Chapter 19

“I think we will be making a move, Smith,” said Steelman, later on, when they were private. “There's a little too much intellect in this camp to suit me. But we haven't done so bad, anyway. We've had three days' good board and lodging with entertainments and refreshments thrown in.” Then he said to himself: “We'll stay for another day anyway. If those beggars are having a lark with us, we're getting the worth of it anyway, and I'm not thin-skinned. They're the mugs and not us, anyhow it goes, and I can take them down before I leave.”

But on the way home he had a talk with another man whom we might set down as a “chap.”

“I wouldn't have thought the boss was a college man,” said Steelman to the chap.

“A what?”

“A University man--University education.”

“Why! Who's been telling you that?”

“One of your mates.”

“Oh, he's been getting at you. Why, it's all the boss can do to write his own name. Now that lanky sandy cove with the birth-mark grin--it's him that's had the college education.”

“I think we'll make a start to-morrow,” said Steelman to Smith in the privacy of their where. “There's too much humour and levity in this camp to suit a serious scientific gentleman like myself.”

MACQUARIE'S MATE

The chaps in the bar of Stiffner's shanty were talking about Macquarie, an absent shearer--who seemed, from their conversation, to be better known than liked by them.

“I ain't seen Macquarie for ever so long,” remarked Box-o'-Tricks, after a pause. “Wonder where he could 'a' got to?”

“Jail, p'r'aps--or hell,” growled Barcoo. “He ain't much loss, any road.”

“My oath, yer right, Barcoo!” interposed “Sally” Thompson. “But, now I come to think of it, Old Awful Example there was a mate of his one time. Bless'd if the old soaker ain't comin' to life again!”

A shaky, rag-and-dirt-covered framework of a big man rose uncertainly from a corner of the room, and, staggering forward, brushed the staring thatch back from his forehead with one hand, reached blindly for the edge of the bar with the other, and drooped heavily.

“Well, Awful Example,” demanded the shanty-keeper. “What's up with you now?”

The drunkard lifted his head and glared wildly round with bloodshot eyes.

“Don't you--don't you talk about him! _Drop it_, I say! DROP it!”

“What the devil's the matter with you now, anyway?” growled the barman. “Got 'em again? Hey?”

“Don't you--don't you talk about Macquarie! He's a mate of mine! Here! Gimme a drink!”

“Well, what if he is a mate of yours?” sneered Barcoo. “It don't reflec' much credit on you--nor him neither.”

The logic contained in the last three words was unanswerable, and Awful Example was still fairly reasonable, even when rum oozed out of him at every pore. He gripped the edge of the bar with both hands, let his ruined head fall forward until it was on a level with his temporarily rigid arms, and stared blindly at the dirty floor; then he straightened himself up, still keeping his hold on the bar.

“Some of you chaps,” he said huskily; “one of you chaps, in this bar to-day, called Macquarie a scoundrel, and a loafer, and a blackguard, and--and a sneak and a liar.”

“Well, what if we did?” said Barcoo, defiantly. “He's all that, and a cheat into the bargain. And now, what are you going to do about it?”

The old man swung sideways to the bar, rested his elbow on it, and his head on his hand.

“Macquarie wasn't a sneak and he wasn't a liar,” he said, in a quiet, tired tone; “and Macquarie wasn't a cheat!”

“Well, old man, you needn't get your rag out about it,” said Sally Thompson, soothingly. “P'r'aps we was a bit too hard on him; and it isn't altogether right, chaps, considerin' he's not here. But, then, you know, Awful, he might have acted straight to you that was his mate. The meanest blank--if he is a man at all--will do that.”

“Oh, to blazes with the old sot!” shouted Barcoo. “I gave my opinion about Macquarie, and, what's more, I'll stand to it.”

“I've got--I've got a point for the defence,” the old man went on, without heeding the interruptions. “I've got a point or two for the defence.”

“Well, let's have it,” said Stiffner.

“In the first place--in the first place, Macquarie never talked about no man behind his back.”

There was an uneasy movement, and a painful silence. Barcoo reached for his drink and drank slowly; he needed time to think--Box-o'-Tricks studied his boots--Sally Thompson looked out at the weather--the shanty-keeper wiped the top of the bar very hard--and the rest shifted round and “s'posed they'd try a game er cards.”

Barcoo set his glass down very softly, pocketed his hands deeply and defiantly, and said:

“Well, what of that? Macquarie was as strong as a bull, and the greatest bully on the river into the bargain. He could call a man a liar to his face--and smash his face afterwards. And he did it often, too, and with smaller men than himself.”

There was a breath of relief in the bar.

“Do you want to make out that I'm talking about a man behind his back?” continued Barcoo, threateningly, to Awful Example. “You'd best take care, old man.”

“Macquarie wasn't a coward,” remonstrated the drunkard, softly, but in an injured tone.

“What's up with you, anyway?” yelled the publican. “What yer growling at? D'ye want a row? Get out if yer can't be agreeable!”

The boozer swung his back to the bar, hooked himself on by his elbows, and looked vacantly out of the door.

“I've got--another point for the defence,” he muttered. “It's always best--it's always best to keep the last point to--the last.”

“Oh, Lord! Well, out with it! _Out with it_!”

“_Macquarie's dead_! That--that's what it is!”

Everyone moved uneasily: Sally Thompson turned the other side to the bar, crossed one leg behind the other, and looked down over his hip at the sole and heel of his elastic-side--the barman rinsed the glasses vigorously--Longbones shuffled and dealt on the top of a cask, and some of the others gathered round him and got interested--Barcoo thought he heard his horse breaking away, and went out to see to it, followed by Box-o'-Tricks and a couple more, who thought that it might be one of their horses.

Someone--a tall, gaunt, determined-looking bushman, with square features and haggard grey eyes--had ridden in unnoticed through the scrub to the back of the shanty and dismounted by the window.

When Barcoo and the others re-entered the bar it soon became evident that Sally Thompson had been thinking, for presently he came to the general rescue as follows:

“There's a blessed lot of tommy-rot about dead people in this world--a lot of damned old-woman nonsense. There's more sympathy wasted over dead and rotten skunks than there is justice done to straight, honest-livin' chaps. I don't b'lieve in this gory sentiment about the dead at the expense of the living. I b'lieve in justice for the livin'--and the dead too, for that matter--but justice for the livin'. Macquarie was a bad egg, and it don't alter the case if he was dead a thousand times.”

There was another breath of relief in the bar, and presently somebody said: “Yer tight, Sally!”

“Good for you, Sally, old man!” cried Box-o'-Tricks, taking it up. “An', besides, I don't b'lieve Macquarie is dead at all. He's always dyin', or being reported dead, and then turnin' up again. Where did you hear about it, Awful?”

The Example ruefully rubbed a corner of his roof with the palm of his hand.

“There's--there's a lot in what you say, Sally Thompson,” he admitted slowly, totally ignoring Box-o'-Tricks. “But--but---'

“Oh, we've had enough of the old fool,” yelled Barcoo. “Macquarie was a spieler, and any man that ud be his mate ain't much better.”

“Here, take a drink and dry up, yer ole hass!” said the man behind the bar, pushing a bottle and glass towards the drunkard. “D'ye want a row?”

The old man took the bottle and glass in his shaking bands and painfully poured out a drink.

“There's a lot in what Sally Thompson says,” he went on, obstinately, “but--but,” he added in a strained tone, “there's another point that I near forgot, and none of you seemed to think of it--not even Sally Thompson nor--nor Box-o'-Tricks there.”

Stiffner turned his back, and Barcoo spat viciously and impatiently.

“Yes,” drivelled the drunkard, “I've got another point for--for the defence--of my mate, Macquarie--”

“Oh, out with it! Spit it out, for God's sake, or you'll bust!” roared Stiffner. “What the blazes is it?”

“HIS MATE'S ALIVE!” yelled the old man. “Macquarie's mate's alive! That's what it is!”

He reeled back from the bar, dashed his glass and hat to the boards, gave his pants, a hitch by the waistband that almost lifted him off his feet, and tore at his shirt-sleeves.

“Make a ring, boys,” he shouted. “His mate's alive! Put up your hands, Barcoo! By God, his mate's alive!”

Someone had turned his horse loose at the rear and had been standing by the back door for the last five minutes. Now he slipped quietly in.

“Keep the old fool off, or he'll get hurt,” snarled Barcoo.

Stiffner jumped the counter. There were loud, hurried words of remonstrance, then some stump-splitting oaths and a scuffle, consequent upon an attempt to chuck the old man out. Then a crash. Stiffner and Box-o'-Tricks were down, two others were holding Barcoo back, and someone had pinned Awful Example by the shoulders from behind.

“Let me go!” he yelled, too blind with passion to notice the movements of surprise among the men before him. “Let me go! I'll smash--any man--that--that says a word again' a mate of mine behind his back. Barcoo, I'll have your blood! Let me go! I'll, I'll, I'll-- Who's holdin' me? You--you---”

“It's Macquarie, old mate!” said a quiet voice.

Barcoo thought he heard his horse again, and went out in a hurry. Perhaps he thought that the horse would get impatient and break loose if he left it any longer, for he jumped into the saddle and rode off.

BALDY THOMPSON

Rough, squarish face, curly auburn wig, bushy grey eyebrows and moustache, and grizzly stubble--eyes that reminded one of Dampier the actor. He was a squatter of the old order--new chum, swagman, drover, shearer, super, pioneer, cocky, squatter, and finally bank victim. He had been through it all, and knew all about it.

He had been in parliament, and wanted too again; but the men mistrusted him as Thompson, M.P., though they swore by him as old Baldy Thompson the squatter. His hobby was politics, and his politics were badly boxed. When he wasn't cursing the banks and government he cursed the country. He cursed the Labour leaders at intervals, and seemed to think that he could run the unions better than they could. Also, he seemed to think that he could run parliament better than any premier. He was generally voted a hard case, which term is mostly used in a kindly sense out back.

He was always grumbling about the country. If a shearer or rouseabout was good at argument, and a bit of a politician, he hadn't to slave much at Thompson's shed, for Baldy would argue with him all day and pay for it.

“I can't put on any more men,” he'd say to travellers. “I can't put on a lot of men to make big cheques when there's no money in the bank to pay 'em--and I've got all I can do to get tucker for the family. I shore nothing but burrs and grass-seed last season, and it didn't pay carriage. I'm just sending away a flock of sheep now, and I won't make threepence a head on 'em. I had twenty thousand in the bank season before last, and now I can't count on one. I'll have to roll up my swag and go on the track myself next.”

“All right, Baldy,” they'd say, “git out your blooming swag and come along with us, old man; we'll stick to you and see you through.”

“I swear I'd show you round first,” he'd reply. “Go up to the store and get what rations you want. You can camp in the huts to-night, and I'll see you in the morning.”

But most likely he'd find his way over after tea, and sit on his heels in the cool outside the hut, and argue with the swagmen about unionism and politics. And he'd argue all night if he met his match.

The track by Baldy Thompson's was reckoned as a good tucker track, especially when a dissolution of parliament was threatened. Then the guileless traveller would casually let Baldy know that he'd got his name on the electoral list, and show some interest in Baldy's political opinions, and oppose them at first, and finally agree with them and see a lot in them--be led round to Baldy's way of thinking, in fact; and ultimately depart, rejoicing, with a full nose-bag, and a quiet grin for his mate.

There are many camp-fire yarns about old Baldy Thompson.

One New Year the shearers--shearing stragglers--roused him in the dead of night and told him that the shed was on fire. He came out in his shirt and without his wig. He sacked them all there and then, but of course they went to work as usual next morning. There is something sad and pathetic about that old practical joke--as indeed there is with all bush jokes. There seems a quiet sort of sadness always running through outback humour--whether alleged or otherwise.

There's the usual yarn about a jackaroo mistaking Thompson for a brother rouser, and asking him whether old Baldy was about anywhere, and Baldy said:

“Why, are you looking for a job?”

“Yes, do you think I stand any show? What sort of a boss is Baldy?”

“You'd tramp from here to Adelaide,” said Baldy, “and north to the Gulf country, and wouldn't find a worse. He's the meanest squatter in Australia. The damned old crawler! I grafted like a nigger for him for over fifty years”--Baldy was over sixty--“and now the old skunk won't even pay me the last two cheques he owes me--says the bank has got everything he had--that's an old cry of his, the damned old sneak; seems to expect me to go short to keep his wife and family and relations in comfort, and by God I've done it for the last thirty or forty years, and I might go on the track to-morrow worse off than the meanest old whaler that ever humped bluey. Don't you have anything to do with Scabby Thompson, or you'll be sorry for it. Better tramp to hell than take a job from him.”

“Well, I think I'll move on. Would I stand any show for some tucker?”

“Him! He wouldn't give a dog a crust, and like as not he'd get you run in for trespass if he caught you camping on the run. But come along to the store and I'll give you enough tucker to carry you on.”

He patronized literature and arts, too, though in an awkward, furtive way. We remember how we once turned up at the station hard up and short of tucker, and how we entertained Baldy with some of his own ideas as ours--having been posted beforehand by our mate--and how he told us to get some rations and camp in the hut and see him in the morning.

And we saw him in the morning, had another yarn with him, agreed and sympathized with him some more, were convinced on one or two questions which we had failed to see at first, cursed things in chorus with him, and casually mentioned that we expected soon to get some work on a political paper.

And at last he went inside and brought out a sovereign. “Wrap this in a piece of paper and put it in your pocket, and don't lose it,” he said.

But we learnt afterwards that the best way to get along with Baldy, and secure his good will, was to disagree with him on every possible point.

FOR AULD LANG SYNE

These were ten of us there on the wharf when our first mate left for Maoriland, he having been forced to leave Sydney because he could not get anything like regular work, nor anything like wages for the work he could get. He was a carpenter and joiner, a good tradesman and a rough diamond. He had got married and had made a hard fight for it during the last two years or so, but the result only petrified his conviction that “a lovely man could get no blessed show in this condemned country,” as he expressed it; so he gave it best at last--“chucked it up,” as he said--left his wife with her people and four pounds ten, until such time as he could send for her--and left himself with his box of tools, a pair of hands that could use them, a steerage ticket, and thirty shillings.

We turned up to see him off. There were ten of us all told and about twice as many shillings all counted. He was the first of the old push to go--we use the word push in its general sense, and we called ourselves the mountain push because we had worked in the tourist towns a good deal--he was the first of the mountain push to go; and we felt somehow, and with a vague kind of sadness or uneasiness, that this was the beginning of the end of old times and old things. We were plasterers, bricklayers, painters, a carpenter, a labourer, and a plumber, and were all suffering more or less--mostly more--and pretty equally, because of the dearth of regular graft, and the consequent frequency of the occasions on which we didn't hold it--the “it” being the price of one or more long beers. We had worked together on jobs in the city and up-country, especially in the country, and had had good times together when things were locomotive, as Jack put it; and we always managed to worry along cheerfully when things were “stationary.” On more than one big job up the country our fortnightly spree was a local institution while it lasted, a thing that was looked forward to by all parties, whether immediately concerned or otherwise (and all were concerned more or less), a thing to be looked back to and talked over until next pay-day came. It was a matter for anxiety and regret to the local business people and publicans, and loafers and spielers, when our jobs were finished and we left.

There were between us the bonds of graft, of old times, of poverty, of vagabondage and sin, and in spite of all the right-thinking person may think, say or write, there was between us that sympathy which in our times and conditions is the strongest and perhaps the truest of all human qualities, the sympathy of drink. We were drinking mates together. We were wrong-thinking persons too, and that was another bond of sympathy between us.

There were cakes of tobacco, and books, and papers, and several flasks of “rye-buck”--our push being distantly related to a publican who wasn't half a bad sort--to cheer and comfort our departing mate on his uncertain way; and these tokens of mateship and the sake of auld lang syne were placed casually in his bunk or slipped unostentatiously into his hand or pockets, and received by him in short eloquent silence (sort of an aside silence), and partly as a matter of course. Every now and then there would be a surreptitious consultation between two of us and a hurried review of finances, and then one would slip quietly ashore and presently return supremely unconscious of a book, magazine, or parcel of fruit bulging out of his pocket.

You may battle round with mates for many years, and share and share alike, good times or hard, and find the said mates true and straight through it all; but it is their little thoughtful attentions when you are going away, that go right down to the bottom of your heart, and lift it up and make you feel inclined--as you stand alone by the rail when the sun goes down on the sea--to write or recite poetry and otherwise make a fool of yourself.

We helped our mate on board with his box, and inspected his bunk, and held a consultation over the merits or otherwise of its position, and got in his way and that of the under-steward and the rest of the crew right down to the captain, and superintended our old chum's general arrangements, and upset most of them, and interviewed various members of the crew as to when the boat would start for sure, and regarded their statements with suspicion, and calculated on our own account how long it would take to get the rest of the cargo aboard, and dragged our mate ashore for a final drink, and found that we had “plenty of time to slip ashore for a parting wet” so often that his immediate relations grew anxious and officious, and the universe began to look good, and kind, and happy, and bully, and jolly, and grand, and glorious to us, and we forgave the world everything wherein it had not acted straight towards us, and were filled full of love for our kind of both genders--for the human race at large--and with an almost irresistible longing to go aboard, and stay at all hazards, and sail along with our mate. We had just time “to slip ashore and have another” when the gangway was withdrawn and the steamer began to cast off. Then a rush down the wharf, a hurried and confused shaking of hands, and our mate was snatched aboard. The boat had been delayed, and we had waited for three hours, and had seen our chum nearly every day for years, and now we found we hadn't begun to say half what we wanted to say to him. We gripped his hand in turn over the rail, as the green tide came between, till there was a danger of one mate being pulled aboard--which he wouldn't have minded much--or the other mate pulled ashore, or one or both yanked overboard. We cheered the captain and cheered the crew and the passengers--there was a big crowd of them going and a bigger crowd of enthusiastic friends on the wharf--and our mate on the forward hatch; we cheered the land they were going to and the land they had left behind, and sang “Auld Lang Syne” and “He's a Jolly Good Fellow” (and so yelled all of us) and “Home Rule for Ireland Evermore”--which was, I don't know why, an old song of ours. And we shouted parting injunctions and exchanged old war cries, the meanings of which were only known to us, and we were guilty of such riotous conduct that, it being now Sunday morning, one or two of the quieter members suggested we had better drop down to about half-a-gale, as there was a severe-looking old sergeant of police with an eye on us; but once, in the middle of a heart-stirring chorus of “Auld Lang Sync,” Jack, my especial chum, paused for breath and said to me:

“It's all right, Joe, the trap's joining in.”

And so he was--and leading.

But I well remember the hush that fell on that, and several other occasions, when the steamer had passed the point.

And so our first mate sailed away out under the rising moon and under the morning stars. He is settled down in Maoriland now, in a house of his own, and has a family and a farm; but somehow, in the bottom of our hearts, we don't like to think of things like this, for they don't fit in at all with “Auld Lang Syne.”'

There were six or seven of us on the wharf to see our next mate go. His ultimate destination was known to himself and us only. We had pickets at the shore end of the wharf, and we kept him quiet and out of sight; the send-off was not noisy, but the hand-grips were very tight and the sympathy deep. He was running away from debt, and wrong, and dishonour, a drunken wife, and other sorrows, and we knew it all.

Two went next--to try their luck in Western Australia; they were plasterers. Ten of us turned up again, the push having been reinforced by one or two new members and an old one who had been absent on the first occasion. It was a glorious send-off, and only two found beds that night--the government supplied the beds.

And one by one and two by two they have gone from the wharf since then. Jack went to-day; he was perhaps the most irreclaimable of us all--a hard case where all cases were hard; and I loved him best--anyway I know that, wherever Jack goes, there will be someone who will barrack for me to the best of his ability (which is by no means to be despised as far as barracking is concerned), and resent, with enthusiasm and force if he deems it necessary, the barest insinuation which might be made to the effect that I could write a bad line if I tried, or be guilty of an action which would not be straight according to the rules of mateship.