Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

“But perhaps Douglas thought you were crowing over him when you took off your hat to him—sneerin’ at him, like, Mitchell,” reflected Jake Boreham.

“No, Jake,” said Mitchell, growing serious suddenly. “There are ways of doing things that another man understands.”

They all thought for a while.

“Well,” said Tom Hall, “supposing we do take up a collection for him, he’d be too damned proud to take it.”

“But that’s where we’ve got the pull on him,” said Mitchell, brightening up. “I heard Dr Morgan say that Mrs Douglas wouldn’t live if she wasn’t sent away to a cooler place, and Douglas knows it; and, besides, one of the little girls is sick. We’ve got him in a corner and he’ll have to take the stuff. Besides, two years in jail takes a lot of the pride out of a man.”

“Well, I’m damned if I’ll give a sprat to help the man who tried his best to crush the Unions!” said One-eyed Bogan.

“Damned if I will either!” said Barcoo-Rot.

“Now, look here, One-eyed Bogan,” said Mitchell, “I don’t like to harp on old things, for I know they bore you, but when you returned to public life that time no one talked of kicking you out of the town. In fact, I heard that the chaps put a few pounds together to help you get away for a while till you got over your modesty.”

No one spoke.

“I passed Douglas’s place on my way here from my camp to-night,” Mitchell went on musingly, “and I saw him walking up and down in the yard with his sick child in his arms. You remember that little girl, Bogan? I saw her run and pick up your hat and give it to you one day when you were trying to put it on with your feet. You remember, Bogan? The shock nearly sobered you.”

There was a very awkward pause. The position had become too psychological altogether and had to be ended somehow. The awkward silence had to be broken, and Bogan broke it. He turned up Bob Brothers’s hat, which was lying on the table, and “chucked” in a “quid,” qualifying the hat and the quid, and disguising his feelings with the national oath of the land.

“We’ve had enough of this gory, maudlin, sentimental tommy-rot,” he said. “Here, Barcoo, stump up or I’ll belt it out of your hide! I’ll—I’ll take yer to pieces!”

But Douglas didn’t leave the town. He sent his wife and children to Sydney until the heat wave was past, built a new room on to the cottage, and started a book and newspaper shop, and a poultry farm in the back paddock, and flourished.

They called him Mr Douglas for a while, then Douglas, then Percy Douglas, and now he is well-known as Old Daddy Douglas, and the Sydney _Worker_, _Truth_, and _Bulletin_, and other democratic rags are on sale at his shop. He is big with schemes for locking the Darling River, and he gets his drink at O’Donohoo’s. He is scarcely yet regarded as a straight-out democrat. He was a gentleman once, Mitchell said, and the old blood was not to be trusted. But, last elections, Douglas worked quietly for Unionism, and gave the leaders certain hints, and put them up to various electioneering dodges which enabled them to return, in the face of Monopoly, a Labour member who is as likely to go straight as long as any other Labour member.

THE BLINDNESS OF ONE-EYED BOGAN

They judge not and they are not judged—’tis their philosophy— (There’s something wrong with every ship that sails upon the sea). _The Ballad of the Rouseabout_.

“And what became of One-eyed Bogan?” I asked Tom Hall when I met him and Jack Mitchell down in Sydney with their shearing cheques the Christmas before last.

“You’d better ask Mitchell, Harry,” said Tom. “He can tell you about Bogan better than I can. But first, what about the drink we’re going to have?”

We turned out of Pitt Street into Hunter Street, and across George Street, where a double line of fast electric tramway was running, into Margaret Street and had a drink at Pfahlert’s Hotel, where a counter lunch—as good as many dinners you get for a shilling—was included with a sixpenny drink. “Get a quiet corner,” said Mitchell, “I like to bear myself cackle.” So we took our beer out in the fernery and got a cool place at a little table in a quiet corner amongst the fern boxes.

“Well, One-eyed Bogan was a hard case, Mitchell,” I said. “Wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Mitchell, putting down his “long-beer” glass, “he was.”

“Rather a bad egg?”

“Yes, a regular bad egg,” said Mitchell, decidedly.

“I heard he got caught cheating at cards,” I said.

“Did you?” said Mitchell. “Well, I believe he did. Ah, well,” he added reflectively, after another long pull, “One-eyed Bogan won’t cheat at cards any more.”

“Why?” I said. “Is he dead then?”

“No,” said Mitchell, “he’s blind.”

“Good God!” I said, “how did that happen?”

“He lost the other eye,” said Mitchell, and he took another drink. “Ah, well, he won’t cheat at cards any more—unless there’s cards invented for the blind.”

“How did it happen?” I asked.

“Well,” said Mitchell, “you see, Harry, it was this way. Bogan went pretty free in Bourke after the shearing before last, and in the end he got mixed up in a very ugly-looking business: he was accused of doing two new-chum jackaroos out of their stuff by some sort of confidence trick.”

“Confidence trick,” I said. “I’d never have thought that One-eyed Bogan had the brains to go in for that sort of thing.”

“Well, it seems he had, or else he used somebody else’s brains; there’s plenty of broken-down English gentlemen sharpers knocking about out back, you know, and Bogan might have been taking lessons from one. I don’t know the rights of the case, it was hushed up, as you’ll see presently; but, anyway, the jackaroos swore that Bogan had done ’em out of ten quid. They were both Cockneys and I suppose they reckoned themselves smart, but bushmen have more time to think. Besides, Bogan’s one eye was in his favour. You see he always kept his one eye fixed strictly on whatever business he had in hand; if he’d had another eye to rove round and distract his attention and look at things on the outside, the chances are he would never have got into trouble.”

“Never mind that, Jack,” said Tom Hall. “Harry wants to hear the yarn.”

“Well, to make it short, one of the jackaroos went to the police and Bogan cleared out. His character was pretty bad just then, so there was a piece of blue paper out for him. Bogan didn’t seem to think the thing was so serious as it was, for he only went a few miles down the river and camped with his horses on a sort of island inside an anabranch, till the thing should blow over or the new chums leave Bourke.

“Bogan’s old enemy, Constable Campbell, got wind of Bogan’s camp, and started out after him. He rode round the outside track and came in on to the river just below where the anabranch joins it, at the lower end of the island and right opposite Bogan’s camp. You know what those billabongs are: dry gullies till the river rises from the Queensland rains and backs them up till the water runs round into the river again and makes anabranches of ’em—places that you thought were hollows you’ll find above water, and you can row over places you thought were hills. There’s no water so treacherous and deceitful as you’ll find in some of those billabongs. A man starts to ride across a place where he thinks the water is just over the grass, and blunders into a deep channel—that wasn’t there before—with a steady undercurrent with the whole weight of the Darling River funnelled into it; and if he can’t swim and his horse isn’t used to it—or sometimes if he can swim—it’s a case with him, and the Darling River cod hold an inquest on him, if they have time, before he’s buried deep in Darling River mud for ever. And somebody advertises in the missing column for Jack Somebody who was last heard of in Australia.”

“Never mind that, Mitchell, go on,” I said.

“Well, Campbell knew the river and saw that there was a stiff current there, so he hailed Bogan.

“‘Good day, Campbell,’ shouted Bogan.

“‘I want you, Bogan,’ said Campbell. ‘Come across and bring your horses.’

“‘I’m damned if I will,’ says Bogan. ‘I’m not going to catch me death o’ cold to save your skin. If you want me you’ll have to bloody well come and git me.’ Bogan was a good strong swimmer, and he had good horses, but he didn’t try to get away—I suppose he reckoned he’d have to face the music one time or another—and one time is as good as another out back.

“Campbell was no swimmer; he had no temptation to risk his life—you see it wasn’t as in war with a lot of comrades watching ready to advertise a man as a coward for staying alive—so he argued with Bogan and tried to get him to listen to reason, and swore at him. ‘I’ll make it damned hot for you, Bogan,’ he said, ‘if I have to come over for you.’

“‘Two can play at that game,’ says Bogan.

“‘Look here, Bogan,” said Campbell, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you give me your word that you’ll come up to the police station to-morrow I’ll go back and say nothing about it. You can say you didn’t know a warrant was out after you. It will be all the better for you in the end. Better give me your word, man.’

“Perhaps Campbell knew Bogan better than any of us.

“‘Now then, Bogan,’ he said, ‘don’t be a fool. Give your word like a sensible man, and I’ll go back. I’ll give you five minutes to make up your mind.’ And he took out his watch.

“But Bogan was nasty and wouldn’t give his word, so there was nothing for it but for Campbell to make a try for him.

“Campbell had plenty of pluck, or obstinacy, which amounts to the same thing. He put his carbine and revolver under a log, out of the rain that was coming on, saw to his handcuffs, and then spurred his horse into the water. Bogan lit his pipe with a stick from his camp-fire—so Campbell said afterwards—and sat down on his heels and puffed away, and waited for him.

“Just as Campbell’s horse floundered into the current Bogan shouted to go back, but Campbell thought it was a threat and kept on. But Bogan had caught sight of a log coming down the stream, end on, with a sharp, splintered end, and before Campbell knew where he was, the sharp end of the log caught the horse in the flank. The horse started to plunge and struggle sideways, with all his legs, and Campbell got free of him as quick as he could. Now, you know, in some of those Darling River reaches the current will seem to run steadily far a while, and then come with a rush. (I was caught in one of those rushes once, when I was in swimming, and would have been drowned if I hadn’t been born to be hanged.) Well, a rush came along just as Campbell got free from his horse, and he went down-stream one side of a snag and his horse the other. Campbell’s pretty stout, you know, and his uniform was tight, and it handicapped him.

“Just as he was being washed past the lower end of the snag he caught hold of a branch that stuck out of the water and held on. He swung round and saw Bogan running down to the point opposite him. Now, you know there was always a lot of low cunning about Bogan, and I suppose he reckoned that if he pulled Campbell out he’d stand a good show of getting clear of his trouble; anyway, if he didn’t save Campbell it might be said that he killed him—besides, Bogan was a good swimmer, so there wasn’t any heroism about it anyhow. Campbell was only a few feet from the bank, but Bogan started to strip—to make the job look as big as possible, I suppose. He shouted to Campbell to say he was coming, and to hold on. Campbell said afterwards that Bogan seemed an hour undressing. The weight of the current was forcing down the bough that Campbell was hanging on to, and suddenly, he said, he felt a great feeling of helplessness take him by the shoulders. He yelled to Bogan and let go.

“Now, it happened that Jake Boreham and I were passing away the time between shearings, and we were having a sort of fishing and shooting loaf down the river in a boat arrangement that Jake had made out of boards and tarred canvas. We called her the _Jolly Coffin_. We were just poking up the bank in the slack water, a few hundred yards below the billabong, when Jake said, ‘Why, there’s a horse or something in the river.’ Then he shouted, ‘No, by God, it’s a man,’ and we poked the _Coffin_ out into the stream for all she was worth. ‘Looks like two men fighting in the water,’ Jake shouts presently. ‘Hurry up, or they’ll drown each other.’

“We hailed ’em, and Bogan shouted for help. He was treading water and holding Campbell up in front of him now in real professional style. As soon as he heard us he threw up his arms and splashed a bit—I reckoned he was trying to put as much style as he could into that rescue. But I caught a crab, and, before we could get to them, they were washed past into the top of a tree that stood well below flood-mark. I pulled the boat’s head round and let her stern down between the branches. Bogan had one arm over a limb and was holding Campbell with the other, and trying to lift him higher out of the water. I noticed Bogan’s face was bleeding—there was a dead limb stuck in the tree with nasty sharp points on it, and I reckoned he’d run his face against one of them. Campbell was gasping like a codfish out of water, and he was the whitest man I ever saw (except one, and _he’d_ been drowned for a week). Campbell had the sense to keep still. We asked Bogan if he could hold on, and he said he could, but he couldn’t hold Campbell any longer. So Jake took the oars and I leaned over the stern and caught hold of Campbell, and Jake ran the boat into the bank, and we got him ashore; then we went back for Bogan and landed him.

“We had some whisky and soon brought Campbell round; but Bogan was bleeding like a pig from a nasty cut over his good eye, so we bound wet handkerchiefs round his eyes and led him to a log and he sat down for a while, holding his hand to his eye and groaning. He kept saying, ‘I’m blind, mates, I’m blind! I’ve lost me other eye!’ but we didn’t dream it was so bad as that: we kept giving him whisky. We got some dry boughs and made a big fire. Then Bogan stood up and held his arms stiff down to his sides, opening and shutting his hands as if he was in great pain. And I’ve often thought since what a different man Bogan seemed without his clothes and with the broken bridge of his nose and his eyes covered by the handkerchiefs. He was clean shaven, and his mouth and chin are his best features, and he’s clean limbed and well hung. I often thought afterwards that there was something of a blind god about him as he stood there naked by the fire on the day he saved Campbell’s life—something that reminded me of a statue I saw once in the Art Gallery. (Pity the world isn’t blinder to a man’s worst points.)

“Presently Jake listened and said, ‘By God, that’s lucky!’ and we heard a steamer coming up-river and presently we saw her coming round the point with a couple of wool-barges in tow. We got Bogan aboard and got some clothes on him, and took him ashore at Bourke to the new hospital. The doctors did all they knew, but Bogan was blind for life. He never saw anything again—except ‘a sort of dull white blur,’ as he called it—or his past life sometimes, I suppose. Perhaps he saw that for the first time. Ah, well!

“Bogan’s old enemy, Barcoo-Rot, went to see him in the hospital, and Bogan said, ‘Well, Barcoo, I reckon we’ve had our last fight. I owe you a hiding, but I don’t see how I’m going to pay you.’ ‘Never mind that, Bogan, old man,’ says Barcoo. ‘I’ll take it from anyone yer likes to appoint, if that worries yer; and, look here, Bogan, if I can’t fight you I can fight for you—and don’t you forget it!’ And Barcoo used to lead Bogan round about town in his spare time and tell him all that was going on; and I believe he always had an ear cocked in case someone said a word against Bogan—as if any of the chaps would say a word against a blind man.

“Bogan’s case was hushed up. The police told us to fix it up the best way we could. One of the jackaroos, who reckoned that Bogan had swindled him, was a gentleman, and he was the first to throw a quid in the Giraffe’s hat when it went round for Bogan, but the other jackaroo was a cur: he said he wanted the money that Bogan had robbed him of. There were two witnesses, but we sent ’em away, and Tom Hall, there, scared the jackaroo. You know Tom was always the best hand we had at persuading witnesses in Union cases to go home to see their mothers.”

“How did you scare that jackaroo, Tom?” I asked.

“Tell you about it some other time,” said Tom.

“Well,” said Mitchell, “Bogan was always a good woolsorter, so, next shearing, old Baldy Thompson—(you know Baldy Thompson, Harry, of West-o’-Sunday Station)—Baldy had a talk with some of the chaps, and took Bogan out in his buggy with him to West-o’-Sunday. Bogan would sit at the end of the rolling tables, in the shearing-shed, with a boy to hand him the fleeces, and he’d feel a fleece and tell the boy what bin to throw it into; and by and by he began to learn to throw the fleeces into the bins himself. And sometimes Baldy would have a sheep brought to him and get him to feel the fleece and tell him the quality of it. And then again Baldy would talk, just loud enough for Bogan to overhear, and swear that he’d sooner have Bogan, blind as he was, than half a dozen scientific jackaroo experts with all their eyes about them.

“Of course Bogan wasn’t worth anything much to Baldy, but Baldy gave him two pounds a week out of his own pocket, and another quid that we made up between us; so he made enough to pull him through the rest of the year.

“It was curious to see how soon he learned to find his way about the hut and manage his tea and tucker. It was a rough shed, but everybody was eager to steer Bogan about—and, in fact, two of them had a fight about it one day. Baldy and all of us——and especially visitors when they came—were mighty interested in Bogan; and I reckon we were rather proud of having a blind wool-sorter. I reckon Bogan had thirty or forty pairs of eyes watching out for him in case he’d run against something or fall. It irritated him to be messed round too much—he said a baby would never learn to walk if it was held all the time. He reckoned he’d learn more in a year than a man who’d served a lifetime to blindness; but we didn’t let him wander much—for fear he’d fall into the big rocky waterhole there, by accident.

“And after the shearing-season Bogan’s wife turned up in Bourke——”

“Bogan’s wife!” I exclaimed. “Why, I never knew Bogan was married.”

“Neither did anyone else,” said Mitchell. “But he was. Perhaps that was what accounted for Bogan. Sometimes, in his sober moods, I used to have an idea that there must have been something behind the Bogan to account for him. Perhaps he got trapped—or got married and found out that he’d made a mistake—which is about the worst thing a man can find out——”

“Except that his wife made the mistake, Mitchell,” said Tom Hall.

“Or that both did,” reflected Mitchell. “Ah, well!—never mind—Bogan had been married two or three years. Maybe he got married when he was on the spree—I knew that he used to send money to someone in Sydney and I suppose it was her. Anyway, she turned up after he was blind. She was a hard-looking woman—just the sort that might have kept a third-rate pub or a sly-grog shop. But you can’t judge between husband and wife, unless you’ve lived in the same house with them—and under the same roofs with their parents right back to Adam for that matter. Anyway, she stuck to Bogan all right; she took a little two-roomed cottage and made him comfortable—she’s got a sewing-machine and a mangle and takes in washing and sewing. She brought a carrotty-headed youngster with her, and the first time I saw Bogan sitting on the veranda with that youngster on his knee I thought it was a good thing that he was blind.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because the youngster isn’t his,” said Mitchell.

“How do you know that?”

“By the look of it—and by the look on her face, once, when she caught me squinting from the kid’s face to Bogan’s.”

“And whose was it?” I asked, without thinking.

“How am I to know?” said Mitchell. “It might be yours for all I know—it’s ugly enough, and you never had any taste in women. But you mustn’t speak of that in Bourke. But there’s another youngster coming, and I’ll swear that’ll be Bogan’s all right.

“A curious thing about Bogan is that he’s begun to be fidgety about his personal appearance—and you know he wasn’t a dood. He wears a collar now, and polishes his boots; he wears elastic-sides, and polishes ’em himself—the only thing is that he blackens over the elastic. He can do many things for himself, and he’s proud of it. He says he can see many things that he couldn’t see when he had his eyes. You seldom hear him swear, save in a friendly way; he seems much gentler, but he reckons he would stand a show with Barcoo-Rot even now, if Barcoo would stand up in front of him and keep yelling——”

“By the way,” I asked, “how did Bogan lose the sight of his other eye?”

“Sleeping out in the rain when he was drunk,” said Mitchell. “He got a cold in his eye.” Then he asked, suddenly:

“Did you ever see a blind man cry?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, I have,” said Mitchell.

“You know Bogan wears goggles to hide his eyes—his wife made him do that. The chaps often used to drop round and have a yarn with Bogan and cheer him up, and one evening I was sitting smoking with him, and yarning about old times, when he got very quiet all of a sudden, and I saw a tear drop from under one of his shutters and roll down his cheek. It wasn’t the eye he lost saving Campbell—it was the old wall-eye he used to use in the days before he was called ‘One-eyed Bogan.’ I suppose he thought it was dark and that I couldn’t see his face. (There’s a good many people in this world who think you can’t see because they can’t.) It made me feel like I used to feel sometimes in the days when I felt things——”

“Come on, Mitchell,” said Tom Hall, “you’ve had enough beer.”

“I think I have,” said Mitchell. “Besides, I promised to send a wire to Jake Boreham to tell him that his mother’s dead. Jake’s shearing at West-o’-Sunday; shearing won’t be over for three or four weeks, and Jake wants an excuse to get away without offending old Baldy and come down and have a fly round with us before the holidays are over.”

Down at the telegraph-office Mitchell took a form and filled it in very carefully: “Jacob Boreham. West-o’-Sunday Station. Bourke. Come home at once. Mother is dead. In terrible trouble. Father dying.—MARY BOREHAM.”

“I think that will do,” said Mitchell. “It ought to satisfy Baldy, and it won’t give Jake too much of a shock, because he hasn’t got a sister or sister-in-law, and his father and mother’s been dead over ten years.”

“Now, if I was running a theatre,” said Mitchell, as we left the office, “I’d give five pounds a night for the face Jake’ll have on him when he takes that telegram to Baldy Thompson.”

TWO SUNDOWNERS

Sheep stations in Australia are any distance from twenty to a hundred miles apart, to keep well within the boundaries of truth and the great pastoral country. Shearing at any one shed only lasts a few weeks in the year; the number of men employed is according to the size of the shed—from three to five men in the little bough-covered shed of the small “cockatoo,” up to a hundred and fifty or two hundred hands all told in the big corrugated iron machine shed of a pastoral company.

Shearing starts early up in northern Queensland, where you can get a “January shed;” and further south, in February, March or April sheds, and so on down into New South Wales, where shearing often lasts over Christmas. Shearers travel from shed to shed; some go a travel season without getting a pen, and an unlucky shearer might ride or tramp for several seasons and never get hands in wool; and all this explains the existence of the “footman” with his swag and the horse man with his packhorse. They have a rough life, and the Australian shearers are certainly the most democratic and perhaps the most independent, intelligent and generous body of workmen in the world.

Shearers at a shed elect their own cook, pay him so much a head, and they buy their rations in the lump from the station store; and “travellers,” _i.e._ shearers and rouseabouts travelling for work, are invited, as a matter of course, to sit down to the shearers’ table. Also a certain allowance of tea, sugar, flour or meat is still made to travellers at most Western station stores; so it would be rather surprising if there weren’t some who travelled on the game. The swagman loafer, or “bummer,” times himself, especially in bad weather, to arrive at the shed just about sundown; he is then sure of “tea,” shelter for the night, breakfast, and some tucker from the cook to take him on along the track. Brummy and Swampy were sundowners.

Swampy was a bummer born—and proud of it. Brummy had drifted down to loaferdom, and his nature was soured and his spirit revengeful against the world because of the memory of early years wasted at hard work and in being honest. Both were short and stout, and both had scrubby beards, but Brummy’s beard was a dusty black and Swampy’s fiery red—he indulged in a monkey-shave sometimes, but his lower face was mostly like a patch of coarse stubble with a dying hedge round it. They had travelled together for a long time. They seemed at times to hate each other with a murderous hatred, but they were too lazy to fight. Sometimes they’d tramp side by side and growl at each other by the hour, other times they’d sulk for days; one would push on ahead and the other drop behind until there was a mile or two between them; but one always carried the billy, or the sugar, or something that was necessary to the comfort of the other, so they’d come together at sundown. They had travelled together a long time, and perhaps that was why they hated each other. They often agreed to part and take different tracks, and sometimes they parted—for a while. They agreed in cadging, and cadged in turn. They carried a spare set of tucker-bags, and if, for instance, they were out of sugar and had plenty flour and tea, Brummy or Swampy would go to the store, boundary-rider’s hut, or selector’s, with the sugar-bag in his hand and the other bags in his shirt front on spec. He’d get the sugar first, and then, if it looked good enough, the flour-bag would come out, then the tea-bag. And before he left he’d remark casually that he and his mate hadn’t had a smoke for two days. They never missed a chance. And when they’d cadged more tucker than they could comfortably carry, they’d camp for a day or two and eat it down. Sometimes they’d have as much as a pound of tobacco, all in little “borrowed” bits, cut from the sticks or cakes of honest travellers. They never missed a chance. If a stranger gave Swampy his cake of tobacco with instructions to “cut off a pipeful,” Swampy would cut off as much as he thought judicious, talking to the stranger and watching his eye all the time, and hiding his palm as much as possible—and sometimes, when he knew he’d cut off more than he could cram into his pipe, he’d put his hand in his pocket for the pipe and drop some of the tobacco there. Then he’d hand the plug to his mate, engage the stranger in conversation and try to hold his eye or detract his attention from Brummy so as to give Brummy a chance of cutting off a couple of pipefuls, and, maybe, nicking off a corner of the cake and slipping it into his pocket. I once heard a bushman say that no one but a skunk would be guilty of this tobacco trick—that it is about the meanest trick a man could be capable of—_because it spoils the chances of the next hard-up swaggy who asks the victim for tobacco._

When Brummy and Swampy came to a shed where shearing was in full swing, they’d inquire, first thing, and with some show of anxiety, if there was any chance of gettin’ on; if the shed was full-handed they’d growl about hard times, wonder what the country was coming to; talk of their missuses and kids that they’d left in Sydney, curse the squatters and the Government, and, next morning, get a supply of rations from the cook and depart with looks of gloom. If, on the other hand, there was room in the shed for one or both of them, and the boss told them to go to work in the morning, they’d keep it quiet from the cook if possible, and depart, after breakfast, unostentatiously.

Sometimes, at the beginning of a drought, when the tall dead grass was like tinder for hundreds of miles and a carelessly-dropped match would set the whole country on fire, Swampy would strike a hard-faced squatter, manager or overseer with a cold eye, and the conversation would be somewhat as follows:

Swampy: “Good day, boss!”

Boss (shortly): “’Day.”

Swampy: “Any chance of a job?”

Boss: “Naw. Got all I want and we don’t start for a fortnight.”

Swampy: “Can I git a bit o’ meat?”

Boss: “Naw! Don’t kill till Saturday.”

Swampy: “Pint o’ flour?”

Boss: “Naw. Short ourselves.”

Swampy: “Bit o’ tea or sugar, boss?”

Boss: “Naw—what next?”

Swampy: “Bit o’ baccer, boss. Ain’t had a smoke for a week.”

Boss: “Naw. Ain’t got enough for meself till the wagon comes out.”

Swampy: “Ah, well! It’s hot, ain’t it, boss?”

Boss: “Yes-it’s hot.”

Swampy: “Country very dry?”

Boss: “Yes. Looks like it.”

Swampy: “A fire ’ud be very bad just now?”

Boss: “Eh?”

Swampy: “Yes. Now I’m allers very careful with matches an’ fire when I’m on the track.”

Boss “Are yer?”

Swampy: “Yes. I never lights a fire near the grass—allers in the middle of the track—it’s the safest place yer can get. An’ I allers puts the fire out afore I leaves the camp. If there ain’t no water ter spare I covers the ashes with dirt. An’ some fellers are so careless with matches lightin’ their pipes.” (Reflective pause.)

Boss: “Are they?”

Swampy: “Yes. Now, when I lights me pipe on the track in dry weather I allers rubs the match head up an’ drops it in the dust. I never drops a burnin’ match. But some travellers is so careless. A chap might light his pipe an’ fling the match away without thinkin’ an’ the match might fall in a dry tuft, an’-there yer are!” (with a wave of his arms). “Hundreds of miles o’ grass gone an’ thousands o’ sheep starvin’. Some fellers is so careless—they never thinks.... An’ what’s more, they don’t care if they burn the whole country.”

Boss (scratching his head reflectively): “Ah-umph! You can go up to the store and get a bit of tucker. The storekeeper might let yer have a bit o’ tobacco.”

On one occasion, when they were out of flour and meat; Brummy and Swampy came across two other pilgrims camped on a creek, who were also out of flour and meat. One of them had tried a surveyors’ camp a little further down, but without success. The surveyors’ cook had said that he was short of flour and meat himself. Brummy tried him—no luck. Then Swampy said he’d go and have a try. As luck would have it, the surveyors’ cook was just going to bake; he had got the flour out in the dish, put in the salt and baking powder, mixed it up, and had gone to the creek for a billy of water when Swampy arrived. While the cook was gone Swampy slipped the flour out of the dish into his bag, _wiped_ the dish, set it down again, and planted the bag behind a tree at a little distance. Then he stood waiting, holding a spare empty bag in his hand. When the cook came back he glanced at the dish, lowered the billy of water slowly to the ground, scratched his head, and looked at the dish again in a puzzled way.

“Blanked if I didn’t think I got that flour out!” he said.

“What’s that, mate?” asked Swampy.

“Why! I could have sworn I got the flour out in the dish and mixed it before I went for the water,” said the cook, staring at the dish again. “It’s rum what tricks your memory plays on you sometimes.”

“Yes,” said Swampy, showing interest, while the cook got some more flour out into the dish from a bag in the back of the tent. “It is strange. I’ve done the same, thing meself. I suppose it’s the heat that makes us all a bit off at times.”

“Do you cook, then?” asked the surveyors’ cook.

“Well, yes. I’ve done a good bit of it in me time; but it’s about played out. I’m after stragglers now.” (Stragglers are stray sheep missed in the general muster and found about the out paddocks and shorn after the general shearing.)

They had a yarn and Swampy “bit the cook’s ear” for a “bit o’ meat an’ tea an’ sugar,” not forgetting “a handful of flour if yer can spare it.”

“Sorry,” said the cook, “but I can only let you have about a pint. We’re very short ourselves.”

“Oh, that’s all right!” said Swampy, as he put the stuff into his spare bags. “Thank you! Good day!”

“Good day,” said the cook. The cook went on with his work and Swampy departed, catching up the bag of flour from behind the tree as he passed it, and keeping the clump of timber well between him and the surveyors’ camp, lest the cook should glance round, and, noticing the increased bulk of his load, get some new ideas concerning mental aberration.

Nearly every bushman has at least one superstition, or notion, that lasts his time—as nearly every bushman has at least one dictionary word which lasts him all his life. Brummy had a gloomy notion—Lord knows how he got it!—that he should ’a’ gone on the boards if his people hadn’t been so ignorant. He reckoned that he had the face and cut of an actor, could mimic any man’s voice, and had wonderful control over his features. They came to a notoriously “hungry” station, where there was a Scottish manager and storekeeper. Brummy went up to “government house” in his own proper person, had a talk with the storekeeper, spoke of a sick mate, and got some flour and meat. They camped down the creek, and next morning Brummy started to shave himself.

“Whatever are you a-doin’ of, Brummy?” gasped Swampy in great astonishment.

“Wait and see,” growled Brummy, with awful impressiveness, as if he were going to cut Swampy’s throat after he’d finished shaving. He shaved off his beard and whiskers, put on a hat and coat belonging to Swampy, changed his voice, dropped his shoulders, and went limping up to the station on a game leg. He saw the cook and got some “brownie,” a bit of cooked meat and a packet of baking powder. Then he saw the storekeeper and approached the tobacco question. Sandy looked at him and listened with some slight show of interest, then he said:

“Oh that’s all right now! But ye needn’t ha’ troublt shavin’ yer beard—the cold weather’s comin’ on! An’ yer mate’s duds don’t suit ye—they’re too sma’; an’ yer game leg doesn’t fit ye either—it takes a lot o’ practice. Ha’ ye got ony tea an’ sugar?”

Brummy must have touched something responsive in that old Scot somewhere, but his lack of emotion upset Brummy somewhat, or else an old deep-rooted superstition had been severely shaken. Anyway he let Swampy do the cadging for several days thereafter.

But one bad season they were very hard up indeed—even for Brummy and Swampy. They’d tramped a long hungry track and had only met a few wretched jackaroos, driven out of the cities by hard times, and tramping hopelessly west. They were out of tobacco, and their trousers were so hopelessly “gone” behind that when they went to cadge at a place where there was a woman they were moved to back and sidle and edge away again—and neither Brummy nor Swampy was over fastidious in matters of dress or personal appearance. It was absolutely necessary to earn a pound or two, so they decided to go to work for a couple of weeks. It wouldn’t hurt them, and then there was the novelty of it.

They struck West-o’-Sunday Station, and the boss happened to want a rouseabout to pick up wool and sweep the floor for the shearers.

“I can put _one_ of you on,” he said. “Fix it up between yourselves and go to work in the morning.”

Brummy and Swampy went apart to talk it over.

“Look here! Brum, old man,” said Swampy, with great heartiness, “we’ve been mates for a long while now, an’ shared an’ shared alike. You’ve allers acted straight to me an’ I want to do the fair thing by you. _I_ don’t want to stand in _your_ light. You take the job an’ I’ll be satisfied with a pair of pants out of it and a bit o’ tobacco now an’ agen. There yer are! I can’t say no fairer than that.”

“Yes,” said Brummy, resentfully, “an’ you’ll always be thrown’ it up to me afterwards that I done you out of a job!”

“I’ll swear I won’t,” said Swampy, hurriedly. “But since you’re so blasted touchy and suspicious about it, _you_ take this job an’ I’ll take the next that turns up. How’ll that suit you?”

Brummy thought resentfully.

“Look here!” he said presently, “let’s settle it and have done with this damned sentimental tommy-rot. I’ll tell you what I’ll do—I’ll give you the job and take my chance. The boss might want another man to-morrow. Now, are you satisfied?”

But Swampy didn’t look grateful or happy.

“Well,” growled Brummy, “of all the —— I ever travelled with you’re the ——. What do you want anyway? What’ll satisfy you? That’s all I want to know. Hey?—can’t yer speak?”

“Let’s toss up for it,” said Swampy, sulkily.

“All right,” said Brummy, with a big oath, and he felt in his pocket for two old pennies he had. But Swampy had got a suspicion somehow that one of those pennies had two heads on it, and he wasn’t sure that the other hadn’t two tails—also, he suspected Brummy of some skill in “palming,” so he picked up a chip from the wood-heap, spat on it, and spun it into the air. “Sing out!” he cried, “wet or dry?”

“Dry,” said Brummy, promptly. He had a theory that the wet side of the chip, being presumably heaviest, was more likely to fall downwards; but this time it was “wet” up three times in succession. Brummy ignored Swampy’s hand thrown out in hearty congratulation; and next morning he went to work in the shed. Swampy camped down the river, and Brummy supplied him with a cheap pair of moleskin trousers, tucker and tobacco. The shed cut out within three weeks and the two sundowners took the track again, Brummy with two pounds odd in his pocket—he having negotiated his cheque at the shed.

But now there was suspicion, envy, and distrust in the hearts of those two wayfarers. Brummy was now a bloated capitalist, and proud, and anxious to get rid of Swampy—at least Swampy thought so. He thought that the least that Brummy might have done was to have shared the “stuff” with him.

“Look here, Brummy,” he said reproachfully, “we’ve shared and shared alike, and——”

“We never shared money,” said Brummy, decidedly.

“Do you think I want yer blasted money?” retorted Swampy, indignantly. “When did I ever ask yer for a sprat? Tell me that!”

“You wouldn’t have got it if you had asked,” said Brummy, uncompromisingly. “Look here!” with vehemence. “Didn’t I keep yer in tobacco and buy yer gory pants? What are you naggin’ about anyway?”

“Well,” said Swampy, “all I was goin’ to say was that yer might let me carry one of them quids in case you lost one—yer know you’re careless and lose things; or in case anything happened to you.”

“I ain’t going to lose it—if that’s all that’s fretting you,” said Brummy, “and there ain’t nothing going to happen to me—and don’t you forget it.”

“That’s all the thanks I get for givin’ yer my gory job,” said Swampy, savagely. “I won’t be sick a soft fool agen, I can tell yer.”

Brummy was silent, and Swampy dropped behind. He brooded darkly, and it’s a bad thing for a man to brood in the bush. He was reg’lar disgusted with Brummy. He’d allers acted straight to him, and Brummy had acted like a “cow.” He’d stand it no longer; but he’d have some satisfaction. He wouldn’t be a fool. If Brummy was mean skunk enough to act to a mate like that, Swampy would be even with him; he would wait till Brummy was asleep, collar the stuff, and clear. It was his job, anyway, and the money was his by rights. He’d have his rights.

Brummy, who carried the billy, gave Swampy a long tramp before he camped and made a fire. They had tea in silence, and smoked moodily apart until Brummy turned in. They usually slept on the ground, with a few leaves under them, or on the sand where there was any, each wrapped in his own blankets, and with their spare clothes, or rags rather, for pillows. Presently Swampy turned in and pretended to sleep, but he lay awake watching, and listening to Brummy’s breathing. When he thought it was safe he moved cautiously and slipped his hand under Brummy’s head, but Brummy’s old pocket-book—in which he carried some dirty old letters in a woman’s handwriting—was not there. All next day Swampy watched Brummy sharply every time he put his hands into his pockets, to try and find out in which pocket he kept his money. Brummy seemed very cheerful and sociable, even considerate, to his mate all day, and Swampy pretended to be happy. They yarned more than they had done for many a day. Brummy was a heavy sleeper, and that night Swampy went over him carefully and felt all his pockets, but without success. Next day Brummy seemed in high spirits—they were nearing Bourke, where they intended to loaf round the pubs for a week or two. On the third night Swampy waited till about midnight, and then searched Brummy, every inch of him he could get at, and tickled him, with a straw of grass till he turned over, and ran his hands over the other side of him, and over his feet (Brummy slept with his socks on), and looked in his boots, and in the billy and in the tucker-bags, and felt in every tuft of grass round the camp, and under every bush, and down a hollow stump, and up a hollow log: but there was no pocket-book. Brummy couldn’t have lost the money and kept it dark—he’d have gone back to look for it at once. Perhaps he’d thrown away the book and sewn the money in his clothes somewhere. Swampy crept back to him and felt the lining of his hat, and was running his hand over Brummy’s chest when Brummy suddenly started to snore, and Swampy desisted without loss of time. He crept back to bed, breathing short, and thought hard. It struck him that there was something aggressive about that snore. He began to suspect that Brummy was up to his little game, and it pained him.

Next morning Brummy was decidedly frivolous. At any other time Swampy would have put it down to a “touch o’ the sun,” but now he felt a growing conviction that Brummy knew what he’d been up to the last three nights, and the more he thought of it the more it pained him—till at last he could stand it no longer.

“Look here, Brummy,” he said frankly, “where the hell do you keep that flamin’ stuff o’ yourn? I been tryin’ to git at it ever since we left West-o’-Sunday.”

“I know you have, Swampy,” said Brummy, affectionately—as if he considered that Swampy had done his best in the interests of mateship.

“I _knowed_ yer knowed!” exclaimed Swampy, triumphantly. “But where the blazes did yer put it?”

“Under _your_ head, Swampy, old man,” said Brummy, cheerfully.

Swampy was hurt now. He commented in the language that used to be used by the bullock-punchers of the good days as they pranced up and down by their teams and lammed into the bullocks with saplings and crow-bars, and called on them to lift a heavy load out of a bog in the bed of a muddy creek.

“Never mind, Swampy!” said Brummy, soothingly, as his mate paused and tried to remember worse oaths. “It wasn’t your fault.”

But they parted at Bourke. Swampy had allers acted straight ter Brummy—share ’n’ share alike. He’d do as much for a mate as any other man, an’ put up with as much from a mate. He had put up with a lot from Brummy: he’d picked him up on the track and learned him all he knowed; Brummy would have starved many a time if it hadn’t been for Swampy; Swampy had learned him how to “battle.” He’d stick to Brummy yet, but he couldn’t stand ingratitude. He hated low cunnin’ an’ suspicion, and when a gory mate got suspicious of his own old mate and wouldn’t trust him, an’ took to plantin’ his crimson money—it was time to leave him.

A SKETCH OF MATESHIP

Bill and Jim, professional shearers, were coming into Bourke from the Queensland side. They were horsemen and had two packhorses. At the last camp before Bourke Jim’s packhorse got disgusted and home-sick during the night and started back for the place where he was foaled. Jim was little more than a new-chum jackaroo; he was no bushman and generally got lost when he went down the next gully. Bill was a bushman, so it was decided that he should go back to look for the horse.

Now Bill was going to sell his packhorse, a well-bred mare, in Bourke, and he was anxious to get her into the yards before the horse sales were over; this was to be the last day of the sales. Jim was the best “barracker” of the two; he had great imagination; he was a very entertaining story-teller and conversationalist in social life, and a glib and a most impressive liar in business, so it was decided that he should hurry on into Bourke with the mare and sell her for Bill. Seven pounds, reserve.

Next day Bill turned up with the missing horse and saw Jim standing against a veranda-post of the Carriers’ Arms, with his hat down over his eyes, and thoughtfully spitting in the dust. Bill rode over to him.

“’Ullo, Jim.”

“’Ullo, Bill. I see you got him.”

“Yes, I got him.”

Pause.

“Where’d yer find him?”

“’Bout ten mile back. Near Ford’s Bridge. He was just feedin’ along.”

Pause. Jim shifted his feet and spat in the dust.

“Well,” said Bill at last. “How did you get on, Jim?”

“Oh, all right,” said Jim. “I sold the mare.”

“That’s right,” said Bill. “How much did she fetch?”

“Eight quid;” then, rousing himself a little and showing some emotion, “An’ I could ’a’ got ten quid for her if I hadn’t been a dam’ fool.”

“Oh, that’s good enough,” said Bill.

“I could ’a’ got ten quid if I’d ’a’ waited.”

“Well, it’s no use cryin’. Eight quid is good enough. Did you get the stuff?”

“Oh, yes. They parted all right. If I hadn’t been such a dam’ fool an’ rushed it, there was a feller that would ’a’ given ten quid for that mare.”

“Well, don’t break yer back about it,” said Bill. “Eight is good enough.”

“Yes. But I could ’a’ got ten,” said Jim, languidly, putting his hand in his pocket.

Pause. Bill sat waiting for him to hand over the money; but Jim withdrew his hand empty, stretched, and said:

“Ah, well, Bill, I done it in. Lend us a couple o’ notes.”

Jim had been drinking and gambling all night and he’d lost the eight pounds as well as his own money.

Bill didn’t explode. What was the use? He should have known that Jim wasn’t to be trusted with money in town. It was he who had been the fool. He sighed and lent Jim a pound, and they went in to have a drink.

Now it strikes me that if this had happened in a civilized country (like England) Bill would have had Jim arrested and jailed for larceny as a bailee, or embezzlement, or whatever it was. And would Bill or Jim or the world have been any better for it?

ON THE TUCKER TRACK: A STEELMAN STORY

Steelman and Smith, professional wanderers from New Zealand, took a run over to Australia one year to have a look at the country, and drifted out back, and played cards and “headin’ ’em” at the shearing-sheds (while pretending to be strangers to each other), and sold eye-water and unpatented medicine, and worked the tucker tracks. They struck a streak of bad luck at West-o’-Sunday Station, where they were advised (by the boss and about fifty excited shearers) to go east, and not to stop till they reached the coast. They were tramping along the track towards Bourke; they were very hard up and had to “battle” for tucker and tobacco along the track. They came to a lonely shanty, about two camps west of Bourke.

“We’ll turn off into the scrub and strike the track the other side of the shanty and come back to it,” said Steelman. “You see, if they see us coming into Bourke they’ll say to themselves, ‘Oh, we’re never likely to see these chaps again,’ and they won’t give us anything, or, perhaps, only a pinch of tea or sugar in a big lump of paper. There’s some women that can never see a tucker-bag, even if you hold it right under their noses. But if they see us going out back they’ll reckon that we’ll get a shed likely as not, and we’ll be sure to call there with our cheques coming back. I hope the old man’s got the lumbago, or sciatica, or something.”

“Why?” asked Smith.