizontal slabs stopped within two feet of the ceiling, the building was exceedingly airy, and open on all sides.

Cheon, convinced that the system was all Johnny's was delighted with his ingenuity. But as he insisted on the walls being scrubbed as soon as they were up, and before the doors and windows were in, Johnny had one or two good duckings, and narrowly escaped many more; for lubras' methods of scrubbing are as full of surprises as all their methods.

First soap is rubbed on the dry boards, then vigorously scrubbed into a lather with wet brushes, and after that the lather is sluiced off with artificial waterspouts whizzed up the walls from full buckets. It was while the sluicing was in progress that Johnny had to be careful; for many buckets missed their mark, and the waterspouts shot out through the doorways and window frames.

Wearing a mackintosh, I did what I could to prevent surprises, but without much success. Johnny fortunately took it all as a matter of course. "It's all in the good cause," he chuckled, shaking himself like a water-spaniel after a particularly bad misadventure; and described the "performance" with great zest to the Maluka when he returned. The sight of the clean walls filled the Maluka also with zeal for the cause, and in the week that followed walls sprouted with corner shelves and brackets-- three wooden kerosene cases became a handy series of pigeonholes for magazines and papers. One panel in the diningroom was completely filled with bookshelves, one above the other for our coming books. Great sheets of bark, stripped by the blacks from the Ti Tree forest, were packed a foot deep above the rafters to break the heat reflected from the iron roof, while beneath it the calico ceiling was tacked up. And all the time Johnny hammered and whistled and planed, finishing the bathroom and "getting on" with the office.

The Quiet Stockman coming in, was pressed into the service, and grew quite enthusiastic, suggesting subst.i.tutes for necessities, until I suggested cutting off the tail of every horse on the run, to get enough horsehair for a mattress.

"Believe the boss'ud do it himself if she asked him," he said in the Quarters; and in his consternation suggested bangtailing the cattle during the musters.

"Just the thing," Dan decided; and we soon saw, with his a.s.sistance, a vision of our future mattress walkin' about the run on the ends of cows'

tails.

"Looks like it's going to be a dead-heat," Johnny said, still hammering, when the Dandy brought in word that the Macs were within twelve miles of the homestead. And when I announced next day that the dining-net was finished and ready for hanging, he also became wildly enthusiastic.

"Told you from the beginning we shouldn't be long," he said, flourishing a hammer and br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with suggestions for the hanging of the net.

"Rope'll never hold it," he declared; "fencing wire's the thing," so fencing wire was used, and after a hard morning's work pulling and straining the wire and securing it to uprights, the net was in its place, the calico roof smooth and flat against the ceiling, and its curtains hanging to the floor, with strong, straight saplings run through the folded hem to weigh it down. Cheon was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with admiration for it

"My word, boss! Missus plenty savey," he said. (Cheon invariably discussed the missus in her presence.) "Chinaman woman no more savey likee that," and bustling away, dinner was soon served inside the net.

Myriads of flies, balked in their desire, settled down on the outside, and while we enjoyed our dinner in peace and comfort, Cheon hovered about, like a huge bloated buzz fly himself, chuckling around the outside among the swarms of balked flies, or coming inside to see if "any fly sit down inside."

"My word, boss! Hear him sing-out sing-out. Missus plenty savey," he reiterated, and then calling a Chinese friend from the kitchen, stood over him, until he also declared that "missus BLENTY savey," with good emphasis on the BLENTY.

The net was up by midday, and at ten o'clock at night the slow, dull clang of a bullock-bell crept out of the forest. Cheon was the first to hear it. "Bullocky come on," he called, waddling to the house and waking us from our first sleep; and as the deep-throated bell boomed out again the Maluka said drowsily: "The homestead's only won by a head. Mac's at the Warlochs."

At "fowl-sing-out" we were up, and found Bertie's Nellie behind the black boys' humpy shyly peeping round a corner. With childlike impetuosity she had scampered along the four miles from the Warlochs, only to be overcome with unaccountable shyness.

"Allo, missus!" was all she could find to say, and the remainder of the interview she filled in with wriggling and giggles.

Immediately after breakfast Mac splashed through the creek at a hand-gallop and, dashing up to the house, flung himself from his horse, the same impetuous, warmhearted "Brither Scot."

"Patience rewarded at last," he called in welcome; and when invited to "come ben the hoose to the diningroom," was, as usual, full of congratulations. "My! We are some!" he said, examining every detail.

But as he also said that "the Dandy could get the trunks right off if we liked to send him across with the dray," we naturally "liked," and Johnny and the Dandy harnessing up, went with him, and before long the verandah and rooms were piled with trunks.

Fortunately Dan was "bush" again among the cattle, or his heart would have broken at this new array of links for the chain.

Once the trunks were all in, Mac, the Dandy, and Johnny retired to the Quarters after a few more congratulations, Johnny continuing his flourishes all the way across. Cheon however, with his charming disregard for conventionality being interested, settled himself on one of the trunks to watch the opening up of the others.

To have ordered him away would have clouded his beaming happiness; so he remained, and told us exactly what he thought of our possessions, adding much to the pleasure of the opening of the trunks. If any woman would experience real pleasure, let her pack all her belongings into trunks--all but a couple of changes of everything--and go away out-bush, leaving them to follow "after the Wet" per bullock waggon, and when the reunion takes place the pleasure will be forthcoming. If she can find a Cheon to be present at the reunion, so much the better.

Some of our belongings Cheon thoroughly approved of; others were pa.s.sed over as unworthy of notice; and others were held up to chuckling ridicule. A silver teapot was pounced upon with a cry of delight (tinware being considered far beneath the dignity of a missus, and seeing Sam had broken the china pot soon after its arrival, tinware had graced our board for some time), pictures were looked at askance, particularly an engraving of Psyche at the Pool; while the case for a set of carvers received boundless admiration, although the carvers in no way interested him.

The photographs of friends and relatives were looked carefully over, the womenfolk being judged by what they might bring in a Chinese matrimonial market.

"My word! That one good-looking. Him close up sixty pound longa China,"