We of the Never-Never Part 19

"Me mate's sick; got a touch of fever," he said simply dismounting near the verandah. "I've left him camped back there at the Warlochs"; and as the Maluka prepared remedies--making up the famous Gulf mixture--the man with grateful thanks, found room in his pockets and saddle-pouch for eggs, milk, and brandy, confident that "these'll soon put him right,"

adding, with the tense lines deepening about his mouth as he touched on what had brought them there: "He's been real bad, ma'am. I've had a bit of a job to get him as far as this." In the days to come we were to learn, little by little, that the "bit of a job" had meant keeping a sick man in his saddle for the greater part of the fifty-mile dry stage, with forty miles of "bad going" on top of that, and fighting for him every inch of the way that terrible symptom of malaria--that longing to "chuck it," and lie down and die.

Bad water after that fifty-mile dry made men with a touch of fever only too common at the homestead, and knowing how much the comforts of the homestead could do, when the Maluka came out with the medicines he advised bringing the sick man on as soon as he had rested sufficiently.

"You've only to ask for it and we'll send the old station buck-board across," he said, and the man began fumbling uneasily at his saddle-girths, and said something evasive about "giving trouble"; but when the Maluka--afraid that a man's life might be the forfeit of another man's shrinking fear of causing trouble--added that on second thoughts we would ride across as soon as horses could be brought in, he flushed hotly and stammered: "If you please, ma'am. If the boss'll excuse me, me mate's dead-set against a woman doing things for him. If you wouldn't mind not coming. He'd rather have me. Me and him's been mates this seven years. The boss 'll understand."

The boss did understand, and rode across to the Warlochs alone, to find a man as shy and reticent as a bushman can be, and full of dread lest the woman at the homestead would insist on visiting him. "You see, that's why he wouldn't come on," the mate said. "He couldn't bear the thought of a woman doing things for him "; and the Maluka explained that the missus understood all that. That lesson had been easily learned; for again and again men had come in "down with a touch of fever," whose temperatures went up at the very thought of a woman doing things for them, and always the actual nursing was left to the Maluka or the Dandy, the woman seeing to egg-flips and such things, exchanging at first perhaps only an occasional greeting, and listening at times to strange life-histories later on.

But in vain the Maluka explained and entreated: the sick man was "all right where he was." His mate was worth "ten women fussing round," he insisted, ignoring the Maluka's explanations. "Had he not lugged him through the worst pinch already?" and then he played his trump card: "He'll stick to me till I peg out," he said--"nothing's too tough for him"; and as he lay back, the mate deciding "arguing'll only do for him," dismissed the Maluka with many thanks, refusing all offers of nursing help with a quiet "He'd rather have me," but accepting gratefully broths and milk and anything of that sort the homestead could furnish.

"Nothing ever knocks me out," he reiterated, and dragged on through sleepless days and nights, as the days dragged by finding ample reward in the knowledge that "he'd rather have me", and when there came that deep word of praise from his stricken comrade: "A good mate's harder to find than a good wife," his gentle, protecting devotion increased tenfold.

Bushmen are instinctively protective. There is no other word that so exactly defines their tender helpfulness to all weakness and helplessness. Knowing how hard the fight is out-bush for even the strong and enduring all their magnificent strength and courage stand ready for those who would go to the wall without it. A lame dog, a man down in his luck, an old soaker, little women any woman in need or sickness--each and all call forth this protectiveness; but nothing calls it forth in all its self-sacrificing tenderness like the helplessness of a strong man stricken down in his strength.

Understanding this also, we stood aside, and rejoicing as the sick man, benefiting by the comparative comfort and satisfied to have his own way, seemed to improve. For three days he improved steadily, and then, after standing still for another day slipped back inch by inch to weakness and prostration, until the homestead, without coercion, was the only chance for his life.

But there was a woman there; and as the mate went back to his pleading the woman did what the world may consider a strange thing--but a man's life depended on it--she sent a message out to the sick man, to say that if he would come to the homestead she would not go to him until he asked her.

He pondered over the message for a day, sceptical of a woman's word-- surely some woman had left that legacy in his heart--but eventually decided he wouldn't risk it. Then the chief of the telegraph coming in--a man widely experienced in fever--and urging one more attempt, the Dandy volunteered to help us in our extremity, and, driving across to the Warlochs in the chief's buggy worked one of his miracles; he spent only a few minutes alone with the man (and the Dandy alone knows now what pa.s.sed), but within an hour the sick traveller was resting quietly between clean sheets in the Dandy's bed. There were times when the links in the chain seemed all blessing.

Waking warm and refreshed, the sick man faced the battle of life once more, and the chief taking command, and the man quietly and hopefully obeying orders, the woman found her promise easy to keep; but the mate's hardest task had come, the task of waiting with folded hands. With the same quiet steadfastness he braced himself for this task and when, after weary hours, the chief p.r.o.nounced "all well" and turned to him with an encouraging "I think he'll pull through now, my man," the st.u.r.dy shoulders that had borne so much drooped and quivered beneath the kindly words, and with dimming eyes he gave in at last to the Maluka's persuasions, and lay down and slept, sure of the Dandy's promise to wake him at dawn.

At midnight the Maluka left the Quarters, and going back just before the dawn to relieve the Dandy, found the sick man lying quietly-restful, with one arm thrown lightly across his brow. He had spoken in his sleep a short while before the Dandy said as the Maluka bent over him with a cup of warm milk, but the cup was returned to the table untasted. Many travellers had come into our lies and pa.s.sed on with a bright nod of farewell; but at the first stirring of the dawn, without one word of farewell, this traveller had pa.s.sed on and left us; left us, and the faithful mate of those seven strong young years and those last few days of weariness. "Unexpected heart failure," our chief said, as the Dandy went to fulfil his promise to the sleeping mate. He promised to waken him at the dawn, and leaving that awakening in the Dandy's hands, as we thought of that lonely Warloch camp our one great thankfulness was that when the awakening came the man was not to be alone there with his dead comrade. The bush can be cruel at times, and yet, although she may leave us alone with our beloved dead, her very cruelty bungs with it a fierce, consoling pain; for out-bush our dead are all our own.

Beyond those seven faithful years the mate could tell us but little of his comrade's life. He was William Neaves, born at Woolongong, with a mother living somewhere there. That was all he knew. "He was always a reticent chap," he reiterated. "He never wanted any one but me about him," and the unspoken request was understood. He was his mate, and no one but himself must render the last services.

Dry-eyed and worn, the man moved about, doing all that should be done, the bushmen only helping where they dared; then shouldering a pick and shovel, he went to the tattle rise beyond the slip rails, and set doggedly to work at a little distance from two lonely graves already there.

Doggedly he worked on; but, as he worked, gradually his burden lost its overwhelming weight, for the greater part of it had somehow skipped on to the Dandy's shoulders--those brave, unflinching shoulders, that carried other men's burdens so naturally and so willingly that their burdens always seemed the Dandy's own. The Dandy may have had that power of finding "something decent" in every one he met, but in the Dandy all men found the help they needed most.

Quietly and una.s.sumingly, the Dandy put all in order and then, soon after midday, with brilliant sunshine all about us, we stood by an open grave in the shade of the drooping glory of a crimson flowering bauhenia. Some scenes live undimmed in our memories for a lifetime--scenes where we have seemed onlookers rather than actors seeing every detail with minute exactness--and that scene with its mingling of glorious beauty, human pathos, and soft, subdued sound, will bye, I think, in the memory of most of us for many years to come:

"In the midst of life we are in death," the Maluka read, standing among that drooping crimson splendour and at his feet lay the open grave, preaching silently its great lesson of Life and Death, with, beside it, the still quiet form of the traveller whose last weary journey had ended; around it, bareheaded and all in white, a little band of bush-folk, silent and reverent and awed; above it, that crimson glory, and all around and about it, soft sun-flecked bush, murmuring sounds, flooding sunshine, and deep azure blue distances. Beyond the bush, deep azure blue, within it and throughout it, flooding sunshine and golden ladders of light; and at its sun-flecked heart, under that drooping crimson-starred canopy of soft greygreen, that little company of bush-folk, standing beside that open grave, as Mother Nature, strewing with flowers the last resting place of one of her children, scattered gently falling scarlet blossoms into it and about it. Here and there a dog lay, stretched out in the shade, sniffing in idle curiosity at the blossoms as they fell, well satisfied with what life had to give just then; while at their master's feet lay the traveller who was to leave such haunting memories behind him: William Neaves, born at Woolongong, with somewhere there a mother going quietly about her work, wondering vaguely perhaps where her laddie was that day.

Poor mother! Yet, when even that knowledge came to her, it comforted her in her sorrow to know that a woman had stood beside that grave mourning for her boy in her name.

Quietly the Maluka read on to the end; and then in the hush that followed the mate stooped, and, with deep lines hardening rigidly, picked up a spade. There was no mistaking his purpose; but as he straightened himself the Dandy's hand was on the spade and the Maluka was speaking.

"Perhaps you'll be good enough to drive the missus back to the house right away," he was saying, "I think she has had almost more than she can stand."

The man looked hesitatingly at him. "If you'll be good enough," the Maluka added, "I should not leave here myself till all is completed."

Unerringly the Maluka had read his man: no hint of his strength failing, but a favour asked, and with it a service for a woman.

The stern set lines about the man's mouth quivered for a moment, then set again as he sacrificed his wishes to a woman's need, and relinquishing the spade, turned away; and as we drove down to the house in the chief's buggy--the buggy that a few minutes before had borne our sick traveller along that last stage of his earthly journey--he said gently, almost apologetically: "I should have reckoned on this knocking you out a bit, missus." Always others, never self, with the bush-folk.

Then, this service rendered for the man who had done what he could for his comrade, his strong, unflinching heart turned back to its labour of love, and, all else being done, found relief for itself in softening and smoothing the rough outline of the newly piled mound, and as the man toiled, Mother Nature went on with her work, silently and sweetly healing the scar on her bosom, hiding her pain from the world, as she shrouded in starry crimson the burial place of her brave, enduring son--a service to be renewed from day to day until the mosses and gra.s.ses grew again.

But there were still other services for the mate to render and as the bush-folk stood aside, none daring to trespa.s.s here, a rough wooden railing rose about the grave. Then the man packed his comrade's swag for the last time, and that done, came to the Maluka, as we stood under the house verandah, and held out two sovereigns in his open palm. The man was yet a stranger to the ways of the Never-Never.

"I'll have to ask for tick for meself for awhile," he said "But if that won't pay for all me mate's had there's another where they came from. He was always independent and would never take charity."

The hard lines about his mouth were very marked just then, and the outstretched hand seemed fiercely defiant but the Maluka reading in it only a man's proud care for a comrade's honour, put it gently aside, saying: "We give no charity here; only hospitality to our guests. Surely no man would refuse that."

They speak of a woman's delicate tact. But daily the bushman put the woman to shame, while she stood dumb or stammering. The Maluka had touched the one chord in the man's heart that was not strained to breaking point, and instantly the fingers closed over the sovereigns, and the defiant hand fell to his side, as with a husky "Not from your sort, boss," he turned sharply on his heel; and as he walked away a hand was brushed hastily across the weary eyes.

With that brushing of the hand the inevitable reaction began, and for a little while we feared we would have another sick traveller on our hand.

But only for a little while. After a day or two of rest and care his strength came back, but his thoughts were ever of those seven years of steadfast comradeship. Simply and earnestly he spoke of them and of that mother, all unconscious of the heartbreak that was speeding only too surely to her. Poor mother! And yet those other two nameless graves on that little rise deep in the heart of the bush bear witness that other mothers have even deeper sorrows to bear. Their sons are gone from them, and they, knowing nothing of it, wait patiently through the long silent years for the word that can never come to them.

For a few days the man rested, and then, just when work--hard work--was the one thing needful, Dan came in for a consultation, and with him a traveller, the bearer of a message from our kind, great-hearted chief to say that work was waiting for the mate at the line party. Our chief was the personification of all that is best in the bush-folk (as all bushmen will testify to his memory)--men's lives crossed his by chance just here and there, but at those crossing places life have been happier and better. For one long weary day the mate's life had run parallel with our chief's, and because of that, when he left us his heart was lighter than ever we had dared to hope for. But this man was not to fade quite out of our lives, for deep in that loyal heart the Maluka had been enshrined as "one in ten thousand."

CHAPTER XVII

The bearer of the chief's message had also carried out all extra mail for us, and, opening it, we found the usual questions of the South folk.

"Whatever do you do with your time?" they all asked. "The monotony would kill me," some declared. "Every day must seem the same," said others: every one agreeing that life out-bush was stagnation, and all marvelling that we did not die of ennui.

"Whatever do you do with your time?" The day Neaves's mate left was devoted to housekeeping duties--"spring-cleaning," the Maluka called it, while Dan drew vivid word-pictures of dogs cleaning their own chains.

The day after that was filled in with preparations for a walk-about, and the next again found us camped at Bitter Springs. Monotony! when of the thirty days that followed these three every day was alike only in being different from any other, excepting in their almost unvarying menu: beef and damper and tea for a first course, and tea and damper and jam for a second. They also resembled each other, and all other days out-bush, in the necessity of dressing in a camp mosquito net. "Stagnation!" they called it, when no day was long enough for its work, and almost every night found us camped a day's journey from our breakfast camp.

It was August, well on in the Dry, and on a cattle station in the Never-Never "things hum" in August. All the surface waters are drying up by then, and the outside cattle--those scattered away beyond the borders--are obliged to come in to the permanent waters, and must be gathered in and branded before the showers scatter them again.

We were altogether at the Springs: Dan, the Dandy, the Quiet Stockman, ourselves, every horse-"boy" that could be mustered, a numerous staff of camp "boys" for the Dandy's work, and an almost complete complement of dogs, Little Tiddle'ums only being absent, detained at the homestead this time with the cares of a nursery. A goodly company all told as we sat among the camp fires, with our horses clanking through the timber in their hobbles: forty horses and more, pack teams and relays for the whole company and riding hacks, in addition to both stock and camp horses for active mustering; for it requires over two hundred horses to get through successfully a year's work on a "little place like the Elsey."

Every one of the company had his special work to attend to; but every one's work was concerned with cattle, and cattle only. The musterers were to work every area of country again and again, and the Dandy's work began in the building of the much-needed yard to the north-west.

We breakfasted at the Springs all together, had dinner miles apart, and all met again at the Stirling for supper. Dan and ourselves dined also at the Stirling on damper and "push" and vile-smelling blue-black tea.

The damper had been carried in company with some beef and tea, in Dan's saddle-pouch; the tea was made with the thick, muddy, almost putrid water of the fast-drying water hole, and the "push" was provided by force of circ.u.mstances, the pack teams being miles away with the plates, knives, and forks.

Out-bush we take the good with the bad as we find it; so we sat among towering white-ant hills, drinking as little of the tea as possible and enjoying the damper and "push" with hungry relish.

Around the Stirling are acres of red-coloured, queer-shaped uncanny white ant hills, and camped among these we sat, each served with a slice of damper that carried a smaller slice of beef upon it, providing the "push"

by cutting off small pieces of the beef with a pen-knife, and "pushing"

them along the damper to the edge of the slice, to be bitten off from there in hearty mouthfuls.

No b.u.t.ter, of course. In Darwin, eight months before we had tasted our last b.u.t.ter on ship-board, for tinned b.u.t.ter, out-bush, in the tropics, is as palatable as castor oil. The tea had been made in the Maluka's quart-pot, our cups having been carried dangling from our saddles, in the approved manner of the bush-folk.

We breakfasted at the Springs, surrounded by the soft forest beauty; ate our dinner in the midst of grotesque ant-hill scenery, and spent the afternoon looking for a lost water-hole.

The Dandy was to build his yard at this hole when it was found, but the difficulty was to find it. The Sanguine Scot had "dropped on it once,"

by chance, but lost his bearing later on. All we knew was that it was there to be found somewhere in that corner of the run--a deep permanent hole, "back in the scrub somewhere," according to the directions of the Sanguine Scot.

Of course the black boys could have found it; but it is the habit of black boys to be quite ignorant of the whereabouts of all lost or unknown waters, for when a black fellow is "wanted" he is looked for at water, and in his wisdom keeps any "water" he can a secret from the white folk, an unknown "water" making a safe hiding-place when it suits a black fellow to obliterate himself for a while.

Eventually we found our hole, after long wanderings and futile excursions up gullies and by-ways, riding always in single file, with the men in front to break down a track through scrub and gra.s.s, and the missus behind on old Roper.

"Like a cow's tail," Dan said, mentally reviewing the order of the procession, as, after dismounting, we walked round our find--a wide-spreading sheet of deep, clay--coloured water, snugly hidden behind scrubby banks.

As we clambered on, two bushmen all in white, a dog or two, and a woman in a holland riding-dress, the Maluka pointed out the inaptness of the simile.