Chapter VIII: Part II: The Golden Graveyard (2)

Bushmen say that that kitchen jumped off its piles and on again. When the smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog were lying against the paling fence of the yard looking as if he had been kicked into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust under a barrow, and finally thrown against the fence from a distance. Several saddle-horses, which had been ‘hanging-up’ round the verandah, were galloping wildly down the road in clouds of dust, with broken bridle-reins flying; and from a circle round the outskirts, from every point of the compass in the scrub, came the yelping of dogs. Two of them went home, to the place where they were born, thirty miles away, and reached it the same night and stayed there; it was not till towards evening that the rest came back cautiously to make inquiries. One was trying to walk on two legs, and most of ‘em looked more or less singed; and a little, singed, stumpy-tailed dog, who had been in the habit of hopping the back half of him along on one leg, had reason to be glad that he’d saved up the other leg all those years, for he needed it now. There was one old one-eyed cattle-dog round that shanty for years afterwards, who couldn’t stand the smell of a gun being cleaned. He it was who had taken an interest, only second to that of the yellow dog, in the cartridge. Bushmen said that it was amusing to slip up on his blind side and stick a dirty ramrod under his nose: he wouldn’t wait to bring his solitary eye to bear--he’d take to the Bush and stay out all night.

For half an hour or so after the explosion there were several Bushmen round behind the stable who crouched, doubled up, against the wall, or rolled gently on the dust, trying to laugh without shrieking. There were two white women in hysterics at the house, and a half-caste rushing aimlessly round with a dipper of cold water. The publican was holding his wife tight and begging her between her squawks, to ‘hold up for my sake, Mary, or I’ll lam the life out of ye.’

Dave decided to apologise later on, ‘when things had settled a bit,’ and went back to camp. And the dog that had done it all, ‘Tommy’, the great, idiotic mongrel retriever, came slobbering round Dave and lashing his legs with his tail, and trotted home after him, smiling his broadest, longest, and reddest smile of amiability, and apparently satisfied for one afternoon with the fun he’d had.

Andy chained the dog up securely, and cooked some more chops, while Dave went to help Jim out of the hole.

And most of this is why, for years afterwards, lanky, easy-going Bushmen, riding lazily past Dave’s camp, would cry, in a lazy drawl and with just a hint of the nasal twang--

‘’El-lo, Da-a-ve! How’s the fishin’ getting on, Da-a-ve?’

Poisonous Jimmy Gets Left.

I. Dave Regan’s Yarn.

‘When we got tired of digging about Mudgee-Budgee, and getting no gold,’ said Dave Regan, Bushman, ‘me and my mate, Jim Bently, decided to take a turn at droving; so we went with Bob Baker, the drover, overland with a big mob of cattle, way up into Northern Queensland.

‘We couldn’t get a job on the home track, and we spent most of our money, like a pair of fools, at a pub. at a town way up over the border, where they had a flash barmaid from Brisbane. We sold our pack-horses and pack-saddles, and rode out of that town with our swags on our riding-horses in front of us. We had another spree at another place, and by the time we got near New South Wales we were pretty well stumped.

‘Just the other side of Mulgatown, near the border, we came on a big mob of cattle in a paddock, and a party of drovers camped on the creek. They had brought the cattle down from the north and were going no farther with them; their boss had ridden on into Mulgatown to get the cheques to pay them off, and they were waiting for him.

‘“And Poisonous Jimmy is waiting for us,” said one of them.

‘Poisonous Jimmy kept a shanty a piece along the road from their camp towards Mulgatown. He was called “Poisonous Jimmy” perhaps on account of his liquor, or perhaps because he had a job of poisoning dingoes on a station in the Bogan scrubs at one time. He was a sharp publican. He had a girl, and they said that whenever a shearing-shed cut-out on his side and he saw the shearers coming along the road, he’d say to the girl, “Run and get your best frock on, Mary! Here’s the shearers comin’.” And if a chequeman wouldn’t drink he’d try to get him into his bar and shout for him till he was too drunk to keep his hands out of his pockets.

‘“But he won’t get us,” said another of the drovers. “I’m going to ride straight into Mulgatown and send my money home by the post as soon as I get it.”

‘“You’ve always said that, Jack,” said the first drover.

‘We yarned a while, and had some tea, and then me and Jim got on our horses and rode on. We were burned to bricks and ragged and dusty and parched up enough, and so were our horses. We only had a few shillings to carry us four or five hundred miles home, but it was mighty hot and dusty, and we felt that we must have a drink at the shanty. This was west of the sixpenny-line at that time--all drinks were a shilling along here.

‘Just before we reached the shanty I got an idea.

‘“We’ll plant our swags in the scrub,” I said to Jim.

‘“What for?” said Jim.

‘“Never mind--you’ll see,” I said.

‘So we unstrapped our swags and hid them in the mulga scrub by the side of the road; then we rode on to the shanty, got down, and hung our horses to the verandah posts.

‘“Poisonous” came out at once, with a smile on him that would have made anybody home-sick.

‘He was a short nuggety man, and could use his hands, they said; he looked as if he’d be a nasty, vicious, cool customer in a fight--he wasn’t the sort of man you’d care to try and swindle a second time. He had a monkey shave when he shaved, but now it was all frill and stubble--like a bush fence round a stubble-field. He had a broken nose, and a cunning, sharp, suspicious eye that squinted, and a cold stony eye that seemed fixed. If you didn’t know him well you might talk to him for five minutes, looking at him in the cold stony eye, and then discover that it was the sharp cunning little eye that was watching you all the time. It was awful embarrassing. It must have made him awkward to deal with in a fight.

‘“Good day, mates,” he said.

‘“Good day,” we said.

‘“It’s hot.”

‘“It’s hot.”

‘We went into the bar, and Poisonous got behind the counter.

‘“What are you going to have?” he asked, rubbing up his glasses with a rag.

‘We had two long-beers.

‘“Never mind that,” said Poisonous, seeing me put my hand in my pocket; “it’s my shout. I don’t suppose your boss is back yet? I saw him go in to Mulgatown this morning.”

‘“No, he ain’t back,” I said; “I wish he was. We’re getting tired of waiting for him. We’ll give him another hour, and then some of us will have to ride in to see whether he’s got on the boose, and get hold of him if he has.”

‘“I suppose you’re waiting for your cheques?” he said, turning to fix some bottles on the shelf.

‘“Yes,” I said, “we are;” and I winked at Jim, and Jim winked back as solemn as an owl.

‘Poisonous asked us all about the trip, and how long we’d been on the track, and what sort of a boss we had, dropping the questions offhand now an’ then, as for the sake of conversation. We could see that he was trying to get at the size of our supposed cheques, so we answered accordingly.

‘“Have another drink,” he said, and he filled the pewters up again. “It’s up to me,” and he set to work boring out the glasses with his rag, as if he was short-handed and the bar was crowded with customers, and screwing up his face into what I suppose he considered an innocent or unconscious expression. The girl began to sidle in and out with a smart frock and a see-you-after-dark smirk on.

‘“Have you had dinner?” she asked. We could have done with a good meal, but it was too risky--the drovers’ boss might come along while we were at dinner and get into conversation with Poisonous. So we said we’d had dinner.

‘Poisonous filled our pewters again in an offhand way.

‘“I wish the boss would come,” said Jim with a yawn. “I want to get into Mulgatown to-night, and I want to get some shirts and things before I go in. I ain’t got a decent rag to me back. I don’t suppose there’s ten bob amongst the lot of us.”

‘There was a general store back on the creek, near the drovers’ camp.

‘“Oh, go to the store and get what you want,” said Poisonous, taking a sovereign from the till and tossing it on to the counter. “You can fix it up with me when your boss comes. Bring your mates along.”

‘“Thank you,” said Jim, taking up the sovereign carelessly and dropping it into his pocket.

‘“Well, Jim,” I said, “suppose we get back to camp and see how the chaps are getting on?”

‘“All right,” said Jim.

‘“Tell them to come down and get a drink,” said Poisonous; “or, wait, you can take some beer along to them if you like,” and he gave us half a gallon of beer in a billy-can. He knew what the first drink meant with Bushmen back from a long dry trip.

‘We got on our horses, I holding the billy very carefully, and rode back to where our swags were.

‘“I say,” said Jim, when we’d strapped the swags to the saddles, “suppose we take the beer back to those chaps: it’s meant for them, and it’s only a fair thing, anyway--we’ve got as much as we can hold till we get into Mulgatown.”

‘“It might get them into a row,” I said, “and they seem decent chaps. Let’s hang the billy on a twig, and that old swagman that’s coming along will think there’s angels in the Bush.”

‘“Oh! what’s a row?” said Jim. “They can take care of themselves; they’ll have the beer anyway and a lark with Poisonous when they take the can back and it comes to explanations. I’ll ride back to them.”

‘So Jim rode back to the drovers’ camp with the beer, and when he came back to me he said that the drovers seemed surprised, but they drank good luck to him.

‘We rode round through the mulga behind the shanty and came out on the road again on the Mulgatown side: we only stayed at Mulgatown to buy some tucker and tobacco, then we pushed on and camped for the night about seven miles on the safe side of the town.’

II. Told by One of the Other Drovers.

‘Talkin’ o’ Poisonous Jimmy, I can tell you a yarn about him. We’d brought a mob of cattle down for a squatter the other side of Mulgatown. We camped about seven miles the other side of the town, waitin’ for the station hands to come and take charge of the stock, while the boss rode on into town to draw our money. Some of us was goin’ back, though in the end we all went into Mulgatown and had a boose up with the boss. But while we was waitin’ there come along two fellers that had been drovin’ up north. They yarned a while, an’ then went on to Poisonous Jimmy’s place, an’ in about an hour one on ‘em come ridin’ back with a can of beer that he said Poisonous had sent for us. We all knew Jimmy’s little games--the beer was a bait to get us on the drunk at his place; but we drunk the beer, and reckoned to have a lark with him afterwards. When the boss come back, an’ the station hands to take the bullocks, we started into Mulgatown. We stopped outside Poisonous’s place an’ handed the can to the girl that was grinnin’ on the verandah. Poisonous come out with a grin on him like a parson with a broken nose.

‘“Good day, boys!” he says.

‘“Good day, Poisonous,” we says.

‘“It’s hot,” he says.

‘“It’s blanky hot,” I says.

‘He seemed to expect us to get down. “Where are you off to?” he says.

‘“Mulgatown,” I says. “It will be cooler there,” and we sung out, “So-long, Poisonous!” and rode on.

‘He stood starin’ for a minute; then he started shoutin’, “Hi! hi there!” after us, but we took no notice, an’ rode on. When we looked back last he was runnin’ into the scrub with a bridle in his hand.

‘We jogged along easily till we got within a mile of Mulgatown, when we heard somebody gallopin’ after us, an’ lookin’ back we saw it was Poisonous.

‘He was too mad and too winded to speak at first, so he rode along with us a bit gasping: then he burst out.

‘“Where’s them other two carnal blanks?” he shouted.

‘“What other two?” I asked. “We’re all here. What’s the matter with you anyway?”

‘“All here!” he yelled. “You’re a lurid liar! What the flamin’ sheol do you mean by swiggin’ my beer an’ flingin’ the coloured can in me face? without as much as thank yer! D’yer think I’m a flamin’----!”

‘Oh, but Poisonous Jimmy was wild.

‘“Well, we’ll pay for your dirty beer,” says one of the chaps, puttin’ his hand in his pocket. “We didn’t want yer slush. It tasted as if it had been used before.”

‘“Pay for it!” yelled Jimmy. “I’ll----well take it out of one of yer bleedin’ hides!”

‘We stopped at once, and I got down an’ obliged Jimmy for a few rounds. He was a nasty customer to fight; he could use his hands, and was cool as a cucumber as soon as he took his coat off: besides, he had one squirmy little business eye, and a big wall-eye, an’, even if you knowed him well, you couldn’t help watchin’ the stony eye--it was no good watchin’ his eyes, you had to watch his hands, and he might have managed me if the boss hadn’t stopped the fight. The boss was a big, quiet-voiced man, that didn’t swear.

‘“Now, look here, Myles,” said the boss (Jimmy’s name was Myles)--“Now, look here, Myles,” sez the boss, “what’s all this about?”

‘“What’s all this about?” says Jimmy, gettin’ excited agen. “Why, two fellers that belonged to your party come along to my place an’ put up half-a-dozen drinks, an’ borrered a sovereign, an’ got a can o’ beer on the strength of their cheques. They sez they was waitin’ for you--an’ I want my crimson money out o’ some one!”

‘“What was they like?” asks the boss.

‘“Like?” shouted Poisonous, swearin’ all the time. “One was a blanky long, sandy, sawny feller, and the other was a short, slim feller with black hair. Your blanky men knows all about them because they had the blanky billy o’ beer.”

‘“Now, what’s this all about, you chaps?” sez the boss to us.

‘So we told him as much as we knowed about them two fellers.

‘I’ve heard men swear that could swear in a rough shearin’-shed, but I never heard a man swear like Poisonous Jimmy when he saw how he’d been left. It was enough to split stumps. He said he wanted to see those fellers, just once, before he died.

‘He rode with us into Mulgatown, got mad drunk, an’ started out along the road with a tomahawk after the long sandy feller and the slim dark feller; but two mounted police went after him an’ fetched him back. He said he only wanted justice; he said he only wanted to stun them two fellers till he could give ‘em in charge.

‘They fined him ten bob.’

The Ghostly Door.

Told by one of Dave’s mates.

Dave and I were tramping on a lonely Bush track in New Zealand, making for a sawmill where we expected to get work, and we were caught in one of those three-days’ gales, with rain and hail in it and cold enough to cut off a man’s legs. Camping out was not to be thought of, so we just tramped on in silence, with the stinging pain coming between our shoulder-blades--from cold, weariness, and the weight of our swags--and our boots, full of water, going splosh, splosh, splosh along the track. We were settled to it--to drag on like wet, weary, muddy working bullocks till we came to somewhere--when, just before darkness settled down, we saw the loom of a humpy of some sort on the slope of a tussock hill, back from the road, and we made for it, without holding a consultation.

It was a two-roomed hut built of waste timber from a sawmill, and was either a deserted settler’s home or a hut attached to an abandoned sawmill round there somewhere. The windows were boarded up. We dumped our swags under the little verandah and banged at the door, to make sure; then Dave pulled a couple of boards off a window and looked in: there was light enough to see that the place was empty. Dave pulled off some more boards, put his arm in through a broken pane, clicked the catch back, and then pushed up the window and got in. I handed in the swags to him. The room was very draughty; the wind came in through the broken window and the cracks between the slabs, so we tried the partitioned-off room--the bedroom--and that was better. It had been lined with chaff-bags, and there were two stretchers left by some timber-getters or other Bush contractors who’d camped there last; and there were a box and a couple of three-legged stools.

We carried the remnant of the wood-heap inside, made a fire, and put the billy on. We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets on the stretchers; and then we stripped and hung our clothes about the fire to dry. There was plenty in our tucker-bags, so we had a good feed. I hadn’t shaved for days, and Dave had a coarse red beard with a twist in it like an ill-used fibre brush--a beard that got redder the longer it grew; he had a hooked nose, and his hair stood straight up (I never saw a man so easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head), and he was very tall, with long, thin, hairy legs. We must have looked a weird pair as we sat there, naked, on the low three-legged stools, with the billy and the tucker on the box between us, and ate our bread and meat with clasp-knives.

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ says Dave, ‘but this is the “whare” * where the murder was that we heard about along the road. I suppose if any one was to come along now and look in he’d get scared.’ Then after a while he looked down at the flooring-boards close to my feet, and scratched his ear, and said, ‘That looks very much like a blood-stain under your stool, doesn’t it, Jim?’

* ‘Whare’, ‘whorrie’, Maori name for house.

I shifted my feet and presently moved the stool farther away from the fire--it was too hot.

I wouldn’t have liked to camp there by myself, but I don’t think Dave would have minded--he’d knocked round too much in the Australian Bush to mind anything much, or to be surprised at anything; besides, he was more than half murdered once by a man who said afterwards that he’d mistook him for some one else: he must have been a very short-sighted murderer.

Presently we put tobacco, matches, and bits of candle we had, on the two stools by the heads of our bunks, turned in, and filled up and smoked comfortably, dropping in a lazy word now and again about nothing in particular. Once I happened to look across at Dave, and saw him sitting up a bit and watching the door. The door opened very slowly, wide, and a black cat walked in, looked first at me, then at Dave, and walked out again; and the door closed behind it.

Dave scratched his ear. ‘That’s rum,’ he said. ‘I could have sworn I fastened that door. They must have left the cat behind.’

‘It looks like it,’ I said. ‘Neither of us has been on the boose lately.’

He got out of bed and up on his long hairy spindle-shanks.

The door had the ordinary, common black oblong lock with a brass knob. Dave tried the latch and found it fast; he turned the knob, opened the door, and called, ‘Puss--puss--puss!’ but the cat wouldn’t come. He shut the door, tried the knob to see that the catch had caught, and got into bed again.

He’d scarcely settled down when the door opened slowly, the black cat walked in, stared hard at Dave, and suddenly turned and darted out as the door closed smartly.

I looked at Dave and he looked at me--hard; then he scratched the back of his head. I never saw a man look so puzzled in the face and scared about the head.

He got out of bed very cautiously, took a stick of firewood in his hand, sneaked up to the door, and snatched it open. There was no one there. Dave took the candle and went into the next room, but couldn’t see the cat. He came back and sat down by the fire and meowed, and presently the cat answered him and came in from somewhere--she’d been outside the window, I suppose; he kept on meowing and she sidled up and rubbed against his hairy shin. Dave could generally bring a cat that way. He had a weakness for cats. I’d seen him kick a dog, and hammer a horse--brutally, I thought--but I never saw him hurt a cat or let any one else do it. Dave was good to cats: if a cat had a family where Dave was round, he’d see her all right and comfortable, and only drown a fair surplus. He said once to me, ‘I can understand a man kicking a dog, or hammering a horse when it plays up, but I can’t understand a man hurting a cat.’

He gave this cat something to eat. Then he went and held the light close to the lock of the door, but could see nothing wrong with it. He found a key on the mantel-shelf and locked the door. He got into bed again, and the cat jumped up and curled down at the foot and started her old drum going, like shot in a sieve. Dave bent down and patted her, to tell her he’d meant no harm when he stretched out his legs, and then he settled down again.

We had some books of the ‘Deadwood Dick’ school. Dave was reading ‘The Grisly Ghost of the Haunted Gulch’, and I had ‘The Dismembered Hand’, or ‘The Disembowelled Corpse’, or some such names. They were first-class preparation for a ghost.

I was reading away, and getting drowsy, when I noticed a movement and saw Dave’s frightened head rising, with the terrified shadow of it on the wall. He was staring at the door, over his book, with both eyes. And that door was opening again--slowly--and Dave had locked it! I never felt anything so creepy: the foot of my bunk was behind the door, and I drew up my feet as it came open; it opened wide, and stood so. We waited, for five minutes it seemed, hearing each other breathe, watching for the door to close; then Dave got out, very gingerly, and up on one end, and went to the door like a cat on wet bricks.

‘You shot the bolt OUTSIDE the catch,’ I said, as he caught hold of the door--like one grabs a craw-fish.

‘I’ll swear I didn’t,’ said Dave. But he’d already turned the key a couple of times, so he couldn’t be sure. He shut and locked the door again. ‘Now, get out and see for yourself,’ he said.

I got out, and tried the door a couple of times and found it all right. Then we both tried, and agreed that it was locked.

I got back into bed, and Dave was about half in when a thought struck him. He got the heaviest piece of firewood and stood it against the door.

‘What are you doing that for?’ I asked.

‘If there’s a broken-down burglar camped round here, and trying any of his funny business, we’ll hear him if he tries to come in while we’re asleep,’ says Dave. Then he got back into bed. We composed our nerves with the ‘Haunted Gulch’ and ‘The Disembowelled Corpse’, and after a while I heard Dave snore, and was just dropping off when the stick fell from the door against my big toe and then to the ground with tremendous clatter. I snatched up my feet and sat up with a jerk, and so did Dave--the cat went over the partition. That door opened, only a little way this time, paused, and shut suddenly. Dave got out, grabbed a stick, skipped to the door, and clutched at the knob as if it were a nettle, and the door wouldn’t come!--it was fast and locked! Then Dave’s face began to look as frightened as his hair. He lit his candle at the fire, and asked me to come with him; he unlocked the door and we went into the other room, Dave shading his candle very carefully and feeling his way slow with his feet. The room was empty; we tried the outer door and found it locked.

‘It muster gone by the winder,’ whispered Dave. I noticed that he said ‘it’ instead of ‘he’. I saw that he himself was shook up, and it only needed that to scare me bad.

We went back to the bedroom, had a drink of cold tea, and lit our pipes. Then Dave took the waterproof cover off his bunk, spread it on the floor, laid his blankets on top of it, his spare clothes, &c., on top of them, and started to roll up his swag.

‘What are you going to do, Dave?’ I asked.

‘I’m going to take the track,’ says Dave, ‘and camp somewhere farther on. You can stay here, if you like, and come on in the morning.’

I started to roll up my swag at once. We dressed and fastened on the tucker-bags, took up the billies, and got outside without making any noise. We held our backs pretty hollow till we got down on to the road.

‘That comes of camping in a deserted house,’ said Dave, when we were safe on the track. No Australian Bushman cares to camp in an abandoned homestead, or even near it--probably because a deserted home looks ghostlier in the Australian Bush than anywhere else in the world.

It was blowing hard, but not raining so much.

We went on along the track for a couple of miles and camped on the sheltered side of a round tussock hill, in a hole where there had been a landslip. We used all our candle-ends to get a fire alight, but once we got it started we knocked the wet bark off ‘manuka’ sticks and logs and piled them on, and soon had a roaring fire. When the ground got a little drier we rigged a bit of shelter from the showers with some sticks and the oil-cloth swag-covers; then we made some coffee and got through the night pretty comfortably. In the morning Dave said, ‘I’m going back to that house.’

‘What for?’ I said.

‘I’m going to find out what’s the matter with that crimson door. If I don’t I’ll never be able to sleep easy within a mile of a door so long as I live.’

So we went back. It was still blowing. The thing was simple enough by daylight--after a little watching and experimenting. The house was built of odds and ends and badly fitted. It ‘gave’ in the wind in almost any direction--not much, not more than an inch or so, but just enough to throw the door-frame out of plumb and out of square in such a way as to bring the latch and bolt of the lock clear of the catch (the door-frame was of scraps joined). Then the door swung open according to the hang of it; and when the gust was over the house gave back, and the door swung to--the frame easing just a little in another direction. I suppose it would take Edison to invent a thing like that, that came about by accident. The different strengths and directions of the gusts of wind must have accounted for the variations of the door’s movements--and maybe the draught of our big fire had helped.

Dave scratched his head a good bit.

‘I never lived in a house yet,’ he said, as we came away--‘I never lived in a house yet without there was something wrong with it. Gimme a good tent.’

A Wild Irishman.

About seven years ago I drifted from Out-Back in Australia to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, and up country to a little town called Pahiatua, which meaneth the ‘home of the gods’, and is situated in the Wairarappa (rippling or sparkling water) district. They have a pretty little legend to the effect that the name of the district was not originally suggested by its rivers, streams, and lakes, but by the tears alleged to have been noticed, by a dusky squire, in the eyes of a warrior chief who was looking his first, or last--I don’t remember which--upon the scene. He was the discoverer, I suppose, now I come to think of it, else the place would have been already named. Maybe the scene reminded the old cannibal of the home of his childhood.

Pahiatua was not the home of my god; and it rained for five weeks. While waiting for a remittance, from an Australian newspaper--which, I anxiously hoped, would arrive in time for enough of it to be left (after paying board) to take me away somewhere--I spent many hours in the little shop of a shoemaker who had been a digger; and he told me yarns of the old days on the West Coast of Middle Island. And, ever and anon, he returned to one, a hard-case from the West Coast, called ‘The Flour of Wheat’, and his cousin, and his mate, Dinny Murphy, dead. And ever and again the shoemaker (he was large, humorous, and good-natured) made me promise that, when I dropped across an old West Coast digger--no matter who or what he was, or whether he was drunk or sober--I’d ask him if he knew the ‘Flour of Wheat’, and hear what he had to say.

I make no attempt to give any one shade of the Irish brogue--it can’t be done in writing.

‘There’s the little red Irishman,’ said the shoemaker, who was Irish himself, ‘who always wants to fight when he has a glass in him; and there’s the big sarcastic dark Irishman who makes more trouble and fights at a spree than half-a-dozen little red ones put together; and there’s the cheerful easy-going Irishman. Now the Flour was a combination of all three and several other sorts. He was known from the first amongst the boys at Th’ Canary as the Flour o’ Wheat, but no one knew exactly why. Some said that the right name was the F-l-o-w-e-r, not F-l-o-u-r, and that he was called that because there was no flower on wheat. The name might have been a compliment paid to the man’s character by some one who understood and appreciated it--or appreciated it without understanding it. Or it might have come of some chance saying of the Flour himself, or his mates--or an accident with bags of flour. He might have worked in a mill. But we’ve had enough of that. It’s the man--not the name. He was just a big, dark, blue-eyed Irish digger. He worked hard, drank hard, fought hard--and didn’t swear. No man had ever heard him swear (except once); all things were ‘lovely’ with him. He was always lucky. He got gold and threw it away.

‘The Flour was sent out to Australia (by his friends) in connection with some trouble in Ireland in eighteen-something. The date doesn’t matter: there was mostly trouble in Ireland in those days; and nobody, that knew the man, could have the slightest doubt that he helped the trouble--provided he was there at the time. I heard all this from a man who knew him in Australia. The relatives that he was sent out to were soon very anxious to see the end of him. He was as wild as they made them in Ireland. When he had a few drinks, he’d walk restlessly to and fro outside the shanty, swinging his right arm across in front of him with elbow bent and hand closed, as if he had a head in chancery, and muttering, as though in explanation to himself--

‘“Oi must be walkin’ or foightin’!--Oi must be walkin’ or foightin’!--Oi must be walkin’ or foightin’!”

‘They say that he wanted to eat his Australian relatives before he was done; and the story goes that one night, while he was on the spree, they put their belongings into a cart and took to the Bush.

‘There’s no floury record for several years; then the Flour turned up on the west coast of New Zealand and was never very far from a pub. kept by a cousin (that he had tracked, unearthed, or discovered somehow) at a place called “Th’ Canary”. I remember the first time I saw the Flour.

‘I was on a bit of a spree myself, at Th’ Canary, and one evening I was standing outside Brady’s (the Flour’s cousin’s place) with Tom Lyons and Dinny Murphy, when I saw a big man coming across the flat with a swag on his back.

‘“B’ God, there’s the Flour o’ Wheat comin’ this minute,” says Dinny Murphy to Tom, “an’ no one else.”

‘“B’ God, ye’re right!” says Tom.

‘There were a lot of new chums in the big room at the back, drinking and dancing and singing, and Tom says to Dinny--

‘“Dinny, I’ll bet you a quid an’ the Flour’ll run against some of those new chums before he’s an hour on the spot.”

‘But Dinny wouldn’t take him up. He knew the Flour.

‘“Good day, Tom! Good day, Dinny!”

‘“Good day to you, Flour!”

‘I was introduced.

‘“Well, boys, come along,” says the Flour.

‘And so we went inside with him. The Flour had a few drinks, and then he went into the back-room where the new chums were. One of them was dancing a jig, and so the Flour stood up in front of him and commenced to dance too. And presently the new chum made a step that didn’t please the Flour, so he hit him between the eyes, and knocked him down--fair an’ flat on his back.

‘“Take that,” he says. “Take that, me lovely whipper-snapper, an’ lay there! You can’t dance. How dare ye stand up in front of me face to dance when ye can’t dance?”

‘He shouted, and drank, and gambled, and danced, and sang, and fought the new chums all night, and in the morning he said--

‘“Well, boys, we had a grand time last night. Come and have a drink with me.”

‘And of course they went in and had a drink with him.

*****

‘Next morning the Flour was walking along the street, when he met a drunken, disreputable old hag, known among the boys as the “Nipper”.

‘“Good MORNING, me lovely Flour o’ Wheat!” says she.

‘“Good MORNING, me lovely Nipper!” says the Flour.

‘And with that she outs with a bottle she had in her dress, and smashed him across the face with it. Broke the bottle to smithereens!

‘A policeman saw her do it, and took her up; and they had the Flour as a witness, whether he liked it or not. And a lovely sight he looked, with his face all done up in bloody bandages, and only one damaged eye and a corner of his mouth on duty.

‘“It’s nothing at all, your Honour,” he said to the S.M.; “only a pin-scratch--it’s nothing at all. Let it pass. I had no right to speak to the lovely woman at all.”

‘But they didn’t let it pass,--they fined her a quid.

‘And the Flour paid the fine.

‘But, alas for human nature! It was pretty much the same even in those days, and amongst those men, as it is now. A man couldn’t do a woman a good turn without the dirty-minded blackguards taking it for granted there was something between them. It was a great joke amongst the boys who knew the Flour, and who also knew the Nipper; but as it was carried too far in some quarters, it got to be no joke to the Flour--nor to those who laughed too loud or grinned too long.

*****

‘The Flour’s cousin thought he was a sharp man. The Flour got “stiff”. He hadn’t any money, and his credit had run out, so he went and got a blank summons from one of the police he knew. He pretended that he wanted to frighten a man who owed him some money. Then he filled it up and took it to his cousin.

‘“What d’ye think of that?” he says, handing the summons across the bar. “What d’ye think of me lovely Dinny Murphy now?”

‘“Why, what’s this all about?”

‘“That’s what I want to know. I borrowed a five-pound-note off of him a fortnight ago when I was drunk, an’ now he sends me that.”

‘“Well, I never would have dream’d that of Dinny,” says the cousin, scratching his head and blinking. “What’s come over him at all?”

‘“That’s what I want to know.”

‘“What have you been doing to the man?”

‘“Divil a thing that I’m aware of.”

‘The cousin rubbed his chin-tuft between his forefinger and thumb.

‘“Well, what am I to do about it?” asked the Flour impatiently.

‘“Do? Pay the man, of course?”

‘“How can I pay the lovely man when I haven’t got the price of a drink about me?”

‘The cousin scratched his chin.

‘“Well--here, I’ll lend you a five-pound-note for a month or two. Go and pay the man, and get back to work.”

‘And the Flour went and found Dinny Murphy, and the pair of them had a howling spree together up at Brady’s, the opposition pub. And the cousin said he thought all the time he was being had.

. . . . .

‘He was nasty sometimes, when he was about half drunk. For instance, he’d come on the ground when the Orewell sports were in full swing and walk round, soliloquising just loud enough for you to hear; and just when a big event was coming off he’d pass within earshot of some committee men--who had been bursting themselves for weeks to work the thing up and make it a success--saying to himself--

‘“Where’s the Orewell sports that I hear so much about? I don’t see them! Can any one direct me to the Orewell sports?”

‘Or he’d pass a raffle, lottery, lucky-bag, or golden-barrel business of some sort,--

‘“No gamblin’ for the Flour. I don’t believe in their little shwindles. It ought to be shtopped. Leadin’ young people ashtray.”

‘Or he’d pass an Englishman he didn’t like,--

‘“Look at Jinneral Roberts! He’s a man! He’s an Irishman! England has to come to Ireland for its Jinnerals! Luk at Jinneral Roberts in the marshes of Candyhar!”

*****

‘They always had sports at Orewell Creek on New Year’s Day--except once--and old Duncan was always there,--never missed it till the day he died. He was a digger, a humorous and good-hearted “hard-case”. They all knew “old Duncan”.

‘But one New Year’s Eve he didn’t turn up, and was missed at once. “Where’s old Duncan? Any one seen old Duncan?” “Oh, he’ll turn up alright.” They inquired, and argued, and waited, but Duncan didn’t come.

‘Duncan was working at Duffers. The boys inquired of fellows who came from Duffers, but they hadn’t seen him for two days. They had fully expected to find him at the creek. He wasn’t at Aliaura nor Notown. They inquired of men who came from Nelson Creek, but Duncan wasn’t there.

‘“There’s something happened to the lovely man,” said the Flour of Wheat at last. “Some of us had better see about it.”

‘Pretty soon this was the general opinion, and so a party started out over the hills to Duffers before daylight in the morning, headed by the Flour.

‘The door of Duncan’s “whare” was closed--BUT NOT PADLOCKED. The Flour noticed this, gave his head a jerk, opened the door, and went in. The hut was tidied up and swept out--even the fireplace. Duncan had “lifted the boxes” and “cleaned up”, and his little bag of gold stood on a shelf by his side--all ready for his spree. On the table lay a clean neckerchief folded ready to tie on. The blankets had been folded neatly and laid on the bunk, and on them was stretched Old Duncan, with his arms lying crossed on his chest, and one foot--with a boot on--resting on the ground. He had his “clean things” on, and was dressed except for one boot, the necktie, and his hat. Heart disease.

‘“Take your hats off and come in quietly, lads,” said the Flour. “Here’s the lovely man lying dead in his bunk.”

‘There were no sports at Orewell that New Year. Some one said that the crowd from Nelson Creek might object to the sports being postponed on old Duncan’s account, but the Flour said he’d see to that.

‘One or two did object, but the Flour reasoned with them and there were no sports.

‘And the Flour used to say, afterwards, “Ah, but it was a grand time we had at the funeral when Duncan died at Duffers.”

. . . . .

‘The Flour of Wheat carried his mate, Dinny Murphy, all the way in from Th’ Canary to the hospital on his back. Dinny was very bad--the man was dying of the dysentery or something. The Flour laid him down on a spare bunk in the reception-room, and hailed the staff.

‘“Inside there--come out!”

‘The doctor and some of the hospital people came to see what was the matter. The doctor was a heavy swell, with a big cigar, held up in front of him between two fat, soft, yellow-white fingers, and a dandy little pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses nipped onto his nose with a spring.

‘“There’s me lovely mate lying there dying of the dysentry,” says the Flour, “and you’ve got to fix him up and bring him round.”

‘Then he shook his fist in the doctor’s face and said--

‘“If you let that lovely man die--look out!”

‘The doctor was startled. He backed off at first; then he took a puff at his cigar, stepped forward, had a careless look at Dinny, and gave some order to the attendants. The Flour went to the door, turned half round as he went out, and shook his fist at them again, and said--

‘“If you let that lovely man die--mind!”

‘In about twenty minutes he came back, wheeling a case of whisky in a barrow. He carried the case inside, and dumped it down on the floor.

‘“There,” he said, “pour that into the lovely man.”

‘Then he shook his fist at such members of the staff as were visible, and said--

‘“If you let that lovely man die--look out!”

‘They were used to hard-cases, and didn’t take much notice of him, but he had the hospital in an awful mess; he was there all hours of the day and night; he would go down town, have a few drinks and a fight maybe, and then he’d say, “Ah, well, I’ll have to go up and see how me lovely mate’s getting on.”

‘And every time he’d go up he’d shake his fist at the hospital in general and threaten to murder ‘em all if they let Dinny Murphy die.

‘Well, Dinny Murphy died one night. The next morning the Flour met the doctor in the street, and hauled off and hit him between the eyes, and knocked him down before he had time to see who it was.

‘“Stay there, ye little whipper-snapper,” said the Flour of Wheat; “you let that lovely man die!”

‘The police happened to be out of town that day, and while they were waiting for them the Flour got a coffin and carried it up to the hospital, and stood it on end by the doorway.

‘“I’ve come for me lovely mate!” he said to the scared staff--or as much of it as he baled up and couldn’t escape him. “Hand him over. He’s going back to be buried with his friends at Th’ Canary. Now, don’t be sneaking round and sidling off, you there; you needn’t be frightened; I’ve settled with the doctor.”

‘But they called in a man who had some influence with the Flour, and between them--and with the assistance of the prettiest nurse on the premises--they persuaded him to wait. Dinny wasn’t ready yet; there were papers to sign; it wouldn’t be decent to the dead; he had to be prayed over; he had to be washed and shaved, and fixed up decent and comfortable. Anyway, they’d have him ready in an hour, or take the consequences.

‘The Flour objected on the ground that all this could be done equally as well and better by the boys at Th’ Canary. “However,” he said, “I’ll be round in an hour, and if you haven’t got me lovely mate ready--look out!” Then he shook his fist sternly at them once more and said--

‘“I know yer dirty tricks and dodges, and if there’s e’er a pin-scratch on me mate’s body--look out! If there’s a pairin’ of Dinny’s toe-nail missin’--look out!”

‘Then he went out--taking the coffin with him.

‘And when the police came to his lodgings to arrest him, they found the coffin on the floor by the side of the bed, and the Flour lying in it on his back, with his arms folded peacefully on his bosom. He was as dead drunk as any man could get to be and still be alive. They knocked air-holes in the coffin-lid, screwed it on, and carried the coffin, the Flour, and all to the local lock-up. They laid their burden down on the bare, cold floor of the prison-cell, and then went out, locked the door, and departed several ways to put the “boys” up to it. And about midnight the “boys” gathered round with a supply of liquor, and waited, and somewhere along in the small hours there was a howl, as of a strong Irishman in Purgatory, and presently the voice of the Flour was heard to plead in changed and awful tones--

‘“Pray for me soul, boys--pray for me soul! Let bygones be bygones between us, boys, and pray for me lovely soul! The lovely Flour’s in Purgatory!”

‘Then silence for a while; and then a sound like a dray-wheel passing over a packing-case.... That was the only time on record that the Flour was heard to swear. And he swore then.

‘They didn’t pray for him--they gave him a month. And, when he came out, he went half-way across the road to meet the doctor, and he--to his credit, perhaps--came the other half. They had a drink together, and the Flour presented the doctor with a fine specimen of coarse gold for a pin.

‘“It was the will o’ God, after all, doctor,” said the Flour. “It was the will o’ God. Let bygones be bygones between us; gimme your hand, doctor.... Good-bye.”

‘Then he left for Th’ Canary.’

The Babies in the Bush.

‘Oh, tell her a tale of the fairies bright--
That only the Bushmen know--
Who guide the feet of the lost aright,
Or carry them up through the starry night,
Where the Bush-lost babies go.’

He was one of those men who seldom smile. There are many in the Australian Bush, where drift wrecks and failures of all stations and professions (and of none), and from all the world. Or, if they do smile, the smile is either mechanical or bitter as a rule--cynical. They seldom talk. The sort of men who, as bosses, are set down by the majority--and without reason or evidence--as being proud, hard, and selfish,--‘too mean to live, and too big for their boots.’

But when the Boss did smile his expression was very, very gentle, and very sad. I have seen him smile down on a little child who persisted in sitting on his knee and prattling to him, in spite of his silence and gloom. He was tall and gaunt, with haggard grey eyes--haunted grey eyes sometimes--and hair and beard thick and strong, but grey. He was not above forty-five. He was of the type of men who die in harness, with their hair thick and strong, but grey or white when it should be brown. The opposite type, I fancy, would be the soft, dark-haired, blue-eyed men who grow bald sooner than they grow grey, and fat and contented, and die respectably in their beds.

His name was Head--Walter Head. He was a boss drover on the overland routes. I engaged with him at a place north of the Queensland border to travel down to Bathurst, on the Great Western Line in New South Wales, with something over a thousand head of store bullocks for the Sydney market. I am an Australian Bushman (with city experience)--a rover, of course, and a ne’er-do-well, I suppose. I was born with brains and a thin skin--worse luck! It was in the days before I was married, and I went by the name of ‘Jack Ellis’ this trip,--not because the police were after me, but because I used to tell yarns about a man named Jack Ellis--and so the chaps nicknamed me.

The Boss spoke little to the men: he’d sit at tucker or with his pipe by the camp-fire nearly as silently as he rode his night-watch round the big, restless, weird-looking mob of bullocks camped on the dusky starlit plain. I believe that from the first he spoke oftener and more confidentially to me than to any other of the droving party. There was a something of sympathy between us--I can’t explain what it was. It seemed as though it were an understood thing between us that we understood each other. He sometimes said things to me which would have needed a deal of explanation--so I thought--had he said them to any other of the party. He’d often, after brooding a long while, start a sentence, and break off with ‘You know, Jack.’ And somehow I understood, without being able to explain why. We had never met before I engaged with him for this trip. His men respected him, but he was not a popular boss: he was too gloomy, and never drank a glass nor ‘shouted’ on the trip: he was reckoned a ‘mean boss’, and rather a nigger-driver.

He was full of Adam Lindsay Gordon, the English-Australian poet who shot himself, and so was I. I lost an old copy of Gordon’s poems on the route, and the Boss overheard me inquiring about it; later on he asked me if I liked Gordon. We got to it rather sheepishly at first, but by-and-by we’d quote Gordon freely in turn when we were alone in camp. ‘Those are grand lines about Burke and Wills, the explorers, aren’t they, Jack?’ he’d say, after chewing his cud, or rather the stem of his briar, for a long while without a word. (He had his pipe in his mouth as often as any of us, but somehow I fancied he didn’t enjoy it: an empty pipe or a stick would have suited him just as well, it seemed to me.) ‘Those are great lines,’ he’d say--

‘“In Collins Street standeth a statue tall--
A statue tall on a pillar of stone--
Telling its story to great and small
Of the dust reclaimed from the sand-waste lone.

*****

Weary and wasted, worn and wan,
Feeble and faint, and languid and low,
He lay on the desert a dying man,
Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go.”

That’s a grand thing, Jack. How does it go?--
“With a pistol clenched in his failing hand,
And the film of death o’er his fading eyes,
He saw the sun go down on the sand,”’--