We of the Never-Never Part 16

"Wouldn't know the old place," Johnny had said, and Dan "reckoned" it was "all right as houses go." Adding with a chuckle, "Well, she's wrestled with luck for more'n four months to get it, but the question is, what's she going to use it for now she's got it?"

CHAPTER XIV

For over four months we had wrestled with luck for a house, only to find we had very little use for it for the time being, that is, until next Wet. It couldn't be carried out-bush from camp to camp, and finding us at a loss for an answer, Dan suggested one himself.

"Of course!" he said, as he eyed the furnishings with interest, "it 'ud come in handy to pack the chain away in while the dog was out enjoying itself "; and we left it at that. It came in handy to pack the chain away in while the dog was enjoying itself, for within twenty-four hours we were camped at the Bitter Springs, and two weeks pa.s.sed before the homestead saw us again.

After our experience of "getting hold of Johnny," Dan called it foolishness to wait for an expert, and the Dandy being away for the remainder of the stores, and the Quiet Stockman having his hands full to overflowing, the Maluka and Dan with that adaptability peculiar to bushmen, set to work themselves at the yard, with fifteen or twenty boys as apprentices.

As most of the boys had their lubras with them, it was an immense camp, but exceedingly pretty. One small tent "fly" for a dressing-room for the missus, and the remainder of the accommodation--open-air and shady bough gundies; tiny, fresh, cool, green shade-houses here, there, and everywhere for the blacks; one set apart from the camp for a larder, and an immense one--all green waving boughs--for the missus to rest in during the heat of the day. "The Cottage," Dan called it.

Of course, Sool'em and Brown were with us, Little Tiddle'ums being in at the homestead on the sick list with a broken leg; and in addition to Sool'em and Brown an innumerable band of n.i.g.g.e.r dogs, Billy Muck being the adoring possessor of fourteen, including pups, which fanned out behind him as he moved hither and thither like the tail of a comet.

Our camp being a stationary one, was, by comparison with our ordinary camps, a campe-de-luxe; for, apart from the tent-fly, in it were books, pillows, and a canvas lounge, as well as some of the flesh-pots of Egypt, in the shape of eggs, cakes, and vegetables sent out every few days by Cheon, to say nothing of scrub turkeys, fish, and such things.

Dan had no objection to the eggs, cakes, or vegetables, but the pillows and canvas lounge tried him sorely. "Thought the chain was to be left behind in the kennel," he said, and decided that the "next worst thing to being chained up was" for a dog to have to drag a chain round when it was out for a run. "Look at me!" he said, "never been chained up all me life, just because I never had enough permanent property to make a chain--never more than I could carry in one hand: a bluey, a change of duds, a mosquito net, and a box of c.o.c.kle's pills."

We suggested that c.o.c.kle's pills were hardly permanent property, but Dan showed that they were, with him.

"More permanent than you'd think," he said. "When I've got 'em in me swag, I never need 'em, and when I've left 'em somewhere else I can't get 'em: so you see the same box does for always."

Yard-building lacking in interest, lubras and piccaninnies provided entertainment, until Dan failing to see that "n.i.g.g.e.rs could teach her anything," decided on a course of camp cookery.

Roast scrub turkey was the first lesson cooked in the most correct style: a forked stick, with the fork uppermost, was driven into the ground near the glowing heap of wood ashes; then a long sapling was leant through the fork, with one end well over the coals; a doubled string, with the turkey hanging from it, looped over this end; the turkey turned round and round until the string was twisted to its utmost, and finally string and turkey were left to themselves, to wind and unwind slowly, an occasional winding-up being all that was necessary.

The turkey was served at supper, and with it an enormous boiled cabbage--one of Cheon's successes. Dan was in clover, boiled cabbage being considered nectar fit for the G.o.ds, and after supper he put the remnants of the feast away for his breakfast. "Cold cabbage goes all right," he said, as he stowed it carefully away--"particularly for breakfast."

Then the daily damper was to be made, and I took the dish without a misgiving. I felt at home there, for bushmen have long since discarded the old-fashioned damper, and use soda and cream-of-tartar in the mixture. But ours was an immense camp, and I had reckoned without any thought. An immense camp requires an immense damper; and, the dish containing pounds and pounds of flour, when the mixture was ready for kneading the kneading was beyond a woman's hands--a fact that provided much amus.e.m.e.nt to the bushmen.

"Hit him again, little 'un," the Maluka cried encouragingly, as I punched and pummelled at the unwieldy ma.s.s.

"Give it to him, missus," Dan chuckled. "That's the style! Now you've got him down."

Kneeling in front of the dish, I pounded obediently at the mixture; and as they alternately cheered and advised and I wrestled with circ.u.mstances, digging my fists vigorously into the spongy, doughy depths of the damper, a traveller rode right into the camp.

"Good evening, mates," he said, dismounting. "Saw your fires, and thought I'd camp near for company." Then discovering that one of the "mates" was a woman, backed a few steps, dazed and open-mouthed--a woman, dough to the elbows, pounding blithely at a huge damper, being an unusual sight in a night camp in the heart of one of the cattle runs in the Never-Never.

"We're conducting a cooking cla.s.s," the Maluka explained, amused at the man's consternation.

The traveller grinned a sickly grin, and "begging pardon, ma'am, for intruding," said something about seeing to his camp, and backed to a more comfortable distance; and the damper-making proceeded.

"There's a billy just thinking of boiling here you can have, mate, seeing it's late," Dan called, when he heard the man rattling tinware, as he prepared to go for water; and once more "begging pardon, ma'am, for intruding," the traveller came into our camp circle, and busied himself with the making of tea.

The tea made to his satisfaction, he asked diffidently if there was a "bit of meat to spare," as his was a "bit off"; and Dan went to the larder with a hospitable "stacks!"

"How would boiled cabbage and roast turkey go?" Dan called, finding himself confronted with the great slabs of cabbage; and the traveller, thinking it was supposed to be a joke, favoured us with another nervous grin and a terse "Thanks!" Then Dan reappeared, laden, and the man's eyes glistened as he forgot his first surprise in his second. "Real cabbage!" he cried. "Gosh! ain't tasted cabbage for five years"; and the Maluka telling him to "sit right down then and begin, just where you are"--beside our camp fire--with a less nervous "begging your pardon, ma'am," he dropped down on one knee, and began.

"Don't be shy of the turkey," the Maluka said presently, noticing that he had only taken a tiny piece, and the man looked sheepishly up. "'Tain't exactly that I'm shy of it," he said, "but I'm scared to fill up any s.p.a.ce that might hold cabbage. That is," he added, again apologetic, "if it's not wanted, ma'am."

It wasn't wanted; and as the man found room for it, the Maluka and Dan offered further suggestions for the construction of the damper and its conveyance to the fire.

The conveyance required judgment and watchful diplomacy, as the damper preferred to dip in a rolling valley between my extended arms, or hang over them like a tablecloth, rather than keep its desired form. But with patience, and the loan of one of Dan's huge palms, it finally fell with an unctuous, dusty "whouf" into the opened-out bed of ashes.

By the time it was hidden away, buried in the heart of the fire, a woman's presence in a camp had proved less disturbing than might be imagined, and we learned that our traveller had "come from Beyanst," with a backward nod towards the Queensland border, and was going west; and by the time the cabbage and tea were finished he had become quite talkative.

"Ain't seen cabbage, ma'am, for more'n five years," he said, leaning back on to a fallen tree trunk, with a satisfied sigh (cabbage and tea being inflating), adding when I sympathised, "nor a woman neither, for that matter."

Neither a cabbage nor a woman for five years! Think of it, townsfolk!

Neither a cabbage nor a woman--with the cabbage placed first. I wonder which will be longest remembered.

"Came on this, though, in me last camp, east there," he went on, producing a hairpin, with another nod eastwards. "Wondered how it got there." "Your'n, I s'pose"; then, sheepish once more, he returned it to his pocket, saying he "s'posed he might as well keep it for luck."

It being a new experience to one of the plain sisterhood to feel a man was cherishing one of her hairpins, if only "for luck," I warmed towards the "man from Beyanst," and grew hopeful of rivalling even that cabbage in his memory. "You didn't expect to find hairpins, and a woman, in a camp in the back blocks," I said, feeling he was a character, and longing for him to open up. But he was even more of a character than I guessed.

"Back blocks!" he said in scorn. "There ain't no back blocks left.

Can't travel a hundred miles nowadays without running into somebody! You don't know what back blocks is, begging your pardon, ma'am."

But Dan did; and the camp chat that night was worth travelling several hundred miles to hear: tales dug out of the beginning of things; tales of drought, and flood, and privation; cattle-duffing yarns, and long tales of the droving days; two years' reminiscences of getting through with a mob--reminiscences that finally brought ourselves and the mob to Oodnadatta.

"That's the place if you want to see drunks, ma'am," the traveller said, forgetting in his warmth his "begging your pardon, ma'am," just when it would have been most opportune, seeing I had little hankering to see "drunks."

"It's the desert does it, missus, after the overland trip," Dan explained. "It 'ud give anybody a 'drouth.' Got a bit merry meself there once and had to clear out to camp," he went on. "Felt it getting a bit too warm for me to stand. You see, it was when the news came through that the old Queen was dead, and being something historical that had happened, the chaps felt it ought to be celebrated properly."

Poor old Queen! And yet, perhaps, her grand, n.o.ble heart would have understood these, her subjects, and known them for the men they were--as loyal-hearted and true to her as the highest in the land.

"They were lying two-deep about the place next morning," Dan added, continuing his tale; but the Maluka, fearing the turn the conversation had taken, suggested turning in.

Then Dan having found a kindred spirit in the traveller, laid a favourite trap for one of his favourite jokes: shaking out a worn old bluey, he examined it carefully in the firelight.

"Blanket's a bit thin, mate," said the man from Beyanst, unconsciously playing his part. "Surely it can't keep you warm"; and Dan's eyes danced in antic.i.p.ation of his joke.

"Oh well!" he said, solemn-looking as an owl, as he tucked it under one arm, "if it can't keep a chap warm after ten years' experience it'll never do it," and turned in at once, with his usual lack of ceremony.

We had boiled eggs for breakfast, and once more the traveller joined us.

Cheon had sent the eggs out with the cabbage, and I had hidden them away, intending to spring a surprise on the men-folk at breakfast.

"How many eggs shall I boil for you, Dan?" I said airily, springing my surprise in this way on all the camp. But Dan, wheeling with an exclamation of pleasure, sprung a surprise of his own on the missus.

"Eggs!" he said. "Good enough! How many? Oh, a dozen'll do, seeing we've got steak "; and I limply showed all I had--fifteen.

Dan scratched his head trying to solve the problem. "Never reckon it's worth beginning under a dozen," he said; but finally suggested tossing for 'em after they were cooked.

"Not the first time I've tossed for eggs either," he said, busy grilling steak on a gridiron made from bent-up fencing wire. "Out on the Victoria once they got scarce, and the cook used to boil all he had and serve the dice-box with 'em, the chap who threw the highest taking the lot."

"Ever try to boil an emu's egg in a quart-pot?" the man from Beyanst asked, "lending a hand" with another piece of fencing wire, using it as a fork to turn the steak on the impromptu gridiron. "It goes in all right, but when it's cooked it won't come out, and you have to use the quart-pot for an egg-cup and make tea later on."