Part 4

Inside, long since, the back-log had split with an explosion that scattered the coals near enough to cause the billy to boil, and the blaze showed the old man’s eyes set on the billy. The dog looked into them, then laid his head between his paws, and still watching his master’s face, beat the ground with his tail. He whined softly and went back to his post at the door, his eyes snapping flintily, his teeth bared. Along his back the hair rose like bristles. He sent an assurance of help to the importunate ewe and lamb. As the sheep neared the hut, he ran to the bunk, raised his head to a level with his master’s, and barked softly. He waited, and despite the eager light in his intelligent face, his master and mate did not ask him any questions as to the cause of these calling sheep. Why did he not rise, and with him re-yard them, then gloatingly ask him where was the chinky crow by day, or sneaking dingo by night, that was any match for them, and then demand from his four-footed trusty mate the usual straightforward answer? Was there to be no discussion as to which heard the noise first, nor the final compromise of a dead-heat?

The silence puzzled the man outside sorely; he crouched, watching both door and shutter. The sheep were all round the hut. Man and dog inside must hear them. Why, when a dingo came that night he camped with them, they heard it before it could reach a lamb. If only he had known then what he knew now! His hold on the axe tightened. No one had seen him come; none should see him go! Why didn’t that old fellow wake to-night? for now, as he crept nearer the hut, he could hear the whining dog, and understood, he was appealing to his master.

He lay flat on the ground and tried to puzzle it out. The sheep had rushed back disorganised and were again near the hut and yard. Both inside must know. They were waiting for him. They were preparing for him, and that was why they were letting the dingoes play up with the sheep. That was the reason they did not openly show fight.

Still he would have sacrificed half of the coveted wealth to be absolutely certain of what their silence meant. It was surely almost daylight. He spread out the fingers of his one hand; he could see the colour of the blood in the veins. He must act quickly, or he would have to hide about for another day. And the absent man might return. To encourage himself, he tried to imagine the possession of that glittering heap that he had seen them counting on the mat. Yet he had grown cold and dejected, and felt for the first time the weight of the axe. It would be all right if the door would open, the old man come out and send the dog to round up the sheep. It was getting daylight, and soon shelter would be impossible.

He crept towards the hut, and this time he felt the edge of the axe. Right and left the sheep parted. There was nothing to be gained now in crawling, for the hostility of the dog told him that he could be seen. He stood, his body stiffened with determination.

Mechanically he went to the door; he knew the defensive resources of the hut. He had the axe, and the stolen tomahawk was stuck in the fork of those myalls. He had no need for both. The only weapon that the old fellow had was the useless butcher’s knife. His eyes protruded, and unconsciously he felt his stiffened beard.

He breathed without movement. There was no sound now from man or dog. In his mind he saw them waiting for him to attack the door; this he did not debate nor alter. He went to the shutter, ran the axe’s edge along the hide hinges, pushed it in, then stepped back.

Immediately the dog’s head appeared. He growled no protest, but the flinty fire from his eyes and the heat of his suppressed breath, hissing between his bared fangs, revealed to Scrammy that in this contest, despite the axe, his one hand was a serious handicap.

With the first blow his senses quickened. The slush lamp had gone out and there was no hint of daylight inside. This he noted between his blows at the dog, as he looked for his victim. It was strange the old fellow did not show fight! Where was he hiding? Was it possible that, scenting danger, he had slipped out? He recalled the dog’s warning when his master was counting his hoard. The memory of that chinking belt-hidden pile dominated greedily. Had the old man escaped? He would search the hut; what were fifty dogs’ teeth? In close quarters he would do for him with one blow.

He was breathing now in deep gasps. The keen edge of the axe severed the hide-hinged door. He rushed it; then stood back swinging the axe in readiness. It did not fall for the bolt still held it. But this was only what a child would consider a barrier. One blow with the axe head smashed the bolt. The door fell across the head of the bunk, the end partly blocking the entrance. He struck a side blow that sent it along the bunk.

The dog was dreadfully distressed. The bushman outside thought the cause the fallen door. Face to face they met--determined battle in the dog’s eyes met murder in the man’s. He brandished an axe circuit, craned his neck, and by the dull light of the fire searched the hut. He saw no one but the dog. Unless his master was under the bunk, he had escaped. The whole plot broke on him quite suddenly! The cunning old miser, knowing his dog would show his flight by following, had locked him in, and he had wasted all this time barking up the wrong tree. He would have done the old man to death that minute with fifty brutal blows. He would kill him by day or night.

He ran round the brush sheep yard, kicking and thrusting the axe through the thickest parts. He had not hidden there, nor among the myall clump where he had practised his bloody plot. The dog stood at the doorway of the hut. He saw this as he passed through the sheep on his way to search the creek. He was half minded to try to invite the dog’s confidence and cooperation by yarding them.

He looked at them, and the moonlight’s undulating white scales across their shorn backs brought out the fresh tar brand 8, setting him thinking of the links of that convict gang chain long ago. Lord, how light it must be for him to see that!

He held out his hand again. There was no perceptible change in the light. There were hours yet before daylight. He moulded his mind to that.

The creek split the plain, and along it here and there a few she-oak blots defined it. He traversed it with his eyes. There were no likely hiding places among the trees, and it would be useless to search them. Suddenly it struck him that the old man might be creeping along with the sheep--they were so used to him. He ran and headed them, driving them swiftly back to the yard. Before they were in he knew he was wrong. Again he turned and scanned the creek, but felt no impulse to search it. It was half a mile from the hut. It was impossible that the old man could have got there, or that he could have reached the more distant house. Besides, why did the dog stay at the door unless on guard? He ran back to the hut.

The dog was still there, and in no way appeased by the yarding of the sheep. He swore at the threatening brute, and cast about for a gibber to throw, but stones were almost unknown there. A sapling would serve him! Seven or eight myall logs lay near for firewood, but all were too thick to be wielded. There was only the clump of myalls, and the few stunted she-oaks bordering the distant creek. To reach either would mean a dangerous delay. Oh, by God, he had it! These poles keeping down the bark roof. He ran to the back of the hut, cut a step in a slab, and putting his foot in it, hitched the axe on one of the desired poles and was up in a moment. He could hear the cabbage fronds hanging from the rafters shiver with the vibration, but there was no other protest from inside.

He shifted a sheet of rotten bark; part of it crumbled and fell inside on the prostrate door, sounding like the first earth on a coffin, in a way that the dog particularly resented. He knelt and carefully eyed the interior. The dog’s glittering eyes met his. The door lay as it had fallen along the bunk. The fire was lightless, yet he could see more plainly, but the cause was not manifest, till from the myalls quite close the jackasses chorused. From his post the dog sent them a signal. Quite unaccountably the man’s muscles relaxed. “Oh, Christ!” he said, dropping the pole. He sprang up and faced the East, then turned to the traitorous faded moon. The daylight had come.

The sweat stung his quivering body. Slowly, he made an eye circuit round the plain; no human being was in sight. All he had to face was a parcel of noisy jackasses and a barking dog! He would soon silence the dog. He took the pole and made a jab at the whelping brute. One thing he noticed, that if he did get one home, it was only when he worked near the horizontal door. His quickened senses guessed at the reason. He could have shifted the door easily with his pole, yet feared, because, if the old man were under, he would expose himself to two active enemies. He must get to close quarters with the dog, and chop him in two, or brain him with the axe.

He ripped off another sheet of bark, and smashed away a batten that broke his swing. Encircling a rafter with his hooked arm, he lay flat, his feet pressing another just over the bunk, because only there would the dog hold his ground. One blow well directed got home. He planted his feet firmly, and made another with such tremendous force that his support snapped. He let go the axe and it fell on the door. He gripped with his hand the rafter nearest, but strain as he would he could not balance his body. He hung over the door, and the dog sprang at him and dragged him down. In bitten agony, he dropped on the door that instantly up-ended.

It was daylight, and in that light the power of those open eyes set in that bald head, fixed on the billy beside the dead fireplace, was mightier than the dog. His unmaimed hand had the strength of both. He lifted the door and shielded himself with it as he backed out.

But that was not all the dog wanted. At the doorway he waited to see that the fleeing man had no further designs on the sheep.

It was time they were feeding. Though the hurdles were down, even from the doorway, the dog was their master. He waited for commands from his, and barked them back till noon.

Several times that day the ewe and lamb came in, looked without speculation at the figure on the bunk, then moved to the dead fire-place. But though the water in the billy was cold, the dog would not allow either to touch it. That was for tea when his master awoke.

There was another circumstance. Those blow flies were welcome to the uncovered mutton. Throughout that day he gave them undisputed right, but they had to be content with it.

Next day the ewe and lamb came again. The lamb bunted several irresponsive objects--never its dam’s udder--baaing listlessly. Though the first day the ewe had looked at the bunk, and baaed, she was wiser now, though sheep are slow to learn. Around that dried dish outside the lamb sniffed, baaing faintly. Adroitly the ewe led the way to the creek, and the lamb followed. From the bank the lamb looked at her, then faced round to the hut, and baaing disconsolately, trotted a few paces back. From the water’s edge the mother ewe called. The lamb looked at her vacantly, and without interest descended. The ewe bent and drank sparingly, meaningly. The lamb sniffed the water, and unsatisfied, complained. The hut was hidden, but it turned that way. Again the ewe leisurely drank. This time the lamb’s lips touched the water, but did not drink. Into its mouth raised to bleat a few drops fell. Hastily the mother’s head went to the water. She did not drink, but the lamb did. Higher up, where the creek was dry, they crossed to tender grass in the billabong, then joined the flock for the first time.

Through the thicker mist that afternoon a white tilted cart sailed joltingly, taking its bearings from the various land marks rather than from the undefined track. It rounded the scrub, and the woman, with her baby, kept watch for the first glimpse of her home beyond the creek. She told her husband that there was no smoke from the nearer shepherd’s hut, but despite his uneasiness, he tried to persuade her that the mist absorbed it.

It was past sun-down, yet the straggling unguarded sheep were running in mobs to and from the creek. Both saw the broken roof of the hut, and the man, stopping the horse some distance away, gave the woman the reins and bade her wait. He entered the hut through the broken doorway, but immediately came out to assure himself that his wife had not moved.

The sight inside of that broken-ribbed dog’s fight with those buzzing horrors, and the reproach in his wild eyes, was a memory that the man was not willing she should share.

BILLY SKYWONKIE.

The line was unfenced, so with due regard to the possibility of the drought-dulled sheep attempting to chew it, the train crept cautiously along, stopping occasionally, without warning, to clear it from the listless starving brutes. In the carriage nearest the cattle-vans, some drovers and scrub-cutters were playing euchre, and spasmodically chorusing the shrill music from an uncertain concertina. When the train stopped, the player thrust his head from the carriage window. From one nearer the engine, a commercial traveller remonstrated with the guard, concerning the snail’s pace and the many unnecessary halts.

“Take yer time, ole die-ard,” yelled the drover to the guard. “Whips er time,--don’t bust yerself fer no one. Wot’s orl the worl’ to a man w’en his wife’s a widder.” He laughed noisily and waved his hat at the seething bagman. “Go an’ ’ave a snooze. I’ll wake yer up ther day after termorrer.”

He craned his neck to see into the nearest cattle-van. Four were down, he told his mates, who remarked, with blasphemous emphasis, that they would probably lose half before getting them to the scrub country.

The listening woman passenger in a carriage between the drover and the bagman, heard a thud soon after in the cattle-truck, and added another to the list of the fallen. Before dawn that day the train had stopped at a siding to truck them, and she had watched with painful interest these drought-tamed brutes being driven into the crowded vans. The tireless, greedy sun had swiftly followed the grey dawn, and in the light that even now seemed old and worn, the desolation of the barren shelterless plains, that the night had hidden, appalled her. She realised the sufferings of the emaciated cattle. It was barely noon, yet she had twice emptied the water bottle, “shogging” in the iron bracket.

The train dragged its weary length again, and she closed her eyes from the monotony of the dead plain. Suddenly the engine cleared its throat in shrill welcome to two iron tanks, hoisted twenty feet and blazing like evil eyes from a vanished face.

Beside them it squatted on its hunkers, placed a blackened thumb on its pipe, and hissed through its closed teeth like a snared wild cat, while gulping yards of water. The green slimy odour penetrated to the cattle. The lustiest of these stamped feebly, clashing their horns and bellowing a hollow request.

A long-bearded bushman was standing on the few slabs that formed a siding, with a stockwhip coiled like a snake on his arm. The woman passenger asked him the name of the place.

“This is ther Never--Never,--ther lars’ place Gord made,” answered one of the drovers who were crowding the windows.

“Better’n ther ’ell ’ole yous come from, any’ow,” defended the bushman. “Breakin’ ther ’earts, an’ dyin’ from suerside, cos they lef’ it,” he added derisively, pointing to the cattle.

In patriotic anger he passed to the guard-van without answering her question, though she looked anxiously after him. At various intervals during the many halts of the train, she had heard some of the obscene jokes, and with it in motion, snatches of lewd songs from the drovers’ carriage. But the language used by this bushman to the guard, as he helped to remove a ton of fencing wire topping his new saddle, made her draw back her head. Near the siding was a spring cart, and she presently saw him throw his flattened saddle into it and drive off. There was no one else in sight, and in nervous fear she asked the bagman if this was Gooriabba siding. It was nine miles further, he told her.

The engine lifted its thumb from its pipe. “Well--well--to--be--sure; well--well--to--be--sure,” it puffed, as if in shocked remembrance of its being hours late for its appointment there.

She saw no one on the next siding, but a buggy waited near the sliprails. It must be for her. According to Sydney arrangements she was to be met here, and driven out twelve miles. A drover enquired as the train left her standing by her portmanteau, “Are yer travellin’ on yer lonesome, or on’y goin’ somew’ere!” and another flung a twist of paper towards her, bawling unmusically, that it was “A flowwer from me angel mother’s ger-rave.”

She went towards the buggy, but as she neared it the driver got in and made to drive off. She ran and called, for when he went she would be alone with the bush all round her, and only the sound of the hoarse croaking of the frogs from the swamp near, and the raucous “I’ll--’ave--’is--eye--out,” of the crows.

Yes, he was from Gooriabba Station, and had come to meet a young “piece” from Sydney, who had not come.

She was ghastly with bilious sickness,--the result of an over-fed brain and an under-fed liver. Her face flushed muddily. “Was it a housekeeper?”

He was the rouseabout, wearing his best clothes with awful unusualness. The coat was too long in the sleeve, and wrinkled across the back with his bush slouch. There was that wonderful margin of loose shirt between waistcoat and trousers, which all swagger bushies affect. Subordinate to nothing decorative was the flaring silk handkerchief, drawn into a sailor’s knot round his neck.

He got out and fixed the winkers, then put his hands as far as he could reach into his pockets--from the position of his trousers he could not possibly reach bottom. It was apparently some unknown law that suspended them. He thrust forward his lower jaw, elevated his pipe, and squirted a little tobacco juice towards his foot that was tracing semi-circles in the dust. “Damned if I know,” he said with a snort, “but there’ll be a ’ell of a row somew’ere.”

She noticed that the discoloured teeth his bush grin showed so plainly, were worn in the centre, and met at both sides with the pipe between the front. Worn stepping stones her mind insisted.

She looked away towards the horizon where the smoke of the hidden train showed faintly against a clear sky, and as he was silent, she seemed to herself to be intently listening to the croak of the frogs and the threat of the crows. She knew that, from under the brim of the hat he wore over his eyes, he was looking at her sideways.

Suddenly he withdrew his hands and said again, “Damned if I know. S’pose its alright! Got any traps? Get up then an’ ’ole the Neddy while I get it.” They drove a mile or so in silence; his pipe was still in his mouth though not alight.

She spoke once only. “What a lot of frogs seem to be in that lake!”

He laughed. “That’s ther Nine Mile Dam!” He laughed again after a little--an intelligent complacent laugh.

“It used ter be swarmin’ with teal in a good season, but Gord A’mighty knows w’en its ever goin’ ter rain any more! I dunno!” This was an important admission, for he was a great weather prophet. “Lake!” he sniggered and looked sideways at his companion. “Thet’s wot thet there bloke, the painter doodle, called it. An ’e goes ter dror it, an’ ’e sez wot ’e ’ll give me five bob if I’ll run up ther horses, an’ keep ’em so’s ’e ken put ’em in ther picshure. An’ ’e drors ther Dam an’ ther trees, puts in thet there ole dead un, an’ ’e puts in ther ’orses right clost against ther water w’ere the frogs is. ’E puts them in too, an’ damned if ’e don’t dror ther ’orses drinkin’ ther water with ther frogs, an’ ther frogs spit on it! Likely yarn ther ’orses ud drink ther water with ther blanky frogs’ spit on it! Fat lot they know about ther bush! Blarsted nannies!”

Presently he enquired as to the place where they kept pictures in Sydney, and she told him, the Art Gallery.

“Well some of these days I’m goin’ down ter Sydney,” he continued, “an I’ll collar thet one ’cos its a good likerness of ther ’orses--you’d know their ’ide on a gum tree--an’ that mean mongrel never paid me ther five bob.”

Between his closed teeth he hissed a bush tune for some miles, but ceased to look at the sky and remarked, “No sign er rain! No lambin’ this season; soon as they’re dropt we’ll ’ave ter knock ’em all on ther ’ead!” He shouted an oath of hatred at the crows following after the tottering sheep that made in a straggling line for the water. “Look at ’em!” he said, “Scoffin’ out ther eyes!” He pointed to where the crows hovered over the bogged sheep. “They putty well lives on eyes! ‘Blanky bush Chinkies!’ I call ’em. No one carn’t tell ’em apart!”

There was silence again, except for a remark that he could spit all the blanky rain they had had in the last nine months.

Away to the left along a side track his eyes travelled seachingly, as they came to a gate. He stood in the buggy and looked again.

“Promised ther ‘Konk’ t’ leave’im ’ave furst squint at yer,” he muttered, “if ’e was ’ere t’ open ther gate! But I’m not goin’ t’ blanky well wait orl day!” He reluctantly got out and opened the gate, and he had just taken his seat when a “Cooee” sounded from his right, heralded by a dusty pillar. He snorted resentfully. “’Ere ’e is; jes’ as I got out an’ done it!”

The “Konk” cantered to them, his horse’s hoofs padded by the dust-cushioned earth. The driver drew back, so as not to impede the newcomer’s view. After a moment or two, the “Konk,” preferring closer quarters, brought his horse round to the left. Unsophisticated bush wonder in the man’s face, met the sophisticated in the girl’s.

Never had she seen anything so grotesquely monkeyish. And the nose of this little hairy horror, as he slewed his neck to look into her face, blotted the landscape and dwarfed all perspective. She experienced a strange desire to extend her hand. When surprise lessened, her mettle saved her from the impulse to cover her face with both hands, to baffle him.

At last the silence was broken by the driver drawing a match along his leg, and lighting his pipe. The hairy creature safely arranged a pair of emu eggs, slung with bush skill round his neck.

“Ain’t yer goin’ to part?” enquired the driver, indicating his companion as the recipient.

“Wot are yer givin’ us; wot do yer take me fur?” said the “Konk” indignantly, drawing down his knotted veil.

“Well, give ’em ter me fer Lizer.”

“Will yer ’ave ’em now, or wait till yer get ’em?”

“Goin’ ter sit on ’em yerself?” sneered the driver.

“Yes, an’ I’ll give yer ther first egg ther cock lays,” laughed the “Konk.”

He turned his horse’s head back to the gate. “I say, Billy Skywonkie! Wot price Sally Ah Too, eh?” he asked, his gorilla mouth agape.

Billy Skywonkie uncrossed his legs, took out the whip. He tilted his pipe and shook his head as he prepared to drive, to show that he understood to a fraction the price of Sally Ah Too. The aptness of the question took the sting out of his having had to open the gate. He gave a farewell jerk.

“Goin’ ter wash yer neck?” shouted the man with the nose, from the gate.

“Not if I know it.”

The “Konk” received the intimation incredulously. “Stinkin’ Roger!” he yelled. In bush parlance this was equal to emphatic disbelief.

This was a seemingly final parting, and both started, but suddenly the “Konk” wheeled round.

“Oh, Billy!” he shouted.

Billy stayed his horse and turned expectantly.

“W’en’s it goin’ ter rain?”