Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

‘Never mind these youngsters, Mac. They’re getting a bit sprung, I fancy. It’s no use making a row. When’ll the “Duke” be up?’

‘He’s due here on Tuesday,’ replied the other, ‘an’, if ye’ll be in, ye can see him. He’s weel worth the lookin’ at. He’ll come by rail to Burrtown, an’ then by coach on.

Two bachelor brothers, the Blakes, who owned a run not far from Palkara, were close to the window at which the pair sat.

The younger brother it was who had fired the remark inside about losing the great ram for which M‘Pherson had just paid 700 guineas.

* * * * *

‘Well, Jack, what passengers to-night?’ asked the overseer of Blake’s Tara Station, as Cobb & Co.’s coach drew slowly up in the pouring rain close to the homestead door.

‘Nary one, bar a cussed ole brute of a ram,’ replied the driver, as he stiffly dismounted, and handed out the mail. ‘I got him at the railway, and I’ve bin more cautious with him than if he’d bin a Lord Bishop He’s for M‘Pherson up at Palkara. Hold the light please, Mr Brown, till I see if the beggar’s all serene.’

‘He’s right enough,’ said the overseer, after a glance at the aristocrat, resting luxuriously on pillows, half buried in hay, and with his legs tied by silk handkerchiefs. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘slip inside and have a snack and a drop of hot grog. I’ll stand by the horses.’

‘You’re a Christian, Mr Brown,’ remarked the driver gratefully, as he pulled off his gloves and blew on his numbed fingers. ‘It’s the coldest rain for this time o’ the year as ever I felt.’

Scarcely had his dripping figure entered the open kitchen door, when, from behind a clump of bushes, came two figures bearing something between them. Lifting the ‘Duke’ with scant ceremony out of his couch, they deposited their burden in his place, and after a few whispered words to Brown, still at the horses’ heads, disappeared. Presently the driver returned, and, with a cheery ‘Good-night,’ started the coach rolling once more through the forty miles of mud and water between Tara and Combington.

* * * * *

‘Coach in, Edwards?’ asked M‘Pherson the next afternoon as he drove up to the ‘Woolpack,’ accompanied by his friend Park.

‘Yes, sir. It’s a bit late, though,’ replied the landlord. ‘Roads terrible heavy after the rain. I had the ram untied an’ put in the stable, an’ gave him some green stuff.’

‘That’s right, Edwards,’ said the squatter. ‘How does he look after the trip—pretty well?’

The other hesitated before answering,—

‘Why, yes, sir; he seems hearty enough. But I’m no judge of sheep.’

‘S’pose ye wouldna care about givin’ 700 guineas for him, eh, Edwards?’ chuckled M‘Pherson.

‘No, sir,’ replied the landlord with emphasis, ‘I’m damned if I would.’

‘Ha, ha!’ laughed the other, as he drove into the yard, ‘and yet, mon, I wouldna swap him for the auld “Woolpack.” Come,’ he added impatiently, ‘unlock the door an’ let us hae a look at His Grace.’

By this time there was quite a crowd on the scene. A couple of stock and station agents, a bank manager, the P.M., some drovers, everybody, in fact, who thought they knew a sheep from a goat, had assembled to have a look at ‘the big ram.’

‘Keep awa’ frae the door,’ quoth M‘Pherson. ‘Ye’ll all be able to hae a good sight o’ him presently. Let him come right out into the yaird, Edwards.’

As he finished, up the lane of spectators stalked a nondescript kind of animal, at which M‘Pherson just glanced, and then sang out to Edwards, appearing in the doorway,—

‘Ye never tauld me there was twa. Whaur’s the ither?’

‘There’s only the one, sir,’ answered the landlord. ‘That’s he.’

‘What!’ and M‘Pherson fairly gasped as he stared at the brute, which—from the muleish head, down the sparsely ‘broken woolled’ back, and slab-sided flanks, to the bare, kangaroo-like legs—bore the impress all over of ‘rank cull.’

Then turning to the grinning landlord, and with accent intensified by excitement, he shouted, ‘What’s yon thing? Whaur’s my ram? D’ye think I ped my money for sic a brute as that? What ha’ ye done wi’ the “Duke”? If this is a wee bit joke o’ yer ain, Mister Edwards, time’s up, I do assure ye, sir.’ And he advanced threateningly towards the publican, who nimbly retreated into the crowd, whilst protesting,—

‘I can swear to you, sir, that’s the very same sheep Jack Burns brought in the coach this mornin’. I helped to take him out, an’ I sez to Jack, “Well, he ain’t much to look at, Jack;” and Jack, he sez, “No, that he ain’t. I think the trip must have haffected him; he seems to have felled away sence we put him in at the railway.”’

‘Tak’ me to the villain,’ groaned M‘Pherson, ‘till I get to the bottom of this de’il’s cantrip!’

Followed by quite a procession, they passed to a little room, where the driver lay sleeping off the fatigues of the previous night.

‘Hi!’ yelled the squatter, shaking him. ‘What ha’ ye done wi’ my ram, ye rascal?’

Jack, sitting up, half awake, replied sulkily,—

‘Damn your ram! He’s in the stable. What d’ye want, rousin’ people like this for?’

‘I’ll rouse ye, ye scamp!’ roared the other. ‘Whaur’s my ram—my “Duke,” I say? D’ye think that I dinna ken a coo frae a cuddy; an’ that I’m to be imposed on wi’ a blasted auld cull in place o’ the “Duke o’ Silversheen” that I ped 700 guineas guid cash for? D’ye imagine I’m daft, ye coach-drivin’ fule, ye? If ye dinna confess wha’s led ye astray, I’ll give ye in chairge this vera meenit. I’ll let ye ken that I’m Jock M‘Pherson o’ Palkara; an’ I’m goin’ to mak’ it het for ye for this wee jobbie!’

This tirade effectually awakened the driver, and said he, with an earnestness there was no mistaking,—

‘By G—d, Mr M‘Pherson, I’m on the square. I never took much notice o’ the ram at the railway. It was dusk, too, when the agent put him in. I seen him two or three times along the road, an’ thought he looked fust class. Nobody could ha’ touched him without me knowin’ of it. But, at the best o’ times, I can’t tell one sheep from t’other, never havin’ had any truck with ’em. Anyhow, if there’s cross work ’bout this un, all I can say is, as I ain’t in it: An’ now you can send for the traps if you likes.’

The man’s manner carried conviction with it, and for a few minutes M‘Pherson was silent.

At last he said,—

‘Come awa’, some o’ ye, an’ catch the creature till I have a look at him.’

But when caught, nothing was ascertainable beyond the one patent fact that he was a broken-mouthed, miserable old cull, who ought to have gone to market as a wether years ago. Earmarks, out of their own district, are of precious little use as a means of identification now-a-days.

It will be noticed that Jack forgot all about his twenty minutes’ stay and chat with the cook in Tara kitchen. The coach had been very much overdue.

‘Surely you’re not going to take the thing home, Mac?’ said his friend, as the former lugged the ‘Duke’s’ _locum tenens_ towards the buggy. ‘He’s only fit to have his throat cut.’

‘Never mind,’ replied M‘Pherson moodily, ‘he’ll mebbe turn out o’ some use yet.’

Not that the old Scotchman was at all inclined to sit down quietly and suffer his loss. Very far from it. But he was no favourite, and public sympathy was absent. Unfeeling people averred that, at the time of the sale, he had been under the influence of hypnotism, etc., etc.; in fact, laughed at, and enjoyed the thing as a good joke. Therefore he was disinclined to blazon his misadventure throughout the Colonies. Also, he thought it would be bad policy to make too much noise.

Nevertheless, he quietly strained every nerve, and spent money freely in endeavours to discover the missing animal. Private detectives and the local police took the matter in hand, and with exactly the same amount of success.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the ‘Duke’ was thriving. At Tara a big underground cellar, lit by skylights, had recently been excavated. This was his home. There, waited upon by the only three in the secret, the great merino lived on the fat of the land. Some nights the Blakes would let him out into the garden for a pick, themselves or Brown securing him in his quarters again before they turned in.

It was a lot of bother, doubtless. But what of that, if they could only ‘bring old Mac to his bearings,’ and secure Palkara for their Association!

As for the risk of discovery, they laughed at it. From the minute the agent (who was ready to swear to the ‘Duke’s’ identity) put him in the coach at the Burrtown terminus, everything seemed vague and exceedingly doubtful respecting the spot at which the transfer could possibly have been effected.

The coach stopped at some half-dozen stations along the road, besides mail stages, and at none of these places could the slightest clue be obtained. In common with the rest, Tara was subjected to official visits.

‘Certainly, Sergeant, happy to show you through all the paddocks. Like to see the rams? Yes, of course. We’ve got some very fine Havilahs you’ll be pleased with, I’m sure. Yes; terrible affair about poor M‘Pherson’s “Duke”! Have another nip before we start?’

So, sheep galore did the unhappy police inspect, and carefully did they compare, stags, wethers, and ancient ‘horny’ ewes with photos of the ‘Duke’ until, at length, quite dazed with the apparently endless quest, to say nothing of the whisky, they audibly cursed the whole ovine race back to the days of the first breeders.

Only once did the brothers feel a doubt. Driving into town, they met M‘Pherson and a black-fellow following the old cull, who was steadily tramping along the road Tara-ward.

‘What’s all this about, M‘Pherson?’ asked one, as they pulled up. ‘Have you taken a droving contract?’

‘Ay,’ replied the old fellow, glaring suspiciously at the pair. ‘Just thet. I’m wantin’ to see whaur Beelzebub, here, gangs. If he’s gotten a hame, which I muckle doot, mebbe he’ll mek back.’

But a couple of miles on, Beelzebub struck a patch of clover, and stuck to it.

The darkey watched him for three days, and, after he had finished every vestige, the old ram paused irresolutely, scratched his ear with his hind foot, and meandered calmly back to the township.

So M‘Pherson returned with him to Palkara. A bit of the garden was fenced off, and here he used to sit and smoke and stare for hours at Beelzebub, until his friends began to think his loss had affected his brain.

Like many of his countrymen, M‘Pherson was superstitious, and, deep down in his heart, was a lurking suspicion of _diablerie_ that would not be exorcised.

‘It’s no earthly use watching that beast, Mac,’ said Park, riding up one day, and finding his neighbour at his usual occupation. ‘Look as hard as you like, and that won’t turn him into the Duke. Now, take my advice, and I think you stand a show of getting him back again. You remember you said that night at the Woolpack, that, if you lost him, you’d join the Association and trust it to recover him for you, or something to that effect. Well, my notion is that some of the boys have had a finger in the pie. And I solemnly believe that, if you don’t soon make your mind up, you’ll never see the Duke any more. Come, now’s the time! Shearing will start presently. Besides, I know you want him badly for those Coonong stud ewes.’

Park, himself a prominent member, used all his powers of persuasion, and to such good purpose, that in the next issue of the local paper appeared the announcement,—

‘Palkara will start shearing on —— under Conference rules.’

* * * * *

A morning or so afterwards, M‘Pherson going out for his before-breakfast smoke and usual look at Beelzebub, to his astonishment saw him not. He had gone. But in his stead stood a stately, almost perfect animal, the _beau ideal_ of what a ‘Champion’ should be. Around his neck he bore a card, on which the old squatter presently read,—

‘I am a fully paid-up member of the Pastoralists’ Association of
Australasia.

‘(Signed) Silversheen.’

THE OFFICER IN CHARGE.

A Far Inland Sketch.

‘A rising township of some four hundred inhabitants, situated on the Trickle Trickle River. Distance from Sydney, north-west, six hundred and fifty miles.’

Thus the _Australian Gazetteer_, speaking of the far-inland village of Jillibeejee. For days you shall have ridden over bush roads, fetlock deep in dust, through monotonous open forest, or over still more monotonous plain, ere, far away on a dry brown ridge, you catch the glitter of something in the bright, hot sunshine. This proceeds from the first roof in Jillibeejee. Then, making your horse stride carefully over the Trickle Trickle, whose banks are apt to crumble, you breast the ridge and take a bird’s-eye view of the township as it lies frying in the sun.

This ridge must be fully fifty feet above the level of the surrounding country, and is probably the ‘rising’ referred to by the jocular _Gazetteer_.

The first building is deserted; so is the second. As you ride along you come to others, dilapidated but, from sounds within, peopled. There are altogether forty houses in Jillibeejee, which, by the _Gazetteer’s_ reckoning, gives us an average of ten inmates to each one.

I am afraid the _Gazetteer_ has never been to Jillibeejee.

In fact, very few people ever do seem to go there. Those that do, either depart again very shortly, or stay until theirs makes one amongst a collection of rudely-fenced enclosures on the banks of the Trickle Trickle, inside which sleep the pioneers of the place.

Perhaps the first emotion that arises in the visitor’s mind is of wonder that any pioneer, no matter how hard up he may have been, should have thought it worth while to commence pioneering at Jillibeejee. The second, that any others should ever join him in such a speculation. Neither tree nor any other green thing meets the sight. All is brown, barren, desolate—apparently a ‘waste land where no one comes, or hath come since the making of the world,’ except that intrepid band in possession.

Why do people live here? How do they live? I must discover this, if possible, before leaving. Having no time to spare, I begin at once.

He is six feet in his stockings, broad, massive, hirsute, and tanned. The insignia of office in such a place would be an absurdity. Therefore his raiment is nondescript, and mostly slouch hat. This is the man who rules the official destinies of the settlement—the ‘Officer in Charge.’ To him I propound my conundrum.

‘Ah,’ replies he; ‘ye shud jist come aroun’ whin ut’s a wet saison, an’ thin ye’d see the differ av ut.’

‘Yes,’ I remark. ‘And when may that time be due?’

‘God knows,’ says he piously, and with a sigh. ‘I’ve bin here four year, an’ I’ve seen ut wanst. Ye cudn’t see the counthry for a week bekase av the wather. Thin, afther, comes the grass an’ the clover six feet high. Ut’s a great counthry, them times, so it is, sorr.’

It is high noon as I and my friend stroll along the fiery, dusty track amongst the iron-roofed ovens large and small.

Everybody seems asleep, save that now and again we catch a glimpse of women, wan and prematurely old-looking.

In the sun’s eye a man lies in the brown dust. He is on his back, his hat off, and snoring stertorously up at a cloud of mosquitoes, sandflies, and other abominations hovering and buzzing about his face.

With a look of solicitude my guide exclaims,—

‘Sure, now, that’s Tim Healy, come in from Out Back, an’ his cheque gone already! Lend a hand, will ye, sorr, wid the other ind av him. The poor devil ’ll be sthruck intirely here, so he will.’

So, one at each ‘ind,’ we bear the man from Out Back into the comparative shade of a verandah, where the constable takes off his boots, loosens his shirt collar, and props his head up, saying,—

‘There, the cratur, mebbe he’ll waken wid nothin’ worse nor a sore head, an’ a limekiln in the throttle av him.’

A fit man and a proper, this one, I reflect, to be Officer in Charge of this half-forgotten fragment of a people.

So, presently, I am not surprised at hearing that, in addition to that title, he bears the important ones of Clerk of Petty Sessions, Registrar of Small Debts Court and Births, Land Bailiff, Inspector of Slaughterhouses, Curator’s Agent, and others equally pertinent to his surroundings, but which I have forgotten.

Entering the parlour of the one public-house, silent and deserted but for clouds of humming flies, a drowsy landlord, booted and spurred for riding, answers our knock.

‘I was goin’ over the river an hour ago,’ he explains, rubbing his bleary eyes, ‘to run a beast in; but two or three of the boys wos here larst night, an’ they kep’ it up; so I lays down on the sofy an’ drops right off. What’ll ye have, gents?’

I ask for beer. My companion smiles and ‘takes’ rum.

‘Lor bless yer!’ exclaims the landlord, ‘there ain’t bin no beer here this twelvemonth or more! I got some, somewheres, on the teams. But, the way things is, it’ll be another twelvemonth afore they show up. Dry time, ye see, sir.’

‘Well, then,’ I say, ‘have you any whisky?’

‘There was a bottle or two, but the boys—’ he commenced, when,—

‘What’s the use av batin’ about the bush that way?’ puts in my companion. ‘Why don’t ye tell the gint at wanst that sorra a dhrop’ll he get in Jillibeejee, bar the rum utself. I’ve dhrunk worse in Port Mackay. Ut’s a wholesome dhrink, in moderation, an’ wid jist a suspicion o’ Trickle Trickle at the bottom av the tumbler.’

So rum it is. The Officer in Charge takes his, I notice, very nearly pure, and without winking. We help ourselves, and the price is one shilling each.

It is still terribly hot.

‘It must be a long way over one hundred degrees in the shade,’ I remark.

‘Come acrost to the station,’ says the Officer in Charge, ‘an’ we’ll see. There’s no shade whatever in Jillibeejee. But there’s the best that is. Sure, ut’s weatherboard an’ lined—the only wan in the town. There’s a thermomether there as tells how big a hate’s on.’

So we go over. The place is like a furnace, and the glass registers one hundred and twenty-seven degrees.

‘And you’ve been here some years!’ I gasp, sliding off my chair, a wet, limp heap, on to the floor, and staying there.

‘I have, indade, sorr,’ replies he. ‘The first summer I was minded to blow me head off wid me pistol. The second was near as bad; but I don’t fale ’em so much now. Whin the wet do come, ut’s almost as thryin’; for the san’-flies an’ miskitties bangs Banagher. Ay, ut’s dull an’ lonesome like, sure enough, till the b’ys comes in for a change; an’ thin, if ye’ll belave ut, Jillibeejee is as ructious a towneen as is on God’s earth.’

‘Come in from where? Where the deuce can anybody come in from? And who in the world would come to such a hole as this ‘for a change?’ I ask irritably, whilst wringing my pocket handkerchief, as the heat proves too trying.

‘Whisht!’ replies my host placidly. ‘Ye’ll mebbe have noticed that there’s not many min in Jillibeejee, knockin’ aroun’ like?’

‘Only the fellow,’ I answer, ‘that we put in the verandah.’

‘Ay, he’s iver wan o’ the fust, is Tim Healy,’ says the Officer in Charge. ‘Whin the others are comin’ in, he’ll be afther going back, stone bruk, so he will, poor divil!’

‘In from _where_? Back to _where_?’ I cry impatiently.

‘To an’ fro the big stations on the border, over yander,’ replies he, with a wave of his hand westward. ‘To the back av beyant, where they digs dams, an’ sinks wells, an’ fences an’ fights wid the naygurs, an’ herds cattle, an’ gathers up a cheque, and thin comes back like pilicans to their women and children on the edge o’ the wiltherness here. Good b’ys, in the main,’ he continues; ‘just a little rough, perhaps, when the rum’s in. Ye see, sorr, ye can’t expeck much else from the craturs, for, iv this is bad, ut’s Hell utself out yander in the new counthry, where there’s no law, no polis, no nothin’. D’ye wander at the b’ys, now, wantin’ a change out av ut wanst an’ agin?’

‘Well, perhaps not. But what must that other life be like?’

So, in the gloaming, hot and close, with a hot-looking moon hanging in a hazy sky, I depart from Jillibeejee, leaving its Officer in Charge—strong man, and a very fit—stroking a great black beard meditatively, and possessing his soul in patience for the stirring times which herald the advent of his charges from the ‘Back av Beyant.’

‘SOJUR JIM.’

Brightly blazed the watch-fires into the still night air, brightly from within the circle formed by them gleamed thousands of sparkling eyes, and fell on the ear a low, continuous sound, like the soft distant murmur of some summer sea on a shingly beach, as twelve thousand sheep peacefully chewed their cuds after the long day’s travel.

The weather was close and sultry. So, feeling indisposed to sleep, I had left my hot tent and was walking round the whitish, indistinct mass of recumbent figures, when I nearly stumbled against the watchman, who, as one of the fires flared up, I saw was the eccentric individual known in the camp by the nickname of ‘Sojur Jim’; and, in pursuance of an idea I had long borne in mind, first assuring myself that all was right with my fleecy charges, I lit my pipe, stretched myself out on the short, thick grass and sand, and said, whilst looking at my watch,—

‘Now, Jim, spin us a yarn that will help to pass away the time.’

But my companion is well-deserving of a more particular description. ‘Sojur Jim’ was the only name by which he was called, and this he had gained by an extraordinary mania he possessed for destroying those small terrors of the Australian bush, familiar to all dwellers therein as ‘Soldier’ or ‘Bull-dog’ ants; insects fierce, intractable and venomous. These, then, seemed objects of especial aversion to Jim; and many a time, whilst travelling along, would one of the men sing out, ‘Jim, Jim, sojurs!’ The effect was electrical; Jim, leaving his flock, would bound away towards the nest, and, dexterously using the long stick, flattened at both ends in rude shovel shape, which was his constant companion, he would furiously, regardless of innumerable stings, uproot and turn over the ‘sojurs’’ stronghold, and, having exposed its inmost recesses, complete the work of destruction by lighting a great fire upon it, and all this he would do with a set stern expression on his grim face, as of one who avenges never-to-be-forgiven or forgotten injuries.

He was indeed a remarkable looking man, strong and athletic, and, in spite of his snow-white hair, probably not more than fifty years of age. Part of his nose, the lobes and cartilages of his ears, and one eye were wanting, whilst the rest of his face was scarred and seamed as if at one time a cross-cut saw had been roughly drawn to and fro over it. And as I watched him sitting there on a fallen log, the flickering blaze playing fitfully on the white hair and corrugated, mutilated features, I felt more than ever sure that the man had a story well worth the hearing could he but be induced to tell it.

Amongst his fellows in the camp he was taciturn and morose, never smiling, speaking rarely, apparently always lost in his own gloomy reflections. My request, therefore, was made with but faint hopes of success; but, to my surprise, after a few minutes silence, he replied,—

‘Very well, I’ll tell you a story. I don’t often tell it; but I will to-night. If at times you feel disinclined to believe it you have only to look at my face. I’m going now to tell you how I got all these pretty lumps and scars and ridges, and how I partly paid the men who made me what I am. “Sojur Jim” they call me, and think I am mad. God knows, I fancy so myself sometimes. Well,’ he went on, in language at times rude and unpolished, at others showing signs of more than average education, ‘Did you ever hear of Captain Jakes?’

‘Of course,’ I answered, for the notoriously cruel bushranger had, after his own fashion, helped to make minor Australian history.

‘Yes,’ muttered Jim abstractedly, ‘he’s accounted for. So is his mate—the one who laughed the loudest of any. But there were three of them, and there’s still another left somewhere. Not dead yet!’ he suddenly exclaimed in a loud voice. ‘Surely not! My God, no! After all these years of ceaseless search! That would be too hard!’ And here he stood up and gazed excitedly into the outer darkness.

‘But the story, Jim,’ I ventured to remark, after a long pause.

‘Right you are,’ he replied, as he again sat down, and calmly resumed. ‘Well, it was the year of the big rush, the first one, to the Ovens. I was a strapping young fellow then, with all my life hopeful and bright before me, as I left the old mother and the girl I loved to try my luck on the diggings. Three years went by before I thought of returning to the little Victorian township on the Avoca, where we had long been settled; but then I struck it pretty rich, and made up my mind to go back and marry, and settle down alongside the old farm; for a pair of loving hearts were, I knew, growing weary of waiting for the return of the wanderer.

‘Like a fool, however, instead of sending down my last lot of gold by the escort, I all of a sudden got impatient, and, packing it in my saddle-bags, along with a tidy parcel of notes and sovereigns, I set off alone. The third night out I camped on a good-sized creek, hobbled my horses, and after planting my saddle-bags in a hollow log, I started to boil the billy for supper. Presently, up rides three chaps, and, before I could get to my swag, I was covered by as many revolvers; while one of the men says, “Come along, now, hand over the metal. We know you’ve got it, and if you don’t give it quiet, why, we’ll take it rough.”

‘“You’ve got hold of the wrong party, this time, mates,” says I, as cool as I could. “I’m on the wallaby, looking for shearing, and, worse luck, hav’n’t got no gold.”

‘“Gammon,” says the first speaker. “Turn his swag over, mates.”

‘Well, they found nothing, of course. Then they searched all over the bush round about, and one fellow actually puts his hand up the hollow of the log in which lay hid my treasure; and I thought it was all up with it, when he lets a yell out of him and starts cutting all sorts of capers, with half-a-dozen big sojurs hanging to his fingers.

‘Jakes (for he was the leader of the gang) now got real savage, and putting a pistol to my head, swore that he would blow my brains out unless I told where the gold was. Well, I wouldn’t let on, for I thought they were trying to bounce me, and that if I held out I might get clear off, so I still stuck to it that they’d mistaken their man.

‘Seeing I was pretty firm, they drew off for a while, and, after a short talk, they began to laugh like madmen; and one, taking a tomahawk, cut down a couple of saplings, whilst another gets ready some stout cord; and Jakes himself goes poking about in the saltbush as if looking for something he’d lost. Before this they had tied my arms and legs together with saddle-straps and greenhide thongs; and there I lay, quite helpless, wondering greatly what they were up to.

‘Presently the three came up, and tying me tightly to the saplings—one along my back, and one cross-ways—they carried me away a short distance to where I had noticed Jakes searching around, and then laid me down face uppermost, partly stripping me at the same time. I lay there quietly enough, puzzling my brains to try and guess what it was all about, and those three devils standing laughing fit to split their sides.

‘“Tell us now, will you,” said they, “where that gold’s planted? How does your bed feel? Are you warm enough?” and such like chaff, till I began to think they must have gone suddenly cranky, for I felt nothing at all. Perceiving that was the case, one of them took a stick and thrust it under me into the ground; and then—oh, God! it was awful!’

Here Sojur Jim paused suddenly, and a baleful light gleamed from that solitary bright eye of his, whilst a spasm shook his whole frame, and his scarred features were contorted as if once more undergoing the agonies of that terrible torture.

The wind sighed with an eerie sound through the tall forest trees around us; the cry of some night-bird came mournfully through the darkness, whilst black clouds flitted across the young moon, filling the sombre Australian glade with weird shadows—making the scene, all at once, dismally in unison with the story, as with a shiver I stirred the fire, and patiently waited for its narrator to go on.

‘Yes,’ he continued at length, ‘I dropped down to it quickly enough then. I was tied on to a sojur-ants’ nest, and they swarmed about me in thousands—into my nose, ears, eyes, mouth, everywhere—sting, sting, sting, and tear, tear, tear, till I shrieked and yelled for mercy.

‘“Tell us where the gold is planted,” said one of the laughing fiends—I heard him laugh again years afterward over the same story—“and we’ll let you go.”

‘“Yes!” I screamed, “I’ll tell you. But for God Almighty’s sake take me out of this!” “Not much,” replied he. “Tell us first, and then you can jump into the creek and give your little friends a drink.” “Look in the big log,” I groaned at last. Then, one of them, remembering the sojurs, gets a stick and fossicks about till he felt the bags, when he shoves his arm up and drags them out.

‘“A square thing, by G—d!” says Jakes, and turning to me, he said, “Mate, you’ve given us a lot of trouble, and as you look as if you were comfortably turned in for the night, it would be a pity to disturb you. So long, and pleasant dreams!” And, with that, away the three of them rode, laughing loudly at my screams for mercy. As you may think,’ went on Jim, ‘I was by this time nearly raving mad with pain. Thousands of those devil-ants were eating into my flesh, and me lying there like a log. Hell! hell will never be as bad as that was!

‘Six months afterward I came to my senses again. It was a sunshiny spring morning, and I heard the magpies whistling outside the old humpy on the Ovens, as I tried to get up and go down to the claim, thinking that I’d had the nightmare terrible bad. But when I got off my bunk I fainted clean away on the floor, and there my mates found me when they came home to dinner. Good lads they were true men, who had nursed me and tended me through all the long months of fever and madness that had passed since the Escort, for which I should have waited, had by the merest chance come across me and sent me back again to die, as everyone thought.

‘But,’ and here, for the first time, Jim’s voice faltered and shook, ‘there was another and a gentler nurse who—God bless her—helped me back to life; the little girl who loved me came up—my mother was dead—and would have kept her word to me, too, and taken my half-eaten carcase into her keeping wholly, had I been mean enough to let her do it. But that was more than I could stand the thought of. So one morning I slipped quietly away to begin my man-hunting; for I had vowed a merciless retribution upon my undoers if I had to track them the wide world over. That’s close on fifteen years ago. I can account for two, and live on in hopes of yet meeting with the third.

‘You’ve heard how Jakes pegged out?’ asked Jim abruptly.

‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘Sergeant O’Brien shot him in the Long Swamp.’

‘So most people think,’ was his reply. ‘But I know who was first in at the end; and when, crouching up to his neck in the mud and long reeds, with my fingers grasping his throat, I think, as he turned his bloodshot and protruding eyes on mine, I think, I say, that he knew me again, all changed as I was. He never spoke, though, and I let him die slowly, for I was sure that the sergeant was a long way behind. I held him there, I tell you, and watched him as he tried to blow the bubbles of blood and froth from out his pale lips, and at last I told him who I was, and how I had tracked him down, and was now about to send his vile soul to perdition. Then, as I heard the galloping tramp of the trooper’s horse, I smothered him in the stagnant ooze of that foul swamp. Truly a dog’s death, but one too good for him! O’Brien, coming up soon afterward, found the body, put a couple of pistol bullets into it, and received the Government reward and promotion, whilst I set off in search of the others.

‘One I came across four years afterwards on the Adelaide side. I had taken a job of shepherding up Port Augusta way, when, one night, who should come to the hut but Number Two, the one who laughed the longest and loudest of the three, as I lay in agony on the sojurs’ nest. I knew him in a minute and heartily welcomed him to stop that night. “Just put those sheep in the yard, matey,” I says, “while I make some bread for our supper.”

‘Well, I makes two smallish johnnycakes, and we had our tea. Then we starts smoking and yarning, and at length I turned the talk on to ants, saying I couldn’t keep nothing there because of them. With that he falls to laughing, and, says he, “My word, mate, I could tell you a yarn if I liked ’bout ants—sojurs—that’d make you laugh for a week, only you see it ain’t always safe, even in the bush, to talk among strangers.”

‘All of a sudden he turned as white as a sheet, and drops off the stool, and twists and groans. Then he sings out, “I’m going to die.”

‘You see,’ remarked Jim, with the cold impassiveness which had, almost throughout, characterised his manner, ‘the strychnine in the johnnycake that had fallen to his share was beginning to work him, and as I laughingly reminded him of old times, and asked him to go on with his story about the sojur ants, he also knew me, and shrieked and prayed for the mercy that I had once so unavailingly implored at his hands. He was very soon, however, too far gone to say much. A few more struggles and it was all over, and then I dragged the dead carrion out of my hut and buried it eight feet deep under the sheep-dung in the yard, where, likely enough, it is yet. So much for Number Two!’ exclaimed Jim, as I sat looking rather doubtfully at him. Not that I questioned the truthfulness of his story—that was stamped on every word he uttered—but that I began to think him rather a dangerous kind of monomaniac to have in a drover’s camp. ‘And now, sir,’ he went on presently, ‘you’ve had the story you asked me for, and if ever we meet again after this trip, maybe I’ll have something to tell you about Number Three; that business it is that brought me down about these parts, for I heard he was working at some of the stations on the river. And as God made me!’ he exclaimed, with a subdued sort of gloomy ferocity in his voice, ‘when we do meet, he shall feel the vengeance of the man whose life and love and fortune he helped to ruin so utterly. I could pick him out of a thousand, with his great nose all of a skew, and his one leg shorter than the other.’

* * * * *

The watch-fires were glimmering dimly. The cool air which heralds the Australian dawn was blowing, and the sheep were moving silently out of their camp in long strings as I rose to my feet. In the white tents all was silence. Thanks to Sojur Jim, their occupants had passed an undisturbed night. Absorbed in his gruesome story—that dark tale of torture and retribution, with just that one little trait of woman’s constancy and devotion shining out like some bright star from a murky sky—the time had slipped away unheeded. Sending him to call the cook, I put the sheep together, wondering mightily to myself, as the man, with his bent-down head and slouching gait, moved away, whether he really could be the same creature who through the silent watches of the night had unfolded to my view such a concentrated, tireless, and as yet unsatiated thirst for revenge, such a fixed and relentless purpose of retaliation, unweakened through the years, but burning freshly and fiercely to-day, as, when with the scarcely healed scars still smarting, disfigured, ruined, hopeless, forsaking all, he went forth alone into the world to hunt down his persecutors.

* * * * *

A few days after Sojur Jim had related to me the story told above, one evening, at dusk, a swagman entered the camp and asked the cook for a piece of meat and some bread. Instead of eating it at once with the accompanying offered drink of tea, he turned away, and, a few minutes later, we saw his fire burning brightly a little further along the lagoon, the banks of which formed our resting-place for the night. Evidently, as the men remarked amongst themselves, our visitor was a ‘hatter.’

Next morning, when Sojur Jim was called out to take his flock, he was missing. His blankets and few belongings still lay as he had arranged them in the tent the night before, ready for turning in; and I at once ordered a search to be made.

It was of very short duration. Just in front of the swagman’s fire, in the shallow water of the lagoon, we found the two bodies. The stranger’s throat was grasped by Jim’s fingers in a vice-like clutch, that, even in death, we long strove in vain to sunder. When parted at last, and we had washed the slimy mud from the features of the dead traveller, a truly villainous countenance was disclosed to view; the huge mouth, low, retreating forehead, and heavy, thick-set jaws, all betokened their owner to have belonged to the very lowest order of humanity. But what struck me at once was that the nose, which was of great size, had, at one time, been knocked completely over to the left side of the face, and as we straightened the body out, it could plainly be seen that one leg was much shorter than its fellow.

* * * * *

Was this, then, indeed ‘Number Three,’ and had Sojur Jim’s vengeful quest, his vow of bitter retaliation, ended at last? I believed so. But, as I gazed down upon the poor, scarred dead clay of a wasted and ruined life lying there, now so calm and still, all its fierce desires and useless repinings, all its feverish passions and longings for dread retribution at rest, forcibly came to my mind the words of the sacred and solemn injunction—‘Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord; I will repay.’

FAR INLAND FOOTBALL.

‘Frightfully dull, isn’t it?’ said the Doctor.

‘Dull’s no name for it,’ said the Clerk of Petty Sessions; ‘this is the awfullest hole I ever was in.’

‘Never knew it so bad,’ chimed in the Chemist and the Saddler, who were on this frosty night drinking whisky hot in the snug parlour of the Shamrock Inn in the little township of Crupperton.

‘I tell you what,’ said the C.P.S. presently; ‘I see by the paper they’ve started a football club at Cantleville. Why shouldn’t we do the same? It’ll help to pass away the time, anyhow.’

The Doctor pricked up his ears with interest. The Chemist seconded the motion enthusiastically.

‘A capital idea,’ said he, ‘and, although I never have played, I’ll go in for it. It’s simple enough, I should imagine.’

‘Simple!’ said the C.P.S., who had once seen a match in Sydney. ‘It’s as easy as tea-drinking. There’s no expense, except the first one of the ball. It’s not like cricket, you know, where you’re always putting your hands in your pockets for something or other.’

‘I’ll give ten shillings, Mr Brown,’ said the Doctor softly.

‘Same here,’ said the Chemist.

‘How do you play it?’ asked the Saddler, and the Blacksmith, and the Constable, who had just dropped in for a warm and a yarn that chilly evening.

‘Well,’ explained the C.P.S., who had ideas, ‘first you get your ball. Then you put up a couple of sticks with a cross one on the top of ’em. Then you measure a distance, say one hundred yards by, say, fifty, on a level bit of ground, and put up another set of sticks. Then you get your men, and pick sides, and pop the ball down in the middle, and wade in. For instance,’ he continued, ‘s’pose we’re playing Saddlestrap. Well, then, d’ye see, we’ve got one goal—that’s what they call the sticks—and they’ve got the other. We’ve to try and block ’em from kicking the ball over our cross-bar, and do our best, meantime, to send it over theirs. It’s just a splendid game for this weather, and nothing could well be simpler.’

More men came in, the idea caught; a club was formed, and that very night the C.P.S. wrote to the capital for a ball ‘of the best make and the latest fashion.’

But it was a very long way to the capital. So, in the interval, the C.P.S., who was an enterprising young Native, procured and erected goal-posts and cross-bars of barked pine; and very business-like they looked with a little pink flag fluttering from the summit of each.

At last the new ball arrived. But, to the secret astonishment of the C.P.S., in place of being round it was oval. However, he was not going to expose his ignorance and imperil the reputation already earned as an exponent of the game, so he only said,—

‘I sent for the very best they had, and I can see we’ve got our money’s worth. I’ll take her home and blow her up ready for to-morrow.’

For a long time the ball seemed to go in any direction but the right one, kick they never so hardly; whilst, as a rule, the strongest and most terrific kickers produced the least effect.

They tried the aggravating thing in every position they could think of, and, for a considerable period, without much success.

It was a sight worth seeing to watch the Blacksmith, after scooping a little hollow in the ground and placing the ball perpendicularly therein, retire and prepare for action. Opening his shoulders and spitting on his hands, he would come heavily charging down, and putting the whole force of fifteen stone into his right foot, deliver a tremendous kick; then stand amazed to see the ball, after twirling meekly up for a few yards, drop on his head instead of soaring between the posts as it should have done.

‘I’m out of practice myself—haven’t played for years, in fact,’ said the C.P.S. when explanation as to this erratic behaviour was demanded. ‘It’s simply a matter of practice, you know, like everything else.’

But all the same for a long time, deep down in his heart, there was a horrible misgiving that the thing was not a football at all—that it should have been round. At last, by dint of constant perseverance, some of the men began to kick fairly well—kick goals even from a good distance.

The first difficulty arose from a lack of side-boundaries. Hence, at times, a kicking, struggling, shouting mob might be seen half-a-mile away, at the far end of the main street, whereas it should have been in front of the post-office.

To remedy this state of affairs, the C.P.S. drove in pegs at what was voted ‘a fair thing’ to serve as guides. When the ball was sent beyond the pegs no one pursued, and little boys stationed there kicked it back again. Also, the cows, pigs and goats of Crupperton, who must have imagined that a lunatic asylum had taken possession of their feeding grounds, returned, and henceforth fed peacefully about the grass-grown streets and allotments at the lower end of the township. Presently, to vary the monotony, the Cruppertonians got up a match amongst themselves for drinks—East _versus_ West was the title of it. But it never went beyond the first scrimmage, if that can be called a first where all was one big scrimmage, caused by two compact bodies of men fighting for the possession of a ball. Out of this quickly emerged the Chemist with, as he averred, a fractured wrist. Anyhow, he wore a bandage, and played no more.

Then the Blacksmith accused the Saddler of kicking him on the shins, wilfully and of malice prepense. For some time past there had been bad blood between these two, and the fight that ensued was so gorgeous that the game was quite forgotten in the excitement of it.

Presently, the village of Saddlestrap, a little lower down the river, in emulation of its larger neighbour, started football also.

The Saddlestraps mostly got their living by tankmaking, were locally known as ‘Thicklegs,’ and were a pretty rough lot. So that, when a match was arranged between the two places, fun was foretold.

The rules of the Saddlestrap club were, like those of the Crupperton one, simplicity itself, consisting, as they did, of the solitary axiom—‘Kick whatever or wherever you can, only kick.’

Therefore, as remarked, fun was expected. The C.P.S. chose his team carefully, and with an eye to weight and size. Superior fleetness, he rightly imagined, would have but little to do with the result of the day’s sport.

With the exception of half-a-dozen of the townspeople, the Crupperton players consisted of young fellows from a couple of stations adjoining. Therefore, the Saddlestraps somewhat contemptuously dubbed their opponents ‘Pastorialites.’

The Doctor pleaded exemption on account of his age, and was, therefore, appointed ‘Referee.’

For a while the play was somewhat weak and desultory, and lacking in effect. The ball was continually being sent outside the pegs, and the urchins stationed there were kept busy. But, at length, to the delight of the spectators, consisting of the entire population of the two townships, there was a hot scrimmage. ‘For all the world like a lot o’ dorgs a-worryin’ a ’possum!’ as one excited bystander yelled, whilst the crowd surged around the mixed-up heap of humanity, the outside ring of which was frantically kicking and shoving at the prostrate inner one, serving friend and foe alike.

‘A very manly and interesting game,’ remarked the Doctor, placidly ringing his bell for ‘Spell, oh!’ whilst the Chemist ran to his shop for plaster and bandage.

Presently, the undermost man of all was dragged out, torn and gory, and spitting teeth from a broken jaw.

Him the Doctor caused to be carried to the nearest house, and, after attending to his wounds, returned hurriedly to the field, where his coadjutor was looking to the minor casualties, and both teams were refreshing themselves with rum, and boasting of their prowess.

The Doctor rang his bell, and play was resumed. It was, he explained, unhealthy to dawdle about in such weather and after severe exertion.

As the C.P.S. pointed out very eloquently that night at the banquet, football was a game in which people must learn to give and take, and that, until this had been fully understood and practised, the game would never get beyond an initial stage.

This was probably the reason that on a Saddlestrap in full pursuit of the ball being deliberately tripped up by a ‘Pastorialite,’ and sent headlong to mother earth, which was hard and knobby, in place of rising and going on with the game, he began to punch the tripper.

Five minutes afterwards might be seen the curious spectacle of a ball lying neglected in the centre of the ground, whilst outside raged a big fight of thirty.

For a time the trouble was strictly confined to the two teams. But when it was observed that Crupperton was getting the worst of it, partisans quickly peeled off and took sides; so that, directly, both townships were up to their eyes in fight, and the Doctor seriously contemplated sending for professional assistance to Cantleville.

For some time victory hovered in the balance. But men fight well on their own ground, and at last the Saddlestraps broke and fled for their horses and buggies. Those who stayed behind did so simply because there was no doctor in their native village.

A banquet for both teams had been prepared at the leading (and only) hotel. But there was only a remnant of one side that felt like banqueting, so the gaps were filled by residents who had been prominent in the fray.

The C.P.S., with a couple of beautifully blackened eyes, took the chair. At the other end of the table presided the Constable, whose features presented a curiously intricate study in diachylon, many of the Saddlestraps having seized a mean opportunity of wiping off old scores.

Speeches and toasts were made and drunk, and football enthusiastically voted the king of all games. As the Blacksmith—whose arm was in a sling—observed, ‘It was a fair an’ square game. A man know’d what he’d got to do at it. There wasn’t no tiddleywinkin’ in the thing.’

The Doctor had been too busy to come early; but he dropped in for a minute or so during the evening, and with great fire, and amidst much applause, made a splendid speech. In its course he quoted Gordon’s well-known lines—‘A game’s not worth a rap for a rational man to play,’ etc.; and also adapted that saying of the ‘Iron Duke’s’ about the battle of Waterloo being won upon the British football grounds.

It was decidedly the ‘speech of the evening,’ and was greeted with hearty cheers as, concluding, he retired to look after his patients.

But Crupperton was very sore next morning; and for a whole week there was no more football. Then they looked about them for more victims to their prowess. But they found none at all near home.

At last, in despair, and in defiance of the advice of the C.P.S., the executive challenged Cantleville itself—agreeing to journey thither. In due course, and after the C.F.C. had recovered from its surprise, and consulted a ‘Gazetteer,’ it accepted.

Cantleville was a very long distance away. Moreover, it was the ‘City’ of those inland parts, and the headquarters of the Civil Service therein. Therefore the C.P.S. and the Constable discreetly refused to accompany their fellows. One of the pair, at least, had doubts as to whether Cantleville played the Crupperton game.

So the Blacksmith was elected Captain. ‘You’d better stay at home,’ said the C.P.S., ‘the chaps over there are regular swells, up to all the latest dodges, and they wear uniforms. Besides they may not quite understand our rules.’

‘Then we’ll teach ’em,’ said the Blacksmith. But the question of a uniform troubled him. So he took counsel with his now fast friend the Saddler, and the result was that everyone packed a stiffly-starched white shirt and a pair of black trousers into his valise.

‘How about your uniforms now?’ said the Blacksmith, ‘nothin’ can’t be neater’n that.’

So they went forth to battle, accompanied by the good wishes of the populace; but neither by Doctor nor Chemist. There were plenty of both at Cantleville. Also they were wise in their generation, and had doubts.