We of the Never-Never Part 17

"A course dinner," Dan called that; and then nothing being forthcoming to toss with--dice or money not being among our permanent property--the eggs were distributed according to the "holding capacity" of the company: one for the missus, two for the Maluka, and half a dozen each for the other two.

The traveller had no objection to beginning under a dozen, but Dan used his allowance as a "relish" with his steak. "One egg!" he chuckled as he sh.e.l.led his relish and I enjoyed my breakfast. "Often wonder how ever she keeps alive."

The damper proved "just a bit boggy" in the middle, so we ate the crisp outside slices and gave the boggy parts to the boys. They appeared to enjoy it, and seeing this, after breakfast the Maluka asked them what they thought of the missus as a cook. "Good damper, eh?" he said, and Billy Muck rubbing his middle, full of damper and satisfaction, answered: "My word! That one damper good fellow. Him sit down long time", and all the camp, rubbing middles, echoed his sentiments. The stodgy damper had made them feel full and uncomfortable; and to be full and uncomfortable after a meal spells happiness to a black fellow.

"Hope it won't sit too heavy on my chest," chuckled the man from Beyanst, then, remembering that barely twelve hours before he had ridden into the camp a stranger, began "begging pardon, ma'am," most profusely again, and hoped we'd excuse him "making so free with a lady."

"It's your being so friendly like, ma'am," he explained. "Most of the others I've struck seemed too good for rough chaps like us. Of course,"

he added hastily, "that's not saying that you're not as good as 'em. You ain't a Freezer on a pedestal, that's all."

"Thank Heaven," the Maluka murmured and the man from Beyanst sympathised with him. "Must be a bit off for their husbands," he said; and his apologies were forgotten in the absorbing topic of "Freezers."

"A Freezer on a pedestal," he had said. "G.o.ddess," the world prefers to call it; and tradition depicts the bushman worshipping afar off.

But a "Freezer" is what he calls it to himself, and contrary to all tradition, goes on his way unmoved. And why shouldn't he? He may be, and generally is, sadly in need of a woman friend, "some one to share his joys and sorrows with", but because he knows few women is no reason why he should stand afar off and adore the unknowable. "Friendly like" is what appeals to us all; and the bush-folk are only men, not monstrosities--rough, untutored men for the most part. The difficult part to understand is how any woman can choose to stand aloof and freeze, with warm-hearted men all around her willing to take her into their lives.

As the men exchanged opinions, "Freezers" appeared solitary creatures--isolated monuments of awe-inspiring goodness and purity, and I felt thankful that circ.u.mstances had made me only the Little Missus--a woman, down with the bushmen at the foot of all pedestals, needing all the love and fellowship she could get, and with no more goodness than she could do with--just enough to make her worthy of the friendship of "rough chaps like us."

"Oh well," said the traveller, when he was ready to start, after finding room in his swag for a couple of books, "I'm not sorry I struck this camp;" but whether because of the cabbage, or the woman, or the books, he did not say. Let us hope it was because of the woman, and the books, and the cabbage, with the cabbage placed last.

Then with a pull at his hat, and a "good-bye, ma'am, good luck," the man from Beyanst rode out of the gundy camp, and out of our lives, to become one of its pleasant memories.

The man from Beyanst was our only visitor for the first week, in that camp, and then after that we had some one every day.

Dan went into the homestead for stores, and set the ball rolling by returning at sundown in triumph with a great find: a lady traveller, the wife of one of the Inland Telegraph masters. Her husband and little son were with her, but--well, they were only men. It was five months since I had seen a white woman, and all I saw at the time was a woman riding towards our camp. I wonder what she saw as I came to meet her through the leafy bough gundies. It was nearly two years since she had seen a woman.

It was a merry camp that night--merry and beautiful and picturesque. The night was very cold and brilliantly starry, as nights usually are in the Never-Never during the Dry; the camp fires were all around us: dozens of them, grouped in and out among the gundies, and among the fires--chatting, gossiping groups of happy-hearted human beings.

Around one central fire sat the lubras, with an outer circle of smaller fires behind them: one central fire and one fire behind each lubra, for such is the wisdom of the black folk; they warm themselves both back and front. Within another circle of fires chirruped and gossiped the "boys,"

while around an immense glowing heap of logs sat the white folk--the "big fellow fools" of the party, with scorching faces and freezing backs, too conservative to learn wisdom from their humbler neighbours.

At our fireside we women did most of the talking, and as we sat chatting on every subject under the sun, our husbands looked on in indulgent amus.e.m.e.nt. Dan soon wearied of the fleeting conversation and turned in, and the little lad slipped away to the black folk; but late into the night we talked: late into the night, and all the next day and evening and following morning--shaded from the brilliant sunshine all day in the leafy "Cottage," and scorching around the camp fire during the evenings.

And then these travellers, too, pa.s.sed out of our camp to become, with the man from Beyanst, just pleasant memories.

"She'll find mere men unsatisfying after this," the Maluka said in farewell, and a mere man coming in from the north-west before sundown, greeted the Maluka with: "Thought you married a towny," as he pointed with eloquent forefinger at our supper circle.

"So I did," the Maluka laughed back. "But before I had time to dazzle the bushies with her the Wizard of the Never-Never charmed her into a bush-whacker."

"Into a CHARMING bush-whacker, he MEANS!" the traveller said, bowing before his introduction; and I wondered how the Maluka could have thought for one moment that "mere men" would prove unsatisfying. But as I acknowledged the gallantry Dan looked on dubiously, not sure whether pretty speeches were a help or a hindrance to education.

But no one could call the Fizzer a "mere man"; and half-past eleven four weeks being already past, the Fizzer was even then at the homestead, and before another midday, came shouting into our camp, and, settling down to dinner, kept the conversational ball rolling.

"Going to be a record Dry," he a.s.sured us--"all surface water gone along the line already"; and then he hurled various items of news at us: "the horse teams were managing to do a good trip; and Mac? Oh, Mac's getting along," he shouted; "struck him on a dry stage; seemed a bit light-headed; said dry stages weren't all beer and skittles--queer idea.

Beer and skittles! He won't find much beer on dry stages, and I reckon the man's dilly that 'ud play a game of skittles on any one of 'em."

Every one was all right down the line! But the Fizzer was always a bird of pa.s.sage, and by the time dinner was over, and a few postscripts added to the mail, he was ready to start, and rode off, promising the best mail the "Territory could produce in a fortnight."

Other travellers followed the Fizzer, and the cooking lessons proceeded until the fine art of making "puff de looneys," sinkers, and doughboys had been mastered, and then, before the camp had time to grow monotonous, the staff appeared with a few of the station pups. "Might it missus like puppy dog," it said to explain its presence hinting also that the missus might require a little clothes-washing done.

Lately, washing-days at the homestead had lost all their vim, for the creek having stopped running, washing had to be conducted in tubs, so as to keep the billabong clear for drinking purposes. But at the Springs there was no necessity to think of anything but running water; and after a happy day, Bertie's Nellie, Rosy, and Biddy returned to the homestead--the goats had to be seen to, Nellie said, thinking nothing of a twenty-seven-mile walk in a day, with a few hours' washing for recreation in between whiles.

Part of the staff, a shadow or two, and the puppy dogs, filled in all time until the yard was p.r.o.nounced finished then a mob of cattle was brought in and put through to test its strength; and just as we were preparing to return to the homestead the Dandy's waggon lumbered into camp with its loading of stores.

A box of new books kept us busy all afternoon, and then, before sundown, the Maluka suggested a farewell stroll among the pools.

The Bitter Springs--a chain of clear, crystal pools, a long winding chain, doubling back on itself in loops and curves--form the source of the permanent flow of the Roper; pools only a few feet deep, irregular and wide-spreading, with mossy-green, deeply undermined, overhanging banks, and lime-stone bottoms washed into terraces that gleam azure-blue through the transparent water.

There is little rank gra.s.s along their borders, no sign of water-lilies, and few weeds within them; clumps of palms dotted here and there among the light timber, and everywhere sunflecked, warm, dry shade. Nowhere is there a hint of that sinister suggestion of the Reach. Clear, beautiful, limpid, wide-spreading, irregular pools, set in an undulating field of emerald-green mossy surf, shaded with graceful foliage and gleaming in the sunlight with exquisite opal tints--a giant necklace of opals, set in links of emerald green, and thrown down at hazard to fall in loops and curves within a forest grove.

It is in appearance only the pools are isolated; for although many feet apart in some instances, they are linked together throughout by a shallow underground river, that runs over a rocky bed; while the turf, that looks so solid in many places, is barely a two-foot crust arched over five or six feet of s.p.a.ce and water--a deathtrap for heavy cattle; but a place of interest to white folk.

The Maluka and I wandered aimlessly in and out among the pools for a while, and, then coming out unexpectedly from a piece of bush, found ourselves face to face with a sight that froze all movement out of us for a moment--the living, moving head of a horse, standing upright from the turf on a few inches of neck: a grey, uncanny, bodyless head, nickering piteously at us as it stood on the turf at our feet. I have never seen a ghost, but I know exactly how I will feel if ever I do.

For a moment we stood spellbound with horror, and the next, realising what had happened, were kneeling down beside the piteous head. The thin crust of earth had given way beneath the animal's hindquarters as it grazed over the turf, and before it could recover itself it had slipped bodily through the hole thus formed, and was standing on the rocky bed of the underground river, with its head only in the upper air.

The poor brute was perishing for want of food and water. All around the hole, as far as the head could reach, the turf was eaten, bare, and although it was standing in a couple of feet of water it could not get at it. While the Maluka went for help I brought handfuls of gra.s.s, and his hat full of water, again and again, and was haunted for days with the remembrance of those pleading eyes and piteous, nickering lips.

The whole camp, black and white, came to the rescue but it was an awful work getting the exhausted creature out of its death-trap. The hole had to be cut back to a solid ridge of rocky soil, saplings cut to form a solid slope from the bed of the river to the ground above, and the poor brute roped and literally hauled up the slope by sheer force and strength of numbers. After an hour's digging, dragging, and rope-pulling, the horse was standing on solid turf, a new pool had been added to the Springs, and none of us had much hankering for riding over springy country.

The hour's work among the pools awakened the latent geologist in all of us, excepting Dan, and set us rooting at the bottom of one of the pools for a piece of the terraced limestone.

It was difficult to dislodge, and our efforts reminded Dan of a night spent in the camp of a geologist--a man with many letters after his name.

"Had the chaps heaving rocks round for him half his time," he said.

"Couldn't see much sense in it meself." Dan spoke of the geologist as "one of them old Alphabets." "Never met a chap with so many letters in his brand," he explained. "He was one of them taxydermy blokes, you know, that's always messing round with stones and things."

Out of the water, the opal tints died out of the limestone, and the geologist in us went to sleep again when we found that all we had for our trouble was a piece of dirty-looking rock. Like Dan, we saw little sense in "heaving rocks round," and went back to the camp and the business of packing up for the homestead.

About next midday we rode into the homestead thoroughfare, where Cheon and Tiddle'ums welcomed us with enthusiasm, but Cheon's enthusiasm turned to indignation when he found we were only in for a day or two.

"What's 'er matter?" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Missus no more stockrider"; but a letter waiting for us at the homestead made "bush" more than ever imperative: a letter, from the foreman of the telegraphic repairing line party, asking for a mob of killers, and fixing a date for its delivery to one "Happy d.i.c.k."

"Spoke just in the nick of time," Dan said; but as we discussed plans Cheon hinted darkly that the Maluka was not a fit and proper person to be entrusted with the care of a woman, and suggested that he should undertake to treat the missus as she should be treated, while the Maluka attended to the cattle.

Fate, however, interfered to keep the missus at the homestead, to persuade Cheon that, after all, the Maluka was a fit and proper person to have the care of a woman, and to find a very present use for the house; an influenza sore-throat breaking out in the camp, the missus developed it, and Dan went out alone to find the Quiet Stockman and the "killers"

for Happy d.i.c.k.

CHAPTER XV

Before a week was out the Maluka and Cheon had won each other's undying regard because of their treatment of the missus.

With the nearest doctor three hundred miles away in Darwin, and held there by hospital routine, the Maluka decided on bed and feeding-up as the safest course, and Cheon came out in a new character.

As medical adviser and reader-aloud to the patient, the Maluka was supposed to have his hands full, and Cheon, usurping the position of sick-nurse, sent everything, excepting the nursing, to the wall.

Rice-water, chicken-jelly, barley-water, egg-flips, beef-tea junket, and every invalid food he had ever heard of, were prepared, and, with the Maluka to back him up, forced on the missus; and when food was not being administered, the pillow was being shaken or the bedclothes straightened.

(The mattress being still on the ends of cows' tails, a folded rug served in its place). There was very little wrong with the patient, but the wonder was she did not become really ill through over-eating and want of rest.